Based loosely off of "The Snow Queen", a story by Hans Christian Andersen, we see things take a different turn as the demons become central characters, and the side characters stick around. Yup, that's the only differences. Enjoy!
Wilde Life
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Oscar decided to rent an old haunted house, and that's when things got weird...
The End
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Two aliens crash a sci-fi convention and accidentally take seven nerds on an adventure that spans the galaxy!
Dumbing of Age
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Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Sam & Fuzzy
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Troubled by gangster rodents, lovesick vampire stalkers, or confused ninja assassins? Don't panic! Sam and Fuzzy are here to help. (For a reasonable fee.)
Go Get a Roomie
Clover
Experience the queer journey of an upbeat hippie and the friendships she makes along the way! A tale of self-discovery and love of many forms.
Lilith's Word
inkPangur
If you had the power to make any wish come true using just one word, what would you say?
Widdershins
Kate Ashwin
A series of light-hearted Victorian-era adventure stories featuring grumpy bounty hunters, accidental thiefkings, and more, in England's magical capital city Widdershins!
Star Impact
Jack McGee
A young, energetic woman fights her way up in the world of super-powered boxing after discovering the mighty gloves of her missing idol!
The Automan's Daughter
Mike Stamm
Aisha Osman and her uncle Siddig outwit bikers, spies and kidnappers while gearing up for a showdown with the formidable Widowmaker mecha.
Fireweeds Moors
Gato Iberico
A cat-headed man and a girl with a sandwich hankering accidentally end up in a myth-infused country where magic chalices are a really big thing.
Girl Genius
Phil Foglio, Kaja Foglio
In a time when the Industrial Revolution has become an all-out war, Mad Science rules the World...with mixed success.
[un]Divine
Ayme
A highschool senior thought giving up his soul for a demon was a good idea. It wasn't.
Between Failures
Jackie Wohlenhaus
The low stakes adventures of an assorted group of 20 somethings trapped in the declining years of American retail. They are naughty and say lots of swears.
Astral Aves
Moon Cabal
A fantasy coming-of-age following the adventures of Astra The Black and friends, as they navigate the mysterious world around them. It's politics, adventure, and the supernatural; oh, and crazy hair.
Knights Errant
J.R. Doyle
Wilfrid's humble quest for revenge becomes bigger and bloodier by the day.
Whomp!
Ronnie
A depressed, portly, hirsute anime fan stumbles through life in the ever-pursuit of chicken nuggets and other life-shortening indulgences.
The Witch Door
Anni K.
Katariina Lehto discovers her neighbor is a witch called Jousia Muotka. Jousia introduces Katariina to the strange people and places beyond the witch door...
Monster Pulse
Magnolia Porter Siddell
Four kids run afoul of a creepy secret organization's experiments, which turn their body parts into fighting monsters. Part sentimental coming-of-age story, part monster-training shonen manga, with just a bit of sci-fi body horror.
Goodbye to Halos
Valerie Halla
Cuddles, gay flirting, weird feelings, and magic-fueled knife fights - it's an adventure across the queer multiverse!
Alice and the Nightmare
Misha Krivanek
Alice finally attends University to learn to collect the dreams of humans, meet new friends, and deal with a pesky reflection along the way.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
The Sanity Circus
Windy
Magic, monsters and mysteries await in the odd city of Sanity. It's up to Attley and a colorful group of characters to find out just what is going on.
Cassiopeia Quinn
Gunwild, Psudonym
A cute, pantsless thief is pursued across the stars by a buttoned-up military officer in the spacey, laser-filled future.
Monsterkind
Taylor C
Wallace Foster, a young, bright-eyed human social worker, has his entire world view rocked when he's suddenly relocated into a city primarily inhabited by monsters.
Atomic Robo
Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener
The robot punches monsters and bad robots and one time he was a cowboy.
Jailbird
Charlie Davis
An all-ages comic about a recently escaped prisoner's struggle to understand the outside world, and vice-versa. Also, a magic cape!
El Goonish Shive
Dan Shive
WARNING: This comic often ignores the Laws of Physics
This is Not Fiction
Nicole Mannino
What do you do when the person you're in-love with is an anonymous romance novelist? Get your best friend to hire your worst enemy for help!
Lighter Than Heir
Melissa Albino
A young Volant woman joins the military in an effort to upstage her war-hero father.
