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I agree. At this point I’m happy for them admitting their feelings and realizing what it would do to Amber.
On the other hand…damn, what a shame. I feel sorry for them.
Willis is definitely brilliant at screwing our heads.
You really think Sal would do something like that? She doesn’t strike me as the type to knock other people down to get ahead, at least not intentionally.
No, that pretty much entirely messes up Sal’s, Jason’s, Danny’s, and Walky’s character arcs.
Look, Sal was struggling. She has no natural grasp of math and doesn’t much like rules-ordered structures.
So she went to Jason. He couldn’t help her, because he understands the material and can’t understand why someone else doesn’t. (This is an Issue with instructors. Teaching is a skill, and knowing a subject well doesn’t always help explain it to people who don’t understand it when it’s presented.)
Sal and Jason fucked instead of Sal learning anything because they have emotional issues.
Sal wound up getting instruction from Danny, because Danny actually tried to understand Sal’s perspective, and Sal was willing to work through her shortcoming (after attempting to improve her grade by working something else /if you know what I’m saying/). Sal put in effort, Danny helped someone, and the two of them became friends (which has had impacts on the Danny/Amber relationship.)
Walky, meanwhile, has been failing. This is because he doesn’t grasp the material either, and he has NO IDEA how to deal with that. Sal has had more trouble with academics in the past, but that’s made her learn how to get through the problems. Walky has never had a course of study he couldn’t excel at without effort. (This is an Issue with smart but lazy and undisciplined people who assume they can skate by in life until they’re forced to actually put effort into things. Sometimes they step up and buckle down. Other times, we fail out of college and find ourselves thirty and working mall retail to pay the bills…)
They’re twins, so they have the same handwriting. Dont’ you know anything about twins?
(Note: This is only true for Dumbiverse twins. Real world twins don’t work that way. Also, even for the Dumbiverse, it’s not canon. I just made it up.)
Rumor has it the writers once said they planned on having Mako meet Firelord Izumi’s daughter at the party in the last episode. That would mean he’d be dating an literal princess next. Apply that to Amber and that just means she has nowhere to go but up!
Avatar >>> princess. Only one per generation, savior of the world, and all that. Also, Korra is kind of both, since her father was also a prince of the Northern Water Tribe and then basically ended up leading the Southern tribe by the end of the series.
I’m glad they didn’t do that, considering the episode that can be summarized as “the multiple ways Mako has been a d-bag.” I feel like an episode with Mako getting with a princess would be like a “girls do fall for jerks” trope.
you say that as though princesses are more special by virtue of being related to somebody (and in some cases, with not a lot of branches on that family tree)
Right name, right grav, right comment, right time, right place.
This has won you all of the internets for today.
All hail Supreme Butt Commander of the Internet.
Speaking as a weeb: being super into anime during puberty can kiiiind of bias you toward effeminate men. Which isn’t to say every dude who isn’t a storm of traditional machismo is into other dudes, but there’s probably like. a slllight correlation.
To be fair, JoJo is absolutely not your typical DC Comics type of manly men. They may not be your average bishounen either, but Jojo men certainly have a certain effeminate allure in their very bishounen eyes, tight clothes, slightly glam rock personas and “unmanly” poses.
Media featuring gay and bi characters or even just beautiful characters of your same sex doesn’t alter your sexuality (but it can allow you to examine it in greater detail and possibly come to new conclusions). However, saying it does can quite possibly fuel bigots. Just my perspective.
Yeah, I’ve watched plenty of anime with the bishonen character type, and I’m still straight as a horny, lonely, stereotype-anime-watcher can be. Which is pretty damn straight. (Damn straight!)
I as a non typical male in my lifes (I loved sailor moon but hate sports for example) I still am attracted to the feminine, but at the same time I know physical attraction only gets you so far and if I like the person i might get a crush regardless, but I also know if they look macho/etc i doubt I would feel attracted to them due to physical preferences.
Hah. I fit the fujoshi trope all too well, and was lucky enough to find a bi guy. Both of us like a certain degree of femininity in our partners, for sure.
See on the one hand, I appreciate the surprising amount of forethought (from Danny of all people) and their consideration towards Amber.
On the other hand BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I agree on both statements. It’s nice to see Danny making the good decision here. Especially since Ethan’s response seems more like a CMA clause than a total agreement.
Right; contrary to readership belief Danny virtually always makes good and decent decisions *when he has sufficient information to do so*. Which until this scene was a circumstance which fell under the category of “never”.
I can think of at lest one who’d be delighted to have a legitimate “Danny doesn’t really care about Amber” argument to rant about instead of referencing the moment he usually does.
“I don’t know,” Jacob replied. “I think I convinced myself that I hated you because I couldn’t admit that I loved you, but I have recently discovered that this is an acceptable option.”
“I too have recently discovered this.” Jacob kissed Edward, causing him to sparkle with joy.
“I want to touch your thing with my thing,” Jacob murmured.
Edward gasped. “We can’t! You know why.”
“It’s OK, I came prepared.” Jacob’s hand glided back toward his extremely yummy butt. If the raised circle in his back pocket was what Edward hoped it was…
Jacob pulled a gold ring with a giant diamond out of his pocket, and slipped it on Edward’s finger. “Now we are married,” Jacob murmured.
“Oh!” Edward cried, “I am ready now. Touch my thing with your thing!”
Jacob removed his jeans and undies, revealing his engorged thing, which consisted of a glans, frenulum, and shaft, all of which are described in very interesting detail on Wikipedia.
OH NO, GRAMMA, YOU’RE READING THIS IN HEAVEN, AREN’T YOU? STOP READING!!!!!!!!
Yeah, it’s not like “And then Danny and Ethan will kiss, right? RIGHT?” was a reaction that was particularly hard to predict, especially when that ship’s been sitting at the dock for almost two years now.
Hopefully bars aren’t involved. If Danny got a little tipsy and smooched Ethan, Amber might blame Sal for Danny’s underage drinking, and by extension her exes getting together.
While I misremembered other stuff, the essence of my prediction was correct: Danny and Ethan do not have sex at this time.
And yes, if Amber ever learns of this mutual attraction, she would explode from the contradiction of desperately wanting Ethan and Danny to have sex while desperately feeling doubly betrayed by her best friend and her ex-boyfriend.
Sure, but knowing Amber and how she never deals with any feelings appropriately, by the time she cools off from the breakup and reaches the emotional place where she can be happy about Seecox, and considering in-comic time versus real time… we’ll all be dead by then. D:
Sure, but honestly, Amber needs help and she needs to grow up. It’s wonderful that Ethan and Danny are worried about her, but (a) Amber’s problems are bigger than the both of them, and (b) denying themselves happiness to protect Amber is going way overboard.
I have many, many years of unhealthy, self-sacrificing co-dependent decisions behind me. In the end, no one benefits from that type of thinking and behavior. They need to approach their relationship based on what they want, and not on what they think will keep Amber from freaking out. First they should try their best to convince Amber that she needs help (through Ethan, heh). And if she doesn’t listen… welp, que sera, sera.
They… they can be happy without dating each other, you know. It’s not like they have some sort of undying love for each other. They’re not each other’s “the one”. They have some attraction to each other and get along well. They’re not gonna be miserable forever if they stay friends.
I agree that Amber needs help, but just giving up and deciding to screw her feelings if she can’t see she needs help is a kind of asshole move that Ethan would never do, because Amber is way too important to him, and his friendship with someone he’s known forever, I’m guessing, takes precedence over his sexual attraction to some guy he met a few weeks ago.
My point is… Ethan and Danny can be fine not dating (at least until Amber reaches a place where’s she could be okay with that.).
I don’t think I need to explain how very not fine Amber would be if they did this right now. She’s already on the verge (or, arguably, in the middle of) a mental breakdown.
The way I understand your point is that acting on some sexual attraction is more important than a lifelong friendship and that person’s mental stability.
Reply to Saki: Okay, I feel like I have to reply again just to say I agree with this, too. I didn’t understand LeRoyEstMort’s comment quite like you did, I saw it more as a statement about things in the long run.
I have similar experiences, so I agree with this. Trying to support Amber in ways they can is great and what friends should do, but making decisions about any other relationship based on what keeps her appeased is not a good idea in the long run.
I mean, they can be tactful about it, but letting Ambers insecurities run their lives isn’t any more healthy than Amber letting the same insecurities run her life, and I’m saying that as someone with equally strong (albeit different) insecurities. I’ve been on both sides of this type of situation so to speak.
Polyamory. Polygamy is multiple marriage. And so far, nope!
(I was personally holding out for hot threesomes. Consensual, healthy ones, where nobody is pushed beyond their comfort zone or sexual preference. But I’m not sure Amber would ever be in a healthy enough state to handle that for the foreseeable future of this comic.)
Threesomes probably wouldn’t work in this dynamic, because: 1) Ethan isn’t bi, so having Amber there would at best be neutral, and at worst be mood-killing, and 2) Amber probably still has sexual feelings towards Ethan, which might make her jealous if she sees Ethan and Dan together.
Is that a “can’t happen” “won’t work” or a “would be terrible” “won’t work”? Because I can see Ethan still feeling guilty about letting Amber down and trying to make it up to her. And horribly, horribly failing.
Amber doesn’t wanna date Danny. Ethan doesn’t wanna date Amber.
It’d be a two way thing for Danny and Ethan, and then Danny would have a one sided thing with Amber, and Amber would have a one sided thing with Ethan.
I’m not sure that’s a workable model for a poly relationship.
Definitely, and definitely your other comment. V’s can totally work in the real world, I should know, I’ve been in a few, but yeah, that option was nuked from orbit once Amber became convinced that Danny was part of a conspiracy against her orchestrated by Sal.
Yeah. I also know a few sets of real-life Vs, and it could have worked while the three of them were all still on good terms. However, it doesn’t strike me as an arrangement Amber would have wanted even beforehand.
Polyamory might happen. But it sure won’t happen with this group. Maybe in the future with some other relationship, but I wouldn’t hold breath for poly representation just yet.
I could see Ethan getting hit by a truck on the way to BotCon or something, maybe decked out as Optimus Prime. He’d probably suffer a broken arm at worst, but – actually, never mind; his sorrow at missing the con might be grieving on par with character death.
dude, i don’t know about you, but my circle of friends doesn’t bang each other’s exes while they’re still grieving the relationship. ethan and danny don’t seem devastated or repressed by this decision; it’s just common decency.
“we’re willing to pass on this pleasure because the pain of hurting our mentally ill friend would be so much greater for us and her” is probably more accurate.
Yikes, I mean, Amber should definitely get therapy and all, but there’s something to be said about not jumping into a relationship with your ex’s ex, who she is still friends with, immediately after you break up that kinda transcends whether or not your ex is an unstable mental wreck.
This is pretty much what anyone who isn’t a selfish asshole would do.
While hospitalization may actually help Amber/AG. It shouldn’t just be so these two can bang with less guilt, but rather because her connection to reality is getting a little more tenuous and she’s starting to become more of a threat to herself and others as evidenced by her punching out random criminals in broad daylight.
Okay, so I just LIVED a similar drama to this over the weekend. A close friend of mine spent the weekend in full on breakdown mode because her ex slept with someone she was close to and trusted, thus torpedoing any chance of the three of them remaining friends.
Sleeping with a close friend’s ex, especially RIGHT AFTER a breakup, is a goddamn shitty thing to do to someone. Ethan and Danny would, in fact, be the fucking worst if they got together right now. Amber’s mental health is irrelevant to that, because it’s a betrayal of trust and not something you should do to anyone you care about.
On the one hand, I don’t like the idea that after a breakup, “my ex would be upset” is a thing much. Especially with all the emotional abuse Amber has been slinging- she doesn’t control Danny’s body or Ethan’s.
But I do think there’s an acceptable period of time that should be left alone for the mental health of everyone involved. So the friend (Ethan) doesn’t feel like a rebound; so the ex (Amber) doesn’t feel like a throw-away AND doesn’t have to wonder if they planned this/already got it on; so the other ex (Danny) has some time to be on their own and heal/come down.
But after said time… I really do think it’s unfair to be angry at a friend for hooking up with someone you’re no longer dating. But then, I’m a polyamorous heathen, so a lot of this drama doesn’t make a lot of sense to me anyway.
When the ex in question is the one who did the breaking up I don’t think they really have a claim to any kind of bugger period because THEY chose to end that relationship.
I mean, Amber isn’t actually the one asking for the buffer period here. Danny and Ethan are deciding on their own that this isn’t something they’d want to pursue because they feel they’d hurt Amber.
HOLD YOUR GROUND SONS OF COMMENTS, OF DUMBING, MY SHIPPERS!
I see in your fan art the same fear that would take the heart of me.
A day may come when the courage of yaoi fails, when we forsake our ships and break all bonds of crack pairings! But it is not this strip! An hour of canon and other characters, when the age of shippers comes crashing down! But it is not this day! THIS DAY WE SHIP! By all that you hold dear on this good comic, I bid you STAND, SHIPPERS OF THE WILLIS!
I call your Aragorn at the Black Gates, and raise you a Theoden at the Pelennor Fields:
Forth, and fear no canonical statements! Arise! Arise, Shippers of Willis! Yaoi shall be shaken, threesomes shall be splintered! A crack day…an OTP day…ere the sun rises! Ship now!…Ship now!…Ship! Ship to ruin and the comic’s ending! Fan art! Fan art! Fan art! Forth, Shippers!
Re alt text: yeah I was pretty much expecting exactly this lol. They might be horny teenagers, but they’re not monsters and they both care about Amber.
That said, down the road (oh god, in like 17 years real time probably xD) I still totally want these two to happen!
It’s nice to see these two acknowledging their feelings even if not dating. Speaks volumes to their relatively recent friendship and character growth they have both gone through. And at the same time as they resolve these issues in a healthy manner, Willis can still have crushed the dreams of shippers, and we can hear the cries of “Damn you Willis!” It’s like having your cake and eating it too.
We shall date in secret. and take over the university under our secret identities, Dorkman and Heartbreaker. Amb…I mean Amazi-Girl won’t be able to find out.
Ok this is a bit of a relief, I would just give up immersion entirely had they uh… acted. On this.
I mean, yeah, horny teenage boys, but like. Come on. They’re both very devoted to Amber. Giving it a little bit of time is a lot better (not that I expect the characters to always act in “fair” ways or anything cus humans aren’t like that).
All that being said it’s a bummer they’re putting it off the table entirely. I get why because of the Amber factor, but if they’d make each other happy Amber SHOULD respect that. Something like this happened with my own friend group which split it right down the middle cus the “Amber” in the situation threw a royal shitfit. It got ugly, but the mature human being thing to do is to respect you don’t own either of those people and they are free to do what they please to make themselves happy.
Like 5 years from now after a shit ton of therapy and maybe an ex or two post Danny I could see her being fine with the idea of them. A decade from now she’d probably happily attend their wedding. But considering how this comic works it’s always going to be too soon for her and a bad idea for them. That being said I still think it’s going to happen someday in comic. Not today but not never.
I worry it will happen because Ethan will refuse to fully ostracize and shun Danny and so Amber will turn on both of them and antagonize them to the point where they no longer feel loyalty to her friendship because she has cast them both aside.
In other words, they’ll probably get together in comic at about the exact time, Amber/AG is hitting her nadir of mental health.
LOL all these ‘the ship has sailed/sunk’ comments. That is not how ships work! A ship is any combination of people you want together, whether they have any chance of being together or not. Just because it’s not canon or can’t be canon right now, doesn’t mean you can’t still ship it! (that said, a mutual confession of attraction is canon as HELL to me and a whole lot more than many of my other ships have xD).
Agreed. Zutara didn’t sink when Aang & Katara got together and the cartoon ended. Folks sure as hell are never going to stop shipping Harry/Malfoy. And, come on. Jack Frost and Elsa being from different movies didn’t stop people from shipping them. This strip ain’t sinking Seecox. :3
Okay, but that (referring to not being able to ship something) isn’t what ship sinking is. As described by TVTropes, “Ship Sinking is an event that seems to kill any reasonable chance of a romantic relationship occurring between two characters in the canon of the work.”
Eh, I’m sure eventually Amber will catch wind of this situation and give them her blessing. She only wants the best for Ethan, and she only dated Danny for like a month and a half.
I dunno. I think if she was in a healthy good head-space and thought through it logically, she’d be really touched and supportive.
But I can see her easily interpreting this as some sort of failing on her part. Like, oh, I suck so much as a partner and a woman that two partners turned gay on me. And now they’re betraying me with each other and reminding me of how broken I am that I turn everyone I’m with gay.
Even though that’s not how anything works, it’s a seductive way of thinking for people really insecure with themselves and their value to people and would fit into things like her breakdown about how Ethan “wouldn’t fake it with her” and the like.
i dont even care about the ship i just really disagree with this
like yeah, obviously NOW would be a bad idea, but cant date ever? theyd be terrible people if they did? amber, at any point regardless of whether before or after her problems are addressed, would be traumatized by two guys she liked being happy together and theyd be monsters for allowing that?
god damn
Yeah, my understanding is that not dating people’s exes is mainly a straight-person thing. There’s just not enough same-sex-interested hotties to go around, people can’t retain claims once they’re broken up. However, it is a good deal classier to wait more than, like, a day.
Yeah, the no dating exes thing is kinda baffling and a little bit creepy to me. Like, it feels like laying claim to someone you have less than zero claim to and a way of bullying friends of expressing desires. I dunno, you may be right about it being a mono straight person thing more often than not (not to say queer folk never do it), and kind of a high school thing as well.
Dunno. If you really don’t want to date a friend of the relevant gender and orientation and your friends and relatives won’t shut up about how you’d be nice together, it’s a useful convention to bring up to get them to shut up.
Correction: I meant, not dating people’s exes forever. I think anyone who cares about Amber could refrain for a couple months. They’re both clear on just enjoying their mutual crushes right now, anyway.
Oh wait Danny and Amber were only dating a month and a half, and probably weren’t yet in love — if Seecox holds off for like two or three weeks then I’ll be impressed with their above-and-beyond restraint/consideration for their friend.
Part of me suspects we’ll see them at least kiss in the book after this current one. And that’d be bad, because it’ll mean that Amber is going to get real bad and even more accusatory and paranoid in this one and probably burn down her remaining old friendships.
I would be fine to read this scenario. I’d like even more, though, if Amber is happy about Seecox, which shows her how far she’s come with all her work towards getting better. …what, I can hope.
Yeah, basically this.
I have no experience with this, but it just seems natural to me that if you’ve ended the relationship, theres no claim to stake anymore.
Say I have a friend who had a rough breakup with their ex, and isn’t over him even though it’s been a year plus. If I date that ex, it’s going to hurt her. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t – there would probably be a lot of other factors involved. But yeah, that shit can hurt.
Oh, this comments section and it’s hyperliteral readings. He’s not saying never. He’s exaggerating for emphasis. At this current moment, there is no way they could ever get together. Not unless the situation with Amber resolves. He didn’t say “We can never date, no matter what.”
And it’s not a matter of “ownership” of an ex. It’s a matter of caring about your friend and not wanting to bring up bad feelings. Your friend means more to you than your desire to date this particular person.
Eventually, though, they have to move on, and you can’t leave out the idea that this person may actually be perfect for you.
Plus there’s simply the fact that dating someone just after your friend breaks up with them makes it seem like you were just waiting in the wings, or that your ex was secretly fancying them but couldn’t because of the relationship. If they are the ones who broke up, it can even be seen as them breaking up with you for your friend.
