There is a very small numerical symbology reference embedded in the strip's dialogue if you wish to puzzle it out. Hint: there are also three affronted faculty members.
Selkie gets a slap on the wrist: a few days out of school (especially considering Todd is on her side). Truck gets something significantly worse: just as many days of in-school suspension, or expulsion and reassignment.
If the Trunchbulls ask, the school can’t comment on Selkie’s punishment for privacy reasons. (I don’t know how true that is, but it doesn’t have to be true to work.)
And I really, really hope Todd ends up “pulling something drastic”, perhaps in the form of a lawsuit, or maybe (a guy can dream) criminal charges against Truck.
Criminal charges is exactly what I was thinking. This wasn’t a simple playground fight, this was assault and battery with the potential to do serious harm. The fact that it happened on school grounds doesn’t change that fact.
The only way to deal with Trunchbulls is to deliver a powerful two-fingered strike to their solar plexus. Not hard enough to rupture the descending vena cava and inferior aorta, and not hard enough to (permanently) damage the diaphragm. But hard enough to let them know you’re not going to tolerate their Stubborn Hurtful Ignorant Type.
It may be unfair, but we now understand the situation a heck of a lot. more. Before it appeared that he was just being a zero tolerance for zero tolerance’s sake fascist.
But then he said the magic word “Professor”. If this comic is anything like real life, I know exactly why he’s choosing the “unfair” option of punishing Selkie: it’s to prevent worse unfairness from falling on all their heads.
Nevermind what the guy is named. That last panel tells us that Truck’s parents are nightmares incarnate for student, parent, and teacher alike. The sort who are perfectly happy to persecute any who offend them as far as they legally can while simultaneously ignoring any bad behavior in their son.
I found Truck’s assertion “When I tell you to do something, you gotta do it!” to be rather suspicious. But now it’s all but confirmed: this idea does come from his parents’ behavior and worst of all, it’s effectively true. It’s not just physical size: he effectively does have the authority to tell other students to do whatever he wants them to do and when they don’t there is consequences for them but not for him. Because from his perspective, that’s just how things always turn out. From his warped (thanks to his parents) perspective, any consequences for his behavior are unfair, and lack of consequences for others not obeying him is unfair.
I am quite familiar with several real-life examples of this exact scenario. And I agree with the principal’s decision for now. If the trunchbulls are as bad as he’s implying, it’s far better to suspend Selkie for a week than give the Trunchbulls justification for hurting her worse especially when Truck is just as oblivious as ever as to how badly he actually hurt her already.
The alternative is to blow Selkie’s “cover”. If the Trunchbulls understood that the little creepy girl who kicked their son in the groin is actually that fragile, they probably would tell Truck to back off. But that’s not going to happen because Selkie’s nature must be kept a secret. And because Selkie’s nature must be kept secret, she’s just a creepy little girl who kicked their precious son in the groin and therefore must be punished. By punishing her in this way, the principal is protecting her secret and protecting her physically.
I agree with you in theory, but I disagree that just letting the Trunchbulls have their way in order to protect Selkie is a good idea. That kid is a violent crime waiting to happen, for exactly the reasons you enumerated. It’s about time something happened to derail this express train to federal prison.
I’m just saying: as a temporary measure, to protect Selkie’s privacy, I agree with this decision. It’s a horrible general policy, and a better long-term solution needs to be figured out before bones get broken or worse, but as a temporary patch to buy time to figure out that better solution, it’s not that bad.
Besides, Selkie now seems to love the idea of a week off. 😀
Well, he is being punished, right? It’s just Selkie is being punished as well. It sends the clear message – if you hurt someone and they defend themselves, you’ll both get into serious trouble! Thus, justice is done.
Except, being authoritarian parents, they can be disabled in action and the child removed from the school for social ineptitude, stuck in something like an Adjusting Behavioural Unit, away from the rest of the population, and there’s fuck all to do with him.
There’s also the fact that he’d be fully within his rights to demand a mental aptitude and/or psychological assessment and physical threat assessment, during which the kid wouldn’t be in normal classes.
The guy is just a fascist, because he’s supporting rules for the rules’ sake. The guy should just tell the parents to go fuck themselves, and have them arrested if they do anything unscrupulous.
But he’s obviously powerless to do that. Maybe I didn’t make it clear enough earlier: he mentioned the magic word “Professor”. Regardless of what he’s a professor of (and quick thought exercise: which word makes “Professor” even more horrible? How about “tenure”?), I’m certain that’s a big part of what the Trunchbulls use to get their way.
If Professor Trunchbull is on the Board of Education, for example, telling him to go fuck himself is just career suicide.
