Their expressions are a bit confusing…but now I’m thinking maybe Andi either overreacted or deliberately used the yelling as an opportunity to temporarily “escape” her situation with Mari. Possibly it was number one (unless we are going to see a big reveal that Andi *is* in fact still a creepy manipulator), but Mari and Theo will see it as number 2.
She shouldn’t really be annoyed by the mess. Andi literally thought Amanda was either in danger or having a freak out and ran off to make sure everything was alright. It’s not like she threw it on the ground on purpose. I’m sure she’d clean it up once she realized what she did. Being mad about the mess is silly.
Theo’s expression confuses me. He seemed to be the most accepting of the situation, so I can’t really tell what this look is? Pity, perhaps? I knowing look that says, ‘I know Mari laid it heavy on you’ or is he mildly upset that Andi came out looking so happy? I just don’t know.
Antoine seems to either mask his feelings towards Andi well with a happy face or he’s a lot more.forgiving than the others are.
His personality leads me to think he’s a lot more forgiving. Now Marta on the other hand, that chewing out might be interesting…she can be really fiery and sassy after all
I personally always glare at the mess I have to clean up. So damned annoying they are they deserve a glare. She might be doing the same thing. “Well this sucks, time to clean.” *Glare*
I think Theo knows what conversation has been going on in the kitchen, thus the look of pity.
As for Antoine, I think he’s putting on a brave face for the kids, because as an uncle, I can tell you, this spinning them around and telling them about his football practice, it’s running interference. He’s entertaining them so they don’t hear something little ears aren’t supposed to hear.
looks as if gramps is giving her the cold shoulder treatment….and i can totally see mari shoving that broom into her hands to clean up her own mess – both literally and figuratively.
I think it’s more that he’s wondering how she’s so together & not currently breaking down, as he (probably) has an idea as to what Mari’s plan was for her & Andi’s kitchen time. I think it’s that he’s wondering if she’s completely indifferent to everything that was just being talked about, if it hasn’t happened yet, or if she’s shaken it off after the rushing out to check in Amanda, having worry immediately replaced with relief & holding the feels from before back (if only temporarily). Theo doesn’t seem the “cold shoulder” type, and we’ve seen him be pretty civil with Andi with all of the mess.
But yeah, Mari it totally showing that broom into Andi’s hands, unless Andi steps up & asks for it right off the bat (which might give Mari pause). We went from messy to absurd & are heading into either messier or the eye of the storm (or the calm before the REAL storm?)
Speaking of which, she did recover from the “I’m literally awful” and crying breakdown pretty quickly. I could see Mari questioning her sincerity if she just walks in with a smile acting all casual again now.
Normally I would completely agree. There is a part of me that says comic timing, and Dave may or may not want to drill down on tears instead of moving forward with story.
Yah comic timing and real life time are two different things plus we went from crying to panic to relief and a bit of a laugh. Mari face speaks more of ‘look at this mess on my clean floors’.
My bets are Andi goes “all shit! My bad let me get that” when she sees the urn.”with maybe a comment of “girls are good.”
I mean its kinda small and hard to see but coming in to the kitchen again Andi has tensed up seeing the mess. Im betting she goes straight for it to clean up.
Eh. Speaking from experience – I can remember going from “puddle of tears” breakdown to “Mama Bear” mode equally quickly, back when my kids were little. Adrenaline is an amazing thing.
While there are times when I have trouble controlling my emotions enough to participate in normal life (without everyone asking what my emotions are about), generally I can manage to go from crying over something (whether a real negative, or like tearjerker shows I’ve been watching) to “act like a sunny normal person” within the space of a room, if I have a chance to wipe my eyes and other people don’t examine me too closely (which is generally the case with the family members I interact with — more concerned with what they’re doing than with analyzing me).
So although yeah, it’s kinda weird that a person can bounce to sunny after awful, I have to say it’s not UNREALISTIC. It does, however, call into question a few things.
It speaks to a person who is used to putting on a sunny face — that is, a manipulator, a person schooled in giving people an impression different from what is actually going on inside them. This doesn’t HAVE to indicate a deficient character (people in abusive situations learn to avoid triggering the abusers, and get used to faking it out of survival instinct; people who are dealing with severe circumstances but have to put on a brave front for the kids / customers and coworkers / etc. can also develop similar strategies) — and there are many cases where you can legitimately hide your circumstances and internal world from other people because they don’t have a right to know (and/or the knowledge being out there would make things a lot worse for those involved).
