A talking too.
Just a reminder, I am taking a two week hiatus beginning NEXT MONDAY. I am still accepting guest strips to air during the hiatus until the end of the day tomorrow (Dec 15th)
I feel like it makes more sense to me that Todd would discipline Selkie for her outbursts privately to avoid placing her on the spot in front of someone he knows she has trouble dealing with.
Spell check: “Your father wants you”
What if the plot twist is that Amanda is a dad?
Yeah, no… but spell check won’t catch a valid spelling, which you’re is. So saying spell check is somewhat pointless here. Instead, how about just “A little typo for you to fix, you input ‘You’re’ instead of ‘Your’ in panel 3.”
After all, if we are going to be picky, your statement was worse than the problem, because it has a logical fallacy rather than merely a spelling error.
*I’m happy to see people point out such errors, and it is wonderful to have them fixed. I just found the method of delivery here condescending toward the author.*
I don’t find it condescending. Humanity finds shortcuts for things, especially in the age of information overflow, and the shortcuts convey the message without necessarily being factually correct. Taking more words to say the same thing isn’t always a net benefit even if it more correctly conveys the concept.
You don’t find the insinuation of not using spell check on something put forth under one’s name insulting or condescending?
To me, that’s like saying ‘Come on, aren’t you supposed to be good at this.’ That’s just my interpretation of telling somebody to use spell check to an adult like this… or even most youth.
If this was about minimal words, ‘Your not You’re typo’ would have been even better, without the implied failure to use a common tool.
You are correct. More words do not = better. Implications are implications, and all I am saying is that the statement implied something that was not cool, so maybe change the wording a little to avoid that implication. Because, all too often we let our words say things we don’t actually intend.
Have you been following this comic long? Because Dave kinda relies on us to catch the bits that make it past his revisions into the final product. That’s been going on for a long time.
I don’t think the implication that Dave failed to use due care in crafting his dialog was inherent in the term “spell check”. It’s just a general thing people say these days. Assume good faith?
I actually caught the “you’re” after posting and fixed it before I saw comments on it.
But yeah, sometimes readers catch slips I made and I fix them, I wouldn’t say I “rely” on it. Sometimes I just… well, slip. I try to fix them when caught. *shrug*
Let’s let Dave decide if he’s insulted or not…
Personally, I’d be more annoyed about someone deciding that they know how I feel than by something that may not be worded in the best way *shrugs*
I’m with Amy here. I hate it when someone else decides to get offended on my behalf when I’m not in the least bit offended. Sometimes, just because I don’t agree with how something was done, doesn’t mean I was offended by it, even if it was directed at me. But when someone else gets offended by something that falls into that category, I feel honor-bound to defend the original person with an “I was not offended, so please leave him/her alone.” And then, I have to actually say that I don’t agree with the person I’m defending, because my agreement becomes assumed when I defend them.
“Don’t attack him” followed immediately by “That doesn’t mean I agree with you” is a pretty damn awkward thing to have to do.
In this case, he didn’t say “Use spell check!” He said “Spell check: ” Meaning, he’s pointing out an error.
However, as this wasn’t a spelling error, but a grammar error, “Grammar Check: ” or “Word choice: ” would’ve been better.
I have found that it’s more effective to say to the OP that I thank them for their input, I may not agree, but they still said something valuable or something like that. I get to stand up for the OP, and also disagree with them in one stroke rather elegantly.
I think the error is the ‘to’ in “whats if I don’ts want toos”
Nah, Selkie is just gonna add “os” instead of “s” at the end of the words from now on 😉
You’re not helping, Mari. Theo’s right, kids don’t get to pick their families.
I picked my family when I was ten. Granted, it took three years for the adoption to go through, but still…
There isn’t really a good line for that anymore. The closest thing I can come up with is “You can’t always get what you want.” Though, in this situation, the real lesson is that sometimes the things you do want mean you have to put up with other things that you don’t want.
I’m noticing a certain pattern of Theo being the one to come around and be helpful first. I think he may be the wiser of the two, which is a bit unusual.
Figgered “gore you” came from her love of Triceratops. Got a nice horn on her nose, “the better to gores you with, my dears”.
But I definitely thing she should agree to be nicer to her new sister.
