Next best thing to a real motorcycle.
Amanda's former GameKid handheld pretty much only had a pet store game and some puzzle games, and the orphanage's video games were all PG games. Car smashing is new delicious territory.
Next best thing to a real motorcycle.
Good. I’m really glad Andi didn’t wait until Monday. It means that Amanda isn’t going to be harboring anger for Todd when they meet again. It means she’s going to launch it at Andi. Andi knows this.
“Amanda isn’t going to be harboring anger”
Hahahahahahahahah.
Not against Todd… perhaps…
I don’t know. Amanda isn’t the most logical kid I’ve ever seen. And even if she was, she IS only 8.
Indeed. A VEEEERRY hard talk to have, but 100% needed.
I just REALLY hope Amanda doesn’t pull something the next time she sees Selkie at school like “the only reason he didn’t pick me is because he didn’t KNOW, if he had I’d have my real mom and dad together and you’d be all alone~”
I’m glad Andi is realizing she can’t just let this hang until monday. Also very nice with the alternating panels showing Selkie (and we can only imagine what Selkie is thinking, not the least of which is that she’ll either be taken back or have to share Todd with Amanda- who she knows shares so well)
Seconded!
And Dave? The shock seems to have popped Amanda’s earrings right out of her ears.
Maybe they got ripped out when her hair stoodon end.
As for Selkie, I bet she is thinking she will go back to the home now.
I’m beginning to think Amanda is a very angry little Inspector Gadget. Go go gadget earrings! And they fly off to go yell at people.
M***** Q** V***U*** A*T** Y*** ** K**RI** PANCAKES!!!!
Hee hee:) I fight all the time with continuity of the Shards characters. I find myself forgetting Alice’s EM/DM solution canisters of all things!! And which of Velvy’s fluffs goes up and which goes down. But the biggest bugger for me, let me tell you, is drawing a character holding something in their right hand and then drawing them carrying the same thing in their left hand the next panel. Damn my eyes! And yes, I am left-handed.
Maybe a cheat sheet that has a list of things you need to put into every panel for each character. You have that on your drawing board or whereever you draw these comics. 🙂
They’re a new kind of “mood” earrings. Instead of changing color – when Amanda is stressed, they disappear! 😉
Andi’s gone up a notch in my estimation. There’s a ton of ways she could have started this discussion that would gloss over this ugly truth. Looks like she’s at least trying to lay it flat out.
I don’t think this kind of truth was appropriate at this stage in Amanda’s life. There are some things children do not need to know—especially when they are in the process of healing from some massive trauma. Saying that Todd didn’t know he’d ever see Amanda again would have been honest and leaving out the unnecessary ugliness. It’s very immature and sad to see that Andi chose to lay the rest out. Typical of her character, though.
I disagree, actually. Yes, Amanda is going through a lot of painful stuff and has issues – but Andi, I think, couldn’t AFFORD to lie about this, or overly simplify things. She knows how angry and upset Todd was; she’s not completely stupid, so she has to assume he’s going to tell his parents. There’s going to be a meeting on Monday where Andi cannot control who says what or how it gets said, and she’s already learned (painfully, slowly, but learned) that she cannot predict accurately how people will react or what they will say.
Telling Amanda the truth now does mean dealing with painful and angry reactions, but it is MUCH better that she do so in a controlled environment, one on one, and not in front of a room full of people who are angry and upset with Andi, and one child with whom Amanda already has issues. It also gives them the rest of the weekend to work on this together, and Amanda can call the orphanage with request for support (ie, referrals to therapists or whatever) if all else fails.
While it’d be nice if she’d handled it better from the start, at the same time, I can’t argue with her decision to tell the truth to Amanda now, rather than waiting for yet more stuff to explode and then deal with the aftermath.
Agree 100% pumpkincat. Even this late in the game, Andi needed to come clean with Amanda to have any hope of things working out going forward.
I just hope the powers that be don’t try to take Selkie back, now that Amanda & Andi are going to be part of the family dynamic. A rather unbalanced dynamic at that.
I’m with pumpkincat on this one.
Even if the truth is very, very hard, sometimes kids need/deserve to know just that – the truth. Simply because, no matter how horrific, it is the Truth nonetheless.
Of course, YMMV. For example, people who learned (admittedly at an age slightly older than 10) that they were conceived in rape. None ever relished learning this in the beginning. After the fact though, some have appreciated knowing this about their history and/or come to understand their mothers/parents/guardians better. Others wish they had never known and that it was never revealed to them.
