the same way that uninsured motorist did right by my brother and me by almost killing my mother running that stop sign and paying for our college with the settlement?
I mean I don’t know what it’s like in the States but in Canada it’s an offense under the motor vehicle act to drive without at least basic third party liability insurance.
All American states and territories require a certain minimum liability/property damage coverage. Drivers have to show proof of insurance when they register their car, but that doesn’t necessarily stop some people from cancelling their policy or letting it expire. It’s pretty easy to get away with it, as long as you don’t get pulled over or get into a wreck.
A few years back, I got rear-ended by an uninsured driver when I stopped for an oncoming cop car. Good news was, my insurance included uninsured motorist coverage so I wasn’t stuck with the bill.
Probably only cuz he didn’t hear what Linda said. Or maybe because he doesn’t understand the full implications? How much does Danny actually know about Sal’s backstory?
He knows that she held Ethan as a hostage and Amber knifed her. But also doesn’t know that Amber and Amazi-Girl are two distinct people… She’ll probably talk to him in time. One really good thing about Danny is he’s a really good listener and not too judgmental.
I’m pretty sure that he does know that, in that Amazi girl talked about Amber being “in here” in at least one of the Shipshines (and I think shifted personas.)
He saw her without the mask in “Mask or No Mask” and I don’t think even Danny’s *that* obtuse.
We know that there was the issue of Marcie’s injury in her childhood; but aside from that time, they were responding to their child engaging in dangerous behavior- criminal behavior, even. While they made poor choices, heck- they may have made poor choices for the wrong reasons, they made *mistakes*, not malicious choices AFAWK. And, they early see that they made mistakes along the way; otherwise they would not have the feeling of regret so visible in the final.
This arc has been the most humanizing treatment that these two have ever received across the entire story, and it makes them more interesting, because they are not just copy-pastes of ‘supervillain dad teams up with vigilante dad’. They’re flawed, but shown as human.
Sal’s “criminal behavior” was a DIRECT result of Linda’s treatment of Marcie’s injury. Her attitude about Sal hanging out with “undesirables” are, IMO, the “malicious decisions” you’re absolving Sal’s parents of. Hard disagree there.
This arc has had a lot of characters pretty explicitly stating the reasons they think Linda and Charles are bad, and that assessment has been pretty well supported by their actions this arc so far.
That they show some mild uncertainty in a single panel doesn’t really change that.
Kinda, but due to her sad expression as she’s saying this, it looks like she’s trying to convince herself. If she had kept in panels 3 and 4 the look she had in panels 1 and 2, then yeah, it’d be pure narcissism, but due to the sorrowful look it seems there’s a bit more than that here.
Seems like seeing Sal with Danny have forced them to rethink about how they’ve seen her all along, and now she’s looking for some straw to grasp to justify herself.
It absolutely doesn’t excuse her past behavior, obviously, but it does offer a small hope of character growth for her; if she can actually go to the next step and admit that they’ve mistreated their daughter badly. No guarantee of that happening at all, though.
It strikes me as “it’s been such a struggle, always hoping we were doing the right thing. I want this to be validation.” People can care about their kids without knowing what would work best for them.
It’s true that parenting has a lot of guess and hope and flying blind and that wanting validation is only human. But it’s also worth noting that the validation in this case is a white nerd boyfriend.
Not that I disagree agree, but I also think it’s a bit more nuanced: Sal appearing to be happy because of said white nerd boyfriend, and the stories about how smart & perceptive Sal is.
Whaaaaa-? I will say that they are human and shown to have flaws, but they’re also extremely in the wrong about how Sal has been raised. Linda has exhibited tons of racist beliefs and attitudes and uses her marriage to Charles as a shield for any and all criticism. Charles for his part is a huge enabler of this. The worst of this racism bleeds through with how she tries to control how her children look, act, and even who they associate with. Right now for the first time Sal is getting approval with Danny, Mr. Vanilla himself, while Walky is getting the cold shoulder by being with Lucy. And like, Linda has been talking with Walky and knew about Lucy and was perfectly happy with it when she though Joyce was Lucy, but the instant she was corrected she got a lot less expressive and friendly and made up an excuse to avoid lunch plans.
The worst part is Sal seems genuinely happy with Wonderbread. Only, now that she heard her mothers comment about it validating her mistreatment growing up she’ll have to reevaluate what her relationship with Danny means in regards to her relationship with her mother and that’s a WHOLE mess of worms. Sal seems the type to act as genuinely as possible and I think she’s honest enough with herself to trust her feelings for Danny don’t come some sublimated desire for approval, though I imagine the fact she seemed to enjoy the last few minutes of approval is going to bother her a lot.
In short, Linda has NOT done right by Sal, and even the theoretically positive act of approving of Danny is used to justify past bad behavior and has the potential to upset the relationship.
Screw you Linda, there are worse parents on campus, but not many.
I don’t think this is an in comic based assertion. Its how shitty some parents can be in real life. I ran into a Jewish lady at a coffee shop recently and had to deal with the same bullshit. She was whining about the riots in France and I said that police shot a 14 yo boy and her response was “it was a Muslim boy.” Like his race or anything else has to do with being 14. When I caller her on it, then she switched to how people are dying in Israel. Which is clearly not related to anything except in her racist mind.
This arc has effectively demonstrated Linda’s *racism* not her humanity. Linda and Charles are finally reflecting their daughter positively because they are seeing her through the filter of Danny’s whiteness, whereas they are ignoring Walky because of his black girlfriend. You aren’t seeing Linda and Charles in their default state. You are seeing how they treat white people that fit their idea of successful.
And you don’t just steal the money your daughter has raised by herself in order to help her friend pay for life-changing surgery, while being a great mom the rest of the time. That’s not a one-time bad decision. That indicates some really messed up values.
Plus, did you forget the part where she wanted to kick Amber out of school because *her father* was responsible for the kidnapping?
Sure, Linda is expressing self-doubt here, but it’s an extremely (paradoxically) prideful self-doubt. She’s saying “my problem child eventually did what I wanted her to do and stopped being a problem” when she should be saying “my daughter had problems when I was controlling her life and they went away when she went out on her own, maybe I was the cause of her problems.” Linda’s congratulating herself for the fact that Sal can be perfectly happy in the absence of her influence.
I think I understand your point here. It’s very easy for us to dislike the Walkertons. We’ve seen years of their actions and how that’s traumatized Sal and Walky in different ways. They have a huge flaw as well, that’s very hard to dismiss if you’re a decent person in any way, but that doesn’t mean you can write them off completely. Linda, especially is being compared to Sal, shown they are similar. This humanizes her and some of her actions because she was probably like Sal as a kid.
They even admit some decisions were “fraught” as in tense and likely mistakes. What those decisions were who knows. (Probably all of them). But you can’t say all their decisions were bad or out of a selfish place anymore even if it’s negatively effected their kids.
For instance I think if would be incredibly unreasonable to expect any parent to accept their kid is going to school with someone who stabbed them in the hand. We know Amber and she and Sal squashed things, but that was after getting into a fist fight! Blaine, her dad kidnapped their other kid. The Walkertons don’t read the comic. They don’t know Amber is an innocent girl struggling with her own trauma who put her life on the line to save Walky and a bunch of other people. Of course they want her gone. Perfect example of a decision made with good intentions that if it had succeeded would’ve fucked their kids over again. I think that’s the Walkertons whole life. Bad, very flawed parents doing what they think is best but it has the opposite result. They’re just arrogant enough to think they’ve done well. We vilify them because we see them at their worst.
Walky and Sal are both happy and healthy and have lived fairly privileged lives. You think Sal just gets to buy and drive a motorcycle because she’s that cool? Who pays her insurance for that thing? Fills it with gas every week? Where is it being stored right now? It’s not so easy to just say the Walkertons are bad parents. We’ve seen bad parents. They’re more complicated then that.
Okay I’m done trying to defend them now. They’re both scumbags.
I never said she didn’t, but she doesn’t just get to have a motorcycle because she’s cool. I’m talking about stuff like what Sal mentions here which admittedly still looks bad on Linda.
Even if it was ultimately used against her Sal enjoyed riding her motorcycle. She saved people’s lives with that motorcycle. Linda in part is responsible for that whether we like her or not. It doesn’t absolve her of anything, but it is an argument.
If Sal could afford a motorcycle, I kind of wonder why Marcie never got an electrolarynx.
I mean, I get that not every person with a disability wants a device “work around”, and not every device is affordable, and maybe her throat is just too damaged even for PT and tools to make much difference. And there’s a whole ASL speaking community that she can be part of. I do get that. And Marcie communicates just fine with her phone. And maybe the PT of learning to use a new device would just bring back too many traumatic memories of her injury.
…It just seems to me that it would be an interesting plot point to explore. Because tools exist. Not all tools are practical. But if Joyce could get glasses and Amber could program reminders on Walky’s phone to help with his ADHD, I just wonder what other tools might be available or useful to support our heroes in their journey into adulthood.
Marcie’s injury happened when they were, what, 10? By the time Sal was old enough to make money legally, Marcie would have been communicating exclusively via ASL for 6 years, the majority of her teen years. Going back to oral speech would probably have been very difficult and uncomfortable at that point. It would be interesting to hear the reason she only uses ASL/text and not other tools, though.
Sal places people above status. Linda places status above people. Yes this arc is humanizing Linda. That doesn’t change that lots of humans are absolute shit people, and Linda is definitely on that end of the spectrum of human decency.
Regretting past decisions does not absolve them. And Sal having healed somewhat from her extremely traumatic teen years does not mean Linda’s decisions are retroactively justified.
That was my concern when this story started. I’m hoping that this doesn’t really cause issues because when Willis paired them together despite their rules about rehashing couples from the Walkyverse, I assume that meant that they would actually be the complete opposite of their dynamic in the other setting (I.e., they’ll be in a healthy relationship). I like this pairing and don’t want it taken from us.
Same. I also am not a huge fan of “MY PARENTS LIKE THEM AND THEREFORE I MUST REBEL” storylines for punks, like c’mon Sal, show a bit of nuance. You can like Danny AND rebel against your parents.
*sigh* I just find their dynamic so sweet. They seem to bring out the best bits of each other.
I think this is more of a “well, I just got what I’ve always wanted: their approval… and it feels just as awful and conditional as I worried it would.”
I don’t think she’ll rebel, but she’s going to have to work to decide how she wants to approach this new approval from her parents. There’s absolutely a way forward for them together even with Sal rebelling. Because, if she’s honest with Danny about this sort of crap her parents have been pulling, Danny might go righteous and furious anger on her behalf.
It’d make me pretty happy to see him really lay into her parents as The Bestest White Son They Always Wanted to drive home their racism. Will they learn their lesson? Who knows. But I do at least see a path where Sal and Danny grow closer from this, not apart.
This is the part where Sal has to listen to the chapter title: “but don’t give yourself away”. She doesn’t have to be a sellout (for want of a better phrase).
Yelling at people that they’re awful almost never produces a lesson. But understanding their values and quietly, calmly, methodically, comprehensively pulling the supports from under the way they express those values just might work.
I don’t think Tisiphone was suggesting that Danny lay into Linda and Charles to defeat their bigotry once and for all, or anything like that. Righteous fury would be a show of defiant support in a love language Sal will easily recognize. She has had very little validation from others that her parents have treated her badly. If my guess is correct, any validation of that idea has come from other people Sal thinks of as rebels. She deserves to get that righteous fury from someone she thinks is genuinely doing it for her, not just for the rebellion.
Honestly, if Sal tries to pull that I’d love for Malaya of all people to call her out on her bullshit. She’s outright stated that she hates when Sal is being fake, so Sal dumping Danny to be a ‘rebel’ would really set her off.
It could just be that it is hard to find anything to not like about Danny at first impressions. He seems to be the people pleaser type of personality, so unless those types annoy you, they tend to get along with most people at the first encounter.
That being said, Danny does tend to bring to much drama and I personally think he provides Sal with a much needed calm space to relax. Her mother might also like it since she is a rock the boat type, but that doesn’t mean that Sal needs to throw it away to spite her mom. I think that just proves that she needs to cut her mom off asap (depending on how financially dependent, etc).
Well aside from Becky and Dina, I think it is definitely the healthiest relationship in the comic. I have known many lesbian couples, and there’s is one of the better lesbian relationships I’ve known.
No need for personal attacks. You’re the one who talked about relationships you observed outside of the comic. But even if you were just talking about the comic, keep in mind actual queer people hear comments about how our relationships are unhealthy way too often.
Eh, Ruth’s reason was ‘dumb’, but that’s because depression is absolutely a self-destructive and self-sabotaging condition, that actively pushes the person dealing with it to make choices that will ultimately harm them, especially in cases where it can form a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ruth’s reason while dumb, to me it’s the most realistic one. Her struggle with depression would lead her to make a dumb as rocks choice like that. It’s something I’ve seen time and time again in the real world.
Pretty sure Ruth broke up with Billie/Jen because she recognized how dangerous and unhealthy their relationship was. The happy part only mattered because she wanted to do it at a time when Billie/Jen wouldn’t hurt herself
I think it’s both. Ruth saw that they had reached a really bad low point, and when she rose out of that low point, she wanted to remove any risk of dragging Billie back down into it. I don’t think Ruth was expecting to stay unsuicidal, and she ended her relationship with Billie because she thinks her suicidality would be contagious.
I’m still wondering if a confrontation by the younger generation (including also Walky and Lucy) might eventually lead to a breakup of the elder Walkertons. Whatever you think of Charles, I’m convinced that he’s not nearly so invested in Linda’s worldview as she is and has been silencing vague discomfort for a long time. When it won’t be silenced, it could become acute.
