Unpleasant memory 3

End of he flashback~ Now get few pages back, read that again with one-page-per-week-slow-motion-mode turned off and hopefully it’s pretty obvious what her problem is and why she is thinking about it now. Next week we’ll go back under the tree!

I noticed that Halloween is coming but I am too busy to prepare a new nice illustration to celebrate. I really wanted to paint Nina with pumpkins and leaves but… It will probably have to wait until next year. You can enjoy illustration from last year though, it still makes me smile even though my style changed considerably in the meantime. Have fun collecting treats this year!

Maybe a candy? I can share~

Maybe a candy? I can share~

And one small reminder for those who didn’t notice: Replay has a Facebook Fanpage and a Twitter account when I post some sketches from time to time. I made some today so feel free to drop by and leave a comment!

118 comments on “Unpleasant memory 3”

    • Rick Brewster Reply

      Red hair, freckles, blue eyes, she’s beautiful. If I had met her I would definitely have tried to talk to and understand her.

      • 1stormbringer77 Reply

        My Step-Mother is a Gorgeous Drop Dead Red Head with Hazel Eyes that can put you in a trance. She is so Beautiful she would make a Playgirl Of The Year look just so-so. And what tops it all off is that she is a Genius (literally,I.Q. 161) and I watched Her type over 200 words a minute.I’m lucky for maybe 30 (search & peck,I didn’t take typing). She’s been a Horticulturist for over 40 years and at Her age she STILL looks like She’s in Her mid to late 40s. Perfect skin,no fat anywhere and does her morning 5 mile jog daily,unless it’s raining,then she uses that old tread mill.I’m 50 and yes,she’s more than 20 years older than me.I’ve never seen her eat junk food and rarely eats beef,mostly chicken,turkey,fish (only what she catches,never from a store)and so many different vegetables that she grows.She’s not a witch,but I wouldn’t doubt it that She will outlive me.My Dad chose wisely to marry her way back in 1979,and I’m so thankful for Her to still be in my life,especially since my Father passed away and She still calls me Her favorite kid.

    • Refugnic Reply

      I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to say ‘Vampires’, but good eye noticing it. I’ve read over it entirely.

      Lesson of the day: Webcomics at 7 AM may not be enjoyed at fullest attention. 😛

    • JW Reply

      I think “wampire” is meant to mean a combination of witch and vampire. But that’s after going through half a dozen possible dozen definitions.

      Foremost, wikipedia suggests:
      * An American Indy Rockband from Portland.
      But I don’t think people in the middle ages would have believed red heads formed an American indy rock band. You know, considering they hadn’t located America on a map yet. And it would be a pretty large band.

      So with wikipedia out, let’s have a look at urban dictionary.
      * An extremely attractive individual with creative and interesting style. Especially goth, punk, or Japanese.
      The “extremely attractive” definitely fits Ada and some other red heads (though I wouldn’t dare say if that’s proportionally more than for other hair colors). But as medieval folk belief it probably wouldn’t work. I mean, sure, Gothic style is late medieval — architecturally speaking. But there weren’t any red-headed Japanese (hair coloring hadn’t been invented yet), nor had punk been invented; so those would be odd additions in a folk belief.

      * A wannabe vampire
      I doubt medieval times would have had many wannabe vampire, because that would be like inviting someone to drive a stake through your heart. … Ok, I suppose it still is, BUT these days you’ll probably get in more trouble if you act on it.

      * A cross between an umpire and vampire (really urban dictionary?)
      Baseball hadn’t been invented yet, so this is out.

      * A mythical creature related to vampires in name only, wampires are born of tragedy and cry tears of blood as they prepare to feed on human flesh. Some can take on human form and a select few can turn into other earthly creatures as well, their favorite form being that of the spider. (Faith restored in urban dictionary)
      I suppose it’s possible, but probably not what the teacher was going for.

      * A Vampyre from Texas.
      Texas hadn’t been invented yet. (+1 for medieval times j/k 😉 )

      And lastly, or actually 4th in the list if I hadn’t reordered them
      * A hybrid mix between a witch and a vampire
      Which fits best with what the teacher said, “witches or even wampires”, because a wampire is all that a witch is and more.

      Hmm. You know, Ada does use magic, so she can probably rightfully be called a witch. Good thing we don’t cling to those medieval values anymore.

    • NotImportant Reply

      Yes, it’s a typo, sorry about that… ╰(゜Д゜)╯ I should really stop posting new pages so late at night, I didn’t notice it at all. Thanks for letting me know!

      • Refugnic Reply

        Aww, now you ruined the discussion. 😛

        But yeah, I figured as much and you are, of course, forgiven. 😉

    • 1stormbringer77 Reply

      If you’ve ever been to Germany (i was stationed there a few times) you’ll notice that the V and W can be translated in reverse. So when the teacher says “Wampire” she was trying to say “Vampire”. The teacher might be of German decent (Austrian,Bavarian,Bohemian,German.I am).

      • Refugnic Reply

        You’re right, the consonants sound about identical in this context. (I am from Germany. Franconia even, where p and b as well as t and d are easily confused in the pronunciation, so I know a bit about that kinda fun). It’s a ‘need to know’ differentiation, if you only heard it, one would probably actually write it with ‘W’.

        In combination with the vowel ‘O’, the ‘v’ sounds like an ‘F’, like in for example: Vogel or Vorwärts.

        It’s one of those little things you don’t really think about, unless you get confronted with it. Then you start to wonder. 😀

  3. Refugnic Reply

    NI, now I am slightly confused.

    You told me, that you added the animal traits for purely cosmetic reasons and that you (and thereby your characters) would perceive the person at hand as ‘human’.
    Yet one of them says: ‘Fox is out of the bag’, which is a clear hit towards her being a foxgirl…which, in turn is a bit of a contradiction to them perceiving each other as entirely human.

    Maybe the teacher should also mention, that those who were perceived as ‘witches’, were actually really smart women with knowledge about herbalism, birth procedures and what not. If not for the people being so scared of the things these women knew, the black death might never have hit as hard, because I’ll just bet that the witches knew of what caused it and a cure for it.

    However the people in the classroom are partially right. Ada is just like the witches back then. Different. By hair color and attitude (the attitude being bolstered by the treatment she receives). There’s a reason why witches supposedly largely lived secluded in the woods…because they didn’t want to deal with the conceited ideas and prejudices of the town people.

    The funny thing about that: When you were sick or in pain, the local witch(doctor) was a far better friend than then Medicus, who would rather kill than help you.

    The interesting little thing about this page is the comment ‘Who’s that girl? She’s cute.’ from one of the classmates.
    There are people who are interested in her and would like to get to know her better, but the peer pressure is keeping them away, further isolating Ada.
    But even if it was only the two of them, Ada would shoot them down, simply because she’d suspect a trap…because you know how it is…it’s always those who are closest to us who hurt us the most. And from the looks of it, Ada has been hurt so much in the past, she is now scared to let anyone close enough to hurt her…but that also precludes her from making any friends or finding love.

    • JW Reply

      If not for the people being so scared of the things these women knew, the black death might never have hit as hard, because I’ll just bet that the witches knew of what caused it and a cure for it.

      I very much doubt that. It was a new disease when it first hit, so they wouldn’t have seen anything like it. And folk medicine wouldn’t have had anything to treat it.
      Additionally, the fear of witches is really something that started much later. The witch hunting period is from 1450 to 1750, so there’s barely overlap with the middle ages, and none with the great plague a hundred years before that.

      • Refugnic Reply

        My apologies, my knowledge about history is very limited (just like about Geography and a number of other things).

        Was it now? Now, as I said, I’m not very big on history, but I believe that the world is repeating itself very often. And diseases don’t just ‘appear’ out of nowhere either. Chances are, that any disease has been around before (except for diseases that are artificially created), at least in one form or another, and that someone has at least some sort of idea on how to combat it.

        I think I once heard that even the people in the middle ages were smart enough to do the decent thing when the plague hit though…they put those who got sick into quarantine (they didn’t call it that, but it was the same thing really), to keep them from infecting the others.
        Either way, the witches would most certainly have had herbs and stuff to counter the effects, like fever, nausea and all that stuff (Not too big on medicine either).

        So maybe they didn’t have ‘the cure’, per se, but they sure were a whole lot more effective than ‘studied’ medics, who really had no idea about what they were doing.

        People were always scared about things they didn’t know. Agreed, the witch hunts only started later, when some ‘Christian’ declared them consorts of the devil, who would sacrifice the innocents to their dark lord. And that made all the lingering fear of the unknown boil over and lead to the witch hunts.

        Again, in context to the page: The witches were a puzzle the people were unable to solve easily and it seeing how it was so much easier to fear them (especially since, if you tried to defend them, you were immediately tainted and burned as well), most people just jumped along.

        And while we’re at ‘mass hysteria’…it was really the same with the Nazis in the 1930s. There was a movement going through Germany. A movement that gave people something to hate and something to follow (people are like sheep, they want an enemy (the wolf) and a leader (the shepherd) to protect them). That’s why many of the more feeble minded joined of their own volition. The majority of the ‘Nazis’ however were actually regular people, people like me and you, who wouldn’t have joined…if not for the simple fact that they would’ve gotten beat up or even killed if you refused.

        People do the craziest things in order to survive…even kill innocents.

        • JW Reply

          And diseases don’t just ‘appear’ out of nowhere either.

          Not out of nowhere, no. But that doesn’t mean we’ve encountered them before either. Take HIV and ebola as examples, they have less than a century of history. We probably got HIV from Apes, and ebola from bats, and after a few mutations to adapt to humans, they’re suddenly deadly and spread like wildfire under the right conditions.
          They didn’t come from nowhere, but we never saw them before either.
          The plague probably sprung up the same way, a few mutations, the right conditions (trade and bad sanitation) and suddenly it’s virulent in the human population and 30-50% of people die in next to no time.

          I think I once heard that even the people in the middle ages were smart enough to do the decent thing when the plague hit though…they put those who got sick into quarantine (they didn’t call it that, but it was the same thing really), to keep them from infecting the others.

          Too bad they didn’t quarantine the rats that were spreading the fleas that were spreading the plague. The pope had the right idea, he had fire lit all around him, which kept everything away -but that wasn’t a tenable solution for common folk.
          Quarantining was not very effective with the plague, unfortunately.

          Either way, the witches would most certainly have had herbs and stuff to counter the effects, like fever, nausea and all that stuff (Not too big on medicine either).

          Maybe. But when the plague is deadly in a few days, it’s a small comfort that fever and nausea are alleviated.

          So maybe they didn’t have ‘the cure’, per se, but they sure were a whole lot more effective than ‘studied’ medics, who really had no idea about what they were doing.

          With regards to the plague, let’s be honest here, none of them were effective in any way. And they were probably among the first to die as well (because they’d try to help, get infected, and die).
          With regard to general medicine. I don’t think it’s fair to say that ‘studied’ medics knew nothing. Herbalism was just as much a part of ‘studied’ medics as of the village healer (or if you prefer witch). And none of them could do much for you if it wasn’t something that was likely to pass without help. Though of course they might help you on your way (to the grave) with some blood letting/leeches.

          • Refugnic

            *Sigh*…I just can’t seem to argue with you, can I?

            You are of course right, however as I said, the viruses and bacteria and sicknesses have been around before. Besides, Ebola and HIV…I believe that they might’ve been around even before that. It’s just that nobody really took notice, because they grew in an ‘undeveloped country’, where people died left and right anyway. Nobody really cared to investigate but much rather kept away from the sick, afraid to catch whatever they have too.

