Too bad it can’t be used for good/helpful stuff like, “Don’t eat healthy foods/stuff yourself with pizza!” tho idk how long diets like that can last if you can’t find ways to flavor/season healthier stuff and portion and all that
I literally function off of spite. I hate myself so much that when my depression says I can’t or shouldn’t do something I do it because who am i to tell myself how to live my life right?
My sister kinda did this with her kids. She always told her kids not to eat so many vegies and that they had to eat other things before they could have more. They became obsessed with eating nothing but vegetables. Now they snack on vegies like candy. Only difficulty now is getting one of them to eat meat. (no, she isn’t trying to be vegetarian or vegan, she just is convinced that she doesn’t like it the same way lots of kids are convinced that carrots are bad).
Meat has a very strong taste, some people don’t like it. No reason to believe the kid has “convinced” themselves they don’t like meat. Or carrots, or whatever food they dislike.
You may have more success with the starting point that the kid is telling the truth about their likes/dislikes, and believing them that they don’t like meat (at least as it’s made currently).
Are they a ketchup kid — what if they can cover it in ketchup?
My parents used to “punish” me with healthy food and “reward” me with deeply unhealthy food, unlike every sibling that had to go through that and is now in the habit of eating unhealthy, I personally became a healthy eater to spite them. I also eat cookies ice cream and pizza and fried chicken literally whenever and not on special occasions because those things are fine to eat so long as you also enjoy vegetables. Anyway I want to learn how to make raddish kimchi. Also my little beer microbrew should be ready soon!
Oh yeah.. But at least Sal is smart enough to not outsmart herself, give vent to the urge but not actually let her ‘rents ruin her good thing with Danners.
You said this before. Why would Danny say such a hurtful thing? Do you think that would be realistic for this comic? Marcie is very much alive and gets by without using her voice just fine.
but mike wasn’t really being an asshole! He was being a jerk with a heart of gold, and was just misunderstood, and he wasn’t actually doing emotional abuse, he was just doing tough love! /s
I mean, it was still dickish of Danny to say that Mike would be better off dead to one of Mike’s grieving friends right outside of the room he was lying in.
There’s a time and place for everything and that wasn’t it.
At what point did Danny get to see Mike be anything that wasn’t prickish behavior? WE got to see it, as did Amber, Ethan, and even Walky, but that’s it.
I think, especially if you reread his last interaction with Mike at Becky’s party, Danny was far more concerned about how Mike treated Ethan (and Amber) than himself.
The whole point of his comment was that Ethan would be better off without Mike around. For awhile – he wasn’t actually thinking about Mike dying, much less saying it, though it’s understandable for Ethan to take it that way in retrospect.
People forget this, but at the time no one thought Mike would die. Most of the cast had not dealt with death, and it seemed impossible for someone their own age to die. Ethan didn’t say Mike might die, he said he might not wake up for a while. Danny was probably thinking a few weeks without Mike would be okay for everyone. He starts to take it back, but then he decides to say how he really feels about Mike. If he Danned anything up, it was by taking things personally and running away instead of talking it out with Ethan.
Saying it at all to someone in Ethan’s state was already Danning it up. He blurted something out that he hadn’t intended to say and there was no way it was going to come across well. Even if it was true.
It just annoys me that readers remember it as even worse than it was.
Glad Sal has enough self awareness to realize whether her parents like or dislike Danny shouldn’t affect how she feels. Now with Danny’s parents she going to have to real8ze they will like her more then they like Danny.
Are Danny’s parents even that bad to him in the Dumbiverse? I re-read their appearance on Freshman Family Weekend and they’re mostly fine until they hear Dorothy dumped him.
The Wilcoxen certainly aren’t the likes of Blaine and Clint, but the brief time we see them, they blame and insult Danny instead of comforting him or bucking him up or being kind to him in the wake of an awkward breakup.
Much more pervasively, it’s *how Danny reacts to things*, like somebody whose self-esteem was consistently discouraged by people around him in childhood. (For example, why does this nice people-pleasing fellow think it’s “no big deal” for Amber to yell at him that he’s stupid?)
The longer he lives away from his parents, the more free he feels to learn about himself, and experiment, and start standing up for what he believes in. The longer he’s without them, the comfier he begins to feel in his own skin.
Subtle stuff, but enough that the commentariat seems to suspect that they’re low-key sucky.
That’ll be interesting to see. With all the drama over the Walkerton’s reaction to Danny, I hadn’t really considered how Sal would play out in Danny’s family dynamic. How that’ll parallel Danny’s acceptance by Sal’s parents and how she’ll react to it.
Of course, I’m not sure they really will like Sal. They want a girl who’s “going places” and Sal’s bad girl might not work for them. She’s no Dorothy, after all.
Yeah, that’s mainly how it reads to me as well. Thank you for putting it so well!
To start with, her expression seems too serious for this to be purely joking (though maybe I misunderstand her sense of humor). But it makes sense with her character for her yelled, contrary statement to have some basis in her feelings – not towards Danny, but towards her parents. But, while she feels the need to say that to express her anger towards them (and to a lesser extent, to be contrary), it doesn’t *actually* make Danny a bad boyfriend. I feel like this is character growth for her to recognize that her own feelings are being unhelpful… I don’t remember specific instances, but in the past, I thought she leaned more towards contrariness.
