Back in the saddle folks, good to be drawing again! Took a vacation to Washington DC this past weekend, had a lot of fun, but the return trip home unfortunately met with tragedy. Tragedy most tragic.
I partook of a Spicy Food Challenge in a biker saloon in West Virginia, and spent the entire remainder of the car ride home chugging Pepto Bismol and cursing my fate. At one point I also tried to go to the bathroom, only to find out the “fun” way that I had not washed all of the nuclear wing sauce off of my hands. The whole day was fire and regret.
At least my taste buds started working normally again. Everything tasted funny throughout Monday. >_>
The four Clans each have traditional roles in Sarnoth society, but individuals are free to work outside of those roles if they choose. Plo Quar's job as a Peacekeeper was/is atypical of Jin'Sorai, who are traditionally artisans and builders.
Selkie’s jumping to conclusions here, makes sense a kid would read the situation this way though.
Especially a kid who’s been searching for answers about her mother leaving her – “It’s okay, sweetie, Mom left you at the orphanage because she had to go SAVE PEOPLE!” is a lot more palatable than pretty much any other answer.
*nods*
1. The ‘bad guys’ are the people taking measures such that the Sarnothi /don’t/ start slaughtering humans, with Selkie’s mother actively working on the side of the human-slaughterers.
2. Not every person fighting ‘bad guys’ is a hero, any more than every firefighter or every soldier is a hero. The term is deliberately used to single out people exceptionally heroic compared to others in the same position–thus the term ‘my hero’ for someone who did something especially important to oneself (such as saved one’s life), whereas third parties would not feel the same level of gratitude and reverence.
Sorry but no, just no. There is no evidence that the Jin’Sorai wanted to “slaughter” humans. They only quote we have is they wanted blood for blood, which given the situation could easily mean the lives of the fishermen who killed the Sarnothi.
I do not understand this continued absurd accusation that the Jin’Sorai are out to exterminate humanity, its simply not supported by the comic nor by logic. Even with their technology the ability for humans to respond with various means to make their habitat unlivable would pose an extreme deterrent to wholesale war against humanity. It just makes no sense.
Yay Mom! ^_^
I guess now’s as good a time as any to ask whether Sarnothi have an atypical reaction to capsaicin (aside from it, y’know, being in icky yucky plants).
Also, gloves are a good idea when preparing and/or eating very spicy foods. For future reference.
Gloves were actually forbidden as part of the challenge’s terms.
1. Eat all of the meat off the wings, to the bone
2. No drinks, no other food, no leaving the table, no cleaning off your hands.
3. After eating all three wings, sit at the table for five minutes.
I got through ONE wing before I felt my stomach rebelling. One wing, and it laid me up for an entire afternoon.
I like those rules.
Sorry to hear you had a bad exerience.
But do Sarnothi react badly to peppers?
Ooh, that sounds like my kind of challenge.
Do you know what went into the sauce? Reapers, scorpions, jolakias, straight up capsaicin extract?
I enjoy my absurdly (and dangerously) spicy stuff 😀
I’m actually growing a wide variety of peppers this year to torture myself. Jalepenos, cayenne, habaneros, scotchbonnets, ghost and scorpionvenom.
I tried growing jolakias for a while, but after I moved there was a freak freeze that killed all of my plants in 1 go (and the first pepper had just started growing)
Once I can green-house it I’m trying again…garlic too, because raw garlic is fun.
I’m growing a bunch of peppers next to my tomatoes to torture the squirrels. The first year I tried to grow tomatoes the squirrels ate most of them. The second year I happened to get some peppers and they only got a small portion, after I found half a pepper eaten they didn’t touch anything else. This year I got many interesting peppers (did you know the Scorpion pepper comes in a chocolate variety?) and have interspaced them with the tomatoes and squash.
As a fond fan of spicy, and someone who would have taken part along side you, I can tell you that this kind of thing takes practice getting used to the spice and getting your digestive system used to it.