            Regarding your second point: Yeah, it didn’t prove very effective for the plague, but that’s because they had no idea where the illness was actually coming from. They just kinda treated it like any other contagious illness.

            Maybe so. Though I still could imagine that a few of those witches had something to maybe overcome the illness effectively. But then again, if the plague was to resurface today…how many people would it kill before it gets contained again? We’ve got good sanitary conditions and medicine and all that stuff, but people still die.

            Likely, albeit not certainly. I could imagine (mind you: Imagine), that many witches had incenses and stuff to keep vermin away from themselves, essentially rendering them ‘immune’ to any illness they might carry. (It is a well known fact that vermin don’t like certain smells). As regarding catching a secondary infection (human to human)…I think that depended entirely on their personal protection protocols (sounds fancy, but really is just washing hands and not actually touching the subject and all that stuff).
            Yes, my apologies, of course Herbalism is just as studied. I was just saying that the Medici of the middle ages were more quacks than anything else. For sure there were a few good ones, those who actually tried to figure out what was going on, but the majority supposedly (I don’t know any Medici personally) were so studied, that they effectively knew nothing about how to actually help a person…but everything about any cataloged illness. 🙂

            I like to remember the fairy tale of ‘The baron of Munchhausen’…the lying baron, who rode on a cannon ball to defeat the invading turks or something. Even on his deathbed he would cry for the doctor to stay away.
            Yet the doctor came. And his name was Death.

          • JW

            *Sigh*…I just can’t seem to argue with you, can I?

            I’m not really one for debates (where someone tries to argue they’re right); because as the saying goes, opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink.
            But as far as discussions (i.e. interactive exploration of a subject) go, I think we’re exploring some interesting topics. And I like learning more about subjects by having an excuse to look them up.

            Besides, Ebola and HIV…I believe that they might’ve been around even before that. It’s just that nobody really took notice

            Well, you’re free to believe whatever you want, of course, but genetic research has provided histories for both. They’re not something people have had before; we can tell when they acquired the mutations they needed to infect and spread in humans.

            Though I still could imagine that a few of those witches had something to maybe overcome the illness effectively.

            Well, I can imagine it, but I can’t believe it. They were just people with a bit of knowledge about medicinal plants and home recipes, not repositories of obscure ancient knowledge now unfortunately lost to us for all eternity. That’s a degree of romanticizing the past I just can’t get behind outside the context of a good novel.
            They were likely just normal people with a bit of expertise (which probably wasn’t their day job), and they’re unlikely to have been quaint nice old women living in the woods in a gingerbread house using children as firewood. It makes for a nice story, but not something I find believable.

            But then again, if the plague was to resurface today…how many people would it kill before it gets contained again? We’ve got good sanitary conditions and medicine and all that stuff, but people still die.

            Well, the strain of yersinia pestis they have today seems to be pretty tame compared to ye old times. And considering it’s a bacterium, anti-biotics would likely work on it.
            Sanitation does remove the main vector for it’s spread (i.e. flea-ridden rats), so it’s unlikely to ever be a threat again unless it finds a new way to infect people. There have been a few rare recent infections though; the main danger is that the doctor doesn’t expect it to be the black death and so won’t immediately start the right treatment.

            Likely, albeit not certainly. I could imagine (mind you: Imagine), that many witches had incenses and stuff to keep vermin away from themselves

            I could be wrong, but I think incense was pretty expensive, and “witches”, like the rest of the common people, pretty poor.
            But yeah, we clearly don’t share the same image of what a real “witch” was.

            As regarding catching a secondary infection (human to human)…I think that depended entirely on their personal protection protocols (sounds fancy, but really is just washing hands and not actually touching the subject and all that stuff).

            To be honest I was only considering they’d catch it from the fleas in the house of the diseased. It doesn’t look like it was spread by contact, but it could be spread through coughing/sneezing if it affected the lungs. Covering the mouth could help a bit with that. And considering they thought it was caused by bad air, that is a likely precaution. (Fun fact, they used to think the same about malaria, which even gets it’s name from bad air.)

            I was just saying that the Medici of the middle ages were more quacks than anything else.

            One of the reasons why I doubt that they were bigger quack that the local healers, is that no one would pay many times more money for a smaller chance of survival.

            but the majority supposedly (I don’t know any Medici personally) were so studied, that they effectively knew nothing about how to actually help a person…but everything about any cataloged illness. 🙂

            Supposed by who, I have to wonder. It sounds like the typical “nerds are socially inept” stereotype thrown back centuries in time. And I don’t see why it would be any more true then than now.
            And of course someone that knows everything about cataloged diseases is exactly the type of person you need if you caught something that isn’t so common that every village healer knows the remedy. Books are much better for preserving ancient knowledge than oral traditions, especially on rare topics.

            (Yikes, this post is far too long.)

          • Refugnic

            Haha, well it most certainly is comforting that you see it that way. And you’re right. Opinions are like assholes. 😛

            That so? Once again, my knowledge seems to fail me. Though I guess it’s kinda a ‘times and means change, things stay the same thing’. If it’s not Ebola/HIV, it’s the plague or the Spanish Flu. Maybe they’re different strains, but the effect is largely the same…the overcome the immunity system, multiply uncontrollably and eventually kill their host. (Which is kinda contra-productive actually, because by killing the host, they’re also killing themselves…but Viruses, just like humans, seem to like destroying their habitat)

            Mind the ‘some’, please. The majority, I agree. But I think that some of them actually had knowledge passed down to them for generations. A whole wealth of knowledge that would put any scholar to shame. Or some others may have been actually geniuses of medicine (like Pasteur for example), way ahead of their time with their methods (like Leonardo Da Vinci). They might have devised methods to combat illnesses like that…but were likely not listened to or maybe even punished for being ‘the odd one out’ (like Gallileo Gallilei). So what happens? They take their knowledge and ideas and stuff…and take them to the grave.

            I’m just saying that, if people had been (or were) a bit more open minded, our world might actually be a better place…or lay in complete ruins, that is possible too. 🙂

            That’s always the danger. Has been and will be until we devise a method where nanites course through our body which set off an alarm as soon as a strain classified as ‘potentially dangerous’ enters the bloodstream and possibly exterminates it while its at it.
            Problem with that approach: Reprogram them and you’ve got a weapon of mass destruction unlike any other before.

            Maybe I used the wrong word. By ‘incense’ I basically meant burning stuff to create a veil of smoke and send the contents into the air. I wasn’t specifically talking about the stuff the 3 kings supposedly brought to the crib of Jesus Christ, but much rather regular stuff you can find in forests or grow in gardens.
            My apologies if I confused you with that, I agree that most witches were likely very poor. Most probably didn’t even really care about money as much.

            Well, people seemingly caught it from nowhere (seeing how fleas can’t be seen with the bare eye and rats were about everywhere anyway, so nobody suspected them to be the carriers), ‘bad air’ was the most likely cause of infection.

            But boy, imagine if the plague really had been transmitted airborne, now that would’ve lead to a whole lot of more deaths. Just one cough and you could infect dozens of people around you…a terrifying thought to be sure.

            I’m sorry, but I never called a Medicus a ‘nerd’ nor ‘socially inept’. In fact, the Medici (again, supposedly) were highly sociable, of rather high standing (how could they possibly afford the books or tuition otherwise?)
            And that was part of the problem. School medicine was still in its baby shoes. They honestly believed that by removing large amounts of blood from the body of the patient that they could cure them. Sure, a dialysis may have been a cure, but (most of) the knowledge of the Medici was just as much bullshit as the ‘common knowledge’ that the earth was a disk and that the sky was revolving around the planet.

            And yes, books are great for conveying information. Much more accurate and lasting than oral traditions.
            However there is a problem it shares with oral traditions and one that’s exclusive.

            The shared problem: If the written down information is useless, it will remain useless for all of eternity.
            The exclusive problem: Until Mr. Gutenberg invented the book print (and even afterwards), books were unaffordable for any but the most wealthy.
            Which means, that, in order to become a Medicus, you had to be wealthy.
            And, although this may just be me riding a stereotype, but anyway: Wealthy people tend to be not as interested in helping people in need, as they are in profiling themselves.

            Of course there’s a whole lot of exceptions and some may well have used their wealth to fund the training of a genuine doctor, however even today, many people would like it, if their children went into medicine.
            But not because they can help people there, but because it is one of the most prestigious and best paying jobs in the entire world.

            And I doubt it was much different in the middle ages.

            But then again, I could of course be wrong on pretty much all accounts. ;P

            Regarding the length: Don’t you worry, I wrote a 700 page story in 6 months and the same length in comments about that story. I can handle ‘lengthy’ just fine. 🙂
            Thanks for having such an interesting discussion with me. 😉

        • Tom Billings Reply

          “… I believe that the world is repeating itself very often. And diseases don’t just ‘appear’ out of nowhere either. Chances are, that any disease has been around before (except for diseases that are artificially created), at least in one form or another, and that someone has at least some sort of idea on how to combat it.”

          Bubonic Plague didn’t appear out of nowhere. It appeared at Cherson, on the Crimean Peninsula, courtesy of a Mongol Army besieging that port. Since the bubonic plague appeared from the Rift Valley of Africa, and spread to the Nile delta, probably through Ivory traders, around the year 535-540AD, it was a vaguely known quantity that killed 40 percent of Europe during the reign of Emperor Justinian the Great. It exploded from a vector pool of rats out on the High Steppe of Asia. about every 2 generations through 747AD, and then vanished for 700 years.That is why no one knew what to do with it.

          “So maybe they didn’t have ‘the cure’, per se, but they sure were a whole lot more effective than ‘studied’ medics, who really had no idea about what they were doing.”

          Actually, the medics of the Church *did* know one way to prevent the bubonic plague from spreading to an individual. They had the Pope, at Avignon, immured in a room that was heated continually above a temperature that the fleas, which spread the plague from rats to humans, could tolerate. He did not get the plague, even as it raged through Avignon, killing some of the medics who kept him alive. They did not know why it worked, …only that it did. Apparently their libraries contained records of the previous plague that started in the Nile Delta. Of course, this solution was too expensive for the general population.

    • NotImportant Reply

      @Refugnic I modified the proverb because it sounded funnier like that, it doesn’t change my stance that those ears and tails are something I added for kicks and that they play no part in the story.

      And maybe I am a mean person but to me everything that happened here is Ada’s fault. I am ginger as well and this situation is something that I have experienced first hand – meaning the teacher explaining how were witches perceived and then adding that ‘in middle ages red haired women were believed to be witches or harlots’. Of course everyone started laughing and turning to me… But I didn’t get called names after that. Because I was being me and not being Ada. Because I knew how to react.
      ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      • Refugnic Reply

        Duly noted.

        And how exactly did you react? Because Ada is keeping silent and secluded. She isn’t snapping back, nor is she lashing out at those ridiculing her.
        She’s just keeping to herself…which is kinda my defense mechanism. Most certainly it doesn’t stop the mockery. But after a while, you learn completely ignoring it.

        Ada is the victim of (fairly mild) mobbing right here. Now if one of those guys decided he wanted to try out those ‘Beastly sexual desires’ and raped her (aside from the point that he probably wouldn’t live to see the next day), would that also be Ada’s fault?

        She isn’t fighting back. But that still doesn’t make the bullying okay.

