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Confirmed
Posted on October 12, 2018 by David M Willis
TODAY I'm gonna be back in Bloomington, Indiana!  I'll be doing a signing event at Vintage Phoenix Comics from 5-7pm.  I'll have books and magnets and maybe some prints!  Come say hello!

163 thoughts on “Confirmed”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    Walky, stop trying to take credit for shit you haven’t done

    1. Stu

      Nah, that’s firmly in the “Wants a Prize for Basic Decency” trope.

      1. stoodmuffin

        It’s walky. It’s kinda both

    2. JA

      He’s just being a regular American.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        Hey, that’s not fair.

        We also sometimes give credit to a random Spaniard so we can get an extra Monday off from work.

        1. BrokenEye, the True False Prophet

          I hope historians eventually find out what day the Norsemen landed in America on so we can take that day off work too.

        2. Azrael

          Columbus was Italian, by the way. /pedantry

        3. Samuel

          Nope, Genoese. If you want to be pedantic, go the full length. Italy did not exist at this time.

        4. wwwhhattt

          People called the area* Italy, referred to themselves as Italians**, and some people (e.g. Machiavelli) thought it should be a single country.
          *Maybe just the north?
          **Form what I’ve read from that time it’s less common than saying Genoese/Florentine etc., but that might just be because they were writing in Italian for Italians.

        5. keithcurtis

          I was gonna say…

        6. Sigh

          Actually, Columbus Day was created so Italian and other Catholic immigants could feel like they contributed something to the history of America, which was otherwise pretty steeped in Puritanism/Protestantism.

    3. Sunny

      Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say he’s trying to take credit for not having done shit?

  2. SailorCakes

    Wow her hair with thru a dramatic change since the last comic

    1. Regalli

      Her clothes did too. Either someone gave her that jacket or it’s some later point. (For all we know it could even be after the first robbery. Pretty sure we’ll get to see that decision made, though.)

      1. jeffepp

        You can’t “the Fonz” without a jacket.

      2. KtBear

        Is it just me or is that Asher’s jacket?

        1. BBCC

          Might be.

        2. Regalli

          *Double checks* Yeah once I remembered what I thought were striped cuffs were his arms and wristbands, it could be the same. There looks like just enough of an arm length difference she would roll the cuffs up where he wouldn’t need to to be the same length.

          Still not the same day unless she lost the blouse and had a tank top on underneath, but good catch, it really could be.

        3. Needfuldoer

          Her hair’s longer, too. We must have skipped at least a few months ahead.

        4. Regalli

          Huh, yeah, especially since it’s longer while curly.

        5. thejeff

          I suspect the “few months” since she’s done choir practice indicates how long she’s been hanging with Asher doing bad things.

        6. BBCC

          I figured the few months was since Marcie lost her voice. “Wouldn’t be fair.”

        7. thejeff

          Probably both.
          Since she’s still been out of the house during the old choir time, using it as an excuse.
          And that previous scene was soon after Marcie was out of the hospital.

        8. BBCC

          That would make sense.

        9. BrokenEye, the True False Prophet

          Not anymore it isn’t.

        10. Sunny

          I don’t think it’s the exact same jacket. It fits her too well for that. But it does look like it’s of the same type.

        11. KtBear

          Here’s why I think it’s the same jacket. It’s only likely to have come from three sources. Linda….who am I kidding? I can’t see her buying Sal a denim jacket, hints way too much of rebellion. Sal, but considering she couldn’t justify buying herself a treat I very much doubt she’d waste money on a jacket. Asher…. he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to buy Sal a jacket, shoplifting is way more his style and Sal has already shown she wont accept the proceeds of crime. I could be wrong, but the jacket actually being Asher’s seems to be the most likely scenario.

  3. Doctor_Who

    Walky was basically me as a kid, when it comes to my younger siblings.

    Yes, I was an insufferable little shit, why do you ask?

  4. Alan

    I’m with Walky here. Cookies. Mmm cookies.

    1. Marsh Maryrose

      “Stay me with cookies, comfort me with nachitos, for I am behaviorally compliant.”

  5. Stephen Bierce

    *cues the cricket from the previous storyline*

    1. Bagge

      TIME TRAVELING CRICKETS!!!

    2. Needfuldoer

      So that’s where Tag went!

  6. Bagge

    Walky is such a little shit…

    …but in this instance, I think he’s trying to derail the confrontation. It’s exactly the same “I’m such a goofball, pay attention to MEEEEEEE” he uses to derail uncomfortable situations in college (very similar to Becky’s strategy).

    Is it a good thing? I’m not sure it’s not. I sincerely doubt Linda has anything positive to offer her daughter in this instance.

    1. Nono

      Pushing the ‘reward me with cookies!’ suggests it leans more towards ‘see I’m not as bad’ stance.

      1. Bagge

        Possibly. My reading of him is that he uses his “Walky is an idiot” persona to remove attention from FEELS (or in this case, confrontation).

        Similar to here
        http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/spaceship/

        1. Axel

          I think it’s both. I don’t think it’s all that altruistic, but yeah generally kids/teens don’t want to see their parents and/or siblings fighting.

        2. Bagge

          Not as much altruistic as conflict averse.

          …and possibly trying to help his sister in his own incredibly inept way

    2. abysswatcher1993

      Yeah, Walky is such a goofball that he can get away with only a little reprimand. Jegus, Walkerton mom has favoritism issues.

    3. Conuly

      I agree.

  7. DailyBrad

    Snrrk. That was a bit of needed levity.

    I hadn’t quite realized just how tense these last few strips have been since I got a laugh here. It’s like taking a big breath after a dive.

  8. Regalli

    Gee, Linda, I wonder why your daughter doesn’t trust you to tell you where she’s been or respect you enough to obey curfews. What a mystery.

    *Insert UC flipping three birds at the same time.*

  9. stoodmuffin

    Oh, Sal. I just. I. Mannnnn. <3 hugs.