Yeah, basically this.
Though it might not even be so much emphasis as just how he’s thinking about it at the moment. They’re 18 and in college. “forever” isn’t really a long time.
Even if he thinks that now, six months from now with Amber in a better place mentally and maybe in a new relationship, things will look completely different. Right now, he can’t see things changing that much. OTOH, in six months, both he and Ethan will likely have had at least other crushes, if not relationships, so maybe it will be forever. Things change fast in those years.
I know, they’re being really mature and awesome and sweet right here and being really aware of all the factors surrounding them. I think this right here might be the healthiest most mature interaction between cast members in a good while.
…so Dorothy walks in during this conversation at just the right point to assume Dan dumped A-G for Ethan, and is too angered to wait for the real story, and storms off to commiserate with Amber and manages to say things such that Amber doesn’t realize how wrong Dorothy got it…
I can’t say I’ve ever seen Dorothy skip all logic and reasoning and jump straight for an emotional end-point. I can see her yelling at the two of them, but even that gives both Ethan and Danny room/time to explain what the hell just happened.
Yeah, if they do get together, their parents are likely to be super shitty with Ethan’s mom trying to bully him back into the closet again and Danny’s parents making shitty jokes about him.
I don’t remember Danny’s parents very well, but I think I’m kinda expecting it’d be worse than shitty jokes. I mean, would they even understand that he’s bi, and not closet-gay or “just experimenting cuz it’s trends or whatever”?
True. Shitty jokes would be the best case scenario. Though, that is how they bullied him about Dorothy, making shitty jokes that were intended to undermine his sense of self-worth.
While there is some merit to the final panel. It is kind if shitty that two people who clearly have chemistry and are attracted to each other can’t date because their friend with severe anger issues and emotional problems will have a pyschotic break rather than be happy for her friends.
But yeah, so much this. There is a line between being considerate and validating the worse behaviors of people who… have some problems to sort out, lets say.
Honestly even without the issues I kind of think this would still be a dick move? I mean starting a relationship with your best forehands boyfriend the day they broke up? kind of awful.
I do not care about this ship at all, but the idea that they could never do a thing that makes them happy because Amber would be unhappy about them being happy is super uncomfortable to me.
Like, hey, I can understand intellectually how someone might prefer being romantic and/or sexual with one person at a time, and I am cool with two people mutually consenting to only be romantic and/or sexual with eachother for a while for this reason.
What I do not get is why anyone would feel that it is their right to tell people they are not currently monogamous with that they cannot have these relationships, I can see no practical justification here, it is just denying other people their happiness because the feelings you get when you see them happy make you uncomfortable.
Hey, if your emotions are doing that, it is the emotions that are the problem, not the people doing things that make them happy. Stop taking out your irrational emotions and bad habits on other people.
Oh, very much, the whole notion of ex-dibs, I feel is toxic as crap. This idea that after a breakup, one should still have claim to who they’re ex dates and see it as a betrayal if a friend dates an ex soon after is some weird creepy ownership stuff and I feel it does a lot of disservice to monogamous relationships.
That being said, I don’t think these two’s worries are entirely about that. Amber went full red-panel panic-attack about Ethan’s initial coming out at prom and currently sees Danny has a corrupted betrayer. Seeing the two of them together, seeing another boyfriend “turn gay” after dating her (not in actual fact, but its how she would interpret it), and seeing a friend “betray” her by lying with who she has decided is her enemy would be all sorts of bad news for her mental health and sense of self-worth and might be more than she can handle right now.
That shouldn’t necessarily serve as a genuine block to them developing their feelings for each other, but both of them are defined by their strong empathy and how they put the feelings of others first and both have a lot of love and sympathy for Amber and want to do best by her as best they can because of it.
So it makes a lot of sense that they’re taking that into account and prioritizing it.
It would be wrong and creepy if Amber tried to demand fidelity after breaking up with Danny, but, it is also considerate of Danny and Ethan not to immediately jump into bed together, since they know that Amber’s feelings are super raw at the moment.
Ethan and Danny also seem perfectly happy to just enjoy their mutual crush, it was really important for each that the other thinks they’re attractive. For now, that’s plenty. So it’s cool.
Dating an ex’s ex can sure be a weird thing and should be taken on with care. For one thing, you are likely to learn about the other side of issues and where sexual likes and dislikes are concerned this might feel really weird.
I suppose it works best when both of you are no longe friends with the common ex.
In case you are, taking the exes feelings into account seems like a wise move. It is not that any ex has the right to tell you who to date, it more like … if you know this will hurt your ex, you should consider if it’s worth losing their friendship over it. We can do want we want but expecting no consequences is not a very mature thing to do.
Timing is part of it. To (mis)quote Alison Bechdel, the statue of limitation on the possessive runs out after some time
I just need to F3 all Cerberus’ comments because they check all my boxes for what I want to say. Yep, yep, and yep. Toxic monogamy and weird ex-possessiveness and in character emapthy. Thank you for saving eme a long and emotional post-writing time.
Maybe it has to do with how Amber would probably put their heads on pikes in her closet if she found out…
I mean, she’s not in a good spot (obviously), so it’s for everyone’s best interests.
Think about it more like this. Amber has a very specific trauma involving her boyfriend leaving her because it turns out he’s gay. Now, the second guy she opened up to also turns out to be “gay” (he’s technically bi, but for this situation that’s pretty much a moot point in terms of amber). If her gay ex gets with her bi ex, Amber will feel something like betrayal. It’s not like “ex-dibs” and more of a feeling of distrust and a problem with herself “The first thing she asks Danny when they meet is if he’s gay or not.” They’re just good friends who’re putting Amber’s feelings first.
Also it is kinda against the unspoken dating rule that exes getting together is kind of a taboo. I mean you can do it, but depending on your relationship with your shared ex it’ll probably be uncomfortable or even friendship ruining. Sure you can say “I don’t give a fuck” but if you don’t want to overcomplicate stuff you just have to weigh how much you like this individual versus how much you care about how it may make your friend feel.
Why is everyone assuming this ship is dead forever rather than pushed to the side until Amber is in a healthy enough place to not fall apart over it which has to come one day. Amber can’t be endlessly knocked into a deeper pit for the entire comic forever.
Honestly, I’m super excited it went this way, because if they banged now, it would be a short lived affair that would be destroyed the second Amber walked in on it. This way? It has a chance to develop more healthily and thus to be more likely to be a longer lasting relationship. We’re a lot more likely to get a lot more cute moments between them this way than if we were to get instant gratification now.
I honestly agree with you 1000 percent in terms of their relationship slowly developing even if the last panel makes me dislike Amber even more. It doesn’t help that I have an ex like Amber. And oh hey by the way unusual crazy outbursts of anger where you belittle the ones who care about you is abusive and shitty whether it is because you were abused or not, and by the way I was with this person for 5 years and begged them to get therapy, they never did and they never addressed their issues just like Amber. I am shocked at how much I am growing an intense dislike for her character.
But yes more cute moments! They have already had some really great cute moments. They are far and aeay my favorite couple in the comic even if they aren’t and never will be. I still want my slips Hine though.
Yeah, I’m in a lot of conflicted feelings about Amber, because I’m realizing she’s got a lot of similarities to my ex-partner of 8 and a half years including that angry accusations of fictional things and belittling and so on. And I have a lot of conflicted feelings about her as well.
Anyways, *hugs* offered on going through all that.
Thanks, for all his faults he was still better than the alcoholic.
Amber is one of my favorite characters and totally the type of girl I generally find myself pursuing, but much like Batman for everything I love about her there Andre Andre million things that drive me crazy and piss me off.
Anyway I prefer my heroes to be more care free like our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man or the best here of all, Carla!
For a second I thought it was one of the strange English language idioms made of people’s names that I had not yet had the pleasure to discover. I’m kinda disappointed now. XD
Why does the last panel make you dislike Amber more? She’s not in it. She’s not making crazy angry demands.
They’re admitting that them getting together would hurt her. Which it would. Which we’ve pretty much known since the possibility of this ship first came up, long before Amber got as bad as she is now. They’re worried about hurting her, because they like her. They’re not worried about her flipping out and beating them up or something.
That’s fair, it’s not so much the last panel, but that these two characters have to live their lives centered on the impact it will have on their emotionally unstable, violent and abusive ex.
They aren’t centering their lives around Amber. They’re just considering her feelings because they care about her.
Like, this isn’t them stopping themselves from doing something they want because of Amber, it’s that they don’t want to do it because they care about her and are worried about how she’d feel. It’d be like Walky and Dorothy decided at the beginning of their relationship that they didn’t want to do it because Dorothy was inevitably leaving. Like, oh sure it’d be nice, but there’s extraneous circumstances that prevent me from wanting to enter this relationship.
I wouldn’t call “not dating someone right this very instant, maybe an hour tops after your girlfriend who you are extremely concerned about because she’s nonchalant about almost dying horribly dumped you” shitty.
This wasn’t even about Danny making a move on Ethan but relenting because of Amber. This is all about Danny getting his feelings out in the open.
As Spencer said, they’re just considering the effect on their friend.
Rightly or wrongly, neither of them consider Amber “emotionally unstable, violent and abusive”. They see her as their friend who they care about and don’t want to hurt. They’re not afraid of her. They like her.
I’ve made similar decisions – though not so dramatically. Not pursued someone because of how it would hurt a mutual friend.
They’re considering the effect on their friend, but is it realistic to take that out of the context of “their friend who broke up with Danny for talking to a girl, without even telling him why it was a problem, their friend who beats up criminals and underage drinkers on the regular, their friend who has obvious trauma which causes her to sometimes lash out violently…” ?
My girlfriend and I had a conversation about whether we should stay together after we both broke up (a few weeks apart, for similar reasons) with our mutual abusive, very depressed and unstable, ex. We didn’t come to the conclusion Ethan and Danny do here, because, well, she was much worse than Amber. And I get it. They DO care, and that’s great. But it is depressing to see them decide Amber’s stability matters more than their feelings for each other.
I mean, their feelings for each at this point are “you’re attractive”, so of course Amber matters more to them than that. Even before they bring her up Danny says that this doesn’t mean they should date, and that he just wanted to get it off his chest.
Nothing makes you dislike anyone. That’s a choice. And you are choosing to hate a character because of her mental health problems. They aren’t even in the comic, and yet you’re letting that increase your hatred towards them.
The reason why Mary, Carol, and John are bad people is ultimately because of their hatred. They each hate at least one person for things outside of their control. Rather than fighting their programming towards hating those people, they choose to embrace it–unlike Joyce and Hank who do what’s right.
Amber is going through worse things than anyone else in this comic. I’ve pointed out several times that the panic attacks she has are what caused the military to declare waterboarding to be torture. Read the description of what happens–it causes panic attacks.
Real life makes this a whole lot harder. I have a cousin who will not seek help for her obvious mental health issues, and the state of the system here means she’s just homeless. And I can sometimes get mad at her–I want to hate her. But I can’t. Because, there, but for the grace of God, go I. I grew up with parents who actually got me help.
It may take effort, but it would really be a good thing if you’d try to see things from Amber’s point of view, so you could form some sympathy for her, instead of seeing as someone to hate.
Hate her actions. Don’t hate the person. Imagine if everyone did–there’d be no reason for the hated person to ever get better.
I think it is pretty clear I am not choosing to hate her because of her mental problems. My anger towards Amber comes from her unwillingness to get help and the fact that her problems are being used to justify legitimately abusive and controlling behavior towards to two people who care most about her. At a certain point whether someone has mental illness or not there has to be some responsibility placed on them for their actions. As much as I sympathize for her, if being abused means she suffers no accountability for her actions how is that really helping her?
People come at things from their lived experience. Derek has mentioned that Amber reminds him of an ex, who was mentally unstable and who also did abusive things.
Derek, please correct me if I’m wrong, you’re obviously the authority of what’s in your head.
Here’s how it read to me: Derek wasn’t choosing to hate a character based on her mental illness. It’s much more likely that Derek’s brain is going “oh hey remember that really bad situation, let’s stay the hell away from anything that looks like that”. That’s adapting and learning from experiences, to try and avoid abusive situations in the future. (I am 100% on board with people attempting to avoid abusive situations, even if it means they might jump to a conclusion and, what, not like somebody? People don’t have to like everyone. Anyway.)
I read Derek’s words like mainly he wouldn’t like other people to be in a situation that has any similarity to the one that he’s experienced, because that experience was super sucky.
Am I off base?
You are not off base at all. I’m not saying people can’t change or that Amber is some irredeemable shrew who should be hated, but this story (especially back when she started lashing out at Danny) has really put her and Danny’s relationship in and different light for me. I guess the point where victim becomes abuser is different for everyone. But Danny is an emotional sponge and Amber using him to soak up her instability even after they have broken up is wrong.
It’s worth noting that Amber isn’t actually using Danny to soak up her instability after their breakup. She’s not even here in the comic today. Instead, she pushed Danny away and went to go handle her own feelings, which is much more her pattern. (Unfortunately, she handles her feelings by punching people in the face, but that’s a separate problem.)
Danny and Ethan are voluntarily refraining from smooching, because they are deciding to be considerate of their friend, not because Amber has ever demanded it of them. If Amber was perfectly stable, they’d still have taken her feelings into consideration, and not hooked up on the very day of the breakup, because they are both empathetic dudes who habitually put others’ feelings first.
“Nothing makes you dislike anyone. That’s a choice.”
While that’s technically true, I think it’s pretty common for ‘that’s what made me dislike/hate x’ to mean ‘this is the [last straw or a trait I find irredeemable] about x,’ not ‘x [or ‘y quality of x’] forced me to dislike x.’
The whole tone of that statement reminds me uncomfortably of how people use the phrase ‘no one can belittle you without your consent’ (or whatever the exact quote is) to silence someone whilst ignoring that the other party had done something mean-spirited/malicious. Both that and the above are arguments based pretty much solely in semantics that shut down someone’s feelings and call them irrational, while absolving another party without really considering their actions.
Beside that, I agree with a lot of your points on why Amber is probably suffering as much or more (and some other people’s on why this strip makes for an odd final straw), but I don’t agree whatsoever that Derek is (or that many people are) hating on her for her mental illness rather than her controlling and abuse. Regardless of the cause, abuse is unacceptable.
That’s absurd. Disliking someone is not a choice, you can’t FORCE yourself to like some because it’s an emotional reaction that is beyond your control.
Yes, Amber is in a terrible place psychologically and she needs serious help but at this point I am far more worried about the safety of her victims then I am about her because she is pathologically violent.
Yay! Danny’s not jumping immediately into a relationship and is taking steps to be more healthy about his feelings and his thoughts and reach out to his now closest friend about what’s been going on so they can process it out in the open more healthily.
I think Danny heard about the concept of Dannying and decided to burn it all down with fire.
Agreed. This is one of the healthiest things he could have done at this point. He confess his feelings, he and Ethan have a constructive talk of their relationship and they take complicating factors into account.
Danny is growing up!
Now, as for my trust in his ability to actually keep his hands off Ethan’s glorious manchest…
Did Danny just Dan something up (this being the next Slipshine) by not Danning something up (expressing his feelings in a mature and mostly healthy way)?
I get the distinct feeling that Danny is going to grow the most out of all the characters as a person. Of course, that’s because he started out more or less at rock-bottom, but still.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to have to choose between Danny and Joyce. Joyce is busy adjusting to the relative okayness of the rest of the world, Danny needs to accept himself as being okay, regardless of his relationship status. Neither of those is particularly easy.
This. This is (pretty much) what I was expecting. Except I expected the roles to be kinda reversed as far as the dialogue in the last panel goes. (and of course my fangirl heart wanted to expect more romance and less rationale)
Shrugs/. I don’t care for the idea of ‘neeeeeveerr’ because of Amber but Danny I think needs to be single for a bit with no obvious romantic prospect on the horizon anyway, because then he doesn’t really experience being single/himself, it becomes a ‘waiting room’ scenario as it were otherwise.
Like the idea of never dating because of an ex is still kind of bad to me but yeah.
I don’t agree that dating each other would be the absolute worst. I mean, wait a bit, but really, your own happiness is much more important than anyone else’s. I’m not saying to be mean to others or not to care about them, but don’t put their feelings in front of your own.
I hope they end up dating!♡
I don’t know. I can see them waiting a few months or supporting each other’s sexual exploration. I like the idea of Danny being with Ethan because Ethan is so much more well-adjusted tho.
What is it with not dating exes, though? I feel like it would only be an issue i f the other person isn’t completely over the ex, like Amber clearly isn’t over Ethan breaking up with her. Otherwise, she and Danny haven’t been together long and she also can’t dictate who he sees and who he doesn’t.
Related to that, is it mandatory to be friends with an ex? Would just simply parting ways allow for more closure and less stewing in the “what-ifs?”. I’m in the camp where it’s not mean/weird to just give each other (indefinite, maybe) space. When I was in college, friend groups/circles dating each other became so messy. Many bridges and friendships got burned that way. That’s my experience, so obviously it’s not the same for everyone.
It’s a tough spot to be in though, I know well what it feels like to have an unhealthy person placing their happiness/sanity on you. I think Amber needs help, but I also think it getting the hell away from all this and taking a break would help, too. See a therapist, make more friends, get a bigger support group – especially of people who understand what she’s going through.
All the stars to Danny for being upfront about his feelings! Honesty is the best policy, as they say…
I think it depends largely on the how and why break-ups happen that decide whether or not it’s appropriate to continue being friends. If the break-up was amicable, then sure, continue to be friends if you still enjoy hanging out with each other. If the break-up was one-sided (one person lost interest, but the other still has feelings for them), friendship may not be possible because the dumpee may not be able to move on from it. (For these people, distance and time will dull the pain, but they never really forget their feelings.)
And finally, if the break-up was due largely to one party being a douchebag (cheating on you, physical or psychological abuse, or other signs of being an abusive partner), then it’s ludicrous to expect them to remain friends afterwards.
It would be a dick move considering you are Ambers freshly made ex (and imO the breakup is not real yet, cause she is just very vulnerable and broken) and her best friend / first ex…
I mean, it’s the same day?! Or the next? There hasn’t much time passed. Don’t pull a Danny, Danny.
Yeah. I assumed something like this was gonna happen. I mean, my mind already has like three AUs where they make out and/or have sex, consequences be damned, but this is a good outcome.
I will agree that it is a terrible idea to jump straight into a relationship from just getting dumped. You should at least wait 3 hours or 2.5 cigarette breaks whichever is shorter.
Maybe dealing with this will result in them being more open to finding another relationship? Ethan in particular seemed to be shying away from the possibility.
I want them to get together eventually, but I’m happy to see they’re not getting together right now. Danny has always been so, so terrible at making acceptable decisions regarding his desperate need to be loved, so it’s great to see him able to express a crush on someone because it makes HIM feel better to clear the air, not because he’s actually trying to get a relationship out of it. I feel like his next relationship, whoever it’s with, has a much better chance of succeeding now that he’s learning to calm the hell down about being in a relationship.
I hope that they continue to be friends, and if Amber/AG is ever told about this a little while later once the hurt feelings have cooled, or finds out about it somehow, she either gives them her blessing to do whatever they want, or reacts so badly that they feel free from the obligation to hold themselves back from doing what they want on her account.
There’s always a little voice in the back of my head whenever Danny/Ethan stuff happens going “oh ok I guess this is the part where things get ruined”, because that’s just kind of the basic assumption I have when Queer dudes show up in fiction, to the point where I’ve outright dropped some Queer inclusive work like Technicolor London and Marvel Comics’ X-Factor when they start tripping my red flags, so I hope that helps contextualize things when I say I absolutely adore this strip and I need to break it down panel by panel.
