Every time someone harangues me about being partisan in a historically/traditionally non-political zone since November 8th I get the burning desire to say “People are going to die, pull your head out of your ass. Or, if you’re actually pissed because I called your racist fuckbag of an illegitimate president exactly what he is, go fuck yourself.”
Everyone says trump supporters are so horrible. so, Who’s side drug an old man out of his car and beat him? Who’s side kidnapped a retarded kid and tortured him? Who’s side beat and ridiculed a homeless person? Who’s side is destroying collage campuses across the US? Who’s side is -consistently- getting exposed as lairs for claiming “Trump supporters assaulted me” when it never actually happened? Who’s side is SO obsessed with demonizing one man that they’d rather scream and cry and destroy everything rather than accept how things happened, Work hard towards improving their image next election, and in the mean time make the best of things?
I mean I get it. You’re mad, But I’m generally neutral leaning and from my stand point I can easily see how trump’s side won. you are so filled with accusations and hate that you can’t even see how hateful you are being. you can’t see that your side is JUST as bad. The way to “win” this isn’t to be all ” The other side is so horrible” The way to win is to come up with REAL ways to improve life for others. The way to win is to not to be violent extremists. The way to win is to prove that you are the better choice by actually BEING BETTER.
Locke, I understand you’re thinking you’re being neutral here but the reason people are mad is because:
1. People are being kicked out of their homes and forced from the country.
2. People are losing health care coverage which will kill friends and loved ones as well as impoverish people at best.
3. Protections for trans people have been removed.
4. Stripping US foreign aid which has saved the lives of millions and WILL kill tens of thousands of people in Africa at the LEAST.
Accepting this as how it works means that this is treated as normal or “that lovable scamp” versus ruined lives.
This is not exaggeration or hyperbole. This is also just the beginning.
Also,
-which side is supported by the KKK and actual neo nazis, one hint, it’s the republicans and Trump
-which side has actively attacked mosks and black churches, one hint, it’s the republicans and Trump
-which side wants to take away people’s healthcare, fuck over the poor, while giving tax credits to the rich, once again, republicans and Trump…
-Which side wants to fuck over transgender kids, yep, those scamps in the GOP again, with their fuhrer Trump
And that’s just a mere few of the many many reasons why Trump needs to be fought.
Your neutrality is a bit questionable when you regurgitate a stream of Fox News talking points. Yes most of those terrible things really happened. Yes, there are liberals who are hypocritical garbage people. That doesn’t mean those people or events are representative of the majority, or even their leadership.
But who’s candidate had a black supporter trying to ask a question dragged of a rally because he assumed they were a protestor? Who loudly, publicly offered to pay the legal bills for people who assault protesters? Who thinks sexual assault is a cool thing to brag about? Who took weeks to repudiate the endorsement of the KKK? And months to denounce hate crimes committed in his name? Who “celebrated” the weekend of MLK Jr day by insulting a personal friend and civil rights leader? Who rolled back protections for trans students? Who announced the lattice if VOICE, a program whose entire purpose is to stir fear and hatred of immigrants? Who is wasting millions of taxpayer dollars every week (which makes money from) by not moving his family to the White House, and spending almost every weekend at a resort that he owns? And then has the gall to say we had to but back on Medicaid? Who is rolling back regulations that keep our water clean, and our food and medicine safe?
We aren’t simply mad. The policy decisions being made will kill people.
Politics is not a game of people who score points and nothing matters except the points. Politics was, and remains, a field that affects millions. The politics of an imperial power like the USA affects the planet.
The President has stated he intends, and in no uncertain terms, to continue killings across the planet. He has, although not stated it outright, carried out actions consistent with his advisors stated intent to see millions of USians dead or on the streets, for any of a variety of statuses. Politics fucking matters.
(I recognize you didn’t say it didn’t, but were responding to someone who was ultimately making a vacuous statement of hypocrisy)
“Who’s side is destroying college campuses across the USA”
That’d be the republicans, looking to defund schools. It’s cute that you think minor property damage on a front facing building is real.
“Who’s side is being outed as liars for sexual assault”
Neither. Because that wasn’t, and still isn’t, a thing. Note that I am pointedly not denying the allegations against Bill Clinton. I’m pretty sure those fucking happened, for more or less the same reasons I’m pretty sure they did for Trump. White dudes with a shit ton of publicity and power, abusing their position by forcing women to have sex with them? Completely fucking unheard of, except by basically everyone.
“Why aren’t you trying to make things better for the next election”
A: I did that. You colossal nitwit.
B: Frankly, it’s not my fucking problem (In the USA) anymore.
C: It’s funny to me that you think destroying institutions couldn’t plausibly help folks.
D: ‘violent extremists’, they say, while ignoring that the first to wield violence – to the point of actual fucking murder – is the side currently in power, and it is the side that is FAR more given to glory in murder and death. To pretend black bloc anarchists or the like, folks who will throw a punch or break a window, are ‘equivalent’ to people who commit murders – especially people who are trying to kill minorities, and ESPECIALLY those who have made that violence their actual fucking goal, like, you know, the President’s chief advisor – is fucking lunacy.
I believe they meant physical assault, not sexual assault, but it’s still bullshit – the FBI has noted a long ass uptick in hate crimes based on race and religion, particularly for Jewish and Muslim folks.
yeah. There is an uptick. But .. here’s the funny thing. I’ve been attacked twice (jewish ) And both times it was by antifa. not only that but attacks on Muslims did not uptick sharply after trump won nor after he took office. It’s been rising at the same rate it rose while obama was in office
Well Trump is pro-Trump and constantly complains about lying. Maybe we are actually talking directly to the new President himself. If that is the case, Mr. Trump: please, please just stop hating people and making hate and violence easy.
And here I was thinking that yu were talking a bout Tornados in Oklahoma, yesterday, but it was a joke about “screen refresh”. Damn, I NEED mor coffee, I’m loving it.
“The crippling fear that everyone is judging me for everything I do all the time.” Is the most normal emotion Amber has expressed in quite a while, let her run with it.
I should try this “build a literal cocoon to cope” thing. (I would also like to try the “invite my friends in with me” but the lack of close friends is one of the things that needs to be coped with.)