But even though it doesn’t HAVE to indicate a deficient character… it certainly puts the manipulator outside the realm of “inherently trustworthy.” The kind of background that creates an efficient liar (via the need to frequently lie) is not a good one. (Exceptions can be made for those in acting professions, who learn the skill for another reason.) And you have to question whether they’re also lying to people who deserve to know the truth… and whether it’s become default to lie so that even when the truth ought to happen, it doesn’t.
I once heard that a certain religious group held to the principle that “you can lie to those outside our group, because they don’t deserve to know the truth.” That has made me completely unwilling to trust the words of anyone in that group (which makes it difficult to learn accurate information about them… that may be the point, for them).
Really? To me, her body language totally says “UH-OH.” Not anger — dismay.
I think we’re meant to laugh here. As others have said, it’s comic irony. A Gilligan’s Island moment. No, of course she doesn’t want to clean up messes, who does? but she’s going to have to. And cleaning up those wood ashes from the kitchen floor is pretty good symbolism for what she’s going to have to do on other levels.
Look at the angle of those fists. That’s not wanna-fight. It’s wanna-be-flight-but-can’t. It’s a teeth-sucking “Damn, now I’ve made everything worse and I’m going to have to wade back in.”
Clenched fists and frowny faces can easily be a sign of fear. Chances are, though, Andi is both pissed and scared. Mari looks like she wants to smack her with that broom.
You know, after thinking about this for a couple comics’ worth, and getting a response from our host on a question that was bugging me, I’m going to have to go ahead and retract a comment I made.
I said it seemed like Todd’s parents were being hypocritical, though I don’t think that’s the word I wanted, exactly.
I was under the impression that it had been most of a year since they found out about Amanda (I was confused by a comment Todd made in a recent strip referring to “nine months ago”) but David Warren confirmed that it had been about a month-and-a-half or so.
Their continuous anger and pain makes _much_ more sense to me in that context, as this is far closer in time than it felt to me. It also makes Mari’s retaliation far more understandable.
I have to admit, I also neglected something I usually keep in mind, re: Monty Oum’s statement on sorrow, and I reckon it applies to fictional characters, as well as real people (“Everyone is entitled to their own sorrow, for the heart has no metric or unit of measure”).
That is a phenomenal quote, and does seem to fit more than a few people here. It’s easy to get confused on pacing, I forgot they only knew for barely over a month as well.
I’m quite used to webcomic time, so I was well aware of it being within the same wintery season, definitely not several months down the road. There’s a number of plot points that would’ve moved on by now if it were several months later. Plus, we’d be skipping most of Andi’s getting to know Amanda (and vice versa), which is the ripest time for both comedy and drama.
That does make some of these comments more understandable. Still not accurate (“It’s been a year, can’t you give it a rest?” isn’t much better than “It’s been a month”), but more understandable. I was wondering why some comments seemed to take for granted they should be over it by now, and wondering why they weren’t.
I have to apologize to all readers, and PROFUSELY to Dave, but upon my first reading, I thought Mari intended to BEAT Andi with the broom. 🙁
It makes a heck of a LOT more sense that Mari has either just cleaned up the “ashes” or wants Andi to do it. 😉
Again, I know I may be in a minority here, and I’m certainly not championing Andi as the Mother of the Year, or anything. Yet…I don’t think she’s doing so horribly. She is in an environment where *literally* every person except Amanda is suspicious of her at best and antagonistic at worst (and her bond with Amanda is still tenative). She showed at least half-decent manners by offering to help Mari in the kitchen and make a rum cake. She showed (IHMO) genuine fear for Amanda when she heard her scream, and now has asked Theo to be careful; she obviously now knows Amanda at least well enough to know that she can get an upsetted stomach easily.
No, I don’t like her “flip” attitude but she is still figuring stuff out, trying to make up for some MAJOR-LEAGUE mistakes, and negotiate her new identity as Amanda’s care-taker. And I am willing to bet that both Selkie and Amanda will consider this a GREAT Christmas; all of the adults (Amanda included) are going a very good job of keeping them out of the “drama.”
That’s not “making up for” anything. Anybody can speak a form of words. Words alone are valueless. Andi will have to live her “making up for her mistake” day in and day out, for a long, long time.
She’s never going to get absolution, but she may be able to earn a grudging admission from the Smiths that she is trying to do things right now.
As I read somewhere recently: “Don’t be sorry. Be better.”
Words are NOT valueless, words having meaning, they can have a huge impact both positive and negative.
Word’s ALONE may not help, but an apology is absolutely necessary when you wrong someone, it shows that you acknowledge what you’ve done. Andi has yet to do that, she started to say that she feels bad, she started to say she did a bad thing, but she has yet to say anything about regretting hurting THEM.
