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His colors are completely “flat”, to use another term. This is something that was noted yesterday, and is in definite contrast to the last time we saw him.
Shaded does not refer to there being thicker black lines in places. In Willis’s normal style, every color of the palette should have a second slightly darker version. For example if you look over at Amber, there’s the brown of Amber’s hair, the white of her glasses and shirt, the fleshtone of her face and hands, and the grey of her shirt’s stripes. In each case there is a second shade of each color to show the lighting (there’s also a lighter highlight color in Amber’s hair, which is a somewhat separate matter, and there’s also the pinkish blush, which no part is in shadow, so ignore those)
Now look over at Mike. There should be a second shade of yellow in his hair, and there should be a second shade of fleshtone on his face, neck, arms, and hand. In the strip King Daniel linked, you can clearly see the second shade of yellow on the side of his hair and the second shade of fleshtone on his ear and his neck.
But wait, you say. What about those slightly lighter lines on the black t-shirt? Again, that is a separate matter because it is a black t-shirt where all the outlines would otherwise get eaten, so ignore that
Mike’s either about to find out about Amber’s split memory issue, or there will be a comical misunderstanding where he obliquely talks about That Thing Last Night without actually cluing Amber in about That Thing Last Night.
Blaine has dark gloves, and dark sleeves (with a white lengthwise stripe on them) that run up to cover them. Amber has blue gloves, and yellow sleeves that are tucked in beneath the gloves. The hand that grabbed the rope had the cover-up dark sleeves…with a white lengthwise stripe.
In addition to what King Daniel says, in the 1/2 panel below Blaine’s hand grabbing the rope, we see both of A-G’s hands, right on the edge of the walkway, left reaching through the railing. And then Mike’s silhouette is shown in a header.
Yes, but but BU-ut, the Mike in the last panel (of the fall) doesn’t have the two-colour shading that others have pointed out makes the Mike above a figment of Amber/A.G.’s imagination. He does have the two colour shading in his last panel (“you can come watch”). So, so maAY-be, A.G. freaked/snapped and fled, /thinking/ she got Mike killed, and didn’t see the actual results.
On the one hand, it would be very real-life to have someone heroically sacrifice themself for something and have it not work. On the other, this is a comic and villains are seemingly impervious to permanent death. On the third hand, the bio-mechanics necessary for Blaine to just /touch/ the rope from a backwards dive off the fire-escape plus the hand strength necessary to arrest a fall from even a short distance, make such a feat realistically impossible. On the fourth hand…. Wil-LIIIIIIIIIIIIS
Yesterday, I proposed the joke theory that Mike has actually always been Amber’s hallucination. This theory included such aspects as Amber in a wig being Walky’s roommate.
Today, I’ve been pointing out more “evidence” in support of this silliness. Because it amuses me. :p
Why can’t it be actually Mike AND a hallucination?
I’m gonna play devil’s advocate here. Joyce is able to Teleport. It isn’t outside the realm of possibility that Mike can Astral Project, or Amber/AG has an actual power to, like, Soultrap the dying or something.
Well, you see that isn’t actually Mike. Amazigirl stashed Mike in the closet along with her costume, which is why Amber isn’t surprised to see Mike since she subconsciously knows he’s there. All clear? If so, please explain it to me.
Pretty much certain, as a lot of people pointed out yesterday. There’s just no way he could have been where he was, he was drawn in a slightly different style, etc.
She’s responding to questions about what’s on her mind … she’s talking about her self-perceptions and her guilt … she’s being told she’s not worthless …
Which one of you wished on the monkey’s paw for Amber to get therapy??
Knowing Willis said this is an autobiopgraphical story, and the joke that this is dumbing of age and not smarting of age, then we can expect more pessimistic self deprecation for the next decade because it took 10 years for half a semester.
So this is her brain trying to remember he got hurt or Mike is a ghost because as kinky as he is he doubt he would sneak into Amber’s room and let people dry hump on top of him.
I still like the idea that Mike never existed and is in fact an Amber personality predating Amazigirl. And that Amber is now suffering a concussion from falling last night.
Tyler Durden-I mean Mike has a point. Amber’s logic is becoming tautologic and it makes me feel as annoyed as a recursive time loop or destiny themed narrative.
The moment someone doesn’t see Mike it will trigger Amber’s fight or fly response and she will be sent to therapy by order of the court.
Optimism only works in certain parts of real life and anime. In Homestuck, Steven Universe Future and Dumbing of Age you can expect the writers to do pessimistic moments that will make Warhammer 40k and Nier Automata look hopeful.
In the works of Junji Ito you can expect doom and destruction outside of human control, and in the works of Lars Von Trier you can expect bigoted glorification of depression and complete misanthropy.
Maybe Mike never existed at all, but every time we’ve seen him, it was Amber imagining him or dreaming of him interacting with other people when she wasn’t around kind of like how the Janitor was originally supposed to be a hallucination of J.D.’s on, “Scrubs.”
Okay, I now dislike you for two reasons
1. I now want to re-read the first 100 pages that contain mike
2. I was planning on finally watching scrubs as a series instead of loose episodes here and there.
I thought about looking through yesterday’s comments to see if anyone had suggested this but was too lazy. I will gladly say it’s your bandwagon onto which I have jumped.
Ghost Mike says you can grind on the Mcnugget boy guilt free cause you’re ok. Also please remember what happened last night cause there’s a 98% chance he’s in the hospital right now!
Nah, he’s not dead. For one Willis has stated a no death rule in the comic (even if as the author he could change that at any time) it would be a huge tone shift in the comic and because of how slow the passage of time is it would be like years of us reading depressed students mourning his death.