  10. Nono

    Linda’s stance is… not completely unreasonable here? If my kid was gone til morning with no clues as to what she’s doing… yeah I’d be concerned too.

    Sure, kids grow up and need independence and all that, and we know Linda is kind of… bad. But I’m withholding judgement on this til we see what her follow-up is gonna be.

    1. Axel

      Does she sound particularly concerned for -Sal-, though?

      1. BBCC

        Pfft, no, Linda cares more about being SEEN as a good mom than BEING a good mom.

        1. Reltzik

          In this case? Her only audience is Walky and Sal and she called up Marge (whoever that is) and revealed that she’d lost track of Sal. So no, I don’t think this right here is performative momming.

          I see Linda’s momming strategy as less a performative thing and more of a dominance thing. Her children will be the way she wants them to be because she’s in charge.

          But in this moment? There’s not a thing she’s saying which is inappropriate to circumstances. Pretty much EVERY kid has the “where were you and why are you sneaking back in at this hour?” confrontation at some point.

        2. BBCC

          I think performative is the wrong word in this case, but I do think this is more a case of her doing what she thinks good moms do (and what’s ‘for the kids own good – according to her’) rather than actually caring about Sal at all. No where does she express any concern for Sal or ask if something happened. And I never had that conversation because I generally listened to my parents because my parents weren’t shitheads like the Walkertons.

        3. Needfuldoer

          She’s probably caught Sal sneaking in a few times, but hasn’t confronted her about it until now.

          +1 to the “never got the ‘why are you sneaking in so late’ talk” list, but I sure got the “why are you still awake and on the Internet so late just go to bed” talk plenty of times. More than ten years later, I post on the Internet at 2 AM because I get up that early for work so who’s laughing now?

        4. Unusually Angry Hippie

          This….is pretty much everything I hate about the peanut gallery we’ve got going on in this comment section. You said it yourself, you’ve never been in a situation that even remotely resembles the one your looking down from your high-horse at.

          I WAS the Sal, in my household, and it takes two to tango. You can’t just sum it up with Walkertons=Evil, Sal=Perfect. I know it’s what ‘troubled'(usually upper-middle class, like the walkertons) kids on the internet want to hear, but you can drop the pretense when your talking about fictional characters.

        5. not someone else

          I think you’re going a little overboard with the insinuations, especially since it’s not like the comment section doesn’t overanalyze everything. Analysis, predictions, and overattachment to the characters are kinda what most of us are down here for.

        6. BBCC

          Sure. I’m on a high horse because I don’t think people should be shitheads to their kids. Okay. I also really like your implication upper-middle class families can’t be toxic and cause trouble. Very nice. I never claimed Sal was perfect. I have said the Walkertons being shit heads does cause her to lash out at them and that they’re probably not going to reconcile any time soon.

        7. BBCC

          Also, FYI, you don’t have to read my comments.

        8. Emily

          “It takes two to tango” really really doesn’t apply to a literal child and their parent. There is not an equal share of responsibility for conflict that arises between them because one is the adult with literally all of the power and the other is a kid who is being raised by that adult.

        9. thejeff

          OTOH, parents can fail to raise perfect kids and conflicts can arise despite them doing basically alright. I know I had plenty of conflicts with my parents and they were mostly me screwing up and them trying to correct me.

          Now, we know from the larger context that there are big problems with the way the Walkertons are treating their kids, but ignoring that context – any parent is going to be upset when their 12 year old kid comes sneaking in late, lying about where they’ve been and apparently been doing so for months. Perhaps not so late, but using choir practice as an excuse long after she quit going.

        10. ischemgeek

          Yeah, this. The parent has the advantage of: total control over the child’s freedom of movement, belongings, and physical integrity, decades of life experience, financial and social resources, and societal benefit of the doubt.

          The kid doesn’t have the option of walking away, of getting help, drawing on life experience, etc.

          Also: It takes two to tango is one that always makes me nervous. It’s such a thought-terminating cliche. In some cases, it’s true that both parties to a disagreement are contributing more-or-less equally. In other cases, it’s an excuse to not look deeper into an abusive situation.

          TW Explicit and detailed description of bullying for the rest of the comment.

          I was bullied really fucking bad in school. Like Carrie level shit. Like all the kids in the class ganging up to urge me to kill myself. Like a group of a dozen kids ambushing me in a bathroom to strip me nude and steal my clothing in middle school. Like to this day, at 31, I can’t use a locker when people are behind me or dig in a crate if others are in the same room because as a kid if I did that, I’d get physically attacked. I could go on.

          And people wrote it off as “It takes two to tango” and “What did you do to MAKE them strip you nude/slam a steel crate lid on your head/slam your locker shut on your head/sucker punch you at the locker/knock your lunch out of your hands/spit on you/throw a drink over your head/sit on you and smash your face into the ice/etc?”

          And they’d never believe the answer was: I existed. With glasses and an overbite. While autistic and queer. That was fucking it. They attacked me because I was weird and queer and I looked funny. And they got away with it because everyone fell for the fallacy of the golden mean and insisted it takes two to tango. They always insisted I had to have done something to deserve it.

          I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve any of it.

          But “it takes two to tango” sure as fuck meant I was treated like I did.

        11. BBCC

          Oh thank god, someone else tackled that nonsense so I didn’t have to.

        12. Inahc

          Yeah. I excused a lot of my mum’s behaviour with “well I was pretty difficult at that age”. But then I found out she’d said similar things to my sister (who she didn’t raise), and I was like – holy fuck that is inexcusable, that is abuse. And then the penny dropped :p

    2. Kyrik Michalowski

      Her stance would be more reasonable if she was worried about Sal, but she isn’t. She is worried about how Sal reflects on her and the family. This isn’t parental concern, love and support, this is about control and public image.

      1. Unusually Angry Hippie

        How the hell do you get that from one strip of conversation?