Panel 1: God, I’m so happy for Danny here. My first coming out was a really nervous affair where I kept pulling the Gay Bravado card over and over until I just flat out admitted to my dad that I really was attracted to men. My acceptance of my sexuality was a gradual, but ultimately easy, process for me, I never really had this “weight off the shoulders” moment so much as over time I became more confident in saying that I was bisexual, so this is just great to see Danny taking power over his sexuality.
Panel 2: Danny’s line in this panel is, for lack of a better term, a really Queer thing to say, and I think it helps to sell how much progress he’s made. Used to be he was freaked out, trying to assert his friggin’ heterosexuality, and bluntly telling Dorothy that he can’t be bisexual because bisexuality doesn’t exist, and now? Now he’s so confident in it that he’s confused as to how everyone else can’t see how awesome it is to find dudes attractive. I mean, look at them! Being all hot and dudely. How do you not see this greatness?
Panel 3: This is just the best. I honestly really like that Danny has decided to come out to Ethan not so he could date him, but because he was tired of living in fear of his own feelings and decided to take charge for himself, and that’s something Danny is terrible at doing.
Panel 4: Oh, Ethan. I imagine it took a lot of effort to admit that he had checked Danny out, since while he’s starting to become more comfortable accepting his own attraction to men, it’s really hard for him to actually legitimize it, and Danny was kind of the perfect target for Ethan to start doing that because Danny was safe. Until now there was no chance of it happening, so why not take in that sweet mullet? And you can really tell neither of them were thinking that the other could find them attractive, like, god, don’t you know how great and hot and awesome you are? Why would you even bother with me?
Panel 5: I imagine I’m going to diverge from the commentariat on this one, but I’m pretty okay with this. This isn’t, like, Ethan and Danny lamenting the death of their newborn romance because they don’t want to step on the toes of that shrill harpy, it’s just the acknowledgement that they care too much about Amber for either of them to want to make a move, and for all the “UGH AMBER HOW DARE YOU GET IN THE WAY OF DUDE SMOOCHING” this is both a really normal, basic empathy level thing they’re doing, and also a way to actually secure the existence of this relationship down the line. I mean, Danny and Amber literally just broke up while Amber was in the middle of another DID fueled breakdown, and she’s also Ethan’s best friend who he loves more than anything in the world. Why would they want to immediately start clawing at each others pants? I guess the way I see it is that I don’t think of it like them not acting on their Obvious Feelings for each other, but more just the acknowledgement that they wouldn’t want to due to extraneous circumstances, like if, say, Walky and Dorothy didn’t want to give their relationship a go at the start, because they were both bothered by the idea of it having a set end date.
I’m not totally on board with this ship yet, I thought there was a lot more to explore with Danny/Amber and that her recent actions were either really out of character or maybe way more awful than they were intended to come off as, and Ethan is still a pretty vanilla character to me so ending my OTP for him is kind of an automatic black spot for me, but I could easily see myself warming up to it as long as Danny and Ethan’s interactions maintain this level of extremely high quality.
Strongly agree with you, especially on the 5th panel. I’d add more; As much as I find Ethan & Danny adorable together and would love it if they were canon, the truth is they’re just… attracted to each other. They’re not in love with each other. To say that this attraction they have should somehow outweigh the love they both have for Amber, that some silly sexual feelings should take precedence over how much they care about Amber and don’t want to do something that would hurt her horribly (if not traumatize her even more than she’s already been)… I think that’s a really selfish way of thinking, and one that puts romantic relationships above friendships, which I just don’t understand. / rant.
Complete aside: May I ask what your issues were with Technicolor London? (Not saying it’s perfect, just curious what red flags it has?)
This might be a bit unclear because o how I phrased my thing, but my argument isn’t so much about what’s best for Amber as it is about Danny and Ethan’s relationship with her.
Yeah, the amount of scorn directed at Amber right now in the comments is pretty creepy. Like, how dare your existence get in the way of dude smooching you mentally ill abuse victim.
As for Technicolor London, I’m just gonna short form it because I imagine Willis isn’t super keen on me criticizing one of his Hiveworks associates, but TL starts off with one of the leads breaking up with his crazy girlfriend, immediately sexing up his dude friend, and deciding that he was always gay.
That’s probably inaccurate since I didn’t read it for much longer than that, but it kind of tapped into this trifecta of “Queer men can’t have relationships with women”, “All Queer men are just waiting to find the right man” and “Bisexuality doesn’t exist”, so I just got really turned off of reading any further. I remember there was another webcomic whose name eludes me but it was on a Queer webcomics blog that had one of the gay male leads proposition another guy in a book store and then tell him they should totally bang because they were both gay, and I had a similar reaction.
I’m definitely not trying to take away any appreciation anyone could have for it, like I said, my reading probably was inaccurate, but it wasn’t the kind of thing I’d want to keep going with to see if it improves.
Ooh. Hadn’t thought of it that way, but I see your point. While the beginning of the story is a bit clumsy, it does get better over time, but the tropes you mention are more than a bit annoying so I completely understand that any hint of them might turn you off. : )
I wonder if it occurred to you the bookstore scene ( like much of fiction)
Is wish-fullfillment?
Is your desire to avoid stereotypes so strong it warps how you view fiction?
Are you telling me you are a Bigeek who Never hung out in bookstore and hope some hot guy would check him out? Cmon!
After spending hundreds of hours of this never ever working, I said screw it, and just sent guys to bookstores so i could scope them out..
( suddenly 100% success rate )
Yeah It didnt have that same magical-spontaneous air which would have happened if i was straight. But if you are hungry, sometimes you have to plant the harvest yourself.
If you are just objecting to “guy gets hit on, only and because, he bangs guys too, and for no other reason, and is expected drop Trou”
Damn dude, Thats reality.
I wish I had dollar for for very time I had to give the “yes, I like men- too- speech, but That doesnt mean you won the lottery and Its my govt mandated Job to bang you. Go back your wife/girlfriend”
After a hundred of those I just switched to “Im straight , fuckoff”
Yeah, all of this. I really like how this is being handled with both of them really laying down some good core fundamentals and putting things out in the open rather than just rushing into rewarding the shippers. And it gives me a lot of hope that if things do go that route eventually, it’ll be with a lot of good structure that will make it more likely to be long-term successful and healthy.
And I feel you with all the hesitation when queer representation happens in fiction. Cause so often it does go bad and bi representation is one of those things that tends to be written just utterly awful, so I’ve definitely been enjoying how Danny seems to intentionally subvert a lot of tropes on that one.
With Amber, looking back, it doesn’t feel that out of place, because this really was bubbling under the surface and threatened a few other times (I’m thinking of her disproportionate reaction to him drinking or her going off on Ethan) and so it was always a possibility that Blaine’s shadow was going to leak through in a bad way and Amber/AG’s DID was going to get really bad at a really bad time.
And while there was a lot to explore with Danny/Amber, I’m not sure Amber/AG was ever really going to be in the place to let it be explored. She didn’t exactly give him space to talk about things that were going on with him (possibly because she was trying to short-circuit any means of him “turning gay” on her, in her interpretation, not in actual fact) and she was allergic to a lot of relationship stuff beyond the surface of things.
Which is sad, because I was routing for them to get there eventually before AG/Amber had her really bad episode.
Yeah, this strip has been really good for alleviating my worry that “Danny is bisexual because Ethan needs a love interest” meant that Danny’s sexuality existed entirely in service of Ethan’s narrative, and that the whole point to Danny’s reason to be in the series was to just give Ethan a vanilla nice boyfriend with zero effort on his part, and they could just stand in the Queer Dude corner of the series for all eternity. It would have been so easy for this strip to be Danny revealing his attraction because he wants to get with Ethan, only for one or both of them to tearfully refuse their barely contained love for each other because of Amber, and instead this is Danny taking control of his feelings for his own sake, and Amber’s involvement in that is less “we can’t do this because Amber will flip her shit” and more “we just don’t want to hurt her feelings because we care about her.” That is, to me, the best possible way this sequence could have gone.
As for Amber, her actions with Danny and now Dorothy hit a really uncomfortable level for me, different than the way other dark material did, like Ruth’s abuse of Billie or her suicidal ideation, or Danny’s creepy Nice Guy misogyny to Dorothy during the Shoes arc. The way Amber’s being written now just kind of taps into a lot of, like, really problematic views on abuse victims and people with mental health problems. That Amber is just so terrible she will emotionally tear into Danny and then try to maneuver another close associate into trying to get him to see things her way, and that for all her effort she’s still just given into all the bullshit she’s absorbed from Blaine, and now her getting help is less “Amber needs support because she’s a good person who’s been through unimaginable bullshit and her brain is fucking with her trying to cope with all her trauma” and more “learn to stop being shit, Amber.”
Like, it’s not that I wanted Amber to never express rage or be a douche about anything, her scenes over Danny drinking, or table flipping, or her brief freakout at Danny after kissing her, I thought, did a really good job riding the line between Amber being an ass, while also acknowledging where she’s coming from and what’s motivating her to do so, while also driving her further and further to repress her problems instead of finding a way to healthily deal with them. Saying that an abuse victim is only sympathetic as long as they never express any kind of anger is bull, like, if Sal or Ethan didn’t fully internalize their abuse and got super fucking pissed off at someone who didn’t deserve it, that wouldn’t make them complete assholes, but I could have done without the extremely half baked cycle of abuse storyline that Amber’s heading down.
But, yeah, much as I mourn Danny/Amber, and a huge part of that is the sheer lack of OGRs for bi dudes in media, it is also a completely new thing for me to see what Danny’s doing here which both makes me so happy and also kind of frames just how bad bi representation is in media where Willis can do basically anything with this character and it’d still be breaking new grounds.
I think you’re trying to attribute Amber’s storyline to all abuse victims, and not being entirely fair. There is a very real trend in abuse victims becoming abusers in their adult life if proper support and health systems aren’t found. This is the path Amber is on, and it’s important to remember that the comic is representing a path that happens to SOME abuse victims, not ALL abuse victims.
A common problem when telling rare stories/adding representation, the lack of that thing in other media causes people to latch on to the few examples they can find as a representation of All of That Thing. When a TV show finally gets a gay character, they have to be Campy enough to represent that part of the community, but not Too Campy or it’s excluding the rest of the community, Sexual enough to represent that part of the community but not Too Sexual or it’s a “Slutty Gay” stereotype, etc. etc.
The same thing applies to all under-represented stories. If Willis tried to write an abuse victim storyline that accurately represented all aspects of abuse survivors, it would either be a generic character that’s a glorified PSA, or a conglomerate of terrible experiences that completely breaks any suspension of disbelief. The only other solutions are to overload the story with abuse storylines to represent everything using different characters, but then it becomes an abuse survivor comic, not a college comic. The only other thing is just to write a single abuse character as fits the story, and try to hope your audience is capable of acknowledging that this one character does not represent everyone, even if there is a lack of alternate representation.
Sure, I recognize that. I kind of have to recognize it all the time because it’s like the only storyline abuse victims get in fiction if they aren’t contrite, self loathing angels or just had it roll off their backs like a constant stream of torment ain’t no thing. I am repeatedly informed, either by media or my demented little brain, that I better shut the fuck up and hate myself because if I get angry it’s definitely because I am about to start beating my loved ones, so seeing a character you deeply related because to they had that same struggle with anger that you have, and enjoyed seeing her fight back against that anger because expressing it tore her in two, only for her to just end up going with it because she’s an abuse victim with a mental health disorder in a work of fiction and that’s just kind of what they do, well, it’s irritating. I get that Amber’s story is being told about Amber, it’s just a story I’m finding pretty distasteful at the moment.
Some bi folks cheat, in fact, Willis wrote a goddamn phenomenal storyline in Shortpacked! about Robin, a bi woman, getting drunk and cheating on her girlfriend with a man, and that’s basically a stereotype apocalypse and it turned out to be the best storyline in the entire series. I am nevertheless deeply annoyed by the year and a half plus onslaught of folks wondering/hoping for when Danny, the platonic idea of monogamy, was going to cheat on his girlfriend, and I’d be deeply annoyed if that happened in-comic despite the existence of bi folks who cheat on their partners.
Of course this can turn out for the better and I’m absolutely certain that it will, in the end, be the story of how Amber started walking the path to conquering her demons. It’s been like three weeks and it’s not like I wasn’t endlessly bongoing about the Ruth/Mary/Carla thing because I thought it wasn’t focusing on Carla enough, before it ended up opening the floodgates for more Carla and developing her more than we’ve ever seen, but I’m fine disliking how Amber’s being handled right now. If I was reading Shortpacked! back then I might have felt the same way about Robin cheating on Leslie while it was ongoing, even though now I think it’s genuinely some of the best work Willis has ever done.
I can feel that. And I agree with both of your points. Its an important aspect that can happen with abused individuals and is presented accurately to that and counters myths about broken victims but its also a fear used as self-cudgel by abuse survivors to swallow their anger and pain until its hard to think.
I also feel like we’re already seeing some of the other side of this equation in Sal. Like Amber, Sal was repeatedly emotionally abused by a parent. Like Amber, this and societal racism has left her with a giant well of anger that could turn to badness if mishandled.
But Sal is emotionally healthier. She lets herself get angry, she lets herself get petty and yes, she internalizes a lot and has her own issues, but she’s been through Amber’s long dark teatime of the soul and has emerged on the other side.
And I think we’ll see Amber get there too without punching a prospective husband like in the other universe. Making some mistakes, doing some harm, but eventually arriving at a stability she can use going forward. And as someone with a lot of similar mental illnesses as her, I look forward to reading that story.
Though that might also be because I see a lot of my ex in her and I still have hope that my ex will arrive there one day, where the parts that happened to me were just a one-off thing. Dunno.
As I just watched The Celluloid Closet again today, reminding me of times where even slightly gay coded characters tended to be laughable, pitiable or horrible and mostly dead in the end. We’ve come a long way from there. There is always this evolution in the depiction of characters from a non-mainstream group. And we have reached the right amount of representation when any character can be an asshole, no matter if s/he is part of a mainstream or minority group and the fact that this one is an asshole does not make people identify the whole group with assholitude.
To me, Willis representation of PTSD is incredibly fine-tuned and to the point. Amber goes down a bad way and at least I am annoyed with her for doing so because *there are other ways* and she actively chooses not to take responsibility for her acts and change her direction. If the abuse victims become abusers scenario was the only one, there would be no point in being annoyed with her because there wouldn’t be a choice on her part involved.
can i please point out that robin never actually literally cheated on leslie with jake manley — like, the two were separated when it happened
like, if danny were to bang ethan right now, and then film it and then put it on youtube, and for danny to be famous enough for it to become news and for everyone in the world to see it, then that would approximate what happened in that shortpacked! storyline
Sadly (IMO), “UGH [CHARACTER] HOW DARE YOU GET IN THE WAY OF (usually, but not always) DUDE SMOOCHING” is a very common reaction/feeling/statement in fandom in general. It’s almost as if a lot of “fans” only care about characters (and/or the actors portraying them) as far as providing material for their own sexual fantasies…
dude this is surprisingly…healthy and mature. I am really fucking proud of them. Of all the plot twists in the world, I never imagined danny to be so honest, I guess?
Yeah, Its healthy and mature.
Thats why I read Dumbing of Age, for all the healthy and mature decisions of the young college people.
Im glad the only potential M-M relationship must be sacrificed for being healthy and nature. We cant have the only M-M relationship be anything but a paragon of chaste virtue. It might look like a stereotype if Danny and Ethan werent perfectly safe and wholesome.
/sarcasm.
I love these characters but this is too safe for me. Its less Representative, not more. Also forgive the dripping derision of Teh wholesomeness.
Ive been watching “Shock Treatment” , the Rocky Horror sequel. IT shoves America-wholesome down your throat, til you need to vomit it out.
The last panel of that strip makes me worried. I could see AG making that mistake in this headspace and lashing out in that irreparable way, largely because her downward spiral right now is really dangerous and bad.
I really hope that she is able to start taking steps to move out of this really awful path she’s on before she gets to a place where she can self-justify striking her best friend.
I’m KINDA not worried about Danny’s and Ethan’s physical safety. I think it is far more likely that Amber will hurt herself than either of them (hurray…)
But I think it’s extremely worrying how that latent threat of violence has always been part of Danny’s relationship with Amazi-girl. “If you do something wrong I may snap and hurt someone… if you say something wrong I will snap and yell at you. If you let me continue I will pull a stunt that may make me hurt myself…”
All Danny’s jokes about how Amber might hurt him were uncomfortable then and are REALLY uncomfortable in hindsight. They are both walking on eggshells not to upset Amber, something that is unfortunately all to easy for Danny to slip into.
They care about her so much, so i can see them postponing their own relationship in what might ultimately be a futile attempt not to trigger her. Not only take it slow but altogether avoiding each other (I was afraid they might push each other away when Danny snapped at Ethan, but fortunately that ended fast enough). That makes me sad.
Yeah, that’s a really nice aspect of college being explored in the strip. Its role as recovery ground from one’s home, exposure to grow, and removal from the toxic pit of high school. It’s kids learning how to adult and how to be the adult they are instead of just pretending to be the one that their parents want them to be.
In all seriousness though im a straight guy who thinks they should get together, they’re obviously cute for eachother and there mutual ex has problems she hasnt worked through and shes not treating them right.
Of course, I’ve never been a total dickbag. Maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad. Wait! I have it. We can just kiss—you know, got the sake of finding it how we really feel. Surely there couldn’t be any harm in an lnnocent little kiss. Of course, we’d have to remove our shirts first—wouldn’t want them getting all sweaty and gross. I mean, if you’re okay with that.
Man.
I had been strongly against the Danny being bi (because I felt it was a large change to an established character with a long history of not being into dudes).
Now he is my favorite ship.
THEY WOULD BE SO CUTE TOGETHER YOU GUYS!!!
Today’s strip’s soundtrack provided by Celine Dion.
On an unrelated subject, where’s Ana Chronistic’s avatar from? I think I’d remember seeing it, because that’s the badassest (and therefore sexiest) looking Joyce ever.
considering the way amber handled her first rejection, im very sure that once amber is “herself” again (aka not super duper mentally stuffs), and things havent gone any other way, and she gets to know about ethan and danny liking eachother, she will even want them to be together
Amber has zero self esteem and that’s going to dip into the negative when she realizes her main coping mechanism has created an entire new slew of problems. She can barely conceptualize that she deserves Danny as is; how do you think she’s going to feel when the two people she loves the most and who are obviously too good to hang around a loathsome piece of shit like herself express an interest in each other?
thats the thing, i mean when shes better. when shes been in therapy, or when shes gotten medicine, or when whatever she needs has happened. when she doesnt need to punch people, when she doesnt hate herself as much. i thought that was clear from my very first comment
That’s going to be years from now, though (in comic time and possibly real time too), if ever.
For anything like the foreseeable future, it’s just not on the table.
I do think she will. I was just trying to make the point that it’s not just her current spiral downwards that makes this problematic. That reaction was my expectation from the very first signs that Danny was bi and hints of shipping him with Ethan. And that was back when Amber was in much better shape than she is now.
