Or…he’s able to convince child services it’s not that big of a deal and proceeds to make life worse for Howard. Or child services does intervene and sends him…where? That seems like something could be a legitimate and prohibitive fear for Ruth.
Child Services unfortunately do not have the resources or manpower or social support to do anything but intervene in the most extreme horrifying of cases. And those cases do desperately need their attention, because holy fuck.
But it means a high school kid with facial bruising from their parent isn’t even likely to get a real investigation outside a casual look-in that’ll trigger an even worse punishment when CPS moves on. Something like this where “sir” knows to only hurt them where it doesn’t show? Much harder to get the forces of good to take seriously.
And “sir” knows this. And is exploiting this. Because like a lot of abusers, he enjoys dancing on the line of just enough to get away with it and then pushing on that line anyways just for fun.
Exactly. He is not acting with any intention at all to be caught or even to face consequences and has a laundry list of protections ready before anyone can even articulate the weird vibe they get if they have time from his granddaughter with the slack blank face.
Which is what makes Sir, funnily enough, vulnerable pretty much exclusively to the loose and craaazy cannons with nothing lose that Billie was half-joking to be. I think Billie is not aware of how little that was joking and that is a damn shame in some ways though very good for her and for Ruth and Howard in others. Because people like Sir even from Ruth’s mouth to our eyes have the power or the influence or SOMETHING that gets the Chloes downstairs to listen, and understand wrongly and move on. I think Sir was as near as one misplaced hand away from Billie actually going off on him, and considering she is powerful and presumably enraged? And, unlike nearly every other physically combative person in this strip, has a history like of demonstrated, aggressive bullying of ‘weaker’ people with the muscle memory to step backward, shut her brain off at a moment’s notice to the suffering of others, and fucking do horrible things to them and fucking laugh at them if she feels like doing it?
I don’t want Billie to punch Sir in the face or have him in a position of finally being threatened down the way he threatened Ruth, just as Robin has finally been thrown out to the wolves of the media in full consequence of every shitty thing she did and pretended not to know. Nossir, no Sir, not me.
Ruth’s over 18, so unless things are very different in Indiana than in the state where I went to college in the early 2010s, child services can’t do anything. I worked in student affairs part-time and came into contact with a student suffering from severe depression related to abuse at the hands of their parents. The student wanted to withdraw from the school to get psychiatric treatment, and the school facilitated their return home to their abusive parents. A video of Sir abusing Howard miiiight potentially do something, although as others have said, it’s unlikely that meaningful action would result – and Ruth isn’t gonna provoke her grandfather to abuse her brother just for a slight chance that it might potentially help, but would more likely lead to more abuse.
But seriously. I’m hoping this means deescalation, and Clint leaving means Ruth and Billie will at least get a temporary reprieve, but I’m sensing another shoe high, high in the air, ready to drop and loud and hard…
And pain is always something of high stakes; those who say otherwise have never lost. Even if Sir is being a crap, Ruth is keeping her younger brother safe, and that endears me more to her. May Howard eventually escape Cliff’s clutches and leave the old man harmless. ‹3
Also, I’m 100% curious to know what’s on the plaque under what I think are Walky’s shoes (yes, I can’t read alt-text at the moment) on the wall. Maybe something like, beyond the femur, her second-greatest prize, worthy of being mounted on the wall of the murder cave(tm)?
Actually if I had to guess it seems like she’s lost weight, because that’s typically a reason that boobs seem large or small in comparison because in reality the ratio of the waist that they’re attached to is what actually matters.
And I don’t think her losing weight would be unintentional or a bad thing, either, because it’s a symptom of the kind of depression she’s going through and why Ruth was so far under by a few weeks in that a couple of beers would make her tipsy enough to talk nonsense after skipping meals.
I wasn’t particularly fond of of Ruthless at first but the more we learn of her the more relatable, and despite her issues likeable she get. The fact she actually seems to have some real integrity under the surface makes me like and feel for her all the more.
If you use two or more links in a comment, it goes into auto-moderation to prevent spam attacks and link barrages.
Willis usually approves them in the morning though. And one link comments go through automatically which is why I only try to have one link unless I’m doing a comprehensive rundown of a character.
Final panel reaction: Aaaawwww. That’s…that’s sweet. Ruth’s trying her best to be a good sister and…yeah I’m on the verge of tears because my heart feels very warm from this right now. And for all her flaws, Ruth has always tried to be a good big sister.
Second panel reaction: Ooowww. As much as Howard can be silly/naive/dumb sometimes, I still like the little guy. And…well ooff but I’d be lying if I said this panel didn’t hit me hard in the feels.
Final thoughts: I want to reach in and hug both of these two.
Ah, spite. A good and remarkably cherished friend of mine for all its nasty little reputation, and one friend that’s held my hand through some shitty times this year and been my saving grace when I was at least smart enough not to put myself intentionally in a place where I was anyone’s consequential determiner. Besides myself and the actual people deciding directly above me, of course. Spite let me be finally mean and being mean was the first step to acknowledging I was suffering so much for so little that I realized it wasn’t just depression caused by life and hell but overexplosion of that from non-presenting autism that never got detected.
It goddamn sucks when you are stuck not even being able to cling to spite out of fear, though, and especially more so when you’re at the awful point where that fear has no longer been applied to your own self.
I don’t like to think I’m poisoned for being spiteful. Petty, sometimes, mean or rude or acting in ways that aren’t good for my own health which is when a coping mechanism becomes such a danger. But I don’t think being spiteful is somehow making me worse a person except when it’s in detriment to my own health or I’m so unaware of it (and I have been before) that I don’t stop and consider carefully enough before I pick my targets.
I mean, being vindictive and blunt and uncaring at times works quite a lot better sometimes on people who are actually going to pause for that moment of self-doubt (like I do) when someone makes an attack. I know it works because sometimes used in the right way, picking your targets, spite can be as much of a statement and a last impression as a defense. If I was more aggressive and vindictive in real life as I was in forums where I’m able to carefully pick and barb my arguments, I would not be at the point where I allow other people’s comfort to fucking kill me and keep killing me to the point it became a disability. Spite is doing more good now than when I was young when it was the only coping mechanism I had instead of a coping mechanism I learned to use as a defense strategically because I’m more likely to be compassionate to even myself if I can blame a target like outside forces or “my brain” for all my misery.
Idk if I can accept yet that spite is comparable to poison, except in the most obvious sense that in the sense there’s still technically benzene in our drinking water. Where my ASD might have been ‘high-functioning’ it’s now a disability because I was too afraid of being directly angry and even now I can’t express direct anger unless there’s some part of it that’s driven, by necessity, that I get satisfaction from winning and all arguments I make are ones I’m goaded into partially by my old friend spite.
while spite gives you the strength to keep going, it also keeps you bitter. it’s a preservative, but one with a limited use. i mean, it essentially is the refusal to stop being angry, which is powerful and important!! there are things that deserve to never be forgotten, to always be angry at. there is a level of which spite allows you to stand up for yourself.
but it’s also not something you can build a positive on, i think. like if you spend your life on the things that you hate you don’t get to spend it as much on the things that you love, which are fundamentally more important and valuable. and while it helps you preserve what you love, it’s useful; when it starts taking away from what you love, it’s not.
but also like i’m kind of thinking socially/professionally here about how, like, not focusing on the positives can wreck yr ability to connect with people and present as someone who’s made the best of their life
People telling me to focus on the positives, in a situation I was perceiving a hundred times more traumatically than they thought I had a right to be, got me so sick I yanked out half the hair on my head and stayed locked in my room for two years to get some peace and quiet.
Positive meant deluding myself into thinking I was and had to be capable of the same things as everyone else. Fighting back was only a first step in realizing, yes, my pain is real, and I do in fact deserve fucking accommodations to survive professionally and live independently if I am in fact able to do that at all and I hope that I can. And that is not a battle that ends unfortunately with the all-consuming relief of something, anything that would serve as a diagnosis. Until the world is perfect I don’t think it’s ever not going to be a reality that I can let go of spite or not keep it close by as a good reminder, because falling into older habits is easier when they’re self-destructive but what is actually killing me is outside stimuli and not anything I did first.
Spite may be necessary for those infractions on my sanity that aren’t insidious enough or are imposed manipulatively enough that think I have no reason to fight what’s happening and have the moral high ground. A lot of the time I fight based on what’s vindictive and feel bad after word except that it turns out again and again that my first and spiteful assumption was RIGHT. I am not sure any of my focused interests are applicable to careers, and if they were, then my relationship with spite in fueling them might be different. But it’s a shitty world and spite’s better than outright malevolence because even good humans need an outlet for anger because staying positive is very, very good in my experience in preserving yourself at the expense of other people who desperately need or needed someone that’d get angry with them or at least hear “yeah, that’s fucked up” instead of saying that anger and grudges themselves were unhealthy.
I mean, I get it. I get why people think people fueled purely by spite might be more liable to harm than to do good. I get why people think Mike is a toxic and horrible person and interpret what I see as lashing out as getting joy from a power he’s taking away, or that I might one day be led to do the same.
But…we’re both reading this comic. This comic would not exist and certainly not be as prolific and well-researched and extensively openminded without a fucking heavy dose of authorial spite. Whether or not I ever benefit by using my seething rage as a tool in a profession that puts food on the table, I think it’s far far better that this comic exists sharing and taking full joy in the detractors it breeds in the act of giving a home to an audience that rarely gets that kind of vindication.
…i would never want to take away your rage, or your spite, or your need for either, or your drive for survival. i don’t…intend to pass judgment on any of those things here
i just honestly don’t know how to reconcile these two things: the need to acknowledge that bad things happen, and the need to make the best out of your situation. and maybe that’s something that can’t be reconciled but it feels like something that ought to add up and i can’t quite figure out why it doesn’t
all i know is that while getting angry empowers me, it also makes me miserable and exhausts me; but being positive doesn’t always satisfy, because it doesn’t let me feel my pain. and being positive doesn’t have to mean lying about your situation; sometimes it’s just accepting it for what it is and moving on however you can. but. i don’t know.
i mean there are plenty of things i hold on to anger about; i just also know my anger can be as likely to hurt as to heal, and i have to be careful with it
i just also know that being angry or upset or not one hundred percent happy about stuff seems to drive people away, and i guess especially people who want to live in a happy space. which is not exactly a bad goal, i guess, because it’s not like you can expect everyone to be your venting space
I know that anger can hurt and I’m not trying to de-legitimize your experiences either. For some people, in fact many people, rage is NOT healthy and even for someone like me that it’s incredibly useful for I still end up feeling that moment of self-doubt when the old fear kicks in and I get terrified I’ve hurt someone innocent (I have) or I’ve really and truly gone too far or my anger was wrong or not fueled at least under the right assumptions–and sometimes, I think being positive just means taking positive where you can.
Sometimes it’s winning internet points over saying you knew [x] fictional character would act [x] way or that someone’s argument about their behavior was wrong for 3000 word’s worth of reasons. It’s not exactly ideal, but it does drive people away, and for many that could and would be a bad thing and a negative direction of outcome for their life. But I’m someone that actually would benefit and gets something healthy by knowing how and what to do to drive people away that will let me still be happy I was right to make it a combative issue instead of accommodating them like I did irl until my emotions fried. And spite fuels internet arguments like this that make me very very very mindful of what I write because it has to be PERFECT because well-constructed arguments change minds, and that takes actual spite to fuel the effort of making an argument I will win or that will make someone reconsider their arguments. Or give me the exact thing I was missing I needed to turn around and research instead. Anger is…not easy, but it feels different depending on the context when it’s used. Spite is an anger that I rarely needing or having reason to be employed legitimately by the people who have resources to act for reasons far more directly selfish and self-serving. Trolling isn’t quite spite, momentary aggression is not quite spite, but it’s every bit a sharp little animal as you’ve described.
It’s not a friend I’d keep around without being very mindful of, and still not caring about, the fact that it’s as liable to bite me as anyone else. I know that. It’s in the calculus. I’d still rather get bitten on my own terms and decide how much of it I can take than let other people have the benefit of the doubt and abuse it because I got so good at letting them. I’m misanthropic. I try to be good. Spite is pretty nice.
And with all that said, as bad as I am at empathy I do sympathize with your position as well and I understand completely the fear or rather nihilistic catch-22 that anger itself cannot be a thing that fosters happiness or relationships that are positive except mainly through validation and solidarity–and yet embracing or being open to happiness can have results that are as bad or worse and we can’t have the comfort of removing the equation from the context of how different all this is for everyone that is capable of experiencing a full range of emotions and thought at all.
Hey Minder and zoelogical, I just read that thread and I wanted to tell you something you already know : it’s okay to feel “bad” emotions that keep you alive. I know it sucks, I know the stigmata. I’ve been complimented for not being bitter despite my life, like having a defense mechanism is something rude to have. I wish you to get in a place you can feel safe enough to lower your defenses, even if it doesn’t feel good right now.
