This is not real colors. Everything here is a shade of red or blue, but they are different hues of red & blue. Look closer: there are no yellows or greens (but there are oranges and cyans). All the skin tones can be considered a shade of red. Most of the background is blue of a blue-ish off-gray. It’s honestly really well done, as the two red and blue palettes meld together, and I like it. 🙂
This is all Ethan’s fault. You see, the clerk is Mike, which is why we can’t see the clerk, so there’s no tag. Mike, with his ability to read people has now said exactly the one thing that makes taking Ethan hostage inevitable. He’s also called the police in advance which is the only possible way they could have shown up, sirens blazing, within seconds of the robbery starting. Mike, it should be remembered, is the one who used blackmail to set up this trip in the first place, knowing it would be hugely stressful for everyone involved. Now, all he has to do is watch as events take their inevitable course and the seeds of Amazigirl are sown. So you see, it is all Ethan’s fault.
Ah, but in truth it is Naomi’s fault, as the creation of Amazi-Girl is solely to put Ethan under enough stress that he’ll sleep with Mike, which is the one thing Naomi most dreads, thus accomplishing Mike’s goal of figuratively fucking Ethan’s mom
Where I live, it’s not legally considered a pitcher unless it has a pour spout.
That means you can take one of those giant novelty beer mugs into a bar and have it filled up, even if you’re the only person at the table, and it doesn’t count as the bar selling a pitcher to a single person. On the other hand, if you’re at the bar/club by yourself, you can’t have your beer served in one of those tiny creamer jugs. BECAUSE IT’S LEGALLY A PITCHER. >_<
Can you not purchase a pitcher to consume on your own then? I mean in fairness the only place I’ve done that was Wetherspoons and their cocktails are really weak… And technically that was two pitchers between two people?
She’s pretty conflicted herself, but for the moment her doubts about this being the right thing to do or even a good idea sound just like being too scared to help Marcie, so she’s pushing through it :/
We haven’t seen much indication of adults in Sal’s life giving her much of a chance. She’s had a REALLY rough time of it leading up to this moment, and unfortunately, that out just came too late.
Interesting! I read it as her doubling down because, hey, she’s already come this far, fuck it, right? Sal’s pretty stubborn. But I like that it can be read other ways, too!
Could be a mix of guilt and saying ‘fuck this’ – after all, she has a couple people at home she probably wants to piss off right now (especially since she is definitely not getting the money for Marcie now).
I’m not sure that really makes sense though – even in her messed up state.
If she’s definitely not getting the money and has a way to get away, why take the hostage. We’d originally thought that was to make the clerk give her the money and it only really makes sense if she’s still thinking that.
If she was just trying to get caught, she could just stay and rant until the cops come in.
How does “I am not a kid. I am fed up with being treated loke a kid and being dismissed. What do I need to do to be taken seriously here??” work for you?
I think it’s important that she has an out. That she has this way to avoid all of the punishment and judgement and sneering that comes afterwards (…….well, okay, most of it).
Because while she has a somewhat noble reason for all of this, the saying remains true: There’s nothing like a good cause to bring out the worst in people.
I don’t think we’re supposed to be cheering Sal on. I think we’re supposed to be seeing that, while Sal has good intentions, she’s doing something horrible to fulfill them.
It’s regional – it wouldn’t draw any attention in the south, and in the west it doesn’t draw much (it’s notable, but not weird). I can’t speak for Indiana in particular though.
In eastern Indiana and western Ohio it’s not exactly common, but it’s also not quite uncommon. When the region was a core manufacturing hub during the mid-twentieth century quite a lot of Southerners migrated here, especially from Appalachia and other poorer, more rural regions of the south for the employment opportunities the region offered. Quite a lot of us descended from them learned some of those mannerisms at home, though the corporate culture of the chain restaurants, large chain retail establishments, corporate owned gas stations, et al that have increasingly infested the region the last forty or fifty years have also largely pushed against addressing the public in such a manner.
Store clerk is now my favorite character. After everyone who has failed Sal, a line that starts with both her parents and just gets longer and longer, it’s this one anonymous store clerk who tries to give her another chance, when said clerk has the least incentive to do so. That’s really, really powerful, I think. It’s a shame that it was just too little, too late.
1) Why did you sympathize in the first place then? We knew going in that she took Ethan hostage.
2) Do you also have no sympathy for Amber after she stabbed Sal? That was also making things worse for someone else (who was detained and no longer a threat I might add).
1) Why did you sympathize in the first place then? We knew going in that she took Ethan hostage.
Sal made plenty of decisions to get to the situation she finds herself in, some were forced on her, some were of her own choosing but here she had a choice to run or make someone else situation worse than her own and she chose to make Ethans situation worse
2) Do you also have no sympathy for Amber after she stabbed Sal? That was also making things worse for someone else (who was detained and no longer a threat I might add).
I have a lot of sympathy for her situation but little to none for actually stabbing Sal
Honestly most of this doesn’t matter now since we know what happened. The sympathy or lack there of should wait until we see how this shakes out in the present. What’s more important is what they all decide to do when/if they ever talk about this.
I’ve given Sal some leeway due to age and circumstances but at some point you are responsible for your own actions.
I can see why she drifted into crime, I can see why she thought robbing the store might be a good idea, I can see why in the heat of the moment Sal might think its her only option but then she was told she’d get nowhere with the knife and then she was told to leave and she’d probably get away with it but she chose to grab a hostage.
I also consider Sals situation to be quite different to Ambers. Amber, to me, has a worse home life than Sal as well as suffering from a mental illness whereas Sal doesn’t seem to be mentally ill
But nothing has changed in what we knew. Previously, we had no idea the cops were right there, so there was no reason to think Sal couldn’t just leave. Now we know the cops are there, but she could run out the back. Same situation.
She came in here planning to threaten the clerk with a knife to get money and wound up threatening Ethan instead.
What thejeff said and I’d also point out that while Sal’s (so far as we know) she is likewise being largely influenced by trauma (what happened to Marcie) and the actions of a shitbag parent shoving her into a corner.
if sal’s not mentally ill with that upbringing i’ll eat my shoes. my parents were very similar to hers and i’m diagnosed with c-ptsd, and, i quote my therapist, “i think your parents damaged your way of thinking more than .”
ack the tw was carrots containing [the person who sexually abused me for three years when i was a prepubescent child] but i guess the carrots got interpreted as botched html.
@ BBCC – i’m in a much better place now, and it was hysterical seeing their faces when i repeated what my therapist said to them. they’ve actually been a little nicer lately between that and one other incident that shook them up?
and yeah, i’m feeling a lot better now. had a few good days of rest and turtling with friends and games. it was just. the last two panels of that one strip with mom causing unspeakable pain while saying “i love you” that was the trigger, everything else has been painful and sad and familiar but not so specifically triggering. which is why much as it’d be nice i doubt there’s going to be a good solution willis can make since triggers are unfortunately often so hyperspecific and hard to predict.
that was a ramble, sorry. point is i’m doing better and glad i’ve been pretty stable with the following strips!
I mean, yeah I have sympathy for Amber when she stabbed Sal. Amber was a messed up little kid who, under extreme pressure, finally broke. The fact that she broke in a way that hurt someone else isn’t any more her fault than the fact that she broke in the first place.
So do I, but I also have sympathy for Sal here. She is also a messed up little kid who is extremely desperate right now (and who also received a heaping helping of emotional and financial abuse not long before doing the crappy thing). I guess I’m trying to understand why one’s more sympathetic than the other to some.
Probably that one is easier for some people to relate to than the other, I would imagine. (Even though, yes, we’ve been shown why they are both very deserving of sympathy.) That’s kind of the beauty of fiction, IMO.
Personally, I sympathize with present-day Sal more than present-day Amber, because present-day Sal has clearly made an effort to unpack a lot of her trauma, as opposed to bottling it up and hurting people. But then again, that’s also due to Sal probably having the opportunity (even though it was forced punishment) to get away from her parents for a while. Amber didn’t get away from Blaine until much later. 🙁
I kind of agree with this to a degree. The circumstances that led to this do put Sal in a sympathetic view, but the buck kind of stops at endangering other people. I think it’s easier to sympathize with Sal because we know everyone came out mostly okay *RIP Sal’s hand*
I don’t remember what strip, but Sal has mentioned that her hand doesn’t work quite right anymore. Also, she was stabbed through the hand. That might leave a tiny surface scar but there’s internal damage (almost definitely a lot of it) with something like that, hands are full of fiddly things.
Yeah, there’s lots of ways to fuck up a hand without chopping it off. And yes, sal’s definitely told Danny it doesn’t work as well anymore. Well enough to make a fist, but not well enough for smaller or more precise things like playing instruments as well.
Also, she was stabbed through her hand right below the knuckles. There’s nerves and tendons and shit there. Everywhere I’ve looked has indicated ‘Yeah, that’s at LEAST one surgery’.
The knife went completely through her hand, back to front. There’s basically no way to miss at least one essential ligament or tendon even with a tiny needle. With a knife? There’s no way that doesn’t do major damage.
Why? Sal’s not going to actually hurt either of them. She’s already scared them by starting the robbery and now she’s just panicing and trying to bluff her way out.
I’m guessing Amber and Ethan, Ethan especially, don’t realize shes bluffing. All Ethan knows is that someones grabbed him, holds a knife to (near) his throat and is making demands
And what if that hadn’t happened? What if the knife slipped? What if Ethan tried to fight back out of sheer adrenaline?
When you create a situation where you move a deadly weapon anywhere near an innocent bystander, you can’t say ‘I didn’t mean to hurt anyone’ any more than you can point a loaded gun at someone ‘just to scare them’. Sal’s actions are no longer defensible.
Ethan fighting back is a major concern. Not so much knife slippage…knives aren’t as unpredictable as firearms in that way, it actually takes a fair amount of force applied in a reasonably specific manner in order to cause severe damage. It’s a LOT harder to accidentally stab someone to death than shoot them.
Not saying it’s not traumatic, as obviously it was and is. But from a logic standpoint (I can’t help it, when I’m in scary situations I deal with it by distancing through logic), the knife is in a completely different tier from a gun.
Yeah, knives are much more predictable than firearms. Go up against someone with a knife barehanded and you’re going to get cut up, probably badly. Your best hope is to keep the cuts to the arm you’re using to block or control the knife.
Someone with a gun, you might get shot or you might not. You’re likely to be worse off if shot, but your chances of not getting hit at all are much higher.
Or so my sensei taught us. I’ve never had to try either – and never got far enough in martial arts to think trying would be anything but disastrous.
This is more about the capacity for accidental harm. A toddler can’t pick up a knife and then accidentally kill an adult with it. It takes effort – not a great deal of it, sure, but a whole lot more than it takes to accidentally pull a trigger. Hence accidental knife fatalities being somewhere around zero, and accidental firearm fatalities being a regular news item.
That’s certainly true, but we’re not talking toddlers here. We’re talking a young teen potentially struggling with another teen with a knife. It’s really easy to get cut badly in that situation.
Besides, even with accidents, I suspect the same applies: more likely to get cut, less likely to get shot, but it’s more likely to be fatal.
Yeah except physical harm isn’t the only way to hurt someone. Sal is responsible for at least a portion of Amber’s trauma and that haunted Amber for far longer than any physical wound would.
To be completely fair getting hurt while attempting a robbery IS usually a potential consequence. This time around the getting hurt just happened a bit later. That aside though Sal was the one who started this chain of events. Amber being an anxious mess and Blaine being a total douchebag wouldn’t matter if she didn’t pull off this idiotic stunt.
Honestly I had a lot of sympathy and understanding for Sal up until the hostage taking. She was being a total idiot but while not excusable it was understandable, but taking hostage just made me go “What the hell Sal? What the hell?”
No. Being stabbed through the hand and permanently losing full use of it AFTER BEING ARRESTED AND NO LONGER A THREAT is neither a legally nor morally appropriate consequence.
And again, we knew about the hostage taking already.
If Sal was an adult instead of a child here I would find this argument to be fairly reasonable, but she’s still just a scared kid, and one who had TRIED to channel her desperation into a way to help Marcie without hurting ANYONE, but her own mother sabotaged and betrayed her
Of course it’s still shitty of her to do this, but this is the kind of shitty decision Linda should’ve been worried about Sal making, and that concern should have motivated her to comfort and support her and help her deal with her guilt over what happened to her friend.
Instead, Linda taught Sal that not only only can she expect NO comfort or support from her parents, they will actively shut down not only any legal, ethical attempts to help Marcie, but also any contact with Marcie.
It’s really damn fortunate they didn’t drive her to seek help from someone even worse than that Asher guy
To be clear, I’m questioning why someone would sympathize with Sal when she chose to (attempt to) put the cashier in danger, but stop sympathizing when she chose to put Ethan in danger. I mean I guess there’s a “bridge too far” argument to be made, but a lot of the comments seem to see threatening Ethan as a different animal from threatening the cashier. The intent on Sal’s part was the same in both instances.
It’s not surprising that people empathize more with a character they know a ton about (Ethan) versus one they haven’t even visually seen. That empathy with the victim makes it harder for some people to feel empathy at the same time for the attacker. Not saying how I personally feel, but explaining why there’s a difference in opinion.
@motorfirebox
Probably because the cashier was never in any danger and if anything the scene is presented as mildly humour, making Sal look like a hot-headed idiot. But the moment she takes Ethan hostage the situation gets serious.
It’s not normal to start to threat people with death just because you feel misunderstood from your parents. Linda isn’t a good parent, yes. That’s at most an explanation. It’s not a reason. And it’s not an excuse. Sal has the heart in the right place, but she’s not a good kid. She will be a pretty decent person in a few years, but right now, she mostly brings sorrow to anyone near her by not thinking before she acts.
You’re making links between Sal taking Ethan as a hostage and Linda’s treatment of Sal that aren’t even there, which Fart Captor never suggested in the first place. Sal didn’t go in there looking to threaten people, it probably was on impulse, without thinking, and while Sal’s motivations for the robbery could in part stem from her resentment of her parents, most of it is because she wants the money for Marcie. And I think you’re omitting the bit where Linda’s stealing Sal’s money drives her into this and putting more blame on Sal than she fairly deserves
I’m not sure how to rob someone or something without some kind of thread. Ask nicely?
She sat on the van, made the van stop, walked around the shop a bit and then acted. This wasn’t impulse. There was a whole deal of inner conflict involved. She thought about it and then made a horrible, plain out wrong decision. And now ethan gets traumatised, amber develops ptbs, the clerk might have a trauma too, sal herself gets a record and goes to a boarding school and kind of loses her family, walky loses his sister and marcie her best friend and probably her main translator with sign language.
This is wrong. Just plain wrong. This should never have happened. And a whole lot of people pay the price, not just sal. This is not something that can be shrugged of. I don’t care why she did it, she shouldn’t have done it. And she knows it, even back then. She’s not the first child that got money taken away, what would our world look like if they all threaten to kill people because of it?
Yeah Linda contributed. But sal is the one with the weapon. Sal is the one who literally threatens to kill ethan.
And somehow people are fine with that because poor sal.. This is a story with a lot of villains and only one hero who did nothing wrong. Marcie.
No. It’s not. It’s a felony. It’s kind of scary how people are fine with death threats and damaging the mind of another human forever, just because they like the person committing the crime.
Most criminals have a heartbreaking story. And a reason for whatever they did. That doesn’t make it more okay. There are 30 million people without insurance in us, give or take a few millions. Several ten thousand of them die an avoidable death each year. What would happen if they all start robbing and possibly killing others to survive?
Suuure, the problem here is the people who don’t give in and die quietly, not the system that fails them. You couldn’t *possibly* improve this system, it’s not like the majority of other countries already have better systems in place :p
Besides, those for-profit prisons ain’t gonna fill themselves! (Fuck I hate that Harper brought that to Canada… And it looks like the Liberals are trying to fill them up too)
I’m not keen on people using violence to get what they want, but it’s getting harder and harder to judge those who have the whole game stacked against them from the start. :/
@Alanari: Nobody is saying that it should be legal to commit crimes out of desperation.
But stealing to avoid starving is NOT the same thing as stealing for fun or greed. Someone doing the former deserves sympathy and leniency that the someone doing the latter does not.
If a desperate believes crime is the only chance they have for survival (or for a loved one’s survival) what the fuck else would you expect them to do? Just die quietly because crime is bad?
Expecting people to put civility or obedience to the law should come before even their own survival doesn’t make society better. It only shields those who are safe and comfortable from being inconvenienced by or having to feel sorry for those who are not
Understanding a decision doesn’t mean agreeing with it, and sympathizing with someone who makes a bad decision doesn’t mean sanctioning that decision. I understand Sal’s decision. I sympathize with her. That doesn’t mean I’m saying what she did was in any sense okay.
^ Pretty much this. Just because my reaction is more ‘Oh, hon, no, that’s a terrible idea that’s going to hurt others and it’s never going to end the way you want’ instead of as condemnatory as you’d like it to be doesn’t mean I think it’s okay to steal shit and hold hostages.
Are you sure you are aware of what she is doing here? You are rationalising and normalising a death threat.
This is not okay. No matter the circumstances. Every criminal has a reason for what he does, and most of those reasons are tragic and heartbreaking. But heartbreaking circumstances doesn’t make it any better.
@Alanari: previous flashback strips SPECIFICALLY established that Sal has been trying to raise money for Marcie, that she started hanging out with Asher and helping with robberies only AFTER her mother stopped her legal attempts to raise money and confiscated her money
And only YESTERDAY, we saw Sal working up the nerve to do this. Her expression became more determined only after a panel showing Marcie getting hurt. While what she is doing is still wrong, she is CLEARLY doing it for Marcie, not for herself or as some blind tantrum to get back at her parents.
And nobody is normalizing or rationalizing crime or violence. Stop clutching your pearls
@Alanari: No, I’m specifically saying that you’re repeatedly mistating her motives, in a reply to someone explaining them, in which you say you understand them.
I was not rationalizing or normalizing anything. I was saying she didn’t do it because she “felt misunderstood”.
I know why she does that. It’s not an excuse for what she does though. This is her decision. She’s not a mindless doll who just reacts to her circumstances. She knows what she’s doing, she knows it’s plain out wrong and she does it anyway. And half the comment section blames it on Linda. This is sals decision, not Linda’s. She herself knows that, in today comic time. But a lot of people are busy trying to excuse her behaviour here. Yes, she’s trying to help a friend, but she’s also threatening to kill someone. This is nothing anyone should feel sympathy for. Not at all.
Not get me wrong. I like present time sal. She’s one of my favourites. But in this, she is the villain.
No, she’s not a mindless doll. Nor is she a purely rational actor, uninfluenced by circumstances: Or by trauma or by sustained parental neglect and abuse.
She’s a person. A child. Yes, she’s doing wrong here and I don’t think anyone is saying otherwise. We can however understand how she got here and why she does it and even sympathize with her.
Just out of curiosity. Do you actually know what is happening here? Or, in other words, did you actually speak to a person who had a knife to his throat? In this world, not in some safe comic world?
I have. Let’s just say, I was raped several hundred times as a teenager and my mind is a mess. Still, I’m a stellar example of a mentally healthy person compared to him. He survived the day, but still lost his life in every way except the literal one.
