Some people make a big deal out of PDM. *shrug*
I promise Then is going to give some sort of explanation in the next strip. I promise not to cut away from here on Friday. Just saying.
Some people make a big deal out of PDM. *shrug*
“It’s a transmitter, and now that it’s damaged a Dead Man’s Switch has gone off somewhere. I’m not worried about a public display of Mommy so much as a public appearance of Mommy, armed to the teeth and ready to deal with whatever hurt her daughter…”
That wouldn’t be so bad, I’m more worried an associate of the war hero will come on her behalf. Mommy might listen to her child and see that everything is alright and she is safe in her new home. A brother in arms with a simple ‘retrieval’ mission, not so much.
Hah. It looks like Agent Brown is very much looking to his sarnothi partners for cues on how to deal with Selkie problems. He didn’t say anything about confiscating the bow before Then said they needed to, but then had no clue about the actual new information that made him think that. He just backed Then up blindly, based on the information that he DID have avaliable but hadn’t put forward on his own.
Because with Selkie he can only push as far as the sarnothi adults will let him, they are the ones protecting her interests and for all that he talks big about the security issues, the diplomatic issues with treating Selkie right are just as important a factor.
Agent Brown has the best of intentions but dude. Ya need to hear out your co-worker on what’s happening before ya speak. Cuz XD you didn’t even make sure that he was done speaking.
….I wanna see more of Selkie’s mother. Cuz seeing her armed to the gills with other fighters would be cool.
What we know?so far about the Bow
1. It’s a holographic projector
2. It transmits a signal when seperated from selkie
3. Keeps selkie safe some how, or alerts someone that selkie may be in potential danger.
4. Recognizes selkie’s biometric patterns
5. Signal is strong enough to be triangulated.
6. Heirloom keepsake last gift from mother
Possibilities
1. Holographic recorder
2. Holographic video conferencing transmitter
3. All seeing holographic eye or all hearing ear, surveillance bug
4. One way communication transmitter
5. Two way communication transceiver
What the bow is not
1. Weapon or bomb
2. Harmful
The thing is none of the possibilities are good reasons for the bow to be confiscated
If anything it lets them know some relresentative of her mother is keeping a close eye on selkie and it would be a huge mistake to circumvent the reason selkie was given the bow in the first place.
Her mother is keeping an eye on selkie and it would very stupid for the agents to even try to prevent it. In fact they should be trying to maintain the one communication thread they do have, even if it is currently one sided.
We don’t know 2, 3 or 5 actually. 🙂
it has been said in the comic
3. Selkie’s mother gave her the bow to keep her safe
it is for that reason that selkie was told to always wear it
2. the agents specifically mention the bow is the source of resonance spikes
Resonance spikes are a type of transmission signal
5. the agents literally followed the resonance signal to the Apartment
they were literally able to triangulate the location.
We know she said it’s to protect her, we don’t know if it actually does, or if there’s even anything to be protected from.
For 2, might just be your wording then. When you said signal I thought you assumed it’s transmitting some kind of information, but all we know is that the agents can detect resonance, kind of like we can detect heat or radiation.
For 5, it’s not like they don’t know where Selkie lives. It’s also just as possible they were already “scanning” her house or general location.
You have to realize that even a simple on/off signal is information. If an on signal is sent, you know that something must have triggered it.
Yes, and we don’t know if any such signal is send at all is my point.
If it can be detected at a distance, it’s a signal. The question is whether it’s being monitored by anyone other than the agents. I expect it is, since otherwise the bow is pointless.
Like if I turn on my desk lamp, if you had the right equipment you could detect it’s head signature, but that does not mean my lamp is sending a signal, right?
It would send the signal that you (or someone) had been at your desk.
If you think lights going on and off sends no signal, then watch a haunted house movie.
They’re currently in the middle of a sarnoth civil war
And you claim there isn’t anyone to protect her from?
There are sarnothi that would gladly hurt Selkie
To send a message to, or get a reaction from, her Mother.
I’m saying we don’t know, is all. You are presenting several assumptions and theories as “what we know”, is all.
Or even if it’s a weapon or harmfull. Though so far two sarnothi who acttally understand resonance (at least one of whom cares for Selkie) seem to think she should not have/use it.
Neither are experts in Sarnoth Resonance Technology
the Doctor never got to look at it long enough to study what it does or how it works.
and the Agents have an ulterior motive for wanting to take it
the agents with the right sarnothi research team
would be able to reverse engineer the device
to create a listening Probe that would help them locate the person or group that has been covertly listening to Selkie’s Bow
once they find them they may be able to use or force them
to find where Selkie’s Mother is Hiding
Seeing as Selkie’s Mother didn’t Trust the Agents to look after Selkie
and Given the History the Doctor told Todd
it’s possible that if the Agents find Selkie’s mother
Selkie will never see her Mother alive again.
