Not in those words, certainly. That’d be a horrible way to approach ANYONE. But nor should the truth be hidden from her, she needs to be told in gentle, age-appropriate language, for exactly this reason– kids tend to assume the worst. Amanda is growing to think she’s inherently unlovable, when really she’s just in a lot of pain and dealing with it poorly. Giving kids the right words to understand and express their pain is key to helping them deal with it.
Is she stealing the doll from the other girl, or is she taking back her doll (violently) that the other girl had stolen -er, I mean borrowed without permission, or is she about to beat up the other girl, using the doll as a club?
I apologize in advance for what I am going to say.
The parents that let those boys hurt Amanda and then say that she is perfectly fine and even returned her…. well they can go hit a deer.
White-tailed deer are not endangered. They are a menace to both public safety and public health. They don’t look cute to me; when I see one by the side of the road I think, “Oh, I hope the car wasn’t hurt too badly.”
Your right Jessamy, when you hit a deer it usually means you need a whole new car. What happens to the deer? It gets up, looks at you like “HEY, Watch where you are going!” and then hops away.
It was TOTALLY the deer’s fault. If the stupid thing had gone the other way or just STAYED PUT I could have swerved around it, but no, it had to jump RIGHT BACK IN FRONT OF ME.
Whitetail aren’t that big, and they are pretty fragile. If you hit one hard enough to damage your car, you probably total the whitetail.
Elk and moose are so tall that a car (pickups and SUVs not necessarily included) doesn’t hit the body, just the legs – which breaks them. Totaling the animal.
Mule deer are probably the most likely to damage the car and not be hurt much. They are big enough to be less fragile than whitetails, but still small enough to be thrown by the impact.
Not the deer my dad hit. When they got the car to a mechanic he pulled out a good slab of steak from… I think it was the part where the door connects to the front? That deer probably hopped away a few feet and died of shock and blood loss.
yeah, my stepbrother up in central Michigan says that deer hits are so prevalent, that the mail trucks up there have roll cages on the OUTSIDE of the vehicle to keep the deer parts off of the actual car, to help minimize the damage to the actual mail truck… as well as to help prevent the deer’s legs from kicking in the windshield and hurting the driver…
Including my extended relative, my family have lost three vehicles to deer. Every time I see the things standing on the side of the road, I know in my heart they aren’t actually grazing.
Why take it out on an innocent deer? They should actually hit a rock, something as hard and unyielding as they obviously were. Instead of teaching the boys to be decent human beings, they punished the child who was bullied.
Actually, growing up in Maine one of the things they teach in drivers ed is “If you have a choice between hitting a moose and hitting a tree aim for the tree.” Yes a car hitting a moose will probably break a moose’s leg. This means the moose will then fall ON your car and crush it. Your car may take damage from a deer but you can usually walk away from it. Not so with a moose.
Grandpa hit a deer back when I was a kid; it rolled over the hood, through the windshield and ended up inside the car with him. For the longest time, there were actual deer hoof skid marks across the inside roof.
Understandable, we only see what Dave has allowed us to see
in terms of her behavior and motives.
But now we can infer that she has been in the receiving end of some pretty hard abuse from her adoptive siblings.
Violence does not make what she does right, but as a kid it is all she understands… Maybe Andi really CAN do her some good now.
Dave, I think I would have had a problem seeing Amanda marked up like that. I for one appreciate the alternate choice and I cannot begin to believe that it will ever get easier to try that. I think the message of Lilian describing her condition was powerful enough, especially coupled with her Princess story still fresh in our minds. Excellent story-telling there. I only wish I was buying Selkie in magazine/book form at a store.
And happy 600th Page, Dave! Here’s to your continued good health and Selkie’s success as a series!
I’m also glad you went with a more metaphorical approach that shows Amanda being torn in two over the abuse. It is too easy to show abuse through bruises, this shows the emotional impact.
I’d add this: I’m guessing that a significant portion of your audience has had their own traumas from bullying and abuse — higher percentage than with other fandoms, due to your chosen subject material and the _ with which you approach it. Therefore it stands to reason that there’s a lot of readers with triggers. Showing abuse directly is probably not a good idea, especially when it can be described symbolically and/or with words.
