Crazy-black-and-green-laser-knives aren’t meant to be handled by little ones.
Also, another Video Game Kickstarter a reader reminded me of: Shantae, Half-Genie Hero. Looks fun!
The sculpting tool only LOOKS like a blade. It's blunted, and lighter than it looks. Also, hitting or trying to carve something with it would probably chip and break it. It can also be difficult to control properly for the inexperienced user, but at a certain level of craft you can make both big sweeping cuts with it as well as smaller fine-tuned polishes.
Yes, slicing your face off would be a pain! More than a pain I should expect.
So… The child is already able to activate their gizmos? (I’m guessing that from Momma’s response, and probably the kid has toy plains he can float)
I assume then that it is either the technology itself or a combination of their physiology and technology that creates the telekinetic effect.
Just putting it out there.
(Also, damn auto correct. I caught a few errors, my appologies if I missed any)
Wait… does that statue have three breasts? O_o
I’m fairly certain that one of those is a gill slit.
If you look reeeeal closely at panel four, you can see gill slits on both sides. So yeah, pretty sure that’s what it is.
It’s a gill flap.
Ah, okay, my eyes aren’t what they used to be and I can’t really use my glasses while surfing the internet. But yeah, gill flaps makes WAY more sense, I knew that they didn’t have three breasts but with my eyes being what they are that’s what that looked like to me. Sorry.
Pashakitty’s hardly the only one who had to look twice to figure that out. 😛
Dave, I thought of a very easy touch-up that could make that gill-flap look less like a third boob in panel 1. There is a little speckle-spot right about where a nipple would be if this were, in fact, a boob. Erase that (or paint over with the light tone of the statue) and that might help break the optical illusion with a few second’s effort.
Magic Ninja… Sculptor. Yep. Totally didn’t see that coming.
I guess the “terrible twos” are are even more nightmareish when you have artifacts of DOOM lieing all over the place!
(after reading the transcript)
Wow, a clean slice with a dull blade. Speaking as a welder by trade, I can’t wait to see what other tools the Sarnothi have developed, or how they have applied them. Their cities must be pretty damn impressive.
Doesn’t seem any more ‘artifact-y of doom’ than any average power tool a two-year-old might randomly grab…
Behold, the Lost Circular Saw of the Covenant!
Ha! Good one! XD
Still, a power saw has numerous safety catches to prevent an accident (the makers don’t want to be sued after all). It also requires a power source and a set-up workstation be used properly. Sarnothi tools can apparently be powered by anyone on the spot (even by children) and have no safty catch other than the user’s skill.
It’s extremely practical, not to mention AWESOME, but lord help any parent who’s four-year-old can handle magic! 8(
I see how she is using it and assume that whatever the power source — from her or from the knife — one must likely be Sarnothi to use it/access that power source. Fascinating.
More rubber science conjecture! If we infer from Selkie’s screeching that the Sarnothi have a measure of sonic specialization in their evolutionary history, they might have developed technology that exploits whatever they’ve retained of that.
It wouldn’t be obviously visible that they were doing anything, but if they had a reactive/resonating material to play with (which is consistent with what we’ve seen of this stuff so far…the black, green glowing material is in play in all observed instances), they could feasibly do a lot with it that an organism lacking such mechanisms (like humans) couldn’t and would likely never chance upon discovering. Particularly if the material is the result of any kind of processing, rather than something occurring in nature…crystals vibrate, but what has to be done to make a crystal that can carry, amplify and shape an acoustic signal with both the power and precision to cut stone at such apparently low output? Or, from the lights, are they stepping an ultrasonic acoustic signal up into EM with the material as a medium and fuel source?
And how absolutely mad is knowledge of this kind of tech going to drive entities like the FBI? A race of people with knives that shoot lasers is an idea that has to drive officials a special kind of mad. Especially if such tech is ubiquitous in a society that is not stable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyMKWJ5e1kg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9a4K3481B0
So sarnothi women do have breasts. I’ve been wondering, and the one panel last strip wasn’t quite enough to go on. One could argue that evolution underwater means that gravity is less relevant, but on the other hand, they’re not exactly hydrodynamic…
I believe it’s to feed their young before their young can handle fish (leastways that’s what it said in that one anatomical drawing. Sarnothi women’s bustiness has been seen before; just not in the comic).