I get the feeling if marijuana was legalized amber would be one those people mandated a prescription so she’d chill out. Which could be an actual thing seeing the growing support of about 93%. Also get back together with danny, pleassssse
So wanting someone to not get hurt because of how far they take a super hero gimmicks is comparable to turning on them. She almost got hit by a truck after getting flung off ross car. If this was a superhero comic, I’d be one thing but this story takes place in a more realistic setting. Sales and dany are in the right on the most of it, they just want her to be safe.
Well, except when the story isn’t in a more realistic setting. Like the car chase and most of AG’s other superhero antics.
And of course Danny did turn on Amazi-Girl: He told her he liked Amber better and that she should go away. Not a healthy thing to say to an alter. His motives were good, but that doesn’t mean it came across well.
From a logical standpoint, Danny was convinced that yes, what AG was doing was getting too dangerous.
Danny had every reason to be convinced the AG thing was going too far but the way he phrased it was not the best way to handle it because yes, it could be taken as turning against you rather than starting to be genuinely concerned because the possible consequences have gotten too high.
While reaffirming that he liked her and cared about her, not just the idea of dating a superhero (if we’re assuming no DID). The rejection is much less and framed in terms of caring that she gets hurt.
That’s…dude, no, I can’t get behind this interpretation of Danny’s behavior. Amazi-Girl is an amazingly unhealthy phenomenon she uses to compartmentalize her negative experiences. It’s kind of like a drug addiction, except it’s a drug addiction that beats bad guys up.
The problem Danny doesn’t get is if he loved Amber, he’d love a person who enjoys hurting people and psychotic obsessions. The only good part of Amber is the part she allows to be herself: which is Amazi-Girl. Danny said he loved the disguise and what she hates about herself.
The “only” good part? Do you not see her having a friendly, mutually-supportive conversation with Ethan right now? Did you forget those times when Amber helped Dina with her suicidal skills?
Not to mention that it was Amazi-Girl who stalked, then attacked Sal and her friends. Or, you know, that time she screamed at, then broke up with Danny for talking to Sal, and worrying that AG might get herself hurt.
Both alters have done good AND bad things. Loving Amber simply means loving someone who has problems, which Danny clearly is well aware of.
This is where the perception part comes in. What Danny meant and what Amazi-Girl heard are very different things.
And he did tell her to stop being Amazi-Girl, not to be more careful about it.
It was pretty clear to me that Danny didn’t want to seem like he was demanding anything, or delivering some kind of ultimatum, and that he understood that being Amazi-Girl was important to her, and not something she would want to give up entirely.
I think it’s also important to note that we have no idea how the rest of that conversation would’ve gone if Amazi-Girl had simply said “no” to that suggestion, instead of dumping Danny and leaving.
All Danny managed to get out was that one timid suggestion, and the explanation that he was afraid she might get killed. There’s no reason to assume he wouldn’t have been content with other solutions. He might well have been perfectly happy if Amazi-Girl had simply promised she would be more careful in the future.
This argument that Clif is making that Danny turned against her completely on a dime is really unfounded. It’s absolutely how AG sees it, but it’s a very unfairly skewed interpretation of Danny’s actions.
I agree that Clif’s argument isn’t well founded, but I’m looking at it from the point of view of Amazi-Girl as an alter. “I like Amber more” and “you took a break from Amazi-Girl”. Being Danny, it’s all very tentative, but it’s definitely a suggestion Amazi-Girl needs to stop, rather than be more careful.
I don’t think it’s surprising at all that AG took it badly or that she misunderstood him – he’s thinking of Amazi-Girl as just something Amber does rather than a separate persona.
Danny still turned on a dime and rejected a large part of who she is.
Or, alternately, Danny was told that Amber had nearly been killed, and so he asked her if she could take a break from doing the thing that had almost killed her, because he “didn’t want a dead Amber.”
I get why Amber views that as turning against her, but it’s not really a view I can share.
Because Danny had no reason to suspect before that what she was doing was at all dangerous. Doing those dangerous things had no part in why he felt proud of her. You read a different comic than I do.
Ooo, true. Personally though, after seeing Joyce, I think I’m more frequently focusing on something that may have already been there for quite some time.
I’m expecting Amber to dance around Danny and Sal’s identities and try to couch it in hypothetical terms (maybe as characters in a fanfic she’s writing).
The thing is most of her fellow students don’t notice she exists. The only people who are likely to judge her are Ethan, Mike, and Danny. Dina won’t, because she’s Dina. The rest of the cast don’t have a clue that there’s anything going on with Amber to judge, other than maybe Dorothy.
Even after freshman family weekend? Amber’s button was hit because, thanks to Blaine, she couldn’t just fade into the background. She thought she’d be known as “that chick with the asshole dad”.
With anxiety, everyone could be looking in the exact opposite direction of you and you would still feel their eyes and their judgement. Anxiety sucks like that.
oh god, I’m Amber with shorter hair and no glasses.
Also, I am totally expecting stoner dude to be plot relevant. Like Dana’s bf or something. He’ll still be too stoned to notice the chair slip out under him for the cube fort.
I mean, yes, booby cleavage, sure. But that the shirt seems to say “Our Prime…” something, which could be a Transformers reference. I’m sure that Ethan, at least, is more interested in that than in boobies.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
I tried to think up a good song about plush seating but all I got was Frank Zappa. Somebody else can handle the Muzak duties. Of just continue with the Roberta Flack from yesterday. It’s a fairly long song, as I recall.
You know that joke about how thinking people are out to get you is comforting because it makes you think that you are important? I was trying to craft a similar joke about social anxiety, but I’m drawing a blank.
It’s true, though. Far worse to contemplate a universe in which you are utterly insignificant, where no one (with the possible exception of family and/or friends) thinks or cares about you, and where nothing you think or do or feel will have any lasting/noticeable effect.
Hey Amber, don’t worry. Some of us are socially reclusive and inept in the same way you are, and are too busy self-judging to have time to judge you, and would welcome the company of someone too self-judging to judge us.
That’s what I meant to say. I think. Would that be a healthy or unhealthy friendship to have? Cause if it’s unhealthy then whoa boy do I have some friendships to fix.
Aliens would NOT NUKE US to keep us from getting into space!
…..
Seriously, why waste time with difficult-to-find plutonium when you can instead pop a few cheap solar sails and navigation computers on some dino-killer asteroids instead?
