To paraphrase a great wizard: “As the number of punches increases, the number of social situations they are incapable of solving approaches zero. And that would be wrong.”
That way lies the tragedy of Superboy Prime and the punching of reality. Think of the horror of Billie Prime punching the Walkyverse in the face to change reality.
The ensuing horror…well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
No, it’s never a good idea to allow an abuser to hold leverage over you, If you have any family besides him you should see about moving Howard with them. Besides (I know we haven’t seen him do it so it’s still up in the air) but, real sibling don’t let the other take shit form people like that, My sister and I bicker a lot but, we both know we aren’t going to stand for the other getting shit on by anyone stranger or family. Besides Howards what 16? he ought to be able to handle the old man by now.
You know, both yesterday and today you replied to a comment in such a way that I have to assume you meant to reply to a different comment. So, if that’s the case, what comment was this reply in reference to?
It just doesn’t really seem to flow logically from what foamy said, and I was similarly confused yesterday. I mean, this is really superfluous, really, when there’s a lot to get into with the content of your comment in itself. I was just…confused.
honestly maybe…start with not assuming that Ruth isn’t doing the best that she can, and go from there. just because it’s not a good idea to allow an abuser to hold leverage over you doesn’t mean that it’s avoidable; that’s why abusers get away with as much as they do, because their victims either don’t have options or don’t know they have options. like. bickering is not abuse, AnonymousGuy. it’s not even remotely the same situation.
…I mean I get that this is hard to deal with and cope with but like that is the point: that brick wall, that you slam up against over and over again
Yeah, uh, and with the sibling dynamics…my sis and I, we bicker yet stand up for each other when it’s like, strangers or friends but….family? That kind of standing up for each other usually does Not happen with adults/guardians that will continually have power over you.
Yes, Ruth should not let her grandfather have leverage, yes, she should get Howard out of that situation, but you don’t have to pull that “real siblings” line like…if you can’t escape the adult the “best” thing to do is step aside and just comfort your sibling after the guardian has left them alone. There’s no reason to jeopardize both of you, and if you seem impartial to the situaltion, they may ask for your stance and then you do a “well, yeah, that was bad but maybe they only deserve X and not X, Y, and, Z”
I know siblings are often fiercely loyal, but we have to make do with the situation.
i mean. pretty much!! your parent/guardian gets mad and you are effectively screwed.
i mean. Ruth is not more responsible for letting her grandfather have leverage over her (as her guardian!!) than her grandfather is for using that leverage irresponsibly. he has a duty to both her and her brother to support them as they begin their lives!! that is why he is their guardian! he is refusing to fulfill that duty by his manipulation and cruelty and abuse.
honestly!! considering how oblivious he is i really kind of doubt it
and like it is the kind of conversation that would honestly be very good for Howard and Ruth both. like. they are the only two people who have enough context to really get each other’s shared experience and understand what they’ve been through
but honestly i bet that Ruth felt like she was protecting him by putting up with it, because the more damage she took the less he had to. which is. actually false. because Sir was always going to do whatever the hell he wanted to do
but the happier he could be the better she was doing, probably
yeah, like… when i found out my mum had been talking to at my sister the way she talks to me, that’s when I finally saw how bad it was. the shit she said to me, I could find excuses for, but to say such horrible things to someone she didn’t actually raise… to think she had the right to ignore all boundaries just because Motherhood.. ugh.
And, like, she wasn’t anywhere near as bad as a lot of other commenters have experienced, but… there are some things I have in common with Ruth. I’m not allowed to fail. These days, my mother gets the flowers-and-sunshine version of what news I still give her, so that she doesn’t get the idea she needs to “help” me. That’s probably not a long-term solution but it’s holding things together for now.
there was this one time when my mom and sister were fighting in the kitchen and my brother and i snuck the cats down the stairs to my room and actually, like, talked about how much This Sucked and it was just like. this really rewarding moment of connection and not being alone, just us and the cats in a little island of peace among the pandemonium. wOw.
but yeah!! it’s okay if someone says it to you but if someone says it to someone else??? what kind of fuckery
…lying is weirdly freeing in that way. like. every time i lie i feel so guilty about it but after a point if people are just…going to react the way they react…they don’t deserve the truth, that’s something you have to earn
I think what Halpful meant (@ Halpful, if I’m wrong, please feel free to correct me) is that one can fail to realise how badly they’re treated by someone who’s supposed to care about/love them (with low self-esteem, they might think they deserve being shouted at constantly, or being hit, or they get to hear so much about how they’re incompetent, or nobody will ever want them, or ugly things like that, that they start to believe them).
And this someone then only fully realises the badness of their own treatment when observing it applied to someone else, thus from an “objective” point of view.
My sister only realised how wrong our family worked with how discussions were held as she had her first fights with her boyfriend-no-husband. We had never learned to objectively discuss things in our family with my mother, as she always either started to shout, insult, use “argument supporting examples” from years ago that had – logically speaking – nothing to do with the topic of discussion, or other things like that. Basically not respecting you as a human in an argument, as someone who was allowed to have a deviating opinion.
And my sister only realised that this was not exactly the way to effectively discuss problems after she had a few fights with her husband. It took her years to get over this kind of style of discussing (aka actually verbally fighting).
Mhm, I meant to say at the end “aka actually being verbally abused” – must have mixed something up, my bad.
The gist of the story is: we never got to know “normal” discussions as children and teens, as they always were full-blast fights with emotional abuse happening.
Howard does act oblivious but I also wonder how much of it stems from different perception/experience. My father treated my brother and I completely differently and our reactions to his abuse were different. I got angrier and angrier but my brother would buckle and feel guilty. There’s still a lot of abuse he got that he still doesn’t really register to him as abuse. It puts me in a weird situation where I don’t want to insist to him that his childhood was crappier than he thinks but I also want to make sure he knows what stuff was 100% not OK.
It’s possible Sir holds Howard’s well being over Ruth’s head but never says anything about it in front of Howard. If Ruth is his main target he might just leave Howard alone except when he’s punishing Ruth. If Ruth has been towing the line for a while now (especially since she’s been out of sight for so long) Sir might have been laying off Howard entirely for a while. It’s real easy when abuse eases up to go, “Well I’m glad that’s over. Now I can give this person with whom I’m supposed to have a loving relationship another chance!”
there is an entirely legitimate possibility that Howard is being trained to be the same kind of abuser as his grandfather. in which case. the abuse not only registers as abuse, but as what he ought to be dealing out. and if Howard refuses to deal it out, that may entirely be why his grandfather thinks of him as weak
which is funny because that is the sort of thing that would actually make Howard strong
anyways i wonder who Howard identifies with most in Game of Thrones. (i hope it’s sansa. it would make my heart squee if it was sansa, bless him.)
I badly expressed my belief Ruth should talk to Howard about this because I think they both have a lot of misconceptions which Sir is fostering about them–even if there’s no easy way out.
It is also likely impossible for them to talk between Ruth’s desperation not to deal with this, Howard’s desperate fantasy escapism, and Sir’s ability to nearly always monitor them both or simply turn them against each other if he decides to pull another string.
Basically, even if keeping their heads down for two more years is really the best solution because fighting Sir for custody might not work and could make it tougher for Ruth to be financially independent when Howard is of age it might help if they could at least commiserate and fight Sir’s gas lighting.
The impression I personally get is that if it was just Ruth, she’d have it out with Sir. However, she is trying to protect her brother as best she can. I COMPLETELY disagree that a 16-year-old young man (and Howard seems pretty young for a 16-year-old) is “ready” to take on a much older, powerful abuser.
Siblings of abusive parents often try to protect each other. It’s actually really common that an older sibling will take on the responsibility of trying to keep their younger sibling(s) from being abused.
In a perfect world, yeah, Ruth and Howard would “stand up” to Sir and there would be a support structure (family or otherwise) so that Howard had someplace else to go. However, in the DoA world (and, sadly, often in the real world as well), things don’t always work that way. As Ruth says, “Sometimes there is no good, cathartic thing to do.” She is trying to minimize the amount of abuse that she and Howard suffer. It’s a sh!tty situation and it seems like neither of them have a lot of realistic options. Hopefully medication and therapy will help Ruth gain some personal agency; maybe once Howard turns 18 the two of them can “join forces” and divest from Sir’s manipulation and abuse.
Hi yes this. From experience: it is half you don’t want them hurt and half you’ll catch hell if they act up. Abusers are really fond of divide and conquer like that. Blame the eldest for not controlling younger sibs, play the “why can’t you be more like [older sib]?” game with the younger ones.
I bet Howard gets a lot of “at least Ruth has a spine” talk.
And it’s worth remembering that she’d “have it out with Sir” in that case because she’d have nothing worthwhile to lose. She wouldn’t expect to win or anything, just that she’d be willing to lose.
Isn’t that so curious how it’s generally understood to, maybe, be not the best idea to let people that have and have asserted power over you and made you aware time and time again that they can rob you of everything, continue doing that? Thank god we all know how to make good decisions or make up complex plans for potential others when we can’t even muster the will to live.
Um…I am confused by your comment. Was that directed towards me? I am not in any abusive relationships right now and I certainly have the “will to live.”
I think it’s a credit to David Willis’ creation that so many people are invested in his characters and spend time thinking about and analyzing them.
(Apologies if this wasn’t directed towards me or if I missed sarcasm or other nuances.)
@Jaime No, oh my goodness, no, not you!! It was sarcastic but it was just a very low-placed comment caused by a drop in the formatting layout but this was definitely to TAG’s comment
I was the middle child in a very abusive household from 10 to 12. My mother and I were his lightning rods. He was my step father. I had two older step siblings and one younger by blood. Only the eldest ever crossed him, like twice.
Growing up like that, hearing your mother suffer far worse, having yourself isolated from other family, and all the other special, unique abuse a child can suffer in their formative years, saying you won’t let your sibling take shut hypothetically doesn’t amount to bubkiss when compared to all those little nightmares that is your childhood home.
While I’ve suffered some abuse (see below), my mom grew up in an INCREDIBLY abusive family. She did what she could to protect her younger sister and brother from her father. And what from I understand (mom won’t tell me a whole lot, for reasons that should be obvious, but from what she has I can make some guesses) anyone in her family, her mother and older brother included, who tried to “stand up” to her father got beaten within an inch of their lives.
I really hope that TheAnonymousGuy never has to suffer through that and I am so sorry that you and my mom and her siblings did. I understand why he p!ssed you off. It’s “easy” to theoretically make judgements about what abused people should and shouldn’t do – until you’re in that position. 🙁
Poor Ruth. She doesn’t need to second guess herself at this point and I say that as someone who thinks she should work together with Howard rather than around him. Then again, I think I have a lot more mature picture of Howard than a lot of people here.
I am a little doubtful over whether their working together would be possible as even if literally all of his obliviousness and lack of awareness is a facade, we haven’t seen that facade drop even when his grandfather wasn’t around except slightly to ask Billie to look after his sister.
Well, Billie is his sister’s girlfriend. He doesn’t know if she knows what Sir is. That’s the problem with family secrets. You don’t know who you can trust. For all he knows, it could go right back to his grandfather. I may, of course, be misreading Howard completely and he’s not just playing the devoted fantasy geek to hide his hidden pain as well as terror Sir will abuse Ruth if he acts up.
I find it quite likely that he does have hidden pain, I find it quite likely that his Game of Thrones obsession is a coping mechanism, but I also find that if the whole thing is just a mask, it doesn’t come off even when just with Ruth as even in moments he could have spoken to her alone or asked to, it didn’t drop. And she seems very used to him behaving this way as well.
maybe he doesn’t even know it’s a mask any more. I’ve certainly consented to having other parts of my mind hide troubling information (including the memory around deciding to hide it).
Ruth and Howard interact almost exactly like my little brother and I did before we moved out. Three years of independent living later, we reconnected and compared notes. Turns out we were both just keeping our heads down, and we were both hurting. All of a sudden, three years and three hundred miles from our abusive parents, we were having our first really conversation. Howard knows exactly what’s going on. Working together is the healthiest thing they could do–but my brother and I didn’t figure that out until we were safe.
Come on Ruthless, you’re supposed to be brave and fierce. This acceptance of defeat ill suits you. A little pain now is worth it for a better life later.
i kinda feel like this is ruth being brave and fierce. or at least, like, dogged
like maybe it’s not super badass but she’s surviving and she’s doing it the best she knows how. she’s prioritizing the wellbeing of herself and her brother in a situation where she doesn’t have power or leverage. like. it’s not defeat if the objective is survival
Yep. She’s doing damn well for someone who just got out of the hospital.
Part of it could also be the depression, hiding alternatives from her – at least I hope so, because it’s nice to find out there is a non-awful solution after all. She can’t just magic away the depression, but maybe a conversation with billie or a therapist will lead to new ideas. (not that I’m seeing any right now, beyond generally working on an escape plan for the future…)
a therapist would be very good for her because they could help break some of those mental traps that longterm depression sucks you into
but an escape plan i think is the first thing that should be on her agenda!! and luckily she has a girlfriend who has all the executive function, they know her at the office supply store as “mad skills billie”
She needs to be strong for both of them. She’s the adult. If Gramps hurts him that’s on him. No one else is going to get her, or ultimately Howard, out of this, unfortunately, as everyone seems either to not care, not know, or not be able to do anything. She should listen more to Billy, even if she doesn’t really have specific plans right now lol
Not sure what you seem to think is funny about any of that but I’m becoming increasingly inclined to think you could stand to fuck right off with that attitude.
She’s still 100% dependent on her grandfather and breaking away would be difficult if not impossible in this situation.
Now you’re going to say she needs to find a way, as if it’s that simple. Because for some reason you’re super invested in putting culpability for this on Ruth rather than the fuckhead abuser who has all the power in this situation.
Ruth is in college. Howard is in high school. Ruth is quite well and very familiar with how Sir works. The time for spite, breaking away, and getting out from under him and possibly even revenge is NOT NOW. That kind of stuff comes later, when Ruth is not in college. It comes when she can no longer be considered financially beholden to him and when she can conceivably have custody of Howard or not need to fight for it because he’s already 18. It sucks, but this is the situation they are in. Sir has money. Money brings privilege. Money makes the fight oh so much harder. Ruth knows this. This isn’t defeat, her eyes are green, this is her dealing with the situation at hand.
You know some of the people talking to you have actual experience with of familial abuse. You could probably stand to shut the fuck up and listen too them.
It’s not trivial! It’s the most important thing ever. I want her to fight back, however she can, damn the consequences. I can’t just let it be, I’m sorry.
How am I victim blaming? I’m not saying it’s her fault. Just that I want her to be more aggressive. Maybe it’s not the best idea. But I agree with Billy about spite.
It’s absolutely not the best idea. It’s a really fucking reckless and terrible idea. You and Billie should consider the fact that Ruth probably has a much better idea of how her and her brother’s abuser works and how to survive him best they can with their limited resources.
Ruth has already made it clear she does not have room to be spiteful when he has total and complete control over her brother’s life and she’s right. Judging her for not being able to magically come up with some kind of revenge plot that works out for everyone is/i> victim blaming. She has been abused, manipulated, and controlled by this man for the majority of her life and just being able to hold it together this much with him after all that and after everything she’s been through in the last few days is amazing and worthy of respect. She cannot get Howard out of this situation. He is a minor, her grandfather has custody, she does not have the resources to fight him. If “Sir” abuses in such a way that’s easy to cover up and if Howard is as psychologically beat down as I get he vibe he is the abuse would also be very hard to prove, I could easily see Howard denying it in court. Hell if this has been going on for the majority of his life he might not even get how bad things are. This could be his “normal.” It’s just kind of ridiculous to assume that Ruth can do anymore than what she’s doing right this minute. In less than a few minutes Howard will leave with their grandfather and the only comfort Ruth can offer her brother or herself is that she didn’t do anything to make whatever happens to him later in the day worse and sometimes that’s all you’ve got.
No, it would be different, I would say it in an affectionate teasing way. It’s hard to describe. But that’s not the point. I’m giving commentary on this situation, not trying to directly talk to Ruth per se.
So, I’ll ask the usual question: leaving aside the depression and the deep conditioned fear and submission, exactly what is she supposed to do?
What plan do you suggest that’ll get her and Howard out of the situation?
Remember that Clint has just demonstrated his ability to manipulate authorities. Remember that he does have legal guardianship of Howard.
If he is openly abusive of Howard, then there will be grounds to retract his guardianship of him. Maybe take some of his money as recompense. Billie and Ruth and maybe the whole gang can work together to win over authorities. She’s an RA, so she might have some pull. Either way, Clint’s main power is his threat. Once he actually uses it he’s out of weapons.
