Pretty much every single scene where Sal rides her bike in this entire comic is going to be super depressing in hindsight, isn’t it?
Like, every single bit of good Sal did with that bike… helping Joyce save Becky, saving AG from the truck, helping AG save Joyce and Faz from Blaine… it all feels tainted now.
In matters of parents, it seens we will be never enough to them…
Wagstaff
It’s all the same basic mistake no matter which way you slice it — if you value their respect too much, you give them a hold over you, that they deserve come a cold day on Venus.
When the focus turns to YOUR own self-respect, there is often a well-needed, natural shift.
I understand this *so* so much. I have accomplishments that were made /far/ more *difficult* because of interference by certain people in my life. And on finally succeeding *despite* being Harding’d, these people had the temerity to act like they deserved to celebrate my success? Their actions do *nothing* to actually diminish my success, but they cast a shadow upon it, and when I look, the shadow on the surface is what I see.
I’m trying to erect a brighter light, but it is very hard and taking a long time.
Wagstaff
If someone gives you money to buy groceries, and you use them to cook one of the best meals in the world, did they cook the meal or did you?
Demoted Oblivious
Oh, logically I know the truth value of it. I’m just failing to download that to my reptile brain so that I am emotionally convinced of it.
Think of it this way. All those things she did with the bike, are all things her mother would have disapproved of. She used that bike to help the very people her mom would have thrown out of school.
And then is having trouble with freshman calculus? Possible, I suppose, but not very likely.
Yumi
Well, if they go by credits and she passed enough AP tests… like by my university’s standards I was never technically a freshman because of credits from AP tests, and there are a lot of APs that are unrelated to math.
Despite Rage
I’ve known people who were extremely intelligent and tested very well but still struggle with math. I’ve also known people that could blow the roof off a math test but failed at everything else. The intelligence split over math is weird.
I was going to say that Linda’s last words to Sal will be “You’re welcome.”, but then I realized that’s not right.
Her last words will be to ask/demand Sal apologize to and thank her.
So, yes… I think Linda is more delusional than Shadow Weaver.
I think I’m the only person that didn’t see Shadow Weaver’s “You’re Welcome” bit as intending to be one last moment of emotional manipulation, but rather exactly what Catra needed to hear at the moment.
After all, the previous thing she did was give Catra what she always wanted from her. Acknowledgement that she was proud of what she’d accomplished. But how do you properly respond to somebody who has abused you for your entire life finally doing something directly for your benefit that you appreciate? How do you work through those emotions?
No time to wait for her to figure it all out, so Shadow Weaver simply tells her. Say ‘Thank You’ for the one good thing they’ve done for you and then go do what you have to do. She knew better than anybody else that a handful of good deeds didn’t make her a good person, and she wasn’t expecting anybody else to think that either.
Huh, you mean they won’t rent you a parking spot that costs a fortune every semester and is so far across campus from where you live that you’ll wind up either walking everywhere or taking the bus anyway, but you need to do it because if you can’t make the drive home every now and again you’ll barely ever see your family?
Well, back when I was in college (admittedly over 45 years ago) I didn’t have a car, and that wasn’t that uncommon. Most people didn’t go home too often (winter break, spring break, and maybe thanksgiving – plus summers, as attending over summers was not common back then). To get home if you didn’t have a car, you either had to know someone with a car going where you were, or you used the ride board (which was an physical bulletin board that people posted when and where they were going – and riders paid for gas). Nowadays people may be less willing to get rides from people they don’t know (or offer rides to people they don’t know)…
It’s been over a quarter century since I went to school, but I seem to recall neither IU nor Purdue would do that to you… unless you filed for a hardship exemption to get a parking spot. They just want to ensure that freshmen all live in the dorms and don’t have cars on campus for some reason I never understood.
This is different from Purdue’s not offering test out credit for Programming I for CS majors.
That’s the only class in which they explicitly teach students how to use their online submission system, and they don’t want to have to tell the students who tested out of that class to ‘man submit’. Those two words are so hard to say that they’re unwilling to reduce their risk of needing to ask students, “Um, despite being one of the better schools for mathematics in the country, we are completely unfamiliar with the practice of throwing out outliers, and so you’ve *totally* ruined our curve with your grades with your 100%s on everything. Could you please just skip the last couple of projects and the final so we can pass a reasonable number of your classmates? You have enough points in the class that will still be one of the higher As.” That’s always so much easier to say, after all.
So it was a matter of principles, good on Sal for that then. Also I understand a little bit more about the whole “No one owns me” stick Sal has bugging her lately, she doesn’t want to owe anybody anything and personally I can relate to that. Sal choosing to give up her ride also further validates what I said before, she decides to do things on her own terms and that’s admirable in it’s own right.
But it’s also feeding this expectation she has where every act of kindness comes with strings attached. She expects there to be a quid pro quo to every exchange, whether it’s an immediate transaction or something that can be held over her head and cashed in later. That’s just depressing.
She doesn’t want to ‘owe’ anybody anything, and nobody just gives her anything outright, so she feels she has to ‘break even’ in the zero-sum game of life. Hence the gift cards in exchange for the bicycle.
