“I came to this maternity ward to kick butt and chew bubble gum. And I’m all out of bubble gum.”
Real balancing act on this page to not tilt it too far towards either super-sad or super-angry
“I came to this maternity ward to kick butt and chew bubble gum. And I’m all out of bubble gum.”
I think Amanda’s catching on in that last panel.
For all that Andi’s screwed up, I really feel for her here. You can see how much it hurts to say what needs to be said.
…Now I want to punch the Sandersons. Giving Amanda up for adoption was supposed to give her a GOOD life, not abuse and abandonment.
Yeah, seems like Haversham-Zhang was right about Amanda having a few empathy issues. Her newly rediscovered mother is obviously fighting back tears, but she looks… distrusting in that last panel.
She’s probably putting 2+2 together, if she realized it’s Andi who did that I understand not feeling sorry.
I take it more as realizing there’s something she needs to know and listening. I use that expression all the time when it’s time to listen.
How long before Amanda rocks up at Todd’s door with her bags?
Seriously. Andi has avoided telling everything, but the way she did it will leave Amanda so many more questions unless she decides to directly lie. I can easily see these questions popping up “Did you think I was dead, too?” “Why didn’t you tell him I was alive?” Andi better call Todd as soon as the girls are in school and sort this all out before it gets worse.
I don’t think Todd is going to want to hear from Andi until the meeting Monday, no matter how good she thinks her reasons are.
As parents, we sometimes have to put our kids’ welfares in front of our comfort levels. Todd is mature enough to understand this, but it would be a big surprise if Andi started to. Gal has a lot of catching up to do in the maturity section.
At the same time though, how easy do you really think it is to say “Gee, sorry I abandoned you at birth, lied about your being ALIVE to your father, and allowed you to be abused for the better part of your life. But I’m back now, so let’s start fresh!”?
Andi’s handling this poorly, but to be fair, it is a horrendously crappy situation.
Andi had nothing to do with the abuse.
That’s kind of the problem from Amanda’s point of view – Andi had nothing to do with it because she wasn’t there. Why wasn’t she there?
Is it me or does it look like she originally was trying to blame the hospital? Or maybe I just don’t have faith in Andi. Probably both.
I think she’s more trying to get Amanda to settle down long enough to really listen. And she’s not saying anything that’s untrue. It WAS a mistake, and a rather huge one at that. Amanda draws the wrong conclusion, but it’s not an inaccurate statement, and the rest of what Andi says does point to her coming completely clean on Monday. (Or you know, Wednesday or next Friday or a year from now, depending on how maliciously Dave wants to drag it out. 🙂 )
I get the impression that Andi isn’t telling the truth here is because she thinks Amanda isn’t ready for it. Keep in mind Amanda is only eight years old and has quite a bit of issues, so Andi is probably trying to tread carefully here.
Most likely she will explain the truth to Amanda when she is older (unless someone else tells her or Amanda finds out on here own).
* her own.
Wait until she’s older? That’s not going to be an option, unless you mean until she’s three days older. Andi doesn’t get to choose here. She has to assume the whole truth is going to come out by Monday at the latest, whether Amanda is ready for it or not.
That doesn’t mean she has to blurt it all out in one day’s strip, though! This conversation isn’t done yet. Don’t assume she’s not going to get into the rest of it. She’s started with what’s clearly most important to her, which is that Todd is not to blame.
Andi is desperate not to lose Amanda’s good opinion. She knows that flat-out lying to her is a bad idea in the long run, but if Amanda somehow leaps to the wrong conclusion, well, that’s something that can be fixed later on.
Actually, I think this is a great example of a character staying IC. If Andi all of a sudden tried to tell the straight truth with no wiffle waffling or truth shading she wouldn’t be Andi with Andi’s issues. What she’s doing with Amanda here is exactly how she got into this mess in the first place – letting Todd draw the wrong conclusions. I don’t like what she’s doing but I love that she’s staying in character.
of all the choices you’ve made on this webcomic, I suspect the decision to give Amanda earrings is the one you’ll most regret.
Unless it becomes a game among the commented of course!
