Calling a partial week Super Grounding is kind of like calling Matter-Eater Lad a superhero. Yeah he technically has a power, but come on.
Definitely need to think harder about composition with this paneling format. Last two strips had people hidden behind insert panels, and that's just not gonna cut mustard.
If I had done something like that as a kid I’d have been grounded for 2 weeks at minimum.
My family never had an issue with this, my cousins and I used to drink wine coolers as kids all the time. They have a descent amount of alcohol and we never really drank enough to get drunk.
Ditto. I think my parents would have been proud. Banning alcohol is a great way to raise an alcoholic.
Its arguable if banning alcohol will will raise an alcoholic, but I will admit, I lost all interest in alcohol when my grandfather let me have a sip of whiskey and laughed his ass off while I was spitting it out coughing.
When you’re eight, “the rest of the week” is already FOREVER. If Amanda had been ten or twelve, with a longer time horizon, then… yeah, it might have taken two weeks to make the point — but look at her reaction! Andi has called it about right.
Which suggests that, whatever Andi’s own mom may have done wrong in raising her, she did manage the bit about ‘suiting punishments to the kid’ pretty well. Andi didn’t have to stop and think – she already knew what to do.
Now someone just needs to address the “hassling other kids” thing, I hope.
She has nothing to do with her free time for the rest of the week except sit at home and be bored. Perfect opportunity for a long talk.
One time as a kid I was on the lookout for hidden snacks when I found a bottle of clear lucid with an orange on it. First thought: clear orange juice?? I have to taste this!
So I filled a solo cup full of it and took a big gulp. Im pretty sure is was some sort of vodka but I dumped it out and threw it in the trash thinking it had gone bad.
Since I told my parents as soon as they got home and showed it to them they ended up laughing about it.
Turns out it was a gift from a person they didn’t like and neither of them water it so the shoved away and forgot about it.
I didn’t get in trouble for that though I was teased about it for years.
I think however if I had stormed off in anger and chugged a few glasses of alcohol my parents would be giving me a very angry ride to the doctor. But my parents would have let the sickness be the punishment. That’s how they were raised. Heck my dad had to have his stomach pumped once due to something similar. Amanda needs to learn actions have consequences but I think both Andi and Too should put emphasis on the grounding having something to do with her bullying and not just the fact that she demanded “juice” after someone started yelling about her. After all she didnt know it was wine. She didn’t get herself drunk on purpose.
Okay seriously Andi? Amanda PUNCHED another kid. Not hassle. Physically assaulted another kid. Like Lillian has told you about and gave you a good report about. Being in denial that it could happen and being antagonistic when someone is calmly talking to you about it makes you a jerk. Sure it’s hard to hear but you need to. Especially if that behavior isn’t checked well enough.
They have to take care of the more recent intoxication first. I doubt any talk about hitting other kids, which happened awhile ago, will take until she’s sobered up and the lesson of no alcohol takes. I expect tomorrow’s hangover will emphasize the lesson rather nicely.
After that, then Andi can talk to her about punching her classmates; it’s rather pointless to do so now.
I doubt Andi will at all. She was being so unnecessarily antagonistic to someone when she was being talked to. I don’t want her talked to for that. I was punching a giant hole in Andi’s ‘logic’. Which she seems to be lacking any of.
The grounding was for the alcohol. I think Andi plans to address the punching happened before Andi got Amanda back, it was a while ago, and she didn’t see it happen. That makes it more complicated than the drinking, and a matter that is best brought up when Amanda is sober and they are in private. There’s probably a good chance Heather’s dad will catch up with everyone after Lilian leaves to explain what Heather told him since he and Heather were headed that way when we saw them last.
She was being antagonistic as Heck and pretending Amanda wouldn’t do that by going “so can I make up stuff now?” Which didn’t help her at all.
Yeah and some guy who didn’t know Andi nor Amanda came up being antagonistic without formally introducing himself at all and immediately stated Amanda was a terrible child IN FRONT of Amanda and her friends and classmates. I’d say he’s way more in the wrong than Andi who wasn’t being antagonistic, rather she was shooting it right back at him in a snarky way since he was a complete ass about the entire thing.
