An uncomfortable conversation ensues.
I feel like I probably made a mistake not putting the urn in the background of past strips, but at the time I didn't really consider the foreshadowing possibility.
An uncomfortable conversation ensues.
Wow, despite all of that, the worst he’s got so far is “unbelievable COW”. I’m sure some more choice language will come up if the conversation continues before the girls return, but Todd is holding it together amazingly well considering the circumstances (and he’s most definitely in shock to some degree)
It does look like he’s just about reached the end of his composure though, so unless something happens very soon to distract him from all of THIS we may have a very loud/angry Todd in the next few pages.
Eeehhh honestly I’m not sure that wording works for me, but it’s a “compromise dialogue” choice. I don’t want to include upper-echelon cuss words in the comic. My exception to that is the cartoony pictograph cussing, but that’s not appropriate for this scene (it would add unintentional comedy and detract too much from the moment). So I went this route.
You can do better than that without swearing, Dave.
Maybe something like, “You horrible, horrible thing,” or “You godforsaken lunatic,” or maybe “You worthless waste of space.”
Possible substitutes are: witch, twit, troll, maggot, brat, harpy…etc.
Harpy is my favorite, by the way. Though cow works well enough…
I really wouldn’t use the “unbelievable cow” line. It isn’t in character, and it’s way out of line because it’s … it’s attacking her appearance and/or calling her stupid when it is her actions that are at issue. What Andi did is wrong because it is wrong, and cowardly, and stole something precious from Todd. It’s not because she is stupid (a common insult from ‘cow’) or fat or has large breasts.
Change it to “you unbelievable coward” and it rings much more true to Todd’s character and the situation, plus it makes Andi’s next line all the more poignant.
I kind of think the insulting elements are what make it kind of work as a compromise word, to be honest.
I’m glad you changed the line, I saw it in the neat version and thought it didn’t ring true to Todd’s character in all the ways others have mentioned plus one more major one: he’s vegetarian, they have never in my experience used ‘cow’ as a derogatory term, most have an almost Hindu like reverence for them (depending on their reasons for the lifestyle, I’ve never actually known any who did it for ‘health reasons’, most have been moral vegetarians)
“neat” should have been “beta”. I have no idea why autocorrect did that…
For those coming in post-edit and curious about context, Todd’;s second dialogue line in the final panel was initially, “How could you do this to me, you unbelievable COW!” I altered it to this current version because the “cow” line just felt really weak.
I dunno if this line is much better, but it’s what I’m going with.
I think the new line fits both todd’s character and the situation a lot better
FWIW, I like the revised line better. It’s more believable of an adult to say in that kind of situation, without being over the top with the dangling sweary bits.
New line is better.
That said, I probably would have gone with a truncated profanity: “How could you do this to me, you cā” “āI was scared!” (I don’t know if Todd would go that far, but…)
But I guess that’s why you’re the author and I’m not.
Glad you didn’t go with that option, actually. I think this line works much better than the original.
And right now I’m incredibly impressed with the “crowdsourcing” or “fanfeedback” elements that lead to a much better line making it the final draft before physical printing of the collection happens. That is just so many kinds of awesome.
While we’re at it, that word bubble choice on the first panel needs work. It’s apparent after I looked it over that the second line is meant at least partially to be said in the second panel, because Todd is clearly saying something in the second panel and the tail points to him there, but the line gets read in the first panel — and with a mild tone of voice, befitting the expression and pose in the first panel, rather than an escalating tone (from controlled to outburst) as would be appropriate given the expression and forward-leaning aggressive pose in the second panel.
Whenever you place bubbles, you should ensure that they are analyzed as part of the panel they are supposed to be in, said by the person who’s saying them at the point in the timeline at which they are supposed to be said. It’s an art and a skill and it takes some time to get good at this — much easier to figure out when it isn’t working.
I’d have the bubbles connected, but moved over so the second bubble shows up primarily in the second panel. The bleed between the two panels works, but only if it doesn’t seem like Todd has stopped speaking before you get to that second panel and find him sitting there mid-sentence.
P.S. I adore the way you use backgrounds to point out emotional states. You have gotten pretty good at this and this page in particular is doing a great job with it, especially in contrasting colors.
And yet Todd, a College educated architect couldn’t come up the the ‘good’ ones; harpy, harridan, and termagant.
And Dave, I’d like to thank you for running a class act.
You rock. Do you own a ban-hammer, or have you ever used one, for those folks who don’t need to be commenting anymore?
Idle curiosity only reason I ask….
I don’t ban anyone from commenting, but in some of the extreme cases I have grey-listed people to have their comments held for moderation approval before they appear.
(As an FYI, there are other things besides grey-listing that can cause ones comments to be held for moderation, so don’t stress it if that happens to you.)
Yup, the revised version works better
I like the revised version, too. Because, really, it seems more like him to be getting the crushing pain of betrayal before/without lashing out randomly. Pinpoint guilt, now… Well, yeah.
Seems like confession is settling Andi some, though. …good, I think.
I like how her mother is brought up yet again. Like, vaguely hinting that it was her mother’s idea to lie to Todd and stage the urn and ashes. Like, seriously, her mom ties into all of this. I feel so bad for Andi. I mean, I feel bad for Todd as well, obviously, but I believe Andi has some serious issues that need to be addressed with her mother.
Like, I get that her mom raised her as a single parent, and she was young at that and didn’t want her daughter to be burdened with the same things she was, but sheesh… it seems like Andi has just been pressured and pushed around her whole life.
Scares her entire life, if you will. What a damned nightmare.
No. She’s a coward and should take some damn responsibility.
I don’t believe it’s as simple as that. And quite frankly, I don’t believe in the ‘bad’ characters being labeled and judged so harshly simply because they aren’t Selkie or Todd. Selkie can be quite selfish and can throw quite the tantrum and she gets a free pass each time because she’s a ‘good’ character and has a ‘right’ to act that way.
It’s rather disconcerning to see, honestly.
As far as responsibility goes, she’s apologizing and in no way blaming Todd for what she did. She’s trying to explain herself to him, give him some reasoning behind her actions. People who just want others to blindly apologize and take the blame for everything without letting the other party give a chance to explain, or at least attempt to make them understand where they were coming from, sicken me. It’s like the other person is attempting some odd revenge scheme and then justify themselves by saying it’s their right to want to see the other person squirm while they sit high and mighty. A person who wants a true apology will listen before casting judgement and will attempt to understand and then express their feelings as well.
Life is not all black and white. Most people do not intentionally set out to harm another. While their actions may not have been the best, they may have done far more harm than good, they may have been absolutely terrible looking back, things that happen in the heat of the moment tend to not be… well thought out.
Lots of people don’t know what to do, so they dig and dig and dig their own grave. It gets worse and worse. You try and find a way out without hurting anyone and without leaving yourself exposed, but you make it worse. Fear makes you do even stupider things. Lies get mixed up in more lies, you think you’re sparing someone else unecessary pain, but it just makes it worse. You’re too afraid to talk because you don’t know what they’ll say, you don’t know if they’ll understand.
It’s an absolute nightmare.
Sometimes the fear is completely wrong and it’s all in your head and you’ve deluded yourself into thinking someone who loves you will hurt you or hate you because it’s happened in the past.
I’m not attempting to justify her actions. She was wrong, she hurt Todd. But we don’t know how she felt. I’m trying to give her a chance to explain why she did what she did. Why her mother may have done what she did. Her mother probably also had the best intentions in mind, but look where that got us…
She told them that their daughter had died at birth. They had a funeral. Fake ashes are on their mantle. He has grieved for years. This isn’t like spilling a glass of milk. This is something that should be on a list of symptoms for a mental disorder. However she felt pales in comparison to the pain, misery, and suffering she caused everyone else. And before you say “at least shes trying to make up for it” many abusive parents do just that, hurt their family members and then “try to make up for it.” You want to empathize with her that’s all you but don’t try to make feeling sorry for Miss Babadook there moral.
The more I see of Andi, the more I’m thinking that her mother dominated her entire life. Children who grow up in that environment have a VERY difficult time breaking away from that parent… especially when they are young and in a vulnerable situation. I think that Andi’s conversation with her mother before she went to get Amanda might be the first time in her life that she’s ever defied her mother’s “wishes.”
Alternatively: she’s a coward, afraid of getting hurt to the point she’s willing to do literally anything to protect herself.
It must be nice to live in a mindspace where everything is so simple and straighforward, where people can be summed up with a single word instead of being complicated and messy and conflicted.
Cry me a river. Accept the fact that some things in the world are black and white. Not everything, or even many things, but some things are.
She did a cowardly thing. She is a coward.
Some things are black & white, and yes Andi is a coward. That said, Dave’s characters are *not* black & white two dimensional beings. Every person we’ve been set up to hate with the exception of Principal Hobbit have revealed to be complex personalities. Maybe Andi will be the second person on the list, next to the Hobbit but I doubt it. I will never be an Andi fan, but I recognize that Dave puts depth of character into these people and I doubt Andi is going to be an exception because of her ties to the main characters. Or, maybe they leave the aquarium and she gets hit by a bus, and we’ll never know why Andi’s so messed up – but now at least Todd knows about Amanda. *shrug*
The character depth and almost total lack of “villains” in this story is one of my favorite things about Selkie š
With Kilyle here, lots of respect and love for every one of Dave’s characters being complex* people. Something that is near-universally recognized as a trait of great writing.
* = they may still be unlikeable people, but they have thought out motives and reactions/emotions at MINIMUM.
Often something in a person’s past causes them to develop a coward trait. In this case, people are hypothesizing Andi’s mom, and possible abuse.
It seems to bother you that people are trying to understand how this situation came about. Why?
It doesn’t bother me that people want to understand why.
I just don’t care why.
Ah! Well, you certainly don’t need to care. But, since you don’t care, perhaps refain from language like “Cry me a river.” that suggests the other person is bad for caring. Its okay that other people care about stuff that you don’t. Its okay that you don’t care about their particular feelings. But, there is no need to TELL them that you don’t care if they cry you a river. Please keep that to yourself.
You were scared.
