What’s the problem? Atsali is just Rainbow Dash. Competitive flyer, confident and fiercely loyal. If a bit awkward and unable to understand other people’s feelings at times.
I was about to say the same thing. This is TOO SMART a response for this character. Yes, young people can have insight and can be surprisingly articulate at times, but this is excessive to the point of breaking the suspension of disbelief.
It should be noted that this interaction does follow Paul’s tendency for a end-of-the-week data dump or mild cliffhanger / resolution.
It really sounds like this script was written for Nadette and her sister, an interaction much more in keeping with the content, but Paul was already set in the Gilchrist home and could not figure out a way to get her sister there… come to think of it WHY is Nadette there?
So yes, I am also calling this out on pacing with a side order of data dump.
Nim: Both you and BarerMender are making the same rather obvious error in your analyses: You are assuming that an eight-year-old Whatsit is directly equivalent to an eight-year-old human.
You have absolutely zero basis for that statement, and we have some evidence to the contrary in Castela’s occasional shifts in and out of an adult-human equivalent mode of discourse.
Given that she is a synthetic being, created for a specific purpose, she may well be programmed with multiple layers of cognition and personality – if you read Datachasers, consider CeCi, who is programmed with multiple personalities and imperatives (of which we may not yet have reached the end).
She may well be a lot of things. That’s like Ken Hamm saying Noah might well have had diesel cranes. Without word from the author, it’s empty speculation. In any case, fiction is about people. All characters in fiction are expected to act in a normal human manner unless explicitly specified otherwise.
In any case, fiction is about people. All characters in fiction are expected to act in a normal human manner unless explicitly specified otherwise.Since when?
Human characters are expected “to act in a normal human manner unless explicitly specified otherwise”, yes.
Castela is specifically stated to be otherwise than human.
Assuming that a non-human character will natheless act like a bog-stock human is the best way i can think of to set yourself up to complain that tha author is cheating when they don’t.
Which you guys are doing.
Castela is NOT human – for that matter, Atsali and Nadette are NOT human.
Just because they look human does not mean that they ARE human or that they will act like a human.
That’s like saying that because a coral snake looks like a scarlet king snake, it’s as safe to pick up as the king snake.
“‘In any case, fiction is about people. All characters in fiction are expected to act in a normal human manner unless explicitly specified otherwise.’ Since when?”
==========
Further thought: I know a lot of SF and fantasy writers more-or-less-closely (my brother is a Big Name Pro SF writer). If you laid that line on them, most of them would laugh in your face – probably, especially, the fantasy authors.
And guess what? This is a fantasy comic.
So long as Paul doesn’t break his own rules (and he doesn’t have to tell us what they are, either) he can do whatever he damned well pleases with his characters, and we can’t tell him it’s wrong or “unrealistic”.
And, hey, if we don’t like it, there’s a button on our browsers we can click to go somewhere where the author follows the rules WE like.
I stand by my statement. All fiction is about people. I say so as a fantasy writer myself. It doesn’t matter how fancy you make your characters, they have to be people. The only exception I’ve ever seen is in science fiction, where writers try to create genuine aliens. It’s hard to do. I refer you to the work of C.J. Cherryh.
[b]Barermender[/b]: You’re backing off from your own original statement, aren’t you – conveniently ignoring the part where you said “[i] All characters in fiction are expected to act in a normal human manner unless explicitly specified otherwise.[/i]”, since it is explicitly stated – several times – that Castela is not even approximately human.
You are trying to impose your own prejudices as to how something should be done on another’s work – one in which your position is most definitely a minority view among readers.
If you had said “In my personal opinion, which is not a law of nature, all characters in fiction are expected to act in a normal human manner unless explicitly specified otherwise,” that would be one thing.
But attempting to flatly lay down the law as to how another creator should conduct his business and stating that your way is the Only Correct Way is rude at a minimum.
“There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays and every single one of them is right.”
Again, I stand by my statement. We’re human beings, we to create write human beings, we read to meet human beings. We expect the characters to act like human beings unless otherwise specified, no matter what they appear as. Werewolves act like violent human beings, vampires act like predatory human beings, the Fae act like utterly self-centered human beings. If the characters don’t act like human beings, we need a good reason why not.
“We’re human beings, we to create write human beings, we read to meet human beings.”
…The heck? I’m here solely because these characters are quite other than human. The standard you’re trying to apply doesn’t apply to this comic, and I’m glad, because the comic would be far more boring if it did. OOCly, Castela’s whole appeal is that she’s both adorable and freakishly inhuman; this example of her mixing the wise tree with the goofy little girl is just another example.
Further, Castela’s mix here seems to be deeper than you think. If Nadette needed to be told what Castela’s telling her, then Nadette wouldn’t’ve been trying to keep it to herself. Castela here is mixing insight with oversimplification — just the thing to expect.