Do SERIOUSLY think an RA has ANY pull with Child Services, the police, or anyone with the authority to get Howard out of there?
Do you think Clint leaves evidence? His primary MO that we’ve seen has been viscous emotional abuse. Even if there’s physical abuse as well, he’s smart enough that there’s no guarantee there’s any proof of it.
His main power is that both of them are financially dependant on him and have been subjected to his abuse for years. He can withhold that financial support, and continue abusing them as long as they can’t support themselves.
People don’t get stuck in awful circumstances like this simply because they’re too weak to resist. It’s far more complicated and shitty than that.
She got stuck in this situation because Clint is an asshole. And I don’t mean official pull, just that people might be more inclined to believe her because she’s an RA, and thus theoretically a responsible adult. Like I said, I don’t see any other way for this to end. She has to be the one to win independence. She can have help, absolutely. But it hurts me to see her just accept that this is how it is. I want her to fight.
You could stand to choose your words more carefully then, because it really sounded like you were blaming her, which is an awful thing people seriously do.
The shittiest part of this is that – at least for now – she has no choice. Acting without a solid plan (or a good plan that still failed) would have nasty consequences. She knows this, and hates every moment of it.
My apologies, I did not mean to imply that this was her fault. I merely have a strong emotional reaction to this, and I want her to fight back. I know she’s trying to make the best of a bad situation. My own experience of abuse may cloud my judgement slightly, and for that I am sorry.
That’s alright. I’m always happier to find there’s been a misunderstanding than someone being an asshole. 🙂
I’m not the only one who misunderstood you that way though. You might want to reply to some other threads to that clear that up and keep similar arguments from re-erupting
So you literally just ignored thejeff’s last paragraph. Clint has already demonstrated that he can manipulate the authority’s. Also: You seriously think that being an R.A is more power then he has? Come on.
It won’t. Even if Ruth did somehow magically come up with some plan, magically gather enough evidence to use against her grandfather, and magically rally the few allies she has right now, it would be impossible to pull off in the few minutes she has to get Howard downstairs. It is completely possible for her to be mentally working on how to eventually get Howard out but it will take time and resources she does not have yet. And it’s not happening today. Right now her mental energy is not extending beyond getting Howard downstairs and getting through the last few minutes she has with “Sir” successfully so that nothing too bad will happen to Howard once he’s out of her sight.
Why is Mary even someone we’re considering here Like I’m not even talking on a moral level here, I’m talking about on a basic competence level. Mary’s attempts at manipulation have all blown up in her face.
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I would bet sooner or later we’ll find out Howard gets beaten anyway, and Clint is keeping Ruth in the dark in order to use him as a prop. He might even be playing them both against each other.
Because that’s as good an excuse as any for a sound punching, and we’re running a little low on bad guys getting punched lately…
Yeah, that was my take on things and why I think Ruth is having a moment there because that thought is going to EAT at her if she realizes all of this has been for nothing.
Oh, that’s a guarantee. All the hoops are just an elaborate game to keep the abused from realizing that their actions literally do not affect a thing and their abuser will find an excuse to hurt them no matter what they do. He’s definitely beating Howard no matter what he or she do. And open-ended subjective tasks like this are perfect for him to justify it.
After all, there’s no time in which she wouldn’t be considered “tardy” or “defiant” thus “deserving” some correction. Because it’s all about the control and how much that gets him off. And how much he wants to avoid the actual ownership for his violent awful behavior.
Oh, but it can always get worse.
If Clint was going to do X amount of beating (and/or ‘just’ berating and humiliating verbally – I’m still not convinced he’s the beating type, probably just a grab-shove-restrain-drag + destroy all self-esteem type) he can always change that to X+Y if he gets additionally irritated / gets it into his head that he needs to make a ‘special lesson’ for the misbehaving.
And it’s not entirely impossible that keeping him in a good mood actually does make a huge difference – if his manner of abuse is, like my mom’s, taking out any annoyance/frustration on the kids while telling himself it’s ‘necessary discipline’, keeping him satisfied might well be a difference between a couple of casually disparaging remarks to ‘keep them on their toes’ and a full-blown hurricane with destroying their property to ‘teach them a lesson’.
I don’t think Ruth doesn’t know that she can’t shield Howard from ALL of it. I think she’s perfectly aware of the low key horror he’s living, and does all she can to keep it from becoming high-key. Because it can always get worse.
…so like, but what if Gramps happened to be punched in the face by a 5’2″ chubby brown-haired lady who screamed “This is from the comments section!!” and then promptly disappeared from that dimension, never to be seen again? Ruth and/or Howard couldn’t be blamed for that, right?
And sometimes there’s “I am in a bad mood and therefore am going to deliberately look for things wrong with everything to find SOME ~good reason~ to go off on you that I might have otherwise overlooked”.
Depends, is he on the top of a very long flight of stairs and is the punch in the direction of said stairs. I ask as a purely academic exercise of course. *fumes on way to wax floors in a fictional universe*
man!!!!! wouldn’t it be nice if you could just stop all abuse by willing it to stop!!!!
there’s a level of which…i get it, because in healthy human relationships you can actually get the other person to stop just by asking, or by standing up for yourself, or something similar? and so when you come up to an abused person after that it’s easy to go “wtf why are you just…keeling over”
when you don’t have the context to understand that keeling over is the safest option, because not keeling over prior to the request/as soon as the request comes in is defiance and a threat to the abuser, because saying no is never a choice you actually get
and when you’ve never been in that situation it can be really hard to understand
Content warning: TMI about personal abuse history coming up in 3…2…1…
When I was a kid (around 12 or so), I was inappropriately touched several times by an adult man. It was over a limited amount of time; my family was on the only major vacation we’d ever taken (my mom and dad, as far as I’m aware, saved for *years* for this trip) and one of the tour guides grabbed my arse when no one was watching. It was NOT just a “pat on the @$$” (not that that is okay either!) but a serious grab that even ventured upon my, um, ladyparts. 🙁
I never told anyone about this for DECADES. Not so long ago while drunk I told someone I trusted. The very first words out of this mouth were: “Why didn’t you TELL someone?” That was followed with, “Didn’t you CARE that he might do that to another girl?” Then: “You put up with it for an entire WEEK of vacation?”
And lo, there was much cursing and some kicking.
I’m betting that a lot of people reading this already know why I never said anything; it would have ruined the vacation that my parents has scraped and saved for. My mom would have blamed herself and that would have made me feel terrible. Moreover, I also blamed *myself* – I thought that maybe somehow *I’d* attracted this abuse. I was an awkward, not-terribly-attractive pre-teen. I actively *wanted* boys to notice me. I guess I kind of felt that my wish to be attractive had caused what happened. (Now that I’m older, I know that was NOT true at all, but that is how I felt at the time.)
The person in who I confided is an otherwise mostly good and compassionate person but he has never experienced this type of abuse and he is still trying to get his foot out of his intenstine (it WAS in his mouth, but then I started kicking). So yeah, children can be and ARE blamed for the abuse they suffer. If this person could blame me, however circumspectly, I have no doubt that others blame child victims of abuse far, far more.
Thanks, zoelogical. I think that many people – the person I mentioned included – are scared when faced with such narratives and want to believe that *they* would have “fought back” and gained control over the situation. But abuse don’t work like that. 🙁
Nor does not “fighting back” make you a weak person or blameworthy; I hate hate HATE the dominant ideology that says it does!!!
i think that the main thing about abuse is how…unreal it is, how impossible it feels that someone could be That Awful. so like if it even throws people who are used to abuse off, how much more is it going to throw off people who don’t have any up close and personal experience with it
and i mean of course you want to believe that you could stop it, because believing that it’s very difficult to stop someone who wants to be cruel is something that shakes your whole world. that there really isn’t any justice except the justice you make.
and sometimes fighting back vs. not fighting back is the difference between surviving and not
I once told my dad I was scared of mum. He confronted her, and it led to an argument where she implied she *had* to be the ‘bad cop’ because of reasons, blaming him and me (apparently I had done something bad and was avoiding punishment, but like, I was way more scared than a kid should ever be of a parent).
I never spoke up again, because I didn’t want to get him in trouble, and it was “just” words. It was a long time before I learnt that emotional abuse is a thing.
My wife was a victim of severe abuse and their abuser attempted to turn the two siblings against one another. It, sadly, worked often as not because they didn’t realize the other was suffering the same way. It won’t magically solve anything but open communication between the two may be a major relief for both.
And we enter part 3 of the That Guy cycle (and no, because people love to do this – no, this comment is not about anyone specific and I assume neither is Shiro. This is a long ass established pattern, and while specific arguments have been referenced, the “That Guy” is what is used to refer to that pattern).
Part One – “Whaaaat? Nooooo. It’s not REAL abuse. They can’t be an abuser! I don’t think they are! It’s not possible, they seem nice! You’re jumping to conclusions! Wait and see! Maybe it’s a fake out. Maybe they’re really great! Maybe the abused person is LYING or just hurt by bad communication/non-demonstrative parenting/misunderstandings feelings or circumstances! Maybe they’re too sick to understand!” – I hate this phase the most but Your Mileage May Vary.
Part Two (when it’s undeniable this is abuse) – “AWWWWW! Where’s the nuance? This is so unrealistic! Willis is a bad writer! He doesn’t understand foreshadowing or nuance or take risks or have exciting twists!”
Part Three (once abuse keeps going and people have pointed out this shit happens IRL all the time) – “Well, it’s THEIR fault, the victim should do this! They shouldn’t have done this! They’re not SO innocent, remember X Bad Thing? It’s their fault! They could leave easily if they wanted to! I did X and it worked, why don’t they in their context?”
While all of what you have said is true and anger-producing, it is “part three” that REALLY makes me stabby. I’m a cisgender woman and I have heard those arguments used SO MANY TIMES against women who speak out about various forms of abuse. Like I said above, even someone very close to me fell into that trap when I disclosed the sexual abuse I’d suffered as a child.
I kind of think of it as the TERRIBLE version of “Monday morning quarterbacking” – it sometimes feels like *everyone* would have “handled” things better than you. “You should have told your mom that the tour guide was molesting you!” (even though it would have spoiled the entire trip for everyone and my mom would have never forgiven herself). “You should have told off that male teacher who flirted with you in class!” (even though he controlled my grade and whether or not I made it into the AP section of the subject). “You shouldn’t have led that guy on by letting him sleep at your apartment – were you TRYING to friendzone him?” (even though we’d all been drinking that night and no one was in any shape to head home; I was trying to be a good friend and keep people safe). I could keep going, as I expect could many others here.
I am SO SICK of the culture of victim-blaming, especially when the victim is a woman or a person of colour. (I live in the U.S. so I am primarily speaking of that country as it’s the one with which I’m most familiar.) When someone gets mugged, the police (as far as I’m aware), don’t usually say things like: “Why were you wearing expensive clothing and jewelry if you didn’t want to be mugged? Were you drinking that night? Well, if you were, what did you expect? Did you fight back against your mugger? If you didn’t, you must have *liked* being mugged. Lots of people don’t get mugged; what did YOU do wrong that made you be mugged?”
However, those *exact same questions* – and worse – are regularly asked of victims of abuse and/or r@pe. I understand that people are scared and want to “re-write” their personal narratives to tell themselves that no such thing would ever happen to them. (As I said above.) However, I also think this sort of rhetoric is a very easy way to shift blame from the abusers to the victims, which is something we are seeing A LOT in the U.S. right now. *deliberately not mentioning any current major politicians…*
All of this is spot on. I’m so sorry you dealt with people like that. You didn’t deserve what happened and you deserved supportive people in your corner. All the appropriate gestures of support!
Hell, we see that plenty in the comments. Any time Amber, Sal, Ruth, Joyce, or anyone deals with abuse, we get some of them. It’s obnoxious as hell. And Phase Three is certainly a valid phase to feel stabby on.
I think Billie’s argument here might be bolstered by some kind of plan that accomplishes some kind of goal beyond “feels good in the short term”.
Unless she’s trying to make the argument that emotional connection to Howard makes Ruth weak and she should stand up to gramps and just let Howie hang for it, which is….kind of evil…but seems to be what she’s gettin at with that last line?
I think her point there is that Shit Grandpa is a manipulative piece of shit and that fuck that guy.
Also that fuck him all the more so because knowing why he brought Howard doesn’t actually prevent it from working, it only makes it chafe that much more.
eh, i kind of think she’s just pointing out that it’s a no-win situation.
like. Gramps exerts control over Ruth by bringing Howard and holding his control over Howard as his legal guardian over her. If she wants to see Howard, she has to do what he says. If she wants to set a good example for Howard, she has to get her act together. Like. Gramps never wanted to deal with the mess that Ruth was, he just wanted to despise her and force her to get back in line.
If Ruth ever wants to get control of her own life back, she has to stand up to him. There are always going to be things holding her back, because Gramps seems pretty good at getting leverage over people. Like. Money, relationships, stability, reputation. If she wants to be able to stand up for herself, she has to stand up for herself regardless of the consequences. And you know what? I bet that Howard would really resent losing his big sister.
…on the other hand that’s the kind of thing that’s a lot easier when you actually have, like, resources. and a place to stay. and security.
I hope that the last panel is Ruth realizing that, no, she was never even truthfully holding onto the tiny shred of power and dignity in this horrendous situation she thought she had. That her actions are being manipulated as easily as Sir is capable of throwing money or force at others to make them fall in line, and she isn’t an exception to be faced with his temper as a threat directly at the exception of being a target of his outright manipulation. She thought she was saving Howard but she was not, she was unwittingly giving her grandfather means use Howard to target her. And that being her fault again, in her own mind, is what I fear she may take away from this but not what I hope moving forward from the still-present echoes of “Let’s make things better.”
But I do hope that look can still mean Ruth realizing she thought she knew her situation and she was wrong. She thought she knew what she was doing and what it meant and she was wrong. She thought she was limited to either the one option listening and cowering for her brother’s safety, enduring hell for that and knowing that would be accomplished or the other option that was only a last resort—death.
And she was wrong. She can’t fall back on either of the two dead-end options she thought she had and I suspect now if that’s what I’m seeing that now Ruth is lost on what that means. Because from that point she can’t put either the mask back on and know it’s ‘the right thing’ to try and soldier on in compliance with her grandfather, or die now at least knowing and having peace she did everything she could.
It’s frightening and painful yet could well be positive; but in any case, Ruth realizing that she’s been played too long already would mean she CAN’T bow her head anymore and bite her tongue with it because if she’s been manipulated then it could also be a lie and Howard was never safe no matter what she did, or what anyone did except Sir. For all Ruth knows if she was fooled, then Howard too might also think he’s the only one that his grandfather wants to hurt. And if she wants to fix it or save herself or save her brother and if it must be her because nobody else is able…maybe she can’t pick either option that was really only one. She can’t be the thing she was before.
Pretty much how I feel 100% with the addition of, “Is Howard the way he is because he wants Ruth to be protected?” or “he believes she’s okay and it’s he that’s the screw up/deserves to be punished?” Which is a even worse. Either way, I think Ruth has done everything in her power to protect him but they need (Howard and Ruth) to talk to get the truth out.
No, I think the last panel is Ruth once again fully feeling the absolute shittiness of her grandpa.
A very natural instinct when you’re being abused is to minimize it – to tell yourself that you’re just imagining or overblowing parts of it, that they’re trying to do good and have good intentions, really. You paint yourself a rosy picture of your abuser having lines they won’t cross, even if in your gut you know it’s not safe to rely on it.
And then something happens and they cross that line as easily as they’ve done all the others, and you’re left in a confusing world where someone can, in fact, be just that bad, despite the world telling you that there are two sides to every conflict and you should just have compassion and faith in your family, always and always.
Also? Howard is not a target for Sir Grandpa’s abuse because he’s realized he can manipulate Ruth via that. If she started ignoring what might happen to Howard and blowing off Sir, he’d just be in a chronically bad mood and he’d tighten his hold on Howard and make his life much more of a living hell, because right now he feels like he’s got everything in control, and implicit threats of violence work just as well as the violence itself.
Ruth is not “deluding herself” into thinking she makes things better for Howard, she knows quite well how the game works and knows she is genuinely being a lightning rod for some of Sir’s controlling urges. Because I guarantee you that he’s not keeping up a constant level of ‘discipline’ at all times. Hix moods wax and wane, and he’s only got so much yelling energy to get out of his system before he feels better and leaves both kids alone.
