Amanda's height is almost the same as Todd's in panel three because she's standing on a higher plane of the ground than he is right there. Or because I didn't want her to disappear too much behind the couch. Feel free to pick the answer you like best.
I feel bad for Selkie. She doesn’t really get what’s going on here, and Todd is trying his best but she probably feels left out. I can tell these people are going to make this veerrry awkward.
That’s actually likely to work out worse for Amanda.
You see, Todd already *knows* Selkie doesn’t like Amanda for very good reasons, and they’ve had time to talk about this before, so he’s at least aware of and sensitive to her discomfort — which is, I think, part of why he’s being awkward here.
(Also note his specific word choice: “They’re here as guests.” Guests, to be made welcome and treated with at least civil courtesy as long as they themselves behave civilly, as opposed to family to be embraced with joy.)
Amanda, on the other hand, has exactly one standard reflex response to seeing discomfort and vulnerability in one of her former favourite bullying victims — and she doesn’t realize that this isn’t the orphanage where the adults are overworked, not always paying quite enough attention and unsure of how to handle things.
She’s going to pounce, and no less than four people are going to call her on her bullshit at once.
“Actually, it broke because I smashed it during a temper tantrum because my favourite bullying target got herself adopted before me. By *you*.”
That’s something most adults wouldn’t even care to admit to themselves, so why would an 8 year old do that? :p
Adults don’t like to admit ANYTHING to themselves. Heck, most wouldn’t change their underwear if they didn’t have to.
Well it’s surprising that she isn’t telling him why it was broken. Is she unintentionally trying to not make him feel guilty? Or am I reading too deeply into this?
Not at all! Amanda’s pretty smart, even if she does have a temper.
Another thing that comes to mind is that she probably doesn’t want Todd to know about her temper tantrum. This is her daddy. She wants him to think of her as a good kid, and she’s probably a little scared of him not accepting her.
It broke vs I broke it doesn’t make a difference to an 8-year old.
She’s no evil mastermind, just a broken kid.
That line gives Selkie more ammunition. The question is, does she respond with the truth or does she remain silent. Also with that remark and the way she said it, I think she is afraid that her father isn’t going to accept her having just seen how her mother was rejected.
Except Selkie has no way of knowing that Amanda broke her Gamekid when Selkie got adopted. She never saw that, only the other girls did and I don’t remember anyone telling Selkie about it.
1) Selkie doesn’t know she did, I think.
2) Selkie doesn’t /need/ “ammunition” here.
I think you are reading too deep.
What kid is going to admit, “I broke it”? It got broke.
Split-level living room. I like it.
An aspect no one else has mentioned: “I broke it because you adopted Selkie” is the same as saying, “I broke it because you hurt my feelings,” which is a HUGE admission of vulnerability. It’s saying that Todd has the power to hurt her feelings, that Selkie has the power to hurt her feelings, and it’s pretty clear that Amanda’s not about to yield that sort of power to anyone, anytime soon. And for good reason: she’s been hurt before, more than any child should be hurt, and she’s not about to let it happen again.
Amanda is going to cling to her “I don’t care/nothing matters/you can’t hurt me” stance to the bitter end, I think, because letting go of that means giving herself away again, and she’s going to need to feel a lot more secure before that can really happen.
I wish this comments column had “Like” buttons.
I was afraid this would be the case. While everyone else is fawning over Amanda, you can see the fear, and resentment in Selkie’s face. Maybe it’s just me but I wouldnt put it past her (Selkie) to be afraid that now that Amanda is in the picture with her bio dad then she might get sent back to the orphange; and lets not forget that ever since Selkie was adopted this appartment was her safe zone from Amanda’s torments.
I see resentment and annoyance, but not really fear. Selki’s family fawns over her every time they see her, she can stand to share some of the fawning. And besides, as of yet, no one has fawned over Amanda at all here. If they’re going to be sisters, she has to learn Amanda is going to he a factor, just like Amanda has to learn she can’t torment Selkie outside of typical sibling stuff and learn to care for her sister.
Same here, no fear spotted. Just general annoyance and resentment of her “guest”
And frankly, she’s entirely entitled to it.
