Except Sal isn’t shatting on Linda. She’s just calling Linda out for what Linda does.
My father seems to accept being called out on his crap with about as much confused grace. It’s like he has no possible concept for being the villain in most of his children’s stories. Unfortunately for him, the only child who does respect him is the one who’s a villain. Oddly enough, for no real reason.
Man i would not be that bold irl unless i was in a ‘don’t give a shit’ mood/able to run away asap after, but i can totally imagine some random student passing by like “i don’t know you or her personally but i think you’re a shitty mom” and just leaving XD
Hopefully Linda continues to think not inviting her to lunch is punishing her for her “rudeness” best case scenario Linda leaves in a huff telling herself her daughter still needs to grow up and worst case Sals prediction about having her whole month ruined involves looking for a job. She has precious work experience while being a high-school student so she’s atleast no stranger to finding work.
Considering why Sal put her motorbike into storage I wouldn’t be surprised if Sal’s been considering getting a job for a while. It’s only a matter of time before tuition becomes more ammunition for Linda to use against her daughter…
Needfuldoer
Would Linda’s ego allow her to not be the mother of two college graduates?
zee
Well we know she’s not above financial abuse and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if she disowned sal, because Linda is the worst
Laura
Perhaps Amber could teach Amber’s income-generating secrets to Sal. Assuming Amber makes her money by livestreaming, Sal’s also an impressive Mario Kart racer.
And there’s always student loans and work-study.
TheStranger
Federal financial aid is tough to get separate from parental income if you’re under… well, Sal is under that age. Iforget if it’s 21 or 25 but it’s in there somewhere unless one gets married.
Somewhere Dan’s head just flew up and he’s not sure why.
Work-study, sure, but her only loan option would be private loans and without her parents co-signing she’d find that a hard go, I think.
Psychie
Also, IU’s workstudy doesn’t really pay enough on top of being nigh impossible to get into given all the competition, so she couldn’t rely on that being enough to cover her tuition, living expenses, and books without some other form of financial aid. And good luck getting a job in Bloomington that pays sufficiently to actually cover even a portion of tuition at entry level. Basically her only real option would be to drop out, get employed somewhere that has an education incentive, like Cook Medical or a few other places, and then re-enroll through their program at a later date, but then she’d be restricted to whatever degree plans they are willing to cover and most of them also only pay for a portion of your tuition IIRC, and whatever schooling she gets would be on top of a full time job likely doing menial labor.
She basically has very little in the way of good options. Maybe if IU had a financial aid department that actually HELPED their students find scholarships and grants they qualify for she’d have a shot, as her history likely qualifies her for a few things, but good luck navigating the absolutely terrible database that has zero organization, zero filters or searchability, and the absolute worst means of navigating I’ve ever encountered (thousands of pages, you have to click through the pages one at a time, every time you click on one of the entries to view the full entry and go back to the database it puts you back on page one, it takes forever to load each new page, etc.). I spent around 6 hours going through that monstrosity and only managed to get to page 5 of the database and did not find anything useful for me in that entire process when I was a student. And if you go into the financial aid building to try to actually get help from supposed professionals who’s entire job, in theory, is connecting students with financial aid opportunities they qualify for, they’ll just give you the run around saying “oh, that’s not actually MY job, you need an appointment with this other person” no matter who you talk to, so you make an appointment with the other person, wait several weeks or months for your next meeting, then they tell you the same thing and point you at someone else. IU is a hellscape if anything goes even slightly wrong because there is basically zero chance you will ever get anything accomplished if you ever need to engage with the bureaucracy even a little bit, it truly doesn’t matter how easy or simple something SHOULD be to solve, they WILL draw it out long enough for you to just give up.
Laura
Eek cats! I’m so sorry ANYONE has to slog through all that! Wow!
so glad my bro’s and my college tuition was fully covered (uninsured motorist settlement)
Dave the Inverted
I refuse to believe database design that bad is accidental. What I can’t figure out here is why. What does it gain the Financial Aid department to have no students actually receiving financial aid? (Honestly, the only thing I can come up with is that someone at the Board of Regents level absolutely hates the idea of The Poors being able to get a college education and thus be in a position to compete with The Right Kind Of People, and has thus ensured that the financial aid that could make that happen simply isn’t available. I don’t like being this cynical, but…..)
