If you need help with panel 5:
Also thanks to Wikipedia I learned that America apparently no longer uses the Food Pyramid diagram as of 2011. Since it’s still 2010-ish in the comic’s canon this technically fits, but totally by accident. XD
Considered drawing a Solitaire game behind the word processor window in Trunchbull's desktop, but wasn't sure it would convey well at that size.
Please tell me that MISTER Trunchbull is due to get cut back down to size.
My poor heart…
Clearly you’ve never dealt with a college professor.
A college professor of Mister Trunchbull’s “worth” can only be taught his lesson and knocked off his high horse via a scandal and getting fired. Really, the only thing Todd needs to do is make mention of the damage that Truck did to the right people and he’d get reined in so fast Trunchy’s head would snap in the process. Todd has the advantage here but doesn’t even realize it. Assistant Professor does not give him tenure after all.
According to the last strip, he’s an *Associate* Professor, which is a tenured position.
I saw a thing one time that said that tenured professors differ from terrorists in that you can negotiate with terrorists. Seems fitting in this case.
If he’s got tenure, he’s essentially untouchable. He can do whatever he wants and he won’t be punished unless he does something blatantly illegal like murder someone.
While I’m certainly on the “hate Trumbull” train, I would like to address some of the comments above about college teaching and professorship.
Associate Professor is a rank. It is quite possible that someone could be promoted to Associate Professor before earning tenure The tenure process takes between 5 and 10 years, depending on the school. I won’t detail exactly what goes into getting tenure because it would probably bore everyone silly, but suffice it to say that most full-time faculty start working on their tenure portfolio as soon as they’re hired. Among other things, most reputable colleges in the States require positive peer and student reviews before awarding a professor tenure.
Nor is tenure an automatic “can’t get fired” guarantee. A tenured professor can still be fired for cause. What tenure means is that the faculty member doesn’t have to be “rehired” by her/his school every year. I am an Assistant Professor in an English department at a US college. My contract only lasts until August of this year. My colllege has to decide whether or not to re-hire me at the end of that time. They can choose NOT to do so without having to provide any reason why. I work for a school system with a strong union, so if that happened and I really hadn’t done anything wrong, I might have some recourse. However, “budget cuts” is sufficient reason to fail to renew someone. Back in the 1970s, the entire full-time faculty of my department (save one or two people) were let go at the end of the school year and there was nothing anyone could do about it. That’s called “retrenchment” and is a strategy sometimes used by schools in order to hire new faculty at lower pay rates.
While I love my job, college professors (tenured or not) are significantly losing any prestige and respect we once had as professionals in the States. Higher education (not to mention K-12) is being brought in line with the business model. Professors in the humanities (like me) are increasingly viewed as obsolete and many colleges seem to be switching to solely a business/STEM curriculum. If you’re looking for big bucks (when I break down my hourly rate of pay, I make less than minimum wage) or prestige, teaching is absolutely NOT the way to go.
Of course, none of this makes Trumbull any less of a douchcanoe. How did he get his position then? Well, in the sciences there is often less emphasis on things like interpersonal skills. Plus, the big money is in the sciences these days and those professors who can win huge grants for the college are more likely to get promotions and tenure. I used to be in astrophysics and I went to school with/studied under some people who were UTTERLY brilliant yet who had less social skills and were less friendly than the average Great White Shark in a feeding frenzy. My guess is that Trumbull is one of those.
Mass Production: Fully applicable to your child’s education. Including the lemons.
Thanks. That all made sense to me. š
Oh man, I hope this man learns a thing or two from Todd.
Also he should actually study the aforementioned Hierarchy for a bit.
You can practically HEAR Todd grinding his teeth in the last panel. The Prof should be grateful they aren’t speaking in person, because I believe Todd is BARELY controlling his absolute rage. The very back of his brain must be going “Don’t smash the phone, don’t smash the phone, it’s not his neck, don’t smash the phone”
He was about to get shouty with the voicemail, it’s a little harder to go off when they’re there to respond
Well, “Professor” Trunchbull….your son violated three level’s of Selkie’s needs. Psychological: her breathing capabilities and homeostasis were compromised even for just a short time…causing her to get sick despite how almost impossible that is for Sarnothi(?).