I think there’s something else going on in that last panel. There’s a change there. Ruth’s going to do something. Not sure what, but that’s the look of coming to a decision.
All Reed and Clarke Hall residents to emergency bunkers! This is not a drill! Repeat, all resi- OH GOD RUTHLESS’S RAGE IS MANIFESTING PHYSICAL FORM ALREADY RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
i used to play a game called fallen london that had a district named Spite in it. so yes. you could literally live in Spite. it was great, run by a Mongolian mafioso-type named the Gracious Widow and everything
the only downsides: it is Victorian London, sometimes the Widow’s exboyfriend comes around and is rakishly, ghoulishly handsome and alluring in a Mad Bad and Dangerous To Know Kind of Way, and also it’s night all the time for reasons. and the city is ruled by mysterious squeaky cloaked Masters who really…don’t seem to have any interests in mind but their own
other than that it’s great. one time i entered all four fail states at the same time and got exiled to the Tomb Colonies, then died, then went insane, and then went to jail
It was brilliant for quite a while, but eventually the payoff of grinding to new content got too low. It’s definitely worth playing the early parts though. As you say, the prose is great, the concept and setting are awesome and at time hilarious and creepy as hell at the same time.
“The Starveling Cat! The Starveling Cat
Why does it look at us like that?”
they do have a lot of new content coming out, but in order for it to be a truly rewarding experience you have to pay for exceptional friendship. which is fair!! they deserve money! it’s just slow if you don’t want to pay that money, haha
but fallen london is so inspirational to my writing style now like. it challenged so many assumptions and was so creative with its form that i’ll probably be looking back to it for most of my life for tips
“the Starveling Cat! the Starveling Cat!
warm as a lizard! fragrant as a bat!”
oh my god you should see the classic nonbinary option it’s FABULOUS
“My dear sir, there are individuals roaming the streets of Fallen London at this very moment with the faces of squid! Squid! Do you ask them their gender? And yet you waste our time asking me trifling and impertinent questions about mine? It is my own business, sir, and I bid you good day.”
Panel 1: Oh, this just breaks my heart, because it’s such a full internalization of the abuser’s logic. That their timeliness or lack thereof will dictate whether and how angry “sir” will be. And that it’ll be their fault if they do something to make him angry.
Which, of course, it’s internalized. “Sir” continuously threatens violence often with just enough denial to pretend that that wasn’t what he so obviously meant and exploits Ruth’s care as a sister for her brother and Howard’s care as a brother for his sister. Making them feel like either has to jump through the hoops and just survive and maybe if they jump through all the hoops well enough then he won’t hurt them as bad as he was going to.
But it’s all a complete ruse, because this is classic abuser 101. Give an impossible subjective task to the person being abused and then abuse them no matter how they complete it because it wasn’t completed X enough. Was it them being subservient and “well-behaved”, well, guarantee that some perceived eye-roll or non-earnest glance will be interpreted as justifying the abuse for “failing to behave”?.Was it about them doing well-enough in an activity, well, even if they perfect it, they didn’t perfect it in the right way, justifying the abuse.
And here, well, there’s no way that when they get downstairs, that no matter how quickly Ruth had them all jump, not even giving Howard the time he needs to get his armor up, that it’ll be enough for “sir”. He’ll still nail them for taking too long because the point of the task is to fail so the abuser can claim the abuse has to do with some action of the abused they can fix next time rather than admit that they just wanted to control and hurt the abused person.
It’s a deliberate no win situation and Ruth, even if she realizes it, it doesn’t feel safe to challenge, because the punishment for “failing the tasks” is so much less than open rebellion and the abuser feeling the need to tighten his control lest his victims escape his web of bullshit.
And that’s heartbreaking. And especially heartbreaking here because Howard is so not up for going back into that world and having his own no-win scenario with “sir” and is wanting to steal as many seconds as he can before the inevitable comes to pass. And “sir’s” reach is so powerful that even his sister who loves him with all her heart can’t risk giving him that tiny breather out of fear of “sir’s” shit.
That’s horrifying. And we have seen NOTHING of “Sir” that hasn’t involved him setting up that sort of situations.
Every single interaction Ruth has had with him, from the first phone call to him physically hurting her in the hallway, has been her having to “report” to him, and him “disciplining her” for not “being enough X” whatever that has meant in the current context.
I… don’t think I’ve really thought of it that way. Huh. ..actually, I just remembered a time when I did last year, and succeeded at NGAF, and… nothing.
It is so fucking confusing not knowing when you’re going to get praised vs lectured. Probably less bad in some ways, but more insidious in others, because I really thought I just had to not make the wrong kind of mistakes and that that was a reasonable expectation, for so long…
*hugs offered* Yeah, it’s an easy trap to fall into and then you’re constantly failing no-win scenarios and feeling like a worthless fuckup. But it’s all their tactic for drilling their way into your head. I wish fewer of us knew what that felt like.
This is painful to read, and insightful as always.
Being given, explicitly or not, the responsability of a younger sibling (potentially since they were born), to discover later that you never had the power to take care of this responsability and bear the horror of it. This is a tactic of an abusive parent.
What’s even worse is that it’s a believable responsability : “When we parents aren’t there, check if your sibling is okay, tell them about the stuff they don’t know about the world and you do, make sure they’re not beaten up in school, don’t torture them”.
It’s reasonable. It’s a reasonable responsability to give an older sibling.
And when it becomes “When I’m angry, you’d better come here and take it or your younger sibling gets it”, you can’t change your worldview like that, switch to “Nope I’m not my sibling’s keeper thank you very much”.
(Urrrh I shouldn’t have written all that. Now all I can’t think about is that I don’t dare to call my brother because I’m ashamed I couldn’t protect him from abuse. This is wrong. It’s sunday. I should call him. Wish me strength.)
Thanks for the strength and the hugs. I called him. He says he’s fine. I never know how to formulate the idea that if anything is not fine he can talk about it while I listen in a non-judgmental way so that he may believe me and use this opportunity. That said, I should begin by asking if he already has a confident ; I can’t be the only keeper of my brother, and I don’t want him to feel pressured into confiding – it was a maternal tactic, you know : “tell me how bad you feel so I know exactly how I can break you in order to make you do what I want”.
Fuck, I can’t even save myself, what am I dreaming about.
He said he’s fine. I asked him if I could call next week and he agreed. I did my part.
Why is everything so complicated.
I should stop making the comment section all about my problems.
Cerberus, sweet as always, please receive my thanks. In the mental reality I’m currently living in, it was always on me and it’s still on me. I’m trying to move in (on?) a less guilty mental reality with a therapist I trust. I’m taken care of.
Panel 2: This is interesting, because on the one hand many of us who’ve been abused have heard advice like this and many of those of us who’ve had already feel the nervousness rising about that suggestion. Because something direct like that has direct consequences. When the cops go away, when you get in a lick or two, when you make your first attempted defiant stand, the abuser so frequently doubles down and gets really nasty.
Like, there’s a reason why the point at which most abused folks who get killed is when they try and escape. It’s a hard risk to take unless you’ve truly hit the point where you do not give a fuck any more, you just need to get free.
But on the other hand, sometimes that show of force, of refusal can have an important affect on the abuser, make them back off to a honeymoon phase, find another means of coercion to keep you from actually severing the game. And for Billie, well, she’s never had an abuser like this. But she’s seen a version of it against Sal. And probably among a few of the cheerleaders and she’s probably been the one they called to give that extra bit of strength and force to get out.
Plus, it’s always rough watching a loved one suffering abuse and know that there’s nothing you really can do but lend support and being willing to help enact whatever plan of escape they want when they are ready to try one.
Panel 3: Mmph. But yeah, I feel it. Cause when you’re in it, there isn’t a magical best solution and oftentimes the “best” solution is just getting free and doing ninety different things to try and protect yourself as you knit your brain back together from all the damage they did to your head.
And sometimes, when things aren’t safe. When it’s not worth the risk, there’s no way out, there’s just riding things out until the center can’t hold or circumstances change. And I see it a lot with my kids. Kids who know that the system will do nothing to keep their parents from beating them and that any report will just get them beat when the cops go away. And so who turtle up and do as many drugs as they can to numb themselves out until they can make it to 18 and be a legal adult.
And it can keep you alive… but it can also drive folks into pure desperation and awfulness. Cause abuse, when you’re riding it out, has a high mental price and it ekes into all parts of your life and like with Ruth, it can spike up things like suicidal ideation, self-injury, overdoses, etc… Riding it out is a temporary solution and the longer you feel stuck in it, the easier it is to give up all hope.
And for Ruth, that center is not holding and things will have to change soon, high risk or not, just for her to live.
And what really scares me with that is… we know Ruth. There is NO CHANCE IN HELL she wouldn’t answer to his bullshit with direct confrontation…. the first one or two of ten times.
At this point she already knows perfectly well the price of defiance, for her and for Howard, and I bet she learnt it really quickly after her parents died. Which right there puts “Sir” in serious competition with Blaine for second-worst-piece-of-shit in the entire comic.
And with the “ring” we of course mean the nearby hospital ward for total dipshit parental figures. I’m sure there are some wild dogs nearby who would be happy to show him the way.
I was one of the lucky ones. Too elaborate, I mentioned in the comments a while back that I was afraid of myself when angry, and it all stemmed from when I had rebelled against my father and told him I would kill him if he even contacted my mother ever again. Well, he kept his distance…for a while. Then he dropped into our lives again, crying some whole “I’m sorry”, “I made a mistake”, “I’ve changed” tune that I didn’t believe, because he’d for that crap before. He started trying his damn mind games with one of my younger brothers the week I went back to college in order to “get them on his side”. So, I came back for the weekend and asked if he wanted to go for a walk. While on said walk, I casually mentioned how crazy the traffic was and how if one was accidentally pushed into the street they’d probably be hit by two or three cars before traffic stopped. I hate that I had to go there, and it probably only worked because I was finally bigger and stronger than him at this point, but it did work. He got the memo. And he finally stopped. I just…really wished I hadn’t stooped to his level in order to make sure my mother and brothers would be ok. I wanted to take the high ground. But in the end that didn’t work. But he never again hurt any of my family members from then to the day he died. But up until then, I was very used to the “impossible tasks” thing you mention below. ‘How’re your grades? Why do you have an B+ on this test instead of an A? You’re smarter than that. You’re not some idiot you’re just not trying hard enough. Do you know what happens to people who don’t try?’ I swear those are the only things he said to me for seven years (middle school until I left for college). But hey, I could handle that I was the strong one. All I had to do was bottle everything up. But when I left for college that left him with no one to antagonize in that way, so he turned to my brothers. And I wasn’t going to let him do that, especially not after we found out he’d cheated on my mom. So, yeah. I don’t have a good answer for how to deal with abuse. I wish I did. I wish I didn’t have too because no one had a sick little twisted heart like that.
…
Sorry. I’m just feeling really introspective tonight. I had surgery earlier today to deal with the skin cancer and now I’m just, laying in a hospital bed unable to go to sleep. The surgery for my (unrelated) thyroid cancer isn’t for another month though. Sorry about not adding updates about that stuff for a couple weeks, but with all the shit that’s been going on, I thought it would just be best not to bring my stuff up. But well, now that it’s good news I think I’m okay with updating people on that? Anyways the point is, I can’t fall asleep for some reason, and I’m looking back on my life up to this point asking myself: Is there anything I truly, deeply regret? And this comic…well it kinda played into that question a bit I guess. I’ll be back home sometime tomorrow, so I’ll hopefully be back to my usual self by then.
Oh, yay, surgery day! How’d that go? Will they have any idea for some time?
And *all the hugs* I’m sorry to hear about your dad. It can be scary dealing with people like that. I had an abusive friend once – ignoring her didn’t stop her, being nice to her didn’t stop, avoiding her didn’t stop, getting upset didn’t stop her, getting mad didn’t stop her….but she sure stopped when I slugged her in the gut (it was an accident, slipped on some ice, but she didn’t know that).
Yeah, surgery went well. The skin cancer developed independent of the thyroid cancer, which itself hasn’t grown or spread, and they got the skin tumor off easy. They want to take a tissue sample from the area it was located in about two months, but after June 19th I should hopefully be cancer free. I mean, I guess if you’re getting two unrelated cases of cancer, then having them be two of the more easily dealt with kind of cancer is pretty good.
Panels 4-6: Got it in one Billie. Because of course it is. “Sir” is a classic abuser who has exploited every spoke of the power and control wheel I keep throwing up here. And “using children” is his ace in the pocket whenever Ruth starts getting more independent than he’d like. Because nothing brings her into compliance more successfully than the visual reminder of who he will hurt if she refuses to play his games.
Because well, of course it would. It’s why abusers threaten friends, siblings, kids, pets and why many intimate partner violence types like to try and get their partners pregnant as fast as possible. Because people have lots of empathy and it’s a lot easier to accept abuse when you think you’re protecting someone else from worse.
It’s what had me willing to jump through my uncle and dad’s hoops to try and protect the partner they were harassing behind my back. It’s what had my ex jumping through her mom’s hoops to try and protect me. It’s something my gf had exploited against her in the couple of years she was in college before her sister could escape.
It’s a vile but effective weapon and for Ruth it unlocks her like nothing else, cutting through her defiance and making her susceptible to abuse that leaves her so suicidal she likely would have died without intervention.
And what’s most interesting here is it seems like Ruth is realizing for the first time how deliberate the exploitation of Howard is. That “sir” is not only leaving an open threat against Howard, but is deliberately doing so openly and blatantly in order to better manipulate her and order her compliance and exploit her natural empathy to dig his hooks into her life more.
And that’s the worst part of abusers. The way they exploit and make weaknesses of truly wonderful human traits, empathy, sacrifice, desire to be fair, love. An abuser twists all of these to get what they want, seeing them as something that makes their victim “weak” and “deserving”.
And at best it can leave one bitterly cynical on the other end. At worst, it can make one loathe their positive traits for giving their abuser an in and make one want to excise them out so they can never be taken advantage of again. And I have no doubts that part of Ruth’s angry bullying RA from hell shtick is heavily influenced by that, just as Carla’s “too cool for school and being seen as caring for others” shtick. Because that’s safer than letting their very real empathy be front and center.
Abusers are like a poison in the very culture. And this is part of the lasting damage they do. And it’s depressing, because if our culture took it a little more seriously. Banned abusive cops from holding jobs, treated abuse as as serious of a crime as shoplifting or possessing a few grams of marijuana. If our culture was more forceful against abusers when they hurt folks and supported their victims more, this whole twisted culture could be excised and destroyed. And it would be so much better for everyone, for our whole damn society, if folks could be kind and empathetic and caring and forgiving without that weaponized against them.
and it’s like it’s – it’s everywhere, abuse is the cornerstone for so much fucked up shit we do. if we could popularize fighting abuse, the methods of thinking that go into standing against abuse and not being abusive, i think that a lot of other problems would find themselves being resolved. because abuse, i think, is where it starts. most everything else is just…excuses to be abusive.
I have a few questions:
1. Is Sir’s cane made of wood?
2. How much force has to be applied to break a wooden cane over someone’s head?
3. How much force is required to stab someone through the heart with a splintered shaft of wood?
4. Is there a local vampire hunter who could easily mistake Sir for a Bram Stoker vampire (assuming he isn’t one)?
i’m your basic average stake
and i’m here to save the day
you can’t stop me cause i’m van helsi-ing
there is nothing i can’t do, and when danger calls
just know that i am on my way
2: Far too many variables to say for sure. With a wooden cane, it depends on type of wood, shape, point and angle of impact. But I’d be hard-pressed to imagine that 50 pounds, applied in the right way, wouldn’t be enough. Metal is trickier, because it will deform rather than “break” when faced with sheering or compression stress. If you really want it to snap, you’d need tensile stress (preferably in combination with the other two)… say because someone is dangling from it over a five story drop. after being hit over the head with it multiple times. But then, this cane appears to be a metal tube, so once it starts deforming the deformation will produce tensile strength at some points. Hard to say, but putting most your weight on it with your foot while bending the ends in the opposite direction might do it.
3: Again, depends on a lot of factors, such as the profile of the weapon, whether you avoid he ribs, and the like. Metal would be slightly easier because it won’t splinter as much on the way in.
4: While normally I would say that Indiana has all the types of crazy, Florida would probably be a better bet. That said, you’re just one state over from the birthplace of one of the most famous vampire hunters in the country’s history, Abraham Lincoln. So yeah, there probably is, and yeah, they’re probably crazy enough to believe metal will work in the place of wood.
