![[0153] Overall Score](/comics/2010-04-08-[0153]-overall-score.png "[0153] Overall Score")
Sometimes I can’t tell myself if my characters are serious or if they are making fun of stuff (like the “Reception” section of Wikipedia articles about movies or the overall scores given in reviews of video games) themselves…
In the photo of Ye Thuza as a young girl she is wearing two patches of “thanaka” on her cheeks. That’s a special yellow-white powder which is worn as sunscreen but mostly as make-up by Burmese women (and a few men).
Today I donated €50,00 to the German division Helfen ohne Grenzen e.V. of the charity Help without Frontiers which helps Burmese refugees. They say €50,00 is covering the costs for one school year per child. Thanks to their special sponsorship program they assure that 100% of all “normal” donations go directly to their projects like the Mae Tao Clinic or migrant schools in Thailand without any deduction of administration expenses. However, since I have made bad experiences with other charities I included the following line in the “Usage:” field of the money transfer form (translated from German):
DO NOT SEND ME FLYERS OR BEGGING LETTERS!
In other news there are several new poll questions in the voting box on the right sidebar.
- Cloud: Mom, what was your childhood in Burma like?
- Ye Thuza: Hmm…
- Diary: Monday, 7 November
Today there was gunfire near our village all day long. I hope nothing bad happened to Khin… At least my leg no longer aches from our escape last week.
- Ye Thuza: With an approval rating of 37%, “My Childhood” fared rather poorly in my diary. Various photographs gave a more favorable impression, though, with 21 out of 28 being positive.
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Wow that’s a pretty intense journal entry, I loled at her response though.
Strangely, this conjures up memories of being raised in N. Ireland. Bombs decimated towns, there were shootings and beatings and riots regularly, military would draw beads on you walking home, parents were murdered lifting their children from school…
…yet I have an overwhelmingly positive recollection of my youth.
“That’s all you have now—just the memory; and even now, even so soon, it’s being distilled of all its coarseness; and what’s left is going to be precious, precious gold” ~Friel
Rough. Really rough…
I guess having wits is always good to endure life as it is, isn’t it? =]
At least her intense childhood led her to become an awesome Sephiro…….. I mean ninja, which eventually led to her giving birth to an awesome,
“Soon-to-be-wielder-o’-weapons-larger-then-Himself-warrior-in-training” Son!
…..Don’t look at me like that, It makes perfect sense!
WRT to the poll, I’m always unsure what to pick when sci-fi and fantasy are listed separately. With the exception of high-fantasy, which is really more a style than a genre, they’re pretty much just different approaches to spec-fic.
So I picked Fantasy, because it’s the more generic term.
I like the fact that Ye Thuza took Cloud’s question seriously and was willing to give him an actual answer. (I’m going with the idea that her comment in the last panel is a lead-in to an actual discussion.)
The Final Fantasy poll doesn’t include Final Fantasy Tactics. FFT is my favorite game of all time. FF6 was very good, but not even in the same league as FFT.
That must have been rough. But do you have any IDEA what the russians did to the Germans during the siege of Berlin? The allies left the main fruit, Berlin, to the russians to take by themselves. When The russians invaded they had top-crack, hardened, veterans in there front lines, and after that it was just lines after lines of men that were army in uniform only, the commanders told them only one thing to do, “Make the Germans howl.” I hate russians for what they did…. makes me sick.
Is the little girl in the pictures Cloud’s mother? Wow, If it’s true, Cloud’s mom has gotten beautiful after times…
I guess Ms. Ye Thuza when she was young, have the same personality like Larisa…
rozencrantz: In the academic world – that portion that’s willing to slum around and think about fantasy/SF, science-fiction is considered a subset of fantasy.
The harder the times the more you can enjoy the better ones…
Well, at least in some cases.
Some people might by proud that they survived in such a place or simply happy to have a better time now and others think about the time with misery.
If you ask me Ye Thuza is kinda taking it with irony…
She is answering his question quite statistical and as if she doesn’t remember it and had to check it herself…
( errr… Novil? She does not have amnesia, does she? o_ô )
And of course the photos are positive XD’
You don’t make pictures of unhappy things in most cases…
I also approve of what gamerjoel135 said ^^
Isn’t that always the way with pictures, though? It’s like we know we’ll be looking back on them for nostalgic comfort later when they’re taken.
Am I the only one having trouble with the actual picture of the comic? My computer is acting as if the comic doesn’t exist, I can see the rest of the page, but there isn’t even a blank spot for the comic, it’s as if it doesn’t exist….
@MaryLiz No I don’t have that problem here.
It is doing it for any comic I pull from the archives as well, it must be my (university) internet… which is admittedly crappy. Maybe I’ll get to see it tomorrow.
I’m just surprised that someone living in a dictatorship (or even a war-torn country)[1] would keep diary. If it falls into the wrong hands it could be used as stick to beat the person and their family.
[1] I don’t think Burma’s always been a dictatorship but I could be wrong.
At least she’s honest. Though I didn’t expect Ye Thuza would have been the type to sugar coat or exaggerate either.