Godslave
Meaghan Carter
Edith has been thrown into the dangerous world of modern-day Egyptian mythology. Fighting monsters and dealing with family drama of godly proportions.
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
Sufficiently Remarkable
Maki Naro
Two young women living in Brooklyn discover that you're always coming of age.
Hazy London
Scotty
A story about messy relationships. From friendly foes to crazy families. Nothing is black and white, just full of color. But, all colors can get a little hazy...
Star Trip
Gisele Weaver
Jas is a human taken from her home planet on a trip across the galaxy she will never forget.
Awaken
Koti Saavedra/Flipfloppery
Superpowers, monsters and conspiracies. Piras, the spoiled Dameschi heir, fights to recover his identity after becoming a terrorist!
Anarchy Dreamers
Emily Ree
Sparkly undead kids fight society's worst Nightmares in this pastel-punk urban fantasy coming-of-age!
Starhammer
J.N. Monk, Harry Bogosian
A teen girl inherits a powerful alien artifact and proceeds to make a series of increasingly poor decisions
Devil's Candy
Rem, Bikkuri
A lush fantasy about boy genius Kazu Decker, the girl he constructed for his 9th grade science project, and the world of devils and monsters they live in.
Ghost Junk Sickness
Studio CARTRIDGE, Laura Lee
Two hunters try to survive and end up being pushed to pursue a deadly bounty dubbed "The Ghost".
Tigress Queen
Allison Shaw
A barbarian warlord and a pampered prince try to avoid a marriage alliance that could end decades of violence.
Never Satisfied
Taylor Robin
Lucy Marlowe, a magician's apprentice, competes against other apprentices for an important, magical, Goverment Job.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Wychwood
Varethane
When Tiara's pyrokinesis is finally noticed, she is captured by a magical research organization for study. If she cooperates, she could be helping to save humanity from a dire threat - but can she trust them?
Kochab
Sarah Webb
A YA F/F fantasy comic about Sonya, a lost skier trying to survive a snowy wilderness and find her way back to her village; and Kyra - a fire spirit trying to fix the home that she let fall apart around her.
Love Not Found
Gina Biggs
Abeille is on a quest to find someone who wants to do it the old-fashioned way in a time when touching has become outdated.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Caramel Corn
Potchimew
Sarah is the only human left in a world full of mythical creatures and monsters. All she wants to do is live a quiet life, but everything changes when she meets her guardian angel, Jacob.
Kiwi Blitz
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
Steffi thinks she can use her kiwi mech to become a superhero. This idea turns out to be very stupid.
Paranatural
Zack Morrison
Superpowered middle schoolers fight evil spirits in their rural hometown. Come for the jokes, stay for the cast, the creatures, and the mystery that ties them all together!
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
The Lonely Vincent Bellingham
Diana Huh
Vincent is an unkind man looking to disappear, and finds himself in the care of a vampire and her two wicked children.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Cut Time
Juby
Rel and her trusty avian friend Fugue are on a quest to save a world that's lost track of time. Follow them and their new recruits, in a story written with help from the stars.
Real Science Adventures
Brian Clevinger
Spin off stories and other adventures from the world of Atomic Robo!
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that is not entirely fair. We have not seen it, because it did not happen in comic, but we have been told that she supported Ethan a lot when he came out to his parents.
She has never been ‘completely unavailable’, she just hasn’t been ‘completely present’ either. Which isn’t fully her fault since she’s had a lot more severe mental stuff going on. And Ethan hasn’t really gone to her when worried about her or when stuff has been going on with him.
Ethan has bad shit of his own, but he doesn’t really know how to reach out to people because his first instinct is to take care of everyone else. With Amber specifically, they’re kinda caught in a loop of Amber having a problem, Ethan gently assuring her that nothing is wrong, and then Amber spiraling even harder because she’s not constructively dealing with her feelings and feels undeserving of Ethan’s kindness.
Ethan has spent so much time playing caretaker that I don’t think he really knows how to ask for help.
You’re right, but I think she still gets some points for this. I’ll rag on Amber a lot, because she has a lot to get dunked on for, but “I’m sorry I haven’t been more emotionally available” is a pretty good and honest apology in my books.
Mosquitos that survive perfectly intact from millions of years ago, that hold a treasure trove of ancient dinosaur DNA so you can build a poorly secured, and not well thought out theme park of genetically engineered and likely highly inaccurate monsters that can breed in the wild thanks to splicing them with frog genes?
