Leave Pohl alone, and he’s like a kid in a chocolate factory
Process Drawing VOD available on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1085980194
↓ Transcript
[SELKIE rushes out of the living room giving the door to her bedroom a SLAM]
TODD: Amanda. Laughing was NOT appropriate.
AMANDA: I didn't mean it! I'm sorry!
TODD: I'm not the one you need to say that too. Stay here, while I talk to your sister.
SFX: [clink!]
[POHL is staring mutely at the viewer while holding a bowl of ice cream and looking mildly guilty]
POHL: Everyone seemed to have kind of temporarily forgotten I was here, so... I stole ice cream. As one does.
TODD: Amanda. Laughing was NOT appropriate.
AMANDA: I didn't mean it! I'm sorry!
TODD: I'm not the one you need to say that too. Stay here, while I talk to your sister.
SFX: [clink!]
[POHL is staring mutely at the viewer while holding a bowl of ice cream and looking mildly guilty]
POHL: Everyone seemed to have kind of temporarily forgotten I was here, so... I stole ice cream. As one does.
The ice cream makes you turn frigid cold as tiny men sing an ice-themed song at you
“Everyone suddenly notices someone stealing food from the kitchen” is one of my favorite tropes. And I hope that’s Selkie’s organic sugar-free unflavored stuff š
“As one does.”
Perfect.
I mean he says it like Todd was going to tell him no or something.
I absolutely love Pohl. š
I hope this gives Amanda some time to talk to Pohl about her … situation. And other things, perhaps. He seems like he’d be a sympathetic and understanding listener.
Doesnāt he hate sugar?
Itās probably the unsweetened ice cream Selkie likes.
Lots of obligate carnivores are okay with sugar, but possibly only because they don’t have the receptors for it. But as the other reply says, it could be unsweetened.
I plan to work this in to the next strip somewhere but just in case I either forget or have to cut the dialogue for space: the ice cream Pohl is eating is an unsugared all natural variety. By “unsugared” I mean no sugar or sweeteners were used in the process. Just cold cream, natural flavoring (some vanilla and rosemary) and copious whipping.
The rosemary and vanilla are edible by sarnothi in small doses much like the herbal and chai teas are.
I kinda hope this page leads folks in the comment section to lighten up on Amanda a bit. She’s genuinely distraught here that she hurt Selkie again.
Folks, she’s like 9, and an abuse survivor at that. She’s not gonna react appropriately to things. There will be missteps. Give the character time to grow. Recall this comic goes in super slow motion and I don’t think that it’s been more than a year and a half canonically since it began.
We all bring our own perspectives to the comic as we read it and a portion of the commentariat clearly had bad experiences with bullies in the past, so I can see where they’re coming from with the Amanda dislike even if I don’t necessarily agree with every bit of it.
Amanda isn’t as bad as Truck but it seems clear to me that she does need to do some work on learning to empathize with others. I feel like she could easily fall into a cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy given all the, ‘Oh yeah, I’m a bad kid’ and ‘I knew you’d stop liking me eventually’. After all, why bother if you think that people will always be expecting you to be terrible? But she also has to learn that what her therapist said is true – even if you do better, even if you apologize, you might not always be forgiven. It’s a hard lesson to learn, but an important one.
Both characters have their issues with each other but when it comes down to it, Amanda’s going to have to do the lion’s share of the work if she wants to actually have a good, sisterly relationship with Selkie.
I wish I could upvote this.
I’ve also had bad experiences with bullies as a teenager and I’d cut Amanda a lot of slack.
I feel like, when it comes to childhood bullying, the ones with a real, heavy responsibility aren’t the actual perpetrators, but the parents of the bullies who let their kids do whatever, the bullies’ own abusers who are causing this behavior (in Amanda’s case, her ex step-parents), and the uncaring teachers who don’t take any sort of action.
Kids make mistakes. They’re kids. It’s the job of the grown-ups to help them stop making these mistakes.
In Amanda’s case, her mum and dad are taking all the right steps, so I’m not particularly worried for her.
“and I donāt think that itās been more than a year and a half canonically since it began”
Actually, it’s been less than a year. Todd adopted her in the summer. July, possibly August. Put a rush on that custom shoe order, so she would have shoes that fit when she started school that year. It is now sometime in the early spring. People are not going around dressed in heavy winter garments, so I’m thinking late March, possibly early April. Selkie’s birthday is in May (we saw that way way back when Todd showed her citizenship papers to Grandma and Grandpa https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie101/), so it can’t be May 24th yet because there hasn’t been a party.
May 24 is my birthday as well! That makes 2 fictional webcomic chars I share a birthday with (the other being Hiate by Sam Boyd, better known for his Lonely Hooves comic.)
I’m sorry, Hiate was from HamstahPowah by Sam Boyd.
