A witch accidentally marries a monster, and now she and her familiar has to navigate life around her monstrous husband and her even more terrifying in-laws.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
All Known Alternatives
Karolina 'Kajotko' Jankiewicz
Akane has only one way to get back home: collect the 42 keys to parallel worlds. Eri and Ben are just trying to get through the summer before university. When a magical key turns up in an old spare set, all three are forced to change their plans and fast.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
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Some huge dude named Griff just crashed into the front of city hall and got arrested. Sayid got his hoverboard, that’s why he’s letting Amazi-Girl keep his skateboard.
….Sayid looks …..like Sal and Walky fused together with glasses. tan skin, walky’s fluffy dark hair, sal’s tatoo’s. seems about sal’s height…..think he even has walky/sal’s eye design too!!
The idea that Tumblr is a prophet is not far off from some users’ behaviors. So by extension one who is “Named by Tumblr” is necessarily “close to the prophet.”
Not sure if I’m correct that “Named-by-tumblr” is meant to express doubt about the accuracy of the original statement, but if you do a little research, Sayyid does mean descendant of the prophet. Although from what I understand that may only apply to last names?
There are two similar names.”Sayyid” is a title for descendants of the Prophet which is also used as a personal name. “Sayid” is a personal name meaning “Happy”, like Arabic for “Felix”. Both of them are spelled a bunch of different ways in Latin characters, with the result that this could be either.
A Ruger Number One is still a solid chunk of steel and hardwood when empty that weighs between seven and nine pounds, depending on the specific model. It would serve as a decent war club even unloaded. Which is how soldiers used single shot rifles in mêlée before the advent of semi automatic of full auto rifles. And Ross is a physically large and powerfully built man. He has no neck to speak of, which is the sign of either a dedicated body builder or someone who works a physically demanding job.
Just realized, the gun or Ross’s possible physical strength may not even be a factor. Amber is on a skateboard and Ross is driving a car. The kind of thing an automobile ncan do to an unprotected pedestrian make guns look tame by comparison.
Yeah, count me in the really flippin worried column here.
Yep, you just latched on to one of the basic facts of my profession. If guns had terminal ballistics anything close to motor vehicles they would be outlawed as WMD. Bullets are 9% fatal, if you can even get one on target. Motor vehicles fly by that mark at 23 MPH, and asymptotically approach 100% fatal around 50. Even at “just” 30 MPH motor vehicles are 40% fatal with pedestrians and cyclists.
I have the chart from the 2009 AAA study memorized.
Hrmm, interesting. I don’t doubt you at all, but I would love to see a source for the bullet to vehicle comparison. it sounds fairly accurate, I just like to have sources for when I debate some subjects
(Keep in mind that compared to firearm ownership, though, car ownership is hugely regulated, so if anyone tries to argue that cars are deadlier than guns as a way of sarcastically suggest a car ban… it’s gonna be embarrassing for them. Imagine gun licenses in every state that have to be regularly renewed, where your vision is checked, and an actual database exists of users that ties you directly to the gun you are licenses for. Imagine being required to but gun insurance to cover you in case of an accident. Imagine being actually required to keep the safety on (as we are required by law to wear seatbelts). Imagine requiring that you pass a firearm safety test before being able to get a gun license, and harder exams for different kinds of guns. (Commercial car licenses, like those required to be a bus driver, for assault weapons…))
You’re right, that is incredibly implausible. At least in this current day and age, when the NRA is anti-gun control. Apparently before the 80s their main function was gun training and registration.
@r_r I’m sorry, are you really trying to argue that you don’t need a driver’s license or auto insurance?
Like, sure, you can technically buy that car and then drive it around without a license, but you are breaking the law to do so. Even if the car just sits in your driveway and never goes anywhere, it needs to be insured.
Not true, a car does not legally need to be insured if it’s not being driven on the road. It is completely legal to buy and possess a car, and operate it on private property without any license, insurance, or regulations (for example, Google “farm truck”). It’s only illegal to drive it on public roadways without meeting those requirements. And plenty of people do.
The counterpoint to the cars and guns regulation debate is that if guns were regulated like cars, the lisence to carry a gun would require a written and practical test provided by the state for a nominal fee and people as young as 16 years old could walk around strapped with 15 years olds allowed to carry with the supervision of a licensed adult. There would also not be the huge variance of law from state to state. All state laws would be standardized and each state would have to honor every other state’s gun licences.
except that there is at least one guy who regularly gets out of traffic tickets while not having a license because apparently they were only ever suppose to apply to commercial use and so not restrict a person’s constitutionally guaranteed right to travel.
I’ve actually looked into it and their is some pretty sketchy legality to the whole thing centered around the difference between the legal definition and the common usage of terms like motor vehicle, transportation, and especially carrier.
a carrier is a person who is paid to carry goods and people from one place to another, transportation is the movement of people or goods by a carrier, and a motor vehicle is a self-propelled contrivance used for transportation…
so if you are not being paid to engage in the act of transportation then your personal conveyance is not technically under the jurisdiction of the Department of motor vehicles it’s just that most people simply assume that it is and/or don’t want to spend the time and effort in court.
I can’t find a proper cite with a quick Google search, but the fun thing about math is that you can do it yourself! F=MA, the mass and acceleration are easy to look up, just plug the numbers into your slide rule or favorite online calculator likeso to see the force. That’s .45 ACP, a common big pistol bullet, and an average small car at 30mph. Rifle bullets are going much faster, more than enough to make up for their lower weight, of course (the smallest size Thumb-Dad’s gun shoots has about twice the energy of the .45, with a teensy bullet moving extremely fast), but there’s multiple orders of magnitude difference between car and bullet.
Pretty sure most soldiers back in the day preferred the bayonet in the melee. it’s a knife … on a stick! (Called a glaive when the stick isn’t also a gun, btw). I’m not worried. Amazi-Girl’s gonna take his gun and beat him with it.
A soldier would have been trained to use both the pointy stabby end and the clubby crushy end of a bayonetted rifle. This started way back when reloading a single shot muzzle loading musket took a good third of a minute and continued on through WWII and Korea when the military still used heavy rifles made of steel and wood. With more modern light weight assault rifles, the emphasis is on the stabby end. As my Drill Sargent admitted in a candid moment, “The striking effectiveness of the M-16 as a club is roughly equal to a wiffle ball bat.”
I’m know I’m focusing on the wrong thing here but what’s the deal with the negative correlation of neck size and stress put on the body (either via body building or labor intensive jobs)?
Work that involves heavy upper body strength, especially the shoulder, tends to build up massive trapesius muscles which are the muscles of the upper back and shoulders that flank 9th neck. A person with heavily developed traps will appear to have a very short or extremely thick neck. This should not be confused with Kippel-Feil syndrome, a congenital defect that causes extremely short necks in people.
Sorry, I realize that did not answer your question. The implication if someone does a physical job for a living, they must not be too bright. Which defies the fact that a large number of physically dangerous and demanding jobs pay pretty well. And of course there’s the whole “muscle head” or “meathead” sneer directed at fitness buffs and body builders. Probably because they can’t seem to talk about anything else.
As to Ross, he may be a dumb meathead, or he may be pretty intelligent and blinded by a lifetime of indoctrination and ideology.
It feels like karmic justice that a lot of menial jobs for “uneducated” people (e.g. plumber) pay a lot more than many white-collar jobs (e.g. pretty much any desk jockey work easily outsourced to other countries). If I had to do it over, I might’ve actually gone for one of those well-paying “menial” jobs, knowing the job market these days.
Poor, poor Joyce. Now she has ANOTHER person to worry about.
This is a bad idea, a bad idea, a bad idea a… HOLY CARP! AMAZIE-GIRL FOLLOWS THE CAR ON A SKATEBOARD TO TAKE ON THE MAN WITH THE GUN AND SAVE BECKY. THIS IS THE AWESOMEST THING SINCE…. OK, since “clever girl” which was just a few minutes ago BUT STILL.
I like Skateboard dude’s attitude. Sure, take the skateboard and follow the shooter. You’re the super hero around here.
…which actually would make her a MUCH better super hero than most. They have their rogues galleries of recurring villians. Amazie-girl has the Cool Clique that hangs out in a Wallmart parking lot.
That was Son Goku’s primary superpower for most of Dragon Ball.
“Hey, you’re a genocidal maniac, but I just kicked the carp out of you. We’re friends now.”
“Damn you, Kakorot.”
No we don’t. We would have if Marty hadn’t gained his confidence at the end of the trilogy. But he did, and the future changed. Clearly butterfly affects eliminated many of the discoveries made like the flying cars and hoverboards. And the stupid future sunglasses, thank god.
No, the faxes have been replaced with the INTERNET!!! GLORIOUS, GLORIOUS INTERNET!!!
Yeah, Daniel here, Screwball’s kinda now dancing through the house “praising” the internet. If he doesn’t reply for a while, he’s still dealing with the magnets I’m gonna throw at him…
I’m worried he’ll just run her down. He’s driving a car and she’s on a skateboard. A ton and a half of metal, glass and plastic vs. squishy human is a gross mismatch.
“Oh. My. God. You will NOT believe what just happened to me! MEMEMEMEMEME!”
And then goes on to rant at her friend about how this has ruined her day and no one else’s. Meanwhile, everything gets worse for all of the characters who actually have names.
I see Knife Gun in the same sentence I instantly think of a knifegun, man that would be cool and dangerous and probably lead to world falling to pieces but still KNIFEGUN
(seriously; that game was messed up. They convert an orphanage in to a school for *mercenary assassins*, and get the 11-old kids there, who have absolutely nowhere else to go, to sign up for it? If Headmaster Cid were a real person, he’d have been brought in front of a war crimes tribunal.)
But seriously, at least that wasn’t the purported “good guys” doing something that, really, you’d expect from some third-world country that the UN is imposing sanctions on.
There was a buckler-gun in Renaissance Europe. I don’t think it was that common an item, but it was a standard buckler (a small shield about 18″ in diameter) with a pistol in the boss (boss = reinforced center part of the shield). Presumably it was for surprise since another fighter would expect a shield rush or a punch (bucklers are small enough to punch with), but not a ranged attack.
