Rubber bullets can kill. In LA one man last a testicle. Another protester got hit in the eye, fracturing their cheek. Another had to be rushed to a hospital after the RB cut an artery. No one died – this time, but it does happen.
In the film, “The Last Castle,” the guards fire rubber bullets. The commandant decides if they will be “body shots,” which can knock out, or “head shots” which will kill! His decision for a “head shot” on a harmless convict is what sets Robert Redford’s character on his path.
From what I understand (though this may be incorrect, purely going on media representations) it’s pretty hard to notice a sniper shot until there’s a noticeable bullet impacting somewhere or into someone. Especially with the general chaos and mayhem and other shooting going on.
I can easily imagine the media not noticing a single sniper shot going into Amazi-Girl, especially if she does the typical tough person act and doesn’t show it.
depending on how loud things were it would either be quite noticeable or extremely noticeable. Even a suppressed rifle is loud and I’m not sure whether a SWAT sniper would use a suppressed rifle in the first place. IRL suppressors are not the quiet *thwip* sound like they are in movies. Typically a shooter using a suppressor should still be wearing hearing protection
Now that said it could be Willis is doing the media depiction style at which point maybe yeah
To expand, especially on anything you’d call a “sniper rifle” (i.e., anything firing a 7.62mm/.308 round or larger), a suppressor is mostly going to be making it harder to locate where the shot came from by sound, but it’s still going to sound like a gunshot.
And “fun” fact — police often use higher-caliber sniper rifles than the average non-specialist military unit does, because they are not usually concerned with suppressors/silencers or hiding their activity once shots are fired at all.
True, suppressed firearms typically just go form “BANG!” to “Bang!”, but some are much quieter than others. I once saw an AR-15 type rifle with an integral suppressor, chambered in .300 Whisper. Firing subsonic ammo, the muzzle blast was drowned out by the sound of the bolt cycling.
It’s the subsonic ammo that’s doing the work there. To my understanding the majority of the bang from a gunshot isn’t the powder going off, it’s the bullet breaking the sound barrier. A suppressor can only deal with the first one.
Between the muzzle blast and the distinctive crack of a supersonic bullet, rifles tend to be pretty noisy. It would be hard to miss, even over the noise of the crowd. If they seem quiet, it’s only because at long range the bullet arrives well before the noise. That, and movie and TV depictions of firearms are notoriously unrealistic.
Might not be the gut, actually. Sure, it’s on the ground next to her abdomen, but she’s also left a trail where she was obviously crawling–so it could be at any point north of her gut. And I’m noticing a dark spot on her hair. So this could be a head-injury. (I hope my first line didn’t come across as reassuring; a head injury leaving that much blood is definitely no good.)
Maybe? She’s not bleeding into the back of her clothes so there doesn’t seem to be an exit wound. I am in no way what so ever a ballistics expert but I would guess that given Amazi-girl’s outfit is very unlikely to be packing the protection needed to significantly slow a bullet and she was shot in lower abdomen that this isn’t a bullet wound. There is no bone there to stop or heavily deflect a highspeed projectile (except the spine, but Amber literally walked away from this so that is unlikely). However, Amazi-girl fights rather acrobatically and isn’t particularly tall compared to a typical man, so maybe the bullet did hit her at an atypical angle and got logged in her leg or pelvis or ribs, or maybe came out her butt which we can’t see well from this perspective. Maybe the round was a low velocity or hollow point round? We shall see.
Of note in particular: the costume bit sticking out of her backpack is also bloody. So she got injured whilst wearing the costume (which, obvs). But then she got away and changed into civilian clothes, and is still heavily bleeding enough to have gone through her winter coat and make a small puddle. Plus whatever she was able to staunch by holding it in, as evidenced by her v bloody hands. Regardless of the source of injury, girliepop has lost way
too much blood here. She needs that wound staunched, treated, stitched, stapled, sown, what-have-you, and soon, or she really will be joining Mike just like she’s been wanting to. Even if she doesn’t bleed out, she’ll be carrying this injury for a long time, if not the rest of her life.
I choose to believe a friendly dog happened by and kept her warm until his human caught up enough to call for him successfully but not enough to see Amber in the dark.
You should absolutely choose the former. Cop custody is not safe. It is especially unsafe if you’ve just been fighting said pigs and winning.
Getting into a cop car is not any different from getting into a car full of mobsters in your average Mafia flick. Your life is now at the mercy of their whims.
I may have couched my point in too much gentleness to make it palatable, so let me make it even clearer:
You should choose the woods even if you’re bleeding out, because cops are murderers and rapists and if you go with them to a second location they are quite likely to kill you.
This is the “bear versus random strange man” argument.
Women who chose bear explained themselves by saying cheerful things like, “The worst thing a bear would ever do is kill me,” and “At least if I told people I was attacked by a bear, they’d believe me.”
She seems to have a head-injury, actually. She’s left a trail of blood in the snow, and scalp injuries, even mild ones, bleed like hell. And a concussion would explain both crawling, and being kind of wonky when she messaged Sal.
oh whoops while we were worrying about horny teenagers making out with people who weren’t their boyfriend a character was getting attempted murdered by the police
If I had a nickel for every time a character got critically wounded while other characters were obliviously fooling around in this comic I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Oh no I did, keep in mind Amber and Walky were dry humping and edging each other while Amber was struggling to remember that Mike was left freshly comatosed due to that encounter.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen some variant of this tiresome, banal “joke” on the Internet, I’d have at least a couple hundred dollars by this point.
It’s weird that it’s weird for people to find the nickel thing happening twice weird, but it’s especially weird that it’s not weird for everybody to repeat the nickel thing more than twice.
I think most people do the joke well. It usually genuinely is weird that whatever thing is mentioned in the joke happened twice. (But maybe that’s just my Twitter feed.)
Yeah that is a lot of blood and presumably not even all of it. It looks like there is blood staining her supersuit in her backpack, a head injury hidden by her hair that is leaking blood, and a trail of blood leading off into the woods. This is real bad.
It’s clearly been hours. The projection is she’s been bleeding for all those hours since the protest?? Unless she encountered some violent situation after the protest. :O
Scalp wound would actually be enough to account for all of this, even if from blunt impact. Of course, one hard enough to keep bleeding that long is definitely in the, “It’s not IF you’re concussed, but how badly” zone.
My brother-cousin lost his sight in one eye. from a rubber bullet going through basic training. Tear gas, rubber bullets, etc can cause extreme injury to death :/
Obviously Cimorene is a Space Marine whose cousin also got inducted into the hallowed ranks of the Astartes. Thus he is a Brother, but also still his cousin.
Sal isn’t stupid enough to become a costumed hero; unlike Amber she values her own life, and Sal recognizes that other people will be hurt if something happened to her.
Even if Sal could disregard the other people in her life I dont think she would become a masked vigilante, she hates being double faced even for a good cause as shown when fighting guys with amazi girl or robbing the convenience store for Marcie.
Sure, but cops don’t usually beat people up and abandon them in the woods, right? Like they couldn’t make the argument “we were using necessary force to arrest this criminal” if they didn’t follow through with the arrest? I do live under a rock, so if anyone has case studies on this type of scenario I would be interested to read about them
She got away. She didn’t just stagger into the edge of the woods and collapse. She did a super-hero get away and had time to change clothes before finally collapsing.
Cops also don’t usually deal with super-heroes who can successfully get into fist fights with dozens of riot cops.
Maybe messy because of her family connections with the Korean mafia?? Ryan’s family would jump to the chance to label her as a terrorist spy working for a foreign country and paint him as her patriotic all-american victim. Also you must wonder how did Amber got acquitted of the charges of assaulting Sam when she was restrained and under police custody. There must be a sealed case file somewhere that you could wave at the “press” even if it is sealed. Messy is a very soft word. Alex Jones would be delighted.
Eh, she was painted as a victim and a juvenile (both true, really), and the prosecutor wouldn’t have wanted to mess up his nice, clean case against the mixed-race hooligan (though Sal getting stabbed may also be why she wasn’t, for instance, charged as an adult; interesting to think that she might owe her current freedom to Amber’s knife).
Yeah! She could be rescuing Danny _right now_. But, nooo, she’s busy _cheating_ on him, rescuing Amber/A-G at this very moment. In the _dark woods_, no less! So much more dramatic / romantic!
I have a criticism : I read this on Mobile and had NO IDEA there was blood or blood on the snow.
( chrome mobile browser, samsung android tablet, standard stuff )
i looked again on PC to read the comments hoping someone explains it, but the blood was more visible.
At this point I think it’s clear the real issue is that WILLIS is TAFFY’S sock puppet, in what could reasonably be termed the longest webcomic-related long con of all time.
wait, I got a better one, that’s actually dating ethics related. Amber told Dorothy to send Joyce titty pics, hoping Dorothy would dump Walky for Joyce, freeing Walky for herself. And then Dorothy and Joyce endangered themselves at the protest, while AG was driving. AG got shot or stabbed and was like, “this is all your fault, I’m audi”
I think in that situation, the best punchline would be Amber pulling out a gun and shooting Raidah in the leg and saying something like “Well, now you can’t complain anymore or you’re a hypocrite.”
“oh whoops while we were worrying about horny teenagers making out with people who weren’t their boyfriend a character was getting attempted murdered by the police”
Oh, it’s obviously turning into cheating. There will be the ‘jabs and insults covering up how much they’ve come to respect each other’ while Sal gets A/AG to safety, then the tender treating her wounds, snuggling up to keep warm in the winter, next thing ya know, totally cheating on Danny.
Of course, the logical next step will be to have Danny join them and resolve the cheating. And then Danny, Sal, and Amber are ALL into Ethan, so obviously they’ll be seducing him. And then Asher comes with him…it’s gonna be a mess, yep. A very hot mess.
She’s composing her memoir disguised as a fanfic, complete with information on the people responsible. Like Rorschach, except the people she’s exposing don’t have that “ends justify the means” kinda excuse.
Has Amber been bleeding out in the snow for 8+ hours?????????????????? Like even if the sun went down earlier, we last saw her at like 2 pm max, how long has Amber been out here????
Like, it’s the end of the storyline, that means it’s near midnight isn’t it?
The police probably raided shortly before sunset, which is around 6pm if Willis follows the times in real life.
The sun is still up during the raid, but when Jennifer reads about the raid, the light coming in the windows is pinkish. Then when we see Asma at her work desk, the clock behind her says 7 or 8 pm (if that’s accurate and not just the background). Then when Dorothy and Joyce get back to the building, it’s dark out.
End of the storyline means last strip before midnight, not necessarily right before midnight.
remember “rubber bullets” is an extremely convenient abbreviation; they’re either a metal bullet with a rubber coating, or a metal-plastic composite that’s still mostly metal. in theory, if they’re used exactly as designed (firing at the ground in front of people, spreading the kinetic energy across a cloud of debris at shin level), they may be less likely to cause lethal injuries, but if you give it to a cop, it’s just a regular bullet with a lower velocity and slightly worse material.
What, you want them to learn to shoot in TWO different ways? How are they to fit that into their ~840 hours of training? That might take away from time spent on learning such important things as racial profiling, avoiding consequences or bluffing their way through legal stuff!
Whoa there, commie, did you just say “legal stuff”?? Are you one of those woke left idiots who thinks our brave police who protect us from the criminal thugs and the mentally ill poor SHOULDN’T have qualified immunity to all prosecution?! WELL. I know what sort of pinkos read THIS comic now!!!
i don’t think this entirely fits through the lens of a training issue; you can train someone to be less lethal but they still have to decide to use that training, and use it for that purpose. I mention this only because a lot of common-sense police reform ideas revolve around the idea that giving cops the tools to do less harm will result in less harm, when often the outcome is often just that the cops now have more tools. look at body cams: cops could use body cams to hold their people accountable, but outside of truly exceptional circumstances where that’s forced, they’re mostly just a pretty useful surveillance tool. with less-lethals, why are we not taking away their lethal arms in exchange? at both an individual tactical level and at a large-scale strategic level, will they really use them as an alternative in scenarios where lethal force is authorized, or do they simply provide an easier-to-reach rung on the force escalation ladder? probably a mixed bag, and i’m sure cops can find a consultant to P-hack some sort of measurable harm reduction out of the data, but look at tasers; zapping people cuffed on the ground is not an reduced-harm alternative to shooting them, it’s a more convenient, easier-to-justify alternative to beating the shit out of them. if you give someone more weapons or tactics, you’re providing them more opportunities to use them.
this isn’t to try and turn this into a problem with cops as individuals and erase the systemic nature of the problem, it’s more to say, systems reproduce themselves through all means available, both through formal means like training and at a “grassroots” level through the parallel society of the cop. it’s not that reform measures are worthless, it’s just for them to have any kind of lasting benefit, they need to be aligned with a broader goal of removing material resources, power, and cultural influence from police forces and policing as a whole, and building up new and existing ways to support and protect people that don’t rely on cops, all in support of an ultimate goal of eliminating the cop and its precursors entirely. (remembering that just because something might not happen in your lifetime doesn’t mean it’s impossible, and just because you might not be around to see it fully realized doesn’t mean you won’t be around to see the beginning of it!)
i missed something with body cams: in addition to being useful surveillance tools, they’re also useful PR tools for creating the impression of accountability, alleviating pressure for larger change. Remember, body cams were one demand among many of the George Floyd protests, and I’m guessing at some point there was some degree of consensus among police/political leadership that they were the best “sacrificial” measure to implement, to create a narrative of hard-fought victory to disperse this incredibly powerful social movement before it could do further damage. it’s not that the body cam demand was a strategic mistake of BLM activists (any mass movement is gonna have a wide, not-perfectly-coherent list of demands, along with things they never even asked for that still look good enough to demobilize a large contingent), it’s that it’s genuinely a hard problem to build movements that are resistant to being stalled out at critical moments by carefully chosen symbolic concessions.
There are some studies showing the introduction of body cams actually help with fewer allegations of abuse by police in those jurisdictions. The cops, of course, claim that this is because the cams show the cops aren’t abusive; anyone with two brain cells knows that the cams do increase at least the fear of accountability (which is why police advocates still do everything they can to fight against their implementation and stronger enforcement about how they are used).
Now, because ACAB, yes, they ALSO have weaponized the cams against the populace as surveillance. But they aren’t an unalloyed evil.
That said, I absolutely agree with your concluding paragraph.
Aaand this is why it was so frustrating to see Dorothy sticking around, grand-standing at the protest for so long: she had to have realized the risk of making Amazi-Girl stay out too long.
In fact, Dorothy asked specifically not to be saved, as I recall – she wanted to be busted protesting, and I don’t think she really cared what she was protesting at the time.
it seems complicated because i think it’s reasonable to anticipate that amazi-girl would not respect that wish (she’s a (fictional) “real-life superhero”, you’ve got all the regular emergency response instincts of “save first and ask questions later” plus unresolved trauma around helping/saving people), but also, is it dorothy’s responsibility to account for that? i think you can argue either way but the result won’t be 100% tidy IMO.
now if amber dies, obviously Dorothy’s therapist should obviously focus on shoring up the “not your responsibility” aspect since that’s what survivor’s guilt is gonna disproportionately attack, but long term i think she’s probably gonna have to figure out how to reckon with being in some way a proximate factor in her friend’s death
Personally if I were in that situation – and I have been in similar situations – I would fine the “not your responsibility” thing unhelpful.
