Never understood why that’s supposedly such a big thing. It’s not like the seat is that hard to move up or down so why is it a big deal if sometimes the woman has to lower it herself?
Acquired habits. A lady rarely, if ever, needs to raise the toilet seat for use. So after 20-30 years you build habits. You’re tired, gotta pee, go into the bathroom, sit down automatically, and fall in (or sit directly on the bowl).
What Hutt said. As a woman with four brothers, I’m used to putting the seat down and honestly don’t care, but my female friends who are only children or have only sisters think it’s the evilest trap that can befall a poor naked butt.
That’s just asking for something to stay behind to surprise the next person to open the cover.
Though I may be over vigilant thanks to the ‘water saving’ toilets we have to have that you actually have to flush twice (at least) so end up using slightly more water than the old ones.
Hold the lever down when flushing until you hear the actual “swoosh” of the flush, and you’ll never have that problem. (holding the lever keeps the flapper valve in the tank open, so that more of the water in the tank will be used)
Doesn’t work when these new ones have a teeny capacity, holding down only lets about another litre out. I’ve tested it with the top off the cistern. It needs two full undersized cisterns to flush properly. Not sure if it is a problem with all the toilets under the new standard here or if ours is just designed badly.
Really I should be shutting the lid, holding down the button, then checking while it refills. But I’m lazy
It means your low-flow is a cheap one and as such poorly designed. The more expensive low flow toilets are more expensive because they have a proper flow for the water and operate better than higher flow models, being that they will clear what would clog a higher flow because good low flows course like a raging river.
Investing into a proper low flow toilet will save you a pretty penny on your water bill over the years and if you are renting it would be worth while to inquire with your landlord about it.
Of course that assumes a full load number 2 flush is required at the time. The watersaver also cancel out the unnecessary flush volume for number 1’s, and people doing random flushes for other things. It maynot handle everything on one flush, but it significantly reduces waste across the population.
Making you flush twices sometimes is an acceptable price for that.
This is the only website where I’ve seen a serious discussion about toilets on a web page that has nothing to do with toilets. I am somehow okay with this.
It may help to convince you to close the lid before flushing to look up stats on exactly how many… ‘particulates’ come out of the toilet, and how far they go, when you flush…
Yes, as a guy, I always close the lid, who the hell wants to walk into a bathroom and look into a toilet, I don’t. And, as stated, yuck, it does spray a little when you flush, so close the lid first, super easy!
I once read an article about how toilet spray can spread up to 6 feet in all directions after you flush, and since then have been firmly in the “just put down the whole cover, that way everyone’s equal” camp.
The lack of covers in public restrooms irks me because of the spray. Especially where I work, where the flush is so violent if I don’t escape the stall in time, I can feel it.
Absolutely concur. Equal opportunity in my house. Seat lid goes down after each toilet user uses the toilet so that we both are expected to follow the same rules. The only time anything is “left behind” is in the middle of the night when the horrible old plumbing would wake everyone with a single flush. We always can tell someone from outside our household has used out toilet because the lid and sometimes the seat will be up.
I have *ONLY* ever once *sat* on the bare toilet seat, because I was sleepy and only half-looked, but I have never fallen in. That said, I check EVEN IN THE LADIES’ ROOM because the cleaning crew leaves the seat up to show it’s been cleaned.
We also habitually put the lid down because otherwise shit might fall in (err, the shit you DON’T want falling in, that is).
When it’s the middle of the night and you have photophobia (an extreme sensitivity to light, not a fear of light, I don’t know what idiot named it that) so the bathroom is pitch black? Good luck looking at anything before you sit down
A phobia is defined as either a fear or an aversion to something, so it makes sense if you use the second definition. Light causes pain, so is therefore avoided.
In my experience, it’s never the toilet seat itself, it’s usually that the toilet seat is part of a pattern of many little problems which boil down to “he can’t be bothered to do small, considerate things.”
This is likely a part of it. When it is part of a chain of inconsiderate behaviours it can be really really really aggravating as it can be part of a ‘stack’ of things that’d take seconds or five minutes to do.
Many generations ago, the rabbis of the Talmud discussed a law that you could divorce somebody because she burned the soup. They decided that this is not about the specific soup — instead, it’s because, if this is the kind of relationship where somebody wants to divorce over something that ridiculously inconsequential, then woah, they should just divorce already.
Seriously, though, this is the kind of stuff that makes me not believe in marriage at all. A marriage is nothing more than a promise to make it a real pain the in a** when you want to break up.
1.) The word choice of “when you want to break up” sounds more like a commitment problem. Not trying to be rude, but an if/when fits better. It’s a good point, though.
2.) Ideally marriage is a celebration of not wanting to break up that comes with rewards for that devotion.
Ideally, yeah. The whole point of a marriage is that, to show your commitment to the other, you literally sign a contract that says you’re going to stay together forever. The entire concept falls apart when it becomes so easy to get out of said contract that a couple can get married and divorced in the same day.
Personally, I’m of the school of thought that the contract (and the ridiculously expensive ceremony) shouldn’t be necessary at all. If you love someone, do you really need to get a priest and your local government involved?
saw this late but have to leave a comment for posterity:
If you love someone, marriage isn’t necessary, no.
But if you want the benefits of having your union recognized by everyone else, so you have a clear delineation of heirs, hospital visitation rights, the ability to claim your spouse as a dependent for taxes or insurance, etc., why wouldn’t you get “that piece of paper”?
Orrrrr you could just marry someone you don’t plan on breaking up with ever? That means getting to know them first, living with them for awhile first so you know if they have any deal-breaking habits, and also none of this wanting to change a person crap. “If I’m a good enough wife/husband, they’ll change” “If they love me enough they’ll change” “If we have kids they’ll change” all of this crap is bullshit and does not belong in a relationship and is probably the biggest reason why relationships fail.
Pretty much this. None of the things are a big deal in and of themselves, but when you’re already stressed and in constant contact with someone all the constant tiny irritations pile up until they explode and there’s a big fight about apparently nothing. Pure human nature and it’s hard work to avoid.
Change the fucking empty toilet roll already. Don’t just leave the new one on top; it takes all of SIX SECONDS to do it. I know perfectly well it’s just a passive-aggressive comment on the fact that you think I don’t do enough housework. Well, guess what? I’m already doing all of the housework that anybody does, and you being unwilling to take six seconds to put the new roll on the holder just emphasizes to me, every damn time, that nothing gets done around here unless I do it. No matter how small or simple it is.
And I’d be a lot more willing to run with that whole “you’re unemployed now, so you do all the housework” bit if (a) when I was employed, it wasn’t still all on me; (b) when I had longer hours than you (but wasn’t making as much money, which was the important metric), it was still all on me; (c) when we worked the same hours but I made more (but your job was more stressful, that being the important metric), it was still all on me; and (d) when I was working full time, supporting us both, and you were unemployed, it was still all on me.
Honestly, I don’t know how we’ve lasted as long as we have. The toilet seat (or the toilet paper roll) and how much annoyance it causes is probably an excellent metric of how a marriage is doing. >:(
This was 80% of the reason I left my husband. It ruined our marriage. It’s damaged our friendship. I’m sorry you have to deal with this, and I wish you luck.
For me it’s a big deal because you should completely (cover and all) close the toilet before flushing or you are misting the entire bathroom in whatever you just sent down the toilet.
I get why people care, but I still judge them for missing it (and I’m a cis woman).
I guess I’m a pretty paranoid person, but I don’t think I’d ever sit down anywhere, let alone on a toilet without looking first at what I was about to sit on.
Unfortunately this can be true worldwide if anyone in the same road as you owns a pet snake and it escapes I had the same experience and I live in England
I’ve encountered live centipedes in the bowl before, and those things are venomous. Bleh. (and yes I mean real centipedes not those house centipede things)
Not tiny where my friend in Michigan was; those bastards were eight inches long. She’d squish them with her bare hands; I would have screamed and run away.
It can be seen as being inconsiderate over all because if we assume you are in a one male, one female living situation, 75% of the time the toilet seat will have to be down for use, and they’re more likely to need it next if you have just gone.
For me, it is bothersome because it means you are flushing without putting the lid down which is gross as it can send germs all about the room.
But does that lead to more germs than leaving it up? Doesn’t Bernoulli’s principle mean that it will rush in through narrow spaces like the one between the seat and lid?
Germs being sent all over the room is a foregone conclusion anyway (though, I’m not sure what toilets all the people who say this this are using that flush with high enough pressure to “spray” anything), and putting the lid down runs the risk of it overflowing and you noticing too late.
That works if the goal is to maximize the number of times that it’s already in the position for what the next person needs it for (it’d still work even if I didn’t grant your assumption that “#2” comprises 50% of times any given person needs to use the restroom), but not if the goal is to equalize the division of toilet-seat-moving labor.
Because it’s not primarily a gender issue, it’s a health one. It looks gross and is unhygienic. And having everybody put the seat/lid back down as part of the toilet-using-procedure is equitable. No one complains about having to close the refrigerator door. It’s part of the process of using the fridge. I truly don’t care what people do in their own homes, but…just leave things as you find them when you’re a guest in others’? It’s very appreciated. 🙂
I’m gonna be honest… Sometimes, when people leave the lid down, I don’t notice and then my bare ass is on the toilet lid. And I don’t know where the cleaner is in a stranger’s house.
The problem with that is that a toilet with the seat down but the lid up doesn’t actually look less gross than one with the seat up, assuming the bowl rim is clean (and why wouldn’t it be? literally nothing ever touches it) and the bowl interior being visible is what your objection is to… and very few people seem to clearly advocate for putting the lid down (even you just now said “seat/lid” as if they’re in any way equivalent… to people whose objection is “I sometimes sit on the toilet blind” the lid down is just as bad as the seat up, and Raibean here is not by any means the first person I’ve heard it from)
I fell in once when I was about five. I have learned to feel to verify the seat position in the dark, no matter how tired I am, which works for lid down as well as seat up.
It was cold and wet and I couldn’t get out. I had to call my mum to pull me out. 🙁
That said, though, the rim is usually the grossest part of any toilet I’ve seen, because people inevitably sprinkle (or spray, if the seat is down) onto it, and it gets nasty quickly if it’s not wiped up immediately.
I think the real question is: Why are people with penises treating toilets like they are urinals? Stand at a urinal; sit on a toilet. The rule holds for any gender.
I agree, seat down but lid up is still gross. I should have said seat+lid instead of seat/lid. I meant them as a package deal but the slash could have easily read as ‘or’. Whoops.
We always had cats when I was a kid, including one that loved to drink faucet. He’d jump from the floor to the toilet, then up to the sink, without really paying attention to the path.
Drinking the faucet would mean the cat had fire breath so he could melt it, and have a stomach that could process very high temperatures and liquid metals.
Actually a cat that could drink a faucet would be pretty cool.
I have one of those cats right now! And he gets VERY angry (though so far thankfully not very “wet”) when a guest is in our house and the toilet lid is left up.
An acquaintance told me about a relationship of his that ended over the last slice of pizza. If finished when he yelled “FINE- YOU HAVE IT” and stormed out the door.
I’m so hoping that Danny is able to set Dorothy straight, because Dorothy might be someone that Amazigirl would talk and maybe even listen to, but she’s not as close as Danny or Ethan so less threatening.
I could definitely see that happening. Amber’s set up this narrative that AG is infallible and perfect so to have someone call any of it into question, Amber is most likely to say something like they’ve become corrupted by Sal or whatever rather than admit any problem.
Listen to what? Amber wasn’t interested in actually telling him anything, and Dorothy doesn’t know (or apparently care) that there even is a backstory.
And Danny probably doesn’t have the slightest idea that Sal is the person Amber ran into, back when. Does he? Pretty sure he doesn’t know anything about that person attending the same college now.
Danny did everything wrong, until their last meeting when he told her that she should AG a break maybe. And he like Amber better than AG. That was all good.
Just a bit late.
Danny did the best anyone could expect a teenager in their second ever relationship to do when it comes to dealing with an incredibly emotionally damaged partner especially considering he has his own baggage to deal with.
