for some reason my brain immediately autocorrected your comment to “Stop smiling like that!” which in context brings the awkward situation to “troublingly kinked”
there is a Preston Sturges movie, Hail the Conquering Hero, where the perpetually campaigning Mayor Everett Noble never misses an opportunity to slip in a plug for the family business – “the Noble Chair Company – seats of all description”
As someone who remembers commenting on that day, the ban was indeed lifted then – my own “test” of that phrase didn’t show up in my comment initially, but later that day (and persisting now, as you can see), the censoring of that phrase no longer existed.
”Gah! It was five years ago!”
“More specific.”
“In the spring?”
“More specific.”
“On a Wednesday?”
“Oh! Right! Now I remember. Because it was Laundry Night, and I had trouble getting the blood out of my clothes.”
“Oh, that is IT!”
It’s Ethan. I think he may very well be the most awkward member of the cast, even moreso than Danny, Amber, or Joyce. (Joyce probably reaches higher level of awkward, but in spikes, versus Ethan’s baseline being smooth as a gravel milkshake.)
Still, he just got thrown into a really complicated and dramatic situation and he takes the first opportunity to try to defuse it, instead of letting it built up into a whole mountain that overshadows everything. I’m impressed. That’s really brave what he’s doing there, facing a past trauma can be a really scary thing.
Oh, I am not going to take that away from him. This is unusual for him, given how he has avoided conflict to his detriment a lot, like cowing to his mom.
I do wonder if, well, hooking up with Mike has been good for his confidence, or if he otherwise would take this step.
He wouldn’t have known about vibrating knifes, considering that he was much to sheltered to recognize transvestites (80ties blockbuster films knew squat about queerness).
Ethan, if you are doing what I think you’re about to do… this could be really good, and I could be really proud of you, it’s definitely tough and scary.
(Please don’t out Amber with it. She needs to be the one to have that conversation and initiate it herself.)
As do I, but I can only see it getting a thousand times worse if Ethan talks about her prematurely. (For a start, her last lines to him were ‘let me like this guy without making it a thing!’ even though she knows full well it IS a thing, and he had kind of overstepped his bounds implying her liking Walky was just a way to work through trauma – even if her subconscious was a factor there, it’s obviously reductive.) The last thing Amber needs is a fight with Ethan, and the last thing the Amber/Walky relationship needs is Sal telling Walky and it not even being Amber who initiated the talk. Amber will not come off well there.
I think maybe ‘I don’t think she’s ready to talk about it, but the girl who stabbed you is a friend of mine and she is on campus’ would be okay, or just referring to a friend who was there as well and told him, but mentioning Amber by name and her trauma – potentially including AG in here – would probably mean a confrontation that would go disastrously for Amber because she’s blindsided.
I think walky knowing what happened is really important for their relationship. This is one of the secrets in their relationship that really need to be told.
It should be amber who tells this though. And I’m not sure she could handle it. Especially not if she doesn’t see it coming.
Yeah, I want it to be Amber’s choice, and I want it to be soon so that there’s any chance the relationship doesn’t completely implode when all the secrets are revealed. I’m not particularly hopeful she will, but I still can want.
Was this a dagger that you held before me,
the blade towards my throat? Come, let me ask you..
Is it nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous memory,
Or by opposing it, deny it?
There’s no such thing.
My mind has made a fool of all the other events,
or else is worth all the rest.
Still trying to work out why she closed her eyes at the end of last strip, and still has them closed in the first panel here. Is this her way of not looking at the tall guy she knows she can’t go for (though maybe not the reason she can’t)? Or is it “I can’t be bothered to get pissed off right now, so I’m just going to close my eyes and if he checks me out, I won’t know” (I don’t think she knows he’s gay.) Or something else?
Not sure. Maybe she’s thinking about something? Maybe she’s still kind of annoyed at Joyce and Carla? Maybe she saw him freeze and stare and, not knowing why, getting annoyed because she’s not really doing anything bad or scary?
Hmm. That last one seems more likely to be true — it’s a weird sort of “I am superior to you mortals and clearly not paying any attention to you at all” look, so possibly this is her going to her Zen place (i.e. thinking of Marcie telling her off) and not snapping at him and therefore possibly starting something.
I think that’s just how he draws people minding their own business. I don’t think she even noticed him. He could have drawn her with her eyes straight ahead, but that might have looked too ambiguous?
I don’t think she wants to think about the fact that people can see her wearing a jacket with “RUTTEN” written on the sleeves; she’s been unusually self-conscious about that.
