435

Justify
Posted on July 2, 2020 by David M Willis

435 thoughts on “Justify”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    sins of the father yadda yadda

    shut up Linda, your kids can fight their own fights

    this another shitty parents arc or what

    1. JetstreamGW

      I wonder when she’s gonna realize that Sal’s an adult and she doesn’t get to make decisions for her anymore?

      1. Andy

        Given some of the stuff she said during the parents’ visit (about forcing Walky to switch to med school, he just doesn’t know it yet) probably never. Or not without Sal slamming it into her face.

        1. Regalli

          I do not foresee the Walkerton children having much, if any, relationship with their parents once they have the chance to be actually independent.

          Sal’s clearly out as soon as she’s financially stable, Walky… I think he and Billie would try for the Polite Thanksgiving Visits Where You Bite Your Tongue for at least a while, but we don’t know what the fallout will be when she really puts the pressure on Walky.

        2. Matthew Evan Davis

          I think that hinges on how much Billie’s relationship with Ruth helps her to be a better person. She has a good heart, but she let status sort of control her mind for a while. I think she’s starting to get the point where if they came down on Walky she would feel obligated to step in (if for no other reason than to reinforce her self-conception as “problem solver” even if she’s no longer a cheerleader). Since she’s not blood, that would likely result in a fight, which might push Walky over the edge.

          If Sal happens to be home along with all this for whatever reason, the gradual ramp-up to that fight becomes a sick ramp.

        3. Matthew Evan Davis

          That should be “to the point,” there.

        4. Ob

          Judging by the Walky we’ve seen so far, he’d probably bend over and take it.

          I’d love to have him break the cycle and stand up for her sis here though, it would be good character development.

        5. Wereg

          It would be really nice to see Walky get some actual development beyond ‘horny’

        6. Leorale

          I love that Walky and Walky’s dad share the exact same expression here.
          I will love even more if Walky breaks the cycle of taking Linda’s wack nonsense.

        7. Van Jealous

          It’ PARENTS WEEKEND…. ROUND TWO!

        8. Van Jealous

          BTW, So much for that look Sal used to fool her folks during Parent’s Weekend, Round One!

      2. Rectilinear Propagation

        Technically she’s trying to make decisions for Amber in this case since she’s the one she’s trying to get thrown out.

    2. Kyrik Michalowski

      Linda can’t help but fight all the wrong battles for all the wrong reasons.

      1. Zaxares

        In fairness to Linda though, in real life, actions like these are often the best way to keep your loved ones safe. The past has a way of never letting you go, and as long as Amber is around, her legacy will continue to affect those around her, as much as she might wish otherwise. Sal, as a teen on the cusp of adulthood, can certainly make her own decisions (and I STRONGLY encourage her to, don’t get me wrong), but that doesn’t make the worry of a parent go away, or change the fact that trouble seems to follow Amber around. It’s kind of like how in some relationships, they break up because one partner can’t handle the stress and worry about their partner working in a high-risk job, never knowing if when they walk out the door in the morning is the last time you’ll ever see them. Neither side really did anything wrong, but the only way to solve the problem is for one side to give up something dear to them, either a cherished career, or someone you love.

        1. SanoSS7

          Yeah, I mean, if this were irl I wouldn’t care about the motivations of ANYTHING if one of my kids had been kidnapped.

        2. Eldritchy

          Let’s not forget that Linda must know about the Ryan incident. Motivations aside Amber DID shank him into the hospital. That definitely didn’t improve the image of her in Linda’s mind.

        3. All-Purpose Guru

          Yeah, but getting someone else’s kid thrown out of school? Not sure how she’s gonna make that piano fly.

        4. clif

          The dean is a family friend and her ex-husband.

        5. InTheory

          As a parent, I probably would have made the same demand myself. And Sal is wrong, Linda wants her out for completely different reasons than her father and it would not have been the same outcome at all. In fact, if Linda had had her way earlier, none of this would have happened and they would have all been spared this life-altering trauma.

        6. Leorale

          Why get Amber kicked out for the sins of her father? That’s not OK at all. Since Linda feels that strongly about it, she should either demand more security for students, or make Sal and Walky switch schools and get all their credits transferred (against Sal’s and Walky’s wishes, as is Linda’s style).
          After all, it does seem that Indiana University has a problem with keeping students safe from guns and kidnappers.

        7. The WonderRabbit

          As Linda stated, it’s also her own sins – she did stab Sal’s hand after all.
          The fact that Amber and Sal have made amends and started to move past it all should mitigate that, but I imagine Linda would be reacting a bit differently if it were, say, Joyce’s mum who did the kidnapping and murder.

        8. thejeff

          No school has enough security to keep students safe from things like this. The only way they could even begin to would be to lock the entire campus down to keep all unauthorized people out, which when you consider it’s the size of a small town located within a city is a pretty ridiculous idea.

        9. InTheory

          No one is responsible for the sins of their fathers. Linda’s concern is Amber’s violent attack on her daughter, and her very serious case of MPD that endangers everyone.

    3. timemonkey

      Surprise, the comic is nothing but shitty parent arcs forever!

      1. Mariah Hardnett

        I mean technically your not wrong

    4. Rose by Any Other Name

      Walky: “So, um, is this a bad time to mention that Amber and I are kinda banging?”

      1. Ron again

        Yes, this is a terrible time.
        *grabs popcorn*
        Now, go ahead

        1. clif

          Yes, we are all terrible people who want to see this.

          Proceed.

    5. Wereg

      I think this one was explicitly confirmed to be another arc about shitty parents.

  2. OtterBoy1

    Oh shiznips

  3. Chris

    Good decision, Sal.

  4. Doctor_Who

    And so, Linda decides to take matters into her own hands and get Amber out of school.

    Step one, bail Blaine out of jail.

    Step two, buy herself a mask and body armor…

    1. King Daniel

      Step three, ???

      Step four, profit!

      1. inqntrol

        Step 3: Get hammered (literally)

        1. Bagge

          I mean, that DOES seem to be the established way of setting ties in the “aweful parent” competition.

        2. Doctor_Who

          Honestly, if this somehow leads to a cascading series of the bad parents of DoA axing each other off one by one, only for the cycle to repeat with the next one, that wouldn’t be so bad.

          Blaine kills Ross, Linda kills Blaine, Carol kills Linda, Whatever Ethan’s mom is named kills Carol, etc.

          Amber sits in her room, writing while wearing a monocle. “Dear Diary, my teen-angst bullshit has a body count.”

          How very.

        3. King Daniel

          Well, Amazi-Girl could quite plausibly be described as “she who brings victory”…

          (also, huh – Marten’s mother from Questionable Content is among the names in the “Fictional” section)

        4. abysswatcher1993

          I am not stopping Linda. Blaine is getting rid of awful parents and getting his ribs broken every time this happens. Just keep Mike and everyone else away from the bloodshed.

    2. tim gueguen

      Isn’t step one to steal Ross’s corpse from the morgue and try to find a way to reanimate him?

      1. Doctor_Who

        He does have the traditional Frankensteinian flat head, possible more so now that it’s been repeatedly whacked with a hammer.

        Where would you put the bolts, though?

        1. tim gueguen

          It’s the 21st Century. Flex Seal will probably do the job.

        2. DSL

          We have wireless recharging now.

        3. Needfuldoer

          – Frankenstein’s monster needed a bolt of lightning to rise from the dead

          – Doc Brown’s time machine needed a bolt of lightning to jump from 1955 to 1985

          – It takes 1.21 jiggawatts of power to jump through time

          Therefore we can estimate it takes 1.21 jiggawatts of electricity to reanimate a corpse in fiction

          I don’t want to know the kind of RF interference you’d cause trying to pass that much through a body-size wire

        4. Needfuldoer

          … wireless charging pad.

          Maybe Linda can find some plutonium.

          (Keyboard went away, accidentally clicked ‘submit’. Somebody’s tablet needs a reboot.)

        5. Commander Clash

          I’m sure in her mind plutonium can be purchased in any corner drugstore but in reality it’s a little hard to come by. Maybe she can find some Libyans who will want her to make a bomb for them.

      2. drs

        Rossert Strong, first of the Queensguard

      3. hof1991

        Send Ross over to Days of Our Lives. They bring people back from the dead all the time. Even after organ donation and burial.

    3. StClair

      No, she won’t do it herself.
      She’ll start a secret organization, something with a name in all caps…

      1. King Daniel

        Screw SEMMF.

        1. clif

          Won’t work. Screw isn’t all caps. On the other hand , S.C.R.E.W., the Secret Committee to … hmm, let me think about this.

        2. Miri

          Secret Committee to Royally Endow Walkertons?

          Empower or Endorse would also work.

        3. Needfuldoer

          Society
          of
          Everyone’s
          Malignant
          Mothers
          and
          Fathers

        4. Regalli

          So THAT’S what it stood for all along!

  5. butts

    “i don’t care about how you feel” linda walkerton, 20??

    1. Reltzik

      …. if the alternative is “Pandering to Your Feelings Because You Don’t Care About Epidemiology Facts” 20??, I’ll take it.

      1. butts

        i… don’t know what brought covid into this conversation, i’m pretty sure the ‘rona doesn’t exist in the Dumbiverse

        1. DrunkenNordmann

          Yet.

        2. ANeM

          I look forward to the next decade of comics just being characters talking over zoom.

        3. Reltzik

          Yeah, sorry, way OT, I’m just a little raw at the feelings-over-facts crowd right now.

        4. Sam

          Yeah, not exactly the best place for that when Linda’s whole thing here is acting with no consideration to Sal’s feelings at all, only her own and damn the facts that stand in her way.

    2. ensiform

      She is certainly not the villain here. She knows nothing of the backstory. She doesn’t know Amber. She doesn’t know Amber saved them. She only knows the facts as presented in the first panel here. ANY parent would be outraged and immediately demand answers, and many would be justified in believing that Amber’s removal was paramount to the safety of the school.

      1. RedCat

        I mean, she kind of knows Ambers Dad kidnapped people to get Amber to drop out. That seems unhealthy to me. And blaming the person who is being targeted by the actual criminal here? Not the best idea imo

        1. iz

          Well she does have a point that letting Blaine “win” would (maybe) remove her children from his attention

  6. Yumi

    Oh, good, just who I wanted to see.

  7. Jabberwocky

    Feel like we’ve skipped a strip

    1. Vukodlak

      We don’t need to see what… Linda says to know what she said. We learn everything from the context of this strip.

    2. Bagge

      Yeah, the one where Linda sits down with Sal and cheks her well being and gets her perpective on things before she rushes off to be randomly aweful.

      Oooops, turns out Linda skipped that strip as well.

    3. Stanistani

      In medias res, eh?

  8. Johan

    Obviously she’s a menace oh wait your kids are friends with her…

    1. Bagge

      Honestly, when it comes to Sals friends Linda count that against her.

      1. Alanari

        She’s also walkys kind-of-girlfriend, so this is not a Linda vs sal thing.

        1. Bagge

          Given that that means that Walky’s girlfriend is NOT Dorothy, I wouldn’t put it past Linda to go for a twofer.

          “Look, David. That bad girl is gone. Why don’t you make an effort to get together with that nice Dorothy girl again?”

        2. Bagge

          Not that I’m sure that Linda knows that Walky dates amber – or doesn’t date Dorothy. Might be another “fun” surprise waiting.

    2. ensiform

      So? Kids make stupid decisions. Kids are often “friends” with bullies and in many sad cases, kids are killed by people they thought were their friends. What’s with the rage against adults who care for their children in this fanbase?

      1. BBCC

        “Cares for her children” my ASS. She does what’s best for her regardless of the kids.

      2. Leorale

        Also, last time Sal’s mom meddled in the friendships of her kids, that was Marcie, because Marcie was a “hoodlum” and a “bad influence” — ie Marcie’s family are undocumented Latinx.
        Teen Sal tried to help her oldest, best, most loyal friend, who was facing hospitalization and longterm disability… and instead of seeing that as laudable in any way, Linda tried her very best to stomp it into the ground.
        Linda has the very worst track record for her kids’ friendships.

  9. danielle

    great talk, linda *thumbs up*

  10. Nono

    Okay, Linda actually makes… some good points in panel 2?

    I mean everything else about her is still a steaming pile of dung, but still.

    1. Chris

      Which ones do you see as good?

      1. Andy

        Amber has a history of both mental instability and violence, and she channels that into vigilante justice. It’s not a stretch to say she’s dangerous to other students. That was also before her father deliberately endangered multiple other students in an effort to hurt her. So now not only is she a danger to those students herself, but her presence may lead to them being targeted by others.

        I don’t believe Linda is entirely right, but I also don’t think she’s entirely wrong.

        1. BigDogLittleCat

          Except Linda doesn’t know about AG or that Amber is in fact mentally unstable, and she didn’t give that as reason for wanting her out.

        2. King Daniel

          The way Amber was talking yesterday (and how she was seen getting out of her Amazi-Girl costume in front of at least one unnamed onlooker besides our student protagonists, and probably more), the secret identity may no longer be secret.

          And Willis has described this chapter and the last as a “season finale” for Dumbing of Age.

        3. Bicycle Bill

          “Season” finale.

          Well, it is October; winter is just around the corner, and I recall seeing a post showing one of the ‘sets’ (the steps at Read Hall) with a dusting of white stuff.

      2. Nono

        I mean I’ll give one point for actually caring about her daughter’s well-being. And for being wary of the fact that her son got kidnapped and the school has just kinda shrugged about it. Honestly I’m surprised that more parents didn’t step in when Ross walked onto campus with a rifle.

