I wasn’t happy with the dialogue at the time I uploaded it, but went ahead anyway. Reader commentary kind of echoed my thoughts on it, so I tweaked the dialogue in panel 4 after finishing the colors to be a bit… kinder.
Here is the original panel 4. Posts prior to 1am central time are commenting on this dialogue in mind, not what’s currently up there.
"I means, it's nos "sets her ons fires and dance ons the ashes", buts I'll takes its.
I have a bad feeling that Amanda isn’t going to get “on the same page” very easily.
Same here. Given what we’ve seen so far, it’s going to take a while before Amanda and Selkie can both work through things.
No child would take this talk this well. Todd still comes off as…. Well at least he is trying, that is something. I do think he might want to take some time to actually sit down with his parents and talk about how to deal with two kids who hate each other. This was not the talk that Grandma wanted Todd and Selkie to have.
My gut feeling is that Selkie will take this like a trooper and keep on putting up with Amanda.
I think Todd is doing pretty well, reassuring her that she’s his no matter what, but also pointing out that Amanda is his too (remember Selkie was there for a good bit of the explanations re:Amanda, she knows he didn’t know she was alive or anything)
Except he isn’t commenting on the bullying that Amanda is currently doing. And how much she’s hurting Selkie emotionally as well as physically. This whole “get along with the person who abuses you” shtick he’s doing isn’t okay. He needs to be reminded that Amanda is a bully. And that she needs to face the consequences of that.
Amanda got much more sneaky about her bullying. Todd has good intentions, but he can be pretty naive. I think he believed that as long as he didn’t notice anything the kids should be ok. But he knows amanda has a history of picking on selkie so now that he noticed selkie not being okay he’s trying to fix it. Todd messed up here by not actively checking on selkie but characters shouldn’t be faulted for not being omniscient.
I have to agree with this. Todd’s doing an awful lot of talking and not enough listening. Very typical parent mistake, but this is a situation a child need the parent to be quiet and be present. If he really did that he would have found out about the couch incident and the other times she was shoved. That needs to come out and be addressed ASAP!
To be fair, Todd hasn’t been a parent for very long. Parenting skills aren’t something you know instantly. It’s something you have to grow into and learn over time. He’s still got some things to learn, as do Andi and both Selkie and Amanda. No aspect of this family dynamic is going to be perfect right off of the bat, especially given Amanda and Selkie’s personal histories–both separate and mixed together. It’s going to take a long time for them to really work through this. Besides, not everything that happens between the girls can be monitored closely. Even when Amanda stays over Todd has to go to the bathroom at some point, which will give the girls time alone if no one else is there. Anything that happens during times where they can’t be monitored is completely up to the girls to bring adult attention, and children don’t always tell adults what’s going on for one reason or another. You can’t expect them too either. They’re just kids after all, and young ones at that. They know about as much psychology and dealing with personal relationships as a your average high schooler knows about computer engineering. Everything happening now is like a giant mass of tangles created by multiple balls of yarn. It’s going to take time and patience to work everything out. There’s probably still going to be some snags here and there, but that happens with everything else in life–real or comic.
I think this is exactly what needs to happen, Amanda is the problem in the two girls relationship and it looks like the adults are finally going to try adress it.
I gotta agree that Selkie certainly fizzled out with that response. Todd comes off as… not very concerned about Selkie’s feelings. I dunno, I think the whole conversation was very lackluster and distant. I was hoping Todd would kinda… give Selkie a little more reassurance and ask her what exactly has Amanda done to her while she’s been coming over. And I mean, at least he let Selkie know he is a father to BOTH girls, but I don’t think he conveyed his message very well? Just saying, “You two need to get along.” seems very… half-hearted? I dunno.
I’m hoping this opens up into something more and I’m definitely not trying to knock you, I just expected more to something with so much build up.
This is what I kept trying to say while smashing my keyboard. My brain doesnt work well when concentrating on exams. Thank you for putting it so well.
Heck all of your comments are extremely insightful.
Oh wow. Um. I never thought anyone would say that. Thanks haha. I’m friends with a writer and I write a lot myself so I tend to over analyze things.
when Todd finally gets around to asking what Amanda has done to Selkie he better clear his schedule for about a day, possibly more.
Well, specifcally, I meant for him to ask her what Amanda has done while in the house. Because none of us know what she’s done to make Selkie this angry and territorial. Maybe Amanda hasn’t done much since she’s been visiting and Selkie just feels threatened by the fact that he has another kid. I wanna know what specifically set Selkie off for this particular incident, because I still have a hard time believing Todd somehow failed to notice Amanda outright treating Selkie like crap in his own home AND failed to notice how upset Selkie looked. I’m kinda still thinking Amanda has kept the tormenting to a minimum around Todd and that’s why he hasn’t noticed anything. She’s just keeping a lid on things and either being snarky and passive aggressive like Selkie or has kept it simple and has been doing nothing but mean faces, sticking out her tongue and occasionally a little namecalling. Small, nearly unnoticeable things unless you’re RIGHT there. Things that caused Selkie to slowly simmer in anger, because she knows Amanda isn’t being outright terrible to her, but juuuuust enough to get away with or seem like typical sibling bickering and the fact that she’s upset that Todd has failed to notice these things…
I mean, Todd is kinda aware of the past they had. So I don’t understand why he hasn’t kept a better eye on them. He knows Amanda is prone to fights as well as taunting and general passive aggressiveness and he knows Selkie has a very quick temper and is quick to think people are out to get her and responds with… well, not violence, but she flares up and screams in anger pretty easily. He should be really freaking wary of leaving then unsupervised.
He may not know how well Amanda is at button pushing yet, but the first thing I’d be concerned about upon knowing that, “they hate each other” and that Amanda bullied Selkie and that Selkie gets angry fast is that Amanda would purposefully try and get Selkie to start a fight with her and then Selkie would get so angry that she bites Amanda. I really think that’s gonna happen in the future. I dunno what’s gonna happen then. Amanda will probably be terrified of Selkie and think of her as even more of a ‘monster’ than she already does, Andi is gonna flip out when Amanda is rushed to the hospital to be treated, probably by Pohl, and not want Amanda around Selkie anymore, she might even claim Selkie is a danger to Amanda, Todd, well, I dunno WHAT Todd will do. He most likely will initially yell at Selkie, causing her to be very hurt and frightened of herself and what she’s done and that Todd will hate her, of course he’ll regret his actions shortly after, probably after fighting with Andi who accuses Selkie of being dangerous and he realizes whIle defending Selkie that he inadvertently hurt her beforehand. Heck, maybe Selkie might even try to run away after that. She’d be so upset at being a real ‘monster’ and that Todd thinks she’s terrible too that she doesn’t know what else to do.