I mean, he should have pulled Andi aside to talk to her. Any time someone blatantly insults your child in front of them and their friends, you’re naturally gonna be pretty pissed off about it. Todd was angry when Dr. Trunchbull insulted Selkie indirectly, directly to her face and Andi was no different when someone insulted her child.
Plus, Andi is completely unaware of what happened between Amanda and Heather. Just because she ‘has a file’ on Amanda doesn’t mean she should instantly condemn her child before hearing her out.
Except he was pissed that Amanda hurt Heather and responded like any person. Andi may not know. But she does know that Amanda can be violent. So her hitting her “friends” shouldn’t be hard to believe.
She didn’t know who he was at all and Amanda hasn’t mentioned anything about Heather to her, even that Heat he r ‘used’ to be her friend. So it’s fine if he has an aggressive reaction because it’s ‘natural’ since Heather was hurt, but it’s not fine that Andi had a ‘natural’ reaction to act with doubt and suspicion when some man she doesn’t know comes up and insults her daughter to her face and in front of her classmates? A grown ass adult insults and belittle a child and that’s perfectly alright and Andi should turn around and slap Amanda across the face because she has a ‘history’ of being a ‘bad’ kid? Hell, she might as well break Amanda’s arm while she’s at it, gotta make sure she gets her point across, am I right?
The f are you on about? None is saying she should have beaten Amanda or anything, only that if someone tells you your kid has been misbehaving, that’s something you should address and dismiss it out of hand – especially not if your kid is a known troublemaker.
*not dismiss out of hand.
Uhh wow. You’re being uber aggressive. I never said that? At all? Like why would I condone child abuse? Also he wasn’t aggressive just upset. Most parents when their kids get hit by “friends” are. So telling Andi to keep Amanda away after hurting Heather for no good reason isn’t unreasonable or evil.
Andi’s not in denial there. She’s (politely) telling Lillian to butt out. There was a situation arising from Amanda’s past behaviour, and it is being handled. Both of Amanda’s biological parents are aware of it. That’s all Lillian needs to know. In panel 3, Lillian essentially admits that Andi’s right — Amanda’s discipline is no longer her job.
This is more backbone than I’d expected from Andi, which is an interesting character development. It shows that a great deal of her past indecision and inability to stand up for herself, in the situations we’ve seen, came from her sense of being so very much in the wrong. With Todd right there, openly acknowledged as Amanda’s Dad, she is visibly stronger.
It doesn’t come out of the blue. The first sign that she had this in her (that I can remember) came when she first met Amanda and unhesitatingly took charge of that dizzy spell.
Except Andi wasn’t handling it. She’s literally trying to avoid being yelled at and is quite frankly not good at handling anything.
Also she visibly made Todd uncomfortable to do so.
Tell me in what strip did Heather tell Lillian that Amanda punched her? This happened pretty recently storytimewise, and it actually happened BEFORE Andi took custody of Amanda so how is it Andi’s fault? (other than the fact she birthed the child and everyone knows mothers have psychic powers to know what their kids are doing ?)
Why would Andi believe some beef head who comes up telling her her kid is bad? Do you know how bad it sucks to be the kid whose parents believe perfect strangers over their own kid? Not a situation that inspires confidence or trust in the parent. I think Andi is trying her best and trying to be sensitive to Amanda’s issues. Being treated as “the bad kid” who no one believes is Directly related to her trauma, remember her adopted brothers beat the crap out of her and the adopted parents didn’t believe her. Andi did exactly the right thing by being on Amanda’s side.
The right thing to do would be to ask for details as well as get Amanda’s side of things, not just flippantly dismiss it outright.
We kind of went through this at the time, so I’ll repeat what I said then: Kenneth was way out of line, tearing into Andi in public like that.
Could she to adjourn somewhere else to discuss this more privately? Okay, sure, that’s always an option — once the big beefy hostile stranger stops throwing unsupported accusations around. It’s an option they might well have gotten to after they both calmed down, if Amanda’s predicament hadn’t interrupted.