Sorry, if your boss is a dick, you should quit… basic fucking economics. Anyone who supports that type of idiocy or bullshit is support of it. He’s just as bad as his boss, as is *anyone* who tolerates him.
If your view is that you are a spineless pleb to keep your job, why the hell would you be in charge of children?
I too agree with the principal’s decision for now but his punishing Selkie was not the reason I lost all respect for him. My reason was what was said in the last three panels here; https://selkiecomic.com/selkie334/
Oh one hopes so indeed. Despite the fact that I actually agree with the Principal’s decision, as explained above, I think Todd might just be able to find the leverage to make things less easy for the Trunchbulls. Let’s not forget: Todd’s about to become the head of the PTA, and he’s no pushover even before these incidents.
Why can’t the principle explain this to Todd? Keeping Todd and the other faculty ignorant of the greater picture seems like an unnecessary complication.
The Trunchbulls, remind me of the Durslies out of the Harry Potter books. Self entitled, snobby, jerks who feel that because they have money and power, that they get to set the rules. Truck is also turning out just like Harry’s cousin, a nasty bully, who feels that might makes right because his parents have shown him that there are no negative consequences to his actions.
Read Matilda by Roald Dahl. Classic book, and where the Trunchbulls get their name. Look at what happens to Matilda, and how she retaliates against “The Trunchbull”.
Sorry, I forgot something. The Dursleys are just xenophobic idiots. Mrs. Trunchbull has them beat by a mile. If Truck’s parents are more like Mrs. Trunchbull, then they are truly sadistic people that feel that they have and deserve power over others. Not a good combination.
I read a synopsis of [I]Matilda[/I]. Mrs. Trunchbull sounds like a teacher I had named Ms. Deroach, when I was in the 4th or 5th grade. The woman hated children and went out of her way to humiliate and abuse us. She once shook me by the shoulder so hard that she left finger bruises on my shoulder.
One time I was having some intestinal issues and asked to be excused to use the bathroom. It took me a bit of time in the bathroom and when I came back she demanded to know what took me so long. Being that I was just a kid I was really embarrassed about that kind of thing and I didn’t want the rest of the class to know, so I leaned in and whispered in her ear.
She promptly leaned back and glared at me and shouted “You got diarrhea?” The whole class erupted in laughter and I was absolutely mortified. After that she just shook her head and told me to take my seat. There had been no reason for her to shout that to the class other than to humiliate me.
These were things this woman did on a regular basis to the kids in her class.
Fear not, poor Napoleon-hobbit! With the stout armor of LOGICNESS and the swift sword of YOU IDIOTIC BASTARDS, and perhaps the shield of DOES SELKIE NEED TO BE KEPT SECRET ANYWAY, we of the messageboard will defend you against the Saracen ogres!
just so you know, “Saracen” is a medieval-era term for “Muslim”, and your use of it in this context makes it practically a racial slur. I’m sure you didn’t intend it, of course.
Hence why my bullies often went unpunished. They were the kids of the powerful families in the town that-lived-there-since-the-pilgrims and I was just the weird new kid from the other side of the state – and Italian instead of Polish-French, to boot. So punishments for them were nothing, if they were even given.
At one point all of that clique of the powerful skipped a class to go to some athletic thing, and the administration told the angry bio teacher that he couldn’t punish them – that he had to let them take the test they skipped that day.
He HEAVILY weighted it in favor of us who were there the first time. Good old Doc.
If it’s to protect Selkie from massive persecution that’s one thing. (I doubt it though). There’s ways to deal with this and make it look like you “punished” Selkie. One of which is to give her a vacation while Truck gets to sit in an old musty room doing IQ tests. (I was put through this once a year for 7 school years in a row just because they wanted to test my intelligence) it can be mindlessly boring and make you question what you did wrong.
Another one would be making him help clean the school after hours as detention for a week. Put him through physical labor and work off his sentence. He doesn’t need to know where Selkie is, just when asked, tell him that she’s dealing with her own punishment. And that for privacy reasons he’s not allowed to know. And neither do the Trunchbull Ogres.
Trunchbull……my whole body gave this giant quiver when I read that name. Read the book probably a dozen times, seen the movie nearly as many times, the name is one of those names that chills you to the bone when you understand it.
The Trunchbulls would probably take everyone down with them if they found out their son’s ‘attacker’ wasn’t punished as well. They won’t be happy, but they should be satisfied with the result. Suspending Selkie as well was a way to keep everyone safe from their wrath, and understanding that, I feel a lot better about the decision. Todd and Selkie don’t know how lucky they are to have that hobbit on their side.
