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Story Wednesday November 30, 2016

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This may be the most painful page of EGS that I have read in quite a while. I don't think I have seen anything even near it since the time Tedd acknowledged Mr. Verres' transphobia.

It is clear that Susan has held a mental image of her father close in which she tried to preserve at least some sort of person worthy of love. It would be easier to think of him as someone who started with good intentions but stumbled into a bad mistake. Being brought face to face with the possibility that not even this much was true... yes, anger and denial are two of the first steps. Having it all intermixed with her immensely traumatic experience with the vampire back in France would not make it any better, to put it mildly.

I am torn. Nanase unquestionably meant well. But I am starting to think that she would have done better to think this more carefully through. Even so, I am doing this from hindsight so I am not precisely in a position to criticise her. Her intentions are obviously good and based on the fact that not only is Diane in danger, she also deserves to know of her half-sister's existence... and that Susan deserves to know the truth as well.

The problem with that is that while truth indeed has the power to set you free, it can also open old wounds and do grave harm. It is for that very reason that Ellen rejected the notion of telling Tedd what they had learned about his mother. This situation is of similar complexity and may well reopen old wounds for Susan... and possibly even make them worse.

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I am in agreement with you, Hack, this is one of the most painful pages of the comic to date. The conversation is necessarily insensitive, due to the topic, but Nanase and Ellen did not approach it very well. This exchange is made worse by the absence of an intermediary, because - of all the friends in their circle - they've spent the least time developing their relationships with Susan. Discussing the topic with Tedd's father was quite invasive, and seeking the truth is not a sufficient justification for either invading her privacy or putting this on her in the moment. They haven't thought this mystery through, it is not as simple as unmasking a man. Telling her creates distress but it doesn't benefit her or Diane in the near term.

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Is she really defending Dad or is she trying to grant her mother a larger dose of respect? IOW, if dad were cheating before she was born, wouldn't mom have known and dumped long before Susan wouldn't have known him.

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43 minutes ago, jmucchiello said:

IOW, if dad were cheating before she was born, wouldn't mom have known and dumped long before Susan wouldn't have known him.

If they're sneaky enough, serial cheaters can avoid getting caught. The time Susan caught him, it could have been just one count of cheating out of countless he wasn't caught for.

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I have to take Nanase's position: You can't skip warning people about threats to their lives or their relative's lives just because the warning is traumatic, and Diane is nowhere near corrupt enough to decide her survival doesn't matter compared to antagonizing Susan.

I do agree that with 20-20 hindsight they should have gotten an intermediary and done less intrusive research, but until after the fact there was no way to know that wouldn't be even worse.

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Considering the last panel, I'm hoping the mention of Jerry is enough to calm Susan down or at least make her more open minded about all of this, she can still hate the idea that her father had been cheating on her mom for years, but hopefully she will at least acknowledge that Nanase and Ellen aren't just making any of this up.

19 minutes ago, Haylo said:

I do agree that with 20-20 hindsight they should have gotten an intermediary and done less intrusive research, but until after the fact there was no way to know that wouldn't be even worse.

If Nanase hadn't done more research, they would have ended up going into this with "So our friend Diane, who looks at sounds a lot like you, born 20 minutes before you, and was attacked by a vampire for having the same affinity as you. Also she was protected by who we believe was Jerry at the New Years party as a favour to her sister. She's adopted though, so we think it might be possible that you're adopted too?"

I think going into this discussion with only assumptions would have been worse.

 

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She said that things were good before that, but I'm not sure why that would have any relation to the thing in question... Does she think it's not possible for someone to do what her father did and still get along with their child?

(Relatedly, am I the only one who thought it seemed odd that she would know at that age that what her father was doing was bad?  I'd expect that, if I were in that situation at that age, I'd be confused as to why dad was keeping it such a secret and why mom was so mad about it.)

In any case, when is someone going to bring up the possibility of magic already?

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38 minutes ago, chridd said:

(Relatedly, am I the only one who thought it seemed odd that she would know at that age that what her father was doing was bad?  I'd expect that, if I were in that situation at that age, I'd be confused as to why dad was keeping it such a secret and why mom was so mad about it.)

It depends on precisely how old 'that age' is. Dan's art was rather stylised at the time; Susan might have been anywhere from five to eight years old. I do not think I would have understood the precise mechanics at age eight myself but I do think I would have understood what was going on, had it been me. I'd read enough at the time to have an idea. But then I'd been a voracious reader since I was six.

Also, I think that Susan did not consider that her father might still want anything to do with her as she considered it irrelevant. She was the one who cut him off when she told the truth to her mother.