At least then she could maintain some illusions in terms of her self-image. As it is, her girlfriend clearly understands just how beaten down, controlled and defeated she is which is something I really think Ruth doesn’t like having been known about her.
i guess like the question becomes: would you rather be deluded about your situation and alone, or honest about that situation and with someone who supports you?
I’m sure you’ll agree that, at least with the character of Ruth, this is an unanswered question. It may be one that this arc will in part answer for her.
This strip reflects a lot the conversations everybody had about Ruth and Howard’s situation !
Which is good, because not everyone who reads this strip is a specialist in abusive relationships. I know that some years ago I would have to have it all spelled out for me.
Okay, fine, I can see the wisdom in taking yelling or punching off the table.
…So, taking that cane and whacking him with it is still very much ON the table, right? I mean, he’s old, what’re the odds he’d recover enough to do anything about that?
ok i see this but i am imagining a large angry badger running through his heart valves and veins and mr. sir here keeled over wonder wtf a heart palpitation is and why he’s never had one before
So I’d always thought “you made me choke on [food/water]” was, mostly, a humorous exaggeration. But now you have made me choke on my water and I have water up my nose.
A friends of mine organized her mother’s escape from her father in a long organized campaign which involved getting all her mother’s stuff out of her parents house while they were on holiday, moving the stuff into an apartment in a far away city, and taking her mother away from the holiday place.
All this just to make sure he wouldn’t get a chance to find her and kill for wanting out.
As long as Ruth has no chance to do that for Howard, she won’t openly defy the person who has power over them. She now knows that he is uses Howard’s safety as a weapon to manipulate her. This must hurt deeply because it shows what she though of as agency was non.
And yeah, some abusers will back off if you bring home to them you are willing to hurt them bad if they don’t. For some, they need to understand you are willing to kill them. And some never back off.
It’s always a risk. Be well prepared and never trust them.
Man, the “do you want him angry” thing in the first panel cuts so hard. I’ve thought for the longest time it was a reasonable comment for my dad and grandma to make referring to my mom. It wasn’t until really recently that I’ve started realizing that they actually had the power to stand up to her and NOT MAKE IT MY PROBLEM that she likes to take out her annoyance on kids regardless of proportion to the misdeed she’s spotted.
But this isn’t the same, is it? Ruth actually genuinely can’t do anything to protect Howard, and de-escalating is the only thing she can think of doing. She’s in the same boat as him, not standing outside and pretending it’s none of her business.
And I don’t think she would use “I bet X will get angry when they come home” as a manipulation tactic to push you into doing things they want you to do…
when it’s all you’ve experienced, it feels like you deserved it regardless of whether you did or not. and realizing that you couldn’t have stopped it is…hard
I both love and hate when stories with such relatable and real situations come out like this because how validating is it to see even just fictional characters battling with the same crap so many of us had to handle feeling very very alone in it. Like, seriously, I’m very very very very grateful whenever someone does an abuse situation so /real/ because, as awful of a reminder it is and as terrible as some of the victim-blaming that crops up in the comments are, it’s so easy to slip into this ‘was i just the stupidest person ever is it just me would it have happened to someone smarter/stronger/whatever’ and stories like this just normalize it for me. Ruth isn’t stupid or weak or weird or bad; she’s trying and struggling with some heavy baggage, but she’s still a valid human beneath that.
also can i say how emotional i get over Billie seeing this and still being here caring about her even so. these girls are so important to me and i appreciate Willis sharing them with us because gosh did i need this.
Yeah, the worst part about abuse is the guilt we often carry after we escape for what we endured when we were just surviving. Like, we so often beat ourselves up with “why weren’t you ‘strong’ enough to fight back and risk all that came with doing that and failing” or “why weren’t you ‘smart’ enough to see how they were manipulating you”.
It’s bullshit, because these abuse tactics are designed to slip under defenses and keep us in a state where we’re barely able to hold together our name, but it linger because our brains are so good at echoing the victim blaming in society and trying to find out a “reason” it happened to you/took so long to escape/recognize.
But the reality is there was nothing we did other than end up in the radar of an abuser. And there is little we could have done to prevent it going down the way it did.
But that little voice is loud, so I also appreciate stories like this.
You better hope you can fool the police data forensics person. They’ll be able to tell all that stuff was downloaded within a given time period not consistent with a habit. Then you’d be the one in the dock.
Might be worth taking a look at the computer to see what IS there though.
Given how hard it is for Howard to find boobie videos, I’m guessing that Gramps controls access to his computer carefully. Add in what Vulcanodon said about forensics, and you’d be better off going with print copies stashed in an attic crawlspace over the course of a few years. The hard part would be getting his fingerprints on them, for which I recommend those plastic slips that comic books come in. Easy to get his prints on those without him knowing that they’ll be used to hold illegal smut the moment he’s incriminated himself.
…. um, I mean, framing people is wrong and don’t… eh, whatever.
BILLIE: Wait wait wait! Let’s just brainstorm a minute…
*two minutes of furious scribbling*
BILLIE: OK, I’ve boiled it down to two options… Do you want to try Operation: Kidnap Howie or Operation: Grandfather Paradox? Kidnapping doesn’t solve the root of the problem, but it’s probably easier to get away with than murder…
Actually, there are several ways to get away with murder, many of which ensure that your eventual capture, should it even happen, takes many, many years, during which you can live your life to the fullest.
If it isn’t a minor sibling still living at home, it’s a beloved pet.
Unfortunately, with people like Gramps, the only way out is to keep your head down so the abuser doesn’t decide to offload you and cut off your contact with the hostage. Then, when you become a legal adult, you work like hell to get a place big enough for you and the hostage, and quietly let the hostage know that it’s available/try hard to prove that that is actually your cat.
Yup, whatever the abuser can get ahold of for blackmail and as hostage, that’s what they’ll reach for. My dad used to hold access to my mom as price for continuing to deal with his bullshit and as a power play to get me home. Letting her go was the hardest and most important thing I could do.
Sounds familiar. This sick bastard I lived with for a while managed to convince me that having my best friend move in would be nothing but helpful, since he was in need of a roof. For months, I tried my best to be extra-careful, since there was now the added worry that my friend would be harmed if I acted out. It took a long time to come to terms with the fact that he’d be fine in the long run, even if the short term entailed a lot of couch surfing, and it took a family emergency to convince me to take the plunge and just pack up and leave, and let my friend handle his own.
To his credit, he managed it well enough, and even got a place of his own after a month or two, but he held it against me, to the point where we’re no longer friends because of it. Not entirely sure why I shared all this, but I guess your sharing brought it out. It goes to show, though, that sometimes, doing what you need to do for your own safety and health doesn’t always come easy, and it may even hurt, but if it’s best for you, then you really should do it.
The strangest cases are the ones where, by the end of it all, you wind up happier without the person you’d previously considered one of your closest companions.
Yes… the only custodial guardian of the kid who is literally not legally allowed to leave the kid alone for a day while visiting his granddaughter only brought him along to be “manipulative”, and not, y’know, because he literally has to.
I know he’s a douche, but get the hell over yourself, Billie. Sometimes things happen that aren’t specifically targeted at you and yours.
Howie is a teenager in high school. There is so much normative culture in favor of him being able to stay alone in a house for a day or two (especially as it looks like this isn’t even an overnight trip, just a day trip). And even if it wasn’t, babysitters are pretty plentiful.
No, his choice to bring in Howie for this. For a thing he knew he wouldn’t even be heavily present for Howie during? Definitely deliberate and definitely designed to get extra leverage over Ruth in reasserting his violent control.
Howard drove himself down to visit his sister on family day without Clint feeling the need to “literary have to” look after him.
Ruth has right out stated two separate times that Clint will take out his aggression on Howard if provoked.
Billie is not GUESSING that Clint is using Howard to manipulate Ruth. She has front row to watching it happening, and so have we.
Also, even disregarding the method, in this case Clint specifically DOES target Ruth. Every single strip he has been in or Ruth has dealt with anything he has done has made that abundantly clear.
Yup, anything, anyone can be weaponized, because at the end of the day it’s all about breaking her down using every weak point she reveals. It’s what makes abusers so toxic, they know how easily to use one’s biggest fears, worries, loves to try and shut down options and keep someone trapped.
You know, it’s amazing how many comments there were specifically deconstructing how abusers use situations like this, use the presence of people like Howard to maintain their abuse, which you had to intentionally skip over in order to make this dumbass remark without even a twinge of guilt.
It really is amazing how some people come to conclusions like this one. Like, I’ve got the auts, so I don’t really get people to begin with, but some folks’ lines of thought seem downright alien when it comes to things like this.
Commentator: “I feel you really GET the character of Tywin Lannister. How comes you are so insightful in the mental landscape of a patriarchal, controlling tyrant who lords over several generations of his house?”
I honestly have no idea what characters Howard relates to. I’ve only ever seen one episode, and I didn’t bother learning any of the characters’ names, since I was barely paying attention. Now, if you asked me which character from The Walking Dead…
Oof. Okay, this strip hits me pretty close to home, as someone with an autistic younger brother. Like Ruth says, I have to keep my head down for him. I can’t even argue in front of him because of how upset it makes him. And I feel like shit typing this out because it sounds like I’m complaining about him. I just hate how it feels like my parents take advantage of his disability to control me.
I don’t know how much good it will do to say so, but you don’t need to beat yourself up over that.
We have very little control over how we react on an emotional level, especially when it comes to our immediate reactions. We can only control what comes next, and how we act on those feelings, and it’s those actions that reflect on your qualities as a person.
And it sounds like you’re doing your best to be a good sibling in a tough situation. Being there to support someone with autism can be stressful enough without throwing parental manipulation into it. Your brain just isn’t set up to emotionally respond to things the same way as your brother, and that’s going cause stress for you both, and that’s his fault OR yours.
I don’t know if it’s the case now or ever will be, but even if you find yourself fighting off feelings of resentment or worse towards your brother, that wouldn’t make you a bad person. You can’t control that immediate feeling, and there’s only so much we can do about those feelings that linger. What you choose to do is what matters in the long term, even if you slip up and act on those negative feelings here and there. You’re only human.
Most importantly, it’s okay to need some emotional support of your own. You clearly want to be a good sibling, and taking care of yourself will help you do that.
Let’s see, we have Alcoholism, PTSD, and Stockholm Syndrome. That’s a pretty lethal trifecta. If she really has alcohol under control, maybe she can learn to combat, and overcome, the other two. I just hope Billie doesn’t become collateral damage. Howard already is.
Howard is the collateral damage in Clint’s control issues with Ruth. He suffers abuse if Ruth steps out of line. It doesn’t matter who injures a non-combatant in war, the innocent are still collateral damage.
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“Perhaps we should test this scientifically: How many punches will it take to get to the submission of an asshole grampa?”
“Billie–”
“We can keep Howard in a bunker as a control!”
“…🤔”
“Let’s ask the owl!”
“HOOT HOOT MOTHERFUCKER”
(read to the tune of Go Go Power Rangers)
I’m going to be singing that all day now.
One, two-hoo-hoo, three.
CRUNCH!
Three.
I would also like to see Sal, Amazigirl, and Carla in on this punching. For science, y’know?
…also because I’m pretty sure they all have a mean right hook.
Carla doesn’t do violence though
She can be the barker, set it up like a carnival game. “Step right up and take a crack at Gramps McEvilguy! First to draw blood wins a prize!”
I wonder what would happen if Gramps meets ToeDad.
Sal is left-handed, as are Ruth, Joe and Dorothy.
But of course having a mix of dominant hands will only help a team in a fight.
You can’t punch all of your problems Billie. No matter how good it would feel.
…but what if she tried punching “not being able to punch all of her problems”?
Like, really hard?
To paraphrase a great wizard: “As the number of punches increases, the number of social situations they are incapable of solving approaches zero. And that would be wrong.”
This is exactly what I was going to quote.
I should probably not consider Vaarsuvius a role model.
It seems to be working surprisingly well for him.
If you consider “Accidentally fucked over the world through deliberate genocide, and knows it” “working well.”
Yeah, but V got a cool new hairdo.
Some of them need kicking. Or a hammerlock.
That way lies the tragedy of Superboy Prime and the punching of reality. Think of the horror of Billie Prime punching the Walkyverse in the face to change reality.
The ensuing horror…well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
Is, married to Danny journalist Billie, Billie Prime? Or this Billie?
Pretty insightful of Billie, there.
No, it’s never a good idea to allow an abuser to hold leverage over you, If you have any family besides him you should see about moving Howard with them. Besides (I know we haven’t seen him do it so it’s still up in the air) but, real sibling don’t let the other take shit form people like that, My sister and I bicker a lot but, we both know we aren’t going to stand for the other getting shit on by anyone stranger or family. Besides Howards what 16? he ought to be able to handle the old man by now.
You know, both yesterday and today you replied to a comment in such a way that I have to assume you meant to reply to a different comment. So, if that’s the case, what comment was this reply in reference to?
I’m kinda following up on the first comments statement and replying to Ruth directly if that makes sense.
It just doesn’t really seem to flow logically from what foamy said, and I was similarly confused yesterday. I mean, this is really superfluous, really, when there’s a lot to get into with the content of your comment in itself. I was just…confused.
honestly maybe…start with not assuming that Ruth isn’t doing the best that she can, and go from there. just because it’s not a good idea to allow an abuser to hold leverage over you doesn’t mean that it’s avoidable; that’s why abusers get away with as much as they do, because their victims either don’t have options or don’t know they have options. like. bickering is not abuse, AnonymousGuy. it’s not even remotely the same situation.
…I mean I get that this is hard to deal with and cope with but like that is the point: that brick wall, that you slam up against over and over again
Yeah, uh, and with the sibling dynamics…my sis and I, we bicker yet stand up for each other when it’s like, strangers or friends but….family? That kind of standing up for each other usually does Not happen with adults/guardians that will continually have power over you.
Yes, Ruth should not let her grandfather have leverage, yes, she should get Howard out of that situation, but you don’t have to pull that “real siblings” line like…if you can’t escape the adult the “best” thing to do is step aside and just comfort your sibling after the guardian has left them alone. There’s no reason to jeopardize both of you, and if you seem impartial to the situaltion, they may ask for your stance and then you do a “well, yeah, that was bad but maybe they only deserve X and not X, Y, and, Z”
I know siblings are often fiercely loyal, but we have to make do with the situation.
i mean. pretty much!! your parent/guardian gets mad and you are effectively screwed.
i mean. Ruth is not more responsible for letting her grandfather have leverage over her (as her guardian!!) than her grandfather is for using that leverage irresponsibly. he has a duty to both her and her brother to support them as they begin their lives!! that is why he is their guardian! he is refusing to fulfill that duty by his manipulation and cruelty and abuse.
I’ll say this: I’m honestly curious if Ruth has talked to Howard about this at all.
honestly!! considering how oblivious he is i really kind of doubt it
and like it is the kind of conversation that would honestly be very good for Howard and Ruth both. like. they are the only two people who have enough context to really get each other’s shared experience and understand what they’ve been through
but honestly i bet that Ruth felt like she was protecting him by putting up with it, because the more damage she took the less he had to. which is. actually false. because Sir was always going to do whatever the hell he wanted to do
but the happier he could be the better she was doing, probably
so much honesty going on in this post it is simply drooling in it
yeah, like… when i found out my mum had been talking
toat my sister the way she talks to me, that’s when I finally saw how bad it was. the shit she said to me, I could find excuses for, but to say such horrible things to someone she didn’t actually raise… to think she had the right to ignore all boundaries just because Motherhood.. ugh.And, like, she wasn’t anywhere near as bad as a lot of other commenters have experienced, but… there are some things I have in common with Ruth. I’m not allowed to fail. These days, my mother gets the flowers-and-sunshine version of what news I still give her, so that she doesn’t get the idea she needs to “help” me. That’s probably not a long-term solution but it’s holding things together for now.
there was this one time when my mom and sister were fighting in the kitchen and my brother and i snuck the cats down the stairs to my room and actually, like, talked about how much This Sucked and it was just like. this really rewarding moment of connection and not being alone, just us and the cats in a little island of peace among the pandemonium. wOw.
but yeah!! it’s okay if someone says it to you but if someone says it to someone else??? what kind of fuckery
…lying is weirdly freeing in that way. like. every time i lie i feel so guilty about it but after a point if people are just…going to react the way they react…they don’t deserve the truth, that’s something you have to earn
I think what Halpful meant (@ Halpful, if I’m wrong, please feel free to correct me) is that one can fail to realise how badly they’re treated by someone who’s supposed to care about/love them (with low self-esteem, they might think they deserve being shouted at constantly, or being hit, or they get to hear so much about how they’re incompetent, or nobody will ever want them, or ugly things like that, that they start to believe them).
