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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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ah, the classic “Be careful what you drag your maybe-boyfriend into, you just might get it”
It should be acknowledged that, regardless whether Sal got what she wanted and regardless whether Sal wanted what she got, Danny did good at his assigned task and at general supportiveness
This is true. This was not a winnable situation and he did his utter best with it, IMO.
at least danny cares more about the real sal than the “ideal” her parents want to be like
Oh no
Oh yes
Oh Yeah! [/KoolAidMan]
Oh Henry
Oh Myyyyyy!
Oh-klahoma where the wind comes rushing down the plains…
Oh Yeah![/MachoManRandySavage]
Perhaps today I am first?
Some other time perhaps!
Rookie mistake. Always go with the real comment and be pleasantly surprised if you got top billing.
That what I did: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/trickledown/
And DID you get a trophy for it?
It’s not too late if you want to start a collection for Slartibeast’s trophy.
Nobody can defeat Ana’s perfectly programmed comment-bot
genuinely could not think of anything worth saying (the price of staying up late to catch the update in real time) but you are absolutely right
No one will ever beat Ana.
It is true that Ana is unbeatable, but she’s not always first to post.
I appreciate how much of a scandal it is when she doesn’t get first post. And how worried we sometimes get when the minutes wear on.
Post, post, post
As fast as you dare
But you’ll always find Ana
Is already there.
Burma-Shave
I still miss those signs.
just imagine seeing this on an actual roadside somewhere. the mental image is hilarious imo
Lol. Somehow Walky still wins the forced sibling off. Like Sal technically has higher stock but Walky def has the emotional W.
Walky always wins just through sheer obliviousness and blind optimism. He seems happy for some reason, but he made a big fool of himself (and a bigger one of Lucy) and now his mom will be laser-focused on his grades.
Making Walky unhappy is difficult. His resting emotional state is a chill contentment with everything. I almost envy him that. You can give his emotions a kick, but they always seem to settle down into being pleased.
Is he actually happy, or is he burying unpleasant thoughts under a mountain of Dexter and Monkey Master DVDs?
DVDs? Lol. He definitely streams it. Probably owns the show digitally on Amazon Prime or maybe he just uses his parents Max password although they’ll be taking the show off in a month. Possibly pirates it off one of those anime sites with the watermarks. Maybe some chad posted the entire series to YouTube mirrored and it hasn’t been copyright struck yet. DVDs. At this point old cartoon DVDs are so obscure that unless he got his parents to buy them for him like ten years ago his only option is to buy a box set off eBay for like 500 bucks.
Hey now, I accumulate box sets instead of streaming. (And if I do want to stream them, there are ways that don’t involve sailing the high seas.) Paramount may have killed Prodigy can’t take DS9 off my bookshelf!
Besides, Dexter and Monkey Master hit mainstream commercial success in the Dumbiverse. It must have seen boxed releases, and I think we saw Walky and Dorothy with copies.
It’s not like Ultra Car, which is probably buried deep in the library of some obscure no-name streaming platform or print-to-order DVD service.
She’s gonna dump him over this, isn’t she?
At least Walky isn’t gonna kiss her next…
I doubt it. Danny’s been nothing but supportive and kind, and Sal isn’t that stupid.
I hope not. I mean Sal can make her own choices, but at least let Danny mess it up first. Torching something nice she enjoys just cause her mom would approve is real fucked and would likely hurt her in the long run. Let it be because Danny says Marcy would be better off dead or because he doesn’t believe she’s a good singer, or because her arch enemy suggested she shouldn’t moonlight as a vigilante. Y’know, justifiable reasons.
If Danny said Marcie was better off dead, I think HE would be dead in short order. XD
I’m just happy I got all of these references:
1. Ethan and Danny re: Mike
2. Dorothy and Danny re: President
3. Amber/Amazi-girl and Danny re: Sal
…poor Danny.
Unless Danny puts his foot down his throat in the next five minutes he’s probably fine for now. This might mark the end of the honeymoon period though.
I mean, in my opinion, Danny is the current title holder of the Insert Foot in Mouth world championship, which is worrisome here.
Danny’s been doing pretty well for himself since the timeskip, but if ever there was a dramatically appropriate moment to relapse, it’d be now.
I’m getting the same vibe from this. It’s something i’ve worried about before.