So no, I completely disagree that saying sorry isn’t important, or worse that its meaningless. Its a start, its a small part of an overall effort, but an important one.
Having dealt with multiple relatives who refuse to admit wrong, I concur that words NEED to be included (at least most of the time; I’m sure exceptions exist).
If you’re unwilling or unable to say you’re at fault, to say you’re sorry, to apologize for what you’ve done and/or verbally worry over the status of your victim, there is going to be something lacking in your actions.
From reading a lot of books on domestic abuse, I’m familiar with the common tactic of “abuse, then act nice and make up and try to get back to a happy relationship, so you are free to abuse again.” And yeah, a lot of times that comes with false words (“I’m sorry, I’ve changed, I’ll never do it again”), sure.
But those times when a person wants to “make nice” without admitting (verbally) to wrong-doing are disturbing, because they suggest that the wrong-doing is a little thing that people can just get over without acknowledging. The person who did wrong has a social obligation to admit it and own up to it — not the only thing they should do, but an important factor.
and now we get to wait and see the flood of people that get mad at her for dropping the fake ashes because it is some sort of emotional manipulation or another like she was faking being concerned for her kid and dropped the urn so that the grandmother would think she was a caring parent and get all emotional having to clean up the fake ashes or something.
Except for that mess. That one’s a given.
Interesting take of a Gilligan cut. xD
Theo looks done. And Todd seems confused.
Welp. Mari’s doin what I would do. Annoyed but still.
I mean she looks annoyed. Obviously cuz,Andi accidentally made the mess. She should sweep it up. Or at least hold the dustpan.
It was a bad pun. They might be reacting to that.
XD Maybe. Though Theo’s puns are a little worse.
Their expressions are a bit confusing…but now I’m thinking maybe Andi either overreacted or deliberately used the yelling as an opportunity to temporarily “escape” her situation with Mari. Possibly it was number one (unless we are going to see a big reveal that Andi *is* in fact still a creepy manipulator), but Mari and Theo will see it as number 2.
She shouldn’t really be annoyed by the mess. Andi literally thought Amanda was either in danger or having a freak out and ran off to make sure everything was alright. It’s not like she threw it on the ground on purpose. I’m sure she’d clean it up once she realized what she did. Being mad about the mess is silly.
Theo’s expression confuses me. He seemed to be the most accepting of the situation, so I can’t really tell what this look is? Pity, perhaps? I knowing look that says, ‘I know Mari laid it heavy on you’ or is he mildly upset that Andi came out looking so happy? I just don’t know.
Antoine seems to either mask his feelings towards Andi well with a happy face or he’s a lot more.forgiving than the others are.
His personality leads me to think he’s a lot more forgiving. Now Marta on the other hand, that chewing out might be interesting…she can be really fiery and sassy after all
I personally always glare at the mess I have to clean up. So damned annoying they are they deserve a glare. She might be doing the same thing. “Well this sucks, time to clean.” *Glare*
I think Theo knows what conversation has been going on in the kitchen, thus the look of pity.
As for Antoine, I think he’s putting on a brave face for the kids, because as an uncle, I can tell you, this spinning them around and telling them about his football practice, it’s running interference. He’s entertaining them so they don’t hear something little ears aren’t supposed to hear.
looks as if gramps is giving her the cold shoulder treatment….and i can totally see mari shoving that broom into her hands to clean up her own mess – both literally and figuratively.
I think it’s more that he’s wondering how she’s so together & not currently breaking down, as he (probably) has an idea as to what Mari’s plan was for her & Andi’s kitchen time. I think it’s that he’s wondering if she’s completely indifferent to everything that was just being talked about, if it hasn’t happened yet, or if she’s shaken it off after the rushing out to check in Amanda, having worry immediately replaced with relief & holding the feels from before back (if only temporarily). Theo doesn’t seem the “cold shoulder” type, and we’ve seen him be pretty civil with Andi with all of the mess.
But yeah, Mari it totally showing that broom into Andi’s hands, unless Andi steps up & asks for it right off the bat (which might give Mari pause). We went from messy to absurd & are heading into either messier or the eye of the storm (or the calm before the REAL storm?)
Speaking of which, she did recover from the “I’m literally awful” and crying breakdown pretty quickly. I could see Mari questioning her sincerity if she just walks in with a smile acting all casual again now.
Normally I would completely agree. There is a part of me that says comic timing, and Dave may or may not want to drill down on tears instead of moving forward with story.