You weren’t scarred and traumatized by the death of your child. No. Todd got that.
Andi? Andi was scared.
I don’t think she yet understands that the pain she suffered in her fear and guilt does not even remotely compare to the pain she caused to someone she claimed to love. I don’t think she understands that “I was scared” is not a valid defense.
You’ve been scared for the past eight years, Andi. Todd has been MOURNING. How long is it going to take for you to understand the difference?
There is no fear in mourning.
Hmmm.
I wrote a fanfic once, or at least a good start to one, wherein a big storm separated the characters and one team was left wondering if the member they couldn’t find was dead or alive.
I recall having them muse that it’s easier when you know someone’s dead, because then you can deal with it and move on.
But when you’re wondering what’s happening to them, whether they need your help, whether they’re doing okay, whether you need to contact more authorities, whether there’s still time to pray they’ll be safe… that’s an incompleteness that is worse than dealing with facts, even horrible facts.
I’m not sure where I pulled that understanding — maybe from college, knowing that I felt much better after I couldn’t do anything to affect my grade than I did in those moments when I could still affect the test (or assignment) and didn’t know how much extra stuff I ought to be doing to improve it. That’s the nearest emotion I can think of in my life at the time I was writing fanfic regularly (my early internet days).
But it seems like a solid principle: Knowing that a bad thing has happened is giving you something you can’t affect but you can learn to deal with. Not knowing what is going on and whether you need to do things differently to change it, that feels a lot worse.
So yeah. In mourning, you’re past the point of fearing what might be happening, or wondering what else you could do.
That’s not true. That’s especially not true for those who have lost pregnancies and children.
The death of a loved one – friend or family – is one thing, but the loss of a child, unborn or at birth, has extremely few if any parallels. There are so many unknowns and unanswerABLE “why”s, so many lost d
(cont’d) lost dreams and hopes and futures that will never happen, when you had nothing to begin with. At least with a person who you were close to, there are pleasant memories to think back on. It hurts worse to have something dangled in front of you and snatched away at the last second, than to at least been able to have held it for a while.
I have never lost a child – but the death of my mother-in-law after only a year of knowing her, when even for that short time she was more of a real mother to me than my own parents, with us having grand plans to move in together and her being a live-in grandma someday, was a far greater loss to me than all of my grandparents’ deaths combined. And even then I’m sure it doesn’t come close to the loss of your child.
Yes… I was very afraid. Afraid to have more children and after my daughter was bornāafraid of something happening to her. I’ve known people who had stillborn babies who experienced the same. It is such an unnatural thing to lose a child. The only thing that could possibly be worse is losing a parent when you are a child or young adult.
A cousin had 2 miscarrages and when she told us she was pregnant and past the “safe point” I was SOOO happy for her, but also so scared. And it’s not even my child so I can only imagine how devasted she must have been and how scared she is now. She’s overjoyed to be puking and peeing all the time and getting the shit kicked outta her š
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean in any way to imply that losing a child was not an incomprehensibly horrible experience with lasting effects on your emotions.
But, it has been my understanding (mostly from the media, so that’s hardly a great place to get info) that the one state that feels even worse than direct loss, in terms of how high the emotional stress gets (and I realize those words are inadequate to the task here), is when you’ve got the child safely into the world but they’re hanging by a thread and you don’t know whether they’re going to live or die.
Like, a premie with severe health problems. Where they could die within minutes or hours or days, or where they could live but with severe lifelong health problems, or where they could get through this and be perfectly fine but just a bit small for their age. And there’s no way to know which one it’s going to be, or what steps you might take to prepare for it, or whether there’s things anyone could be doing differently to up the chances of the child having a healthy life (or a life at all).
It’s hard to make this comparison without making it seem like a child already dead is somehow a better or easier thing than a child teetering on the edge between life and death. Both situations are… well, rough, and again, words aren’t really up to the task here. But the agony of hoping against hope when the deck is stacked against it, hope fighting against fear….
Sorry, my meaning probably got lost in my wordy >_< and maybe my emotion also. Lemme try again.
In the example you provided via your own writing, you spoke to the effect of unknowns being resolved, and those resolutions providing a small comfort.
The nuances of the unknowns in the event of a miscarriage or stillbirth, however (not a post-natal death, that's even differenter!), are extremely different from losing someone who had a life so to speak. So the comparison changes significantly… to being not even comparable.
It shouldn't be about ranking them – more that the nuances behind each type of loss is comparing apples to oranges. Both may be fruit, and sweet-tasting – but the similarities end there.
That makes sense. I mean, even in the religious beliefs I grew up with, it’s understood that your first breath is the creation of your soul — “the breath of lives” that God gives you at that point — so from an eternal perspective, a stillbirth or miscarriage is someone who could have been an eternal person but for unknown reasons didn’t get that chance. (Even a child who lived briefly outside the womb is a living soul you will see again in Heaven.)
But regardless of beliefs, it is sad that any parent has to go through that sort of loss. I really have nothing to compare it to.
What church did you grow up in? In my church, it’s understood that, since life begins at conception, so does the soul. (Relatively minor theological point, I know, but now I’m curious. š )
Given the evidence so far, I still stand by my statement. The fears mentioned fall into two groups: Those who fear the potential loss of a child which would precede a time of mourning and those who fear the potential loss of a subsequent child which would follow the time of mourning. Neither are part of the actual mourning process.
Todd has been MOURNING. How long is it going to take for you to understand the difference?
Until Todd loves her enough to tell her what the lie cost him? If he does not share this with the woman he loved and was driven apart from, she will never understand the difference.
Until Todd forgives her enough to listen to her, he will never know what it cost Her to be submissive to her mother enough to do that thing.
“I was scared” is a valid defense. You put enough fear into a person and their higher thinking functions shut down, scare them badly enough and some of their lower functions can fail, too.
You don’t remember, ever, seeing a second grader urinate at being told to go up on stage and give their little spiel?
If Andi needs to be told what it cost Todd to believe his child was dead, then she is truly beyond redemption as a human being.
“I was scared” is a valid defense for “why didn’t you tell me you broke mom’s vase”. It is not a valid defense for telling someone their child is dead, and then falsifying a cremation urn and funeral.
No, its not a defense. But, it can explain the behavior. If she truly understood how awful her actions were, and how much it hurt Todd, then I imagine it was completely terrifying to tell him the truth. And, terror can prevent a person from doing something that they know they should do. Terror works that way.
So, yeah. Todd has every damn right to be angry and hurt and telling him in public as he’s meeting the child for the first time is really, really not a good way to go about this because he is socially obligated right now to cover up his anger until he’s somewhere private. Todd deserved better, both in the past and right now. But, Andi is trying to explain her behavior, because she feels awful, and its a valid explanation, and perhaps Todd understanding what happened will help him in some small way, rather than this just being a random act of cruelty against him. The explanation does nothing to diminish the pain that Todd is gonna feel though. No explanation would make this situation okay.
Thank you for stating that more coherently than I could. :–)
Sorry but after what Todd has gone through and what Andi has done, I am hoping he does NOT still “love” her. He was smitten with her and I assume he grew out of it, seeing what she had become and not wanting that as his partner in life — no matter how she got there or where she got it from. What we do not know is what became of them right after/a year after Amanda’s “death”. That would probably answer a lot of unanswered questions and may even change a few opinions. I still hold to the belief that, no matter her circumstances, Andi needs to understand the pain she caused Todd and will cause him even now by collecting Amanda first and not even asking him/telling him of the true facts ahead of time. It is yet another hole she dug very recently on her way to “make amends”. I also stand by my statement that Andi excels at Life Fail 101. I am hoping she gets into the next class soon: How To Dig A Ditch But Remember To Shovel Some Stairs ;O)
Dave> Actually, I wondered if you purposefully had Andi say 8 yrs because she started her definition of pain when it was a shared pain between their rocky relationship AFTER Amanda “died”/was born… or if she’d consider it 9 years of hell due to her own circumstances and not wishing for a baby at all in her life. This is interesting because it may actually be pointing to a decent quality in Andi: being able to not live with the last 8 years because it hurt Todd AND she so bad, and not just her own suffering.
I can’t see them getting back together. I know a lot of stories make reunion the positive “everything is back in its proper place” ending, but it seems incredibly wrong for this story, and beyond implausible.
And it also would kind of imply that if these guys with this much history can get their act together and get back into a wholesome family unit then why can’t the rest of you humans fix your relationships this way? It is kind of insulting to the families that have separated over irreparable differences much smaller than this kind of thing.
So I know everyone’s been riding the “Wahh, her mom was mean to her!” train, but frankly I’m sick of hearing that.
I’ve read the same comics as you all have, and while her mother is not perfect, she is certainly not this insane, evil abusive woman that some people here would have you believe she is.
Andi is not scarred or traumatized or anything else from her childhood – Andi is a cowardly fuckup. The fact that you would look at her childhood and go, “Yep, classic evil abusive parent,” is a disservice to those who are actually emotionally abused by their parents on a daily basis. She’s a nasty person who did a nasty thing because she was too much of a yellow-bellied coward to tell Todd how she felt, and took the easiest way out of the situation possible.
She’s an awful human being, and I look forward to the day she is no longer present in this comic.
I I would read Sister Claire if I were you. Characters who started off seemingly evil, horrid, unkind, and downright hurtful in their actions slowly are revealed to not be so black and white. People who initially cried out for said characters to die or get their just desserts, felt sympathy and even understanding once their actions were explained and dived deeper into just what was on the surface.
People are full of complex emotions and thoughts. You’d be surprised why people do the things they do.
Heck, even Orange is the New Black dives into those tense situations and make you feel sorry and even understanding to characters you thought were mean or insane.
Why people do what they do is of less concern to me than the fact they were done.
I’m sorry that life sucks for some people – that doesn’t give you any sort of pass to hurt others.
I’m sorry you feel that way.
I’m sorry you’re willing to excuse people for their crimes based on their past.
People change and people make mistakes. I’m willing to forgive or at the very least, attempt to hear out and understand. Sure sometimes I might still be angry or never fully trust that person again, but at the very least I’ve tried and given them some closure to their own mistakes. Who am I to forever condemn a person if they’re actively trying to make a change? Have I done no wrong in my short life? Would I not want the same compassion and humanity shown to me if I had wronged another?