        Now, please allow me to repeat my question: How did you react when that came up?

        • NotImportant Reply

          I am not a psychologist and don’t have much experience with severe bullying but doing nothing about it doesn’t help, usually.
          I don’t remember exact words I used since it was long time ago and to me it’s just a silly memory, not some traumatic event from the past but the correct thing to do would probably to throw a comment such as “Now thank you very much, teacher! ಠ_ಠ ” and then laugh with others. Basically to lighten up the situation. Those kids weren’t really bullying her, they were throwing mean jokes but it wouldn’t have been very hard to impress them with a bit of boldness.
          Ada chose to talk when she shouldn’t have, talking about her unusual hobbies to a girl whose intentions she did not know and chose to remain silent when she should have told people off.

          • Refugnic

            Heh…well, I’ve grown a spine in the past few years, but back in my school days, I remember it not being so easy. After a while you just get tired of fighting back…but that’s for the ‘strange people’ who get targeted wherever they go.

            Good for you that you had the spine to fight when it came up. Most don’t.

            And contrary to Ada, they aren’t even cute or have other obvious redeeming qualities. They are just ‘the strange, lone, kid’.

          • NotImportant

            I was kind of lucky that I grew my spine earlier, much earlier, but it wasn’t too pleasant. Well, everyone goes through that phase at some point.

          • Refugnic

            Either you attack or you defend. It’s really as simple as that.

            Though I personally think that being on the receiving end of the stick makes a better person out of you than being on the dishing out end…albeit it is less pleasant.

          • Tom Billings

            ” …the correct thing to do would probably to throw a comment such as “Now thank you very much, teacher! ಠ_ಠ ” and then laugh with others.”

            I’d go with something a bit stronger, myself. Something like, …”Tell us teacher, just when did that particular plague of stupid end, …or did it?”…looking around the room at the snickerers.

          • Refugnic

            The correct response of the teacher would then have to be: ‘Dear Ada, as I’m sure you have already noticed, ‘Stupid’ is a very resilient condition, which is extremely hard to get rid of. Doctors are working on it, but so far they’ve had little success.’ 😛

      • antrik Reply

        @NotImportant are you seriously suggesting that if someone is not resolute and quick-witted enough to disperse such a situation, it’s their own fault and they deserve to be ridiculed? That’s like telling an obese kid that it’s their own fault if they get beaten up, since they didn’t run away fast enough…

        • NotImportant Reply

          Come, I’m not that evil. I’m just saying that in that particular situation Ada pushed herself into a corner by refusing to open her mouth to anyone. She wasn’t really “bullied” (at least I haven’t shown anything like this). A couple of mean comments happen to anyone during high school… And instead of laughing them off she decided that it’s a perfect pretext to get angry at everyone on the planet and distance herself from them. I know it looks very dramatic from her perspective but from the outside…? Not so much. People just thought she was gloomy. And they were right!

      • antrik Reply

        Sure, *technically*, she had the choice what conclusions to draw from the situation. (Though I don’t really agree that she could have spoken up at that moment… Clearly, she was overwhelmed and helpless.)

        *Technically*, she could have chosen to try reaching out, instead of secluding herself further. (At the risk of embarrassing herself even more in the process, like she probably has in similar situations in the past…) But that doesn’t mean she *realised* she had this choice to make. Nobody *told* her how to handle the situation better — and people in such situations rarely see it themselves. It’s not her *fault* that evolution has wired us in ways not exactly ideal for dealing with the challenges of modern society…

        And you can’t really fault her for making a bad choice, while at the same time excusing the others — after all, their perception of the other side’s demeanour is *equally* flawed here.

        • NotImportant Reply

          It’s not like I’m going to punish her or anything 😉 I’m not a fan of her passive behavior in this situation but this is who she is and that’s her life. I might be a god of her world but believe me, she’s not going to get punished for this one haha~

          There’s no need to look for someone to blame, that’s all what I’m saying. Nobody here wanted to ruin her life or anything, they weren’t particularly malicious either. I can’t brand anyone here “evil” or “wrong”. I deliberately wanted to create a situation that was unpleasant but could have easily been avoided because there’s no “evil bully”, just unfortunate circumstance and Ada’s passiveness.

          • antrik

            So… This is an extremely late follow-up; and I actually feel kinda bad for harping on this… But I just want to clarify that I have no qualms with how you depicted this situation (indeed I think it presents Ada’s thought process very well); nor do I think anyone here is being particularly “evil”. My objection was solely to your above remark that “everything that happened here is Ada’s fault”: that’s victim blaming.

            It may be true that she could have avoided the situation if she behaved differently — just as it may be true that some cases of sexual violence could be avoided if the victim dressed differently for example (to cite the textbook example of victim blaming) — but that doesn’t in any way remove responsibility from the aggressors…

  4. JW Reply

    It’s quite awful of the teacher not to take into account that one of her students would likely be teased with such a stereotype.
    Or maybe she’s absolutely horrible and did it for exactly that reason.

    • Refugnic Reply

      I don’t think the teacher paid any mind to there being a red head in her class. It’s in her lesson plan, so she teaches her students about it. Ginger or not.

      Now, a good teacher would’ve done some preempting…but most teachers (not all, mind you), have long fallen into a routine where they simply pull down their lessons and be done with it, no questions asked.

    • NotImportant Reply

      Teacher has her material to teach, she is not going to omit parts because someone is uncomfortable with them. And protecting Ada in this situation is equally damaging because it creates a sense of ‘special treatment’. It’s Ada’s fault for not being able to deal with the situation. When you think about it many people get involved with some very idiotic rumors and that’s how it is.

      • JW Reply

        I’m not saying the teacher had to omit parts. But she does have a responsibility towards her students.
        Sure, Ada might have easily dealt with it in some way or another. It’s easy enough to make a joke about it (Hey watch it, or I’ll turn you into a toad. Oh wait, you already are.)
        However, she’s a kid, and clearly not dealing with it appropriately.

        Besides, how hard was it for teach to say “but of course that’s all superstitious nonsense, just like [insert any number of other superstitious beliefs and stereotypes from the middle ages]”.

        • NotImportant Reply

          Not hard and maybe she did, but this is Ada’s memory. She didn’t get really bullied, she just closed herself in, unable to deal with a little pressure. Maybe she was insecure to begin with, about her hobbies, about herself. With that silence she distanced herself from the class even further.

          • Refugnic

            Oddly enough I find myself in her behavior.

            When someone shows even the slightest bit of interest into the things I like, I jump at the opportunity to talk about it, simply because it tends to be so unpopular and rare to find someone to talk about it…even if I risk getting shot down in the process.

            On the contrary, when on the defensive, I shut myself in and set myself to ‘Ignore’. Because the other option would be counterattacking. And I want to be better than that.

            ‘Joining in’ and make a joke out of it may also be an option…but back when the situation was an issue, it never crossed my mind.

  5. Rateus Camp dweller Reply

    Really important for teachers to show a subtle empathy with their students. None of that on display here 🙁

    • Refugnic Reply

      I’m afraid she won’t be. We’ve seen her about 10 years later…she’s still bitter about being so defensive back then.

    • Refugnic Reply

      That might be a bit exaggerated, but it most certainly is on its way towards the Olympus of Webcomics. Before long, almost anyone who is into webcomics will at least have heard of Replay I believe.

        • Refugnic Reply

          Um, excuse me, but spot two at TWC and no sign of slowing down? Just keep it running and before long you’ll be as famous as for example Tom Fischbach. 😉

  9. xthorgoldx Reply

    Wait, a Halloween vote incentive? It’s been a year? Dang, that went by quick.

  10. JW Reply

    the overcome the immunity system, multiply uncontrollably and eventually kill their host. (Which is kinda contra-productive actually, because by killing the host, they’re also killing themselves…but Viruses, just like humans, seem to like destroying their habitat)

    Well, you have to consider that for many deadly diseases we’re often not the natural host. So even if they massacre us, they’ll just continue live on in their usual host. For the plague fleas where the real host, we were just a dead end exploration. For ebola bats are the natural host, so screw us.
    There is a tendency for diseases to get less deadly the longer they ‘live’ with a host-species. Because living together is a better long-term strategy than dying together.

    But boy, imagine if the plague really had been transmitted airborne, now that would’ve lead to a whole lot of more deaths. Just one cough and you could infect dozens of people around you…a terrifying thought to be sure.

    Considering at the height 50% of the people in Europe died, I don’t think it could have been much worse. Greater virulence might even have helped, by killing everyone before they could spread it further (through trade and fleeing, or however those plague rats got everywhere).

    But I think that some of them actually had knowledge passed down to them for generations.

    Sure, but there’s a severe limit to what can be passed on without putting it down on paper/parchment. Especially knowledge about things that don’t come up often will get lost fast.
    There will inevitably have been serendipitous discoveries every now and again, but unless some scholar put it down, or if it spread among the population of healers (because it didn’t just apply to very rare cases), it would have been lost in a few generations.

    but were likely not listened to or maybe even punished for being ‘the odd one out’ (like Gallileo Gallilei)

    Actually, Galileo’s problem seemed to stem mostly from the fact he was an asshole. Culminating in personally insulting the pope (who had been his friend), by writing a dialogue where he puts some of the pope’s arguments against the Copernican view into the mouth of Simplicio (the simpleton). Because, as we all know, calling your opponents idiots is the best way to win an argument and get them to agree with you.

    Thanks for having such an interesting discussion with me.

    Likewise 🙂

    • Refugnic Reply

      Huh…I guess vanity got the better of me right there. You are, of course, right. Just like humans keep looking for new places to live (some of which being completely inhospitable to us, yet still people are trying), viruses (or about any species, really) seeks to spread as far as they can.
      Heh…now you know that and I know that…could someone now please tell the leaders of the world that living together is better than dying together?

      Huh…hadn’t thought of that. Well, 50 % of a large number left still tends to be a large number. But you’re right, if the illness hits and kills the host within minutes, they really don’t have much chance to spread it.

      …now who ever claimed that witches were generally incapable of writing? Cause I didn’t. Otherwise you’re of course right. If you don’t need an information, you forget it, whereas paper is patient. Reading and writing are fairly basic skills and if someone can be taught to tell apart the different herbs of the area and what they do, then I think these people should also have the ability to put it down to paper or read it. Where else would spell books come from after all.

      Heh, Maybe he had a form of Tourette’s and nobody realized that he was actually sick. But yeah, calling people idiots is going to win them over for sure, that’s right. 😀
      Interestingly enough, calling people idiots is actually a good way to get others to agree with you. You just need to take care that you target the people that aren’t on the friendlist of the ones he wants to win over.

      By which we’re actually back at this page (Yay, full circle :P). Bullying like the one here is a cascade effect. Someone starts and everyone else follows after to not be left out, all united in bullying the victim.
      Unfortunately this ‘mob mentality’ doesn’t ever really ‘grow out’ either and happens over and over again, especially if there’s a lot of stress involved.

      • JW Reply

        …now who ever claimed that witches were generally incapable of writing?

        I would hazard to guess pretty much every historian. Because there were very few places where you could learn it. Even the nobility rarely bothered, they had people for it.

        Reading and writing are fairly basic skills and if someone can be taught to tell apart the different herbs of the area and what they do, then I think these people should also have the ability to put it down to paper or read it.

