We know at least one of those people in the windows (Dorothy) did indeed see the fight take place; she’s not tagged today though, which may imply that she ran off to get an authority figure involved as others have speculated.
I was under the impression that Dorothy was watching from her dorm, not the hall lobby.
Clif
In any case, I believe that the silhouettes in the window in panel 2 are in fact plants.
King Daniel
We saw a food tray behind Dorothy in her panel, sitting on what looked like the type of tables we’ve previously seen in the dining hall.
Kris
I’m not quite convinced yet if we know those silhouettes are witnesses. They’ve been in the background this entire time. Unless we see reactions and faces I’m gonna assume it’s open season. Dorothy, Ethan, and Danny are the only absolutes. We can’t even confirm Marcie’s seen anything yet.
“Everyone else” is Danny and Ethan, who are both pretty reserved people. Malaya isn’t. She likely would have shouted (or made some kind of disparaging comment deliberately loud enough for Sal to hear).
Sam
Marcie and Malaya have likely seen nothing, they were going off in the opposite direction of where this took place.
This is a very serious comic, but if you need some levity you can just imagine that in the last panel Amber is actually saying “HOOOOO” like Lion-O the Thundercat.
I think you meant revelationary. Though I also wouldn’t mind if Sal and Amber became revolutionaries and started an uprising against an oppressive regime.
Please please let this end up with both of them getting to a better space about this. They need therapy and hugs from friends. (I’m sentimental garbage on Thanksgiving but I really just wanna see ALL these kids get hugs, tbh,)
Heck, if Sal just hugged her, dropped the iron was of cool and just said “I’m sorry” over and over again.
That might cause amber to reciprocate and actually burst into tears instead of unbridled rage.
Huh. . . I . . .I am glad that this is how it is ending. Sal has just realized something internally, Amber has her internal vindication and pride, no one is seriously hurt, and there are no security guards racing out to grab them.
If this is the end of it then I will be incredibly happy. But there is always a possibility of something going wrong. Willis showed Dorothy for a reason, and with her respect for Authority I can see her going to grab an RA or security in an attempt to help stop this before it goes any further. I hope that I may be overthinking things but we shall see.
Mh. This could easily be another traumatic experience for Amber. Not being able to breathe, slowly suffocating, not being sure if she survives this. I think that would count as being seriously hurt.
I could be wrong, but I think she’s going to take that earlier triumph and work with that instead. And even that at least as much as the internal “faced my demon and didn’t lost control” kind of victory as the more temporary “could beat her in a fight” kind.
As Cerberus said a couple days ago, they were both shadow-boxing. They both won.
ok I don’t want to say “most”, but a lot of bullies realize that they have gone too far and might have seriously hurt another person. This is probably a combination of basic empathy and fear of getting caught.
The fact that Leland is LAUGHING as the runs away and steals Marcie’s skateboard means he has no empathy, no decency towards the person he nearly murdered. I shudder, honestly
I’d seriously want to understand the psychology behind the typical bully… I’ve been bullied in my school days and I honestly can’t make myself think that bullies might’ve any empathy or decency. If you have these, you don’t start bullying someone, period…
I was bullied as a kid and I saw some bullies show remorse and regret, so some bullies DO realize they were acting shitty. Usually those are the “caved in to peer pressured and bullied the strange kid along with the rest of the class” types of bullies. The instigators not so much
Generally, it’s not that bullies don’t have empathy, it’s just that they don’t think through the consequences of their actions. Many are hurting or feel powerless in their own lives. Bullying allows them to assert control over another person. It makes them feel powerful, which is what most bullies are lacking outside of this dynamic. It doesn’t help that they often get praise from peers for showing “strength.” They are so focused on making themselves feel powerful that they don’t really think about what they are doing to the other person.
Actual children bullies have plenty of chances to learn empathy- it’s something everyone learns at one pace or another. Usually when you don’t learn that particular lesson it’s because adults are shielding you from it (or actively harming you if you show signs of it), and many times that doesn’t change, but sometimes it does.
CJ
You know that “someone who has no empathy” is the definition of psychopath?
Zee
Most children don’t grasp the concept of empathy. Hence why everyone was bullied as a kid
MatthewTheLucky
There is a lot to unpack in that statement.
