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I’m worried that it’s a bit more insidious than that. I mean, we know why he targeted Joyce, and so this seems less like “I support Desanto” and more like he’s found a target rich environment.
The more I look at his totally neutral expression, when everyone around him is either shouting or jeering or horrified or excited, the more creeped out I get.
They’ve only started after Amazi-Girl and her shiny superhero reputation got into the ring with Sal. Furthermore, one of the first hecklers is black – I’d say that shows how this is not about race.
In other words, they’re trying to justify why a CLEARLY good person without any sort of mental issues what so ever like Amazi-Girl would be fighting Sal. Answer: Sal MUST have done SOMETHING bad… right? RIGHT?
This is why hero-worship and jumping on the side of someone without knowing ANY facts is a terrible, terrible idea. Sadly it is a distinctly human reaction to take sides based on prior affinity.
Well, I will take issue with one thing. Self-hatred is a thing, and it’s perfectly plausible for that first heckler to be a racist. “I’m one of the good ones, not like THAT thug.”
We’ll see when AG goes after Ryan next strip. If the crowd is like “Different target? Ok. Get him!”, then it’s the hero worship that’s the problem here.
Otherwise, maybe there might be a racial component? Nah. I’m sure there’ll be some other excuse next time.
Attempted rapist, so far. We don’t know if he’s actually done anything to anyone else.
Not defending him, but with how quickly he flipped out and how impulsively he acted trying to force Joyce into the bathroom… that whole scene pretty much implied he was the kind of rapist who only just managed to work up the ‘courage’ to do more than just fantasize while watching violent porn. In essence… a ‘newbie’. Fledgling criminal, of whom their “first tries” are usually always laden with mistakes, and always tend to be a bit more violent because something doesn’t go according to plan and they get nervous/scared about being caught.
It hasn’t been all that long since he attacked Joyce, either… chances are he’s been laying low all of this time making up some story about how he was mugged by some horrible POC minority with a knife/broken bottle and that’s how he got his scar, waiting to see if any cops show up to ask him questions about an incident at a party, and saw that no one did (because it was never reported to anyone), so he assumes either his victim doesn’t remember or was too scared of him to do anything. His involvement here is either he’s 1) hunting for a new victim, 2) his father being a pastor was asked to speak or do a prayer and convinced/made him come help out, 3) given the possible “A black/brown possibly muslim or mexican thus TERRORIST criminal attacked me!” story he’s made up he’s going to be paraded around as an example of how minorities and/or immigrants are out of control and a threat to FWEEDUMZ, or 4) a combination of some or all the previous 3.
If Amazigirl tries to confront him for what he did, I don’t see it going well for her (or Sal by extension, since she’s already being pegged as a troublemaker because she’s black). The crowd will likely defend him once they realize that she’s not going to go after the person they automatically hate and are afraid of (Sal), and the cops will probably be called to deal with a “crazy person wearing a hero costume attacking people” and her soon to be associated “gang member protester thug” sidekick (again… Sal*). Chase will ensue… Sal likely to be arrested just for being black and at a Republican rally… If Amazigirl escapes the police will start really hunting her down for being associated with multiple incidents… Media outlets at the rally and with police contacts start running stories about a violent vigilante on the loose… University starts getting flack for said vigilante living on campus and performs a mandatory search on all dorms for anything indicating who it might be…
I would agree that that probably would have been his first rape where he used force, but since he had a plan and an expectation, i wouldn’t say it was his first bout with non-consensual sex A.K.A. rape.
I just realized something, does she know what ryan looks like there is nothing there in the earlier comic pages to suggest she would actually recognizing him, I mean there’s no confirmation she saw his face.
Maybe a few (misogynist racists, in response to Ana’s inB4everyone comment) … the rest are — so far — simply caught up in the mob response to the jumped-to conclusions of a few. If you didn’t mean to make a subtle comment on American populist politics, Willis, take credit for it anyway. At a guess, we’re going to see some DeSanto demagogic opportunism here. And it looks like AG’s realized the downside of an adoring crowd. This could be the turning point for Amazi-Amber.
Come on, let’s be real here. She’s standing in for trump. Notwithstanding that mob responses are, yanno, sort of based on baseline racism or sexism (or both! Or other isms)
Let’s be real here, I don’t think you realize just how old Robin’s candidacy is in real-time. She’s been at it for longer then Trump has.
Also, this response is based on Amazi-Girl’s reputation of being the good-guy(gal). It wouldn’t even make sense for it to be based on ‘baseline sexism’, since both are female and the crowd is on one of their side.
She’s the incumbent. She has previously made it clear she views her constituents as a bunch of hicks, but I still hope this incident will inspire her to make some changes and maybe even listen to Roz
She’s been the incumbent for a long time in real time. As such, she’s been a good general foil for the various prejudices common in the Republican electorate. This particular rally storyline goes back aways, but not before the trump campaign.
She showed up with a hat that read Make District Whatever Great Again, and has had jokes about her tiny hands, despite not actually having tiny hands. She’s been around longer than Trump. Her presentation, however, does not predate Trump. And then you have a crowd cheering on (becoming?) racist violence. It’s a trump rally. Let’s be real here.
…And good god. That’s how mob violence works. In this case, it’s not sexism, but you will see it in others.
I’m pretty sure the crowd goading Amazigirl to “kick her ass” in regards to Sal is a straight on criticism of Trump supporters attacking black people who showed up to their rallies. Remember that wannabe-Marine that jumped on and punched the black girl in the face because she was holding up a sign who was being escorted out? Or the guy who stood up as a black man was being escorted out and just straight up hit him and was never arrested? The white couple who tried to take away a black woman’s book because she was ignoring Trump’s speech?
Not subtle at all. This is a straight up left hook criticism to Republican supporters who automatically would assume that the black girl is here to cause problems and that the white one is not only innocent, but should brutalize the black girl just because.
Or it could be that the crowd has an affinity for Amazi-Girl as she is the local hero.
Personally, I’d wager you’re putting too much real-world politics into this situation and disregarding the in-comic context.
That sed, this will all be moot by tomorrow’s comic as she’ll likely go for the attempted rapist.
You… You really think Willis isn’t influenced by “real world issues”?
He is. He absolutely is. A lot of stuff he puts in the comic basically to say “this is a thing that happens in our world, this happens to real people.” I don’t think he’s likely to shy away from showing the most extreme political individuals in a way that affects his characters.
Personally, only Willis can say what exactly he was influenced by- but it definitely feels like this is a reflection of racism within certain extremist circles. Partly because I don’t think Amazi-girl IS a local hero, outside of the college itself- and partly because yes, this sort of ugliness happens, and it affects people, and that’s something that Willis tends to focus on.
It probably IS a crowd of misogynist racists. It is a political rally for a conservative politician and it is a Willis comic where they are all gauranteed to have all the bad traits found in real world conservatives.
But… I don’t see how misogyny has anything to do with it considering both combatants are women. Seriously, unless Amber suddenly grew a penis the last time she was on Slipshine that statement makes no sense at all.
Also.. is it really fair to assume the crowd is racist? Before they prove themselves so? Doesn’t that make one just as prejudiced as the real world people that crowd represents?
They haven’t quite proven themselves racist yet. So they took the white girl’s side? So what. Only one person made a comment that Sal ‘looks’ like a trouble maker. Sure.. that one probably meant her brown skin but we don’t actually know that. She does have kind of a bad ass look thing going on. Or.. maybe it’s a prude that doesn’t like exposed midrif… Don’t get me wrong, that one is probably racist but we don’t really know yet.
As to the rest assuming that Sal is a guilty party… she is fighting Amazi-Girl. Let me repeat that. SHE IS IN A FIGHT WITH AMAZI-GIRL. They don’t see Amazi-Girl as a regular person who might just have an ordinary disagreement with someone. They only know her as a quasi-super hero that fights CRIMINALS. And now she is fighting Sal. It’s a pretty obvious conclusion for them to jump to don’t you think?
By the way… if this story arc is the start of a message about racist, Trumpish conservatives that’s fine. That group certainly deserves to get knocked down a bunch. I just hope Willis plans to establish that that is what they are a bit better than this before doing so. White girl known as a super-hero, expected to be in right because she is a ‘super-hero’ not just because she is white vs brown girl that nobody knows is not a good way to establish racism.
Oh. That’s who the guy with the scar is… the rapist… I didn’t catch that. Ok.. certainly the presence of one evil person in the crowd has now been verified!
… so? Are we going to judge a crowd by picking out one person in it? You don’t honestly expect everyone in a large gathering to conform to one trait, do you? Because that’s just naive. Even if this was the ‘gathering money to cure cancer’ get-together, it would STILL have a few grade-A assholes in it. Not everyone goes to these things for the same reasons.
“it is a Willis comic where they are all gauranteed to have all the bad traits found in real world conservatives” I would be sorely disappointed if Willis would choose to write these people as caricatures instead of human beings – I’ve come to expect better of him. Even in religious gatherings he’s shown redeeming traits, so I could only hope he’d give the same courtesy to other groups he might or might not personally like.
I agree that it’s not quite fair to call racism as a cause yet. But, as you said, racism is highly likely in this crowd. It does appear to be an analog to some racist shit at Trump rallies.
In other words, it’s not as big a jump as calling Amazi-Girl racist.
Unfortunately, Amazi-girl is a bit bogged down in her present circumstances. She’d have trouble disengaging to go after Ryan.
Obviously, Sal is to blame for this. If she hadn’t grabbed her cap, she would have seen Ryan and been free to pursue and etc etc etc justify justify justify.
Oh sure. In your reality based system that might be true. Through the lens that filters Amazi-Girl’s world it’s all obviously Sal’s fault. Somehow.
Actually, I suspect that’s less true now than a couple minutes ago. Amber didn’t like what she sees from that crowd and maybe she sees herself reflected in it as well.
Did Sal ever see the rapist? You’d think that she’d have taken him down herself right then if she had. Kinda gives me the idea she doesn’t know what he looks like, other then having a huge scar on his face.
No, Sal was the one who advised against going to the police because she claimed they’d be no help. Joyce and Billie went with Dorothy, Amazigirl and Sarah showed up later.
Neither did I, but someone thought they saw him in the background, yesterday? Tualha thought they saw him, but most commenters thought otherwise, no tag after all. I think he just must have been behind that guy.
Once again, Amazi-Girl is confronted with the appearance of a racial bias in her actions. Perhaps she should think these things through before she does them?
Unfortunately. It’s kinda like Brock Turner where he’s just the perfect distillation of a problem that’s been going on for too long because of how unrepentant and vile the perpetrator has been and how thoroughly justice failed to be served.
So, unfortunately, I fear he’ll linger on in public consciousness. Especially since he seems to be pulling the tired trope of whining about how “hard done he was” and how the “accusation (that he was convicted of) ruined his life”.
I want to add that I really despise this came off as necessary. Mandatory Minimums do nobody any good directly, because as far as rehabilitation goes, we have a completely, utterly broken justice system that only produces recidivists. But the other option, of ignoring the problem, only reinforces that crimes against women do not matter, and you don’t have the political will to reform the entire system just from that. AGH.
Lailah: It may also very well backfire, in that fewer people will be judged guilty for rape, because there will be the subconcious (or even plain concious) thought among the jury members that “Well, if they are judged guilty, they are certain to do time now, so now I -really- have to be careful about proclaiming them guilty.”
Good intentions and reality. May they one day meet!
I know! That’s so critically huge and I’m so hopeful to see Amber/AG see that and recognize that as she seems to be doing in Panels 4 and 5. I think this might be the turning point that leads her to having to deconstruct the archvillain myth once and for all.
No, even if it distracted her from that, she already had the critical moment where she re-evaluated how she was treating Sal. Plus, what she’d be distracted with is a key instance where Amazi-Girl was trying to do something actually good, to contrast against her harassment of Sal.
Or conversely, a reminder another time when she’d tried to do good, and made things worse, by creating the distraction that allowed Ryan to escape. Which itself might either be seen as more evidence that Amazi-Girl isn’t as infallible as she’d believed, or as an actual failure which might actually be fixed, to compare against the perceived failure during the robbery that she’s been futily trying to fix
Zimmermaning would be more if she was judging Sal solely on racial bias. She’s targeting Sam base on things that she has done. Sal has actually broken the law. She actually took some one hostage so she was probably tried for a violate one and probably only didn’t get punished cause she’s a minor. Through that doesnt mean that Amber is a doing the right thing. She is techially fueling fire to a different issue, namely harassing someone despite them no longer being respondible.
Ex convicts tend to be treated poorly. And while that might sound stupid said by itself, most ex cons are people who were arrested for minor reasons such as owning weed or people who made legimately bad decisions who want to change.
These people can’t escape from their past and tend to be pressure into crime again not because they want to but because its the only option.
I’m glad Sal seemed to have avoided this, considering that she up at the same school as the rest of the cast and went to a boarding school rather then jail.
I just hope that the heist remains between Amber, Sal and the people Wally mentioned it to.
TLDR version: Amber isn’t Zimmermaning but is a till doing something wrong for different reasons.
The way she was treating Sal may have been motivated by the robbery, rather than racism, but how it colored Amber’s perception of Sal, and how it motivated her treatment of Sal was exactly as it would have been if it were.
Even the way she’s holding a grudge about something Sal has already atoned for, and will never be able to atone for in Amber’s eyes, was causing Amber to act exactly the same as it would have been if the color of Sal’s skin were the reason for it.
Except for the part where it’s not racist. And where it’s completely different from what Zimmerman did.
It’s not even like her stalking is particularly close to Zimmerman’s either – she’s following and harassing a particular individual over multiple days. He followed one kid for a few minutes before killing him. He called the cops. She didn’t. In fact, as far as stalking goes, she’s done much more than Z did. Other than the actual killing part, of course.
But her motivation is so completely different that the comparison just doesn’t work for me.
I was thinking in terms of the stalking a black kid looking for a single sign of wrongdoing to justify violent intervention and not really even needing the fig leaf of that because you’re convinced that this person is a wrong-doer simply because of their existence and willing to fuel paranoid delusions to justify and perpetuate that.
But yeah, point definitely taken on Zimmerman intending racism and racist enforcement of color composition of his gated community and general ill intention and that being different than AG.
She’s using the exact thought process Zimmermann did for his legal defense. The one he was exonerated for, because it was to a black person. In spite of the fact that bog-standard self defense in Florida, *and the law Zimmermann was using*, would have given it to Martin.
ZOMG TEH INTENTION is really not that big a deal here.
We actually don’t know there is no racial bias.
Until this moment , Amber never had to confront any of her own internalized implicit biases.
Even if Amber has a just original cause for being obsessed, it could be amplified by racial bias. Racism and prejudice isnt just “I hate X people” .
It can be “I like X people, except in all these circumstances , when I will treat them unequally”
This feeds into the Perfect Victim fallacy. and it implies there is perfect Criminal fallacy Bias
( if you dont think there is a ‘perfect Criminal Bias’ you have to explain why Brock Turner is now free, or Ethan Couch was initially released. )
Amber doesnt have to be a racist to have extra ( racial ) animus on Sal which was triggered by her Trauma. You have to be some kind of Buddha to prevent these biases from leaking in your head under extreme stress and trauma. Most people cant be bothered. But Amber sees it now.
I hope she cant unsee it.
Yes, we do. If there were racial bias, it would have been seen in all her other attacks. She has not in any way favored people of color in her attacks. Criminals are her acceptable targets.
Plus, well, Sal doesn’t look black. She changed the one feature that made her look black. She looks as white as Walky. Seeing as Amber didn’t even know her name (and was surprised she was at college at all), I would not be surprised if she doesn’t know she’s black (even assuming Sal identifies as black–I’m not even sure.)
I also don’t like the idea of assuming racial animus as a default position. I think it makes it innocuous. If all antagonistic actions between people of different races are assumed to have racial animus by default, then how do we call out hate crimes?
I think you need to show evidence of racial animus. Otherwise, we should assume it isn’t there.
It is kind of established in world that it’s not immediately obvious what race Walky & Sal fall into – other than “not white” of course. That was actually our first clue to the screwed up racial dynamics of the Walkerton family – when Joyce asked and Walky said Sal was black and he was generically beige.
I feel your pain. She’s black. She identifies as black, her father is black. She’s been black this entire time. I’m not sure why people keep conveniently forgetting this. Even if she wasn’t – white supremacy affects people of all races.
You are mixing up explicit biases and overt prejudice ( which I am not assuming and even ruled out ) with implicit bias, which everyone has. Humans are filled with cognitive biases. If you want to pretend these dont exist , thats something delusional or science-denialism.
“If there were racial bias, it would have been seen in all her other attacks.”
NO. I’m talking about Ambers feelings and motivations. I’m not making accusations.
Implicit Bias doesnt work that way. It results in unequal outcomes due to statistics. Babies are even born with implicit bias. Implicit bias doesnt even mean racism. It refers to in-group or own-group favoritism, which most people have. Do you favor your own family over other people? Havemt you always? Do you favor people in your extended family?
Do you favor people who remind you of your extended family or where you are from? Its human.
“She has not in any way favored people of color in her attacks.”
(1) You dont know that.
(2) You dont know the background of whos committing crime in Indiana in the comic. You would have to compare those 2 stats.
(3) Shes in a mostly white area
(4) Since I’m talking about implicit Bias, not overt racial hatred , NO she doesn’t have to just target People of Color. Thats not how it works.
It can effect other measures, like how she treats criminals,or whether shes permanently stalks them , or tries to break her own personal code with them.
“Criminals are her acceptable targets.”
Is that so? Like beating up kids who are drinking Beer? How many white kids did Amazi-girl attack and threaten when they drank? Sal isnt a criminal.
“If all antagonistic actions between people of different races are assumed to have racial animus by default, then how do we call out hate crimes? ”
No you are saying something far more pernicious. No one is saying ALL antagonistic actions … Instead of saying all , you are saying you must assume None are possible. Then you saying you are too uncomfortable even to have a discussion on the subject of Internal Biases of a traumatized character in a cartoon.
And then you are saying all discussion of motivation which is the crux on which all criminology works, is off the table, unless someone is a full blown Klansman ( ? )
“then how do we call out hate crimes” ?
Implicit bias and Hate crimes are not the same thing! You have implicit Bias right now. But I don’t believe you hate anybody. I already said very clearly implicit bias is only operable in certain circumstances. If you are too afraid to talk about implicit bias ( which is as soft and weak a discussion as you can get ) how can you talk about Hate crimes ?
But in order to both you have to talk about motivation, and feelings and psychology. Things which exist inside peoples heads. You cant see hate. You can only see anger and violence. By your own words , you would Kill the discussion of hatecrimes too. How are you going to distinguish them?
One example might be to go get educated on the topic. You could… even read webcomics on the topic! I have no idea WHERE on the internet you might find such a wonderul gem…
Where could you possibly find a webcomic about overcoming implicit biases and cultural prejudices? Maybe there you will find someone in the comments, who can help you figure out this difference.
Who ever that person is, I dont envy her or him ( or them or they ) .
And God help the artist who writes that. Thats got to be the most thankless task all of webdom.
But this is a webcomic. A literary form. We can speculate about implicit bias and whether it might show up in AG’s actions if we had statistical data on the races of criminals on the IU campus to compare to those that AG has attacked. But we don’t have that and more it doesn’t actually exist, because this is fiction and the only crimes that take place on the IU campus are those Willis chooses to take place. There is nothing except what’s shown in the comic (or in his occasional comments). If he doesn’t choose to show us Amber’s implicit bias, there’s no reason to think it’s there. It literally only exists if he wants it to.
Now, he’s been remarkably good at showing us subtle forms of racism (and sexism and homophobia). It’s quite possible there are subtle clues that I’ve missed, but you’ve got to make that case and make it using clues that show up in the actual comic not just in arguments that it would be possible.
And no, Amber’s hatred of Sal doesn’t count. She has real, personal reasons for that, unfair and screwed up though they might be.
She’s been deliberately stalking Sal since at least last night and using it to justify remaining mad at her and viewing her as a supervillain trying to destroy her life at every level while trying to build up enough of a hate-on (or see an excuse to intervene on legal grounds) to justify violent intervention: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/two-2/
So yeah, the Ryan thing was incidental. Though I’m glad she’s getting shunted off this path before she did much more than stalk, harass, and terrify Sal (which none of those are good but it’s at least a different level of awful than intentional assault or worse).
Stalking someone and attempting to provoke a confrontation on a regular basis is about as close to initiating it as she can get without literally breaking the law. It’s also kind of unsettling that she knows this and exploits it.
*spends way too long reading up on Indiana’s stalking laws to see if Amazi-Girl’s actually remained this side of legal. …. you know, legal-style vigilante-ing*
Legally, I think it comes down to whether Amazi-Girl’s made any threat to Sal that could place her in reasonable fear of severe bodily injury and/or death. Given AG’s well-publicized habit of beating people into submission, most threats she makes to Sal could easily carry that implication… but IIRC their direct interactions (in which Sal would have recognized her as AG) have been very limited.
… also, Sal doesn’t give a crap about the legalese and wouldn’t press charges anyway because fudge the fuzz, so I spent way too much time looking that up.
“Sal doesn’t give a crap about the legalese and wouldn’t press charges anyway because fudge the fuzz,”
1: I have a feeling (but nothing more than a feeling, just so we’re clear on that) that the reason AG isn’t caught yet* is because the local cop department isn’t trying that hard. And this might be because they aren’t that unhappy with criminals getting roughed up a bit in general. Like, it’s what they wish they could be doing without getting caught or facing consequences. So they make token efforts but nothing too serious.
2: Plus, Sal very much doesn’t trust the police. I think we all know why, so I won’t say more about that.
*Of course, the most obvious reason she hasn’t been caught is because she’s needed in the story. But at the same time, Willis usually at least attempts to have some internal reasoning behind everything as well. Which I appreciate.
Yeah, entirely unsurprised that the law is on Sal’s side right up until she’s up against a jury. That’s a pretty normal conception of self defense.
(And yes, a ‘reasonable person’ would be afraid in her boots. You have someone who’s repeatedly threatened you and is now following you with intent unspecified)
Yeah, from Sal’s perspective this is far from funny and she’d be well within her rights to assume AG’s stalking would end with her getting killed (hence why I brought out the Zimmerman parallels).
And unfortunately, it’s been very clear for awhile now that self-defense laws simply do not cover black people who defend themselves from white people harassing, stalking, or attacking them. Hell, Zimmerman’s whole defense rested on the notion that Trayvon Martin may have tried to defend himself from an attack before Zimmerman killed him, thus making Zimmerman the one practicing self-defense.
And that knot of logic aside, what that means in practice is that even if black person is violently stalked, them defending themselves in even the slightest ways will be used to punish them for trying not to die.
Hell, Amazi-girl even fits in some of that logic with her whole “um… you technically hit me first (because you caught me stalking you and were exhausted by it and justifiably angry) so I now have an excuse to attack you” that she thought about going down for a minute (and which I’m so relieved she didn’t go through with).
Yes. It is literally the same argument. I suppose I should have thrown out neon signs yesterday, I genuinely should have thought to. I was only not entirely clear on whether Indianan law was on Sal’s side, because I don’t care that much about Indianan law (ethics was). Florida law was 100% on Martin’s side before the jury got involved too.
It’s a little more complicated. A good part of it is that self-defense laws tend to be on the side of the survivor, since they get to tell their story and the other guy doesn’t.
It’s quite possible that both were legally justified in self-defense. Martin having a reasonable fear due to pursuit and thus being justified in attacking Zimmerman. Since Zimmerman was not committing a felony, it’s also possible that by the end of the fight he had a reasonable fear for his life and thus was justified himself.
Of course, it’s also possible (and in my mind most likely) that Zimmerman was lying his ass off and things didn’t go down like that at all. If he had assaulted Martin then he was committing a felony and had no self-defense right.
Mostly, Florida’s self-defense laws suck.
Also, whatever the law said, it wasn’t on Martin’s side as soon as the police became involved – long before the actual trial. The crime scene was mishandled. Zimmerman wasn’t handled as a murder suspect right from the beginning.
SYG does not nominally carve an exemption out for being the aggressor, and without SYG he actually didn’t have a leg to stand on (SYG didn’t make it ‘reasonable person’, it made it ‘honest fear’. Except again, it does not carve an exemption out for being an aggressor, and stalking is a crime in florida that justifies a violent response; especially a non-lethal one)
And that’s the difference between the law and the justice system. The laws on the books actually, factually were on his side. The prosecutor’s office wasn’t, nor were… actually I can’t recall what the cops did, but being cops, I have a low initial guess.. But man alive, those prosecutors did not want to jail someone for shooting a black child dead. I actually forgot about them, thanks for the reminder.
I don’t really think it’s a racial bias… more of a “ACCORDING-TO-ME-YOU-RUINED-MY-LIFE” bias? (Not to say that Sal isn’t the victim of many social biases, but Amazi-Girl’s beef is more personal than that). Of course, the way her actions are being portrayed now will make it seem like she has a social bias, since no one else knows the deeper story here but her.
It is a racialized action (if she were to attack Sal), because she’d get away with it by virtue of the approval of the racist people in the crowd. Also remember that she’s repeatedly let Sal know exactly what the people are saying there, that Sal’s a troublemaker and will never amount to anything. AG doesn’t intend it that way, but she’s still backed by the racist society when those things come out of her mouth.
It’s not that Amazi-Girl is racially motivated to hate Sal, it’s that
1) People will be more inclined to side with Amazi-Girl and believe her narrative of her being the good guy and Sal the outright villain, so she has more freedom than if Sal was white.
2) Sal, with her past and the tendency of the justice system to overly punish African Americans, can’t do as much to retaliate as a white person could. If she punches back, they consider it assault. If she says Amazi-Girl tried to ambush her and her friends, they find out she was drinking. Anytime she tries to say it’s unfair, they point out that she already has a record (albeit juvenile) and use it to say that she must have been causing trouble.
While Amazi-Girl may not be inspired by racism, her race and Sal’s play a part in protecting her from the repercussions of her actions. How she can get away with stalking Sal, looking for an opening and provoking her to fight. How Sal can’t trust law enforcement enough to protect her from somebody who wants to hurt her and has to defend herself. How she can threaten Sal in a public space, in front of a crowd. without knowing anything wrong Sal’s done, and have the mob laud her as a hero, while declaring Sal a villain. If she had been doing this to a white person, somebody would have been calling her out on this long before.
In some ways there’s parallels to Mary’s harassment of Ruth and Carla. It’s a person with social power getting away with something that should receive punishment because the victims can’t or won’t go to the authorities because of other factors.*
*Obviously the big caveat in this parallel is that Mary knew about the power imbalance and bigotry and fully put herself on board while AG has become horrified to learn what power imbalance and bigotry she was benefitting from.
Let me put it this way: Our nation’s capital has a football team named for a racial slur against Native Americans, and most people aren’t that bothered by it.
I like to think that the bulk of the crowdis siding with Amazi-girl because she’s a familiar name, an icon, someone they know from the newspaper as a hero, and not because of skintone… but a lot of them probably gravitate towards it unconsciously, and there are definitely a few bigots in the mix swaying the mob mentality.
It’s both. One spurious stimulus reinforces the other, especially in a mob environment which requires — and may be looking for — only the tiniest spark to get the fire burning. It doesn’t take much.
In fact, I believe this scene is setting up *PROOF* of your point 1):
I believe Amazigirl may very well switch gears and confront Ryan, at which point the crowd is going to suddenly *stop supporting her*
It’s the inherent downside of a riled up crowd. They can quickly turn on the person they are supporting if they feel denied or feel the person is going after the wrong target. See online harassment movements turning on women and POC in their movements who momentarily speak out about bigotry or who go after a target the harassment movement doesn’t feel fits their typical target.
I guess. Yeesh, and all I was getting at was that Amber should think before she does things, because she keeps getting herself into scenarios that make her look bad…
I think the person who people thought was Ryan yesterday was actually not Ryan (I think they were talking about the guy in the white shirt, and Ryan’s wearing one of Robin’s blue campaign tees), but it is still oddly prescient.
Tualha was the one who thought they saw him, but they just saw someone that looked like him.
If you may allow me a bit of bragging, -I- said that one of the things that was different was that yesterday guy nose was not cut, unlike Ryan’s. It was sort of meant as a joke, because (as someone else pointed out), it might have healed enough by now to be unnoticeable.
Yeah, there’s no way this ends well with the crowd
Because if she gives in to the crowd, then she’s just that racist vigilante they want her to be. If she turns away from everyone, she’s likely to get jeered. And if she goes after some random upstanding campaigner who’s a white guy instead of that “thug”, they’re gonna go apeshit on her.
Like, Amazi-girl would actually be able to sleep well tonight if the latter, but it’s gonna mean weathering some serious harassment and possibly a full-on attack by a “good samaritan”.
Yeah. If she attacks a black lady, she’s an upstanding hero protecting a crowd, but if she attacks a white dude, she’s a dangerous vigilante assaulting innocent bystanders. Hypocrisy like that makes me fucking sick.
Yeap. It’s the same shit that gets unarmed black children (referred to as men, almost supernaturally powerful beings) killed, while people keep referring to Ryan Lochte as a “boy who meant no harm/what’s the big deal” when he’s fucking 32 year old man and LIED ABOUT A CRIME and could have gotten a bunch of brown/black people arrested so he could get away with messing up a store and pissing on it. Epic levels of petty hypocrisy.
Eh, people know her as a superhero. She was clearly keeping an eye on this person, knows who she is, and considers her a villain.
If she suddenly charges at a bystander she just spotted, that seems a lot more random.
I mean, sure, there’s obviously some racism present, but the situations aren’t really the same. Perceiving them differently isn’t necessarily a double standard.
I wanted to say something like, “Well, there’s a whole slew of mitigating circumstances because X Y Z” and then I realized that they all applied to Sal too and that, frankly yeah it’s really just people being racist to Sal.
Like, I try not to assume everybody’s racist in everything they do but jesus this is pretty damn racist.
Odds are that NOT everyone in that crowd’s a racist. I’d guess that AT LEAST 10%… likely a lot higher… are going along with the crowd fervor without the slightest regard to race.
…. of course, the crowd fervor is racist in its origin, but that doesn’t make all of the individuals swept up in it racist. Just another way that racism is really, really insidious. It’s an institution with a life of its own that’s bigger than the people who practice it.
That seems accurate to real life riled up mobs. I’m thinking of online harassment mobs where a good percentage of what is driving it is racial or sexual or transphobic/homophobic animus but there’s a small group of folks that just believe the made-up justifications for the harassment and have enough internal bias to believe that wholesale and ignore the amount of bigoted animus their fellow travelers are throwing out.
Honestly, that AG doesn’t let herself get swept into that and is starting to see in their approval a wake-up sign that she’s not on the right side is very very good.
Option 1: Gets what she wanted, at the price of her soul a one way ticket to Moral Rock Bottom. Not even that, she’ll be below sea level.
Option 2: Walking away stings her pride (and shakes her unwavering righteousness, which AG protects at all costs.
Option 3: Is the right thing, but means she won’t get revenge AND her pride is stung, because she loves and feeds on approval from others as a vigilante “superhero”.
I think we can rule out option 1. I think the incredible wrongness of how she’s been seeing / treating Sal is one of many things crashing down on her right now.
The hugs darkened the entire planet, engulfing all life and blocking out the sun, freezing the Earth as it moved in, it’s warmth hardly a worthy replacement.
Well, he’s a white man who looks innocent and is wearing a “De Santo” shirt so immediately teaming up with the racially diverse motorcycle girl to attack him is the most surefire way to turn the public against her.
Well, actually, there are more surefire ways to turn the public against her, but there’s not that many.
Of course then AmaziGirl will lose an amount of her following, considering she attacked a nice preacher’s son unprovoked, while leaving that troublemaker to get away.
Well he said that “that part was actually true,” and while we have no reason to trust him, it doesn’t seem like at that point he would bother continue lying. I’ve known few total scumbags like this guy who were supposedly “right with god” so it doesn’t surprise me at all that his dad is a pastor. he probably got his nasty disgusting view of women from him (but maybe not, we don’t know)
I kind of figure, why wouldn’t it be true? He didn’t know Joyce until he gave her a bible quote, she could have just been uncomfortable at parties or whatever. Plus, it’s a lot easier to tell the truth about yourself. He didn’t really even need to lie, except for his intentions (even if she had his full name, that doesn’t get many victims anywhere).
Of course, even if he’s no preacher’s son, she attacked a nice conservative boy from a good family with baseless lies, so I doubt the reaction would be much better.
Not a chance, though. No evidence gathered, no police reports filed, the victim barely remembers anything and doesn’t want to prosecute, and all the witnesses were confused about what happened and it’s been a month at least since it went down.
He’s been seen at other parties. I doubt Joyce was his first victim; if he’s taken to court others might come forward.
Personally I’d rather he were buried than jailed and fed, but that’s a topic for another time and place.
My future child will be black/white mixed. I just read that dialogue and realised my kid is going to go through the same shit Sal is, and I won’t be able to do a damn thing about it.
I kinda no what you mean. I’m quite frankly horrified at what’s going on and deeply afraid. And despite my current Walky gravatar, I am actually white, and despite firmly voting against Trump, I still feel like I’m part of the problem and not doing enough to counter it. I just…I just feel a little sick.
Ditto, I can usually snark about the terror of any given election season, but this year has just been… no, no, no over and over again. I’m legitimately terrified by Trump and the neo-nazis he is leaving in his wake.
Same. People don’t take this shit seriously, and that’s exactly how history repeats itself. This man is telling us exactly who he is, and what he intends to do, and so many of us are out here not listening.
‘Oh he’s a joke”, “Oh he doesn’t mean that”, “I’m not going to vote, but I’m still sure he won’t get elected.” Like, you’re not *hearing* him. It affects everyone. Like I said to someone I know who wanted to abstain from voting: you may not be Latinx – do you *really* think this man and his ilk won’t come for you when they’re done with them? It could be a lot worse, I can think of a ton of examples in modern history where marginalized people in the US were worse off than they are now. This is why it’s so important to learn history beyond a BS high school text understanding.
The toupéed one is sort of like if The Beast and The Smiler had a hate child* and left him to be raised by that asshole guy with the screen across one eye.
*They’re both incapable of love, so hate child it is.
Well, the Amazi-Girl realizes how racist she looks/acts thing happened a lot sooner than expected. I was expecting at least until later in the evening or the next morning, and that was only if the event went this way.
And her it comes. Sal is in serious deep shit, but not from Amazi-Girl at this point.
AG just had her fuse either defused or lit, depending on how she reacts to Ryan.
yknow i was gonna make a comment about how im kinda glad joyce left a scar, but
it hasnt really been THAT long even, has it? that might not even be a permanent scar
(i do wonder what his explanation for it to other people is, though, cuz it is still huge even if it’s healing)
His explanation is probably what you might expect.
“I was at a party — no, I didn’t drink any alcohol, I swear! — and I went outside to get some fresh air, and I was jumped by a gang of thugs! For no reason! One cut my face with a bottle, and another slammed me with a baseball bat! Then I passed out, and they ran away. I thank God for protecting my life!”
The DoA cast as RWBY teams? I don’t think most of them fit the rules of the setting, the Browns being the obvious exception, but coming up with bullshit combiweapons for them all would be fun.
Not sure if it’d be more or less dorky than making terrible OCs, but it’d be a laugh either way.
holy shit i read this and didn’t even recognize ryan and i was like ‘aaaahh i have chills this is so much’ and then i read the comments and i REALIZED and now i have chills again
ok but seriously, would she get in trouble for clocking Ryan? it has been mentioned he was a creepo at parties before but unfortunately there’s not a lot of real physical evidence the police could use (Joyce didn’t report her attack and I’m willing to bet his other victims did not either because reporting rape always sucks for the victim)
also: what is Ryan doing here? does he actually believe in family values and such? maybe the “son of a pastor” thing was not a lie?
Well, likeliest answer is either a) he’s a misogynist in addition to a rapist and so the “family values” platform appeals to him, or more likely b) he’s looking for a new victim.
and/or his family is attending that rally, or pressuring him to from a distance.
also, I wouldn’t see him as the type to be politically observent enough to know her platforms, but I do see him as the kind who would blindly vote for their party regardless (and hey they actually do back his misogyny so it works out for him)
I don’t think he’s got much opportunity to roofie anyone here, and I don’t think it likely he’d vary his M.O. given how long he kept trying with Joyce rather than going to find an easier mark or a different way of doing it. So I’m going to go with B. Or maybe Marie’s option.
He did say “that part was true” when Joyce called him out immediately after glassing him, so I wouldn’t be surprised. And, unfortunately, Amazi-Girl would probably get in a bit of trouble if she went after him; he’s an unassuming white man at a Republican political rally, and no one besides Amazi-Girl knows just how much of a piece of shit he is. Here’s hoping that doesn’t stop her from trying anyway, though.
(Seriously, though, if he could join Blaine and Toedad in the “fuckfaces hospitalized by Amazi-Girl” club that would be great please I’m begging you Amazi-Girl BREAK HIS FUCKING EVERYTHING.)
Didn’t he start to lose control of the car when Amazigirl threw down those tire poppers? I’d have to go back and check, but I’m pretty sure the car crash was like 60% due to Amazi-Girl’s actions during the confrontation.
Hey, I didn’t say it was a bad thing. I fully support Amazi-Girl blowing out the tires of a homophobic, abusic fuckface’s car. (Now he gets a hospital trip, jail time, AND a wrecked car! Eat karmic retribution, Toedad!)
Anyways, the point I was trying to make was “Amazi-Girl has either directly put or helped put two dangerous, monstrous men (Blain and Ross) in the hopsital, and it would be appreciated it if she made it three for three.”
Maybe not legally (I mean, she’s already known for beating people up), but definitely with the crowd of conservatives, for attacking and making horrible false allegations about a godly white boy, plus letting some ‘troublemaker’ get away (“Amazi-Girl was probably just a trick so they wouldn’t see her partner stealing stuff” and similar theories would also be likely).
True, but the fresh gash on the face is pretty distinctive. AG’s probably been looking for it, but hasn’t run across anyone with one yet. She can’t KNOW it’s him (like we do), but it’s not a lead she can pass up.
He fits the description so she should follow the lead in some manner. I was responding to someone suggesting she beat him to a pulp. I’m assuming she’s not so far gone for this to be reasonable response for just suspecting its him.
Not really a fan of Amber or Amazi-girl, but it’s incredibly relieving that they are kind of owning up to this being a personal vendetta instead of being bolstered by the crowd.