Which, yeah, is messed up. But it’s pretty clear she thinks that way because she was effectively raised to believe it. Because her parents never do nice things for her without expecting a “return on their investment”. Even while they treated Walky completely differently – which is why she is so often instinctively bitter towards him, even though she’s starting to resist that tendency, because she understands now that it isn’t his fault.
Linda’s racism, at least in regards to Sal, is probably overstated. My read on her is that it’s mainly about personality and behavior. Linda has a very specific image in mind about how a daughter should behave which Sal has never matched, and Linda is too inflexible and too controlling to handle that in a healthy manner. Any racism on Linda’s part is secondary to the clash of personality here.
That said, she’s definitely racist, her treatment of Marcie makes that pretty clear.
Myth
You may be right, but you may be understating the influence of Linda’s racism in her treatment of Sal. Racism is a subconscious influence, not usually a conscious one; Linda probably thinks it’s just a clash of personality too, but realistically, if she is racist, that is going to influence her concept of how her daughter should look and behave. Sal and Linda’s relationship reminds me strongly of a friend’s relationship with her own mother. My friend and her mother are both mixed race, and my friend has afro-textured curly hair. Her mother is extremely controlling, especially about my friend’s appearance, and especially about her hair. It’s odd because her mother is the same race that she is, but she seems to feel very strongly that my friend wearing her hair naturally is nothing short of unforgivable. She obsesses over my friend’s hair even more than my friend’s weight, which is her second biggest source of criticism. Why does she think my friend has to straighten her hair? Probably for the same reason she thinks my friend has to be thin: it’s not something she actively thinks about, it’s the expression of an unconscious societally-ingrained prejudice. Her obsession with her daughter’s hair is racist in the same way her obsession with her daughter’s weight is sexist, it’s a bigger-picture thing.
Wagstaff
Well she stole from her own daughter while being prejudiced against young Marcie because she’d “wind up robbing convenience stores just to get mommy’s attention”.
Just the kind of behavior you’d expect from supremacist groups and individuals who judge others by standards they themselves fail to follow.
Thag Simmons
The hair stuff isn’t the root of the problem here, it’s a small part of the clash between who Sal is and what Linda wants her to be. If Sal naturally had hair like Walky I don’t think she’d have wound up with a better relationship with Linda
BBCC
It isn’t a small part though. Linda and Charles opinions on her hair are one of the things Sal was visibly carrying for 99% of the story pre-timeskip. We know her feelings on ‘how she’s supposed to look’ are complicated and go back to when she was at least 12. On another note, hair type would’ve been one of the first things Linda would be able to notice went against what she wanted – long before any personality would be evident.
Tgape
I don’t know your friend or her mother, so can’t explain them. But I’ve known mixed-race parents who struggle with the feeling that their kids not doing the things they did to blend in is going to end up horribly. The thing is, they specifically selected the neighborhood they lived in to be one that was more accepting, so their kids aren’t facing the racism that they got from both sides for no goddamned reason.
Note that by ‘struggle with’, I mean, ‘abuse their kids and then get called out on it by their neighbors and coworkers, over and over again’, rather than something more enlightened, unfortunately. It’s a sad world sometimes, even in the good parts. And by the good parts, I mean the enlightened microcosms that shift around over time as the bad parts try to stamp them out, so it’s not like I can list neighborhoods. By the time you moved there, they probably wouldn’t be the good parts anymore.
temperaryobsessor
I’m inclined to blame sexism more than racism, but Salk nows more about her situation than I do.
I think it’s been explored/explained pretty well that Sal’s mom has always favored Walky over Sal because he’s lighter? cuter? more compliant? Has “whiter, straighter hair”? Because she’s racist against her own child. Argh.
IIRC their skintone is pretty much the same, and their facial features aren’t that different. I think it started with Sal’s curly hair vs. Walky’s straight hair, which led to Linda treating Walky more favorably, which led to Sal giving less and less of a shit about what Linda thought (which is itself a more stereotypically black trait) while Walky was more compliant, which led to Linda being even more biased, and the whole thing just kinda snowballed.
C.T. Phipps
Correct me if I’m wrong but I think Willis said that Sal is meant to be noticeably darker. That Linda noticed this and unconsciously (consciously) began forwarding Walky toward being a doctor while dismissing Sal due to her friendship with Marcie (AN ILLEGAL’S CHILD!) and later robbery. Essentially writing off her child as a lost cause.
Lingo
I thought he said their skintone is the same. There were a bunch of posts by readers saying so when this originally came up. When she told Walky “you came out whiter” I don’t think she was speaking literally.
Leorale
Iirc Willis has said that their skin coloring is exactly the same, like with an eyedropper tool, but the “ethnic” hair is a thing.
I do not think Willis would write a series where the Black character is mistaken about her own lifelong experiences of racism. Let’s believe Sal.
In addition, Linda likes Walky’s instinctive “fawn” reactions, and doesn’t like Sal’s instinctive “fight” reactions. It does not occur to Linda that she is the threat causing these reactions, she thinks it’s just how her kids are (because one is a golden boy and one is a Black hoodlum). She is actually mistreating both her kids — directly with Sal, obviously, plus indirectly with Walky, as he gets a front-row seat to how conditional Linda’s love is, and what it looks like to lose mom’s support.
