I hate a lot of things that *happen* on April Fools, but the holiday itself is pretty fun. Mojang (Minecraft), Blizzard (World of Warcraft), and other game companies tend to do amusing things, Google and YouTube play around with their capabilities, and people get a chance to see how gullible their friends and family members can be.
It’s also a reminder to use your brain a bit before you go trusting something said even by a trusted family member. A healthy sense of skepticism is a good thing.
Fun bits I recall from previous years include World of Warcraft adding a Bard character where you buff your team with songs… by playing a Rock Band / Guitar Hero guitar, and another year when they said they’d have two-headed ogre characters controlled by two players at the same time; Minecraft once made everybody into villagers and had all the sounds replaced by the Villager News guy saying the sounds instead (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmM1wl2XQiE). Once year there was an awesome trailer for a Legend of Zelda movie that I would go see in a heartbeat if it really existed (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBCzkz3gHb8).
This year, I got three April Fools videos from Markiplier, and they were made my day. They’re each five minutes long. In one of them, Mark contemplates a banana… for five whole minutes, and it’s not just him sitting there staring at it, either — there’s a whole progression of story, without any words. But you really gotta watch the vids with captions on, or you miss more than half of the story.
I’m a little sad that I missed my first chance to upload an April Fools video on my YouTube channel, but I’m having enough trouble putting together regular videos. Still working on my first lesson for Koine Greek.
I’m so confused as to why there glaring at one another? They’re both on the same wavelength here! Why would they be annoyed with one another? Andi, you invited Todd here and happily introduced him as Amanda’s father, so let him father. Todd you keep saying Andi needs to try harder and she’s doing a good job here so stop being a damp baby.
Like, for serious you two, what the what? Get over yourselves.
Noooo you should’ve made Amanda one of the Jin sorai (I forget the species name)
Also it would’ve been cool if you went all out & made Andi’s nose selkiefied. But this is really cool I love her coloring!
also, gotta love the awkward “oh yeah I’m not a single parent” semi-conflict there XD
here’s hope it works out for the best for Amanda, truth born in argument and all that
This is really not a good time to have The Friend Talk with her right now.
Also, nobody is under any obligation to either be friends with someone or forgive someone who hurt them. Here’s hope their lecture will be about being polite and also about her telling them what the hell happened, not the blind ‘if someone wants to be friends you can’t be rude and say no’…
This may not be a good time, but since Amanda has managed to alienate herself from all her friends except Keisha, it is a subject that needs to be brought up.
It’s good Todd and Andi are going to speak with Amanda, but I hope they don’t force her to be friends with Heather. That should really be up to her. She could at least be encouraged hold off making decisions about about the friendship until she feels better. It’s also good form to thank someone for apologizing (though you don’t have to accept).
I hope they make her apologize for hitting her, agree about not being forced to be friends though. But then I was also bothered by the much earlier statement about how Selkie and Amanda need to learn to like each other rathern than just learn to get along or tolerate each other so we’ll see…
A forced apology isn’t a real apology. It’s more of an insult than anything. They shouldn’t force her to apologize, but they should explain to her why what she did was wrong and that she SHOULD apologize for it.
Yes, this is one of those parenting situations that requires careful thought, but something needs to be done soon (though not necessarily right then and there).
Unfortunately there is no really perfect way to do it (though there are loads of ways to screw it up). It very much comes down to how the kids behave.
I’m of the mind that it would be crucial to talk with Amanda about it later in private (even if things go well), but since Heather has apologized maybe it would be an okay time to take both girls aside and talk with them together (or maybe wait until some of the kids go home).
It’s really cool, though, the adults are choosing to watch what happens rather than jumping right in. My kiddo is just a little younger than these kids (by a year or two). It seems those of her friends who have the hardest time navigating friend conflicts often have the parents who are the most over-involved when the conflicts happen. It really messes with kids’ self esteem and intuition when parents keep jumping in to tell them what to do/say right then and there. And a lot of times, us parents don’t even have the full picture of what’s going on or even great social skills ourselves (I sure don’t—I’m just learning a lot of this on my own).
