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Way to go. You just made us all sad. Again. After recovering from the Adventure Time episode, we became sad from the fact that Danny/Amber/Amazi-Sal blew it. After we got over that, we read your comment. Now we are infinitely stuck in a forever looping loop of sadness. Forever.
Big Futurama fan here and I can remember watching Jurassic Bark when it aired. I was sitting there thinking what a good episode it was and how I liked the character growth being shown by Fry.
And then I found myself choking up as the song started: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5peiLlHdvo
I got a feeling that theory may be put to the test once Amber, (what what was I thinking, AMBER DID EVERYTHING RIGHT) once Danni learns to see past seventy-five or so years of superhero comic convention.
I don’t know about that. For all his faults, all he did in this case was stay loyal. He has no idea that Amber is Amazigal, and if you had a friend who was constantly trying to pressure you into a relationship, while you were already sorta in one, what would do? Espesially if she kept doing it after you expressed your discomfort and desire for her to stop.
Of course, most people seem to think particularly poorly of Danny, even Willis, so maybe I’m missing something.
As has been said a million times already: ONLY DANNY HANGS OUT WITH BOTH AMBER AND AMAZIGIRL REPEATEDLY.
Ethan is assumed to know already because he mentioned seeing the paper which happened to have Amazigirl mentioned in it and it is possible Mike knows too.
Danny however, has seen both on a regular basis and hasn’t worked it out at all. All she does is put on a certain costume, ruffle up her hair a bit and put on a mask that only hides part of her face, not her entire face. If it was like Spiderman where it was a full costume with no facial features showing, it would be a lot more difficult, but it isn’t and her appearance has limited differences.
And as has been mentioned a million times: Dorothy has the tools to work it out, but she hasn’t had the time to work it out. She has been shown doing a lot of studying/homework and between that and Walky’s Walkyness, she likely hasn’t had the opportunity to research Amazigirl more. Plus, she has seen Amber what, twice? Would you assume the random person you met only once or twice was a superhero? Probably not, because there is no clear connection.
So we all agree: the ONLY thing that Danny has done is be unobservant. That is the only thing he’s done wrong – he has failed to dismiss the possibility that out of the hundreds of girls he hasn’t met, one of them might be Amazi-girl. Because if you meet one girl at college, then obviously the girl you randomly met is the only candidate for being the campus superhero you randomly met independently of her.
And yes, this failure to draw a connection means that he “fucked up massive” and is definitely more at fault for the situation for the girl who knew the situation the whole time and at no point has made a serious attempt to explain things to him – even when it was clear that it was that or massive emotional pain.
Yes, it’s all his fault. This makes perfect sense – because he’s satan. That is the entire explanation.
You have a point. You’d have more of a point if he hadn’t responded to this fact being pointed out by immediately trying to forge a deeper, more human relationship with Amazi-girl (while respecting her obvious desire to maintain a secret identity, of course). By your logic, this makes him a sensitive, receptive, rapidly emotionally maturing individual, who recognizes his flaws when they’re pointed out and works to correct them.
But don’t let that slow you down! Hate Danny! Hate Danny! Hate Danny! Yay! (He IS satan, after all.)
I am with you 100%. Anytime Danny comes up, all I see is a circlejerk of hatred. I guess it’s too much effort to attempt to understand that characters do not necessarily have all the knowledge the reader does, and cannot understand them on the same level.
Run the program on a computer. Keep going forward in time at increasingly large intervals until it ends on its own or the hardware gives out. Either way, it halted!
Well, if you want to get all *picky* about it, you could write a simple program that runs alongside the first program and keeps track of its entire state, noting any points where it exactly matches a prior state as being indicative of a non-halting program, and keeping track overall of repetition or patterned growth among a program that does not halt or exactly repeat. Then jumping a few million years in the future would almost certainly give you enough data to conclude with certainty one way or the other whether it will halt, at least with a close examination of the outputs. And if you’re still not sure, jump again.
Nope, that’s not a solution.
Take that program you just wrote, name it Halt.
Halt is also a program, and it takes two arguments – a program (with one argument) and its argument.
[For example, if P(X)=Halt(X,X), you can check Halt(P,P), as an aside.]
But the real trick is that you can have a program P(X) that does: if Halt(X,X) then loop forever, else halt(and “return true”).
What happens when you run P(P)?
If P(P) halts, then P(P) doesn’t halt.
If P(P) doesn’t halt (then *your* halt program itself halted and returned false), then P(P) halts immediately.
It doesn’t matter how far in the future you jump. In fact, you yourself put in a “if you are not sure yet, jump more forward”m which is potentially an infinite loop, which makes your program not-a-solution (to be a solution, it must actually halt itself for all possible inputs).
It’s unsolvable *because it doesn’t have a solution*.
What you might not have gotten about this is, halting problem is not a “if you solve it for most practical purposes, you have a solution”. It’s a “is it possible to solve this without exceptions” question.
She ended up dying anyway, though, so when you think about it, the fixed point still happened. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t just take her away from that time period, she would still have disappeared, so the historical events caused by her disappearance would still have happened. And for that matter why not cook up a clone body for Rose’s dad? It seems like a lot of “fixed point” issues could be mitigated by faking people’s deaths.
Danny doesn’t get a happy ending until he earns one. And to do that, he has to become conscious of all the things that he does that makes him such an asshat and take steps to mitigate them.
We’re still waiting for that first epiphany. We suspect that we’ll be waiting a very, very, very long time.
Didn’t he make the best possible decision though? He appeased Amber to get her away from her dad, and then told her he couldn’t continue with her because to him, he’s with someone else.
Dude’s kinda dumb, but he’s a pretty good guy. I’m honestly surprised we haven’t seen him creeping over Dorothy or mad that she dumped him because she didn’t want to be with anyone, then got with someone else in the next week. Again, I got props for Danny.
Part of what makes Danny such a hate magnet is that even when he does the right thing, he does it in the worst possible way. And he didn’t appease Amber to get her away from her dad. Danny was far too deep in his miserable naval-gazing to notice anything going on around him. Danny accepted Amber’s help to cover for him, in the most ungrateful and put-upon way possible, and then did nothing to help support the ruse that he had agreed to. Then when it came time for the ruse to end, he did not thank her, nor did he disengage with any grace. Instead he told her in the most rude and curt way possible that he never wanted to be around her ever again.
Danny is a tool. A squishy, shapeless tool. He doesn’t have a clue how to interact with other human beings, despite all his lofty pretensions to high moral and ethical standards. All those honorable intentions will never be realized because he cannot grasp Interaction 101–whose first lesson is “Treat others like they are people who have feelings that should be respected.”
So, basically, the same lesson that virtually every character in the comic needs to learn, and especially the one they exploit out of him the most.
Give me a break. Amber pressured him into violating some of his deeper principles, and he still didn’t explode at her like pretty much…yep, every other character except Dina has in one situation or another. Hell, even Dorothy exploded at him for merely suggesting the possibility she might fail, and could still manage to (in his mind) be happy. He’s been wrong, but he’s not the monster you keep painting him as.
Got to say I agree. When he does “the right thing” it isn’t the thing that will hurt people least, it’s the thing that will fit best with his own view of himself as a “nice guy”. He realised, talking to his parents, that Amber was a wonderful person who deserved his love. He knows (surely?) that Amazigirl is a fantasy that he can have fun with, but shouldn’t take seriously. Instead of thinking “who will be hurt most if I stop seeing them?” he thought “how can I keep to the nice-guy code?”
…what, you’re obligated to dump your perfectly nice girlfriend if you find someone nicer?
Do you realize how fucked up that sounds?
And judging by the immediately following comics, he realized Amber -was- a “wonderful person”. Who (as recognized even by Mike and Amber herself) was currently emotionally bullying him into violating his principles.
But yeah, no, he’s the bastard, and Amber’s a pure spotless angel.
Amazi-girl isn’t a “perfectly nice girlfriend” she’s a fantasy. As Amber said, she isn’t a real person who you can love. Danny is so caught up in his comic-book fantasy that he doesn’t care about who the real girl behind the mask is.
His “principles” are complete bullshit: he just wants to be able to tell himself that he’s doing the right thing, when really he’s avoiding a difficult break-up.
I don’t think Amber’s a “pure spotless angel”, I think she’s pretty mixed up. But at least she doesn’t lie to herself about it.
Give it up – haters gotta hate, even if that requires them to ignore more and more reality to justify their rage. Nothing as petty as facts can turn them from this path.
“He knows (surely?) that Amazigirl is a fantasy that he can have fun with, but shouldn’t take seriously. ” – this is kind of ridiculous. He obviously knows that there is a girl behind the mask, even if he doesn’t know who. And based on what he knows there is no reason he should trust what Amber says about her “not being a whole person”.
Cover up for him? He didn’t want her there, and the first thing that he did was drag her aside and demand an explanation, which she didn’t give, but wheedled him into taking her along anyway. And he was uncomfortable about the situation for the entire time afterward.
You need to take off your hate-goggles and face the facts: anybody who thinks that Danny was selfish and self-absorbed in that scene only accomplishes this by being so selfish and self-absorbed that they dismiss and deny reality to perpetuate their delusion.
I’d say Danny’s horrible choice is getting involved with someone and refusing to find out who she actually is.
In a normal webcomic we could brush off him not being able to tell that Amazi-Girl is Amber but Willis draws the characters with such distict body types it should be obvious to someone who has spent so much time with both of them. People like Billie and Dorothy haven’t spent much tiem around one of them, let alone both so we can cut them some slack but Danny? He’s willfully ignorant and that makes him much less sympathetic than he should be.
Well, I feel like Willis is employing that age-old comic book device that allows a piece of felt over your eyes to COMPLETELY hide your identity (or if you’re Superman and just that epic, your forelock of hair will do it) So I don’t think we can contest the whole “He should recognize her” thing. Otherwise we’d have to hate quite a few superhero comics out there (although not the Flash, thank God)
Exactly. I get the feeling that it’s a lot harder to tell in-universe. Heck, Dina lives with her and hasn’t figured it out, and nobody calls her “willfully ignorant.”
They’ve never been tagged in the same strip, but I believe Dina was watching from off-panel when Amazi-Girl spirited Billie away from the fight with Ruth. She was evidently watching the fight before that.
You have evidence that Dina hasn’t figured it out?
‘Cause I don’t think anyone’s asked her, or even brought it up around her, and it’s totally in character for her to have recognized Amber the first (and, I think, only) time she saw her in costume, and just never mentioned it because she thinks that everyone else finds it equally obvious and doesn’t realize that her roommate being a masked vigilante is unusual or worthy of comment.
There’s no in-canon evidence either way. And I’ll admit that if anyone in this comic wouldn’t consider someone being a masked vigilante to be at all important, it would be Dina. Just pointing out that it’s not immediately obvious to everyone but Danny that Amazi-Girl=Amber. It annoys me when people continuously rag on Danny for not knowing things that it’s perfectly reasonable for him not to know.
I’ve said this so many times that I’ve gotten tired of saying it, but Danny is the only person in the comic who has had significant contact with Amber in both her guises. Most of the rest (Dina being the main exception) haven’t even met Amber more than briefly, because she spends most of her non-vigilante time in class or holed up in her room, and everyone else has seen Amazi-Girl only briefly, in stressful situations like the middle of a fight or while dealing with the aftermath of attempted rape. Danny, on the other hand, has sat and talked with Amazi-Girl, has played video games with her, has helped her with her work, has friggin’ made out with her, and has been in class with Amber, has eaten lunch with her, has sat and talked with her, has taken her on a pizza date to meet his parents and had her cuddled against his side.
And he doesn’t fucking recognize her. There’s enough deconstruction going on with Amber’s personae that I don’t buy the Clark Kent trope here. Danny doesn’t know because he doesn’t want to know, because he cares about his Lois Lane fantasy more than he cares about Amber in either guise.
(I’m excepting Ethan and Mike here, because it’s not clear how much contact they might have had with Amazi-Girl before college – and Ethan, at least, knows. There’s no evidence either way for Mike, but he seems to know everything.)
I am seriously considering committing this comment to a series of plaques, which I will then personally send to each person insisting that DoA operates under Silver Age comic rules when it is clearly deconstructing those tropes.
Remember when Marvel first spun off Wolverine into his own book? He put on an eye patch, moved to some southeast Asian shithole where he apparently had a history, and started calling himself “Patch.”
Riiiiiggght.
Then John Byrne took over the book, said “bullshit,” and here was the old orange and brown costume again. Almost every supporting character in the book reacted the same way: “Oh, good. Now I can stop pretending I don’t know you’re Wolverine.”
At one point he expressed some irritation that everyone just played along with the most lame-ass thing he’d ever done. One of the characters, I forget which, told him, “Hey, when a guy with unbreakable claws and an attitude wants to pretend he’s fooling people, you play along.”
Maybe Danny’s just playing along. The conflict, fully internalized, may be what’s making him act like such an asshole. He’s living the dream, but on some level he knows it’s bullshit – but he doesn’t want to give it up.
If he knew, was playing around, and didn’t want to give it up, I doubt he would have cut Amber out so harshly. Obviously hurt feelings keep no matter who you are currently pretending to be.