Maybe their home planet/interstellar Empire is very rich in plutonium. Or maybe they found a way to make nukes out of. Maybe I used “nuke” because at the last minute I thought “blow us all to hell” sounded like the aliens would be performing oral sex on us until we died. Maybe even all three. I’m just pretty certain that any species sufficiently advanced enough for space travel and observing us would find us…abrasive.
I figure most sufficiently advanced species would figure that we’d either kill ourselves off and save them the trouble before ever managing to get out of our solar system, or we’d be forced to mature to survive. Either way, no reason to kill us.
…. unless, you know, “sufficiently advanced” is only in a technological sense, and they still like blood sports.
If they still like blood sports they’ll keep some of us alive to be gladiators and Mameluke-style slave soldiers, since we’ve gotten pretty proficient at killing.
I feel like there was a massive conversation in the comics about doing just what Amber is suggesting with those chairs back when they first appeared in the comic.
Hey kids, if you find yourself insisting your brain is garbage, first be sure a total asshole didn’t make it that way, because you’d be selling yourself short. And then you’d be passing up a chance to realize what happened and go beat them up.
And we shall all stare at Mike and wonder where he got the stairs …. sorry … not sorry …. It is rare to see a Malapropism that doesn’t involve the word there/their/they’re. It is worth a sensible chuckle.
“The crippling fear that everyone everywhere is judging me for everything I do all the time” Book title? Either DoA or a Chuck Tingle production. Also, relatable.
Definitely the tile for either a song/album/compilation.
Metallica?
Rob Zombie?
Stomping Tom Conner or maybe Johnny Cash?
Maybe something by an Oktoberfest Ompapah Band or Irish?
Nah, if it were Chuck Tingle, it’d be something like, “Pounded In The Butt By The Crippling Fear That Everyone Everywhere Is Judging Me For Everything I Do All The Time”.
From my knowledge, crippling and crippled are fine because they are verbs which mean disabling, impairing or weakening but using the word cripple as a noun to refer to a disabled person is offensive.
Don’t be silly Amber we don’t judge yo… um…. we don’t follow your every mov… um…. we don’t have a webcomic comments section dedicated to discussion every little detail of your li…
um… OK, we kinda do. But right now I judge you to be a great friend.
I understand that art is not easy-peasy and leaning toward maximal perfection isn’t a thing artists usually have as their vision, especially in simple comics like this… but anyhow:
-Amber talks about a perfect cube… it’s much more of a rectangle, but then again who even says cuboid, rectangular cuboid, right cuboid, rectangular box, rectangular hexahedron, right rectangular prism, or rectangular parallelepiped, anyway?
-Anyhow, it’s a skinnier cuboid in the first frame, making “cube” less exact, but in the last frame, it’s significantly wider, making it much closer to a cube, so Amber would be much more correct then about it being a “perfect cube” if they stacked the other two on top of those ones.
Yes, this was just a pointless complaint about the dimensions of drawn chairs. I know, I wasted some minutes of effort over something nobody will care about, and everybody hates nitpickers anyway.
Eh, it was interesting looking up those synonyms for “cuboid”. Worth it.
If you’re talking about the “skinnier” chairs in the first frame and “wider” chairs in the second frame, I’ve been made aware that it’s an optical illusion. The rest about stacking the chairs to make something that’s not truly a cube though, but more of a cuboid, seems to be agreed upon.
I believe what Znayx means is:
Each chair is, itself, an open cube. Two chairs together, thus, are not; and two more stacked on top of them, definitely not. (Using the xyz axes: starting with dimensions of 1x1x1, to 2x1x1, to 2x1x2.)
Funny enough I had assumed that each was 2 units long by 1 high and 1 deep.
In this visualization, a unit would be one Amber butt to top of head.
But then I second guessed that my assumption was all wrong.
I remembered waist to head is the same distance as waist to foot and shoulder to shoulder is half that. Google says under human figure drawing that the torso is three heads high and the butt to foot distance is 4 heads.
So using Amber’s head as a unit of measure we can guesstimate the proportions of the seating volume of the chair.
Height = 4
Depth is twice her shoulder width = 4
Length is a little iffy since her legs are folded but lets say = 4
So the interior volume is two cubes but the exterior overall size and shape would not be because of the chairs internal structure and padding.
Then you have to add the legs.
I wonder what kind of durable and easy to clean textile they would be covered with due to BO and shoes and coffee and cola spills?
At the university where I work, any soft furniture that survives more than about a year is covered in a waterproof plastic material with a faint leathery texture printed into it. Even that ends up permanently stained after a while. (The paintball incident didn’t help.)
Suppose there’s a guy with the best brain and the best words and he’s absolutely certain he’s the best at everything. To establish if that were true, one would need to go up a level (meta) to where the larger ruleset about brains and words came from. Non-basic maths and logic. Godel – Escher – Bach style.
But it’s more likely the guy with the best brain doesn’t both with maths or reading.
Sometimes people buy a top of the line server class computer to play “free” games, watch “videos” and waste time ranting and posting cat pictures on MyFace or Spacebook?.
Amber/AmaziGirl is helping me while I work through coming to understand the trauma of my childhood, how I’ve normalized it, how I’ve been unconscious of it.
Thank you, Mister Willis, for creating such dynamically tangible characters.
Story telling feels like community therapy.
“Don’t worry Amber, that’s just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the universe has that.”
“Everyone? Ah! Well! Maybe that means that outside even the Universe there’s some…”
“Maybe… Who cares? Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say “Hang the sense of it” and just keep yourself occupied… Science has achieved some wonderful things, I know, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.”
“And are you?”
“No. That’s where it all falls down, of course.”
(with apologies to the late, great, Douglas Adams)
So long as, back in La Porte, Joyce’s dog doesn’t swallow what it thought was a fly but was actually the remnants of an intergalactic battle fleet who were seeking revenge for Amber’s ill-chosen words that annihilated two whole civilisations!
I know her alter ego is Amazi-Girl, but I still think lifting up those chairs and arrange it upside down would take more than one person unless she thinks Ethan would help her construct her Fortress of Solitude.
It would all depend on the materials of construction and how you lift them.
I they are the standard sears specials then there is not to much to them.
If they were made by students in the cabinetry program you might need a forklift if they used classical solid wood construction and joinery techniques.
