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Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
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Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
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I only just now noticed that the guy in the back is tagged Norville, and apparently he’s appeared in a few previous strips. How did I not notice that before?
This is English. Spelling is optional. Especially in this case, because “chirch” feels like it’ll be pronounced the same as “church”, AKA rhyming with “birch”.
As I say them, they’re very close, but the vowel in “church” is a little longer and lower than the vowel in “birch”. If I pay attention I can tell that the tip of my tongue moves up and back for “birch”, relative to where it is for “church”.
(I tried to figure out the linguistic terms for it, but none of the examples on Wikipedia sound like anything that ever comes out of my mouth ever.)
My accent is, admittedly, a bit weird. It’s a mashup of Vermont Yankee, General American, stuff I picked up from going to school in a part of North Carolina that is itself a mashup of imported accents, and some quirks of my own from learning vocabulary more from reading than from other people or television, plus a problem with ‘ar’ that’s probably physiological.
I assumed “chirch” was your interpretation of how an overly sunny girl would say it – like “chawrch” for Goofy, “chorch” for Coach Z, and “temple of dismembered prostitutes” for Buckets of Blood Guy.
maybe that’s why he’s Buckets of Blood Guy, the stress of never getting to be a kid because he was too busy preparing to double-major has given him an insane fixation on making children’s cartoons excessively gory and grim
I keep wondering about that. Were they first the Coen Brothers, and then the Coen Siblings, and then the Coen Sisters? Should we retroactively refer to them as the Coen Sisters? Or should we just stick to Coen Siblings now because it’s nice and inclusive and works for all periods?
Or just “The Coens”?
Actually, he’s dual-majoring in Comp Sci (or EE or whatever they call it at IU) and law. He wants to be that guy who enforces video game regulations for Germany and other places that have censorship laws requiring all the blood to be green or something like that. That way, he gets to play ALL the bloody video games, and no one else gets to see them in their true, bloody form. All that blood is his, his, ONLY HIS!
Yeah, my headcanon, since he started showing up in DoA, has been that his real name is Bob Guy. I find this particularly amusing because I know a Robert Guy, though he goes by “Robb”, after the one in ASoIaF.
I don’t have much to say – my heart breaks for Danny. I hope he and Amber get a chance to chat. Also – echoing Cerb’s point later down. This is MUCH healthier than he was after breaking up with Dorothy. He’s doing his best not to pine and to get away from situations where pining is easier. And yeah, Amber notices him now.
From my knowledge, projectors tend to be on the ceiling near the front where students can’t easily access them without carrying a ladder in. And sometimes there are plug sockets up really high on the wall at the front too for no discernable reason.
If the room is old enough, there might be a projection room behind it to accommodate a film projector. It may or may not be used for that anymore, and the hole may or may not be shuttered, but that square for the projector hole could easily still be there.
Nobody? It’s an uncomfortable situation for both of them.
I hope they’ll meet up and start talking to each other again, but “in the middle of class in front of a bunch of other people” isn’t the ideal time or place.
It was a looot more complicated than that. If Danny had tried to have that conversation without Sal reminding Amber/AG of her trauma they likely would have had much more of a conversation on the subject. Instead, he (unknowingly) brought it up at the worst possible time, when AG was not only being reminded of her trauma but also feeling like Danny had betrayed her by being chummy with the cause of said trauma. To her it felt like Sal had taken Danny from her, not that Danny was afraid for her safety.
It is incredibly weird to me just how, like, pleasant it is to see someone explain why Amber freaked out then rather than just going “oh she’s just that shitty and violent.”
I get why Amber flipped her lid, I’ve done that too in situations like that, and it sucks to hear so much from anonymous randos about how it makes you shitty and broken.
I don’t think anyone intended to apply this to someone in real life. They are still fictional characters we are talking about here.
But well, we are provided with the explanation since we as readers saw firsthand what happened to her, even her flashbacks, which are a major factor in her struggling. Which makes to us her actions not that shitty (imo) but also not healthy either.
Danny now never heard about Sal (at least I believe so), he just knew that she had issues and experienced some of them in the confrontation with her father. But Amber never actually told him about Sal, or even hinted that she and Sal had any kind of past. Heck, even Sal doesn’t seem to know. Which makes Amber, though a relatable character, acting shitty in the comic, because all her co-people don’t know about all this.