CJ
Even most toddlers will smile if someone smiles at them and get sad, when people around them are sad. Until they learn to become angry when someone cries from their parents or whoever is in loco parentis.
That children need to learn about consequences (i.e. that someone will hurt if you hit them) is a different thing.
Huh, ok, several sources say that’s not quite so, as mirroring others feelings in very young children has something to do with not distinguishing between self and other and empathy needs that distinction. So they lean it somewhere between 2 and 4 years old.
Bullying is a behavior where the bullies ignore empathy with the victim (by defining them as ‘not people’ in some way or other) and gain positive feelings be being in control of th situation or th positive feedback from their also bullying peers or adults who define the victims as ‘not people (like us)’, too.
It’s a situation where empathy is suppressed and not presen.
A psychopath is always unable to be empathetic.
BBCC
Not quite. Very specific people tend to be more likely to be bullied – kids of colour, LGBT kids, disabled kids (especially if they’re autistic), fat kids, poor kids, etc. Kids who aren’t seen as ‘normal’, basically. Which feeds into why it’s so easy to define them as ‘not people’. For instance, while one of my so called best friends as a kid was always a liar and always very toxic, it wasn’t until I started having to sit out of gym because of my heart condition things really ramped up.
That said, psychopathy is no longer considered a real thing and what once may have been called psychopathy does have a lack of cognitive empathy (being able to feel other’s feelings as a sort of echo) but does not preclude the ability to like others and wanting them to be happy.
CJ
As medical concepts evolve, they change. What is the current term for what was previously defined as psychopathy? Did this lead to a higher number on people diagnosed with it? Has the actual definition changed?
Has anyone come up with a therapy that actually helps them to learn about empathy or at least learn something else that has the same result (i.e. being able to discard ideas of how to achieve an aim where persons with empathy would discard them because of empathy even if empathy is a foreign concept?)
That said, if you want to find a reason to not see someone as human, you will find a reason, even if it is the wrong hair-style, (not) painted nails, or the way they react to loud noise. Though rigid social concepts provide people with ammunition and more back-up on this ideas, in the end anything can be used that way.
Regalli
It’s kind of been considered with a variety of things (including antisocial behavioral disorder or whatever it’s called currently – I don’t exactly read the DSM-5 for fun,) and kind of considered ‘okay we may have been pathologizing and demonizing something that isn’t a given marker for Trouble, actually.’ There are studies showing that, say, surgeons tend to score low on the empathy scales – more empathic people would have much more trouble functioning in that environment because of the high stress and stakes. Now whether that’s natural low empathy or their brains shutting it off as a protective measure is another question entirely, but *shrug*. Not a Psych person.
There’s also a degree of low empathy (or perceived) in play with autistic people, but we vary a lot – some of us are hyperempathic, taking other people’s emotions on as our own, and others can’t really place ourselves in another’s shoes and take empathy on like that but do have really high SYMPATHY for others, and recognizing all of it requires a level of emotional vocabulary and awareness that’s difficult because of our brains. Also since we don’t always instinctively mirror facial expressions and map them to mood people don’t always think we’re feeling things that we are, and then we can’t explain it. Especially with kids, who haven’t figured out the coping mechanisms they need to proceed.
Sam
Empathy is not fully developed in children or teenagers. Your teenage years are where it fully develops. That is why you will have heard terms like ‘all kids are sociopaths’. Saying they completely lack empathy is inaccurate though – there are two types of empathy: affective (feeling what others feel e.g. if your best friend is sad you might not full out sob with them, but your mood might lower, you might shed a tear or two yourself if you have fairly high affective empathy or if you have hyperempathy) and cognitive (being able to understand logically what someone is feeling, why, what caused it).
In someone with Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) where empathy is low or non-existant (notably, I have noticed a few people diagnosed with it saying their empathy for animals is much higher than for people while others lack empathy for either), the empathy that is low is affective. They struggle to or cannot feel what someone else is feeling. If someone walks into the room sad, their mood doesn’t react by itself. If someone comes into their room crying, their mood doesn’t inherently lower. Their emotions do not change simply based on other emotions being present in the same space as them or it has a very limited effect at best.