On the other hand…
Is this where Sal and Amazi-Girl team up once again to bring down a real villain?
Also, the grim look on Sal’s face with the “Yeah, she looks like a troublemaker.” just makes me sad.
Yeah, that moment is straight up haunting. As you note, she’s likely heard it a thousand times before and I just feel deeply that face, because that’s the face that says, I’ve heard this so many times I can’t even feel it, but I’m still pissed off inside because this is still nonetheless genuinely upsetting.
And it’s a face that also reflects how those microaggressions hit. You grimace, you bear it out, because if you negatively react then you’ll just get yelled at for overreacting. And you’ve done that dance enough to know the script by heart.
I said pretty much what I wanted to say about the racialized aspect of this yesterday. I stand by it- Sal is affected by this. AG hounding her and never explaining why looks racist, has racial undertones to it, and THIS is why – due to the kind of society we live in, people that look like AG will always get the benefit of the doubt. I doubt she’ll be able to explain it away without someone being hurt. I might comment on it later, though.
Poor Sal. It must be scary being in a room full of angry, conservative white people. I hope Marcie or someone can escort her outside before she gets into non-AG trouble for simply being black and angry and standing in front of a pissed off white person.
Sal knows that in whatever narrative amazi-girl is spinning, she will be the villain. And people will buy it. Like they have every other time a white person targets her for whatever reason.
It’s like that old joke “You are found guilty.” “But why, there are no evidence.” “Batman punched you and tied you to a lamp post. Good enough for us.”
This is white privilege at is finest. Two person have a confrontation. The crowd takes notice and reacts… obviously the white girl is in the right and the black girl is in the wrong. We don’t want her kind here anyway.
So I’m SO GLAD that Amazigirl actually stops and realizes all this and tries to de-escalate in the fourth and fifth panel. That is the single most healing thing she has done in ages.
So much this! And yeah, she was uncomfortable to begin with being surrounded by “family values” types and that’s not improved now that they are all actively against her and for her being beaten up simply because she blew up at the woman who’s been stalking her for at least two nights straight.
And I’m really heartened by… huh, I wanted to check the tags to see if Amber broke through but neither Amber or AG are tagged… that’s odd… anyways, by one of those alters finally noticing the racial implications of her paranoid obsessions surrounding Sal and recognizing what she was starting to let herself become because of it.
Nothing sobers one up more than the approval of the worst scum on the planet.
The fact that neither Amber or AG are tagged makes me think that it’s probably because at this point, she doesn’t know who she is anymore. She doesn’t know who’s in control. She’s slowly breaking down.
Willis has been very clever with tags so there’s no way this wasn’t intentional.
Yeah I was thinking slowly in terms of how she’s been progressively falling to pieces over the past few days (in-comic time). But yeah right now it’s reaching critical levels.
Yes! That’s the best possible option. It’s AG herself realizing the folly of her path and what she’s becoming. That means AG might be opening herself to letting go of the central fallacy she’s been using to define herself for so long.
I’m not sure she’s caught on to the race aspect of it yet.
If she’s thought about why the crowd’s taken her side at all yet, she may just be assuming it’s because of her sterling reputation as a superheroine. Like “When I attack people, usually they’ve committed some crime. They see me attacking Sal and naturally assume she’s a criminal” sort of thing.
From her shocked expression in panel 4 and the way she’s trying to discourage the crowd in panel 5, and looking a bit scared by how they’re reacting, I’d say she definitely sees it now.
If nothing else, the cry of the word that will be censored into a percussion instrument seems to have woken her up to the level of vitriol and bigotry there is in the people backing her.
Especially as sexism is something she’s faced way too many times from her father and she’s likely heard him snarl that term far too many times for comfort.
I suspect that may be intentional – Sal’s scar is a reminder of the bad decisions she’s made, and her (so far unspoken but heavily implied) determination not to repeat them, but I doubt Ryan will ever own up to being wrong when he tried to rape Joyce and other women.
But let’s remember that Sal was a young teenager when she tried to rob a convenience store, and didn’t actually hurt anybody. Ryan is an adult who drugged Joyce and was planning much worse.
It’s interesting that Sal can cover it up, but nonetheless is still followed by her past and so forth; meanwhile Ryan can’t hide his scar at all, but is unlikely to ever face major or ongoing consequences.
“Villains!! The VERY WEEK of the grand opening of my ‘Aw Yus Sammiges’ restaraunt, Galazzo’s DARES to add SUBS to their menu?? THEY SHALL PAY WITH THEIR LIVES!!”
Me: *whimpers on floor* “Not good, not good, not good…”
Amazi-girl: “Um…. please stop projecting racism through me… oh God, I suddenly see things in a new light here.”
Me *carefully peaks up*
Me and Amazi-girl: “RYAN!!!! GET THAT FUCKER!!!”
To be fair, she’s kinda a branded hero.
On the other hand, I sincerely wonder how much of Robin’s voter base are… nice people.
On the third mutant hand, Hey look. It’s a douchebag.
Mr. Random – you should read ‘The Gripping Hand’, by Larry Niven. If nothing else, it will teach you a great new metaphor.
On the one hand, Amazi-Girl, a ‘hero’ with a dangerous obsession.
On the other hand, Sal, a ‘villain’ who’s self-aware, and working hard to change.
On the gripping hand, Ryan, a monster they can both agree to hate.
A LONG time ago I said that I hope Ryan never resurfaces because he has already fulfilled his role in Joyce’s story. What’s left for her is to defeat the internal Ryan. The external is unimportant.
But I neglected the importance of him for AMAZI-GIRL. He is not finished with HER story. He is the one who got away. He is one of the biggest arguments against her actually being a hero.
“He is one of the biggest arguments against her actually being a hero.”
If you are talking about how she perceives herself, I fully agree. That she let him get away has been heavy on her mind most days, I bet. Every time she sees Joyce she is reminded of her failure to capture Cutnose. And AG is not allowed to do failures.
But from my perspective, it’s not really that one mistake that made her not the hero. She certainly did not mean to let him escape, she just was not aware of how her first public appearance (as in, showing up in a crowd) would go. Newbie mistake, so to speak. It’s something the hero comics never really teach you*. So this isn’t even on my top ten list of arguments of why she’s not actually a hero.
Yes, I’m talking about her own narrative. My own definition of hero comes a long distance away from “masked vigilante”.
But so much of Amber/Amazi-girl’s story is about her own narrative and that’s why it’s so interesting. Who is she? What is her worth? What is the difference between Amber and Amazi-girl.
Amazi-girl IS a hero. That is not just an ideal, that is part of the definition. If she is not a hero she is not Amazi-girl. If she is not Amazi-girl she is just Amber in a mask. And Amber is weak, bad, destructive (FUDGE YOU, BLAINE!!!). Amber has to be contained not to cause damage. That’s why she HAS to be Amazi-girl, and that is why she has to be a hero.
And a hero catches criminals, no matter the cost. That’s why she pushed Mike to the floor over some dick-picks. That’s why she nearly died fighting ToeDad. That’s why she is spending her nights and days assaulting people with less and less provocation.
But a hero has to be RIGHT, morally speaking. That’s why she managed to stop herself from fighting Sal here, and that’s why Ryan getting away was not just a bad day at work – it is a threat against her entire identity. A HERO doesn’t let the bad guy get away. That’s just the second act, right? She will catch him in the end, right?
Re-reading your first comment, it’s actually pretty damn clear you’re referring to AG’s narrative, not your perspective. I got hung up on that one sentence without context. Really silly of me, and not silly in a good way either.
As such, all there is to say that your take on the situation is pretty much how I feel too. Damn you for being spot on!
Sal’s black, and Ryan is a white preacher’s son committing purely heterosexual rape after being led on by loose party girls. They kind of deserved it anyway, and his poor face. Ruining his prospects like that should be objectionable.
Man, I need to get out of this family value suits. It stinks.
Nonono, you’re overthinking it. NO ONE is going to get to tell their side of the story, not Ryan, not Sal, not AG. It’s just going to be a royal rumble before anyone gets four coherent words out.
And the real problem is that Sal’s already a designated target.
Better question: can the mob stop them?
There’s no question of beating a mob that size in unarmed combat, but downing Ryan and fleeing should be doable, if EXTREMELY risky.
Amazi-Girl, Amber, darlings, you’ve encountered a REAL GODDAMN VILLAIN and your fake!Joker is in front of you and it’s been made clear she’s not the one you should be focusing on, WHAT DO YOU DO?!
I may be wrong on this statement, I’m by no means even close to understanding alters, but isn’t it actually common in real life for people who have one alter begin to develop others as time goes on? I do not mean this to be offensive in nature, I simply want to be better informed.
Yeah, alters can either dribble in over time or make themselves known over time or like in my case, I can have sudden increases in alters during periods of exceptional abuse and emotional turmoil.
It can really suck, especially when you’ve been integrated for awhile and now have to integrate in the new guys just because you’ve been through hell and it’s fucked with your head a bit.
Amber/AG has occasionally slipped into a black speech bubble, from time to time, when she’s REALLY angry. A part of me wonders if this isn’t a third persona, or the start of one.
Other people have done that too though. I think that it was just to indicate the amount of venom in her voice at that moment. Unless Venom is the new alter, I think that’s all it was
I don’t agree that Sal isn’t the one she should be focusing on. She got a mob primed on her, so she needs to get her out. Pity about letting Ryan run again, though.
Nice that Amber’s still got the presence of mind to remember that Sal hasn’t really done anything here.
Not sure where she can go from here. Spotting Ryan is of course an important step 1, but it’s not like she’d accomplish anything by just turning around and attacking him here and now. This whole thing has become a public spectacle now, so she’s gonna have a hard time discretely following him home.
She’s gonna feel real bad if she loses this opportunity because she blew her wad chasing some hair-brained vendetta against a reformed criminal.
Well, she would accomplish inflicting pain upon the wicked, but as badly as it would poison her image…
Yeah, I don’t think she’s ready to be “the hero they deserve” yet, psychologically or logistically.
in real life, I made a fist in satisfaction and growled
and then looked around me and melted back into my usual demure self
but in my heart I’m still very very excited
SAL AMAZI GIRL TEAM UP AND BEAT UP THAT HORRIBLE PERSON!!!
and learn an important lesson about friendship in the process
(well it’s actually a lesson about not viewing a person as a personal symbol for something and bein’ abusive to them for it butyouknowwhatImean)
YES
WORK TOGETHER TO TURN HIS FEMURS INTO HIS FUCKING RIBCAGE
im sorry im generating enough white hot rage to go back 19 years and stab someone in the womb
I am horrified to see that guy’s face again but ALSO I love where this strip went because FINALLY this could be a wake-up call for Amazigirl to realize how badly she’s been messing up.
There aren’t any toyshop ninjas around, but one should never presume a person does not have weapons at their disposal.
A human is never unarmed so long as he has his braincase.
Huh. I’m beginning to wonder if Amazi-Girl is hallucinating. Remember, Beef is one of the first guys she attacked in this comic, and now suddenly he just appears when his name is mentioned? And then Ryan suddenly appears out of the blue, here and now?
Wait a second…how would she recognize him? She didn’t actually see him that night. She showed up, everyone looked at her, he got away in the distraction and she only got a vague description (White, large nose, gash on the face, and what he was wearing, the last part is obviously not applicable now). I just have some trouble believing that in this situation while she’s distracted by stuff she’d instantly recognize someone she never saw in person.
If I recall she promised Joyce she’d be on the lookout for somebody with a facial scar.
Even if she hasn’t confirmed this is the guy yet it’s still her first lead, and she’s probably internally weighing whether she’d rather be pursuing that to make good on her promise instead of whatever she thinks she’s doing with Sal here.
Look at her face! There is enough of the justice-seeking aspect of Amazi-Girl operating that she will not be swayed by the bad sentiments of the crowd. She scans the crowd as her quick mind works on avoiding injustice to Sal. One member of the crowd closely matches the description of Joyce’s assailant. Amazi-Girl has a promise to the former Whiteboard Ding-dong Bandit to fulfill. Now she has a problem she can focus on without interference from Amber’s rage. We now pause this comment for 24 hours while we wait to see what she comes up with!
That’s odd, considering that she was seen making her way there as AG and also fighting people in the background as AG. I wonder why she switched to civvies and back.
That scar looks pretty well healed, more than one would expect for only a few weeks. How much time has passed in continuity between the Fateful Frat Party and now? I this a case of mistaken identity, and Amazi-girl is about to pummel an innocent?
The party was Friday night of Week One. It’s currently either late Sunday night or early Monday morning of Week Six. (Not sure if we’ve crossed the midnight line yet.) So roughly a month.
Panel 1: There was a person who mentioned in the Patreon side that it was nice that Marcie’s coworkers acknowledge her signal, because yeah, she’s mute, but she can still do her job. She can signal for help. She can try and break up confrontations, she can direct traffic. And that’s an important minor note because so often it is assumed that if you have a sensory disability (blind, deaf, mute) that you are essentially incapable of vast swaths of work despite the fact that often minimal accommodations are actually needed.
And that tends to lead to passive discrimination.
That said… oh fuck, oh fuck ohfuck! Her coworkers are all white and at least one of them is an Amazi-girl fan and very likely to assume Sal is the actual instigator of this conflict. I’m still so very worried about her safety, a worry that will not go down the longer we spend in this particular strip.
Panel 2: That Marcie face, that glare she’s doing. I like to imagine it’s in response to that last comment down there. The one that’s calling every canine in the tri-county area over to make a nice little den and raise a kennel.
CONTENT WARNING: RACIST VIOLENCE AND APOLOGIAS FOR
Cause… ugh… that comment has so many fucking barbs in it. Especially in the context of Mike Brown and the numerous ghouls who came out of the woodwork to argue that he deserved to get shot because he “stole something”.
And that crowd… oof, getting uglier, cheering on a fight, and the optics of it, Amazi-girl backed by an entire throng of “family values” voters with just Marcie and Sal alone. Sal, posed and ready to defend herself from the white woman who’s been stalking her for two nights straight and who ‘s just so tired and done of waiting for that to come to its head at an even worse less comfortable space.
I haven’t been there, but I identify with the head space. After three near-brushes with folks who wanted and were honestly mulling over whether to kill me for being trans in my life, I’ve had too many a day where I just want to get physically attacked to get it over with. To no longer be scared that one day, someday it’ll come to its head and just have it happen now and be done with the Sword of Damocles once and for all.
For Sal, AG has proven she’s willing to enforce even the slightest laws against her and she’s been spotting her following her over and over again, even viewing her saving her life and trying to provide medical care as a violence done against her.
Sal knows that AG will eventually find an excuse to attack her. So might as well get it over now. Crowd of racists be damned.
I’m very sorry about what you went through. And you posted all good points. It’s reminiscent of people attacking trans people, people attacking BLM protesters and feeling righteous about it, most prominently of POCs (even some who support Trump) being harassed and physically assaulted at Trump rallies.
Sal is sick and tired and wants to get it over with, because it’s hard going out and not knowing whether you’ll get pulled over, attacked, harassed, etc. People tend to distance themselves from this kind of thing, but to exist in that mindset for your whole life is a form of trauma.
It is for this reason I would never go to a conservative rally like this one, or otherwise find myself in a conservative white space. People can be really awful to you.
My cousins are black, so I’m intimately aware of how much those passive threats constrain and feed into anxiety. Most of them just stay home a lot, because, that ends up being safer. I do the same for different reasons.
And I don’t even get it nearly a quarter as bad as TWoC do as my friends have reported. That passive terrorism works and works its way into your head.
And yeah, ditto. I grew up in the equivalent of that sort of rally. I never want to go back.
The depressing reality is that terrorism works really really well in keeping the populations affected by it out of society and thus allows the people benefitting from it to pretend that they don’t actually know or see anyone actually affected by it.
The racism aspect is really timely to me because a black kid was just killed in the town I used to live, possibly over a stolen motor bike, and in the comments on one page someone actually said “well if you people just raised your kids right…”!!
Another commenter said she wanted to move to Syria because it was safer than [Australian town] and the comments in that thread devolved into anti-refugee rhetoric.
I’m sick of this world. I hope that in the DoA world there will at least be a positive ending to this story arc.
Interesting that so many commenters think there is a racial component here in the crowd. I spy with my little eye, at least two black people in said crowd.
So you are discounting Sal’s life experience, even after it has been repeatedly demonstrated?
Do you think it’s coincidence that the black girl is assumed to be the aggressor here? That additionally she’s assumed to be a thief, and deserving of an ass-kicking?
What I “like” about this comment is that it shows even though you’re trying to present yourself as being reasonable you’re not even willing to acknowledge the *potential* there is racism. Despite all the signs and symptoms of well ingrained racism in this strip you don’t just think it is possible there’s no racial component, you think there *definitely is not* a racial component.
THAT is what makes it obvious you choose to turn a blind eye to racism, no matter what you tell yourself or others.
This. if you can sympathize with Amber after all the crap she’s done, you can definitely sympathize with Sal.
Also: Even if you’re black and support Trump, or dislike other POCs, or whatever, does not negate systemic racism or its history. If I went to a Trump rally tomorrow and professed my support of him, it wouldn’t stop hateful people from harassing me.
Or if you personally know at least one black person. Or because the Civil Rights Act passed, and now we live in a post racial society where race influences nothing whatsoever.
However, comma, Sal is dressed in bike leathers and just body slammed a local hero. That would “look like trouble” to anyone of any race. Plus, Marcie was holding her back while Amazi-Girl recovered.
The comment above mine was a great example of sarcasm, btw. As per the definition, it need not be ironic. And see Fart Captor’s comment -the racism is there.
HA!
No one can “show you where the racism is” because the comic is holding a mirror up to the racism of our own culture —AND you have obviously CHOSEN to be blind to that!
You might as well demand us to show you this so called “Sun” when you have your eyes closed , in a locked closet.
Amber now sees the racism, which is 50% of the point of this comic.
Why do you think shes not kicking Sals ass?
OK I’m just kidding with you, of course i can ‘show you the racism’ .
( Holds Up mirror )
Nobody knows what she did, this is obvious from the comic.
If you have to imagine the comic characters have a time machine ( or can see from your view ) to deny that a racist comment about her being black is racist… There are 4 other characters that looks violence personified in this comic, including a rapist! But you think the black girl is the ones that looks like trouble.
Does Ryan literally have to start raping new people in the hall right now , before you think one of the white guys here might be the real ones that looks like trouble.
But you think Black girls cant wear leather, or they are asking for racist mobs. and you cant see the racism!~
Not anyone, no. Plenty of people don’t associate motorcycle leathers with troublemakers.
You have a point in that that’s not doing Sal any favors, but it’s far from the only factor working against her here.
Dude, don’t ever ask for examples of racism, everyone will give you a thousand examples whether they’re there or not.
If it’s one thing I know it’s people refuse to accept any point of view that isn’t exactly like their own and then they will make up a label for you for not agreeing with them.
Probably because there absolutely is one. The presence of black people in the crowd doesn’t prevent that. Even the smiling girl in the top right who seems to be into it.
Y’know, of all the potential responses to today’s comic, I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting Racism Denialism…
Though, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. A marginalized woman is being victimized. And that has repeatedly and consistently meant some asshole coming into the comment threads to try and devil’s advocate on behalf of the bigots and try and deny away the bigotry.
So I guess, congratulations on being Example 4,307S of this phenomenon. The gift shop is to the right, please pick up some lovely parting gifts on your way back to the chans.
I mean, we shouldn’t be so surprised. We all remember how ‘you came out whiter’ went in the comments section, not to mention everything about Becky or Carla that parallels it, but with sexuality and gender.
(but it still is surprising to come across it, especially being that blunt and unapologetic)
It’s going to be another one of those “How do you see the [example of prejudice], it’s not there!” until Willis puts in a strip making it beyond obvious that it’s there, and then people will be “Why are you shoving [example of prejudice] in our faces like that?”, isn’t it?
Yeah. Use the R(acist) word and you’ve got people popping up all over to deny it. “It can’t be!” “Racism in America doesn’t exist anymore, haven’t you heard what Dr. King accomplished?” Yeah. Right before they murdered him.
Racism Denial is like the default response to racism by a good chunk of people. I would have been more surprised if it didn’t show up in a strip so obviously portraying racism.
I guess I should thank you. Your trolling–the attitude is unmistakable–gives me an opportunity to explain why you cannot deny racism as an issue here, like you can with AG.
There are many, many reasons to presume racism here. You’ve got a crowd acting just like the Trump crowds. You’ve got people who are pushing mob violence.
But you’ve mostly got that troublemaker line. Being dressed as a biker chick is not remotely something to make someone think you are a troublemaker. Especially at this type of rally where there are usually lots of people dressed that way.
Now, there is the issue that Amazi-Girl is talking about fighting her, and claimed she attacked her first. But that doesn’t make the “looks like a troublemaker” line make sense.
No, unlike with AG, there is no other reason that quite makes sense for this reaction. It’s not 100%, as I said above, but it is very, very likely to be motivated by racial animus.
So, take your mocking attitude elsewhere. If you were actually interested in talking about this, you wouldn’t pull that attitude. You might as well have added “lol” at the end.
i was wondering this before, but now that its all coming to a head: what can amazi-girl actually do to ryan? beat him up? unless she kills him (which she obviously cant do) thats not really a solution. she cant just tie him up and drop him off at the police station either, and its been like, what, three weeks since the assault? and joyce probably *still* doesnt want to press charges
Probably just keep him under tight scrutiny. Try to be prepared so that next time he tries to rape somebody they’ll get something more solid to take to the police than a “he said she said” situation.
You know, technically I’m not sure if the attack on Joyce was a he-said/she-said situation. Remember, Sarah hit Ryan just as he was about to drag Joyce away, so you actually have 2 witnesses to at least part of Ryan’s crime.
After what happened with Blaine, I would say that yeah, Amber/Amazigirl COULD kill Ryan. Not here, but now that she’s found him, she could follow him around like she’s been doing to Sal, until he’s alone (or, even better, alone with another would-be victim), and then… proceed.
I’m not saying it’s even remotely likely, or that there wouldn’t be awful consequences, but she probably could.
Panel 3: Oh, holy fuck, that face. That face. And that top of the panel comment. Like the one before, it’s so transparently racist and yet has that little bit of deniability that Sal knows will come down on her head if she reacts to it. And that face. That’s the face of having been here way too many times, suffered these comments one too many times.
Of just being done, not really able to even react to one more microaggression on a life filled with them, but still feeling the hurt and anger because it’s still shitty, it’s still dehumanizing, it’s still a triggering reminder of how she’ll never have her parents’ love in the way her brother does.
It’s a window into why Sal says she knows what it’s like to struggle with anger, with powerlessness. Because being a black woman, being into counterculture, this is her life. This is always her life. And from her perspective, it’s even worse.
Cause in her mind, AG has come off as nothing but extremely racist, a Zimmerman-esque figure who just won’t leave her alone and is looking for any excuse to justify beating her up and viewing her as a villain. And now she’s backed by a crowd that Sal was already uncomfortable around, which is now actively throwing racial dogwhistles her way and straight up cheering on her stalker to kick her ass.
And she stands firm.
That take chutzpah and inner strength. Like, fuck, I once got into it with a pair of neo-nazis that wanted to harm me once, but I had a whole bus of folks that were very openly getting my back. And that helped me not be scared. To hold firm like that when the “whole bus” is the equivalent of a local white supremacy rally backing said neo-nazis? I imagine I would be a whimpering mess.
And yet Sal stands up straight and gives them nothing. That’s emotional strength right there.
Sal’s strong, but she’s going to need some better outlets if shit like this keeps piling up.
Fucking Jason, talking to Marcie, and riding her bike are great, but I’m not convinced they’re fully adequate for stress of this magnitude, if only because Jason, Marcie, and the poor bike would end up exhausted.
Dogwhistle is a term that seems innocuous to a general audience but is used as a code-word for another intention and is often employed politically as a means of masking or coding bigotry.
Famous examples include things like “welfare queen” which was used to insinuate that welfare money was all going to lazy black women instead of real Americans so that racists would support the push to eliminate or seriously defang racism.
See also things like professional homophobes using “religious liberty” to mean right to harass, discriminate against, and abuse gay people or the suspicious way many fans of the border wall use “illegal immigrant” to mean all latinx people regardless of their immigration status or the way neo-nazis have started to us “white genocide” as a codeword for “non-white-people exist in my country and I want to act like I’m a victim for ‘suffering’ this”.
There’s a lot of racist dogwhistles in American politics owing to the Southern Strategy. “Thug” is one that’s been in a lot of public consciousness as of late owing to its use to insinuate that every unarmed black person shot by cops somehow deserved it.
Sometimes the people using it forget the original meaning it was hiding behind, leading to things like racists referring to the rural “inner city” population to describe black people in rural areas seemingly unaware that that just shines a ginormous floodlight on the dogwhistle and what it means.
The term, of course, comes from how dogs can hear a dogwhistle being blown, while humans hear a big pile of nothing because it operates at a pitch they aren’t able to hear.
Meanwhile, back in the dorms, Sarah is STILL in the middle of a grouphug when suddenly…
Joyce: “sniff… what?”
Sarah: “THAT’S THE BIG SIS ALARM, GET YOUR FEELS OFF ME THIS INSTANCE, THERE IS A WAY TO EXPRESS MY CONCERN WITHOUT GETTING ALL EMOTIONAL!!!” *Jumps through the window with the Baseball Bat of the Old Testament God.*
In fact, he’s probably the same guy in the third panel of the previous strip. Either he missed the memo that this was supposed to be as racially charged as some of the commenters are making out, or he found some “white privilege” lying around and decided to use it.
To be fair, the vast majority of the crowd would probably assert the same. After all, they are there in support of a Latina candidate.
Their actions speak louder.
For other examples, see Alan Keyes defending white supremacists and KKK members, Christina Hoff Summers or Phyllis Schlafly fighting against women’s rights, Milo Yiannopoulous and Robert Oscar Lopez throwing their support behind homophobic organizations and arguing against the rights of gay people, or that one weird jew who tried to defend the neo-nazis of the alt-right and ended up having to hand-wave all the neo-nazis alt-righters in his comment threads telling him how much they wanted to kill him.
Remember when notable MRA Roosh V (who is ethnically Iranian) had the support of white supremacists for like five minutes because they hated women more than they hated him being a racial minority? yeah
No, not to the casual angry sexism, but to Amazi-girl… er… Amber… er… it’s not even listed, huh… to whatever amalgamation is running the show right now, to her look of shock and betrayal and self-doubt.
Cause, I’ve definitely been worried about the racial implications of her actions for awhile and even more worried as AG has devolved more and more into stalking and finding more and more paranoid delusions to use to justify viewing Sal as nothing more than a “bad guy”, the “archvillain” of her life.
Definitely Sal has noticed those. And here, AG or Amber or both see them as well. She sees exactly who’s backing her and why and what they expect her to do as their “white knight” against the “thug”. And she’s horrified. Through them she sees a little of the horror of her actions, of the type of people she’s in danger of having as her only supporters if she stays on this road, and of the type of people who share her conviction that a person like Sal can never be redeemed.
And we can see that in her toothy grimace and her begging of the crowd, trying to explain, trying to rationalize her actions and then, thankfully, seeing part of the truth. That Sal didn’t actually do anything wrong here (other than some hypocrisy about escalation). AG was out of line. AG stalked her. AG fit into a narrative she never intended to but was no less horrible because of that fitting.
And that’s everything I could want because it’s a sign that AG or Amber wants off this path, will fight to stay off this path and is starting to see what she’s becoming. And that’s gonna be so key to her recovery and her integration and her seeing Amber’s strengths and AG’s risks and flaws.
And the best part of it all is that it’s AG/Amber who’s leading it. It’s not Sal chewing her out and reaching through. It’s not a wise council. It’s AG/Amber seeing the path, seeing her fans, seeing what she’s been letting herself become. It’s her wanting off this terrifying ride we’ve been on ever since that escalating verbal abuse against Danny.
Panels 6-8: … well fuck.
There’s little good here. If Sal and AG attack this fucker, the crowd will turn and Robin will have to label her a menace for assaulting her campaign worker. And there’s little she can do except beat him up, unfortunately, because there’s no proof that he’s committed a crime other than the cut across the face (looks like a potential permanent scar, well done Joyce, you’ve got PTSD for like the next 30 years, but at least you gave him something to remember on cold nights).
When she promised her she’d keep looking for him (a promise she momentarily forgot to stalk Sal and blame her for stealing a bf she willingly threw away to justify still hating her).
Shit’s about to go down. And even though AG is gonna be in an unsafe place at the end of it, she’s at least through the worst of it and hopefully off the bad road she was riding for far too long.
I think Amazi-girl might stop short of full-out assaulting Ryan – hell, if she’s quick-witted enough, she could play it off as “I wasn’t after her. You – the guy with the scar near his nose. I’m taking you in to the cops for attempted rape.”
Or something to that effect. SOMEONE in that building knows precisely who he is, and labeling what he did that publicly is something he wouldn’t be capable of hiding from, short of having some vastly powerful connections.
I’m pretty sure that she’s going to do her Christian Bale schtick, announce to the crowd what he did and then attack him. The problem is that he is one of the Party Faithful and I suspect that he’ll have more supporters than foes in the crowd.
So, AG and Sal will need to fight their way out of a near-riot. I suspect that Ryan will be found dangling upside-down and hog-tied from a lamp-post with a note reading ‘rapist’ pinned to his campaign shirt (good visual, BTW, Robin). Meanwhile, Amazi-Girl and Sal will be sitting on a roof-top together, having a very, very awkward conversation.
This could be the beginning of the post-Harvey Dent ‘The Batman is a Menace’ phase of the public’s perception of Amazi-Girl. I don’t think that Amber will mind too much; the ‘urban superhero’ thing was mostly the product of Dorothy’s romantic mindset. I suspect that Amazi-Girl will find that those who have always truly been her allies still will be her allies and that having less a burden of public perceptions on her will make it easier for her to process certain things.
Seriously, this is the first sign of hope we’ve had for her in weeks if not months. Guess the realization of where she is and who exactly is in this crowd can get through to her where even Danny and concern for her own wellbeing couldn’t.
Hooray for Gashface’s timely appearance at a not-Trump rally! Seriously there could not be a better person to show up nor a better time for him to be here. (And yay, that does look like it’s healing as a nasty scar. Hope it scares other naive girls expecting a nice, “morally upright” evening just enough to keep them with friends and away from you, ya roofie-ing bastard.)
I think the difference with her reactions to Danny and the crowd here stem from Danny being someone she trusted who “betrayed” her.
But the rally here are egging her on to act like a violent thug to satisfy some pretty blatant racism. Amber’s not being let down by someone she loves and trusts, she’s being encouraged and supported by a pack of assholes.
He’s from waaaaay back in the first book of the comic. He tried to date rape Joyce, failed, but got away. Amazi-Girl swore to track him down. This is his first appearance as himself and not as a nightmare hallucination by Joyce since he ran from that party.
(well, unless you count that extremely important end to the ding-dong bandit ark, but let me ask you… did SOMEONE ELSE see them together?
…OK, fine, there was the assault… when Amazi-girl let the bad guy get away. HAH, YOU REALLY BELIEVED THAT IMPOSTER???? That was just a pizza delivery super hero who got roped in trying to be the real thing.)
A part of me finds it interesting they’re cheering on someone who helped take down Toe dad: who probably would have felt at home with their most likely political direction (if any) they’d take on LGBT issues. (As in, it’s unlikely to be positive. While it may not be a part of their main platform, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a sizeable number in there who still who supported ‘conversion therapy’ for instance)
Buuut I guess in the here and now racial bias trumps all others. For now.
(Or they at least hold onto some micron of decency and disapprove of Toe dad. Who the heck knows I guess. Though it matters little considering what they’re doing now.)
That said, yeah, I think the immediacy of the conflict with a “thug” in the dog-whistle meaning of that term is trumping her role in inadvertently saving a lesbian at the moment.
I would go so far as to say that most of the family values types abuse in practice if not in principle.
By which I mean: Sure, they don’t condone taking a gun to your child, but they won’t exactly condemn it, either. They don’t condone threatening your child with death if they don’t comply, but the child really brought it on themself by being [gay/lesbian/bi/trans/asexual/pan/etc]. They don’t condone forcible kidnapping, but if the kid would just “get right with god,” the father wouldn’t have been driven to it in the first place.
I could go on.
Sure, they don’t come out and say they support it… but when it comes down to it, actions speak louder than words, and it’s pretty obvious who their actions come down in favor of.
While I have many conservative friends who in fact, are not racist, sexist assholes, and I firmly believe that political and ideological diversity is crucial for healthy democracy, conservative groups touting “family values” like the “Family Research Council” and their ilk are all but unanimously opposed to the rights of people in the LGBT community. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not just talking about marriage, but housing, employment using the goddamn bathroom, and probably other stuff I’m forgetting but which will surely destroy us all!
Yeah, in many (most?) states it is completely legal for your landlord to evict you because of your sexuality or gender identity. Same for your employer being able to fire you. So even though gay marriage is legal, many people have gotten fired when they tried to update their health insurance at work to include their spouses.
And that recent court case of the trans funeral worker might eliminate even the fig leaf of those protections in liberal states owing to the “religious liberty” exemption the judge ruled that allowed an employer to legally discriminate against someone who is trans or queer if the company’s “religious values” don’t support that sort of thing.
I’m done reading comments for today. Apologizes to any hereafter that I may of commented on otherwise, I always like to see someone comment on mine, and I try to comment on others for that reason.
I suggest familiarizing yourself with RightWingWatch if you want to know how shitty conservative “family values” groups can be.
These are the people who want to kidnap (and in some cases have helped kidnap) the children of GLBTQ parents. Not specifically with shotguns, but given how many of them really love guns and think they should be allowed to carry them at all times, it’s not too much of a leap to go to “kidnapping, possibly with a gun”.
We’re also talking about people who not only think LBQTG folks can and should be denied housing and jobs, but also are in favour of them being jailed, put in concentration camps, or even put to death. All while they hold their “family values” banners high.
Before all y’all go pulling the race card, keep in mind that Amazi Girl is an idolized mysterious crime fighter known for beating up the assholes and bad guys, and Sal is a tough looking girl in biker attire, known for being a rebel. If you had to guess which one was in the right and which one was causing trouble…. If I saw ANY tough looking person fighting the god damn college campus SUPERHERO of course I’m gonna assume he/she is the bad guy!
They’re all wrong of course, but right to assume what they did with the knowledge they had.
Though of course vigilantism isn’t exactly a good thing in most cases….
I….. Really? I thought I made a valid point as to why someone might possibly side with a superhero (albeit a psycho one but people don’t really know that yet) over a rebel?
Is it just automatically racist because she’s black? What part makes it racist?
You are. While your explanation is plausible, and no doubt is a factor, the stuff they’re shouting about how Sal “looks like a trouble-maker”, and “must have stole something” make racism more likely by orders of magnitude.
Ooph. I missed that one too.
I’m assuming the ‘leather-clad hooligan versus known and adored campus icon’ aspect is getting a lot of people to favor Amazi-girl, but there are clearly some vocal bigots shaping the crowd mentality into something ugly.
How about if (as others have predicted) Amber directs the crows after the rapist asshole, but they refuse along the lines of “but he looks respectable” or “he seems so decent” or some bs, I will completely admit that the crowd’s a bunch of racist assholes trying to convict poor Sal. If they go along with it tho, doesn’t that show that it’s because they want to side with the superhero?
I’m not saying it’s NOT racism here, just that it might not be based on what we know
They’re already calling for someone to assault her when the ONLY things they know about Sal is what she looks like, and her proximity to someone who might do it.
Part of what Sal looks like is that she’s standing like she’s ready for a fight, with Amazi-girl, who many of them know of from the paper and trust.
I believe we’ve established here in the comments the tendency of people to side with who they already know and sympathize with over unknowns.
Ooo, ooo, I know this one! You pretended that Amazi-Girl just attacked someone today, and did not have people cheer her on! The victim she helped, at most, was mutedly happy. That cheering her on regardless of what she does is the expected response! That people tend to actually see the wrongdoing with Amazi-girl’s targets (For instance, the stolen purse)
Then you pretended it was some WEIRD IDEA that race is maybe why, in spite of any other thing, Sal ‘looks like a trouble maker’! Why the crowd would immediately and automatically side with Amazi-Girl in the absence of any real evidence of wrongdoing.
She’s trading on white privilege in addition to her status as a crime fighter. These are not mutually exclusive.
I have never once, after having spent years in atheist communities, seen someone with “Reason” in their username who was actually reasonable. If you’re going that far, it is 100% a shibboleth to position you as virtuous.
Likewise with “Skeptic” or “logic”. I’ve seen exactly one who wasn’t, and that person eventually changed his screenname because he was tired of being associated with the vast majority of them.
Like, dude (it’s always dudes), if you have to name yourself as something to try to position yourself as authority on skepticism, reason, or logic, you likely have none of the three.
I would bet very good money that 95% of those with one of those three words in their sn are disingenous sophists whose confidence in their deduction and reasoning is orders of magnitude greater than their actual abilities, and who has no intent to actually engage honestly (which includes accepting the possibility that they might not have all the information going in… and that maybe people who have lived a thing their entire life are more of an authority of what it’s like than someone’s preconceived notions).
I doubt there’s enough subtlety in Sal’s narrative for what you’re talking about. Racism is Sal’s “thing”. It basically defines her character at this point.
I’m thinking that maybe there’s a way that AG can turn this around without making things worse. Right now, AG has a mob of fans who are angry at Sal. All she needs to do is . . . redirect them.
1) She yells “STOP! There’s something more important than my conflict with this young woman.”
2) She points at Ryan: “Some weeks ago, a young woman was given a glass of drugged soda by a man who then tried to get her alone and rape her. She managed to cut his face with the glass, and was defended by friends who were worried about her. But the man himself got away. Now, I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but that man with a scar looks very familiar. Given that the victim filed a police report the next day, I think the police would be very interested in taking a statement from this individual, and seeing if the victim can pick him out in a lineup.”
Note that by accusing him but not attacking him physically (yet), this puts Ryan in the corner, and takes pressure off of Sal. Ryan can try and laugh it off, or make excuses, or whatever, but now the crowd is focused on him and not on Sal. If he bolts, either someone in the crowd or Amazi-Girl herself might be able to physically restrain him. If he stands his ground, insisting that he did nothing wrong, there was some mistake, whatever, security might still be able to call police, who might be willing to at least detain him and take a statement — if Joyce can be found to back AG up (presumably AG will want to fade if the police actually do show up).
