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Let the cover by a 1930s greyscale noir homage with a suave Walky dipping Amber in Tarzan rags in the streetlight, Lucy hiding in the background in a trenchcoat, and his parents swooning in the foreground.
Naw. His face is longer/narrower, eyes are closer together, and his nose is tall and points down, not short and pokey. Also, significantly fewer bedsheet abrasions.
If anyone here looks like Linda, it’s Sal. They have the same face, same build, same body language and mannerisms… it’s like the only traits she inherited from Charles are her hair and skin tone.
… Maybe that’s part of the reason Linda comes down on Sal so hard, because she subconsciously sees a lot of herself in her?
This made me laugh. I had to do some internet searching to figure out what it was a reference to and wow this joke has alot! Death Note, Dragonball, Team Four Star … delicious icing.
The comic itself rarely leaves me lost, though this one did. But the comments almost always remind me that I am either the wrong demographic or too old (probably both) for this group. No knowledge of or interest in Transformers, Saturday morning cartoons, anime, comic books, video games – so really, most of what the commenters talk about…
I mean, doesn’t Willis’ bio explicitly state “I’m old” ? When you’ve been at it as long as he has, your fans are gonna skew old, too. 41-year-old checking in here.
41 is a youngster – I have jeans older than that. Yes, if there are multiple of us on Medicare, then there’s at least some level of older skew. Still, I’d guess the majority grew up in the 90s or more recently.
37 and figured I was probably the midpoint, with readership likely ranging from current students up to people in their 70s? I’d have assumed the bottom half of the graph were a little more dense than the top, though. I guess I’m still sub-central.
Demographics be damned, OTL1973. I’m 66, on Medicare, love (some*) anime, Nimona, She-Ra And The Princesses of Power, Ducktales 2017, MLP gen 4, Steven Universe, The Owl House, and of course Lower Decks.
*Anime is diverse so there’s something for everybody. Check out films by Studio Ghibli, Mamoru Hosada, Isao Takahata, Naoko Yamada, Makoto Shinkai, series “A Place Beyond the Universe”, “Ancient Magus’ Bride”, “Blue Period” “Iroduku The World In Colors” to start.
As someone who’s actually the age of some of the characters in the strip (less and less every year it feels weird) I think the audience actually skews older. Bunch of people who’ve been reading Willis for like the past 20-30 years or however long he’s been going. If I had to hazard a guess I’d say most commenters are in their 40s at least or something. Be an interesting poll to have
I came to Willis via DoA itself but was already in my 30s at the time. That being said, I do tend to skew younger as a person than my numeric age. Neurodiversity and chronic illness will delay you like that, plus our friendship groups were / still are formed in a rural university town with all-age town-uni gaming and comic societies. So it’s not been all that long since our friends ranged from 16/17 up to 77 – shorter than you’d expect anyway.
Like, I thought it was gonna be bad. And Walky would just watch them try not to make a scene in public about it, and be deviously smirking the whole time. Not go in GUNS BLAZING and MAKE THE FUCKING SCENE.
I’m surprised Amber didn’t react to being called a FERAL CHILD. That’s just brutal. He could have just laid low, and Sal would have been like, “Bro, I put in a good word for Lucy. Seems like Mom and Dad will be cool about it.”
Sal might actually be boosted to favorite child after this.
That’s fair – I think it’s just the circumstances collectively that leave me baffled. Sure, in isolation I don’t think that gag would be taken badly (particularly given Walky), but in *this* situation, with *these* people all in a room, without even saying hello to her? Just wild decision-making.
Which I guess is exactly how we ended up here in the first place, really.
I’d honestly be pretty surprised if Danny wasn’t ticked as well. They both know that Amber is a walking microcosm of horrific life events, indeed a fractal of ever building traumas, a trauma romanesco one might say. She’s agreed to this because she full time dissociates and no longer has stakes in her own life or feelings.
Well, Amber already refers to herself as “the monster,” so her ego’s got limited capacity for bruising. Certainly not because of anything *Linda* might say.
Celebrity interactions can be interesting. My favorite were the conversations I’d had with online with John Tenta (Earthquake in the WWF). He was both engaging and a sweetheart. Obligatory “cancer sucks” statement.
Listen, if Amber doesn’t look Walky’s mother directly in the eyes and say
“I f*cked your son” and then gently place a roll of nickles that are missing a few… I cry.
She might also be incensed at the idea that Walky broke up with Lucy and hooked up with Amber within the same day. Like ‘wow bro, I know I only gave you guys 2 weeks, but damn’.
“You mean you couldn’t stand not being the favorite son for a single afternoon, so you hooked up with the first white chick who would have you back?
…After she shoved you into a *table* on your last date?”
Yeah, she’ll figure out quickly that her brother is intentionally doing something outrageous, even if she doesn’t immediately understand the whole plan.
Walky: Hey hey hey now, it was Lucy’s idea. Mostly.
Linda: Your sister and I are furious. Right Sal?
Amber: What plan, what’s going on, where am I?
Jesse Pinkman: He can’t keep getting away with this
Ok so on the subject of lucy vs dorothy, the mother has a point that Dorothy is a lot more mature, has a better future outlook and compliments walkys childishness.
Lucy, largely just finds walky attractive. Shes more immature and of course the mother cant know this from the 2 minutes shes known her but shes not wrong that dorothy IS better for him.
Dorothy is not more mature, she’s more sophisticated. Lucy and Dorothy’s immaturity is different. Her future outlook is rooted in immaturity, a child deciding what she wants to be when she grows up and locking that in as an immutable goal. Lucy’s immaturity is “I want to sit at the popular kid’s lunch table”.
Dorothy was generally more mature but she’s experiencing a PTSD-based freak-out that she can’t handle. Lucy seems to view life as a Disney Channel teen series.
I do not like character of Lucy, but Lucy likes Walky in a way that makes him happy where he is and I think that’s important. Walky needed someone to do hijinks with not just watch the silly or try and fix everything else. Peak Walky and Dorothy was running through the rain after Amazagirl, but that just wasn’t the bread and butter. In contrast, Walky and Lucy actively do comics together and Lucy doesn’t keep saying it’s just the thing until she’s on her next stage… thats nice for him.
I don’t think she clocked it entirely but she’s definitely aware that her brother uses zany antics to escape difficult situations and the fact that he showed up with a new girl out of nowhere is hitting all the suspicion alarms in her head.
Cats aren’t new! Cats have been on the world wide web since the world wide web was a thing. I am pretty sure when the internet was the arpanet there where cats were a fundamental part of it.
That’s just what our feline overlords want us to think! To distract us from the fight for the future of civilization as they fight the geese for control of the Earth!
If you’re going to side with anyone let it be the cats Geese can’t be reasoned with Cats can be bribed with treats and placated with sunshine c9ming from windows.
If nothing else it is almost a 100% certainty that there were several engineers who would have been wearing cat ears and/or fursuits had they the opportunity.
I don’t remember reading “Maneki Neko” before. It’s very cute.
I’m not sure it’s intended, but I had some definite sympathy for the agent’s pov – not the tax collection stuff, but just the potential for how easily such a network/AI could twist to evil purposes without the people following its directions ever realizing.
Yeah, i’m not sure that’s intended, in fact the “tax collection” bit is not super convincing, a bit forced, like the author was kinda back pedalling from their own story and realized a bit too late that she wasnt quite the bad guy they had meant for them to be. short stories are hard tbf.
I also felt a bit of a dark aftertaste from Cat Pictures Please when i realized AI fails to account for social factors entirely. I’m also not convinced this is an intended takeaway, i think the way the AI protag wonders why humans are so bad at taking care of themselves invites reflection, but it’s framed within the paradigm of individual(ist) bootstrapping, and doesn’t suggest class struggle as a narrative horizon.
