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.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Paint the Town Red
Windy, Winter Jay Kiakas
Winona runs a werewolf shelter with partner in crime, Odile in the Gothic city of Merlot. One day they take in an injured vampire, and soon unravels many of the dark secrets of Merlot.
No End
Erli, Kromi
A queer romance about people attempting to build lives in a cold, post-apocalyptic world ravaged by hordes of undead.
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.
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!
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.
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I bet it’s cold linoleum too, or maybe an area rug Amber or Dina put down. I can’t imagine a college being crazy enough to put down wall to wall carpet; they’d have to replace it annually.
excuse me, I’m sorry. I was about to make a reference to the porn parody of Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny but then I remembered that I’d blocked it from my brain.
Only the Buttatar, master of all four vegetables, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished. A hundred years passed and my brother and I discovered the new Buttatar, an carrotbender named Aang.
I’m fairly sure that Clark has never been that coy in any of his iterations, even in his (actually genuinely a good guy, and not just a tropey and unlikable macho man or emo kid) iterations. I think I’d like him a lot more if he was ever written with that degree of personality range.
‘course, so long as Five for Fighting’s “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” exists, I’ll be a huge fan of the sheer pathos and romance of his character.
Is it Hellsing Ultimate Abridged?
I don’t know where I’ve heard that line before, but I know it’s familiar, and that’s the first thing that I could think of.
isn’t this bible verse only telling us that queers have more imaginative sex than just “lay like with a woman“?
(also… your typical gay man wouldn’t lie with a man as he would with a woman, if we assume that with a woman he would just sleep next to her, being unaroused … now, with a man… – there, bible verse obeyed)
If you translate it literally, it says, “You shall not have the lyings of a man in the lyings of a woman.” Maybe you know what that means, but I sure don’t.
That sounds like a machine translation. I wouldn’t really call something a “literal” translation if it’s grammatically incorrect, unless the original is incorrect in the original language’s grammatical rules.
Okay, okay, so Amber and Walky are going to have their important conversation while lying on the floor. And Joyce is distracted by accidentally getting hooked on some of Amber’s slashfic. And, since I’m pretty sure we haven’t seen her leave, I’m going to assume Dina is still there, eating mcnuggets and just kinda watching.
God I would hope so, after first beating up Sal, and then getting beat up by Sal, and THEN going out for a night of Roller Derby! I imagine Amazi-Girl woke up that night — all sore from head to toe — and was all, “Nope, fuck this shit, I’m going back to sleep!”
It’s also possible that Amazigirl fills a need and with the combination of her relationship with Sal and the outlet for controlled violence that Roller Derby provides, that Amazigirl just didn’t wake up. Doesn’t mean that she’s gone away.
So, I’m guessing this is the Time for Backstory talk, but Amber, you should probably consider having the Dissociation talk and the “Swapped your grades” talk soonish.
I know, I know, one at a time, but both of those have a LOT of potential to blow up in your face, honey.
But has Amber really admitted the Dissociation thing to anyone? I’m not even sure Ethan knows, and nor does Danny.
There’s this one scene in the dorm lounge involving Amber and I think Danny (although it might have been Ethan) saying something like “Glad you two are getting along” and Amber thinks he means her and Amazigirl, when really he meant her and Sal, and is subsequently confused about Amber’s reply about “sharing the same body”.
No. She hasn’t.
She’s hinted at it. She’s occasionally talked like the other person already knew – that scene with Danny is an example of that. But she’s never really tried to explain it.
She did say to her mom and Joe’s dad, “Sometimes I disassociate and fight criminals”, but they lacked any context to understand that she was actually being literal there. Even that wouldn’t necessarily imply distinct alters – there are other forms of disassociation that would be more common.
That is some next level nitpicking. She *literally* tried to explain it to Danny. You can say she didn’t do a great job of it, but she absolutely did try. Though Danny may not have followed it all, he definitely seemed to understand more than he did before, so I’d say she was at least partially successful
I would also feel pretty safe simply assuming she’s told Ethan at least as much if not more, even without solid evidence of that having occurred.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Dina had picked up on that too and not just about Amazi-Girl, but I don’t think it’s very likely Amber has deliberately had a conversation about it with her
The fact Dina thinks Amazi-Girl is referring to Amber as a different person for her benefit does not suggest to me that she realises Amazi-Girl actually sees Amber as a different person.
I’m actually pretty confused by the writing on that particular strip in general. Dina is clearly aware that there are two personas, and that she *should* consider them separate people. But she also interprets Amazigirl’s natural slip of referring to “Amber” instead of “I” as “carefully labelling” when it was not intentional, indicating that she would assume it would be more natural for both personas to just say “I” all the time instead of talking about each other as if different people.
Maybe Dina understands the big picture, but doesn’t understand how severely the personas are disassociated? That’s my guess.