“I’ll gives hers a kiss tomorrows.” 😀
Yes … and a nice, friendly smile, like she gave Truck in the library.
And while Grandpa and Grandma got to “pick their family”, I seriously doubt that Todd, Antoine or Marta were consulted about whether they should get another child. Probably given a fail accompli – “This is your new brother (sister)”.
DAMN spell check. I THINK, not THING Selkie should be nice, and the kids would be given a FAIT accompli, not FAIL.
Best editing ALWAYS happens right AFTER you hit “send!” :/
Not to mention how it nos hue mint “fait” accompli but it chained it to fail wiles you whirrent looking.
I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC.
It plainly Marx four my revue
Mistakes eye can knot sea.
Ive run this pome threw it,
I’m sure your pleased two no.
Its letter perfect in it’s weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.
(Can’t remember the source, sorry)
Ha! I like that.
How about “chequer” for “checker”?
The one I read had a couple differences.
PC -> pea see
Mistakes -> miss steaks
“Letter perfect awl the weight”
Possibly other differences, it’s been a really long time since I read it.
You know something? Selkie *shouldn’t* have to be nice to Amanda, if she doesn’t want to. From her point of view, Amanda’s just some nasty little bully who just happens to have been fathered by her dad. They’re half-sisters who have no functional relationship, and it’s wrong of the adults to try to force it. Give up on doing things as a family, at least for now, and let Todd and the grandparents spend time with Amanda without involving Selkie. She’s Todd’s family, not Selkie’s.
I can’t help but agree with you here CM, especially given that Amanda was Selkie’s primary *bully* throughout most of her life.
It would be good, and even necessary, for Selkie and Amanda to eventually reconcile and move past their differences, especially since these ultimately stem from a situation neither had any control in. But especially for Selkie, forcing the issue right away and forcing positive interaction is asking a lot of her, perhaps too much.
To clarify – it’s never too much to ask kids to learn basic politeness even towards someone you hate, but forcing them to hang out in a positive fashion is a few steps beyond that, and a bit soon.
I’m mostly on board with this one. Acting civil toward each other (not name-calling, for example) is a baseline requirement, though, to avoid making the situation worse.
Maybe not nice, but they need to be at least civil. Like if they were really sisters and didn’t get along they’d still need to learn.
I think they should be allowed to be family if they want, but as half-siblings, it isn’t like they need to share the same house.
It shouldn’t be like wicked step-family where they don’t have a choice in the matter but more “we’re family, because we wanna be.”
I completely agree with this and if Selkie doesn’t say something in the next page like “She was part of the group that helped Truck sent me to the hospital” or list a bunch of other times Amanda has lashed out or been part of a bullying event I’ll be pretty disappointed. The adults need to understand the full extent of what Amanda has done, it is in no way right for them to tell Selkie to let go of her hurt and trauma because Amanda has had a hard time in the past.
*standing ovation*
Exactly! Amanda has been an unholy terror to Selkie. Yes Amanda has had difficult circumstances, horrific ones at times, but Selkie doesn’t deserve to be tormented as a result, and to have to simply forget all that? No sir. She has been a champ so far in TRYING to be nice to Amanda only to have it repeatedly thrown back in her face.
I can’t remember if it was established that the Sandersons already had two biological kids when they adopted Amanda (making her the youngest), or that they adopted her first and then found out that they were fertile after all (making her the oldest).
Heather said they already had two kids. Which would make sense because it would be harder to see Amanda as an “unneeded extra” for being adopted if they grew up with her there their whole lives. And remember her story, the boys went after her because they were jealous of her getting new stuff.
Honestly, yeah, I really don’t like Todd’s pushing here either. Selkie WAS super civil with Amanda, for someone who’s been tormenting her for years. Adult intervention in sibling relationships is just… very often off-mark.
I think they have a much better chance to build an amiable relationship if Selkie does not force herself to be ~nice to Amanda when she makes an ass of herself. That way resentment lies.
