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Post by swankivy on May 21, 2010 22:29:21 GMT -5
Have anything to say about #262: ivy #46: do something? This is the place to discuss with others without having to post directly on the comic (though you're free to do both)!
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Post by SHO! on May 22, 2010 2:16:21 GMT -5
This looks like a set up for something that might get out of control and not end well at all. It's a shame Mennie is so "young thinking". I like when Amanda is happy and safe and this looked like she had found some place like that for a while...
That T-shirt on Amanda is awesome, but eerily foreboding.
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Post by Corinne on May 22, 2010 14:19:44 GMT -5
Aww, Mennie, why do you do stuff like that? Poor Amanda is so confused by your big-kid antics! It probably wasn't a good idea to show her to your friend, either... I agree with SHO; this looks like it could spiral out of control. It's sad to be reminded that Amanda still isn't safe. I'm also impressed with how fast she learned what "normal" is, though I guess it's also sort of sad to think about.
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Post by swankivy on May 22, 2010 21:21:35 GMT -5
It's a shame Mennie is so "young thinking". I like when Amanda is happy and safe and this looked like she had found some place like that for a while... Aww, Mennie, why do you do stuff like that? Poor Amanda is so confused by your big-kid antics! Yeah, see that's exactly the problem: Melanie IS young. A lot of people don't realize we're dealing with an eight-year-old here who is an extraordinary baby's main guardian (when a responsible mother and father didn't know WHAT to do to keep her contained!). She's usually pretty responsible for such a young kid. So I guess it's a good reminder, when she does stupid peer pressure-related, naïve things, that Melanie is EIGHT. That T-shirt on Amanda is awesome, but eerily foreboding. Think so? In any case it sure is appropriate for her. I've noticed baby tee shirts often have messages like this on them. Recently I saw one that said "My parents are still looking for the off switch." Seriously. . . . It probably wasn't a good idea to show her to your friend, either... I agree with SHO; this looks like it could spiral out of control. It's sad to be reminded that Amanda still isn't safe. I'm also impressed with how fast she learned what "normal" is, though I guess it's also sort of sad to think about. Yeah, Melanie really does not understand what danger the baby could be in if the wrong people find out about her, and her having no discretion to the point where she tells people "guess what, I have a flying baby" is definitely an invitation for disaster. I don't really think she's discovered what "normal" is though--she hasn't figured out anything beyond "sometimes people yell when I do this, and I hate yelling." It's interesting how she's figured out that flying and moving things without touching them are related. I remember her mom trying to figure out how to get a similar concept across to her, too--and she was frustrated because her daughter seemed to think she was saying "don't play with that toy" rather than "don't play with any toy in that way."
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Post by SHO! on May 23, 2010 4:15:29 GMT -5
It's a shame Mennie is so "young thinking". I like when Amanda is happy and safe and this looked like she had found some place like that for a while... Yeah, see that's exactly the problem: Melanie IS young. A lot of people don't realize we're dealing with an eight-year-old here who is an extraordinary baby's main guardian (when a responsible mother and father didn't know WHAT to do to keep her contained!). She's usually pretty responsible for such a young kid. So I guess it's a good reminder, when she does stupid peer pressure-related, naïve things, that Melanie is EIGHT.
So you consider Mennie's ability to better keep Amanda contained is reflective of Mennie's behavior? I kind of thought it was a bit more of a "teaching by consequence" action. The experiment with Kitty is what made me think that. That her actual thinking of keeping a tab on "home" was directly related to Amanda losing her original happy place. It seems like even her acting "normal" is more out of personal desire for people not to get "yelling" than to obey what someone told her to do.
One a side note, I just thought of something. What kind of water bottle was that? It appears to have a label, and from what I remember, in the late 80s most people only thought of yuppies and posers BUYING individual sized, prepackaged water. I don't even remember there being a lot of readily available individual sized, prepackaged water in plastic bottles. Even soda often came in glass bottles and I can recall class trips specifically having to write on permission slips that glass bottles were not allowed and beverages had to be in cans or those "new" drink boxes.
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Post by swankivy on May 23, 2010 10:37:15 GMT -5
So you consider Mennie's ability to better keep Amanda contained is reflective of Mennie's behavior? I kind of thought it was a bit more of a "teaching by consequence" action. . . . It seems like even her acting "normal" is more out of personal desire for people not to get "yelling" than to obey what someone told her to do. No, not really. Melanie isn't doing anything in particular that's better "parenting"; I'm just pointing out that her parents had no idea what to do as a way of saying the kid is a handful, and Melanie doesn't seem afraid to rise to the challenge. I wasn't commenting on her success or failure. In any case I do think that having two people to touch base with and get comfort from is important to Ivy, but what she's learning to do and not do is indeed through her own experimentation and hard knocks. One a side note, I just thought of something. What kind of water bottle was that? It appears to have a label, and from what I remember, in the late 80s most people only thought of yuppies and posers BUYING individual sized, prepackaged water. I'm sure that what they bought (well, not exactly bought) was a case, with probably 12 or 24 individual plastic bottles, I dunno. I know bottled water didn't become a huge thing until sometime in the 1990s, but most of the companies that currently make bottled water were around since the 1970s or 1980s, and one company that's actually pretty much in my backyard has been distributing in plastic bottles and those water-jug machines since the 1960s. (I remember being impressed in middle school that one of my friends had one at home, just like at the doctor's office where they had the paper cone-shaped cups to go with them!) I'm sure it could have been there even if it wasn't a big trend yet. ('Specially in New York where a lot of trends are born.) When it got bigger, that's when Pepsi and Coke came up with the idea of selling tap water, haha. (Dasani and Aquafina . . . saw all this on that great episode of Bullshit with Penn & Teller.)
