Quote Originally Posted by Osiris View Post
I would say that manners are entirely dependant on who you are around. I know some Americans that are quite polite and some that are selfish douche bags. I can say the same about Canada, Australia, China, France, Egypt, Italy, Greece... anywhere you can think of. I do hear what you're saying though. I think out of all of them Riley is one of the most realistic characters. Don't get me wrong, I can't fucking stand Riley at all, but the fact that she turned to the bottle to cope with the end of the world is probably the most realistic depiction of a survivor that we've seen. She simply just couldn't deal, and I don't think it had a tremendous amount to do with whether or not anyone was thanking her for what she did, or whether she was able to talk to anyone. I think she just reached the end of her rope and started swinging.

This does raise the interesting question about coping mechanisms. So far we've seen alcoholism, criers, hotheads, people that simple freeze up, and people who absolutely batshit crazy. I wonder what else we'll discover now that a new group is in the mix.
you and yarri are both making good points, but at the same time, drogon has some valid ideas too. look at it like this: there is this support network going on, the soldiers, including retired ie burt, rely on each other, they speak the same language, they chewed the same dirt, they can speak in a shorthand that lets them acomplish things quickly and effeciently, theoretically. not only that, you have romantic interest, lizzy and saul, michael and pegs, they can rely on each other for confidence in times of stress (ie i need to talk to someone, you're my confidant) then you have the unintentional relationship of relationships, pegs and lizzy are both in romantic relationships so they share a certain bond, along with any of the redshirt females that are in relationships. then you have nationality, with the exception of datu, the rest are presumed to be american, so while she and datu may both be foreigners, datu is from the phillipines (i think) and riley is from france, they speak different languages, and they run in different work circles. datu is a laborer so he shares that with other people who have had jobs in a similar field, meanwhile riley was in the service industry, specifically food preperation. so riley really didn't have much in the way of a support network. now i think that some of her "exile" was self imposed, but that doesn't change the fact that she has had a very tenuous relationship to the rest of the group. now of course, the group has changed and the relationships are kind of reversed.