And, incidentally, let’s think about WHY Amanda snuck off and got into trouble just at that point. From Amanda’s point of view:
1. Yes, she did punch Heather.
2. No, nobody is going to listen to her side of the story. Nobody ever does. She’s the bad kid.
3. Andi’s defending her now, but once she learns there’s some truth to the accusation from Heather’s Dad, she’s not going to want her any more. Maybe she’ll send her back.
Send her own kid back and traumatize her more?
Read the context. I’m talking about what Amanda is afraid of, and why she so emphatically did not want to be there for the end of the conversation. She didn’t go to the “juice” stand because she was thirsty, that was only an excuse. She went there because she couldn’t bear to be there when Kenneth was blaming her. In her pessimistic little mind, confirmed by traumatic previous experience, such a conversation ALWAYS ends badly for her. She is forever stuck as the Bad Kid, and (she still believes) nothing she can do will change that.
Wow. I forgot how much you support Andi even when someone was trying to talk to her about her aggressive daughter’s behavior and she was outright childish and antagonistic.
To be fair, it is not so much that Andi is in denial about it as:
1. this happened BEFORE Amanda was in her care.
2. As understandable as Ken’s beef with Andi is, he is coming at her without knowing the entire story, and without Andi knowing the entire story either. He doesn’t know that until now, Amanda was in an orphanage, and that Amanda’s anger was due to Heather’s perceived betrayal. Andi probably doesn’t have this fight with Heather in the file she was given, probably because of how recent it was and because neither girl probably brought it up to the school, and only Heather thought to bring this incident up with her parents (why would Amanda admit to Andi something that might make Andi think less of her?).
So a large random person comes up to you at your job to yell at you that your daughter was bullying someone. You don’t know this person, and while you know that your kid may have a history, that thought may have gotten pushed to the background because well, large person getting in your face for something that you don’t even know that your kid did.
3. Todd got himself involved in the confrontation with Ken and Andi. She didn’t call on him to do so. He called on himself to do so.
4. If you are talking about Andi putting her arm around Todd in front of Lillian, she is freaked out (understandably so) about Lillian seeing Amanda chug wine. And because Todd supported her with Ken, and because she was probably off the charts nervous, she (without thinking) put her hands on Todd.
Keep in mind, this is not excusing Andi for her shitty actions towards Todd, this is explaining the situation as it stands with Andi now.
Except he was calm. He was trying to politely talk about it. Then Andi had to be outright childish about it until Todd stepped in. Which she knows her kid is violent. She has a huge file about it.
Calm? Polite?
https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie737/
“I want Amanda to stay AWAY from my Heather. Amanda has NOT been treating Heather well at ALL. She’s been violent and aggressive, and just blatantly AWFUL towards her.” Spoken with a furious scowl – look again at the first panel. No, that is not calm. That is not polite. That is… excusable, maybe, in an angry father, given the one-sided story Heather fed him, but it’s still way out of line for a public place.
It’s also entirely true so calling it a one sided story is misleading, Amanda has been all that and more, and not just to Heather.
His tone might be up for interpretation, as it is a comic. To me it looked like he wasn’t shouting or being violent though.
Heather knows it’s a one-sided story. She told her father about the punch, but she made it seem as if it came entirely out of nothing, as if she had been, oh! totally innocent, just minding her own business! and had done nothing whatsoever to provoke it, whereas she really knew perfectly well exactly why Amanda was so furious.
Fact: Selkie kicked Truck in the crotch. Truck told only that one fact, and didn’t tell his father what he’d been doing to her at the time. That was another (even more) one-sided story! Kids tell them all the time… for that matter, so do adults.
Oddly — sadly — enough, Amanda doesn’t. She doesn’t expect her side of anything to be believed, at all, so she doesn’t even bother to try.
I’m willing to cut Kenneth some slack. He’s new to this parenting gig too. He seems to be a basically reasonable guy. Once he got more information and realized the situation was more complicated than he’d been led to believe, he did moderate his tone quite a bit.