In that strip, Amazi-Girl was talking in panels 1 & 2, and Amber removes the mask as she starts talking in panel 3.
It makes Amber’s correction in panel 3 clear that what’s changed is that Amber is now talking about herself instead of Amazi-Girl talking about her. Without a visual cue to indicate the switch, it could have been taken to be Amazi-Girl still talking, and correcting herself to say she was the one exhausted in social situations, not Amber.
You’d have to know both personalities well enough to know that Amber is the introverted one to resolve that ambiguity, but you’d have a hard time learning whose personality traits are whose if you don’t have some way to tell which of them is talking in the first place
When did she literally try to explain it to Danny? I may be forgetting something.
That strip Charlotte referred to was the example of talking about it as if he already understood, but it’s not really explanation. As far as I know, that’s the clearest she’s been with anyone and it’s clearly her talking about how their relationship is going, not explaining its existence.
I do think Danny has mostly figured it out, and that strip may have been a large part of it. I do think he was confused there and saying he’d meant her and Sal was stalling while he tried to process it. Then Amber pushed him away before they could really talk more.
She’s also told him since that she think’s AG’s going out at night, but Faz was there and she couldn’t explain then either.
It’s possible she’s told Ethan in detail, but I don’t think we’ve seen anything to indicate it. He knew about Amazi-Girl to start with, but the split was much less pronounced then.
No, she’s not using clinical terms or explaining every detail, but she is clearly indicating that there is a separation between Amber and Amazi-Girl. Danny clearly understands that much, because he’s not disputing that or asking for clarification even though he’s in the middle of standing up for himself and demanding an explanation.
There’s also the whole “Amber is allowed to be inconsistent” chat they had ages ago. Stuff like that has come up multiple times. She clearly didn’t feel any need to hide that from him.
The reason Danny was able to figure it out was because Amber talked to him about it. Maybe she didn’t sit him down and give him a detailed lecture explaining everything she knew about how fucked up her brain is, but it turns out that’s not the only way to talk to people about your mental illness. Bringing it up in bits and pieces over time still counts as talking about it.
Maybe *I’m* the one being nit-picky now, but if you think she needs to talk about it at greater length, or in greater detail, or just more explicitly than we’ve seen so far, fuckin’ say THAT. Saying “she never really tried to explain it” simply because there was room for her to be misunderstood rubs me entirely the wrong way.
I still see that as her talking as if he already knows and him struggling to catch on. She’s definitely not hiding it from him, but not actually explaining it either. She’s certainly talking about them as if they’re two different people, but that’s different than actually trying to explain. Even awkwardly and without clinical language.
Part of it of course is that Danny always winds up needing to focus on other parts and/or driving her off/being driven away himself before he can actually ask questions about it.
Let’s say that if she wants to bring Walky up to speed on this without taking the weeks (and the breakup) that it took for Danny to get it, she’s going to have to be a lot clearer than she ever has been.
Mental illness is not exactly an easy or fun thing to talk about. Just revealing it to someone can be scary, and actually getting them to understand something they’ve never experienced and which you may not fully understand yourself is a difficult task.
Amber doesn’t owe it to Walky to explain it to him at all. She should take whatever time she needs to feel comfortable and safe talking about it with him.
She didn’t owe that to Danny either. She owed him an explanation for their breakup since she still wanted to be friends with him and he was justly upset at how arbitrary it had seemed to him, but that’s it
I do think some explanation is necessary before she and Walky get too physical though, if only because it would be massively MASSIVELY not okay to use a body she shares with AG to bang someone without her knowing. Nobody wants her to wake up with Walky in her bed and not know what the hell happened – or for Walky to not know why the person he thinks is his girlfriend is freaking out.
I understand that it’s difficult. I don’t intend to attack her or blame her for not doing so. I simply do not see an explanation in any of those scenes. Or even an attempt at one.
I prefer not to talk about these things in terms of “owing”. The connotations are all wrong for how I think about it. And I said nothing about her having to, I said “If she wants to”.
And whether or not she owes him anything, her not making it clear to him is very likely to damage their budding relationship, especially if Walky is confronted with it unexpectedly. Which could happen in bed, as BBCC suggests, or just through Walky running into Amazi-Girl some night and having no reason not to treat her like his girlfriend.
That she and Amazi-Girl aren’t talking just complicates things even more.
Fart Captor, I think you’re assuming the general population knows way more about these rare kinds of mental disorder than they actually do.
For most people (including me) I think it is really hard to grasp that Amber and Amazigirl are two distinct personas that have nothing to do with each other beyond being in the same brain and body. I know nothing about this disorder in a clinical or scientific sense.
Amber’s friends do mostly not see her as mentally ill, so I think the possibility of her having such a severe mental disorder has just not entered their heads. Danny has been shown repeatedly to be confused by Amber making this strong distinction between her and Amazigirl. I really don’t think he’s grasped how severe this is, and neither has Ethan.