I don’t think she is using them to psyche herself up. I think the flashbacks are occurring because to her the situation seems similar. She’s seeing someone in need of help because of someone who is armed and because it has triggered that flashback, logic has gone a out the window as she doesn’t want to see that happen to anyone again.
AG is driven by a powerful need – the rather perverse need to prove to her dad that she’s not the pathetic weakling he told her she was for years. A knife? A gun? Any escalation of threat triggers her dad in her head, saying, “You’re going to be deterred by THAT? You’re PATHETIC!” We can only hope she doesn’t let it goad her into reckless action.
He’s gotta reach a stop sign eventually. Hopefully they’ll be the last to arrive at a four way stop and he’ll be very conscientious about traffic laws, giving amazi-girl a better chance to catch up. Or maybe Becky gets a text instructing her to distract Ross? I can’t help but feel this is going to end badly for someone. Probably because this is DoA.
(I initially phrased it as “hit a stop sign” but that was probably wishful thinking on my subconscious’s part.)
I was kind of assuming there’d be a short cut (didn’t look at the IU maps but most universities I’ve been at are way harder/slower to drive around than walk/bike), but it looks like she’s going straight behind him. Maybe she thinks he’ll obey stop signs and such (and she won’t)?
I think we can safely assume that the cops are even now enroute to the fountain, and people making a getaway in a car need to follow roads and observe stop signs and traffic lights in order to avoid attracting unwanted police attention. Amazi-Girl doesn’t; she knows the shortcuts on campus from her previous nocturnal forays as a costumed crusader; and is probably figuring out which walkway she can take to cut diagonally across campus and pop up in front of him.
Ohmigod. I can see it now. Amber/Amazi-Girl is not going to get shot; she is going to strike a heroic pose, Tiananmen Square-style, in the road in front of ToeDad’s car; ToeDad presses down on the accelerator and adds a count of “attempted homicide using a motor vehicle” to the litany of charges he has already piled up.
Ya I guess she is sorta stealing her thunder…but then again this is probably just like how I said way back when I mentioned the at Joyce and Amber are like two sides of the same coin.
A gun may be more lethal than a gun but a gun is much safer than a gun while a gun carries more bullets than a gun, the gun has a higher kill count since the gun doesn’t have as much recoil as a gun.
This is Amazigirl chasing him. He slams on the brakes, she’ll probably do a flip over the top and land with a bad ass look in her eyes. The flip will either be intentional or accidental but with the same end result.
If Toedad is going to follow the laws of the road now that he has Becky back in his clutches, then that street has a few stop signs coming up, not to mention that it gets a lot of traffic once you get in front of the Student Union. It might be realistically possible.
Joyce, Dorothy, Billie and Walky aren’t on it either. They’re all main-ish characters and have seen a lot of time on DoA anyway. But I’m sure Amber – or any other student here – won’t be done away with.
The fact that he is trying to help certainly makes him a more redeemable person, but I think that we can all agree that pulling a gun on his child is worse parenting than anything Blaine has done.
I dunno. Maybe in terms of actions overall, Toedad would be considered by the public to be the worse parent, but Blaine set out to actively harass, tear down, and emotional cripple his daughter over a series of years. And he seemed to do so knowingly, and with malice. I’d say he’s worse.
In ranking how horrible a parent is, you need three axes: malice, misguidedness, and how bad the child is hurt. On the easy to categorize axes, Blaine and Ross are bad on different ones. As for impact, who fucking knows, they’re still in college and the length and severity of the aftereffects are a factor. Basically, difficult because Becky hasn’t had much time to process this event.
I don’t know, with him threatening with the gun, I would have to put him in the “worse” slot. Amber’s dad probably think’s he is helping her too. Maybe not in a way most people would accept, but in the way that he thinks the man needs to be in charge and is trying to, as he once said, put her in her place. I’m sure he thinks its for her own good as well and that she will benefit from it. Unless I’ve forgotten something the worst he has done is threaten with bodily injury. This guy is using lethal force (even though no one has died as of yet).
Blaine at least could be driven away by receiving a good beating. Dangerous thing about people who’re just trying to help is they also remain convinced they’re doing the right thing, which can motivate them to keep trying in spite of the odds. Blaine, as much of an asshole as he is might return for a rematch to restore some semblance of his superiority complex, but the threat of further humiliation should keep him at bay as long as he stays sober enough to fear for his reputation.
Eh, even Blaine THOUGHT he was helping when he verbally abused his daughter. I’m sure he thought he was ‘toughening her up’. In fact, if he’d had a son, some people wouldn’t even find it abusive.
Every man is good, in his own mind. That’s why societies need an objective law.
Amber and Ethan were in the store when that Sal robbed at 13. Amber was tramatized as it was and Ethan was just getting her to go out in public into a store and actually pick out something to buy.
When Sal arrested, Amber attacked her from behind and sank her own knife into the back of her hand. Likely why Sal wears gloves at all times now.
That’s her father making fun of her for being scared “just a punk with a knife.
Amber’s father chewing her out for being a coward during the convenience store robbery. He made her feel like crap afterwards, even though it was undeserved.
I shall choose to focus on that and not the fact that Amazi-Girl is very likely to get herself severely injured by a horrifyingly single-minded, can’t-be-reasoned-with douchedad with a rifle.
How is the car still there? Did he stop five seconds after he started? If he’s still on the same street and hasn’t stopped tha Amber should’ve been able to see what happened.
Fair enough, I mean consuming all the trans fat of the traditional glazed Donut is not only part of the policemans daily duty but it’s also a very important part of his natural diet.
I would strongly suggest an archive binge so you can get the whole story. Welcome to the crowd!
If you really would like to know without doing an archive binge, I will spoil it for you, so stop reading if you don’t wanna know yet.
Sal robbed a convenience store when she was 13. Amber and Ethan were there at the time and were attacked. Amber’s (abusive) dad scolded her for losing to “just some punk with a knife.”
Long, long ago, when they were still young teenagers, Amber and Ethan went on a school field trip together. They entered a convenience store, and were hanging out in there when Sal arrived… and tried to rob the convenience store.
I’m between the ‘Amazigirl gets shot’ option and ‘Amazigirl tries to stop the car and gets hit’ (either on purpose or not would work- hell, she could even stop Ross, then get hit because she’s in traffic)
Today’s Dollop of Didactic Diversion — “Deputizing” is the act of a person of authority giving someone the power to do something in place of another person; a sheriff “deputizing” the posse in an old Western movie, for example. What Amazi-Girl has done in ordering Sayid to surrender the skateboard for her use is “commandeering”, not “deputizing”. And depending on your point of view, “commandeering” something might also be considered “highjacking”, although “commandeer” is generally the term used when the action is instigated by someone with military or civil authority.
(Does Amazi-Girl actually have any civil authority? Weelllllll…… I suppose you could ask the same question about Batman, Superman, Spiderman, or any of the other costumed heroes. For now let’s just stop ToeDad and get Becky back, and hold that discussion for another day)
the Adam West Batman was a licensed LEO, but the character has been on various sides of the law since it was created in the ’30s. AFA Superman is concerned, would YOU tell him to stop catching bad guys and handing them over to police? The other characters have also been on various ins and outs with “official” LEO, depending on the story.
I fear Amber’s risk assessment might be somewhat impaired by her guilt complex here.
Which I guess was always a risk given how her stress and panic has sometimes driven her to some risky and poorly thought out actions while promoting her Amazi-Girl alter. But this seems to have flown past antagonizing 4 people in a Walmart parking lot over illegally purchased beer into dangerously close to “this cape will let me fly” territory. Guns are not knives and chasing a car with a skateboard is not as safe or easy as it looked in Back to the Future.
I think it’s likely. Amber’s fights were either highly personal stuff (her fights against Blaine or Sal) or just random jerks she curbstomped. Here, she’s trying to be the cool superhero everyone, including her, thinks she is.
This might be the catalyst that turns her away from being Amazi-Girl, or it might drive her further into it; that this is another mistake that is totally her fault and she has to work twice as hard to atone for it.
Random fan theory time that really has no basis (like most fan theories)
Sayid will turn out to be a genius on the level of walkyverese Joe and will start making weapons and armor for Amber. He will also make her a new costume that isn’t the worst possible color you could have as a super hero. I mean bright highly visible yellow…really?
NEW, FROM HASBRO!!! ITS THE NEW AND IMPROVED “HIP SKATER WALKY!!” PRESS THE BUTTON ON HIS BACK TO MAKE HIM BURP!! PAJAMA JEANS AND SUBPAR TEST RESULTS SOLD SEPARATELY!! BUY NOW!!!
Ambe- I mean Amazigirl, you’re clearly in the zone right now, and we’re all 50 shades of jazzed (that sounded dirtier than intended…) about that, but if you could maybe dial it back just a smidge, maybe not go in too angry. Not only out of fear for what we can do yo you. More because we all saw what happened when you went in angry after a poor excuse for a parent, and while Blaine deserved it (thats putting it kindly), and Ross deserves it right now, Danny ain’t hear to pull you off, I dunno if you’re gonna listen to Becky as well as you do him, and beating a man into a bloody stain on the sidewalk may not do so well for the heroic image. Just sain.
This being the update for October 21, I’ll assume the reason she can catch up to a car is because that skateboard is actually a hoverboard with fake wheels to disguise it.
Oh dear. Yeah, I see no possible way for this to go wrong… Hopefully the police get there soon, because I have doubts about Amazi-girl’s focus and caution. A repeat of the parking lot would be bad when the enemy is armed with a rifle AND A CAR.
Well, I guess a hunting rifle is a terrible weapon choice. It’s slow to reload and awkward for melee or close range combat. If Amazigirl can get him by surprise it might not be a total tragedy.
Kinda makes me wonder how famous Amazi-Girl really is. the last time I remember her trying to heroize, the people just ignored her. (the grafitti incident)
Fun fact, Becky’s dad is using a Ruger no.1, (id’d by the trigger guard) and it is a single shot rifle, he didn’t reload after that warning shot previous, and since they immediately drove off, he hasn’t reloaded, ergo, empty gun.
Get his ass, Amazi-Girl!!
Actually he did reload; read the strip again and you can see that he’s putting something into the breech in the panel where all the bystanders are diving for the floor and Joyce is having her panic attack.