Also and this is my main reason. Amber is here. No way AG would just go back home and sleep off something like Mike dying. I just don’t think that would happen. Amber would be at a police station reporting the crime or something right? So he’s probably hurt and in the hospital or maaaaaybe the evil dads kidnapped him but I’m skeptical on that one. AG will probably visit him tonight when Ambs switches unless she can remember what happened before that.
The 2% is that Mike is fine and that nothing bad happened and this is just an elaborate troll while Blaine and Ross rot in jail waiting for their sentencing for attempted murder.
Willis DID say he broke one of his major writing rules about the right time for the ‘did Mike die’ strip though and he’s always reserved the right to change his mind.
And AG can’t go to the police because she’s still wanted for her role in what went down with Toedad the FIRST time.
Doesn’t that make AG horrible though? Irredeemable to me at least which is why I don’t think it happened. It’s already pretty sketchy that AG would just go home if Mike got hurt but there are a lot of variables to how that situation could’ve ended that might make it more understandable.
Mike dying and AG just going home and not letting Amber remember, not going to the cops to testify about who is responsible even if that means revealing who she is and her involvement. That’s pretty selfish and would make her just as bad as the dads. I don’t think AG’s morality would allow her to prioritize her well being and nights as a vigilante over someone’s life.
We don’t know anything about how that situation ended but Mike dying is not the one that makes it okay for AG to go home, sleep it off, and not share any memories of it with Amber. That’s something you can’t really come back from.
That’s just my take though. Maybe she did. Especially if you said Willis revealed he broke a writing rule. Maybe DoA’s about to get very dark!
If Mike died from that fall, there’s nothing AG can do for him except kick the living hell out of the dads. Maybe she did do that and left their crumpled selves near Mike so the police would have no doubt who was responsible. Maybe she left a note on or near Mike if they somehow got away. Maybe she was in shock and got home by instinct and fell asleep by pure exhaustion. There’s a lot of maybes here. If Mike is dead though, “AG casually went home and slept it off” is not where I think it’ going.
She also can’t catch the dads if she gets arrested by the police (which would also be bad for Amber, not just AG). That could have been her train of thought as well. And if not…well, AG’s never been a perfectly moral person. She spent several (out of comic) years treating Sal like the root of all evil and stalking her. She’s the one who breaks up with Danny for ‘turning against her’ when he expresses concern over being AG and suggests she quit (now granted, Danny didn’t understand she had DID and that he sounded like he was asking her to get rid of a whole other personality, not just give up a job, but if AG were being rational she could’ve understood he just meant the job). AG’s the one who insists Amber’s broken and can’t be trusted. I don’t think AG’s ever been this unselfish morality.
Though, as for sharing memories with Amber – that’s not really something you can choose to do. DID personalities can lie to each other, keep secrets, hide things, etc., yes, but AG and Amber haven’t shared memories for a very long time. This doesn’t seem like a conscious decision to me. So I don’t think this is AG willingly refusing to tell Amber her friend is dead so much as they’re too split up to share it right now.
That is a very interesting take actually. It does make AG way more dangerous
than a dissociated outlet for Amber’s rage though. Especially if the not sharing memories is out of either of their control. Cause any outcome that ends with Mike dead is still a horrible choice from AG to leave one of Amber’s oldest friends dead on the street somewhere.
If the cops had found Mike dead and a note from Amazi-Girl — or Mike dead and two incapacitated dads (one an accused kidnapper on bail, the other in a goofy superhero get-up) accusing Amazi-Girl of beating them up and dinging their limo — wouldn’t the campus would be in lockdown and the dragnet out?
In the other 2% Amazi-Girl captured the Two Bad Dads, and Mike is holding them in durance at the bottom of a dry well under an abandoned house. He makes them rub each other with lotion by threatening then with a rubber hose.
I must admit that the idea is growing on me. It’s freakishly weird, but part of me kinda wants to see that being canon. Or at least being alluded to as a very real possibility…
There is no other 19%. Merely a lack of precision. Hospital Mike is between 50% and 70%. Dead Mike is between 30% and 50%. Real Mike currently talking to Amber is between 0% and 1%. These are subjective odds in any case.
Wasn’t so bad, thanks for asking. Smashed as I was, it was mostly just mild grogginess until I had breakfast. Nothing some coffee and a sandwich couldn’t fix.
We’re doing pretty alright. She’s been very receptive and accommodating, asking a lot of questions and looking up more info when I don’t have an answer ready. I’m not out to anyone else (offline), and she’s respecting my privacy by not saying anything in public, which I appreciate. If anything, we’re closer than we’ve been in a long time. No doubts or worries on this one.
I’m still going with he’s gonna spend the duration of his coma alone (aside from his parents) and wake up to realize that no body liked him enough to care that he was missing or why
No shit, there I was. Back in aught one, I was working at a temp job for the State of Nevada Teachers Union. On Jan 01, 2001, they were supposed to transfer everybody over to a new health plan. So they canceled all the old health plans, but neglected to start the new ones. As you can imagine, many of the retirees were highly peeved. “I have to take this medicine, or I could die. Now the pharmacy wants $600 dollars to refill it.”
Anyway, I was answering the phone for people with life or death problems, and somebody else called up wanting a list of dentists that take the plan.
Me: “OK, where do you live at?”
Bonehead on the Phone: went into an extended screed about the evils of ending a sentence with a preposition.
BotP: “Do you want to try that again?”
Me: “OK, where do you live at, Fishface?”
BotP: screech, warble glorble “Let me talk to your manager!”
Me: “No.” /hangs up phone.
Two days later they finally got everything fixed and laid off 9/10ths of the temps, including me.
Mike struck his head in a fall, and suffered a subdural haemorrhage. In preparation for his surgery, a nurse shore his hair off. Now nobody can recognise him.
I like your farmhouse Gambit much better.
