Just a reminder that I am on a trip and strips this week are low-artwork. If Monday’s strip was Diet Selkie, today’s is Diet Caffiene-Free.
I'm undecided on if Heather forgot about "smear the orphans", or if she just chose to forgive and overlook it.
That one remark – “real kid” friends – should be enough to clue Heather in to who her REAL friends are.
Uh, Giselle? Do you realize that you shouldn’t insult someone you’re trying to sweet talk? In case you haven’t noticed, Heather is an “orphie”, and you just implied that she doesn’t count as a “real-kid”. Real smooth kid.
But kids are kids, and not always good at discerning such minipulation. (I know I wasn’t.)
Heather has shown good sense though. This should tip her off.
Technically she’s no longer an orphan as she’s been adopted and now has parents. This is the setup for so many movies about not forgetting where you came from before you became popular. “We used to be best friends but then she changed when…”
HHHHHHHHHHHHSSSSSSSSSSSSSS-
Heather, let’s see that spine you gave Amanda. And this literally turned my stomach.
Don’t listen to her! You can have real kid friends AND keep your fake kid friends!
No, that’s not right.
I meant to say that orphans are just as real as everybody else!
Is Giselle pronounced GEE-sa-la or Ji-sell?
I’m not sure of the proper pronunciation, but I say it internally as Jih-zelle
ji-ZEL is correct, at least in English. Fun fact: the name is derived from a germanic term for a hostage or pledge, in particular a child pledged to a foreign court for political purposes.
Of course, in this case it appears that Giselle is seeking to get Heather to pledge herself as a hostage to the court of ‘Real Kids’ in their grammar school political map, and/or holding their friendship hostage as a lever for social manipulation elsewhere.
What tangled webs we weave, eh?
c’mon Heather, you’re smart enough, you can figure it out! And really, how is it none of the teachers have overheard all this ‘orphan discrimination’? The children yell it enough. Every one of these kids need to be sat down individually and have a Talk. With the teachers, then with the parents. This school is not on top of things.
Well, look at the principal — if he starts cracking down on the bullying of orphans, the parents will come in. If he ignores it, it’s business as usual, and will the orphanage land on his head as hard as the parents? (Yeah, some parents would obviously be shocked, horrified, and have a long talk with their kids about why that is NOT OKAY. But then there’s the Trunchbulls.)
I don’t think she would forget it OR forgive it.
Miss Manners was on Johnny one night, and was talking about the rudeness of not saying “excuse me” after burping. Johnny asked what you should say if the gas left by the other end. She said you say nothing. She said that DOING that was so rude, that the only polite thing to do was pretend it did not happen. Don’t even acknowledge it by apologizing.
Now, let’s say that I, as a white guy, wished to be friends with some black kids, and one day it was suggested we all go “pound on the honkies”. I doubt I could forgive them for that comment, and I probably could not forget it was said.
So the only thing I could do, if I wished to remain friends with them, would be to convince myself I did not hear the statement. “Selective deafness”. Pretend it didn’t happen. And any time one of my new friends made a mean or racist comment about “my type of people”, I’d have to just – not hear it.
This isn’t a comment that Heather could “choose” not to hear. This is a statement made directly to her. Forcing her to decide.
I hope she puts her soccer skills to work and kicks Giselle’s butt.
But then, I believe violence solves a lot of problems. 😀
Generally speaking, the only problem violence is generally good at solving is violence, and generally only temporarily.
Trouble is, everyone sees their actions as justified from their own perspective. Even if they can’t articulate that reason to another, or feel ashamed of it, or /know/ that what they’re doing is wrong in the eyes of another, they have a reason and that’s enough of an impetus to act.
Enacting violence against them won’t make that reason go away, it just gives them a reason to avoid getting caught or trying to explain themselves in the future.
This isn’t to say violence can’t be a useful tool, but like any tool one must have a keen understanding of when to apply what force to where to get useful work done.
When I was a young kid, my siblings and I were fair-skinned, blond*, and blue-eyed. Mom, having just lived through the sixties and seventies, was super-paranoid that the racists were going to get their claws into us because we looked “aryan”. I somehow got the impression that racists were like evil evangelists going door to door saying “Hey, kid, you shouldn’t be friends with those kids, you should be racists like us!”. Which is silly in retrospect, because real racism is far more insidious and subtle.
And then Giselle goes and says that orphans aren’t “real kids” to someone who was just adopted. Giselle, sweetie, if you really want to join HYDRA that badly, you need to work on your people skills.
ingroup outgroup thinking seems to be wired in. even kids, or perhaps especially kids, do it almost automatically. i’m not optimistic. sooner or later dr. strangelove wins.
Blood… boiling… >=(
If there’s one thing the last few pages have shown it’s that these scheming kids are…kids.
They’ve seemed clever, at times, striking when the iron’s hot and all that. But what they’ve shown pretty consistently is that (lucky for the world) they haven’t learned to apply patience to their cruelty any better than they’ve learned to apply the patience that would make the cruelty unnecessary. Tommy talked a good game about making sure to strike only unguarded targets, but that didn’t keep him from losing his cool when his buttons were pushed. And Giselle is jumping straight into us-or-them territory at the first hint of losing influence with her “pet rich kid.” It worked last time because “neutral/unknown” vs “Amanda” goes to “neutral/unknown.” As Heather said, being friends with Amanda sucked.
But I’ll be pretty surprised if “neutral/unknown” beats “Keisha.”
They know how to strike when the iron’s hot, but if it’s not hot they won’t wait for the right time before striking.
I think Heather’s soon going to remember how she swore that those pigtails would go home with her. She didn’t like how they were treating the kids who were still in the orphanage at the snowball fight. That mentality is highly unlikely to change just because Giselle is acting nice to her. Especially if she’s trying to drive a wedge between Heather and one of her oldest friends, one who knows how to treat people.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m kind of prefering diet caffine free selkie. Maybe it’s just because in a way, it conveys more of your emotions
Looks like her plan for tricking her is about to fall short.
Yeah, looks like Giselle overplayed her hand there. Heather isn’t so quick to forget her experiences and ties at the orphanage.
Separating her from Amanda was one thing; repeating that with Keisha isn’t going to be as easy for the conspirators. Especially when Heather sees how the other orphans are still being singled out by the bullies.