But I don’t know, maybe there’s a bit of jokiness in there, too. Maybe she’s doing something akin to the say-what-you-mean-but-pretend-you’re-joking thing, but with the added caveat of actually-is-joking-but-still-kinda-feels-that-feel-and-wants-to-blow-off-steam.
Or, maybe Walky’s love of tropes is rubbing off on her.
That’s how I read it too, and I’m actually really surprised that people think she’s joking. I think it was a feeling that was building all day, it finally burst out of her, and then she admitted that it doesn’t make sense.
Yeah, she knows it’s just reflexive and irrational, and Danny thankfully doesn’t seem to be that torn up about it. Of course, we’ve seen Danny take all kinds of verbal abuse from people in stride, so this is probably hardly fazing him.
Sending mixed singles. I guess Sal learned something from rooming with Jennifer last semester. Great technique here. Leave em confused, that’s what keeps em interested.
I’m choosing to believe Sal is trying to be playfully self-aware of her own bullshit and just massively missing the mark on what is “Fun” vs “Genuinely Upsetting.”
She goes full-on Walky here. This is the playground “I don’t like your stupid face!” that has the opposite meaning, like we saw between Jennifer & Ruth.
Remember when that one guy was insisting that Billie and Ruth broke up months before they did? I think it was the fight where Ruth told Billie to stop trying to get her to drink. She walked away and from that point forward they were broken up in his eyes to the point that Willis had to step in
Oh I’m way behind, I am trying to savor them. I just meant are you reading or have you read the series in general. I just discovered this recently and I love it. I was excited to see that others share my enthusiasm.
I don’t really understand what happens here. Is this just Sal’s pattern of being contrary violently breaking out? Still seems strange that she would snap at Dan like that.
She’s got to snap at someone, snapping at her parents would’ve done too much damage, and now Dan is the only one present. I take it as a sign that Sal thinks their relationship is firm enough to take this. Danny is her safe place!
I think in the past Sal would have said this and genuinely meant it, but she’s changing from that person. But at the same time, she still holds onto some of the old impulses. So she said it, but she didn’t really mean it.
I can’t help but feel that Linda has a point, and she is growing up. People focused on Danny’s whiteness, but having a healthy relationship with someone suitable is a good sign.
While there’s truth in that, that Linda decided that it was a “healthy relationship with someone suitable” within minutes of meeting Danny suggests that she’s judging on very superficial characteristics at best.
And given her also instant reaction to Lucy, it’s pretty clear what one of those characteristics is.
This is the end of a Book, which means it is night & everybody goes to sleep. Tomorrow’s comic will be an exceptionally bright “Good morning!” as per formula. Which means we’ve got a few situations with potential for hanky-panky left hanging. Asher/Ethan didn’t happen & Danny/Sal obviously won’t. Joe & Joyce watched Hymmel the Horrible Hymnal, which we won’t witness, for which I’m sorry. That leaves Lucy & Walky, who had the disadvantage that Jennifer refused to read the room & leave it. In retrospect, I think that Walky tried to hint that she should go see Asher.
I don’t know that Jennifer couldn’t read the room so much as that she didn’t care to help. (Or doesn’t think Lucy and Walky should be taking that step, although that’s probably more investment in the situation than she’s willing to acknowledge.)
I REALLY hope Malaya and Sal will have a discussion about this. Even if she’s usually a nuisance, sometimes Malaya is able to raise good point and make Sal thinks. Sal says he’s fine is not enough to be really fine.
I mean, I for one know that like Dorothy and walky, Willis has been waiting throughout it’s walky to do sal x Danny proper meet cute and romance. Admittedly, Dorothy and walky are already broken up, but he could be doing this comic for another fifty years! Who knows.
I really don’t see why the commentariat is suggesting that Sal is *joking* here… Sal’s clearly not joking; she’s expressing her anger/conflicted feelings. She’s also targeting an innocent victim in this.
However, she realizes right afterward that it’s too much; too harsh and totally mistargeted, so the quiet “your fine, come back tomorrow” by way of apology.
No lie, it’s not the best apology, and it wasn’t remotely a fair attack- this is a low-point for Sal from my view. I wouldn’t ‘come back tomorrow’ if this happened to me.
I would. This is a strong emotional reaction to an incredibly stressful situation, striking the heart of her childhood traumas and she walks it back immediately.
However, she really put him into a no-win situation, practically gave him his directions, and then got angry about the result.
Her anger is misguided, as she’s angry at her parents. But she by rights owes a genuine apology, not a mumbled ‘ignore what I just said’.
Mind you, Sal is one of my favorite characters in the story- and she seems to generally do good- but this was cruel.
It’s also remarkable insofar as it is very similar to how her mother responds to anger- quick and explosive shifts of mood, and seemingly as quick of recovey.
That’s being a fair weather partner, sticking around only when things are good.
It was not fair to Danny but she walked it back. Danny now realizes that Sal has issues but those are by far outweighed by his love for her and desire to be together. Problems happen and couples work through them and end up being stronger together.
I’d say that, if something THIS wildly intense happens in the first few months of a relationship, one must seriously weigh “am I being a fair-weather partner” vs. “okay, so is this always going to be this unfair?”