How do I know? My college had some very comfortable open frame chairs in the morning lounge area – nice sunny and warm in the wee hours of the morning – that weighed over 200 lb each – solid hardwood is very solid and very heavy.
I do like her t-shirt: “Your Princess is in another castle” – Sassy but funny. It also says something about her and her fear that everything good is in Amazi-Girl, not her.
I swear, these kids are cleavaging cats and dogs, lately. First Joyce, and now Aven. I’m pretty sure they’ve both shown a little before, but something seems different about these last few strips. The cleavage represents clear thoughts?
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don’t worry, we’re too busy being just as shitty on ourselves to worry about you!
…well, except Trump but fuck that guy
…and ALL THE GOP
Every time someone harangues me about being partisan in a historically/traditionally non-political zone since November 8th I get the burning desire to say “People are going to die, pull your head out of your ass. Or, if you’re actually pissed because I called your racist fuckbag of an illegitimate president exactly what he is, go fuck yourself.”
Sometimes my beans get a little steamed.
I’m too worried about Trump and the GOP to worry about Amber.
Everyone says trump supporters are so horrible. so, Who’s side drug an old man out of his car and beat him? Who’s side kidnapped a retarded kid and tortured him? Who’s side beat and ridiculed a homeless person? Who’s side is destroying collage campuses across the US? Who’s side is -consistently- getting exposed as lairs for claiming “Trump supporters assaulted me” when it never actually happened? Who’s side is SO obsessed with demonizing one man that they’d rather scream and cry and destroy everything rather than accept how things happened, Work hard towards improving their image next election, and in the mean time make the best of things?
I mean I get it. You’re mad, But I’m generally neutral leaning and from my stand point I can easily see how trump’s side won. you are so filled with accusations and hate that you can’t even see how hateful you are being. you can’t see that your side is JUST as bad. The way to “win” this isn’t to be all ” The other side is so horrible” The way to win is to come up with REAL ways to improve life for others. The way to win is to not to be violent extremists. The way to win is to prove that you are the better choice by actually BEING BETTER.
Locke, I understand you’re thinking you’re being neutral here but the reason people are mad is because:
1. People are being kicked out of their homes and forced from the country.
2. People are losing health care coverage which will kill friends and loved ones as well as impoverish people at best.
3. Protections for trans people have been removed.
4. Stripping US foreign aid which has saved the lives of millions and WILL kill tens of thousands of people in Africa at the LEAST.
Accepting this as how it works means that this is treated as normal or “that lovable scamp” versus ruined lives.
This is not exaggeration or hyperbole. This is also just the beginning.
Also,
-which side is supported by the KKK and actual neo nazis, one hint, it’s the republicans and Trump
-which side has actively attacked mosks and black churches, one hint, it’s the republicans and Trump
-which side wants to take away people’s healthcare, fuck over the poor, while giving tax credits to the rich, once again, republicans and Trump…
-Which side wants to fuck over transgender kids, yep, those scamps in the GOP again, with their fuhrer Trump
And that’s just a mere few of the many many reasons why Trump needs to be fought.
Your neutrality is a bit questionable when you regurgitate a stream of Fox News talking points. Yes most of those terrible things really happened. Yes, there are liberals who are hypocritical garbage people. That doesn’t mean those people or events are representative of the majority, or even their leadership.
But who’s candidate had a black supporter trying to ask a question dragged of a rally because he assumed they were a protestor? Who loudly, publicly offered to pay the legal bills for people who assault protesters? Who thinks sexual assault is a cool thing to brag about? Who took weeks to repudiate the endorsement of the KKK? And months to denounce hate crimes committed in his name? Who “celebrated” the weekend of MLK Jr day by insulting a personal friend and civil rights leader? Who rolled back protections for trans students? Who announced the lattice if VOICE, a program whose entire purpose is to stir fear and hatred of immigrants? Who is wasting millions of taxpayer dollars every week (which makes money from) by not moving his family to the White House, and spending almost every weekend at a resort that he owns? And then has the gall to say we had to but back on Medicaid? Who is rolling back regulations that keep our water clean, and our food and medicine safe?
We aren’t simply mad. The policy decisions being made will kill people.
Politics is not a game of people who score points and nothing matters except the points. Politics was, and remains, a field that affects millions. The politics of an imperial power like the USA affects the planet.
The President has stated he intends, and in no uncertain terms, to continue killings across the planet. He has, although not stated it outright, carried out actions consistent with his advisors stated intent to see millions of USians dead or on the streets, for any of a variety of statuses. Politics fucking matters.
(I recognize you didn’t say it didn’t, but were responding to someone who was ultimately making a vacuous statement of hypocrisy)
“Who’s side is destroying college campuses across the USA”
That’d be the republicans, looking to defund schools. It’s cute that you think minor property damage on a front facing building is real.
“Who’s side is being outed as liars for sexual assault”
Neither. Because that wasn’t, and still isn’t, a thing. Note that I am pointedly not denying the allegations against Bill Clinton. I’m pretty sure those fucking happened, for more or less the same reasons I’m pretty sure they did for Trump. White dudes with a shit ton of publicity and power, abusing their position by forcing women to have sex with them? Completely fucking unheard of, except by basically everyone.
“Why aren’t you trying to make things better for the next election”
A: I did that. You colossal nitwit.
B: Frankly, it’s not my fucking problem (In the USA) anymore.
C: It’s funny to me that you think destroying institutions couldn’t plausibly help folks.
D: ‘violent extremists’, they say, while ignoring that the first to wield violence – to the point of actual fucking murder – is the side currently in power, and it is the side that is FAR more given to glory in murder and death. To pretend black bloc anarchists or the like, folks who will throw a punch or break a window, are ‘equivalent’ to people who commit murders – especially people who are trying to kill minorities, and ESPECIALLY those who have made that violence their actual fucking goal, like, you know, the President’s chief advisor – is fucking lunacy.
I believe they meant physical assault, not sexual assault, but it’s still bullshit – the FBI has noted a long ass uptick in hate crimes based on race and religion, particularly for Jewish and Muslim folks.
yeah. There is an uptick. But .. here’s the funny thing. I’ve been attacked twice (jewish ) And both times it was by antifa. not only that but attacks on Muslims did not uptick sharply after trump won nor after he took office. It’s been rising at the same rate it rose while obama was in office
Um, you may have tipped your hand on your supposed neutrality there. You used “anti-fascist” as an insult.