But it’s good talk about friend conflicts in private. We’ve read books together sometimes to help. There’s some really wonderful ones geared just for kids—especially girls (we love the American Girl series even though we don’t buy the dolls). There’s some really great ones for us parents, too, to help our kids, and they’ve actually helped me with my own friendships.
I clicked back to the previous comic, completely confused, trying to figure out what was happening that I had missed. Then I remembered it was April Fool’s.
LOL! Good one Dave! I had to read the comments to find out that colors were swapped before I could figure out who was who x.x I mean, Todd and Andi I got right away, but the kids had me so confused.
My initial reaction was that Amanda must be getting really sick, to have turned that color … then I saw Andi and figured it was another alternative universe drawing. Then I saw the transcript. Well done, Dave, well done.
just an oddball question, but… when you get this strip put together for book 3?, maybe book 4? will you re-color it to the correct palette or will you leave it as is, and have a note for when it was originally posted, that it was on the 1st of April, and that’s why the colors were swapped??
Now that I’ve got past the swapped colours, what strikes me most about this page is Keisha’s little grin in the last panel, while Amanda’s going “Aaarrrgh, Oh My GAWWD!!!”
I think she’s thinking, “Oh! Amanda now has parents. Plural. Maybe they’ll teach her to be nicer to her friends. I’m still her friend anyway, but… yeah. I could totally do with her being nicer.”
Is this going to be recolored now that April Fool’s Day is over? Or is it going to be left so that a year from now no one will get it unless they check which day it was written leaving an uncomfortable hiccup in the middle of a comic which could have been read casually?
So instead of enjoying your comic page by page fluidly, you want them to read your blog posts to understand what’s going on in your comic? I’m sorry–as great as it was for April first–I really think you should change it for your long-term goals as a comic artist.
As interesting as this arc is, I’m starting to think this comic should be called “Amanda”, because it feels like been a long time since we’ve checked in with Selkie, and the really interesting stuff that was going on with her; underwater civil war, what-happened-to-my-birth-mom-exactly, dealing with all those a$$hat kids at school, is-my-teacher-going-to-date-my-new-dad stuff. Hope we can get back to that soon.
This is a problem with ALL webcomics trying to tell an extended story. Even when it’s updated very regularly, as Selkie is, we only get to see pages one at a time, with days in between, so it FEELS like it’s taking forever. Yet, when you go back and reread the pages like pages in a book, it flows very naturally. It’s hard to be patient, but you really have to be, in order to get the story.
Amanda? She is a huge part of Selkie’s life now, and will be from this point onward. Like it or not, they’re sisters!
Think about this: how Amanda reacts to this particular crisis may make a big difference in the long run, in what kind of sister-relationship they turn out to develop. It’s not very promising right now! but that may be about to… well, begin to change, at any rate… so I’m pretty sure that’s why we’ve had to spend this much time with Amanda.
As soon as I remembered it was April Fools’, I was hoping you’d do something like this Dave. XD Much applause to you!
Seemed more fun than the old standard of “Im quitting the comic everyone, that’s totally what is happening today, for reals.” joke. XD
And Jeph from QC beat you to it 😉
Yeah but he totally has a sponsor deal now and is totally chilling on a beach for life now.
Is there a link to a version of this strip that isn’t color swapped? If it’s already been posted I apologize for missing it.
There has not been a normal-color version posted, no.
At first I was all “WTF!” then about 3 seconds later I laughed XD
I hate April fools however a colour swap is pretty inoffensive so I wont complain. Love your work regardless <3
I hate a lot of things that *happen* on April Fools, but the holiday itself is pretty fun. Mojang (Minecraft), Blizzard (World of Warcraft), and other game companies tend to do amusing things, Google and YouTube play around with their capabilities, and people get a chance to see how gullible their friends and family members can be.