If she were behaving in an aphysical way, as if she’d actually experienced more time than that, sure that’d be a problem, but that’s not what we’re seeing here. She even said “smell” last page, what would you think if she were “disguised as” a cat or dog instead of a human? We’re seeing her behaving in an inhuman way. Which she is. I’d say nonhumans shouldn’t behave like humans, unless there’s a reason — and her growing up trying to imitate a human is reason enough for what humanity she shows here.
Something i forgot to put in that long comment: Nadette is there because, as can be seen by reviewing the week’s pages, this is a direct continuation of the sequence that began at the skate park; she came to the Gilchrist place with Atsali and Castela, and this is directly following on; she hasn’t had a chance to go home yet.
All you have to do is read the comic and pay attention.
She’s eight and ancient all in one. It’s not the first time she’s baffled people by acting much more mature than her apparent age. Remember this? http://wapsisquare.com/comic/life-strategies/
I doubt that they’re actually noticeable to norms – consider that a large fraction of the core cast have fangs, or consider Tina’s eyes (or Katherine’s, for that matter), and apparently hardly anyone actually notices.
Like Monica and Shelly’s “cat marks”, or Antimony Carver’s scar that only shows in her aetheric form, they’re there mostly as a marker for the reader.
Also, her stutter has been gone this week. But i dont see it as a not a continuity gaffe. Castell is a Para, not a human 8 year old, and I’m used to Paras making big developmental jumps as they develop. Or id I miss Paul saying that Castrol was going to develop like a human?
As Tarlok said above, Castela first showed utterly unexpected wisdom three story-years ago, back in http://wapsisquare.com/comic/life-strategies/, and maybe once or twice since. It’s too blatant to be ascribed to the author’s carelessness. But it really needs an explanation some day, and I hope that day is soon. In particular, I wonder if she’s always been wise, her stuttering and little-sister tormenting of Atsali 99% of the time being just a mask, or does it only come out from somewhere when someone needs help? And if so, from where? I certainly don’t buy ‘I’ve just had to pick up a few more life strategies than most little kids.’ Kid-Castela and Yoda-Castela are too different.
She’s half omnipotent plant, which is enough of an explanation to me.
That side of her heritage will probably surfaced more and more. Her spontaneous outbursts of wisdom aren’t even the only things that most likely have to do with that:
-She managed to outright kill a Fae, who are descriebd as ‘only slightly less dangerous than elementals’
-She can desintegrate stuff with her bare hands (so far only toys while playing)
I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d be the focus of one of the next adventureous arcs. Though Atsali also doesn’t seem to be your run of the mill Siren/Succubus hybrid, considering how she managed to handle both Tsillah and Thymbris so fast that she managed to actually surprise them (Are those markings on her face from either of her parents lineages or are they something else?).
I’ve been following your wonderful comic for a few years now and I have to say that Castela is one of my favorite characters. The more she masters her human look the more I can’t wait to see her get older. I bet she’s going to take after her mother in a few years.
<3 oh pickle <3
you're the bestest 🙂
What’s the problem? Atsali is just Rainbow Dash. Competitive flyer, confident and fiercely loyal. If a bit awkward and unable to understand other people’s feelings at times.
Dear sweet mother of all that is pony, you’re right!!!! How have I not seen this before?
Dang it! Where’s the like button on here?
She needs to have a wild moment, some spare cash, and get one of those rainbow hair color jobs.
I’m planning something similar if I hit my goal
Paul has actually already drawn Atsali dressed as Rainbow Dash.
See the pink square under the bottom right of the comic? The one with Shelley gesturing towatds the black text. Click that.
Bud, actually
That’d be Bud, actually.
I love that little stink weed. LOL
Ok, Pickle has access the Well of All Knowledge that is her Blackthorn side.
Yeah, that was an incredibly complex sentence for an eight-year-old. She’s been too smart sometimes before, though.
I was about to say the same thing. This is TOO SMART a response for this character. Yes, young people can have insight and can be surprisingly articulate at times, but this is excessive to the point of breaking the suspension of disbelief.
It should be noted that this interaction does follow Paul’s tendency for a end-of-the-week data dump or mild cliffhanger / resolution.
It really sounds like this script was written for Nadette and her sister, an interaction much more in keeping with the content, but Paul was already set in the Gilchrist home and could not figure out a way to get her sister there… come to think of it WHY is Nadette there?
So yes, I am also calling this out on pacing with a side order of data dump.
Conclusions not supported by evidence.
Nim: Both you and BarerMender are making the same rather obvious error in your analyses: You are assuming that an eight-year-old Whatsit is directly equivalent to an eight-year-old human.
You have absolutely zero basis for that statement, and we have some evidence to the contrary in Castela’s occasional shifts in and out of an adult-human equivalent mode of discourse.