Still can’t help picturing breast-feeding a child with razor teeth. >_<
Sarnothi children may be born toothless and grow their baby teeth in later. Predatory mammals can handle their offspring’s baby teeth, and weening generally takes place once the adult teeth start coming in.
That’s becasue babies nurse with their lips—not their teeth (and a good mamma teaches them early not to bite). Plenty of non-human mammals nurse babies with full sets of super sharp teeth. I can speak from personal experience, too (my daughter teethed very early and had a full set before weaning) it is no biggie.
In the whole (real world) animal kingdom, only humans have breasts of any significant size when they’re not feeding young children. Unless sarnothi kids aren’t weaned until well into their fifth year (or equivalent), it would be odd if she held onto hers unless sarnothi women were similar to human women in this aspect.
Which is where gravity and hydrodynamics would come in. Human breasts are kinda a survival trait (men can’t tell just by looking if a woman is ‘in heat’ or not, and thus can’t just blindly risk leaving women to danger), and such survival traits only remain useful as long as they don’t actually hinder general performance.
Interesting things on the subject of evolution. Current thought is that human breasts are an artifact (one of many) resulting from our communication specializations…as our snouts flattened into speaking mouths, we needed more protuberant bosoms to preclude suffocating our young during nursing. Particularly since, like other great apes, we tend to cradle and carry our young while nursing rather than laying out like a cat or pig might.
Most mammals don’t actually have very prominent breasts /at all/, compared to how we’ve developed, and the ones that do often have them hanging directly down for another reason such things are useful: So that quadrupeds, particularly (but not exclusively) herbivores can let their young nurse while remaining upright and mobile. Such structures are very rare among animals for whom this is not a consideration, such as apes and marsupials (whose young cling to their mother and are carried thusly, rather than following along or hanging out under them).
Obviously, these are not universally applicable trends (evolution, especially hypothetical evolution for fiction, is a slippery process and not all answers are used by all species in all comparable niches), but in the case of the Sarnothi I could see them developing protuberant breasts for more or less the same reasons we probably did as they progressed from snouted, shark-like predators to agile communicators akin to ourselves.
That’s an interesting hypothetical evolutionary history, Dave. Kind of half imagining their (very ancient) ancestors as a shark-like proto-cetacean that stayed small, using high pitched sonics to hunt and stun prey before specializing further and further into human-like socialization and communication patterns. They would probably retain the mechanisms that allow for things like the screech, particularly in young, as a defensive mechanism even if they lost more bat-like sonar/assault capacity along the way.
That would relate them closer to ungulates than apes, of course. But relating them to apes per the Aquatic Ape hypothesis would require a lot more genetic juggling.
Either way, really fascinating critters and captivating people which I look forward to learning more about.
In case I haven’t said it already Dave, I really, thoroughly enjoy this comic and believe that the world is enriched by your work on it. Kudos, and keep up the good work.
Hmmm… still language geeking here. What language are the De’Medeias speaking in this comic? English? If so, this seems a remarkable level of adaptation to surface life they have here. I assume they’re bilingual… hmm. Puzzling.
Why so? For generations, immigrants came here, and the first thing they did was learn to speak English. They taught their children English. Many first-generation Americans, of a hundred years ago, had no idea how to speak their parents’ native tongue, as their parents, wanting to be “good Americans”, spoke English in the home, so the children grew up speaking it, instead of Italian or French or German or Russian or Chinese. A “remarkable level of adaptation”? If you can form sounds, you can learn to speak another language.
Or are you suggesting that you thought they would be too stupid to learn English?
Or a simple not-knowing history, in which case he knows now.
True enough, I’m pretty much third generation everything (Irish, Scottish, German, Polish and Norwegian) and I have no idea how to speak my great-grandparent’s languages other than a couple of words in German. My parents don’t speak any of them either. And I don’t recall my grandparents speaking anything other than English either.
Geez, harsh much, Alpo? You can correct someone without trying to make them feel like an idiot, you know.
I think that so far, the only sarnothi we have seen before the good doctor is Selkie, who while intellegent, has a few lingual tics (she is probably first generation, while the De’Medeias may be second or third generation, or at least were here somewhat longer than Selkie if they were first generation). My grandmother was incredibly intellegent, but since English was not her first language, she too had a couple of lingual tics that she just recently gotten rid of. It has nothing to do with intellegence, and everything to do with what you are used to, and what is easier.