I dunno, maybe I’m too dark, but I seriously forsee Selkie biting Amanda in the future and emotions will be running high and people will say and do things they don’t mean.
All I’m saying is Todd should at the very least know to watch these two together like a hawk and I’m perplexed as to why he seems so lax about the whole situation and inconsiderate to everyone elses’ feelings but his own.
It’s much, much simpler than that.
Let me spell it out for you.
1) Amanda has, over the past several years, bullied and tormented Selkie to the point where when Selkie has nightmares about bullying, it was Amanda’s – and her two primary henchgirls – faces she saw.
2) When she was adopted, she allowed herself to believe she finally had a parent on her side and a safe space from said tormentor– safe as in “she can’t get here”, which isn’t the same as “she’s not allowed to hurt me here” because technically Amanda wasn’t allowed to hurt Selkie in school or at the orphanage either and that doesn’t seem to have stopped her.
3) Now it turns out that Amanda is Todd’s daughter and suddenly her safe space isn’t safe anymore: Amanda can come in and torment her when Todd isn’t looking – and, in fact, has.
The more I think about it, the more I’m thinking Selkie and Amanda heard entirely different things in this comic:
Selkie heard “The place you thought might have been safe isn’t, Amanda will be here and torment you and the supposed adults won’t notice. It was stupid to expect anything else.”
Amanda heard “blah blah another adult telling me to be nice to the stupid fish blah blah who cares,” and went back to doing what she’s apparently good at — finding ways to torment Selkie when the adults aren’t paying attention.
I don’t know how your comment was in response to mine. I didn’t say that Selkie’s safe place hasn’t been compromised. It has. That’s besides the point. My point is Todd is insensitive and I can’t figure out why because he seems to care so very much about Selkie, yet he’s brushing her off entirely. He’s also oblivious, even though he knows these two, as he called it, ‘hate each other’ so he’s aware of their history and yet he doesn’t watch them carefully to see what’s happening between them.
It just seems really weird to me that Todd hasn’t noticed anything at all. Which makes me think Amanda isn’t doing what she normally does, but instead is just pushing buttons subtly. Because I find it really hard to believe that Todd has failed to notice Amanda tormenting Selkie in his own home. Unless he just doesn’t care. Because he’s not super busy or anything. He ca b easily watch them.a
As someone who has been bullied at school for years, right under the teachers’ noses, and also as someone who’s currently a teacher and trying to do better than that, I assure you there’s nothing remotely weird about it.
With kids, it actually takes a lot of directed attention to tell one-sided bullying from
1) play-fighting, which kids do, and don’t appreciate adults butting in;
2) two-sided argument that started with something minor and escalated and now both sides feel slighted and will probably resolve this better without an adult butting in;
3) one-sided bullying that goes the OTHER way, as the person trying to hurt the other AT THE EXACT MOMENT the adult pays attention is just as likely to be the pissed off victim.
And that’s assuming the victim DOES react in a noticable way. Any show of anger is just as likely to get THEM in trouble, and the bullies are usually much better at manipulation (the same wisdom as ‘don’t get in fights with muggers, they are better at it than you’). Kids aren’t good at coherently telling adults what went wrong, and of course both sides are going to spin the situation in their favor, and the bully WILL outright lie.
Regular bully targets damn well learn to hide anything that’s happening from adults so as to not get in trouble themselves, and while Todd likely WOULD believe Selkie over Amanda in any given case in his own house – and even that’s not a guarantte, given how little he apparently understands about the situation – Selkie doesn’t feel confident and secure enough in it yet (and Todd’s lectures on both getting along don’t help), and even if she did, keeping mum on any immediate accident is a habit that’s not easy to shake.
Kids are VERY good at hiding bullying from adults, including kids in whose direct interest it is, technically, to bring the bullying to their attention.
Todd’s mistakes here are not in not noticing when Amanda does something wrong, it’s in encouraging Selkie to hide their fights (‘it’s both of your jobs to get along with each other!’ is often code in adult-speak ‘whoever is the one that brings any problems to my attention is the one who’s going to end up being blamed for them’), not noticing she’s upset, not blanket taking her side and making her safety a priority (for example, actually not leaving the two girls in the same room unsupervised, making sure that if the adults are distracted the girls are apart and Amanda physically can’t get to Selkie).
And I can’t be suprised that a NEW parent won’t know how to do these things. Even if he was bullied as a kid – I have a general idea of what to do and not to do because I’ve been itnerested in this and low key researching this for years, because I am a teacher, not because I was bulllied myself (that’s just the reason for my interest). Little kids don’t actually have a good idea of what realistic things they want adults to do to protect them, and when they grow up into adults, they don’t magically get this understanding either.
tl;dr this is entirely understandable and easily believable but I’m still going to judge Todd for the ‘both of you get along’ sentence because HOLY SHIT
“I still have a hard time believing Todd somehow failed to notice […] how upset Selkie looked.”
Unfortunately, I totally believe this. Remember, Todd didn’t notice that his pregnant lover was upset, over a duration of at least seven months (assuming 2 missed periods prior to the test) and possibly longer. Todd’s got a weakness, and that’s being blind that people are upset when he’s not. Todd’s happy that he found his not-dead daughter, and that he’s maybe able to reach her and help her be a happy kid, and until Selkie’s explosion, he was probably assuming that she was okay with this too.
I wonder if it’s because of his own temper? He subconsciously assumes that if people are upset, they’ll explode, and do so quickly? Not to mention he may believe that it’s easier to notice people are upset — by the time he started being able to “simmer” instead of explode, his parents and siblings were probably really good at noticing his moods (they’d have been learning the more subtle signs at the same time he was learning to tone himself down). So if he doesn’t notice people are upset… they’re not upset, right? Right?
Thus, he could recognize that Amanda and Selkie hated each other when they were calling each other names, and he was hearing the complaints. But once they took the hostilities “sub rosa,” he… couldn’t see it. They weren’t calling each other names, so they were learning how to get along. (Which is also the result he desperately wants.) So they’re learning how to be sisters, and not re-creating a bullying dynamic anymore, right? Right?
“Getting along”. Amanda needs to be talked to about her bullying Selkie and treating her like garbage. Because seriously Todd. You can’t be this oblivious to bullying.