I think the biggest thing a person can do is try to work out their problems with one another while not blindly being concerned solely with yourself. You become a better person for it in the long run and maybe they will to. I’d like to give my fellow human beings that chance, even if it means I have to bite my tongue, swallow my pride and listen to another person sometimes.
Plus, it’s quite good for both parties state of mind. Dwelling on anger and holding grudges just isn’t healthy.
This conversation is a pretty good summary of the plot for the project I’m working on. I find that amusing.
…Well, a good summary except that nobody gets a tragic backstory that drives their actions. They’re both incredibly self-centered jerks whose attitudes about other people led to situations where they did horrible, irreparable things. And that shook them out of themselves and led them down two different paths toward being a better adult than they were a teen.
But being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, and being able to forgive the harm they did you, that’s a big part of the story. And so is acknowledging that the person you used to be didn’t have an excuse for their behavior, and that you look back on them with shame and have tried hard to become the type of person who would never do such a thing ever again.
That, and discussing how quickly people jump to conclusions without knowing all the facts of the matter. I’m gonna have fun developing that facet of the story š
They were together for seven years afterward and she kept up the lie the entire time. Even now she was trying to cover up the truth by hiding Amanda. People change is clearly not the case here.
It’s not like it was a one time thing that happened 8 years ago. Their entire relationship was a lie. She hid this from him for years.
I don’t think “I’m sorry”, or “I felt vulnerable this one time” is going to cut it. Making excuses is just showing how unrepentant she is.
Why do I get the distinct feeling *you* were hurt by someone severely screwed up, and you’ve never been able to get past it?
I don’t think my personal life is relevant to the topic at hand, and I have no interest in discussing it. That will be all I’ll say on the matter.
Chug nailed it. Sci may be a little troll but his issues almost surely stem from someone who was messed up, he probably thought he could play white knight and ‘rescue them’ and it didn’t go exactly as planned. So now he is mad at the world for not being exactly like bad rom-com movies. Or he is twelve and homeschooled.
That’s incredibly arrogant – I’m also not trolling. Since we’re just throwing out opinions though:
I think you’re a girl who once had her ass grabbed, and has since turned into a moral crusader telling the world she was raped and is a survivor.
Now, of course, the above is fucking ridiculous. I have no way of knowing your story, or what you’ve been through. So don’t try and tell me mine.
fuck you sci, you don’t know me and I have been nice till now. I have been through far fucking worse than being groped so shut your entitled smug little troll face! You sound like the spoiled only child who resents his parents for not buying him the Right car for his birthday, the kind who would hire someone to kill them for it. How exactly were you abused you fucking tourist? Didn’t get the newest iPad? Hating an imaginary character is fine, knock yourself out if you can’t handle a real person. But your treatment of everyone on this board shows you are either a child or a mentally and morally deficient adult who needs to be in a group home and well-supervised (and probably not allowed out on the internet)
Sorry, Blue Coyote, but if there’s any moral high ground between the two of you, he’s just pointed out that you lost it.
Neither of you knows what the other has been through. But you threw the first punch with an opinion on his background, and it’s fair for him to respond in kind — but he didn’t do that, he pointed out how it would look and that it is WRONG.
I thought about calling you on that homeschooling crack, but decided to leave well enough alone. But you can’t judge someone you don’t know and then go off on them when they judge you back.
Especially when he pointed out that his background was not up for discussion. You decided to discuss it anyway, and then got mad at him for pointing a finger in your direction.
Neutral corners, you two. We’re not here to attack each other. This is one of the few nice forums I’ve ever been to and I would hate to see that ruined.
(Not just an opinion but a dismissive opinion — which is why his rebuttal seemed to be of equal caliber.)
(Also, still wish I could edit my own messages here. Sigh.)
(Having read further down the page, definitely wish I could edit my own messages. But what’s said is said. I seem to have missed a bit of context. The part I responded to still seems like “equal caliber” stuff, though.)
sorry guys, really (everyone except sci- he can still go take a long walk) I lost it after reading ALL his comments (and also arguing with morons about Chareleston all day). I love this forum and most of the people on it, I’m just sick of what we all know is the same stupid troll who’s been banned three times already. I guess it is a testament to Dave’s writing that he can’t stay away.
Maybe or maybe not, but you present yourself in a very angry, hurt mannerāone that may be seen in some people who are in their teens to early 20s and still sorting stuff out. Of course, you very well could be older or younger, but the anger really comes through.
Those were my thoughts as well, Chug. There is no reason to have so much heat or hatred of someone unless they remind you of someone you hate or that hurt you quite badly.
I have my own opinions on what Sci’s background might be, but that’s just from being a writer — my brain concocts scenarios like crazy from limited information.
Sci has expressed an interest in not having their background discussed, and we should respect their wishes and their privacy. If it happens that discussing Selkie’s plot and characters leads to Sci being more open with us later, that is up to them.
Thank you.
There is a healthy medium. I feel bad for Andi and believe she needs consequences for her terrible choices. Sure people can be victims. Look at those who commit the most heinous crimes–they often were tortured by the people who raised them. It does not diminish murdering, torturing, raping and/blowing up people who they either never knew or people who were good who they loved. Andi didn’t do something that evil, but what she has hid from Todd merits having her ass handed to her and if she was someone I knew? I’d want to see her do more than apologize before we could ever build trust. Maybe taking a step away from her crazy family and getting counseling of some sort. The fact they had not just an urn but a funeral tells me Andi wasn’t the one in on the deception. What formally preganant 17 year old can afford even a small funeral? Plus to make it authentic, her mom had to be there. No. While I think Andi had a tough time telling the truth at first, it was probably her mom who was behind it becoming a true lie in the beginning. At least I am kind of hoping this is revealed.
Heck, remember how public opinion shifted around Trunchypoo? He went from a villain caricature to an almost-sympathetic character.
And now he’s just a dick. A sad dick, but a dick nonetheless. š
Andi is absolutely a screwed up human being, but the fact that you don’t read her mom prodding her to *stage a freakin’ funeral to cement her lie* as a massively insane action – and the fact that Andi goes along with it *as if this is normal behavior* – as a significant ‘tell’ for abuse is more than a little bit alarming.
There’s absolutely no question that Andi’s mom is abusive, because normal people with healthy minds *do not do these things*.
“We had a funeral! We bought an urn!” sounds a whole lot like Todd and maybe his family were involved in covering the costs for this charade, too.
So not only did Andi’s mother stage a funeral, she presumably *pocketed the funds for said funeral for herself*. I say again: normal people with healthy minds DO NOT do these things.
And that’s Andi’s reason. She’s screwed up enough to believe that’s an excuse – which it is not – but Dave did an *absolutely fantastic* job of telegraphing the influence of a narcissistic parent, here, and ignoring that is a disservice to both the story and to the man’s storytelling.
If you hold a funeral, you need a place to do it – a church or a funeral-home chapel – and you need someone to officiate – normally a preacher of some sort.
Both of these cost, but I don’t see how Ma could pocket any of the money.
If Todd wanted to buy an urn, that’s his business Cremains come in a cardboard box.
The actual cremation – that could be a spot to rip off Todd’s family, but it could also be that she told them that, since Andi was 16, she was covered under Ma’s insurance, and the insurance paid for the cremation of the stillborn child. Not being married to her, Todd really had nothing to say about it.
If Andi’s mother told Todd’s parents that she would take care of the funeral arrangements – ie: the cost of cremation, choice of urn, etc. *AND* there was no formal service (possible since this was for an alleged stillborn), it would be entirely possible for Andi’s mother to present Todd’s family with cremains for a quiet “family” service at home with friends & family. This still speaks more to the mother’s ability to control and manipulate Andi since this is hardly something she could have choreographed on her own considering her age and mental state at the time.
Which still means that it’s VERY likely that Andi’s mother took money from Todd’s parents to cover at least partial costs for these arrangements … possibly without Andi even being aware of that fact.
I have a feeling (hope, really) the mother orchestrated some (if not most) of it. If not, Andi has gone from being a sad character to an super awful character who’s hard to trust/sympathize with. The only people I know who do that kind of crap are sociopaths and folks with alcohol/drug problems. Not even the most narcissistic teens I’ve known don’t do sick things like thatāunless they fall under the above labels.
People who are that deceitful, self centered and cruel (even as young adults) rarely actually change. I’ve never seen it at least. Maybe the person acted like they “changed” but they just rechanneled their crappy behavior into something else or let it reemerge when it suited them. So I’m really hoping Andi’s mom is behind it… I just started liking Andi. I do think she deserves to be chewed out, but would love to see healing for her, but all that changes if she was the “mastermind” of the whole circus.
Hear hear!
Re: “disservice to those who are actually emotionally abused by their parents on a daily basis”
Dear Sci: you do not speak for all emotionally abused (once-) children, and you certainly DO NOT speak for me.
I dislike Andi. I believe she is indeed cowardly. *Being manipulated into learned helplessness over the course of the many years of one’s childhood can do that.*
IT DOES NOT EXCUSE HER ACTIONS. Being scared does not *excuse* anyone’s actions. It can, however, *explain* them. Which doesn’t relieve her of having to face the consequences of her actions, to be sure, but ought to be a call for mercy, not in judgement, but at least in outward treatment.
Todd has every right to be angry – yes, even at Andi. He’s allowed to be angry at more than one person though – blame often lies not only with one person in any given situation, but with many people or entities. Todd should be angry at Andi – and at her mother at the same time. Andi deserves Todd’s anger – but not 100% of it (assuming he calms down enough to truly *hear* the whole story).
It disturbs me a little that you’re behaving and speaking so violently in this situation. It is fine to have opinions, strong ones even; right to free speech yadda yadda. But PLEASE for the love of fishes, use a respectful TONE.
I would also caution against making such all-or-nothing comments as “I look forward to the day she is no longer present in this comic”, it is at minimum, a bit disrespectful to Dave and his plans for this comic as its Author.