Oddly enough, in my own work I’m going the other direction for a couple key scenes — because I think having the reader step into the shoes of the victim is important to the telling, and to the ultimate social effects I’m hoping for (greater empathy for abuse victims, and more action taken to stop bullying). I think making it symbolic or magical or talking around it would dilute the effect more than I’m comfortable with.
So here it’s explicitly explained, the mother who gave her a gamekid was an adoptive mother. This was a theory a fan posted earlier but now it’s confirmed.
I have to wonder what the order of the situation with that old adoptive family was. Was Amanda always an unholy terror, and the family reacted extremely badly, or did they abuse her and that’s why she’s the way she is? Because one of these implies that Lillian’s theory won’t work — the idea that if the results of the abuse are slowly dealt with, the anger and bad behavior will resolve. If she was always that way, that’s not going to solve the problem. It’s just a whole different can of worms to fix alongside the other problem then.
Even in families where all of the siblings are biologically related you can have situations where the parent(s) are unintentionally abusive just by getting into the habit of believing one kid’s word over the other. Or sometimes letting one child get away with behavior that they would never tolerate in the other.
My relationship with my own mother is much better now that I moved out, but I no longer ever let her get away with claiming that she doesn’t play favorites. She never intended to, but that is 100% exactly what she did.
I completely agree with you. My mother always believed my brother over me and was more lenient with him. She always believed the worst and most horrible things about me and rarely asked me for my side without pre judging me. Thing is, I was always the strait laced kid and my brother was the thief, drug addict, and abusive one.
Didn’t matter though, someone could say something to my mother about me and she believed it without ever considering my track record.
After going to an SCA event, (it’s kind of like a weekend ren fair) the car my friends and I were in broke down in a bad neighborhood on our way back. We walked in costume to a hotel to try and use a phone to call for help. The hotel was serviced by the same security company that my parents worked for so when the hotel manager called security about three strange people in weird clothes, I tried to explain what the situation was and mentioned that my parents worked for the same company.
Apparently the security guy didn’t believe me and by the time I heard from my mother about the incident he had told her that he thought I was a prostitute due to my odd flamboyant clothing. My mother instead of calling me and asking me to clarify what what was going on simply assumed that he was right and got mad at me for whoring myself out and calling attention to the fact that I was her daughter.
That’s right, she was more angry at the thought that other people would know that HER DAUGHTER was a supposed whore than she was at the possibility that I was actually selling my self.
Even after I explained what had actually happened and asked her why if I was doing that would I call attention to our family connection to someone I knew would tell her about it, she still completely believed that I had been whoring myself out until I got caught at it.
Another time I was dating a guy that she didn’t like, and someone told her that he was a drug dealer and that he probably had me hooked on drugs. (He was nothing of the kind by the way and I had never done any drugs in my life.) My mother not only accused me of being hooked on drugs she demanded that I strip naked so she could search my body for needle tracks.
My brother on the other hand who was on drugs and occasionally dealing could do no wrong in her eyes. It didn’t matter how often he stole things from her and others, or how many of his girlfriends dumped him because he was a violent drug and alcohol addicted jackass, my mother could forgive him anything.
Bear in mind that Amanda was a newborn baby when her first parents adopted her. Unless she has a biological disorder, they are the reason she is as she is. If she does have biological issues causing her behaviour, the parents had a duty to have her diagnosed and treated, which they don’t seem to have done, but is an avenue I suspect Lillian would have pursued. I note she doesn’t mention it.
And here’s the testing point. Four for you Lillian.
(And Dave, I do not blame you in the slightest. Wow, poor Amanda. I’m starting to wonder if maybe her adoptive parents might have thought it would be better for her to get away… but that’s probably giving them too much credit given it’s still THE OTHER KIDS’ faults.)
a story broke about an arkansas state representative who adopted two little girls, and later literally gave them away (legal in arkansas!) to a man who raped one of them. if i read it correctly, he got them back then gave them away again. google rep. justin harris.
Yah I read about that too. As for Amanda I think having a family that actually wants her will go a long way and have her best friend with her too. Andi you need to adopt two kids
I don’t think Andi’s going to be adopting Keisha. Not now, not ever. She’ll have enough on her plate with Amanada, and in fact Amanda needs and deserves to get full-time parental attention and will likely be occupying more than 100% of Andi’s time.
