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David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
Alex Maw @xjmaw.bsky.social ⋅ 6m
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“Have you considered that he’s a version of your trauma you can fuck?”
“Have YOU??”
“…YES”
Who is saying which line here?
Because it could honestly be either or.
Both are saying both simultaneously.
These to are VERY on the same wavelength when it comes to this topic.
I imagine Amber gets the first and last lines.
Out loud. Ethan would think it, though.
You know… I’m kinda onboard for that. So long as Ethan is aware and gives consent, I mean, why not?
Also… if only we could all have a version of our trauma in the form of a hot guy we could fuck… hmmm…
**tries to picture a hot guy that somehow represents the US medical insurance system**
Yeahhh but if Ethan finds out Asher had *any* part in the night that got Mike killed, he might attempt to murder him, and I don’t want Ethan to have to be on the run from the Korean Mafia. Though I could absolutely see him joining AmaziGirl with his own alter/secret crimefighting identity after that mind melt, if he and Asher did hook up before he found out about that night.
He did things on that night, but I don’t think it has anything to do with Mike deciding to lure Blane away and get into a fight with him. Mike pretty much decided to do that on his own.
And it sounds like Blaine had Asher over a barrel, with regards to his setting that night into motion.
Seperate nights though. Asher pulled the alarm on a different noght than Mike getting fatally injured
I mean, it probably wouldn’t be too hard for Asher to get Ethan to see him as another of Blaine’s victims since Asher was blackmailed (with something that could potentially lead to his death, even) into helping Blaine.
And really, I can’t see the corresponding truth about Asher getting Blaine whacked being anything but a positive in Ethan’s book.
Unfortunately, for many systemic American problems, the hot guy version of that trauma is Ronald Reagan.
Which I’m suddenly realizing might not be as offputting as it should be in this particular fandom. Dangit Shortpacked!
Oh, please. The US healthcare system can absolutely fuck you without needing to be a hot guy
Fuck the system! Stick it to the man! Tell him to shove it where the sun don’t shine!
innuendo insults are really low-hanging fruit
I dunno, I’d rather my trauma come in sapphic flavoring, y’know?
While the expression on your gravitar is totes Joyce-appropriate, I bet this is Booster’s logic.
Still calling Booster in the room!
Morgan Freeman voice. “But they were both bottoms…”
Mike was. Ethan can pitch just fine. Don’t know if he’s much for playing catcher.
There’s Willis art of him being topped by Manny, so I guess h’s a switch hitter.
Dumbing of Age Book 13: Look, Don’t Kiss That Boy or Anything, Okay?
Does Ethan have a roommate? I’m only asking cause his room seems like a dark void right now and I gotta wonder how the dude sharing that room rolls with that.
Jacob seems like a dude with an active social life who gets out a lot
It’s Jacob.
I mean it’s still Jacob.
He mentioned it when Amber came to tell him Sal and Danny were dating.
Last I checked, his roommate was Jacob, right? Did Jacob move out after the incident with Joyce and Jacob’s brother? Seems like Ethan is always alone in his room when we see him.
I actually totally forgot it was Jacob. I guess Jacob just studies in the library or something.
Jacob is a character who has been conspicuously absent post-timeskip but he’s been mentioned a few times so he’s still probably around.
Part of me thinks Jacob’s gonna show up again when it’s time to pick Lucy up off the Walky rebound.
That would be good for her. I hope its not too much of a rebound, like she was for Walky. Walky and Lucy are cute, but there is no way they’re lasting. He’s just not that into her.
Hmmm. I don’t know how I feel about that relationship. Genuinely neutral, not unsettled. I guess it kinda depends how far Lucy moves towards the spotlight of the comic and we see her go through her own inward journey and examining her religion, then I might see a Lucy/Jacob ship being a good idea.
But right now, I don’t think they actually have any common interests. I see no legitimate reason to want them to get together, other than being there and available.
They have sameish religious beliefs, but that’s all I can think of.
Oh, and a positive opinion of Raidah.
They just seem very romantically compatible. Lucy’s already been compared to Joyce but she doesn’t have problematic baggage with Jacob. More importantly they’re both looking for the same thing, a serious relationship. Jacob doesn’t play games and Lucy falls in love very quickly, not to mention Jacob’s hot and Lucy is super horny. It almost feels too setup. Like it wouldn’t happen because it’s too easy.