And honestly, to the guys out there: Would you risk your opportunity to fool around with Hawkgirl, Wonder Woman or Black Cat(last one doesn’t count but pretend it does!) And to the girls: If Green Lantern, Spiderman or The Dark Knight wanted you, would you risk fouling it up by the 2nd or 3rd week (rember, DoA time is a bit wonky!) just out of curiosity? No! You’d live the dream, fool around with a superhero and then push the whole identity thing for later, maybe six weeks in? Although I’d be down to never know about the aforementioned super heroines’ real identities if I got to date them. I mean, have you SEEN Black Cat??
Wonder Woman’s secret identity was always all sorts of screwy, though. I don’t think it’s ever been taken seriously within my lifetime. Or my father’s lifetime.
…also, I’d really rather not fool around with any of them. They’re all nuts. Especially Hawkgirl.
Only if it was Spidey, Nightwing, or Captain Marvel (carol, not mar-vell)
But I feel the novelty would wear off REALLY fast, especially cause I’d feel like they didn’t trust me enough to entrust me with their real identities, or that maybe their secret identities were dating someone else. Like, you wouldn’t know. Plus, it’s pretty likely your dates would get interrupted by villains, or the villains would kidnap you to get to the hero.
So glad I don’t live in a comic book.
This relationship is healthier than Joyce/Ethan because it looks to be over.
Actually, one thing that is healthier about Joyce/Ethan is that there is no ugly secret being hidden between them. The truth might be a trainwreck, but at least it isn’t a hidden trainwreck.
I think Joyce’s issues regarding sexuality being complicated by a rape attempt counts as an ugly secret in the relationship, considering their bizarro foundation of mutual avoidance.
There will be great times for Danny when he grows up and stops doing stupid things. We will never see said great times in this comic, but I feel confident that it will eventually happen.
Billie climbing on top of him and demanding journalism seemed like a pretty good time to be Danny. Except of course that he somehow immediately Danned it up.
Does she really want someone so dense he can’t recognize her through such a thin disguise? Dumbest superhero movie last year was Green Lantern, but at least they had the decency to let the girlfriend recognize the man behind the lame little mask.
No one in this comic so far has been able to recognize her. Billie was right on top of her for a while (God that sounds dirty), and mistook her for Sal, who has a completely different hair style, body type, and race.
Ending the relationship is the best step for both of them. Continuing will just break Amber’s heart and encourage Danny’s escapism (which will lead to heartbreak).
He’s gonna be waiting there a long, long time
‘Til touch down brings him ’round again to find
She’s not the girl he thinks she is in class.
Oh no, no, no,
She’s Amazi-Giiiiiiirl.
Hey, speaking of LGBT characters, it totally blew my mind when I grew up and realized that as I kid I watched an anime with a TG villain who flirts with male characters.
Not that that show was progressive or anything, I’m just surprised they allowed it on American TV. I know that stuff is a little more common in Japan, but in Sailor Moon they turned the lesbians into cousins over here, so I don’t know how the censors missed Big Cheese.
I think I heard that the SPC dubbers had no idea what the show was really about and just made it up.
Sailor Moon had a LOT of gay couples, each censored in a different way. Zoicite became a woman (which I actually liked since it made it less about men vs women) , Uranus and Neptune were made cousins, Fisheye was treated like a woman but they left in blatent evidence she was a man (including topless scenes) and a couple of the week who ended up as brothers. By the time S rolled around they were really only doing the minimum amount fo censoring necessary to get things on air.
I know a lot of that show was made up, but apparently the crossdressing was not. He really did do that, in both his Japanese and American incarnations.
You mean, you expect that in a year you’ll have piled up so much of a buffer that you’ll have to switch schedules to twice daily and have half your carefully designed daily cliffhangers happen at noon?
This one’s on her. She has absolute proof that he has feelings both for her as a person, and for Amazi-girl. She has proof as well that he will respect, and remain loyal to those feelings, even when presented with other options. At this point, it is her and only her that holds her back.
She also has absolute proof that he’s an asshole who, despite claiming to have deep feelings for her, will cruelly cut her out of his life if he gets a hair up his ass about it.
Aww. Sad. Now Amber has to try and go fix everything with a person subconsciously determined to keep everything messed up.
On a side note: yay, this strip isn’t about Jocelyne! That means no more indignant ramblings and heated debate in the comments! (Or at least less ._.)
That’s part of the problem. Can a woodchuck create a piece of wood too heavy for him to lift? If so, does that not call into question the woodchuck as an omnipotent diety?
None. A woodchuck would not chuck wood even if woodchuck could chuck wood.
And even if woodchuck could chuck wood and even if woodchuck would chuck wood, should woodchuck chuck wood?
How much bound, round ground could a bound round ground hound hound if a bound round ground hound could be found bound to hound bound round ground for a round pound of bound ground round?
The arguments themselves were mostly confusion over what terms are appropriate for certain situations. The ones about Danny and Amber were largely polarized with clear sides – either you hated Danny or you didn’t.
Look at it this way, Amber. You could’ve been Dan’s redheaded be-glasses’ed friend who attempts to straighten him out but sort of fucks up the execution one alternate-reality over.
Better to angst in dramatic lighting on a rooftop than anti-drunk driving accident death.
Although most events for a “Family Weekend” would have been scheduled for Saturday. Sunday would probably consist of a University-sponsored breakfast and that’s about it, as the visitors got ready to return to their own homes.
What the hell? And here I was relieved that Ethan, Joyce, Joshua, Sal, and Amber managed to make it out in one piece. And now that Joshua and Ethan came out to each other? And Joyce has an outstanding schism with her parents? Hahaha, everyone is so screwed.
Dude, THAT was probably the biggest twist so far. I didn’t know there’s still a day left for all this shit to burn. These strips haven’t been denouement-we’re still climbing the goddamn slope.
All the uproar about labels yesterday, and no one has anything to say about this? ^ Why can’t this crowd be enlightened about more than one thing?? (Wait, don’t tell me: *this* is just a joke. Right.)
Amazi-Girl should toss him off a bridge or make herself look like a jerk so Danny will want to get with Amber. It’s what Silver Age Superman would have done!
Silver Age Superman would trap him in a plastic missle, and throw him into space for playing with his dog … Yes, this actually happened. Even worse, he did it to his own cousin
Jokes on us: Amazi-Girls is actually positioned behind Danny so we can’t see her, about to apply an affectionate Honduran neck-tie to Mr. Wilcox’s windpipe.
Something only Ruth and Amazi-Girl would invent, arriving at the same mystical technique through eerily similar life experiences. I imagine it involves a lotta elbow, a lungful of carbon and a bruised kidney.
Another thing we could see if Billy decides to draw out Amazi-Girl by becoming a supervillain! She could kidnap Amazi-Girl’s love interest! THE MATH PROFESSOR!
Not vindictive, he spent a day pretending to be the boyfriend of Amber. But Amazi-Girl would have no way of knowing it was just a big lie if she wasn’t actually Amber. She might think he was two timing her.
Pretty harsh all around. This isn’t QC or GWS, these are kids who were in high school just months ago. I cut them all slack, closeted Ethan, Dorothy’s desire for caramel, Danny’s confusion with young ladies, the mature and experienced ones are sophomores. The few that behave like adults might be upperclassmen or grad students. I have no illusions that I was very mature or good to be in a relationship with when I was that age. Can’t imagine what my future wife saw in me at twenty, when I was older than most of the characters.
So did she just leave without saying? Or is it implied that she went to proceed to make her way to him?? I feel like lots of people think it’s the former but fingers crossed for the latter!
“Wonder what would happen if I did accept that busty cheerleader’s offer a few days back? Guess I’ll never find out because I got a date with a vigilante…who happened to look like this girl I happened to know and like and who also looked like my ex-girlfriend. Oh, and wonder what’s in that pizza I just ate…it is damn good. I guess it does dominate my taste bud like the sign said.”
Ok, so I read It’s Walky and Joyce and Walky (not all of it, but whatever is available for free on the website) and neglected to read Roomies. So can someone explain to me why there seems to be a hatred for Danny? What did he do in Roomies to warrant this? Just curious. And also, why do people think he screwed up here? He refused to play with the feelings of a girl who he can’t have. Seems nicer than half of the guys I know :\
Danny is a passive aggressive and clingy so-called nice guy who sets people’s teeth on edge. He has no ambition and he sets himself up for failure by his own admission. He followed Dorothy to college and, unlike Felicity, this comes across as dangerously close to stalking. His inability to see the obvious that Amber is Amazi-Girl also offends people who can’t suspend disbelief on Silver Age tropes.
If it makes you feel any better, I am clueless to the Danny of the other universes (mostly), but dislike Danny for his Danny-ness shown here:
He started as too clingy, refusing to stop dating Dorothy because he “believed in their love strong enough” to follow her to college (I agree with Dorothy stating it would have been a bigger favor if she’d dumped him earlier; he would have had a shot at living his life more).
Second, his parent’s behavior clearly states his unwillingness to take charge or make decisions for himself. Which is just such wasted potential. He could be a good role model with his morals about not sleeping around. He could go the distance with his grades and do something. But he doesn’t. His big goal for the future was being “first man” to Dorothy’s president. He sits around. He does nothing. And the impatience people show him show me, this has been going on. And on. And no one has been able to do anything about it.
And third, if any of the above weren’t true, and even if you were willing to be kind enough, or patient enough, or look past these because you’re thinking Danny is, at heart, a clueless guy who for the most part a good guy, there’s this: When he told Amber how he felt, when he saw her cry with joy, and when he subsequently broke the fragments of her heart with his anger at himself and her, when she walked off in despair… HE DIDN’T GO AFTER HER.
What in the hell are you expecting he would say to her? “Hey, I still completely mean everything I said, but don’t feel glum! I want you to be happy, I just can’t hang out with you ever again.”
But I mean, of course Amber’s not to blame at all. It’s not like Danny asked for an explanation and she lied to him, right?
I have a hard time hating anyone when I see the correlation between the way they are and the way they were raised or their circumstance. That’s why I can hate Mary. I know she’s probably a product too but there’s no data. The only exception to the rule is Mike. I could eventually hate Mike because there seems to be no connection between his sociopathy and his parents. For the rest of them, I root like crazy and would rather see them having a go at love and life than writing them off. There’s damn few ways to break out of yourself, and of them love is the best by far, even when you’re making a mess of it.
Danny is a loyal guy who lacks a certain amount of perception, and he has a tendency to gravitate toward emotionally unavailable women (Dorothy, who wants a boyfriend who can amuse her when she has time but whom she can put in a box when she’s busy, and Amber, whose inability to be open is self-evident). These relationships inevitably put him in a no-win situation: He’s an unsupportive, shallow jerk for not breaking up with Dorothy, but of course he’d have been denounced as insensitive and shallow if he had broken up with her; similarly he’s an unsupportive jerk for refusing Amber’s advances, but he would have been pilloried as shallow and unfaithful if he had pursued her.
I have no idea how you reached those conclusions. My biggest problems with Danny are that he’s clingy, obsessive, and raises the people he has feelings for on pedestals.
Also, I love Amber a lot, and I hate to see her hurting, regardless of the source.
I recommend re-reading DoA entirely from Danny’s perspective, hehe. I made a very, very long post a while ago about the topic. You’ll probably get a more objective feel for his character and maybe understand him a bit better.
I dunno, I like him because I relate to him in some ways. I find him misguided but I can’t dislike him based on that. I was and still am misguided. He means well, and aside from one instance I’ve never really been angry at him. *shrug* I don’t love him but I would certainly defend him as I like him quite a bit.
(not to mention everyone is angsty here. They’re teenagers after all! Amber, Ethan, Joyce, Sarah….etc. etc.)
In what way has Danny put Amazi-girl or Dorothy on a pedestal?
Dorothy exploded at him because he raised the possibility she might fall short of her dreams, and stated he would still support her. Amazi-girl…I honestly can’t think of any situation in which he is whitewashing her. His whole big “failing” with her appears to be him not following the lead of his junk after Amber. And he likes Amber, very much, and very much did not put her on a pedestal.
Amber, however: is 100% responsible for how fucked up this situation is. Inner daemons or not, she is the only one who has all the information and could end the farce in a -second- if she just told the truth.
Like I said, I can’t believe how much sympathy someone who causes all her own relationship problems gets when she could end them all herself by literally pulling on a string.
Secondly, I don’t know what you mean by “whitewashing” in this instance.
Thirdly, almost every conversation Danny has had with Amber is about Amazi-Girl. In fact, almost every conversation Danny has had with anyone is either him talking to or about girls he likes. Come to think of it, Danny is a little similar to Roomies Joyce, only instead of trying to find a husband, he’s preoccupied trying to find tru wuv.
Note: I am not saying he is anywhere near Joyce in intensity, btw, though I am sure someone will try to accuse me of that. I am also aware that to Danny, Amber probably came off like Joyce in Roomies, which is valid.
(also am I the only one who thinks danny’s going to hear about what went on with amber that day and freak out over how he treated her)
Oh, no disagreement that he’s overly focused on relationships.
But I fail to see any “whitewashing”.
Anyway.
Timemonkey:
He suggested she might change her mind. He never said “Hey, you should give up everything”.
Granted, in a moment of extreme emotional pain, he retaliated by insulting Yale. AFTER saying that he’d be willing to give up on his own career and follow Dorothy to Yale if that’s what it took to be with her.