Well, she’s questioning her reasons for being in the relationship, which is fair. Maybe she can’t really know if she wants to be with Danny in order to please her parents or not, but she “can” know if she dumps him in order to spite them. It’s not exactly Sal’s style to make bad decisions just to feel a sense of control, but I wouldn’t rule it out. (Watching a stream of someone playing the game Control while writing this post may have influenced it.)
She can know that though. She’s known Danny for months before they even started dating. They had a pretty solid friendship before anything romantic blossomed and even if they weren’t dating she still enjoys his company. I can understand her questioning how her mother’s approval feels after years of being the problem child, but that doesn’t invalidate all the real emotions she’s had an overcome. Like just getting to the point of dating Danny was a struggle because her trust issues from her mom made her feel like his genuine feelings and kind gestures to her were conditional.
Sal’s revenge could be to get everything her parents wanted for her in spite of them, not because of them. Do it her way, and give them none of the credit. I’m still holding out hope. And I feel like Danny could supportively throw down with the parents if Sal gave him the go ahead.
I’m feeling sorry for both of them.
OOF i always love a good “i got what i always wanted and it turns out it sucks” arc
The fact that it was perfectly predictable doesn’t make it hurt less.
Noooo Sal you can love Danny even if your parents approve of him!
Oh this is heartbreaking. Poor Sal.
So Danny needs to take lessons in being disreputable from … who?
Are we looking at Saldanasher as the one true three? That’d put the cat among the pigeons!
Not Ethan/Dan/Asher? Amber’s head might actually vaporize.
But EthanAsherSal is the ElliotParkerHardison of DoA.
Dan can be that poor woman who they had to get to replace Sophie when her actress was pregnant, and Timothy Hutton can be Blaine.
Would it be better if the esteem wasn’t even for Danny but for the hat?
Is Danny’s hat the real DoA counterpart of Shortpacked! Fuckface?
Yes, it turns out I can type the name of the iguana, as long as it’s specifically as the name of the iguana. I’m as surprised as anyone. I still don’t think I’d be able to say it though.
I didn’t think fuck was replaced here? Had I forgotten that one?
No, I didn’t mean in a censorship way, I mean in an “I am basically Joyce in several respects” way.
Sal gets it… but at what cost…?
I think Sal has a taste of imposter syndrome, and this is just for her parents’ love. Then again, Walky was trying to sabotage his own relationship with his parents, so there’s that as well.
I mean, neither of her parents bothered contacting her about their visit and they seemed perfectly happy to not spend any real time with her before meeting Danny, so it’s hard to believe Linda would have taken Sal’s advice if they never met him.
Alright Danny, first serious boyfriend test inbound.
Poor Sal. She’s got stress bags under her eyes
Such a sad girl in panel one, I hope she lets Danny cheer her up.
Yeah Sal, it was just him.
You know your mother’s love is conditional, and any hope you have that it is not, is but a product of magical thinking.
Heed the advice of the Dino Empress, Sal. Renounce magical thinking and embrace empirical evidence.
I figured Dina’s advice would be to mimic the behaviour of a specific species of dinosaur
You want love? Well, the tyrannosaurus rex receives an amount of love disproportionate to how cool it actually was, so maybe do what they did.
Look cool and imposing while tearing off the heads of others who annoy you or appear to be prey? Y’know, Sal was doing good at that for a while.
Tearing of the heads of prey is not fair to Sal. She’s not a bully.
Look, we know fuck-all about dinosaur behaviour, since it doesn’t fossilize. Anything we have is conjecture: nesting, migration, hunting, attack & defense strategies. If we have anything on that, it’s due to imagination & comparison with living animals. With a bit of “We found these fossilized skeletons in a group, which suggests…” thrown in for good measure.
It’s surprising how far we got on imagination, really. And there’s the odd fact that some bits that we didn’t think would fossilize, did so anyway. We have dinosaur feathers in amber & thus an idea of their colours. We have impressions of dinosaur skin, which includes a good impression of a dinosaur cloaca. We even have a rare few mummified specimens.
Interesting! I love learning bits about dinosaur coloration, probably because as a kid in a middle school science class, the teacher was saying what color dinosaurs “had to be,” and iwas like, “Well, do we know? Isn’t it possible that the colors on dinosaurs were fuckin’ sick*?”
