1631 Agent N10.

Grief makes people do weird things, think weird shit. It’s hard to tell how someone is going to deal with it. I’ve known rational people to lose their shit for moths, or even years. Sometimes they never get things back under control. In my youth I was very troubled by grief, but now I just ball it up inside mostly. My generally grim outlook allows me to function relatively normally. Grim might not be the right word. Realistic maybe. Death is hunting us all and sometimes sneaks up on one of us. It’s a reality we all have to face as best we can. It’s very dangerous to prod at someone who may not have dealt with the issue, or is dealing with it. Over the last few years grief has been so omnipresent that I’m a little numb to it now. The Teen, until very, very, recently was still basically in a constant state of teetering on the edge of grief over her father. And fair enough. In my experience 4 to 5 years is pretty normal grieving time for my family. At least on the maternal side. It’s more like minutes on dad’s side, but they are German by blood so they don’t have, how you say? The feelings? The continual exposure to anything makes you more and more immune. For my part I had already grieved for my Uncle before his actual death. It was pretty easy to see that if something else didn’t get there first the alcohol was going to. In many ways I feel the same way about his son and eldest daughter. They’re young, but were perhaps too long in that sort of environment. We tried, as best we could, to instil our values in the Teen, which her brother casually refers to as “brain washing”. It may be more literally true than he realizes. Her psyche certainly took a long time to clean out even a little. She has a least a tiny bit of ambition beyond being drunk all the time now. That’s about as good as we could have hoped for really. At this point she’s on the cusp of going out on her own. What little we’ve armed her with may not be enough to safely navigate the waters of adulthood, but there’s nothing to be done about that now. Our best was all we had.

My nephew has RSV or something. Like, bad pneumonia, I guess. I didn’t get to meet him last weekend because of it. Everyone is worried, but I’m not really. He’s my sister’s child so he’s as close to invulnerable as a human can be by my estimation. I’m disappointed I didn’t get to see him in person. He’ll be a year old before I get another chance, so that’s sad. It’s good that he’s too little to know his first xmas will be in a hospital. I hope he never has to spend a holiday that way ever again.

33 Comments

To be honest, this seems like a dick move from Thomas here… I know he means well, but I can see a whole slew of ways this could go horribly wrong.

It would be an even greater dick move to lack the empathy to attempt to determine whether one of your friends feelings of fear and self loathing can be rectified, and how.

One must always seek emotional equilibrium, and must also help others to seek it as well

I agree that he should try, but not at the expense of Joe. He is setting her up for a catastrophic fallout. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to pick between two people you cared about, but it tears you up inside. Even just the process of going behind one’s back to help the other in a way that you think won’t hurt the first. If you live with one (or worst in my case because it was both) if these people, it gets real messy real fast.

This is assuming that jo is an inept moron and doesn’t know how to have a conversation, and that Mrs. Melville is not receptive to any inquiries about the situation.

I strongly suggest you re-read some of the earlier comics again. The personality of jo suggests full faculty of conversational skill, and the personality and personal relationship of Mrs. Melville appears to be stronger than what you suggest.

I’m glad he said “it seems unlikely.” That phrase alone, with how Thomas is with words, carries a lot of weight.

Hope little nephew gets through this quickly and can go home to properly make his mama sleep deprived.

And thank goodness level headed people were there for Teen. Having raised two young men to adulthood, I can say that even when it seems unlikely they’ve assimilated what you’ve been trying to impart, a lot comes through once the heaviest phase of adolescence resolves. If you’d asked me when he was 17 if Olderson would turn out to be the fine young man he is, I would have laughed hollowly. I honestly didn’t think either of us would survive those years. And now, I couldn’t be prouder of him. Still working on Youngerson. But I see hope.

This is why I dislike Thomas sometimes
I mean I get it, Nina is his friends. But sometimes dreams don’t come true, sometimes you have to adapt or change or something. I don’t mean she has to forget about being a libriarian but she can go to others.

I saw a reflection of life in another comic that I tought was pretty good, the guy said that life is what you want, most people want to be fit, but they want to spend time with friends or family more than go to the gym, most people want to be rich, but they prefer free time more a than a 2 job. Sure is not always the case and alot of times is more complicated, but the fact is that if she really wanted the be a libriarian she would have searched in other city if there is no other one in there.