Yes, this. Danny is not perfect, but he’s doing his best with a bad set of circumstances. You will also notice that much of his commentary is not about HIS hurt but concern about Amber/AG. Not exactly the hallmark of a bad guy.
Danny has his own issues, but he’s not the one being unreasonable here.
That strikes me as enormously out of character for both of them. Danny is a bit clueless sure but he’s nowhere near the level of obliviousness required for him to not see how that would be a terrible idea.
I can easily see a scenario where it happens. Just wait until the next time someone throws a party they both end up at. Alcohol + Hurt feelings + Repressed sexual urges boiling over + Lust+ Bonding over concern for Amber = Slipshine? Some hot and heavy making out? Or just an intense but immediately regretted kiss?
I’m amused that so many topics are discussed here, and it’s the roleplay someone objects to. Usually they at least talk about the comic. That’s more than can be said about most threads after the first couple posts.
Which, to me at least, also isn’t a problem. Some threads are light fun; some are very deep. Some are both! I learn a lot reading them, too. It is probably safe to say that anyone who routinely reads the comments routinely spends a lot more time reading the comments than the comic.
I imagine this many days later I’m not likely to get an answer, but I still wonder, is it roleplay in general being objected to? (In which case you might want to be aware, there is a very high concentration of nerds and/or geeks here, so it would likely be wise to anticipate nerdy and/or geeky antics.) (Also, if taking an alias, is that not also roleplay?)
The only way I could think of to construe this as *spam* would be if they had a link to their site and were telling everyone repeatedly to sign up. Which they don’t. Or maybe if the definition is being expanded to include any possible “advertisement”, but if the mere mention of a game franchise is the issue then that could make some of the topics in the strip very hard to discuss. Like the one where Dan and Sal are playing MarioCart. How *would* we comment? “I too have played racing games and have trouble with some of the tracks.” This sentence over and over would get repetitive. It could be made funny, but it more closely resembles spam than this post. I’m not sure how to remove all brand names without removing most of the meaning of the statement. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’d much rather hear people relate to each other about which tracks they like, or are frustrated by, and why, and how the same track might differ between versions, or similar issues in games of varying similarity. None of this can be done without mentioning what game is being considered, at least not without a nearly absurd amount of effort.
Or maybe you just don’t like roleplay. Or Payday. Or maybe you find this group’s activity in this location to be annoying for some other reason. Those are opinions I would not share, but if they are yours then I would have no objection to you expressing them.
But it is not spam. I very extremely strongly dislike spam (except the canned meat product… I can be a bit weird) but false reporting of spam is also a problem. It can interrupt a person’s ability to communicate over some channels, some of which could be very important. Which sometimes might be a goal a person might have, but it also will usually affect a lot of other people the same way. And usually most of the people affected have nothing to do with the spam, or why they would be blocked for someone else’s spam. For actual spam, especially repeat offences, I would consider it worth it. (There is disagreement on this. The developers of a very widely-used spam filter even disagree with me on this point.) But reporting spam where there is none is often a much less target-specific punishment than a lot of people realize. It often affects a lot more people than one might initially think.
Funny, I always heard that line as “Over mind and body”. A quick search agreed with your version, though. I’ve learned something new today, does that mean I can go back to bed now?
I’m wondering why Amazi-Girl brought it up at all. “Lost the faith” hardly seems like a real reason, so A-G’s motives for bringing her biggest fan into her personal mess seem… murky.
Use Dorothy to bring Danny back into the fold?
Expects that Dorothy will cut off Danny, thereby punishing him more?
Or, perhaps most unlikely, a cry for help, expecting Dorothy to reach the same conclusion as Danny?
Might be she’s calmed down a tad and is regretting her decision to completely eject Danny from her life, but doesn’t think she herself could talk to him directly without going right back to ragemode. She still doesn’t think he’s right about her needing to take a break from AG, it’s just that she’s not in any state to be the person who tells him that right now.
I’m fairly certain that this is not the first time Dorothy did not give Danny the benefit of the doubt. He seems to be the type that sort of invites that kind of treatment, not that I blame him for that. He seems conditioned to think he is pretty worthless.
Yyyyyyyeah. We’ve established that Amber’s not in a good way, but it seriously bothers me that DOROTHY hears that and thinks “yeah, that sure is a normal thing she just said”.
Mostly because Dorothy’s just seen her wander around campus and beat on people that actually deserve a beating. And she, like Danny, is kinda taken in by Amber’s confidence as Amazigirl and doesn’t realize the suicidal tendencies and self hatred behind it.
Still, “nothing that punching more criminals in the face won’t help me work through” is a huge warning sign. Even Dorothy should be taken aback by that.
Yeah, that part is a bit terrifying. I mean, we’ve already seen that she’s decided to interpret Danny talking with Sal as proof of a conspiracy theory and an act of betrayal, but here…?
That’s some disturbing shit, taking her cult of personality to a whole new level of badness.
I think even worse is the whole “oh, you’re my biggest fan, maybe you can ‘bring him back to the fold'” vibe of it all. Like, oh, my gaslighting in order to get him to accept my deluded and fictional view of the world as accurate didn’t work, but maybe you can do better for me in convincing him to “return” to me. It’s all just super skeezy!
Really? REALLY? Dorothy would trust this person who basically said, “I’m going to hurt more students to cope” over Danny, who she’s known for years? That’s pretty goddamn silly to be honest.
Sorry. I’m super pro-Danny but Danny is the boy that cried wolf in this situation. The one time something goes wrong with him and its NOT his fault, people are not likely to just believe him. Though a longer talk with Amber/AG would quickly fix that mindset.
I think the problem is that she’s known Danny for years.
And Danny at the beginning of the comic was kinda a Nice Guy TM with some antiquated views (see him trying to get people to glare at Roz or him in his first appearances with Dorothy).
And so she hasn’t seen how much he’s grown and changed from that. Also, she’s in hero worship for Amazi-girl and so is being blind to her faults.
I think not being unnerved by the “I’m going to go assault random strangers because my SO did something that upset me” statement disqualifies her from mediating these proceedings
Even for a joke, I’d expect some reaction. That Dorothy completely glossed over it seemed off to me.
Maybe she was already so focused on “Danny screwed up” she didn’t really process it.
Danny may be a foolish fool who foolishly fools himself into following foolish dreams and other follies. But this time it’s Dotty von Karma’s perfect record that will bite the dust in order to pursue the Truth and there shall be justice for all.
Seriously tho. I’ve people complain that Dorothy is too perfect. Now I see a lot of people angry that she may, possibly make a mistake later when confronting Danny.
I mean there’s a middle ground between “perfect” and “siding with a violent vigilante you’ve known for like 3 weeks over the friend you’ve known for years.” Like even she acknowledges that she doesn’t know both sides of the story and she still immediately puts the blame on Danny.
AG doesn’t want Dorothy to talk to as much as yell at Danny, it is weird that she didn’t say that part bluntly, but maybe on some level she knows it’s wrong?
Yeah Dorothy, because the person jumping around in a super suit will *clearly* have the rational side in this argument. I’m hoping that she’ll talk to Danny and then use her interview tonight to also try to convince Amber to stop.
the problem here is that atm only sal and danny see her reckless activities in that light. i doubt ethan knows the details of the toedad car chase, or he’d likely be freaking out too.
I know a lot of people really like Dorothy. I don’t dislike her, really, there’s so little about her to dislike, but I’ve always found her flat…boring even. However, since Willis has consistently demonstrated his talent at making characters who don’t seem like much on the surface turn out to have surprising depths, I’ve been patiently awaiting Dorothy’s turn from paper angel to someone way more complex and fascinating than they initially seemed to be. I hope that this is Dorothy’s turn.
(I also hope our next cut is to Jocelyn, Joyce, and Becky’s Excellent Adventures in Housebreaking, as long as I’m hoping.)
Yeah, I don’t get the Dorothy love either. I’ve always been sorta “meh” when it comes to her. She’s okay, and I could be friends with her, but she doesn’t excite me or inspire me to want to hang out with her all the time.
I think for me, maybe it’s that there never seems to be any real conflict in her life. It’s great hanging out with drama-free people in real life but from a narrative perspective…eh, even one-note villains like Mary at least create some friction to propel the storytelling. I’ve stopped putting any real effort into predicting where the story is going to go because I’m so often wrong (I do not mind this – I like it a lot, actually) but I think it would be nice if Dorothy’s hero-worship of AG bumps up hard against the realities of how troubled Amber is and this puts her in a space where she starts questioning all the things she thought she knew. I think that would make a great counterpoint to the struggles Walky is facing right now.
As someone who completely adore Dorothy, I think that she has the same kind of drama and growth as the rest of the cast, only much more muted. She makes her mistakes, she learns from the fallout and she makes sure to change and get better, and generally she manages to do so without a lot of firework.
When she started off as a journalist she immediately ran to slutshame Joe (which he enjoyed) and Roz. When Roz called bullshit Dorothy admitted that she was wrong and went out of her way to get Roz side of the story.
When she realized what had happened to Joyce at the party she was filled by guilt and promised to make up for it. When Joyce wanted her to come to church she did, which led to a confrontation with Mary and a lot of awkwardness, but also growth of Dorothy’s and Jocye’s friendship.
Her and Walky’s realtionship is also evolving. She tries to avoid the mistake she did with Danny and communicate as clearly as possible, which leads to other problems.
Now she has trouble reaching out to Joyce and how to handle her trauma so she flounders a bit and fret a lot. And as you note, she is in the of a great mistake in her idolization of Amazie-girl. We will see her get wise to that soon enough.
So those are all reasons why I find Dorothy interesting – she finds herselves in conflicts and problems, but she goes out of her way to solve them with minimum drama (compare Walky who does the opposite).
But one of the main reasons I love her so is that I think she is completely hilarious. The straight one, the team mum, the responsible one… it’s comedy gold. She brings homework to the beach, writes papers on her phone during a party and in general tries to confront the madness that surrounds her with calm politeness (her interaction with Becky is a perfect example. “…we don’t like each other?”)
Of course, you don’t have to like Dorothy, but this is why I do 🙂
What I find interesting about Dorothy is that she’s the cast with good supportive parents who support her dreams, but don’t shove lots of stress on her and a raising environment where she was encouraged and allowed to be vulnerable.
As such, she seems a lot more mature and grounded than a lot of the class, because she’s one of only a few not trying to figure out who they are escaped from the shadow of their parents. She’s not undoing years of damage from shitty parents or shitty worldviews saddled onto her. She’s got her struggles but she at least has a good grasp on what her situations are.
She’s still got a lot to learn, especially with regards to her stress and overwork. And she does experience external barriers to her own happiness (knowing the strong negative barriers in place for getting what she wants owing to her gender and religion) that she’s learning to cope with.
And I think that’s what makes her a great empathetic support for characters like Joyce and it’s also what likely makes her feel “flatter” to people like the OP. Because she’s not dealing with massive gender or sexuality stuff so much and all the oppression that comes with. She’s not rebuilding her sanity from a lifetime of awfulness from shitty parents and cultures. She’s just polishing the edges on a stone that has already been carefully hewn and cut.
She’s got a headstart on a lot of the characters. But perhaps her greatest flaw and struggle is that everyone seems to also forget that she’s 18 and no less prone to the dumb decisions on occasions of a recent adult learning how to adult.
I think personally that Dorothy seems more “flat” because, well her character is in fact quite deep. Not much going on superficially, but a lot going on under the surface (like was well explained by Bagge). This is why I like her, and if she wasn’t there the comic would seem somewhat more chaotic, superficial and less significant to me. It’s like she’s the comic-glue.
And besides, I identify to her workaholic side, and who doesn’t enjoy identifying to comic characters?
I hate the idea naratively that everyone has a weakness, or a darkside or whatever negative perspective some storytellers use for construction. it flies face of reason in a world where there are truely great and exceptional people. It feels to me like people trying to pat themselves on the back for being average by saying even the greatest people on earth are still deeply flawed.