If they had, I would really hope that they’d tried much harder to get Amber to seek treatment.
I’m wondering if Amber’s misconceptions of gay sex and Joyce’s denial is strong enough that Joyce’ll leave thinking she just read a super friendly story, despite knowing different.
From my memories of low-research slash, she’s at least going to have the impression that they got in an intense workout featuring wrestling and acrobatics.
what if joyce starts to look fanfiction porn in stead of visual porn because its easier to disconnect from from the shame brain when your reading about dongs than when you look at dongs (based on my research)
I find Amber’s behaviour very promising. She doesn’t make excuses, she doesn’t bolt. She is sad and braces herself for a difficult conversation, but there is no sign of the earlier trauma.
Is he getting dumped? I think he’s more going to get an infodump, that she has a bad past with his sister and now is on a roller derby team with her and see if he’s still cool with their dating knowing that?
Yeah, but we know what she needs to talk to Walky about, so the obvious reaction doesn’t fit this case.
Interestly, Walky doesn’t seem to have that reaction here.
I always thought that was because she recognized Joe in it (and to a lesser extent, Robin), and brought up her nascent “I love these people and I am torn at how they (who aren’t, as it turns out, evil or hellbound) can do this and I have these feelings and I can’t act on them“.
A couple of strangers, in the written word, may be different.
I think that this is the point where Amber tells Walky that she strongly believes that she has DID. I also suspect that this is the point where Walky tells her that he doesn’t care (after taking a while to understand what this is supposed to mean).
He may be less okay with “Oh and I stabbed your sister and then stalked and harassed her for the last couple of weeks” and “I changed your grades despite you specifically telling me not to and now you’re at risk of expulsion if anyone finds out.” Walky is my last hope for Amber actually facing consequences for how she treated Sal and that’s a grim thought.
I don’t trust the timing on this; it’s too soon from the last super dramatic moment. Either Walkys gonna be an Idiot, they’re gonna avoid talking about it for a while or it’s gonna be undersold I think.
You’re sorta right? Like yaoi is usually referring to men-loving-men media from Japan (or inspired by media from Japan) geared towards and created by straight woman for straight woman which does tend to lean stylistically more towards pretty boys or bishounen. Generally media featuring more traditionally masculine men is created by gay men for gay men and is called bara.
Well said, that was my understanding as well, Yaoi tends to be more sparkly bishi boys, and has very little connection with male gay porn, didn’t know that was called bara, however, so thank you for that bit of learning.
Yaoi fangirls make me so uncomfortable they’re not actually any better than straight dudes drooling over lesbians but fandom culture pretends they’re totally not grossly objectifying gay men.
Amber idolises Batman (he’s the main inspiration for Amazi-Girl, after all). So, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, like Batman, Amber is always prepared, right down to a Virtual Machine that she has open and unlocked on her laptop at all times to sucker people who think that they’re ‘borrowing’ her browser. So, they’ll be looking at her slash archive rather than all the schematics for Amazi-Girl’s gadgets!
I know a ridiculous number* of people who grew up in purity culture Christianity and only learned about consent once they started reading fanfic. So this could be great for Joyce!
* In this context, even one is a ridiculous number, but it’s more than that.
It would be good to see Amber when she’s not desperately in need of sleep. AG’s evenings leave little time for sleep, so Amber would have many of the symptoms of a sleep apnea diagnosis. Not good, as I can attest.
Poor decision making, irritable, depressed, listless. Not to mention the many purely physical issues, masked by her being 18 or 19.
Joyce reading Slash fic before she realizes, and/or knows and can’t stop reading, but with her innocent face… this is the CUTEST Joyce pannel. I’m framing it. I love it.
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talk some more
on Garbage Floor
everybody walk the dinosaur
of course Dina would interject with that line…
Now I can’t get that music video sequence out of my head..
Please, someone whip it up for the rest of us, we need this.
Whip it, whip it good!
Are we not men?
One wonders if Dina has ever seen this video;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-GxYzbI4lg
Well, I had never seen it. Thanks for the link.
You’re welcome. Elvira ran it on a Halloween special and it kind of stuck with me.
Selmers?
I see and appreciate this reference
Oh they’re on the floor, that’s why the red. For some reason I thought they were up in the bunk already
Who decided to make the dorm floors blood red instead of, like, beige?
Buckets of Blood Guy?
he moonlights as an interior decorator to pay for college
Isn’t that one of IU’s colors?
I bet it’s cold linoleum too, or maybe an area rug Amber or Dina put down. I can’t imagine a college being crazy enough to put down wall to wall carpet; they’d have to replace it annually.
School colors or not, it’s super tacky for a living space and I’m judging
Unless it’s super matted, basically linoleum floor like what’s in the hallways.