I read it as that’s what is about to happen with Todd calling Andi. I do think it’s long overdue but better now than never.
Except he isn’t. He’s placing the blame on both of them. The victim is never in the same level as their tormentor and he’s not addressing this as bullying at all. So. Yeah no. He’s literally doing the “gotta be nice to your abuser” crap that’s done too friggin often in bullying cases. And it’s pathetic.
Third panel, is there murder in her eyes, is that right?
Love it.
I’m surprised the “I CHOSE you,” hasn’t come up. It might also do well to reassure Selkie.
While true, that would be pretty hurtfull if it got back to Amanda and Todd probably rightly wants to avoid that situation.
He may want to avoid it, but he may not get that happy state of affairs.
It’s all well and good to ask two parties to play nice with each other because you don’t want to have to choose between them, but if one side keeps sniping at the other sooner or later you will have to call them on their crap, or the attacked side will assume your protestations of friendship don’t mean a thing and you’ve already chosen the other.
Honestly I’m about to give up on the comic. This was exactly what I was afraid would happen, Todd telling Selkie AGAIN that she has to try to get all with Amanda, her bully. Todd was well aware that Amanda had been bullying her but has apparently forgotten? And “make sure Amanda’s on the same page”?! Are you freaking kidding me?! Let’s set aside how lackluster Andi has been at doing the right thing and bring a responsible adult, so that there is little reason to think she’d have any follow through on Todds request beyond “be nice to Selkie”, how about he step up and be responsible himself? How about putting in a little effort in and find I out just what has been going on?! Dig in to WHY Selkie is so upset about Amanda!
Also, Selkies complete deflation of anger is about as unbelievable as Amanda’s drunken binge.
It is, as always, Dave’s world and we are just visiting it, but I hope he will take my passionate arguments as a sign I care about the comic and its characters. Up until this latest arc it’s been so great, I hope it gets back on track soon.
Agreed, Todds continued white washing of Amanda’s bullying and abuse of Selkie from the past, I think, “4 years” in the orphanage is really starting to make me want to stop reading. Ignoring all recent events that alone is enough to make him just saying “try to get along” really neglectful. But when you facter in Amandas recent actions and her involvement with Trucks assault (yes she didn’t agree with what he did in the end but she was still a willing ally of his abuse and delighting in the idea of Selkie getting harassed until that point.) Its honestly abusive. “Forget the last several years of abuse and get along for my sake.” That’s wrong, that’s sick, that’s the most selfish abusive thing you can do to someone who has suffered for years.
I have to disagree here. I think Todd isn’t completely aware of how bad Amanda’s bullying was. He not trying to encourage Selkie to continue to be abused, he is just clueless on how to properly resolve things between Amanda and Selkie.
Also, didn’t Todd grow up in an abusive household before he was adopted? Maybe he’s being more lax with Amanda because of his own past. I think he’s afraid to go too hard on her because of that. I don’t think it’s the best decision, but given Todd’s past, it makes a ton of sense.
That he is at least somewhat aware that Selkie was being bullied by Amanda and never made an effort before and clearly isn’t now to finding out what was really happening is a huge fail on his part. ESPECIALLY since he has a past that involved bullying.
As a parent and a human being of course he’s not going to be perfect but this isn’t a single instance anymore, it’s a continuing narrative where in Amanda torments Selkie (and others) with little to no consequence.
Yes Amanda has been hurt and yes she deserves opportunities to be helped, but so far it’s coming at the expense of Selkie and Todd is being complicit in it. Now to top it all off Selkie is told, AGAIN, that she has to make an equal effort to be “nice” to her tormentor, her abuser. That’s wrong!
To make things worse Selkies reaction here to Todds obliviousness is completely unbelievable. It requires a suspension of disbelief in how people would reasonably react in this kind of situation that’s just too big a leap. (And yes I appreciate the oddity of complaining about suspension of disbelief in a comic where people remain ignorant of aquatic creatures living among them).
The biggest problem is for me (and I imagine others) that we WANT to keep liking the comic. I’ve really enjoyed and been touched by it up until the recent story arc focusing on Amanda. It would be easy if I didn’t care about it, if Dave hadn’t created characters in Selkie and Todd that I became invested in emotionally. Then I could just walk away. But I do care and Inwant to follow Selkies story because there is so much potential there and she’s such a fun and interesting character. That’s why it hurts so much to see the comic going in what I feel is such a wrong direction. At some point I’m just not going to be able to push through the bad anymore in hopes that the future might have some good in it.
Actually Selkie’s reaction is entirely realistic? She’s a kid. An adult – a new adult in her life who’s her DAD and who has protected her so far, is promising to try and solve her problem, even approaching her first about it. He’s not scolding her for not being nice to Amanda, and I’m willing to bet she’s got that reaction from teachers before.
WE know what Todd is doing is not going to help. SELKIE doesn’t. This is already more support than she’s used to getting.
It’s entirely realistic and kind of really really sad.
Yeah, I’m inclined to quit reading too if this keeps up. Todd is letting his sentimentality cloud the fact that HIS BIO-DAUGHTER IS A HORRIBLE PERSON and is abusing the shit out of Selkie. I don’t even want to watch this anymore.
This is really really frustrating to read, because Todd is missing the mark so badly, and Selkie’s response is just….doesn’t make sense.
So, there are three components to actually supporting someone going through a hard time.
1) acknowledge what they’re going through.
2) validate the emotions they’re experiencing as a result
3) practical support in terms of what you can do to help them.
Todd has followed the three steps only as if the SOLE issue here is the jealousy that’s resulted from a new sibling. There is NO mention of the abuse…which is sort of ok, because I don’t know if Todd is aware the issues between Selkie and Amanda are significantly more than a handful of childish spats. But Selkie has also RESPONDED as if that’s the only issue on the table.
THAT is what is straining my credulity. Irl, a more reasonable reaction would be for her to have stared at Todd in disbelief and then burst into more tears of frustration that still no one has addressed the shit Amanda has put her through and is still putting her through, because when viewed through that lense, what Todd has just said effectively translates to ‘Selkie, you are not being sufficiently doormatt-ish for my liking, lie flatter and stop making such a fuss when Amanda wipes her boots on you’.
And I’ve seen that interaction irl. The irl equivalent of Selkie? Left home at 18 and never went back. He has no contact with his family and has made a new one. His parents are still baffled by this, because they can’t understand what they did wrong, they just asked him to stop making such a fuss.