Dang, I just thought about it. Sal would have had to learn ASL all left-handed, or using a busted right hand! Ouch! Dang, I sure hope the injured hand was her non-dominant hand!
The hand is full of lots of intricate parts. Fingers and knuckles are just a massive pulley system. If you plunge a knife through it it’s never gonna work the same again
Yeah, parents never seem to realize that maybe the kid is okay *in spite of* those decisions.
(And/or maybe the kid is not all that okay.)
I do find it a very humanizing temptation, though, for Linda to worriedly assert this. She did want to do right by Sal, she does wish her happiness, and she’s worried that they messed up and made bad choices with regard to her (which they did).
Racism and bad parenting choices are not solely the realm of mustache-twirling villains, but also the realm of parents who do care about their kids, but continually make some very big mistakes. It’s accurate. I like it.
(Of note: I don’t mean that now I like Linda and Charles. Their actions didn’t get any less harmful just because they may have an inkling that maybe they did something wrong at some point. I mean that I like the storytelling a bunch.)
I don’t think I know enough about the parent’s perspective on Sal and their interactions to know if they are actually awful. Sal could just be an asshole who blames them for her bad behavior for all I have seen.
Pretty sure her stealing Sal’s money she was saving for Marcie’s surgery, no matter how futile it may be, is evidence enough of Linda being awful.
And, even if Charles didn’t seem to be throwing out micro aggressions from time in his own right, him standing by while Linda is being awful makes him pretty bad as well.
If I were trying to have a more objective opinion I’d say it’s a mixed bag like most real parents. They clearly want what they think is the best for their children but obviously have no clue what that is. Contextually Sal and Walky are both getting full rides through college with no scholarship s or grants. Debt free education is a huge privilege. That being said Linda called what would eventually be Sal’s best friend a vagrant when she was like 4 years old for the crime of playing on a jungle gym with no parents in immediate eyeshot. And also stole money Sal had raised herself for Marcy to get potentially voice saving surgery. You be the judge.
Send your kid to a far-off catholic boarding school instead of into juvy might seem to the parents to be a good decision (also, privileged decision).
The bad comes in with putting her in the place to try to steal money to help a friend pay for surgery by
a) not supporting her at all in the wish to help said friend
b) stealing the distinctly not enough money Sal managed to raise without their help with legal means
c) keeping her away from home over the holidays and
d) making sure she knows she’s shit and less care worth to them then the neighbors’ daughter with every interaction ever.
There’s a very small amount of shit that you need to add to a mixed bag before everything that’s mixed in it winds up shitty. Linda added a lot of shit.
Here’s an itemized list of crap Sals’ parents have pulled that we have witnessed:
–When Sal worked her butt off to raise funds so that Marcie could have life-changing surgery, Linda took the money away.
–Linda and Charles have consistently treated Sal differently from Walky, including giving her just a gift card, instead of the care package they bought Dorothy when she was dating Walky.
–When the whole gang was kidnapped, Linda wanted to have Amber kicked out of the school. Why? Because it was her father that was responsible for the kidnapping, so obviously his daughter should be punished???
–For the first time, Linda is treating Sal better than Walky in recent events BECAUSE now Walky has a black girlfriend, and Sal has a white boyfriend who fits their cookie cutter definition of “good”.
Ooh would you like more things we’ve seen onscreen?
– the first time she laid eyes on Walky’s girlfriends, Linda was super warm to Dorothy and Joyce, but was icy cold to Lucy, with only their appearances to go on. (We have ample evidence from multiple characters, and also Word of God, that this is definitely part of a pattern in which Linda is literally racist around her two mixed-race kids.)
– Stood by and supported that the boy “from a nice family” shouldn’t be held accountable for grievously injuring Sal’s “illegal” friend — who was basically blamed for existing in the wrong place, instead.
– No matter how hard your kid is, you need to keep making efforts to know them. Rather than ever showing unconditional love to Sal, Linda routinely ignores and low-key rejects her. She only grants her smiles and positive attention to her Golden Child. This began in little subtle ways when they were very young (lil Sal & Walky were both running around, Linda only reprimanded Sal; when forced to pick which kid should get an opportunity to be included onscreen, she picked Walky). It has snowballed over the years to the differences with care packages, only informing Walky that she’s visiting, explicitly not inviting Sal to lunch/dinner, etc.
-inhale-
How the fuck are we still getting these comments??????? Does Linda need to slap sal in the face and call her the n word to convince you people?????
Traumatizing your daughter, then saying you did right because she finds a decent person to spend her love and time with?
No. You didn’t do right by her. You didn’t raise her to be like this. She chose how to treat people in spite of you, not because of you. You chose to fail your daughter. You don’t deserve any credit to the person she is now.
Fuck off to both of you.
If they don’t cut their parents off before marriage, that’s also very valid and understandable… just as Sal is still making efforts to get scraps of approval from her parents.
Kids really, really want their parents to love them.
The difference is that if you get them to pay for the wedding, you have to put up with them at the wedding and that can screw up the whole day and ruin your memories of, so why bother having the big wedding in the first place.
College otoh they pay for and aren’t part of the vast majority of the time. The value of college isn’t ruined.
Course it depends on how bad it is. Sometimes it’s worth cutting loose even earlier.
Because even odds the fancy wedding is what there parents want and not them.
Even if they do want a fancy wedding it might not be worth keeping their parents in there lives longer than they have to.
Their parents will see paying for the wedding as an invitation to take it over.
Yeah, remember that flashback strip where Linda and Charles are sitting on the sofa, inspiration strikes, and together they say, “Ah! let’s fail our daughter!” Neither do I. They made awful choices that fail badly, but that one is wildly implausible.
It makes me wonder how they were raised. Most people learn parenting from their parents. (That’s one of the scariest things about parenting. Where I’ve made mistakes, I may have indirectly screwed up lives I will never know.)
As for Sal: she does know how to treat people well, but aside from Marcie and Danny she’s treated most of those around her like cheap furniture, not people. She seems to have learned some bad lessons from her upbringing and they aren’t helpful now. She’s responding recently to a situation in which her normal behavior doesn’t work and so had to think about why.
(I like to think that Danny saw there was more to Sal than her tough-girl veneer and deliberately tripped her up to give that more an opening.)
I wouldn’t say she treated the people around her like ‘cheap furniture’ but she definitely didn’t let people close to her. That didn’t mean she didn’t care – she was definitely concerned for Joyce, Becky, Jennifer, etc. and got along with Carla okay, but she didn’t want to let them in. Marcie being mad at her kinda made her crack that shell open and so did deciding to get (mostly) out of the fighting game (dickhole friends of a rapist and evil dads aside).
Wonder how many visits they’d be able to keep that charade up for.
The answer is none, because Sal dumping Danny would probably make Linda immediately lose all interest in interacting with her for some weird reason, what could it possibly be???
Kinda skeeving me out that they’re talking about it like these two are well into a long-term commitment when really they’re two 19/20 year olds who have been dating for what like two months at most. It’s not gonna go well that they’re pinning all their hopes for their kid on this random slice of white bread they’ve known for all of four minutes.
Just about a week, depending on where you draw the line. The scenes with the bike & the flowers were a Thursday. The bike ride that was basically their first date was that Friday. This is the next Friday.
well, he could’ve meant ‘settling down’ with a ‘normal’ boyfriend/calming down her ‘rebel’ personality as opposed to like “oh yeah they’re going to get engaged”
It feels like Danny’s parents with Dorothy. They’re just desperately clinging to this good smart white boy to settle down their uppity rebel daughter. Just his proximity is adding a value she never had before in their eyes
Saying that within earshot is how you ensure that you get the wrong date for the wedding, and no pictures of the grandkids, Linda. Not even secondhand.
Congratulations! You know what they say:
“Don’t trust anyone over 30.”
One more year until you join the ranks of the rest of us untrustworthy scoundrels..
…and then the REAL fun begins! 😀
happy BIRTH day [HUNH!]
happy BIRTH day [HUNH!]
may the candles on your cake
burn like cities in your way
happy BIRTH day [HUNH!]
happy BIRTH day [HUNH!]
congratulations on making it this far!!! <3
(idk if thats an appropriate birthday thing to say, in my circles of crazy/queer/poor/addict folks this sort of sentiment is meaningful and meant with love <3)
Sure. Sal’s “unacceptable behavior” had nothing to do with your parentin, only Sal’s choices But her “acceptable behavior” has everything to do with you, nothing to do with her. Of course.
I understand how this cannot feel good, but I also hope she won’t let them ruin this for her. She has something very special with Danny, and throwing it away to spite them would be a mistake.
man, sal really can’t win with her parents. even when she’s playing “the daughter they actually wanted.” i think like one of the things she’s been struggling with this semester is a real crisis of identity and not wanting to prove her parents right.
like, sal’s character has had this undercurrent of struggling with people’s expectations and her own desires since the beginning of the comic, but i feel like this semester it’s been really highlighted. having malaya as a roommate has been excellent for reinforcing this as well i think.
She may just be picking up on the vibe of the last few pages, rather than hearing this particular (whispered) conversation.
She went into this wanting to see what it would be like to have her parents’ approval (for once). And now she knows. And hey, guess what, it’s not that great.
Living as AU Sal who did turn out whiter and also never had the guts to stand up to my parents and just did almost everything right except the things they don’t know about. I am so sorry to her for having to live this kind of life for a second. Especially because they don’t seem like they would believe her if she wasn’t attached to a white man right now. I want her to be happy so badly. I came here to have a good time and I just feel like my parent’s bongo rn
Ugh. Of all the possible “other shoe drops” followups to yesterday’s strip…I dunno. This one rings a little too cleanly horrible. I was loving the complications of them being relatable and Linda sharing so many mannerisms with Sal. Hope to see more of that in the rest of this arc.
The more I see of Linda and Charles, the more I understand Walky’s initial complete lack of manners and social graces. Linda and Charles are rude and, frankly, awkward.
( I basically didn’t know how to not be rude for a long time and if I ever asked how something was rude people would start screaming at me and judging me and telling me “you know how that’s rude” when I didn’t, it wasn’t conductive to personal growth And I learned how to be polite in spite of the type of person who acts that way and not because of this type of person, I would rather be rude to spite this sort of asshole if I was surrounded by them but thankfully most people aren’t that awful. )
( Like I was generally nice but would occasionally come off as rude unintentionally and people would be downright shocked because rudeness was coming out of my mouth. The assumption was that I had a carefully cultivated “nice” persona, I guess, instead of me just generally being nice by nature)
Let’s compare Linda’s prior reaction to Dorothy with Walky, her reaction to Danny now, her initial overly enthusiastic greeting of Joyce as Walky’s presumed love interest…
…With how she treated Lucy like absolute garbage.
Lucy is easily at least as smart and academically driven as Danny, more balanced than Dorothy, more church-committed and community-focused than Joyce is, and genuinely appears to be making Walky happy. If Linda could put down her colorism and racism for a minute, she could see what a catch Lucy is.
Look, that’s all very nice, but Linda just doesn’t like her for some reason she just can’t put her finger on. She doesn’t have to like EVERY girl Walky dates, right?
There’s been the occasional comment these last few days along the lines of “Maybe Linda isn’t so bad/Maybe Sal just needs to buck up and realize that maybe she treats her parents unfairly” and while people are definitely allowed to share those opinions (and honestly make some decent points about how Charles and Linda’s lack of OBVIOUS (key word) malintent makes them really compelling in comparison to some of the other shitty DOA parents ), IMO in a few weeks when Linda inevitably tries to aggressively shut down Sal’s autonomy as soon as the slightest hint of conflict between the two spark up again I’m just going to be sitting here quietly thinking to myself “lmfao fuckin’ knew you still sucked Linda”.
I don’t care whether or not Linda is awful. I just want her to be awful in a way that’s interesting to read.
Yesterday’s hypocrisy about sleeping with the TA (when we KNOW she would never approve of Sal doing it) was interesting. It complicated her dynamic with Sal just a little bit more. That’s fun to dig into.
Lunging at the only white girl of a group and saying “I bet my son is dating YOUUUUUUUUU” is verging on self-parody and the opposite of interesting. It’s “Daisy can detect Girl Spit on Wally’s shirt” levels of Flanderization. I am hoping for less of that kind of awfulness going forward – not because I secretly hope Linda is a good person, but because I don’t want to read a conflict with a one-joke villain.
I mean fair! Interesting characters + dynamics are always more fun to engage with, and I always appreciated the ways in which Linda’s form of shitty parenting has felt more complicated in comparison to the acts of brute force dysfunction that Blaine/Carol/Ross/etc end up engaging in. It’s a good contrast! You can be a generally nice person and be in a happy marriage and make silly jokes and still intentionally harm your kids in ways that deeply fuck them up. I don’t think anyone ever wants to see a story become a parody of itself, but narratively if Linda end up being more of a driving force for conflict instead of being this constantly evolving complex character, I don’t think that’s a sign of failure on the part of the story.
Linda is not a major character in the overarching plot of DOA, Sal is. Sal and Co* dealing with the fallout of this storyline are essentially what matters in the end, and even if by the end the only thing Sal gets out of this experiment is that her suspicions about how her own mother treats her in relation to whiteness are 100% true, that realization is still important and can still be a source of engaging and dynamic storytelling.
Linda’s never been a one-joke villain, at least not to me. This kind of subtle flavor of unchecked racist microaggression has always been incredibly fucking real, and the emotional fallout of experiencing these kinds of behaviors on a repeated basis does cause immense life-altering harm. Even the more quote “unrealistic/parodist” moments are things that I see happen on a fairly regular basis in what are supposed to be more progressive spaces. The exhaustion of having to interact with people who are supposed to be your allies but are insistent that their proximity to whiteness does not impact the intensity of unconscious anti-black behavior fucking sucks and It’s a serious issue in left-wing communities.