        I know for sure that my mom yells THE MOST when she’s worried. Linda’s in a difficult place and has no idea how to deal with it, so she’s falling back to the ‘mom voice’ negative reinforcement that seems to have worked fine on Walky.

        1. BBCC

          I’m the kid of one of those people who yells when they’re worried too. A) Linda’s track record isn’t good enough she gets the benefit of the doubt on her motives. B) She’s missing the thing that, in my experience, usually follows immediately after ‘where were you’ – ‘why are you so late’?

        2. BBCC

          Before anyone asks – my experience is overhearing my mom asking those same questions to my sister.

        3. ischemgeek

          For me i am still open to Linda acting from worry. The tell will be if she starts asking Sal if she WANTS to make the family/her mother/ her father a laughing stock /look bad. My folks loved pulling that one

        4. BBCC

          Maybe I’m just a cynic when it comes to Linda and Charles. I don’t have that kind of generosity to give them the benefit of the doubt.

        5. ischemgeek

          Getcha. Worried and godawful parent aren’t exclusive. Linda is an emotionally abusive sack of shit. But she can be that and simultaneously be worried for her kid. My folks very often were genuinely worried about my sibs’ and my mh issues. At the same time they were emotionally and physically abusive.

        6. Inahc

          It’s not like the reasons make it any less wrong.

        7. BBCC

          That’s true, but my cynical pill side is still suggesting that she’s more worked up because having your kid come home at god knows when in the morning is a spot on her reputation as a mom than actual worry about Sal, even if there is some of that (though, frankly, my cynical pill side often doubts that too).

        8. thejeff

          You don’t get it from one strip of conversation. You get it from the entire comics worth of context.

        9. Conuly

          We get it from the fact that Sal outright said her mother favored Walky. We get it from the corroboration of this statement that came when we saw a. the flashback of their mother choosing Walky to be the child with the short acting gig b. the box of treats she sent to Walky and Billie compared to the tiny box she sent to Sal c. all other scenes and flashbacks with Sal and her mother where the woman has not a single nice thing to say to her daughter d. the way Walky completely and utterly shut down at the thought of failure, complete with fears that nobody would love him if he failed a single math class e. wasn’t there even a flashback of the twins as babies with their mother complaining already that Sal “cried more”?

        10. BBCC

          That last one hasn’t happened, to be fair, but the rest is all true.

    3. Regalli

      I would consider being more sympathetic if
      1) Linda’s record didn’t speak for itself. The immediate dismissal of Marcie and failure to speak up for Sal during the Leland debacle, her telling Dorothy’s mom that Walky’s going to be premed (‘I thought he was a telecommunications major?’ ‘So does he, until he changes his mind.’)* and clearly seeing the Dorothy relationship as something to bring Walky’s reputation and drive up rather than the business of the kids, completely ignoring Sal showing up in favor of needling Walky to meet his new girlfriend – and this is just the stuff we’ve seen on panel, in her tag.
      2) I’m just gonna note – chronologically speaking, I’m pretty sure we haven’t seen Sal swear by this point in the timeline. This is the second time we’ve seen Linda swear AT Sal – the first time was in the first Marcie flashback, when Sal was around five. I’m not gonna say swearing around your young children is never a healthy dynamic, or that it doesn’t happen sometimes after serious concern (especially around this age,) but given what we already know of this relationship and the fact that both times we’ve seen it have been at Sal, in anger… It’s not a good look.

      * Another reason there’s a difference between Dorothy’s family and Charles and Linda: In that strip, Deborah is clearly supportive of Walky and Dorothy not necessarily being serious and equally clearly uncomfortable with Linda’s ‘oh he just doesn’t KNOW he’s going to be a doctor’ lines.

      1. Diner Kinetic

        Not to mention how there’s _definitely_ a double standard here. If I didn’t know better I’d say Walky was actually trying to draw attention to how Sal was being treated worse than him with sarcasm, instead of being a dick. But it’s Walky, so being a dick is pretty much the only way he _can_ point things out a lot of the time… wait, this is why he’s rooming with mike

        1. Emily

          Yeah, Walky made it pretty clear that best case scenario he was completely oblivious to the favouritism going on in their family so I’m not buying these “he’s just trying to act normal/distract Linda.”

        2. Sunny

          He’s also very averse to confrontations (with the one exception of discussing cartoons). I can from experience say that it’s extremely uncomfortable for a child to have to listen to one of your parents arguing with your sibling, and I imagine doubly so if it’s your twin. Walky falling back on his goofball behaviour to try and derail it, or at least to make it a little more bearable, is perfectly understandable and not something that should be held against him.

        3. Emily

          Actively emphasizing how you’re “the good one” and throwing your sibling under the bus should absolutely be held against you. There are a million “goofy” ways to defuse this tension that aren’t reinforcing the favourite child paradigm going on in this family but Walky chose this one.

        4. ischemgeek

          Yep.

          Although a word in Walky’s defense: I volunteer with kids a lot. A lot of the time, “goofball” I’m-being-good-see? is an anxiety response. A lot of what we’ve seen of Walky throughout the entire storyline is pretty typical of a G&T kid with anxiety. It’s a shitty thing for him to do, but I am increasingly confident that his “oblivious” persona is in fact a persona and he picked up early that his mom comes down on failure or mistakes like a tonne of bricks and is terrified of encountering the Wrath of Linda. At this point he’s been raised with the I’m-the-good-kid paradigm, and it’s to him a safe way to try to redirect the conversation. It’s a shitty way to redirect the conversation, but I get why he jumped on it.

          Which makes me wonder whether what we’ve seen of Linda thus far is just the tip of the iceberg. Why is Walky so terrified of confrontation?

          On Sal’s side, though, he’s totally throwing her under the bus, and he’s got a habit of doing that. He knows he’s the Golden Child (even as much as he’ll deny it) and he’s not afraid to exploit his GC status, in this case to try to redirect Linda’s mood to amusement/exasperation with him so she’ll quit making him nervous. He’s done it before. He’ll probably do it again. And I feel bad for Sal as a result.