I know this is now me arguing with myself in my point above, but I am reminded of situations where everyone telling me that just felt like repressing a difficult truth. What was actually healing was coming to terms with the fact that I had let my friend down to aome extent, and she ended her life, and there was no way of knowing if I had done more if it would have made a difference, and the people telling me it wouldn’t have didn’t know that. If it’s true that nothing I could have done would have mattered, then the entire concept of suicide prevention is a lie.
.
My healing involved accepting the uncertainty and forgiving myself for not doing more, even in the face of such a serious consequence. Although I’m stil working on it, it feels better than lying to myself by oretending that I know nothing I might have done would have made a difference.
You can bet the cops are out looking for her. Or at least looking for “Amazi-Girl”, and since they have a lot of money to throw at big brain investigators, they’ll likely find out who Amazi-girl is soon enough. Amber’s likely in deep trouble. Now this to top it all off.
Interesting times ahead.
Apparently “Jakey” is internet slang for a ‘nice guy’ who actually is nice, but to the point of being utterly tepid and uninteresting. According to other folks round these parts, there’s some Tumblr post featuring the phrase “I want Jakey to die”.
I only learned all of this AFTER I made my poll choice, of course, which was based on a comment-thread exhaustion in which I had reached the point where I wanted the cheating saga to lead to a chain-reaction of character suicides ultimately leaving only the biggest narcissists on campus (Roz, Raidah, Booster, Maya, Mary and Charlie Yus) teaming up under Helen’s leadership.
No, I have no idea how that team-up was supposed to happen, or what they’d do. Like I said, I was just feeling utterly negative about the strip that day because of the comment threads.
Look, Jennifer kinda sucks, but I am pretty sure she been keeping Sal’s “secret”. Like, I don’t think she tried to publish her identity on the newspapers.
Also, she can be clueless but one thing she been demonstrably aware is racial dynamics, so I don’t think she would talk about the violent acts of her black quasi-sibling with the cops.
Willis is within his rights to kill another character, but yes he did promise no more major deaths. But Willis also said he wouldn’t kill anyone, and then killed Mike, so who knows what could happen?
Narratively speaking, death by cop isn’t really a satisfying end for Amber. What does that pay off in her character arc? She was already pretty self sacrificing with her vigilante work. Just saying I don’t think this would be the greatest way to kill her off it that was the route this goes in.
I don’t think Mike’s death was narratively satisfying. He was an asshole and then got contruved-redeemed so we’d be sad about him dying. (I’m not; I agree with Danny about Mike.)
But yeah this would be way worse as she’s a better character to start with.
I’m still waiting for the twist (in another decade or two) that reports of his demise were a cover for witness protection, then everyone’s beyond pissed at him.
Still not sure it’s a gut wound. While that’s where the blood under her is, the blood trail means she’s been bleeding for a bit, and that could also be the result of head trauma. She’s just been crawling over her own blood-stains.
I had really, really hoped the commenters who had called this were wrong. Definitely on the edge of my seat here. This may be the end of Book 15, but there’s no way in hell this scene doesn’t continue… though I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets broken up by a flashback first.
I love Gunnerkrigg, but I’ve quit checking it regularly. The plot got too convoluted for me keep up with on a MWF basis. At some point, I’m going to go back to where I lost it, if not all the way back to the beginning, and catch up all in one go.
Police but Sal’s gonna lean on Asher to fix Amber up without the ER/cops getting involved which is gonna bring the “Asher knows who Amazigirl” thing is to a head.
Or like, what is happening here will directly result in that being addressed because there’s a nonzero chance that Billie gets Sal’s ass arrested and Linda won’t even bother trying to hear her out. Basically, Asher abandons his heel face turn for good this time and embraces the heel and mob connections.
It all feels super unlikely, but it feels connected.
I think you are on the right track. Sal will ask Asher to help her friend Amber find an underground doc, but Asher knows Amber is Amazigirl who the mob wants, so he will be torn between helping Sal or betraying her again.
my bet is on a lawful abiding citizen working as the wrathful hand of god. I’m not saying that Mary is the culprit, but i want to know where she is hidding the smoking gun.
First cops, then while she was already injured, Incelerator took a cheap shot, but she still kicked his ass to the curb before wandering off with a concussion and bleeding head wound.
Yeah, people lost their shit over the whips South African police used (sjamboks, saith Wikipedia), but I’d rather get hit by one of them than by a hard rubber club with a steel core. I’d rather get cut by a whip than have my bones crushed.
Not much of a mystery. Seems like AG got shot at and winged by one of those snipers Dorothy and Jocelyne mentioned. The bigger question is “how do we keep this bullet hole quiet”
Right? There, she’s wounded enough that she had to have her best friend Sal come rescue her because she couldn’t get home under her own power and it’s freezing out. Are y’all happy about this?
There were some while the whole protest was going on, and then a few “making up a guy to get mad at” about how IF she gets away unscathed the comics bad. Well that guys not real so good for them
I hated those arguments. Yeah it was unrealistic, but I love Amazigirl lol. I hate cheating, I like my superheroes, somebody fix her. She and Amber are my two favorite characters. She doesn’t need to face consequences for her actions, she’s perfect
It had to happen sometime, it’s kind of been set-up that getting back into the “super hero” stuff is going to turn out poorly for AG. Attacking a bunch of riot police, with far-right extremist groups probably nearby makes it more likely to be now.
I mean, the tonal whiplash is a bit jarring, but yeah, seeing AmaziAmber finally get consequences for her stupid decisions is pretty great to see.
What, did you expect me to feel all sorry for her? Nah. I mean, it sucks that she had to learn this way, but maybe she’ll stop being so reckless now and find a healthy outlet for her rage. Like maybe the Roller Derby plot that Willis seemingly shelved.
Like, sure, a real person might learn to stop fighting armed thugs, but do you really think a costumed crimefighter is gonna have any response besides “I will fucking increase the fucking thing”? When does that ever happen? They recover from their injuries and then dedicate their time to getting better at fighting armed thugs. What the fuck kind of comic reader expects the costumed hero to do the “healthy” thing and stop knocking out cops and rapists (which is a tautology, I know), instead of bringing a weapon of her own next time? The lack of genre savvy is unbelievable.
Reminds me of Spider-Liv (an alternate universe Doctor Octopus who takes on the Spider-Man role and ends up having an even more difficult time than most Spider-People), who at one point loses an arm with horribly realistic consequences… and, instead of retiring, makes a high-tech yet imperfect replacement and gets back to superheroing through the constant pain. She’s still dealing with it in the third part of the (currently on hiatus) trilogy.
It’s a well-documented phenomenon, really. Get your ass kicked in round 1? Well, round 2 is gonna feature some new moves. Now, maybe it was a bit much to call Tricia an idiot, maybe they just don’t take in much superhero media and are expecting/wanting things to go more in the slice-of-life teen drama direction like most of the other cast. Amber and Amazi-Girl, though, they don’t always operate in the same genre, and especially whenever Amazi-Girl gets involved, things start to get Weird™ to accommodate. She doesn’t quite fit with the other characters, and that’s a really interesting dynamic to me.
If your counter to Tricia is “she’s not real” (also please refrain from insulting other posters), then that’s also the counter “are y’all happy about this” – she’s not real for us to care about it that way, either.
Completely neutral counterpoint: If you dive into the comments to make sure everyone knows you’re relishing in cop violence against one of the protagonists, maybe you should get called an idiot
Like normally I think “no genuinely personal attacks” is a good barometer but uh, there are exceptions
Who said I was relishing in the violence? I’m just glad that this theoretically opens up a potential avenue for character development for AmaziAmber. I’ve found her to be extremely stale lately, and a change would be interesting.
This also almost certainly wasn’t the cops. She’d be in a jail cell or handcuffed to a hospital bed if this was the cops.
…are the police known for bringing victims of their brutality to the hospital? That was not my impression. But then, most of the incidents I’ve heard about just ended in death.
Also you called it “AmaziAmber finally get[ting] consequences”, then added, “What, did you expect me to feel sorry for her? Nah,” so. The “sucks that she had to learn this way” (learn what?) didn’t come across as particularly sincere.
Also, while you might be convinced these injuries are unrelated to what we saw earlier, the fact remains that Amazi-Girl’s most recent “stupid decision” was defending Joyce from police violence.
So. You know. The optics on your comment aren’t great.
Kind of. Mostly.
Even the ones who die generally get brought somewhere.
There are certainly cases where they rough someone up and don’t arrest them, but those don’t get the publicity of the deaths. Nor do the cases where they do hurt someone while arresting them (or after), but don’t actually kill.
A case like this though? Not a chance they’d let someone who’d been beating up cops like AG was go if she didn’t actually get away on her own. And the way she was fighting, basically anything they did to her could easily be justified, unless there was hard evidence it only happened after she was restrained in custody.
I wasn’t saying it, but I mean, yeah. I kind of feel better that the protest had an effect on the characters instead of being set dressing for the Big Kiss.
Not agreeing with the “All women must be violently punished for acting like characters!!!!1!!1!” crowd, mind you. I’m happy about my thing and that’s it.
This comes as kinda weirdly aggressive? Like, as if AmaziGirl is a real person and you feel like people’s criticism mean an actual person got hurt or killed, rather than simply being another element of a story’s convolution and development and drama.
Like, yes, I *am* glad this happened, because it’s interesting and it will challenge the characters and they’ll have to overcome this new difficulty, and that will give them chances to rise to the occasion and reveal their character, which, like, rules? It’s one of the things I read stories for.
Like, as Nabokov said, and JMS quoted: “The writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.”
Okay, it’s tin foil hat time.
Amber and Amazi-Girl are Hurt™ right now.
Dorothy is cheating on Wally, with plans to break up with him.
Walky and Amber are obviously into each other.
What if, after Dorothy dumps him, he ends up going to Amber’s to hang out and do nothing together, only to learn she’s been injured. Being a decent guy whose conscience is growing some lately, he decides to help her coalesce. At some point, the whole Florence Nightingale thing kicks in and they become An Official Couple™. Hurt/Comfort in the most direct way?
For sure, I don’t see him sitting on her bed with her, feeding her spoonfuls of Tylenol Jell-O. Gaming with her while she recovers, sharing his chicken nuggets, walking with her to and from class though, I could see it
In all honesty, I COULD see him feeding her spoonfuls of jello. He strikes me as the kind of guy who’d figure out how to step up for his friends, just not the kind of guy who goes looking for an opportunity to do so.
Walky has an enormous heart he hides under his layer of ADHD dipshit armor and he would bring over Tylenol JELL-O while trying to play it off as “look I figger this way you get the painkiller AN’ the sweets, it’s win-win, I’m a genius fer comin’ up with it.”
If Joyce gave him a blowjob out of guilt for the blanket, what’s the guilt ridden equivalent sex act for “sorry I cheated while your sister was bleeding out”
Amber knows her memes, so she’s familiar with the joke that neurodivergent people often say “OW!” when something doesn’t even hurt but barely notice when a finger comes half off.
She’s split the difference here, wreaking havoc with internet savvy.
For all that I’ve been both those people, I can’t disagree; “neurodivergent” is a category like “people not from Ohio”. There are a lot of other places to be, and a lot of other minds to have.
I don’t understand the jakey thing at all but I think the body horror thing is a reference to people in the comments maybe expressing their revenge fantasies toward these two? Except I haven’t seen anything that would qualify as body horror in that regard.
I was assuming incel manifesto over how women are evil for denying men their bodies, by being sapphic, therefore desiring them bodily harm as punishment
I believe the accepted phraseology is “Damn you, Willis!” while shaking your fist at the screen. (Or in the general direction of Indiana, if you can find it)
There was another post upthread that theorized a post-protest encounter/stabbing involving Incelerator, and the fact she’s only apparently bleeding from one side does tend to imply she wasn’t shot.
Sal shares with Walky that characteristic of “I will do the right thing when given the opportunity, but I’m not seeking those opportunities out because I’m working through my own shit.”
I always fail to remember that Amber doesn’t want to fight crime; instead AG wants to fight crime, and in the process is destroying a body she’s sharing.
I forget about that sometimes, too. AG at least tries to only attack violent threats, but Amber can’t really be trusted not to just attack whoever’s in her focus when she gets aggressive. And then she goes and eats garbage and jacks off all day, instead of working out or having a salad. They really need to sort some things out.
I’d disagree, she’s been crawling through the forest, her costume is covered in blood, she definitely took whatever measures she could to stem the bleeding and yet she is laying in a small pool of her own blood and on the verge of losing consciousness. That definitely looks like severe blood loss.
And she’s in so much trouble that she had to call for help. She is very badly injured and will need to go to a first aid unit at the very least, possibly surgery.
Stab or Slash, yeah, but then again it’s not always a guarantee that a bullet leaves the body. Which would make the situation So much more complicated.
Depending on the weapon and ammunition used, a bullet is more or less likely to fully penetrate a person. A sniper rifle is more likely to pass through, whereas a typical police sidearm is relatively more likely to embed a bullet. Amber’s wound appears to be in her abdomen, not a great place for a bullet to be, but survivable if the bullet is extracted and the wound cauterized.
And like! I’m definitely not saying I think she was shot. I think the most likely scenario here is that she was in rough shape when she escaped the police and then she ran afoul of some of the guys we know are still holding a grudge…
Maybe she slipped into like a public bathroom to change out of her costume and they saw her going in and then jumped her as she came out with like a baseball bat.
But we are definitely supposed to be wondering! There are disparate puzzle pieces here, and one other possibility is that she DID get some type of serious gut injury while fighting the cops, and then adrenaline got her away from the protest scene seemingly fine, and it wasn’t until a while later that the adrenaline ran out and everything caught up with her at once and she collapsed 🤔
Also bless all of us with our tin foil hats here going over the panel with our magnifying glass, like it’s a real crime scene photo, and neither the distance nor the angle nor Willis’s art style could possibly be obscuring things like blue lips. X3
Whoever injured her likely did so while she was still in costume. Others in the comments section have pointed out that her costume is bloody probably indicating that she was injured in costume, managed to fight off or lose whoever injured her, and then changed into her civies.
Given she’s out here, and not arrested or tied up or anything, my suspicion is on “Pyrrhic victory” for whatever she was up to immediately prior to this.
@Proxiehunter: full devil’s advocate mode, maybe she got beat up while in costume enough to bloody it and the. Also got stabbed(?) separately!
(I doubt it, bc this is a drawing not a photo, and the detail of the costume spilling out covered in blood is there to tell us the stab(?) wound happened before she changed.)
Possibly minor nit: She hasn’t been crawling. That is, if you magnify and look carefully behind Amber, there are footprints and blood droplets, not drag marks and blood smears. So she was walking (probably staggering) while bleeding, and then collapsed, before texting Sal.
Sal is young enough that she doesn’t known she’s quoting Shrek and Willis knew that Amber’s sorry state would distract everyone else, but its so blatant that I really don’t want to let him get away with it.