No. There’s nothing to sympathise with here. Not if you actually know what all this means. This is a line that should never be crossed. And she crossed it, knowing fully well she shouldn’t do this.
No, I haven’t. I also haven’t been in Sal’s position.
I agree it’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed. If you think I’m saying otherwise, if you think I’m saying “Go Sal, this is great”, you’re completely misunderstanding.
I can still see how she got to the point where she did this and sympathize with her, while still agreeing it was wrong. Like I understand why Amber attacked her a little bit later and sympathize with her, while still agreeing that was wrong.
Not sure what else to say.
Alenari, real question here – Do you consider it an excuse to bring up Blaine’s influence in Amber stabbing Sal? Because I’ve seen far far FAR more people who bring up Linda as part of the explanation for Sal’s motives and blaming her for fucking up Sal’s mental state (which did, in part, lead to the robbery) than actually blaming her for Sal’s choices, the same way I’ve seen more people who bring up Blaine as part of the explanation for Amber’s motives and blaming him for fucking up Amber’s mental state (which, in part, lead to Amber stabbing Sal) than people actually blaming him for Amber’s decision to stab Sal.
@Alanari: I’m starting to find it really condescending way you keep suggesting that people disagreeing with you are doing so out of ignorance because they haven’t thought it through as much as you have.
If you, personally, can’t sympathize with Sal’s actions here, that seems perfectly reasonable to me. I would completely understand if Ethan or Amber were unable or even just unwilling to forgive or sympathize with Sal because of this. Same for Sal if she can’t or won’t forgive Amber for stabbing her.
But her being sympathetic doesn’t require that EVERYONE sympathize with her anymore than it requires people to condone or excuse her actions. Not one person is saying Sal is doing nothing wrong here, though you keep responding as if they were.
Morality and blame are not absolute, black & white, all-or-nothing concepts. Linda deserving a great deal of blame for this does not absolve Sal of her own part in this, but – again – nobody is has claimed that it does.
But even an adult will resort to crime or violence when desperate or panicked and pushed into a corner where they don’t see any other options. A child, however, is less mature, less experienced, and generally less equipped to evaluate situations like this.
An adult would have seen that while Marcie’s situation really sucks, it’s not as desperate as Sal is treating it. She’s not dying or in pain. She just can’t speak anymore. An adult would also be far more cognizant of how easy it can be to scar people for life even if she never actually intended to followed through on her threats, as well as how easily things could go wrong so that someone could get seriously hurt either trying to stop her or trying to escape her.
That is the whole damn reason why courts make such a point of handling criminal charges against minors differently than those against adults. Because even when a kid is fully responsible for their actions, that doesn’t mean the same thing as it does for an adult.
I also can see how she got there jeff, but understanding a motivation is not the same as sympathising with a crime. Especially not one that can have consequences as severe as this.
Bbcc, I think people are great at blaming others for horrible decisions because that’s easier than taking the blame yourself. They however mostly claim good decisions for themselves. But both come from the person itself.
I’ve also done some bad things. Not nearly as bad as this and all linked to the raping. Basically, I’ve emotionally hurt a few people because I couldn’t deal with the vulnerability that comes with being in love with someone and /or having sex. There’s a reason for this, yes, but still, it’s my fault. Not the fault of this guy who did that to me. And it’s my guilt. I’ve apologised to those I still know a way to get in touch with and they forgave me. And nothing I did was a conscious decision, I wasn’t even aware of what I did back then, I just was horribly afraid and fled. unlike sal who knows that she’s doing something wrong.
Doesn’t change the fact that I really hurt some people I shouldn’t have hurt. And I am, and feel, guilty of that. I should never have done this. And it didn’t hurt them any less just because there’s a reason why I did it. It doesn’t excuse anything and it doesn’t give me a free pass to stomp over other people’s feelings whenever convenient.
Damaged mind or not, I have no right whatsoever to hurt another human. Period. And the person to blame if I hurt someone is me. I’m doing this. Not some guy in my past. It’s called taking the responsibility for your own actions.
Amber.. Amber is different insofar as that she just got through a dangerous and massively traumatising situation. Her body probably consists of 99% adrenaline right now. Adrenaline literally disables your ability to think and reduces you to fight or flight. Your mind goes numb and you just react. At least in the flashbacks I remember she didn’t think at all, just reacted to pressure. And it literally seemed to be a minute after sal was arrested, so her adrenaline level probably didn’t have the time to go down (that takes 5-10 minutes). So this most likely was an adrenaline induced fight reaction.
If that impression we got from Ambers flashbacks proves to be correct, I’m indeed giving amber some mitigating circumstances. But not due to Blaine. You can’t think or rationally decide with a high level of adrenaline. And mitigating circumstances aren’t equal to being innocent. Taking a knife and stabbing someone is awfully wrong. Amber doesn’t show much inhibition when it comes to physically hurting or attacking others in present comic time, and it seems like she already was like this as a child.
My parents were both psychically and physically abused by their parents. Far worse than anything amber endured. Neither of them would even think of hurting another human being like that. Having an awful childhood doesn’t make you violent. Being violent makes you violent. An awful uprising can strengthen an already present tendency to violence, but it is your decision how to deal with your own violence in the first place.
I don’t think anyone is trying to give sal a free pass here. We’re just willing to forgive her… Kinda like how your friends forgave you.
And Sal probably also has a lot of adrenaline in her right now.
I think I generally agree with your “sufferng bad things doesn’t excuse doing more bad things”, but I disagree with the total lack of sympathy for a child failing at that, or at least with the idea that *nobody* is allowed to have sympathy for her. Sympathy and responsibility aren’t mutually exclusive.
Yes captor, but we still punish underage criminals because what they did was wrong and they usually know it. Sal knows. She us fully aware that all this is an awful thing to do. She thought about it for a while before she kicked down that sign.
She’s 13 and she had a few experiences that forced her to mature fast. She knows that threatening the life of another person is wrong. Just wrong. She also knows that stealing is wrong. She does it anyway. Yes, she isn’t fully aware of why it’s wrong, but she should know enough to not do that. She’s threatening ethans life. 10yearolds know better than to make death threats with a knife.
We probably mostly are adults. We know better what all this entails. At least I know. And this is exactly why I can understand her but I don’t have any sympathy with her in this strip. Because my knowledge is part of whether I have sympathy with someone. Sympathy is about how I feel about the fate of another human. This includes judging their actions that led to their fate, which includes using my knowledge about possible outcomes of said actions.
Amber didn’t stab Sal until Blaine started giving her a hard time about freezing instead of reacting violently to defend Ethan. There’s unquestionably adrenaline and trauma involved, but it’s not until Blaine harasses her that she snaps and stabs Sal.
So, I’m asking again – is acknowledging Blaine’s role in pushing her to that point an excuse? I don’t think it is – I think talking about it serves as an explanation. It certainly doesn’t make it okay for Amber to stab her, anymore than it was okay for Sal to rob a store and take hostages. However, the explanations they do have makes me feel sympathetic enough that I’m more sad about the incident than angry. That doesn’t mean I think it was okay or that any legal consequences weren’t warranted (although I’m sure we’ll see another round of Fun With Emotional Abuse starring the Walkerton parents before this is over).
And frankly? It is not up to you to decide who is or is not worthy of my sympathy. That’s up to me, thank you very much. You don’t have to feel sympathetic to Sal, but I’ll thank you not to act like it’s not okay for anyone else to feel sympathy.
I’m interested in Joyce and Joes journey and am curious to see if they’ll end up together, Ethan is a character I want to see grow and I’m hoping to see if Danny can shake off his belief he needs a label and can become his own man
somehow, it feels like Willis won’t let them be together (as much as I ship them, it feels unlikely they will. I’d like to put this out there, that it’s just as likely that willis will see this and go “well now i gotta”). Ethan has grown, and will continue to do so, Danny will also do so so eventually he’s gotta b.c either he will grow or he will break himself but he is a rounded character and either way he will eventually come to the conclusion that labels aren’t very applicable irl.
I’m reading this comic b.c I don’t care about being happy, and tbh I’m pretty sure it’s the same for many others. Also here b.c it is an opportunity to re-eval myself through comparison tho and grow as a person, since any imbibed info will affect me as a person.
I like the person she has become. But I don’t particularly like the kid she was. Yes, there were a lot of things that contributed, but in the end, it was her decision. And it was a horrible decision. At 13, you should know better.
I assist in teaching volleyball to 13 year olds. I’ve seen some crumble and have to run to the locker room to have a good cry because I told them things like “your timing is off, try a shorter step when you approach the ball”.
…I’ll definitely believe that feeling you’re responsible for your best (only?) friend’s disability will lead you to stop thinking altogether.
You should know better – when your brain is working, yes. Problem is, that’s an age where the brain often freezes.
And it froze over a time period of several days? The first robbery was most likely planned, they got a lookout and they decided how to divide the money. So this wasn’t spontaneously, this was planned, and that usually takes some time.
I’ve trained children too, a few years back. At that age, they can tell the difference between right and wrong. And really, really wrong. Frankly, I’ve met children with far worse fates than sal, and they wouldn’t think of threatening to kill another human. That’s a line you simply don’t cross. And respecting this line is pure instinct for kids. Usually.
So what? We’re back to ignore all the context, because some other kids have it worse and it’s just that Sal is born killer because she doesn’t have the pure instinct?
If she’d have actually hurt ethan to strengthen her point, would this also be not as bad because of context? Or if she’d kill ethan and move on to Amber? Just asking. Because, you know, desperation makes people do that, too. And if the police didn’t arrive, it probably would have been the only way for her to make the clerk take her seriously.
There’s a difference between being a killer and making death threats though. And a decent human being does neither.
I just want to point out that Sal has never threatened to kill anyone. It might not be that big of a difference to you, but even with her taking Ethan hostage, she has never threatened to kill anyone, nor has the intention to do so. It’s still absolutely inappropriate what she’s doing, and it’s still traumatizing, but there is a distinction here that is being lost.
Also: children threaten other people all the time. It’s a line regularly crossed by kids playing Xbox Live every single day, unless that somehow doesn’t count because it’s in an online context. But if you’re claiming that kids never say or do anything awful because they just instinctually know better- that’s not true in the slightest.
It’s a threat, yes, but Sal doesn’t have the intention or desire to kill Ethan. It’s not a huge difference, and it’s not an excuse or justification for what she’s doing, but Sal didn’t run in here with the intention of trying to kill someone. It was a spur of the moment decision caused by adrenaline and fear.
When you hold a knife to someone’s throat, you are threatening to kill them, whether you say so or not.
Whether you actually INTEND to kill them doesn’t enter into whether the threat was made.
I could threaten to kill someone right now with no intention to do it (I won’t because I’m not a piece of shit), but that doesn’t mean I’m not doing it.
Yeah, big difference and threaten is probably the wrong word to use. Kids threatening to kill each other over video games or even playground screaming matches is one thing. The words are there, but there’s usually no credible threat to it.
It’s not just online either – serious threats can be made online, but the average in game chat ranting isn’t one.
This, even though no words are used, the threat is definitely there: Holding a knife to someone’s throat is a threat and will be perceived as such by anyone. Legally, this was armed robbery the moment she waved the knife and we’ve just escalated to assault with a deadly weapon.
I do agree, she doesn’t want to kill anyone and almost certainly doesn’t comprehend how serious what she’s doing is.
Yeah.. *we* know that sal had neither the intention or capacity to actually cut anyone with that knife, and Sal probably isn’t thinking enough to realize how this looks, but it’s not reasonable to expect *Ethan* to know any of that.
I was responding to the “they wouldn’t think of threatening to kill another human. That’s a line you simply don’t cross. And respecting this line is pure instinct for kids. Usually.”
There was nothing about it being a credible or physical threat, just a threat. The fact is that kids are not inherently born with moral values. Kids absolutely will threaten to kill each other because they do not realize the impact of what they are saying. They don’t think about the consequences or the gravity of their words. And many kids today are desensitized to violence and the impact it has thanks to media normalizing it. To say that it is pure instinct not to do so is erroneous. Whether it’s a credible threat or not, kids will threaten each other.
I’ll admit I was thinking of more a direct declaration of intent and that I was wrong to say that she wasn’t threatening Ethan’s life. I’m not saying that Sal never threatened anyone, but I don’t think she was necessarily threatening to kill someone, at least, not at first. Threat with bodily harm is a thing, and more than probably what she was originally going for with the clerk. Now with Ethan it’s escalated to deadly threat, and I don’t know that that was what Sal intended.
The point I’m (poorly) trying to make is that intent does matter, a little bit. It doesn’t make a difference legally, and it doesn’t make what she’s doing any less wrong, but Sal is panicking and making poor decisions and isn’t in a state where she can consider what it is she’s doing and what she’s indirectly saying when she grabs a hostage. It’s being treated as if she had consciously planned on threatening someone’s life ahead of time and is now acting on that and- she didn’t.
Yeah, I think sal was like “uh… hostages, that’s a thing robbers do!” And didn’t think at all about the implications. I wonder if she’ll freak out later about having held a knife to someone’s throat.
My child IS thirteen, and yeah, you’re right. Life is just a big chaotic mess of emotions trumping rational thought. Kids who aren’t in abusive situations double down over the most unreasonable shit when emotions are flying high. Someone in Sal’s situation? I can see it. She’s in panic mode. She’s not thinking rationally enough to grasp the exit strategy she’s been given.
Honestly? I think Sal’s an abused kid who’s good at heart who’s doing awful things for good reasons. She deserves disciplinary action, but she also deserves better than the abusive situation she’s in.
Y’know, I bet there’s a whole thing about her getting pinned as the primary target for the other damn robbery even though all she did was sit in the truck.
They robbed another shop basically next door. Of course police is nearby. And she’s not exactly invisible there,even from outside the shop. It could have been someone on the side walk.
Asher didn’t know what she was planning to do. He’d probably have prevented it if he did. There is little chance that she manages to pull this off and if the police gets her, they’ll most likely also discover his identity. So, no. Most likely not him. He has a much to lose as she does.
A flashback that isn’t blhe? I don’t know if my body is ready for this, but I’ll try. And man, that employee really tried to give Sal a chance to get out of there but she was stubborn about it. :/
Also, I’m now really hoping we get back to the present soon so we can see Sal and Ethan talk. I wonder what Sal will have to say? And what Ethan will have to say?
I appreciate the cashier, I wonder if they called the cops (maybe before realizing how young and likely to get shot Sal is), or if someone else did, or if they were there for some other reason. Though, if it’s the former two, they sure moved fast.
*I realized after typing all that, I bet Sal got scapegoated re: the previous robbery and was already being followed
Yeah, I was wondering how the cops got there so fast and I think you’re right. Asher and the other people gave her the knife so she’d get caught instead of them.
> Some teens robbed a store, little time for witness testimony as the cops immediately followed them
> Young black teen dropped off at a store, enters with a knife
> Others have booked it
> Cops catch Sal robbing the second store
> Car they were tailing registered to someone the cops won’t fuck with, and/or they claim it was stolen
> Sal blamed in entirety, either doesn’t involve others, does but isn’t believed, or does but is still seen as the worst since she was caught with a knife (and because she was probably the only black kid)
So it’s more like they’re about to scapegoat Sal, than that they have. Sal’s group seem kind of like dicks, so at best they’ll allow it, at worst reinforce it and/or testify against her, so that’s another way to look at it as scapegoating.
Given they’re arriving almost immediately after Sal announces it’s a holdup, I suspect not then. My guess is a tail from the previous robbery after Sal got dropped off or something.
It’s less that the clerk couldn’t have done it quickly and without realizing Sal’s age, and more that the cops were dispatched and arrived in a matter of seconds
That I can understand. Amber is clearly no threat, but Ethan COULD be a potential threat. So taking Ethan hostage neutralises the only threat AND gives her potential leverage, while taking Amber hostage leaves her having to potentially deal with both Ethan and the cops.
It would be ironic if that were the case, given Amber later stabs her in the hand. It make more sense to take a hostage that would not fight back than one who would, particularly since Ethan’s proximity to Amber could be taken as an indication of attachment which would mean taking Amber hostage would stop Ethan from doing anything. (I admit it could push him over the edge, but I consider that unlikely based on his characterization so far).
Man this is the nicest late night cashier of all time lol. And come on Ethan and Amber, ya’ll shoulda been running by now. I know trauma is tough, but take care of yourselves, run if you have the chance!
That’s also not how escaping from a situation like this works given they learned 1) they were noticed and 2) there’s an exit that may not require running past the person with the weapon all of five seconds ago…
Why do you assume these 13 y.o. kids are able to think clearly in this moment? I, a 20-something, would also be scared as shit, possibly to the point of freezing as Amber and Ethan have.
Even ignoring that they’re 13, fight/flight/freeze is not really a conscious reaction. Throw pretty much anyone into a sufficiently threatening situation and they’ll react in one of those ways, with little control over which one. I think there are patterns in how individuals react, but it’s not as simple as “I froze that time, I will always freeze.”
Training can overcome that and build in more useful responses, but it’s not easy. A lot of work needs to go into it.
Even when you hear about people who did the right thing untrained in some crisis situation, it’s often just “I found myself reacting.” Conscious mind in the back seat, trying to catch up with the reflex.
There’s also ‘fawn’ (try and make the problem go away by complying and survive.) Even less well-known than freeze, which is starting to be recognized as a standard response, but also an instinctive override.
Hadn’t heard of that.
Makes sense. It can be a good reaction in some circumstances. Which is why we have it built in.
When you can’t safely resist or get away and you’re already being targeted so freezing won’t get you passed over – use your words. We’re social animals. Words are what we do.
It’s not a great sign when the cashier who Sal is attempting to rob displays in one panel more understanding than Linda did in the entirety of the flashback.
New contender for the DoA Top 10 Best Parents list.
. . . it’s not specifically ordered, but so far I’ve got Dorothy’s parents, Dina’s parents, Carla’s parents, Hank, Stacy, and Leslie.
Thus far, Galasso and Pamela, Sierra’s parents, and Mike’s parents have appeared but unless I’m forgetting something have mostly been neutral. Maggie may or may not count, as I have no reason to doubt her parenting ability but it hasn’t been demonstrated in-strip.
Yeah, there’s gonna be some major similarities if anyone tries to list the decent parents of the strip. Listing the worst parents gets tricky because there are weird debates over what kind of screwed-up parenting is worst.
Yeah, between remarkably-well-adjusted and low-drama Sierra and her dad immediately trying to put an obstacle between Blaine and Amber and deescalate him, I think REALLY well of the Snow parents.
My main list is focused on those who have been depicted doing solid parenting things; giving decent advice to a kid and looking out for them, for example. Sierra’s parents are solid people and probably awesome parents, but have not appeared enough to have demonstrated so in-strip.
Dina’s parents rank pretty high because, while they’re rather quiet, “You have a girlfriend? Here is money for a date.” is the healthiest response to their child’s relationship we’ve seen.