You can still post about it. Think about that, in comparison to where the bodies are.
Whose side supported a fascist government for the sole and express purpose of doing harm to those they hate?
You’re not “generally neutral,” you’re objectively evil and putting a Hell of a lot of effort into being ignorant.
Oh and basically everything you say is either a blatant lie or describes Trump.
You’re really gonna go pro-Trump and complain about lying? Seriously?
Well Trump is pro-Trump and constantly complains about lying. Maybe we are actually talking directly to the new President himself. If that is the case, Mr. Trump: please, please just stop hating people and making hate and violence easy.
Waited for forever for this to update so I can sleep satisfied.
I feel unfulfilled if I am not caught up to the latest DOA.
*F5* *F5* *F5* *F5* hey, it was for private conv after all
And here I was thinking that yu were talking a bout Tornados in Oklahoma, yesterday, but it was a joke about “screen refresh”. Damn, I NEED mor coffee, I’m loving it.
ahahaha, yes, Amber is definitely doing all right right now
NOTHING WRONG AT ALL
wait what happened to my glorious buttock
THAT’S NOT A BUTT
THAT’S NOT A BUTT AT ALL
It’s been gone for something like a week now. Is this the first in all that time that you’ve assessed your new avatar?
It was here yesterday (round these parts anyway)
Don’t you mean: “those round parts”?
*Ba-dum tish.*
Double-check your e-mail addy on the information block at the bottom of the comment add box.
“The crippling fear that everyone is judging me for everything I do all the time.” Is the most normal emotion Amber has expressed in quite a while, let her run with it.
Amber is me in this strip.
Same.
I should try this “build a literal cocoon to cope” thing. (I would also like to try the “invite my friends in with me” but the lack of close friends is one of the things that needs to be coped with.)
I bet if you built a sweet fort, people would want to check it out. That’s what birds seem to figure, anyway. Maybe try squawking more, too.
Nobody should ever be too old to build a pillow fort.
And yet…
Hmmm, something to suggest to IKEA to have them start a new product line called KUDDEFORT.
At least she’s mentioned crippling fear. That’s a start.
Three Jocelynes in a row, what are the odds?
More importantly, what does the one-armed bandit pay out?
The one-armed bandit lined up four Marys once, and all of us unfortunate enough to have her got punched.
For Jocelyne? I reckon the payout should be a publishing deal.
If you don’t want to get punched, I recommend not getting three Fayes on the QC machine.
And don’t talk about Robot Fight Club since there is no such thing as a Robot Fight Club – Bartholomew Punchbot CPA.
I get the feeling if marijuana was legalized amber would be one those people mandated a prescription so she’d chill out. Which could be an actual thing seeing the growing support of about 93%. Also get back together with danny, pleassssse
Danny will turn against who she is based on a few words from Sal. Ethan is a rock by comparison.
So wanting someone to not get hurt because of how far they take a super hero gimmicks is comparable to turning on them. She almost got hit by a truck after getting flung off ross car. If this was a superhero comic, I’d be one thing but this story takes place in a more realistic setting. Sales and dany are in the right on the most of it, they just want her to be safe.
Sales needs her to be safe! That way she can autograph merch for double profit.
Well, except when the story isn’t in a more realistic setting. Like the car chase and most of AG’s other superhero antics.
And of course Danny did turn on Amazi-Girl: He told her he liked Amber better and that she should go away. Not a healthy thing to say to an alter. His motives were good, but that doesn’t mean it came across well.
Whether or not you buy into the theory that Amber has a rare mental condition, Danny still turned on a dime and rejected a large part of who she is.
From a logical standpoint, Danny was convinced that yes, what AG was doing was getting too dangerous.
Danny had every reason to be convinced the AG thing was going too far but the way he phrased it was not the best way to handle it because yes, it could be taken as turning against you rather than starting to be genuinely concerned because the possible consequences have gotten too high.
While reaffirming that he liked her and cared about her, not just the idea of dating a superhero (if we’re assuming no DID). The rejection is much less and framed in terms of caring that she gets hurt.
That’s…dude, no, I can’t get behind this interpretation of Danny’s behavior. Amazi-Girl is an amazingly unhealthy phenomenon she uses to compartmentalize her negative experiences. It’s kind of like a drug addiction, except it’s a drug addiction that beats bad guys up.
The problem Danny doesn’t get is if he loved Amber, he’d love a person who enjoys hurting people and psychotic obsessions. The only good part of Amber is the part she allows to be herself: which is Amazi-Girl. Danny said he loved the disguise and what she hates about herself.
@C.T. Phipps:
The “only” good part? Do you not see her having a friendly, mutually-supportive conversation with Ethan right now? Did you forget those times when Amber helped Dina with her suicidal skills?
Not to mention that it was Amazi-Girl who stalked, then attacked Sal and her friends. Or, you know, that time she screamed at, then broke up with Danny for talking to Sal, and worrying that AG might get herself hurt.
Both alters have done good AND bad things. Loving Amber simply means loving someone who has problems, which Danny clearly is well aware of.
Danny didn’t reject anything about who she is. He was afraid for her safety. Something that is solidly justified by the fact that she almost died.
This is where the perception part comes in. What Danny meant and what Amazi-Girl heard are very different things.
And he did tell her to stop being Amazi-Girl, not to be more careful about it.
No, he didn’t. He suggested she take a break. He didn’t tell her to do it, nor did he even suggest she give it up entirely.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/teensiest/
It was pretty clear to me that Danny didn’t want to seem like he was demanding anything, or delivering some kind of ultimatum, and that he understood that being Amazi-Girl was important to her, and not something she would want to give up entirely.
I think it’s also important to note that we have no idea how the rest of that conversation would’ve gone if Amazi-Girl had simply said “no” to that suggestion, instead of dumping Danny and leaving.
All Danny managed to get out was that one timid suggestion, and the explanation that he was afraid she might get killed. There’s no reason to assume he wouldn’t have been content with other solutions. He might well have been perfectly happy if Amazi-Girl had simply promised she would be more careful in the future.
This argument that Clif is making that Danny turned against her completely on a dime is really unfounded. It’s absolutely how AG sees it, but it’s a very unfairly skewed interpretation of Danny’s actions.