Welcoming Keisha into her home as Amanda’s best friend, sure. They can spend lots of time together, have playdates, sleepovers, do all the fun things that best-friend eight-year-old girls like to do. But that whole “we’ll demand to be adopted together or not at all” vow is not realistic.
That said… I really hope that the story does eventually include Keisha getting adopted too, by a loving family who wants HER, for herself, not just a sad tagalong two-for-the-price-of-one.
Love that the first time anyone ever replies to one of my posts is to make me seem like an asshole for wanting Amanda to have what has been the only support and constant in her life with her in a difficult journey that they had promised to make together
What if Andi meets Keisha and feels a real bond with her, too? It could happen! I know Andi said she didn’t want to raise a kid who wasn’t biologically related to her, but Andi seems to be rethinking a lot of her old assumptions lately.
Amanada is 8 now right? (That seems to be what everyone says.)
So she was adopted when she was 3 years old.
The family already had two biological sons.
The two sons were complete little [expletive deleted].
Yet the parents didn’t believe her (According to her story) and refused to believe their biological kids would do anything bad to her.
5 years later, safe to assume Amanda is deemed a ‘problem child’ because she either:
A. She’s perceived as anti-social with her ‘siblings’.
B. Always “lying”.
C. She learned to FIGHT BACK and that didn’t go over well with her ‘parents’.
(Note: Siblings and Parents is in quotations because I’d like to think those terms should be reserved for people who deserve to called that with a sense of endearment. People who mistreat their family don’t deserve those terms.)
Coupled with the abandonment issues she already had what with being put up for adoption as a newborn, throw in the emotional and physical abuse she had to put up with, and finally, feeling like she didn’t matter because of neglect as a result of an unfortunate matter of circumstance, I’m surprised she handles things as well as she does currently.
I mean…she’s 8. That kind of stuff breaks most ADULTS.
Incredible writing Dave! This is why I love Selkie. It’s all the variety of complexity. Seriously, not many people can write a situation that is meant to be seen as NOT BLACK AND WHITE as well as you do.
No, she was adopted as a newborn, returned at the age of 5, just as (age 5) selkie was also being left there. They were both in the orphanage for three years, after which Selkie was adopted and now Amanda might be.
I don’t think it’s called adoption if the child is returned to the birth parent. Not sure though, but I don’t think that’s what the situation would be.
Well, if Andi was hoping reclaiming their child would help her get back with Mark (not that I ever thought that would work) she should realize now that there’s no chance of that happening. Even if Mark could find a way to forgive her for giving Amanda up and lying about it he won’t forgive the fact that Andi’s actions led to his child suffering abuse like what he experienced as a child.
Kudos to Ms. Haversham-Zhang for staying securely in the “what is best for *Amanda* camp. It’s not easy, and it looks like she’s not letting Andi go on with rainbow farting unicorns and “it’ll all be easy!” magic.
Amanda will not be an easy kid to raise. I hope Andi is up to the task, or finds strengths she doesn’t know she has.
“Why doesn’t anyone want me?”
Because they aren’t sure if they can help you, Amanda.
Wow, that puts everything in place.
True, but has Lilian tried telling Amanda that? She’s at least 8, not 3.
It sounds like you meant to respond to Terah.
I don’t think telling an 8-year-old “it’s your fault no one wants you because you are too angry” is a good idea.
Not in those words, certainly. That’d be a horrible way to approach ANYONE. But nor should the truth be hidden from her, she needs to be told in gentle, age-appropriate language, for exactly this reason– kids tend to assume the worst. Amanda is growing to think she’s inherently unlovable, when really she’s just in a lot of pain and dealing with it poorly. Giving kids the right words to understand and express their pain is key to helping them deal with it.
Is she stealing the doll from the other girl, or is she taking back her doll (violently) that the other girl had stolen -er, I mean borrowed without permission, or is she about to beat up the other girl, using the doll as a club?
She’s about to learn why slugging someone while holding a hard plastic object in your hand is not a great idea.
My dad had to teach my sister that if you throw a punch never have your thumb inside your fist, otherwise SNAP broken thumb.
My Tae Kwon Do instructor taught us the same lesson. Looking back it amazes me that I ever made my fist that way. It feels super unnatural now.