It’s also a reminder to use your brain a bit before you go trusting something said even by a trusted family member. A healthy sense of skepticism is a good thing.
Fun bits I recall from previous years include World of Warcraft adding a Bard character where you buff your team with songs… by playing a Rock Band / Guitar Hero guitar, and another year when they said they’d have two-headed ogre characters controlled by two players at the same time; Minecraft once made everybody into villagers and had all the sounds replaced by the Villager News guy saying the sounds instead (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmM1wl2XQiE). Once year there was an awesome trailer for a Legend of Zelda movie that I would go see in a heartbeat if it really existed (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBCzkz3gHb8).
This year, I got three April Fools videos from Markiplier, and they were made my day. They’re each five minutes long. In one of them, Mark contemplates a banana… for five whole minutes, and it’s not just him sitting there staring at it, either — there’s a whole progression of story, without any words. But you really gotta watch the vids with captions on, or you miss more than half of the story.
I’m a little sad that I missed my first chance to upload an April Fools video on my YouTube channel, but I’m having enough trouble putting together regular videos. Still working on my first lesson for Koine Greek.
I’m so confused as to why there glaring at one another? They’re both on the same wavelength here! Why would they be annoyed with one another? Andi, you invited Todd here and happily introduced him as Amanda’s father, so let him father. Todd you keep saying Andi needs to try harder and she’s doing a good job here so stop being a damp baby.
Like, for serious you two, what the what? Get over yourselves.
Hahahahahaha damp baby. Holy cap auto correct thank you so very much.
Also crap. Less funny of an auto correct.
Noooo you should’ve made Amanda one of the Jin sorai (I forget the species name)
Also it would’ve been cool if you went all out & made Andi’s nose selkiefied. But this is really cool I love her coloring!
Might one infer, from the fact that the heart in panel two appears to go to University of Texas, that Selkie is thinking, “I love beef”?
More like the “I’m lovin’ this” has little devil-horns on it.
Alpo has the right of it. Steer-horns on the heart. 🙂
Well. Heather tried.
At first I thought Heather was in Drunk Hallucination mode. Then I remembered what day it is. 🙂
Derp. And by Heather I meant Amanda. Stupid typo fairy.
I just woke up and hadn’t remembered April fools. Let’s just say for the first 5 seconds, outs were flipped…
>_>
This Is Beautiful
also, gotta love the awkward “oh yeah I’m not a single parent” semi-conflict there XD
here’s hope it works out for the best for Amanda, truth born in argument and all that
This is really not a good time to have The Friend Talk with her right now.
Also, nobody is under any obligation to either be friends with someone or forgive someone who hurt them. Here’s hope their lecture will be about being polite and also about her telling them what the hell happened, not the blind ‘if someone wants to be friends you can’t be rude and say no’…
This may not be a good time, but since Amanda has managed to alienate herself from all her friends except Keisha, it is a subject that needs to be brought up.
That’s funny! I love April Fool’s Day. 😀
It’s good Todd and Andi are going to speak with Amanda, but I hope they don’t force her to be friends with Heather. That should really be up to her. She could at least be encouraged hold off making decisions about about the friendship until she feels better. It’s also good form to thank someone for apologizing (though you don’t have to accept).
I hope they make her apologize for hitting her, agree about not being forced to be friends though. But then I was also bothered by the much earlier statement about how Selkie and Amanda need to learn to like each other rathern than just learn to get along or tolerate each other so we’ll see…
A forced apology isn’t a real apology. It’s more of an insult than anything. They shouldn’t force her to apologize, but they should explain to her why what she did was wrong and that she SHOULD apologize for it.
Yes, this is one of those parenting situations that requires careful thought, but something needs to be done soon (though not necessarily right then and there).
Unfortunately there is no really perfect way to do it (though there are loads of ways to screw it up). It very much comes down to how the kids behave.
I’m of the mind that it would be crucial to talk with Amanda about it later in private (even if things go well), but since Heather has apologized maybe it would be an okay time to take both girls aside and talk with them together (or maybe wait until some of the kids go home).
