(Sorry if this ends up doubleposting, it doesn't seem to have gone through a minute ago.)
I find it interesting that, judging by her hands, the new wife is shaking like crazy over Fred being taken away (I don't think something as small as adjusting a picture would get motion lines all around it like that otherwise anyway, like the much bigger motions of Fred swinging his arms in panel one and gesticulating to his dad in three don't have any). It's strong enough that it's even being passed onto the table through her touching it. Dad, on the other hand, it totally steady-handed.
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SynDuoJohn A. GalvanSomewhere over a rainbowRegistered Userregular
Oh no, the soup! Katie, you've officially gone too far : ')
More data to fuel speculations about where the camp might be. We already knew it was out west because of the cougar, and I agree that those mountains might be the Rockies. Idaho, maybe? Anyone else have a guess? I'm getting a real Idaho vibe from the scenery. I guess it could be in the Canadian Rockies, although in that case Seventeen's siblings must have had to sneak across the border. Pretty sure they're from down south and I doubt they have passports.
@Torom- The big reason for the hate is that as far as we can tell, Fred might not have ended up at Camp if she and the father didn't meet. While it's quite possible he would have, people seem to see her existence as the catalyst for Fred's abandonment, and so are lashing out at her. Plus, people have been predicting she would cause his exile since she first showed up, so there's been time for Vitriol to build.
Everyone hating the new wife I think you missed something. Fred's father has always been no good and obviously so. Frankly I suspect the new wife is shaking as she realizes how self centered he is and wondering when she goes to "camp"
Big claims need big proof and here it is. Fred's dads wife "disappeared", assumed dead. Did Fred's dad do anything to comfort the child? Fred lost his mom, so he was probably wrecked, but he put everything into comforting his dad and all his dad did was wallow in his own self pity with no regards to Fred. He did not care about his sons needs and only cared about his own and has obviously never been there for Fred, that's why he hung out with his mother so much.
Can we read into the fact that the only interaction Fred and the missing mom ever seemed to have with Dad was when they where serving him? I think so.
Don't hate the new wife, hate Fred's Dad, he is obviously the self centered narcissistic villain of this arc.
Also kudos to Katie for such subtle and sublime writing. It has depth.
What's really interesting to me here is that Fred seems to have no clue what's actually going on, right up to the end. He doesn't react like someone who finds the new girlfriend a threat - he's just perplexed and feeling lonely, trying to get his dad to remember what used to bind them together.
That, plus it being made clear that apparently every camper is either ignorant about their situation, or in denial.
All the kids are dead, camp is purgatory and this is a heart warming story of a new woman helping a father let go of the memory of his dead son and wife.
The dad has agency. It was his decision to abandon Fred. Women aren't some mystical demons from the nether that use their feminine wiles to bend men to their wills.
The dad chose to abandon Fred rather than risk making his new wife uncomfortable with his past. The new wife didn't sneak Fred off into the night. His dad packed him up and left him.
It's awful that she is complacent, but she's only the catalyst for the dad's decision.
I think they're BOTH responsible. The New Wife for being so insecure of a dead woman and her child that she was okay with the kid being gone, and Fred's Dad for going along with this and not opting to go to counseling or standing his ground in regards to his son.
Interesting that the road goes to the gate and no further. In other words, it looks like it was built just for the camp. And can be traversed by a normal family car.
I am with iamnameless only a little further. I think they all might be dead. What if the dad wasn't really bringing him there that is just how is poor little ghost had to explain it to himself.
That would be twisted if they were all ghosts. What if the guy killed killed him and left his body in the woods? Sadly, I think they were all just dumped. Either way both adults are the worst, It is clear the others need Fred right now.
again with the eyes, or lack thereof, in the new OTP picture - it just freaks me out!
jumping on the 'trying to divine the location of the camp' bandwagon, I like to think we are looking at Snoqualmie Pass and camp is tucked up against any one of the myriad* of lakes near Cle Elum Lake or maybe a little farther north by Lake Chelan; any body of water on the east side of the Cascades would work though.
1) It IS a real place for reasons related to my other theory.
2) The reason for the drops, as of disputable benefit that they may supply, is that eventually, the kids, upon some semblance of adulthood, are removed or gain an understanding of the world, that they eventually decide that they must leave (heck, even I remember when I felt too old for camp).
As they have not truly grasped the nuances of the world, they are not faring terribly well in whatever they are doing, but upon a chance meeting of a couple of the ex-campers, they realized that they must help those who have been left, unwanted, and they get what they can together with their meager means, and one of their bosses, presented with a tax deduction (however that might occur), drops off the 'supplies.'