In real life, you normally don’t get that from someone being violent to you or someone you know – you just experience the action, just like Danny did in the comic. Which makes it – on personal level – a shitty behaviour. Because she did not trust Danny enough to simply talk about any of that. I consider it to be the same with people reacting e.g. jealous in their relationships because they idk feel not good enough for their partner subconsciously, have self-doubt or sthg like that, and thus drive their partner away with controlling behaviour after some time, instead of telling them at some point WHY they act like that. And for that to happen they need to be able to self-reflect, to become conscious of the why themselves, and to trust in their relationship enough to be able to communicate about such matters.
But that’d just be the ideal case and as we probably all know, life doesn’t go like that, because emotions are not always rational.
My point is that it sucks that I can go “I relate to this” and then have a bunch of people go “acting like this at any moment regardless of reasoning makes you bad/toxic/broken/an abuser.”
Though I don’t believe the others meant it exactly that way (as a generalisation – since what they’re referencing is the comic), if you read it like that, it’s legitimately like that for you and I have no right to tell you how you can or should perceive their statements in another way. I also have no solution to the situation besides adding that generalisations like that I personally perceive to be generally bad, though we humans tend to do generalisations (or putting people into neat little categories), most of the time unconsciously.
Good for Danny. That whole, “you’re dating part of me but friends with the other part” was just bad news. Yeah he’s being passive aggressive. But who isn’t in this arc?
I can see either of these being valid explanations, and I think that while it is probably mainly one of the reasons, it could partially be the other as well.
This. You can be respectful after a break up but he still has to go to class and therefore do whats best for him. If he is having trouble concentrating with her in his field of view then moving seats is the right choice.
I took it as him figuring that she would prefer to be able to see him rather than think he was watching her from behind. I thought he changed seats to be nice to her.
I took it more as him finding it awkward to sit next to her, awkward to sit behind her, and still awkward several rows in front of her but now he can’t see her reaction at least.
Like, zoinks, it’s Shaggy. Like, what’s he doing in college? Shouldn’t he be running from a ghost? Then again, he’d probably make one hell of a track and field athlete.
Please, that’s not Shaggy. That’s his twin brother Edward. And don’t you dare mention that embarrassing pothead brother of his, who thinks his dog talks to him and hangs out with a guy wearing an ascot, which has to be a sign of something unsavoury.
Hanna Barbera haven’t exactly been big on continuity. The original Flintstones is full of continuity problems, like Joe Rockhead’s character design changing between episodes, Wilma having more than one maiden name etc.
It’s weird for me to think that I just finished up my last quarter of university a few weeks ago, yet the characters are not even at their first winter break, despite the fact that I started college at the same time Joyce did.
Model railroad hobbyists who try to operate their layouts in ‘prototypical’ fashion (as opposed to just watching the trains go ’round and ’round) sometimes use something called a “fast clock” so that one hour (model time) takes place in, for example, ten minutes real time.
Willis has gone to the other extreme and is using a verr-rr-rr-ryyy *SLOW* clock, so that each chapter of each book is one day (comic time) and takes anywhere from 80 days on up in real time.
What throws me off is when they reference things that didn’t exist when the comic first started like Steven Universe or Pokemon Go. Thankfully it doesn’t happen too often but just imagine if this comic goes on long enough they’ll live in a world where they just started collge and Trump’s been president of two years!
How do you mean? The chronology works fine in-universe. It’s just very very slow paced. We know how many days it’s been in universe – a little over a month, roughly Oct. 6th. And it operates on comic book time – it is always this year, forever. So, “Oct. 6th” can mean 2016, 2017, and so on and so forth.
Somehow, all the characters live in a bubble of massively distorted space time, as if IU was near a black hole or something, which dilates their time massively compared to the outside world. From their perspective, time anywhere else in the world proceeds much faster, but it still allows for new trends and technologies to seep into their bubble.
Panel 2: Different row, but still looking at Amber. And uh oh, Amber in a middle seat so now is likely to get two creepsters moving in shortly. I wonder if this is partially intended as a self-destruction thing, like “punishing” the self-loathing alter for how things went with Danny with the “golden” alter.