        Sure, most people can read to learn, after all. Literacy rates are sky-high these days and little has changed in terms of biological potential.
        However, you need to be taught, which costs a lot of money when all that’s available is private teachers. And when there’s very little to read, there is very little incentive to pay that cost. In addition, for the greater part, literacy in the middle ages meant Latin. So it wasn’t just learning to read and write, it would be learning a new language.

        Where else would spell books come from after all.

        How many spellbooks from the middle ages have you heard of? I don’t believe there are that many, and the ones I’ve heard of weren’t written by witches, but by the clergy (which also dabbled in magic and had plenty of time, as well as the education needed to write about it).
        Of course one might argue all the books by witches were burned or otherwise lost, but I think there’s enough obstacles that would have precluded them being written in the first place.

        By which we’re actually back at this page (Yay, full circle :P). Bullying like the one here is a cascade effect. Someone starts and everyone else follows after to not be left out, all united in bullying the victim.

        Well, it makes sense in a way, because you wouldn’t want to become a target yourself.
        Maybe it would help to teach kids to stand up for each other, as well as for themselves.

        • Refugnic Reply

          Still, that begs the questions how spellbooks came to be in the first place.
          Yes, there were very few capable of it, but I still think that there were a few who actually realized the importance of it and bothered to learn it.
          I mean, it’s not like it cost a fortune to share a skill, isn’t that right?

          Most certainly a valid point, however the ‘school reading/writing’ isn’t necessarily the only way to put down information into books.
          Just look at the myriad of different writing systems. Maybe they wrote in some sort of rune cipher you would only understand if you had a mentor to teach you, much like you could only learn to read/write the regular language if someone else taught you.
          After all, writing is nothing but drawing predefined symbols on paper and reading is recognizing these glyphs and reconstruct their meaning.
          So, even if they weren’t ‘literate’ by general understanding, they may well have been able to read and write.

          Again, a very good point and you also take my counterargument away from me.
          The main problem with actual witch spellbooks making it to today is the simple fact that they were either destroyed during the witch hunts or simply hidden to escape destruction. Time would do the rest. It’s not like someone would go and replicate them, which was, as I’m sure you know, the only way to copy books before Johann v. Gutenberg came around. So yeah. Possible, but hard to prove.

          It would. But I don’t think that’s on schedule. Because that would actually make sense. 😛

          • JW

            Still, that begs the questions how spellbooks came to be in the first place.

            Only if you assume only witches can make spells. The grimoires that have survived to our time were written by doctors, monks (even popes, according to some), Arab scholars, but no witches as far as I’ve been able to find.

            I mean, it’s not like it cost a fortune to share a skill, isn’t that right?

            Just (a lot of) time. And someone willing to learn, and then later teach. Because if a link breaks anywhere on the way, the skill is lost at that point.
            Keeping skills alive in a small (eligible) population is no mean feat. For example, when Tasmania got cut off from Australia, the technology level of the hunter -gatherers there started to drop quickly. Because any skills lost in the isolated group couldn’t be relearned from interaction with the continent. (This kind of thing might be fun to write a simulation for.)

            Most certainly a valid point, however the ‘school reading/writing’ isn’t necessarily the only way to put down information into books.
            Just look at the myriad of different writing systems. Maybe they wrote in some sort of rune cipher you would only understand if you had a mentor to teach you, much like you could only learn to read/write the regular language if someone else taught you.

            I’m pretty sure that would only make things harder.
            I find it difficult to believe there would have been a sufficiently large, interconnected network of witches (however one might want to define those, because we haven’t and are probably talking cross-purpose to some extent due to that), to maintain their own writing system. (Less so if they don’t use a common language like Latin, because without that the groups are effectively even smaller)

            And another problem just came to mind. The material for the books themselves. For most of the middle ages there wasn’t any paper (paper only reached Germany in the 1400s). And parchment and other alternatives were both expensive and in short supply. I suppose there’s wood and stone, but that’s hardly practical for a compendium of knowledge.

            So, even if they weren’t ‘literate’ by general understanding, they may well have been able to read and write.

            Well, I’ll grant you it’s not impossible, but in my estimation I think they would have more likely been struck dead by lightning. After all, supposedly God didn’t like witches. 😉

          • Refugnic

            I would not assume that only witches can ‘make’ spells. About every religion has its very own rituals and spells to ask the Gods for things. So yes, it is completely feasible that a scholar may have written the spells down. However that, in turn, makes me wonder, how they came into possession of these spells.

            I also wouldn’t rule out, that some of the earlier monks could have studied witchcraft together with the witches. As you’ve already stated, the witch hunts started well after the middle ages, so, at some point, a witch may well have been a respected member of society, which also the clergy would consult. I mean, I think we both agree that what’s written in the history books doesn’t always have to be correct. (You know, history gets written by the winners ;))

            Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. However, if we assume my previous statement to be true, there might even have been training camps of sort for witchcraft. I mean, medieval church managed to span the entirety of Europe. What’s to keep a wandering witch to travel from town to town to seek out those gifted (and interested) in the arts to pass on their knowledge? I believe to have heard that any one witch always had a disciple whom they passed on their knowledge to and, when the disciple became the master, they would take on a disciple of their own to carry on the tradition (and skills).
            In fact, I think that’s how most jobs managed to survive in a world, where books were expensive and hard to come by. (As well as the skill to read)

            Getting back to the discussion…the language barrier is a problem, especially if we pay attention to the simple fact that magic doesn’t actually exist, so ‘magical understanding’ as it is propagated by the bible for example doesn’t just happen.
            What may happen however is, that a traveling witch would be fluent enough in whatever language she’s going to to communicate. Not exactly likely, but possible.

            As for being organized…and just why not? There have been druid circles all over the place with the celtic tribes. Most of them shared rituals and information, so why not the classic European witch? I mean, women supposedly talk a lot more than men…damn, now I’ve got the image of two witches gossiping over a boiling cauldron in my head. 😀

            Heh…I was wondering when you’d bring up paper actually.
            You’re right. Expensive to make, hard to come by at the time. Any sort of writing material would be, really.
            So I think we’ve reached an ending point for this discussion right here…you know, assuming that the witches weren’t actually cooperating with the wealthy clergy in order to preserve their knowledge.

            So thank you for a very interesting, if not even fascinating discussion, where you systematically dismantled every single point I would bring up. I’m not even upset, because really, I don’t know Jack about witches or any of that, so it most certainly has been a learning experience for me. 😉

            Regarding the strike by lightning…that would assume that witches were evildoers, who were listening to the lores of Satan instead of the word of the Lord, but tell me…how evil can someone, who is versed in the lore of nature, the gifts the Lord has blessed us with really be? How evil can someone be, who would alleviate the pain of another?
            And if they had been so very, very evil…then why didn’t God just smite them for their treachery?
            He sure did some fine smiting at Sodom and Gomorrah.

            So yeah, either the witches weren’t as evil as the church made them out to be (black sheep excluded, most certainly there were a few who used their knowledge for…less noble causes, but then again: Who hasn’t?)…or God simply stopped to care, after we killed Jesus Christ.

            The world most certainly looks the part, if you ask me.
            But that’s yet another discussion I believe.

          • JW

            However that, in turn, makes me wonder, how they came into possession of these spells.

            The same way we came into the possession of gods and ghost and ghouls. It’s probably not even accurate to say they’ve been made up. It’s more like stories of causality and wishful thinking that get passed down the generations, getting embellished, mutating, crossbreeding, until you get a whole zoo of make-believe rituals and entities that no one ever created.
            It’s like the story of the dove I dropped one or two weeks ago. You put a dove in a box, and randomly have it receive a pellet of food. The dove move around and gets a ‘reward’, and thinks maybe it’s something I did. Let’s try whatever I was doing. And every now and again (randomly) it gets another pellet. Before long it does complicated ritualistic dances, “convinced” that it’s actions somehow trigger the rewards.
            And humans aren’t much better. There are tons of superstitions to avert bad luck or enforce good luck. Knock on wood; throw salt over your shoulder. And since luck/bad luck is pretty much randomly dealt out, sometimes we get our “pellet” and reenforce our belief in whatever superstitious ritual we had used.
            And spells are even better, because they’re more complicated, so if you don’t get what you wanted from a spells, it’s probably because you did the spell wrong, and not because it’s fancy make-belief. (And similarly, god is even better, because he’s ineffable, so if he doesn’t listen to your prayer, it’s probably your own fault, or there’s some unknowable reason why it’s better you didn’t get what you wanted right now)

            People are fascinating.
            And scary crazy, when you think about it.

            I believe to have heard that any one witch always had a disciple whom they passed on their knowledge to and, when the disciple became the master, they would take on a disciple of their own to carry on the tradition (and skills).

            So they’re like the Sith? Always there are two, a master and an apprentice?

            As for being organized…and just why not? There have been druid circles all over the place with the celtic tribes. Most of them shared rituals and information, so why not the classic European witch?

            Because I reckon there were too few, spread too thinly. And they were in another niche than druids, because the religious niche was already filled by the church.

            Regarding the strike by lightning…that would assume that witches were evildoers

            Well, the traditional witch-persecution justification is that they were consorting with the devil.
            The medieval view held that there were two type of magic, natural magic, and demonic magic. And witch magic was supposedly demonic magic. One might of course argue that that was just slander, or that there were good (white) witched, and bad (black) witches. But in any case, lot’s of evil people we can all agree on being evil didn’t get stricken down be lightning.

            And if they had been so very, very evil…then why didn’t God just smite them for their treachery?

            Maybe he made a bet with the devil (a la book of Job). Or it was his rest day (and a day to god is like a thousand years, 2 Peter 3:8).
            Actually, everything should always be going exactly according to God’s plan, so it’s impossible to be a traitor to God. Betraying God would be going along with his plan, and therefore not a betrayal even if that were your intention. (But don’t count on that saving a person from the fires of hell, because that might be just as much a part of that person’s role.)

            But that’s yet another discussion I believe.

            Well, the weeks not over yet. Or we could do it next week 😉

    • Refugnic Reply

      That would imply, that these kids are actually thinking about what they’re doing.

      Furthermore that’s the point. Lore is lore. Not fact. Now, if Ada gave them a reason to fear her, they would think twice about what they say about her.
      But she doesn’t. She just remains silent, allowing the badmouth train to run wild.

      At this point, it’s still the teachers responsibility to intervene and protect the student.
      I’m not saying, that she should’ve omitted the topic (like NI already said, she has her schedules and needs to stick to them), but when the whispering and badmouthing started, she should’ve said something to deescalate the situation.

      It’s kinda sad that she didn’t. What’s even more sad is, that nobody ever seems to do anything.

  12. Sarnak Reply

    Unfortunately, I had a similar experience, and I can say, from the victim’s prospective, when you’ve been fighting these idiots, who you know you’re smarter than (and have known for years), and you keep getting shot down by the teacher; sent to the principal’s office, and told that, effectively, until they actually PHYSICALLY hurt you, nothing can be done; and that YOU were in fact the disruption, for being a target, the will to fight eventually burns out in you. All that you are left with is embers of rage. You know that what happens to you is wrong, that its against the schools rules even, and the teacher does nothing because they just want to get through the lesson. You start to become more introverted, because it seems like no one around you likes or cares about you. You start to think its not worth the effort to try and make friends, because all they do get used to hurt you.

    Any way, Ada seems to be exhibiting symptoms of a developmental disorder. Highly intelligent, lacking in social graces, very introverted, focused to the point of obsession, very trusting of those few who she opens up to. I recognize the pattern ALL TOO well.
    And I’m projecting my problems on to her, aren’t I? Still, bullying is not the fault of the victim.