Maybe?
I wonder if Ryan’s mother is in the crowd. Was the bible verse she sent him (2 Corinthians 11:14) meant to be a hint that she suspected that something was badly wrong with her son?
She should just turn away from the woman who threw her down and, with no explanation, attack a (seemingly) random white man in the crowd, and the rest of the crowd will be on her side with this sudden change?
I don’t think group psychology works that way, but I’d be interested to learn otherwise if I’m wrong.
Is it 100% guaranteed that he’s not a hallucination? Cause I thought he was at first and am a little confused as to why he’d be there, since he just is pretending to be a “family values Christian guy” right?
If he is real, I’m pretty sure ur right on the path the story will take (I hope so at least. Plz!)
As someone else pointed out, Amber has never actually seen Ryan before, and its really hard to hallucinate someone if you don’t know what they look like.
As soon as the pointing happens, he’s gonna bolt. AG’s arrival on the night in question caused such a stir that Ryan was able to escape. He remembers the vigilante. The vigilante who would not be yelling and pointing at him. He’d run.
She needs to just charge him.
You’re right — I stopped re-reading after Sarah talked about filing a police report the next morning, and missed that the next storyline picks up the next day, and (given Sal’s caveats about the police not doing much, and Dorothy finding depressing statistics on college prosecution of rape, and slightly-amnesiac Joyce saying she wants to drop the matter), the filing of a police report gets dropped.
So in my scenario, Amber would have to re-word her accusation a bit.
Of course, the storyline was plotted, worded, drawn, inked, colored, and uploaded months ago. Nothing I suggest will change what’s out there.
Acceptable target: acquired. Hell, they may even team up, if Sal notices too (IIRC she knows about his scar, but that doesn’t necessarily mean instant recognition).
How fitting that this comic released just after Brock Turner was released for “good behavior” after serving three months of his (already laughable) six month sentence.
Panel five gives me a little hope that AmaziGirl can eventually come to terms with the past. Because her first act, instinct even, is an attempt to say to the crowd that Sal hasn’t done anything wrong, that this is something personal from years back. She’s trying to balance her need for some sort of vengeance with the simultaneous desire to protect someone from hostile circumstances. It’s possibly a case of realizing that the person she hates might also be a victim. And it’s something that’s bothering AmaziGirl deeply. And that gives me the smallest sparkling of hope.
On another note I want to make an observation. There are a few commenters who are dismissing the possibility that there is some racial bias in the crowd immediately targeting Sal and siding with AmaziGirl. While I’m not going to say that every person in that crowd is racist, there will absolutely be some of the mob who are. In addition this is a striking example of white privilege and unconscious bias. If Sal were white, there would be less people cheering on the random vigilante. At the same time do to societal influences, many people who aren’t racist will assume in a confrontation between a black and white person that the black person is at fault do to “being a trouble maker” or some variant of that, unless it is quite clear the white person in said conflict is racist (something like a Swatstika tatoo couple with a shoved head). There is also an idea from a couple commenters that the enthusiasm to seeing Sal hurt expressed by the crowd is not racially motivated due to the presence of two black people in a crowd of about a hundred to two hundred white people. This could be because of unconscious bias, but there is also the possibility of internalized racism. Some black conservatives will blame “black culture”, “laziness”, or a lack of conformation to white culture for such things as poverty and crime among the black community, and will see other black people as simply not working hard enough or of causing their own problems. This is based on the idea “I overcame all of the same obstacles that you now face, so obviously there’s something wrong or inferior about you”. Furthermore, being the target of an alt-right group doesn’t mean that one supports said group, based on mutual hatred of another targeted minority by said alt-right group. There are examples of this everywhere throughout history but two striking examples come from World War 2: The third Reich actually used hundreds of thousands of non-German soldiers, including French, Dutch, and Belgian SS members who volunteered in order to kill communists; similarly the Japanese founded the “Free Indian Army” from natives of Singapore and the British Raj, all of whom were volunteers willing to adopt fascist ideology in order to drive out the British. And a caraismatic enough leader can convert people to their cause who it would seem to make no sense for them to follow, simply because they are being given an outlet for anger and frustration. In a case like a rally for a politician like De Santo, it would probably be immigrants and or Muslims. While we the readers know that Sal is black, the Walkertons are apparently “ambiguously brown” (I hate to use that phrase) to the other characters, as Jouce initially assumed Walky was Amerindian. And being “ambiguously brown” means that other people will probably fit her in some way into a position that they do hate: Sal can’t pass as white, but she can pass as a variety of other ethnic minorities that face daily hatred. Sorry about the rant and it’s rather disjointed nature. I’m angry, I tend to ramble when I’m angry and while a native speaker of Emglish my first language until the age of about five was a dialect of French that I involuntarily slip back into every once in a while so it’s difficult to express myself as much as I wish I could.
First paragraph: Yeah, that bit’s got me so hopeful cause well… she torched her own relationship to try and preserve her fantasy of Sal is the monster who can do no right and who represents everything AG needs to stop in the world. And yet here, she lets herself fall out of that fantasy and recognizes that Sal is not the instigator and may even be the victim of this crowd.
And I’m really crossing my fingers that that moment of humanizing is the first in her finally letting go that fantasy and fully grappling with how much Blaine has poisoned her and what will actually help her recover instead of what will drive her into becoming him instead.
I don’t mean this in a derogatory way, but if you write a text this long it’s pretty much impossible for it to be read to the end by anyone who doesn’t fully agree with your ideas in the first place (except maybe to prove a point). If you want your observations to be relevant in a discussion, you need to summarize; otherwise, what you yourself call a rant is useful only as catharsis.
IMO, the problem is not so much the length (I regularly read things that are much longer) as the dearth of paragraph breaks. A few more would work wonders for clarity and focus, again IMO.
I ramble at times and I do appreciate the criticism from both of you. Some old habits from my days as a history major break hard though (for some reason most of my professors believed that a paragraph needed to be eight sentences minimum).
Yeah, it’s a problem I have. A family that hardly let me get a word in edgewise growing up and (mentioned below) teachers and professors that wanted obscene amounts of information in paragraphs really hammered said problem into me. Trying to work on it. On the plus side, if someone else were to find my writing cathartic, that would mean that I did something good today, and I like that idea.
I’m guessing this is probably partially targeted at me…
Thank you so much for clearly articulating your point with logic and a fair amount of evidence instead of just hating on me.
While I don’t agree with everything you said, I agree with quite a bit of it, and it also helped me see a few errors I made. If only everyone could have discussions like you instead of throwing around buzzwords, which was the main reason I got a little miffed. Have a great day man!
*hugs* Sorry for being part of the pile-on. And yeah, it can be easy to step in stuff due to blind-spots. I’m certainly not immune to that.
Honestly, I think you were ill-served by being after several instances of folks trying to do strong denialisms of the racism in the comic and I think that’s why the response was harsher than it might otherwise have been.
Honestly, and please please do not take this the wrong way, I did not see your comments before posting this comment. I’d seen a couple of others that, ruffled my feathers so to speak. And I kinda let loose. Because I feel like this is a safe place to do that. And have a civilized if heated discussion at the same time. My primary purpose when I comment here is never to purposely offend/belittle someone.
Part of Amazi-Girl knows she must be totally doing something wrong if a mob cheers her on with racicist slurs to beat up someone. She how her face freezes?
Let’s hope she sizes the opportunity Ryan presents and says ‘it was just a ruse to get at this rapist here. ”
She hasn’t a hope in hell to explain to this mob that her thing with Sal is personal (and from her pow not at all related to Sal being black).
Amazigirl needs to join forces with Sal, and then we get a montage of Ryan getting beat to hell by both of them while “X Gon give it to ya” blasts in the background.
Not really Deadpool’s speed. They’re both more than strong enough anyway, and Sal’s wiry build isn’t entirely unlike Wade’s, while I’m sure he’d have some choice quips about Amber’s physique.
This is the moment of destiny for Amazi-Girl; does she do as the mob wants and attack someone for no other reason than someone ‘looks like trouble’… Or does she attack a man that she knows is trouble, even though he may be a member of the party’s most faithful followers?
I think Ryan’s sudden appearance is actually the worst case scenario.
Amazi-Girl was in the middle of an epiphany. She was being forced to realize just how wrong she was. Now Ryan is here and she can focus on something other than herself. Worse yet, he’s going to dig up all of her new feeling of inadequacy that she acquired because she feels like she failed Joyce. Now she’s got her father’s baggage and new baggage dragging her down.
Also, she can’t do anything about Ryan. She’s surrounded by a mob of people who are all egging her on to beat up the innocent black woman. Stopping now to chase after a white, male member of that crowd who the mob has no reason to think is a rapist and who aren’t as inclined to assume the worst about him as they are Sal will turn the crowd against her immediately. She also has no legal grounds to attack him. Any evidence of his crimes is now long gone. The only evidence of that night is his scar which he can easily explain away as an old accident. Right now, the law is on his side simply because they don’t have any evidence.
I think Ryan just robbed us of our big emotional resolution, not delivered it.
Well, maybe not an old accident – a scar from a gash like that is probably still a little raw. But yeah, he can definitely make something plausible up; agreed on all counts.
That is a great point. If Amber cut and run she’d be forced to rethink her approach to Sal, but now she’s been confronted with the one who got away and no clear way to actually take him in.
At the same time, the way things are going, and Ryan being in the same room as two people who are fiercely protective of Joyce and have risked their lives for her, well, I wouldn’t count out some kind of resolution just yet. I could easily see something like the two of them both trying to take him down punching holes into their perceptions of each other. Amber’s hatred is already well documented, but Sal thinks Amazi-Girl is at best a kid doing stupid stuff and at worst a dangerous thug.
Ah. The two day binge. I know her well. But this situation is not so bad – this comic updates every day of the week. The bad binges are when you find out the comic is unfinished but dead, and will never update again…
At any rate, welcome to the comic! I hope you will have a good time following it as well as binging it.
To be honest I think it’s worse when it is still updated, just REALLY REALLY SLOWLY. At least with Death and the Maiden, after my sad realization I was able to just remove it from my favorites bar!
As for THIS one… and here I thought it was awesome that Questionable Content updates every WEEKDAY! Hurrah for David Willis*!
*Also, belated as it applies to like 80% of the strips because I didn’t comment on anything before now, DAMN YOU WILLIS
SMART MOVE:
AG – “ENOUGH!! *crowd halts in momentary shock* This woman and I have a personal misunderstanding, and it will have to wait. Because THAT MAN *very exaggerated but specific point* is an identified, attempted rapist, and he must be brought to justice NOW!!” *charge*
SAL – “Uh . . . wut?”
DUMB MOVE:
Probably what’s actually going to happen, it is basically the name of the comic.
I really love that Ryan is back! I know that’s a weird thing to type, but I wasn’t sure if he would ever come back or if he would just be a gross spectre hanging over Joyce forever without her ever being able to have any sort of closure. Now there’s a chance for said closure and for him to face some more substantial/lengthy punishment for his actions. I’m pumped! Fuck that guy!
As for the rest of the strip, it feels like a distraction in more ways than one. The rally attendees being shitty (re: racist, sexist) people is understandable, and I’m glad Amber’s justice-o-meter works enough for her to not want to associate with them or their rationales. However, I hope this isn’t the end of her grudge, and she gets to work through it in a more personal way.
What the heck is there to steal from a university auditorium anyway, faceless jerk…?
OK, I have already seen a hell of a lot of comments on this strip saying pretty much what I want to say. So I shall not repeat those thins with different wording (“Hooray!” people shouted, being spared another novel in the comment field), and instead state only this:
I really, really wish to punch Ryan so bad in the face. He is the very epitome of conservative/religious entitlement in all of its worst forms. And it’s 99.9999% certain that he’s one of those “I’m not racist, but” type of racists too. Fuck that piece of shit.
I would advise against a punch.
There are plenty of options, though! If there’s one thing we humans are good at it’s coming up with ways to damage one another.
I actually already knew about that particular fact.
Solution: Wear boxing gloves. They protect your hands. In fact, they protect your hands so well, you end up punching someone’s head a lot more, and then they are likely to (sooner or later) die prematurely from repeated concussion damage.
And that is why boxing became a much more lethal sport once boxing gloves were introduced.
I had a specific combo in mind to suggest because I’m not quite awake enough to properly detail the execution of a heelpalm strike (great for uppercuts and blows to the nose!) but figured that if I’m not awake I should err on the side of not posting violent stuff on DoA.
This is why you’re usually advised to hold something in your hand when throwing a punch, like a lighter.
Also, connect with your knuckles, not the flats of your fingers. Angle your fist down a bit; this also strengthens your punch as your knuckles are now aligned with your wrist and arm bones. Go for a straight punch. Hooks, haymakers and uppercuts are predictable, slow and usually less effective.
Punches are vastly preferable over headbutts and kicks and leave you at a safer distance than elbows and knees.
Make sure to shout and yell while attacking. It raises adrenaline, it draws attention from surrounding parties and it may intimidate.
If you’re forced, and I mean, no other options, forced to fight, go for the throat, or the kidneys. Heads are made of bone and a knock-out punch is rare. Instead, make the opponent flinch, wheeze, stumble or double over; if they’re aggressive but not THAT malicious, they back the fuck off and run, if they’re seriously threatening at least you now have an opportunity to land more blows and knock them to the ground.
Then, and this is the most important step:
If they’re on the ground, run. Run like hell. You do not want to kill or maim a downed opponent; for legal, traumatic and safety reasons.
Also, We propose that like Toedad, we shall no longer refer to Ryan with his real name. Instead, he shall forevermore be known as Cutnose (an eternal reminder of Joyce glassing him).
I agree that ryan should get a villain name, but it shouldnt be something cool sounding like cutnose. the reason that toedad works is it sounds ridiculous.
First off, we don’t have any actual evidence that the entire crowd in the room has joined in the jeering. In fact it would seem the opposite, since the distance and close up shots of Ryan show several people who are observing (likely unable to see the situation and don’t know what’s up) rather than participating. So this idea that hundreds of people have turned on Sal all at once is simply untrue. It’s more like a dozen and change at most, going from the actual comic. (I’m sure from Sal and AG’s point of view, it seems much more substantial since all they can see, literally and figuratively, is the ones in front jeering.)
Second, Ryan himself has admitted that he was not a pastor’s son, so claiming he is representative of religious/conservative faults of character is pretty baseless. Its more than likely that nothing he said to Joyce was truthful, since you know, he’s a (likely serial) rapist.
Funny thing is, that’s the exact comic I was referencing.
I took the wording a different way, as in the line “That part was true” was indicating that Joyce’s statement declaring him to not be a pastors son was truthful. Therefore, he wasn’t one.
But looking at it again, I can see it also having the opposite meaning, that his statement was true.
Sorry, no banana. Ryan states “That part was true.” If he wanted to acknowledge Joyce’s statement, he would have needed to state “is true”, and even then Joyce only made a single statement, so “that part” could not apply.
So it very clearly does not have “also” the opposite meaning of what you thought it did, but _only_ the opposite meaning.
“You lied to me. You’re no pastor’s son.” “That part was true.”
So you claim “that part was true” means that Joyce got it right that Ryan is no pastor’s son, but she got it wrong that Ryan lied to her?
Even taking into account that Ryan just got a glass to his face and might be considered somewhat dazzled, I am afraid my pretentious snobbery is clouding my vision a bit too much to let me see that make a whole lot of sense.
It does not need to be the entire crowd to make this situation dangerous for Sal. It doesn’t even need to be the majority. It’s enough that there is a large number of people jeering and calling for violence, since they’re the ones immediately surrounding her, and there is nothing to suggest that the rest of the crowd would disapprove, much less intervene.
Even if the water in a swimming pool is only 10% feces, its still definitely do not want to be in there.
I didn’t say if it was dangerous or if it wasn’t. (And it certainly is.) Or, for that matter, what actions the others in the crowd might take. I was simply pointing out that not the entire crowd is involved.
Good moxie, but kind of off the mark as far as a target goes.
Then you were offering a counterpoint to an argument nobody was making. People may not have been explicitly acknowledging that not ALL of the crowd was calling for blood, but I don’t see anyone making arguments that would require that to make sense.
You set an extremely condescending tone by starting your comment with ”Guess what its fact time”, so it came across much like it would have if you’d felt the need to point out that not EVERY man there is a rapist like Ryan. Its a misrepresentation of what people are actually saying that makes it seem like you either think they’re really that stupid, or you simply don’t think their opinions (and in some cases, real world experiences) aren’t worth paying enough attention to understand them properly.
If you’re going to get into a discussion about a sensitive topic like this, you could stand to choose your words more carefully.
I know everyone wants to talk about Amazi-girl’s story, but i just want to bring up one thing i noticed. In the first panel, marcie is giving sal a look that i am interpreting as “Seriously Sal?, i just wanted a peaceful job and then this happens. Why does this always happen when you are around?”
That’s what I was thinking.
On second glance it could go either way. Or both, really; between Malaya, Sal, her co-workers, and stars only know what else, Marcie has enough frustration to go around at this point.
OK, so loooooong comment is coming after all. Not about the comic itself as much as about the comments today. You’ve been warned.
Some people here have been asking “where is the racism?” Now, some of those people have also been accepting the answers they got, just to get that out of the way. This comment is not addressed at you.
But others have been less than accepting. Or trying to mitigate it rather than asking. These are the people I am a bit upset with right now.
See, here is the thing: The people that have called out the racism that is happening here, they’ve done so because they know how it really works. Racism isn’t about lynchings and putting on white masks. In fact, that is a relatively minor aspect of it.
Most of the racism is about the little things. Things that add up. And those that have been the direct targets of these things know exactly what they mean. And then they are in a much, much better position to tell when it’s happening than f.ex. I am.
I am in fact very much reminded of the “Joyce has lunch with John” storyline and the comment field back then. There were a few posters that could not or would not see what it was that made John such a dick. But the LBGQT posters, -they- could see it from miles away.
Because they had lived it, over and over and over again. They had time and time again experienced that when someone like John says A (in itself not that bad), then he is very likely likely to also say B (really bad). They could see that from the very moment John made it clear he was not interested in seeing Becky, that he was going to turn out to be a dick. He ended up saying B, and also C (waaaay bad) and D (downright heinous), and a few more letters of increasing badness.
And then other people tried to defend him, up until the very moment when he became indefensible, and -even then-, a few people tried to mitigate it by saying things like maybe Joyce could act less angry. Gods, that was infuriating. It would have been even more infuriating if Willis hadn’t been taking care of the worst of the crap.
But at the same time, there were a fair few people who simply did not know just how damn crappy it was to be LBGQT in USA. They were not aware of the bullying and the many forms it took. To some extent, they should have been aware, but they were not. At least these people really learned some interesting (as per the Chinese curse definition) facts.
And now the same thing is happening vis a vis the racism Sal is experiencing in this strip. The red flags are popping up, and people aren’t seeing them. Because they don’t know where to look for them.
Now, this is where I will tell a bit about myself: I am currently living in the USA, but I am most certainly a bona fida foreigner. Norwegian, to be exact. And having lived in USA for almost four years now, I can tell you with certainty that when people say racism is a big problem in this country, they’re goddamn right!
The funny thing is -how- I know this: By being welcomed into this country.
I currently deliver pizzas as my job, and so I get into touch with a lot of people. My accent clearly betrays me as foreign, and lots of people do ask where I come from. I am not yet tired of being asked, partially because the responses have been pretty much positive in every way. In my case, it’s nothing worse than base curiosity, and that’s in itself fine.
I have never been told to “go home!”. The only way people have hinted that I should go back to Norway, is by apologising on behalf of the country. “Why would you come to -this- place?” they say, as if I am a millionaire who just stepped into a McDonalds. They’re acting ashamed, not arrogant.
(The reason I came is a woman, by the way. A wonderful woman whom I love dearly, and who’s given me a whole new life to experience.)
Other than that, I am welcomed. Truly, fully welcomed. I have deliveries where I chat with people for a couple of minutes at a time. Old ladies ask me to send postcards when I tell them I’m going on vacation. Nobody that opens the door gets nervous in my presence, even though I am a 194cm tall man.
My neighbour is a supporter of the Toupéed one (I know because of the bumper stickers on his car. When we first met, he said “we should hang out sometime” (I have still not been hanging out with him).
And here’s a few really good ones (for a certain black gallow’s humour value of “good”): I am not staying home because I am afraid of what might happen to me, what people might shout at me, if I simply walk outside. I’ve never been fetishized because of my “exotic” looks. I have never had people wanting to touch my hair without my consent.
And do you know what will never happen to me? What I can guaran-damn-tee will never, ever, happen to me?
That someone will send me mail, or tag my house or my church (OK, I don’t go to church, but you know what I mean) with “Go home, Norsie!” Heck, I had to “invent” the word ‘Norsie” right now because nobody here has a word specifically designed to disparage me and tell me that I am somewhat less than human because of the country I come from. The worst they do is call me Swedish, and -that- is basically because they act like the stereotype of the American that doesn’t know the outside world. They’re poking fun at themselves as much as me.
And if I should get shot, and the cops catch my shooter alive, said murderer will not be taken to Burger King by them.
And I know for a fact that if I should ever sell cigarettes without licence, I will not in a million years be choked to death.
That is happening to people here, though. People who are actual Americans are less welcome in this country than I am. Because they’re not white like I am.
Now, I am not saying that I should be less welcome. I really appreciate the level of welcomeness. I am saying that the actual citizens of this country, the people whose parents and grandparents and greatgrandparents were born here should be getting my level of welcome, -and then some-.
But as I said, it’s mainly the small things. That pile up.
Let’s liken it to the infamous water drop torture. You know, the one where “all” they do is continuously dripping a drop of water on someone’s forehead. One drop is nothing. Nor is two drops. But keep it up for an hour, and suddenly it turns devastatingly cruel. But you have to have experienced it to really know how cruel it is (please don’t experience it). And if you have experienced it, you will also cringe when you see it happen to someone else -at the very first drop-. You don’t have to wait long to understand what the end result is going to be.
And those comments Sal is getting here are those small drops, commonly known as micro-aggression. One comment is, in itself, hardly anything. But anyone who’s ever been on the receiving end knows that it doesn’t end in that one comment. Another will come, and another, and another, and another… And all of a sudden it’s becoming completely unbearable. And that’s long before any actual violence starts.
So my final words are: Don’t really listen to me. I sort of know, but I do not actually -know- how it is to be waterdrop tortured, I can only infer it. Listen to those that have been, and who do know. Listen, and believe in them, rather than me. I have already taken up waaaaay too much space here.
Hei hei! I didn’t know we had a Nordmann in here. I’m not, I just took a class of the language in college.
Which is actually related because: African American Vernacular English, which isn’t what Sal speaks, but the kind that “messes up” be and is, is pretty much a slightly different language within the English family, more like Scottish. It’s not an accent, it has a different and consistent grammar that standard English speakers don’t understand. The fact that the two are almost mutually intelligible makes most Americans think that the differences are mistakes due to lack of education or intelligence, but language doesn’t actually work that way. (I mean, do dumb white people mess up language? There’s a trope that truly retarded people do, but that’s vanishingly rare.) The reason they consistently have these differences from standard English is because they mean something other than what you’d expect.
So let’s go for an example: there was a study where they got a bunch of kids right about kindergarten age, showed them an episode of Sesame Street, and asked them to describe what was happening. The white kids saw Cookie Monster, and they said “Cookie Monster is eating cookies!” The black kids said about half and half “Cookie Monster is eating cookies” and “Cookie Monster be eating cookies.” The white kids had no clue what that meant, but the black kids explained that the second version means something more like “Cookie Monster is eating cookies, like he always does.” That last bit is completely missed by standard English speakers, who just think it’s a mistake.
This sort of thing happens all the time. White people think that the differences between them and black people are mistakes, but they’re just a little extra color. (Pardon the pun.)
A little addendum: what I meant by it being related is that very few people here consider AAVE a separate language. No one takes classes on how to speak it, like Spanish or French or Norwegian. They don’t care. Learning a language is a form of admiration, that you care about this other culture. (which is why, in my opinion, American kids do so poorly in their mandatory language classes, just a pure lack of respect for the languages.)
Those were good examples above. I agree. I’ve said as much in other places, that one issue is that Blackness is defined by others as the inherent opposite of whiteness, when the reality is that the culture, etc is its own entity. White people “speak properly” while black people are “articulate”. Sal is “dressed like a dangerous person” while Amber being dressed like a superhero is more normal than it is completely absurd. Sal is angry because she’s up to no good, while Amber is angry because obviously let’s psychoanalyze her, she MUST have good reasons, and so on.
And it’s very true – here in US, people don’t respect other languages. It’s a sign of being “foreign” or “other”, and you want to be as American Pie as possible, so you don’t learn it. Or if you do, you are uppity (a European language) or you’re more useless than before (a language associated with cultures of color).
Maybe Americans would have more respect for other languages from places they will probably never visit, if people that come here from those places would respect our language.
Yes, its so terrible how people can just come here and not already speak English. How dare they.
I mean, they won’t even be able to understand me when I complain about how lazy they are and how their culture is inferior! Manners, people! You’d think that learning a second language as an adult was something that required a large investment of time and energy and required access to educational resources
Oh gods, “slang”. Another great example of “small drops” of racism in system. The fact that AAVE is not considered as real as “WASP English” (you know what I mean) is most definitely one of those things that should be slammed into the sun by now.
As if WASP English was just “naturally” the right way (and indeed, the -only- way), instead of the sum of a political and social culture that valued AAVE much, much less.
I think the part that is the most grating, the most sickening is that many of those actual citizens, who are being disparaged and regarded as less human, come from America. Their families have lived here just as long as other families, and their heritage is just as American (though of course, stained by the despicable abuses they have suffered.)
My family has only been here a few generations, and I don’t think I, or anyone else, would say I’m not an American. But people are degraded and mistreated to the absolute extreme because of a skin phenotype that no more connects them to their place of origin than anyone else who’s roots trace back here for centuries. Its a true shame that humans have come so far overall, but made so little progress in understanding and accepting each other.
On a lighter note though, as a Swede, I’m very thankful for the free ammo, you dirty Norsie. ;P
“I don’t know who you are, but if you as a single Swede want to be on a raft with five Norwegians you are a good man.”
Thor Heyerdahl to Bengt Danielsson.
Emperor – Well said. WELL said. Thanks so much for a really good illustration of how incredibly real racism is. As a person of Scandinavian persuasion who has lived in the US… Yes. Seconded everything you just said.
Thank you. Really. Your opinion matters -a lot- to me. You’ve inspired most of those words.
I was also a bit afraid to post this post (it’s been in my head a long time now), because… Well, because no matter what I did, the post would always end up centered on me; and when all is said and done, I am the last person that needs centered on in this discussion.
[deleted: A bunch of rambling that never got anywhere near coherent]
That is extremely well said, and reminds me a lot of how I slowly came to be aware of just how incredibly different life in this country is for people who aren’t able-bodied, white, heterosexual, cisgendered, neurotypical Christian men.
I feel like hearing stories like this during my own journey out of ignorance is something that made me much more willing to see the unpleasant realities, and actually consider, my own part in them. Its good for the privileged to see their peers taking that journey willingly, and to see how this kind of awareness is not innate, but something that has to be learned.
It’d be nice if the voices and stories of the underprivileged were enough, but if they were, the situation would probably not have gotten this way to begin with
To be fair, if you see a well known costumed superhero fighting anybody, you’re generally going to assume the costumed superhero is the good guy in this.
“*Looks* like a troublemaker” code language aside.
Of course, in real life, you don’t have “well known costumed superheroes*”.
If one does appear, I suspect most people’s reactions would depend largely on the media coverage. What we’ve seen of the media coverage of AG is pretty good.
Badly. Especially given she’s like, the underdog’s hero or whatever.
I said yesterday that I strongly feel that Blaine is at least somewhat racist (not yet based on any fact, nor just on ‘because he’s bad’ but on a combination of age, attitude, etc, and also maybe because I’m used to finding out people’s parents are racist irl).
With that taken into consideration, probably extra badly.
I wonder if the people claiming they don’t see the racism are lying or they’re just that dumb. I mean, I’m pretty much racism-blind and even *I* can see it. It’s literally spelled out in that third panel: “she looks like a trouble-maker.”
On another note, I’m torn on who gives more of a “eeeew” feeling in that sixth panel: the two guys who seem angry about it all (and, I assume, are crying out for a lynching) or the woman at the forefront who just seems so DELIGHTED to see two people she doesn’t know beat each other up in a situation she knows nothing about.
When Rapist Ryan is acting the LEAST objectionably in a group, you really hit a new low (note: I don’t mean that he IS the least objectionable, just that his actions at the moment are).
Also, congratulations, Leslie, this is the constituency that supports your dream girlfriend. Get the blinders off and move the fuck on.
Yeah, this is basically as clear an example of the kind of racism focused on in the Sal/Amber conflict.
Sal’s race is irrelevant to Amber’s hatred against her, but when it comes to her actions then it’s there in glittering neon. No matter how you slice it, when you get shit like Amber gleefully agreeing with Sal being hampered by her criminal record for the rest of her life, it’s there no matter what.
It’s why Amber having this clearly spelled out for her, and actively feeling horrified at what these people are saying in support of her, could be so significant. I don’t think it’s just a matter of “Amber relents because racism is bad”, it’s because she’s clearly seeing her dehumanization of Sal in this crowd.
That’s a very good point. Amber is seeing how she has been treating Sal this whole time is related to how the crowd thinks of her. Maybe this will finally get her to start seeing things from others’ perspectives.
Yup, this chain is why I’m really hopeful that this is a corner turning moment for Amazi-girl and that she’s seeing how her dehumanization and villainization of Sal fits into the real world and thus realizing that she needs to change that response (through long and difficult work).
I just cannot get on board with this terminology. How can an action be racist if the person performing it is not doing it for a racist reason? The action itself is neutral. It requires a racist thought–even a subconscious one–to call it a racist action. Actions have no brains or ability to do anything, so they can’t be racist in any other way.
AG’s actions look racist.
And I do think this is important. Look at all those people who seem to think that denying racism is “reasonable.” If they can rationalize away why an action can’t be racist, then we fail to convince them.
Better to use “looks racist” to get the idea across.
What JBento said, but to answer your more broad general question:
An action can be racist even if it is not intended to be racist because there are systems of racist oppression that a statement or action can fit into and which causes harm to a person of color.
So, like for instance, someone absent-mindedly playing with a black girl’s hair and not thinking about it or someone absent-mindedly assuming that majority-minority districts must have high crime and “broken families” or someone who thinks they are being race-neutral on their hiring practices but tending to only hire white people for skilled professions even when POC have the same qualifications and levels of experience.
Unconscious racism and bigotry is the bread and butter of a lot of things. So people can stumble into it without even realizing what they did was causing harm because the overall culture does not do a good job in educating the dominant groups in these systems of oppression and what they look like.
Instead, systems of oppression just look normal. And so racist actions can be underdone without racist intent simply because what is “normal” is actually rather racist.
This is exactly the problem with insisting on defining racism as hatred of another race, rather than as an artifact of living in a society steeped in in white supremacy.
A lot of racism is unconscious. The tendency to perceive Black people, especially women, as “angry” much faster than white people behaving in the same way is racism, and does not need to involve actively consciously hating Black people to be so. In fact that requirement would let the vast bulk of both personal and systemic racism go unchallenged.
This is precisely what was causing confusion for me in the comments for the previous strip. I was using a much more narrow definition of ”racism”.
I was counting unconscious bias when thinking of racism in the abstract, but when it came to the question of ”is Amber being racist?”, I only wanted to count the conscious or willfully ignorant/insensitive forms of racism. Even after seeing how some of the things she was doing actually WERE racist, I still didn’t want to day SHE was because somewhere along the line I had added a requirement that a person could only be A racist if they do racist things because they are a bad person.
Basically, if I wouldn’t call someone a bigot, I didn’t want to say they were racist, either.
Now I think I actually get it, but it took a couple intermediate steps to get there
People are not just dumb. Just remember that most of them are not from the united states, and do not regularly experience the ridiculous fixation on race that you guys have.
Race is a social construct. Just let it go away and stop caring about it.
From my personal experience, seeing cousins come back from the united states and talk about how they are “proud people of color”, when you have lived a fully normal life never caring about your “race” feels gut-wrenching. The very use of the word “race” is racist, and the division into “us vs them” when you’ve lived a life without ever having to care about that is utterly horrible and I would not want it to spread.
1) You can’t ignore race without also ignoring racism.
2) Just letting go of the idea of racial divisions (which admittedly, would be nice) won’t fix racism, unless you somehow get the racists to do this as well. And they won’t, because they’re racists.
3) Pride in one’s race / ethnicity is unfortunately very necessary to instill in the children of minorities in this country, in order to counteract all of the ways our culture will try to subtly (or not so subtly) shame them for it.
I agree that this is gut-wrenching.
4) Please don’t tell people to just “let [race] go away”, unless you’re talking to someone else living in this magical raceless paradise you come from. Pretending race isn’t an issue is a major reason why things are still as bad as they are here.
My experience is that a lot of Americans just lack perspective about how the ideas they take for granted are viewed in other parts of the world.
Race is a term that applies to dogs, using it about people is inherently dehumanizing. Using the term at all in many places outside of the US, including most of Europe, is a major cultural faux pas. Just using the term will tend to cause people to stare at you and think you are the kind of weirdo who believes in Eugenics and has pictures of Hitler in his attic.
Racism, also called racialism , any action, practice, or belief that reflects the racial worldview—the ideology that humans are divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called “races,” that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and traits of personality, intellect, morality, and other cultural behavioral features, and that some races are innately superior to others.”
In other words, most people outside the US would define you as racist _because you believe in the existence of races_ if you throw that term around too much. Makes you think, doesn’t it? Just because something is usual in your environment doesn’t mean it isn’t crazy from a more detached perspective.
Being proud of being a person of color makes about as much sense as being proud of being a ginger, or being proud of having that more solid kind of earwax instead of the more creamy kind. It is completely and utterly arbitrary.
If someone had and came back from a distant country telling you you should feel proud about your hair color because it is a major source of discrimination in the place he comes from, how would you feel?
Do you seriously think that this is only a problem in the US because we don’t understand what the word “racism” means? Are you really so arrogant that you think the only reason we still have these problems is because someone hasn’t explained to us that race shouldn’t matter?
If you think “race” is a term only used for dogs, you have not translated that word correctly. Since you’re using a British encyclopedia for your definition when we’re talking about America that seems extremely likely. American English and British English are distinct dialects and there are a lot of words that are used very differently. Though even in the UK, “breed” sounds more like the word you’re describing. THAT is definitely only used when referring to animals. If Europeans find it offensive to use “race”, someone should probably tell the BBC and all the European commenters here who have been using it without mentioning how offended they are even once.
I would LOVE to hear what your “experience” with racism in America actually IS, because its sounding more and more like you have experienced neither.
So AmaziGirl can’t bring herself to inflict the vengeance that Amber wants?
I’m honestly surprised she was able to see that Sal wasn’t really in the wrong here.
I wonder if Amber herself would be more inclined to fight.
Amazi-Girl is Amber’s outlet for violence. Amber herself seems to be terrified of her own capacity for it.
The way I’m seeing it is that Amber’s being given exactly what she wants, for her to take on Sal and have people hate and dehumanize her as much as she does, and she’s recognizing how inherently wrong all of it is.
Amber isn’t tagged in this strip, though, so doesn’t that mean it’s AmaziGirl who’s recognizing it’s inherently wrong?
I mean, it could be a mistake that Amber isn’t tagged here, or I guess her hesitation could be fueled by something other than “wrongness” (a sense of validation for attacking, I suppose? some obvious animosity on Sal’s part, so she can pretend to herself that it’s her civic duty compelling her to fight and not Amber’s desire for vengeance?).
Sometimes it’s hard to get into the minds of Amber and AmaziGirl. Perhaps it’s because, although they’ve significantly diverged/dissociated since the beginning of the strip, they’re still connected on a subconscious level.
The bit that makes it complicated to talk about is that there’s Amber the person and “Amber” the persona. “Amber” isn’t the real person any more than “Amazi-Girl” is.
So if I understand this correctly, “Amber” would still be referred to as an alter, even though she’s the original personality who Amazi-Girl will hopefully reintegrate into?
Amber the original personality hasn’t existed since Sal murdered her parents in a dark alley. The Amber persona isn’t the original just because she has the same name. She’s a neurotic hate-filled product of societal expectation of Blaine’s expectations.
Well, that’s not exactly how integration works. Integration isn’t some reverse birth where the spawned alter goes back into the original.
Rather it is a state where both alters are talking to each other, communicating their desires and working together to create a cohesive, relatively consistent whole rather than trying to stake out fiefdoms and fighting, hiding memories from each other, and/or wrestling each other for control.
Basically, when a split happens, it’s happened. It’s a lot like evolution where the “original” isn’t really worth caring about, because it’s a common ancestor and the personalities that now exist both came from that same common ancestor and thus have equal claim to that mantle.
And that’s also why it’s important in integration to get the alters talking and cooperating rather than trying to eliminate them back into the “original”, because those alters feel just as “original” and will fight being “eliminated” back into the other alter just because it shares the whole person’s name.
They’re not alters, though, are they? Amazi-girl and Amber aren’t literally different personalities co-existing in Amber’s head, they’re just two different ways in which Amber chooses to interact with the world. It’s not Jekyll and Hyde, it’s Batman and Bruce Wayne. Am I mistaken?
Nothing’s confirmed yet, but I feel that things are leaning towards Amber having DID, rather than it just being a matter of personas anymore.
The compartmentalizing of her identities; where Amazi-Girl can lose her dignity, Amber loses her sanity, and they both lose Danny, how Amber has PTSD over seeing Sal causing her to shift personas; including literally telling Danny that he was wrong to refer to her as Amber when she had shifted, how she defines certain actions as acceptable as long as it’s a specific alter; that it’s Amazi-Girl who’s dating Danny, but Amber can allow herself to be flexible about legal drinking age to help Billie to her room.
I feel that it’s gone too far for it just to be Amber wearing a mask at this point.
Nope, same person.
Sometimes I’m on a different computer and I’m too lazy to try to pull up upside down letters.
The point is that it looks the same upside down. Well, it’s not EXACTLY an ambigram, thanks to spacing, but the idea is that “a snow mouse” should be legible.