I would like to see how Charles feels about all this. He’s been kind of a passive houseplant, so far. (Kinda like Ethan’s dad, but less closeted.)
Leorale
I digressed, there. I meant to say, their identities as Black vs. “generically beige” are more complicated than their literal eyedropped skin colour. Which makes sense because, in real life, Blackness is not just the melanin, either.
Needfuldoer
Correct, their literal eyedropper skin coloring is exactly the same: #CEA87E in average light, and #A67558 in the shadows. (Outdoor winter shadows are #90806F.)
Eyedropper-ed from the most recent comic where they’re both indoors on the same panel:
Linda’s projecting the stereotypes of her own biases onto her children, but it doesn’t seem to sink in for her that she’s the one perpetuating the negativity feedback loop that “pRoVeS hEr RiGhT” (for want of better phrasing) about Sal.
Regalli
My agreement to all of this. I wonder about Charles, but given Sal doesn’t have any warm thoughts about him either, I don’t expect much. Still, maybe there’s hope for him much like there’s hope for Hank.
Sometimes I remember Saul exists, and feel a passing sadness. Gay or ace, that approach to sexuality just sounds miserable.
Varangian
Honestly? I think Charles has been well-represented as, well, complicit in his wife’s racism, if not actively aiding it. It’s not a flavor of racism that bothers him, essentially.
See, if you told Linda or Charles that Linda was doing anything racist, they’d be furious. How dare you? Her husband is Black! She has mixed-race children! She LOVES Charles, how can you throw these stupid tiny details in her face? And Charles would back her up, because what a ridiculous accusation. Linda just wants the best for their kids, rather than to “grow up on the streets”, or “acting like a thug”.
thejeff
Yeah, I agree. Charles is less active, so we’ve seen less, but we haven’t seen him push back at all, even when not in Linda’s presence.
BBCC
Well, after all, Sal looks so PRETTY with her hair long and straight…
Eh, that specific strip you linked seemed less like Mike actually detecting any hypocrisy on their part and more like an unironic “checkmate liberals” meme.
Also wow it’s weird to read that strip in light of what Walkyverse Mike ultimately became
At least, that’s Sal’s conclusion. But honestly, who knows? It could be random. It could be that Linda just likes boys better than girls, or that Sal cried a bit more as a baby, or that Walky was more compliant as a child (and still is today) or that she flipped a coin.
Leorale
Willis doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would write a story in which a Black character would be wrong about her lifelong experience of racism. Let’s believe Sal.
Also, perhaps you’re only doubting Sal here because she’s a fictional character. If you tend to come up with alternate possibilities in real life, where you’d argue that something isn’t really about racism as claimed, but it’s some other thing instead, you might be falling into the trap of Occam’s Big Paisley Tie. http://www.shakesville.com/2013/08/occams-big-paisley-tie.html?m=1
Wagstaff
Well no racist, at least these days, will outright admit it. But they don’t need to.
“If it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”
Tgape
It’s my impression that they still will, but only in their enclaves. Which more or less means that if you accuse someone of racism and they admit it, watch out, because that means they know that pretty much everyone around them except you will support them on that, and most of them have more clout than you. And by ‘support them’, I mean ‘go after you, your house, your family.’
Uly
Sure, she’s a closet bigot, but trying to figure out why a toxic parent would favor one child over another is generally a waste of time. It doesn’t matter what Linda’s motivations are. It’s enough to know that she favors Walky over Sal. That may be because she’s racist, or that may be incidental to her racism, or it may be that it’s only part of the reason.
But worrying about what makes toxic people tick is always a waste of time.
Wagstaff
I suppose you have a point there. Said time may very well be better spent on preventing those toxic mindsets from reproducing.
There’s no cure for toxicity as of yet, but why use that as an excuse not to develop a vaccine?
eh, whatever
In real life, figuring out what makes toxic people tick is very important: that’s the only way to predict what they’ll be toxic about next, and the only possible way to get them to understand anything.
Tgape
Also how they will attack people. It’s not all about what they *can* do. I’ve known toxic CEOs who never personally demoted or fired anyone due to their particular toxicity.
Sure, these things *definitely* happened under their watch, and it was *definitely* with their support. But they limited themselves to casting shade and supporting the toxicity of others, rather than getting their own hands dirty, because of their own fear of persecution – despite being a CEO of a local major employer and well respected by the other elites of their state, they were still ‘persecuted’.
Schpoonman
Sounds about white.
Wagstaff
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not say they were subject to “persecution”!
Persecution is about the systematic mistreatment of individuals and groups. It’s about cruel and unfair behavior. However, when an individual or group in a position of power is angrily criticized and perhaps boycotted for social, ethical, legal violations, that’s not “persecution”. That’s PROTEST.
Government officials jailed for denying the rights of groups they deem unworthy are not being persecuted for their beliefs or personality. Parents penalized for stealing from their children are not being persecuted for their beliefs. They’re being protested and appropriately punished for their on cruel and unfair behavior towards fellow human beings.