Unfortunately we can never know the extent of the whole YMMV bit without the Truth being spoken. Catch-22, that.
To build trust and security on a foundation of half truths and outright lies will always lead to a house of cards scenario. Any progress Andi makes with Amanda with that half truth/lie would be meaningless and flimsy, washed away the second the truth is given be it when she 14, 18 or even 20+. Your statement that the ugliness is unnecessary is a very damaging attitude that only lead to more pain later.
Correction: washed away the second Todd tells her the whole truth, that he was told Amanda was dead. And that second is most probably only two days away.
I’m interested to see if Andi elaborates on her statement to say “I was the one who told him you were dead”. I believe giving Amanda the knowledge of -why- Todd passed her over is completely correct. It’s not a ‘half truth’ to gloss over the whys right now, Amanda’s only 8. If she asks when she’s older, then sure, go into the sordid details -age appropriate-.
Then again Andi might be still too reluctant to share. THAT would be a question for the meet-up on Monday. “My mom said you thought I was dead, why?!”
Good for Andi on alleviating the blame from Todd since he’s the innocent party in this situation. That being said, I have no idea how Andi is gonna stop Amanda from either a) being furious at her & blaming it all on her mom …. or b) hating her grandmother who was the mostly guilty party. Either way, Andi kind of loses. Despite her grandma not wanting her, there’s still a chance to salvage the relationship if they meet (things could change if her grandma meets her face to face). If they meet & andi explained the truth about why Todd thought she was dead, the relationship is ruined from the get go. If Andi spares her mom and takes the blame, Amanda will a) feel betrayed and then b) feel horrible about it later when she finds out the truth. Good on Andi for being honest (my child psych experience proves to me that telling the truth to kids is always the best policy)…. but she sure knows how to get herself stuck between the devil & the sea.
The grandma made her bed and can now lie in it. Andi’s going to be better off taking her own responsibility and aligning with the kid. She should have done that a long time ago, possibly from the start. This relationship is not worth salvaging.
And tbh I really love how Andi’s handling this. She’s being mature, honest and respectful. She needed some time to psyche herself up to telling Amanda, thus “bribery” in the last update.
She’s going to do just fine.
Indeed. It took her damn well long enough, but I had faith Andi wasn’t completely awful/malicious.
No, she’s just stupid and lets her emotions dictate her actions.
…which often amounts to pretty much the same thing as acting like an idiot.
I think that Amanda meeting grandmother should be very LOW on Andi’s priority list. That she-dog has already shown she’s going to tear Andi down every chance she’s got. I can totally see her looking at Amanda and saying “Do you know how completely you ruined your mother’s and my life?!”
And I can see Amanda glaring at her and telling her to shut her gob and sit down. One thing that little girl isn’t is afraid to speak her mind. Then out come the mass attack of symbols from Amanda’s mouth.
“Game Over”
So right.
There is absolutely no doubt that I am a horrible person, and my reaction to panel three proves it. It’s a matter of eye-lines, but still:
SELKIE: Your boy parts have deceived me. By reproducing. I must ensure that this never occurs again.
Yep. You’re a horrible person. 😛 I can’t unsee that, now.
I’s gonna knocks you out.
Selkie saids knocks you out.
As much as I like your version, I can’t agree that that’s what’s happening. The sight-lines might have been right but if you look closely you can see Todd has the car door open for Selkie and her right arm is already behind it. This tells me she is actually farther back into the panel than Todd is and is therefore staring into the car’s interior.
And the other bomb has been dropped.
Popcorn anyone?
Wow…
FINALLY. Yaaaaaaay.
Fun fact: The more you face unpleasant truths, the easier it gets to deal with ’em.
Andi talking to Amanda? Great. Andi telling Amanda that kind of information. Hmm…. She really didn’t think about what she was doing at all. She’s kind of treating it all about her—not Amanda. There are some things children probably should not know, and I have to say this would probably be one of them—at least at this time in Amanda’s life. Crappy parenting.
Actually, she kinda did. What other explination would she possibly accept for why her father not only passed her up at the orphanage, but didn’t look for her at all.
That Todd (and Andi) didn’t *know* he could reconnect with her. After all, Amanda went in when she was a baby. Babies get adopted and unless there is an open adoption it’s very seldom birth parents get access to the information of the children they adopted out. Also, he and Andi were broken up for some time so they were out of communication.