Panel 3-4: Head down, but glancing with blushes the next panel. Yeah, that captures a breakup really well. Especially one that had some ugly elements in it near the end. Danny is hurt by the end of things, but part of him also longs still for her and what they had together.
And that’s a nice parallel with Billie being in a similarly conflicted space about Ruth in the previous comic.
Panel 5: And moving in the front, blushing, looking away, and hurting. But I’m so proud of Danny here. We know his usual method of handling heartbreak and it’s really self-destructive. So the fact that he’s out and doing things to reduce the amount of suffering he’s actively putting himself through, not sitting next to Amber, not sitting where he’ll be tempted to look over her all period, doing his part to separate and heal.
I mean, that’s remarkable, Danny is doing the healthy things in recovering from heartbreak and that’s a huge character growth for him.
And Amber, glancing over herself. And that’s full of even more meaning because of how the Amazi-girl alter decided to interpret the breakup. After all, we know that the Amber alter also loved Danny, and has felt completely shut out of being able to process the fallout and messy emotions of this breakup.
Panel One: Ah, yes, this class exists. That’s….that’s gonna be awkward. And yay, Buckets of Blood Guy! I miss the annoying Shortpacked customers. I have a soft spot for them, since Shortpacked was my intro to Willis’ work.
Panel Two: And yep, ex sighted. Now officially awkward. Poor Danny. He wants to help Amber so much, but that blew up in his face.
Panel Three: So he won’t say anything, he’s just gonna hang around and sit in the next row and try not to get any attention over anything.
Panel Four: But no, he can’t help looking and that’s no good for class time. Pine over your ex later, Danny, education is important.
Panel Five: Poor Danny. He looks so miserable. I just want to hug him. And now Amber’s noticed him. This will be interesting. Is it too much to ask for them to talk to each other? I really want them to straighten out…well a lot of things. Even if they don’t get back together, it’d be nice if they could be friends.
I really how they will manage to talk to each other, but that is complicated. I think Danny is good to wait for Amber to take the first step. If she’s not ready to talk it can blow up spectacularly (again).
Similarly, I have white shirts and light blue shirts. And one cream shirt, just to break it up a little. (In the past, a sage green shirt filled that spot in the rotation.)
Buckets of blood has been in two comics and has had 4 speaking lines. Norville has been in 7 comics with no speaking lines. Congrats to the two popular background characters, you put random TV background characters to shame!
Well, looks like Danny is being added to the (long) list of people in this strip who desperately need a hug! Now, Amber has noticed Danny’s behaviour. I wonder is she’s going to respond to it in any way and, if she does, in what way?
I think it’s the former too, because if he wanted her to see him he would have moved only a row in front, rather than as far up front as he could (assuming there are only 4 rows of chairs in the class).
The skintone is more like Jacob’s (but it’s almost certainly not Jacob either). Also if it were Ethan, Danny wouldn’t leave an empty seat between them. Also if Ethan were here, he and Amber would be sitting together. Also if Ethan had this class, he and Amber would’ve been sitting together on previous occasions.
Re-reading this comic from the start for the third time, and it still feels pretty fresh. Maybe a little too fresh, in some places. I always consider skipping a certain couple of Dina-heavy chapters, even though she’s just about my favorite character.
The strip where Dorothy says she’s sorry that they broke up. Amber looks a little forlorn before remarking that Danny would eventually see it as a good thing, and then when she was talking about it with Ethan she said that things could have gotten dangerous, and Amazi-Girl had to let him go “before somebody got hurt.”
*pulls off Amazi-Girl’s mask* “The campus vigilante was Old Woman O’Malley all this time! She was in league with Daisy to drive up IDS readership numbers!”
“i would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling stoners and that fucking dog! And who are you calling old? I’m eighteen, for fuck’s sake.”
Apparently if you use the Tor browser, since it doesn’t save personal information and anonymizes your IP through the Tor network, you can vote infinitely in the polls.
I could easily just vote from my other computer (which has the same outward IP address), so I’m pretty sure it’s just cookie based. (I don’t vote from the other computer on purpose.)
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Shaggy?
Is that Shaggy in the back?
Apparently it’s Norville.
I only just now noticed that the guy in the back is tagged Norville, and apparently he’s appeared in a few previous strips. How did I not notice that before?
According to Willis’ twitter feed on the right, he wasn’t tagged until just a few minutes ago.
