El Goonish Shive VII: The Comic is 20 Years Old, but the Cast is Still 18

[Maat Mons]

The trouble with a temporary villain form is you'd know it was temporary. How can you get up to proper evil when you know you're going to feel bad about it later? If I were going to use a villain form, it would have to come with a built-in memory wipe for all the stuff I did while transformed. It would also need to wipe my memory of deciding to use the form, and leave me with some plausible false memories of what I was doing during all the forgotten time. I could use underhanded methods to set myself up for success, and I'd be none the wiser. I'd just think things happened to work out really well.

[Qwertystop]

The trouble with a temporary villain form is you'd know it was temporary. How can you get up to proper evil when you know you're going to feel bad about it later? If I were going to use a villain form, it would have to come with a built-in memory wipe for all the stuff I did while transformed. It would also need to wipe my memory of deciding to use the form, and leave me with some plausible false memories of what I was doing during all the forgotten time. I could use underhanded methods to set myself up for success, and I'd be none the wiser. I'd just think things happened to work out really well.

The thing is, how temporary is it? "When I change back, I'll wish I hadn't done it" is just incentive to figure out a way to make it last longer, and therein lies the problem – it's basically the aberration trade, giving up morality for power, at which point you care less about whatever morality you kept and are more willing to trade what's left of it away for even more power.

Actually, I bet it's not just similar – this is probably exactly the category of magic that produces vampires, in-setting. Use a spell that gives you power and is amenable to abstract trade-offs, trade your empathy or morality or some other aspect of your mindset to make it stronger, cascade.

[Vinyadan]

Now that you mention it, becoming an aberration is something very similar and which we have seen in-setting.

About aberrations, here's something I thought. While magic was still a secret, maybe some people thought that the only access to magic was becoming an aberration. More ways to access magic being readily available could have meant that new aberrations would have become rarer and rarer, as there likely would have been less sinister ways to reach the same purposes (being immortal, access to riches, and casting spells).

[Maat Mons]

Speaking of better forms of immortality, it's always seemed odd to me that Sirleck wasn't angling to make Adrian Raven his new host. Feeding seems like it must be the riskiest part of being an aberration. If Sirleck had managed to latch onto Raven, he'd have been set for eternity.

[Rater202]

Speaking of better forms of immortality, it's always seemed odd to me that Sirleck wasn't angling to make Adrian Raven his new host. Feeding seems like it must be the riskiest part of being an aberration. If Sirleck had managed to latch onto Raven, he'd have been set for eternity.

1: Immortals already hate Aberrations for some reason... Or maybe it's just that killing Abberations is one of the few ways they can screw with mortals without getting in trouble. Either way, taking an elf as a host is just painting a target on his back.

2: As an Elf, Adrian is bound by vaguely defined rules that, while not as strict as those that restrict immortals, still limit what he can and can't do. Unless it turns out that there's no inherent restriction and it's more "immortal will get pissy."

3: Sirleck knows Pandora.

[Maat Mons]

Sirleck instigated a plan that eliminated Pandora as a threat. He had every reason to believe she would retain no emotional connection to Raven after she was reborn. It really looked for a time there like he had deliberately gotten rid of the major obstacle to a plan to capture Raven.

I don't recall any indication that the Immortal community as a whole is protective of half-immortals. As far as I remember, Pandora is the only immortal who is established as giving a crap if Raven lives or dies.

All aberrations always have a massive target on their back. Sirleck is kill-on-sight for immortals whether he's possessing Raven or not. His only chance for survival is to remain hidden. Each time he takes a new host, he risks revealing himself. As time goes on, the chance that he won't be found out and slain as a result of one of his many, many possessions goes to zero. If he took Raven, he could lay low forever after and never again need to take any risks.

[Windscion]

It was Voltaire who targeted Pandora. Sirleck just wanted the Twins out of the way so he could take a shot at Magus. (And he would have gotten away with it, too, if not for those meddling kids. Well, mostly Ellen's unexpected resistance.) Sirleck didn't know what backing Raven had, and also Raven made a great distraction.