Agreed. Didn’t bother me so much there, partly because it was from the AI’s pov and partly because it mostly just a cute cat pictures thing.
It does seem not very conscious of anything beyond individual choices. OTOH, it was one AI that experimented with helping 3 people with little success, as opposed to one that was apparently manipulating a vast network of people.
It might go absolutely, unquestionably well, just to fuck with the obvious expectation that it’d go horribly. Linda’s certainly playing into things right now…
She seemed like she was prepared to cut off her mum one day and then her mum starts valuing her input because she’s with a safe white boy and that feeling must be like a ball of squiggles inside.
Yeah, not mutually exclusive. He isn’t processing right but this isn’t the example. That’s him being him in his peer to peer interactions as part for Walky…
Honestly surprised Amber agreed to go through with this. For a few reasons. Not least of which is she has to know how their mother at least feels about her.
I’m willing to bet she ends up blurting out the truth of why she’s there instead of Lucy before this delightful lunch is over.
Yeah, I feel that she firmly believes she will get through this entire thing without actually speaking directly to anyone and just saying The Required Line half-consciously when prompted.
Sal says she already has lunch plans (and therefor won’t be joining her parents for lunch). Linda replies that they don’t actually expect Sal to come. Walky is within hearing distance in the background, though appears to be involved in a different conversation, so we don’t know if he is aware of the exchange.
Both Walkerton parents indicate that they are surprised that Sal showed up to spend time with them. It makes sense that Walky would have assumed similar. But we don’t have direct evidence of what he was thinking.
Eeh, potato tomato I’d say. In other strips it is always cited that he was broken up with for talking to Sal, with Amber never correcting it to “also/actually blank”, if anything I think Amazi-girl’s “she turned you against me” is much like Anakin’s “you turned Padme against me” where it’s just an excuse/justification rather than the trigger for the event. In the end, what triggered the break up was Danny talking to Sal.
I don’t recall those other strips, so I can’t speak to the context of those.
She definitely gets upset over him talking to Sal, but the breakup doesn’t come until after the “take a break from Amazi-Girl” part. Which hits a bit harder when you remember that Danny was dating AG, not Amber. So saying he likes Amber better isn’t, as he intended, “I like the real person better than the super-hero image”, but “I like her better than you.”
Oooh! I have soooo many thoughts on the Amber and Danny split. Ultimately she was holding Danny to an unrealistic standard to understand something even she didn’t, in a decision he made while they were banging. She was also showing a brief flash of being abusive about it. That’s why she really broke up with him in my opinion.
It’s more complicated because the division between the two was becoming stronger as they dated. And Willis was writing it more and more openly as DID, rather than just a secret id thing.
But by the time of the breakup, the different personas were quite clear.
No surprise that Danny didn’t get it, but I don’t think it was really “an unrealistic standard” either. Just miscommunication and misunderstanding.
@thejeff. I have to disagree there. I don’t give Amber any slack on this. It was a blatantly unfair dynamic. There was miscommunication and misunderstanding mainly because Amber didn’t fully understand the boundaries she was trying to set which she admitted when Danny confronted her about it. It turned into a relationship on Amber/AG’s time and convenience full of mixed signals, where Danny couldn’t touch her or act like her boyfriend to keep up appearances that they weren’t a couple, when everyone assumed they were dating. One moment it’s fine for Danny to talk about their relationship and diss his ex with Amber, the next moment he can’t kiss Amber because he’s dating AG. The relationship was already dipping into toxicity before the breakup even happened. Almost an inverse of her parents which Amber recognized, cause Danny’s such a loyal good boy he would tolerate abuse.
@Doopyboop Thanks. That’s a fair read on those strips. Or at least on how Danny sees things, since both of them kind of derail without Amber responding with anything about the breakup itself.
Well, we’ve only seen her talk about it after instances where Walky was affected by Amber’s family (post kidnapping). We don’t know what her initial reaction was but given it involved dumping her in another state and mostly speaking to her to call her a failure, I’m not holding my breath.
Nah. Carol’s love for Sal might be twisted, tied up in racist baggage, and terribly shown most of the time, but it’s not so extreme that she wouldn’t care about someone stabbing Sal. Her view of Sal was that she needed to stop “being such a thug” and “grow up”, not that she couldn’t grow up and become a “better person”.
…Fuck me, my mind took that seriously and now I’m imagining hiw bad things would get if we had a big enough, or weird enough, fandom for that kind of fic.
My evil desire is that this subterfuge ends with Walky and Amber getting back together. It won’t happen. But that’s my furthermost desire for this storyline.
It won’t happen. I want it to, but we have established that Walky has character and a strong sense of what he considers right. So his relationship with Lucy probably won’t end until she meets Jacob.
Honestly that’s exactly what I think will happen. Dorothy is old news, and there’s been a long amount of time since Walky was with her. Amber though, there’s still unresolved tension. I don’t think he’ll cheat on Lucy of course, but I do think he’s gonna remember how much he did enjoy being with Amber. Frankly, it’s like something right out of a sitcom.
I’m actually surprised a cheating development hasn’t happened yet. They’re all horny teenagers yet they’ve remained astoundingly loyal. I’ve seen relationships crumble over someone liking a thirst trap on social media. The DoA cast has it remarkably put together.
Ooh that definitely counts, even if the relationship with Raidah only lasted about…5 minutes after the kiss. I’d say the pretend girlfriend thing (topped with the kiss like a wet and soggy cherry) probably crosses the line into emotional cheating.
Technically counts, but it’s about the best possible form of cheating. It’s functionally equivalent to breaking up because you find you like someone else. None of the lies or deception that really do the long term damage with cheating.
I don’t think it’s that so much as there is a definite difference in the very definition of cheating. Instead of a commitment existing when two people agree it does, there seems to be a notion that the commitment automatically exists from the first date.
Plenty of old school cheating took place after marriage, so I’m not sure that’s the difference.
Not sure I buy this “commitment from the first date” thing either. Aren’t there plenty of one date/one night stands from dating apps these days?
Not sure which generation of olds you are, compared to my day, but I think it’s hard to say. Every generation has always been opposed to cheating, but has also done plenty of it.
I do think there’s an element of it that comes from the internet– every generation has opposed cheating, but they haven’t all grown up with the incredibly strong, often sweeping condemnation of cheating that I see online. It also increases awareness of others cheating, which allows for more opportunities for this to be reinforced.
But there are also a lot of changing relationship dynamics– polyamorous people have always existed, but it seems like people are increasingly open about it now, and it seems like there are more polyam people now (though this is anecdotal). And that too affects how people relate to romantic relationships and cheating.
… Well, the mission to make the white girlfriend look like the bad option is going well. The mission to not get disowned entirely isn’t going well at all.
Regarding “after shared trauma I’m addicted to her body” … that’s essentially what (was it Ethan?) told Amber about Walky: “He’s a version of your trauma that you can fork.”
I don’t know; hopefully no stupid challenges that involve over-dosing on benadryl.
The TikTok user experience doesn’t quite agree with my particular blend of autisms, but as long as it ain’t paying people thousands of dollars to users to promote hate-speech, well, it’s just alright as far as social media in 2023 goes i guess
The fact that it took me a couple tries to figure out which blue hellsite you meant is depressing. Because there’s… at least two, depending on whether you count each Facebook-owned property individually.
The only “Autism Mommy” I’d ever be comfortable knowing more about would have to be dressed like Black Cat and charging me at least $50* an hour. Why does everything have to be A Thing™, damn it?
