Actually, I used to like it that way too until it started giving me stomach aches at around age 11 or 12. (I also used to like apple juice as well until *that* started giving me stomach aches about the time I hit 40. Sometimes our tastes — and food tolerances — change as we age…)
I bet Amanda would love grapefruit then, she must have never been offered it before. She would probably like Blood oranges too, they are more ‘bitey’ than regular oranges.
I don’t think it’s any weirder than liking dark chocolate over milk, or kosher lactic pickles over bread and butter.
I love how she describes the taste in physical terms. I hate (most) raw onions because they are “sharp” or “bite me” — I understand that most people don’t conflate the sense of taste and of touch, but for me it makes sense to speak of them that way.
As someone who cooks often and just enjoys food period, I always describe food in such terms. It’s not just the cool flavor of mint, it’s a soothing flavor. A honey pineapple sauce with a little paprika? It stings in the best ways.
I find equating flavors with other sensations helps people understand better what I’m talking about. And interests them to try it out for themselves.
No, she’s just an alcoholic. I’ve got a friend (of legal drinking age) who keeps a bottle of orange juice in the fridge, and tops it off with a new bottle constantly. It’s not super-alcoholic, probably a percent or two, but it’s pleasantly fizzy and has a pretty good taste.
Still no remorse, still no lessons learned. Ugh. Although I really like the quirk of her liking something so oddball taste-wise, I am so tired of this kid not learning one damn thing since we’ve first met her. We have learned about her, but she has not changed at all as a character.
I don’t see any learning to deal with. She still blows up at everything, still bullies Selkie, and still has no remorse or understanding of her behavior. Not even a hint of learning.
Yup, I’m you you leoness. Amanda remains my least favorite character by a large margin. Even Truck got disciplined by his father once he realized the truth.
I don’t know…she IS still a kid and, as someone below said, she is trying to assert her own agency (of which she’s had precious little). Just the fact that she’s been reasonably civil to Selkie during the holiday celebration so far represents progress to me. The time-frame of the comics isn’t the same as our real-life time-frame and it’s unrealistic to assume that any child would “change” so quickly, especially when she’s been through so many upheavals in her own life.
Also, everyone seems to be missing the fact that Amanda’s previous living situation (wasn’t she elsewhere before the orphanage? – sorry that I don’t remember) must have been pretty bad if she was drinking (and liking!) expired orange juice. It’s not hard to taste/smell when that stuff goes bad and it can make you very sick if you drink it. Was she deprived of edible food? Was she in a situation where she had to eat/drink spoiled foodstuffs? I’m aware I’m wildly speculating here, but perhaps Dave is setting up a nice juxtaposition between Selkie’s necessary dietary restrictions and perhaps Amanda’s past forced dietary restrictions.
tl;dr – Amanda is just a kid, albeit a bit of a messed-up one, due to circumstances outside her control. Give her a bit of a break here. 🙂
I once forgot a bottle of apple juice in the car for a couple of weeks. It was in Arizona in the summer. When I found it, it had a bit of a spark to it, and while I didn’t and still don’t like alcoholic beverages, this stuff was all right. I could see how people would like it.
It also explains why she just kept drinking it. Everyone was saying no child would keep drinking when they tasted the alcohol, we now know. She’s been doing it for a while and likes the taste. So there we go.
Not the most healthy of life choices. What she needs I think is someone sitting down with her and just talking to her, one on one time. No play, no wild adventures. Just them and her, for a few hours having a calm discussion on things. I think Andi has been trying to bond with her with actions and has not done that. No strike on her, most people don’t think about using meaningful discussions with children.
It an explanation, but IMO an incredible reach of one. And even orange juice that starts to turn isn’t going to have the same “bite” as wine. I enjoy grapefruit juice and pop, both of which have bite, but dislike wine, there’s a noticeable difference.
But eh, whatever, Dave’s not gonna go back at this point and redo that whole storyline, so it is what it is.
True, I might have chosen grape or cherry juice for what Amanda lets ferment but either way we get something. There is something else though. She might be putting on a strong, stubborn front.
This whole thing smacks of a strong front, everyone is being so nice when is the other shoe going to drop? Best be obstinate and strong so they can’t hurt her and all that.
looks like it. they´ll have to nip that in the bud, and fast – for a kid that small, even ‘pinchy’ juice gives you a light buzz, if she gets used to that, and even likes it, you´ll have an alcoholic in the making.
never mind that drinking on an underage, developing system is far more damaging then with an adult liver+stuff. next time, if she sneaks real booze instead of wine, she could end up with alcohol poisoning!