I dunno, I don’t have any beef with you in particular and i would really hate for it to seem like I’m only writing this because, i dunno, i think your opinions are objectively wrong (They’re not! You’re right to say that her little act of hypocrisy in yesterday’s strip is an excellent detail that enriches her character, and you’re right for at least wanting more moments like that.), but what I ultimately wanted to express with my initial comment is that Linda being a plot device to comment on how unconscious racial bias and parenting that emphasizes a lack of autonomy can AND will dissolve a child’s ability to form an positive self-identity and erode trust in others is already engaging enough as is, and while it might make for an interesting thought experiment to think about other avenues that could be taken when it comes to Linda as a solitary character, if that core commentary becomes muddled as a result of it, in the end that’s going to create bad, uninteresting storytelling.
I never doubted Linda was awful. I just can’t imagine Willis setting her up like he has and then allowing her to not be terrible. “Linda Sucks” is probably written at the core of her character. Part of why I find her so tiresome is I’d love to see nuance and maybe see her grow from being terrible but I doubt she will because that’s not exactly the kinda story DOA wants to tell.
Yeah, as the title suggests, it’s a coming of age story where the main characters come face to face with the ugly realities of the world, including the fact that well, bigoted assholes are bigoted assholes and adamant to be that way.
Eh, Sal does treat her parents unfairly. Sal’s parents treat her unfairly. Lather; rinse; repeat. It’s going to continue until someone steps out of the circle. And I’m less interested in who started it than in who stops it.
Sal’s parents appear to think Danny is the ideal partner for Sal to date.
If you could have your PERFECT (no limits, imagination run wild…) date for just ONE afternoon, how would you describe the perfect one to share it with? Doesn’t have to be human. Could be a good book, a brownie, a bowl of sherbert, a favorite domestic animal, a human partner, a non-romantic friend… Just what or who would you like to share a PERFECT afternoon with?
I’d go hang gliding. Just me and the hawks. And maybe a gliding instructor. And no injuries to keep me from trying it. That would be my perfect way to spend an afternoon: on a “date” with the sky.
My ideal date would be chilling at the house, playing video games, singing duets to cartoons, cooking together and watching anime. My ideal date is just my ideal friend, but also we can make out and other stuff when we’re done.
ooh i was hiking with my girlfriend yesterday and we were joking that it was pretty convenient to be doing that together, because we both enjoy walking in the mountain and kissing each other, and so we did plenty of both! haha. also skinny dipping in a lake, then letting the sun and breeze dry our skins while sharing a (lukewarm lol) beer =)
(also, it just so happened my latest funtimes with a loved one was with my lover but i usually go hiking with my best friend, we always have the best time, it’s this special time out of time for the two of us where our conversation rolls around in every direction and we geek out on the plants we find and we also drink beer and go skinny dipping typically =P. i’m not that much of a romantic and most of my “dates” involve either me and a horror film, or friends and good food <3)
Oh, they’d definitely be a dragon. At good forty, fifty feet long at least, smart as a whip, and vicious as a rabid wolverine. We’d go out for a nice, long flight, and lay waste to at least one city, maybe a town or two, and have a lovely meal among the smoldering ruins.
Someone I want to know better, who wants to know me better, who will and can discuss deeply something that’s serious, not topical, and has a lot of interesting ramifications. And enjoys a good walk, or cycling around aimlessly.
Me neither. We’ve already got a dad redemption arc with Hank, who earned it better, so we’re probably in the clear for Charles to enable Linda forever.
I would kinda love a “no one is owed forgiveness” moment with Charles expressing some remorse to sal, probably in a not great way, and just getting the “nah, too little to late. I can never trust you. Get out of my life”
I could go on and vehemently tear these fictional characters apart, mainly because there are people who act just like them that existed/exists and it frustrates me to no end, but I’d only accomplish frustrating myself even more trying to competently describe my disgust without repeated the same things ad infinitum.
Instead, I will congratulate Sal for finding someone that truly cares about her and Danny for standing by Sal. Let S.S. Dally sail far and true.
Having never experienced This particular kind of parental abuse(I only got the classic drunken hijinks and work-related neglect), I did not intuitively understand what the eff was going on in the comment section.
I’m glad I read through it though, wow she’s full of it.
Really, if your kid just survives to become an independently functioning adult, you have done the best job a parent could possibly do. These are not lies.
Some parts of this seem contradictory to me and I’m struggling to understand your meaning. If the child becomes a functional adult the parent was more or less successful, that is true. But “best you could possibly do” usually means there was no room for improvement. Parenting is complex and there isn’t a way to get it 100% right in all areas. I would say many people still have unresolved issues from the way they were parented, even if their parents meant well and tried to do a good job.
I was trying to imagine a metric for parental success that would make even Linda go “are you sure there’s not some obvious possibilities you’re overlooking?”
My heart is breaking for Sal. I hope she knows she doesn’t have to make herself miserable to make a point to her parents. Let them tell themselves any old fairy tale they want . . .
If I ever worked on something alone, and succeeded, my mother would say, “We did it!”
If we ever worked on something together (even if I did most of the work), and succeeded, my mother would say “I did it!”
If she ever worked on something alone, and failed, my mother would say, “We did it!”
If we ever worked on something together (even if all I did was offer guidance she yelled at me for and then ignored), and failed, my mother would say, “You did it!”
I can’t remember, are any of the parents not kind of obvious assholes if not downright villainous? How are Dorothy and Danny’s parents? Really can’t remember. Think Dina’s might have been okay? I get that in university parent drama keeps the wheels of story and character progression greased, it’s just eventually we have to accept where we have to take over our behaviour and commit to being better people and making better adults than our parents.
Danny’s parents hammered the idea that he is of little value into his head, they only care when he can attach himself to a good woman who’s going places. Remember how stalkerishly obsessed they were with Dorothy?
I would like to say that I don’t know of Joe’s dad ever behaving badly toward Joe. Relative to some people’s moral structures he’s been an awful partner and could be said to be a poor example for his son. The son feels this way. (So do I.)
Bad partner good parent is a thing that exists. There is something to be said about cheating on the mother of your children, knowing that if (when) it gets out your kids home life is going to explode. Even just the effect of seeing their mother heartbroken. Even if you’re a shitty partner if you can’t control yourself for your kids sake that docks several points off your parent score
I’d say he was more of a bad parent in that he set a terrible example and his actions messed Joe up rather than directly being a dick TO Joe. I do believe he cares about Joe and means well, but him trying to clean up his act is definitely important to fixing his relationship with Joe.
But we haven’t seen any signs of him trying to clean up his act. We’ve seen him helping out Amber and trying to be a good parent, but that was never his problem.
We haven’t seen anything about him cheating on Stacy, but we also haven’t had any comment on it since early on when he basically just told Joe it was fine because she was hot and he didn’t feel like cheating right then. Nothing about him admitting he had a problem and trying to work on it.
This would be an entirely different and equally interesting comic if we actually saw it from the parents perspective. I think it’s a point that we don’t. For many, as they get older their parents become less constant and more fallible. The fact we don’t really know what his dad is doing or if he can stay faithful to Stacy makes us worry the same way Joe does.
Best-worst way for this to end would be Danny somehow managing to (accidentally, probably) call out Linda’s nonsense.
Worst because of the fallout for Sal and Walky, and because this is really not Danny’s battle to fight.
Best because Linda hearing it from someone as aggressively whitrbread as Danny might actually manage to hurt a little.
You may have missed the reference because there was nothing stealthy about it. It was open confiscation. In the case of a parent and a minor child it may be lawful, I wouldn’t know. (Doesn’t mean it was “right,” or decent, or helpful.)
All right, Danny. It’s time to use your power of Danning it up for good. We’ve got some people who could really use some harsh truths doled out to them before your brain catches up and realizes what you’re saying. Let them have it.
Sal turned out fine in spite of her shitty parents, not because of them, and her being fine has nothing to do with Danny being white, he’s just a nice guy. I’m sure her mother would talk differently if Danny were black.
Indeed. :/ Nonetheless, I hope she can overcome it and appreciate her love with Danny for what it is regardless. A good thing approved of by bad people doesn’t make the good thing bad.
Like for fuck’s sake, she’s 18/19 years old. What’s this cultural obsession with “settling down” (whatever that means) as soon as physically possible? Pick your partner for life before you’ve even finished college or you’re what, some kind of unruly wildcard? How do people live that way, without dying of exhaustion by age 15? I’m tired just thinking about it.
I was reminded of when Jennifer, Ash, and Raidah were all clucking at each other and at Sal about TEEHEE LOOK AT US WE’RE ALL SETTLING DOWN made me wanna reach into the comic like “bruh you guys haven’t even hit your 20s yet, trust me you still have a long way to go, just enjoy yourselves”
This is why it’s hard to be happy when you haven’t forgiven the people that hurt you. If you’re happy you worry that they’ll think the did the right thing and use it as justification for all the shitty things they did to you.
Forgiving people only benefits them and makes them feel like whatever you held against them was justified. Throwing them away entirely and washing your hands is the superior option because then you don’t have to think about them at all. They can be a stranger in the crowd, you can move on with your life, and whatever happens to them is no longer your problem.
Vehemently disagree, forgiveness is an insanely overrated concept and it’s disgusting the way it’s hoisted onto victims. It’s hard to be happy when you have shitty people in your life who treat you terrible. Once sal graduates and cuts them off forever she’ll feel a lot better, trust me
Forgiveness as a reflex irrespective of the other’s attitude is not just overrated; it’s wrong. Forgiveness is the reward for repentance. Don’t reinforce bad behavior; do reinforce good behavior.
What’s to forgive? They just said, probably within Sal’s range of hearing, that they think they did nothing wrong. Everything that hurt Sal, and her friends, and her self-esteem for the sake of keeping her away from Mexicans and poor people, teaching her to act more white (telling her her natural hair isn’t good enough), ignoring her in favor of her more charming twin brother? It was he right thing for her, as evidenced by Danny deigning to date her. You can’t forgive people who don’t regret their actions.
Oh, looks like I hit a nerve with this one. Forgiveness should be a personal choice, but that isn’t always respected. It’s very harmful to force forgiveness onto a victim, especially in the name of social convenience. But what if you are the victim? You could cut the abuser out of your life, but the pain and anger are still there. Some people choose forgiveness to deal with those feelings. By letting go of their anger about the past, they may be more prepared to deal with the future. Sal and Amber were able to forgive each other for what happened at the convenience store, and it’s allowed them to become friends and benefit from new experiences with the Roller Derby team. Sal hasn’t forgiven her parents, so it hurts that much more to hear them justify their shitty behavior. It places her in a trap, because any happiness she finds will be tainted by knowing her parents feel this way. If she chooses to pursue forgiveness in the future and let go of the anger, she may not care what they think. The strip reminded me of some things I experienced in my own college years, contrasted with how I feel now that I’ve tried to forgive those involved. To me it’s a subtle example of how forgiveness can actually be beneficial to the victim.
letting go of your anger isn’t the same as forgiving a person
forgiving a person usually means you’re good with them
you can decide not to expend mental energy on someone without being on good terms with them
But you shouldn’t forgive someone while they’re still doing the things they need to be forgiven for and you’re still tied to them. Is it better for her if she forgives then and then hears them justify their shitty behavior?
When she does cut them out of her life, then maybe she’ll be able let go of that anger and that past.
But now you’re saying an abuse victim should forgive ongoing abuse. That’s toxic.
I’m sure a lot of people have had very smart and and heartfelt ways of expressing their sympathy for Sal and distaste for Linda and Charles, but alas, I’m not much for smartness or heart feelings.
Tbh we probably don’t wanna crack that one open again, given how divisive that topic has been. Still, I have strong opinions on the matter and couldn’t hit the post button before I thought better.
I think the important distinction here is the difference between seeing your kid about to touch a hot stove and not stopping them so they’ll learn it’s unsafe and to listen when you warn them about things next time, versus deliberately putting their hand on the stove yourself.
If I tell my kid “Don’t touch that, you’ll get burnt” repeatedly and the kid refuses to listen, it’s not abuse for me to let them experience pain of their own volition. I told them what would happen, they didn’t listen, they experienced a consequence. No abuse in sight. What, am I supposed to be on 24/7 surveillance to make sure my dipshit kid doesn’t figure out “Hot stove = me burn finger”?
Lemme share an actual anecdote, maybe it’ll help me communicate this better.
When I was a wee “lad”, my dad told me if I rode my bike on that new patch of gravel or I’d slip and hurt myself. Guess what I did the exact second he wasn’t looking. Just like he said, I slipped and hurt myself, got a few pebbles embedded in my elbow, and made a hell of a shriek. He comes runnin’ back outside, sees me laying in the loose gravel I was just told not to ride my bike in, with the bike on top of me. Now, I don’t know about the rest of this comments section, but in my house we had a phrase for this sort of self-inflicted mishap. “Stupid hurts, don’t it?” We weren’t calling the person stupid, but the action, and when he asked me the question, all I could say was “Yeah”, and he knew I’d learned my lesson. It didn’t lead to any sort of lecture, we didn’t have some sitcom heart-to-heart bonding moment, there was no yelling or name calling. Just a parent warning about something that would hurt, being told “okay”, and then the kid deliberately doing the thing anyway.
That’s the sort of situation I’m talking about here. Sorry if that didn’t come across, I was trying to be succinct. Now, if you’re gonna call that abusive, I don’t know what to say to that besides “No it’s not”.