Yeah, this is a load of truthbomb I’m not sure Amanda’s ready to get into, and definitely not RIGHT NOW, without Todd who is clearly better at talking to children.
Andi, you are going to be paying for DECADES of therapy for this moment. I mean, you were going to need to anyway, but this time it’s firmly your fault.
As to “Why didn’t her father look for her” – Amanda was an INFANT when Andi gave her up. She may or may not have had hair at that point, and her skin would be flushed red from blood vessels. Even if Todd had been present at the birth (and Andi could probably have told the truth there,) he wouldn’t have recognized her. And she was given up for adoption as, once again, an INFANT. Babies get adopted fast compared to older children, and they’d have no reason to believe her first family would be a nightmare who would ultimately give her back.
“I wasn’t ready to be a mother, I was still so young myself. Your dad couldn’t make it to the birth. We both thought we’d never get to actually see you. I thought you’d be adopted by a family who would love you and that would be that. If I had known what was going to happen, I would have chosen differently.”
All true statements, which are all neatly focused on ANDI rather than Todd when it comes to the key decision so they can explain in more detail later.
Seriously! I *wanted* to like Andi and was vouching for her against those who super hated her, but I’m quickly losing faith/sympathy for her in this arc—especially after reading about there being not just an urn, but a funeral. I want to hope her mom is behind a bunch of it, but this nonsense with Amanda leaves me thinking Andi just has serious “me me” issues.
Personally I’m thinking she’s way over her head with things that have escalated way out of her control and did so pretty quickly, and really really bad at thinking things through.
I’m hoping that she does get better (this is at least an attempt at going “hey don’t blame your dad, I screwed up,” just… clearly clueless as to how children’s thought processes work,) and I think Amanda’s chances to at least have a functional relationship with Todd and therapy should potentially help more than the state she was sort of stuck in before, but Andi’s in sink or swim territory here and I’m not sure she’ll be able to salvage things with Amanda after all this.
She IS all “me, me, me”, and I get the feeling she’s using Amanda as a weapon against Todd, forcing him back into her life. Which is not only completely unfair for the kids involved, also likely to result in Todd resenting her.
I’m HOPING this isn’t going to lead into a situation where Andi and Todd get together for “the sake of the children”, because that’s about the last thing they need. And I highly doubt they broke up completely over the adoption thing (and the hurtful things Andi said on the issue).
I believe you are wrong here, very very very wrong. Kids don’t just figure out things – they overhear a hell of a lot. I was exploring concepts like abortion, child molestation, suicide, rape, domestic violence before I was ten simply because I was quiet and people didn’t know I was there or didn’t realize I could hear what they were talking about through walls. There is no way Amanda is not going to hear people in Todd’s family talking about what really happened and it’s much better for her to hear it directly from Andi rather than try to put it into context herself.
Oh, no. I have a well-adjusted *happy* and healthy kid so I am doing just fine—thankyouverymuch. Also, I have seen a lot of family/friends with parents like Andi who have really heavy baggage as adults (some to the point they have attempted loads of self-harm and will probably never have healthy adulthoods). So I do know what I’m talking about. You cannot be BFFs with your child. There’s a point you need to be an *adult*. The way to do it is to not give more information than there are questions. Lying is very bad but dumping truth like a turd on your kid—especially at a young age—is very….shitty.
1. I personally distrust people who say their kids are happy and well adjusted. Yours may very well be but my own mother would’ve sworn the same while I was suicidally depressed. She still pulls out the family albums on occasion to “prove” I wasn’t as bad off as I was; after all, I was smiling in all the pix. People routinely commented on how smart, well-behaved, and polite my sibs and I were when we were growing up. So while it might be true that your kids are, I don’t know you so your word isn’t real proof for me. Bad parents lie, either because they don’t realize the damage they’re doing or because they don’t want to admit to it.
2. Assuming your kids are happy and well-adjusted, well that’s great…for your kids. Happy, well-adjusted kids did a fair amount of damage to me in school – people with “good” parents have a very difficult time believing what “bad” parents can do. So…what happens the first time Happy, Well- adjusted who’s never been exposed to the dark side of humanity discovers one of his/her friends has been molested, raped, or is being abused? If parents haven’t been willing to talk about it, Happy, Well-adjusted is unlikely to know how to handle it as well.