Obviously we all “know” Sal pretty well to know that deep down she’s a good person, but I’m not going to recommend anyone at any stage of a relationship tolerate conduct like “yell at you for something that’s not your fault, then slam a door in your face”. Sticking with THAT partner is going to up your risk of being a victim in the general case.
That’s fair, it’s basically about weighting how much you love someone and want them in your life vs. the effort you need to put into the relationship. Sal is definitely someone worth the effort.
In the abstract sure – be real careful about putting up with partners yelling at you for things that aren’t your fault and slamming doors in your face.
But that’s taking this one scene out of context. When something like this happens, you’ve got to look at why it happened.
Eh, it wasn’t really an ‘attack’ on Danny though? If she’d twisted “my parents like you” into some perceived flaw or sin of Danny’s, that’d have been one thing, but she didn’t even accuse him of anything.
Yeah she’s not joking, she’s just working through some complex emotions. She’s become self aware enough to realize it’s a knee jerk reaction and not how she really feels, and she probably just needs to sleep on it
I don’t think “joking” is the right sentiment so much as not entirely serious. Danny knows she doesn’t actually dislike him because of her parents. That’s why he hung around to give her a chance to walk it back. Doesn’t also mean she doesn’t need to address that instinct so it doesn’t happen in the first place, but, well, that’s the “dumbing” part of “of age.”
Maybe that’s why he hung around. Or maybe he’s like me. I’d have been about 10% through “that’s weird, I wonder what it means?” when she course-corrected. In no condition to remember that I have legs, or how they work, let alone decide where to have them take me.
1.) I think Sal is going to climb out the window and go for a long walk, wearing her leather jacket and smoking a cigarette. If she’s lucky maybe the roller rink will be open and she can skate top speed to get the frustration out.
2.) I don’t do this anymore, but when I was Sal’s age, I loved to climb tall trees. I loved the perspective, while swaying in the breeze from a great height. Nowadays I listen to soft music.
1) Listen to some music or read that music magazine we saw her look at a while ago, maybe text Marcie.
2) Scroll through Tumblr fan blogs I know will have cute things, look at things I like on Youtube, read (fanfic or a book) or work on my Game of Thrones D&D game.
I’ve been thinking… I wonder why it’s ok when Sal does it and not when Jennifer does. I think mostly it seems like Sal is an injured bird and Jennifer seems more manipulative. Or maybe it’s because Sal recants instantly while Jennifer drags things out?
Pretty much, Jennifer is a smug manipulative rich girl whose problems are very much self-inflicted. Sal meanwhile got dealt a pretty shit hand and she is doing her best to deal with it and is actually doing pretty well.
Jennifer got dealt a pretty shit parental hand as well – hers is just neglect and absence papered over with money rather than Linda’s more active abuse.
Jennifer’s sometime behaviour comes across as offensive (as in, on the offence), while Sal’s comes across as defensive. Easier to sympathise with the latter (to me)
Sal realizes she’s being shitty and that this is a her problem. Jennifer thinks everyone else is the problem and she’s fixed herself by cutting off her old group and changing her image. It’s the self awareness and subsequent steps to deal with her issues
Also, Sal is aware that Danny is a good audience for these things, because he doesn’t internalize this stuff or pick a fight over it. He lets her kind of talk/yell it out, then once that’s done, they talk together to process it. Their communication styles match up very well for this, so Sal doesn’t have to be as composed or as guarded as she might with someone else. I do hope Sal gets to a point where not everything has to happen with a freakout, but she’s got time and it’s pretty understandable that she’d have a lot of frustration and a limited emotional vocabulary for understanding that (Their household doesn’t seem to be big on feelings talk, not like Dorothy’s home, for example). Jennifer, on the other hand, lashes out indiscriminately, even at people who absolutely will be hurt by what she says, or think it’s personal. Then she somehow gets surprised when people avoid her because they don’t want to be hurt/yelled at again? So yeah, I get it in Sal a lot more and I think Sal will grow out of it.
That’s a good point. It feels like Sal will stop lashing out once she’s healed some, whereas with Jennifer it feels like that’s what you get— that’s who she wants to be.
Honestly Sal healing has been a great part of seeing her with Danny. She had to learn to trust him. She used to be a lot more distant and a lot more suspicious- she flipped right out when he got her that bicycle, for example. Since then, she might still have that initial impulse to bristle, but it seems to get a little less intense every time, and her cooldown period before she can talk it out is getting shorter. Jennifer, on the other hand, keeps on doing the same thing over and over and thinks it’s okay because she’s just like…doing it to new people who haven’t yet realized what she’s like? I really understand Alice right here; Jennifer has a lot of good qualities but she’s also quite toxic, and not a great friend for a lot of people.
She’d gotten a lot better before the time skip, but reset hard.
The breakup hit her hard and I suspect Raidah’s been playing on her worst aspects since.
I don’t think it really makes sense to say that Sal needs to heal, while that’s just what Jennifer’s like.
But the reason Jennifer was getting better was because her old hall didn’t put up with her garbage. Her new hall put her on a pedestal as soon as she moved—the hard reset happened before Raidah. Jennifer wants to be this way… I don’t think Sal does.
