Actually this is better than if the teachers had just found her being pelted with snowballs. Since they’d know about the stolen shirt, finding another student manhandling Selkie is very much not good.
A kid once picked me up to tell me that I was wrong and to enforce his opinion on me.
I specifically remember the teacher only stopping me once I broke his jaw and downed him… I’m not proud of what I did, per se, but the teacher said he’d have done it himself if able, and my dad was happy he wouldn’t have to worry about me getting into fights if I was strong enough to win them…
I love it when the teacher supports self defense, instead of expecting students to run to them so said teacher can play the big hero. One of the middle schools I went to actually had the temerity to state, in the student handbook, that, “A child’s self-defense is to tell an adult.”.
I had an even more bizarre experience. When I told teachers I was being bullied, I’d get in trouble for “tattling” and be told to “solve my own problems”. When I got into fights (the only other solution I could think of), I’d get in trouble for fighting, but the bully would typically get off Scott free.
I dealt with a similar situation my elementary school too. Instigators were rarely punished; retaliators (either by fighting or tattling) were severely punished. The idea seemed to be that the victims were “asking for” what they got and the bullies “couldn’t help themselves”.
Yeah I used to believe that too when I was a kid. It wasn’t until years later, at a school reunion, that I learned that in my situation at least the bully had actually been taken to the principal’s office for “a talk.” Apparently the teachers knew that dealing with a bully takes more time and effort than they could administer on the spot so they had a policy of passing him up the foodchain. We victims just never saw that part.
That’s better than what happened to me in grade school. I got beat up in gym class by a girl that was twice my height and weight while the teacher stood by watching till another teacher came to investigate the noise. Only then did the gym teacher step in to say that we shouldn’t be fighting.
He was witness to the bullying and not only didn’t care enough to stop it but by his inaction only encouraged it. The girl that beat me up was pissed off because another kid pushed me into her, it didn’t matter that I didn’t push her on purpose.
She got pushed and I was the one that did it in her mind, so I was the one to pay.
I went through that a bit too. We had a girl that was picking on one of my friends (who was a guy). Kicked him and the like, and we couldn’t get her to stop. The teachers only had us do “student mediated” discussions and told us to fix it ourselves for years. Finally they had a big conversation and heard all about what this girl was doing (including telling lies about me to her mom). So often nowadays teachers do nothing about bullying and tell students to just live with it, ignore it, or forget about it.
Of course, our district also had a junior high student threaten to kill the bus driver just as we were leaving school (with over a half hour drive to our town), and the district told her to bring him home anyway and didn’t care. That was the junior high and 6th grade bus, as they thought that having 6th graders (we were the first 6th grade only class) with high schoolers would be bad. What they didn’t realize was that a lot of us had older siblings in high school that took offense to junior high students picking on us. That and it made extra long bus routes since they had two buses covering the same (and more) area. It was a stupid idea all around.
I generally think that authoritarianism is a very poor method of child-rearing, but the kid did learn that his size did not make him invulnerable, and he wound up defending me in later fights in exchange for tutelage in mathematics.
He sent me an e-mail a couple years ago thanking me, telling me I was one of the first people to care at all. Kinda disturbing. I guess being the hero of the story is neat, but I can’t help but feel bad for the guy. His parents must’ve been bridge trolls…
Had a non-quite-as-badass, but similar experience. In middle school there was this girl who picked on me endlessly, for no apparent reason. I managed to say away from her for the most part, but one say in gym she managed to get behind me and trip me. Enraged, I sprinted after her and tackled her. The teacher called us both over, and proceeded to lambast the other girl, informing her that if she ever came near me again she’d be suspended. I never did figure out why she was dumb enough to think pulling this in an indoor gym with teachers watching was a good idea.
I firmly believe that if there is a hell, you just get sent back to relive middle school over and over. I remember almost nothing positive from the experience.
Although, I do remember this one girl in the 7th grade who constantly heckled me. We were two of three girls in the woodshop class, so I was easy pickings, since I was small and a nerd. She would follow me around and poke me and cry “Four eyes! Four eyes!” (Very creative, obviously). One day, I turned around and punched her straight in the nose, and she went down like a sack of potatoes. Trust me, she never called me “Four eyes” again.
Unfortunately this did teach me that violence was the way around my problems, but on the bright (?) side, the people I was involved with violently were not very bright.
I was thinking he might have a very bad reaction to certain noises. Then again, I have sensory issues, but I could see that coming up eventually in this comic.
Yeah, that is a tear in Truck’s eye. How did Truck become an orphan? I ask because he reminds me of a girl a knew when I worked in a shelter for “temporarily displaced youth”. It was technically a runaway shelter but DYFS would routinely bring us kids who were about to age out of the Foster Care system. She was seventeen and and seen a great deal of abuse/neglect, but was with us because her mother had killed her father(in front of her) and was in jail awaiting trail. She had no family willing to take her(“because girls are nothing but trouble”). She was a tall, strong, angry girl who was very quick to hit but She was in so much pain. She would do just about anything to avoid the appearance of weakness.