        It’s a very low bar since it’s Carol, though.

        1. Regalli

          The question is, does she actually care about her daughter’s wellbeing, or is she using that as an excuse/‘I care about both of you!’ smokescreen.

          Given every past interaction we’ve seen between Linda and Sal, I’m not actually convinced this is about Sal at all. (And I’m not sure Sal is, either.)

        2. Nono

          I’m probably giving her too much credit as it is, yeah. I’d like to think that Linda does care for Sal in her own, horribly messed up way and hopefully she learns how to be a better parent.

          Maybe because the last year or so for this comic has just been Horrible Parents so maybe we can just have some… slightly less terrible ones?

        3. BBCC

          We have less terrible ones – Dina’s, Carla’s, Dorothy’s, Hank’s getting there, Sierra’s (who granted, isn’t a main character), Mike’s, Joe’s dad is apparently trying to be better and his mom seemed very nice in Patreon strips, Amber’s mom, there’s a handful more but I’m not looking for ’em right now. Y’all get my point. 😛

        4. Regalli

          Good parents tend to be less ripe grounds for drama and storylines about coping with the trauma your upbringing inflicted on you, after all. And without those, what even IS Dumbing of Age?

          Also Jacob’s brother Harrison seems totally cool, and he’s a dad. Also bodes well for Jacob’s parents that both their sons are pretty put-together! (By college standards in Jacob’s case, but still, damn well by this cast’s standards!)

          And Leslie’s not QUITE Becky’s surrogate lesbian mom but she IS a solid lesbian mentor who will buy Becky pancakes forever, so that’s something.

        5. Nono

          I mean, I liked it fine when the biggest drama in DoA was about Ruth and Billie. I didn’t need the parental drama, regular college drama was good for me personally.

        6. SuperZero

          Joe’s dad was recently seen sexually harassing his son’s teenage friends.

        7. BBCC

          I didn’t say he was good at it, I said he was OSTENSIBLY trying to be better. I don’t remember much since he got with Stacey.

        8. SuperZero

          To be fair, I think that did happen after.

        9. thejeff

          There’s no evidence at all that Richard is trying to be better. He told Joe he’s not noticing all the hot college girls because the sex with Stacey is so good.
          He hasn’t acknowledged a problem or said anything about trying to change, he’s just assuming that because he’s not interested right now everything will be fine.

        10. BBCC

          Okay, fair enough, misremembered that conversation. He did say he was going to be faithful to Stacey but that’s it.

        11. RedCat

          He did also say that Stacey was someone he wanted to grow with, and someone he wanted to be there for.
          So he has mentioned wanting to grow, or change for the better.

        12. SuperZero

          Eh? The school hasn’t had time to “just kinda [shrug] about it;” it only just happened, and we haven’t seen what they’re doing yet.

    2. Andy

      They’re good points if you ignore the context, which Sal knows better than she does – Amber’s made steps to fix herself, and tried hard to stop her dad.

    3. Reltzik

      The “stabbed my daughter’s hand” is a good point until you realize (as Sal and Walky know, and as Linda doesn’t give enough of a damn to find out) that Amber’s grown far past being a danger to either of them.

      All the rest of it is punishing a child for the crimes of a parent.

      1. Nono

        I agree, but Carol also doesn’t know Amber at all, either. To her it’s just ‘there’s a danger to my kids’.

        As readers we know that Amber is better than that and isn’t responsible for Blaine. To Carol all she might have heard was ‘oh yeah some girl stabbed Sal and then her dad kidnapped David, but honestly she’s cool, trust us’.

        1. BBCC

          Yeah, Linda REALLY gave a rat’s ass about Sal’s being stabbed. You can tell when it actually happened and she didn’t see her for five years. But now that it affects Walky, she cares.

      2. Regalli

        I mean Sal and Amber did get into a pretty public fight last week, but Walky and Sal both know that’s settled and they’ve made peace (or at least peace enough) and Linda doesn’t mention it at all. (It’s also highly likely Linda doesn’t know about AG, unless that’s gone public and we haven’t heard yet, or the fact that Walky and Amber are vaguely A Thing. And since she doesn’t know about AG, not the stalking, either – which is very much a thing I could see a parent legitimately concerned with Sal’s wellbeing being rightfully pissed at – or the DID – which, Linda being Linda, she would DEFINITELY be using as ‘proof’ that Amber doesn’t belong at this college with Good Normal People or around her son.)

        (Amber clearly needs a shitload of mental health support like yesterday, but even short-term stays in inpatient at mental health facilities tend towards the traumatic, and having a Rare Scary Controversial condition would make it five thousand times worse. Stacy doesn’t have the resources to find a DID-supportive and affirming psychologist right now, so honestly ‘out of their league campus staff and online peer support groups’ seems like the best-case scenario that’s actually remotely plausible.)

        1. Jane

          Are we sure she doesn’t know about the fight? I’m not certain how else she’d know that Amber was the one that stabbed her daughter, unless it was by way of explanation for that fight – Sal recognizing her is one thing, but I highly doubt that Linda would recognize a grown-up Amber.

        2. Nono

          Ruth said she was going to lie her ass off to Chloe to keep it under wraps. So Linda might have just gotten the Cliff’s Notes version of Amber.

        3. Jane

          I think the Cliff’s Notes version might actually be worse for Amber in this situation, though… It’d presumably mean mentioning that Amber and Sal had a confrontation with each other over what happened five years ago, without mentioning any of the things that drove them to confront each other, or how they moved past it.

          That kind of makes it sound like Amber has a grudge over what happened, and may still be pursuing it.

        4. BBCC

          She might remember the name. It was only 5 years ago and presumably she had to handle a bunch of legal shit involving Amber’s name.

        5. Jane

          Maybe, but then why would she think “that was the end of things”? Without the fight, she had no reason to even think they went to the same college prior to the kidnapping, and after the kidnapping, she had way more to panic about than that.

        6. BBCC

          Because she didn’t think they’d ever have any issue with Amber again or reason to hear about her after all the legal shit got sorted. It’s not like she could’ve known they’d go to the same school. And it doesn’t make sense that she’d know about the fight. A) Ruth made up an excuse to Chloe. B) Sal and Amber are both adults – there’s no reason to notify a parent unless they’re listed as the kid’s emergency contact. Neither girl required an emergency contact and frankly, if Linda is Sal’s, I’ll eat my hat. C) The only person who would have told Linda about it since then is one of the twins and neither of them have any reason to tell her about that.

        7. Jane

          I think you misunderstood my point slightly – when she says “I thought that was the end of it”, that strongly implies to me that she was aware of Amber attending the same college as Sal before the kidnapping.

          If she wasn’t aware of Amber being at the college, then she would have no reason to think about that incident at all – she would be laser-focused on the current situation of “her dad and a pack of creeps just kidnapped both my children”. “I thought that was end of it” strongly implies to me that she was actually thinking about it one way or the other, since Amber herself is very old news otherwise.

          This goes doubly so when one considers that Walky was also kidnapped, and Linda cares a heck of a lot more about what happens to Walky than what happened to Sal – it would be strange to me that she’d start off thinking about what Amber did to Sal years ago at a time like like this, if she wasn’t already worrying about Amber being enrolled in the college.

        8. BBCC

          She doesn’t need to know about Amber having been at the school beforehand, she just needs to know about it now. Thinking that’s the end of it implies, to me anyway, more that she didn’t expect to hear about Amber again after all the legal crap wrapped up five years ago. Hearing about her in connection with the kidnapping brought the association back up.

        9. Jane

          Mmm, I guess we’re just going to differ in our respective interpretations to me; for me, “I thought that was the end of it” reads more like (subtext) “I was already willing to put up with having that violent hooligan around my children, but this is a bridge too far”.

          Maybe it’d help if we knew just how much time had past between the kidnapping and now – the more time she’s had to think, the more time it makes sense to me that she’d have thought about Sal and not just Walky.

        10. Regalli

          Yeah, see, I think the fundamental difference here is that you think Linda really cares much at all about Sal, and um. We do not. Because Linda’s actions have at no point supported that hypothesis, sadly. (Seriously, she literally does not speak to or give more than the barest acknowledgement of Sal at Freshman Family Weekend. And Sal gave them one hell of a peace offering. She gave Billie and Dorothy care package cookies and gave Sal a gift card, and while a gift card may be USEFUL it still shows clear lack of personal effort compared to cookies.)

          If Linda ACTUALLY wants to care about Sal for more than the few seconds she makes a convenient rhetorical point, she’s gonna have to demonstrate that before I give her even an INCH.

        11. Jane

          I’d say it’s more the opposite, really – if she hasn’t been given a reason to think about Amber recently, then I don’t think there’s much reason for her to remember the connection between this near-stranger and her unfavorite child over something that happened half a decade ago, when her favorite child has just been put into extreme danger that saw a person murdered.

        12. BBCC

          I don’t think it’s about caring about Sal, really, I just think she did enough legal shit that the name stuck and then the name came up with regards to the kidnapping. Not any particular effort, just knowing the name because it was part of something that took up an annoying amount of time and effort.

        13. Miri

          I think some of y’all are forgetting narcisim: that was her daughter’s hand.

          Also if the argument is that Blaine’s crimes aren’t Amber’s, the stabbing was something Amber herself did. (Although in context I suspect part of the reason the Catholic boarding school was an option was because she had been stabbed in the hand, would be affected for life anyway, surely has been punished enough…)

        14. Regalli

          I’m assuming Linda’s banking on name recognition (or does recognize Blaine from the subsequent legal proceedings or something.) If she knew about the fight, that would merit mentioning as proof it WASN’T the end of things, before talking about things BLAINE did to WALKY (or adjacent to Walky) that happened to Amber as much as him. The Blaine issue isn’t one to get his also-a-victim-here daughter expelled for, you take that shit up with Campus Security.

          Though of course that does make certain assumptions about Linda’s priorities, now doesn’t it.

        15. Jane

          I’m not as confident of that – we came in mid-conversation, and were only given a single panel to summarize Linda’s position. Given that, mentioning the permanent damage done to Sal five years ago should take priority over the fight that didn’t cause any lasting harm, as it’s the more important of their fights. From a writing perspective, it makes sense to me that it would be dropped to make the dialogue flow better.

          And if she didn’t hear about the fight, I don’t really see why she’d even be aware of Amber’s existence prior to the kidnapping – without that, she had no reason to think they were even in the same college, let alone think about whether it was the “end of things” or not.

        16. Regalli

          As I said – it’s highly likely Linda was involved enough in whatever legal issues AMBER got in following the convenience store incident to know her name, and we know Blaine was involved at LEAST enough to sell people on ‘no no, she doesn’t need therapy, self-defense classes will be fine.’ (Seriously I’m certain that involved bribing or blackmailing a judge now.) Blaine hasn’t changed enough in five years to be unrecognizable, and Linda’s likely to make the ‘Amber O’Malley’ connection as it is.

          As BBCC says, given the lying Ruth pulled to Chloe and the fact that Sal sure as hell wouldn’t tell Linda anything, there are limited ways for her to know. (Maybe if she stalks the campus subreddit or something, and I wouldn’t put it past her.) And if she did know, it flows naturally from ‘I thought this was the end of it’ and was the only other publicly-known thing AMBER actually did, and the only other thing Sal was a victim of. Dropping it for dialogue flow also drops any real sense that Linda is actually concerned on Sal’s behalf at all. Given Linda’s past onscreen interactions with Sal are all either completely ignoring her or yelling at her, this would be different enough to justify its inclusion over ‘may have killed my son’s roommate.’ (Note, not ‘killed at least one person, one of whom was a student.’ ‘My son’s roommate,’ specifically.)

        17. Jane

          I guess I just don’t think that a legal issue several years ago involving someone that she seems to regard largely as a bother would really stick in her head to the degree that she’d think to bring it up here, unless she had a more recent reason to be thinking about it. To me, it’s like… Being involved in a minor car crash five years ago, and remembering the other party’s name now. Yes, you might put two and two together after a bit of time, but not in the middle of a major crisis like your son being kidnapped, and it wouldn’t be the first thing you mention regarding why they shouldn’t be in school now.

          As for how she heard about it, there are other ways it could have come up – maybe Ruth’s coverup was less successful than she thought, maybe one of the other witnesses to the fight had a previously unknown friend-of-a-friend thing going on with their parents, or maybe Walky somehow let it slip (not that I can think of any time he would have even talked to his parents). It would be odd, but a lot less odd to me than Linda thinking this much about Sal when Walky was kidnapped.

        18. BBCC

          This is nothing like a minor car crash. This at the very least made it to court enough that Sal was sentenced and offered a choice in sentencing – that’s at least several weeks, if not months, where she heard about the case against the O’Malleys, probably DAILY or near enough to. She’d hear her name a lot whether she cared about her or not. 5 years isn’t that long for a name like that to stick. Frankly, I’m more surprised the name DIDN’T stick with Sal.

        19. Miri

          “O’Malley, O’Malley… Why is that name familiar?” “Ummm, convenience store incident?”

      3. Netty

        The fact that she said ‘she stabbed my daughter’s hand and she thought that would be the end of it’ suggested that her stabbing her daughter’s hand was a completely forgivable offense, but now that her presence is threatening her son it’s suddenly important.

  11. Cattleprod

    Linda: I don’t look so bad now that I can say at least I’m not a literal murderer, huh?