A lot of words? Sorry: ex-campers are managing to arrange the air drops, but they're effed up themselves, don't have a lot of money due to failure to re-integrate, so the stuff is kinda kooky, but the ex-campers cannot stand the idea of returning to deliver the stuff, so some moneyed boss (getting a benefit) does it for them. (I guess this theory says that Camp damage has overflowed outside the log cabins of Camp, which means that those who you see are not all that there are (or were).
3. I really am starting to despise these parents. Fred's dad is a scumbag.
I knew how this story was going to end, we all did, but it still makes me incredibly sad and holding back a tear or two. Great work Katie and Adam, the stories you tell, and the way you can make all of us feel about them is truly amazing.
I imagine it someplace more remote than Snoqualmie Pass. There's loads of car traffic through there. That's why I was thinking Idaho, or maybe Montana. You can't get more remote than that without leaving the lower 48.
It is weird that the season and weather don't seem to vary though. The lack of extreme temperatures would definitely fit with with the Pacific Northwest, but then you would expect more rain and cloudy skies. See: the weather last month and for the next four months or so in Seattle. Most mountainous areas have pretty rough weather though, in the winter especially but really all year long the weather can be very unpredictable, depending on the elevation. Where do you get young, high mountains, cougars, and mild, clear weather year round?
It's a conundrum. Maybe Wen the Eternally Surprised stopped off there on his way to the Ramtops and left a spinner behind, so that it's actually always the same mild summer day.
Consider this: not one camper has commented on Malachi's blue hair.
The only other person we've seen with blue hair is Malachi's mom.
But if you met a person with naturally blue hair, wouldn't you be curious? And kids aren't exactly subtle. Either it's a natural, albeit rare, occurrence in their world or the kids are unnaturally polite regarding Malachi's freakish nature.
If unnatural hair colors exist, unnatural places might also exist!
This makes me just unbearably sad. I think I wrote the other parents off as just being terrible people to begin with, but Fred's dad seemed to really love him, he seemed so normal. As a parent, I'm finding it impossible to imagine a situation in which I could so easily abandon my daughter. It is unfathomable.
In the response to the thoughts of the campers being dead... well, I did have that kind of feeling, but am reticent to commit to it, for a number of reasons.
First, the dead (probably) don't get hungry, and food has been the focus of this latest story.
Second, the nature of the drops, and the very name of the camp itself, imply it is a place for that which is unwanted, not necessarily LOST (Cue weird swelling squealy music. Dammit, Cuselof!)
And third, well, that's too easy. If anything, the very nature of the camp and campers hasn't been decided by the creators. It's supposed to be ambiguous and undecided. Maybe SOME of these kids are dead. Maybe others are abandoned. Maybe others are orphans.
Perhaps Camp Weedonwantcha is some Quantum Space that all Children occupy when not being directly observed by an adult, and it only seems like they've been there forever, but are merely sulking for mere moments in the real world.
OR maybe this is a world that has resolved to dump children for better or worse in a bowl shaped valley surrounded by nigh insurmountable peaks.
Sure, the story creates feels, but reading these comments is a lot worse.
So many people hating and advocating vengeance. Revenge doesn't solve anything, it's the same kind of behavior the father is displaying.
You don't even know their circumstances. You see glimpses. Do you think they did this intentionally to hurt the child, that they deserve to be hurt? People make mistakes and don't think things through... sometimes it's hard to put yourself in someone else's position. It's so easy to judge.
Now I'm not saying the father was right to do what he did... but revenge is definitely not the solution.
I also have a different theory for why things went down like this:
Fred's dad isn't his real father. That would explain why the father was so distant... and after the mother died (probably) he felt like he was left with something that wasn't supposed to be his burden. Things got better for a while between Fred and his father... but when the new woman arrived, his focus shifted again.
And when Fred became the separator between Dad and Red... well, that was just too much of a burden for dad.
It's not a good thing to do... but try to understand. Bad things don't always happen because someone is malicious... sometimes they just happen.
I agree, revenge won't answer this problems. I would like to point out the place has no adult supervision. They get food drops sometimes. All the children there were left to possible starve to death. Its would be hard to accept any excuse.
But... This place doesn't exist. The comic is meant for some humor. Maybe we shouldn't be reading too deep into this. So we really should just relax.
@PoiPoiGirl You're right. If this was the real world, they likely would have already starved, succumbed to the elements, killed each other off, etc. I hope they get drops of antiseptic and bandaids. Tanner's cut looks pretty bad.
I get the feeling Malachi's soup explosion is what caused everyone's predicament.
