Comic for Monday, Sep 30, 2024

[Darth Fluffy 332]

Comic for Monday, Sep 30, 2024

Wow, that got dark fast. Jay is in pretty good shape considering how traumatized this would have left her.

This reminds me of the horror trope where the little kid has powers, of the picked on loner who starts fires with her mind.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,614]

 

You are starting 2nd grade.  What do you need?

A calculator, sneakers & the ability to kill with a thought.

 . . . .

I didn't get a decent calculator until high school.

 

[Darth Fluffy 332]

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

 

You are starting 2nd grade.  What do you need?

A calculator, sneakers & the ability to kill with a thought.

 . . . .

I didn't get a decent calculator until high school.

I didn't get a decent calculator until high school, and it was a slide rule.

 

[ijuin 587]

The most healthy reaction that we are likely to get from Hope is “OMG I owe her big time!”

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,614]

 

10 minutes ago, ijuin said:

“OMG I owe her big time!”

 

But what could Hope (or even Pandora) do at this point to sufficiently compensate Jay for a lost childhood? 

 

[Darth Fluffy 332]

1 hour ago, ijuin said:

The most healthy reaction that we are likely to get from Hope is “OMG I owe her big time!”

Bear in mind that Pandora likely either saved her life or at least avoided a different major trauma which seems to have had a more dire outcome, setting her up to harm someone more directly. In this case, it's still horrific, but it is self defense, she did not directly harm him, in fact had no way of knowing what would happen.

[ijuin 587]

True, but Hope would still want to help Jay to heal, much like how Jerry felt that he needed to help Susan after hearing about how Helena and Demetrius had exploited her and made her face the vampire with very little preparation.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,614]

 

Pandora damaged many lives through carelessness and unintended consequences.  Will Hope be able to give all these lives the attention and assistance they deserve? 

 

[Darth Fluffy 332]

4 hours ago, ijuin said:

True, but Hope would still want to help Jay to heal, much like how Jerry felt that he needed to help Susan after hearing about how Helena and Demetrius had exploited her and made her face the vampire with very little preparation.

Oh, yeah, no doubt. Hope is trying to do well, and is a couple hundred years from crazy.

 

4 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Pandora damaged many lives through carelessness and unintended consequences.  Will Hope be able to give all these lives the attention and assistance they deserve?

No, several reasons, some meta:

Doesn't know all the players. She's discovering these as she sees them and connects. Even then, she did not 'know' Jill until she determined to.

If she triages, there are many that will be just fine on their own. Rhoda, for instance.

Her focus is her family, connecting back to them. That's healthy for them and her. The Camdins probably won't reach that threshold to demand attention - it won't make that much difference.

Some of them are helping each other. The main gang.

Meta: would not be an interesting story line.

Meta: need sources of future drama.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,324]

4 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

If she triages, there are many that will be just fine on their own. Rhoda, for instance.

Why...do I get the strange feeling that there's going to be a Jay vs. Rhoda story line upcoming??? By the pricking of my thumbs...

[mlooney 3,548]

8 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

Why...do I get the strange feeling that there's going to be a Jay vs. Rhoda story line upcoming??? By the pricking of my thumbs...

Based on what we know Jay would lose, until she gained Rhoda's spell then it would be an epic mage duel.  Rhoda has the advantage in power based on who is and isn't royalty, but Jay has experience.

[Darth Fluffy 332]

I wonder if immortals can stuff it back in the bottle, unmark awakened folks? Maybe just load or drain them? Probably not, or they would have handled aberrations with that.

I wonder if Jay is how aberrations come to be? Significant trauma and too much power? Seems to fit.

Jay will get healing, it fits the style of the comic and the foreshadowing in the current arc. She is becoming a more sympathetic character as well.

[ijuin 587]

Aberrations happen when a mage decides that it is worth killing people to steal their vitality.

[mlooney 3,548]

6 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I wonder if Jay is how aberrations come to be? Significant trauma and too much power? Seems to fit.

Aberrations have been around a lot longer than 12 years, so that's unlikely.

[Darth Fluffy 332]

1 hour ago, mlooney said:

Aberrations have been around a lot longer than 12 years, so that's unlikely.

Immortals have also been around for a lot longer than 12 years, and presumably, Pandora was not the first to mark mortals.

They have the no direct interference rule for a reason, some long past bad experience. She was within that constraint; apparently some past immortals were outside those bounds.

[mlooney 3,548]

Well, we know that the immortal laws were in effect for at least 300 years plus some unknown number of centuries, because she couldn't help Blake in fights.

[ijuin 587]

If you look at the old Pantheons, it appears that, 3000+ years ago, some Immortals posed as gods, literally “playing god” with mortals. When that went bad (a possible cause of the Bronze Age Collapse), the Immortals swore that they would never repeat the mistake of trying to rule over mortals.

[mlooney 3,548]

17 hours ago, ijuin said:

If you look at the old Pantheons, it appears that, 3000+ years ago, some Immortals posed as gods, literally “playing god” with mortals. When that went bad (a possible cause of the Bronze Age Collapse), the Immortals swore that they would never repeat the mistake of trying to rule over mortals.

That make some sense and fit the IRL timeline as well.

[ChronosCat 156]

On 10/1/2024 at 10:38 AM, Darth Fluffy said:

I wonder if Jay is how aberrations come to be? Significant trauma and too much power? Seems to fit.

I'm fairly sure one has to actively choose to seek immortality/power through "vampiric" means to become an aberration. True, a certain amount of base power is probably required as well,  but I doubt the person has to be supercharged to pull it off. Also, while some people with lasting trauma might take it out on others, so far as I know choosing to look out for oneself to the exclusion of all others and abandoning morality in the process is not a common reaction to trauma in real life.

19 hours ago, ijuin said:

If you look at the old Pantheons, it appears that, 3000+ years ago, some Immortals posed as gods, literally “playing god” with mortals. When that went bad (a possible cause of the Bronze Age Collapse), the Immortals swore that they would never repeat the mistake of trying to rule over mortals.

I suspect the Bronze Age Collapse was the result of Uryuoms and/or a Magic Rules Change.

[Darth Fluffy 332]

2 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Also, while some people with lasting trauma might take it out on others, so far as I know choosing to look out for oneself to the exclusion of all others and abandoning morality in the process is not a common reaction to trauma in real life.

It is far too common, but we'd have to switch to the political thread to discuss it.

[ChronosCat 156]

I mean, plenty of people do choose to look out only for themselves and abandon morality, but I've long assume that a large percentage of them were born with a reduced capacity for empathy. And while some kinds of trauma could potentially lead to someone with a more normal sense of empathy doing their best to suppress it, I'm confident the vast majority of people who experience trauma continue to lead moral lives.

[ijuin 587]

One of the most common sources of trauma is witnessing someone else being brutalized and being unable to help them, so I would say that such people were traumatized specifically because they did experience empathy.