    1. Bagge

      Give her time. I honstely don’t rule anything out at this point.

    2. drs

      “…in this universe.”

    3. SuperZero

      She did intentionally interfere with a child getting needed medical attention. So she did sort of try.

      1. Human Bean

        Wait, what? I don’t remember Linda doing that. Can you please tell me which incident you’re referring to?

        1. Human Bean

          Ah, wait, do you mean the time she stole the money Sal had collected for Marcie’s surgery?

          Though I don’t really see how that’s “sort of trying” to murder someone, even if it was a really awful thing to do.

        2. SuperZero

          I suppose you’re right, since the standard we were using was “literal murderer.”

          I don’t think trying to permanently disable a child isn’t too far off, though, and she also stole charitable donations to do it.

  12. Bagge

    I HEARD ABOUT A PARENT BEING AWEFUL AND IT WASN’T ME SO NOW I DEMAND ATTENTION!

    1. Bagge

      Like, Sorry Linda. You are still barely at third place of a bad parental figures, and you tie with “sir” for that spot.

    2. Regalli

      That about sums it up, yeah. Sure also is a thing that she’s focusing in on a lot of things Blaine did, things where Amber was a victim alongside… oh huh, Walky. And nothing about, say, the relatively public beatdown that occurred between Sal and Amber last week?

      I wouldn’t be up to hearing this bullshit either, Sal.

      1. Nono

        Ruth supposedly lied the hell to Chloe to keep said public beatdown under wraps. And the only people who would report this to Linda are her kids, neither of whom would sell Amber out.

        1. Regalli

          I vaguely remembered that, but yeah, there really isn’t a way for Linda to know unless she’s WAY tapped into the student gossip mills and they talked about it, with pictures.

        2. SuperZero

          If she knew that, it’d be on the list.

          Like, Amber has legitimately done things–several of them to Sal–that should probably get her kicked out of school (and arrested, for that matter). She and Sal have since reconciled, but Linda being up in arms about those things would still make sense.
          But she isn’t even using them to help her vendetta, so she obviously doesn’t know.

        3. Regalli

          Precisely. If Linda was concerned about those, then sure, fine, reasonable.

          Wanting to validate the murderer’s life choice by blaming his daughter/abuse victim for being his daughter and getting her expelled because her dad is shit? Far, FAR less reasonable. You sue the school for unsafe conditions and get them to take some actual security steps so a campus vigilante isn’t a thing actually filling a necessary role. Because as it stands, shit on this campus was fucked BEFORE AmbG showed up. (Seriously students were committing dox-and-stalk campaigns on women who came forward accusing their bro of rape – AFTER he got stabbed repeatedly, because he brought a knife and threatened to assault multiple people. That is a sign that you have a DEEP campus culture problem, realistically speaking. I mean, realism and AG don’t mix, but the point stands!)

        4. thejeff

          I mean, it’s a sign of a deep problem, but it’s not one that’s unrealistic or particularly surprising. Nor is it really anything that campus security can do much about, at least until after the fact.

  13. Badgermole

    Linda and Carol have the same angry white lady vibe and it’s making me confuse the two of them

    1. AeromechanicalAce

      They are both excellent examples of the Phenomenon known as “Karen”

    2. Newllend(henryvolt)

      You would think that would make them birds of a feather but I predict it will be more of a reason for them the butt heads. Like the rare sight of one Karen starting a confrontation with another Karen. But at the same time when they’re arguing Waukee and Joyce will just look at them and think “Do we fight like that?”

      1. Newllend(henryvolt)

        *Walky

      2. Jamie

        Liiiiike Pachycephalosauruses?

      3. drs

        I feel bad for people actually named Karen. Also the Karen peoples of Burma.

        1. DrunkenNordmann

          Blame the Karens who ruined it for the rest of Karen-kind.

        2. drs

          “Blame the Karens”

          The vast majority of whom weren’t named Karen? ‘Karen’ is an arbitrary label imposed on entitled white women, at the expense of real people. And yes, I have friends named Karen, who are neither entitled nor white, who feel hurt by this trend.

        3. DrunkenNordmann

          Have you actually read the whole comment? I was fully acknowledging that being named Karen doesn’t make you a bad person.

          But the reason the name got that negative association in some countries is because some people named Karen were being terrible people.

        4. drs

          ” some people named Karen were being terrible people”

          Can you name even one real person as the source of the meme? Because my research turns up “uncertain, maybe from fictional works such as ‘Mean Girls’ or ‘Goodfellas'”

          And why should some hypothetical bad Karens taint the whole name? We don’t talk about Donalds or Georges or Tonies. Why is it okay to use some people’s personal name as a generic insult?

        5. BBCC

          I’m pretty sure it came around as part of a trend from a few years ago of throwing out generic ‘mom’ or ‘teen girl’ names as part of a point when venting about entitled white people – I also heard Brenda, Barbara, Debra, and Becky quite a bit. Not sure why Karen stuck.

        6. Rectilinear Propagation

          I mean, John somehow became a synonym for toilet (same with Dick and penis) so it happens.

          @BBCC If I had to guess, Karen stuck because of alliteration with “OK, Karen”. Also because the specific kind of “I want to speak to a manager” entitlement that people were venting about at the time the name happened to stick is more particular to middle aged white women than teens and a name like Becky is too young and Barbara too old.

          Though if Karen hadn’t already stuck by the time the BBQ Becky incident was filmed, Becky probably would have ended up being the generic insult instead.

        7. RedCat

          “Becky” IS far as I know a term used like “Karen”, just for younger women/teenagers.

        8. SuperZero

          Except for the parts about expense and hurt, that’s all true.

        9. King Daniel

          uh

        10. drs

          I guess SuperZeros don’t care about people’s feelings.

        11. SuperZero

          For something to happen at somebody else’s expense, something has to actually happen to the somebody else.

        12. BBCC

          The only one I know is in pretty good humour about it.

    3. Nono

      They’re both bad in their own ways.

      I’d put Linda as slightly less worse because if you want to be kind you can just say she’s horribly misguided (and racist in regards to Marcie). Carol directly aided and abetted a would-be murderer.

      1. AutobotDen

        and Carol may still try to justify her actions.

      2. iz

        idk mate I could argue that Linda is worse because she directly abused her own child, while Carol was just going with the crowd trying to get “a man from their community” out of jail, thinking he wouldn’t commit another crime immediatedly.

        They’re both terrible. Maybe the most important difference is that Carol sees Joyce as “one of us” and Becky as “one of them” while Linda definetly sees her own daughter as “one of them”. Other big difference is that Hank is a much much better parent than Mr Walkerton and actually helps the kids, while Mr Walkerton (what even is his name?) always deffers to his wife.

  14. Newllend(henryvolt)

    Go ahead Linda make her life worse and then gas light her into thinking it’s her fault, it wouldn’t be the first time. Her own father, Her best friend/Ex-boyfriends mom, her middle school math teacher, what’s one more?

    I mean everyone else involved seems to have chosen to not take it out on her, including your son, and the parents of said roommate but hey whatever makes you feel like your doing the right thing.

    1. abysswatcher1993

      Linda, Carol, Ethan’s mom, and Blaine deserve to burn in the same hell Ross is burning at.

      1. Newllend(henryvolt)

        As awful as they all can be at times that’s a bit harsh, I know people say that all the time and most of the time you don’t really mean it. But I wouldn’t really wish literall hell upon my worst enemy.

        1. AeromechanicalAce

          I think we can safely mean it with Ross, Blaine and Carol.

          Linda and Ethan’s mom are in the “maybe” Column.

        2. Regalli

          Linda stole from Sal (for money meant to help a friend) on the grounds that friend was a ‘bad influence’ that were full of racism and victim-blaming bullshit, basically dropped Sal while she was recovering from a disabling injury and sent her hundreds of miles away, rarely if ever visited her, was not present for Sal’s move-in (though I wouldn’t be shocked if that was intentional on Sal’s part, too,) and proceeded to completely ignore her at Freshman Family Weekend even as Sal clearly tried to reach out to them and be on her best behavior (by acting completely unrecognizable as Sal, and even Charles who acknowledged her existence only did so to make the loaded-and-he-knows-it comment about her hair.) And the clear relative effort in the care package stands out, too – not only did Billie get cookies where Sal didn’t, Dorothy was included.

          Linda Walkerton sucks shit. I can be convinced, IF Naomi handles the current situation a hell of a lot better than the clear homophobia she displayed towards Ethan at Family Weekend and makes even a token acknowledgement that him being gay isn’t The Worst Thing Ever, that she can eventually improve. (And that ONLY because her counterpart in Shortpacked apparently did, but Carol was also a marginally better person there.) Linda can just go fuck herself, she’s every bit the abusive shitstain Blaine and Ross are but focused much more heavily on emotional abuse and manipulation.

        3. Newllend(henryvolt)

          Oh no wait no that I think about it, as much as I still don’t like the idea of being spiteful enough to wish someone’s soul complete damnation. Blaine might deserve it because he’s actually is an Unapologetic murderer.

        4. Regalli

          They are also all, fortunately, fictional! Their suffering is entirely nonexistent, as are their actions, thank GOD for that.

          That said, I AM the kind of spiteful that wishes certain politicians spend their last days haunted by the ghosts of all the people their actions and inactions have killed, a la Angels In America’s Roy Cohn. (Sure would’ve preferred any variation on it NOT to involve a global pandemic, though. I was pretty set on the ‘something noncontagious’ angle there, universe!)

        5. timemonkey

          If they earn it, they burn in it.

  15. DT

    You forgot to flip her off as you walked away, Sal.

    1. Stephen Bierce

      “Carla, flip her off for me. I’m too tired to do it myself.”

  16. Passchendaele

    “I try to make the best decisions for you, which is why I won’t actually listen to you and will make you and your friends lives worse” linda really is committed to being an asshole in every universe, isn’t she

    1. Ron again

      I think she thinks she’s doing good. She, like many parents, has a “role” in her head that she sould play. She will act like she thinks she should act, instead of thinking about the current situation, what the best outcome is and how to get there. Her role model would not allow a psychopath near her misbehaved child. And that’s as deep as she needs to be involved to know what her role would say. Quite often people act like this.

      1. Passchendaele

        Oh yeah, absolutely, she’s not intentionally trying to be an asshole. She just ends up being an asshole because she puts zero thought into these situations and ignores her kids. Her intent is a lot less important than the impact.

  17. The Coolest Child

    I feel like a strip was skipped here, personally. I know the point is to piece together the story, but still.

    1. SuperZero

      We didn’t need to see them explain what happened, and Walky helpfully starts the comic by asking his mother to repeat herself while seeming caught off-guard. That neatly establishes that her conclusion doesn’t flow logically from what preceded it or match what Walky and Sal are thinking.

      Although I did think I skipped a strip for a moment, there.

  18. abysswatcher1993

    Drop mic.

    Sal did the most mature tresponse to abusive parents in this comic. Ignoring someone is more painful than punching them.

    1. SuperZero

      I think I might have to hang up on my mother some time in the near future. It’s such a weird thing to be giving so much forethought. I’m terrified.

      Sal is… just leaving??? How!?!? She’s like a superhero to me.

      1. Leorale

        I believe in you! Good luck.

  19. Kyrik Michalowski

    Alright listen here conga, if your daughter, whom you barely care about as is, can forgive the girl who stabbed her then you can too. And children are not their parents, as your children both show by being decent people, so to punish someone for their parents crimes is reprehensible to anyone with a shred of moral decency.

    Is anyone else losing patience with the DoA parents?

    1. AeromechanicalAce

      I lost mine way back at the first parent visit arc. Half the parents in this comic are HORRIBLE.

      Dina’s and Mike’s Seem okay though.

      1. Kyrik Michalowski

        Mike’s parents need to teach every other parent about unconditional love and acceptance. Their son is a major asshole and they still love and accept him. His dad had faith in him with nothing more to go on than Amber’s word.

      2. RedCat

        And Dorothy’s. Little pushover-y, but nice.

    2. Reltzik

      With some of them.

      Confining myself to the parents of the kidnappees: Keeners are still awesome, Saruyamas are awesome. Stacy is… eh. Linda is bad, Carol is bad, Hank is okay but not great, Charles is… pretty much a nonentity. Siegals are awful. Blaine is the worst.

      1. SuperZero

        Does Becky not count as a kidnappee? I guess technically they never actually managed to get her.

        1. Reltzik

          Well, not in this round of kidnapping.

          …. you know, saying it like that, Ross is…. well, okay, Blaine is till the worst, but Ross is a close second.

        2. ego

          at this point ross is significantly better than average.

        3. thejeff

          No. Ross is still horrible, even among the bad parents. Him falling out with Blaine over their differing goals doesn’t change that.

    3. abysswatcher1993

      This is Linda we are speaking of. She stole Sal’s money because she thought an illegal immigrant like Marcie was a hooligan that deserved her throat injury.

      1. Kyrik Michalowski

        That still baffles me as to how she could think that was in any way the right thing to do.

        1. Nono

          ‘You’re just a kid, I know what’s right and you’ll thank me for it later when you find out that hooligan is dealing out drugs for money.’

        2. Regalli

          It’s straight up financial abuse as a means to control Sal, Decent People Logic does not belong anywhere in its vicinity.

  20. Reltzik

    Panel 5 Linda is forgetting (or steamrolling past) the fact that her children are now adults and she doesn’t get to make decisions for them.

    1. drs

      “I’m paying for their college and housing, so I still own them. Also they came out of my body, so I’ll always own them.”