By repackaging protest and appropriate punishment as “persecution”, not only do manipulative groups and individuals get to commit all kinds of abuses guilt-free — they get to feel like they’re martyrs while doing so. Further counciling manipulative religious groups in particular are passages in their holy books that promise glorious rewards for being “persecuted” — after they die, of course.
temperaryobsessor
She didn’t say they were persecuted she said they were ‘persecuted’ personally I don’t use half quotes for that type of thing I use full quotes but to each their own.
Its basically the typing equivelent of air quotes or the double blinking peace sign, or an eyeroll.
Yotomoe
That’s sorta the thing with narratives really. In real life I’ve known plenty of black people conflate the way they’ve been treated to racism. But then when the situation is seen or observed they were also being really unreasonable? Where like even if racism played a part they definitely weren’t blameless. People have a habit of latching on to their “otherisms” when trying to parse why they’re treated badly. I mean why else would somebody be treating me badly other than that they have a biased hatred towards me and people like me. Which yknow credit where credit is due that happens all the goddamn time. And since we’ve recieved word of god that that is probably what’s happening we can’t fight that. You could just as easily argue Linda has some deep rooted sexism since that’s another way Sal and Walky differ. Or even that there’s no reason and Linda just can’t compartmentalise her love and just naturally shows favoritism. If I was Sal’s friend in real life and she told me me her brother is the favorite because he’s less black (well for one if he put off because the whole idea of what makes someone more or less black is a huge thing for me, as I am a black man who feel estranged from the black community and is kinda sensitive to the black on black gatekeeping our community can sometimes have) I would also ask what makes her feel that way. Like not that I don’t believe she’s being neglected or abused but moreso that understanding her bias is paramount to confronting it. That and it could just be multiple things. Nobody’s restricted to just being one form of bigot.
Demoted Oblivious
^ This ^. I fully read Linda as more sexist than racist, but also very, very much both, *and* classist. (total aside Yoto, with apologies for being way out of line, but curious: do you think ‘Black on Black’ gatekeeping might also be defensive classism?)
Back to Linda though, she seems like, it’s ok that her husband is black, because he’s a man. Her son is too, /and/ he has whiter attributes. But Sal came out blacker and *female*. Then had the gaul to make friends with poor trash? Doesn’t Sal get how hard Linda has had to work on her image and station?
So it’s like, “Jesus Christ lady! Just pick a bigotry and stay in your lane. Do you have to hog them all?”
Can you imagine if Sal *had* been into Marcie? ?
Yotomoe
Colorism is absolutely just a gatekeeping way of separating yourself from others in your community. It often gets into classism cuz every ism tends to be classism at its core. Darks skinned black people are portrayed by media and other black people as aggressive, rude and thuggish while light skinned or mixed black people are often seen as sell-outs and uncle toms. Mixed children tend to get the worst of it since they have to deal with both racists AND black people who feel they get preferential treatment. Darker skinned people have absolutely disavowed and criticized light skinned people for appearing in film and tv or being more in line with what is seen as conventional beauty in the US. Which is pretty unfair if you ask me. So I’m that regard I kinda am not a fan of Walky being guilted but for being less black (whatever that means in this context). It honestly feels like that would just be Sal being just as bigoted as Linda for the opposite reasons. As is the fate of any light skinned black people who aren’t black enough to “matter”
BBCC
“Can you imagine if Sal *had* been into Marcie? ?”
Nope, because I don’t need an aneurysm born of rage. Or a coronary for that matter.
temperaryobsessor
I think Linda is the not racist (TM) type of racist.
So she wouldn’t refuse to marry him because he’s black she would just find him not marriage material in a way she can’t put her finger on, or a specific reason which she would just happen not to notice in a white man, until she for whatever reason changed her mind.
Going off of a one off comment he proberly started off as fun but not marriage material but became her project.
I think she’s sexist not in a women are inherently inferior to men way but in a double standard way.
Where stuff like conquoring the slide or standing up for a friend are more likely to be celebrated or at least corrected with understanding when a boy is doing it than a girl.
364 thoughts on “Ammunition”
RassilonTDavros
Well, I don’t know what I expected*… but this is worse.
beyond it being linda’s fault in some way, obvs
RassilonTDavros
Pretty much every single scene where Sal rides her bike in this entire comic is going to be super depressing in hindsight, isn’t it?
Like, every single bit of good Sal did with that bike… helping Joyce save Becky, saving AG from the truck, helping AG save Joyce and Faz from Blaine… it all feels tainted now.
(it’s also giving me major IW!Linda vibes)
Amos Batista
In matters of parents, it seens we will be never enough to them…
Wagstaff
It’s all the same basic mistake no matter which way you slice it — if you value their respect too much, you give them a hold over you, that they deserve come a cold day on Venus.
When the focus turns to YOUR own self-respect, there is often a well-needed, natural shift.
Demoted Oblivious
I understand this *so* so much. I have accomplishments that were made /far/ more *difficult* because of interference by certain people in my life. And on finally succeeding *despite* being Harding’d, these people had the temerity to act like they deserved to celebrate my success? Their actions do *nothing* to actually diminish my success, but they cast a shadow upon it, and when I look, the shadow on the surface is what I see.
I’m trying to erect a brighter light, but it is very hard and taking a long time.