I MEAN LIKE sometimes when you’re angry you’re miserable because the situation is miserable and you just. you know. caught on!!! in which case being aware of the misery is better than not being miserable, because it’s genuine to your situation and you can take active steps to decrease your misery.
and sometimes that means being angry!! sometimes that means blowing up. but like holding on to your anger post blowing up is definitely something that can be poisonous – but, i mean, it’s not like it’s easy to integrate something that painful into your experience. and sometimes going over and over something is what you need in order to process it, but i mean: processing it should be the end result. unless not ever having processed it is what you need in which case i don’t get to judge lmao
like: i am familiar and comfortable with certain levels of anger that you hold to survive, that you hold to remind yourself that this was not okay. i just can’t live there. like: i have ADHD! i am pissed as hell that this was a thing all my life and nobody realized it!! and this was a thing because studies on girls with ADHD are a lot more limited than studies on boys, and also my parents don’t entirely believe that mental issues are real issues that need assistance, and because i was usually able to perform well enough that it didn’t look like i had ADHD. and i didn’t even realize it until college, so, i guess there we go
but the work of living with ADHD is not accomplished by being angry at all the reasons why it’s so difficult to live with ADHD. because, i mean, at a point, those are just things that exist. and constantly getting angry at them is exhausting and also…counterproductive. one of the things that i really needed to realize in order to live with this successfully is that no one has their shit together, and that realization is kind of a work in progress!! you go from “no one has their shit together” in the sense that, ok, it’s okay when people screw up; to “no one has their shit together” in the sense that since nobody has their shit together, you don’t have to have your shit together one hundred percent of the time as long as you get your shit together when it counts. mostly.
…i mean like, also, i have a Stephanie Brown avatar in the year of our lord 2017. i know so much about holding grudges and maintaining anger. my feminist rage at what was done to her will probably never be quieted and it shouldn’t be because it should never have happened in the first place. but like the work of loving Stephanie Brown isn’t entirely based in her trauma. a good part of it is in her trauma and being angry about it and never forgetting it, but that’s not all about it. i don’t love her for what happened to her, i love her for who she is and who she can be. and that love is the more critical work, i think, because it seeds potential and growth. which are things any character needs in order to exist
i guess where i’m coming from is you can’t create from a position of anger, you can pretty much just destroy; and while destruction can be the impetus for creation (and is valuable and important!!) they can’t exist at the same time. dumbing of age doesn’t exist because it hates bad stuff; it exists because there’s a real and genuine love for these characters out there, and the desire to see what happens to them.
ergh i feel like i should apologize for overgeneralizing and being trite in the beginning of this, haha; we’ve talked enough that You Deserve More Work From Me i feel like. but i do super appreciate your questioning what i say and coming out with arguments and like. all that work you put into these posts!!
What Anowan said, and also, I feel like there are important puzzle pieces here that fit together if I can just remember a few pieces I’ve got … I need a real keyboard for this. And paper. BBS
zoe: I might have found what’s not adding up. destruction and creation at the same time? … spoilers, steven universe season 2: Tnearg, orvat ehol naq fnccuver gbtrgure. that’s how you reconcile acknowledging the bad things while making the best of it. I think the end of the Mistborn trilogy might be a good metaphor too.
Maybe I need to give more context, so… Story time!
I usually think of my anger as a shield of thorns. It hurts me and it protects me, which sucks but is better than being defenseless. Several years ago, before I understood this, I joined a meditation group. The first part of it was tolerable, but they’d end with a passage from some meditation book, and I found these passages deeply uncomfortable, like, I-want-to-tear-my-skin-off levels of discomfort (I feel like I’m missing a word here). But they were about love and gratitude and compassion, and those are good things, right? So I spent quite a while wondering what the hell was wrong with me that they felt so wrong and horrible and unsafe and twisted.
Eventually, I… well, I still wasn’t able to approach it with words back then, but I poked at the feelings, trying to feel what was so scary about it, and one of the images that came up a lot was Darth Ex. I was angry at him, not for what he did, but because I knew that without the anger I couldn’t keep myself safe from him. I wanted so much for him to be a safe person and he wasn’t and anger was the only thing keeping me from reaching out and getting hurt again. I couldn’t afford to feel compassion in his direction. When I realised that, I felt a lot less bad about my weird reactions. I held onto my shield.
Around the same time, I was starting to learn about boundaries. Learning that took time, and starting to build my own boundaries took a lot more time, but once I had a few boundaries, I discovered I didn’t need anger as much. I could put down the shield of thorns sometimes, because I’d built better defences, and the more boundaries I built the better it got. 🙂
That wasn’t the end of it, though. I forget how it started, but at some point anger was back and stirring up trouble. I didn’t want to be angry, didn’t see the point, but eventually I sat down and listened to it. By this point, it could actually use words a little, which makes things a lot easier. 🙂 So we talked, and talked some more, and I practised listening instead of suppressing it, and one day I grokked my anger, and something completely fucking unexpected happened. It transformed. It went from a shield of thorns, protective but destructive and dumb as rocksrubies, to something constructive and empowering, something that spotted problems and then lent its power to an aspect better suited to finding solutions. 🙂 I’d read about this kind of anger, but didn’t think it existed in me, or ever would. 🙂
The first time it happened, iirc, I got up and did some of my old martial arts forms, because what the anger needed was big, wide movements, it needed me to take up space and move and it felt really good to have that outlet that let me feel my feelings without the risk of hurting anything. (other people’s suggested outlets had been useless or worse. hitting pillows actually makes me *more* angry and frustrated and bitter.)
It’s not a stable transformation yet, but knowing from experience that it’s possible is, like, a lot more than half the battle. 🙂
So… I suspect/hope that this is related to other people’s bad meditation experience. maybe they’ve been pressured into the overly-positive BS when what they need is more like “it’s ok that it’s not ok”; when they need to feel and process those inconvenient emotions and not suppress or dismiss them; when they need to be able to defend themselves first, and only move on to compassion when it’s safe to do so.
Compassion is important. Boundaries are important. You need *both* to find balance, and you need the other defense mechanisms to survive long enough to get there. (and not having gotten there yet is not some horrible flaw. it’s normal. you’re allowed to enjoy your imperfect life and not spend every waking moment on self-improvement. 😉
* not sure if adhd or osdd-ish, but, I find it exhausting/impossible to hang onto an emotion. I’ll quite easily forget to be angry unless it’s so big it’s completely running my brain – and even then it can’t last once it’s burned all my spoons. I have the same problem with boundaries, but smaller. habits help.
* anger and such can push people away. so can excessive calm. it’s hard to know when you need to rein it in, and when you need to find someone more resilient to talk to. I suppose it can be both, too. partly knowing your audience and partly moderation. there’s a lot of grey in there that I’m still exploring – like, when I’m irrationally angry at something because it triggered a bunch of anxiety, is it reasonable for someone close to me to argue with my feelings? I know it’s not the fault of the trigger, but my feelings are still real, and it hurts to be told I should just not have those feelings. Is there a better way to express myself to get the support and comfort I want? Should I expect more effort from the other person to see my perspective, or should I just expect coldness or obligation-based gestures of comfort when I let the illogical emotional mess show? …huh, that got offtopic. I guess I don’t want to say that I’m being irrational when I’m being irrational, it feels like… like when Smoky Quartz wanted to show off the yo-yo. we’ve both got a bit of Sardonyx in us, maybe. and a bit much attachment to Truth for Truth’s sake at the expense of feelings. (no this isn’t meant to make sense to anyone but me at this point, I’m talking to myself….)
@zoelogical I’m…actually happiest when I’m angry now, if that makes sense? Because the freedom to feel what I’m feeling and having a reason is all I wanted for so long without even knowing that repressing that was making me so dead and tired. But I understand it obviously will not be that way for everyone, shouldn’t be that way, and for people in a better place or with differently working minds (even I had rage that hurt me in the past when again, I had to bite it down and was helpless to say anything or feel like I earned it) be only painful. I feel you on the anger at misdiagnosis because I did ‘have’ ADD until I found out the real reason I’ve been not paying attention to anything but the stuff I obsess over is, well, actually being low enough on the autism spectrum to pass for neurotypical time and again despite all the red flags now that people are finally sharing they had seen. And I do believe anger can create because anger is another type of energy and if you can combine it with love and good intentions then I think it can be used to do more than destroy even if destruction and dismantling and analyzing is my point of strength.
And I appreciate your POV and you taking the time to argue your points as well, even though I will hold onto my spite for now, and hope that one day I can start to broaden my motivations beyond it though I doubt it ever truly goes away and I may be not the same anymore without it for ultimately better or worse.
@Anowan TAKES ALL THE HEARTS, DISTRIBUTES, you are sweetheart
@Halpful I love the way you describe anger and how it’s gone for you from something that dug in and hurt so much because it was all you could really do to hold on, to get a handle and use it and feel control and empowerment in it. I don’t mean to imply with all this that I live my life in anger, that I’m upset every second of every day, but I have a chip on my shoulder and it’s ready in the better times to block me whenever something comes up that I otherwise would suffer through needlessly to protect someone that never would realize otherwise I could not sit there and take it. I like anger, but spite is the friend and the dangerous kind, and I keep them closer now than I did when they were my entire reason to live. They protected me and I protect my right to have them, because the people who want you not to be angry are not always doing so with bad intentions but most also are not always aware of specific things I can or can’t see in life and people because of how my mind works. And I think part of me must have been aware of that before I ever had the reason or a way to put it into words.
@halpful: UNFORTUNATELY im not caught up with steven universe and i’ve never played Mistborn, rip. i can work with anger as a protective thing, though!! i mean like i can even say that i’ve experienced that, i guess. i feel like that’s different from spite, though? like spite can be very much about pettily cruel actions taken over a long period of time, and that’s damaging. it’s when you hold on to anger past any possible use or purpose, i think? or at least that’s the image i’ve gotten of it.
i mean like: there’s anger and spite for self defense, and then there’s anger and spite for anger and spite’s sake. because outrage addiction is, unfortunately, a very real thing, and that’s…a pretty harmful thing.
…so much of this is very gray territory and changes from place to place and person to person
@Minder: i can see how getting angry could be a happy and even meditative thing! like there is a certain kind of joy in methodically crushing something. there is a freeing quality in being able to be angry. and i mean like…ugh i’ve been too…excluding in all this? like. there are plenty of people who make things with anger, but i dont think that anger is the foundation. ergh. i’ve said this.
but like: analysis is its own kind of creation, in that you take what has been presented and create a reading, an interpretation, a combination between the original text and your own perspective. and it is important and valuable!
There’s a game? i was referring to the books by Brandon Sanderson. I disagree with some of the things in later books but he’s very good at writing non-NT characters. Although it was Preservation and Ruin I was thinking of as parallels to Sapphire and Ruby here. (omg do get caught up on steven universe, it is so so good and so many important concepts are in there. including a hint of what constructive anger looks like)
Anyways… I think we should trust Minder’s judgement on whether they still need anger/spite in their situation. I mean, a part of me is also going “but what if we’re wroooong?!?” but I’m starting to see that sometimes that voice gets counterproductive. You can’t force someone to see your perspective, you can only explain it and hope, and I think you’ve explained well enough. 🙂
…I’m not getting the analysis comment, but I think that’s because the cider just hit me. (yes, just cider, low alcohol tolerance.) my brain’s off duty for a couple of hours now 🙂
wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee love that experience when you put up with things you should never put up with so that other people won’t get hurt
and you start to get to the place of feeling like you deserve it because you are putting up with it because you’ve never really had an end goal and the now is eternity
and having Billie in this is…different because it is a completely different person who can see how Messed Up everything is and validate that while also shaking literally everything to the ground. all the preconceptions, missed values
Yup. That’s the exact hole my uncle got me into. Trying to protect my ex so going in to see him with no support or aftercare. And becoming more and more convinced I deserved the dehumanization and having to beg for my humanity to even be seen much less respected.
It’s a nasty spiral to get sucked into. And I feel so bad for Ruth who is in the midst of it, has internalized that self-hatred, and doesn’t see her way out yet.
haaa…I just, like, put up with so much shit because I needed a place to live and my younger siblings needed someone who could be emotionally stable around…and I don’t really regret the latter, exactly, but I feel kind of sick when I think about how much unnecessary fear I had to live in because my parents wanted to control us. because apparently parenting is all about controlling your children, or something.
and like i guess right now it’s more just like…this vicious tangle of people who are messes, and the actions that come out of their messes, and the behavior they expect to see. and like i can be as empathetic as i want but i’m still going to come out of interactions with them feeling like i’m crazy, and having to deny my own emotions, and being pressured to perform certain roles because they love me or whatever, and their love for me is always going to be more important than anything i might actually need or want. because the things i need and want are inconvenient.
idk i never felt like i was explicitly dehumanized more just like i didn’t exist, which is its own thing
but like the only thing that gets you out is therapy and leaving
Panel 1: Pin-prick eyes, short answer, “sir”. I’ve seen that face on loved ones interacting with parents on the phone before. I’ve been that face. It’s soul-crushing to live it, it’s heart-breaking to see it, because it’s a complete loss of fight to an abuser who already knows they’ve won and has the power they have. And they are so very good at taking away options or make it feel like the greatest mistake/cruelty to make a clean break. This hits especially hard because my gf recently had to let her dad back into her life for financial help to retain the place she’s using to hold firm against her mom. And he is very “sir”-like.
