Character Development: Lalli

[Luthien]

So, Lalli needs to use his words more, and Emil needs to learn that suffocation is not acceptable sign language. Hm, now I'm envisioning a Swedish/Finnish/sign language only those two can understand...

Yes. So much yes.

Although this brings up an interesting question. Lalli currently can only communicate with Turri. I believe Minna has said that she's planning on doing this for a while, so presumably Lalli is going to find some form of communication with the others. I'm not really sure how language learning works on the road, though.

[urbicande]

Yes. So much yes.

Although this brings up an interesting question. Lalli currently can only communicate with Turri. I believe Minna has said that she's planning on doing this for a while, so presumably Lalli is going to find some form of communication with the others. I'm not really sure how language learning works on the road, though.

Well, we know that Lalli and Reynir can talk in the Mage Chat Room, so that's one method.  And I'd be amazed if Lalli and Emil both weren't trying to learn some Icelandic, given that's a common language among the rest of the crew.  (Except for Purrito, of course)

[Róisín]

I would expect at least Lalli and Emil to work out something: a Finnish/Swedish/military sign language pidgin seems most likely. How he would do with Reynir I'm less sure. But they need to do something, and that soon. Based on my own experience of travelling with people with whom I initially had little language in common, one picks it up surprisingly fast, in our case starting with terms such as 'passport', 'car key', 'toilet' and 'aaarrgh they drive on the other side of the road in this country watch where you're going'! I'm sure the team will encounter their own problems!

[Amarnur]

I definitely agree that Lalli will probably find some way to communicate with the others, especially Emil, whether it be nonverbal, a mis-mash of languages, or whatever. When my family went up to Bangladesh for a few weeks, my siblings (who didn't speak a word of Bengali) somehow worked out a system with my cousins (who didn't speak a word of English) to the point where I couldn't even understand what they were doing.

And something I haven't seen anything about is that, Lalli is very hard on himself about his mistakes, but it looks like Onni was the one who actively encouraged him to think like that. In the flashback, Lalli is obviously bothered by his mistake, but I'm a bit unsure as to whether he actually feels guilty about his mistake, or if he's worried about what Onni will say to him afterward. He gets very defensive about it, so he's definitely not so apathetic about the whole thing.

If he really feels bad, then Onni is making his guilt even worse and pushing him further into a mindset of perfectionism, which usually ends in two ways: eventually not caring enough to give effort into anything, or working yourself up to a nervous breakdown/otherwise destroying yourself by trying too hard, and it always causes a great deal of stress. And if he was raised with this mindset, I definitely see it causing huge problems for him during this mission.

If he's just trying to stave off Onni's scolding, then he's being pushed into a mindset of perfectionism anyway, but with the added bonus of not finding anything all that rewarding in doing things right. This goes more with the "do whatever others tell him to do" thing that's going on, and I think it would foster more irritation than stress.

What's interesting to me, though, is that while Onni and Tuuri get very hung up about Lalli's mistakes, the officers at the Keuruu base don't seem to care much at all once the error is unambiguously brought to light. I think this goes with the situations that led the three of them away from Saimaa, as well as whatever trauma resulted in them being orphans.

[Róisín]

You may well be right. I think Tuuri might do better if she approached it more as "We do have a problem here, any suggestions, Lalli?" rather than screaming at him and driving him even further back into his own head. Lalli strikes me as the type who would be quite hard enough on himself already, and quite enough of a perfectionist, without having it reinforced.

I'd read him as a bright, reclusive, sensitive kid who takes pride in what he can do, but because of that very sensitivity is easily thrown off balance. And if some of the fans are correct and he really is somewhere on the autism spectrum (not that he would be diagnosed in-world), that problem would be enhanced.

In real life, I've found the best approach to people like Lalli when they are distressed is to speak quietly, project an ocean of calmness, and give them a little time to get it together. Which, left to themselves, they will generally do.

[SectoBoss]

I would expect at least Lalli and Emil to work out something: a Finnish/Swedish/military sign language pidgin seems most likely. How he would do with Reynir I'm less sure. But they need to do something, and that soon. Based on my own experience of travelling with people with whom I initially had little language in common, one picks it up surprisingly fast, in our case starting with terms such as 'passport', 'car key', 'toilet' and 'aaarrgh they drive on the other side of the road in this country watch where you're going'! I'm sure the team will encounter their own problems!

I would not be entirely surprised to see Lalli and Reynir, probably in much later chapters when they're a bit more used to each other's presence, using their time in the dreamworld to hash out a primitive sign language that they can then use in the waking world in lieu of words. I imagine the process would probably have to be mediated by Onni, though, as I don't see Lalli being all that eager to extend a line of dialogue to the guy who keeps invading his sanctuary!
As for Emil and Lalli, I can imagine them building something similar, although it would me much slower going (or perhaps not, if Lalli's more enthusiastic about 'talking' to Emil than Reynir?) without the aid of magic.