And lied about her age, is clearly somewhat panicked, is uncomfortable with and unexperienced in her current action, and ultimately doesn’t injure anyone in the process? Maybe, maybe not. Given all of the details and an opportunity to take the action after the incident without interference from Sal’s parents, I bet the cashier would at least go so far as asking Sal if she was interested.
Of course, if you’re a gas station cashier, you’re probably not really in a position to adopt anyone – particularly someone in as troubled a state as Sal seems to be.
If I knew they were trying to get money for a friend’s surgery, were from an abusive home, and did it while in deep emotional turmoil? Then yes, because sometimes good people do bad things in their pain when they feel backed into a corner and like they’ve got no other options. Even despite the cashier giving her an out, she genuinely sees no point in protecting herself. She doesn’t care what happens to her. So even if given a way out of this problem? That doesn’t give her a new option for fixing the problem that is actually plaguing her. She still feels trapped.
We know that Sal was practically beaten down into this corner by her mother’s lack of care. By her mother BLACKMAILING her into getting better friends. By her well-earned money being taken away from her. So yes she’s doing the wrong thing but she’s a kid holding a kid at knife point with no intent to actually hurt him, not an adult holding a kid at knife point with every intention to kill him. She’s been put under an intense amount of emotional pressure with no way to escape it so she’s acting out. We know this isn’t Sal normally. We know she would rather have earned the money herself. *But her mother took that option away from her and blackmailed her*.
All this proves is that if you hurt someone enough and take away enough options, they might crack and do something they know is wrong. That isn’t a ‘gotcha’. That is just tragic. Sal never should have been put in a situation where she felt this was the only option she had left.
Theory time! Who called the cops? I imagine it was the clerks/workers at the first convenience store that Sal’s friends stole from. They have camera footage of them leaving in a truck and if there are cameras at traffic lights and such, they might have tracked down that the fleeing truck came to this convenience store, to rob it like they did the first. I imagine the cops will be surprised to find only one person inside. And again, I posit that Sal’s record includes the first convenience store/her family considers her responsible because she refused to snitch on her buddies. Even if they aren’t great friends, Sal isn’t a snitch, especially with cops.
Yeah, that seems likely. I doubt Asher and co. end up getting off scot free for this (and it’s possible that whatever cameras got the truck, since it seems near certain they did, could lead to them trying to offer a plea for the first one if she testified against them, but then 1. Sal and 2. racism.) But Sal is here, and Sal is arrestable, and as the cashier says they are not gonna treat her as a scared thirteen-year-old.
Clerk did. Someone kicked over a display and yelled – you press the buttom that calls the cops. Then you see it was just a kid who will not be treated well by the system and try to get her out.
And now I have this mental image of Clark bringing Sal to his Kansas home and he gets very competitive when she sees him do farm chores using his super strength. Like carrying an entire huge roll of hay to for the cows and she tries to emulate him but fails, but it doesn’t stop her from trying.
Either him or Diana working another job like the Taco Whiz gig.
By 2037, the whole strip will have pivoted to the Amazons adopting the cast and taking them to Themiscyra for healing and training in Nazi punching for those who so desire.
You could have gotten away with the attempted crime, Sal, but you traumatized an already anxious girl and got a stab in your hand like if you where Nicolas Angel. Hatred is quite contagious.
I mean, if you wanna be pedantic, pretty sure all of the cast is 18+, but yeah, Sal does not have a great track record with authority figures. Even her dad wasn’t great.
This isn’t pride, it’s desperation and guilt. She thinks this the only way to help Marcie and doesn’t feel she has the right to give up just because she’s scared and uncomfortable about doing this
I don’t think it’s pride. I also don’t think that it’s desperation or guilt, not any more.
At this point I think it’s stubbornness. She’s gotten locked into the course of doing the robbery, and tunnel vision is keeping her from reevaluating that and realizing hey, it’s time to call this thing quits and run out the back.
It doesn’t solve her actual problem. Even if she runs, she still doesn’t have another way to help Marcie. She doesn’t care if she gets hurt or punished or arrested if it means she can finally help Marcie. In her current state of mind, she might not be physically trapped or forced to do this, but emotionally she still feels trapped and doesn’t know any other way to try to help Marcie because when she tried to do it the right legal way? Her mother stole her money and used it to blackmail her.
It might not solve her problem, but it’s a hell of a lot better than potentially going to prison. My Point is she was given a chance not every person gets. She has a MUCH better chance in helping Marcy a free girl than one in jail.
When I was siiiventeen it was a very bad year
It was a very bad year for small town girls who got into fights
I should have hid from the lights
But Marcie needed that green
When I was siiiventeen
The fans always expect it when it pains
And the flashback changes colors
But the flashback does not change
And so with the slow awkward dumbing of age
She went forward with an age old desire for cash
On the edge of siiiiventeen
Who will be shocked that 13 year olds are knifing each other, what’s wrong with society? She should run for office, under a party that promises to bring back moral teachings to our kids!
That clerk has shown more sympathy and understanding in 3 panels than Linda has shown in this entire flashback.
The cops came surprisingly fast. They were probably already tailing Asher and some probably split off to get Sal when they got info about her being dropped off at another store.
Gas station night attendant. I think you’re exactly right.
I’m also wondering if this one was in fact the one we saw her and Marcie hanging out outside, and the clerk recognizes her as the kid deliberating over a candy bar and deciding it wasn’t worth it. Either way they’re aware they’re in no danger and seeing her as a scared kid with no plan and no forethought, and trying to give her an out before she did anything more than knock over some cardboard (which means they were probably willing to lie a bit when asked. ‘No idea how she knew about that back exit, but she bolted as soon as she saw the lights.’)
Yeah, that seems like a significant indicator in Indiana. (I’m used to Baltimore area where it’s common parlance among white people as well, but I know it’s not universal.)
Pretty sure it’s the same place – we saw the glass and little speaker grille then and the ATM next to it – which we can’t see here, but could in Amber’s version.
Probably banking hard on the fact that the two kids probably aren’t in much position or head space to give more than a very rough description.
I was thinking it could be a chain before – the front in the strip of the first robbery a few days ago looked identical to the one in the establishing shot of Amber’s flashback – but I’m definitely leaning towards it being this exact one.
Not sure about the front from the other robbery, but inside where the clerk is is identical to the scene where she didn’t buy the candy bar: bulletproof glass with the same rectangle things, ATM next to it.
Poor Sal, she really is desperate isn’t she, and Linda took away any hope of doing this the legal way. Linda is as much to blame for this as Sal, because she backed Sal into a corner and took away her options.
Poor Sal, she really is desperate isn’t she, and Linda took away any hope of doing this the legal way. Linda is as much to blame for this as Sal, because she backed Sal into a corner and took away her options.
I wouldn’t be surprised considering this particular moment is a cosmic character coincidence sinkhole. (Maybe it’s where this universe’s drama tag got pulled.)
But considering the clerk has never been seen or named or identified, it’s definitely Bloodrose.
Really interested how most of this sequence wasn’t in Amber’s flashback. Doylistically it’s probably because Willis hadn’t come up with all the details of when Sal robbed the first one (and White People Awareness of this particular double standard in 2018 vs 2013 is way higher.) But Watsonianly I really do think Amber in her trauma either didn’t hear/process or has forgotten some of the details that show Sal in any light but the absolute worst.
And let’s talk some more about how sad it is that this clerk reacts with more compassion to the situation than either Linda in any capacity ever or Blaine. (If the clerk’s offering a scared kid an out then I’m willing to bet they wouldn’t deride the scared kid who froze for doing so.)
Well, we see in the last two panels that Amber is covering her eyes.
It wouldn’t be a surprise if she was tuning a lot of this out and only remembering the worst of it.
There’s a difference between remembering something and having a flashback to one particular traumatising moment, well, at least for me. Remembering something is like telling a story. Flashbacks are like being thrown into one moment in the past and being caught there. Sometimes being thrown from image to image.
Also, the clerk probably spoke in a low tone and human memory is faulty at best.
I think that there’s something tragic about just how comedically inept Sal was at this. If Ethan and Amber weren’t so terrified, they’d probably have been laughing their heads off.
Why anyone besides high druggies even considers service stations a viable thing to rob any more when they have so many protocols and safety features is beyond me.
Yeeah I’m just not feeling any sympathy here. It doesn’t matter how sad or desperate Sal is, she knows better then to rob a convenient store. Or double down and take a hostage. 13 is not that young to not understand basic right or wrong.
Lifting a rich person’s wallet because ‘they wouldnt miss it’ is something I could see a 13 year old justify. Selling dime bags to strangers because they can’t see bigger picture is something I could see a 13 year old justify. Robbing a store??? Come on, my 8 year old niece behind me knows better than that. Hell she asked why she didn’t at least put on a mask xD
And didn’t Sal try to say her parents treated her like shit because she was ‘blacker’ than Walky? When Sal herself seems to wear her hair natural when she’s shaking around, lying, smoking, and stealing – – what does THAT say about Sal’s perception of blackness?
Reeeeaally hoping she’s trying to get caught here on purpose.
Could very well be that some part of her WANTS to be caught. I mean, she just got given an out. A way to get off scott free. And she instead took a hostage. Either she has a HORRIBLY twisted view on how these go due to her ‘friend’ that Linda thinks is a good boy, or she WANTS to be caught
Or I guess she could also be so panicked she isn’t thinking clearly whatsoever and this is just one long litany of errors
You can see where she thinks about it. But it is a way to get off without getting Marcie what she needs, what Sal thinks is necessary to atone for getting her injured.
Sal is not thinking clearly, and part of it is panic, but part of it is that she is on a crusade. A well-intentioned crusade, but one that overrides other concerns nonetheless. As mrj quoted above, “that which redeems consumes”.
People keep saying that they have no sympathy for Sal, because taking hostages is obviously wrong. It is, but she’s not a rational actor here. She’s completely blinded by guilt. May they never have reason to know what that is like.
One of the main reasons Cortez unleashed the genocide and looting of Meso-America in such a brutal way, was the fact that all of the Conquistadors were in massive amounts of debt. Especially the those in charge. None of the wealth that was looted from the Aztecs Actually went to Spain or the would be Conquerors, instead it ended up in vaults in Italy, where most banking was done at the time.
The Main tool that Mafioso use to manipulate their community into accepting their brutal rule is through the creation of debt networks. A waiter might poison the food of a Sicilian labor organizer that the mafia got a hit on, not because he wanted him dead, but because he owes the Family a favor and Debts Must Always Be Paid.
Being in a state of debt like this is essentially akin to having the logic of an addict, trying to liquidate as many assets until all debts are paid. Sal feels took Marcie’s voice and thus feels the full weight of the debt that Marcie’s undocumented uninsured parents ranked up. Sal isn’t thinking logicly shes thinking like she needs to liquidate as many assets as humanly possible as soon as possible.
Also who are you to make judgements on people who rob businesses? There are always legitimate reasons for every crime, not always good ones, but enough that thinking all armed robbery is universally bad is probably a moral failing.
For treating her “blacker”, that started long before she started “shaking around, lying, smoking, and stealing”.
(No idea what “shaking around” is supposed to be.)
As for the hair: I think the flashback with Marcie’s injury is the earliest we’ve seen it straightened? The little kid ones it was natural. The school ones with Leland it was still natural. Now, a couple months after the injury, it’s natural again.
Bet she’s been saving the hair murdering money for Marcie.
And didn’t Sal try to say her parents treated her like shit because she was ‘blacker’ than Walky? When Sal herself seems to wear her hair natural when she’s shaking around, lying, smoking, and stealing – – what does THAT say about Sal’s perception of blackness?
It shows that she’s a. starting to reject her mother’s vision for herself and b. imbibed a lot of her attitudes from her mom.
This really shows just how weak Amber’s psyche was to begin with. Sal didn’t even do a good job thinking this shit through! She didn’t get money. She didn’t harm anyone. She traumatized a girl for having a knife out while yelling. Traumatized her so bad her personality split! And why? Because her fucking mother STOLE her money she was trying to help with friend with.
To be fair to Amber, it’s not really THIS moment that does it for her. It’s kind of a catalyst, but it’s more like a domino effect. I’d say her reaction here makes sense because she’s just an anxious kid. She was just freaking out about buying twinkies and now a stranger is waving a knife around. She’s scared. And maybe if this was all that had happened, she wouldn’t have been as traumatized.
This event merely set off the next event, which is Blaine berating her for being afraid. He shamed her, made her feel responsible for Ethan being taken hostage here, and that guilt, anger and fear from his words is what caused her to snap. She lashed out and stabbed Sal in the hand, and her personality split because she was at odds with herself. Normal people don’t stab other people and thus Amber feels like she’s bad and awful for hurting Sal. And she can’t deny that a part of her might have enjoyed it, just as a part of her enjoyed punching the shit out of her father. Her psyche was weak due to her abusive dad, and he was the final domino that made her snap after this awful night.
Pretty much. Blaine is the root of Amber’s problems. Sal merely the trigger. And you’re very likely right that it was her stabbing Sal that was the catalyst, not Sal threatening her and Ethan.
But she’s not just an anxious kid. She’s already a long term abuse victim and her social anxiety is just a symptom of that. Even before this she desperately needs therapy (and to be away from Blaine.)
That said, her anxiety is firmly in the disorder territory, and at that point what would be merely a stressful situation can become traumatic because anxiety brain runs overtime.
It’s all Blaine’s fault, but this would have been naturally frightening to Amber even if she had no abuse but a naturally-occurring anxiety disorder.
True, but I assume the anxiety isn’t naturally occuring, but is itself the result of Blaine’s abuse. Or is at least compounded by it, where a supportive environment could have helped her with it.
Yeah, I tend to think she was at least a bit prone to it under ideal non-abusive circumstances, and then Blaine made it six million times worse. Either way she was never going to handle something like this particularly well even if Blaine HADN’T proceeded to be a shitstain immediately afterwards. (Ie, if Blaine were not actually Blaine.)
Not something we’ll ever find out for sure since Amber having a shitstain father is universal (unless there IS a universe out there where he got himself killed by the mob while Stacey was pregnant, and maybe in that universe she and Yuri who was already an adult and also pregnant teamed up as co-parents and things were happy? Let me dream.) So ultimately the point is moot.
If this is Sal’s flashback (and it all still has a blue tint) then she will see Ethan’s grown up face next. And I really want to know what she dos with knowing he’s the guy she took hostage then.
This is the nicest person to attempt a robbery on.
Wow, the compassion of this sales clerk. Someone’s threatening her, and her only thought is ‘gee, will the Robber be alright?’
#JustARepostSoTheTyposWontBotherMeThroughoutTheNextWeek
Someone’s trying to threaten her, but so far isn’t at all. Her weapon is useless, and the cops are already on their way.
So I can see thinking “Really? This can’t be a real robbery, can it?” and then realizing “No, it’s not. She’s just a kid who doesn’t know what she is doing.” and going from there.
But yeah, they’re still very understanding. As people have pointed out, much more than Sal’s own mother has been.
Bit too negative outlook for me, that! In this moment in time, what matters is the kind clerk, the poor folks she is about to hurt, the friend she’s doing this all for.
She should deal with Linda once she’s in the picture. Right now, she’s just a roadblock.
And advice to any parents here, if you position yourself as a speedbump on your kid’s road to life, you will get run over.
If Sal hadn’t lied about her age, the cashier could have given her a more accurate response. After all, the police would be far more likely to consider a thirteen year old a child than a ‘th…siiventeen’ year old.
Certainly, the cashier’s given response coupled with the unexpected arrival of the police escalated the stress Sal was under. The juxtaposition of her expectation that this robbery go off without a hitch, based on the prior robbery, with actual events (glass, cops, etc.) probably knocked her off the rails of her prior plan without giving her time to unwind and re-evaluate events, which is why she takes the extra step of obtaining a hostage. If she was more experienced and less flustered by events, she probably would have fled out the back (or simply have come in with a better plan).
Please note ‘stress’, and for that matter ‘trauma’, does not occur only for victims (like Amber and Ethan and the Clerk) but also for perpetrators (if it is even fair to call Sal that).
And a lot of that evidence suggests it really is “mistake”. That it’s subconcious processing.
Not consciously thinking “She looks about 13, but she’s black, so I’ll say 15”, but just a shortcut to seeing them as older.
Brains are weird, although I’ve also seen evidence it’s sometimes a mistake in the sense of not wanting to see what’s in front of them, hence my quotes around mistake.
See also ‘12-year-old murder victim is considered adult, college-age rapist is a promising young man who doesn’t deserve his future ruined because of one mistake.’
I disagree: I think cashier *caught* it, and new dang well that the police still wouldn’t see a knife-brandishing black girl as a ‘kid’. plus, a 13 year old looks WAAAYYY different than a 17 year old, most of the time; The cashier almost *certainly* knows she’s lying.
Remember, in *real life*, police saw Tamir Rice as an ‘adult’, and he was *TWELVE*.
Police claim the saw Tamir Rice as an adult. Assuming that they didn’t just intentionally shoot a black child knowing full well what they were doing and then covering it up is extremely generous, and more benefit of the doubt than they deserve.
That’s a generous assumption on behalf of police that regularly treat black children as being adults. It doesn’t really matter what Sal told the clerk, the clerk can tell she’s lying and knows that it wouldn’t really matter how old she was for how the police would treat her. Why do you think the clerk told her to run?
Hostage taking is sort of costing you sympathy points here, Sal, even though we all knew it was coming.
Regardless, is the clerk Mr. Rogers or something?
RL aside: I haven’t seen Cerberus, Bluewind, or Jeep-eep in forever. Have they been posting on Patreon, or does someone know if they’re alright or something?
A point I want to make for all the “She has no excuse for suddenly taking a hostage” folks. Adrenaline kind of doesn’t help the brain make decisions, usually you lock on to what you expect to happen, and if it doesn’t… well it can cause a melt down in the worst case, and a slew of bad decisions in the… uh… other worst case?
In this case she didn’t expect the glass (which, really Sal, i know you’re distracted and flustered, but the glass is really obvious…), did expect the police so suddenly, and i guess just those two really…
I wonder, have people never read a story where someone swears an oath, and then it turns out to drive them to ruin or betrayal or something because they don’t know how else to fulfill it?
That’s what is happening here. “This is just temporary” was a promise, because “this is still my fault” even if Marcie doesn’t hold her to it. Taking a hostage is Sal’s final desperate attempt to hold that oath. I’m sure she knows it’s not sensible. I’m sure she knows it’s not right.
But it’s the only option she can come up with, because breaking that promise is not on the table.
I honestly think Sal is so far into panicked anxiety tunnel vision that there’s nothing resembling rational thought here. She didn’t plan at the start of the night to rob a second store – she had that idea when they gave her the knife. She wasn’t emotionally prepared to rob a second store – she needed to psyche herself up for it and only the traumatic thought of Marcie and her guilt brought her to that level. (And I’m certain that was what brought her to the first one.) She had no intention of taking a hostage – she started by just kicking over a snack stand and threatening the completely unfazed clerk. She’s not even able to lie about her age. This was a terrible plan which contains negative amounts of forethought, but she’s too freaked out and terrified and guilty to turn back because admitting she failed Marcie is even worse in her mind than the consequences.
