oh andi….nothing like saying ‘i´ll be back in a mo’ to make the kid with *serious* abandonment issues follow you. and overhearing that her *other* grandma wants nothing to do with her is bound to ruin her happy ‘i´ve got a family, yeah!’ moment for good.
On the plus side, if Todd´s family catch wind of Patricia´s part in this, they might end up more sympathetic towards Andi. Not “let´s be a happy family again” sympathetic, but “let´s be civil around each other so Amanda can have the best childhood we can give her”.
Todd already knows some of what’s going on with Patricia. His reaction to Amanda revealing that she hadn’t met Andi’s mother indicated he expected Patricia to be involved now. That revelation got Todd out of Angry and into Listen. At a guess, Todd knows more about just what Patricia had to do with all of this than we’ve seen Andi tell him, if only because it makes sense for him to know where Andi’s family is in all of this and showing her give details would be rehashing what we’ve already seen.
Andi’s handling this better than I’d imagined she would. Leave Amanda with someone she’s having fun with, in a place where at least SOME support is present if things go south. Not knowing just how much of the details Todd’s family knows, they’ve probably put a few things together regarding Patricia’s absence from everything.
You’ve got bad mobile ad problems, Dave. It took me five tries to get to this page without my session being hijacked and my phone buzzing uncontrollably until I killed Chrome.
idk, I just think it’d be kinda neat to see how a human deals with tragedy of that degree. Like, a first-hand look at a human’s life being utterly destroyed.
Amanda’s already an angry kid with emotional problems. She’s doing a bit better now than she has in the past, but undoing all of that positive life change so abruptly and so soon would probably cause a double-down on the urge to hurt people.
So I’d say the first likely outcome of Andi pulling a “going down to the corner store” move would be Amanda punching things until she breaks a hand.
Slightly tangentially… the author Bujold says she works by a “what’s the worst thing that can happen to this character?” method of plotting. However, there’s one unspoken addition to that: “the worst thing that can happen that will not break the character.” Because a broken character is… actually not that interesting to read about, generally. Break a character the wrong way and you break the story.
Well, how about this?:
Set various devices and people to record every aspect of your life, in every way. Then, pay some very helpful people to satisfy your curiosity, using your OWN life, in and creative way those people care to come up with (make sure it takes time, though, since you’ll want to watch!) Then you can have another (prearranged) helpful person gather all of the data and info for you. Then, you can have both your “first hand look” AND a “first hand account” of a life being utterly destroyed. Bonus! Lucky you! Enjoy.
🙂
There are many possibilities that could come from this. Can’t help but wonder if it’s not Amanda who overhears Patricia saying she washed her hands of the whole thing, but rather Todd. It might give him a push to see what’s on Andi’s mind, maybe even give her the chance to finally say that she was scared through the whole pregnancy. It won’t ever excuse the lie and the urn full of cedar ash, but I think Todd and Andi will both come out of that conversation a bit more understanding and better able to move on.
I would like to see this. If nothing else, Todd is good at both being angry and – thanks to his parents and time and therapy – channeling that anger. Creatively, even! I would like to see how he would handle being angry on Andi’s behalf (especially since I’m sure his first reaction would be to not WANT to be angry on her behalf).
How is she going to excuse herself from being ridden around on Uncle’s shoulders, to follow and overhear? My bet is she’ll say she needs to use the bathroom, because
1) that’s a natural for any kid. She already tried it on Andi when she was nervous about meeting her Dad’s family for the first time; and
2) it would be such an elegant parallel with Selkie’s spying at the De’Madiea home.
You know, maybe Patricia is missing her daughter on Christmas Day. Maybe she’s regretting her fearful ‘no, I don’t want to meet my granddaughter’ reaction. Maybe she’s not evil, or abusive, or vengeful. Maybe she’s a flawed person who made mistakes and isn’t strong enough to take the emotional hit of admitting she was wrong and making the first overtures to fixing those mistakes.
Every single character in this comic who has been ‘evil’ or ‘mean’ at first view in this comic has turned out to have reasons behind their actions. We might not agree with the reasons, but there’s always been an internal logic that makes them understandable and even sympathetic, whether we as readers like their choices or not.