[Fyraltari]

We don't know what the process of possessing someone is like. Maybe it doesn't work on elves.

Or maybe Sirleck was afraid that someone with Raven's skill and experience could eliminate him when Magus made it seem he was more harmless than he actually was.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Plus, Sirleck feeds on his host. We don't know whether Raven would live forever that way.

[Kish]

Yeah, I doubt very much that aberrations in general or body snatchers in specific are in a position of "I just need an elf once." And if they were...from their perspective, the only reason not to devour whole cities without hesitation is the negative attention from those powerful enough to be a threat to them drawn by doing so; taking over the body of an immortal's actual child does not sound like a way to reduce, avoid, or mitigate that.

[Rater202]

I've seen people make the argument that the purpose of homework isn't to evaluate of you learned the lesson or teach you anything, but that it's actually supposed to get you used to going to work and then coming home and still having work to do on your own time despite having spent all morning and a good chunk of the afternoon at a place where you should have done the work.

Considering that the purpose of school is to occupy your time and turn you into a productive worker, homework is just another tool to indoctrinate people into toxic work culture, according to these theories.

I don't know, it makes a lot more sense than most conspiracy theories.

[Fyraltari]

I like this password.

[Maat Mons]

I'd say it's the other way around. Homework is when you actually do things. Doing things is how you learn. The part of school that exists only to turn you into a good drone is the part where you show up at the building, sit at a desk, and interact with people.

[Rater202]

I'd say it's the other way around. Homework is when you actually do things. Doing things is how you learn. The part of school that exists only to turn you into a good drone is the part where you show up at the building, sit at a desk, and interact with people.

You've never had an employer give you extra paperwork to do at home? Or ask you to work unpaid overtime "just this once?" Homework is where it starts.

Instead of using class time efficiently, class time is used to drill in drone behaviors and you end up doing the real work on what is supposed to be your own time.

[Maat Mons]

Your second paragraph is exactly what I was getting at. I'm not saying homework doesn't lay the groundwork for unpaid overtime. I'm saying that at least it also helps you learn the subject matter. Sadly, most other aspects of school can't even boast that much. So if I was given carte blanche to redesign the school system, homework is the one thing I'd keep.

[Rater202]

Your second paragraph is exactly what I was getting at. I'm not saying homework doesn't lay the groundwork for unpaid overtime. I'm saying that at least it also helps you learn the subject matter. Sadly, most other aspects of school can't even boast that much. So if I was given carte blanche to redesign the school system, homework is the one thing I'd keep.

No, it's quite the opposite: I'm saying ditch homework entirely and instead use class time to actually teach the stuff in a way that's efficient.

[Maat Mons]

What's efficient about having a human being talking at you? You could just read an eBook and gain all that same information. I guess you might want to schedule a Zoom meeting with an instructor if you were confused, but I'm not seeing any need for a brick-and-mortar institution or set class times.

[Rater202]

What's efficient about having a human being talking at you? You could just read an eBook and gain all that same information. I guess you might want to schedule a Zoom meeting with an instructor if you were confused, but I'm not seeing any need for a brick-and-mortar institution or set class times.

You misunderstand.

Current system: Majority of the 6+ hours a day, five days a week, set aside for the sole purpose of educating children is deliberately wasted. Instead, children are made to do the majority of the work to educate themselves on their own time, normalizing the kind of behavior that, as an adult, becomes unpaid overtime and making them devalue their own time.

A more efficient system would be: actually using the 6+ hours set aside for education for the sake of education so the child doesn't have to do the majority of the work on their own time. The child learns that work is work and home is home and grows up into someone who values their time.

If you have time set aside for something, and the majority of that something is done outside of that time, time is not being used efficiently.

[Qwertystop]

What's efficient about having a human being talking at you? You could just read an eBook and gain all that same information. I guess you might want to schedule a Zoom meeting with an instructor if you were confused, but I'm not seeing any need for a brick-and-mortar institution or set class times.