Compare back breeding chickens into classic dinosaurs. Either way, if we want them to be viable in todays ecosystems, they’ll need to be somewhat inaccurate.
Definitely not dino DNA, that stuff has a half life of like 500 years (literally several orders of magnitude less than what’d be needed to revive the non-avian dinosaurs).
Last year the record for earliest DNA recovered was pushed back to over a million years ago. Still impressive but nowhere near the 66 million years separating us from the last non avian dinosaurs.
Impressive indeed, considering that that’d be roughly 2,000 DNA half-lives (for scale, after just 10% of that elapsed time, 200 half-lives, only 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000062230152778611% of the original would be left…now throw in about 1,800 additional half-lives to get to the time of that mammoth DNA). And yeah, end-Cretaceous DNA would require survival for an impossible minimum of around 130,000 DNA half-lives—that’s not even what’d be needed for mid-Cretaceous or gods forbid, Jurassic/Triassic DNA.
(In short, there’s a reason “twenty half-lives” is often used as a baseline for when a sample becomes all but unrecognizable; by that point, you have less than 0.0001% of the original sample remaining. In DNA’s case, that twenty-half-life baseline on a good day would barely stretch back to the beginning of the Holocene. Even Pliocenic DNA would be several times over the age of that mammoth DNA milu linked above…)
i’m not versed in physics/chemistry enough to understand what the half-life of DNA means. are we talking atomic disintegration? like radioactive elements? or does it refer to the resilience of the molecular bonds? does this measure depend on the environment at all (like temperature)?
in the article i linked to, researchers explained that they were only able to recover DNA this old because the mammoth had remained mummified inside permafrost the whole time, and even then they could only find a bunch of tiny fragments which they reconstructed jigsaw-style using a modern elephant genome for reference.
they note that, at the absolute most, the oldest DNA we could ever hope to find is 2,6 myo because that’s when the earliest permafrost formed.
As I understand it, the DNA breakdown rate—its half-life—is essentially the speed at which its molecules break apart from each other, yeah. Warmer temperatures and the presence of liquid water help accelerate this process, which is why the mammoth in the article (frozen in permafrost) was able to last as long as it did, even in its heavily-degraded form as was noted. The previous record-holder was a 700,000-year-old horse also frozen in permafrost, and a 130,000-year-old polar bear before that—all likewise preserved in permafrost.
Apparently the oldest DNA theoretically survivable in any significantly-reconstitutable/readable form (assuming ideal temperatures a little below freezing, and minimal presence of liquid water) could be up to 1.5myo, so that million-year-old mammoth DNA was definitely pushing the edges of what’s even possible…and dino-DNA is certainly altogether out of the picture (as even “unrecognizable” DNA, theoretically-speaking, would be entirely gone in less than 7 million years even given ideal conditions for preservation).
wow =) thanks for the deep dive. yeah, i’ve heard the 1.5 mya figure before, i’m excited to see if that is eventually pushed back by advances in genomics, either theoretical (better AI-assisted reconstruction?) or technical…
and while it might be disappointing that we’ll never get dinosaur DNA, i think it’s worth noting that DNA is not the blueprint that pop science/scifi would have us think of it as. To name just one thing DNA wouldn’t bring back: dinosaur gut microbiome. Will the baby dinos survive their first meal in a world many million years worth of microbial, viral, and plant evolution down the line? I really wish we’d knock DNA from its pedestal. We are not our chromosomes, no more than a book is the family tree of its author.
See, you clearly said “Hush”, but for some reason my brain replaced it with “Smoke on the Water”. Apparently, my brain believes in spite of all evidence that’s the only song they ever performed.
Ethan: Not a lot of people know what it feels like to be angry, in your bones. I mean, they understand, foster parents, everybody understands, for awhile. Then they want the angry little kid to do something he knows he can’t do, move on.
Amber: Are you quoting the Dark Knight Rises?
Ethan: HE WASN’T DICK GRAYSON! THE MOVIE’S ENDING MAKES NO SENSE!
I’m glad she came out and said it. I wonder if he’s brushing it off, or if he’s just not ready/willing to be vulnerable right now. This does seem less… hostile… than some of their past conversations.
To be fair to the both of them, the last time they did interact Amber was trying to push people away by being incredibly horny and talking to him about Danny. Who, while I do think he’s an overall decent guy, is on Ethan’s shit list for a valid reason
I actually wonder if he’s talked to Amber about what Danny said outside of Mike’s hospital room…
I think Ethan really wants company right now, but he also can’t really trust that Amber is going to be a good friend yet.
