Jessie is a bit naive scatterbrained and bumbling, but she can be authoritative when she needs to be.
Alternate dialogue for Lisa in panel 3: "Bend over, and prepare for drama."
Jessie is a bit naive scatterbrained and bumbling, but she can be authoritative when she needs to be.
Selkie expression: Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen it.
Keikaku dori …
It’s sort of an “evil mastermind” expression, isn’t it?
This is kind of where I wish Selkie would turn this around and “save” him, thus turning the entire rest of the situation around on him to end his short-lived grudge… He seems like the kind of kid who would remember when someone saved his ass, even if it was someone who got him in that mess indirectly. He hasn’t really been portrayed as a bad kid, just one with problems, so I hope there’s a peaceful outcome on the way. The adults don’t know everything about the playground incident and Selkie hasn’t explained everything yet either. Both sides were provoked that day, and if she wants to really move on, she’s gonna need to want to talk about it rather than just get her revenge.
Tried that once in elementary school. Didn’t work.
What? No! Very much no!
First of all, it’s not possible. There is nothing Selkie can do at this point that will “save” Tommy. The fight on the playground, plus running up to the library without permission, means that Tommy is already in trouble. And he’s going to blame Selkie for every bit of it.
Second, it’s the worst possible thing that could happen. Tommy needs to be in trouble at this point. You say he’s a kid with problems instead of a bad kid? Fine. Those problems will not be dealt with if he gets off the hook again. His rampage will continue until something forces the authorities to do something, and his parents will be the hardest to convince of all.
Third, “talking it out” may work for those nasty little brats outside. They really are working from faulty information, and may, if correctly informed, go back to their general contempt of the “orphies” rather than their current hostility. Truck (no doubt encouraged on some level by his parents’ bigotry against the Sarnothi) has conceived a hatred for “fish face”, and it’s not going to be a short-lived grudge. He’s going to blame her for everything that goes wrong in his life from this day forth, even if it makes no damn sense.
Fourth, given that there’s no chance of “peace” coming from Truck’s direction, Selkie needs to have a victory if the nightmares and the terror of going back to school are ever going to stop. She needs to know that she can fight back.
Another reason it’s a bad idea for Selkie to bail Truck out: It gives Truck justification for his actions. It’s a matter of “I attack Selkie = She bails me out = She deserves to be attacked again = She will bail me out again.” It’s the same logic you run into if your only answer to a baby crying is shoving a bottle of milk in it’s face, it’ll never stop crying.
Oh, no no no. If he feels free to snot off to a teacher like that, he’s not going to feel obligated to treat Selkie honorably in return for her giving him a freebie. He’ll just see it as more validation that whatever he wants he gets. Shut him down now!
I was here first hurry. Why do you color it in after you uploaded like last time. Nice.
Usually it’s when I don’t get a strip completely done before I have to go to bed. I work nights, so gotta get to sleep in the afternoon.
Ok just wanted to know great comic
I feel your pain, Dave. O_O I work graveyards at a local 24/7 diner. Fun stuff. >_>
Ouch
Well, you did put up the rough on the Sunday before Monday…I think we can all bear with you till you finish it off. (Besides, it’s just chance (and being on vacation) that lets me look at it before Monday morning anyway.)
Good advancing of the storyline. Then, given what’s already happened, I wonder what would be different with him (or his family’s reaction) if he assaulted a teacher.
Okay I feel a bit better about this situation now in terms of Jessie doing the right thing.
Same here. Currently she’s the least clueless teaching staff person.
Me too. I was thrown off when she told him where selkie was at all, but she’s on top of it.
And Jessie out of nowhere with the being a superb teacher. There’s a number of people I know that read this that wrote her off as just a bubble headed idjit. She’s doing the right thing, taking command, and this time, things cannot just be written off. Whether taunted or not, he broke the rules to stalk a little girl and from our perspective at least, obviously to hurt her. This many times in a row get’s close to the third time is a pattern rule.
I wholekidneyedley support you.
Bubble-head idiot? No. New, inexperienced and easily panicked, yes. But she´s learning quickly, and she really has Selkie´s best interests in mind.
And even if she were a bubble-headed idiot, she´s also the only person I can recall who didn´t initially react with shock when she saw Selkie the first time. That´s gotta count for something.
“Doy” ??? Jessie! I’m surprised at you, using such language in front of children.
Is that something bad? I thought it was a typo on “boy”.
“Doy” is an expression indicating stupidity. In this case, it means that Truck is acting stupidly if he insists that a teacher can’t tell him what to do.
It’s fairly recently slang, so older adults wouldn’t use it.
Yeah that’s me alright – older adult. 😉
Well. He is. <.<
“Thats OK Ms Jessie, I was hungry for company anyway, I promise I won’t hurt him” said with her predatory smile might just make Tommy change his mind.
I just noticed how big Tommy is compared to his teaching aid. If he’s really arrogant enough to think no one will go against him because of his parents, one might think he may assault, as in pass the teacher’s aid. It would finally get his parents involved in a way that makes them notice his violent nature and seek help to correct it.
I meant to say push not pass, darn phone auto correct.