I remember one time I got mad and slugged a kid in the stomach… good part I didn’t get in trouble, bad part the kid lived to see another day
We’re just going to call you “Mega Amanda” from now on, K?
😉
K. I just lose my temper… and people get hurt. It is their own fault though, they shouldn’t bother me.
I apologize in advance for what I am going to say.
The parents that let those boys hurt Amanda and then say that she is perfectly fine and even returned her…. well they can go hit a deer.
One would assume, knowing Lillian, that charges of child abuse were filed and some part of Amanda returning was protective custody.
Poor deer! (I agree with the sentiment, just not the target of the car.)
White-tailed deer are not endangered. They are a menace to both public safety and public health. They don’t look cute to me; when I see one by the side of the road I think, “Oh, I hope the car wasn’t hurt too badly.”
Your right Jessamy, when you hit a deer it usually means you need a whole new car. What happens to the deer? It gets up, looks at you like “HEY, Watch where you are going!” and then hops away.
It was TOTALLY the deer’s fault. If the stupid thing had gone the other way or just STAYED PUT I could have swerved around it, but no, it had to jump RIGHT BACK IN FRONT OF ME.
Whitetail aren’t that big, and they are pretty fragile. If you hit one hard enough to damage your car, you probably total the whitetail.
Elk and moose are so tall that a car (pickups and SUVs not necessarily included) doesn’t hit the body, just the legs – which breaks them. Totaling the animal.
Mule deer are probably the most likely to damage the car and not be hurt much. They are big enough to be less fragile than whitetails, but still small enough to be thrown by the impact.
Not the deer my dad hit. When they got the car to a mechanic he pulled out a good slab of steak from… I think it was the part where the door connects to the front? That deer probably hopped away a few feet and died of shock and blood loss.
yeah, my stepbrother up in central Michigan says that deer hits are so prevalent, that the mail trucks up there have roll cages on the OUTSIDE of the vehicle to keep the deer parts off of the actual car, to help minimize the damage to the actual mail truck… as well as to help prevent the deer’s legs from kicking in the windshield and hurting the driver…
Including my extended relative, my family have lost three vehicles to deer. Every time I see the things standing on the side of the road, I know in my heart they aren’t actually grazing.
They’re laying in WAIT.
Also, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln1ucGoPvWk (Louis CK, not safe for work, LOTS of cussing and vulgarity)
Which is exactly why my car insurance policy has a section on deer strikes… Thankfully I’ve never had to use it (yet)!
So do your part and eat a deer!
Think deer are bad, try hitting a kangaroo or an emu.
Why take it out on an innocent deer? They should actually hit a rock, something as hard and unyielding as they obviously were. Instead of teaching the boys to be decent human beings, they punished the child who was bullied.
Actually, growing up in Maine one of the things they teach in drivers ed is “If you have a choice between hitting a moose and hitting a tree aim for the tree.” Yes a car hitting a moose will probably break a moose’s leg. This means the moose will then fall ON your car and crush it. Your car may take damage from a deer but you can usually walk away from it. Not so with a moose.
Grandpa hit a deer back when I was a kid; it rolled over the hood, through the windshield and ended up inside the car with him. For the longest time, there were actual deer hoof skid marks across the inside roof.
Holy shit.
I am still having trouble empathizing with Amanda.
Understandable, we only see what Dave has allowed us to see
in terms of her behavior and motives.
But now we can infer that she has been in the receiving end of some pretty hard abuse from her adoptive siblings.
Violence does not make what she does right, but as a kid it is all she understands… Maybe Andi really CAN do her some good now.
Dave, I think I would have had a problem seeing Amanda marked up like that. I for one appreciate the alternate choice and I cannot begin to believe that it will ever get easier to try that. I think the message of Lilian describing her condition was powerful enough, especially coupled with her Princess story still fresh in our minds. Excellent story-telling there. I only wish I was buying Selkie in magazine/book form at a store.
And happy 600th Page, Dave! Here’s to your continued good health and Selkie’s success as a series!
I’m also glad you went with a more metaphorical approach that shows Amanda being torn in two over the abuse. It is too easy to show abuse through bruises, this shows the emotional impact.