Yeah, this is where I’m at. Jennifer has said she’s in therapy, and good for her if so, but we don’t see a lot of it. We see her thinking that doing the same things with different people is somehow growth or recovery. Jennifer may well have some stuff to heal from, but it doesn’t seem like healing is where her focus is at the moment. So yeah, for the time being, Sal is actively changing, while this is how Jennifer is. It doesn’t have to stay that way, it’s just that currently Jennifer has not expressed interest in changing her behavior.
Well one big thing that she changed didn’t reset – she’s still not drinking. That’s absolutely huge.
But I disagree completely that the hard reset happened before Raidah. It didn’t happen when she moved dorms. The new hall did put her on a pedestal, but she got past that. The last big things we saw from her before the time skip were her getting sober, going to therapy (at least for a bit) and opening up to her new dorm about Ruth and about her problems. She’s in a good space.
Then there’s the Halloween flashback, the breakup with Ruth and Raidah brings her into her clique. Next time we see her is post time skip and she’s the “new improved Jennifer”.
She’s in a good space for her, but she’s treating other people badly— as lesser beings as soon as she moves in. None of that is Raidah related. She likes being on a pedestal and maybe for her negging and mixed messages are part of that.
I meant that as she was in a good space at the end of the time skip. You’re skipping over all the development that happened between her moving dorms and the time skip.
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ah, spite, letting people dictate your preferences through opposites
Too bad it can’t be used for good/helpful stuff like, “Don’t eat healthy foods/stuff yourself with pizza!” tho idk how long diets like that can last if you can’t find ways to flavor/season healthier stuff and portion and all that
I literally function off of spite. I hate myself so much that when my depression says I can’t or shouldn’t do something I do it because who am i to tell myself how to live my life right?
I’m sorry to hear that you have to deal with that. I know how hard that is.
I wish I could do that, I try bit it usually ends up sucking even more.
“Please don’t throw me in that briar patch!”
Sometimes it only has to work for a second or two.
Please don’t use reverse psychology to get someone to throw you into my patch. I don’t know you like that…
My sister kinda did this with her kids. She always told her kids not to eat so many vegies and that they had to eat other things before they could have more. They became obsessed with eating nothing but vegetables. Now they snack on vegies like candy. Only difficulty now is getting one of them to eat meat. (no, she isn’t trying to be vegetarian or vegan, she just is convinced that she doesn’t like it the same way lots of kids are convinced that carrots are bad).
Meat has a very strong taste, some people don’t like it. No reason to believe the kid has “convinced” themselves they don’t like meat. Or carrots, or whatever food they dislike.
You may have more success with the starting point that the kid is telling the truth about their likes/dislikes, and believing them that they don’t like meat (at least as it’s made currently).
Are they a ketchup kid — what if they can cover it in ketchup?
I’ve done a diet like that. It did work. Just messed with my blood sugar too much.
I became a vegetarian out of spite and have kept to it for 20 years
My parents used to “punish” me with healthy food and “reward” me with deeply unhealthy food, unlike every sibling that had to go through that and is now in the habit of eating unhealthy, I personally became a healthy eater to spite them. I also eat cookies ice cream and pizza and fried chicken literally whenever and not on special occasions because those things are fine to eat so long as you also enjoy vegetables. Anyway I want to learn how to make raddish kimchi. Also my little beer microbrew should be ready soon!
Oh yeah.. But at least Sal is smart enough to not outsmart herself, give vent to the urge but not actually let her ‘rents ruin her good thing with Danners.
She’s trying her best!
What’s life without a little crazy?
genuinely jumpscared
I too live in a world of contradictions, Sal.
Hopefully Danny won’t Dan this up like saying Marcie would be better off dead.
You said this before. Why would Danny say such a hurtful thing? Do you think that would be realistic for this comic? Marcie is very much alive and gets by without using her voice just fine.
And unlike Mike, Marcie wasn’t a colossal asshole to Dan.
but mike wasn’t really being an asshole! He was being a jerk with a heart of gold, and was just misunderstood, and he wasn’t actually doing emotional abuse, he was just doing tough love! /s
I mean, it was still dickish of Danny to say that Mike would be better off dead to one of Mike’s grieving friends right outside of the room he was lying in.
There’s a time and place for everything and that wasn’t it.
I read his comment as musing on the thought that maybe everyone else would be better off if Mike were no more.
Winner winner chicken dinner
It wasn’t even “dead”. Just that he “not wake up for awhile”.
And he was likely thinking mostly about Ethan being better off without Mike around.
At what point did Danny get to see Mike be anything that wasn’t prickish behavior? WE got to see it, as did Amber, Ethan, and even Walky, but that’s it.
Few and far between for all of them (until the end for Amber). Especially for Walky.
‘/s’ is an “end of sarcasm” sign. Casi is joking and actually means the opposite of everything they said.
I hear they’ve invented this thing called the Internet.
I think, especially if you reread his last interaction with Mike at Becky’s party, Danny was far more concerned about how Mike treated Ethan (and Amber) than himself.
The whole point of his comment was that Ethan would be better off without Mike around. For awhile – he wasn’t actually thinking about Mike dying, much less saying it, though it’s understandable for Ethan to take it that way in retrospect.
People forget this, but at the time no one thought Mike would die. Most of the cast had not dealt with death, and it seemed impossible for someone their own age to die. Ethan didn’t say Mike might die, he said he might not wake up for a while. Danny was probably thinking a few weeks without Mike would be okay for everyone. He starts to take it back, but then he decides to say how he really feels about Mike. If he Danned anything up, it was by taking things personally and running away instead of talking it out with Ethan.