Yah comic timing and real life time are two different things plus we went from crying to panic to relief and a bit of a laugh. Mari face speaks more of ‘look at this mess on my clean floors’.
My bets are Andi goes “all shit! My bad let me get that” when she sees the urn.”with maybe a comment of “girls are good.”
I mean its kinda small and hard to see but coming in to the kitchen again Andi has tensed up seeing the mess. Im betting she goes straight for it to clean up.
Eh. Speaking from experience – I can remember going from “puddle of tears” breakdown to “Mama Bear” mode equally quickly, back when my kids were little. Adrenaline is an amazing thing.
Same here!!! ?
While there are times when I have trouble controlling my emotions enough to participate in normal life (without everyone asking what my emotions are about), generally I can manage to go from crying over something (whether a real negative, or like tearjerker shows I’ve been watching) to “act like a sunny normal person” within the space of a room, if I have a chance to wipe my eyes and other people don’t examine me too closely (which is generally the case with the family members I interact with — more concerned with what they’re doing than with analyzing me).
So although yeah, it’s kinda weird that a person can bounce to sunny after awful, I have to say it’s not UNREALISTIC. It does, however, call into question a few things.
It speaks to a person who is used to putting on a sunny face — that is, a manipulator, a person schooled in giving people an impression different from what is actually going on inside them. This doesn’t HAVE to indicate a deficient character (people in abusive situations learn to avoid triggering the abusers, and get used to faking it out of survival instinct; people who are dealing with severe circumstances but have to put on a brave front for the kids / customers and coworkers / etc. can also develop similar strategies) — and there are many cases where you can legitimately hide your circumstances and internal world from other people because they don’t have a right to know (and/or the knowledge being out there would make things a lot worse for those involved).
But even though it doesn’t HAVE to indicate a deficient character… it certainly puts the manipulator outside the realm of “inherently trustworthy.” The kind of background that creates an efficient liar (via the need to frequently lie) is not a good one. (Exceptions can be made for those in acting professions, who learn the skill for another reason.) And you have to question whether they’re also lying to people who deserve to know the truth… and whether it’s become default to lie so that even when the truth ought to happen, it doesn’t.
I once heard that a certain religious group held to the principle that “you can lie to those outside our group, because they don’t deserve to know the truth.” That has made me completely unwilling to trust the words of anyone in that group (which makes it difficult to learn accurate information about them… that may be the point, for them).
her face just makes me think of this
http://i.imagefra.me/bbfjuesi
That statement is a summary of Andi’s life. “I don’t want to clean up messes.”
I was just about to say that but you beat me to it.
….even if i caused them in the first place”
Andi looks as pissed as Mari in that last panel.
Really? To me, her body language totally says “UH-OH.” Not anger — dismay.
I think we’re meant to laugh here. As others have said, it’s comic irony. A Gilligan’s Island moment. No, of course she doesn’t want to clean up messes, who does? but she’s going to have to. And cleaning up those wood ashes from the kitchen floor is pretty good symbolism for what she’s going to have to do on other levels.
I’m seeing tiny clenched fists and a tiny frowney face. To me she looks pissed but idk we’ll see.
Look at the angle of those fists. That’s not wanna-fight. It’s wanna-be-flight-but-can’t. It’s a teeth-sucking “Damn, now I’ve made everything worse and I’m going to have to wade back in.”
Clenched fists and frowny faces can easily be a sign of fear. Chances are, though, Andi is both pissed and scared. Mari looks like she wants to smack her with that broom.
You know, after thinking about this for a couple comics’ worth, and getting a response from our host on a question that was bugging me, I’m going to have to go ahead and retract a comment I made.
I said it seemed like Todd’s parents were being hypocritical, though I don’t think that’s the word I wanted, exactly.
I was under the impression that it had been most of a year since they found out about Amanda (I was confused by a comment Todd made in a recent strip referring to “nine months ago”) but David Warren confirmed that it had been about a month-and-a-half or so.
Their continuous anger and pain makes _much_ more sense to me in that context, as this is far closer in time than it felt to me. It also makes Mari’s retaliation far more understandable.
I have to admit, I also neglected something I usually keep in mind, re: Monty Oum’s statement on sorrow, and I reckon it applies to fictional characters, as well as real people (“Everyone is entitled to their own sorrow, for the heart has no metric or unit of measure”).
That is a phenomenal quote, and does seem to fit more than a few people here. It’s easy to get confused on pacing, I forgot they only knew for barely over a month as well.