I agree that Clif’s argument isn’t well founded, but I’m looking at it from the point of view of Amazi-Girl as an alter. “I like Amber more” and “you took a break from Amazi-Girl”. Being Danny, it’s all very tentative, but it’s definitely a suggestion Amazi-Girl needs to stop, rather than be more careful.
I don’t think it’s surprising at all that AG took it badly or that she misunderstood him – he’s thinking of Amazi-Girl as just something Amber does rather than a separate persona.
Danny still turned on a dime and rejected a large part of who she is.
Or, alternately, Danny was told that Amber had nearly been killed, and so he asked her if she could take a break from doing the thing that had almost killed her, because he “didn’t want a dead Amber.”
I get why Amber views that as turning against her, but it’s not really a view I can share.
Because Danny had no reason to suspect before that what she was doing was at all dangerous. Doing those dangerous things had no part in why he felt proud of her. You read a different comic than I do.
Ethan is far better for Danny.
Hey, my brain is also garbage!
Okay, back to crying.
Amber needs a haircut, I almost can’t make eye contact with her.
Oh wait
Amber and I share taste in furniture.
And probably like half the comments section does, too.
isn’t this the second time someone’s suggested the chair cube (chube)?
Not exactly.
Has Amber never been drawn with cleavage before or am I just pervy today?
Also me and my partner are having nearly this exact debate again tonight
A little from column A, a little from column Boobs
A little from the C cup, a little from the D cup
I could be wrong, but I don’t believe we’ve seen her with such a cleavage-revealing shirt before now.
Ooo, true. Personally though, after seeing Joyce, I think I’m more frequently focusing on something that may have already been there for quite some time.
First Joyce, now Amber? Soon cleavage will swallow Bloomington!
Oh, well, I can think of worse ways to go.
who’ll bring up the danny sized elephant in the room?
It is very small for an elephant, then. Downright petite.
It’s big! Huge! As big as the rooms they sleep in! Big enough to PackADorm.
….
*flees for dear punning life*
*audience groan*
Thank you, thank you. Now, for my next trick, I shall find an unrelated English word that rhymes with “wolf”!
My horse lost his hoof,
To the damable wolf,
So we then used his hide
To cover the side
Of a chair that’s now covered in Amber.
Erm, with Amber. In Amber just doesn’t work.
“wolf” and “hoof” don’t rhyme. So nyeh.
I’m guessing you pronounce hoof to rhyme with “goof” and not “woof”?
Half-rhymes are a thing.
Hoof rhymes with woof, but neither rhyme with wolf. That L isn’t silent.
Depends on which dialect of ‘merican you are using.
Depending on your accent, wolf and gulf. Or if you just want the spelling to be the same, wolf and golf.
There’s always “coolth,” for a different kind of half-rhyme.
When fleeing the puns, where does the elephant keep his few remaining possessions? …In his trunk!
How does an elephant retain its memory when it gets beyond old?
With a post-age stamp.
Where does the elephant make memories with his college-aged pal? In the hippocampus.
It’s a Mimmoth!
It’s a minmoth.
With his luck, probably Danny 😛
Way to elephant it up, Danny.
I’m expecting Amber to dance around Danny and Sal’s identities and try to couch it in hypothetical terms (maybe as characters in a fanfic she’s writing).
The thing is most of her fellow students don’t notice she exists. The only people who are likely to judge her are Ethan, Mike, and Danny. Dina won’t, because she’s Dina. The rest of the cast don’t have a clue that there’s anything going on with Amber to judge, other than maybe Dorothy.
Ah, but that’s the thing. Someone questioning their own self-worth doesn’t NEED people to be looking to feel everyone’s eyes on them.
Mike will be happy to judge her for the rest.
Even after freshman family weekend? Amber’s button was hit because, thanks to Blaine, she couldn’t just fade into the background. She thought she’d be known as “that chick with the asshole dad”.
We’re yet to see how that spread, or didn’t.
Given that it hasn’t been mentioned by anyone since, I think it’s clear that it didn’t.
With anxiety, everyone could be looking in the exact opposite direction of you and you would still feel their eyes and their judgement. Anxiety sucks like that.
“Why are they all avoiding looking at me? What have I done? What’s wrong with me?”
Your Princess is in another Box Chair Castle
oh god, I’m Amber with shorter hair and no glasses.
Also, I am totally expecting stoner dude to be plot relevant. Like Dana’s bf or something. He’ll still be too stoned to notice the chair slip out under him for the cube fort.
Not everyone everywhere, Amber. Just a bunch of strangers in a higher-level universe who look through the fourth wall at you every night.
My judgment for tonight: Dayum, wear that shirt more often.
That particular update would be a new bra, rather than a new shirt. And now I feel creepy for talking about a comic character’s cleavage.
Are you kidding, comic characters are the least creepy people to talk about sexually!
Especially when their creator also regularly puts out porn of them.
…. am I the ONLY one who was more interested in trying to figure out what that shirt said?
I mean, yes, booby cleavage, sure. But that the shirt seems to say “Our Prime…” something, which could be a Transformers reference. I’m sure that Ethan, at least, is more interested in that than in boobies.
I bet it’s “your princess is in another castle”.
*squints* Yeah, I think you’re right.
Still, Ethan probably did a double-take just to be sure.
She has worn it before. I don’t know if was to such…startling effect.
Agreed.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
I tried to think up a good song about plush seating but all I got was Frank Zappa. Somebody else can handle the Muzak duties. Of just continue with the Roberta Flack from yesterday. It’s a fairly long song, as I recall.
How about Is it in my Head? off Quadrophenia, for Amber in general? (I’ve got nothin’ for upholstery songs.)
Never a bad time for Zappa.
Amber remains adorable. I am pleased.
You know that joke about how thinking people are out to get you is comforting because it makes you think that you are important? I was trying to craft a similar joke about social anxiety, but I’m drawing a blank.
I have heard that if the hospital burns down, all the paranoid folks calmly lead everyone to safety. They were ready.
It’s true, though. Far worse to contemplate a universe in which you are utterly insignificant, where no one (with the possible exception of family and/or friends) thinks or cares about you, and where nothing you think or do or feel will have any lasting/noticeable effect.
If I wasn’t too lazy and this morning too grey and cold, I would try to find the relevant Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference here.