I do still think she’ll recover, mostly because I don’t think Willis is really doing an “Amber is a no good shit” storyline, but how long it takes and how healthy she is at the end is very much up in the air.
ethan and danny make a choice to not date until they know it wont hurt a person that is very important to them, which is also a good choice because they should probably get to know eachother and their own feelings a bit more before getting into a relationship? AMBER IS THE FUCKING DEVIL LETS FUCKING KILL HER
why does amber have to have problems and issues that stem from her dad’s abuse leading her to believe she’s only doing what’s right for herself by lashing out at people
and did she have to be so inconsiderate as to not magically deal with her untreated mental health disorder thats created a burgeoning violent and borderline suicidal alternate personality
Ugh. People who dare to have problems are the worst. They should just pick themselves up by their bootstraps and solve their problems just by wanting, and then ‘Murica would be great again.
It’s not like THEIR problems are like MY problems, because my problems are actual problems that other people fail to accommodate for.
…
Is that how you ‘Murica? Am I ‘Muricaning right? Or do I need to put an acclaim for Trump in there somewhere?
So many people seem upset that this isn’t developing into a relationship because of Amber. I question why these two are being shipped so hard though. Yeah Danny is bi and he and Ethan think the other is hot. That’s not really a solid foundation for a meaningful relationship. They might both have some shared hobbies and the sex might be good but that’s not all there is to it.
So them deciding not to date isn’t an awful thing where Amber is breaking up their bond or anything. They’re just friends who find each other physically attractive, not star-struck lovers.
Plus yeah if they dated they WOULD be the fucking worst. With the whole thing where Ethan and Amber broke up over his gayness and the fallout and everything, then Danny breaking up with her over the “we can’t communicate like normal emotionally sound people” thing. If Ethan snatched Dan up right after that it would be a massive slap in the face to Amber.
Even if they do end up dating, it’s perfectly reasonable that they would wait a decent amount of time out of respect for their mutual friend’s feelings. So I don’t really get where all the hate is coming from… sinking fan ships I guess
Is that really the only way to view Amber? If she’s not a victim then she can register all her complaints to the suck-it bucket?
Amazi-Girl was an asshole to Danny and I don’t have any hope her intentions with getting Dorothy to talk to him will be any better, but it’s not like Amber’s just dropped off of Danny and Ethan’s map, or that the vast amount of time spent with her as a lovable, caring person suddenly stopped mattering. How could they not be concerned about how she’d feel about this?
They should be concerned about her feelings. That being said I’m mostly just bothered by the thought that Danny is any sort of villain here. He didn’t dump Amber, she dumped him without even explaining who Sal was or why she felt betrayed. This isn’t even getting into her progressively more controlling and aggressive behavior towards Danny in the stories leading up to this. Amber is their friend they should care, but that doesn’t excuse her behavior.
Is anybody saying Danny is a villain? At worst there was an assumption that he was trying to immediately leap into Ethan’s pants, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing to some folks.
Yeah, Amber was straight up being emotionally abusive to Danny and nobody should try to excuse that, I just don’t think anybody is trying to, and I’m hard pressed to think of a consistent pattern of controlling or aggressive behaviour aside from that last thing and now presumably with what she wants Dorothy to do. Otherwise, Amber is someone both Danny and Ethan deeply love and want the best for, and are now becoming aware just how badly damaged she is.
Okay I’m sorry but how do you figure Dan and Ethan wouldn’t have a meaningful or good relationship? I have news buddy; having “some shared hobbies” and mutual attraction is generally all it takes for a relationship to sprout up, and then to just grow from there. I mean, what other couple in DoA has any more than that going for them?
Ruth and Billie hated each other, and now are together and have developed deeper feelings. Walky and Dorothy have very little in common whatsoever and still manage to have a decent relationship. Becky and Dina literally just happened with hardly any preamble and that’s still a thing.
But Ethan and Danny actually having stuff in common is apparently not decent enough grounds for a good relationship to you?
I’m not even gonna address the other stuff, because other replies already have. I just needed to set that weird remark straight.
Fully expecting to come here tomorrow to find a strip consisting of four beat panels of Ethan and Danny standing around in awkward silence before a fifth panel of them making out.
I am not happy that the dudes I have shipped for a year or more are castigating themselves over the possibility of acting on mutual attraction because it would be unfair to their mutual psychotic and kind of emotionally abusive ex.
I mean, if you actually ship these two longterm, this is probably the best thing you could ask for.
Danny’s trying to assert himself and not rushing into another relationship like he did with Amber and Amazi-Girl, Ethan’s actually calmly expressing interest in a man and learning that he can be viewed as attractive to someone, and the only real thing stopping them is their concern for a friend who, inevitably, will support the two of them together, if only because of her lack of self esteem and the belief that she’d get in their way.
For real, this seems like the best chance for them to actually get together in a healthy and constructive way.
Seriously, these are foundations that will make this a healthier and longer lasting potential pair in the future. Like, I feel this is less the sinking of the ship and more a promo for its new embankment of canons.
Let me put it this way: If they made out right now, they would both deeply regret it for a long time and their entire friendship would collapse under the weight of their guilt, thus destroying any chance of them actually dating for a very, very long time – if not forever.
So, like Cerberus and Spencer said, this is not just the healthiest approach, it’s the one that has the most chances of resulting in them eventually dating. : )
When Danny is talking about Amber, in the last strip: Decepticon symbol. When the guys are trying to be good people, in this strip: Autobot symbol. Just sayin’.
Honestly, I just want her to hit rock bottom already so this plot thread can end because I stopped caring about it months ago. For me this is by far the weakest storyline in the comic.
@Alt-text: I was expecting exactly this, except preceded by lots more internal agony and bad communication. For a comic named Dumbing of Age, it’s refreshing how often the characters avoid Hilarious Misunderstandings by just being honest about their thoughts and feelings.
While I respect them for being conscious of Amber’s feelings – “forever” is a long time and “can’t ever” sounds like the UST will just get stronger until one of them cracks since they’re attracted to one another.
Especially if alcohol is involved because this is college. I know Danny drank at the one party, I don’t believe Ethan did (if he did I can’t remember) but… well. Things happen.
Danny needs time to see who he is when he’s not in a relationship anyway. And Ethan isn’t exactly BEGGING to be in a relationship. So in addition to being considerate to Amber’s feelings, this is just the better option. Ethan can still be kind and supportive for Danny as a friend!
Yeah, this is a huge deal for Danny. He was angling to romance Amber the first chance he got, when that fell through he set his sights on Amazi-Girl, and after all that Danny insisted he was too wiped out to be with someone before Amber came back to him. This is the first time in the course of the series that Danny has both expressed an interest in someone and not immediately try to make it happen.
This actually ended pretty close to how I hoped for this stage *crosses fingers that doesn’t get torpedoed with the next comic*. Good that Danny got it off his chest and he and Ethan can talk about it and move forward, maybe into a great relationship for both of them, but given all the stuff Danny has dealt with, and that they are still going through with Amber, they don’t have to go straight from “Confession” to “boning.” They could, but a breather and chance to sort out everything is probably healthier and wiser for everyone, which I’m not against. I’d actually be a little disappointed if they just said, “Eh, screw all the things happening and the emotionally shaken state Danny’s in and Ethan’s turmoil over Amber, boning has to happen NOW.” Again, they could do that, but it’s probably wiser that they don’t, given how that’s worked for most of the people around them. A potential canon ship doesn’t have to be dead in the water just because they didn’t bang and commit to a relationship the absolute first time they aired their feelings. Sometimes other stuff has to happen first.
Not to mention, plenty of fictional stories/characters bypass the emotional delicacies to get to the boning or rose-tinted infatuation first, which then leads to drama, guilt, pain, sadness, etc. later. Even Dina and Becky did, God love them both. It’d be pleasantly refreshing to see these two thoughtful nice guys not fall into that pattern just because seeing them hook up would be gratifying at the time. That might be optimistic of me, perhaps, but I can dream that SOME characters might not leap that fast.
What “Into the Bunker” did to the S.S. WenDip, “Chest” has done to The Good Ship …Ethanny? Danthan? Okay, the name needs work, but my point is this: ships aren’t always permanently sunk.
For probably the first time, I can say that I know exactly how one of these characters feels. I just did the same thing that Danny did last night (kind of) and there really is a weight lifted when you tell someone how you feel about them, no matter how it turns out.
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 11h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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“AMBER WOULD BE OUR MAKO”
“wait did you just call us Korrasami”
“shit, I guess”
“…that’s kinda sexy”
Oh my goodness no
Oh my goodness yes
HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA YES
BE THE FUCKING WORST
(
BUT DON’T BE WORST AT FUCKING)I hate being so conflicted!
I agree. At this point I’m happy for them admitting their feelings and realizing what it would do to Amber.
On the other hand…damn, what a shame. I feel sorry for them.
Willis is definitely brilliant at screwing our heads.
Yessssssss. Be the absolute worst.
Embrace the dork side!
YES
Hahahaha!!! Brilliant!!!
YES Now kiss. :3
But Amber hasn’t gotten a semi-annoying sidekick who we can pawn a gay ship on to yet.
This is where Dorothy comes in. She is rather competent, though. But this could be her fatal(est) flaw at last.
Or does she?…..Dorothy you’ve just been called up! Time to lose the zero and get with the hero….literally because Walky’s test scores are awful.
Is it not obvious that Sal has been switching their tests?
You really think Sal would do something like that? She doesn’t strike me as the type to knock other people down to get ahead, at least not intentionally.
No, that pretty much entirely messes up Sal’s, Jason’s, Danny’s, and Walky’s character arcs.
Look, Sal was struggling. She has no natural grasp of math and doesn’t much like rules-ordered structures.
So she went to Jason. He couldn’t help her, because he understands the material and can’t understand why someone else doesn’t. (This is an Issue with instructors. Teaching is a skill, and knowing a subject well doesn’t always help explain it to people who don’t understand it when it’s presented.)
Sal and Jason fucked instead of Sal learning anything because they have emotional issues.
Sal wound up getting instruction from Danny, because Danny actually tried to understand Sal’s perspective, and Sal was willing to work through her shortcoming (after attempting to improve her grade by working something else /if you know what I’m saying/). Sal put in effort, Danny helped someone, and the two of them became friends (which has had impacts on the Danny/Amber relationship.)
Walky, meanwhile, has been failing. This is because he doesn’t grasp the material either, and he has NO IDEA how to deal with that. Sal has had more trouble with academics in the past, but that’s made her learn how to get through the problems. Walky has never had a course of study he couldn’t excel at without effort. (This is an Issue with smart but lazy and undisciplined people who assume they can skate by in life until they’re forced to actually put effort into things. Sometimes they step up and buckle down. Other times, we fail out of college and find ourselves thirty and working mall retail to pay the bills…)
Yeah Walky is just failing. I did the same in college. In my case I pulled it off and hopefully he does too.
You’re saying Walky can’t recognize his own handwriting?
They’re twins, so they have the same handwriting. Dont’ you know anything about twins?
(Note: This is only true for Dumbiverse twins. Real world twins don’t work that way. Also, even for the Dumbiverse, it’s not canon. I just made it up.)
Not only is it not “obvious”, it flies in the face of the character arcs that are happening, and makes no logistical sense.
Perhaps less obvious and more funny.
I assumed it had been Jason switching the scores, or just arbitrarily pulling them out of his ass.
Well see that just means it’s time to introduce Lucy!!!
Rumor has it the writers once said they planned on having Mako meet Firelord Izumi’s daughter at the party in the last episode. That would mean he’d be dating an literal princess next. Apply that to Amber and that just means she has nowhere to go but up!
I’m betting that was one of the things they had to cut because of Nick’s surprise budget cut halfway through the season.
Avatar >>> princess. Only one per generation, savior of the world, and all that. Also, Korra is kind of both, since her father was also a prince of the Northern Water Tribe and then basically ended up leading the Southern tribe by the end of the series.
When you put it like that I can see your point. Unfortunately as far as the series goes he will forever be alone.
Dark Horse is actually going to be releasing a series of LoK comics that picks up where the show left off. Maybe that plot point will show up then?
And maybe there will be lesbian kisses at long last? One can only dream.
Korra and Asami are both bisexual.
Strictly Bisex for for you,
none of that homo stuff?
I’m glad they didn’t do that, considering the episode that can be summarized as “the multiple ways Mako has been a d-bag.” I feel like an episode with Mako getting with a princess would be like a “girls do fall for jerks” trope.
you say that as though princesses are more special by virtue of being related to somebody (and in some cases, with not a lot of branches on that family tree)
HAHAHAHA
Is Dorothy Bolin?
Is Danny the Avatar or Ethan? I could see arguments for both.
Korra is the bottom.. so Probably Danny.
Also Danny is already the worst according to you people..
LET THE BI/GAY FLOWWWWW.
…
amber is totally going to be their mako omg
SLIPSHINE
They don’t have to DATE…
OMG – Amber would … explode? implode? Some kind of plode episode.
I’m guessing she would a splode.
She would assplode.
Right name, right grav, right comment, right time, right place.
This has won you all of the internets for today.
All hail Supreme Butt Commander of the Internet.
YOUR AMBER A SPLODE
YOUR HEAD A SPLODE
I’m gonna go with she would a SPLOOSH
I going to go with she would write slash fan fiction.
start to wonder if there is something about her that makes men want the D? and i’m not talking about luffy
Speaking as a weeb: being super into anime during puberty can kiiiind of bias you toward effeminate men. Which isn’t to say every dude who isn’t a storm of traditional machismo is into other dudes, but there’s probably like. a slllight correlation.
On the one hand, I’m bi. And watched anime growing up. On the other hand, Inuyasha is for pussies, give me real men. Like Goku. Or Bobobo.
Tetsuoooooooooooooo!!!
Yeah, I was gonna say… it’s not all bishies, there’s also fellows like Alex Armstrong.
Or Jonathan Joestar. I know JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure made me question my sexuality. I mean, c’mon, have you seen the Pillar Men.
In my dreams, yes.
To be fair, JoJo is absolutely not your typical DC Comics type of manly men. They may not be your average bishounen either, but Jojo men certainly have a certain effeminate allure in their very bishounen eyes, tight clothes, slightly glam rock personas and “unmanly” poses.
But…but I liked Inuyasha..
I did too, but I kinda prefer Haru from My Little Monster.
Media featuring gay and bi characters or even just beautiful characters of your same sex doesn’t alter your sexuality (but it can allow you to examine it in greater detail and possibly come to new conclusions). However, saying it does can quite possibly fuel bigots. Just my perspective.
Yeah, I’ve watched plenty of anime with the bishonen character type, and I’m still straight as a horny, lonely, stereotype-anime-watcher can be. Which is pretty damn straight. (Damn straight!)
I as a non typical male in my lifes (I loved sailor moon but hate sports for example) I still am attracted to the feminine, but at the same time I know physical attraction only gets you so far and if I like the person i might get a crush regardless, but I also know if they look macho/etc i doubt I would feel attracted to them due to physical preferences.
Hah. I fit the fujoshi trope all too well, and was lucky enough to find a bi guy. Both of us like a certain degree of femininity in our partners, for sure.
Yeah that’s what Ethan’s mom insinuated during Freshman Family Weekend, but in a less humorous sense.
Are you implying that there are people who don’t want Luffy’s Monkey D?
I hear it’s made of rubber.
Buggy the Clown’s D can detach. This is canon.
She would deplode.
And then replode.
Or call a threesome.
No table would be safe.
And the dreams of the shippers were crushed.
Well, you know, not entirely. I mean, Poly is still an option.
Well, you know, TECHNICALLY…
i love them both so much right now!
…no homo
dude not cool. even in jest
LOTS of homo (and bi).
We are at homo critical mass right now.
No such thing. All queers ahead!
“the bi train will now départ. All queer ahead !” ?
ALL OF THE HOMO!!!
YAASSSSS
There goes the ship. It has sailed. We missed it.
More like sunk in the harbor.
Got its bow ripped off by the champagne bottle.
*Trying not to wake people up, but totally laughing.*
Shipwright blew it up for the insurance money.
Disappeared off the face of the earth.
“Sailing the wide accountan-sea”
For now.
That’s not how ships work. Ships don’t care about canon. They sail on as long as someone’s there to steer them
“ships don’t care about canon, it just gives them more powder for the cannons”
Unless said ship was Zutara and you still wanted to watch Legend of Korra.
I’m sure there are people that did not stop.
or for Ethan’s bath waterWe can ship it!
There’s an iceberg wearing yellow coveralls and a mask, gliding into the harbor to the jaws theme.
God damn it
Well good to see this is getting resolved more or less.
As if millions of Yaoi Slipshine fans suddenly cried out in disappointment, and were suddenly silenced.
There’s always dream sequences. I guess.
Not all dreams are pleasant though.
Joyce knows.
That’s okay, I’ll just cry in the dark with copious amounts of rum and draw my own porn of them.
See on the one hand, I appreciate the surprising amount of forethought (from Danny of all people) and their consideration towards Amber.
On the other hand BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I agree on both statements. It’s nice to see Danny making the good decision here. Especially since Ethan’s response seems more like a CMA clause than a total agreement.
This kind of good decision isn’t really out of character for Danny though.
Right; contrary to readership belief Danny virtually always makes good and decent decisions *when he has sufficient information to do so*. Which until this scene was a circumstance which fell under the category of “never”.
CMA clause?
Crisis averted…?
for now.
Like the absolute fucking worst dickbags!…..but would anyone give a shit?
In comic? Yeah probably. Outside of comic…fifty/fiftyish?
I can think of at lest one who’d be delighted to have a legitimate “Danny doesn’t really care about Amber” argument to rant about instead of referencing the moment he usually does.
But if Amber were to have an accident (frozen in ice for a hundred years)…
Captain Amazigirl?
“Amber, history records that while you were frozen, Danny and Ethan hooked up like a hundred times.”
She is torn between feelings of betrayal and yaoi glee.
“…in the first week. Wow, what sick historian kept track of… all he signed was For a Nickel???”
Made my day, thanks.
have an internet
That’s right.
Once per year.
They can’t “date”.
That doesn’t mean they can’t do “things”
with their “things”
rub it on their tummies!
Next on slipshine: “Boy smut”, written by Joyce
That sounds immensely entertaining.
“Boy Smut” by Joyce Brown
“Why are we fighting?” Edward said to Jacob.
“I don’t know,” Jacob replied. “I think I convinced myself that I hated you because I couldn’t admit that I loved you, but I have recently discovered that this is an acceptable option.”
“I too have recently discovered this.” Jacob kissed Edward, causing him to sparkle with joy.
“I want to touch your thing with my thing,” Jacob murmured.
Edward gasped. “We can’t! You know why.”
“It’s OK, I came prepared.” Jacob’s hand glided back toward his extremely yummy butt. If the raised circle in his back pocket was what Edward hoped it was…
Jacob pulled a gold ring with a giant diamond out of his pocket, and slipped it on Edward’s finger. “Now we are married,” Jacob murmured.
“Oh!” Edward cried, “I am ready now. Touch my thing with your thing!”
Jacob removed his jeans and undies, revealing his engorged thing, which consisted of a glans, frenulum, and shaft, all of which are described in very interesting detail on Wikipedia.
OH NO, GRAMMA, YOU’RE READING THIS IN HEAVEN, AREN’T YOU? STOP READING!!!!!!!!
” causing him to sparkle with joy.”
THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER!!!!
This is honestly the best thing ive ever seen on here
This. This makes everything worth it. Ever.
The Ding-Dong Bandit Strikes Again!
Damn it Amber! Why did you give Amazi-Girl the power to destroy ships?!?
It’s like the worst power she could have, considering what we’ve seen is her taste in fanfic.