Wagstaff
If someone gives you money to buy groceries, and you use them to cook one of the best meals in the world, did they cook the meal or did you?
Demoted Oblivious
Oh, logically I know the truth value of it. I’m just failing to download that to my reptile brain so that I am emotionally convinced of it.
Greylurker
Think of it this way. All those things she did with the bike, are all things her mother would have disapproved of. She used that bike to help the very people her mom would have thrown out of school.
Tgape
*I* expected that she was secretly an amazing student. Like, unbeknownst to her peers, she tested out of two semesters’ worth of classes.
Clif
And then is having trouble with freshman calculus? Possible, I suppose, but not very likely.
Yumi
Well, if they go by credits and she passed enough AP tests… like by my university’s standards I was never technically a freshman because of credits from AP tests, and there are a lot of APs that are unrelated to math.
Despite Rage
I’ve known people who were extremely intelligent and tested very well but still struggle with math. I’ve also known people that could blow the roof off a math test but failed at everything else. The intelligence split over math is weird.
Suet
*huffs on a toy pipe* Yep, that’s how that went.
Would it really be reasonable to go around IU in a motorbike?
Ana Chronistic
classic Linda shit
too bad I bet even if she dies of 100% natural causes with a perfect alibi for Sal, somehow there’ll be something still hanging over Sal’s head
Buli-buli
I was going to say that Linda’s last words to Sal will be “You’re welcome.”, but then I realized that’s not right.
Her last words will be to ask/demand Sal apologize to and thank her.
So, yes… I think Linda is more delusional than Shadow Weaver.
Mr D phone posting
….is your Gravatar meant to be Kaiserneko?
Thag Simmons
I saw it as the TF2 Scout
Psi Baka Onna
It’s from paranatural, a webcomic I highly recomend!
Lumino
I think I’m the only person that didn’t see Shadow Weaver’s “You’re Welcome” bit as intending to be one last moment of emotional manipulation, but rather exactly what Catra needed to hear at the moment.
After all, the previous thing she did was give Catra what she always wanted from her. Acknowledgement that she was proud of what she’d accomplished. But how do you properly respond to somebody who has abused you for your entire life finally doing something directly for your benefit that you appreciate? How do you work through those emotions?
No time to wait for her to figure it all out, so Shadow Weaver simply tells her. Say ‘Thank You’ for the one good thing they’ve done for you and then go do what you have to do. She knew better than anybody else that a handful of good deeds didn’t make her a good person, and she wasn’t expecting anybody else to think that either.
temperaryobsessor
Somehow I don’t think Linda would have changed her name from Light Spinner.
Doctor_Who
Huh, you mean they won’t rent you a parking spot that costs a fortune every semester and is so far across campus from where you live that you’ll wind up either walking everywhere or taking the bus anyway, but you need to do it because if you can’t make the drive home every now and again you’ll barely ever see your family?
Yes, I’m bitter, thanks for asking.
Otl1973
Well, back when I was in college (admittedly over 45 years ago) I didn’t have a car, and that wasn’t that uncommon. Most people didn’t go home too often (winter break, spring break, and maybe thanksgiving – plus summers, as attending over summers was not common back then). To get home if you didn’t have a car, you either had to know someone with a car going where you were, or you used the ride board (which was an physical bulletin board that people posted when and where they were going – and riders paid for gas). Nowadays people may be less willing to get rides from people they don’t know (or offer rides to people they don’t know)…
Tgape
It’s been over a quarter century since I went to school, but I seem to recall neither IU nor Purdue would do that to you… unless you filed for a hardship exemption to get a parking spot. They just want to ensure that freshmen all live in the dorms and don’t have cars on campus for some reason I never understood.
This is different from Purdue’s not offering test out credit for Programming I for CS majors.
That’s the only class in which they explicitly teach students how to use their online submission system, and they don’t want to have to tell the students who tested out of that class to ‘man submit’. Those two words are so hard to say that they’re unwilling to reduce their risk of needing to ask students, “Um, despite being one of the better schools for mathematics in the country, we are completely unfamiliar with the practice of throwing out outliers, and so you’ve *totally* ruined our curve with your grades with your 100%s on everything. Could you please just skip the last couple of projects and the final so we can pass a reasonable number of your classmates? You have enough points in the class that will still be one of the higher As.” That’s always so much easier to say, after all.
Yumi
Hm. So, not a Ghost Rider situation, then…
newlland(Henryvolt)
So it was a matter of principles, good on Sal for that then. Also I understand a little bit more about the whole “No one owns me” stick Sal has bugging her lately, she doesn’t want to owe anybody anything and personally I can relate to that. Sal choosing to give up her ride also further validates what I said before, she decides to do things on her own terms and that’s admirable in it’s own right.
Needfuldoer
But it’s also feeding this expectation she has where every act of kindness comes with strings attached. She expects there to be a quid pro quo to every exchange, whether it’s an immediate transaction or something that can be held over her head and cashed in later. That’s just depressing.
She doesn’t want to ‘owe’ anybody anything, and nobody just gives her anything outright, so she feels she has to ‘break even’ in the zero-sum game of life. Hence the gift cards in exchange for the bicycle.