Thought so. They’d be nuts to build dotms out of anything they can’t hose down every June.
Yeah, the stuff in the halls is so hard, I don’t think it counts as a carpet anymore.
Especially after Mary squirted GLUE all over it.
Someone who knows these students and wanted to help them hide the stains?
the homeless found a home on garbage floor
Nice one
“…Correction, Superman, Batman, and an elaborate series of vegetables and household appliances are extremely good friends.”
but everything changed when the cucumber nation attacked
“i fought in the cucumber wars, until i took a cumshot to the knee”
. . .
excuse me, I’m sorry. I was about to make a reference to the porn parody of Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny but then I remembered that I’d blocked it from my brain.
Only the Buttatar, master of all four vegetables, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished. A hundred years passed and my brother and I discovered the new Buttatar, an carrotbender named Aang.
I can’t decide which I like better, the Skyrim joke, or the Avatar jokes.
Let go of your pickle!
Dumbing of Age Book 9: Batman and Superman Are Extremely Good Friends
Dumbing of Age Book 9: Trust Me, She’s Preoccupied
“…so any way,” Clark said with a grin, “turns out that just because I’m fire proof, my pants are not.”
Batman turned to him with a raised eyebrown, let his eyes linger maybe just a moment too long on Superman’s super firm tushy and said:
“I’m Batman”
I almost spit my tea all over my phone XD
That might be the best fanfic review I ever got
I’m fairly sure that Clark has never been that coy in any of his iterations, even in his (actually genuinely a good guy, and not just a tropey and unlikable macho man or emo kid) iterations. I think I’d like him a lot more if he was ever written with that degree of personality range.
‘course, so long as Five for Fighting’s “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” exists, I’ll be a huge fan of the sheer pathos and romance of his character.
Clark in all iterations has a great tushy.
Amber must be in a VERY good mood if she’s letting other people read her fanfic.
I’m pretty sure most people who have spent any length of time with Joyce would be happy for most anything to distract her with.
Hey she gets a beta reader and didn’t even have to ask.
Year of comics of Joyce reading fanfiction GO!
Sounds all too plausible.
“So it’s okay as long as I’m not fucking another dude in the vagina?”
Truly an excellent series, both of them in fact.
What series?
Is it Hellsing Ultimate Abridged?
I don’t know where I’ve heard that line before, but I know it’s familiar, and that’s the first thing that I could think of.
Yes, yes it is. Episode nine.
“Ze bible says a man may not lay with a man as he would a woman!”
isn’t this bible verse only telling us that queers have more imaginative sex than just “lay like with a woman“?
(also… your typical gay man wouldn’t lie with a man as he would with a woman, if we assume that with a woman he would just sleep next to her, being unaroused … now, with a man… – there, bible verse obeyed)
If you translate it literally, it says, “You shall not have the lyings of a man in the lyings of a woman.” Maybe you know what that means, but I sure don’t.
It means in woman’s space, or so I’ve heard. Basically ‘don’t fuck guys in women’s beds, c’mon guys, don’t be fucking rude.’
That sounds like a machine translation. I wouldn’t really call something a “literal” translation if it’s grammatically incorrect, unless the original is incorrect in the original language’s grammatical rules.
If it reads like a Gurgi quote, maybe double-check your work.
I love how that series just sort of slowly got gayer and gayer over time until Alucard was all but explicitly (heh) genderfluid.
Okay, okay, so Amber and Walky are going to have their important conversation while lying on the floor. And Joyce is distracted by accidentally getting hooked on some of Amber’s slashfic. And, since I’m pretty sure we haven’t seen her leave, I’m going to assume Dina is still there, eating mcnuggets and just kinda watching.
I think I love this scene.
Dina is basically us, just chilling out and watching all of this unfold.
Look, Dina synchronization or no, you’re not going to convince me to go out at midnight to get some mcnuggets.
O, aren’t I?
Dina has gone into Ninja mode and everyone has forgotten she is there.
She just steps behind the door and *poof* what Dina?
I imagine unbreaded chicken tenderloins from the freezer would do in a pinch
Yeah, I’d love to see this moment in a wide shot.
Is is slashfic Amber has written or was busy reading?
Uncertain! But it works either way, really.
“Soon she’ll ask what ‘safeword’ means though, so be ready for that.”
or just why they are saying random colors.
Is Joyce reading “Batman Peens Superman”?
dawn of butt-stuff
the safe word is Martha
“My safe word is ‘Martha’.” “Mine too.”
Wouldn’t the obvious subtitle be “Dawn of Just-Ass”?
Here’s something for you (nothing remotely NSFW, but the topic obviously is):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZkVuSHjtik
tl;dr version:
JusticeJust-Ass is coming.Just-ass league
They’re not friends they’re enemies cause that’s a Dark Knight Returns slashfic!
But they’re extremely good enemies!