That’s it, that’s the tweet
I dunno, she spent the first 13 years of her life growing up next to Walky. I can see her being dragged into a Shrek screening for like, family movie night or something.
The option closest to my actual opinion is “probably bad but more importantly amusing.”
Cheating is bad but this is a work of fiction. I care less about whether or not characters are moral than I do about whether they do things which create or maintain narrative conflict or tension.
Idk, I read in a few of the previous threads that by not condoning the fictional cheating, you’re actually a dirty cheater who loves real life cheating. (Obv not sincere)
See, a common misconception. Jennifer would see the tag as “Amber” and knows that Sal would keep her identity as Amazi-girl secret from the readers. Sal is the most clever superhero
Hallucination theory?
Maybe Amber is hallucinating Sal finding her via cryptic messages, when what she actually sent was total gibberish.
Maybe Sal is hallucinating Amber bleeding in the snow, when Amber is secretly right behind her with a steel chair.
While I’m going insane, maybe Amazi-Girl didn’t take much damage from the cops at all and her wounds are from Asma beating her ass with those bolt cutters.
No, it’s fine. Totally explainable. Amber is just talking to herself, imagining her alt Sal coming to the rescue of her base Amber, since her alt Amazi-Girl is unavailable right now (for whatever reason). Totally normal.
I am genuinely happy, and I mean this without snark, to see that while we are deeply divided on interpersonal behaviors and infidelity and shit, we can all generally agree: FUCK the police
Same. I buried this in the comment thread yesterday, too, but while we had a pretty acrimonious discussion yesterday I nonetheless wanted to point out that I appreciate your taste in Space RTS universes — it’s rare to see an ostentatious Homeworlder in the wild. (lucky cash flow timing means I have both Mothership models on my desk, that’s the kinda fan I am.)
Yeah I put it in yesterday’s comments and I want to say here too that I apologize for definitely arguing with you by proxy and getting heated. That was rude. If I was gonna keep that convo going I should have stopped with my definition of the Scarlet Letter In The Comments phenomenon because that was meant much more generally, but I got mad and acted a fool.
Also hahaha damn, extremely cool! I am jelly, I do not have rad merch, just a great love of Homeworld 1 and 2 (I gotta try this 3 that apparently is now a thing, and maybe Deserts) and Makaan’s silky voice.
3 is so very, very good. Deserts is a different cup of tea, given that it confines you to a 2d environment (although I much prefer the way it handles fighters/bombers/strikecraft, in all honesty).
Nonetheless, I recommend them both!
(I might actually have a spare HW3 key kicking around from a bundle, but I need to quiz my discord to see if anyone picked it up out of the “Free keys” channel and didn’t tell me)
Re: the poll: the literal title of the strip is Dumbing of Age. People are going to be immature and they are going to do stupid things. They are all growing up and learning new sides of themselves and trying new things and hurting each other. I don’t get how people are this genuinely upset about some fictional teenagers doing teenager shit.
Anyway, I’m simultaneously happy for Joyce and Dorothy and sad for Joe, who seems to be genuinely growing as a person thanks to his love for Joyce. He’s getting fucked over here through no fault of his own. It’s normal to have multiple feelings about things, even conflicting ones! It’s good for you.
(I say this like anyone else would be me and almost make smart remarks re: the content of today’s strip, featuring a cop-brutalized Ambs, in implied opposition to opinions I actually somewhat agree with.)
Really weird how everyone seems to be the least concerned about how Walky feels about him and how he seems to be a constant afterthought in discussions of this plotline
Lotta folks are put off by Walky’s devil-may-care front that he puts up to hide his real issues behind, largely because it renders him unable to do the right thing occasionally (see also: his lackluster response to his parents being racist at Lucy).
I have been guilty of this behavior and I want to stress I do not agree Walky can go jump anywhere, but I am the least concerned about his personal Great Infidelity Fallout Reaction because:
-it has been hinted very very much that he and Amber will get back together, both here and on both Patreons
-Walky and Dorothy’s rebound relationship is not healthy for them and neither one of them are actually committed to it, they are involved right now for the wrong reasons—I think they’ll always be special to one another but this is not the good, solid romance of the first books
-as someone with ADHD it is excruciating to see how much our boy feels like he has to mask, and while he doesn’t have to mask with Dorothy the way he did with Lucy, he hasn’t had a break, really, either
-what Big Z said except filtered through the lens of relatable cringe, seeing old sins in him, that whole deal
I’m definitely on board with “Dorothy x Walky being a bad pairing for both of them”, since Dorothy needs someone to help stop her spiral and Walky, frankly, needs someone to drill past his armor just a little and get him more engaged.
Walky’s already also pretty high on my “I suspect he already knows his relationship is not actually functional, and he was okay with that” list — I almost see him as trying to avoid any kind of real relationship on the grounds that a serious partner would start trying to get past his front…and there have been several indications that the front is psychologically load-bearing in that he’s keeping HIMSELF from worrying about himself, too.
Yeah, like. I saw at least one person say “Dorothy is using him as a dildo”, and first of all yeesh, but second of all I think Walky was very much on board for “sex with a friend I still think is very pretty to make her feel better” and isn’t being used as much as “willingly presented himself as a distraction”.
I’m just not sure, so far, if I think he’s doing it because he wants to feel useful and sex is nice, or as almost a form of self-harm as in “despite what Dorothy said, no; I do not deserve a relationship with someone who can give me their whole heart — I barely even deserve this.”
Either way, I think WALKY seems more cognizant of being Dorothy’s quasi-rebound than Dorothy is of using him that way. I think she’ll be quick to accuse herself of it, but I doubt she was self-aware enough of where she was in her spiral, and I definitely don’t think she knew she was trying not to face up to her feelings for Joyce, because I don’t think she knew they were there until Joe confronted her.
I’m team “it’s possible for people to treat each other badly by accident”, where it sucks that this is happening to Walky, but I still don’t think it’s something Dorothy is doing to him on purpose.
See, I swear I have reasons for not being as worried about Walky
(like I don’t think he’s actually seemed happy to be dating Dorothy, and I think he might just be waiting to be dumped — this might even be a case where hearing he’s being dumped for Joyce is an irrational relief, like, “see, it’s not that I did something wrong this time, I’m just not a woman”)
(I also think he’s the only one of the people involved to express unambiguous interest in polyamory, except of course he was probably at least half-joking so “unambiguous” is the wrong word, but I’m less sure Dorothy wants to keep dating Walky than I am that Joyce wants to keep dating Joe, if that makes sense)
buuuuuuuuuut, he sure is the brownest of the four, and I can’t ignore that that might also be a subconscious factor, even for me. :/ :/ Dang it, society.
I do not think Walky should do anything poly with Joyce, Joe, and Dorothy, because 1.) neither Walky nor Dorothy are healthy in the current relationship, 2.) Joyce and Walky cannot stand each other, 3.) Amber is who Walky can be his whole self with.
NOW. Yes. I am the filthy sicko who believes Dorothy and Joe should bury the hatchet and kiss and fuck along with Joe/Joyce and Joyce/Dorothy, and I will believe that forever even as Willis takes apart my ship with an angle grinder, and you may say, “but they hate each other too!”
And yes, BUT, Dorothy and Joe’s dislike is *rational*. It’s founded on issues. Joe was a huge asshole and sexist, he was very bad to Dorothy. Dorothy resents that. However, Joe is changing. Dorothy is changing. As unlikely as it seems by the day, Joe and Dorothy could mend that relationship with words and deeds.
Joyce VS Walky, on the other hand, is not rational. It’s vibes. It’s “there’s just something about you I fucking hate.” There’s a bunch of hovering attached reasons, sure, like with Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner, but at the end of the day it’s purely “man FUCK OFF, guy”. And that will not become a good romance, ever!
Finally, Amber: Amber is the person in Walky’s life he feels he never has to mask for. He never has to pretend anything. He never has to perform. Holy shit is that so important for an ADHD person.
This is either going to sound weird or absolutely the most understandable thing, but I think Amber and Walky have the most potential to accidentally start caring enough that they blow past each other’s respective psychological armor such that they can both start working on their issues a little more productively (or at all, depending on how you see their arcs thus far).
Surprise! It’s: The Most Understandable Thing, because yes, that is also what I believe, I absolutely see that happening and I will be incredibly here for it.
I’m actually not one of the people who thinks Dorothy still hates Joe. I think she had a lot of pent up angry (and also jealous) feelings, that she fully vented her spleen over them in their last conversation, and that they might now be able to be friends — except for the possibility that Joe hears about all of this and is hurt badly enough that he doesn’t want to see her or Joyce ever again.
On that note, I actually think Joyce’s angry feelings wrt Walky might also be significantly lessened now? It’s not the only thing he’s ever done to her (he was also super blunt about thinking Christianity is stupid with her), but how much of her “grr argh” at Walky was jealousy (and embarrassment and denial that he kept triggering by lampshading her crush)? I guess we’ll find out!
I do think there’s “Walky goes back to Amber” potential here, but the more rational side of me thinks Walky should ideally be single again for a while in a way where he doesn’t feel like “I have no girlfriend because I’m a screwup”, and ideally form some platonic friendships, because right now the only people in the comic who are his friends first and Joyce’s friends second are Jennifer and Sal, and both of them are……. shall we say, less than demonstrative of their affection for him.
But shipper gremlin who wants a big messy polycule says he dates Amber, Dorothy dates Amazi-Girl.
Which I’m much more on board for now that it’s not being championed alongside Dorothy/Jocelyne by a bunch of folks who were mostly way more invested in hooking Dorothy up with “literally anyone who isn’t Joyce, oh god please keep her away from Joyce” than they were in actually shipping her with either girl.
Oh, no, I didn’t think you were one of such commenters, I just wanted to be clear about why my dumb ass is so super convinced of “Joe, Joyce, Dorothy, full reciprocal throuple, final destination” and not adding a Walky into the mix. 😅
I think time alone and forming platonic bonds is probably in his future and kinda good for him, yeah, but the sparks between him and Amber, I am compelled by them.
And yeah, yeah that counter shipping was bad times. No bueno!
HOWEVER. Given that my ideal triad is probably dead in the water, have I introduced you to the Church of Joe/Jocelyne? Our central tenet is “but it would be so fucking funny and cute, though”.
Ha, that’s fair. I do see it as more of a hinge situation right now, but of course that could change (and even if I never feel differently, obviously you’re still valid for disagreeing).
I feel like the conversation between Walky and his dad about Amber, when neither she nor Lucy were around to impress, was foreshadowing more Amber/Walky in a big way. I also thought it was significant that he stood up for her immediately in a way he wasn’t able to do for Lucy, and of course that he went to her to “do nothing”.
(Also agreed on not having to mask being important. Something I think Dorothy and Lucy explicitly had in common was viewing Walky as a lil bit of a “fixer-upper”, and I genuinely don’t mean that as a knock on either girl, I blame society.
Devil’s advocating my own opinion: you could argue that maybe Amber and Walky would mutually encourage each other to stagnate, and I think the most ideal relationships are a mix, providing shelter when you need it and encouraging growth when you need that… but I also think it should “encouraging self-actualization”.
Support Walky learning how to develop a comfortable-enough Worksona, help him how to do household chores and then find an equitable split… those I think are just survival skills everyone needs! What no one needs is to have their whole wardrobe replaced with Business Casual Clothes and their interests “corrected” to something you consider more “age-appropriate”.
(Also bless Dorothy, she did try to make picking out clothes for each other fun and sexy……… again, I blame society lol.))
With Dorothy not seeing any reports of gunshots etc in earlier strips (“less lethal” rounds are still propelled by gunpowder and sound pretty similar, unless they’re using pepper-enhanced paintballs but that’s not gonna cause gut bleeding like “rubber bullets” and “beanbags”), I’m kinda leaning in the direction of “something else is happening here rather than just cop-on-vigilante violence”.
Especially because even the laziest donut-addicted campus cop is going to be able to follow THAT trail and cuff the person at the end of it.
Dang. Hm. That’s a decent point and Willis did drop that the gaggle of dipshits Blaine paid to be foot soldiers is still around via Incelerator, still holding a grudge against AG, this might be their work.
But it’s also possible the cops broke off pursuit; the job was to clear the encampment, which they did with gusto, and while they probably would like to get the person who was kicking their asses, they might have met quota, seen she was in the wind, and given up.
Third, wildcard possibility: we know the Incel Gang has a love of working security functions for nominally right-wing Congresswomen, so maybe they have a boy in uniform…
I kinda have enough faith in bad cops being bad in specific ways that I’d think they’re not gonna let a little thing like “orders” or “met quota already” stop them from especially punishing someone who had the utter gall to punch a cop.
Yeah, you’re right, they either really, really lost her lost her in the woods when she made her getaway, or this is Incel Gang shit. Fuck, man! Bad times either way.
It’s possible she was still in position to parkour away to the point that they lost her without a trail, which exacerbated existing wounds to the point she started leaving a trail. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug and like I said exerting herself to get away could easily make an open wound worse to the point she starts losing debilitating amounts of blood.
On a meta note, too, I think “Incel Guys” provide more room for Willis to work than “protest cops” just from the way that sections of the commentariat were (rightly) reacting negatively to the protest storyline.
Willis I am holding this as an ironclad oath you will not make Joe and Rachel happen. This is an OATH, WILLIS
MY TEETH, WILLIS. THEY HUNGER FOR SILICON SHOULD YOU BREAK YOUR WORD! Am I talking about my God-given chompers or a collection of lion gangs I happen to have fashioned into tools with which to destroy computer parts?? You don’t know! You CAN’T know! So why RISK IT??? Keep Rachel AWAYYYY from Mr. Rosenthal. Keep her FARRRRR AWAY.
They’ve also definitely noticed the interest in a big poly mess! Which doesn’t mean it’ll happen now in this year’s batch of strips but I am hopeful for something in the future.
Also FWIW I am actually really interested in Rachel and would like to see more of her the same way I wanna see more of Raidah. We’ve had similar slivers of “this character might have more going on” with both of them, and they’re both pretty, and I’m shallow.
I admit I want to see what Rachel’s deal is, for sure! Like, she’s got such an absolutist view on this, that comes from somewhere deep and hurt, what happened there?? Did Ruth do more to her than we saw with the being a huge binch? Or was Rachel already as angry at people as she is now?
It’s come up, but in a way where I could believe they’d had a miscommunication.
When Joyce was explaining “doing laundry” to Joe, she expressed anxiety that maybe masturbation was cheating on him, specifically saying she and Dorothy hadn’t “done laundry” again since she started dating Joe, “I have been faithful!”
But it was so tangled up in masturbation that Joe’s only real response to this information was to tell her that that (masturbation) isn’t cheating. I kind of think HE must think Joyce was telling him about something that sounded much worse than it was…?
So, as a result, we have a statement from Joyce where she certainly seems to think they were exclusive, and Joe not arguing that they weren’t, but also not Joe specifically saying, “Okay, good, don’t do that with Dorothy again.”
I was genuinely wondering if maybe Joyce THOUGHT she was being told that Joe didn’t expect monogamy of her, but if she did, I think she wouldn’t have been so visibly guilty and sad when she was trying to psych herself up for confessing to Joe.