Panel 2: Ugh, “sir” is such a creepy power-tripping fuck. Like, everything needs to run perfectly on his time and when he’s completed his duties rearranging the pieces he considers Howie and Ruth to be, he immediately expects them to jump, no questions asked, both understanding the price for any lateness.
And it creates a situation like this, where Ruth is having to deputize “sir’s” bullshit just to try and protect Howard to the level she can and where “sir” can at any point decide that they “took too long” to justify another round of violent hateful abuse.
It’s a no-win situation.
Panel 3: There are options for Ruth, but well, when you’re just trying to survive abuse, sometimes those aren’t worth the risks until you can get all your affairs in order. And sometimes the only thing you can do for a time is ride out the abuse knowing it is breaking you apart and fucking up your mental health. And it can be hard to even see them. This is how she’s been able to survive and protect Howard, so there’s going to need to be a lot to try and deviate from that moderately successful path (ignore the complete mental breakdown and massive suicidal ideation and PTSD).
And I can’t help but read Ruth’s response here in two ways. Both the defensiveness of “this is the only option I can see to protect both of us and this is how we’ve survived and you’re not actually having to live it” which is very true. Only the person being abused knows best the mental calculus at play and what are the options they have the spoons to work with. But also, a genuine question. She would love to know a magical solution if one exists, if Billie is seeing a way out that she hasn’t already worked with. Because she is desperate to escape.
But sadly Billie has the learned survival skills for neglect, an entirely different animal of abuse altogether.
Panel 4: This is a better piece of advice than Billie or Ruth fully know. Spite is powerful, especially for breaking away from an abuser and being willing to take the big risks to do so. I know to escape my uncle and dad, I needed spite and just a sense of being done losing things because of them in order to take the risk of homelessness that very nearly happened. And that was how my ex escaped her mom, finally getting to a point of spite and rock-bottom where she was tired of how that abuse was destroying everything she loved.
Spite can cut through that rational part of your brain that says “keep your head down, do what you need to get by, survive” and take possibly fool-hardy risks. And it can cut through the gaslighting of an abuser and how much they try and convince you that your recognition of things as abuse is the real crime at play. Spite is what eventually is going to help Ruth rescue her brother once and for all someday and cut her grandpa fully out of her life.
She just needs to survive to a point where she can use it.
so when pandora opened her box of horrors the almost-last thing was hope. the absolute-last thing was spite, and she took it and kept it as a pet for ages and it’s why she never got kicked out of her own home
I mean, joking but not joking a bit, but hope being last in the box is kind of an underhanded joke in that hope would indeed thin to be unthinkingly nice and step back to let everyone else out first.
And to top it off, all this controlling and more-or-less-subtle threat bullshit “Sir” is doing is with Ruth fresh out from the suicide ward. She is extremely vulnerable, and all he can see is an opportunity to squeeze harder.
And god do I feel you on spite. I never realized what goddamn reason I had to be so upset at the world to get so horribly sick and depressed when everyone else, even my therapist, was not only surviving but telling me I had to change my entire worldview to think positive so I could do the same. Then I tried to change my worldview. And in a fit of petty rage at how stupid the advice in the positivist book was telling me to find opportunity in pain, I finally threw that mindset away and admitted ‘defeat’ welcomed back the spite with open arms and knew I had to do something else even if it meant just dying because this wasn’t working. And if not for that I don’t know if I’d have been ready when the signal came on Tuesday morning that finally told me to remember and think hard and go look and be my own advocate because if the spite was still there then I still had a reason.
Panel 5: But this is also true from Ruth. Spite is a gamble. And there are a lot of times when that gamble doesn’t pay off. Have a job offer fall through and that attempt at spite and having a spine may have just been the birth of me just being yet another homeless trans person trying to get by.
It’s a risk and that means you can lose and the pain that comes with that can sometimes be fatal. Hence why spite is so powerful, because it can get you to the point of “fuck it” you need to take big risks like that.
Panel 6: And this right here is why “sir” is so prominently using Howard here during this trip. Because for most of us, we are empathetic and for a lot of folks it’s much easier to accept personal pain or ruin than to accept the pain and ruin of someone you love. It’s what made me try and protect my ex from my family by taking more pain onto myself. It’s what my boss used against me to try and get me to back off advocating for my students. Threatening others, exploiting others, it’s perfect for someone willing to be that much of a bastard to make the threat to begin with.
And it makes abusers hard to fight, because they exploit that humanity of ours, taking people’s best instincts and turning them into weapons against them. Taking someone’s trust to gaslight. Taking someone’s desire to improve to denigrate. Taking someone’s desire to be fair to normalize violence. Taking someone’s desire to protect the lives of others to exploit suicide threats to prevent a person from leaving. Taking someone’s love to coerce consent. Taking someone’s kindness to keep them trapped or from fighting back.
And it’s why a lot of folks who’ve been through that hell and out the other side are scrappy mother fuckers who’ve got a cynicism five-miles long. Because that’s what having that goodness exploited does to you. And it can leave you feeling raw and “damaged”.
And it’s why the Power and Control Wheel exists, because those are the tactics used to shimmy the blade along the edge of social niceties in order to get the outcome the abuser wants: http://tcfv.org/pdf/Updated_wheels/LGBT.pdf
And “sir” is exploiting every single spoke of it to engineer exactly this type of defeat in Ruth. Because at the end of the day, he’s scared. Ruth is no longer in his house, is no longer a minor and he’s not going to be able to hold on to Howard indefinitely either and in fact Ruth could probably make a genuine case for adopting him as his adult family member.
So he’s trying to winch as much control as possible on Ruth so Ruth doesn’t get any funny ideas about doing anything outside the path he has set for her and believing herself to be a full human being rather than a prop for him to play with and torment.
Because like all abusers, he gets off on this. On reducing another to this level of helplessness, because somehow someway, this makes them feel slightly less like another meaningless body on a blue-green rock no more meaningful than any other. Because this makes them feel the rush of not being able to do much, but definitely being able to harm another and take over their life and options.
And I hope one day Ruth can find her path out. Even if it takes a while to build, that she finds her way out.
It’s 4:07 where I live and I just wanted to say two things, the first one being – I wanted to send you a giant hug, because you’ve gone through so much and you never deserved any of that.
The second being, that I eagerly await every night for your comments, because your panel analysis are so thorough and brilliant.
I never (ever!) comment, even if I do read this comic every day at 2 in the morning as soon as it’s released, but honestly — you look like a great person and an extremely smart reader, so. Greetings? I hope you have a nice Saturday :3
And, there it is, the dog that is spite that protected you when no one fucking else was able to biting back, because sometimes even after all the wounds before that coping mechanism can (or, rather, is used to) punish ways that came out more painful than the protection and desperation that kept it biting.
I am sorry and worried and wishing every good consequence and none of the worst-case scenarios resulting from you trying to get a bit of goddamn validation out of an awful situation that otherwise left you with nothing, nothing to take away and then not even having spite. Ruth not even having spite, the right to be petty and bite back, is the absolute most crushing thing I could imagine for someone in her position (and that’s probably privileged on my part, because I’ve not yet suffered irrevocably for the sleeping but waiting beast that is me ultimately realizing I care more about my right to hate this shitty world than I have desire to live or die in it). Because after even the low point where spite is the very last thing, after Ruth literally hitting the point where life was so terrible she’d be willing to die if it meant getting out of this obligation, her grandfather wouldn’t stop and brought her back from the brink with a painful reminder that no, she did still have something that she cared about and he had that precious thing in the palm of his hand. And that is worse than I can imagine and in retrospect probably why I am very deliberately the way I am, because as much as I care I have also done everything in my power never to be relied upon because I am simply not sure if I could soldier on as Ruth has been horribly coerced to do and in this instance she has no way of applying rationally the knowledge in abstract that the power was never hers.
It’s so goddamn messed up. It’s why I hate living but joke constantly and use it to make snap judgements on nearly everyone I meet without even thinking by now the way Mike writes a list. If I rattle people with uncomfortable jokes about morbid topics I can always face the reality I’ll step over awful and unprepared-for boundaries but it lets me gauge the other 99%, the people who laugh at the wrong times, for the wrong reasons, to know what makes things funny and to understand–and the people who I need to keep knowing and to fight for without learning any more right away. Because logic doesn’t work, giving people the benefit of the doubt has never worked, and not being vulnerable to people that could be in need of my help someday is not a possibility I want to entertain except for reasons that can still make me feel compelled–like how hopeless an expression they make or how hollow a laugh it is when they laugh along with a joke of mine instead of being made uncomfortable or visibly nonplussed even as they laugh because they never needed to think about it before I opened my mouth and made it their problem in a casual conversation.
I’m so sorry that love and concern and openheartedness have all been used against you and worse in a cycle of you and those you love because someone else had a handle in on both. I’ve had the advantage of never having anyone to fight for except for pets and animals I knew with certainty from experience would be mistreated deliberately in my absence either way, and knew with equal certainty were being abused not to manipulate but to get a fucking rise out of me. I’m just getting back on my feet lightly enough with that spite in arms to do more than burn bridges with niceties. I’ve been skirting at the boundaries of keeping my head down at the tutoring job that’s the first thing I’m able to keep doing for work, in that I do I treat my boss nicely and indulge her grievances when they are legitimate. And I also take care I never lie to my students, or coddle them with untruths or easy cop-outs even if those would be easier or perhaps healthier, and if she tells them something flat-out wrong I have told them in her hearing that it is not the only opinion and emphatically not one that I share. I don’t know how long I will be able to put up with this job. I wish I could do more to help people than to try and pick my bullies and my fights for targets with brains that can be picked for weaknesses that might give others freedom or will actually prove I need more education.
Maybe being unable to consign myself to responsibility for anyone means I have a responsibility to use that freedom to help people, or maybe I’ll buckle again when the situation finally comes to life or death, or maybe I just like picking fights and being right and feeling good about it. But I hope I can at least fight if I’m going to be petty about fiction and analysis to argue things that will cause second thoughts or attack the ones attacking the Ruths or the mes of old still living in fear. I do not want anyone else to reach this point where they think they would give up everything and Ruth and you have had it taken there and back just to do it again.
and I do not care who I offend at the end of the day despite the panic I still feel at possibly hurting people when no, I
*understand exactly how little I am affecting them intentionally with my actions compared to how much they are unintentionally damaging with theirs. And I wish they WOULD stop coddling as well and be honest about the things I could change, because those things blowing up into other battles keeps me from understanding what I am doing to make them begin the echo chamber of oversensitized trauma that begins when someone so much as loudly speaks at me and I love that person.
*hugs back* I’m doing better. I really am. Please, I hate to ask you to be safe when it feels so stupid and redundant and of course it’s not always in your hands, but–don’t give up and hang in there your self as hard as you can because you matter so much and we’re not more important than your health if it means putting the bad shit first or letting what you love become a detractor.
Okay! After that great comic yesterday, let’s see a comic of our cast reveling in the joy of a great success and a rare and well-earned moment of happi-
he is probably aware, but he may not be making the mental connect between his actions and his grandfather’s actions. but also like if you’re just going to get punished anyways it doesn’t really matter if you spend a little more time on something you enjoy that allows you to pretend like it isn’t happening
and there may be only so much his grandfather is willing to do to him; if he’s done the worst he does already, howard may just be like “eh whatever” because it’s his normal
You could make the argument that Howie was genuinely not a target and that Ruth was the designated victim and that was that in the kid’s first appearance. As of his eerie monoprocessive obsession with finding something of no relevance over trying to even bother giving the illusion of acknowledgement of why he’s here? Going into random girls’ rooms to see if their television has Game of Thrones so he can sit alone in the dark and try to watch it, focus on trying, and then trying for any similar programming at a time it isn’t going to be scheduled?
Howard knows. Other people in Howard’s life don’t have to know, and I guarantee there are people you think are good or boring or simply haven’t thought about currently making life a living hell for someone that didn’t deserve it.
That is why abuse exists. It’s not obvious. It’s sneaky. It makes you ashamed of exposing the truth that could save you and having even that knowledge repressed within you by someone that is actually doing wrong and doesn’t mean to be caught. Abuse is everywhere because abuse has to be everyone, and it has to be everyone because abuse is anyone.