1.) This reminds me how much I hated being a kid…and and teen…and sometimes an adult. (stupid bullies)
2.) The 3rd It kinda looks like a 27 and in my headcannon he was loosing it lol.
Ok, sincerely, why is this ok? When I say ‘this’ I refer to the fact that Amanda is seemingly allowed to act racist as much as she wants, and nobody seems to care.
Yes, technically it’s not racism, it’s speciesism, but if I went around in school, calling all of the black kids ‘Monkey-face’, you can bet your ass the school wouldn’t take that shit lying down. They’d nip it in the bud faster than Selkie can start screeching.
theres a sad irony that schools tend to be alot more lenient when it comes to disabilities and deformities etc, i recall in my school experience, anything racial or ethnic was a 1 week suspension automatically but say you called someone with a missing limb “nubs”(no offense intended just an example) teachers just yelled like “hey!” as if you said the word “damn” in their class. since the school seams to see selkie as “deformed” rather than a different species, i honestly find this a very realistic situation. that or they just dont notice amanda saying it
True. I remember the reactions from when this girl in my class in my elementary school with a speech impediment got picked on. The adults usually wouldn’t intervene and the few times they did it was just a quick “knock it off” and then silence. One of the adults even encouraged the bullying a few times. Yet even slightly picking on the disabled boy in the wheelchair was usually met with someone going to detention. Different issues are treated very differently.
When I was in High school, I was bullied pretty bad. My stepbrother had gotten the **** kicked out of him by the star quarter back over a girl and my mom came down on the school for not suspending the aggressor. Their logic was ‘Well, he’s the star player, and it IS football season… hm… let’s take him off the team when football season is over.’ (Small school)
Mom came and screamed at the principal until they agreed to take him off RIGHT THEN. Then, my stepbrother transferred schools because of the bullying and they transferred it to me.
When mom found out, she came BACK to the school and screamed at the principal AGAIN for not stopping it, so he came down hard on my bullies, out of fear of my mother.
He got so scared of the idea of dealing with my mom again, he would literally jump in terror if he saw me so much as walk into the office.
Oh boy, I remember this happening to me in elementary school. The kid decided to pick me up and slam me against the wall because I stood up for myself and my cousin since he was picking on us both. He learned not to do that again after I headbutted him and broke his nose.
This does sadily bring back bad memories…I was horrible picked on, treated very much like Selkie, every day I was in school. I hated myself, my life and I attached whatever and whoever I could. I had one person, who back then was my ‘friend’ but now I realize was nothing but a horrible person. I can’t remember the exact situation/conversation going on, but I was being told to shut up and not speak by this ‘friend’. I refused to, actually speaking up for once for myself. She decided that me simply saying ‘no’ was enough of a reason to grab me by the neck, choke me and hold me slightly above the ground. I could not scream or cry for help, let alone breathe at the time, and none of the teachers cared about me. I was the freak, the outcast and the ‘bad kid’ because of problems I had I was unable to control or change at the time. They were me, and I was labeled and pushed asside for it. It took, at least it seemed, almost 5 or so minutes before someone, the gym teacher, to say something. Even then, he barely tried. She didn’t even get a timeout from my memory…
I am now 21, and memories such as those still haunt me. Luckily I have an amazing person that puts up with my issues I have gathered over these years of emotional and mental abuse. While I know Selkie is a character in a comic, I still hope that this, and whatever may happen next, will not haunt and scar her more than she already has been from all the teasing and taunting through her years of life. I know personally how horrible it is for a person, they be 6 or 60 it doesn’t matter. Being treated like that and hurt in such a way…it’s not something to take lightly or brush asside.
Sorry, I’m taking an online comic to seriously aren’t I? Just memories…
I think part of what makes Selkie such a wonderful comic is that it does address real life issues that many others skirt around. It can also help in looking at childhood traumas in a new light from a safe(r) distance through the lens of the comic itself.
I had issues with bullies as a child as well in elementary school- I’ve never been the most feminine of girls, into books and “smarter than a girl was supposed to be.” Females can be vicious in teasing the ones that don’t fit in. I also had a friend get bullied once by a rotten female in high school. I didn’t fight for myself, but wouldn’t let that female bad-mouth my friend or put her in tears. Apparently a really creative threat is scarier than just decking the little wench. But then having someone promise in a cool, matter-of-fact tone that she would rip every hair from your head and then leave you covered in bruises makes an impact. Even after I moved away that female never messed with any of my friends again.
Been there. Had to push down a petite meanass girl to get them to stop in middle school. I only shoved her as I ran into the bilding, because I was crying and I was an inch away from pounding the life out of her. Then her big friend Tuba came to confront me about ‘being mean ‘ to her. Tuba didn’t scare me then, nor does he now. I scared me though, and I am still kinda scared at just how very very angry I was.