I’d add this: I’m guessing that a significant portion of your audience has had their own traumas from bullying and abuse — higher percentage than with other fandoms, due to your chosen subject material and the _ with which you approach it. Therefore it stands to reason that there’s a lot of readers with triggers. Showing abuse directly is probably not a good idea, especially when it can be described symbolically and/or with words.
Oddly enough, in my own work I’m going the other direction for a couple key scenes — because I think having the reader step into the shoes of the victim is important to the telling, and to the ultimate social effects I’m hoping for (greater empathy for abuse victims, and more action taken to stop bullying). I think making it symbolic or magical or talking around it would dilute the effect more than I’m comfortable with.
Congratulations on #600 Dave! Also, thank you for going with your gut and not drawing her injured.
So here it’s explicitly explained, the mother who gave her a gamekid was an adoptive mother. This was a theory a fan posted earlier but now it’s confirmed.
… Well. That explains a lot.
Now, where Andi’s hair is undyed, i see the similarity (not sure if this is the right word?) between her… um… front hair? and Amanda’s pigtails 😮
“Bangs”
“interrobangs?”
Congratulations on #600 Dave, it packs a punch.
I have to wonder what the order of the situation with that old adoptive family was. Was Amanda always an unholy terror, and the family reacted extremely badly, or did they abuse her and that’s why she’s the way she is? Because one of these implies that Lillian’s theory won’t work — the idea that if the results of the abuse are slowly dealt with, the anger and bad behavior will resolve. If she was always that way, that’s not going to solve the problem. It’s just a whole different can of worms to fix alongside the other problem then.
Even in families where all of the siblings are biologically related you can have situations where the parent(s) are unintentionally abusive just by getting into the habit of believing one kid’s word over the other. Or sometimes letting one child get away with behavior that they would never tolerate in the other.
My relationship with my own mother is much better now that I moved out, but I no longer ever let her get away with claiming that she doesn’t play favorites. She never intended to, but that is 100% exactly what she did.
I completely agree with you. My mother always believed my brother over me and was more lenient with him. She always believed the worst and most horrible things about me and rarely asked me for my side without pre judging me. Thing is, I was always the strait laced kid and my brother was the thief, drug addict, and abusive one.
Didn’t matter though, someone could say something to my mother about me and she believed it without ever considering my track record.
After going to an SCA event, (it’s kind of like a weekend ren fair) the car my friends and I were in broke down in a bad neighborhood on our way back. We walked in costume to a hotel to try and use a phone to call for help. The hotel was serviced by the same security company that my parents worked for so when the hotel manager called security about three strange people in weird clothes, I tried to explain what the situation was and mentioned that my parents worked for the same company.
Apparently the security guy didn’t believe me and by the time I heard from my mother about the incident he had told her that he thought I was a prostitute due to my odd flamboyant clothing. My mother instead of calling me and asking me to clarify what what was going on simply assumed that he was right and got mad at me for whoring myself out and calling attention to the fact that I was her daughter.
That’s right, she was more angry at the thought that other people would know that HER DAUGHTER was a supposed whore than she was at the possibility that I was actually selling my self.
Even after I explained what had actually happened and asked her why if I was doing that would I call attention to our family connection to someone I knew would tell her about it, she still completely believed that I had been whoring myself out until I got caught at it.
Another time I was dating a guy that she didn’t like, and someone told her that he was a drug dealer and that he probably had me hooked on drugs. (He was nothing of the kind by the way and I had never done any drugs in my life.) My mother not only accused me of being hooked on drugs she demanded that I strip naked so she could search my body for needle tracks.
My brother on the other hand who was on drugs and occasionally dealing could do no wrong in her eyes. It didn’t matter how often he stole things from her and others, or how many of his girlfriends dumped him because he was a violent drug and alcohol addicted jackass, my mother could forgive him anything.
Bear in mind that Amanda was a newborn baby when her first parents adopted her. Unless she has a biological disorder, they are the reason she is as she is. If she does have biological issues causing her behaviour, the parents had a duty to have her diagnosed and treated, which they don’t seem to have done, but is an avenue I suspect Lillian would have pursued. I note she doesn’t mention it.
“N-n-n-no one ever said this would be HARD!” in 3…2…1…
And here’s the testing point. Four for you Lillian.