The total perspective vortex, or whatever it was called?
Deteriorata, anyone?
You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
And whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.
One of my favorite songs of all time. It never fails to cheer me up.
I actually find such contemplations comforting.
“The Cocoon of Upholstery” sounds like a more affordable (and comfortable) Fortress of Solitude.
Hey Amber don’t worry. Some of us are ok. *looks outside* Nevermind, I think the aliens will nuke us to keep us from accessing the rest of space.
Hey Amber, don’t worry. Some of us are socially reclusive and inept in the same way you are, and are too busy self-judging to have time to judge you, and would welcome the company of someone too self-judging to judge us.
That’s what I meant to say. I think. Would that be a healthy or unhealthy friendship to have? Cause if it’s unhealthy then whoa boy do I have some friendships to fix.
….. also, wait really? NUKE US?
Aliens would NOT NUKE US to keep us from getting into space!
…..
Seriously, why waste time with difficult-to-find plutonium when you can instead pop a few cheap solar sails and navigation computers on some dino-killer asteroids instead?
Maybe their home planet/interstellar Empire is very rich in plutonium. Or maybe they found a way to make nukes out of. Maybe I used “nuke” because at the last minute I thought “blow us all to hell” sounded like the aliens would be performing oral sex on us until we died. Maybe even all three. I’m just pretty certain that any species sufficiently advanced enough for space travel and observing us would find us…abrasive.
I figure most sufficiently advanced species would figure that we’d either kill ourselves off and save them the trouble before ever managing to get out of our solar system, or we’d be forced to mature to survive. Either way, no reason to kill us.
…. unless, you know, “sufficiently advanced” is only in a technological sense, and they still like blood sports.
If they still like blood sports they’ll keep some of us alive to be gladiators and Mameluke-style slave soldiers, since we’ve gotten pretty proficient at killing.
“aliens would be performing oral sex on us until we die”
I think I would be mostly ok with this, actually. I’m not sure if that’s a bad sign or a good sign.
Why would they do that? All the aliens want is to serve man.
(Do I need a spoiler alert tag for a 1950 short story/1962 Twilight Zone episode? “It’s a cookbook.”)
I feel like there was a massive conversation in the comics about doing just what Amber is suggesting with those chairs back when they first appeared in the comic.
Anyone know that strip that was?
Here‘s the first strip.
The only comment about that on that day was from Hijean.
I’m pretty sure we cued on to the possibilities by the next one, though. Definitely by the time Sarah was trying to use them to hide.
Yesterday, check it.
hashtag relatable
Hey kids, if you find yourself insisting your brain is garbage, first be sure a total asshole didn’t make it that way, because you’d be selling yourself short. And then you’d be passing up a chance to realize what happened and go beat them up.
Anybody know where you can get chairs like this? Or modular furniture in general?
I got some decent results by googling cube armchair
If IKEA are not doing modular furniture I’m ashamed of being a Swede.
oh, i really like the colors in this strip – all the red and blue! and amber is adorable.
people would probably stare at a chair cube regardless, heh
All the staring in the world cannot penetrate THE CUBE
next strip: Mike walks up and stairs at Amber judgementally from over the sidewalls.
And we shall all stare at Mike and wonder where he got the stairs …. sorry … not sorry …. It is rare to see a Malapropism that doesn’t involve the word there/their/they’re. It is worth a sensible chuckle.
No, no, no, you’re internetting wrong! You’re supposed to say “Thats not how you sepll stare you dumbass didnt u go to scool?”
“The crippling fear that everyone everywhere is judging me for everything I do all the time” Book title? Either DoA or a Chuck Tingle production. Also, relatable.
I’d rather “This brain is garbage. I want a different one.”
Definitely the tile for either a song/album/compilation.
Metallica?
Rob Zombie?
Stomping Tom Conner or maybe Johnny Cash?
Maybe something by an Oktoberfest Ompapah Band or Irish?
Monster Magnet
Nah, if it were Chuck Tingle, it’d be something like, “Pounded In The Butt By The Crippling Fear That Everyone Everywhere Is Judging Me For Everything I Do All The Time”.
I felt like leaving the alteration implicit. 😛 Anyone who’s heard of Tingle knows the score.
“Butt-Rammed By A Physical Manifestation Of The Superhero Personality I Created In Order To Distance Myself From My Emotional Trauma”
Silly Amber, that’s clearly a parallelepiped.
I mean… is it paranoia, if we really are judging (almost) every decision she makes?
Only if she’s noticed the fourth wall
I’m sorry but I’m wondering if the ablest language was a writing slip, or an in-character slip? Either way I hope it is not a book title.
Just to clarify, is the ableist language being referred to the word “crippling” in “crippling fear” or something else?
I would like to know too.
From my knowledge, crippling and crippled are fine because they are verbs which mean disabling, impairing or weakening but using the word cripple as a noun to refer to a disabled person is offensive.
No, it’s always a slur.
“Cripple” is a slur in all forms.
What “ablest” language?
“Crippling” is a slur.
Don’t be silly Amber we don’t judge yo… um…. we don’t follow your every mov… um…. we don’t have a webcomic comments section dedicated to discussion every little detail of your li…
um… OK, we kinda do. But right now I judge you to be a great friend.
I understand that art is not easy-peasy and leaning toward maximal perfection isn’t a thing artists usually have as their vision, especially in simple comics like this… but anyhow:
-Amber talks about a perfect cube… it’s much more of a rectangle, but then again who even says cuboid, rectangular cuboid, right cuboid, rectangular box, rectangular hexahedron, right rectangular prism, or rectangular parallelepiped, anyway?
-Anyhow, it’s a skinnier cuboid in the first frame, making “cube” less exact, but in the last frame, it’s significantly wider, making it much closer to a cube, so Amber would be much more correct then about it being a “perfect cube” if they stacked the other two on top of those ones.
Yes, this was just a pointless complaint about the dimensions of drawn chairs. I know, I wasted some minutes of effort over something nobody will care about, and everybody hates nitpickers anyway.
Eh, it was interesting looking up those synonyms for “cuboid”. Worth it.
I thought the same thing, and it bothers me.
i’m glad someone else picked it up.
If you’re talking about the “skinnier” chairs in the first frame and “wider” chairs in the second frame, I’ve been made aware that it’s an optical illusion. The rest about stacking the chairs to make something that’s not truly a cube though, but more of a cuboid, seems to be agreed upon.