Given that she is a synthetic being, created for a specific purpose, she may well be programmed with multiple layers of cognition and personality – if you read Datachasers, consider CeCi, who is programmed with multiple personalities and imperatives (of which we may not yet have reached the end).
She may well be a lot of things. That’s like Ken Hamm saying Noah might well have had diesel cranes. Without word from the author, it’s empty speculation. In any case, fiction is about people. All characters in fiction are expected to act in a normal human manner unless explicitly specified otherwise.
I take back “explicitly.” There are other ways of specifying.
In any case, fiction is about people. All characters in fiction are expected to act in a normal human manner unless explicitly specified otherwise.Since when?
Human characters are expected “to act in a normal human manner unless explicitly specified otherwise”, yes.
Castela is specifically stated to be otherwise than human.
Assuming that a non-human character will natheless act like a bog-stock human is the best way i can think of to set yourself up to complain that tha author is cheating when they don’t.
Which you guys are doing.
Castela is NOT human – for that matter, Atsali and Nadette are NOT human.
Just because they look human does not mean that they ARE human or that they will act like a human.
That’s like saying that because a coral snake looks like a scarlet king snake, it’s as safe to pick up as the king snake.
Pooh.
That was supposed to read:
“‘In any case, fiction is about people. All characters in fiction are expected to act in a normal human manner unless explicitly specified otherwise.’ Since when?”
==========
Further thought: I know a lot of SF and fantasy writers more-or-less-closely (my brother is a Big Name Pro SF writer). If you laid that line on them, most of them would laugh in your face – probably, especially, the fantasy authors.
And guess what? This is a fantasy comic.
So long as Paul doesn’t break his own rules (and he doesn’t have to tell us what they are, either) he can do whatever he damned well pleases with his characters, and we can’t tell him it’s wrong or “unrealistic”.
And, hey, if we don’t like it, there’s a button on our browsers we can click to go somewhere where the author follows the rules WE like.
I’ll still be here, though…
I stand by my statement. All fiction is about people. I say so as a fantasy writer myself. It doesn’t matter how fancy you make your characters, they have to be people. The only exception I’ve ever seen is in science fiction, where writers try to create genuine aliens. It’s hard to do. I refer you to the work of C.J. Cherryh.
[b]Barermender[/b]: You’re backing off from your own original statement, aren’t you – conveniently ignoring the part where you said “[i] All characters in fiction are expected to act in a normal human manner unless explicitly specified otherwise.[/i]”, since it is explicitly stated – several times – that Castela is not even approximately human.
You are trying to impose your own prejudices as to how something should be done on another’s work – one in which your position is most definitely a minority view among readers.
If you had said “In my personal opinion, which is not a law of nature, all characters in fiction are expected to act in a normal human manner unless explicitly specified otherwise,” that would be one thing.
But attempting to flatly lay down the law as to how another creator should conduct his business and stating that your way is the Only Correct Way is rude at a minimum.
“There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays and every single one of them is right.”
Again, I stand by my statement. We’re human beings, we to create write human beings, we read to meet human beings. We expect the characters to act like human beings unless otherwise specified, no matter what they appear as. Werewolves act like violent human beings, vampires act like predatory human beings, the Fae act like utterly self-centered human beings. If the characters don’t act like human beings, we need a good reason why not.
How about, they don’t act like human beings because they are not human beings!!!
“We’re human beings, we to create write human beings, we read to meet human beings.”
…The heck? I’m here solely because these characters are quite other than human. The standard you’re trying to apply doesn’t apply to this comic, and I’m glad, because the comic would be far more boring if it did. OOCly, Castela’s whole appeal is that she’s both adorable and freakishly inhuman; this example of her mixing the wise tree with the goofy little girl is just another example.
Further, Castela’s mix here seems to be deeper than you think. If Nadette needed to be told what Castela’s telling her, then Nadette wouldn’t’ve been trying to keep it to herself. Castela here is mixing insight with oversimplification — just the thing to expect.
If she were behaving in an aphysical way, as if she’d actually experienced more time than that, sure that’d be a problem, but that’s not what we’re seeing here. She even said “smell” last page, what would you think if she were “disguised as” a cat or dog instead of a human? We’re seeing her behaving in an inhuman way. Which she is. I’d say nonhumans shouldn’t behave like humans, unless there’s a reason — and her growing up trying to imitate a human is reason enough for what humanity she shows here.
Something i forgot to put in that long comment: Nadette is there because, as can be seen by reviewing the week’s pages, this is a direct continuation of the sequence that began at the skate park; she came to the Gilchrist place with Atsali and Castela, and this is directly following on; she hasn’t had a chance to go home yet.
All you have to do is read the comic and pay attention.
She’s also there, because Sali is her girlfriend, and obviously went with her to find out what the big news was
Ow ow ow ow OW!