I hope she just shows she can be a chill friend in the mean time.
Sometimes the best way to be alone is in a crowded place, I’ve found. If I’m sitting in a food court with my iPad, no one bothers me at all. If I hole up in my home without speaking to anyone, I get a LOT of well-meaning trying to cheer me ip or whatever.
Plus, if I go do public-space solitude, no one can accuse me of hermiting. Because I went out, didn’t I?
This is actually remarkable progress for Amber. Usually her acknowledging her faults leads to her going on superhero death marches, and instead here she’s just flatly admitting she wasn’t as good as she wanted to be.
He has been there for her through every major life issue and is now grieving one of his very best friends who died in a horrible and senseless way.
His last interaction with Amber was her being a horny creep about someone he’s upset with (in a way that ties into the grief).
Yeah god forbid he not just get over that because Amber finally decided to try being a friend. If you don’t think he deserves to get a little of what he’s given all these years, just because he’s not all sunshine and roses, god help anyone in your life who has a bad day.
Likewise, though we didn’t see much of it, she was there for him to help through coming out as gay and dealing with his prejudiced family. This despite that being tied to ending their romantic relationship.
They both have their issues, but don’t pretend this has always been a one-way friendship.
And then she stopped talking to him because him being gay exhausted her, got pissy when Joyce took him to a meetup instead of her, and then things got bad enough that she was pretty much incapable of trying to help him with anything.
Amber’s not a giving friend, but she hasn’t had much to give because she takes control of other peoples’ suffering to fuel her own mental health spiral, and it’s something she’s only starting to confront now.
Amber can object and also it’s what happened, on top of needing to go be a superhero, apparently.
It also matters a lot that this is how Ethan put it, and then the next strip has him add that he gets it was exhausting and that’s it a lot more for him than it is her, and he never got the chance to escape it. Later that weak she broke down that he’d fake it for Joyce and not her.
Amber’s not an emotionally available friend, we know this because she is currently saying as much, and then the last time these two spoke Ethan real blunt-like told her that she only approaches him in a crisis, which she was doing then too.
Like yeah actually it’s okay to read this as a one-sided friendship and especially when the most evidence against it is something that happened off-screen that motivated them not speaking to each for like four years real time until Amber felt like it again. That’s what Amber’s facing up to right now and trying to amend.
I, personally, do not object to reading it as a largely one-sided friendship. However, I do not see that line as 1. a good quote to pull out of context like that 2. a fair assessment of what happened from a reader standpoint.
Ugh. I wish this was ever worth it, but it’s just not.
It’s not out of context, it’s a statement by Ethan about how he felt abandoned by someone who is in this strip going “I haven’t been emotionally available.” I don’t know what a “fair assessment of what happened from a reader standpoint” means either since knowing why Amber did it (crippling self-loathing, Ethan existing as a protector figure for her since childhood, being emotionally hurt from not being able to be with him the way she wanted) doesn’t suddenly means it didn’t happen, it just means we know why it did and how it contributed to Amber’s existing problem of spiraling real hard using other peoples’ problems, particularly Ethan’s, which was something else she admitted prior to the timeskip.
“And then she stopped talking to him”– fair! “And then she abandoned him,” even. But then there’s consideration for “Because him being gay exhausted her” vs because of other reasons, like the ones you listed.
Okay but “me being gay exhausted you” is the exact sentence used by the person Amber is currently admitting that she wants to be more emotionally open to, because that’s what it felt like to Ethan.
I didn’t even say “Because him being gay exhausted her” to mean “this is specifically why Amber abandoned him,” it was one of the multitude of reasons for why Amber, right now, is making an effort to be there for Ethan when he needs her and admitting fault for how she’s acted in the past.
Where are the campus therapists and psychiatrists to help teenagers who were kidnapped and nearly murdered by a mobster? Amber should have been there for Ethan, true, but the school should absolutely be offering free counseling to students they have repeatedly failed to protect.
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TECHNICALLY she just asked if he minded
Hey he asked for silence. No comments! Shh….
Good luck with that.
Let me be the first to stand up and say loudly, and proudly, that I stand in solidarity and silence with Emothan.
Amber being asked to not be social? Oh no, how will she cope
About as well as usual?
And that’s how the school burned down.
It was just the student union.