Can we assume this is a sign of the Principal’s biases as he refers to her as “Selkie’s Teacher” when obviously she has just as many students in her class as any other teacher. For that matter he doesn’t seem to know the name’s of his staff. (Probably comes from firing so many.)
I wouldn’t assume it as a bad sign right now. He would know that Selkie is in the library as she’s allowed there at the moment. A principle needs to know where the exceptions are to properly control the school. Her teacher being called there merits the comment.
I think that was said more for the sake of the reader. Yes it’s rather odd for him to address her as ‘Selkie’s teacher’. He knows her name although I don’t know if they are on a first name bases in terms of closeness, and in normal circumstances he would call her by it.
We’re just being spoon fed the situation, he hears the librarian call for Mina if he recognizes his voice and who he is calling then he can put two and two together to figure out why the librarian is calling for the teacher of the student who is in the library.
And here we see the seed which sprouted to Truck’s ill-mannered behavior: “You can’t tell me what to do, because you’re not my mother”.
His parents taught him only to obey them, and them alone.
Rendering all forms of authority obsolete.
“His parents taught him only to obey them, and them alone.”
Well, maybe not deliberately. Here’s the thing: I used to be mildly autistic (had the noise sensitivity thing, attention issues, took me a long time just to learn how to pretend to listen to someone, etc.) but was lucky enough to grow out of it without drugs. I also know a couple with a child who has a much worse case of it that I did, and it’s really super hard.
Now Truck may or may not be being written with a specific attention/learning disability, but if he is, I sympathize with the Trunchbulls to a certain extent. Yes, they are still buttholes for taking the “I believe my son over any number of adult witnesses” stance. But trying to raise a child who usually pays you little or no attention, not because he’s being belligerent, but because his brain has difficulty processing this strange, abstract “other people” thing, is super hard.
Can’t edit, so I’ll reply: All this is assuming the reason the Trunchbulls are defensive of Tommy is because of his learning/attention disability. Their over-defensiveness is sending him the absolute wrong signals, but there may be a good reason why they’re making such a blundering foolish mistake in the first place.
Going back to the real-life couple, they’re super smart. Their kid is also pretty smart for his age. But the early years, before they learned how to deal with him, was constantly miserable. Once they learned how to deal with him, and how to recognize when he really was being belligerent and when he was just oblivious because of his condition, things became a lot better. If this happened with the Trunchbulls, the Trunchbulls may be presuming that the teachers got it wrong because they just don’t know how to communicate with him.
And then there’s the fact that Mr. Trunchbull may not just be being racist and may actually have a point about Sarnothi thinking and communicating in a fundamentally alien way to the way humans do. (We know for a fact that their language is at least a little alien with the “pluralses” and all.) That, combined with his son’s communication issues, could lead a very smart parent to make a blisteringly stupid conclusion.
Why does it have to be learning disabilities? The monsters who tormented me throughout middle school certainly managed to do so without any learning disabilities.
Sometimes you´ll have to take into account the possibility that people are simply assholes.
People are born hard wired to a large extent. nurture is only half of the equation. sometimes i think people underestimate how much genetics/the brain come into play with people’s personalities. Babies have distinct personalities even in-utero.
I mean. Really we just don’t know enough about truck’s history, and truck’s parents, to make a judgement call on *why* he is the way that he is. We just know that he is displaying patterns of disturbing behavior and thinking. The adults in the story need to address it. But honestly. Who knows how much progress is even possible with him, especially with his parents validating his attitudes and excusing his behavior.
“Why does it have to be learning disabilities?”
Doesn’t have to be. Like I’ve been saying, I could be 100% wrong, but considering Truck’s behavior, he seems to be written like someone who isn’t just belligerent, but someone who really does have difficulty comprehending how he should behave. He’s definitely not written “stupid”, and he’s not written “cleverly evil”. If he was just an intelligent monster, he’d be much, much, much more careful about hiding his activities from the teachers.
As it is, he doesn’t seem to get why the teachers would even want to stop him. That’s why he’s not trying to hide his activities: going so far as to ask a teacher where Selkie is. Part of it is the bad influence of his parents, and part of it seems to be that he really, really has trouble understanding how other people think.
I don’t know about his parents correcting his behavior. If it’s one thing I’ve noticed about Tommy’s dad is that the good professor is so in love with his own hypothesis, (it’s not a theory until enough evidence consistently supports it), not to mention his confidence in his own infallibility makes him a bad scientist and an even worse parent.
I hope SO MUCH that Todd will hit the Professor over his head with his own “conspiracy hypothesis” line, once the Professor insists that Truck must have been framed for this incident.
Oooh! I’ve got it! Just like in the strip referenced, Jessie should lick her thumb and threaten to touch Truck with it and he’ll be out of there instantly! Perfect way to defuse the situation.
… brb, rewriting
… Beautiful. <3
Elegant, simple.
Small chance of backfiring horribly.
I’m hoping Truck saves that punch a lot of people think Jessie will get for Principal Hobbit.
Or, considering the number of staff that seem to be on their way to the library right now… wait til they’re all in a good position to see him giving Jessie a black eye. Not that I want her to get hurt… but… Y’know what? You’re right. Principal Hobbit is a MUCH better candidate for that.
that kid is seriously confused about his place in the universe.