Maybe Andi’s mother isn’t a cardboard cutout of Mean Mommy any more than Andi is just Evil Ex-Girlfriend or Agent Whassisname is Terrifying Government Agent or Truck is Oversized Bully.
How wise you are. It is one of the hallmarks of Dave’s Comic, that good is relatives, bad is relatives, and perspective and compassion means condemning Someone is premature… First gather All the facts, and then withhold judgment until your opinion is Proven.
I do think you are right. That’s exactly what’s kept me coming back to this comic: the characters and their relationships. They are all such real, three-dimensional people, every time. And there’s at least the illusion that even the ones we don’t get to find out about are like that, too.
Ya know, you can be a flawed human being and still be abusive. We don’t like to say it, but really, most abusers are not evil people. They’re … people. They make mistakes and have good points.
That doesn’t make their abuse any less painful for the people who experience it. If anything, it makes it worse. If someone is always awful, it’s usually pretty easy to figure it out. But if they’re loving sometimes, if they brush your hair and play with you and make your favorite meal on your birthday, it can be damned hard to say “this person abused me” when they also gaslight you, hit you with the hairbrush, and burn your toys in a fit of rage.
All this to say that Patricia may not be evil or vengeful, but she can still be abusive. Being regretful and being abusive are NOT mutually exclusive. Being a fully realized person with good and bad points, and being an abuser, are NOT mutually exclusive. And from what we’ve seen so far, Patricia was (and remains) emotionally abusive of Andi. Maybe we’ll see something to change that perspective. Maybe we won’t. But right now, that’s what it looks like.
So many people counter accusations of abuse with examples of the abuser being a good person. Well, yeah — abusers can do all sorts of things when they aren’t abusing. And even cutting out the most manipulative sociopaths (who often have high charisma and the ability to charm their way out of suspicions), there’s a lot of people who abuse in private but are good in public, or who are generally good but have some abusive moments (more than once or twice — an infrequent pattern), or whose abuse is difficult to spot because it doesn’t seem like abuse, or who honestly don’t see abuse when they stop to analyze their actions and figure out why people are mad at them (or scared of them).
A quite common pattern in abuse is the cycle of abuse, regret, make up, do nice things for a while, fall back into abuse. The nice things can be REALLY nice, like nice enough to keep the victim from wanting to leave, even if they’ve seen this cycle before. You can’t analyze a person from one small part of their behavior.
The expression on her face, and the way she hesitates/emphasises there, makes me think she’s surprised she actually likes having an uncle.
Makes me wonder what the extended family was like at the Sanderson’s… we don’t know a whole lot about her time there, and from what Heather said it seemed like her foster siblings were the main source of her misery, but we’ve yet to learn anything concrete about what exactly happened to her. This is only the most recent thing that makes me seriously wonder about the adults’ roles in her abuse.
There might not have been much extended family at the Sanderson’s — I and my spouse, for instance, are only children, and of my parents, one was an only child, and the other… well, for various reasons, we were estranged from his sister. (Some valid, some Gods Know.)
If the Sandersons were generally terrible people, or terrible enough to those they weren’t doting on… They might’ve been estranged from all other family. And/or badmouthed other family to their kids.
Please no screaming match between Patricia and Andi. :/ Especially if Amanda is probably going to be listening.
I mean,I hope she just doesn’t call. Cuz obviously. It probably won’t go well. Let’s just hope that Amanda doesn’t listen in.
oh andi….nothing like saying ‘i´ll be back in a mo’ to make the kid with *serious* abandonment issues follow you. and overhearing that her *other* grandma wants nothing to do with her is bound to ruin her happy ‘i´ve got a family, yeah!’ moment for good.
I believe you’re right about this. I don’t hold out much hope for Patricia being a better person than we’ve seen her to be.
Even moreso as Andi abandoned her at the museum, so I predict Amanda will follow Andi and learn the truth about her “other” grandma…
It was the aquarium. Andi got a little,terrified of seeing Todd.