I think I started as “anonymous” and then I started trying to use upside down letters (such as using a schwa instead of an “a”), and eventually it somehow evolved into this.
I love Amber’s cognitive dissonance over this as it’s only when people are SUPPORTING HER does she realize the context of what she’s doing. Amazi-Girl is aware Sal is an innocent but Amber keeps trying to pick a fight.
Amazi-Girl has said that people complimenting her and cheering her name had her overjoyed, when she showed up in Danny’s dorm before the first time they banged. So I don’t think compliments are her kryptonite at all. There may be a distinction between when she’s in the dorm vs. on the hunt for Sal that I’m missing, though.
It’s not the compliments themselves. It’s the type of compliments and what they seem to say about her.
It’s not quite the same, but imagine you were feeling really great about this piece of art you made. And then you start getting compliments from a bunch of people. You feel good. Then you notice they all have on some sort of white power t-shirt. Doesn’t feel so good anymore!
I think it’d be more apt to say that some of them were making racist-toned compliments about your work and then you noticed they all were wearing various symbols of white power.
So the Amber persona is going to be upset at AG, and by extension herself, for not going after Sal when she had the chance.
Hopefully if AmaziGirl is beginning to see reason, Amber won’t be too far behind.
This breakdown’s going to be even more spectacularly catastrophic than I thought. Why does it surprise me Ryan’s at the rally. Of COURSE Ryan would be at the rally.
And yet still. Wow. Tumbling down tumbling down tumbling down.
How the fuck do you see racism here? Amber was caught in a mugging by Sal and has post traumatic stress disorder from that affair, so she is stalking her due to the grudge she holds against her.
A mob with no background knowledge of the situation saw the encounter and went “the local campus superhero is fighting that motorcycle hoodlum, let’s get her!”.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I don’t see how race even enters the equation. Are you Americans seriously that obsessed about race? The feeling I get is, the more you talk about it and split two groups into “us and them”, regardless of whether you want to help “them” or not, the more you perpetuate racism.
Why is Sal a hooodlum? Nobody there seems to know Sal, even by sight. If AG jumps on Ryan next strip, do you think people will be saying “go AG, take down that hoodlum?” No? Why? It’s still AG doing the jumping.
> A mob with no background knowledge of the situation saw the encounter and went “the local campus superhero is fighting that motorcycle hoodlum, let’s get her!”.
The motorcyclist is black, and the crowd is white and they’re nearly all right wing republicans supporting a very dodgy Palin-like demagogue.
How you cannot see that this is racism beggars all belief.
> The feeling I get is, the more you talk about it and split two groups into “us and them”, regardless of whether you want to help “them” or not, the more you perpetuate racism.
Amusingly, that parallels the GOP Southern Strategy. If one don’t mention racism, it doesn’t exist. Right? Give me a break.
> A mob with no background knowledge of the situation saw the encounter and went “the local campus superhero is fighting that motorcycle hoodlum, let’s get her!”.
How can a mob “with no background knowledge” know that Sal is (a) a motorcylist or (b) a hoodlum?
I’d also like to point out that the only authority figure in the whole shebang, i.e. Marcie, is on Sal’s side, so the “hoodlum” here is Amazi-Girl.
Let’s not kid ourselves here: none of those people are looking for justice or law enforcement. Mobs very rarely, if ever, are.
What those people want is violence. And in the pairing between “crazy violent woman in her pajamas” and “unknown black girl,” they’d much rather the black girl gets it.
Here’s the thing about Americans: yes, that subtle, insidious racism is *EVERYWHERE.* Everything from the way criminals are described on TV to how riots are described to politics to a million little things are altered by race. In a mostly-white college town, in a mob, of *course* the crowd is going to see the white person as the hero or victim and the dark person as an aggressor, no matter the facts or context.
First.
Let’s be real – having a mental illness does not excuse you from doing shitty things to others. I could have PTSD, but it doesn’t mean I can abuse others, or generally act like an asshole and have that be a-ok. Amber has beef against Sal, but guess what – Sal served her time, got out, Amber has no legal grounds at this point to still be fucking with her.
Then – See above comment. The fact that the crowd assumes Sal is a hoodlum, rather than a person being stalked or a person with genuine beef with AG is a sign of prejudice in and of itself. They’re not saying, “well, slow down. What’s going on here?” Read their comments. They’re making racial assumptions about Sal without knowing her at all. Sal’s not even dressed like a biker. She’s wearing pants, boots, and a sweatshirt. That’s basic college student attire.
Third point. Read some other comments here. Race enters the picture because, as I said before, the crowd automatically jumps to believe AG and eggs her on to beat Sal up because she must have done something wrong. AG stalking and harassing her is racialized because AG is white, and thus most people looking at it will assume Sal is in the wrong. No, it’s not reasonable for AG to beat people up because she wants to. Vigilantism is illegal. And if I saw someone in an actual damn makeshift costume and cape harassing someone else, I’d think it was a joke at best and move to get a closer understanding of it.
Finally. Talking about racism does not perpetuate it. Actually being racist perpetuates racism – discrimination in jobs, work, school etc.. Telling people to quit talking about their racial experiences, because it “divides people in the nation” (read: it makes you uncomfortable to think about it), perpetuates it. If I say, “racism exists in America”, this does not make me a racist.
It’s not an obsession. You literally can’t talk about the history of America without talking about race. One of the prime reasons the colonies were so ripe to start on their own was because they had a great amount of resources, AND they had the slave workforce for it – not paying your workers = more money for the bottom line.
I get that since this is a comic, we need to have a reasonable suspension of belief, but even then, I find it hard to imagine that the crowd’s first reaction would be “the local campus superhero is fighting that motorcycle hoodlum, let’s get her!” instead of “huh, looks like that superhero girl is picking a fight with that motorcycle girl.” All of the other times, when people see Amazi-Girl fight, they also see the “bad guy” doing something like assaulting a girl, vandalism, or kidnapping. No matter how much they trust Amazi-Girl, it’s rather hard to justify stalking a girl in the shadows whose only crime (at the moment) is standing around, chatting up her friend who’s at work.
While I remember how that feels, I can assure you that reality requires the exact same suspension of disbelief. Read through more of the other comments and you’ll find plenty of people who know from experience how realistic it is.
No. Just no. Both of them need to walk away together, sit down and talk this out in private. Yeah, there’d be yelling and possibly violence but they need to work this out between THEM, not in public.
Otherwise, Amber may snap and Sal could go to jail.
Yeah, I think they’re well due for that talk. Not here, not now, but soon. It’s like the third time they’ve faced each other, and Sal is still in the dark about what the problem is.
The person who runs around hitting people and implies it’s okay because she dresses like a fictional character & all those people are Bad anyway sure seems bothered by a crowd yelling “Yeah, hit that person we assume is Bad cos you’re dressed like a fictional character!” Welcome to the world you made, Amber
Reading the last few months about Amber have been pretty damn painful for me. It felt like all of her positive qualities were wiped out, that she was definitely always totally just her dad and that her struggles were about how she needed to not become the abuser she was always inherently doomed to become, and we see her verbally abuse Danny because of course she does and follow that up by trying to, or at least very much sounding like she’s trying to, manipulate Ethan and Dorothy against him.
It was particularly hard for me, because like the way people talk about how folks like Sal, Carla, and Dina are incredibly important to them, that’s what Amber was to me. Seeing Amber’s struggles with her anger, her shame for allowing herself to be affected by a lifetime of trauma and abuse, her breaking down in guilt whenever that anger inevitably bubbled over and caused her to lash out at her loved ones, it was real as fuck to me. Amber spoke to me in a way that no other character did, and to have that be brushed aside for a much more stereotyped narrative of abuse victims, well, it fucking sucked and it made me want to stop reading for a while. I don’t feel that way now about the comic, I had some stuff about Amber’s character generously explained to me in a way that helped me see where I could stand to see things differently and where I was allowing my own preconceived notions to interfere with what was actually happening, but it was still, ultimately, difficult, the same way so many people here talked about how Ruth’s fall into suicidal depression was hurting them.
Sufficed to say, seeing Amber relent from fighting Sal, not because she’s realized that Sal is super cool and she really wants to brush her hair, but because it’s the right thing to do, well it’s pretty damn great. It’s a return to who Amber really is. She’s not her dad. She’s not in the cycle of abuse. She’s not a violent racist thug. She’s a kid desperately trying to make up for being abused and mentally ill. Amber wants to do the right thing, and if that means she has to put aside her all-consuming hatred for someone she doesn’t even register as human because she’s not going to turn herself into a symbol for a pack of racist thugs, then so be it.
Hear hear! And yeah, I know what you mean about that. Like, I can count DID representation on maybe two hands if I stretch and for positive depictions, I could probably still count that if I’d been through an invigorating game of catch with a hand-grenade. So Amber/AG’s been the only thing to fit that niche.
So it’s really good to see her make these mistakes, but to also recognize these mistakes and hopefully be setting herself to being the awesome person she is rather than the awful person she’s convinced she has to become as if it was fated by destiny. And I’m really excited for where Amber/AG might be going next.
Yeah, this strip especially really gave me hope we’re starting Amber’s road to recovery.
No prompting. No “My God what I have done.” No scene where Sal frolics through fields of sunflowers spreading joy to all of God’s creatures while Amber fumes in the shadows. It’s a matter of Amber’s own morality conflicting with her need for vindication, and that morality pulls ahead with no hesitation. She’d have this reaction for anybody, but Sal especially, it’s all the more significant to see Amber try and deescalate things.
This scene is what Amber wanted. She has a crowd of people cheering at length about how Sal needs to be punished. It’s what Danny was supposed to do! Of course Sal is evil! How do you not see this?! Despite all that, she can’t do it. She might not recognize it yet, but she’s staring her own dehumanizing of Sal as a concept to overcome right in the face, and it scares the crap out of her.
That’s a very good observation. Amazi-girl got what she wanted, only to realize that it wasn’t so great after all. Or rather – just as you say – that it is WRONG.
And she recognized it, and she stepped away from the confrontation she so desperately wanted. In the end it was more important for her to do what is right than to be immune to criticism. And that is wonderful.
Yup, she got everything she thought she wanted and realized that was someone else’s dream. Someone she never actually wants to become. And her being able to see that and become flexible as the “golden” alter?
Yay! It’s a great sign that she can actually start defeating the Blaine in her head and her fears of becoming him.
I hadn’t really thought of the significance of this being Amazi-Girl.
Like, I think the two are still fairly integrated. They act with the same goals, they tend to share similar feelings on things, The key difference is that Amazi-Girl can function near Sal and also tends to act to defend Amber from perceived threats like Danny’s “betrayal.”
So Amazi-Girl, the always moral, just and inflexible alter, she’s the one who’s backing down because she’s horrified that her treatment of Sal is being reflected back to her by a different party.
I’m not saying its ok what Ambers doing, I’m saying that if charges are brought against her then stalking might not stick because what are the instances that could be used to prove the stalking?
The parking lot incident (involving underage drinking) and being stared at from behind Ambers own door, its probably not enough to get a charge of stalking
If it comes down to a fight (looking less likely now) then charges might be brought against Amber but then it could just as easily be brought against Sal as people (including Marcie) saw Sal attack Amber first and used threatening language against Amber
Yeah its not the whole story but its the only story a court would here which means its pretty good writing by the author
What is it about today’s comic that has so many people flying their asshole flags? She asked, as though the answer wasn’t “We put the black girl up against the white one.”
Of course the court would rule against Sal. She’s black. Her stalker is a white girl. white girls categorically don’t stalk, much less black girls. As omniscient viewers, we’re supposed to know better. And not ask motherfucking stupid questions. We know the law itself (If that actually matters to you, given that we have, yanno, ethics) is on Sal’s side. The court wouldn’t be, but that was a given.
The fact that they both live in the same building would definitely make it much harder to prove intent if Amber had only ever followed her around campus, but seems like they’d at least be able to bring it to court
Courts of law give just about the same number of fucks about people who are being stalked as it does about people who have been raped. Which is to say, nearly zero.
But in society, what Amber has been doing is stalking and if say Blaine had been doing it to her, she would be terrified and angry and demand a similar confrontation as Sal did.
1 PM this afternoon: Oh, did I read DoA last night? I think I may have forgotten to. I’ll just check in and see what I missed.
1:01 PM: Oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiii…!
“No, no, you don’t understand! She didn’t do anything wrong, she just happens to be my eternal nemesis. Please stop taking my side so I won’t feel bad about beating her up!”
Ryan! I’m not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. I’ve wanted him to be found, for something to be done about him, since it’s horrible (especially for Joyce, but for other ‘potential victims’) that he’s running around free, and Amazi-girl finding him was something I wanted to see.
but here it’s in the middle of something else big, and panel 4 and 5 made me very hopeful AG can realize how wrong the things she’s been doing is, and I’ve wanted that as well for a while now. so I really hope that Ryan appearing won’t distract from that realization and turning things around.
the best outcome would of course be taking down Ryan AND a turn-around and realizing mistakes. but that might be too much to hope for.
I’ll be checking for the next strip first thing in the morning.
The real fight is internal. Amber would stay and get her resolution with the nemesis. That trumps everything.
AG would chase the actual criminal as she promised Joyce she would. It is the blot on her record, the one who got away. Based on the tag I bet AG acts honorably here.
I’m on the side of things here that says they are cheering for AMAZI-GIRL, and not for violence against a black chick.
The one speech bubble that MIGHT be racially charged is “She looks like a trouble-maker”, and even THEN it’s a fact that everyone in the entire fucking comic has been able to pinpoint Sal as the “cool rebel loner type” from a single glance because THAT IS THE IMAGE SAL PROJECTS.
While there isn’t a doubt in my mind that some members of the crowd are racists, I don’t think the cheering for the fight is a racial issue. Amazi-Girl is a popular vigilante, and from the perspective of anyone who knows about her it’d be completely natural to assume that if she’s fighting someone, they are breaking the law.
If I was on YouTube right now, this is where I’d put the addendum: “But go ahead and call me a blind, privileged white heterosexual if you don’t want to talk reasonably.” I would hope that I don’t need that bit on here, though. I like to think that those who are fans of the same webcomics as me have the same ability to discuss controversial topics rationally.
Cheering for Amazi-Girl to beat on a black woman while assuming that the white vigilante is totally on top of things and that her target obviously did something to deserve it.
I think we’re about to see why it’s racist: when AG goes after Ryan, the crowd will react much differently. “Hey, why is she beating up that nice young man?”
Oh, no freaking doubt. Amber’s ignoring a Vicious Criminal Thug to attack a poor Christian Good Ol’ Boy who got a nasty scar from some cheap floozy who led him on.
She’ll go from “valiant hero defending our safe space” to “violent uncontrollable mentally ill terror” in a heartbeat.
99% of the people here are discussing rationally. It’s just that when people are being super defensive and accusing others of hyperbole and being irrational simply for bringing racism up, then you can’t have a rational discussion, because basically you’re not giving on anything at all. You’re being a wall. it’s a really fancy way of saying “well why do you people have to bring up race all the time?”. If race discussions make you uncomfortable, come out and say it -instead of twisting it so that anyone that disagrees with you is being irrational.
And that speech bubble, for example, WAS racist.
Sal is not wearing anything that unusual at all, especially for a college student. She’s wearing pants and boots and a sweater. I would not know, from looking at her, that she rides bikes, or is a loner, or anything like that. And she’s not in this situation because she brought it on herself- she’s in this situation because AG’s been stalking her and being shitty to her as usual, and this time it brought the attention of a racist crowd, at a conservative mostly white rally.
Yeah, should have stuck to making funny comments. Or stayed out of the comment section altogether.
Look at my comment VERY CLOSELY, read your own comment, and realize what an ass your being.
You DO realize its entirely possible to disagree with people with people without being completely dismissive of the people making opposing arguments?
Like, if you’d left out or reworded the first and last paragraphs of your original comment, you might actually have come across like someone interested in an actual discussion.
Realise what an ass -they- are being? Take a look in the mirror first. This paragraph in particular:
“If I was on YouTube right now, this is where I’d put the addendum: “But go ahead and call me a blind, privileged white heterosexual if you don’t want to talk reasonably.” I would hope that I don’t need that bit on here, though. I like to think that those who are fans of the same webcomics as me have the same ability to discuss controversial topics rationally.”
This paragraph is pre-emptively saying “I am right and rational, and there is no way anyone can disagree with me.” It’s there to have a cop-out when people point out where the racism is existing. It is there, in short, to be an ass.
If you really want to have a rational discussion, leave that sort of bullshit out altogether.
Alright, Norton, maybe I should have left that bit out. I can see where it would come across as potentially hostile or arrogant, but that was not my intention. It’s just the kind of bullshit that I always come across in similar discussions on YouTube- people saying I can’t even have a fucking opinion on these matters because I’m white. I wanted to preempt that here, but instead now I can’t have an opinion on these matters at ALL because I came across as a douchebag.
So let me clear this up: I know racism exists. I can see when it exists. I’m not fucking blind. I’m not one of the ones asking “Why people always pull race into it”. What I am saying is that in THIS PARTICULAR SITUATION, I am of the OPINION that racism is NOT THE KEY FACTOR in why the crowd is SIDING WITH THE CELEBRITY.
I’ll also clear up my “ass” comment: that was a reply to Mav. I’m not sure if I directly hit “reply” on his/her particular comment, but it was in response to him/her accusing me of accusing others of hyperbole and irrationality, when my original comment had nothing to do with other people’s already made arguments on the subject.
So, to reiterate, I mentioned my “YouTube addendum” because people have actually used that “argument” against me in the past when considering the fact that something may not be a race issue. Sorry for bringing it up at all.
If my wording offends you, oops. That’s how I type. If I have seemed like an ass, oops. Didn’t mean to. I want a rational discussion on this topic, and yet I have a hard time coming across as rational despite fitting that description.
I’m not sure if I think this is racially charged or not, but I guarantee you if they fought it would become a racially charged issue media-wise, considering where this is happening. I’m with you that the only comment that seems racist was the person saying, “she looks like a troublemaker” – which, btw, FUCK that guy what an ass. I feel like the people who recognize AG just see it as hero vs villain… BUT then I remembered we’re at a hardcore, Trump-esque Republican event annnnnd yeah, now I’m thinking this is a bit more racially charged than those speech bubbles indicate. And I 100% think if she goes after the rapist guy that the crowd is gonna turn on her for not going after Sal instead.
> “kidnapping with a shotgun” — This is a sore point of mine. Not a shotgun. Willis was being clever. I would cheerfully expound on this, but this comment section is already too long.
Okay, so Gash-face is gonna go down. great. fantastic. But PLEASE have SOMEBODY slap the crap outta amber. That psycho otaku needs to have one hell of a reality check before the book is out, or she will dissolve into a completely unlikeable character.
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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 ⋅ 1d
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 ⋅ 5h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
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WHAT A TWEEST!
…a rally full of misogynist racists, you don’t say!
The plot twist is that after this arc there won’t be any twists left.
It ALL returns.
Tomorrow we’ll find out Blaine is somewhere in the crowd as welld
And Toedad escaped from jail.
The League of Evil has formed.
Hey butts – I love your current Gravatar image. ^^
…with a bag containing the still-smoking remains of Becky’s closet
Why is the name Blaine associated with Evil Douchebag in the webcomic community?
First the Walkyverse, then Zombie Roomie…
Okay, that’s all I’ve got, but still.
Well actually, that’s already been said SmilingNid.
What a plot twist!
“I have no more ‘plot twists.’ No surprises. All you see here are the unused plot elements and red herrings YOU left behind, STRIPPED BARE.”
“Well, that’s a bit much.”
Who would have guessed that the “family values” crowd would just turn out to be a pack of bigots? It’s so out of character for them.
I know right!
I’m worried that it’s a bit more insidious than that. I mean, we know why he targeted Joyce, and so this seems less like “I support Desanto” and more like he’s found a target rich environment.
The more I look at his totally neutral expression, when everyone around him is either shouting or jeering or horrified or excited, the more creeped out I get.
It’s a nice eerie touch. Like the sound suddenly dropping out in a horror movie.
We can’t see it because the comic’s a static image, but the focus on Gashface must have some dolly zoom thrown in.
Oh, NO! That’s he! The would-be rapist Amazi-Girl let escape! http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/bat/
Okay, forget Sal. This is the bastard that needs to get taken down right now! Get him, Amazi-Girl!
It does put kind of a creepy twist on the jokes about both Leslie and Daisy hunting at the rally.
They’ve only started after Amazi-Girl and her shiny superhero reputation got into the ring with Sal. Furthermore, one of the first hecklers is black – I’d say that shows how this is not about race.
In other words, they’re trying to justify why a CLEARLY good person without any sort of mental issues what so ever like Amazi-Girl would be fighting Sal. Answer: Sal MUST have done SOMETHING bad… right? RIGHT?
This is why hero-worship and jumping on the side of someone without knowing ANY facts is a terrible, terrible idea. Sadly it is a distinctly human reaction to take sides based on prior affinity.
Well, I will take issue with one thing. Self-hatred is a thing, and it’s perfectly plausible for that first heckler to be a racist. “I’m one of the good ones, not like THAT thug.”
Anyone ever hear the story of the literally blind, dark-skinned white supremacist? Ideology has no color.
*Meant to add: It does, however, have parents.
You do know that was a Dave Chappelle skit right? I sometimes miss sarcasm so that may be a thing here too.
Are you talking about the Chapel show sketch???
That skit came to mind too. Though the character there was told he was white as a child.
We’ll see when AG goes after Ryan next strip. If the crowd is like “Different target? Ok. Get him!”, then it’s the hero worship that’s the problem here.
Otherwise, maybe there might be a racial component? Nah. I’m sure there’ll be some other excuse next time.
I’d say that Sal’s dad has already demonstrated why the “but a black person agrees with it” argument doesn’t mean that something isn’t racist.
And rapists.
Well, at least one rapist.
Attempted rapist, so far. We don’t know if he’s actually done anything to anyone else.
Not defending him, but with how quickly he flipped out and how impulsively he acted trying to force Joyce into the bathroom… that whole scene pretty much implied he was the kind of rapist who only just managed to work up the ‘courage’ to do more than just fantasize while watching violent porn. In essence… a ‘newbie’. Fledgling criminal, of whom their “first tries” are usually always laden with mistakes, and always tend to be a bit more violent because something doesn’t go according to plan and they get nervous/scared about being caught.
It hasn’t been all that long since he attacked Joyce, either… chances are he’s been laying low all of this time making up some story about how he was mugged by some horrible POC minority with a knife/broken bottle and that’s how he got his scar, waiting to see if any cops show up to ask him questions about an incident at a party, and saw that no one did (because it was never reported to anyone), so he assumes either his victim doesn’t remember or was too scared of him to do anything. His involvement here is either he’s 1) hunting for a new victim, 2) his father being a pastor was asked to speak or do a prayer and convinced/made him come help out, 3) given the possible “A black/brown possibly muslim or mexican thus TERRORIST criminal attacked me!” story he’s made up he’s going to be paraded around as an example of how minorities and/or immigrants are out of control and a threat to FWEEDUMZ, or 4) a combination of some or all the previous 3.
If Amazigirl tries to confront him for what he did, I don’t see it going well for her (or Sal by extension, since she’s already being pegged as a troublemaker because she’s black). The crowd will likely defend him once they realize that she’s not going to go after the person they automatically hate and are afraid of (Sal), and the cops will probably be called to deal with a “crazy person wearing a hero costume attacking people” and her soon to be associated “gang member protester thug” sidekick (again… Sal*). Chase will ensue… Sal likely to be arrested just for being black and at a Republican rally… If Amazigirl escapes the police will start really hunting her down for being associated with multiple incidents… Media outlets at the rally and with police contacts start running stories about a violent vigilante on the loose… University starts getting flack for said vigilante living on campus and performs a mandatory search on all dorms for anything indicating who it might be…
So much shit hitting so many fans right now.
* = Good lord, Sal really can’t catch a break
I would agree that that probably would have been his first rape where he used force, but since he had a plan and an expectation, i wouldn’t say it was his first bout with non-consensual sex A.K.A. rape.
I certainly did not expect that!
Holy Mother of bat-turns Amazi-Girl!
I just realized something, does she know what ryan looks like there is nothing there in the earlier comic pages to suggest she would actually recognizing him, I mean there’s no confirmation she saw his face.
How many duded with a huge, recent facial scar do you think there are in the same campus/neighbourhood?
If I recall Joyce gave her a brief description so she could chase after him. If nothing else, Amazi-girl should at least know the scar.
Maybe a few (misogynist racists, in response to Ana’s inB4everyone comment) … the rest are — so far — simply caught up in the mob response to the jumped-to conclusions of a few. If you didn’t mean to make a subtle comment on American populist politics, Willis, take credit for it anyway. At a guess, we’re going to see some DeSanto demagogic opportunism here. And it looks like AG’s realized the downside of an adoring crowd. This could be the turning point for Amazi-Amber.
Come on, let’s be real here. She’s standing in for trump. Notwithstanding that mob responses are, yanno, sort of based on baseline racism or sexism (or both! Or other isms)
Let’s be real here, I don’t think you realize just how old Robin’s candidacy is in real-time. She’s been at it for longer then Trump has.
Also, this response is based on Amazi-Girl’s reputation of being the good-guy(gal). It wouldn’t even make sense for it to be based on ‘baseline sexism’, since both are female and the crowd is on one of their side.
She’s the incumbent. She has previously made it clear she views her constituents as a bunch of hicks, but I still hope this incident will inspire her to make some changes and maybe even listen to Roz
She’s been the incumbent for a long time in real time. As such, she’s been a good general foil for the various prejudices common in the Republican electorate. This particular rally storyline goes back aways, but not before the trump campaign.
She showed up with a hat that read Make District Whatever Great Again, and has had jokes about her tiny hands, despite not actually having tiny hands. She’s been around longer than Trump. Her presentation, however, does not predate Trump. And then you have a crowd cheering on (becoming?) racist violence. It’s a trump rally. Let’s be real here.
…And good god. That’s how mob violence works. In this case, it’s not sexism, but you will see it in others.
Yeah, but the things Trump represents existed well before Trump announced his candidacy, and Robin is a stand-in for those.
I’m pretty sure the crowd goading Amazigirl to “kick her ass” in regards to Sal is a straight on criticism of Trump supporters attacking black people who showed up to their rallies. Remember that wannabe-Marine that jumped on and punched the black girl in the face because she was holding up a sign who was being escorted out? Or the guy who stood up as a black man was being escorted out and just straight up hit him and was never arrested? The white couple who tried to take away a black woman’s book because she was ignoring Trump’s speech?
Not subtle at all. This is a straight up left hook criticism to Republican supporters who automatically would assume that the black girl is here to cause problems and that the white one is not only innocent, but should brutalize the black girl just because.
Or it could be that the crowd has an affinity for Amazi-Girl as she is the local hero.
Personally, I’d wager you’re putting too much real-world politics into this situation and disregarding the in-comic context.
That sed, this will all be moot by tomorrow’s comic as she’ll likely go for the attempted rapist.
You… You really think Willis isn’t influenced by “real world issues”?
He is. He absolutely is. A lot of stuff he puts in the comic basically to say “this is a thing that happens in our world, this happens to real people.” I don’t think he’s likely to shy away from showing the most extreme political individuals in a way that affects his characters.
Personally, only Willis can say what exactly he was influenced by- but it definitely feels like this is a reflection of racism within certain extremist circles. Partly because I don’t think Amazi-girl IS a local hero, outside of the college itself- and partly because yes, this sort of ugliness happens, and it affects people, and that’s something that Willis tends to focus on.
It probably IS a crowd of misogynist racists. It is a political rally for a conservative politician and it is a Willis comic where they are all gauranteed to have all the bad traits found in real world conservatives.
But… I don’t see how misogyny has anything to do with it considering both combatants are women. Seriously, unless Amber suddenly grew a penis the last time she was on Slipshine that statement makes no sense at all.
Also.. is it really fair to assume the crowd is racist? Before they prove themselves so? Doesn’t that make one just as prejudiced as the real world people that crowd represents?
They haven’t quite proven themselves racist yet. So they took the white girl’s side? So what. Only one person made a comment that Sal ‘looks’ like a trouble maker. Sure.. that one probably meant her brown skin but we don’t actually know that. She does have kind of a bad ass look thing going on. Or.. maybe it’s a prude that doesn’t like exposed midrif… Don’t get me wrong, that one is probably racist but we don’t really know yet.
As to the rest assuming that Sal is a guilty party… she is fighting Amazi-Girl. Let me repeat that. SHE IS IN A FIGHT WITH AMAZI-GIRL. They don’t see Amazi-Girl as a regular person who might just have an ordinary disagreement with someone. They only know her as a quasi-super hero that fights CRIMINALS. And now she is fighting Sal. It’s a pretty obvious conclusion for them to jump to don’t you think?
By the way… if this story arc is the start of a message about racist, Trumpish conservatives that’s fine. That group certainly deserves to get knocked down a bunch. I just hope Willis plans to establish that that is what they are a bit better than this before doing so. White girl known as a super-hero, expected to be in right because she is a ‘super-hero’ not just because she is white vs brown girl that nobody knows is not a good way to establish racism.
Oh. That’s who the guy with the scar is… the rapist… I didn’t catch that. Ok.. certainly the presence of one evil person in the crowd has now been verified!
… so? Are we going to judge a crowd by picking out one person in it? You don’t honestly expect everyone in a large gathering to conform to one trait, do you? Because that’s just naive. Even if this was the ‘gathering money to cure cancer’ get-together, it would STILL have a few grade-A assholes in it. Not everyone goes to these things for the same reasons.
“it is a Willis comic where they are all gauranteed to have all the bad traits found in real world conservatives” I would be sorely disappointed if Willis would choose to write these people as caricatures instead of human beings – I’ve come to expect better of him. Even in religious gatherings he’s shown redeeming traits, so I could only hope he’d give the same courtesy to other groups he might or might not personally like.
I’ve been part of conservative political groups before (College Republicans, and a couple of others)…this isn’t a caricature.
You are correct. I was totally off base with that one.
I agree that it’s not quite fair to call racism as a cause yet. But, as you said, racism is highly likely in this crowd. It does appear to be an analog to some racist shit at Trump rallies.
In other words, it’s not as big a jump as calling Amazi-Girl racist.
I figure the use of unfiltered “bongo” is justification for the misogyny label
Well, it *is* Bloomington…by the time you’re that far south, you’re in the South.
Hurray! Title Drop! Nothing could ruin this night!
As CinemaSins would say,
Roll credits!
*ding*
ohshit
My thoughts exactly.
Well of course the TARDIS would agree with the other TARDIS.
Cue the Kill Bill soundtrack!
Hmm, I think I will: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTVHjYAix-g
GET HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh… So this is gonna be a thing again.
…yaaay?
‘Yaaay’ is definitely the opposite of this situation.
Are you sure? Hopefully Amazi-Girl will give that guy the justice he deserves.
Yeah, I thought that zoom in means Amazi-Girl is gonna drop it and chase the asshole, and then they will bond by kicking his GOD DAMN TEETH IN
Unfortunately, Amazi-girl is a bit bogged down in her present circumstances. She’d have trouble disengaging to go after Ryan.
Obviously, Sal is to blame for this. If she hadn’t grabbed her cap, she would have seen Ryan and been free to pursue and etc etc etc justify justify justify.
Not so sure about that, Amazi-girl is obsesed with Sal, if she didn’t literally grounded her, she wouldn’t have toticed
Oh sure. In your reality based system that might be true. Through the lens that filters Amazi-Girl’s world it’s all obviously Sal’s fault. Somehow.
Actually, I suspect that’s less true now than a couple minutes ago. Amber didn’t like what she sees from that crowd and maybe she sees herself reflected in it as well.
Did Sal ever see the rapist? You’d think that she’d have taken him down herself right then if she had. Kinda gives me the idea she doesn’t know what he looks like, other then having a huge scar on his face.
I don’t think Sal was at the party that night. I seem to recall Joyce and co. telling her what happened the next day.
No, Sal was the one who advised against going to the police because she claimed they’d be no help. Joyce and Billie went with Dorothy, Amazigirl and Sarah showed up later.
But yaaay backwards is still yaaay.
Maybe you could turn it upside down and get heeeh?
,,¿heeeh···,,
To be more specific.
BEAT HIS ASS!
Oh SUGAR HONEY ICED TEA!
My thoughts exactly!
Well I didn’t see that coming
Neither did I, but someone thought they saw him in the background, yesterday? Tualha thought they saw him, but most commenters thought otherwise, no tag after all. I think he just must have been behind that guy.
Oh my goodness, so much.
Shit
Once again, Amazi-Girl is confronted with the appearance of a racial bias in her actions. Perhaps she should think these things through before she does them?
To be fair, she’s not the one who initiated it.
This time.
Wellll, she was tailing Sal.
Yeah, she was kinda Zimmermanning, so… yeah.
Eugh, that asshole’s a cultural reference point now.
Unfortunately. It’s kinda like Brock Turner where he’s just the perfect distillation of a problem that’s been going on for too long because of how unrepentant and vile the perpetrator has been and how thoroughly justice failed to be served.
Not sure whether Brock Turner will end up having the same long-lasting cultural impact. Give it a couple of years.
He was the cause of a new change in California Law that will likely get colloquially named after him:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/30/491989477/california-lawmakers-approve-mandatory-sentencing-for-rape
So, unfortunately, I fear he’ll linger on in public consciousness. Especially since he seems to be pulling the tired trope of whining about how “hard done he was” and how the “accusation (that he was convicted of) ruined his life”.
I want to add that I really despise this came off as necessary. Mandatory Minimums do nobody any good directly, because as far as rehabilitation goes, we have a completely, utterly broken justice system that only produces recidivists. But the other option, of ignoring the problem, only reinforces that crimes against women do not matter, and you don’t have the political will to reform the entire system just from that. AGH.
Lailah: It may also very well backfire, in that fewer people will be judged guilty for rape, because there will be the subconcious (or even plain concious) thought among the jury members that “Well, if they are judged guilty, they are certain to do time now, so now I -really- have to be careful about proclaiming them guilty.”
Good intentions and reality. May they one day meet!
Not really. The minimum is lower than the prescribed number of years already. This just forces judges to place higher years.
Like, this isn’t /good/, but it doesn’t do much in this regard.
I dunno, the more that guy’s name becomes synonymous with “rapist”, the better I feel about hearing it.
But its awesome how this crowd amplified her Zimmermanning ,
back to Amber —and now she sees it unequivocally .
She sees shes leading a racist bullying mob against Sal.
I know! That’s so critically huge and I’m so hopeful to see Amber/AG see that and recognize that as she seems to be doing in Panels 4 and 5. I think this might be the turning point that leads her to having to deconstruct the archvillain myth once and for all.
She needs to learn that people can reform.
Then Amber needs to reform herself. Shes never even confronted the harm she caused attacking Sal.
A lot of the violence Amber unleashes for minor property crimes, is totally unjustified. Shes is practically the image of out of control , white cop.
Spotting Ryan in the crowd could only have added to that sense of “oh god I’m on their side of this”
That, or completely distracted her from / made her forget her sudden epiphany.
No, even if it distracted her from that, she already had the critical moment where she re-evaluated how she was treating Sal. Plus, what she’d be distracted with is a key instance where Amazi-Girl was trying to do something actually good, to contrast against her harassment of Sal.
Or conversely, a reminder another time when she’d tried to do good, and made things worse, by creating the distraction that allowed Ryan to escape. Which itself might either be seen as more evidence that Amazi-Girl isn’t as infallible as she’d believed, or as an actual failure which might actually be fixed, to compare against the perceived failure during the robbery that she’s been futily trying to fix
Zimmermaning would be more if she was judging Sal solely on racial bias. She’s targeting Sam base on things that she has done. Sal has actually broken the law. She actually took some one hostage so she was probably tried for a violate one and probably only didn’t get punished cause she’s a minor. Through that doesnt mean that Amber is a doing the right thing. She is techially fueling fire to a different issue, namely harassing someone despite them no longer being respondible.
Ex convicts tend to be treated poorly. And while that might sound stupid said by itself, most ex cons are people who were arrested for minor reasons such as owning weed or people who made legimately bad decisions who want to change.
These people can’t escape from their past and tend to be pressure into crime again not because they want to but because its the only option.
I’m glad Sal seemed to have avoided this, considering that she up at the same school as the rest of the cast and went to a boarding school rather then jail.
I just hope that the heist remains between Amber, Sal and the people Wally mentioned it to.
TLDR version: Amber isn’t Zimmermaning but is a till doing something wrong for different reasons.
The way she was treating Sal may have been motivated by the robbery, rather than racism, but how it colored Amber’s perception of Sal, and how it motivated her treatment of Sal was exactly as it would have been if it were.
Even the way she’s holding a grudge about something Sal has already atoned for, and will never be able to atone for in Amber’s eyes, was causing Amber to act exactly the same as it would have been if the color of Sal’s skin were the reason for it.
Except for the part where it’s not racist. And where it’s completely different from what Zimmerman did.
It’s not even like her stalking is particularly close to Zimmerman’s either – she’s following and harassing a particular individual over multiple days. He followed one kid for a few minutes before killing him. He called the cops. She didn’t. In fact, as far as stalking goes, she’s done much more than Z did. Other than the actual killing part, of course.
But her motivation is so completely different that the comparison just doesn’t work for me.
I was thinking in terms of the stalking a black kid looking for a single sign of wrongdoing to justify violent intervention and not really even needing the fig leaf of that because you’re convinced that this person is a wrong-doer simply because of their existence and willing to fuel paranoid delusions to justify and perpetuate that.
But yeah, point definitely taken on Zimmerman intending racism and racist enforcement of color composition of his gated community and general ill intention and that being different than AG.
She’s using the exact thought process Zimmermann did for his legal defense. The one he was exonerated for, because it was to a black person. In spite of the fact that bog-standard self defense in Florida, *and the law Zimmermann was using*, would have given it to Martin.
ZOMG TEH INTENTION is really not that big a deal here.
Yeah. She was stalking her, which in my opinion is initiating contact because they’ll feel sufficiently threatened.
To be fair, that’s less a racial bias on her part, more a “complete obsession with one particular person to the point of self destructing”
Still bad, just for different reasons
Oh I agree. I don’t think AG intended to be racist, just wasn’t paying attention to what archetype her obsession was fulfilling.