It’s a prequel entitled “The Dark Knight Comes”
“I think I slept”, i.e. Amazi-Girl didn’t go out last night.
I caught that too. This is concerning to me as it confirms.how much Amber really has no idea avout what AG does.
Thanks. I didn’t catch that.
She thinks. She isn’t and can’t be certain.
Yeah, that’s… not good.
God I would hope so, after first beating up Sal, and then getting beat up by Sal, and THEN going out for a night of Roller Derby! I imagine Amazi-Girl woke up that night — all sore from head to toe — and was all, “Nope, fuck this shit, I’m going back to sleep!”
It’s also possible that Amazigirl fills a need and with the combination of her relationship with Sal and the outlet for controlled violence that Roller Derby provides, that Amazigirl just didn’t wake up. Doesn’t mean that she’s gone away.
That was my first thought, but I wonder if there’s something deeper going on. Likely months before we find out. Even if she does wake up tonight.
Amber should ask Dina about that, she would probably know if A-G went out.
The best of friends
Wondering what shenanigans will inevitably interrupt this important talk.
My money’s on ninjas busting down the door.
I’m betting on Walky and Amber having to explain stuff like “safeword” to Joyce.
*ninjas = Mike
Always. Expect. Ninjas.
http://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/346
Alright, it’s adorable that Walky knew Joyce would be preoccupied just from the fact that he noticed she noticed the fanfiction.
And it’s adorable Joyce is preoccupied by it, although I’m sure it’s no Stucky.
Honestly… I love their weird friendship.
I love that Joyce and Walky know each other pretty well at this point.
“Friend all over my face,
PharaohBruce!”faaaaace!
Thanks for that.
So, I’m guessing this is the Time for Backstory talk, but Amber, you should probably consider having the Dissociation talk and the “Swapped your grades” talk soonish.
I know, I know, one at a time, but both of those have a LOT of potential to blow up in your face, honey.
Very good point.
But has Amber really admitted the Dissociation thing to anyone? I’m not even sure Ethan knows, and nor does Danny.
There’s this one scene in the dorm lounge involving Amber and I think Danny (although it might have been Ethan) saying something like “Glad you two are getting along” and Amber thinks he means her and Amazigirl, when really he meant her and Sal, and is subsequently confused about Amber’s reply about “sharing the same body”.
No. She hasn’t.
She’s hinted at it. She’s occasionally talked like the other person already knew – that scene with Danny is an example of that. But she’s never really tried to explain it.
She did say to her mom and Joe’s dad, “Sometimes I disassociate and fight criminals”, but they lacked any context to understand that she was actually being literal there. Even that wouldn’t necessarily imply distinct alters – there are other forms of disassociation that would be more common.
That is some next level nitpicking. She *literally* tried to explain it to Danny. You can say she didn’t do a great job of it, but she absolutely did try. Though Danny may not have followed it all, he definitely seemed to understand more than he did before, so I’d say she was at least partially successful
There’s also the strip Charlotte was referring to (which was actually Danny again, not Ethan) where Amber misunderstands Danny’s question as being about her and Amazi-Girl instead of about her and Sal. Given how Danny didn’t seem even slightly confused and simply clarified who he had meant, I think we can assume he understands.
I would also feel pretty safe simply assuming she’s told Ethan at least as much if not more, even without solid evidence of that having occurred.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Dina had picked up on that too and not just about Amazi-Girl, but I don’t think it’s very likely Amber has deliberately had a conversation about it with her
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/socialcircumstances/
I’d venture that, even if the word dissociation hasn’t come to her head, Dina knows more than she’s let on.
The fact Dina thinks Amazi-Girl is referring to Amber as a different person for her benefit does not suggest to me that she realises Amazi-Girl actually sees Amber as a different person.
I’m actually pretty confused by the writing on that particular strip in general. Dina is clearly aware that there are two personas, and that she *should* consider them separate people. But she also interprets Amazigirl’s natural slip of referring to “Amber” instead of “I” as “carefully labelling” when it was not intentional, indicating that she would assume it would be more natural for both personas to just say “I” all the time instead of talking about each other as if different people.
Maybe Dina understands the big picture, but doesn’t understand how severely the personas are disassociated? That’s my guess.
I think Dina just means the mask.
In that strip, Amazi-Girl was talking in panels 1 & 2, and Amber removes the mask as she starts talking in panel 3.
It makes Amber’s correction in panel 3 clear that what’s changed is that Amber is now talking about herself instead of Amazi-Girl talking about her. Without a visual cue to indicate the switch, it could have been taken to be Amazi-Girl still talking, and correcting herself to say she was the one exhausted in social situations, not Amber.
You’d have to know both personalities well enough to know that Amber is the introverted one to resolve that ambiguity, but you’d have a hard time learning whose personality traits are whose if you don’t have some way to tell which of them is talking in the first place
When did she literally try to explain it to Danny? I may be forgetting something.
