Latest Page Discussions/Comic Update Chitchat

[Antillanka]

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.

Yeah, or you can accept that you don't hold the "okay-ness" of the future, but offer your help and support for whatever that comes.

[Sc0ut]

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.

I agree, hence me saying "Emil did not pick the best way to do this". (I also don't say this myself, though funnily enough it does help me to hear it.)
I was only arguing with the idea that Emil needs to be somehow punished for not getting it right, despite his heart being in the right place. I think we could all do with a bit more of "appreciating the intent behind an awkward yet friendly gesture" (though I don't exactly expect it of Lalli at this point, of course). But, to each their own, and I know it's possible to be annoyed with a well-meaning gesture, despite yourself. I'm sorry I seem to have opened such a long and unpleasant conversation, and managed to convey something different than I intended, to boot.

Yeah, or you can accept that you don't hold the "okay-ness" of the future, but offer your help and support for whatever that comes.

This is a great way to put it, and offers something to say when nothing positive can be said about the situation itself. As an awkward person myself, thank you

[thorny]

I was only arguing with the idea that Emil needs to be somehow punished for not getting it right, despite his heart being in the right place.

Oh, I don't think punishing Emil would be useful. While Mother Nature often punishes people for being clueless, I think humans should try to avoid doing so; for one thing everybody's clueless about something, for another instruction tends to work IMO better than punishment anyway, at least when deliberate meanness isn't the issue; and I think it's obvious that Emil's not trying to be mean, rather the reverse.

Edited to remove last sentence, because when I took a second look at the thread it made no sense.

Edited twice, to say that I don't think anybody's said in this thread that Emil should be punished -- only that he should be "set straight"; which I took to mean that he needs to be told that he's screwing up. That's not a punishment, unless the person being told insists on taking it as such; and it's sometimes a necessity.

What Lalli might do isn't necessarily the best thing to do either. Lalli's rather socially clueless himself, in a different fashion; and I don't think anybody's said that his reactions are likely to be ideal.

[Lazy8]

I was only arguing with the idea that Emil needs to be somehow punished for not getting it right, despite his heart being in the right place. I think we could all do with a bit more of "appreciating the intent behind an awkward yet friendly gesture" (though I don't exactly expect it of Lalli at this point, of course). But, to each their own, and I know it's possible to be annoyed with a well-meaning gesture, despite yourself. I'm sorry I seem to have opened such a long and unpleasant conversation, and managed to convey something different than I intended, to boot.

Where ever did I say that Emil needs to be "punished" for not getting it right? I said Emil needs to be set straight so he doesn't do it again. (Also, good job blatantly misinterpreting me for offering a point of view that differed from yours (this after going on about how you saying that hoping the crew's disregard for the pain they were causing infected entities "came back to bite them" wasn't intended to mean they should be "punished") and then accusing me of being overly aggressive...)

[Antillanka]

Where ever did I say that Emil needs to be "punished" for not getting it right? I said Emil needs to be set straight so he doesn't do it again...

... but I wonder, who would set him straight? Not Lalli. Sigrun doesn't meddle in those problems. Tuuri doesn't do "straight". Mikkel wouldn't understand Lalli's concerns. Your only possibility is Minna, and she won't do it magically, but by slooooow and painful character growth.

Peace out.

[Lazy8]

... but I wonder, who would set him straight? Not Lalli. Sigrun doesn't meddle in those problems. Tuuri doesn't do "straight". Mikkel wouldn't understand Lalli's concerns. Your only possibility is Minna, and she won't do it magically, but by slooooow and painful character growth.

Peace out.

Well, like I said, I was glad to see that Lalli was trying rather than just bottling it all in and pretending that everything's okay. I think that eventually, Lalli will be the one to do that... it's just, as you said, going to be incredibly slow and painful.

[Occa]

Oh man I haven't read for a bit. Lalli's done bottling things up, huh?