I’d say Todd is going to end up the same way, but this writing seems determined to portray Todd as some sort of Gary-stu parent everyone loves regardless, so I doubt it.
Selkie is a KID. She’s not 18 yet. Getting ANY amount of support and encouragement about problems with Amanda is new to her. She trusts Todd, and she WANTS to be fine. She WANTS to be happy. She WILL repress her emotions to show Todd that she appreciates his efforts, as she already has.
This is fucked up, but it’s entirely realistic )=
Yeah…not to join in on the ‘Pile on Dave’ bandwagon, but this is really so far off the mark that it’s missing the page entirely. It dismisses Selkie’s anger too quickly.
The response to ‘I’ll call Andi and make sure Amanda is on the same page about getting along’, should be something like, “No, Dads. She’ll say she is and I’m the one that’s not, but when you’re not looking she pinches me and bumps me off the sofa and….’ all the other little things that kids can do to make someone miserable without actively drawing the ire of an adult. Because there are tons of them.
And Amanda would lie in this situation. We’ve seen her pull out the big blues and do it.
And Todd needs to listen and take it seriously. Then when Amanda says she’s doing her best to get along, he needs to say, ‘I’m not the one you need to convince. Selkie is, and she feels you’re not. I believe her.’
Ah, yes, because Selkie is an adult who knows exactly what to do in this situation and exactly what Todd is getting wrong.
Oh wait. No she isn’t!
If shes were MYs kids I’s tells her I loves hers every-other panel. Todd not once. And I’d make it personal and possessive. “Yer MY daughter, mine, and I love you, that’s forever. And No one gets between you and me in that. Because you are MY daughter whom I love more than anything. I love you Selkie, and no one can replace what you are in my heart.
But Amanda is also my daughter, and I didn’t know that before, but now I do and that makes her my daughter, too. And that doesn’t change where you are in my heart, or how much I love you.
And then go on to blah-blah-blah something together, now, and a plan to do something big together, later, so she has something with just “thee and me” to look forward to.
Even if that wall o’text took two pages to do.
You know, because Everyone needs reassurance, once in a while and “I love yous” need to be said! Although a hug is also very needful, from time to time. Todd is only human, but the I loves yous go a long way to making uncertainty vanish.
I could see little kid Selkie taking a leap of logic and faith in the final, thinking that Dad understands more than he has expressed, trusting the tone if not the content of his words, and expecting a talk to somehow magically fix it.
But honestly, I think we’re getting past the point where talking will solve anything. Something may have to happen.
Also, I still think getting along is a lot to ask for step sisters who would have jealousy issues even without the other baggage. I would have started with being polite/civil toward each other. You can’t expect them to like each other right off or to act like they like each other if they’re not feeling it.
Being civil would be a really good start. I think what Selkie hears is “I’m going to require Amanda to be civil to you when she’s here.” She’s trusting that Todd will make it happen, and that’s enough to reassure her for now.
Easier said than done, though. Amanda’s issues run pretty deep. Even if she doesn’t do anything that overtly rises to the level of bullying, she probably isn’t going to stop being hostile to Selkie. Making faces at her when Todd isn’t looking, purposely doing little things to get under Selkie’s skin… that’s quite ‘normal’ sibling rivalry for kids that age. But it is NOT being civil.
Speaking as someone who lived through a hostile-sibling relationship — what works best is to discover a common ‘enemy’. In my case, it was when my brother and I as teenagers agreed that our parents were being so unreasonable! (I cannot remember what they were being unreasonable about — looking back, they probably weren’t. But I was a teen, and so was he, and that was common ground!) Selkie and Amanda are too young for that, but…
Well, I am waiting for the scene, quite some time from now maybe, when the two of them actually talk to each other a little about real feelings. That, to me, will be the sign that their relationship is on the mend.
Random observation from a random reader…
There’s been a lot of criticism leveled at Todd over the last few pages about ignoring Amanda’s tormenting of Selkie, and now at Dave for letting Selkie respond so positively to Todd’s peace offering which also doesn’t address that. But do we know that Selkie really *is* angry about Amanda’s behavior toward her, or could it be that Selkie’s main concern is — as she says — just that Amanda is monopolizing Todd and Todd is letting it happen?
Just to be sure, I went back and looked at page 761 — the only one where we see Amanda and Selkie together since the art show — and of the 5 days depicted in Todd’s house, I only see one case (panels #3-5) where Amanda is definitely bullying Selkie. In the other days, it seems to me that Selkie is fuming not over having being bullied or not feeling safe, but over having to share her Dad and her home with someone she doesn’t like. When I first read that page, my takeaway was “Selkie’s mad that she has to share her Dad and her home with Amanda because she hates Amanda, and Todd’s failure to notice this is making the situation worse”; I was rather taken aback when I saw comments suggesting the root cause was Selkie feeling unsafe in her home, and I still think that’s a bit of an excessive leap. Being ignored — or feeling as if being ignored, whether it’s true or not — by a parent for weeks on end is more than enough to build up the head of steam Selkie’s now letting out; and if that is the case, then Todd’s dialogue here is exactly what Selkie wants to hear (well, aside from the part about having to still share Todd with Amanda). Don’t forget that up until Amanda came into the picture, Selkie spent a lot of enjoyable time with Todd, and that doesn’t all go out the window in just a few weeks. If anything, Selkie probably *wants* Todd to fix things up, so she ought to be delighted that he says he will.
So I’m wondering if maybe there aren’t some unwarranted assumptions being made by the audience here.
Uh.
You seem to suggest that you can only feel unsafe about potential bullying WHILE THE BULLYING IS HAPPENING.
Which is not remotely how it works???
If you are around a wild animal, you are going to be cautious to PREVENT it attacking, not only WHILE it attacks, that’s how self preservation instinct works. That’s how feeling safe/unsafe works, it’s about POTENTIAL harm, about DANGER.
And Selkie damn well KNOWS she’s in danger around Amanda. She might have bullied her ~only once~ on the panels we’ve been shown, but it’s a continuation of a years-long pattern.
Selkie is on her guard around Amanda. She can’t let it down, she can’t relax. Even IN HER OWN HOME she has to remain vigilant and cautious, lest Amanda pounce on the weakness and hurt her.
This is what this is about.