In a weird sort of way, if she learns that alcohol isn’t some adult secret of awesomeness that’s been systematically denied to her, her college years may feature more evenings which she can remember than a lot of the other students.
Not suggesting you should freely give your kids all the booze they can drink, but I don’t agree that the idea of hitting a specific number on the calendar makes you go from “can’t have any, period” to “all you want” is healthy.
The U.S. has a pretty high rate of alcohol abuse and I’ve read some articles suggesting the reason why is that alcohol is so “taboo” here. I’ve had a couple of friends who didn’t want to drink much or at all, and they were seen as “odd” for not wanting to go on a liver-destroying drinking binge once they turned 21. If something is forbidden and/or illicit, it becomes more desireable to a lot of people.
For example: my partner was born on a U.S. military base in Germany. He lived in Germany for the first few years of his life and spent a fair amount of his childhood in Europe. He’s told me that it is not uncommon for European teenagers or even pre-teenagers to be allowed a small glass of wine with dinner or a small low-proofage glass of beer. He said that tradition made him less likely to “overdo” his drinking once he turned 21. Drinking to excess didn’t have the appeal for him that it has for many other U.S. citizens.
I’m with MWS that we CERTAINLY shouldn’t be getting children drunk, but de-mystifying drinking might help lead to less extreme and healthier drinking habits in the U.S.
(Although, of course Amanda shouldn’t have been chugging wine at the reception!) 😛
It could be that it’s local slang that they’ve both picked up, despite the generation gap. Or maybe it’s just a turn of phrase that Dave likes, and has chosen to use more than once. I’m pretty sure more than one of his characters likes to use “Dude!” as an interjection, too.
I really don’t see the big deal. I had my first drink around the same age in the form of wine coolers. Of course I hate the tangy Orange juice. Like the Capri Sun juice and citrus juices. I also can’t stand any tropical fruit or plants.
You’ll have to forgive me on this, I’m turning thirty and have never had anything alcoholic. What is the difference between orange juice, flavorwise, and citrus juices? Aren’t oranges a type of citrus?
Oranges are citrus, but all citrus fruits have different flavors. Lemons, graprefruit, limes, and oranges don’t all taste the same, and they have different levels of acidic zing.
When OJ ferments, it’s more zingy. I really wasn’t aware you could ferment citrus into a drinkable booze… it gets gross pretty fast, and I find even room temperature OJ to be intolerably foul
Yup fermentation requires sugar (OJ definitely has that) and something to break it down such as yeast or bacteria. However citrus fruits have much lower sugar content than typical fermented fruits like grapes, apples or pears. Juice will have a higher sugar content than the raw fruit, but its still not exceptionally high. With Orange Juice you are still going to end up with less than 1% alchol by volume, where as wine is usually in the 9-14% range (typically 12.5-14.5%) so we are still talking a significant difference between drinking some slightly aged OJ and multiple cups of wine.
Citrus juices are usually blends, like OJ and Pineapple together, or OJ and Grapefruit juice. And juices can ferment, it usually only takes a month or so, so if you forget it in the back of the fridge and its still sealed it will ferment a bit. But it will usually only be a tiny bit, usually only 1-5% Alcohol.
more often then not you wont get alcohols. you will get vinegars as yeasts don’t tend to like the very acidic environments of apple juices. but the ones that make vinegar tend to be far more tolerant.
Yeah, whenever I’ve had “Orange wine” or “Lemon Wine” I’ve read the label and learned that apple juice comes before the orange or lemon juice in the ingredient list.
l think this also points to her past caretakers – they didn’t look after her, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the orange juice was spiked, and she grew to like it.
I’m actually thinking it’s a bit of additional evidence that the orphanage had too few people and resources to handle the number of kids in their care — they were stretched beyond what they could do.
It wouldn’t surprise me if this were part of the upcoming strips: More evidence of the harm (and potential harm) that that environment did to Amanda, which could easily have been avoided had Andi come clean early instead of eight years too late.