I mean Amber’s never been very emotionally available so she really isn’t apologizing for much.
They were each other’s only friends except for Mike. And Mike was Mike.
But if she was never very emotionally available for Ethan, then technically she was apologizing for a lot.
that is not entirely fair. We have not seen it, because it did not happen in comic, but we have been told that she supported Ethan a lot when he came out to his parents.
She has never been ‘completely unavailable’, she just hasn’t been ‘completely present’ either. Which isn’t fully her fault since she’s had a lot more severe mental stuff going on. And Ethan hasn’t really gone to her when worried about her or when stuff has been going on with him.
Well, that’s kinda the problem.
Ethan has bad shit of his own, but he doesn’t really know how to reach out to people because his first instinct is to take care of everyone else. With Amber specifically, they’re kinda caught in a loop of Amber having a problem, Ethan gently assuring her that nothing is wrong, and then Amber spiraling even harder because she’s not constructively dealing with her feelings and feels undeserving of Ethan’s kindness.
Ethan has spent so much time playing caretaker that I don’t think he really knows how to ask for help.
You’re right, but I think she still gets some points for this. I’ll rag on Amber a lot, because she has a lot to get dunked on for, but “I’m sorry I haven’t been more emotionally available” is a pretty good and honest apology in my books.
Well, time for Amber to finally learn ASL.
Marcie is apparently not a half-bad teacher.
Which half?
I don’t know what that face on the last panel is supposed to indicate. And Amber you did say in silence.
Try messaging him instead.
Personally see that as a kind of “well I tried” shrug of acceptance. If Ethan doesn’t want to hear her apology, then she won’t force it.
I thought she’d said her piece, and was just taking the opportunity to enjoy being near each other in silence.
I took it as a challenge accepted face.
I think that’s a “composing a text” face.
I see it as “prepping herself to be uncharacteristically social in a way Emothan won’t like”.
I’m not sure what that face means either.
Just then Ethan and Amber noticed a bunch of tally marks on their bodies that weren’t there a moment earlier.
**Captain America Meme**
“I get that reference.”
I don’t. What obscure nonsense is this?
It works better as a ‘the Silence’ reference anyway.
I almost fell for that. Well played!
Ha I get that reference.
Except they might not know what it’s for O.O
Hey, who turned out the lights?
Silence in the
LibraryCafeteriaSo much Amber…
I feel like I’m trapped in Amber!!! 🤪
You know what else gets trapped in amber?
Here’s a hint: 🧬
Mosquitos that survive perfectly intact from millions of years ago, that hold a treasure trove of ancient dinosaur DNA so you can build a poorly secured, and not well thought out theme park of genetically engineered and likely highly inaccurate monsters that can breed in the wild thanks to splicing them with frog genes?
Compare back breeding chickens into classic dinosaurs. Either way, if we want them to be viable in todays ecosystems, they’ll need to be somewhat inaccurate.
Definitely not dino DNA, that stuff has a half life of like 500 years (literally several orders of magnitude less than what’d be needed to revive the non-avian dinosaurs).
But perfectly preserved dinosaur tails caught in amber, on the other hand…
yeah, mesozoic DNA is lost forever.
Last year the record for earliest DNA recovered was pushed back to over a million years ago. Still impressive but nowhere near the 66 million years separating us from the last non avian dinosaurs.
Impressive indeed, considering that that’d be roughly 2,000 DNA half-lives (for scale, after just 10% of that elapsed time, 200 half-lives, only 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000062230152778611% of the original would be left…now throw in about 1,800 additional half-lives to get to the time of that mammoth DNA). And yeah, end-Cretaceous DNA would require survival for an impossible minimum of around 130,000 DNA half-lives—that’s not even what’d be needed for mid-Cretaceous or gods forbid, Jurassic/Triassic DNA.
(In short, there’s a reason “twenty half-lives” is often used as a baseline for when a sample becomes all but unrecognizable; by that point, you have less than 0.0001% of the original sample remaining. In DNA’s case, that twenty-half-life baseline on a good day would barely stretch back to the beginning of the Holocene. Even Pliocenic DNA would be several times over the age of that mammoth DNA milu linked above…)
i’m not versed in physics/chemistry enough to understand what the half-life of DNA means. are we talking atomic disintegration? like radioactive elements? or does it refer to the resilience of the molecular bonds? does this measure depend on the environment at all (like temperature)?
in the article i linked to, researchers explained that they were only able to recover DNA this old because the mammoth had remained mummified inside permafrost the whole time, and even then they could only find a bunch of tiny fragments which they reconstructed jigsaw-style using a modern elephant genome for reference.
they note that, at the absolute most, the oldest DNA we could ever hope to find is 2,6 myo because that’s when the earliest permafrost formed.