You say “I’m sorry youāre willing to excuse people for their crimes based on their past.” That’s not what others are saying AT ALL. You’re being so militant that you’re demonizing and misconstruing those whose opinions differ even slightly from yours. That’s not healthy. You can be angry at someone or something or disagree with someone, but don’t let it turn you into a monster so to speak.
As for me – I did many cowardly things due to my learned helplessness, though nothing on the scale of Andi’s actions (nothing as morally depraved or borderline criminal). But it was only due to outward forgiveness that I was able to fight the patterns I had once adopted for survival. I still dealt with the logical and emotional/social consequences of my actions, but recovery has been possible for me because it was meted out with a gentle tone and hand. Just because someone fucks up doesn’t mean there’s no room for redemption. It’s not like she raped or killed anyone. And, forgiveness doesn’t mean the person doesn’t suffer the consequences of their actions.
I’d like to chime in more or less agreeing with pyrpyr here. I was emotionally abused throughout my teens (and very early 20s) by my stepfather, and carried around a huge amount of emotional issues as a result of it. That included anger at my mother as well as at him, and it took years to be able to understand WHY I did some of the things I did, because learned behaviors are not easy to untangle.
My relationship with my mother was hurt by it for a number of years after I moved out. We did eventually repair our relationship and she apologized to me for being so blind to it at the time – and I accepted her apologies, and forgave her,
Do I think Andi has a burden of responsibility in all this? Absolutely. But I also have a fair amount of compassion for her, not least of which because of all the ‘we don’t knows’. There’s just a lot that hasn’t been stated. Reading between the lines, it does look like Andi’s mother has controlled her and emotionally abused her, but we don’t know for sure. However, going by what we DO know:
We know that her mother applied serious emotional pressure to her as a teenager (not a group known for thinking clearly) at a time when she was most likely non compos mentis. The period right around childbirth, and for up to six months after, the female body is pumping RIDICULOUS amounts of brain-altering chemicals through the system. It’s generally considered not advisable to make big decisions right before, during, or after childbirth BECAUSE this is a known fact – and no matter the reasoning, Andi’s mom took action right during this period. For this reason, and since there had been no prior discussion or paperwork on adoption, I’d say the hospital/orphanage is also at least partly to blame, for letting this go through without a second glance – understandable, but still abhorrent.
Now, Andi absolutely owns ALL responsibility for not having told Todd after the fact, especially after she actually moved out of her mother’s house and so on. I can understand why she didn’t, and how the pressures her mother may have added by her rearing might have contributed to that decision – but it’s still on her. The truth though is it’s a horrible, messy situation which is going to cut into both Todd and Andi and hurt them both before things can be sorted out.
I hope Todd can be somewhat compassionate once he’s worked through some of his initial anger. I’d love to see him insist that Andi get therapy to confront some of her issues which led to these decisions, especially if she wants a role in THEIR daughter’s life. Because Amanda’s not the only one in that household with problems.
Thank you.
I’ll try to respond briefly.
a.) I’m not trying to speak for all abused children. But the fact that everyone is screaming abuse after witnessing a single conversation between Andi and her mother IS disrespectful towards those who have suffered from real abuse.
b.) I don’t need to have a respectful tone in my comments when discussing a character who is both awful, and not real. Nobody’s feelings are being hurt when I say how bad she is.
c.) I think it’s unfair to say it’s disrespectful to Dave – the fact that he’s created a character who can evoke strong emotions, including hate, is impressive I think, and a testament to his character writing ability
d.) I see no room for forgiveness. Her actions were/are deplorable, absolutely on the level of rape and kidnapping, though perhaps not murder.
Sci- infant boy-child, do NOT even try to say you know anything about how bad rape is.
Firsthand experience is not a prerequisite for judgment. I’ve never been killed in a terrorist attack either, but I can imagine it’s pretty fucking unbelievably awful.
a) Maybe these abuse victims can actually SEE more than you do that there was abuse–it’s not as if conversation is always going to tell you where abuse is. It usually DOESN’T. And anyways, the only one who can say at the end of the day whether or not Andi is good/bad/ugly is DAVE.
b) In general, it’s polite in society to use a respectful tone at least when speaking to other people. Your responses to others’ comments have been extremely full of anger, insulting, and ARE causing hurt or you wouldn’t get replies from abuse victims telling you to STOP IT and that YOU ARE WAY OFF BASE.
d) That is your opinion, but you insulting others for having a different opinion IS abuse. And as a victim, saying Andi’s as bad as a rapist or a kidnapper . . . that is WAY OFF. I’d much rather have Andi as a FRIEND then EVER been in the same room or CITY as the guys who hurt me.
a.) I’ve suffered childhood abuse. I see on the same level they do. Have another theory? And I agree, until Dave confirms anything, there’s no abuse.
b.) I haven’t insulted anyone in this thread.
c.) I haven’t insulted anyone in this thread. I’m disrespectful towards the character – not anyone else with an opinion different than mine.
“I havenāt insulted anyone in this thread.”
“I havenāt insulted anyone in this thread. Iām disrespectful towards the character ā not anyone else with an opinion different than mine.”
Um let’s try that again.
1. “Cry me a river. Accept the fact that some things in the world are black and white” (the use of “cry me a river” is quite insulting)
2. “So I know everyoneās been riding the ‘Wahh, her mom was mean to her!’ train, but frankly Iām sick of hearing that.” (You reference others’ opinions with snark and open disdain; that’s insulting. And saying “I’m sick of hearing that” implies that you can’t stand the thought of folks disagreeing with you. For the record, until now, on my part, I’ve merely been defending my opinions and asking you to not speak for me – really the only thing I *could* be trying to force on you is HOW you say things, not WHAT you say or think. But using “sick of hearing” is pompous and potentially forceful of one’s opinion.)
3. “Iāve read the same comics as you all have, and while her mother is not perfect, she is certainly not this insane, evil abusive woman that some people here would have you believe she is.” (More indications of disdain for others’ opinions to the point of insult in “I’ve seen the same X as you have” and “not the X some would have you believe” – these phrases give connotations that others are crazy or dumb for having a different idea)
4. “The fact that you would look at her childhood and go, ‘Yep, classic evil abusive parent,’ is a disservice to those who are actually emotionally abused by their parents on a daily basis.” (“The fact that you would X”: antagonistic and disdainful, again. And I highlight again the egoism in presuming to speak for an entire group in such grandiose terms.)
5. “Iām sorry youāre willing to excuse people for their crimes based on their past.” (Aggression in sarcasm and, again, disdain for others’ opinions, not to mention willing misinterpretation and polarization based solely on disagreement.)
These all are quite classifiable as insults. Not name-calling or swearing, to be sure, but insulting nonetheless.
Your tone and word/phrase choice are all indicative of hating on others for disagreeing with you. Unless you didn’t mean it that way, in which case, take it as a lesson that maybe you need to study language connotations and social stuff, and what things mean. Polarization-type strawman arguments aren’t exactly welcoming of differing opinions either, BTW.
As Anna Smith said, “Other people feel differently, and *you donāt get to say that they canāt*.” Speaking the way you do would say that you ARE trying to dictate others’ ideas – at least in standard-usage English. Even between two people who suffered the exact same trauma – all other things being equal -, each individual’s feelings on their situations, and their own paths to healing and forgiveness (or lack thereof), are going to be different, and THAT’S OKAY. You don’t have to forgive Andi, but stop being apoplectic at those who feel they could.
Again quoting Anna Smith, ā’I was abused!’ is NOT AN EXCUSE to be abusive to others.” Maybe you should take your own advice to Andi.
I would add, preemptively, that the responses you are getting, such as my initial response to you, are likely not because they disagree with your inability to forgive Andi, but because of your insinuations that they also should not be forgiving towards her.
That’s a good point.
You guys are both making me want to go back and read through several pages’ worth of content — because it feels like I missed something — and making me want to avoid doing that altogether, because it sounds like what I missed might’ve been some pretty negative stuff.
And here I thought I’d been following the comments pretty well. Guess I’ve been skimming more than I thought.
Disdain and dismissal are quick ways to make enemies. Though I’ve been seeing it on both sides here, and it’s bugging me. Sci’s opinions can be extreme but he doesn’t seem to be an outright troll, or maybe that’s part of the context I’m missing here.
(Also, what is up with saying rude people “must be twelve”? Pre-teens don’t have a monopoly on rude behavior or arrogance.)
I don’t know about the comparisons being particularly apt, but it seems like he was trying to put this in a category of extremely bad and irreparably harming behavior. I would say that having your child taken away from you, and then being told that they’re dead when they’re really not, and having this situation go on for years while you mourn and then move on and get other children, that’s an extremely bad thing that does irreparable damage to all parties involved. So that much, at least, seems apt.
But, Sci, you are being insulting to abused people by making assumptions of how we all feelāspeaks the woman who has no contact with either of her parents for safety issues and has heard a couple therapists say, “OMG! Most people I meet with your childhood become drug users.” Please don’t make assumptions of others.
D) Unless you have been raped, you don’t get to say that kind of shitāand I highly doubt you’d be making that comparison if you had actually been raped.
Anyone with common sense should know better than that. Likewise, please do not speak for others who have suffered any other kind of trauma unless you’ve *been there* (and even people who have realize trauma and paths to healing journeys are very individual things).
Since I was abused as a child, I guess I do get to “go there,” which I think is an absolutely ridiculous concept. So I will continue to go there – ANDI WAS NOT ABUSED. Or at least there is currently no evidence to demonstrate it. Dave might show me I’m wrong later on.
1) I’m very sorry you were abused. That sucks.
2) But you don’t get to speak for everyone who *was*.
3) You seem very angry. If you have not talked to trustworthy who is equipped to talk to about it, it’s really helpful. Depending what state/county you live in, you can often find find help really cheap or for freeābut it takes time to find someone who’s a good match. This may be a good place to start:
http://blahtherapy.com
> But the fact that everyone is screaming abuse after witnessing a single conversation between Andi and her mother IS disrespectful towards those who have suffered from real abuse.
So real abuse == what happened to you, and fake abuse == what happened to everyone else???