Anyway, it’s cool to know what we do know, and also know that my teacher’s perspective was more based on “time to be boring about dinosaurs of all things” than what evidence might actually say.
*the phrasing my middle school self used was slightly different
I’d say dinosaurs can have any colours that birds have & we know those can get pretty sick. Unless someone jumps in to explain how we know some of those pigments didn’t evolve yet.
Problem is, pigmentation is the sort of thing where you only know what was there if it’s preserved exactly right, so I don’t know that a timeline of pigment evolution is particularly possible. There’s just too many gaps to tell between ‘this didn’t exist’ and ‘we haven’t yet found it.’ Also, most birds have their colours on their plumage, which nearly all dinosaurs didn’t have. I don’t know whether you can get peacock-feather-scales, but you might get tortoise-shell-like effects on ankylosaurids.
If we know what the terrain and flora looked like, we enjoy imagining that many dinos probably camouflaged with their surroundings.
Not everything camouflages (sometimes it’s more advantageous to advertise that you’re poisonous, or to impress mates with your incredibly dapper coloration, etc), but still, the likely surroundings can give us a fun starting point for imagination.
Apparently we know how eyesight and receptiveness to different colours evolved, although that’s mostly by comparison between different animal groups. Birds see more colours than we do & ability to see colour can also get lost or be regained. You’d think that goes hand in hand with a change in colorization, but it’s all very speculative.
If we cast a wider net for ideas on dinosaur colours: various species of lizards have vivid colours as well. Scales on an animal do not preclude bright colorization.
There are fossils left by living animals: tracks, coprolites, bite marks.
…and those constitute evidence of dinosaur behaviour. You’re right, of course. Also nests, wich I kinda mentioned.
Well, she’s got another meeting with her parents tomorrow. The REAL empirical test would be to go without Danny and see what happens.
She got something. He’s just Dan.
Plus it got plowed by the Walky debacle anyway. Her doubt’s gonna sting too since the Walkertons will be back tomorrow.
Your avatar is best Joyce face.
Smug, mildly horny, and full of mustard.
Danny did good, and honestly, so did Sal, but I see where the victory is tainted. Yes, her mom saw her, as in actually SAW her, more than she has in years, but Danny had to peel back assumptions because he’s someone Linda would put some stock in.
Walky got humiliated, but it also got him what he wanted (Actually, Sal did, but he had no way of knowing that), so he can shrug it off for now in true Walky fashion. It’s how he deals with this stuff, for good and bad.
Theres the other shoe
For some reason I lost the plot and thought Danny was gonna say “a 5-second taste of your tongue” as a reward for helping her with this.
For “some reason” lol
I had a GF…most of 30 years ago… whose step dad was exactly the kind of asshole to like me more than he liked her. I went out of my way not to interact with him, it was fucked.
The price of getting what you want is getting what you once wanted.
Ah the age old painful question.
I can only hope Sal doesn’t have to learn the hard way like I did today,
relatives antagonized me on what was supposed to be MY happy birthday weekend
Oh geez, I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?
Any whozawhatsit: Happy Birthday!!
I really don’t want to talk about it if that’s alright, i mean the nature of the matter is being covered already by conversations around here about Sal, whom i emphasize with very much, so cold comfort there.
My birthday actually ain’t until Monday, it’s just my weekend that’s gone to shit, but thank you. 🥹
Totally get it. I hope your weekend gets better.
I hope that your birthday proper has some good fun, pleasant company, and sparkling joy
“oh turns out I DO want to be treated like a cool rebel loner, all this complaining has been in vain!”
If your parents are shitty people, is getting their approval a good thing? If they only approved of you because you found the right partner, wouldn’t that feel bad?
Lucky Sal gets to have all the feelings at once.
Oof. Also saddened for Danny with asking, “Did I do good?” and then just what followed. But mostly feeling for Sal.
Think they should both just block their parents and then have a celebratory fuck, honestly, but that’s not super realistic with college costs and current life setup.
They can always have a sad fuck instead.
But I suspect the likely Sal / Danny slipshine will be more fun than that.
Ffs, Linda has done a number on those kids.
A four digit number, which adds up to 21. Those who are woke will reckon this number, and renounce all that it stands for.
…That’s a deep, dark, dank cut right there. Like, “what is that thing in the shadows of the basement and why’s it hairy” cut.