    • Dæmon Reply

      You have NO IDEA how much both statements apply to me. I mean, I may have gotten MY act together by 9th grade,but it took SO much work for two months. I mean, if I could, I’d see what I was like then, as a stranger’s perspective. Sure, everyone says I was a brat, but this was from being secluded, and bullied, and you get the idea. I hate people, but I have a few friends,ones I can really trust. That’s all I need for my life, and I don’t care about anyone anyone who wants to make fun of me for it. Thank you for finally being able to sum up my life, better than I could. He’ll, even in school now, I still have to deal with assholes, and people say it gets better, but I doubt that cause of how far I’ve gotten in life. I just think I’ll stop caring and I will probably be glad I did.

    • Refugnic Reply

      I don’t know about ‘being smarter’, but other than that, that’s pretty much me in a nutshell. (I think everyone has been in this kind of situation…either as part of the group of bullies (because standing by and not doing anything is still wrong) or as a victim.

      I don’t even remember if I ever fought back or if I straight went to ‘sitting it out’. But the feeling of helplessness I know all to well.

      Maybe, sometime in the future, someone will make the world a better place.
      And if they do…I sure hope they start in school. Because that is one messed up place.

      ‘Building the world of tomorrow’…and what a world that is going to be.

      • NotImportant Reply

        This whole discussion about bullying has got me thinking… I have been friends with bullied people, I have been friends with people who were bullies (nothing severe), my parents are teachers and I’ve been in some unpleasant situations myself. All kinds of perspectives.
        Teacher can’t always defend the bullied student, sometimes it makes things worse (special treatment leads to bullying as well). And teacher is .. just a person. Like any of us here. I am not sure if I knew how to handle those kind of situations.
        People who bully others are not 100% evil either. Sometimes they just don’t know how to communicate better. They have issues, possibly problems at home. Maybe they even want to be friends with the bullied person, I saw things like that, damn, I stepped in and tried to helped both sides, but they just refused to understand each other.
        And being bullied – everyone takes those things differently. One person will fight back, the other will close in. One will move one, the other will resent his/her bullies for the rest of his/her life.
        I suppose the saddest thing is not being able to move on. There are all kinds of people in the world. We should never give up on others.

        • Refugnic Reply

          I never claimed that the bullies were ‘evil’. In fact, looking back at my own time, I kinda pity them a little, to be honest. Because instead of being my friends they deemed it necessary to harass me. Though I will admit, again in hindsight, that I have not been entirely innocent either.

          Okay, I didn’t walk up to them and ask them to bully me. But I also didn’t walk up to them to offer being their friend either. I acted different than the others, despite knowing that it would lead to me being a target. But I didn’t want to be like the others just to fit in. I just wanted to be myself. I still don’t think that’s wrong, however it put me into the line of fire and I knew it would. Because I had seen it before. School after school.

          I’m not saying that the teachers are to blame either. It’s…a very complicated situation. The teacher needs to protect his students, also from each other, that’s right. But not by shielding a single student, because that’s ‘special treatment’, which, as we know, quickly gets you the ‘teacher’s pet’ reputation, which makes you a target again (I’ve been teacher’s pet often enough, just in case anyone cares).

          I think, what a teacher could do, is sit down with the parties involved and talk it out with them. From my experience, kids can be surprisingly reasonable if treated reasonably. Figure out where the frustration of the bully comes from. In 99 % of the cases, the bully is actually a decent person inside, but can’t show it to avoid appearing as weak and thereby a possible target for others.

          But there is a big problem with that and that is tight schedules and of course exhaustion. Teachers simply don’t have the time or energy to help their students deal with problems like that. Parents would be the next to turn to, however they would naturally side with their child and instead of talking it out with the bully (and their parents), they would probably only make it worse. (Adults can be surprisingly childish when push comes to shove.)

          The world is a terrible place and school life is a reflection of this terrible mess that we call world.
          But at the same time, it is where the world of tomorrow is crafted.
          And if we are to change the world into a better place, it will need to start right there. Where the generation of tomorrow learns what it means to live in this world.

          Do we really want it to be a lesson full of abuse, emotional and physical pain and never ending torture?
          Or would we not much rather want it to be a lesson about mutual understanding and getting along with each other? (I do sound like a preacher right now, don’t I?)

          Either way, to deal with bullying, once and for all is kinda like getting rid of terrorism. It may sound like a bad comparison, but it really is the same…the big difference being that the terrorists are armed and usually ready to die for what they believe in.

          If people were content…there would be no need for bullying. And the call to arms for God or whatever else floats your boat would fall on deaf ears.

          Newton once said, that a body once stopped will tend to remain in this stopped position and require substantial force to get moving again, whereas a moving body will continue to move in the direction, unless an opposing force moves it another way.

          People are the same. Once content, they stop. And it will take substantial force to get them to move out of their way to terrorize anyone.

          I’m sorry if none of this made any sense.

          • NotImportant

            No, it made sense. But repairing schools is not a solution either. Concept of school is not bad at all. You could say that if families were healthy, children wouldn’t cause problems while dealing with other children. And when you think about it is often the case that bullies bring home violence and lack of affection into school and bullied are unable to communicate their suffering to their parents. With proper support both sides could probably be much better.
            It’s a bit of a cycle, unfortunately. It would be very hard, or maybe even impossible, to ‘fix’ it.

  13. maocifer Reply

    Dammit Ada.
    So relatable. That’s practically my opinion about everyone…

    And yes, anon, she IS cute.
    Fox girls are adorable. Foxes are adorable.

  14. Dæmon Reply

    All right my comment didn’t post for me, so I’ll say it again. NI, does the language of the symbols on the artifacts match the language of the enchantments, or it in an arcane or ancient tongue? Does Ada have the longsword featured in the first gallery piece, or does she need to get it? And can you post a character how to draw for us in the gallery? Last of all, do you think this might make a good RPG of some kind, like a D&D parody, or a video game? (I sure wish it was a game) And NI, “you done good, kid.” I know that I shouldn’t say that to an elder, but I heard it as a kid, and was told it was a classic line, so I thought it fit here. Anyway, if you don’t want to answer any of it, feel free to say so. I know it’s a lot to answer in a single comment, but I thought it was good to ask. Thanks, NI, for such a great comic! I’ve rarely come across even a manga this good, and I know only a few series of any manga, and even less anime because if my parents.

    • NotImportant Reply

      Thank you for your kind words! I am very happy to hear that you like the comic, hopefully I won’t disappoint you in the future.
      Regarding your questions:
      1. About the language of the enchantments and magic objects – I don’t want to say too much as our heroes will be discovering those things later on. But! This world is not limited to one kind of magic, we’ll see many things and for example writings/runes on Robert’s japanese swords will never be explained.
      2. Ada is yet to get her longsword.
      3. You’d like a tutorial..? Well, sure! Why not! I won’t have time to make it in the next 2 weeks but after that I can make some, thanks for the great idea!
      4. About a possible game – yeah, I thought about it! RPG game would be possible and I was thinking about short visual novel as well. Maybe in the future..? Who knows? I’d like to see it myself!
      Thank you once again ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

      • Refugnic Reply

        How funny that we would reply to the same comment at the same time, isn’t it?

        Did you get my E-Mail yet or did it slip into the spamfolder again? I just want an ACK, thank you. 🙂

          • Refugnic

            No worries, no worries, really. In fact, it’s quite the contrary. Usually you’re so quick to respond, that I worry a little that you might not have gotten it whenever you’re not. Thus, my question. 🙂

      • Dæmon Reply

        Wait, so will Rob’s swords be explained in the story, or are they gonna be a mystery?

        • NotImportant Reply

          I will explain everything apart from symbols on them as they will have no means to find out about those.

          • Refugnic

            It would still be nice to have some background information. And if it has no plot significance, you could just share it in a FAQ or something. You know, for the curious ones.

          • NotImportant

            I plan to make something like ‘Stefen’s journal’ where I’ll put various info and sketches about demons, their anatomy, how magic world, timeline of world events and so on. But not yet, don’t have enough time for now :/

      • Dusk Reply

        Im new to the comic and have been catching up. Great comic by the way. I can honestly say that i’ve never seen anything like this. Especialy for a first comic. but more over i’m imposed to assume that your living in japan　日本語をできますか　あなたは日本人ではないと思いますでも. sorry I don’t mean to be rude but knowing this and already seeing hebrew in the magic system . I’m stuck thinking about what role those influences will play in both the storyline and magic system. Keep up the work on my new favorite comic.

        • NotImportant Reply

          Welcome! Thank you for reading and your kind words! 私は日本語まだできません, 勉強中です. I am not living in Japan, not yet at least. I’d like to move there in the near future though.
          I hope you’ll continue to enjoy the story. Thanks again!

    • Refugnic Reply

      Well, there’s a number of softwares to make RPGs (one of which aptly named RPG Maker). Looks like games on the SNES though, so not exactly ‘state of the art’, but what makes an RPG great is not the graphics, but the storytelling behind it.

      Other than that…you are aware that there are at least three programmers actively affiliated with the comic, right? (One making it, one having supplied about 50 % of the currently available fanfics (+1 pending) of it and spamming the comment section and another one just spamming the comment section)? And, to top it all off, one of them is a capable visual artist, so the usual roadblock that is graphics actually wouldn’t be a problem.

      I believe, given time and effort (and possibly an incentive from the community)…it could be a game. And a stunning one at that.

      However there is a bit of a problem as of right now. If we were to make a game like that (which is hard work, most of us working folks have little to no time for), we would need to know the entire script. And, once the game is published, people would play it and learn the story in mere days instead of years.

      It’d ruin the entire suspension that is ‘waiting for the next page’, because you would already know what’s going to happen next.

      On the other hand there is always the option of not using the (entire) script, but much rather use a detached story, which does happen in the story, but doesn’t give away all of it. More or less an arc or episode stretched out to a game of multiple hours.

      For example all of the prologue and chapter 1 (whenever that is going to finish :P) could be made into one game with a few things or another appearing that doesn’t happen in the comic.

      Or, of course, you could completely detach it from the main storyline and put the characters into a nightmare maze, courtesy of (Dr.) Faust. In order to escape the prison he has put the cast in they would need to solve puzzles, fight their demons, do some bonding and so on…and once they wake it will be a new morning and as if nothing ever happened. For after all, it was nothing but a bad dream.

      Aaand now you’ve got me thinking of game mechanics and all that stuff and sad, ’cause I’ll never get to see it happen.
      Thank you very much.
      Great work.
      Good job.

      Yours truly,
      Refugnic Eternium.

      😛

  15. Dæmon Reply

    no, does Refugnic’s story in the form of Adam’s (Faust’s) jounal hold any canon in it? It would make a lot of sense given the context of the story, and the dream Rob had at the start of the prolouge. This was just a passing thought, and I had to figure it out, so who better to ask than the creator.

  16. Dæmon Reply

    Arggghhh….. Auto correct, you suck. That should be NI, not no. Sorry for the double comment, but no edit button yet.

    • Dæmon Reply

      As a note, I had only read it partially at the time, but it was bugging me enough by the time Faust picked up Ada in a bar that I had to know.

    • NotImportant Reply

      Hahaha it’s okay, don’t worry about it! And Refugnic doesn’t know more than you guys, those are his wild guesses and if he is right… you’ll have to wait and see!