Red flag on one front, but also a flag on another: she is DESPERATE to have agency. To be able to rule her own life. It’s a balancing act to give a kid development-appropriate agency, but being jerked around by adults all the time is just as bad (maybe worse) than too-early freedoms. If you have no freedoms as a kid, you hit 18 and OMG WHAT NOW. Especially if you’ve been trying to yank away from the over-controlling adults in your life and now you can and you’re FREE and can do EVERYTHING THEY FORBADE.
Ahahahaha, yeah, no, that’s not good, let’s not do that.
So yeah, red flag but also a flag for something underneath, I would wager.
Given how much both her parents already allow her to indulge her whims when they aren’t harmful to herself or others (rainbow hair, to name but one example) I’m not sure how telling her she can’t drink alcohol and explaining that it’s bad for her is going to hamper her sense of agency…
Oh yea… Kimchi. THAT has BITE! that Not only has bite but BITES BACK… OOOh and Don’t Forget BLACK GARLIC OOOH YEAAH. good stuff. Fermentation and spoilage has so many great tastes. Aged steaks, and various stinky cheeses.
Ew. Amanda is a bit weirder than we thought. X3
Actually, I used to like it that way too until it started giving me stomach aches at around age 11 or 12. (I also used to like apple juice as well until *that* started giving me stomach aches about the time I hit 40. Sometimes our tastes — and food tolerances — change as we age…)
It is a little weird.
I bet Amanda would love grapefruit then, she must have never been offered it before. She would probably like Blood oranges too, they are more ‘bitey’ than regular oranges.
I don’t think it’s any weirder than liking dark chocolate over milk, or kosher lactic pickles over bread and butter.
It’s expired juice. Well,nearly expired juice. That’s why it’s weird.
I love how she describes the taste in physical terms. I hate (most) raw onions because they are “sharp” or “bite me” — I understand that most people don’t conflate the sense of taste and of touch, but for me it makes sense to speak of them that way.
As someone who cooks often and just enjoys food period, I always describe food in such terms. It’s not just the cool flavor of mint, it’s a soothing flavor. A honey pineapple sauce with a little paprika? It stings in the best ways.
I find equating flavors with other sensations helps people understand better what I’m talking about. And interests them to try it out for themselves.
No, she’s just an alcoholic. I’ve got a friend (of legal drinking age) who keeps a bottle of orange juice in the fridge, and tops it off with a new bottle constantly. It’s not super-alcoholic, probably a percent or two, but it’s pleasantly fizzy and has a pretty good taste.
Still no remorse, still no lessons learned. Ugh. Although I really like the quirk of her liking something so oddball taste-wise, I am so tired of this kid not learning one damn thing since we’ve first met her. We have learned about her, but she has not changed at all as a character.
Just like some normal people do. But she has been learning to deal with her anger. It just isn’t easy to take care of.
I don’t see any learning to deal with. She still blows up at everything, still bullies Selkie, and still has no remorse or understanding of her behavior. Not even a hint of learning.
She’s still working on it. You’re being a little too harsh on a kid here.
The problem is I see zero evidence of the “working on it” or “learning” that you’re talking about. Can you point to any examples?
Remember, it’s only been a few weeks in-story.
Yup, I’m you you leoness. Amanda remains my least favorite character by a large margin. Even Truck got disciplined by his father once he realized the truth.
Agreed. While a good smack would probably just make things worse, I can’t help but feel that she’s one of THOSE kids.
I don’t know…she IS still a kid and, as someone below said, she is trying to assert her own agency (of which she’s had precious little). Just the fact that she’s been reasonably civil to Selkie during the holiday celebration so far represents progress to me. The time-frame of the comics isn’t the same as our real-life time-frame and it’s unrealistic to assume that any child would “change” so quickly, especially when she’s been through so many upheavals in her own life.
Also, everyone seems to be missing the fact that Amanda’s previous living situation (wasn’t she elsewhere before the orphanage? – sorry that I don’t remember) must have been pretty bad if she was drinking (and liking!) expired orange juice. It’s not hard to taste/smell when that stuff goes bad and it can make you very sick if you drink it. Was she deprived of edible food? Was she in a situation where she had to eat/drink spoiled foodstuffs? I’m aware I’m wildly speculating here, but perhaps Dave is setting up a nice juxtaposition between Selkie’s necessary dietary restrictions and perhaps Amanda’s past forced dietary restrictions.
tl;dr – Amanda is just a kid, albeit a bit of a messed-up one, due to circumstances outside her control. Give her a bit of a break here. 🙂
I once forgot a bottle of apple juice in the car for a couple of weeks. It was in Arizona in the summer. When I found it, it had a bit of a spark to it, and while I didn’t and still don’t like alcoholic beverages, this stuff was all right. I could see how people would like it.