So, again, not seeing whitewashing, although sure, seeing a heaping dose of desperately trying to keep the relationship going no matter what it took, or if it even made them happy.
Well, she can but that would risk putting Danny in harms way. Who would want to harm Danny anyways?(besides Yotomoe and a couple of hundred other folks in the comment section)
how does it put him any more at risk that him blatantly dating a superhero? If she had any villains, they’d be all over scooping danny up right about now to get to her.
Yeah, because it’s not like she agreed to go along with it, oh wait she did, or tried to basically get him to cheat on her with her, oh wait she did, and is now disappearing without explanation for reasons that are entirely her fault, oh wait she is, and has now ruined her (two) relationships with her boyfriend and best friend because she couldn’t be assed to untie a goddamn knot, oh wait she is, and ignored many opportunities to bring up her problems with their relationship as Amazi-girl, oh wait she did.
we’ve had this argument too often, and we’re never going to agree. I’ve never said she’s faultless (as you always accuse me of doing) merely that she can never get what she wants from him (i.e. a real relationship with the chance of love) because he thinks only of himself. Nothing she could do would ever change that, so she is doing the right thing by dumping him. She should have told him to piss off as soon as he said he preferred Amazi-girl to her.
The anti-Danny posts around here are getting the the point of the surreal. There are vague similarities to the events that happened in the comic, but then suddenly things veer off wildly into some strange, dark place that I don’t really understand.
Well, other than the fact that Danny is satan. That much I think has been made clear.
This is so sad, he needs to tell her he spent time with Amber, but he can’t. He’s trying to do the right thing and be a good boyfriend, but she can’t let him do it because she doesn’t want to think about what she did to him again. She might even be afraid she’d blow her identity cover in the moment from crying, which if she’s still not sure she wants to share it with him she can’t risk. It’s so very sad…
By the way, for all of those who find the impenetrability of Amazi-Girl’s disguise to be beyond belief, you should realize that the human brain can easily be flummoxed by things that it is only half-glimpsing or half-paying-attention to.
Though, to be fair, Danny has had enough experience with both of them, that the fact that he hasn’t picked up enough hints displays an epic density and a superhuman level of fail.
To be fair (I’m mixed about both of them, because it’s Amber’s insecurity about men that’s causing part of this problem, as well as both Danny’s inability to care for two women simultaneously and his incredible selfishness) how long did it take Louis Lane/Mary Jane/every love-interest of a super-hero to figure out that two people=1 person. It really hasn’t been all that long in the dumbiverse since Danny saw Amazi-girl.
How has Danny been selfish? He doesn’t know what kind of affect it’s having on Amber, because he doesn’t know she’s amber. As far as he knows he just has a girlfriend with a kink, why is he suddenly being selfish for going along with that instead of being like Lois Lane and going “well gee, I’m going to dig until I find the real identity of the local superhero”? Maybe he’s just leaving it alone because he thinks she doesn’t want him to know who she is, I mean she wears a mask to every interaction.
Would that be after she had an “oh crap” reaction when she thought he was asking, so he reassured her he wasn’t because she clearly didn’t want to tell him?
Why does everybody seem to forget that Danny stated to Amber (who he does not recognize as Amazi-Girl) that he himself doesn’t want to figure out her secret identity unless it’s by way of some dramatic reveal? It’s not just because he’s being considerate of her feelings, much as people like to spin it that way.
He’s been around Amazi-girl a lot. At night. Often in the dark or in the stark shadows of a single nearby light source. While she’s in disguise, wearing a cape that changes her silhouette and changing her hairstyle and her voice.
But none of that matters, because he’s satan. Satan sees all things clearly.
Back in high school, my Civics teacher did a demonstration to illustrate the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. She arranged for a student from one of her other classes to, unannounced in the middle of class, run in, snatch her purse from the floor by her desk, and run back out with it – and then asked us to all write down our eyewitness descriptions of the perpetrator and events. And then invited the purse-snatcher back in and compared people’s accounts and descriptions to the actual person and events.
I have a ridiculous memory; my description was spot-on, and when I was vague about something, I knew that I didn’t know it, and said that rather than filling in blanks with my imagination. But almost everyone else’s accounts ranged from significantly skewed to completely off the wall. No one recognized the purse-snatcher, even though she was known to many of them (though not me) and her face wasn’t covered. Many people didn’t register what she’d taken, and several didn’t notice that she’d taken anything. Few people described her clothing or physical attributes with any accuracy. One girl, who was friends with the purse-snatcher, described her, a white girl with straight, light brown hair and pale grey-green eyes, as being a black man, which I can only ascribe to a shocking amount of barely-hidden racism.
And this generally applies to everyone who’s seen Amazi-Girl except Danny.
This situation couldn’t be resolved by her talking to Danny, oh no, we’d better blame him for everything and say she’s doing the right thing by abandoning him without explanation -_-
That was probably the best move for the both of them. Amber shouldn’t use Amazi-Girl’s relationship with Danny for personal gain, and Danny shouldn’t dwell on the fantasy of dating a superheroine.
I’m still kinda rooting for these two crazy kids. Hope they can work it out somehow. Also Amber’s facial expression is killing me. Danny’s too. Actually everything about this strip hurts a bit. Happiness is the most elusive of things in this universe for all these characters. Sigh.
Is there enough of that brilliant white chocolate/caramel mixture to balance out the bitterness of families scorned?
Find out in the next 500 episodes on Dumbing Of Age!
1.01. was move in day.
There were no time skips until the end of 2.03 (9 days total).
Then there’s 3 day gap.
Then 2.04. to 3.03. are all one day after another (6 more days).
We skip 2 days at the end of it.
20 days total. 3.04. is 21st. Exactly three weeks. Did I miss something, or have Billie made a mistake?
Nah, man, you’re not alone. I also agree that all the hate towards him is unwarranted. He could’ve phrased his thoughts much better, but his heart was in the right place.
I can relate to him, and that’s most likely the reason why I hate him sometimes. I tend to do the same mistakes.
So, after all, even if he is a dumbass sometimes, I like him.
Yeah me too. I mean you can list the immaturity and character issues of the whole cast. Billy is a neglected but spoiled alcoholic brat. Sarah’s a misanthrope. Mike’s a sociopath. Amber flirts with multiple personality disorder. Joe’s a complete hedonistic narcissist. Ruth’s prone to self-indulgent self pity (it’s why she see’s herself in Danny in the other verse ill grant you).
Yeah this isn’t fair at all. Danny has some problems he needs to work on, and both his and Amber’s actions are completely understandable and make a lot of sense.
I like Danny, but ignoring the flaws that get him into these situations is not a positive way of looking at his character. (I mean, he wouldn’t even BE at IU if he didn’t have a major twoo luv problem.)
I don’t read the comments very often so I probably missed you explaining it but-
Dude. What is UP with your Amber hate? Did a woman like her seriously hurt you for you to take this all so personally? I mean seriously. She is a very damaged person, and she is also young. Both of those aren’t well known for making good choices. (I mean, almost none of the characters make good choices. We are reading Dumbing of Age.)
Especially judging by the look on Danny’s face, his obsession with monogamy, and how long he’s been waiting, he might be expecting Amazi-girl’s going to yell at him for hanging out with another girl and complimenting her. Kinda fucked up and paranoid, but he still showed up.
Amber/Amazi-girl can either (1) get through this scot-free, or (2) reveal her secret and play into the exact situation that Danny foolishly said he was expecting to happen when they started this. Probably with drama, but she didn’t show up.
…reading all these Amber and Danny comics, kinda dismayed that so many people seem to think “honesty and faithfulness to your significant other” are just cultural artifacts, and that if you don’t run after every person who seems, on the surface, to be a better fit for you despite any lying or emotional manipulation they might currently be engaged in, you’re a bastard-coated bastard with bastard filling.
I haven’t seen anyone who seems to me to believe that. I certainly don’t, and I’ve been very vocal about my problems with Danny and his behaviour. (Not so much this strip – partly because I was busy today, and partly because I’m getting tired of repeating the same things every time Danny shows up – but check the last batch of Danny/Amber strips. I commented plenty there.)
I see that most people seem to think that it was Danny telling Amber he didn’t want to see her anymore that made her not visit him as Amazi-girl. When I first saw this though the first thing that popped in my mind was that Amber had time to think about what Mike had said and is questioning her choice in guys. Maybe she is now afraid to end up like her father, especially after she her turbulent adventure of punching him in the face and loving it.
Too bad things aren’t that black and white and assuming if you’re not acting like your mother did in a relationship then you automatically act like your father is complete bullshit.
I am of the opinion that everyone in this comic* deserves to be happy. Ethan, Joyce, Amber, and yes, even Danny. Everything sucks for them for no good reason.
“For no good reason”? Sorry, can’t agree: if that were the case, the comic just wouldn’t be a good read. I think that things suck for these characters because of their human flaws and baggage; which is good reason enough, and it’s one reason why readers can relate to them so much.
I’m sure you don’t actually think that Amber dresses up like a superhero and beats up random criminals for a good reason. Or that Ethan and Joyce are dating each other for a good reason.
It’s hard to divorce their choices from the experiences that resulted in the thought processes behind them. Amber uses Amazi-Girl as a coping mechanism because of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. Ethan and Joyce are repressing themselves because of their upbringing (it’s more complicated in Ethan’s case, but it’s still the root cause). These choices would not have been made if they were not the products of their circumstances.
Good “reasons”, yes. Good “excuses”, no. Their respective personalities and pasts can explain many of their actions, but that does not absolve them of responsibility.
Because we know Amber’s backstory and why she has to hide behind Amazi-Girl to be brave, we assume that Danny’s the bad guy.
But based on what he knows, it’s entirely reasonable for him to act the way he is. In his eyes, Amber was trying to muscle her way into being his girlfriend without his consent when he was seeing another girl. He has every reason to not want to see her anymore.
What gets me is that Amber has absolute proof Danny has feelings for her AND for Amazi-girl. He as well as said that they’d likely get together if they kept hanging out together. She also has proof that he won’t betray her, via Danny shooting her down precisely *because* he might develop romantic feelings for her if they keep going, and that would hurt the girlfriend that he has right now. So on the Amazi-Girl side, she has a guy who won’t cheat, and will actively avert cheating if he realizes there’s a chance of it coming up. As Amber, she knows that he likes HER, and recognizes that they could easily end up together.
The funny thing is, if the roles had been completely reversed, and Danny was the one forcing Amber to pretend to be his girlfriend in front of her parents even though she was really uncomfortable with it, everyone would be calling him a monster. This is a major double standard.
You’re right, I shouldn’t put words in other people’s mouths.
I meant if they just reversed roles, not reversed genders. I would expect, maybe completely incorrectly, that if Danny had forced Amber into the same situation, people would blame him as a male (and as Danny) for being overly aggressive with Amber. *shrug* Maybe not
I understood your point. It is mainly about gender, so I genderbent them.
However, Danny and Amber as characters are more than just their gender. The way things happened are a consequence of their experiences, circumstance, and the people they are. You can’t meaningfully switch their places around in the story (unless you come up with a slew of qualifiers), because it would be inconsistent with who they are.
Screw it, I’ll make it end the way I want it to end. Fan-fiction time. FAN FICTION TIME EVERYBODY!
AG: Danny – Amber told me about what happened today
D: Sh… she did?
AG (smiles): Yes. It was very sweet of you to help her out. And sweet of you to stand up for me.
D (blushes): Oh. *beat* How much did she tell you?
AG: More than she told you, I think. Do you know why she needed your help today?
D (embarrassed): No… no I don’t
AG: Amber had a… confrontation… and needed someone to spend time with in public, to avoid another, worse one
D (looking at ground): Oh. Why didn’t she tell me? *beat* I just gave her another confrontation, didn’t I?
AG (smiles and puts an arm around D)
D (looking sad): But, the thing is, she…
AG: She sees good things in you. The same things I see. I’m sure she couldn’t help feeling some attraction.
D (looking at ground): But I… feel some things too…
AG (smiling): The important thing is you wanted to be faithful. I understand. And I think Amber… Amber is okay being just friends for now
(they smile at each other, and embrace. fade to black…)
– Testing, testing.
– Sweet, it showed up! Does everybody else see this? Now somebody else try posting.
– “Testing, testing”? That’s the best you could do?
– No kidding. And what font is this? Arial? Lame.
– And what was with the user names? Eight characters? Why would anyone ever need that many? What a waste of memory.
– Seriously.
– You guys suck. See if I ever write anything for you again.
– Good riddance!
It’s a testament to Willis’ skill as an artist and storyteller that he can say so much with just one expression. No dialogue, just a look on someone’s face.
I feel bad for danny. He didn’t want to be a jerk and cheat so he stood firm in the face of some strong temptation and for that he looses two girls (actually one) and from his perspective it’s just one girl standing him up after he sacrificed a lot for her.
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here we go…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3MXiTeH_Pg
I was expecting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnHmskwqCCQ
I mean, as long as we’re sharing…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdo62nMQR-0
How did none of you post this?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAAsCNK7RA
I think we have a winner
Well, she is a superhero…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KNuxoH_9wo
Or maybe even…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag-dxWQfA_U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DciHBnMnlo
NO WAIT THE BEST
http://vimeo.com/11703016
I’m surprised nobody’s posted this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0
NO. STOP THAT.