And this someone then only fully realises the badness of their own treatment when observing it applied to someone else, thus from an “objective” point of view.
My sister only realised how wrong our family worked with how discussions were held as she had her first fights with her boyfriend-no-husband. We had never learned to objectively discuss things in our family with my mother, as she always either started to shout, insult, use “argument supporting examples” from years ago that had – logically speaking – nothing to do with the topic of discussion, or other things like that. Basically not respecting you as a human in an argument, as someone who was allowed to have a deviating opinion.
And my sister only realised that this was not exactly the way to effectively discuss problems after she had a few fights with her husband. It took her years to get over this kind of style of discussing (aka actually verbally fighting).
Mhm, I meant to say at the end “aka actually being verbally abused” – must have mixed something up, my bad.
The gist of the story is: we never got to know “normal” discussions as children and teens, as they always were full-blast fights with emotional abuse happening.
yes that does seem to be what halpful meant
and. yes. it does. so much. it takes so many years and so much therapy and so much distance to find healing for the things that were done to you
Howard does act oblivious but I also wonder how much of it stems from different perception/experience. My father treated my brother and I completely differently and our reactions to his abuse were different. I got angrier and angrier but my brother would buckle and feel guilty. There’s still a lot of abuse he got that he still doesn’t really register to him as abuse. It puts me in a weird situation where I don’t want to insist to him that his childhood was crappier than he thinks but I also want to make sure he knows what stuff was 100% not OK.
It’s possible Sir holds Howard’s well being over Ruth’s head but never says anything about it in front of Howard. If Ruth is his main target he might just leave Howard alone except when he’s punishing Ruth. If Ruth has been towing the line for a while now (especially since she’s been out of sight for so long) Sir might have been laying off Howard entirely for a while. It’s real easy when abuse eases up to go, “Well I’m glad that’s over. Now I can give this person with whom I’m supposed to have a loving relationship another chance!”
there is an entirely legitimate possibility that Howard is being trained to be the same kind of abuser as his grandfather. in which case. the abuse not only registers as abuse, but as what he ought to be dealing out. and if Howard refuses to deal it out, that may entirely be why his grandfather thinks of him as weak
which is funny because that is the sort of thing that would actually make Howard strong
anyways i wonder who Howard identifies with most in Game of Thrones. (i hope it’s sansa. it would make my heart squee if it was sansa, bless him.)
I badly expressed my belief Ruth should talk to Howard about this because I think they both have a lot of misconceptions which Sir is fostering about them–even if there’s no easy way out.
It is also likely impossible for them to talk between Ruth’s desperation not to deal with this, Howard’s desperate fantasy escapism, and Sir’s ability to nearly always monitor them both or simply turn them against each other if he decides to pull another string.
Basically, even if keeping their heads down for two more years is really the best solution because fighting Sir for custody might not work and could make it tougher for Ruth to be financially independent when Howard is of age it might help if they could at least commiserate and fight Sir’s gas lighting.
Yeah, it’d be nice if all abuse victims had options like that, but that’s a real cavalier attitude you got there.
I guess my sisters are fake.
SAME wow I can’t believe so many of us were tricked into thinking we had siblings!!!! #justonlychildthings!!!
The impression I personally get is that if it was just Ruth, she’d have it out with Sir. However, she is trying to protect her brother as best she can. I COMPLETELY disagree that a 16-year-old young man (and Howard seems pretty young for a 16-year-old) is “ready” to take on a much older, powerful abuser.
Siblings of abusive parents often try to protect each other. It’s actually really common that an older sibling will take on the responsibility of trying to keep their younger sibling(s) from being abused.
In a perfect world, yeah, Ruth and Howard would “stand up” to Sir and there would be a support structure (family or otherwise) so that Howard had someplace else to go. However, in the DoA world (and, sadly, often in the real world as well), things don’t always work that way. As Ruth says, “Sometimes there is no good, cathartic thing to do.” She is trying to minimize the amount of abuse that she and Howard suffer. It’s a sh!tty situation and it seems like neither of them have a lot of realistic options. Hopefully medication and therapy will help Ruth gain some personal agency; maybe once Howard turns 18 the two of them can “join forces” and divest from Sir’s manipulation and abuse.
Hi yes this. From experience: it is half you don’t want them hurt and half you’ll catch hell if they act up. Abusers are really fond of divide and conquer like that. Blame the eldest for not controlling younger sibs, play the “why can’t you be more like [older sib]?” game with the younger ones.
I bet Howard gets a lot of “at least Ruth has a spine” talk.
And it’s worth remembering that she’d “have it out with Sir” in that case because she’d have nothing worthwhile to lose. She wouldn’t expect to win or anything, just that she’d be willing to lose.
Isn’t that so curious how it’s generally understood to, maybe, be not the best idea to let people that have and have asserted power over you and made you aware time and time again that they can rob you of everything, continue doing that? Thank god we all know how to make good decisions or make up complex plans for potential others when we can’t even muster the will to live.
Um…I am confused by your comment. Was that directed towards me? I am not in any abusive relationships right now and I certainly have the “will to live.”
I think it’s a credit to David Willis’ creation that so many people are invested in his characters and spend time thinking about and analyzing them.
(Apologies if this wasn’t directed towards me or if I missed sarcasm or other nuances.)
I think they were responding to TheAnonymousGuy, if I’ve got the comments lined up right.
That makes sense – thanks! 🙂
@Jaime No, oh my goodness, no, not you!! It was sarcastic but it was just a very low-placed comment caused by a drop in the formatting layout but this was definitely to TAG’s comment
Gotcha – my bad! 🙂
I was the middle child in a very abusive household from 10 to 12. My mother and I were his lightning rods. He was my step father. I had two older step siblings and one younger by blood. Only the eldest ever crossed him, like twice.
Growing up like that, hearing your mother suffer far worse, having yourself isolated from other family, and all the other special, unique abuse a child can suffer in their formative years, saying you won’t let your sibling take shut hypothetically doesn’t amount to bubkiss when compared to all those little nightmares that is your childhood home.
-offers hugs-
-Take hugs, give back hugs with back pats.-
Responding to TheAnonymousGuy. Some reason really pissed me off. Had to have that said.
*appropriate gesture of support*
While I’ve suffered some abuse (see below), my mom grew up in an INCREDIBLY abusive family. She did what she could to protect her younger sister and brother from her father. And what from I understand (mom won’t tell me a whole lot, for reasons that should be obvious, but from what she has I can make some guesses) anyone in her family, her mother and older brother included, who tried to “stand up” to her father got beaten within an inch of their lives.
I really hope that TheAnonymousGuy never has to suffer through that and I am so sorry that you and my mom and her siblings did. I understand why he p!ssed you off. It’s “easy” to theoretically make judgements about what abused people should and shouldn’t do – until you’re in that position. 🙁
My mom and my siblings.
“It’s never a good idea to allow an abuser to hold leverage over you.”
“It’s never a good idea to allow a cancerous tumor to cannibalize your bloodflow.”
“It’s never a good idea to allow a nuclear explosion to vaporise your body.”
yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup
billie sees through all the bullshit
Ouch.
Poor Ruth. She doesn’t need to second guess herself at this point and I say that as someone who thinks she should work together with Howard rather than around him. Then again, I think I have a lot more mature picture of Howard than a lot of people here.
I am a little doubtful over whether their working together would be possible as even if literally all of his obliviousness and lack of awareness is a facade, we haven’t seen that facade drop even when his grandfather wasn’t around except slightly to ask Billie to look after his sister.
Well, Billie is his sister’s girlfriend. He doesn’t know if she knows what Sir is. That’s the problem with family secrets. You don’t know who you can trust. For all he knows, it could go right back to his grandfather. I may, of course, be misreading Howard completely and he’s not just playing the devoted fantasy geek to hide his hidden pain as well as terror Sir will abuse Ruth if he acts up.
I.e. I see him as the Mirror Ruth in this.
I find it quite likely that he does have hidden pain, I find it quite likely that his Game of Thrones obsession is a coping mechanism, but I also find that if the whole thing is just a mask, it doesn’t come off even when just with Ruth as even in moments he could have spoken to her alone or asked to, it didn’t drop. And she seems very used to him behaving this way as well.
maybe he doesn’t even know it’s a mask any more. I’ve certainly consented to having other parts of my mind hide troubling information (including the memory around deciding to hide it).
…….honestly….game of thrones has so much violence in it that it’s probably a validation of his experience that Things Suck
Ruth and Howard interact almost exactly like my little brother and I did before we moved out. Three years of independent living later, we reconnected and compared notes. Turns out we were both just keeping our heads down, and we were both hurting. All of a sudden, three years and three hundred miles from our abusive parents, we were having our first really conversation. Howard knows exactly what’s going on. Working together is the healthiest thing they could do–but my brother and I didn’t figure that out until we were safe.
*plays Weird Al’s “One More Minute” on the hacked Muzak* (re: alt text)
…and the lightbulb snaps on.
wow, this gramps guy is a dick
Come on Ruthless, you’re supposed to be brave and fierce. This acceptance of defeat ill suits you. A little pain now is worth it for a better life later.
i kinda feel like this is ruth being brave and fierce. or at least, like, dogged
like maybe it’s not super badass but she’s surviving and she’s doing it the best she knows how. she’s prioritizing the wellbeing of herself and her brother in a situation where she doesn’t have power or leverage. like. it’s not defeat if the objective is survival
Yep. She’s doing damn well for someone who just got out of the hospital.
Part of it could also be the depression, hiding alternatives from her – at least I hope so, because it’s nice to find out there is a non-awful solution after all. She can’t just magic away the depression, but maybe a conversation with billie or a therapist will lead to new ideas. (not that I’m seeing any right now, beyond generally working on an escape plan for the future…)
a therapist would be very good for her because they could help break some of those mental traps that longterm depression sucks you into
but an escape plan i think is the first thing that should be on her agenda!! and luckily she has a girlfriend who has all the executive function, they know her at the office supply store as “mad skills billie”
I don’t personally feel like accepting this abusive situation is particularly conducive to their well being.
It’s abuse. Of course it’s not good for them genius. But right now they’re both financially dependant on him, and Howard is basically a hostage.
Please quit being so condescending.
She needs to be strong for both of them. She’s the adult. If Gramps hurts him that’s on him. No one else is going to get her, or ultimately Howard, out of this, unfortunately, as everyone seems either to not care, not know, or not be able to do anything. She should listen more to Billy, even if she doesn’t really have specific plans right now lol
Not sure what you seem to think is funny about any of that but I’m becoming increasingly inclined to think you could stand to fuck right off with that attitude.
I think that the way Billie suggests to punch him is pretty funny.
Wow if only those abused kids would just STOP ACCEPTING THEIR ABUSE maybe things would be all better!!
Ruth isn’t a kid. She needs to listen to Billy.
Billy doesn’t have a plan either. She just wants to punch him.
That doesn’t help anything, satisfying though it might be.
She’s still 100% dependent on her grandfather and breaking away would be difficult if not impossible in this situation.
Now you’re going to say she needs to find a way, as if it’s that simple. Because for some reason you’re super invested in putting culpability for this on Ruth rather than the fuckhead abuser who has all the power in this situation.
Ruth is in college. Howard is in high school. Ruth is quite well and very familiar with how Sir works. The time for spite, breaking away, and getting out from under him and possibly even revenge is NOT NOW. That kind of stuff comes later, when Ruth is not in college. It comes when she can no longer be considered financially beholden to him and when she can conceivably have custody of Howard or not need to fight for it because he’s already 18. It sucks, but this is the situation they are in. Sir has money. Money brings privilege. Money makes the fight oh so much harder. Ruth knows this. This isn’t defeat, her eyes are green, this is her dealing with the situation at hand.
ok
i mean, like, accepting the facts of a situation is the first step towards getting out, but ok
….i’m not sure that i would mean the same thing by acceptance as you seem to?
That’s not how familial abuse fucking works.
Of course it is. Eventually something breaks, either you or them.
You know some of the people talking to you have actual experience with of familial abuse. You could probably stand to shut the fuck up and listen too them.
Yeah, I’m one of them.
Then why are you working so hard to trivialize other survivors experience?
It’s not trivial! It’s the most important thing ever. I want her to fight back, however she can, damn the consequences. I can’t just let it be, I’m sorry.
You are victim blaming Ruth while simultaneously dismissing the people who respond with the appropriate amount of disgust to your antics.
How am I victim blaming? I’m not saying it’s her fault. Just that I want her to be more aggressive. Maybe it’s not the best idea. But I agree with Billy about spite.
It’s absolutely not the best idea. It’s a really fucking reckless and terrible idea. You and Billie should consider the fact that Ruth probably has a much better idea of how her and her brother’s abuser works and how to survive him best they can with their limited resources.
Ruth has already made it clear she does not have room to be spiteful when he has total and complete control over her brother’s life and she’s right. Judging her for not being able to magically come up with some kind of revenge plot that works out for everyone is/i> victim blaming. She has been abused, manipulated, and controlled by this man for the majority of her life and just being able to hold it together this much with him after all that and after everything she’s been through in the last few days is amazing and worthy of respect. She cannot get Howard out of this situation. He is a minor, her grandfather has custody, she does not have the resources to fight him. If “Sir” abuses in such a way that’s easy to cover up and if Howard is as psychologically beat down as I get he vibe he is the abuse would also be very hard to prove, I could easily see Howard denying it in court. Hell if this has been going on for the majority of his life he might not even get how bad things are. This could be his “normal.” It’s just kind of ridiculous to assume that Ruth can do anymore than what she’s doing right this minute. In less than a few minutes Howard will leave with their grandfather and the only comfort Ruth can offer her brother or herself is that she didn’t do anything to make whatever happens to him later in the day worse and sometimes that’s all you’ve got.
Did not mean for so much of that to be italicized.
Yeah, funny how “supposed to be” does the opposite of making anyone feel capable of doing anything.
ugh, yeah. FUCK everyone who gave me a version of “you’re supposed to be smart” when I tried to ask them for help…
Depends on the person.
Uh no, no it doesn’t. its equally a shitty thing to say regardless of who says it.
I know, I wouldn’t actually say it to someone in that situation. Well, maybe if they were a super close friend.
If you said it too a super close friend that would be worst.
No, it would be different, I would say it in an affectionate teasing way. It’s hard to describe. But that’s not the point. I’m giving commentary on this situation, not trying to directly talk to Ruth per se.
So, I’ll ask the usual question: leaving aside the depression and the deep conditioned fear and submission, exactly what is she supposed to do?
What plan do you suggest that’ll get her and Howard out of the situation?
Remember that Clint has just demonstrated his ability to manipulate authorities. Remember that he does have legal guardianship of Howard.
If he is openly abusive of Howard, then there will be grounds to retract his guardianship of him. Maybe take some of his money as recompense. Billie and Ruth and maybe the whole gang can work together to win over authorities. She’s an RA, so she might have some pull. Either way, Clint’s main power is his threat. Once he actually uses it he’s out of weapons.
Do SERIOUSLY think an RA has ANY pull with Child Services, the police, or anyone with the authority to get Howard out of there?
Do you think Clint leaves evidence? His primary MO that we’ve seen has been viscous emotional abuse. Even if there’s physical abuse as well, he’s smart enough that there’s no guarantee there’s any proof of it.
His main power is that both of them are financially dependant on him and have been subjected to his abuse for years. He can withhold that financial support, and continue abusing them as long as they can’t support themselves.
People don’t get stuck in awful circumstances like this simply because they’re too weak to resist. It’s far more complicated and shitty than that.
She got stuck in this situation because Clint is an asshole. And I don’t mean official pull, just that people might be more inclined to believe her because she’s an RA, and thus theoretically a responsible adult. Like I said, I don’t see any other way for this to end. She has to be the one to win independence. She can have help, absolutely. But it hurts me to see her just accept that this is how it is. I want her to fight.
You could stand to choose your words more carefully then, because it really sounded like you were blaming her, which is an awful thing people seriously do.
The shittiest part of this is that – at least for now – she has no choice. Acting without a solid plan (or a good plan that still failed) would have nasty consequences. She knows this, and hates every moment of it.
My apologies, I did not mean to imply that this was her fault. I merely have a strong emotional reaction to this, and I want her to fight back. I know she’s trying to make the best of a bad situation. My own experience of abuse may cloud my judgement slightly, and for that I am sorry.