For maximum comic tension, if DYW (do your Wurst?) if Willis kills off Mike, that moves Mary into the number one slot, as Dorm Antagonist, and if he does that, who’d want to read the books/comic?
A long time ago, I had such an immature relationship with the man I was seeing at the time that I always had to try and run a mental simulation of what I should say to him and how he would react and how I should answer that and so on, for fear of looking bad/not clever enough.
It backfired on me when the mental voice of the now ex-man I was seeing (or the man I was not seeing anymore, if you will) gained a mind of its own and laughed at me, on one hand for still being not over him, and on the other hand for confusing him with the actual guy when it was so obvious that he was just an hallucination.
I’ve had visual hallucinations when I was a teenager, as you do, but this takeover by an inner voice freaked me out a lot.
Someone can explain that preposition thing, here? (I am not an English speaker). i have seen mention of it from time to time in various media but am not sure what it’s about.
It’s a part of English grammar that modifies a noun or pronoun by relating it to another noun or pronoun. Words like “on” “at” “before” or, in this case, “of” are considered prepositions. English grammar doesn’t allow a sentence to end in one because it leaves the second half of the pairing unsaid.
In the sentence above, she said she is ruining the life of somebody’s twin brother (Walky), but she placed the part referring to the twin brother at the beginning of the sentence, leaving the preposition modifying “the life” at the end of the sentence. Most English speakers would understand it, but it’s considered bad grammar.
Ending a sentence with “of” “in” “at” or any other preposition is considered grammatically incorrect. “…brother, whose life I’m also ruining.” would be a correct alternative, but one that doesn’t necessarily flow as naturally in conversation.
The excellent movie “Beavis and Butthead Do America” contains an example of an FBI agent who’s also a stickler for grammar, telling a subordinate to never end a sentence with a preposition, prompting the subordinate to comedically try to rephrase a sentence… about whacking off.
There was a fallacy in English grammar, widely taught from the mid 19th century until the 1930s, which held that a preposition (such as “at”, “on”, “with”, “by”, “for”, “under”, etc.) has to go immediately before its complement (“because otherwise it would be a postposition, not a preposition”). Under this supposed rule the sentence “What are you laughing at?” is wrong, and ought to be “At what are you laughing?” because “what” is the complement of the preposition “at”. This nonsense was debunked by linguists ninety years ago, but some English teachers haven’t got the memo yet.
I gather that most modern style guides advise that you ought to avoid putting prepositions after their complements when you can, because the readers who are irritated by prepositions at the ends of sentences are genuinely irritated, even though they ought not to be, and you usually don’t want to irritate readers. “But break this rule rather than write something barbaric.” It’s like avoiding split infinitives.
In other words, you were correct to write “I … am not sure what it’s about.”, and you ought not to let anyone tell you that you were wrong to put the preposition “about” at the end of a sentence. “I am not sure about what it is.” would be a barbarism.
Both of which rules exist (prepositions and split infinitives) because Latin grammar doesn’t allow it and Latin is the One True Language of which all other languages are but shadows – or so old grammarians thought.
The rules make no sense in English, which has a largely Germanic grammar, despite having many Latinate words.
WAY back in the day, ancient greek and latin were part of the curriculum in most schools. In ancient greek, it is absolutely impossible for a sentence ending with a preposition to actually make sense. Students, not thinking too much about it and having this rule hammered into them by their teachers all the time, began applying it english as well. Some of those became teachers and began hammering that same rule, that was meant for another language, into their english language students. Generations later, we’re still dealing with this shit.
(source: my actual ancient greek teacher)
Fun fact: The “don’t end sentences in a preposition” thing was made up by the same guy who made up “never split infinitives”, and he made those things up because he wanted English to work more like Latin, whose syntax does not allow for end of sentence prepositions, and whose infinitives are a single word and so cannot be split. In other words, those rules are not actually rules inherent to English syntax, they are just the elitist preferences of some old linguist that got written down somewhere along the line and now everyone pretends they’re actual rules.
Assuming this scene takes place roughly concurrently with what’s going on with Joyce, this is probably early afternoon at the latest, since Joyce was eating lunch when she got the call from her dad. The rooftop fight happened shortly after midnight the night before, soMike has been missing for about 12-14 hours at this point.
If Mike taken to the hospital, either by getting there himself, or with help from Amazi-Girl, or a change of heart from Ross, the other characters might not know yet. Assuming he was either conscious or had his ID on him, he’d have been identified by now, but priority would probably be on telling his parents first, school second. The school probably would be the ones to announce that a student had been injured, and they’d have to wait to talk to their PR staff and lawyers before announcing it to the rest of the student body. (I’m basing this on working in higher education- while nothing quite this dramatic has happened at one of my schools, that’s the general procedure I’ve seen for situations like this)
If Mike is dead, unless AG or Ross (or Blaine, but he’s less likely) decide to tell someone, his body might not have been found until recently. If he’s dead, the school is going to be even more careful about making any announcements, and police usually won’t publicly identify a body until they’ve notified next-of-kin, so this will take even longer to come out.
Either way, yikeserama. I feel like if by the end of the day (in-universe) we don’t have answers about Mike, I’m going to be leaning way more towards him being dead.
Well, so in two months of preliminaries for the final showdown we have checked on all main characters at the campus that have are directly or indirectly related to Amber except…
I’m astonished there’s a camp that not only believes this is the real, corporeal Mike, but also is arguing against the evidence that he’s not.
Like I immediately assumed it was Amber’s subconscious or something, his first two lines are so heavy handed
I find it extremely interesting that yesterday’s hover text was about a movie scene where people disappeared and reappeared from a photo: “hey it’s your cousin, marvin barry, you know that asshole sound you were looking for, well listen to this!!!”