Reading the information yourself means getting stuck if you misunderstand whatever static way things are presented in the book; a teacher can adapt. Putting too many different means of explanation in the book to try to avoid that risks becoming overwhelming and redundant, and a student may not know they are misunderstanding until much later and this may be unable to know which thing they need to find corrections on. I'm not going to claim school is perfect as it is, but I will say that both explanation of a concept by another person (who is actually there and can adjust their approach as necessary better than a recording) and working through examples are useful for absorbing different things and for different students, even if in some cases the ratio could do with adjustment. Outside of a few specific fields, I've never had as much success learning things through self-study and online learning programs (e.g. video lectures) as with an actual teacher, even with some of the worse teachers I've had.

[Anonymouswizard]

You have to take into account that Rater seems to have an unusually bad schooling history, and this seems to have tainted his views. He seems to believe that people become teachers to abuse power, to start.

As for homework,my understanding is that it exists so that teachers have free time. I do t know how much this applies to US schools, but in my experience more work is done in lesson than outside of it for the majority of compulsory schooling. Plenty of work done during class so that if you don't understand it the teacher can help, Then ideally 1-2 hours of homework to catch up the time teachers need to plan lessons/do admin/get gazeboed and get you used to the length of the working day.

Of course by the time I was 14 most homework was long term coursework that you had to manage. By the time I was Tedd's age it was all coursework and assigned reading (even accounting for the one year difference in schooling).

Of course the annoyance was there, just as it's there when my employer asks me to do additional stuff at home.

[Vinyadan]

Homework is essential for learning. A lot of things need you to go for it alone (translating, writing, studying at your own pace). Doing this during class would not work, because people perform these tasks at different paces, and some wouldn't have enough time, while others would waste a lot of it. The exception is when the school has resources you cannot expect the pupil to have, like a model for drawing class (faster people in this case can just add more detail) or room for a building project if you are studying at mason school. There isn't some obscure cabal behind this; every discipline needs practice. I also don't believe it conditions you in working from home, that's a matter of cost-reward for the worker and of the power relationship between employer and employee.

The one real problem I see with homework is that the environment at home is very influential on how well homework is done, so it further advantages people who already have it better. But, unless you can give everyone a real tutor and spaces at school to do homework, I don't see a solution.

However, I share Tedd's view that homework on top of full days doesn't make much sense, especially for an 18 y o, unless it is really light. (Tedd actually seems to be much more of a grown up in these last strips, making calculations and giving his own judgements.)

By the way, do US schools all teach the same things? Or are there different categories in the same age bracket, depending on the job they prepare you for? I would expect someone like Tedd to go to a more theory-driven school with fewer hours of class.

[Lord Raziere]

By the way, do US schools all teach the same things? Or are there different categories in the same age bracket, depending on the job they prepare you for? I would expect someone like Tedd to go to a more theory-driven school with fewer hours of class.

.......whats a theory driven school? /ignorant american.

in the US we have community colleges, technical schools, full on colleges....but I'm not sure we have anything else? thats all I can think of off the top of my head. the cliche in the US is that full on colleges are pretty much a lot of work even more than jobs are, and some put you deep into debt and such though.

[Rater202]

You have to take into account that Rater seems to have an unusually bad schooling history, and this seems to have tainted his views. He seems to believe that people become teachers to abuse power, to start.

I dont think teachers become teachers to abuse authority.

I think that teaching is a difficult job that doesn't pay what it's worth, therefore anyone who becomes a teacher is either an idealist or has a motive other than profit.

Generally speaking, there are three kinds of people who become teachers. Idealists who have no idea how difficult it's going to be, people who know how hard and unrewarding the job is but do it any way becuase they want to help people and make a difference... And people who crave power over people who can't fight back.

You see the same patterns among firemen, doctors, police officers... Anybody who is acknowledged as an authority. It's different ratios though. It's very rare that you'll find a fireman who wants to have power over people... Though when you do they're some of the worst.

And the idealists and a lot of the "want to make a difference" types tend to end up either quitting or getting jaded due to inadequate training and inadequate compensation for the cost.

couple this with corruption in the system as administrators become complacent and the bad ones end up either being the majority or dominating the work environment.