Shaggy’s actual name in the SD series is Norville, so it still could be Shaggy.
In fact, it’s much more likely now
Norville “Shaggy” Rogers
Yep, looks like it. Least that’s what that Wikipedia thing says…
you could also consult the Scooby Doo Project
B.o.B guy is a programmer?
Hey, someone has to make sure the blood spatters in video games are accurate to real life.
Game design honestly feels like a good career choice for him.
I’m sure the producers of MK would hire him. After all, it’s one of the bloodiest game series.
Also the boob physics.
Augh nooooo I had comfortably forgotten buckets of blood guy
why
How could you forget? He’s the star of the comic! Some people think it’s the overly sunny chirch girl but no, it’s him.
I was about to ask how someone who’d only appeared in one single strip out of more than 2 000 could possibly be the star…
…But then I checked and found out that this is his second appearance in DoA. Therefore you are right, Kris, BoBG is indeed the star.
You should have called me out on spelling “church” with an “i” like a fool…missed opportunity.
FOOLS!
This is English. Spelling is optional. Especially in this case, because “chirch” feels like it’ll be pronounced the same as “church”, AKA rhyming with “birch”.
And if church and birch rhymes you open for some really good hymns.
The OE spelling was actually cirice.
“Church” and “birch” (OE beorc) don’t quite rhyme in my accent.
I’m sure Björk could tell us more about that.
I don’t think I know of any accent where ‘church’ and ‘birch’ don’t rhyme. Unless they don’t in Scottish or something?
As I say them, they’re very close, but the vowel in “church” is a little longer and lower than the vowel in “birch”. If I pay attention I can tell that the tip of my tongue moves up and back for “birch”, relative to where it is for “church”.
(I tried to figure out the linguistic terms for it, but none of the examples on Wikipedia sound like anything that ever comes out of my mouth ever.)
My accent is, admittedly, a bit weird. It’s a mashup of Vermont Yankee, General American, stuff I picked up from going to school in a part of North Carolina that is itself a mashup of imported accents, and some quirks of my own from learning vocabulary more from reading than from other people or television, plus a problem with ‘ar’ that’s probably physiological.
I assumed “chirch” was your interpretation of how an overly sunny girl would say it – like “chawrch” for Goofy, “chorch” for Coach Z, and “temple of dismembered prostitutes” for Buckets of Blood Guy.
Don’t you mean Frank Miller, rather than Buckets of Blood Guy?
I guess I had mixed them together! Honestly, I’m not disappointed I can’t make up what BoB guy should say.
SECOND?!
Because Willis hates you personally and wishes for you to suffer, that’s why.
He hates ALL of us personally and wishes for us to suffer. Like C3PO said, it is our lot in life.
Man is born to read Willis comics and suffer as the sparks fly upward. Part of that quote usually gets left out.
BUCKETS OF BLOOD GUY
what’s his major? i hope it’s biology or something, so he can one day possibly work with actual buckets of blood
maybe a med student?
oh yes please let him be premed, and make his way through law school, and then like thirty years later:
“–and the cancer will eat your brain and make your organs explode and your skeleton will melt and…”
yeah, sure, let him go through law school, and become a doctor, that’s how it works, yes
WHY BE JUST A LAWYER OR A DOCTOR WHEN YOU CAN BE BOTH
or you can disappoint your parents and be only one
or end up disappointing your parents even worse by becoming neither
maybe that’s why he’s Buckets of Blood Guy, the stress of never getting to be a kid because he was too busy preparing to double-major has given him an insane fixation on making children’s cartoons excessively gory and grim
Dumbing of Age: Buckets of Blood Guy Begins
directed by frank snyder, written by james goyer
Or maybe by the Coen Brothers, aka the Fargo Chipper Boys.
I keep wondering about that. Were they first the Coen Brothers, and then the Coen Siblings, and then the Coen Sisters? Should we retroactively refer to them as the Coen Sisters? Or should we just stick to Coen Siblings now because it’s nice and inclusive and works for all periods?
Or just “The Coens”?
i think you mean the wachowskis
Since it’s a freshman course, wouldn’t it be pre-med? I’m not sure how American college courses work.
He’s not in college, he just walks throughout the multiverse and happened to land in this one
Someone has to do the Cheese’s job in his absence.
Criminal justice.