I agree…but then as a parent? I see where see and his parents are coming from—though I am sensing Mari may be siding with Selkie. I think the idea of what they are saying is correct (it will go easier for both Amanda and Selkie if they *both* drop their defenses and chill), but the way they are wording it is not. This is totally normal though for all parents (and even grandparents) to make mistakes like these—especially after something intense happened. What will make it okay is their follow through. Will they talk to her about her feelings about this situation? Will they acknowledge them and help her come up with better ways of dealing with Amanda’s rudeness and outbreaks? If I was in this (very fictional) kind of situation, I’d probably be hunting down one or even 2 very good child/family counselors to help navigate through it all with my children.
Agreed. Though, since it is a fictional situation, I highly doubt that there’ll be any outside counselors brought in here to short-circuit the plot. Unless it is about counseling (which Selkie clearly isn’t), you don’t want outsiders coming into a story resolving all the issues. That might get a happy ending for the characters, but it would kill the story dead.
A story about relationships needs to have its characters work out their relationship problems on their own, interacting with each other.
Oh, I agree. If we saw the characters in counseling all the time it’d be boring as hell. But a story *can* progress with a mention of therapy in it at least. There are strips which go that far (Questionable Content is one I think of offhand but there are a few others—including some stories in Discord Comics)—not that I’m saying Selkie should one way or another.
In fact it’s very surprising with the turn this has all taken. Selkie’s story is quite fascinating on its own without Andi and Amanda being brought in… But Andi/Amanda have a situation that is so interesting it could be a strip unto itself. Dave’s done a remarkable job so far putting their stories together without making the comic’s plot convoluted. That is pure talent!
Can’t pick your family?
yep, just like how you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose… but you CAN’T pick your friends nose…
Sure you can. Most often when we marry.
I didn’t know to expect much from my marriage, but quickly learned that the family I chose was far superior to the one that I was issued.
Dave, I just got informed this morning that I might need to help my brother for a week, and he doesn’t have internet. I’m not saying this would be 100% the reason if I don’t get a comic strip to you in time, but it certainly changed my deadline to like 6 PM tonight and I wasn’t ready for that.
If I don’t make it, I look forward to the next time the opportunity becomes available.
Also, because I was going to post this once the hiatus started, but may not have the chance: SPRINGPOP, are you okay? I wanted to check back with you to see how things were going and whether you needed anything more in the short term. I’ve been thinking about you and praying about your situation and I don’t want you to think like we went “Phew, that’s over” and just moved on because I know this didn’t really clear up any of the major problems over there.
Please let us know if there’s anything you think we can do for you. And you have permission to get my email from Dave if you want to talk with me more privately.
Even if you can’t make the deadline for the Hiatus strips, I’d still love to see it as fan art at a later date. 😀
I am hurrying as best as I can to finish by deadline. By my clock that’s a little over two hours (dunno your time zone). I have it all roughed out and colors chosen and such, just need to finalize the art and work out some layout bugs. Hope you’ll like it 😀
Kids don’t get to pick their families, but honestly, Selkie didn’t sign up for this shit. Amanda is NOT her sister. Amanda is with a person who is *not* part of Todd’s family. And “adopting” Amanda by proxy, when Amanda is a vicious kid who hates Selkie with a passion and routinely makes racial slurs at her, is a cruel thing to do on Todd’s part. They need to wait until Amanda grows up a bit.
>Amanda is NOT her sister.< Sorry, but you're wrong. Amanda is Todd's daughter. Selkie is Todd's daughter. Therefore they are sisters. They may no be "family", but they ARE sisters.
Slight typo: “Whats if I don’ts want tos”.
I don’t tend to comment, but I really like the story. 😀 Selkie is one of the few webcomics I still enjoy reading.
I believe we ran across this in another strip. “Tos” looks too much like it should be pronounced “toss”, so Dave decided to stick with toos to make it flow more naturally.
With that particular word, especially here, it suggests she’s drawing out the word. Even without Selkie’s added-s, it would work that way for any kid: “What if I don’t want toooo?!?!”
“Your father loves you.” Another of those shallow reassurances that adults so often offer to kids.
No, he doesn’t. Not yet. Love is a relationship between people. He only just met her. He knows almost nothing about her.
It’s shorthand, I suppose. Andi is right that he wants Amanda and will try to do right by her, but at this point, about all he’s got to go on is an idea. There’s this child of his who is not dead after all, who suffered the way he did, and needs him. That’s a good start, but it’s not love. Amanda isn’t a mini-Todd, she is herself. Even Mari, who by temperament offers tokens of affection very readily, doesn’t actually love Amanda yet. It takes time to establish a bond.