That strip Charlotte referred to was the example of talking about it as if he already understood, but it’s not really explanation. As far as I know, that’s the clearest she’s been with anyone and it’s clearly her talking about how their relationship is going, not explaining its existence.
I do think Danny has mostly figured it out, and that strip may have been a large part of it. I do think he was confused there and saying he’d meant her and Sal was stalling while he tried to process it. Then Amber pushed him away before they could really talk more.
She’s also told him since that she think’s AG’s going out at night, but Faz was there and she couldn’t explain then either.
It’s possible she’s told Ethan in detail, but I don’t think we’ve seen anything to indicate it. He knew about Amazi-Girl to start with, but the split was much less pronounced then.
Right here, and in the strip afterwards:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/pokestop/
No, she’s not using clinical terms or explaining every detail, but she is clearly indicating that there is a separation between Amber and Amazi-Girl. Danny clearly understands that much, because he’s not disputing that or asking for clarification even though he’s in the middle of standing up for himself and demanding an explanation.
There’s also the whole “Amber is allowed to be inconsistent” chat they had ages ago. Stuff like that has come up multiple times. She clearly didn’t feel any need to hide that from him.
The reason Danny was able to figure it out was because Amber talked to him about it. Maybe she didn’t sit him down and give him a detailed lecture explaining everything she knew about how fucked up her brain is, but it turns out that’s not the only way to talk to people about your mental illness. Bringing it up in bits and pieces over time still counts as talking about it.
Maybe *I’m* the one being nit-picky now, but if you think she needs to talk about it at greater length, or in greater detail, or just more explicitly than we’ve seen so far, fuckin’ say THAT. Saying “she never really tried to explain it” simply because there was room for her to be misunderstood rubs me entirely the wrong way.
Different reads on it, I guess.
I still see that as her talking as if he already knows and him struggling to catch on. She’s definitely not hiding it from him, but not actually explaining it either. She’s certainly talking about them as if they’re two different people, but that’s different than actually trying to explain. Even awkwardly and without clinical language.
Part of it of course is that Danny always winds up needing to focus on other parts and/or driving her off/being driven away himself before he can actually ask questions about it.
Let’s say that if she wants to bring Walky up to speed on this without taking the weeks (and the breakup) that it took for Danny to get it, she’s going to have to be a lot clearer than she ever has been.
She’s actually explaining it.
Mental illness is not exactly an easy or fun thing to talk about. Just revealing it to someone can be scary, and actually getting them to understand something they’ve never experienced and which you may not fully understand yourself is a difficult task.
Amber doesn’t owe it to Walky to explain it to him at all. She should take whatever time she needs to feel comfortable and safe talking about it with him.
She didn’t owe that to Danny either. She owed him an explanation for their breakup since she still wanted to be friends with him and he was justly upset at how arbitrary it had seemed to him, but that’s it
I do think some explanation is necessary before she and Walky get too physical though, if only because it would be massively MASSIVELY not okay to use a body she shares with AG to bang someone without her knowing. Nobody wants her to wake up with Walky in her bed and not know what the hell happened – or for Walky to not know why the person he thinks is his girlfriend is freaking out.
I understand that it’s difficult. I don’t intend to attack her or blame her for not doing so. I simply do not see an explanation in any of those scenes. Or even an attempt at one.
I prefer not to talk about these things in terms of “owing”. The connotations are all wrong for how I think about it. And I said nothing about her having to, I said “If she wants to”.
And whether or not she owes him anything, her not making it clear to him is very likely to damage their budding relationship, especially if Walky is confronted with it unexpectedly. Which could happen in bed, as BBCC suggests, or just through Walky running into Amazi-Girl some night and having no reason not to treat her like his girlfriend.
That she and Amazi-Girl aren’t talking just complicates things even more.
Fart Captor, I think you’re assuming the general population knows way more about these rare kinds of mental disorder than they actually do.
For most people (including me) I think it is really hard to grasp that Amber and Amazigirl are two distinct personas that have nothing to do with each other beyond being in the same brain and body. I know nothing about this disorder in a clinical or scientific sense.
Amber’s friends do mostly not see her as mentally ill, so I think the possibility of her having such a severe mental disorder has just not entered their heads. Danny has been shown repeatedly to be confused by Amber making this strong distinction between her and Amazigirl. I really don’t think he’s grasped how severe this is, and neither has Ethan.
If they had, I would really hope that they’d tried much harder to get Amber to seek treatment.
I’m wondering if Amber’s misconceptions of gay sex and Joyce’s denial is strong enough that Joyce’ll leave thinking she just read a super friendly story, despite knowing different.
From my memories of low-research slash, she’s at least going to have the impression that they got in an intense workout featuring wrestling and acrobatics.
I suspect, even with the misconceptions, it’s still likely to be pretty explicit.