I would also expect Joe to be at least NOMINALLY okay with this (I think Joyce having feelings for Dorothy — citations to be added below, bc three links puts you in moderation >.>), but Willis did say they wanted to do a storyline with a relationship ending messily due to something like cheating… I guess that only technically requires one of the boys to dump their girlfriend, heh.
My informed-by-talking-to-the-kids-these-days (I have a very queer teenager and a perpetual gaggle of new fraternity brothers) position is that these days, anyone using the terms “boyfriend/girlfriend” is implying monogamy/exclusivity, “dating” can go either way, and “situationship”/”FWB” are expressly non-exclusive.
Well, the answer to “did they discuss monogamy” is still no! I think it’s still clear from Joyce’s behavior that she thinks they’re monogamous, and and I think Joe thinks the same.
i was in a polyamourous relationship for several years and we referred to each other as girlfriend/boyfriend/etc. so i don’t think that’s really a good barometer LOL
This is not any insult to polyamory but monogamy is most certainly still the default relationship model in American society. Most people don’t have conversations about whether a relationship is going to be monogamous, for most people it is just assumed.
What Dot said — I’m poly myself, and for most people in the US polyamory still isn’t even on the radar. Maybe 5% of people tops will identify as willing to try it, last I heard, and much fewer than that have ever been in a poly relationship.
For the record, I’ll believe stats like that when it stops being so taboo. It’s like any other self-reported data about invisible traits against which there’s social stigma. Only 10% of people are gay, you say? Uh-huh. Get back to me when we no longer have people coming out in their 80s because they genuinely didn’t know there was even a word for their feelings.
To clarify — I don’t think that’s “the number of people inclined to poly in a world with no stigma”, I think it’s “a useful stat to clarify out WHY I think the mono assumptions hold until proven otherwise in today’s climate”.
I think the distinction Big Z describes really only applies as a default. As a rough measure of seriousness, with exclusivity linked to increasing seriousness.
If people are serious and have discussed polyamory, that’s a different thing.
In this case, the characters almost certainly haven’t agreed to be poly, certainly not on panel and they haven’t explicitly discussed being exclusive, so we’re left guessing based on what they have said about their relationship status. And really at this what they’ve said about how what they’re doing is cheating and they shouldn’t.
Dammit. We should have known this would happen. Superman has Kryptonite, Martian Manhunter has fire, Green Lanterns are helpless against the color yellow. Somehow the cops have learned the one and only weakness Amazigirl is vulnerable to. Bullets.
Yeah, but Superman eventually developed immunity to kryptonite (in Kingdom Come) and Green Lanterns can learn to overcome their yellow problem. So what we need to do is find some way for Amazi-Girl to develop immunity to bullets. Only then shall her true power be unlocked!
“Your gangrenous impudice bastards!! Your fucking God-banished disasters!! Pudic stinky vultures!!”
Me, cursing whoever did this to Amber as Captain Haddock.
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She said “ow” that means she’s fine!
just slipped on her ketchup packs is all.
She’s got both shoes on, she’s fine.
Only the second time Sal’s come rescued Amber. Hardly a concern at all.
I now ship Sal and Amazi-Girl, that is all.
I lied, that’s not all: AmberxDannyxSalxAmazi-GirlxDorothyxJoycexJoexWalkyxAsherxEthan
THAT is all.
I hereby approve your ship.
*checks watch
So when’s it gonna happen?
As long as she still says vowels she is ok.
She get shot?!
Dorothy said the news reported no shots were fired, so I’m betting those are impact injuries.
Dorothy said no SNIPER shots were fired. Rubber bullets can still break skin, especially at close range.
Rubber bullets can kill. In LA one man last a testicle. Another protester got hit in the eye, fracturing their cheek. Another had to be rushed to a hospital after the RB cut an artery. No one died – this time, but it does happen.
In the film, “The Last Castle,” the guards fire rubber bullets. The commandant decides if they will be “body shots,” which can knock out, or “head shots” which will kill! His decision for a “head shot” on a harmless convict is what sets Robert Redford’s character on his path.
That news could even be wrong.
From what I understand (though this may be incorrect, purely going on media representations) it’s pretty hard to notice a sniper shot until there’s a noticeable bullet impacting somewhere or into someone. Especially with the general chaos and mayhem and other shooting going on.
I can easily imagine the media not noticing a single sniper shot going into Amazi-Girl, especially if she does the typical tough person act and doesn’t show it.
depending on how loud things were it would either be quite noticeable or extremely noticeable. Even a suppressed rifle is loud and I’m not sure whether a SWAT sniper would use a suppressed rifle in the first place. IRL suppressors are not the quiet *thwip* sound like they are in movies. Typically a shooter using a suppressor should still be wearing hearing protection
Now that said it could be Willis is doing the media depiction style at which point maybe yeah
To expand, especially on anything you’d call a “sniper rifle” (i.e., anything firing a 7.62mm/.308 round or larger), a suppressor is mostly going to be making it harder to locate where the shot came from by sound, but it’s still going to sound like a gunshot.
And “fun” fact — police often use higher-caliber sniper rifles than the average non-specialist military unit does, because they are not usually concerned with suppressors/silencers or hiding their activity once shots are fired at all.
True, suppressed firearms typically just go form “BANG!” to “Bang!”, but some are much quieter than others. I once saw an AR-15 type rifle with an integral suppressor, chambered in .300 Whisper. Firing subsonic ammo, the muzzle blast was drowned out by the sound of the bolt cycling.
It’s the subsonic ammo that’s doing the work there. To my understanding the majority of the bang from a gunshot isn’t the powder going off, it’s the bullet breaking the sound barrier. A suppressor can only deal with the first one.
Between the muzzle blast and the distinctive crack of a supersonic bullet, rifles tend to be pretty noisy. It would be hard to miss, even over the noise of the crowd. If they seem quiet, it’s only because at long range the bullet arrives well before the noise. That, and movie and TV depictions of firearms are notoriously unrealistic.
We don’t know she’s been shot per se, but she is hurt. She could have an open fracture, lacerations, or a concussion would be a fair bet too.
She’s injured to the point that she had to call for help. Considering that Amber is basically a super hero, that’s not a small amount of damage.
She got messed up.
Yeah, those titanium bones have to hurt.
Sal-fred, I need pickup…
Lol i read this in the batman voice xD
That was perfect. Kudos!
Bleeding from the gut seems worse if it’s not a bullet wound. 😬
Might not be the gut, actually. Sure, it’s on the ground next to her abdomen, but she’s also left a trail where she was obviously crawling–so it could be at any point north of her gut. And I’m noticing a dark spot on her hair. So this could be a head-injury. (I hope my first line didn’t come across as reassuring; a head injury leaving that much blood is definitely no good.)
Maybe? She’s not bleeding into the back of her clothes so there doesn’t seem to be an exit wound. I am in no way what so ever a ballistics expert but I would guess that given Amazi-girl’s outfit is very unlikely to be packing the protection needed to significantly slow a bullet and she was shot in lower abdomen that this isn’t a bullet wound. There is no bone there to stop or heavily deflect a highspeed projectile (except the spine, but Amber literally walked away from this so that is unlikely). However, Amazi-girl fights rather acrobatically and isn’t particularly tall compared to a typical man, so maybe the bullet did hit her at an atypical angle and got logged in her leg or pelvis or ribs, or maybe came out her butt which we can’t see well from this perspective. Maybe the round was a low velocity or hollow point round? We shall see.
Of note in particular: the costume bit sticking out of her backpack is also bloody. So she got injured whilst wearing the costume (which, obvs). But then she got away and changed into civilian clothes, and is still heavily bleeding enough to have gone through her winter coat and make a small puddle. Plus whatever she was able to staunch by holding it in, as evidenced by her v bloody hands. Regardless of the source of injury, girliepop has lost way
too much blood here. She needs that wound staunched, treated, stitched, stapled, sown, what-have-you, and soon, or she really will be joining Mike just like she’s been wanting to. Even if she doesn’t bleed out, she’ll be carrying this injury for a long time, if not the rest of her life.
So she’s been bleeding for hours outside in the middle of winter in Indiana? How has she not bled out or died of exposure by now?
I choose to believe a friendly dog happened by and kept her warm until his human caught up enough to call for him successfully but not enough to see Amber in the dark.
Cold slowed the bleeding perhaps. Plus she probably had some sort of first aid kit on her.
Problem is that if she goes to the hospital she’ll be recognized as the suspect who beat up all those cops.
If given the choice between bleeding out in the winter woods and going into police custody after a massive display of force like Amazi-Girl’s…
I might choose the former.
You should absolutely choose the former. Cop custody is not safe. It is especially unsafe if you’ve just been fighting said pigs and winning.
Getting into a cop car is not any different from getting into a car full of mobsters in your average Mafia flick. Your life is now at the mercy of their whims.
Bleeding out in the winter woods isn’t exactly safe either.
I would generally prefer, if I have the choice, to die than to be killed.
I may have couched my point in too much gentleness to make it palatable, so let me make it even clearer:
You should choose the woods even if you’re bleeding out, because cops are murderers and rapists and if you go with them to a second location they are quite likely to kill you.
This is the “bear versus random strange man” argument.
Women who chose bear explained themselves by saying cheerful things like, “The worst thing a bear would ever do is kill me,” and “At least if I told people I was attacked by a bear, they’d believe me.”
1000%. That. Exactly. Same deal, and unfortunately just as true in both cases hahahaaaaa *sobbing*
😢
She seems to have a head-injury, actually. She’s left a trail of blood in the snow, and scalp injuries, even mild ones, bleed like hell. And a concussion would explain both crawling, and being kind of wonky when she messaged Sal.
The likeliest bet is a cop using “less than lethal” rounds or a tear gas canister that exploded and did shrapnel-style damage.
I am sure she is fine.
AMBER!!!!
AMAZI-GIRL!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! 😭😭😭
“Don’t freaking DOX me”
Oh, Geez. It is Amber too.
oh whoops while we were worrying about horny teenagers making out with people who weren’t their boyfriend a character was getting attempted murdered by the police
Oh don’t worry is not murder when a cop do it! 😃
This is a public service announcement
With guitar!
Know your rights: all three of them
Number One:
You have the right not to be killed
Murder is a CRIME!
Unless it was done
By a policeman
Or an aristocrat
Know your rights
That’s my Joe
You have the right to free speech
As long as you’re not
Dumb enough to actually try it
It has been suggested in some quarters
that this is not enough!
Well…
Get off the streets
Get off the streets…
If I had a nickel for every time a character got critically wounded while other characters were obliviously fooling around in this comic I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.
I joke but the situation is still dire.
Who exactly was it the other time?
Mike, right? They were at a birthday party while he was fucking around on a scooter with two grown men who wanted him dead.
Oh, I thought Newlland meant ‘fooling around’ in the sexual sense, not just partying. I see now that was not necessarily the intention.
Oh no I did, keep in mind Amber and Walky were dry humping and edging each other while Amber was struggling to remember that Mike was left freshly comatosed due to that encounter.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen some variant of this tiresome, banal “joke” on the Internet, I’d have at least a couple hundred dollars by this point.
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I’d have a nickel for every time I had a nickel for every time I had a time I had a nickel. 🫴🏻
HA HA HA! ETERNAL NICKELS SHALL BE MINE! MINE!…
🪙💰🤑
(Scrooge McDuck dives gracefully into a heap of nickels…)
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/174146/how-can-scrooge-mcduck-dive-into-money-without-hurting-himself#174147
(Or, as Mike would say, “I do have a nickel. I banged your mom for it.”)
It’s weird that it’s weird for people to find the nickel thing happening twice weird, but it’s especially weird that it’s not weird for everybody to repeat the nickel thing more than twice.
Fractal nickels… nickels all the way down.
Hey man it’s fun. Phineas and Ferb was funny and influential. And it’s a lot more fun than how the nickle saying used to go
I think most people do the joke well. It usually genuinely is weird that whatever thing is mentioned in the joke happened twice. (But maybe that’s just my Twitter feed.)
ah! we should be using it more. doing you a favor, really.
Yeah, how dare people use pop-culture references to comment on things?
It’s funny because she has a Mike clone in her head, so when she dies he gets to die again.
Of course, if she’s got a nickel in her pocket, they can spend eternity in the afterlife boning, just passing that nickel back and forth….
Oh the blood, fuck.
Yeah that is a lot of blood and presumably not even all of it. It looks like there is blood staining her supersuit in her backpack, a head injury hidden by her hair that is leaking blood, and a trail of blood leading off into the woods. This is real bad.
It makes me wonder what nature of wounds she has. Blunt injury, cut, bullet wound, maybe even all of them.
It’s clearly been hours. The projection is she’s been bleeding for all those hours since the protest?? Unless she encountered some violent situation after the protest. :O
Scalp wound would actually be enough to account for all of this, even if from blunt impact. Of course, one hard enough to keep bleeding that long is definitely in the, “It’s not IF you’re concussed, but how badly” zone.
Dumbing of Age Book 15: Ow
NOOOOO!
Damn those fucking pigs!
“Look how they massacred my girl”
Get suspensed idiot!
Yeah, I’m sure you all heard my swearing rant the other day.
DAMN YOU WILLIS.
Apparently Sal is not the scariest thing in the woods. Your bloodied up friend is.
Now reminds me that the news specifically said no SNIPER shots were fired. Other police shots are very much on the table.
My brother-cousin lost his sight in one eye. from a rubber bullet going through basic training. Tear gas, rubber bullets, etc can cause extreme injury to death :/
Brother-cousin?
Maybe it’s a typo and it should be brother’s cousin? Or text to speech was supposed to delete the word brother but stuck a hyphen there instead.
Obviously Cimorene is a Space Marine whose cousin also got inducted into the hallowed ranks of the Astartes. Thus he is a Brother, but also still his cousin.
Brat od tetke/strica?
Should have invested in the Kevlar suit.
if Dayman Waynes can make bullet proof PJ’s, WTH was stopping you Amber?!
So now she will have to pass the mantle of Amazi-Girl on to Sal, making Jennifer retroactively correct?
Sal isn’t stupid enough to become a costumed hero; unlike Amber she values her own life, and Sal recognizes that other people will be hurt if something happened to her.
Even if Sal could disregard the other people in her life I dont think she would become a masked vigilante, she hates being double faced even for a good cause as shown when fighting guys with amazi girl or robbing the convenience store for Marcie.
HOW ARE WE ENDING THE BOOK HERE?!
The bookie needs to settle all the bets and pools now, that way.
Because Willis is a cruel god who cares nothing for our struggle for answers.
And that’s why we love him.
Because Willis has stockholm-syndromed us at the deepest levels.
oh dang
amazi-girl hon you gotta break away earlier, seriously
her lips aren’t blue she’s not bleeding out
😖🙏🏽
*plays “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar on hacked muzak*
Amazing choice. 🎼🎵🎶
I feel like Amber could definitely have a viable lawsuit against the Indiana State police. Maybe it’s messy cause “vigilante”+”protest”, but still.
She (well alter-ego) ran up to a cop and kicked him in the face and then began beating up other cops. I don’t think a suit would go anywhere.