Their cognitive empathy level though can vary a lot because that can be learned. You can’t learn to feel something you don’t, but you can learn to logically put pieces of a puzzle together. Some will have low cognitive empathy – their inability to feel what others do can have a knock on effect of them not understanding why others feel the way they do. Others will have decent or high cognitive empathy though – they might not feel what you feel but they’ll be able to work it out and understand why your feelings are what they are.
So someone with ASPD may not feel what you feel and may struggle to understand why you are feeling what you are. It doesn’t mean they’ll actually be a cruel, mean or sadistic person though. Kids don’t have fully developed empathy and are all of them cruel monsters? No. Plenty of them have been taught the right lessons and try their best to be kind. This is true for all conditions with low empathy: it’s not inherently going to make them act cruel. Just as hyperempathy is not going to necessarily make you act kind.
Someone with low empathy in both ways might understand absolutely nothing about why you are upset about something and still express sympathy and compassion that helps you feel better while someone with hyperempathy and high cognitive empathy could be an asshole edgelord.
The way to help people with low empathy treat people right is literally just to teach them what you would teach children. These are possible consequences. This is how people might feel. Hurting people needlessly is wrong. They can get it. Plenty of them do and succeed in society.
As for whether ‘psychopathy’ has a medical term to cover it… that is complicated. It isn’t officially a diagnosis at all and never really was. Antisocial Personality Disorder is and people with it tend to refer to it as sociopathy or psychopathy, and I’ve seen at least a couple argue that they are the same thing which could be true as traits described as psychopathic (being methodical, emotionally controlled, calculated) could easily be counter balances to those that are described as sociopathic (being careless, easily angered, impulsive). There is not a perfect consensus on it and it really does not help that the guy who made the Psychopathy Checklist, Robert Hare can’t seem to agree with himself on which has which trait despite insisting they are different.
So ASPD is a thing. Is psychopathy a separate thing? I veer towards no at this current time. You might think differently and that’s fine.
Yeah this kid attacked her once with no known provocation, and then years down the line goes after her with a ROCK to the NECK? Presumably because Sal went after him when he got off scot-free, and I have to imagine there were interactions before that because… yikes. Even if Sal and Marcie weren’t on the receiving end of Leland in that time, that cannot have been his only instances of assault.
I hope we don’t see more Leland in the present. I don’t think anything good can come from this guy showing up.
Leland is truly evil if he can commit minor crimes after big crimes. It is like hitting someone in the head with a hammer, and then just casually steal chocolate from a store.
Rabid Rabbit
No, no, it’s like hitting someone in the head with a hammer, then notice they have a chocolate bar and take it.
243 thoughts on “De-escalation”
jeffepp
Obligatory “Now kiss”.
Pablo360
It might qualify for Top 5 Fucked-UP DOA Relationships if that happened.
Rabid Rabbit
Oh come on, we’ve been saying that for the last five strips at least.
BBCC
I say that most of the time Sal and Marcie are on screen together. Maybe not this time cuz they’re like 13, but most times.
Kris
You can kiss at 13….probably still not a good idea though cause Marcie could actually be dying there.
Rabid Rabbit
Reynardine says something highly inappropriate.
(https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=111, for those who need the reference.)
Reltzik
More like the past 5 years.
Dave
People like you are what corners where made for, now go stand in one and think about what you did.
Kris
I guess it’s a good thing no one saw any of that. This could’ve been a situation.
Xerxes
there are silhouettes in the windows, assume a few did
King Daniel
We know at least one of those people in the windows (Dorothy) did indeed see the fight take place; she’s not tagged today though, which may imply that she ran off to get an authority figure involved as others have speculated.
Pablo360
I was under the impression that Dorothy was watching from her dorm, not the hall lobby.
Clif
In any case, I believe that the silhouettes in the window in panel 2 are in fact plants.
King Daniel
We saw a food tray behind Dorothy in her panel, sitting on what looked like the type of tables we’ve previously seen in the dining hall.
Kris
I’m not quite convinced yet if we know those silhouettes are witnesses. They’ve been in the background this entire time. Unless we see reactions and faces I’m gonna assume it’s open season. Dorothy, Ethan, and Danny are the only absolutes. We can’t even confirm Marcie’s seen anything yet.
newllend(henryvolt)
Maybe it’s not too late to cover this up?
thejeff
Is there any reason to think Marcie’s seen anything? She’s only appeared in flashback since before the fight started.