    • Refugnic Reply

      I am known to be good at guessing though…but really, all of my fanfics are based on the same amount of information any of us has and while I’ve become fairly good friends with NI in the past weeks (or has it been months already? Time flies.) I have yet to get any usable advance information from her…she’s being a freaking vault with intel…but then again, we wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise, would we?

      Ah yeah, there is a juicy little tidbit that may not be well known as of yet (and is publicly available): In a few pages, Ada will blush and smile and lean on to someone…and I am talking about Ada right here, blood smeared in her white T-Shirt, so Robert is the most likely candidate to serve as pillar to lean on.

      How I know this? Check the fanart section thumbnails and see for yourself. ;P

      I do wonder which picture NI will choose for my latest Fanfic though. Only one way to find out. 😀

  17. Dæmon Reply

    “I never claimed that the bullies were ‘evil’. In fact, looking back at my own time, I kinda pity them a little, to be honest. Because instead of being my friends they deemed it necessary to harass me. Though I will admit, again in hindsight, that I have not been entirely innocent either.”
    I couldn’t agree more about the actions that were used on both sides.

    “Okay, I didn’t walk up to them and ask them to bully me. But I also didn’t walk up to them to offer being their friend either. I acted different than the others, despite knowing that it would lead to me being a target. But I didn’t want to be like the others just to fit in. I just wanted to be myself. I still don’t think that’s wrong, however it put me into the line of fire and I knew it would. Because I had seen it before. School after school.”
    Actually, I have some mental conditions that more than kinda prevent me from being “normal” in the first place, so I think I get it, but I might be wrong. As for what normal is, my parents and teachers, particularly my Debate team coach, mostly say that “normal” is a stereotype, and is a logical fallacy, which makes sense to me, given that we’re told that we’re all different, and that no two people are the same. If something is not normal (I’m gonna stop using quotes, for the sake of time. I’m a slow typer. Just be sure to emphasize it like it is in quotes.) in a harmful way, I would say that saying it’s not normal is less accurate than if you said it was harmful or deadly. That’s just me, so go ahead and say I’m wrong, but this is an opinion of mine, not a fact of life.

    “I’m not saying that the teachers are to blame either. It’s…a very complicated situation. The teacher needs to protect his students, also from each other, that’s right. But not by shielding a single student, because that’s ‘special treatment’, which, as we know, quickly gets you the ‘teacher’s pet’ reputation, which makes you a target again (I’ve been teacher’s pet often enough, just in case anyone cares).”
    Again, I can agree with that, but at the same time, those kids may be jelous of the attention. I will continue this later, so please do not comment yet, because it is not finished.

    • Dæmon Reply

      To continue: I have been a “teacher’s pet” many times, and I must say, it isn’t pleasant. Also, complicated plus MORE than an understatement in my case, since I have specific needs that have to be met, and besides ADHD in addition to that, I also had anger problems, which was probably why it was so much _more_ than complicated for me.

      “I think, what a teacher could do, is sit down with the parties involved and talk it out with them. From my experience, kids can be surprisingly reasonable if treated reasonably. Figure out where the frustration of the bully comes from. In 99 % of the cases, the bully is actually a decent person inside, but can’t show it to avoid appearing as weak and thereby a possible target for others.”
      I can believe that, and I also think that, if we had the resources, we should try to talk it out, though not in the way we currently do in most circumstances. It really is just telling someone off for being a jerk, and does nothing but cause more bullying, and then the cycle repeats, or at least it usually would. It’s start with the billy my getting more and more severe, until finally, someone cracks and finally tells the authority figure, ant which point is a swift punishment and another set of beatings, and so on and so forth. Really, why don’t people take the time to talk things out? Are we designed like that evolutionarily, or is it something else? Anyone who knows or can find out easily (I’m terrible with technology, which makes for a hellhole of a life in today’s world) please, tell me what you find on this topic.

      “But there is a big problem with that and that is tight schedules and of course exhaustion. Teachers simply don’t have the time or energy to help their students deal with problems like that. Parents would be the next to turn to, however they would naturally side with their child and instead of talking it out with the bully (and their parents), they would probably only make it worse. (Adults can be surprisingly childish when push comes to shove.)”
      Yeah, adults more than kinda suck at these problems, and I am sure that since kids, at least what I’ve seen, can be better at reasoning things out than their elders, which is rather ironic, given that adults are SUPPOSED to be better than kids at this sort of thing. Anyway, yes parents don’t usually do it right, and it bugs me that they won’t, or possibly refuse in some cases, to talk to the bully, kid to kid, not parent to parent. As for being tired, yeah, I guess. But I think the real thing doing that is the idiots in high school, not the kindergarteners. I mean, as a teenager you have so much more access to information, and resources, so it can escalate a hell of a lot faster, not to mention that the hormones in side these kids are raging crazily so they will do some REALLY stupid shit. College isn’t that much different except you can do a fair lot more stuff that can get you arrested a LOT more easily. Oh, and the alcohol is pretty bad to have at that age, or even before 21. I mean people tell me that the brain finishes development at 25, but it slows WAY down at 21. Tight schedule, yeah, but that’s likely for anyone who’s in high school or past that (some places middle school is the start of that schedule changing though). Energy, however, depends on a lot of things. Usually though, you’re right, even with a 23 year old teacher straight out of college. Trust me, I have had at least seven of those through my elementary of high school career.

      “The world is a terrible place and school life is a reflection of this terrible mess that we call world.
      But at the same time, it is where the world of tomorrow is crafted.
      And if we are to change the world into a better place, it will need to start right there. Where the generation of tomorrow learns what it means to live in this world.”
      Yeah, that sounds about right for my life, as far as anyone has ever compared it. Ignoring the poor word choice of saying, “thatwe call world,” which lost me for a second, I think you’re right. Quick question, week you had with words outside of stories and essays like am? Just wondering, since you certainly fit into that at times, what with the writing in your comments losing me from time to time. Trust me, I’m not insulting you, I just wanted to know. Anyway, yes the world of tomorrow is “craftdd” as you put it,but Ithink it’s more accurate to away it’s born, since it certainly seems that our next gen stupids are being born every day. Forget learning about the world, and just try to learn about what’s even REMOTELY acceptable in any society. That, at the very least, should lead you where you need to go to learn about the world, however it seems likely that no one will ever be able to learn what’s even a possibility of being accepted in any given society today. Looking at you, Trump. As for changing the world, as has been proven in fiction, reality, philosophy and I think the comments on an earlier page as well, people don’t WANT to change, or they don’t like change. Just look at you’re typical new year’s resolution it is normally shot down in flames by the time January 15 comes around. I mean, not even half a month, and it already get’s taken out by laziness, greed, or something else. I may have exaggerated the day, but you get the idea. And back to learning about the world, it’s on the net, and people don’t even use the most readily available resource (though itonly reaches about a third of the world) to find what they’re looking for. I at least know I can’t do something like that without infecting my computer every month, so I try not to. It’s an excuse, and I’ll readily admit that, but I just don’t get, and sometimes fear technology, despite all of it’s uses. Technology being things like computers, since I can deal with books and papers, andoerferto search an old tome than go to the net, like in that animated Scooby Doo movie with the samurai. In fact, I more than kinda but not completely fear the phone I’m using to type this right now. Anyway, we’re apparently on the verge of a mass extinction anyway, so it _may_ be be too late to stop it. I’m kinda hoping we all die out cause of it. Oh, and according.g to my mom’s sources, it’s gonna be by my grandchildren’s generation, so we’re probably screwed as is. Well, better reserve my spot in Hell soon, cause I think it might just disappear if I don’t. Well, nice knowin’ ya. Anyway, all jokes aside, the land of tomorrow sounds pretty effed up as it is. I don’t want to take part in that Debate, so I might have stuff to say, but I’ll try to keep it to myself.

      Do we really want it to be a lesson full of abuse, emotional and physical pain and never ending torture?
      Or would we not much rather want it to be a lesson about mutual understanding and getting along with each other? (I do sound like a preacher right now, don’t I?)
      To answer the first, no, and the secone and third, yes. ‘Nuff said.

      “Either way, to deal with bullying, once and for all is kinda like getting rid of terrorism. It may sound like a bad comparison, but it really is the same…the big difference being that the terrorists are armed and usually ready to die for what they believe in.”
      Yeah, that comparison is pretty much spot on, but the bullies could also be a little more like what’s depicted of France, America, and the the others In Hetalia doing to itialy. In other words, being juerks who take over the world, or in the case of both Bushwhackers, or perhaps Bushnukers would be more appropriate, they attack a nation based on an assumption not backed by any evidence, and which turns out to be untrue in the end. At least I am told it did, but I have heard (note: these are the same kind of people who don’t look anything up for themselves, and only go based on the same rumors that said things like how Trump supposedly said he wanted Mexico to pay for the wall he wanted to keep MEXICANS out of the US, and also that the death penalty, despite science proving this wrong, has NEVER had a single mistaken death, where an innocent was killed. Sounds WAY too good to be true, if you ask me… But anyway) from peers that there were supposedly ships sunk at the bottom of the ocean, from the war no less, with nukes that didn’t go off. I’m pretty sure if it were true, we would have talked about it in Wold Civ class, since something like, oh let’s say, ONE nuke would have made international news, and this was NOWHERE in any news I could find, for MONTHS after this rumor started. Pretty dumb to believe, right? Sadly, a few friends bought it, and I think I may have looked down the wrong rabbit hole if kids I thought were friends were that mindless to begin with. They’re not bad people, but they don’t exactly look like people I’dtry to hang out with. Funny thing is, these are the same people who, for the most part, probably spread rumors about me that we ALL knew weren’t true to begin with, then stuck up for me when people picked on me. Realizing that literally just now made me realize that, while I don’t see them as friends, I do still interact with them, and that’s about as far as I want to go. Seeing people you know and saying hi are just polite anyway, so it’s be rude if I didn’t do it anyway, which is still far too intimate for my normal interactions with the general populace of the world. I just either ignore them, or jsut say to eff off, mostly so I don’t end up hurting them. I may be socially inept like Ada, but that’s for another day, since I’m going off on a tangent here. As for the ready to die part, I don’t know that 100% of them are ready for that, bit it’s possible that most of them are at least ready to die, since not many make it out of a battle alive, or so I hear. Again, I suck at searching the net, and I need facts for this sort of thing, so any info would be great. My main sources are canon wikis and Wikipedia, not so much news sites, since I don’t really trust them.

      As for the last little bit, I don’t k is how to respond, since Ithink what you have seems pretty much right, but the exact wording of Newton’s law may be a little off. Not certain on any of that though so I can’t say for sure what is or is not right, and what is philosophy. I may have been considering matters like what is time, love, etc. for almost a decade now, since I was 8 or 9 really, and I still have only scratched the surface of philosophy and what it’s about. Honestly, I still don’t understand the term philosophy itself, so what can I say? I may not be new in terms of how long I have considered these topics, but I still have to figure SO much more, and still more if we take into account my fear of technology. Seriously, how do you do Italics on a Nexus 4 anyway? And what’s the deal with window’s 8 supposedly being “good” when I have based nothing but crap from long time fans of Microsoft? You see what I mean? Machines are scary, man….