Yeah, not intending to exploit parts of the system that harms minorities doesn’t actually make it hurt less for those it harms.
Unfortunately, not trying to be overtly racist doesn’t stop you from perpetuating damaging stereotypes or promoting unjust power structures.
We actually don’t know there is no racial bias.
Until this moment , Amber never had to confront any of her own internalized implicit biases.
Even if Amber has a just original cause for being obsessed, it could be amplified by racial bias. Racism and prejudice isnt just “I hate X people” .
It can be “I like X people, except in all these circumstances , when I will treat them unequally”
This feeds into the Perfect Victim fallacy. and it implies there is perfect Criminal fallacy Bias
( if you dont think there is a ‘perfect Criminal Bias’ you have to explain why Brock Turner is now free, or Ethan Couch was initially released. )
Amber doesnt have to be a racist to have extra ( racial ) animus on Sal which was triggered by her Trauma. You have to be some kind of Buddha to prevent these biases from leaking in your head under extreme stress and trauma. Most people cant be bothered. But Amber sees it now.
I hope she cant unsee it.
Yes, we do. If there were racial bias, it would have been seen in all her other attacks. She has not in any way favored people of color in her attacks. Criminals are her acceptable targets.
Plus, well, Sal doesn’t look black. She changed the one feature that made her look black. She looks as white as Walky. Seeing as Amber didn’t even know her name (and was surprised she was at college at all), I would not be surprised if she doesn’t know she’s black (even assuming Sal identifies as black–I’m not even sure.)
I also don’t like the idea of assuming racial animus as a default position. I think it makes it innocuous. If all antagonistic actions between people of different races are assumed to have racial animus by default, then how do we call out hate crimes?
I think you need to show evidence of racial animus. Otherwise, we should assume it isn’t there.
Plus, well, Sal doesn’t look black.
Oh my fucking God, dude.
Maybe he has that same condition that Stephen Colbert has?
It is kind of established in world that it’s not immediately obvious what race Walky & Sal fall into – other than “not white” of course. That was actually our first clue to the screwed up racial dynamics of the Walkerton family – when Joyce asked and Walky said Sal was black and he was generically beige.
I feel your pain. She’s black. She identifies as black, her father is black. She’s been black this entire time. I’m not sure why people keep conveniently forgetting this. Even if she wasn’t – white supremacy affects people of all races.
You are mixing up explicit biases and overt prejudice ( which I am not assuming and even ruled out ) with implicit bias, which everyone has. Humans are filled with cognitive biases. If you want to pretend these dont exist , thats something delusional or science-denialism.
“If there were racial bias, it would have been seen in all her other attacks.”
NO. I’m talking about Ambers feelings and motivations. I’m not making accusations.
Implicit Bias doesnt work that way. It results in unequal outcomes due to statistics. Babies are even born with implicit bias. Implicit bias doesnt even mean racism. It refers to in-group or own-group favoritism, which most people have. Do you favor your own family over other people? Havemt you always? Do you favor people in your extended family?
Do you favor people who remind you of your extended family or where you are from? Its human.
“She has not in any way favored people of color in her attacks.”
(1) You dont know that.
(2) You dont know the background of whos committing crime in Indiana in the comic. You would have to compare those 2 stats.
(3) Shes in a mostly white area
(4) Since I’m talking about implicit Bias, not overt racial hatred , NO she doesn’t have to just target People of Color. Thats not how it works.
It can effect other measures, like how she treats criminals,or whether shes permanently stalks them , or tries to break her own personal code with them.
“Criminals are her acceptable targets.”
Is that so? Like beating up kids who are drinking Beer? How many white kids did Amazi-girl attack and threaten when they drank? Sal isnt a criminal.
“If all antagonistic actions between people of different races are assumed to have racial animus by default, then how do we call out hate crimes? ”
No you are saying something far more pernicious. No one is saying ALL antagonistic actions … Instead of saying all , you are saying you must assume None are possible. Then you saying you are too uncomfortable even to have a discussion on the subject of Internal Biases of a traumatized character in a cartoon.
And then you are saying all discussion of motivation which is the crux on which all criminology works, is off the table, unless someone is a full blown Klansman ( ? )
“then how do we call out hate crimes” ?
Implicit bias and Hate crimes are not the same thing! You have implicit Bias right now. But I don’t believe you hate anybody. I already said very clearly implicit bias is only operable in certain circumstances. If you are too afraid to talk about implicit bias ( which is as soft and weak a discussion as you can get ) how can you talk about Hate crimes ?
But in order to both you have to talk about motivation, and feelings and psychology. Things which exist inside peoples heads. You cant see hate. You can only see anger and violence. By your own words , you would Kill the discussion of hatecrimes too. How are you going to distinguish them?
One example might be to go get educated on the topic. You could… even read webcomics on the topic! I have no idea WHERE on the internet you might find such a wonderul gem…
Where could you possibly find a webcomic about overcoming implicit biases and cultural prejudices? Maybe there you will find someone in the comments, who can help you figure out this difference.
Who ever that person is, I dont envy her or him ( or them or they ) .
And God help the artist who writes that. Thats got to be the most thankless task all of webdom.
Best of luck to you .
But this is a webcomic. A literary form. We can speculate about implicit bias and whether it might show up in AG’s actions if we had statistical data on the races of criminals on the IU campus to compare to those that AG has attacked. But we don’t have that and more it doesn’t actually exist, because this is fiction and the only crimes that take place on the IU campus are those Willis chooses to take place. There is nothing except what’s shown in the comic (or in his occasional comments). If he doesn’t choose to show us Amber’s implicit bias, there’s no reason to think it’s there. It literally only exists if he wants it to.
Now, he’s been remarkably good at showing us subtle forms of racism (and sexism and homophobia). It’s quite possible there are subtle clues that I’ve missed, but you’ve got to make that case and make it using clues that show up in the actual comic not just in arguments that it would be possible.
And no, Amber’s hatred of Sal doesn’t count. She has real, personal reasons for that, unfair and screwed up though they might be.
Is there any chance that she was tailing Ryan and it isn’t a coincidence that he appears to us at this point?
None.
She’s been deliberately stalking Sal since at least last night and using it to justify remaining mad at her and viewing her as a supervillain trying to destroy her life at every level while trying to build up enough of a hate-on (or see an excuse to intervene on legal grounds) to justify violent intervention:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/two-2/
So yeah, the Ryan thing was incidental. Though I’m glad she’s getting shunted off this path before she did much more than stalk, harass, and terrify Sal (which none of those are good but it’s at least a different level of awful than intentional assault or worse).
This is going bad, and I need an out. Hey, a [I’m just gonna hide this word]!
Too wit that may be the first time someone’s been happy to see one?
Stalking someone and attempting to provoke a confrontation on a regular basis is about as close to initiating it as she can get without literally breaking the law. It’s also kind of unsettling that she knows this and exploits it.
Very unsettling.
Well, you -can- go further than simply -provoking- a confrontation without breaking the law, but basically.
*spends way too long reading up on Indiana’s stalking laws to see if Amazi-Girl’s actually remained this side of legal. …. you know, legal-style vigilante-ing*
Legally, I think it comes down to whether Amazi-Girl’s made any threat to Sal that could place her in reasonable fear of severe bodily injury and/or death. Given AG’s well-publicized habit of beating people into submission, most threats she makes to Sal could easily carry that implication… but IIRC their direct interactions (in which Sal would have recognized her as AG) have been very limited.
… also, Sal doesn’t give a crap about the legalese and wouldn’t press charges anyway because fudge the fuzz, so I spent way too much time looking that up.
“Sal doesn’t give a crap about the legalese and wouldn’t press charges anyway because fudge the fuzz,”
1: I have a feeling (but nothing more than a feeling, just so we’re clear on that) that the reason AG isn’t caught yet* is because the local cop department isn’t trying that hard. And this might be because they aren’t that unhappy with criminals getting roughed up a bit in general. Like, it’s what they wish they could be doing without getting caught or facing consequences. So they make token efforts but nothing too serious.
2: Plus, Sal very much doesn’t trust the police. I think we all know why, so I won’t say more about that.
*Of course, the most obvious reason she hasn’t been caught is because she’s needed in the story. But at the same time, Willis usually at least attempts to have some internal reasoning behind everything as well. Which I appreciate.
Yeah, entirely unsurprised that the law is on Sal’s side right up until she’s up against a jury. That’s a pretty normal conception of self defense.
(And yes, a ‘reasonable person’ would be afraid in her boots. You have someone who’s repeatedly threatened you and is now following you with intent unspecified)
Yeah, from Sal’s perspective this is far from funny and she’d be well within her rights to assume AG’s stalking would end with her getting killed (hence why I brought out the Zimmerman parallels).
And unfortunately, it’s been very clear for awhile now that self-defense laws simply do not cover black people who defend themselves from white people harassing, stalking, or attacking them. Hell, Zimmerman’s whole defense rested on the notion that Trayvon Martin may have tried to defend himself from an attack before Zimmerman killed him, thus making Zimmerman the one practicing self-defense.
And that knot of logic aside, what that means in practice is that even if black person is violently stalked, them defending themselves in even the slightest ways will be used to punish them for trying not to die.
Hell, Amazi-girl even fits in some of that logic with her whole “um… you technically hit me first (because you caught me stalking you and were exhausted by it and justifiably angry) so I now have an excuse to attack you” that she thought about going down for a minute (and which I’m so relieved she didn’t go through with).
Yes. It is literally the same argument. I suppose I should have thrown out neon signs yesterday, I genuinely should have thought to. I was only not entirely clear on whether Indianan law was on Sal’s side, because I don’t care that much about Indianan law (ethics was). Florida law was 100% on Martin’s side before the jury got involved too.
It’s a little more complicated. A good part of it is that self-defense laws tend to be on the side of the survivor, since they get to tell their story and the other guy doesn’t.
It’s quite possible that both were legally justified in self-defense. Martin having a reasonable fear due to pursuit and thus being justified in attacking Zimmerman. Since Zimmerman was not committing a felony, it’s also possible that by the end of the fight he had a reasonable fear for his life and thus was justified himself.
Of course, it’s also possible (and in my mind most likely) that Zimmerman was lying his ass off and things didn’t go down like that at all. If he had assaulted Martin then he was committing a felony and had no self-defense right.
Mostly, Florida’s self-defense laws suck.
Also, whatever the law said, it wasn’t on Martin’s side as soon as the police became involved – long before the actual trial. The crime scene was mishandled. Zimmerman wasn’t handled as a murder suspect right from the beginning.
SYG does not nominally carve an exemption out for being the aggressor, and without SYG he actually didn’t have a leg to stand on (SYG didn’t make it ‘reasonable person’, it made it ‘honest fear’. Except again, it does not carve an exemption out for being an aggressor, and stalking is a crime in florida that justifies a violent response; especially a non-lethal one)
And that’s the difference between the law and the justice system. The laws on the books actually, factually were on his side. The prosecutor’s office wasn’t, nor were… actually I can’t recall what the cops did, but being cops, I have a low initial guess.. But man alive, those prosecutors did not want to jail someone for shooting a black child dead. I actually forgot about them, thanks for the reminder.
I don’t really think it’s a racial bias… more of a “ACCORDING-TO-ME-YOU-RUINED-MY-LIFE” bias? (Not to say that Sal isn’t the victim of many social biases, but Amazi-Girl’s beef is more personal than that). Of course, the way her actions are being portrayed now will make it seem like she has a social bias, since no one else knows the deeper story here but her.
It is a racialized action (if she were to attack Sal), because she’d get away with it by virtue of the approval of the racist people in the crowd. Also remember that she’s repeatedly let Sal know exactly what the people are saying there, that Sal’s a troublemaker and will never amount to anything. AG doesn’t intend it that way, but she’s still backed by the racist society when those things come out of her mouth.
Yeah. It’s not that Amazi-Girl’s thing with Sal is motivated by race, but for a number of reasons, race keeps entering into it.
Yep. And she’s legit ultimately triggered by Sal. I get how she got here. It’s really unfortunate. I want Amber to get better. Maybe then it’d stop.
It’s not that Amazi-Girl is racially motivated to hate Sal, it’s that
1) People will be more inclined to side with Amazi-Girl and believe her narrative of her being the good guy and Sal the outright villain, so she has more freedom than if Sal was white.
2) Sal, with her past and the tendency of the justice system to overly punish African Americans, can’t do as much to retaliate as a white person could. If she punches back, they consider it assault. If she says Amazi-Girl tried to ambush her and her friends, they find out she was drinking. Anytime she tries to say it’s unfair, they point out that she already has a record (albeit juvenile) and use it to say that she must have been causing trouble.
While Amazi-Girl may not be inspired by racism, her race and Sal’s play a part in protecting her from the repercussions of her actions. How she can get away with stalking Sal, looking for an opening and provoking her to fight. How Sal can’t trust law enforcement enough to protect her from somebody who wants to hurt her and has to defend herself. How she can threaten Sal in a public space, in front of a crowd. without knowing anything wrong Sal’s done, and have the mob laud her as a hero, while declaring Sal a villain. If she had been doing this to a white person, somebody would have been calling her out on this long before.
All of this.
In some ways there’s parallels to Mary’s harassment of Ruth and Carla. It’s a person with social power getting away with something that should receive punishment because the victims can’t or won’t go to the authorities because of other factors.*
*Obviously the big caveat in this parallel is that Mary knew about the power imbalance and bigotry and fully put herself on board while AG has become horrified to learn what power imbalance and bigotry she was benefitting from.
Sal’s native American, not African American, but it’s much of a muchness in this context
No, she’s half black, half white. I’ve no idea where you’re getting native American from.
Even if she was it wouldn’t change anything, native Americans are actually worse off in the racism front
Is it as bad in the US as it is in Canada? Because it’s super fucking bad here.
All I can tell you is it’s really fucking bad here.
Let me put it this way: Our nation’s capital has a football team named for a racial slur against Native Americans, and most people aren’t that bothered by it.
Though I believe they lost their trademark on it. At least last I heard.
I like to think that the bulk of the crowdis siding with Amazi-girl because she’s a familiar name, an icon, someone they know from the newspaper as a hero, and not because of skintone… but a lot of them probably gravitate towards it unconsciously, and there are definitely a few bigots in the mix swaying the mob mentality.
It’s both. One spurious stimulus reinforces the other, especially in a mob environment which requires — and may be looking for — only the tiniest spark to get the fire burning. It doesn’t take much.
— certain parts of this very comment section are already beginning to illustrate that.
Mob mentality?
In fact, I believe this scene is setting up *PROOF* of your point 1):
I believe Amazigirl may very well switch gears and confront Ryan, at which point the crowd is going to suddenly *stop supporting her*
“Yeah! Kick her ass- Wait, now she’s beating up that white guy! GET HER!”
It’s the inherent downside of a riled up crowd. They can quickly turn on the person they are supporting if they feel denied or feel the person is going after the wrong target. See online harassment movements turning on women and POC in their movements who momentarily speak out about bigotry or who go after a target the harassment movement doesn’t feel fits their typical target.
Except that was really Blaine who did that! Not Sal. Blaine pushed her over the edge after Sal was caught.
Whoa. Didn’t think I’d prompt *that* much of a discussion…
You brought up the subject of racial bias. This is what happens
I guess. Yeesh, and all I was getting at was that Amber should think before she does things, because she keeps getting herself into scenarios that make her look bad…
Oooooooh shiiiiiit
oh god, oh jeez, did NOT see that one comingggg
Oh. Well.
Finally.
STAB HIM IN THE DICK
I DON’T CARE HOW JUST DO IT
please
pleeeeeeeease*
*note that butts does not condone actual dick-stabbings, imaginary dick-stabbings are a relatively harmless form of catharsis
Dick-stabbings are actually a great tactic if things have gone sufficiently pear-shaped to warrant lethal force. Lotta bloodflow down there.
Is this comment autobiographical?
Not this time.
You know what?
I am very, very, very glad for that.
Your screen names make this exchange so much better, just so you know.
The emperor of the internet must have compassion for their subjects. If not, they cannot call themselves emperor.
This. Leave Sal alone, go kick HIS ass.
No. It is clearly time for a team-up.
Has anyone given Sal a description of Ryan?
Pretty sure not beyond “he had a huge gash in his face last time we saw him”
*plays Rush’s “Distant Early Warning” on the hacked Muzak*
Red Alert! Red Alert!
When discussing Amber/Amazi-girl “The Enemy Within” might be a better choice. Or maybe “The Weapon.”
LTNS, Stephen, we missed you. You wouldn’t believe all the nuts who’ve been using your hacked Muzak system in your absence.
Holy crap, it’s Ryan! And he’s a supporter of Robin.
Who was it who thought they saw Ryan in the crowd yesterday? I am in awe.
I think the person who people thought was Ryan yesterday was actually not Ryan (I think they were talking about the guy in the white shirt, and Ryan’s wearing one of Robin’s blue campaign tees), but it is still oddly prescient.
Or subscribed to the Patreon…
Tualha was the one who thought they saw him, but they just saw someone that looked like him.
If you may allow me a bit of bragging, -I- said that one of the things that was different was that yesterday guy nose was not cut, unlike Ryan’s. It was sort of meant as a joke, because (as someone else pointed out), it might have healed enough by now to be unnoticeable.
But it wasn’t. So I was right.
But it could have still been too far away to see clearly.
Your declaration came to pass?
I don’t think AG normally does requests, Joyce was an exception.
I don’t think she normally gets requests. If only because she doesn’t hang around for them.
She might also feel responsible for catching him considering she inadvertently created the distraction that allowed him to escape the first time.
AG does feel responsible for Ryan’s escape, and that was only reinforced by the Whiteboard Dingdong incident.
So if Amazo attacks Ryan unprovoked… That could be bad.
On the other hand, the public seems to be on her side.
But if she lets Sal know that this was the jerk was that attacked Joyce, happy team up time go?
Sal does know about the thing, so if Amazi-girl tells her, then Sal would get it yeah
Yeah, there’s no way this ends well with the crowd
Because if she gives in to the crowd, then she’s just that racist vigilante they want her to be. If she turns away from everyone, she’s likely to get jeered. And if she goes after some random upstanding campaigner who’s a white guy instead of that “thug”, they’re gonna go apeshit on her.
Like, Amazi-girl would actually be able to sleep well tonight if the latter, but it’s gonna mean weathering some serious harassment and possibly a full-on attack by a “good samaritan”.
Yeah. If she attacks a black lady, she’s an upstanding hero protecting a crowd, but if she attacks a white dude, she’s a dangerous vigilante assaulting innocent bystanders. Hypocrisy like that makes me fucking sick.
Yeap. It’s the same shit that gets unarmed black children (referred to as men, almost supernaturally powerful beings) killed, while people keep referring to Ryan Lochte as a “boy who meant no harm/what’s the big deal” when he’s fucking 32 year old man and LIED ABOUT A CRIME and could have gotten a bunch of brown/black people arrested so he could get away with messing up a store and pissing on it. Epic levels of petty hypocrisy.
Wait, WHAT?
Ugh. Damn it, humanity…
Should we nuke the whole place and start over with intelligent cockroaches, you think?
[error 404, eloquence not found]
Here, have a story.
That was possibly the most optimistic story of humankind’s extinction I have ever read. It certainly was bittersweet.
Indeed.
Eh, people know her as a superhero. She was clearly keeping an eye on this person, knows who she is, and considers her a villain.
If she suddenly charges at a bystander she just spotted, that seems a lot more random.
I mean, sure, there’s obviously some racism present, but the situations aren’t really the same. Perceiving them differently isn’t necessarily a double standard.
I wanted to say something like, “Well, there’s a whole slew of mitigating circumstances because X Y Z” and then I realized that they all applied to Sal too and that, frankly yeah it’s really just people being racist to Sal.
Like, I try not to assume everybody’s racist in everything they do but jesus this is pretty damn racist.
Odds are that NOT everyone in that crowd’s a racist. I’d guess that AT LEAST 10%… likely a lot higher… are going along with the crowd fervor without the slightest regard to race.
…. of course, the crowd fervor is racist in its origin, but that doesn’t make all of the individuals swept up in it racist. Just another way that racism is really, really insidious. It’s an institution with a life of its own that’s bigger than the people who practice it.
… going along with the crowd fervor without the slightest idea what it’s about. FTFY.
That seems accurate to real life riled up mobs. I’m thinking of online harassment mobs where a good percentage of what is driving it is racial or sexual or transphobic/homophobic animus but there’s a small group of folks that just believe the made-up justifications for the harassment and have enough internal bias to believe that wholesale and ignore the amount of bigoted animus their fellow travelers are throwing out.
Honestly, that AG doesn’t let herself get swept into that and is starting to see in their approval a wake-up sign that she’s not on the right side is very very good.
Option 1: Gets what she wanted, at the price of her soul a one way ticket to Moral Rock Bottom. Not even that, she’ll be below sea level.
Option 2: Walking away stings her pride (and shakes her unwavering righteousness, which AG protects at all costs.
Option 3: Is the right thing, but means she won’t get revenge AND her pride is stung, because she loves and feeds on approval from others as a vigilante “superhero”.
I think we can rule out option 1. I think the incredible wrongness of how she’s been seeing / treating Sal is one of many things crashing down on her right now.
Can’t rule anything out. She’s not exactly operating with her sanity reserves at 100% right now.
Nope! I’m tripling down on my optimism tonight.
Amber’s gonna team up with Sal and Marcie and together they’re going to build a rocket to fire him into the sun goddamn sun
Later they will be subsumed into the hugsphere that engulfed Sarah earlier.
Carla can help
That hugsphere is going to engulf the planet if we aren’t careful.
As emperor of the internet, I hereby proclaim that we shall be 100% entirely careless about the prospect of a hugsphere engulfing the planet.
You heard your emperor. Make it so.
The hugs darkened the entire planet, engulfing all life and blocking out the sun, freezing the Earth as it moved in, it’s warmth hardly a worthy replacement.
Eat Arby’s.
Still worth it.
There’s always the option of yelling that the fucker with the scar tried to rape her friend.
Oh wait, he’s white. That wouldn’t work…
I am up for some Team Go! Ah, Kim Possible… Good times, good times.
Well, he’s a white man who looks innocent and is wearing a “De Santo” shirt so immediately teaming up with the racially diverse motorcycle girl to attack him is the most surefire way to turn the public against her.
Well, actually, there are more surefire ways to turn the public against her, but there’s not that many.
Hey, you rile up the angry racist sexist crowd who wants to see blood with the tools you got not the tools you wish you had.
AW DANG IT’S THAT GUY!!! GET ‘IM!!!
…Yeah, that figures.
Dramatic Twist music-twist sting, please?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOy6hqzfsAs
That’s close enough!
Welp.
Well that racism stuff in the comments yesterday certainly has come to be.
And hell, Ryan. Of course, the title.
That was unexpected. Probably the one thing Sal and Amazi-Girl can agree on.
We’re never going to see that Amazi-Sal fight, are we?
I hope it’s with Ryan though. Dude needs to get arrested for what he wanted to do.
Of course then AmaziGirl will lose an amount of her following, considering she attacked a nice preacher’s son unprovoked, while leaving that troublemaker to get away.
(I’m not saying she shouldn’t do it.)
I’m pretty sure he’s not actually a pastor’s son. It was just part of the lie he established to target (agh even writing it feels wrong) Joyce.
There was that one panel that sort of established it, where he was ‘getting a text from his mom’ while he was actually looking up more verses to use.
Well he said that “that part was actually true,” and while we have no reason to trust him, it doesn’t seem like at that point he would bother continue lying. I’ve known few total scumbags like this guy who were supposedly “right with god” so it doesn’t surprise me at all that his dad is a pastor. he probably got his nasty disgusting view of women from him (but maybe not, we don’t know)
I kind of figure, why wouldn’t it be true? He didn’t know Joyce until he gave her a bible quote, she could have just been uncomfortable at parties or whatever. Plus, it’s a lot easier to tell the truth about yourself. He didn’t really even need to lie, except for his intentions (even if she had his full name, that doesn’t get many victims anywhere).
Of course, even if he’s no preacher’s son, she attacked a nice conservative boy from a good family with baseless lies, so I doubt the reaction would be much better.
Not a chance, though. No evidence gathered, no police reports filed, the victim barely remembers anything and doesn’t want to prosecute, and all the witnesses were confused about what happened and it’s been a month at least since it went down.
He’s been seen at other parties. I doubt Joyce was his first victim; if he’s taken to court others might come forward.
Personally I’d rather he were buried than jailed and fed, but that’s a topic for another time and place.
Maybe not, it’s for the best and we all knew that.
“She looks like a troublemaker”
And I just started fucking crying.
To be fair, she’s wearing gloves. Indoors.
…Yeah, no, it’s a race thing.
My future child will be black/white mixed. I just read that dialogue and realised my kid is going to go through the same shit Sal is, and I won’t be able to do a damn thing about it.
Oh, you won’t have to worry about that. Emperor Trump will have deported all of the brown people to Mexico by then.
(In case it’s not clear, that’s not levity. That’s spite. It’s nearly two months before the election, and I’m fresh out of levity.)
I kinda no what you mean. I’m quite frankly horrified at what’s going on and deeply afraid. And despite my current Walky gravatar, I am actually white, and despite firmly voting against Trump, I still feel like I’m part of the problem and not doing enough to counter it. I just…I just feel a little sick.
Ditto, I can usually snark about the terror of any given election season, but this year has just been… no, no, no over and over again. I’m legitimately terrified by Trump and the neo-nazis he is leaving in his wake.
Same. People don’t take this shit seriously, and that’s exactly how history repeats itself. This man is telling us exactly who he is, and what he intends to do, and so many of us are out here not listening.
‘Oh he’s a joke”, “Oh he doesn’t mean that”, “I’m not going to vote, but I’m still sure he won’t get elected.” Like, you’re not *hearing* him. It affects everyone. Like I said to someone I know who wanted to abstain from voting: you may not be Latinx – do you *really* think this man and his ilk won’t come for you when they’re done with them? It could be a lot worse, I can think of a ton of examples in modern history where marginalized people in the US were worse off than they are now. This is why it’s so important to learn history beyond a BS high school text understanding.
Remember when we were making fun of Mitt Romney for how incredibly white he was? Or how that 47% thing was an actual PR problem for him?
Yeah… good times.
I actually called him the Smiler cause he reminded me of the villain of Transmetropolitan and even he didn’t terrify me half as much as Trump.
The toupéed one is sort of like if The Beast and The Smiler had a hate child* and left him to be raised by that asshole guy with the screen across one eye.
*They’re both incapable of love, so hate child it is.
I think the closest thing to Trump in that strip might be Heller.
Fanbase of angry racists, intentional pose of “simple-talking” and aggressive ignorance weaponized as hate.
It’s worth noting that Heller was also the figure that Spider Jerusalem was literally terrified of after attending his rally.
Oh gods, I had forgotten all about Heller. Yeah, Trump is Heller’s evil twin brother.
I was anticipating multiple panic attacks on election day. I really felt a lot better after the Democratic National convention.
I love Tim Kaine, and I loved the upbeat attitude at the DNC. And then I really loved how Trump took the bait and started losing badly.
We will probably somehow end up at war with Canada long before they’ve finished deporting everyone
And then ally ourselves with the Quebecoise on the grounds that they’re the “friendly resistance”. Things will go downhill from there.
Oh, and can I request that you do not refer to the Toupéed one with that title? He does -not- deserve it.
Also *hugs* and wishes for the best for your future kid.
Same.
I should probably lay low(er) for awhile.
damn.
*hugs* offered
It’s painful to even read.
Sympathy via light touching?
I was actually kinda hoping Ryan was off campus…or dead.
*non stop internal screaming of anger*
Of course he’s a Republican. How could he not be?
He could’ve been libertarian.
Or don’t-give-a-damn-about-politics-arian.
Assholes transcend and permeate the sad notion of political parties.
EAT HIS EYES PLEASE
WOULD YOU KINDLY INVERT HIS SPINE
IF YOU COULD I WOULD LOVE IT IF YOU’D SNAP HIS FUCKING NECK
please
I hear you are what you eat, so better to skip that first step.
Oh, and Joyce does nice work.
Cliche villain scars.
Burns cost extra.
Premium package performed with a spoon.
All he needs now is a goatee and voilà!
What would he do with a viola?
Play it sarcasticly for dramatic effect?
Turn it into gold and head down to Georgia?
That’s what I get for fiddling with spelling.
Yup. Definitely a cut above.
Well, the Amazi-Girl realizes how racist she looks/acts thing happened a lot sooner than expected. I was expecting at least until later in the evening or the next morning, and that was only if the event went this way.
So if she takes the chance to deliver justice on Ryan, what are the chances the crowd turns on her?
100%. The crowd doesn’t know what Ryan did, and it’s the slimmest of fucks that they’d give if they even gave one.
technically she doesn’t know what he did either. She only has a rough description of him.
There’s room for her to doubt that this is actually him (though the obviously fresh scar is pretty solid), but she knows what he did.
40%. The crowd (well the vocal and agitated part) wants excitement and blood. The details don’t matter much.
And her it comes. Sal is in serious deep shit, but not from Amazi-Girl at this point.
AG just had her fuse either defused or lit, depending on how she reacts to Ryan.
*looks at first panel*
I dunno why, but the fact that “Epic Beard Man Jr.” over there recognizes Amazi-Girl by name amuses me to no end.
Take him down, Amazi-girl.
“Hans… are we the baddies?”
yknow i was gonna make a comment about how im kinda glad joyce left a scar, but
it hasnt really been THAT long even, has it? that might not even be a permanent scar
(i do wonder what his explanation for it to other people is, though, cuz it is still huge even if it’s healing)
His explanation is probably what you might expect.
“I was at a party — no, I didn’t drink any alcohol, I swear! — and I went outside to get some fresh air, and I was jumped by a gang of thugs! For no reason! One cut my face with a bottle, and another slammed me with a baseball bat! Then I passed out, and they ran away. I thank God for protecting my life!”
It’s been close to a month so for it to have not even faded suggests that it’s a long-lasting scar, if not permanent.
Dun dun DUN!
Questing of Age
Danny regains consciousness and walks up to Joyce.
Danny: Thanks Joyce.
Joyce: It was nothing.
Danny: So, I have been resurrected.
Joyce: I guess so, but Riley died.
Danny: so it was at the cost of a little girl’s life?
Joyce: Yeah…
Danny: Well, we can’t have that.
With that Danny tosses himself into the pit.
Amber: DANNY!
Danny: I CALL FOR THE RESSURECTION OF RILEY DE SANTO!
Riley rises from the pit, and Roz grabs her.
Roz: Riley!
Amber: We failed to save Danny.
Dorothy: Damnit!
Joyce: Wait a sec.
Ethan walks up to the pit.
Ethan: I offer up my soul for Danny’s return.
Before anything can happen Walky steps up as well.
Walky: I also offer my soul.
Dorothy: As do I.
Roz: I feel obliged to.
Riley: I’ll do whatever my sister does.
Ruth: Fine.
Billie: C’mon Ruth!
Mike: I will enjoy hell.
Sal: Wonderbread…
Becky: sounds fun!
Dina: Just so long as her properly appreciates dinosaurs.
Joe: Only my sexiness can properly bring him back.
Jacob: Damn your ego is huge Joe.
Carla: Okay.
Marcie: (shrugs)
Malaya: It’s been fun.
Sarah: As long as Joyce is okay.
Amber: I owe him
Joyce: I’m doing it as well.
Mary: and I’m the final.
Danny begins to rise, again.
Danny: How did you do it?
Joyce: We each gave up a portion of our soul.
Danny: That was risky
The group walks out into the rising sun.
THE END.
Aaah… a mostly happy ending to soothe the awful shit that’s about to start on this page… this is a good.
Whatever dread being inhabits that infernal pit had best be very, very careful of those twenty portions.
But…NO! That can’t be the end! I NEED MORE!!
Before there was a quest, there was a tournament.
“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.”
I want RWBY even more now.
The DoA cast as RWBY teams? I don’t think most of them fit the rules of the setting, the Browns being the obvious exception, but coming up with bullshit combiweapons for them all would be fun.
Not sure if it’d be more or less dorky than making terrible OCs, but it’d be a laugh either way.
holy shit i read this and didn’t even recognize ryan and i was like ‘aaaahh i have chills this is so much’ and then i read the comments and i REALIZED and now i have chills again
I thought “when did Danny get a scar?”. Then I read the comments.
Oh shit.
Oh SHIT.
Oh shit… :c
DO THE RIGHT THING, BEAT RYAN INTO A PULP
ok but seriously, would she get in trouble for clocking Ryan? it has been mentioned he was a creepo at parties before but unfortunately there’s not a lot of real physical evidence the police could use (Joyce didn’t report her attack and I’m willing to bet his other victims did not either because reporting rape always sucks for the victim)
also: what is Ryan doing here? does he actually believe in family values and such? maybe the “son of a pastor” thing was not a lie?
Well, likeliest answer is either a) he’s a misogynist in addition to a rapist and so the “family values” platform appeals to him, or more likely b) he’s looking for a new victim.
and/or his family is attending that rally, or pressuring him to from a distance.
also, I wouldn’t see him as the type to be politically observent enough to know her platforms, but I do see him as the kind who would blindly vote for their party regardless (and hey they actually do back his misogyny so it works out for him)
Ooh, that’s a good shout and possible. Especially since it’s likely that that was the only true part of his spiel.
My money is on c) Both.
I don’t think he’s got much opportunity to roofie anyone here, and I don’t think it likely he’d vary his M.O. given how long he kept trying with Joyce rather than going to find an easier mark or a different way of doing it. So I’m going to go with B. Or maybe Marie’s option.
He did say “that part was true” when Joyce called him out immediately after glassing him, so I wouldn’t be surprised. And, unfortunately, Amazi-Girl would probably get in a bit of trouble if she went after him; he’s an unassuming white man at a Republican political rally, and no one besides Amazi-Girl knows just how much of a piece of shit he is. Here’s hoping that doesn’t stop her from trying anyway, though.
(Seriously, though, if he could join Blaine and Toedad in the “fuckfaces hospitalized by Amazi-Girl” club that would be great please I’m begging you Amazi-Girl BREAK HIS FUCKING EVERYTHING.)
Joyce put Ross in the hospital.
Well, punched him out.
Most of the damage was probably from the car crash he got his own fool self into, not to mention a decidedly unwilling Becky.
Didn’t he start to lose control of the car when Amazigirl threw down those tire poppers? I’d have to go back and check, but I’m pretty sure the car crash was like 60% due to Amazi-Girl’s actions during the confrontation.
Well yeah, but normally a blowout is fairly controllable – until you let go of the wheel and crawl half out the window to shoot someone!
Which still makes it Amazi-Girl’s fault, I guess. Cause she was on the roof.
If only she’d just let him drive off.
Hey, I didn’t say it was a bad thing. I fully support Amazi-Girl blowing out the tires of a homophobic, abusic fuckface’s car. (Now he gets a hospital trip, jail time, AND a wrecked car! Eat karmic retribution, Toedad!)
Anyways, the point I was trying to make was “Amazi-Girl has either directly put or helped put two dangerous, monstrous men (Blain and Ross) in the hopsital, and it would be appreciated it if she made it three for three.”
Basically I wanna see her kick Ryan’s ass.
Sal knows.
Maybe not legally (I mean, she’s already known for beating people up), but definitely with the crowd of conservatives, for attacking and making horrible false allegations about a godly white boy, plus letting some ‘troublemaker’ get away (“Amazi-Girl was probably just a trick so they wouldn’t see her partner stealing stuff” and similar theories would also be likely).
She never saw Ryan and only has a rough description of him.
Same with Sal.
I sense a plot inconsistency coming up.
True, but the fresh gash on the face is pretty distinctive. AG’s probably been looking for it, but hasn’t run across anyone with one yet. She can’t KNOW it’s him (like we do), but it’s not a lead she can pass up.
He fits the description so she should follow the lead in some manner. I was responding to someone suggesting she beat him to a pulp. I’m assuming she’s not so far gone for this to be reasonable response for just suspecting its him.
I was wondering when he was going to show up.
Not really a fan of Amber or Amazi-girl, but it’s incredibly relieving that they are kind of owning up to this being a personal vendetta instead of being bolstered by the crowd.
On the other hand…
Is this where Sal and Amazi-Girl team up once again to bring down a real villain?
Also, the grim look on Sal’s face with the “Yeah, she looks like a troublemaker.” just makes me sad.
The last sentence: She’s probably heard it a thousand times by now.
Yeah, that moment is straight up haunting. As you note, she’s likely heard it a thousand times before and I just feel deeply that face, because that’s the face that says, I’ve heard this so many times I can’t even feel it, but I’m still pissed off inside because this is still nonetheless genuinely upsetting.
And it’s a face that also reflects how those microaggressions hit. You grimace, you bear it out, because if you negatively react then you’ll just get yelled at for overreacting. And you’ve done that dance enough to know the script by heart.
It looks less grim and more resolute to me. Like ‘yeah, I knew this was how shit was going to go’
Grim acceptance. “yup. this is how it always goes.”
okay yes.
Sic him!
Well wasn’t expecting that, let’s see where priorities are.
Wow, it’s Ryan. I hope he rots in jail.
I said pretty much what I wanted to say about the racialized aspect of this yesterday. I stand by it- Sal is affected by this. AG hounding her and never explaining why looks racist, has racial undertones to it, and THIS is why – due to the kind of society we live in, people that look like AG will always get the benefit of the doubt. I doubt she’ll be able to explain it away without someone being hurt. I might comment on it later, though.
Poor Sal. It must be scary being in a room full of angry, conservative white people. I hope Marcie or someone can escort her outside before she gets into non-AG trouble for simply being black and angry and standing in front of a pissed off white person.
This.
Sal knows that in whatever narrative amazi-girl is spinning, she will be the villain. And people will buy it. Like they have every other time a white person targets her for whatever reason.
It’s like that old joke “You are found guilty.” “But why, there are no evidence.” “Batman punched you and tied you to a lamp post. Good enough for us.”
This is white privilege at is finest. Two person have a confrontation. The crowd takes notice and reacts… obviously the white girl is in the right and the black girl is in the wrong. We don’t want her kind here anyway.
Neatly forshadowed here
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/store-bought/
So I’m SO GLAD that Amazigirl actually stops and realizes all this and tries to de-escalate in the fourth and fifth panel. That is the single most healing thing she has done in ages.
So much this! And yeah, she was uncomfortable to begin with being surrounded by “family values” types and that’s not improved now that they are all actively against her and for her being beaten up simply because she blew up at the woman who’s been stalking her for at least two nights straight.