And yes, Selkie’s understanding of the problem in the situation is not that Amanda should stop being a bully, it’s that Amanda should stop being in her house. She can’t make all the connections, she can’t articulate what’s going wrong, she just knows that she feels good when Amanda is not there and bad when Amanda is there. She knows that she’s worried about her dad taking Amanda’s side over hers, but she can’t make the connections we adults can about ‘because Amanda is a bully and good at making adults be on her side’. From her point of view, her dad should be on her side not because she’s right and Amanda’s wrong (which she knows is true but hasn’t helped a lot so far), her dad should be on her side because he’s HER dad.
Selkie expresses it as sibling jealousy, and understands it as sibling jealousy, and is very eagerly trustful of her dad when he says he’ll fix it. You are right in that accusations of Dave as writing this unrealistically are bullshit.
But she IS unsafe. There are no assumptions that we make that aren’t supported by years of personal experience.
WHY. WHY.
Todd, why the HELL are you asking someone to get along with the person who constantly teases them and calls them friggin racial slurs? YOU ARE A FUCKING MORON.
Cause he has no choice in the matter? He cant abandon either child, and he cant clone himself so each child gets one.
Taking the best of a bad situation doesn’t make you a moron, just makes it life.
There are *definitely* better ways to handle this than telling a bullying victim she needs to put up with the bully in her space and that’s just the way it is.
This is not a simple case of two siblings wanting more 1on1 daddy time than logistics will allow. I think a lot of the frustration comes from people having had irl bullying experiences, and seeing someone who owes the victim their support effectively telling her to shut up and put up held up as some sort of super reasonable paragon is unrealistic and remarkably dismissive. Todd right now is not being a good father. Or a good person. And if that’s the sort of narrative Dave is interested in spinning, I’m likely not going to stick around to read it; there’s enough of that victim blaming bullshit in the real world, why would I want to read about it in fiction too?
Because it is Dave spinning it, and you just “know” he’s going to put an intelligent twist in to it? That’s a question, based on previous experience, not sarcasm nor rhetorical. You don’t sound like you believe Dave can do that? I think he can, AND have a happy, or at least a satisfying result.
Honestly, I literally can’t envisage any plot twists to this that would make the lack of acknowledgment and validation he’s shown Selkie over her bullying ok, or Selkie’s blithe acceptance of it reasonable and realistic as a response.
My husband was the victim of this sort of bullying as a kid. It admitted extended waaay into adolescence, but he had parental support through it and still attempted suicide twice. I have literally no idea how we are supposed to believe Selkie’s response to this without a cop out of Sarnothi brains being built differently.
A good analogy that more people might understand would be imagine this is a comic where a character has depression. We see them struggling with it over the course of several chapters. Eventually, they hit rock bottom and withdraw from the world, unable to function. To everyone reading who has experience with depression, it’s blatantly obvious they need counselling, help and possibly medication. Instead, another character barges in and effectively does the sergeant major impression, screaming in their face and using threats, humiliation and tough love to motivate them back to ‘normality’. Irl if someone did this, it’s a really quick way to push someone to a crisis point and about the worst thing you can do for someone with depression. In the comic, however, the depressed character reacts perfectly to it, jumps up and immediately becomes a healthy and productive member of society once more. The readers are horrified and alienated, because the writer has just thrown a storyline they were heavily invested in under the bus in favour of quick and unrealistic wish fulfilment.
Same here. ‘Just talk it out, they’ll be reasonable if you just speak to them about it!’ Is a myth that is the primary reason people go back to abusive situations, be that jobs, families or relationships; the belief that there are magic words somewhere that will cause the abuser to start treating you like a human being again. And it is just that; a myth. There are no magic words. It doesn’t work that way. To watch this myth get propagated in a storyline about how a father is supposed to be protecting his child is just horrifying, and on top of that, as I have said with Selkie’s response, badly written. Were I just a casual reader, I’d have dropped it already. I’m still here because of sentimental investment, but that won’t take long to fade at this point. This is now….train wreck territory, tbh.
he cannot abandon either child
Yes he bloody well can.
He desperately doesn’t want to. In a remotely fair universe he shouldn’t have to. But if Amanda absolutely refuses to stop bullying Selkie every chance she gets no matter what her parents say, then he’s going to have to put his foot down and tell her that until she can learn to act like a decent human being around Selkie it’s best if she doesn’t come around anymore.
It’s a nice ideal to not want to hurt either side, but when one child is bullying another, “not taking sides” means you’re either tacitly endorsing the status quo or are just too spineless to do something about it.
“All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing.” doesn’t just apply to big evils.
There is a very complex and dangerous dynamic going on. Give too much attention to Amanda, then Amanda gets to act and tease that she is the real child and Selkie is a mistake. Give too much to Selkie, then Selkie is the chosen child and Amanda is the throw away obligation.
Unfortunately this isn’t something the parents can truly resolve, it has to be the kids that come to some kind of truce.
But they have fought for a long time, there is little trust and a lot of sensitive feelings on both side.
Its like trying to defuse a landmine with a time bomb.
I think it is possible that things can be resolved between the two girls, but with the complicated situation they are in, it definitely won’t be easy.
At this point, I think they need a therapist for the girls to help sort things out.
In real life, they’d need one.
They won’t get one, though, because they are characters in a story, and a therapist would be cheating. As readers, we want to see these kids grow and learn from life events. No, it won’t be easy; if it were, there’d be no story.
But, because it is a story, there is an implicit promise that after the hard stuff, there will be a satisfying resolution.
A therapist is not cheating, because a therapist is not magic. A therapist is not going to help here easily. An arc about a therapist trying to resolve this would actually be interesting, thinking about it…
I think a lot of discontent in the comments is that it really feels like Amanda is just never getting called on her treatment of Selkie. In a normal situation, what Todd is asking is reasonable. But it’s clear he has no idea of the extent of Amanda’s bullying. Different situation. And no matter what, at no time can I recall Amanda getting really penalized or corrected on her behavior to Selkie, or any sign of remorse. Way too much of her behavior is excused by her painful background, methinks. That getting to be irritating as a reader, as it would be upsetting for Selkie. Hopefully this storyline gets into that. And…let’s not forget that just maybe it’s in Selkie’s head that Amanda’s mom came back for her…
Dave, it’s Christmas in your storyline. Give us a Christmas turnaround. Todd actually sees what Selkie is going through; Selkie continues to be assured of Todd’s love and the safety of her home; Todd and Andi get Amanda the professional help she needs in order to come to terms with her past.
I would like to point out that a lot of the people complaining about Todd not knowing about the abuse are the same people who were complaining that Todd didn’t have any flaws. Now he has a flaw, so you want to stop reading the comic?