Looking at it like that, it’s quite admirable that Amanda has managed to make as much progress in growing as a person as she has in about nine months, particularly considering her age. She’s still got a long way to go, but many people take years to get even that far, even adults.
I’ll admit I get some catharsis out of watching Amanda twitch. There’s nothing I like more in stories than karma for people who are mundanely jerkish. I like villains. I don’t like bullies.
I want to make two points:
1. If Amanda were a real person I would definitely react differently. Although we all engage in a little suspension of disbelief/intentional self delusion when reading fiction and thinking about the characters as if they were real, in the end they are not. If I hate a character Iām not going to hurt their feelings, they donāt have any after all, so I feel a lot more freedom to have strong opinions than I would about a real person.
2. Setting all of the above aside, feeling bad is better than not feeling bad of course, but it doesnāt matter if you keep being intentionally cruel in the first place. Amanda didnāt just react in an in appropriate way, she persisted in doing so even when Todd told her she was out of line. That makes it much worse in my book. She had the opportunity to correct her so, to stop, but didnāt. If cutting Amanda some slack comes at the expense of Selkie, her victim, thatās a deal breaker for me.
I feel very weird about Todd’s timing. Selkie has had problems with Amanda… the whole strip. Real problems, that should be addressed by the whole family.
But to choose this specific night after Amanda was in horrible pain (and where the triggering incident for Selkie is jealousy about something that is absolutely not Amanda’s fault), to have this be the night for having Selkie talk to Amanda about all her anger over past deeds… it seems really unkind. I’m not surprised that Selkie would feel like having it all out (she’s 8, and upset), but I’m surprised Todd didn’t shut it down.
(And, of course, Amanda shouldn’t be laughing about her sister’s nightmares. But I don’t think she really has the emotional stamina right now to respond in a useful way.)
What strikes me as better would be if Todd could validate Selkie’s feelings PRIVATELY, in one-on-one conversation, and then should schedule family counseling or something for a time where Amanda hasn’t just been puking with horrible uncontrollable headaches.
…Not that I require fictional characters to always make wise choices. š
I feel that, but I also don’t think this conversation went where Todd was expecting. Like, when he wanted to sit down and talk about it, I don’t think he meant the years of bullying, just the immediate situation. It makes sense that the emotions are linked, though. Even before the fallout here, I was thinking it’d be better to have some one-on-ones first.
Man, if I had a quarter for every time a conversation with one or both of my kids went *completely* off the rails… well, that would be a lotta quarters.
Remember, folks, even normal, well-adjusted human kids don’t come with manuals, and Todd is parenting not only an abused, messed-up kid, but a war orphan who just happens to be a completely different SPECIES that isn’t integrated into our culture at all (‘cept for Pohl, he’s cool.)
Shit’s gonna happen, and Todd is the one who has to keep all the fragile glass balls in the air. He’s doing pretty well, considering.
Yeah, my only quibble is that I kinda feel like this is a conversation that should have happened/been attempted earlier but should also have been preceded by some additional one-on-one therapy for Amanda as well as one-on-one therapy for Selkie.
On the other hand, poor Todd’s having to fly by the seat of his pants in a lot of ways and after some initial bumps it *seems* like the girls have been getting on okay together. Not super friendly of course but not knock-down, drag-out fights either. Maybe he was just enjoying the calm and praying that nothing major came up to rock the boat for a bit.
And of course in the grand scheme of things I don’t even think it’s been a full calendar year in-comic since we started. Selkie got adopted right before school started in the fall and I think right now we’re maybe in, like, February or March? Christmas is over but everyone’s still in their cold-weather gear and there’s not been any mention of the school year coming to a close yet. That’s a lot of stuff happening in the lives of these characters during the span of 6-8 months!
Except the conversation that happened and the topic it revolves around wasnāt what Todd was intending to address, he was trying to address the more immediate situation of Amandaās sudden power burst. Yes itās not necessarily surprising that the deeper issues came out, but also I think we need to cut Todd some slack, heās handling the situation pretty well for someone who just watched his human daughters eyes suddenly burst into glowing green flame and then deal with her being violently ill due to the after effects. Thatās not exactly normal parenting level stuff.
I agree entirely. This was a conversation to be had long ago, not when Amanda just went through a nauseating and scary experience she was then blamed for and yelled at. This seems very unkind and unfair to Amanda who not only had a horrible and painful experience just now, she also hates herself for her past and is trying to do better. Todd is just letting Amanda continue to hurt and be beat up on and while heās validating Selkieāa feelings, heās not validating any of Amandaās, heās just letting her beat herself up and Selkie vent at her and thatās just not ok in this situation. Amanda FELT like her therapist said that no one would ever forgive her and Todd came at her in a really condescending way in my opinion and basically invalidated those feelings. Heās not doing well right now and I wish Andi was here to help.