All the same, look again at his expression in the first panel of the page I linked to. From Andi’s point of view, he presented initially as this burly, angry stranger coming up close to her (literally “in her face”!), snarling accusations about her daughter. With her daughter right there, listening to every word!
So, sure, she gave him a snarky answer. I would, too.
That’s not aggressive? His daughter got hurt by someone she considered a friend and had not a lot of information so he’s trying to protect his kid. Andi acted immature and escalated things when she didn’t need to.
He wasn’t at all calm. Hands on his hips, leaning over her, scowling, and raising his voice are *not* considered being calm.
His posture is clearly aggressive, or as you prefer, antagonistic. He shows a great deal of antagonistic body language. Hands on hips to make himself look bigger, leaning over her to take a dominating position, his clenched fists while his arms are crossed show his hostility in the defense of his daughter. He raised his voice several times, yelling at her. He approached and made a public display of what should be a private conversation, in an attempt to humiliate her. He may not be doing these things on purpose, but it is what he is doing.
I don’t like Andi. I never have. I keep waiting for her to get better, but it’s not happening yet. But she wasn’t being antagonistic here, she was being defensive. Snarky and sarcastic, but it was defensive, not antagonistic. Hands down Kenneth is in the wrong
Except no? It wasn’t aggressive or anything? And Andi wasn’t helping by being antagonistic towards him. -___-
No, she didn’t, but again, a big guy comes to you about a beef with your daughter, and you don’t know who he is from Adam, and yes, as much as Ken may have been calm, the guy was also displaying (intentionally or unintentionally) vaguely intimidating body language.
She also had to fight with several people. Her mother on reuniting with her daughter. To a lesser extent, Todd and his family gave her (an admittedly well-deserved and long time in coming) call out. Amanda turned off Andi’s alarm making Andi late for work and Amanda late for school. A file on Amanda’s bad behavior, about as thick as her arm is probably the last thing on her mind, and Amanda hasn’t (recently) shown any more aggression than a normal (if really bratty) kid (except for a shouting match with Todd in which Amanda was defending Andi).
Kenneth is not totally in the wrong here per say (although he could have tried to take the beef into a more quiet place) but that is not what Andi is seeing because again, this Art show is her place of work, not unlike Ken’s office, and I would imagine that he would not be very happy if Todd took his beef with Heather’s behavior towards Selkie to the office. Especially since again, if Andi does not have Amanda’s file memorized, or if that file was not on her mind at the time, this is a guy who IS making unfounded accusations against her daughter who she know has had a shit life before she adopted her.
As for the alcohol at the Art show, I am firmly with the Venue being to blame (THIS TIME. I AM WILLING TO SHOW HER SOME BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT, BUT SHE HAS A LONG WAY TO GO BEFORE I CAN SAY THAT SHE IS ACTING RESPONSIBLY). As far as I could tell, there was no indication on the fliers that the art show was 21 and over (insert country legal age to drink here). If they were planning on having wine being that easy to take, it should have indicated on the flier itself that it was an adult show. If not, the table should have been arranged in a way that any bottles of water would have been grabbed before the wine. And the two beverage people SHOULD HAVE MADE SURE THAT A KID COULD NOT TAKE THE DRINKS. Man handling her, no, but they could stand between her and the wine. One of them could have made sure to hand her a bottle of water. As someone who actually did have a alcohol license at one point (it is expired now, and it was just so I can legally serve beer at a theme park) they done messed up huge. If it was any of the other children, the parents or guardians could sue (in fact, if Andi had the presence of mind to, and just doesn’t want to put this incident behind her, she COULD probably get them on serving alcohol to a minor).
Dude. Andi had her hands on her hips and was being quite fingers in the ears didn’t wanna hear anything Amanda might have done. Like it didn’t help. At all.
He was absolutely being aggressive. But I see that you’re choosing to ignore his aggressive behaviors, because you simply dislike Andi THAT much, that you’re unwilling to see when someone else is in the wrong.
Except it isn’t. He’s being rude but then again to him,Amanda is quite the bully and hurt his child. He’s annoyed but he isn’t being aggressive. -____-
I gave all the reasons why he was being aggressive, but you’re choosing to ignore them. Leaning over someone, clenched fists, and raised voices are aggressive. Not rude.