Sir has friends and people who speak fondly of him and probably countless people that think he’s a good old man that’s firm but loving of his grandkids. They think he’s an upstanding member of the community that gives back and gives the world to Ruth and Howard and is a saint for doing so when those poor kids were obviously suffering and now they owe the old man both gratitude and respect that just isn’t questioned.
Howard doesn’t even have to know, even though he damn well does. That’s why abuse happens even though it seems remarkable the way everyone can be seen to profess agreement that abuse is bad. No shit it’s bad. That’s why there are so many many many many many ways to hide it if you do it and we have fucking adopted many of those permissive ways as the default in our law system and societal mindset.
Oh, I think he’s aware. I think he’s treating this location as an oasis. If he waits a little longer, then he doesn’t have to be on edge for that small little bit of time. Like, “sir” is upset. Which means he’s going to be hurt tonight no matter what he does, so he just wants a little longer before he has to go back and that happens. Because it’s the only avenue he has to try and reclaim some power and agency back.
Yup, I’ve had kids who do stuff like this. Really linger at school as long as they can manage. Anything to limit the amount of time they have to spend at home.
I used to do this as a kid. Leave for school before anyone woke up, stay at school doing “homework” and then go to th library until closing. Every day. Weekends I would be at the library or “jogging” around town – or, later, working too many hours at my part-time job.
Everyone praised my dedication and work ethic. Nobody thought to ask why it was better than home even though I told them as much in so many words. :/
I’m going to post an unpopular opinion here that Ruth is really screwing her brother over. She’s trying to nobly sacrifice herself for him and be the protector of her brother but all she’s doing is enabling Sir. Which is, of course, exactly what he’s done. I wouldn’t be surprised if all of the behavior she’s shown where she’s infantalizing Howard and talking over him is stuff she learned from her grandfather. Stuff that prevents her from realizing Howard probably is every bit as sharp as she is and that they need to work together on extirpating themselves. The fact Ruth is only a few years older than him is also something to notice as it reflects an attitude that allows Sir Scumbag to use each of them to control the other. I wouldn’t be surprised if Howard isn’t controlled by worry for RUTH.
I wouldn’t say ‘she is screwing her brother over’ so much as Sir has orchestrated a situation in which not doing something feels like the lesser of two evils as ‘doing something’ will most definitely lead to escalation and further abuse if it does not work. Sir is using her empathy and sympathy to trap her, and yes, it is possible he is doing it to Howard too.
You don’t have to make people incapable of making a move when you can destroy their will to instead as no one wants to be at fault for their loved one getting hurt (which would actually be Sir’s fault for choosing to hurt Howard but that wouldn’t stop him twisting it into being Ruth’s fault for knowing how he would react).
Stop blaming Ruth for doing exactly what she’s been programmed for years by an actual predator that WANTS us to blame her as much as he wants Ruth to blame herself, because once even we be made to agree that she is acting of her own volition it stops mattering almost depressingly fast whether there’s a reason she is acting that is simply forcing her feet down a line because unlike other people she does not have the ability to see other paths let alone choose to walk one. Even saying in words that Ruth herself is screwing her brother over for jumping on the ‘how high’ that is demanded in self-sacrifice is saying Ruth may as well just go ahead and put her hand down on a hot stove and then fully cognizant keep it there before her hand connects to the brain cells telling it for evolutionary purposes to yank that shit back where it’s not in the fire anymore.
She’s not ‘enabling’ him, literally anyone else that isn’t Ruth is more enabling of his behavior than she is because she has been broken down and unable to function otherwise. Chloe is enabling. Billie, if you want to look at her actions and inability to defend the idea of attacking, is enabling. Neither are to blame and blame Ruth is just shitty and bad language and thought reinforcement or else I wouldn’t take so much time to point it out. Sir is taking what he wants, that Ruth or anyone thinks she’s ‘giving’ the desired outcome to him is how he gets away with it.
I think Ruth is doing absolutely everything she can to help Howard but if she’d bother to treat him like an adult or at least her peer (again, 3 years) then she’d probably have this resolved in five minutes. Instead, she’s trying to act like Howard’s mother and that is doing neither of them any favors.
Specifically, that they both seek to get out of this simultaneously. No one suffers for both. It won’t resolve the issues but it’s something they can work together against. I’m no stranger to abusive homes and the worst thing you can do is let your siblings get divided against you. 🙁 You need to be together if anything is going to be accomplished.
Extirpate Howard and Ruth both from his financial control and physical one. It’s a long and nasty road, possibly involving legal difficulties. However, I think Ruth is trying to martyr herself for Howard but that’s not what Howard wants since he loves his sister and doesn’t want to see her hurt anymore than the next. As my wife says above my shoulder, watching a sibling stay in an abusive situation for you is….traumatizing.
Once again, that’s a goal, not a plan. Any action taken by Ruth get out from under Shit Grandpa’s thumb requires a plan to get Howard out as well, or else things will get worse for Howard.
And right now, she doesn’t have such a plan. She’d need to be able to support herself on her own, and Howard. Paying her own tuition would be off the table for the near future at least, much less any of Howard’s plans for the future.
Even with a solid plan to accomplish that, and the will to give that much up, any failed attempts will have consequences for both of them, and being abused is also traumatizing.
What she’s doing right now isn’t enabling. It’s surviving.
Yeah, it’d be great if she started working on a plan for both of them (preferably a new one, where both of them are alive), but if the best she can come up with right now is “make it through today”, it hardly seems like a bad place to start.
And it’s not that I’m saying the situation is hopeless. It isn’t. They can eventually get away from that asshole. But as you said, it’s going to be a long, nasty road, and right now Ruth’s primary concern is that both of them reach the end of it.
Yeah this. Nothing about an abusive situation is easy and quick fixes don’t exist. But abusers have a vested interest in the “it’s so easy to leave” myth because it creates the impression that if someone really doesn’t “want” to be abused, they’ll “just” leave. Here in reality land, it’s not that simple and very often victims are caught between a rock and a hard place, and end up deciding the devil they know is better than the one they don’t.
Ruth is not treating herself like and adult, she is BARELY and adult, and Howard is NOT an adult. Stop acting like they should be in a place to see what their options are when Ruth is clearly just scraping to survive and that takes all her vision and tunnels it just like her grandfather wants. Are there empirically better options? Yes. DO NOT PUT THIS ON RUTH THAT SHE CANNOT THINK OF THEM. She is sick and doing what she’s told is the very most she can even attempt right now, no one has ever let her believe she could act independently and have worth of her own and this is not Ruth’s fault that she can’t make our outsider-perspective decisions.
So basically you think Ruth and Howard have both fallen into a trap where they both want to leave are willing to accept the risk for themselves inherent in acting but not accept the risk to there poor sibling. Howards afraid to act because Sir will blame Ruth the responsible sibling, and Ruth is afraid to at act because Sir will take it out on Howard the helpless sibling.
Yes, it’s actually similar to the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Of the women imprisoned inside the Reverend’s bunker, she’s the only one who knows he’s full of shit about the world ending. HOWEVER, she doesn’t know for 100% certainty and while she’s willing to risk HER life in trying to escape the bunker, she’s not willing to risk the other women’s.
That might be the case – for one thing that sort of trap seems exactly like something Sir would build. It still doesn’t make any of this Ruth’s fault, and it still leaves a very real possibility that the best way out is to wait two years, and bail once Howard is an adult and Sir’s power over him is drastically reduced.
Oh, Ruth. It’s so hard. It’s so goddamn hard and helpless and it’s so deeply sunk she can’t the actual reason the game is being played is not him winning, but her losing, and having to live with the future of losing being a constant inescapable thing where it’s not even possible to forfeit for Howard’s survival.
And even Billie, for all her actions speak more clearly as to what she actually means, is not saying anything helpful either in suggesting that a small step back in the right direction is the first one that Ruth could take on the path of ultimate resistance. Because if Ruth is gambling on Howard for her own sake and it’s for anger borne only out of the lack of concern for herself, that’s already been stripped of her here and a stupid suggestion that means obviously she’ll lose all real value in the fake chips she has to gamble with.
And the thing is, it’s not even a good strawman in Billie’s suggestion that you have to decide on, and that’s the truly frightening point. The point at which you no longer have spite, have already gambled on dying over Howard and been willing to lose, is a game where the even the chips you DO have to gamble are no longer more important than the game being Russian Roulette. Because she will soldier on now and she will face additional crushing despair from knowing she can’t even die and at some point she will stop even being able to fake it for his sake, and then she loses anyway. It’s not spite when fighting back is literally the only option because spite is for ‘how much’ and this is now a matter of when. And I hope it gets better.
I hope it gets better before Howard gets in that car and she begins this same cycle with one less bullet in the chamber. Because every minute he’s not there standing there in front of her, every minute Billie is not holding Ruth’s hand through this and I fear so much Ruth will find a good excuse to make her stop–even the threat of Howard is something that Sir is overestimating because you cannot live for something that isn’t there and when you’re depressed there’s nothing there but the horribleness in front of you.
I don’t want Ruth to be in the hospital twice and for no other reason than thinking she had to do something she was too disabled to be considered capable of.
I’m interested in more of Ruth’s history “big sistering” to keep Howie safe(r). The horrors she may have been through, then deciding that this kid (four years her junior) isn’t gonna suffer the same…
“Gamble and lose with your own pain“: Any protective instinct Ruth has will only be amplified after her foibles allowed Mary to go full bigot on Carla.
Even if Ruth has to leave spite, her favorite weapon, in the “Bat utility belt” for now.
The authorities, work and an awful lot of luck and pushing an open confrontation with an abusive authority figure who apparently wields some level of financial or other influence to keep his control.
What happens when your authorities listen to him?
If Ruth is treating Howard like a little child, he’s acting like one.
It could be he’s retreated from, or resisted, maturing because he’s seen what Sir does to Ruth, but either way, he seems unaware that if he keeps Sir waiting, Sir will take it out on Ruth. If he were as eager to spare her abuse as she is to save him, he wouldn’t play the “5 more minutes” game.
I don’t want to judge him because we don’t know where his head is, and maybe he’s so traumatized or repressed this is all we see, but so far I see only an oblivious child, while Ruth is showing great heart and courage striving mightily to protect her loved one from the abuse she suffers.
Poor Ruth.
Far more likely to take it out on him, since he’ll be the one going back home with Clint. A few more minutes away may be worth it, at least in the moment.
Willis, there is an invasive publicity. I don’t know if you can do anything about it. It is about a movie, it takes the screen and I can’t close it without opening 🙁
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It’s always a bet for two.
I’m glad her eyes go back quickly; the first panel had me worried.
You can’t blame her, it must be very stressful tking to her abusive granfather.
call child services…. get him to snap at you and have Billie film it. Bam bad gramps is out two grandkids.
Or…he’s able to convince child services it’s not that big of a deal and proceeds to make life worse for Howard. Or child services does intervene and sends him…where? That seems like something could be a legitimate and prohibitive fear for Ruth.
Gramps appears to have a lot of money, and with that comes the ability to convince the right people that Everything Is Fine.
Child Services unfortunately do not have the resources or manpower or social support to do anything but intervene in the most extreme horrifying of cases. And those cases do desperately need their attention, because holy fuck.
But it means a high school kid with facial bruising from their parent isn’t even likely to get a real investigation outside a casual look-in that’ll trigger an even worse punishment when CPS moves on. Something like this where “sir” knows to only hurt them where it doesn’t show? Much harder to get the forces of good to take seriously.
And “sir” knows this. And is exploiting this. Because like a lot of abusers, he enjoys dancing on the line of just enough to get away with it and then pushing on that line anyways just for fun.
So true.
Exactly. He is not acting with any intention at all to be caught or even to face consequences and has a laundry list of protections ready before anyone can even articulate the weird vibe they get if they have time from his granddaughter with the slack blank face.
Which is what makes Sir, funnily enough, vulnerable pretty much exclusively to the loose and craaazy cannons with nothing lose that Billie was half-joking to be. I think Billie is not aware of how little that was joking and that is a damn shame in some ways though very good for her and for Ruth and Howard in others. Because people like Sir even from Ruth’s mouth to our eyes have the power or the influence or SOMETHING that gets the Chloes downstairs to listen, and understand wrongly and move on. I think Sir was as near as one misplaced hand away from Billie actually going off on him, and considering she is powerful and presumably enraged? And, unlike nearly every other physically combative person in this strip, has a history like of demonstrated, aggressive bullying of ‘weaker’ people with the muscle memory to step backward, shut her brain off at a moment’s notice to the suffering of others, and fucking do horrible things to them and fucking laugh at them if she feels like doing it?
I don’t want Billie to punch Sir in the face or have him in a position of finally being threatened down the way he threatened Ruth, just as Robin has finally been thrown out to the wolves of the media in full consequence of every shitty thing she did and pretended not to know. Nossir, no Sir, not me.