There’s a pizza place here that has a crust called Apocalypdough. It is Scotch Bonnets, Ghost Peppers, and Habanero juice. Don’t do what I did and get Tabasco Pepperoni, Linguica Sausage, and Garlic Cloves. Best pizza I ever had, but I am used to war and ot was almost too much anyway.
Does selkie know not to tell everyone who her mother is?
Or is topsecret info going to get leaked at school?
Somehow I doubt she’s going to want to let everyone know that her mom is a Sarnothi hero. She gets teased enough for her fish features, why would she do anything to confirm them?
because… Mom’s are AWESOME!… as well as the fact of the whole rivalry with Amanda and HER mom… Selkie’s gotta retaliate SOMEHOW… Too bad, she’s gonna get laughed at and ignored for telling tall tales, like Georgie.
Yeah, unless someone makes the point to her that she needs to keep this quiet, and makes sure she understands why it’s REALLY important, I’d say this secret is doomed.
Man…I wonder if Selkie’s going to see her Mother again though.
I think it’s only a matter of time and she will be trying to hook her up with Todd.
I don’t think either would be interested. Unless somehow this becomes the Parent Trap.
She still might try. She obviously loves her mom, she loves Todd, in her mischief mind she might think that’s enough. And she could always use it to defeat Amanda. Selkie isn’t physically dangerous as she would never in a million years use her weapons to hurt Amanda, but she would love to tease Amanda and get away with it. Most kids are like this.
In fact, I see a lot of Mabel from Gravity Falls in Selkie, and look at some of her fantasies with Pacifica. Very similar to what Selkie would like to do with Amanda.
From what we’ve seen so far sarnothi and humans are likely to be physically incompatible, so that’s not really a possibility, though yea Selkie might not know that.
Get well soon, Dave! Being an Indian, I have quite a stomach for spicy food. But hearing your description I think even I would have been defeated by a single wing.
Hmmm… So Selkie and her mom were in danger of being attacked/arrested by their own race and possibly mistakenly taken out by the other races. This is complicated.
Well, other way around… Selkie and her mom are Jin’Sorai. So they were in danger of being attacked / arrested by the Sar’Teri on purpose, or, yes, I suppose they could be mistakenly attacked by surviving Jin’Sorai or other rebels who weren’t up to speed on Plo Quar’s switch to their side. Though, since it’s been all over the “mass media” that last is unlikely. The main danger has to be from the Sar’Teri.
I has a constructive criticism!
It doesn’t exactly make sense that Todd telling Selkie about her homeland’s war happens off screen. It feels incredibly awkward that suddenly she just knows about it. This occurs to me as a super important scene that Selkie would have *character-developing* reactions to, and therefore, as something that *should* be shown.
Unless of course there’s a very specific reason we don’t see this, but it’d have to be a good one.
I put a lot of thought into the decision to have Selkie’s informing about Sarnoth happen off screen, and to be honest I feel it’s a bit of a weak move too. But I chose to do it that way for a couple reasons.
1. Pohl has already given a fairly wordy explanation about the sarnothi civil war and it’s effect on the population. From a meta-logic standpoint, the readers already HAVE this information. Giving it again via Todd telling Selkie on-screen is redundant.
2. Selkie is a child, and she also was raised away from Sarnoth. Aside from a general “these are people like me”, Selkie doesn’t really have much reason to have an emotional reaction to details about the war, and being a child she wouldn’t have a full appreciation of the scope of it. She’d be sad in a general sense, and maybe a bit generally angry that her people were on the receiving end, but there’s no personal connection Selkie would have to that information. As the saying goes: one death is a tragedy, one-hundred is a statistic.
Plus, it makes more sense to me that Todd would give Selkie a polished-up telling of the story. More, “The Jin’Sorai were attacked and they are losing the war” than “The Jin’Sorai were attacked so ruthlessly that you may be one of the last ones”. That’s something I wished to imply with Selkie’s dialogue here: she knows the war exists, and she knows her side is losing. I just can’t see Todd burdening her with anything more sordid than that simple boiled-down telling.