6th panel!
BLARGL!!!!
BLARGL?
Yes, BLARGL. Accompanied by the Anime Trope of people falling over, feet in the air.
Those inconsistent earrings aren’t even close to being the biggest regret I have about the comic, though.
You do realize you have to tell us your biggest regret now?
Must I? 😉
I’m curious to see if it will be something I and your other readers dislike … or our favorite thing in the comic.
😉
My biggest regret of the comic (well, so far anyway) is revealing Amanda as Todd’s daughter as early as I did.
This was revealed in strip #194, which aired on April 2012. Took three years to finally move ahead with that plot point. At the time I didn’t realize how long it would take me to finally DO something with Amanda being Todd’s daughter. I didn’t realize in 2012 that it would be 2015 before Andi reclaimed Amanda.
At the time I had narrative plans to tease the identity of Todd’s daughter around a bit. Heather has blond hair with green eyes and Sandy has red hair with one green and one blue eye because, originally, they were to be red herrings in regards to the identity of Todd’s daughter. But when it came time for #194, it felt really awkward to me that Andi wasn’t referring to her lost daughter by name. I also kind of said to myself, “It’s OBVIOUS that the daughter will be Amanda. She has the exact same colors of skin and eyes as Todd and the exact hair color of Andi. None of the red herrings have that. Plus she’s Selkie’s nemesis, it’s an easy guess”. So I scrapped the identity teasing and put her name in Andi’s dialogue.
The identity teasing might have turned out to be fun, who knows? I denied myself the opportunity to work with it and I’ll never know now if it would have been correctly guessed, or if I could have gotten people thinking Heather or Sandy was Todd’s daughter. I regret not running with that.
For what it’s worth Dave, I think your pacing so far is fine without that side arc.
With everything else as it is, that might’ve wound up stretching things out poorly elsewhere.
Don’t think of it as a regret so much as an interesting what-if?
Yeah. Look at Shards. Chapter 3 has only taken 3 years… Er… Yeah. Working on pacing still.
You could have given her a different name from what they filled out. I mean, her original adoptives were apparently oblivious to what was going on with her and her brothers, so they might well have been inclined to do name-changes on their new kid in the first place.
That said, hey, it’s a webcomic — nothing wrong with picking a more straightforward plotline, precisely BECAUSE it takes forever to get anywhere. O:>
Well everything worked out fine, because accidentally drawing out the Truck story arc for over a year prepared us to wait for however long it took for you to get around to this part of the story.
Also, incidentally, I’m a Girl Genius fan since the very first physical preview comic, which means I’ve been trained to wait decades for characters to get to their destinations. That’s not an exaggeration. From the first mention of Mechanicsburg to the first time the protagonists reach it, is less than a year of continuity time but over ten years of real world time.
When we finally find out what happened to Selkie’s Mom in 2056 (our time, but just one and a half years comic time) and you admit that you drew out that part a bit too long, my grandkids (I don’t have any children yet) will laugh and tell you that they didn’t even notice.
Webcomic time is weird. I once worked out that a MWF webcomic gets about twelve pages per month. A regular print comic, coming out once a month, is a 32-page comic with 22 pages of story, so a webcomic is about half as fast, or on par with a print comic that comes out every other month.
Of course, print comics tend to have whole groups devoted to putting it all together, and it’s usually their main job, while webcomic artists tend to be doing it in their spare time, and are soloists (and of the five partners I can think of, two broke up (MegaTokyo, Better Days), one is married (Girl Genius), and one ended up cycling through a number of artists due to issues in their personal lives (Erfworld — understandable issues, such as the loss of a close family member, but it still managed to turn the comic into a largely text-based story, which just feels weird).
Obviously there’s a few webcomic artists who make it to the Patreon-funded level where making the comic becomes their full-time job, and it’s a growing number which does give me hope, but mostly it’s done after work and before bedtime, and with the understanding that the artist still has chores and a social life. So having a webcomic come out slower is completely understandable.
Even if it does mean that a decades-to-days ratio isn’t at all uncommon. (And you thought Bart Simpson was taking forever to grow up!)