Not to defend a fictional character, but I don’t think we’ve seen any evidence of that. She seems more like the type that deliberately doesn’t hit her kids so she can hold it over their heads.
Yeah, I don’t see her as hitting Sal– in part because I don’t see her as hitting *Walky,* and I can’t imagine it wouldn’t have come up by now if Linda struck her but not him.
It’s interesting what going on here. Sal thinks she hears them telling each other what a good job they’ve done because Sal snagged a wholesome white boyfriend. But they look sad now? Maybe they are reconsidering their conditional approval or maybe they are rethinking their parenting choices? Normal parents (like me) constantly second-guess themselves, thinking back over all the times they could have been less stressed, more fun, or more supportive, maybe these horrible people are human enough for that.
Linda isn’t sad. Sal having a nice (white) boyfriend is the proof Linda needed to affirm her shitting parenting, so now Linda will probably double down on being awful. Her her face is one of renewed determination. Charles has a face of some shock, but mostly sadness, because he realized Linda doesn’t have faith in her daughter. Linda thinks the only reason Sal is doing better is because of her parenting and nothing to do with Sal’s own choices, Charles realizes this, and because Sal over heard them so does she.
I swear if they ruin this for Sal and Danny I’m going to claw my way through all the multiverse realms until I find the one where they exist and clump them both upside the head.
I remember in high school some girls explaining that they smoked in order to punish their parents. I didn’t understand then either. But Sal is so realistic.
Much better to be a success and punish them by cutting them out of your life. Even better if it’s not to punish but because you’ve done the cost benefit analysis and even though you pity them you know they’re not healthy to be around.
I don’t know what makes people have those different mindsets, those different reactions to terrible parenting.
You can’t really punish them by cutting them out of your life when you’re 13. Or even in high school.
And waiting years for some payoff isn’t really a thing most young kids are good at. So you flail around at rebellion then, even if it hurts you more than it does them.
It’s just straight up emotionally abusive to say that within earshot and since this is a fictional character I don’t have to be polite with how I phrase how I feel about this: fuck you Linda
Even without the bias of liking Sal, as an outsider I’d have to ask… why was Sal ever in a position where she had become friends with the likes of Asher and his gang, who literally have ties to the mob? We see Linda speak up about Sal’s choice in friends… once.
And that was Marcy, who Linda called a “hooligan” despite the fact that between the two, Sal’s the one with a record while we have never seen Marcy break any laws and only ever hold down proper (if unfortunately likely minimum wage) jobs. Marcy’s only crime was being latina.
Also people have pointed out Linda stealing that money Sal was raising. In response to that breaking of trust and the desire to raise money for her friend, Sal tried to rob a convenience store. It’s a pretty easy ’cause and effect’ to follow, frankly.
I am starting to think that when people ask for Linda to be more “nuanced,” they mean they want her racism to be easier to ignore. like, no one is asking for Charles, specifically, to be a more nuanced and interesting character – just Linda.
I have to admit I’ve noticed that the Walkertons are always the bad parents people in the comments want to see get better. Ethan’s horrible homophobic parents or Danny’s parents don’t tend to get the same reactions (and Ethan’s parents actually DID get over their homophobia in the Walkyverse so I’d say there’s more hope there).
I still don’t get how Linda can be this….dense? Racist? Whatever she is, considering who she herself is with. Hopefully this set of parent/kid issues get a happier ending than our last few…
Ego can be a HELL of a drug. And unfortunately, parents love to view themselves as the high authority over their kids, therefore any decision they make (both good or bad) is always the right one because nobody else has the ‘right’ to refute them.
THAT’S why she acts so cold to Sal? Because she’s projecting onto her because deep down she knows she failed her as a parent????
I can’t decide if I’m less or more pissed off now. On the one hand this is the closest thing to a sympathetic reason we’ve seen from Linda so far. On the other hand, *suck it up and be a parent to your kid you dumb bongo.*
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the same way that uninsured motorist did right by my brother and me by almost killing my mother running that stop sign and paying for our college with the settlement?
What? That happened? When?
… Is your mother OK?
I think in it’s own way, Oklahoma is mother to us all.
But seriously, she good?
This was like when I was… five?
(She’s very fine and currently tolerating a grandcat in the house)
UN-insured?!?!
Insurance is expensive and worthless anyway.
I mean I don’t know what it’s like in the States but in Canada it’s an offense under the motor vehicle act to drive without at least basic third party liability insurance.
I’m well aware of the consequences of not having it. That doesn’t change the fact that $200/month for literally no coverage is robbery.
I pay that a year and have more than basic coverage… then again, I’m on the other side of the pond
When it’s mandatory to have, they can get away with charging out the butt for itm
All American states and territories require a certain minimum liability/property damage coverage. Drivers have to show proof of insurance when they register their car, but that doesn’t necessarily stop some people from cancelling their policy or letting it expire. It’s pretty easy to get away with it, as long as you don’t get pulled over or get into a wreck.
A few years back, I got rear-ended by an uninsured driver when I stopped for an oncoming cop car. Good news was, my insurance included uninsured motorist coverage so I wasn’t stuck with the bill.
Only Danny seems happy in that last panel.
Probably only cuz he didn’t hear what Linda said. Or maybe because he doesn’t understand the full implications? How much does Danny actually know about Sal’s backstory?
Not as much as he probably should be.
He knows that she held Ethan as a hostage and Amber knifed her. But also doesn’t know that Amber and Amazi-Girl are two distinct people… She’ll probably talk to him in time. One really good thing about Danny is he’s a really good listener and not too judgmental.
I’m pretty sure that he does know that, in that Amazi girl talked about Amber being “in here” in at least one of the Shipshines (and I think shifted personas.)
He saw her without the mask in “Mask or No Mask” and I don’t think even Danny’s *that* obtuse.
And yep, there’s that other shoe!
Fucking Linda.
Going to have to disagree here somewhat.
We know that there was the issue of Marcie’s injury in her childhood; but aside from that time, they were responding to their child engaging in dangerous behavior- criminal behavior, even. While they made poor choices, heck- they may have made poor choices for the wrong reasons, they made *mistakes*, not malicious choices AFAWK. And, they early see that they made mistakes along the way; otherwise they would not have the feeling of regret so visible in the final.
This arc has been the most humanizing treatment that these two have ever received across the entire story, and it makes them more interesting, because they are not just copy-pastes of ‘supervillain dad teams up with vigilante dad’. They’re flawed, but shown as human.
i dont get a sense of that from this comic, and today’s strip’s last panel, at ALL
Sal’s “criminal behavior” was a DIRECT result of Linda’s treatment of Marcie’s injury. Her attitude about Sal hanging out with “undesirables” are, IMO, the “malicious decisions” you’re absolving Sal’s parents of. Hard disagree there.
^ That.
Yup. Linda’s microaggressions against Sal started before Marcie got hurt. They started well before Sal even met Marcie.
No.
This arc has had a lot of characters pretty explicitly stating the reasons they think Linda and Charles are bad, and that assessment has been pretty well supported by their actions this arc so far.
That they show some mild uncertainty in a single panel doesn’t really change that.
The “PROOF, FINALLY!” line from Linda doesn’t strike you as narcissistic at all?
Kinda, but due to her sad expression as she’s saying this, it looks like she’s trying to convince herself. If she had kept in panels 3 and 4 the look she had in panels 1 and 2, then yeah, it’d be pure narcissism, but due to the sorrowful look it seems there’s a bit more than that here.
Seems like seeing Sal with Danny have forced them to rethink about how they’ve seen her all along, and now she’s looking for some straw to grasp to justify herself.
It absolutely doesn’t excuse her past behavior, obviously, but it does offer a small hope of character growth for her; if she can actually go to the next step and admit that they’ve mistreated their daughter badly. No guarantee of that happening at all, though.
It strikes me as “it’s been such a struggle, always hoping we were doing the right thing. I want this to be validation.” People can care about their kids without knowing what would work best for them.
It’s true that parenting has a lot of guess and hope and flying blind and that wanting validation is only human. But it’s also worth noting that the validation in this case is a white nerd boyfriend.
Not that I disagree agree, but I also think it’s a bit more nuanced: Sal appearing to be happy because of said white nerd boyfriend, and the stories about how smart & perceptive Sal is.
Whaaaaa-? I will say that they are human and shown to have flaws, but they’re also extremely in the wrong about how Sal has been raised. Linda has exhibited tons of racist beliefs and attitudes and uses her marriage to Charles as a shield for any and all criticism. Charles for his part is a huge enabler of this. The worst of this racism bleeds through with how she tries to control how her children look, act, and even who they associate with. Right now for the first time Sal is getting approval with Danny, Mr. Vanilla himself, while Walky is getting the cold shoulder by being with Lucy. And like, Linda has been talking with Walky and knew about Lucy and was perfectly happy with it when she though Joyce was Lucy, but the instant she was corrected she got a lot less expressive and friendly and made up an excuse to avoid lunch plans.
The worst part is Sal seems genuinely happy with Wonderbread. Only, now that she heard her mothers comment about it validating her mistreatment growing up she’ll have to reevaluate what her relationship with Danny means in regards to her relationship with her mother and that’s a WHOLE mess of worms. Sal seems the type to act as genuinely as possible and I think she’s honest enough with herself to trust her feelings for Danny don’t come some sublimated desire for approval, though I imagine the fact she seemed to enjoy the last few minutes of approval is going to bother her a lot.
In short, Linda has NOT done right by Sal, and even the theoretically positive act of approving of Danny is used to justify past bad behavior and has the potential to upset the relationship.
Screw you Linda, there are worse parents on campus, but not many.
“uses her marriage to Charles as a shield for any and all criticism.” I’ve seen this assertion from dozens of commenters. Is there a citation?
They might be mixing it up with when WALKY used it to defend Linda when Sal first told him what was up.
I don’t think this is an in comic based assertion. Its how shitty some parents can be in real life. I ran into a Jewish lady at a coffee shop recently and had to deal with the same bullshit. She was whining about the riots in France and I said that police shot a 14 yo boy and her response was “it was a Muslim boy.” Like his race or anything else has to do with being 14. When I caller her on it, then she switched to how people are dying in Israel. Which is clearly not related to anything except in her racist mind.
This arc has effectively demonstrated Linda’s *racism* not her humanity. Linda and Charles are finally reflecting their daughter positively because they are seeing her through the filter of Danny’s whiteness, whereas they are ignoring Walky because of his black girlfriend. You aren’t seeing Linda and Charles in their default state. You are seeing how they treat white people that fit their idea of successful.
And you don’t just steal the money your daughter has raised by herself in order to help her friend pay for life-changing surgery, while being a great mom the rest of the time. That’s not a one-time bad decision. That indicates some really messed up values.
Plus, did you forget the part where she wanted to kick Amber out of school because *her father* was responsible for the kidnapping?
Sure, Linda is expressing self-doubt here, but it’s an extremely (paradoxically) prideful self-doubt. She’s saying “my problem child eventually did what I wanted her to do and stopped being a problem” when she should be saying “my daughter had problems when I was controlling her life and they went away when she went out on her own, maybe I was the cause of her problems.” Linda’s congratulating herself for the fact that Sal can be perfectly happy in the absence of her influence.
I think I understand your point here. It’s very easy for us to dislike the Walkertons. We’ve seen years of their actions and how that’s traumatized Sal and Walky in different ways. They have a huge flaw as well, that’s very hard to dismiss if you’re a decent person in any way, but that doesn’t mean you can write them off completely. Linda, especially is being compared to Sal, shown they are similar. This humanizes her and some of her actions because she was probably like Sal as a kid.
They even admit some decisions were “fraught” as in tense and likely mistakes. What those decisions were who knows. (Probably all of them). But you can’t say all their decisions were bad or out of a selfish place anymore even if it’s negatively effected their kids.
For instance I think if would be incredibly unreasonable to expect any parent to accept their kid is going to school with someone who stabbed them in the hand. We know Amber and she and Sal squashed things, but that was after getting into a fist fight! Blaine, her dad kidnapped their other kid. The Walkertons don’t read the comic. They don’t know Amber is an innocent girl struggling with her own trauma who put her life on the line to save Walky and a bunch of other people. Of course they want her gone. Perfect example of a decision made with good intentions that if it had succeeded would’ve fucked their kids over again. I think that’s the Walkertons whole life. Bad, very flawed parents doing what they think is best but it has the opposite result. They’re just arrogant enough to think they’ve done well. We vilify them because we see them at their worst.
Walky and Sal are both happy and healthy and have lived fairly privileged lives. You think Sal just gets to buy and drive a motorcycle because she’s that cool? Who pays her insurance for that thing? Fills it with gas every week? Where is it being stored right now? It’s not so easy to just say the Walkertons are bad parents. We’ve seen bad parents. They’re more complicated then that.
Okay I’m done trying to defend them now. They’re both scumbags.
Sal paid for her motorcycle herself.
I never said she didn’t, but she doesn’t just get to have a motorcycle because she’s cool. I’m talking about stuff like what Sal mentions here which admittedly still looks bad on Linda.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/ammunition/
Even if it was ultimately used against her Sal enjoyed riding her motorcycle. She saved people’s lives with that motorcycle. Linda in part is responsible for that whether we like her or not. It doesn’t absolve her of anything, but it is an argument.
I said that to address her parents paying for insurance and gas. As Sal said it was expensive, hence why it’s in storage now.
And sure, you could argue that, but it’s a really really weak argument.
Hmm. Speaking of money, I wonder whether Sal ever did get her $700+ in shoebox money back.
Some electrolarynxes (talk box microphones, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolarynx) go for about that much.
If Sal could afford a motorcycle, I kind of wonder why Marcie never got an electrolarynx.