Questionor
Marcie is with Malaya. Can you imagine Malaya would’ve stood by silently?
newllend(henryvolt)
Everyone else was.
Kinoko
“Everyone else” is Danny and Ethan, who are both pretty reserved people. Malaya isn’t. She likely would have shouted (or made some kind of disparaging comment deliberately loud enough for Sal to hear).
Sam
Marcie and Malaya have likely seen nothing, they were going off in the opposite direction of where this took place.
Guerisso
I looks like it’s darker outside, at least with all the light inside. It’s really hard to look outside in that case so I doubt they see anything.
Steve
Bright inside, dark outside. Probably didn’t see much.
Jhon
A security camera saw Amber slice up Ryan. So one probably saw this fight.
Doctor_Who
This is a very serious comic, but if you need some levity you can just imagine that in the last panel Amber is actually saying “HOOOOO” like Lion-O the Thundercat.
Ainara
or imagine her saying “hho boy” instead
Needfuldoer
Spontaneous Rolling Stones karaoke.
ObiKemnebi
I hope this becomes a revolutionary moment for both of them.
chris2315
I think you meant revelationary. Though I also wouldn’t mind if Sal and Amber became revolutionaries and started an uprising against an oppressive regime.
CJ
As long as they don’t end up like revolutionary girl Utena, I’m fine with wathever revolution they are about to have..
thejeff
Sal could turn into a motorcycle.
Annonymouse
Totally appropriate yet inappropriate
[video unavailable]
Looks like YouTube has dropped a few more layers deeper into the abyss
DailyBrad
Good call, Sal.
FacelessDeviant
Yeah. Definitely a… better call, Sal.
Laladoria
I’m glad Sal kind of had an epiphany about this and stopped.
…
Hopefully Amber doesn’t see it as pity.
Mr. Mendo
She will.
Lizza
Unfortunately she probably will.
thejeff
I don’t think so. I think Amber’s had her own epiphany.
Stephen Bierce
*plays the coda to “Shinma Lemures” from the Vampire Princess Miyu Original Video Anime soundtrack from a speaker somewhere*
lilyliv
Please please let this end up with both of them getting to a better space about this. They need therapy and hugs from friends. (I’m sentimental garbage on Thanksgiving but I really just wanna see ALL these kids get hugs, tbh,)
Annonymouse
Heck, if Sal just hugged her, dropped the iron was of cool and just said “I’m sorry” over and over again.
That might cause amber to reciprocate and actually burst into tears instead of unbridled rage.
gears
YAY SAL
goggleman64
YAY SAL
JoeCovenant
YAY SAL!
Geneseepaws
If we can be sur that Amber is not just feignting (not fainting), but you know, distract- then attack.
thejeff
She’s not. We’re done here.
William Leonard Reese Jr.
Huh. . . I . . .I am glad that this is how it is ending. Sal has just realized something internally, Amber has her internal vindication and pride, no one is seriously hurt, and there are no security guards racing out to grab them.
If this is the end of it then I will be incredibly happy. But there is always a possibility of something going wrong. Willis showed Dorothy for a reason, and with her respect for Authority I can see her going to grab an RA or security in an attempt to help stop this before it goes any further. I hope that I may be overthinking things but we shall see.
Alanari
Mh. This could easily be another traumatic experience for Amber. Not being able to breathe, slowly suffocating, not being sure if she survives this. I think that would count as being seriously hurt.
thejeff
I could be wrong, but I think she’s going to take that earlier triumph and work with that instead. And even that at least as much as the internal “faced my demon and didn’t lost control” kind of victory as the more temporary “could beat her in a fight” kind.
As Cerberus said a couple days ago, they were both shadow-boxing. They both won.
Agemegos
Nothing ever ends.
hof1991
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
Derek
ok I don’t want to say “most”, but a lot of bullies realize that they have gone too far and might have seriously hurt another person. This is probably a combination of basic empathy and fear of getting caught.