In that light I really appreciate just how low drama Dorothy is since it’s exactly the kind of personality that is cable of greatness like running a major company or becoming president.
That said it does seem like Dorothy mutes her passions a little bit to pursue her goals. She risks very little in every part of her life. And while avoiding unnecessary risks by doing responsible things like studying makes sense she also avoids practical risks like heartbreak by avoiding emotional commitment to Walky. I don’t want to see Dorothy fail or be weak or any of that. I just want to see her risk enough to care, and then because she cares for her to struggle. I hope we see that here.
I mean Dorothy knows Danny’s a pushover, I mean he followed her to a school because of their relationship. I think she should know his personality could very well caught in an abusive relationship. Dorothy even said she’s used be being the dominant one. Amazi-girl goes around punching people, which is probably not the most stablest mindset out there. I don’t blame Dorothy for thinking like that, because Amazigirls so “cool”! I just hope she doesn’t say anything to Danny to make him feel like he should try and amend the his relationship with Amber (In the dating sense. Someone should definitely help Amber as a friend, and get professional help. Everyone just enables her).
Because there’s a huge difference between “I’m going to stop some more crimes, which will probably involve punching people” and “I’m going to go work off my breakup tension by punching people, but don’t worry, they’ll be bad guys”.
It’s the motivation. I can only assume Dorothy doesn’t take that revelation seriously.
Willis has already showed us that Dorothy is ambitious, has set her sights on being US President, and broke up with Danny in HS because he was not serious about an education.
I think she is level headed enough, that when she talks to Danny, IF he levels with her, she will realize that there is a lot more going on with AG than a costume.
Her first hint ought to be AG’s departing comment maybe. Well adjusted people don’t fine it needful to their well being to punch others in the face.
Amazi-Girl dumped him for suggesting that she (Amazi-Girl) needed to be repressed and that he liked Amber more.
For someone whose alters are disassociating more and more, that’s pretty devastating.
I can’t see how having Dorothy talk to Danny is any benefit to Amazi-Girl for the purposes of preserving the status quo. Dorothy is likely to be rather more assertive and persistent in trying to get AG to seek out help when she fully understands the situation, and even on the off chance that Dorothy turns Danny back into a true believer, AG pretty clearly wrote him off. Even if she does let Danny back in, things won’t be the same as they were. Part of me is hoping that this is actually a way of crying out for help on Amazi-Girl’s part.l
I think that she may just want someone to agree with her. Someone to prove her right. Someone that she’s sure will be on her side. Because at the end of the day, all of Amber’s insecurities are still under there. And she needs to hear “You were completely right to do this.”
That seems very like to be her motivation. And it demonstrates how paperthin Amazi-girls amount of control really is if she thinks Dorothy will take her side.
I think this is proof of just how deluded AG is right now and how committed she is to this delusion. Like, Dorothy might come away from a conversation with him thinking he fucked up simply because Danny is awful at saying what is going on with any manner of tact or without sticking his foot in his mouth.
But if things get spelled out, there’s no way she’d support AG’s shit. But AG is convinced that it’s all so obvious the level of betrayal. I mean, Sal is clearly evil and has powers to corrupt the weak willed and turn them against “the mission” by sowing doubt and refusing to accept what I say is right. And so Danny clearly betrayed her and everyone will see and if they don’t then they are corrupted to and must be fought and treated like enemies and their betrayal must be subsumed into mindless violence.
Like, this is becoming more and more a self-reinforcing conspiracy spiral for AG and I’m not sure how she pulls out now that she’s sacrificed her own romantic relationship to it.
The thing is, if Dorothy actually DOES hear from Danny his side of the story, he’s going to sound completely reasonable, because he is the reasonable one here.
“I found out that she almost got turned into road pizza and I was scared for her, so I told her that maybe she should take a break from the superhero thing for a little while. And then she accused me of having been ‘turned against her’ and broke up with me.”
I wonder if that would change Dorothy’s opinion on Amazi-Girl a bit. Because this fangirling without any acknowledgment that Amazi-Girl is actually kind of terrifying is worrying.
Dorothy is too sensible to be clouded by such fangirl adoration. Once she finds out that Danny approached Amazi-girl with reasonable concerns and she broke up with him the ball will be in her court. She’ll have to decide whether she should confront Amazi-girl with the same concerns and be cut off from access or enable her delusions.
This is one of those situations where I get thrown off balance with regards to how much disbelief should be suspended with DoA in general, and Amber/AG in particular. How much of what we see should be treated as cartoonish antics free of real-world consequences, and how much should be regarded through a strictly realistic lens?
If Amazi-girl should just be regarded as a comic-book hero made flesh (ink flesh. Inksh. Flink) then Dorothy’s reactions to her – fangirling, requesting selfies, not being disturbed by the violence on display – are excusable and we can trust her judgement. Thing is, this arc is (further) pushing the fact that Amber isn’t fine, that Amazi-girl is NOT a healthy, functional outlet, and that there are a lot of consequences yet to be fully explored.
And with THAT reading, I feel like “sensible” Dorothy should have already seen enough red flags to not be gushing and selfie-snapping. I think she IS blinded enough by hero worship to become an enabler to Amber’s dangerous behavior.
For someone who wants to get into politics she doesn’t seem to have much concern for due process
One thing that’s bound to come up eventually is when AG misreads a situation and beats the crap out of someone who doesn’t “deserve” it, or seriously injures someone over some petty crime. One of the things that initially bugged me about Amber/AG was that it it felt out of place to have a costumed vigilante running around in a relatively realistic real world setting without any real apparent consequences. Now that we’re seeing that consequences are a thing, I’m starting to dread the pileup of suck that has to be inbound for Amber and anyone caught in it when it goes down.
I mean she’s already done that to Sal, though she was showing restraint by not punching first. She’s might doing it today, since even the guy she saved seems kind of disturbed by the violence. She’s going around looking to start a fight to deal with anger, so any little thing can probably set her off.
That wasn’t restraint (or, at least, it wasn’t restraint with the goal of avoiding violence). It was just Amazi-Girl’s way of continuing to be right in her own eyes by goading people into violence so she could hit them with “good reason”, instead of hitting them for a minor crime that no-one cared about anyway (which would hurt her heroic vision of herself).
But do you konestly expect Danny to be able to properly explain the situation? No, Sir, this has Willis’ Dramatic misunderstanding written all over it.
This said: she’ll probably talk to him and as long as he doesn’t think she’s attacking him, will most likely be reasonable and therefore she’ll understand where he was coming from – mainly wishing Amber’s safety.
‘I’m going to deal with my anger at my ex by punching people in the face (and this is obviously literal, I just did it)’ should probably raise a red flag instead of leading to ‘Stop Danning things up, Danny’.
Oh man. Is it just me, or does Danny get really defensive and over-protective whenever Dorothy brings up Amazi-Girl to him? I wonder now if she’s even going to be able to get his side of the story, or if she’ll just trigger his insecurities horribly by asking. 🙁
Consider how Danny reacted when Ethan asked what happened. He really did not fill in the details, what he did say made it sound like he thought he really smurfed up and was to blame, wanted Ethan to focus on supporting Amber, and seemed determined to be allowed to wallow in his own growing self-hatred without anyone trying to make him feel better. It’s why he pushed Ethan away and why he did not open up to Joe despite that being his M.O. He won’t be any more forthcoming with Dorothy. If anything, she will probably say something that makes him hate himself even more than he already does, causing him to withdraw even deeper into his own issues.
If he had any self-esteem, there would be more hope that he could deal with this in a healthy way. He doesn’t, so when Dorothy does talk to him about this his responses will go some distance towards making her think he simply Danned it up like he is always blamed for doing (whether he deserves it or not).
Danny will put on his own mask, solely to take out Amazi-Girl. Okay that probably won’t happen, but it would be kinda awesome to have Amber about to punch out some low level crook, when Danny swings in a kicks her in the skull.
“Did that hurt “Amazi-Girl” I learned it from watching you!”
What the fudge, Amaziegirl. Even in your idiotic, paranoid worldview where Danny somehow betrayed you, throwing his ex-girlfriend at him is just petty.
On the other hand, it IS the most effective way to make Dorothy see what’s really going on.
In fact, it’s so stupid so I almost believe it is self sabotage – a way to push away Dorothy too before SHE does something that can hurt amazi-girl.
Seriously, it’s such a pointless and exploitative action and really highlights how badly her illness is starting to poison her decision making and her empathy. I’m really not looking forward to how AG/Amber is going to top this.
I don’t think the ex-girlfriend thing has much to do with it. It’s not like she sought out Dorothy to do this. Dorothy proved herself an ally, so now AG thinks she might be able to convince Danny, since Danny is “obviously wrong.”
The main fear I see in Amber is in being wrong about this whole thing. It’s why she broke down when Sal saved her, or when she was nice and offered to help her pick up her laundry. And it’s why she flipped when she saw Sal and Danny together.
If Dorothy convinces Danny, that not only fixes her problem, but “proves” that Sal was actually up to no good this whole time. It goes a long way in assuring her that her worldview is correct.
I like that reading way better than mine. Unfortunately I think that since she used the phrase “our ex boyfriend” there is a strong element of just wanting to be hurtful to get back at Danny for “betraying her”.
I agree with it being a test to confirm that she is right about Sal, but I ALSO think that it’s a way to cull out further “non-faithful” people (i.e. pushing away people who are close to her and therefor might hurt her emotionally).
I really don’t think there is a lot of rationality going on now. I think Amber/Amaziegirl is still in the middle of one of the biggest freakouts to date and she scrambles to keep just the tiniest amount of control over her narrative. Pushing away people that might challenge it is one way of doing that.
That’s the twist on that. Like, in the Walkyverse, Amazi-girl’s “being immune to criticism” was a crucial thing for an insecure nerdy girl coping with a cruel misogynist customer base. It was a way of blocking out inaccurate and mean “criticisms” as well as dressing downs.
But here, being immune to criticism, means being immune to constructive criticism. Criticism meant to give her more coping strategies, or reach out with worry, or call out dangerous or abusive behavior. She’s immune to the concept of ever being wrong, so everything she does must be righteous even if chosen for non-righteous means.
Amazi-girl being “immune to criticism” in this universe is George W Bush’s “moral clarity”, a means of simply refusing reality when it says “you are wrong” and doubling down instead.
Decide a kid who’s reformed from their criminal past is your arch nemesis despite them doing everything in their power to avoid such a confrontation and they saved your life? So what, AG’s decided they were bad, so that must have been an act of violence against them as well.
Decide an ex-boyfriend has betrayed you for not shunning said girl despite knowing literally nothing about any of this situation? So what, AG’s decided that that was a betrayal so no amount of facts will change her mind.
Said ex-boyfriend or girl bring up excellent points that would normally cause a moment of introspection? So what, Amazi-girl is immune to criticism. And thus what these traitors babble about might as well be the crash of the ocean waves for all she cares.
That’s why she effectively doomed the relationship when she decided that only Amaziegirl and not Amber dates Danny. In a relationship you CAN’T be immune to criticism.
It’s the flipside of Captain America – you know, his famous quote (I will mangle it a bit), “When the whole world tells you what is right, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the world, ‘No, YOU move’.” Unshakeable moral character is not ALWAYS a good thing.
Yeah, just saw Civil War yesterday. Still processing parts of it.
Yeah, that quote always creeped me out.
Sure, it’s a great thing, if you’re actually right.
But it gives the same encouragement to the deluded. To those stuck in the past, seeing the nation change for the better around them. To those rights given to other religions, other races, to women, to homosexuals and transfolk. In their minds, they’re the ones ignoring what the world says is right, planting themselves like a tree beside the river of truth and saying “No, you move”.
That analogy can be fixed so easily, too. It’s a river of truth. It moves–slowly, but it moves. Your tree isn’t going to be by the river forever. And you’ll be far away from the truth.
trlkly: “…you’ll be far away from the truth”
ToeDad: “EROSION DOES NOT EXIST, THE RIVER IS JUST WHERE GOD ALWAYS PUT IT. NOW I’M GOING TO POINT MY GUN AT THINGS. GUN, GUN GUN”
Yeah, I think a major subtheme of this comic is the toxicity of inflexible morals. We see it in Mary, in Toedad, and now we see it in Amazi-girl as well.