This strip actually reminds me of what I call now to be one of my “moments of glory” in school. At least regarding when I was being bullied.
I had a friend I’d been fighting with for months when I was a sophomore. When I was a freshman, halfway through the year I’d began to wear what everybody called my “cat hat” even though it was a white fleece hat with Inuyasha ears on it (and he was a half-dog-demon with pointy ears, so I could understand the confusion) and would alternate between that and my Mokona (rabbit-eared) hat. The girl I knew had been my “best friend” ever since we were in kindergarten, and we’d had several falling outs since third grade and through most of middle school. But we’d known each other for so long, and shared classes together, and shared so much with each other that it was impossible for us to be kept apart or angry at each other for very long. So much that in 7th grade, I stood up to a bully who’d been bothering not only her, but me as well, and wound up with an in-school suspension as a result. I was rather proud of that, actually. I pushed him against the wall and kicked him in the groin several times.
It was in the first few months of our sophomore year, in which we again shared classes in, which we’d been happy about since we hadn’t shared classes since 8th grade, when she began to pester me about my new choices in headgear. She told me to stop wearing them and to grow up. Naturally, I didn’t. I was an outcast already, so I’d developed my own little nerdy sense of style simply because I’d liked it and thought my clothing choices were comfortable. Her pestering turned so bad that I dropped out of our girls counseling group for several months, and went to vent about her to my guidance counselor on a near daily basis. Naturally, I began to sit across the room from her in our classes, would hardly acknowledge her presence, and wouldn’t answer the phone if she called me.
And then in December that year, on a snow day that fell on my brother’s birthday, I woke up to text messages from a number I hadn’t saved as a contact. It was my “friend J, from girls group”. Eventually “she” asked me what I thought about the fight I was having with N and I told her frankly, “I’m sick of her trying to boss me around. She’s being so immature and needs to grow up!” to which “J” said, “No, YOU need to grow up and stop wearing all of those stupid hats.”
I completely lost it at that point. I knew it wasn’t J at that point, it was N. So I called her up, she sent me straight to voicemail, and I told her not to do anything like that again. I told her to f*** off, to leave me alone, or ELSE.
And then when I saw her in school that Monday, I lost it again. She had surrounded herself with some of the other girls in our counseling group, and I charged right for her, grabbed her by the arm, and asked her what in the HELL she thought she was doing. Did she really think she could get away with everything she was doing to me? How on EARTH could she think I was her doll who did her bidding? After everything we had been through… especially since I’d given her a best friends necklace the previous year when she and her grandmother were supposed to be moving away.
I asked how in the hell she had the gall to pester me in such a way. On my BROTHER’S BIRTHDAY, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! Who the hell did she think we was, coming off so God damned high and mighty?
Eventually I let her go and scurry on off to her class, but my adrenaline had been pumping at that point. So needless to say I was full of energy during my next class, Acting.
And then of course, halfway through our next class, which we had together, my dean came to the class to pick me up. Personally. When I was in his office with my guidance counselor, he told me that N had gone to her dean and reported that I had “aggressively grabbed her by the arm and threatened her”.
I won’t mince words. I did threaten her. I told her to get the f*** out of my life and stop torturing me. I didn’t want anything to do with her at that point in time.
Luckily, my dean and guidance counselor knew me well. My brothers and I had been going to that school for a long time. They knew them as well, and they knew we were good kids. They understood that I was merely standing up for myself, but saying as N wasn’t bullying me in school, in front of witnesses who would recall it, when I told them my side of the story, they sided with me, but were still required to suspend me for five days, even though the counselor knew all about the problems I’d been having with her, as I’d been telling him about them for quite some time.
They were nice enough to count the first day as that day, and just told me it would be like having an extended winter vacation, because as luck would have it, it happened the day before holiday vacation. The day was half over by then and my suspension was effective immediately, as they had instated it that day, so I spent the rest of my day sitting in the office, reading, when my parents couldn’t come to pick me up.
Of course… eventually, we became friends again, at first in a very acquaintance-like way, but never again as close as we’d once been. She was by my side during some very difficult times, but we still drifted apart. I still haven’t forgiven her for what she did to me when we were sophomores, and even the way she treated me when we were seniors. I never took crap from her again, but we never fully got along again. We were never best friends again, but I let her think we were. As cruel of me as it may sound, I could never love her the same way again. But she had many more emotional and familial issues than I did, and I was a shoulder for her to lean on, so I let her believe we were best friends… even though, I felt nothing for her.
It’s been nearly two years now since I’ve seen her, and nearly a year and a half since I’ve last spoken to her. We’ve gone our separate ways and I’m better off without her. But still… even though I’ll never forgive her, I’ve let go of our past. Slowly but surely, she’s slipping out of my mind.