That doesn’t matter much. It takes a long time to reload one of those, even for a skilled user and something tells me Ross isn’t skilled. He’s going to have precisely one shot at Amazi-Girl. After that, it’s going to be hand-to-hand.
In any case, when facing unarmed teenagers who are not themselves protected by a car, Big Toe Daddy’s car is a far more effective weapon than his rifle.
This. My day job is covering bicycle wrecks (Witch on a Bicycle; http://www.opusthepoet.wordpress.com) and as part of that I have memorized the fatality rates at various vehicle speeds. Below 23 MPH a motor vehicle is less deadly than a gun (9%), but at 23 MPH motor vehicles are fatal 10% of the time. As speed increases to just 30 MPH fatality rates go to 40%, hit 80% at 40 and start to level out at 50 because there are only so many people left to kill after you pass 8 out of 10, I mean by 50 you are getting real close to 100%. Above 60 MPH you start getting into speeds where the cyclist’s corpse starts doing major damage to the vehicle and driver injury starts becoming more common. I have been doing this since 2006 and I can only recall 5 fatalities caused by a cyclist or pedestrian coming through the windshield with most of those having impact speeds in excess of 80 MPH. So if Toedad hits AmaziGirl, we want him to do so as close to 20 MPH or slower as possible.
OTOH, Amazi-girl is chasing him, so the chances of a collision at speed are pretty low. Either she can’t catch up to him at all or she catches him because he’s slowed down by stop signs or other cars.
And Amazi-girls are more maneuverable than cars. Even on a skateboard.
Not all. Asma, Raidah and her posse, and some of the parents are DoA-only characters. Riley appeared first in DoA and was then back-ported (much older) to Shortpacked!
Willis isn’t out of Walkyverse characters, but I think, leaving out real people and other people’s properties, he’s down to folks like bespectacled and vested girl, unimpressed coed, and Guns.
(And why isn’t unimpressed coed in the poll? I demand more unimpressed coed!)
I know that “unimpressed coed” is how Willis tagged her, and he probably has his reasons, but “coed” is … well, ask yourself what the male equivalent is (man-coed?)–and please let me know if I’m missing one. Yes, coed, of course, cones from co-educational. But even co-educational still has use, male students today are as much coeds in that sense as f-students. “Coed” is from a time when ‘student’ equaled male student and “coed” = vhey, there are chicks on campus now, hubba, hubba, (panty raid tonight!) and they’re even allowed to take classes!”
Actually, the original concept was that there were men’s colleges and women’s colleges. Men’s colleges taught math, physics, engineering, and other man stuff. Women’s colleges taught classes on becoming a teacher, nursing, social etiquette, and the things you need to teach your children. After all, women don’t have careers outside the home. When women started demanding a real, and equal, education. The campuses became co-educational. The male students (and later the female students) adopted the term coed to describe the new female students. Coed is really an outdated term, and an outdated concept. Now, everyone’s just a student. Even though some smell nicer than others.
True enough. It’s really hard to disassociate from the worst parts of the abuse, but even when you can actively recognize “what happened to me was wrong”, you’re still left with trying to fill the void left behind, and it can be a real mess trying to work through it.
BenRG: ANY time is a bad time for that; it’s sucky waste of life-time. Probably is, even after you get free of the abuser physically, the abuse might have been uploaded into your brain & mind and runs itself without asking your permission. And once it’s internalized like that, the abusive voice speaks in your voice. And, its not under your concious volition; you don’t have to ask the abusive voice what it has to say, its going to tell you, and you cant just shut it up. There is help to be had to get free, but that’s another story.
Will Deputy Skateboard be a recurring character? It probably would have been easier to commandeer an inanimate object than appoint it with a human title, but then hey Amazi-girl works in amazing ways.
Now I’m obsessing over what the correct capitalization of “Amazi-girl” is, and your font isn’t helping, Willis.
Close. To hear it right, you have to know that “Said” is a port city in Egypt, which is pronounced “Sayid”. The sentences imply that “you” pronounced it wrong, and I am correcting you. It works better when spoken aloud than when read.
“Some punk with a gun”…. Isn’t that a batman quote. I swore I’ve heard batman say that before… I think it was in the Justice League show when they travel to an alternate world and Batman fights Batman and Batman makes Batman give up by saying “And because of this no 10 year old kid will have to lose their parents to some punk with a gun”…. Or something.
Even Amazi-Girl knows this is more dangerous than the bullies and vandals she normally deals with. But, her Dad’s voice is there in her head, telling her how worthless and pathetic she is. And she has to PROVE HIM WRONG.
It’s scary to realize that, for all the hate she feels for Blaine, she’s still trying to prove herself to him.
I think Amber is misunderstanding the complexity of the situation – and I don’t mean the gun. I mean the emotional component between a crazy father and his daughter. I doubt the strip where Becky starts crying when she points out that this scenario would end in her dad getting himself killed was a pure accident. Nor was the confused and scared look on Becky’s father’s face. This isn’t a scenario for punching. This is something more nuanced.
1: Amber isn’t a cop, and is obviously projecting her own experiences over the one Becky is in.
2: And do you think that Becky would run out and kick her fallen dad and celebrate as Amber beats him half to death? If she did, that would be some pretty poor writing and destroy a lot of the character development.
Hey, I didn’t say it was going to be nice for her, but that asshole needs to be rendered a non-issue ASAP by whoever is in a position to achieve that. And frankly, it’s likely to end better for him at the hands of AG, as he’s less likely to get ventilated by a cop deciding to cut the gordian knot.
Fair enough. But my point is that you don’t just use “whatever means necessary”. Delicate situation is… well… delicate. That’s why I point out that Amber isn’t a cop. She is an untrained, unprofessional rage machine projecting her own experiences onto Becky’s situation. There may be a better and safer way to diffuse the situation than bravado – might not. All in how it’s written.
Saying you should do something and doing it aren’t exactly the same thing. Until we see what happened immediately after that, we don’t know what exactly he did. right now he claims not to have hurt anyone. Hard to say, considering he might not consider Dina quite “real”.
So yeah, he considered that he should do something – presumably violent. That doesn’t automatically equate to a “willingness to beat and kill for bigotry”. Not when he also said that he doesn’t “want” to hurt anyone.
Long story short: He’s a wacko. And no doubt we all cheer if he gets a beat down. But what is more interesting is Becky, her reaction. What Amber’s motivations are, are they leading her in a direction that will help, or will they end up causing more trouble. One thing is clear from the last panel, Amber is not well.
Wait, when has he shown those things specifically?
And the discussion isn’t really about what you would like, but about how the actions will affect the characters. We as readers might like lots of differnt things, but that’s really a dead-end discussion. Amber might have the best intentions, and you might like the result, but is it the wise choice for her to be making from an in-universe perspective, and is she acting for teh right reasons?
I’m just wondering what her plan is for getting Becky. Is she going to leap on top of the car? She’s proven that she can do this. Is she going to crash in through the windshield? What on earth is her plan?
…Does she even have one?
I think she’ll get non fatally wounded. While this scares me, I can at least breathe a little easier knowing that she’s not gonna die. But a severe injury will still be awful.
How do you think Danny is going to factor into this? if Amazi-Girl gets injured, Amber will be the one in the hospital. Will he be angry that she went after a guy with a gun? Proud? Will this be what ends the relationship? Very curious.
PTSD is a byproduct of the flight or fight response. If you’re in a terrifying situation, your mind is saying “fight or run”. If you can’t do either, one of the results is PTSD. Amber has PTSD from the robbery, and anger mixed with the guilt heaped on her by her father. The result is Amazi-Girl. Everyone deals with PTSD in their own way. Hers is to help the weak. A lot of social workers and psychologists enter their fields for the same reason. As for a plan, I don’t think she has one. At least not yet. I also don’t think she can handle Fundie by herself. She’s strong and resourceful, but Fundie’s large and on a mission. Dina’s still unaccounted for, and may well be close by now. After all, we still don’t know why the car is stopped at the end of the road. Could a little dinosaur be blocking his way? He might be hesitant to run her down, he knows he has a lot to answer for, but assault with a motor vehicle could boost his sentence to life and he may not want to risk it. Stopping to move her, and the chase around the car, would delay him quite a while. If Becky can keep the rifle out of his hands, maybe by locking the door when he gets out, while the other two attack, then join the attack if she isn’t too traumatized to move, there’s a good chance he will still be down when the police arrive. To paraphrase the old adage: “Hell hath no fury like a group of pissed off college girls.”
The other possibility is that the sight of Dina might send him into road-rage and he floors the gas, possibly spurring a rebellion by Becky against him, which might ether cause a crash or at least a slowdown.
If I remember correctly there is one strip where it’s mentioned that Amber does in fact do a voice when she’s Amazigirl. Can’t remember where, but I think it was when she came through Ethan’s window and then Ethan and Danny talk about her doing a voice afterward.
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sure, a gun without bullets is just a blunt knife
same diff
OH HI SAYID NAMED-BY-TUMBLR
Bullets are sorta like small, fast knives.
its ok she got dis!
she can dodge bullets right its one of her super powers….
shit, I forgot it’s BTTF Day, that should be a HOVERBOARD!!
Some huge dude named Griff just crashed into the front of city hall and got arrested. Sayid got his hoverboard, that’s why he’s letting Amazi-Girl keep his skateboard.
you mean the Dean’s office, maybe
Nope, that’s BTTF1.
Okay, but how is he going to clean the manure off it?
Sayid actually doesn’t mind manure.
Even better, they are small, fast, blunt knives. Who is afraid of small, blunt knives?
Little fingers that poke you from across the room.
…that poke holes into you…
Fixed.
….Sayid looks …..like Sal and Walky fused together with glasses. tan skin, walky’s fluffy dark hair, sal’s tatoo’s. seems about sal’s height…..think he even has walky/sal’s eye design too!!
Long-lost older sibling confirmed. ;P
Interesting last name. Is it Polish?
Arabic. It means “related to the prophet”.
Oops, I meant “Named-by-Tumblr”.
Yes, exactly. “Named-by-Tumblr” is Arabic for “close to the prophet”. I should know, I have multiple degrees in both Arabicology and Arabiconomy.
The idea that Tumblr is a prophet is not far off from some users’ behaviors. So by extension one who is “Named by Tumblr” is necessarily “close to the prophet.”
