Latest Page Discussions/Comic Update Chitchat

[Sc0ut]

No, it's not like anyone has said "on screen" that you have x% of probability of infection per sq in of wound surface left by a troll, or that even a pin prick, if only deep enough, is a death sentence.

Thank you, that's what I wanted to hear I'll go by what Mikkel says here for now: http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=660

It's obvious they take all possible protection measures against the rash, because avoiding an outbreak is worth the hassle. We cannot, however, determine from this that contact with a vector results in a 99% chance of getting infected, or 70% or 30%. All we know is it's non-negligible. So, I'm not relaxed about Tuuri yet, but I also don't think it would necessarily be a miracle for her not to get infected. Most real viral and bacterial illnesses work similarly, too. It is possible to be around people with the flu and not get infected, for instance, even if you're not vaccined. The risk is different for different illnesses (and levels of proximity) but doubt there's any scenario where the disease spreads 100% or 99% of the time.

[Antillanka]

He definitely looks mad enough to lash out, even angrier than last time. He's had nobody to vent to and no way to deal with his anger and frustration. He can't talk to Tuuri because she doesn't want herself or Lalli to worry, and there's no-one else who even speaks his language. Lashing out is imminent. Emil doesn't deserve it though; he's just trying to help, even if he's being somewhat naive about it. Lalli really needs someone to cry to.

YES!

I don't know why I think it would do Lalli so much good! And Emil is ideal for the "shoulder" role.

[JoB]

Thank you, that's what I wanted to hear I'll go by what Mikkel says here for now: http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=660

... yeah, because him saying outright that he's worried about the effect on morale is such a clear sign that he speaks nothing but the full truth there ...

Most real viral and bacterial illnesses work similarly, too.

Sorry, no, they don't. There's not a single real world illness, including the products of military laboratories, that stands a chance of wiping out 99.9+% of humanity in the way shown with the Rash. (Release a B weapon and then start persistent suppressing artillery fire against efforts to have it contained and you might get close to that in the designated target region.) Considering that the dead stop to be infectious within hours - that's faster than some of the deceased's tissues will be fully dead, for crying out loud! -, the Rash needs to have a truly unprecedented success rate at infecting more victims to do what it did.

[Róisín]

Anent the 'it will be okay' thing: in circumstances where it all will patently *not* be okay, my real-life experience suggests that the people saying things like that are either wellmeaning but completely clueless (hi, Emil), or in desperate denial and refusing to accept reality (hello, Tuuri) as well as wanting you to join them in denial so they will feel better.

[thorny]

We cannot, however, determine from this that contact with a vector results in a 99% chance of getting infected, or 70% or 30%. All we know is it's non-negligible.

It's possible that the disease has changed significantly in 90 years. However: we do know that it wiped out most of the population of the world in a matter of weeks or months. That implies not only a near-100% rate of dying or trollifying once infected, but an astonishingly high chance of getting infected in the first place.

[Lazy8]

So I take it you've never seen people say "it's gonna be okay" to comfort others or themselves, even in situations where nobody had any idea if things will be okay, or horrible? It's actually a pretty natural and common thing, if illogical. Sometimes literally the only thing that keeps people going is hope in a positive outcome (no matter how unlikely). Right now, we don't know if Tuuri is infected (even though half the comment section started to mourn her as soon as she got bitten) so they may in fact still be all happy and okay come summer. Emil is pointing out a possible outcome. And he's doing it because he hopes to help his friend feel better. Can't see how he deserves to be "set straight" over this.

Um... why do you think I reacted like that? I most emphatically do not want to hear someone tell me "It's gonna be okay" in a situation where it it painfully clear that it is NOT, I don't care how close they are to me. I've also seen multiple other people react badly to hearing others offer platitudes or silver linings at a time when everything was falling apart. So yes, Emil very much does need to be set straight, because no matter how much he's trying, it's clear that his attempt at offering platitudes was incredibly painful for Lalli, and if he's not corrected, he is going to keep hurting Lalli, which I am sure he doesn't want to do.