Well. This was unexpected. What I meant was that their speaking English was a clue to something, even if we don’t know what yet. Because I didn’t know enough history, as Pyrpyr suggested, I worded it badly. Perhaps “commitment” would have been better than “adaptation”. In any event, I meant mental adaptation, like adapting to a new culture, rather than any kind of physical adaptation that Alpo suggested.
Although, Alpo, this raises an interesting question. If you’re right, and they’re speaking English, why are they so committed to being “good Americans”? In this day and age, we’re more tolerant of non-English-speaking or bilingual Americans. So what, then, is driving this desire? Are they committed to abandon Sarnoth? Or is it something else? Hmmm… *strokes chin and wishes he had a beard*
Tolerant but not allowing. They don’t have driving tests in languages they don’t know about, even in places that they do give driving tests in anything but English. And considering that not many people know that it’s illegal to take you’re wife’s last name in more states than bestiality is illegal in… we Americans don’t allow for as much as people think we do.
Just a side note, if that kid is 4 his vocabulary is thoroughly stunted.
I intended it more as “little kid speak”.
He sounds and behaves much more like a 2-3 year old (a young 3 at that). My kiddo is 4, and has lots of friends between 2-6.
Just my experience – most kids can say airplane by the time they are four (though some will still drop their Rs a little), and they can usually speak in very complete sentences. Of course, this boy may be a little different since he is Sarnothi.
Also, a kid that age is usually more likely to ask what a strange knify thing is (though they will still pick it up), and will usually drop it when they hear the “mommy danger” voice versus fighting for the dangerous object. That’s more 2 year old behavior—though a 3 year old and a 4 year old can behave that way (usually when *very* *very* tired).
I was thinking “toddler” when I wrote him but “big enough to be left alone for short times while the stay-at-home parent works on stuff” when I drew him. Bit of a mental conflict I guess. XD
Yea, my 1 1/2 year old could probably repeat words like that it you said them to her. A 4 year old would be able to speak in full, proper sentences. He might be too big to pick up at that point too and would know not to touch sharp objects lol.
*sidekick Linguistics Girl hops in!*
Although we may be delving more into neurology here as well…
A four-year-old who speaks one language would be stringing together full sentences.
A four-year-old in a bilingual household would still be stringing sentences together, but incomplete or with some noticeable errors.
Either way, a four-year-old WOULD grab sharp things even if told not to… in ANY language.
I must rejoin Language Geek Boy! *hops out*
*normal girl walks in* did you guys see that caped girl? Dunno who she is /shrug/
Anywho… ditto the masked girl. Also: a two-year old human would speak like Suko does. Dunno if sarnothi brain/language development is different though. But, Selkie was talking normally at age 5 by human standards.
Source: personal experience. Many many years of babysitting, day-camping, and tutoring bilingual kids.
Sorry but I agree with them, Dave. I would have guessed him to be 2 or 2.5 years old, unless this language is hard for him to learn, or they age differently than humans.
Gonna be straight with you (and everyone else), if I’ve messed up the language faculties compared to age, I’m not about retconning myself. XD
Further clarification: I was thinking of him as being really young, toddler or just past it, when I wrote his dialogue, but after drawing the comic out felt maybe he should be a bit older if he is being left unsupervised for short durations while his mother sculpts. Didn’t amend the dialogue to adjust for the alteration in backstory though.
If I messed up a basic child development thing I don’t have a problem “fixing it in post”. So… yeah. Dave Fail Retcon! XD
Maybe he just got up from a nap…
Still think you’re good at calling him at 2. As the mom of a 2 yr old and a 5 yr old, I’m ok with my 2 yr old puttering around in the toyroom while I cook dinner, work on the computer, etc. for a little while. She will wander back in to where I am when she needs me or wants company (much like this little guy.)
I would say it’s a combination of factors for stunted language development. Firstly, as already stated was a matter of nonhuman neurology having the language centers develop either at a different rate or at a different time. Second, would be the also previously stated bilingual household. Third, may be a late introduction to English or even to human environments. Do the Sarnothi need to be near a marine environment when really young? Maybe just learning to breathe air is a challenge? Fourthly, would a species that has a deeply ingrained magical/psychic ability also need a bit more time? Fifth, there is the possibility that Seho may simply be developmentally challenged.