Yeah, and I guess these days cops can use as much force as they want for nearly any reason.
Sure, but cops don’t usually beat people up and abandon them in the woods, right? Like they couldn’t make the argument “we were using necessary force to arrest this criminal” if they didn’t follow through with the arrest? I do live under a rock, so if anyone has case studies on this type of scenario I would be interested to read about them
Also hard to believe other protesters would watch a fellow protester get beat up like that and just say, “whelp, too bad. Let’s go home.”
She got away. She didn’t just stagger into the edge of the woods and collapse. She did a super-hero get away and had time to change clothes before finally collapsing.
Cops also don’t usually deal with super-heroes who can successfully get into fist fights with dozens of riot cops.
Maybe messy because of her family connections with the Korean mafia?? Ryan’s family would jump to the chance to label her as a terrorist spy working for a foreign country and paint him as her patriotic all-american victim. Also you must wonder how did Amber got acquitted of the charges of assaulting Sam when she was restrained and under police custody. There must be a sealed case file somewhere that you could wave at the “press” even if it is sealed. Messy is a very soft word. Alex Jones would be delighted.
Eh, she was painted as a victim and a juvenile (both true, really), and the prosecutor wouldn’t have wanted to mess up his nice, clean case against the mixed-race hooligan (though Sal getting stabbed may also be why she wasn’t, for instance, charged as an adult; interesting to think that she might owe her current freedom to Amber’s knife).
her raspberry danish!
Now that’s a tragedy
How is the comment section going to make this about the ethics of cheating this time?
amber’s blood is cheating on her body with the snow
Sal promised not to rescue any bloodied friends other than Danny
Yeah! She could be rescuing Danny _right now_. But, nooo, she’s busy _cheating_ on him, rescuing Amber/A-G at this very moment. In the _dark woods_, no less! So much more dramatic / romantic!
(Kjarl Thotep approves.)
I have a criticism : I read this on Mobile and had NO IDEA there was blood or blood on the snow.
( chrome mobile browser, samsung android tablet, standard stuff )
i looked again on PC to read the comments hoping someone explains it, but the blood was more visible.
Same. First read: Huh, what happened? Second read and expanded comic: Oh shit!
Amber’s blood is cheating on her with that snow.
look you’re not helping the sockpuppet allegations
I know 😭
🤨
Wait. There were sockpuppet allegations and I missed them?
I must be having a Jennifer moment.
Yeah, some dipshits on Reddit were on it for a while.
always have been, always will be
< – dipshit on reddit
thank you both (but I repeat myself) for this laugh
Aha! An obvious effort to try to throw us off the trail. But I’m onto you.
Literally just had a coughing fit from laughing too hard. Damn you, Willis!
Slipshine of Taffy/Willis when? Give the people what they want coward.
I’m a real person. Do not ever draw porn of me.
As opposed to the author of this comic, who is four hens in a baggy hoodie.
(Fr though eugh.)
Well, I didn’t wanna speak for Willis.
Honestly, half the time when I visualize you, you’re made out of taffy.
Legally, that’s true. I’m made of 99.93% Taffy.
If you want an accurate mental image, I basically look like a young Greg Universe with a short beard.
Wait a minute, Willis has a short beard in their artistic rendition…!
And they’re made of taffy! I saw them on a taffy puller once!
ADMIT THE TRUTH*, DAVE, IF THAT IS YOUR REAL NAME :O
Huh. Taffy == Willis….
(*connects the red yarn on the pushpins)
Yeah, it all makes sense now!!
At this point I think it’s clear the real issue is that WILLIS is TAFFY’S sock puppet, in what could reasonably be termed the longest webcomic-related long con of all time.
Refreshing the page before I post, next time…
what can I say, great minds think alike XD
Old sayings check: Fools think alike. Great minds run in the same channel.
“Fuck the police, monogamously.”
Definitely use protection.
Kevlar-based protection. And social distancing (like, a few kilometers at least). Maybe a hazmat suit, if you got one.
Obviously because they were riding their cheating high they never bothered to check if everyone else got back safely.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/safely/
All reports were that she had successfuly escaped.
Watch it be Incellerator who ran up and stabbed her after she left the protest, because Amber stabbed that one asshole.
That would be consistent with the apparent lack of exit wound, at that.
I wouldn’t put that responsibility solely on two first-time protesters who didn’t even plan to be there. Where were the experienced protesters?
Sal is going to go into one of those “Only *I* am allowed to kill you!” rants.
Wouldn’t that make her AG’s supervillain nemesis? (arguably, again)
Amber is cheating at the game she’s playing on her phone.
wait, I got a better one, that’s actually dating ethics related. Amber told Dorothy to send Joyce titty pics, hoping Dorothy would dump Walky for Joyce, freeing Walky for herself. And then Dorothy and Joyce endangered themselves at the protest, while AG was driving. AG got shot or stabbed and was like, “this is all your fault, I’m audi”
That… actually makes sense to me.
My impression is that AG wants their body to stop. To stop – being.
level 2: construe getting shot by cops as an example of elitism in leftist spaces
So Raidah can sneer at her or getting shot for the wrong reasons?
I think in that situation, the best punchline would be Amber pulling out a gun and shooting Raidah in the leg and saying something like “Well, now you can’t complain anymore or you’re a hypocrite.”
Cops shoot non-lethal rounds at white protesters, lethal rounds at non-white protesters.
They really shouldn’t be shooting anybody.
STOP RESISTING!! *screamed with intent to intimidate, but it actually sounds like a fucking donkey braying*
…Or both. At both.
(“Carlo vive…”)
“oh whoops while we were worrying about horny teenagers making out with people who weren’t their boyfriend a character was getting attempted murdered by the police”
This is how.
Oh, it’s obviously turning into cheating. There will be the ‘jabs and insults covering up how much they’ve come to respect each other’ while Sal gets A/AG to safety, then the tender treating her wounds, snuggling up to keep warm in the winter, next thing ya know, totally cheating on Danny.
Of course, the logical next step will be to have Danny join them and resolve the cheating. And then Danny, Sal, and Amber are ALL into Ethan, so obviously they’ll be seducing him. And then Asher comes with him…it’s gonna be a mess, yep. A very hot mess.
Holy fuck.
Just cause ya dying doesn’t mean you can’t scroll Tik Tok.
Is that she was doing? Here I thought she was getting ready to send out one last text message.
But damn if that is the case thats…so her.
Amber: Can’t… die… yet… someone… wrong… on… Internet…
must… stay alive… long enough… to finish… this fanfic
She’s composing her memoir disguised as a fanfic, complete with information on the people responsible. Like Rorschach, except the people she’s exposing don’t have that “ends justify the means” kinda excuse.
Watching “The Office”, episode “The Dinner Party”. Putting Jan’s assistant’s song on repeat.
“If I gotta go, I’m gonna go laughing and smiling at cat videos.”
Amber probably took like 6 bullets to the chest and has somehow survived
Also WHAT DO YOU MEAN END OF BOOK FIFTEEN???
Damn
Has Amber been bleeding out in the snow for 8+ hours?????????????????? Like even if the sun went down earlier, we last saw her at like 2 pm max, how long has Amber been out here????
Like, it’s the end of the storyline, that means it’s near midnight isn’t it?
The police probably raided shortly before sunset, which is around 6pm if Willis follows the times in real life.
The sun is still up during the raid, but when Jennifer reads about the raid, the light coming in the windows is pinkish. Then when we see Asma at her work desk, the clock behind her says 7 or 8 pm (if that’s accurate and not just the background). Then when Dorothy and Joyce get back to the building, it’s dark out.
End of the storyline means last strip before midnight, not necessarily right before midnight.
So not 8 hours, but probably at least several.
This is January, when is sundown shortly after winter solstice in Indiana? Where I am it’s 3 pm.
around 6 pm.
Oof. The speech bubble, it’s Amber too. Rubber bullets at point-blank range? Or was it something worse?
remember “rubber bullets” is an extremely convenient abbreviation; they’re either a metal bullet with a rubber coating, or a metal-plastic composite that’s still mostly metal. in theory, if they’re used exactly as designed (firing at the ground in front of people, spreading the kinetic energy across a cloud of debris at shin level), they may be less likely to cause lethal injuries, but if you give it to a cop, it’s just a regular bullet with a lower velocity and slightly worse material.
Holy crap, I did not know this. When people called them rubber bullets, I was imagining a solid chunk of rubber!
What, you want them to learn to shoot in TWO different ways? How are they to fit that into their ~840 hours of training? That might take away from time spent on learning such important things as racial profiling, avoiding consequences or bluffing their way through legal stuff!
Whoa there, commie, did you just say “legal stuff”?? Are you one of those woke left idiots who thinks our brave police who protect us from the criminal thugs and the mentally ill poor SHOULDN’T have qualified immunity to all prosecution?! WELL. I know what sort of pinkos read THIS comic now!!!
Don’t forget planting evidence!
i don’t think this entirely fits through the lens of a training issue; you can train someone to be less lethal but they still have to decide to use that training, and use it for that purpose. I mention this only because a lot of common-sense police reform ideas revolve around the idea that giving cops the tools to do less harm will result in less harm, when often the outcome is often just that the cops now have more tools. look at body cams: cops could use body cams to hold their people accountable, but outside of truly exceptional circumstances where that’s forced, they’re mostly just a pretty useful surveillance tool. with less-lethals, why are we not taking away their lethal arms in exchange? at both an individual tactical level and at a large-scale strategic level, will they really use them as an alternative in scenarios where lethal force is authorized, or do they simply provide an easier-to-reach rung on the force escalation ladder? probably a mixed bag, and i’m sure cops can find a consultant to P-hack some sort of measurable harm reduction out of the data, but look at tasers; zapping people cuffed on the ground is not an reduced-harm alternative to shooting them, it’s a more convenient, easier-to-justify alternative to beating the shit out of them. if you give someone more weapons or tactics, you’re providing them more opportunities to use them.
this isn’t to try and turn this into a problem with cops as individuals and erase the systemic nature of the problem, it’s more to say, systems reproduce themselves through all means available, both through formal means like training and at a “grassroots” level through the parallel society of the cop. it’s not that reform measures are worthless, it’s just for them to have any kind of lasting benefit, they need to be aligned with a broader goal of removing material resources, power, and cultural influence from police forces and policing as a whole, and building up new and existing ways to support and protect people that don’t rely on cops, all in support of an ultimate goal of eliminating the cop and its precursors entirely. (remembering that just because something might not happen in your lifetime doesn’t mean it’s impossible, and just because you might not be around to see it fully realized doesn’t mean you won’t be around to see the beginning of it!)
i missed something with body cams: in addition to being useful surveillance tools, they’re also useful PR tools for creating the impression of accountability, alleviating pressure for larger change. Remember, body cams were one demand among many of the George Floyd protests, and I’m guessing at some point there was some degree of consensus among police/political leadership that they were the best “sacrificial” measure to implement, to create a narrative of hard-fought victory to disperse this incredibly powerful social movement before it could do further damage. it’s not that the body cam demand was a strategic mistake of BLM activists (any mass movement is gonna have a wide, not-perfectly-coherent list of demands, along with things they never even asked for that still look good enough to demobilize a large contingent), it’s that it’s genuinely a hard problem to build movements that are resistant to being stalled out at critical moments by carefully chosen symbolic concessions.
There are some studies showing the introduction of body cams actually help with fewer allegations of abuse by police in those jurisdictions. The cops, of course, claim that this is because the cams show the cops aren’t abusive; anyone with two brain cells knows that the cams do increase at least the fear of accountability (which is why police advocates still do everything they can to fight against their implementation and stronger enforcement about how they are used).
Now, because ACAB, yes, they ALSO have weaponized the cams against the populace as surveillance. But they aren’t an unalloyed evil.
That said, I absolutely agree with your concluding paragraph.
Aaand this is why it was so frustrating to see Dorothy sticking around, grand-standing at the protest for so long: she had to have realized the risk of making Amazi-Girl stay out too long.
Amazi-Girl is responsible for her own choices. Dorothy didn’t ask to be saved.
In fact, Dorothy asked specifically not to be saved, as I recall – she wanted to be busted protesting, and I don’t think she really cared what she was protesting at the time.
it seems complicated because i think it’s reasonable to anticipate that amazi-girl would not respect that wish (she’s a (fictional) “real-life superhero”, you’ve got all the regular emergency response instincts of “save first and ask questions later” plus unresolved trauma around helping/saving people), but also, is it dorothy’s responsibility to account for that? i think you can argue either way but the result won’t be 100% tidy IMO.
now if amber dies, obviously Dorothy’s therapist should obviously focus on shoring up the “not your responsibility” aspect since that’s what survivor’s guilt is gonna disproportionately attack, but long term i think she’s probably gonna have to figure out how to reckon with being in some way a proximate factor in her friend’s death
Personally if I were in that situation – and I have been in similar situations – I would fine the “not your responsibility” thing unhelpful.
I know this is now me arguing with myself in my point above, but I am reminded of situations where everyone telling me that just felt like repressing a difficult truth. What was actually healing was coming to terms with the fact that I had let my friend down to aome extent, and she ended her life, and there was no way of knowing if I had done more if it would have made a difference, and the people telling me it wouldn’t have didn’t know that. If it’s true that nothing I could have done would have mattered, then the entire concept of suicide prevention is a lie.
.
My healing involved accepting the uncertainty and forgiving myself for not doing more, even in the face of such a serious consequence. Although I’m stil working on it, it feels better than lying to myself by oretending that I know nothing I might have done would have made a difference.
Amazi-Girl could have left when she led Joyce, Dorothy, Jocelyn, and Asma out. She actively chose not to. This is not on Dorothy.
Amazi-Girl was not just there to save the bisexual disasters, she is not Dorothy’s bodyguard
You can bet the cops are out looking for her. Or at least looking for “Amazi-Girl”, and since they have a lot of money to throw at big brain investigators, they’ll likely find out who Amazi-girl is soon enough. Amber’s likely in deep trouble. Now this to top it all off.
Interesting times ahead.
They will ask an AI system who Amazi-Girl really is and it will say Jason.
Jennifer is AI?
Close enough.
Natural Stupidity
Nah, AI would insist that AG is actually Mike in disguise, concluding that he faked his own death in order to pull a full-on Darkman.
I really like how the phone light is done. I less like how Amber is done oh no
Amber can’t be too bad off if she is still playing Pokémon Go.
As someone with chronic pain Poke’mon Go is an excellent distraction for the flesh prison.
Also who is Jakey and why is the poll asking if I want the joker to kill him
I’m assuming it’s referring to Joe/Walky and intentionally misnaming one of them as someone who dislikes them would do.
Because this is a finely nuanced poll that is covering all the bases.
It’s the poll we need and deserve, and you and I made this happen, Clif.
NONE OF THE REST OF YOU.
Apparently “Jakey” is internet slang for a ‘nice guy’ who actually is nice, but to the point of being utterly tepid and uninteresting. According to other folks round these parts, there’s some Tumblr post featuring the phrase “I want Jakey to die”.
