I honestly didn’t expect the waitress’s “cosplay” comment to generate as much debate as it did. Uh… oof.
I wasn’t going to give her a name since she’s just a walk-in, but I’ve decided to reward her trial-by-fire. So, hi-and-bye Ayesha.
Carrie can talk without pluralses, but it's something she needs to deliberately think about.
Yea I don’t see how this “explanation” is supposed to be better.
And he wonders why comments are made. At this point I wonder if it’s doing a bit more harm than good to not tell ANYONE. Giving out the wrong ideas and whatnot. A few people here and there realizing “hey this person is called a sarnothi and they’re a lot like me” might help their integration
You’re still WONDERING if it’s doing more harm than good? The entire war started because a couple guys mistook a sarnothi for a fish, and here’s the thing; they were totally right to think that. Thinking “oh I guess there are fish-people in this lake, better him go” would have been completely insane.
And consider this: If they can’t be unveiled today then why ever? Why would anything change when no information is being presented. Is the idea that someday there’ll just be a broadcast that the growing number of people with a nameless genetic disease are actually a sentient non-human species and that’ll be fine with everyone? Why? People will be just as confused and scared because they’ll be exactly as ignorant as they were before, they will have the same lack of information but now it will be supplemented by the fact that secret government operations were hiding their existence.
The point to me is that she wouldn’t speak about things she doesn’t know.
And the explanation is not supposed to be “better”, it’s supposed to be the “truth”. He’s correcting her.
I think their plan is to reveal them in the future and say: ‘We had them around, living among us, living normal lifes, they are not a threat. Revealing them right now would create a mess. Plus they have a civil war ongoing.
Revealing them is always going to create a mess. Spending a larger amount of time dedicating a larger amount of resources to deal with them without the public knowing is just going to make it worse.
Racism is irrational, racists never sound dumber than when they’re trying to support themselves factually. If someone can stand up and say honestly, truthfully, and with a developed record to support their statements that every Sarnothi that has ever interacted with people has been part of a government conspiracy then suddenly they have a real case for distrusting them. If you want to show they’re normal then drop the veil, introduce them, and let people have their honest reactions.
If you catch a fish and it starts talking you should probably let it go regardless.
And ask it what it’s like to live underwater. And make sure your fishing isn’t doing irreparable harm to its race.
If you catch a fish and it starts talking 1) let it go and 2) start making wishes! (Not that the Sarnothi could make someone’s wife emperor of the world, but still…)
““hey this person is called a sarnothi and they’re a lot like me” might help their integration”
Except their current fear is that the general public will go “Holy shit fish people! And they’re having a WAR in one of the Great Lakes? Welp, time to go in and clean house.”
Yeah, saying it’s a genetic “disorder” just makes more of a scene than they’ve already had. They could have told her that there’s no makeup involved and that’s just how they look without implying that they’re sick or making it seem like an uncomfortable situation.
seriously what the hell. cosplay is a much better cover anyway
Except that if they go to that restaurant a lot it’s easier in the long run for the staff to know “that’s just how they look” and accept them as regulars than it is for them to be known as “Those cosplay people, you never see them without the makeup… wonder why the husband never wears any?” The genetic disorder line stops most people from asking questions because they don’t want to be rude. Cosplay would actually encourage questions. I accept that it could be good if they started claiming it was cosplay of a series of books and then wrote a scifi/fantasy series about the Sarnothi to spread the word and make them popular before releasing info that it’s all true. In the short term though it just leads to all sorts of difficult questions especially if the waitress is into cosplay herself and wants to talk about what products exactly they use to get that effect, etc.
I WANT to like benny so much. I just…don’t. The constant negativity and meanish comments remind me of when I was in school, and I hated people being like that back then too. Maybe he’ll pull around like Amanda’s started to. Just wish there were fewer characters that I start off disliking that magically undergo a big personality change. Only my opinion though
It’s not magical if you can see why they’re changing. In Amanda’s case we certainly can. She’s eight, and kids that age are not set in stone — learning, and changing as they learn, is what all children do. (And even some adults!)
And sometimes they’re not even changing at all, we’re just seeing more about who they are. All we know about Benny at this point is that he has some of the mannerisms of a typical early-teen. It’s a stage of development. The sarcasm and veiled rebelliousness, that’s something parents do try to rein in… but they rarely succeed, or if they do, it’s only by browbeating the kid into submission. It normally ends on its own, as teens develop more maturity.
Beneath that veneer, we don’t really know anything yet about who Benny is as a person, or why he’s feeling the need to be sarcastic.
Benny’s pretty easy to understand. The ball of angst and hormones of a typical teenager would be enough, but he’s got the added influence of being old enough to remember Sarnoth and the reasons for their exile. I don’t know if this has ever been confirmed w/in the story but it’s been implied that he and his mother are the family of the Sarnothi man who was killed which started the whole war. If that’s true it’s SUPER easy to understand Benny. Even if it’s not, he’s still old enough to remember the emotional turmoil of life in Sarnoth before they were forced to flee.
Remember, It’s not like what he said and did was in a vacuum. They overheard the entire conversation about Amanda being afraid of being eaten. He was irritated for good reason, and took it out on Amanda when she arrived.
Of course he handled it in an immature manner, but typical, manner. He’s still a kid. You’re expecting way too much from him.
This is how most 13 year olds behave. I know I did way back when.
Right.
Benny is a bit of a dick, but how many people aren’t dicks during their adolescence?
I was a bit of a ass, never a dick, when I was about 6 or 7. But then my mother explained to me that the woman I called ugly had been beaten by her husband and that I was being rude and that it hurt the woman’s feelings.
The reason my mother knew this was that she was a co-worker.
Now, I learned my lesson at a fairly early age. If Benny is thirteen, he needs better parenting, because he’s obviously not learning anything, and unwilling to try.
Rudeness should never be excused, no matter what the excuse you use.
Hmmmm… A little commentary from Todd once in a while isn’t bad, but it is starting to fall into awkward territory. There is a reason why thought bubbles have mostly disappeared from narrative comics. Show don’t tell.
And the best way to show that he’s asking questions like this and thinking about just what his daughter is in for, without interrupting the flow of the story, is…?
Thought bubbles and narration DO have their place.
I don’t mind the though bubbles… but in visual media it’s generally accepted that if you can convey something with images rather than words, you should. So like instead of a character telling us they are sad, you just draw looking sad.
In this case I feel Todd’s expression actually does speaks for itself, so the author could have gotten away with leaving his actually though unsaid.
Except it really doesn’t. All his expression shows is that he’s worried, not why or how it relates to the situation at hand, and, even then, it could easily be sadness as well. This is one of those times when you CAN’T convey the proper meaning with a visual without disrupting the flow of the story.
exactly. I wouldn’t have known what Todd was thinking about, and it was important insight. It’s not even like thought bubbles are common in this webcomic, there’s no need to nitpick the author on it.
I agree with that sentiment actually, its why I so often do the colored emotive backgrounds instead of an “aaaah that makes me so angry!” Bubble.
But in this arc I thought having Todd pepper in some narration here and there would help make things a bit less ambiguous. One flaw I tend to find jn my own work is that I try so hard not to over-explain that I end up under-explaining
Hey – thank you for continuing to work and express this! And also for garnering a community that can have actual constructive critics that don’t garner into what comments in the rest of the internets looks like.
I don’t think you have that flaw, Dave. You’re characters seem pretty clear in their feelings and intentions–except for Andi, but that seems deliberate. I eould much rather have a little mystery than too many explanations.
I know i go off on my jags about treating the characters like they are real, and picking at their actions and junk. Benny is a character i relate to. I was a victim of bullying in school. And no, bit the “big thug stealing lunch money” thing… REAL bullying, dune by the “good kids”. Anyway, i turned into a big ball of snark, and didn’t stop until college, when i could finally get away.
I am kind of surprised that no one is talking about what Amanda said. How much you want to bet that Agent Smith gets upset at it being compared to a Camp, like concentration camp, when Amanda shouldn’t know better at that age.
I mean, we already have one instance of Agent Smith being way to prickly just in the last 5 minutes.
I was thinking refugee camp, tbh.
It’s Agent Brown. None of the Smiths are agents. Well, maybe Mari, in an upcoming surprise reveal.
I would think refugee camp too – even in (what is it supposed to be in-comic time?) 2010(?) those words were in all the newspapers all the time.
I assumed it was “Summer Camp”, which is probably the type of camp she’d be more familiar with.
But what will Todd eat?
Hushpuppies and salad!!
mmmm hush puppies.
On the one hand, I feel like the cosplay thing would have been a great, “Okay, yeah, lets go with that,” explanation. At least for now. On the other hand I understand that this is supposed to be a slow integration and they want people to get used to the idea that there are people who just look like this. However I feel like calling it a disorder is deliberately misleading. Maybe call it a “condition” or “trait”. Regardless, I feel like this is more a case of mishandling from above and Avery is just following guidelines rather his own preference.
That’s just so rude of Avery. Poor girl,she didn’t even mean anything by what she said.
I mean has he seen cosplayers? They look really good. It wouldn’t be hard to believe they were cosplaying.
*facedesk* she just had to say CAMP didn’t she?!? That’s seriously not cool.
Avery called it a camp too,I think. I might be wrong.
Why?
Summer camp. Scout camp. Church camp. Band camp. Math camp. Tennis camp.
All KINDS of camps. Why do you automatically go to Concentration Camp?
What kind of camp would Amanda be most familiar with?
Summer camp.
I would never have thought either concentration camp or summer camp before reading the comments. I though refugee camp. How is the word “camp” automatically “not cool?”
You’ve read the comic up to this point right? You know how Selkie’s specific faction was mostly wiped out right? I just gotta say, Dave shouldn’t have had her say that.
We don’t know that concentration camps were involved in the genocide, nor has there been previous mention of them.
When I was eight, I knew about war and that people got hurt and killed during wartime. I *think* I had some vague knowledge of WWII and that terrible things had happened to innocent people in that war. I have to note that while I went to comparatively good public schools in the U.S., this knowledge did not come from my classroom but from my mom frequently educating me outside the classroom.
Amanda grew up in an orphanage and didn’t have the benefit of family instruction. While it seems like she goes to an excellent school, I wouldn’t assume that in the 3rd grade (the grade most U.S. students are in when they are 8) she had lessons about the Holocaust and the concentration and death camps, the Japanese internment camps in the U.S., or any other detention camps.
If she had Jewish heritage, I guess I could see her having learned about the concentration and death camps in WWII as part of her cultural history. However, IIRC, nowhere in the comic does Dave allude to that as part of her identity.
I honestly have to say, if someone said “camp” to me when I was 8, I would have thought: “Campfires! Marshmallows! Swimming! Hiking through the woods!” Around that age a few of my friends were campfire girls. As adults reading this, we cringe at Amanda’s mention of “camp.” However, I think it’s one HECK of a stretch to suggest that Amanda is deliberately using the word “camp” in a “not cool” manner. If anything, I think it shows that she is starting to get excited about learning more and being more involved in Selkie’s world, which is kind of dear of her. 🙂
I’m going to choose to focus on how jazzed Amanda seems to be about hearing more about ‘the village’. (also, browsing backwards I saw I missed a comic, whoops!)
1: she may be trying to wheedle in going with as a “well ,Selkie gets to go” or trying to prove she’s brave in the face of Benny’s teasing.
2: knowing now that Selkie really IS a different species, and seeing other sarnothi for real, may have kindled curiosity and she wants to learn more for the sake of, for lack of a more appropriate term, Scholarship.
Man, I don’t hate Benny’s character, but if I’d talked and acted that way when I was his age, I’d have gotten a slap to the face, my game privileges revoked and growling, under-the-breath promises of parking lot beatings after the meal.
If I had been in Benny’s shoes when I was growing up, my Grandma would have taken me by the ear, and dragged me outside to have a good talking to.
Benny is spoiled. And I can’t stand Agent Brown in this scenario.
You’re surprised that someone stumbling into an innocent social faux-pas would be viciously attacked as a TYRANNICAL OPPRESSOR !!!1 – ? In our present day, the age of the political correctness Gestapo? Poor Ayesha’s lucky you drew her non-white and especially non-male* or your readers would’ve really torn her apart. Oh most parlous kind boy, have you not learned your lesson?
Having started your comic on such a touchy-feely theme as adopting a “special needs” child, even the most trivial departure from social justice dogma will now be met with unflinching condemnation by the Inquisition.
Better draw your one-shot character performing some kind of auto da fe to wash your sins, or it’s the comfy chair for you.
* I don’t usually bother reading comments, but look at the shit Benny’s getting from your audience, when his behavior’s actually an order of magnitude more subdued than Amanda’s has been. You can try to argue it’s about age and expected maturity, but the babysitter was even older and even pissier than Benny and I’m willing to bet if I sifted through the old comments I’d find your readers praising her for being strong and assertive and a cool puss to boot. Benny has committed the deadly sin of being male.
What, you mean Jessie? No, we called her an immature brat too.
You need to get off your ironically hypocritical high horse. It seems like you need some reading lessons, because NO ONE here was criticizing Ayesha, and almost everyone agreed that the Browns were way too harsh on what was obviously a mistake, intended to be an attempt at identifying with them.
And no one is condemning Benny, either. Saying he’s not their favorite character, sure, but just as many are saying that given his background — implied to be the son of the Sarnothi that was originally captured and killed by those fisherman — and his age as a teenager, it’s completely understandable. You’re making up a strawman of people hating male characters, just so you can feel like you’re the only smart one here, when in fact you’re just making shit up.
Also, what the hell does “auto da fe” mean?
TL;DR version: You’re full of it. Quit being so condescending when you aren’t even talking about things that actually happened.
@McBehrer: An “auto da fe” literally means “act of faith.” It was an act of penance performed by “heretics” condemned by the Spanish (and other) Inquisitions. It could involve public penance, torture, and/or death. The motive behind the Spanish Inquisition was not to “save” supposed “sinners,” but rather to eliminate enemies of the crown, non-subservient women, followers of Pagan religions, the mentally ill/differently abled, etc. It was all very political and QUITE unexpected! 😛
Now, I KNOW I shouldn’t feed the troll, but….
Werwolfe, if you’ve been following this webcomic at all, you’d know that your accusations just don’t fit. Both Amanda and her mother, Andi, have been attacked and criticized extensively by the readers. I don’t know which character you think is “one-shot,” but Dave has shown ALL his characters, even the secondary ones, growing and changing over the course of the narrative, just like people in real life. I’m sorry that you think adoption and differently-abled people are “touchy-feely” subjects; apparently neither of those situations exist in your angry, narrow-minded world.
TL;DR – Please go back to the MRA forums on reddit ASAP.
I can see how, if you haven’t read the comments sections much in the past, this one could seem harsh on Benny. Especially if other frustrations in your life right now might affect the weight criticism carries for you.
I guess it rubs me wrong because you said yourself that you haven’t read the comments much here before – if you were seeing these patterns happen around here all the time, okay, but without actually knowing what you’re talking about? It just seems hateful. And I’m hoping I’m wrong about what you mean by the political correctness Gestapo.
Either way, I do want to give you the benefit of the doubt on this because I’ve made baseless, bitter generalizations too when I’m angry and thinking the worst of people. So…yeah. Rubs me wrong, but I get it. And when I get like this, it’s usually because I feel like I’m not being heard. Or I feel like I’m talking to people who don’t think I’m worth listening to because of something beyond my control. It’s a sucky feeling, and I tend to be wrong, but that’s anger for ya — it turns people into strawmen.
(It helps not to read the comments on anything where I start by thinking, “hey, I bet I’ll see XYZ thing that ticks me off in the comments today!” That’s playing right into my confirmation bias, I get upset about something that might not even be happening, and ultimately I wind up one more step away from being able to handle life with grace and understanding. I mean, I’m just guessing, here? But I can’t think of any other reason why you’d read the comments today in particular. Maybe you just felt like it, I dunno.)
(Anyway, I hope you’re able to feel better soon.)
@dalniente: you are far more compassionate and empathetic than I and I’m going to try to take a page from your book.
I’m afraid that, as a Queer woman, I sometimes have a “knee-jerk” response when people start using phrases like “social justice dogma” and “political correctness Gestapo.” While I have been “luckier” than a lot of other Queer women, I have still been insulted and marginalized because of who I am. I have received death threats on twitter for tweeting about feminism. And when I try to “fight back,” I am called a “feminazi,” a deluded “social justice warrior,” and reminded that “we all have free speech” and “political correctness hurts innocent men who are unfairly attacked by women.”
[I’m not EVEN going to talk about my extreme rage regarding what Trump has said about women! NO ONE is ever allowed to grab me by my ladyparts!]
Changing gears, I have Jewish heritage, and Werwolfe’s remark about the “Gestapo” is especially hurtful to me. My maternal grandfather was a POW in WWII and was sent to the Nazi work camps – he NEVER would talk about what he saw and suffered there. My partner is Polish and many of his ancestors died in the death camps. So-called “political correctness” IN NO WAY compares to the atrocities of the Holocaust.
I am obviously angry about this and it’s hard to be compassionate when one is this angry. I’m aware that anger can be a legitimate response to hateful discourse. But, as you said, dalniente, sometimes people are angry because they feel as if they are not being heard, or because they feel disenfranchised. I don’t want MY anger to keep me from thinking about why other people might be angry as well, and for different reasons than I am.
You talked about “being able to handle life with grace and understanding.” I’m not there yet AT ALL, but I think that is a worthy goal. 🙂
So, Werwolfe, I hope you stick around and keep reading Dave’s webcomic. I’m sorry if I responded too angrily to you. I won’t deny it; your post made me angry and seemed calculated to anger people. But I will try to listen to what you have to say and respond to you in a civil and compassionate manner. 🙂
One of the rare instances where feeding the troll can add up to a real discussion between two other people. Yea for this community!
?
I feel like the easy solution here is to change his response slightly to “genetic condition” rather than “genetic disorder”. Technically, being double-jointed is a rare genetic condition that usually does little or no harm to the person who has it. Disorder implies there’s something wrong with them, while condition implies that it could be any kind of condition, good, bad, or neutral. Of course, this does play into ableism (the general idea that being sick/having a disorder is “bad”) but we do have to deal with the society we have, not always the one we want.
Just, y’know, a thought, since the supposed end-goal is to integrate the Sarnothi into society.
Pffffahhaha, Amanda has no clue.