On the plus side, if Todd´s family catch wind of Patricia´s part in this, they might end up more sympathetic towards Andi. Not “let´s be a happy family again” sympathetic, but “let´s be civil around each other so Amanda can have the best childhood we can give her”.
Todd already knows some of what’s going on with Patricia. His reaction to Amanda revealing that she hadn’t met Andi’s mother indicated he expected Patricia to be involved now. That revelation got Todd out of Angry and into Listen. At a guess, Todd knows more about just what Patricia had to do with all of this than we’ve seen Andi tell him, if only because it makes sense for him to know where Andi’s family is in all of this and showing her give details would be rehashing what we’ve already seen.
Andi’s handling this better than I’d imagined she would. Leave Amanda with someone she’s having fun with, in a place where at least SOME support is present if things go south. Not knowing just how much of the details Todd’s family knows, they’ve probably put a few things together regarding Patricia’s absence from everything.
…Amanda, don’t follow Mom.
This is why I said she needed to Solid Snake. Stealth should have been the way to go.
You’ve got bad mobile ad problems, Dave. It took me five tries to get to this page without my session being hijacked and my phone buzzing uncontrollably until I killed Chrome.
weird… I don’t have those issues. Maybe it is Chrome?
I’ve started to just turn off javascript for chrome to stop browser hijacking… but it does sound like chrome is having bad problems.
Andi going out for a smoke, apparently. I hope she never returns – I’d love to see the effect it would have on Amanda.
._.
Way to live up to your title, I guess?
idk, I just think it’d be kinda neat to see how a human deals with tragedy of that degree. Like, a first-hand look at a human’s life being utterly destroyed.
Amanda’s already an angry kid with emotional problems. She’s doing a bit better now than she has in the past, but undoing all of that positive life change so abruptly and so soon would probably cause a double-down on the urge to hurt people.
So I’d say the first likely outcome of Andi pulling a “going down to the corner store” move would be Amanda punching things until she breaks a hand.
ONE hand? I personally would expect to see her with both hands in casts. And maybe a foot, given her temper.
Lol, pls make this.
Slightly tangentially… the author Bujold says she works by a “what’s the worst thing that can happen to this character?” method of plotting. However, there’s one unspoken addition to that: “the worst thing that can happen that will not break the character.” Because a broken character is… actually not that interesting to read about, generally. Break a character the wrong way and you break the story.
So let’s not, plzkthx.
Well, how about this?:
Set various devices and people to record every aspect of your life, in every way. Then, pay some very helpful people to satisfy your curiosity, using your OWN life, in and creative way those people care to come up with (make sure it takes time, though, since you’ll want to watch!) Then you can have another (prearranged) helpful person gather all of the data and info for you. Then, you can have both your “first hand look” AND a “first hand account” of a life being utterly destroyed. Bonus! Lucky you! Enjoy.
🙂
What does social media have to do anything here Keep on keepin’ on? 😛
I kid I kid. Mainly because this branch of discussion can take a very depressing turn and I wouldn’t want to see the fury that can develop.
There are many possibilities that could come from this. Can’t help but wonder if it’s not Amanda who overhears Patricia saying she washed her hands of the whole thing, but rather Todd. It might give him a push to see what’s on Andi’s mind, maybe even give her the chance to finally say that she was scared through the whole pregnancy. It won’t ever excuse the lie and the urn full of cedar ash, but I think Todd and Andi will both come out of that conversation a bit more understanding and better able to move on.
I would like to see this. If nothing else, Todd is good at both being angry and – thanks to his parents and time and therapy – channeling that anger. Creatively, even! I would like to see how he would handle being angry on Andi’s behalf (especially since I’m sure his first reaction would be to not WANT to be angry on her behalf).
My first thought: Amanda immediately assumes she’s being left here, possibly because her mom thinks she likes the new relatives better than her mom.
Subsequent thought: Wasn’t “be good” on of the last things Selkie’s mom said to her? (Amanda wouldn’t know that, I just made a mental connection.)