Arms crossed before Andi started “so can I like out my ass too” thing. Voice wasn’t raised. There isn’t any indication that there was before then. So. Yeah. No. -____-
*lie.
“Arms crossed before Andi started “so can I like out my ass too” thing”
I don’t understand the relevance of that comment. Yes, they were crossed before Andi said that, because he was being hostile.
Perhaps you need to read his dialog again, because his voice does raise several times.
“I want Amanda to stay AWAY”
“Amanda has NOT been treating Heather well at ALL.”
“Blatantly AWFUL”
You’re also continuing to ignore the other things I said involving his body language, such as immediately leaning over her when he approached her, a severely aggressive move.
Again, I do not like Andi. Andi is terrible, and shows little sign of getting better, but Kenneth is obviously being aggressive towards her, putting her on the defensive.
Arms crossed like that is hostile. It says “I AM THE AUTHORITY AND YOU WILL DO WHAT I SAY.” Folded arms, scowl, hostile voice and words in panel 1. He continues the nasty voice-over in panel 2 as we see Amanda’s miserable face. It’s in panel 3 that Andi reacts sarcastically to the man who is hurting HER kid, Right This Very Minute.
Then, before Kenneth can even react to the snark, Todd disconcerts him by interrupting.
You know, the more I look at the page we’re talking about, the more I think that… even though Todd has good cause to dislike Andi, nine years of dating count for something. Old habits die hard. I expect this is far from the first time the two of them have teamed up against a common enemy.
Of course, Kenneth is NOT so unreasonable a man as he comes across at the beginning of the page. He’s angry, and is used to being the boss, so his default mode is to issue orders, but he’s not stuck there. He moderates his tone pretty quickly when he realizes the situation is more complicated than he thought.
“Of course, Kenneth is NOT so unreasonable a man as he comes across at the beginning of the page. He’s angry, and is used to being the boss, so his default mode is to issue orders, but he’s not stuck there. He moderates his tone pretty quickly when he realizes the situation is more complicated than he thought.”
Sessine, I could not agree more. Kenneth is, at heart, a good guy. I do not dislike his character, and everyone does stupid stuff sometimes. For him, this is just one of those times. He took what should have been a private conversation and made it not only public, but also hostile.
Uh… Dave? I agree. What kinda grounding is that??
On one hand, Amanda couldn’t know it wasn’t juice.
On the other hand, there were two adults demanding that she stop, and her response was ‘you can’t order me around’.
Yeah, this grounding is warranted.
(I do like the ‘let the sickness be the punishment’ approach better tho)
I agree that the grounding is mostly for the “you can’t order me around” response.
But also… I don’t think she gets the excuse of ignorance. For the first tumbler-full, okay, if she downed it quickly enough, she might not have realized it wasn’t juice. By the time she reached for the second one, though… she knew. She had to have known. She was so angry she didn’t care. She gulped down that second one, and was chugging a third, and had possibly even grabbed a fourth glass by the time Lillian stopped her. (All in the course of under a minute.)
One of the life lessons everyone needs to learn (and it’s hard, and most people need to keep re-learning it the hard way) is how foolish it is to let “I’m angry,” translate to “I don’t care.”
Eh, I’ve never been grounded or punished, and it’s not because I was an angel or something. It’s more important for the kid to understand why what he did was wrong and to not do it again. In most cases punishments just teach kids to be sneaky and not get caught.
In Amanda’s case I think what she needs most is actual therapy though, I feel she’s too far gone for just sitting her down and talking to her to help at this point.
…and this is even more true
At a birthday of my aunt, my uncel and a cousin got me drunk. I was 12 or so. I only ate a bun at the morning and over the day I had drank several colabeer (1/3cola, 2/3 beer), serveral diffrent other booze, wine, ect.
At the end I think I was drunk. I can still remember everthing, espacially how sick I felt alte in the evening.
Now I’m 30 and I never touched alcohol again. I accept alcohol only as
ingredient for cooking and even then I smell the faintest alcohol.