Just what exactly did you expect of our Rick?? Did you really even have to click on it?
More like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ytCEuuW2_A
Haha, just when I think of that…
also: http://priceisrightlosinghorn.com/
Really?
That gravitar doesn’t go with the ‘?’
I see her more as “REALLY??” and some sort of pummeling by mechanized toys following it up
Here we go again.
I said a, here we go GO!
A here we go GO!
I should a known..
should a known, should a known the girl
with all the things we said
YOU BLEW IT DUDE
& dudette =(
Great, I got flashbacks to that one episode of Adventure Time.
Way to go. You just made us all sad. Again. After recovering from the Adventure Time episode, we became sad from the fact that Danny/Amber/Amazi-Sal blew it. After we got over that, we read your comment. Now we are infinitely stuck in a forever looping loop of sadness. Forever.
It’s the ending to Toy Story 3 all over again…
noooooooo
Quick, watch some Futurama to cheer yourself up! May I recommend Jurassic Bark?
Oh, you heartless monster. Now, if you excuse me, I’m going to watch Code of Hero.
Let’s all calm down and watch some Bravest Warriors. Also you become a follower of the catbug followers.
I must need a LOT of sleep, because that did not make much sense.
Gota love catbug trow a blanket over it
I’m going to second calling you a heartless monster.
Guys, seriously, relax, maybe with some Clannad…
*checks pulse* Yep, now I’m dead.
No!!!! Don’t be dead! Or sad!
Everyone gets a hug!
Maybe some angle beats on the side…
I know what will cheer everyone up, let’s watch Marley and Me!
After Story.
Just go all out, Air TV, Kanon, Clannad, Clannad After Story.
Big Futurama fan here and I can remember watching Jurassic Bark when it aired. I was sitting there thinking what a good episode it was and how I liked the character growth being shown by Fry.
And then I found myself choking up as the song started: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5peiLlHdvo
Awwww…
I spy, with my little eye…
Something heart-broken
Someone who needs a hug.
The silhouette of a scorned woman. Sort of.
The sillouette of a person who screwed up her own best relationship(s) but for some reason totally gets away with it among the fans!
It’s because Danny is satan, don’tcha know. he can do no right, and anyone he interacts with can do no wrong.
If he ever met Blaine the universe would implode.
I got a feeling that theory may be put to the test once Amber, (what what was I thinking, AMBER DID EVERYTHING RIGHT) once Danni learns to see past seventy-five or so years of superhero comic convention.
>If he ever met Blaine the universe would implode.
This comment is hilarious in retrospect.
A dude who fucked up massive.
A girl who fucked up too, but not as massive.
I don’t know about that. For all his faults, all he did in this case was stay loyal. He has no idea that Amber is Amazigal, and if you had a friend who was constantly trying to pressure you into a relationship, while you were already sorta in one, what would do? Espesially if she kept doing it after you expressed your discomfort and desire for her to stop.
Of course, most people seem to think particularly poorly of Danny, even Willis, so maybe I’m missing something.
Let’s be honest here, the reason he fucked up is cause he can’t even tell that they’re the same person despite all the signs she’s been giving.
But Dorothy, not a known idiot-ball holder, has also met Amber and AmaziCar (admittedly on a dark night but still…) and not made the link.
In fact no-one seems to have worked it out. Give the doofus a chance.
Amber, on the other hand, knows the situation fully.
As has been said a million times already: ONLY DANNY HANGS OUT WITH BOTH AMBER AND AMAZIGIRL REPEATEDLY.
Ethan is assumed to know already because he mentioned seeing the paper which happened to have Amazigirl mentioned in it and it is possible Mike knows too.
Danny however, has seen both on a regular basis and hasn’t worked it out at all. All she does is put on a certain costume, ruffle up her hair a bit and put on a mask that only hides part of her face, not her entire face. If it was like Spiderman where it was a full costume with no facial features showing, it would be a lot more difficult, but it isn’t and her appearance has limited differences.
And as has been mentioned a million times: Dorothy has the tools to work it out, but she hasn’t had the time to work it out. She has been shown doing a lot of studying/homework and between that and Walky’s Walkyness, she likely hasn’t had the opportunity to research Amazigirl more. Plus, she has seen Amber what, twice? Would you assume the random person you met only once or twice was a superhero? Probably not, because there is no clear connection.
So we all agree: the ONLY thing that Danny has done is be unobservant. That is the only thing he’s done wrong – he has failed to dismiss the possibility that out of the hundreds of girls he hasn’t met, one of them might be Amazi-girl. Because if you meet one girl at college, then obviously the girl you randomly met is the only candidate for being the campus superhero you randomly met independently of her.
And yes, this failure to draw a connection means that he “fucked up massive” and is definitely more at fault for the situation for the girl who knew the situation the whole time and at no point has made a serious attempt to explain things to him – even when it was clear that it was that or massive emotional pain.
Yes, it’s all his fault. This makes perfect sense – because he’s satan. That is the entire explanation.
No, Danny has also shown a marked preference for exciting fantasy over a real relationship. That makes him an immature putz.
You have a point. You’d have more of a point if he hadn’t responded to this fact being pointed out by immediately trying to forge a deeper, more human relationship with Amazi-girl (while respecting her obvious desire to maintain a secret identity, of course). By your logic, this makes him a sensitive, receptive, rapidly emotionally maturing individual, who recognizes his flaws when they’re pointed out and works to correct them.
But don’t let that slow you down! Hate Danny! Hate Danny! Hate Danny! Yay! (He IS satan, after all.)
I am with you 100%. Anytime Danny comes up, all I see is a circlejerk of hatred. I guess it’s too much effort to attempt to understand that characters do not necessarily have all the knowledge the reader does, and cannot understand them on the same level.
Humans.
Fleshlings.
DRAMATIC LIGHTING!!!
Dude. Can Danny have a happy ending, please? Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but he’s the character I identify with most closely.
He has a pretty happy ending in the Walkyverse. So, until things settle here, you can take refuge there.
Make sure to follow the link to It’s Walky or Joyce and Walky though. Bring Back Roomies is about to have some sad moments.
Your grav makes me fee Danny’s pain. For the first time. Ever.
Seeing that face makes me reflexively try to give her a puppy. But you can’t hand things to characters on a computer screen.
So now I’m sitting here after midnight, holding a puppy, and I don’t even know where I got the fucking thing.
Take it back to its own time, Doctor. You can’t solve every problem with a time machine.
That sounds like a challenge.
I thought that but then I realised that, yes, you *can* solve everything with a time machine.
Halting problem.
Run the program on a computer. Keep going forward in time at increasingly large intervals until it ends on its own or the hardware gives out. Either way, it halted!
Halting the computer is not the same as halting the program.
Well, if you want to get all *picky* about it, you could write a simple program that runs alongside the first program and keeps track of its entire state, noting any points where it exactly matches a prior state as being indicative of a non-halting program, and keeping track overall of repetition or patterned growth among a program that does not halt or exactly repeat. Then jumping a few million years in the future would almost certainly give you enough data to conclude with certainty one way or the other whether it will halt, at least with a close examination of the outputs. And if you’re still not sure, jump again.
Nope, that’s not a solution.
Take that program you just wrote, name it Halt.
Halt is also a program, and it takes two arguments – a program (with one argument) and its argument.
[For example, if P(X)=Halt(X,X), you can check Halt(P,P), as an aside.]
But the real trick is that you can have a program P(X) that does: if Halt(X,X) then loop forever, else halt(and “return true”).
What happens when you run P(P)?
If P(P) halts, then P(P) doesn’t halt.
If P(P) doesn’t halt (then *your* halt program itself halted and returned false), then P(P) halts immediately.
It doesn’t matter how far in the future you jump. In fact, you yourself put in a “if you are not sure yet, jump more forward”m which is potentially an infinite loop, which makes your program not-a-solution (to be a solution, it must actually halt itself for all possible inputs).
It’s unsolvable *because it doesn’t have a solution*.
What you might not have gotten about this is, halting problem is not a “if you solve it for most practical purposes, you have a solution”. It’s a “is it possible to solve this without exceptions” question.
I see no one has explained the premise of the show to you.
fixed points
I can solve those too. But then I go crazy and think I’m a god for a few minutes and learn a valuable lesson about…not doing that I guess?
The point is Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey. Just remember that and it all makes sense.
She ended up dying anyway, though, so when you think about it, the fixed point still happened. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t just take her away from that time period, she would still have disappeared, so the historical events caused by her disappearance would still have happened. And for that matter why not cook up a clone body for Rose’s dad? It seems like a lot of “fixed point” issues could be mitigated by faking people’s deaths.
It’s a time machine that also goes through space and dimensions, so I’m PREtty fuckin sure he can get that puppy over there.
If you’re Ninth, you got it out of the trash like that one cat
Danny doesn’t get a happy ending until he earns one. And to do that, he has to become conscious of all the things that he does that makes him such an asshat and take steps to mitigate them.
We’re still waiting for that first epiphany. We suspect that we’ll be waiting a very, very, very long time.
As long as he’ll have to wait tonight for Amazi-Girl to show up?
He never got it in the other universe, so he’s still a happy ending in debt.
(Never got the epiphany, I mean.)
Things like loyalty, supportiveness, ethics, and a recognition of temptations in his life. These are all sins and should be cleansed from anyone.
Or he goes to the “day spa” on the far side of town and pays for the “complete” massage package.
Pretty sure this isn’t the ending. Just a moment in time.
Perfect Gravitar.
“There are no happy endings, because there are no endings!”
Thank you, Schmendrick.
aaannnd now I have Jocelyn/Joshua singing “Now That I,m a Woman in my head.
Anything is better than the Mia Farrow version!
more like bumming of age
What’s there to be bummed about? Amber has managed to drop 150 pounds of unsightly and unhealthy weight. We should be happy for her.
I think you hate Danny a bit too much.
You’d think so, but no such thing sadly. Dude just keeps fuckin’ up.
Yeah, ya remember that time when Danny murdered 12 people and kicked four puppies? What a jerk.
As much as I hate Danny… yeah, you can hate him too much.
If you hate Danny more than you hate Blaine or Ryan, you’re hating Danny too much. Or maybe Blaine and Ryan too little.
Actually, if you hate Danny more than pretty much all of the parents (excluding the Snows and the Saruyamas), you’re hating him too much.
Did the Keeners kick a puppy while I wasn’t looking?
oh fuck I forgot the best parents
I danned it
please forgive me
Personally, I just don’t like him. I don’t hate him but I don’t like him.
Didn’t he make the best possible decision though? He appeased Amber to get her away from her dad, and then told her he couldn’t continue with her because to him, he’s with someone else.
Dude’s kinda dumb, but he’s a pretty good guy. I’m honestly surprised we haven’t seen him creeping over Dorothy or mad that she dumped him because she didn’t want to be with anyone, then got with someone else in the next week. Again, I got props for Danny.
Part of what makes Danny such a hate magnet is that even when he does the right thing, he does it in the worst possible way. And he didn’t appease Amber to get her away from her dad. Danny was far too deep in his miserable naval-gazing to notice anything going on around him. Danny accepted Amber’s help to cover for him, in the most ungrateful and put-upon way possible, and then did nothing to help support the ruse that he had agreed to. Then when it came time for the ruse to end, he did not thank her, nor did he disengage with any grace. Instead he told her in the most rude and curt way possible that he never wanted to be around her ever again.
Danny is a tool. A squishy, shapeless tool. He doesn’t have a clue how to interact with other human beings, despite all his lofty pretensions to high moral and ethical standards. All those honorable intentions will never be realized because he cannot grasp Interaction 101–whose first lesson is “Treat others like they are people who have feelings that should be respected.”
So, basically, the same lesson that virtually every character in the comic needs to learn, and especially the one they exploit out of him the most.
Give me a break. Amber pressured him into violating some of his deeper principles, and he still didn’t explode at her like pretty much…yep, every other character except Dina has in one situation or another. Hell, even Dorothy exploded at him for merely suggesting the possibility she might fail, and could still manage to (in his mind) be happy. He’s been wrong, but he’s not the monster you keep painting him as.
Methinks you doth protest too much.
Got to say I agree. When he does “the right thing” it isn’t the thing that will hurt people least, it’s the thing that will fit best with his own view of himself as a “nice guy”. He realised, talking to his parents, that Amber was a wonderful person who deserved his love. He knows (surely?) that Amazigirl is a fantasy that he can have fun with, but shouldn’t take seriously. Instead of thinking “who will be hurt most if I stop seeing them?” he thought “how can I keep to the nice-guy code?”
It’s all about himself.
…what, you’re obligated to dump your perfectly nice girlfriend if you find someone nicer?
Do you realize how fucked up that sounds?
And judging by the immediately following comics, he realized Amber -was- a “wonderful person”. Who (as recognized even by Mike and Amber herself) was currently emotionally bullying him into violating his principles.
But yeah, no, he’s the bastard, and Amber’s a pure spotless angel.
Amazi-girl isn’t a “perfectly nice girlfriend” she’s a fantasy. As Amber said, she isn’t a real person who you can love. Danny is so caught up in his comic-book fantasy that he doesn’t care about who the real girl behind the mask is.
His “principles” are complete bullshit: he just wants to be able to tell himself that he’s doing the right thing, when really he’s avoiding a difficult break-up.