But no she wants that specific library so thomas had to mess around a family that may or may not blame her for the loss, maybe they just can’t see her without thinking of the other girl.

That is why i like more Reggie than thomas or more Daffy than Bugs or any other example of these two types of characters. Reggie and Daffy can be assholes, but they are like that and everyone can see it but thomas is more of manipulate or have a reason behind all that they do.

Well it has to be this library or Nina moves away and leaves the comic. Which is fine, I guess. Maybe I should do that. I’ve been thinking of killing off a character too. I mean that would be realistic. Sometimes people just die for no reason, out of the blue. They take a wrong turn. Or get cancer, or any number of random things. And, as you say, dreams don’t always come true, so maybe this one shouldn’t.

NOOOOOOOO JACKIE STOP NO NO NO YOU CANNOT KILL NINA.

on a rational note, I think DAxo is confusing “making everything better” with the attempt to do so.

DAXO, your feelings are on the money. Maybe Nina isn’t going to get the library job, but I think bringing this situation to a head us about self growth for the characters and closure. Do I think Nina will be friends with Mrs Melville? No. But I can see one of two outcomes.

1. Nina is right, there is resentment in which case Nina understands and the fear of the POTENTIAL resentment is alleviated. Fear of others’ emotions stems from not knowing their feelings.

2. Melville doesn’t hate Nina, and a mistake or something occurred with application in the past causing a misunderstanding. In this case Nina understands that she was never resented, and may feel guilty that she thought that, but the emotional status quo is restored, Nina and alex are just two people who have shared history.

Either way, the fear of the POTENTIAL resentment is alleviated, as it’s either real feeling or imagined, not both anymore.

Finding out that the reason someone acts like they hate you is because THEY ACTUALLY HATE YOU is very liberating.

@Crave:
NO, don’t send Nina away.

Write in Daxo, and then knock them off.
Problem solved; Nina stays.

@Daxo:
He didn’t say he was going to fix the issue of them not hiring Nina,
He wants Brook to gather intel so as to ascertain whether or not the accident held any sway in the choice to not hire Nina.
He is attempting to assuage the immense self-incrimination that beleaguers his friend.

Sorry if it came too strong(?)
The fact is as much as she wants there are actually bookstores instead of a “walmart” with a book section, there are schools and such on.

There are other people in the comic that dont work in the store, if she goes to a 3 option in the city she should appear often enough

The resentment aspect is something that I actually having considered, I’m the kind of guy that dont really care what other people think about me so I cant really relate

C´mon Jackie, you know better than that (in case that your comment wasn´t sarcasm…). We don´t know if Nina hasn´t developed another pursuit, or if there´s another thing that she didn´t thought fit to her, but it could be. Sometimes dreams are hard, but making oneself another one is also very hard. (I wanna read one of her erotic fanfics :D, she could write erotic novels! )

Thomas learned it, coming from left field (Carol helped wonders). If this goes wrong… he will learn that manipulations has its limits, and consecuences to his dearest neofites in training. He cares about Jo and Nina, but c´mon. He´s mishmashing Jedi and Sith guidelines here xD.

May the Force be with them.

I actually kind of empathize with Thomas here (a good feat for any writer). I live in a relatively small town and I remember doing foolish things like this when I was younger, which in hindsight was always going to blow up in my face.

But sometimes you try to help people you care about, ignoring the voice in your head telling you to stop. Some people operate on the idea that if you do nothing, the results are as much your fault as those involved. Other people go with the idea that you stay out of it and let the chips fall where they may.

To be honest the thing that might blow up in Thomas’ face in this scenario is that he told Jo about Nina’s past without her permission. Some people value the right to be the one to tell about their personal struggles, some people are okay if it’s friends.

I mean seriously, has nobody here ever gone ‘Hey, can you find out if X hates me?’

Excellent summary of what is going through someone’s head when they set something like this in motion… and how it can be ultimately misguided. I guess we shall see how it plays out!

