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David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 7d
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social ⋅ 20d
Gwen Snyder is uncivil @gwensnyder.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Ash Parrish @adashtra.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Katie @katiestp.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Hunter S Schafer @bolt451.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
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(he/him)
⚧
do we have a competitor for Biggest Wall of Text
I think we do.
Big enough to block out an entire dorm building. That’s a damn big wall.
More wall-of-text than Sal’s panel of f-words even.
Dumbing of Age Book 9: I Was Sure You Said Noon, and I’m Pretty Sure It’s Noon Now, I Checked Like Six Times on the Way Here, but Maybe I Misremembered, or Maybe I Misunderstood, or Maybe I Said Something Wrong, And
Duming of Age Book 9: Call them “Issues”
. . . as the title is continued on the back cover, inside front and back covers, and next six pages. Okay, fine, the title is the entire book.
I was gonna suggest this one , but Amber definitely has her beat =P
Mood.
My mood is doom spelled backwards.
“Doomy M”, actually.
yay marcie
Dumbing of Age Book 9: [just all of panel four]
or panel five even
but also panel four
More seriously, the alt-text.
DoA Book 9: This Is The Right Time, Isn’t It?
DoA Book 9: When the Pawn, but it’s anxiety
*plays The Alan Parsons Project’s “Prime Time” on the hacked P.A. speakers*
Now there’s a song I’ve not thought about in a long… time.
(Loved the video, back in the day.)
Huh, I’m not tagged in this strip. Coulda fooled me.
He forgot to tag a lot of us, musta not seen us in the bush
Whoa Amber, take a deep breath and calm down. I have been known to do this exact thing.
Dammit, Amber, quit being relatable!
And – SQUEEEE! I didn’t know I needed these two to interact but I do. I very very much do.
Since Amber (probably?) can’t read sign language yet, they’ll have to communicate over texting.
… Amber was MADE for this relationship.
She’ll nail it!
…As soon as Marcie gives her her number.
Well, if Marcie somehow asked Amber to meet her, she probably did it through electronic communication of some sort. Maybe they know each other through Twitter, or something. As you said, Amber can’t read ASL yet.
Unless it was an agreement from last night with the rest of the gang there.
Yikes, that is a big mood. *yeets away*
Holy shit Amber. Take a moment to breathe.
Amber, this seems like the kind of thing I have to keep myself from doing sometimes.
Just what did you two get up to at roller derby, hmm? Is this a date?
they’re meeting up to go to roller derby, they only enlisted yesterday
like shakespeare
But in the original ASL.
We are all Amber on this blessed day.
Ohhhhh right cuz of the roller derby
That’s a lot of words.
Alternate title for this strip: “Social Anxiety”
I can relate to this so much. Social anxiety sucks.
Oh man, Amber has been relatable before, but this is really next-level stuff.
Oh hey, it’s Lawful Good Amber. I like her, she should be around more often.
So, is Amazi-girl more of a chaotic good then?
Amazi-Girl is nothing if not lawful. But good? That’s arguable.
I don’t think being a masked vigilante could reasonably be termed “lawful”.
‘Lawful’ doesn’t have to refer to The Law Of The Land. It can refer to a personal code, which Amber/AG have in spades. Lawul people need structure and order in order to feel secure, and they usually wind up imposing their code on others.
AG doesn’t really stick to a set of principles so much as she just tries to ensure the cops come after her. As such, I would classify her as chaotic for actively subverting the law even when it’s unnecessary.
I classify this persona as Good, weakly Lawful, as she is willing to commit what she sees as minor crimes in the service of Good, but is principled to the point of literally creating an alter to make it easier, and she supports the Law when it doesn’t conflict with Good.
Red-Panel Amber is Chaotic Evil.
None of that makes any sense at all to me.
I lack some of the cultural referents used in some of the discussions here, but this particular conversation relates to a moral alignment theory as used in some role-playing games, notably Dungeons and Dragons. The proper response is “gaming nerds!” in a scornful tone of voice. Particularly if you’re Billie.
Oh, I’m a gaming nerd. That part I got. It just didn’t match my understanding of Amber/AG at all. Not even well enough to break it down.
The important thing to remember is that Amber is not who Amazi-Girl thinks she is, and Amazi-Girl is not who Amber thinks she is. “Amazi-Girl always fights for justice” is Amber’s take, not what we’ve actually seen, and vice-versa.
Alright fine, point by point:
“AG doesn’t really stick to a set of principles so much as she just tries to ensure the cops come after her.”
When or how does she try to ensure the cops come after her?