How is she going to excuse herself from being ridden around on Uncle’s shoulders, to follow and overhear? My bet is she’ll say she needs to use the bathroom, because
1) that’s a natural for any kid. She already tried it on Andi when she was nervous about meeting her Dad’s family for the first time; and
2) it would be such an elegant parallel with Selkie’s spying at the De’Madiea home.
You know, maybe Patricia is missing her daughter on Christmas Day. Maybe she’s regretting her fearful ‘no, I don’t want to meet my granddaughter’ reaction. Maybe she’s not evil, or abusive, or vengeful. Maybe she’s a flawed person who made mistakes and isn’t strong enough to take the emotional hit of admitting she was wrong and making the first overtures to fixing those mistakes.
Every single character in this comic who has been ‘evil’ or ‘mean’ at first view in this comic has turned out to have reasons behind their actions. We might not agree with the reasons, but there’s always been an internal logic that makes them understandable and even sympathetic, whether we as readers like their choices or not.
Maybe Andi’s mother isn’t a cardboard cutout of Mean Mommy any more than Andi is just Evil Ex-Girlfriend or Agent Whassisname is Terrifying Government Agent or Truck is Oversized Bully.
Just putting the option out there.
How wise you are. It is one of the hallmarks of Dave’s Comic, that good is relatives, bad is relatives, and perspective and compassion means condemning Someone is premature… First gather All the facts, and then withhold judgment until your opinion is Proven.
I do think you are right. That’s exactly what’s kept me coming back to this comic: the characters and their relationships. They are all such real, three-dimensional people, every time. And there’s at least the illusion that even the ones we don’t get to find out about are like that, too.
Ya know, you can be a flawed human being and still be abusive. We don’t like to say it, but really, most abusers are not evil people. They’re … people. They make mistakes and have good points.
That doesn’t make their abuse any less painful for the people who experience it. If anything, it makes it worse. If someone is always awful, it’s usually pretty easy to figure it out. But if they’re loving sometimes, if they brush your hair and play with you and make your favorite meal on your birthday, it can be damned hard to say “this person abused me” when they also gaslight you, hit you with the hairbrush, and burn your toys in a fit of rage.
All this to say that Patricia may not be evil or vengeful, but she can still be abusive. Being regretful and being abusive are NOT mutually exclusive. Being a fully realized person with good and bad points, and being an abuser, are NOT mutually exclusive. And from what we’ve seen so far, Patricia was (and remains) emotionally abusive of Andi. Maybe we’ll see something to change that perspective. Maybe we won’t. But right now, that’s what it looks like.
So many people counter accusations of abuse with examples of the abuser being a good person. Well, yeah — abusers can do all sorts of things when they aren’t abusing. And even cutting out the most manipulative sociopaths (who often have high charisma and the ability to charm their way out of suspicions), there’s a lot of people who abuse in private but are good in public, or who are generally good but have some abusive moments (more than once or twice — an infrequent pattern), or whose abuse is difficult to spot because it doesn’t seem like abuse, or who honestly don’t see abuse when they stop to analyze their actions and figure out why people are mad at them (or scared of them).
A quite common pattern in abuse is the cycle of abuse, regret, make up, do nice things for a while, fall back into abuse. The nice things can be REALLY nice, like nice enough to keep the victim from wanting to leave, even if they’ve seen this cycle before. You can’t analyze a person from one small part of their behavior.
Why do I get the feeling that Andi is about to remove herself from the equation?
The expression on her face, and the way she hesitates/emphasises there, makes me think she’s surprised she actually likes having an uncle.
Makes me wonder what the extended family was like at the Sanderson’s… we don’t know a whole lot about her time there, and from what Heather said it seemed like her foster siblings were the main source of her misery, but we’ve yet to learn anything concrete about what exactly happened to her. This is only the most recent thing that makes me seriously wonder about the adults’ roles in her abuse.
There might not have been much extended family at the Sanderson’s — I and my spouse, for instance, are only children, and of my parents, one was an only child, and the other… well, for various reasons, we were estranged from his sister. (Some valid, some Gods Know.)
If the Sandersons were generally terrible people, or terrible enough to those they weren’t doting on… They might’ve been estranged from all other family. And/or badmouthed other family to their kids.