So how is “You’re pretty okay” mean? Well it denies her the ugly pleasure of self denigration, I suppose. I think Actual!Mike could do a lot better than that.
If they are going all in on the “Mike is dead” crap then there better be some AMAZING explanations.
Mike would have died from falling off a second story building, which is possible, but then we’re ALSO operating under the assumption that his body wasn’t discovered by anybody, because the Campus isn’t on lockdown and Robin didn’t seem to know that “Hey, that kid who was at the party was found dead a few blocks away”
Which doesn’t work because Mike was driving around, screaming at the top of his lungs, so clearly people were aware that SOMETHING was happening, combined with a lot of shouting and screaming during the fight.
There’s no realistic way that Mike died and it hasn’t been discovered yet. Similarly, we also know that Ross’s involvement in the assault wasn’t discovered, because Robin used her sources to find he was out on bail, but didn’t mention that he was wanted for a brand new assault?
Too much shit doesn’t add up on this day. Besides the fact that we’ve seen other characters doing stuff, I wouldn’t be surprised if this entire day was just an Amber Fever Dream.
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 10h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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oh shit
…
ok shit
Sick burn though.
“We have just lost cabin pressure.”
Said the flatulent space pirate.
When cabin pressure drops everyone is flatulent.
Nope, still not shaded.
Huh? He has shade under his hair, shade under his upper eyelids, shade under his nose, shade under his jaw. I’d call that shaded.
Compare him with Amber’s shading in today’s strip, or with Mike himself at the beginning of this chapter: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/02-to-remind-you-of-my-love/empathizing/
His colors are completely “flat”, to use another term. This is something that was noted yesterday, and is in definite contrast to the last time we saw him.
Mmmmaybe…
Shaded does not refer to there being thicker black lines in places. In Willis’s normal style, every color of the palette should have a second slightly darker version. For example if you look over at Amber, there’s the brown of Amber’s hair, the white of her glasses and shirt, the fleshtone of her face and hands, and the grey of her shirt’s stripes. In each case there is a second shade of each color to show the lighting (there’s also a lighter highlight color in Amber’s hair, which is a somewhat separate matter, and there’s also the pinkish blush, which no part is in shadow, so ignore those)
Now look over at Mike. There should be a second shade of yellow in his hair, and there should be a second shade of fleshtone on his face, neck, arms, and hand. In the strip King Daniel linked, you can clearly see the second shade of yellow on the side of his hair and the second shade of fleshtone on his ear and his neck.
But wait, you say. What about those slightly lighter lines on the black t-shirt? Again, that is a separate matter because it is a black t-shirt where all the outlines would otherwise get eaten, so ignore that
He’s not moving a whole lot, either.
Look, this is Walkyverse Mike. He heard there was a imbalance in misery-causing and he’s claimed right of salvage.
sweet sweet Salvage
That’s because all the shade comes out of his mouth.
That was brilliant.
*wins*
He is just a figment of Ambers imagination in here, so no surprise. Question is what became of the physical boi?
Additionally, he’s on her bed.
I think that it’s on purpose that mikes not shaded. Too me it seems like he’s not there physically, but instead in her head.
Let’s not circle back. There’s no true synergy.
Ah yes, the greatest insult, “you’re pretty okay”.
Like Shirou Emiya telling Archer that he is a good person.
Ugh all the bad memories.
Wait wait. The Mike part of her brain is… the good part?
that part of her brain is the “Inner Truth” part.
Or, y’know, he’s trying to distance himself from Blaine, who pointed their similarity last time
Maybe the Mike part of her brain is drunk?
He’d be blushing and have sclera if he was drunk.
Whaaat
Mike’s either about to find out about Amber’s split memory issue, or there will be a comical misunderstanding where he obliquely talks about That Thing Last Night without actually cluing Amber in about That Thing Last Night.
I’m thinking at the moment Mike IS Amber’s split memory issue.
I agree, and well put.
Ditto
He might be a communicating vessel from AG to Amber though, so in a way, he’ll tell her. Did he know about it though, last time we saw him?
To paraphrase Tyler Durden:
“I am Amber’s inability to cope with her feelings.”
Welp, yup, clearly a hallucination.
Obviously Amber is concussed. Probably from that fall that she suffered.
The one where she grabbed for the rope with her glove and fell from the fire escape?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/02-to-remind-you-of-my-love/dead/
I’m pretty sure that’s Mike falling.
And Blaine grabbing the rope.
Evidence?
Blaine has dark gloves, and dark sleeves (with a white lengthwise stripe on them) that run up to cover them. Amber has blue gloves, and yellow sleeves that are tucked in beneath the gloves. The hand that grabbed the rope had the cover-up dark sleeves…with a white lengthwise stripe.
Hair is shaped like Mike’s.
Good points both.
In addition to what King Daniel says, in the 1/2 panel below Blaine’s hand grabbing the rope, we see both of A-G’s hands, right on the edge of the walkway, left reaching through the railing. And then Mike’s silhouette is shown in a header.
Yes, but but BU-ut, the Mike in the last panel (of the fall) doesn’t have the two-colour shading that others have pointed out makes the Mike above a figment of Amber/A.G.’s imagination. He does have the two colour shading in his last panel (“you can come watch”). So, so maAY-be, A.G. freaked/snapped and fled, /thinking/ she got Mike killed, and didn’t see the actual results.
On the one hand, it would be very real-life to have someone heroically sacrifice themself for something and have it not work. On the other, this is a comic and villains are seemingly impervious to permanent death. On the third hand, the bio-mechanics necessary for Blaine to just /touch/ the rope from a backwards dive off the fire-escape plus the hand strength necessary to arrest a fall from even a short distance, make such a feat realistically impossible. On the fourth hand…. Wil-LIIIIIIIIIIIIS
… that was the joke, yes.