3. Happy, Well-adjusted is going to grow up. My nice, friendly, happy, overprotected grandma married an abusive, malicious, alcoholic abuser with pedophile tendencies. Same problem – people who’ve never been exposed to the dark side of humanity can be easy marks for predators if they aren’t practiced in seeing below surfaces. If parents skate over the surface on those issues, kids most likely will too…to their potential later detriment.
4. Not telling one’s kids about the dark side of humanity does NOT protect them from it. I had a friend of ten years who was super overprotective of her daughters because she’d been molested herself as a teenager. But she never talked to her girls about it because she was trying to protect them. Guess what? Grandpa molested the oldest, divorced dad molested the youngest a couple years later. The oldest one was working up to suicide when she finally confided in my husband and me…because we did talk about it, albeit in terms of the damage my own mother’s molestation issues did to me. She knew I’d believe her. Youngest one came forward immediately when it happened to her, she knew she’d be believed because of the fall out from her sister’s experience with grandpa.
Talk is talk. Dumping stuff “like a turd” may not be the best way but it’s far better than remaining silent and pretending it doesn’t happen. Willingness to talk about bad stuff makes it far more likely kids will confide in you if something bad really does happen to them.
*nod* I have told my kid some things about my sire which were not happy-happy nice-nice, but they were true. And I don’t think she’s suffered overmuch from knowing that stuff.
Getting the equal/parent balance right is a fuzzy thing. In the Andi/Amanda case… I’m not sure there’s any right answer, and a lot of wrong ones. Truth, at least, means that once it’s out there, it won’t come bite everyone in the throat later.
And… Amanda’s quite possibly precociously “adult” at times already, in some ways. It’s not like Andi was her mom all those years, so the balance of equal/parent is going to be different from the “I raised you from a baby” version. It may be that she will need to hear Andi confess that she’s got her warts, she messed up too — and that she’s sorry, and will do her best to fight for her kid from here on out.
Maybe Amanda needs someone to also model confession, and apologies, and working to make things better. Adults are pretty much crap at modeling that when it comes to telling a kid the adult screwed up, I’ve noticed…
My mom’s policy was that if we were old enough to ask the questions, we were old enough to get the answers (adjusting for complexity as needed–“Mommy, where do babies come from?” at age six gets answered a lot differently than “Ok, you said that a part from Mom and a part from Dad meet, but how?” at age ten).
That seems to have worked very well for all four of us.
You have a point. I imagine that Andi spent her silent-time desperately thinking about whether there was an edited version of the truth she could tell Amanda, and (correctly, in my view) she decided that there wasn’t.
Amanda is certain to hear the whole nasty business sooner or later. Better to rip the bandage off now and deal with the fallout, painful though it will be, than try to weasel along with partial truths and then have Amanda discover the rest of it on her own. It would probably happen on Monday anyway, so it’s not like prettying the story up now would even give Amanda time to grow older and better able to deal with it.
I look forward to seeing what Selkie is thinking. She’s certainly uppset, but is she just mad, or is she afraid she’s going to go back to the orphanage.
I place my money on both.
There’s a good chance she is at least worrying about being sent back. Because, remember, she KNOWS that Amanda was. She knows it’s possible, and yes, she’s probably telling herself that MY Dad wouldn’t do that, no he wouldn’t, no way… and all the same, no matter how much she pushes it away, the thought keeps coming back. She spent a lot of time in the orphanage feeling completely convinced that nobody would want her. A few months of having a happy home aren’t enough to wipe that out.
Not to mention that, even if Todd is totally supportive, she’s still going to have to deal with the fact that he’s now going to be supportive to Amanda too. AMANDA.
No wonder she’s scowling.
I think the best case scenario is, she´s angry that she´ll have to share her dad with the girl she hates most in the world, and who hates her back like no other girl.
And she´ll be worried that now, Amanda will no longer be just “that girl who bullies my daughter” to Todd – now they´ll both be equally important to him and he´ll no longer be entirely on Selkie´s side about Amanda´s behavior towards her.
Mind you, despite Selkie’s fears, I think it’ll go better for her, since Todd is unlikely to tolerate any sort of bullying between his daughters. (I’m unsure of what’s the correct way to refer to the two of them? Adoptive sisters? Half-sisters? Or is that reserved purely for genetic half sisters? English can be difficult with all the PC stuff. =P)
Foster siblings might work, as Selkie is adopted and Amanda is biological. But I think Todd would object to language which places them on different levels from one another, as an adopted child himself.