Saying it at all to someone in Ethan’s state was already Danning it up. He blurted something out that he hadn’t intended to say and there was no way it was going to come across well. Even if it was true.
It just annoys me that readers remember it as even worse than it was.
I can’t believe Danny spit on Mike’s dying face in front of his parents.
Have Danny and Marcie even met?
Why would he say that? Danny has never said that any of his peers would be better off dead.
It still takes a colossal asshat to be so self-absorbed that he doesn’t notice his friend is visiting another in THE HOSPITAL.
It’s okay Danny! You aren’t at that cement wall thing! Therefore, not a breakup!
Actually, the line “My parents like you so AH don’t like you!” sounds like a good book title.
I’d buy a totally random book with that title and invest my life in reading the prior and subsequent comics, for sure
Sounds like we have a winner then. Wonder what the title of the next chapter is. Let’s see.
Everybody’s Looking for Nothing. Hm.
I hope tomorrow isn’t Opposite Day.
Kinda? It’s a new moon IIRC
She just had to get that out of her system.
Sal’s got issues.
It’s weirdly cute.
*Quiet Screaming into my Pillow*
“I can’t be seen as a person unless I’m with you”
Panel 4 Danny is so 😔
Glad Sal has enough self awareness to realize whether her parents like or dislike Danny shouldn’t affect how she feels. Now with Danny’s parents she going to have to real8ze they will like her more then they like Danny.
This is why I keep faithful to this ship. They just work so damned well together, and really bring out the best in the other.
My parents often say to me “yeah, but we like her” when talking about my spouse. It’s mostly a joke. Mostly.
Are Danny’s parents even that bad to him in the Dumbiverse? I re-read their appearance on Freshman Family Weekend and they’re mostly fine until they hear Dorothy dumped him.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/wilcoxes/
The Wilcoxen certainly aren’t the likes of Blaine and Clint, but the brief time we see them, they blame and insult Danny instead of comforting him or bucking him up or being kind to him in the wake of an awkward breakup.
Much more pervasively, it’s *how Danny reacts to things*, like somebody whose self-esteem was consistently discouraged by people around him in childhood. (For example, why does this nice people-pleasing fellow think it’s “no big deal” for Amber to yell at him that he’s stupid?)
The longer he lives away from his parents, the more free he feels to learn about himself, and experiment, and start standing up for what he believes in. The longer he’s without them, the comfier he begins to feel in his own skin.
Subtle stuff, but enough that the commentariat seems to suspect that they’re low-key sucky.
The most damning thing we’ve seen about the Willcoxes was in a strip where they didn’t show up and weren’t mentioned:
I’m kinda used to being called stuff like [a piece of shit]. It’s not really that big a deal to me.
It feels clear that however the Wilcoxes treated him at Family Weekend was not exactly them at their worst.
Yes! Thank you, that’s the strip I was thinking of, and it was, appropriately, worse than I remembered.
That’ll be interesting to see. With all the drama over the Walkerton’s reaction to Danny, I hadn’t really considered how Sal would play out in Danny’s family dynamic. How that’ll parallel Danny’s acceptance by Sal’s parents and how she’ll react to it.
Of course, I’m not sure they really will like Sal. They want a girl who’s “going places” and Sal’s bad girl might not work for them. She’s no Dorothy, after all.
The Fallacy of the Ultimate Binary
I take that as her instantly knowing she is being ridiculous and to sleep it off.
Yeah, that’s mainly how it reads to me as well. Thank you for putting it so well!
To start with, her expression seems too serious for this to be purely joking (though maybe I misunderstand her sense of humor). But it makes sense with her character for her yelled, contrary statement to have some basis in her feelings – not towards Danny, but towards her parents. But, while she feels the need to say that to express her anger towards them (and to a lesser extent, to be contrary), it doesn’t *actually* make Danny a bad boyfriend. I feel like this is character growth for her to recognize that her own feelings are being unhelpful… I don’t remember specific instances, but in the past, I thought she leaned more towards contrariness.
But I don’t know, maybe there’s a bit of jokiness in there, too. Maybe she’s doing something akin to the say-what-you-mean-but-pretend-you’re-joking thing, but with the added caveat of actually-is-joking-but-still-kinda-feels-that-feel-and-wants-to-blow-off-steam.
Or, maybe Walky’s love of tropes is rubbing off on her.
That’s how I read it too, and I’m actually really surprised that people think she’s joking. I think it was a feeling that was building all day, it finally burst out of her, and then she admitted that it doesn’t make sense.
Yeah, she knows it’s just reflexive and irrational, and Danny thankfully doesn’t seem to be that torn up about it. Of course, we’ve seen Danny take all kinds of verbal abuse from people in stride, so this is probably hardly fazing him.
Not sure if I really think they can overcome this, or if it’s just wishful thinking. But one can hope…
Onward to Book 14!
Welp, that was frightening. Glad she wasn’t serious though.
Sour patch kid Sal.
Well on the plus side Panel 4 Danny, Walky probably won’t date your ex this time.
Sending mixed singles. I guess Sal learned something from rooming with Jennifer last semester. Great technique here. Leave em confused, that’s what keeps em interested.
