Wapsi Square Forum

Link http://wapsisquare.com/comic/talk-with-you-later/

Looks like the predator speculation was right on target, especially about the permission slip.

UH oh.

Someone gonna get grounded for a LONG time...

==============

NOT helping there, Pickle.

Seven-year-olds are still bloodthirsty little monsters deep down.

AnotherFairportfan wrote:UHoh.

Someone gonna get grounded for a LONG time...

...And so's Atsali...

Atsali is gonna have hours 'n' hours in her room with no TV or music or phone or computer ...

To alleviate the boredom, she's gonna start writing adventure stories longhand on legal pads...

I had a sudden thought after looking at the page again:

Fish fry Friday.

AnotherFairportfan wrote:UH oh.

Someone gonna get grounded for a LONG time...

Oh yeah!

Deservedly.

I wonder if Katherine is going to play the very disappointed card . . . Guilt is a powerful tool. (I still remember my mom playing that one on me . . . forty years later.)

Atsali is going to be paying for this for a very long time.

AnotherFairportfan wrote: NOT helping there, Pickle.

Seven-year-olds are still bloodthirsty little monsters deep down.

Not all that deep . . . not even skin deep.

AnotherFairportfan wrote:Atsali is gonna have hours 'n' hours in her room with no TV or music or phone or computer ...

Or books . . . excepting only textbooks and assigned reading.

. . .

I wonder if it would occur to her to ask for extra reading?

And do you have any idea how annoying it is to have your mother remove every piece of reading material you can reach . . . not even allowing the cereal box to stay on the table because you might . . . err . . . would read the back?

AnotherFairportfan wrote:To alleviate the boredom, she's gonna start writing adventure stories longhand on legal pads...

Hmmm . . . interesting idea.


Just had another thought: Wasn't Katherine in the service (Air Force, IIRC) at some time? If so, I wonder if she was ever a Drill Instructor?

--FreeFlier

I don't know what had me laughing hardest- the look on the coach's face, or the look on Katherine's! Alder really stepped in it this time!!! Predators are not allowed in contact sports for a reason... I wonder... how many times was a quarterback sacked and eaten before they figured that one out?

Told yooooooooooooouuuu.

And I wonder if Atsali will figure out who dropped a dime, or just write it off to Mother Knows All?

--FreeFlier

Not like she could've kept it a secret. At some point Kath probably would have wanted to go see Atsali play tennis. Boom. Lie destroyed.

No one else considers this to be rather silly?

I'd barely consider a Siren terribly dangerous compared to many other types of paranormal creatures. By this sort of reasoning, Devyn shouldn't be allowed within a mile of the school because she can cause extreme emotional/possibly physical trauma to people if she gets upset.

Figured this was gonna be a fun little side arc where we learn Atsali has an affinity for sports, not another dumb thing to make her feel horrible and like she can't live life.

I have this image of Kath taking Atsali to the island (via somebody poiting, or however), telling her to go full Siren form, and then to bring her a shark, and not a small one, either. Atsali does battle with a goodly sized shark, returns with it in her talons and drops it on the beach. Kath reminds her that this is part of who she is, but not all of who she is. She must never forget that, nor confuse the two.

Akeche wrote:No one else considers this to be rather silly?

I'd barely consider a Siren terribly dangerous compared to many other types of paranormal creatures. By this sort of reasoning, Devyn shouldn't be allowed within a mile of the school because she can cause extreme emotional/possibly physical trauma to people if she gets upset.

Figured this was gonna be a fun little side arc where we learn Atsali has an affinity for sports, not another dumb thing to make her feel horrible and like she can't live life.

A story without conflict...

Isn't.

Yeah, fun little side-arcs are fine and dandy, but people are constantly clamoring for a story. Maybe Paul's life is too busy to do another "calendar machine" level plot, but he can at least do a mini-episode, right?

Akeche wrote:No one else considers this to be rather silly?