Also, I can't help but feel like this world is some sort of afterlife, although that then raises an important question: how did they all die? Were they all murdered by their parents? Did they die of other causes and were simply not loved enough to be mourned afterwards? Is this just some generic purgatory that ALL children go to regardless? Perhaps some of the campers actually have GOOD backstories to their arrival?
I like how this world, whatever it is (real, afterlife, supernatural, etc), allows the children to live out relatively happy lives. The dangers never seem to actually kill anyone, and the only two things that really bring them any amount of sorrow are bullying and their own dark pasts.
I like when a series leaves so much open for interpretation. It kinda sucks that we can't properly satisfy our curiosity with definitive answers, but I still have fun reading fan theories and occasionally coming up with my own. Helps me with my own future stories, as well.
I guess I'm starting to lean towards the idea too that this may not be a real physical place. I don't think it's the afterlife (at least I hope not!), but that it is some place which is normally not anchored specifically to one location. Like maybe all a parent has to do is throw their kid in the car and start driving off into the wilderness, and eventually the gate to the camp will sort of open up before them. Maybe that's why the supply drops are so irregular too. The drone or whatever drops them off has to get sufficiently lost before it finds itself over the camp.
So that way, the camp can represent some sort of Platonic "camp" ideal- big lake, dense woods, surrounded by mountains, but always a perfect summer day. The sort of place people think of when they hear the words "summer camp."
Have people read Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere"? There is London, and then "London Below", where the forgotten people go when they slip through the cracks. It's very difficult for people in London Above to even notice them, but there is a whole parallel world down there that operates by very different rules, and what was metaphor and whimsy above is often concrete and perilous below (eg. "Shepherd's Bush" has real shepherds and they aren't very nice). And if you get too mixed up in London Below, when you return you might find that to the world above, you no longer exist..
I'm wondering how much of the parents' decision to abandon their kids is fully conscious. Maybe there is some subconscious decision made that they no longer want their kids around, and then after that they sort of follow this dreamy impulse to send their kid to "camp", drive to a location by instinct, and leave the kid there, the child fading out of their consciousness and memory the whole time, so that on the drive back they don't even really remember what they were doing there. The same thing could happen for the supply drops- these unwanted items are dropped off at the camp by some half-conscious impulse rather than by conscious design. It's just the place unwanted people and objects go, but it's not the result of some actual government or social plan. It's just how the universe works.
"To those that say "girlfriend", please note the ring in the second panel. They be married yo. We have a classic fairytale situation here." - not really 1) it's on the left hand, 2) it looks like an engagement ring (it has a stone in it). So it's an engagement ring.
"To those that say "girlfriend", please note the ring in the second panel. They be married yo. We have a classic fairytale situation here." - not really 1) it's on the left hand, 2) it looks like an engagement ring (it has a stone in it). So it's an engagement ring.
I'm going to have to disagree with you on both points:
1. I presume you're European, where most countries (not all) customarily put the wedding ring on the right finger; however wearing the wedding ring on the left hand is the norm in the USA.
2. They do not appear to live an opulent lifestyle, so it is totally reasonable for an engagement ring (solitary stone) to also be used as the wedding ring. Not everybody can buy into mortgage the farm so you can afford a 'wedding set'.
I feel they are married for the following reasons:
1. Red is the one placing the picture, staking her claim. If the dad had done it, it would represent a burgeoning relationship, but she is making a strong statement,"Your old wife/ mother is gone, I rule here now."
2. The ring
3. and playing into the 'Evil Stepmother' stereotype - Red as girlfriend would be just an 'outsider' and I would hope, not powerful enough to convince dad to get rid of Fred, family. But by marrying the dad, she now becomes family too and at the same level as Fred, and thus with enough leverage to effect the dismissal of Fred.
You're attributing the phrase "I rule here now" to a woman who is literally, physically, shaking? Katie's art seems to depict the woman as deeply upset and shaken, not triumphant at "ruling" over her new family. In fact, I suspect it is quite the opposite.
My suspicion is that she hasn't quite known what to do with Fred- how to bond with him and fully integrate into the family. She probably feels very insecure in her new role of wife and mother. She bears some responsibility for this, but so too does Fred's father. So when Fred brought out tangible symbols of his strong bond with his mother, she got upset. This makes her a flawed and weak character, but not a malevolent one. Then the father, helpless when it comes to integrating his new wife into the family and probably quite at a loss for what to do with Fred himself (which we saw previously), panics and decides that Fred is threatening his relationship with his wife. Rather than stepping up and trying to bring the three together as a family, he decides he can't handle the situation anymore and gets rid of Fred. So he too, is weak and flawed.