> I donāt need to have a respectful tone in my comments when discussing a character who is both awful, and not real.
You do have to have a respectful tone in your comments when you are speaking with OTHER PEOPLE who ARE REAL.
> I see no room for forgiveness. Her actions were/are deplorable, absolutely on the level of rape and kidnapping, though perhaps not murder.
Other people feel differently, and *you don’t get to say that they can’t*.
I appreciate that this is a hot-button issue for you, Sci, but it is both rude and unconscionable to take your own demons out on the other people in this comment section, and “I was abused!” is NOT AN EXCUSE to be abusive to others.
The only reason I brought up my own past is because everyone else was accusing me of trolling. I don’t even think my past is relevant.
You all keep accusing me of harassing people. Can I see some evidence?
See my reply above.
Want to add that regardless of whether the Andi-emotional-abuse theory pans out depending on what Dave reveals in the future, she shows some symptomology, so it is a fair thing to theorize. It’s not necessary to be so antagonistic to proponents of that theory. All that was really needed was the reminder that it’s not yet Word if God. And perhaps something like “Maybe some of you can forgive this sort of thing; I personally wouldn’t be able to.”
I disagree with your above post. Sorry, but none of that qualifies as insulting to me. Perhaps people here might be too sensitive.
Remember the bit where I said “Unless you didnāt mean it that way, in which case… maybe you need to study language connotations and social stuff”?
Maybe I’m not sensitive (speaking only for me here), maybe you just don’t get social interactions.
For my part, I should hope I know what I’m talking about in the case of language here; I’m an editor. We don’t just do grammar – we make suggestions for tone etc. as well.
In addition, I find it kinda disturbing that you’re shielding yourself with the “you’re just sensitive” argument… Last I checked, that is a CLASSIC defense of especially emotional abusers.
I’m not denying that the comments are antagonistic. I’m saying that antagonistic =\= insulting.
Oh, and for the record, while I do believe everyone is entitled to have their own opinion, I do not believe all opinions are equal and deserving of respect. Some are objectively stupid and should be treated that way. So yeah, if I think someone’s ideas are silly, I’ll say so.
And if people think your ideas are silly, and say so, can you accept that as their prerogative?
100%. That said, I reserve the right to call them an idiot for disagreeing.
So what you are basically saying is that you can say anything you want in as hateful a tone as you can manage but no-one can say anything to you no matter how logical or polite and you can still be rude to them, you won’t even accept your very own words repeated back to you as evidence of any wrongdoing. You come onto a fandom that you claim to hate (but won’t stop following) to pick arguments with fans mostly resorting to ad hoc and stawman arguements that you keep beating like a dead seahorse even when everyone else has put it to rest. You insist life has treated you grievously and that no one’s pain could possibly compare to the pain you have suffered. Everything is stark black and white with absolutely no variations or scale, no such thing as mitigating circumstances or situations that are out of control. Those are all the defining characteristics of a troll.
If you reserve the right to call someone an idiot for disagreeing with you, then I’m sure you agree with someone else having the right to call you a troll for calling people names for the mere act of disagreeing with you.
I gotta admit he’s handling this way better then I would have there would have already been yelling (considering the s#*. She pulled)
God, a funeral. She doubled down from the very beginning. Todd is righteously angry alright… He’s really going to ignite when he learns that the “better life” Andi’s deception bought for Amanda Marie was one of abuse, neglect, and abandonment. Andi was scared? Poor lamb. Amanda Marie was scared too. I’ve been reluctant to judge Andi harshly because you don’t know till you’ve been there, but I think I’m over that.
I was a single teen mother. I was pressured to give my daughter away, though it wasn’t my parents inflicting the pressure. I was confused, and afraid and traumatized by Mr. Biology. A hot mess, me. The only thing that I was certain of was that this baby needed me and that I needed her. I became who I am because she needed a strong, competent mother.
Andi doesn’t get to whine that “Ma made me do it”, when she continued to lie for 8 years, and (this is what really boggles the mind on the betrayal front) pressure Todd to make another baby with her to replace the daughter she lied about.
That was before Andi discovered she could get Amanda back.
It’s not like they were really on speaking terms for those eight years.
It was very clear in the beginning of this comic that Todd had been avoiding her for the biggest part of it. So she didn’t “continue to lie” for eight years. There’s a difference between not bringing up a subject and lying.
I didn’t read it as them having not spoken for most of those 8 years. In fact I read it as them having been together for most of it. It seemed as though it was only when Todd finally decided he didn’t want to wait any longer to become a father that they parted ways permanently. https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie103/
You’re right, I was re-reading the comic just now when that ocurred to me. Still: we weren’t told the entire span of those eight years, only the first two(?) years starting at comic 193.
And in the first big talk they had in over 6 months, Andi told him he should know it’s a touchy subject, so it’s safe to assume they hardly spoke about it.
Really not the same as lying.
Also: https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie49/
This comic shows her calling him, trying to talk about it.
She really hasn’t “continued the lie”
And I really don’t see why saying “I don’t want to adopt, but rather try again” is pressure, but that might be on me
It IS technically called a “lie of omission”, FYI.
Not if they never spoke about it again after the funeral, but I’m willing to call semantics on that. I’ve had arguments with my g/f about that, when I went out with colleagues and didn’t mention there were lady colleagues with us as well.
For me, it doesn’t matter: I love her, I’m out with colleagues, and I tell her I’m out with colleagues, so she doesn’t have to worry.
She gets mad for lying about gender, which I didn’t… I just never told her I went with male colleagues and/or female colleagues…. just “colleagues” to let her know nothing’s gonna happen.
But when I WOULD tell about it, she’d get mad about me trying to make her jealous, otherwise I wouldn’t have to mention that there were women there as well.
Ah yes! one of the double standards that women have against us guys… no matter which way you answer that you’re screwed… oh well, what can ya’ do??!
I assure you, there are guys who will do the whole “Where were you? Out with friends? Why didn’t you say some of them were guys?!” routine as well.
I consider that sort of behavior kind of a red flag, meriting some serious discussion at the least, no matter the gender of the accusing/jealous partner. (Yeah, there can be reasons behind it which make it less likely to be paired with the really nasty behaviors, but it’s a flag.)
That wasn’t trying to tell him about Amanda. That was trying to force herself back into his life after they broke up.
I agree. She was spamming his phone, but not to tell him about Amanda. It was a “I’m going Ro make you talk to me” sort of thing.
She doesn’t get to whine and get off scot free indeed!
Wanna see if she tries to make actual reparations and accept the consequences. Only THEN I’d forgive her.
That’s it, Todd, let it all out so you can get over it and regardless of how things end up, Andi doesn’t have to be scared of confronting you.
Yeah, “cow” just doesn’t fit. It’s a jarring off note. Coward maybe.
I’m amazed at the restrained agony you’ve got demonstrated in both characters here.
Everyone commenting has like, intelligent and thought out comments and literally all I can muster up is OHHHH MY GOD
And yet you, instead of sharing intellectually deep thoughts, shared with us that the page has an emotional Impact for you. And is not That of value to us, too?
Agreed! At least it came up right away. Each time I re-read the comic, I find it more horrifying.
Andi is a horrible person and beyond forgiveness in my opinion, but hopefully Todd can get along with his new(?) daughter as much as his current.
I’m writing an entire complex story entirely on the thesis that nobody is “beyond forgiveness.” Not even talking from a religious angle (although I’m not ignoring that facet either). But the thesis is “What Do You Do When You’ve Done the Unthinkable?”
Andi has done some horrible things that might or might not be heavily influenced by her relationship with her mother. And she has admitted to them, finally. That is the first step. It doesn’t absolve her of anything, she doesn’t get a blue ribbon and a cash prize for stepping up to do what she should’ve done eight years ago, but it is a first step and it is possible for her to take more steps in the right direction.
She’s burned bridges with Todd, and I would expect that those are permanent. I really can’t see them getting together, no matter how that affects the kids. But some sort of split custody thing is doable.
When I try to analyze her, I see a woman who is still quite immature. Like, a teenager inside, incompetent at some things that adults are supposed to have learned by now, such as dealing with difficult situations in an adult manner, even if it hurts. I don’t know how much of that immaturity is connected to her relationship with her mom, or what other factors might be driving it. But it puts her behind the eight ball, and I don’t expect her to get past immaturity very fast. Maybe she can do a lot of things right in a short period but she still has to grow up — a lot.
And I do sympathize with the fear that builds up when you’ve got to do a thing, an important thing, and then you’re scared so you don’t do it, and then every time you think about it it’s worse because you should’ve done it back then and didn’t do it and so you push it to the back of your mind over and over as the pressure just builds and builds, and then it becomes all but impossible for you to actually deal with it. Sadly, I have a more than a few of these things in my life, even when the act is as simple as a phone call and a short conversation. The longer you let it sit, the more impossible it becomes.
As far as the stuff she did back when she was a teen… well, I grew up on this song that went like this (from memory, but I listened to it tons and have most of it in there):
“When you tell one lie, it leads to another,
So you tell two lies to cover each other,
Then you tell three lies, and oh brother,
You’re in trouble up to your ears!
“So you tell four lies, to try to protect you,
Then you tell five lies, so folks won’t suspect you,
Then you tell six lies and you collect
A life full of worry and fear.
“‘Cuz you can’t remember how many lies you’ve told;
Half the things you say aren’t true.
And sometime you’ll slip up, you’ll trip up, and then
Whatever will become of you?
“Soon you lie and lie, without even trying,
And each lie you tell will keep multiplying:
Soon the whole wide world will know you’re lying
And you’ll be suspected, (something) and rejected,
It’s right that you should!
When you lie, you’re closing the door on everything good.”
If that’s not The Andi Theme Song, I don’t know *what* is.
While I believe in forgiveness, I also believe that some things are 100% beyond forgiveness.
Yeah. Part of what makes forgiveness so precious is that no one owes it to anyone else. For it to be owed or an obligation is an additional burden placed on the agrieved.