The things she said in her diary are not funny, but her gamereview style comment IS. X3
But yeah as others said before pictures normaly save the happy and peaceful moments of life, but diarys tend to show the truth behind them.
I find it funny that Cloud’s mom speaks like a news ticker about her childhood. Whenever I feel like I have a rough life, things like this remind me that the USA could be much, much worse off. Still, a little adversity in your childhood might not be a bad thing. There’s something about it that seems to elp kids grow up and learn to be better people in hopes to prevent their own children rom going through that same adversity.
Congrats to your charitable donation, but be advised — once they have your name on their list, the solicitations for donations are unstoppable. I haven’t lived in Germany for more than 30 years, so I can’t speak about current conditions there, but in the U.S.A., if you even think about a charitable organization, they will start dunning you for money on a weekly basis — phone solicitations, mail, e-mails — an unending stream of begging for more-more-more.
What ends up happening is they spend all the money you send them on asking you to send more! And the folks they were supposed to help get nothing.
Games without frontiers, war without tears… that is what comed to mind while reading the comic.
is Burma opresed by who? fanatic zealots, politic maniacs, monarchy, inquisition or what?
Its an Ironi that one place in the world is in emisphere is in its best moment and the other one collapisng, esample: Midle Ages Catholic inquisition- Midle east intelectual academy (avicena, averroes etc..) and in a wink of an eye Western civilisation pass through Renaissence and iluminism while Midle East develops what we see now (Averroes is nearly killed by Almohads fundamentalist empire).
A friend told me that he is happy to live in a world without Slavery, Inquisitions or female repression, funny ballony world will always be what it is, the result is always zero in any counting.
per Novil: “Sometimes I can’t tell myself if my characters are serious or if they are making fun of stuff …”
I can relate to that! My dragons have actually done things unexpectedly that made me have to write a whole nother chapter for them. In another story a character had the unmitigated gall to die of a heart attack in the third paragraph! I had to bring in a replacement character. 🙂 🙁 🙂
To the polls, too (because I don’t feel I’d have anything constructive to say about the comics; it speaks for itself):
Funnily enough, I found you through an advertisement banner on another webcomic, which I don’t read anymore now. Funnily not just because of that, but also because Sandra and Woo might be the only thing, or one of very few, that I found and came to love through an advertisement banner (so when I clicked on that option in the poll, I thought how strange it was and how it absolutely did not reflect the way I usually find out about things; but it was true). I think that says something about the kind of comics this is, and how likeable it is. How likeable it was from the very moment I set my eyes on it.
Kazuma1412 said: blah blah blah.
Stop whining, tell me what Germans did to poles and then Russians did the same, and allies didn’t help us 😛 war is war.
WAR makes me thing, in the Tens of thousands Year they have been around, War on there own kind has yet to Get out dated, That just revamp it to a bigger killing spree..Just does not Make any sense..
One thing I didn’t notice until my second time reading this was that Ye Thuza was sewing. She didn’t seem to be making a costume or anything, so it made me wonder if that’s a throwback to her childhood, especially given the money they just came into.
It’s probably only remarkable to me because in the couple girls I’ve brought home since I’ve moved to my current area have all expressed surprise at someone owning a sewing kit. I never thought it such a big deal (okay, maybe for a guy, but not in general) probably because we were always dirt poor growing up and rarely had the luxurgy of going out and buying new clothes if I ripped the ones I had.
Oh wow…D:…that was pretty crappy there …..I loled as well to that last comment. x3
RA: Hm, I did not even realise that… I’m sewing quite often. It seemed like a normal thing to do to me in the comics…
I have a feeling she’s repairing Cloud’s pants. Probably torn during one of his missions.
I know of a whole group of women who spend lots of time sewing!
Most of it is costuming for their other hobby though; “cowboy action shooting”. 🙂
I suspect she may be mending a pair of pants. That wouldn’t be all that surprising of a fantasy mom, and not all that hard either.
Well I’m grateful that people can make me feel less lost in the culture of dispose and rebuy.
There’s something to be said about characters who have come out of bad circumstances, including possible prejudices, and yet their personality is cheerful and positive.
Cloud’s cousin personified this, and I think Ye Thuza does as well. It demonstrates to us that life isn’t as bad as we sometimes think it is.
Add to your list: Sandra losing her mom, and Larisa being dealt a very bad deck health-wise. Yet both of them are cheerful and positive.
Our minds have a funny way of making our youth seem a lot better than it really was. I believe it’s so we’ll actually keep having kids, wanting them to have even happier childhoods rather than thinking “Why would I put another creature through that? Of course I’m not gonna have kids.”
Yay to Ye for keeping it real!
Excellent social commentary, one that is replayed over again and again, not only in Burma but in other parts of the world
Great reminder
Ugh… charities.
You have your choice between those who pocket most of the money for themselves, those that spam you constantly with the most insufferable glurge under the sky, and those that simply manage the funds so bloody poorly that no good is done with them.
I think what I like best about this is that, whenever you mention any horrors happening in Burma, you always donate to help. Like instead of using it to your advantage, you’re actually just raising awareness.