[wavewright62]

So Emil has apparently sensed that Reynir, growing depressed, is vulnerable to being toppled from the position of Overly Optimistic Cinnamon Roll. With great cunning he has schemed to usurp the position by exploiting the friendshipping tendencies of the Minnions...

Late on the draw, but you win an internet for this one, I reckon.

Spoiler: "No drama thanks" • show

(Also, not weighing in on whether 'tis better to suffer the slings and arrows of 'going to be okay.'  My personal experience is to not even notice what anyone has said to me during a crisis until much later, and nobody knows what drivel is going to come out of my shell-shocked mouth in situations.  I had quite some drama recently, and I'll be damned if I can remember any of what was actually said.  Whatever it was, nothing was going to make me feel better, since I retreated inside myself and was only going to listen to my own internal chatter at that point.  Somehow I gave a coherent report to the police, though.  'Going to be okay' was never one of the options.)

[Lazy8]

Some more elaborate thoughts copy/pasted from the comments (and much of this is in fact commentary on the comments)...

I continue to be both puzzled and frustrated by the number of people claiming that Lalli is being an ungrateful brat because he reacted badly to Emil's little pep talk. Was Emil trying to be hurtful or selfish? No, definitely not. Was his heart in the right place? Of course it was - he's Emil. But telling Lalli, who's clearly been depressed and is currently facing the death of one of his only remaining family members, that everything's going to be better for both of them because friendship and a flower, was still really insensitive. The fact that Emil had his heart in the right place, or that he didn't mean to be insensitive, doesn't change the fact that he was, in fact, insensitive. And even before today's page, when Lalli did in fact go too far, the reactions of "Lalli better not hurt Emil's feelings!" - never mind that Emil had already hurt Lalli's feelings, albeit inadvertently - were nothing short of disturbing.

It's also disturbing to see Lalli's genuine reasons to be upset be reduced to a toddler throwing a tantrum. One of his last two remaining family members just got handed a guaranteed death sentence. The other one is in a coma. He's being constantly taunted by a murderous horse ghost that's already nearly killed him twice. We've already seen two people (Tuuri and Mikkel) invalidate his feelings in favor of pushing him into behaving the way that they wanted him to behave. So when one of the last remaining people he thinks he can trust says, not even "It's going to be okay," but "Everything's going to be better for me therefore it must be better for you too, and hey, you have my friendship, therefore things are going to be great!", it's hardly a mystery why he finally snapped.

And I don't know whether people are so enamored of Emil that they don't want to admit he's capable of ever doing anything wrong even by accident (never mind that one of his earliest established character flaws is a penchant for putting his foot in his mouth and chewing hard), or can't bear to see him censured for anything because even just trying ought to be good enough no matter how hurtful it is and Lalli ought to just shut up and take it on top of everything else that's been going wrong in his life, but the character bashing in general and the Lalli bashing in particular is really getting old. Does Emil deserve to have something thrown in his face again or for Lalli to cut him off over this? No, of course not - but he does need to be made to understand that his well-meaning but incredibly misguided attempt at comfort is not only not making things better, it's actively making things worse. And if Emil, who up to this point had been doing so well at the whole empathy thing, completely failed to read Lalli's body language and tone of voice in favor of picking out the one word that he wanted to hear, then well... maybe Lalli needs to do something more forceful to get that understanding across. It'll be painful, and I have no doubt that nobody will be fully in the right, but at this point it feels like something that needs to happen.

[Ragnarok]

Snip

This is pretty much exactly what I saw in the scene. Emil's screwing up big-time, and Lalli's perfectly within his rights to act as he is.

There are Lalli-bashers? I'm glad I don't read the comments.

[Lazy8]

This is pretty much exactly what I saw in the scene. Emil's screwing up big-time, and Lalli's perfectly within his rights to act as he is.

There are Lalli-bashers? I'm glad I don't read the comments.

I do think that cutting off Emil entirely would be going too far on Lalli's part. But the reasons he's gotten to this point are entirely understandable.

All of the characters have suffered bashing at some point. From what I've seen Lalli and Sigrun tend to get the worst of it, and now that Sigrun's out of commission all of that vitriol is falling squarely on Lalli.