I mean, I get that not every person with a disability wants a device “work around”, and not every device is affordable, and maybe her throat is just too damaged even for PT and tools to make much difference. And there’s a whole ASL speaking community that she can be part of. I do get that. And Marcie communicates just fine with her phone. And maybe the PT of learning to use a new device would just bring back too many traumatic memories of her injury.
…It just seems to me that it would be an interesting plot point to explore. Because tools exist. Not all tools are practical. But if Joyce could get glasses and Amber could program reminders on Walky’s phone to help with his ADHD, I just wonder what other tools might be available or useful to support our heroes in their journey into adulthood.
Marcie’s injury happened when they were, what, 10? By the time Sal was old enough to make money legally, Marcie would have been communicating exclusively via ASL for 6 years, the majority of her teen years. Going back to oral speech would probably have been very difficult and uncomfortable at that point. It would be interesting to hear the reason she only uses ASL/text and not other tools, though.
Sal places people above status. Linda places status above people. Yes this arc is humanizing Linda. That doesn’t change that lots of humans are absolute shit people, and Linda is definitely on that end of the spectrum of human decency.
Regretting past decisions does not absolve them. And Sal having healed somewhat from her extremely traumatic teen years does not mean Linda’s decisions are retroactively justified.
“Our constant assaults on her self-esteem have borne fruit!”
Gaslight your children for results
“The beatings continued and morale improved!”
Well, Sal succeeded *despite* them but i suppose it can be twisted into “every action has lead to this” or so
Oh god please don’t lead to a breakup these two actually have one of the healthiest relationships in this comic!
Which… Admittedly says more about the other relationships, BUT STILL!
That was my concern when this story started. I’m hoping that this doesn’t really cause issues because when Willis paired them together despite their rules about rehashing couples from the Walkyverse, I assume that meant that they would actually be the complete opposite of their dynamic in the other setting (I.e., they’ll be in a healthy relationship). I like this pairing and don’t want it taken from us.
Same. I also am not a huge fan of “MY PARENTS LIKE THEM AND THEREFORE I MUST REBEL” storylines for punks, like c’mon Sal, show a bit of nuance. You can like Danny AND rebel against your parents.
*sigh* I just find their dynamic so sweet. They seem to bring out the best bits of each other.
I think this is more of a “well, I just got what I’ve always wanted: their approval… and it feels just as awful and conditional as I worried it would.”
I don’t think she’ll rebel, but she’s going to have to work to decide how she wants to approach this new approval from her parents. There’s absolutely a way forward for them together even with Sal rebelling. Because, if she’s honest with Danny about this sort of crap her parents have been pulling, Danny might go righteous and furious anger on her behalf.
It’d make me pretty happy to see him really lay into her parents as The Bestest White Son They Always Wanted to drive home their racism. Will they learn their lesson? Who knows. But I do at least see a path where Sal and Danny grow closer from this, not apart.
Agreed.
This is the part where Sal has to listen to the chapter title: “but don’t give yourself away”. She doesn’t have to be a sellout (for want of a better phrase).
Yelling at people that they’re awful almost never produces a lesson. But understanding their values and quietly, calmly, methodically, comprehensively pulling the supports from under the way they express those values just might work.
Facts and logic also don’t work.
I don’t think Tisiphone was suggesting that Danny lay into Linda and Charles to defeat their bigotry once and for all, or anything like that. Righteous fury would be a show of defiant support in a love language Sal will easily recognize. She has had very little validation from others that her parents have treated her badly. If my guess is correct, any validation of that idea has come from other people Sal thinks of as rebels. She deserves to get that righteous fury from someone she thinks is genuinely doing it for her, not just for the rebellion.
Honestly, if Sal tries to pull that I’d love for Malaya of all people to call her out on her bullshit. She’s outright stated that she hates when Sal is being fake, so Sal dumping Danny to be a ‘rebel’ would really set her off.
It could just be that it is hard to find anything to not like about Danny at first impressions. He seems to be the people pleaser type of personality, so unless those types annoy you, they tend to get along with most people at the first encounter.
That being said, Danny does tend to bring to much drama and I personally think he provides Sal with a much needed calm space to relax. Her mother might also like it since she is a rock the boat type, but that doesn’t mean that Sal needs to throw it away to spite her mom. I think that just proves that she needs to cut her mom off asap (depending on how financially dependent, etc).
Is it really one of the healthiest relationships in this comic if comments like this from Linda can end it?
Well aside from Becky and Dina, I think it is definitely the healthiest relationship in the comic. I have known many lesbian couples, and there’s is one of the better lesbian relationships I’ve known.
Generalizing and pathologizing the health of lesbian relationships is not appreciated or appropriate.
Who peed in your cornflakes? I was making a comment on a fictional relationship between comic characters, not talking about people in the real world.
No need for personal attacks. You’re the one who talked about relationships you observed outside of the comic. But even if you were just talking about the comic, keep in mind actual queer people hear comments about how our relationships are unhealthy way too often.
I’m trying to figure out where you read any of that.
Healthy is a spectrum and not a binary!
If they do break up because of this, I’m not sure if it will even be the dumbest reason for a breakup in DoA.
For me Ruth breaking up with Billie essentially “because they are happy” is the one that takes the cake.
It would be followed by this one (“because it makes my parents happy”).
Followed by “Because I want to focus on my studies”.
But hey, it’s called Dumbing of Age for a reason!
Eh, Ruth’s reason was ‘dumb’, but that’s because depression is absolutely a self-destructive and self-sabotaging condition, that actively pushes the person dealing with it to make choices that will ultimately harm them, especially in cases where it can form a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ruth’s reason while dumb, to me it’s the most realistic one. Her struggle with depression would lead her to make a dumb as rocks choice like that. It’s something I’ve seen time and time again in the real world.
Pretty sure Ruth broke up with Billie/Jen because she recognized how dangerous and unhealthy their relationship was. The happy part only mattered because she wanted to do it at a time when Billie/Jen wouldn’t hurt herself
I think it’s both. Ruth saw that they had reached a really bad low point, and when she rose out of that low point, she wanted to remove any risk of dragging Billie back down into it. I don’t think Ruth was expecting to stay unsuicidal, and she ended her relationship with Billie because she thinks her suicidality would be contagious.
I’m still wondering if a confrontation by the younger generation (including also Walky and Lucy) might eventually lead to a breakup of the elder Walkertons. Whatever you think of Charles, I’m convinced that he’s not nearly so invested in Linda’s worldview as she is and has been silencing vague discomfort for a long time. When it won’t be silenced, it could become acute.
I’d love if Charles had an epiphany about what they’ve done to Sal (and Walky, but Sal definitely took the brunt of it)
You ignorant bongo
THIS
Very much this.
Meh. I’ll give them maybe 10% of the credit. Maaaaybe.
And that 10% is mostly that Sal can only exist because they fucked.
Ha. I wouldn’t even call that a favor. There was no Sal before they fucked. She wasn’t some potential person hoping for life before her conception.
Linda and Charles fucked because they wanted a kid. Sal’s birth wasn’t a favor they did for her, but a favor they did themselves.
…Are you certain they wanted a kid?
A kid, yes. Their oldest twin? Ehhhhh.
and this is why sal can’t have nice things*
* relationships with her parents
That’s not always a nice thing.
Yeah, “fraught” decisions, like stealing from your kid. 👀
Yeah, that may be the the absolute peak of their awfulness, but it’s still a huge fucking peak.
Wait, when did they steal from her?
She took the money she saved up that she was going to give to marcie for her operation like, “I’ll hate you forever” “you’re 13”
As a kid Sal saved up money to pay Marcie’s operation, her mom stole all of it 😡
Which is what pushed Sal to try to steal some of it back in the first place.
Or dumping her when she’s newly disabled in another state and only talking to her to “lecture her about how she’s a failure”
Yeah. Yeah, that’s huge. Wow.
…Newly disabled, severely traumatized, AND her best friend just lost her spoken voice.
Thankfully, mercifully, Marcie somehow moved to Tennessee too or Sal would’ve been totally alone.
Dang, I just thought about it. Sal would have had to learn ASL all left-handed, or using a busted right hand! Ouch! Dang, I sure hope the injured hand was her non-dominant hand!
She was left handed before being stabbed so at least there’s that.
Wai, how was Sal “newly disabled”? I know she’s got a scar on her hand, but is there anything else?
And how did she get that scar?
There’s been implications she has nerve damage in that hand but I’m not sure I recall correctly.
She’s actually got two scars on her hand, one on either side.
You know, from the knife that went right through it.
Here she mentions how her right hand isn’t “so good,” and that’s now, years after being stabbed: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/02-this-is-the-way-that-we-love/tuned/
Ahh, thanks. (And a general thanks to all the replies.)
For some reason I completely failed to think that there would be nerve damage and other issues there, even though that is extremely obvious. Hey ho.
The hand is full of lots of intricate parts. Fingers and knuckles are just a massive pulley system. If you plunge a knife through it it’s never gonna work the same again
Her hand isn’t at full function anymore.
I like that this immediately proves that Linda, was in fact speaking at a volume that everyone could hear in the previous panel
“You ended up okay, tgerefore I made all the right decisions.”
Yeah, parents never seem to realize that maybe the kid is okay *in spite of* those decisions.
(And/or maybe the kid is not all that okay.)
I do find it a very humanizing temptation, though, for Linda to worriedly assert this. She did want to do right by Sal, she does wish her happiness, and she’s worried that they messed up and made bad choices with regard to her (which they did).
Racism and bad parenting choices are not solely the realm of mustache-twirling villains, but also the realm of parents who do care about their kids, but continually make some very big mistakes. It’s accurate. I like it.
(Of note: I don’t mean that now I like Linda and Charles. Their actions didn’t get any less harmful just because they may have an inkling that maybe they did something wrong at some point. I mean that I like the storytelling a bunch.)
Hear, hear!
Credit for me, blame for thee.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/i/
“I made me”
I don’t think I know enough about the parent’s perspective on Sal and their interactions to know if they are actually awful. Sal could just be an asshole who blames them for her bad behavior for all I have seen.
Maybe try going through the Linda tab for a refresher? There’s some bad stuff
Pretty sure her stealing Sal’s money she was saving for Marcie’s surgery, no matter how futile it may be, is evidence enough of Linda being awful.
And, even if Charles didn’t seem to be throwing out micro aggressions from time in his own right, him standing by while Linda is being awful makes him pretty bad as well.
She stole Sals money she was saving for Marcy who is a good egg probably one of the best eggs yet they Linda labled her a trouble maker.
If I were trying to have a more objective opinion I’d say it’s a mixed bag like most real parents. They clearly want what they think is the best for their children but obviously have no clue what that is. Contextually Sal and Walky are both getting full rides through college with no scholarship s or grants. Debt free education is a huge privilege. That being said Linda called what would eventually be Sal’s best friend a vagrant when she was like 4 years old for the crime of playing on a jungle gym with no parents in immediate eyeshot. And also stole money Sal had raised herself for Marcy to get potentially voice saving surgery. You be the judge.
Send your kid to a far-off catholic boarding school instead of into juvy might seem to the parents to be a good decision (also, privileged decision).
The bad comes in with putting her in the place to try to steal money to help a friend pay for surgery by
a) not supporting her at all in the wish to help said friend
b) stealing the distinctly not enough money Sal managed to raise without their help with legal means
c) keeping her away from home over the holidays and
d) making sure she knows she’s shit and less care worth to them then the neighbors’ daughter with every interaction ever.
There’s a very small amount of shit that you need to add to a mixed bag before everything that’s mixed in it winds up shitty. Linda added a lot of shit.
Ce n’est pas ça, chef.
Ceci n’est pas une bonne mére. Or even the picture of one.
mère
Merde (which ALSO fits).
Linda is racist against her own child.
Here’s an itemized list of crap Sals’ parents have pulled that we have witnessed:
–When Sal worked her butt off to raise funds so that Marcie could have life-changing surgery, Linda took the money away.
–Linda and Charles have consistently treated Sal differently from Walky, including giving her just a gift card, instead of the care package they bought Dorothy when she was dating Walky.
–When the whole gang was kidnapped, Linda wanted to have Amber kicked out of the school. Why? Because it was her father that was responsible for the kidnapping, so obviously his daughter should be punished???
–For the first time, Linda is treating Sal better than Walky in recent events BECAUSE now Walky has a black girlfriend, and Sal has a white boyfriend who fits their cookie cutter definition of “good”.
Ooh would you like more things we’ve seen onscreen?
– the first time she laid eyes on Walky’s girlfriends, Linda was super warm to Dorothy and Joyce, but was icy cold to Lucy, with only their appearances to go on. (We have ample evidence from multiple characters, and also Word of God, that this is definitely part of a pattern in which Linda is literally racist around her two mixed-race kids.)
– Stood by and supported that the boy “from a nice family” shouldn’t be held accountable for grievously injuring Sal’s “illegal” friend — who was basically blamed for existing in the wrong place, instead.
– No matter how hard your kid is, you need to keep making efforts to know them. Rather than ever showing unconditional love to Sal, Linda routinely ignores and low-key rejects her. She only grants her smiles and positive attention to her Golden Child. This began in little subtle ways when they were very young (lil Sal & Walky were both running around, Linda only reprimanded Sal; when forced to pick which kid should get an opportunity to be included onscreen, she picked Walky). It has snowballed over the years to the differences with care packages, only informing Walky that she’s visiting, explicitly not inviting Sal to lunch/dinner, etc.
They are so yikes!!!
Wait until Linda finds out that that boy from a nice family was responsible for getting them kidnapped.
You could try reading this specific strip, which contains all the information you need?
That might be difficult though.