His flaw is that he’s oblivious to interpersonal things. He doesn’t know about the bullying. Remember, he identifies with Amanda. He was the abused-kid-turned-bully. Not the victim of the abused-kid-turned-bully.
As for Selkie being calmed by this, she’s hoping that the phone call to Andi will make things better. She’s had years of dealing with this. I’ve been in her place, and I learned that “We’ll deal with this” means to shut up, let them deal with it, and don’t make a fuss unless whatever they’ve planned hasn’t resulted in anything.
Also, everyone is pointing out that Amanda has invaded Selkie’s safe space. When you have siblings, you do NOT get the whole house away from them. You get your bedroom. If you share the bedroom, you get your half of the bedroom. Selkie has her bedroom. She doesn’t have to share it. She has her whole bedroom as a place to get away from Amanda. I doubt she had that much in the group home. My vague memories from when I was 5 are of a giant room filled with rows of bunkbeds, and only older kids allowed to sleep on the top bunk, leaving us younger ones as fair game.
Dave, I have not lost faith in your writing ability.
Amanda does. Amanda gets her OWN apartment, a mother AND a father, and gets to invade Selkie’s space. And its not about having to share, its about having to share with someone who has tormented her for years and the adults, especially Todd, being completely obtuse about it, focusing on Amanda at the expense of Selkie.
I feel like there’s a willingness to demonize Amanda, maybe just because of some assumption that any story has to have a villain. But as we’ve seen several times in this comic (Truck, Agent Whassisname), characters who come off as villains at first turn out to have reasons for what they do. Sometimes we as readers might not AGREE with those reasons, but they have them.
Amanda’s not a villain either. Amanda’s a third-grader who has grown up in a group home/orphanage and in an abusive home that rejected her. Amanda’s not stabbing Selkie with heated pins behind Todd’s back, she’s not trying to Bad-Seed Selkie into the grave. What’s she doing? Well, from what we see she’s engaging in some sibling-baiting. She’s trying to get as much positive attention from her Brand New Daddy as she can manage. She’s quite likely trying to manipulate things so that she looks good in every situation and maybe set up Selkie so that Selkie looks bad.
Why? Not because she’s evil, but because this is the behavior that Amanda has been systematically taught her entire life. At the orphanage, every time we see a potential parent show up, the kids come running out and try to be as cute and appealing as possible, talk up their accomplishments, try and be the bestest one so that they get picked to have a home and a family. In the foster/adoptive home that Amanda was in, the model she saw was that the ‘real’ kids tormented the adopted kid and were never punished for it. These are the models she has to work with.
Should Todd have noticed? Maybe, maybe not. He’s been a parent for less than a year, and a parent of multiple kids (as far as he knows) for only a couple of months. And both Amanda and Selkie have their own reasons for not wanting their behavior to escalate until the grown-up pays attention.
Basically, I don’t think anybody’s the Bad Guy here. Just people with issues acting in the way their issues dictate.
Amanda’s behavior goes beyond your typical grade school level sometimes you aren’t nice to a kid, its a targeted, long running campaign of terror against Selkie. She delights in causing Selkie pain. She, for no reason other than that she wanted to, convinced a new student at school that Selkie was a monster. She delighted in Selkie’s shirtless situation. She continously and constantly refers to Selkie in terms to make her a “thing” not a person. She gets her friends to gang up on Selkie, she was even partly responsible for Truck going after Selkie in the snowball fight (credit to her for recognizing she’d gone too far then and trying to stop it).
But the worse part is how she seems to have faced pretty much zero consequences for her reign of terror towards Selkie. The issue is less about what Amanda has done and continues to do, its that Todd, as Selkie’s gaurdian has COMPLETELY dropped the ball on this situation. He KNEW that Amanda bullied Selkie and the most he has done is tell BOTH girls they need to try to get along. He has made (so far as we know) zero effort to learn what was happening. At least Heather’s father tried to stand up for his daughter against the bullying (albeit in not a very mature fashion). Before Todd knew he had any connection to Amanda and definitely since, he has done little to nothing to recognize what Selkie is going through and try to help with it. Contrast that with the way he has made a strong effort to help Amanda, even though its come at the expense of his other daughter. I’m not expecting him to be a psychic and immediately understand whats going on but he at least needs to TRY to make an effort to dig a little deeper.
Topping it all off is the way in which he speaks to Selkie above and she suddenly is ok with everything. Not only does he again respond as if each girl is equally responsible (which is fair in his mind but only because he hasn’t got a clue whats going on and has failed to try and find out) but she, unbelievably in my opinion, suddenly is ok with it. It’s either sloppy writing (sorry Dave) or heartbreaking because she believes that this is the best she can get and is ok with that!
Its not about Amanda being irredeemably bad, its about the adults abysmal handling of the situation.
Kinda coming at this from two angles, so bear with me?
First, from a storyteller/reader perspective, perfect characters are boring. Characters who make mistakes, cause messes, flounder their way through them, claw back up out of them, and end up stronger and wiser at the end of it are interesting and engaging. If the grown-ups in this story (mainly Todd and Andi in the current moment) are screwing up right now, that creates dramatic tension, moves the story forward, and gives them the potential for growth and change that wouldn’t be there if they all responded with perfect appropriateness and total sensitivity to every scenario.
Second, from an in-story perspective, I honestly don’t read Todd as dropping the ball as badly as all that. Is he screwing up some? Absolutely. He’s new at this, and the best-meaning parents in the world screw up sometimes. I don’t know any parent, anywhere, who doesn’t have some story of some point when they did the exact wrong thing and felt awful later when they figured it out. But I don’t think that Amanda and Selkie’s antagonism to one another is necessarily beyond a grade-school level of nastiness, and I don’t think Todd has any reason to think that it is. When things have gotten Really Bad (the shirt-stealing, the snowball fight), Todd went up in parentally-appropriate flames and stomped in to address the situation. This? It’s rivalry coming to a head, and it does need to be addressed, and he’s trying his best to do so within the limits of a complicated situation that he doesn’t entirely understand.
And Selkie’s capitulation? I think it comes from trust in Todd. Dad said he loves her (if not in those words, in the promise that she’s always his daughter), and that they’re going to work together to fix things, and she believes him because every time he’s seen a problem in her life and said he’d fix it, he has. No, the problem isn’t solved. But from her perspective, Dad now knows the problem is there and he’s on the case, which is better than she’s had for the last few weeks, and that feels better.