And now we know why Joyce wants to be such good friends with Dorothy.
The best of friends.
Friend of Dorothy
Gals being pals
And now Joyce has discovered slashfic.
This is true.
And coming soon, Joyce discovers spontaneous orgasms.
Joyce would just love the Ambiguously Gay Duo!
Why are the panels red though?
I think that’s just the floor.
I think the red represents Amber’s stress levels.
As we saw with the sunset framing the Sal/Amber fight, it can be both.
“…oh, hello Robin!”
5 minutes later, Joyce’s brain explodes.
Two more panels and there will be no whites left in her eyes. They will be all blue.
And that’s when she develops the ability to shoot Laser Death Eye Beams.
Nah, she can do that already. John was lucky he walked out of that diner alive.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/angry-3/
How many panels until the blue has consumed the entire room?
Depends on if Amber finished writing the juicy parts.
Very easy slope for her to go down.
I see what you did there!
what if joyce starts to look fanfiction porn in stead of visual porn because its easier to disconnect from from the shame brain when your reading about dongs than when you look at dongs (based on my research)
She wouldn’t be the first to do so.
oof
can high-key relate
Honestly, fanfic taught me more about sex on a practical level than school ever did.
Probably for the best I’m ace.
they’re Super Friends!
I honestly don’t know whether to congratulate on that one or drown you in a toilet.
DUDE SMUT!!!
This is opening up a whole new world for Joyce: this is either going to be absolutely amazing or absolutely terrible, there is no in-between.
I find Amber’s behaviour very promising. She doesn’t make excuses, she doesn’t bolt. She is sad and braces herself for a difficult conversation, but there is no sign of the earlier trauma.
This might go well!
I think it might go well for Amber but I’m worried about how Walky will handle being dumped again so soon.
Say what now?
Is he getting dumped? I think he’s more going to get an infodump, that she has a bad past with his sister and now is on a roller derby team with her and see if he’s still cool with their dating knowing that?
I guess “We need to talk” just automatically made me assume the worst possible thing and/or a break up specifically, but this makes more sense.
Yes, that was my first reaction as well. The phrase “we need to talk” instantly set off my incoming break up alarm.
Yeah, but we know what she needs to talk to Walky about, so the obvious reaction doesn’t fit this case.
Interestly, Walky doesn’t seem to have that reaction here.
[Blushing intensifies]
OMG, I did not anticipate Joyce discovering smutty fan-fic!
…Is this going to end the same way as when she looked up the Roz/Joe video where she just feels bad and then I feel bad?
I’m wondering if the lack of imagery will be a factor.
I always thought that was because she recognized Joe in it (and to a lesser extent, Robin), and brought up her nascent “I love these people and I am torn at how they (who aren’t, as it turns out, evil or hellbound) can do this and I have these feelings and I can’t act on them“.
A couple of strangers, in the written word, may be different.
Next strip: Joyce decides to work some m/m romance into her ongoing sci-fi webcomic.
As long as it’s not “Nathan” x “Ike”.
I would love to see more strips of Joyce reading Amber’s smutty fanfics.
Gah! Red panels! I thought I’d seen the last of you.
Actually, I think that’s the colour of Amber’s bed covers.
Oh, no. Dorothy, don’t google anything you read that you don’t understand.
SAFESEARCH ON! SAFESEARCH ON!
Its Amber’s computer. Safesearch is not on.
Not only is safesearch not on, it has ejected itself out of the computer and is shivering catatonically in the corner.
Is that a Dale reference? Nice.
I’m sure Dorothy understands things just fine. Joyce probably won’t though.
Joyce has become careful about googling ever since the Dildo-incident.
And thus Joyce becomes the equivalent of a fujoshi.
As long as she isn’t a futanari, all is good. (for the love of all that is wholesome, do NOT look that up).
Uh, is there some sort of problem with futanari I’m not familiar with?
Them specifically, no. Some of the porn based on that concept, on the other hand . . .
Joyce would be disappointed if she watched Batman v Superman and Justice League.
I think that this is the point where Amber tells Walky that she strongly believes that she has DID. I also suspect that this is the point where Walky tells her that he doesn’t care (after taking a while to understand what this is supposed to mean).
He may be less okay with “Oh and I stabbed your sister and then stalked and harassed her for the last couple of weeks” and “I changed your grades despite you specifically telling me not to and now you’re at risk of expulsion if anyone finds out.” Walky is my last hope for Amber actually facing consequences for how she treated Sal and that’s a grim thought.
I don’t trust the timing on this; it’s too soon from the last super dramatic moment. Either Walkys gonna be an Idiot, they’re gonna avoid talking about it for a while or it’s gonna be undersold I think.
Oh I fully expect Amber to be a total chickenshit about this.