-inhale-
How the fuck are we still getting these comments??????? Does Linda need to slap sal in the face and call her the n word to convince you people?????
God y’know what this is probably just bait to piss everyone off, there’s no way people are still genuinely this blind
It reminds me of Occam’s Big Paisley Tie.
http://www.shakesville.com/2013/08/occams-big-paisley-tie.html?m=1
Oh, you sweet summer child.
Traumatizing your daughter, then saying you did right because she finds a decent person to spend her love and time with?
No. You didn’t do right by her. You didn’t raise her to be like this. She chose how to treat people in spite of you, not because of you. You chose to fail your daughter. You don’t deserve any credit to the person she is now.
Fuck off to both of you.
fuck them but it is realistic, this is abusive parents every time their kids get married
ayup.
hoepfully by that point most ppl would’ve cut their parents off and not invite them to the wedding, let alone see their grand kids
If they don’t cut their parents off before marriage, that’s also very valid and understandable… just as Sal is still making efforts to get scraps of approval from her parents.
Kids really, really want their parents to love them.
No, you get them to pay for the wedding first. Then cut them off.
Disagree, college can in theory lead to a better future but a wedding is a one time party. Elope and invite your friends to Taco Bell afterwards.
Why not get them to pay for both?
The difference is that if you get them to pay for the wedding, you have to put up with them at the wedding and that can screw up the whole day and ruin your memories of, so why bother having the big wedding in the first place.
College otoh they pay for and aren’t part of the vast majority of the time. The value of college isn’t ruined.
Course it depends on how bad it is. Sometimes it’s worth cutting loose even earlier.
Because even odds the fancy wedding is what there parents want and not them.
Even if they do want a fancy wedding it might not be worth keeping their parents in there lives longer than they have to.
Their parents will see paying for the wedding as an invitation to take it over.
Leave it to a bigoted asshole to rewrite history in their favor 😤
Exhibit 15 Million why Sal wishes she could reject their claim over her.
Yeah, remember that flashback strip where Linda and Charles are sitting on the sofa, inspiration strikes, and together they say, “Ah! let’s fail our daughter!” Neither do I. They made awful choices that fail badly, but that one is wildly implausible.
It makes me wonder how they were raised. Most people learn parenting from their parents. (That’s one of the scariest things about parenting. Where I’ve made mistakes, I may have indirectly screwed up lives I will never know.)
As for Sal: she does know how to treat people well, but aside from Marcie and Danny she’s treated most of those around her like cheap furniture, not people. She seems to have learned some bad lessons from her upbringing and they aren’t helpful now. She’s responding recently to a situation in which her normal behavior doesn’t work and so had to think about why.
(I like to think that Danny saw there was more to Sal than her tough-girl veneer and deliberately tripped her up to give that more an opening.)
I wouldn’t say she treated the people around her like ‘cheap furniture’ but she definitely didn’t let people close to her. That didn’t mean she didn’t care – she was definitely concerned for Joyce, Becky, Jennifer, etc. and got along with Carla okay, but she didn’t want to let them in. Marcie being mad at her kinda made her crack that shell open and so did deciding to get (mostly) out of the fighting game (dickhole friends of a rapist and evil dads aside).
No you didn’t… you assholes
I’m… genuinely thrown for a loop by Linda and Charles implying they ever doubted themselves. Didn’t think they had it in them.
Not that they aren’t still utterly horrible people who are taking exactly the wrong lesson from this, but the glimmer of potential is new.
He’s patting her on the back.
She’s patting herself on the back, with both hands.
Correlation does not equal causation, Linda, you bongo.
Or, if that doesn’t work for you, the absence of evidence (that you’re a horrible mother) is not the evidence of absence.
So true queen. All her good traits come from your parenting and her bad traits are a mystery.
No, Linda knows where she thinks sal’s bad traits come from. She just can’t say it out loud, gotta keep up plausible deniability
. . . so bad decisions are on Sal but good decisions are on them.
also how many Christians are taught to think of their relationship with God. Everything good comes from Him, everything bad is sin and your fault.
(if this sounds like abusive parenting, that is also entirely on you)
“you two really need to work on your whispering”
Would Sal dump Danny just because her parents like him?
I can see it as less dumping him and more like pretending they broke up when the parents visit.
Wonder how many visits they’d be able to keep that charade up for.
The answer is none, because Sal dumping Danny would probably make Linda immediately lose all interest in interacting with her for some weird reason, what could it possibly be???
I hope not. She decided to bring him because she knew they’d like him.
She wants to see what them liking her would be like.
I don’t think she’s enjoying it.
When somebody’s joy is tainted, it can be hard to share it with them, even if you really want it.
Doubt. Don’t think she wants to let her shitty parents take away one of the best things she’s got going on
Wanting, feeling, and knowing are three things that don’t always line up.
Kinda skeeving me out that they’re talking about it like these two are well into a long-term commitment when really they’re two 19/20 year olds who have been dating for what like two months at most. It’s not gonna go well that they’re pinning all their hopes for their kid on this random slice of white bread they’ve known for all of four minutes.
They’re dating like one day less than Walky and Lucy.
Maybe one day more.
Either way, it hasn’t been 2 weeks, yet.
Yeah, they’re 18 and have dated a couple weeks.
Just about a week, depending on where you draw the line. The scenes with the bike & the flowers were a Thursday. The bike ride that was basically their first date was that Friday. This is the next Friday.
Thank you, I really didn’t feel like going back to look. xD
well, he could’ve meant ‘settling down’ with a ‘normal’ boyfriend/calming down her ‘rebel’ personality as opposed to like “oh yeah they’re going to get engaged”
That’s what I perceived.
It feels like Danny’s parents with Dorothy. They’re just desperately clinging to this good smart white boy to settle down their uppity rebel daughter. Just his proximity is adding a value she never had before in their eyes
those two parents are terrible
the upcoming restaurant scene will feature the most justified flipping of tables ever
Unless the wait staff deserve the work of cleaning up the flipped tables, it’s not justified.
Flipped BIRDS, on the other hand… or on both hands…
I’m betting that Danny will be the one to flip them. But, like, metaphorically. Because it’s Danny.
Danny will *attempting to flip them but the tables are attached to the floor would be funny
Except the tables aren’t actually bolted, because in the panel after THAT Sal flips them, with one hand. :p
You mean: no longer bolted down.
Now I’m imagining Danny failing to flip the table, a beat panel, then Sal flipping it to reveal Danny underneath it with a wrench.
I’m now upset that we were robbed a double horrible parents dinner scene.
Frantically switching between Joyce/Joe/Carol and Linda/Charles/Lucy/Walky/Sal/Danny.
Saying that within earshot is how you ensure that you get the wrong date for the wedding, and no pictures of the grandkids, Linda. Not even secondhand.
the blood of the covenant may be strong, but stronger still will be the bloodflow when i
Oh I’m 29 now.
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday Yotomoe! I hope it is a great one and I hope you enjoy your weekend.
Congratulations! You know what they say:
“Don’t trust anyone over 30.”
One more year until you join the ranks of the rest of us untrustworthy scoundrels..
…and then the REAL fun begins! 😀
Happy B-day!
🥳 🪅 🎉 🎂 🎈 🎊
Happy birthday to you!
The world is a zoo!
Wish you a great party!
And some sweet presents too!
This would be very funny if it wasn’t your birthday, and you were just making a statement that was true and had also been true for a few months now.
But on the off chance that’s not the case, happy birthday!
Oh daaang, our birthdays are hella close.
Happy birthday Yotomoe !
Happy birthday, Yotomoe!
Yay! May your year be full of art and flirtatious adventures.
happy BIRTH day [HUNH!]
happy BIRTH day [HUNH!]
may the candles on your cake
burn like cities in your way
happy BIRTH day [HUNH!]
happy BIRTH day [HUNH!]
congratulations on making it this far!!! <3
(idk if thats an appropriate birthday thing to say, in my circles of crazy/queer/poor/addict folks this sort of sentiment is meaningful and meant with love <3)
Happy birthday, Yoto!
I hope you have a great day!
Happy birthdfay!
Sure. Sal’s “unacceptable behavior” had nothing to do with your parentin, only Sal’s choices But her “acceptable behavior” has everything to do with you, nothing to do with her. Of course.
… and cue the breakup with Danny.
Look at their faces. If Linda truly believed what she just said, she wouldn’t have to say it.
Sal no you are happy with your egg and your parents liking the egg doesn’t change this
Sal is happy *in spite* of your bad decisions. You get zero credit.
I understand how this cannot feel good, but I also hope she won’t let them ruin this for her. She has something very special with Danny, and throwing it away to spite them would be a mistake.
Might not be spite. Might just be her feeling like the relationship is tainted by her own twisted internalized expectations 🙁
This.
(I hope not, though.)
man, sal really can’t win with her parents. even when she’s playing “the daughter they actually wanted.” i think like one of the things she’s been struggling with this semester is a real crisis of identity and not wanting to prove her parents right.
like, sal’s character has had this undercurrent of struggling with people’s expectations and her own desires since the beginning of the comic, but i feel like this semester it’s been really highlighted. having malaya as a roommate has been excellent for reinforcing this as well i think.
Plays “Garden Party” on a passing ice cream truck’s PA.
It’s not even just the racism.
It’s the fact all Sal had to do to get their approval was get the right (white) man.
Her accomplishments were never as important as property of someone else.
This. This. This.
😤😡😞
The cup of conditional love really do runneth over.
doth run
YUP.
Plus, she’s saying all this stuff at a level that Sal CAN HEAR.
She’s not saying this for her and Charles. She’s saying this as a ‘told you so’ to Sal.
This part’s whispered I think. Smaller font. Shaky tails on the speech bubbles.
Yesterday’s bit about schtupping the TA was apparently out loud though.
Sal’s face makes me think she can hear them.
She may just be picking up on the vibe of the last few pages, rather than hearing this particular (whispered) conversation.
She went into this wanting to see what it would be like to have her parents’ approval (for once). And now she knows. And hey, guess what, it’s not that great.
I want her to be happy bro
Living as AU Sal who did turn out whiter and also never had the guts to stand up to my parents and just did almost everything right except the things they don’t know about. I am so sorry to her for having to live this kind of life for a second. Especially because they don’t seem like they would believe her if she wasn’t attached to a white man right now. I want her to be happy so badly. I came here to have a good time and I just feel like my parent’s bongo rn
Ugh. Of all the possible “other shoe drops” followups to yesterday’s strip…I dunno. This one rings a little too cleanly horrible. I was loving the complications of them being relatable and Linda sharing so many mannerisms with Sal. Hope to see more of that in the rest of this arc.
The more I see of Linda and Charles, the more I understand Walky’s initial complete lack of manners and social graces. Linda and Charles are rude and, frankly, awkward.
That’s actually a very good point.
( I basically didn’t know how to not be rude for a long time and if I ever asked how something was rude people would start screaming at me and judging me and telling me “you know how that’s rude” when I didn’t, it wasn’t conductive to personal growth And I learned how to be polite in spite of the type of person who acts that way and not because of this type of person, I would rather be rude to spite this sort of asshole if I was surrounded by them but thankfully most people aren’t that awful. )
( Like I was generally nice but would occasionally come off as rude unintentionally and people would be downright shocked because rudeness was coming out of my mouth. The assumption was that I had a carefully cultivated “nice” persona, I guess, instead of me just generally being nice by nature)
(moral of the story: give people the benefit of the doubt or you are the asshole actually)
well, fuck.
Also is that…doubt from Charles in the penultimate panel? Or am I just being optimistic
I think it is, but also – he hasn’t moved his hand. So I think this is yet another disagreement he’ll sacrifice on the altar of being Linda’s enabler.
Seed of doubt! Seed of doubt! SEED OF DOUBT!
+1
Hard for me to read it as him breaking from her at all when they both have the same solemn expression
Panel 4: [Everyone disliked that.]
Even Linda
Danny’d this up, Linda. thanks.
Interesting, love that I can’t tell who has more of a look of doubt on their face.
Let’s compare Linda’s prior reaction to Dorothy with Walky, her reaction to Danny now, her initial overly enthusiastic greeting of Joyce as Walky’s presumed love interest…
…With how she treated Lucy like absolute garbage.
Lucy is easily at least as smart and academically driven as Danny, more balanced than Dorothy, more church-committed and community-focused than Joyce is, and genuinely appears to be making Walky happy. If Linda could put down her colorism and racism for a minute, she could see what a catch Lucy is.
Look, that’s all very nice, but Linda just doesn’t like her for some reason she just can’t put her finger on. She doesn’t have to like EVERY girl Walky dates, right?
God she’s awful.
Lucy has an aura of….danger about her. Yes, danger.
just curious, why do you bring up Lucy’s church-going as a positive point towards the Walkterton parents, or in general?
Midwestern parents, American, pretty safe gamble to say “good christian” is a positive trait to them
They also sent Sal to Catholic school hoping she’d find Jesus. Instead she found leather.
Yeah, a good thing to remember with this comic is that it’s set in a highly religious area. Everyone is affected in some way or another by it.
Yes, Zee and BBCC got it right. Thanks!
My take is that they’re Catholic and thus the Browns would hate them and they’d hate the Browns.
There’s been the occasional comment these last few days along the lines of “Maybe Linda isn’t so bad/Maybe Sal just needs to buck up and realize that maybe she treats her parents unfairly” and while people are definitely allowed to share those opinions (and honestly make some decent points about how Charles and Linda’s lack of OBVIOUS (key word) malintent makes them really compelling in comparison to some of the other shitty DOA parents ), IMO in a few weeks when Linda inevitably tries to aggressively shut down Sal’s autonomy as soon as the slightest hint of conflict between the two spark up again I’m just going to be sitting here quietly thinking to myself “lmfao fuckin’ knew you still sucked Linda”.