        5. BBCC

          I think Walky’s terrified of confrontation BECAUSE he’s the good kid. He knows what’ll happen if he becomes a ‘bad kid’ like Sal. Even if he tried his damnedest to tune it all out (and I do believe that), he had to have noticed that he had to tune out a lot, and this probably wasn’t the ONLY time he couldn’t tune it out. Plus, I mean. C’mon. It’d be hard to notice that mom doesn’t talk to Sal anymore and they didn’t see her for the five years she was sent away (according to the Walky twitter anyways).

        6. Inahc

          ” I think Walky’s terrified of confrontation BECAUSE he’s the good kid. ”

          Makes sense to me. :/ I’m not sure why I was so terrified myself – there was no sal, unless you count my dad – but my feelings turned out to be fairly accurate.

          What pisses me off the most about it is something that still seems bizzare: once I was Bad, apparently I didn’t get to have asthma any more. My mum went from protecting me from smokers to calling me names for trying not to go into our dining room while her friend was smoking tobacco in there. 😛

        7. ischemgeek

          I think the two tend to feed into each other. But yes, totally agreed.

      2. BBCC

        Here’s the best part, we’ve never seen Linda speak to Sal without yelling or getting mad. Including when she has NOT been yelling (or at least, not as loudly) at Walky.

        1. Regalli

          I mean, look at it here. Cursing by euphemism at Sal, a simple ‘Quiet, David’ that he apparently feels okay asking for cookies after. If she was really so angry she couldn’t control herself, ‘not the damn time!’ or ‘shut up!’ wouldn’t be any more out of line than the bull is.

          And we saw her pull the middle name card on Sal during that same Marcie flashback for Sal… wandering to a different part of the playground and being rambunctious and climby (both things children that age are prone to being) while Linda was clearly not paying close attention. We haven’t seen it pulled on Walky. Another thing that would be an appropriate option here.

          Sure, good parents would be seriously worried about the kid who’s breaking curfew and that could translate to anger, but good parents would also want to shut the other one out and tell them to mind their own business rather than listening in on a charged conversation.

        2. BBCC

          Yeah, I think by this point, we’ve hopefully thrown the notion the Walkertons are good parents out the window.

        3. Unusually Angry Hippie

          There’s a difference between ‘not good’ and the ‘absolutely horrible monsters who entirely justify Sal’s behavior’ that you keep pushing.

        4. Regalli

          Given everything we’ve seen, Linda’s treatment of Sal has been consistently harsher than her treatment of Walky since before they could actually put any thought into that behavior. It continues to be to this day.

          Given everything we’ve seen, Linda’s treatment of Walky has involved consistently overlooking his bad behavior and simultaneously ignoring his thoughts and desires in favor of what she wants for her boy-shaped accessory doll.

          Given everything we’ve seen, Charles has at best never taken time to think about what he says to Sal before saying it, and at worst knowingly made racially-loaded comments about something that takes hours and a not-inconsiderable-to-a-college-student amount of money, which she has very conflicted feelings over.

          Both Walkerton parents let Sal go after mere minutes of them being in the same room as both their children for the first time in years. They didn’t even stay to help Sal move in.

          Linda is emotionally abusive. We can see it from her effects on the twins, we can see it in her actions. Charles is at best completely incompetent with no effort to be better, but I tend not to be that generous.

          Abuse doesn’t have to be physical to be real. Abuse fucks you up long term, including quite a lot of bad decisions because it’s the only way you can consistently get attention. (Human beings, especially children, actually physically need it!) And what Linda is doing fucked both her children up just as assuredly as what Blaine did to Amber or Toedad to Becky or any other case. Abuse victims don’t always behave sympathetically or perfectly, because living through a traumatic situation means you do what you can in the moment and it irrevocably changes your brain to think this is the good solution to all problems.

          Sal has issues, but she’s also in a relatively free, healthy environment for probably the first time in her life. Realizing she doesn’t have to be as she was will take time, just as much as any other character. I still want her to apologize like hell to Marcie and have good, long talks with Ethan, Amber, and AG, but a key point of this comic is that none of our main cast are without issues and none of them have totally healthy coping mechanisms. Even the ones that aren’t outwardly harming other people constantly are usually doing serious damage to themselves. (See: Danny, Dorothy) They’re all growing. They all need to grow.

          (And the ones that don’t appear to have their brains literally reshaped by trauma – Dorothy, Dina, and maybe Jacob – all still have issues fitting into their new environment and aren’t always managing that healthily. Even Dina responds to ableism towards her with either ‘well yours is mostly acceptable because you are always misanthropic’ or ‘yes I will certainly help sabotage a romantic relationship secretly.’)

        5. Regalli

          TLDR; Sal needs to learn better mechanisms but that’s pretty damn hard when there has literally never been a positive authority figure in her life. She hasn’t had the chance to get better any more than Faz has. Doesn’t make that behavior okay or not harmful, but in a situation like this the onus is definitely, unambiguously on the parents to be better than Linda or Charles are being, and we have evidence in strip that Linda has been like this since well before either twin could be responsible for their actions. (She cursed at her toddler for playing on a piece of playground equipment. Sal was at worst trying to climb up the slide while no one was on it.)

        6. Emily

          Present Sal doesn’t even really have any major behavioural issues besides her issues with interpersonal relationships which she’s already been shown to be improving on. Like, a black woman in America not trusting authority figures is not a behavioural issue it’s just being sensible.

        7. thejeff

          It’s a little revealing that apparently a Catholic boarding school away from family (for all its problems) was a healthier environment for Sal than her home. She’s clearly in better mental shape than when she went there and arguably than her brother who stayed with the loving parents.

        8. BBCC

          I wouldn’t give the school that kind of credit. Nothing Sal’s ever said about it sounds conducive to getting better and, robbery aside, Sal’s seemed about the same in these flashbacks (and you could argue if the robbery is entirely to help Marcie, that it’s a special circumstance).