Ruth’s over 18, so unless things are very different in Indiana than in the state where I went to college in the early 2010s, child services can’t do anything. I worked in student affairs part-time and came into contact with a student suffering from severe depression related to abuse at the hands of their parents. The student wanted to withdraw from the school to get psychiatric treatment, and the school facilitated their return home to their abusive parents. A video of Sir abusing Howard miiiight potentially do something, although as others have said, it’s unlikely that meaningful action would result – and Ruth isn’t gonna provoke her grandfather to abuse her brother just for a slight chance that it might potentially help, but would more likely lead to more abuse.
Howard: the anti-Spite.
Have you heard about the Lonesome Loser?
Beaten by the Queen of Hearts every time…
how dare u get that song in my head
curse u little river band!!!!!
Be glad it’s not “We Two”. That one can also apply. 😐
Re: alt text: But what’s wrong with the pair he has now, did they finally wear out?
Ruth kept one, didn’t she?
Take a look at the wall in panel 2. She kept both, and had them mounted. As a warning. To other shoes.
So she starts with shoes and works her way up the leg to femurs? Makes sense.
But seriously. I’m hoping this means deescalation, and Clint leaving means Ruth and Billie will at least get a temporary reprieve, but I’m sensing another shoe high, high in the air, ready to drop and loud and hard…
Maybe that’s Walky’s shoe. Why he needs the new pair.
“Finally”?
He just got them less than a month ago.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/target-2/
It’s been three-and-a-half years IRL. Comic time does fucky things to our senses.
And pain is always something of high stakes; those who say otherwise have never lost. Even if Sir is being a crap, Ruth is keeping her younger brother safe, and that endears me more to her. May Howard eventually escape Cliff’s clutches and leave the old man harmless. ‹3
Also, I’m 100% curious to know what’s on the plaque under what I think are Walky’s shoes (yes, I can’t read alt-text at the moment) on the wall. Maybe something like, beyond the femur, her second-greatest prize, worthy of being mounted on the wall of the murder cave(tm)?
Now that you pointed out the plaque I am suddenly aware of how extremely high the ceiling is.
Re: Alt text: … Is…is Walky going to make shoes out of Howard?
Did Howard finally get a chance to see Game of Thrones?
That’s the real drama here. DID HOWARD SEE BOOBIES?
It would be nice for the hostage to get some enjoyment occasionally:(
Ruth is obviously playing the long game.
The long, tortuous, harmful long game that will hopefully save her and her brother. Eventually. At least Howie. With luck.
Allso, is it just the art evolution or billie has… grown as of late? I only mention it because it’s kind of glaringly obvious to me just now.
Actually if I had to guess it seems like she’s lost weight, because that’s typically a reason that boobs seem large or small in comparison because in reality the ratio of the waist that they’re attached to is what actually matters.
And I don’t think her losing weight would be unintentional or a bad thing, either, because it’s a symptom of the kind of depression she’s going through and why Ruth was so far under by a few weeks in that a couple of beers would make her tipsy enough to talk nonsense after skipping meals.
That’s a sound theory and now that you mention it, Billie seems to have more of a waist here.
Intriguing.
I wasn’t particularly fond of of Ruthless at first but the more we learn of her the more relatable, and despite her issues likeable she get. The fact she actually seems to have some real integrity under the surface makes me like and feel for her all the more.
oh boy. you used *that* word. (I’ll put the explanation link in the next comment because moderation)
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/act-with-integrity/
…oh, maybe links don’t automatically go to moderation here? 🙂
If you use two or more links in a comment, it goes into auto-moderation to prevent spam attacks and link barrages.
Willis usually approves them in the morning though. And one link comments go through automatically which is why I only try to have one link unless I’m doing a comprehensive rundown of a character.
act with integrity
no regrets
Final panel reaction: Aaaawwww. That’s…that’s sweet. Ruth’s trying her best to be a good sister and…yeah I’m on the verge of tears because my heart feels very warm from this right now. And for all her flaws, Ruth has always tried to be a good big sister.
Second panel reaction: Ooowww. As much as Howard can be silly/naive/dumb sometimes, I still like the little guy. And…well ooff but I’d be lying if I said this panel didn’t hit me hard in the feels.
Final thoughts: I want to reach in and hug both of these two.
Ah, spite. A good and remarkably cherished friend of mine for all its nasty little reputation, and one friend that’s held my hand through some shitty times this year and been my saving grace when I was at least smart enough not to put myself intentionally in a place where I was anyone’s consequential determiner. Besides myself and the actual people deciding directly above me, of course. Spite let me be finally mean and being mean was the first step to acknowledging I was suffering so much for so little that I realized it wasn’t just depression caused by life and hell but overexplosion of that from non-presenting autism that never got detected.
It goddamn sucks when you are stuck not even being able to cling to spite out of fear, though, and especially more so when you’re at the awful point where that fear has no longer been applied to your own self.
spite is one of those things that can help you defend yourself
and yet also like. completely poison you at the same time
I don’t like to think I’m poisoned for being spiteful. Petty, sometimes, mean or rude or acting in ways that aren’t good for my own health which is when a coping mechanism becomes such a danger. But I don’t think being spiteful is somehow making me worse a person except when it’s in detriment to my own health or I’m so unaware of it (and I have been before) that I don’t stop and consider carefully enough before I pick my targets.
I mean, being vindictive and blunt and uncaring at times works quite a lot better sometimes on people who are actually going to pause for that moment of self-doubt (like I do) when someone makes an attack. I know it works because sometimes used in the right way, picking your targets, spite can be as much of a statement and a last impression as a defense. If I was more aggressive and vindictive in real life as I was in forums where I’m able to carefully pick and barb my arguments, I would not be at the point where I allow other people’s comfort to fucking kill me and keep killing me to the point it became a disability. Spite is doing more good now than when I was young when it was the only coping mechanism I had instead of a coping mechanism I learned to use as a defense strategically because I’m more likely to be compassionate to even myself if I can blame a target like outside forces or “my brain” for all my misery.
Idk if I can accept yet that spite is comparable to poison, except in the most obvious sense that in the sense there’s still technically benzene in our drinking water. Where my ASD might have been ‘high-functioning’ it’s now a disability because I was too afraid of being directly angry and even now I can’t express direct anger unless there’s some part of it that’s driven, by necessity, that I get satisfaction from winning and all arguments I make are ones I’m goaded into partially by my old friend spite.
ehhhhh more like:
while spite gives you the strength to keep going, it also keeps you bitter. it’s a preservative, but one with a limited use. i mean, it essentially is the refusal to stop being angry, which is powerful and important!! there are things that deserve to never be forgotten, to always be angry at. there is a level of which spite allows you to stand up for yourself.
but it’s also not something you can build a positive on, i think. like if you spend your life on the things that you hate you don’t get to spend it as much on the things that you love, which are fundamentally more important and valuable. and while it helps you preserve what you love, it’s useful; when it starts taking away from what you love, it’s not.
but also like i’m kind of thinking socially/professionally here about how, like, not focusing on the positives can wreck yr ability to connect with people and present as someone who’s made the best of their life
People telling me to focus on the positives, in a situation I was perceiving a hundred times more traumatically than they thought I had a right to be, got me so sick I yanked out half the hair on my head and stayed locked in my room for two years to get some peace and quiet.
Positive meant deluding myself into thinking I was and had to be capable of the same things as everyone else. Fighting back was only a first step in realizing, yes, my pain is real, and I do in fact deserve fucking accommodations to survive professionally and live independently if I am in fact able to do that at all and I hope that I can. And that is not a battle that ends unfortunately with the all-consuming relief of something, anything that would serve as a diagnosis. Until the world is perfect I don’t think it’s ever not going to be a reality that I can let go of spite or not keep it close by as a good reminder, because falling into older habits is easier when they’re self-destructive but what is actually killing me is outside stimuli and not anything I did first.
Spite may be necessary for those infractions on my sanity that aren’t insidious enough or are imposed manipulatively enough that think I have no reason to fight what’s happening and have the moral high ground. A lot of the time I fight based on what’s vindictive and feel bad after word except that it turns out again and again that my first and spiteful assumption was RIGHT. I am not sure any of my focused interests are applicable to careers, and if they were, then my relationship with spite in fueling them might be different. But it’s a shitty world and spite’s better than outright malevolence because even good humans need an outlet for anger because staying positive is very, very good in my experience in preserving yourself at the expense of other people who desperately need or needed someone that’d get angry with them or at least hear “yeah, that’s fucked up” instead of saying that anger and grudges themselves were unhealthy.
I mean, I get it. I get why people think people fueled purely by spite might be more liable to harm than to do good. I get why people think Mike is a toxic and horrible person and interpret what I see as lashing out as getting joy from a power he’s taking away, or that I might one day be led to do the same.
But…we’re both reading this comic. This comic would not exist and certainly not be as prolific and well-researched and extensively openminded without a fucking heavy dose of authorial spite. Whether or not I ever benefit by using my seething rage as a tool in a profession that puts food on the table, I think it’s far far better that this comic exists sharing and taking full joy in the detractors it breeds in the act of giving a home to an audience that rarely gets that kind of vindication.
…i would never want to take away your rage, or your spite, or your need for either, or your drive for survival. i don’t…intend to pass judgment on any of those things here
i just honestly don’t know how to reconcile these two things: the need to acknowledge that bad things happen, and the need to make the best out of your situation. and maybe that’s something that can’t be reconciled but it feels like something that ought to add up and i can’t quite figure out why it doesn’t
all i know is that while getting angry empowers me, it also makes me miserable and exhausts me; but being positive doesn’t always satisfy, because it doesn’t let me feel my pain. and being positive doesn’t have to mean lying about your situation; sometimes it’s just accepting it for what it is and moving on however you can. but. i don’t know.
i mean there are plenty of things i hold on to anger about; i just also know my anger can be as likely to hurt as to heal, and i have to be careful with it
i just also know that being angry or upset or not one hundred percent happy about stuff seems to drive people away, and i guess especially people who want to live in a happy space. which is not exactly a bad goal, i guess, because it’s not like you can expect everyone to be your venting space
I know that anger can hurt and I’m not trying to de-legitimize your experiences either. For some people, in fact many people, rage is NOT healthy and even for someone like me that it’s incredibly useful for I still end up feeling that moment of self-doubt when the old fear kicks in and I get terrified I’ve hurt someone innocent (I have) or I’ve really and truly gone too far or my anger was wrong or not fueled at least under the right assumptions–and sometimes, I think being positive just means taking positive where you can.
Sometimes it’s winning internet points over saying you knew [x] fictional character would act [x] way or that someone’s argument about their behavior was wrong for 3000 word’s worth of reasons. It’s not exactly ideal, but it does drive people away, and for many that could and would be a bad thing and a negative direction of outcome for their life. But I’m someone that actually would benefit and gets something healthy by knowing how and what to do to drive people away that will let me still be happy I was right to make it a combative issue instead of accommodating them like I did irl until my emotions fried. And spite fuels internet arguments like this that make me very very very mindful of what I write because it has to be PERFECT because well-constructed arguments change minds, and that takes actual spite to fuel the effort of making an argument I will win or that will make someone reconsider their arguments. Or give me the exact thing I was missing I needed to turn around and research instead. Anger is…not easy, but it feels different depending on the context when it’s used. Spite is an anger that I rarely needing or having reason to be employed legitimately by the people who have resources to act for reasons far more directly selfish and self-serving. Trolling isn’t quite spite, momentary aggression is not quite spite, but it’s every bit a sharp little animal as you’ve described.
It’s not a friend I’d keep around without being very mindful of, and still not caring about, the fact that it’s as liable to bite me as anyone else. I know that. It’s in the calculus. I’d still rather get bitten on my own terms and decide how much of it I can take than let other people have the benefit of the doubt and abuse it because I got so good at letting them. I’m misanthropic. I try to be good. Spite is pretty nice.
And with all that said, as bad as I am at empathy I do sympathize with your position as well and I understand completely the fear or rather nihilistic catch-22 that anger itself cannot be a thing that fosters happiness or relationships that are positive except mainly through validation and solidarity–and yet embracing or being open to happiness can have results that are as bad or worse and we can’t have the comfort of removing the equation from the context of how different all this is for everyone that is capable of experiencing a full range of emotions and thought at all.
Hey Minder and zoelogical, I just read that thread and I wanted to tell you something you already know : it’s okay to feel “bad” emotions that keep you alive. I know it sucks, I know the stigmata. I’ve been complimented for not being bitter despite my life, like having a defense mechanism is something rude to have. I wish you to get in a place you can feel safe enough to lower your defenses, even if it doesn’t feel good right now.