As I understand it, the DNA breakdown rate—its half-life—is essentially the speed at which its molecules break apart from each other, yeah. Warmer temperatures and the presence of liquid water help accelerate this process, which is why the mammoth in the article (frozen in permafrost) was able to last as long as it did, even in its heavily-degraded form as was noted. The previous record-holder was a 700,000-year-old horse also frozen in permafrost, and a 130,000-year-old polar bear before that—all likewise preserved in permafrost.
Apparently the oldest DNA theoretically survivable in any significantly-reconstitutable/readable form (assuming ideal temperatures a little below freezing, and minimal presence of liquid water) could be up to 1.5myo, so that million-year-old mammoth DNA was definitely pushing the edges of what’s even possible…and dino-DNA is certainly altogether out of the picture (as even “unrecognizable” DNA, theoretically-speaking, would be entirely gone in less than 7 million years even given ideal conditions for preservation).
wow =) thanks for the deep dive. yeah, i’ve heard the 1.5 mya figure before, i’m excited to see if that is eventually pushed back by advances in genomics, either theoretical (better AI-assisted reconstruction?) or technical…
and while it might be disappointing that we’ll never get dinosaur DNA, i think it’s worth noting that DNA is not the blueprint that pop science/scifi would have us think of it as. To name just one thing DNA wouldn’t bring back: dinosaur gut microbiome. Will the baby dinos survive their first meal in a world many million years worth of microbial, viral, and plant evolution down the line? I really wish we’d knock DNA from its pedestal. We are not our chromosomes, no more than a book is the family tree of its author.
*plays Deep Purple’s “Hush” on the hacked Muzak*
As an Aussie, replaces it with Russell Morris’s earlier (and IMHO superior) version.
well now I have to find that.
It was the only hit for the band “Somebody’s Image” with him on lead vocals.
See, you clearly said “Hush”, but for some reason my brain replaced it with “Smoke on the Water”. Apparently, my brain believes in spite of all evidence that’s the only song they ever performed.
Not even Highway Star?
Smoke on the Water is the only time Zappa ever gets any attention on the radio. That’s a shame, but also entirely understandable.
*cues up “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt*
Amber just needs to give it space.
Ethan: Not a lot of people know what it feels like to be angry, in your bones. I mean, they understand, foster parents, everybody understands, for awhile. Then they want the angry little kid to do something he knows he can’t do, move on.
Amber: Are you quoting the Dark Knight Rises?
Ethan: HE WASN’T DICK GRAYSON! THE MOVIE’S ENDING MAKES NO SENSE!
Unfortunately he didn’t say anything about using telepathy.
Hey, silence together is still progress, right, Amber?
I’m glad she came out and said it. I wonder if he’s brushing it off, or if he’s just not ready/willing to be vulnerable right now. This does seem less… hostile… than some of their past conversations.
To be fair to the both of them, the last time they did interact Amber was trying to push people away by being incredibly horny and talking to him about Danny. Who, while I do think he’s an overall decent guy, is on Ethan’s shit list for a valid reason
I actually wonder if he’s talked to Amber about what Danny said outside of Mike’s hospital room…
I think Ethan really wants company right now, but he also can’t really trust that Amber is going to be a good friend yet.
I hope she just shows she can be a chill friend in the mean time.
So, what’s Ethan doing out in this harried throng of oversharing extraverts? Does Jacob need private use of their room?
Sometimes the best way to be alone is in a crowded place, I’ve found. If I’m sitting in a food court with my iPad, no one bothers me at all. If I hole up in my home without speaking to anyone, I get a LOT of well-meaning trying to cheer me ip or whatever.
Plus, if I go do public-space solitude, no one can accuse me of hermiting. Because I went out, didn’t I?
Honestly fair.
Oh hey, it just occurred to me that flipping someone off is completely silent….. wonder what is making me think that?
Just casually hanging next to each other isn’t a bad first step tho
Can someone please explain the alt-text?
I don’t see what a philosopher, mummy, surgeon in a trenchcoat has to do with the rest of the strip?
Hush can also be used as a word for keeping quiet, an example being: “You kids better hush and try to sleep.”