[Róisín]

Another factor is that, to judge by his mapping, Lalli may have an eidetic memory. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he has picked up more language than the others think, and just isn't speaking. I've watched enough kids with good memories pick up languages to know that once they have a few dozen nouns it can just cascade.

[urbicande]

Another factor is that, to judge by his mapping, Lalli may have an eidetic memory. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he has picked up more language than the others think, and just isn't speaking. I've watched enough kids with good memories pick up languages to know that once they have a few dozen nouns it can just cascade.

I'd think that mapping skills and memory would be a requirement for scouts.  (Especially night scouts. They can't really rely on landmarks)

[Róisín]

Though I think Lalli may be unusual in not carrying a map. Remember early on, Tuuri is trying to give him a map, and he says that he doesn't carry maps? I thought at the time that that was unusual, but given his scouting style, which seems to be somewhere between marathon and broken-field running, I can quite see why. He'd have to remember a lot, though.

[SignatureSmiley]

Another factor is that, to judge by his mapping, Lalli may have an eidetic memory. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he has picked up more language than the others think, and just isn't speaking. I've watched enough kids with good memories pick up languages to know that once they have a few dozen nouns it can just cascade.

I don't see Minna using the socially awkward (possibly autistic) person has eidetic memory cliche. He probably just has a good memory and a really good sense of direction.

[Róisín]

He would need both the excellent sense of direction and a pretty good memory to scout at all, I think. Guess we'll just have to wait and see how Minna writes him. Eidetic memory can exist without autism, in otherwise completely neurotypical people. But maybe it's a cliche because it's a thing that happens?

And I've never been quite sure, with Lalli, just how much of his character is the way it is because he's a mage and presumeably is aware of both the physical and subtle worlds all the time? That has got to be distracting, having two sets of input going at once. Add to that his isolating night job. That one is bad enough for people with ordinary night jobs (I've worked enough of those to know how that goes - either you only socialise with other night people, or the day people expect you to stay up when you would normally be asleep so you aren't much company, or you do things alone). And that was just ordinary jobs, not constantly perilous ones.

Further add a naturally introverted character and a life which may already have included surviving very traumatic events and the loss of his family, and the lack of what we would think of as a formal education, and I think that's a reasonable explanation for Lalli. With some degree of autism or without.

[urbicande]

He would need both the excellent sense of direction and a pretty good memory to scout at all, I think. Guess we'll just have to wait and see how Minna writes him. Eidetic memory can exist without autism, in otherwise completely neurotypical people. But maybe it's a cliche because it's a thing that happens?

And I've never been quite sure, with Lalli, just how much of his character is the way it is because he's a mage and presumeably is aware of both the physical and subtle worlds all the time? That has got to be distracting, having two sets of input going at once. Add to that his isolating night job. That one is bad enough for people with ordinary night jobs (I've worked enough of those to know how that goes - either you only socialise with other night people, or the day people expect you to stay up when you would normally be asleep so you aren't much company, or you do things alone). And that was just ordinary jobs, not constantly perilous ones.

Further add a naturally introverted character and a life which may already have included surviving very traumatic events and the loss of his family, and the lack of what we would think of as a formal education, and I think that's a reasonable explanation for Lalli. With some degree of autism or without.

Of course, he may well have been chosen as a night scout because of those trait. It's a bit of a chicken and egg.  Scouts are probably mostly loners anyway, and they'd need to have a good spatial sense and memory because, seriously, if you're scouting at night you're almost certainly not going to stop to mark up a map.  It's going to be *dark* in the Y90 world!

The mage bit about having extra inputs is interesting though.  It's not something I'd considered.

[Róisín]

Yeah, I think there would definitely have to be a 'scout mindset' that was a prerequisite for the job. As for many jobs in our world! Like someone who designs to be a teacher needs to be cheerful, patient and like kids, or a surgeon needs to be innately meticulous and not squeamish, or the mining explosives guy needs to be a fanatic about precision.

In the year 90 world I expect that showing a light at night while you marked up your map, and having your attention on the map instead of on what was sneaking up behind you might be the last mistake a scout ever made!

[urbicande]

In the year 90 world I expect that showing a light at night while you marked up your map, and having your attention on the map instead of on what was sneaking up behind you might be the last mistake a scout ever made!

Exactly.  Pay attention to where you are, stay silent when you're standing still or not, note where you were after you have the luxury of relaxing.

Also probably finding a good place to hide yourself when the dawn comes.