The fact that Leland is LAUGHING as the runs away and steals Marcie’s skateboard means he has no empathy, no decency towards the person he nearly murdered. I shudder, honestly
Piotr W
I’d seriously want to understand the psychology behind the typical bully… I’ve been bullied in my school days and I honestly can’t make myself think that bullies might’ve any empathy or decency. If you have these, you don’t start bullying someone, period…
Derek
I was bullied as a kid and I saw some bullies show remorse and regret, so some bullies DO realize they were acting shitty. Usually those are the “caved in to peer pressured and bullied the strange kid along with the rest of the class” types of bullies. The instigators not so much
Terry
Generally, it’s not that bullies don’t have empathy, it’s just that they don’t think through the consequences of their actions. Many are hurting or feel powerless in their own lives. Bullying allows them to assert control over another person. It makes them feel powerful, which is what most bullies are lacking outside of this dynamic. It doesn’t help that they often get praise from peers for showing “strength.” They are so focused on making themselves feel powerful that they don’t really think about what they are doing to the other person.
not someone else
Actual children bullies have plenty of chances to learn empathy- it’s something everyone learns at one pace or another. Usually when you don’t learn that particular lesson it’s because adults are shielding you from it (or actively harming you if you show signs of it), and many times that doesn’t change, but sometimes it does.
CJ
You know that “someone who has no empathy” is the definition of psychopath?
Zee
Most children don’t grasp the concept of empathy. Hence why everyone was bullied as a kid
MatthewTheLucky
There is a lot to unpack in that statement.
CJ
Even most toddlers will smile if someone smiles at them and get sad, when people around them are sad. Until they learn to become angry when someone cries from their parents or whoever is in loco parentis.
That children need to learn about consequences (i.e. that someone will hurt if you hit them) is a different thing.
Huh, ok, several sources say that’s not quite so, as mirroring others feelings in very young children has something to do with not distinguishing between self and other and empathy needs that distinction. So they lean it somewhere between 2 and 4 years old.
Bullying is a behavior where the bullies ignore empathy with the victim (by defining them as ‘not people’ in some way or other) and gain positive feelings be being in control of th situation or th positive feedback from their also bullying peers or adults who define the victims as ‘not people (like us)’, too.
It’s a situation where empathy is suppressed and not presen.
A psychopath is always unable to be empathetic.
BBCC
Not quite. Very specific people tend to be more likely to be bullied – kids of colour, LGBT kids, disabled kids (especially if they’re autistic), fat kids, poor kids, etc. Kids who aren’t seen as ‘normal’, basically. Which feeds into why it’s so easy to define them as ‘not people’. For instance, while one of my so called best friends as a kid was always a liar and always very toxic, it wasn’t until I started having to sit out of gym because of my heart condition things really ramped up.
That said, psychopathy is no longer considered a real thing and what once may have been called psychopathy does have a lack of cognitive empathy (being able to feel other’s feelings as a sort of echo) but does not preclude the ability to like others and wanting them to be happy.
CJ
As medical concepts evolve, they change. What is the current term for what was previously defined as psychopathy? Did this lead to a higher number on people diagnosed with it? Has the actual definition changed?
Has anyone come up with a therapy that actually helps them to learn about empathy or at least learn something else that has the same result (i.e. being able to discard ideas of how to achieve an aim where persons with empathy would discard them because of empathy even if empathy is a foreign concept?)
That said, if you want to find a reason to not see someone as human, you will find a reason, even if it is the wrong hair-style, (not) painted nails, or the way they react to loud noise. Though rigid social concepts provide people with ammunition and more back-up on this ideas, in the end anything can be used that way.
Regalli
It’s kind of been considered with a variety of things (including antisocial behavioral disorder or whatever it’s called currently – I don’t exactly read the DSM-5 for fun,) and kind of considered ‘okay we may have been pathologizing and demonizing something that isn’t a given marker for Trouble, actually.’ There are studies showing that, say, surgeons tend to score low on the empathy scales – more empathic people would have much more trouble functioning in that environment because of the high stress and stakes. Now whether that’s natural low empathy or their brains shutting it off as a protective measure is another question entirely, but *shrug*. Not a Psych person.
There’s also a degree of low empathy (or perceived) in play with autistic people, but we vary a lot – some of us are hyperempathic, taking other people’s emotions on as our own, and others can’t really place ourselves in another’s shoes and take empathy on like that but do have really high SYMPATHY for others, and recognizing all of it requires a level of emotional vocabulary and awareness that’s difficult because of our brains. Also since we don’t always instinctively mirror facial expressions and map them to mood people don’t always think we’re feeling things that we are, and then we can’t explain it. Especially with kids, who haven’t figured out the coping mechanisms they need to proceed.