Taellosse
Which, yeah, is messed up. But it’s pretty clear she thinks that way because she was effectively raised to believe it. Because her parents never do nice things for her without expecting a “return on their investment”. Even while they treated Walky completely differently – which is why she is so often instinctively bitter towards him, even though she’s starting to resist that tendency, because she understands now that it isn’t his fault.
Sirksome
Well I like my idea that her bike was actually a transformer a lot better. But of course it’s just Linda being a jerk. Bleh.
Doctor_Who
I mean, this isn’t totally incompatible with her bike being a Transformer. You can hold out hope.
BBCC
This will payoff when Sal’s bike escapes and blows up Linda. 😀
Keulen
It can definitely be both.
plasticwrap
Any theories why Sal and her mom can never get along? I mean, she’s not a delinquent, not really, so…
Doctor_Who
Likely racial issues aside, Linda is a very controlling person, and Sal is a person who is very against being controlled.
Plain Marie
Very succinctly said!
Thag Simmons
Linda’s racism, at least in regards to Sal, is probably overstated. My read on her is that it’s mainly about personality and behavior. Linda has a very specific image in mind about how a daughter should behave which Sal has never matched, and Linda is too inflexible and too controlling to handle that in a healthy manner. Any racism on Linda’s part is secondary to the clash of personality here.
That said, she’s definitely racist, her treatment of Marcie makes that pretty clear.
Myth
You may be right, but you may be understating the influence of Linda’s racism in her treatment of Sal. Racism is a subconscious influence, not usually a conscious one; Linda probably thinks it’s just a clash of personality too, but realistically, if she is racist, that is going to influence her concept of how her daughter should look and behave. Sal and Linda’s relationship reminds me strongly of a friend’s relationship with her own mother. My friend and her mother are both mixed race, and my friend has afro-textured curly hair. Her mother is extremely controlling, especially about my friend’s appearance, and especially about her hair. It’s odd because her mother is the same race that she is, but she seems to feel very strongly that my friend wearing her hair naturally is nothing short of unforgivable. She obsesses over my friend’s hair even more than my friend’s weight, which is her second biggest source of criticism. Why does she think my friend has to straighten her hair? Probably for the same reason she thinks my friend has to be thin: it’s not something she actively thinks about, it’s the expression of an unconscious societally-ingrained prejudice. Her obsession with her daughter’s hair is racist in the same way her obsession with her daughter’s weight is sexist, it’s a bigger-picture thing.
Wagstaff
Well she stole from her own daughter while being prejudiced against young Marcie because she’d “wind up robbing convenience stores just to get mommy’s attention”.
Just the kind of behavior you’d expect from supremacist groups and individuals who judge others by standards they themselves fail to follow.
Thag Simmons
The hair stuff isn’t the root of the problem here, it’s a small part of the clash between who Sal is and what Linda wants her to be. If Sal naturally had hair like Walky I don’t think she’d have wound up with a better relationship with Linda
BBCC
It isn’t a small part though. Linda and Charles opinions on her hair are one of the things Sal was visibly carrying for 99% of the story pre-timeskip. We know her feelings on ‘how she’s supposed to look’ are complicated and go back to when she was at least 12. On another note, hair type would’ve been one of the first things Linda would be able to notice went against what she wanted – long before any personality would be evident.
Tgape
I don’t know your friend or her mother, so can’t explain them. But I’ve known mixed-race parents who struggle with the feeling that their kids not doing the things they did to blend in is going to end up horribly. The thing is, they specifically selected the neighborhood they lived in to be one that was more accepting, so their kids aren’t facing the racism that they got from both sides for no goddamned reason.
Note that by ‘struggle with’, I mean, ‘abuse their kids and then get called out on it by their neighbors and coworkers, over and over again’, rather than something more enlightened, unfortunately. It’s a sad world sometimes, even in the good parts. And by the good parts, I mean the enlightened microcosms that shift around over time as the bad parts try to stamp them out, so it’s not like I can list neighborhoods. By the time you moved there, they probably wouldn’t be the good parts anymore.
temperaryobsessor
I’m inclined to blame sexism more than racism, but Salk nows more about her situation than I do.
Proxiehunter
She didn’t get her brothers white people hair.
Wagstaff
I mean isn’t it pretty clear? Linda’s a racist who feels entitled to steal from her children, and Sal disagrees.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Plain Marie
I think it’s been explored/explained pretty well that Sal’s mom has always favored Walky over Sal because he’s lighter? cuter? more compliant? Has “whiter, straighter hair”? Because she’s racist against her own child. Argh.
RassilonTDavros
IIRC their skintone is pretty much the same, and their facial features aren’t that different. I think it started with Sal’s curly hair vs. Walky’s straight hair, which led to Linda treating Walky more favorably, which led to Sal giving less and less of a shit about what Linda thought (which is itself a more stereotypically black trait) while Walky was more compliant, which led to Linda being even more biased, and the whole thing just kinda snowballed.
C.T. Phipps
Correct me if I’m wrong but I think Willis said that Sal is meant to be noticeably darker. That Linda noticed this and unconsciously (consciously) began forwarding Walky toward being a doctor while dismissing Sal due to her friendship with Marcie (AN ILLEGAL’S CHILD!) and later robbery. Essentially writing off her child as a lost cause.