Actually, he’s dual-majoring in Comp Sci (or EE or whatever they call it at IU) and law. He wants to be that guy who enforces video game regulations for Germany and other places that have censorship laws requiring all the blood to be green or something like that. That way, he gets to play ALL the bloody video games, and no one else gets to see them in their true, bloody form. All that blood is his, his, ONLY HIS!
I find green or violet or blueish blood much gorier than red blood.
Poor Danny.
Actually, this is Danny making a good tactical choice. Possibly not intentionally.
I kind of love that buckets of blood guy’s tag name isn’t explained in the Dumbingverse.
If anyone was wondering…
To me, Buckets of Blood guy will be…
Bob.
It makes sense in some strange, other-worldly way.
Perfectly reasonable nickname for him.
Robert Griffin. But everyone calls him BoBG.
Yeah, my headcanon, since he started showing up in DoA, has been that his real name is Bob Guy. I find this particularly amusing because I know a Robert Guy, though he goes by “Robb”, after the one in ASoIaF.
Buckets of Blood Guy don’t got no arms.
he’s naruto running
Damn it, he’s gonna see some buckets of blood one way or another!
How else is he gonna get buckets of blood?
I sing of arms and the man,
ROFL
Sads
…
…How am I supposed to make a long-ass rambling thing based on a single sentence if there aren’t even any words in the comic?
BBCC, this one is all yours!
Not very long ass, but I did my best. XD
I don’t have much to say – my heart breaks for Danny. I hope he and Amber get a chance to chat. Also – echoing Cerb’s point later down. This is MUCH healthier than he was after breaking up with Dorothy. He’s doing his best not to pine and to get away from situations where pining is easier. And yeah, Amber notices him now.
Is the square on the back wall for a projector, or some new college thing from after my time?
From my knowledge, projectors tend to be on the ceiling near the front where students can’t easily access them without carrying a ladder in. And sometimes there are plug sockets up really high on the wall at the front too for no discernable reason.
If the room is old enough, there might be a projection room behind it to accommodate a film projector. It may or may not be used for that anymore, and the hole may or may not be shuttered, but that square for the projector hole could easily still be there.
Aww, now the question here is who is the REAL coward?
Nobody? It’s an uncomfortable situation for both of them.
I hope they’ll meet up and start talking to each other again, but “in the middle of class in front of a bunch of other people” isn’t the ideal time or place.
I kinda hope they don’t start talking. That conversation’s gonna get real awkward if Danny finds out she’s hanging with Sal.
I don’t see how? They broke up because he tried to get her to hang up her cape, not because he was taking to Sal.
It was a looot more complicated than that. If Danny had tried to have that conversation without Sal reminding Amber/AG of her trauma they likely would have had much more of a conversation on the subject. Instead, he (unknowingly) brought it up at the worst possible time, when AG was not only being reminded of her trauma but also feeling like Danny had betrayed her by being chummy with the cause of said trauma. To her it felt like Sal had taken Danny from her, not that Danny was afraid for her safety.
It is incredibly weird to me just how, like, pleasant it is to see someone explain why Amber freaked out then rather than just going “oh she’s just that shitty and violent.”
I get why Amber flipped her lid, I’ve done that too in situations like that, and it sucks to hear so much from anonymous randos about how it makes you shitty and broken.
I don’t think anyone intended to apply this to someone in real life. They are still fictional characters we are talking about here.
But well, we are provided with the explanation since we as readers saw firsthand what happened to her, even her flashbacks, which are a major factor in her struggling. Which makes to us her actions not that shitty (imo) but also not healthy either.
Danny now never heard about Sal (at least I believe so), he just knew that she had issues and experienced some of them in the confrontation with her father. But Amber never actually told him about Sal, or even hinted that she and Sal had any kind of past. Heck, even Sal doesn’t seem to know. Which makes Amber, though a relatable character, acting shitty in the comic, because all her co-people don’t know about all this.
In real life, you normally don’t get that from someone being violent to you or someone you know – you just experience the action, just like Danny did in the comic. Which makes it – on personal level – a shitty behaviour. Because she did not trust Danny enough to simply talk about any of that. I consider it to be the same with people reacting e.g. jealous in their relationships because they idk feel not good enough for their partner subconsciously, have self-doubt or sthg like that, and thus drive their partner away with controlling behaviour after some time, instead of telling them at some point WHY they act like that. And for that to happen they need to be able to self-reflect, to become conscious of the why themselves, and to trust in their relationship enough to be able to communicate about such matters.