Mind a heart ? Here’s a heart if you like it : <3
I MEAN LIKE sometimes when you’re angry you’re miserable because the situation is miserable and you just. you know. caught on!!! in which case being aware of the misery is better than not being miserable, because it’s genuine to your situation and you can take active steps to decrease your misery.
and sometimes that means being angry!! sometimes that means blowing up. but like holding on to your anger post blowing up is definitely something that can be poisonous – but, i mean, it’s not like it’s easy to integrate something that painful into your experience. and sometimes going over and over something is what you need in order to process it, but i mean: processing it should be the end result. unless not ever having processed it is what you need in which case i don’t get to judge lmao
like: i am familiar and comfortable with certain levels of anger that you hold to survive, that you hold to remind yourself that this was not okay. i just can’t live there. like: i have ADHD! i am pissed as hell that this was a thing all my life and nobody realized it!! and this was a thing because studies on girls with ADHD are a lot more limited than studies on boys, and also my parents don’t entirely believe that mental issues are real issues that need assistance, and because i was usually able to perform well enough that it didn’t look like i had ADHD. and i didn’t even realize it until college, so, i guess there we go
but the work of living with ADHD is not accomplished by being angry at all the reasons why it’s so difficult to live with ADHD. because, i mean, at a point, those are just things that exist. and constantly getting angry at them is exhausting and also…counterproductive. one of the things that i really needed to realize in order to live with this successfully is that no one has their shit together, and that realization is kind of a work in progress!! you go from “no one has their shit together” in the sense that, ok, it’s okay when people screw up; to “no one has their shit together” in the sense that since nobody has their shit together, you don’t have to have your shit together one hundred percent of the time as long as you get your shit together when it counts. mostly.
…i mean like, also, i have a Stephanie Brown avatar in the year of our lord 2017. i know so much about holding grudges and maintaining anger. my feminist rage at what was done to her will probably never be quieted and it shouldn’t be because it should never have happened in the first place. but like the work of loving Stephanie Brown isn’t entirely based in her trauma. a good part of it is in her trauma and being angry about it and never forgetting it, but that’s not all about it. i don’t love her for what happened to her, i love her for who she is and who she can be. and that love is the more critical work, i think, because it seeds potential and growth. which are things any character needs in order to exist
i guess where i’m coming from is you can’t create from a position of anger, you can pretty much just destroy; and while destruction can be the impetus for creation (and is valuable and important!!) they can’t exist at the same time. dumbing of age doesn’t exist because it hates bad stuff; it exists because there’s a real and genuine love for these characters out there, and the desire to see what happens to them.
ergh i feel like i should apologize for overgeneralizing and being trite in the beginning of this, haha; we’ve talked enough that You Deserve More Work From Me i feel like. but i do super appreciate your questioning what i say and coming out with arguments and like. all that work you put into these posts!!
@anowan you are a sweetheart <3
What Anowan said, and also, I feel like there are important puzzle pieces here that fit together if I can just remember a few pieces I’ve got … I need a real keyboard for this. And paper. BBS
ok, here goes.
zoe: I might have found what’s not adding up. destruction and creation at the same time? … spoilers, steven universe season 2: Tnearg, orvat ehol naq fnccuver gbtrgure. that’s how you reconcile acknowledging the bad things while making the best of it. I think the end of the Mistborn trilogy might be a good metaphor too.
Maybe I need to give more context, so… Story time!
I usually think of my anger as a shield of thorns. It hurts me and it protects me, which sucks but is better than being defenseless. Several years ago, before I understood this, I joined a meditation group. The first part of it was tolerable, but they’d end with a passage from some meditation book, and I found these passages deeply uncomfortable, like, I-want-to-tear-my-skin-off levels of discomfort (I feel like I’m missing a word here). But they were about love and gratitude and compassion, and those are good things, right? So I spent quite a while wondering what the hell was wrong with me that they felt so wrong and horrible and unsafe and twisted.
Eventually, I… well, I still wasn’t able to approach it with words back then, but I poked at the feelings, trying to feel what was so scary about it, and one of the images that came up a lot was Darth Ex. I was angry at him, not for what he did, but because I knew that without the anger I couldn’t keep myself safe from him. I wanted so much for him to be a safe person and he wasn’t and anger was the only thing keeping me from reaching out and getting hurt again. I couldn’t afford to feel compassion in his direction. When I realised that, I felt a lot less bad about my weird reactions. I held onto my shield.
Around the same time, I was starting to learn about boundaries. Learning that took time, and starting to build my own boundaries took a lot more time, but once I had a few boundaries, I discovered I didn’t need anger as much. I could put down the shield of thorns sometimes, because I’d built better defences, and the more boundaries I built the better it got. 🙂
That wasn’t the end of it, though. I forget how it started, but at some point anger was back and stirring up trouble. I didn’t want to be angry, didn’t see the point, but eventually I sat down and listened to it. By this point, it could actually use words a little, which makes things a lot easier. 🙂 So we talked, and talked some more, and I practised listening instead of suppressing it, and one day I grokked my anger, and something completely fucking unexpected happened. It transformed. It went from a shield of thorns, protective but destructive and dumb as
rocksrubies, to something constructive and empowering, something that spotted problems and then lent its power to an aspect better suited to finding solutions. 🙂 I’d read about this kind of anger, but didn’t think it existed in me, or ever would. 🙂The first time it happened, iirc, I got up and did some of my old martial arts forms, because what the anger needed was big, wide movements, it needed me to take up space and move and it felt really good to have that outlet that let me feel my feelings without the risk of hurting anything. (other people’s suggested outlets had been useless or worse. hitting pillows actually makes me *more* angry and frustrated and bitter.)
It’s not a stable transformation yet, but knowing from experience that it’s possible is, like, a lot more than half the battle. 🙂
So… I suspect/hope that this is related to other people’s bad meditation experience. maybe they’ve been pressured into the overly-positive BS when what they need is more like “it’s ok that it’s not ok”; when they need to feel and process those inconvenient emotions and not suppress or dismiss them; when they need to be able to defend themselves first, and only move on to compassion when it’s safe to do so.
Compassion is important. Boundaries are important. You need *both* to find balance, and you need the other defense mechanisms to survive long enough to get there. (and not having gotten there yet is not some horrible flaw. it’s normal. you’re allowed to enjoy your imperfect life and not spend every waking moment on self-improvement. 😉
some other scattered thoughts:
* not sure if adhd or osdd-ish, but, I find it exhausting/impossible to hang onto an emotion. I’ll quite easily forget to be angry unless it’s so big it’s completely running my brain – and even then it can’t last once it’s burned all my spoons. I have the same problem with boundaries, but smaller. habits help.
* anger and such can push people away. so can excessive calm. it’s hard to know when you need to rein it in, and when you need to find someone more resilient to talk to. I suppose it can be both, too. partly knowing your audience and partly moderation. there’s a lot of grey in there that I’m still exploring – like, when I’m irrationally angry at something because it triggered a bunch of anxiety, is it reasonable for someone close to me to argue with my feelings? I know it’s not the fault of the trigger, but my feelings are still real, and it hurts to be told I should just not have those feelings. Is there a better way to express myself to get the support and comfort I want? Should I expect more effort from the other person to see my perspective, or should I just expect coldness or obligation-based gestures of comfort when I let the illogical emotional mess show? …huh, that got offtopic. I guess I don’t want to say that I’m being irrational when I’m being irrational, it feels like… like when Smoky Quartz wanted to show off the yo-yo. we’ve both got a bit of Sardonyx in us, maybe. and a bit much attachment to Truth for Truth’s sake at the expense of feelings. (no this isn’t meant to make sense to anyone but me at this point, I’m talking to myself….)
@zoelogical I’m…actually happiest when I’m angry now, if that makes sense? Because the freedom to feel what I’m feeling and having a reason is all I wanted for so long without even knowing that repressing that was making me so dead and tired. But I understand it obviously will not be that way for everyone, shouldn’t be that way, and for people in a better place or with differently working minds (even I had rage that hurt me in the past when again, I had to bite it down and was helpless to say anything or feel like I earned it) be only painful. I feel you on the anger at misdiagnosis because I did ‘have’ ADD until I found out the real reason I’ve been not paying attention to anything but the stuff I obsess over is, well, actually being low enough on the autism spectrum to pass for neurotypical time and again despite all the red flags now that people are finally sharing they had seen. And I do believe anger can create because anger is another type of energy and if you can combine it with love and good intentions then I think it can be used to do more than destroy even if destruction and dismantling and analyzing is my point of strength.
And I appreciate your POV and you taking the time to argue your points as well, even though I will hold onto my spite for now, and hope that one day I can start to broaden my motivations beyond it though I doubt it ever truly goes away and I may be not the same anymore without it for ultimately better or worse.
@Anowan TAKES ALL THE HEARTS, DISTRIBUTES, you are sweetheart
@Halpful I love the way you describe anger and how it’s gone for you from something that dug in and hurt so much because it was all you could really do to hold on, to get a handle and use it and feel control and empowerment in it. I don’t mean to imply with all this that I live my life in anger, that I’m upset every second of every day, but I have a chip on my shoulder and it’s ready in the better times to block me whenever something comes up that I otherwise would suffer through needlessly to protect someone that never would realize otherwise I could not sit there and take it. I like anger, but spite is the friend and the dangerous kind, and I keep them closer now than I did when they were my entire reason to live. They protected me and I protect my right to have them, because the people who want you not to be angry are not always doing so with bad intentions but most also are not always aware of specific things I can or can’t see in life and people because of how my mind works. And I think part of me must have been aware of that before I ever had the reason or a way to put it into words.
*jedi hugs* 🙂
heh, the song from SU s4e4 is still stuck in my head 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rds7V5Sxu-4
@halpful: UNFORTUNATELY im not caught up with steven universe and i’ve never played Mistborn, rip. i can work with anger as a protective thing, though!! i mean like i can even say that i’ve experienced that, i guess. i feel like that’s different from spite, though? like spite can be very much about pettily cruel actions taken over a long period of time, and that’s damaging. it’s when you hold on to anger past any possible use or purpose, i think? or at least that’s the image i’ve gotten of it.
i mean like: there’s anger and spite for self defense, and then there’s anger and spite for anger and spite’s sake. because outrage addiction is, unfortunately, a very real thing, and that’s…a pretty harmful thing.
…so much of this is very gray territory and changes from place to place and person to person
@Minder: i can see how getting angry could be a happy and even meditative thing! like there is a certain kind of joy in methodically crushing something. there is a freeing quality in being able to be angry. and i mean like…ugh i’ve been too…excluding in all this? like. there are plenty of people who make things with anger, but i dont think that anger is the foundation. ergh. i’ve said this.
but like: analysis is its own kind of creation, in that you take what has been presented and create a reading, an interpretation, a combination between the original text and your own perspective. and it is important and valuable!
There’s a game? i was referring to the books by Brandon Sanderson. I disagree with some of the things in later books but he’s very good at writing non-NT characters. Although it was Preservation and Ruin I was thinking of as parallels to Sapphire and Ruby here. (omg do get caught up on steven universe, it is so so good and so many important concepts are in there. including a hint of what constructive anger looks like)
Anyways… I think we should trust Minder’s judgement on whether they still need anger/spite in their situation. I mean, a part of me is also going “but what if we’re wroooong?!?” but I’m starting to see that sometimes that voice gets counterproductive. You can’t force someone to see your perspective, you can only explain it and hope, and I think you’ve explained well enough. 🙂
…I’m not getting the analysis comment, but I think that’s because the cider just hit me. (yes, just cider, low alcohol tolerance.) my brain’s off duty for a couple of hours now 🙂
but only one pair. more than one pair is girly. right walky?
wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee love that experience when you put up with things you should never put up with so that other people won’t get hurt
and you start to get to the place of feeling like you deserve it because you are putting up with it because you’ve never really had an end goal and the now is eternity
and having Billie in this is…different because it is a completely different person who can see how Messed Up everything is and validate that while also shaking literally everything to the ground. all the preconceptions, missed values
Yup. That’s the exact hole my uncle got me into. Trying to protect my ex so going in to see him with no support or aftercare. And becoming more and more convinced I deserved the dehumanization and having to beg for my humanity to even be seen much less respected.
It’s a nasty spiral to get sucked into. And I feel so bad for Ruth who is in the midst of it, has internalized that self-hatred, and doesn’t see her way out yet.
haaa…I just, like, put up with so much shit because I needed a place to live and my younger siblings needed someone who could be emotionally stable around…and I don’t really regret the latter, exactly, but I feel kind of sick when I think about how much unnecessary fear I had to live in because my parents wanted to control us. because apparently parenting is all about controlling your children, or something.
and like i guess right now it’s more just like…this vicious tangle of people who are messes, and the actions that come out of their messes, and the behavior they expect to see. and like i can be as empathetic as i want but i’m still going to come out of interactions with them feeling like i’m crazy, and having to deny my own emotions, and being pressured to perform certain roles because they love me or whatever, and their love for me is always going to be more important than anything i might actually need or want. because the things i need and want are inconvenient.
idk i never felt like i was explicitly dehumanized more just like i didn’t exist, which is its own thing
but like the only thing that gets you out is therapy and leaving
Yup.