I don’t think any of the parents is as bad as that. Not even Blaine, who is all about himself and thus would not consider it profitable. Not even Carol, who I hope would draw the line somewhere, even as a supporter of the Orange Man. Buckets of Blood Guy, certainly. Ryan, maybe.
Which goes to show that the argument is not “Who is the most evil?”, but “But whose grasp on reality is thinnest?” since BoBG is just a creep who gives off bad vibes, while Ryan…
I mean Buckets of Blood Guy knows Transformers were made for adults, not kids.
Basking in Danny’s reflected glory counts, right?
yesterday Taffy replied to my comment with “people can still see you when you close your eyes” and I still don’t know what the hell this could possibly mean. I…lack object permanence because I think some dialogue and situations are contrived?
is this another one of those instances where I should ignore their reply because (per their own admission) they talk nonsense late at night?
I’m so confused
Some things are not worth lingering on
I took it as a comment on the need to assume another’s viewpoint now and then, for perspective. But what do I know?
“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion….”
Taffy can speak for themselves, but I think it was making fun of your comment rather than presenting an argument. “People can still see you when you close your eyes.” Is a quote. I believe the original was from the Simpsons. The immediate reply was also a quote from the Simpsons.
It too was making fun of your comment by suggesting it was already dead.
Look, Walky’s parents have known him all his life, as has Sal. The fact that none of them questioned him switching girlfriends on a dime suggests that it’s not out of character for Walky.
Except that from what we’ve seen it is wildly out of character for Walky. And he never had any interest in girls (or maybe just no opportunity) before Dorothy, so they don’t really have any past experience to go on. But even with friends or other interests he’s seemed more the type to obsessively focus than to drop one and move to another.
I figure Sal actually caught on pretty quickly that it was some kind of wacky scheme.
I mean, if Walky really does have ADHD (as has been suggested, but not diagnosed, in comic), then both periods/topics of hyper focus *and* flitting rapidly from one thing/interest to another can be typical.
I think his parents were just happy it wasn’t Lucy.
The last panel Sal face breaks my heart. Thus far she has covered up a lot of pain with anger. And now that she’s opening up more, it’s all just there.
Yep, you got your parents esteem, they even started to trust your judgement. Danny is the “proof” that you met their standards, the same way high grades would be proof. The reason you still feel bad is cause of a lifetime of feeling conditionally valued, and the principle still being in place even when you win.
Hmm maybe Linda’s, and frankly Charles’ just by association, esteem isn’t worth anything? Since you know they’ll withdraw it and reduce you to an infant or a criminal at the first sign of weakness? And it’s time to stop trying to earn it?
I think this is called fair-weather parenting. Or if it isn’t it should be.
Approval is a hell of a drug but it’s not like sal’s earned/received anything because of it other than the approval itself from what i can tell
Or any kinda ‘reward’ would be thrown back in her face like her ‘motorcycle privileges”
Oh Sal, I am not sure if I am glad that she does not fall for her parent’s bs, but also I just really wanted her to have a positive and nice experience.
Sal is so fucking cool.
This is going to be completely out of left field, but the first thing my brain thought of when reading the first panel is that Gabrielle Union meme. (The one where she originally goes, “Did you get the guy? Did you get the job? Did your house get any bigger?” etc.)
I feel so awful for Sal.
It occurs to me that the speed at which her parents flipped the switch is a big part of why this stings.
Danny got the esteem. Sal will have to be glad to get contact esteem. I don’t know if her parents will get any better.
Danny, it’s Hug Time.
+1
+2
Or slipshine time ;P
Oh, Sal, you’re not being fair to yourself. You did really well talking down an irrationally angry person who was also your mother, and that’s impressive by any measure.
Its better that she realizes this now than revels in her parents conditional love.
Still its easy to feel for her.
Hopefully Danny will inderstand and Sal won’t do something stupid in turn.
What Sal thought she wanted, as opposed to what she really wanted. Sal thought she wanted to be her parent’s favorite child, but she just wants her mom’s love; and no, those two are not the same. Sal became the favorite, because of Danny, not because her mom loves her, for just being her daughter. At some point, there will be a blowup, between those two.
Damn, can’t even get the contact high.
Why settle for that when Meredith is just a few doors down?
I really hope they don’t break up…
if anything i’d think she’d double down and stay together versus breaking up just to spite her parents