Pretty sure she was just joking with him.
I know. I was trying to joke myself.
Mostly.
She’s hiding a genuine fear under there.
♫ Give ’em the old, double whammy
Daze and dizzy ’em ♪
I’m choosing to believe Sal is trying to be playfully self-aware of her own bullshit and just massively missing the mark on what is “Fun” vs “Genuinely Upsetting.”
She goes full-on Walky here. This is the playground “I don’t like your stupid face!” that has the opposite meaning, like we saw between Jennifer & Ruth.
I had the thought that this was basically on the level of “I don’t know how to deal with these feelings, so I’m going to throw a toy at you.”
she needed to vent, but she also wanted him to know that she still loves him.
I choose to take this as a real breakup, because the standard is apparently so low that “walking away from them” counts, around here.
Remember when that one guy was insisting that Billie and Ruth broke up months before they did? I think it was the fight where Ruth told Billie to stop trying to get her to drink. She walked away and from that point forward they were broken up in his eyes to the point that Willis had to step in
Good times
Wasn’t that just one of the time Ruth tried to break up, but Billie wouldn’t let her? As later revealed in the Halloween arc, happened all the time.
Honestly, I was scared that thos was how it was gonna go, thank goodness.
Book 13: My parents like you so I don’t like you
Was just about to comment this;
other than getting married i’d hope most parents would just feel indifferent.
or comforting in the divorce where the ‘well we never liked him’ would translate to ‘you’re too good’ or ‘he was a good guy, sorry it didn’t work out’
Well at least she clarifies. XD
yeah that checks out. yay for Sal growth!
Sal is having a lot of complex emotions right now
Neither Sal, nor Murderbot, nor me, like that feel.
Wait are you reading Murderbot Diaries?
I don’t think the next one’s out yet.
Oh I’m way behind, I am trying to savor them. I just meant are you reading or have you read the series in general. I just discovered this recently and I love it. I was excited to see that others share my enthusiasm.
I have read the first 2 books! Also savouring here 🙂
[A birthday cake that spells out in the frosting “Sorry for what I said when it was 104 degrees out”]
getting mixed signals, here
Ha ha ha. How many people got halfway through the strip and went “Sal, no!”?
I don’t really understand what happens here. Is this just Sal’s pattern of being contrary violently breaking out? Still seems strange that she would snap at Dan like that.
She’s got to snap at someone, snapping at her parents would’ve done too much damage, and now Dan is the only one present. I take it as a sign that Sal thinks their relationship is firm enough to take this. Danny is her safe place!
I think in the past Sal would have said this and genuinely meant it, but she’s changing from that person. But at the same time, she still holds onto some of the old impulses. So she said it, but she didn’t really mean it.
I can’t help but feel that Linda has a point, and she is growing up. People focused on Danny’s whiteness, but having a healthy relationship with someone suitable is a good sign.
While there’s truth in that, that Linda decided that it was a “healthy relationship with someone suitable” within minutes of meeting Danny suggests that she’s judging on very superficial characteristics at best.
And given her also instant reaction to Lucy, it’s pretty clear what one of those characteristics is.
You’re not wrong about that either.
This is the end of a Book, which means it is night & everybody goes to sleep. Tomorrow’s comic will be an exceptionally bright “Good morning!” as per formula. Which means we’ve got a few situations with potential for hanky-panky left hanging. Asher/Ethan didn’t happen & Danny/Sal obviously won’t. Joe & Joyce watched Hymmel the Horrible Hymnal, which we won’t witness, for which I’m sorry. That leaves Lucy & Walky, who had the disadvantage that Jennifer refused to read the room & leave it. In retrospect, I think that Walky tried to hint that she should go see Asher.
Remember folks, Hymmel the Horrible Hymnal has an actual real-life counterpart in Psalty the Sinister Songbook!
I don’t know that Jennifer couldn’t read the room so much as that she didn’t care to help. (Or doesn’t think Lucy and Walky should be taking that step, although that’s probably more investment in the situation than she’s willing to acknowledge.)
I’m not at all sure that Walky was hinting anything there. Seemed more like he was just throwing a barb back at her.
And of course, she’s got no obligation to leave her room.
Sal nooooooo, don’t let that poison get to your head!
This is just her venting, this is the kind of stuff abuse does, she has my sympathies 🥺
At least she realised that wasn’t a cool thing to say to Danny 3 minutes later
More like 3 seconds. Unless he just lingered there for a while I’m shock
Whew. The blurry Patreon preview had me worried yesterday…
Ah, the Willis got you.
I wondered wondered why he wouldn’t keep that sword dangling by a thread, but now it makes sense.
Well, that’s one way to end a book.
Hahahahaha Sal……………… At least she’s joking about it
“sorry, force of habit”
Oh, that brings back college memories
Tsundere Sal Strikes Again!
I REALLY hope Malaya and Sal will have a discussion about this. Even if she’s usually a nuisance, sometimes Malaya is able to raise good point and make Sal thinks. Sal says he’s fine is not enough to be really fine.
I mean, I for one know that like Dorothy and walky, Willis has been waiting throughout it’s walky to do sal x Danny proper meet cute and romance. Admittedly, Dorothy and walky are already broken up, but he could be doing this comic for another fifty years! Who knows.