Clearly, the most DoA thing to happen would be for Jacob & Sarah to somehow end up with a second chance of getting together. Sarah had a crush on him way before Joyce, but would Joyce see a Sarah/Jacob ship as a betrayal anyway? It may all depend on whether Joe is is really the one for her or not.
If I were Ethan’s roommate right now, well, I’d try to be supportive, but I wouldn’t spend a lot of time in a dark room full of depression.
Pre-timeskip, at the very least, he was roommates with Jacob, and we hear someone talking to him from within his room in a Patreon strip. Presumably it’s still Jacob, though since the roommate is off-screen it’s hypothetically possible that Ethan’s roommate is now someone else.
If I recall correctly, which is a real 50/50 shot honestly, Willis often draws the interior of rooms like this when a character is talking to another from the hallway, likely to save time (I wouldn’t want to design and draw the unique interior of a character’s dorm room either). However, I think this technique is most often used only for characters that it would make sense for – like Ethan and Ruth when they are going through hard times.
I am 90% sure that this technique is being used here because Ethan has a boy in his bed. I am 40% sure that boy is Asher.
other than jacob transferring for some reason there’d be no reason to change but even if he’s not going to class enough to be noticeable, jacob would also be busy with his own classes to not know if ethan’s holed up in his room all day unless he also doesn’t shower/spray febreezer or so
Even if he noticed, I don’t think Jacob would push the issue. He’d make his opinion clear and then let Ethan do his own thing, I think. Jacob isn’t really shown to insert himself into situations: when Sarah pushed him away, he walked.
I honestly wouldn’t be that surprised if Jacob transferred just so he wouldn’t have to risk running into Joyce again.
Ethan either goes to a very large class or has a very absent minded professor not to notice that the guy he hasn’t seen in class for three weeks has a perfect attendance score. Either that or Amber’s grade altering technique has evolved from petty cyber crimes to full on coercion.
Jedi mind tricks!
Hey psychological sooth-saying is Booster’s technique!
Dumbing of Age is already like Dragon Ball Z now — cast members keep stealing each others’ special moves!
If I recall correctly, which is a real 50/50 shot honestly, Willis often draws the interior of rooms like this when a character is talking to another from the hallway, likely to save time (I wouldn’t want to design and draw the unique interior of a character’s dorm room either). However, I think this technique is most often used only for characters that it would make sense for – like Ethan and Ruth when they are going through hard times.
Whoops – this reply is in the wrong section. Sorry about that.
So to me, the whole idea that a college class is taking attendance is strange and alien. 1990s Caltech did not do that shit. Buuut I tutored some undergrads at IU in the 2000s, who told me about having ‘clickers’ they had to use in math classes to “check in”, also I think to answer “do you understand or are you lost?” questions en masse.
So it would be both “large class” and “no one is actually calling out names, it’s some automated stuff”.
Right?! I went to university in Europe, and literally was able to pass most classes by showing up for the final exam and *nothing else*. The whole idea of homework and tests and frigging attendance feels so high school like to me.
Homework and tests we did have! Though at Caltech tests are mostly take-home, on the honor code; if the rules say “don’t look at a book” you’re expected to not do so. More often, you can look at notes or a book, because it’s testing skill rather than memory. But Caltech was unusual.
USA uni seems so high school in general. They have shared dorms and don’t seem to buy groceries even??
You had weird high schools.
I suspect part of the difference is that a lot of the US was still fairly sparsely settled when we started building up state colleges, back in the late 1800s. Many of them were built in rural areas where land was cheap. There simply wasn’t housing available, so they built their own.
Classic college is some sort of dorm and dining hall/cafeteria, yes. Not at all like typical US high schools (okay, they have cafeterias, but you’re visiting school for 6-7 hours), but somewhat like UK public schools or Hogwarts.
At Caltech there were hallway (“alley”) kitchens or kitchenettes, which we needed despite mandatory food plan use because that only provided lunch and dinner Monday-Friday. So people did buy some sort of food and cooked, though that could mean sandwiches or instant ramen at the low end. For rooms, there was a mix of singles and double and a few triples. Unusually, doubles could be co-ed (mixed gender), though you couldn’t be forced into a mixed-gender room by roompick procedures. By contrast, IU had single-gender floors, and I’ve heard Berkeley has single-gender buildings.