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4 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Too bad they can't just call up Jerry and ask him what he meant.

We know Voltaire has been hanging around watching everything, what has Jerry been up to since New Years?

Also, where's Helena and Demetrius? they obviously weren't watching Elliot when Voltaire made his appearance.

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Yay I predicted the 'she gun be angry' in last comic's thread!

 

What's that?

Literally everyone predicted it before me? Well, peanutbrittle, that blows.

 

Side note: Angry Susan looks increasingly Raven-ish. Probably the black hair, but hey, if immortals can have kids with mortals and they draw a lot of their inspiration from Shakespearian fairies...

 

I make baseless accusations as to her parentage. Truth roll to save.

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1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

It depends on precisely how old 'that age' is. Dan's art was rather stylised at the time; Susan might have been anywhere from five to eight years old. I do not think I would have understood the precise mechanics at age eight myself but I do think I would have understood what was going on, had it been me. I'd read enough at the time to have an idea. But then I'd been a voracious reader since I was six.

It wouldn't surprise me if the first time I found out that people cared about fidelity was in high school (~14-18 years old), though I don't think it would have occurred to me before then that people would do such a thing.  (I'm basing this partly on the fact that I don't remember thinking about the subject before then, so I'm not sure what I would have felt, or if I knew about it and just don't remember.)

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32 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:
2 hours ago, chridd said:

(Relatedly, am I the only one who thought it seemed odd that she would know at that age that what her father was doing was bad?  I'd expect that, if I were in that situation at that age, I'd be confused as to why dad was keeping it such a secret and why mom was so mad about it.)

It depends on precisely how old 'that age' is. Dan's art was rather stylised at the time; Susan might have been anywhere from five to eight years old. I do not think I would have understood the precise mechanics at age eight myself but I do think I would have understood what was going on, had it been me. I'd read enough at the time to have an idea. But then I'd been a voracious reader since I was six.

Also, I think that Susan did not consider that her father might still want anything to do with her as she considered it irrelevant. She was the one who cut him off when she told the truth to her mother.

Even if she didn't understand that what happened was bad, or at least just how bad it was, the reaction by her mom left very little doubt that she considered it extremely bad.

8 hours ago, partner555 said:
9 hours ago, jmucchiello said:

Is she really defending Dad or is she trying to grant her mother a larger dose of respect? IOW, if dad were cheating before she was born, wouldn't mom have known and dumped long before Susan wouldn't have known him.

If they're sneaky enough, serial cheaters can avoid getting caught. The time Susan caught him, it could have been just one count of cheating out of countless he wasn't caught for.

I have cousins who learned that they had a half brother at the reading of their fathers testament. Turned out that he had two families, and managed to keep this secret for more than fifty years. No one even suspected that there was anything going on, and yet he had to split his time between the two families. It started to fall apart after he was pensioned. Before that he traveled as a part of his job and managed to spend time with his second family. Some years later his health took a turn for the worse and he was hospitalized, effectively cutting off all possible contact with the other family. So when there suddenly was a four children (my cousins are two brothers and a sister) mentioned in the will it was quite a chock. Two of my cousins didn't want to have anything to do with this new relative, but the third one says that meting his "new" half brother was a pretty incredible experience. There were so many things he recognized from his full siblings and after just a few hour it felt like they really knew each almost as well as he knows his siblings.

When asked they all say that the first feeling was disbelief. It just couldn't be true. Then they got mad at their father, that he could do something like this to their mother and them. But eventually they had to accept that what was done was done, and even if their father had cheated on their mother, and had kept a huge part of his life secret it didn't change the fact that he had been their father, and a good father at that.


 

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1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

It depends on precisely how old 'that age' is. Dan's art was rather stylised at the time; Susan might have been anywhere from five to eight years old. I do not think I would have understood the precise mechanics at age eight myself but I do think I would have understood what was going on, had it been me. I'd read enough at the time to have an idea. But then I'd been a voracious reader since I was six.

I think Susan was five and hadn't started school yet. Indicators? She couldn't read very well yet, and she hadn't met Sarah, who didn't know Susan was a blonde until they were in high school.

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56 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

I think Susan was five and hadn't started school yet. Indicators? She couldn't read very well yet, and she hadn't met Sarah, who didn't know Susan was a blonde until they were in high school.

I thought they did not meet until junior high, while Sarah grew up with Elliot. 

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35 minutes ago, Sjmcc13 said:
1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

I think Susan was five and hadn't started school yet. Indicators? She couldn't read very well yet, and she hadn't met Sarah, who didn't know Susan was a blonde until they were in high school.