On the other hand, it would make her an excellent enemy for Lucy, who has magical shipping powers.
Surprise! Danny and Ethan, both characters demonstratively capable of sympathy and consideration, are acting sympathetic and considerate.
But they’re violating the basic premise of the comic! It’s supposed to be all bad decisions all the time!
How am I supposed to relate to characters who aren’t complete fuckups?!
They made a bad decision by doing the opposite of what the general majority of the readership wants, namely Ethanny to be a thing.
I think in this one instance, we could forgive the characters for acting selfishly!
I feel like this comic was created very recently
Did Willis just whip this up yesterday?
He writes then months in advance. It’s just that he knows us and can play us like a violin.
I think he went to the Light Yagami School of Strategy, since he can practically predict the future.
That, and, as a whole, we are not really that complex, particularly when it comes to the feverish hope that two same-gender characters might smooch.
But they are queer and could possibly smooch and… okay, I see your point.
Weeee are definitely easy to satisfy. Which makes it WEIRD that so many authors fail to do it.
Willis knows his audience. Many authors don’t. (Or they do but their editors don’t.) : /
Willis is the Hari Seldon of the DoA Commentariat.
Yeah, it’s not like “And then Danny and Ethan will kiss, right? RIGHT?” was a reaction that was particularly hard to predict, especially when that ship’s been sitting at the dock for almost two years now.
That would be news to the Patreon folks who read this 24 hours ago.
So what you’re saying is that you’re a time travelling wizard.
David Willis => D. W. => Doctor Who? :0
Obviously he’s Darrel Waltrip, and can drive fast enough to break through space-time.
DAMN IT, WILLIS! We wanted that HOT HOT MAN-LOVIN’
I still want it so T_____T
Fuck her. Try and be happy together.
Trial date! Error is when Amber finds out.
I don’t think Ethan would like that solution.
He tried and failed that solution in the hotel room that night after prom
Litterally ?
i think Ethan’s hair got poofier in the last panel, like a startled bird.
That sudden realization of why Ethanny can never be shook his hair.
Reminds me of when Amber made a similar face and response in reaction to Dina saying something lewd.
If I remember correctly it was Dina insinuating Amber sometimes used the Amazigirl costume to spice up sex with Danny.
That’s the one!
And thus did a thousand ships sink — burning — into the deep black heart of the sea
Damn it, you two, this is no time for mature and adult rationale! This is a matter of life and ships!
*ships and depth!
Ughhhh!!!! Goddamn!!!!
I now expect them to be each others wing man.
“wing wang man”
Hopefully bars aren’t involved. If Danny got a little tipsy and smooched Ethan, Amber might blame Sal for Danny’s underage drinking, and by extension her exes getting together.
I’m pretty sure they’re under 21, so the strongest things they’ll be drinking will be ginger ale….
Maybe cough syrup.
Tell that to billie
While I misremembered other stuff, the essence of my prediction was correct: Danny and Ethan do not have sex at this time.
And yes, if Amber ever learns of this mutual attraction, she would explode from the contradiction of desperately wanting Ethan and Danny to have sex while desperately feeling doubly betrayed by her best friend and her ex-boyfriend.
Best friend who is ALSO an ex-boyfriend, actually. Right?
Don’t worry guys, once Amber’s had time to cool off from the breakup she’ll be shipping you two like a cargo barge.
Amber: “On the one hand, I really want to punch both of you in dicks. On the other, I kinda wanna start writing a story about you two in a shower…”
“Search your feelings, Amber I feel the conflict within you. Let your inner yaoi fangirl out.”
Sure, but knowing Amber and how she never deals with any feelings appropriately, by the time she cools off from the breakup and reaches the emotional place where she can be happy about Seecox, and considering in-comic time versus real time… we’ll all be dead by then. D:
Sure, but honestly, Amber needs help and she needs to grow up. It’s wonderful that Ethan and Danny are worried about her, but (a) Amber’s problems are bigger than the both of them, and (b) denying themselves happiness to protect Amber is going way overboard.
I have many, many years of unhealthy, self-sacrificing co-dependent decisions behind me. In the end, no one benefits from that type of thinking and behavior. They need to approach their relationship based on what they want, and not on what they think will keep Amber from freaking out. First they should try their best to convince Amber that she needs help (through Ethan, heh). And if she doesn’t listen… welp, que sera, sera.
This is very true. Well said.
They… they can be happy without dating each other, you know. It’s not like they have some sort of undying love for each other. They’re not each other’s “the one”. They have some attraction to each other and get along well. They’re not gonna be miserable forever if they stay friends.
I agree that Amber needs help, but just giving up and deciding to screw her feelings if she can’t see she needs help is a kind of asshole move that Ethan would never do, because Amber is way too important to him, and his friendship with someone he’s known forever, I’m guessing, takes precedence over his sexual attraction to some guy he met a few weeks ago.
My point is… Ethan and Danny can be fine not dating (at least until Amber reaches a place where’s she could be okay with that.).
I don’t think I need to explain how very not fine Amber would be if they did this right now. She’s already on the verge (or, arguably, in the middle of) a mental breakdown.
The way I understand your point is that acting on some sexual attraction is more important than a lifelong friendship and that person’s mental stability.
Reply to Saki: Okay, I feel like I have to reply again just to say I agree with this, too. I didn’t understand LeRoyEstMort’s comment quite like you did, I saw it more as a statement about things in the long run.
I have similar experiences, so I agree with this. Trying to support Amber in ways they can is great and what friends should do, but making decisions about any other relationship based on what keeps her appeased is not a good idea in the long run.
I mean, they can be tactful about it, but letting Ambers insecurities run their lives isn’t any more healthy than Amber letting the same insecurities run her life, and I’m saying that as someone with equally strong (albeit different) insecurities. I’ve been on both sides of this type of situation so to speak.
This is so gaybies (in a good way).
I was honestly expecting this to be a dream/daydream sequence.
So I guess polygamy is the relationship type we are not going to explore in this comic?
hey man they’ve only been in college for like a month
give ’em time
Fine. Two months then poly.
Polyamory. Polygamy is multiple marriage. And so far, nope!
(I was personally holding out for hot threesomes. Consensual, healthy ones, where nobody is pushed beyond their comfort zone or sexual preference. But I’m not sure Amber would ever be in a healthy enough state to handle that for the foreseeable future of this comic.)
I could’ve sworn someone’s already mentioned polyamory in the comic before. I’m most likely wrong.
Threesomes probably wouldn’t work in this dynamic, because: 1) Ethan isn’t bi, so having Amber there would at best be neutral, and at worst be mood-killing, and 2) Amber probably still has sexual feelings towards Ethan, which might make her jealous if she sees Ethan and Dan together.
Is that a “can’t happen” “won’t work” or a “would be terrible” “won’t work”? Because I can see Ethan still feeling guilty about letting Amber down and trying to make it up to her. And horribly, horribly failing.
Amber doesn’t wanna date Danny. Ethan doesn’t wanna date Amber.
It’d be a two way thing for Danny and Ethan, and then Danny would have a one sided thing with Amber, and Amber would have a one sided thing with Ethan.
I’m not sure that’s a workable model for a poly relationship.
That’s called a “V”, actually. Not uncommon, especially if the two nondating ones are friends. Share your toys with your bestie and all that. :3
Wait, I misread. Yeah, now Amber doesn’t want to date Danny it won’t work. It WOULD have earlier… in fanfiction terms.
Definitely, and definitely your other comment. V’s can totally work in the real world, I should know, I’ve been in a few, but yeah, that option was nuked from orbit once Amber became convinced that Danny was part of a conspiracy against her orchestrated by Sal.
Yeah. I also know a few sets of real-life Vs, and it could have worked while the three of them were all still on good terms. However, it doesn’t strike me as an arrangement Amber would have wanted even beforehand.
Polyamory might happen. But it sure won’t happen with this group. Maybe in the future with some other relationship, but I wouldn’t hold breath for poly representation just yet.
I’m thinking the most likely candidate for a poly relationship is Dina.
“Okay, but what if instead of dating, we just bang a lot in private?”
“I think Amber would be okay with that.”
“And then one of us gets hit by a truck and dies?”
“Wh-why would you say that?”
I could see Ethan getting hit by a truck on the way to BotCon or something, maybe decked out as Optimus Prime. He’d probably suffer a broken arm at worst, but – actually, never mind; his sorrow at missing the con might be grieving on par with character death.
I second the motion.
Only if she gets to watch.
Mixed feels here! I’m glad they are both bring responsible and honest, but at the same time… Come back, ship! D:
*being. First time commenting on mobile. >_>;
Awww, the sweet, awkward, giggly smiles of people finding out they like each other. :3
+1 :)))
“We shouldnt date but….. We should…… Smooch??”
…hold hands and read about dinosaurs?
DO I?!?!
Nooooo! My ship! My precious ship! What have you done, Willis?!
Okay, don’t date. Just get married.
Loophole.
YASSSS
“we can’t do what we want in our life because of some unstable mental wreck”
“let’s make our lives a little bit worse because of her”
Yay. So good.
Just hospitalize Amber already, gosh.
dude, i don’t know about you, but my circle of friends doesn’t bang each other’s exes while they’re still grieving the relationship. ethan and danny don’t seem devastated or repressed by this decision; it’s just common decency.
that was a weird jump to violence, dude.
To be fair, I think they meant hospitalize for mental instability? But yeah.
“we’re willing to pass on this pleasure because the pain of hurting our mentally ill friend would be so much greater for us and her” is probably more accurate.
How awful that they care for their friend.
Yikes, I mean, Amber should definitely get therapy and all, but there’s something to be said about not jumping into a relationship with your ex’s ex, who she is still friends with, immediately after you break up that kinda transcends whether or not your ex is an unstable mental wreck.
This is pretty much what anyone who isn’t a selfish asshole would do.
Yeah, I’m not big on claiming somebody after you’ve broken up, but really, they can wait more than one day.
Wow your kind of an asshole.
While hospitalization may actually help Amber/AG. It shouldn’t just be so these two can bang with less guilt, but rather because her connection to reality is getting a little more tenuous and she’s starting to become more of a threat to herself and others as evidenced by her punching out random criminals in broad daylight.
Okay, so I just LIVED a similar drama to this over the weekend. A close friend of mine spent the weekend in full on breakdown mode because her ex slept with someone she was close to and trusted, thus torpedoing any chance of the three of them remaining friends.
Sleeping with a close friend’s ex, especially RIGHT AFTER a breakup, is a goddamn shitty thing to do to someone. Ethan and Danny would, in fact, be the fucking worst if they got together right now. Amber’s mental health is irrelevant to that, because it’s a betrayal of trust and not something you should do to anyone you care about.
On the one hand, I don’t like the idea that after a breakup, “my ex would be upset” is a thing much. Especially with all the emotional abuse Amber has been slinging- she doesn’t control Danny’s body or Ethan’s.
But I do think there’s an acceptable period of time that should be left alone for the mental health of everyone involved. So the friend (Ethan) doesn’t feel like a rebound; so the ex (Amber) doesn’t feel like a throw-away AND doesn’t have to wonder if they planned this/already got it on; so the other ex (Danny) has some time to be on their own and heal/come down.
But after said time… I really do think it’s unfair to be angry at a friend for hooking up with someone you’re no longer dating. But then, I’m a polyamorous heathen, so a lot of this drama doesn’t make a lot of sense to me anyway.
When the ex in question is the one who did the breaking up I don’t think they really have a claim to any kind of bugger period because THEY chose to end that relationship.
*buffer period
I mean, Amber isn’t actually the one asking for the buffer period here. Danny and Ethan are deciding on their own that this isn’t something they’d want to pursue because they feel they’d hurt Amber.
We can wait, really!
After all, this is DUMBING of age, no Smart or Mature or Considerate of Age
Lifetime dork just adds to the hotness.
The Willis giveth, and the Willis taketh away
even as soon as the very next strip.
(;_;)
Nah, I’m cool with it.
Your not amber! Your Becky in disguise!
As Frank-N-Furter once said, “What she doesn’t know, won’t hurt her”.
HOLD YOUR GROUND SONS OF COMMENTS, OF DUMBING, MY SHIPPERS!
I see in your fan art the same fear that would take the heart of me.
A day may come when the courage of yaoi fails, when we forsake our ships and break all bonds of crack pairings! But it is not this strip! An hour of canon and other characters, when the age of shippers comes crashing down! But it is not this day! THIS DAY WE SHIP! By all that you hold dear on this good comic, I bid you STAND, SHIPPERS OF THE WILLIS!
I wouldn’t have guessed Galasso was so passionate about yaoi.
I chuckled, well done
Our lord Galasso needs not reveal his interests to us fools unless they be relevant.
I call your Aragorn at the Black Gates, and raise you a Theoden at the Pelennor Fields:
Forth, and fear no canonical statements! Arise! Arise, Shippers of Willis! Yaoi shall be shaken, threesomes shall be splintered! A crack day…an OTP day…ere the sun rises! Ship now!…Ship now!…Ship! Ship to ruin and the comic’s ending! Fan art! Fan art! Fan art! Forth, Shippers!
Ok good, they’re aware enough.
Still, woo!! Feels good to get it out of the way too, both for Danny and for us.
Re alt text: yeah I was pretty much expecting exactly this lol. They might be horny teenagers, but they’re not monsters and they both care about Amber.
That said, down the road (oh god, in like 17 years real time probably xD) I still totally want these two to happen!
No, she’s the worst
No, Mary’s the worst. (Of the females anyway.) Going by characters in general Amber’s not even in the top three.
What about Carol?
Mary is this bad this young. Give her time, I feel loke Carol’s maxed out.
Nuuu. Wait, what if secret relationship.
Is more funny with that avatar !
Hahahaha Danny keeping something secret without getting found hahahahhaahahaha
And now KEEEEESSSSSSSS!
I’m sitting at the bottom of the ocean with this ship.
We can become cool zombie pirates in due time.
I was picturing mermaids/mermen/non-binary-mers, but zombie pirates sounds way cooler.
I’d say both, but rotting fish is not a good thing to be.
Zombie Pirates are all inclusive.
(Ghost Ship Ethanny)
Oh thank goodness, I was expecting this to be much worse actually because it’s my birthday and we all know how the Willis taketh away.
It’s nice to see these two acknowledging their feelings even if not dating. Speaks volumes to their relatively recent friendship and character growth they have both gone through. And at the same time as they resolve these issues in a healthy manner, Willis can still have crushed the dreams of shippers, and we can hear the cries of “Damn you Willis!” It’s like having your cake and eating it too.
Yep, that’s what I expected.
I am laughing so hard at the crushed shipper dreams.
Some people just want to watch the world…ship burn
Shut up and kiss, you fools!
We shall date in secret. and take over the university under our secret identities, Dorkman and Heartbreaker. Amb…I mean Amazi-Girl won’t be able to find out.
Ok this is a bit of a relief, I would just give up immersion entirely had they uh… acted. On this.
I mean, yeah, horny teenage boys, but like. Come on. They’re both very devoted to Amber. Giving it a little bit of time is a lot better (not that I expect the characters to always act in “fair” ways or anything cus humans aren’t like that).
All that being said it’s a bummer they’re putting it off the table entirely. I get why because of the Amber factor, but if they’d make each other happy Amber SHOULD respect that. Something like this happened with my own friend group which split it right down the middle cus the “Amber” in the situation threw a royal shitfit. It got ugly, but the mature human being thing to do is to respect you don’t own either of those people and they are free to do what they please to make themselves happy.
Like 5 years from now after a shit ton of therapy and maybe an ex or two post Danny I could see her being fine with the idea of them. A decade from now she’d probably happily attend their wedding. But considering how this comic works it’s always going to be too soon for her and a bad idea for them. That being said I still think it’s going to happen someday in comic. Not today but not never.
I worry it will happen because Ethan will refuse to fully ostracize and shun Danny and so Amber will turn on both of them and antagonize them to the point where they no longer feel loyalty to her friendship because she has cast them both aside.
In other words, they’ll probably get together in comic at about the exact time, Amber/AG is hitting her nadir of mental health.
I’m not giving up. Maybe someone will have another party and we’ll get some alcohol induced sexy times. for the sake of drama…3 years from now.
LOL all these ‘the ship has sailed/sunk’ comments. That is not how ships work! A ship is any combination of people you want together, whether they have any chance of being together or not. Just because it’s not canon or can’t be canon right now, doesn’t mean you can’t still ship it! (that said, a mutual confession of attraction is canon as HELL to me and a whole lot more than many of my other ships have xD).
Agreed. Zutara didn’t sink when Aang & Katara got together and the cartoon ended. Folks sure as hell are never going to stop shipping Harry/Malfoy. And, come on. Jack Frost and Elsa being from different movies didn’t stop people from shipping them. This strip ain’t sinking Seecox. :3
Exactly! (ugh at Elsa/any dude tho, come on, she’s sooooo gaaaaay :p). And I love the shipname Seecox hahahaha. Amazing.
Some people just can’t see Elsa’s gay. Here’s to hoping Disney will make them see.
Eheh me too, dunno who came up with it, but it’s awesome AF. XD
Okay, but that (referring to not being able to ship something) isn’t what ship sinking is. As described by TVTropes, “Ship Sinking is an event that seems to kill any reasonable chance of a romantic relationship occurring between two characters in the canon of the work.”
And suddenly the wail of the countless shippers was heard throughout the cosmos.
Eh, I’m sure eventually Amber will catch wind of this situation and give them her blessing. She only wants the best for Ethan, and she only dated Danny for like a month and a half.
I dunno. I think if she was in a healthy good head-space and thought through it logically, she’d be really touched and supportive.
But I can see her easily interpreting this as some sort of failing on her part. Like, oh, I suck so much as a partner and a woman that two partners turned gay on me. And now they’re betraying me with each other and reminding me of how broken I am that I turn everyone I’m with gay.
Even though that’s not how anything works, it’s a seductive way of thinking for people really insecure with themselves and their value to people and would fit into things like her breakdown about how Ethan “wouldn’t fake it with her” and the like.
And so, the ship becomes a submarine. For now.
A little chin scruff, and Danny would be Shaggy from Scooby Doo…
Or if you’re going with DC’s reboot, a hipster mustache.
forget amber, GO FOR IT.
THESE TWOooo *still squeeing*
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
i dont even care about the ship i just really disagree with this
like yeah, obviously NOW would be a bad idea, but cant date ever? theyd be terrible people if they did? amber, at any point regardless of whether before or after her problems are addressed, would be traumatized by two guys she liked being happy together and theyd be monsters for allowing that?
god damn
Yeah, my understanding is that not dating people’s exes is mainly a straight-person thing. There’s just not enough same-sex-interested hotties to go around, people can’t retain claims once they’re broken up. However, it is a good deal classier to wait more than, like, a day.
Yeah, the no dating exes thing is kinda baffling and a little bit creepy to me. Like, it feels like laying claim to someone you have less than zero claim to and a way of bullying friends of expressing desires. I dunno, you may be right about it being a mono straight person thing more often than not (not to say queer folk never do it), and kind of a high school thing as well.
Dunno. If you really don’t want to date a friend of the relevant gender and orientation and your friends and relatives won’t shut up about how you’d be nice together, it’s a useful convention to bring up to get them to shut up.
Correction: I meant, not dating people’s exes forever. I think anyone who cares about Amber could refrain for a couple months. They’re both clear on just enjoying their mutual crushes right now, anyway.
Oh wait Danny and Amber were only dating a month and a half, and probably weren’t yet in love — if Seecox holds off for like two or three weeks then I’ll be impressed with their above-and-beyond restraint/consideration for their friend.