Yesterday, I proposed the joke theory that Mike has actually always been Amber’s hallucination. This theory included such aspects as Amber in a wig being Walky’s roommate.
Today, I’ve been pointing out more “evidence” in support of this silliness. Because it amuses me. :p
Okay, I miss that.
Missed. Why do I type when I just woke up?
… Does Amber have droolworthy abs?
Given Amber’s prowess at acrobatics, parkour, and jiu jitsu, I’m gonna guess “yes”.
I want to believe this is actually Mike but all signs point to hallucination.
Why can’t it be actually Mike AND a hallucination?
I’m gonna play devil’s advocate here. Joyce is able to Teleport. It isn’t outside the realm of possibility that Mike can Astral Project, or Amber/AG has an actual power to, like, Soultrap the dying or something.
The Prodigal Roommate returns!
Wait, Mike has little to no shading.
WHY DOES HE HAVE LITTLE TO NO SHADING??
Well, you see that isn’t actually Mike. Amazigirl stashed Mike in the closet along with her costume, which is why Amber isn’t surprised to see Mike since she subconsciously knows he’s there. All clear? If so, please explain it to me.
*play’s Weird Al’s “Word Crimes” on the hacked Muzak*
As with most Weird Al songs, I think that one is better than the original.
Correct.
wow! that is a fabulous twist! great storyline!!
Well, yes. But which possibility is actually the twist?
Exactly! keeps the readers guessing, interested, and reading
the meanest and correctest hallucination has spoken
So what are the odds this Mike is a hallucination/all in her head? Because I’m less and less convinced he is real.
Pretty much certain, as a lot of people pointed out yesterday. There’s just no way he could have been where he was, he was drawn in a slightly different style, etc.
And what he said yesterday implied that he is a voice inside her head and that this fact would not, in fact, make her less crazy.
Understandable, but still. Is that really something the Mike in her head would say?
You think Mike-Mike might say it but that Head-Mike wouldn’t?
What about Head Alien?
She’s responding to questions about what’s on her mind … she’s talking about her self-perceptions and her guilt … she’s being told she’s not worthless …
Which one of you wished on the monkey’s paw for Amber to get therapy??
Well, many of us wished upon a Willis, and that’s a lot like wishing on a monkey paw, so…a lot of us, I guess.
Knowing Willis said this is an autobiopgraphical story, and the joke that this is dumbing of age and not smarting of age, then we can expect more pessimistic self deprecation for the next decade because it took 10 years for half a semester.
Wait, I though we were using dead Mike’s hand. Which is even more like a monkey’s paw.
We don’t know he’s dead yet.
I hate how I always have to look up which slash to use in html…
“No. That’s not true! That’s impossible!”
Which part?
Search your feelings, Amber. You know it to be true.
Noooooo!
So this is her brain trying to remember he got hurt or Mike is a ghost because as kinky as he is he doubt he would sneak into Amber’s room and let people dry hump on top of him.
This is Mike we’re talking about. Or it would be if it was.
Especially not Walky. *reads cliff’s comment* or maybe especially Walky…
Mike was dead all along?
Mike was dead, to begin with…
I still like the idea that Mike never existed and is in fact an Amber personality predating Amazigirl. And that Amber is now suffering a concussion from falling last night.
Tyler Durden-I mean Mike has a point. Amber’s logic is becoming tautologic and it makes me feel as annoyed as a recursive time loop or destiny themed narrative.
The moment someone doesn’t see Mike it will trigger Amber’s fight or fly response and she will be sent to therapy by order of the court.
Hang onto that optimism. You never know when you might need it.
Optimism only works in certain parts of real life and anime. In Homestuck, Steven Universe Future and Dumbing of Age you can expect the writers to do pessimistic moments that will make Warhammer 40k and Nier Automata look hopeful.
In the works of Junji Ito you can expect doom and destruction outside of human control, and in the works of Lars Von Trier you can expect bigoted glorification of depression and complete misanthropy.
H. P. Lovecraft was an optimist.
That’s a funny way to spell “racist”.
Those aren’t mutually exclusive?
Look, the hoop might be eye-level and the ball might be full of helium, but can’t a guy(?) just have this dunk?
Maybe Mike never existed at all, but every time we’ve seen him, it was Amber imagining him or dreaming of him interacting with other people when she wasn’t around kind of like how the Janitor was originally supposed to be a hallucination of J.D.’s on, “Scrubs.”
I wanted to figure out a way to say this, but you beat me to it already anyways.
So since Ethan and Mike had sex, Ethan was also a figment of her imagination?
No, that whole scenario was one of Amber’s slashfics.
Walky’s room-mate is Carl Rutter.
Who is on the books but has never been seen by anyone.
Okay, I now dislike you for two reasons
1. I now want to re-read the first 100 pages that contain mike
2. I was planning on finally watching scrubs as a series instead of loose episodes here and there.
The ship sinks at the end of, “Titanic.”
I proposed this very theory yesterday.
I still stand by it.
Glad to see others jumping on my bandwagon.
I thought about looking through yesterday’s comments to see if anyone had suggested this but was too lazy. I will gladly say it’s your bandwagon onto which I have jumped.
Ghost Mike says you can grind on the Mcnugget boy guilt free cause you’re ok. Also please remember what happened last night cause there’s a 98% chance he’s in the hospital right now!
We can expect Amber to repeat an Always Sunny in Philadelphia Moment.
Sal: “Ya fucking lost ya mind!”
God, I can hear the title music and see the title card already…
“The gang stubs a Toe”
Joyce – I know exactly what to do to face my crisis of faith!
“Joyce And Mary Free Satan”
Is the other 2% he’s dead?