[Hrollo]

I think you're missing an important point: you, as a reader, have way more information than Emil.

For all that Emil knows, Lalli is only worried about Tuuri. He has no idea about the whole "Sleipnir will chase you to the end of the Earth and go after your family" thing, because the only two people who are aware of that are Reynir and Lalli, neither of which are able to communicate well on that subject with other crewmembers (let alone with Emil with whom they share no language).

[Keeper]

I think you're missing an important point: you, as a reader, have way more information than Emil.

For all that Emil knows, Lalli is only worried about Tuuri. He has no idea about the whole "Sleipnir will chase you to the end of the Earth and go after your family" thing, because the only two people who are aware of that are Reynir and Lalli, neither of which are able to communicate well on that subject with other crewmembers (let alone with Emil with whom they share no language).

Emil also doesn't really know much about Lalli's past beyond "We lived in Saimaa for a while and that was kinda dangerous but then we moved to Keuruu where it's safer." Tuuri didn't give him more details than that. Lalli stated in his little speech that life was fine for them until something bad happened, and he fears a repeat now, but as Minna has shown, Emil literally only understood one word of that. Now, Emil definitely should have judged from Lalli's facial expression that "smile" was preceded by a negative. I think the language barrier between them is exacerbating the differences between them.

[thorny]

I think you're missing an important point: you, as a reader, have way more information than Emil.

For all that Emil knows, Lalli is only worried about Tuuri.

But that's enough.

What Emil said was roughly the equivalent of 'your sister may be going to die but that's ok because you've got me for a friend now, isn't it? so smile!'

I agree that Emil probably wasn't thinking of it that way, was most likely trying to cheer Lalli up because he's genuinely concerned about Lalli, and is not a terrible person. But that's still a massively clueless and injurious thing to do. Emil really needs to learn better.

Also, if what we're considering isn't only Emil's point of view but also Lalli's, and I agree that we should: from Lalli's point of view, all of that is relevant, whether Emil knows it or not. Lalli's still got to deal with it; and expecting him, on top of all that load, to also take on the load of soothing Emil would be IMO asking too much even of someone with lots of social skills; which Lalli hasn't got.

I really am getting the sense that what this comic is really about is the pitfalls of miscommunication. All of this mess was caused by miscommunication in the first place; and further miscommunication is clearly part of how the situation's progressing. -- come to think of it, all the way back before our team was even chosen there was miscommunication! the grantwriters assumed that the proposers would be among the crew, and chose their funding amount accordingly; but none of the proposers actually had any intention of going, which is how the crew wound up being made up of whoever they could scare up for insufficient money, and therefore full of people who can't understand each other.

[Lazy8]

I think you're missing an important point: you, as a reader, have way more information than Emil.

For all that Emil knows, Lalli is only worried about Tuuri. He has no idea about the whole "Sleipnir will chase you to the end of the Earth and go after your family" thing, because the only two people who are aware of that are Reynir and Lalli, neither of which are able to communicate well on that subject with other crewmembers (let alone with Emil with whom they share no language).

I didn't spell out any of this outright, but you're missing an important point of how I set up my post: when I was talking about how Emil was being insensitive, I only mentioned Tuuri's infection and Lalli's depression, because those are, indeed, the only things Emil knows about - but those things alone are still a pretty big deal. Yeah, Emil's friendship isn't going to fix the situation with the ghosts or whatever happened in Lalli's past, but that's irrelevant because Emil doesn't know about them - the important thing is that neither is Emil's friendship going to fix the impending death of a family member, which he does know about.

By contrast, I talked about Sleipnope and Lalli's PTSD in the context of what we the readers know about Lalli's situation, and as a backdrop for how the readers have been treating him. Because even though Emil might not know about those things, looking at it as a reader, they do make Lalli's reaction understandable - which makes the readers' bashing him for hurting Emil's feelings, knowing full well about all of the above, all the more troubling.