I don’t doubt that the principal did what was in the best interest of everyone by not pissing the Trunchbulls off, but I don’t think that means he is on Selkie’s side. He basically threw her under the bus to save his own hide, not hers.
Todd could raise a ruckus…but then maybe the mysterious government agencies who have shown an interest in Selkie might not want that. On the other hand, one Innsmouth Investigator might trump two Trunchbulls…
Ten angry Todd Smiths … plus the three faculty … equals thirteen? And calling the principal a “hobbit” … is this a reference to the thirteen dwarfs from Tolkien’s book? And the hobbit joined their side (reluctantly), and ended up contributing to their success.
……Huh. The Trunchbulls? As in, the guys that want to put microchips in kids? And as it turns out, one of them is a professor?
Wow….that’s kinda…why am I surprised by that?
Yeah-no. The principal is still a vicious little Anti-Hobbit even with this justification. Sociology and education structure aside, I’m pretty sure the Principal of a school, with inherent authority over all the faculty, is supposed to act in the best interest of the children and not just cover his own ass from even nastier people.
The solution is simple.
Selkie gets a slap on the wrist: a few days out of school (especially considering Todd is on her side). Truck gets something significantly worse: just as many days of in-school suspension, or expulsion and reassignment.
If the Trunchbulls ask, the school can’t comment on Selkie’s punishment for privacy reasons. (I don’t know how true that is, but it doesn’t have to be true to work.)
And I really, really hope Todd ends up “pulling something drastic”, perhaps in the form of a lawsuit, or maybe (a guy can dream) criminal charges against Truck.
Criminal charges is exactly what I was thinking. This wasn’t a simple playground fight, this was assault and battery with the potential to do serious harm. The fact that it happened on school grounds doesn’t change that fact.
The only way to deal with Trunchbulls is to deliver a powerful two-fingered strike to their solar plexus. Not hard enough to rupture the descending vena cava and inferior aorta, and not hard enough to (permanently) damage the diaphragm. But hard enough to let them know you’re not going to tolerate their Stubborn Hurtful Ignorant Type.
Trunchbulls – Matilda reference! (Roald Dahl.) Except presumably with a different attitude towards children.
That’s what I was thinking too!!!
Epic Dahl reference indeed.
So in other words, he’s punishing Selkie as well to save his own @$$?
Yeah. Sure. That’s completely fair.
LIKE HELL IT IS.
It may be unfair, but we now understand the situation a heck of a lot. more. Before it appeared that he was just being a zero tolerance for zero tolerance’s sake fascist.
But then he said the magic word “Professor”. If this comic is anything like real life, I know exactly why he’s choosing the “unfair” option of punishing Selkie: it’s to prevent worse unfairness from falling on all their heads.
Nevermind what the guy is named. That last panel tells us that Truck’s parents are nightmares incarnate for student, parent, and teacher alike. The sort who are perfectly happy to persecute any who offend them as far as they legally can while simultaneously ignoring any bad behavior in their son.
I found Truck’s assertion “When I tell you to do something, you gotta do it!” to be rather suspicious. But now it’s all but confirmed: this idea does come from his parents’ behavior and worst of all, it’s effectively true. It’s not just physical size: he effectively does have the authority to tell other students to do whatever he wants them to do and when they don’t there is consequences for them but not for him. Because from his perspective, that’s just how things always turn out. From his warped (thanks to his parents) perspective, any consequences for his behavior are unfair, and lack of consequences for others not obeying him is unfair.
I am quite familiar with several real-life examples of this exact scenario. And I agree with the principal’s decision for now. If the trunchbulls are as bad as he’s implying, it’s far better to suspend Selkie for a week than give the Trunchbulls justification for hurting her worse especially when Truck is just as oblivious as ever as to how badly he actually hurt her already.
The alternative is to blow Selkie’s “cover”. If the Trunchbulls understood that the little creepy girl who kicked their son in the groin is actually that fragile, they probably would tell Truck to back off. But that’s not going to happen because Selkie’s nature must be kept a secret. And because Selkie’s nature must be kept secret, she’s just a creepy little girl who kicked their precious son in the groin and therefore must be punished. By punishing her in this way, the principal is protecting her secret and protecting her physically.
And enabling them helps this situation how?
I agree with you in theory, but I disagree that just letting the Trunchbulls have their way in order to protect Selkie is a good idea. That kid is a violent crime waiting to happen, for exactly the reasons you enumerated. It’s about time something happened to derail this express train to federal prison.
Hear here.