I only learned all of this AFTER I made my poll choice, of course, which was based on a comment-thread exhaustion in which I had reached the point where I wanted the cheating saga to lead to a chain-reaction of character suicides ultimately leaving only the biggest narcissists on campus (Roz, Raidah, Booster, Maya, Mary and Charlie Yus) teaming up under Helen’s leadership.
No, I have no idea how that team-up was supposed to happen, or what they’d do. Like I said, I was just feeling utterly negative about the strip that day because of the comment threads.
I fully expect a story to be Sal getting arrested for assaulting police during the protest after an officer talks to Jennifer.
Because Jennifer never bothered to learn Amazi-Girl assaulted police to save protestors.
Look, Jennifer kinda sucks, but I am pretty sure she been keeping Sal’s “secret”. Like, I don’t think she tried to publish her identity on the newspapers.
Also, she can be clueless but one thing she been demonstrably aware is racial dynamics, so I don’t think she would talk about the violent acts of her black quasi-sibling with the cops.
Willis promised after Mike no more major deaths, right?
….I don’t remember any such promise being made but that’s just me.
I thought he had promised near the beginning of the comic that there would not be any major deaths because it would take forever to get past.
Yeah, then he changed his mind because he got tired of/ran out of ideas for Mike.`So at this point, a chain of deaths could absolutely happen.
Well, you’d be surprised what you can live through!
Good quote from a bad movie. Respect.
Hehehe I was curious if anybody would recognize the quote… Respect~
Willis is within his rights to kill another character, but yes he did promise no more major deaths. But Willis also said he wouldn’t kill anyone, and then killed Mike, so who knows what could happen?
Narratively speaking, death by cop isn’t really a satisfying end for Amber. What does that pay off in her character arc? She was already pretty self sacrificing with her vigilante work. Just saying I don’t think this would be the greatest way to kill her off it that was the route this goes in.
I don’t think Mike’s death was narratively satisfying. He was an asshole and then got contruved-redeemed so we’d be sad about him dying. (I’m not; I agree with Danny about Mike.)
But yeah this would be way worse as she’s a better character to start with.
Just realizing right now that Mike kinda bagged himself a “Roomies! Ruth Redemption.”
He never said he wouldn’t kill anyone. He said no main character was going to die.
And he hadn’t noticed Mike had become a main character.
I’m still waiting for the twist (in another decade or two) that reports of his demise were a cover for witness protection, then everyone’s beyond pissed at him.
Except for Walky, who’ll be gleeful about how he “called it”.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/booing/
If it includes someone saying, “Somehow, Mike returned”, I’d be all over that.
JESUS FUCK
really really worried about the positioning of amber’s injuries – gut wound can’t be good, even for someone as ridiculously durable as her
Still not sure it’s a gut wound. While that’s where the blood under her is, the blood trail means she’s been bleeding for a bit, and that could also be the result of head trauma. She’s just been crawling over her own blood-stains.
DAAAAAAMN YOU WILLIIIIIIS!
I had really, really hoped the commenters who had called this were wrong. Definitely on the edge of my seat here. This may be the end of Book 15, but there’s no way in hell this scene doesn’t continue… though I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets broken up by a flashback first.
Oh, don’t worry. It’s not *my* blood. (Hopefully.)
“It’s not my blood. It’s Amazi-Girl’s.”
“THAT’S NOT BETTER!”
Oh my god I fucking cackled, absolutely beautiful. I laughed so loud I startled my wife too.
I feel bad for laughing at this-
Uh-oh. I fell in lover with Gunnerkrigg Court right away. Now I have another strip to catch up on days of reading of.
Oh, crap. I’ll do days of reading, and then have to settle down to one new strip a day. I hate when that happens.
You don’t have to worry about dropping down to one strip a day. Gunnerkrigg Court doesn’t update daily. It’s like half that.
Oh, no!
I love Gunnerkrigg, but I’ve quit checking it regularly. The plot got too convoluted for me keep up with on a MWF basis. At some point, I’m going to go back to where I lost it, if not all the way back to the beginning, and catch up all in one go.
It took me three chapters to figure out Antimony’s name wasn’t “Antmony.” Oh course, it took me years to figure out antimony wasn’t antinomy.
Why didn’t you charge us to guess what you thought it was? Are you Anti-money?
Antimony was Coyote all along.
PLACE YOUR BETS: Police? Mob? Or police-under-mob’s-thumb?
Police but Sal’s gonna lean on Asher to fix Amber up without the ER/cops getting involved which is gonna bring the “Asher knows who Amazigirl” thing is to a head.
Or like, what is happening here will directly result in that being addressed because there’s a nonzero chance that Billie gets Sal’s ass arrested and Linda won’t even bother trying to hear her out. Basically, Asher abandons his heel face turn for good this time and embraces the heel and mob connections.
It all feels super unlikely, but it feels connected.
I think you are on the right track. Sal will ask Asher to help her friend Amber find an underground doc, but Asher knows Amber is Amazigirl who the mob wants, so he will be torn between helping Sal or betraying her again.
riot cop or proud boy or riot cop that’s a proud boy.
my bet is on a lawful abiding citizen working as the wrathful hand of god. I’m not saying that Mary is the culprit, but i want to know where she is hidding the smoking gun.
I’ll wager thirty quatloos on Return of the Ghost of the Evil Dads!
I put 10 quatloos on Taylor/Tyler. Violent goons have upgraded.
First cops, then while she was already injured, Incelerator took a cheap shot, but she still kicked his ass to the curb before wandering off with a concussion and bleeding head wound.
Superbly done and superbly drawn, Willis. Right in the feels, right in the pull you up short.
Well shit. I don’t like where this is headed. I generally like people named Amber!
I’ve never been at a big protest.
But I can only assume that night sticks HURT.
Yeah, people lost their shit over the whips South African police used (sjamboks, saith Wikipedia), but I’d rather get hit by one of them than by a hard rubber club with a steel core. I’d rather get cut by a whip than have my bones crushed.
At least skin is easy to mend, and you can get s cool scar out of the deal.
Oooo! ✨ Ending the book with a violence-mystery! I like it ^^
Hardly a mystery, even Amazigirl would be hard pressed to take on a horde of militarized cops and get away unscathed
Not much of a mystery. Seems like AG got shot at and winged by one of those snipers Dorothy and Jocelyne mentioned. The bigger question is “how do we keep this bullet hole quiet”
So I succumbed to temptation and Patreon for the month so I already saw this. Was gonna repeat my reaction but it didn’t feel right.
I will say… are any of you here who critiqued this plot on how it felt unrealistic that Amazigirl got away unscathed?
Tell me. Do you feel better now?
Right? There, she’s wounded enough that she had to have her best friend Sal come rescue her because she couldn’t get home under her own power and it’s freezing out. Are y’all happy about this?
There were people who critiqued Amazigirl getting away unscathed? I thought everyone was just arguing about Joyce and Dorothy.
There were some while the whole protest was going on, and then a few “making up a guy to get mad at” about how IF she gets away unscathed the comics bad. Well that guys not real so good for them
I hated those arguments. Yeah it was unrealistic, but I love Amazigirl lol. I hate cheating, I like my superheroes, somebody fix her. She and Amber are my two favorite characters. She doesn’t need to face consequences for her actions, she’s perfect
It had to happen sometime, it’s kind of been set-up that getting back into the “super hero” stuff is going to turn out poorly for AG. Attacking a bunch of riot police, with far-right extremist groups probably nearby makes it more likely to be now.
I’m much more interested in this than I am in any Joyce/Dorothy cheating shenanigans, at the very least.
👍This right here.
I mean, the tonal whiplash is a bit jarring, but yeah, seeing AmaziAmber finally get consequences for her stupid decisions is pretty great to see.
What, did you expect me to feel all sorry for her? Nah. I mean, it sucks that she had to learn this way, but maybe she’ll stop being so reckless now and find a healthy outlet for her rage. Like maybe the Roller Derby plot that Willis seemingly shelved.
She’s not real, idiot.
Like, sure, a real person might learn to stop fighting armed thugs, but do you really think a costumed crimefighter is gonna have any response besides “I will fucking increase the fucking thing”? When does that ever happen? They recover from their injuries and then dedicate their time to getting better at fighting armed thugs. What the fuck kind of comic reader expects the costumed hero to do the “healthy” thing and stop knocking out cops and rapists (which is a tautology, I know), instead of bringing a weapon of her own next time? The lack of genre savvy is unbelievable.
Reminds me of Spider-Liv (an alternate universe Doctor Octopus who takes on the Spider-Man role and ends up having an even more difficult time than most Spider-People), who at one point loses an arm with horribly realistic consequences… and, instead of retiring, makes a high-tech yet imperfect replacement and gets back to superheroing through the constant pain. She’s still dealing with it in the third part of the (currently on hiatus) trilogy.
Starts at https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/spider-liv-olivia-octavius-au-quest.53960/ for anyone who’s curious. It’s not a happy story, but not a hopeless one either.
It’s a well-documented phenomenon, really. Get your ass kicked in round 1? Well, round 2 is gonna feature some new moves. Now, maybe it was a bit much to call Tricia an idiot, maybe they just don’t take in much superhero media and are expecting/wanting things to go more in the slice-of-life teen drama direction like most of the other cast. Amber and Amazi-Girl, though, they don’t always operate in the same genre, and especially whenever Amazi-Girl gets involved, things start to get Weird™ to accommodate. She doesn’t quite fit with the other characters, and that’s a really interesting dynamic to me.
If your counter to Tricia is “she’s not real” (also please refrain from insulting other posters), then that’s also the counter “are y’all happy about this” – she’s not real for us to care about it that way, either.
Okay.
Completely neutral counterpoint: If you dive into the comments to make sure everyone knows you’re relishing in cop violence against one of the protagonists, maybe you should get called an idiot
Like normally I think “no genuinely personal attacks” is a good barometer but uh, there are exceptions
Who said I was relishing in the violence? I’m just glad that this theoretically opens up a potential avenue for character development for AmaziAmber. I’ve found her to be extremely stale lately, and a change would be interesting.
This also almost certainly wasn’t the cops. She’d be in a jail cell or handcuffed to a hospital bed if this was the cops.
The way you couched that in your initial reply was extremely weird and came off like you were extremely jazzed about it.
…are the police known for bringing victims of their brutality to the hospital? That was not my impression. But then, most of the incidents I’ve heard about just ended in death.
Also you called it “AmaziAmber finally get[ting] consequences”, then added, “What, did you expect me to feel sorry for her? Nah,” so. The “sucks that she had to learn this way” (learn what?) didn’t come across as particularly sincere.
Also, while you might be convinced these injuries are unrelated to what we saw earlier, the fact remains that Amazi-Girl’s most recent “stupid decision” was defending Joyce from police violence.
So. You know. The optics on your comment aren’t great.
Kind of. Mostly.
Even the ones who die generally get brought somewhere.
There are certainly cases where they rough someone up and don’t arrest them, but those don’t get the publicity of the deaths. Nor do the cases where they do hurt someone while arresting them (or after), but don’t actually kill.
A case like this though? Not a chance they’d let someone who’d been beating up cops like AG was go if she didn’t actually get away on her own. And the way she was fighting, basically anything they did to her could easily be justified, unless there was hard evidence it only happened after she was restrained in custody.
Hey are you also “least_rectangles” anywhere, Tricia? Asking completely neutrally.
Nope
Okay, good.
I don’t think “completely neutrally” means what you think it means.
I wasn’t saying it, but I mean, yeah. I kind of feel better that the protest had an effect on the characters instead of being set dressing for the Big Kiss.
Not agreeing with the “All women must be violently punished for acting like characters!!!!1!!1!” crowd, mind you. I’m happy about my thing and that’s it.
“Do you feel better now?”
This comes as kinda weirdly aggressive? Like, as if AmaziGirl is a real person and you feel like people’s criticism mean an actual person got hurt or killed, rather than simply being another element of a story’s convolution and development and drama.
Like, yes, I *am* glad this happened, because it’s interesting and it will challenge the characters and they’ll have to overcome this new difficulty, and that will give them chances to rise to the occasion and reveal their character, which, like, rules? It’s one of the things I read stories for.
Why do you read them?
Like, as Nabokov said, and JMS quoted: “The writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.”
Okay, it’s tin foil hat time.
Amber and Amazi-Girl are Hurt™ right now.
Dorothy is cheating on Wally, with plans to break up with him.
Walky and Amber are obviously into each other.
What if, after Dorothy dumps him, he ends up going to Amber’s to hang out and do nothing together, only to learn she’s been injured. Being a decent guy whose conscience is growing some lately, he decides to help her coalesce. At some point, the whole Florence Nightingale thing kicks in and they become An Official Couple™. Hurt/Comfort in the most direct way?
That sounds adorable, but I can’t picture Walky really nursing someone back to health.
But I’ll root for the return of Garbage Skow any way it can!
For sure, I don’t see him sitting on her bed with her, feeding her spoonfuls of Tylenol Jell-O. Gaming with her while she recovers, sharing his chicken nuggets, walking with her to and from class though, I could see it
In all honesty, I COULD see him feeding her spoonfuls of jello. He strikes me as the kind of guy who’d figure out how to step up for his friends, just not the kind of guy who goes looking for an opportunity to do so.
Walky has an enormous heart he hides under his layer of ADHD dipshit armor and he would bring over Tylenol JELL-O while trying to play it off as “look I figger this way you get the painkiller AN’ the sweets, it’s win-win, I’m a genius fer comin’ up with it.”
In another universe Walky sat by Joyce until she woke up.
Guess we have to go to slipshine to watch them coalesce…
Worst day to be Joe.
You lost your girlfriend and you are losing your sister
If Joyce gave him a blowjob out of guilt for the blanket, what’s the guilt ridden equivalent sex act for “sorry I cheated while your sister was bleeding out”
Threesome.
“That’s your answer to everything!“
It’s a good answer.
Worse day to be Amber, tbh.
Dying of a gut wound.
Don’t worry! Willis said that no one would die in this comic! Just ask our good buddy Mike! He’s still doing moms for a nickel just off screen.
(I’m joking cause I’m getting hella Mike flashbacks. I hope Amber is okay)
Next chapter, in all the Dorothy strips there’s A M B E R hidden in the backgrounds.
We never saw a body. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
(I do hope Amber isn’t too seriously hurt, though.)
“Doing moms for a nickel”…as in, he pays them a nickel? Or they pay _him_ a nickel? Mike’s employment status in this gig(olo) economy?
Amber knows her memes, so she’s familiar with the joke that neurodivergent people often say “OW!” when something doesn’t even hurt but barely notice when a finger comes half off.
She’s split the difference here, wreaking havoc with internet savvy.
Those are different people. Some are more sensitive than usual, others less.
For all that I’ve been both those people, I can’t disagree; “neurodivergent” is a category like “people not from Ohio”. There are a lot of other places to be, and a lot of other minds to have.
The classic categories of neurodivergence: ADHD, anxiety, schizophrenia, Ohio Citizenship, autism, and dyslexia. It’s all on the tapestry.
Obviously not all neurodivergent people are the same, but the “saying ow when it barely hurts and ignoring serious injuries” is actually a thing.
so, the Chekhov’s Gun was really there
Where’s the poll option for “I want everyone involved in any romance slightly connected to anything to make the worst decision available.”?