He is trying to love her. Someday he will.
“Your father loves you.” That’s also an example of Andi being Andi. She tells herself what she wants to be true, and isn’t good at nuance. In this case, she’s telling Amanda what she thinks Amanda wants to hear — but Amanda has a finely-honed BS detector. She has already decided to suspend judgement for now, and I think that’s about as far as she’s willing to go.
I’m starting to agree that Andi and Amanda should not be involved with Todd’s family. While Theo and now Todd are willing to work on this and try and make things better for everyone involved, Mari clearly isn’t and Selkie doesn’t want to. If Selkie isn’t willing to try then Amanda won’t be willing either and it’ll end up being a huge painful mess.
Andi should just find a nice guy who will love Amanda and her just as much as he would his own biological family and leave Todd out of it so he can focus on his own family’s needs.
I’d analyze each person independently. If Theo wants to get to know his granddaughter and possibly find a way to a repaired relationship between him and Andi, he should be able to do that, regardless of whether Todd is in the picture and regardless of whether other members of the family like him doing that.
Similarly, Mari should be free to develop a relationship with Amanda, even if she feels incapable of establishing a relationship with Andi after all that has happened.
I feel pretty strongly about this, in that we had to fight for me (my mom and I) to have a relationship with my niece and nephews, as we were putting in more time and energy and money than their actual blood relatives were doing, but the blood relatives (including their mom) kept treating us like second-class citizens, and the court has its rules about what constitutes a relative in the eyes of the law (that last part, at least, is reasonable, if insulting).
Nowadays I have a pretty good relationship with all three kids, as well as with their brother (my blood relative through my brother). If I’d let the rest of the family define my relationship to those kids, I wouldn’t have that — and if Mom and I had given up in discouragement, most likely two of those kids wouldn’t even be part of the family anymore due to the foster-care situation that went on.
It took me a while to conclude that relationships may be partly established by ties through other people, but that after a certain point those relationships exist regardless of the other people. Families aren’t indivisible units where the severing of one relationship severs them all.
P.S. I left a note for you up the page a little bit; hope you read it.
I also am of mixed feelings about whether kids should be forced to develop relationships with each other. In general I think no, they shouldn’t be forced. On the other hand, these two are likely going to end up on outings together, and they’re already classmates — they can’t avoid each other. It might be to their long-term good to force some baseline cordiality and even finding ways to make them empathize even if they’re not pleased with the idea right now.
Yeah if Amanda and Selkie just don’t want to get along there’s no point in forcing it and they should just say adios. They should still be told to be civil to one another of course. I disagree with the fact that the adults should be able to pursue a relationship with Amanda without trying to at least mend their relationship with Andi somewhat. Andi is Amanda’s mom. Amanda will hate them if they hate Andi, plain and simple. If they try and say she should avoid from mentioni ng Andi or decline having Andi over with Amanda then they need to flat out say they don’t want to per sue a relationship with Amanda. It’s a package deal with them, alienating her mom is just as bad as alienating Amanda.
Todd and Mari really need to understand that Andi IS part of their lives now, whether they like it or not. In a sense I think the same sort of thing should be extended to Selkie, but that’s a tiny bit different… they need to work out Amanda’s issues and then work the girls out together and if it STILL fails then I’d say don’t force it.
Still, I maintain that Andi needs to move on and find someone else who can love Amanda and Andi both. She should start her own little family and Todd can have his.
I’m going to disagree slightly in that… I don’t think Andi necessarily needs to find someone else to “move on” — I think Andi would do well to have some time figuring out who she is when she’s not in a relationship. Well, except a parental one with her kid, which is kind of unavoidable right now — and, with a chunk of luck, might wind up being good for her. It sucks to do the single-parent thing when you can’t trade-off emotional duties with someone else, but if she can’t learn how to do the hard things and stand up for herself for whatever reason*… She can probably do it for Amanda?
Heck, she is doing it for Amanda. She’s trying hard as heck to be fair to Todd about things (though good for Amanda, frankly, standing up for Andi!), and while she’s putting in limits… I dunno, would she have a snarling fit if Amanda needed to be protected? I sure hope so. She already stood up to her Ma about it, and that’s a start.