Sal’s “It’s not you, it’s me” energy is nice tbh.
“I have issues. But I don’t want to hurt you while I work them out.”
I was genuinely worried this would be her reaction… fortunately she was just being a bit tsundere.
So I’m not the only one who mentally added a “Baka!” to panel 5….
Sal going “Baka!” would be so cute XD
Coin flip heads: She drags him inside.
Coin flip tails: She rejects him.
This coin landed on its side. Progress?
I really don’t see why the commentariat is suggesting that Sal is *joking* here… Sal’s clearly not joking; she’s expressing her anger/conflicted feelings. She’s also targeting an innocent victim in this.
However, she realizes right afterward that it’s too much; too harsh and totally mistargeted, so the quiet “your fine, come back tomorrow” by way of apology.
No lie, it’s not the best apology, and it wasn’t remotely a fair attack- this is a low-point for Sal from my view. I wouldn’t ‘come back tomorrow’ if this happened to me.
I would. This is a strong emotional reaction to an incredibly stressful situation, striking the heart of her childhood traumas and she walks it back immediately.
I understand and did point that out.
However, she really put him into a no-win situation, practically gave him his directions, and then got angry about the result.
Her anger is misguided, as she’s angry at her parents. But she by rights owes a genuine apology, not a mumbled ‘ignore what I just said’.
Mind you, Sal is one of my favorite characters in the story- and she seems to generally do good- but this was cruel.
It’s also remarkable insofar as it is very similar to how her mother responds to anger- quick and explosive shifts of mood, and seemingly as quick of recovey.
That’s being a fair weather partner, sticking around only when things are good.
It was not fair to Danny but she walked it back. Danny now realizes that Sal has issues but those are by far outweighed by his love for her and desire to be together. Problems happen and couples work through them and end up being stronger together.
I’d say that, if something THIS wildly intense happens in the first few months of a relationship, one must seriously weigh “am I being a fair-weather partner” vs. “okay, so is this always going to be this unfair?”
Obviously we all “know” Sal pretty well to know that deep down she’s a good person, but I’m not going to recommend anyone at any stage of a relationship tolerate conduct like “yell at you for something that’s not your fault, then slam a door in your face”. Sticking with THAT partner is going to up your risk of being a victim in the general case.
That’s fair, it’s basically about weighting how much you love someone and want them in your life vs. the effort you need to put into the relationship. Sal is definitely someone worth the effort.
In the abstract sure – be real careful about putting up with partners yelling at you for things that aren’t your fault and slamming doors in your face.
But that’s taking this one scene out of context. When something like this happens, you’ve got to look at why it happened.
Eh, it wasn’t really an ‘attack’ on Danny though? If she’d twisted “my parents like you” into some perceived flaw or sin of Danny’s, that’d have been one thing, but she didn’t even accuse him of anything.
Yeah she’s not joking, she’s just working through some complex emotions. She’s become self aware enough to realize it’s a knee jerk reaction and not how she really feels, and she probably just needs to sleep on it
agreed.
I don’t think “joking” is the right sentiment so much as not entirely serious. Danny knows she doesn’t actually dislike him because of her parents. That’s why he hung around to give her a chance to walk it back. Doesn’t also mean she doesn’t need to address that instinct so it doesn’t happen in the first place, but, well, that’s the “dumbing” part of “of age.”
Maybe that’s why he hung around. Or maybe he’s like me. I’d have been about 10% through “that’s weird, I wonder what it means?” when she course-corrected. In no condition to remember that I have legs, or how they work, let alone decide where to have them take me.
…Would anyone like to play a game?
Here’s the question:
1.) What’s Sal going to do now to unwind her mind and unthread her head?
2.) What do YOU like to do when everything gets to be too much, like it all is for Sal, right now?
I can start.
1.) I think Sal is going to climb out the window and go for a long walk, wearing her leather jacket and smoking a cigarette. If she’s lucky maybe the roller rink will be open and she can skate top speed to get the frustration out.
2.) I don’t do this anymore, but when I was Sal’s age, I loved to climb tall trees. I loved the perspective, while swaying in the breeze from a great height. Nowadays I listen to soft music.
1) probably gonna smoke outside
2) i kinda feel on the verge of autistic meltdown right now, i feel like crying but my face can’t make tears 😭
I hear ya, NG! I’m sending soothing vibes your way. I hope things settle down for you when they can. Remember to breathe. (( <3 ))
my emotions have just been so hectic since this shitty birthday weekend, it might be a few days before I’m back to my low-mid anxious baseline 😢
but thank you as always Laura 😖🥹
You are so welcome, of course, NG.
Here is the music I’m playing right now while trying to work through my feeling of being overwhelmed…
https://insig.ht/46v1k59niCb
Apropos of our egg-citing recipe swap yesterday, here’s a wee joke (yust a yolk?) for Becky and Dina:
I tried to start a dating site for lesbian chickens, but I was struggling to make hens meet.
(Guess they were too chicken!)
Ooh, sheesh! WAY too much Metadata in that URL! Yuck! And that’s no yolk.
Thank you so much. Your lesbian egg jokes and this song started a transmutation that is turning my tears of sorrow into that of joy. 🥲
✊️ We can get through this. 🤝
1) Listen to some music or read that music magazine we saw her look at a while ago, maybe text Marcie.