So I would say the saying we have in germany
“A burnt child dreads the fire” is correct.
Meanwhile, My mother handed me the worst tasting, warm, cheap beer she could find while we were at a party when I was about Amanda’s age because I was INSISTING that I wanted one. When I was like “omg eww”after about 2 sips, she just smiled and said “See, it’s horrible. You have to wait till you’re an adult then it’ll taste good. Your tastebuds…. have to come in… like wisdom teeth.” She then chugged the rest of it as quickly as possible. I didn’t find out till I was almost 23 that she pulled a fast one.
The only other comparable time was when I got into the jello shots… I still didn’t get punished for it. Not even a little.
Although she would ABSOLUTELY have punished me for Amanda’s behavior when told she couldn’t have any. Like straight up red butt spanked till I couldn’t sit, punished. You did not disrespect your elders, you did not ignore your elders, and you certainly didn’t cause a scene.
“Your tastebuds have to come in…” Haha! In general I’m not in favour of lying to kids, but that’s just brilliant.
My uncle didn’t even pull a fast one – he just handed me an unopened can out of the cooler. Tasted like sh** to my younger self and I never did develop a taste afterwards.
I like Lillian’s pleased face in the last panel. 🙂
As to Matter Eater Lad… At least he can sometimes be useful… Unlike Arm Fall Off Boy.
I agree. Matter-Eater Lad came up with creative ways to use his powers in combat situations (or at least the writers did).
I used Matter Eater Lad in a horror RPG. I changed his name to the Hunger and made him a cannibalistic villain. A guy that will not go away, constantly chases you, and will eventually eat you no matter what you do to try and get away.
Matter Eating makes a great horror power. “He opens his mouth, but instead of a throat is an abyss, a lightless less-than-nothingness. His mouth opens wider, and you hear a rushing as the air in the room is pulled inwards. He opens his mouth wider, impossibly wide, and the wind is howling as you struggle against the pull of the void.”
On the subject of underrated powers, I feel the need to bring up Heart as one of the most underrated powers of all time. Know what the leading cause of death in America is? Hint: It isn’t Fire, Earth, Air, or Water.
nope, you’re wrong… the leading cause of death is STUPIDITY… heart failure, etc. is just a symptom of stupidity…
Say what?
If you’re really looking for root causes, the leading cause of death is LIFE. Look into it! Pretty much every death ever happened to someone who was alive.
You think I’m joking? I’m not. Death can’t be prevented. It can, sometimes, be postponed to a later date, but then sometimes it also arrives earlier than expected. It comes with being born, a package deal. You want the one, you’re going to get the other, no way out of it.
The only choice you get — sometimes, if you’re lucky — is what you do with the time you’ve got.
“Cause of death” generally refers to the more immediate cause. You can go back into further root causes and say all death is caused by life, time, physics or linear causality, and that would be true but it kind of misses the point. “Cause of death” is not about the fact that someone died but about the question of what got them first.
Naturally. My point, in response to scantrontb, was that if you’re going to say the leading cause of death is stupidity, well… there’s some truth to that because we all do stupid things at times, and yes, it’s often possible to trace a death back to SOMEONE being stupid — not necessarily the person who dies. But if you’re going to look behind the immediate cause of death, then you should look a bit further back.
Saying it’s “stupidity” is buying into the notion that you can avoid death by not being stupid. “Death is something that happens to other people. I won’t be stupid, so I won’t die.” Say it out loud like that and anyone can see it’s wrong… and yet…
And yet, people still talk all the time about preventing deaths and saving lives, when all anyone can really do, ever, is postpone deaths and preserve lives to last a while longer. This is still a good objective, but it is a more modest one, and the difference matters.
(Getting back to your original point, you’re not wrong. The leading proximate cause of death is indeed heart-related.)
They’ve shown Heart could be used for literal mind control, it’s just that the kid who got the ring was too much of a sucker to do anything with it.
Yeah, I recall some kind of Alternate Future episode where Ma-Ti was homeless and used the Heart ring to make people give him spare change.