*That’s an estimate based on no knowledge. I have never hired a sex worker, so typical prices aren’t something I need to know.
I mean, if I’m paying close to rent prices I’d probably want it to be fun and enjoyable for everyone involved, yes. Why would I shovel out $200-$600 and then not care if the person I hired was enjoying it or not? Like, maybe other people are okay with that, but if I hired somebody to beat me up dressed as a Marvel character and they were clearly bored or even just seemed uncomfortable with it, I think I’d probably stop the whole operation and send them off?
Yeah, basically. The parents who literally make money, or at least social capital, off how Poor and Beleaguered and Virtuous they are for having a nasty little disabled child who is effort they don’t want to put in.
More like “what the fuck are you doing” mode. She knows Walky and Amber were a thing before, and that they broke it off. Now suddenly they’re “back together”?
“That feral child stabbed your sister!”
I suppose Walky’s response was better than the alternative – “Well, yeah, Mom, but did you forget that your daughter had been holding a knife to someone’s neck just before that happened?”
Just a reminder to everyone (perhaps unneeded) that Sal had been arrested already when Amber stabbed her – Amber’s action was NOT in self-defense or defense of others.
I appreciate your concern but it definitely feels like you’re taking this stance choosing to ignore that a: amber’s response was shown as clearly a delay in trauma processing between her father’s agressive tactics to tear her down for being spineless, as well as being faced with potentially losing Ethan, her One Friend and at the time crush. It’s also something she deeply regrets, was dumped over by the guy using her for his own whims so that his -new- girlfriend can look better to his mom, and has been doing what she can to make amends to sal since they discussed it, and may be a large contributing factor to why she doesn’t want to be amazigirl anymore.
Just, if you want both nuance and accountability it’s good to cover it all instead of taking a stance that looks a lot like defending Linda’s Feral Child take.
“So fucking what”? So this “exhausting bore” finds it reasonable that Linda would be upset at Walky dating the person who knifed his sister.
But perhaps you non-exhausting non-bores, would like Linda to once again throw Sal under the bus, and embrace into the family the white person who stabbed her black daughter and somehow got off without doing a day of juvie.
It’s not as if you are not obviously trying to find a way to bash me for the very obvious, very plain things I’m saying, even if you end up having to argue that Linda should be even more racist than she currently is.
It’s really cute how your sheer malice ends up making you object to the one non-racist thing Linda has ever done, that being her disliking Amber for stabbing Sal.
What the fuck are you even talking about? Do you know? It doesn’t seem like you do. I never objected to the thing you claim I did. I’m not arguing for more fucking racism. Stop making up lies.
Let’s see, you called me a ‘exhausting bore’ because I (very consisely) stated the reason that Linda’s negative reaction towards Amber is reasonable.
So you either object to that opinion of mine and you think Linda should have embraced her daughter’s white attacker, or you are just a malicious asshole attacking me without justification. Pick and choose your sin, you are an asshole either way.
I’m not playing along with your stupid little dichotomy, though I won’t defend myself against the allegation of being an asshole. I called you that because (as The Oracle pointed out more politely), Linda’s knowledge of this or that isn’t really relevant to the overall discussion of Amber’s reason for stabbing Sal. It’s exhausting to constantly read these braindead takes that require so much unraveling that Maniac Magee would hesitate to try. It’s boring because it’s exhausting.
Except that this strip isn’t about why Amber attacked Sal, but about Linda having a negative reaction seeing Walky bringing Amber as his date. So how much Linda knows about the situation is very obviously relevant, and yet “So fucking what, you exhausting bore.” you say to me when I bring this simple fact up.
But sure, dude, whatever. It was so complicated and required so much unraveling the very very simple and obvious thing I said.
It turns out I was wrong that it was unneeded. It wasn’t only needed but it was so relevant that people grew upset that I so inconveniently reminded people of it.
Is that actually what you think happened here? Not like… you jumping in to add unnecessary context to someone else’s comment, not saying how you’re thinking about that context, someone else add further context- much like you did- only for you to dismiss it by saying Linda wouldn’t know? Because apparently that’s what everyone was talking about. (It might have been what you were unclearly talking about, but that doesn’t actually mean it was what other people were talking about.)
No, people are really upset to know what happened in the comic. Sure.
Holy shit this is one of the best single strips in years. Definitely the best since the Farewell Brain Mike one, at least. Every level is working here, every line and character movement works together, really high quality stuff.
This is honestly impressive. Walky is somehow managing to immediately go off script from an already terrible plan… and somehow make it go even worse as a result.
This is what I most fear, too.
Sal and Amber were finally making progress. Sal and Walky, too.
Now potentially the two of them might become the reason she breaks up with Danny, at least if he puts both feet squarely down his gullet in response.
I like Sal and Danny. They’re sweet, tender, charismatic, wholesome.
I don’t want this to ruin them.
And Sal has carried the weight of the Walkertons’ casual racism and prejudiced expectations for years, now, already – Walky admitted it to her and to himself at most months ago, likely less, and *he* gets to blow everything up and call them out in public? On the sole occasion she gets any sort of positive (well, positive-seeming, for not the best reasons) feedback from them first?
It fits well with last strip. Sal is a grownup, if she vouches for Lucy then Lucy is grown up, whites can be childish if they prove it and PoC can be grown up if they prove it..
That kind of language is the kind of stuff you can expect from a prejudiced mom with Nice White Lady Syndrome, where her animating force isn’t so much advocacy for her children as much as it is the will to garner social credit points by spiting and making herself look better than others.
This might be a shot in the dark but the structure of the panel layout and the flippancy of “Only once” is giving me strong allusions of Laurie confronting Comedian from Watchmen. Very funny but also remarkably similar, right down to the implicit “And then things changed.”
I CANNOT read Sal’s expression and I mean that in a good way. Is she disappointed in Walky/mad at him for dating Amber? Confused because he knows she’s definitely dating Lucy? Or picking up on what he’s doing here and is kind of impressed?
Hoping Dorothy somehow shows up and sees walky with amber instead of Lucy and just freaks out bc she just told him she wants him back, but instead he goes back to amber(as far as she knows)
It’s a coin flip on if she would freak out, or if once she found out the plan she’d get another hit of “my projects make bad decisions when I’m not mentoring them”.
Man, first Linda is willing to give Lucy a second chance, and now she’s opposed to a white person stabbing a black person with a knife. We’re seeing real progress today, I’m proud of us all.
lmao I feel even without the, uh, history, they all still would have been way too focused on the “what do you mean you had one girlfriend and now you have a different girlfriend?” part to get to the learning a lesson
I have absolutely no idea what emotion Sal’s expression in the first panel is supposed to convey. Anger or irritation perhaps? That barely-visible fraction of an eyebrow is confusing me, okay
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Pshhh, cats aren’t NEW
(will gladly take them, of course!)
DoA Book 13: Ooooh, Gail Simone just liked my post would be interesting, actually
(as would every OTHER line in panels 2-5)
I like the way Amber is subtly signaling that this whole thing is a giant troll by invoking Gail Simone
Her audience isn’t likely to have ever heard of her, so she’s not signaling. At best she’s trying and failing to signal.
It’s still signaling even if the signal isn’t received.
Is it still communicating even if the communication isn’t received?
If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
(yes, yes it does. and yes it is)
Something wrong with the lines in panel 1?
Book 13: Bro!
not as good for book titles
Book 13: “That Feral Child Stabbed Your Sister!”
Let the cover by a 1930s greyscale noir homage with a suave Walky dipping Amber in Tarzan rags in the streetlight, Lucy hiding in the background in a trenchcoat, and his parents swooning in the foreground.