Don’t be in their face. In fact, be as far _out_ of their faces as possible at all times. Give reasonable reasons, mind you – very specifically _ones they will like_ – like the idea that you’re really throwing yourself into school to get the best education you can. I think that would work well here.
Sal clearly has lots of practice at this.
Be friendly, avoid all conflicts, and whenever possible, be as out of touch as you can until you have that paper.
Then run like hell.
Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything, oh wait, of course I totally am.
Somehow i also highly doubt that Linda’s self-description as “the calm one” is even close to accurate
Bogeywoman
She’s the type who always says they hate drama but is high key the reason for the drama. She actually reminds me of a friend-ish acquaintance (friendship past its expiry date).
I feel like unless Linda’s behaviour gets even worse she probably will, but it’ll be the sort of thing where it doesn’t happen very often and she’s not really a part of their life for reasons the kids won’t pick up on until they’re older.
No no, go on. I wanna see if we can connect Linda finding out Jocelyn is trans to some kind of explosive negative consequence.
Rabid Rabbit
Hmm, let’s see:
1) Carla, in spite of her high social value due to who her parents are, is one of Sal’s bad-influence friends.
2) Carla is trans.
3) Jocelyn is Carol’s daughter, therefore under suspicion due to being related to the woman who got Walky kidnapped.
4) Jocelyn is trans.
5) Because it’s not credible for there to be two trans women with only two degrees of separation, and also all trans people are part of a single hive mind, clearly everything that’s been happening is part of a trans conspiracy to make Linda’s kids rebel against her.
6) Therefore Linda explodes. And I have a headache.
Impressive. Thank you for coming up with something on such short notice.
Ed Callahan
You definitely have a future as a political analyst. You’ll still get a headache, though not a migraine. You get one of those only when you try to read someone else’s political analysis.
InscrutableJane
This is extremely believable as terf brain-rot logic, quite impressive.
Thag Simmons
Oh yeah, Carol’s probably burning the bridge and salting the earth upon which it stood. I don’t see an obvious trigger like that for Linda, although I wouldn’t be surprised if one appears since it is a lot more dramatic and a lot more conclusive if the relationship breaks down explosively.
Linda’s bad, but I feel like she’s not so bad (yet) that the desire to make it work when you’re older would go away. Admittedly, I’m bringing in my own biases here. I’ve been that kid visiting a distant grandparent and not picking up on the bad blood.
Shes gonna be the type of parent to see photos of her daughters wedding posted by a guest on Instagram and realize she hasn’t heard from her since graduation. Then try to go ape shit only to realize she’s been blocked on everything, and she doesn’t know where the hell sal lives
Yeah, I think this is probably for the best for Sal, Linda (and Charles mostly by virtue of complicity) is a repeatedly toxic influence in her life and she really just.. Doesn’t need to put up with that. I’m glad she’s coming to that realization and continuing down the path of living for herself and not for Linda.
…Just really hope this doesn’t end up with her deciding that her relationship with Danny was just something she did for Linda too because I think they have really good chemistry and it’d suck for that outburst yesterday (in comic time) to be prophetic.
Despite it’s many flaws, Sal could always apply to FAFSA to help out with tuition payment.
TheLurkerAbove
I assume that’s some form of student aid. So she’ll just need to cover living expenses. I’d like to see Sal work (again) in some part-time job.
Needfuldoer
Always remember: in the US, “financial aid” means “student loans”.
Student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy, either.
Cait
FAFSA counts your parents’ income and assumes they will be helping pay for your education, even if they have no interest in doing so.
Mark
Is it actually possible to apply to a college in the US without filling out the FAFSA application sooner or later? It’s certainly not possible without being urged to do so at least a thousand times.
cain
It is possible, yes. I don’t think paying for tuition is part of the application.