(And Dave, I do not blame you in the slightest. Wow, poor Amanda. I’m starting to wonder if maybe her adoptive parents might have thought it would be better for her to get away… but that’s probably giving them too much credit given it’s still THE OTHER KIDS’ faults.)
a story broke about an arkansas state representative who adopted two little girls, and later literally gave them away (legal in arkansas!) to a man who raped one of them. if i read it correctly, he got them back then gave them away again. google rep. justin harris.
Yah I read about that too. As for Amanda I think having a family that actually wants her will go a long way and have her best friend with her too. Andi you need to adopt two kids
I don’t think Andi’s going to be adopting Keisha. Not now, not ever. She’ll have enough on her plate with Amanada, and in fact Amanda needs and deserves to get full-time parental attention and will likely be occupying more than 100% of Andi’s time.
Welcoming Keisha into her home as Amanda’s best friend, sure. They can spend lots of time together, have playdates, sleepovers, do all the fun things that best-friend eight-year-old girls like to do. But that whole “we’ll demand to be adopted together or not at all” vow is not realistic.
That said… I really hope that the story does eventually include Keisha getting adopted too, by a loving family who wants HER, for herself, not just a sad tagalong two-for-the-price-of-one.
Love that the first time anyone ever replies to one of my posts is to make me seem like an asshole for wanting Amanda to have what has been the only support and constant in her life with her in a difficult journey that they had promised to make together
What if Andi meets Keisha and feels a real bond with her, too? It could happen! I know Andi said she didn’t want to raise a kid who wasn’t biologically related to her, but Andi seems to be rethinking a lot of her old assumptions lately.
What are you gonna do, Andi?
They let the biokids abuse her? And didn’t bother to defend her?! Those f—ing jerks!!
They ABUSED her?! What the fuck?! Why do you adopt a kid if you’re gonna go and do that?!???
MY GOD.
Okay, so let me see if I got this right.
Amanada is 8 now right? (That seems to be what everyone says.)
So she was adopted when she was 3 years old.
The family already had two biological sons.
The two sons were complete little [expletive deleted].
Yet the parents didn’t believe her (According to her story) and refused to believe their biological kids would do anything bad to her.
5 years later, safe to assume Amanda is deemed a ‘problem child’ because she either:
A. She’s perceived as anti-social with her ‘siblings’.
B. Always “lying”.
C. She learned to FIGHT BACK and that didn’t go over well with her ‘parents’.
(Note: Siblings and Parents is in quotations because I’d like to think those terms should be reserved for people who deserve to called that with a sense of endearment. People who mistreat their family don’t deserve those terms.)
Coupled with the abandonment issues she already had what with being put up for adoption as a newborn, throw in the emotional and physical abuse she had to put up with, and finally, feeling like she didn’t matter because of neglect as a result of an unfortunate matter of circumstance, I’m surprised she handles things as well as she does currently.
I mean…she’s 8. That kind of stuff breaks most ADULTS.
Incredible writing Dave! This is why I love Selkie. It’s all the variety of complexity. Seriously, not many people can write a situation that is meant to be seen as NOT BLACK AND WHITE as well as you do.
No, she was adopted as a newborn, returned at the age of 5, just as (age 5) selkie was also being left there. They were both in the orphanage for three years, after which Selkie was adopted and now Amanda might be.
To paraphrase Bruce Banner from Avengers: Oh that’s MUCH worse!
I don’t think it’s called adoption if the child is returned to the birth parent. Not sure though, but I don’t think that’s what the situation would be.
Andi surrendered her parental rights when she gave Amanda up for adoption, and now would have to legally adopt her.
I’d say Amanda gets ‘readopted’ (that probably isn’t a word, but it’s fitting the situation anyway)
Well, if Andi was hoping reclaiming their child would help her get back with Mark (not that I ever thought that would work) she should realize now that there’s no chance of that happening. Even if Mark could find a way to forgive her for giving Amanda up and lying about it he won’t forgive the fact that Andi’s actions led to his child suffering abuse like what he experienced as a child.
Todd?
Kudos to Ms. Haversham-Zhang for staying securely in the “what is best for *Amanda* camp. It’s not easy, and it looks like she’s not letting Andi go on with rainbow farting unicorns and “it’ll all be easy!” magic.
Amanda will not be an easy kid to raise. I hope Andi is up to the task, or finds strengths she doesn’t know she has.
Nice composition of the page. Very well done.