Part of me suspects we’ll see them at least kiss in the book after this current one. And that’d be bad, because it’ll mean that Amber is going to get real bad and even more accusatory and paranoid in this one and probably burn down her remaining old friendships.
I would be fine to read this scenario. I’d like even more, though, if Amber is happy about Seecox, which shows her how far she’s come with all her work towards getting better. …what, I can hope.
Yeah, basically this.
I have no experience with this, but it just seems natural to me that if you’ve ended the relationship, theres no claim to stake anymore.
Feeling are tricky, fickle things.
Say I have a friend who had a rough breakup with their ex, and isn’t over him even though it’s been a year plus. If I date that ex, it’s going to hurt her. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t – there would probably be a lot of other factors involved. But yeah, that shit can hurt.
Huh. I’m not sure why but I didn’t actually read Danny’s “ever” as an actual prohibition but as just for emphasis.
Oh, this comments section and it’s hyperliteral readings. He’s not saying never. He’s exaggerating for emphasis. At this current moment, there is no way they could ever get together. Not unless the situation with Amber resolves. He didn’t say “We can never date, no matter what.”
And it’s not a matter of “ownership” of an ex. It’s a matter of caring about your friend and not wanting to bring up bad feelings. Your friend means more to you than your desire to date this particular person.
Eventually, though, they have to move on, and you can’t leave out the idea that this person may actually be perfect for you.
Plus there’s simply the fact that dating someone just after your friend breaks up with them makes it seem like you were just waiting in the wings, or that your ex was secretly fancying them but couldn’t because of the relationship. If they are the ones who broke up, it can even be seen as them breaking up with you for your friend.
Yeah, basically this.
Though it might not even be so much emphasis as just how he’s thinking about it at the moment. They’re 18 and in college. “forever” isn’t really a long time.
Even if he thinks that now, six months from now with Amber in a better place mentally and maybe in a new relationship, things will look completely different. Right now, he can’t see things changing that much. OTOH, in six months, both he and Ethan will likely have had at least other crushes, if not relationships, so maybe it will be forever. Things change fast in those years.
The obvious Slipshine should actually be the Danny/Amber/Ethan 3-way. She likes both of the guys, and they seem to be on the verge…
…you should look up what verge means in French.
He he
What was I expecting? Not an honest, slightly awkward, but ultimately very emotionally mature conversation, that’s for sure. You go, kids, you go.
I know, they’re being really mature and awesome and sweet right here and being really aware of all the factors surrounding them. I think this right here might be the healthiest most mature interaction between cast members in a good while.
Either that or Willis is just using them as a talk piece.
…so Dorothy walks in during this conversation at just the right point to assume Dan dumped A-G for Ethan, and is too angered to wait for the real story, and storms off to commiserate with Amber and manages to say things such that Amber doesn’t realize how wrong Dorothy got it…
I can’t say I’ve ever seen Dorothy skip all logic and reasoning and jump straight for an emotional end-point. I can see her yelling at the two of them, but even that gives both Ethan and Danny room/time to explain what the hell just happened.
Goddamn i just want to see Danny bend Ethan over and give it to him like a freight train an hour latte to the depo.
We all do, trust me.
This means that they will end up doing it, doesn’t it?
Awwww, these two dorks. This works really well without dialog too.
To be fair, Amber is not ONLY problem for their relationship. There are their parents as well.
their parents will be a problem no matter who they date though, unfortunately
Yeah, if they do get together, their parents are likely to be super shitty with Ethan’s mom trying to bully him back into the closet again and Danny’s parents making shitty jokes about him.
I don’t remember Danny’s parents very well, but I think I’m kinda expecting it’d be worse than shitty jokes. I mean, would they even understand that he’s bi, and not closet-gay or “just experimenting cuz it’s trends or whatever”?
*trendy, damnit. ><
True. Shitty jokes would be the best case scenario. Though, that is how they bullied him about Dorothy, making shitty jokes that were intended to undermine his sense of self-worth.
Just make out in front of her.
Amber’s enough of a fujo that her libido will outweigh her inexhaustible rage.
NSFW
THE CHOSEN HAS RETURNED!
Praise Yotomoe!!
THE SLEEPER HAS AWAKENED!!
That’s a lot of fluid
She should go see a doctor about that
It’s her sexy ex banging her sexy ex. She was already soaked before she started.
Nosebleed can do that
I am in favor of this scenario
And like that, a light shone bright through the darkness, and a great weight was lifted.
Ok
But this doesn’t mean they can’t be friends with benefits
So
Slipshine when?
Amazi-girl: “They both betrayed me for each other. I will now self destruct in a downwards spiral of violence.”
Amber: “SHUT UP, HOT MEN DOING IT”
And the split would deepen between them…
Yeah, maybe it is for the best that they’re going into this nice and slow.
While there is some merit to the final panel. It is kind if shitty that two people who clearly have chemistry and are attracted to each other can’t date because their friend with severe anger issues and emotional problems will have a pyschotic break rather than be happy for her friends.
Wow, I got super ninja’d xD
But yeah, so much this. There is a line between being considerate and validating the worse behaviors of people who… have some problems to sort out, lets say.
More tragic than shitty. It’s not like Amber chose her problems.
Unless of course we go to the source, but ‘shitty’ is a FAR to mild word for Blaine.
Honestly even without the issues I kind of think this would still be a dick move? I mean starting a relationship with your best forehands boyfriend the day they broke up? kind of awful.
This was supposed to say “best friends” not “best forehands.”
Amber tossed him like, 2 hours ago
its their choice
Yeah its there choice whether they act like dicks.
And instead they could be acting with their dicks!
*trombone noises*
Thank you. I was hoping someone would follow that up.
Just the angst in the strip makes me so happy,’ they are thinking with their heads and not other lower parts
I do not care about this ship at all, but the idea that they could never do a thing that makes them happy because Amber would be unhappy about them being happy is super uncomfortable to me.
Like, hey, I can understand intellectually how someone might prefer being romantic and/or sexual with one person at a time, and I am cool with two people mutually consenting to only be romantic and/or sexual with eachother for a while for this reason.
What I do not get is why anyone would feel that it is their right to tell people they are not currently monogamous with that they cannot have these relationships, I can see no practical justification here, it is just denying other people their happiness because the feelings you get when you see them happy make you uncomfortable.
Hey, if your emotions are doing that, it is the emotions that are the problem, not the people doing things that make them happy. Stop taking out your irrational emotions and bad habits on other people.
Oh, very much, the whole notion of ex-dibs, I feel is toxic as crap. This idea that after a breakup, one should still have claim to who they’re ex dates and see it as a betrayal if a friend dates an ex soon after is some weird creepy ownership stuff and I feel it does a lot of disservice to monogamous relationships.
That being said, I don’t think these two’s worries are entirely about that. Amber went full red-panel panic-attack about Ethan’s initial coming out at prom and currently sees Danny has a corrupted betrayer. Seeing the two of them together, seeing another boyfriend “turn gay” after dating her (not in actual fact, but its how she would interpret it), and seeing a friend “betray” her by lying with who she has decided is her enemy would be all sorts of bad news for her mental health and sense of self-worth and might be more than she can handle right now.
That shouldn’t necessarily serve as a genuine block to them developing their feelings for each other, but both of them are defined by their strong empathy and how they put the feelings of others first and both have a lot of love and sympathy for Amber and want to do best by her as best they can because of it.
So it makes a lot of sense that they’re taking that into account and prioritizing it.
It would be wrong and creepy if Amber tried to demand fidelity after breaking up with Danny, but, it is also considerate of Danny and Ethan not to immediately jump into bed together, since they know that Amber’s feelings are super raw at the moment.
Ethan and Danny also seem perfectly happy to just enjoy their mutual crush, it was really important for each that the other thinks they’re attractive. For now, that’s plenty. So it’s cool.
Couldn’t agree more.
Dating an ex’s ex can sure be a weird thing and should be taken on with care. For one thing, you are likely to learn about the other side of issues and where sexual likes and dislikes are concerned this might feel really weird.
I suppose it works best when both of you are no longe friends with the common ex.
In case you are, taking the exes feelings into account seems like a wise move. It is not that any ex has the right to tell you who to date, it more like … if you know this will hurt your ex, you should consider if it’s worth losing their friendship over it. We can do want we want but expecting no consequences is not a very mature thing to do.
Timing is part of it. To (mis)quote Alison Bechdel, the statue of limitation on the possessive runs out after some time
I just need to F3 all Cerberus’ comments because they check all my boxes for what I want to say. Yep, yep, and yep. Toxic monogamy and weird ex-possessiveness and in character emapthy. Thank you for saving eme a long and emotional post-writing time.
Maybe it has to do with how Amber would probably put their heads on pikes in her closet if she found out…
I mean, she’s not in a good spot (obviously), so it’s for everyone’s best interests.
Think about it more like this. Amber has a very specific trauma involving her boyfriend leaving her because it turns out he’s gay. Now, the second guy she opened up to also turns out to be “gay” (he’s technically bi, but for this situation that’s pretty much a moot point in terms of amber). If her gay ex gets with her bi ex, Amber will feel something like betrayal. It’s not like “ex-dibs” and more of a feeling of distrust and a problem with herself “The first thing she asks Danny when they meet is if he’s gay or not.” They’re just good friends who’re putting Amber’s feelings first.
Also it is kinda against the unspoken dating rule that exes getting together is kind of a taboo. I mean you can do it, but depending on your relationship with your shared ex it’ll probably be uncomfortable or even friendship ruining. Sure you can say “I don’t give a fuck” but if you don’t want to overcomplicate stuff you just have to weigh how much you like this individual versus how much you care about how it may make your friend feel.
Why is everyone assuming this ship is dead forever rather than pushed to the side until Amber is in a healthy enough place to not fall apart over it which has to come one day. Amber can’t be endlessly knocked into a deeper pit for the entire comic forever.
Because when it comes to shipping, anything short of instant gratification is seen as complete ruination. Kinda like… [insert your own joke here]
Honestly, I’m super excited it went this way, because if they banged now, it would be a short lived affair that would be destroyed the second Amber walked in on it. This way? It has a chance to develop more healthily and thus to be more likely to be a longer lasting relationship. We’re a lot more likely to get a lot more cute moments between them this way than if we were to get instant gratification now.
I honestly agree with you 1000 percent in terms of their relationship slowly developing even if the last panel makes me dislike Amber even more. It doesn’t help that I have an ex like Amber. And oh hey by the way unusual crazy outbursts of anger where you belittle the ones who care about you is abusive and shitty whether it is because you were abused or not, and by the way I was with this person for 5 years and begged them to get therapy, they never did and they never addressed their issues just like Amber. I am shocked at how much I am growing an intense dislike for her character.
But yes more cute moments! They have already had some really great cute moments. They are far and aeay my favorite couple in the comic even if they aren’t and never will be. I still want my slips Hine though.
Yeah, I’m in a lot of conflicted feelings about Amber, because I’m realizing she’s got a lot of similarities to my ex-partner of 8 and a half years including that angry accusations of fictional things and belittling and so on. And I have a lot of conflicted feelings about her as well.
Anyways, *hugs* offered on going through all that.
Thanks, for all his faults he was still better than the alcoholic.
Amber is one of my favorite characters and totally the type of girl I generally find myself pursuing, but much like Batman for everything I love about her there Andre Andre million things that drive me crazy and piss me off.
Anyway I prefer my heroes to be more care free like our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man or the best here of all, Carla!
Andre Andre is the greatest thing my auto correct has ever produced.
For a second I thought it was one of the strange English language idioms made of people’s names that I had not yet had the pleasure to discover. I’m kinda disappointed now. XD
Why does the last panel make you dislike Amber more? She’s not in it. She’s not making crazy angry demands.
They’re admitting that them getting together would hurt her. Which it would. Which we’ve pretty much known since the possibility of this ship first came up, long before Amber got as bad as she is now. They’re worried about hurting her, because they like her. They’re not worried about her flipping out and beating them up or something.
That’s fair, it’s not so much the last panel, but that these two characters have to live their lives centered on the impact it will have on their emotionally unstable, violent and abusive ex.
They aren’t centering their lives around Amber. They’re just considering her feelings because they care about her.
Like, this isn’t them stopping themselves from doing something they want because of Amber, it’s that they don’t want to do it because they care about her and are worried about how she’d feel. It’d be like Walky and Dorothy decided at the beginning of their relationship that they didn’t want to do it because Dorothy was inevitably leaving. Like, oh sure it’d be nice, but there’s extraneous circumstances that prevent me from wanting to enter this relationship.
I’ve admitted that there is a fair reasoning to their decision. A choice can be fair or make sense but still be shitty for everyone involved.
I wouldn’t call “not dating someone right this very instant, maybe an hour tops after your girlfriend who you are extremely concerned about because she’s nonchalant about almost dying horribly dumped you” shitty.
This wasn’t even about Danny making a move on Ethan but relenting because of Amber. This is all about Danny getting his feelings out in the open.
As Spencer said, they’re just considering the effect on their friend.
Rightly or wrongly, neither of them consider Amber “emotionally unstable, violent and abusive”. They see her as their friend who they care about and don’t want to hurt. They’re not afraid of her. They like her.
I’ve made similar decisions – though not so dramatically. Not pursued someone because of how it would hurt a mutual friend.
They’re considering the effect on their friend, but is it realistic to take that out of the context of “their friend who broke up with Danny for talking to a girl, without even telling him why it was a problem, their friend who beats up criminals and underage drinkers on the regular, their friend who has obvious trauma which causes her to sometimes lash out violently…” ?
My girlfriend and I had a conversation about whether we should stay together after we both broke up (a few weeks apart, for similar reasons) with our mutual abusive, very depressed and unstable, ex. We didn’t come to the conclusion Ethan and Danny do here, because, well, she was much worse than Amber. And I get it. They DO care, and that’s great. But it is depressing to see them decide Amber’s stability matters more than their feelings for each other.
I mean, their feelings for each at this point are “you’re attractive”, so of course Amber matters more to them than that. Even before they bring her up Danny says that this doesn’t mean they should date, and that he just wanted to get it off his chest.
Nothing makes you dislike anyone. That’s a choice. And you are choosing to hate a character because of her mental health problems. They aren’t even in the comic, and yet you’re letting that increase your hatred towards them.
The reason why Mary, Carol, and John are bad people is ultimately because of their hatred. They each hate at least one person for things outside of their control. Rather than fighting their programming towards hating those people, they choose to embrace it–unlike Joyce and Hank who do what’s right.
Amber is going through worse things than anyone else in this comic. I’ve pointed out several times that the panic attacks she has are what caused the military to declare waterboarding to be torture. Read the description of what happens–it causes panic attacks.
Real life makes this a whole lot harder. I have a cousin who will not seek help for her obvious mental health issues, and the state of the system here means she’s just homeless. And I can sometimes get mad at her–I want to hate her. But I can’t. Because, there, but for the grace of God, go I. I grew up with parents who actually got me help.
It may take effort, but it would really be a good thing if you’d try to see things from Amber’s point of view, so you could form some sympathy for her, instead of seeing as someone to hate.
Hate her actions. Don’t hate the person. Imagine if everyone did–there’d be no reason for the hated person to ever get better.
I think it is pretty clear I am not choosing to hate her because of her mental problems. My anger towards Amber comes from her unwillingness to get help and the fact that her problems are being used to justify legitimately abusive and controlling behavior towards to two people who care most about her. At a certain point whether someone has mental illness or not there has to be some responsibility placed on them for their actions. As much as I sympathize for her, if being abused means she suffers no accountability for her actions how is that really helping her?
People come at things from their lived experience. Derek has mentioned that Amber reminds him of an ex, who was mentally unstable and who also did abusive things.
Derek, please correct me if I’m wrong, you’re obviously the authority of what’s in your head.
Here’s how it read to me: Derek wasn’t choosing to hate a character based on her mental illness. It’s much more likely that Derek’s brain is going “oh hey remember that really bad situation, let’s stay the hell away from anything that looks like that”. That’s adapting and learning from experiences, to try and avoid abusive situations in the future. (I am 100% on board with people attempting to avoid abusive situations, even if it means they might jump to a conclusion and, what, not like somebody? People don’t have to like everyone. Anyway.)
I read Derek’s words like mainly he wouldn’t like other people to be in a situation that has any similarity to the one that he’s experienced, because that experience was super sucky.
Am I off base?
You are not off base at all. I’m not saying people can’t change or that Amber is some irredeemable shrew who should be hated, but this story (especially back when she started lashing out at Danny) has really put her and Danny’s relationship in and different light for me. I guess the point where victim becomes abuser is different for everyone. But Danny is an emotional sponge and Amber using him to soak up her instability even after they have broken up is wrong.
Woo, I did reading- and people-comprehension.
It’s worth noting that Amber isn’t actually using Danny to soak up her instability after their breakup. She’s not even here in the comic today. Instead, she pushed Danny away and went to go handle her own feelings, which is much more her pattern. (Unfortunately, she handles her feelings by punching people in the face, but that’s a separate problem.)
Come to think of it, when Amber nearly walked in on Billie/Danny way back when, she felt jealous and frustrated, but she didn’t want to make it Danny’s problem. “Don’t apologize. You owe me no loyalty.” http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/demonstration/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/angry/
…and she didn’t hold it against him later.
Danny and Ethan are voluntarily refraining from smooching, because they are deciding to be considerate of their friend, not because Amber has ever demanded it of them. If Amber was perfectly stable, they’d still have taken her feelings into consideration, and not hooked up on the very day of the breakup, because they are both empathetic dudes who habitually put others’ feelings first.
“Nothing makes you dislike anyone. That’s a choice.”
While that’s technically true, I think it’s pretty common for ‘that’s what made me dislike/hate x’ to mean ‘this is the [last straw or a trait I find irredeemable] about x,’ not ‘x [or ‘y quality of x’] forced me to dislike x.’
The whole tone of that statement reminds me uncomfortably of how people use the phrase ‘no one can belittle you without your consent’ (or whatever the exact quote is) to silence someone whilst ignoring that the other party had done something mean-spirited/malicious. Both that and the above are arguments based pretty much solely in semantics that shut down someone’s feelings and call them irrational, while absolving another party without really considering their actions.
Beside that, I agree with a lot of your points on why Amber is probably suffering as much or more (and some other people’s on why this strip makes for an odd final straw), but I don’t agree whatsoever that Derek is (or that many people are) hating on her for her mental illness rather than her controlling and abuse. Regardless of the cause, abuse is unacceptable.
That’s absurd. Disliking someone is not a choice, you can’t FORCE yourself to like some because it’s an emotional reaction that is beyond your control.
Yes, Amber is in a terrible place psychologically and she needs serious help but at this point I am far more worried about the safety of her victims then I am about her because she is pathologically violent.
Yay! Danny’s not jumping immediately into a relationship and is taking steps to be more healthy about his feelings and his thoughts and reach out to his now closest friend about what’s been going on so they can process it out in the open more healthily.
I think Danny heard about the concept of Dannying and decided to burn it all down with fire.
He has! Joe used it at one point.
Agreed. This is one of the healthiest things he could have done at this point. He confess his feelings, he and Ethan have a constructive talk of their relationship and they take complicating factors into account.
Danny is growing up!
Now, as for my trust in his ability to actually keep his hands off Ethan’s glorious manchest…
Did Danny just Dan something up (this being the next Slipshine) by not Danning something up (expressing his feelings in a mature and mostly healthy way)?