No need for fairy-tale evil here. Just two emotionally insecure adults and one unfortunate child.
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I find it interesting that, judging by her hands, the new wife is shaking like crazy over Fred being taken away (I don't think something as small as adjusting a picture would get motion lines all around it like that otherwise anyway, like the much bigger motions of Fred swinging his arms in panel one and gesticulating to his dad in three don't have any). It's strong enough that it's even being passed onto the table through her touching it. Dad, on the other hand, it totally steady-handed.
(Insert that comic where the campers try to guess the date)
Big claims need big proof and here it is. Fred's dads wife "disappeared", assumed dead. Did Fred's dad do anything to comfort the child? Fred lost his mom, so he was probably wrecked, but he put everything into comforting his dad and all his dad did was wallow in his own self pity with no regards to Fred. He did not care about his sons needs and only cared about his own and has obviously never been there for Fred, that's why he hung out with his mother so much.
Can we read into the fact that the only interaction Fred and the missing mom ever seemed to have with Dad was when they where serving him? I think so.
Don't hate the new wife, hate Fred's Dad, he is obviously the self centered narcissistic villain of this arc.
Also kudos to Katie for such subtle and sublime writing. It has depth.
That, plus it being made clear that apparently every camper is either ignorant about their situation, or in denial.
The dad chose to abandon Fred rather than risk making his new wife uncomfortable with his past. The new wife didn't sneak Fred off into the night. His dad packed him up and left him.
It's awful that she is complacent, but she's only the catalyst for the dad's decision.
jumping on the 'trying to divine the location of the camp' bandwagon, I like to think we are looking at Snoqualmie Pass and camp is tucked up against any one of the myriad* of lakes near Cle Elum Lake or maybe a little farther north by Lake Chelan; any body of water on the east side of the Cascades would work though.
* plethora
Edit: this is in response to they're dead. Not the location. But it's totally the Pacific Northwest.
1) It IS a real place for reasons related to my other theory.
2) The reason for the drops, as of disputable benefit that they may supply, is that eventually, the kids, upon some semblance of adulthood, are removed or gain an understanding of the world, that they eventually decide that they must leave (heck, even I remember when I felt too old for camp).
As they have not truly grasped the nuances of the world, they are not faring terribly well in whatever they are doing, but upon a chance meeting of a couple of the ex-campers, they realized that they must help those who have been left, unwanted, and they get what they can together with their meager means, and one of their bosses, presented with a tax deduction (however that might occur), drops off the 'supplies.'
A lot of words? Sorry: ex-campers are managing to arrange the air drops, but they're effed up themselves, don't have a lot of money due to failure to re-integrate, so the stuff is kinda kooky, but the ex-campers cannot stand the idea of returning to deliver the stuff, so some moneyed boss (getting a benefit) does it for them. (I guess this theory says that Camp damage has overflowed outside the log cabins of Camp, which means that those who you see are not all that there are (or were).
3. I really am starting to despise these parents. Fred's dad is a scumbag.
It is weird that the season and weather don't seem to vary though. The lack of extreme temperatures would definitely fit with with the Pacific Northwest, but then you would expect more rain and cloudy skies. See: the weather last month and for the next four months or so in Seattle. Most mountainous areas have pretty rough weather though, in the winter especially but really all year long the weather can be very unpredictable, depending on the elevation. Where do you get young, high mountains, cougars, and mild, clear weather year round?
It's a conundrum. Maybe Wen the Eternally Surprised stopped off there on his way to the Ramtops and left a spinner behind, so that it's actually always the same mild summer day.
The only other person we've seen with blue hair is Malachi's mom.
But if you met a person with naturally blue hair, wouldn't you be curious? And kids aren't exactly subtle. Either it's a natural, albeit rare, occurrence in their world or the kids are unnaturally polite regarding Malachi's freakish nature.
If unnatural hair colors exist, unnatural places might also exist!
First, the dead (probably) don't get hungry, and food has been the focus of this latest story.
Second, the nature of the drops, and the very name of the camp itself, imply it is a place for that which is unwanted, not necessarily LOST (Cue weird swelling squealy music. Dammit, Cuselof!)
And third, well, that's too easy. If anything, the very nature of the camp and campers hasn't been decided by the creators. It's supposed to be ambiguous and undecided. Maybe SOME of these kids are dead. Maybe others are abandoned. Maybe others are orphans.
Perhaps Camp Weedonwantcha is some Quantum Space that all Children occupy when not being directly observed by an adult, and it only seems like they've been there forever, but are merely sulking for mere moments in the real world.