But that’d just be the ideal case and as we probably all know, life doesn’t go like that, because emotions are not always rational.
sorry, that became kinda long….
My point is that it sucks that I can go “I relate to this” and then have a bunch of people go “acting like this at any moment regardless of reasoning makes you bad/toxic/broken/an abuser.”
Yes, that really sucks
Though I don’t believe the others meant it exactly that way (as a generalisation – since what they’re referencing is the comic), if you read it like that, it’s legitimately like that for you and I have no right to tell you how you can or should perceive their statements in another way. I also have no solution to the situation besides adding that generalisations like that I personally perceive to be generally bad, though we humans tend to do generalisations (or putting people into neat little categories), most of the time unconsciously.
Amazi-gal has been hanging with Sal, Amber wouldn’t go near her (except to stab her of course).
Buckets of Blood Guy, of course.
Shaggy? He certainly does run from a lot of monsters.
Good for Danny. That whole, “you’re dating part of me but friends with the other part” was just bad news. Yeah he’s being passive aggressive. But who isn’t in this arc?
I don’t read that as passive aggression so much as wanting her out of his field of view for his own sanity.
I can see either of these being valid explanations, and I think that while it is probably mainly one of the reasons, it could partially be the other as well.
But now he’s in her field of view reversing the process like that one Uno card! What about Amber’s arguably more fragile sanity?
If he’s giving too much thought to that than yes, passive aggression could be at play. I’m not seeing it, myself.
I think after a breakup, your first responsibility is to your own sanity, not your ex’s.
This. You can be respectful after a break up but he still has to go to class and therefore do whats best for him. If he is having trouble concentrating with her in his field of view then moving seats is the right choice.
I took it as him figuring that she would prefer to be able to see him rather than think he was watching her from behind. I thought he changed seats to be nice to her.
I took it more as him finding it awkward to sit next to her, awkward to sit behind her, and still awkward several rows in front of her but now he can’t see her reaction at least.
–Just take a seat, they’re always free
No surprise, no mystery
I’m this theater I call my soul
I always play the starring role–So Lonely!
Like, zoinks, it’s Shaggy. Like, what’s he doing in college? Shouldn’t he be running from a ghost? Then again, he’d probably make one hell of a track and field athlete.
He’s investigating a ghost that hides behind doors and goes wherever she likes undetected but for a faint odor of Cocoa Puffs.
They are investigating the rumors of an avenging angel flying around the campus and tossing cars around with her mind.
Please, that’s not Shaggy. That’s his twin brother Edward. And don’t you dare mention that embarrassing pothead brother of his, who thinks his dog talks to him and hangs out with a guy wearing an ascot, which has to be a sign of something unsavoury.
Are you accusing Fred of something heinous? Then again, his weird trap fetish may actually be masking something darker now that I think about it.
Scooby Doo goes back and forth on whether the kids went to college. I seem to recall Scooby Doo in Cyberspace mentioned they did.
It was high school. Memory, WHY?
Hanna Barbera haven’t exactly been big on continuity. The original Flintstones is full of continuity problems, like Joe Rockhead’s character design changing between episodes, Wilma having more than one maiden name etc.
Uh oh, Danny’s got his goth sweatshirt on. Better keep him away from Billie’s booze stash. And Ruth.
Amber does have a knack for acting with integrity.
She’s hasn’t got the “no regrets” part down yet, though.
Holy son of a gun! DANNY! I missed you so much! My sweet child, it’s been 4 months! Give me a hug! :’D
It’s weird for me to think that I just finished up my last quarter of university a few weeks ago, yet the characters are not even at their first winter break, despite the fact that I started college at the same time Joyce did.
That is the major flaw with this comic. The chronology isn’t really real.
Model railroad hobbyists who try to operate their layouts in ‘prototypical’ fashion (as opposed to just watching the trains go ’round and ’round) sometimes use something called a “fast clock” so that one hour (model time) takes place in, for example, ten minutes real time.
Willis has gone to the other extreme and is using a verr-rr-rr-ryyy *SLOW* clock, so that each chapter of each book is one day (comic time) and takes anywhere from 80 days on up in real time.