Safety: Her health/body was compromised by Truck shaking out her hand warmers and she seriously could have died.
Esteem: Self-esteem and Respect by others…needs no other explanation.
Trunchbull said it himself…Selkie is just a “weak little girl” compared to the massive Truck.
That’s “Physiological”.
I know…I made that reply after midnight. -_-
Your reply, Sir or Madam, is made of win.
I wish there was a way to “like” this comment! Brilliant.
Psychological would work too in how she’s terrified of all trucks now, but what you’re describing is physioligical (health and injury)
Trunchbull desperately needs a visit from the MIBs.
Finally caught up after a couple of months of being offline. I’m going to post a few items that actually relate to past strips.
Selkie’s speech patterns: I’m having trouble with the “cultural pluralization” thing. Direct immersion in a new language would lead you to copy what you hear, and generalize based on the patterns of that language, while the NON-immersive style is what causes students to try translating one word at a time from their native language. No?
Green/black stuff: Pohl being able to emit a video show from his eyes is really straining my suspension of disbelief. I know, eye beams are a common enough trope, and I remember when I was young enough to insist that vision was something that my eyes did to the world, rather than vice versa, but it kinda goes against everything we know about biology. I think.
Jenny (recently seen with Andi): Have we seen her before? The tags say no, but it seems you’re still working on updating the archives; even the /selkie/ tag never appears during pages 133-364. Speaking of tags, perhaps you’ll consider also making some tags for features other than the characters? A /dream/ tag would have been useful when I was searching earlier.
I’ve considered event/location tags along with the character tags, but I don’t know where to draw the line. “Dream” “Apartment” “School”? “Todd’s Bedroom” “Selkie’s Classroom” “Girl’s Bathroom”? Et cetera.
Also, the light display will eventually be explained a bit more. In time. :3
I just really hope that Trunchbull doesn’t try to blackmail Todd with knowledge of the Sarnothi. I have a hunch that he knows more than we think (too much), since he seemed so sure of himself that Selkie tried to spit poison at him in our last encounter. I wonder just how deep his rabbit hole goes, and I don’t think he can just be swept under the rug by the MiB.
Also, I hate it when they pick up the phone when you expect to leave a voicemail. So much embarrassment to be had
I love this comic very much but I have to say if this guy and his kid don’t get some kind of ‘official’ punishment I’m not sure I’d want to keep reading.
What I mean is most stories go down the rode of the main character getting there own back though some kind of indirect karmic consequence. And to be honest I really hope there wont be a need for that. I’m really sick of stories that always portray the ‘justice system’ or ‘authority figures’ as completely useless or corrupt.
I know it makes for more drama and is suppose to make the ‘win’ more satisfying. But for once Id really like to see the person who thinks he’s infallible or in control of the system to actually have to face said system a be judged and sentenced accordingly.
I don’t find underdog victories satisfying or heroic if it had to be done indirectly or outside of the law/rules. It just accentuates just how correct the ‘bad guy’ was to believe he was right or that he would not be punished. It depressing, its chicle, and while the system dose often fail in real life its only a small percentage, and why that percentage hurts the majority of assault charges, abuse cases, ect, actually side with the victim.
You must be fun at parties.
Hate to say it, but it’s written about so much because that kind of crap is real-life. I say this as a victim of serious bullying and a parent.