I also donāt think Amanda meant to be hurtful about the pony thing. She didnāt understand what happened in the dream and had a gut reaction to the statement. It wasnāt the right gut reaction and for sure she needed to be told that wasnāt the appropriate reaction to have, but where is Selkieās reprimand for calling Amanda an awful thief who purposely took something from Selkie that Amanda CANNOT PHYSICALLY TAKE in the first place? Come on Todd. Do better.
The problem there is these sorts of issues can’t really be worked out in a single conversation. I would honestly not be surprised if they HAVE been talking about this sort of thing. Ideally it’s something you’d help both children work through at a measured pace, with many different discussions across a span of time. But this is very much the sort of thing that requires consistent conversations and work for everyone, rather than something you can just talk over once.
Unfortunately unpredictable events just brought things to a head and now everyone’s having to confront this all at once without any chance to clear enough time and space to process everyone’s feelings very well.
I wonder if icecream is ok for Sarnothi in large amounts, given that they are cold blooded. Surely all that sugar is poison for a consumate carnivore?
Carnivores and their prey have glucose in the blood stream. Sugar can’t be poison, although very large amounts amounts might overwhelm body regulatory systems. (So does water.)
Frozen food is more likely to be a problem for cold-blooded creatures. They do generate some bodily heat from muscle action, so icecream would melt eventually, but it might plug up the digestive tract temporarily, or or could stomach lining that was in contact with the icecream for too long get frostbitten?
As someone with lactose intolerance I can assure you sugars can have a negative effect on ones body, even if not technically a poison.
Sometimes, you just gotta seize the opportunity.
When ice cream is involved, “sometimes” rapidly approaches “every time”.
As one does.
What do you want to bet Todd steps into the kitchen, sees Pohl, and says “I’ll have what you’re having.”
He is seriously having A DAY here.
I genuinely believe Amanda did NOT intend to laugh. Poor rapscallion has been through the ringer and isn’t the most.. put-together kid mentally speaking even on her better days. Todd is managing damage control with Selkie, but this is a good opportunity for Selkie to learn that sometimes we humans DO NOT react the way we want all the time. I’ve been in life-threatening situations more than once, and when the “appropriate” responses would have been to run, I just.. stood there. Every fiber in my body wanted to run but, like a deer in the headlights, I numbly stood still.
Likewise, “inappropriate laughter” is a very common stress-response in a lot of people. And as much as I tend to dislike Amanda, I’m not gonna harsh on the poor kid for being at the mercy of her trauma-altered brainpan.
Was laughing the “correct” response? No. Is it understandable as an adult? To me, yes. Will Todd eventually (if not already) realize Amanda had no control over laughing? I hope so.
Will Selkie care? Prrrrrrobably not at first, if at all.. for the next several years, anyway..
Did she intend to laugh? No perhaps not. Did she double down on her laughter when Todd tried to correct her? Yes, yes she did. Thatās where it crosses from unintentional (but still hurtful) to intentional.
I don’t think that makes it intentional. She had not stopped laughing when Todd tried to correct her. If it was a surprised/stress-response, that just means it was still on-going.
For Aria’s example, if someone was frozen in place in response to a situation where they “should” run, and someone else shouts, “Run!” at them, and they continue to be frozen in place, that doesn’t mean they’re not intentionally just standing there.
Apologies should happen when Selkie’s a bit more calm. Right now would just result in a screaming match. DX At least Amanda recognized she should apologize and it wasn’t entirely on purpose.
I freaking love Pohl.
It’s not every day I literally laugh out loud at a comic, but this made the cut! XD
Btw, out of curiosity, 2 questions for Dave:
1) How much planning ahead do you do for Selkie? Like, are you writing by the seat of your pants, or is the script for the last ever strip in a safe somewhere?
2) When do we get the heads of Amanda’s foster “family” on sharp pikes? š
Ty!
Thot for the Day: sometimes when Pohl is around, stuff Miraculously āhappensā to start make everything better. Not allllll of it at once, not just āsuddenly a miracle happened.ā But he is present and the good starts to push the bad to the side. Not in a flash, not āand everybody smiled,ā and not in a trite wayā¦.but just because Pohl was there – that is āWhenā things started to get better.
I donāt know the name of the trope, but heās the guy who is the OPPOSITE of that guy with the permanent raincloud over his head.
Pohl is not trope like and static, just something about himā¦..
Question: was “thot” an intentional misspelling, and, if so, do you know the meaning of the term? Just not a word I expected popping up in this comment section. XD
I really appreciate that Todd prioritized checking on Selkie (the victim) before addressing Amandaās (once again) problematic behavior.
Everybody wondering about sugar and stuff in the ice cream and I’m just over here like, “Are Sarnothi good with food that cold?”