(Being thirteen, it is likely she’s not dwelling too hard on the worst possible consequences because teens, but given how badly Walky’s fucked up with his fear of failure who knows. Someone help these children.)
Completely agree. I just figured it was important to note Sal is not panicking about her safety or getting caught, as for instance suggestions that she could have taken the get-away opportunity presume. She’s panicking about never being able to atone, to make herself worthwhile.
The other day Bagge pointed out an important comic too. University Sal calls out thinking you are acting selfless, but having something to prove, as something that can get someone hurt. Well, here is that lesson.
So, how old is Sal really here? She seems like she starts to say 13 before changing to 17. just curious. A 13 year old is unlikely to be tried as an adult which aligns with Sal’s story/life
I don’t think Sal was tried as an adult, but given cop’s… track records with children who are not white, the clerk is probably worried Sal is going to get shot.
Im quite happy with the clerk who is providing an out because they worry sal will be shot. But we know sal was arrested. We know she ended up in boarding school rather than jail so she must be thirteen here right? I’m just looking for context for myself
She is thirteen and was sent away for five years with little to no contact with her family (Walky’s not seen her and barely spoken to her in that time, which he blames on the cost of postage).
Given that her parents have apparently had almost no contact as well, I assume that was Walky’s usual deflection and they discouraged any interest he might have had in reaching out. Which he would have quickly picked up on to stay in their good graces.
No, even if he wanted to (and he might not have – that whole situation was heavy and messy and we know Walky’s response to Sal having heavy, emotional situations was to do his best to tune it out and then deflect if he couldn’t), I imagine contact time would be limited.
I mean, can you imagine Walky buying stamps? Even now (eg, not in flashback), it seems like it would be a comedy thing about how he can’t adult. If his parents said ‘no, it costs too much’ or ‘it’s just wasting postage,’ Walky would probably just accept it.
I’m picturing the latter, because that would be not just based on money (which they undoubtedly can spare, they’re not supposed to be poor and stamps are under a dollar each), but on them thinking reaching out is a waste of time, and is one of those small things Walky certainly wouldn’t catch he subtext of, especially in the past.
Well no, not really. But I can imagine him calling her on the phone. Or texting her, since he’s opposed to using his phone as a phone. Or emailing or anyone of the nigh-infinite other ways people have to stay in touch when far away these days.
But I can easily also imagine him picking up the subtext of his parents cues not to bother.
I’ve seen it in gas stations at garages, where there’s a booth to handle paying for gas and selling cigarettes and few other things. Rarely in an actual convenience store gas station with aisles full of goods and stuff.
Probably common in some bad neighborhoods though.
Yeah, it very much depends on the neightborhood. There was one I was in in Arecibo PR that was much like this – aisles of goods and bulletproof glass at the register.
It’s not a universal thing across the country, but presumably the only establishments that have bulletproof glass are those that are frequently targeted for crimes, such as banks or convenience stores.
Yeah, that’s why I said it wasn’t universal. I live in Oklahoma, and I don’t have any gas stations with bulletproof glass either. But I wouldn’t be surprised that they would exist in other areas, that have higher crime rates or gun violence.
Yeah, she’s damaged.
Marcie’s damaged.
And that’s really hard to deal.
I gave allowance,
Tried Go-Fund-Me,
But that did not pay the bill.
I feel guilty.
I feel desperate.
And my family doesn’t understand.
I helped Asher,
Get easy money,
But at least he had a PLAN.
Can’t I be sssiii…venteen?
Can’t I just rob this store?
I want to help her out,
And let her talk once more.
Bro annoys me.
Dad ignores me.
And mom — let’s not go there.
The only way
I ever please them
Is to straighten out my hair.
I met Marcie.
She’s my best friend.
I can’t allow myself to fail.
I’ll make sure to
Get her voice back
Even if I go to JAIL.
Can’t I be sssiii…venteen?
Can’t I just rob this store?
I want to help her out,
And let her talk once more!
I said I’m sssiii…venteen!
I will get through this cage!
Even if I have to grab
This boy who looks my age!
——————————
Now I’m damaged.
And they’re damaged.
And Marcie still has no voice.
I helped no one.
And hurt everyone.
I know this wasn’t the right choice.
Can’t I just be thirteen?
This wasn’t the right choice. I just want to help her out.
I couldn’t think of the right choice. Then what was the right choice?
What was the right choice?
– Mike arranges/blackmails Blaine into agreeing to drive Amber and Ethan to and from a school band trip.
– Sal’s mother takes the $700 she’s saved to help Marcie.
– Amber and Ethan’s school trip comes and the band does well. They stop at the gas station and the kids decide to buy snacks for the drive home.
– Sal acts as a lookout for Asher and (presumably) his brother and brother’s friend while they rob the store. She receives her cut and asks to be dropped off at another convenience store.
– Amber wants Twinkies but is bordering on an anxiety attack at the thought of talking to the clerk. Ethan offers to talk to the stranger for her, and also points out Sal, who he notices pacing. He believes Sal is also on the edge of an anxiety attack (“I bet you two are the same!”)
– Sal stops pacing and thinks for a moment. She has a red panel flashback to Marcie and knocks a stand of Nachitos over, declaring a holdup. Ethan pulls Amber aside, hiding in the aisles.
– The clerk (which the comments have dubbed ‘Clark’ after Clark Kent’s compassion) points out that he’s safe behind bullet proof glass and that the police have arrived.
– Sal takes Ethan hostage.
– According to the books, the police disarm the situation peacefully (although considering comments made by Sal about police, in this case ‘peacefully’ likely just means no one was hurt).
– While Sal is being arrested by the police, Blaine berates Amber for not defending Ethan.
– A thoroughly (and thus far, permanently) traumatized Amber snaps and stabs Sal through the hand, causing permanent damage. So far as we know, she is never charged for this.
– Blaine declines to get therapy for Amber and opts for self defence lessons instead.
– Sal is sent to a frillion crappy therapists and a jail like Catholic boarding school in Tennessee that’s apparently little different from juvenile detention, with little to no contact from her family over those five years.
I’m starting to feel like Sal’s MUCH better off for that ‘no contact’ thing jesus fucking christ Linda
(just caught up from the beginning of the flashback…)
Apparently this was said in the paper versions, in the recap section. PDFs don’t mention it (although they do mention the knife went through her hand, not just in it).
Not because they shouldn’t be. For Sal’s sake, I wish they all were. But for the sake of realistically portraying Sal’s situation, especially leading up to her obvious distrust of authority figures and especially cops, but in general, realistic for a young black girl, there shouldn’t be anyone like Becky’s supportive cops.
(not that it wouldn’t be satisfying for even a cop to be like ‘wow, her mom is saying some fucked up shit’)
I don’t think there will be. I don’t think Sal would be quite so ‘all authority is shit’ if she had had any substantial positive authority figures in her life.
Yeah, it doesn’t seem likely, but I’ll just be so angry if so. I don’t know how the comment section is doing on this sort of thing RN either, which makes me a bit anxious (thinking back to all the ‘Mary’s kinda right’ type comments and expecting ‘come on the cops are just doing their jobs, that racist comment was just them being mad because they had to arrest a criminal’ type things)
I’d like to believe that wouldn’t happen, but literally any time we deal with an abusive parent or bigot we get comments like that. Hell, we had a bunch with Linda just the past few days.
People are fine when characters stand up against the concepts of bigotry and abuse, but when there’s an actual character that’s made to be bigoted or abusive, they’ll find any excuse for their actions.
I get what you’re saying, really. But it’s fiction. We can discuss it in nuances rather than binary right/wrong FAR more easily than real life events, because the characters are symbols, not actual people.
I think it’s useful and healthy for folks consuming media to relate to “antagonists” in some ways, as a thought exercise if nothing else. It can help you to identify potentially harmful behaviors in yourself given certain contexts and keep them in check IRL.
TL;DR, identifying with a character exhibiting bad behavior does not make you a “bad person”. You’re only being a shitbag if you apply that behavior knowingly to others.
It can be. But when the excuses people are making for the antagonists are the same excuses regularly made for real life abusers, that’s not quite so useful and healthy.
Maybe not quite so clear here, but I’m remembering a lot of the discussion when Clint first appeared. (Or John, in a slightly different way.) There was a lot of dismissal of the red flags many people saw that paralleled very nicely the way real life abuse victims get dismissed.
Relating with the antagonist (or any fictional character exhibiting bad behavior – like Sal here (or Amber in a few minutes)) can be useful. You can understand how people come to do bad things. Identifying with them to the point that you’re defending the bad behavior is a different story.
I said nothing about identifying with antagonists. I said people will excuse characters explicitly created to be bigoted or abusive. Think about the last several days where you have people bending over backwards to say that Linda’s not racist, Sal’s just overreacting. Again: it’s actual text within the webcomic that Linda is racist. But people want to create a whole narrative in which Linda is right about Marcie’s parents being criminals, so her aversion to Marcie is actually rooted in something reasonable and fact-based and not racism.
You can’t identify unhealthy behaviors in yourself if you refuse to accept the unhealthy behaviors in characters and rewrite their behavior to actually be good.
To further clarify: some things aren’t that ambiguous nor have a lot of nuance to them.
Mary is very clearly, very explicitly homophobic and transphobic. And yet, people will defend her, claiming that she was “only trying to study” when it came to her feud with Carla.
Ross was very explicitly homophobic, showing up at the school to kill his daughter because she was a heathen now for being a lesbian. And people defended him because he just really loved his daughter.
Linda is racist, but she’s not an open bigot about it like Mary or Ross. She doesn’t use slurs. She doesn’t explicitly mention race. But if you read what she’s saying and read the statements of the people around her (see: Sal, Walky, Billie), you could tell that she has biases. She may not be as openly violent in her bigotry as Mary, but you can see by the way she assumes that a (Mexican) toddler will grow up to become a petty criminal that there’s some fucked up thinking there. But people would rather say that Linda’s narcissistic and wants to have a feminine, pretty little princess daughter like Billie, which has NOTHING to do with racism honest, instead of admitting that Linda’s racist.
Feel free to identify and examine characters’ behaviors as you will, but if you excuse blatant prejudices and find a way to say that the character’s actually NOT a bigot, it’s not going to help you keep in check any behaviors of your own. It might, actually, help perpetuate them.
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wait what
those colours aren’t blue OR red?!
what sorcery is this
Clearly that last panel should have been red.
I see it as in transition to red, which it will be next strip.
It would have been, if it were Amber’s (or Ethan’s) flashback.
This is real colors. Maybe this is Willis saying this is no longer a flashback, this is the objective take on what actually happened?
The last bit of flashback showing the robbery from Amber’s perspective did something similar, though that wasn’t as close to real colors
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/same/
I think the only significance to it is dramatic effect
That’s because that one’s main colour, shading wise, was red, this one’s is blue.
Just as a note, that is not the last bit of Amber’s flashback to the robbery. This is: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/hostage/
Interesting that Amber’s memory apparently entirely skips over the entire middle of this comic
Well, Sal was yelling the parts Amber overheard, I doubt the rest was quite as loud
This is not real colors. Everything here is a shade of red or blue, but they are different hues of red & blue. Look closer: there are no yellows or greens (but there are oranges and cyans). All the skin tones can be considered a shade of red. Most of the background is blue of a blue-ish off-gray. It’s honestly really well done, as the two red and blue palettes meld together, and I like it. 🙂
*OR a blue-ish off-gray. Typos. Blah.
I’m hypothesizing it could be relived trauma. For either Sal or Ethan.
Or the rest of this storyline will now take place in this perspective of time.
😔
yeeeeep
This is all Ethan’s fault. You see, the clerk is Mike, which is why we can’t see the clerk, so there’s no tag. Mike, with his ability to read people has now said exactly the one thing that makes taking Ethan hostage inevitable. He’s also called the police in advance which is the only possible way they could have shown up, sirens blazing, within seconds of the robbery starting. Mike, it should be remembered, is the one who used blackmail to set up this trip in the first place, knowing it would be hugely stressful for everyone involved. Now, all he has to do is watch as events take their inevitable course and the seeds of Amazigirl are sown. So you see, it is all Ethan’s fault.
Prove me wrong.
Ah, but in truth it is Naomi’s fault, as the creation of Amazi-Girl is solely to put Ethan under enough stress that he’ll sleep with Mike, which is the one thing Naomi most dreads, thus accomplishing Mike’s goal of figuratively fucking Ethan’s mom
Go Team Marcie!
NARRATOR: it was not all forgotten by morning.
🙁
Well, she didn’t take the cashier’s advice, so we’ll never know.
I know I’ll never forget that Xtreme mug! 96 ounces people! That’s insane!
Technically, that ought to be called a “pitcher.”
Where I live, it’s not legally considered a pitcher unless it has a pour spout.
That means you can take one of those giant novelty beer mugs into a bar and have it filled up, even if you’re the only person at the table, and it doesn’t count as the bar selling a pitcher to a single person. On the other hand, if you’re at the bar/club by yourself, you can’t have your beer served in one of those tiny creamer jugs. BECAUSE IT’S LEGALLY A PITCHER. >_<
Can you not purchase a pitcher to consume on your own then? I mean in fairness the only place I’ve done that was Wetherspoons and their cocktails are really weak… And technically that was two pitchers between two people?
No, Sal, listen to the disembodied vo – ehh, never mind, we know how this turns out…
Okay I don’t know about this one. You’re telling me Sal had an out and doubled down?! Conflicted feelings here!
I mean, Sal’s not exactly the best at making touch decisions in the heat of the moment.
And that’s coming from me, a guy who almost threw a chair at another dude.
To be fair, that chair was a jerk
Steve Ballmer, is that you?
Almost? Well, see, you have way more self control than me.
…but I didn’t have a friend who might get an important surgery if I threw the chair well enough, so I’m not gonna judge Sal for this call.
She’s pretty conflicted herself, but for the moment her doubts about this being the right thing to do or even a good idea sound just like being too scared to help Marcie, so she’s pushing through it :/
We haven’t seen much indication of adults in Sal’s life giving her much of a chance. She’s had a REALLY rough time of it leading up to this moment, and unfortunately, that out just came too late.
Honestly, I read it as her feeling guilty and deciding to get caught on purpose.
Interesting! I read it as her doubling down because, hey, she’s already come this far, fuck it, right? Sal’s pretty stubborn. But I like that it can be read other ways, too!
Could be a mix of guilt and saying ‘fuck this’ – after all, she has a couple people at home she probably wants to piss off right now (especially since she is definitely not getting the money for Marcie now).
I’m not sure that really makes sense though – even in her messed up state.
If she’s definitely not getting the money and has a way to get away, why take the hostage. We’d originally thought that was to make the clerk give her the money and it only really makes sense if she’s still thinking that.
If she was just trying to get caught, she could just stay and rant until the cops come in.
Fair point.
How does “I am not a kid. I am fed up with being treated loke a kid and being dismissed. What do I need to do to be taken seriously here??” work for you?
I think it’s important that she has an out. That she has this way to avoid all of the punishment and judgement and sneering that comes afterwards (…….well, okay, most of it).
Because while she has a somewhat noble reason for all of this, the saying remains true: There’s nothing like a good cause to bring out the worst in people.
I don’t think we’re supposed to be cheering Sal on. I think we’re supposed to be seeing that, while Sal has good intentions, she’s doing something horrible to fulfill them.
For a character without a face or a name, I really like the store clerk here.
Store clerks seem to generally be pretty good in Willisverses.
Mike is the best.
The store clerk seems pretty awesome here.
yeah seriously. But clerks often know how shit works.
And he wasn’t even supposed to be there today!
Is it common for a man to call a kid “hon” ? One he has no family connexion to ?
Actually, is it common that a clerk, whatever their gender is, call a kid customer “hon” ?
I’m asking because this looked really weird to me ever since we first met this specific clerk.
It’s regional – it wouldn’t draw any attention in the south, and in the west it doesn’t draw much (it’s notable, but not weird). I can’t speak for Indiana in particular though.
In the Northeast it’s mostly associated with diner waitresses.
In eastern Indiana and western Ohio it’s not exactly common, but it’s also not quite uncommon. When the region was a core manufacturing hub during the mid-twentieth century quite a lot of Southerners migrated here, especially from Appalachia and other poorer, more rural regions of the south for the employment opportunities the region offered. Quite a lot of us descended from them learned some of those mannerisms at home, though the corporate culture of the chain restaurants, large chain retail establishments, corporate owned gas stations, et al that have increasingly infested the region the last forty or fifty years have also largely pushed against addressing the public in such a manner.
It’s funny to think that many diners are basically immigrant-run ethnic food places.
Funny, I’ve been reading the clerk as a woman all this time…
Same. Think its the hon
It’s just a Clerks reference, you guys…
I know the clerk is probably a woman, but I pretend it’s a sassy gay guy
Store clerk is now my favorite character. After everyone who has failed Sal, a line that starts with both her parents and just gets longer and longer, it’s this one anonymous store clerk who tries to give her another chance, when said clerk has the least incentive to do so. That’s really, really powerful, I think. It’s a shame that it was just too little, too late.
Ethan looks like he’s got a five o’clock shadow there.
puberty comes at you fast
Trauma has aged him.
I had sympathy for Sal but thats basically all gone now.
Why? Because she’s a desperate 13 year old? She’s not in the best mindset to be making decisions here.
I have sympathy for someone right up until they choose to make things worse for someone else.
Yeah she got a bad deal of the cards but now what shes doing to someone else is worse than whats been done to her
I understand why shes doing what shes done but the sympathy I had for her is gone and now I’m more concerned for Ethan and Amber
Two questions here:
1) Why did you sympathize in the first place then? We knew going in that she took Ethan hostage.
2) Do you also have no sympathy for Amber after she stabbed Sal? That was also making things worse for someone else (who was detained and no longer a threat I might add).
1) Why did you sympathize in the first place then? We knew going in that she took Ethan hostage.
Sal made plenty of decisions to get to the situation she finds herself in, some were forced on her, some were of her own choosing but here she had a choice to run or make someone else situation worse than her own and she chose to make Ethans situation worse
2) Do you also have no sympathy for Amber after she stabbed Sal? That was also making things worse for someone else (who was detained and no longer a threat I might add).
I have a lot of sympathy for her situation but little to none for actually stabbing Sal
Honestly most of this doesn’t matter now since we know what happened. The sympathy or lack there of should wait until we see how this shakes out in the present. What’s more important is what they all decide to do when/if they ever talk about this.
1) I still don’t understand. She had that choice in Amber’s flashback too when she saw the bulletproof glass.
2) So do you still have sympathy for Sal’s situation even if not for the robbery itself?
I’ve given Sal some leeway due to age and circumstances but at some point you are responsible for your own actions.
I can see why she drifted into crime, I can see why she thought robbing the store might be a good idea, I can see why in the heat of the moment Sal might think its her only option but then she was told she’d get nowhere with the knife and then she was told to leave and she’d probably get away with it but she chose to grab a hostage.
I also consider Sals situation to be quite different to Ambers. Amber, to me, has a worse home life than Sal as well as suffering from a mental illness whereas Sal doesn’t seem to be mentally ill
But nothing has changed in what we knew. Previously, we had no idea the cops were right there, so there was no reason to think Sal couldn’t just leave. Now we know the cops are there, but she could run out the back. Same situation.