I like adding fruit to.my beef mince.
well this explains why day old applesauce cupcakes taste better than fresh I guess. 😉
… I’m going to have to concur with Selkie here, Amanda.
… More worryingly, does this imply that Amanda’s been developing a taste for proto-alcohol?
It also explains why she just kept drinking it. Everyone was saying no child would keep drinking when they tasted the alcohol, we now know. She’s been doing it for a while and likes the taste. So there we go.
Not the most healthy of life choices. What she needs I think is someone sitting down with her and just talking to her, one on one time. No play, no wild adventures. Just them and her, for a few hours having a calm discussion on things. I think Andi has been trying to bond with her with actions and has not done that. No strike on her, most people don’t think about using meaningful discussions with children.
Yeah, it appears Amanda has been through some self-taught enology crash courses. xD
It an explanation, but IMO an incredible reach of one. And even orange juice that starts to turn isn’t going to have the same “bite” as wine. I enjoy grapefruit juice and pop, both of which have bite, but dislike wine, there’s a noticeable difference.
But eh, whatever, Dave’s not gonna go back at this point and redo that whole storyline, so it is what it is.
True, I might have chosen grape or cherry juice for what Amanda lets ferment but either way we get something. There is something else though. She might be putting on a strong, stubborn front.
This whole thing smacks of a strong front, everyone is being so nice when is the other shoe going to drop? Best be obstinate and strong so they can’t hurt her and all that.
looks like it. they´ll have to nip that in the bud, and fast – for a kid that small, even ‘pinchy’ juice gives you a light buzz, if she gets used to that, and even likes it, you´ll have an alcoholic in the making.
never mind that drinking on an underage, developing system is far more damaging then with an adult liver+stuff. next time, if she sneaks real booze instead of wine, she could end up with alcohol poisoning!
I have a friend who fermented a couple bottles of Snapple into Snapplehol. I wasn’t there to sample it but apparently it wasn’t all bad.
I like Amanda’s descriptions. Very little-kid like.
I do worry about her being enamored with mildly alcoholic drinks, but hey, wait until she gets into university.
In a weird sort of way, if she learns that alcohol isn’t some adult secret of awesomeness that’s been systematically denied to her, her college years may feature more evenings which she can remember than a lot of the other students.
Not suggesting you should freely give your kids all the booze they can drink, but I don’t agree that the idea of hitting a specific number on the calendar makes you go from “can’t have any, period” to “all you want” is healthy.
The U.S. has a pretty high rate of alcohol abuse and I’ve read some articles suggesting the reason why is that alcohol is so “taboo” here. I’ve had a couple of friends who didn’t want to drink much or at all, and they were seen as “odd” for not wanting to go on a liver-destroying drinking binge once they turned 21. If something is forbidden and/or illicit, it becomes more desireable to a lot of people.
For example: my partner was born on a U.S. military base in Germany. He lived in Germany for the first few years of his life and spent a fair amount of his childhood in Europe. He’s told me that it is not uncommon for European teenagers or even pre-teenagers to be allowed a small glass of wine with dinner or a small low-proofage glass of beer. He said that tradition made him less likely to “overdo” his drinking once he turned 21. Drinking to excess didn’t have the appeal for him that it has for many other U.S. citizens.
I’m with MWS that we CERTAINLY shouldn’t be getting children drunk, but de-mystifying drinking might help lead to less extreme and healthier drinking habits in the U.S.
(Although, of course Amanda shouldn’t have been chugging wine at the reception!) 😛
I was struck by the wording that echoes Theo’s: “Wanted an answer; GOT an answer” (or however he phrased it).
Did she pick it up from him, or is it just the way their brains work?
In both cases, someone calls them on what happened, and they use this to say it achieved the effect they wanted so what’s the big deal?
It could be that it’s local slang that they’ve both picked up, despite the generation gap. Or maybe it’s just a turn of phrase that Dave likes, and has chosen to use more than once. I’m pretty sure more than one of his characters likes to use “Dude!” as an interjection, too.