OR maybe this is a world that has resolved to dump children for better or worse in a bowl shaped valley surrounded by nigh insurmountable peaks.
So many people hating and advocating vengeance. Revenge doesn't solve anything, it's the same kind of behavior the father is displaying.
You don't even know their circumstances. You see glimpses. Do you think they did this intentionally to hurt the child, that they deserve to be hurt? People make mistakes and don't think things through... sometimes it's hard to put yourself in someone else's position. It's so easy to judge.
Now I'm not saying the father was right to do what he did... but revenge is definitely not the solution.
I also have a different theory for why things went down like this:
Fred's dad isn't his real father. That would explain why the father was so distant... and after the mother died (probably) he felt like he was left with something that wasn't supposed to be his burden. Things got better for a while between Fred and his father... but when the new woman arrived, his focus shifted again.
And when Fred became the separator between Dad and Red... well, that was just too much of a burden for dad.
It's not a good thing to do... but try to understand. Bad things don't always happen because someone is malicious... sometimes they just happen.
But... This place doesn't exist. The comic is meant for some humor. Maybe we shouldn't be reading too deep into this. So we really should just relax.
Also, I can't help but feel like this world is some sort of afterlife, although that then raises an important question: how did they all die? Were they all murdered by their parents? Did they die of other causes and were simply not loved enough to be mourned afterwards? Is this just some generic purgatory that ALL children go to regardless? Perhaps some of the campers actually have GOOD backstories to their arrival?
I like how this world, whatever it is (real, afterlife, supernatural, etc), allows the children to live out relatively happy lives. The dangers never seem to actually kill anyone, and the only two things that really bring them any amount of sorrow are bullying and their own dark pasts.
I like when a series leaves so much open for interpretation. It kinda sucks that we can't properly satisfy our curiosity with definitive answers, but I still have fun reading fan theories and occasionally coming up with my own. Helps me with my own future stories, as well.
So that way, the camp can represent some sort of Platonic "camp" ideal- big lake, dense woods, surrounded by mountains, but always a perfect summer day. The sort of place people think of when they hear the words "summer camp."
I'm wondering how much of the parents' decision to abandon their kids is fully conscious. Maybe there is some subconscious decision made that they no longer want their kids around, and then after that they sort of follow this dreamy impulse to send their kid to "camp", drive to a location by instinct, and leave the kid there, the child fading out of their consciousness and memory the whole time, so that on the drive back they don't even really remember what they were doing there. The same thing could happen for the supply drops- these unwanted items are dropped off at the camp by some half-conscious impulse rather than by conscious design. It's just the place unwanted people and objects go, but it's not the result of some actual government or social plan. It's just how the universe works.
"To those that say "girlfriend", please note the ring in the second panel. They be married yo. We have a classic fairytale situation here." - not really 1) it's on the left hand, 2) it looks like an engagement ring (it has a stone in it). So it's an engagement ring.
1. I presume you're European, where most countries (not all) customarily put the wedding ring on the right finger; however wearing the wedding ring on the left hand is the norm in the USA.
2. They do not appear to live an opulent lifestyle, so it is totally reasonable for an engagement ring (solitary stone) to also be used as the wedding ring. Not everybody can buy into mortgage the farm so you can afford a 'wedding set'.
I feel they are married for the following reasons:
1. Red is the one placing the picture, staking her claim. If the dad had done it, it would represent a burgeoning relationship, but she is making a strong statement,"Your old wife/ mother is gone, I rule here now."
2. The ring
3. and playing into the 'Evil Stepmother' stereotype - Red as girlfriend would be just an 'outsider' and I would hope, not powerful enough to convince dad to get rid of Fred, family. But by marrying the dad, she now becomes family too and at the same level as Fred, and thus with enough leverage to effect the dismissal of Fred.
My suspicion is that she hasn't quite known what to do with Fred- how to bond with him and fully integrate into the family. She probably feels very insecure in her new role of wife and mother. She bears some responsibility for this, but so too does Fred's father. So when Fred brought out tangible symbols of his strong bond with his mother, she got upset. This makes her a flawed and weak character, but not a malevolent one. Then the father, helpless when it comes to integrating his new wife into the family and probably quite at a loss for what to do with Fred himself (which we saw previously), panics and decides that Fred is threatening his relationship with his wife. Rather than stepping up and trying to bring the three together as a family, he decides he can't handle the situation anymore and gets rid of Fred. So he too, is weak and flawed.
No need for fairy-tale evil here. Just two emotionally insecure adults and one unfortunate child.