Amazing how it all fits.
Not sure if I’m correct that “Named-by-tumblr” is meant to express doubt about the accuracy of the original statement, but if you do a little research, Sayyid does mean descendant of the prophet. Although from what I understand that may only apply to last names?
There are two similar names.”Sayyid” is a title for descendants of the Prophet which is also used as a personal name. “Sayid” is a personal name meaning “Happy”, like Arabic for “Felix”. Both of them are spelled a bunch of different ways in Latin characters, with the result that this could be either.
A Ruger Number One is still a solid chunk of steel and hardwood when empty that weighs between seven and nine pounds, depending on the specific model. It would serve as a decent war club even unloaded. Which is how soldiers used single shot rifles in mêlée before the advent of semi automatic of full auto rifles. And Ross is a physically large and powerfully built man. He has no neck to speak of, which is the sign of either a dedicated body builder or someone who works a physically demanding job.
Gotta admit, kinda worried about Amber here.
Just realized, the gun or Ross’s possible physical strength may not even be a factor. Amber is on a skateboard and Ross is driving a car. The kind of thing an automobile ncan do to an unprotected pedestrian make guns look tame by comparison.
Yeah, count me in the really flippin worried column here.
Yep, you just latched on to one of the basic facts of my profession. If guns had terminal ballistics anything close to motor vehicles they would be outlawed as WMD. Bullets are 9% fatal, if you can even get one on target. Motor vehicles fly by that mark at 23 MPH, and asymptotically approach 100% fatal around 50. Even at “just” 30 MPH motor vehicles are 40% fatal with pedestrians and cyclists.
I have the chart from the 2009 AAA study memorized.
Poet?
well, Amazi-Girl DID say she was crazy
True.
Hrmm, interesting. I don’t doubt you at all, but I would love to see a source for the bullet to vehicle comparison. it sounds fairly accurate, I just like to have sources for when I debate some subjects
Google’s right there, so it’d be pretty easy to get a source yourself.
(Keep in mind that compared to firearm ownership, though, car ownership is hugely regulated, so if anyone tries to argue that cars are deadlier than guns as a way of sarcastically suggest a car ban… it’s gonna be embarrassing for them. Imagine gun licenses in every state that have to be regularly renewed, where your vision is checked, and an actual database exists of users that ties you directly to the gun you are licenses for. Imagine being required to but gun insurance to cover you in case of an accident. Imagine being actually required to keep the safety on (as we are required by law to wear seatbelts). Imagine requiring that you pass a firearm safety test before being able to get a gun license, and harder exams for different kinds of guns. (Commercial car licenses, like those required to be a bus driver, for assault weapons…))
You’re right, that is incredibly implausible. At least in this current day and age, when the NRA is anti-gun control. Apparently before the 80s their main function was gun training and registration.
There are zero regulations on car ownership. A 10 year old can legally buy a car and have it delivered.
Driving it on public roads is where regulation begins and ends there.
We had that in Canada until last year.
@r_r I’m sorry, are you really trying to argue that you don’t need a driver’s license or auto insurance?
Like, sure, you can technically buy that car and then drive it around without a license, but you are breaking the law to do so. Even if the car just sits in your driveway and never goes anywhere, it needs to be insured.
This is a poor rebuttal. :|a D+.
Not true, a car does not legally need to be insured if it’s not being driven on the road. It is completely legal to buy and possess a car, and operate it on private property without any license, insurance, or regulations (for example, Google “farm truck”). It’s only illegal to drive it on public roadways without meeting those requirements. And plenty of people do.
The counterpoint to the cars and guns regulation debate is that if guns were regulated like cars, the lisence to carry a gun would require a written and practical test provided by the state for a nominal fee and people as young as 16 years old could walk around strapped with 15 years olds allowed to carry with the supervision of a licensed adult. There would also not be the huge variance of law from state to state. All state laws would be standardized and each state would have to honor every other state’s gun licences.
except that there is at least one guy who regularly gets out of traffic tickets while not having a license because apparently they were only ever suppose to apply to commercial use and so not restrict a person’s constitutionally guaranteed right to travel.
I’ve actually looked into it and their is some pretty sketchy legality to the whole thing centered around the difference between the legal definition and the common usage of terms like motor vehicle, transportation, and especially carrier.
a carrier is a person who is paid to carry goods and people from one place to another, transportation is the movement of people or goods by a carrier, and a motor vehicle is a self-propelled contrivance used for transportation…
so if you are not being paid to engage in the act of transportation then your personal conveyance is not technically under the jurisdiction of the Department of motor vehicles it’s just that most people simply assume that it is and/or don’t want to spend the time and effort in court.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/carrier
http://thelawdictionary.org/transportation/
http://definitions.uslegal.com/v/vehicle/
I can’t find a proper cite with a quick Google search, but the fun thing about math is that you can do it yourself! F=MA, the mass and acceleration are easy to look up, just plug the numbers into your slide rule or favorite online calculator like so to see the force. That’s .45 ACP, a common big pistol bullet, and an average small car at 30mph. Rifle bullets are going much faster, more than enough to make up for their lower weight, of course (the smallest size Thumb-Dad’s gun shoots has about twice the energy of the .45, with a teensy bullet moving extremely fast), but there’s multiple orders of magnitude difference between car and bullet.
E = ½mv² would be more useful than F = ma in this case.
Do you have a source for that? I believe you, but it would be great to have a source to refer to when I’m talking to people.
I just did a search for pedestrian death rates vs motor vehicle speed but using “aaa pedestrian safety” got https://www.aaafoundation.org/sites/default/files/2011PedestrianRiskVsSpeed.pdf as the 4th result. The relationship of death to speed is on page 9 of the report.
Pretty sure most soldiers back in the day preferred the bayonet in the melee. it’s a knife … on a stick! (Called a glaive when the stick isn’t also a gun, btw). I’m not worried. Amazi-Girl’s gonna take his gun and beat him with it.
A soldier would have been trained to use both the pointy stabby end and the clubby crushy end of a bayonetted rifle. This started way back when reloading a single shot muzzle loading musket took a good third of a minute and continued on through WWII and Korea when the military still used heavy rifles made of steel and wood. With more modern light weight assault rifles, the emphasis is on the stabby end. As my Drill Sargent admitted in a candid moment, “The striking effectiveness of the M-16 as a club is roughly equal to a wiffle ball bat.”
I’m know I’m focusing on the wrong thing here but what’s the deal with the negative correlation of neck size and stress put on the body (either via body building or labor intensive jobs)?
Work that involves heavy upper body strength, especially the shoulder, tends to build up massive trapesius muscles which are the muscles of the upper back and shoulders that flank 9th neck. A person with heavily developed traps will appear to have a very short or extremely thick neck. This should not be confused with Kippel-Feil syndrome, a congenital defect that causes extremely short necks in people.
Sorry, I realize that did not answer your question. The implication if someone does a physical job for a living, they must not be too bright. Which defies the fact that a large number of physically dangerous and demanding jobs pay pretty well. And of course there’s the whole “muscle head” or “meathead” sneer directed at fitness buffs and body builders. Probably because they can’t seem to talk about anything else.
As to Ross, he may be a dumb meathead, or he may be pretty intelligent and blinded by a lifetime of indoctrination and ideology.
It feels like karmic justice that a lot of menial jobs for “uneducated” people (e.g. plumber) pay a lot more than many white-collar jobs (e.g. pretty much any desk jockey work easily outsourced to other countries). If I had to do it over, I might’ve actually gone for one of those well-paying “menial” jobs, knowing the job market these days.
I thought his name would be “Sayid Macropodus-Ocellatus”?
I don’t need friends or bullets, I have knives!
This is madness!
No this is Dumbing of Age……. Oh wait yeah of course it’s madness it’s Dumbing of Age
No, this iS PARTA the story.
I am iS PARTA
What you did there? I saw that
*Stands and salutes* God speed Amazi-girl!!
No, this is Patrick
Poor, poor Joyce. Now she has ANOTHER person to worry about.
This is a bad idea, a bad idea, a bad idea a… HOLY CARP! AMAZIE-GIRL FOLLOWS THE CAR ON A SKATEBOARD TO TAKE ON THE MAN WITH THE GUN AND SAVE BECKY. THIS IS THE AWESOMEST THING SINCE…. OK, since “clever girl” which was just a few minutes ago BUT STILL.
I like Skateboard dude’s attitude. Sure, take the skateboard and follow the shooter. You’re the super hero around here.
I agree with you. This is awesome. And a bad idea.
It could be awesome with the right approach, like through the windshield.
“Hi, Becky! Have a lap full of superheroine!”
I’m so happy you said that because I really needed a reminder of Happier Times
THANK YOU for that! IOU an internet.
As long as it’s not superheroin. She might be tempted to use that to numb the pain.
“Dude, keep it” ? really ?
(hey, it coincide with a day related to Back to the future… remember that skateboard scene ?)
Exactly what I was thinking.
He’s got a Pitbull now.
it will transform into a hoverboard watch
…I am now officially In Awe.
“Those things don’t work on water. Unless you got power!”
There’s skater guy!
I said see you later guy!
I saw what you Sayid thar.
She needed to come back down to Earth!
+1 to this entire conversation.
I had just gotten this song out of my head, too . . .
Oh no. She’s gonna go into a blood rage shoot him in the hand with his own gun.
Toedad will show up on campus on a motorcycle, be way cool and boff the TA.
PLOT TWIST
Amazi-girl’s true ability is to turn former villains into badass anti-heroes.
…which actually would make her a MUCH better super hero than most. They have their rogues galleries of recurring villians. Amazie-girl has the Cool Clique that hangs out in a Wallmart parking lot.
It’d basically just make her Luffy.
Or most shounen manga heroes, really.
That was Son Goku’s primary superpower for most of Dragon Ball.
“Hey, you’re a genocidal maniac, but I just kicked the carp out of you. We’re friends now.”
“Damn you, Kakorot.”
Oolong, Yamcha and Puar, Tien and Choutzuzu, Piccolo, Vegeta….It kinda drops of at that point.
True. It did kind of stop with Vegeta. I don’t guess you can count the androids.
Also Majin Buu (the fat one)
sure you can count Android 18, although that was mostly Krillin (they have a kid now)
I suspect she may aim for the balls instead.