      • Dæmon Reply

        I just realized, that’s like a HALF an essay at best for my normal first draft length, not even counting I go WAY beyond the 200 word max every damn time, without exception. I don’t even trim it down. I just hope I don’t get marked down in high school, since I’ll be pulling out essays longer than this to in college,and this is what I’ve been doing since fourth grade. Not a problem till now, but I think I should tone it down on the length just a bit, since I seem to be headed toward the lengths of about two paragraphs in around one tops, a half that being g a bit of a stretch for a minimum, since I can score half of a five paragraph essay on only one. And I did it again, didn’t I? Overkill analisys for the win!

      • Refugnic Reply

        That has to be one of the most extensive replies I’ve ever gotten to be sure.

        I will try to keep it short, if you don’t mind.

        A little quote I like to use whenever confronted with ‘normality’: ‘Normality is nothing but an illusion created by society to give itself a base to exist on.’
        In fact, normality is nothing but a common standard of a society, which people need to conform to (by compromising their individuality) in order to get along with each other. However this ‘common standard’ has evolved into something, where everything that deviates from the ‘acceptable range’ gets punished swiftly and often cruelly. Yet still, if we can’t be ourselves…then who else are we supposed to be? Normality doesn’t answer that.

        Heh…jealous, huh? Well maybe…though I think they’d ever admit that (everyone likes to get a little attention after all)

        Why don’t they…because time has become a luxury in this hectic world of ours and communication has become a hassle, if there are more effective ways to get your point across. ‘Talking it out’ takes time and effort…two things people don’t want to invest if they can’t see the returns in their pockets.

        I’m not going to get started on alcohol. That stuff should be banned for consumption. Period. Nothing good ever comes from it.

        What is wrong about the wording ‘the mess that we call world’? Our world, that thing we call ‘world’, which includes society, environment etc…and it’s a huge mess.

        I didn’t get what you meant to say with ‘week you had with words ourside of stories and essays like I am’. Whether I did have problems and get bullied for it?
        If so, yeah, I did. Everyone picks up speech patterns from their personal idols and role models. Mine were video game heroes. Enough said.

        There is a nice little ‘essay’ on whether hell is endo- or exotherm. Kinda fun to read. But you’re right about one thing, there isn’t a single human on this world that is without sin. As such, we would all go to Hell, no matter which savior we believe in. So yeah…let’s just make the most of our time here and see where it takes us.

        A colleague of mine I had a small discussion with had a bit of a different opinion on bullying than me. ‘People bully others because they can.’
        Not because they’re unhappy. Not because they’re stressed. Not because they are trying to establish their superiority.
        Just because they can.

        But personally I don’t want to believe that.

        I didn’t quote Newton but much rather recited from memory, so yes, the wording is probably off. The content is what is important.

        No clue how you do italics on a Nexus, I’ve got a plain old laptop browser and use HTML ( and without the spaces).

        Machines and computers are scary, but so are horses, yet we rely on them to do things for us anyway.
        Courage is not the absence of fear, but the strength to press on despite it.

        • JW Reply

          I’m not going to get started on alcohol. That stuff should be banned for consumption. Period. Nothing good ever comes from it.

          Unfortunately, worse things come from banning it. You can ban the supply, but you can’t ban the demand, and therefore organized crime will fill the gap in the market. As the US found out during the prohibition.

          • Refugnic

            Yeah, it’d probably be best if there was some way to prevent the creation of alcohol (and other drugs), however, as everyone knows, as soon as the knowledge about how something is made there will always be some nutcase to actually make it to meet the demand and make a pretty penny from it.

            The greed of mankind knows no bounds after all.

          • JW

            The trouble is natural processes will make alcohol all by themselves. So even if we could erase the knowledge of brewing, there would still be alcohol, and the art would be rediscovered in no time.

        • Dæmon Reply

          What the… How does the word bad turn into the words week you had. This, this is why I hate technology, especially smart phones. I can’t even BEGIN to comprehend what they are, or why they exist. I really wish I had l had lived in an earlier era, for tech, but today, for the good stuff like books and things.

          • Refugnic

            Heh…so it really was ‘were you bad’ (real keyboards. Just gotta love ’em :)).

            Well, to answer your question, as I mentioned before, my role models weren’t actual people, as such my style of speech was a bit antiquated (and still is at times). So yeah, that only underlined my position as an ‘easy target’, cause who would stand up for the odd duck that talks funny after all.

            Technology is neither good nor bad by definition. There’s a whole lot of things you can do with for example Smartphones and tablets, however the Autocorrect has lead to many interesting word confusions (and sore thumbs) already. The phone is trying to help you and I think that those who actually work with them really got that down and can type faster than I can on a real keyboard, but for all the others…well, let me put it this way, it takes me like 5 minutes to send a regular, five line SMS, whereas someone who actually does it more often does the same in 30 seconds.

            That said…if you loathe smartphones so much…then just why are you using one? 😉

          • JW

            I think auto-correct can be turned of. (I don’t have a smart-phone, so I can’t speak from experience.)
            If you’re bad with technology, there’s probably someone you know somewhere (work, school, family) that could help you turn it off. (And asking them for a favour may even make them like you better 😉 )

          • JW

            (Because of the Ben Franklin effect I mean; not to suggest they don’t now 😛 )

      • JW Reply

        Really, why don’t people take the time to talk things out? Are we designed like that evolutionarily, or is it something else? Anyone who knows or can find out easily (I’m terrible with technology, which makes for a hellhole of a life in today’s world) please, tell me what you find on this topic.

        We’re genetically predisposed to taking the path of least resistance. (Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because overthinking things has its costs just like underthinking things.)
        Talking things out takes time and effort, and while it may be the best solution long-term, it’s not the easiest solution short-term. Added to that, people have all sorts of biases. For example, even when people do something without any reason (even if they only think that they did it, when in fact they were merely tricked), they will find a justification for it. That’s most profound in people with a split-brain (for example to stop severe epileptic fits, sometime the connections between both brain-halves is/was severed). On half of the brain will make someone do something, and when asked, the other half of the brain will confabulate a somewhat plausible reason for why they did that.
        The bad news from that is, if a bully picks on someone for no reason at all, they will make up some justification for themselves and hey, since they’re justified, why not do it again. The good news it, it works in reverse. If you get someone to do you a favour, they will try to justify that, and the easiest justification is that you’re a nice person that deserves having a favour done for them. (This is also known as the Benjamin Franklin effect, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect )

        • Refugnic Reply

          I think everything is designed to take the path of least resistance (look at Water or Electrons for example).
          Neither of them care that the other way might be ‘better’, they just go wherever they get to easiest.

          So, in effect, to make people talk it out would be, to make it actually be harder to just ignore it…though quite bluntly, how one would go about that. Without violating quite a few of the human rights at least that is.

          Franklin effect, eh? What a peculiar thing that seems to be. However it is true. When we help someone, we get that fuzzy feeling of having done something good. We feel happy for them and that we were able to help.
          And, like anything else that makes us feel good (or at least less terrible), we’ll want more of that.

          • Dæmon

            To answer rlthe smartphone question, it’s availability. I can’t always access a computer, but since I carry a phone on me at all times, and a charger if I need to, I can answer these kinds of questions, look stuff up, and do things that, while I admit I prefer a computer like a desktop (laptops are only okay if that’s not available, or if I just need to look at something really quickly, like using the stupid Skyward system Canyons set up to check my grades). If I had to look something up and a computer is going to take too long, that’s where my phone now comes in. Admittedly, the is my first smartphone, and not having any experience with one before, I don’t know how to use one in the first place, which is pretty much expected in such a situation. So, in short, it’s a matter of time and availability. If I had a choice that I could make easily, it’s be a desktop every time I could, and then a laptop if I couldn’t. I’ve also never owned an Ipod, so I don’t get the point of one, particularly since Apple products cost 2 to 3 times more than Android, and are less durable (again, I have no experience, so this is secondhand information), and don’t have as many options, unless you count Apple’s 24 karat gold smart watch for 10,000 bucks. Smart watches alone, when I looked at the prices, note this was not to buy but to find a comparison of prices , Apple’s least expensive watch was the price of Android’s most expensive watch, which makes no sense at all, since Android obviously makes a profit off of it. Maybe it’s the fact that they solder all their computers together, or I could be missing something like money-grubbing going on here, or something else entirely could be the cause. Anyway, I think I have answered the question well enough to make myself clear.

          • Refugnic

            Availability is the primary reason why anyone bothers with a smartphone I believe.

            Regarding the pricing of Apple vs. Google (Android)…well, that’s Apple’s philosophy at work there. They offer their operating system for almost free (contrary to Microsoft, who charges about 100 bucks for a new OS copy). Apple earns its money with the hardware and, unlike Google, they only offer it for their hardware.
            That has the advantage that Apple has full control over the hardware, so when they develop a new OS, you can about bet that the OS will actually WORK with that hardware (not so much with Android and Windows). Same with the applications available…as long as you adhere to the guidelines, it’ll work, no second questions asked.

            Android and Windows have the problem, that the developers will never know, which kinda hardware it’s going to be deployed on and neither do the application developers. Developing for multiple architectures has always been difficult and that’s also why there are so much more crashes on Android/Windows than on Apple (not like Apple products never crash, but at least it’s rarely due to hardware incompatibilities).

            And then of course the ‘pay for the name’ price. ‘Apple is great, Apple is solid, Apple is the best there is’ is the basic image of the company.
            I will admit that they’re good. They really are. But for that price I’d rather by myself a nice Desktop computer than a stupid phone. 😀

            The basic rule of economy: The value of any given thing is completely determined by the amount of money the customer is willing to pay for it.
            That’s really all there is to the high price.
            If people stopped buying Apple products, Apple would lower their prices to cut their losses.

    • Refugnic Reply

      Yeah, I was here when the steep ascend happened and can say I’m a little proud to have witnessed (and maybe even helped) it a little, though of course the vast majority of the credit goes to NI for her outstanding work and her involvement with the community.

      I remember, when I submitted my first fanfic, there were like two or three fanarts in the gallery and no fanart section.
      Today, there’s about 15+, 4 of which submitted in the past week I believe. This reflects the change in awareness quite nicely I believe.

  19. Dæmon Reply

    Why did a comment I posted say October 31st, and not 30th? Are you guys in Asia or something? Like, across the international date line? Anyway, last post I just made PROVED my hate for smart phones in, I kid you not, THREE words. The word “the” didn’t work, since I hit an r, and then hit an l instead of t and backspace respectively. I really don’t get smart phones anyway, so I do think it’s a little redundant to have one when a desktop, and some laptops, are SO much faster. Still, I would hate to lose a valuable resource for communication, but I prefer talking face to face ( or at least on a voice chat thing like, hmm… CALLING. Though as I said, I hate people. (Isn’t that just what Ada does…? Talks to people then withdraws when they treat her like garbage…. Wait, that was this comic and the last two wasn’t it? Well, I can’t help but realize she’s pretty much exactly what I would have become, except if being MORE violent is such a possibility for someone….) Still, there isn’t a thing out there I can thing of without both pros and cons, and this is no exception. In terms of learning, I prefer to work alone, like just about every superhero does at at least one point in their career. That may be an ironic comparison, considering as I reread that after typing it, and then realized I am practically ruled by fiction, since real life sucks, and I know it does. This makes me wonder WHY I have managed to stay away from the moe lifestyle, since I pretty much either daydream, read, or draw in class, when I shouldn’t, and somehow manage almost straight A’s. This is an amazing realization, and probably needs some more thought on it. Anyway, I got SO far away, and I have no idea what I was typing about it he first place. Let me check. *scroll, scroll…* Ah, it was.about the strange date difference, and was meant to be quick and easy, and ended up being another chaos moment, as if life didn’t have enough of those already. Well, happy Hallow’s Eve, everyone. And I might add, it tried to auto correct an incorrect spelling of Hallow’s Eve to Ya’ll so even, which is nothing like it at all. Hilarious, man, just hilarious.anyway have fun, Ya’ll.