        9. thejeff

          That wasn’t so much about how good the school was as about how bad the home life was.

        10. BBCC

          That’s true. Distance might have helped in and of itself.

        11. Regalli

          @ Emily: There’s still a couple things Present Sal could use work on – don’t start a fight while your friend’s on rent-a-cop duty, no matter how shitty the people employing her are. Get the target out of immediate Friend’s Responsibility range first. The fact that she long ago promised Marcie to not start fights anymore over something she still clearly has guilt over doesn’t help, either.

          Mostly that whole guilt complex for things she’s not at fault for/not always admitting when she is wrong thing doesn’t work super well. Far from the most destructive mechanism on campus, but there’s a reason why Marcie is shutting her out right now. (Also Sal being so closed off to people hasn’t helped her codependency with Marcie, which is why I continue to be glad she and Danny are friends who aren’t yet tied romantically.)

        12. BBCC

          Everything Regalli said and I never said all of Sal’s behaviour is justified by her parents. I do believe a lot of her issues stem from her parents, because her parents are emotionally abusive fuckheads and yeah, I’ll talk about the details of that when they are relevant to the strip or the discussion in the comments. I’d say ‘sorry about your luck’ but I’m not sorry at all.

        13. Fomalhaut88

          There’s a reason that parents like the walkertons consistently spit out pairs of infantilized-v-traumatized kids in real life (hi!), and it’s not because they’re merely “not good”.

          Based on the actual, predictable effects of the walkertons actions, they -are- monsters, and it would almost certainly be for the best for both of the twins to cut them out of their lives entirely.

  11. ShinyNeen

    I’m guessing there’s been at least a bit of a time skip since the last comic. Not sure how much though, I’m not versed in how hair un-straightening works.

    1. Marsh Maryrose

      In the Dumbiverse, Sal’s hair can un-straighten spontaneously under the right circumstances. So far that ability has only been used for comic effect, though, so you’re probably right about there being some flashback time skip.

      1. Needfuldoer

        It’s at least a couple inches longer, even without accounting for the waviness. That doesn’t happen overnight…

    2. CJ

      If it had been spontaneous unstraightening, Linda would have mentioned the hair already as another of Sal’s failings.

      Maybe Sal is working at night?

      1. thejeff

        She’s 12 (probably 13, depending on time skip), so I doubt she’s got any kind of legal job.
        Probably hanging out with Asher and other bad influences. Building up towards the robberies.
        The hair’s now about right, so we’re getting closer.

  12. Benjy

    Just out of curiosity, was Sal ever part of Circle The State?

  13. abysswatcher1993

    I am not sure who to root for: the rebel teen that does morally ambiguous stuff, or the racist over protective mom? Hmmm… Okay, I will side with Sal.

  14. newllend(henryvolt)

    Walky until we’re out of this flash back and you’re a less spoiled petulant child please shut up and more so considerate please shut up.

  15. Kyrik Michalowski

    I’m noticing a shift from yesterday’s strip to today’s in what seems to be several weeks or months. Sal has clearly stopped straightening her hair and is now wearing her classic jacket. Also Linda, maybe if you actually gave more of a shit about your child, rather than what people think of your family, she might be willing to talk to you. But that would require real caring and effort on your part wouldn’t it?

    Also Walky, trying to detract right now isn’t helping, though again I’m imagining he is trying to defuse the situation rather than make it worse. Walky can be foolish and childish, but malicious is not his style and for all his faults he cares more about his sister than his parents. Though I could be reading too much into his actions, I only know he recently started to realize how differently his mother treats them both.

    1. BBCC

      I don’t think Walky’s intentionally making her situation worse, but it’s certainly not helping. I think it’s more ‘I want cookies! Mom, I’m being good, give me cookies!’

      1. Kyrik Michalowski

        Fair enough, as I said I might be giving him too much credit here. He is definitely not helping anything, regardless of whther his intentions are to help or merely because he’s hungry for cookies.

        1. BBCC

          Might be a little of both. He can’t tune out their argument so he asks for cookies.

    2. timemonkey

      I doubt he’s trying to defuse anything. Walky isn’t aware enough of the situation to want to diffuse it, he’s never allowed himself to be. He HAS picked up on that they consider her the bad one and him the good one and that he gets things so as we see above he’s willing to follow that narrative in the hopes it gets him things. That he’s making things worse and essentially ganging up on his sister are things he’s not considering.

      1. thejeff

        That he’s not aware of why they treat her differently and has cause and effect backwards doesn’t mean he’s not aware there’s a situation to be defused. Defusing bad feelings with humor is pretty much his only social skill – and he’s not good at knowing when to apply it.
        It could very well be his intent here – even if he thinks Linda’s yelling because Sal’s been bad.

    3. CJ

      It’s a dynamic not unknown with children, than one takes the role of “the good one” and emphasizes at every turn that they are behaving as expected and are the good ones while their counterpart doesn’t and isn’t.
      I’m not sure if this, of itself, is a sign of an abusive environment or just something that’s as normal as kids verbally fighting about who’s got the better presents.

      1. Sam

        It can be a red flag if there is a clear set up dynamic of ‘this child is always doing wrong’ no matter what. If their sibling is always calling out every little thing they do as ‘misbehaviour’, it can indicate their family has an abusive dynamic where they know they can stay in the good books by ganging up on them. Like many signs of abuse though, it depends very much if it is a reinforced pattern, or a one-off. If the kid is doing it of their own free will or if the parent has been reinforcing it.

        We know the Walkertons, persistently through Sal’s life, have chosen and supported Walky over her though and reinforced this idea. And we saw that when it came to gifts, Billie is treated more equally to Walky than Sal is. Which is really damn awful when you consider Billie has actively bullied Walky at school before and generally treats Walky fairly poorly. But Sal’s mother *still* values Billie more than Sal. And she has never valued Marcie at all even though Marcie from what we know stayed in proper contact with Sal, which neither Walky or Billie did.