Truck’s behavior should never be tolerated, and this is worse, it endorses the behavior.
I’m just saying: as a temporary measure, to protect Selkie’s privacy, I agree with this decision. It’s a horrible general policy, and a better long-term solution needs to be figured out before bones get broken or worse, but as a temporary patch to buy time to figure out that better solution, it’s not that bad.
Besides, Selkie now seems to love the idea of a week off. 😀
You could say that she is an extremely rare case of icthyosis. It’s horrible but it at least maintains her cover and can explain her fragility.
Well, he is being punished, right? It’s just Selkie is being punished as well. It sends the clear message – if you hurt someone and they defend themselves, you’ll both get into serious trouble! Thus, justice is done.
… I seriously hope you meant that sarcastically…
Here, here!
Next time on “How to Create a Sociopath”, and people keep wondering why so many more morally off people there are.
Except, being authoritarian parents, they can be disabled in action and the child removed from the school for social ineptitude, stuck in something like an Adjusting Behavioural Unit, away from the rest of the population, and there’s fuck all to do with him.
There’s also the fact that he’d be fully within his rights to demand a mental aptitude and/or psychological assessment and physical threat assessment, during which the kid wouldn’t be in normal classes.
The guy is just a fascist, because he’s supporting rules for the rules’ sake. The guy should just tell the parents to go fuck themselves, and have them arrested if they do anything unscrupulous.
But he’s obviously powerless to do that. Maybe I didn’t make it clear enough earlier: he mentioned the magic word “Professor”. Regardless of what he’s a professor of (and quick thought exercise: which word makes “Professor” even more horrible? How about “tenure”?), I’m certain that’s a big part of what the Trunchbulls use to get their way.
If Professor Trunchbull is on the Board of Education, for example, telling him to go fuck himself is just career suicide.
Sorry, if your boss is a dick, you should quit… basic fucking economics. Anyone who supports that type of idiocy or bullshit is support of it. He’s just as bad as his boss, as is *anyone* who tolerates him.
If your view is that you are a spineless pleb to keep your job, why the hell would you be in charge of children?
I too agree with the principal’s decision for now but his punishing Selkie was not the reason I lost all respect for him. My reason was what was said in the last three panels here; https://selkiecomic.com/selkie334/
I think someone’s about to discover the consequences of taking advantage of Todd’s good nature.
Oh one hopes so indeed. Despite the fact that I actually agree with the Principal’s decision, as explained above, I think Todd might just be able to find the leverage to make things less easy for the Trunchbulls. Let’s not forget: Todd’s about to become the head of the PTA, and he’s no pushover even before these incidents.
Todd shouldn’t be underestimated, of course.
But formidable though the Trunchbulls may be, I doubt they compare with Agent Brown.
Indeed, Dondonesque. Indeed…
Why can’t the principle explain this to Todd? Keeping Todd and the other faculty ignorant of the greater picture seems like an unnecessary complication.
“I’m punishing your kid for defending herself because I am more afraid of the other parents than you” would read to me as a challenge.
given Todd’s own dealings with them, I think he’ll understand where the hobbit iscoming from
Or he would see the hobbit as weak and not able to protect his kid fairly and go for the throat.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
Contrary to other statements, I don’t read this as the Principal protecting anyone’s butt but his own. And; has he misread Todd or what?
predictions:
Todds’ well placed Shi*storm in 3… 2… 1…
Selkie finally meets Doctor “Gillman”, when Todd takes Her to the hospital for a health check.
“Dr. Gillman” made me lul.
The Trunchbulls, remind me of the Durslies out of the Harry Potter books. Self entitled, snobby, jerks who feel that because they have money and power, that they get to set the rules. Truck is also turning out just like Harry’s cousin, a nasty bully, who feels that might makes right because his parents have shown him that there are no negative consequences to his actions.
Read Matilda by Roald Dahl. Classic book, and where the Trunchbulls get their name. Look at what happens to Matilda, and how she retaliates against “The Trunchbull”.
Lots of meaning there, and a good read as well.
Sorry, I forgot something. The Dursleys are just xenophobic idiots. Mrs. Trunchbull has them beat by a mile. If Truck’s parents are more like Mrs. Trunchbull, then they are truly sadistic people that feel that they have and deserve power over others. Not a good combination.
I read a synopsis of [I]Matilda[/I]. Mrs. Trunchbull sounds like a teacher I had named Ms. Deroach, when I was in the 4th or 5th grade. The woman hated children and went out of her way to humiliate and abuse us. She once shook me by the shoulder so hard that she left finger bruises on my shoulder.