I thought they did not meet until junior high, while Sarah grew up with Elliot. 

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=319

That only confirms that Sarah knew that Susan's first name is Tiffany.

As far as Susan not reading well at the time she caught her father cheating, there's no real indicator, the flashback dream she had after "Painted Black" shows her having trouble sleeping, and hoping that her dad reading the story for her would help, it doesn't mean she couldn't read it, he had probably read stories to help her sleep before, so it would have been a comfort thing. Then there was the other flashback Susan had at Grace's birthday party where even at that young age, she clearly associates her appearance with the woman she caught her father with and wants nothing to do with it by trying to cut all of her hair off. Her mom promises to take her to the stylist the next day to have it fixed up. Susan trying to chop her hair off suggests that it wasn't more than a day or two after catching her father cheating, and I'm guessing Susan asked to have her hair dyed at the stylists while they fixed her hair and she kept it dyed since.

It doesn't really put an age to when that happened but she could have been dark blue haired for much if not all of elementary school.

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10 hours ago, Haylo said:

I have to take Nanase's position: You can't skip warning people about threats to their lives or their relative's lives just because the warning is traumatic, and Diane is nowhere near corrupt enough to decide her survival doesn't matter compared to antagonizing Susan.

While I agree in principle, in practice, telling Susan does nothing to improve Diane's chances of survival, it isn't really a choice between the two. Susan may be more effective than Tedd or Sarah in a fight, but she goes to a different school, and all the members of the circle from Diane's school are considerably more powerful with much more access. For that matter, Rhoda might be a potent protector in time. I think Susan should know, but this isn't really about Diane's safety.

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17 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

This may be the most painful page of EGS that I have read in quite a while. I don't think I have seen anything even near it since the time Tedd acknowledged Mr. Verres' transphobia.

That wasn't that long ago, was it?

17 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

I am torn. Nanase unquestionably meant well. But I am starting to think that she would have done better to think this more carefully through. Even so, I am doing this from hindsight so I am not precisely in a position to criticise her. Her intentions are obviously good and based on the fact that not only is Diane in danger, she also deserves to know of her half-sister's existence... and that Susan deserves to know the truth as well.

The problem with that is that while truth indeed has the power to set you free, it can also open old wounds and do grave harm. It is for that very reason that Ellen rejected the notion of telling Tedd what they had learned about his mother. This situation is of similar complexity and may well reopen old wounds for Susan... and possibly even make them worse.

I would say that in both cases, there will be strong reason to tell - we just don't see that reason for Tedd yet. But, yes, I would expect they would have prepared it better. It seems like Ellen and Nanase didn't even talked about who will say what ...

11 hours ago, Haylo said:

I have to take Nanase's position: You can't skip warning people about threats to their lives or their relative's lives just because the warning is traumatic, and Diane is nowhere near corrupt enough to decide her survival doesn't matter compared to antagonizing Susan.

Agree.

10 hours ago, Scotty said:

She's adopted though, so we think it might be possible that you're adopted too?"

I think going into this discussion with only assumptions would have been worse.

Definitely.

4 hours ago, Scotty said:
8 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Too bad they can't just call up Jerry and ask him what he meant.

We know Voltaire has been hanging around watching everything, what has Jerry been up to since New Years?

Also, where's Helena and Demetrius? they obviously weren't watching Elliot when Voltaire made his appearance.

Why do you think so? They might've just decided it's not worth it to show.

3 hours ago, Cpt. Obvious said:

Even if she didn't understand that what happened was bad, or at least just how bad it was, the reaction by her mom left very little doubt that she considered it extremely bad.

Also, her father told her she is not supposed to tell mom. That alone signifies it's important.

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

Then there was the other flashback Susan had at Grace's birthday party

By the way, WHO is that third person in that flashback? Her father? That woman? Older Susan?

47 minutes ago, banneret said:

While I agree in principle, in practice, telling Susan does nothing to improve Diane's chances of survival, it isn't really a choice between the two. Susan may be more effective than Tedd or Sarah in a fight, but she goes to a different school, and all the members of the circle from Diane's school are considerably more powerful with much more access. For that matter, Rhoda might be a potent protector in time. I think Susan should know, but this isn't really about Diane's safety.

Diane will need to learn summoning and fighting with magic weapons. Susan is the best one to teach her that. Unarmed martial arts which everyone else is learning wouldn't really help her. Although it IS possible there's nothing Susan can do NOW - she would need to wait for Diane to get magic first - I'm not sure how would waiting with this information help. Remember, Diane is convinced Susan is her sister and wants to talk with her, should they be hiding Susan from her?

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