  16. BBCC

    I wrote a lot on Patreon and I’m too tired to rephrase it, so here, have it all at once.

    Well this isn’t good. And yeah, I’m taking that as confirmation Sal quit singing because Marcie can’t. And why am I not surprised she was in a choir? Show of hands, who wants to bet that was the ‘parent approved’ way she got to do what she liked?

    Also, I’m still having to remind myself Walky’s a child and it’s not appropriate to want to slap him because WHAT THE FUCK

    I can’t believe how pissed I am at Walky in this strip. Like, it sucked enough (but was sort of understandable) when it sounded like he was just ignoring her problems and their parents emotional neglect and abuse but now we’ve seen him actively making it worse twice and that is making me very angry with him.

    I still love Walky and I know he’s growing past this but jesus christ, kid, READ THE ROOM.

    I also notice Sal’s hair is natural now and her clothes are much closer to the robbery which concerns me.

    1. Regalli

      Might have potentially given her access to that bass, too. I’m pretty sure they’re talking about church choir (she refers to the person by first name, and no matter how tenuous this lie is to begin with it’s a touch more plausible with church,) but they might still have been a relatively Cool Church with more than just the piano or organ.

      I want to be charitable and say Walky’s trying to defuse after staying up late and worrying*, but after the double dick move of ‘hey can you lend me money? Maybe Marcie’s medical money?’ and then trying to shift the blame onto Sal… if he is genuinely unaware of everything going on right now, it has to be because he’s repressing the SHIT out of it.

      * Not that Walky would admit that, even to himself, because Feelings Are Stupid And Girly. … Actually, gotta wonder if some of his toxic masculinity started as defense mechanisms, given the way he’s secure in other parts.

      1. Regalli

        And either way Walky should have figured by now that his goofball antics just make things worse and alienate Sal.

      2. BBCC

        I think it being church is unlikely. Walky’s never struck me as a church goer and I believe Willis has said before that the Walkertons were raised ‘unconcerned’ about religion, though Sal got sent to a Catholic school under the idea religion was moral instruction and Sal ‘clearly’ needed some. Might be a secular music group. My elementary school advertised community events like that all the time, especially if they took place at the school.

        I wouldn’t say Walky’s totally secure in his masculinity other than feelings – he also believes men only own one pair of shoes. I can believe Walky couldn’t tune out the argument and decided to chime in with something like ‘Hey, I’m good, can I have cookies?!”

        1. Regalli

          Not always, just that some parts (like the ‘whatever, I’ll be gay for pizza’) are oddly less prominent. But eh, psychoanalysing Walky could go all day and get us nowhere.

          Depends on the school, for sure, but given their probable district they probably are wealthy and loud enough to get regular refurbishments and the nice equipment, so non-school-run but school-hosted is possible. (Then again, my shitty 40-year-old building actually gets people to pay to use the auditorium, but that’s mostly because it is obscenely large and the sound and lighting died completely in the last eight years so they had to finally be replaced.)

        2. BBCC

          That’s true, Walky’s issues seem specific to his upbringing.

          Well, their school did have a pit full of concrete and rebar, so probably not TOO great, but even normal schools can host things and the school might still run a music program. I joined Girl Guides (basically Girl Scouts in Canada) in my school, and I know my friend had a playgroup and non-school hosted events like community art camps advertised at school (although one of those ended up being a front for a cult, so hopefully their school screens the events better).

        3. Regalli

          The only time my intramurals ran past sundown were actual performances and tech week (where the whole thing had to be coordinated with the aforementioned dying technical systems,) and it was usually a ‘we have to clean up and lock up after’ thing for the latter. I mean, it happened, but I don’t think an outside body would be allowed lockup privileges or that custodial staff would stay anywhere near that late for a routine rehearsal.

          Of course, the excuse is totally fake and Sal’s not great at improvising, but since Linda’s taking ‘I know you haven’t for months’ without any sign of ‘Choir practice doesn’t run past 10 PM’ I have to wonder. Then again, it’s not really about what time it is.

        4. BBCC

          I don’t remember how late girl guides ran, but it couldn’t have been that late. I was like 4-5.

        5. Regalli

          Yeah, pretty sure mine was done by like, 7 or 8 (pretty sure it started later).

          Having to run a full-length play in costume and makeup, with tech, and while we’re at it the set isn’t done yet because hahaha it’s never done before tech week all takes a while. (And then there was that one time the school had given a random driver’s ed class the auditorium two nights before opening, and we could only run Act One in the end because we weren’t allowed in until like 7.)

        6. thejeff

          Though this could have been the first time she was this late and the choir excuse was plausible enough up until now.

        7. BBCC

          Yeah, that wouldn’t shock me. I think sometimes older kids in school get stuck out later. I know my drama teacher had rehearsals running for a long time like 10 or 11.

        8. CJ

          Maybe choir had been a school thing? I’m missing out on a word here. In Germany, schools often had an official choir (which did perform at school events or set up a Christmas concert), or offered voluntary additional “recreative activities” which could be a specialized choir (e.g. French chansons), various sports activities and so on. They were called “Arbeitsgemeinschaften”. These could use school rooms and materials and i think there was a teacher responsible for them. I think the concept differs from school club activities. Is there something like that in th US?

        9. BBCC

          Nah, that’d fall under school clubs/teams/whatever.

    2. thejeff

      Good catch. I hadn’t connected the end of choir with Sal giving up singing because of Marcie. Even though we already knew that.

  17. tim gueguen

    This strip makes me wonder how much Sal might actually have stolen. Of course it’s possible she was unsuccessful

  18. Tacos

    Walky, not helping.

    Seems like there was a timeskip between this strip and the previous one. Sal’s hair isn’t straight anymore and she’s not dressed how she was before. We’re getting closer to the robbery it looks like.

    1. BenRG

      Walky really seems to have been acting almost infantilised. I’m wondering just how badly his parents’ favouritism may have affected his mental and emotional development.