And I’m really heartened by… huh, I wanted to check the tags to see if Amber broke through but neither Amber or AG are tagged… that’s odd… anyways, by one of those alters finally noticing the racial implications of her paranoid obsessions surrounding Sal and recognizing what she was starting to let herself become because of it.
Nothing sobers one up more than the approval of the worst scum on the planet.
I’m assuming that’s purposeful ambiguousness? And that he might tag it later, as in after this scene is over
The fact that neither Amber or AG are tagged makes me think that it’s probably because at this point, she doesn’t know who she is anymore. She doesn’t know who’s in control. She’s slowly breaking down.
Willis has been very clever with tags so there’s no way this wasn’t intentional.
I completely agree except for the “slowly” part. This feels more like sudden catastrophic implosion to me.
Yeah I was thinking slowly in terms of how she’s been progressively falling to pieces over the past few days (in-comic time). But yeah right now it’s reaching critical levels.
Well now AG is tagged =D
AG?
Yes! That’s the best possible option. It’s AG herself realizing the folly of her path and what she’s becoming. That means AG might be opening herself to letting go of the central fallacy she’s been using to define herself for so long.
I’m not sure she’s caught on to the race aspect of it yet.
If she’s thought about why the crowd’s taken her side at all yet, she may just be assuming it’s because of her sterling reputation as a superheroine. Like “When I attack people, usually they’ve committed some crime. They see me attacking Sal and naturally assume she’s a criminal” sort of thing.
From her shocked expression in panel 4 and the way she’s trying to discourage the crowd in panel 5, and looking a bit scared by how they’re reacting, I’d say she definitely sees it now.
If nothing else, the cry of the word that will be censored into a percussion instrument seems to have woken her up to the level of vitriol and bigotry there is in the people backing her.
Especially as sexism is something she’s faced way too many times from her father and she’s likely heard him snarl that term far too many times for comfort.
AG is tagged as of 6:40AM CST, so I suspect there was a mistake or delay in tagging.
And there’s Ryan, marked forever as the villain he really is. Nice work on that one, Joyce.
It’s a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.
I’d be a lot happier
Not unlike the scar Sal has on her hand, come to think of it.
I’m not sure what to make of that parallel
I suspect that may be intentional – Sal’s scar is a reminder of the bad decisions she’s made, and her (so far unspoken but heavily implied) determination not to repeat them, but I doubt Ryan will ever own up to being wrong when he tried to rape Joyce and other women.
But let’s remember that Sal was a young teenager when she tried to rob a convenience store, and didn’t actually hurt anybody. Ryan is an adult who drugged Joyce and was planning much worse.
She took Ethan hostage and threatened to stab him in the neck.
That constitutes hurting somebody!
It’s interesting that Sal can cover it up, but nonetheless is still followed by her past and so forth; meanwhile Ryan can’t hide his scar at all, but is unlikely to ever face major or ongoing consequences.
I dunno, I think it just makes him even scar-ier.
Hey! Cut that out!
You wound me, sir!
These sharp puns pain me.
As Cinema Sins would say: Roll Credits!
wait he still goes here
Should I drop out and wait till the heat dies down… I’m sure all this will blow over, time to find another innocent sorority Girl to date rape.
Anybody else think that lady in the sixth panel looks like Sydney Yus with tiny eyes?
Aw, you beat me to it!
Unfortunately, this.
this.
If she doesn’t start to talk about destroying a toy store, then it’s not Sydney.
This isn’t Shortpacked!.
In Dumbiverse, Sydney destroys pizzerias.
DESTROY GALASSO’S PIZZA (and subs)!!!!
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
“Villains!! The VERY WEEK of the grand opening of my ‘Aw Yus Sammiges’ restaraunt, Galazzo’s DARES to add SUBS to their menu?? THEY SHALL PAY WITH THEIR LIVES!!”
I’d read it.
Build’s all wrong.
Me: *whimpers on floor* “Not good, not good, not good…”
Amazi-girl: “Um…. please stop projecting racism through me… oh God, I suddenly see things in a new light here.”
Me *carefully peaks up*
Me and Amazi-girl: “RYAN!!!! GET THAT FUCKER!!!”
To be fair, she’s kinda a branded hero.
On the other hand, I sincerely wonder how much of Robin’s voter base are… nice people.
On the third mutant hand, Hey look. It’s a douchebag.
Not a third robot hand? With a pie for Ryan’s face?
A+ reference : D
A+? But I didn’t even reach beyond the creator of this comic! I can do better, I swear!
Third hand? You sure you’re not from a planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse?
So long as the pie is filled with acid-spitting beetles.
They’re the family values crowd, they’re not nice people or at least not nice if you aren’t exactly like them.
Mr. Random – you should read ‘The Gripping Hand’, by Larry Niven. If nothing else, it will teach you a great new metaphor.
On the one hand, Amazi-Girl, a ‘hero’ with a dangerous obsession.
On the other hand, Sal, a ‘villain’ who’s self-aware, and working hard to change.
On the gripping hand, Ryan, a monster they can both agree to hate.
Or better yet, read ‘The Mote in God’s Eye’, which is the original source and IMO better than the sequel.
fucking republicans
Let’s not make this about politics. Can we settle on “fucking racists”?
There’s a difference?
Yes.
To be fair, there’s a significant overlap.
A LONG time ago I said that I hope Ryan never resurfaces because he has already fulfilled his role in Joyce’s story. What’s left for her is to defeat the internal Ryan. The external is unimportant.
But I neglected the importance of him for AMAZI-GIRL. He is not finished with HER story. He is the one who got away. He is one of the biggest arguments against her actually being a hero.
“He is one of the biggest arguments against her actually being a hero.”
If you are talking about how she perceives herself, I fully agree. That she let him get away has been heavy on her mind most days, I bet. Every time she sees Joyce she is reminded of her failure to capture Cutnose. And AG is not allowed to do failures.
But from my perspective, it’s not really that one mistake that made her not the hero. She certainly did not mean to let him escape, she just was not aware of how her first public appearance (as in, showing up in a crowd) would go. Newbie mistake, so to speak. It’s something the hero comics never really teach you*. So this isn’t even on my top ten list of arguments of why she’s not actually a hero.
*I am fully aware of the irony in this statement.
Yes, I’m talking about her own narrative. My own definition of hero comes a long distance away from “masked vigilante”.
But so much of Amber/Amazi-girl’s story is about her own narrative and that’s why it’s so interesting. Who is she? What is her worth? What is the difference between Amber and Amazi-girl.
Amazi-girl IS a hero. That is not just an ideal, that is part of the definition. If she is not a hero she is not Amazi-girl. If she is not Amazi-girl she is just Amber in a mask. And Amber is weak, bad, destructive (FUDGE YOU, BLAINE!!!). Amber has to be contained not to cause damage. That’s why she HAS to be Amazi-girl, and that is why she has to be a hero.
And a hero catches criminals, no matter the cost. That’s why she pushed Mike to the floor over some dick-picks. That’s why she nearly died fighting ToeDad. That’s why she is spending her nights and days assaulting people with less and less provocation.
But a hero has to be RIGHT, morally speaking. That’s why she managed to stop herself from fighting Sal here, and that’s why Ryan getting away was not just a bad day at work – it is a threat against her entire identity. A HERO doesn’t let the bad guy get away. That’s just the second act, right? She will catch him in the end, right?
Amazi-girl is immune to criticism.
Re-reading your first comment, it’s actually pretty damn clear you’re referring to AG’s narrative, not your perspective. I got hung up on that one sentence without context. Really silly of me, and not silly in a good way either.
As such, all there is to say that your take on the situation is pretty much how I feel too. Damn you for being spot on!
No worries, your majesty
Going off on tangents is what we do around here.
Well holy shit.
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh omg Ryan whhhyyyyyyy I was not expecting thisssss
Top 10 strip?
Top 10 strip.
Even if they do team up to take out Ryan, will the ‘family values’ group let them?
Sal’s black, and Ryan is a white preacher’s son committing purely heterosexual rape after being led on by loose party girls. They kind of deserved it anyway, and his poor face. Ruining his prospects like that should be objectionable.
Man, I need to get out of this family value suits. It stinks.
Nonono, you’re overthinking it. NO ONE is going to get to tell their side of the story, not Ryan, not Sal, not AG. It’s just going to be a royal rumble before anyone gets four coherent words out.
And the real problem is that Sal’s already a designated target.
*vomiting intensifies*
Better question: can the mob stop them?
There’s no question of beating a mob that size in unarmed combat, but downing Ryan and fleeing should be doable, if EXTREMELY risky.
It’s a good thing Ryan has that scar now because he’s so generic looking that no one would ever recognize him otherwise.
Also thank you for your thoughtful and meaningful input, racist onlooker in panel 3. /sarcasm
OHSHITWHAT
Amazi-Girl, Amber, darlings, you’ve encountered a REAL GODDAMN VILLAIN and your fake!Joker is in front of you and it’s been made clear she’s not the one you should be focusing on, WHAT DO YOU DO?!
Also, huh, Amazi-Girl isn’t in the tags.
Neither is Amber.
So who is this?
I think she’s trying to figure that out herself right now
Which means either a) 3rd alter or b) Amber is fighting back and neither is fully in control right now.
I may be wrong on this statement, I’m by no means even close to understanding alters, but isn’t it actually common in real life for people who have one alter begin to develop others as time goes on? I do not mean this to be offensive in nature, I simply want to be better informed.
Yeah, alters can either dribble in over time or make themselves known over time or like in my case, I can have sudden increases in alters during periods of exceptional abuse and emotional turmoil.
It can really suck, especially when you’ve been integrated for awhile and now have to integrate in the new guys just because you’ve been through hell and it’s fucked with your head a bit.
Amber/AG has occasionally slipped into a black speech bubble, from time to time, when she’s REALLY angry. A part of me wonders if this isn’t a third persona, or the start of one.
Other people have done that too though. I think that it was just to indicate the amount of venom in her voice at that moment. Unless Venom is the new alter, I think that’s all it was
Sal, duh.
Amazi-Girl is in the tags now, so I’m guessing it was an oversight.
I don’t agree that Sal isn’t the one she should be focusing on. She got a mob primed on her, so she needs to get her out. Pity about letting Ryan run again, though.
I’ll be damned.
Kill the rapist! Rip out it’s life! /Kohr-Ah
Nice that Amber’s still got the presence of mind to remember that Sal hasn’t really done anything here.
Not sure where she can go from here. Spotting Ryan is of course an important step 1, but it’s not like she’d accomplish anything by just turning around and attacking him here and now. This whole thing has become a public spectacle now, so she’s gonna have a hard time discretely following him home.
She’s gonna feel real bad if she loses this opportunity because she blew her wad chasing some hair-brained vendetta against a reformed criminal.
Well, she would accomplish inflicting pain upon the wicked, but as badly as it would poison her image…
Yeah, I don’t think she’s ready to be “the hero they deserve” yet, psychologically or logistically.
YESSSS
in real life, I made a fist in satisfaction and growled
and then looked around me and melted back into my usual demure self
but in my heart I’m still very very excited
Clarification: Triumph began in panel 5 when Amazi-Girl understands the racial context of what’s happening.
Okay that smile in the top right is kind of terrifying and hilarious in this context
So, stick with me for a sec….
SAL AMAZI GIRL TEAM UP AND BEAT UP THAT HORRIBLE PERSON!!!
and learn an important lesson about friendship in the process
(well it’s actually a lesson about not viewing a person as a personal symbol for something and bein’ abusive to them for it butyouknowwhatImean)
YES
WORK TOGETHER TO TURN HIS FEMURS INTO HIS FUCKING RIBCAGE
im sorry im generating enough white hot rage to go back 19 years and stab someone in the womb
rage-powered tardis? rage-powered tardis!
read youtube comments and gain infinite power!
As Gangler points out a few posts above… beating him up won’t accomplish much.
I like Umbrella’s idea though. Much more permanent solution.
And then eat some fruit filled pies?
I am horrified to see that guy’s face again but ALSO I love where this strip went because FINALLY this could be a wake-up call for Amazigirl to realize how badly she’s been messing up.
Let’s hope Ryan doesn’t draw on Sal.
Wait, why am I assuming people are armed here?
Oh, right, it’s probably a rally to show their support of ToeDad w/ a side order of DeSanto.
There aren’t any toyshop ninjas around, but one should never presume a person does not have weapons at their disposal.
A human is never unarmed so long as he has his braincase.
Oh HELL no that’s actually him, isn’t it?
For a minute there I though Joyce’s hallucination thing had spread
thats what i thought when this was on patreon
Worse is, I’d almost forgotten about him. I thought that was Danny in the last panel for a moment, and was wondering what’s wrong with Danny’s face…
will he finally be arrested?? I SURE HOPE SO
So… is there a reason neither Amber nor Amazigirl are in the tags?
She’s not so different from those people around her. I hope she’s realizing that.
Huh. I’m beginning to wonder if Amazi-Girl is hallucinating. Remember, Beef is one of the first guys she attacked in this comic, and now suddenly he just appears when his name is mentioned? And then Ryan suddenly appears out of the blue, here and now?
“you wanna know how i got these scars?”
Get that raping motherfucker, Amazigirl!!!
Wait a second…how would she recognize him? She didn’t actually see him that night. She showed up, everyone looked at her, he got away in the distraction and she only got a vague description (White, large nose, gash on the face, and what he was wearing, the last part is obviously not applicable now). I just have some trouble believing that in this situation while she’s distracted by stuff she’d instantly recognize someone she never saw in person.
Then again this is a comic strip.
If I recall she promised Joyce she’d be on the lookout for somebody with a facial scar.
Even if she hasn’t confirmed this is the guy yet it’s still her first lead, and she’s probably internally weighing whether she’d rather be pursuing that to make good on her promise instead of whatever she thinks she’s doing with Sal here.
Look at her face! There is enough of the justice-seeking aspect of Amazi-Girl operating that she will not be swayed by the bad sentiments of the crowd. She scans the crowd as her quick mind works on avoiding injustice to Sal. One member of the crowd closely matches the description of Joyce’s assailant. Amazi-Girl has a promise to the former Whiteboard Ding-dong Bandit to fulfill. Now she has a problem she can focus on without interference from Amber’s rage. We now pause this comment for 24 hours while we wait to see what she comes up with!
glad I’m not the only one that remembers she never saw him.
It’s worth noting that Amber was at the party, and might well have seen Ryan (they’re in a strip together, but not obviously in the same room).
Amazi-girl, of course, has to display ignorance when she asks about the attacker.
Wait, why was she there? Just scoping out underage drinkers? Is this just a background cameo?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/badfriends/
Nevermind, found. Weird.
That’s odd, considering that she was seen making her way there as AG and also fighting people in the background as AG. I wonder why she switched to civvies and back.
I probably posted this link last time this happened, but meh, it still works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBTT3VPriV8
It would be exceptionally cool if Amber signed to Sal & Marcie that she spotted Ryan in the crowd and needs their help. For Joyce.
That scar looks pretty well healed, more than one would expect for only a few weeks. How much time has passed in continuity between the Fateful Frat Party and now? I this a case of mistaken identity, and Amazi-girl is about to pummel an innocent?
About 5 weeks I think.
The party was Friday night of Week One. It’s currently either late Sunday night or early Monday morning of Week Six. (Not sure if we’ve crossed the midnight line yet.) So roughly a month.
Ryan is tagged.
Ryan has been tagged when Joyce is hallucinating.
dammit those are both the same link
maybe those guys really were all ryan. joyce finally saw through their illusion
Oh my god cream him. Just give him like a freaking Superman punch.
Amazi-Girl now has to choose between her obsession and letting a rapist escape justice.
Choose wisely.
Comic Reactions:
Um… too many. I have too too many.
Panel 1: There was a person who mentioned in the Patreon side that it was nice that Marcie’s coworkers acknowledge her signal, because yeah, she’s mute, but she can still do her job. She can signal for help. She can try and break up confrontations, she can direct traffic. And that’s an important minor note because so often it is assumed that if you have a sensory disability (blind, deaf, mute) that you are essentially incapable of vast swaths of work despite the fact that often minimal accommodations are actually needed.
And that tends to lead to passive discrimination.
That said… oh fuck, oh fuck ohfuck! Her coworkers are all white and at least one of them is an Amazi-girl fan and very likely to assume Sal is the actual instigator of this conflict. I’m still so very worried about her safety, a worry that will not go down the longer we spend in this particular strip.
Panel 2: That Marcie face, that glare she’s doing. I like to imagine it’s in response to that last comment down there. The one that’s calling every canine in the tri-county area over to make a nice little den and raise a kennel.
CONTENT WARNING: RACIST VIOLENCE AND APOLOGIAS FOR
Cause… ugh… that comment has so many fucking barbs in it. Especially in the context of Mike Brown and the numerous ghouls who came out of the woodwork to argue that he deserved to get shot because he “stole something”.
And that crowd… oof, getting uglier, cheering on a fight, and the optics of it, Amazi-girl backed by an entire throng of “family values” voters with just Marcie and Sal alone. Sal, posed and ready to defend herself from the white woman who’s been stalking her for two nights straight and who ‘s just so tired and done of waiting for that to come to its head at an even worse less comfortable space.
I haven’t been there, but I identify with the head space. After three near-brushes with folks who wanted and were honestly mulling over whether to kill me for being trans in my life, I’ve had too many a day where I just want to get physically attacked to get it over with. To no longer be scared that one day, someday it’ll come to its head and just have it happen now and be done with the Sword of Damocles once and for all.
For Sal, AG has proven she’s willing to enforce even the slightest laws against her and she’s been spotting her following her over and over again, even viewing her saving her life and trying to provide medical care as a violence done against her.
Sal knows that AG will eventually find an excuse to attack her. So might as well get it over now. Crowd of racists be damned.
I’m very sorry about what you went through. And you posted all good points. It’s reminiscent of people attacking trans people, people attacking BLM protesters and feeling righteous about it, most prominently of POCs (even some who support Trump) being harassed and physically assaulted at Trump rallies.
Sal is sick and tired and wants to get it over with, because it’s hard going out and not knowing whether you’ll get pulled over, attacked, harassed, etc. People tend to distance themselves from this kind of thing, but to exist in that mindset for your whole life is a form of trauma.
It is for this reason I would never go to a conservative rally like this one, or otherwise find myself in a conservative white space. People can be really awful to you.
My cousins are black, so I’m intimately aware of how much those passive threats constrain and feed into anxiety. Most of them just stay home a lot, because, that ends up being safer. I do the same for different reasons.
And I don’t even get it nearly a quarter as bad as TWoC do as my friends have reported. That passive terrorism works and works its way into your head.
And yeah, ditto. I grew up in the equivalent of that sort of rally. I never want to go back.
“Most of them just stay home a lot, because, that ends up being safer. I do the same for different reasons.”
How wonderful it must be to live in the Land of the Free, eh?
The depressing reality is that terrorism works really really well in keeping the populations affected by it out of society and thus allows the people benefitting from it to pretend that they don’t actually know or see anyone actually affected by it.
The racism aspect is really timely to me because a black kid was just killed in the town I used to live, possibly over a stolen motor bike, and in the comments on one page someone actually said “well if you people just raised your kids right…”!!
Another commenter said she wanted to move to Syria because it was safer than [Australian town] and the comments in that thread devolved into anti-refugee rhetoric.
I’m sick of this world. I hope that in the DoA world there will at least be a positive ending to this story arc.
Interesting that so many commenters think there is a racial component here in the crowd. I spy with my little eye, at least two black people in said crowd.
Hm.
…there is a racial component in how Sal is being treated here.
Unambiguously.
Full stop.
It is a central aspect to her character arc and the experiences she has had.
Completely imagined in this case.
So you are discounting Sal’s life experience, even after it has been repeatedly demonstrated?
Do you think it’s coincidence that the black girl is assumed to be the aggressor here? That additionally she’s assumed to be a thief, and deserving of an ass-kicking?
At a rally for a conservative politician?
Do you live under a rock?
What I “like” about this comment is that it shows even though you’re trying to present yourself as being reasonable you’re not even willing to acknowledge the *potential* there is racism. Despite all the signs and symptoms of well ingrained racism in this strip you don’t just think it is possible there’s no racial component, you think there *definitely is not* a racial component.
THAT is what makes it obvious you choose to turn a blind eye to racism, no matter what you tell yourself or others.
This. if you can sympathize with Amber after all the crap she’s done, you can definitely sympathize with Sal.
Also: Even if you’re black and support Trump, or dislike other POCs, or whatever, does not negate systemic racism or its history. If I went to a Trump rally tomorrow and professed my support of him, it wouldn’t stop hateful people from harassing me.
We all know racism can’t occur if there are 3 or more black people within a 10 mile radius.
Or if you personally know at least one black person. Or because the Civil Rights Act passed, and now we live in a post racial society where race influences nothing whatsoever.
Your poor attempt at sarcasm is noted.
However, comma, Sal is dressed in bike leathers and just body slammed a local hero. That would “look like trouble” to anyone of any race. Plus, Marcie was holding her back while Amazi-Girl recovered.
Show me where the “racism” is, please?
All over today’s strip.
Perhaps you were looking at the banner? You want to scroll down a little and look bellow that.
The comment above mine was a great example of sarcasm, btw. As per the definition, it need not be ironic. And see Fart Captor’s comment -the racism is there.
HA!
No one can “show you where the racism is” because the comic is holding a mirror up to the racism of our own culture —AND you have obviously CHOSEN to be blind to that!
You might as well demand us to show you this so called “Sun” when you have your eyes closed , in a locked closet.
Amber now sees the racism, which is 50% of the point of this comic.
Why do you think shes not kicking Sals ass?
OK I’m just kidding with you, of course i can ‘show you the racism’ .
( Holds Up mirror )
Do you see it, yet?
Nobody knows what she did, this is obvious from the comic.
If you have to imagine the comic characters have a time machine ( or can see from your view ) to deny that a racist comment about her being black is racist… There are 4 other characters that looks violence personified in this comic, including a rapist! But you think the black girl is the ones that looks like trouble.
Does Ryan literally have to start raping new people in the hall right now , before you think one of the white guys here might be the real ones that looks like trouble.
But you think Black girls cant wear leather, or they are asking for racist mobs. and you cant see the racism!~
Not anyone, no. Plenty of people don’t associate motorcycle leathers with troublemakers.
You have a point in that that’s not doing Sal any favors, but it’s far from the only factor working against her here.
Especially colourful sporty looking ones, though black leathers and patches don’t really have the impact they used to(?) either.
Dude, don’t ever ask for examples of racism, everyone will give you a thousand examples whether they’re there or not.
If it’s one thing I know it’s people refuse to accept any point of view that isn’t exactly like their own and then they will make up a label for you for not agreeing with them.
Yes yes, poor upstanding white folks getting called racists is the real injustice here.
See, now that’s sarcasm.
You call that sarcasm?! I’ve seen better.
The fact I can identify it makes it some of the best I’ve seen. I have enough trouble with it spoken.
Yeah that’s the thing with Sal, all of her issues somehow always Tie back into racism even though there’s absolutely no connection.
That is the political rally equivalent of “I can’t be racist, I have black friends!”
Probably because there absolutely is one. The presence of black people in the crowd doesn’t prevent that. Even the smiling girl in the top right who seems to be into it.
Y’know, of all the potential responses to today’s comic, I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting Racism Denialism…
Though, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. A marginalized woman is being victimized. And that has repeatedly and consistently meant some asshole coming into the comment threads to try and devil’s advocate on behalf of the bigots and try and deny away the bigotry.
So I guess, congratulations on being Example 4,307S of this phenomenon. The gift shop is to the right, please pick up some lovely parting gifts on your way back to the chans.
I mean, we shouldn’t be so surprised. We all remember how ‘you came out whiter’ went in the comments section, not to mention everything about Becky or Carla that parallels it, but with sexuality and gender.
(but it still is surprising to come across it, especially being that blunt and unapologetic)
Please don’t send them to the chans. We have enough people shitting up the place already.
It’s going to be another one of those “How do you see the [example of prejudice], it’s not there!” until Willis puts in a strip making it beyond obvious that it’s there, and then people will be “Why are you shoving [example of prejudice] in our faces like that?”, isn’t it?
“It’s so unsubtle. Willis is making unrealistic characters to push his agenda.”
It’s like frickin’ clockwork.
Yeah. Use the R(acist) word and you’ve got people popping up all over to deny it. “It can’t be!” “Racism in America doesn’t exist anymore, haven’t you heard what Dr. King accomplished?” Yeah. Right before they murdered him.
Racism Denial is like the default response to racism by a good chunk of people. I would have been more surprised if it didn’t show up in a strip so obviously portraying racism.
True.
I guess I should thank you. Your trolling–the attitude is unmistakable–gives me an opportunity to explain why you cannot deny racism as an issue here, like you can with AG.
There are many, many reasons to presume racism here. You’ve got a crowd acting just like the Trump crowds. You’ve got people who are pushing mob violence.
But you’ve mostly got that troublemaker line. Being dressed as a biker chick is not remotely something to make someone think you are a troublemaker. Especially at this type of rally where there are usually lots of people dressed that way.
Now, there is the issue that Amazi-Girl is talking about fighting her, and claimed she attacked her first. But that doesn’t make the “looks like a troublemaker” line make sense.
No, unlike with AG, there is no other reason that quite makes sense for this reaction. It’s not 100%, as I said above, but it is very, very likely to be motivated by racial animus.
So, take your mocking attitude elsewhere. If you were actually interested in talking about this, you wouldn’t pull that attitude. You might as well have added “lol” at the end.
i was wondering this before, but now that its all coming to a head: what can amazi-girl actually do to ryan? beat him up? unless she kills him (which she obviously cant do) thats not really a solution. she cant just tie him up and drop him off at the police station either, and its been like, what, three weeks since the assault? and joyce probably *still* doesnt want to press charges
I think it’s more that Amazi-Girl swore she’d track down Ryan, but her obsessive stalking of Sal means she failed at that.
she just needs his last name.
Hopefully its something like “Butsack”, or “Feltcher”. Possibly “Dumas”
Then she can curse him.
If anything her obsessive stalking of sal is what led her to him
Now she must choose between continuing going after Sal or going after the rapist
Probably just keep him under tight scrutiny. Try to be prepared so that next time he tries to rape somebody they’ll get something more solid to take to the police than a “he said she said” situation.
You know, technically I’m not sure if the attack on Joyce was a he-said/she-said situation. Remember, Sarah hit Ryan just as he was about to drag Joyce away, so you actually have 2 witnesses to at least part of Ryan’s crime.
After what happened with Blaine, I would say that yeah, Amber/Amazigirl COULD kill Ryan. Not here, but now that she’s found him, she could follow him around like she’s been doing to Sal, until he’s alone (or, even better, alone with another would-be victim), and then… proceed.
I’m not saying it’s even remotely likely, or that there wouldn’t be awful consequences, but she probably could.
But that was Amber who did that. AG sees that action as being unworthy of her. Only Amber would keep on after the guy after he was down, not AG.
I think you’re right that Amber O’Malley could kill him. But she would cross over back to Amber to do it.
Panel 3: Oh, holy fuck, that face. That face. And that top of the panel comment. Like the one before, it’s so transparently racist and yet has that little bit of deniability that Sal knows will come down on her head if she reacts to it. And that face. That’s the face of having been here way too many times, suffered these comments one too many times.
Of just being done, not really able to even react to one more microaggression on a life filled with them, but still feeling the hurt and anger because it’s still shitty, it’s still dehumanizing, it’s still a triggering reminder of how she’ll never have her parents’ love in the way her brother does.
It’s a window into why Sal says she knows what it’s like to struggle with anger, with powerlessness. Because being a black woman, being into counterculture, this is her life. This is always her life. And from her perspective, it’s even worse.
Cause in her mind, AG has come off as nothing but extremely racist, a Zimmerman-esque figure who just won’t leave her alone and is looking for any excuse to justify beating her up and viewing her as a villain. And now she’s backed by a crowd that Sal was already uncomfortable around, which is now actively throwing racial dogwhistles her way and straight up cheering on her stalker to kick her ass.
And she stands firm.
That take chutzpah and inner strength. Like, fuck, I once got into it with a pair of neo-nazis that wanted to harm me once, but I had a whole bus of folks that were very openly getting my back. And that helped me not be scared. To hold firm like that when the “whole bus” is the equivalent of a local white supremacy rally backing said neo-nazis? I imagine I would be a whimpering mess.
And yet Sal stands up straight and gives them nothing. That’s emotional strength right there.
Sal’s strong, but she’s going to need some better outlets if shit like this keeps piling up.
Fucking Jason, talking to Marcie, and riding her bike are great, but I’m not convinced they’re fully adequate for stress of this magnitude, if only because Jason, Marcie, and the poor bike would end up exhausted.
Out of curiosity, what’s a racial dogwhistle? or a dogwhistle in general? I’ve seen that term before but I don’t understand it
Dogwhistle is a term that seems innocuous to a general audience but is used as a code-word for another intention and is often employed politically as a means of masking or coding bigotry.
Famous examples include things like “welfare queen” which was used to insinuate that welfare money was all going to lazy black women instead of real Americans so that racists would support the push to eliminate or seriously defang racism.
See also things like professional homophobes using “religious liberty” to mean right to harass, discriminate against, and abuse gay people or the suspicious way many fans of the border wall use “illegal immigrant” to mean all latinx people regardless of their immigration status or the way neo-nazis have started to us “white genocide” as a codeword for “non-white-people exist in my country and I want to act like I’m a victim for ‘suffering’ this”.
There’s a lot of racist dogwhistles in American politics owing to the Southern Strategy. “Thug” is one that’s been in a lot of public consciousness as of late owing to its use to insinuate that every unarmed black person shot by cops somehow deserved it.
Sometimes the people using it forget the original meaning it was hiding behind, leading to things like racists referring to the rural “inner city” population to describe black people in rural areas seemingly unaware that that just shines a ginormous floodlight on the dogwhistle and what it means.
Thank you for clarifying!
The term, of course, comes from how dogs can hear a dogwhistle being blown, while humans hear a big pile of nothing because it operates at a pitch they aren’t able to hear.
Well, I was half right.
Meanwhile, back in the dorms, Sarah is STILL in the middle of a grouphug when suddenly…
Joyce: “sniff… what?”
Sarah: “THAT’S THE BIG SIS ALARM, GET YOUR FEELS OFF ME THIS INSTANCE, THERE IS A WAY TO EXPRESS MY CONCERN WITHOUT GETTING ALL EMOTIONAL!!!” *Jumps through the window with the Baseball Bat of the Old Testament God.*
What did the New Testament God use then?
The Joyce-smile.
It’s super effective.
Weaponized Triangle Smile? Doesn’t that violated some U.N. Peace Treaty?
That appears to be a black guy yelling “kick her ass” in panel 2…
In fact, he’s probably the same guy in the third panel of the previous strip. Either he missed the memo that this was supposed to be as racially charged as some of the commenters are making out, or he found some “white privilege” lying around and decided to use it.
Just as women can internalize misogyny, people of color can internalize the values of our white supremacist society.
This. There’s a lot of interesting literature, think pieces, etc. One of the terms used now is “respectability politics”
Are you sure his presence doesn’t just mean that no one at this rally is racist???? idk seems like you’re making a big judgement
(/sarcasm, of course. noting so you don’t have to search my name to confirm, because apparently that’s how this week is going)
I really wish we didn’t live in a world where I actually needed that clarification.
To be fair, the vast majority of the crowd would probably assert the same. After all, they are there in support of a Latina candidate.
Their actions speak louder.
This.
For other examples, see Alan Keyes defending white supremacists and KKK members, Christina Hoff Summers or Phyllis Schlafly fighting against women’s rights, Milo Yiannopoulous and Robert Oscar Lopez throwing their support behind homophobic organizations and arguing against the rights of gay people, or that one weird jew who tried to defend the neo-nazis of the alt-right and ended up having to hand-wave all the neo-nazis alt-righters in his comment threads telling him how much they wanted to kill him.
Like, it happens.
Let’s not forget the female anti-Sufferagettes of pre 1920 US and elsewhere.
Every time Stacy Dash opens her mouth post-“Clueless”…
Remember when notable MRA Roosh V (who is ethnically Iranian) had the support of white supremacists for like five minutes because they hated women more than they hated him being a racial minority? yeah
So i just went back and re read it and the scar is on the wrong side of his face. so either thats not really ryan or a mistake was made.
looks right to me
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/bat/
It’s on the proper side. Don’t mistake it for Joyce’s dream.
I could have sworn Willis had commented here…
Did Willis Ban himself?
Meh he deserved it.
fuck that guy
Did you see that webcomic he did…Roomies or some shit, what was up with that?
“and his fundamentalist christian characters aren’t realistic at all, that dude totally doesn’t know what he’s talking about”
So rude , too!
One time —I just politely asked him how to pronounce Deena’s
name — and you’d think I stole his toy robots, and Blew up Cybertron.
(( Sa-RU-yama , SARU-yama? . I’ll never know ))
I even hear he’s taken up drawing dingdongs! In pen!
Purchased from Pen Island, no doubt!
I just wanted to add to the thread.
OH SHIT
/KILL BILL SIRENS
I completely forgot how disturbing Joyce’s dream was. I feel lucky that i don’t dream very much at all.
* meant as a reply 2 comment above me*
Panel 4 and 5: YES! YES!
No, not to the casual angry sexism, but to Amazi-girl… er… Amber… er… it’s not even listed, huh… to whatever amalgamation is running the show right now, to her look of shock and betrayal and self-doubt.
Cause, I’ve definitely been worried about the racial implications of her actions for awhile and even more worried as AG has devolved more and more into stalking and finding more and more paranoid delusions to use to justify viewing Sal as nothing more than a “bad guy”, the “archvillain” of her life.
Definitely Sal has noticed those. And here, AG or Amber or both see them as well. She sees exactly who’s backing her and why and what they expect her to do as their “white knight” against the “thug”. And she’s horrified. Through them she sees a little of the horror of her actions, of the type of people she’s in danger of having as her only supporters if she stays on this road, and of the type of people who share her conviction that a person like Sal can never be redeemed.
And we can see that in her toothy grimace and her begging of the crowd, trying to explain, trying to rationalize her actions and then, thankfully, seeing part of the truth. That Sal didn’t actually do anything wrong here (other than some hypocrisy about escalation). AG was out of line. AG stalked her. AG fit into a narrative she never intended to but was no less horrible because of that fitting.
And that’s everything I could want because it’s a sign that AG or Amber wants off this path, will fight to stay off this path and is starting to see what she’s becoming. And that’s gonna be so key to her recovery and her integration and her seeing Amber’s strengths and AG’s risks and flaws.
And the best part of it all is that it’s AG/Amber who’s leading it. It’s not Sal chewing her out and reaching through. It’s not a wise council. It’s AG/Amber seeing the path, seeing her fans, seeing what she’s been letting herself become. It’s her wanting off this terrifying ride we’ve been on ever since that escalating verbal abuse against Danny.
Panels 6-8: … well fuck.
There’s little good here. If Sal and AG attack this fucker, the crowd will turn and Robin will have to label her a menace for assaulting her campaign worker. And there’s little she can do except beat him up, unfortunately, because there’s no proof that he’s committed a crime other than the cut across the face (looks like a potential permanent scar, well done Joyce, you’ve got PTSD for like the next 30 years, but at least you gave him something to remember on cold nights).
But at the same time, I doubt she could forgive herself if she did nothing again, especially when she promised Joyce:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/gashface/
When she promised her she’d keep looking for him (a promise she momentarily forgot to stalk Sal and blame her for stealing a bf she willingly threw away to justify still hating her).
Shit’s about to go down. And even though AG is gonna be in an unsafe place at the end of it, she’s at least through the worst of it and hopefully off the bad road she was riding for far too long.
I think Amazi-girl might stop short of full-out assaulting Ryan – hell, if she’s quick-witted enough, she could play it off as “I wasn’t after her. You – the guy with the scar near his nose. I’m taking you in to the cops for attempted rape.”
Or something to that effect. SOMEONE in that building knows precisely who he is, and labeling what he did that publicly is something he wouldn’t be capable of hiding from, short of having some vastly powerful connections.
From your mouth to past Willis’s ears. May it be so.
I’m pretty sure that she’s going to do her Christian Bale schtick, announce to the crowd what he did and then attack him. The problem is that he is one of the Party Faithful and I suspect that he’ll have more supporters than foes in the crowd.
So, AG and Sal will need to fight their way out of a near-riot. I suspect that Ryan will be found dangling upside-down and hog-tied from a lamp-post with a note reading ‘rapist’ pinned to his campaign shirt (good visual, BTW, Robin). Meanwhile, Amazi-Girl and Sal will be sitting on a roof-top together, having a very, very awkward conversation.
This could be the beginning of the post-Harvey Dent ‘The Batman is a Menace’ phase of the public’s perception of Amazi-Girl. I don’t think that Amber will mind too much; the ‘urban superhero’ thing was mostly the product of Dorothy’s romantic mindset. I suspect that Amazi-Girl will find that those who have always truly been her allies still will be her allies and that having less a burden of public perceptions on her will make it easier for her to process certain things.
It might distract them long enough for Sal to escape though.
Seriously, this is the first sign of hope we’ve had for her in weeks if not months. Guess the realization of where she is and who exactly is in this crowd can get through to her where even Danny and concern for her own wellbeing couldn’t.
Hooray for Gashface’s timely appearance at a not-Trump rally! Seriously there could not be a better person to show up nor a better time for him to be here. (And yay, that does look like it’s healing as a nasty scar. Hope it scares other naive girls expecting a nice, “morally upright” evening just enough to keep them with friends and away from you, ya roofie-ing bastard.)
I think the difference with her reactions to Danny and the crowd here stem from Danny being someone she trusted who “betrayed” her.
But the rally here are egging her on to act like a violent thug to satisfy some pretty blatant racism. Amber’s not being let down by someone she loves and trusts, she’s being encouraged and supported by a pack of assholes.
I’m… confused. I think i missed something. Has that guy with the scar shown up before? Who is he?
Just click on the “Ryan” tag in the pink box just below the comic to refresh your memory.
Oh right, that guy. Huh, I remember him being a bit buffer. Thanks
Date rapist. Traumatized Joyce. Generally awful.
Also caused Ruth’s depression in another universe.