(* I re-read the Aquarium sequence, and Andi explicitly says her Ma was badgering her to give the kid up for adoption. Which means she was stuck between Todd’s fantasy-family-glee, and her Ma’s “give up the kid even though it will trash your relationship.” So really, Andi had no path that gave her a lot of personal agency there, and didn’t have the ability (for whatever reason) to stand up and yell that she had a problem with all this. …heck, I just realized. The lie was, in its amazingly dysfunctional way, Andi’s attempt to make everyone “happy” (i.e., not angry with her) and protect what she had before. …that is one heck of a bleak place to be, where a horrible lie is the only “agency” you can come up with. 🙁 )
I don’t think they’re required to like Andi. What she did was pretty unforgivable. As long as they’re civil with her, that’s all that’s required. Divorced parents do the same thing all they time. They work together to co-parent, but other than that, they lead their own lives.
If Andi decides to try and cut Todd out of Amanda’s life just because his family isn’t as completely forgiving of her as she’d like them to be, the chances are it’s going to become a long, ugly, custody battle. Todd already lost his daughter once. I don’t think he’s going to let Andi take her away from him again.
is the Andi/Amanda conversation happening the next day?
because if this is still the same day… it should be pitch-black outside the car windows. combined with Andi’s wording in the second panel implies that this IS the next day, since she says “that whole night” as if it were last night… if it were the same day and they are driving home from Todd’s place, then it would make more sense for it to read: “… that THE whole night…” thus bringing it back to the present tense… as for the Todd/Selkie side of the panels, it seems to still be the same day because the grand parents ARE still there… unless they stayed overnight?? but then it wouldn’t make much sense to discipline Selkie the day AFTER stuff happened. the whole “strike while the iron is hot” kind of thinking, if it goes too long between action and re-action, then the lesson might be wasted…
as for Todd talking to Selkie in private versus while Amanda was still in the house, that is a very good train of thought. when i was in the Navy, that’s one of the things they teach when you get to be a an NCO, “Praise in Public… Punish in Private”
Uhh… yeah I think the car windows are just going to have to be copped too as a mistake. 😡 It definitely is the same evening. Andi and Amanda are on the way home from the dinner night.
The remark, you can’t pick your family, really irks me. First of all, aren’t we all closely related in one form or another? Why doesn’t this apply to the entire population?
The second issue is, if you can’t choose your family, you sure as hell can ignore them. Bad behavior from family should never be tolerated for the sake of family peace.
Amanda is a bully and a bitch. She has a lot to make up for. And frankly Selkie looked like ahe behaved a hundred times better then Amanda.
Todd’s a dick for shoutint at Selkie about her behavior.
Shouting? He said, “But you do need to do better about behaving, sweety.” That sounds pretty gentle to me, considering that at one point Selkie lunged at Amanda with bared carnivore teeth! Granted, there was provocation for that, but throughout the evening Selkie was being pretty snarky. She was in her home territory. She felt secure enough that she pushed her luck, right up to the limit she thought she could get away with. Todd’s letting her know that he saw this, and she’s going to have to do better.
Not for the sake of some surface plastering-over of peace. Amanda can only be called a bully and a bitch by people who don’t care about her. To Todd, Amanda is a wounded little girl who is now his daughter too. He does care about her. He wants to help her. So he doesn’t want Selkie, his other daughter, to be constantly prodding and taunting her sister. Selkie feels safe at home, and knows she is loved. That means Todd expects more of her. You can’t fault him for making it clear he expects Selkie to at least be civil to Amanda.
Is it fair that he’s asking this of Selkie right now, and not of Amanda? Of course it is — he’s talking to Selkie.
Now, mind you, these girls are eight years old, and they’ve hated each other for years. I don’t expect Todd’s admonishments to work!
To Todd, Amanda is a wounded little girl who is now his daughter too.
She is. But that doesn’t change the fact that she is a bully that’s been tormenting his adopted daughter for years.
The one does not neutralize or invalidate the other.
I really like how we have these transitions between Andi/Amanda and Selkie/Todd. I really get the sense the parents want the same thing and—while the girls started off hating each other and currently aren’t pleased—they will all become very close (even with their parents taking different directions with their own lives).