Wapsi Square Forum

Ouch.

http://wapsisquare.com/comic/no-one-cares/

Oh my.

I hope she doesn't latch onto Atsali (and Nadette, i suppose) in hopes of validating her own existence by basking in their glow...

I know that road...

The feels. They hurts us, precious.

You turn a corner in life when you start believing in yourself instead of just what others say.

Add me to the people who (at this point) don't care about Devyn.

Yes, yes, teenage angst, we've all been there. It's terrible. School sucks. Nothing new there.

But why should I specifically care about her? Yes, she chewed out an employee at her uncle's pool. Hooray, well done. But we have been given very precious little else to follow that up with.

Is she just feeling emo? Is she at a crossroads? Is she harboring a dark secret? What? Give us something, anything. I need character-specific insights before I can care about a specific character.

She can kill everyone not immortal in a 10 block radius without even trying, of course she's going to be a bit emo.

It's a lonely place to be when everyone looks at you like a geek or worse because you don't smoke, drink, do anything the cool kids do... I was a band geek... I kept to myself and led a straight life in school and was kinda ostracized for it. I wasn't really accepted by the power people OR the band people... until I got boobs... then I got all kinds of popular. I've been where she's at and can relate.

DilyV wrote:It's a lonely place to be when everyone looks at you like a geek or worse because you don't smoke, drink, do anything the cool kids do... I was a band geek... I kept to myself and led a straight life in school and was kinda ostracized for it. I wasn't really accepted by the power people OR the band people... until I got boobs... then I got all kinds of popular. I've been where she's at and can relate.

"in current use, the word typically connotes an expert or enthusiast or a person obsessed with a hobby or intellectual pursuit," - Wikipedia

I've known quite a number of car geeks, football geeks, popular-music geeks, specific-band geeks, etc. A few drug geeks (and no I don't mean doctors or pharmacists - they are varieties of medical geeks). My sisters both went through stages of being boy-geeks.

Everyone's a geek.

Opus the Poet wrote:She can kill everyone not immortal in a 10 block radius without even trying, of course she's going to be a bit emo.

I think that Bud would be an ideal candidate for mentoring Devyn - super-skinny dorky girl with self-image issues seems to be right up her alley. Not to mention having to actively suppress an insane power level just to coexist with normal humans.

Thor wrote:Give us something, anything. I need character-specific insights before I can care about a specific character.

Genetically, she is a member of mtDNA haplogroup T, with mutations 16126C, 16169Y, 16294T, 16296T, 73G, 263G, and 315.1C. This either indicates some interesting human ancestry in her family tree, or an even more interesting case of convergent evolution.

When she was much younger, she used to dream of being tall when she grew up. It was one of the defining moments of her young-adulthood when she realized that that adolescent growth spurt just wasn't going to happen, and had to face the fact that she'll always be petite.

Books are even more important to her than we've seen. There are two particular books she ran across in the library (little "l") years ago that very strongly influenced her outlook on life and the future... and she has never told anyone at all that she's even heard of them. They're her personal secret... partly because she's an introvert, and partly because she thinks she'd be laughed at in school for being even more of a dork.

As a Helead she has certain powers of illusion and concealment (as do most types of Nymph and similar nature-spirit paranormal). Unfortunately these don't help her social-isolation problem at all.

Last year, on a dare from Lexi, she splurged her allowance on a quart of Chunky Monkey ice cream and ate it all at one sitting. She finished it and didn't barf, but between the ice-cream headache and the shaky woozy feeling when the sugar rush wore off a few hours later, she hasn't even been able to look at the stuff since.

She's been known to break the fourth wall and use her cyberhacking skills to plant misleading rumors and stories, so some or all of this may be untrue (including this last bit).

Please feel free to care now, if you wish (or not). You're welcome.

^Shots fired.

I find it difficult not to care about someone, even if it's "just a character." Especially when they aren't happy. Needless to say, I can really get into stories.