      1. 3-I

        YEP, this.

        People need to stop acting like kids are their property.

  21. brasca1

    And here I thought Joyce’s parents would be showing up. If Linda knew how bad Walky’s grades are she’d probably pull Mike’s plug so her son could get a free ride for the semester.

    1. Kyrik Michalowski

      If she knew how bad Walky’s grades are… she would probably blame it on Amber as well.

      1. Mra

        That’d be ironic since the only reason he is passing is because she tweaked his grades in the school computer.

      2. Zee

        Or find a way to pin it on sal

  22. Bagge

    Walky will have to use himself as leverage, won’t he? “If you force amber out, I leave college as well,” kinda deal.

    1. Yumi

      “If you force Amber out, I will flunk out of college.”

      1. Bagge

        “I will even flunk math retroactively”

        1. Newllend(henryvolt)

          Oh that’s clever.

      2. Kyrik Michalowski

        Hell, he would be flunking right now if not for Amber’s… “subtle adjustments.”

        1. Bagge

          and it would be hilarious if Linda learns about that in the upcoming confrontation.

        2. Newllend(henryvolt)

          Depending on if she finds out without anyone else like the dean discovering it has me me curious. I remember in the past someone floated the idea that Linda would have probably the same thing Amber did if she had the chance and knew he was failing.

        3. Regalli

          By ‘hilarious’ you mean ‘oh look at all those Chekhov’s Guns firing off at various terrible angles at once,’ righht?

        4. Bagge

          ….right.

  23. DailyBrad

    Linda’s a proud mother in the Biblical sort of sense of pride. 😛

    1. Bagge

      She’s a proud parent in the Toedad sort of sense of pride.

      Ownership

  24. Raen

    Y’know, unlike pretty much every other decision made by a parent in this strip, I’m not sure I can actually blame her for this.

    1. SuperZero

      It’s such an off-the-wall conclusion that Walky is completely thrown by it.

    2. Rectilinear Propagation

      She’s blaming Amber for her own kidnapping. Or at the very least she thinks Amber should be punished for getting kidnapped by her own father.

      She also stated this should happen immediately after stating that she doesn’t have any answers regarding how this happened in the first place.

      1. thejeff

        To give her a little benefit of the doubt for the moment, we know far more about what happened than she did and we don’t know quite what she knows.

        Assuming she doesn’t know about Amazi-Girl, what role does she actually think Amber played? Kidnapped, yes, but also released. Does she know that Ross released her without Blaine’s agreement? Does she know that Amber came back to rescue them (ties back to knowing about AG)?
        From a certain point of view it could look like Blaine released his daughter to help him with his goals. That’s completely wrong, but from outside it doesn’t look great for Amber.

  25. Jane

    I feel odd saying this, but based on what Linda knows, I don’t actually think she’s being unreasonable until she starts ignoring the people who have a much better grasp of the situation than her… I mean, all she really knows is that Amber is a troubled and violent person, and that she seems to be involved in feuds that result in people around her getting hurt.

    We know the story’s a lot more complicated than that, and that it would be hideously unfair to Amber, but “Get this person away from my daughter before she gets her killed” may be the closest she’s ever been to trying to do something good for Sal.

    1. Hazel

      Yeah, I don’t blame Linda for this reaction (now the OTHER stuff…). Amber is a troubled and violent person. In the past she stabbed Sal and years later she provoked and attacked Sal multiple times. Then her father kidnapped Walky, murdered someone in front of him, and put Mike, his room mate in a potentially deadly coma.
      Leaving the college would not be best for Amber, and neither of her children desire it. But if I were Linda, after finding out about (some) of the danger Amber’s presence has put them through I would be on warpath.

      1. Jane

        I’d also emphasize the fact that it wasn’t just Blaine that kidnapped Amber and her friends – he had an entire gang of creeps backing him up with his crime.

        When Ross kidnaps his daughter, you can feel that things are safely ended when he goes to prison… But when it’s a gang of people kidnapping a student, that doesn’t really feel like a “terrible parent abusing their child” scenario anymore. It feels like something a lot bigger, and you worry about whether it’s actually over, or if one of his partners is going to do something similar.

        I mean, we know that Blaine was (probably) the only one willing to go this far – but when all you really know is that half a dozen people were arrested in this kidnapping plot, how can you feel confident in knowing that there’s no one else willing to continue the vendetta?

        1. SuperZero

          That’s a justification for pulling Sal and Walky out of the school. Having Amber expelled for ???? doesn’t actually address any of that.

          And Joyce’s enemies have put them in danger as much as Amber’s.

        2. Jane

          Amber’s the one they’re after – and so far as Linda knows, there may be more people after her, considering the number of people already involved in the plot. From the outside, it looks more like a Mafia being after her than just a parent, frankly.

          If Amber isn’t there, then nobody gets kidnapped or shot going after her. It isn’t about Amber having done something wrong – it’s about other students being in danger just by being around her.

          As for Joyce, Ross was acting alone the first time, and everything should have been resolved by him being in jail – it’s not the kind of thing that anyone expects to happen twice, if only because nobody expects someone that obviously dangerous to get out on bail.

        3. SuperZero

          And having Amber expelled for [reasoning not found] doesn’t address any of that. That’s a justification for wanting to pull Sal and Walky out of the school.

        4. Jane

          …?

          “People are trying to harm you, and are willing to hurt the people around you to accomplish that, while we don’t have the resources to provide proper security” is a perfectly valid reason to remove Amber from the school, if a callous one. It solves the problem by removing the target of the problem.

          It’s a solution that would leave a bad taste in many people’s mouths, including my own – but the logic behind what Linda wants is clear enough to me.

        5. Ron again

          I agree with you completely, but the point there would be (and I don’t agree with that, I just do understand): “why should I have to go through the trouble of getting my kids in a different achool if she caused the problem?”

        6. Jane

          I’d also add that sending them to a different college is a non-trivial ask – assuming that she could even talk her kids into going somewhere else. She could probably talk Walky into it, but definitely not Sal.

          There’s the tuition already spent that they wouldn’t be getting back, credits that wouldn’t necessarily transfer, pre-requisites that might have to be repeated, not to mention having to move again, and the fact that the new college would presumably be compromising on some of her criteria based on the fact that it wasn’t her first choice (her first choice, I have to stress, because Walky certainly wasn’t doing the choosing)… Choosing to leave the college over this isn’t a light matter.

          It’s probably the right choice if you no longer have faith in the college’s safety, though. And having multiple students kidnapped just after another guy showed up on campus threatening people with a rifle is probably a good reason not to have faith in its safety.

      2. SuperZero

        Linda does not know about how the conflict between Sal and Amber continued after they met in college (they could have told her, but if they had it would have been on her list). She does know that Amber was also one of the victims of the kidnapping (it’s extremely unlikely they told her about Blaine and Mike but not about Amber).

    2. regina phalange

      I agree. I hate Linda, more so than even Blaine and Toedad, because she is a very realistic type of horrible, the kind most people actually encounter at some point in their lives.

      But the thing about real people is that they aren’t good or evil exclusively. Linda doesn’t hate Sal. Her obsession with controlling her children doesn’t mean she doesn’t love them. Her refusal to empathize with her children as people (as opposed to treating them like underlings, or even pets, who must be managed) makes her a bad parent, not necessarily a bad person.

      And this is a perfectly reasonable response from her. Is it hypocritical for someone who sent their preteen to boarding school with minimal contact to be concerned about her safety? I would say it’s a bit of an eye-roll moment for sure, but it doesn’t invalidate her concerns, which are fair.

      I assume next panel she’ll go back to the way we know her, when she ignores the express thoughts and opinions of her adult children because she, Parent, knows better than them, Children, even when they were there and she wasn’t. But I don’t see why people are leaping down her throat over this particular strip so soon. It seems a little bongo-eating-crackers.

      1. BBCC

        She’s ALREADY ignoring her kid’s opinions on the situation.

        And frankly, I call bullshit she gives a damn about the stabbing at all. She didn’t when it actually HAPPENED. But now that she want Amber out of school (for something that ISN’T her fault) she can use it as a reason. Her concerns are based on some nonsensical blaming a kid for their parent’s actions and that is why they are invalid.

      2. Jane

        And on the “realistic type of horrible” note… I mentioned that it was unreasonable of her to ignore the perspective of people who knew Amber, but in all honesty, I’d probably be somewhat similar.

        I mean, we’re probably all seen someone end up drawn into terrible situations by their friends and loved ones, right? It’s all a matter of degrees, from “I really shouldn’t have spent that night drinking instead of studying” to “Okay, I really shouldn’t have lied to the cops for them”, but it’d be hard to name a person who hasn’t put their friendship over the occasional trouble that friendship has brought them. In this case, it’s not hard at all to interpret Sal and Walky’s defense of Amber as being rooted in their relationship, rather than an honest analysis of the danger that Amber actually poses – especially since Walky’s honestly not that reliable a person, and she’s predisposed to think of Sal as a troublemaker who surrounds herself with other troublemakers. It’d be one thing if she were given actual evidence that Amber wasn’t that dangerous, but all she has is the opinion of a couple of people whose judgement she has reason to doubt.

        It’s a presumptuous move of her to make, certainly, but… If she’s right, then she may have saved the life of her children; if she’s wrong, all she’s done is cut off a relationship that was probably a bad influence to begin with (in her opinion, to be clear), and which wouldn’t have lasted past college regardless.

      3. SuperZero

        This strip starts in media res, with Walky being flummoxed by his mother’s bizarre proclamation; she ignores this.
        Then Sal makes a good enough argument that she has to actually stop and think of a reason to ignore it; it’s not a great reason.

    3. DrunkenNordmann

      And then you remember that she stole her daughter’s savings because she didn’t like her wanting to help a Latino girl get surgery.

      Never assume Linda’s got Sal’s actual well-being in mind.

      1. Jane

        I mean, I never said she was a good person – just that this is the only time I can think of where I could think “Okay, I could see a normal, reasonable parent who loves their daughter doing that”.

    4. SuperZero

      If Linda knew several things she doesn’t, and didn’t know several things she did, that would make sense.

      There is a set of true facts that could lead to this conclusion. The Venn diagram of that set and the set of facts that she has, however, are basically two separate circles.

      1. Jane

        If the only thing she knew was “A gang of people including Amber’s father kidnapped Amber and Sal”, that would be enough to justify a knee-jerk reaction of “Get her out of my daughter’s school before something worse happens”, honestly. It wouldn’t be right for the school to listen, but it makes sense for a parent to prioritize the safety of their child – even when it harms another student.

        1. SuperZero

          No? Like if you could draw one conclusion from that it would be literally anything else? Because the only information you’d have is that Amber is a victim.

          So that’s not just not a reasonable conclusion, it’s not even just a conclusion that can’t possibly come from the evidence given, it’s a conclusion that is disproven by the evidence. It’s the one thing she definitely knows can’t be correct.

          Also you don’t actually get to choose to have other people expelled from schools for being the victims of crimes. If she was concerned about her kids’ safety she’d want to remove them from the school, not another victim.

          And parents who are cool with harming other students are, uh, pretty far beyond the realm of acceptable.

        2. Jane

          Eh? I’m not saying that that information suggests that Amber’s part of the plot or anything – but if there’s people trying to kidnap her, and the school demonstrably can’t do anything about it, then she has plenty of reason to think that it could happen again.

        3. Sam

          Which is why if you care about YOUR children’s safety, you would move YOUR children to another school where they would not be affected again. Trying to get Amber expelled for what her father did is not logical or the logical conclusion a rational person would make. It’s a vindictive attack to take against a victim of a crime as if she would draw her father back to doing more crimes at her on purpose.

          Instead of trying to protect anyone here, all Linda is doing is looking for opportunities to attack and let it be known that she is mad.

        4. Jane

          She might be able to talk Walky into leaving, but Sal certainly isn’t going to go – and there’s a reason that this was Linda’s first choice school for Walky, and not wherever she would send them to next. Then there’s the fact that she paid money to put her children in this school, which won’t be returned just because he’s not finishing the semester – and she’ll also have wasted months of her son’s life on classes that they won’t be finishing. Not to mention that this would all be pretty disruptive at a time that Walky just went through a pretty traumatic event – he could very well end up going to pieces and failing his classes if he transferred, and wouldn’t be given nearly as much slack as he would here, where they understand that he was just kidnapped and watched a man be murdered in front of him.

          There are a ton of good reasons that Linda wouldn’t want to pull Walky from the school at this time if she could pressure Amber into leaving instead – this is her son’s future we’re talking about here.

          Would pushing all of the harm onto Amber, a fellow victim, be the kind thing to do? Obviously not. Would it be the decent thing to do? Heck no. Would I think less of a person who did it? Certainly.

          But when it means prioritizing her son over a person she doesn’t particularly like, when there are meaningful costs and risks to both people involved, yes, I do understand why a person would do that. Revictimizing a person like that is cruel, but sparing your child more suffering by pushing it onto someone you don’t know isn’t an uncommon decision – it’s just rarely presented as starkly as this.

  26. Mra

    Nice try, Linda, but Blaine is still the winner of Bad Parent Olympics.

    1. Keulen

      Linda’s trying for second place, but she’s got a lot of strong competitors also vying for the spot.

      1. Nono

        Ross has a solid grasp on second, and Carol’s running away with third.

        1. Nevermaker

          Honestly, it’s pretty horrifying that we have a parent like THIS and she’s only at FOURTH place for Worst Main Character Parent. (Fifth if we count Ruth’s grandfather.)

