Should be the last “Diet Caffiene Free Selkie” strip. Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe Monday’s too, depending on how the drive home goes.
Cookie cake is one of my saddest losses. #screwyoudiabetes.
Should be the last “Diet Caffiene Free Selkie” strip. Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe Monday’s too, depending on how the drive home goes.
Diet Caffiene Free Selkie or no I want the next page!!! god these kids need some therapy
Calling someone else incompetent to cover up your own screw-up; classic tactic for irresponsible brats everywhere.
Uh oh.
I hope you can run faster than Heather, Giselle, or you may have an unexpected pigtailectomy soon. 🙂
And here are even more witnesses to Truck’s misbehavior. Nor can the Trunchbulls play the ‘it’s the dangerous Sarnothi’s fault’ card this time.
Randomness: I wish Heather’s parents would consider adopting Keisha. I know that’s asking a lot of a couple but…Idk.
Sad about no more cookie cake for you:(
Fail. Good. *shakes head* Wonder how the little sociopath is going to try to spin this into Heather’s fault. I know it’s a fictional world, but the treatment of the orphans is just disgusting in this school system. I know it’s not ALL the kids, but there’s this pretty large and frightening anti-orphan pack of brats, and no protection for them due to the principal’s cartilage spine in the face of parents.
You did well to preface it with “I know this is a fictional world.” I bore the brunt of a ton of bullying when I was a kid, because my family was just very different (hippies) in a sea of conservative red necks. Many were the types of people who were destructive for just the sake of being destructive. Even as I child I assumed they were being abused at home in some way. And it’s true that they really go for the jugular– they see the thing that makes you weak in some way, and they attack it. Every little thing about you.
But even in that environment growing up, it seemed like there were a few things that were off limits even to the wort of them. Those things included: dead or missing parents, adoption, and disease. Sure, people talked about kids in those situations behind their back, but it was something *no one* would make fun of them for, to their face.
For that reason this pack of devil children who use the insult “orphies” to throw at the orphaned children feels, coupled with the truly nasty expression on their faces, like an exaggerated version of real life. Which is okay– this is a comic. It’s a fictional world. Or else, yeah, these are just particularly psychotic children. However having a school that does nothing about bullying is not at all a new thing, historically. There are schools that know about bullying and purposefully turn a blind eye out of principle. They defend the bullies to the victims, even in extreme cases like when the victims try to commit suicide over it. It’s often a sad world we life in. *sigh*
It doesn’t happen as much these days, though, because thanks to school shootings bullying has become sort of a hot topic as compared to the awareness society had about it in, oh, say, the 70’s and 80’s. And in elementary school I think you see a high level of responsibility for violence. It is the job of teachers and the like to *protect* the children that they are trying to teach.
And there is more than just a principle in a given school, which is something a lot of comics and movies/tv shows like glee don’t take into account. There is a whole system in place that built and populated every school in a given system. There is also the NEA — the National Education Association which will put millions toward Lawyers fees for each case against a teacher or administrator in the exact situation we have here. When there is an irate parent or student making false claims, trying to push other people around because in their twisted minds, they think they have some kind of authority over the entire education system, and all other parents/students.
That is why after every single instance that there in inappropriate behavior on the level that the law might need to be brought into the picture, every teacher involved creates a documentation of the occurrence in their own account. So, like I said. I just don’t find it realistic that truck and his father would be able to bully the entire school like this. But, we’re watching a story which is a parody of life, and not life itself. There are plenty of factors relating to this comic that hit very close to home for me, otherwise.
Unfortunately, I was bullied and I was bullied when I moved from an inner city area to a tiny rural town where certain families had been there for 300 years. They did, in fact, own the town. Their kids could do no wrong, and the administration behaved like the principal here does. Probably why this does resonate so hard with me. While there wasn’t an orphanage, there was an extreme level of poverty in some spots in town and those kids were cheerfully assaulted on the basis of being so poor, in broken homes, in foster care, etc. I worked briefly in the school system as an adult and watched the teachers doing the same thing to other teachers who weren’t “from there” or on their “level”. I was working as a paraprofessional while getting my Education Masters. One woman, whose daughter I graduated high school with in that school, saw me studying on my lunch and asked what I was reading. I explained that I was working on homework for a class. Her response: “Oh, GED?”
I graduated…with…her…daughter. But this royal family member of the town, this adult, had utter blinders on to the point that anyone in the “lowly” position of paraprofessional had to be a high school drop out with room temperature IQ.
So…I’ve seen this kinda thing, and then seen the adults doing it, in a small town. It’s more realistic than I like to think, probably why it resonates so hard for me. Dave does a good job, doesn’t he?
I really, really wonder about that girl’s parents, she shows much higher skill-levels in perfidy than most children develop at that age without role models.
Hey, there you go, Giselle: last panel, turning around the abuse to blame your victim. It’s the perfect way to salvage blowing your cover while she’s still reeling from the reveal. Glad to see you’re learning, and I’m sure you’ll make a great professional supervillain in ten or so years.