We would all appreciate the information as we debate and argue amongst ourselves over whatever it is. :9
Just do what I said, she’s a very young and very angry Inspector Gadget and she sends them out to yell at people.
Oh, I think it was a great decision! It’s become a game now—like the opposite of “Where’s Waldo.” 🙂
The best fandoms have enjoyable drinking games 😀
Lying by omission is still lying. Andi has no one to blame here other than herself. And she isn’t mad at him. She’s mad with the liar. Which is you,Andi.
It is and isn’t. It depends on the context. To do it properly to protect someone takes some careful thought. The way Andi is telling it here, though, will easily lead to direct lying—which makes it lying. Also there’s too much implying it was the hospital’s mistake. Can you imagine if Amanda was an adult? She may very well wish to sue the hospital now (and you can’t blame her).
A simple, “Neither of us thought we could get you back or would ever see you again” would have been 100% the truth and would have stopped most of the questioning and anger. She could have even lead in with the fact Todd never made the choice to adopt out Amanda, but by the time he got to the hospital it was a done deal. Totally true.
This doesn’t mean that Andi gets away *scott free* for what she did, but Amanda doesn’t deserve to have such a horrible origin story dumped on her. Seen it happen to friends with stupid parents. It always ends up being about the parents wanting to “confess” versus actually giving a f*ck about their kids’ feelings. It rarely ends well for the kids.
Yes, but Andi’s not confessing this because she WANTS to confess. She’s not being self-indulgent here. Quite the opposite, in fact. What you want her to say to Amanda…? That might work if Amanda wasn’t very likely going to find out the rest of it anyway.
Andi also doesn’t know what Todd will say to her, he should be supportive and helpful, but he will say enough for Amanda to understand. Andi might be worried that delaying total information even a day might do more damage than honesty. So she’s baring it to the best of her ability and hoping to fix any damage.
Of course the alligator tears are back. I don’t believe for a second they’re genuine. Unless they’re tears for herself.
You don’t… believe they’re genuine? What? You, um… think these are tears faked for manipulative effect or something? That she’s not torn up inside?
This terrible mess is her fault. Some of us readers may think a lot of the blame should belong to Andi’s mother, but we have a different perspective. We’re outside the situation looking on. I’m pretty sure Andi blames herself, not her mom.
I don’t think they’re genuine in the least no. I see a woman that has dodged issues and goes into flight mode every time there’s a confrontation.
I think it’s good she’s coming clean yes, but with her overbearing mother she’s had to create defense mechanisms. Crying is a great defense.
Had a mother like you who assumed tears were about manipulation. Some people – PEOPLE WITH EMPATHY – cry more easily than others. That’s all. Having an asshole parent who thinks otherwise is living hell. Not letting people show the emotions they’re feeling is a hell of a manipulation tactic and it usually runs hand in hand with phrases like “wipe that look off your face” because kids aren’t supposed to show anger, justified or not, either. Somebody is being manipulative in cases like that and it’s not the person showing their true emotions.
Additionally, in families where anger is only allowed authority figures, strong emotions can be sublimated into crying because crying, while despised by parental figures, is at least marginally tolerated, where as allowing anger free reign via trying to beat the crap out of said figure is going to get the child beat on, hospitalized or potentially killed. It’s not the only way of managing thwarted anger, but it’s common enough.
I don’t assume everyone that cries is manipulating people. But I’ve met many people that when they wanted to get something from someone started crying and when they got it, the crying came to a stop. Adult people. People that should know better.
And Andi for whatever share of her involvement has done things like lie about her daughter’s life to Todd, gave him an urn or cedar ashes, and has tried using Amanda to get back together with Todd.
Then when confronted, on come the waterworks. Her mother may have forced the issue, but when I see someone with a history of manipulation start crying when confronted, I roll my eyes and disbelieve.
Don’t give bubblegum to infants 🙁
“Whoever said I was dead CAN MEET ME IN THE FREAKING PIT!!!”
The first rule of the club is: you don’t talk about the club, ever, except with people who belong to the club.
And even then, only sparing. And at meetings, everyone pretends each other are invisible. That’s hard? It’s all right, our roster is puny.