        2. Nono

          Naomi’s pretty bad too, but she’s had limited exposure and only one kid to ruin.

        3. thejeff

          Yeah, using a broad definition of parental figure, I’d say Clint and Carol are vying for 3rd and Linda’s a solid 5th.

          Though if Naomi appears in this arc, she could make a surprise play to move up in the ranking.

        4. SuperZero

          Just give them all participation trophies. Nobody gets to win.
          They’ll hate that.

        5. Bicycle Bill

          “Ross has a solid grasp on second.”

          But do they present the award posthumously?

    2. BBCC

      She’s wrestling with Carol over Worst Mom, okay?

  27. KSClaw

    Oh fuck off Linda

    1. AutobotDen

      aw, someone beat me to it.

  28. Newllend(henryvolt)

    Also I kind of hope this is where Walky grows a set and stands up to his mom, on behalf of Amber. If Joyce can do it for the sake of someone she cares for there’s no reason he can’t either. I also hope he doesn’t tell her why, keep her out of the loop of why he’s worked over this particular person….just so she can see him and Amber making latter on.

  29. woobie

    At least Sal hasn’t reached hair poofing stress yet.

    1. Bagge

      She knows better by now than being surprised by Linda being aweful

      1. Regalli

        Which honestly, seems sadder than anything else. She knows nothing she says will matter, so why put up with this shit.

  30. Delicious Taffy

    Yeah, how dare she somebody else do a bad thing?

    …stupid bongo.

  31. tim gueguen

    I wonder what Charles’ (non)response will be?

    1. StClair

      “Yes, dear”
      “You know your mother’s right…”

  32. Rikunda

    Has any of the parents thought to ASK their kids what they want? How they feel? It is always them telling them how they should feel… Typical parents.

    1. StClair

      bender-serious.gif

  33. Roger Sterling

    Ok so can somebody get the Infinity Gauntlet and like…dial the age range exclusively to the parents’ generation? I feel like statistically a lot of people will be better off, and then once their kids get a half decade to sort things out we’ll snap em back when they’re nice and irrelevant.

  34. bejouled

    … Why does nobody point out that Amber’s dad kidnapped AMBER as well? Like this is clearly not something she arranged to hurt the Walkertons.

    1. Bagge

      Linda: “ah, I see I acted rashly. Tell me more about the situation and how you feel about it, and we can find a good solution together.”

      <-Totally plausible scenario.

      1. bejouled

        Well when you put it THAT way…

        1. Bagge

          🙂

      2. BBCC

        Where can we hire that Linda?

    2. Kyrik Michalowski

      Because in Linda’s eyes that doesn’t matter, just like Amber being there to rescue them doesn’t matter either. The only thing that matters is who Linda can blame for putting her through this.

      1. 3-I

        Putting HER through this is the perfect phrasing.

        You’d have to be very, very generous to think Linda’s doing this for Sal and not herself.

    3. BBCC

      Bold of you to assume Linda would CARE.

    4. Dr. T

      You forget, Linda is not above blaming the victims if their unfortunate circumstances inconvenience her. Didn’t she want Marcie deported when Sal’s response to her getting assaulted?

      1. BBCC

        Not deported, but she wasn’t above stealing her fundraiser money and holding it hostage (“You get the money when you stop hanging out with her”)

  35. Rikunda

    You know when Sal had her hand stabbed she kinda deserved it. It was horrible, but she did cause a girl to have a panic attack while poorly trying to rob a store.

    The dad, on the other hand, kidnapped kids and threatened to kill them all. Comparing the daughter to the dad is like comparing the sun to jupiter.

    1. Bagge

      Louder so amber hears it

    2. BBCC

      I’m gonna say no, Sal did not deserve to be stabbed after the robbery was over and she was already detained. That said, Amber was pretty clearly traumatized and her dad pushed her ’til she snapped and stabbed Sal. That and Blaine’s premeditated, intentional kidnapping of multiple teenagers for a petty ass grudge are still miles apart ethically.

    3. CMasta

      Sal did not deserve to have her hand stabbed. The robbery had failed and was well neutralized by that point. Check yourself with that shit.

    4. Hazel

      Permanently injuring someone who was arrested, subdued and defenseless because they threatened your friend? A panic attack is no excuse, I’ve had panic attacks trying to make phone calls. Sal did not deserve to be stabbed.

    5. Regalli

      No, she did not.

      I have some sympathy for Amber at the time because she was so obviously goaded into it by her abuser after an already-traumatic situation, but Sal didn’t deserve to be stabbed, and Sal didn’t deserve to be permanently disabled, especially not after any threat (which was minimal, since she was a scared 12-year-old and her flashbacks reveal she was so terrified the CASHIER was like ‘oh, honey, no’) was past. Amber was wrong to stab Sal, she was wrong when she made Sal out to be her personal supervillain, and her recognition that Sal is not is a genuinely good thing for a MULTITUDE of reasons.

    6. Jezi

      I think I see what you’re trying to say, but I also feel like “given her mental state and the circumstances, it’s not really that strange that Amber stabbed Sal” is very far from “Sal deserved it”.

    7. C.T Phipps

      I love Sal but are we pretending threatening someone with a knife isn’t scary or dangerous? Yes, Sal was a child but it also wasn’t harmless.

      1. Hazel

        Being threatened with a knife is incredibly scary and dangerous. Being stabbed by a knife is much more dangerous and scary.

    8. thejeff

      Sal deserved nothing of the sort. Sal deserved love and support she didn’t get.

      Sal did create a situation where that (or worse) was an all too likely outcome. She could have gotten shot by cops. She could have seriously hurt Ethan – even without intending to, if he’d struggled or something while the knife was at his throat.

      Amber’s stabbing of her wasn’t justified or deserved, but it was understandable – given what we know of her trauma and her father’s abuse and goading.

      There’s a strong tendency here to blame one of them to the point of exonerating the other completely. I don’t think that’s the intent of the scene.

      1. Regalli

        Yeah, both Sal and Amber made a TON of terrible decisions there (though I’m not entirely certain how CONSCIOUS Amber actually was in stabbing Sal, still, she did it and it is objectively the most lasting harm either of them did to the other – even counting the convenience store as the inciting incident that created AG, Amber’s reaction to stabbing Sal is at least as much a factor in it as the hostage situation itself.)

        Neither Sal nor Amber deserved to be in that situation, and if you want someone to blame for it, try, oh, I don’t know. The woman who stole from Sal as leverage to take her away from her best friend, making her desperate enough to do something completely stupid. Or the man who spent all day (and all her life) resenting and haranguing Amber for the crime of existing, including after she and her best friend had been involved in a traumatic incident, breaking her brain enough that the berserker rage and stabbing were things she did. (Seriously active thought had nothing to do with that one, that was all rage and pain.)

        1. Miri

          Also the bit where they were both traumatised little kids trying to do right by their friends and really screwing it up because their parents were abusive bastards.

    9. Ron again

      Now I know it’s been said before but it’s important to distinquish when there’s a cause and effect of someones actions, (for example, a drunkard breaking his neck because he fell off the stairs in a funny way) and someone deserving something (did the drunkard deserve to die because he had a few too many?). I think there was a cause and effect at work. Sal did something that caused her to get stabbed.

      She deserved to be arrested and detained. She deserved to be tried and punished. She caused all that to happen as well. But to be stabbed? I know in some ideologies that’s what she deserved but not in mine and I would say she was part of the cause, not that it was a fair punishment.

  36. Juanoku

    God, parents, please, don’t call your kids shots. Let them learn

  37. Newllend(henryvolt)

    I’m actually happy we’re getting this. A full chapter of certain people calling out there parents on there BS. I especially want to see Naomi get her turn considering Ethan saw how bad it can get having a homophobic parent like Ross.

  38. Nah

    You know, if Linda knew about Amber stalking Sal for weeks with the intent to be violent to her, then this would be a reasonable reaction, I wouldn’t buy that a stalker just changed their mind.

    But she doesn’t know that, she’s just connecting an act done by a kid give years ago to acts taken now by a grown ass man who is a separate human being and putting them all on adult amber.

    1. Roger Sterling

      Are you saying that Linda’s reaction is more deplorable because she doesn’t know how much worse the situation actually got?

      Because if this scene had happened during the arc where AG was stalking Sal, we’d be praising her for having incredibly foresight.

      1. Regalli

        If this scene happened THEN, she’d clearly be worried primarily about Sal as the actual victim of Amber’s Seriously Bad Shit.

        This scene is, however, happening now, where two out of three things cited are about Walky and where Amber was a victim as much as Walky was, because they were committed by Blaine. As such, it is victim-blamey and any attempt to seem concerned about Sal falls flat when she literally did not acknowledge Sal’s presence the last time they were in the same room. (Turned to look at her when she entered. Immediately went back to focusing on Walky and Walky’s New Girlfriend. Never had a single line directed at Sal. Sal ducked out without either parent acknowledging she was leaving.)
        https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/appointment/ and strip following, the ‘turn to look’ reveal page was before a scene change but I can’t link two strips in one comment, but Charles’s tag is so short it’s easy to trawl.

  39. BBCC

    *GROANS*

    Does she HAVE to be here? Does she REALLY?

    Okay, fine, her son was kidnapped, I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt-

    Oh, wait, I don’t have to. She immediately goes to awful right out of the jump. Yay! Linda is just the Karen who keeps on giving. Seeing her means never having to give the benefit of the doubt.

    I’m a little disappointed we didn’t get her reaction to Sal having found leather as opposed to Jesus, but oh well.

    Okay, let’s get to it.

    1) Oh, yes, Linda, we know how much you care your daughter was stabbed in the hand. I mean, when it actually happened you … *checks notes on hand* sent her to live several states away and never bothered to contact her. Oh. Oops?

    2) And catapulting STRAIGHT into blaming Amber for something she didn’t actually do. Ah yes, Amber, how dare you ….*checks notes* have an abusive father who is willing to kidnap people! Clearly this is your fault and this is a crime worthy of expulsion.

    3) Linda, I know you often get them confused, but you only do what’s best for YOU. You don’t give a rat’s ass about what’s best for Sal, as evidenced by you refusing to LISTEN to what she thinks is best.We all saw that with how you handled Marcie, who I hope you get to see today just to hammer home that you don’t get to make that call. You couldn’t stop her from seeing Sal when you sent her away and you can’t stop her now.

    4) Linda, just because you’re presumably paying for their tuition doesn’t mean you get to control their life. I know you think it does but your kids are still adults.

    5) God I love Sal.

    On that note, I’d like to point out this is the first time we’ve seen Linda talk to (or at least AT) Sal without yelling at her on screen. Yaaaaaay.

    So, place your bets right here, who thinks she’ll find some way to blame this on Sal, at least partially, if/when Asher’s involvement becomes known.

    1. Kyrik Michalowski

      I’m surprised she isn’t blaming Sal for not being there to protect Walky. But you took the words right out of my mouth, Linda might not be Blaine but goddamn if I don’t want both of them to suffer.

    2. Bagge

      Welcome to your “favorite” shitty parent, BBCC. I hope you didn’t miss her.

      1. BBCC

        I was happily enjoying a Linda free Canada day. 😛

        Okay, that’s a lie, I did have fun writing that comment. Dunking on Linda is cathartic. I get to find out how many awful things I can list about what she’s doing because it keeps me from just posting ‘fuck you, Linda’ over and over. XD

    3. Regalli

      In ‘fairness’ to Linda (note that I am using the DEEPEST sarcasm there,) she doesn’t actually give a rat’s ass about what’s best for Walky, either! She still thinks he’s going to be a doctor and he just doesn’t know it yet, never mind what HE actually feels passionate about! And she’s clearly given him a deep, deep complex about failure and the anxiety to match because he’s seen what happens when her children disappoint her and still thinks it has anything to do with what Sal’s done and not just that Sal’s not properly compliant and moldable into a proper accessory Successful Child!

      Oh, wait, that just makes her look worse. Funny how that happens.

      (I’m not sure I really HAVE a least-favorite parent, though I do have an outsized dislike of the Wilcoxen relative to their screentime. Every time one comes onstage, I’m reminded EXACTLY why I hate Them In Particular. It never ends.)

      1. BBCC

        “Fuck YOU in particular” is a pretty good way to sum up my feelings on Linda tbh.

        1. Regalli

          I think my stance on the assorted Terrible Parents of Dumbing of Age is that memetic photo of a lightning storm with the caption ‘And fuck these seven fish in particular.’ There is always room in the reservoirs of my rage.

          Helps that so many of them are, ultimately, variations on the same terrible ‘I didn’t want to make an actual person with opinions and wants of their own, I wanted someone who I could mold into the shape I deemed fit’ theme.

        2. Bagge

          Sums up my feelings about ToeDad pretty well too.

  40. Roger Sterling

    On reflection, actually, I’m not entirely sure any of us wouldn’t come to the identical conclusion Linda had. It’s one thing if we’re omniscient. It’s quite another if you’re only just being caught up to speed, and you don’t want to lie awake at night wondering if this is the day where your son’s friend’s cursed bloodline turns yours into the collateral damage.

    Everybody becomes a hardass when their children are involved. I’m not a parent, but I feel like everyone is being a little naive to think they wouldn’t at least have Linda’s gut response to the situation.

    And she doesn’t even know about the vigilante alter or the fact the main reason her kids were kidnapped was to lure that alter out of hiding to kidnap a third party.