As a librarian myself, I have to ask–has Nina marched into the library and asked what she can do to volunteer? Even if the librarian doesn’t like her or is uncomfortable around her, , there’s always something to do, even if it is only shoveling the front walk (it snowed this week), alphabetizing the sale books (a thankless task), or calling the phone list to remind folks about an upcoming program (really hard for shy people). The Friends can also usually use help on programs or fundraisers.

She’ll probably get the jobs no one wants at first, or the weed-them-out tasks (organizing the westerns or romances), but if she sticks with it and keeps coming back, she will (eventually) be appreciated. I would certainly, all other things being equal, give a higher consideration to a volunteer, than to a random applicant-with-a-resume.

Alternately, if she doesn’t want to chance the public library, she could volunteer at the school library/libraries, and get her foot in the door that way. It’s hard to ignore a glowing recommendation from another librarian.

Next, if Nina has applied before (for paid work), there may be policy reasons she wasn’t hired–maybe she needs to take classes and be certified, or to go back to school and get her MLS/MLIS to officially work in a library of that size. The library may also be obligated to hire from other libraries in its system, group or consortium, before hiring from outside.

Finally, she could just be overqualified for whatever jobs are available (like the custodial job Nina’s jealous of at the moment) and the librarian doesn’t want to insult her by offering something below her abilities…

…or maybe the librarian remembers her reaction to the accident and doesn’t want to make Nina uncomfortable–you never know how grief affects a person.

Well… honestly…
i’m looking down on him in this one…
He’s butting in without her permission to snoop and roping in another friend to use her friendship to find out.

Honestly.. its the storta thing that should and really could only be handled by the persons involved.
This is like 80% gonna backfire…
on nina and jo.. and not him.. (till later)

I’m not sure why people are being quite so hard on Thomas here. Jo is also Nina’s friend. Jo had heard about the accident. Jo was the one who brought up the possibility that Nina wasn’t getting hired because the family might blame Nina after Thomas informed her that Nina wanted to work at the library but had been turned down. Alex is Jo’s friend as well as roommate, and I’m sure Jo won’t simply barge in and wantonly hurt her feelings – this is probably the gentlest and least intrusive way of getting information that could lead to some closure.

There’s always absconding with their email…
Accessing their cellular phones/devices unobtrusively…
Mind-hacks are beyond their skills, though.

You think those ways are less intrusive? Really? Legality and morality aside, if they found out, I’m pretty sure they would consider those methods to be MORE intrusive…

Few there are that truly understand technology…think about it:
Email is sent across thousands of miles of wires and cables, through hundreds of servers…to get only a few hundred miles.
Each and every server copies each and every packet sent through it before it is sent on to the next server in a matter of seconds.

Do You realise how many stops an email will take to get from DC to Kansas?
This post here will cross 27 state lines to get to Crave’s server,
And that is before You ever see it.

Whilst wire-fraud could be claimed, merely redirecting their email through a certain server on it’s journey, isn’t illegal.

And any wireless electromagnetic communications are free to whom ever can capture them.
BY FEDERAL LAW.
Decryption was the harder part, before cloud computing, and share-time on super-computers.

And a well effectuated mind-hack is imperceptible to most of the populace.

Only someone with constant intimate knowledge of the subject previous to being mind hacked, and would therefore notice a change,
And those whom effectuated the mind-hack could tell it was done.

I know it is just a typo, and I don’t want to make light of a serious subject you raised. However, I had a mental picture of someone loosing their shit over some moths, and found it very amusing.

Hey, Germans do feelings! Sure, we tend to take a rational approach to them and make every effort not to let them affect our behavior, but they’re there. Just a different way of handling them. Generally, I think it’s a tendency to view emotions as a private experience, which can come across as cold when others see it more in a social context. Emotional processing tends to be less about expressing and more about quiet ruminating. Though that’s still a bit regional, since the Bavarians portion of Germany is always a little more relaxed and expressive.

I think this is a pretty Thomas-y thing to do, so just enjoy what’s been set in motion. Even if it might be a disaster.

And don’t worry, if there is a disaster (aka “failure”), that day the page will just be black and we resume afterwards.

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