He’s from waaaaay back in the first book of the comic. He tried to date rape Joyce, failed, but got away. Amazi-Girl swore to track him down. This is his first appearance as himself and not as a nightmare hallucination by Joyce since he ran from that party.
It took me a bit to remember him, too.
SUDDENLY DEATHMATCH. AGAIN.
NOW THATS A REVEAL!!!
Ryan, yo-you got a little, a little spaghetti on your face, it seems.
Maybe he’s been infected by the T-Virus.
Oh no! Joyce’s agoraphobic hallucination of every man in a crowd of strangers turning into Ryan has become contagious and infected Amazigirl!
…unless…Joyce is Amazigirl! It all makes sense now!
WHAT A TWIST!!!
I mean, we never saw them together, right?
NOPE
(well, unless you count that extremely important end to the ding-dong bandit ark, but let me ask you… did SOMEONE ELSE see them together?
…OK, fine, there was the assault… when Amazi-girl let the bad guy get away. HAH, YOU REALLY BELIEVED THAT IMPOSTER???? That was just a pizza delivery super hero who got roped in trying to be the real thing.)
:O …. GET’M >:(
I saw his face, and stopped breathing for a moment.
KICK HIS ASS, AMAZI-GIRL!!!
My mental image of him always had shards of glass still in his face, like some sort of movie villain.
Sal, my bby, don’t listen to them.
A part of me finds it interesting they’re cheering on someone who helped take down Toe dad: who probably would have felt at home with their most likely political direction (if any) they’d take on LGBT issues. (As in, it’s unlikely to be positive. While it may not be a part of their main platform, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a sizeable number in there who still who supported ‘conversion therapy’ for instance)
Buuut I guess in the here and now racial bias trumps all others. For now.
(Or they at least hold onto some micron of decency and disapprove of Toe dad. Who the heck knows I guess. Though it matters little considering what they’re doing now.)
Believe it or not, conservative “family values” groups usually don’t support kidnapping with a shotgun.
If they do, please except my apology for not knowing, and know that I am flabbergasted that anyone would take that view.
Sadly as we saw with Carol, some do.
That said, yeah, I think the immediacy of the conflict with a “thug” in the dog-whistle meaning of that term is trumping her role in inadvertently saving a lesbian at the moment.
I would go so far as to say that most of the family values types abuse in practice if not in principle.
By which I mean: Sure, they don’t condone taking a gun to your child, but they won’t exactly condemn it, either. They don’t condone threatening your child with death if they don’t comply, but the child really brought it on themself by being [gay/lesbian/bi/trans/asexual/pan/etc]. They don’t condone forcible kidnapping, but if the kid would just “get right with god,” the father wouldn’t have been driven to it in the first place.
I could go on.
Sure, they don’t come out and say they support it… but when it comes down to it, actions speak louder than words, and it’s pretty obvious who their actions come down in favor of.
While I have many conservative friends who in fact, are not racist, sexist assholes, and I firmly believe that political and ideological diversity is crucial for healthy democracy, conservative groups touting “family values” like the “Family Research Council” and their ilk are all but unanimously opposed to the rights of people in the LGBT community. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not just talking about marriage, but housing, employment using the goddamn bathroom, and probably other stuff I’m forgetting but which will surely destroy us all!
I guess having been raised in a conservative and rationally-minded home, I vastly underestimate how shitty conservatives can be.
Housing, really? Like they say gays can’t have houses?
Damn
Yeah, in many (most?) states it is completely legal for your landlord to evict you because of your sexuality or gender identity. Same for your employer being able to fire you. So even though gay marriage is legal, many people have gotten fired when they tried to update their health insurance at work to include their spouses.
It’s gross.
Think the only conservative state where that sort of discrimination is illegal is Utah, liberal states tend to be a bit better off.
Though it still happens a lot in practice.
And that recent court case of the trans funeral worker might eliminate even the fig leaf of those protections in liberal states owing to the “religious liberty” exemption the judge ruled that allowed an employer to legally discriminate against someone who is trans or queer if the company’s “religious values” don’t support that sort of thing.
Why is it so easy to hate?
I’m done reading comments for today. Apologizes to any hereafter that I may of commented on otherwise, I always like to see someone comment on mine, and I try to comment on others for that reason.
I suggest familiarizing yourself with RightWingWatch if you want to know how shitty conservative “family values” groups can be.
These are the people who want to kidnap (and in some cases have helped kidnap) the children of GLBTQ parents. Not specifically with shotguns, but given how many of them really love guns and think they should be allowed to carry them at all times, it’s not too much of a leap to go to “kidnapping, possibly with a gun”.
We’re also talking about people who not only think LBQTG folks can and should be denied housing and jobs, but also are in favour of them being jailed, put in concentration camps, or even put to death. All while they hold their “family values” banners high.
…okay, that’s it, no more faith in human decency. From here out I put my faith in dogs.
And cats. Cats are dicks but they’re equal opportunity dicks.
Dogs can also be racist :I
Don’t be silly. Of course gay people can have homes.
Just not around here near us decent folks.
Before all y’all go pulling the race card, keep in mind that Amazi Girl is an idolized mysterious crime fighter known for beating up the assholes and bad guys, and Sal is a tough looking girl in biker attire, known for being a rebel. If you had to guess which one was in the right and which one was causing trouble…. If I saw ANY tough looking person fighting the god damn college campus SUPERHERO of course I’m gonna assume he/she is the bad guy!
They’re all wrong of course, but right to assume what they did with the knowledge they had.
Though of course vigilantism isn’t exactly a good thing in most cases….
…why is it that the folks who make these posts always have the most ironic usernames?
@Rosicrucian: For the most obvious reason, of course.
What have I said that’s unreasonable?
The part where you hand-waved away racism so thick it’s making the split pea soup look like tapwater in a waterfall.
I….. Really? I thought I made a valid point as to why someone might possibly side with a superhero (albeit a psycho one but people don’t really know that yet) over a rebel?
Is it just automatically racist because she’s black? What part makes it racist?
Maybe I’m just missing something?
You are. While your explanation is plausible, and no doubt is a factor, the stuff they’re shouting about how Sal “looks like a trouble-maker”, and “must have stole something” make racism more likely by orders of magnitude.
Yeah that’s fair, I DID totally miss the “stole something line.”
Ooph. I missed that one too.
I’m assuming the ‘leather-clad hooligan versus known and adored campus icon’ aspect is getting a lot of people to favor Amazi-girl, but there are clearly some vocal bigots shaping the crowd mentality into something ugly.
You set a high bar coming in here as the “Voice of Reason.”
Then you proceeded to whiteguy-splain away what’s in front of your face and repeatedly reinforced by Sal’s character arc.
How about if (as others have predicted) Amber directs the crows after the rapist asshole, but they refuse along the lines of “but he looks respectable” or “he seems so decent” or some bs, I will completely admit that the crowd’s a bunch of racist assholes trying to convict poor Sal. If they go along with it tho, doesn’t that show that it’s because they want to side with the superhero?
I’m not saying it’s NOT racism here, just that it might not be based on what we know
*crowds, though crows would be a bit more entertaining I suppose
I’m working on that this winter, actually… Should be fun. Corvid army, FOR SCIENCE!
Dina approves of this message.
They’re already calling for someone to assault her when the ONLY things they know about Sal is what she looks like, and her proximity to someone who might do it.
Part of what Sal looks like is that she’s standing like she’s ready for a fight, with Amazi-girl, who many of them know of from the paper and trust.
I believe we’ve established here in the comments the tendency of people to side with who they already know and sympathize with over unknowns.
I mean, he’s a pastor’s son!
Ooo, ooo, I know this one! You pretended that Amazi-Girl just attacked someone today, and did not have people cheer her on! The victim she helped, at most, was mutedly happy. That cheering her on regardless of what she does is the expected response! That people tend to actually see the wrongdoing with Amazi-girl’s targets (For instance, the stolen purse)
Then you pretended it was some WEIRD IDEA that race is maybe why, in spite of any other thing, Sal ‘looks like a trouble maker’! Why the crowd would immediately and automatically side with Amazi-Girl in the absence of any real evidence of wrongdoing.
She’s trading on white privilege in addition to her status as a crime fighter. These are not mutually exclusive.
Because Dunning-Kruger.
I have never once, after having spent years in atheist communities, seen someone with “Reason” in their username who was actually reasonable. If you’re going that far, it is 100% a shibboleth to position you as virtuous.
Likewise with “Skeptic” or “logic”. I’ve seen exactly one who wasn’t, and that person eventually changed his screenname because he was tired of being associated with the vast majority of them.
Like, dude (it’s always dudes), if you have to name yourself as something to try to position yourself as authority on skepticism, reason, or logic, you likely have none of the three.
I would bet very good money that 95% of those with one of those three words in their sn are disingenous sophists whose confidence in their deduction and reasoning is orders of magnitude greater than their actual abilities, and who has no intent to actually engage honestly (which includes accepting the possibility that they might not have all the information going in… and that maybe people who have lived a thing their entire life are more of an authority of what it’s like than someone’s preconceived notions).
…
Its possible that you have, now! From VoiceOfReason’s comments, it appears they have had their eyes opened a bit. It just took a little wrestling.
I doubt there’s enough subtlety in Sal’s narrative for what you’re talking about. Racism is Sal’s “thing”. It basically defines her character at this point.
I’m thinking that maybe there’s a way that AG can turn this around without making things worse. Right now, AG has a mob of fans who are angry at Sal. All she needs to do is . . . redirect them.
1) She yells “STOP! There’s something more important than my conflict with this young woman.”
2) She points at Ryan: “Some weeks ago, a young woman was given a glass of drugged soda by a man who then tried to get her alone and rape her. She managed to cut his face with the glass, and was defended by friends who were worried about her. But the man himself got away. Now, I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but that man with a scar looks very familiar. Given that the victim filed a police report the next day, I think the police would be very interested in taking a statement from this individual, and seeing if the victim can pick him out in a lineup.”
Note that by accusing him but not attacking him physically (yet), this puts Ryan in the corner, and takes pressure off of Sal. Ryan can try and laugh it off, or make excuses, or whatever, but now the crowd is focused on him and not on Sal. If he bolts, either someone in the crowd or Amazi-Girl herself might be able to physically restrain him. If he stands his ground, insisting that he did nothing wrong, there was some mistake, whatever, security might still be able to call police, who might be willing to at least detain him and take a statement — if Joyce can be found to back AG up (presumably AG will want to fade if the police actually do show up).
Maybe?
I wonder if Ryan’s mother is in the crowd. Was the bible verse she sent him (2 Corinthians 11:14) meant to be a hint that she suspected that something was badly wrong with her son?
Why bother with all the talking and explaining? She can just pounce on him, the crowd was ready to be on her side anyway.
She should just turn away from the woman who threw her down and, with no explanation, attack a (seemingly) random white man in the crowd, and the rest of the crowd will be on her side with this sudden change?
I don’t think group psychology works that way, but I’d be interested to learn otherwise if I’m wrong.
All she needs is maybe a “that’s him, get him!”. But maybe you’re right, and I’m being too charitable.
Is it 100% guaranteed that he’s not a hallucination? Cause I thought he was at first and am a little confused as to why he’d be there, since he just is pretending to be a “family values Christian guy” right?
If he is real, I’m pretty sure ur right on the path the story will take (I hope so at least. Plz!)
As someone else pointed out, Amber has never actually seen Ryan before, and its really hard to hallucinate someone if you don’t know what they look like.
Oh I hadn’t realized! Then will she know it’s rapist-dude? Did Sarah describe him to her? I hope so, don’t quite remember.
Yes, and she at least partially remembered when she later spoke to Joyce (referring to him as ‘ol’ gash face’)
As soon as the pointing happens, he’s gonna bolt. AG’s arrival on the night in question caused such a stir that Ryan was able to escape. He remembers the vigilante. The vigilante who would not be yelling and pointing at him. He’d run.
She needs to just charge him.
I seem to recall that Sal and Joyce talked everyone out of filing a police report.
Joyce didn’t file a police report, but Ryan wouldn’t know that.
You’re right — I stopped re-reading after Sarah talked about filing a police report the next morning, and missed that the next storyline picks up the next day, and (given Sal’s caveats about the police not doing much, and Dorothy finding depressing statistics on college prosecution of rape, and slightly-amnesiac Joyce saying she wants to drop the matter), the filing of a police report gets dropped.
So in my scenario, Amber would have to re-word her accusation a bit.
Of course, the storyline was plotted, worded, drawn, inked, colored, and uploaded months ago. Nothing I suggest will change what’s out there.
Acceptable target: acquired. Hell, they may even team up, if Sal notices too (IIRC she knows about his scar, but that doesn’t necessarily mean instant recognition).
How fitting that this comic released just after Brock Turner was released for “good behavior” after serving three months of his (already laughable) six month sentence.
*Volunteers to give that POS a facial scar like Ryan’s*
Don’t get caught.
Whoa, someone called Sal the b-word and it didn’t change to bongo. It all returns indeed.
*aliens from Toy Story voice* The forbidden termmmmmm! /dated reference
…Toy Story is dated now.
Man, pretty soon here I’m gonna have to start feeling old.
Panel five gives me a little hope that AmaziGirl can eventually come to terms with the past. Because her first act, instinct even, is an attempt to say to the crowd that Sal hasn’t done anything wrong, that this is something personal from years back. She’s trying to balance her need for some sort of vengeance with the simultaneous desire to protect someone from hostile circumstances. It’s possibly a case of realizing that the person she hates might also be a victim. And it’s something that’s bothering AmaziGirl deeply. And that gives me the smallest sparkling of hope.
On another note I want to make an observation. There are a few commenters who are dismissing the possibility that there is some racial bias in the crowd immediately targeting Sal and siding with AmaziGirl. While I’m not going to say that every person in that crowd is racist, there will absolutely be some of the mob who are. In addition this is a striking example of white privilege and unconscious bias. If Sal were white, there would be less people cheering on the random vigilante. At the same time do to societal influences, many people who aren’t racist will assume in a confrontation between a black and white person that the black person is at fault do to “being a trouble maker” or some variant of that, unless it is quite clear the white person in said conflict is racist (something like a Swatstika tatoo couple with a shoved head). There is also an idea from a couple commenters that the enthusiasm to seeing Sal hurt expressed by the crowd is not racially motivated due to the presence of two black people in a crowd of about a hundred to two hundred white people. This could be because of unconscious bias, but there is also the possibility of internalized racism. Some black conservatives will blame “black culture”, “laziness”, or a lack of conformation to white culture for such things as poverty and crime among the black community, and will see other black people as simply not working hard enough or of causing their own problems. This is based on the idea “I overcame all of the same obstacles that you now face, so obviously there’s something wrong or inferior about you”. Furthermore, being the target of an alt-right group doesn’t mean that one supports said group, based on mutual hatred of another targeted minority by said alt-right group. There are examples of this everywhere throughout history but two striking examples come from World War 2: The third Reich actually used hundreds of thousands of non-German soldiers, including French, Dutch, and Belgian SS members who volunteered in order to kill communists; similarly the Japanese founded the “Free Indian Army” from natives of Singapore and the British Raj, all of whom were volunteers willing to adopt fascist ideology in order to drive out the British. And a caraismatic enough leader can convert people to their cause who it would seem to make no sense for them to follow, simply because they are being given an outlet for anger and frustration. In a case like a rally for a politician like De Santo, it would probably be immigrants and or Muslims. While we the readers know that Sal is black, the Walkertons are apparently “ambiguously brown” (I hate to use that phrase) to the other characters, as Jouce initially assumed Walky was Amerindian. And being “ambiguously brown” means that other people will probably fit her in some way into a position that they do hate: Sal can’t pass as white, but she can pass as a variety of other ethnic minorities that face daily hatred. Sorry about the rant and it’s rather disjointed nature. I’m angry, I tend to ramble when I’m angry and while a native speaker of Emglish my first language until the age of about five was a dialect of French that I involuntarily slip back into every once in a while so it’s difficult to express myself as much as I wish I could.
First paragraph: Yeah, that bit’s got me so hopeful cause well… she torched her own relationship to try and preserve her fantasy of Sal is the monster who can do no right and who represents everything AG needs to stop in the world. And yet here, she lets herself fall out of that fantasy and recognizes that Sal is not the instigator and may even be the victim of this crowd.
And I’m really crossing my fingers that that moment of humanizing is the first in her finally letting go that fantasy and fully grappling with how much Blaine has poisoned her and what will actually help her recover instead of what will drive her into becoming him instead.
Paragraph 2: Slow clap. This. All the this.
I don’t mean this in a derogatory way, but if you write a text this long it’s pretty much impossible for it to be read to the end by anyone who doesn’t fully agree with your ideas in the first place (except maybe to prove a point). If you want your observations to be relevant in a discussion, you need to summarize; otherwise, what you yourself call a rant is useful only as catharsis.
IMO, the problem is not so much the length (I regularly read things that are much longer) as the dearth of paragraph breaks. A few more would work wonders for clarity and focus, again IMO.
I ramble at times and I do appreciate the criticism from both of you. Some old habits from my days as a history major break hard though (for some reason most of my professors believed that a paragraph needed to be eight sentences minimum).
Yeah, it’s a problem I have. A family that hardly let me get a word in edgewise growing up and (mentioned below) teachers and professors that wanted obscene amounts of information in paragraphs really hammered said problem into me. Trying to work on it. On the plus side, if someone else were to find my writing cathartic, that would mean that I did something good today, and I like that idea.
I’m guessing this is probably partially targeted at me…
Thank you so much for clearly articulating your point with logic and a fair amount of evidence instead of just hating on me.
While I don’t agree with everything you said, I agree with quite a bit of it, and it also helped me see a few errors I made. If only everyone could have discussions like you instead of throwing around buzzwords, which was the main reason I got a little miffed. Have a great day man!
*hugs* Sorry for being part of the pile-on. And yeah, it can be easy to step in stuff due to blind-spots. I’m certainly not immune to that.
Honestly, I think you were ill-served by being after several instances of folks trying to do strong denialisms of the racism in the comic and I think that’s why the response was harsher than it might otherwise have been.
Honestly, and please please do not take this the wrong way, I did not see your comments before posting this comment. I’d seen a couple of others that, ruffled my feathers so to speak. And I kinda let loose. Because I feel like this is a safe place to do that. And have a civilized if heated discussion at the same time. My primary purpose when I comment here is never to purposely offend/belittle someone.
Part of Amazi-Girl knows she must be totally doing something wrong if a mob cheers her on with racicist slurs to beat up someone. She how her face freezes?
Let’s hope she sizes the opportunity Ryan presents and says ‘it was just a ruse to get at this rapist here. ”
She hasn’t a hope in hell to explain to this mob that her thing with Sal is personal (and from her pow not at all related to Sal being black).
Amazigirl needs to join forces with Sal, and then we get a montage of Ryan getting beat to hell by both of them while “X Gon give it to ya” blasts in the background.
But we didn’t get a montage of them getting swole first!
Not really Deadpool’s speed. They’re both more than strong enough anyway, and Sal’s wiry build isn’t entirely unlike Wade’s, while I’m sure he’d have some choice quips about Amber’s physique.
It seems we’ve fallen into the trap that is the prolific use of ‘X Gon Give it to ya.’
I was referencing Rick & Morty, not Deadpool.
I had chosen not to watch it. I may reconsider.
I find it to be one of the best shows in several years, but that is of course subjective.
If you want the episode with the thing I was referencing, its Season 1 Episode 9.
This is the moment of destiny for Amazi-Girl; does she do as the mob wants and attack someone for no other reason than someone ‘looks like trouble’… Or does she attack a man that she knows is trouble, even though he may be a member of the party’s most faithful followers?
It’s like in infamous when it gives you the karmic choices
Or any Star Wars title by Bioware. Though they tend to involve less crowd backing.
Legit gasped.
DAMMIT DO THE RIGHT THING AMAZIGIRL GET THE JACKASS
Misunderstood fight before superhero team-up time.
Ah boy…Get the guy wiht the scar! HE tried to attack Joyce and he got away! Get him before he does again!
I think Ryan’s sudden appearance is actually the worst case scenario.
Amazi-Girl was in the middle of an epiphany. She was being forced to realize just how wrong she was. Now Ryan is here and she can focus on something other than herself. Worse yet, he’s going to dig up all of her new feeling of inadequacy that she acquired because she feels like she failed Joyce. Now she’s got her father’s baggage and new baggage dragging her down.
Also, she can’t do anything about Ryan. She’s surrounded by a mob of people who are all egging her on to beat up the innocent black woman. Stopping now to chase after a white, male member of that crowd who the mob has no reason to think is a rapist and who aren’t as inclined to assume the worst about him as they are Sal will turn the crowd against her immediately. She also has no legal grounds to attack him. Any evidence of his crimes is now long gone. The only evidence of that night is his scar which he can easily explain away as an old accident. Right now, the law is on his side simply because they don’t have any evidence.
I think Ryan just robbed us of our big emotional resolution, not delivered it.
Well, maybe not an old accident – a scar from a gash like that is probably still a little raw. But yeah, he can definitely make something plausible up; agreed on all counts.
That is a great point. If Amber cut and run she’d be forced to rethink her approach to Sal, but now she’s been confronted with the one who got away and no clear way to actually take him in.
At the same time, the way things are going, and Ryan being in the same room as two people who are fiercely protective of Joyce and have risked their lives for her, well, I wouldn’t count out some kind of resolution just yet. I could easily see something like the two of them both trying to take him down punching holes into their perceptions of each other. Amber’s hatred is already well documented, but Sal thinks Amazi-Girl is at best a kid doing stupid stuff and at worst a dangerous thug.
Whaaaaaaaaaat?
Is this real?
Or is it fantasy?
I have to know!
No… no… NOOOOOOO…
I’m caught up now ;-;
I STARTED READING THIS TWO DAYS AGO
What did you do? Read nonstop for both days?
Yes.
Ah. The two day binge. I know her well. But this situation is not so bad – this comic updates every day of the week. The bad binges are when you find out the comic is unfinished but dead, and will never update again…
At any rate, welcome to the comic! I hope you will have a good time following it as well as binging it.
To be honest I think it’s worse when it is still updated, just REALLY REALLY SLOWLY. At least with Death and the Maiden, after my sad realization I was able to just remove it from my favorites bar!
As for THIS one… and here I thought it was awesome that Questionable Content updates every WEEKDAY! Hurrah for David Willis*!
*Also, belated as it applies to like 80% of the strips because I didn’t comment on anything before now, DAMN YOU WILLIS
I feel so bad for you.
Here, we’ll share my cookies and coconut rum and get through this.
SMART MOVE:
AG – “ENOUGH!! *crowd halts in momentary shock* This woman and I have a personal misunderstanding, and it will have to wait. Because THAT MAN *very exaggerated but specific point* is an identified, attempted rapist, and he must be brought to justice NOW!!” *charge*
SAL – “Uh . . . wut?”
DUMB MOVE:
Probably what’s actually going to happen, it is basically the name of the comic.
I really love that Ryan is back! I know that’s a weird thing to type, but I wasn’t sure if he would ever come back or if he would just be a gross spectre hanging over Joyce forever without her ever being able to have any sort of closure. Now there’s a chance for said closure and for him to face some more substantial/lengthy punishment for his actions. I’m pumped! Fuck that guy!
As for the rest of the strip, it feels like a distraction in more ways than one. The rally attendees being shitty (re: racist, sexist) people is understandable, and I’m glad Amber’s justice-o-meter works enough for her to not want to associate with them or their rationales. However, I hope this isn’t the end of her grudge, and she gets to work through it in a more personal way.
What the heck is there to steal from a university auditorium anyway, faceless jerk…?
There he is—the villain who escaped my justice, so long ago! That’s right,it’s Penny Arcade’s Tycho!
Oh shit, Ryan’s back.
Ooooooh
Shit
She did promise Joyce to look for him. But what will happen when (if ?) she tries to tell that to the crowd ?
… this won’t end well, will it ?
OK, I have already seen a hell of a lot of comments on this strip saying pretty much what I want to say. So I shall not repeat those thins with different wording (“Hooray!” people shouted, being spared another novel in the comment field), and instead state only this:
I really, really wish to punch Ryan so bad in the face. He is the very epitome of conservative/religious entitlement in all of its worst forms. And it’s 99.9999% certain that he’s one of those “I’m not racist, but” type of racists too. Fuck that piece of shit.
I would advise against a punch.
There are plenty of options, though! If there’s one thing we humans are good at it’s coming up with ways to damage one another.
I actually already knew about that particular fact.
Solution: Wear boxing gloves. They protect your hands. In fact, they protect your hands so well, you end up punching someone’s head a lot more, and then they are likely to (sooner or later) die prematurely from repeated concussion damage.
And that is why boxing became a much more lethal sport once boxing gloves were introduced.
I had a specific combo in mind to suggest because I’m not quite awake enough to properly detail the execution of a heelpalm strike (great for uppercuts and blows to the nose!) but figured that if I’m not awake I should err on the side of not posting violent stuff on DoA.
This is why you’re usually advised to hold something in your hand when throwing a punch, like a lighter.
Also, connect with your knuckles, not the flats of your fingers. Angle your fist down a bit; this also strengthens your punch as your knuckles are now aligned with your wrist and arm bones. Go for a straight punch. Hooks, haymakers and uppercuts are predictable, slow and usually less effective.
Punches are vastly preferable over headbutts and kicks and leave you at a safer distance than elbows and knees.
Make sure to shout and yell while attacking. It raises adrenaline, it draws attention from surrounding parties and it may intimidate.
If you’re forced, and I mean, no other options, forced to fight, go for the throat, or the kidneys. Heads are made of bone and a knock-out punch is rare. Instead, make the opponent flinch, wheeze, stumble or double over; if they’re aggressive but not THAT malicious, they back the fuck off and run, if they’re seriously threatening at least you now have an opportunity to land more blows and knock them to the ground.
Then, and this is the most important step:
If they’re on the ground, run. Run like hell. You do not want to kill or maim a downed opponent; for legal, traumatic and safety reasons.
I’d probably just run like hell anyway. I’m really not good at fighting in real life.
I know it’s supposed to be a scar, but the facial mark on the dude in the last panel just makes me think he has a worm on his face.
Also, We propose that like Toedad, we shall no longer refer to Ryan with his real name. Instead, he shall forevermore be known as Cutnose (an eternal reminder of Joyce glassing him).
I believe Gashface has already been coined.
On the downside, it makes him sound like a B-list supervillain, which is a little more dignity and grandeur than he deserves.
I agree that ryan should get a villain name, but it shouldnt be something cool sounding like cutnose. the reason that toedad works is it sounds ridiculous.
Good point! No “Cutnose”!
Guess what its fact time!
First off, we don’t have any actual evidence that the entire crowd in the room has joined in the jeering. In fact it would seem the opposite, since the distance and close up shots of Ryan show several people who are observing (likely unable to see the situation and don’t know what’s up) rather than participating. So this idea that hundreds of people have turned on Sal all at once is simply untrue. It’s more like a dozen and change at most, going from the actual comic. (I’m sure from Sal and AG’s point of view, it seems much more substantial since all they can see, literally and figuratively, is the ones in front jeering.)
Second, Ryan himself has admitted that he was not a pastor’s son, so claiming he is representative of religious/conservative faults of character is pretty baseless. Its more than likely that nothing he said to Joyce was truthful, since you know, he’s a (likely serial) rapist.
No, ryan specifically said the part about being a pastor’s son was true. I am going to attempt html to link it.
ok, that didnt seem to work. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/bat/
Funny thing is, that’s the exact comic I was referencing.
I took the wording a different way, as in the line “That part was true” was indicating that Joyce’s statement declaring him to not be a pastors son was truthful. Therefore, he wasn’t one.
But looking at it again, I can see it also having the opposite meaning, that his statement was true.
Curse you English grammar!
Sorry, no banana. Ryan states “That part was true.” If he wanted to acknowledge Joyce’s statement, he would have needed to state “is true”, and even then Joyce only made a single statement, so “that part” could not apply.
So it very clearly does not have “also” the opposite meaning of what you thought it did, but _only_ the opposite meaning.
Joyce made a pair of statements. But hey, I can understand it being kind of hard to read with all that pretentious snobbery clouding your vision.
“You lied to me. You’re no pastor’s son.” “That part was true.”
So you claim “that part was true” means that Joyce got it right that Ryan is no pastor’s son, but she got it wrong that Ryan lied to her?
Even taking into account that Ryan just got a glass to his face and might be considered somewhat dazzled, I am afraid my pretentious snobbery is clouding my vision a bit too much to let me see that make a whole lot of sense.
It does not need to be the entire crowd to make this situation dangerous for Sal. It doesn’t even need to be the majority. It’s enough that there is a large number of people jeering and calling for violence, since they’re the ones immediately surrounding her, and there is nothing to suggest that the rest of the crowd would disapprove, much less intervene.
Even if the water in a swimming pool is only 10% feces, its still definitely do not want to be in there.
I didn’t say if it was dangerous or if it wasn’t. (And it certainly is.) Or, for that matter, what actions the others in the crowd might take. I was simply pointing out that not the entire crowd is involved.
Good moxie, but kind of off the mark as far as a target goes.
Then you were offering a counterpoint to an argument nobody was making. People may not have been explicitly acknowledging that not ALL of the crowd was calling for blood, but I don’t see anyone making arguments that would require that to make sense.
You set an extremely condescending tone by starting your comment with ”Guess what its fact time”, so it came across much like it would have if you’d felt the need to point out that not EVERY man there is a rapist like Ryan. Its a misrepresentation of what people are actually saying that makes it seem like you either think they’re really that stupid, or you simply don’t think their opinions (and in some cases, real world experiences) aren’t worth paying enough attention to understand them properly.
If you’re going to get into a discussion about a sensitive topic like this, you could stand to choose your words more carefully.
I know everyone wants to talk about Amazi-girl’s story, but i just want to bring up one thing i noticed. In the first panel, marcie is giving sal a look that i am interpreting as “Seriously Sal?, i just wanted a peaceful job and then this happens. Why does this always happen when you are around?”
To me, it looks like she’s staring at the person saying “AG is gonna fight that other chick” with death in her eyes.
BUT, I will gladly admit I hardly have conclusive evidence supporting me here. It’s only a feeling.
That’s what I was thinking.
On second glance it could go either way. Or both, really; between Malaya, Sal, her co-workers, and stars only know what else, Marcie has enough frustration to go around at this point.
I don’t think so. You only see part of her face when it’s obscured later, but she seems worried, not pissed with Sal.
DO NOT LET THAT FUCKER GET AWAY
AMBER
YOU NEED
TO QUIT
YOUR BULLSHIT
AND GET
THAT FUCKER
TEAM UP WITH SAL
AND GET
THAT FUCKER
I forgot who Ryan was. Thank god he tags everything because I forgot how satisfying it was to see Sarah put the bat to him.
Plot twist, this was really just a Donald trump rally
No one would be surprised.
OK, so loooooong comment is coming after all. Not about the comic itself as much as about the comments today. You’ve been warned.
Some people here have been asking “where is the racism?” Now, some of those people have also been accepting the answers they got, just to get that out of the way. This comment is not addressed at you.
But others have been less than accepting. Or trying to mitigate it rather than asking. These are the people I am a bit upset with right now.
See, here is the thing: The people that have called out the racism that is happening here, they’ve done so because they know how it really works. Racism isn’t about lynchings and putting on white masks. In fact, that is a relatively minor aspect of it.
Most of the racism is about the little things. Things that add up. And those that have been the direct targets of these things know exactly what they mean. And then they are in a much, much better position to tell when it’s happening than f.ex. I am.
I am in fact very much reminded of the “Joyce has lunch with John” storyline and the comment field back then. There were a few posters that could not or would not see what it was that made John such a dick. But the LBGQT posters, -they- could see it from miles away.
Because they had lived it, over and over and over again. They had time and time again experienced that when someone like John says A (in itself not that bad), then he is very likely likely to also say B (really bad). They could see that from the very moment John made it clear he was not interested in seeing Becky, that he was going to turn out to be a dick. He ended up saying B, and also C (waaaay bad) and D (downright heinous), and a few more letters of increasing badness.
And then other people tried to defend him, up until the very moment when he became indefensible, and -even then-, a few people tried to mitigate it by saying things like maybe Joyce could act less angry. Gods, that was infuriating. It would have been even more infuriating if Willis hadn’t been taking care of the worst of the crap.
But at the same time, there were a fair few people who simply did not know just how damn crappy it was to be LBGQT in USA. They were not aware of the bullying and the many forms it took. To some extent, they should have been aware, but they were not. At least these people really learned some interesting (as per the Chinese curse definition) facts.
And now the same thing is happening vis a vis the racism Sal is experiencing in this strip. The red flags are popping up, and people aren’t seeing them. Because they don’t know where to look for them.
Now, this is where I will tell a bit about myself: I am currently living in the USA, but I am most certainly a bona fida foreigner. Norwegian, to be exact. And having lived in USA for almost four years now, I can tell you with certainty that when people say racism is a big problem in this country, they’re goddamn right!
The funny thing is -how- I know this: By being welcomed into this country.
I currently deliver pizzas as my job, and so I get into touch with a lot of people. My accent clearly betrays me as foreign, and lots of people do ask where I come from. I am not yet tired of being asked, partially because the responses have been pretty much positive in every way. In my case, it’s nothing worse than base curiosity, and that’s in itself fine.
I have never been told to “go home!”. The only way people have hinted that I should go back to Norway, is by apologising on behalf of the country. “Why would you come to -this- place?” they say, as if I am a millionaire who just stepped into a McDonalds. They’re acting ashamed, not arrogant.
(The reason I came is a woman, by the way. A wonderful woman whom I love dearly, and who’s given me a whole new life to experience.)
Other than that, I am welcomed. Truly, fully welcomed. I have deliveries where I chat with people for a couple of minutes at a time. Old ladies ask me to send postcards when I tell them I’m going on vacation. Nobody that opens the door gets nervous in my presence, even though I am a 194cm tall man.
My neighbour is a supporter of the Toupéed one (I know because of the bumper stickers on his car. When we first met, he said “we should hang out sometime” (I have still not been hanging out with him).
And here’s a few really good ones (for a certain black gallow’s humour value of “good”): I am not staying home because I am afraid of what might happen to me, what people might shout at me, if I simply walk outside. I’ve never been fetishized because of my “exotic” looks. I have never had people wanting to touch my hair without my consent.
And do you know what will never happen to me? What I can guaran-damn-tee will never, ever, happen to me?
That someone will send me mail, or tag my house or my church (OK, I don’t go to church, but you know what I mean) with “Go home, Norsie!” Heck, I had to “invent” the word ‘Norsie” right now because nobody here has a word specifically designed to disparage me and tell me that I am somewhat less than human because of the country I come from. The worst they do is call me Swedish, and -that- is basically because they act like the stereotype of the American that doesn’t know the outside world. They’re poking fun at themselves as much as me.
And if I should get shot, and the cops catch my shooter alive, said murderer will not be taken to Burger King by them.
And I know for a fact that if I should ever sell cigarettes without licence, I will not in a million years be choked to death.
That is happening to people here, though. People who are actual Americans are less welcome in this country than I am. Because they’re not white like I am.
Now, I am not saying that I should be less welcome. I really appreciate the level of welcomeness. I am saying that the actual citizens of this country, the people whose parents and grandparents and greatgrandparents were born here should be getting my level of welcome, -and then some-.
But as I said, it’s mainly the small things. That pile up.
Let’s liken it to the infamous water drop torture. You know, the one where “all” they do is continuously dripping a drop of water on someone’s forehead. One drop is nothing. Nor is two drops. But keep it up for an hour, and suddenly it turns devastatingly cruel. But you have to have experienced it to really know how cruel it is (please don’t experience it). And if you have experienced it, you will also cringe when you see it happen to someone else -at the very first drop-. You don’t have to wait long to understand what the end result is going to be.
And those comments Sal is getting here are those small drops, commonly known as micro-aggression. One comment is, in itself, hardly anything. But anyone who’s ever been on the receiving end knows that it doesn’t end in that one comment. Another will come, and another, and another, and another… And all of a sudden it’s becoming completely unbearable. And that’s long before any actual violence starts.
So my final words are: Don’t really listen to me. I sort of know, but I do not actually -know- how it is to be waterdrop tortured, I can only infer it. Listen to those that have been, and who do know. Listen, and believe in them, rather than me. I have already taken up waaaaay too much space here.
Hei hei! I didn’t know we had a Nordmann in here.
I’m not, I just took a class of the language in college.
Which is actually related because: African American Vernacular English, which isn’t what Sal speaks, but the kind that “messes up” be and is, is pretty much a slightly different language within the English family, more like Scottish. It’s not an accent, it has a different and consistent grammar that standard English speakers don’t understand. The fact that the two are almost mutually intelligible makes most Americans think that the differences are mistakes due to lack of education or intelligence, but language doesn’t actually work that way. (I mean, do dumb white people mess up language? There’s a trope that truly retarded people do, but that’s vanishingly rare.) The reason they consistently have these differences from standard English is because they mean something other than what you’d expect.
So let’s go for an example: there was a study where they got a bunch of kids right about kindergarten age, showed them an episode of Sesame Street, and asked them to describe what was happening. The white kids saw Cookie Monster, and they said “Cookie Monster is eating cookies!” The black kids said about half and half “Cookie Monster is eating cookies” and “Cookie Monster be eating cookies.” The white kids had no clue what that meant, but the black kids explained that the second version means something more like “Cookie Monster is eating cookies, like he always does.” That last bit is completely missed by standard English speakers, who just think it’s a mistake.
This sort of thing happens all the time. White people think that the differences between them and black people are mistakes, but they’re just a little extra color. (Pardon the pun.)
A little addendum: what I meant by it being related is that very few people here consider AAVE a separate language. No one takes classes on how to speak it, like Spanish or French or Norwegian. They don’t care. Learning a language is a form of admiration, that you care about this other culture. (which is why, in my opinion, American kids do so poorly in their mandatory language classes, just a pure lack of respect for the languages.)
Those were good examples above. I agree. I’ve said as much in other places, that one issue is that Blackness is defined by others as the inherent opposite of whiteness, when the reality is that the culture, etc is its own entity. White people “speak properly” while black people are “articulate”. Sal is “dressed like a dangerous person” while Amber being dressed like a superhero is more normal than it is completely absurd. Sal is angry because she’s up to no good, while Amber is angry because obviously let’s psychoanalyze her, she MUST have good reasons, and so on.