That’s alright. I’m always happier to find there’s been a misunderstanding than someone being an asshole. 🙂
I’m not the only one who misunderstood you that way though. You might want to reply to some other threads to that clear that up and keep similar arguments from re-erupting
So you literally just ignored thejeff’s last paragraph. Clint has already demonstrated that he can manipulate the authority’s. Also: You seriously think that being an R.A is more power then he has? Come on.
I didn’t say that she had more pull. I said that combined, their efforts might be enough.
……yeah that’s not gonna happen.
I hope it does.
It won’t. Even if Ruth did somehow magically come up with some plan, magically gather enough evidence to use against her grandfather, and magically rally the few allies she has right now, it would be impossible to pull off in the few minutes she has to get Howard downstairs. It is completely possible for her to be mentally working on how to eventually get Howard out but it will take time and resources she does not have yet. And it’s not happening today. Right now her mental energy is not extending beyond getting Howard downstairs and getting through the last few minutes she has with “Sir” successfully so that nothing too bad will happen to Howard once he’s out of her sight.
“Openly” is the key word.
My stepfather was good at that until the last episode.
Life’s a chess game and Clint just put Ruth n check.
They need someone just as manipulative as him…
Mike and Mary team up against Clint
It’s unlikely but I really want to see that
i feel like that teamup would have Mary suspecting Mike of hitting on her the whole time and Mike signing off with a “sorry, but i only fuck moms”
(he fucks a local actress playing the virgin mary)
Why is Mary even someone we’re considering here Like I’m not even talking on a moral level here, I’m talking about on a basic competence level. Mary’s attempts at manipulation have all blown up in her face.
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I love the incredibly expressive faces you draw, Mr Willis. Ruth went on an emotional journey here and you can see it all in her face. Love it.
I would bet sooner or later we’ll find out Howard gets beaten anyway, and Clint is keeping Ruth in the dark in order to use him as a prop. He might even be playing them both against each other.
Because that’s as good an excuse as any for a sound punching, and we’re running a little low on bad guys getting punched lately…
Yeah, that was my take on things and why I think Ruth is having a moment there because that thought is going to EAT at her if she realizes all of this has been for nothing.
Oh, that’s a guarantee. All the hoops are just an elaborate game to keep the abused from realizing that their actions literally do not affect a thing and their abuser will find an excuse to hurt them no matter what they do. He’s definitely beating Howard no matter what he or she do. And open-ended subjective tasks like this are perfect for him to justify it.
After all, there’s no time in which she wouldn’t be considered “tardy” or “defiant” thus “deserving” some correction. Because it’s all about the control and how much that gets him off. And how much he wants to avoid the actual ownership for his violent awful behavior.
“Their actions literally do not affect a thing and their abuser will find an excuse to hurt them no matter what.”
My favorite Aesop is Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
And I hate having it be the case, but it’s the case here.
Oh, but it can always get worse.
If Clint was going to do X amount of beating (and/or ‘just’ berating and humiliating verbally – I’m still not convinced he’s the beating type, probably just a grab-shove-restrain-drag + destroy all self-esteem type) he can always change that to X+Y if he gets additionally irritated / gets it into his head that he needs to make a ‘special lesson’ for the misbehaving.
And it’s not entirely impossible that keeping him in a good mood actually does make a huge difference – if his manner of abuse is, like my mom’s, taking out any annoyance/frustration on the kids while telling himself it’s ‘necessary discipline’, keeping him satisfied might well be a difference between a couple of casually disparaging remarks to ‘keep them on their toes’ and a full-blown hurricane with destroying their property to ‘teach them a lesson’.
I don’t think Ruth doesn’t know that she can’t shield Howard from ALL of it. I think she’s perfectly aware of the low key horror he’s living, and does all she can to keep it from becoming high-key. Because it can always get worse.
Exactly.
Wouldn’t Howard be an impetus of this decision regardless of whether or not he was present at the time?
Yeah, but it probably seems a lot more immediate and relevant when he’s not only on her mind but there in person.
…so like, but what if Gramps happened to be punched in the face by a 5’2″ chubby brown-haired lady who screamed “This is from the comments section!!” and then promptly disappeared from that dimension, never to be seen again? Ruth and/or Howard couldn’t be blamed for that, right?
nah
“Can’t reasonably be blamed” and “Can’t be blamed” are not the same.
And in my experience, sometimes there’s “Can’t justify blaming but take it out on you anyway, and am mad about it.”
And sometimes there’s “I am in a bad mood and therefore am going to deliberately look for things wrong with everything to find SOME ~good reason~ to go off on you that I might have otherwise overlooked”.
Depends, is he on the top of a very long flight of stairs and is the punch in the direction of said stairs. I ask as a purely academic exercise of course. *fumes on way to wax floors in a fictional universe*
I like the way you think.
Grandpa will be protected at the bottom of the stairs
I don’t care how old he is, Clint has earned at least a few punches.
this is … exhausting
You are an awesome storyteller. This moment proves it.
my heart is breaking but my experience is validated
I see That Guy’s current argument is “why don’t Ruth and Howard just, like, STOP being so abused?”
I hate That Guy.
same
“Stop being forced into circumstances that you have no control over and stop being affected by them as a person”
Thanks for summing it up so succinctly.
man!!!!! wouldn’t it be nice if you could just stop all abuse by willing it to stop!!!!
there’s a level of which…i get it, because in healthy human relationships you can actually get the other person to stop just by asking, or by standing up for yourself, or something similar? and so when you come up to an abused person after that it’s easy to go “wtf why are you just…keeling over”
when you don’t have the context to understand that keeling over is the safest option, because not keeling over prior to the request/as soon as the request comes in is defiance and a threat to the abuser, because saying no is never a choice you actually get
and when you’ve never been in that situation it can be really hard to understand
Has anybody ever used this argument with children of domestic violence? I’ve seen it used for people in abusive relationships but never for children…
They’ve made that argument in this very comment section, regarding Ruth and her shitty grandpa.
Jesus Christ that’s sad
Scroll up.
Content warning: TMI about personal abuse history coming up in 3…2…1…
When I was a kid (around 12 or so), I was inappropriately touched several times by an adult man. It was over a limited amount of time; my family was on the only major vacation we’d ever taken (my mom and dad, as far as I’m aware, saved for *years* for this trip) and one of the tour guides grabbed my arse when no one was watching. It was NOT just a “pat on the @$$” (not that that is okay either!) but a serious grab that even ventured upon my, um, ladyparts. 🙁
I never told anyone about this for DECADES. Not so long ago while drunk I told someone I trusted. The very first words out of this mouth were: “Why didn’t you TELL someone?” That was followed with, “Didn’t you CARE that he might do that to another girl?” Then: “You put up with it for an entire WEEK of vacation?”
And lo, there was much cursing and some kicking.
I’m betting that a lot of people reading this already know why I never said anything; it would have ruined the vacation that my parents has scraped and saved for. My mom would have blamed herself and that would have made me feel terrible. Moreover, I also blamed *myself* – I thought that maybe somehow *I’d* attracted this abuse. I was an awkward, not-terribly-attractive pre-teen. I actively *wanted* boys to notice me. I guess I kind of felt that my wish to be attractive had caused what happened. (Now that I’m older, I know that was NOT true at all, but that is how I felt at the time.)
The person in who I confided is an otherwise mostly good and compassionate person but he has never experienced this type of abuse and he is still trying to get his foot out of his intenstine (it WAS in his mouth, but then I started kicking). So yeah, children can be and ARE blamed for the abuse they suffer. If this person could blame me, however circumspectly, I have no doubt that others blame child victims of abuse far, far more.
people want to believe that you can have some control over stuff like that happening, yeah
-offers hugs- i’m so sorry you went through that
Thanks, zoelogical. I think that many people – the person I mentioned included – are scared when faced with such narratives and want to believe that *they* would have “fought back” and gained control over the situation. But abuse don’t work like that. 🙁
Nor does not “fighting back” make you a weak person or blameworthy; I hate hate HATE the dominant ideology that says it does!!!
yeee
i think that the main thing about abuse is how…unreal it is, how impossible it feels that someone could be That Awful. so like if it even throws people who are used to abuse off, how much more is it going to throw off people who don’t have any up close and personal experience with it
and i mean of course you want to believe that you could stop it, because believing that it’s very difficult to stop someone who wants to be cruel is something that shakes your whole world. that there really isn’t any justice except the justice you make.
and sometimes fighting back vs. not fighting back is the difference between surviving and not
A much smaller story of silence:
I once told my dad I was scared of mum. He confronted her, and it led to an argument where she implied she *had* to be the ‘bad cop’ because of reasons, blaming him and me (apparently I had done something bad and was avoiding punishment, but like, I was way more scared than a kid should ever be of a parent).
I never spoke up again, because I didn’t want to get him in trouble, and it was “just” words. It was a long time before I learnt that emotional abuse is a thing.
This childhood story is terrible and I’m sorry. Are you in a better situation now ?
My wife was a victim of severe abuse and their abuser attempted to turn the two siblings against one another. It, sadly, worked often as not because they didn’t realize the other was suffering the same way. It won’t magically solve anything but open communication between the two may be a major relief for both.
Also, fuck Sir.
And we enter part 3 of the That Guy cycle (and no, because people love to do this – no, this comment is not about anyone specific and I assume neither is Shiro. This is a long ass established pattern, and while specific arguments have been referenced, the “That Guy” is what is used to refer to that pattern).
Part One – “Whaaaat? Nooooo. It’s not REAL abuse. They can’t be an abuser! I don’t think they are! It’s not possible, they seem nice! You’re jumping to conclusions! Wait and see! Maybe it’s a fake out. Maybe they’re really great! Maybe the abused person is LYING or just hurt by bad communication/non-demonstrative parenting/misunderstandings feelings or circumstances! Maybe they’re too sick to understand!” – I hate this phase the most but Your Mileage May Vary.
Part Two (when it’s undeniable this is abuse) – “AWWWWW! Where’s the nuance? This is so unrealistic! Willis is a bad writer! He doesn’t understand foreshadowing or nuance or take risks or have exciting twists!”
Part Three (once abuse keeps going and people have pointed out this shit happens IRL all the time) – “Well, it’s THEIR fault, the victim should do this! They shouldn’t have done this! They’re not SO innocent, remember X Bad Thing? It’s their fault! They could leave easily if they wanted to! I did X and it worked, why don’t they in their context?”
BBCC, you may have many internets and a cookie. 🙂
While all of what you have said is true and anger-producing, it is “part three” that REALLY makes me stabby. I’m a cisgender woman and I have heard those arguments used SO MANY TIMES against women who speak out about various forms of abuse. Like I said above, even someone very close to me fell into that trap when I disclosed the sexual abuse I’d suffered as a child.
I kind of think of it as the TERRIBLE version of “Monday morning quarterbacking” – it sometimes feels like *everyone* would have “handled” things better than you. “You should have told your mom that the tour guide was molesting you!” (even though it would have spoiled the entire trip for everyone and my mom would have never forgiven herself). “You should have told off that male teacher who flirted with you in class!” (even though he controlled my grade and whether or not I made it into the AP section of the subject). “You shouldn’t have led that guy on by letting him sleep at your apartment – were you TRYING to friendzone him?” (even though we’d all been drinking that night and no one was in any shape to head home; I was trying to be a good friend and keep people safe). I could keep going, as I expect could many others here.
I am SO SICK of the culture of victim-blaming, especially when the victim is a woman or a person of colour. (I live in the U.S. so I am primarily speaking of that country as it’s the one with which I’m most familiar.) When someone gets mugged, the police (as far as I’m aware), don’t usually say things like: “Why were you wearing expensive clothing and jewelry if you didn’t want to be mugged? Were you drinking that night? Well, if you were, what did you expect? Did you fight back against your mugger? If you didn’t, you must have *liked* being mugged. Lots of people don’t get mugged; what did YOU do wrong that made you be mugged?”
However, those *exact same questions* – and worse – are regularly asked of victims of abuse and/or r@pe. I understand that people are scared and want to “re-write” their personal narratives to tell themselves that no such thing would ever happen to them. (As I said above.) However, I also think this sort of rhetoric is a very easy way to shift blame from the abusers to the victims, which is something we are seeing A LOT in the U.S. right now. *deliberately not mentioning any current major politicians…*
All of this is spot on. I’m so sorry you dealt with people like that. You didn’t deserve what happened and you deserved supportive people in your corner. All the appropriate gestures of support!
Hell, we see that plenty in the comments. Any time Amber, Sal, Ruth, Joyce, or anyone deals with abuse, we get some of them. It’s obnoxious as hell. And Phase Three is certainly a valid phase to feel stabby on.
And thank you for the cookie!
That’s why they always say “Don’t be That Guy.”
I think Billie’s argument here might be bolstered by some kind of plan that accomplishes some kind of goal beyond “feels good in the short term”.
Unless she’s trying to make the argument that emotional connection to Howard makes Ruth weak and she should stand up to gramps and just let Howie hang for it, which is….kind of evil…but seems to be what she’s gettin at with that last line?
I think her point there is that Shit Grandpa is a manipulative piece of shit and that fuck that guy.
Also that fuck him all the more so because knowing why he brought Howard doesn’t actually prevent it from working, it only makes it chafe that much more.
Very true, FC.
eh, i kind of think she’s just pointing out that it’s a no-win situation.
like. Gramps exerts control over Ruth by bringing Howard and holding his control over Howard as his legal guardian over her. If she wants to see Howard, she has to do what he says. If she wants to set a good example for Howard, she has to get her act together. Like. Gramps never wanted to deal with the mess that Ruth was, he just wanted to despise her and force her to get back in line.
If Ruth ever wants to get control of her own life back, she has to stand up to him. There are always going to be things holding her back, because Gramps seems pretty good at getting leverage over people. Like. Money, relationships, stability, reputation. If she wants to be able to stand up for herself, she has to stand up for herself regardless of the consequences. And you know what? I bet that Howard would really resent losing his big sister.
…on the other hand that’s the kind of thing that’s a lot easier when you actually have, like, resources. and a place to stay. and security.
I hope that the last panel is Ruth realizing that, no, she was never even truthfully holding onto the tiny shred of power and dignity in this horrendous situation she thought she had. That her actions are being manipulated as easily as Sir is capable of throwing money or force at others to make them fall in line, and she isn’t an exception to be faced with his temper as a threat directly at the exception of being a target of his outright manipulation. She thought she was saving Howard but she was not, she was unwittingly giving her grandfather means use Howard to target her. And that being her fault again, in her own mind, is what I fear she may take away from this but not what I hope moving forward from the still-present echoes of “Let’s make things better.”
But I do hope that look can still mean Ruth realizing she thought she knew her situation and she was wrong. She thought she knew what she was doing and what it meant and she was wrong. She thought she was limited to either the one option listening and cowering for her brother’s safety, enduring hell for that and knowing that would be accomplished or the other option that was only a last resort—death.
And she was wrong. She can’t fall back on either of the two dead-end options she thought she had and I suspect now if that’s what I’m seeing that now Ruth is lost on what that means. Because from that point she can’t put either the mask back on and know it’s ‘the right thing’ to try and soldier on in compliance with her grandfather, or die now at least knowing and having peace she did everything she could.
It’s frightening and painful yet could well be positive; but in any case, Ruth realizing that she’s been played too long already would mean she CAN’T bow her head anymore and bite her tongue with it because if she’s been manipulated then it could also be a lie and Howard was never safe no matter what she did, or what anyone did except Sir. For all Ruth knows if she was fooled, then Howard too might also think he’s the only one that his grandfather wants to hurt. And if she wants to fix it or save herself or save her brother and if it must be her because nobody else is able…maybe she can’t pick either option that was really only one. She can’t be the thing she was before.
Pretty much how I feel 100% with the addition of, “Is Howard the way he is because he wants Ruth to be protected?” or “he believes she’s okay and it’s he that’s the screw up/deserves to be punished?” Which is a even worse. Either way, I think Ruth has done everything in her power to protect him but they need (Howard and Ruth) to talk to get the truth out.
a+++ reference to the arc title
No, I think the last panel is Ruth once again fully feeling the absolute shittiness of her grandpa.
A very natural instinct when you’re being abused is to minimize it – to tell yourself that you’re just imagining or overblowing parts of it, that they’re trying to do good and have good intentions, really. You paint yourself a rosy picture of your abuser having lines they won’t cross, even if in your gut you know it’s not safe to rely on it.
And then something happens and they cross that line as easily as they’ve done all the others, and you’re left in a confusing world where someone can, in fact, be just that bad, despite the world telling you that there are two sides to every conflict and you should just have compassion and faith in your family, always and always.