Whatever the case, it may not be that big an issue and we may all just could be over analyzing this.
You totally nailed “toddler”—just not the age. Toddlers are babies that walk (aka – “toddle”) 1+ to 2. After that, they are called preschoolers (3-4). Then they are consider child-aged (5-8) and then tweens (9-12).
One need not necessarily assume early childhood development of their species proceeds at EXACTLY the same pace as humans do… in fact that would be a rather weird coincidence.
Two very similar breeds of monkeys (to use a Darwinian-style metaphor) developing at similar speeds during their early growth would make sense. The Merfolk (don’t want to backbutton mid-comment to recall their species name right now) are from a widely diverse branch of evolution from humans, however. Perfectly parallel early development would be bizarre… They apparently hatch from eggs, for @#$%’s sake! ^_^
You mean “not above”, right? Are you above retconning your retcon notice? (Xzibit would be proud.)
This post is now a retcon.
Yo dawg, I heard…
Sarnothi are not human. It would stretch credulity if their development was exactly like that of neotenous hairless chimps.
He may have a speech impediment. I had one when I was younger and so did my youngest sister. People often thought I was younger than my age because of the way I pronounced words (the “th” sound was REALLY hard for me to make, which sometimes made me sound like I was using “baby talk”). Children with speech impediments also sometimes use short or incomplete sentences because it’s difficult and/or embarrassing for them to speak.
I notice Selkie has an impediment in English too…maybe it’s a racial trait? I’m wondering if their physiology is different enough from humans to make speaking English difficult. The adults we have seen, who have mastered speaking English, may then have undergone some type of interracial speech therapy?….
lets not get into that I still can’t say ‘s’ without is sounding like ‘shhhh’
Hahaha! Those moments are familiar—especially when trying to do art around kids. “Don’t touch that! Drink that! Get near that!” And unless you are blessed with the space for a studio, you are stuck. Good luch with child-proofing. The most I can do is only take out the pointy, injury-causing things when I’m sure I have time to put them away. Of course that doesn’t guarantee curious hands don’t explore where they shouldn’t. This is part of why I only do that kind of art in the middle of the night when I can sleep in the next day.
Panel 2: I see a sneaky little Suko peeking around the corner! 😀
Panel 6: THAT is THE picture of cuteness!
Also, is it just me or does Suko look just like his daddy?? :3
Also… as a fellow A:TLA fan… did you do what I think you did with the kid’s name? XD
Let me just say he aaaaaaalmost had a birth mark on the left side of his face and leave it at that. :3
Virt’s doing the soundtrack for that Shantae game. I’m in.
So all adult selkies (or at least, female selkies) have the power of green electric laser glow hands? And our Selkie doesn’t know about this? Ruh roh… uncontrollable surprise laser powers ahead…
(Of course she did have that flashback of her mom…)
PS I <3 Ninja Artist Mom. Too cool.
Oh, delete my comments. I just realized the power is coming FROM the weapon – not the other way around. Now I will look dumb. :/
The visible energy is coming from the blade. Dose not mean the source of the power is the wielder. It dose open the question. Is Selkies mother a more powerful or different caster?
Yeah, I realized that right after I posted, and hoped I could get the comment deleted before anyone saw my mistake. Oh well.
I’m seeing this as being some sort of technology that is fairly common in their culture. Probably another good reason MIB would rather the rest of the world didn’t know too much about the Sarnothi.
Oh, uh, I never fixed that for you did I… Sorry.
That’s okay. 🙂
I agree that he acts about 2, but he’s bigger than I would have expected. I guess if I were in charge of the retcon department, I’d redraw him a bit smaller, but assume that a Sarnothi boy of this age is indeed old enough to be left alone for short periods (which I guess is true for humans without stretching it too much).
Btw, it seems like “Sarnothi” would be a nationality, rather than a species, but maybe we/they use the same word for both concepts? I suppose that’s analogous to what we do with words like “Korean”.
Anyone else thinking this lady’s design reminds them of Katara from Avatar: TLA? Especially looking at panel six, for example. The facial markings remind me of Katara’s hair loopies.
Yeah… I wonder if I can still find those dvd boxes… *wanders off in search of ATLA dvds*
*blink* *blink*
Saaaaaaaaaaaaaay…
(So then who’s Pohl modeled after?)