Tomorrow a new poll, and that’s the ONLY option.
WHY AREN’T WE TALKING ABOUT THE NEW POLL?
Honestly I love that Willis did this. The world needs more nuance.
yeah, I admire his commitment >.<
Willis has been committed?
Makes me think of that as like an act someone could do, like “You have committed David Willis. What say you in your defense?”
Aggravated Willising!
Assault with a deadly Willis
Yeah, 15 years ago. Part of his therapy is doing this DoA comic.
I’m loving the new poll but the “body horror manifesto” and “kill jakey” options don’t mean anything to me. Am I missing a reference?
I don’t understand the jakey thing at all but I think the body horror thing is a reference to people in the comments maybe expressing their revenge fantasies toward these two? Except I haven’t seen anything that would qualify as body horror in that regard.
I was assuming incel manifesto over how women are evil for denying men their bodies, by being sapphic, therefore desiring them bodily harm as punishment
I keep wanting to make a comment about how it’s still not nuanced enough but I haven’t found a funny enough way to phrase that.
WILLIS YOU MONSTER
I believe the accepted phraseology is “Damn you, Willis!” while shaking your fist at the screen. (Or in the general direction of Indiana, if you can find it)
Dag NABBIT Willis
at least she’s conscious and free
What the heck did get into, AZ
Also thank you for the More Nuanced ™ poll, Willis.
So I guess the reports that Amazi-Girl successfully escaped were wrong then. Or something else happened to her after she got away from the cops and the protest area.
I mean, “escaped” doesn’t necessarily mean “unharmed”
I was assuming “successfully escaped” meant she got away without any serious injuries, but I guess not.
the only person she gives interviews to is Dorothy, so whoever reported it wouldn’t necessarily know all AG’s injuries.
“Successfully escaped” means “not in police custody or the morgue”, as opposed to a failure to escape.
You are perhaps thinking of “safely escaped” or “escaped unharmed”
There’s “escaped unharmed” and then there’s “escaped while successfully faking being unharmed, at least untiil getting out of sight”
There was another post upthread that theorized a post-protest encounter/stabbing involving Incelerator, and the fact she’s only apparently bleeding from one side does tend to imply she wasn’t shot.
Amber is so me (checking twitter after getting shot cause I’m bored waiting for medical attention)
Dang, DashWallkick!
I am so sorry you got shot. I am so sorry that happened to you.
I hope you are doing much better now.
🎵Lets Do The Time Warp Agaaaaain🎵
Amazi-Amber can’t be defeated.
Wtf. This storyline started so nice with more Jocelyn time.
heck
It’s certainly not great, but it could be worse… she could’ve been in that shape while also in a jail cell. Or, you know, dead.
Probably wouldn’t be in a jail cell then, but a guarded hospital bed. Which, depending on how bad this really is, might be better or worse.
Anton Chekhov strikes again
I gotta know who tf Jakey is.
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=i+hope+jakey+dies
He’s… a broken captcha? I’m cool with his death.
Oh, damn it. I was trying to be mildly sassy while also still giving a real answer. Can’t fuckin’ trust third-party tools these days.
Google is also super broken these days. Gotta pass a parameter to make it even slightly functional.
Ah, it’s Joe!
That poll: also to be read in the voice of Professor Hulk as he points to chalkboard diagrams.
Love when a superhero barely gets away in a bloody injured mess
Best spider-man Batman stuff right there
…and in the Time of Cholera, to boot!
Oh, sorry… were you using “Love” as a verb, as in, “I love it” rather than as a noun, as in, “Dorothy and Joyce are expressing their love”?
Sorry, I misread you.
Not to mention the part where she reached out to Sal and Sal came for her ❤️
Sal is now officially her sidekick
Sal shares with Walky that characteristic of “I will do the right thing when given the opportunity, but I’m not seeking those opportunities out because I’m working through my own shit.”
Well that’s not good.
Well, damn. I thought if anyone would be gutted at the end of the arc it’d be Joe.
Oh that’s definitely blood, the big question is, was it the cops? Or did it happen after she escaped the protest.
Oh, like because she’s got her organs are outside of her body, like where they’re not supposed to be.
Welp, looks like Amber fought the law and the law won…
Amazi-Girl fought the law and now Amber has to deal with the blowback. Really kinda rude of her.
I always fail to remember that Amber doesn’t want to fight crime; instead AG wants to fight crime, and in the process is destroying a body she’s sharing.
I forget about that sometimes, too. AG at least tries to only attack violent threats, but Amber can’t really be trusted not to just attack whoever’s in her focus when she gets aggressive. And then she goes and eats garbage and jacks off all day, instead of working out or having a salad. They really need to sort some things out.
Jills off*
On the other hand, Amber never eats that broccoli, so, you know, they’re both inconsiderate of each other.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-15/01-love-dares-you-to-change/broccoli-2/
She really oughta eat some damn vegetables. Fuckin’ Internet nerds and their intentional malnutrition.
Well, this bodes poorly.
Fingers crossed for the storyline where Sal and Danny nurse Amber back to health and become a throuple
Dang it, stop making me want things that will (probably) never happen! XD
I thought Dorothy/Joyce would never happen, so we must stay hopeful!
Ah, you speak truth. Forgive my momentary lack of faith, comrade.
Danny will need to hit the gym and work on his stamina to keep up with his super-girlfriends XD
No he will NOT, Sal and Amber DEMAND to be railed by a cute twink
(Or to peg said cute twink, we know Ambs is almost certainly 100% into that)
Oh wait you said work on his stamina. Yeah, that. That tracks.
Endurance training, like running, should probably keep him nice and lean XD
Well that was a Category 5 gut-punch… well played (and as is tradition, DYW.)
Did she get shot after all?
I don’t think so, that’s no much blood
I’d disagree, she’s been crawling through the forest, her costume is covered in blood, she definitely took whatever measures she could to stem the bleeding and yet she is laying in a small pool of her own blood and on the verge of losing consciousness. That definitely looks like severe blood loss.
And she’s in so much trouble that she had to call for help. She is very badly injured and will need to go to a first aid unit at the very least, possibly surgery.
Assuming she can or is willing to, you can bet that cops will be on a lookout for someone with these kinds of injuries going to a hospital.
Split the difference — it looks like a lot of blood loss, but with no obvious exit wound I suspect something other than a gunshot.
Stab or Slash, yeah, but then again it’s not always a guarantee that a bullet leaves the body. Which would make the situation So much more complicated.
Especially with crowd control rounds in play—lower velocity, intended to be “less lethal”, etc.
Rubber rounds will fuck you up or even kill you, but a real bullet would be the more dramatic option, and present the most complications.
Counterpoint: bullets don’t always go all the way through people.
Depending on the weapon and ammunition used, a bullet is more or less likely to fully penetrate a person. A sniper rifle is more likely to pass through, whereas a typical police sidearm is relatively more likely to embed a bullet. Amber’s wound appears to be in her abdomen, not a great place for a bullet to be, but survivable if the bullet is extracted and the wound cauterized.
And like! I’m definitely not saying I think she was shot. I think the most likely scenario here is that she was in rough shape when she escaped the police and then she ran afoul of some of the guys we know are still holding a grudge…
Maybe she slipped into like a public bathroom to change out of her costume and they saw her going in and then jumped her as she came out with like a baseball bat.
But we are definitely supposed to be wondering! There are disparate puzzle pieces here, and one other possibility is that she DID get some type of serious gut injury while fighting the cops, and then adrenaline got her away from the protest scene seemingly fine, and it wasn’t until a while later that the adrenaline ran out and everything caught up with her at once and she collapsed 🤔
Also bless all of us with our tin foil hats here going over the panel with our magnifying glass, like it’s a real crime scene photo, and neither the distance nor the angle nor Willis’s art style could possibly be obscuring things like blue lips. X3
Whoever injured her likely did so while she was still in costume. Others in the comments section have pointed out that her costume is bloody probably indicating that she was injured in costume, managed to fight off or lose whoever injured her, and then changed into her civies.
She definitely put up a fight, not sure if against cops or her assailants, both her head and her knuckles are bloodied.
Given she’s out here, and not arrested or tied up or anything, my suspicion is on “Pyrrhic victory” for whatever she was up to immediately prior to this.
@Proxiehunter: full devil’s advocate mode, maybe she got beat up while in costume enough to bloody it and the. Also got stabbed(?) separately!
(I doubt it, bc this is a drawing not a photo, and the detail of the costume spilling out covered in blood is there to tell us the stab(?) wound happened before she changed.)
Possibly minor nit: She hasn’t been crawling. That is, if you magnify and look carefully behind Amber, there are footprints and blood droplets, not drag marks and blood smears. So she was walking (probably staggering) while bleeding, and then collapsed, before texting Sal.
Oh you are right, I missed that
Or maybe she collapsed and then texted Sal 🤔 but either way, good eye. 🙂
Sal is young enough that she doesn’t known she’s quoting Shrek and Willis knew that Amber’s sorry state would distract everyone else, but its so blatant that I really don’t want to let him get away with it.
That’s it, that’s the tweet
Thank you for your service.
I do what I can to keep the Damn you, Willis! grounded x
If there’s one character I believe wouldn’t have seen Shrek, it’s Sal.
100%
I dunno, she spent the first 13 years of her life growing up next to Walky. I can see her being dragged into a Shrek screening for like, family movie night or something.
Oh this is a good point and also I love the idea of Young Sal first experiencing Leonard Cohen through it
Is Sal secretly a Shrek guy???
DAMN YOU WILLIS.
Yam Don is Will
U make this?
The option closest to my actual opinion is “probably bad but more importantly amusing.”
Cheating is bad but this is a work of fiction. I care less about whether or not characters are moral than I do about whether they do things which create or maintain narrative conflict or tension.
Idk, I read in a few of the previous threads that by not condoning the fictional cheating, you’re actually a dirty cheater who loves real life cheating. (Obv not sincere)
Yaaay, more girls who will smooch!
?????
It means now Sal and Amber will get together and start smooching. Joyce and Dorothy is wholesome yuri, this will be toxic yuri.
Counter: if Danny = Egg becomes prophetic, it can be a wholesome yuri triad and Joyce/Dorothy can safely become toxic yuri. 😀
Dumbing of Age ending in the biggest polycule ever.
Amazi-Girl and Sal in the same place at the same time? I must be hallucinating
See, a common misconception. Jennifer would see the tag as “Amber” and knows that Sal would keep her identity as Amazi-girl secret from the readers. Sal is the most clever superhero
Hallucination theory?
Maybe Amber is hallucinating Sal finding her via cryptic messages, when what she actually sent was total gibberish.
Maybe Sal is hallucinating Amber bleeding in the snow, when Amber is secretly right behind her with a steel chair.
While I’m going insane, maybe Amazi-Girl didn’t take much damage from the cops at all and her wounds are from Asma beating her ass with those bolt cutters.
No, it’s fine. Totally explainable. Amber is just talking to herself, imagining her alt Sal coming to the rescue of her base Amber, since her alt Amazi-Girl is unavailable right now (for whatever reason). Totally normal.
I am genuinely happy, and I mean this without snark, to see that while we are deeply divided on interpersonal behaviors and infidelity and shit, we can all generally agree: FUCK the police
(Do not sexually fuck the police)
Same. I buried this in the comment thread yesterday, too, but while we had a pretty acrimonious discussion yesterday I nonetheless wanted to point out that I appreciate your taste in Space RTS universes — it’s rare to see an ostentatious Homeworlder in the wild. (lucky cash flow timing means I have both Mothership models on my desk, that’s the kinda fan I am.)
Yeah I put it in yesterday’s comments and I want to say here too that I apologize for definitely arguing with you by proxy and getting heated. That was rude. If I was gonna keep that convo going I should have stopped with my definition of the Scarlet Letter In The Comments phenomenon because that was meant much more generally, but I got mad and acted a fool.
Also hahaha damn, extremely cool! I am jelly, I do not have rad merch, just a great love of Homeworld 1 and 2 (I gotta try this 3 that apparently is now a thing, and maybe Deserts) and Makaan’s silky voice.
This is nice to see ❤️
Peace and love on planet earth and all that!
3 is so very, very good. Deserts is a different cup of tea, given that it confines you to a 2d environment (although I much prefer the way it handles fighters/bombers/strikecraft, in all honesty).
Nonetheless, I recommend them both!
(I might actually have a spare HW3 key kicking around from a bundle, but I need to quiz my discord to see if anyone picked it up out of the “Free keys” channel and didn’t tell me)
It’s a shame that Cataclysm is apparently lost to us…
Re: the poll: the literal title of the strip is Dumbing of Age. People are going to be immature and they are going to do stupid things. They are all growing up and learning new sides of themselves and trying new things and hurting each other. I don’t get how people are this genuinely upset about some fictional teenagers doing teenager shit.
Anyway, I’m simultaneously happy for Joyce and Dorothy and sad for Joe, who seems to be genuinely growing as a person thanks to his love for Joyce. He’s getting fucked over here through no fault of his own. It’s normal to have multiple feelings about things, even conflicting ones! It’s good for you.
Walky can jump in a lake.
I almost missed the part about the poll. People, please look at the part about the poll before you reply. This post is valid, because of the poll.
(I say this like anyone else would be me and almost make smart remarks re: the content of today’s strip, featuring a cop-brutalized Ambs, in implied opposition to opinions I actually somewhat agree with.)
Really weird how everyone seems to be the least concerned about how Walky feels about him and how he seems to be a constant afterthought in discussions of this plotline
Wonder what’s up with that
About this*
Lotta folks are put off by Walky’s devil-may-care front that he puts up to hide his real issues behind, largely because it renders him unable to do the right thing occasionally (see also: his lackluster response to his parents being racist at Lucy).
I have been guilty of this behavior and I want to stress I do not agree Walky can go jump anywhere, but I am the least concerned about his personal Great Infidelity Fallout Reaction because:
-it has been hinted very very much that he and Amber will get back together, both here and on both Patreons
-Walky and Dorothy’s rebound relationship is not healthy for them and neither one of them are actually committed to it, they are involved right now for the wrong reasons—I think they’ll always be special to one another but this is not the good, solid romance of the first books
-as someone with ADHD it is excruciating to see how much our boy feels like he has to mask, and while he doesn’t have to mask with Dorothy the way he did with Lucy, he hasn’t had a break, really, either
-what Big Z said except filtered through the lens of relatable cringe, seeing old sins in him, that whole deal
I’m definitely on board with “Dorothy x Walky being a bad pairing for both of them”, since Dorothy needs someone to help stop her spiral and Walky, frankly, needs someone to drill past his armor just a little and get him more engaged.
Walky’s already also pretty high on my “I suspect he already knows his relationship is not actually functional, and he was okay with that” list — I almost see him as trying to avoid any kind of real relationship on the grounds that a serious partner would start trying to get past his front…and there have been several indications that the front is psychologically load-bearing in that he’s keeping HIMSELF from worrying about himself, too.
Yeah, like. I saw at least one person say “Dorothy is using him as a dildo”, and first of all yeesh, but second of all I think Walky was very much on board for “sex with a friend I still think is very pretty to make her feel better” and isn’t being used as much as “willingly presented himself as a distraction”.