Also? Howard is not a target for Sir Grandpa’s abuse because he’s realized he can manipulate Ruth via that. If she started ignoring what might happen to Howard and blowing off Sir, he’d just be in a chronically bad mood and he’d tighten his hold on Howard and make his life much more of a living hell, because right now he feels like he’s got everything in control, and implicit threats of violence work just as well as the violence itself.
Ruth is not “deluding herself” into thinking she makes things better for Howard, she knows quite well how the game works and knows she is genuinely being a lightning rod for some of Sir’s controlling urges. Because I guarantee you that he’s not keeping up a constant level of ‘discipline’ at all times. Hix moods wax and wane, and he’s only got so much yelling energy to get out of his system before he feels better and leaves both kids alone.
Ruth knows exactly what she’s doing.
I think Howard’s behavior indicates he’s probably every bit as abused as Ruth– certainly, probably much more so since she left.
I think there’s something else going on in that last panel. There’s a change there. Ruth’s going to do something. Not sure what, but that’s the look of coming to a decision.
….
….
All Reed and Clarke Hall residents to emergency bunkers! This is not a drill! Repeat, all resi- OH GOD RUTHLESS’S RAGE IS MANIFESTING PHYSICAL FORM ALREADY RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
DUCK AND COVER! I REPEAT: DUCK AND COVER!!!
I think someone is getting ready to give Spite a chance. Perhaps not the BEST inspirational slogan, but Sarah would totally buy into it.
i used to play a game called fallen london that had a district named Spite in it. so yes. you could literally live in Spite. it was great, run by a Mongolian mafioso-type named the Gracious Widow and everything
You are really selling me on the concept of living in Spite.
hahahaha
the only downsides: it is Victorian London, sometimes the Widow’s exboyfriend comes around and is rakishly, ghoulishly handsome and alluring in a Mad Bad and Dangerous To Know Kind of Way, and also it’s night all the time for reasons. and the city is ruled by mysterious squeaky cloaked Masters who really…don’t seem to have any interests in mind but their own
other than that it’s great. one time i entered all four fail states at the same time and got exiled to the Tomb Colonies, then died, then went insane, and then went to jail
You are really selling me on playing Fallen London!
heeeeeeeeeck
downsides: it’s really wordy, and it’s very grindy
upside: fabulous text and a great sense of humor
I played it for awhile some years ago.
It was brilliant for quite a while, but eventually the payoff of grinding to new content got too low. It’s definitely worth playing the early parts though. As you say, the prose is great, the concept and setting are awesome and at time hilarious and creepy as hell at the same time.
“The Starveling Cat! The Starveling Cat
Why does it look at us like that?”
they do have a lot of new content coming out, but in order for it to be a truly rewarding experience you have to pay for exceptional friendship. which is fair!! they deserve money! it’s just slow if you don’t want to pay that money, haha
but fallen london is so inspirational to my writing style now like. it challenged so many assumptions and was so creative with its form that i’ll probably be looking back to it for most of my life for tips
“the Starveling Cat! the Starveling Cat!
warm as a lizard! fragrant as a bat!”
Well then, now I live in Spite and it’s suitably hilarious. I’m sure only good thing can come from this.
:DDDDD
I keep seeing mentions of that game everywhere lately, has it suddenly gotten popular or is the universe telling me I should play it?
both, probably
oh my god you should see the classic nonbinary option it’s FABULOUS
“My dear sir, there are individuals roaming the streets of Fallen London at this very moment with the faces of squid! Squid! Do you ask them their gender? And yet you waste our time asking me trifling and impertinent questions about mine? It is my own business, sir, and I bid you good day.”
Oooooh! Burn!
Sam Starfall in Fallen London?
This Must Happen!
Comic Reactions:
TW for all of these: Abuse, abuse dynamics
Panel 1: Oh, this just breaks my heart, because it’s such a full internalization of the abuser’s logic. That their timeliness or lack thereof will dictate whether and how angry “sir” will be. And that it’ll be their fault if they do something to make him angry.
Which, of course, it’s internalized. “Sir” continuously threatens violence often with just enough denial to pretend that that wasn’t what he so obviously meant and exploits Ruth’s care as a sister for her brother and Howard’s care as a brother for his sister. Making them feel like either has to jump through the hoops and just survive and maybe if they jump through all the hoops well enough then he won’t hurt them as bad as he was going to.
But it’s all a complete ruse, because this is classic abuser 101. Give an impossible subjective task to the person being abused and then abuse them no matter how they complete it because it wasn’t completed X enough. Was it them being subservient and “well-behaved”, well, guarantee that some perceived eye-roll or non-earnest glance will be interpreted as justifying the abuse for “failing to behave”?.Was it about them doing well-enough in an activity, well, even if they perfect it, they didn’t perfect it in the right way, justifying the abuse.
And here, well, there’s no way that when they get downstairs, that no matter how quickly Ruth had them all jump, not even giving Howard the time he needs to get his armor up, that it’ll be enough for “sir”. He’ll still nail them for taking too long because the point of the task is to fail so the abuser can claim the abuse has to do with some action of the abused they can fix next time rather than admit that they just wanted to control and hurt the abused person.
It’s a deliberate no win situation and Ruth, even if she realizes it, it doesn’t feel safe to challenge, because the punishment for “failing the tasks” is so much less than open rebellion and the abuser feeling the need to tighten his control lest his victims escape his web of bullshit.
And that’s heartbreaking. And especially heartbreaking here because Howard is so not up for going back into that world and having his own no-win scenario with “sir” and is wanting to steal as many seconds as he can before the inevitable comes to pass. And “sir’s” reach is so powerful that even his sister who loves him with all her heart can’t risk giving him that tiny breather out of fear of “sir’s” shit.
alla this
if Sir wants to be mad then he will be and there’s no controlling that
That’s horrifying. And we have seen NOTHING of “Sir” that hasn’t involved him setting up that sort of situations.
Every single interaction Ruth has had with him, from the first phone call to him physically hurting her in the hallway, has been her having to “report” to him, and him “disciplining her” for not “being enough X” whatever that has meant in the current context.
I… don’t think I’ve really thought of it that way. Huh. ..actually, I just remembered a time when I did last year, and succeeded at NGAF, and… nothing.
It is so fucking confusing not knowing when you’re going to get praised vs lectured. Probably less bad in some ways, but more insidious in others, because I really thought I just had to not make the wrong kind of mistakes and that that was a reasonable expectation, for so long…
*hugs offered* Yeah, it’s an easy trap to fall into and then you’re constantly failing no-win scenarios and feeling like a worthless fuckup. But it’s all their tactic for drilling their way into your head. I wish fewer of us knew what that felt like.
This is painful to read, and insightful as always.
Being given, explicitly or not, the responsability of a younger sibling (potentially since they were born), to discover later that you never had the power to take care of this responsability and bear the horror of it. This is a tactic of an abusive parent.
What’s even worse is that it’s a believable responsability : “When we parents aren’t there, check if your sibling is okay, tell them about the stuff they don’t know about the world and you do, make sure they’re not beaten up in school, don’t torture them”.
It’s reasonable. It’s a reasonable responsability to give an older sibling.
And when it becomes “When I’m angry, you’d better come here and take it or your younger sibling gets it”, you can’t change your worldview like that, switch to “Nope I’m not my sibling’s keeper thank you very much”.
You can’t.
(Urrrh I shouldn’t have written all that. Now all I can’t think about is that I don’t dare to call my brother because I’m ashamed I couldn’t protect him from abuse. This is wrong. It’s sunday. I should call him. Wish me strength.)
*hugs*
*hugs*
Strength, and good fortune.
*All the hugs*
Thanks for the strength and the hugs. I called him. He says he’s fine. I never know how to formulate the idea that if anything is not fine he can talk about it while I listen in a non-judgmental way so that he may believe me and use this opportunity. That said, I should begin by asking if he already has a confident ; I can’t be the only keeper of my brother, and I don’t want him to feel pressured into confiding – it was a maternal tactic, you know : “tell me how bad you feel so I know exactly how I can break you in order to make you do what I want”.
Fuck, I can’t even save myself, what am I dreaming about.
He said he’s fine. I asked him if I could call next week and he agreed. I did my part.
Why is everything so complicated.
I should stop making the comment section all about my problems.
I’m a bit misty eyed now.
I’m so sorry there’s no need !!! Please don’t worry about me, I’m in way better hands than I make it appear when I comment here !
It’s OK. If this forum helps you to vent, that’s a good thing. I’m just happy you both have someone to call.
it’s ok you’re allowed to have problems and you’re allowed to talk about them
-huuugs-
*appropriate gesture of support* That wasn’t on you. That was never on you.
Cerberus, sweet as always, please receive my thanks. In the mental reality I’m currently living in, it was always on me and it’s still on me. I’m trying to move in (on?) a less guilty mental reality with a therapist I trust. I’m taken care of.
Then I wish you all the best in your recovery. You’ve got this. *hugs offered*
Panel 2: This is interesting, because on the one hand many of us who’ve been abused have heard advice like this and many of those of us who’ve had already feel the nervousness rising about that suggestion. Because something direct like that has direct consequences. When the cops go away, when you get in a lick or two, when you make your first attempted defiant stand, the abuser so frequently doubles down and gets really nasty.
Like, there’s a reason why the point at which most abused folks who get killed is when they try and escape. It’s a hard risk to take unless you’ve truly hit the point where you do not give a fuck any more, you just need to get free.
But on the other hand, sometimes that show of force, of refusal can have an important affect on the abuser, make them back off to a honeymoon phase, find another means of coercion to keep you from actually severing the game. And for Billie, well, she’s never had an abuser like this. But she’s seen a version of it against Sal. And probably among a few of the cheerleaders and she’s probably been the one they called to give that extra bit of strength and force to get out.
Plus, it’s always rough watching a loved one suffering abuse and know that there’s nothing you really can do but lend support and being willing to help enact whatever plan of escape they want when they are ready to try one.
Panel 3: Mmph. But yeah, I feel it. Cause when you’re in it, there isn’t a magical best solution and oftentimes the “best” solution is just getting free and doing ninety different things to try and protect yourself as you knit your brain back together from all the damage they did to your head.
And sometimes, when things aren’t safe. When it’s not worth the risk, there’s no way out, there’s just riding things out until the center can’t hold or circumstances change. And I see it a lot with my kids. Kids who know that the system will do nothing to keep their parents from beating them and that any report will just get them beat when the cops go away. And so who turtle up and do as many drugs as they can to numb themselves out until they can make it to 18 and be a legal adult.
And it can keep you alive… but it can also drive folks into pure desperation and awfulness. Cause abuse, when you’re riding it out, has a high mental price and it ekes into all parts of your life and like with Ruth, it can spike up things like suicidal ideation, self-injury, overdoses, etc… Riding it out is a temporary solution and the longer you feel stuck in it, the easier it is to give up all hope.
And for Ruth, that center is not holding and things will have to change soon, high risk or not, just for her to live.
And what really scares me with that is… we know Ruth. There is NO CHANCE IN HELL she wouldn’t answer to his bullshit with direct confrontation…. the first one or two of ten times.
At this point she already knows perfectly well the price of defiance, for her and for Howard, and I bet she learnt it really quickly after her parents died. Which right there puts “Sir” in serious competition with Blaine for second-worst-piece-of-shit in the entire comic.
agreed. 🙁
I say we throw them in the ring and let them duke it out for the title.
And with the “ring” we of course mean the nearby hospital ward for total dipshit parental figures. I’m sure there are some wild dogs nearby who would be happy to show him the way.
I was one of the lucky ones. Too elaborate, I mentioned in the comments a while back that I was afraid of myself when angry, and it all stemmed from when I had rebelled against my father and told him I would kill him if he even contacted my mother ever again. Well, he kept his distance…for a while. Then he dropped into our lives again, crying some whole “I’m sorry”, “I made a mistake”, “I’ve changed” tune that I didn’t believe, because he’d for that crap before. He started trying his damn mind games with one of my younger brothers the week I went back to college in order to “get them on his side”. So, I came back for the weekend and asked if he wanted to go for a walk. While on said walk, I casually mentioned how crazy the traffic was and how if one was accidentally pushed into the street they’d probably be hit by two or three cars before traffic stopped. I hate that I had to go there, and it probably only worked because I was finally bigger and stronger than him at this point, but it did work. He got the memo. And he finally stopped. I just…really wished I hadn’t stooped to his level in order to make sure my mother and brothers would be ok. I wanted to take the high ground. But in the end that didn’t work. But he never again hurt any of my family members from then to the day he died. But up until then, I was very used to the “impossible tasks” thing you mention below. ‘How’re your grades? Why do you have an B+ on this test instead of an A? You’re smarter than that. You’re not some idiot you’re just not trying hard enough. Do you know what happens to people who don’t try?’ I swear those are the only things he said to me for seven years (middle school until I left for college). But hey, I could handle that I was the strong one. All I had to do was bottle everything up. But when I left for college that left him with no one to antagonize in that way, so he turned to my brothers. And I wasn’t going to let him do that, especially not after we found out he’d cheated on my mom. So, yeah. I don’t have a good answer for how to deal with abuse. I wish I did. I wish I didn’t have too because no one had a sick little twisted heart like that.
…
Sorry. I’m just feeling really introspective tonight. I had surgery earlier today to deal with the skin cancer and now I’m just, laying in a hospital bed unable to go to sleep. The surgery for my (unrelated) thyroid cancer isn’t for another month though. Sorry about not adding updates about that stuff for a couple weeks, but with all the shit that’s been going on, I thought it would just be best not to bring my stuff up. But well, now that it’s good news I think I’m okay with updating people on that? Anyways the point is, I can’t fall asleep for some reason, and I’m looking back on my life up to this point asking myself: Is there anything I truly, deeply regret? And this comic…well it kinda played into that question a bit I guess. I’ll be back home sometime tomorrow, so I’ll hopefully be back to my usual self by then.
i. wow. i’m so sorry you had to go to that to get him out of your life
im glad to hear that you’re getting treatment for your cancers! i hope it works out well, and i’m happy to hear about any progress that might be made
*hugs* Yeah, it’s fucked the lengths so many of us have to go to to get the abusive fuckers out of our lives.
*jedi hugs*
Oh, yay, surgery day! How’d that go? Will they have any idea for some time?
And *all the hugs* I’m sorry to hear about your dad. It can be scary dealing with people like that. I had an abusive friend once – ignoring her didn’t stop her, being nice to her didn’t stop, avoiding her didn’t stop, getting upset didn’t stop her, getting mad didn’t stop her….but she sure stopped when I slugged her in the gut (it was an accident, slipped on some ice, but she didn’t know that).
Yeah, surgery went well. The skin cancer developed independent of the thyroid cancer, which itself hasn’t grown or spread, and they got the skin tumor off easy. They want to take a tissue sample from the area it was located in about two months, but after June 19th I should hopefully be cancer free. I mean, I guess if you’re getting two unrelated cases of cancer, then having them be two of the more easily dealt with kind of cancer is pretty good.
Yay, good luck!
!! good to hear
Aw yeah! <3 Congrats! I hope the rest of treatment goes well!
May the odds be in your favor.
*ALL the hugs*
Panels 4-6: Got it in one Billie. Because of course it is. “Sir” is a classic abuser who has exploited every spoke of the power and control wheel I keep throwing up here. And “using children” is his ace in the pocket whenever Ruth starts getting more independent than he’d like. Because nothing brings her into compliance more successfully than the visual reminder of who he will hurt if she refuses to play his games.
Because well, of course it would. It’s why abusers threaten friends, siblings, kids, pets and why many intimate partner violence types like to try and get their partners pregnant as fast as possible. Because people have lots of empathy and it’s a lot easier to accept abuse when you think you’re protecting someone else from worse.
It’s what had me willing to jump through my uncle and dad’s hoops to try and protect the partner they were harassing behind my back. It’s what had my ex jumping through her mom’s hoops to try and protect me. It’s something my gf had exploited against her in the couple of years she was in college before her sister could escape.
It’s a vile but effective weapon and for Ruth it unlocks her like nothing else, cutting through her defiance and making her susceptible to abuse that leaves her so suicidal she likely would have died without intervention.
And what’s most interesting here is it seems like Ruth is realizing for the first time how deliberate the exploitation of Howard is. That “sir” is not only leaving an open threat against Howard, but is deliberately doing so openly and blatantly in order to better manipulate her and order her compliance and exploit her natural empathy to dig his hooks into her life more.
And that’s the worst part of abusers. The way they exploit and make weaknesses of truly wonderful human traits, empathy, sacrifice, desire to be fair, love. An abuser twists all of these to get what they want, seeing them as something that makes their victim “weak” and “deserving”.