Countdown to fucking worstness in ten…
…months
I get the distinct feeling that Danny is going to grow the most out of all the characters as a person. Of course, that’s because he started out more or less at rock-bottom, but still.
Nah, Joyce.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to have to choose between Danny and Joyce. Joyce is busy adjusting to the relative okayness of the rest of the world, Danny needs to accept himself as being okay, regardless of his relationship status. Neither of those is particularly easy.
This. This is (pretty much) what I was expecting. Except I expected the roles to be kinda reversed as far as the dialogue in the last panel goes. (and of course my fangirl heart wanted to expect more romance and less rationale)
“what were you guys expecting?”
Rhymes with “Wrongs” and “Quip-lines”
Dongs and good times?
Songs and wind chimes?
…leaves off reading comments to look for songs with wind chimes.
Bongs and Red Vines?
Thongs and gold mines?
Wrongs and dope rhymes?
Schlongs and groped hinds.
….I’ll see myself out
Gongs and big fines?
Shrugs/. I don’t care for the idea of ‘neeeeeveerr’ because of Amber but Danny I think needs to be single for a bit with no obvious romantic prospect on the horizon anyway, because then he doesn’t really experience being single/himself, it becomes a ‘waiting room’ scenario as it were otherwise.
Like the idea of never dating because of an ex is still kind of bad to me but yeah.
Korrasami, Hannigram, Danny/Ethan.
Ethan is hilarious in the last panel.
I would pay real money for this sex scene… and I have not done so yet.
Dangit OF ALL THE TIMES for characters to not make a terrible decision. This isn’t called Smarting of Age ffs.
OF ALL THE TIMES for characters to continue to do exactly what we expected them to do, which is, to not be utter dickbags.
But I want the cute computer geek on comic book nerd sexy times noooooooow!
Now be single college dudes and totally do it!
Kisssssssssssssssssssssss!
Ok, which of you puppetters commenters are making them say that in the last panel ?
Also : …A.G. is just back and listening against the window right now.
Probably me. Sorry about that.
The comic is called Dumbing of Age! No making responsible decisions about romance that take into account the feelings of others in Dumbing of Age!
I don’t agree that dating each other would be the absolute worst. I mean, wait a bit, but really, your own happiness is much more important than anyone else’s. I’m not saying to be mean to others or not to care about them, but don’t put their feelings in front of your own.
I hope they end up dating!♡
Then don’t date. There’s something called FwBs
I don’t know. I can see them waiting a few months or supporting each other’s sexual exploration. I like the idea of Danny being with Ethan because Ethan is so much more well-adjusted tho.
What is it with not dating exes, though? I feel like it would only be an issue i f the other person isn’t completely over the ex, like Amber clearly isn’t over Ethan breaking up with her. Otherwise, she and Danny haven’t been together long and she also can’t dictate who he sees and who he doesn’t.
Related to that, is it mandatory to be friends with an ex? Would just simply parting ways allow for more closure and less stewing in the “what-ifs?”. I’m in the camp where it’s not mean/weird to just give each other (indefinite, maybe) space. When I was in college, friend groups/circles dating each other became so messy. Many bridges and friendships got burned that way. That’s my experience, so obviously it’s not the same for everyone.
It’s a tough spot to be in though, I know well what it feels like to have an unhealthy person placing their happiness/sanity on you. I think Amber needs help, but I also think it getting the hell away from all this and taking a break would help, too. See a therapist, make more friends, get a bigger support group – especially of people who understand what she’s going through.
All the stars to Danny for being upfront about his feelings! Honesty is the best policy, as they say…
I think it depends largely on the how and why break-ups happen that decide whether or not it’s appropriate to continue being friends. If the break-up was amicable, then sure, continue to be friends if you still enjoy hanging out with each other. If the break-up was one-sided (one person lost interest, but the other still has feelings for them), friendship may not be possible because the dumpee may not be able to move on from it. (For these people, distance and time will dull the pain, but they never really forget their feelings.)
And finally, if the break-up was due largely to one party being a douchebag (cheating on you, physical or psychological abuse, or other signs of being an abusive partner), then it’s ludicrous to expect them to remain friends afterwards.
It would be a dick move considering you are Ambers freshly made ex (and imO the breakup is not real yet, cause she is just very vulnerable and broken) and her best friend / first ex…
I mean, it’s the same day?! Or the next? There hasn’t much time passed. Don’t pull a Danny, Danny.
Amber dumped him not the other way around. She isn’t a fucking victim here.
Danny wouldnt be a bad person for it, but I feel like Ethan would because she considers him her best friend.
Yeah. I assumed something like this was gonna happen. I mean, my mind already has like three AUs where they make out and/or have sex, consequences be damned, but this is a good outcome.
Um. I dunno why my comment got posted here, I thought I had opened a new thread. I is sorry.
Oh no, i was dumped
let’s date someone else 2 hours later.
I will agree that it is a terrible idea to jump straight into a relationship from just getting dumped. You should at least wait 3 hours or 2.5 cigarette breaks whichever is shorter.
No happiness for you!
WHAT CUTE DORKS
re: the title. I was expecting polyamory, tbh.
Maybe dealing with this will result in them being more open to finding another relationship? Ethan in particular seemed to be shying away from the possibility.
I want that Ethan face as a reaction meme.
I called this. I’m not sad. Not sad at all. My heart was prepared.
…
*sobs into whiskey*
I want them to get together eventually, but I’m happy to see they’re not getting together right now. Danny has always been so, so terrible at making acceptable decisions regarding his desperate need to be loved, so it’s great to see him able to express a crush on someone because it makes HIM feel better to clear the air, not because he’s actually trying to get a relationship out of it. I feel like his next relationship, whoever it’s with, has a much better chance of succeeding now that he’s learning to calm the hell down about being in a relationship.
I hope that they continue to be friends, and if Amber/AG is ever told about this a little while later once the hurt feelings have cooled, or finds out about it somehow, she either gives them her blessing to do whatever they want, or reacts so badly that they feel free from the obligation to hold themselves back from doing what they want on her account.
There’s always a little voice in the back of my head whenever Danny/Ethan stuff happens going “oh ok I guess this is the part where things get ruined”, because that’s just kind of the basic assumption I have when Queer dudes show up in fiction, to the point where I’ve outright dropped some Queer inclusive work like Technicolor London and Marvel Comics’ X-Factor when they start tripping my red flags, so I hope that helps contextualize things when I say I absolutely adore this strip and I need to break it down panel by panel.
Panel 1: God, I’m so happy for Danny here. My first coming out was a really nervous affair where I kept pulling the Gay Bravado card over and over until I just flat out admitted to my dad that I really was attracted to men. My acceptance of my sexuality was a gradual, but ultimately easy, process for me, I never really had this “weight off the shoulders” moment so much as over time I became more confident in saying that I was bisexual, so this is just great to see Danny taking power over his sexuality.
Panel 2: Danny’s line in this panel is, for lack of a better term, a really Queer thing to say, and I think it helps to sell how much progress he’s made. Used to be he was freaked out, trying to assert his friggin’ heterosexuality, and bluntly telling Dorothy that he can’t be bisexual because bisexuality doesn’t exist, and now? Now he’s so confident in it that he’s confused as to how everyone else can’t see how awesome it is to find dudes attractive. I mean, look at them! Being all hot and dudely. How do you not see this greatness?
Panel 3: This is just the best. I honestly really like that Danny has decided to come out to Ethan not so he could date him, but because he was tired of living in fear of his own feelings and decided to take charge for himself, and that’s something Danny is terrible at doing.
Panel 4: Oh, Ethan. I imagine it took a lot of effort to admit that he had checked Danny out, since while he’s starting to become more comfortable accepting his own attraction to men, it’s really hard for him to actually legitimize it, and Danny was kind of the perfect target for Ethan to start doing that because Danny was safe. Until now there was no chance of it happening, so why not take in that sweet mullet? And you can really tell neither of them were thinking that the other could find them attractive, like, god, don’t you know how great and hot and awesome you are? Why would you even bother with me?
Panel 5: I imagine I’m going to diverge from the commentariat on this one, but I’m pretty okay with this. This isn’t, like, Ethan and Danny lamenting the death of their newborn romance because they don’t want to step on the toes of that shrill harpy, it’s just the acknowledgement that they care too much about Amber for either of them to want to make a move, and for all the “UGH AMBER HOW DARE YOU GET IN THE WAY OF DUDE SMOOCHING” this is both a really normal, basic empathy level thing they’re doing, and also a way to actually secure the existence of this relationship down the line. I mean, Danny and Amber literally just broke up while Amber was in the middle of another DID fueled breakdown, and she’s also Ethan’s best friend who he loves more than anything in the world. Why would they want to immediately start clawing at each others pants? I guess the way I see it is that I don’t think of it like them not acting on their Obvious Feelings for each other, but more just the acknowledgement that they wouldn’t want to due to extraneous circumstances, like if, say, Walky and Dorothy didn’t want to give their relationship a go at the start, because they were both bothered by the idea of it having a set end date.
I’m not totally on board with this ship yet, I thought there was a lot more to explore with Danny/Amber and that her recent actions were either really out of character or maybe way more awful than they were intended to come off as, and Ethan is still a pretty vanilla character to me so ending my OTP for him is kind of an automatic black spot for me, but I could easily see myself warming up to it as long as Danny and Ethan’s interactions maintain this level of extremely high quality.
Strongly agree with you, especially on the 5th panel. I’d add more; As much as I find Ethan & Danny adorable together and would love it if they were canon, the truth is they’re just… attracted to each other. They’re not in love with each other. To say that this attraction they have should somehow outweigh the love they both have for Amber, that some silly sexual feelings should take precedence over how much they care about Amber and don’t want to do something that would hurt her horribly (if not traumatize her even more than she’s already been)… I think that’s a really selfish way of thinking, and one that puts romantic relationships above friendships, which I just don’t understand. / rant.
Complete aside: May I ask what your issues were with Technicolor London? (Not saying it’s perfect, just curious what red flags it has?)
This might be a bit unclear because o how I phrased my thing, but my argument isn’t so much about what’s best for Amber as it is about Danny and Ethan’s relationship with her.
Yeah, the amount of scorn directed at Amber right now in the comments is pretty creepy. Like, how dare your existence get in the way of dude smooching you mentally ill abuse victim.
As for Technicolor London, I’m just gonna short form it because I imagine Willis isn’t super keen on me criticizing one of his Hiveworks associates, but TL starts off with one of the leads breaking up with his crazy girlfriend, immediately sexing up his dude friend, and deciding that he was always gay.
That’s probably inaccurate since I didn’t read it for much longer than that, but it kind of tapped into this trifecta of “Queer men can’t have relationships with women”, “All Queer men are just waiting to find the right man” and “Bisexuality doesn’t exist”, so I just got really turned off of reading any further. I remember there was another webcomic whose name eludes me but it was on a Queer webcomics blog that had one of the gay male leads proposition another guy in a book store and then tell him they should totally bang because they were both gay, and I had a similar reaction.
I’m definitely not trying to take away any appreciation anyone could have for it, like I said, my reading probably was inaccurate, but it wasn’t the kind of thing I’d want to keep going with to see if it improves.
Ooh. Hadn’t thought of it that way, but I see your point. While the beginning of the story is a bit clumsy, it does get better over time, but the tropes you mention are more than a bit annoying so I completely understand that any hint of them might turn you off. : )
The other Comic is I think, “It’s Always Raining Here”. To be fair It’s much better than Technicolor London.
I See what you’re saying though, Spencer.
I wonder if it occurred to you the bookstore scene ( like much of fiction)
Is wish-fullfillment?
Is your desire to avoid stereotypes so strong it warps how you view fiction?
Are you telling me you are a Bigeek who Never hung out in bookstore and hope some hot guy would check him out? Cmon!
After spending hundreds of hours of this never ever working, I said screw it, and just sent guys to bookstores so i could scope them out..
( suddenly 100% success rate )
Yeah It didnt have that same magical-spontaneous air which would have happened if i was straight. But if you are hungry, sometimes you have to plant the harvest yourself.
If you are just objecting to “guy gets hit on, only and because, he bangs guys too, and for no other reason, and is expected drop Trou”
Damn dude, Thats reality.
I wish I had dollar for for very time I had to give the “yes, I like men- too- speech, but That doesnt mean you won the lottery and Its my govt mandated Job to bang you. Go back your wife/girlfriend”
After a hundred of those I just switched to “Im straight , fuckoff”
Yeah, all of this. I really like how this is being handled with both of them really laying down some good core fundamentals and putting things out in the open rather than just rushing into rewarding the shippers. And it gives me a lot of hope that if things do go that route eventually, it’ll be with a lot of good structure that will make it more likely to be long-term successful and healthy.
And I feel you with all the hesitation when queer representation happens in fiction. Cause so often it does go bad and bi representation is one of those things that tends to be written just utterly awful, so I’ve definitely been enjoying how Danny seems to intentionally subvert a lot of tropes on that one.
With Amber, looking back, it doesn’t feel that out of place, because this really was bubbling under the surface and threatened a few other times (I’m thinking of her disproportionate reaction to him drinking or her going off on Ethan) and so it was always a possibility that Blaine’s shadow was going to leak through in a bad way and Amber/AG’s DID was going to get really bad at a really bad time.
And while there was a lot to explore with Danny/Amber, I’m not sure Amber/AG was ever really going to be in the place to let it be explored. She didn’t exactly give him space to talk about things that were going on with him (possibly because she was trying to short-circuit any means of him “turning gay” on her, in her interpretation, not in actual fact) and she was allergic to a lot of relationship stuff beyond the surface of things.
Which is sad, because I was routing for them to get there eventually before AG/Amber had her really bad episode.
Yeah, this strip has been really good for alleviating my worry that “Danny is bisexual because Ethan needs a love interest” meant that Danny’s sexuality existed entirely in service of Ethan’s narrative, and that the whole point to Danny’s reason to be in the series was to just give Ethan a vanilla nice boyfriend with zero effort on his part, and they could just stand in the Queer Dude corner of the series for all eternity. It would have been so easy for this strip to be Danny revealing his attraction because he wants to get with Ethan, only for one or both of them to tearfully refuse their barely contained love for each other because of Amber, and instead this is Danny taking control of his feelings for his own sake, and Amber’s involvement in that is less “we can’t do this because Amber will flip her shit” and more “we just don’t want to hurt her feelings because we care about her.” That is, to me, the best possible way this sequence could have gone.
As for Amber, her actions with Danny and now Dorothy hit a really uncomfortable level for me, different than the way other dark material did, like Ruth’s abuse of Billie or her suicidal ideation, or Danny’s creepy Nice Guy misogyny to Dorothy during the Shoes arc. The way Amber’s being written now just kind of taps into a lot of, like, really problematic views on abuse victims and people with mental health problems. That Amber is just so terrible she will emotionally tear into Danny and then try to maneuver another close associate into trying to get him to see things her way, and that for all her effort she’s still just given into all the bullshit she’s absorbed from Blaine, and now her getting help is less “Amber needs support because she’s a good person who’s been through unimaginable bullshit and her brain is fucking with her trying to cope with all her trauma” and more “learn to stop being shit, Amber.”
Like, it’s not that I wanted Amber to never express rage or be a douche about anything, her scenes over Danny drinking, or table flipping, or her brief freakout at Danny after kissing her, I thought, did a really good job riding the line between Amber being an ass, while also acknowledging where she’s coming from and what’s motivating her to do so, while also driving her further and further to repress her problems instead of finding a way to healthily deal with them. Saying that an abuse victim is only sympathetic as long as they never express any kind of anger is bull, like, if Sal or Ethan didn’t fully internalize their abuse and got super fucking pissed off at someone who didn’t deserve it, that wouldn’t make them complete assholes, but I could have done without the extremely half baked cycle of abuse storyline that Amber’s heading down.
But, yeah, much as I mourn Danny/Amber, and a huge part of that is the sheer lack of OGRs for bi dudes in media, it is also a completely new thing for me to see what Danny’s doing here which both makes me so happy and also kind of frames just how bad bi representation is in media where Willis can do basically anything with this character and it’d still be breaking new grounds.
I think you’re trying to attribute Amber’s storyline to all abuse victims, and not being entirely fair. There is a very real trend in abuse victims becoming abusers in their adult life if proper support and health systems aren’t found. This is the path Amber is on, and it’s important to remember that the comic is representing a path that happens to SOME abuse victims, not ALL abuse victims.
A common problem when telling rare stories/adding representation, the lack of that thing in other media causes people to latch on to the few examples they can find as a representation of All of That Thing. When a TV show finally gets a gay character, they have to be Campy enough to represent that part of the community, but not Too Campy or it’s excluding the rest of the community, Sexual enough to represent that part of the community but not Too Sexual or it’s a “Slutty Gay” stereotype, etc. etc.
The same thing applies to all under-represented stories. If Willis tried to write an abuse victim storyline that accurately represented all aspects of abuse survivors, it would either be a generic character that’s a glorified PSA, or a conglomerate of terrible experiences that completely breaks any suspension of disbelief. The only other solutions are to overload the story with abuse storylines to represent everything using different characters, but then it becomes an abuse survivor comic, not a college comic. The only other thing is just to write a single abuse character as fits the story, and try to hope your audience is capable of acknowledging that this one character does not represent everyone, even if there is a lack of alternate representation.
Sure, I recognize that. I kind of have to recognize it all the time because it’s like the only storyline abuse victims get in fiction if they aren’t contrite, self loathing angels or just had it roll off their backs like a constant stream of torment ain’t no thing. I am repeatedly informed, either by media or my demented little brain, that I better shut the fuck up and hate myself because if I get angry it’s definitely because I am about to start beating my loved ones, so seeing a character you deeply related because to they had that same struggle with anger that you have, and enjoyed seeing her fight back against that anger because expressing it tore her in two, only for her to just end up going with it because she’s an abuse victim with a mental health disorder in a work of fiction and that’s just kind of what they do, well, it’s irritating. I get that Amber’s story is being told about Amber, it’s just a story I’m finding pretty distasteful at the moment.
Some bi folks cheat, in fact, Willis wrote a goddamn phenomenal storyline in Shortpacked! about Robin, a bi woman, getting drunk and cheating on her girlfriend with a man, and that’s basically a stereotype apocalypse and it turned out to be the best storyline in the entire series. I am nevertheless deeply annoyed by the year and a half plus onslaught of folks wondering/hoping for when Danny, the platonic idea of monogamy, was going to cheat on his girlfriend, and I’d be deeply annoyed if that happened in-comic despite the existence of bi folks who cheat on their partners.
Of course this can turn out for the better and I’m absolutely certain that it will, in the end, be the story of how Amber started walking the path to conquering her demons. It’s been like three weeks and it’s not like I wasn’t endlessly bongoing about the Ruth/Mary/Carla thing because I thought it wasn’t focusing on Carla enough, before it ended up opening the floodgates for more Carla and developing her more than we’ve ever seen, but I’m fine disliking how Amber’s being handled right now. If I was reading Shortpacked! back then I might have felt the same way about Robin cheating on Leslie while it was ongoing, even though now I think it’s genuinely some of the best work Willis has ever done.
I can feel that. And I agree with both of your points. Its an important aspect that can happen with abused individuals and is presented accurately to that and counters myths about broken victims but its also a fear used as self-cudgel by abuse survivors to swallow their anger and pain until its hard to think.
I also feel like we’re already seeing some of the other side of this equation in Sal. Like Amber, Sal was repeatedly emotionally abused by a parent. Like Amber, this and societal racism has left her with a giant well of anger that could turn to badness if mishandled.