I agree that Todd will most probably not tolerate bullying, but Selkie can´t be too certain right now. Sure, he fought like a lion to defend her from outsiders, but Amanda is his other daughter now, not an outsider.
Also, I just realized… Amanda got sent back to the orphanage because her adoptive parents´ biological kids hated her and beat her up. And Selkie knows that. She´s got to be afraid (or become afraid, soon enough) that Amanda will apply the lesson learned there by mistreating Selkie until Selkie gets sent back to the orphanage for speaking up about it – because in Amanda´s experience, that must be how adopted-versus-biological sibling relationships work.
Here. This should help with the final panel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09s-c2JVI40
Hahaha
Thank God! And Amanda’s hair defies gravity. I love it.
Oh Andi…yer really bad with both of them.
Hey hey, way to go Andi, glad to see that your facing the music instead of facing the consequences if you didn’t. I’m surprised that Amanda Marie has gotten over her anger so quickly, or maybe she’s just burying it in video games.
Andi STILL needs to talk to her about her attitude towards being adopted and people in general, particularly Selkie, overwise she’s very likely going to demand to Todd that she abandon Selkie and take her.
I don’t see why everyone’s dreading that. So what if she does demand it? Kids do ask for impossible things. Todd’s easy answer is a firm “No,” in the same tone of voice as “No motorcycle.” Many things will change, but not that. Selkie is his daughter.
I agree that Amanda needs a change of attitude, but Todd’s reaction would teach her more than anything Andi can say, especially at this point.
We don´t know if Amanda´s adoptive parents´ biological kids ever made that demand – but they got their way, didn´t they? In Amanda´s experience, that must be how the world works, so I wouldn´t put it beyond her to try.
Good on Andi for getting the confession out of the way before monday.
… I’m still dreadfully worried that when the meet takes place Amanda will wind up throwing a tantrum and laying down an ultimatum – her, or “Fish face”… And then wind up breaking when Todd sides with Selkie.
I don’t think that Todd will “side” with Selkie per say. What I mean by this, is that I think that Todd REALLY wants to have a relationship with Amanda now that he knows that she is his child. So, although he will tell Amanda “No” in regards to ditching Selkie, it will not be a matter of choosing one over the other but rather telling her that he wants both of them in his life.
At least that is what I am hoping will happen. I really do hope that Todd does not decide to choose one over the other.
I’m fully aware that Todd absolutely would not *want* to choose one over the other.
I’m somewhat more dubious on your faith that Amanda will /accept/ that choice.
I did not say anything in my comment about Amanda accepting anything outright.
Sorry, I should clarify. IF it comes to it, yes I think Amanda would be mad in the beginning. But I do not think that Todd will accept defeat and choose only having one child in his life at the first sign of resistance from Amanda.
And I’m saying that as far as Amanda is concerned, /not/ immediately and unconditionally choosing her over “that fishie freak” is the same as favoring Selkie over her and she *will* likely do her absolute best to not only burn that bridge, but dynamite the supports and seed the approach with landmines afterwards.
I don’t know about that. Amanda was able to forgive Andi for giving her up in the first place. I think that with time and patience, even Amanda would come around.
Okay, so you were right. I do have faith in Amanda being eventually okay with a situation where both she and Selkie are equal siblings. I do admit that this might be a pipe dream, however. 😉
My niece and nephew are both adopted with open adoptions. My nephew has been very well-adjusted. His birth grandmother lives in the area and has kept in contact. (His birth parents live in another so he has less contact with them.) My niece, by contrast, uses the knowledge of her birth family in a less positive way. Whenever she wants to hurt her adoptive parents, she accuses them of ‘not being her real parents’ and calling them by their name instead of Mom and Dad.
I suppose what I’m getting at that it’s not so much how you tell the truth to a child but how the child herself will interpret that truth.
I like Andi and have always liked her. I hope that she and Todd are able to build their friendship back up, that she and Amanda will have a good mother/daughter relationship, and that she and Selkie can be friends as well.
I AM ROOTING FOR YOU! <3
This is a very real experience. This is what happened to me. I had 3 siblings that were told I died at birth.
Oh my that’s just awful 🙁
Way to give a girl some warning before you unload another bombshell!