Nah, he’s not dead. For one Willis has stated a no death rule in the comic (even if as the author he could change that at any time) it would be a huge tone shift in the comic and because of how slow the passage of time is it would be like years of us reading depressed students mourning his death.
Also and this is my main reason. Amber is here. No way AG would just go back home and sleep off something like Mike dying. I just don’t think that would happen. Amber would be at a police station reporting the crime or something right? So he’s probably hurt and in the hospital or maaaaaybe the evil dads kidnapped him but I’m skeptical on that one. AG will probably visit him tonight when Ambs switches unless she can remember what happened before that.
The 2% is that Mike is fine and that nothing bad happened and this is just an elaborate troll while Blaine and Ross rot in jail waiting for their sentencing for attempted murder.
Willis DID say he broke one of his major writing rules about the right time for the ‘did Mike die’ strip though and he’s always reserved the right to change his mind.
And AG can’t go to the police because she’s still wanted for her role in what went down with Toedad the FIRST time.
Doesn’t that make AG horrible though? Irredeemable to me at least which is why I don’t think it happened. It’s already pretty sketchy that AG would just go home if Mike got hurt but there are a lot of variables to how that situation could’ve ended that might make it more understandable.
Mike dying and AG just going home and not letting Amber remember, not going to the cops to testify about who is responsible even if that means revealing who she is and her involvement. That’s pretty selfish and would make her just as bad as the dads. I don’t think AG’s morality would allow her to prioritize her well being and nights as a vigilante over someone’s life.
We don’t know anything about how that situation ended but Mike dying is not the one that makes it okay for AG to go home, sleep it off, and not share any memories of it with Amber. That’s something you can’t really come back from.
That’s just my take though. Maybe she did. Especially if you said Willis revealed he broke a writing rule. Maybe DoA’s about to get very dark!
If Mike died from that fall, there’s nothing AG can do for him except kick the living hell out of the dads. Maybe she did do that and left their crumpled selves near Mike so the police would have no doubt who was responsible. Maybe she left a note on or near Mike if they somehow got away. Maybe she was in shock and got home by instinct and fell asleep by pure exhaustion. There’s a lot of maybes here. If Mike is dead though, “AG casually went home and slept it off” is not where I think it’ going.
She also can’t catch the dads if she gets arrested by the police (which would also be bad for Amber, not just AG). That could have been her train of thought as well. And if not…well, AG’s never been a perfectly moral person. She spent several (out of comic) years treating Sal like the root of all evil and stalking her. She’s the one who breaks up with Danny for ‘turning against her’ when he expresses concern over being AG and suggests she quit (now granted, Danny didn’t understand she had DID and that he sounded like he was asking her to get rid of a whole other personality, not just give up a job, but if AG were being rational she could’ve understood he just meant the job). AG’s the one who insists Amber’s broken and can’t be trusted. I don’t think AG’s ever been this unselfish morality.
Though, as for sharing memories with Amber – that’s not really something you can choose to do. DID personalities can lie to each other, keep secrets, hide things, etc., yes, but AG and Amber haven’t shared memories for a very long time. This doesn’t seem like a conscious decision to me. So I don’t think this is AG willingly refusing to tell Amber her friend is dead so much as they’re too split up to share it right now.
That is a very interesting take actually. It does make AG way more dangerous
than a dissociated outlet for Amber’s rage though. Especially if the not sharing memories is out of either of their control. Cause any outcome that ends with Mike dead is still a horrible choice from AG to leave one of Amber’s oldest friends dead on the street somewhere.
If the cops had found Mike dead and a note from Amazi-Girl — or Mike dead and two incapacitated dads (one an accused kidnapper on bail, the other in a goofy superhero get-up) accusing Amazi-Girl of beating them up and dinging their limo — wouldn’t the campus would be in lockdown and the dragnet out?
Not necessarily. In my experiences, lockdowns are only if there’s an active danger around. Might be an order not to go out at night though.
In the other 2% Amazi-Girl captured the Two Bad Dads, and Mike is holding them in durance at the bottom of a dry well under an abandoned house. He makes them rub each other with lotion by threatening then with a rubber hose.
I must admit that the idea is growing on me. It’s freakishly weird, but part of me kinda wants to see that being canon. Or at least being alluded to as a very real possibility…
I give it more than 50% but nowhere near as high as 98%. Dead Mike I give at least 30% and Real Mike under 1%.
What’s the other 19%
There is no other 19%. Merely a lack of precision. Hospital Mike is between 50% and 70%. Dead Mike is between 30% and 50%. Real Mike currently talking to Amber is between 0% and 1%. These are subjective odds in any case.
She’s OK
Good to know.
I think we can do better than that.
On the other hand, he is KO
So was Mike just there for the dry humping or is this an imaginary mike
Imaginary Mike was there to record the dry humping on his phone. What do you think he’s watching?
His phone still works? Amazing!
It’s so weird that this all seems more convoluted and confusing than the reality where they were fighting aliens and coming back from the dead.
No, no, this is all very simple. You see, decades before the comic started, two young men were studying to become Keyblade maste
Somerhing something darkness something something heart, something something X-BLADE!
while it’s pronounced key-blade, it’s spelled χ-blade, thank you.
Who could forget that iconic
Leonard NimoyRutger HauerChristopher Lloyd hamminess?Prepositions are perfectly fine words to end a sentence with. If that’s the worst “Mike” can come up with, Amber’s better off than she thinks.
Sorry for last night’s drunkposting.
It’s cool. How’s the hangover going?
Wasn’t so bad, thanks for asking. Smashed as I was, it was mostly just mild grogginess until I had breakfast. Nothing some coffee and a sandwich couldn’t fix.
That’s good. If you don’t mind me asking, how’re things going with your girlfriend?