I just had to pull my daughter from a preschool that used to pride itself on raising kids in a gentle environment. The “bully” is a little boy who is the assistant teacher’s pet. He’s very cuddly with the teachers, but not too many of the kids are fond of him as he’s not very well socially equipped, insecure, and thus uses nasty words and violence to communicate. He followed my little girl around the school repeating “I don’t like you. I don’t like you.” He then punched her in the stomach. The teachers saw it, but never told us. She did. When we met with the lead teacher she apologized and promised to keep an eye on the kids. She did, but when the teaching assistant took over she was terrible about supervising the children and kept placing my daughter next to this boy at circle time. When I saw a few other things I didn’t like coming in early for pickup, I decided to pull her out. If it was elementary school, it’d be different, but she is only 4 once and I am blessed to be able to homeschool her the remainder of the year. This was at a very “progressive” school where last year they took bullying so seriously, they actually nailed it in the bud early with another childātrying to use positive reinforcement with his mom (plus time-outs when he did hurt someone). When it didn’t work they expelled him. Sadly, the teacher we had has left and the whole place is under a new administratorāplus they are trying expand the program. Such small changes, but they make such a huge difference. With bigger schools I can only imagine it’s even harder to stop a bad system.
You’re talking about Dues Ex Machina resolutions, yes? Where circumstance or random luck saves the day rather than the hero’s cleverness or preparation? Or are you talking about protagonists that break the rules of a corrupt society to achieve their goals? Just making sure I understand.
Protagonists don’t always have to break the rules to get justice in a corrupt society. Sometimes you need to find the right authority figure (This minister jerk is being paid off by the gangsters! We must inform the Prince at once!).
In real life, of course, sometimes the best action is to give up on immediate justice and just get out of the clutches of the abuser. Stories need to be relatively compact compared to real life and have proper resolutions at their endings. In real life sometimes you get proper justice after a long time, and sometimes you have to wait until the afterlife.
And sometimes jerks come to their senses and you can forgive them.
Dues Ex Machina is a good way to put it. I probably very poorly worded my statement about how in RL the victim’s abuser dosent get away scot free most of the time. The issues is the whole ‘its a crap sack world’ and ‘victim’ mentality this kind of seting creates. Because while it happens a lot, I mean like 20 or 30 % kind of thing. That still leave 70% of cases where it dose get resolved.
I’ve battled with depression and anxiety attacks for a long time and I find popular media always focusing on the negative unbearable and why I tend to focus on smaller scale works of fiction as a whole. How things were solved with Heather was beautiful. And I was ok with the duel suspension way of handling things…. until i found out Truck got let off and his parent get special treatment because people are afraid of them. Why? What can they really do? what have they done before? why is someone with such supposed power and influence and high paying job got his kid in a public school?
My main issues is how Selkie had to seek medical attention. I have never in my life seen a state of bullying be ignored when someone went to the hospital as a result. It that tunes out to hold no water in this argument then your falling into ‘crap sack world’ or ‘victim pandering’. A stories world being presented for the viewer to have there personal issues and grudges reaffirmed, the world is shit, authority figures will always side with the ‘normal’ kid, everyone who actually is nice is always powerless to do anything, because that appeals to those who feel they have no agency in there lies and reaffirms a world view that feeds into the self identification as ‘victim’.
Every time I say don’t like this kind of story telling method I shouted down by people who have suffered bullying and how it true to RL and that getting any kind of closer never happens. And a few years back i was right there with em, but i found that it wasn’t helping my anxieties or depression any to have the way of looking at things consistently shown as rector in stories read to get away for RL.
To be fair, she did not go directly to the hospital from school. She got sick with a cold as an indirect result of the bullying, and due to her Sarnothi physology and lack of information about her people, she had to go to a place that has a specialist. Which was the hospital. So the school would not have known that she ended up in the hospital, and even if they did, they would not have known how severe the case was until they were told. As it stands at this point, what they saw was that one of the kids was kicked in the crotch, while the other went home (admittedly, after a faint) with the sniffles, but was otherwise fine. Added to the fact that the one that got kicked in the crotch ALSO has parent who can/have made things difficult for the school in the past, and I am not surprised at the outcome.