Actually we have seen a lot from Sal’s perspective. Her guilt over Marcie’s injury (along with a desire to pay for her medical bills), certain “injustices” that have occurred.(wealthy kid avoiding punishment)
I would pay so much money to see the robbery from Sal’s PoV, but because I’m a student, I am happy to pay $5 to see tomorrow’s earlier and am hoping we’ll see more in strip. I trust Willis.
I also trust it will be very upsetting but I mean..it was hardly a fun day so.
Yes please. Talk about it, scream about it, cry about it, I don’t care what happens from this point on as long it finally gets out in open and they can put the entire ugly conflict behind them.
I hope this ends with him finding a bit of peace… even if she doesn’t apologize, I hope he sees the regret in her, and it helps him to deal and move on.
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“Hello. My name is Ethan Siegal. You threatened me with a knife. Prepare to have a rather awkward conversation.”
“STOP SAYING THAT!”
“You’ve done nothing but study transformers for 20 years?”
He has a very specific set of Overkills.
for some reason my brain immediately autocorrected your comment to “Stop smiling like that!” which in context brings the awkward situation to “troublingly kinked”
Probably because of Becky’s smile.
Well I it’s a good thing he’s going to take a stab at clearing the air right away, after all we wouldn’t want to let this wound fester for years …
Ethan is definitely a cut above the rest.
But clearly a little on edge.
That’s ok, Ethan can handle it.
don’t knock it just yet, he might parry it into a fun new friendship
It’d be knife if they became friends, wouldn’t it? Though it might give Amber some ideas for her slashfic…
I’m sure your comment will whet some peoples appetites …
I agree, he’s reached the point where he’s got a real edge and everyone else is gonna haft to hone their skills or end up on their butts.
he’s en-guard for anything, he will thrust himself into a solid conversation with her
Perhaps we should hilt this before we tip over into nonsense?
I feel a shiv-er coming on
Oh nice!
That really bolstered this thread 🙂
butten
Is that the division of Ruttech that manufactures things like ejector seats?
either that or toilet seats…
Seats of all types!
there is a Preston Sturges movie, Hail the Conquering Hero, where the perpetually campaigning Mayor Everett Noble never misses an opportunity to slip in a plug for the family business – “the Noble Chair Company – seats of all description”
ejector toilet seats?
He just wants to ask if he can join her Carla fanclub, since they apparently get such nice jackets.
Fuck yeah, sign me up.
“…wanna play apples to apples?”
“Yeah, but only if you tell me what the deal is with you and Joyce because I have wondered ever since she told me you broke up.”
oh, right, THAT was a thing
Sal feeling like she missed a lot of plot is one of my favorite strips of her interaction with Joyce
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/damngirl/
“I was gay and we handled it poorly.”
“*Sigh* Of course you did.”
“. . . but you held me at knife point.
Remember me, maybe?”
I hold a lotta people at knife point, your gonna have to be more specific.
The day I held you at knifepoint was the most important day of your life, but for me it was Tuesday.
Wasn’t that phrase censored here a while ago?
I guess the ban was lifted when Faz used a very similar phrase in comic.
If I remember correctly it was during the comics when Faz claimed that he had invented a crypto-currency.
Here we go – not clear from the comments if the censor was inactivated that day or some commentors found clever ways to bypass it.
As someone who remembers commenting on that day, the ban was indeed lifted then – my own “test” of that phrase didn’t show up in my comment initially, but later that day (and persisting now, as you can see), the censoring of that phrase no longer existed.
”Gah! It was five years ago!”
“More specific.”
“In the spring?”
“More specific.”
“On a Wednesday?”
“Oh! Right! Now I remember. Because it was Laundry Night, and I had trouble getting the blood out of my clothes.”
“Oh, that is IT!”
Recall me maybe
*screaming intensifies*
Literally what I was thinking. My only coherent thought is “AHHHHHH”
Nah, this’ll be healthy. Awkward, but healthy. Just so long as no one miscommunicates anything, and what are the odds of that?
All of the odds.
*Prepares the blanket piles and comforting warm beverages*
*Especially if we get a scene change next*
Opposite for me. This soothes me.
I have seen some confusion. This is ‘excited’ screaming, not ‘scared where this is going’ screaming.
There’s plenty of both kinds of screaming going on, I’m sure.
Oh yeah. Even if good things come out of this, it’s gonna hurt on the way.