We can’t rule it out being dangerous to Selkiecomic.com. She did damage an unknown technology that has a rather advanced and dense power storage device. A cell phone battery can blow up and destroy a hand. Imagine what this could do if the defect decides to release an amount of energy capable of sustaining a holographic projection for years.
Love those autocorrect lines. Of course the bow isn’t dangerous to the website, it’s a fictional drawing.
Depends… you did see what happened over at Sue and Kathryn, right?
A reminder…
http://sueandkathryn.com/comic/sue-and-kathryn-347/
It’s interesting that Then and Agent Brown did *not* react when the bow went off with the Pohls. Only here. I would guess they already know about the Pohls’ use of the Sarnothi tech above water and subtly allow it to keep going on (or perhaps explicitly, I can’t tell). So it is primarily that it is in the hands of a 3rd (?) grader and a human father that is new to the culture.
Yea, they didn’t even know what it is, just caught resonance readings (kind of like a geiger counter going off i asume). From the Pohl’s household that is not really unexpected. What’s interesting is that they did not come check it out the first time and weren’t even that surprised, which is why I think sarnoti emitting resonance is something that also happens naturaly.
Here’s my thoughts…
Judging from Sai Fen’s use of the tech… this is something that the Sarnothi could potentially turn into a weapon. The gift is “awakened” (in a previous comic the agents did use that term) in youth, and perhaps evolves with the individual to fit their personality and interests. Sai Fen is an artist, so hers became artists’ tools. The De’Madeas are family-oriented and peaceful, so Pohl was able to turn his into the aquarium pump for their babies, and Sai Fen to use hers to extract the baby from the tank for nursing within a globe of water. The tech can levitate and alter physical objects in the environment. Depending on it’s current manifestation, it could potentially be harmful to others (as we saw when Suko tried to play with Sai Fen’s tools and she intervened)
If Selkie’s personality and anger with her enemies continues to manifest negatively, then her tech-gift could manifest as weaponry. It would be important for her to make peace with her adversaries, first… it seems she is on that track already with both Amanda, and Truck… though after the last Truck-comic we saw, I would like to see her kindle a friendship and alliance with him, now that she understands him a little better. He has an abusive home, and needs a friend.
We saw it used as a weapon – destroying the jin sorai (sp?) habitat, as laser blasts from armlets in that story Sai Fen told Selkie, and also by Selkie’s mom.
Yes. Used as a weapon by those who are “employed” as armed persons.
Plo Quar (Selkie’s mother) was a militant, so she would have manifested hers as a weapon.
But for more peaceful members of Sarnothi society who did not “need” a weapon, it wouldn’t need to be used as such. I purchase a lot of items that could be, and are, used as weapons and drugs… household tools, X-acto knives, razor blades and cutter blades, and all sorts of potential inhalants like white-out, nail polish, epoxies, spray paint, etc. But I have no intent to use those in a manner other than their constructive functions.
Truck isn’t from an abusive home. Quite the opposite, he’s quite spoiled and her parents were overly eager to excuse or ignore his bad behavior(My perfect Baby can’t possibly have been beating up another kid, that nasty girl who kicked him in the crotch must have started it) up until his father was confronted with video evidence of Truck bragging about getting away with being bad.
Basically he was the “sociopath with overly enabling parents” kind of bully, not the “hard home life and can only cope by sharing the suffering” kind.
On the other hand, he seems to have realized that there was something wrong with him and he’s apparently getting therapy, so who knows how it’s gonna go in the future?
You know, the term “abuse” is a bit broader than you seem to think it is, Rater. And people can be abusive while thinking that they are being good or even kind.
Refusing to discipline your child, refusing to train them so they’ll be a functional adult — letting them have their own way 100% of the time and never countering their worst impulses — that is every bit as much abuse as beating them up or denying them food.
In fact, in some cases it might be WORSE abuse, because that kind of discipline-deprivation has lifelong impact, whereas an incident of getting slapped around or going without food for a week might actually be something you’d basically forgotten by the time you hit your twenties.
As a person who was neglected before I can even remember, I can attest that even if you’ve forgotten abuse, it still impacts your life if it happened early enough. I am still scarred by things that happened before I was six, even though I barely remember them. Some of those scars are purely emotional (the phobia of bathrooms which got ridiculously bad this year), and others are more noticable (picking at my lips until they’re a mass of raw skin and blood).
A couple years ago, I found out that the origin of my phobia is more likely something that happened when I was two, of which I have never had a memory.