We’re doing pretty alright. She’s been very receptive and accommodating, asking a lot of questions and looking up more info when I don’t have an answer ready. I’m not out to anyone else (offline), and she’s respecting my privacy by not saying anything in public, which I appreciate. If anything, we’re closer than we’ve been in a long time. No doubts or worries on this one.
Oh, good. Glad to hear that it’s going smoothly for you.
My 30th birthday present is a Schrodinger’s Mike shiptease.
… I’ve had worse birthday presents.
Happy birthday! [blows squeaker]
Happy birthday!
[Starts the little monkey drummer.]
Happy 30th! Hopefully your next 30 will be even better.
I misread that as striptease somehow…
You’re either watching Mike get nekkid to music or you’re thinking about it?
So when is Willis going to reveal that Mike is in a coma and he’s projecting his astral form at Amber so he can make long distance nickel jokes?
Mike booty called a mum long distance for a nickel…
Or something.
Amber gets a call
“Your friend Mike appeared to me out of the ether, gave me a nickle, and-“
Funny, I didn’t see Mike as being in the habit of handing out woodpeckers.
(Other than his, dohohoho)
I’m still going with he’s gonna spend the duration of his coma alone (aside from his parents) and wake up to realize that no body liked him enough to care that he was missing or why
That would be so sad, imo, even for him. Not saying it can’t happen, but it would be very sad.
Speaking of prepositions ending sentences with:
No shit, there I was. Back in aught one, I was working at a temp job for the State of Nevada Teachers Union. On Jan 01, 2001, they were supposed to transfer everybody over to a new health plan. So they canceled all the old health plans, but neglected to start the new ones. As you can imagine, many of the retirees were highly peeved. “I have to take this medicine, or I could die. Now the pharmacy wants $600 dollars to refill it.”
Anyway, I was answering the phone for people with life or death problems, and somebody else called up wanting a list of dentists that take the plan.
Me: “OK, where do you live at?”
Bonehead on the Phone: went into an extended screed about the evils of ending a sentence with a preposition.
BotP: “Do you want to try that again?”
Me: “OK, where do you live at, Fishface?”
BotP: screech, warble glorble “Let me talk to your manager!”
Me: “No.” /hangs up phone.
Two days later they finally got everything fixed and laid off 9/10ths of the temps, including me.
Go capitalism.
Did you ever find out if this retiree taught English or Lit?
God I hope this doesn’t get dragged out.
I see you shiver with…
Hypothermia.
Huh. I didn’t expect a Mike hallucination to be the part of amber that doesn’t think of her as being worthless.
Hallucination!Mike is not the therapy Amber needs now.
8-(
Somewhere, Mike is lying in a coma, and this is his ghost or some form of Tulpa, trying to still be Mike, but also supportive to Amber.
*GASP!*
How dare you.
Just now realizing that the chapter title is a Hamilton reference.. To be fair, I didn’t know Hamilton was a thing back when this chapter started.
And the sequence where Mike fell from the fire escape had the hovertext, “And when push comes to shove / I will kill your friends and family…”
ohno
I still can’t tell if this Mike is real or imaginary. I’m leaning towards imaginary, but I can’t be sure.
Or a he’s ghost.
Mike struck his head in a fall, and suffered a subdural haemorrhage. In preparation for his surgery, a nurse shore his hair off. Now nobody can recognise him.
I like your farmhouse Gambit much better.
For maximum comic tension, if DYW (do your Wurst?) if Willis kills off Mike, that moves Mary into the number one slot, as Dorm Antagonist, and if he does that, who’d want to read the books/comic?
This is shallow, but Mary is cuter than Mike, so I’d prefer your scenario.
A long time ago, I had such an immature relationship with the man I was seeing at the time that I always had to try and run a mental simulation of what I should say to him and how he would react and how I should answer that and so on, for fear of looking bad/not clever enough.
It backfired on me when the mental voice of the now ex-man I was seeing (or the man I was not seeing anymore, if you will) gained a mind of its own and laughed at me, on one hand for still being not over him, and on the other hand for confusing him with the actual guy when it was so obvious that he was just an hallucination.
I’ve had visual hallucinations when I was a teenager, as you do, but this takeover by an inner voice freaked me out a lot.
That sounds pretty horrible – I hope both the real guy and the avatar of him in your head are both in the dim and distant past.
Is this a bad-good hallucination, leading towards healing, or a terrible bad-bad stress jobby? Who knows! Let drama ensue!
Someone can explain that preposition thing, here? (I am not an English speaker). i have seen mention of it from time to time in various media but am not sure what it’s about.
It’s a part of English grammar that modifies a noun or pronoun by relating it to another noun or pronoun. Words like “on” “at” “before” or, in this case, “of” are considered prepositions. English grammar doesn’t allow a sentence to end in one because it leaves the second half of the pairing unsaid.
In the sentence above, she said she is ruining the life of somebody’s twin brother (Walky), but she placed the part referring to the twin brother at the beginning of the sentence, leaving the preposition modifying “the life” at the end of the sentence. Most English speakers would understand it, but it’s considered bad grammar.
Ending a sentence with “of” “in” “at” or any other preposition is considered grammatically incorrect. “…brother, whose life I’m also ruining.” would be a correct alternative, but one that doesn’t necessarily flow as naturally in conversation.
The excellent movie “Beavis and Butthead Do America” contains an example of an FBI agent who’s also a stickler for grammar, telling a subordinate to never end a sentence with a preposition, prompting the subordinate to comedically try to rephrase a sentence… about whacking off.
“This is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put” — often attributed to Winston Churchill.