Out of the mouths of babes…
That’s impressive sarcasm for an 8 year old. Well done.
Eight-year-olds are amazingly savvy these days. Though … whatever happened to Castella’s photo-negative eyes??
Those weren’t photo negative. Those were empty eye sockets with little light-sensing beads sticking out on stalks.
She has had a couple years of practicing holding ‘human-form’
She’s got her human on……………
Thanks for calling her out, kiddo. I really haven’t been liking Nadette lately.
I thought bears were predators.
To quote Gary Larson: “Look at these claws! Look at these teeth! You think we just eat berries?”
They have incredible speed and power. Smart, too.
Smarter than your average bear anyway
Just because they eat fish, and other bears, and loud annoying humans, doesn’t make them a ‘predator’
Like humans they are omnivores, they’ll eat just about anything.
Shouldn’t “nerddom” have two “d’s?”
I thought about that. Nothing works right. Nerdom. Nerddom. Nerd-dom. Take your pick.
“Nerdity”
Nerd-topia? Nerdopolis? Nerdism? Nerdness?
Being rated as a Young Teen comic, Paul is careful with the nerdity…
How ’bout “nerd-dom” with a hyphen between the “d’s?” (Honestly, I never heard the word back in the seventies till “Happy Days” started using it…)
How old *is* the pickle anyway…she goes from speaking like a 4 year old to being all wise….
She’s eight.
She’s eight and ancient all in one. It’s not the first time she’s baffled people by acting much more mature than her apparent age. Remember this?
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/life-strategies/
Pickle is how I react to ALLLLL my friends, all the time…wow <3 <3
and just like that castela is my favorite character in this comic
The snark is strong in one so young 😀
One can see how pickle has gotten better at keeping human form over time…just gotta work on the cheeks and she’ll be there.
I doubt that they’re actually noticeable to norms – consider that a large fraction of the core cast have fangs, or consider Tina’s eyes (or Katherine’s, for that matter), and apparently hardly anyone actually notices.
Like Monica and Shelly’s “cat marks”, or Antimony Carver’s scar that only shows in her aetheric form, they’re there mostly as a marker for the reader.
Also, her stutter has been gone this week. But i dont see it as a not a continuity gaffe. Castell is a Para, not a human 8 year old, and I’m used to Paras making big developmental jumps as they develop. Or id I miss Paul saying that Castrol was going to develop like a human?
Castrol? My spellchecker is getting kickbacks to post ads and isn’t cutting me in!! Anyway, I’ll just hope that my point is clear
I haven’t heard the term, OH-NOES in a long-ass time!
It’s a classic.
Hey! Maybe Nadette has an innate fear that Atsali will prey on her. I mean, we’re all afraid of tigers, as much as we love them.
Nadette’s a female bear. Sirens prey on males and fish…
Yeah, tigers prey on jungle animals. Doesn’t make them less scary. You must have missed when Atsali preyed the heck out of Berdine.
Hmmm. I must have forgotten to include the ISO9001 International Smart-Ass Signifier glyph.
Interesting who’s the wiser head…
As Tarlok said above, Castela first showed utterly unexpected wisdom three story-years ago, back in http://wapsisquare.com/comic/life-strategies/, and maybe once or twice since. It’s too blatant to be ascribed to the author’s carelessness. But it really needs an explanation some day, and I hope that day is soon. In particular, I wonder if she’s always been wise, her stuttering and little-sister tormenting of Atsali 99% of the time being just a mask, or does it only come out from somewhere when someone needs help? And if so, from where? I certainly don’t buy ‘I’ve just had to pick up a few more life strategies than most little kids.’ Kid-Castela and Yoda-Castela are too different.
She’s half omnipotent plant, which is enough of an explanation to me.
That side of her heritage will probably surfaced more and more. Her spontaneous outbursts of wisdom aren’t even the only things that most likely have to do with that:
-She managed to outright kill a Fae, who are descriebd as ‘only slightly less dangerous than elementals’
-She can desintegrate stuff with her bare hands (so far only toys while playing)
I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d be the focus of one of the next adventureous arcs. Though Atsali also doesn’t seem to be your run of the mill Siren/Succubus hybrid, considering how she managed to handle both Tsillah and Thymbris so fast that she managed to actually surprise them (Are those markings on her face from either of her parents lineages or are they something else?).
I’ve been following your wonderful comic for a few years now and I have to say that Castela is one of my favorite characters. The more she masters her human look the more I can’t wait to see her get older. I bet she’s going to take after her mother in a few years.
Wait, you know who her mother is? o_O
You know I’ll love to see how Castela is gonna be as a grownup.
Almost forgot: What exactly has Atsala become more than a bit aggressive at? Have those two finaly crossed that line officially?
You didn’t see her on the Hockey Field? Or the skate ramp? She used to be so self-conscious and timid just walking through the school halls