I know this is a very long-winded comment, but… the way Selkie kept screeching as a way to stand up for herself reminded me of all of my turmoil. I know that’s a very roundabout way of saying it and getting to my point…
Even though I’m trying to forget about everything she did to me, I still can’t get over the fact that, even though I’d told my guidance counselor about everything she’d done to me, and the fact that my dean sided with me, that I was the one punished because even though I was the one being bullied, I’d stuck up for myself in an attempt to put an end to it. It always angers me that the victims wind up being the ones who are punished… but eventually, we have to learn how to let go of our anger.
I can only hope that there are others like me who stood up for themselves… so they wouldn’t be victimized again.
If there are, then… at least, I can be a little happier.
They were required to suspend you? That’s wrong — the principal and other school authorities are paid money to make good decisions when needed. If they’re doing nothing more than following book rules, then they don’t need to be paid nearly as much. Sometimes parents need to get involved and remind them of this, and stop the spread of “Zero Tolerance” policies. Go check out This Is True and search for the string “Zero Tolerance” for more on this subject.
Kinda reminds of of a situation I was in back in the second or third grade. There was a school bully that always picked on me and my friends. One day I finally got sick of it and bopped him in the head with a ball. He gave chase and I led him through the jungle gym and into the woods behind our school where we took nature walks. Once we were out of sight of the school I let him catch up a little and once he was close I dug my foot into the ground and spun around and punched him straight in the face knocking him on his ass.
As he was laying on the ground in pain I picked up a cement cylinder from an old stop sign and slammed it on him. It was only a foot or so long but really heavy. He let out a scream and starting crying and I just left him there.
I never got in trouble for it and I never heard any word about what happened to him, don’t think I ever saw him again after that day.
The saddest moment for me when I was in elementary school was in dealing with a bully. She was a new girl and I never forgot that how my one friend told me as soon as she walked in she was trouble. I tried being nice to her, I was after all in second grade and it was in my nature soon though she turned all of my friends against me told them all I was a freak a weirdo and not to hang with me becauseI had just gotten glasses and she made fun of the fact that I was 7 and couldnt read yet and called me a looser. I had a learning disablity which no one diagnosed till two more years. The moment I remember the most was sitting on the railing at the blacktop stairs at recess watching everyone playing with her the helicopter game and when I asked to join they said “they dont play with nazis” that hurt the most cause I’m german mostly and have a bit of an accent. She would tease me saying her family helped founded the united states and she was related to John Adams while I helped try to kill people cause of my last name. Kids use to make fun of me saying I was a cheeseburger cause of my funny last name that ends in berger and would try and take bites out of me.
Things didnt get much better in Highschool I got called a nazi girl a lot cause when your blue eyed and blond haired and your last name is most distictively german. I was an outcast cause I liked anime and comics and geeky things and wasnt a real girly girl. The head cheerleader use to write on my papers in science drawing lude things teasing me cause I was virgin, senior year they nominated me homecoming queen as a joke getting my hopes up only to mock me when I lost to a girl with the same first name saying who would vote for a freak like me.
As a child, I had the very bad habit of escalating things to the point that anyone sane would never again mess with me… and I was the smallest boy at my school (not just my grade, my whole school; the kindergarteners were bigger than me when I was in sixth grade) until I was in 7th grade, and then again until I was in the 11th grade.
I bit eyeballs, I kicked, I headbutted, I clawed. I did everything and anything I needed to do to win and to ensure I was never bullied again by that particular individual.
As the smallest boy in the whole school, I rarely got in trouble for defending myself.
uh-oh
Not QUITE as planned, but I think that this will still get the desired result.
Actually this is better than if the teachers had just found her being pelted with snowballs. Since they’d know about the stolen shirt, finding another student manhandling Selkie is very much not good.
A kid once picked me up to tell me that I was wrong and to enforce his opinion on me.
I specifically remember the teacher only stopping me once I broke his jaw and downed him… I’m not proud of what I did, per se, but the teacher said he’d have done it himself if able, and my dad was happy he wouldn’t have to worry about me getting into fights if I was strong enough to win them…
My childhood was very strange.
And by strange, I assume you mean badass?
I love it when the teacher supports self defense, instead of expecting students to run to them so said teacher can play the big hero. One of the middle schools I went to actually had the temerity to state, in the student handbook, that, “A child’s self-defense is to tell an adult.”.
I had an even more bizarre experience. When I told teachers I was being bullied, I’d get in trouble for “tattling” and be told to “solve my own problems”. When I got into fights (the only other solution I could think of), I’d get in trouble for fighting, but the bully would typically get off Scott free.
This was in elementary school.
Yeah, some schools can’t seem to get their act together as to how bullying should be handled.
I dealt with a similar situation my elementary school too. Instigators were rarely punished; retaliators (either by fighting or tattling) were severely punished. The idea seemed to be that the victims were “asking for” what they got and the bullies “couldn’t help themselves”.