Don’t be silly – Amazi-girl’s going to stab him in the hand with the gun.
Haven’t you heard the new sensation sweeping the nation?
Bigots love cannons.
“Keep it. I got a pitbull now!”
What? It’s 2015. We say that now.
No we don’t. We would have if Marty hadn’t gained his confidence at the end of the trilogy. But he did, and the future changed. Clearly butterfly affects eliminated many of the discoveries made like the flying cars and hoverboards. And the stupid future sunglasses, thank god.
and faxes in every room!
WHAT A WORLD!
No, the faxes have been replaced with the INTERNET!!! GLORIOUS, GLORIOUS INTERNET!!!
Yeah, Daniel here, Screwball’s kinda now dancing through the house “praising” the internet. If he doesn’t reply for a while, he’s still dealing with the magnets I’m gonna throw at him…
*plays Aerosmith’s “Last Child” on the Muzak*
*plays “Power of Love” on the Muzak*
*jams “Johnny B. Goode” …on the muzak*
Happy bttf day
Oh, God. Please don’t shoot her, Ross.
…He’s gonna shoot her, isn’t he? Not fatally, but…he’s TOTALLY gonna shoot her.
I’m worried he’ll just run her down. He’s driving a car and she’s on a skateboard. A ton and a half of metal, glass and plastic vs. squishy human is a gross mismatch.
Well, he’s also got a Becky with nothing to lose in the passenger seat. I’m just sayin’
Is that girl in the background of panel 2 calling 911?
…. This is an oddly appropriate gravatar for the comment.
If so, she’s the most sensible character in this storyline so far.
Amazi-Girl and her sidekick Clever-Girl may be awesome, but there are times when common sense needs to take point.
Hopefully.
If so, at least one person there has some sense.
It looks like she’s calling someone, and seems very vehement about whatever she’s saying.
I’d be surprised.
Nah, she’s just calling in for Daisy’s bounty on Amazi-Girl sightings. Gonna get in the paper she is!
“CP, I just witnessed an attack, its the enemy!”
“CP Copies!”
“All fire-teams, this is CP!”
“We are under attack, all units on alert!”
Indiana University CP: Entering Alert Status
Nah, she’s calling her best friend
“Oh. My. God. You will NOT believe what just happened to me! MEMEMEMEMEME!”
And then goes on to rant at her friend about how this has ruined her day and no one else’s. Meanwhile, everything gets worse for all of the characters who actually have names.
Not anymore, Amazigirl just elbowed her in the head…
Yeah, looks like she might be. Possibly adding the cars description if she’s smart…
I see Knife Gun in the same sentence I instantly think of a knifegun, man that would be cool and dangerous and probably lead to world falling to pieces but still KNIFEGUN
Gunswords are a thing.
Gunblades are totally a (fictional) thing.
Common sense isn’t, though.
(seriously; that game was messed up. They convert an orphanage in to a school for *mercenary assassins*, and get the 11-old kids there, who have absolutely nowhere else to go, to sign up for it? If Headmaster Cid were a real person, he’d have been brought in front of a war crimes tribunal.)
Heck, that’s all perfectly logical compared to Ultimecia and time compression.
“Why would she want to do this? Ah, who cares!”
But seriously, at least that wasn’t the purported “good guys” doing something that, really, you’d expect from some third-world country that the UN is imposing sanctions on.
And when people show up to attack the place, partially because of the mess he made, he buggers off and hands responsibility to one of those kids.
There were real (single shot, black powder) gun swords: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2244080/Sword-pistol-brandished-Lord-Nelson-Battle-Trafalgar-goes-auction.html
Except a gunsword is a sword that’s also a gun. A Knife Gun would be a gun that shoots knives.
…wasn’t there totally a gun that shot swords/knives in Borderlands 2 ?
Yes it was a torgue e-tech gun.
because of course it was a Torque design.
Oh, I remember now, the Dragon Keep extension
There certainly was in the Saints Row 4 DLC.
So pretty much a giant flechette gun?
Which is only good for penetrating armour and not much else.
There was a buckler-gun in Renaissance Europe. I don’t think it was that common an item, but it was a standard buckler (a small shield about 18″ in diameter) with a pistol in the boss (boss = reinforced center part of the shield). Presumably it was for surprise since another fighter would expect a shield rush or a punch (bucklers are small enough to punch with), but not a ranged attack.
Bayonets are a REAL thing.
I think the Janitor may have intended one of those.
Invented. Tired, sorry.
For Kids!
Snake, Remember the basics of CQC.
KNIFE!
KNIFE GUN!
KNIFEWRENCH!
for kids
oh my god there’s an actual knifegun.
https://www.knife-depot.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/8788023_1.jpg
Do you think there might actually be a knifewrench too?
So I just looked that up and turns out you were making a Scrubs reference.
http://new2.fjcdn.com/thumbnails/comments/5452111+_ea219a8ce25014b69c7a3cb86b3cf518.gif
(getting good mileage out of this gif today)
Whoops, forgot to credit the artist.
The pic I linked to was by Gigi D.G., who does the webcomic Cucumber Quest. It’s really funny and has gorgeous art too!
Thank you yotomo, I knew I couldn’t be the only one thinking this
A knife-rifle, or knifle.
Basically you just get any weapon and then write knife on it and BAM instant ruler of the Universe
No, that title belongs to the inventor of the combustible lemon.
Nope the guy who invented the exploding pomegranate.
Technically, that is actually a thing…
Bayonet.
http://www.amazon.com/Billy-Kid-Legends-West-Knife/dp/B00EGWCPGA
Knifegun.
Bayonets exist
Bayonets merely turn a rifle into a spear.
Or if it’s one of those long old-style affairs, a short glaive (in the actual meaning of a slashing blade onna stick).
Am I the only one who thought Sayid was Walky at first glance? Like, I was reading panel one and thought I saw Walky in panel two.
SWEET I GET TO BE BECKY
You are Rad!
I thought Sayid looked a bit like Walky in an earlier panel, during the shooting, but it’s mostly the haircut.
INdeed.
The gun makes the aforementioned stupid punk more threatening.
I mean, I get that Amazi-Girl is using her trigger flashbacks to psyche herself up, but keep some perspective here.
I don’t think she is using them to psyche herself up. I think the flashbacks are occurring because to her the situation seems similar. She’s seeing someone in need of help because of someone who is armed and because it has triggered that flashback, logic has gone a out the window as she doesn’t want to see that happen to anyone again.
AG is driven by a powerful need – the rather perverse need to prove to her dad that she’s not the pathetic weakling he told her she was for years. A knife? A gun? Any escalation of threat triggers her dad in her head, saying, “You’re going to be deterred by THAT? You’re PATHETIC!” We can only hope she doesn’t let it goad her into reckless action.
“Just some stupid punk with the nuclear launch codes!”
She’s gonna get shot because of sudden (distracting) flashbacks, isn’t she?
AG is about to hand Toedad his head. One Toedead coming up.
Hope for the best. Fear the worst.
Hope for the best . Plan for the worst.
Military brat’s motto.
You mean his toe ?
I’m hoping she has a really good plan to catch a car with a skateboard.
Go really really fast.
He’s gotta reach a stop sign eventually. Hopefully they’ll be the last to arrive at a four way stop and he’ll be very conscientious about traffic laws, giving amazi-girl a better chance to catch up. Or maybe Becky gets a text instructing her to distract Ross? I can’t help but feel this is going to end badly for someone. Probably because this is DoA.
(I initially phrased it as “hit a stop sign” but that was probably wishful thinking on my subconscious’s part.)
The moment Toedad notice there’s a phone, it’ll get tossed out the window.
She’s played Sonic Adventure 2 Battle.
I was kind of assuming there’d be a short cut (didn’t look at the IU maps but most universities I’ve been at are way harder/slower to drive around than walk/bike), but it looks like she’s going straight behind him. Maybe she thinks he’ll obey stop signs and such (and she won’t)?
It may well turn into a shortcut based catchup though.
I think we can safely assume that the cops are even now enroute to the fountain, and people making a getaway in a car need to follow roads and observe stop signs and traffic lights in order to avoid attracting unwanted police attention. Amazi-Girl doesn’t; she knows the shortcuts on campus from her previous nocturnal forays as a costumed crusader; and is probably figuring out which walkway she can take to cut diagonally across campus and pop up in front of him.
Ohmigod. I can see it now. Amber/Amazi-Girl is not going to get shot; she is going to strike a heroic pose, Tiananmen Square-style, in the road in front of ToeDad’s car; ToeDad presses down on the accelerator and adds a count of “attempted homicide using a motor vehicle” to the litany of charges he has already piled up.
Alternately, Parkour T-bone combo.
As long as being smart isn’t a prerequisite for a good plan, there’s this:
http://i.imgur.com/fhsiT.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/iuQbo.jpg
Y’know, if Amazi-Girl can hop onto a moving truck while being chased by two fellow campusmates, I think this is perfectly doable.
It’s called skitching, for those who weren’t around in the 80s and 90s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skitching
When I posted that this morning I didn’t even think about how it tied into BttF.
Dammit, Amber’s making things about her, again!
She is a superhero. That’s what they do.
By that logic how is she no different than spiderman and Batman when they were starting out?
No, I mean her traumatic backstory is bleeding into Joyce’s traumatic now-story…
Ya I guess she is sorta stealing her thunder…but then again this is probably just like how I said way back when I mentioned the at Joyce and Amber are like two sides of the same coin.
So, Joyce is Pre-Crisis Wally West in this scenario?
Don’t you mean Becky’s traumatic now-story??
By the end of this, probably everybody’s traumatic story.
This is Dumbing of Age. There’s plenty of trauma for everyone.
Ohh,the bad memories are kickin’ in. I hope we see her beat the crap out of Toedad.
Toedad: “Hmmm. Seems like the car stopped in this empty parking lot and it started to rain. I’m sure only good things can come from this.”
He better hope he isn’t in a Walmart parking lot because unlike McDonald parking lots no one will notice the Violent beat down.
sweet! free skateboard!!
man, this is shaping up to be an awesome day. now to read the past few strips.
……
“Dude, keep it.”
Skater guy, you the real MVP.
Some stupid punk ya but I think a Gun is a bit more lethal than a gun, just be careful please.