I really don’t see the big deal. I had my first drink around the same age in the form of wine coolers. Of course I hate the tangy Orange juice. Like the Capri Sun juice and citrus juices. I also can’t stand any tropical fruit or plants.
You’ll have to forgive me on this, I’m turning thirty and have never had anything alcoholic. What is the difference between orange juice, flavorwise, and citrus juices? Aren’t oranges a type of citrus?
Oranges are citrus, but all citrus fruits have different flavors. Lemons, graprefruit, limes, and oranges don’t all taste the same, and they have different levels of acidic zing.
When OJ ferments, it’s more zingy. I really wasn’t aware you could ferment citrus into a drinkable booze… it gets gross pretty fast, and I find even room temperature OJ to be intolerably foul
Yup fermentation requires sugar (OJ definitely has that) and something to break it down such as yeast or bacteria. However citrus fruits have much lower sugar content than typical fermented fruits like grapes, apples or pears. Juice will have a higher sugar content than the raw fruit, but its still not exceptionally high. With Orange Juice you are still going to end up with less than 1% alchol by volume, where as wine is usually in the 9-14% range (typically 12.5-14.5%) so we are still talking a significant difference between drinking some slightly aged OJ and multiple cups of wine.
Citrus juices are usually blends, like OJ and Pineapple together, or OJ and Grapefruit juice. And juices can ferment, it usually only takes a month or so, so if you forget it in the back of the fridge and its still sealed it will ferment a bit. But it will usually only be a tiny bit, usually only 1-5% Alcohol.
more often then not you wont get alcohols. you will get vinegars as yeasts don’t tend to like the very acidic environments of apple juices. but the ones that make vinegar tend to be far more tolerant.
Yeah, whenever I’ve had “Orange wine” or “Lemon Wine” I’ve read the label and learned that apple juice comes before the orange or lemon juice in the ingredient list.
l think this also points to her past caretakers – they didn’t look after her, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the orange juice was spiked, and she grew to like it.
I’m actually thinking it’s a bit of additional evidence that the orphanage had too few people and resources to handle the number of kids in their care — they were stretched beyond what they could do.
It wouldn’t surprise me if this were part of the upcoming strips: More evidence of the harm (and potential harm) that that environment did to Amanda, which could easily have been avoided had Andi come clean early instead of eight years too late.
Hoo boy.. She’s been saying “I do what I want” alot. Hopefully someone notices the red flag and keeps an eye on her..
Red flag on one front, but also a flag on another: she is DESPERATE to have agency. To be able to rule her own life. It’s a balancing act to give a kid development-appropriate agency, but being jerked around by adults all the time is just as bad (maybe worse) than too-early freedoms. If you have no freedoms as a kid, you hit 18 and OMG WHAT NOW. Especially if you’ve been trying to yank away from the over-controlling adults in your life and now you can and you’re FREE and can do EVERYTHING THEY FORBADE.
Ahahahaha, yeah, no, that’s not good, let’s not do that.
So yeah, red flag but also a flag for something underneath, I would wager.
Given how much both her parents already allow her to indulge her whims when they aren’t harmful to herself or others (rainbow hair, to name but one example) I’m not sure how telling her she can’t drink alcohol and explaining that it’s bad for her is going to hamper her sense of agency…
… Then again, I’m not a parent.
And aside from the alcohol, there’s her treatment of Selkie. We haven’t seen anything that bad recently but that could change..
When Amanda hits 21 she’s going to *love* fuzzy navels.
“I do what I want” I see no reason to believe she would wait til 21 to start knowingly drinking alcohol.
Amanda, you have GOTTA try “kimchi.”
Oh yea… Kimchi. THAT has BITE! that Not only has bite but BITES BACK… OOOh and Don’t Forget BLACK GARLIC OOOH YEAAH. good stuff. Fermentation and spoilage has so many great tastes. Aged steaks, and various stinky cheeses.
Yay for goopy pancakes! Made some this morning with frizen blueberries for my daughter’s 8th bday.
Pass her a Happy Birthday for me!!
…the only relevant thing I have to share is this bit of advice:
never forget a juice box in your backpack for a week.
But do forget an apple on your dash for a hot day while you work. The car will smell lovely and you might be good eating the apple as well 🙂
That’s… that’s basically Baby’s First Prison Wine. They’re lucky she hasn’t teched up to drinking mouthwash.
In middle school the cafeteria gave half the student body indigestion by giving them out of date orange/pinapple juice.