Ooh, I love it!
Same.
Take my imaginary upvote!
Dumbing of Age Book 13: Only Once
But these cats are new.
alternatively,
Dumbing of Age Book 13: Cats
Dumbing of Age 13: Gail Simone Just Like My Post!
The disturbing CGI version or the campy stage play version?
I understood that reference, hooray!
Epic troll due to the lack of cats on-panel.
could’ve gone worse
It’s only one comic strip. We’ll see. Linda understandably freaked out.
Could have and still might!
Yea, Sal could realize that Linda looks exactly like Danny face-wise (check panel 1 and 3).
Even their hair is the same.
Naw. His face is longer/narrower, eyes are closer together, and his nose is tall and points down, not short and pokey. Also, significantly fewer bedsheet abrasions.
I was genuinely wondering why Danny was referring to Amber as a ‘feral child’ for a moment
If anyone here looks like Linda, it’s Sal. They have the same face, same build, same body language and mannerisms… it’s like the only traits she inherited from Charles are her hair and skin tone.
… Maybe that’s part of the reason Linda comes down on Sal so hard, because she subconsciously sees a lot of herself in her?
True, it could’ve immediately devolved into a fistfight.
All according to cake
(Cake means keikaku)
(Keikaku means plan)
This made me laugh. I had to do some internet searching to figure out what it was a reference to and wow this joke has alot! Death Note, Dragonball, Team Four Star … delicious icing.
The comic itself rarely leaves me lost, though this one did. But the comments almost always remind me that I am either the wrong demographic or too old (probably both) for this group. No knowledge of or interest in Transformers, Saturday morning cartoons, anime, comic books, video games – so really, most of what the commenters talk about…
It’s cool. We can be old together.
I’m nearing Medicare enrollment age, there are lots of us ancients in the commentariat.
I’m on Medicare. The demographics for this strip skew older than I initially expected.
I mean, doesn’t Willis’ bio explicitly state “I’m old” ? When you’ve been at it as long as he has, your fans are gonna skew old, too. 41-year-old checking in here.
41 is a youngster – I have jeans older than that. Yes, if there are multiple of us on Medicare, then there’s at least some level of older skew. Still, I’d guess the majority grew up in the 90s or more recently.
37 and figured I was probably the midpoint, with readership likely ranging from current students up to people in their 70s? I’d have assumed the bottom half of the graph were a little more dense than the top, though. I guess I’m still sub-central.
I’m certified old but Gail Simone once liked one of my posts.
Demographics be damned, OTL1973. I’m 66, on Medicare, love (some*) anime, Nimona, She-Ra And The Princesses of Power, Ducktales 2017, MLP gen 4, Steven Universe, The Owl House, and of course Lower Decks.
*Anime is diverse so there’s something for everybody. Check out films by Studio Ghibli, Mamoru Hosada, Isao Takahata, Naoko Yamada, Makoto Shinkai, series “A Place Beyond the Universe”, “Ancient Magus’ Bride”, “Blue Period” “Iroduku The World In Colors” to start.
You rock on, you. ^-^
As someone who’s actually the age of some of the characters in the strip (less and less every year it feels weird) I think the audience actually skews older. Bunch of people who’ve been reading Willis for like the past 20-30 years or however long he’s been going. If I had to hazard a guess I’d say most commenters are in their 40s at least or something. Be an interesting poll to have
I came to Willis via DoA itself but was already in my 30s at the time. That being said, I do tend to skew younger as a person than my numeric age. Neurodiversity and chronic illness will delay you like that, plus our friendship groups were / still are formed in a rural university town with all-age town-uni gaming and comic societies. So it’s not been all that long since our friends ranged from 16/17 up to 77 – shorter than you’d expect anyway.
episode 60 finale!
Yeah here we go full on cringe,this hair brained scheme is still idiotic but at this point I don’t give a damn.
Let’s go maximum train wreck just so longe as Linda is on it because I’m tired of her shit.
Knowyourmeme dot come slash lets-keep-going-and-see-what-happens, mmmmhmm.
either way free pizza, even if linda refuses to pay for ambers share i’m sure walky will compensate her lol
This is genuinely too stupid to even comment seriously on. Impressive work, Walky.
Like, I thought it was gonna be bad. And Walky would just watch them try not to make a scene in public about it, and be deviously smirking the whole time. Not go in GUNS BLAZING and MAKE THE FUCKING SCENE.
I’m surprised Amber didn’t react to being called a FERAL CHILD. That’s just brutal. He could have just laid low, and Sal would have been like, “Bro, I put in a good word for Lucy. Seems like Mom and Dad will be cool about it.”
Sal might actually be boosted to favorite child after this.
That was the plan.
Sal’s plan. And maaaaybe Walky’s?
The way Walky breaks out the “only once!” gag like Sal isn’t five feet away from him, before even acknowledging her presence in the room, too.
It’s beyond words. It’s too dumb for me to even be upset at.
Walky knows that Sal and Amber are friends now. He knows that she defended Amber against their mother before.
That’s fair – I think it’s just the circumstances collectively that leave me baffled. Sure, in isolation I don’t think that gag would be taken badly (particularly given Walky), but in *this* situation, with *these* people all in a room, without even saying hello to her? Just wild decision-making.
Which I guess is exactly how we ended up here in the first place, really.
Sal is going to be pissed at Walky and Lucy for this abuse of Amber though.
I’d honestly be pretty surprised if Danny wasn’t ticked as well. They both know that Amber is a walking microcosm of horrific life events, indeed a fractal of ever building traumas, a trauma romanesco one might say. She’s agreed to this because she full time dissociates and no longer has stakes in her own life or feelings.
She knows that, but their parents do not.
But Walky does.
He’s not trying to upset Sal. He is trying to upset his mother.
Maybe it’s in contrast to the number of times she stabbed someone else.
Ryan can attest to that when his stitches come out, sometime in June in-comic.
Could be alluding to the backstabbing Linda herself inflicted on Sal. Repeatedly.
Well, Amber already refers to herself as “the monster,” so her ego’s got limited capacity for bruising. Certainly not because of anything *Linda* might say.
Hahaha linda can’t hurt amber she doesn’t know amber the way blaine and mike did.
Checks watch.
This train wreck is running right on time.
I dunno what people are complaining about.
Gail Simone like! Well, no matter what else happens this evening for Amber, it was worth it.
My comment was liked by Mara Wilson once and I was ecstatic.
Celebrity interactions can be interesting. My favorite were the conversations I’d had with online with John Tenta (Earthquake in the WWF). He was both engaging and a sweetheart. Obligatory “cancer sucks” statement.
I helped one of the Marble Hornets guys fix a problem with a hostile NPC in his Fallout 4 stream and got a Twitter shout-out once, does that count?
Listen, if Amber doesn’t look Walky’s mother directly in the eyes and say
“I f*cked your son” and then gently place a roll of nickles that are missing a few… I cry.
She’s gotta time it so Ethan and Asher walk in at that exact moment, though.
Mike’s legacy.
We technically don’t know if they ever smashed do we? The farthest we’ve seen is some pants change level, implied grinding. I wanna believe though.
All depends on your definition of “smash”.
My understanding was that dry smashing was involved.
I’m a bit nonplussed that Walky has absolutely no compunction announcing to his parents his transition away from his prior virginity.
(My future parents-in-law were mortified when they heard my fiance’ and I discussing where to spend the night, back when we were pushing 30.)
sal rightfully incensed that walky treats everything like a joke and walking away i guess?
come on tho man just stand up for lucy and tell your parents to fuck off, joyce and becky went through a lot worse you can do this
She might also be incensed at the idea that Walky broke up with Lucy and hooked up with Amber within the same day. Like ‘wow bro, I know I only gave you guys 2 weeks, but damn’.