One year ago, I would’ve said I was mostly over all that, and was just working on limiting how much I pick at my lips. Six months ago, I was subjected to traumas which brought everything back to the surface, and I’m back to showering twice a week and bloody lips.
Please, please, please. Don’t say one type of abuse is worse than another. Don’t assume that a forgotten abuse is not having an impact. The thing I can’t remember is something I can’t face, can’t come to terms with, and can never properly recover from.
There are one-time events bad enough to leave a lifelong negative impact, certainly. Having forgotten the original event doesn’t necessarily undo the harm. And one abusive situation (repeated or situational abuse) shouldn’t be compared with another; I can agree with you on all of that.
I meant something like: If a kid* gets hit one time, it might (might) leave less of a lifelong problem than an entire childhood being pampered, which is what Truck had.
*Old enough to process the situation and remember it.
My reading of the Truck setup is a very serious handicap both to acting like an adult and to relating to other people, and I don’t take his situation lightly. I can’t see any person who gets raised like that ending up a functional adult at 18, but I can imagine some acts of abuse that, for a specific person, do not significantly impact their ability to be a functional adult by 18.
(I’m definitely not saying that all kids who get hit once are better than all kids who get pampered.)
I also get what you’re saying about traumas sticking with you and being unexpectedly triggered. While my trauma is much lower than yours, a few months ago I got reintroduced to my “minor phobia” of dogs when a relative thrust one into our car and overrode my protests (I had to drive, my mom was falling asleep) and then I was tunnel-visioning my way down the freeway with my body reacting like there was a giant hornet in the car. Didn’t realize my visceral reaction would be that pronounced even a couple decades after the incident that gave me the phobia, but being unable to escape the situation and having to stay focused on the road made a huge difference.
(Dog was a gem of a passenger, too, didn’t make a sound or fuss or anything. Reactions like that have nothing to do with logic.)
(Also I term it a “minor phobia” because I can deal with dogs, they just make me uneasy and tense if they’re large or energetic. From what I’ve heard of full-fledged phobia, if I had an actual phobia of dogs, the effect would be significantly less manageable.)
No, while also bad, spoiling kids is not abuse.
^This. While certainly harmful, spoiling your child or ignoring their faults ins’t quite the same as beating a child, belittling or screaming a them over any little thing, touching them inappropriately, starving them, or neglecting their physical and emotional needs to the point of damaging their health.
Unless the kid has some other problem(Like Truck, the budding Sociopath), Spoiling a child ins’t going to cause long term emotional harm. They might get a a rough wakeup call, they might think they’re entitled to things that they are not(a different issue), but mommy and daddy buying every toy you want is not going to cause the same problems or problems as severe as mommy and daddy beating you black and blue because you’re still hungry after your dinner of plain white toast.
Even the level of Spoiling Truck got is really only an issue because of Truck’s budding sociopath. If that wasn’t a problem then he’d just have grown up to be an entitled jerk instead of the monster he’d be if he hand’t gotten caught.
Excessive spoilage of children won’t cause the same kind of harm to a child as abuse will. That’s why I said that Truck doesn’t come from an abusive home.
“Spoiling a child isn’t going to cause long term emotional harm.”
If a grown adult goes into a meltdown over having part of their fast-food order screwed up, or a store being out of stock of the item they wanted, or a boss refusing to give them a raise, I’m gonna say they never learned how to behave as a functional adult, and that their inability to manage disappointments and their own emotions shows that they are handicapped.
And while it’s conceivable that a person might develop this kind of problem on their own or as an adult, or that it might be indicative of a different type of problem, in most cases I would bet on the parents catering to the kid to an unhealthy degree. In such cases, the parents — systematically and over decades — taught the child that it was acceptable to be that way, fundamentally hamstringing their ability to interact with the adult world.
If you think these cases are few and far between, I encourage you to peruse NotAlwaysRight for a while. It’s kinda alarming.
The obvious counter-argument is that there’s a difference between long term emotional harm and not growing up.
a kid who gets spoiled all his life isn’t emotionally damaged, he’s just never going to learn how to be an adult. That’s harmful, but it’s not long-term emotional damage.
Long term emotional damage is flinching when someone adjusts their waste line because it reminds you of Pappa taking off his belt to beat you with. It’s having a panic attack at an unexpected camera flash because your Wicked Uncle Earnie took pictures while he was fiddling around with you. It’s not being able to sit down and eat in front of other people because your foster mother would snatch the food off your plate and throw it out in front of you if you tried to eat your steak with a salad fork.
Some grown man throwing a fit because the guy at Starbucks used soy milk instead of half and half? He’s not emotionally damaged, he just never grew up.
That’s why spoiling your kids isn’t abuse. Abuse leads to damaged adults. Excessive spoilage leads to you kids never becoming adults in the first place.