    1. Uly

      It’s not the first part about wanting Amber gone that’s the problem, it’s the last part about her making decisions for her kids. She should’ve already started the process of recognizing that they’re independent entities who make their own decisions by now.

      1. Nono

        They’re freshly adults (if that). It does take some parents longer to let go of their kids being, well, kids, especially considering how much managing of Walky’s future Linda does.

        Even some well-intentioned parents have a tough time recognizing their kids as adults for a long time.

      2. Miri

        My kids are 5.5, 2.5 and 3 months. While I will jokingly sing “Mother knows best” to the big one, I also hear her out, give her explanations, and try to allow her autonomy over her own life where feasible. The 2.5 year old, who is mid-language explosion, gets vetoed when her wish list includes items like “draw on the walls” or “stay in a poopy nappy” but she gets explanations for these things, and where what she wants to do isn’t destructive, unhealthy, or likely to result in us missing a reasonably hard deadline (e.g. taking her sister to/collecting her sister from school) – we do try to accommodate it. Even the baby gets fed on demand, I’ll cook with him in the sling if his need for cuddles coincides with needing to cook the girls supper, etc. (Responsive parenting.)

        Yeah, they’re my kids, I am responsible for them, they are so vitally precious to me… But they are also people in their own rights, and one of the awesome things about parenting is getting to know those lovely little people and getting to ride along as they find their paths in life.

    2. BBCC

      I would like to think I wouldn’t blame a kid for shit her dad did no and I’d REALLY like to think I wouldn’t try to get her expelled for something that wasn’t her fault.

      And Linda’s only a hardass now because it affected Walky. She didn’t give a shit when Sal was actually stabbed but now that she can use that to get Amber tossed out she’s suddenly SUCH a concerned mother for Sal.

      1. regina phalange

        Do we know she didn’t go on a similar warpath over Sal getting stabbed? Or is that just based on the fact that Sal got sent away to punish her for the robbery and Amber didn’t seem to have any discipline taken against her? Because if middle-class Linda can get Sal out of any legal trouble, surely mafia-connections Blaine could do the same for Amber. That just leaves internal discipline, and Blaine was straight-up proud of the stabbing as I recall.

        I know people like Linda IRL–incidentally, I hate Linda more than any other hateable DOA character for that reason–and it’s not that they don’t care about their children as a rule. They withhold care when the child “behaves badly,” as if it’s an animal they can fully control with basic punishment/reward systems. They pick favorite children based on who is being the least “bad” at any given point, and they make it clear to the other (or, as in the case of Linda, they pick a favorite early on based on biases and the “bad” behavior is basically self-fulling prophecy).

        My point is that I think her care is genuine here, even if she makes terrible and irresponsible parenting decisions. Perhaps her solution is misguided, but how much of the details could she possibly have at this point? “Get the common denominator person here away from my children” seems like a reasonable gut-reaction to the broad strokes of things to me.

        1. BBCC

          Everything we’re told indicates she sent Sal away three states away and didn’t speak much to her except to lecture her on being a failure (Sal’s words). That includes Sal adjusting and trying to deal with what ended up being a permanently disabling injury. I’m pretty comfortable saying she did NOT go on the warpath for Sal. Best thing I can see is her threatening to sue the police department for letting Amber grab the knife and that being how Sal got the choice of boarding school or juvie.

        2. BBCC

          And no, there’s NOTHING reasonable about trying to get Amber kicked out for something her father did, gut reaction be damned.

        3. SuperZero

          Huh. It just occurred to me that Linda’s efforts to ensure that Marcie had a permanently disabling injury also inflicted the same on Sal. Never really thought of that connection.

        4. SuperZero

          Linda can’t have that much information without having more than that. She wouldn’t know the same person was involved if they hadn’t explained it to her.

    3. Reaver

      I mean if my kid got kidnapped, I wouldn’t instantly decide the other kid that got kidnapped with her needs to be punished actually…

    4. SuperZero

      If she’s been brought up to speed, she knows Walky was targeted because Amber is his friend, and she also knows that Amber is one of the victims. The conclusion that Walky’s friend should be punished for having been kidnapped is… not a rational conclusion.
      Although it’s one that’s familiar to me.

      And remember, the entire conflict between Sal and Amber originated with Linda doing some of the most evil crime ever invented.

    5. Wraithy2773

      That’s honestly my read on it too. I mean, she’s still a massive asshole for ignoring new information presented by Sal, but I do get Linda’s immediate impulse to want to act and be proactive about a situation that could have killed her child.

      1. SuperZero

        Lashing out at Amber isn’t being proactive about the situation at all.
        And her immediate impulse really should be to show some concern for Walky. And possibly Sal, since she was there. And maybe even the other victims!

        1. Wraithy2773

          Oh, fully agreed. But I do understand having an impulse of “I should do something to regain some sense of power, this is a something I can do, I should do that!”, carefully missing the step of “making sure that something will actually help”, let alone “Is action by me actually needed here?”

          I *get* her impulse. But her head’s still very far up her ass right now.

        2. thejeff

          A syllogism:
          Something must be done.
          This is something.
          Therefore this must be done.

    6. Sam

      Absolutely not. Any of my anger would be directly solely at Blaine because I’m not a irrational person that blames a child for their parents actions. I would be trying to comfort and listen to my children and trying to get campus security improved, not trying to go on a damn warpath of aggression against any and every easy target. Linda’s conclusion wouldn’t be something that I would touch with a ten foot pole. I’d have some serious concern about Amber’s well-being and connection to Sal, but I wouldn’t be trying to actively make her life worse.

      1. Regalli

        Seriously, I wouldn’t LIKE Amber after the stabbing but this is objectively not a thing Amber should be expelled for. (And honestly, I think ‘oh he kidnapped her, murdered people, and the victims all say he’s a mobster? And he was at the scene during the convenience store incident, and involved in the fallout?’ would explain SO much, and only reinforce ‘wow, fuck THAT guy.’)

        There are steps to take for the school to be safe. Expelling Amber for THIS one is just not one of them. Also Linda we know you can afford lawyers, help the others out, wave them menacingly at the school. Or at least leverage your connection to the dean for GOOD causes!

  41. CMasta

    Oh goddammit am I really going to agree with Linda? Haven’t you taken enough from me Willis?

    1. C.T Phipps

      I am going to say that her reaction is INSANE as there’s a mafia goon and a fundamentalist terrorist school shooter (who thankfully never fired his gun) to blame already. Sue Joyce’s church and Blaine.

      1. bhtooefr

        …he did fire it though: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/risk/

  42. Uly

    Linda, your kids are either legal adults, or they will be in a few months. You cannot make decisions for them anymore. You’re harming them. This is NOT what’s best for them.

    1. King Daniel

      They’re both 18 already; Willis doesn’t show under-18s in Slipshines for obvious reasons.

      The over-18s among the students in the comic that I can think of are: Dorothy (19), Dina (just turned 19), Rachel (20), Raidah (20), Ruth (20), and Sarah (just turned 20).

      Unknown – Other Rachel and Meredith have recently marked off birthdays per this strip, but we don’t know whether they turned 18 or 19; Agatha’s birthday is also coming up soon, incidentally, again according to that strip.

      1. Nono

        You’d also have to include Roz, Joe, Billie, Sayid and Bryce, then.

        1. Nono

          Oh, and Danny and Amber, as well?

        2. King Daniel

          As far as we know, all the characters you named are 18 precisely; the characters I listed are a year (or more!) above it – i.e. 19/20 years old.

    2. DrunkenNordmann

      When has Linda ever cared about not harming her kids?

  43. y3k

    Well, *somebody* wants to talk to the manager.

  44. StClair

    “Ah recognize you’ve made a decision, but given that it’s a stupid-ass decision, Ah’ve elected to ignore it.”

  45. bryy

    What do you want answers about, Linda? The entire situation is black and white. Ross kidnapped them. Like. I mean. That’s what happened.

    1. ProfNekko

      probably wants to know why the school has such crap security that several students can get kidnapped right out from under their noses would be a good question to ask.

      1. Nono

        There’s also the ‘gunman showed up on campus’ and ‘some dude was stalking girls only to get stabbed into the hospital’ events, too.

        1. King Daniel

          Compounded with “one of the kidnappers was the campus gunman, and another kidnapper was someone banned from university grounds, while the rest of the kidnappers were STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY ITSELF”

      2. Hazel

        Those are some good questions to get answers too!

      3. thejeff

        What level of security do you think would prevent that?
        Is that at all compatible with being a school?

        IU is a large campus in the middle of a city. It has roads running through it and open spaces. The buildings themselves have some security, but without walling the entire campus in and not letting non-students/staff onto the property, I don’t know what they could do. Security here doesn’t seem worse than any university I’ve seen.

        1. Regalli

          I think, bare minimum, some awareness of the things on campus that do leave a paper trail (for instance, the doxxings) is doable, and we know the hostages were kidnapped for over four hours – even that late at night, that campus security wasn’t concerned about such a ‘prank’ at the dorm where a stabbing occurred, very recently, and got involved for at least a checkin with the RAs afterwards does not instill confidence. The fact that the only time we’ve heard even a request for therapy checkins was Ruth and Billie instead of putting it on Ruth also isn’t great. That’s not on security, but it doesn’t exactly give a vibe of ‘caring about students’ wellbeing.’ When you have a week where a student is outed as a rapist who threatens other students with a knife and simultaneously, a ‘List’ ranking women on campus (primarily in the dorm that was targeted!) by attractiveness leaks, that’s probabaly a sign you need to have the mandatory Let’s Talk About Consent, Objectification, and Sexual Violence seminars at least on the SCHEDULE by now. And we know for a fact that the method of assessing whether teachers and TAs are taking advantage of students involves ‘bring the student with you to testify to the contrary,’ which is just. PROFOUNDLY a bad idea, on so many levels.

          They probably couldn’t prevent all these incidents (especially since both Ross ones primarily involved a nonstudent and the Mike fight occurred off-campus, and Blaine was working around being banned from campus,) but we haven’t really heard ANY reaction to them beyond vague concern and having the RAs address it. That doesn’t really instill confidence they’re taking multiple extremely violent incidents on campus seriously.

        2. thejeff

          Firealarms get pulled. This happens on college campuses. Some people don’t come back after a fire alarm. This isn’t normally something worth freaking out about. We saw Roz heading off with a boy, for example. Doubt she came back to check in right away.

          Yeah, there’s some more the campus could do about sexual violence/abuse issues in general, but as you say those aren’t really security issues. The way Jason’s firing was handled does piss me off on multiple levels.

        3. Regalli

          I feel like it was worth at least a raised eyebrow or two so soon after the Ryan incident, especially since there was doxxing of his victims going on.

          Like, under normal circumstances this would be perfectly mundane-seeming and Blaine WAS exploiting a lot of loopholes there. This was not normal circumstances. (Frankly Ruth should probably have raised an alarm of some sort when Joyce, Amber, and Dorothy – who were all known to be involved with the Ryan shit, not sure how much she’d know about Sarah – all suddenly vanished, let alone the other four, and I think she knew it too with that ‘It’s fine. It’s probably fine. Maybe they all went to McAwesome’s.’ Joyce is not one to vanish without staying for roll call at 4 AM.)

  46. Jonah Sanville

    we were so busy with the shitty dads, we almost forgot about the shitty moms

  47. Nick

    Linda is really bad at telling who’s harmful to / a bad influence on who and for what reasons.

    Say, here’s a thought – do we actually know what Linda thinks of Billie? Given what we’ve seen of Linda, I would have thought that “drunk driving and almost getting her friend killed” would be reason enough for her to want to stop her son from hanging out with her (or her daughter from rooming with her, for that matter) despite them having known eachother since childhood – in fact, that might actually be more reasonable than anything ELSE we’ve seen her say – but I don’t think this has ever come up.

    1. BigDogLittleCat

      She likes Billie well enough to send her care packages of cookies.

    2. Newllend(henryvolt)

      She’s from a wealthy upper-class family with status, That’s all that matters. Reckless alcoholic tendencies and daddy issues be damned.

    3. Regalli

      Billie describes herself as the ‘white-passing surrogate daughter’ Linda actually wanted, or something to that extent. Given the care package, I don’t think the DUI changed things all that much.

    4. thejeff

      Well, Billie’s her surrogate daughter and she’s obviously just acting out because of her own parents’ neglect. Unlike Sal, who must just be naturally bad because she’s acting like that despite Linda’s best efforts.

    5. DudeMyDadOwnsaDealership

      But, her daddy is really rich. Possibly richer than Linda’s ever gonna be.

      She also wanted to avoid Walky like the plague during the years she developed alcoholism and got in a car wreck and acted like it was no big deal. She also made head cheerleader during these years. None of Billie’s problems haven’t threatened Linda’s plans for her son in any big way, to boot.

      Amber, a child of a nobody, first was tied in to Sal’s ‘Great Indiscretion’ and Sal remained an unacceptable level of indiscreet ever since, despite keeping her at a Catholic School until College to give her time to think about her behavior.

      Now, that same ‘Amber’ is running wild and enjoying local celebrity for violent vigilante actions against perceived troublemakers, regardless of who their families are or how much clout they have, on the campus she has connections with. She starts dragging along Sal into her capers, then Walky leaves Dorothy for her. Finally after a dorm-mate of theirs ended up in a coma after coming between her and her father’s reenactment of Kick-Ass, said father abducts her son (as well as several others, but who cares?) in order to use as leverage to make her kidnap someone else for some hayseed who started that scene with a gun that led to Sal getting involved with an earlier caper of Amber’s. Her father kills said hayseed over nothing that made sense, and then attempted to do the same to Walky. Sal got involved with Amber vigilante antics once again.