Lingo
I thought he said their skintone is the same. There were a bunch of posts by readers saying so when this originally came up. When she told Walky “you came out whiter” I don’t think she was speaking literally.
Leorale
Iirc Willis has said that their skin coloring is exactly the same, like with an eyedropper tool, but the “ethnic” hair is a thing.
I do not think Willis would write a series where the Black character is mistaken about her own lifelong experiences of racism. Let’s believe Sal.
In addition, Linda likes Walky’s instinctive “fawn” reactions, and doesn’t like Sal’s instinctive “fight” reactions. It does not occur to Linda that she is the threat causing these reactions, she thinks it’s just how her kids are (because one is a golden boy and one is a Black hoodlum). She is actually mistreating both her kids — directly with Sal, obviously, plus indirectly with Walky, as he gets a front-row seat to how conditional Linda’s love is, and what it looks like to lose mom’s support.
I would like to see how Charles feels about all this. He’s been kind of a passive houseplant, so far. (Kinda like Ethan’s dad, but less closeted.)
Leorale
I digressed, there. I meant to say, their identities as Black vs. “generically beige” are more complicated than their literal eyedropped skin colour. Which makes sense because, in real life, Blackness is not just the melanin, either.
Needfuldoer
Correct, their literal eyedropper skin coloring is exactly the same: #CEA87E in average light, and #A67558 in the shadows. (Outdoor winter shadows are #90806F.)
Eyedropper-ed from the most recent comic where they’re both indoors on the same panel:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/bigmanlymachoman/
Linda’s projecting the stereotypes of her own biases onto her children, but it doesn’t seem to sink in for her that she’s the one perpetuating the negativity feedback loop that “pRoVeS hEr RiGhT” (for want of better phrasing) about Sal.
Regalli
My agreement to all of this. I wonder about Charles, but given Sal doesn’t have any warm thoughts about him either, I don’t expect much. Still, maybe there’s hope for him much like there’s hope for Hank.
Sometimes I remember Saul exists, and feel a passing sadness. Gay or ace, that approach to sexuality just sounds miserable.
Varangian
Honestly? I think Charles has been well-represented as, well, complicit in his wife’s racism, if not actively aiding it. It’s not a flavor of racism that bothers him, essentially.
See, if you told Linda or Charles that Linda was doing anything racist, they’d be furious. How dare you? Her husband is Black! She has mixed-race children! She LOVES Charles, how can you throw these stupid tiny details in her face? And Charles would back her up, because what a ridiculous accusation. Linda just wants the best for their kids, rather than to “grow up on the streets”, or “acting like a thug”.
thejeff
Yeah, I agree. Charles is less active, so we’ve seen less, but we haven’t seen him push back at all, even when not in Linda’s presence.
BBCC
Well, after all, Sal looks so PRETTY with her hair long and straight…
Clif
Hypocrisy is a thing.
You know who was particularly good at detecting hypocrisy? Mike was. http://www.itswalky.com/comic/hypocrites/
RassilonTDavros
@Clif
Eh, that specific strip you linked seemed less like Mike actually detecting any hypocrisy on their part and more like an unironic “checkmate liberals” meme.
Also wow it’s weird to read that strip in light of what Walkyverse Mike ultimately became
Mydnyt
I think it’s been alluded to that her skin is slightly darker then walky’s and therefor the “less white” child is worth less
Uly
At least, that’s Sal’s conclusion. But honestly, who knows? It could be random. It could be that Linda just likes boys better than girls, or that Sal cried a bit more as a baby, or that Walky was more compliant as a child (and still is today) or that she flipped a coin.
Leorale
Willis doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would write a story in which a Black character would be wrong about her lifelong experience of racism. Let’s believe Sal.
Also, perhaps you’re only doubting Sal here because she’s a fictional character. If you tend to come up with alternate possibilities in real life, where you’d argue that something isn’t really about racism as claimed, but it’s some other thing instead, you might be falling into the trap of Occam’s Big Paisley Tie. http://www.shakesville.com/2013/08/occams-big-paisley-tie.html?m=1
Wagstaff
Well no racist, at least these days, will outright admit it. But they don’t need to.
“If it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”
Tgape
It’s my impression that they still will, but only in their enclaves. Which more or less means that if you accuse someone of racism and they admit it, watch out, because that means they know that pretty much everyone around them except you will support them on that, and most of them have more clout than you. And by ‘support them’, I mean ‘go after you, your house, your family.’
Uly
Sure, she’s a closet bigot, but trying to figure out why a toxic parent would favor one child over another is generally a waste of time. It doesn’t matter what Linda’s motivations are. It’s enough to know that she favors Walky over Sal. That may be because she’s racist, or that may be incidental to her racism, or it may be that it’s only part of the reason.
But worrying about what makes toxic people tick is always a waste of time.
Wagstaff
I suppose you have a point there. Said time may very well be better spent on preventing those toxic mindsets from reproducing.
There’s no cure for toxicity as of yet, but why use that as an excuse not to develop a vaccine?
eh, whatever
In real life, figuring out what makes toxic people tick is very important: that’s the only way to predict what they’ll be toxic about next, and the only possible way to get them to understand anything.