I’ve noted this before, but you have an awesome knack for making someone look like the bad guy, and then later coming back and showing the character from a new angle that forces us to reconsider. The most recent case being the Sar’Teri trying for a peaceful solution to the fishing incident. Still waiting to see if that will happen again with Professor Trunchbull or the Principal, who are both “in the know” regarding Sarnothi existence. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past you to make the fishermen look sympathetic, too!
The principal knows about Sarnothi? Since when?
The principal at least knows that Selkie is different, because Agent Brown made sure that they knew that she has to flush her gills.
Well, I’m sure no one told the guy how the thing went down. The principle probably said the kids got into a snowball fight, Selkie and Truck got into it and Selkie ended up kicking him in the balls. Then his pwn child probably said he didn’t do anything wrong. Not to mention Selkie tried to spit poison at him so he probably thinks she DID start it with his son. His line of reasoning isn’t irrational; he just never got the whole story and wants to defend his own kid. Sure the dude is a bit of a douchebag in terms of thinking so highly of himself, but really he’s not guilty of anything other than that thus far.
Admittedly he probably won’t be able to be reasoned with either way, but he’s not an awful person for thinking of his family before others. Just like Todd isn’t in the wrong for wanting to protect Selkie. These two aren’t so different really.
I’m reminded of a quote from Jack Rosenblum: āIf one person tells you you’re a horse, they are crazy. If three people tell you you’re a horse, there’s conspiracy afoot. If ten people tell you you’re a horse, it’s time to buy a saddleā
By that I mean, I see your point but the thing is that – pretty much all the characters in this story share the same view of the Trunchbulls so I think Dave intends for them to be the bad guys and if you aren’t yet convinced they are maybe it’s only because Dave is stringing the evidence out and the clincher is yet to come.
Sometimes a guy acts like a douchebag because he really IS a douchebag.
Kitenkaiba.
You and I have very different experiences of school life. Obviously. I suffered bullying at school for every single one of my school years, and in every single year I was the one blamed for being bullied. I even got beaten up by a teacher. If this is going to be true to life – then there isn’t a win involved at all. Trunchbull and Trunk will be scot-free, and Trunk will go on to bully people as an adult.
“While the system does often fail in real life it’s only a small percentage”. Often and small don’t go together. Often is much more than small. If you think it’s only a small percentage who fail, then the system only infrequently fails. If it often fails, then it fails for much more than a small percentage.
And real life doesn’t support you. Neither does all the kids committing suicide from being bullied. Regardless of them, there are way more people like me who managed to survive school and have a life scarred by the experience and I’ve never seen any of my bullies receive any come back or punishment Kharmic or otherwise.
I keep up on the reading about bullying and why it happens, and I still see victim-blaming in the literature. And that’s from the experts.
But this is not real-life. And however Dave chooses to resolve this, IF IT GETS RESOLVED AT ALL – is up to him. And as the storyteller, I trust him to find the right way to do this in the world that he has invented.
There will always be bullies and there will always be bullying. You can’t eliminate it, but you can come up with better ways of dealing with it. The first thing that needs to go are the zero-tolerance policies most schools have in place regarding violence. They don’t allow for self-defense. “It takes two to tango”, they tell you–but even if you’re lying on the floor, curled up in a fetal position while some troglodyte punches and kicks you, you’ll get in as much trouble (or more) as the bully because “it takes two to tango”. Students can’t stand up for themselves because they’ve been told they aren’t ALLOWED. They’re told to wait for an authority figure. Well most of the time when this stuff happens there’s no authority figures to be found. If you try to stand up for yourself, you’re the one who’s punished.
These policies were put in place to protect the kids. They’ve failed MISERABLY. They need to go.
Exactly. The system is utterly ridiculous. My little brother got beat up by one of his best friends in 6th or 7th grade (the kid got mixed up in a bad crowd). He didn’t fight back but was still suspended. And the reason he was attacked? Because of his ethnicity. ><
@Kiri
“And real life doesnāt support you.”
It supported me, and I owe society a debt of gratitude for removing the fear of bullying from my life
Bullying has been condemned and demonized for generations already. Even if that ideal is not always upheld, it is still considered the ideal that we are meant to strive for, and many still do. (Seriously, has anyone ever heard of a pro-bully platform?)