What throws me off is when they reference things that didn’t exist when the comic first started like Steven Universe or Pokemon Go. Thankfully it doesn’t happen too often but just imagine if this comic goes on long enough they’ll live in a world where they just started collge and Trump’s been president of two years!
I think you mean “if the world goes on long enough”.
Or if the Trump presidency goes on long enough.
We’re holding a pool. How many times he’ll be impeached.
Whether any of those impeachments will result in a conviction, or if he’ll just resign, is the
subject of a different pool.
How do you mean? The chronology works fine in-universe. It’s just very very slow paced. We know how many days it’s been in universe – a little over a month, roughly Oct. 6th. And it operates on comic book time – it is always this year, forever. So, “Oct. 6th” can mean 2016, 2017, and so on and so forth.
Somehow, all the characters live in a bubble of massively distorted space time, as if IU was near a black hole or something, which dilates their time massively compared to the outside world. From their perspective, time anywhere else in the world proceeds much faster, but it still allows for new trends and technologies to seep into their bubble.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 2: Different row, but still looking at Amber. And uh oh, Amber in a middle seat so now is likely to get two creepsters moving in shortly. I wonder if this is partially intended as a self-destruction thing, like “punishing” the self-loathing alter for how things went with Danny with the “golden” alter.
Panel 3-4: Head down, but glancing with blushes the next panel. Yeah, that captures a breakup really well. Especially one that had some ugly elements in it near the end. Danny is hurt by the end of things, but part of him also longs still for her and what they had together.
And that’s a nice parallel with Billie being in a similarly conflicted space about Ruth in the previous comic.
Panel 5: And moving in the front, blushing, looking away, and hurting. But I’m so proud of Danny here. We know his usual method of handling heartbreak and it’s really self-destructive. So the fact that he’s out and doing things to reduce the amount of suffering he’s actively putting himself through, not sitting next to Amber, not sitting where he’ll be tempted to look over her all period, doing his part to separate and heal.
I mean, that’s remarkable, Danny is doing the healthy things in recovering from heartbreak and that’s a huge character growth for him.
And Amber, glancing over herself. And that’s full of even more meaning because of how the Amazi-girl alter decided to interpret the breakup. After all, we know that the Amber alter also loved Danny, and has felt completely shut out of being able to process the fallout and messy emotions of this breakup.
Danny is Dannying really well. He goes on, he doesn’t grandstand and he tries to minimize the damage.
And poor Amber. She has very few tools to deal with this. I’m glad she is in class, at least.
Panel One: Ah, yes, this class exists. That’s….that’s gonna be awkward. And yay, Buckets of Blood Guy! I miss the annoying Shortpacked customers. I have a soft spot for them, since Shortpacked was my intro to Willis’ work.
Panel Two: And yep, ex sighted. Now officially awkward. Poor Danny. He wants to help Amber so much, but that blew up in his face.
Panel Three: So he won’t say anything, he’s just gonna hang around and sit in the next row and try not to get any attention over anything.
Panel Four: But no, he can’t help looking and that’s no good for class time. Pine over your ex later, Danny, education is important.
Panel Five: Poor Danny. He looks so miserable. I just want to hug him. And now Amber’s noticed him. This will be interesting. Is it too much to ask for them to talk to each other? I really want them to straighten out…well a lot of things. Even if they don’t get back together, it’d be nice if they could be friends.
I really how they will manage to talk to each other, but that is complicated. I think Danny is good to wait for Amber to take the first step. If she’s not ready to talk it can blow up spectacularly (again).
Very true. Hopefully they’re in a better spot to talk soon, though Danny’s improved break up coping and Amber…..
Okay, fine, Amber. AG’s been shunting her problems onto her lately, so hopefully Amber will be okay because AG’s clearly not.
Clearly not helping with that.
He should have move to one row in front of her, so she could move one row in front of him, and then repeat again and again, to Benny Hill music.
Ruh-roh.
Looking back through the posts Norville is posted in I have one question. Does Norville only have one green shirt?
He probably has a closet full of them, all made from unidentifiable yet unmistakably cheap fabric
I have like a dozen or so identical French Blue dress shirts to save time dressing in the morning.