  19. BBCC

    I just checked the archive and this delightful piece of information still stands: We’ve yet to see a strip where Linda speaks to Sal without yelling/being mad at her.

    1. Regalli

      And the remaining ones are generally Sal looking for attention and being soundly ignored.

      1. BBCC

        Those are the ones where Linda isn’t speaking to her.

        Which, considering how she talks to her daughter, is probably for the best.

    2. Kinoko

      Oof. You’re right. 🙁

      1. BBCC

        My favourite is the one where Sal and Walky are doing the exact same thing (running around playing) and Linda’s like ‘David! SALLY!’

        By favourite, I mean the one where I most want to slap her.

  20. Nobody

    I’m getting why Sal doesn’t like Walky

    1. Danielle

      me too

      1. abysswatcher1993

        Me three

  21. tirachokko

    Oh Sal.
    (It works for every strip, and that’s the real sad bit)

    1. tirachokko

      augh nope, changing that, nope, don’t wanna be that one (watch this one be faz)

      1. tirachokko

        sigh.

        1. Regalli

          … At least two of these characters have at least one redeeming quality?

          But um, damn. You sure are getting the irritating horndog streak.

        2. tirachokko

          at least i kind of like joe now

  22. ARoseJess

    Yep, I was this younger sibling as well…and that didn’t play well with the older sibling, my parents didn’t fall for it but a grandmother did…she was pretty awful…but as a kid it kind of rocked…I feel awful now…

  23. Keulen

    Walky, normally people who are asleep don’t talk about being asleep. Or ask for cookies while asleep.

  24. Khno

    Well the question now is: do your comics twin want cookies because your real twins do, or do your real twins want cookies because of implying incomics twins crave cookies, or have you had twins to know the ways of the twins and write them more accurately, or are twins twinning twins twinningly?

  25. BenRG

    Obvious time-skip but I wonder how long?

    I also wonder how long Walky let Linda infantilise him and how much this contributes to his current issues.

    1. Darkoneko

      it still hasn’t stopped, is it. “he’s gonna study medecine, he just doesn’t know it yet”

  26. Darkoneko

    *slowly raises up from the sofa* i see youuuu

    1. BenRG

      Linda would probably been more effective if she’d said something like: “Okay, Sal? Here’s an early warning: You’re already demonstrating a total lack of the skills needed for a life of crime. I suggest that you give it up now.”

  27. Victor Riley

    Wow… Walky literally wants a cookie for doing what was minimally expected of him.

  28. Ashley

    I cannot believe how many hoops some people in the comments are willing to jump, avoid, squeeze through or ignore in order to give Walky the benefit of the doubt. It’s the exact opposite from Becky, who was rationalized as being The Worst Human Ever for every little thing she did.

    Becky uses money to get a haircut instead of investing and becoming a millionaire and never bother anyone with her “homeless LGBTQ person” nonsense: HOW COULD SHE!

    Walky is very deliberately trying to sink her sister down further to make himself look better: No, you see, he’s INTeRfEring, he’s in his own way HeLPinG, he’s SuBCOnSciOUSLy trying to Do hIs BeST.

    I don’t mean to say he’s a monster or anything like that, and I like the way he’s being written and the conflict it brings to the story. However, trying to rationalize his actions as anything other than “wanting to antagonize his sister while being unaware of the larger consequences that might bring” is reaching.

    1. Sam

      There a few key differences from this and Becky though, namely that:

      a) In this scenario, Walky is quite a few years younger, roughly 12ish – he has more leniency in that kids can be damn insensitive and not care, especially boys, because boys aren’t pushed to develop maturity. Doesn’t make it right or fun to deal with when you’re another kid (which I can say very personally, as I despised many of the boys my age, they were tactless, thoughtless and never shut up) but kids have more room to be imperfect.

      b) He is largely unaware of the scope of the actual problems. He just sees this as an opportunity to try to get cookies, he’s not fully aware of how this just piles onto Sal’s feeling isolated in her own home. It is possible to interpret his actions here in different ways that are all self-centered though – a selfish desire for cookies, an anxious desire to end conflict (because we know he tends to be conflict adverse), trying to break tension because it makes him uncomfortable (we see in the present day he tends to interject and make things worse when tension exists), or more negatively, he just wants to add to ragging on Sal and get a reward for it, which would be parroting the way his mother is extra harsh to Sal but tends to reward him.

      Doesn’t make it right that people would rag on Becky (what is she supposed to do, rent a place to live for $20?) but there *are* more generous interpretations of the motivations behind Walky’s words here besides just wanting to annoy Sal. Personally, I just thought he was being thoughtlessly self-righteous and wanted rewarded for being good, which has very little to do with Sal herself, and more to do with just believing he should be rewarded for behaving.

    2. Inahc

      Er… There are always people on both sides (or, probably more than two sides) for every character. I don’t think it’s the opposite. Heck, most people seem to like Becky these days iirc.

    3. thejeff

      I do think there’s reason to think Walky is, probably almost reflexively, doing the same kind of thing we’ve seen him do more consciously (if not much more effectively) in college: try throwing humor into the tense situation. Backfires at least as often as it works of cours.e

      As for the commentariat’s reaction compared to Becky – as Inahc says, Becky had her defenders too. I suspect many of Walky’s defenders here were also her defenders then – at least the ones who were around. I know I liked her back then, though I don’t think I was commenting much when she first reappeared.
      But then I tend to defend most of the major characters, with the exception of the villains (and Mike, if you don’t count him as a villain).

      1. Regalli

        Yeah, I’m not sure how much I commented then but I definitely thought the hate for Becky there was overblown. And Walky is definitely in the wrong here. If he’s trying to defuse, he sucks at it here and his appearance three strips ago was unambiguously insensitive so I’m not sure how much credit should be given. But at the same time, Walky’s not immune to Linda’s abuse either, and I can see this being a defense mechanism of some sort to cope with it. (At the very least, he clearly internalized what happens when you provoke Linda’s ire, because we can see how much anxiety he has at not being The Perfect Smart One.) It’s a terrible one that hurts Sal, but it is possibly one.