As for why it is the alt-text, only the great Willis knkws.
“Fair enough”.
Ethan twists the phone.
This will never get old.
This is actually remarkable progress for Amber. Usually her acknowledging her faults leads to her going on superhero death marches, and instead here she’s just flatly admitting she wasn’t as good as she wanted to be.
Yeah, for Amber this is pretty good right now.
okay holy fuck you know what this completely subverted my expectations amber pls be chill for a while this is a good look
Amber is trying. Kudos for her, but I wonder if Ethan deserves her attention.
He has been there for her through every major life issue and is now grieving one of his very best friends who died in a horrible and senseless way.
His last interaction with Amber was her being a horny creep about someone he’s upset with (in a way that ties into the grief).
Yeah god forbid he not just get over that because Amber finally decided to try being a friend. If you don’t think he deserves to get a little of what he’s given all these years, just because he’s not all sunshine and roses, god help anyone in your life who has a bad day.
Likewise, though we didn’t see much of it, she was there for him to help through coming out as gay and dealing with his prejudiced family. This despite that being tied to ending their romantic relationship.
They both have their issues, but don’t pretend this has always been a one-way friendship.
And then she stopped talking to him because him being gay exhausted her, got pissy when Joyce took him to a meetup instead of her, and then things got bad enough that she was pretty much incapable of trying to help him with anything.
Amber’s not a giving friend, but she hasn’t had much to give because she takes control of other peoples’ suffering to fuel her own mental health spiral, and it’s something she’s only starting to confront now.
Seriously? “because him being gay exhausted her”?
Don’t talk to me.
It’s literally the line!
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/alwaysalways/
It’s the line from Ethan, which Amber objects to the next strip.
Amber can object and also it’s what happened, on top of needing to go be a superhero, apparently.
It also matters a lot that this is how Ethan put it, and then the next strip has him add that he gets it was exhausting and that’s it a lot more for him than it is her, and he never got the chance to escape it. Later that weak she broke down that he’d fake it for Joyce and not her.
Amber’s not an emotionally available friend, we know this because she is currently saying as much, and then the last time these two spoke Ethan real blunt-like told her that she only approaches him in a crisis, which she was doing then too.
Like yeah actually it’s okay to read this as a one-sided friendship and especially when the most evidence against it is something that happened off-screen that motivated them not speaking to each for like four years real time until Amber felt like it again. That’s what Amber’s facing up to right now and trying to amend.
I, personally, do not object to reading it as a largely one-sided friendship. However, I do not see that line as 1. a good quote to pull out of context like that 2. a fair assessment of what happened from a reader standpoint.
Ugh. I wish this was ever worth it, but it’s just not.
It’s not out of context, it’s a statement by Ethan about how he felt abandoned by someone who is in this strip going “I haven’t been emotionally available.” I don’t know what a “fair assessment of what happened from a reader standpoint” means either since knowing why Amber did it (crippling self-loathing, Ethan existing as a protector figure for her since childhood, being emotionally hurt from not being able to be with him the way she wanted) doesn’t suddenly means it didn’t happen, it just means we know why it did and how it contributed to Amber’s existing problem of spiraling real hard using other peoples’ problems, particularly Ethan’s, which was something else she admitted prior to the timeskip.
“And then she stopped talking to him”– fair! “And then she abandoned him,” even. But then there’s consideration for “Because him being gay exhausted her” vs because of other reasons, like the ones you listed.
Okay but “me being gay exhausted you” is the exact sentence used by the person Amber is currently admitting that she wants to be more emotionally open to, because that’s what it felt like to Ethan.
I didn’t even say “Because him being gay exhausted her” to mean “this is specifically why Amber abandoned him,” it was one of the multitude of reasons for why Amber, right now, is making an effort to be there for Ethan when he needs her and admitting fault for how she’s acted in the past.
Where are the campus therapists and psychiatrists to help teenagers who were kidnapped and nearly murdered by a mobster? Amber should have been there for Ethan, true, but the school should absolutely be offering free counseling to students they have repeatedly failed to protect.
A major theme of this web comic is that Indiana U does not care.
Walky said the school therapists aren’t very good, so I assume they’ve been.
Well his brow is unfurrowed, that’s a good start
JUST TALK YOU MOODY TEENAGER
Can’t, he’s too busy being pre-Batman.
Wait I’m confused wasn’t it Spider-Man 3?