I doubt she’d break things off with Danny. Sal’s smart enough, and has had enough time to really work through her shit, to realize that Danny is a person who actually just accepts her how she is rather than trying to impose some idea of how he wants her to be.
y’know, i get on jennifer and lucy for being stuck in the high school mind set, but at least they aren’t like 40 years old and moms, my fuckin goodness linda.
ppl do say some ppl never out grow high school but other than having a ‘cushy’ job where you’re an authority figure i’m surprised that kinda behavior wouldn’t be shut down by an acquaintance if not a random stranger who could humble them
He’s been like this the whole time. Despite how terrible Linda has been to Sal to her face, the only time we have ever seen Charles “go against” her was when he talked to Walky a couple strips ago about Amber. He’s completely comfortable signaling to his kids that they have support even if it isn’t from their mother, but we have never once seen him bother to do that for Sal. He’s also shown that he shares Linda’s opinion of Sal to a certain extent (when he was equally shocked that Sal showed up with Danny and not a tattooed punk rocker or whatever).
I genuinely don’t get why people think he’s so much better and/or more redeemable than Linda toward Sal. Linda’s self-righteousness, stubbornness, and emotional reactions just make her attitude more obvious.
two factors come into play here: 1) not being actively awful and mostly keeping quiet leaves some seeing the possibility that he’s thinking positive things he’s not voicing. 2) Hank had a similar dynamic with his wife at first and managed to pull ahead in the parent rankings.
Archieve
I think the thing to remember with the Hank/Carol dynamic is that Hank normally did get to atleast speak and wasn’t afraid to argue with his wife(admittedly for patriarchal reasons but still) whereas Charles seems to think standing around saying nothing and never voicing an pposing opinion is an acceptable way to parent.
pig
I keep thinking Charles might be about to break ranks with Linda and being disappointed 🙁
Maybe; the conversation with Walky and this moment where he’s noticing things are weird seem like it’s setting up for me the moment where he’s starting to notice and prepare to point out that Linda is a tiger mom.
This. I get the feeling that Charles is only just now beginning to really *See* how Linda interacts with their kids.
I might be giving him the benefit of the doubt but I’m still hoping there’s a redemption arc of some sort for him. Something like Hank/Carol, maybe.
And maybe it’s just wishful thinking. Sal & Walky deserve a parent that actively cares about them.
DashWallkick
It took Hank a very, very long time to realize Carol was a monster, I am willing to give Charles the benefit of the doubt that having the kids at college going through changes is starting to make him think about some things. Especially since he’s kind of letting her be the bad cop a lot of the time.
thejeff
I think Hank actually changed. He and Carol agreed on a lot in their Family Weekend appearance. It was him with the “Hitler was maybe partly Jewish” bit.
He was just willing to listen to Joyce and learn from her.
286 thoughts on “Fake”
Ana Chronistic
I think you mean, trying to steal being the one not being shat on for no good reason?
Lanie
That is probably a concept too advanced for Linda. 🙁
Some Ed
Except Sal isn’t shatting on Linda. She’s just calling Linda out for what Linda does.
My father seems to accept being called out on his crap with about as much confused grace. It’s like he has no possible concept for being the villain in most of his children’s stories. Unfortunately for him, the only child who does respect him is the one who’s a villain. Oddly enough, for no real reason.
Angel
Man i would not be that bold irl unless i was in a ‘don’t give a shit’ mood/able to run away asap after, but i can totally imagine some random student passing by like “i don’t know you or her personally but i think you’re a shitty mom” and just leaving XD
NGPZ
Ever hear of Cooking Mama???
I feel like making a game where you be cooking SAL’s mama. With LASERs!!! ????
Proxiehunter
I’m not sure Linda is fit for human consumption.
NGPZ
Don’t worry earthling. I’m sure a modicum of exposure to sodium nitrate and gamma rays prior to cooking will render her safe.
Taffy
Waste of good lasers.
NGPZ
Now why cook the laser devices themselves? They don’t taste very good unless you a robot or somethin XD
Taffy
Maybe it’s because I’m a little stoned, but my first thought was “me eat yummy laser”, in the voice of Dollip Daze.
Casi
“Mmm laser”- Robot Homer Simpson
someone
Looks like a job for Savey Meal-Bot.
Animedingo
Her hair is crazy large
Ss3 Sal
Pergola
Sal’s hair deserves its own tag.
Dara
And Sal’s reached the walk-away point.
Good for her.