A gun may be more lethal than a gun but a gun is much safer than a gun while a gun carries more bullets than a gun, the gun has a higher kill count since the gun doesn’t have as much recoil as a gun.
Guns don’t kill people, Guns do.
Guns don’t kill people, massive hemoraging caused by bullets ripping through flesh do.
The only way to stop a gun with a gun is a gun with a gun.
Shooting people with bullets — from guns!!!
*facepalm palm* knife.
Too late.
Sometimes you just need a little less gun.
Be a little hard to shoot AG with a rifle while driving.
If he pulls over, different story.
Whereas if he doesn’t pull over Amazigirl is just as “so what?”
Toedad’s car is actually a deadlier weapon than his particularly silly rifle.
All he has to do is slam on the brakes.
This is Amazigirl chasing him. He slams on the brakes, she’ll probably do a flip over the top and land with a bad ass look in her eyes. The flip will either be intentional or accidental but with the same end result.
Yay, hi Sayid! Also, Amazi-board!
If I ever get a skateboard it will be called Amazi-board.
(Or just “the plank” when I trip and it drops me in a pool or something)
You don’t walk the plank, you ride it!
The long walk on the short plank.
Wow, if Amazi-Gril can catch up to the car on a skateboard, then she really is Amazing.
Take the past and use it to become stronger. The crazy part is her own spin on it.
If Toedad is going to follow the laws of the road now that he has Becky back in his clutches, then that street has a few stop signs coming up, not to mention that it gets a lot of traffic once you get in front of the Student Union. It might be realistically possible.
So… uhhh… Amber’s not in the list of who we want to see more of. But Becky and Dina are.
Joyce, Dorothy, Billie and Walky aren’t on it either. They’re all main-ish characters and have seen a lot of time on DoA anyway. But I’m sure Amber – or any other student here – won’t be done away with.
Well Toe Dad I hope you’re ready for your first session of Beat-Down Therapy, because the Doctor is in.
What is that flashback? I cant even remember anymore.
After the childhood robbery she got wrapped up in that involved Ethan and Sal. That line is being said by her scum bag father.
On a side note who is the worst father in this series? Toe dad or Abusive scum dad?
Oooh, that’s a tough choice. At least Toedad is TRYING to help… he just really sucks at it.
The fact that he think’s he’s trying to help when he does this kind of makes him worse in a way, I think.
The fact that he is trying to help certainly makes him a more redeemable person, but I think that we can all agree that pulling a gun on his child is worse parenting than anything Blaine has done.
Both equal grade of turd, in my option.
I dunno. Maybe in terms of actions overall, Toedad would be considered by the public to be the worse parent, but Blaine set out to actively harass, tear down, and emotional cripple his daughter over a series of years. And he seemed to do so knowingly, and with malice. I’d say he’s worse.
In ranking how horrible a parent is, you need three axes: malice, misguidedness, and how bad the child is hurt. On the easy to categorize axes, Blaine and Ross are bad on different ones. As for impact, who fucking knows, they’re still in college and the length and severity of the aftereffects are a factor. Basically, difficult because Becky hasn’t had much time to process this event.
I disagree, malice isn’t really a big factor when compared to impact. Your intentions really only matter to you.
I don’t know, with him threatening with the gun, I would have to put him in the “worse” slot. Amber’s dad probably think’s he is helping her too. Maybe not in a way most people would accept, but in the way that he thinks the man needs to be in charge and is trying to, as he once said, put her in her place. I’m sure he thinks its for her own good as well and that she will benefit from it. Unless I’ve forgotten something the worst he has done is threaten with bodily injury. This guy is using lethal force (even though no one has died as of yet).
Blaine at least could be driven away by receiving a good beating. Dangerous thing about people who’re just trying to help is they also remain convinced they’re doing the right thing, which can motivate them to keep trying in spite of the odds. Blaine, as much of an asshole as he is might return for a rematch to restore some semblance of his superiority complex, but the threat of further humiliation should keep him at bay as long as he stays sober enough to fear for his reputation.
Eh, even Blaine THOUGHT he was helping when he verbally abused his daughter. I’m sure he thought he was ‘toughening her up’. In fact, if he’d had a son, some people wouldn’t even find it abusive.
Every man is good, in his own mind. That’s why societies need an objective law.
Toedad, no contest. Good intentions lose all meaning the moment you reach the point of pulling a gun on your loved ones.
That said, I wouldn’t put gun-use past Blaine. It’s just that we haven’t seen him use any yet. Future events could very well bring the contest back.
When Amber was younger, she and Ethan were attacked by Sal, who was robbing a convenience store with a knife.
Sal didn’t attack either of them. Just demanded money from the cashier. She was scared to death all the while doing it.
She took Ethan hostage, holding a knife to him. That is an attack in my book.
Amber and Ethan were in the store when that Sal robbed at 13. Amber was tramatized as it was and Ethan was just getting her to go out in public into a store and actually pick out something to buy.
When Sal arrested, Amber attacked her from behind and sank her own knife into the back of her hand. Likely why Sal wears gloves at all times now.
That’s her father making fun of her for being scared “just a punk with a knife.
Amber’s father chewing her out for being a coward during the convenience store robbery. He made her feel like crap afterwards, even though it was undeserved.
The line is shown in this strip.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/nothing/
It’s part of the flashback you see while she’s beating the crap out of scum-dad.
Also where are our Amber and Blaine tags, you’re slipping Willis
Well, Amazi-Girl is tagged…
Big letdown from Sal’s bike though.
Sayid’s got some sweet tattoos.
I shall choose to focus on that and not the fact that Amazi-Girl is very likely to get herself severely injured by a horrifyingly single-minded, can’t-be-reasoned-with douchedad with a rifle.
How is the car still there? Did he stop five seconds after he started? If he’s still on the same street and hasn’t stopped tha Amber should’ve been able to see what happened.
Pedestrian crossings, probably.
I seriously doubt he’d stop for those.
He’s still got to convince himself he’s the good guy here. Good guys don’t break traffic regulations.
Talking is a free action.
AMBER THIS ISN’T YOUR CHANCE TO REDEEM YOURSELF YOU WERE LIKE 12
Like I said to Mr.Mendo, Batman logic.
A rifle, to be exact. Speaking of, I often wonder if Ross’ car has an NRA bumper sticker somewhere.
I wonder if a hoverboard could go faster.
c’mon amber do it for her
DO IT FOR HER
You do it for her
And you would do it again
You do it for him, that is to say
You’ll do it for her
… what the hell is that on Sayid’s arms? Tattoos? Henna tattoos? Excessive sweat?
Tattoos if Tumblr is to be believed.
Ah yes, so it’s not a motorcycle or a car, but a skateboard.
I hereby name it “The Amazi-Board”.
joyce x sayid OTP !
Taking bets on how long it takes Joyce to realize she’s talking with a man she does not know while alone.
Also props for Sayid in aiding great justice (or suicide).
o_o She totally is. Maybe she’ll be okay, since he looks like Walky.
Or maybe she’ll punch him in the face, since he looks like Walky.
I think there’s plenty of people around. Y’know. Since a man just fired a firearm and such.
Everyone is there except for the police.
Those donuts aren’t gonna eat themselves.
Fair enough, I mean consuming all the trans fat of the traditional glazed Donut is not only part of the policemans daily duty but it’s also a very important part of his natural diet.
oh ! Now that you mention it :O
She’s avoiding looking at him tho.
Look at her eyes – they’re panic eyes. She’s probably seeing Ryan.
KILL, AMAZI-GIRL!
That is a VERY important comma.
It really is.
4th panel. Those are words of “encouragement” from… her father.
It’s yet another way she’s still shakled by everything he did to her.
Scary, huh? Amber is still trying to prove herself to her father.
Prove that he’s wrong, but it still applies.
Sayid seems chill. I like Sayid.
On the plus side, it looks like someone’s finally calling the cops.
Having come to DoA somewhat recently, what exactly does the flashback mean? What punk with what knife, and what did they do?
I would strongly suggest an archive binge so you can get the whole story. Welcome to the crowd!
If you really would like to know without doing an archive binge, I will spoil it for you, so stop reading if you don’t wanna know yet.
Sal robbed a convenience store when she was 13. Amber and Ethan were there at the time and were attacked. Amber’s (abusive) dad scolded her for losing to “just some punk with a knife.”
Long, long ago, when they were still young teenagers, Amber and Ethan went on a school field trip together. They entered a convenience store, and were hanging out in there when Sal arrived… and tried to rob the convenience store.
Amber stabbed Sal with a knife.
It’s a long, spoileriffic story. If you like DoA, you’re better off just reading the whole thing through from the beginning.
Someone’s about to get a fucking slap.
I hope there’s a manure truck nearby.
Yeah, that’d be hilarious, and I think we’ve seen enough serious shit.
Why?
JUST WHY?!
To bury Toedas in it.No,he deserves better..a manure truck on fire! MUHAHAHAHA!
Wasn’t that BTTF, not BTTF2? (Now Biff…)
There were manure-dunkings in all three movies: Biff in 1 and 2 and Buford in 3.
MANURE! I HATE MANURE!!
Whelp, this is going to end badly for somebody.
…but I guess we all knew that ever since the hospital preview panel showed up, huh? Damn you, Tumblr!
I’m between the ‘Amazigirl gets shot’ option and ‘Amazigirl tries to stop the car and gets hit’ (either on purpose or not would work- hell, she could even stop Ross, then get hit because she’s in traffic)
I think it’s more likely that Amazi-Girl will catch up to the car, then somersault onto it and ride on top until she can get Ross to stop.
Or, Ross will get away before Amazi-girl can reach him.
Amazi-Girl realizes she can’t catch up with the car, and just then, Sal passes by on her motorcycle. “Citizen! I must deputize your– Oh. Hell.”
Today’s Dollop of Didactic Diversion — “Deputizing” is the act of a person of authority giving someone the power to do something in place of another person; a sheriff “deputizing” the posse in an old Western movie, for example. What Amazi-Girl has done in ordering Sayid to surrender the skateboard for her use is “commandeering”, not “deputizing”. And depending on your point of view, “commandeering” something might also be considered “highjacking”, although “commandeer” is generally the term used when the action is instigated by someone with military or civil authority.