But Sal is emotionally healthier. She lets herself get angry, she lets herself get petty and yes, she internalizes a lot and has her own issues, but she’s been through Amber’s long dark teatime of the soul and has emerged on the other side.
And I think we’ll see Amber get there too without punching a prospective husband like in the other universe. Making some mistakes, doing some harm, but eventually arriving at a stability she can use going forward. And as someone with a lot of similar mental illnesses as her, I look forward to reading that story.
Though that might also be because I see a lot of my ex in her and I still have hope that my ex will arrive there one day, where the parts that happened to me were just a one-off thing. Dunno.
As I just watched The Celluloid Closet again today, reminding me of times where even slightly gay coded characters tended to be laughable, pitiable or horrible and mostly dead in the end. We’ve come a long way from there. There is always this evolution in the depiction of characters from a non-mainstream group. And we have reached the right amount of representation when any character can be an asshole, no matter if s/he is part of a mainstream or minority group and the fact that this one is an asshole does not make people identify the whole group with assholitude.
To me, Willis representation of PTSD is incredibly fine-tuned and to the point. Amber goes down a bad way and at least I am annoyed with her for doing so because *there are other ways* and she actively chooses not to take responsibility for her acts and change her direction. If the abuse victims become abusers scenario was the only one, there would be no point in being annoyed with her because there wouldn’t be a choice on her part involved.
can i please point out that robin never actually literally cheated on leslie with jake manley — like, the two were separated when it happened
like, if danny were to bang ethan right now, and then film it and then put it on youtube, and for danny to be famous enough for it to become news and for everyone in the world to see it, then that would approximate what happened in that shortpacked! storyline
as in, a dick move, but not cheating
My bad. I remembered that one chat Robin and Joe had about how she felt like her dad, so I guess I just conflated the two.
The rationality for not getting in a relationship for Ambers sake is very very realistic.
BUt…
That they dont bang right now, or soon, is very unrealistic.
Its the most unrealistic ive ever read from Willis, including all of the SEMME comics.
Real Life: They totally bang, feel bad for Ambers sake. keep its a secret, and regret it till later.
maybe even Amber changes her mind, Danny gets back together with her.
They keep it a secret origoinally to spare Ambers feelings.
Amber dumps Danny again.
Ethan x Danny hooks up again
wash repeat.
Amber tells Danny about her 3 some fantasy. They decided to do it.
She figures out this wasnt their first time. shit hits the fan
Sadly (IMO), “UGH [CHARACTER] HOW DARE YOU GET IN THE WAY OF (usually, but not always) DUDE SMOOCHING” is a very common reaction/feeling/statement in fandom in general. It’s almost as if a lot of “fans” only care about characters (and/or the actors portraying them) as far as providing material for their own sexual fantasies…
dude this is surprisingly…healthy and mature. I am really fucking proud of them. Of all the plot twists in the world, I never imagined danny to be so honest, I guess?
Yeah, Its healthy and mature.
Thats why I read Dumbing of Age, for all the healthy and mature decisions of the young college people.
Im glad the only potential M-M relationship must be sacrificed for being healthy and nature. We cant have the only M-M relationship be anything but a paragon of chaste virtue. It might look like a stereotype if Danny and Ethan werent perfectly safe and wholesome.
/sarcasm.
I love these characters but this is too safe for me. Its less Representative, not more. Also forgive the dripping derision of Teh wholesomeness.
Ive been watching “Shock Treatment” , the Rocky Horror sequel. IT shoves America-wholesome down your throat, til you need to vomit it out.
The last panel of this strips makes me really sad.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/gettoclass/
The last panel of that strip makes me worried. I could see AG making that mistake in this headspace and lashing out in that irreparable way, largely because her downward spiral right now is really dangerous and bad.
I really hope that she is able to start taking steps to move out of this really awful path she’s on before she gets to a place where she can self-justify striking her best friend.
I’m KINDA not worried about Danny’s and Ethan’s physical safety. I think it is far more likely that Amber will hurt herself than either of them (hurray…)
But I think it’s extremely worrying how that latent threat of violence has always been part of Danny’s relationship with Amazi-girl. “If you do something wrong I may snap and hurt someone… if you say something wrong I will snap and yell at you. If you let me continue I will pull a stunt that may make me hurt myself…”
All Danny’s jokes about how Amber might hurt him were uncomfortable then and are REALLY uncomfortable in hindsight. They are both walking on eggshells not to upset Amber, something that is unfortunately all to easy for Danny to slip into.
They care about her so much, so i can see them postponing their own relationship in what might ultimately be a futile attempt not to trigger her. Not only take it slow but altogether avoiding each other (I was afraid they might push each other away when Danny snapped at Ethan, but fortunately that ended fast enough). That makes me sad.
This is one of those situations where the preview panels keep me from getting worried. Everything seems fine in August.
People talk about Willis coming along and being all hurtful and stuff, but I find the comic mostly uplifting. The bad stuff exists to be squashed.
I really agree on that. For me Dumbing of Age is about flawed people helping each other to get better.
Yeah, that’s a really nice aspect of college being explored in the strip. Its role as recovery ground from one’s home, exposure to grow, and removal from the toxic pit of high school. It’s kids learning how to adult and how to be the adult they are instead of just pretending to be the one that their parents want them to be.
I just kept clicking, and the last panel in this strip suggests a sliiiightly different (albeit much much MUCH less likely) reaction.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/burn/
Didn’t Amber dump Danny? I don’t see anything to feel guilt about.
It’s way past time for Danny and Ethan to stand up for themselves.
There looking at you, perverted commenters who suggested they should have sexy times.
That is what doujins are for
Noooooo the good ship Awkwardmus Prime has sunk!
In all seriousness though im a straight guy who thinks they should get together, they’re obviously cute for eachother and there mutual ex has problems she hasnt worked through and shes not treating them right.
Of course, I’ve never been a total dickbag. Maybe it wouldn’t be all that bad. Wait! I have it. We can just kiss—you know, got the sake of finding it how we really feel. Surely there couldn’t be any harm in an lnnocent little kiss. Of course, we’d have to remove our shirts first—wouldn’t want them getting all sweaty and gross. I mean, if you’re okay with that.
And these pants are just getting in the way!
Man.
I had been strongly against the Danny being bi (because I felt it was a large change to an established character with a long history of not being into dudes).
Now he is my favorite ship.
THEY WOULD BE SO CUTE TOGETHER YOU GUYS!!!
OH GOD THE FEELS.
Today’s strip’s soundtrack provided by Celine Dion.
On an unrelated subject, where’s Ana Chronistic’s avatar from? I think I’d remember seeing it, because that’s the badassest (and therefore sexiest) looking Joyce ever.
Preview panel Willis posted on Tumblr.
NOW KIIIIIISSSSSSSSSS
You know you want to.
considering the way amber handled her first rejection, im very sure that once amber is “herself” again (aka not super duper mentally stuffs), and things havent gone any other way, and she gets to know about ethan and danny liking eachother, she will even want them to be together
Of course she will. Because she knows that Amber is a horrible person who doesn’t deserve anything good and they’ll be much better off without her.
This doesn’t mean it won’t tear her heart out, just that her self-esteem is low enough that she’d see that as a good thing.
Then she’d go out and punch more bad guys to cope with it.
I figure by the time Danny and Ethan actually work up the nerve to go out with each other, Amber will be in a healthier place.
The reverse could happen as well.
i obviously meant when shes feeling better though? when shes not in the need of punching people?
Honestly, that would still be at the best we’ve seen her at.
Even without the punching people to cope part, she’d still be agreeing because they both deserve better than her. And it would still hurt.
oh okay thanks for making it clear that amber will fucking never ever get healthier (:
Amber has zero self esteem and that’s going to dip into the negative when she realizes her main coping mechanism has created an entire new slew of problems. She can barely conceptualize that she deserves Danny as is; how do you think she’s going to feel when the two people she loves the most and who are obviously too good to hang around a loathsome piece of shit like herself express an interest in each other?
thats the thing, i mean when shes better. when shes been in therapy, or when shes gotten medicine, or when whatever she needs has happened. when she doesnt need to punch people, when she doesnt hate herself as much. i thought that was clear from my very first comment
That’s going to be years from now, though (in comic time and possibly real time too), if ever.
For anything like the foreseeable future, it’s just not on the table.
I do think she will. I was just trying to make the point that it’s not just her current spiral downwards that makes this problematic. That reaction was my expectation from the very first signs that Danny was bi and hints of shipping him with Ethan. And that was back when Amber was in much better shape than she is now.
I do still think she’ll recover, mostly because I don’t think Willis is really doing an “Amber is a no good shit” storyline, but how long it takes and how healthy she is at the end is very much up in the air.
ethan and danny make a choice to not date until they know it wont hurt a person that is very important to them, which is also a good choice because they should probably get to know eachother and their own feelings a bit more before getting into a relationship? AMBER IS THE FUCKING DEVIL LETS FUCKING KILL HER
why does amber have to like exist and have feelings and shit
shes such an asshole
why does amber have to have problems and issues that stem from her dad’s abuse leading her to believe she’s only doing what’s right for herself by lashing out at people
shes such an asshole
and did she have to be so inconsiderate as to not magically deal with her untreated mental health disorder thats created a burgeoning violent and borderline suicidal alternate personality
what a total chode i swear
Ugh. People who dare to have problems are the worst. They should just pick themselves up by their bootstraps and solve their problems just by wanting, and then ‘Murica would be great again.
It’s not like THEIR problems are like MY problems, because my problems are actual problems that other people fail to accommodate for.
…
Is that how you ‘Murica? Am I ‘Muricaning right? Or do I need to put an acclaim for Trump in there somewhere?
10/10
Would go Galt again.
I want to add to this thread.
This thread is ridiculous. She assaults random people on a regular basis.
DO IT. BE THE WORST. BE FUCKING HAPPY FOR ONCE IN YOUR GODDAMNED LIVES.
Seriously, living for toxic people is a horrible idea and will destroy every good thing about your life.
since this strip is about bisexuality kinda, i as a bisexual will reveal that i dont understand unisexuals or unisexuality
So many people seem upset that this isn’t developing into a relationship because of Amber. I question why these two are being shipped so hard though. Yeah Danny is bi and he and Ethan think the other is hot. That’s not really a solid foundation for a meaningful relationship. They might both have some shared hobbies and the sex might be good but that’s not all there is to it.
So them deciding not to date isn’t an awful thing where Amber is breaking up their bond or anything. They’re just friends who find each other physically attractive, not star-struck lovers.
Plus yeah if they dated they WOULD be the fucking worst. With the whole thing where Ethan and Amber broke up over his gayness and the fallout and everything, then Danny breaking up with her over the “we can’t communicate like normal emotionally sound people” thing. If Ethan snatched Dan up right after that it would be a massive slap in the face to Amber.
Even if they do end up dating, it’s perfectly reasonable that they would wait a decent amount of time out of respect for their mutual friend’s feelings. So I don’t really get where all the hate is coming from… sinking fan ships I guess
cept amber broke up with danny, and amber is kinda being an amizi-bag-o’dicks right now.
Damn totally got ninja’d.
Again, Danny didn’t dump Amber. She is not a victim in this situation.
Is that really the only way to view Amber? If she’s not a victim then she can register all her complaints to the suck-it bucket?
Amazi-Girl was an asshole to Danny and I don’t have any hope her intentions with getting Dorothy to talk to him will be any better, but it’s not like Amber’s just dropped off of Danny and Ethan’s map, or that the vast amount of time spent with her as a lovable, caring person suddenly stopped mattering. How could they not be concerned about how she’d feel about this?
They should be concerned about her feelings. That being said I’m mostly just bothered by the thought that Danny is any sort of villain here. He didn’t dump Amber, she dumped him without even explaining who Sal was or why she felt betrayed. This isn’t even getting into her progressively more controlling and aggressive behavior towards Danny in the stories leading up to this. Amber is their friend they should care, but that doesn’t excuse her behavior.
Is anybody saying Danny is a villain? At worst there was an assumption that he was trying to immediately leap into Ethan’s pants, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing to some folks.
Yeah, Amber was straight up being emotionally abusive to Danny and nobody should try to excuse that, I just don’t think anybody is trying to, and I’m hard pressed to think of a consistent pattern of controlling or aggressive behaviour aside from that last thing and now presumably with what she wants Dorothy to do. Otherwise, Amber is someone both Danny and Ethan deeply love and want the best for, and are now becoming aware just how badly damaged she is.
I agree with everything you’ve said except for the part where Danny broke up with Amber. It was the other way around. : )
I think cmd just meant they broke up over Amber’s inability to communicate, not that Danny was the one who ended it.
Okay I’m sorry but how do you figure Dan and Ethan wouldn’t have a meaningful or good relationship? I have news buddy; having “some shared hobbies” and mutual attraction is generally all it takes for a relationship to sprout up, and then to just grow from there. I mean, what other couple in DoA has any more than that going for them?
Ruth and Billie hated each other, and now are together and have developed deeper feelings. Walky and Dorothy have very little in common whatsoever and still manage to have a decent relationship. Becky and Dina literally just happened with hardly any preamble and that’s still a thing.
But Ethan and Danny actually having stuff in common is apparently not decent enough grounds for a good relationship to you?
I’m not even gonna address the other stuff, because other replies already have. I just needed to set that weird remark straight.
Fully expecting to come here tomorrow to find a strip consisting of four beat panels of Ethan and Danny standing around in awkward silence before a fifth panel of them making out.
I am not happy that the dudes I have shipped for a year or more are castigating themselves over the possibility of acting on mutual attraction because it would be unfair to their mutual psychotic and kind of emotionally abusive ex.
I mean, if you actually ship these two longterm, this is probably the best thing you could ask for.
Danny’s trying to assert himself and not rushing into another relationship like he did with Amber and Amazi-Girl, Ethan’s actually calmly expressing interest in a man and learning that he can be viewed as attractive to someone, and the only real thing stopping them is their concern for a friend who, inevitably, will support the two of them together, if only because of her lack of self esteem and the belief that she’d get in their way.
For real, this seems like the best chance for them to actually get together in a healthy and constructive way.
Seriously, these are foundations that will make this a healthier and longer lasting potential pair in the future. Like, I feel this is less the sinking of the ship and more a promo for its new embankment of canons.
Let me put it this way: If they made out right now, they would both deeply regret it for a long time and their entire friendship would collapse under the weight of their guilt, thus destroying any chance of them actually dating for a very, very long time – if not forever.
So, like Cerberus and Spencer said, this is not just the healthiest approach, it’s the one that has the most chances of resulting in them eventually dating. : )
But… but… I just want one gay (male) couple… *sheds a tear*
When Danny is talking about Amber, in the last strip: Decepticon symbol. When the guys are trying to be good people, in this strip: Autobot symbol. Just sayin’.
Decepticon symbol is underneath the autobot symbol
i am so glad they realized this. i’ve beed dreading an amber mind break via gay Danny slip-shine for well over a year.
I’m so glad this strip came out, the comments over this potential pairing was making me feel very uncomfortable
I know right??
Like, people:I know they’re cute together, but wouldn’t you rather amber NOT suffer an irreparable psychotic break??
Honestly, I just want her to hit rock bottom already so this plot thread can end because I stopped caring about it months ago. For me this is by far the weakest storyline in the comic.
@Alt-text: I was expecting exactly this, except preceded by lots more internal agony and bad communication. For a comic named Dumbing of Age, it’s refreshing how often the characters avoid Hilarious Misunderstandings by just being honest about their thoughts and feelings.
While I respect them for being conscious of Amber’s feelings – “forever” is a long time and “can’t ever” sounds like the UST will just get stronger until one of them cracks since they’re attracted to one another.
Especially if alcohol is involved because this is college. I know Danny drank at the one party, I don’t believe Ethan did (if he did I can’t remember) but… well. Things happen.
Good on them for admitting it though.
They should totally go for it. Sorry Amber.
Danny needs time to see who he is when he’s not in a relationship anyway. And Ethan isn’t exactly BEGGING to be in a relationship. So in addition to being considerate to Amber’s feelings, this is just the better option. Ethan can still be kind and supportive for Danny as a friend!
Yeah, this is a huge deal for Danny. He was angling to romance Amber the first chance he got, when that fell through he set his sights on Amazi-Girl, and after all that Danny insisted he was too wiped out to be with someone before Amber came back to him. This is the first time in the course of the series that Danny has both expressed an interest in someone and not immediately try to make it happen.
A definite sign of growth for the guy. Here’s hoping his parents don’t push any ‘but son you aren’t worth anything without a girlfriend’ buttons.
This actually ended pretty close to how I hoped for this stage *crosses fingers that doesn’t get torpedoed with the next comic*. Good that Danny got it off his chest and he and Ethan can talk about it and move forward, maybe into a great relationship for both of them, but given all the stuff Danny has dealt with, and that they are still going through with Amber, they don’t have to go straight from “Confession” to “boning.” They could, but a breather and chance to sort out everything is probably healthier and wiser for everyone, which I’m not against. I’d actually be a little disappointed if they just said, “Eh, screw all the things happening and the emotionally shaken state Danny’s in and Ethan’s turmoil over Amber, boning has to happen NOW.” Again, they could do that, but it’s probably wiser that they don’t, given how that’s worked for most of the people around them. A potential canon ship doesn’t have to be dead in the water just because they didn’t bang and commit to a relationship the absolute first time they aired their feelings. Sometimes other stuff has to happen first.
Not to mention, plenty of fictional stories/characters bypass the emotional delicacies to get to the boning or rose-tinted infatuation first, which then leads to drama, guilt, pain, sadness, etc. later. Even Dina and Becky did, God love them both. It’d be pleasantly refreshing to see these two thoughtful nice guys not fall into that pattern just because seeing them hook up would be gratifying at the time. That might be optimistic of me, perhaps, but I can dream that SOME characters might not leap that fast.
Bets on Amber finding out that this conversation happened anyway? I’ve got two hundred on a week.
no bet–that’s at least a year’s worth of comics, so the odds are HIGHLY ever in your favour =p
Ok….. so…… now that I spent the last 3 days binge reading the entirety of this series, a few things:
#1 THIS SERIES IS AWESOME, WHY DEAR GOD, WHY HAVE I CAUGHT UP NOOOOOOOO
#2 for real though, this comic is great, and I look forward to more. You do amazing work David
Just wait till we get to the next agonizing arc. You’ll be screaming DAMN YOU WILLIS for only uploading one comic a day.
It could have been worse. There were some poor saps who ended their binge in the middle of the ToeDad arc…
That’s a rough spot.
What “Into the Bunker” did to the S.S. WenDip, “Chest” has done to The Good Ship …Ethanny? Danthan? Okay, the name needs work, but my point is this: ships aren’t always permanently sunk.
I don’t even know how long I’ve been waiting for this strip.
Thank you.
They are totally looking out at the camera in the last panel.
You just love building up our shipping hopes, only to crush them, don’t you Willis?
DO IT FOR THE SLIPSHINE BOYS. FOR. THE. SLIPSHINE.
Admittedly, Willis? Exactly that. “Our home planet needs us.”
For probably the first time, I can say that I know exactly how one of these characters feels. I just did the same thing that Danny did last night (kind of) and there really is a weight lifted when you tell someone how you feel about them, no matter how it turns out.
Is it odd that I can imagine a manly voice for Ethan? Like, Michael Ironside-level of manly? It gets no manlier than Sam Fucking Fisher.