And *appropriate gesture of support* for what you went through.
i feel supported!!!
but god, ruth, she’s had to do this all alone for so long and now she doesn’t have to and I Feel For Her So Much
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: Pin-prick eyes, short answer, “sir”. I’ve seen that face on loved ones interacting with parents on the phone before. I’ve been that face. It’s soul-crushing to live it, it’s heart-breaking to see it, because it’s a complete loss of fight to an abuser who already knows they’ve won and has the power they have. And they are so very good at taking away options or make it feel like the greatest mistake/cruelty to make a clean break. This hits especially hard because my gf recently had to let her dad back into her life for financial help to retain the place she’s using to hold firm against her mom. And he is very “sir”-like.
Panel 2: Ugh, “sir” is such a creepy power-tripping fuck. Like, everything needs to run perfectly on his time and when he’s completed his duties rearranging the pieces he considers Howie and Ruth to be, he immediately expects them to jump, no questions asked, both understanding the price for any lateness.
And it creates a situation like this, where Ruth is having to deputize “sir’s” bullshit just to try and protect Howard to the level she can and where “sir” can at any point decide that they “took too long” to justify another round of violent hateful abuse.
It’s a no-win situation.
Panel 3: There are options for Ruth, but well, when you’re just trying to survive abuse, sometimes those aren’t worth the risks until you can get all your affairs in order. And sometimes the only thing you can do for a time is ride out the abuse knowing it is breaking you apart and fucking up your mental health. And it can be hard to even see them. This is how she’s been able to survive and protect Howard, so there’s going to need to be a lot to try and deviate from that moderately successful path (ignore the complete mental breakdown and massive suicidal ideation and PTSD).
And I can’t help but read Ruth’s response here in two ways. Both the defensiveness of “this is the only option I can see to protect both of us and this is how we’ve survived and you’re not actually having to live it” which is very true. Only the person being abused knows best the mental calculus at play and what are the options they have the spoons to work with. But also, a genuine question. She would love to know a magical solution if one exists, if Billie is seeing a way out that she hasn’t already worked with. Because she is desperate to escape.
But sadly Billie has the learned survival skills for neglect, an entirely different animal of abuse altogether.
Panel 4: This is a better piece of advice than Billie or Ruth fully know. Spite is powerful, especially for breaking away from an abuser and being willing to take the big risks to do so. I know to escape my uncle and dad, I needed spite and just a sense of being done losing things because of them in order to take the risk of homelessness that very nearly happened. And that was how my ex escaped her mom, finally getting to a point of spite and rock-bottom where she was tired of how that abuse was destroying everything she loved.
Spite can cut through that rational part of your brain that says “keep your head down, do what you need to get by, survive” and take possibly fool-hardy risks. And it can cut through the gaslighting of an abuser and how much they try and convince you that your recognition of things as abuse is the real crime at play. Spite is what eventually is going to help Ruth rescue her brother once and for all someday and cut her grandpa fully out of her life.
She just needs to survive to a point where she can use it.
so when pandora opened her box of horrors the almost-last thing was hope. the absolute-last thing was spite, and she took it and kept it as a pet for ages and it’s why she never got kicked out of her own home
I mean, joking but not joking a bit, but hope being last in the box is kind of an underhanded joke in that hope would indeed thin to be unthinkingly nice and step back to let everyone else out first.
haha
the tiniest monster of them all
And to top it off, all this controlling and more-or-less-subtle threat bullshit “Sir” is doing is with Ruth fresh out from the suicide ward. She is extremely vulnerable, and all he can see is an opportunity to squeeze harder.
I don’t like “Sir” very much.
*hugs and support as appropriate*
And god do I feel you on spite. I never realized what goddamn reason I had to be so upset at the world to get so horribly sick and depressed when everyone else, even my therapist, was not only surviving but telling me I had to change my entire worldview to think positive so I could do the same. Then I tried to change my worldview. And in a fit of petty rage at how stupid the advice in the positivist book was telling me to find opportunity in pain, I finally threw that mindset away and admitted ‘defeat’ welcomed back the spite with open arms and knew I had to do something else even if it meant just dying because this wasn’t working. And if not for that I don’t know if I’d have been ready when the signal came on Tuesday morning that finally told me to remember and think hard and go look and be my own advocate because if the spite was still there then I still had a reason.
Panel 5: But this is also true from Ruth. Spite is a gamble. And there are a lot of times when that gamble doesn’t pay off. Have a job offer fall through and that attempt at spite and having a spine may have just been the birth of me just being yet another homeless trans person trying to get by.
It’s a risk and that means you can lose and the pain that comes with that can sometimes be fatal. Hence why spite is so powerful, because it can get you to the point of “fuck it” you need to take big risks like that.
Panel 6: And this right here is why “sir” is so prominently using Howard here during this trip. Because for most of us, we are empathetic and for a lot of folks it’s much easier to accept personal pain or ruin than to accept the pain and ruin of someone you love. It’s what made me try and protect my ex from my family by taking more pain onto myself. It’s what my boss used against me to try and get me to back off advocating for my students. Threatening others, exploiting others, it’s perfect for someone willing to be that much of a bastard to make the threat to begin with.
And it makes abusers hard to fight, because they exploit that humanity of ours, taking people’s best instincts and turning them into weapons against them. Taking someone’s trust to gaslight. Taking someone’s desire to improve to denigrate. Taking someone’s desire to be fair to normalize violence. Taking someone’s desire to protect the lives of others to exploit suicide threats to prevent a person from leaving. Taking someone’s love to coerce consent. Taking someone’s kindness to keep them trapped or from fighting back.
And it’s why a lot of folks who’ve been through that hell and out the other side are scrappy mother fuckers who’ve got a cynicism five-miles long. Because that’s what having that goodness exploited does to you. And it can leave you feeling raw and “damaged”.
And it’s why the Power and Control Wheel exists, because those are the tactics used to shimmy the blade along the edge of social niceties in order to get the outcome the abuser wants: http://tcfv.org/pdf/Updated_wheels/LGBT.pdf
And “sir” is exploiting every single spoke of it to engineer exactly this type of defeat in Ruth. Because at the end of the day, he’s scared. Ruth is no longer in his house, is no longer a minor and he’s not going to be able to hold on to Howard indefinitely either and in fact Ruth could probably make a genuine case for adopting him as his adult family member.
So he’s trying to winch as much control as possible on Ruth so Ruth doesn’t get any funny ideas about doing anything outside the path he has set for her and believing herself to be a full human being rather than a prop for him to play with and torment.
Because like all abusers, he gets off on this. On reducing another to this level of helplessness, because somehow someway, this makes them feel slightly less like another meaningless body on a blue-green rock no more meaningful than any other. Because this makes them feel the rush of not being able to do much, but definitely being able to harm another and take over their life and options.
And I hope one day Ruth can find her path out. Even if it takes a while to build, that she finds her way out.
that wheel is so useful
He really has the whole bingo down. At least Howard won’t stay in his house forever, and then it will be a different matter altogether.
Yo, Cerberus.
It’s 4:07 where I live and I just wanted to say two things, the first one being – I wanted to send you a giant hug, because you’ve gone through so much and you never deserved any of that.
The second being, that I eagerly await every night for your comments, because your panel analysis are so thorough and brilliant.
I never (ever!) comment, even if I do read this comic every day at 2 in the morning as soon as it’s released, but honestly — you look like a great person and an extremely smart reader, so. Greetings? I hope you have a nice Saturday :3
And, there it is, the dog that is spite that protected you when no one fucking else was able to biting back, because sometimes even after all the wounds before that coping mechanism can (or, rather, is used to) punish ways that came out more painful than the protection and desperation that kept it biting.
I am sorry and worried and wishing every good consequence and none of the worst-case scenarios resulting from you trying to get a bit of goddamn validation out of an awful situation that otherwise left you with nothing, nothing to take away and then not even having spite. Ruth not even having spite, the right to be petty and bite back, is the absolute most crushing thing I could imagine for someone in her position (and that’s probably privileged on my part, because I’ve not yet suffered irrevocably for the sleeping but waiting beast that is me ultimately realizing I care more about my right to hate this shitty world than I have desire to live or die in it). Because after even the low point where spite is the very last thing, after Ruth literally hitting the point where life was so terrible she’d be willing to die if it meant getting out of this obligation, her grandfather wouldn’t stop and brought her back from the brink with a painful reminder that no, she did still have something that she cared about and he had that precious thing in the palm of his hand. And that is worse than I can imagine and in retrospect probably why I am very deliberately the way I am, because as much as I care I have also done everything in my power never to be relied upon because I am simply not sure if I could soldier on as Ruth has been horribly coerced to do and in this instance she has no way of applying rationally the knowledge in abstract that the power was never hers.
It’s so goddamn messed up. It’s why I hate living but joke constantly and use it to make snap judgements on nearly everyone I meet without even thinking by now the way Mike writes a list. If I rattle people with uncomfortable jokes about morbid topics I can always face the reality I’ll step over awful and unprepared-for boundaries but it lets me gauge the other 99%, the people who laugh at the wrong times, for the wrong reasons, to know what makes things funny and to understand–and the people who I need to keep knowing and to fight for without learning any more right away. Because logic doesn’t work, giving people the benefit of the doubt has never worked, and not being vulnerable to people that could be in need of my help someday is not a possibility I want to entertain except for reasons that can still make me feel compelled–like how hopeless an expression they make or how hollow a laugh it is when they laugh along with a joke of mine instead of being made uncomfortable or visibly nonplussed even as they laugh because they never needed to think about it before I opened my mouth and made it their problem in a casual conversation.
I’m so sorry that love and concern and openheartedness have all been used against you and worse in a cycle of you and those you love because someone else had a handle in on both. I’ve had the advantage of never having anyone to fight for except for pets and animals I knew with certainty from experience would be mistreated deliberately in my absence either way, and knew with equal certainty were being abused not to manipulate but to get a fucking rise out of me. I’m just getting back on my feet lightly enough with that spite in arms to do more than burn bridges with niceties. I’ve been skirting at the boundaries of keeping my head down at the tutoring job that’s the first thing I’m able to keep doing for work, in that I do I treat my boss nicely and indulge her grievances when they are legitimate. And I also take care I never lie to my students, or coddle them with untruths or easy cop-outs even if those would be easier or perhaps healthier, and if she tells them something flat-out wrong I have told them in her hearing that it is not the only opinion and emphatically not one that I share. I don’t know how long I will be able to put up with this job. I wish I could do more to help people than to try and pick my bullies and my fights for targets with brains that can be picked for weaknesses that might give others freedom or will actually prove I need more education.
Maybe being unable to consign myself to responsibility for anyone means I have a responsibility to use that freedom to help people, or maybe I’ll buckle again when the situation finally comes to life or death, or maybe I just like picking fights and being right and feeling good about it. But I hope I can at least fight if I’m going to be petty about fiction and analysis to argue things that will cause second thoughts or attack the ones attacking the Ruths or the mes of old still living in fear. I do not want anyone else to reach this point where they think they would give up everything and Ruth and you have had it taken there and back just to do it again.
and I do not care who I offend at the end of the day despite the panic I still feel at possibly hurting people when no, I
*understand exactly how little I am affecting them intentionally with my actions compared to how much they are unintentionally damaging with theirs. And I wish they WOULD stop coddling as well and be honest about the things I could change, because those things blowing up into other battles keeps me from understanding what I am doing to make them begin the echo chamber of oversensitized trauma that begins when someone so much as loudly speaks at me and I love that person.
*hugs* You matter. Please hang in there.
*hugs back* I’m doing better. I really am. Please, I hate to ask you to be safe when it feels so stupid and redundant and of course it’s not always in your hands, but–don’t give up and hang in there your self as hard as you can because you matter so much and we’re not more important than your health if it means putting the bad shit first or letting what you love become a detractor.
Does Billy think spite is an action? This concerns me on a few levels.
Okay! After that great comic yesterday, let’s see a comic of our cast reveling in the joy of a great success and a rare and well-earned moment of happi-
…… fuck.
……fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
we did not forget that bad things were happening to ruth but we had managed to avoid it
And that’s with “Sir” OFFSCREEN. Next time he appears the server will melt from internet rage.
Sorry Howard, no more Game of thrones for you. Back to Casterly Rock it is.
Heh, Walky’s shoes as a trophy is just so… petty in a hilarious way.
I didn’t even notice the shoes until you mentioned them. pffffffff
Taking the long, high road is a noble cause, Ruth.
It’s not as high or nearly as long a road as she thinks.
It’s long in Willis years.
How is it that Howard seems unaware that the grandfather he lives with is an abusive prick?