Love the symbolism of the car bursting into flames in panel 6.
Yes, he’s been doing a good job with background symbolism. Reminds me of some bits of Megamind.
Also, I’m liking the way Andi’s bangs hide her emotions for key bits. It’s a great use of them, and works with some of the Japanese styles (where faces get blanked out — just not drawn at all — when the emotions get too great) as well as the idea of people who need to hide their inner selves more having hair covering their face.
This is like watching a very elegant train accident in slow (but not too slow) motion. Well done, Sir.
Also, it’s really cool how unpredictable this story is, yet the characters remain true to themselves—even while doing something surprising.
when something upsetting happens, andi reacts with tears. amanda reacts with rage. in that respect, she takes after todd.
Oh, Andi. I know you want to make sure there’s no hard feelings about Todd, I know you have no clue what you’re doing whatsoever…
But man, you have NO CLUE WHAT YOU’RE DOING WHATSOEVER and it SHOWS.
That couch is a little fleshy.
Agreed. Dave, Andi is an artist: Have her spend a couple hours with Amanda transforming that couch into an array of colors or something. Nothing should ever be flesh-colored unless it’s meant to deliberately pretend to be flesh, or to make us doubt our senses, and that’s probably not the case here.
It’s a bit of a theme. Compare the fleshy colored couch alongside the Blood Rain painting and the blood-spattered curtains in her bedroom.
Dave> Why not tilt? Not wrong to show too sad and too angry, but in this case, you did great.
Thanks. 😀 I wanted to be careful about the emotive tilt simply because I feel like things have been cranked up to 11 lately, and scaling down to a 9 or 8 may not be too bad of an idea once in awhile.
Over on Gunnerkrigg Court they’ve been ramped up to 13 for so long that they’ve actually lost readers, some for good, some just for a few months, because it’s a highly emotional plot arc that is hitting too close to home for many people. You gotta give emotional breaks, especially for a series that has you sit for a couple of days between each update, so you have to stew on whatever info you’ve got.
Knowing how to hit that roller-coaster curve is a fine art, and you’re doing great so far. Hitting the right spots. It feels right.
My friends and I were comparing some sad moments a few months back: this one super-punch-in-the-gut opening backstory, compared to the opening of Up.
At first I concluded that the punch-in-the-gut opening was worse. But even though it objectively had worse stuff happening, where Up was more about a normal (and not over-the-top) life that went through normal ups and downs and ended in a death, as we discussed it it became clear that Up had probably managed a more effective sad opening. Because a constant barrage of sad just leaves you numb, rather than making you feel the positives and the negatives, the heartwarming and the tearjerkers, so that the mixed emotions well up in you together and bring a greater catharsis overall.
You can only hit a small kid with tragedy so many times before the audience gets tired of it, even if they still connect with the kid. It just doesn’t feel as real, and it feels manipulative. Those moments of light-heartedness are crucial to the overall flow.
P.S. You guys mentioned “tilt” and I went back to look and see if camera-angle tilt was mentioned. Because camera-angle tilt is useful for conveying emotional states that put the characters off-balance internally.
That is an excellent point about Gunnerkrigg. I wondered why the last few pages were just… very clearly parallels to I’d been through and yet I’d gone totally numb to it. I’m still reading it, and I still care, but I’ve stopped being able to feel about it for a little while. 🙁
Well, couch in panel 4 looks like a butt, so maybe Amanda can kick it.
Just now noticing how Andi’s body language now mimics her body language back when she was telling Todd about the baby …
(https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie193/, for the reference.)
I look forward to seeing how long it takes her to connect the dots between ‘My dad thought I was dead’ and ‘Since I wasn’t dead, how did I get to the orphanage?’. (Likelihood of the hospital doing it all on their own versus…)
(I keep getting ‘Duplicate comment detected’, thus this line.)
I look forward to seeing how long it takes her to connect the dots between ‘My dad thought I was dead’ and ‘Since I wasn’t dead, how did I get to the orphanage?’. (Likelihood of the hospital doing it all on their own versus…)