Yeah I used to believe that too when I was a kid. It wasn’t until years later, at a school reunion, that I learned that in my situation at least the bully had actually been taken to the principal’s office for “a talk.” Apparently the teachers knew that dealing with a bully takes more time and effort than they could administer on the spot so they had a policy of passing him up the foodchain. We victims just never saw that part.
That’s better than what happened to me in grade school. I got beat up in gym class by a girl that was twice my height and weight while the teacher stood by watching till another teacher came to investigate the noise. Only then did the gym teacher step in to say that we shouldn’t be fighting.
He was witness to the bullying and not only didn’t care enough to stop it but by his inaction only encouraged it. The girl that beat me up was pissed off because another kid pushed me into her, it didn’t matter that I didn’t push her on purpose.
She got pushed and I was the one that did it in her mind, so I was the one to pay.
I went through that a bit too. We had a girl that was picking on one of my friends (who was a guy). Kicked him and the like, and we couldn’t get her to stop. The teachers only had us do “student mediated” discussions and told us to fix it ourselves for years. Finally they had a big conversation and heard all about what this girl was doing (including telling lies about me to her mom). So often nowadays teachers do nothing about bullying and tell students to just live with it, ignore it, or forget about it.
Of course, our district also had a junior high student threaten to kill the bus driver just as we were leaving school (with over a half hour drive to our town), and the district told her to bring him home anyway and didn’t care. That was the junior high and 6th grade bus, as they thought that having 6th graders (we were the first 6th grade only class) with high schoolers would be bad. What they didn’t realize was that a lot of us had older siblings in high school that took offense to junior high students picking on us. That and it made extra long bus routes since they had two buses covering the same (and more) area. It was a stupid idea all around.
I generally think that authoritarianism is a very poor method of child-rearing, but the kid did learn that his size did not make him invulnerable, and he wound up defending me in later fights in exchange for tutelage in mathematics.
He sent me an e-mail a couple years ago thanking me, telling me I was one of the first people to care at all. Kinda disturbing. I guess being the hero of the story is neat, but I can’t help but feel bad for the guy. His parents must’ve been bridge trolls…
Had a non-quite-as-badass, but similar experience. In middle school there was this girl who picked on me endlessly, for no apparent reason. I managed to say away from her for the most part, but one say in gym she managed to get behind me and trip me. Enraged, I sprinted after her and tackled her. The teacher called us both over, and proceeded to lambast the other girl, informing her that if she ever came near me again she’d be suspended. I never did figure out why she was dumb enough to think pulling this in an indoor gym with teachers watching was a good idea.
I firmly believe that if there is a hell, you just get sent back to relive middle school over and over. I remember almost nothing positive from the experience.
Although, I do remember this one girl in the 7th grade who constantly heckled me. We were two of three girls in the woodshop class, so I was easy pickings, since I was small and a nerd. She would follow me around and poke me and cry “Four eyes! Four eyes!” (Very creative, obviously). One day, I turned around and punched her straight in the nose, and she went down like a sack of potatoes. Trust me, she never called me “Four eyes” again.
Unfortunately this did teach me that violence was the way around my problems, but on the bright (?) side, the people I was involved with violently were not very bright.
Middle school/junior high was when I started coming into myself, when I became sexually active, and when I published my first book…
But none of those things were good *then*, and they caused me a shitton of strife, so I totally agree.
Ah… Reminds me of beat up the white kid day after my older brother graduated…
The Samoans quickly learned not to pick on the 6 year old who carried around a 20 pound back pack.
Seems like your dad held somewhat of the same philosophy my mom and dad imparted into my siblings and I:
“We don’t ever want to hear about you starting fights. But if you do get INTO a fight, then we want to hear about you FINISHING it.”
Teachers arriving in 3-2-1… Mark.
Damn it, now I want Selkie to eat Truck’s face! …ok, that can also NOT happen.
Humans taste terrible anyway.
I died laughing at this.
How would you know until you’ve tried one? 😉
How do you know he hasn’t. Some artist are very thorough in their research.
Humans I find taste a lot like sour Pork …
Someone actually fed human flesh to a wine-tasting robot. (Why? For SCIENCE!) Results indicate we probably taste like pork.
I’m very much afraid of Truck trying to slam her into the wall or ground…!
If she screams directly in his face….ooh…can only imagine what would happen!
Did her scream make him recall something bad that happened to him or…?
I was thinking he might have a very bad reaction to certain noises. Then again, I have sensory issues, but I could see that coming up eventually in this comic.
I wonder if he can help this reaction, is all. He seems bugged out over it.
my memories vary, it was a one hand choke slam o.o lol
Bad memories yes but…what can you do?
…and is that a tea in the corner of his eye? Something else seems to be afoot here.