When you decide that in the fight between reality and what your worldview says the world is like, reality should back off and adapt, that opens the door to some pretty scary and awful actions.*
*There is value in standing against what society says the world is like, but that’s because society is often awful and slow to adapt to reality. But that’s a bit different than responding to the existence of other people or challenges to assumptions you’ve made due to social conditioning by putting your fingers in your ears and going la-la-la-la.
We’re seeing that difference right now play out with the “should trans people have the right to pee without harassment” “debate” happening right now.
That’s a very good reading of the comic, and that’s again why Joyce is such an incredibly awesome character. She changes her morals, not because she HAS to in order to survive (like Becky) but because it is the Right Thing To Do.
Danny: *is the one in the right for almost the first time ever*
Dorothy: *wonders if it’s possible Danny did something that made Amazigirl this angry*
Comment Section: GODDAMNIT DOROTHY YOU IDIOT HOW DARE YOU JUMP TO A PERFECTLY REASONABLE CONCLUSION GIVEN WHAT LITTLE YOU KNOW ABOUT THE SITUATION AND PAST EXPERIENCES. DANNY IS COMPLETELY RIGHT ABOUT AMAZIGIRL, NO BODY MENTION THE FACT THAT SAL HAD TO POINT IT OUT TO HIM BEFORE HE SAW IT.
Sorry but it’s never a reasonable conclusion to assume the person who is literally in the process of hunting down people to physically assault is the one in the right in any kind of confrontation. Like this interaction is so full of red flags it’d make a communist blush.
Yes, but if you’re not 12 you recognize that superhero comic morality doesn’t actually transfer one-to-one to real life. If there had been someone on my campus running around beating up petty criminals idolizing her would be the last thing on my mind.
Ohhhh boy, Amazi-Girl’s really going all out with the “alienate all the person’s friends by giving them misleading implications” tactic.
On Dorothy’s part, though, these feelings are perfectly reasonable. But I’m glad she reminded herself to hear both sides of the story, and I hope she follows through on that before passing a solid judgment on Danny.
Ah shit, that was her dad’s two favorite tactics weren’t they? That and the angrily yelling at people and treating anything other than 100% getting his way as an act of violence against him…
Shit. She’s carrying her father’s ghost and it is poisoning her everything.
Panel 1 part 1: No, Amber, bad Amber, that’s not the lesson you should have taken away from Dorothy reminding you of how people look up to you. Damn you and your immunity to criticism and your new habit of bending your interpretation of reality to support the courses you’ve already chosen for yourself and others.
Panel 1, part 2: Eeeesh, Amber? Uh… you’re getting really really creepy on the emotional abuser scale. Like, echoing cult leaders? Asking your ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend to finish your job gaslighting him? Treating your life as some holy mission that should be worshipped and never questioned? Like, literally none of that is even the remotest bit okay and ugh, that “he seems to have… lost the faith” at the end is so skeezy it makes my skin crawl. Stop being creepy and awful, AG/Amber!
Panel 1, part 3-one hundredy billion: I think I focused on this one above in a response, but I’m really scared of how much further she’s slipping into this self-reinforcing spiral of conspiracy theories and splitting with reality. Like, she’s decided anyone speaking out against her or in any way not agreeing with her is “a betrayal” and she’s deluded enough to think anyone will “see the righteousness of her case” if they see the facts. And she’s also decided that more and less controlled violence is the proper coping strategy for being so “betrayed”.
Like, this is so clearly a loop setting up for her to lose everyone who’s supported her and for her to become more and more erratic as her brain interprets this as “proof” of a vast conspiracy by Sal to erode the support force for her “mission”. Like, this has always had the possibility of going off the rails, but I feel like we’re seeing the beginning of some Alex Jones-esque shit.
If she steals Carla’s whiteboard, I’m gonna get really scared.
Panel 4: Yes, violence is a great coping strategy and not at all likely to worsen your abusive tendencies and won’t at all train you to associate hurting people unconsensually as a way to feel good and relaxed.
And it won’t at all corrupt Amazi-girl’s positive aspects, turning that alter into a frightening authoritarian terror looking for any excuse for violence that will cause many of her former fans to turn on her… nosiree…
Panel 5: Seriously, AG/Amberwhatthehell?!?
Bonus reaction: Assuming my DID theory is correct, Amazi-girl taking such thorough control here for such an extended period of time and drifting further and further into a militaristic “civilians, combatants, and the mission” framework means that she’s pushing that disassociation hard and we may actually see the personalities stop being able to share all their memories soon.
Even if that doesn’t happen, though, AG/Amber is in such a bad space mentally and is making such terrible terrible decisions for the health and safety of herself and others.
I don’t think Ethan and Danny have the perspective to do this, but she might need a 72-hour 5150 and observation soon if things continue down this bad road.
Hate to be anal, but the white writing on a green background is extremely uncharacteristic of a ‘white’ board – looks like a standard old-fashioned chalkboard, to me.
Dotty seemed to pause a bit at the “nothing beating up more people can help me work through” but her view of Danny gets in the way, unfortunately.
Keeping my fingers crossed she will see what is actually happening, but right now I don’t have much hope.
Making her a confidant is a really shitty move on Amber/AGs part.
Welp… for all the people expecting Dorothy to see through this. I’m kinda hoping you’re right, but I think you’re wrong. Between the fangirling, the jumping straight to “WhatthehellDanny”, and the not seeing any of the stuff Danny has, I’m really afraid she just got hit straight in the cognitive bias.
She may straight up not buy Danny’s story if he does get it out straight, and that’s if there’s no miscommunications. And, let’s face it, there’s plenty of room for something to get said poorly here.
I’m hoping I’m wrong here. But I’m expecting this to get worse before it gets better.
Piling on that issue, is the fact that Danny is likely to buckle under any accusation Dorothy makes. Sure, he saw Sal’s point, but knowing Danny, how likely is he to stick to it faced with aggressive disagreement from both AG and Dorothy?
One need only look at how he reacted to Ethan asking what happened to realize that this is the case. He seems to think that he was the one who messed up and deserves to be punished for it.
Poor Danny.
AG just weaponized Dannys support system against him. Its vindictive.
Now Dorothy is going to go in all guns-ablazing, Blaming Danny for the breakup, and saying Danny didnt learn from their breakup, and isnt supportive to womens goals.
But Dorothy isnt perfect. Danny literally got dumped for the same thing ( seemingly ) 1 one month. Only one time he was wrong and the other right.
Dorothy is likely to make him defensive , first. And I expect Danny to be justifiable hurt, bullshit, and feel like his self-respect is being bartered.
AG made it unequivocally clear she is always a greater priority to Amber than Danny ever will be. That relationship is dead. It cant grow.
This is also Dorothy’s pet-peeve. She may not come out and accuse him of dannying it up again.
But I expect the same in softer words.
whatthehelldanny= i thought danny loved her and was happy with her? *i* think shes cool, why would he want to not be with her? did he have to mess up this relationship that seemed to do him good?
whatthehelldanny=/= FUCKING DANNY YOURE THE WORST GO KILL YOURSELF
The very first three things are accusative attacks, that automatically blame Danny. It not “What happened” Its ‘How did Danny screw this up’ ? ( with a background of He did it again ) . Its even reasonable for her to think this. It still doesnt make the next scene that will follow right.
No one is saying Dorothy is evil. Shes an almost perfect human. BUt the comic is called “Dumbing of Age”, ( not Perfect College Kids ) and men, especially Danny not respecting womens careers is a hot-button for her. ( For good reasons )
Amaz-girl just laid this on Dorothy, and Asked for her ‘help’ .
Try and see through Dannys eyes. Hes been dumped twice and told hes worth less than am outside goal or hobby. He already has bad self-worth.
What AG said to him is shitty. Its going to hurt double when Dorothy blames him first.
Dorothy will probably listen to Danny and believe him—eventually. But not when hes hurt or after he feels blamed by Dorothy.
Not only that, but it’s not like you’d have to have Dorothy’s flaws for this to work.
It’s perfectly reasonable for her not to realize what’s actually going on, even though we do. We have more information about what AG has done and her mental state. We have the text right in front of us and can see what was said, instead of just hearing thing. And, quite importantly: We don’t have a couple (maybe even 3) friends who have been heroically saved by AG.
There are some that seem to be making out like Dorothy is being horribly negligent not to pick up on what they see as obvious red flags. And that’s just a little odd to me.
Oh, and there’s not much to see through Danny’s eyes yet. We’re just speculating on what may happen. I’m sure there will be some sort of misunderstanding, but I don’t think she’s going to say what she said here. She does have one other “flaw” you didn’t mention: that of giving people too much of a benefit of the doubt. And that could work either way.
A vigilante is a giant, blaring red flag on their own, for those of us without the luxury to believe otherwise. The path she’s taking is entirely expected (A lot of it happens to actual police as well, to boot, which actually IS relevant to Dorothy’s career trajectory *AND* ambitions; and therefore ought to be coming up soon in college, if not yet because it’s only what, 5 or 6 weeks in?)
The weird thing about red flags is you only notice them when you notice the first one in a person. It’s surprisingly easy to miss the red flags on a person in the way they treat others or the views they hold until you are a bit more enmeshed with them than you’d like. And so it can be a little embarrassing sometimes to see a red flag and then look back and realize there’s been years of red flags littering the road behind you.
If “violent vigilantism” isn’t a glaring red flag for you then you need to reassess your priorities. It is NOT the hallmark of a reasonable or stable person. This isn’t like some super subtle and nuanced problem that’s easy to miss, she assaults people on a regular basis.
you people have to remember that dorothy doesnt know at all what has happenef between danny and amber, just like you defended danny against amazi girl before by saying he didnt know the whole story. please bw fucking reasonable
Ok, just a theory but I can see this going critical mass very soon and i dont think the casualties will be limited to these 3. Dorothy goes to talk to danny. She ends up realizing how irrational amazi-girl is, and how reasonable and honest danny is being. This reminds her of how dishonest walky is being. She slips up and ends up back with danny and walky has to repair everything.
I never liked Dorothy, let alone understood all the commentariat’s love for her. I mean, right from the start she’s a coward who blames Danny for… not being psychic, I guess?
Ehh, I understand why she didn’t want to be with Danny as he had crossed the boundary from supportive to “passive aggressive stalking.” However, if she really didn’t like him as much as we see here, why didn’t she break up with him earlier?
No, see, I’m not talking about that (though, she’s an atheist woman with as many confrontational skills as a pancake trying to make a political career in the US, soooo…). I’m talking about the fact that, instead of breaking up with Danny, her course of action was “let me just move cities here, so that I don’t have to use any actual words.”
That’s still not psychic powers, that’s obvious warning signs. Not 100% guaranteed signs, because teenagers are dumb, but it’s still not ‘psychic powers’.
Indeed but that was also canonically her first relationship. Most people make at least one big fuckup with their first relationship because they’re still learning how to relationship.
Please do not use derogatory terms about the mentally ill. If we can avoid that shit for fictional characters who are gay, trans, black, etc., we can avoid it for those who are mentally ill.
I feel that I shouldn’t have to explain why this one would be derogatory.
Hence why I limit such requests to the mentally ill. I’d be a hypocrite if I tried to tell people never to say words like “crazy” and such.
My main suggestion is to focus on the beliefs, not the person with those terms. Most people I’ve talked to who find the terms offensive don’t when they are used that way.
There’s been a lot of moments where I’ve disagreed with DoA characters but for some reason this was the first time I’ve become angry. I mean, Amber here is literally asking Dorothy to “talk some sense” into Danny. This isn’t a “I’m having issues and I need help” talk. This is more… immature. Is that the word? Maybe.
She’s basically recruiting her to help gaslight her ex. It’s super fucked up of her and it’s pretty fucked up how quickly Dorothy bought into blaming Danny despite knowing literally nothing whatsoever about the situation.