ETA: Kindly do not make assumptions as to what I have or haven't seen or experienced. Because yes, I might very well be reacting on the basis of personal experience.

[Solokov]

Of all the things for emil to understand... it's that?

... well at least he caught something?

[Grade E cat]

I have a few headcanons that I never post on the corresponding thread because they are perpetually evolving as the comic updates. One of them is that Lalli has a way of bringing non-mages into the dream world if he considers it necessary. The two last pages have upgraded that headcanon from "maybe it will happen at some point in the story" to "I really hope this happens soon". I like to see Emil is at least starting to pick up some Finnish, but I think that at this point, they can no longer afford verbal misunderstanding, and the dream world would have the side effect of giving Emil an idea of the extra burden Lalli has to carry as a mage.

Also, just thought of something while writing this down: remember how some of us supected mage powers could let Lalli and/or Reynir know whether Tuuri is infected or not before she actually shows symptoms? Lalli's words are "all of it is going to happen all over again". Not "may", "is". Granted that the depressive mindset could also simply be convincing him that Tuuri's bite is go wrong in the worst way possible, but several of us did consider the possibility his mage powers could give him an extra edge on Tuuri's health status. This page may very well be a confirmation of that situation... or I could get proven wrong on Monday.

[Windfighter]

Also, just thought of something while writing this down: remember how some of us supected mage powers could let Lalli and/or Reynir know whether Tuuri is infected or not before she actually shows symptoms?

Something like this maybe

??? 0=)
(wow, it feels like ages since I arted that one)

[Caro]

Well that broke my heart. I might have cried while reading that and want to give Lalli a hug. Emil is apparently really bad at reading people! He completely missed the emotions in Lalli's rant. That or he's still trying to go the "everything will be okay! Your problems will be solved with the power of friendship!"-route, even though it's very clearly not working. Lalli looks really pissed off in the last panel, and this time it's just purely saying "I want to slap this freaking idiot" with very little sadness left. There's still a chance that lashing out will happen. Poor Emil.

[Sc0ut]

Um... why do you think I reacted like that? I most emphatically do not want to hear someone tell me "It's gonna be okay" in a situation where it it painfully clear that it is NOT, I don't care how close they are to me. I've also seen multiple other people react badly to hearing others offer platitudes or silver linings at a time when everything was falling apart. So yes, Emil very much does need to be set straight, because no matter how much he's trying, it's clear that his attempt at offering platitudes was incredibly painful for Lalli, and if he's not corrected, he is going to keep hurting Lalli, which I am sure he doesn't want to do.

ETA: Kindly do not make assumptions as to what I have or haven't seen or experienced. Because yes, I might very well be reacting on the basis of personal experience.

Good job making it all about you and your preferences. I just wanted to discuss the comic, not become your punching bag because I don't share your views on "platitudes". I won't further discuss this with you.

It's possible that the disease has changed significantly in 90 years. However: we do know that it wiped out most of the population of the world in a matter of weeks or months. That implies not only a near-100% rate of dying or trollifying once infected, but an astonishingly high chance of getting infected in the first place.

This is a good point: yes, the level of destruction would suggest it's way more infectious than anything we know.
However, one major difference from any real life illness is that a part of the infected don't simply die, but transform into trolls that can apparently rip through buildings and armored vehicles (so imagine how they can rip through unarmed humans who don't know what to expect... especially a lot of doctors and nurses very early on). I'm guessing a lot of the population didn't just die from the Rash but also in general troll-inflicted violence, starvation because of the gradual isolation of communities, big drop in hygiene levels and availability of medication etc etc. The chaos that must've ensued probably made it difficult to apply many methods to contain diseases that are effective in "normal" circumstances. This, along with the fact that trolls have a very long lifespan, makes it possible to have a very destructive epidemic even if the disease isn't THAT infectious.

One more point I wanted to make is that SSSS is not hard sci-fi, and it doesn't make sense to treat it as such. Minna is not an expert in medicine and doesn't seem like the type to research very in-depth, so it is possible that the Rash behaves a bit inconsistently, adapting to plot needs. That's why I generally believe only what canon explicitly says, keep suppositions to a minimum and have given up the habit of making predictions. Basically, I'll believe it when I see it. Of course, this doesn't mean everyone should do the same I'll leave you guys to it.