One time I was having some intestinal issues and asked to be excused to use the bathroom. It took me a bit of time in the bathroom and when I came back she demanded to know what took me so long. Being that I was just a kid I was really embarrassed about that kind of thing and I didn’t want the rest of the class to know, so I leaned in and whispered in her ear.
She promptly leaned back and glared at me and shouted “You got diarrhea?” The whole class erupted in laughter and I was absolutely mortified. After that she just shook her head and told me to take my seat. There had been no reason for her to shout that to the class other than to humiliate me.
These were things this woman did on a regular basis to the kids in her class.
heh, his reasons grant him no grace from me, he ranks spineless jack (apple) (scissors) (sandles) in my book
also really hoping those magically turn into images like dave’s do
<3
This was just awesome!
Fear not, poor Napoleon-hobbit! With the stout armor of LOGICNESS and the swift sword of YOU IDIOTIC BASTARDS, and perhaps the shield of DOES SELKIE NEED TO BE KEPT SECRET ANYWAY, we of the messageboard will defend you against the Saracen ogres!
just so you know, “Saracen” is a medieval-era term for “Muslim”, and your use of it in this context makes it practically a racial slur. I’m sure you didn’t intend it, of course.
You are right. DERPY MORT.
I meant it as a joke based on Principal Napoleon-Hobbit’s use of the word “Crusade”. Crusade -> Crusades -> Saracens -> get it?
So apologies to anyone who has been offended.
Hence why my bullies often went unpunished. They were the kids of the powerful families in the town that-lived-there-since-the-pilgrims and I was just the weird new kid from the other side of the state – and Italian instead of Polish-French, to boot. So punishments for them were nothing, if they were even given.
At one point all of that clique of the powerful skipped a class to go to some athletic thing, and the administration told the angry bio teacher that he couldn’t punish them – that he had to let them take the test they skipped that day.
He HEAVILY weighted it in favor of us who were there the first time. Good old Doc.
If it’s to protect Selkie from massive persecution that’s one thing. (I doubt it though). There’s ways to deal with this and make it look like you “punished” Selkie. One of which is to give her a vacation while Truck gets to sit in an old musty room doing IQ tests. (I was put through this once a year for 7 school years in a row just because they wanted to test my intelligence) it can be mindlessly boring and make you question what you did wrong.
Another one would be making him help clean the school after hours as detention for a week. Put him through physical labor and work off his sentence. He doesn’t need to know where Selkie is, just when asked, tell him that she’s dealing with her own punishment. And that for privacy reasons he’s not allowed to know. And neither do the Trunchbull Ogres.
Trunchbull……my whole body gave this giant quiver when I read that name. Read the book probably a dozen times, seen the movie nearly as many times, the name is one of those names that chills you to the bone when you understand it.
The Trunchbulls would probably take everyone down with them if they found out their son’s ‘attacker’ wasn’t punished as well. They won’t be happy, but they should be satisfied with the result. Suspending Selkie as well was a way to keep everyone safe from their wrath, and understanding that, I feel a lot better about the decision. Todd and Selkie don’t know how lucky they are to have that hobbit on their side.
I don’t doubt that the principal did what was in the best interest of everyone by not pissing the Trunchbulls off, but I don’t think that means he is on Selkie’s side. He basically threw her under the bus to save his own hide, not hers.
Whoa! Somehow I missed that whole comic you linked to when it first came out. *Boggle*
Thanks for linking back!
Also: Life’s a Beach. XD
Todd could raise a ruckus…but then maybe the mysterious government agencies who have shown an interest in Selkie might not want that. On the other hand, one Innsmouth Investigator might trump two Trunchbulls…
Ten angry Todd Smiths … plus the three faculty … equals thirteen? And calling the principal a “hobbit” … is this a reference to the thirteen dwarfs from Tolkien’s book? And the hobbit joined their side (reluctantly), and ended up contributing to their success.
Three people, in panel 3…
HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED!
Urg, if they’re named “Trunchbull”, it’s going to be bad news no matter what they do.
Trunchbull? Matilda! ^^ Roald Dahl rides again! *laughs*
I’m hoping Todd sues. I also hope the old gym teacher gets a better job than grocery bagger.
……Huh. The Trunchbulls? As in, the guys that want to put microchips in kids? And as it turns out, one of them is a professor?
Wow….that’s kinda…why am I surprised by that?
Yeah-no. The principal is still a vicious little Anti-Hobbit even with this justification. Sociology and education structure aside, I’m pretty sure the Principal of a school, with inherent authority over all the faculty, is supposed to act in the best interest of the children and not just cover his own ass from even nastier people.