And all the Kids in Kidville say, Heather’s spine grew three sizes that day.
– – – – –
Innappropriate to the comic, but I’ve been having a nostalgia fit the past couple days for a 1992 cartoon that never made it past a pilot episode. It’s pretty cheesy and kind of bad, but I used to love it as a kid. I have to wonder how my parents could stand being in the room while I watched and re-watched the VHS. XD The Defenders of Dynatron City.
Occasionally when I post half-finished to-be-completed later updates, people tell me they like how the blank white background lends a different emotional tone than when the backgrounds are done normally. Thought I'd use that intentionally this go-around.
Huh. It seems ALL of the comics I’m reading suddenly have people standing up for themselves.
Interesting.
Yep. It’s rad.
Read mine! I’m not!
There’s an uprising, I’m telling you.
Go heather. Amanda desperately needs a reality check.
Agreed, it’s about time Amanda was told what she’s about to be told.
And most importantly, she needs to hear it from a friend, not an adult or someone she considers a rival. Then it’ll get through to her.
Today is the day for
(blinks) Link disappeared.
Today is the day for this gif!
http://comstat.memecdn.com/images/comment/1523.gif
Weird, I could see the link fine in the email I get when people comment… Huh.
I like how Heather stood up for herself. Anyone who puts quantifiers on things like that is someone you want to cut out of your life, but for kids it is hard, because they don’t know those things. “Apologize and I’ll go to your party”. There have to be deeper psychological issues than the surface “no parents” and “possible abuse”. In my book, anyhow. I think we’d gone through almost every shrink in the yellow pages that my insurance would cover between the ages of nine and 15.
I also like how you used the white background on purpose.
Aw yeah, you tell her, Heather.
That “oh snap” snapped so hard it took MY fingers off
im rather curious how the bully kids hiding in the stall will play into all of this, they havnt heard anything that could be used against Amanda or heather so it doesnt look like a blackmail senerio. curious…
I was kind of thinking the plan was to jump out and smack on them when teachers were unlikley to find out. In that case, I ALMOST feel sorry for the bullies (almost). Amanda & Heather are already both mad as hell and obviously physically strong. And no matter how pissed they are at each other, they both dislike the other kids more. I think those two are in for more trouble than they barginned for.
Just like in the animal kingdom, some targets are too dangerous to confront openly. Amanda and Heather are likely to be avoided openly. If anything, they’ll be separated then attacked stealthily. Even as they are now, attacking them together would likely cause them to go back to back, which is not what you want either of them doing.
Yeah, but… They could tell Truck that Amanda and Heather have something to hide, and Selkie knows about it, as part of the overall “getting back at the orphans plan”. Then Truck just has to get the info from someone he definitely would consider the weakest link (assuming Selkie even comes back to school). Escalation like that would be super risky even with his parents watching his back, but he’s probably too young and self-absorbed to realize the downside of trying to interrogate Selkie for a specific piece of info. Which could turn very ugly very fast…
Or maybe Heather just accidentally spills enough details in the next page because she thinks they’re alone. (oops!)
Despite the sad looks, Amanda still hadn’t quite gotten it. Good for Heather. Hopefully this serves as a wakeup call. Hopefully.
Hurrah, hurrah! Spine growth!
Also: Heather looks male when she gets angry. This could be explained away as an unintended consequence of art style, or as foreshadowing for the fact that Heather is really some kind of male shapeshifting creature pretending to be a little girl for reasons unknown.
As you can probably guess, I think the shapeshifter explanation is more plausible.
There are selkies in this world. Why not changelings?
May just be that Heather has not had her face contorted in fury before this point. Or a possible side effect of her character design (the long face and prominent nose).
My daughter, in some angles, can look very androgynous — her facial structure is a lot like her dad’s, sometime. So yay for people who are not always 100% visually cued as a particular gender! *grin*
I get that all the time with my son. He’s Dovahkiin, for crying out loud! Yes, people say, “You’re daughter is SO CUTE!” And I reply with, “Yes, he is!” LOL Sure, I keep his hair long, but he looks like a boy, dangit! He doesn’t have LOOOONG hair. Just, you know, cute! And he’s only 1.75 yrs old LOL.