Like, if I were living with an abusive prick, I would jump when called. Why is he so casual about it?
he is probably aware, but he may not be making the mental connect between his actions and his grandfather’s actions. but also like if you’re just going to get punished anyways it doesn’t really matter if you spend a little more time on something you enjoy that allows you to pretend like it isn’t happening
and there may be only so much his grandfather is willing to do to him; if he’s done the worst he does already, howard may just be like “eh whatever” because it’s his normal
If suffering is inevitable, it can at least be postponed.
yup!!!!!!!
and if you can pretend it isn’t happening it’s almost like it isn’t happening except that it is but you can pretend that it isn’t
You could make the argument that Howie was genuinely not a target and that Ruth was the designated victim and that was that in the kid’s first appearance. As of his eerie monoprocessive obsession with finding something of no relevance over trying to even bother giving the illusion of acknowledgement of why he’s here? Going into random girls’ rooms to see if their television has Game of Thrones so he can sit alone in the dark and try to watch it, focus on trying, and then trying for any similar programming at a time it isn’t going to be scheduled?
Howard knows. Other people in Howard’s life don’t have to know, and I guarantee there are people you think are good or boring or simply haven’t thought about currently making life a living hell for someone that didn’t deserve it.
That is why abuse exists. It’s not obvious. It’s sneaky. It makes you ashamed of exposing the truth that could save you and having even that knowledge repressed within you by someone that is actually doing wrong and doesn’t mean to be caught. Abuse is everywhere because abuse has to be everyone, and it has to be everyone because abuse is anyone.
Sir has friends and people who speak fondly of him and probably countless people that think he’s a good old man that’s firm but loving of his grandkids. They think he’s an upstanding member of the community that gives back and gives the world to Ruth and Howard and is a saint for doing so when those poor kids were obviously suffering and now they owe the old man both gratitude and respect that just isn’t questioned.
Howard doesn’t even have to know, even though he damn well does. That’s why abuse happens even though it seems remarkable the way everyone can be seen to profess agreement that abuse is bad. No shit it’s bad. That’s why there are so many many many many many ways to hide it if you do it and we have fucking adopted many of those permissive ways as the default in our law system and societal mindset.
Oh, I think he’s aware. I think he’s treating this location as an oasis. If he waits a little longer, then he doesn’t have to be on edge for that small little bit of time. Like, “sir” is upset. Which means he’s going to be hurt tonight no matter what he does, so he just wants a little longer before he has to go back and that happens. Because it’s the only avenue he has to try and reclaim some power and agency back.
This is the first overt hint that we’ve got that Howard really, really doesn’t want to be around his grandfather.
I don’t know. He is watching something, no one likes to be torn away from watching something.
Yup, I’ve had kids who do stuff like this. Really linger at school as long as they can manage. Anything to limit the amount of time they have to spend at home.
Then they go to the public library and hang out there until close. See them a lot of nights.
I used to do this as a kid. Leave for school before anyone woke up, stay at school doing “homework” and then go to th library until closing. Every day. Weekends I would be at the library or “jogging” around town – or, later, working too many hours at my part-time job.
Everyone praised my dedication and work ethic. Nobody thought to ask why it was better than home even though I told them as much in so many words. :/
I’m going to post an unpopular opinion here that Ruth is really screwing her brother over. She’s trying to nobly sacrifice herself for him and be the protector of her brother but all she’s doing is enabling Sir. Which is, of course, exactly what he’s done. I wouldn’t be surprised if all of the behavior she’s shown where she’s infantalizing Howard and talking over him is stuff she learned from her grandfather. Stuff that prevents her from realizing Howard probably is every bit as sharp as she is and that they need to work together on extirpating themselves. The fact Ruth is only a few years older than him is also something to notice as it reflects an attitude that allows Sir Scumbag to use each of them to control the other. I wouldn’t be surprised if Howard isn’t controlled by worry for RUTH.
Exactly what he wants. Sorry.
I wouldn’t say ‘she is screwing her brother over’ so much as Sir has orchestrated a situation in which not doing something feels like the lesser of two evils as ‘doing something’ will most definitely lead to escalation and further abuse if it does not work. Sir is using her empathy and sympathy to trap her, and yes, it is possible he is doing it to Howard too.
You don’t have to make people incapable of making a move when you can destroy their will to instead as no one wants to be at fault for their loved one getting hurt (which would actually be Sir’s fault for choosing to hurt Howard but that wouldn’t stop him twisting it into being Ruth’s fault for knowing how he would react).
Stop blaming Ruth for doing exactly what she’s been programmed for years by an actual predator that WANTS us to blame her as much as he wants Ruth to blame herself, because once even we be made to agree that she is acting of her own volition it stops mattering almost depressingly fast whether there’s a reason she is acting that is simply forcing her feet down a line because unlike other people she does not have the ability to see other paths let alone choose to walk one. Even saying in words that Ruth herself is screwing her brother over for jumping on the ‘how high’ that is demanded in self-sacrifice is saying Ruth may as well just go ahead and put her hand down on a hot stove and then fully cognizant keep it there before her hand connects to the brain cells telling it for evolutionary purposes to yank that shit back where it’s not in the fire anymore.
She’s not ‘enabling’ him, literally anyone else that isn’t Ruth is more enabling of his behavior than she is because she has been broken down and unable to function otherwise. Chloe is enabling. Billie, if you want to look at her actions and inability to defend the idea of attacking, is enabling. Neither are to blame and blame Ruth is just shitty and bad language and thought reinforcement or else I wouldn’t take so much time to point it out. Sir is taking what he wants, that Ruth or anyone thinks she’s ‘giving’ the desired outcome to him is how he gets away with it.
I think Ruth is doing absolutely everything she can to help Howard but if she’d bother to treat him like an adult or at least her peer (again, 3 years) then she’d probably have this resolved in five minutes. Instead, she’s trying to act like Howard’s mother and that is doing neither of them any favors.
I think you’re being a pretentious idiot if you think there’s an easy way out of this.
What exactly is this solution you think would resolve this in five minutes?
Specifically, that they both seek to get out of this simultaneously. No one suffers for both. It won’t resolve the issues but it’s something they can work together against. I’m no stranger to abusive homes and the worst thing you can do is let your siblings get divided against you. 🙁 You need to be together if anything is going to be accomplished.
Okay, once again you’ve not actually described a course of action which would resolve the problem.
“Working together” sounds great but the critical question you haven’t answered is “to do what?”
Extirpate Howard and Ruth both from his financial control and physical one. It’s a long and nasty road, possibly involving legal difficulties. However, I think Ruth is trying to martyr herself for Howard but that’s not what Howard wants since he loves his sister and doesn’t want to see her hurt anymore than the next. As my wife says above my shoulder, watching a sibling stay in an abusive situation for you is….traumatizing.
Once again, that’s a goal, not a plan. Any action taken by Ruth get out from under Shit Grandpa’s thumb requires a plan to get Howard out as well, or else things will get worse for Howard.
And right now, she doesn’t have such a plan. She’d need to be able to support herself on her own, and Howard. Paying her own tuition would be off the table for the near future at least, much less any of Howard’s plans for the future.
Even with a solid plan to accomplish that, and the will to give that much up, any failed attempts will have consequences for both of them, and being abused is also traumatizing.
What she’s doing right now isn’t enabling. It’s surviving.
Yeah, it’d be great if she started working on a plan for both of them (preferably a new one, where both of them are alive), but if the best she can come up with right now is “make it through today”, it hardly seems like a bad place to start.
And it’s not that I’m saying the situation is hopeless. It isn’t. They can eventually get away from that asshole. But as you said, it’s going to be a long, nasty road, and right now Ruth’s primary concern is that both of them reach the end of it.
Yeah this. Nothing about an abusive situation is easy and quick fixes don’t exist. But abusers have a vested interest in the “it’s so easy to leave” myth because it creates the impression that if someone really doesn’t “want” to be abused, they’ll “just” leave. Here in reality land, it’s not that simple and very often victims are caught between a rock and a hard place, and end up deciding the devil they know is better than the one they don’t.
Ruth is not treating herself like and adult, she is BARELY and adult, and Howard is NOT an adult. Stop acting like they should be in a place to see what their options are when Ruth is clearly just scraping to survive and that takes all her vision and tunnels it just like her grandfather wants. Are there empirically better options? Yes. DO NOT PUT THIS ON RUTH THAT SHE CANNOT THINK OF THEM. She is sick and doing what she’s told is the very most she can even attempt right now, no one has ever let her believe she could act independently and have worth of her own and this is not Ruth’s fault that she can’t make our outsider-perspective decisions.
So basically you think Ruth and Howard have both fallen into a trap where they both want to leave are willing to accept the risk for themselves inherent in acting but not accept the risk to there poor sibling. Howards afraid to act because Sir will blame Ruth the responsible sibling, and Ruth is afraid to at act because Sir will take it out on Howard the helpless sibling.
Yes, it’s actually similar to the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Of the women imprisoned inside the Reverend’s bunker, she’s the only one who knows he’s full of shit about the world ending. HOWEVER, she doesn’t know for 100% certainty and while she’s willing to risk HER life in trying to escape the bunker, she’s not willing to risk the other women’s.
That might be the case – for one thing that sort of trap seems exactly like something Sir would build. It still doesn’t make any of this Ruth’s fault, and it still leaves a very real possibility that the best way out is to wait two years, and bail once Howard is an adult and Sir’s power over him is drastically reduced.
Look on the bright side Ruth, you’ll probably be making medical decisions for your grandfather in a few years.
Oh, Ruth. It’s so hard. It’s so goddamn hard and helpless and it’s so deeply sunk she can’t the actual reason the game is being played is not him winning, but her losing, and having to live with the future of losing being a constant inescapable thing where it’s not even possible to forfeit for Howard’s survival.
And even Billie, for all her actions speak more clearly as to what she actually means, is not saying anything helpful either in suggesting that a small step back in the right direction is the first one that Ruth could take on the path of ultimate resistance. Because if Ruth is gambling on Howard for her own sake and it’s for anger borne only out of the lack of concern for herself, that’s already been stripped of her here and a stupid suggestion that means obviously she’ll lose all real value in the fake chips she has to gamble with.
And the thing is, it’s not even a good strawman in Billie’s suggestion that you have to decide on, and that’s the truly frightening point. The point at which you no longer have spite, have already gambled on dying over Howard and been willing to lose, is a game where the even the chips you DO have to gamble are no longer more important than the game being Russian Roulette. Because she will soldier on now and she will face additional crushing despair from knowing she can’t even die and at some point she will stop even being able to fake it for his sake, and then she loses anyway. It’s not spite when fighting back is literally the only option because spite is for ‘how much’ and this is now a matter of when. And I hope it gets better.
I hope it gets better before Howard gets in that car and she begins this same cycle with one less bullet in the chamber. Because every minute he’s not there standing there in front of her, every minute Billie is not holding Ruth’s hand through this and I fear so much Ruth will find a good excuse to make her stop–even the threat of Howard is something that Sir is overestimating because you cannot live for something that isn’t there and when you’re depressed there’s nothing there but the horribleness in front of you.
I don’t want Ruth to be in the hospital twice and for no other reason than thinking she had to do something she was too disabled to be considered capable of.
*shakes dice* cmon papa needs a new skillet!
I wonder if Grandpa is basically holding him hostage or maybe he isn’t aware that Ruth obeys him because she is worried about her little brother…
I think Sir is very much aware, and that that’s why he brought Howard along.
Heh you nailed it, Billie said almost the exact same thing XD
I’m interested in more of Ruth’s history “big sistering” to keep Howie safe(r). The horrors she may have been through, then deciding that this kid (four years her junior) isn’t gonna suffer the same…
“Gamble and lose with your own pain“: Any protective instinct Ruth has will only be amplified after her foibles allowed Mary to go full bigot on Carla.
Even if Ruth has to leave spite, her favorite weapon, in the “Bat utility belt” for now.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/win/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/blackmailed/
Just two more years and Howard can move out, if Ruth can be halfway financially stable by then she might be able to cut him off.
Howard can get out now. It would require the authorities and work but staying with him two more years won’t help.
The authorities, work and an awful lot of luck and pushing an open confrontation with an abusive authority figure who apparently wields some level of financial or other influence to keep his control.
What happens when your authorities listen to him?
If Ruth is treating Howard like a little child, he’s acting like one.
It could be he’s retreated from, or resisted, maturing because he’s seen what Sir does to Ruth, but either way, he seems unaware that if he keeps Sir waiting, Sir will take it out on Ruth. If he were as eager to spare her abuse as she is to save him, he wouldn’t play the “5 more minutes” game.
I don’t want to judge him because we don’t know where his head is, and maybe he’s so traumatized or repressed this is all we see, but so far I see only an oblivious child, while Ruth is showing great heart and courage striving mightily to protect her loved one from the abuse she suffers.
Poor Ruth.
Far more likely to take it out on him, since he’ll be the one going back home with Clint. A few more minutes away may be worth it, at least in the moment.
Actually that’s a common abuser-speak trope: the effects of your ptsd justify your continued abuse
yeah this is really an unfunny joke
Willis, there is an invasive publicity. I don’t know if you can do anything about it. It is about a movie, it takes the screen and I can’t close it without opening 🙁
I thought Walky already established that he doesn’t need more shoes.