“You mean you couldn’t stand not being the favorite son for a single afternoon, so you hooked up with the first white chick who would have you back?
…After she shoved you into a *table* on your last date?”
Yeeeah, I think even if she learns this was Lucy’s plan, she’s gonna give them both the business.
“She” is Amber, who teleported directly to the booth.
I think Sal either has a vague idea of what Walky’s up to here, or is just too stunned to have any idea what to do.
Yeah, she’ll figure out quickly that her brother is intentionally doing something outrageous, even if she doesn’t immediately understand the whole plan.
Walky: Hey hey hey now, it was Lucy’s idea. Mostly.
Linda: Your sister and I are furious. Right Sal?
Amber: What plan, what’s going on, where am I?
Jesse Pinkman: He can’t keep getting away with this
Is “he” Walky, Willis, or Vince Gilligan?
*plays Grand Funk (Railroad)’s “Bad Time” on the jukebox*
When it comes to stabbing, once is too many.
Well like, yea, if you do it wrong.
Amber can’t do anything right.
Tell that to Ryan.
As Joyce would have said back then: “I bring not peace but the sword.”
What’re you, the stabbing police?
We don’t talk about that, Bruno. :p
Sorry I couldn’t help myself! XD
Abstinence: truly the only way, I guess.
Stabstinence
Ok so on the subject of lucy vs dorothy, the mother has a point that Dorothy is a lot more mature, has a better future outlook and compliments walkys childishness.
Lucy, largely just finds walky attractive. Shes more immature and of course the mother cant know this from the 2 minutes shes known her but shes not wrong that dorothy IS better for him.
Dorothy would never propose a hijink of this caliber.
You’re saying she’s not worthy of Walky?
I’m just saying it’s not fair to treat Lucy as a straight downgrade from Dorothy. It’s clear she’s bringing a lot to the table on her own.
Dorothy: I will be President some day.
Lucy: I will keep realistic dreams.
Maturity is relative.
Lucy: I just want the popular kids (and my almost mother-in-law) to like me, who do I have to crush to get there?
Dorothy is not more mature, she’s more sophisticated. Lucy and Dorothy’s immaturity is different. Her future outlook is rooted in immaturity, a child deciding what she wants to be when she grows up and locking that in as an immutable goal. Lucy’s immaturity is “I want to sit at the popular kid’s lunch table”.
Lucy’s immaturity is the stubborn belief that everyone can be happy and friends together if they just put their minds to it.
I mean, if it was everyone’s goal then maybe we would. But, ahh… nope. Power hungry gonna power hungry.
na. some people just don’t get along with each other.
Dorothy was generally more mature but she’s experiencing a PTSD-based freak-out that she can’t handle. Lucy seems to view life as a Disney Channel teen series.
I do not like character of Lucy, but Lucy likes Walky in a way that makes him happy where he is and I think that’s important. Walky needed someone to do hijinks with not just watch the silly or try and fix everything else. Peak Walky and Dorothy was running through the rain after Amazagirl, but that just wasn’t the bread and butter. In contrast, Walky and Lucy actively do comics together and Lucy doesn’t keep saying it’s just the thing until she’s on her next stage… thats nice for him.
I think Walky might get killed here actually.
Sal looks like she doesn’t know what to do with this.
Who would?
Sal’s expression in the third panel feels like she’s immediately clocked Walky’s general plan and motivation here.
Either that or her mind’s so full of WTF that she has no idea what the hell.
Maybe not his exact plan, but I’m sure she’s figured out he’s trying to achieve something with this stupidity.
Walky is playing this so very very over the top that yeah, I think Sal got it, and also, the “only once!” line is perfection.
Especially as many times as Linda has emotionally cut Sal.
I don’t think she clocked it entirely but she’s definitely aware that her brother uses zany antics to escape difficult situations and the fact that he showed up with a new girl out of nowhere is hitting all the suspicion alarms in her head.
Cats aren’t new! Cats have been on the world wide web since the world wide web was a thing. I am pretty sure when the internet was the arpanet there where cats were a fundamental part of it.
Ah, but these TikTok cats are saying “meow” in a hilarious and completely original way.
That’s just what our feline overlords want us to think! To distract us from the fight for the future of civilization as they fight the geese for control of the Earth!
Well… geese can’t be trusted!
*unwraps cheezburger for Overlord*
If you’re going to side with anyone let it be the cats Geese can’t be reasoned with Cats can be bribed with treats and placated with sunshine c9ming from windows.
It’s the DANCE
They are doing one of those TikTok dances that cats do
If nothing else it is almost a 100% certainty that there were several engineers who would have been wearing cat ears and/or fursuits had they the opportunity.
But in the plus side, cats on the internet are totally immune to the comic’s floating timeline.
Cats are eternal.
Amber must be seriously avoiding this conversation with the concentration of a thousand suns.
Cats are an eternal novelty.
One of the only certain things in earthling life aside from death and taxes, thankfully.
“Cat pictures please!”
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_01_15/
“Maneki Neko” (招き猫, literally, “beckoning cat”)
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/maneki-neko/
An oldie but a goodie –
The Mitchiri Neko March
Love it!!!
Thanks Laura ^^
These were some sweet stories
So glad you liked them, milu!
There have also been two different sequel novels to “Cat Pictures, Please”
So cool! Thank you for letting us know!
Do you have the links?
Here they are!
https://naomikritzer.com/naomi-kritzers-novels/
I don’t remember reading “Maneki Neko” before. It’s very cute.
I’m not sure it’s intended, but I had some definite sympathy for the agent’s pov – not the tax collection stuff, but just the potential for how easily such a network/AI could twist to evil purposes without the people following its directions ever realizing.
Me too!
Yeah, i’m not sure that’s intended, in fact the “tax collection” bit is not super convincing, a bit forced, like the author was kinda back pedalling from their own story and realized a bit too late that she wasnt quite the bad guy they had meant for them to be. short stories are hard tbf.
I also felt a bit of a dark aftertaste from Cat Pictures Please when i realized AI fails to account for social factors entirely. I’m also not convinced this is an intended takeaway, i think the way the AI protag wonders why humans are so bad at taking care of themselves invites reflection, but it’s framed within the paradigm of individual(ist) bootstrapping, and doesn’t suggest class struggle as a narrative horizon.
Agreed. Didn’t bother me so much there, partly because it was from the AI’s pov and partly because it mostly just a cute cat pictures thing.
It does seem not very conscious of anything beyond individual choices. OTOH, it was one AI that experimented with helping 3 people with little success, as opposed to one that was apparently manipulating a vast network of people.
I don’t remember cats – just line printer porn. (Well, porn by the standards of the day…)
line printer pron …of cats?
Fun fact! One of the earliest leading proponents of blogging was hoping for a platform where he wouldn’t have to hear about cats.
And I’m pretty sure it was a Usenet post of mine that finally drove him off.
(a post about this cat, but when she was much much littler)
that’s very level headed: I don’t run to my desk to avoid my cat meowing to get fed every 5 minutes in order to be bothered *inside* my escape room.
“Don’t worry, mom. I stabbed her back.”
“Multiple times. In fact I might stab her again tonight.”
Assault with a friendly weapon?
Linda: I guess that explains why she is walking funny.
(Yea it been a while but, just pretend it hasn’t)
So did you stab her backside or stab her back (in retaliation). Yes.
“It’s a lot more fun when your son stabs me than when your daughter did, and I scream louder too.”