I’m quite used to webcomic time, so I was well aware of it being within the same wintery season, definitely not several months down the road. There’s a number of plot points that would’ve moved on by now if it were several months later. Plus, we’d be skipping most of Andi’s getting to know Amanda (and vice versa), which is the ripest time for both comedy and drama.
That does make some of these comments more understandable. Still not accurate (“It’s been a year, can’t you give it a rest?” isn’t much better than “It’s been a month”), but more understandable. I was wondering why some comments seemed to take for granted they should be over it by now, and wondering why they weren’t.
Andi just did the following; Open mouth, insert foot.
Mari looks like she just cleaned up andi’s mess literally and possibly figuratively as well.
Oh, I hope she didn’t! I hope she’s going to put that broom into Andi’s hands.
I have to apologize to all readers, and PROFUSELY to Dave, but upon my first reading, I thought Mari intended to BEAT Andi with the broom. 🙁
It makes a heck of a LOT more sense that Mari has either just cleaned up the “ashes” or wants Andi to do it. 😉
Again, I know I may be in a minority here, and I’m certainly not championing Andi as the Mother of the Year, or anything. Yet…I don’t think she’s doing so horribly. She is in an environment where *literally* every person except Amanda is suspicious of her at best and antagonistic at worst (and her bond with Amanda is still tenative). She showed at least half-decent manners by offering to help Mari in the kitchen and make a rum cake. She showed (IHMO) genuine fear for Amanda when she heard her scream, and now has asked Theo to be careful; she obviously now knows Amanda at least well enough to know that she can get an upsetted stomach easily.
No, I don’t like her “flip” attitude but she is still figuring stuff out, trying to make up for some MAJOR-LEAGUE mistakes, and negotiate her new identity as Amanda’s care-taker. And I am willing to bet that both Selkie and Amanda will consider this a GREAT Christmas; all of the adults (Amanda included) are going a very good job of keeping them out of the “drama.”
Sorry – typos in last line: “All of the adults (Andi included) are doing a very good job of keeping them (Selkie and Amanda) out of the ‘drama.'”
Stupid iPad keyboard! 😛
Trouble is I see very little of wanting to “make up” for her mistake. Like even a “sorry I lied to you about your granddaughter being dead”.
That’s not “making up for” anything. Anybody can speak a form of words. Words alone are valueless. Andi will have to live her “making up for her mistake” day in and day out, for a long, long time.
She’s never going to get absolution, but she may be able to earn a grudging admission from the Smiths that she is trying to do things right now.
As I read somewhere recently: “Don’t be sorry. Be better.”
Words are NOT valueless, words having meaning, they can have a huge impact both positive and negative.
Word’s ALONE may not help, but an apology is absolutely necessary when you wrong someone, it shows that you acknowledge what you’ve done. Andi has yet to do that, she started to say that she feels bad, she started to say she did a bad thing, but she has yet to say anything about regretting hurting THEM.
So no, I completely disagree that saying sorry isn’t important, or worse that its meaningless. Its a start, its a small part of an overall effort, but an important one.
Having dealt with multiple relatives who refuse to admit wrong, I concur that words NEED to be included (at least most of the time; I’m sure exceptions exist).
If you’re unwilling or unable to say you’re at fault, to say you’re sorry, to apologize for what you’ve done and/or verbally worry over the status of your victim, there is going to be something lacking in your actions.
From reading a lot of books on domestic abuse, I’m familiar with the common tactic of “abuse, then act nice and make up and try to get back to a happy relationship, so you are free to abuse again.” And yeah, a lot of times that comes with false words (“I’m sorry, I’ve changed, I’ll never do it again”), sure.
But those times when a person wants to “make nice” without admitting (verbally) to wrong-doing are disturbing, because they suggest that the wrong-doing is a little thing that people can just get over without acknowledging. The person who did wrong has a social obligation to admit it and own up to it — not the only thing they should do, but an important factor.
Yes, but she did say she knows she is horrible. She HAS admitted to wrong-doing. She just didn’t use the particular words “I’m sorry.”
I think this is because she knows ‘sorry’ would be utterly inadequate to the situation. Nobody’s going to believe she’s sorry unless she acts like it.
Mari sure looks like she wants to, doesn’t she? XD
and now we get to wait and see the flood of people that get mad at her for dropping the fake ashes because it is some sort of emotional manipulation or another like she was faking being concerned for her kid and dropped the urn so that the grandmother would think she was a caring parent and get all emotional having to clean up the fake ashes or something.
We’ll see what happens tomorrow
I know Andi can be a loving mom. I doubt it was on purpose or anything. But she should clean it up cuz she made it.
A rather… bad choice of words, Andi.