“As such, I would classify her as chaotic for actively subverting the law even when it’s unnecessary.”
Technically I guess you can say it’s mostly all unnecessary, but outside of her stalking of Sal, she’s mostly stopping minor street crime like a low rent comic book superhero. Scaled up a bit for Ryan and Toedad.
“I classify this persona as Good, weakly Lawful, as she is willing to commit what she sees as minor crimes in the service of Good, but is principled to the point of literally creating an alter to make it easier, and she supports the Law when it doesn’t conflict with Good.”
‘This persona’ must be Amber because you just dealt with AG? She didn’t create an alter to make it easier, but out of trauma and to channel her rage so she didn’t hurt undeserving people. Not sure what minor crimes you’re talking about here, but you seem to be attributing AG’s crimes to Amber, since you talk about creating an alter? I can’t tell.
“Red-Panel Amber is Chaotic Evil.”
I guess. Maybe. The only things she’s really done in that state are beat up Blaine, take Ryan down and run away from Sal. I can’t really call any of that evil. Not at all sure RPA is separate enough to get a separate alignment anyway.
Whoops, “don’t come after her”.
And the minor crime was changing Walky’s grade.
I think vigilantes are by definition non-lawful.
Not necessarily. Lawful applies to following a code/set of rules/etc. A code of chivalry, for example, would constitute lawful, as would religious rules.
Amazi-Girl is lawful neutral. Loathes nothing more than rulebreaking (e.g. Danny drinking at the party) and often falls into morally gray territory in the name of following rules (e.g. confronting Sal for underage drinking when in reality it’s because of her own grudge).
1: It was Amber that really loathed Danny’s drinking at the party -specifically because it broke the rules-. When AG arrived, she said that she didn’t want him drinking because if he got caught, he might get expelled, and she didn’t want to lose him.
2: On a more general level, the whole alignment system works best with people whose grip on sanity is, if not entirely 1:1, then at least in a consistent state of being. The whole Amber/AG situation is clearly anything but, which is why the actions of the two truly goes all over the place.
She is besties with St. Cuthbert.
Wow, today’s pairs really well with the It’s Walky rerun.
It’s nice to know that some small subset of Amber’s issues are familiar to me?
Yes, you were supposed to meet at noon in front of the wall of words.
No, you were supposed to meet with Professor Plum in the library, with a candlestick.
Not with Ryan, on the stairs, with a knife?
No, Ryan’s 2:00, with a phone.
And then we cut away from Amber again. Y’see, she doesn’t stop this wall of text for the entire day. We’ll see her again in the next arc, as she runs out of steam.
I think that we’ll come back in a few strips’ time when Amber finally runs down and Marcie can manage some sort of response.
I wonder if Amber understands ASL? For some reason, it seems to be something with which she might have some passing familiarity, or at least Amazi-Girl may know. Might Marcie be the first person to realise that there are two people in Amber?
Nah, there’ll be a running gag where other characters walk down the stairs in front of the continuing wall of text.
While complaining about the wall of text blocking the path.
It’s like you’re looking into my brain.
Or she’s psychically reading your thoughts and speaking them out loud herself.
I feel called upon
This is probably the most relatable strip Willis has ever done, and that’s among a pantheon of relatable strips.
Fun fact: right until the day I retired, one of the most stressful parts of my day was approaching the employee entrance for the first time in the morning. Would I fail to recognize someone I should have recognized immediately? Would I be overly familiar with someone I didn’t really know very well? Would I say something bland about the weather going into the elevator and the ride would be 15 seconds of awkward silence?
My private ironic shorthand for these situations was “failing the entrance exam.” And of course, the exit exam would similarly fraught.
Every single day. For years.
Man, I’m glad I could retire early.
Let me guess, you worked from home, right?
It’s PM not AM!
So who here had actually stuttered several times trying not to screw up out of anxiety, and who here had only worried about screwing up while staying quiet?
If Walky leave Amber in the dust I’m gonna be pretty angry.
There’s still hope, don’t count them out just yet.
Stressful as this is, I’m always happy when Amber has problems of the non-stabby, non-daddy, non-amzi-girl kind.
This is the first time that Marcie and Amber are on panel together, confirming that they are two separate people.
Or is she one person flipping back and forth between both roles so quickly that persistence of vision kicks in and she looks like two people, like the Olsen twin?
Get out of my head, Willis!!!
I suspect that Marcie wants Amber to run down a little before she tries to hug her because she doesn’t want high-speed and high-pitched panic-babble in her ear! Dealing with Sal’s anxieties is so much easier, relatively speaking!
Well, yeah, Sal’s family crest is basically a knight refusing to discuss their feelings.