When I was in college at a large state school, many decades ago, the freshman classes were mostly large lectures. And in any case, I don’t remember any classes – all the way through college – where attendance was taken. Your responsibility was to get the work done and pass all the tests. A few classes, mostly upper level, were heavily discussion-based, so missing those might have been considered missing required work. But otherwise, attendance was not directly an issue. Has that changed over the years?
Yes, it has changed, at least in some places. I graduated from a very large state school 5 years ago. While my large lecture courses didn’t take attendance, classes for my major (which only had ~30 students in my year) sometimes did take attendance and we were only allowed so many unexpected absences before there was some negative consequence (e.g. grade penalties or automatic fails).
the way she said ‘it’s a mystery!’ after wards she most likely altered ethan’s records like with walky’s tho i imagine a prof wouldn’t care enough to double check/care
You’d have to have a class big enough that his absence would be inconspicuous, but small enough where they took attendance. I mostly remember attendance for language classes (German, not programming languages or formal languages)
oh, maybe an e-comp. my instructor was the kind of douche who might have done attendance, so I’m assuming all of them are.
Some uni departments require that classes take attendance– I remember one of my instructors complaining about that. And I remember attendance clickers and sign-in forms and such that would make it easier to take attendance for large classes.
Oh I guess the return of the Amber hacking plot was also a bit of foreshadowing for how Ethan is still in school
OH! I didn’t pick up on that at all.
You know it’s serious when Amber hasn’t written a yaoi fanfic. I mean there’s a chance she has already ,but not telling Ethan that she has means it’s serious.
Well, damn.
Amber committed a crime for Ethan.
By Charles rules, that’s another body for the college f*ck pile.
Aw, she committed crimes for him too.
And she has no awareness of his involvement in the aftermath of the kidnapping.
His meaning Asher’s.
I don’t think anyone knows that. It would be fairly hard to figure out since not many people know Asher’s ties to the mob and Blaine’s ties to that same mob.
Oh, I’m aware. I just wonder whether knowing would impact her view of Asher (and if so, which way).
She already considers him a problem because of what he did to Sal. If she’d learn he had involvement with the kidnapping and basically called a hit on Amber’s father… yeah, big mess waiting to happen.
Amber might consider calling a hit on Blaine to be a point in Asher’s favor, honestly.
True
Where is this “called in a hit”? IIRC he was made go-fer to observe and report back when the deed was done. I’d believe he sent word upstream that someone was doing things that could attract the wrong kind of attention, and somebody else decided what to do about it.
I love how the fact that Asher is currently dating Jennifer doesn’t even factor in to the reasons why Ethan shouldn’t kiss him.
I mean, even if the writing is evidently on the wall for those two, AMBER doesn’t know that.
Unless she also doesn’t know that Asher is dating Jennifer in the first place, which…I’m unsure how to verify but I guess with how anti-social Amber is, might be plausible?
I mean considering she once said “Inject (drama) directly into my veins!” she might actually respect him more for that sadly
How would Amber know who Asher is dating? Jennifer doesn’t even live in the dorm any more. There’s probably no interaction.
I don’t think the Booster-Ethan-Amber group knows about Jennifer dating Asher. It hasn’t come up at all.
I’m not sure if even Asher knows whether he’s still dating Jennifer or not. She just blew up at him because he wasn’t role-playing her bad boy stereotype.
And then for conforming to it again, but in the wrong way.
i mean making out isn’t the same as getting engaged, tho i imagine ethan would still be considerate enough of sal (but it’s not like he’s not still with jen unless she doesn’t care if he has flings on the side)
I don’t think Ethan has any reason to care what Sal thinks or feels beyond basic humanity? I think they’ve said like three lines to each other, right before Sal and Amber beat each other up.
I’m honestly not even sure what this has to do with Sal.
Slashing the line on the slash?
Guess goodness is still above hotness after all.
Hmm. Amber considers Booster a “boy”, then?
Wait no, amber is referring to Asher. Brain tired.
Honestly, good on Amber. Given her typical priorities, breaking away from doing things that directly/indirectly benefit her to look out for someone in a socially/legally-acceptable way (even if that someone probably doesn’t appreciate it) is a tough thing to do.
(I am obviously ignoring the implied hacking, that’s definitely not legally-acceptable but also not relevant to the act of warning Ethan about Asher)
…I’m on the “you’re a bit out of line, Amber” side of things right now.
Yeah, Asher has a dark past. And we, as the audience, know that he’s still got a foot in that world. But Amber’s using an event 6 years ago to judge him. That she learned during a situation where Walky full-on decked him in the face and Asher… well, he wasn’t happy about it, but he let it go.