And her front too.
” Consensual stabbing I might add.”
So is this going to go horribly wrong or horribly right?
It might go absolutely, unquestionably well, just to fuck with the obvious expectation that it’d go horribly. Linda’s certainly playing into things right now…
Yes.
I feel Sal’s confusion and sadness.
She seemed like she was prepared to cut off her mum one day and then her mum starts valuing her input because she’s with a safe white boy and that feeling must be like a ball of squiggles inside.
End result: Linda thinks Walky isn’t processing well and gets him into therapy instead.
He isn’t and she should.
Yeah, not mutually exclusive. He isn’t processing right but this isn’t the example. That’s him being him in his peer to peer interactions as part for Walky…
Well, this situation sure is.
All according to plan?
Can confirm. The train wreck is on schedule.
Honestly surprised Amber agreed to go through with this. For a few reasons. Not least of which is she has to know how their mother at least feels about her.
I’m willing to bet she ends up blurting out the truth of why she’s there instead of Lucy before this delightful lunch is over.
You’re giving Amber a lot of credit that she’ll be paying enough attention away from her phone to reveal anything.
Yeah, I feel that she firmly believes she will get through this entire thing without actually speaking directly to anyone and just saying The Required Line half-consciously when prompted.
I’m still not sure she’s wrong about that.
Offending Linda was one of her stated goals.
I am surprised Amber would be so blase’ about hurting Sal and Danny, though.
Is she? If this fiasco knocks Walky out of the Golden Child spot, seems like Sal might be getting a promotion.
I think we established in a previous comment section that Walky likely assumed his sister wouldn’t be there. Could be wrong though.
People have repeatedly claimed that but I don’t see where they came up with that idea.
We have a degree of evidence from two comics.
Comic 1:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/04-but-dont-give-yourself-away/whispering/
Sal says she already has lunch plans (and therefor won’t be joining her parents for lunch). Linda replies that they don’t actually expect Sal to come. Walky is within hearing distance in the background, though appears to be involved in a different conversation, so we don’t know if he is aware of the exchange.
Coimc 2
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/04-but-dont-give-yourself-away/readjust/
Both Walkerton parents indicate that they are surprised that Sal showed up to spend time with them. It makes sense that Walky would have assumed similar. But we don’t have direct evidence of what he was thinking.
Has she even noticed that they are there?
Walky didn’t think sis would be there.
She’s getting free pizza, hello?
OMG. I totally just did the Gail Simone fan-girl thing yesterday because she replied to my tweet.
I’m honestly amazed that Linda’s first objection is because she stabbed Sal. Genuinely. I would have assumed it was cuz of her dad.
Like truly, Linda bringing that up first is blowing my mind a little bit.
That “feral child” also stabbed Danny (in the back)
Calling her honey aside, let chaos reign in Cupid’s eyes!!
…And ditched him just for talking to Sal, IIRC. Did I remember that right?
You do not. The ditching was not for talking to Sal; the ditching was for letting Sal convince him that she should ditch Amazigirl.
…Hmm?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/she-2/ No, it was definitely for talking to Sal.
Hmm, given the following strips, looks like it was a bit of both reasons.
Eeh, potato tomato I’d say. In other strips it is always cited that he was broken up with for talking to Sal, with Amber never correcting it to “also/actually blank”, if anything I think Amazi-girl’s “she turned you against me” is much like Anakin’s “you turned Padme against me” where it’s just an excuse/justification rather than the trigger for the event. In the end, what triggered the break up was Danny talking to Sal.
I don’t recall those other strips, so I can’t speak to the context of those.
She definitely gets upset over him talking to Sal, but the breakup doesn’t come until after the “take a break from Amazi-Girl” part. Which hits a bit harder when you remember that Danny was dating AG, not Amber. So saying he likes Amber better isn’t, as he intended, “I like the real person better than the super-hero image”, but “I like her better than you.”
Ooh! Insightful! I did NOT catch that. Cool!
Oooh! I have soooo many thoughts on the Amber and Danny split. Ultimately she was holding Danny to an unrealistic standard to understand something even she didn’t, in a decision he made while they were banging. She was also showing a brief flash of being abusive about it. That’s why she really broke up with him in my opinion.
It’s more complicated because the division between the two was becoming stronger as they dated. And Willis was writing it more and more openly as DID, rather than just a secret id thing.
But by the time of the breakup, the different personas were quite clear.
No surprise that Danny didn’t get it, but I don’t think it was really “an unrealistic standard” either. Just miscommunication and misunderstanding.
@thejeff. I have to disagree there. I don’t give Amber any slack on this. It was a blatantly unfair dynamic. There was miscommunication and misunderstanding mainly because Amber didn’t fully understand the boundaries she was trying to set which she admitted when Danny confronted her about it. It turned into a relationship on Amber/AG’s time and convenience full of mixed signals, where Danny couldn’t touch her or act like her boyfriend to keep up appearances that they weren’t a couple, when everyone assumed they were dating. One moment it’s fine for Danny to talk about their relationship and diss his ex with Amber, the next moment he can’t kiss Amber because he’s dating AG. The relationship was already dipping into toxicity before the breakup even happened. Almost an inverse of her parents which Amber recognized, cause Danny’s such a loyal good boy he would tolerate abuse.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/pokestop/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/02-but-the-sun-still-shines/watchaway/
Ta daaaaaaaa
@Doopyboop Thanks. That’s a fair read on those strips. Or at least on how Danny sees things, since both of them kind of derail without Amber responding with anything about the breakup itself.
Kinda surprised Linda recognized her.
Even more surprised Linda disapproves of the Sal stabbin’
Linda is the only one who can stab her daughter. How dare that Amber-hussy muscle in on her territory.
Except she knows about the whole kidnapping thing and tried to get Amber expelled???
And I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew her by name. But recognized her by sight and knew who she is?
I can’t help but wonder if Sal wasn’t dating Danny if his mom would suddenly not care about the stabbing
Most likely yeah.
Naw, Linda has actually always been very vocally mad at Amber and her family about the stabbing.
Oh yeah that’s what she threatened to sue for right?
Well, we’ve only seen her talk about it after instances where Walky was affected by Amber’s family (post kidnapping). We don’t know what her initial reaction was but given it involved dumping her in another state and mostly speaking to her to call her a failure, I’m not holding my breath.
Nah. Carol’s love for Sal might be twisted, tied up in racist baggage, and terribly shown most of the time, but it’s not so extreme that she wouldn’t care about someone stabbing Sal. Her view of Sal was that she needed to stop “being such a thug” and “grow up”, not that she couldn’t grow up and become a “better person”.
I didn’t know Carol felt that way about Sal. Well now that she’s single maybe she can finally pursue that relationship.
Gaaaaah, fuck, wrong shitty parent >_<
…Fuck me, my mind took that seriously and now I’m imagining hiw bad things would get if we had a big enough, or weird enough, fandom for that kind of fic.
Gimme 5 months.
On the plus side, this is so mindcrushingly stupid that the façade is going to collapse instantly.
I like the subtle detail that Amber’s sitting at someone else’s table.
Charles has absolutely zero reaction to this at all. I’m beginning to seriously worry Linda Get Outed him.
He’s learned the hard way by now to take a backseat to Linda.
Going with the Flow has to be an established defense mechanism for him by now
And theeere it is, the WTF reaction I’ve been waiting for since this plan was hatched.
Also it’s the twentieth anniversary of this It’s Walky! strip that definitely never traumatized anybody
It’s beautiful. The idea had no chance of working, so I just wanted to see the madness
Thank you for the remembered trauma.