I don’t think Amber’s a “pure spotless angel”, I think she’s pretty mixed up. But at least she doesn’t lie to herself about it.
Yes; all she does is lie to the guy she’s crushing on and avoid giving him answers when he asks for them.
Give it up – haters gotta hate, even if that requires them to ignore more and more reality to justify their rage. Nothing as petty as facts can turn them from this path.
“He knows (surely?) that Amazigirl is a fantasy that he can have fun with, but shouldn’t take seriously. ” – this is kind of ridiculous. He obviously knows that there is a girl behind the mask, even if he doesn’t know who. And based on what he knows there is no reason he should trust what Amber says about her “not being a whole person”.
Cover up for him? He didn’t want her there, and the first thing that he did was drag her aside and demand an explanation, which she didn’t give, but wheedled him into taking her along anyway. And he was uncomfortable about the situation for the entire time afterward.
You need to take off your hate-goggles and face the facts: anybody who thinks that Danny was selfish and self-absorbed in that scene only accomplishes this by being so selfish and self-absorbed that they dismiss and deny reality to perpetuate their delusion.
Dammit, I had almost forgotten about this storyline!
The only thing that can make you forget about a ship that MIGHT work is a ship out of left field. Or right field…
I love how the fallout from Danny’s terrible choices is syncing up in the comics now. XD
Only this one I can’t really blame him for.
What am I saying?
Of Course I can!
Yay! The return of “Danny hating” Yotomoe!
Was there ever any other kind?
I don’t think Danny made a terrible choice; I think Amber didn’t clarify anything, making it so Danny was unable to make a better informed choice.
I’d say Danny’s horrible choice is getting involved with someone and refusing to find out who she actually is.
In a normal webcomic we could brush off him not being able to tell that Amazi-Girl is Amber but Willis draws the characters with such distict body types it should be obvious to someone who has spent so much time with both of them. People like Billie and Dorothy haven’t spent much tiem around one of them, let alone both so we can cut them some slack but Danny? He’s willfully ignorant and that makes him much less sympathetic than he should be.
More to the point, Danny was easily the most shallow significant member of the cast. And shallowness rarely goes unpunished.
Btw POP QUIZ for y’all: what the hell was Amazi-girl doing with her arms?
Joe? I feel like Joe is much more shallow lol
Joe doesn’t discriminate. At all.
holding out her cape maybe? so she could (off-screen) swish it as she turned away from him in a very dramatic fashion?
Well, I feel like Willis is employing that age-old comic book device that allows a piece of felt over your eyes to COMPLETELY hide your identity (or if you’re Superman and just that epic, your forelock of hair will do it) So I don’t think we can contest the whole “He should recognize her” thing. Otherwise we’d have to hate quite a few superhero comics out there (although not the Flash, thank God)
Exactly. I get the feeling that it’s a lot harder to tell in-universe. Heck, Dina lives with her and hasn’t figured it out, and nobody calls her “willfully ignorant.”
I’m sure Dina knows.
But since it doesn’t involve dinosaurs, why on earth would she care?
This.
Dina knows all the secrets of the universe. She never mentions them because no-one thinks to ask (and they don’t involve dinosaurs).
Has Dina ever seen Amazi-Girl? Has Dina ever stated she doesn’t know who Amazi-Girl is? She’s DINA, she may not care.
They’ve never been tagged in the same strip, but I believe Dina was watching from off-panel when Amazi-Girl spirited Billie away from the fight with Ruth. She was evidently watching the fight before that.
You have evidence that Dina hasn’t figured it out?
‘Cause I don’t think anyone’s asked her, or even brought it up around her, and it’s totally in character for her to have recognized Amber the first (and, I think, only) time she saw her in costume, and just never mentioned it because she thinks that everyone else finds it equally obvious and doesn’t realize that her roommate being a masked vigilante is unusual or worthy of comment.
There’s no in-canon evidence either way. And I’ll admit that if anyone in this comic wouldn’t consider someone being a masked vigilante to be at all important, it would be Dina. Just pointing out that it’s not immediately obvious to everyone but Danny that Amazi-Girl=Amber. It annoys me when people continuously rag on Danny for not knowing things that it’s perfectly reasonable for him not to know.
I’ve said this so many times that I’ve gotten tired of saying it, but Danny is the only person in the comic who has had significant contact with Amber in both her guises. Most of the rest (Dina being the main exception) haven’t even met Amber more than briefly, because she spends most of her non-vigilante time in class or holed up in her room, and everyone else has seen Amazi-Girl only briefly, in stressful situations like the middle of a fight or while dealing with the aftermath of attempted rape. Danny, on the other hand, has sat and talked with Amazi-Girl, has played video games with her, has helped her with her work, has friggin’ made out with her, and has been in class with Amber, has eaten lunch with her, has sat and talked with her, has taken her on a pizza date to meet his parents and had her cuddled against his side.
And he doesn’t fucking recognize her. There’s enough deconstruction going on with Amber’s personae that I don’t buy the Clark Kent trope here. Danny doesn’t know because he doesn’t want to know, because he cares about his Lois Lane fantasy more than he cares about Amber in either guise.
(I’m excepting Ethan and Mike here, because it’s not clear how much contact they might have had with Amazi-Girl before college – and Ethan, at least, knows. There’s no evidence either way for Mike, but he seems to know everything.)
I am seriously considering committing this comment to a series of plaques, which I will then personally send to each person insisting that DoA operates under Silver Age comic rules when it is clearly deconstructing those tropes.
I was going to post, but John said it all.
Remember when Marvel first spun off Wolverine into his own book? He put on an eye patch, moved to some southeast Asian shithole where he apparently had a history, and started calling himself “Patch.”
Riiiiiggght.
Then John Byrne took over the book, said “bullshit,” and here was the old orange and brown costume again. Almost every supporting character in the book reacted the same way: “Oh, good. Now I can stop pretending I don’t know you’re Wolverine.”
At one point he expressed some irritation that everyone just played along with the most lame-ass thing he’d ever done. One of the characters, I forget which, told him, “Hey, when a guy with unbreakable claws and an attitude wants to pretend he’s fooling people, you play along.”
Maybe Danny’s just playing along. The conflict, fully internalized, may be what’s making him act like such an asshole. He’s living the dream, but on some level he knows it’s bullshit – but he doesn’t want to give it up.
If he knew, was playing around, and didn’t want to give it up, I doubt he would have cut Amber out so harshly. Obviously hurt feelings keep no matter who you are currently pretending to be.
Never underestimate the power of denial.
And honestly, to the guys out there: Would you risk your opportunity to fool around with Hawkgirl, Wonder Woman or Black Cat(last one doesn’t count but pretend it does!) And to the girls: If Green Lantern, Spiderman or The Dark Knight wanted you, would you risk fouling it up by the 2nd or 3rd week (rember, DoA time is a bit wonky!) just out of curiosity? No! You’d live the dream, fool around with a superhero and then push the whole identity thing for later, maybe six weeks in? Although I’d be down to never know about the aforementioned super heroines’ real identities if I got to date them. I mean, have you SEEN Black Cat??
I’d never choose Batman over anyone. The guy’s an emotionally stunted asshole, any relationship, no matter how casual, will crash and burn.
Wonder Woman’s secret identity was always all sorts of screwy, though. I don’t think it’s ever been taken seriously within my lifetime. Or my father’s lifetime.
…also, I’d really rather not fool around with any of them. They’re all nuts. Especially Hawkgirl.
Is Power Girl available? She’s got that window thing going, so the rules on crazy people are overruled.
The “don’t stick it in the crazy” rule applies double when the crazy has superpowers. Chest window or no.
(Walkyverse Tony would have done well to remember this.)
“Window thing” piqued my curiosity, so I had to Google “Wonder Girl.”
Holy cow. Motorboat City.
Pretty sure Wondergirl is like… 16, bro.
Yea, typo – “Power Girl” was the one I looked up. With the “window thing.”
Some mixed-up fantasy bullshit rather than a real person? No thanks!
(After all, Amber still has the same body!)
Only if it was Spidey, Nightwing, or Captain Marvel (carol, not mar-vell)
But I feel the novelty would wear off REALLY fast, especially cause I’d feel like they didn’t trust me enough to entrust me with their real identities, or that maybe their secret identities were dating someone else. Like, you wouldn’t know. Plus, it’s pretty likely your dates would get interrupted by villains, or the villains would kidnap you to get to the hero.
So glad I don’t live in a comic book.
God Dan it, Damny.
There’s your problem. Some wires got crossed in your Yotomoe-bot.
Malfunction…need input!
we are now seeing the repercussions of “The Danning”
Amazi-Girl!!!!!!
Amber… </3
Where?
…Danny. Friggin’ Danny.
Whoa, did my Ruth avatar change from angry to happy?
Ruth is pleased with Danny’s multiple Failures.
Mike is furious at Ruth’s pleasure… Wait.
Jacob is amused by Mike’s anger.
The TARDIS is predictably detached from all these goings-ons.
Fem-Joshua is just happy to be here!
Come to think of it, actually, any fanart with male-identifying Joshua in it is technically genderbending her…
I think of it as AU (Alternate Universe in fanfiction term).
Now you just look like you’re playfully chiding him.
It’s saying something about this comic that this relationship isn’t even tied for least healthy.
Any relationship with Danny is unhealthy.
This relationship is healthier than Joyce/Ethan because it looks to be over.
Actually, one thing that is healthier about Joyce/Ethan is that there is no ugly secret being hidden between them. The truth might be a trainwreck, but at least it isn’t a hidden trainwreck.
I think Joyce’s issues regarding sexuality being complicated by a rape attempt counts as an ugly secret in the relationship, considering their bizarro foundation of mutual avoidance.
This ship is taking in a lot of water.
Tell them to say “Hi” to JocEthan for me!
“Houston on the blind, this is to confirm, I am the only sole survivor of the SS JocEthan.“
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR0lWICH3rY
Between this strip and today’s Roomies, it’s not a great time to be Danny.
I wonder if there ARE any great times to be Danny.
When you are asleep not dealing with life-drama in real time
It’s good to be danny in the brief moments you forget you’re danny. Like when you’re asleep.
There will be great times for Danny when he grows up and stops doing stupid things. We will never see said great times in this comic, but I feel confident that it will eventually happen.
Billie climbing on top of him and demanding journalism seemed like a pretty good time to be Danny. Except of course that he somehow immediately Danned it up.
Journalism may be my new favorite euphemism.
I prefer “wrong her until she has a good scapegoat”, personally.
Does she really want someone so dense he can’t recognize her through such a thin disguise? Dumbest superhero movie last year was Green Lantern, but at least they had the decency to let the girlfriend recognize the man behind the lame little mask.
But Everyone’s that dumb. Everyone but Ethan.
And Mike. Never forget about Mike.
Nobody in the strip has recognized her, not just Danny. It’s something played for comedic effect.
Except if Dorothy went and did the research, she’d be able to figure it out in no time. She just hasn’t done the research.
(god, I so do not want to get into this argument again, I’m still suffering from anti-Danny burnout from the last strips with him)
Yeah she has. Not thorough enough for positive identification, but still.
Er, that’s what I meant. She hasn’t used the information she’s gathered up already. If she did so, it likely wouldn’t be long before she found out.
No one in this comic so far has been able to recognize her. Billie was right on top of her for a while (God that sounds dirty), and mistook her for Sal, who has a completely different hair style, body type, and race.
Let us not forget hair color.
And I guess she just assumes that the accent is fake. Or Amazi-Girl’s is.
Well, nowadays Amazi-girl’s accent actually *is* fake.
So what will Amber as Amazi-girl flaking on Danny accomplish?
…Not having her heart busted like a water balloon.
This.
agh I just wanna hold her
Maintain her self-respect.
Ending the relationship is the best step for both of them. Continuing will just break Amber’s heart and encourage Danny’s escapism (which will lead to heartbreak).
Self-destruction.
He’s gonna be waiting there a long, long time
‘Til touch down brings him ’round again to find
She’s not the girl he thinks she is in class.
Oh no, no, no,
She’s Amazi-Giiiiiiirl.
Amazi-Girl, Running these rooftops of the school, ALONE.
+1 million
Willis, was this originally a Friday strip? This sort of has the feel of a Friday Cliff-Hanger and/or the end of the story-line.
Dude, I am magical, but I am not magical enough to have had a six month buffer back when weekend updates were unlocked.
Check back in with me in about a year, though, at my current rate.
You are magical, Willis.
Magical Willis….sounds like a lost kid’s movie.
And that is why we must burn you.
How many ducks does Willis weight?
He becomes more magical the more strips he makes and the more people who read. He will become the cheese. He will surpass it!
He will surpass The Cheese and become Big Cheese.
The crossdressing rat from Samurai Pizza Cats?
Hey, speaking of LGBT characters, it totally blew my mind when I grew up and realized that as I kid I watched an anime with a TG villain who flirts with male characters.
Not that that show was progressive or anything, I’m just surprised they allowed it on American TV. I know that stuff is a little more common in Japan, but in Sailor Moon they turned the lesbians into cousins over here, so I don’t know how the censors missed Big Cheese.
I think I heard that the SPC dubbers had no idea what the show was really about and just made it up.