[Aliax]

I haven't been participating on the forum for several reasons, and a big one was that this thread here was the one I most wanted to read and have fun in. But I also very strongly suspected that it would upset me to no end... See, my son is autistic. Very high intelligence, quite severe autism. Since I'd read in the comments that people had been discussing on the forum the possibility of Lalli being autistic, I was horribly afraid I'd find upsetting things. I was right 

Autism is a radically over-diagnosed condition. A cousin of mine is "autistic" but is clear as day just an introvert who doesn't want to argue with the doctor (or her family). A therapist discussed it (overdiagnosis in general, not that particular case) at Salon:

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/21/thats_not_autism_its_simply_a_brainy_introverted_boy/

Huh. HUH. I'll be frank: that article is a steaming pile of horse manure. The boy described in it is so CLEARLY autistic, it's not even funny. The REAL problem here is not the oh-so-horrible-and-limiting label of "autism" being imposed on the kid; it's the article author's opinion that autism is such a *horrible and limiting* label to begin with! His level of ignorance about what autism IS, and HOW it manifests, is truly horrifying for someone pretending to correct people's misconceptions about autism O.o So yeah, please don't base your "knowledge" of autism on that article, because it's so, so, SO wrong about autism that it's shameful it was published in the first place.

If you expect someone to behave in an autistic way and reward them for doing so you will gradually nudge them into a fascimile of the disorder without any actual disorder being extant.

Nonsense. A kid can't fake being autistic. That's beyond ridiculous; it's offensive. You can fake specific autistic behaviours, but you can't fake BEING autistic - or at least not without it taking the same kind of EXTREME toll on your mind and body that faking NOT being autistic takes on autistic people.

*takes deep breath to calm down*

Personally: do I think Lalli is autistic? I wasn't sure for most of my reading, even though each new development, no matter how big or small, pointed to it. And then he outright shut down when Tuuri bullied him too much ( http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=383 ), and Tuuri's comment clearly implied it was a reaction he had often enough when he was overwhelmed, and I went, "Yep, autistic freakout all right."

That said, I don't care whether people think Lalli is autistic or not. Minna herself has said that she wants people to be free to interpret him however they want, and the least I can do is respect her wishes! I *do*, however, care very much about which arguments are used to counter the possibility that he's autistic. Like for example:

It is not an instinctive reaction, I agree. Which is why it's so interesting that he does it... he extrapolated that Emil cares about the state of hair from way back when Emil smoothed Lalli's hair down. I think he really was doing what he thought was appropriate in the situation, which is indicative of normal empathy levels, given that he wasn't unsettled at all and probably felt like Emil was making a big deal over nothing. Is it normal? No. The important thing is that it indicates Lalli has the capacity to recognize distress, the desire to alleviate it, and the ability to decide upon a course of action given previous interactions. The fact that it was not a typical (appropriate is disputable) response is irrelevant: the processes needed to lead to the response are very typical.

I'm not sure I understand this correctly, but it sounds like you're saying that simply having those processes, and that level of empathy, are enough to deny the possibility of autism? In which case: no, absolutely not. Autistic people possess those processes just like most other human beings (it's psychopaths and narcissists* who lack one of them, namely "the desire to alleviate distress"), and if anything, they tend to be *more* empathetic than neurotypical people. The problem is that they often don't know how or when to properly use those processes, and even more importantly: they often have much bigger troubles obtaining the data to input into those processes in the first place, because this part depends on using social skills which neurotypical people learn naturally as they develop, but autistic people don't. Simply put, this means that an autistic person might very well not recognise that (for example) you're feeling down from the subtle behavioural clues you're giving off, but if/once they do become aware of it, they WILL care, and they WILL want to help - but they might have no idea how to do that if they don't know you well enough, or they might do it in a way that looks crazy/stupid/inappropriate/offensive to you.

* Autism is pretty much the antithesis of psychopathy, and I can't help but get hurt when people attribute psychopathic traits to autism :/

---

A couple other unrelated comments:

Correct. And there's a very thin line between narcissism and psychopathy. The most recent DSM threw out those terms altogether (I believe), replacing them with the much more sensible "antisocial personality disorder" *is studying psychology as a Year 12 elective subject*.

No, it doesn't. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is still its own thing in the DSM 5. And it's been a LONG time since "psychopathy" has been 'replaced' by Antisocial Personality Disorder; that's absolutely not something new in the DSM 5. Oh, and no, there isn't a "very thin line" between narcissism and psychopathy: the two have major overlapping elements, that much is true, but they also have major differences.

---

But... how do we know that they don't talk? The thing is, comics is a very static medium. You can't depict everything that's going on at any given moment, otherwise the page will get very crowded and hard to follow. And just because we don't see something happening (tuuri and lalli talking somewhere off-panel) doesn't mean it's not actually happening.

We know for sure now, since Tuuri herself told us: http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=374 . Minna even comments: "Tuuri has nothing to worry about here, she may not have noticed but Emil's been making sure Lalli has gotten all the socializing he needs this last week. He's probably all set for the next year or so on that front." From the sound of it, and even though I guess Minna was joking a bit, it sounds like Lalli got extremely little socialising back in Keuruu *even from his cousins*, if Emil's socialising is supposed to be so much more than he's used to