Remember, in her first night in her new home, when she had a nightmare about being rejected and falling alone forever, her nightmare wore Amanda’s face.
That “poor little girl” certain people keep insisting we’re horrible persons because we don’t feel sorry for her has been tormenting Selkie for years.
I mean, you can’t completely ignore her background. Terrible thingd happened to her and they’re still haunting her. If you look at the difference in Selkie and Amanda’s body language you can see. Selkie is annoyed, yes, but she’s also comfortable and doesn’t feel vulnerable, hence the open way she’s sitting. She’s touching her ears so that could be a sign of her hearing things she’d sub consciously not want to hear, such as Todd being nice to Amanda and accepting her as his daughter as well. But her sitting pose indicates she’s comfortable and doesn’t feel threatened, but only irritated.
Amanda on the other hand is in a very defensive and fearful position. Her past of rejection makes her lock herself up in an attempt to keep herself safe. She’s protecting her vitals so to speak. She turned away from Todd because she doesn’t trust him yet and is scared to face him. She subconsciously wants to go the direction her entire body is pointed towards. My guess is Andi is that way and that’s her safe zone.
In other words, Scott McCloud would be proud of you, Dave. And if you haven’t read his books by now, I thoroughly encourage you to go read them (at least the first and third — Understanding Comics and then Making Comics; the middle one is about marketing and was a bit off-base and got a lot of flak).
I love seeing comics that make great use of body language, unspoken communication it’s easy to overlook if you’re hurrying through paying more attention to the words. Lackadaisy Cats is another good one for body language (and also gorgeous… which sadly is why it takes forEVer to get an update).
Call me a troll if you want, but I still think it’d be hilarious in a really dark way if Selkie did go back to the orphanage and the comic just ended like that.
TROOOOOOLL! TROLL IN THE COMMENTS!
… Thought you ought to know. *pretends to faint*
You’re a troll and you’re no longer even remotely interesting anymore. Go find somewhere else to be twelve years old.
Says the guy who thinks 8-year-old girls who’ve been abused and abandoned don’t deserve sympathy.
Says the guy that believes that the eight-year-old girl who has been actively tormenting another eight-year-old girl for the past three years deserves less sympathy than her victim, yes.
That ending would be totally out of keeping with the story, which of course makes it decent fodder for a form of How It Should Have Ended… only trollier. At least HISHE sticks by logical reasons that things work. Your ending (while I personally found it pretty funny to think of) is more about defying expectations and/or giving voice to the lie that people can only ever love the beings they pushed out of their own bodies.
Meh, I think my tongue-in-cheek suggestions in #609 were funnier. I didn’t think of it as trolling, so much as “very obviously out of character behavior” suitable for an April Fool’s or other non-canonical episode.
If Selkie’s mother ever reappears, this is sort of how I pictured things going. Like instead of Selkie sitting to the side, Todd does, while Selkie and Plo Quar talk together in Tensei. (Pardon if the name or language name are misspelled ^^”’ )
And I think those GameKids need to be recalled. Sometimes they just seem to BURST right open!
I know, Right? I mean kids’ sneakers are made of rubber, not wood or rock, … I mean cheese! They’re supposed to be made tough for kids, not to be kept in little ol’ lady’s curio cabinets! They make watch crystals out of synthetic sapphire, why not the screen-covers?
that would jump the cost significantly I’m sure, and maybe that even if they did use it then thickness that it would have to be to provide the equivalent value of strength and protection as a watch lens would make it WAAAY too thick, and not a “slim, an’ sexy” look…
but, mostly i’ll bet is the fact that the electronics UNDER that super skinny piece of glass probably won’t be able to pick up your fingers any more if it was thicker.
I thought that the GameKid used the buttons, sorry. Just for got ab the touch screen thing. My
GameKid Advanced doesn’t have the touch feature
Also, synthetic sapphire is more scratch-resistant than shatter-resistant. If I recall correctly what my spouse was talking about (I might not, eh), synthetic sapphire is actually pretty brittle. There are reasons why the larger iPhingie screens are still gorilla glass, and “they couldn’t make enough sapphire ones” is only part of them. If I Recall Correctly, that is. Which I may not, and I’m not going to double-check at nearly 1am. >_>
*flees to bed*
Dave> Todd is the same height as Amanda because he is coming down to her level 😉 Writer/Artist fiat!