There was a fallacy in English grammar, widely taught from the mid 19th century until the 1930s, which held that a preposition (such as “at”, “on”, “with”, “by”, “for”, “under”, etc.) has to go immediately before its complement (“because otherwise it would be a postposition, not a preposition”). Under this supposed rule the sentence “What are you laughing at?” is wrong, and ought to be “At what are you laughing?” because “what” is the complement of the preposition “at”. This nonsense was debunked by linguists ninety years ago, but some English teachers haven’t got the memo yet.
I gather that most modern style guides advise that you ought to avoid putting prepositions after their complements when you can, because the readers who are irritated by prepositions at the ends of sentences are genuinely irritated, even though they ought not to be, and you usually don’t want to irritate readers. “But break this rule rather than write something barbaric.” It’s like avoiding split infinitives.
In other words, you were correct to write “I … am not sure what it’s about.”, and you ought not to let anyone tell you that you were wrong to put the preposition “about” at the end of a sentence. “I am not sure about what it is.” would be a barbarism.
Both of which rules exist (prepositions and split infinitives) because Latin grammar doesn’t allow it and Latin is the One True Language of which all other languages are but shadows – or so old grammarians thought.
The rules make no sense in English, which has a largely Germanic grammar, despite having many Latinate words.
WAY back in the day, ancient greek and latin were part of the curriculum in most schools. In ancient greek, it is absolutely impossible for a sentence ending with a preposition to actually make sense. Students, not thinking too much about it and having this rule hammered into them by their teachers all the time, began applying it english as well. Some of those became teachers and began hammering that same rule, that was meant for another language, into their english language students. Generations later, we’re still dealing with this shit.
(source: my actual ancient greek teacher)
That last line is killer. I adore it. If only it was real Mike saying it.
Imaginary Mike. How dare you being cheerful?
Imaginary Mike, you’re not speaking ancient Greek, you’re allowed to end sentences with prepositions.
I wish I had an inner Mike.
Fun fact: The “don’t end sentences in a preposition” thing was made up by the same guy who made up “never split infinitives”, and he made those things up because he wanted English to work more like Latin, whose syntax does not allow for end of sentence prepositions, and whose infinitives are a single word and so cannot be split. In other words, those rules are not actually rules inherent to English syntax, they are just the elitist preferences of some old linguist that got written down somewhere along the line and now everyone pretends they’re actual rules.
Garbage roof : having the top bed counts
Assuming this scene takes place roughly concurrently with what’s going on with Joyce, this is probably early afternoon at the latest, since Joyce was eating lunch when she got the call from her dad. The rooftop fight happened shortly after midnight the night before, soMike has been missing for about 12-14 hours at this point.
If Mike taken to the hospital, either by getting there himself, or with help from Amazi-Girl, or a change of heart from Ross, the other characters might not know yet. Assuming he was either conscious or had his ID on him, he’d have been identified by now, but priority would probably be on telling his parents first, school second. The school probably would be the ones to announce that a student had been injured, and they’d have to wait to talk to their PR staff and lawyers before announcing it to the rest of the student body. (I’m basing this on working in higher education- while nothing quite this dramatic has happened at one of my schools, that’s the general procedure I’ve seen for situations like this)
If Mike is dead, unless AG or Ross (or Blaine, but he’s less likely) decide to tell someone, his body might not have been found until recently. If he’s dead, the school is going to be even more careful about making any announcements, and police usually won’t publicly identify a body until they’ve notified next-of-kin, so this will take even longer to come out.
Either way, yikeserama. I feel like if by the end of the day (in-universe) we don’t have answers about Mike, I’m going to be leaning way more towards him being dead.
I really hope this isn’t Amber subconsciously remember the last thing Mike said to her (offscreen).
Well, so in two months of preliminaries for the final showdown we have checked on all main characters at the campus that have are directly or indirectly related to Amber except…
Ethan
Sure this is not by chance.
I’m astonished there’s a camp that not only believes this is the real, corporeal Mike, but also is arguing against the evidence that he’s not.
Like I immediately assumed it was Amber’s subconscious or something, his first two lines are so heavy handed
I find it extremely interesting that yesterday’s hover text was about a movie scene where people disappeared and reappeared from a photo: “hey it’s your cousin, marvin barry, you know that asshole sound you were looking for, well listen to this!!!”
Or more likely it was someone singing who wasn’t supposed to exist at all in that time and place.
Please stop making us suffer, please make her remember his sacrifice ;-; Also Joyce Sister, I hope she’s okay ;-;
So how is “You’re pretty okay” mean? Well it denies her the ugly pleasure of self denigration, I suppose. I think Actual!Mike could do a lot better than that.
The one thing that she’s most certain about in life is her own worthlessness. He’s telling her she’s wrong about even that.
If they are going all in on the “Mike is dead” crap then there better be some AMAZING explanations.
Mike would have died from falling off a second story building, which is possible, but then we’re ALSO operating under the assumption that his body wasn’t discovered by anybody, because the Campus isn’t on lockdown and Robin didn’t seem to know that “Hey, that kid who was at the party was found dead a few blocks away”
Which doesn’t work because Mike was driving around, screaming at the top of his lungs, so clearly people were aware that SOMETHING was happening, combined with a lot of shouting and screaming during the fight.
There’s no realistic way that Mike died and it hasn’t been discovered yet. Similarly, we also know that Ross’s involvement in the assault wasn’t discovered, because Robin used her sources to find he was out on bail, but didn’t mention that he was wanted for a brand new assault?
Too much shit doesn’t add up on this day. Besides the fact that we’ve seen other characters doing stuff, I wouldn’t be surprised if this entire day was just an Amber Fever Dream.
Willis has already confirmed that this chapter’s events are not a dream.
Who is force ghost Mike texting?
Your mom.
When I see Mike, I’ve been hearing this song;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFjew9c5Fak
Damn Kid Hallucinations, always on their phones