What you should work on next is a more advanced technique of setting your victim up so that you can pretend that your bad behavior is a reaction to them disappointing you in some way in the past. You can even drag third-parties into this, bad-mouthing your victim behind their backs and then when the third party suggests some specific passive-aggressive technique, you have someone else who is already agreeing with your actions. Also, if necessary, you can fall back on blaming the third party for your actions (if blaming the victim doesn’t work) and therefore avoiding any responsibility whatsoever! (It’s best if the third party has some kind of actual or perceived authority.)
Also, make sure that however many rules you break or lies you tell, you simply need to make sure everyone thinks you’re being victimized/neglected by your victim long before your victim realizes that they need to defend themselves, and your story will make them look like a total liar. Do this more than once, and no one will even bother to pay attention to contrary evidence, since clearly the truth (your “truth”) has already been determined. You’ll be the hero and all you had to do was utterly destroy your victim’s reputation with no true provocation.
Protip: convince yourself of your own story and you can even be sincere about it, which will help in a number of ways.
Don’t thank me, thank the people who pulled this on me in real life and then later told me straight to my face when I couldn’t believe it. Good luck in future villainous endeavors.
… Are you Captain Hammer?
Holy crap, where did this happen?
Maybe paranoia is underrated…
#1 Sorry to hear Dave can’t have cookie cake.
#2 Looks like Heather will be eating crow pie.
She’s still mad at Amanda, though. She MIGHT apologize for misreading Lynni and Giselle, but she’s not likely to apologize for any of the other things that happened in the bathroom. She’s also probably not going to be friends with Amanda for awhile.
Hahaha I’m loving Giselle’s face when she’s realized her own mistake XD And eh… Don’t mind me I’m just on the edge of my seat drinking barley tea and hope for monday… … … -siiiiip-
DA-DA
DA-DA
DA-DA DA-DA DA-DA
I gotta say, I really like the jaw line on Giselle in the last panel. I think it’s the most three dimensional thing I’ve seen in this comic.
I just want to throw out there that I rather like seeing the “diet caffeine free” art. It lets us see your drawing style a lot more.
I appreciate the “fully loaded” as well, but its actually really nice to see the process sometimes.
Na. Captain Hammer’s not bright enough to give instructions. He just has a natural talent. After all, he has super powers!
It took this long because the first time you lied, the thing you said happened to be true. See also: “It was a lie at the time,” from El Goonish Shive.
http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=365
By the way, is that Jessie Flower providing adult supervision in panel 5?
It’s Mary, from the orphanage.
To whoever’s keeping up the Selkie “TV Tropes” page, would panels 4-6 qualify as an “Oh Crap” moment for Giselle?
I’m not sure how this comment section works so this might wind up getting double posted:
I’ve been reading and enjoying this comic for a while now. Heather is one of my favorite characters but I have to ask, is she somewhat learning disabled(not sure if I’m using the right term)? I’m not trying to insult the character, it just seems that she is based on past story lines involving her.
Figured it out. Good on you Heather.
Now here’s hoping there’s a mature, constructive response that ultimately benefits you and your relationship with your friends.
Honestly though, these kids are acting very, VERY destructively. Not just isolating and bullying the…ugh…”orphies”, but doing it to other kids at this age where they’re still developing proper social skills seems like throwing ice on plant sprouts to me.
How do these kids get like this again? We know the Trunchbull story, but what about these kids? What let them think that this kind of stuff is okay?
A natural behaviour in kids, or some kind of problematic parenting?
Part of it I think is that if an adult isn’t there to verify, the kids can say whatever they want and if they have more witnesses to confirm on hand adults will believe the minority rather then the majority because majority makes it more believable. It should also be noted, that kids with parents, if they tell them about it and complain most regular parents will defend their kids complain and set things straight. Orphanage staff probably don’t go that far for there charges because it makes it seem like favoritism. You say they’re monsterous, but honestly this is about par course. Kids at this age will get away with ANYTHING they can. If they’re only children they’ve likely got a very highly developed sense of entitlement to the point where anyone considered lower is fair game. Kids are mean, because naturally they haven’t been socialized, and if they don’t have to share like in only children or in the case of parental favoritism can’t get the benefits of why they should be nice to other people who can’t reasonably do anything about it in today’s school system. The system isn’t designed to make a safe enviroment for kids, it’s designed to be safe against lawsuits, so any retaliation like in the case of Selkie defending herself is discouraged even if the other party is at fault.
*Majority not minority
Kids are, by default, jerks. They need to be taught proper behavior. That takes time. In fact, some kids never learn it and become jerks in adulthood. (See subset of humanity known as “bros”)
Heather, this is where you smile.
You smile, and you walk away.
Not to “be the bigger person,”
But because it will totally freak her out.
In a competely different context, someone I know said he and his friends were bullied by someone who was in foster care. He told the bully, “It’s not our fault your parents don’t love you!” I think that was mean/cruel of him, but apparently it was effective in getting the bully to stop.
On another note, I don’t get how the “well duh” thing is Giselle blaming Heather. It came across to me as more, “LOL yeah you caught me out.”