      By this point, this is a problem for Linda. Billie never had this effect on Walky. Nothing ever went South with Billie that required Linda to accept that there is a problem where she isn’t in control of things enough to safely dismiss things whether or not she has the whole story, like everyone else matters too or some such B.S.

      While not egocentric like so many people out there, she is certainly egoist.

  48. BigDogLittleCat

    Time for Walky to stand up to his mother and set her straight. It’s not Amber’s fault that her father is a deranged criminal. She’s not responsible for his actions.
    Sal and Walky both are friends with Amber and both like her and trust her and Linda needs to just back off.

    Besides, it’s not like Amber’s father is going to be kidnapping people again anytime soon, since it’s a good bet he’s going to be a guest of the state for a long time.

    1. Nick

      I’m actually a bit disappointed that Sal seems to be exiting this conversation, since she’s probably a lot more qualified than Walky to “explain Amber” to her mom. It sure as hell took her long enough, but at this point I think Sal understands Amber better than most people in the cast (losing only to Ethan and possibly Ruth).

      1. SuperZero

        Sal leaving is likely for her own safety. And frankly telling her mom off as much as she just did was really brave already.

        1. Regalli

          And honestly, nothing Sal says could change Linda’s mind. It didn’t with Marcie over YEARS of Marcie being a perfectly fine kid, it won’t here.

        2. ischemgeek

          When you’re the scapegoat, literally anything you say or do is used against you. Fact is, Walky has a much better shot at convincing Linda because he’s the golden child. The harder Sal pushes the more Linda will use that as justification for her current course of action.

        3. SuperZero

          In my experience, anything Walky says or does can also be used against Sal. Things Blaine did might be used against Sal.

        4. ischemgeek

          This too.

          GC does well: why can’t you be more like your brother?
          GC fucks up: Why did you let him do that?
          You do well: you just HAVE to show off, don’t you? / You must’ve cheated / what’s the big deal? You’re good at that anyway.
          You screw up: all kinds of lectures and blame

        5. SuperZero

          Once when I was at college in another state my mother called to yell at me for something my sister had just done.

        6. ischemgeek

          When my sister had an underage drinking party and trashed the house, my parents grounded *me* for not warning them… And thanked her for cleaning up.

          They also once grounded me for having a friend over to work on an assignment when they had given their permission the day before.. and then forgotten. Because I “should have known” they weren’t comfortable with me having a friend over unsupervised.

          We literally worked on the assignment. And then cleaned the kitchen. Because my friend and I stupidly thought coming home to a nice clean kitchen would be a happy surprise for them.

      2. CJ

        I can see this as the Bretter alternative to Sal socking her mother (which I would be sorely tempted to do in her position).

      3. DudeMyDadOwnsaDealership

        I don’t think Linda’s desire to get Amber expelled and kicked off campus has to do with whether Amber is at fault for this, or anything beyond Blaine’s crimes and their consequences becoming a problem for her.

        She can control what happens to Amber, the clear constant connected to every time Blaine got anywhere near either of her kids (mostly Sal) that now has escalated to her other child being put in harms way in a fashion that made the fiasco public. Sal and Walky never see or hear from Amber again, chances are very high they won’t have problems with Blaine again.

        Blaine himself, well……Let’s just say there’s too many X factors Linda could avoid all together by not being the 1st snob hill resident to close in on organized crime before her and all of her colleagues’ hands have been forced, like Al Capone did with Chicago. People like Linda and mobsters tend to stay out of each-other’s way in practice, and Amber’s of as little consequence as Marcie was to her.

        Carol’s a egocentric moral coward who hides in her own little world. Linda consciously has a heart of coal and is proud of it. Sal knows better than to try to get through to someone when it’s basically like trying to convince Monty Burns to have a heart.

  49. John

    ANNOUNCER: “And with his brutal murder of the competition, it looks like Blaine has a lock on the Worst Parent of DoA Cup…”

    LINDA: “Hold my beer.”

  50. Sirksome

    You know I came to this one late and now I’m wondering why the comments exploded and .. OH! Linda’s back. Okay. It makes sense now.

    Honestly I still don’t have a good read on her. I think she cares about her kids….maybe…. but goes about showing it all the wrong ways. Still better than kidnapping your daughter and her friends and trying to kill people over it but that’s admittedly a very low bar to hurdle.

    1. DrunkenNordmann

      Reminder that her way of “caring about her kids” involved stealing the money Sal saved up to help her friend get surgery.

    2. SuperZero

      If Linda knows that, she knows Walky was targeted because he’s friends with Amber. And since they’ve been talking about it, she presumably knows Sal is friends with Amber. And she knows Amber is a victim.

      So she just announced to her kids that she wants to hurt their friend because she’s a victim. Not really showing a lot of care for them, there.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Wasn’t Walky actually grabbed because one of the goons somehow confused him for Amazi-Girl? (He was wearing his Nightguy mask…)

        1. SuperZero

          Ah, you are correct. So add Walky to the part about how she must know they’re friends because they’ve been talking about her.

  51. Kella

    Problem 1: Caused by Amber
    Problem 2: Caused by Blaine
    Problem 3: Caused by Blaine

    Linda: AMBER’S THE PROBLEM

    1. SuperZero

      I can’t blame Problem 1 just on Amber; Sal was also quite at fault.
      But mostly Linda, who made Sal desperate and forced her hand.

      1. Abbe_Faria

        I mean even Sal has even owned up to the first problem being partly her fault hasn’t she?

        1. SuperZero

          I think so. She definitely acknowledged she was at fault to Ethan, although that’s not quite the same thing.

        2. SuperZero

          Oh, bad link. Was I supposed to do it like ?

        3. SuperZero

          Close enough! The question mark is the link for some reason.

      2. BenRG

        Additionally, it was Blaine’s psychological abuse of Amber that created the mental condition where she stabbed Sal. So, it’s all Blaine really.

        Meanwhile, Linda has to carry quite a lot of the blame for Sal trying to rob that convenience store.

        1. StClair

          She should, but she doesn’t and won’t.

        2. thejeff

          And Blaine’s goading in the moment that triggered Amber to do it, so it really, really is all Blaine.

      3. Kella

        Fully agree. Blaine was the problem behind all three and I’m not sure that Linda has that information. I was more pointing out that even by Linda’s own description, she cited Amber’s father as the cause of the conflict twice and yet still somehow blamed Amber for having a homicidal, kidnapping father.

  52. Kaffeeteria

    I love Sal.

    1. Bagge

      Linda doesn’t.

  53. NinjaNick

    It’s not Amber’s fault that Blaine’s such an evil bad father.

    Linda is still behind Carol for least trustworthy mothers.

    1. Bagge

      I mean, Linda still think it is Sal’s fault that Linda is such an evil bad mother.

  54. BenRG

    Yeah, it figures that Linda would like to find an easy scapegoat to blame everything on and destroy so as to avoid coming to difficult realisations about nuanced realities. I wonder if Walky is going to tell her that Amber is his girlfriend and how she’ll react to that?

    1. Needfuldoer

      Or that Amber was actively putting a stop to Blaine’s scheme?

      Or that Sal and Amber cleared the air and are on peaceful terms now?

  55. Alanari

    I do understand the wish to protect her family, and she is right in that getting amber out of school would make life safer for her kids, since that will definitely make blaine stop. Sacrificing amber to protect her kids is not exactly a proof of character though. And getting rid of criminals by giving them what they want is not how one should deal with them.
    Also, seems like Linda doesn’t specifically target sal. She’s trying to get walkys girlfriend expelled. Seems like walky merely was lucky to never get in conflict with her before.

    1. Newllend(henryvolt)

      If the point of it is is to keep her serperated from her son & daughter because Amber brings danger not because she is dangerous herself. Why not just have them transfer schools instead of just trying to target the person who’s only real crime is being an abuse victim. But of course she’s not going to do that and plus like many others have said, Sal and Walky are not baby’s anymore, her bad approach to all this not even needed.

      1. Alanari

        I’m not sure parents eher really stop seeing their children as their n little kids.
        And yes, she should rather think about transferring her own kids if it’s about their safety. Amber did stab sal though, so there was a real crime. And I’m sure Linda hasn’t forgiven that. She does love and protect Sal. She’s doing it in a bad way that sometimes does more damage than good though. I’m pretty sure most parents wouldn’t be exactly thrilled to find out their kid is going to school with the girl who crippled said offspring.

        1. Newllend(henryvolt)

          That is understandable to that extent I’ll admit.

        2. Newllend(henryvolt)

          As far as motives go.

  56. Owlmirror

    I have a horrible feeling I understand Linda’s underlying “logic”.

    Everything she’s saying, here, follows from the fact that she has a good relationship with Dean McHenry (and she’s a control freak).

    She can’t do anything about Blaine — that would be on the police/DA/court system. She almost certainly has no connection with the police/DA/court system.

    Pulling her kids out of the school would be less than optimal to her, because she has no clout with the dean of any other school.

    She can use her clout with the dean to try to do something about Amber. So that’s what she wants to do. The point that it might not be the right thing to do is irrelevant.

    There might be ways to push back at Linda.

    1) The campaign manager for Robin DeSanto has a girlfriend who is Amber’s roommate and friend. Becky could express support for Amber’s heroism, and sympathy for Amber’s victimization by Blaine, and anger and outrage at any attempt to get Amber expelled.

    2) Carla might be convinced to use her parent’s financial clout to support Amber (maybe at Sal’s request? I realize this is kind of weak)

    3) Dorothy’s parents might offer support for the girl who fought off a bullying rapist for their daughter (but I don’t think they have any particular financial or political pull, so that’s even weaker).

    Of course, maybe the whole thing could be rendered moot because Blaine could end up dead, “trying to escape”, or “in a prison brawl”.

    1. BenRG

      The trick will be to stop Amber sacrificing herself and her future because she thinks that Sal and Walky ‘deserve better’ than having her and her problems around.

    2. Wraithy2773

      Aye, I actually really do get her impulse here. Oh, she’s absolutely an asshole, but she wants to do *something* to regain some semblance of control in a situation where she has little-to-none after her favorite child was put into a life-threatening situation.

      She needs someone to whack her with the clue bat, preferably someone that she actually will listen to and not ignore by default, but I don’t think massive hijinks will be needed. Walky just needs to step up and get it across to Linda that *he* doesn’t want Amber hurt because of her abusive asshole of a father.

      1. BenRG

        WALKY: “You can’t make them expel Amber, mom!”

        LINDA: “Walky, you don’t know what you’re saying; just let mommy handle…”

        WALKY: “We’re married!”

        Everyone goes silent.

        LINDA and SAL (simultaneously): “What.”

        1. BenRG

          A few strips down the line, Walky gives Amber an expensive ring and tells her to ‘put it on, don’t ask questions and keep smiling!”

    3. Regalli

      Oh, yeah, the logic makes a degree of awful sense (and anything she could threaten against the school itself – say, a negligence suit that doesn’t have to WIN, just has to scare them enough to settle – would also alienate her from the Dean.) It’s just that the conclusion is extremely cruel and victim-blamey, and well… Linda Walkerton is already established to be cruel and victim-blamey, and to pick the easy scapegoat over the person actually responsible. (Leland has such a future ahead of him!) Internally consistent. Still reflects badly on her.

  57. QuantumKittydynamics

    Surprised no one’s mentioned the grafitti “Red Center Desk” yet. Guess someone in this universe is a fan of The Handmaid’s Tale.

    1. DaveM

      Was it called the Red Center in the book? I read the book and (regrettably) saw the movie, but haven’t touched the series (there’s enough repressive hate fuelled sh*t going on in real life without needing any more thank you), and I don’t recall that phrase (though that might be because of what I laughingly refer to as a “memory” rather than it being a later addition).

  58. DaveM

    “Amber stabbed my daughters hand, but that was a while ago, so it’s over. But then her dad kidnapped my son and may have gotten my son’s room mate injured, obviously that’s over the line and she must be punished severely.”

    And the Walkertons move past the Browns on the sh***y parents board. At least Hank is willing to learn and move forwards, whereas Charles is one of those partners who will let pass, acquiesce to, rationalise, or just plain ignore anything that might start an argument in the name of a “quiet life”. It’s quite amazing how much you can be willing to accept in those circumstances, even though you can’t avoid the blame for the aftermath of anything you passively accepted in this aim.

    1. temperaryobsessor

      To be fare we haven’t seen her husbands reaction and Linda has double downed on the evil every chance she got.

  59. Sombrero

    Yes! I really really hope DoA Season 2 gets rid of Dumb Evil Dads and focus on Really Evil Parents like Linda. She is the real deal.

  60. Kunglebund

    yes, punish AMBER for the shit her father did. That’ll teach her to not have an abusive father.

  61. Sirksome

    I’m still a little confused on the Linda hate? I mean I know she’s not likeable and sort of awful, but people are acting like she’s the worst parent ever when we just finished an arc heavily featuring Ross and Blaine! Y’know the bad dads who kidnap daughters for being gay or to save money and shoot guns and hit their kids and oh yeah MURDER!!! Look how fucked up Amber is. Sal and Walky are relatively okay. That’s not worth a prize or anything but I do think it means Linda isn’t past the point of no return….yet. Maybe she’ll surprise us.