Not every teacher is bad, but the system is toxic. The theories I've seen suggest that homework, as it is now, is part of the toxic infrastructure.

Re: Homework, Homework doesn't give the teachers a break. It actually gives them more work becuase they have to take it home and grade it on their own time. They're doing mandatory unpaid overtime and a the same time normalizing it.

(Grading is another part of it that's problematic actually. There have been studies that say that grading isn't a good measure of performance, doesn't provide the motivation people suggest it does, and is biased toward kids with certain talents who come from certain kinds of homes.)

By the way, do US schools all teach the same things? Or are there different categories in the same age bracket, depending on the job they prepare you for? I would expect someone like Tedd to go to a more theory-driven school with fewer hours of class.

Public schools are nominally supposed to teach the same curriculum but in practice, it depends on where the school is and who they have on staff.

Charter Schools, Private Schools, and so on are supposed to teach the same stuff as public schools but with specialized treatments or additional coursed instead of or in addition to standard, but in practice how well that enforced varies significantly: Some charter schools have gotten away with teaching people that the moon landing was a hoax, for example.

Once you get to the university level is where it goes on; Different universities have different programs, there are two-year degrees, four-year degrees... You don't even need to go to a university, you could go to a two-year community college, pass there, and then transfer to a university which will save you a lot of money but isn't always a viable option, or you could just take the two-year degree and go. Or you could go to a trade school and spend a cole years learning a job.

There are gifted programs and schools for the gifted, but it's hard to get into those, and there's some evidence that they do more harm than good.

Ideally, Tedd would be in some AP classes... But Ideally, Tedd wouldn't be a neurotic, socially awkward mess with severe issues stemming from parental abandonment who until very recently wasn't confident in himself and embraced the idea of being an unashamed pervert and a jackass because it meant he wasn't weird.

All of which would result in grades being lower than they should be or being targetted, consciously or subconsciously, by the biases of less than good teachers and basically cost Tedd opportunities he should have gotten.

And well, we've seen directly that the Principal at Moperville North is an incompetent Manchild and that at least some of the teachers are the bad kind of teacher.

[Vinyadan]

.......whats a theory driven school? /ignorant american.

in the US we have community colleges, technical schools, full on colleges....but I'm not sure we have anything else? thats all I can think of off the top of my head. the cliche in the US is that full on colleges are pretty much a lot of work even more than jobs are, and some put you deep into debt and such though.

Various countries in Europe have secondary schools based on Napoleon's "lycée". These schools don't teach you a job and are meant to develop a person on a cultural level before he actually studies a job at a university. These are the school I called "theory-driven". They come in various flavours, but generally it's the basic baggage (literature, maths, history, geography...) plus philosophy and Latin followed by more specific teaching, depending on the school specialty (so Greek or technical drawing or many foreign languages). These schools don't need much supervised practice; instead, they require lots of theoretical study. So you get something like just 30-32 hours a week of school, sometimes less, but you will likely have to spend much more time on the books than in a professional school. (historically, Lycaeums were the schools of the elites; they were the only schools that gave you access university. Now there are ways to circumvent that, and some countries have done away with this rule altogether)

The other option are technical and professional secondary schools, which don't teach Latin or philosophy and instead teach and qualify you for a job. So you find technical subjects like informatics or mechanics and automation systems, or how to draw clothes, or how to raise cattle and value a terrain and so on. Technical and professional schools generally rely on students practicing their future jobs in laboratories or work settings, so they can own machines like lathes, or contain full-on farms. That takes quite a bit of hours, sometimes 40 h a week.

A big difference between continental Europe and the US is that in continental Europe students are often arranged in fixed groups of 15-30 students. Each group is made of kids the same age and has its own room, and its members will spend all the years at the school doing the same activities together (unless someone has to repeat a year and is moved to a younger group, or too many students leave and the group becomes too tiny and has to be disbanded). Teachers go from room to room.

Tedd to me looks like the kind of kid who'd have chosen a lyceum. But, as Rater observed, his situation might have hindered him a lot. And it's pretty odd to think of Tedd as part of a student class in the European sense, when he's always shown walking around corridors with just one or two people he knows.