Todd is well within his rights to never forgive Andi for this. Hopefully Andi will at some point forgive herself, if for no other reason than the burden of fear and guilt she has is preventing her from functioning normally, or being a good mom (running off in terror and leaving her kid?! what was that!?). But, Andi forgiving herself isn’t predicated on Todd forgiving her, and he can certainly just never do so if that is what brings him the most peace.
See, “no one owes it to anyone” and “some things are beyond forgiveness” kind of contradict, in a weird way.
If some things are beyond forgiveness, then it kind of implies that lesser things “deserve” to be forgiven.
If no one is obligated to forgive the ones who hurt them, then they are free to forgive or to not forgive depending on their internal world, their free-will decision, and they can do this even against things the rest of us would judge unforgivable.
A couple of the things I unpack in my story are these:
1. Forgiveness is a concept that has multiple facets, and we tend to mix these up when talking about it.
2. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean getting back in a relationship with them. You can forgive someone and still move on with your life apart from them, owing them nothing.
3. While some people don’t forgive until the person has repented, forgiveness doesn’t have to be about the other person at all. Sometimes it’s about letting go of continued hurt and pain, long after the person has left your life — in some cases even after they are dead, and no longer about to repent. In other cases they never realized how badly they hurt you, and in other cases they never cared and still don’t care.
But as I explained to a friend of mine, when you’re not in contact with the person, but continue to hate them whenever you think of them, that hate isn’t hurting them in the slightest — it’s only hurting you. It’s a burden you shouldn’t have to go on bearing.
4. If you’ve hurt someone badly, then even if you have repented, you need to come to grips with the fact that they may never forgive you. And that’s okay. They don’t owe you forgiveness. If you’re clinging to the idea that they’re wrong for holding your behavior against you, then your attitude hasn’t changed enough and you need to work on that attitude before anything else.
So… yeah. Interesting concept, forgiveness. Lots of ways to look at it, and to analyze how it affects the people involved, whether forgiveness is offered or not.
Re: forgiveness and Your Mileage May Vary – YES
No one owes anyone else forgiveness. No one owes un-forgiveness either – some may find a certain hurt forgiveable, while another will be unable to forgive the same hurt. It’s a very individual thing – YMMV very much applies here, to each his own… So it’s unfair to try to push your own standards into someone else, or try to speak for others.
And to continue to pound this particular nail on the head for the 1000th time :p – forgiveness in its purest form merely = letting go of anger or hard feelings towards someone. Nothing to do with them gettin’ to skip out on consequences.
Indeed.
mm. They don’t contradict for me, but that is perhaps because I’m coming from a place where I was taught that I “HAD” to forgive other people, no matter what (I could still be hurting from the first action, they could still be hurting me in the present, etc). I was taught that the act of not forgiving someone was so hurtful towards them that it was sinful to withhold forgiveness from them. (You might be able to tell that the person who taught me this was also the one hurting me. Whoo abuse.)
So, to be able to withhold forgiveness, it has to be possible for an act to be unforgivable in your opinion. Someone else could find something forgivable that you don’t. But, the ability for an individual to find something unforgivable is key to any of us having choice when we forgive someone.
It is totally fine (and even wonderful) that you see it differently though. š Thank you for sharing!
I want to up one your comments: I’m glad that there are others who seek to understand and empathize with Andi without forgiving her, and to recognize her flaws without condemning them. I’m also toast hat there are others who aren’t willing to vilify Andi’s mother based off of (what I think is) mostly speculation with little evidence.
“Up one” should have read “up vote”
Also, “toast hat” should have read “glad that”…
Agreed, while Andi displays a lot of classic behaviors of one who has been emotionally abused, some folks need reminders that ***WE DO NOT HAVE DIRECT AUTHOR CONFIRMATION YET.***
Fwiw, if it turns out that *isn’t* the case and Andi is just cowardly/immature… Yeah I’mma be much much angrier at her.
I agree with Ayana: Everyone has the potential to be forgiven but not everyone can be 100% forgiven by everyone. There are some people who have done terrible things whom I cannot forgive 100%. So, no, you cannot tell me that I have to forgive someone. They can try all they like but if trust is broken, it is so much harder to get back. For me, I can’t forgive you if I don’t trust you 100%. That has to come first. So, given that, if Todd feels the same way, he will never 100% forgive her, but to get time with his bio daughter I am sure he will be civil and maybe even fake it at least for his kid but to Andi? Nah. I don’t think she deserves it anyhow but that’s my opinion.
The nature of forgiveness is that nobody “deserves” it. If they deserved it, there would be nothing to forgive.
You should look up Leftover Soup with the keyword “trust.” Tailsteak, the author, has an interesting take on the concept of trust as a necessary component of specific relationships.
Also, please look up a ways for more of my commentary on forgiveness. It’s a subject I’ve been looking into quite a lot for my project.
I read:) Thanks. It is part of what got this part of the thread going. And I mean “deserves it” from the giver’s perspective. Perspective is so huge. What is wrong to someone may be fine to someone else, based solely on their background/upbringing/culture, etc. Fascinating how varied we all are and amazing that we coexist. That whole trust thing goes hand in hand with human nature’s need to seek out others either like us or willing to accept us for either ourselves or by conforming to the whole.
+1000
Is this a web comic-type story, or something else that will be available online?
i assume you meant to say OFF-line… this comic is BOTH. the webcomic here, and on the right side of the comic in the sidebar, there is a link to the Magcloud site for a dead-tree version of this comic, book one and book two, these pages of the current arc are NOT in book two, Dave said what it does cover, and where it stops, but i forgot… i do remember that this arc will be in his THIRD Selkie book though…
I really wish Todd had delayed this whole conversation until he and Andi could have it privately. š Even if he hadn’t made the “Amanda Marie” connection, even just a “how odd that you adopted a kid” conversation should wait for a time when they can talk privately. Not “rushed words while the kids are briefly distracted.”
All things considered, I think he’s shown remarkable restraint to have waited until the girls were distracted. For the moment he’s mostly just talking, not making a huge scene. Todd’s no superhero, he’s just a guy. A guy who has just learned his entire life for the last 8 years has been based on a horrible lie.
The thing to worry about is: what’s he going to do about it *right now*?
What worries me even more, what is Amanda going to do when she finds out that Todd is her biological father and “merely” Selkie’s adoptive father?
Because if her pattern of behaving like an intolerable little shit every time she thinks she has something to lord over other people holds true, she’s going to say something absolutely fucking HORRIBLE to Selkie, possibly bad enough that Todd might be pushed to saying something along the lines of “get out of my sight. I already mourned the daughter I thought I had; I don’t want to know the brat she became instead.”
Despite all the time Amanda spent wanting to be adopted, she still has this strange attitude that biological parents are the only “real” parents. Someday, someone will point out to her that adoptive parents get to CHOOSE their child, while biological parents are pretty much stuck with them. (Andi’s an exception.)
* Background Star Wars music*
“Amanda-Marie? I am your father. I thought you were dead. Andi lied. You are coming home with me RIGHT NOW!”
Exit party of four: Todd in the lead, purple with suppressed emotion, Amanda, torn between delight and panic and dismay, Selkie, whose eyes are now the size of very large scallop shells, and last of all, taken by surprise by the abrupt departure, trailing at a distance and trying desperately to keep up, Felix, who had spotted the fact that Selkie had three dead sardines in her pocket.
Exit stage left, pursued by an octopus?
Unfinished script by Shakespeare?
A play where a real octopus plays the main character would be fairly amusing. Octodad… the MUSICAL.
Side character:”Oh, woe is me! For I have been denied my rightful place upon my father’s throne!”
Octopus: *wibbles tentacles* “flfbbbbwwlwbblglorp”
Love the emotional backgrounds. Good idea!
I’ve read the above coment and I’ve seen what everyone has to say about it.
On one hand I understand why Todd is so upset. After being lied to for eight years about what happened to Amanda and then finding out about it, I can’t really blame him.
On the other hand, I understand that Andi was feeling lost and confused at the time. Don’t get me wrong; faking Amanda’s death was NOT the right thing to do, but I understand that she didn’t know how to cope with an unexpected teen pregnancy. She may have made a huge mistake in the past, but at least she is trying to make amends for it.
With that being said, I figure it will take Todd some time to deal with his anger and discovering that Amanda never died. He will probably want to get to bond with Amanda, but it will take time and some effort to forgive Andi (if he does forgive her).
As for Selkie and Amanda, I don’t know when they will find out that they are sisters, but I figure that they will find out eventually. They’ll probably be more focused on the fact they are sisters (which I am sure they will NOT be happy about) than what Andi did.
It’s Amanda I’m worried about.
Selkie will grouch and snark a couple times about having a brats for a sisters, but by and large she trends towards being kinds.
Amanda, on the other hand, isn’t going to want to share HER father with… That.
IMHO the best why to introduce the situation to Selkie is for Todd to say ‘Hon, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is you have a sister. The bad news is you already know her, and don’t like her.’
This tells Selkie that just because Todd now knows he has a “real daughter” it doesn’t mean she’s being replaced. She ***IS*** Todd’s daughter.
yeah. I expect Todd will probably do a great job here, if he can just get the privacy and time to process his feelings.
Liking that one š
Good call on pulling the “Cow” bit.
Todd’s problem here is that his parents brought him up too nice. It makes him a really great guy 99% of the time, but in cases like this when you really, really just need to vent at someone for the bullshit they’ve heaped on you, you just don’t have the words, and your first instinct is to sit on your bile instead until it explodes.
I sometimes wonder what I’d come up with if I had reason to really let loose.
I grew up with the idea that you shouldn’t swear, but at some point I actually made the conscious decision to not let swearing become a habit or a knee-jerk reaction, ever. I’ve been in the company of a group of friends whose swearing is… well, worse than anything I ever expected to hear before I hit college, and some of it is used as general banter and stuff, and I found it really weird when I first started getting accustomed to it.
But a decade and a half of that stuff and it still hasn’t become part of my vocabulary, except that I’m better able to kind of feel my way through character dialogue when they’d be using words like that (I don’t tend to write like that), and that on occasion — not that often — I use swear words for specific reasons because I think they fit the context.