Yeah, that is a tear in Truck’s eye. How did Truck become an orphan? I ask because he reminds me of a girl a knew when I worked in a shelter for “temporarily displaced youth”. It was technically a runaway shelter but DYFS would routinely bring us kids who were about to age out of the Foster Care system. She was seventeen and and seen a great deal of abuse/neglect, but was with us because her mother had killed her father(in front of her) and was in jail awaiting trail. She had no family willing to take her(“because girls are nothing but trouble”). She was a tall, strong, angry girl who was very quick to hit but She was in so much pain. She would do just about anything to avoid the appearance of weakness.
Truck is not an orphan. He’s one of Tony’s acquaintances like the other “mean kids”.
Ah. So much for THAT theory. Truck sucks, then. Selkies shriek cut off pretty abruptly. Did she just get cold and go into torpor?
Hmm, I wonder if the rapid cut off has anything to do with sudden pressure or restriction of her gills the way Truck grabbed her?
If I recall correctly, Truck was one of the ones who went with the battlecry of “pummel the orphans”.
anyone else here see panel 5 and think:
“hey listen!” ?
not until you brought it up 😛
Hmm. Braced against a wall, strong legs for swimming… I think Truck may be about to get 2 custom sneakers to the chest and be sent flying.
1.) This reminds me how much I hated being a kid…and and teen…and sometimes an adult. (stupid bullies)
2.) The 3rd It kinda looks like a 27 and in my headcannon he was loosing it lol.
Ok, sincerely, why is this ok? When I say ‘this’ I refer to the fact that Amanda is seemingly allowed to act racist as much as she wants, and nobody seems to care.
Yes, technically it’s not racism, it’s speciesism, but if I went around in school, calling all of the black kids ‘Monkey-face’, you can bet your ass the school wouldn’t take that shit lying down. They’d nip it in the bud faster than Selkie can start screeching.
theres a sad irony that schools tend to be alot more lenient when it comes to disabilities and deformities etc, i recall in my school experience, anything racial or ethnic was a 1 week suspension automatically but say you called someone with a missing limb “nubs”(no offense intended just an example) teachers just yelled like “hey!” as if you said the word “damn” in their class. since the school seams to see selkie as “deformed” rather than a different species, i honestly find this a very realistic situation. that or they just dont notice amanda saying it
True. I remember the reactions from when this girl in my class in my elementary school with a speech impediment got picked on. The adults usually wouldn’t intervene and the few times they did it was just a quick “knock it off” and then silence. One of the adults even encouraged the bullying a few times. Yet even slightly picking on the disabled boy in the wheelchair was usually met with someone going to detention. Different issues are treated very differently.
When I was in High school, I was bullied pretty bad. My stepbrother had gotten the **** kicked out of him by the star quarter back over a girl and my mom came down on the school for not suspending the aggressor. Their logic was ‘Well, he’s the star player, and it IS football season… hm… let’s take him off the team when football season is over.’ (Small school)
Mom came and screamed at the principal until they agreed to take him off RIGHT THEN. Then, my stepbrother transferred schools because of the bullying and they transferred it to me.
When mom found out, she came BACK to the school and screamed at the principal AGAIN for not stopping it, so he came down hard on my bullies, out of fear of my mother.
He got so scared of the idea of dealing with my mom again, he would literally jump in terror if he saw me so much as walk into the office.
Oh boy, I remember this happening to me in elementary school. The kid decided to pick me up and slam me against the wall because I stood up for myself and my cousin since he was picking on us both. He learned not to do that again after I headbutted him and broke his nose.
You speak from experience, Dave?
Just for fun…Truck leans in closer and kisses her.
Or he punches out one of her teeth.
i dont envy the poor soul who punches those dagger teeth o.o
Yeah, not only are they sharp but she has poison spit as well.
poisonous saliva meets bloodstream … yea I think I see issues coming up if that happens.
This does sadily bring back bad memories…I was horrible picked on, treated very much like Selkie, every day I was in school. I hated myself, my life and I attached whatever and whoever I could. I had one person, who back then was my ‘friend’ but now I realize was nothing but a horrible person. I can’t remember the exact situation/conversation going on, but I was being told to shut up and not speak by this ‘friend’. I refused to, actually speaking up for once for myself. She decided that me simply saying ‘no’ was enough of a reason to grab me by the neck, choke me and hold me slightly above the ground. I could not scream or cry for help, let alone breathe at the time, and none of the teachers cared about me. I was the freak, the outcast and the ‘bad kid’ because of problems I had I was unable to control or change at the time. They were me, and I was labeled and pushed asside for it. It took, at least it seemed, almost 5 or so minutes before someone, the gym teacher, to say something. Even then, he barely tried. She didn’t even get a timeout from my memory…
I am now 21, and memories such as those still haunt me. Luckily I have an amazing person that puts up with my issues I have gathered over these years of emotional and mental abuse. While I know Selkie is a character in a comic, I still hope that this, and whatever may happen next, will not haunt and scar her more than she already has been from all the teasing and taunting through her years of life. I know personally how horrible it is for a person, they be 6 or 60 it doesn’t matter. Being treated like that and hurt in such a way…it’s not something to take lightly or brush asside.