“There’s a thing you should know about Asher” is one thing, and I’d agree that Ethan should be informed about Asher’s involvement in that event, it wasn’t pleasant for young Ethan. But “Don’t kiss him” is a step and a half too far, Amber’s just assuming he’s still a bastard, and that’s not cool.
Considering how many people in the comments were thinking that Asher was no good for Jennifer and they should break up before it was revealed she knows and doesn’t care…
I’m inclined to give Amber some leeway here. If anyone knows what Ethan would later regret, it’s Amber. And I think Ethan can very reasonably read a “I don’t think you should kiss” into that “don’t kiss him”. They both know she has no authority over him.
Though I agree that she’s probably prejudging Asher unfairly, this really just means Ethan can ask Asher about it on their first
datehangout.She’s explaining why she thinks he’d feel that way while also making it quite clear that she’s telling him because she values his feelings over her mental spank bank. The consequences of him kissing Asher are only “if you do this without the facts then later find them you may feel worse than you do currently, and if you find out I could have given you relevant information and didn’t we’ll both blame me for that” – it’s not like she’s saying “if you kiss him I’ll be mad at you ” or anything…
Yeah I’m with Miri on this one. Amber is explaining the situation, not giving an “or else.”
When I said Amber would’ve committed the same crimes for Ethan and others as she did for Walky, I didn’t think I’d be immediately proven right.
Ethan out here sounding like he’s trying to get expelled. I believe it from the strips new resident emo.
no Amber, you’re not being a good friend, you’re being a shit friend because you’re STILL mentioning to a person that you’re making him the subject of your sexual fantasies in front of him, out loud, when he has previously been uncomfortable/unhappy about it. It’s bad and creepy enough that you’re doing this to real people in your life, but above all it costs ZERO DOLLARS to keep your mouth shut about it, especially in front of them!
is it really character growth if she’s still doing the bad thing, but she’s doing it slightly less? I have doubts
Then I guess there’s no such thing as character growth. Few people decide “I’m going to try to be a better person now” and immediately achieve perfection.
Also, can you point me to the strip where Ethan expressed an opinion on Ambers RP slashfic tendencies, because I’ve checked every Ethan+Amber tagged strip to when she asked for details about him dating Mike, and I can’t find it?
I remember Danny certainly did when Amber was asking about the threesome. Don’t recall Ethan
“is it really character growth if she’s still doing the bad thing, but she’s doing it slightly less? I have doubts”
…YES. Dude, people suck. To say “You’re not perfect, are you even trying?” is just.
Jesus Christ.
1. If someone *does* keep their mouth shut about it, who cares what they fantasize about in private? If I never act on it, why is it creepy for me to think about someone else being hot? Why isit somehow *less* creepy if the person I’m fantasizing about is an actor rather than a friend? Where and why are you drawing a line in the sand?
2. Ethan has never said on-page that he’s uncomfortable with her slashfic. He’s had plenty of time to tell her to stop, if so. He may soon tell her to stop in this very scene, but he hasn’t yet. For all we know, he also reads and enjoys it. But if nothing else he’sputup with it for years.
3. Growth takes time, and remember that on-page it’s only been a few months since all of these characters entered a wildly new social situation with new rules for peer interaction (college) not to mention a whole lot of traumatic and unexpected bullshit has happenedin thosefew months. Amber’s still calibrating to college and she’s like 19. Cut her some slack.
^this
This quashes my suspicions that Ethan wasn’t enrolled in any classes, because it sounds like Amber is changing his attendance record.
I’d really like to see Ethan start to get over this nihilistic phase.
Asher’s in the room isn’t he?
Well at least now he knows so he can go in eyes open if anything happens.
Does anyone have a link to the flashback that shows Asher calling the cops that night?
Asking for a friend.
(Wow perfect avatar at random, I had to follow up lol)
Not sure if it’s in a flashback, but he tells it to Walky when Walky and Amber confront him (that’s why Walky punched him, and why he let Walky get away with it)
I think the only flashback is Sal getting them to drop her off
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/resteasy/ Here’s where he admits to doing it if that’s what you’re looking for?
I don’t think we saw it happen, I think it was said after the fact.
Glad that’s out in the open for Ethan at least. Doesn’t mean he won’t go after Asher but at least he isn’t blindsided.