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Post by SHO! on May 24, 2010 11:57:41 GMT -5
I'm sure that what they bought (well, not exactly bought) was a case, with probably 12 or 24 individual plastic bottles, I dunno. I know bottled water didn't become a huge thing until sometime in the 1990s, but most of the companies that currently make bottled water were around since the 1970s or 1980s, and one company that's actually pretty much in my backyard has been distributing in plastic bottles and those water-jug machines since the 1960s. (I remember being impressed in middle school that one of my friends had one at home, just like at the doctor's office where they had the paper cone-shaped cups to go with them!) I'm sure it could have been there even if it wasn't a big trend yet. ('Specially in New York where a lot of trends are born.) When it got bigger, that's when Pepsi and Coke came up with the idea of selling tap water, haha. (Dasani and Aquafina . . . saw all this on that great episode of Bullshit with Penn & Teller.)
Oh, I wasn't saying that bottled water didn't exist or couldn't be purchased in the late 80s (also, I singled out individual sized, labeled, commercial bottles because I was well aware of the large "office sized" ones being around). What I was pointing out was that in that time period, unless you lived in an area with extremely foul tap water, most people considered buying those small bottles of water a ludicrous idea that was left to the wealthy and posers with too much money. I believe this was especially the general consensus in the poorer, urban climates with which Mennie seems to be growing up.
Another thing I just realized was that sugary drinks like soda and flavored drinks were usually consumed by adults and children alike because we lived in a time where people didn't see any harm in it (try pouring cola into a baby bottle in the mall these days) and I can't recall seeing "normal" people walking around with bottled water. I just thought it was odd seeing a kid with a labeled bottle of water in a pre-1990s setting. It's kind of like how in pre-1950s media everyone smoked tobacco and did it anywhere they wanted and it would be odd to see someone giving that little fake cough to alert someone else to put it out.
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Post by swankivy on May 24, 2010 13:37:13 GMT -5
Oh, I wasn't saying that bottled water didn't exist or couldn't be purchased in the late 80s . . . What I was pointing out was that in that time period, unless you lived in an area with extremely foul tap water, most people considered buying those small bottles of water a ludicrous idea that was left to the wealthy and posers with too much money. I believe this was especially the general consensus in the poorer, urban climates with which Mennie seems to be growing up. Of course. (I understood that.) But considering Melanie just wanted to get water for having around on top of the building and wouldn't have had to pay for it if she was stealing it, just grabbing a case of it would be an easy solution. ^__^ Those water bottles are lying around all over their roof btw. The first time you see 'em is back in #217. I bet they just refill them now.
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Post by Corinne on May 24, 2010 15:44:04 GMT -5
I don't really think she's discovered what "normal" is though--she hasn't figured out anything beyond "sometimes people yell when I do this, and I hate yelling." It's interesting how she's figured out that flying and moving things without touching them are related. I remember her mom trying to figure out how to get a similar concept across to her, too--and she was frustrated because her daughter seemed to think she was saying "don't play with that toy" rather than "don't play with any toy in that way." That is interesting! Has she really realized that flying and moving things without touching them are linked, then? They might have seemed like two things to her--two different things that caused yelling, mind you. I guess that's because of the way she flies. It's as though she were carrying herself the way she carries her bunny toy, right? Has she started actually walking yet, or does she still just make it seem that way? Does she actually use her muscles at this point, or has she just gotten better at faking it (e.g. when she's picking things up and whatnot)? It's so interesting seeing how her powers affect the way she lives! It's also sad that she's managed to figure out some things that her mother was trying to make her realize... There are so many things Meri Lin would have written in her little milestone booklet by now! I hope they're reunited one day!
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Post by swankivy on May 24, 2010 18:42:51 GMT -5
Has she really realized that flying and moving things without touching them are linked, then? They might have seemed like two things to her--two different things that caused yelling, mind you. I guess that's because of the way she flies. It's as though she were carrying herself the way she carries her bunny toy, right? Gosh, this is a difficult thing to explain. . . . Let's see. She knows very well that flying and moving things without touching them are caused by the same sort of action--she knows that her special energy makes them happen--but she is doing very subtle things all the time that people DON'T yell about, so she hasn't quite realized that they're upset or confused or scared because she can do it in the first place. That leads into an answer for this: Has she started actually walking yet, or does she still just make it seem that way? Does she actually use her muscles at this point, or has she just gotten better at faking it (e.g. when she's picking things up and whatnot)? It's so interesting seeing how her powers affect the way she lives! At this point she still wouldn't be able to actually walk without using her powers. She hasn't figured out the concept of balance at all. Like, REALLY, at all. She is actually subtly and automatically supporting herself even for sitting at this point, so while her weight might be resting on the surface she's sitting on, she's probably sort of leaning her back against her energy, sort of. (That's not exactly the right way to describe it, but it'll do.) She does have better control over her muscles than she used to, and just a little bit of dexterity (you might notice that she almost always uses her hands to eat; it's instilled from her parents insisting on it). But she has very little coordination and puts forth very little actual strength through her muscles. Nearly everything she does is a combination of physical and telekinetic energy, though just very simple physical things like shifting her arms and legs around or holding her head up are done entirely physically. Her walking is also still pretty imperfect. She'll eventually develop the ability to truly walk without assistance, but never really grasps the balance she would need to do anything like stand on one foot or walk backwards or go down stairs without using a handrail. It was a huge interruption in her natural physical development, and she'd honestly be disabled without it at this point and later in her life. . . . Weird, eh?
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Post by Corinne on Jun 1, 2010 12:08:31 GMT -5
Wow! Thanks for the explanation! That's really interesting!
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