Sorry, I’m taking an online comic to seriously aren’t I? Just memories…
I love your comic by the way
I’m sorry for what you went through.
I think part of what makes Selkie such a wonderful comic is that it does address real life issues that many others skirt around. It can also help in looking at childhood traumas in a new light from a safe(r) distance through the lens of the comic itself.
I had issues with bullies as a child as well in elementary school- I’ve never been the most feminine of girls, into books and “smarter than a girl was supposed to be.” Females can be vicious in teasing the ones that don’t fit in. I also had a friend get bullied once by a rotten female in high school. I didn’t fight for myself, but wouldn’t let that female bad-mouth my friend or put her in tears. Apparently a really creative threat is scarier than just decking the little wench. But then having someone promise in a cool, matter-of-fact tone that she would rip every hair from your head and then leave you covered in bruises makes an impact. Even after I moved away that female never messed with any of my friends again.
Been there. Had to push down a petite meanass girl to get them to stop in middle school. I only shoved her as I ran into the bilding, because I was crying and I was an inch away from pounding the life out of her. Then her big friend Tuba came to confront me about ‘being mean ‘ to her. Tuba didn’t scare me then, nor does he now. I scared me though, and I am still kinda scared at just how very very angry I was.
This strip actually reminds me of what I call now to be one of my “moments of glory” in school. At least regarding when I was being bullied.
I had a friend I’d been fighting with for months when I was a sophomore. When I was a freshman, halfway through the year I’d began to wear what everybody called my “cat hat” even though it was a white fleece hat with Inuyasha ears on it (and he was a half-dog-demon with pointy ears, so I could understand the confusion) and would alternate between that and my Mokona (rabbit-eared) hat. The girl I knew had been my “best friend” ever since we were in kindergarten, and we’d had several falling outs since third grade and through most of middle school. But we’d known each other for so long, and shared classes together, and shared so much with each other that it was impossible for us to be kept apart or angry at each other for very long. So much that in 7th grade, I stood up to a bully who’d been bothering not only her, but me as well, and wound up with an in-school suspension as a result. I was rather proud of that, actually. I pushed him against the wall and kicked him in the groin several times.
It was in the first few months of our sophomore year, in which we again shared classes in, which we’d been happy about since we hadn’t shared classes since 8th grade, when she began to pester me about my new choices in headgear. She told me to stop wearing them and to grow up. Naturally, I didn’t. I was an outcast already, so I’d developed my own little nerdy sense of style simply because I’d liked it and thought my clothing choices were comfortable. Her pestering turned so bad that I dropped out of our girls counseling group for several months, and went to vent about her to my guidance counselor on a near daily basis. Naturally, I began to sit across the room from her in our classes, would hardly acknowledge her presence, and wouldn’t answer the phone if she called me.
And then in December that year, on a snow day that fell on my brother’s birthday, I woke up to text messages from a number I hadn’t saved as a contact. It was my “friend J, from girls group”. Eventually “she” asked me what I thought about the fight I was having with N and I told her frankly, “I’m sick of her trying to boss me around. She’s being so immature and needs to grow up!” to which “J” said, “No, YOU need to grow up and stop wearing all of those stupid hats.”
I completely lost it at that point. I knew it wasn’t J at that point, it was N. So I called her up, she sent me straight to voicemail, and I told her not to do anything like that again. I told her to f*** off, to leave me alone, or ELSE.
And then when I saw her in school that Monday, I lost it again. She had surrounded herself with some of the other girls in our counseling group, and I charged right for her, grabbed her by the arm, and asked her what in the HELL she thought she was doing. Did she really think she could get away with everything she was doing to me? How on EARTH could she think I was her doll who did her bidding? After everything we had been through… especially since I’d given her a best friends necklace the previous year when she and her grandmother were supposed to be moving away.
I asked how in the hell she had the gall to pester me in such a way. On my BROTHER’S BIRTHDAY, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! Who the hell did she think we was, coming off so God damned high and mighty?
Eventually I let her go and scurry on off to her class, but my adrenaline had been pumping at that point. So needless to say I was full of energy during my next class, Acting.
And then of course, halfway through our next class, which we had together, my dean came to the class to pick me up. Personally. When I was in his office with my guidance counselor, he told me that N had gone to her dean and reported that I had “aggressively grabbed her by the arm and threatened her”.
I won’t mince words. I did threaten her. I told her to get the f*** out of my life and stop torturing me. I didn’t want anything to do with her at that point in time.
Luckily, my dean and guidance counselor knew me well. My brothers and I had been going to that school for a long time. They knew them as well, and they knew we were good kids. They understood that I was merely standing up for myself, but saying as N wasn’t bullying me in school, in front of witnesses who would recall it, when I told them my side of the story, they sided with me, but were still required to suspend me for five days, even though the counselor knew all about the problems I’d been having with her, as I’d been telling him about them for quite some time.