Sailor Moon had a LOT of gay couples, each censored in a different way. Zoicite became a woman (which I actually liked since it made it less about men vs women) , Uranus and Neptune were made cousins, Fisheye was treated like a woman but they left in blatent evidence she was a man (including topless scenes) and a couple of the week who ended up as brothers. By the time S rolled around they were really only doing the minimum amount fo censoring necessary to get things on air.
I know a lot of that show was made up, but apparently the crossdressing was not. He really did do that, in both his Japanese and American incarnations.
Actually, I was going for a MGS3 reference…didn’t know there is a character with that name.
What kind of cheese? Wenslydale? Gouda? Havarti?
All of them. And none of them.
To hell with Harry Potter you got the real magic Willis.
You mean, you expect that in a year you’ll have piled up so much of a buffer that you’ll have to switch schedules to twice daily and have half your carefully designed daily cliffhangers happen at noon?
And in two years they’ll be hourly.
In three years he’ll be drawing them faster than they can be read, and the site will be restructured to show them in filmstrip form.
And then the world will blow up. Not because of Willis; just a random event.
Your a wizard David!
This one’s on her. She has absolute proof that he has feelings both for her as a person, and for Amazi-girl. She has proof as well that he will respect, and remain loyal to those feelings, even when presented with other options. At this point, it is her and only her that holds her back.
You act as if teenage girls, or teenagers in general are rational.
You act as if people in general are rational.
You act as if Pi is rational.
Well, it’s too damn delicious to be rational…oh wait, you’re talking about that Pi, not the good pie.
Well … it’s a ratio …
Hell no, but it’s normally their fault if they don’t.
Rationality is in short supply around these parts. Even Dorothy has her lapses.
Rationals are dense, yet the probability of picking one is zero under most real circumstances.
She also has absolute proof that he’s an asshole who, despite claiming to have deep feelings for her, will cruelly cut her out of his life if he gets a hair up his ass about it.
That’s not true. He’s just a loyal boyfriend that doesn’t want to be tempted.
Only bad people are loyal to their girlfriends, you know that! Silly Yotomoe.
Ohhhhh m’ heart…
Aww. Sad. Now Amber has to try and go fix everything with a person subconsciously determined to keep everything messed up.
On a side note: yay, this strip isn’t about Jocelyne! That means no more indignant ramblings and heated debate in the comments! (Or at least less ._.)
Did you see the other Danny/Amber strips? Somehow those ones provoked more conflict than the one about a trans woman.
…Which I guess says something about the DoA fandom. Something good, I should think.
The DoA fandom: Come for the humor, stay for the deep philosophical arguments.
I stay for the hating Danny.
I stay for the lesbians, be they genuine lesbians, bisexuals or simply paired in my mind.
I stay for that and the theological discussions. But mostly lesbians.
I stay for the comedy and drama! (And lesbians!) And then the constant massive posts in the comments just sort of happen, I dunno how.
I stay because…. gravatar!
“How much wood could a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”
Re: My above comment. That’s supposed to be the topic for the next deep philosophical argument.
Well, that depends. How strong is a woodchuck?
That’s part of the problem. Can a woodchuck create a piece of wood too heavy for him to lift? If so, does that not call into question the woodchuck as an omnipotent diety?
The answer to that question is yes.
None. A woodchuck would not chuck wood even if woodchuck could chuck wood.
And even if woodchuck could chuck wood and even if woodchuck would chuck wood, should woodchuck chuck wood?
How much bound, round ground could a bound round ground hound hound if a bound round ground hound could be found bound to hound bound round ground for a round pound of bound ground round?
Amber strips may have isnpired more argument on a wider range of topics, but they didnt inspire over 1200 comments’ worth of argument.
The arguments themselves were mostly confusion over what terms are appropriate for certain situations. The ones about Danny and Amber were largely polarized with clear sides – either you hated Danny or you didn’t.
Look at it this way, Amber. You could’ve been Dan’s redheaded be-glasses’ed friend who attempts to straighten him out but sort of fucks up the execution one alternate-reality over.
Better to angst in dramatic lighting on a rooftop than anti-drunk driving accident death.
Dude gets pensive sometimes. If only he put that much effort into thinking the rest of the time…
Haha, as if that would actually help! Wait, am I making fun of Danny or myself now?
Danny, like usual!
Way to go, Danny, ya tool.
Of all the Danny Wilcoxen in the world, you’re the Danny Wilcoxest.
Wilcoxiest. Fixed!
Wow she looks stoned to the gills in that third panel.
OR liberated by insanity, like a mad scientist.
Danny(thinking): “I wonder how much I’d have to train before I can jump onto this wall without using my hands. If Mario can do it, I’m sure I can.”
Now imagine Batman making that face.
And with that, “Parents Day” returns to its year long slumber, until the next year brings a fresh crop of freshman whence to rip the hearts out of.
ha ha ha no it ain’t over yet y’all’ve got until the 23rd
and actually it’s freshman family WEEKEND but whatevs
So two more days of Parents drama?? Or is my timing wrong? Keeping track of DoA time confuses me XD
One more day. The football game would have been Saturday, so only Sunday left to go.
Although most events for a “Family Weekend” would have been scheduled for Saturday. Sunday would probably consist of a University-sponsored breakfast and that’s about it, as the visitors got ready to return to their own homes.
What the hell? And here I was relieved that Ethan, Joyce, Joshua, Sal, and Amber managed to make it out in one piece. And now that Joshua and Ethan came out to each other? And Joyce has an outstanding schism with her parents? Hahaha, everyone is so screwed.
It’s actually Freshman Family Weekend.
It’s not over yet.
aaaand, Willis beat me to it.
Dude, THAT was probably the biggest twist so far. I didn’t know there’s still a day left for all this shit to burn. These strips haven’t been denouement-we’re still climbing the goddamn slope.
Girl, this college is gonna buuuuurn….~
And I just heard Roger Waters in my head, from the album “Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking”.
She said, “You’ve been having a nightmare –
And it’s not over yet!”
I don’t care what happens to these people.
But I love being Dina.
I used to be Dina, like you.
Then I shot my knee.
Was that the best you could do?
Nope, this isn’t even my final form!
So, you came to the comment section just for that?
A good decision.
Wouldn’t you?
So did I, I just like being MIKE.
A wise decision, for then you would be not Mike. And to have someone be Mike and to not be Mike seems like pain would be inevitable.
0.0 Sure that works too.
I’m the Jew boy now. Totally awesome.
All the uproar about labels yesterday, and no one has anything to say about this? ^ Why can’t this crowd be enlightened about more than one thing?? (Wait, don’t tell me: *this* is just a joke. Right.)
I considered it, but I wasn’t really in the mood for conflict.
Or we recognized trolling when we saw it and declined to take the bait.
Is it because Joe is also Jewish?
stop
^that was in regards to tristan b calling Ethan “jew boy” btw
Gotcha.
And I’m…. who am I now?
Hm… Sal. I… GUESS I’ll take it…
They’re my source for intrigue in my intrigue-less life! Don’t bash them.
Amazi-Girl should toss him off a bridge or make herself look like a jerk so Danny will want to get with Amber. It’s what Silver Age Superman would have done!
Silver Age Superman was a dick!
True, Sooo true.
You could say he’s the World’s Finest Dick.
That’s what ladies have said about me if you know what I mean.
HAHAHAHA
…no they don’t…
No, you’re thinking of Nightwing (In more ways than one, suggestive wink)
No, that’s World’s Finest ASS.
Can’t he be both ?
Last I heard, it was down to him and Kyle Rayner.
Silver Age Superman: World’s Greatest Dick.
He prefers Richard.
Actually, Clark. Well not really. Superman wasn’t Clark Kent in the Silver Age. Clark Kent was the form he adopted to screw with people.
Silver Age Superman would trap him in a plastic missle, and throw him into space for playing with his dog … Yes, this actually happened. Even worse, he did it to his own cousin
Dude, Silver Age Superman would let people die of thirst.
Looks like “someone” is gonna get stood up, by Amazi-girl!
And now Danny knows what every super hero love interest felt.
Danny and Jocelyn! FTW!
Jokes on us: Amazi-Girls is actually positioned behind Danny so we can’t see her, about to apply an affectionate Honduran neck-tie to Mr. Wilcox’s windpipe.
Wow that comment was rife with typos and low on taste. Disregard.
What’s a Honduran Necktie?
I believe its when.a.woman forcibly squeezes her crotch and thighs around your neck so as to induce submission
I thought it was called the Hurricana Neckbreaker.
I thought it was called a fun friday night. HEYO
No, that’s just your mom.
…and a nickel.
Something only Ruth and Amazi-Girl would invent, arriving at the same mystical technique through eerily similar life experiences. I imagine it involves a lotta elbow, a lungful of carbon and a bruised kidney.
And a backhand across the face, for being rude.
I like this one much better.
Believe or not, yours wins simply because of the imagery of Amazi-girl turning a standing 69 position into the worst thing ever.
“I have neither breath nor balls, and cannot scream”
Another thing we could see if Billy decides to draw out Amazi-Girl by becoming a supervillain! She could kidnap Amazi-Girl’s love interest! THE MATH PROFESSOR!
I totally suggested that the other day!
Then Billie would fall in love with him and Ruth would have to destroy the world.
Set it to Joss Whedon-written musical lyrics and we have a webfilm!
“Dawn is in trouble? Must be Tuesday.”
Dammit guys, you made my head hurt.
Aaaaaaaaaand
You Dan it to the left
And Dan it to the right
Dannin’ up relationships
All day and all night
Dan’ning is a special set of skills.
Skills that have to be acquired over a long career.
Skills that make you a nightmare for people like women.
OH! Here’s a good question:
The Great Faz
Danny
Assuming you MUST marry one and kill the other, what do you do?
I’d kill Faz. Then hide his corpse in a barrel filled with gunpowder and then set it on fire.
Marry them to each other, and kill myself.
(My gravatar, of course, would marry Danny. My gravatar frequently makes bad life decisions.)
haha
I’d euthanize Faz and marry Danny. Then I’d kill him too.
Now, will Danny blame Amazi-Girl’s sudden lack of interaction on Amber’s deception?
dear god, I hope not
I just want Amber to avoid him at this point, honestly. She and Ethan should start being friends again. ; – ;
Dan would have to believe Amazi-Girl was vindictive for that. More likely he thinks she’s been kidnapped by supervillains or depowered.
Or worse…quit.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“AMAZI-GIRL—NO MORE!”
Spiderman quit like 30 times like that.
Because Spidey’s a wimp…and we could’ve just had Peter Parker retired as Spider-Man and had Ben as the new Spidey but noooooo….they had to kill Ben.
Ugh. This is why I hate Spider-Man. Stop angsting and start heroing, dang it!
He never wanted to hero to begin with, his entire career is done out of guilt for getting Uncle Ben killed.
Otto!Spidey is much less angsty. But a much bigger jerk.
Not vindictive, he spent a day pretending to be the boyfriend of Amber. But Amazi-Girl would have no way of knowing it was just a big lie if she wasn’t actually Amber. She might think he was two timing her.
and then he’d get a shark thrown at him.
Probably.
Pretty harsh all around. This isn’t QC or GWS, these are kids who were in high school just months ago. I cut them all slack, closeted Ethan, Dorothy’s desire for caramel, Danny’s confusion with young ladies, the mature and experienced ones are sophomores. The few that behave like adults might be upperclassmen or grad students. I have no illusions that I was very mature or good to be in a relationship with when I was that age. Can’t imagine what my future wife saw in me at twenty, when I was older than most of the characters.
So did she just leave without saying? Or is it implied that she went to proceed to make her way to him?? I feel like lots of people think it’s the former but fingers crossed for the latter!
P.S I miss my Mike Gravatar T_T
hovertext: he’s gonna be waitin’ there for a while
I’m really curious about what Danny’s gotta be thinking sitting there…
“I danned it.”
…somehow.
He doesn’t actually have to have danned it. He just has to think he’s danned it.
“Wonder what would happen if I did accept that busty cheerleader’s offer a few days back? Guess I’ll never find out because I got a date with a vigilante…who happened to look like this girl I happened to know and like and who also looked like my ex-girlfriend. Oh, and wonder what’s in that pizza I just ate…it is damn good. I guess it does dominate my taste bud like the sign said.”
Man. Kick in the heart.
Amazi-Girl turns her A upside down and proceeds to beat Dani to death with a crowbar!
ITS BIZARRO!
Ahh she pulls a Gorden Freeman, Nice.
Either that or her dad does it–dressed up like a clown.
Am I weird for (very, very, very casually) shipping Amber and Jocelyne?
yes
Yeah, I suspected as much.
To be fair, I did draw a little mini-comic featuring Ethan/”Joshua”/Amber before the reveal (which will now never see the light of day)…
Nooooooooo !
Let the fanart flow free !
Yeah!! Give us the ultimate reveal!
I cannot! You guys will have to be satisfied with the adorable Jocelyne art I drew instead.
(which shall be forthcoming, once I get my tablet back on the 19th)
Rule 63. Release it!
Tablet? You mean like a Wacom one? Or like an iPad and you’re just using like a Paper app?
Wacom.
Well, it appears as if you guys really wanna see it… I guess I’ll put it up.
But the Jocelyne art is going up first!
Well, I ship Jocelyne and Dany….
Why? They never even met.
Danny loves people unconditionally. Joy (because I can’t spell worth crap) wants to be loved for who she is.