I’m just not sure, so far, if I think he’s doing it because he wants to feel useful and sex is nice, or as almost a form of self-harm as in “despite what Dorothy said, no; I do not deserve a relationship with someone who can give me their whole heart — I barely even deserve this.”
Either way, I think WALKY seems more cognizant of being Dorothy’s quasi-rebound than Dorothy is of using him that way. I think she’ll be quick to accuse herself of it, but I doubt she was self-aware enough of where she was in her spiral, and I definitely don’t think she knew she was trying not to face up to her feelings for Joyce, because I don’t think she knew they were there until Joe confronted her.
I’m team “it’s possible for people to treat each other badly by accident”, where it sucks that this is happening to Walky, but I still don’t think it’s something Dorothy is doing to him on purpose.
See, I swear I have reasons for not being as worried about Walky
(like I don’t think he’s actually seemed happy to be dating Dorothy, and I think he might just be waiting to be dumped — this might even be a case where hearing he’s being dumped for Joyce is an irrational relief, like, “see, it’s not that I did something wrong this time, I’m just not a woman”)
(I also think he’s the only one of the people involved to express unambiguous interest in polyamory, except of course he was probably at least half-joking so “unambiguous” is the wrong word, but I’m less sure Dorothy wants to keep dating Walky than I am that Joyce wants to keep dating Joe, if that makes sense)
buuuuuuuuuut, he sure is the brownest of the four, and I can’t ignore that that might also be a subconscious factor, even for me. :/ :/ Dang it, society.
I do not think Walky should do anything poly with Joyce, Joe, and Dorothy, because 1.) neither Walky nor Dorothy are healthy in the current relationship, 2.) Joyce and Walky cannot stand each other, 3.) Amber is who Walky can be his whole self with.
NOW. Yes. I am the filthy sicko who believes Dorothy and Joe should bury the hatchet and kiss and fuck along with Joe/Joyce and Joyce/Dorothy, and I will believe that forever even as Willis takes apart my ship with an angle grinder, and you may say, “but they hate each other too!”
And yes, BUT, Dorothy and Joe’s dislike is *rational*. It’s founded on issues. Joe was a huge asshole and sexist, he was very bad to Dorothy. Dorothy resents that. However, Joe is changing. Dorothy is changing. As unlikely as it seems by the day, Joe and Dorothy could mend that relationship with words and deeds.
Joyce VS Walky, on the other hand, is not rational. It’s vibes. It’s “there’s just something about you I fucking hate.” There’s a bunch of hovering attached reasons, sure, like with Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner, but at the end of the day it’s purely “man FUCK OFF, guy”. And that will not become a good romance, ever!
Finally, Amber: Amber is the person in Walky’s life he feels he never has to mask for. He never has to pretend anything. He never has to perform. Holy shit is that so important for an ADHD person.
This is either going to sound weird or absolutely the most understandable thing, but I think Amber and Walky have the most potential to accidentally start caring enough that they blow past each other’s respective psychological armor such that they can both start working on their issues a little more productively (or at all, depending on how you see their arcs thus far).
Surprise! It’s: The Most Understandable Thing, because yes, that is also what I believe, I absolutely see that happening and I will be incredibly here for it.
I’m actually not one of the people who thinks Dorothy still hates Joe. I think she had a lot of pent up angry (and also jealous) feelings, that she fully vented her spleen over them in their last conversation, and that they might now be able to be friends — except for the possibility that Joe hears about all of this and is hurt badly enough that he doesn’t want to see her or Joyce ever again.
On that note, I actually think Joyce’s angry feelings wrt Walky might also be significantly lessened now? It’s not the only thing he’s ever done to her (he was also super blunt about thinking Christianity is stupid with her), but how much of her “grr argh” at Walky was jealousy (and embarrassment and denial that he kept triggering by lampshading her crush)? I guess we’ll find out!
I do think there’s “Walky goes back to Amber” potential here, but the more rational side of me thinks Walky should ideally be single again for a while in a way where he doesn’t feel like “I have no girlfriend because I’m a screwup”, and ideally form some platonic friendships, because right now the only people in the comic who are his friends first and Joyce’s friends second are Jennifer and Sal, and both of them are……. shall we say, less than demonstrative of their affection for him.
But shipper gremlin who wants a big messy polycule says he dates Amber, Dorothy dates Amazi-Girl.
Which I’m much more on board for now that it’s not being championed alongside Dorothy/Jocelyne by a bunch of folks who were mostly way more invested in hooking Dorothy up with “literally anyone who isn’t Joyce, oh god please keep her away from Joyce” than they were in actually shipping her with either girl.
Oh, no, I didn’t think you were one of such commenters, I just wanted to be clear about why my dumb ass is so super convinced of “Joe, Joyce, Dorothy, full reciprocal throuple, final destination” and not adding a Walky into the mix. 😅
I think time alone and forming platonic bonds is probably in his future and kinda good for him, yeah, but the sparks between him and Amber, I am compelled by them.
And yeah, yeah that counter shipping was bad times. No bueno!
HOWEVER. Given that my ideal triad is probably dead in the water, have I introduced you to the Church of Joe/Jocelyne? Our central tenet is “but it would be so fucking funny and cute, though”.
Ha, that’s fair. I do see it as more of a hinge situation right now, but of course that could change (and even if I never feel differently, obviously you’re still valid for disagreeing).
I feel like the conversation between Walky and his dad about Amber, when neither she nor Lucy were around to impress, was foreshadowing more Amber/Walky in a big way. I also thought it was significant that he stood up for her immediately in a way he wasn’t able to do for Lucy, and of course that he went to her to “do nothing”.
(Also agreed on not having to mask being important. Something I think Dorothy and Lucy explicitly had in common was viewing Walky as a lil bit of a “fixer-upper”, and I genuinely don’t mean that as a knock on either girl, I blame society.
Devil’s advocating my own opinion: you could argue that maybe Amber and Walky would mutually encourage each other to stagnate, and I think the most ideal relationships are a mix, providing shelter when you need it and encouraging growth when you need that… but I also think it should “encouraging self-actualization”.
Support Walky learning how to develop a comfortable-enough Worksona, help him how to do household chores and then find an equitable split… those I think are just survival skills everyone needs! What no one needs is to have their whole wardrobe replaced with Business Casual Clothes and their interests “corrected” to something you consider more “age-appropriate”.
(Also bless Dorothy, she did try to make picking out clothes for each other fun and sexy……… again, I blame society lol.))
With Dorothy not seeing any reports of gunshots etc in earlier strips (“less lethal” rounds are still propelled by gunpowder and sound pretty similar, unless they’re using pepper-enhanced paintballs but that’s not gonna cause gut bleeding like “rubber bullets” and “beanbags”), I’m kinda leaning in the direction of “something else is happening here rather than just cop-on-vigilante violence”.
Especially because even the laziest donut-addicted campus cop is going to be able to follow THAT trail and cuff the person at the end of it.
Dang. Hm. That’s a decent point and Willis did drop that the gaggle of dipshits Blaine paid to be foot soldiers is still around via Incelerator, still holding a grudge against AG, this might be their work.
But it’s also possible the cops broke off pursuit; the job was to clear the encampment, which they did with gusto, and while they probably would like to get the person who was kicking their asses, they might have met quota, seen she was in the wind, and given up.
Third, wildcard possibility: we know the Incel Gang has a love of working security functions for nominally right-wing Congresswomen, so maybe they have a boy in uniform…
I kinda have enough faith in bad cops being bad in specific ways that I’d think they’re not gonna let a little thing like “orders” or “met quota already” stop them from especially punishing someone who had the utter gall to punch a cop.
Yeah, you’re right, they either really, really lost her lost her in the woods when she made her getaway, or this is Incel Gang shit. Fuck, man! Bad times either way.
It’s possible she was still in position to parkour away to the point that they lost her without a trail, which exacerbated existing wounds to the point she started leaving a trail. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug and like I said exerting herself to get away could easily make an open wound worse to the point she starts losing debilitating amounts of blood.
On a meta note, too, I think “Incel Guys” provide more room for Willis to work than “protest cops” just from the way that sections of the commentariat were (rightly) reacting negatively to the protest storyline.
It also occurs to me that this might just reframe/expand what the title of the first chapter in Book 16 is alluding to.
Oh yeah it’s definitely a double meaning.
Curse you, Paramore!!!
GOOD POINT.
Fingers crossed for everyone not enjoying the cheating that that means they’re gonna get caught or come clean prior to like two storylines from now…
ohhhh shit
Is this going to interrupt Dorothy’s plans for the night? Will Dorothy blame herself for not leaving the protest when asked.
This isn’t on Dorothy. Amazi-Girl got Joyce, Dorothy, and company out and then went back into the fray over their objections.
https://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/790650525327785984/im-sorry-this-is-probably-sound-like-a-troll-ass
Also for those who want it, Willis has now clearly addressed “did you ever say Joyce was straight”!
Also, as a bonus, on the topic of ships from the Walkyverse: https://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/790588512703545344/nothing-against-joyorathy-or-anything-but-the-way
Willis I am holding this as an ironclad oath you will not make Joe and Rachel happen. This is an OATH, WILLIS
MY TEETH, WILLIS. THEY HUNGER FOR SILICON SHOULD YOU BREAK YOUR WORD! Am I talking about my God-given chompers or a collection of lion gangs I happen to have fashioned into tools with which to destroy computer parts?? You don’t know! You CAN’T know! So why RISK IT??? Keep Rachel AWAYYYY from Mr. Rosenthal. Keep her FARRRRR AWAY.
🤣
They’ve also definitely noticed the interest in a big poly mess! Which doesn’t mean it’ll happen now in this year’s batch of strips but I am hopeful for something in the future.
Also FWIW I am actually really interested in Rachel and would like to see more of her the same way I wanna see more of Raidah. We’ve had similar slivers of “this character might have more going on” with both of them, and they’re both pretty, and I’m shallow.
But I promise not to ship her with Joe.
I admit I want to see what Rachel’s deal is, for sure! Like, she’s got such an absolutist view on this, that comes from somewhere deep and hurt, what happened there?? Did Ruth do more to her than we saw with the being a huge binch? Or was Rachel already as angry at people as she is now?
Oh shit
Did those couples ever discuss monogamy? I don’t remember it coming up. So I feel like the cheating pole is insufficiently detailed
It’s come up, but in a way where I could believe they’d had a miscommunication.
When Joyce was explaining “doing laundry” to Joe, she expressed anxiety that maybe masturbation was cheating on him, specifically saying she and Dorothy hadn’t “done laundry” again since she started dating Joe, “I have been faithful!”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/04-but-dont-give-yourself-away/cheating-2/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/04-but-dont-give-yourself-away/touchedmyself/
But it was so tangled up in masturbation that Joe’s only real response to this information was to tell her that that (masturbation) isn’t cheating. I kind of think HE must think Joyce was telling him about something that sounded much worse than it was…?
So, as a result, we have a statement from Joyce where she certainly seems to think they were exclusive, and Joe not arguing that they weren’t, but also not Joe specifically saying, “Okay, good, don’t do that with Dorothy again.”
I was genuinely wondering if maybe Joyce THOUGHT she was being told that Joe didn’t expect monogamy of her, but if she did, I think she wouldn’t have been so visibly guilty and sad when she was trying to psych herself up for confessing to Joe.
I would also expect Joe to be at least NOMINALLY okay with this (I think Joyce having feelings for Dorothy — citations to be added below, bc three links puts you in moderation >.>), but Willis did say they wanted to do a storyline with a relationship ending messily due to something like cheating… I guess that only technically requires one of the boys to dump their girlfriend, heh.
Citations for “I think Joyce having feelings for Dorothy won’t be a surprise”:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/04-for-me-it-was-tuesday/flush/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/04-for-me-it-was-tuesday/iloveyous/
Good thing I was gonna add a second comment anyway since I completely botched that sentence and it didn’t make sense in the original comment, l-lol.
My informed-by-talking-to-the-kids-these-days (I have a very queer teenager and a perpetual gaggle of new fraternity brothers) position is that these days, anyone using the terms “boyfriend/girlfriend” is implying monogamy/exclusivity, “dating” can go either way, and “situationship”/”FWB” are expressly non-exclusive.
Well, the answer to “did they discuss monogamy” is still no! I think it’s still clear from Joyce’s behavior that she thinks they’re monogamous, and and I think Joe thinks the same.
Oh, more of Joe specifically:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/01-everybodys-looking-for-nothing/philanderer/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/01-everybodys-looking-for-nothing/hard-2/
i was in a polyamourous relationship for several years and we referred to each other as girlfriend/boyfriend/etc. so i don’t think that’s really a good barometer LOL
This is not any insult to polyamory but monogamy is most certainly still the default relationship model in American society. Most people don’t have conversations about whether a relationship is going to be monogamous, for most people it is just assumed.
What Dot said — I’m poly myself, and for most people in the US polyamory still isn’t even on the radar. Maybe 5% of people tops will identify as willing to try it, last I heard, and much fewer than that have ever been in a poly relationship.
For the record, I’ll believe stats like that when it stops being so taboo. It’s like any other self-reported data about invisible traits against which there’s social stigma. Only 10% of people are gay, you say? Uh-huh. Get back to me when we no longer have people coming out in their 80s because they genuinely didn’t know there was even a word for their feelings.
To clarify — I don’t think that’s “the number of people inclined to poly in a world with no stigma”, I think it’s “a useful stat to clarify out WHY I think the mono assumptions hold until proven otherwise in today’s climate”.
I think the distinction Big Z describes really only applies as a default. As a rough measure of seriousness, with exclusivity linked to increasing seriousness.
If people are serious and have discussed polyamory, that’s a different thing.
In this case, the characters almost certainly haven’t agreed to be poly, certainly not on panel and they haven’t explicitly discussed being exclusive, so we’re left guessing based on what they have said about their relationship status. And really at this what they’ve said about how what they’re doing is cheating and they shouldn’t.
I don’t know, Amber is bleeding
And we thought they were all safe….
DAMN YOU WILLIS!!!!
(Also, it’s Amber at the moment…. that’s interesting)
Dammit. We should have known this would happen. Superman has Kryptonite, Martian Manhunter has fire, Green Lanterns are helpless against the color yellow. Somehow the cops have learned the one and only weakness Amazigirl is vulnerable to. Bullets.
Yeah, but Superman eventually developed immunity to kryptonite (in Kingdom Come) and Green Lanterns can learn to overcome their yellow problem. So what we need to do is find some way for Amazi-Girl to develop immunity to bullets. Only then shall her true power be unlocked!
once again I find myself favoring ranked choice as a method of voting
“Your gangrenous impudice bastards!! Your fucking God-banished disasters!! Pudic stinky vultures!!”
Me, cursing whoever did this to Amber as Captain Haddock.
Whiplash, thy name is Willis.
And Amazi-Girl lifted her hand, saying, “Save me!”
And Sal said, “No.”
Of all the DoA types to go full Rorschach, I put Sal in second.
amber: masturbates herself to sleep, leaves amazi-girl to deal with it
amazi-girl: gets shot, leaves amber to deal with it
lol