Just wanted to try to leave the non web archive link version of that strip you linked:
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/this-was-the-best-i-could-do/
Re: Dina,
Never Forget
🦕
My evil desire is that this subterfuge ends with Walky and Amber getting back together. It won’t happen. But that’s my furthermost desire for this storyline.
Don’t abandon your dream just yet. There’s plenty of opportunities for anything to happen here. One performative kiss could be all it takes.
It won’t happen. I want it to, but we have established that Walky has character and a strong sense of what he considers right. So his relationship with Lucy probably won’t end until she meets Jacob.
Honestly that’s exactly what I think will happen. Dorothy is old news, and there’s been a long amount of time since Walky was with her. Amber though, there’s still unresolved tension. I don’t think he’ll cheat on Lucy of course, but I do think he’s gonna remember how much he did enjoy being with Amber. Frankly, it’s like something right out of a sitcom.
I’m actually surprised a cheating development hasn’t happened yet. They’re all horny teenagers yet they’ve remained astoundingly loyal. I’ve seen relationships crumble over someone liking a thirst trap on social media. The DoA cast has it remarkably put together.
Now that I think about it I guess we did kind of get Jacob pseudo-cheating on Raidah with pretend girlfriend for a day Joyce. Maybe that counts?
Ooh that definitely counts, even if the relationship with Raidah only lasted about…5 minutes after the kiss. I’d say the pretend girlfriend thing (topped with the kiss like a wet and soggy cherry) probably crosses the line into emotional cheating.
Technically counts, but it’s about the best possible form of cheating. It’s functionally equivalent to breaking up because you find you like someone else. None of the lies or deception that really do the long term damage with cheating.
Anecdotally, I think current generations seem much more opposed to cheating than us Olds did in our day
I don’t think it’s that so much as there is a definite difference in the very definition of cheating. Instead of a commitment existing when two people agree it does, there seems to be a notion that the commitment automatically exists from the first date.
Plenty of old school cheating took place after marriage, so I’m not sure that’s the difference.
Not sure I buy this “commitment from the first date” thing either. Aren’t there plenty of one date/one night stands from dating apps these days?
Not sure which generation of olds you are, compared to my day, but I think it’s hard to say. Every generation has always been opposed to cheating, but has also done plenty of it.
I do think there’s an element of it that comes from the internet– every generation has opposed cheating, but they haven’t all grown up with the incredibly strong, often sweeping condemnation of cheating that I see online. It also increases awareness of others cheating, which allows for more opportunities for this to be reinforced.
But there are also a lot of changing relationship dynamics– polyamorous people have always existed, but it seems like people are increasingly open about it now, and it seems like there are more polyam people now (though this is anecdotal). And that too affects how people relate to romantic relationships and cheating.
**gets out pompoms**
Gar-bage-skow!
Gar-bage-skow!
Well…
Something’s gonna happen here.
“Well, cats are nice.”
“The movie.”
“There’s ANOTHER movie?”
“…no.”
There is a turkish film called Kedi its quite good.
Linda: You don’t understand, David! Sally is dating an Approved White Boy now, I have to pretend to give a shit that she got stabbed!
… Well, the mission to make the white girlfriend look like the bad option is going well. The mission to not get disowned entirely isn’t going well at all.
Ah, glorious chaos and horrid ideas!
I mean if he says “addicted to her body” that makes it sound like she’s just a friend with benefit/casual flling tho lol
At least the mom seems concerned that she stabbed her versus not caring or even beng glad
Regarding “after shared trauma I’m addicted to her body” … that’s essentially what (was it Ethan?) told Amber about Walky: “He’s a version of your trauma that you can fork.”
Heh, Amber knifed the sister and forked the brother :D.
And spooned the new son-in-law!
I think that last one was fan fiction.
Are you saying Amazi-Girl is Amber’s Mary Sue? Which, ykw, yeah totally
…OK, would anyone be up for a game?
Here’s tonight’s question:
What IS new on TikTok, honey?
I don’t know; hopefully no stupid challenges that involve over-dosing on benadryl.
The TikTok user experience doesn’t quite agree with my particular blend of autisms, but as long as it ain’t paying people thousands of dollars to users to promote hate-speech, well, it’s just alright as far as social media in 2023 goes i guess
The fact that it took me a couple tries to figure out which blue hellsite you meant is depressing. Because there’s… at least two, depending on whether you count each Facebook-owned property individually.
Don’t tell me instagram is included in that too? ;(
I mean, it’s cool with Autism Mommies, antisemitic conspiracy theorists, and other such things being major influencers…
The only “Autism Mommy” I’d ever be comfortable knowing more about would have to be dressed like Black Cat and charging me at least $50* an hour. Why does everything have to be A Thing™, damn it?
*That’s an estimate based on no knowledge. I have never hired a sex worker, so typical prices aren’t something I need to know.
More like $200, last I heard.
Damn. I guess only rich people get to have that brand of fun.
Depends on your standards.
I wouldn’t actually call it fun.
Speaking as a former SW.
I mean, if I’m paying close to rent prices I’d probably want it to be fun and enjoyable for everyone involved, yes. Why would I shovel out $200-$600 and then not care if the person I hired was enjoying it or not? Like, maybe other people are okay with that, but if I hired somebody to beat me up dressed as a Marvel character and they were clearly bored or even just seemed uncomfortable with it, I think I’d probably stop the whole operation and send them off?
“Autism mommies”? I am too scared to look it up. Sounds like they’re making their child’s autism a personality trait and/or a source of income.
Yeah, basically. The parents who literally make money, or at least social capital, off how Poor and Beleaguered and Virtuous they are for having a nasty little disabled child who is effort they don’t want to put in.
I hear it’s people promoting eating borax to help with joint pain.
Don’t eat borax.
I wonder how many compartments Amber has set up on her phone so she can browse those sites safely.
Gail Simone liking her post does put her in a bigger advantage I must say…
Is it just me, or is Sal in “holy fuck go off bro” mode
More like “what the fuck are you doing” mode. She knows Walky and Amber were a thing before, and that they broke it off. Now suddenly they’re “back together”?
“That feral child stabbed your sister!”
I suppose Walky’s response was better than the alternative – “Well, yeah, Mom, but did you forget that your daughter had been holding a knife to someone’s neck just before that happened?”
Just a reminder to everyone (perhaps unneeded) that Sal had been arrested already when Amber stabbed her – Amber’s action was NOT in self-defense or defense of others.
I appreciate your concern but it definitely feels like you’re taking this stance choosing to ignore that a: amber’s response was shown as clearly a delay in trauma processing between her father’s agressive tactics to tear her down for being spineless, as well as being faced with potentially losing Ethan, her One Friend and at the time crush. It’s also something she deeply regrets, was dumped over by the guy using her for his own whims so that his -new- girlfriend can look better to his mom, and has been doing what she can to make amends to sal since they discussed it, and may be a large contributing factor to why she doesn’t want to be amazigirl anymore.
Just, if you want both nuance and accountability it’s good to cover it all instead of taking a stance that looks a lot like defending Linda’s Feral Child take.
Agreed. It’s certainly not a good or a justified thing, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum either.
Most of the things you mention are things Linda wouldn’t know about.
So fucking what, you exhausting bore?
“So fucking what”? So this “exhausting bore” finds it reasonable that Linda would be upset at Walky dating the person who knifed his sister.
But perhaps you non-exhausting non-bores, would like Linda to once again throw Sal under the bus, and embrace into the family the white person who stabbed her black daughter and somehow got off without doing a day of juvie.