It will horrify both’s parents!
It works!
Dude, at least let either of them have three words in.
I hate to add fuel to this fire, but I agree. If only because Jocelyne is more of a complete person than his current girlfriend is.
…meaning that I agree with the ship.
Heck, I’d agree with the ship too but at least let them have 3 words in before setting sail, you know.
Psh, the crackier the better.
Danny doesn’t love people. Danny doesn’t love anything but his fantasy world.
Oh, last comment. We should cut to Danny going, “Amazi-Girl?”
Then Amazi-Girl partying and saying, “Boffo!”
Maybe because the comic is named “Approach”, I thought she was actually gonna…..but no, that’d just be crazy.
Her approach to this problem is to put some distance between herself and the problem.
Ok, so I read It’s Walky and Joyce and Walky (not all of it, but whatever is available for free on the website) and neglected to read Roomies. So can someone explain to me why there seems to be a hatred for Danny? What did he do in Roomies to warrant this? Just curious. And also, why do people think he screwed up here? He refused to play with the feelings of a girl who he can’t have. Seems nicer than half of the guys I know :\
It’s his fault Ruth died. And he was soooooooo angsty. And he kept stringing Joyce along albeit unintentionally.
Danny is a passive aggressive and clingy so-called nice guy who sets people’s teeth on edge. He has no ambition and he sets himself up for failure by his own admission. He followed Dorothy to college and, unlike Felicity, this comes across as dangerously close to stalking. His inability to see the obvious that Amber is Amazi-Girl also offends people who can’t suspend disbelief on Silver Age tropes.
He’s really, really arrogant, and incredibly judgmental.
How is he these things? I’d just like to note that I didn’t read Roomies, only It’s Walky, Shortpacked and DoA.
If it makes you feel any better, I am clueless to the Danny of the other universes (mostly), but dislike Danny for his Danny-ness shown here:
He started as too clingy, refusing to stop dating Dorothy because he “believed in their love strong enough” to follow her to college (I agree with Dorothy stating it would have been a bigger favor if she’d dumped him earlier; he would have had a shot at living his life more).
Second, his parent’s behavior clearly states his unwillingness to take charge or make decisions for himself. Which is just such wasted potential. He could be a good role model with his morals about not sleeping around. He could go the distance with his grades and do something. But he doesn’t. His big goal for the future was being “first man” to Dorothy’s president. He sits around. He does nothing. And the impatience people show him show me, this has been going on. And on. And no one has been able to do anything about it.
And third, if any of the above weren’t true, and even if you were willing to be kind enough, or patient enough, or look past these because you’re thinking Danny is, at heart, a clueless guy who for the most part a good guy, there’s this: When he told Amber how he felt, when he saw her cry with joy, and when he subsequently broke the fragments of her heart with his anger at himself and her, when she walked off in despair… HE DIDN’T GO AFTER HER.
Danny hate.
What in the hell are you expecting he would say to her? “Hey, I still completely mean everything I said, but don’t feel glum! I want you to be happy, I just can’t hang out with you ever again.”
But I mean, of course Amber’s not to blame at all. It’s not like Danny asked for an explanation and she lied to him, right?
I forget, did he ever tell Amber he was in a relationship?
Yes.
Oh my god, he didn’t lead her on! The monster!
I was answering your question about what he did in Roomies.
I have a hard time hating anyone when I see the correlation between the way they are and the way they were raised or their circumstance. That’s why I can hate Mary. I know she’s probably a product too but there’s no data. The only exception to the rule is Mike. I could eventually hate Mike because there seems to be no connection between his sociopathy and his parents. For the rest of them, I root like crazy and would rather see them having a go at love and life than writing them off. There’s damn few ways to break out of yourself, and of them love is the best by far, even when you’re making a mess of it.
Danny is a loyal guy who lacks a certain amount of perception, and he has a tendency to gravitate toward emotionally unavailable women (Dorothy, who wants a boyfriend who can amuse her when she has time but whom she can put in a box when she’s busy, and Amber, whose inability to be open is self-evident). These relationships inevitably put him in a no-win situation: He’s an unsupportive, shallow jerk for not breaking up with Dorothy, but of course he’d have been denounced as insensitive and shallow if he had broken up with her; similarly he’s an unsupportive jerk for refusing Amber’s advances, but he would have been pilloried as shallow and unfaithful if he had pursued her.
Danny is basically the Hans Moleman of DoA.
I have no idea how you reached those conclusions. My biggest problems with Danny are that he’s clingy, obsessive, and raises the people he has feelings for on pedestals.
Also, I love Amber a lot, and I hate to see her hurting, regardless of the source.
yeah
I mean, he made all of us slow clap. And then he just thew it away!
I recommend re-reading DoA entirely from Danny’s perspective, hehe. I made a very, very long post a while ago about the topic. You’ll probably get a more objective feel for his character and maybe understand him a bit better.
I did. My opinion remains unchanged.
Conversely, it’s the love for Amber that I have trouble understanding.
It might be an artifact of my familiarity with her in the Walkyverse, but I didn’t really like her all that much in SP!, so I kind of doubt it.
I’m quite unsure of how one could like Danny. He’s angsty and pretty unremarkable.
I dunno, I like him because I relate to him in some ways. I find him misguided but I can’t dislike him based on that. I was and still am misguided. He means well, and aside from one instance I’ve never really been angry at him. *shrug* I don’t love him but I would certainly defend him as I like him quite a bit.
(not to mention everyone is angsty here. They’re teenagers after all! Amber, Ethan, Joyce, Sarah….etc. etc.)
In what way has Danny put Amazi-girl or Dorothy on a pedestal?
Dorothy exploded at him because he raised the possibility she might fall short of her dreams, and stated he would still support her. Amazi-girl…I honestly can’t think of any situation in which he is whitewashing her. His whole big “failing” with her appears to be him not following the lead of his junk after Amber. And he likes Amber, very much, and very much did not put her on a pedestal.
Amber, however: is 100% responsible for how fucked up this situation is. Inner daemons or not, she is the only one who has all the information and could end the farce in a -second- if she just told the truth.
Like I said, I can’t believe how much sympathy someone who causes all her own relationship problems gets when she could end them all herself by literally pulling on a string.
He didn’t raise the possibility she might fall short, he suggested she just give up and be with him.
First off, what timemonkey said.
Secondly, I don’t know what you mean by “whitewashing” in this instance.
Thirdly, almost every conversation Danny has had with Amber is about Amazi-Girl. In fact, almost every conversation Danny has had with anyone is either him talking to or about girls he likes. Come to think of it, Danny is a little similar to Roomies Joyce, only instead of trying to find a husband, he’s preoccupied trying to find tru wuv.
Note: I am not saying he is anywhere near Joyce in intensity, btw, though I am sure someone will try to accuse me of that. I am also aware that to Danny, Amber probably came off like Joyce in Roomies, which is valid.
(also am I the only one who thinks danny’s going to hear about what went on with amber that day and freak out over how he treated her)
Oh, no disagreement that he’s overly focused on relationships.
But I fail to see any “whitewashing”.
Anyway.
Timemonkey:
He suggested she might change her mind. He never said “Hey, you should give up everything”.
Granted, in a moment of extreme emotional pain, he retaliated by insulting Yale. AFTER saying that he’d be willing to give up on his own career and follow Dorothy to Yale if that’s what it took to be with her.
So, again, not seeing whitewashing, although sure, seeing a heaping dose of desperately trying to keep the relationship going no matter what it took, or if it even made them happy.
She’s there. And then she is gone.
Please excuse the following dirty joke:
If only STDs worked like that.
Heck, if only bad memories worked like that.
They do, but only in Castle Oblivion.
There was a Amazi-girl here…she’s gone now!
Dammit Amazi-Girl,.. MAN UP!
This is like Guile’s “Go home and be a family man”….to Chun-Li.
You did not need to say most of that sentence.
“Take your balls out of your purse, and kick some ass!”
Just what everyone wanted, more of this plotline! Hurray!
I don’t know if it will work like that. I think it’s the end, and then we’ll see Danny later being all, dude Amazi-girl’s been avoiding me..
I wonder if she ever accidentally does a ‘Batman-growly-voice’ when she talks to danny…
She changed her voice deliberately and he made note of it.
No, they’re wondering if Amber ever unintentionally slips into her Amazi-Girl voice around him. It’d be kinda hilarious to see.
You know, that is the silliest part of The Dark Knight….to me at least.
To me it was that Bane wasn’t in it
It’s not silly when Kevin Conroy does it.
There’s a world of difference between Christian Bale’s Batman voice and Kevin Conroy’s Batman voice.
At least it is easy to understand what Conroy’s Batman is saying!
Dammit Amazi-Girl, just explain it to him
you know she can’t do that.
Well, she can but that would risk putting Danny in harms way. Who would want to harm Danny anyways?(besides Yotomoe and a couple of hundred other folks in the comment section)
I could see her dad getting in a punch
how does it put him any more at risk that him blatantly dating a superhero? If she had any villains, they’d be all over scooping danny up right about now to get to her.
He’d dump her (or at least she thinks he would). He explicitly told her he didn’t want to know who she was, because it would spoil the story.
He’s a totally self-centered fantasist, and she’s better off without him.
Yeah, because it’s not like she agreed to go along with it, oh wait she did, or tried to basically get him to cheat on her with her, oh wait she did, and is now disappearing without explanation for reasons that are entirely her fault, oh wait she is, and has now ruined her (two) relationships with her boyfriend and best friend because she couldn’t be assed to untie a goddamn knot, oh wait she is, and ignored many opportunities to bring up her problems with their relationship as Amazi-girl, oh wait she did.
we’ve had this argument too often, and we’re never going to agree. I’ve never said she’s faultless (as you always accuse me of doing) merely that she can never get what she wants from him (i.e. a real relationship with the chance of love) because he thinks only of himself. Nothing she could do would ever change that, so she is doing the right thing by dumping him. She should have told him to piss off as soon as he said he preferred Amazi-girl to her.
The anti-Danny posts around here are getting the the point of the surreal. There are vague similarities to the events that happened in the comic, but then suddenly things veer off wildly into some strange, dark place that I don’t really understand.
Well, other than the fact that Danny is satan. That much I think has been made clear.
This is so sad, he needs to tell her he spent time with Amber, but he can’t. He’s trying to do the right thing and be a good boyfriend, but she can’t let him do it because she doesn’t want to think about what she did to him again. She might even be afraid she’d blow her identity cover in the moment from crying, which if she’s still not sure she wants to share it with him she can’t risk. It’s so very sad…
By the way, for all of those who find the impenetrability of Amazi-Girl’s disguise to be beyond belief, you should realize that the human brain can easily be flummoxed by things that it is only half-glimpsing or half-paying-attention to.
Here’s one of many many short videos done on change blindness: http://youtu.be/vBPG_OBgTWg
Though, to be fair, Danny has had enough experience with both of them, that the fact that he hasn’t picked up enough hints displays an epic density and a superhuman level of fail.
YES! Thank you.
It’s how often he’s been around the two of them that baffles me. The others have their reasons for not recognizing her.
It’s Magical Girl syndrome.
I believe that it’s been established that Danny’s not interested in finding out who Amazi-Girl “really is.” He even straight up told her exactly that.
And his willful ignorance just fuels our displeasure with him.
To be fair (I’m mixed about both of them, because it’s Amber’s insecurity about men that’s causing part of this problem, as well as both Danny’s inability to care for two women simultaneously and his incredible selfishness) how long did it take Louis Lane/Mary Jane/every love-interest of a super-hero to figure out that two people=1 person. It really hasn’t been all that long in the dumbiverse since Danny saw Amazi-girl.
How has Danny been selfish? He doesn’t know what kind of affect it’s having on Amber, because he doesn’t know she’s amber. As far as he knows he just has a girlfriend with a kink, why is he suddenly being selfish for going along with that instead of being like Lois Lane and going “well gee, I’m going to dig until I find the real identity of the local superhero”? Maybe he’s just leaving it alone because he thinks she doesn’t want him to know who she is, I mean she wears a mask to every interaction.
Ironically – he’s kinda going allowing with the identity she wants to present herself as, instead of forcing her to present as her “True self”.
Sooooooo….yeah.
It’s almost like she wore a mask to all their meetings for a reason or something.
Would that be after she had an “oh crap” reaction when she thought he was asking, so he reassured her he wasn’t because she clearly didn’t want to tell him?
Why does everybody seem to forget that Danny stated to Amber (who he does not recognize as Amazi-Girl) that he himself doesn’t want to figure out her secret identity unless it’s by way of some dramatic reveal? It’s not just because he’s being considerate of her feelings, much as people like to spin it that way.
He also doesn’t know he’s hurting anyone by not finding out.
He’s been around Amazi-girl a lot. At night. Often in the dark or in the stark shadows of a single nearby light source. While she’s in disguise, wearing a cape that changes her silhouette and changing her hairstyle and her voice.
But none of that matters, because he’s satan. Satan sees all things clearly.
Wait, the cape changes her voice? It all makes sense now! Amazi-girl isn’t the girl, but the cape. THE CAPE IS HER TRUE POWER!
Grammar, buddy.