But I also make use of a variety of weird words on my own time, because they better fit my mood. A couple I created myself (like “Krianya” meaning, roughly, “for cryin’ out loud!” but a bit stronger and with a little tongue-in-cheek), while others I borrowed (like “smeg,” the word that comes out whenever others might say “oh crap” or stronger variants), and some are from non-English languages because swearing in other languages always seems less offensive somehow (though even there, I was never really interested in the swearing of the languages I studied, except to be able to spot it if someone was trying to trick me into using swearing without realizing it).
It does seem, though, like I end up with situations where I want to write characters making a big scene, but the vocabulary is too tame for the task. And I’m not yet sure in which direction I want to take that. I think the character who learns her husband was cheating on her is going to be using weapons-grade vocabulary, because to do otherwise would be to pussy-foot around reality and take away from the power of the emotions in use at the time.
Wer seem to be in rather the same boat. š
My family doesn’t swear. Pretty much doesn’t cuss either (I can think of possibly two instances this year). I was also homeschooled. Between the two, it was a little startling to go to college (a Christian college, no less).
Now that I’ve gotten used to hearing it, sometimes cuss words jump into my head when something happens, though I don’t think I’ve ever said them. I hope that I will never use them fluently, it just sounds…I don’t know, uneducated, or something? Like you can’t take the time to come up with something to better express yourself, so you just shove it into one of a few catch-all phrases. At least, that’s how it feels for people who use them casually. For something like this, it fits very well.
And thank you for pointing out the part about writing yourself. I’ve also tried to keep my writing very clean, but I think you’re right that there are times when it is called for. I just hadn’t thought about it that way. That will probably help a lot with making my stories feel real.
Let me know when I can start looking for your stuff, if like to read it. š
Dave I agree with your choice to go with the ‘what were you thinking?’ line because it is such a valid question. What WAS she thinking? I mean even if she didn’t think she was able/willing to raise a child surely she must have known Todd wanted to. And even if he was too young to raise it without her support she would have known HE would have had the support of his parents; people who showed how willing they are to raise children by adopting three of them (and a dog who gets his own room).
Did she not think THAT family would have been a “better life” than some strangers?
As always, my best guess:
Panic. Sheer, total, unmitigated PANIC is what she was thinking. Remember all, this decision came up IN THE DELIVERY ROOM, while Todd was late. (And oh, how little it would take for someone to convince her in that state that maybe he’s not coming, despite all the evidence otherwise.)
Let’s be clear here, Andi made a whole host of terrible, terrible decisions, but this first one that started it all was based in sheer, all-consuming panic, which is not an unreasonable thing to feel when you’re giving birth the father’s not there and you’re a teenager and already had some doubts and still want the father in your life. (Which may have been why Andi never expressed her concerns about being a mother – Todd’s being SO SUPPORTIVE and wants to be a dad and how can she explain that she’s not on board with it as much as he is when he’s being so good as to continue talking with her?*)
* Unwed teen parents narrative, after all. Culturally a thing.
It was a bad decision. She most certainly should have voiced her concerns a long time before that. She probably should have talked with his parents as well, they would have given her support for whatever decision she made that she very much needed at the time. But speaking as a very anxious person, it’s so very very hard just to speak at all, much less to say “hey, I’m not ready for this and need help” and so I can see how Andi ended up swallowing those concerns until it was too late, Todd wasn’t there, she was terrified and giving birth and her mother was convincing her of a plan to make all the scariness go away that she didn’t have the time or emotional energy to think through properly. And then when she realized that, she was probably still in panic mode and left to explain things to Todd alone. Cue the lie (which, let’s be clear here: HORRIBLE, horrible act, and there was no way their relationship could ever really recover from that. Telling the truth might have left something to save, but there’s no real possibility here) and from there it just got worse and worse the longer she had to uphold it.
They were terrible decisions she should never have made if she had been thinking them through. But I think the key here is that she very much couldn’t and was in no state to even try thinking them through, and once she was there was no clean way out.
Well as you said: She most certainly should have voiced her concerns a long time before that.
She had close to 9 months to think about it and speak up.
At seventeen?
Okay, I was nearly a preternaturally mature 17 year old, for reasons which I don’t wish on people. I was 17 when I found the fellow I wanted to marry (that was over 20 years ago, and still married to him; *grin*), I was 18 when I moved up with him and I was 18 and not yet married when we had our first pregnancy scare.*
And. It. Was. Scary. To tell him. He handled it great! It was a very strengthening thing! Also, my period started the next day, whew!
But it was scary.
Now, in my case, when I said, “I haven’t had a period for a while now so I might be pregnant even though I don’t recall any contraception mishap…” he said, “What would you want to do?” And he made it clear he’d support me no matter what I picked. (This memory is seared into my mind like it was last week, despite being over 20 years ago. That’s how scary it was. That’s how great my fellow handled it.)
When Todd and Andi had the more-than-a-scare, they both panicked. And then Todd went baby-happy.
And whether Andi was outright abused by her mom or not, I don’t think she was ever allowed to develop good boundaries, or a habit of speaking up. So she doesn’t know what she wants, she’s scared, and she’s got two conflicting outside influences…
Yeah, it’s true, she should’ve spoken up at some point! But this is less about Andi being a Bad Person, and more about a classical tragedy, where people — by being themselves, and not generally starting out wanting to hurt people — wind up making a huge mess. Andi being Andi, speaking up about her ambivalence and possibly losing her boyfriend…? Unthinkable. Opposing her mother, who had enough of a habit of Mom Knows Best that she orchestrated the adoption at the first opportunity (Todd being late)? Also unthinkable. (And even if Andi’s mom Meant Well… a pattern of Mother Knows Best just seems way too plausible. Remember, she said her goodbyes to “that kid” 8 years ago, and had no interest in supporting Andi in getting Amanda back. Even when Andi was in a more successful place, with a stable job, and the resources to be a parent!)
Todd, delighted to be a dad and not realizing that his enthusiasm isn’t quiiiite support for his girlfriend? Also tragic! If he’d realized Andi wasn’t emotionally on board with this plan, he might’ve been able to talk to his parents and enlist their aid in reassuring Andi that they’d be there to help. Or figure out what to say to support her. Or even just honor her ambivalence! Unfortunately, he has the blind spots that many kids of happy families have: he doesn’t realize how much someone can get screwed up, and what he might be doing to feed into that. But he put a paper doll of “Happy Mother” over Andi, and spun a fantasy. (He, too, was 17, as I recall? Pretty understandable.)
Neither of them wanted to hurt the other. Both of them managed it. (I’ve had a paper doll draped over me… It’s no substitute for a respectful and caring relationship.) The consequences of Andi’s panic are worse, yes, and I really hope that she can go the distance with her confession and discover that his anger doesn’t break her — so that she can grow that spine she needs to be the mother she’s decided she should be.
But, well, it’s the English Major thing: it’s classical tragedy. If you start mapping her onto characters… she’s no Iago.
(* Footnote: Irregular periods, due to undiagnosed hypothyroidism + college stress, can be really scary. Get your thyroid tested! TSH should be between .4 and 4 and ideally somewhere in the 2-ish range or so. Don’t trust “normal” till you see the numbers!)
Nice thoughts. One of them triggered an image I’d love to see. I have stated that I’m no Andi-fan but I would love to see Amanda in trouble/danger somehow and we get to see Mama-Bear-Andi break out. That would be a beautiful thing and the first redeeming quality in Andi — unless my theory I stated to Dave above is correct and Andi says “8 years” and not “9 years” of pain and lies because she considers it started AFTER Amanda was born and that she considers her “scared” moments to really have started after she told Todd Amanda was dead. Selfish, but also a start at something beyond herself.
Crossin’ fingers with you!
Also crossin’ fingers that Amanda will eventually Do Her Worst… and that Andi will be able to stay with her. Perhaps because it’s going to be hard for an eight-year-old to have done something as awful as what Andi wound up doing, really. (So maybe Amanda will stop having the fear that she’ll be left/kicked out.)
…I wonder if Andi will go mama-bear to defend Amanda from Andi’s mother… >_>
… Y’know, you just reminded me of her whole comment when Todd spoke about adopting and Andi said what she said that it was “babysitting someone else’s kid” I believe? Adds a whole ‘mother layer to this, to now know this event was behind it all along. I know it’s been said before by other commenters when the teen pregnancy was revealed and all, and the icing was put on the cake when it was revealed that the child’s death was a lie, but this cake just keeps getting more and more layers of icing – and now extra cherries and sprinkles on top, now that everyone (everyone who’s core, anyways) is in the know.
Well its going to get a metric crapton of sparklers and rockets when Amanda Marie and Selkie find out. Prepare thyself, the dung has only began to touch the fan!
I might be the odd one out, but I would be having a different reaction to this situation. A joy in knowing someone I thought was dead for years is right before me. Someone I would have only been imaging what this person would be like now I can know them. With a bit of hope in the time I now have with them. The shock and anger can be worked out later.
On that note, I can see Amanda walking back, Todd saying, “Andi never told you who your father is.”
“No.”
Pulls out Darth Vader mask, “I am your father.”
Has the urn on Todd’s parents’ mantle ever been depicted in the comic?
not on the mantle, but it HAS been seen in Todd’s memory/flashbacks…
i wish i could find it in the archives, but i am too zombiefied right now to coherently attempt to look it up, sorry…
I kind of like that Andi is just sitting there taking Todd’s anger. She’s explaining, but not really trying to defend herself–or at least, her body language doesn’t suggest that. If some people who wronged me would just LET ME BE ANGRY, I might actually be able to accept them back into my life.
I remember an incident where we spent a couple hours at a Laundromat, and they refused to let people use the bathroom after a certain hour (even though there was an attendant there), even to wash their hands.
I came home incensed about it and this incident led to us switching to a much nicer Laundromat one town over. But the detail that sticks in my mind is that Dad seemed to think that we were making a big deal over nothing and that we were out of line to even be angry about this.