Similarly, I have white shirts and light blue shirts. And one cream shirt, just to break it up a little. (In the past, a sage green shirt filled that spot in the rotation.)
What, you think this comic has the budget to give the extras full wardrobes?
This is a decade before Shortpacked but Buckets of Blood guy is wearing the same shirt. Presumably newer now.
Never underestimate how long a geek can continue wearing the same t-shirt, especially if it bears artwork relevant to his interests.
Truth.
Sad Danny is sad
I’m not surprised at how Danny is dealing with this. After all, he’s a pretty up-front guy.
So Willis, is Buckets a big fan of the Decepticon Justice Division?
he boycotts mtmte because it panders to sjws
I’ve read the first five volumes of it and it really is as good as everyone says. I don’t think it even has a single bad line of dialogue.
I can’t forgive James Roberts for killing off a cute tiny gay robot though.
I didn’t expect an answer, haha. Thanks!
If that’s not good enough reason to find it and start reading it, I don’t know what is!
Jinkies! Shaggy apparantly goes to college now….Zoinks!
Is he majoring in Criminology, or Metaphysical Biology?
MB would lead to Gems, like from Steven Universe.
Buckets of blood has been in two comics and has had 4 speaking lines. Norville has been in 7 comics with no speaking lines. Congrats to the two popular background characters, you put random TV background characters to shame!
awkaaard
Well, looks like Danny is being added to the (long) list of people in this strip who desperately need a hug! Now, Amber has noticed Danny’s behaviour. I wonder is she’s going to respond to it in any way and, if she does, in what way?
Sooo did Danny move so he wouldn’t have to see Amber, or so that Amber would see him? I’d think the former I guess
I’m gonna guess former as well. Which is healthy. No need to cause oneself extra distress when one doesn’t have to.
The former. Looking at her is causing him grief so he wants her out of his eyesight.
If he thought that doing so would make her feel as miserable as he is right now, I doubt he’d do it.
I think it’s the former too, because if he wanted her to see him he would have moved only a row in front, rather than as far up front as he could (assuming there are only 4 rows of chairs in the class).
Is that arm Ethan?
no
The skintone is more like Jacob’s (but it’s almost certainly not Jacob either). Also if it were Ethan, Danny wouldn’t leave an empty seat between them. Also if Ethan were here, he and Amber would be sitting together. Also if Ethan had this class, he and Amber would’ve been sitting together on previous occasions.
Danny, baby.
Re-reading this comic from the start for the third time, and it still feels pretty fresh. Maybe a little too fresh, in some places. I always consider skipping a certain couple of Dina-heavy chapters, even though she’s just about my favorite character.
Since Amber has had a change of heart about Sal, I wonder if she’ll have a change of heart about Danny.
She already has. Now she’s convinced that Danny is better off without her, and that she’s a danger to him.
Um. Did I miss something?
The strip where Dorothy says she’s sorry that they broke up. Amber looks a little forlorn before remarking that Danny would eventually see it as a good thing, and then when she was talking about it with Ethan she said that things could have gotten dangerous, and Amazi-Girl had to let him go “before somebody got hurt.”
Is … Is Shaggy going to out Amazi-Girl?!
*pulls off Amazi-Girl’s mask* “The campus vigilante was Old Woman O’Malley all this time! She was in league with Daisy to drive up IDS readership numbers!”
“i would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling stoners and that fucking dog! And who are you calling old? I’m eighteen, for fuck’s sake.”
“Also, why the fuck can that dog talk? There aren’t any other true fantasy elements in this franchise, so why this one thing?”
Apparently if you use the Tor browser, since it doesn’t save personal information and anonymizes your IP through the Tor network, you can vote infinitely in the polls.
Also apparently your comments need to await moderation.
Just for first-time posters.
When I’m using Tor I don’t have any cookies so it always thinks I’m a first-time poster.
I could easily just vote from my other computer (which has the same outward IP address), so I’m pretty sure it’s just cookie based. (I don’t vote from the other computer on purpose.)
Blue-shirted Shoulder Guy’s back! Wooo!
Awkward!!
I want to talk to you but I want you to be the one to break the ice first because I just want to be a coward.
Or maybe I respect that you told me to go away and that remains in force until explicitly revoked.
Picked a good comic to accidentally miss. Not a bad comic, just not much to discuss.