2) Scroll through Tumblr fan blogs I know will have cute things, look at things I like on Youtube, read (fanfic or a book) or work on my Game of Thrones D&D game.
Ooohhh… great ideas! Thanks!
After sleeping, it’d be nice if they went on another bike ride+picnic the next day
I’ve been thinking… I wonder why it’s ok when Sal does it and not when Jennifer does. I think mostly it seems like Sal is an injured bird and Jennifer seems more manipulative. Or maybe it’s because Sal recants instantly while Jennifer drags things out?
Probably the second, I would say.
Pretty much, Jennifer is a smug manipulative rich girl whose problems are very much self-inflicted. Sal meanwhile got dealt a pretty shit hand and she is doing her best to deal with it and is actually doing pretty well.
Jennifer got dealt a pretty shit parental hand as well – hers is just neglect and absence papered over with money rather than Linda’s more active abuse.
True, no parenting vs shitty parenting.
What specific Jennifer behavior are you referring to?
You know. When they do IT.
No, I have no idea either. Jennifer has done a lot of things, but I don’t recall anything directly comparable to this strip.
Conflicting boyfriend expectations/instructions, hot/cold behavior, etc.
Jennifer’s sometime behaviour comes across as offensive (as in, on the offence), while Sal’s comes across as defensive. Easier to sympathise with the latter (to me)
Sal realizes she’s being shitty and that this is a her problem. Jennifer thinks everyone else is the problem and she’s fixed herself by cutting off her old group and changing her image. It’s the self awareness and subsequent steps to deal with her issues
Also, Sal is aware that Danny is a good audience for these things, because he doesn’t internalize this stuff or pick a fight over it. He lets her kind of talk/yell it out, then once that’s done, they talk together to process it. Their communication styles match up very well for this, so Sal doesn’t have to be as composed or as guarded as she might with someone else. I do hope Sal gets to a point where not everything has to happen with a freakout, but she’s got time and it’s pretty understandable that she’d have a lot of frustration and a limited emotional vocabulary for understanding that (Their household doesn’t seem to be big on feelings talk, not like Dorothy’s home, for example). Jennifer, on the other hand, lashes out indiscriminately, even at people who absolutely will be hurt by what she says, or think it’s personal. Then she somehow gets surprised when people avoid her because they don’t want to be hurt/yelled at again? So yeah, I get it in Sal a lot more and I think Sal will grow out of it.
That’s a good point. It feels like Sal will stop lashing out once she’s healed some, whereas with Jennifer it feels like that’s what you get— that’s who she wants to be.
Honestly Sal healing has been a great part of seeing her with Danny. She had to learn to trust him. She used to be a lot more distant and a lot more suspicious- she flipped right out when he got her that bicycle, for example. Since then, she might still have that initial impulse to bristle, but it seems to get a little less intense every time, and her cooldown period before she can talk it out is getting shorter. Jennifer, on the other hand, keeps on doing the same thing over and over and thinks it’s okay because she’s just like…doing it to new people who haven’t yet realized what she’s like? I really understand Alice right here; Jennifer has a lot of good qualities but she’s also quite toxic, and not a great friend for a lot of people.
She’d gotten a lot better before the time skip, but reset hard.
The breakup hit her hard and I suspect Raidah’s been playing on her worst aspects since.
I don’t think it really makes sense to say that Sal needs to heal, while that’s just what Jennifer’s like.
But the reason Jennifer was getting better was because her old hall didn’t put up with her garbage. Her new hall put her on a pedestal as soon as she moved—the hard reset happened before Raidah. Jennifer wants to be this way… I don’t think Sal does.
Yeah, this is where I’m at. Jennifer has said she’s in therapy, and good for her if so, but we don’t see a lot of it. We see her thinking that doing the same things with different people is somehow growth or recovery. Jennifer may well have some stuff to heal from, but it doesn’t seem like healing is where her focus is at the moment. So yeah, for the time being, Sal is actively changing, while this is how Jennifer is. It doesn’t have to stay that way, it’s just that currently Jennifer has not expressed interest in changing her behavior.
Well one big thing that she changed didn’t reset – she’s still not drinking. That’s absolutely huge.
But I disagree completely that the hard reset happened before Raidah. It didn’t happen when she moved dorms. The new hall did put her on a pedestal, but she got past that. The last big things we saw from her before the time skip were her getting sober, going to therapy (at least for a bit) and opening up to her new dorm about Ruth and about her problems. She’s in a good space.
Then there’s the Halloween flashback, the breakup with Ruth and Raidah brings her into her clique. Next time we see her is post time skip and she’s the “new improved Jennifer”.
She’s in a good space for her, but she’s treating other people badly— as lesser beings as soon as she moves in. None of that is Raidah related. She likes being on a pedestal and maybe for her negging and mixed messages are part of that.
I meant that as she was in a good space at the end of the time skip. You’re skipping over all the development that happened between her moving dorms and the time skip.
She even tore her own pedestal down telling them about her Kit Fisto fanfiction. And the DUI.
Two book titles on this one, and both from Sal! What a good day.
That…is a strange book ending. Oh well, l’m excited for the next one.
It’s not the best feeling, but I totally relate to Sal in this strip.
me too 😭😭😭😭🫂
Yanno, that is actually some decent communication there.