God I have so much sympathy for Danny. He tries so hard and it seems like all the people in his life who SHOULD know him the best have such low opinions of him as a person. His parents, his ex girlfriend, his best friend. Jesus Christ. No wonder he has next to no self confidence. No wonder he loves to buckle. Danny you need a new support system and fast. I’m really glad he met Ethan and Sal. And I’m really glad he seems to slowly but steadily be finding his self worth. I’m so glad he knows that he didn’t actually do anything wrong even if he got dumped for it. I do have faith he’ll stick up for himself when Dorothy comes to him about this.
Does he really know that he did nothing wrong? It seems to me that he believes that he did, which is not surprising. Take it from me, when you have no self esteem it is next to impossible to look at any one situation and not blame yourself for it, no matter how obvious it should be that it wasn’t your fault. His interactions with Ethan seem to confirm that he blames himself and that he thinks he isn’t worth having anyone be concerned about him.
Well he did say that he thought if he did everything right he could somehow avoid getting dumped. And then there was that line before that about how what he was doing with wasn’t buckling. So I think he knows his concerns aren’t wrong even if doing the right thing ended up costing him his relationship. His whole conversation with Ethan “Doesn’t she realize how much she’s damaging herself…” makes me think he has a good of a read on this situation as he can. He’s sad about the break up but he’s more concerned about the damage Amber is doing to herself. He didn’t suddenly decide his concerns were meaningless just because Amber didn’t take having them pointed out well. I’m proud of him.
I wonder how much of the peanut gallery has forgotten that we, as readers, see from a largely omniscient perspective rather than that of any of the characters.
Dorothy has no idea that Amazi-Girl nearly died performing heroics, not to mention nearly causing a multi-car pileup. As far as she knows, Amazi-Girl just runs around campus and stops petty crime. And as such, it is not unbelievable that Dorothy would assume that Danny, who she had to basically tell to stop near-stalking her near the beginning of the strip, had done something upsetting.
The real question in my mind is if Danny will think to tell her about the near-fatal incident.
AAGGHHH, YOU GUYS, NO. The reason you leave the seat down if you share a toilet with a female person is that ladybits have to be wiped. That’s usually done with the dominant hand, and so is putting the seat down. You don’t want other people’s toilet germs or under-seat accumulations of effluvia on your hand when it’s time for that hand to head down south.
Essentially, putting the seat down is a courtesy because it prevents your partner from having to touch an object covered in sewage or germs before she touches bits of herself that are warm, moist entrances to her body’s interior–all things that harmful bacteria love.
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he forgot to leave the seat down
*wonders how many terrible relationships actually ended over something like that*
I’m glad you’re back as the top comment. It was jarring to see another name.
Pfff.
Never understood why that’s supposedly such a big thing. It’s not like the seat is that hard to move up or down so why is it a big deal if sometimes the woman has to lower it herself?
Acquired habits. A lady rarely, if ever, needs to raise the toilet seat for use. So after 20-30 years you build habits. You’re tired, gotta pee, go into the bathroom, sit down automatically, and fall in (or sit directly on the bowl).
What Hutt said. As a woman with four brothers, I’m used to putting the seat down and honestly don’t care, but my female friends who are only children or have only sisters think it’s the evilest trap that can befall a poor naked butt.
Which I don’t understand… who leaves the toilet seat COVER open all the time? CLOSE THAT THING BEFORE YOU FLUSH! Ick.
That’s just asking for something to stay behind to surprise the next person to open the cover.
Though I may be over vigilant thanks to the ‘water saving’ toilets we have to have that you actually have to flush twice (at least) so end up using slightly more water than the old ones.
Hold the lever down when flushing until you hear the actual “swoosh” of the flush, and you’ll never have that problem. (holding the lever keeps the flapper valve in the tank open, so that more of the water in the tank will be used)
Doesn’t work when these new ones have a teeny capacity, holding down only lets about another litre out. I’ve tested it with the top off the cistern. It needs two full undersized cisterns to flush properly. Not sure if it is a problem with all the toilets under the new standard here or if ours is just designed badly.
Really I should be shutting the lid, holding down the button, then checking while it refills. But I’m lazy
I feel you on all of that Smash. Low-flow fills me with rage.
It means your low-flow is a cheap one and as such poorly designed. The more expensive low flow toilets are more expensive because they have a proper flow for the water and operate better than higher flow models, being that they will clear what would clog a higher flow because good low flows course like a raging river.
Investing into a proper low flow toilet will save you a pretty penny on your water bill over the years and if you are renting it would be worth while to inquire with your landlord about it.
Of course that assumes a full load number 2 flush is required at the time. The watersaver also cancel out the unnecessary flush volume for number 1’s, and people doing random flushes for other things. It maynot handle everything on one flush, but it significantly reduces waste across the population.
Making you flush twices sometimes is an acceptable price for that.
This is the only website where I’ve seen a serious discussion about toilets on a web page that has nothing to do with toilets. I am somehow okay with this.
It may help to convince you to close the lid before flushing to look up stats on exactly how many… ‘particulates’ come out of the toilet, and how far they go, when you flush…
Mythbusters did it. AND they discovered how many of those ‘particulates’ can end up on your toothbrush. :3
I just had a rat come up from the toilet pipes. Covers should always be left down
Yes, as a guy, I always close the lid, who the hell wants to walk into a bathroom and look into a toilet, I don’t. And, as stated, yuck, it does spray a little when you flush, so close the lid first, super easy!
I once read an article about how toilet spray can spread up to 6 feet in all directions after you flush, and since then have been firmly in the “just put down the whole cover, that way everyone’s equal” camp.
The lack of covers in public restrooms irks me because of the spray. Especially where I work, where the flush is so violent if I don’t escape the stall in time, I can feel it.
Absolutely concur. Equal opportunity in my house. Seat lid goes down after each toilet user uses the toilet so that we both are expected to follow the same rules. The only time anything is “left behind” is in the middle of the night when the horrible old plumbing would wake everyone with a single flush. We always can tell someone from outside our household has used out toilet because the lid and sometimes the seat will be up.
Your toilets must be huge because I have never fallen into any and it’s not even something I could manage while trying.
That said, it’s a common courtesy to lower the seat, although I thought it was the top one.
Last time I fell in a toilet I was a kid. That being said, I know many kid-sized women.
YAY I HAVE A COMPUTER AGAIN
I have *ONLY* ever once *sat* on the bare toilet seat, because I was sleepy and only half-looked, but I have never fallen in. That said, I check EVEN IN THE LADIES’ ROOM because the cleaning crew leaves the seat up to show it’s been cleaned.
We also habitually put the lid down because otherwise shit might fall in (err, the shit you DON’T want falling in, that is).
I don’t know. Look before you sit down. On anything.
There might be a cat on it.
Or a dead mouse. Or some vomit. 🙂
When it’s the middle of the night and you have photophobia (an extreme sensitivity to light, not a fear of light, I don’t know what idiot named it that) so the bathroom is pitch black? Good luck looking at anything before you sit down
Vampires named it that. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense.
nightlight
A phobia is defined as either a fear or an aversion to something, so it makes sense if you use the second definition. Light causes pain, so is therefore avoided.
In my experience, it’s never the toilet seat itself, it’s usually that the toilet seat is part of a pattern of many little problems which boil down to “he can’t be bothered to do small, considerate things.”
This is likely a part of it. When it is part of a chain of inconsiderate behaviours it can be really really really aggravating as it can be part of a ‘stack’ of things that’d take seconds or five minutes to do.
Many generations ago, the rabbis of the Talmud discussed a law that you could divorce somebody because she burned the soup. They decided that this is not about the specific soup — instead, it’s because, if this is the kind of relationship where somebody wants to divorce over something that ridiculously inconsequential, then woah, they should just divorce already.
“‘Til soup do us part.”
Seriously, though, this is the kind of stuff that makes me not believe in marriage at all. A marriage is nothing more than a promise to make it a real pain the in a** when you want to break up.
*in the
Two things:
1.) The word choice of “when you want to break up” sounds more like a commitment problem. Not trying to be rude, but an if/when fits better. It’s a good point, though.
2.) Ideally marriage is a celebration of not wanting to break up that comes with rewards for that devotion.
Ideally, yeah. The whole point of a marriage is that, to show your commitment to the other, you literally sign a contract that says you’re going to stay together forever. The entire concept falls apart when it becomes so easy to get out of said contract that a couple can get married and divorced in the same day.
Personally, I’m of the school of thought that the contract (and the ridiculously expensive ceremony) shouldn’t be necessary at all. If you love someone, do you really need to get a priest and your local government involved?
saw this late but have to leave a comment for posterity:
If you love someone, marriage isn’t necessary, no.
But if you want the benefits of having your union recognized by everyone else, so you have a clear delineation of heirs, hospital visitation rights, the ability to claim your spouse as a dependent for taxes or insurance, etc., why wouldn’t you get “that piece of paper”?
Orrrrr you could just marry someone you don’t plan on breaking up with ever? That means getting to know them first, living with them for awhile first so you know if they have any deal-breaking habits, and also none of this wanting to change a person crap. “If I’m a good enough wife/husband, they’ll change” “If they love me enough they’ll change” “If we have kids they’ll change” all of this crap is bullshit and does not belong in a relationship and is probably the biggest reason why relationships fail.
I think very few people marry anyone they plan on breaking up with.
And yet, divorces happen. Sometimes after many happy years. There’s even some evidence that those who live together first are more likely to divorce.
The more I hear about Jewish law, the more I want to be Jewish…
Slut-shaming has nothing on Kosher
Cheeseburger-shaming, or pepperoni pizza-shaming.
Pretty much this. None of the things are a big deal in and of themselves, but when you’re already stressed and in constant contact with someone all the constant tiny irritations pile up until they explode and there’s a big fight about apparently nothing. Pure human nature and it’s hard work to avoid.
Oh, that’s an interesting point, haha.
Change the fucking empty toilet roll already. Don’t just leave the new one on top; it takes all of SIX SECONDS to do it. I know perfectly well it’s just a passive-aggressive comment on the fact that you think I don’t do enough housework. Well, guess what? I’m already doing all of the housework that anybody does, and you being unwilling to take six seconds to put the new roll on the holder just emphasizes to me, every damn time, that nothing gets done around here unless I do it. No matter how small or simple it is.
And I’d be a lot more willing to run with that whole “you’re unemployed now, so you do all the housework” bit if (a) when I was employed, it wasn’t still all on me; (b) when I had longer hours than you (but wasn’t making as much money, which was the important metric), it was still all on me; (c) when we worked the same hours but I made more (but your job was more stressful, that being the important metric), it was still all on me; and (d) when I was working full time, supporting us both, and you were unemployed, it was still all on me.
Honestly, I don’t know how we’ve lasted as long as we have. The toilet seat (or the toilet paper roll) and how much annoyance it causes is probably an excellent metric of how a marriage is doing. >:(
This was 80% of the reason I left my husband. It ruined our marriage. It’s damaged our friendship. I’m sorry you have to deal with this, and I wish you luck.
Thanks. It pisses me off no end.
For me it’s a big deal because you should completely (cover and all) close the toilet before flushing or you are misting the entire bathroom in whatever you just sent down the toilet.
I get why people care, but I still judge them for missing it (and I’m a cis woman).
I guess I’m a pretty paranoid person, but I don’t think I’d ever sit down anywhere, let alone on a toilet without looking first at what I was about to sit on.
Had a snake in the bowl before. Not looking is dangerous. (just a python but still, those teeth down there?!)
Where the hell do you live??
I would assume Australia.
Ya, the land down under where everything wants to kill you
Unfortunately this can be true worldwide if anyone in the same road as you owns a pet snake and it escapes I had the same experience and I live in England
I’ve encountered live centipedes in the bowl before, and those things are venomous. Bleh. (and yes I mean real centipedes not those house centipede things)
House centipedes are real centipedes…thankfully relatively tiny ones, but still…real centipedes.