I'd barely consider a Siren terribly dangerous compared to many other types of paranormal creatures. By this sort of reasoning, Devyn shouldn't be allowed within a mile of the school because she can cause extreme emotional/possibly physical trauma to people if she gets upset.

Figured this was gonna be a fun little side arc where we learn Atsali has an affinity for sports, not another dumb thing to make her feel horrible and like she can't live life.

She's a bit more than a siren - she's a succubus, as well. So not only will she kill her opponent, she'll suck their life force out of them as well.

Akeche wrote:No one else considers this to be rather silly?

I'd barely consider a Siren terribly dangerous compared to many other types of paranormal creatures.

I'd say it would be considered, generally, to ba A Very Ungood Idea to have someone who can transform into a seven-foot raptor who could rip an opponent in half is she loses her temper play field hockey or other contact sports.

While field hockey is, supposedly, more civilised than ice hockey, consider the old truism: "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out."

Also: remember Phix's tirade when Monica and Shelly went frolicking through the city? Not all paras are as dangerous as Monica, Shelly, or yea, even as dangerous as Atsali or Castela.

And a big part of it is the disobedience and deceit.

Then there's Coach Adler's demonstrated lack of judgement . . .

Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

--FreeFlier

AnotherFairportfan wrote:NOT helping there, Pickle.

Seven-year-olds are still bloodthirsty little monsters deep down.

Seven-year-olds take significant pleasure in seeing misbehaving adults get taken down a few steps and disciplined. It helps them feel less unequal, knowing that even the Big Folk authority figures have to play by The Rules, too.

Akeche wrote:No one else considers this to be rather silly?

I'd barely consider a Siren terribly dangerous compared to many other types of paranormal creatures. By this sort of reasoning, Devyn shouldn't be allowed within a mile of the school because she can cause extreme emotional/possibly physical trauma to people if she gets upset.

It's not really a question of whether Atsali is as dangerous as a Sphinx. It's a question of whether Atsali is dangerous to the other students she's playing with. If she is... and the knocked-silly girl in the last frame on Tuesday suggested that she is... then she shouldn't be in the game. It wouldn't matter very much whether another player had her neck broken by a Sphinx or a Siren... dead is dead.

If Sirens are "grouped" as predators, it's presumably based on significant paranormal experience that they act that way. They may have predatory instincts which emerge when triggered and which are not always under conscious control... as Shelly's Sphinx reactions have done, at least twice. Wolves are apparently the same way... they're intelligent and social much of the time, but if you trigger their "predator mode" their sociality goes bye-bye and they become attack-and-kill machines for a while.

We've seen Atsali go all fangs-and-claws and attack her own little sister when her hormones and emotions got the better of her.

Atsali needs to know, and understand, and respect her own nature, if she is to master it and manage it. Simply being in denial about it... pretending it just isn't so... is convenient in the short term, but could be a disaster for her and others.

Devyn is in a similar situation... she needs to understand and manage who and what she is, in order to avoid hitting others. That's why she, also, wears a talisman of control.

Yes Kath is ex USAF. I dont care how big and bad a predator is an angry mother will eat it alive if the little ones are in danger. In this case it was not just her kid in danger but others as well, the Coach is gonna go down hard.

Stali is gonna be in heap big trouble for this. No dating, no nothing. I can also see mama telling the stinkweed she doesn't need any sound effects or anything else from the peanut gallery.

GlytchMeister wrote:
A story without conflict...

Isn't.

Well, sorta. In Western Culture, we expect our protagonists to struggle at every step until they finally finally succeed, after which there is a quick wrap-up and then on to the next story.

But have you ever read a Japanese Light Novel? Some of them are stories as we expect them, but there's a whole bunch of them where the protagonist gets massively over-powered in chapter 1 and then spends the next 100-200 chapters kicking butt and securing a harem without hardly breaking a sweat, all with only the smallest pretense of needing to save the world eventually (or just as often, not even that).

You think that it would get dull after a while, but somehow watching the nice-guy everyman schlub go out and do all the things you wanted to do when you were, say, 13 or so, is strangely compelling and soothing.