I don’t care whether or not Linda is awful. I just want her to be awful in a way that’s interesting to read.
Yesterday’s hypocrisy about sleeping with the TA (when we KNOW she would never approve of Sal doing it) was interesting. It complicated her dynamic with Sal just a little bit more. That’s fun to dig into.
Lunging at the only white girl of a group and saying “I bet my son is dating YOUUUUUUUUU” is verging on self-parody and the opposite of interesting. It’s “Daisy can detect Girl Spit on Wally’s shirt” levels of Flanderization. I am hoping for less of that kind of awfulness going forward – not because I secretly hope Linda is a good person, but because I don’t want to read a conflict with a one-joke villain.
I mean fair! Interesting characters + dynamics are always more fun to engage with, and I always appreciated the ways in which Linda’s form of shitty parenting has felt more complicated in comparison to the acts of brute force dysfunction that Blaine/Carol/Ross/etc end up engaging in. It’s a good contrast! You can be a generally nice person and be in a happy marriage and make silly jokes and still intentionally harm your kids in ways that deeply fuck them up. I don’t think anyone ever wants to see a story become a parody of itself, but narratively if Linda end up being more of a driving force for conflict instead of being this constantly evolving complex character, I don’t think that’s a sign of failure on the part of the story.
Linda is not a major character in the overarching plot of DOA, Sal is. Sal and Co* dealing with the fallout of this storyline are essentially what matters in the end, and even if by the end the only thing Sal gets out of this experiment is that her suspicions about how her own mother treats her in relation to whiteness are 100% true, that realization is still important and can still be a source of engaging and dynamic storytelling.
Linda’s never been a one-joke villain, at least not to me. This kind of subtle flavor of unchecked racist microaggression has always been incredibly fucking real, and the emotional fallout of experiencing these kinds of behaviors on a repeated basis does cause immense life-altering harm. Even the more quote “unrealistic/parodist” moments are things that I see happen on a fairly regular basis in what are supposed to be more progressive spaces. The exhaustion of having to interact with people who are supposed to be your allies but are insistent that their proximity to whiteness does not impact the intensity of unconscious anti-black behavior fucking sucks and It’s a serious issue in left-wing communities.
I dunno, I don’t have any beef with you in particular and i would really hate for it to seem like I’m only writing this because, i dunno, i think your opinions are objectively wrong (They’re not! You’re right to say that her little act of hypocrisy in yesterday’s strip is an excellent detail that enriches her character, and you’re right for at least wanting more moments like that.), but what I ultimately wanted to express with my initial comment is that Linda being a plot device to comment on how unconscious racial bias and parenting that emphasizes a lack of autonomy can AND will dissolve a child’s ability to form an positive self-identity and erode trust in others is already engaging enough as is, and while it might make for an interesting thought experiment to think about other avenues that could be taken when it comes to Linda as a solitary character, if that core commentary becomes muddled as a result of it, in the end that’s going to create bad, uninteresting storytelling.
* Walky, Lucy, Danny and potentially Jennifer.
This.
I never doubted Linda was awful. I just can’t imagine Willis setting her up like he has and then allowing her to not be terrible. “Linda Sucks” is probably written at the core of her character. Part of why I find her so tiresome is I’d love to see nuance and maybe see her grow from being terrible but I doubt she will because that’s not exactly the kinda story DOA wants to tell.
Yeah, as the title suggests, it’s a coming of age story where the main characters come face to face with the ugly realities of the world, including the fact that well, bigoted assholes are bigoted assholes and adamant to be that way.
Eh, Sal does treat her parents unfairly. Sal’s parents treat her unfairly. Lather; rinse; repeat. It’s going to continue until someone steps out of the circle. And I’m less interested in who started it than in who stops it.
Where has Sal treated them unfairly?
Literally never. When they’re around, she goes out of her way to try and get on their good side.
Buddy.
Please tell me that you didn’t go “Sal treats her parents unfairly for being racist towards her, their own child”.
I didn’t. You added the last clause.
If Sal treated her parents fairly they wouldn’t be part of her life at all.
There is no Easter Bunny
There is no Tooth Fairy
And there is no we
Man even Charles looks like he doesn’t believe that shit.
I get the itch that the “her” mentioned in the last panel isn’t Sal…
Wait, are you suggesting that Linda might not be the twins’ mother?
Or there was another daughter.
…Would anyone be up for a game?
Sal’s parents appear to think Danny is the ideal partner for Sal to date.
If you could have your PERFECT (no limits, imagination run wild…) date for just ONE afternoon, how would you describe the perfect one to share it with? Doesn’t have to be human. Could be a good book, a brownie, a bowl of sherbert, a favorite domestic animal, a human partner, a non-romantic friend… Just what or who would you like to share a PERFECT afternoon with?
I can go first:
I’d go hang gliding. Just me and the hawks. And maybe a gliding instructor. And no injuries to keep me from trying it. That would be my perfect way to spend an afternoon: on a “date” with the sky.
With Dina, watching The Land Before Time movies. Autistic paradise. 🥰🦖🌈
With chocolate milk, hotdogs, popcorn, cereal, dino pillow tent. Perfect.
Sounds heavenly!
My ideal date would be chilling at the house, playing video games, singing duets to cartoons, cooking together and watching anime. My ideal date is just my ideal friend, but also we can make out and other stuff when we’re done.
That’s the dream, for sure!
Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to add… no limit on the number of whats and/or whoms. A dare with multiple folks and/or others and/or oneself… anything goes 🙂
*date, not dare. (Could be both, I guess…)
ooh i was hiking with my girlfriend yesterday and we were joking that it was pretty convenient to be doing that together, because we both enjoy walking in the mountain and kissing each other, and so we did plenty of both! haha. also skinny dipping in a lake, then letting the sun and breeze dry our skins while sharing a (lukewarm lol) beer =)
that said, i also relate to this cute song by Rose Betts:
“the best part of the date today was driving myself home”
(also, it just so happened my latest funtimes with a loved one was with my lover but i usually go hiking with my best friend, we always have the best time, it’s this special time out of time for the two of us where our conversation rolls around in every direction and we geek out on the plants we find and we also drink beer and go skinny dipping typically =P. i’m not that much of a romantic and most of my “dates” involve either me and a horror film, or friends and good food <3)
Oh, gosh, milu, that sounds AMAZING.
I miss hiking so much. I always dreamed of one day hiking the whole Appalachian Trail.
…someday…
Oh, they’d definitely be a dragon. At good forty, fifty feet long at least, smart as a whip, and vicious as a rabid wolverine. We’d go out for a nice, long flight, and lay waste to at least one city, maybe a town or two, and have a lovely meal among the smoldering ruins.
Terrific! I love it!!!
Someone I want to know better, who wants to know me better, who will and can discuss deeply something that’s serious, not topical, and has a lot of interesting ramifications. And enjoys a good walk, or cycling around aimlessly.
Oh, yeah. Cycling aimlessly while building worlds with words. Bliss!
I don’t want to see Charles get a redemption arc.
Me neither. We’ve already got a dad redemption arc with Hank, who earned it better, so we’re probably in the clear for Charles to enable Linda forever.
I would kinda love a “no one is owed forgiveness” moment with Charles expressing some remorse to sal, probably in a not great way, and just getting the “nah, too little to late. I can never trust you. Get out of my life”
That would be interesting to see one of them (probably Charles lbr) make a positive change but Sal still doesn’t want them in her life.
I could go on and vehemently tear these fictional characters apart, mainly because there are people who act just like them that existed/exists and it frustrates me to no end, but I’d only accomplish frustrating myself even more trying to competently describe my disgust without repeated the same things ad infinitum.
Instead, I will congratulate Sal for finding someone that truly cares about her and Danny for standing by Sal. Let S.S. Dally sail far and true.
This comment is self-care.
“I love her, but, yeah, she’s been pretty rough.” Oof. That hurts.
What’s that quote about everything before the word “but” being bullshit, again?
“Everything before the word ‘but’ is horseshit.” – Ned Stark
It’s so sad.
Having never experienced This particular kind of parental abuse(I only got the classic drunken hijinks and work-related neglect), I did not intuitively understand what the eff was going on in the comment section.
I’m glad I read through it though, wow she’s full of it.
Really, if your kid just survives to become an independently functioning adult, you have done the best job a parent could possibly do. These are not lies.
So Linda, how’s that gifted son of yours doing?
Yeah that’s… very obviously not true at all.
Could we say “best outcome”? Sometimes I do a lousy job and the result is good anyway.
Some parts of this seem contradictory to me and I’m struggling to understand your meaning. If the child becomes a functional adult the parent was more or less successful, that is true. But “best you could possibly do” usually means there was no room for improvement. Parenting is complex and there isn’t a way to get it 100% right in all areas. I would say many people still have unresolved issues from the way they were parented, even if their parents meant well and tried to do a good job.
I was trying to imagine a metric for parental success that would make even Linda go “are you sure there’s not some obvious possibilities you’re overlooking?”
My heart is breaking for Sal. I hope she knows she doesn’t have to make herself miserable to make a point to her parents. Let them tell themselves any old fairy tale they want . . .
There going to twist anything she does to fit their narrative. Might as well make herself happy.
Truth
When the child does something right, it’s because of good parenting.
When the child does something wrong, it’s because the child is flawed.
If I ever worked on something alone, and succeeded, my mother would say, “We did it!”
If we ever worked on something together (even if I did most of the work), and succeeded, my mother would say “I did it!”
If she ever worked on something alone, and failed, my mother would say, “We did it!”
If we ever worked on something together (even if all I did was offer guidance she yelled at me for and then ignored), and failed, my mother would say, “You did it!”
Something something success is privatized losses are socialized
Confirmation bias, eh?
Sal already knows she’s lost no matter what.
I can’t remember, are any of the parents not kind of obvious assholes if not downright villainous? How are Dorothy and Danny’s parents? Really can’t remember. Think Dina’s might have been okay? I get that in university parent drama keeps the wheels of story and character progression greased, it’s just eventually we have to accept where we have to take over our behaviour and commit to being better people and making better adults than our parents.
Dorothy’s parents are nice, Danny’s parents are fine, if not a little condescending to Danny. Dina’s parents are basically just Dina.
Danny’s parents are terrible, as pointed out by Danny a few strips ago.
Danny’s parents are absolutely horrible, what are you on?!
Danny’s parents hammered the idea that he is of little value into his head, they only care when he can attach himself to a good woman who’s going places. Remember how stalkerishly obsessed they were with Dorothy?
It’ll be fun to see what they make of Sal.
Ok I’ll admit. I actually BARELY remembered Danny’s parents.
Which tracks because they are DANNY’S parents.
Dorothy’s, Dina’s, Sierra’s, Hank (Joyce’s dad), Carla’s and Amber’s mom are all decent. Joe’s dad is trying more lately.
I would like to say that I don’t know of Joe’s dad ever behaving badly toward Joe. Relative to some people’s moral structures he’s been an awful partner and could be said to be a poor example for his son. The son feels this way. (So do I.)
Bad partner good parent is a thing that exists. There is something to be said about cheating on the mother of your children, knowing that if (when) it gets out your kids home life is going to explode. Even just the effect of seeing their mother heartbroken. Even if you’re a shitty partner if you can’t control yourself for your kids sake that docks several points off your parent score
I’d say he was more of a bad parent in that he set a terrible example and his actions messed Joe up rather than directly being a dick TO Joe. I do believe he cares about Joe and means well, but him trying to clean up his act is definitely important to fixing his relationship with Joe.
But we haven’t seen any signs of him trying to clean up his act. We’ve seen him helping out Amber and trying to be a good parent, but that was never his problem.
We haven’t seen anything about him cheating on Stacy, but we also haven’t had any comment on it since early on when he basically just told Joe it was fine because she was hot and he didn’t feel like cheating right then. Nothing about him admitting he had a problem and trying to work on it.
This would be an entirely different and equally interesting comic if we actually saw it from the parents perspective. I think it’s a point that we don’t. For many, as they get older their parents become less constant and more fallible. The fact we don’t really know what his dad is doing or if he can stay faithful to Stacy makes us worry the same way Joe does.
He certainly is.
Best-worst way for this to end would be Danny somehow managing to (accidentally, probably) call out Linda’s nonsense.
Worst because of the fallout for Sal and Walky, and because this is really not Danny’s battle to fight.
Best because Linda hearing it from someone as aggressively whitrbread as Danny might actually manage to hurt a little.
Sal hears it but Danny doesn’t hm
That moment when you realize that what you wanted was no good
wait till Linda finds out Danny dated Amber. then learns walky did right after.
….. oh.
I must have missed a strip, but where did we learn that Linda stole from Sal?
This one, it was a while ago.
You may have missed the reference because there was nothing stealthy about it. It was open confiscation. In the case of a parent and a minor child it may be lawful, I wouldn’t know. (Doesn’t mean it was “right,” or decent, or helpful.)
I hope Sal opens up to Danny about her parental trauma. I’m sure he’d back her up if he knew the shit she’s been through.
The need to understand and be understood is one of the reasons we accept an Other as Significant.
All right, Danny. It’s time to use your power of Danning it up for good. We’ve got some people who could really use some harsh truths doled out to them before your brain catches up and realizes what you’re saying. Let them have it.
…No. This is in spite of y’all’s abuse.
Sal turned out fine in spite of her shitty parents, not because of them, and her being fine has nothing to do with Danny being white, he’s just a nice guy. I’m sure her mother would talk differently if Danny were black.
oof poor sal
Indeed. :/ Nonetheless, I hope she can overcome it and appreciate her love with Danny for what it is regardless. A good thing approved of by bad people doesn’t make the good thing bad.
