Very Few 2016-06-02

[illiad]

What, you want Siren mothers to have to give birth to 20 lb babies with wings and claws? Geez!

well, she could have been a EGG....

I wonder how Pickle was coaxed into taking human shape. That may be a relatively recent development. First she learned how to communicate with humans - which in itself must have been interesting - and then how to twist and coil her viney body into a more humanoid shape.

AFAIK she was cultured as a weapon... so had to fit in to not be noticed...

[Armorlord]

*grins*

So, what do you want to bet this will lead in to Atsali telling Nadette a little of her past?
Or maybe it'll just be a cute interlude.

I'm thinking more of the results of a Seer handling objects that certain events and Atsali's parents could have left impressions on. 'Cause I'm willing to bet that she knows/remembers less about her past than we do at this point.

Wait ... How is it she has full human form at that age? She should be incapable of knowingly morph into human form. Neither of her parents were human, so she should look like them in their natural state. Shelly had a reason to look human without even trying because one of her parents was human. Before puberty and excess boobatude burst forth, Atsali had, at the least, bird legs. Literally. Even wings. I would think these things would be manifest at infancy and toddler stage as well.

Judging from how her heritage affects her 'human' form at puberty, and that they were predators that lured in humans by nature, I believe that is a natural form for her. The fiercer aspects being a combat form of the Sirens. The succubus aspects seem to be late blooming and she had thought she hadn't gotten any at all, and judging from the incubus of a similar age it seems that at least secondary aspects like horns would normally have shown as a default in a purebred.

[Armorlord]

they were predators that lured in humans by nature, I believe that is a natural form for her.

To further clarify my train of thought, I'm thinking that Sirens, as disguise/seduction/ambush predators by nature, are likely to have the ability to seem human as an inborn ability moreso than other paras.
To extend that thought, it would seem a healthy development for their young to be able appear adorable by human standards as a defensive camouflage until they are old enough to hunt for themselves, eg puberty.

[FreeFlier]

they were predators that lured in humans by nature, I believe that is a natural form for her.

To further clarify my train of thought, I'm thinking that Sirens, as disguise/seduction/ambush predators by nature, are likely to have the ability to seem human as an inborn ability moreso than other paras.
To extend that thought, it would seem a healthy development for their young to be able appear adorable by human standards as a defensive camouflage until they are old enough to hunt for themselves, eg puberty.

Well, that works for humans . . .


As far as their initial default form, might that be set by the mother's form at delivery/laying? E.g., if mom's in human form at delivery, the baby is apparently human, probably until the onset of puberty; if mom's in bird form, she lays an egg that hatches into a baby birdling/chick . . .

In fact, I suspect that mom might get locked into a form for an uncertain time between fertilization and delivery . . .

Wait ... How is it she has full human form at that age? She should be incapable of knowingly morph into human form. Neither of her parents were human, so she should look like them in their natural state. Shelly had a reason to look human without even trying because one of her parents was human. Before puberty and excess boobatude burst forth, Atsali had, at the least, bird legs. Literally. Even wings. I would think these things would be manifest at infancy and toddler stage as well.

Both parents presumably at least had the capacity to appear human.

Somewhere Phix stated that half-human males of Shelly's and Phix's lineage appear fully human and can't morph . . . Shelly's dad is one. (Her mother is also half-human.)

Atsali had bird legs and wings part of the time . . . she has also developed new forms recently. I expect that she initially had no transformational abilities, and has gained increasing powers as she matures. As for when the transformations started manifesting . . . who knows? (other than Paul . . . who may not be precisely sure. Sometimes authors learn surprising things about their characters . . . )

--FreeFlier

[Dave]

Somewhere Phix stated that half-human males of Shelly's and Phix's lineage appear fully human and can't morph . . . Shelly's dad is one. (Her mother is also half-human.)

Shelly's mother is Bia, who is (in classic mythology) entirely a Titan... no human parents. Bia masqueraded as a human girl/woman in order to seduce and marry Shelly's father, in the hope of breeding a girl-child, but this was only a shapechange. Unless Paul says otherwise someday, Shelly's mother isn't even half human... she's a pure Titan.

I believe it was Bia who said that male Sphinxes of Phix's type cannot morph... which is why she wanted to bear a girl.

So, it looks as if Shelly is half Titan, one quarter Sphinx and one quarter human.

[Gyrrakavian]

It would seem that quite a few folks have forgotten 'Show and Tell', 'Scare for Fun' and whichever comic explicitly states that the young kids don't have to use a human guise at school while they're still figuring out how to do it.

So I'd say the answer is either a tailisman (likely a braclet) or it's because both sirens and succubi/incubi prey on humans.

[Opus the Poet]

Nobody has commented on sharing baby pictures being a "life partner" level of sharing? That puts the SS Nadsali as canon OTP. Unless Paul decides to pull another bootlegger turn in the plot.

[AnotherFairportfan]

That would appear to be an even earlier period that New Orphan Atsali.

Maybe the next pic shows her parents with Giggling Baby Atsali, and that leads us into her telling Nadette Everything.

Telling - telling someone who feels as strongly about her as Nadette does - may be the start of Atsali learning to deal rather better with emotions and relationships.