Also: hey, that looks lie my school!
AlsoAlso: oh, look, an Art Shift! Color Backgrounds? Is that significant?

DilyV wrote:It's a lonely place to be when everyone looks at you like a geek or worse because you don't smoke, drink, do anything the cool kids do... I was a band geek... I kept to myself and led a straight life in school and was kinda ostracized for it. I wasn't really accepted by the power people OR the band people... until I got boobs... then I got all kinds of popular. I've been where she's at and can relate.

I currently work with railroaders (I work for one of the crew transport companies), so I still get that crap from time to time. Mostly from the ones who still act like high-schoolers/college freshmen frat boys despite being in their late 20s, 30s or older.


EDIT: just the first part. And it doesn't help that I'm a high functioning autistic. Thankfully, I'm nowhere near as socially awkward as I was in high school.

Dave wrote:

Thor wrote:Give us something, anything. I need character-specific insights before I can care about a specific character.

Genetically, she is a member of mtDNA haplogroup T, with mutations 16126C, 16169Y, 16294T, 16296T, 73G, 263G, and 315.1C. This either indicates some interesting human ancestry in her family tree, or an even more interesting case of convergent evolution.

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

That was AWESOME!

You know, this reminds me of what I do. Frankly, I write so much more information about a character then I ever do in the work itself. The problem is, you just WANT to scream from the top of your lungs, "Do you not see the BRILLIANCE of what I have done???" And then when you actually tell people all the behind the scene details, they go, "ohhhhhh. Yeah! Suddenly everything makes sense!" But when you hold someone's hand and walk them though the museum pointing out the dioramas and what they mean, it's never as satisfying as when they figure it out themselves.

"Why does everyone keep freaking out when he swings his resignation letter around the room?"
"He wrote that letter on the blade of a fireaxe that was forged in the heart of a pulsar. Three episodes ago.
"ohhhh! That explains why it can cut through steel."
"Yeah. It's a metaphor."
"You should point that it's not a letter, it's a fireaxe."
"People like you sacked Rome and brought about a thousand years of darkness."

I'm paraphrasing here, but this was an actual conversation.
Sometimes, the message of the story ain't directed at you.

Someone needs a crash course in Personal Demons 101: Wrangling and Ignoring.

DilyV wrote:It's a lonely place to be when everyone looks at you like a geek or worse because you don't smoke, drink, do anything the cool kids do.

I'll bet that none of those things are even true. Her internal dialogue could have been mine on any given day of high school. At my 35th HS reunion (after a couple of decades of psycho- and pharmacotherapy) , I was astounded to learn just how cool others perceived me to be.

I don't think that this is teenage angst, Thor. Paul has done an excellent job of depicting bona fide depression.

Thor wrote:Add me to the people who (at this point) don't care about Devyn.

Yes, yes, teenage angst, we've all been there. It's terrible. School sucks. Nothing new there.

But why should I specifically care about her? Yes, she chewed out an employee at her uncle's pool. Hooray, well done. But we have been given very precious little else to follow that up with.

Is she just feeling emo? Is she at a crossroads? Is she harboring a dark secret? What? Give us something, anything. I need character-specific insights before I can care about a specific character.

Teenage angst? Bullshit. This goes a lot deeper than that. If you don't care you ain't been there.

The kid has inner turmoil, everyone does. The one that walks like her thinking they are worthless is just as wrong as the one who walks head high thinking they are the gods of the school. It is nice to see though everything back to normal here. We all need to play nice.

I hadn't realized Devyn was carrying such a heavy load. It's especially unexpected because she was able to assess Atsali's personality so well based on only a few minutes conversation. You'd think someone so insightful towards others would turn that insight on herself. But that might be hard for her...

Hopefully Atsali will draw her in and make her feel much better about herself.

...And THAT is where I see the crux of the issue. We had a red herring thrown at us earlier this year - "something happened at the orphanage."

This may be a test of whether or not Atsali can pick up (thanks to her other friends) that Devyn is depressed.