If I recall right Heart was basically motivation empathy and compassion, but when you can force people to feel those things against their will… well, that becomes an area I don’t think the show leads considered. XD
Spare change which he then immediately gave to other homeless people. It was meant to show his compassion, I suspect, but it made him look like he had no sense of self-preservation.
It should be noted, Matter Eater Lad is an expert martial artist.
When I was about the same age, my friend Beth and I got into the sangria that had been put out for her mom’s birthday party. Everybody else was busy decorating and didn’t notice that we had snuck several large cups of the stuff until we started throwing up in the bushes under an open window and they heard us. We both caught a lot of trouble, but I think the adults considered us to be so miserable already that as punishment they just made us tell people how stupid we’d been. I couldn’t touch Sangria til YEARS after I had become an adult.
Why are the comments on this comic always so unlikeable? it starts off with “she wasn’t grounded long enough” “she shouldn’t have been grounded, the hangover is enough punishment”
and it moves on to endless arguments about who’s wrong and who’s wronger, and hating on what all characters do.
I read the comments for some interesting discussion of the comic, and speculation on what will happen next, but people treat the story like they’re reading a newspaper article and they must make it known how wrong everyone else is.
I think that’s just the sign of a good story, we argue about the characters as if they were real even though we know they are not, that’s how believable they are.
This IS discussion of the comic. Dave’s strongest point is his ability to create complex, believable, realistic characters, each one with a point of view that readers come to understand better and better as we see more of them.
We initially met Amanda as a really nasty school bully making Selkie’s life miserable. She was very believable. Many readers, especially those with childhood memories of being bullied, responded to that by hating her and wanting to see horrible things happen to her. They wrote about their own bad memories in the comments here to explain why they felt that way.
But that wasn’t where Dave’s story was heading. We know much more about Amanda now. I don’t think anyone still wants to see terrible things happen to her. Most of us, at any rate, understand her well enough to realize that wouldn’t teach her a lesson. It would only make things worse. Some people have actually written that following this comic has helped them to deal better with their own memories of being bullied.
Time after time, Dave has given us new perspectives on the current ‘bad guy’ character to show us that no, actually, they are in fact complex many-sided human beings like everyone else. People pick up on small cues in the drawings and the dialog, and present a case for what they think that character’s feelings might have been to make them say and do that.
The longest arguments in the comments tend to be with readers who haven’t picked up on this pattern in Dave’s storytelling, and are still reading the strip looking for one-dimensional good guys to root for and bad guys to hate. They’re not going to find them here. Or, there are also some longtime readers who made up their minds forever about a character a good while back, and for reasons of their own do not want to abandon that judgement despite what other readers think is evidence to the contrary now being presented.
(And then, because the story is about raising kids, there are the parenting details like the grounding — many people like to give accounts of how they were raised, for comparison. Quite often the implication is, “…and I turned out okay.” Sometimes it’s, “…and don’t ever do this, it doesn’t work.” Those exchanges aren’t arguments. They’re conversations!)
To add to this point, I grew up in the Dr Spock era of child rearing, and the dude never even had kid of his own. He was a beard with a cool name telling other people how to raise their kids. Meanwhile I was taking part in raising my sister when she was a baby when I was 4. I did my share of diaper changing and feeding. I could talk to him all the live long day about child rearing.
Sometimes discussion can be confused for argument, in spoken word or print. But if you notice, we do advance our opinions. And even some of us with the sharpest knives so to speak do in fact treat each other with incredible respect. Me and Springpop for instance disagree heavily on things but we do rather get along. I won’t speak for her, but I respect her and hope the feeling is mutual.
People can discuss things, they can argue, and I hope they’re each mature enough to understand that you can do this while still respecting and getting along with your opponent.
it’s not people disagreeing with eachother that bothers me, it’s how they treat the characters. I mentioned “newspaper articles” meaning that it reminds me of the comment discussions under web articles, where people always assume things and say horrible things about the people in the story.
Maybe it’s me being too invested in the story, but I’m frustrated by the exacting standards of perfection that are demanded from every kid or adult in the comic.
Is no one going to address the dad half-joke?