Definitely makes it easier to deal with other people’s anxieties if they don’t talk about them.
Until it all explodes of course.
Well, yeah, but what’s the worst thing that can hap-
Oh, right the robbery is what happened last time Sal got pushed that far. Right. Shit.
That is some familiar anxiety right there
yep. totally me every time i get to a meeting point early and the other person isn’t there yet.
What day is it? Am i really supposed to meet now? and here? what if it’s the same street name but the one on the other end of the city?!…
Always takes a while and some checking and rechecking before i can convince myself of the possibility that the other person is just slightly late…^^
Oh. Amber and I are the same person for A strip
Me_IRL. Which is extra weird, as I also have those glasses, and that haircut, and her general body type and clothing style. …Shit, am I an Amber alter? Dammit, not again!
This was certainly college for me. Remember the first time I tried to flirt with a girl and was basically like
“I know your name”
Anxiety! Now there’s a character I recognize.
Turns out this is secretly the matrix, except the world isn’t made up of green lines of code but the verbal anxieties of a would be superhero.
Hello anxiety my old friend…
I’ve come to talk with you again, and again, and again….
Oh wow, it’s me when I was that age.
When I was 17, a guy asked me to hangout with him one day during the holidays at his house and said to meet him down town. I had a very similar monologue to Amber’s going through my head the entire journey there. It got worse when I arrived and saw he was reading a newspaper. I assumed I was so late he had to grab a paper to relieve the boredom when he was actually trying to look sophisticated so I’d think he was, like, super smart.
Anyway, we’ve been in a relationship for 13-14 years now and married for 2 so anyone who regularly has these kinds of anxiety attacks don’t worry, it is possible to power through and have good things happen.
Her name is Marcie and it’s definitely in the tags.
Also maybe Mute-o is a fucked-up way to refer to her especially considering she was assaulted.
Cannot relate, I am always 30 minutes early to everything for crippling fear of being late.
Every job interview I’ve ever attended, I’ve become nicely acquainted with the receptionist due to how early I arrive.
I have the fun time of like lingering around nearby until I’m only 15 minutes early because I worry that it’d be weird to be so early.
I do this, and then suffer from the crippling fear that whoever I’m meeting feels I’m pressuring them by showing up early. :/
I show up 30min early and then spend 15 min hiding in the car or a nearby coffee shop because what if 30min is weird and then I enter the building and make sure to kill enough time to enter their office with 10min to spare (so I don’t look desperate, don’t annoy the receptionist and don’t look like I am not diligent enough to show up early.
I overthink all the social things. All of them.
I show up on time. Not 30 minutes early. Not 10 minutes early. Not even 2 minutes early.
If I’m supposed to show up at 1500 for an interview, I’m going to walk in the door at 1500.
She’s mute not deaf
That’s okay; Amber isn’t really talking to Marcie anyway. She’s just filling the dead air with her anxieties.
I have never related to a character more in my whole life. The anxiety is real. The only thing that would make it more real is trying to hold back tears.
Always cool to see characters interacting that haven’t really before!
Hearts out to the US transfolk who just got sold up the river by SCOTUS. 8(
Not a final ruling and doesn’t affect those already serving, if I understand correctly. I found it surprising though. But, yeah.
Why does this surprise you? THIS was what was at stake in electing the president who would choose dead SCOTUS Justice Scalia’s replacement, which should have been Pres. Obama’s right. The Republicans were *determined* to stack the SCOTUS in service to their conservative agenda, and they got their wish. Welcome to the Republican Brave New World.
Also – Kavanaugh. Fuck Justice Kennedy for giving them that spot and enabling this bullshit.
5 to 4, because OF COURSE it was.
Additionally: Unfortunately, I have little hopes that RBG will last for the remainder of Trump’s term, so even in the unlikelyhood that he doesn’t get reelected, SCOTUS is going to be stacked as fuck.
A stacked SCOTUS is basically free reign, and unfortunately there’s no way to unstack it until the stackers start dying off or resigning of their own accord, and SCOTUS tends to frown on revising decisions, so it’s effects span generations.
There’s probably no greater power invested in the US presidency than those nominations, and it’s always barely a blip on campaigns because, unfortunately, you’ll motivate about 0 voters with it (that weren’t already voting anyway).
free REIN. Damn me, and the lack of an edit function.
It’s possible to increase the size of the court. It’s been done before, though not for a long time. There’s some discussion of it though.
It’s also theoretically possible to impeach Justices, but that’s much less likely unless something really solid comes out about Kavanaugh.