She came in here planning to threaten the clerk with a knife to get money and wound up threatening Ethan instead.
What thejeff said and I’d also point out that while Sal’s (so far as we know) she is likewise being largely influenced by trauma (what happened to Marcie) and the actions of a shitbag parent shoving her into a corner.
I guess I don’t really see much of a difference.
(tw for csa mention):
if sal’s not mentally ill with that upbringing i’ll eat my shoes. my parents were very similar to hers and i’m diagnosed with c-ptsd, and, i quote my therapist, “i think your parents damaged your way of thinking more than .”
ack the tw was carrots containing [the person who sexually abused me for three years when i was a prepubescent child] but i guess the carrots got interpreted as botched html.
@ Elsendor – I’m so sorry to hear that. Are you feeling better from the last few strips? I seem to recall you were having a hard time with them.
@ BBCC – i’m in a much better place now, and it was hysterical seeing their faces when i repeated what my therapist said to them. they’ve actually been a little nicer lately between that and one other incident that shook them up?
and yeah, i’m feeling a lot better now. had a few good days of rest and turtling with friends and games. it was just. the last two panels of that one strip with mom causing unspeakable pain while saying “i love you” that was the trigger, everything else has been painful and sad and familiar but not so specifically triggering. which is why much as it’d be nice i doubt there’s going to be a good solution willis can make since triggers are unfortunately often so hyperspecific and hard to predict.
that was a ramble, sorry. point is i’m doing better and glad i’ve been pretty stable with the following strips!
I’m glad you’re feeling better and I’m sorry you had to deal with anything that would make that ugliness familiar.
I mean, yeah I have sympathy for Amber when she stabbed Sal. Amber was a messed up little kid who, under extreme pressure, finally broke. The fact that she broke in a way that hurt someone else isn’t any more her fault than the fact that she broke in the first place.
So do I, but I also have sympathy for Sal here. She is also a messed up little kid who is extremely desperate right now (and who also received a heaping helping of emotional and financial abuse not long before doing the crappy thing). I guess I’m trying to understand why one’s more sympathetic than the other to some.
Yeah I have sympathy for both.
Probably that one is easier for some people to relate to than the other, I would imagine. (Even though, yes, we’ve been shown why they are both very deserving of sympathy.) That’s kind of the beauty of fiction, IMO.
Personally, I sympathize with present-day Sal more than present-day Amber, because present-day Sal has clearly made an effort to unpack a lot of her trauma, as opposed to bottling it up and hurting people. But then again, that’s also due to Sal probably having the opportunity (even though it was forced punishment) to get away from her parents for a while. Amber didn’t get away from Blaine until much later. 🙁
Yeah, those extra two years away probably helped. It doesn’t help that Sal’s presence also caused a lot more stress for Amber and AG.
I kind of agree with this to a degree. The circumstances that led to this do put Sal in a sympathetic view, but the buck kind of stops at endangering other people. I think it’s easier to sympathize with Sal because we know everyone came out mostly okay *RIP Sal’s hand*
The damage to her hand is just a small scar at most, its not like her hand was chopped off.
I don’t remember what strip, but Sal has mentioned that her hand doesn’t work quite right anymore. Also, she was stabbed through the hand. That might leave a tiny surface scar but there’s internal damage (almost definitely a lot of it) with something like that, hands are full of fiddly things.
Yeah, there’s lots of ways to fuck up a hand without chopping it off. And yes, sal’s definitely told Danny it doesn’t work as well anymore. Well enough to make a fist, but not well enough for smaller or more precise things like playing instruments as well.
Yeah, I was definitely thinking of her telling Danny (I think he asks if she plays guitar when she tunes his ukulele), your reply reminded me
Also I should correct myself, while a hand stab could leave a tiny scar, Sal’s scar isn’t small at all. It is a good portion of her hand.
Also, she was stabbed through her hand right below the knuckles. There’s nerves and tendons and shit there. Everywhere I’ve looked has indicated ‘Yeah, that’s at LEAST one surgery’.
The knife went completely through her hand, back to front. There’s basically no way to miss at least one essential ligament or tendon even with a tiny needle. With a knife? There’s no way that doesn’t do major damage.
Why? Sal’s not going to actually hurt either of them. She’s already scared them by starting the robbery and now she’s just panicing and trying to bluff her way out.
I’m guessing Amber and Ethan, Ethan especially, don’t realize shes bluffing. All Ethan knows is that someones grabbed him, holds a knife to (near) his throat and is making demands
And what if that hadn’t happened? What if the knife slipped? What if Ethan tried to fight back out of sheer adrenaline?
When you create a situation where you move a deadly weapon anywhere near an innocent bystander, you can’t say ‘I didn’t mean to hurt anyone’ any more than you can point a loaded gun at someone ‘just to scare them’. Sal’s actions are no longer defensible.
Then we’d be in a different series. Which I would also read.
Ethan fighting back is a major concern. Not so much knife slippage…knives aren’t as unpredictable as firearms in that way, it actually takes a fair amount of force applied in a reasonably specific manner in order to cause severe damage. It’s a LOT harder to accidentally stab someone to death than shoot them.
Not saying it’s not traumatic, as obviously it was and is. But from a logic standpoint (I can’t help it, when I’m in scary situations I deal with it by distancing through logic), the knife is in a completely different tier from a gun.
Yeah, knives are much more predictable than firearms. Go up against someone with a knife barehanded and you’re going to get cut up, probably badly. Your best hope is to keep the cuts to the arm you’re using to block or control the knife.
Someone with a gun, you might get shot or you might not. You’re likely to be worse off if shot, but your chances of not getting hit at all are much higher.
Or so my sensei taught us. I’ve never had to try either – and never got far enough in martial arts to think trying would be anything but disastrous.
Yup. Winner leaves in an ambulance, loser leaves in a body bag.
This is more about the capacity for accidental harm. A toddler can’t pick up a knife and then accidentally kill an adult with it. It takes effort – not a great deal of it, sure, but a whole lot more than it takes to accidentally pull a trigger. Hence accidental knife fatalities being somewhere around zero, and accidental firearm fatalities being a regular news item.
That’s certainly true, but we’re not talking toddlers here. We’re talking a young teen potentially struggling with another teen with a knife. It’s really easy to get cut badly in that situation.
Besides, even with accidents, I suspect the same applies: more likely to get cut, less likely to get shot, but it’s more likely to be fatal.
Yeah except physical harm isn’t the only way to hurt someone. Sal is responsible for at least a portion of Amber’s trauma and that haunted Amber for far longer than any physical wound would.
Sal still doesn’t have full use of that hand. Like, let’s not pretend Sal didn’t also sustain permanent non-legal consequences.
Which were the consequences of her actions, if she didn’t pull this stunt she wouldn’t get hurt.
Sal got stabbed because Amber was egged on and freaked out. Getting stabbed isn’t necessarily a result of hostage and robbery attempt.
To be completely fair getting hurt while attempting a robbery IS usually a potential consequence. This time around the getting hurt just happened a bit later. That aside though Sal was the one who started this chain of events. Amber being an anxious mess and Blaine being a total douchebag wouldn’t matter if she didn’t pull off this idiotic stunt.
Honestly I had a lot of sympathy and understanding for Sal up until the hostage taking. She was being a total idiot but while not excusable it was understandable, but taking hostage just made me go “What the hell Sal? What the hell?”
No. Being stabbed through the hand and permanently losing full use of it AFTER BEING ARRESTED AND NO LONGER A THREAT is neither a legally nor morally appropriate consequence.
And again, we knew about the hostage taking already.
It’s all Ethan’s fault.
@BBCC
It was a joke. Or at least mildly jokey.
I did not catch the joke. Sorry.
I mean, she was already choosing to make things worse for someone else. She was simply thwarted in that goal by the bulletproof glass.
If Sal was an adult instead of a child here I would find this argument to be fairly reasonable, but she’s still just a scared kid, and one who had TRIED to channel her desperation into a way to help Marcie without hurting ANYONE, but her own mother sabotaged and betrayed her
Of course it’s still shitty of her to do this, but this is the kind of shitty decision Linda should’ve been worried about Sal making, and that concern should have motivated her to comfort and support her and help her deal with her guilt over what happened to her friend.
Instead, Linda taught Sal that not only only can she expect NO comfort or support from her parents, they will actively shut down not only any legal, ethical attempts to help Marcie, but also any contact with Marcie.
It’s really damn fortunate they didn’t drive her to seek help from someone even worse than that Asher guy
To be clear, I’m questioning why someone would sympathize with Sal when she chose to (attempt to) put the cashier in danger, but stop sympathizing when she chose to put Ethan in danger. I mean I guess there’s a “bridge too far” argument to be made, but a lot of the comments seem to see threatening Ethan as a different animal from threatening the cashier. The intent on Sal’s part was the same in both instances.
Well for me it’s that the cashier is in no danger at all from Sal so she still has a chance, a small one to be fair, of not crossing the line
But she did cross the line by threatening Ethan however I do get your point and thats cool too
It’s not surprising that people empathize more with a character they know a ton about (Ethan) versus one they haven’t even visually seen. That empathy with the victim makes it harder for some people to feel empathy at the same time for the attacker. Not saying how I personally feel, but explaining why there’s a difference in opinion.
@motorfirebox
Probably because the cashier was never in any danger and if anything the scene is presented as mildly humour, making Sal look like a hot-headed idiot. But the moment she takes Ethan hostage the situation gets serious.
I feel like basing a moral judgement on whether or not the act in question makes you laugh is on really, really shaky ground.
Eh, it’s a comic book so normal rules don’t exactly apply.
It’s not normal to start to threat people with death just because you feel misunderstood from your parents. Linda isn’t a good parent, yes. That’s at most an explanation. It’s not a reason. And it’s not an excuse. Sal has the heart in the right place, but she’s not a good kid. She will be a pretty decent person in a few years, but right now, she mostly brings sorrow to anyone near her by not thinking before she acts.
You’re making links between Sal taking Ethan as a hostage and Linda’s treatment of Sal that aren’t even there, which Fart Captor never suggested in the first place. Sal didn’t go in there looking to threaten people, it probably was on impulse, without thinking, and while Sal’s motivations for the robbery could in part stem from her resentment of her parents, most of it is because she wants the money for Marcie. And I think you’re omitting the bit where Linda’s stealing Sal’s money drives her into this and putting more blame on Sal than she fairly deserves
Of course she went in there to threaten people. How do you think she planned to rob the place?
I’m very sympathetic to Sal here, but that makes no sense.
My mistake, I thought Alanari was referring to Ethan being taken hostage only.
I’m not sure how to rob someone or something without some kind of thread. Ask nicely?
She sat on the van, made the van stop, walked around the shop a bit and then acted. This wasn’t impulse. There was a whole deal of inner conflict involved. She thought about it and then made a horrible, plain out wrong decision. And now ethan gets traumatised, amber develops ptbs, the clerk might have a trauma too, sal herself gets a record and goes to a boarding school and kind of loses her family, walky loses his sister and marcie her best friend and probably her main translator with sign language.
This is wrong. Just plain wrong. This should never have happened. And a whole lot of people pay the price, not just sal. This is not something that can be shrugged of. I don’t care why she did it, she shouldn’t have done it. And she knows it, even back then. She’s not the first child that got money taken away, what would our world look like if they all threaten to kill people because of it?
Yeah Linda contributed. But sal is the one with the weapon. Sal is the one who literally threatens to kill ethan.
And somehow people are fine with that because poor sal.. This is a story with a lot of villains and only one hero who did nothing wrong. Marcie.
Perhaps it’s because you’re reducing it to “not the first child that got money taken away” and ignoring everything else that’s contributed?
Yes, it’s a horrible wrong decision. It’s an understandable wrong decision, given the context.
No. It’s not. It’s a felony. It’s kind of scary how people are fine with death threats and damaging the mind of another human forever, just because they like the person committing the crime.
Most criminals have a heartbreaking story. And a reason for whatever they did. That doesn’t make it more okay. There are 30 million people without insurance in us, give or take a few millions. Several ten thousand of them die an avoidable death each year. What would happen if they all start robbing and possibly killing others to survive?
Suuure, the problem here is the people who don’t give in and die quietly, not the system that fails them. You couldn’t *possibly* improve this system, it’s not like the majority of other countries already have better systems in place :p
Besides, those for-profit prisons ain’t gonna fill themselves! (Fuck I hate that Harper brought that to Canada… And it looks like the Liberals are trying to fill them up too)
I’m not keen on people using violence to get what they want, but it’s getting harder and harder to judge those who have the whole game stacked against them from the start. :/
@Alanari: Nobody is saying that it should be legal to commit crimes out of desperation.
But stealing to avoid starving is NOT the same thing as stealing for fun or greed. Someone doing the former deserves sympathy and leniency that the someone doing the latter does not.
If a desperate believes crime is the only chance they have for survival (or for a loved one’s survival) what the fuck else would you expect them to do? Just die quietly because crime is bad?
Expecting people to put civility or obedience to the law should come before even their own survival doesn’t make society better. It only shields those who are safe and comfortable from being inconvenienced by or having to feel sorry for those who are not
Understanding a decision doesn’t mean agreeing with it, and sympathizing with someone who makes a bad decision doesn’t mean sanctioning that decision. I understand Sal’s decision. I sympathize with her. That doesn’t mean I’m saying what she did was in any sense okay.
^ Pretty much this. Just because my reaction is more ‘Oh, hon, no, that’s a terrible idea that’s going to hurt others and it’s never going to end the way you want’ instead of as condemnatory as you’d like it to be doesn’t mean I think it’s okay to steal shit and hold hostages.
Sal isn’t doing this because she feels misunderstood. She is trying to get money to help Marcie. Have you not been paying attention?
I have. Did you threaten the life of another human being when you felt misunderstood as a kid?
I didn’t. Because I always knew some basic rules of human interaction.
“Sal isn’t doing this because she feels misunderstood”
“Did you threaten the life of another human being when you felt misunderstood as a kid?”
Are you sure you’re paying attention?
Are you sure you are aware of what she is doing here? You are rationalising and normalising a death threat.
This is not okay. No matter the circumstances. Every criminal has a reason for what he does, and most of those reasons are tragic and heartbreaking. But heartbreaking circumstances doesn’t make it any better.
I’m not. I’m too busy blaming Ethan.
@Alanari: previous flashback strips SPECIFICALLY established that Sal has been trying to raise money for Marcie, that she started hanging out with Asher and helping with robberies only AFTER her mother stopped her legal attempts to raise money and confiscated her money
And only YESTERDAY, we saw Sal working up the nerve to do this. Her expression became more determined only after a panel showing Marcie getting hurt. While what she is doing is still wrong, she is CLEARLY doing it for Marcie, not for herself or as some blind tantrum to get back at her parents.
And nobody is normalizing or rationalizing crime or violence. Stop clutching your pearls
@Alanari: No, I’m specifically saying that you’re repeatedly mistating her motives, in a reply to someone explaining them, in which you say you understand them.
I was not rationalizing or normalizing anything. I was saying she didn’t do it because she “felt misunderstood”.
I know why she does that. It’s not an excuse for what she does though. This is her decision. She’s not a mindless doll who just reacts to her circumstances. She knows what she’s doing, she knows it’s plain out wrong and she does it anyway. And half the comment section blames it on Linda. This is sals decision, not Linda’s. She herself knows that, in today comic time. But a lot of people are busy trying to excuse her behaviour here. Yes, she’s trying to help a friend, but she’s also threatening to kill someone. This is nothing anyone should feel sympathy for. Not at all.
Not get me wrong. I like present time sal. She’s one of my favourites. But in this, she is the villain.
No, she’s not a mindless doll. Nor is she a purely rational actor, uninfluenced by circumstances: Or by trauma or by sustained parental neglect and abuse.
She’s a person. A child. Yes, she’s doing wrong here and I don’t think anyone is saying otherwise. We can however understand how she got here and why she does it and even sympathize with her.
Or at least some of us can.
Just out of curiosity. Do you actually know what is happening here? Or, in other words, did you actually speak to a person who had a knife to his throat? In this world, not in some safe comic world?
I have. Let’s just say, I was raped several hundred times as a teenager and my mind is a mess. Still, I’m a stellar example of a mentally healthy person compared to him. He survived the day, but still lost his life in every way except the literal one.
No. There’s nothing to sympathise with here. Not if you actually know what all this means. This is a line that should never be crossed. And she crossed it, knowing fully well she shouldn’t do this.
No, I haven’t. I also haven’t been in Sal’s position.
I agree it’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed. If you think I’m saying otherwise, if you think I’m saying “Go Sal, this is great”, you’re completely misunderstanding.
I can still see how she got to the point where she did this and sympathize with her, while still agreeing it was wrong. Like I understand why Amber attacked her a little bit later and sympathize with her, while still agreeing that was wrong.
Not sure what else to say.
Alenari, real question here – Do you consider it an excuse to bring up Blaine’s influence in Amber stabbing Sal? Because I’ve seen far far FAR more people who bring up Linda as part of the explanation for Sal’s motives and blaming her for fucking up Sal’s mental state (which did, in part, lead to the robbery) than actually blaming her for Sal’s choices, the same way I’ve seen more people who bring up Blaine as part of the explanation for Amber’s motives and blaming him for fucking up Amber’s mental state (which, in part, lead to Amber stabbing Sal) than people actually blaming him for Amber’s decision to stab Sal.
@Alanari: I’m starting to find it really condescending way you keep suggesting that people disagreeing with you are doing so out of ignorance because they haven’t thought it through as much as you have.
If you, personally, can’t sympathize with Sal’s actions here, that seems perfectly reasonable to me. I would completely understand if Ethan or Amber were unable or even just unwilling to forgive or sympathize with Sal because of this. Same for Sal if she can’t or won’t forgive Amber for stabbing her.
But her being sympathetic doesn’t require that EVERYONE sympathize with her anymore than it requires people to condone or excuse her actions. Not one person is saying Sal is doing nothing wrong here, though you keep responding as if they were.
Morality and blame are not absolute, black & white, all-or-nothing concepts. Linda deserving a great deal of blame for this does not absolve Sal of her own part in this, but – again – nobody is has claimed that it does.
But even an adult will resort to crime or violence when desperate or panicked and pushed into a corner where they don’t see any other options. A child, however, is less mature, less experienced, and generally less equipped to evaluate situations like this.
An adult would have seen that while Marcie’s situation really sucks, it’s not as desperate as Sal is treating it. She’s not dying or in pain. She just can’t speak anymore. An adult would also be far more cognizant of how easy it can be to scar people for life even if she never actually intended to followed through on her threats, as well as how easily things could go wrong so that someone could get seriously hurt either trying to stop her or trying to escape her.
That is the whole damn reason why courts make such a point of handling criminal charges against minors differently than those against adults. Because even when a kid is fully responsible for their actions, that doesn’t mean the same thing as it does for an adult.
I also can see how she got there jeff, but understanding a motivation is not the same as sympathising with a crime. Especially not one that can have consequences as severe as this.
Bbcc, I think people are great at blaming others for horrible decisions because that’s easier than taking the blame yourself. They however mostly claim good decisions for themselves. But both come from the person itself.