And I tried to explain to him what it felt like to sit there for like two hours with shit on my hands (because when you are doing laundry that includes kids’ clothes this is not an uncommon substance), and be unable to wash my hands, be unable to get them clean enough to touch anything with or do anything with or even just fold them in a normal way around my body — purely because the people running that Laundromat had an asinine policy about the restroom (which I think was mostly because the attendant was just a relative of the owner who couldn’t be arsed to do more than the minimum while he was running the place).
I think if my dad had acknowledge that I was angry and had some right to feel that way, the feeling would’ve passed much faster, and we’d’ve gotten back to logical thought and trying to figure out a way to ensure this didn’t happen twice (I vaguely recall it happening like three times before we finally made the move to a better business). But as it was, I ended up being angry at the Laundromat guy and angry at my dad for dismissing my feelings about those two incredibly uncomfortable hours that I shouldn’t have had to go through.
Not like that’s the only time he’s been dismissive of my feelings (which is why I decided to try letters instead of direct conversation, when it’s a matter of importance), but that’s the biggest one that sticks in my head.
Enjoy all the speculation
Is that “the Punisher” on Todd’s T-shirt? Foreshadowing? Or Just Andi’s perception?
Reading through the comments, all I can say is “Well played, Dave.”
I’m really amazed by all the people who believe Andi should have raised a child she never wanted while she was still a child. I can only assume that those people have never seen how that plays out in real life. I’ve never once seen a person in those circumstances not resent their child. THIS DOES NOT MAKE A HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT FOR A CHILD!
Seriously though look at things from Andi’s point of view. We get Todd’s, because he is the main character so many people see him as 100% innocent. If Andi was the main character he would have been seen as a horrible person pushing her to do something that made her extremely uncomfortable. Hell if Todd had payed even the slightest attention to Andi instead of getting sucked up in the joy of being a father he would have noticed she wasn’t happy.
Todd did not see that. That is on him. He never considered she might not be as joyful as he was. So he inadvertently put a huge amount of pressure on her. Carry and give birth to a child to please me. Just because he didn’t intend to hurt Andi doesn’t mean he didnt!! This also shows just how immature both of them were. They would not have been good parents.
Now you have someone who feels forced to do something they want no part of and then their parent who has been there for them their entire life swoops in and says “You don’t have to”. Of course she would listen to her mom. She’s scared and no where near ready for this and she knows it! Not many kids her age could admit that!
Her mom offers adoption and Andi takes it, after all look at Todd! He has a loving family who would do anything for him. Of course Andi would want that for her child. A stable and safe home. That’s what she expected to happen!
Then Todd shows up still excited about being a parent and Andi acts her age. She panics. She tells Todd the only reasonable thing she could think of that would keep him from getting upset at her. Does she mean to hurt him? No. Does it? Yes. After seeing how he reacts now she’s really afraid to tell the truth so she sits on it. The more time passes the more it gets harder to tell.
Then when she tries to get back into a relationship with Todd she finds out he adopted a daughter the same age as Amanda .This is implied to be an impulse decision on his part, that doesn’t show maturity.(Todd was not at all prepared for a special needs child. Another impulsive decision on his part.) Andi who is just as impulsive decides to see if there is anyway to get Amanda back. Partly to get Todd back but also it looks as if she wants some closure in her life. She was just as unprepared for a special needs child as Todd was. Only Andi’s stumbling isn’t as heartwarming as Todd’s to many readers. Even though Todd and his family accidentally poisoned Selkie! I can only assume this is because Andi isn’t the focus character. We don’t get to see much of her home life with a very hard to handle child (Selkie was mostly well behaved before Todd choose her) nor do we get to see much of her thought process. We only get to see her when she is fumbling in public.
Andi has made some poor choices but nothing to be demonized for. Todd has also made poor choices. Heck he didn’t even stop to think before kissing a Teacher at his child’s school right after he and that teacher just made serious alligations about the school. He could have ruined everything for Selkie and the other kids at the school. Just because he still couldn’t read the mood properly.
So you have two young adults with terrible impulse control here. I feel bad for both of them but I also annoyed at both of them.
I also have some reservations for both sets of parents. This train wreck should not have gone as far as it did.
*Thus ends the great rant of the bat.*
I’m in agreement with 99% of what you say here, except for the “Todd was unprepared for a special-needs child” bit.
Were there some bumps in the beginning as he (and the grandparents!) learned her particular “quirks”? Yes. She had a few uncomfortable moments, but didn’t get direly ill or require hospitalization in the first few weeks, OR months, of living with Todd due to his incompetence. Heck, he was quite financially prepared to fund those accommodations of hers that were on the more expensive side! (Most notably those shoeses.) And he has done all he could in the way of preparedness – Selkie had the necessary supplies for gill-flushing in her backpack for school, and plenty of warmers in her clothes for winter, of course that’s notwithstanding bullies messing up said plans and preparations.
And – most notably of all – impulsivity aside, he didn’t hit the eject-button when the going got tough. He never returned her to the orphanage even after figuring out how encompassing her needs were, and has become her biggest champion at school and in the face of a government agent, with all those Classified strings attached.
Tacking on that maybe he wasn’t 100% prepared, but prepared enough, as it were.
But still driven to (at times immature) impulses apart from the adoption. (Poor Mina.)
It appears that Andi and Todd were together for most of the years since Amanda Marie was born, only breaking up a few months before Todd pursues adoption. Andi lied to Todd about the child he wanted so much dying. She could have given him the child and bailed if she wanted no part of being a mother at 17. She didn’t. She wanted Todd, but not the baby.
She maintained that lie to both Todd and his family for 8 years. If you remember, his parents are present when his phone rings and they chide him for not talking to Andi. It’s the reason he calls her back.
True, and just because, Batty, you’ve never seen someone NOT resent their child for them having said child at a young age does not mean that is always so. I am sure there have been people out there who never regretted giving away/having said kid as a teen. Not many, but some.
Yes, this is the part that gets me, the “she wanted Todd, but not the baby” and went to this extreme to maintain that.
It speaks to the immaturity that can’t see a future without that singular The One Guy for Me around, that can’t even envision solutions that involve letting him go — and damn his free will or informed consent.
Um… If Andi could see Todd’s family and want that for her child and see how baby-happy Todd is… Why not just give the baby to Todd? I am not blaming Andi for not raising Amanda herself. I am saying she makes dumb choices — circumstances or no, panic and fear or not, they are still not smart when she clearly neglected to see her other options. Her fear blinded her just as much as Todd’s baby-dreams š Agreed. At that age, both had terrible impulse control. It’s just that Todd grew out of it.
Maybe it’s just me, but the clashing background distracted me from the conversation. I get what you are going for with the sadness/fear vs anger each character is experiencing, but to me it just popped out too much.
If we’re voting, I found it effective. But then, I’m interested in making my own webcomic and pay closer attention to details like that, and find them interesting rather than distracting.
Gotta say, Todd is a pretty nice person. I mean saintly. “And you’ve known for… how long?” Desperate for this to be a medical mixup? A doctor screwing up, a nurse, anything but the truth.
So Dave, since so many believe this mostly Andi’s mom’s fault, Please enlighten us. Is Ma responsible for helping Andi cover this up?
No comment at this time.
Figures. He’ll torment us as long as he can before he finally gives us relief. š
Probably plot-relevant and will be revealed down the road… Thought so.
She (depending on the state) violated Todd’s parental rights. She took away his informed consent. Having or not having the baby was her choice of course, but lying to Todd? Keeping his daughter from him? Making him think she died? He has every right to be livid with her. Her choice caused (is causing?) him enormous pain. It caused Amanda enormous pain and damage as well. Her decision to go and “get” Amanda after all this time was impulsive and she >had< to know this was going to come out. She didn't correct a mistake, she compounded it in a way that seems guaranteed to cause even more heartache and pain. If this is a ploy to get Todd back into her life (You have to come back! I have our daughter!) then it's going to get even worse. I've said it before but Todd would have a very strong case for custody at this point if he chose to pursue it based on Andi's actions in the last 8 years.
Wow. I’m rather disturbed by the responses here. A lot of pain and rage there.
I can understand it. It’s just, really painful how often people use the term “unforgivable”.
It’ll be interesting to see how many change their positions over the course of the story, either as more information gets revealed or as they have time to work through their initial monochromatic feelings into more nuanced ones.
Also, this seems like a situation of deep catharsis. And if a story is based around creating catharsis, it needs to bring the emotions to the surface in the most raw and untempered manner possible. So perhaps even this rage is doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing, at this point in the tale.
You should see what’s going on over on Gunnerkrigg Court, where a quite different tale of abuse is slowly being unveiled. People are actually leaving the comic, just because it’s getting too intense, hitting too close to home. Some are leaving temporarily (so they can get through the dramatic tension in a quick archive binge later), while others, it seems, are leaving for good.
True, I do that myself.
It’s strange though. I see a healthy catharsis in this comic. I’m not disturbed by it. In the comments section, I see emotion overriding thought, and people hurting.
Yeah my wife and I are in the temporary-absence-marathon-later camp. Gettin’ antsy waiting for the dust to clear a bit so we can get back to it finally :p
without going into the right or wrongness of Andi’s reasons “i was scared for the last eight years” or her subsequent actions (irrelevant for this query)…
i am curious as to what the catalyst was for her to “NOT be scared”?? and cause this RADICAL shift in her mental state, a large enough of a shift that she felt it correct and NECESSARY to get her daughter back from adoption?? THAT is the $64000 Question right there!… hopefully it will be revealed all in due time, as the comic continues…
Response to Blue Coyote:
I never claimed to hate this fandom. Even if I do, I like the comic. That’s enough of a reason to stay.
I never said my pain was incomparable to others’. I’d rank myself relatively low on the scale.
I can’t decipher the beginning of your second wall of text, so I’ll ignore it.
You keep resorting to background attacks. Talk about immature? You don’t know me or my life at all. Think before you post. For all you know, I’m neither straight, male, or white.
Blue Coyote’s right. You have all the characteristics of a troll, which makes you entirely unpleasant and unproductive to be around. I’d like to save my brain cells, and so will be ignoring your comments in the future even if you finally say something intelligent. But I’m sure you’re okay with that.
My heart is broken. Some person online is ignoring me. Oh the humanity.