Tgape
Also how they will attack people. It’s not all about what they *can* do. I’ve known toxic CEOs who never personally demoted or fired anyone due to their particular toxicity.
Sure, these things *definitely* happened under their watch, and it was *definitely* with their support. But they limited themselves to casting shade and supporting the toxicity of others, rather than getting their own hands dirty, because of their own fear of persecution – despite being a CEO of a local major employer and well respected by the other elites of their state, they were still ‘persecuted’.
Schpoonman
Sounds about white.
Wagstaff
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not say they were subject to “persecution”!
Persecution is about the systematic mistreatment of individuals and groups. It’s about cruel and unfair behavior. However, when an individual or group in a position of power is angrily criticized and perhaps boycotted for social, ethical, legal violations, that’s not “persecution”. That’s PROTEST.
Government officials jailed for denying the rights of groups they deem unworthy are not being persecuted for their beliefs or personality. Parents penalized for stealing from their children are not being persecuted for their beliefs. They’re being protested and appropriately punished for their on cruel and unfair behavior towards fellow human beings.
By repackaging protest and appropriate punishment as “persecution”, not only do manipulative groups and individuals get to commit all kinds of abuses guilt-free — they get to feel like they’re martyrs while doing so. Further counciling manipulative religious groups in particular are passages in their holy books that promise glorious rewards for being “persecuted” — after they die, of course.
temperaryobsessor
She didn’t say they were persecuted she said they were ‘persecuted’ personally I don’t use half quotes for that type of thing I use full quotes but to each their own.
Its basically the typing equivelent of air quotes or the double blinking peace sign, or an eyeroll.
Yotomoe
That’s sorta the thing with narratives really. In real life I’ve known plenty of black people conflate the way they’ve been treated to racism. But then when the situation is seen or observed they were also being really unreasonable? Where like even if racism played a part they definitely weren’t blameless. People have a habit of latching on to their “otherisms” when trying to parse why they’re treated badly. I mean why else would somebody be treating me badly other than that they have a biased hatred towards me and people like me. Which yknow credit where credit is due that happens all the goddamn time. And since we’ve recieved word of god that that is probably what’s happening we can’t fight that. You could just as easily argue Linda has some deep rooted sexism since that’s another way Sal and Walky differ. Or even that there’s no reason and Linda just can’t compartmentalise her love and just naturally shows favoritism. If I was Sal’s friend in real life and she told me me her brother is the favorite because he’s less black (well for one if he put off because the whole idea of what makes someone more or less black is a huge thing for me, as I am a black man who feel estranged from the black community and is kinda sensitive to the black on black gatekeeping our community can sometimes have) I would also ask what makes her feel that way. Like not that I don’t believe she’s being neglected or abused but moreso that understanding her bias is paramount to confronting it. That and it could just be multiple things. Nobody’s restricted to just being one form of bigot.
Demoted Oblivious
^ This ^. I fully read Linda as more sexist than racist, but also very, very much both, *and* classist. (total aside Yoto, with apologies for being way out of line, but curious: do you think ‘Black on Black’ gatekeeping might also be defensive classism?)
Back to Linda though, she seems like, it’s ok that her husband is black, because he’s a man. Her son is too, /and/ he has whiter attributes. But Sal came out blacker and *female*. Then had the gaul to make friends with poor trash? Doesn’t Sal get how hard Linda has had to work on her image and station?
So it’s like, “Jesus Christ lady! Just pick a bigotry and stay in your lane. Do you have to hog them all?”
Can you imagine if Sal *had* been into Marcie? ?
Yotomoe
Colorism is absolutely just a gatekeeping way of separating yourself from others in your community. It often gets into classism cuz every ism tends to be classism at its core. Darks skinned black people are portrayed by media and other black people as aggressive, rude and thuggish while light skinned or mixed black people are often seen as sell-outs and uncle toms. Mixed children tend to get the worst of it since they have to deal with both racists AND black people who feel they get preferential treatment. Darker skinned people have absolutely disavowed and criticized light skinned people for appearing in film and tv or being more in line with what is seen as conventional beauty in the US. Which is pretty unfair if you ask me. So I’m that regard I kinda am not a fan of Walky being guilted but for being less black (whatever that means in this context). It honestly feels like that would just be Sal being just as bigoted as Linda for the opposite reasons. As is the fate of any light skinned black people who aren’t black enough to “matter”
BBCC
“Can you imagine if Sal *had* been into Marcie? ?”
Nope, because I don’t need an aneurysm born of rage. Or a coronary for that matter.
temperaryobsessor
I think Linda is the not racist (TM) type of racist.
So she wouldn’t refuse to marry him because he’s black she would just find him not marriage material in a way she can’t put her finger on, or a specific reason which she would just happen not to notice in a white man, until she for whatever reason changed her mind.
Going off of a one off comment he proberly started off as fun but not marriage material but became her project.
I think she’s sexist not in a women are inherently inferior to men way but in a double standard way.
Where stuff like conquoring the slide or standing up for a friend are more likely to be celebrated or at least corrected with understanding when a boy is doing it than a girl.
Thag Simmons