Nope. Only if you serve as your ‘birth sex’ and only if you don’t have dysphoria.
So, they’re cool with transfolk as long as they pretend to be cis? JFC, motherfuckers aren’t even pretending anymore.
That’s what the article I read said anyways. Perhaps Clint’s heard something else? I don’t know.
Matches what I’ve heard, though not phrased that way of course.
Which did? The article I read or Clint’s statement?
Your article and JBento’s phrasing.
Okay, I’m making sure. I’m not good at telling online sometimes.
Mood
Question: WHY can’t Marcie whisper? She knows how to speak – she can blow air through her mouth. WHY is she 100% mute? Just because she can’t use her vocal chords doesn’t mean she can’t *whisper*!
Nobody’s ever said anything about vocal cords. Leland smooshed her throat with a rock. That’s gonna do some damage to the other parts of her throat too.
Can’t remember where I first saw it (might’ve been linked from this very comments section), but I remember once seeing a Reddit AMA by someone who was rendered 100%, “can’t-make-any-sounds-even-reflexively”, mute due to a throat injury received in adulthood.
Yep, there’s definitely 100% mute folks out there.
I’m the head writer for a creative project and one of our characters is mute due to bilateral vocal chord paralysis. So I’ve incidentally done a lot of research. It’s a common misconception. Whispering still involves engaging the vocal chords. If you try to whisper without engaging your throat at all, and only using your mouth, you’ll see what I mean. Also, even though it’s called “vocal chord paralysis”, the problem is the nerves controlling that part of the throat. It also often leads to occasional trouble breathing or swallowing. Most with bilateral vocal chord paralysis can make A sound, but it’s described as a deeply unsettling grunting noise that folks go out of their way not to make.
If you can still whisper you have what’s called partial paralysis. That’s usually what you see represented in a lot of throat injuries, where the injured person can only whisper or speak in a low, harsh voice.
If her vocal cords were damaged, she may not be able to phonate. Maybe some rough or breathy sounds from breathing or physical movement within the throat (like the glottis or the larynx). But if that’s the case, whispering would definitely not be an option. @10LettersIsTooLong described this well above. Not to mention that whispering is actually harsher on your throat (that is to say, any human’s throat) than speaking normally. And that’s all without even going into the psychological issues that accompany injuries like these.
So like, actually though? YEAH – not being able to use your vocal cords means PRECISELY that you are incapable of whispering. Just to clarify, since that was what you asked.
Sorry, I keep having more to add to this… BUT SO OK the only way to phonate by “blowing air through [your] mouth” is basically…whistling? Which is not speech, obviously. The lips, teeth, tongue, etc, are just articulators in speech. They don’t phonate. Air passing out through your mouth is just exhaling – and if you change your embouchure, sure, whistling. But phonation – the production of sound itself – comes from the vocal cords. You can shape vowels with your mouth and lips and articulate consonants with your tongue and teeth all day long, but without the vocal cords you’re just mouthing words while exhaling. At best, you could communicate with a person this way if you read lips and that’s about it. Think about any woodwind instrument – it phonates through a reed. Brass instruments phonate through a mouthpiece. You can’t imitate those sounds just by standing there without the instrument and blowing air. The same is true of the voice.
Final addendum: for those wondering, phonation of the voice refers to the vibration of the the vocal cords/folds, and if you want to know more about that…I think there are actually no current proven theories about exactly how humans initiate the process of vibrating the vocal folds, so I can’t help you there lol K BYE THANKS FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK
If you place a vibrator on your throat you can modulate the buzzing with your mouth into a fairly good approximation of speech. I’ve heard it done. You sound like a robot, which I think is cool.
Do I see a Marcie/Carla plotline in our future?
She can’t speak, dude. Some people were born like that, and others in an accident. So NO. She CANNOT WHISPER!
Amber is hyperventilating! Someone give this lady Batman x Superman porn and hot chocolate now!
It’s not porn it’s LITERATURE!
Yeah, I know that feeling of “Wait, this is what the person I’m supposed to be talking to looks like, right?”
This is so deeply and personally relatable to me that I almost recoiled.
This is exactly the sort of thing that runs through my head when I’m anxious. Luckily(?) nobody else has to hear it, because when I’m that nervous I can just about gulp out monosyllables.
this is the most relatable thing that has happened in this comic, and i’m counting the dina arc
I do this all the time. I set reminders, double check texts and playback conversations in my mind. Just to make sure that I’m not at the wrong place at the wrong time. Arriving 20-30 mins early doesn’t help, I think I’m avoiding lateness but I’m just giving myself more time to worry.
Best and most relatable interaction.