Not tiny where my friend in Michigan was; those bastards were eight inches long. She’d squish them with her bare hands; I would have screamed and run away.
It can be seen as being inconsiderate over all because if we assume you are in a one male, one female living situation, 75% of the time the toilet seat will have to be down for use, and they’re more likely to need it next if you have just gone.
For me, it is bothersome because it means you are flushing without putting the lid down which is gross as it can send germs all about the room.
But does that lead to more germs than leaving it up? Doesn’t Bernoulli’s principle mean that it will rush in through narrow spaces like the one between the seat and lid?
Germs being sent all over the room is a foregone conclusion anyway (though, I’m not sure what toilets all the people who say this this are using that flush with high enough pressure to “spray” anything), and putting the lid down runs the risk of it overflowing and you noticing too late.
I mean, commercial toilets, sure, but those don’t even have lids.
That works if the goal is to maximize the number of times that it’s already in the position for what the next person needs it for (it’d still work even if I didn’t grant your assumption that “#2” comprises 50% of times any given person needs to use the restroom), but not if the goal is to equalize the division of toilet-seat-moving labor.
Because it’s not primarily a gender issue, it’s a health one. It looks gross and is unhygienic. And having everybody put the seat/lid back down as part of the toilet-using-procedure is equitable. No one complains about having to close the refrigerator door. It’s part of the process of using the fridge. I truly don’t care what people do in their own homes, but…just leave things as you find them when you’re a guest in others’? It’s very appreciated. 🙂
I’m gonna be honest… Sometimes, when people leave the lid down, I don’t notice and then my bare ass is on the toilet lid. And I don’t know where the cleaner is in a stranger’s house.
The problem with that is that a toilet with the seat down but the lid up doesn’t actually look less gross than one with the seat up, assuming the bowl rim is clean (and why wouldn’t it be? literally nothing ever touches it) and the bowl interior being visible is what your objection is to… and very few people seem to clearly advocate for putting the lid down (even you just now said “seat/lid” as if they’re in any way equivalent… to people whose objection is “I sometimes sit on the toilet blind” the lid down is just as bad as the seat up, and Raibean here is not by any means the first person I’ve heard it from)
I fell in once when I was about five. I have learned to feel to verify the seat position in the dark, no matter how tired I am, which works for lid down as well as seat up.
It was cold and wet and I couldn’t get out. I had to call my mum to pull me out. 🙁
That said, though, the rim is usually the grossest part of any toilet I’ve seen, because people inevitably sprinkle (or spray, if the seat is down) onto it, and it gets nasty quickly if it’s not wiped up immediately.
I think the real question is: Why are people with penises treating toilets like they are urinals? Stand at a urinal; sit on a toilet. The rule holds for any gender.
I agree, seat down but lid up is still gross. I should have said seat+lid instead of seat/lid. I meant them as a package deal but the slash could have easily read as ‘or’. Whoops.
The true course is to close the lid completely. We all go down the path to Hell together.
To be fair, upped toilet seats have claimed more women’s lives than lightning strikes.
I have very, very, very good aim…I am a true hero!
We always had cats when I was a kid, including one that loved to drink faucet. He’d jump from the floor to the toilet, then up to the sink, without really paying attention to the path.
The seat stayed down or else the cat took a swim.
*Drink from the faucet. He didn’t actually drink faucets, that would be weird.
Drinking the faucet would mean the cat had fire breath so he could melt it, and have a stomach that could process very high temperatures and liquid metals.
Actually a cat that could drink a faucet would be pretty cool.
I have one of those cats right now! And he gets VERY angry (though so far thankfully not very “wet”) when a guest is in our house and the toilet lid is left up.
My parents got cats after I moved out (whyyyyyyy), and one of them legit drinks straight from the toilet, so my mother leaves the seat up for him.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH WHY DOES THAT BATHROOM HAVE CARPET
WHY WOULD ANYONE CARPET A BATHROOM EVER AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH
the ’70s
I love that a whole thread has been burned up discussing this actual issue. For reals. 😀
LOL I know right? XD
An acquaintance told me about a relationship of his that ended over the last slice of pizza. If finished when he yelled “FINE- YOU HAVE IT” and stormed out the door.
Now Amazi-Girl’s dumped Danny does that mean he can date Amber now?
I figure if Amber ever starts working through her problems she’d eventually guilt herself out of getting back with Danny over how she’s treated him.
Better than not flushing toilets, I mean.
….That’s a thing. That’s totally a thing. I see this happen with men.
DANNY DID NOTHING WRONG. #FREEDANNY #DANNYGATE
Damn straight.
Damn bi.
You know what I meant.
Well of course we do, but we don’t think you do. So you explain it, and we’ll tell you if it’s right.
“I wholeheartedly agree with your take on what is happening.”
#notalldannys
I’m so hoping that Danny is able to set Dorothy straight, because Dorothy might be someone that Amazigirl would talk and maybe even listen to, but she’s not as close as Danny or Ethan so less threatening.
Ehhhhh, this could still take a really dark turn. Who’s to say Amazigirl wouldn’t shut out Dorothy next after she hears and agrees with Danny’s side?
I could definitely see that happening. Amber’s set up this narrative that AG is infallible and perfect so to have someone call any of it into question, Amber is most likely to say something like they’ve become corrupted by Sal or whatever rather than admit any problem.
I’m hoping Dorothy will bring Danny to is senses enough that he’ll actually listen to the back story.
Listen to what? Amber wasn’t interested in actually telling him anything, and Dorothy doesn’t know (or apparently care) that there even is a backstory.
And Danny probably doesn’t have the slightest idea that Sal is the person Amber ran into, back when. Does he? Pretty sure he doesn’t know anything about that person attending the same college now.
He does not. All he knows is that Sal saved Amber’s life and that Amber really hates her, but not why.
Danny did everything wrong, until their last meeting when he told her that she should AG a break maybe. And he like Amber better than AG. That was all good.
Just a bit late.
Danny did the best anyone could expect a teenager in their second ever relationship to do when it comes to dealing with an incredibly emotionally damaged partner especially considering he has his own baggage to deal with.
Yes, this. Danny is not perfect, but he’s doing his best with a bad set of circumstances. You will also notice that much of his commentary is not about HIS hurt but concern about Amber/AG. Not exactly the hallmark of a bad guy.
Danny has his own issues, but he’s not the one being unreasonable here.
#FREEDANNY
He did the best anybody but a qualified therapist could have.
I’m not even 100% sure the therapist could have done better, honestly.
It’s gonna be great when Amber sees him necking Ethan before any of this stuff gets resolved though.
That strikes me as enormously out of character for both of them. Danny is a bit clueless sure but he’s nowhere near the level of obliviousness required for him to not see how that would be a terrible idea.
I can easily see a scenario where it happens. Just wait until the next time someone throws a party they both end up at. Alcohol + Hurt feelings + Repressed sexual urges boiling over + Lust+ Bonding over concern for Amber = Slipshine? Some hot and heavy making out? Or just an intense but immediately regretted kiss?
The PAYDAY gang still stands by Danny in this hard time, although our new initiate from Australia has some difficulty agreeing with us…
Right now we’re split 12 to 3.
Stop this spam please.
Continue it, the payday subplot is important to the dumbingverse story as a whole
I’m amused that so many topics are discussed here, and it’s the roleplay someone objects to. Usually they at least talk about the comic. That’s more than can be said about most threads after the first couple posts.
Which, to me at least, also isn’t a problem. Some threads are light fun; some are very deep. Some are both! I learn a lot reading them, too. It is probably safe to say that anyone who routinely reads the comments routinely spends a lot more time reading the comments than the comic.
I imagine this many days later I’m not likely to get an answer, but I still wonder, is it roleplay in general being objected to? (In which case you might want to be aware, there is a very high concentration of nerds and/or geeks here, so it would likely be wise to anticipate nerdy and/or geeky antics.) (Also, if taking an alias, is that not also roleplay?)
The only way I could think of to construe this as *spam* would be if they had a link to their site and were telling everyone repeatedly to sign up. Which they don’t. Or maybe if the definition is being expanded to include any possible “advertisement”, but if the mere mention of a game franchise is the issue then that could make some of the topics in the strip very hard to discuss. Like the one where Dan and Sal are playing MarioCart. How *would* we comment? “I too have played racing games and have trouble with some of the tracks.” This sentence over and over would get repetitive. It could be made funny, but it more closely resembles spam than this post. I’m not sure how to remove all brand names without removing most of the meaning of the statement. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’d much rather hear people relate to each other about which tracks they like, or are frustrated by, and why, and how the same track might differ between versions, or similar issues in games of varying similarity. None of this can be done without mentioning what game is being considered, at least not without a nearly absurd amount of effort.
Or maybe you just don’t like roleplay. Or Payday. Or maybe you find this group’s activity in this location to be annoying for some other reason. Those are opinions I would not share, but if they are yours then I would have no objection to you expressing them.
But it is not spam. I very extremely strongly dislike spam (except the canned meat product… I can be a bit weird) but false reporting of spam is also a problem. It can interrupt a person’s ability to communicate over some channels, some of which could be very important. Which sometimes might be a goal a person might have, but it also will usually affect a lot of other people the same way. And usually most of the people affected have nothing to do with the spam, or why they would be blocked for someone else’s spam. For actual spam, especially repeat offences, I would consider it worth it. (There is disagreement on this. The developers of a very widely-used spam filter even disagree with me on this point.) But reporting spam where there is none is often a much less target-specific punishment than a lot of people realize. It often affects a lot more people than one might initially think.
NOOOOOOOOO, Stop it. Dorothy was the bigger man this time!!!!
Wow Amber, that’s pretty low.
You can jump higher than that!
This made me laugh far more than it should have
*plays The Police’s “Too Much Information” on the hacked Muzak*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx1e21e4Zoo <- Overkill Overkill Over My Dead Body…
Funny, I always heard that line as “Over mind and body”. A quick search agreed with your version, though. I’ve learned something new today, does that mean I can go back to bed now?
According to the “Police Complete” sheet music (which I own from back when I thought I might someday actually learn to play my guitar), it’s:
Overkill, overview, over my dead body
Over me, over you, over everybody
Dammit, Dorothy, maybe the one time in his life Danny’s deserved the benefit of the doubt is the time you don’t give it to him.
I’m wondering why Amazi-Girl brought it up at all. “Lost the faith” hardly seems like a real reason, so A-G’s motives for bringing her biggest fan into her personal mess seem… murky.
Use Dorothy to bring Danny back into the fold?
Expects that Dorothy will cut off Danny, thereby punishing him more?
Or, perhaps most unlikely, a cry for help, expecting Dorothy to reach the same conclusion as Danny?
Second one. Amber is incapable of being wrong, and anyone not of the Overmind must be excluded.
Amber’s wrong all the time. She spends a lot of effort thinking about how she’s wrong.
It’s Amazi-Girl who’s incapable of making mistakes.
Might be she’s calmed down a tad and is regretting her decision to completely eject Danny from her life, but doesn’t think she herself could talk to him directly without going right back to ragemode. She still doesn’t think he’s right about her needing to take a break from AG, it’s just that she’s not in any state to be the person who tells him that right now.
I’m fairly certain that this is not the first time Dorothy did not give Danny the benefit of the doubt. He seems to be the type that sort of invites that kind of treatment, not that I blame him for that. He seems conditioned to think he is pretty worthless.
I bet Dorothy is probably thinking Danny got uncomfortable clingy when actually Danny was being sensible… still uncomfortable though…
Ah, I’m glad that there’s someone here who’s actually smart enough to get all the details
Yep. Though she doesn’t have them yet. But she’s smart enough to ask the questions.
I’m reminded of the Hulk. “HULK HATES PUNY BANNER!”
Except in this case both minds do.
“Don’t let me turn into that monster!” isn’t a phrase that suggests that Dr. Banner hated the Hulk in your book?
I think he ment that both minds hate the same one. Both Amber and AG hate Amber. Banner and Hulk just hate each other but not them selves
Oh… yeah, I probably should have seen that.