    • Refugnic Reply

      We’re in Europe, so not that far east. I don’t know which timezone the server is set to though.

      Regarding the autocorrect feature (or the keyboard of smartphones in general)…well, just like writing on a real keyboard, perfection comes with practice. Instead of writing with ten fingers, it’s viable to work with your thumbs alone (because of the small size).
      It really is all a matter of getting used to it. Recently I talked with someone who had changed his keyboard layout (making ‘e’ output a ‘l’ or something). He told me that it was easier to type for him that way, whereas I couldn’t formulate a single word on that keyboard. However I do believe that, if I put practice into it and learned the layout, I could type it just like I am typing on my QWERTY-layout right now.

      You’re right though, the end of the world may have been the best that’s ever happened to Ada, because all of a sudden, she was allowed to put the pent up aggression to good use. I think she may actually be the ‘Bonnie’ type of girl (getting turned on by violence), although I have no proof for that.

      Regarding your A’s despite not really attention…this sounds a little like you’re suffering from a condition from the Autism spectrum. I’m not a doctor, but you may want to ask one if that’s possible. This is not meant to be an insult. Quite on the contrary, people who are suffering from Autism tend to be absolute geniuses in their respective field of expertise, whereas they are suffering deficits in other areas. Usually the social skills are lacking in these people, they are perceived as ‘strange’ by others. Also, there are many different kinds of Autism. The kind where the affected person is completely detached from the world is the most famous, but not the most frequent form. Many Autists are actually perceived as ‘a little strange’, but not as ‘suffering from Autism’.
      You may want to look up ‘Asperger syndrome’ in this regard, which is a kind of ‘highly functional autism’ (meaning that the people can do most anything ‘normal’ people can do, but the way they think and go about things are anything…but not normal.

      Again, this is neither an insult nor a diagnosis, but what you’re telling me here sounds a little in that direction.

      • NotImportant Reply

        Not necessary! I always had perfect marks with little effort as well, nothing diagnosed, social skills okay as well. I believe I had it easy in high school (and earlier) because I was taught how to learn as a little kid by my parents and grandparents (all teachers). Of course as a kid you don’t even realize such things, but your brain is so much more useful out of sudden… Later on, while observing my capabilities, I have discovered how it works and when and why I would make a mistake and so on.
        So it’s not always autism, although I’ve known brilliant people with it diagnosed – sometimes it’s just experience from childhood that has made your brain a tad more eager to absorb knowledge.

        • Refugnic Reply

          No, of course not necessarily and I stated a number of times, that I am not a doctor and that it wasn’t a diagnosis, but much rather an impression I was getting from him.

          That said, there are a number of potential explanations for this kind of phenomenon.
          Maybe this childhood experience of yours made you super smart, maybe you actually have a form of highly functional autism that just wasn’t discovered (I was told that many Aspergers do a great job at compensating their weaknesses). I don’t know. And I probably never will. (Though it is a little scary to meet an actual genius. Kinda makes you feel dumb (in comparison), even though you know that you’re not. :P)

          ‘Austism’ is a budding field of research as it stands I believe and there’s so much about our brains science has yet to explain.

          How was that? ‘If our brain was simple enough for us to understand it, we would be too simple minded to understand it.’

          Who knows, those whom we are calling ‘Autists’ in all of their colors and shapes may (mind the may) just be evolutions attempts to create the next version of humanity. After all, evolution is all about adapting to change. Our society is increasingly going away from communicating and moving in groups.
          The incapability (or unwillingness) to communicate may be testament to this change. And the cerebral resources usually ‘wasted’ on analyzing stuff like subtext, facial expressions or all that junk (try to get a computer to understand all of that) is simply staggering.

          Now imagine the entire processing power of our mind (save for the essentials like breathing and eating in the BIOS) be reserved for a single task…I can well imagine that it’ll be an autist, who will find the cure to AIDS and cancer…maybe one actually found one already…but nobody realized it, because they didn’t understand him.

          We will probably never know.

          But maybe it’s better that way. Imagine if we unlocked all of the brains secrets and could thereby optimize it, throwing out all the unneeded things…what kind of world would that create…the thought makes me shudder a little.
          Because at that point, we would, most likely, be a race of organic machines.
          I’ll stop now. 😀

          • JW

            Who knows, those whom we are calling ‘Autists’ in all of their colors and shapes may (mind the may) just be evolutions attempts to create the next version of humanity. After all, evolution is all about adapting to change.

            There is little reason to think there are more people with autism or Asperger’s than there used to be. The perceived “increase” is mostly due to changes in diagnosis (both in the definition and in the frequency). So I don’t think evolution is “trying” to go anywhere with it; they’re just part of the natural variation of our species. Unless there’s selection for that specific variation (or against it), there will be little change to its frequency in the gene pool.

            Our society is increasingly going away from communicating and moving in groups.

            Are you sure? I mean, social media is all the hype, and that’s both.

            But maybe it’s better that way. Imagine if we unlocked all of the brains secrets and could thereby optimize it, throwing out all the unneeded things…what kind of world would that create…the thought makes me shudder a little.

            Yeah, that’s a scary thought. Also because you never know if those features you optimized away might become crucial at some point in the future. Monocultures are fragile, a single catastrophe can wipe them out; you need variation for long term insurance, even if it’s suboptimal in the short-term.

            Because at that point, we would, most likely, be a race of organic machines.

            We are organic machines; that’s what organisms are. No need to get pejorative about it 😉

          • Refugnic

            Ah, back for another round of discussion, aren’t you JW? Should’ve known you’d pick this one up. 😀

            I agree, actually. However evolution works very…very slowly. I believe that the human genome hasn’t undergone significant changes for the past 10k years or more (correct me if I’m wrong). Evolution doesn’t just stop though. It’s trying out different things. Some work better, some work less good. What works good gets passed on, what doesn’t dies out.

            So, whereas the general percentage of autists may not have increased, it may still be one of evolutions attempts to create a better, stronger species. Just like every single one of us, actually.

            Okay, maybe I should reiterate and add ‘communicate using the vocal chords’. I mean, if the trend continues, before long we’ll just have to think what we want to tell others and it’ll appear on their screens. And the next step after that is (computer aided) telepathy.

            Regarding the ‘moving’…well, while there’s a certain sense of ‘community’, I for one am not moving very much right now.
            And how much does really get done in these social networks?
            ‘Moving in groups’ generally means for me, that people get together to achieve a common goal (for example hunting a mammoth).

            Sure, teams still exist today, but they are more about mental capacity than actual moving. Brain instead of brawn.

            Yup, can’t argue with you there. Just one virus could kill the entire humanity if we all were the same. But then again, if we achieved ‘programmable humanity’, we could ensure diversity that way, specifically creating individuals meant for particular tasks. But once again…that’d make us organic machines.

            *Sigh*…okay, by ‘machine’ I mean (which I’m very sure you know) an emotionless entity, which solely exists for a singular purpose…the one it was created for. Kinda like a drone in a bee hive. Or maybe even worse.

          • JW

            I believe that the human genome hasn’t undergone significant changes for the past 10k years or more (correct me if I’m wrong).

            It depends on what you call significant. One thing that comes to mind is lactose tolerance (the ability to digest milk in adulthood) in Caucasians.
            And apparently white skin is also quite recent (post-farming).
            There’s a lot of small adaptation, but I can’t quickly find a list of anything that I’d call significant. (But I did just find a 300 page book in pdf format about human evolution is the past 10000 years, so maybe ask me again in a few years.)

            Evolution doesn’t just stop though. It’s trying out different things. Some work better, some work less good. What works good gets passed on, what doesn’t dies out.

            And what doesn’t have any significant effect can go either way, building up variation until some day perhaps it is significant (when the environment changes).

            before long we’ll just have to think what we want to tell others and it’ll appear on their screens.

            Now there’s a scary though.
            Well, especially so if there’s a risk it happens unconsciously, or if the government (or others) can read our mind without our express permission. (And without putting us in huge machine. Because, yes, you actually can already read someone’s mind, to a very small degree, currently.)

            *Sigh*…okay, by ‘machine’ I mean (which I’m very sure you know) an emotionless entity, which solely exists for a singular purpose…the one it was created for. Kinda like a drone in a bee hive. Or maybe even worse.

            Yes, I did know you meant that, and it’s a definition/stereotype of “machine” I agitate against. I studied AI, so I take offense on behalf of machines when people dispute their potential for being as emotional and erratic as the best of us 😉

            Fun fact, people are terrible at making decisions when they can’t feel emotions. They just get all indecisive because they can’t commit one way or the other. Can’t even decide on what to eat. (Based on research on people with damage to the part of their brain responsible for generating emotions, which all seem to share this indecision-impairment.)
            So unless we really come drones to the extent that we don’t need to make any decisions at all, I’m not to worried about us losing our emotions.

      • Dæmon Reply

        Actually, I already know I have high-functioning Autism. I just don’t talk about it because people get really uncomfortable when I mention it, like I’m a freak or monster.

        • NotImportant Reply

          Uwah, very sorry to hear that you met such people. I hope that you can still believe that there are others out there, who are not as blind. Hang in there ♡

        • Refugnic Reply

          There will always be assholes. These kinda people also consider ‘Depression’ to be a choice instead of an illness.

          Certainly there are a few pretenders for whom it actually is a choice, but who in their right mind would ‘choose’ to feel that way?

          We think the way we think because we were born and raised that way, no two ways about that.
          And please remember: Normality is a construct, much like perfection, that is impossible to achieve, created by society to give itself a base to exist on.

          So don’t worry if you’re not ‘normal’…because, quite honestly, nobody is. 🙂
          And especially those who hang around here aren’t. 😀

          As a little proof, I committed myself to write 50k words this month (NaNoWriMo) and just went ahead with about 2200 of ’em.
          What I get for that? A sense of achievement at best. No trophy, no deed, no money.
          Now tell me, what kinda ‘normal’ person does that?

        • Dataprowler Reply

          I’ve found that being HFA isn’t so bad. Honestly, people just want a simple explanation behind a behavior, rather than the scientific background. Trust me, it isn’t an autism thing — I sometimes mention that I’m an aspiring artist and people can take that to mean the weirdest things. Dancing in place? I’m an artist. Screw up social cues? I’m high-functioning autistic.

          It is surprising how situationally interchangeable the two justifications are.

  20. Caleb Hawn Reply

    Wow. I have red hair, so I know how she feels. Why would a teachure say something like that, though, espeshily with a redhead in her classroom at the time? Unfortunately, that does happen sometimes.

    • Deamon Reply

      Nah, it’s fine. He was the kind of comedian who could crack jokes at the expense of everyone. He even told us a story if how he got cow dung in his mouth one time. For those of you who want to hear it, sadly I can’t remember most of it, as it was four rears ago, and besides, him making fun of me for having g red hair is nothing new. Like above, I’ve been alienated for many other things. Also, he was trying to help us be more comfortable in an unfamiliar environment, as new students to the school.

  22. adam Reply

    Ah school. And ah, the phenomenon where lacking in social skills causes a lack of sociability.

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