Professional asexual
Good ?? for ?? her ??
Nicoleandmaggie
I hope they keep paying her tuition.
Archieve
Hopefully Linda continues to think not inviting her to lunch is punishing her for her “rudeness” best case scenario Linda leaves in a huff telling herself her daughter still needs to grow up and worst case Sals prediction about having her whole month ruined involves looking for a job. She has precious work experience while being a high-school student so she’s atleast no stranger to finding work.
Psi baka onna
Considering why Sal put her motorbike into storage I wouldn’t be surprised if Sal’s been considering getting a job for a while. It’s only a matter of time before tuition becomes more ammunition for Linda to use against her daughter…
Needfuldoer
Would Linda’s ego allow her to not be the mother of two college graduates?
zee
Well we know she’s not above financial abuse and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if she disowned sal, because Linda is the worst
Laura
Perhaps Amber could teach Amber’s income-generating secrets to Sal. Assuming Amber makes her money by livestreaming, Sal’s also an impressive Mario Kart racer.
And there’s always student loans and work-study.
TheStranger
Federal financial aid is tough to get separate from parental income if you’re under… well, Sal is under that age. Iforget if it’s 21 or 25 but it’s in there somewhere unless one gets married.
Somewhere Dan’s head just flew up and he’s not sure why.
Work-study, sure, but her only loan option would be private loans and without her parents co-signing she’d find that a hard go, I think.
Psychie
Also, IU’s workstudy doesn’t really pay enough on top of being nigh impossible to get into given all the competition, so she couldn’t rely on that being enough to cover her tuition, living expenses, and books without some other form of financial aid. And good luck getting a job in Bloomington that pays sufficiently to actually cover even a portion of tuition at entry level. Basically her only real option would be to drop out, get employed somewhere that has an education incentive, like Cook Medical or a few other places, and then re-enroll through their program at a later date, but then she’d be restricted to whatever degree plans they are willing to cover and most of them also only pay for a portion of your tuition IIRC, and whatever schooling she gets would be on top of a full time job likely doing menial labor.
She basically has very little in the way of good options. Maybe if IU had a financial aid department that actually HELPED their students find scholarships and grants they qualify for she’d have a shot, as her history likely qualifies her for a few things, but good luck navigating the absolutely terrible database that has zero organization, zero filters or searchability, and the absolute worst means of navigating I’ve ever encountered (thousands of pages, you have to click through the pages one at a time, every time you click on one of the entries to view the full entry and go back to the database it puts you back on page one, it takes forever to load each new page, etc.). I spent around 6 hours going through that monstrosity and only managed to get to page 5 of the database and did not find anything useful for me in that entire process when I was a student. And if you go into the financial aid building to try to actually get help from supposed professionals who’s entire job, in theory, is connecting students with financial aid opportunities they qualify for, they’ll just give you the run around saying “oh, that’s not actually MY job, you need an appointment with this other person” no matter who you talk to, so you make an appointment with the other person, wait several weeks or months for your next meeting, then they tell you the same thing and point you at someone else. IU is a hellscape if anything goes even slightly wrong because there is basically zero chance you will ever get anything accomplished if you ever need to engage with the bureaucracy even a little bit, it truly doesn’t matter how easy or simple something SHOULD be to solve, they WILL draw it out long enough for you to just give up.
Laura
Eek cats! I’m so sorry ANYONE has to slog through all that! Wow!
Ana Chronistic
yikes!
so glad my bro’s and my college tuition was fully covered (uninsured motorist settlement)
Dave the Inverted
I refuse to believe database design that bad is accidental. What I can’t figure out here is why. What does it gain the Financial Aid department to have no students actually receiving financial aid? (Honestly, the only thing I can come up with is that someone at the Board of Regents level absolutely hates the idea of The Poors being able to get a college education and thus be in a position to compete with The Right Kind Of People, and has thus ensured that the financial aid that could make that happen simply isn’t available. I don’t like being this cynical, but…..)
Allen Alberti
my hope is that Linda threatens no tuition, and Walky in solidarity threatens to drop out, and this makes Charles realize what’s what and pull a Hank
Dara
The key to this is how you handle it, right?