Think twice, joke once.
Ohhh Dorothy is gonna make a mistake soon, isnt she?
Soon?
Dorothy’s ridiculous hero worship of Amazi-Girl has been a giant mistake since day one.
“Lost the faith”? Amber, you’re a vigilante, not a fucking cult leader.
Yyyyyyyeah. We’ve established that Amber’s not in a good way, but it seriously bothers me that DOROTHY hears that and thinks “yeah, that sure is a normal thing she just said”.
Dorothy hasn’t really talked to anyone who’s disliked Amazi-Girl. Other than Sarah, and they haven’t had a conversation about that.
Basically, she hasn’t had someone point out the flaws and dangers of being a vigilante.
Mostly because Dorothy’s just seen her wander around campus and beat on people that actually deserve a beating. And she, like Danny, is kinda taken in by Amber’s confidence as Amazigirl and doesn’t realize the suicidal tendencies and self hatred behind it.
Still, “nothing that punching more criminals in the face won’t help me work through” is a huge warning sign. Even Dorothy should be taken aback by that.
Because no one ever talks in metaphors or hyperbole.
Except she’s literally going out to punch people.
She’s her dad with “acceptable” targets.
Like the Bay Harbor Butcher in Dexter!
She is… The Iron Sociopath
“Faith” in that AmaziGirl serves only for Justice™. Makes sense to me from a comic book trope view.
Amazi-Coolade.
Yeah, that part is a bit terrifying. I mean, we’ve already seen that she’s decided to interpret Danny talking with Sal as proof of a conspiracy theory and an act of betrayal, but here…?
That’s some disturbing shit, taking her cult of personality to a whole new level of badness.
I think even worse is the whole “oh, you’re my biggest fan, maybe you can ‘bring him back to the fold'” vibe of it all. Like, oh, my gaslighting in order to get him to accept my deluded and fictional view of the world as accurate didn’t work, but maybe you can do better for me in convincing him to “return” to me. It’s all just super skeezy!
Vigilantes and cult leaders both dish out their own version of the law.
Dorothy is acting as a reporter onto a good story; the morals required for being a reporter or a president aren’t that strict.
Really? REALLY? Dorothy would trust this person who basically said, “I’m going to hurt more students to cope” over Danny, who she’s known for years? That’s pretty goddamn silly to be honest.
To be fair, she doesn’t think very highly of Danny to begin with.
To be fair, she knows Danny most as “He who messes up literally everything in his life”
You and vex just bummed me out..
Sorry. I’m super pro-Danny but Danny is the boy that cried wolf in this situation. The one time something goes wrong with him and its NOT his fault, people are not likely to just believe him. Though a longer talk with Amber/AG would quickly fix that mindset.
And they’re criminals, so they must deserve it.
Of course, all criminals deserve physical violence as punishment. Amber is a hero!!! (?)
A punch to the face instead of being arrested? Might not be a bad trade off.
Really depends on the case, but you have a point. i just dont think Amber is in any position to make that call, and yet…
Not saying she is, just, comparatively speaking.
Judge Amazigirl?
Well, at least Amber’s beatings aren’t racially motivated…
Give her time. Soon every tanned girl on a scooter will feel her Sal-induced rage fist.
Maybe the meaning of that statement just hasn’t sunk in yet for Dorothy. I hope it does. :/
I think the problem is that she’s known Danny for years.
And Danny at the beginning of the comic was kinda a Nice Guy TM with some antiquated views (see him trying to get people to glare at Roz or him in his first appearances with Dorothy).
And so she hasn’t seen how much he’s grown and changed from that. Also, she’s in hero worship for Amazi-girl and so is being blind to her faults.
I think Dorothy can play impartial third party
I think not being unnerved by the “I’m going to go assault random strangers because my SO did something that upset me” statement disqualifies her from mediating these proceedings
This week in Healthy Coping Strategies with Amber…
That sounded like a joke. I’m pretty sure Dorothy took it as a joke. I would have taken it as a joke had I not seen it be true reality.
It was not a joke at all it is and always has been the entire point of Amazi-Girl: catharsis through rationalized physical violence.
And Dorothy doesn’t know that. Theory of mind–you can’t assume that what you know is what the characters know.
Even for a joke, I’d expect some reaction. That Dorothy completely glossed over it seemed off to me.
Maybe she was already so focused on “Danny screwed up” she didn’t really process it.
Or, I don’t know, maybe she’s just seen for herself that AG only responds with violence when violence is offered.
Which is 100% bullshit.
She, less than a goddamned minute ago, watched Amber beat on a bag snatcher.
Seriously, half the fights Amazi-Girl gets in are instigated by her.
Except, Dorothy’s hardly impartial – she seems to be AG’s biggest fan, absent Danny.
I never thought I would see the day, where the comment section was defending Danny…against Dorothy!
I know! It’s simultaneously refreshing and disheartening!
It’s a tipsy topsy world!
Good comments section. Good comments.
The world turned upside down…
I’m going to be peeved if Dorothy does get mad at Danny about this, because he’s in the right on this one.
FOOLISH FOOLY-FOOL, Danny is never right!
Trying to fool us with their foolishly foolish foolery, the fools.
FOOLS!!!
Danny may be a foolish fool who foolishly fools himself into following foolish dreams and other follies. But this time it’s Dotty von Karma’s perfect record that will bite the dust in order to pursue the Truth and there shall be justice for all.
…and thus concludes the Golden Age Narrator and Bad English Dub slashfic.
Goodnight everybody!
I was hoping for more foolishness.
…I kid, I kid.
Gasp, people in DoA doing something dumb ?
—-
Seriously tho. I’ve people complain that Dorothy is too perfect. Now I see a lot of people angry that she may, possibly make a mistake later when confronting Danny.
There is no winning for Dotty, is there ?
I mean there’s a middle ground between “perfect” and “siding with a violent vigilante you’ve known for like 3 weeks over the friend you’ve known for years.” Like even she acknowledges that she doesn’t know both sides of the story and she still immediately puts the blame on Danny.
She’s known Danny longer than you have.
I kind of want Dorothy to interact with actual Amber more. The only meaningful conversations they’ve had were when Amber was caped.
Well hopefully once Dorothy talks with Danny, she’ll stop her whole idolization of AG. Maybe actually try and help or something.
Ways to get over a breakup:
Lots of ice cream
Time
Listening to sad music
Vigilante Justice
Netflix binge
Taking petty revenge against your ex
Refusing to get professional help
Being an all-around toxic person
Ruining your ex’s self-esteem
Telling your friends to never speak to your ex
so dorothy isn’t a friend then?
AG doesn’t want Dorothy to talk to as much as yell at Danny, it is weird that she didn’t say that part bluntly, but maybe on some level she knows it’s wrong?
All at the same time.
Obviously. Doing these step-by-step may not achieve the results that you want
Playing loads of Skyrim.
Nothing better to do after a breakup than kill dragons….and other stuff.
What, not the squid game ?
You guys never mentioned rebounding! You know, multiple times, like when you throw a rock on water to do ricochets.
Sadly, the fountain is a little too small to really get more than once skip when you really toss a crook at it. Maybe if they were at the beach.
Hear both sides, Dottie! It’s practice for your future presidency!
Yeah Dorothy, because the person jumping around in a super suit will *clearly* have the rational side in this argument. I’m hoping that she’ll talk to Danny and then use her interview tonight to also try to convince Amber to stop.
This can only end well for Amber, Danny, and Dorothy
Well two outta three ain’t bad.
Well to cut Danny some slack it’s not like the thought of her getting herself killed is more terrifying to anyone else but Danny.
the problem here is that atm only sal and danny see her reckless activities in that light. i doubt ethan knows the details of the toedad car chase, or he’d likely be freaking out too.
I’m guessing Dorothy doesn’t know much of what happened either, even if you’d expect her to be around when Becky gushed about it.
Sal was concerned enough to talk to him about it.
Okay, so, I’m curious.
Will we ever get to see some sort of internal confrontation between Amazi-Girl and Amber? Not even about Danny, I just mean in general.
For context, when I mean SEEING the internal confrontation, I’m mostly thinking this: http://www.theglassscientists.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/TGS_CH02_PG34_colored.jpg
That’s a beautiful comic, def checking this one out! 😀
Along the classic Lit line of thought, I was thinking this:
https://youtu.be/NB2CNr692RE?t=30s
“danny, why did you and AG break up?”
“i suggested that she consider ‘being alive’ a higher priority than she apparently does.”
“You monster!”
When you were proud of her, did you think that what she did was risk free?
I know a lot of people really like Dorothy. I don’t dislike her, really, there’s so little about her to dislike, but I’ve always found her flat…boring even. However, since Willis has consistently demonstrated his talent at making characters who don’t seem like much on the surface turn out to have surprising depths, I’ve been patiently awaiting Dorothy’s turn from paper angel to someone way more complex and fascinating than they initially seemed to be. I hope that this is Dorothy’s turn.
(I also hope our next cut is to Jocelyn, Joyce, and Becky’s Excellent Adventures in Housebreaking, as long as I’m hoping.)
Yeah, I don’t get the Dorothy love either. I’ve always been sorta “meh” when it comes to her. She’s okay, and I could be friends with her, but she doesn’t excite me or inspire me to want to hang out with her all the time.
I think for me, maybe it’s that there never seems to be any real conflict in her life. It’s great hanging out with drama-free people in real life but from a narrative perspective…eh, even one-note villains like Mary at least create some friction to propel the storytelling. I’ve stopped putting any real effort into predicting where the story is going to go because I’m so often wrong (I do not mind this – I like it a lot, actually) but I think it would be nice if Dorothy’s hero-worship of AG bumps up hard against the realities of how troubled Amber is and this puts her in a space where she starts questioning all the things she thought she knew. I think that would make a great counterpoint to the struggles Walky is facing right now.
As someone who completely adore Dorothy, I think that she has the same kind of drama and growth as the rest of the cast, only much more muted. She makes her mistakes, she learns from the fallout and she makes sure to change and get better, and generally she manages to do so without a lot of firework.
When she started off as a journalist she immediately ran to slutshame Joe (which he enjoyed) and Roz. When Roz called bullshit Dorothy admitted that she was wrong and went out of her way to get Roz side of the story.
When she realized what had happened to Joyce at the party she was filled by guilt and promised to make up for it. When Joyce wanted her to come to church she did, which led to a confrontation with Mary and a lot of awkwardness, but also growth of Dorothy’s and Jocye’s friendship.
Her and Walky’s realtionship is also evolving. She tries to avoid the mistake she did with Danny and communicate as clearly as possible, which leads to other problems.
Now she has trouble reaching out to Joyce and how to handle her trauma so she flounders a bit and fret a lot. And as you note, she is in the of a great mistake in her idolization of Amazie-girl. We will see her get wise to that soon enough.
So those are all reasons why I find Dorothy interesting – she finds herselves in conflicts and problems, but she goes out of her way to solve them with minimum drama (compare Walky who does the opposite).
But one of the main reasons I love her so is that I think she is completely hilarious. The straight one, the team mum, the responsible one… it’s comedy gold. She brings homework to the beach, writes papers on her phone during a party and in general tries to confront the madness that surrounds her with calm politeness (her interaction with Becky is a perfect example. “…we don’t like each other?”)
Of course, you don’t have to like Dorothy, but this is why I do 🙂
Yeah, this.
What I find interesting about Dorothy is that she’s the cast with good supportive parents who support her dreams, but don’t shove lots of stress on her and a raising environment where she was encouraged and allowed to be vulnerable.
As such, she seems a lot more mature and grounded than a lot of the class, because she’s one of only a few not trying to figure out who they are escaped from the shadow of their parents. She’s not undoing years of damage from shitty parents or shitty worldviews saddled onto her. She’s got her struggles but she at least has a good grasp on what her situations are.
She’s still got a lot to learn, especially with regards to her stress and overwork. And she does experience external barriers to her own happiness (knowing the strong negative barriers in place for getting what she wants owing to her gender and religion) that she’s learning to cope with.