*Screams externally*
Hello, It’s Me
I thought about this for a long long time… (an anthem from the Malaise Era)
I would op for that nice Presley boy’s, “There’s a whole lot of screaming going on. “
Ethan is a braver soul than me
He IS being brave. Really out of everyone, and I love everyone, I’m always proudest of Ethan.
(Okay, Leslie in SP!, but Ethan here.)
Big ol’ 25 here, ready for the emotions.
But you took me hostage. Don’t stab me maybe.
My song references are getting as old as they are obscure. I was going with
Hold-up girl, please look at me
Hold-up girl, what do you see?
Even older, if not as obscure:
Hey there, hold-up girl,
Strolling down the hall, so fancy free
Nobody you meet could ever see
The anger and rage inside you
…dammit, I’m going to be thinking of these all night now.
I wanna be Hold-up Girl, wanna be Hold-up Girl
That’s the most important thing to me
Hold-up Girl
She’s been living in her hold-up world….
It’s hard to be alright
’round your crazy,
But you took me hostage
Don’t stab me maybe
But here’s this dagger, so stab me maybe….
Literally zero chance of this not being awkward, so might as well jump right into it!
… Oh geez he’s jumping right into it.
It’s Ethan. I think he may very well be the most awkward member of the cast, even moreso than Danny, Amber, or Joyce. (Joyce probably reaches higher level of awkward, but in spikes, versus Ethan’s baseline being smooth as a gravel milkshake.)
Still, he just got thrown into a really complicated and dramatic situation and he takes the first opportunity to try to defuse it, instead of letting it built up into a whole mountain that overshadows everything. I’m impressed. That’s really brave what he’s doing there, facing a past trauma can be a really scary thing.
Oh, I am not going to take that away from him. This is unusual for him, given how he has avoided conflict to his detriment a lot, like cowing to his mom.
I do wonder if, well, hooking up with Mike has been good for his confidence, or if he otherwise would take this step.
Agreed.
I feel like I should have known and could never have known that it would be Ethan who would break the ice on this.
Assuming that’s what’s about to happen.
Judging by his facial expression, it’s what he wants to do. We’ll see if he manages to pull through or backs off last minute.
**Louder Internal Screaming
Here’s my number, don’t stab me baby
I don’t know maybe he would welcome a certain type of stabbing if she had the right type of “knife.”
(It’s me uncensored yet again)
If she had the right type of ‘knife’, she COULD call him! 😉
Even if the phone isn’t cutting-edge?
Knife? You call that a knife? ‘Ere, THIS is a knife! *(Holds up the one that twists and vibrates)*
He wouldn’t have known about vibrating knifes, considering that he was much to sheltered to recognize transvestites (80ties blockbuster films knew squat about queerness).
Ethan, if you are doing what I think you’re about to do… this could be really good, and I could be really proud of you, it’s definitely tough and scary.
(Please don’t out Amber with it. She needs to be the one to have that conversation and initiate it herself.)
She should, but I worry that if Amber’s left to initiate that on her own it could be a very long time yet before it happens.
As do I, but I can only see it getting a thousand times worse if Ethan talks about her prematurely. (For a start, her last lines to him were ‘let me like this guy without making it a thing!’ even though she knows full well it IS a thing, and he had kind of overstepped his bounds implying her liking Walky was just a way to work through trauma – even if her subconscious was a factor there, it’s obviously reductive.) The last thing Amber needs is a fight with Ethan, and the last thing the Amber/Walky relationship needs is Sal telling Walky and it not even being Amber who initiated the talk. Amber will not come off well there.
I think maybe ‘I don’t think she’s ready to talk about it, but the girl who stabbed you is a friend of mine and she is on campus’ would be okay, or just referring to a friend who was there as well and told him, but mentioning Amber by name and her trauma – potentially including AG in here – would probably mean a confrontation that would go disastrously for Amber because she’s blindsided.
I think walky knowing what happened is really important for their relationship. This is one of the secrets in their relationship that really need to be told.
It should be amber who tells this though. And I’m not sure she could handle it. Especially not if she doesn’t see it coming.
Yeah, I want it to be Amber’s choice, and I want it to be soon so that there’s any chance the relationship doesn’t completely implode when all the secrets are revealed. I’m not particularly hopeful she will, but I still can want.
What i’m wondering is, once Sal realizes who Ethan is, will she be able to connect the dots on her own and figure out who Amber is?
Yeah this is gonna be incredibly awkward. I don’t even know how you would start this conversation.
Well, if he wants to make sure it’s awkward, he could always lead with “I know why you wear gloves.”
I can’t believe I’m so dense I had never made that connection.