        There definitely is more defense for most male characters than female ones (see also Mike even when he’s saying his plans outright, with no one around, and that getting questioned as to whether he really means it,) and I think there’s a small portion of the commentariat who will defend some characters well past the point where a good faith argument can be made (people defended Toedad after he pulled the gun.)

        There’s also the fact that plot points get forgotten. Even if you’re paying attention, it’s easy to forget a minor point in a big storyline (like what’s Billie’s mom doing,) and some of them are impractical to tag trawl for. Linda’s an easy character to find most of her appearances and most of the evidence against her, but if you only take this strip on its own then she seems much more like a reasonable parent here, because there’s no context establishing this as a pattern of behavior.

        And especially with the time scale, you can forget things like ‘No, Walky and Dorothy broke up less than 48 hours ago’ or ‘AG hasn’t been seen since April’.

        1. thejeff

          One of the reasons I think he might be is that it is very similar to some of his failed attempts in the future. He definitely sucks at it – or at least at knowing when it’ll work. Likely he’s even worse here and less self-aware about it.

          And yeah, I think in general there’s more defense for male characters than female ones – though don’t forget the “Mary was only trying to study” brigade.

        2. Regalli

          How could I forget?

          Which plays into its own axis of privilege, too, as Carla knows full well.

  29. Br44n5m

    Not a twin, can I still have a cookie?

  30. Derek

    aw I commented yesterday at 1am but it didn’t post. Here’s a retry:
    I never wanted to smack Walky more, he’s intentionally adding gasoline to the fire aimed at Sal, that is so not cool

    and for the first time Linda actually has a point, a child Sal’s age shouldn’t be wandering around at night

    1. Sam

      She might have a point if she was a good parent. But she is coming at it from the angle of a controlling parent. *Where* doesn’t matter nearly so much as the *why*. Why she wants to be out so late. Why she feels the need to lie.

      1. Sigh

        It doesn’t matter what kind of parent she is, 14 yr olds shouldn’t be hanging out past midnight in convenience store parking lots.

  31. Cannonshop

    I’m gonna go back and say, “It fits the pattern of abusive homes” here, Walky is clearly playing the combination “Good child” and “Mascot”. Sal is clearly the “bad child” (not really bad, just how her role worked out). Linda is abusive, folks. she’s infantilized her son and alienated her daughter. I could almost suspect there’s alcohol or affairs involved here, but it’s also clear in something else;

    Sal is the responsible one. (actually, come to think on it, she was in “It’s Walky!!” too). David…david has been shielded from consequences from day one, while also being prevented from taking risks or encountering them on his own.

    thus, his emotional development is STUNTED, as is his other developments. Sure, he’s got high native intelligence (both the Walkerton kids do) but his parents clearly didn’t provide him the mental and emotional tools to actually USE IT, and worse, they’ve blocked him from the natural process of trial-and-error, channelling him into a perpetual man-child who will, most certainly, need a ‘safe space’ if he ever stops being (Deliberately) oblivous.

    In a way, it’s actually an inversion of the usual relationship-the Brother is the passive one, the one who seeks attention and praise, while the Daughter is the assertive one who’s toughened up enough to be functionally an adult (early, even) and accepting of consequences.

    It’s like Linda didn’t bother to tell Walky ‘don’t touch, it’s hot’ because Sally already grabbed it and burned her hands.

    My step-niece was in a similar position when my sister married her current husband. The result has been that said step-niece doesn’t contact her family (except her step-sister-and then, only rarely) and is a fully-functioning adult, while my ‘blood’ niece is 26 with a kid living in my sister’s basement with her husband rent-free.

    Sal may be a bit of an ass, but she’s FUNCTIONAL-she has sense, she measures risks rationally, she knows how to survive. Walky DOESN’T, here’s my prediction, if this followed “Rule of Natural Consequences”;

    Sally will graduate from college, if she wants the degree, and move into a career. Walky…will go home to his parent’s house, and live there until they die, working an occasional part-time, low-demand, low-skill job until he’s too old to successfully temp, at which point, she might take him in when mom and dad kick the bucket.

    why?

    because he’s still using the coping skills of an infantilized child, while Sal has a full suite of functional judgement, including the understanding that actions DO have consequences.

    1. Regalli

      I have hope Walky will eventually realize he’s fucked but can salvage things, including getting some therapy (he needs to break the anxiety freeze to get anywhere with studying) and actually putting the effort he needs in. It’ll take a long, loooong time, but the arc he’s on is trending positive starting with the fact that he’s acknowledging Sal had a point in how they were treated and that he shouldn’t cheat his grades up while he knows Sal put in the work to improve. He shouldn’t cheat in general, but recognizing Sal has struggled to get where she is is important in his own right.

      As to the issues… Some abusers do have other issues, but the vibe I get off Linda and Charles is that this is entirely aimed at the kids and controlling them because the kids aren’t people in their own right so much as extensions of their will and expectations. (Same dynamic with Carol and Naomi.) This whole Perfect Functional Family Unit with Perfect Success Child Thing screws people up on its own.

      1. Sigh

        “I don’t want my 14 year old hanging out in the convenience store parking lot past midnight, smoking and chatting with thieves,” isn’t “controlling.” It’s completely normal parenting.

    2. Sigh

      “Measures risks functionally”
      Sal:
      Smokes.
      Let Joyce ride on her motorcycle without a helmet.
      Got her TA fired and nearly kicked out of the country (something you might think someone whose best friend is an illegal immigrant might be sensitive to.)
      Fights.

      Sal is an interesting character and definitely more mature than Walky, but this is not good risk assessment.

      1. thejeff

        “Got her TA fired and nearly kicked out of the country.”
        You’re blaming her for Jason fucking her? It’s Jason’s job not to fuck students.

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