(Does Amazi-Girl actually have any civil authority? Weelllllll…… I suppose you could ask the same question about Batman, Superman, Spiderman, or any of the other costumed heroes. For now let’s just stop ToeDad and get Becky back, and hold that discussion for another day)
Oh, good, someone beat me to it.
Not out of the realm of possibility for a college freshman to confuse the words, though, especially since it’s done often in media anyway.
the Adam West Batman was a licensed LEO, but the character has been on various sides of the law since it was created in the ’30s. AFA Superman is concerned, would YOU tell him to stop catching bad guys and handing them over to police? The other characters have also been on various ins and outs with “official” LEO, depending on the story.
Well, in Amber’s world, vehicles transform into sentient robots as often as not, so perhaps she thinks she is deputizing the skateboard.
You’re just a vehicleist and don’t want skateboards to be deputys. Stop pushing your dictionarical agenda all over our throats!
Marcy hangs on to the bike for a tow.
I vote for the last option.
That being the on top part.
Amber needs a lot of therapy… or cross fit. Probably cross fit. We’re better off having her be a hero.
Vigilantism is cheaper than therapy bills.
I think that’s how SEMME worked too.
It’s almost like I was making a direct reference or something!
http://new2.fjcdn.com/thumbnails/comments/5452111+_ea219a8ce25014b69c7a3cb86b3cf518.gif
Knowing what I know of Willis from binge reading this comic last week and paying attention to the comments, this can only end well. *rolls eyes*
Does Joyce look like that in panel 3 because she’s worried about Becky and Amazigirl, or also because a strange man is talking to her…
Both
This won’t end well.
I fear Amber’s risk assessment might be somewhat impaired by her guilt complex here.
Which I guess was always a risk given how her stress and panic has sometimes driven her to some risky and poorly thought out actions while promoting her Amazi-Girl alter. But this seems to have flown past antagonizing 4 people in a Walmart parking lot over illegally purchased beer into dangerously close to “this cape will let me fly” territory. Guns are not knives and chasing a car with a skateboard is not as safe or easy as it looked in Back to the Future.
Overall, I think Amber might end up getting a rude awakening in the fact that she’s not invulnerable.
I think it’s likely. Amber’s fights were either highly personal stuff (her fights against Blaine or Sal) or just random jerks she curbstomped. Here, she’s trying to be the cool superhero everyone, including her, thinks she is.
This might be the catalyst that turns her away from being Amazi-Girl, or it might drive her further into it; that this is another mistake that is totally her fault and she has to work twice as hard to atone for it.
Random fan theory time that really has no basis (like most fan theories)
Sayid will turn out to be a genius on the level of walkyverese Joe and will start making weapons and armor for Amber. He will also make her a new costume that isn’t the worst possible color you could have as a super hero. I mean bright highly visible yellow…really?
At least the suit doesn’t have a big ted target mark.
Today is the day that Amber O’Malley returns to the future
Will her kids grow up to be assholes?
Perhaps in some other reality.
This guy looks like hip skater Walky.
NEW, FROM HASBRO!!! ITS THE NEW AND IMPROVED “HIP SKATER WALKY!!” PRESS THE BUTTON ON HIS BACK TO MAKE HIM BURP!! PAJAMA JEANS AND SUBPAR TEST RESULTS SOLD SEPARATELY!! BUY NOW!!!
I think Willis would only sell this Idea to HASBRO if he was to get free Transformer stuff for the next 2 or 3 years.
‘HASBRO’ now makes me think of brokitteh:
CHEEZBURGER I CAN HAS BRO?
Does anyone else really want an Its Walky! Alan toy where you can slide his chest open and remove a separate alien figure?
DEATH
WISH
DEATH
WISH
Ambe- I mean Amazigirl, you’re clearly in the zone right now, and we’re all 50 shades of jazzed (that sounded dirtier than intended…) about that, but if you could maybe dial it back just a smidge, maybe not go in too angry. Not only out of fear for what we can do yo you. More because we all saw what happened when you went in angry after a poor excuse for a parent, and while Blaine deserved it (thats putting it kindly), and Ross deserves it right now, Danny ain’t hear to pull you off, I dunno if you’re gonna listen to Becky as well as you do him, and beating a man into a bloody stain on the sidewalk may not do so well for the heroic image. Just sain.
Joyce and Macropodus OTP.
And then the police show up and AmaziGirl identity gets revealed!
Or, you know, she disarms Toedad and THEN the police show up to a masked person holding up a man and his daughter in a car.
this is when you realize that neither amber or amazi-girl are in the poll
On the other hand, panel 3: dang, that Amazi-ass.
This being the update for October 21, I’ll assume the reason she can catch up to a car is because that skateboard is actually a hoverboard with fake wheels to disguise it.
Can I ship Joyce and Sayid?
They’re kinda adorable.
Even if they’ve only interacted this once so far.
unlikely – full deck setup costs more than 100 bucks.
And so it begins!
What is that on Sayid arms? Vericose veins, or a faded tribal tattoo?
Not to detract from the high-pressure situation, but instant fictional character crush on Sayid, I hope we see more of him.
You aren’t far off, Sayid. And Amber, you really ought to know better than to listen to your dad.
Careful Amber that face is pretty Classic Ninja Turtles
Oh dear. Yeah, I see no possible way for this to go wrong… Hopefully the police get there soon, because I have doubts about Amazi-girl’s focus and caution. A repeat of the parking lot would be bad when the enemy is armed with a rifle AND A CAR.
Well, I guess a hunting rifle is a terrible weapon choice. It’s slow to reload and awkward for melee or close range combat. If Amazigirl can get him by surprise it might not be a total tragedy.
Anyone else think that all this “getting fucked over by all these people of the same religion” is going to completely destroy Joyce’s faith.
A few months from now, we have a preview panel of her father showing up. We also have a preview panel of a very pissed Joyce.
Get him!
Kinda makes me wonder how famous Amazi-Girl really is. the last time I remember her trying to heroize, the people just ignored her. (the grafitti incident)
So we might be a bit further off from the fall from grace for Amazi-girl? She might actually stop this sonnavabongo.
Fun fact, Becky’s dad is using a Ruger no.1, (id’d by the trigger guard) and it is a single shot rifle, he didn’t reload after that warning shot previous, and since they immediately drove off, he hasn’t reloaded, ergo, empty gun.
Get his ass, Amazi-Girl!!
And then it turns out to be some kind of custom job.
Actually he did reload; read the strip again and you can see that he’s putting something into the breech in the panel where all the bystanders are diving for the floor and Joyce is having her panic attack.
That doesn’t matter much. It takes a long time to reload one of those, even for a skilled user and something tells me Ross isn’t skilled. He’s going to have precisely one shot at Amazi-Girl. After that, it’s going to be hand-to-hand.
ahh good eye, BenRG I didn’t catch that. and VERY nice attention to detail, Mr. Willis! you continue to earn my admiration!
It looked to me as though he did re-load.
In any case, when facing unarmed teenagers who are not themselves protected by a car, Big Toe Daddy’s car is a far more effective weapon than his rifle.
This. My day job is covering bicycle wrecks (Witch on a Bicycle; http://www.opusthepoet.wordpress.com) and as part of that I have memorized the fatality rates at various vehicle speeds. Below 23 MPH a motor vehicle is less deadly than a gun (9%), but at 23 MPH motor vehicles are fatal 10% of the time. As speed increases to just 30 MPH fatality rates go to 40%, hit 80% at 40 and start to level out at 50 because there are only so many people left to kill after you pass 8 out of 10, I mean by 50 you are getting real close to 100%. Above 60 MPH you start getting into speeds where the cyclist’s corpse starts doing major damage to the vehicle and driver injury starts becoming more common. I have been doing this since 2006 and I can only recall 5 fatalities caused by a cyclist or pedestrian coming through the windshield with most of those having impact speeds in excess of 80 MPH. So if Toedad hits AmaziGirl, we want him to do so as close to 20 MPH or slower as possible.
OTOH, Amazi-girl is chasing him, so the chances of a collision at speed are pretty low. Either she can’t catch up to him at all or she catches him because he’s slowed down by stop signs or other cars.
And Amazi-girls are more maneuverable than cars. Even on a skateboard.
Why is this an actual new character? Doesn’t Willis have infinite background characters from It’s Walky &c. that he can repurpose?
…what.
Like, all of the characters here are //sort of// adapted from the Walkyverse, right? But Sayid is new?
Because why not? The reason there are so many characters to adapt is, possibly, because he likes making characters. Why would he stop?
Not all. Asma, Raidah and her posse, and some of the parents are DoA-only characters. Riley appeared first in DoA and was then back-ported (much older) to Shortpacked!
Willis isn’t out of Walkyverse characters, but I think, leaving out real people and other people’s properties, he’s down to folks like bespectacled and vested girl, unimpressed coed, and Guns.
(And why isn’t unimpressed coed in the poll? I demand more unimpressed coed!)
I know that “unimpressed coed” is how Willis tagged her, and he probably has his reasons, but “coed” is … well, ask yourself what the male equivalent is (man-coed?)–and please let me know if I’m missing one. Yes, coed, of course, cones from co-educational. But even co-educational still has use, male students today are as much coeds in that sense as f-students. “Coed” is from a time when ‘student’ equaled male student and “coed” = vhey, there are chicks on campus now, hubba, hubba, (panty raid tonight!) and they’re even allowed to take classes!”
Actually, the original concept was that there were men’s colleges and women’s colleges. Men’s colleges taught math, physics, engineering, and other man stuff. Women’s colleges taught classes on becoming a teacher, nursing, social etiquette, and the things you need to teach your children. After all, women don’t have careers outside the home. When women started demanding a real, and equal, education. The campuses became co-educational. The male students (and later the female students) adopted the term coed to describe the new female students. Coed is really an outdated term, and an outdated concept. Now, everyone’s just a student. Even though some smell nicer than others.
The only character she ever interacted with was Roomies! Joe, so, “Hubba hubba, there are chicks on campus,” is honestly pretty appropriate.
Amber, this is a damn bad time to be listening to a single word that Blaine ever said to you.
That kinda sums up a too large part of her life, doesn’t it?
When you live your life under the thumb of an abusive asshole, you unfortunately pick up some bad habits.