Back in high school, my Civics teacher did a demonstration to illustrate the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. She arranged for a student from one of her other classes to, unannounced in the middle of class, run in, snatch her purse from the floor by her desk, and run back out with it – and then asked us to all write down our eyewitness descriptions of the perpetrator and events. And then invited the purse-snatcher back in and compared people’s accounts and descriptions to the actual person and events.
I have a ridiculous memory; my description was spot-on, and when I was vague about something, I knew that I didn’t know it, and said that rather than filling in blanks with my imagination. But almost everyone else’s accounts ranged from significantly skewed to completely off the wall. No one recognized the purse-snatcher, even though she was known to many of them (though not me) and her face wasn’t covered. Many people didn’t register what she’d taken, and several didn’t notice that she’d taken anything. Few people described her clothing or physical attributes with any accuracy. One girl, who was friends with the purse-snatcher, described her, a white girl with straight, light brown hair and pale grey-green eyes, as being a black man, which I can only ascribe to a shocking amount of barely-hidden racism.
And this generally applies to everyone who’s seen Amazi-Girl except Danny.
Dammit, you Amazi-Girl’d up again!
So, not to change the subject, but did The Generalwillisimo set a record in blocked and banned commenters, in the last two days?
I didn’t block or ban anyone!
i did send some posts into the spam filter though
Is it safe to assume most “spam” was people doing your mom joke like a certain asshole we all know?
Muscle Man?
That would be his mom.
HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE
I mean
I am, like, to the moon with happiness over that.
are you saying everyone was at least rational and no one was foaming at the mouth to get their vitriol onto the comment board?
because which internet are we talking about here
I sense… copy-pasting and… photoshoping. XD
Is that Reed hall? It’s been so long since I’ve been in Bloomington.
BLORMAL
NEVER FORGET
oh wait ha ha wrong state
sorry everyone
i’ll go back to illinois now
just kidding, I’m never going back.
This situation couldn’t be resolved by her talking to Danny, oh no, we’d better blame him for everything and say she’s doing the right thing by abandoning him without explanation -_-
I know right? I mean, why should she have to take responsibility for being a moron and starting a relationship under an assumed identity?
Just because she’s doing wrong doesn’t make him any less wrong either.
…And I will look down at them and say, “no.”
That was probably the best move for the both of them. Amber shouldn’t use Amazi-Girl’s relationship with Danny for personal gain, and Danny shouldn’t dwell on the fantasy of dating a superheroine.
I’m still kinda rooting for these two crazy kids. Hope they can work it out somehow. Also Amber’s facial expression is killing me. Danny’s too. Actually everything about this strip hurts a bit. Happiness is the most elusive of things in this universe for all these characters. Sigh.
At least we have Dorothy and Walky?
Is there enough of that brilliant white chocolate/caramel mixture to balance out the bitterness of families scorned?
Find out in the next 500 episodes on Dumbing Of Age!
Semi off-topic, but I went back to the start of this storyline, and something caught my eye. Billie says it’s been four weeks in this one: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/leer/
but:
1.01. was move in day.
There were no time skips until the end of 2.03 (9 days total).
Then there’s 3 day gap.
Then 2.04. to 3.03. are all one day after another (6 more days).
We skip 2 days at the end of it.
20 days total. 3.04. is 21st. Exactly three weeks. Did I miss something, or have Billie made a mistake?
she probably blanked out and missed a couple of days whilst she was still drinking.
Good decision Amazi-Girl.
And i shall stand on my very small island of liking Danny in this sea of Danny hate, alone apparently lol
Nah, man, you’re not alone. I also agree that all the hate towards him is unwarranted. He could’ve phrased his thoughts much better, but his heart was in the right place.
You’re definitely not alone. I like Danny too. Mostly because I can relate to him so well.
Totally with you, there.
As much of an ass as he is, I like Danny, too.
I can relate to him, and that’s most likely the reason why I hate him sometimes. I tend to do the same mistakes.
So, after all, even if he is a dumbass sometimes, I like him.
Yeah me too. I mean you can list the immaturity and character issues of the whole cast. Billy is a neglected but spoiled alcoholic brat. Sarah’s a misanthrope. Mike’s a sociopath. Amber flirts with multiple personality disorder. Joe’s a complete hedonistic narcissist. Ruth’s prone to self-indulgent self pity (it’s why she see’s herself in Danny in the other verse ill grant you).
I like him because he seems to be largely the victim of shitty circumstances and Amber’s stupidity.
Now that’s not very fair. Amber’s got a lot of issues to go through too.
Yeah this isn’t fair at all. Danny has some problems he needs to work on, and both his and Amber’s actions are completely understandable and make a lot of sense.
I like Danny, but ignoring the flaws that get him into these situations is not a positive way of looking at his character. (I mean, he wouldn’t even BE at IU if he didn’t have a major twoo luv problem.)
I don’t read the comments very often so I probably missed you explaining it but-
Dude. What is UP with your Amber hate? Did a woman like her seriously hurt you for you to take this all so personally? I mean seriously. She is a very damaged person, and she is also young. Both of those aren’t well known for making good choices. (I mean, almost none of the characters make good choices. We are reading Dumbing of Age.)
Or is it an artifact of all the Danny hate?
It’s a small island but we’ll have a good time!
YAY!! im not forever alone!
Ow….the feels.
Danny’s getting pretty good at the whole living statue thing. Should put a hat down or something.
Idea:
Especially judging by the look on Danny’s face, his obsession with monogamy, and how long he’s been waiting, he might be expecting Amazi-girl’s going to yell at him for hanging out with another girl and complimenting her. Kinda fucked up and paranoid, but he still showed up.
Amber/Amazi-girl can either (1) get through this scot-free, or (2) reveal her secret and play into the exact situation that Danny foolishly said he was expecting to happen when they started this. Probably with drama, but she didn’t show up.
Eh.
…reading all these Amber and Danny comics, kinda dismayed that so many people seem to think “honesty and faithfulness to your significant other” are just cultural artifacts, and that if you don’t run after every person who seems, on the surface, to be a better fit for you despite any lying or emotional manipulation they might currently be engaged in, you’re a bastard-coated bastard with bastard filling.
Most of them can be explained with a heavy implied level of “He knows or should have known that they’re the same person”.
Most.
I haven’t seen anyone who seems to me to believe that. I certainly don’t, and I’ve been very vocal about my problems with Danny and his behaviour. (Not so much this strip – partly because I was busy today, and partly because I’m getting tired of repeating the same things every time Danny shows up – but check the last batch of Danny/Amber strips. I commented plenty there.)
I’ve replied to such a person above.
I apologize, but I don’t remember what your criticisms have been.
If you let your eyes slip out of focus and treat the first two panels like a magic eye, you can see a small 3d effect
That’s nifty.
Danny sits on air …
Yes Danny, suffer. Suffer.
She’s the girlfriend he deserves, but not the one he needs right now
I see that most people seem to think that it was Danny telling Amber he didn’t want to see her anymore that made her not visit him as Amazi-girl. When I first saw this though the first thing that popped in my mind was that Amber had time to think about what Mike had said and is questioning her choice in guys. Maybe she is now afraid to end up like her father, especially after she her turbulent adventure of punching him in the face and loving it.
Too bad things aren’t that black and white and assuming if you’re not acting like your mother did in a relationship then you automatically act like your father is complete bullshit.
I haven’t actually seen anyone saying this. I’m pretty sure the reason she’s not approaching him is because she’s still hurt by what he’s said to her.
He doesn’t deserve to be happy.
Just my opinion.
I am of the opinion that everyone in this comic* deserves to be happy. Ethan, Joyce, Amber, and yes, even Danny. Everything sucks for them for no good reason.
*Main cast.
“For no good reason”? Sorry, can’t agree: if that were the case, the comic just wouldn’t be a good read. I think that things suck for these characters because of their human flaws and baggage; which is good reason enough, and it’s one reason why readers can relate to them so much.
I’m sure you don’t actually think that Amber dresses up like a superhero and beats up random criminals for a good reason. Or that Ethan and Joyce are dating each other for a good reason.
I could go on.
I think he disagrees on whether those are A) the things that suck for them or B) their choices which are the reasons other things suck for them.
It’s hard to divorce their choices from the experiences that resulted in the thought processes behind them. Amber uses Amazi-Girl as a coping mechanism because of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. Ethan and Joyce are repressing themselves because of their upbringing (it’s more complicated in Ethan’s case, but it’s still the root cause). These choices would not have been made if they were not the products of their circumstances.
Good “reasons”, yes. Good “excuses”, no. Their respective personalities and pasts can explain many of their actions, but that does not absolve them of responsibility.
Also, “good” not in the sense of moral value, but as an indicator of strength to describe how believable their motivations are.
That is not the context I was using. I meant it as if the characters were real people.
OK, forget it then. I thought you meant “good” in the sense of “believable”, as JT said.
Because we know Amber’s backstory and why she has to hide behind Amazi-Girl to be brave, we assume that Danny’s the bad guy.
But based on what he knows, it’s entirely reasonable for him to act the way he is. In his eyes, Amber was trying to muscle her way into being his girlfriend without his consent when he was seeing another girl. He has every reason to not want to see her anymore.
What gets me is that Amber has absolute proof Danny has feelings for her AND for Amazi-girl. He as well as said that they’d likely get together if they kept hanging out together. She also has proof that he won’t betray her, via Danny shooting her down precisely *because* he might develop romantic feelings for her if they keep going, and that would hurt the girlfriend that he has right now. So on the Amazi-Girl side, she has a guy who won’t cheat, and will actively avert cheating if he realizes there’s a chance of it coming up. As Amber, she knows that he likes HER, and recognizes that they could easily end up together.
The funny thing is, if the roles had been completely reversed, and Danny was the one forcing Amber to pretend to be his girlfriend in front of her parents even though she was really uncomfortable with it, everyone would be calling him a monster. This is a major double standard.
BTW, I posted this earlier and it was removed. It was worded slightly differently. Are we not allowed to use the “r” word here?
Not sure. I saw it and replied to it, but obvs mine disappeared as well.
My response was me being annoyed at everyone coming up with hypotheticals and pretending they know how people would actually respond to them.
Up there, I gave the reasons I don’t like Danny and tend to side with Amber. They would not change if Danny was Danna and Amber was Andrew.
You’re right, I shouldn’t put words in other people’s mouths.
I meant if they just reversed roles, not reversed genders. I would expect, maybe completely incorrectly, that if Danny had forced Amber into the same situation, people would blame him as a male (and as Danny) for being overly aggressive with Amber. *shrug* Maybe not
I understood your point. It is mainly about gender, so I genderbent them.
However, Danny and Amber as characters are more than just their gender. The way things happened are a consequence of their experiences, circumstance, and the people they are. You can’t meaningfully switch their places around in the story (unless you come up with a slew of qualifiers), because it would be inconsistent with who they are.
Screw it, I’ll make it end the way I want it to end. Fan-fiction time. FAN FICTION TIME EVERYBODY!
AG: Danny – Amber told me about what happened today
D: Sh… she did?
AG (smiles): Yes. It was very sweet of you to help her out. And sweet of you to stand up for me.
D (blushes): Oh. *beat* How much did she tell you?
AG: More than she told you, I think. Do you know why she needed your help today?
D (embarrassed): No… no I don’t
AG: Amber had a… confrontation… and needed someone to spend time with in public, to avoid another, worse one
D (looking at ground): Oh. Why didn’t she tell me? *beat* I just gave her another confrontation, didn’t I?
AG (smiles and puts an arm around D)
D (looking sad): But, the thing is, she…
AG: She sees good things in you. The same things I see. I’m sure she couldn’t help feeling some attraction.
D (looking at ground): But I… feel some things too…
AG (smiling): The important thing is you wanted to be faithful. I understand. And I think Amber… Amber is okay being just friends for now
(they smile at each other, and embrace. fade to black…)
>_> <__> <_<
So apparently if you do the shifty eyes four times alternating in direction, it gets turned into that
I was trying those emoji’s IRL and it felt wierd.
heyguisewhatsgoingon oh wait it’s everyone hate Danny again, I’ll be back tomorrow.
It’s like… there’s never been a comments section in the history of the internet where people weren’t furious all the time.
The first comment system ever designed ever:
– Testing, testing.
– Sweet, it showed up! Does everybody else see this? Now somebody else try posting.
– “Testing, testing”? That’s the best you could do?
– No kidding. And what font is this? Arial? Lame.
– And what was with the user names? Eight characters? Why would anyone ever need that many? What a waste of memory.
– Seriously.
– You guys suck. See if I ever write anything for you again.
– Good riddance!
You forgot “Hello World!”
Jocelyn Brown is so good with updating her website. It’s rare to see someone with her ability to keep up a six month buffer.
I know right? She was like mimicking everything with the CSS and all.
To everyone who thinks they’re in the minority for not hating on Danny: you’re not. At this point, it’s pretty equal, if not more in your favor.
It’s a testament to Willis’ skill as an artist and storyteller that he can say so much with just one expression. No dialogue, just a look on someone’s face.
I feel bad for danny. He didn’t want to be a jerk and cheat so he stood firm in the face of some strong temptation and for that he looses two girls (actually one) and from his perspective it’s just one girl standing him up after he sacrificed a lot for her.
I giving 70% chance he blames Amber for this. Which in a round about way I guess is 100% true.
Go back and read that comic again, but with this playing in the background, and then pause on the last panel until the song’s finished:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZnfoqxPSDs