Not Their Fault 2013-10-01

[Fairportfan]

When M gets to the part where she tells Tina that she was right, and explains why, we'll all be floored, right before she smacks her upside the noggin for the assault by Tar.

She will, however, pull her punch to avoid smashing Tina like an egg.

Or. perhaps, as the demon shepherd, she may do some shepherding on Tina...

[Platonix]

Remember, Monica is on more than speaking terms with her own demons. I suspect that trying to force guilt/worthlessness/shame on her by attacking her at the body-image level, especially by force, is more likely to make her angry than anything else. And she's just demonstrated that, and gotten a pretty darned cathartic bit of closure.

Abnormal reaction even so? Possibly. But she's not a "normal" person. Trying to abuse her is about like trying to abuse the jaguar; she's likely to simply treat it as the violence it is and rip the attacker's throat (and other organs) out at the first opportunity.

On top of this, I suspect learning that a C-Space entity was acting "human evil" made it an order of magnitude easier to keep track of whose fault it was and wasn't.

[loxmyth]

we'll all be floored

... right before Tina is? I find myself remembering the scene where Phyx slapped Nudge out into the open.

BTW, I want to second the appreciation for the rematerializing clothing as reflection of her having gained confidence in her ability to operate on (and manipulate) this plane of reality.

Actually, the thing I find most interesting about this whole sequence is that she seems to have known what to do at an instinctive level. We've seen the background for some of that, but I don't think we''ve previously seen her employ these abilities with anything like this degree of control. As she was told in the library: Congratulations, kid, you're dangerous too. Lucky for everyone that you're a good person.

(Though if she hadn't been, I suspect Phix and company would have kept her from being a danger to others. One way or another.)

[Yamara]

dex drako: If you have sisters or daughters in a violent neighbourhood, it is not just a month, it is 24-7...
even in little 'harmless' UK, there are too many naive fools who think 'it cannot happen here' and do not teach them to be strong and streetwise..

It's hardly limited to violent neighborhoods, as the news proves.

Nothing wrong with self-defense training and situational awareness-- but dress, training, timing etc are never excuses to blame the victim.

What it says on the tin.

[My2Cents]

While what Monica went through (http://wapsisquare.com/comic/no-excuse/) was meant to be analogist to rape, it didn’t get far enough to have the psychological impact. More like attempted rape, with the rapist discovering the hard way that his intended victim was the equivalent of a internationally top rated martial artist.

Might be the demon world's harsher equivalant of http://wapsisquare.com/comic/02242005/

[Celos]

Monica was raped. I find it highly unrealistic that she's this calm and put together such a short time after, even if she's just had an outburst about it. And telling the others how to deal with their pain when hers is even more fresh? I'm having trouble suspending my disbelief. I have not been raped, but I have been molested, and it took me years to come to terms with it. How could she do a 180 in mere minutes? I just can't find it believable.

Monica sadistically killed tar. That will make recovery much easier I expect. For a sadist, this may just be a give and take and hence she may not have suffered significant damage in the first place and negated what she did suffer by the manner of the kill.

[Catawampus]

It would seem like the demons would not have to go through any sort of rehabilitation as to how to be proper demons. After all, the time they have been assigned to Jet so far is less than a second compared to their overall time in existence as demons. It doesn't even make sense that they would feel disoriented at present. They should just feel normal. I find it hard to accept they would be so drastically changed by a few years being under Tar's thumb compared to their billions of years of life thus far.

There's how much time it lasted, and there's how much time it felt like it lasted.

Besides, it only takes a few hours for a person to pick up new habits, and you know how difficult even a recently gained habit can be to get rid of; why should demons be any different in that regard?

They probably spent close to two decades reacting to that thing in their midst. It doesn't matter if the demons remember ten additional years of existence or trillions, that's still two decades of mental conditioning in their immediate past either way.

[Julie]

Gee. Wow. I wonder if we will ever find out what the TAR was and why it invaded Jet. Unless Tina explains to them after they wake I guess we won't. Just love it when it's all action and no explanation. Does that make this an anticlimax?

That's life for you...a lot of stuff going on that sometimes you don't get the chance to fully grasp or understand...though you may be lucky enough to witness the consequences and start piecing things together that way. Goodness knows that my life feels ridiculously anticlimactic and confusing often enough to drive me mad. Yes...I know that this is a story, and therefore it should have some explanations provided to the readers...but I kind of like that Paul doesn't just shove everything down our throats right when it's most convenient for us (or when we think we want or need it). He saves the explanations for a time that is most appropriate (and realistic) for the story and his characters, which (IMO) makes for a more intriguing tale.

It would seem like the demons would not have to go through any sort of rehabilitation as to how to be proper demons. After all, the time they have been assigned to Jet so far is less than a second compared to their overall time in existence as demons. It doesn't even make sense that they would feel disoriented at present. They should just feel normal. I find it hard to accept they would be so drastically changed by a few years being under Tar's thumb compared to their billions of years of life thus far.

I don't think that's really true at all. I mean, if you think about it in parts and pieces, and then put them together, the demons' behavior makes sense. First of all, while the demons inhabiting Jet's C-space may be billions of years old (or whatever), they may not have all worked together as a unit during that time. Several of them could have been assigned to various other individuals without any meet-ups before their time with Jet, so while they may be "good" at being demons due to having so much prior experience, they may not be good at working together...especially since their roles and functions as a covey were usurped by the Tar. Secondly, I don't think it matters how old or experienced a being is when it's been recently victimized. Every victim has to go through a recovery process that involves re-learning how to function with and around others no matter how much prior knowledge they have of that behavior. Add to that the fact that demons probably are not accustomed to being victimized by anything other than sphinxes (and that seems to have involved more death/destruction as opposed to rape which would have lingering emotional ramifications), and you'd be dealing with a lot of potential issues (i.e. self-doubt, confusion, hopelessness) that, though similar to what humans experience, are more complex since the beings in question seemed unaware that such things could happen to them before their time with Jet. When you take into account potential lack of experience working as a cohesive covey, and the fact that so many of them were raped into submission and now have to cope with the ramifications...well it makes perfect sense to me that there would be some kind of "rehabilitation" period."

And what Catawampus said.