I’ve also done some bad things. Not nearly as bad as this and all linked to the raping. Basically, I’ve emotionally hurt a few people because I couldn’t deal with the vulnerability that comes with being in love with someone and /or having sex. There’s a reason for this, yes, but still, it’s my fault. Not the fault of this guy who did that to me. And it’s my guilt. I’ve apologised to those I still know a way to get in touch with and they forgave me. And nothing I did was a conscious decision, I wasn’t even aware of what I did back then, I just was horribly afraid and fled. unlike sal who knows that she’s doing something wrong.
Doesn’t change the fact that I really hurt some people I shouldn’t have hurt. And I am, and feel, guilty of that. I should never have done this. And it didn’t hurt them any less just because there’s a reason why I did it. It doesn’t excuse anything and it doesn’t give me a free pass to stomp over other people’s feelings whenever convenient.
Damaged mind or not, I have no right whatsoever to hurt another human. Period. And the person to blame if I hurt someone is me. I’m doing this. Not some guy in my past. It’s called taking the responsibility for your own actions.
Amber.. Amber is different insofar as that she just got through a dangerous and massively traumatising situation. Her body probably consists of 99% adrenaline right now. Adrenaline literally disables your ability to think and reduces you to fight or flight. Your mind goes numb and you just react. At least in the flashbacks I remember she didn’t think at all, just reacted to pressure. And it literally seemed to be a minute after sal was arrested, so her adrenaline level probably didn’t have the time to go down (that takes 5-10 minutes). So this most likely was an adrenaline induced fight reaction.
If that impression we got from Ambers flashbacks proves to be correct, I’m indeed giving amber some mitigating circumstances. But not due to Blaine. You can’t think or rationally decide with a high level of adrenaline. And mitigating circumstances aren’t equal to being innocent. Taking a knife and stabbing someone is awfully wrong. Amber doesn’t show much inhibition when it comes to physically hurting or attacking others in present comic time, and it seems like she already was like this as a child.
My parents were both psychically and physically abused by their parents. Far worse than anything amber endured. Neither of them would even think of hurting another human being like that. Having an awful childhood doesn’t make you violent. Being violent makes you violent. An awful uprising can strengthen an already present tendency to violence, but it is your decision how to deal with your own violence in the first place.
I don’t think anyone is trying to give sal a free pass here. We’re just willing to forgive her… Kinda like how your friends forgave you.
And Sal probably also has a lot of adrenaline in her right now.
I think I generally agree with your “sufferng bad things doesn’t excuse doing more bad things”, but I disagree with the total lack of sympathy for a child failing at that, or at least with the idea that *nobody* is allowed to have sympathy for her. Sympathy and responsibility aren’t mutually exclusive.
Yes captor, but we still punish underage criminals because what they did was wrong and they usually know it. Sal knows. She us fully aware that all this is an awful thing to do. She thought about it for a while before she kicked down that sign.
She’s 13 and she had a few experiences that forced her to mature fast. She knows that threatening the life of another person is wrong. Just wrong. She also knows that stealing is wrong. She does it anyway. Yes, she isn’t fully aware of why it’s wrong, but she should know enough to not do that. She’s threatening ethans life. 10yearolds know better than to make death threats with a knife.
We probably mostly are adults. We know better what all this entails. At least I know. And this is exactly why I can understand her but I don’t have any sympathy with her in this strip. Because my knowledge is part of whether I have sympathy with someone. Sympathy is about how I feel about the fate of another human. This includes judging their actions that led to their fate, which includes using my knowledge about possible outcomes of said actions.
Sympathy and punishment: Also not mutually exclusive. Especially for children.
I’m starting to wonder: are we using completely different definitions of “sympathy” here? What does the word mean to you?
Amber didn’t stab Sal until Blaine started giving her a hard time about freezing instead of reacting violently to defend Ethan. There’s unquestionably adrenaline and trauma involved, but it’s not until Blaine harasses her that she snaps and stabs Sal.
So, I’m asking again – is acknowledging Blaine’s role in pushing her to that point an excuse? I don’t think it is – I think talking about it serves as an explanation. It certainly doesn’t make it okay for Amber to stab her, anymore than it was okay for Sal to rob a store and take hostages. However, the explanations they do have makes me feel sympathetic enough that I’m more sad about the incident than angry. That doesn’t mean I think it was okay or that any legal consequences weren’t warranted (although I’m sure we’ll see another round of Fun With Emotional Abuse starring the Walkerton parents before this is over).
And frankly? It is not up to you to decide who is or is not worthy of my sympathy. That’s up to me, thank you very much. You don’t have to feel sympathetic to Sal, but I’ll thank you not to act like it’s not okay for anyone else to feel sympathy.
why are you reading this comic
I’m interested in Joyce and Joes journey and am curious to see if they’ll end up together, Ethan is a character I want to see grow and I’m hoping to see if Danny can shake off his belief he needs a label and can become his own man
Why are you reading this comic?
somehow, it feels like Willis won’t let them be together (as much as I ship them, it feels unlikely they will. I’d like to put this out there, that it’s just as likely that willis will see this and go “well now i gotta”). Ethan has grown, and will continue to do so, Danny will also do so so eventually he’s gotta b.c either he will grow or he will break himself but he is a rounded character and either way he will eventually come to the conclusion that labels aren’t very applicable irl.
I’m reading this comic b.c I don’t care about being happy, and tbh I’m pretty sure it’s the same for many others. Also here b.c it is an opportunity to re-eval myself through comparison tho and grow as a person, since any imbibed info will affect me as a person.
I like the person she has become. But I don’t particularly like the kid she was. Yes, there were a lot of things that contributed, but in the end, it was her decision. And it was a horrible decision. At 13, you should know better.
I assist in teaching volleyball to 13 year olds. I’ve seen some crumble and have to run to the locker room to have a good cry because I told them things like “your timing is off, try a shorter step when you approach the ball”.
…I’ll definitely believe that feeling you’re responsible for your best (only?) friend’s disability will lead you to stop thinking altogether.
You should know better – when your brain is working, yes. Problem is, that’s an age where the brain often freezes.
And it froze over a time period of several days? The first robbery was most likely planned, they got a lookout and they decided how to divide the money. So this wasn’t spontaneously, this was planned, and that usually takes some time.
I’ve trained children too, a few years back. At that age, they can tell the difference between right and wrong. And really, really wrong. Frankly, I’ve met children with far worse fates than sal, and they wouldn’t think of threatening to kill another human. That’s a line you simply don’t cross. And respecting this line is pure instinct for kids. Usually.
So what? We’re back to ignore all the context, because some other kids have it worse and it’s just that Sal is born killer because she doesn’t have the pure instinct?
If she’d have actually hurt ethan to strengthen her point, would this also be not as bad because of context? Or if she’d kill ethan and move on to Amber? Just asking. Because, you know, desperation makes people do that, too. And if the police didn’t arrive, it probably would have been the only way for her to make the clerk take her seriously.
There’s a difference between being a killer and making death threats though. And a decent human being does neither.
I just want to point out that Sal has never threatened to kill anyone. It might not be that big of a difference to you, but even with her taking Ethan hostage, she has never threatened to kill anyone, nor has the intention to do so. It’s still absolutely inappropriate what she’s doing, and it’s still traumatizing, but there is a distinction here that is being lost.
Also: children threaten other people all the time. It’s a line regularly crossed by kids playing Xbox Live every single day, unless that somehow doesn’t count because it’s in an online context. But if you’re claiming that kids never say or do anything awful because they just instinctually know better- that’s not true in the slightest.
In what world is holding a knife to someone’s throat not a threat to kill them? You don’t have to say the words to threaten someone’s life.
(Barring some interesting consensual situations)
“nor has the intention to do so”
It’s a threat, yes, but Sal doesn’t have the intention or desire to kill Ethan. It’s not a huge difference, and it’s not an excuse or justification for what she’s doing, but Sal didn’t run in here with the intention of trying to kill someone. It was a spur of the moment decision caused by adrenaline and fear.
When you hold a knife to someone’s throat, you are threatening to kill them, whether you say so or not.
Whether you actually INTEND to kill them doesn’t enter into whether the threat was made.
I could threaten to kill someone right now with no intention to do it (I won’t because I’m not a piece of shit), but that doesn’t mean I’m not doing it.
Yeah, big difference and threaten is probably the wrong word to use. Kids threatening to kill each other over video games or even playground screaming matches is one thing. The words are there, but there’s usually no credible threat to it.
It’s not just online either – serious threats can be made online, but the average in game chat ranting isn’t one.
This, even though no words are used, the threat is definitely there: Holding a knife to someone’s throat is a threat and will be perceived as such by anyone. Legally, this was armed robbery the moment she waved the knife and we’ve just escalated to assault with a deadly weapon.
I do agree, she doesn’t want to kill anyone and almost certainly doesn’t comprehend how serious what she’s doing is.
Yeah.. *we* know that sal had neither the intention or capacity to actually cut anyone with that knife, and Sal probably isn’t thinking enough to realize how this looks, but it’s not reasonable to expect *Ethan* to know any of that.
I was responding to the “they wouldn’t think of threatening to kill another human. That’s a line you simply don’t cross. And respecting this line is pure instinct for kids. Usually.”
There was nothing about it being a credible or physical threat, just a threat. The fact is that kids are not inherently born with moral values. Kids absolutely will threaten to kill each other because they do not realize the impact of what they are saying. They don’t think about the consequences or the gravity of their words. And many kids today are desensitized to violence and the impact it has thanks to media normalizing it. To say that it is pure instinct not to do so is erroneous. Whether it’s a credible threat or not, kids will threaten each other.
I’ll admit I was thinking of more a direct declaration of intent and that I was wrong to say that she wasn’t threatening Ethan’s life. I’m not saying that Sal never threatened anyone, but I don’t think she was necessarily threatening to kill someone, at least, not at first. Threat with bodily harm is a thing, and more than probably what she was originally going for with the clerk. Now with Ethan it’s escalated to deadly threat, and I don’t know that that was what Sal intended.
The point I’m (poorly) trying to make is that intent does matter, a little bit. It doesn’t make a difference legally, and it doesn’t make what she’s doing any less wrong, but Sal is panicking and making poor decisions and isn’t in a state where she can consider what it is she’s doing and what she’s indirectly saying when she grabs a hostage. It’s being treated as if she had consciously planned on threatening someone’s life ahead of time and is now acting on that and- she didn’t.
Yeah, I think sal was like “uh… hostages, that’s a thing robbers do!” And didn’t think at all about the implications. I wonder if she’ll freak out later about having held a knife to someone’s throat.
My child IS thirteen, and yeah, you’re right. Life is just a big chaotic mess of emotions trumping rational thought. Kids who aren’t in abusive situations double down over the most unreasonable shit when emotions are flying high. Someone in Sal’s situation? I can see it. She’s in panic mode. She’s not thinking rationally enough to grasp the exit strategy she’s been given.
Honestly? I think Sal’s an abused kid who’s good at heart who’s doing awful things for good reasons. She deserves disciplinary action, but she also deserves better than the abusive situation she’s in.
Keep the knife…
Why did the cops show up so fast…
Did that piece of shit Asher just call the cops on Sal?
More likely the cops had already been called about Asher, no doubt got the car’s plates. He was on camera dropping Sal off.
Y’know, I bet there’s a whole thing about her getting pinned as the primary target for the other damn robbery even though all she did was sit in the truck.
At least one of them is significantly older than her – old enough to have and drive the truck. No way they’re getting it pinned on a 13-year old kid.
They robbed another shop basically next door. Of course police is nearby. And she’s not exactly invisible there,even from outside the shop. It could have been someone on the side walk.
Asher didn’t know what she was planning to do. He’d probably have prevented it if he did. There is little chance that she manages to pull this off and if the police gets her, they’ll most likely also discover his identity. So, no. Most likely not him. He has a much to lose as she does.
Hmmmm. You have some good points.
I take back the “piece of shit” comment. That was uncalled for.
But I’m still suspicious.
A flashback that isn’t blhe? I don’t know if my body is ready for this, but I’ll try. And man, that employee really tried to give Sal a chance to get out of there but she was stubborn about it. :/
Also, I’m now really hoping we get back to the present soon so we can see Sal and Ethan talk. I wonder what Sal will have to say? And what Ethan will have to say?
First thing from Sal should be an apology and then, if Ethan accepts it, an explanation
Or Sal gets back inside and Ethan’s left. Because drama. ;P
Drama? In this comic? I highly doubt it.
Maybe if there was some kind of tag we could pull?
I appreciate the cashier, I wonder if they called the cops (maybe before realizing how young and likely to get shot Sal is), or if someone else did, or if they were there for some other reason. Though, if it’s the former two, they sure moved fast.
*I realized after typing all that, I bet Sal got scapegoated re: the previous robbery and was already being followed
Yeah, I was wondering how the cops got there so fast and I think you’re right. Asher and the other people gave her the knife so she’d get caught instead of them.
And they expect 13 year old girl to keep their identity secret? There is a thing called interrogation, even for kids.
How would scapegoating Sal for the other robbery work? There were surviving witnesses that wouldn’t have seen her there.
More likely, the cops were called by the clerk, or the APB was already out on the truck that led them straight to her.
> Some teens robbed a store, little time for witness testimony as the cops immediately followed them
> Young black teen dropped off at a store, enters with a knife
> Others have booked it
> Cops catch Sal robbing the second store
> Car they were tailing registered to someone the cops won’t fuck with, and/or they claim it was stolen
> Sal blamed in entirety, either doesn’t involve others, does but isn’t believed, or does but is still seen as the worst since she was caught with a knife (and because she was probably the only black kid)
So it’s more like they’re about to scapegoat Sal, than that they have. Sal’s group seem kind of like dicks, so at best they’ll allow it, at worst reinforce it and/or testify against her, so that’s another way to look at it as scapegoating.
Maybe the clerk has an alarm button behind the counter? They might have pressed it as soon as Sal pulled the knife.
Given they’re arriving almost immediately after Sal announces it’s a holdup, I suspect not then. My guess is a tail from the previous robbery after Sal got dropped off or something.
It’s less that the clerk couldn’t have done it quickly and without realizing Sal’s age, and more that the cops were dispatched and arrived in a matter of seconds
Smart, nice clerk. I hope Sal thanked them at some point for at least trying to help.
I kind of doubt she got a chance, but since she remembers it, I think we can assume she appreciates the intention now.
I… notice she overlooked the person closer to her in order to grab the guy who seemed like he was freaking out less.
Cashier in here breaking my fucking heart, too.
That I can understand. Amber is clearly no threat, but Ethan COULD be a potential threat. So taking Ethan hostage neutralises the only threat AND gives her potential leverage, while taking Amber hostage leaves her having to potentially deal with both Ethan and the cops.
It would be ironic if that were the case, given Amber later stabs her in the hand. It make more sense to take a hostage that would not fight back than one who would, particularly since Ethan’s proximity to Amber could be taken as an indication of attachment which would mean taking Amber hostage would stop Ethan from doing anything. (I admit it could push him over the edge, but I consider that unlikely based on his characterization so far).
Its possible on some level she took Ethan hostage because she saw herself in him and in his situation would prefer someone attacked her than Marcie.
Man this is the nicest late night cashier of all time lol. And come on Ethan and Amber, ya’ll shoulda been running by now. I know trauma is tough, but take care of yourselves, run if you have the chance!
that… that’s not how trauma works.
That’s also not how escaping from a situation like this works given they learned 1) they were noticed and 2) there’s an exit that may not require running past the person with the weapon all of five seconds ago…
Why do you assume these 13 y.o. kids are able to think clearly in this moment? I, a 20-something, would also be scared as shit, possibly to the point of freezing as Amber and Ethan have.
Even ignoring that they’re 13, fight/flight/freeze is not really a conscious reaction. Throw pretty much anyone into a sufficiently threatening situation and they’ll react in one of those ways, with little control over which one. I think there are patterns in how individuals react, but it’s not as simple as “I froze that time, I will always freeze.”
Training can overcome that and build in more useful responses, but it’s not easy. A lot of work needs to go into it.
Even when you hear about people who did the right thing untrained in some crisis situation, it’s often just “I found myself reacting.” Conscious mind in the back seat, trying to catch up with the reflex.
Yup. Look up “Amygdala Hijack” for more details on this. It’s fascinating and really frustrating.
There’s also ‘fawn’ (try and make the problem go away by complying and survive.) Even less well-known than freeze, which is starting to be recognized as a standard response, but also an instinctive override.
Oh, huh, I was taught that one was called ‘flatter’.
Yeah. I’ve had that one; it can make for really weird responses. :/ It’s like preemptive Stockholm syndrome :p “Here, let me help you screw me over!”
Hadn’t heard of that.
Makes sense. It can be a good reaction in some circumstances. Which is why we have it built in.
When you can’t safely resist or get away and you’re already being targeted so freezing won’t get you passed over – use your words. We’re social animals. Words are what we do.
The problem with any of them of course is when the wrong automatic reaction for the situation kicks in.
A smaller scale version is flattering your attacker to get them to stop.
Oh boy…
It’s not a great sign when the cashier who Sal is attempting to rob displays in one panel more understanding than Linda did in the entirety of the flashback.
Yep.
Mmhmm.
New contender for the DoA Top 10 Best Parents list.
. . . it’s not specifically ordered, but so far I’ve got Dorothy’s parents, Dina’s parents, Carla’s parents, Hank, Stacy, and Leslie.
Thus far, Galasso and Pamela, Sierra’s parents, and Mike’s parents have appeared but unless I’m forgetting something have mostly been neutral. Maggie may or may not count, as I have no reason to doubt her parenting ability but it hasn’t been demonstrated in-strip.
This list sounds familiar… Nah, it’s pretty obvious who the not-completely-shit parents are.
Yeah, there’s gonna be some major similarities if anyone tries to list the decent parents of the strip. Listing the worst parents gets tricky because there are weird debates over what kind of screwed-up parenting is worst.
Sierra’s dad gets points for stepping in to confront Blaine.
Yeah, between remarkably-well-adjusted and low-drama Sierra and her dad immediately trying to put an obstacle between Blaine and Amber and deescalate him, I think REALLY well of the Snow parents.
My main list is focused on those who have been depicted doing solid parenting things; giving decent advice to a kid and looking out for them, for example. Sierra’s parents are solid people and probably awesome parents, but have not appeared enough to have demonstrated so in-strip.
Dina’s parents rank pretty high because, while they’re rather quiet, “You have a girlfriend? Here is money for a date.” is the healthiest response to their child’s relationship we’ve seen.
Seriously. MVP of this sequence.
Is there any chance that cashier is old enough, is willing and can afford to adopt Sal?
At this point, I’m seriously considering just sticking a post-it note saying ‘free to good home’ on her forehead.
This is me avoiding talking about the rest of this strip because I am going to bed in a moment and I do not need to spend my night crying about Sal
y’know, like I have this entire flashback.
<3
Would you adopt someone who held a boy at knife point to force you to give them your money?
The sympathy most likely ended there. Rightfully so.