People will tell you to ‘let go’ of them, which isnt it; you have to escape their grip.
True enough. It’s really hard to disassociate from the worst parts of the abuse, but even when you can actively recognize “what happened to me was wrong”, you’re still left with trying to fill the void left behind, and it can be a real mess trying to work through it.
Yes
Yes.
BenRG: ANY time is a bad time for that; it’s sucky waste of life-time. Probably is, even after you get free of the abuser physically, the abuse might have been uploaded into your brain & mind and runs itself without asking your permission. And once it’s internalized like that, the abusive voice speaks in your voice. And, its not under your concious volition; you don’t have to ask the abusive voice what it has to say, its going to tell you, and you cant just shut it up. There is help to be had to get free, but that’s another story.
Let us take a moment to appreciate that the author looked up and knew it would be Back to the future day, like, 4 months ago.
I can’t even plan stuff for the next week <_<
Did I miss something? Only place I’ve seen BTTF mentioned was in the comments…
The skateboard “deputising” vs. McFlys skate/hoverboard commandeering.
Well played indeed
so is amber gonna be the one in the hospital and will this coincide with her identity being revealed
no, Alfred will come to the rescue.. (hmm, who’s her Alfred?)
Either Ethan or Danny, I’d guess.
Is that an Amazi-board?
Well, NOW it is XD
I think she’s definitely excited.
I like the dark shades to Amazigirls comic-relief turn.
Question occurs to me, has Willis ever has a Native American character?
I now predict Amazi-Girl will save Becky and Ross will crash into a truckload of manure.
Sayid isn’t so.
Can Sayid be a main character now? I already love his design.
Well hello Sans.
Toedad’s about to get dunked on.
(everybody buy Undertale. It’s too good)
Brave like hero.
Smart like streetcar.
Knife =/= gun. Seriously,
I’m pretty sure even HE wouldn’t do something like this.
Sayidsaurus
Rock Paper Scissors Knife Gun
go get him Amazi-girl! also, it is impossible for me to imagine Amazi-girl’s voice wobbling as if unsure or scared.
Will Deputy Skateboard be a recurring character? It probably would have been easier to commandeer an inanimate object than appoint it with a human title, but then hey Amazi-girl works in amazing ways.
Now I’m obsessing over what the correct capitalization of “Amazi-girl” is, and your font isn’t helping, Willis.
Amazi-Girl, as is the norm for hyphenated hero names.
There is an example of an inanimate object becoming Amazi-Girls’ sidekick, but so far it has only happened in the fan-art!
My first guess would be the corn-popper, but your username and icon seem to suggest differently.
Alt-text made me remember this word puzzle:
You said said is said said I said said is said said said is not said said
Add punctuation and capitalization, and it’s a grammatically correct sentence.
You said, “Said is said ‘said’.” I said, “Said is said ‘said’, said is not said ‘said’.”
I’m not sure if there should be apostrophes around the first instance of ‘said’ inside each of the quotation marks, though. But I got it pretty close.
Close. To hear it right, you have to know that “Said” is a port city in Egypt, which is pronounced “Sayid”. The sentences imply that “you” pronounced it wrong, and I am correcting you. It works better when spoken aloud than when read.
“Some punk with a gun”…. Isn’t that a batman quote. I swore I’ve heard batman say that before… I think it was in the Justice League show when they travel to an alternate world and Batman fights Batman and Batman makes Batman give up by saying “And because of this no 10 year old kid will have to lose their parents to some punk with a gun”…. Or something.
This is just build up for like the ultimate heartbreak or the best redemption in Amber’s eyes. Do it Willis.
So we have a flashback to Amber, but only Amazi-girl is tagged.
Should we be worried about this?
Can see no rose cheek on her in the flashback!
Maybe this is the moment Amazi-Girl was born?
uhhh question… are those tattoos on sayids arms? or did he get seriously mangled a couple times while learning to skateboard or something?
I like how this runs into Back to the Future day with Marty borrowing boards left and right.
Does Sayid have tattoos or just really gnarly arm hair?
Even Amazi-Girl knows this is more dangerous than the bullies and vandals she normally deals with. But, her Dad’s voice is there in her head, telling her how worthless and pathetic she is. And she has to PROVE HIM WRONG.
It’s scary to realize that, for all the hate she feels for Blaine, she’s still trying to prove herself to him.
Is she trying to prove herself to show Blaine that he was wrong, or is she trying this to show to *HERSELF* that he was wrong?
What you can do to yourself in your own mind is far, far worse than what anyone else can actually do.
BTW, did anyone notice in Panel 3, Joyce’s eyes are panic eyes. She’s terrified to even talk to Sayyid. I wonder if he looks like Ryan, to her?
I think Amber is misunderstanding the complexity of the situation – and I don’t mean the gun. I mean the emotional component between a crazy father and his daughter. I doubt the strip where Becky starts crying when she points out that this scenario would end in her dad getting himself killed was a pure accident. Nor was the confused and scared look on Becky’s father’s face. This isn’t a scenario for punching. This is something more nuanced.
When a man kidnaps someone at gunpoint, you neutralize him by any means necessary and only then attend to other complexities.
1: Amber isn’t a cop, and is obviously projecting her own experiences over the one Becky is in.
2: And do you think that Becky would run out and kick her fallen dad and celebrate as Amber beats him half to death? If she did, that would be some pretty poor writing and destroy a lot of the character development.
Hey, I didn’t say it was going to be nice for her, but that asshole needs to be rendered a non-issue ASAP by whoever is in a position to achieve that. And frankly, it’s likely to end better for him at the hands of AG, as he’s less likely to get ventilated by a cop deciding to cut the gordian knot.
Fair enough. But my point is that you don’t just use “whatever means necessary”. Delicate situation is… well… delicate. That’s why I point out that Amber isn’t a cop. She is an untrained, unprofessional rage machine projecting her own experiences onto Becky’s situation. There may be a better and safer way to diffuse the situation than bravado – might not. All in how it’s written.
He’s shown willingness to beat and kill for his own bigotry. Frankly, I cannot give a single damn what AG will do to him.
And him being injured enough not to be able to engage in further shennanigans is a plus, so far as I’m concerned.
Saying you should do something and doing it aren’t exactly the same thing. Until we see what happened immediately after that, we don’t know what exactly he did. right now he claims not to have hurt anyone. Hard to say, considering he might not consider Dina quite “real”.
So yeah, he considered that he should do something – presumably violent. That doesn’t automatically equate to a “willingness to beat and kill for bigotry”. Not when he also said that he doesn’t “want” to hurt anyone.
Long story short: He’s a wacko. And no doubt we all cheer if he gets a beat down. But what is more interesting is Becky, her reaction. What Amber’s motivations are, are they leading her in a direction that will help, or will they end up causing more trouble. One thing is clear from the last panel, Amber is not well.
Wait, when has he shown those things specifically?
And the discussion isn’t really about what you would like, but about how the actions will affect the characters. We as readers might like lots of differnt things, but that’s really a dead-end discussion. Amber might have the best intentions, and you might like the result, but is it the wise choice for her to be making from an in-universe perspective, and is she acting for teh right reasons?
He came within a heartbeat of a full on gaybash just a few strips back, remember?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/comics/2015-10-13-astray.png
You really missed your calling as a hostage negotiator.
I’m just wondering what her plan is for getting Becky. Is she going to leap on top of the car? She’s proven that she can do this. Is she going to crash in through the windshield? What on earth is her plan?
…Does she even have one?
I think she’ll get non fatally wounded. While this scares me, I can at least breathe a little easier knowing that she’s not gonna die. But a severe injury will still be awful.
How do you think Danny is going to factor into this? if Amazi-Girl gets injured, Amber will be the one in the hospital. Will he be angry that she went after a guy with a gun? Proud? Will this be what ends the relationship? Very curious.
I could see the cape being useful for obscuring his windshield and forcing him to stop and get it out of the way.
Also, injury and success are not mutually exclusive.
PTSD is a byproduct of the flight or fight response. If you’re in a terrifying situation, your mind is saying “fight or run”. If you can’t do either, one of the results is PTSD. Amber has PTSD from the robbery, and anger mixed with the guilt heaped on her by her father. The result is Amazi-Girl. Everyone deals with PTSD in their own way. Hers is to help the weak. A lot of social workers and psychologists enter their fields for the same reason. As for a plan, I don’t think she has one. At least not yet. I also don’t think she can handle Fundie by herself. She’s strong and resourceful, but Fundie’s large and on a mission. Dina’s still unaccounted for, and may well be close by now. After all, we still don’t know why the car is stopped at the end of the road. Could a little dinosaur be blocking his way? He might be hesitant to run her down, he knows he has a lot to answer for, but assault with a motor vehicle could boost his sentence to life and he may not want to risk it. Stopping to move her, and the chase around the car, would delay him quite a while. If Becky can keep the rifle out of his hands, maybe by locking the door when he gets out, while the other two attack, then join the attack if she isn’t too traumatized to move, there’s a good chance he will still be down when the police arrive. To paraphrase the old adage: “Hell hath no fury like a group of pissed off college girls.”
Fascinating.
The other possibility is that the sight of Dina might send him into road-rage and he floors the gas, possibly spurring a rebellion by Becky against him, which might ether cause a crash or at least a slowdown.
Amber is my goddamn hero
oh good, there’s at least one person in the background on a phone. CALL THE POLICE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzuC8B46N_w
It’s good to see she’s approaching this with a clear mind and a solid plan.
Friendly reminder this strip is named “balls,” which Amazi-girl seems to have in abundance, unlike Danny.
They balance each other out.
Eh, he can step up sometimes. He’s just not always good at it.
This smells like tragedy, but maybe a temporally appropriate heroic soundtrack will help?
Gee, I sure wish there was something – maybe a number – you could call in case of emergencies like crazy religious assholes with guns.
*stares wistfully into the distance*
Just read Amazi- girl with a Batman voice, now wondering if she does the same
If I remember correctly there is one strip where it’s mentioned that Amber does in fact do a voice when she’s Amazigirl. Can’t remember where, but I think it was when she came through Ethan’s window and then Ethan and Danny talk about her doing a voice afterward.
Yes! Danny and Ethan were discussing her voice. Danny tried to imitate the Christian Bale-ness, and only achieved a medium-blue talk bubble.