[Gez]

To answer the question of "what good is a compass on the Moon?", one needs to ask if the situation also involves time travel. Apparently, two billion years ago, it would have worked just fine.

[Qwertystop]

Various countries in Europe have secondary schools based on Napoleon's "lycée". These schools don't teach you a job and are meant to develop a person on a cultural level before he actually studies a job at a university. These are the school I called "theory-driven". They come in various flavours, but generally it's the basic baggage (literature, maths, history, geography...) plus philosophy and Latin followed by more specific teaching, depending on the school specialty (so Greek or technical drawing or many foreign languages). These schools don't need much supervised practice; instead, they require lots of theoretical study. So you get something like just 30-32 hours a week of school, sometimes less, but you will likely have to spend much more time on the books than in a professional school. (historically, Lycaeums were the schools of the elites; they were the only schools that gave you access university. Now there are ways to circumvent that, and some countries have done away with this rule altogether)

The other option are technical and professional secondary schools, which don't teach Latin or philosophy and instead teach and qualify you for a job. So you find technical subjects like informatics or mechanics and automation systems, or how to draw clothes, or how to raise cattle and value a terrain and so on. Technical and professional schools generally rely on students practicing their future jobs in laboratories or work settings, so they can own machines like lathes, or contain full-on farms. That takes quite a bit of hours, sometimes 40 h a week.

A big difference between continental Europe and the US is that in continental Europe students are often arranged in fixed groups of 15-30 students. Each group is made of kids the same age and has its own room, and its members will spend all the years at the school doing the same activities together (unless someone has to repeat a year and is moved to a younger group, or too many students leave and the group becomes too tiny and has to be disbanded). Teachers go from room to room.

Tedd to me looks like the kind of kid who'd have chosen a lyceum. But, as Rater observed, his situation might have hindered him a lot. And it's pretty odd to think of Tedd as part of a student class in the European sense, when he's always shown walking around corridors with just one or two people he knows.

Ah. Yes, that category of school is not a thing in the US. At that age level, we have public schools (government-run, tax-funded, anyone of the appropriate age living in the relevant area can go there with no further requirements), and private schools (privately owned, generally some combination of entrance exams, tuition fees, religious affiliation, etc). Also some kids are home-schooled. In general, though, nearly everyone goes to public schooling. There are national educational standards, but the actual degree to which a given school meets or exceeds them or fails to do so will vary. Private schools and home-schoolers may diverge somewhat from the usual structure of things but are at least nominally still required to meet those national standards, and though I've never been to one my understanding is that they mostly still follow the same structure as public schools, but with higher standards or better-paid teachers or more extracurriculars or whatever. We don't really have different schools with different approaches and focuses (unless you've got rich parents and live near an appropriate private school) until the post-secondary level, colleges and universities and such.

[DavidSh]

Some cities, at least New York City, have selective "magnet" public high schools. The Bronx High School of Science is probably the best-known, at least among my circles.

[KillianHawkeye]

The characters haven't started college yet, have they? I know they're close...

Anyway, yeah, in American public high schools you're all basically learning the same curriculum unless you can test into an advanced class in a certain subject. Then there are a few extra-curricular classes that allow a student to start learning music or art or computers or foreign languages (well SOME foreign language is usually required but taking the advanced foreign language classes was optional back when I did it).

Private schools may be totally different, and of course there's a lot of variety in quality level in the public schools depending on where you are. But it's really in the post-high school era that American educations start getting really specific. Some go to community colleges, some go to big universities to get a more advanced degree, others go to a trade school, et cetera.

[Maat Mons]

Another fun fact about US schools: while some of the funding is federal, a school that relies only on that will be a terrible, underfunded place that provides a very poor quality of education. More local forms of government also contribute, but how much depends on where you live. If you live somewhere affluent, the local govern can afford to contribute substantially, and you'll have good schools. If you live somewhere poor, the local government can't afford to contribute much, and you'll have awful schools. So it's very important to your future success to be born somewhere with a high median income.

[Fyraltari]

THE AGONY!

That is all.