It’s really cool, though, the adults are choosing to watch what happens rather than jumping right in. My kiddo is just a little younger than these kids (by a year or two). It seems those of her friends who have the hardest time navigating friend conflicts often have the parents who are the most over-involved when the conflicts happen. It really messes with kids’ self esteem and intuition when parents keep jumping in to tell them what to do/say right then and there. And a lot of times, us parents don’t even have the full picture of what’s going on or even great social skills ourselves (I sure don’t—I’m just learning a lot of this on my own).
But it’s good talk about friend conflicts in private. We’ve read books together sometimes to help. There’s some really wonderful ones geared just for kids—especially girls (we love the American Girl series even though we don’t buy the dolls). There’s some really great ones for us parents, too, to help our kids, and they’ve actually helped me with my own friendships.
I clicked back to the previous comic, completely confused, trying to figure out what was happening that I had missed. Then I remembered it was April Fool’s.
LOL! Good one Dave! I had to read the comments to find out that colors were swapped before I could figure out who was who x.x I mean, Todd and Andi I got right away, but the kids had me so confused.
My initial reaction was that Amanda must be getting really sick, to have turned that color … then I saw Andi and figured it was another alternative universe drawing. Then I saw the transcript. Well done, Dave, well done.
While this is for sure an April Fools joke, I can still easily see Amanda have drunken hallucinations like this.
A serendipitous opportunity to observe, with some surprise, how nicely a lock of white hair goes with periwinkle skin.
just an oddball question, but… when you get this strip put together for book 3?, maybe book 4? will you re-color it to the correct palette or will you leave it as is, and have a note for when it was originally posted, that it was on the 1st of April, and that’s why the colors were swapped??
For a second, I thought this was just Amanda being drunk. 😉
Straight from “orphan” to “getting double-teamed by your two parents.”
Grass is always greener, innit?
Now that I’ve got past the swapped colours, what strikes me most about this page is Keisha’s little grin in the last panel, while Amanda’s going “Aaarrrgh, Oh My GAWWD!!!”
I think she’s thinking, “Oh! Amanda now has parents. Plural. Maybe they’ll teach her to be nicer to her friends. I’m still her friend anyway, but… yeah. I could totally do with her being nicer.”
Is this going to be recolored now that April Fool’s Day is over? Or is it going to be left so that a year from now no one will get it unless they check which day it was written leaving an uncomfortable hiccup in the middle of a comic which could have been read casually?
I dunno. I could also just as easily put “Happy April Fools day” in the blog post. *shrug*
So instead of enjoying your comic page by page fluidly, you want them to read your blog posts to understand what’s going on in your comic? I’m sorry–as great as it was for April first–I really think you should change it for your long-term goals as a comic artist.
I may sound judgmental, but I do mean the best.
As interesting as this arc is, I’m starting to think this comic should be called “Amanda”, because it feels like been a long time since we’ve checked in with Selkie, and the really interesting stuff that was going on with her; underwater civil war, what-happened-to-my-birth-mom-exactly, dealing with all those a$$hat kids at school, is-my-teacher-going-to-date-my-new-dad stuff. Hope we can get back to that soon.
This is a problem with ALL webcomics trying to tell an extended story. Even when it’s updated very regularly, as Selkie is, we only get to see pages one at a time, with days in between, so it FEELS like it’s taking forever. Yet, when you go back and reread the pages like pages in a book, it flows very naturally. It’s hard to be patient, but you really have to be, in order to get the story.
Amanda? She is a huge part of Selkie’s life now, and will be from this point onward. Like it or not, they’re sisters!
Think about this: how Amanda reacts to this particular crisis may make a big difference in the long run, in what kind of sister-relationship they turn out to develop. It’s not very promising right now! but that may be about to… well, begin to change, at any rate… so I’m pretty sure that’s why we’ve had to spend this much time with Amanda.
Why is Todd only a red head?
He has Andi’s coloring.