And lied about her age, is clearly somewhat panicked, is uncomfortable with and unexperienced in her current action, and ultimately doesn’t injure anyone in the process? Maybe, maybe not. Given all of the details and an opportunity to take the action after the incident without interference from Sal’s parents, I bet the cashier would at least go so far as asking Sal if she was interested.
Of course, if you’re a gas station cashier, you’re probably not really in a position to adopt anyone – particularly someone in as troubled a state as Sal seems to be.
If I knew they were trying to get money for a friend’s surgery, were from an abusive home, and did it while in deep emotional turmoil? Then yes, because sometimes good people do bad things in their pain when they feel backed into a corner and like they’ve got no other options. Even despite the cashier giving her an out, she genuinely sees no point in protecting herself. She doesn’t care what happens to her. So even if given a way out of this problem? That doesn’t give her a new option for fixing the problem that is actually plaguing her. She still feels trapped.
We know that Sal was practically beaten down into this corner by her mother’s lack of care. By her mother BLACKMAILING her into getting better friends. By her well-earned money being taken away from her. So yes she’s doing the wrong thing but she’s a kid holding a kid at knife point with no intent to actually hurt him, not an adult holding a kid at knife point with every intention to kill him. She’s been put under an intense amount of emotional pressure with no way to escape it so she’s acting out. We know this isn’t Sal normally. We know she would rather have earned the money herself. *But her mother took that option away from her and blackmailed her*.
All this proves is that if you hurt someone enough and take away enough options, they might crack and do something they know is wrong. That isn’t a ‘gotcha’. That is just tragic. Sal never should have been put in a situation where she felt this was the only option she had left.
Not without Linda’s permission.
Goddammit.
Theory time! Who called the cops? I imagine it was the clerks/workers at the first convenience store that Sal’s friends stole from. They have camera footage of them leaving in a truck and if there are cameras at traffic lights and such, they might have tracked down that the fleeing truck came to this convenience store, to rob it like they did the first. I imagine the cops will be surprised to find only one person inside. And again, I posit that Sal’s record includes the first convenience store/her family considers her responsible because she refused to snitch on her buddies. Even if they aren’t great friends, Sal isn’t a snitch, especially with cops.
Crack theory: It’s somehow Linda.
It was Mike.
All part of his plan to traumatize Amber and create Amazi-Girl.
This!
Yeah, that seems likely. I doubt Asher and co. end up getting off scot free for this (and it’s possible that whatever cameras got the truck, since it seems near certain they did, could lead to them trying to offer a plea for the first one if she testified against them, but then 1. Sal and 2. racism.) But Sal is here, and Sal is arrestable, and as the cashier says they are not gonna treat her as a scared thirteen-year-old.
I think the implication is that someone fled out the back door and called the cops. The cops were probably already on alert from the previous robbery.
Clerk did. Someone kicked over a display and yelled – you press the buttom that calls the cops. Then you see it was just a kid who will not be treated well by the system and try to get her out.
There was an attempt
Also, I am naming that clerk ‘Clark’ because I like to imagine* Clark Kent would be that sweet.
* = I mean, I don’t acknowledge versions of Superman who wouldn’t show compassion to a clearly conflicted and not well young teenager, but still.
Of course Clark Kent is that sweet. He’s Clark Frickin’ Kent.
And I’m more than willing to accept that Superman exists in this universe and that this was Clark’s part time job before moving to Metropolis.
I would approve of this being Clark Kent’s job during college*.
* = He needs to be an adult because someone needs to adopt Sal.
He’s working his way to his journalism degree. Sure, he got a scholarship, but it helps Ma and Pa Kent if he covers his own dorm costs.
…. but why in Indiana?
Dude. He has super speed. He doesn’t care about commute time, no matter where he normally lives.
Yeah, but he DOES care about being a Kansas boy.
Didn’t stop him from moving to Metropolis which, iirc, is in New York.
Helps let him ditch the job if needed, should someone shoot him when away from the bulletproof cashier booth without effect.
And now I have this mental image of Clark bringing Sal to his Kansas home and he gets very competitive when she sees him do farm chores using his super strength. Like carrying an entire huge roll of hay to for the cows and she tries to emulate him but fails, but it doesn’t stop her from trying.
Let it never be said that Clark Kent can’t clerk.
Either him or Diana working another job like the Taco Whiz gig.
By 2037, the whole strip will have pivoted to the Amazons adopting the cast and taking them to Themiscyra for healing and training in Nazi punching for those who so desire.
Clerk* Kent
Clerk Kant
I decided the clerk’s name is Carleton, this is a second job he has.
Now I just want to see Clark Kent do I the Carlton dance to some Tom Jones music.
You’re a good egg, clerk, it seems.
Is that cigarette attached to Sal’s lip by a microscopic bungee cord or something?
Haha it’s defying gravity
It’s probably something gross like viscous saliva. Be glad Willis isn’t drawing it.
Same thing that keeps the eyebrows attached to the face when they fly free of the head in shock?
You could have gotten away with the attempted crime, Sal, but you traumatized an already anxious girl and got a stab in your hand like if you where Nicolas Angel. Hatred is quite contagious.
Hello Sal, how’s the hand? 😛
That store clerk has been nicer to Sal than we’ve ever seen Linda be.
…as far as I remember, the store clerk has been nicer to Sal than we’ve seen ANY other adult be.
I mean, if you wanna be pedantic, pretty sure all of the cast is 18+, but yeah, Sal does not have a great track record with authority figures. Even her dad wasn’t great.
To the clerk, you are waaaay nicer than you need to be.
Sal, you were given an out…. wth?
When your pride is too big you don’t want to back off, even when it’s the smart thing to do. She is too cynical and too proud by this point.
This isn’t pride, it’s desperation and guilt. She thinks this the only way to help Marcie and doesn’t feel she has the right to give up just because she’s scared and uncomfortable about doing this
I felt it was more that she felt this was her last chance to help Marcie.
Not pride, but desperation.
To quote a different webcomic: That which redeems consumes.
I don’t think it’s pride. I also don’t think that it’s desperation or guilt, not any more.
At this point I think it’s stubbornness. She’s gotten locked into the course of doing the robbery, and tunnel vision is keeping her from reevaluating that and realizing hey, it’s time to call this thing quits and run out the back.
holy shit how do you read this entire comic up to this point and come out thinking it’s pride
It doesn’t solve her actual problem. Even if she runs, she still doesn’t have another way to help Marcie. She doesn’t care if she gets hurt or punished or arrested if it means she can finally help Marcie. In her current state of mind, she might not be physically trapped or forced to do this, but emotionally she still feels trapped and doesn’t know any other way to try to help Marcie because when she tried to do it the right legal way? Her mother stole her money and used it to blackmail her.
I mean, she’s not going to get to keep that money either, but yeah, she’s very clearly not thinking straight here.
It might not solve her problem, but it’s a hell of a lot better than potentially going to prison. My Point is she was given a chance not every person gets. She has a MUCH better chance in helping Marcy a free girl than one in jail.
Yes, but that is rational people thinking and I don’t think Sal’s doing much rational people thinking right now.
you are the holdup queen, young and sweet, only siiiventeen
When I was siiiventeen it was a very bad year
It was a very bad year for small town girls who got into fights
I should have hid from the lights
But Marcie needed that green
When I was siiiventeen
The fans always expect it when it pains
And the flashback changes colors
But the flashback does not change
And so with the slow awkward dumbing of age
She went forward with an age old desire for cash
On the edge of siiiiventeen
What Sal doesn’t realise is that while she’s been having this flashback Carla has completely covered Sal in her own name with marker.
And is preparing a dark ritual to etch her name on Sal’s soul.
Past Sal NOOOOOOOO why are you making an even worse decision.
Why am I “Nooooo-in” at a flashback?
Right, my heart is breaking.
Can The Clerk be a recurring character? Please?
Afterward we’ll discover it’s Robin.
Who will be shocked that 13 year olds are knifing each other, what’s wrong with society? She should run for office, under a party that promises to bring back moral teachings to our kids!
… Entertaining as this scenario is, that’s not really Robin’s speech patterns on display there.
That clerk has shown more sympathy and understanding in 3 panels than Linda has shown in this entire flashback.
The cops came surprisingly fast. They were probably already tailing Asher and some probably split off to get Sal when they got info about her being dropped off at another store.
That clerk’s shown more sympathy, understanding and compassion than Linda has in the entire story.
I know and it makes me sad for Sal that a complete stranger is a better person to Sal than her own mother.
…it’s a grocery store clerk. Good odds they’re not white, and knows exactly what kind of shit Sal’s bringing on herself :(.
Gas station night attendant. I think you’re exactly right.
I’m also wondering if this one was in fact the one we saw her and Marcie hanging out outside, and the clerk recognizes her as the kid deliberating over a candy bar and deciding it wasn’t worth it. Either way they’re aware they’re in no danger and seeing her as a scared kid with no plan and no forethought, and trying to give her an out before she did anything more than knock over some cardboard (which means they were probably willing to lie a bit when asked. ‘No idea how she knew about that back exit, but she bolted as soon as she saw the lights.’)
Gah, why did I say grocery store…
Oh, right. Also, note the usage of “Hon” by the clerk.
Yeah, that seems like a significant indicator in Indiana. (I’m used to Baltimore area where it’s common parlance among white people as well, but I know it’s not universal.)
…stupid chat box eating angle brackets. Was making a booze joke >_<.
And “No, I didn’t get a good look at her”.
Pretty sure it’s the same place – we saw the glass and little speaker grille then and the ATM next to it – which we can’t see here, but could in Amber’s version.
Probably banking hard on the fact that the two kids probably aren’t in much position or head space to give more than a very rough description.
I was thinking it could be a chain before – the front in the strip of the first robbery a few days ago looked identical to the one in the establishing shot of Amber’s flashback – but I’m definitely leaning towards it being this exact one.
Not sure about the front from the other robbery, but inside where the clerk is is identical to the scene where she didn’t buy the candy bar: bulletproof glass with the same rectangle things, ATM next to it.
Yeah, just rechecked – different roof shapes, I was misremembering.
Or this place gives coffee and pastries to cops at a discount or for free, and there’s usually a squad car pulling in every 10 minutes or so.
With the sirens going?
That’s how they beat the traffic.
(No joke, I’ve witnessed cops doing just that.)
Well, no, they’d have lit up the lights and bwooped the siren when they saw someone inside brandishing a knife.
Possible, but unlikely they’d have seen the kid with the knife inside the store from the squad car.
Poor Sal, she really is desperate isn’t she, and Linda took away any hope of doing this the legal way. Linda is as much to blame for this as Sal, because she backed Sal into a corner and took away her options.
Yes, this exactly!
Poor Sal, she really is desperate isn’t she, and Linda took away any hope of doing this the legal way. Linda is as much to blame for this as Sal, because she backed Sal into a corner and took away her options.
Is it you Willis? Are you the hidden store clerk?
We all knew that Sal had to grow up fast.
… I just didn’t expect it to be this fast.
I like the cashier a lot.
Plot twist: the cashier was Asma the whole time!
I was actually considering that
I wouldn’t be surprised considering this particular moment is a cosmic character coincidence sinkhole. (Maybe it’s where this universe’s drama tag got pulled.)
But considering the clerk has never been seen or named or identified, it’s definitely Bloodrose.
Convenience store guy’s name is Klevin. He’s pretty chill, in spite of that.
God, Panel 2 Sal…
*heart breaks*
Sal…oh no baby what is you doin?
Store clerk “I wasn’t even supposed to BE here today!”
I just realized middle school Amber has the same hairstyle she did when she was introduced in Shortpacked…
Itwas at this point she realized…….she F****Ed up
Really interested how most of this sequence wasn’t in Amber’s flashback. Doylistically it’s probably because Willis hadn’t come up with all the details of when Sal robbed the first one (and White People Awareness of this particular double standard in 2018 vs 2013 is way higher.) But Watsonianly I really do think Amber in her trauma either didn’t hear/process or has forgotten some of the details that show Sal in any light but the absolute worst.
And let’s talk some more about how sad it is that this clerk reacts with more compassion to the situation than either Linda in any capacity ever or Blaine. (If the clerk’s offering a scared kid an out then I’m willing to bet they wouldn’t deride the scared kid who froze for doing so.)
Well, we see in the last two panels that Amber is covering her eyes.
It wouldn’t be a surprise if she was tuning a lot of this out and only remembering the worst of it.
There’s a difference between remembering something and having a flashback to one particular traumatising moment, well, at least for me. Remembering something is like telling a story. Flashbacks are like being thrown into one moment in the past and being caught there. Sometimes being thrown from image to image.
Also, the clerk probably spoke in a low tone and human memory is faulty at best.
Yeah, I think both are very likely – we’ve really only ever seen Amber experience this as traumatic flashbacks to begin with.
I think that there’s something tragic about just how comedically inept Sal was at this. If Ethan and Amber weren’t so terrified, they’d probably have been laughing their heads off.
Why anyone besides high druggies even considers service stations a viable thing to rob any more when they have so many protocols and safety features is beyond me.
Eh, she’s th— siiii venteen. Those are the types of places that get robbed in movies and stuff, she’s probably just going off that.
Plus they just robbed one. But they’d probably done a bit of research not just picked it because it was there.
Yeeah I’m just not feeling any sympathy here. It doesn’t matter how sad or desperate Sal is, she knows better then to rob a convenient store. Or double down and take a hostage. 13 is not that young to not understand basic right or wrong.
Lifting a rich person’s wallet because ‘they wouldnt miss it’ is something I could see a 13 year old justify. Selling dime bags to strangers because they can’t see bigger picture is something I could see a 13 year old justify. Robbing a store??? Come on, my 8 year old niece behind me knows better than that. Hell she asked why she didn’t at least put on a mask xD
And didn’t Sal try to say her parents treated her like shit because she was ‘blacker’ than Walky? When Sal herself seems to wear her hair natural when she’s shaking around, lying, smoking, and stealing – – what does THAT say about Sal’s perception of blackness?
Reeeeaally hoping she’s trying to get caught here on purpose.
Could very well be that some part of her WANTS to be caught. I mean, she just got given an out. A way to get off scott free. And she instead took a hostage. Either she has a HORRIBLY twisted view on how these go due to her ‘friend’ that Linda thinks is a good boy, or she WANTS to be caught
Or I guess she could also be so panicked she isn’t thinking clearly whatsoever and this is just one long litany of errors
You can see where she thinks about it. But it is a way to get off without getting Marcie what she needs, what Sal thinks is necessary to atone for getting her injured.
Sal is not thinking clearly, and part of it is panic, but part of it is that she is on a crusade. A well-intentioned crusade, but one that overrides other concerns nonetheless. As mrj quoted above, “that which redeems consumes”.
People keep saying that they have no sympathy for Sal, because taking hostages is obviously wrong. It is, but she’s not a rational actor here. She’s completely blinded by guilt. May they never have reason to know what that is like.
One of the main reasons Cortez unleashed the genocide and looting of Meso-America in such a brutal way, was the fact that all of the Conquistadors were in massive amounts of debt. Especially the those in charge. None of the wealth that was looted from the Aztecs Actually went to Spain or the would be Conquerors, instead it ended up in vaults in Italy, where most banking was done at the time.
The Main tool that Mafioso use to manipulate their community into accepting their brutal rule is through the creation of debt networks. A waiter might poison the food of a Sicilian labor organizer that the mafia got a hit on, not because he wanted him dead, but because he owes the Family a favor and Debts Must Always Be Paid.
Being in a state of debt like this is essentially akin to having the logic of an addict, trying to liquidate as many assets until all debts are paid. Sal feels took Marcie’s voice and thus feels the full weight of the debt that Marcie’s undocumented uninsured parents ranked up. Sal isn’t thinking logicly shes thinking like she needs to liquidate as many assets as humanly possible as soon as possible.
Also who are you to make judgements on people who rob businesses? There are always legitimate reasons for every crime, not always good ones, but enough that thinking all armed robbery is universally bad is probably a moral failing.
You had me until you went BFI in the last paragraph.
witHazel, explanations are not excuses, but as explanations go, yours is pretty good.
Even though I am of the opinion that armed robbery is pretty bad.
“… thinking all armed robbery is universally bad is probably a moral failing.”
Um, yeah, I can buy that.
For treating her “blacker”, that started long before she started “shaking around, lying, smoking, and stealing”.
(No idea what “shaking around” is supposed to be.)
As for the hair: I think the flashback with Marcie’s injury is the earliest we’ve seen it straightened? The little kid ones it was natural. The school ones with Leland it was still natural. Now, a couple months after the injury, it’s natural again.
Bet she’s been saving the hair murdering money for Marcie.
I’m guessing it was meant to be “sneaking around”.
And didn’t Sal try to say her parents treated her like shit because she was ‘blacker’ than Walky? When Sal herself seems to wear her hair natural when she’s shaking around, lying, smoking, and stealing – – what does THAT say about Sal’s perception of blackness?
It shows that she’s a. starting to reject her mother’s vision for herself and b. imbibed a lot of her attitudes from her mom.
Oh my God… seriously Sal you spiral from one bad decision to another…
I’m pretty sure that Sal would agree with you. That’s why Joyce idolising her is so painfully unpleasant to her.
The story clerk gave her an out, should have tooken it.
Well, this hurt. So Sal had the chance to walk out of it and still she had to double down on it. Ouch.
She had to! Marcie needed her to! Or, at least, that’s what this frightened, betrayed and desperate 13-year-old girl thought was the case.
store clerk deserves a tag
This really shows just how weak Amber’s psyche was to begin with. Sal didn’t even do a good job thinking this shit through! She didn’t get money. She didn’t harm anyone. She traumatized a girl for having a knife out while yelling. Traumatized her so bad her personality split! And why? Because her fucking mother STOLE her money she was trying to help with friend with.
To be fair to Amber, it’s not really THIS moment that does it for her. It’s kind of a catalyst, but it’s more like a domino effect. I’d say her reaction here makes sense because she’s just an anxious kid. She was just freaking out about buying twinkies and now a stranger is waving a knife around. She’s scared. And maybe if this was all that had happened, she wouldn’t have been as traumatized.
This event merely set off the next event, which is Blaine berating her for being afraid. He shamed her, made her feel responsible for Ethan being taken hostage here, and that guilt, anger and fear from his words is what caused her to snap. She lashed out and stabbed Sal in the hand, and her personality split because she was at odds with herself. Normal people don’t stab other people and thus Amber feels like she’s bad and awful for hurting Sal. And she can’t deny that a part of her might have enjoyed it, just as a part of her enjoyed punching the shit out of her father. Her psyche was weak due to her abusive dad, and he was the final domino that made her snap after this awful night.
Pretty much. Blaine is the root of Amber’s problems. Sal merely the trigger. And you’re very likely right that it was her stabbing Sal that was the catalyst, not Sal threatening her and Ethan.
But she’s not just an anxious kid. She’s already a long term abuse victim and her social anxiety is just a symptom of that. Even before this she desperately needs therapy (and to be away from Blaine.)
That said, her anxiety is firmly in the disorder territory, and at that point what would be merely a stressful situation can become traumatic because anxiety brain runs overtime.
It’s all Blaine’s fault, but this would have been naturally frightening to Amber even if she had no abuse but a naturally-occurring anxiety disorder.