It’s not as if you are not obviously trying to find a way to bash me for the very obvious, very plain things I’m saying, even if you end up having to argue that Linda should be even more racist than she currently is.
It’s really cute how your sheer malice ends up making you object to the one non-racist thing Linda has ever done, that being her disliking Amber for stabbing Sal.
What the fuck are you even talking about? Do you know? It doesn’t seem like you do. I never objected to the thing you claim I did. I’m not arguing for more fucking racism. Stop making up lies.
Let’s see, you called me a ‘exhausting bore’ because I (very consisely) stated the reason that Linda’s negative reaction towards Amber is reasonable.
So you either object to that opinion of mine and you think Linda should have embraced her daughter’s white attacker, or you are just a malicious asshole attacking me without justification. Pick and choose your sin, you are an asshole either way.
I’m not playing along with your stupid little dichotomy, though I won’t defend myself against the allegation of being an asshole. I called you that because (as The Oracle pointed out more politely), Linda’s knowledge of this or that isn’t really relevant to the overall discussion of Amber’s reason for stabbing Sal. It’s exhausting to constantly read these braindead takes that require so much unraveling that Maniac Magee would hesitate to try. It’s boring because it’s exhausting.
Except that this strip isn’t about why Amber attacked Sal, but about Linda having a negative reaction seeing Walky bringing Amber as his date. So how much Linda knows about the situation is very obviously relevant, and yet “So fucking what, you exhausting bore.” you say to me when I bring this simple fact up.
But sure, dude, whatever. It was so complicated and required so much unraveling the very very simple and obvious thing I said.
You’re like addicted to being wrong. And don’t call me “dude”, I’m not one.
Hey, you said in your first comment that it might be unneeded. It just turns out you were right.
It turns out I was wrong that it was unneeded. It wasn’t only needed but it was so relevant that people grew upset that I so inconveniently reminded people of it.
Is that actually what you think happened here? Not like… you jumping in to add unnecessary context to someone else’s comment, not saying how you’re thinking about that context, someone else add further context- much like you did- only for you to dismiss it by saying Linda wouldn’t know? Because apparently that’s what everyone was talking about. (It might have been what you were unclearly talking about, but that doesn’t actually mean it was what other people were talking about.)
No, people are really upset to know what happened in the comic. Sure.
Linda doesn’t actually need to know those things, because she’s not real and isn’t discussing the metanarrative in the comments section.
Willis! You wouldn’t!!
Wouldn’t what?
Wouldn’t download bread?
And suddenly…
Linda is on the right side…..
.
.
well fffffffff
Holy shit this is one of the best single strips in years. Definitely the best since the Farewell Brain Mike one, at least. Every level is working here, every line and character movement works together, really high quality stuff.
Sal gets what’s going on, I think. Note the difference between her expressions in the first and second frame.
I mean, Gail Simone rewteeted me like twice, and in my estimation it would take precedence over anything except maybe a Nobel prize dinner.
This is honestly impressive. Walky is somehow managing to immediately go off script from an already terrible plan… and somehow make it go even worse as a result.
It’s amazing.
I had forgotten that she stabbed her.
This is even better
I really hope Sal catches on quickly
Well this is turning into a disaster faster than I expected.
I don’t know what people are complaining about. The train wreck is right on schedule.
Shall we place bets on how many strips it will be before Danny opens his mouth and says something true at the exact wrong time.
The very best outcome for Sal was going to be bittersweet. We don’t seem to be headed for the best outcome for Sal.
I know. What are the odds this train wreck could start an argument between Linda and Charles? I’d say low, but not impossible.
This is what I most fear, too.
Sal and Amber were finally making progress. Sal and Walky, too.
Now potentially the two of them might become the reason she breaks up with Danny, at least if he puts both feet squarely down his gullet in response.
I like Sal and Danny. They’re sweet, tender, charismatic, wholesome.
I don’t want this to ruin them.
And Sal has carried the weight of the Walkertons’ casual racism and prejudiced expectations for years, now, already – Walky admitted it to her and to himself at most months ago, likely less, and *he* gets to blow everything up and call them out in public? On the sole occasion she gets any sort of positive (well, positive-seeming, for not the best reasons) feedback from them first?
When the famous one like your post, it’s like: oh, boy, I’ve reach the top . It feels like you won an autograph.
feral child? linda, that is an adult woman (young though she is).
oh also amber might’ve stabbed her in the hand but you stabbed her in the back etc etc
It fits well with last strip. Sal is a grownup, if she vouches for Lucy then Lucy is grown up, whites can be childish if they prove it and PoC can be grown up if they prove it..
That kind of language is the kind of stuff you can expect from a prejudiced mom with Nice White Lady Syndrome, where her animating force isn’t so much advocacy for her children as much as it is the will to garner social credit points by spiting and making herself look better than others.
Gail Simone follows Us, but then again, We are the emperor of the internet, so that’s only right and proper.
(Please don’t ask Us if We screenshotted that particular notification.)
This might be a shot in the dark but the structure of the panel layout and the flippancy of “Only once” is giving me strong allusions of Laurie confronting Comedian from Watchmen. Very funny but also remarkably similar, right down to the implicit “And then things changed.”
Let’s not bicker and argue about who stabbed who…
What’s a little stabbing between friends?
This is supposed to be a ‘happy occasion!
Things people say about their partners even in casual relationships: “I’m addicted to her body”
like WHAT????
Wait is that a thing in real life?
I do think Sal has sussed what Walky’s trying to do
But also, I think this is going to fuck up Amber some more.
Yeah that’s got to be triggering for Amber. She’s been through a thing or two in the aftermath of that incident.
Oh you know what, that probably was the first time Carol sued Amber’s mom
This is amazing actually
Sal is having trouble deciding who to go off on first.
I CANNOT read Sal’s expression and I mean that in a good way. Is she disappointed in Walky/mad at him for dating Amber? Confused because he knows she’s definitely dating Lucy? Or picking up on what he’s doing here and is kind of impressed?
Hoping Dorothy somehow shows up and sees walky with amber instead of Lucy and just freaks out bc she just told him she wants him back, but instead he goes back to amber(as far as she knows)
It’s a coin flip on if she would freak out, or if once she found out the plan she’d get another hit of “my projects make bad decisions when I’m not mentoring them”.
Man, first Linda is willing to give Lucy a second chance, and now she’s opposed to a white person stabbing a black person with a knife. We’re seeing real progress today, I’m proud of us all.
We already knew the latter when she tried to get Amber expelled. :/
I greatly appreciate the sarcasm inherent in this statement.
She stabbed your sister!
But she is white!:D
lmao I feel even without the, uh, history, they all still would have been way too focused on the “what do you mean you had one girlfriend and now you have a different girlfriend?” part to get to the learning a lesson
I think the utter shock of who amber is is the only thing sufficiently distracting them from how walkie has a new girlfriend since this morning
I changed my mind, I think this was a good idea now.
Third panel Sal all “Well, yeah, but that was a while ago.”
Sal is there surprised her mom actually cared.
Well, if the plan is to make Lucy seem better by comparison, it’s working.
Danny you dated that “feral animal”, chill
OH GOD I THOUGHT DANNY SAID THAT IT’S WALKY’S MOM FUUUUUUUCK
that’s still a fucked up thing to say tho
Just once I’d like to see someone, anyone, just up and deck Walky
Right in the face
Just once
Please
Seems a little bit of overkill, but yeah.
Well Jennifer threw him out a door recently…
I have absolutely no idea what emotion Sal’s expression in the first panel is supposed to convey. Anger or irritation perhaps? That barely-visible fraction of an eyebrow is confusing me, okay
oh nice, I’m a Les Bean
🫢