Will this whole situation blow up spectacularly over Christmas dinner? Oh, probably. That’s how stories work. But I do think Todd is trying, and I do think that Selkie has faith in her Dad when she can see past her hurt and anger, and I do think that everybody in the situation, including Andi and Amanda, are doing their best within the limitations of their own issues.
I think a lot of us are forgetting that Amanda and Selkie are children. We can’t hold Amanda 100% accountable for her actions. Adults have failed her all her life and she’s never had a positive role model in her life or even a constant adult figure to guide her. The best she has is Lillian and though she has tried, she too has failed Amanda numerous times unintentionally. She has good intentions for Amanda and she defends Amanda when she can, but she isn’t Amanda’s parent or guardian. She merely watched over her as much as time would allow, which was not nearly enough. She too, has failed to get her bullying of Selkie under control even though she’s aware of it. She knew how badly Amanda’s trauma was and tried to deal with it herself as best she could, but she should have sought out other measures. She was well aware she was not enough help for Amanda, she knew she didn’t have the time or resources to help Amanda. That’s why she gave her to Andi so readily, because she thinks Andi can fix what she could not.
The problem is, Amanda has been neglected and abused for years. By ADULTS. Physically, mentally, emotionally. She’s 9. She ‘knows’ better, but at the same time, she doesn’t really. Amanda has been more abused than Selkie. Now, this isn’t a competition on who’s abuse is worse, but Selkie was never physically hit, Selkie was never told by someone she thought loved and cared for her that she was trash and a liar. It astonishes me how so many people overlook this. Amanda is what she is because of the adults around her. She didn’t set out to be this way. She clearly hates how people view her and think she’s a monstrous, bad, evil, hopeless child. It HURTS her. She just keeps it up because she thinks she will ALWAYS be pegged as the bad, problem child. She will ALWAYS, be blamed. She will never escape the accusations, so why not make them a reality? It’s her own twisted way to protect herself as well as mock her abusers by giving them what they all think she is.
Why does no one defend Amanda? Why do we all brush off HER abuse? We make excuses for the orphanage who failed to protect her, failed to help her heal and yet.. we all so easily demonize Amanda as exactly what the rest of the adults do. A problem child with no hope. We all so easily write off her problems and call her a monster and other terrible things and that she’s hopeless and doesn’t deserve a chance… No one has truly tried to dig to the bottom of her abuse or talk to her about her history with Selkie. Adults are still failing her. Still ignoring and avoiding her issues. Until her PARENTS address her issues and WORK THROUGH them with her, she will not get better and continue to torment Selkie.
But don’t blame Amanda, don’t demonize a 9 year old as a lost cause. She is NOT hopeless. She has PLENTY of time to become a lovely person who is kind and protective of Selkie. Don’t do to her what adults all her life have done. Don’t write off her issues as less than important than Selkie’s, just because she’s not the ‘main’ character in this story. That’s what got us in this situation in the first place.
And honestly, when I see people tear Amanda down as a witch and not worth the time, it sickens me deeply. She f*cking 9 and abused. How heartless can you get?
Its not about demonizing Amanda, its about recognizing how horrible her behavior has been towards Selkie and that Todd in particular and the adults in general are failing right now. If anything Todd’s focus on helping Amanda is painful to watch because he’s so oblivious to Selkie’s suffering.
Suggesting that Amanda’s behavior be recognized and addressed, suggesting that Todd not forget about Selkie or what has happened to her at the hands of Amanda is not the same as saying Amanda is a lost cause or that she should be tossed by the wayside. Of course its terrible that Amanda has been through tough times but lots of people go through tough times and it may explain bad behavior but it doesn’t mean it should be tolerated/ignored. And of course Todd (and more importantly Andi) should work with Amanda to help her deal with the hurt she has suffered in the past. But the problem is the way Todd is approaching it now is at Selkie’s expense. He is prioritizing one daughter over the other in the worst possible way AND still failing to recognize the fundemental issues, still acting as if BOTH girls are equally responsible for what has occurred.
Consider the differences here:
Amanda now has a mother AND a father. Selkie only has a father.
Amanda has her own space at home AND can basically invade Selkie’s space. Selkie no longer has a safe space of her own.
Amanda hits her friend and the friend apologizes to her. Amanda gets drunk and gets ice cream. Amanda abuses Selkie and occasionally gets told to be nice.
Selkie gets her home invaded by her tormenter and is treated as if she is equally at fault for being abused.
If Amanda’s issues and treatment of Selkie are not handled all that will teach her is that its OK to do these sorts of things to people and that its ok to treat Selkie like she’s not a person. How is that good for her? If she is to be redeemed it can’t be done in a way that whitewashes her past and continuing bad behavior.
I don’t want Amanda tortured or thrown out or anything, but I want the adults to start behaving in a more responsible and appropriate fashion.
I agree that the adults need to speak with Amanda about her behavior otherwise she’s just gonna keep doing it, but it certainly is not her fault that she’s turned out this way. I disagree with the whole, got drunk, gets ice cream bullshit. She did not purposely set out to drink alcohol. She doesn’t deserve a punishment for accidentally consuming alcohol because there were adults present who weren’t mentally sufficient in supervising alcohol. That’s not on Amanda. The fights, the name calling, the tormenting, those are all things that need to be handled, BUT I think that they need to get to the root of HER problems before they can even dive into that. Once everyone understands what Amanda went through and her thought process, then and ONLY then, will Amanda be able comprehend and understand why she’s wrong. Then they can start holding her accountable for her actions MOVING FORWARD. Do not punish her for what’s happened in the past. Explain why she was wrong, but do not suddenly ground her for prior years bad behavior. If she keeps acting out against Selkie, then of course, by all means, hold her accountable for her PRESENT actions.
Amanda’s behavior indeed needs to be addrssed, but not in the way everyone wants it. Which is for her to be burned at the stake, told she’s trash and a monster, smack her and ground her. That’s wrong.
I disagree with the idea that Amanda’s actions are not her fault. Its not her fault that bad things happened to her, and its fair to say that those contributed, but she is also making choices and my frustration is with the lack of adults doing anything about those choices.