Sam
Empathy is not fully developed in children or teenagers. Your teenage years are where it fully develops. That is why you will have heard terms like ‘all kids are sociopaths’. Saying they completely lack empathy is inaccurate though – there are two types of empathy: affective (feeling what others feel e.g. if your best friend is sad you might not full out sob with them, but your mood might lower, you might shed a tear or two yourself if you have fairly high affective empathy or if you have hyperempathy) and cognitive (being able to understand logically what someone is feeling, why, what caused it).
In someone with Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) where empathy is low or non-existant (notably, I have noticed a few people diagnosed with it saying their empathy for animals is much higher than for people while others lack empathy for either), the empathy that is low is affective. They struggle to or cannot feel what someone else is feeling. If someone walks into the room sad, their mood doesn’t react by itself. If someone comes into their room crying, their mood doesn’t inherently lower. Their emotions do not change simply based on other emotions being present in the same space as them or it has a very limited effect at best.
Their cognitive empathy level though can vary a lot because that can be learned. You can’t learn to feel something you don’t, but you can learn to logically put pieces of a puzzle together. Some will have low cognitive empathy – their inability to feel what others do can have a knock on effect of them not understanding why others feel the way they do. Others will have decent or high cognitive empathy though – they might not feel what you feel but they’ll be able to work it out and understand why your feelings are what they are.
So someone with ASPD may not feel what you feel and may struggle to understand why you are feeling what you are. It doesn’t mean they’ll actually be a cruel, mean or sadistic person though. Kids don’t have fully developed empathy and are all of them cruel monsters? No. Plenty of them have been taught the right lessons and try their best to be kind. This is true for all conditions with low empathy: it’s not inherently going to make them act cruel. Just as hyperempathy is not going to necessarily make you act kind.
Someone with low empathy in both ways might understand absolutely nothing about why you are upset about something and still express sympathy and compassion that helps you feel better while someone with hyperempathy and high cognitive empathy could be an asshole edgelord.
The way to help people with low empathy treat people right is literally just to teach them what you would teach children. These are possible consequences. This is how people might feel. Hurting people needlessly is wrong. They can get it. Plenty of them do and succeed in society.
As for whether ‘psychopathy’ has a medical term to cover it… that is complicated. It isn’t officially a diagnosis at all and never really was. Antisocial Personality Disorder is and people with it tend to refer to it as sociopathy or psychopathy, and I’ve seen at least a couple argue that they are the same thing which could be true as traits described as psychopathic (being methodical, emotionally controlled, calculated) could easily be counter balances to those that are described as sociopathic (being careless, easily angered, impulsive). There is not a perfect consensus on it and it really does not help that the guy who made the Psychopathy Checklist, Robert Hare can’t seem to agree with himself on which has which trait despite insisting they are different.
So ASPD is a thing. Is psychopathy a separate thing? I veer towards no at this current time. You might think differently and that’s fine.
Reltzik
I’ve always assumed it was about power tripping, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen research on it.
…. probably out there, though.
Regalli
Yeah this kid attacked her once with no known provocation, and then years down the line goes after her with a ROCK to the NECK? Presumably because Sal went after him when he got off scot-free, and I have to imagine there were interactions before that because… yikes. Even if Sal and Marcie weren’t on the receiving end of Leland in that time, that cannot have been his only instances of assault.
I hope we don’t see more Leland in the present. I don’t think anything good can come from this guy showing up.
Needfuldoer
Yeah, that was probably the biggest in a long line of incidents of Leland bullying Marcie and Sal, and getting away with it scot-free.
Tan
Jesus Christ, I didn’t even notice they took her skateboard. The fuck.
abysswatcher1993
Leland is truly evil if he can commit minor crimes after big crimes. It is like hitting someone in the head with a hammer, and then just casually steal chocolate from a store.
Rabid Rabbit
No, no, it’s like hitting someone in the head with a hammer, then notice they have a chocolate bar and take it.
Monito
And then stealing their skateboard to get away!
Mr. Mendo