Odds of him bringing up Danny as a conversation starter?
Oh right Danny… hmm🤔
Yesss Ethan, you go, you !
Was this a dagger that you held before me,
the blade towards my throat? Come, let me ask you..
Is it nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous memory,
Or by opposing it, deny it?
There’s no such thing.
My mind has made a fool of all the other events,
or else is worth all the rest.
Please consider yourself upvoted.
Meanwhile, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are wondering why a certain forest is on the move.
(No doubt they are also pondering one of the greatest questions of all time: “Who would fardels bear?”)
+1 for that absolutely unexpected but amazing reference
Sal: [exuent, pursued by a bear]
I’m no expert, but I think we otter be able to come up with a better descriptor for Ethan — he doesn’t strike me as a bear at all …
Still trying to work out why she closed her eyes at the end of last strip, and still has them closed in the first panel here. Is this her way of not looking at the tall guy she knows she can’t go for (though maybe not the reason she can’t)? Or is it “I can’t be bothered to get pissed off right now, so I’m just going to close my eyes and if he checks me out, I won’t know” (I don’t think she knows he’s gay.) Or something else?
Not sure. Maybe she’s thinking about something? Maybe she’s still kind of annoyed at Joyce and Carla? Maybe she saw him freeze and stare and, not knowing why, getting annoyed because she’s not really doing anything bad or scary?
Hmm. That last one seems more likely to be true — it’s a weird sort of “I am superior to you mortals and clearly not paying any attention to you at all” look, so possibly this is her going to her Zen place (i.e. thinking of Marcie telling her off) and not snapping at him and therefore possibly starting something.
I think that’s just how he draws people minding their own business. I don’t think she even noticed him. He could have drawn her with her eyes straight ahead, but that might have looked too ambiguous?
I don’t think she wants to think about the fact that people can see her wearing a jacket with “RUTTEN” written on the sleeves; she’s been unusually self-conscious about that.
She may care less now that Carla’s seen it. Cat’s out of the bag.
…dude has some brass.
“Can I talk to you about our savior, Amazi-Girl?”
Hmmm, if they actually have an honest talk about the incident, I wonder if we’ll learn Sal’s actual feelings about “that girl who stabbed me”?
I expect to learn more about the reason why she did this.
This, this, this! Until yesterday’s blue panel we’ve only seen it from Amber’s perspective, where Sal is the one-dimensional villain.
Actually we have seen a lot from Sal’s perspective. Her guilt over Marcie’s injury (along with a desire to pay for her medical bills), certain “injustices” that have occurred.(wealthy kid avoiding punishment)
We haven’t seen either of the actual robberies though.
Right. We don’t know how it all ties together.
We don’t know anything about the other robbery at all.
I would pay so much money to see the robbery from Sal’s PoV, but because I’m a student, I am happy to pay $5 to see tomorrow’s earlier and am hoping we’ll see more in strip. I trust Willis.
I also trust it will be very upsetting but I mean..it was hardly a fun day so.
Curse you, serial release format!!
Ethan took the initiative!
Now to foolishly hope this all ends well.
Yes please. Talk about it, scream about it, cry about it, I don’t care what happens from this point on as long it finally gets out in open and they can put the entire ugly conflict behind them.
Why do you want Willis’ children to starve?
“Shout, shout, let it all out.”
(Come on, I’m talking to you.)
I think that, at some point soon, we’re going to read Sal saying: “Ah think y’r pretty nervous ’bout somethin’!”
“maybe you don’t remember me? I’m the kid you held hostage with a knife a few years ago”
Good times, good times.
This is gonna be super awkward and yet I’m kinda glad Ethan’s actually gonna talk to Sal.
AAGGHH. But seriously, Ethan, kudos for facing this head on.
And here Ethan reallizes “hey she looks enough like Walky I can do like Amber and imagine she is his brother and make mama proud”
(Yes this is supposed to be a shitty take, don’t @me)
I bet she blows him off, thinking he’s hitting on her.
I hope not though because he will realize that Sal is not that same girl who threatened him.
agreed for the first part, but he already know that, they met before
I think she knows he’s gay. But if she thinks he’s hitting on her, she might not blow him off. She goes for tall.
I feel like Ethan is going to Danny this up.
I hope this ends with him finding a bit of peace… even if she doesn’t apologize, I hope he sees the regret in her, and it helps him to deal and move on.
“Can I interest you in a gratuitous grudge match?”
ETHAN. GROWTH.
Wait if you talk about Amber’s stuff without her there I might be worried