Don’t be in their face. In fact, be as far _out_ of their faces as possible at all times. Give reasonable reasons, mind you – very specifically _ones they will like_ – like the idea that you’re really throwing yourself into school to get the best education you can. I think that would work well here.
Sal clearly has lots of practice at this.
Be friendly, avoid all conflicts, and whenever possible, be as out of touch as you can until you have that paper.
Then run like hell.
Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything, oh wait, of course I totally am.
HueSatLight
Just in time for being the calm one not to mean they’re the one who’s in the right.
Proxiehunter
Actually in their relationship this is probably the first time the calm one is the one in the right.
Bryy
Eh, nah. Linda’s hardly ever been right.
Enkrod
Linda’s always right, far-right even.
shellshockbp
“I’m not one of those lunatics. I would have voted for Obama a third time if I could.”
Steelbright
Somehow i also highly doubt that Linda’s self-description as “the calm one” is even close to accurate
Bogeywoman
She’s the type who always says they hate drama but is high key the reason for the drama. She actually reminds me of a friend-ish acquaintance (friendship past its expiry date).
Ray Radlein
Welp, there’s another mother who is never going to meet their daughter’s children (if any)
Thag Simmons
I feel like unless Linda’s behaviour gets even worse she probably will, but it’ll be the sort of thing where it doesn’t happen very often and she’s not really a part of their life for reasons the kids won’t pick up on until they’re older.
Ray Radlein
She’ll find out about Jocelyne eventually. That’ll be worse.
Ray Radlein
GODDAMMIT READING COMPREHENSION WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME
please ignore previous comment in its entirety
Taffy
No no, go on. I wanna see if we can connect Linda finding out Jocelyn is trans to some kind of explosive negative consequence.
Rabid Rabbit
Hmm, let’s see:
1) Carla, in spite of her high social value due to who her parents are, is one of Sal’s bad-influence friends.
2) Carla is trans.
3) Jocelyn is Carol’s daughter, therefore under suspicion due to being related to the woman who got Walky kidnapped.
4) Jocelyn is trans.
5) Because it’s not credible for there to be two trans women with only two degrees of separation, and also all trans people are part of a single hive mind, clearly everything that’s been happening is part of a trans conspiracy to make Linda’s kids rebel against her.
6) Therefore Linda explodes. And I have a headache.
Taffy
Impressive. Thank you for coming up with something on such short notice.
Ed Callahan
You definitely have a future as a political analyst. You’ll still get a headache, though not a migraine. You get one of those only when you try to read someone else’s political analysis.
InscrutableJane
This is extremely believable as terf brain-rot logic, quite impressive.
Thag Simmons
Oh yeah, Carol’s probably burning the bridge and salting the earth upon which it stood. I don’t see an obvious trigger like that for Linda, although I wouldn’t be surprised if one appears since it is a lot more dramatic and a lot more conclusive if the relationship breaks down explosively.
Linda’s bad, but I feel like she’s not so bad (yet) that the desire to make it work when you’re older would go away. Admittedly, I’m bringing in my own biases here. I’ve been that kid visiting a distant grandparent and not picking up on the bad blood.
zee
Shes gonna be the type of parent to see photos of her daughters wedding posted by a guest on Instagram and realize she hasn’t heard from her since graduation. Then try to go ape shit only to realize she’s been blocked on everything, and she doesn’t know where the hell sal lives
Praying for this btw
Prince Mech
Yeah, I think this is probably for the best for Sal, Linda (and Charles mostly by virtue of complicity) is a repeatedly toxic influence in her life and she really just.. Doesn’t need to put up with that. I’m glad she’s coming to that realization and continuing down the path of living for herself and not for Linda.
…Just really hope this doesn’t end up with her deciding that her relationship with Danny was just something she did for Linda too because I think they have really good chemistry and it’d suck for that outburst yesterday (in comic time) to be prophetic.
TheLurkerAbove
Yea, I hope she eventually goes no-contact with her parents and starts healing.
How much is IU tuition fees? I wonder if she’ll be able to be independent from her parents’ financial support.
I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams
Despite it’s many flaws, Sal could always apply to FAFSA to help out with tuition payment.