Consider it a chance for him to level his Speechcraft.
Yeah, that was the same thing with my son when he was that age.
He had a nice set of curls on his head which we tried to grow as long as possible to make him be able to wear it like Bradley Cooper does.
We don’t know why, but we were 23 (me) and 20 (her), we were dumb back then when it came to fashion.
Any way… he was wearing a pilot jacket, for crying out loud, when this elderly woman said: “What a cute little girl” to which I replied “I don’t know how many kids you see now, but I only see one, and that’s my son”
it’s about friggin time someone stood up to her! so glad it’s heather ^__^
Way to go Heather.
Maybe me wonder if Amanda’s adoptive parents way back when put her in the orphanage again because Amanda was harassing their other kids and they couldn’t discipline her so they put her back, hence the abandonment issues and the lack of personal responsibility.
GO, HEATHER!!! 😀
Somebody needs a friend who’s not so high maintenance…
By the by, I got my copy of Selkie Volume One yesterday. (Actually it was probably in my PO box the day before, but I didn’t stop by then.) Nostalgic reminiscing of how much I enjoyed the early strips—and a reminder of how much the strip has grown since then. I look forward to more volumes…
Great! 😀
After working with a computer since the late 1990s, and reading things on a Nook Color for two-some years, I’ve come to the conclusion that I prefer the printed form where possible, be it book or magazine or comic or fanzine. That this is not always practical is a source of great regret to me. Again, looking forward to further volumes…
I think there is a reason Heather stood up on this issue when she hasn’t before. The bully I was friends with as a kid was very similar to Amanda (only with a rough family situation instead of abandonment issues). She had to hit a very personal hot button issue with me before I fought back and cut her off. Being hit was Heather’s wake up call, so this is a hot button issue for her. She reacted like it brought back a painful memory. My guess is Amanda knows Heather has been abused in the past and hit her to let Heather know what it’s like to have a personal secret used to betray her. Like she knows Heather’s secret is being terrified of being physically attacked. If my guess is right, abuse could be the reason Heather ended up in the orphanage. And if they act, those orphan haters in the stall are going to be in much more trouble than they bargained for. Heather could easily tell her parents about having her past come back to haunt her through the actions of the kids at school. Her parents would know about her past and their reassurances that it’s wrong and lessons on how to get help will come into play here. That is if my guess is right.
BTW today’s strip literally made my jaw drop. This is almost exactly how my conversation where I cut off my friendship with that girl went. Only my hot button issue was my mother. My mom had an episode of her illness while we were on a girl scout trip. That girl said to leave my mom behind because she was “faking it.” There were no other adults around and her saying that made the other girls believe it was being faked for attention. All the other girls left while my mom was having an attack that was almost fatal. Granted my mom is melodramatic and silly a lot of times, but she has never faked her illness to get attention. She’s actually very sensitive about how serious it is because people usually assume she’s faking it. That day we were unexpectedly put in a situation that triggered her worse symptoms that were signs she taught me only happened when she might need an ambulance. I was left alone as the only one who would help her. I was able to help my mom and she’s still alive, but I still remember this girl the way I saw her then. I remember her being the one who got people to leave my mom alone with me on the sidewalk to die. That was the final straw for me. I remember yelling almost word for word everything in the final panel.
I disagree on the Heather-was-abused theory only due to her reaction. A physically abused person might not react in such a self-strong manner. I’d think she’d be more cowed and less self-assured that she is right and Amanda is wrong.
Also, is Amanda so screwed up that she’d hit a friends she knew was once physically abused? I’m pretty sure Amanda herself was, and that was insinuated when the “Amanda’s secret!” issue came out, though of course we know a bigger secret in that she is actually Todd’s bio daughter.