As for the alcohol situation, she was explicitly told NOT to drink them and she did it anyway. She disobeyed the adults who were in charge (repeatedly apparently). (Aside: I find that whole situation even less believable than the above comic, there is just no reasonable situation in which a child would consume large quantities of wine when they were expecting grape juice, the first natural reaction woudl have been to spit it out or if she chugged the first cup to not go for a second one when it BURNED going down. A more believable scenario would be one akin to Anne of Green Gables who got drunk on, IIRC a cherry cordial, a very sweet liqour that masks the alcohol. If a kid is going to accidentally get drunk its going to have to be in such a way that they don’t realize they are consuming alcohol. The only alternative is she’s had alcohol before and knew what she was doing enough not to care).
And why should she not be held accountable for bad actions in the past? Whats the statute of limitations for her crimes then? A week? A month? A year? And I have yet to see anyone including myself call for her to be treated like trash or burned at the stake or any such nonesense. You are setting up a strawman there. We are saying that Todd shouldn’t simply ignore/remain oblivious to whats happening, that he needs to get to the bottom of the situation and make it absolutely clear in whatever way is appropriate to Amanda that the specific things she has been doing to Selkie are unacceptable. It can’t be a simple “be nice”. It needs to be “You have to treat her as a person. You can’t tell people she’s a monster. You can’t call her derogatory names. You can’t torment her. You don’t have to be her best friend, but you can’t be her worst enemy”. If that involves other punishments like grounding or what not to get the point across fine, but it needs to happen or else Todd has failed Selkie as a parent.
Further the frustration is less at Amanda, who yes is a child, and at Todd for failing to do a reasonable effort to consider Selkie and protect her. We know he was aware of at least some of Amanda’s bullying and yet he incorporated Amanda in to their life without any significant effort to ensure that Selkie’s needs were also being met and Selkie was safe too. In his zeal to connect with his biological daughter he has neglected his adopted daughter. He needs to fix that, and so far, based on the above, he is falling far short of where he needs to be. I don’t expect him to be perfect, none of us are, and it would be a boring story if he was, but I do expect him to be more aware than he is being. Yet that hope I keep having throughout this whole arc is time and again failing to come to pass.
I have to agree with David, but I also agree there’s a lot of Amanda demonizing. I think it’s safe to say the adults are not being perfect parents here, but that is what we are supposed to see as Marie broke the 4th wall a little (gently) chewing out Todd for not noticing things before. I’ve kind of noticed there is this theme of growing and being a work in progress that applies to both the children and parents in this comic—even when it comes to secondary characters and “bad guys.” It seems like the children have parents who try to be better people (for their kids) and as a result—grow into better parents. I think we are supposed to see Todd’s flaws here so we get to see him overcome some of them. Same goes all the more so with Andi as she has been living with emotional abuse from her mom and stuck in a state of adolescence until recently. I’m very interested to see the direction it takes. Dave has never disappointed with stories that are heart-warming, but also unpredictable (in a good way that stays true to the characters).
Going to go make some popcorn now. 🙂
I have some Parmesan Cheese for the popcorn, have you tried it that way? I’m enjoying watching this play out, unlike the “Other Comic” which I had to drop out of cause the sadism started poking my hot buttons. This is the kinda comic I can watch, with my feet hassock and a bowl of popcorn in my lap. (A smaller bowl than when I was young, though) *Sigh*
Yeah, gonna see how this plays out. Want som Parmesan cheese for yur popcorn? Not as tasty as butter and salt, but the cheese has some salt, and I gotta watch this play out. Todd, wake up and smell the hummus. Dave? I’m behind you, er, … (Creepy) … I’m with you, here!
This isn’t like that (Other Comic with the girl) web comic, where the abuse got so egregious it hit my hot button, and I had to drop it from my list.
I do want to be clear, while I have my complaints about the current direction things are going, that this is Dave’s comic and he has every right to take it in whatever direction he wants. He doesn’t “owe” me or anyone else a specific outcome. Its ok for a creator to go one direction and some fans to go another. You can’t please all the people all the time after all. I may not like what happens, I may not stick around for what happens, but in the end its his story to tell, if I wanted to tell a story of my own I could start my own comic 🙂
I would like to absolutely back you up. I am complaining a lot because this jars very badly with me. But it’s Dave’s comic and he shouldn’t change it for anyone. Some will like it and some will hate it, and people will read or not as a response, but he owes no one anything. I’ve got my own creative areas, and criticise them people may, but I’d be furious if someone told me what I ought to do with them.
I’m still reading, for the record. While it is clear that the Amanda issue needs to be addressed, the storyline is still young. As for people crying that Dave has seriously dropped the ball: Even good writers fumble occasionally. The great ones know how to salvage the situation.
But that’s why webcomics are such a neat medium! You get INSTANT feedback. 🙂
Yea, personally I wouldn’t mind if Todd decides he wants nothing to do with Amanda after all and she got written out off the comic, not going to stop reading because of this though.
A lot of people seem to be confusing the Amanda from the first few strips with the Amanda from the more recent strips she no longer has a small gang that teams up against Selkie or has,’t any one noticed that. also more recently she seems be an understanding form Amanda that her behaviour up to now is wrong and that it has hurt her. we do not know exactly what has happened in the last few months of the strip but hostility between them must have lessened because it was pretty obvious before and now Tood cant see it not that he is the best in that department. and finally Selkie response must be taken into the fact that with Todd’s help twice now she has defeated a bully . Heather now a friend and Truck who offered friendship maybe t is believing in that track recorded of her Dad to fix problems.
please excuse my grammar and spelling.
Anyone remember this?
https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie499/
But for Amanda it is enough “to be on the same page”? I’m pretty disappointed to be honest. Why does he believe that Amanda doesn’t need professional help, too? Especially after all the things that she have done?
I also don’t buy Selkies reaction here. One thing I love about this comic is, that the children are really appear as being exactly that. But in this case it’s not only an unfitting reaction for Selkie, but for a child in general.
This might be the first page I’ve ever hated, in terms of writing. It’s way, way, WAY too fast. Selkie honestly deserves to be upset, and I kind of feel like Todd robbed her of it. I remember when I was a kid, and my cousin would have tantrums in the car. My Aunt would roll down the window, grab the air, and say “I threw it out of the car. It’s gone. You can’t be upset about it anymore.” Despite also feeling frustrated at my cousin, I also felt sorry for him. You’re allowed to feel things to their full extent, or they just sit in you and fester (The film Inside Out does a great job of showing this).
Todd just cut off not only Selkie’s feelings, but also the communication between them about Amanda.
As a reader, I also feel like I’ve been cut off. This is incredibly unrealistic for a comic that normally nails emotions.
“I will settle, in the short term,” said Dumbledore, with a bite of impatience in his voice, “for a lack of open hostility.”