Dave, I hope someday you stick the unfinished comics up in a separate area, for us budding artists to see the differences between the finished work and the unfinished work and to learn from it.
And it would probably help me feel a little less bad when I’m working on a piece and the early drafts are horrible scrawly messes that convince me I was foolish to ever consider myself an artist, and I can just go “Relax, Alethia, relax: Yours doesn’t look too much worse than Dave’s, and look how expressive his finished products are. You’ve done stuff like that before. Don’t panic, just keep going.”
I tried doing that for a short while, but it kind of became one more thing to upload every update, and I sort of… well, fizzled on it after awhile. :\
If I may share something though, I think one of the best pieces of advice I received about the initial sketches was this: “Don’t form attachments”.
I used to be worrisome about my sketches, delicately erasing mistakes and stressing if I couldn’t redraw something just exactly right. But sketches are not a finished product. They are not your artwork. They are a stepping stone to your artwork. They are the pawns you sacrifice to achieve larger goals.
As an exercise, try drawing a sketch of something, put a little detail and planning into it. Then take your eraser and swipe gigantic sweeping chunks out of it. Redraw those parts from scratch. Is there one part of the sketch you think came out really really well? Erase it. Destroy it.
If you treat your production sketches with the care and love of a finished drawing you will get bottled up on that stage of the process and have a hard time moving forward. Discard your attachment to the sketches; they exist only to refine the ideas that will become the final piece. I found it easier to move forward with drawings once I decided to reserve my fussiness and worry for the stages that end up in the final product.
They are a stepping stone to your artwork. They are the pawns you sacrifice to achieve larger goals.
Dave: Selkie would prefer it, if they were the Prawns you sacrificed for your comic.
Heh. You’re reminding me of Spinelli.
Have you considered, instead of sticking up the sketch on every update, just taking a little time once a month or so to stick a few of them up in a separate archive section? Several webcomics I can think of use separate sections for looking at various associated art. And it doesn’t even have to be all the sketches from all the comics, or all the comics that month, just a few at a time, maybe even out of order (though ideally it would eventually be *in* order).
Look at El Goonish Shive, where the author’s going back through the archive a little at a time to add commentary. It could work like that.
When we had “That Guy” that we didn’t like in the house, Dad always sent me to the kitchen to get coffee, so that I would learn that Tolance, and Hospitality (gastgaberschaft) and friendship are two different things. With hospitality (friendship) you get coffee AND cookies!
Amanda’s just closer to the “camera” than Todd is.
I had a Gameboy too, once. Then I played Mario Land until I felt the back of the system pop and bow outward. I checked the batteries and they had exploded. Had to carefully pry them out with a popsicle stick so as not to touch the junk inside. I repeat: I played Mario Land UNITL THE BATTERIES EXPLODED.
Interesting, I wouldn’t have pegged Amanda as a reader. Assuming she’s telling the truth about that.
Given their intense dislike of each other, they’re going to be less than thrilled when they discover what(ever) they have in common, especially when the rest of the family points that out…
Judging by the fact that she does write, and writers often like to read, I am not surprised. Where did I get that she writes? That telltale “fiction” about the princess in the abusive house she read in class.
Quite a contrast in that last panel … Selkie sitting all sprawled out, while Amanda hunches over with her arms around herself (almost like the first panel) … I’ll let others make of that what they will, I just thought I’d point it out.
I analyzed it in an above comment. I’m glad someone else noticed their positions! It’s very telling.
From the time stamps, your comment came in one minute before mine, which (I guess) is how I missed it … I try not to repeat other people’s comments, especially since (as usual) yours is much more eloquent than mine.
Oh don’t be that way. Half the time I make tons of spelling errors anyhow. I’m just glad someone else noticed the same things I did about them. It’s nice.
Obviously Amanda is hanging onto the back of the couch, with her feet dangling.
I can sense a “Meanwhile…” in the kitchen where Andi is about to be the target of a whole lot of frustration and anger. Here’s to hoping cool heads prevail.