Good point. Sometimes I get way into my own crackpot theories about things I like. Also, thanks for responding to my wall of text. I didn’t realize how long it was until after I submitted it.
It doesn´t seem to me like being hit was her hot button. Being expected to *apologize* to the girl who just hit her was her hot button.
As I see it, she´d been putting up with Amanda in order to stay friends with one of her friends from her “old life” in the orphanage, so she´d been doing her best to ignore Amanda´s “quirks” – but Amanda basically telling her to apologize for Amanda hitting her, so that Amanda would accept Heather´s offered gift, that must have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel´s back.
FWIW… optimistically, I could see Heather inviting Selkie to that party, initially just to spite Amanda, and some sort of friendship growing out of that.
…I want a nuclear-powered lunchbox!
“ARE YOU BROKE IN THE HEAD?!”, Heather says.
I think she actually might be, yes. When Andi manages to find Heather, she’s going to have an unpleasant surprise or two on her hands.
Geez, just wait until she and Selkie eventually become sisters, since Todd’s her dad, after all.
You mean Andi finds Amanda.
1. Families and friends fight, and regardless of however either girl is feeling, neither Heather nor Amanda has (yet) abandoned the other, because they care for each other, even if they are very, very angry with one another.
2. In a situation where people (let’s call them protagonists) with ties to one another fight, no matter how much animosity with each other they may have, if others (call them antagonists) tries to bust in between them, the protagonists will circle their wagons and stand together against this new threat. It may be a cliche in movies and TV, but that’s because it’s true, from friends squabbling, to out-and-out domestic disturbances, when police try to intervene.
I used to live in Philly, and very often I went to the Italian Market. Some of the vendors were also loud hawkers, and their calls to buy stuff were sometimes very, very annoying. But if any outsider would dare to complain about them, we would all gang up and defend our boys. They were annoying, but they were ours!
3. My point is, those bullies in the bathroom are. In. For. It.
And here we see that Amanda has absorbed the true lesson of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’:
Always belittle others. That way, they will be so desperate for your approval and acceptance that they will do whatever you ask of them, without regard for their dignity or personal well-being.
Unfortunately, because she is no longer a prime influence on Heather’s self-esteem, it doesn’t seem to be working anymore.
I’m so glad that I’m not the only person that took that lesson from Rudolph. I tell people all the time that it’s a song about someone that’s self esteem was so destroyed that he winds up doing what just anyone wants for approval.
I think the true horror is that Rudolph was so beaten down that 3 christmasses later he was found dead from a meth overdose in his stable since nothing relieves the pain of never being accepted.
Yeah! Tell her like it is Heather. And please, I know I posted late on the last comic, but can you please tell me what all the small words were supposed to be that Amanda was “hearing/thinking” in the previous comic?
Well, some of them are too small for me to really make out, but it looks like, “Dad Mom Family Stuff Lied Betray Too Hurt Party Want Secrets”, all quite disjointed. ‘Betray’ might have been ‘better’, ‘want’ might have been ‘won’t’, ‘lied’ might have been ‘tied’ and ‘stuff’ might have been ‘stupid’.
I think the idea was to show the words that were standing out to Amanda the most, mixed in with how she was feeling about Heather – basically, resenting both Heather’s new family – a “how dare you brag about how great your life is now when mine isn’t” sort of thing – and Heather telling Selkie something that Amanda considered to be in confidence between them.
Dad Mom Family Stuff Lied Betray Toys Hurt Party Want Secrets
Sorry for the late reply! 😀
“You need to say you’re sorry for making me hit you.”
Holy CRAP. Not even nine years old and already she’s an accomplished abuser.
Sounds to me like she had an apprenticeship with masters…
I so can’t wait to see where this is going. I’m glad Heather’s standing up for herself; but I wonder where this’ll leave Amanda.
Not many teenagers have these problems.
……In some of the comics I read.
I suspect most comic-makers are idealising childhood/teenager-hood. School for me was a series of nightmares, right up to when I left at 18.
This story is fascinating and realistic, which seems to me something rather special.