True, but I assume the anxiety isn’t naturally occuring, but is itself the result of Blaine’s abuse. Or is at least compounded by it, where a supportive environment could have helped her with it.
Yeah, I tend to think she was at least a bit prone to it under ideal non-abusive circumstances, and then Blaine made it six million times worse. Either way she was never going to handle something like this particularly well even if Blaine HADN’T proceeded to be a shitstain immediately afterwards. (Ie, if Blaine were not actually Blaine.)
Not something we’ll ever find out for sure since Amber having a shitstain father is universal (unless there IS a universe out there where he got himself killed by the mob while Stacey was pregnant, and maybe in that universe she and Yuri who was already an adult and also pregnant teamed up as co-parents and things were happy? Let me dream.) So ultimately the point is moot.
If this is Sal’s flashback (and it all still has a blue tint) then she will see Ethan’s grown up face next. And I really want to know what she dos with knowing he’s the guy she took hostage then.
Agreed; I wonder what her reaction would be.
Step one has to be what she was going to do anyway: Finding some way to get rid of Carla.
I’m naming them, Werke LeMerc – The Gas Station Clerk.
This is the nicest person to attempt a robbery on.
Wow, the compassion if this sales clerk. Someone’s threatening her, and her only thought is ‘gee, will the Robber will be alright?’
This is the nicest person to attempt a robbery on.
Wow, the compassion of this sales clerk. Someone’s threatening her, and her only thought is ‘gee, will the Robber be alright?’
#JustARepostSoTheTyposWontBotherMeThroughoutTheNextWeek
Someone’s trying to threaten her, but so far isn’t at all. Her weapon is useless, and the cops are already on their way.
So I can see thinking “Really? This can’t be a real robbery, can it?” and then realizing “No, it’s not. She’s just a kid who doesn’t know what she is doing.” and going from there.
But yeah, they’re still very understanding. As people have pointed out, much more than Sal’s own mother has been.
Bit too negative outlook for me, that! In this moment in time, what matters is the kind clerk, the poor folks she is about to hurt, the friend she’s doing this all for.
She should deal with Linda once she’s in the picture. Right now, she’s just a roadblock.
And advice to any parents here, if you position yourself as a speedbump on your kid’s road to life, you will get run over.
If Sal hadn’t lied about her age, the cashier could have given her a more accurate response. After all, the police would be far more likely to consider a thirteen year old a child than a ‘th…siiventeen’ year old.
Certainly, the cashier’s given response coupled with the unexpected arrival of the police escalated the stress Sal was under. The juxtaposition of her expectation that this robbery go off without a hitch, based on the prior robbery, with actual events (glass, cops, etc.) probably knocked her off the rails of her prior plan without giving her time to unwind and re-evaluate events, which is why she takes the extra step of obtaining a hostage. If she was more experienced and less flustered by events, she probably would have fled out the back (or simply have come in with a better plan).
Please note ‘stress’, and for that matter ‘trauma’, does not occur only for victims (like Amber and Ethan and the Clerk) but also for perpetrators (if it is even fair to call Sal that).
I’m not sure we can take it for granted that the police would treat a 13 year old black kid as a child
We can’t take for granted the police will treat a 12-year-old black kid with a toy gun as a child.
Also, studies show that people are far more likely to ‘mistake’ a black kid for older.
And a lot of that evidence suggests it really is “mistake”. That it’s subconcious processing.
Not consciously thinking “She looks about 13, but she’s black, so I’ll say 15”, but just a shortcut to seeing them as older.
Brains are weird.
Brains are weird, although I’ve also seen evidence it’s sometimes a mistake in the sense of not wanting to see what’s in front of them, hence my quotes around mistake.
See also ‘12-year-old murder victim is considered adult, college-age rapist is a promising young man who doesn’t deserve his future ruined because of one mistake.’
And then scream in rage.
I disagree: I think cashier *caught* it, and new dang well that the police still wouldn’t see a knife-brandishing black girl as a ‘kid’. plus, a 13 year old looks WAAAYYY different than a 17 year old, most of the time; The cashier almost *certainly* knows she’s lying.
Remember, in *real life*, police saw Tamir Rice as an ‘adult’, and he was *TWELVE*.
The ‘best’ part is that once 2019 rolls around, Tamir Rice’s murder would have been the same year as the robbery.
That clerk knows damn well what they’re dealing with.
Police claim the saw Tamir Rice as an adult. Assuming that they didn’t just intentionally shoot a black child knowing full well what they were doing and then covering it up is extremely generous, and more benefit of the doubt than they deserve.
That’s a generous assumption on behalf of police that regularly treat black children as being adults. It doesn’t really matter what Sal told the clerk, the clerk can tell she’s lying and knows that it wouldn’t really matter how old she was for how the police would treat her. Why do you think the clerk told her to run?
Hostage taking is sort of costing you sympathy points here, Sal, even though we all knew it was coming.
Regardless, is the clerk Mr. Rogers or something?
RL aside: I haven’t seen Cerberus, Bluewind, or Jeep-eep in forever. Have they been posting on Patreon, or does someone know if they’re alright or something?
Cerberus was on Patreon a couple weeks ago.
Thanks. Hope everything is going as well as a possible with her.
She was squeeing about Sal/Carla so at least that was making her happy?
Yay.
A point I want to make for all the “She has no excuse for suddenly taking a hostage” folks. Adrenaline kind of doesn’t help the brain make decisions, usually you lock on to what you expect to happen, and if it doesn’t… well it can cause a melt down in the worst case, and a slew of bad decisions in the… uh… other worst case?
In this case she didn’t expect the glass (which, really Sal, i know you’re distracted and flustered, but the glass is really obvious…), did expect the police so suddenly, and i guess just those two really…
I wonder, have people never read a story where someone swears an oath, and then it turns out to drive them to ruin or betrayal or something because they don’t know how else to fulfill it?
That’s what is happening here. “This is just temporary” was a promise, because “this is still my fault” even if Marcie doesn’t hold her to it. Taking a hostage is Sal’s final desperate attempt to hold that oath. I’m sure she knows it’s not sensible. I’m sure she knows it’s not right.
But it’s the only option she can come up with, because breaking that promise is not on the table.
I honestly think Sal is so far into panicked anxiety tunnel vision that there’s nothing resembling rational thought here. She didn’t plan at the start of the night to rob a second store – she had that idea when they gave her the knife. She wasn’t emotionally prepared to rob a second store – she needed to psyche herself up for it and only the traumatic thought of Marcie and her guilt brought her to that level. (And I’m certain that was what brought her to the first one.) She had no intention of taking a hostage – she started by just kicking over a snack stand and threatening the completely unfazed clerk. She’s not even able to lie about her age. This was a terrible plan which contains negative amounts of forethought, but she’s too freaked out and terrified and guilty to turn back because admitting she failed Marcie is even worse in her mind than the consequences.
(Being thirteen, it is likely she’s not dwelling too hard on the worst possible consequences because teens, but given how badly Walky’s fucked up with his fear of failure who knows. Someone help these children.)
Completely agree. I just figured it was important to note Sal is not panicking about her safety or getting caught, as for instance suggestions that she could have taken the get-away opportunity presume. She’s panicking about never being able to atone, to make herself worthwhile.
The other day Bagge pointed out an important comic too. University Sal calls out thinking you are acting selfless, but having something to prove, as something that can get someone hurt. Well, here is that lesson.
That’s a very understanding attempted robbery victim.
Basically, Sal was so tragicomically inept from the first moment that I guess the clerk felt kind of sorry for her.
Oh, Sal. 🙁
s a m e
Oh sal
So, how old is Sal really here? She seems like she starts to say 13 before changing to 17. just curious. A 13 year old is unlikely to be tried as an adult which aligns with Sal’s story/life
I don’t think Sal was tried as an adult, but given cop’s… track records with children who are not white, the clerk is probably worried Sal is going to get shot.
Especially in context. As of last year, ‘five years ago’ is a post-Trayvon world.
Assuming the cashier is black, which isn’t unlikely, it’s always been that world. Just that some of us could ignore it.
Yup, but that was one of the earlier instances that sparked a larger campaign around it (at least larger in terms of media).
Im quite happy with the clerk who is providing an out because they worry sal will be shot. But we know sal was arrested. We know she ended up in boarding school rather than jail so she must be thirteen here right? I’m just looking for context for myself
She is thirteen and was sent away for five years with little to no contact with her family (Walky’s not seen her and barely spoken to her in that time, which he blames on the cost of postage).
Given that her parents have apparently had almost no contact as well, I assume that was Walky’s usual deflection and they discouraged any interest he might have had in reaching out. Which he would have quickly picked up on to stay in their good graces.
Oh, it’s absolutely not postage. That was weak even before we had backstory.
But it’s also not just Walky using that as an excuse for being an uncaring little jerk who couldn’t bother to try to contact his sister.
No, even if he wanted to (and he might not have – that whole situation was heavy and messy and we know Walky’s response to Sal having heavy, emotional situations was to do his best to tune it out and then deflect if he couldn’t), I imagine contact time would be limited.
I mean, can you imagine Walky buying stamps? Even now (eg, not in flashback), it seems like it would be a comedy thing about how he can’t adult. If his parents said ‘no, it costs too much’ or ‘it’s just wasting postage,’ Walky would probably just accept it.
I’m picturing the latter, because that would be not just based on money (which they undoubtedly can spare, they’re not supposed to be poor and stamps are under a dollar each), but on them thinking reaching out is a waste of time, and is one of those small things Walky certainly wouldn’t catch he subtext of, especially in the past.
Well no, not really. But I can imagine him calling her on the phone. Or texting her, since he’s opposed to using his phone as a phone. Or emailing or anyone of the nigh-infinite other ways people have to stay in touch when far away these days.
But I can easily also imagine him picking up the subtext of his parents cues not to bother.
Well, he’d have to call the school. He doesn’t have her phone number at the start of the comic.
Huh. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, that they’d discourage Walky talking to Sal the way they discouraged Sal talking to Marcie.
Wait, what kind of store has bulletproof glass? Is that a thing?
Yes, it’s a thing.
Very much so. I went to grad school in Newark, NJ in the 90s and the fast food joints had bulletproof glass.
I’ve seen it in gas stations at garages, where there’s a booth to handle paying for gas and selling cigarettes and few other things. Rarely in an actual convenience store gas station with aisles full of goods and stuff.
Probably common in some bad neighborhoods though.
Common in convenience stores that are isolated and stay open all night.
Yeah, it very much depends on the neightborhood. There was one I was in in Arecibo PR that was much like this – aisles of goods and bulletproof glass at the register.
I’ve seen it pretty often in 24 hour places in the US.
It’s cultural details like this that drive home how alien the U.S. is sometimes.
It’s not a universal thing across the country, but presumably the only establishments that have bulletproof glass are those that are frequently targeted for crimes, such as banks or convenience stores.
Where I live in the US, I’ve never seen one with bulletproof glass. Not even in high crime rate areas.
But I live in Texas which is basically its own microcosm within the US.
Yeah, that’s why I said it wasn’t universal. I live in Oklahoma, and I don’t have any gas stations with bulletproof glass either. But I wouldn’t be surprised that they would exist in other areas, that have higher crime rates or gun violence.
The KFC near where I grew up in Queens NY had bulletproof glass, but the McDonalds and the Wendy’s across the street from the KFC did not.
That’s the sound of da police
*”Sssiii…venteen” a Heathers Parody*
Yeah, she’s damaged.
Marcie’s damaged.
And that’s really hard to deal.
I gave allowance,
Tried Go-Fund-Me,
But that did not pay the bill.
I feel guilty.
I feel desperate.
And my family doesn’t understand.
I helped Asher,
Get easy money,
But at least he had a PLAN.
Can’t I be sssiii…venteen?
Can’t I just rob this store?
I want to help her out,
And let her talk once more.
Bro annoys me.
Dad ignores me.
And mom — let’s not go there.
The only way
I ever please them
Is to straighten out my hair.
I met Marcie.
She’s my best friend.
I can’t allow myself to fail.
I’ll make sure to
Get her voice back
Even if I go to JAIL.
Can’t I be sssiii…venteen?
Can’t I just rob this store?
I want to help her out,
And let her talk once more!
I said I’m sssiii…venteen!
I will get through this cage!
Even if I have to grab
This boy who looks my age!
——————————
Now I’m damaged.
And they’re damaged.
And Marcie still has no voice.
I helped no one.
And hurt everyone.
I know this wasn’t the right choice.
Can’t I just be thirteen?
This wasn’t the right choice.
I just want to help her out.
I couldn’t think of the right choice.
Then what was the right choice?
What was the right choice?
Okay, so, robbery timeline here.
– Mike arranges/blackmails Blaine into agreeing to drive Amber and Ethan to and from a school band trip.
– Sal’s mother takes the $700 she’s saved to help Marcie.
– Amber and Ethan’s school trip comes and the band does well. They stop at the gas station and the kids decide to buy snacks for the drive home.
– Sal acts as a lookout for Asher and (presumably) his brother and brother’s friend while they rob the store. She receives her cut and asks to be dropped off at another convenience store.
– Amber wants Twinkies but is bordering on an anxiety attack at the thought of talking to the clerk. Ethan offers to talk to the stranger for her, and also points out Sal, who he notices pacing. He believes Sal is also on the edge of an anxiety attack (“I bet you two are the same!”)
– Sal stops pacing and thinks for a moment. She has a red panel flashback to Marcie and knocks a stand of Nachitos over, declaring a holdup. Ethan pulls Amber aside, hiding in the aisles.
– The clerk (which the comments have dubbed ‘Clark’ after Clark Kent’s compassion) points out that he’s safe behind bullet proof glass and that the police have arrived.
– Sal takes Ethan hostage.
– According to the books, the police disarm the situation peacefully (although considering comments made by Sal about police, in this case ‘peacefully’ likely just means no one was hurt).
– While Sal is being arrested by the police, Blaine berates Amber for not defending Ethan.
– A thoroughly (and thus far, permanently) traumatized Amber snaps and stabs Sal through the hand, causing permanent damage. So far as we know, she is never charged for this.
– Blaine declines to get therapy for Amber and opts for self defence lessons instead.
– Sal is sent to a frillion crappy therapists and a jail like Catholic boarding school in Tennessee that’s apparently little different from juvenile detention, with little to no contact from her family over those five years.
I’m starting to feel like Sal’s MUCH better off for that ‘no contact’ thing jesus fucking christ Linda
(just caught up from the beginning of the flashback…)
It’s distressing that the school that was clearly pretty miserable for her is looking like the BETTER option.
“According to the books”? Wait, there’s more information in the books? I really need to break down and buy those.
Apparently this was said in the paper versions, in the recap section. PDFs don’t mention it (although they do mention the knife went through her hand, not just in it).
Also, character profiles including majors and hometowns, if that’s your thing.
There better not be any sympathetic cops.
Not because they shouldn’t be. For Sal’s sake, I wish they all were. But for the sake of realistically portraying Sal’s situation, especially leading up to her obvious distrust of authority figures and especially cops, but in general, realistic for a young black girl, there shouldn’t be anyone like Becky’s supportive cops.
(not that it wouldn’t be satisfying for even a cop to be like ‘wow, her mom is saying some fucked up shit’)
I don’t think there will be. I don’t think Sal would be quite so ‘all authority is shit’ if she had had any substantial positive authority figures in her life.
Yeah, it doesn’t seem likely, but I’ll just be so angry if so. I don’t know how the comment section is doing on this sort of thing RN either, which makes me a bit anxious (thinking back to all the ‘Mary’s kinda right’ type comments and expecting ‘come on the cops are just doing their jobs, that racist comment was just them being mad because they had to arrest a criminal’ type things)
I’d like to believe that wouldn’t happen, but literally any time we deal with an abusive parent or bigot we get comments like that. Hell, we had a bunch with Linda just the past few days.
People are fine when characters stand up against the concepts of bigotry and abuse, but when there’s an actual character that’s made to be bigoted or abusive, they’ll find any excuse for their actions.
just like real life
I get what you’re saying, really. But it’s fiction. We can discuss it in nuances rather than binary right/wrong FAR more easily than real life events, because the characters are symbols, not actual people.
I think it’s useful and healthy for folks consuming media to relate to “antagonists” in some ways, as a thought exercise if nothing else. It can help you to identify potentially harmful behaviors in yourself given certain contexts and keep them in check IRL.
TL;DR, identifying with a character exhibiting bad behavior does not make you a “bad person”. You’re only being a shitbag if you apply that behavior knowingly to others.
It can be. But when the excuses people are making for the antagonists are the same excuses regularly made for real life abusers, that’s not quite so useful and healthy.
Maybe not quite so clear here, but I’m remembering a lot of the discussion when Clint first appeared. (Or John, in a slightly different way.) There was a lot of dismissal of the red flags many people saw that paralleled very nicely the way real life abuse victims get dismissed.
Relating with the antagonist (or any fictional character exhibiting bad behavior – like Sal here (or Amber in a few minutes)) can be useful. You can understand how people come to do bad things. Identifying with them to the point that you’re defending the bad behavior is a different story.
I said nothing about identifying with antagonists. I said people will excuse characters explicitly created to be bigoted or abusive. Think about the last several days where you have people bending over backwards to say that Linda’s not racist, Sal’s just overreacting. Again: it’s actual text within the webcomic that Linda is racist. But people want to create a whole narrative in which Linda is right about Marcie’s parents being criminals, so her aversion to Marcie is actually rooted in something reasonable and fact-based and not racism.
You can’t identify unhealthy behaviors in yourself if you refuse to accept the unhealthy behaviors in characters and rewrite their behavior to actually be good.
To further clarify: some things aren’t that ambiguous nor have a lot of nuance to them.
Mary is very clearly, very explicitly homophobic and transphobic. And yet, people will defend her, claiming that she was “only trying to study” when it came to her feud with Carla.
Ross was very explicitly homophobic, showing up at the school to kill his daughter because she was a heathen now for being a lesbian. And people defended him because he just really loved his daughter.
Linda is racist, but she’s not an open bigot about it like Mary or Ross. She doesn’t use slurs. She doesn’t explicitly mention race. But if you read what she’s saying and read the statements of the people around her (see: Sal, Walky, Billie), you could tell that she has biases. She may not be as openly violent in her bigotry as Mary, but you can see by the way she assumes that a (Mexican) toddler will grow up to become a petty criminal that there’s some fucked up thinking there. But people would rather say that Linda’s narcissistic and wants to have a feminine, pretty little princess daughter like Billie, which has NOTHING to do with racism honest, instead of admitting that Linda’s racist.
Feel free to identify and examine characters’ behaviors as you will, but if you excuse blatant prejudices and find a way to say that the character’s actually NOT a bigot, it’s not going to help you keep in check any behaviors of your own. It might, actually, help perpetuate them.
I cannot help but to think Sal is quite lucky to be alive :S
You’re right.
Holy shit.
She doubles down with a hostage after being told it’s a moot point…
Sal’s lucky to be alive. She’s LUCKY to be alive.
Which.
Oh man.
This was already so many layers of fucked please tell me it’s not more layers of fucked