And at best it can leave one bitterly cynical on the other end. At worst, it can make one loathe their positive traits for giving their abuser an in and make one want to excise them out so they can never be taken advantage of again. And I have no doubts that part of Ruth’s angry bullying RA from hell shtick is heavily influenced by that, just as Carla’s “too cool for school and being seen as caring for others” shtick. Because that’s safer than letting their very real empathy be front and center.
Abusers are like a poison in the very culture. And this is part of the lasting damage they do. And it’s depressing, because if our culture took it a little more seriously. Banned abusive cops from holding jobs, treated abuse as as serious of a crime as shoplifting or possessing a few grams of marijuana. If our culture was more forceful against abusers when they hurt folks and supported their victims more, this whole twisted culture could be excised and destroyed. And it would be so much better for everyone, for our whole damn society, if folks could be kind and empathetic and caring and forgiving without that weaponized against them.
*hugs*
yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup
and it’s like it’s – it’s everywhere, abuse is the cornerstone for so much fucked up shit we do. if we could popularize fighting abuse, the methods of thinking that go into standing against abuse and not being abusive, i think that a lot of other problems would find themselves being resolved. because abuse, i think, is where it starts. most everything else is just…excuses to be abusive.
I have a few questions:
1. Is Sir’s cane made of wood?
2. How much force has to be applied to break a wooden cane over someone’s head?
3. How much force is required to stab someone through the heart with a splintered shaft of wood?
4. Is there a local vampire hunter who could easily mistake Sir for a Bram Stoker vampire (assuming he isn’t one)?
i’m your basic average stake
and i’m here to save the day
you can’t stop me cause i’m van helsi-ing
there is nothing i can’t do, and when danger calls
just know that i am on my way
Alas for not being able to upvote this into the stratosphere.
just imagine hugh jackman’s van helsing dressed in the kim possible outfit and it’s approximately the same thing
1: Appears to be metal. Probably aluminum.
2: Far too many variables to say for sure. With a wooden cane, it depends on type of wood, shape, point and angle of impact. But I’d be hard-pressed to imagine that 50 pounds, applied in the right way, wouldn’t be enough. Metal is trickier, because it will deform rather than “break” when faced with sheering or compression stress. If you really want it to snap, you’d need tensile stress (preferably in combination with the other two)… say because someone is dangling from it over a five story drop. after being hit over the head with it multiple times. But then, this cane appears to be a metal tube, so once it starts deforming the deformation will produce tensile strength at some points. Hard to say, but putting most your weight on it with your foot while bending the ends in the opposite direction might do it.
3: Again, depends on a lot of factors, such as the profile of the weapon, whether you avoid he ribs, and the like. Metal would be slightly easier because it won’t splinter as much on the way in.
4: While normally I would say that Indiana has all the types of crazy, Florida would probably be a better bet. That said, you’re just one state over from the birthplace of one of the most famous vampire hunters in the country’s history, Abraham Lincoln. So yeah, there probably is, and yeah, they’re probably crazy enough to believe metal will work in the place of wood.
….
… too much analysis?
Nope. Perfect amount of analysis.
on the plus side, Ruth thinks of Billie as a Disney princess and that’s the most goddamn adorable thing i’ve ever heard of in my entire life
I almost disagreed that that isn’t what Ruth meant, but then I remembered the last time she described Billie to someone and yes she totally does
for Ruth it has totally always been about Billie storming her goddamn castle and I Love This Analogy
ruth the dragon who fell in love with the
cheerleaderprincess dragonslayermy heart melted a bit at that image, thought you should know.
<333
💗
<3
I would watch the shit out of that movie!
“Someday, my princess will co-ooome,
We will follow our rainbow
Anyone in our way I will kick in the baaaaalls
’cause I am an alpha-boooongo.”
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaack
😀 😀 😀
i feel like Beauty and the Beast/Maleficent/Sleeping Beauty would fit them really well, but now i kind of want Wizard of Oz too. SOMEHOW
I think that Ruth would be a happier woman at this point if Billie hadn’t seen through her as if she were made of plate glass.
she wasn’t happy to begin with. what makes you think she’d be happier?
At least then she could maintain some illusions in terms of her self-image. As it is, her girlfriend clearly understands just how beaten down, controlled and defeated she is which is something I really think Ruth doesn’t like having been known about her.
mmmmmmmm
i guess like the question becomes: would you rather be deluded about your situation and alone, or honest about that situation and with someone who supports you?
I’m sure you’ll agree that, at least with the character of Ruth, this is an unanswered question. It may be one that this arc will in part answer for her.
eh. i mean. Ruth pretty much seems to have made her choice, i.e. honest and with someone who supports her. but what do you think?
This strip reflects a lot the conversations everybody had about Ruth and Howard’s situation !
Which is good, because not everyone who reads this strip is a specialist in abusive relationships. I know that some years ago I would have to have it all spelled out for me.
Okay, fine, I can see the wisdom in taking yelling or punching off the table.
…So, taking that cane and whacking him with it is still very much ON the table, right? I mean, he’s old, what’re the odds he’d recover enough to do anything about that?
What about switching his heart medication with a large, angry badger?
ok i see this but i am imagining a large angry badger running through his heart valves and veins and mr. sir here keeled over wonder wtf a heart palpitation is and why he’s never had one before
I love it! <3
VISUALS WE CAN GROK
So I’d always thought “you made me choke on [food/water]” was, mostly, a humorous exaggeration. But now you have made me choke on my water and I have water up my nose.
Constance from Redwall would tear him to pieces….
A friends of mine organized her mother’s escape from her father in a long organized campaign which involved getting all her mother’s stuff out of her parents house while they were on holiday, moving the stuff into an apartment in a far away city, and taking her mother away from the holiday place.
All this just to make sure he wouldn’t get a chance to find her and kill for wanting out.
As long as Ruth has no chance to do that for Howard, she won’t openly defy the person who has power over them. She now knows that he is uses Howard’s safety as a weapon to manipulate her. This must hurt deeply because it shows what she though of as agency was non.
And yeah, some abusers will back off if you bring home to them you are willing to hurt them bad if they don’t. For some, they need to understand you are willing to kill them. And some never back off.
It’s always a risk. Be well prepared and never trust them.
Man, the “do you want him angry” thing in the first panel cuts so hard. I’ve thought for the longest time it was a reasonable comment for my dad and grandma to make referring to my mom. It wasn’t until really recently that I’ve started realizing that they actually had the power to stand up to her and NOT MAKE IT MY PROBLEM that she likes to take out her annoyance on kids regardless of proportion to the misdeed she’s spotted.
But this isn’t the same, is it? Ruth actually genuinely can’t do anything to protect Howard, and de-escalating is the only thing she can think of doing. She’s in the same boat as him, not standing outside and pretending it’s none of her business.
And I don’t think she would use “I bet X will get angry when they come home” as a manipulation tactic to push you into doing things they want you to do…
*appropriate gesture of support*
yeaaaah
when it’s all you’ve experienced, it feels like you deserved it regardless of whether you did or not. and realizing that you couldn’t have stopped it is…hard
-hugs-
keep your head up & your chin pointy enough to puncture skulls, should the need arise
Well the anger bang is probably fairly catheratic
Anger banging is extremely cathartic. Trust me on this one.
I both love and hate when stories with such relatable and real situations come out like this because how validating is it to see even just fictional characters battling with the same crap so many of us had to handle feeling very very alone in it. Like, seriously, I’m very very very very grateful whenever someone does an abuse situation so /real/ because, as awful of a reminder it is and as terrible as some of the victim-blaming that crops up in the comments are, it’s so easy to slip into this ‘was i just the stupidest person ever is it just me would it have happened to someone smarter/stronger/whatever’ and stories like this just normalize it for me. Ruth isn’t stupid or weak or weird or bad; she’s trying and struggling with some heavy baggage, but she’s still a valid human beneath that.
also can i say how emotional i get over Billie seeing this and still being here caring about her even so. these girls are so important to me and i appreciate Willis sharing them with us because gosh did i need this.
*hugs offered*
Yeah, the worst part about abuse is the guilt we often carry after we escape for what we endured when we were just surviving. Like, we so often beat ourselves up with “why weren’t you ‘strong’ enough to fight back and risk all that came with doing that and failing” or “why weren’t you ‘smart’ enough to see how they were manipulating you”.
It’s bullshit, because these abuse tactics are designed to slip under defenses and keep us in a state where we’re barely able to hold together our name, but it linger because our brains are so good at echoing the victim blaming in society and trying to find out a “reason” it happened to you/took so long to escape/recognize.
But the reality is there was nothing we did other than end up in the radar of an abuser. And there is little we could have done to prevent it going down the way it did.
But that little voice is loud, so I also appreciate stories like this.
Easy solution. Fill gramps pc will kiddie porn and tip off the police.
You better hope you can fool the police data forensics person. They’ll be able to tell all that stuff was downloaded within a given time period not consistent with a habit. Then you’d be the one in the dock.
Might be worth taking a look at the computer to see what IS there though.
Given how hard it is for Howard to find boobie videos, I’m guessing that Gramps controls access to his computer carefully. Add in what Vulcanodon said about forensics, and you’d be better off going with print copies stashed in an attic crawlspace over the course of a few years. The hard part would be getting his fingerprints on them, for which I recommend those plastic slips that comic books come in. Easy to get his prints on those without him knowing that they’ll be used to hold illegal smut the moment he’s incriminated himself.
…. um, I mean, framing people is wrong and don’t… eh, whatever.
Panel 6: “Yeah Billie, I guess you’re right. But it’s like picking a complicated lock that’s wired to explosives.”
Say this for Billie though; she’s willing to stand inside the blast zone and give support. And just say the word and she’ll do more.
BILLIE: Wait wait wait! Let’s just brainstorm a minute…
*two minutes of furious scribbling*
BILLIE: OK, I’ve boiled it down to two options… Do you want to try Operation: Kidnap Howie or Operation: Grandfather Paradox? Kidnapping doesn’t solve the root of the problem, but it’s probably easier to get away with than murder…
Actually, there are several ways to get away with murder, many of which ensure that your eventual capture, should it even happen, takes many, many years, during which you can live your life to the fullest.
DINGADINGDING, BILLIE GETS THE BRASS RING!
If it isn’t a minor sibling still living at home, it’s a beloved pet.
Unfortunately, with people like Gramps, the only way out is to keep your head down so the abuser doesn’t decide to offload you and cut off your contact with the hostage. Then, when you become a legal adult, you work like hell to get a place big enough for you and the hostage, and quietly let the hostage know that it’s available/try hard to prove that that is actually your cat.
Yup, whatever the abuser can get ahold of for blackmail and as hostage, that’s what they’ll reach for. My dad used to hold access to my mom as price for continuing to deal with his bullshit and as a power play to get me home. Letting her go was the hardest and most important thing I could do.
Sounds familiar. This sick bastard I lived with for a while managed to convince me that having my best friend move in would be nothing but helpful, since he was in need of a roof. For months, I tried my best to be extra-careful, since there was now the added worry that my friend would be harmed if I acted out. It took a long time to come to terms with the fact that he’d be fine in the long run, even if the short term entailed a lot of couch surfing, and it took a family emergency to convince me to take the plunge and just pack up and leave, and let my friend handle his own.
To his credit, he managed it well enough, and even got a place of his own after a month or two, but he held it against me, to the point where we’re no longer friends because of it. Not entirely sure why I shared all this, but I guess your sharing brought it out. It goes to show, though, that sometimes, doing what you need to do for your own safety and health doesn’t always come easy, and it may even hurt, but if it’s best for you, then you really should do it.
*hugs* Yeah, those are the ones that hurt the most.
The strangest cases are the ones where, by the end of it all, you wind up happier without the person you’d previously considered one of your closest companions.
Yes… the only custodial guardian of the kid who is literally not legally allowed to leave the kid alone for a day while visiting his granddaughter only brought him along to be “manipulative”, and not, y’know, because he literally has to.
I know he’s a douche, but get the hell over yourself, Billie. Sometimes things happen that aren’t specifically targeted at you and yours.
Howie is a teenager in high school. There is so much normative culture in favor of him being able to stay alone in a house for a day or two (especially as it looks like this isn’t even an overnight trip, just a day trip). And even if it wasn’t, babysitters are pretty plentiful.
No, his choice to bring in Howie for this. For a thing he knew he wouldn’t even be heavily present for Howie during? Definitely deliberate and definitely designed to get extra leverage over Ruth in reasserting his violent control.
Howard drove himself down to visit his sister on family day without Clint feeling the need to “literary have to” look after him.
Ruth has right out stated two separate times that Clint will take out his aggression on Howard if provoked.
Billie is not GUESSING that Clint is using Howard to manipulate Ruth. She has front row to watching it happening, and so have we.
Also, even disregarding the method, in this case Clint specifically DOES target Ruth. Every single strip he has been in or Ruth has dealt with anything he has done has made that abundantly clear.
For extra fun, he is ALSO using Billie to manipulate her
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/gramps/
Yup, anything, anyone can be weaponized, because at the end of the day it’s all about breaking her down using every weak point she reveals. It’s what makes abusers so toxic, they know how easily to use one’s biggest fears, worries, loves to try and shut down options and keep someone trapped.
You know, it’s amazing how many comments there were specifically deconstructing how abusers use situations like this, use the presence of people like Howard to maintain their abuse, which you had to intentionally skip over in order to make this dumbass remark without even a twinge of guilt.
It really is amazing how some people come to conclusions like this one. Like, I’ve got the auts, so I don’t really get people to begin with, but some folks’ lines of thought seem downright alien when it comes to things like this.
Howard should invest in a camera and just do video reviews of Game of Thrones for the internet. I’m sure he’d offer some very important insights.
Commentator: “I feel you really GET the character of Tywin Lannister. How comes you are so insightful in the mental landscape of a patriarchal, controlling tyrant who lords over several generations of his house?”
Howard: “Dunno, it just seems so obvious.”
okay so which character do you think he relates to the most
im guessing either jon snow or sansa. probably jon snow but i’m holding out for sansa bc that would be cute
HALF-MAN, HALF-MAN, HALF-MAN
ok i accept tyrion as an answer but mostly because he’s like, half cool
the other half is messed up, guys, he’s so messed up, i still haven’t forgiven him for killing shae tbh
I honestly have no idea what characters Howard relates to. I’ve only ever seen one episode, and I didn’t bother learning any of the characters’ names, since I was barely paying attention. Now, if you asked me which character from The Walking Dead…
honestly there’s a lot of characters i dont blame u at all
i read the books and then stopped before season 6 which was probably good for my sanity.
Oof. Okay, this strip hits me pretty close to home, as someone with an autistic younger brother. Like Ruth says, I have to keep my head down for him. I can’t even argue in front of him because of how upset it makes him. And I feel like shit typing this out because it sounds like I’m complaining about him. I just hate how it feels like my parents take advantage of his disability to control me.
That’s awful.
I don’t know how much good it will do to say so, but you don’t need to beat yourself up over that.
We have very little control over how we react on an emotional level, especially when it comes to our immediate reactions. We can only control what comes next, and how we act on those feelings, and it’s those actions that reflect on your qualities as a person.
And it sounds like you’re doing your best to be a good sibling in a tough situation. Being there to support someone with autism can be stressful enough without throwing parental manipulation into it. Your brain just isn’t set up to emotionally respond to things the same way as your brother, and that’s going cause stress for you both, and that’s his fault OR yours.
I don’t know if it’s the case now or ever will be, but even if you find yourself fighting off feelings of resentment or worse towards your brother, that wouldn’t make you a bad person. You can’t control that immediate feeling, and there’s only so much we can do about those feelings that linger. What you choose to do is what matters in the long term, even if you slip up and act on those negative feelings here and there. You’re only human.
Most importantly, it’s okay to need some emotional support of your own. You clearly want to be a good sibling, and taking care of yourself will help you do that.
I hope things will get easier for you.
Let’s see, we have Alcoholism, PTSD, and Stockholm Syndrome. That’s a pretty lethal trifecta. If she really has alcohol under control, maybe she can learn to combat, and overcome, the other two. I just hope Billie doesn’t become collateral damage. Howard already is.
Howard is Clint’s collateral damage, not Ruth’s. She’s not the one harming him.
Howard is the collateral damage in Clint’s control issues with Ruth. He suffers abuse if Ruth steps out of line. It doesn’t matter who injures a non-combatant in war, the innocent are still collateral damage.
and the kicker is that ruth and howard are both noncombatants