TheLurkerAbove
I assume that’s some form of student aid. So she’ll just need to cover living expenses. I’d like to see Sal work (again) in some part-time job.
Needfuldoer
Always remember: in the US, “financial aid” means “student loans”.
Student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy, either.
Cait
FAFSA counts your parents’ income and assumes they will be helping pay for your education, even if they have no interest in doing so.
Mark
Is it actually possible to apply to a college in the US without filling out the FAFSA application sooner or later? It’s certainly not possible without being urged to do so at least a thousand times.
cain
It is possible, yes. I don’t think paying for tuition is part of the application.
Needfuldoer
The cost of attending IU Bloomington for one year is about $25,000 for an Indiana resident, including room and board.
https://admissions.indiana.edu/cost-financial-aid/index.html
Jerach
I doubt she’d break things off with Danny. Sal’s smart enough, and has had enough time to really work through her shit, to realize that Danny is a person who actually just accepts her how she is rather than trying to impose some idea of how he wants her to be.
elfroyalty
y’know, i get on jennifer and lucy for being stuck in the high school mind set, but at least they aren’t like 40 years old and moms, my fuckin goodness linda.
Angel
ppl do say some ppl never out grow high school but other than having a ‘cushy’ job where you’re an authority figure i’m surprised that kinda behavior wouldn’t be shut down by an acquaintance if not a random stranger who could humble them
We need some kinda (anti) Karen revolution lol
UrsulaDavina
Linda as cool as a cucumber… that fell off a truck in July… on a sidewalk in Kuwait and it broke in half.
Great on Sal though walking away rather then reacting to Linda’s provocation is significant character growth.
Shorduie
Agreed. Good for her.
Shorduie
You know what, I dislike Charles now. He is not just being passive at this point, he either fears Linda or just doesnt care about Sal that much
Nono
He’s basically grown up Walky. Not surprising that his spine has trouble staying upright.
regina phalange
He’s been like this the whole time. Despite how terrible Linda has been to Sal to her face, the only time we have ever seen Charles “go against” her was when he talked to Walky a couple strips ago about Amber. He’s completely comfortable signaling to his kids that they have support even if it isn’t from their mother, but we have never once seen him bother to do that for Sal. He’s also shown that he shares Linda’s opinion of Sal to a certain extent (when he was equally shocked that Sal showed up with Danny and not a tattooed punk rocker or whatever).
I genuinely don’t get why people think he’s so much better and/or more redeemable than Linda toward Sal. Linda’s self-righteousness, stubbornness, and emotional reactions just make her attitude more obvious.
Mollyscribbles
two factors come into play here: 1) not being actively awful and mostly keeping quiet leaves some seeing the possibility that he’s thinking positive things he’s not voicing. 2) Hank had a similar dynamic with his wife at first and managed to pull ahead in the parent rankings.
Archieve
I think the thing to remember with the Hank/Carol dynamic is that Hank normally did get to atleast speak and wasn’t afraid to argue with his wife(admittedly for patriarchal reasons but still) whereas Charles seems to think standing around saying nothing and never voicing an pposing opinion is an acceptable way to parent.
pig
I keep thinking Charles might be about to break ranks with Linda and being disappointed 🙁
Archieve
I’m sure Sal can emphasize.
DashWallkick
Maybe; the conversation with Walky and this moment where he’s noticing things are weird seem like it’s setting up for me the moment where he’s starting to notice and prepare to point out that Linda is a tiger mom.
Tarnagh
This. I get the feeling that Charles is only just now beginning to really *See* how Linda interacts with their kids.
I might be giving him the benefit of the doubt but I’m still hoping there’s a redemption arc of some sort for him. Something like Hank/Carol, maybe.
And maybe it’s just wishful thinking. Sal & Walky deserve a parent that actively cares about them.
DashWallkick
It took Hank a very, very long time to realize Carol was a monster, I am willing to give Charles the benefit of the doubt that having the kids at college going through changes is starting to make him think about some things. Especially since he’s kind of letting her be the bad cop a lot of the time.
thejeff
I think Hank actually changed. He and Carol agreed on a lot in their Family Weekend appearance. It was him with the “Hitler was maybe partly Jewish” bit.
He was just willing to listen to Joyce and learn from her.