Uh oh, Joyce’s first fanfiction. Which is also slash…
As someone who came from a similar christian background, this could take her off the grid for a couple of weeks
She might’ve read some Dexter and Monkey Master genfic. But yeah, this is a whole new ballgame.
She sounded pretty surprised at the fact that this “prose story” existed in the first place.
Not ENTIRELY her first. And given her favorite movie, I’m pretty sure she has seen at least some hot werewolf-on-vampire action before.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-2/01-pajama-jeans/gross/
Ethan gave her the heads up here: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/forthright/
This is knowledge she should not have.
And yet…
Great callback to another blushing Joyce.
And thus, a Yaoi fangirl is born.
Is it Yaoi though when both guys are ridiculous slabs of man meat
Yaoi tends to be used to refer to dudes from anime or manga smoochin’; with Batman and Superman, it’s more slashfic.
I mean, IIRC there’s a Batman manga, but this is still prose.
Batman and Superman aren’t ridiculousn slabs of man meat?
No, they are. When I think Yaoi I think teenage pretty boys. Might be wrong on that account though, not a Yaoi expert.
You’re sorta right? Like yaoi is usually referring to men-loving-men media from Japan (or inspired by media from Japan) geared towards and created by straight woman for straight woman which does tend to lean stylistically more towards pretty boys or bishounen. Generally media featuring more traditionally masculine men is created by gay men for gay men and is called bara.
Well said, that was my understanding as well, Yaoi tends to be more sparkly bishi boys, and has very little connection with male gay porn, didn’t know that was called bara, however, so thank you for that bit of learning.
Yaoi fangirls make me so uncomfortable they’re not actually any better than straight dudes drooling over lesbians but fandom culture pretends they’re totally not grossly objectifying gay men.
And thus Joyce discovered the dazzling world of Yaoi
First iguanas and now yaoi. Oh to be a young first-year college student again.
Crap, hours later I figured what exactly she meant by “I *think* I slept”. … :/
This strip combined with Joyce’s reaction to watching Joe and Roz’s sex tape suggests that it is only a matter of time before Joyce jumps someone!
She might find she likes theory stuff more than physical stuff. But you might be right!
I’m hoping for a dramatic twist that makes if not Walky.
I think Walky would turn her down. But it would let her have an “I’ve kissed the lips that kissed you.” moment with Dorothy.
Just gonna go right ahead and look on someone else’s computer without even asking, eh Joyce?
I’m honestly wondering if Amber deliberately left that tab open as a booby trap for the unwary!
Let’s be real, it’s Amber she probably has like 173 tabs of slash open at any given time.
Kind of surprised it doesn’t lock. It’s not like Amber was using it before they came in.
Amber idolises Batman (he’s the main inspiration for Amazi-Girl, after all). So, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, like Batman, Amber is always prepared, right down to a Virtual Machine that she has open and unlocked on her laptop at all times to sucker people who think that they’re ‘borrowing’ her browser. So, they’ll be looking at her slash archive rather than all the schematics for Amazi-Girl’s gadgets!
Seems like you could still lock the screen, then have that VM open for anyone who does get past is.
“booby trap”
Not ENTIRELY accurate. More like… “Dong trap”. Does that work?
Dong Decoy? Schlong Snare? Peen Pitfall?
I know a ridiculous number* of people who grew up in purity culture Christianity and only learned about consent once they started reading fanfic. So this could be great for Joyce!
* In this context, even one is a ridiculous number, but it’s more than that.
I love how both Walky and Amber are basically, “huh, OK, so Joyce happened.”
It would be good to see Amber when she’s not desperately in need of sleep. AG’s evenings leave little time for sleep, so Amber would have many of the symptoms of a sleep apnea diagnosis. Not good, as I can attest.
Poor decision making, irritable, depressed, listless. Not to mention the many purely physical issues, masked by her being 18 or 19.
Seeing Joyce’s reaction to the slashfic once she gets further in is going to be amazing
Either her brain or her panties are going to explode.
Well, we have a nomination for the next Porn Zone page…
Red panels
I think that’s the floor.
It can be both.
LIBIDO! yessss
And fanfiction dot net claims another victim. Mua hahahahaaaaa.
Amber uses AO3 because she is not on amateur hour.
Joyce reading Slash fic before she realizes, and/or knows and can’t stop reading, but with her innocent face… this is the CUTEST Joyce pannel. I’m framing it. I love it.
I actually Like Walkie’s hair a lot? He’s like the grown up version of the Original “Magic school buses” Carlos in that pic, to me?
Kind of a late thought, but props to Walky for his “we’re actually pretty good at talking” in panel 5. No cliche panic, all chill!
I’m not seeing the alt-text on my phone
“just guys being superfriends”
Not even Joyce can resist the sweet allure of the yaois ^o^.
“What’s better than this? Guys being dudes.”
“We need to talk.” The single worst sentence in the English language. This is not going to be good for Walky.