They were nice enough to count the first day as that day, and just told me it would be like having an extended winter vacation, because as luck would have it, it happened the day before holiday vacation. The day was half over by then and my suspension was effective immediately, as they had instated it that day, so I spent the rest of my day sitting in the office, reading, when my parents couldn’t come to pick me up.
Of course… eventually, we became friends again, at first in a very acquaintance-like way, but never again as close as we’d once been. She was by my side during some very difficult times, but we still drifted apart. I still haven’t forgiven her for what she did to me when we were sophomores, and even the way she treated me when we were seniors. I never took crap from her again, but we never fully got along again. We were never best friends again, but I let her think we were. As cruel of me as it may sound, I could never love her the same way again. But she had many more emotional and familial issues than I did, and I was a shoulder for her to lean on, so I let her believe we were best friends… even though, I felt nothing for her.
It’s been nearly two years now since I’ve seen her, and nearly a year and a half since I’ve last spoken to her. We’ve gone our separate ways and I’m better off without her. But still… even though I’ll never forgive her, I’ve let go of our past. Slowly but surely, she’s slipping out of my mind.
I know this is a very long-winded comment, but… the way Selkie kept screeching as a way to stand up for herself reminded me of all of my turmoil. I know that’s a very roundabout way of saying it and getting to my point…
Even though I’m trying to forget about everything she did to me, I still can’t get over the fact that, even though I’d told my guidance counselor about everything she’d done to me, and the fact that my dean sided with me, that I was the one punished because even though I was the one being bullied, I’d stuck up for myself in an attempt to put an end to it. It always angers me that the victims wind up being the ones who are punished… but eventually, we have to learn how to let go of our anger.
I can only hope that there are others like me who stood up for themselves… so they wouldn’t be victimized again.
If there are, then… at least, I can be a little happier.
They were required to suspend you? That’s wrong — the principal and other school authorities are paid money to make good decisions when needed. If they’re doing nothing more than following book rules, then they don’t need to be paid nearly as much. Sometimes parents need to get involved and remind them of this, and stop the spread of “Zero Tolerance” policies. Go check out This Is True and search for the string “Zero Tolerance” for more on this subject.
Kinda reminds of of a situation I was in back in the second or third grade. There was a school bully that always picked on me and my friends. One day I finally got sick of it and bopped him in the head with a ball. He gave chase and I led him through the jungle gym and into the woods behind our school where we took nature walks. Once we were out of sight of the school I let him catch up a little and once he was close I dug my foot into the ground and spun around and punched him straight in the face knocking him on his ass.
As he was laying on the ground in pain I picked up a cement cylinder from an old stop sign and slammed it on him. It was only a foot or so long but really heavy. He let out a scream and starting crying and I just left him there.
I never got in trouble for it and I never heard any word about what happened to him, don’t think I ever saw him again after that day.
The saddest moment for me when I was in elementary school was in dealing with a bully. She was a new girl and I never forgot that how my one friend told me as soon as she walked in she was trouble. I tried being nice to her, I was after all in second grade and it was in my nature soon though she turned all of my friends against me told them all I was a freak a weirdo and not to hang with me becauseI had just gotten glasses and she made fun of the fact that I was 7 and couldnt read yet and called me a looser. I had a learning disablity which no one diagnosed till two more years. The moment I remember the most was sitting on the railing at the blacktop stairs at recess watching everyone playing with her the helicopter game and when I asked to join they said “they dont play with nazis” that hurt the most cause I’m german mostly and have a bit of an accent. She would tease me saying her family helped founded the united states and she was related to John Adams while I helped try to kill people cause of my last name. Kids use to make fun of me saying I was a cheeseburger cause of my funny last name that ends in berger and would try and take bites out of me.
Things didnt get much better in Highschool I got called a nazi girl a lot cause when your blue eyed and blond haired and your last name is most distictively german. I was an outcast cause I liked anime and comics and geeky things and wasnt a real girly girl. The head cheerleader use to write on my papers in science drawing lude things teasing me cause I was virgin, senior year they nominated me homecoming queen as a joke getting my hopes up only to mock me when I lost to a girl with the same first name saying who would vote for a freak like me.
Truck would have picked me up exactly once.
As a child, I had the very bad habit of escalating things to the point that anyone sane would never again mess with me… and I was the smallest boy at my school (not just my grade, my whole school; the kindergarteners were bigger than me when I was in sixth grade) until I was in 7th grade, and then again until I was in the 11th grade.
I bit eyeballs, I kicked, I headbutted, I clawed. I did everything and anything I needed to do to win and to ensure I was never bullied again by that particular individual.
As the smallest boy in the whole school, I rarely got in trouble for defending myself.