FYI, it is in fact possible for something to be both often (time), yet small (per-ratio).
@Jim/Qrinta
I agree; itās not just unfair, but outright unreasonable to assume that kids can just overpower the instinct to defend themselves on a whim. Even most ADULTS lack that sense of control.
Still, playing the devil’s advocate, how would you prevent bullies from exploiting a self-defense rule? (“He pushed me for teasing him, so had the right to punch him in the face!”)
@Antidragon4185
Yes! This is my main point, if you have evidence to prove the bullying happening you have a very good chance of people siding with you. Mostly humans are not evil gits out to stab you in the back, unusually there just lazy or ignorant at worst.
It wasn’t real life that supported you – it was the luck of the draw. The majority of bullied children are not supported. And are blamed.
And all you have to do is look around you to see the blame the victim mentality that is rife not just in bullying but everywhere else as well. The poor are blamed for being poor, the raped are blamed for being raped, the incest victims are blamed for the incest. Most cultures reward the powerful and punish the vulnerable. That’s the kind of world we live in. I’m currently part of a group trying to get through some anti-bullying laws in my state due to the number of suicides and deaths, and the amount of trouble we’re having trying to get anything even listened to – it tells me you were the lucky one to be believed. And this is why I think Kitenkaiba is living in that rosy coloured glasses world. BTW, I didn’t say it never happens – I said it infrequently happens. It’s not a small percentage that doesn’t work – it’s a small percentage that DOES work for the victim.
It happened in real life so yeah sounds like real life supported him. Good things happen in real life too and frankly the need to focus solely on the negative only perpetuates more negativity. I have been bullied as a kid; I have been beaten as a teenager by local gangs. I have been though a lot of shit and the last thing I want others who are facing the same thing it too always be told that nothing will ever help them, that nothing will ever get better, and that the cruel people always win. Because thatās bullshit!
They don’t use the term “pro-bully”, but the platform definitely exists.
Somehow, I think I’d like to hear Professor Trunchbull’s idea of what happened first, so Todd can refute it in staggering detail…
And speaking of food diagrams, to hell with the “MyPlate” system. I vote we go back to the OLD food pyramid. The one that showed actual food and people running in the background and didn’t look like some sort of prismatic mind-control device. MyPlate A) doesn’t tell you how high to put things on the plate, B) doesn’t tell you how often to eat these things, and C) doesn’t tell you which foods to eat sparingly.
… Soapbox fun tyme over. Sorry.
does the Prof have a cold? (He missed the N in his name when answering the phone š )
Fixed!
Your link to Food Pyramid calls it “Food Pyrmaid”. š
There’s three sides to this story. There’s Truck’s version, there’s Selkie’s version, and somewhere in between there’s the truth.
Selkie did not tell Todd everything about what happened that day–and Truck I’m sure gave a similarly edited story. If these two adults are intelligent about this they’ll compare notes and maybe between the two find out what ACTUALLY happened. Even money on if that happens. Todd is too angry and the professor is too arrogant. There’s going to be an argument and if Todd doesn’t watch his temper, possible legal action.
People like you are at least half the reason bullying continues to be an epidemic.
I’m sorry you feel that my pointing out the obvious–that neither party has the whole story here–is tantamount to supporting bullying.
I’m not saying that Selkie had it coming or that she deserved it or anything of that nature. What I AM saying is that both parties are missing information that, if they had it, there’d probably be a lot less bluster going on. But please, feel free to make baseless assumptions about my character.
I keep hoping that Prof Trunchbull is named for Miss Trunchbull from Matilda. It would explain sssoooo mmmuuuccchhh.
To be fair, most of America never really used the Food Pyramid at all. Hence the obesity.
I have a feeling that this is going to get ugly.
Is it bad that this guy reminds me of Gendo Ikari?
Do you know the inhuman MEDICAL BILLS HE PAID?!?!