Try measuring the chairs in the first panel vs the last panel; they’re the same, it’s an optical illusion from the placement of speech bubbles.
I believe what Znayx means is:
Each chair is, itself, an open cube. Two chairs together, thus, are not; and two more stacked on top of them, definitely not. (Using the xyz axes: starting with dimensions of 1x1x1, to 2x1x1, to 2x1x2.)
Funny enough I had assumed that each was 2 units long by 1 high and 1 deep.
In this visualization, a unit would be one Amber butt to top of head.
But then I second guessed that my assumption was all wrong.
I remembered waist to head is the same distance as waist to foot and shoulder to shoulder is half that. Google says under human figure drawing that the torso is three heads high and the butt to foot distance is 4 heads.
So using Amber’s head as a unit of measure we can guesstimate the proportions of the seating volume of the chair.
Height = 4
Depth is twice her shoulder width = 4
Length is a little iffy since her legs are folded but lets say = 4
So the interior volume is two cubes but the exterior overall size and shape would not be because of the chairs internal structure and padding.
Then you have to add the legs.
I wonder what kind of durable and easy to clean textile they would be covered with due to BO and shoes and coffee and cola spills?
At the university where I work, any soft furniture that survives more than about a year is covered in a waterproof plastic material with a faint leathery texture printed into it. Even that ends up permanently stained after a while. (The paintball incident didn’t help.)
Wow… It is an optical illusion (about the width of the chairs being different in the two panels). I really was wrong about that part…
But StClair also tackles the other point I made, a more correct point. I think we can agree that they won’t make a *true* cube when put together.
(wow, that illusion is so weird)
“This brain is garbage. I want a different one.”
I feel you there, Amber. I feel you there.
I’m angry that my college didn’t have that kind of furniture. Where was my tuition money going if not for giant, world-sealing-off chairs?
Mine had them but they were bolted to the floor.
Sorry, Amber. You’re a college student, now. Y’all have to learn to live with cheap noodles.
I feel the same about my brain on many occasions
But without judging how can you be found not guilty?
Oh hey, Amber is putting herself down again.
News at eleven.
I think my brain is amazing and wonderful. But then I remember that it’s my brain that’s telling me that.
But if your brain is amazing and wonderful, how could it be wrong?
Suppose there’s a guy with the best brain and the best words and he’s absolutely certain he’s the best at everything. To establish if that were true, one would need to go up a level (meta) to where the larger ruleset about brains and words came from. Non-basic maths and logic. Godel – Escher – Bach style.
But it’s more likely the guy with the best brain doesn’t both with maths or reading.
bother no both
Sometimes people buy a top of the line server class computer to play “free” games, watch “videos” and waste time ranting and posting cat pictures on MyFace or Spacebook?.
Poor Amber! It’s easy to forget sometimes just how many problems she has just in functioning!
I think it’s kind of sweet that even when Amber wants to seal herself off from the world, she wants Ethan on the inside with her.
^this
It IS kind of sweet, until my brain starts retelling it as a kidnapping-murder-suicide in a means similar to the end of “A Cask of Amontillado”.
“I lit a match, and I smilled at Fortunato as he clawed vainly at the brickwork. ‘Well, isn’t this cosy?’ I asked.”
Amber/AmaziGirl is helping me while I work through coming to understand the trauma of my childhood, how I’ve normalized it, how I’ve been unconscious of it.
Thank you, Mister Willis, for creating such dynamically tangible characters.
Story telling feels like community therapy.
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/02/387007941/take-the-ace-quiz-and-learn-what-it-does-and-doesnt-mean
(Exchange “mother” for “parent”; the data there is dated.)
“Don’t worry Amber, that’s just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the universe has that.”
“Everyone? Ah! Well! Maybe that means that outside even the Universe there’s some…”
“Maybe… Who cares? Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say “Hang the sense of it” and just keep yourself occupied… Science has achieved some wonderful things, I know, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.”
“And are you?”
“No. That’s where it all falls down, of course.”
(with apologies to the late, great, Douglas Adams)
So long as, back in La Porte, Joyce’s dog doesn’t swallow what it thought was a fly but was actually the remnants of an intergalactic battle fleet who were seeking revenge for Amber’s ill-chosen words that annihilated two whole civilisations!
“But that’s impossible!”
“No, just very VERY improbable!”
Hmm…
I didn’t change email or name!
That’s weird!
(And a little ironic given the posts!)
Sooooooooooo a safe space ?
Definitely but Amber’s social anxiety makes it on a very, very immediate psychological level.
I know her alter ego is Amazi-Girl, but I still think lifting up those chairs and arrange it upside down would take more than one person unless she thinks Ethan would help her construct her Fortress of Solitude.
It would all depend on the materials of construction and how you lift them.
I they are the standard sears specials then there is not to much to them.
If they were made by students in the cabinetry program you might need a forklift if they used classical solid wood construction and joinery techniques.
How do I know? My college had some very comfortable open frame chairs in the morning lounge area – nice sunny and warm in the wee hours of the morning – that weighed over 200 lb each – solid hardwood is very solid and very heavy.
happy international women’s day!
A cocoon sounds nice… I could go to sleep in that and when I wake up I’d be someone completely different and not have to be who I am now.
Butterflies must have it good.
Or you could be an astronaut. They sleep in cocoons.
*appropriate gesture of support*
I do like her t-shirt: “Your Princess is in another castle” – Sassy but funny. It also says something about her and her fear that everything good is in Amazi-Girl, not her.
More like “Arrange furniture UNTIL nobody’s watching.”
Tfw you wish you could reset your brain/body to factory settings but your factory settings are terrible
I know all too well how you feel Amber. I truly do. May the god of upholsteryshine brightly upon you.
Mr Willis with all due respect I have had just about enough of your trucks for one lifetime please.
they made a lovenest. Gross
I swear, these kids are cleavaging cats and dogs, lately. First Joyce, and now Aven. I’m pretty sure they’ve both shown a little before, but something seems different about these last few strips. The cleavage represents clear thoughts?
Its some pretty decent cleavage going on, taking on Billies crown maybe 🙂
“Its okay Amber. Most people don’t even know you exist at all! All of your problems and dreams mean absolutely nothing to them!”