Note: I never said that spoiling your kids isn’t harmful. I just want to reiterate that point. My point is not that spoiler your kids in’st harmful, my point is that it’s not abuse.
I don’t see that he is physically abused, or neccessarily spoiled… but what I do see, is both of his parents are quite overbearing, strict, and insistant that their child grow up “tough” and “don’t let anyone push you around”… while on the surface, those are beneficial leadership traits… if not carefully metered out, and balanced with teaching empathy and kindness to others… it can be hard on the child’s psyche, and result in the bully we see Truck becoming. Although we did get a glimpse into the little boy that he still is, who just wants to be liked/loved. I sense that he is not getting enough empathy/tenderness at home, and he craves that, but at the same time, wants to live up to his parents’ expectations, more out of fear than respect. We also got insights to the Trunchbulls by way of the comments of other parents and faculty members. Even the principal was afraid to speak against them.
You should go back and reread. Truck is used to getting his way no matter what, and his parents seem to ignore any of his wrongdoing up until his father is confronted with video evidence of Truck bragging about never getting in trouble and always getting his way.
He’s spoiled. Which, combined with the fact that he had pretty clear-cut markers of being a budding sociopath, well… not a good thing at all. Luckily that got nipped in the bud and he realized that something was wrong with him, so he can still grow up to be a decent person
you forget Sarnoth Technology has a form fits function
also size of the device plays a role in what it is capable of doing
the knife works as a knife and the water bracers were part of a modular set and included a “charging” station or something similar.
the bracers weren’t used for any other purpose than to manipulate water
the knife was designed to provide form to create a sharp energy field that could cut stone when regular metal wouldn’t be capable.
if form didn’t affect function, then why would each version we’ve seen of sarnoth technology have such varied shapes and uses?
if the bow actually could be used as a weapon, or tool regardless of it’s original form and purpose. than it would stand to reason that the shape would be different.
a simple Ring, Gauntlet, bracers, head-band, or necklace would be able to be used for any and all Sarnoth purposes.
but that’s not what we’re seeing
we’re seeing that Form is very closely tied to the function of Sarnoth technology
otherwise they’d all be the green lantern
I love that you’ve picked up on that. 🙂
Dave this is in reply to Mikael, But could you correct me on anything parts i am wrong on, And verify the parts i have correct?
from what i can gather in comic, The sarnoth in their youth gain a species ability. This ability looks very similar to what humans would label magic. The ability allows sarnothi to create a green aura or energy field. With concentration they can manipulate this field to create images, To for example tell a story to children, or help them perform a task. For some tasks however the concentration level required is too high. Or the amount of aura required would deplete their mana too quickly.
This is where sarnothi technology comes in. Sarnoth tech allows a user to use less concentration and mana to perform a task with aura more easily. For simple small or simple objects like the knife or selkie’s bow the tech can recharge just by simple contact with a sarnothi. Such simple devices can be used by even sarnoth children untrained and without the skill in aura. This is why the sarnoth knife was taken from the child, because he might have accidentally activated it and cut himself. Also why selkie is able to with instruction deactivate her bow.
For more complex devices such as the water bracers, they probably require more mana than a sarnothi can normally produce alone. Which is why they require a charging station. So it seems sarnoth technology can run on both mana or electricity, or that mana is actually actually the natural bioelectric field that is created by the nervous system of living animals.
In which case humans might also be able to use sarnoth technology.
Or that sarnoth are similar to electric eels and can create an actual electric current that powers sarnoth technology.
What about when Pohl did Pinky and the Brain for the kid? Don’t remember him using any device at all then, or maybe I just missed one?
See above comment
The tech isn’t an individual manifestation, it’s crafted. Pohl made the water-manipulating bracers, not Sai Fen. The stone carving “knife” was made by someone else and Sai Fen purchased it.
I find the His Dark Materials style of individual manifestations to be a fascinating interpretation, though. If that were how Resonance worked and personality influenced the form, I could see Selkie’s manifesting as a shield instead of a weapon. She’s pretty quick to jump in and help when needed, but would still enjoy having something to beat people across the head with.
ok, i guess this will tie into the ominous ‘protection’ the bow offers selkie…. hiding her from enemies. whoever said they´re *only* after her cause she´s the daughter of a resistance fighter/leader? there´s got to be a reason why out of all the other sarnothi orphans it was selkie that was hidden among humans instead of whatever facility they use for the rest of the fishy imigrants.
come to think of it, for all we´re wondering about mommy, who is selkies father?!
I do have a question, when did Agent Brown put on his shades? Off panel from last comic?
That’s a continuity mistake, I’ll be fixing that for the update.