And it’s very true – here in US, people don’t respect other languages. It’s a sign of being “foreign” or “other”, and you want to be as American Pie as possible, so you don’t learn it. Or if you do, you are uppity (a European language) or you’re more useless than before (a language associated with cultures of color).
Maybe Americans would have more respect for other languages from places they will probably never visit, if people that come here from those places would respect our language.
You’re right, I have not been respectful of the American language when I moved over here. I shall rectify this now.
Asio Hawk davado.
Very nice.
Reminds me of https://xkcd.com/84/
It better, since that’s where I stole it from.
Yes, its so terrible how people can just come here and not already speak English. How dare they.
I mean, they won’t even be able to understand me when I complain about how lazy they are and how their culture is inferior! Manners, people! You’d think that learning a second language as an adult was something that required a large investment of time and energy and required access to educational resources
America does not have a national language, but as pointed out by Emperor English definitely would not be the indigenous choice.
Oh gods, “slang”. Another great example of “small drops” of racism in system. The fact that AAVE is not considered as real as “WASP English” (you know what I mean) is most definitely one of those things that should be slammed into the sun by now.
As if WASP English was just “naturally” the right way (and indeed, the -only- way), instead of the sum of a political and social culture that valued AAVE much, much less.
Also, my comments need more Robot Hugs. Here you go: http://www.robot-hugs.com/definition/
I think the part that is the most grating, the most sickening is that many of those actual citizens, who are being disparaged and regarded as less human, come from America. Their families have lived here just as long as other families, and their heritage is just as American (though of course, stained by the despicable abuses they have suffered.)
My family has only been here a few generations, and I don’t think I, or anyone else, would say I’m not an American. But people are degraded and mistreated to the absolute extreme because of a skin phenotype that no more connects them to their place of origin than anyone else who’s roots trace back here for centuries. Its a true shame that humans have come so far overall, but made so little progress in understanding and accepting each other.
On a lighter note though, as a Swede, I’m very thankful for the free ammo, you dirty Norsie. ;P
Bloody Swedes, grumblegrumble…
But yeah, your comment shows that not only is racism sickening, it is also so goddamn incompetent. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.
“I don’t know who you are, but if you as a single Swede want to be on a raft with five Norwegians you are a good man.”
Thor Heyerdahl to Bengt Danielsson.
Emperor – Well said. WELL said. Thanks so much for a really good illustration of how incredibly real racism is. As a person of Scandinavian persuasion who has lived in the US… Yes. Seconded everything you just said.
Big Box – Hurra, Sverige!!!
I’ll just be over here mumbling my words through a mouth full of potatoes:
http://satwcomic.com/language-lesson
(ok, not real Dane, but I did live there for two years)
We have a genuine Nordic Convention over here!
This was beautiful and really well written and really on-point as to some of the frustration.
Thank you. Really. Your opinion matters -a lot- to me. You’ve inspired most of those words.
I was also a bit afraid to post this post (it’s been in my head a long time now), because… Well, because no matter what I did, the post would always end up centered on me; and when all is said and done, I am the last person that needs centered on in this discussion.
[deleted: A bunch of rambling that never got anywhere near coherent]
That is extremely well said, and reminds me a lot of how I slowly came to be aware of just how incredibly different life in this country is for people who aren’t able-bodied, white, heterosexual, cisgendered, neurotypical Christian men.
I feel like hearing stories like this during my own journey out of ignorance is something that made me much more willing to see the unpleasant realities, and actually consider, my own part in them. Its good for the privileged to see their peers taking that journey willingly, and to see how this kind of awareness is not innate, but something that has to be learned.
It’d be nice if the voices and stories of the underprivileged were enough, but if they were, the situation would probably not have gotten this way to begin with
Sigh. Poor Sal.
The Robin Hood paradox.
It turns out, robbing from the rich doesn’t work.
What does work is that you take over the system and change it for your own ends.
To be fair, if you see a well known costumed superhero fighting anybody, you’re generally going to assume the costumed superhero is the good guy in this.
“*Looks* like a troublemaker” code language aside.
You could call it ‘Popular Culture Bias’ I suppose.
In real life? I feel like I back the normal person dressed in street clothes, not the vigilante.
Of course, in real life, you don’t have “well known costumed superheroes*”.
If one does appear, I suspect most people’s reactions would depend largely on the media coverage. What we’ve seen of the media coverage of AG is pretty good.
So Amazigirl realises she’s on the side of the bad guys, which in this case is a group of racist assholes out to lynch a black girl.
I wonder how that fits in with Amber’s ethics?
Badly. Especially given she’s like, the underdog’s hero or whatever.
I said yesterday that I strongly feel that Blaine is at least somewhat racist (not yet based on any fact, nor just on ‘because he’s bad’ but on a combination of age, attitude, etc, and also maybe because I’m used to finding out people’s parents are racist irl).
With that taken into consideration, probably extra badly.
omg omg omg omg
I wonder if the people claiming they don’t see the racism are lying or they’re just that dumb. I mean, I’m pretty much racism-blind and even *I* can see it. It’s literally spelled out in that third panel: “she looks like a trouble-maker.”
On another note, I’m torn on who gives more of a “eeeew” feeling in that sixth panel: the two guys who seem angry about it all (and, I assume, are crying out for a lynching) or the woman at the forefront who just seems so DELIGHTED to see two people she doesn’t know beat each other up in a situation she knows nothing about.
When Rapist Ryan is acting the LEAST objectionably in a group, you really hit a new low (note: I don’t mean that he IS the least objectionable, just that his actions at the moment are).
Also, congratulations, Leslie, this is the constituency that supports your dream girlfriend. Get the blinders off and move the fuck on.
Yeah, this is basically as clear an example of the kind of racism focused on in the Sal/Amber conflict.
Sal’s race is irrelevant to Amber’s hatred against her, but when it comes to her actions then it’s there in glittering neon. No matter how you slice it, when you get shit like Amber gleefully agreeing with Sal being hampered by her criminal record for the rest of her life, it’s there no matter what.
It’s why Amber having this clearly spelled out for her, and actively feeling horrified at what these people are saying in support of her, could be so significant. I don’t think it’s just a matter of “Amber relents because racism is bad”, it’s because she’s clearly seeing her dehumanization of Sal in this crowd.
That’s a very good point. Amber is seeing how she has been treating Sal this whole time is related to how the crowd thinks of her. Maybe this will finally get her to start seeing things from others’ perspectives.
Yup, this chain is why I’m really hopeful that this is a corner turning moment for Amazi-girl and that she’s seeing how her dehumanization and villainization of Sal fits into the real world and thus realizing that she needs to change that response (through long and difficult work).
I just cannot get on board with this terminology. How can an action be racist if the person performing it is not doing it for a racist reason? The action itself is neutral. It requires a racist thought–even a subconscious one–to call it a racist action. Actions have no brains or ability to do anything, so they can’t be racist in any other way.
AG’s actions look racist.
And I do think this is important. Look at all those people who seem to think that denying racism is “reasonable.” If they can rationalize away why an action can’t be racist, then we fail to convince them.
Better to use “looks racist” to get the idea across.
AG’s actions AREN’T racist. Nobody’s talking about AG’s actions. We’re talking about the mob’s.
^
What JBento said, but to answer your more broad general question:
An action can be racist even if it is not intended to be racist because there are systems of racist oppression that a statement or action can fit into and which causes harm to a person of color.
So, like for instance, someone absent-mindedly playing with a black girl’s hair and not thinking about it or someone absent-mindedly assuming that majority-minority districts must have high crime and “broken families” or someone who thinks they are being race-neutral on their hiring practices but tending to only hire white people for skilled professions even when POC have the same qualifications and levels of experience.
Unconscious racism and bigotry is the bread and butter of a lot of things. So people can stumble into it without even realizing what they did was causing harm because the overall culture does not do a good job in educating the dominant groups in these systems of oppression and what they look like.
Instead, systems of oppression just look normal. And so racist actions can be underdone without racist intent simply because what is “normal” is actually rather racist.
This is exactly the problem with insisting on defining racism as hatred of another race, rather than as an artifact of living in a society steeped in in white supremacy.
A lot of racism is unconscious. The tendency to perceive Black people, especially women, as “angry” much faster than white people behaving in the same way is racism, and does not need to involve actively consciously hating Black people to be so. In fact that requirement would let the vast bulk of both personal and systemic racism go unchallenged.
This is precisely what was causing confusion for me in the comments for the previous strip. I was using a much more narrow definition of ”racism”.
I was counting unconscious bias when thinking of racism in the abstract, but when it came to the question of ”is Amber being racist?”, I only wanted to count the conscious or willfully ignorant/insensitive forms of racism. Even after seeing how some of the things she was doing actually WERE racist, I still didn’t want to day SHE was because somewhere along the line I had added a requirement that a person could only be A racist if they do racist things because they are a bad person.
Basically, if I wouldn’t call someone a bigot, I didn’t want to say they were racist, either.
Now I think I actually get it, but it took a couple intermediate steps to get there
People are not just dumb. Just remember that most of them are not from the united states, and do not regularly experience the ridiculous fixation on race that you guys have.
Race is a social construct. Just let it go away and stop caring about it.
From my personal experience, seeing cousins come back from the united states and talk about how they are “proud people of color”, when you have lived a fully normal life never caring about your “race” feels gut-wrenching. The very use of the word “race” is racist, and the division into “us vs them” when you’ve lived a life without ever having to care about that is utterly horrible and I would not want it to spread.
1) You can’t ignore race without also ignoring racism.
2) Just letting go of the idea of racial divisions (which admittedly, would be nice) won’t fix racism, unless you somehow get the racists to do this as well. And they won’t, because they’re racists.
3) Pride in one’s race / ethnicity is unfortunately very necessary to instill in the children of minorities in this country, in order to counteract all of the ways our culture will try to subtly (or not so subtly) shame them for it.
I agree that this is gut-wrenching.
4) Please don’t tell people to just “let [race] go away”, unless you’re talking to someone else living in this magical raceless paradise you come from. Pretending race isn’t an issue is a major reason why things are still as bad as they are here.
My experience is that a lot of Americans just lack perspective about how the ideas they take for granted are viewed in other parts of the world.
Race is a term that applies to dogs, using it about people is inherently dehumanizing. Using the term at all in many places outside of the US, including most of Europe, is a major cultural faux pas. Just using the term will tend to cause people to stare at you and think you are the kind of weirdo who believes in Eugenics and has pictures of Hitler in his attic.
Why you ask? Just look at the Encyclopedia Britannica and take a look at how racism is defined: https://global.britannica.com/topic/racism
”
Racism
Alternate Title: racialism
Racism, also called racialism , any action, practice, or belief that reflects the racial worldview—the ideology that humans are divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called “races,” that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and traits of personality, intellect, morality, and other cultural behavioral features, and that some races are innately superior to others.”
In other words, most people outside the US would define you as racist _because you believe in the existence of races_ if you throw that term around too much. Makes you think, doesn’t it? Just because something is usual in your environment doesn’t mean it isn’t crazy from a more detached perspective.
Being proud of being a person of color makes about as much sense as being proud of being a ginger, or being proud of having that more solid kind of earwax instead of the more creamy kind. It is completely and utterly arbitrary.
If someone had and came back from a distant country telling you you should feel proud about your hair color because it is a major source of discrimination in the place he comes from, how would you feel?
Do you seriously think that this is only a problem in the US because we don’t understand what the word “racism” means? Are you really so arrogant that you think the only reason we still have these problems is because someone hasn’t explained to us that race shouldn’t matter?
If you think “race” is a term only used for dogs, you have not translated that word correctly. Since you’re using a British encyclopedia for your definition when we’re talking about America that seems extremely likely. American English and British English are distinct dialects and there are a lot of words that are used very differently. Though even in the UK, “breed” sounds more like the word you’re describing. THAT is definitely only used when referring to animals. If Europeans find it offensive to use “race”, someone should probably tell the BBC and all the European commenters here who have been using it without mentioning how offended they are even once.
I would LOVE to hear what your “experience” with racism in America actually IS, because its sounding more and more like you have experienced neither.
So AmaziGirl can’t bring herself to inflict the vengeance that Amber wants?
I’m honestly surprised she was able to see that Sal wasn’t really in the wrong here.
I wonder if Amber herself would be more inclined to fight.
OH SHIT IT’S RYAN FUCK HIM UP
Amazi-Girl is Amber’s outlet for violence. Amber herself seems to be terrified of her own capacity for it.
The way I’m seeing it is that Amber’s being given exactly what she wants, for her to take on Sal and have people hate and dehumanize her as much as she does, and she’s recognizing how inherently wrong all of it is.
Amber isn’t tagged in this strip, though, so doesn’t that mean it’s AmaziGirl who’s recognizing it’s inherently wrong?
I mean, it could be a mistake that Amber isn’t tagged here, or I guess her hesitation could be fueled by something other than “wrongness” (a sense of validation for attacking, I suppose? some obvious animosity on Sal’s part, so she can pretend to herself that it’s her civic duty compelling her to fight and not Amber’s desire for vengeance?).
Sometimes it’s hard to get into the minds of Amber and AmaziGirl. Perhaps it’s because, although they’ve significantly diverged/dissociated since the beginning of the strip, they’re still connected on a subconscious level.
DID is complex. It’s still Amber here, much as she doesn’t want it to be.
The bit that makes it complicated to talk about is that there’s Amber the person and “Amber” the persona. “Amber” isn’t the real person any more than “Amazi-Girl” is.
Yeah, alters that have the same name as the whole person make grammar a hyperdimensional clusterfuck.
So if I understand this correctly, “Amber” would still be referred to as an alter, even though she’s the original personality who Amazi-Girl will hopefully reintegrate into?
Amber the original personality hasn’t existed since Sal murdered her parents in a dark alley. The Amber persona isn’t the original just because she has the same name. She’s a neurotic hate-filled product of societal expectation of Blaine’s expectations.
Well, that’s not exactly how integration works. Integration isn’t some reverse birth where the spawned alter goes back into the original.
Rather it is a state where both alters are talking to each other, communicating their desires and working together to create a cohesive, relatively consistent whole rather than trying to stake out fiefdoms and fighting, hiding memories from each other, and/or wrestling each other for control.
Basically, when a split happens, it’s happened. It’s a lot like evolution where the “original” isn’t really worth caring about, because it’s a common ancestor and the personalities that now exist both came from that same common ancestor and thus have equal claim to that mantle.
And that’s also why it’s important in integration to get the alters talking and cooperating rather than trying to eliminate them back into the “original”, because those alters feel just as “original” and will fight being “eliminated” back into the other alter just because it shares the whole person’s name.
Hopefully that makes sense.
Thank you for that, Cerberus. I think what I believed was that integration would eventually sort of “dissolve” the disparate alters back together.
I’ve switched to referring to the human as Amber O’Malley and the alters as Amber and Amazi-Girl (or AG for short).
I used to use quotes, but it feels wrong, like I’m saying the alt isn’t real.
They’re not alters, though, are they? Amazi-girl and Amber aren’t literally different personalities co-existing in Amber’s head, they’re just two different ways in which Amber chooses to interact with the world. It’s not Jekyll and Hyde, it’s Batman and Bruce Wayne. Am I mistaken?
Nothing’s confirmed yet, but I feel that things are leaning towards Amber having DID, rather than it just being a matter of personas anymore.
The compartmentalizing of her identities; where Amazi-Girl can lose her dignity, Amber loses her sanity, and they both lose Danny, how Amber has PTSD over seeing Sal causing her to shift personas; including literally telling Danny that he was wrong to refer to her as Amber when she had shifted, how she defines certain actions as acceptable as long as it’s a specific alter; that it’s Amazi-Girl who’s dating Danny, but Amber can allow herself to be flexible about legal drinking age to help Billie to her room.
I feel that it’s gone too far for it just to be Amber wearing a mask at this point.
Wait a sec. Are you a different person than “a snow mous e”? I see you using the upside down letters, while they prefer using regular letters.
If so, I apologize for mixing you two up.
Nope, same person.
Sometimes I’m on a different computer and I’m too lazy to try to pull up upside down letters.
The point is that it looks the same upside down. Well, it’s not EXACTLY an ambigram, thanks to spacing, but the idea is that “a snow mouse” should be legible.
I think I started as “anonymous” and then I started trying to use upside down letters (such as using a schwa instead of an “a”), and eventually it somehow evolved into this.
Aha! That’s also probably the reason that sometimes some commenters don’t have their names linked.
I do use two computers (and occasionally a tablet) but I have the same info typed into all of them. Then again, that’s pretty easy for me.
I do it for the grav, mostly. Though I do wish I could fix his eyes.
“Wipe the floor with that B-O-N-G-O, B-O-N-G-O, B-O-N-G-O and Bongo was her name-o”
What I want to know is if that is actually Ryan or if Amazi-Girl is losing her mind and seeing things.
It’s definitely Ryan.
“After a surprise appearance at last night’s rally, people are asking: Does Amazi-Girl support Desanto?”
Time to parkour the hell out of there, AG, and wait for slashface to leave the rally.
Yay, mob. Honestly, fuck those people and TALK it out with Sal, A-G. If you want to keep any shred of credibility and sanity.
I love Amber’s cognitive dissonance over this as it’s only when people are SUPPORTING HER does she realize the context of what she’s doing. Amazi-Girl is aware Sal is an innocent but Amber keeps trying to pick a fight.
That’s an interesting observation. I suppose it might break her underdog narrative.
Amazigirl may be immune to criticism, but compliments is her kryptonite.
Amazi-Girl has said that people complimenting her and cheering her name had her overjoyed, when she showed up in Danny’s dorm before the first time they banged. So I don’t think compliments are her kryptonite at all. There may be a distinction between when she’s in the dorm vs. on the hunt for Sal that I’m missing, though.
It’s not the compliments themselves. It’s the type of compliments and what they seem to say about her.
It’s not quite the same, but imagine you were feeling really great about this piece of art you made. And then you start getting compliments from a bunch of people. You feel good. Then you notice they all have on some sort of white power t-shirt. Doesn’t feel so good anymore!
I think it’d be more apt to say that some of them were making racist-toned compliments about your work and then you noticed they all were wearing various symbols of white power.
So the Amber persona is going to be upset at AG, and by extension herself, for not going after Sal when she had the chance.
Hopefully if AmaziGirl is beginning to see reason, Amber won’t be too far behind.
Well.
This breakdown’s going to be even more spectacularly catastrophic than I thought. Why does it surprise me Ryan’s at the rally. Of COURSE Ryan would be at the rally.
And yet still. Wow. Tumbling down tumbling down tumbling down.
How the fuck do you see racism here? Amber was caught in a mugging by Sal and has post traumatic stress disorder from that affair, so she is stalking her due to the grudge she holds against her.
A mob with no background knowledge of the situation saw the encounter and went “the local campus superhero is fighting that motorcycle hoodlum, let’s get her!”.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I don’t see how race even enters the equation. Are you Americans seriously that obsessed about race? The feeling I get is, the more you talk about it and split two groups into “us and them”, regardless of whether you want to help “them” or not, the more you perpetuate racism.
Why is Sal a hooodlum? Nobody there seems to know Sal, even by sight. If AG jumps on Ryan next strip, do you think people will be saying “go AG, take down that hoodlum?” No? Why? It’s still AG doing the jumping.
> A mob with no background knowledge of the situation saw the encounter and went “the local campus superhero is fighting that motorcycle hoodlum, let’s get her!”.
The motorcyclist is black, and the crowd is white and they’re nearly all right wing republicans supporting a very dodgy Palin-like demagogue.
How you cannot see that this is racism beggars all belief.
> The feeling I get is, the more you talk about it and split two groups into “us and them”, regardless of whether you want to help “them” or not, the more you perpetuate racism.
Amusingly, that parallels the GOP Southern Strategy. If one don’t mention racism, it doesn’t exist. Right? Give me a break.
> A mob with no background knowledge of the situation saw the encounter and went “the local campus superhero is fighting that motorcycle hoodlum, let’s get her!”.
How can a mob “with no background knowledge” know that Sal is (a) a motorcylist or (b) a hoodlum?
Does not compute.
1) Bicycle leathers; 2) Amazi-Girl squaring up to her. You only need to read comic books to get it.
I’d also like to point out that the only authority figure in the whole shebang, i.e. Marcie, is on Sal’s side, so the “hoodlum” here is Amazi-Girl.
Let’s not kid ourselves here: none of those people are looking for justice or law enforcement. Mobs very rarely, if ever, are.
What those people want is violence. And in the pairing between “crazy violent woman in her pajamas” and “unknown black girl,” they’d much rather the black girl gets it.
The fact that Marcie was holding onto Sal probably doesn’t help, since it creates the image of Sal being apprehended by security.
(Not that I think this crowd needs anything to jump to a negative conclusion about Sal, but it was something that I had noticed about the strip.)
Of course, encouraging her to beat up the person already restrained by security isn’t really a good thing either.
Very true.
Here’s the thing about Americans: yes, that subtle, insidious racism is *EVERYWHERE.* Everything from the way criminals are described on TV to how riots are described to politics to a million little things are altered by race. In a mostly-white college town, in a mob, of *course* the crowd is going to see the white person as the hero or victim and the dark person as an aggressor, no matter the facts or context.
First.
Let’s be real – having a mental illness does not excuse you from doing shitty things to others. I could have PTSD, but it doesn’t mean I can abuse others, or generally act like an asshole and have that be a-ok. Amber has beef against Sal, but guess what – Sal served her time, got out, Amber has no legal grounds at this point to still be fucking with her.
Then – See above comment. The fact that the crowd assumes Sal is a hoodlum, rather than a person being stalked or a person with genuine beef with AG is a sign of prejudice in and of itself. They’re not saying, “well, slow down. What’s going on here?” Read their comments. They’re making racial assumptions about Sal without knowing her at all. Sal’s not even dressed like a biker. She’s wearing pants, boots, and a sweatshirt. That’s basic college student attire.
Third point. Read some other comments here. Race enters the picture because, as I said before, the crowd automatically jumps to believe AG and eggs her on to beat Sal up because she must have done something wrong. AG stalking and harassing her is racialized because AG is white, and thus most people looking at it will assume Sal is in the wrong. No, it’s not reasonable for AG to beat people up because she wants to. Vigilantism is illegal. And if I saw someone in an actual damn makeshift costume and cape harassing someone else, I’d think it was a joke at best and move to get a closer understanding of it.
Finally. Talking about racism does not perpetuate it. Actually being racist perpetuates racism – discrimination in jobs, work, school etc.. Telling people to quit talking about their racial experiences, because it “divides people in the nation” (read: it makes you uncomfortable to think about it), perpetuates it. If I say, “racism exists in America”, this does not make me a racist.
It’s not an obsession. You literally can’t talk about the history of America without talking about race. One of the prime reasons the colonies were so ripe to start on their own was because they had a great amount of resources, AND they had the slave workforce for it – not paying your workers = more money for the bottom line.
I get that since this is a comic, we need to have a reasonable suspension of belief, but even then, I find it hard to imagine that the crowd’s first reaction would be “the local campus superhero is fighting that motorcycle hoodlum, let’s get her!” instead of “huh, looks like that superhero girl is picking a fight with that motorcycle girl.” All of the other times, when people see Amazi-Girl fight, they also see the “bad guy” doing something like assaulting a girl, vandalism, or kidnapping. No matter how much they trust Amazi-Girl, it’s rather hard to justify stalking a girl in the shadows whose only crime (at the moment) is standing around, chatting up her friend who’s at work.
While I remember how that feels, I can assure you that reality requires the exact same suspension of disbelief. Read through more of the other comments and you’ll find plenty of people who know from experience how realistic it is.
Other than the costumed vigilante, of course
oh shit it dat boi
No. Just no. Both of them need to walk away together, sit down and talk this out in private. Yeah, there’d be yelling and possibly violence but they need to work this out between THEM, not in public.
Otherwise, Amber may snap and Sal could go to jail.
Yeah, I think they’re well due for that talk. Not here, not now, but soon. It’s like the third time they’ve faced each other, and Sal is still in the dark about what the problem is.
Meltdown in 5…4…3…2…
[cues up iroha’s “meltdown”]
The person who runs around hitting people and implies it’s okay because she dresses like a fictional character & all those people are Bad anyway sure seems bothered by a crowd yelling “Yeah, hit that person we assume is Bad cos you’re dressed like a fictional character!” Welcome to the world you made, Amber
Holy fuck!
Kill that bastard, guys!
WORK TOGETHER!
I see red panels in our future.
So many red panels.
Amber, when we gave you a quota of 12 red panels, we thought you wanted them for flashbacks.
So I really, really like this and the last strip.
Reading the last few months about Amber have been pretty damn painful for me. It felt like all of her positive qualities were wiped out, that she was definitely always totally just her dad and that her struggles were about how she needed to not become the abuser she was always inherently doomed to become, and we see her verbally abuse Danny because of course she does and follow that up by trying to, or at least very much sounding like she’s trying to, manipulate Ethan and Dorothy against him.
It was particularly hard for me, because like the way people talk about how folks like Sal, Carla, and Dina are incredibly important to them, that’s what Amber was to me. Seeing Amber’s struggles with her anger, her shame for allowing herself to be affected by a lifetime of trauma and abuse, her breaking down in guilt whenever that anger inevitably bubbled over and caused her to lash out at her loved ones, it was real as fuck to me. Amber spoke to me in a way that no other character did, and to have that be brushed aside for a much more stereotyped narrative of abuse victims, well, it fucking sucked and it made me want to stop reading for a while. I don’t feel that way now about the comic, I had some stuff about Amber’s character generously explained to me in a way that helped me see where I could stand to see things differently and where I was allowing my own preconceived notions to interfere with what was actually happening, but it was still, ultimately, difficult, the same way so many people here talked about how Ruth’s fall into suicidal depression was hurting them.
Sufficed to say, seeing Amber relent from fighting Sal, not because she’s realized that Sal is super cool and she really wants to brush her hair, but because it’s the right thing to do, well it’s pretty damn great. It’s a return to who Amber really is. She’s not her dad. She’s not in the cycle of abuse. She’s not a violent racist thug. She’s a kid desperately trying to make up for being abused and mentally ill. Amber wants to do the right thing, and if that means she has to put aside her all-consuming hatred for someone she doesn’t even register as human because she’s not going to turn herself into a symbol for a pack of racist thugs, then so be it.
Hear hear! And yeah, I know what you mean about that. Like, I can count DID representation on maybe two hands if I stretch and for positive depictions, I could probably still count that if I’d been through an invigorating game of catch with a hand-grenade. So Amber/AG’s been the only thing to fit that niche.
So it’s really good to see her make these mistakes, but to also recognize these mistakes and hopefully be setting herself to being the awesome person she is rather than the awful person she’s convinced she has to become as if it was fated by destiny. And I’m really excited for where Amber/AG might be going next.
Yeah, this strip especially really gave me hope we’re starting Amber’s road to recovery.
No prompting. No “My God what I have done.” No scene where Sal frolics through fields of sunflowers spreading joy to all of God’s creatures while Amber fumes in the shadows. It’s a matter of Amber’s own morality conflicting with her need for vindication, and that morality pulls ahead with no hesitation. She’d have this reaction for anybody, but Sal especially, it’s all the more significant to see Amber try and deescalate things.
This scene is what Amber wanted. She has a crowd of people cheering at length about how Sal needs to be punished. It’s what Danny was supposed to do! Of course Sal is evil! How do you not see this?! Despite all that, she can’t do it. She might not recognize it yet, but she’s staring her own dehumanizing of Sal as a concept to overcome right in the face, and it scares the crap out of her.
That’s a very good observation. Amazi-girl got what she wanted, only to realize that it wasn’t so great after all. Or rather – just as you say – that it is WRONG.
And she recognized it, and she stepped away from the confrontation she so desperately wanted. In the end it was more important for her to do what is right than to be immune to criticism. And that is wonderful.
Yup, she got everything she thought she wanted and realized that was someone else’s dream. Someone she never actually wants to become. And her being able to see that and become flexible as the “golden” alter?
Yay! It’s a great sign that she can actually start defeating the Blaine in her head and her fears of becoming him.
I hadn’t really thought of the significance of this being Amazi-Girl.
Like, I think the two are still fairly integrated. They act with the same goals, they tend to share similar feelings on things, The key difference is that Amazi-Girl can function near Sal and also tends to act to defend Amber from perceived threats like Danny’s “betrayal.”
So Amazi-Girl, the always moral, just and inflexible alter, she’s the one who’s backing down because she’s horrified that her treatment of Sal is being reflected back to her by a different party.
Come to think of it, Blaine is immune to criticism too…
My, doesn’t that face look punchable.
Any chance that AG was actually tracking down Ryan from the get-go and that she didn’t even know Sal was there until Sal pulled her off her ledge?
That Sal blew her chance to nab the guy who attacked Joyce?
None.
Oh my god.
Probably not but it’d be another doozy of a plot twist
No, because she was stalking Sal in the dorms earlier (remember when Sal turned around and was like “what was that?”)
Is looking out of your own door considered stalking?
Following someone to a Walmart parking lot and attacking them certainly is.
Oh, and also this:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/two-2/
I’m not saying that what shes done isn’t wrong but I’m not sure it’d be defined as stalking in a court of law
Oh my /god/.
I’m not saying its ok what Ambers doing, I’m saying that if charges are brought against her then stalking might not stick because what are the instances that could be used to prove the stalking?
The parking lot incident (involving underage drinking) and being stared at from behind Ambers own door, its probably not enough to get a charge of stalking
If it comes down to a fight (looking less likely now) then charges might be brought against Amber but then it could just as easily be brought against Sal as people (including Marcie) saw Sal attack Amber first and used threatening language against Amber
Yeah its not the whole story but its the only story a court would here which means its pretty good writing by the author
What is it about today’s comic that has so many people flying their asshole flags? She asked, as though the answer wasn’t “We put the black girl up against the white one.”
Of course the court would rule against Sal. She’s black. Her stalker is a white girl. white girls categorically don’t stalk, much less black girls. As omniscient viewers, we’re supposed to know better. And not ask motherfucking stupid questions. We know the law itself (If that actually matters to you, given that we have, yanno, ethics) is on Sal’s side. The court wouldn’t be, but that was a given.
From what I could find on how stalking is legally defined in Indiana, there doesn’t seem to be anything that would exclude it.
The fact that they both live in the same building would definitely make it much harder to prove intent if Amber had only ever followed her around campus, but seems like they’d at least be able to bring it to court
Oh, in a court of law? Then she’d be fucked.
Courts of law give just about the same number of fucks about people who are being stalked as it does about people who have been raped. Which is to say, nearly zero.
But in society, what Amber has been doing is stalking and if say Blaine had been doing it to her, she would be terrified and angry and demand a similar confrontation as Sal did.
*sneers* RYAN.
1 PM this afternoon: Oh, did I read DoA last night? I think I may have forgotten to. I’ll just check in and see what I missed.
1:01 PM: Oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiii…!
This really Is a Great Comic today.
racial profiling and Ryan. Grossest strip ever.
Will seeing an entire crowd jeering at Sal set off any sympathy for Amazi-girl? Tune in next time!
Grunt
I beseech to the God of the Dumbiverse that Ryan receives his comeuppance!
“No, no, you don’t understand! She didn’t do anything wrong, she just happens to be my eternal nemesis. Please stop taking my side so I won’t feel bad about beating her up!”
Suddenly, Ryan happens.
>:(
(…There isn’t an angry emoji?)
I’d imagine it’s because angle brackets are used for tags.
God dammit!
Ryan! I’m not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. I’ve wanted him to be found, for something to be done about him, since it’s horrible (especially for Joyce, but for other ‘potential victims’) that he’s running around free, and Amazi-girl finding him was something I wanted to see.
but here it’s in the middle of something else big, and panel 4 and 5 made me very hopeful AG can realize how wrong the things she’s been doing is, and I’ve wanted that as well for a while now. so I really hope that Ryan appearing won’t distract from that realization and turning things around.
the best outcome would of course be taking down Ryan AND a turn-around and realizing mistakes. but that might be too much to hope for.
I’ll be checking for the next strip first thing in the morning.
KILL. HIM.
Fuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhck.
The real fight is internal. Amber would stay and get her resolution with the nemesis. That trumps everything.
AG would chase the actual criminal as she promised Joyce she would. It is the blot on her record, the one who got away. Based on the tag I bet AG acts honorably here.
I’m on the side of things here that says they are cheering for AMAZI-GIRL, and not for violence against a black chick.
The one speech bubble that MIGHT be racially charged is “She looks like a trouble-maker”, and even THEN it’s a fact that everyone in the entire fucking comic has been able to pinpoint Sal as the “cool rebel loner type” from a single glance because THAT IS THE IMAGE SAL PROJECTS.
While there isn’t a doubt in my mind that some members of the crowd are racists, I don’t think the cheering for the fight is a racial issue. Amazi-Girl is a popular vigilante, and from the perspective of anyone who knows about her it’d be completely natural to assume that if she’s fighting someone, they are breaking the law.
If I was on YouTube right now, this is where I’d put the addendum: “But go ahead and call me a blind, privileged white heterosexual if you don’t want to talk reasonably.” I would hope that I don’t need that bit on here, though. I like to think that those who are fans of the same webcomics as me have the same ability to discuss controversial topics rationally.
The are cheering for Amazi-Girl to commit violence against a black chick.
That is SPECIFICALLY what they are cheering for
Cheering for Amazi-Girl to beat on a black woman while assuming that the white vigilante is totally on top of things and that her target obviously did something to deserve it.
I think we’re about to see why it’s racist: when AG goes after Ryan, the crowd will react much differently. “Hey, why is she beating up that nice young man?”
Oh, no freaking doubt. Amber’s ignoring a Vicious Criminal Thug to attack a poor Christian Good Ol’ Boy who got a nasty scar from some cheap floozy who led him on.
She’ll go from “valiant hero defending our safe space” to “violent uncontrollable mentally ill terror” in a heartbeat.
99% of the people here are discussing rationally. It’s just that when people are being super defensive and accusing others of hyperbole and being irrational simply for bringing racism up, then you can’t have a rational discussion, because basically you’re not giving on anything at all. You’re being a wall. it’s a really fancy way of saying “well why do you people have to bring up race all the time?”. If race discussions make you uncomfortable, come out and say it -instead of twisting it so that anyone that disagrees with you is being irrational.
And that speech bubble, for example, WAS racist.
Sal is not wearing anything that unusual at all, especially for a college student. She’s wearing pants and boots and a sweater. I would not know, from looking at her, that she rides bikes, or is a loner, or anything like that. And she’s not in this situation because she brought it on herself- she’s in this situation because AG’s been stalking her and being shitty to her as usual, and this time it brought the attention of a racist crowd, at a conservative mostly white rally.
All of This ^^^
Yeah, should have stuck to making funny comments. Or stayed out of the comment section altogether.
Look at my comment VERY CLOSELY, read your own comment, and realize what an ass your being.
You DO realize its entirely possible to disagree with people with people without being completely dismissive of the people making opposing arguments?
Like, if you’d left out or reworded the first and last paragraphs of your original comment, you might actually have come across like someone interested in an actual discussion.
Realise what an ass -they- are being? Take a look in the mirror first. This paragraph in particular:
“If I was on YouTube right now, this is where I’d put the addendum: “But go ahead and call me a blind, privileged white heterosexual if you don’t want to talk reasonably.” I would hope that I don’t need that bit on here, though. I like to think that those who are fans of the same webcomics as me have the same ability to discuss controversial topics rationally.”
This paragraph is pre-emptively saying “I am right and rational, and there is no way anyone can disagree with me.” It’s there to have a cop-out when people point out where the racism is existing. It is there, in short, to be an ass.
If you really want to have a rational discussion, leave that sort of bullshit out altogether.
Alright, Norton, maybe I should have left that bit out. I can see where it would come across as potentially hostile or arrogant, but that was not my intention. It’s just the kind of bullshit that I always come across in similar discussions on YouTube- people saying I can’t even have a fucking opinion on these matters because I’m white. I wanted to preempt that here, but instead now I can’t have an opinion on these matters at ALL because I came across as a douchebag.
So let me clear this up: I know racism exists. I can see when it exists. I’m not fucking blind. I’m not one of the ones asking “Why people always pull race into it”. What I am saying is that in THIS PARTICULAR SITUATION, I am of the OPINION that racism is NOT THE KEY FACTOR in why the crowd is SIDING WITH THE CELEBRITY.
I’ll also clear up my “ass” comment: that was a reply to Mav. I’m not sure if I directly hit “reply” on his/her particular comment, but it was in response to him/her accusing me of accusing others of hyperbole and irrationality, when my original comment had nothing to do with other people’s already made arguments on the subject.
So, to reiterate, I mentioned my “YouTube addendum” because people have actually used that “argument” against me in the past when considering the fact that something may not be a race issue. Sorry for bringing it up at all.
If my wording offends you, oops. That’s how I type. If I have seemed like an ass, oops. Didn’t mean to. I want a rational discussion on this topic, and yet I have a hard time coming across as rational despite fitting that description.
I’m not sure if I think this is racially charged or not, but I guarantee you if they fought it would become a racially charged issue media-wise, considering where this is happening. I’m with you that the only comment that seems racist was the person saying, “she looks like a troublemaker” – which, btw, FUCK that guy what an ass. I feel like the people who recognize AG just see it as hero vs villain… BUT then I remembered we’re at a hardcore, Trump-esque Republican event annnnnd yeah, now I’m thinking this is a bit more racially charged than those speech bubbles indicate. And I 100% think if she goes after the rapist guy that the crowd is gonna turn on her for not going after Sal instead.
> “kidnapping with a shotgun” — This is a sore point of mine. Not a shotgun. Willis was being clever. I would cheerfully expound on this, but this comment section is already too long.
I still want to see Sal and amber go at it, though in a less public place would be best
If they’re going to be going at it, they’re definitely going to want some privacy
FUCK IM UP
Sorry, remind me who this guy is?
Oh never mind, I got it.
Let’s hope Amazi-Girl lunges at him like so!!!
Okay, so Gash-face is gonna go down. great. fantastic. But PLEASE have SOMEBODY slap the crap outta amber. That psycho otaku needs to have one hell of a reality check before the book is out, or she will dissolve into a completely unlikeable character.
Cue the music when Shoshanna runs into Hans Landa at the restaurant
You look unfortunate boy. How bout I even up that face of yours.
I can’t believe I finally get to say this and actually be serious for once! “It’s him! The guy with the face!”
There’s no wake-up call quite like the douchebags who agree with you.