    1. Ragnarok101

      She stole money from her daughter that said daughter was collecting to try to pay off Marcie’s medical bills. She did this for blatantly bigoted reasons. People remember this, and also remember Linda’s favoritism towards Walky and her dislike of Sal. So her reasons are transparently bullshit.

    2. JBento

      Psst. Multiple levels of “bad” cross the “unacceptably bad” threshold.

    3. Regalli

      Both of these. Also, we’ve previously seen Linda NOT fight for Sal when she lashed out at a kid who severely endangered another, (trespassing or not, Leland was clearly violent towards other kids and likely to carry a grudge, but oh, he has a bright future ahead of him! So Linda just SAT THERE.) and instead tell Sal she shouldn’t hang around Marcie, the victim, because it’s far easier to blame the poor Latina girl over the rich white boy.

      I honestly forgot about Leland until this morning, but he really is evidence this is Linda’s pattern. It’s not about who’s at fault – so long as someone dangerous is being dangerous to someone else, well, fuck that other victim no matter what her kids actually think about them!

      1. Sirksome

        I’m not trying to defend Linda. She’s obviously not a great person or parent. I’m just saying I think she can come around. I honestly think she has a better chance of it than Carol does. It’s just that right after a story about two evil dad’s I’m really tired of almost every parent being irredeemably awful. It would be nice to see a bad parent use this as an opportunity to change instead of doubling down and having the message be all parents bad!

        1. thejeff

          I’m holding out hopes for Naomi. Though there’s always the chance she’ll take the opportunity to move up the bad parent’s list instead.

        2. Seregiel

          That parent is Hank and maaaybe Dr.Rosenthal.

          Hank: He started out openly antagonistic to Joyce’s friends, but after a successful rebuttal from Joyce at the fountain, let her make her own choice. Later, he was mad about the car stealing incident and just sided with Joyce to be right, but after finding out the reason they left, he took tbe girls back to school early.

          Rosenthal: serial cheater and still skeevy toward women, but seems to be running towards the feels for once and is sticking around during a pretty traumatic filled moment for Stacy. Also seems to be supplying money for Amber’s lawyer and actively tried to find an unknown teen to help his partner when she was panicking. We dont quite know that man’s worst beyond the product that is Joe but we know that this is leagues beyond where he normally swims.

        3. Regalli

          Stacy is also not terrible but clearly out of her depth with Amber’s mental health issues (no, low blood sugar is not the reason Amber has trouble reentering the dorm for the first time after she stabbed someone right outside it, Stacy,) but I think with a frank talk after this, she might be able to at least grasp that it’s well beyond what she or Amber can fix on their own.

          Naomi could get better or could double down on the homophobia after this. Hell, so could Saul, who is clearly not as straight as he wants to act. Either way, they seem to have handled the convenience store incident better than any other set of parents. (Though admittedly, when one set involves Blaine and the other clearly did not give a shit, that was not hard.)

          Speaking of enablers, I can see Charles realizing the shit he’s internalized and put on Sal and how much damage Linda did and performing a similar Hank-esque arc.

          I have at least a spark of hope that Yuri (Faz’s mom,) removed from Blaine’s toxicity, manages to recognize how bad that situation was and tries to do better for Faz. We don’t know enough to bet on that one, but there is HOPE.

          Hell, nothing we know of the Billingsworths is good but they could end up turning it around eventually.

          The thing is, I’m not sure there’s much Linda COULD do to rebuild the bridges she burned with Sal at this point, and she has not demonstrated a willingness to try even when Sal made offers. (She didn’t speak to Sal at Family Weekend at all.) And I REALLY rankle at the implication Linda’s more redeemable than the dads when we’ve actively seen her abuse Sal onscreen – because that is ABSOLUTELY what stealing the money Sal had put away for Marcie, and making its return dependent on Sal cutting ties with her, was, let alone the other moments that are generally Like This – and we know she’s fucked up Walky a lot as well and has Expectations for him whether he wants to be a doctor or not. Thinking she can change would require any indication whatsoever she wants to, and so far, she clearly doesn’t.

          Also, it seems pretty clear to me by now that a pretty core theme of Dumbing of Age isn’t just ‘kids making mistakes as they enter adulthood’, it’s ‘doing so while reckoning with the ways their parents have messed them up’. It’s obviously the central bit of Joyce’s storyline, and obviously also Amber’s, but we see it with both the twins as well, and to a lesser extent with Joe and Danny (him following Dorothy to college made so much sense the moment we heard his parents!) to name a few. Burning out on it is understandable as far as I’m concerned, but at the same time: yeah, this theme is really well-established and really central, and I suspect the dads were as much a vehicle to facilitate this particular storyline as anything. (Blaine was there for Amber to grow, but Ross’s involvement and death? Walky being kidnapped with the others? Those are both DEFINITELY narrative setup.) The more subtle ‘I will die for you’s and ‘I know better what you need and should be than you do’ seem to be the more personal stories to Willis.

  62. JessWitt

    Knee jerk reaction much, Linda? Amber was kidnapped too by her father.

    And get to know Amber first, why all this happened and why she deserves to stay in IU.

    1. JessWitt

      Also Linda, direct your anger to keeping the kidnapper and his accomplices in jail forever.

      1. temperaryobsessor

        But the kidnapper is an adult white man who proberly had a bright future before deciding to kidnap his daughter and people loosely associated with her.

  63. Rabisch

    Will Wally say anything in Amber’s defense or will he remain mute and obedient as a good mom boy he is?

  64. Cfb

    While Linda is a terrible parent in general, regarding Amber she sounds like most parents I know. I know it’s wrong, but sometimes people get a little overboard when trying to protect their child.

    That doesn’t exonerate her for playing favorites or for the whole Marcie situation, though

    1. Eldritchy

      Let’s look at it from her perspective. Her kid was kidnapped, his roommate was almost killed, someone DIED during that kidnapping. I’m genuinely surprised she is not freaking out More.

      1. Daibhid C

        Freaking out, I get. Deciding to blame Amber – who was ALSO KIDNAPPED – not so much.

        I freak out about just about everything, but my immediate thought isn’t “Who can I, personally, punish for this, regardless of their involvement?”

        1. Eldritchy

          Well she has a pretty bad track record with Amber. First Amber stabs Sal, then she shanks Ryan on campus and now is Somehow connected to a kidnapping… it looks kinda bad for Amber.

        2. thejeff

          Yeah, stabbing a rapist and stalker with the very knife he brought to attack his previous (almost) victim with looks so bad.

        3. Eldritchy

          Well the point is that where Amber is, violence happens. Whether she is causing the violence or her family does. It’s kind of like parents don’t want their kids to associate with families known for their violent and dysfunctional behaviour. Because they don’t want their kids to get caught up in that. All Linda cares about is that Amber has a history, a pattern of violent behaviour.

        4. BBCC

          It’s one thing to tell the kids not to associate with Amber and another to try to get her kicked out of school for something she did not do.

        5. Eldritchy

          That’s true

        6. temperaryobsessor

          Yea by that logic if someone is a frequent victim of bullying behavior possibly because they are not defended clearly they are the problem and should be further punished. So I guess Linda’s consistant about that.

        7. thejeff

          By that logic, Amber is the problem because she kept Dorothy and Joyce from being assaulted and possibly murdered. There was going to be violence whether she was there or not.

        8. temperaryobsessor

          Wow my comment explains why she hated Marcy and yours shows why Sal was her unfavorite.

        9. Eldritchy

          Also Linda doesn’t even know yet that Amber is Amazi-girl, the person who runs around and beats people up as stress relief…

  65. Kaidah

    Are there any good parents in this comic? Willis, is there something about your childhood you’re still trying to work through or something?

    1. Ron again

      Mikes parents, Hank is quite okay, theres a ton of comments above with better lisits of nice parents…

    2. Lexi

      Dina’s parents heard she got a girlfriend and immediately sent her money to take Becky out to dinner,

  66. DudeMyDadOwnsaDealership

    Most tactful thing Sal has said or done in regards to dealing with her narcissistic control-freak mother and her Linda Loman of a father.

    Seriously, there’s only so much you can do with parents like that without trying to be someone you’re not and expecting them to be people they’re not…

  67. JBento

    Huh, I thought it was the neigbour’s dog that woke me up early this morning, but since Linda’s back there’s even odds it was just BBCC snarling.

    Also, I can’t wait to have Ethan’s parents have Sal kicked out for holding a knife to their kid’s throat and a member of her youth gang being an accomplice in the whole kidnapping. What’s that? Not the way it works? Fancy that.

    Alt-Text: Yeaaaah, can we have Sierra’s parents instead? Or Dina’s, if you feel like not writing any dialogue.

    1. BBCC

      Hey, I wasn’t snarling, I was groaning. 😛

      …Okay, fine, there was a little snarling. Just a bit.

  68. SpaceshipPilot

    “I try to make the best decisions for you, regardless of how they make others feel.” That says it all, doesn’t it? Of course, those “others” apparently includes Sal herself. Her feelings are never taken into account.

    1. BenRG

      Implicit message: “You, like essentially everyone else I meet, are too stupid, degenerate or naive to make decisions for yourself.”

      1. Regalli

        Yeeeep! And we know it’s a thing because she thinks the same of Walky!

        I don’t care for Linda.

  69. Kater

    If Blaine goes to prison (woo) does that mean Amber’s tuition stops (boo)?

    I guess Dr. Rosenthal could step up but that seems wild for a relationship that’s only a month or so old.

    Can’t wait for Linda’s conversation with the dean; “sorry, there’s nothing in the by laws specifically prohibiting the children of assholes from attending so we have no reason to kick out Amber, Sal or Walky.”

  70. Lord_Circe

    Panel 4: *processing* Maybe… my anger is misaimed?

    Panel 5: NAAAAAAAAAH!

  71. Hazel

    Don’t know why no-one’s pointed out that the last time Linda did what she thought was best, she sent Sal to boarding school, effectively punishing *her*. Now that it’s convenient to punish someone else? I mean c’mon, what kind of traumatic event shouldn’t end with punishing a child amirite?

    /s

    Linda is self-serving and a bad parent.

    1. Hazel

      How did I forget to mention that to Linda it was Sal’s fault with the robbery, but now it’s Amber’s fault with the subsequent stabbing? Again, doing what’s convenient to label a teen as a delinquent. She loves to do that.

      1. Hazel

        And *also*, (lol I’m not done) the whole situation is framed with “her son” in mind, not even engaging with Sal til she speaks up.

        1. Regalli

          Oh, yeah. THAT more than anything is why I don’t think Linda’s suddenly started caring about Sal beyond the generic ‘her daughter’.

          Don’t forget how she blamed Marcie for the incident where Leland attacked and disabled her, too! Because Marcie is a ‘hoodlum’, but Leland still has such a bright future ahead of him.

          *Angry twitching*

  72. Tarnagh

    Well, now I know who Joyce’s mother is going to end up allying herself with. Hopefully everyone else’s parents are like, What? No. Sit the F down, Karen.

  73. RedCat

    oH GREAT.

  74. Lux

    I was really hoping we wouldn’t see Linda for at least another few months…

    1. Lux

      Also my icon is apparently now Galazzo.

  75. PB

    I know Linda doesn’t have all the facts. I know she thinks she’s trying to do right by her children.

    She still sucks.

  76. Daniel M Ball

    screw it, I’m going to say it: Sal needs better parents, and so does Walky, but it might be too late for Walky. Sal needs better parents because the ones she has don’t value her in the slightest, and Walky needs better parents because the ones he has have spoilt him to the point of being incapable of adult function.

    1. Regalli

      Oh, it’s not spoiling. (Or at least, not JUST spoiling.) Walky grew up knowing he was the favorite but that if he ISN’T Always Good, he will lose that favor with his parents. Walky internalized being the Smart One and the Good One and the Funny One (I’m… fairly confident at least some of his inappropriate joking when Linda and Sal fight is trying to distract and defuse things) because if he is not effortlessly smart, if Linda doesn’t like him, she will treat him the way she does Sal.

      Which, let’s be clear, DEEPLY fucked up attitude to have but since he couldn’t escape, if he thought his options were a favorite/dead to me dichotomy… well, I see why he leaned into being the favorite rather than trying to fight. And why the thought of disappointing Linda fills him with absolute TERROR. And why he’s falling back on the same pattern that worked for him growing up. Kid deserved better himself.

      Again: Fuck Linda Walkerton. All these kids need therapy.

      1. StClair

        Ayup, to all of the above.

  77. Buli-Buli

    I am late to the party but Linda is full of shit. I’m sure she believes what she told Sal, but she’s only ever made decisions that are the best for HER. Whatever makrs HER look best.

    Case in point. Billie. Billie is a fucking mess and the only reason she isn’t dead or in prison is her family’s connections. Linda has not only failed to discourage Walky’s friendship with her, she’s actively encouraged it. Because Linda likes having rich white friends.

  78. Random Nickname

    I think the way she prases what she says is really telling. Not “that girl stabbed Sal, her father kidnapped you”, but “that girl stabbed MY daughter, hurt MY son.
    It’s like “Sal is making us look like bad parents” all over again. She cares about the twins not as their own unique selves but as an extension of herself she must control and protect, because they reflect on her.
    It’s sadly such a common pattern of behavior, but a grueling one nonetheless. I appreciate to see it that explicitly framed as wrong and egotistical as it is here.

    1. Buli-Buli

      I am in 100% agreement here.

  79. DarkoNeko

    “I make the best decisions for you”, heh, not the first time I hear thyat one

Leave a Reply to Newllend(henryvolt) Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

*

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.