IT’S IN SPITE OF YOU, YOU FUCKS, IN SPITE OF YOU!
😀
“OuR lItTlE gIrL iS gRoWiNg Up AnD sEtTlInG dOwN” shut the fuck up
Like for fuck’s sake, she’s 18/19 years old. What’s this cultural obsession with “settling down” (whatever that means) as soon as physically possible? Pick your partner for life before you’ve even finished college or you’re what, some kind of unruly wildcard? How do people live that way, without dying of exhaustion by age 15? I’m tired just thinking about it.
Seriously… 😩
I was reminded of when Jennifer, Ash, and Raidah were all clucking at each other and at Sal about TEEHEE LOOK AT US WE’RE ALL SETTLING DOWN made me wanna reach into the comic like “bruh you guys haven’t even hit your 20s yet, trust me you still have a long way to go, just enjoy yourselves”
If they’d sucked themselves off any harder, they’d have vanished into thin air with a wet slurp.
“Our little girl is associating with someone we approve of, instead of hanging with crooks and robbing stores like she used to do.”
Nevermind the reasons she might have done those things, as long as she dates a loaf of Bunny Bread at some point.
Right? Talk about counting your chickens before they hatch.
More like counting your chickens before the primordial froth has finished churning.
So uh. You guys think she heard all that?
This is why it’s hard to be happy when you haven’t forgiven the people that hurt you. If you’re happy you worry that they’ll think the did the right thing and use it as justification for all the shitty things they did to you.
Forgiveness would be best but, if that costs too much today, “I no longer care what they think” works too.
Forgiving people only benefits them and makes them feel like whatever you held against them was justified. Throwing them away entirely and washing your hands is the superior option because then you don’t have to think about them at all. They can be a stranger in the crowd, you can move on with your life, and whatever happens to them is no longer your problem.
Vehemently disagree, forgiveness is an insanely overrated concept and it’s disgusting the way it’s hoisted onto victims. It’s hard to be happy when you have shitty people in your life who treat you terrible. Once sal graduates and cuts them off forever she’ll feel a lot better, trust me
Forgiveness as a reflex irrespective of the other’s attitude is not just overrated; it’s wrong. Forgiveness is the reward for repentance. Don’t reinforce bad behavior; do reinforce good behavior.
What’s to forgive? They just said, probably within Sal’s range of hearing, that they think they did nothing wrong. Everything that hurt Sal, and her friends, and her self-esteem for the sake of keeping her away from Mexicans and poor people, teaching her to act more white (telling her her natural hair isn’t good enough), ignoring her in favor of her more charming twin brother? It was he right thing for her, as evidenced by Danny deigning to date her. You can’t forgive people who don’t regret their actions.
Oh, looks like I hit a nerve with this one. Forgiveness should be a personal choice, but that isn’t always respected. It’s very harmful to force forgiveness onto a victim, especially in the name of social convenience. But what if you are the victim? You could cut the abuser out of your life, but the pain and anger are still there. Some people choose forgiveness to deal with those feelings. By letting go of their anger about the past, they may be more prepared to deal with the future. Sal and Amber were able to forgive each other for what happened at the convenience store, and it’s allowed them to become friends and benefit from new experiences with the Roller Derby team. Sal hasn’t forgiven her parents, so it hurts that much more to hear them justify their shitty behavior. It places her in a trap, because any happiness she finds will be tainted by knowing her parents feel this way. If she chooses to pursue forgiveness in the future and let go of the anger, she may not care what they think. The strip reminded me of some things I experienced in my own college years, contrasted with how I feel now that I’ve tried to forgive those involved. To me it’s a subtle example of how forgiveness can actually be beneficial to the victim.
letting go of your anger isn’t the same as forgiving a person
forgiving a person usually means you’re good with them
you can decide not to expend mental energy on someone without being on good terms with them
But you shouldn’t forgive someone while they’re still doing the things they need to be forgiven for and you’re still tied to them. Is it better for her if she forgives then and then hears them justify their shitty behavior?
When she does cut them out of her life, then maybe she’ll be able let go of that anger and that past.
But now you’re saying an abuse victim should forgive ongoing abuse. That’s toxic.
I’m sure a lot of people have had very smart and and heartfelt ways of expressing their sympathy for Sal and distaste for Linda and Charles, but alas, I’m not much for smartness or heart feelings.
Eat Shit Linda, you too Chuck.
At a glance, this looked like “Eat shit Linda, you cuck” and for your own safety you should know I chuckled audibly.
I read “you too, cuck” and thought, yeah probably. Seems the type
I don’t think Linda cheated with Charles, though?
It’s almost fascinating how singularly concerned Linda is with the optics of her parenting
Parents that hit their kids be like
Ohoho, do we wanna open that can of worms again? Cuz if we’re openin’ that can, I’ll set up a campfire and bust out the good dishes.
Tbh we probably don’t wanna crack that one open again, given how divisive that topic has been. Still, I have strong opinions on the matter and couldn’t hit the post button before I thought better.
couldn’t stop myself from hitting the post button*
Like shitty parents can’t help themselves from hitting their kids?
There’s no controversy as such. Some people are just fucking wrong.
Using pain to force compliance from children is always fucked up, and definitely not “caring”.
I think the important distinction here is the difference between seeing your kid about to touch a hot stove and not stopping them so they’ll learn it’s unsafe and to listen when you warn them about things next time, versus deliberately putting their hand on the stove yourself.
You still don’t need to hurt a child to teach that lesson. 🤷♂️
I’m not hurting the kid, the stove is and I’m just not stopping it because the kid refused to believe me. What part of that was ambiguous?
I really hope you’re doing a bit right now, because that is child abuse.
If I tell my kid “Don’t touch that, you’ll get burnt” repeatedly and the kid refuses to listen, it’s not abuse for me to let them experience pain of their own volition. I told them what would happen, they didn’t listen, they experienced a consequence. No abuse in sight. What, am I supposed to be on 24/7 surveillance to make sure my dipshit kid doesn’t figure out “Hot stove = me burn finger”?
Lemme share an actual anecdote, maybe it’ll help me communicate this better.
When I was a wee “lad”, my dad told me if I rode my bike on that new patch of gravel or I’d slip and hurt myself. Guess what I did the exact second he wasn’t looking. Just like he said, I slipped and hurt myself, got a few pebbles embedded in my elbow, and made a hell of a shriek. He comes runnin’ back outside, sees me laying in the loose gravel I was just told not to ride my bike in, with the bike on top of me. Now, I don’t know about the rest of this comments section, but in my house we had a phrase for this sort of self-inflicted mishap. “Stupid hurts, don’t it?” We weren’t calling the person stupid, but the action, and when he asked me the question, all I could say was “Yeah”, and he knew I’d learned my lesson. It didn’t lead to any sort of lecture, we didn’t have some sitcom heart-to-heart bonding moment, there was no yelling or name calling. Just a parent warning about something that would hurt, being told “okay”, and then the kid deliberately doing the thing anyway.
That’s the sort of situation I’m talking about here. Sorry if that didn’t come across, I was trying to be succinct. Now, if you’re gonna call that abusive, I don’t know what to say to that besides “No it’s not”.
To be fair, I called it “divisive” not “controversial”.
Hard agree tho.
Seriously. Thanks for saying this. There’s no way in hell Linda didn’t beat on Sal until sal was strong enough to fight back.
Not to defend a fictional character, but I don’t think we’ve seen any evidence of that. She seems more like the type that deliberately doesn’t hit her kids so she can hold it over their heads.
Yeah, I don’t see her as hitting Sal– in part because I don’t see her as hitting *Walky,* and I can’t imagine it wouldn’t have come up by now if Linda struck her but not him.
Oh shit. Parents not knowing when to shut the fuck up.
It’s interesting what going on here. Sal thinks she hears them telling each other what a good job they’ve done because Sal snagged a wholesome white boyfriend. But they look sad now? Maybe they are reconsidering their conditional approval or maybe they are rethinking their parenting choices? Normal parents (like me) constantly second-guess themselves, thinking back over all the times they could have been less stressed, more fun, or more supportive, maybe these horrible people are human enough for that.
Linda isn’t sad. Sal having a nice (white) boyfriend is the proof Linda needed to affirm her shitting parenting, so now Linda will probably double down on being awful. Her her face is one of renewed determination. Charles has a face of some shock, but mostly sadness, because he realized Linda doesn’t have faith in her daughter. Linda thinks the only reason Sal is doing better is because of her parenting and nothing to do with Sal’s own choices, Charles realizes this, and because Sal over heard them so does she.
I swear if they ruin this for Sal and Danny I’m going to claw my way through all the multiverse realms until I find the one where they exist and clump them both upside the head.
I feel like this is something enough fans would volunteer to do like the scene in Lord of the Rings. “And you’ll have MY ax!”
As a senior citizen I am sometimes reminded how good young persons’ hearing is
I remember in high school some girls explaining that they smoked in order to punish their parents. I didn’t understand then either. But Sal is so realistic.
Much better to be a success and punish them by cutting them out of your life. Even better if it’s not to punish but because you’ve done the cost benefit analysis and even though you pity them you know they’re not healthy to be around.
I don’t know what makes people have those different mindsets, those different reactions to terrible parenting.
It makes sense to do what you’re suggesting if your parents haven’t already fucked you up so badly that it’s not an option anymore.
You can’t really punish them by cutting them out of your life when you’re 13. Or even in high school.
And waiting years for some payoff isn’t really a thing most young kids are good at. So you flail around at rebellion then, even if it hurts you more than it does them.
Holy fuck you can just fucking fuck off linda What the fuck is wrong with you what the fuck????
It’s just straight up emotionally abusive to say that within earshot and since this is a fictional character I don’t have to be polite with how I phrase how I feel about this: fuck you Linda
These two remind me of my ex girlfriends creepy parents. I was the good influence kid growing up which made my social life awful for me
Well way to kill the fucking mood huh?
I hope Charles face in Panel 3 is proof, finally, that he’s not 100% onboard with Linda’s behavior towards their children.
otoh “she’s been really rough”.
I mean, she did try to rob a convenience store
Screw context.
Yup.
Charles and Linda probably don’t even register why she robbed it in the first place. Linda, at the very least, thinks its genetics.
You’re being very generous with that “think” word.
Yeah, bet that bongo mutters the N-word in her sleep! 😤
Even without the bias of liking Sal, as an outsider I’d have to ask… why was Sal ever in a position where she had become friends with the likes of Asher and his gang, who literally have ties to the mob? We see Linda speak up about Sal’s choice in friends… once.
And that was Marcy, who Linda called a “hooligan” despite the fact that between the two, Sal’s the one with a record while we have never seen Marcy break any laws and only ever hold down proper (if unfortunately likely minimum wage) jobs. Marcy’s only crime was being latina.
Also people have pointed out Linda stealing that money Sal was raising. In response to that breaking of trust and the desire to raise money for her friend, Sal tried to rob a convenience store. It’s a pretty easy ’cause and effect’ to follow, frankly.
Charles can be upset about Sal’s behavior and at the same time find objection with Linda’s actions. Both things are not incompatible.
Her behavior of directly responding to both parents’ blatantly unfair treatment? No, he actually can’t be upset about that.
I didn’t notice his face and the nuance behind it in panels three and four until you pointed it out. Thank you.
Leslie continues to be the only good parent in Dumbing of Age.
yeeup (also totally unrelated but i just wanted to say that yellow brick ramble is absolutely delightful :)) )
What did Dina’s parents do?
Counterargument: Dina’s parents.
Also Dorothy’s parents… i think. I think the worse thing they’ve done is not fully realise that their daughter is pressuring herself way too hard.
Oh, and Mike’s parents seem to be good as well. At least well meaning.
Unless i’ve forgotten something.
fall in a hole linda
Reminds me of this from Horizon: Zero Dawn
“Everyone calls me ‘Aloy of the Nora’. It should be ‘Aloy despite the Nora’.”
I am starting to think that when people ask for Linda to be more “nuanced,” they mean they want her racism to be easier to ignore. like, no one is asking for Charles, specifically, to be a more nuanced and interesting character – just Linda.
I have to admit I’ve noticed that the Walkertons are always the bad parents people in the comments want to see get better. Ethan’s horrible homophobic parents or Danny’s parents don’t tend to get the same reactions (and Ethan’s parents actually DID get over their homophobia in the Walkyverse so I’d say there’s more hope there).
Yup.
i mean that’s the goal of racists, to oppress people of color in such a way that the rest of the white establishment lets them get away with it
I still don’t get how Linda can be this….dense? Racist? Whatever she is, considering who she herself is with. Hopefully this set of parent/kid issues get a happier ending than our last few…
Ego can be a HELL of a drug. And unfortunately, parents love to view themselves as the high authority over their kids, therefore any decision they make (both good or bad) is always the right one because nobody else has the ‘right’ to refute them.
Wait.
THAT’S why she acts so cold to Sal? Because she’s projecting onto her because deep down she knows she failed her as a parent????
I can’t decide if I’m less or more pissed off now. On the one hand this is the closest thing to a sympathetic reason we’ve seen from Linda so far. On the other hand, *suck it up and be a parent to your kid you dumb bongo.*
Oh, and just to make it clear, I don’t feel any sympathy for Linda. Deal with your bullshit and be a parent instead of projecting.
Oh fuk off you two. Anything Sal does awesomely at is thanks to Sal, her own self. All you guys did was gave her insecurities and a shitty childhood.
oh no
Carol and the Walkertons need to be locked in a room together with no food or water.
OOOOOFFF. that sucks
I can never see any actual color difference when I check his work with Sal versus Walky.