[Lazy8]

Good job making it all about you and your preferences. I just wanted to discuss the comic, not become your punching bag because I don't share your views on "platitudes". I won't further discuss this with you.

Gee, maybe because I was trying to consider Lalli's point of view rather than just Emil's, and providing an example of how that might work? The second you said "So I take it you've never seen..." was when this conversation became about me rather than the characters. Plus I fail to see how pointing out that I've seen multiple people react negatively to this was making anything "all about me", nor how offering evidence as to why I disagree with your opinion constitutes "making you a punching bag."

[Gwenno]

I think this page does a very good job in highlighting the differences in Emil and Lalli's lives up to this point, and the current discourse only goes to highlight how profoundly this parallels real life for many people.

There are a lot of different ways people can attempt to offer comfort, and while I believe that Emil was sincere in what he was doing, his experience in life meant that he really had little idea of how Lalli would react. I genuinely think that if Emil was upset, this kind of comforting phrase (baseless though the comfort may be), would make him feel better. While some people may go for the "everything will be ok" method, merely for lack of inspiration for anything else to say, or lack of empathy or understanding of the other's feelings, I don't think this applies to Emil. I think he genuinely thought this would make Lalli feel better. While there's been some wonderful ideas about Lalli and Emil's lives before the expedition over in the scriptorium, to this point the cannon is still a little bare. To generalise however, Emil's upbringing was softer in a lot of ways, whereas Lalli's was potentially very, very hard, and I think this is one of the points where the difference between the two of them becomes painfully obvious, if only to us and Lalli.

[Grade E cat]

Something like this maybe

??? 0=)
(wow, it feels like ages since I arted that one)

Yes, I remember this drawing of yours well. Around that time, being the discreet Reynir fan-girl that I am, I was wondering how his magic vision worked with the intermediate stages between "healthy soul" (invisible to him) and "full-on ghost" (clearly visible to him). Her soul turning out to have become visible to him was my headcanon as to how Tuuri's infection would be revealed.

[thorny]

No time to hunt up the page right now, but I'm pretty sure that before Tuuri was even bitten Lalli saw major trouble coming. There was a page when he said they should head home, right then, and instead the crew decided to explore one more location first; and then one where he said more or less 'we should have gone home; but it's too late now'.

He presumably didn't know exactly what was going to happen, or he would have gotten that troll, or at least tried to, before it bit Tuuri. But he's known for quite a while that disaster of some sort was going to happen.

What we don't know is how accurate his form of knowledge is. Maybe it's not 100% and there's still some chance that things will work out.

-- on the other subject, even in far less drastic cases than the one I cited, it can be infuriating rather than soothing to be told that things will be OK when they clearly won't be, or when it's unlikely that they will be. It is indeed something people commonly do, intending to be comforting; but, unless it almost certainly will be all right, and/or the comforter can do something about it, I'd avoid it. 'It'll be OK, I'll drive you to work so you won't lose your job because your car broke down' is great. 'It'll be OK, you'll get over your grief about your partner's upcoming long painful death from something incurable' is fairly awful. Even in some cases in which it almost certainly will be OK it's likely not to be a good thing to say; 'It'll be OK, when you're 35 you'll be glad that person broke up with you back when you were 15' is not particularly useful; while some people may take it well others may be furious.

And it's all too likely to come across as Róisín said is true in some cases: as wanting the person in trouble to join in denial so that the person supposedly comforting them can feel better. This may not be what's meant; but it may well be what's heard.

TL; DR. Short version: when trying to comfort someone, please remember that people are different, and that to be effective comfort needs to suit the one being comforted.

Slightly longer: providing information about those differences is not meant to be an insult; it's meant to be an explanation. If you and/or your friends been going around telling everybody 'it's going to be OK', this doesn't mean those of us who don't find that helpful think you and/or your friends are terrible people. It only means that we'd like you to think about those differences in the future.