[Dave]

Telling - telling someone who feels as strongly about her as Nadette does - may be the start of Atsali learning to deal rather better with emotions and relationships.

I wonder... could Atsali's perceptual blindness (inability to read faces and body language) be an acquired thing, due to emotional trauma from her parents' death, rather than something inborn?

If so, then possibly "working through" the experience, by telling Nadette about it, might actually remove a block.

[AnotherFairportfan]

Telling - telling someone who feels as strongly about her as Nadette does - may be the start of Atsali learning to deal rather better with emotions and relationships.

I wonder... could Atsali's perceptual blindness (inability to read faces and body language) be an acquired thing, due to emotional trauma from her parents' death, rather than something inborn?

If so, then possibly "working through" the experience, by telling Nadette about it, might actually remove a block.

Ummm ... yeah. That's an expansion of What I Said.

[oldmanmickey]

Yall bare with me for a moment if you please. I am wondering if we missed something. Looking back over the past few strips pickle never shows up in any shape, form or fashion. It all centers Atsali. The idea has hit me that SHE was the one bred to be a weapon. Perhaps an attempt to get the best of both a siren and an incubus. That would explain why there is no sign of daddy.

[FreeFlier]

Could be . . . Though there was discussion of the blackthorn at one point.

--FreeFlier

[Dave]

Could be . . . Though there was discussion of the blackthorn at one point.

Quite a lot of discussion, in fact.

Paden said "Everything is pointing to the same shadow government that was hybridizing the blackthorn."

Marius said "They didn't get what they were after. The blackthorn is still in its 'nursery'. The only other survivor is Leucoisa and Walter's little girl. She was in the safe room."

Cassi then ends her response with "The blackthorn will never be a weapon!"

Several strips earlier, after getting Atsali into the safe room, Leucoisa said "I'm doing the right thing. No more weaponization of a flower."

All of those phrasings say to me that the blackthorn (presumably Castela) was the primary target of the "weapon" raid. That doesn't rule out the possibility that Atsali was a breeding experiment (possibly with weapon or combat potential), but if so it sounds as if she was of only secondary interest to the raiders.

[TheOtherOne]

I still have no real clue as to the involvement of Leucoisa and Walter in the whole affair. Were they helping breed the weaponized blackthorn for the shadow government and had a change of heart? Did they simply know too much about it and had to be eliminated? What? Maybe I missed something. Happens frequently.

[Armorlord]

It occurs to me that we don't actually know Walter is dead. It's implied her mother was dead outside the door, likely blocking shots that would have gone through and killed Atsali otherwise. We have mention of her parents being killed, but no eyes on Walter, from our perspective. Not saying he isn't, and it certainly seems everyone believes he is dead, but feels like there is wriggle room in the narrative.

If nothing else, seems like there is still something to Walter's tale since he wasn't there while that fight was going down, but there were no hostiles left either. Perhaps arrived just a hair late and for reasons we don't have answers to yet offed the remaining bads and made like he had died there too. The right head-blown-off corpse in his clothes. Then again, if Foxglove can just find those responsible like that, I wonder if she would have been aware of that too.. thickening the mystery and tying more characters' families up in this.

[Dave]

I still have no real clue as to the involvement of Leucoisa and Walter in the whole affair. Were they helping breed the weaponized blackthorn for the shadow government and had a change of heart? Did they simply know too much about it and had to be eliminated? What? Maybe I missed something. Happens frequently.

I don't think any of the rest of us are any way ahead of you on those points... we simply don't know.

Leucoisa's words and actions do seem to be consistent with either the "change of heart" or "learned about it and were eliminated" scenarios. My own hunch is that it's the former (she did say "we worked for them") but I could well be wrong about that.

[jwhouk]

Lot of things presumed, lot of wriggle room for Pablo to fill in the gaps.

And we still have Thana - and why exactly she had an interest in Atsali.

[FreeFlier]

I think that Leucoisa and Walter are most probably dead . . . but we've had dead people show up before . . .

Thana . . . I suspect her interest was the same as Nadette's, only Atsali couldn't handle it at all then. I also suspect that Atsali feels guilty about Thana's suicide . . . Which, for those that don't know, is also very common around suicides, even without any hypothetical romantic issues.

--FreeFlier

[AnotherFairportfan]

Yall bare with me for a moment if you please. I am wondering if we missed something. Looking back over the past few strips pickle never shows up in any shape, form or fashion. It all centers Atsali.

Well, that might be because at the point in chronology of the recent strips, Castela is about minus seven years of age.

She's ten years younger Atsali (Atsali is fifteen when we meet her and Castela starts kindergarten the next year). At the point where we were when the action went down, Atsali was probably (judging, as someone said, from her dentition and speech) about two or three. Little hard to appear in a story taking place seven years before you were seven or eight years before you were "born" or grafted or planted or whatever.

[AnotherFairportfan]

I also suspect that Atsali feels guilty about Thana's suicide . . . Which, for those that don't know, is also very common around suicides, even without any hypothetical romantic issues.

--FreeFlier

Oh, god, yes. Suicide is one of the cruelest things you can do.