And I think that’s what makes her a great empathetic support for characters like Joyce and it’s also what likely makes her feel “flatter” to people like the OP. Because she’s not dealing with massive gender or sexuality stuff so much and all the oppression that comes with. She’s not rebuilding her sanity from a lifetime of awfulness from shitty parents and cultures. She’s just polishing the edges on a stone that has already been carefully hewn and cut.
She’s got a headstart on a lot of the characters. But perhaps her greatest flaw and struggle is that everyone seems to also forget that she’s 18 and no less prone to the dumb decisions on occasions of a recent adult learning how to adult.
So if Dumbing of Age were a science experiment, Dorothy would be the control group?
Some of my favorit hilarious Dorothy moments!
Dorothy’s rival
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/rivalry/
Sexual euphoria
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/marched/
Does Becky like waffles?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/gunshot/
Are you cheating on me?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/cheating/
Cute little mouse boys
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/rewrote/
Whispering is fine
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/sexislike/
The rain falls…
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/salute/
Dorothy’s epic quest
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/tall/
Two moms!
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/confidentially/
I think personally that Dorothy seems more “flat” because, well her character is in fact quite deep. Not much going on superficially, but a lot going on under the surface (like was well explained by Bagge). This is why I like her, and if she wasn’t there the comic would seem somewhat more chaotic, superficial and less significant to me. It’s like she’s the comic-glue.
And besides, I identify to her workaholic side, and who doesn’t enjoy identifying to comic characters?
I hate the idea naratively that everyone has a weakness, or a darkside or whatever negative perspective some storytellers use for construction. it flies face of reason in a world where there are truely great and exceptional people. It feels to me like people trying to pat themselves on the back for being average by saying even the greatest people on earth are still deeply flawed.
In that light I really appreciate just how low drama Dorothy is since it’s exactly the kind of personality that is cable of greatness like running a major company or becoming president.
That said it does seem like Dorothy mutes her passions a little bit to pursue her goals. She risks very little in every part of her life. And while avoiding unnecessary risks by doing responsible things like studying makes sense she also avoids practical risks like heartbreak by avoiding emotional commitment to Walky. I don’t want to see Dorothy fail or be weak or any of that. I just want to see her risk enough to care, and then because she cares for her to struggle. I hope we see that here.
That said
Dorothy has unrelsistic goals (unrealistic that is unless she succeeds ) and the will to persue them. That always seems to antagonize people.
Dorothy isn’t flat. She has a respectable rack according to Joe.
I mean Dorothy knows Danny’s a pushover, I mean he followed her to a school because of their relationship. I think she should know his personality could very well caught in an abusive relationship. Dorothy even said she’s used be being the dominant one. Amazi-girl goes around punching people, which is probably not the most stablest mindset out there. I don’t blame Dorothy for thinking like that, because Amazigirls so “cool”! I just hope she doesn’t say anything to Danny to make him feel like he should try and amend the his relationship with Amber (In the dating sense. Someone should definitely help Amber as a friend, and get professional help. Everyone just enables her).
I didn’t want to side with Sal, but… I’m not OK with how OK Dorothy is with casual and realistic mentions of punching people.
Well, girls punching guys has been socially percieved as violence… when exactly?
Always?
well, shes going to punch villains aka people who deserve some punches which is what shes veen doing all the time so why would dorothy react?
Because there’s a huge difference between “I’m going to stop some more crimes, which will probably involve punching people” and “I’m going to go work off my breakup tension by punching people, but don’t worry, they’ll be bad guys”.
It’s the motivation. I can only assume Dorothy doesn’t take that revelation seriously.
Willis has already showed us that Dorothy is ambitious, has set her sights on being US President, and broke up with Danny in HS because he was not serious about an education.
I think she is level headed enough, that when she talks to Danny, IF he levels with her, she will realize that there is a lot more going on with AG than a costume.
Her first hint ought to be AG’s departing comment maybe. Well adjusted people don’t fine it needful to their well being to punch others in the face.
Or Maybe she will assume Danny isnt being supportive of AG goals ( like Doroythy ) and try to talk him into it.
I dont see how it can work, when AG dumped him for just having an honest conversation.
Or Maybe she will assume Danny isnt being supportive of AG goals ( like Dorothy ) and try to talk him into it.
I dont see how it can work, when AG dumped him for just having an honest conversation.
Amazi-Girl dumped him for suggesting that she (Amazi-Girl) needed to be repressed and that he liked Amber more.
For someone whose alters are disassociating more and more, that’s pretty devastating.
I can’t see how having Dorothy talk to Danny is any benefit to Amazi-Girl for the purposes of preserving the status quo. Dorothy is likely to be rather more assertive and persistent in trying to get AG to seek out help when she fully understands the situation, and even on the off chance that Dorothy turns Danny back into a true believer, AG pretty clearly wrote him off. Even if she does let Danny back in, things won’t be the same as they were. Part of me is hoping that this is actually a way of crying out for help on Amazi-Girl’s part.l
I think that she may just want someone to agree with her. Someone to prove her right. Someone that she’s sure will be on her side. Because at the end of the day, all of Amber’s insecurities are still under there. And she needs to hear “You were completely right to do this.”
That seems very like to be her motivation. And it demonstrates how paperthin Amazi-girls amount of control really is if she thinks Dorothy will take her side.
I think this is proof of just how deluded AG is right now and how committed she is to this delusion. Like, Dorothy might come away from a conversation with him thinking he fucked up simply because Danny is awful at saying what is going on with any manner of tact or without sticking his foot in his mouth.
But if things get spelled out, there’s no way she’d support AG’s shit. But AG is convinced that it’s all so obvious the level of betrayal. I mean, Sal is clearly evil and has powers to corrupt the weak willed and turn them against “the mission” by sowing doubt and refusing to accept what I say is right. And so Danny clearly betrayed her and everyone will see and if they don’t then they are corrupted to and must be fought and treated like enemies and their betrayal must be subsumed into mindless violence.
Like, this is becoming more and more a self-reinforcing conspiracy spiral for AG and I’m not sure how she pulls out now that she’s sacrificed her own romantic relationship to it.
i think she just said something cause shes upset about danny honestly. we all say things without thinking “saying this will make this and this happen”
Amazi-Girl thinks she’s right. She thinks she’s healthy. She thinks Dorothy will be on her side, rather than being confused by The Evil One.
The thing is, if Dorothy actually DOES hear from Danny his side of the story, he’s going to sound completely reasonable, because he is the reasonable one here.
“I found out that she almost got turned into road pizza and I was scared for her, so I told her that maybe she should take a break from the superhero thing for a little while. And then she accused me of having been ‘turned against her’ and broke up with me.”
I wonder if that would change Dorothy’s opinion on Amazi-Girl a bit. Because this fangirling without any acknowledgment that Amazi-Girl is actually kind of terrifying is worrying.
Dorothy is too sensible to be clouded by such fangirl adoration. Once she finds out that Danny approached Amazi-girl with reasonable concerns and she broke up with him the ball will be in her court. She’ll have to decide whether she should confront Amazi-girl with the same concerns and be cut off from access or enable her delusions.
Is she? Is she really?
This is one of those situations where I get thrown off balance with regards to how much disbelief should be suspended with DoA in general, and Amber/AG in particular. How much of what we see should be treated as cartoonish antics free of real-world consequences, and how much should be regarded through a strictly realistic lens?
If Amazi-girl should just be regarded as a comic-book hero made flesh (ink flesh. Inksh. Flink) then Dorothy’s reactions to her – fangirling, requesting selfies, not being disturbed by the violence on display – are excusable and we can trust her judgement. Thing is, this arc is (further) pushing the fact that Amber isn’t fine, that Amazi-girl is NOT a healthy, functional outlet, and that there are a lot of consequences yet to be fully explored.
And with THAT reading, I feel like “sensible” Dorothy should have already seen enough red flags to not be gushing and selfie-snapping. I think she IS blinded enough by hero worship to become an enabler to Amber’s dangerous behavior.
For someone who wants to get into politics she doesn’t seem to have much concern for due process
One thing that’s bound to come up eventually is when AG misreads a situation and beats the crap out of someone who doesn’t “deserve” it, or seriously injures someone over some petty crime. One of the things that initially bugged me about Amber/AG was that it it felt out of place to have a costumed vigilante running around in a relatively realistic real world setting without any real apparent consequences. Now that we’re seeing that consequences are a thing, I’m starting to dread the pileup of suck that has to be inbound for Amber and anyone caught in it when it goes down.
I mean she’s already done that to Sal, though she was showing restraint by not punching first. She’s might doing it today, since even the guy she saved seems kind of disturbed by the violence. She’s going around looking to start a fight to deal with anger, so any little thing can probably set her off.
That’s batman’s schting too, isn’t it ?
Instilling fear into the heart of those he pursue.
That wasn’t restraint (or, at least, it wasn’t restraint with the goal of avoiding violence). It was just Amazi-Girl’s way of continuing to be right in her own eyes by goading people into violence so she could hit them with “good reason”, instead of hitting them for a minor crime that no-one cared about anyway (which would hurt her heroic vision of herself).
But do you konestly expect Danny to be able to properly explain the situation? No, Sir, this has Willis’ Dramatic misunderstanding written all over it.
Finally someone else reading the same comic I am.
It’s really none of Dorothy’s business anyway.
I’m hoping if she does go to him, that she’ll be impartial, but since she just defaulted to “what the hell Danny”…we’ll see.
This said: she’ll probably talk to him and as long as he doesn’t think she’s attacking him, will most likely be reasonable and therefore she’ll understand where he was coming from – mainly wishing Amber’s safety.
That’s mostly what I’m expecting. The comic is called Dumbing of Age but you can only get so dumb before you start to stretch belief.
True! And we all make mistakes that revolve around growth (or lack there of) because that’s just life.
Dorothy, I love ya but…
‘I’m going to deal with my anger at my ex by punching people in the face (and this is obviously literal, I just did it)’ should probably raise a red flag instead of leading to ‘Stop Danning things up, Danny’.
You’re not wrong, but… let’s be honest, she’s only doing exactly what this comment section has been doing for the past half-decade.
Ha! Glad I never contributed to that.
And they’ve always been gross and wrong to do it.
Dorothy picked up on one of the really odd things she said. It wasn’t the only one.
“Lost the faith”?
Amber/AG’s behavior is setting off all manner of red flags for me. I might need to walk away from this arc for a bit.
Oh man. Is it just me, or does Danny get really defensive and over-protective whenever Dorothy brings up Amazi-Girl to him? I wonder now if she’s even going to be able to get his side of the story, or if she’ll just trigger his insecurities horribly by asking. 🙁
Oh dear, that is a far too likely scenario for comfort.
Consider how Danny reacted when Ethan asked what happened. He really did not fill in the details, what he did say made it sound like he thought he really smurfed up and was to blame, wanted Ethan to focus on supporting Amber, and seemed determined to be allowed to wallow in his own growing self-hatred without anyone trying to make him feel better. It’s why he pushed Ethan away and why he did not open up to Joe despite that being his M.O. He won’t be any more forthcoming with Dorothy. If anything, she will probably say something that makes him hate himself even more than he already does, causing him to withdraw even deeper into his own issues.
If he had any self-esteem, there would be more hope that he could deal with this in a healthy way. He doesn’t, so when Dorothy does talk to him about this his responses will go some distance towards making her think he simply Danned it up like he is always blamed for doing (whether he deserves it or not).
Our.
I noticed that too, and for a moment I thought the alters were starting to blend together, but I’m pretty sure “our” means “Amazi-Girl and Dorothy’s”
Blending together would be a good thing. Disassociating more and more seems far more likely at this point.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Amber didn’t remember anything after seeing Sal and Danny on the stairs. That would be a hell of a wake-up call.
It’s nicely ambiguous, isn’t it? I liked that.
Well, Dorothy is going to learn a hard lesson on expectations vs reality.
Danny will put on his own mask, solely to take out Amazi-Girl. Okay that probably won’t happen, but it would be kinda awesome to have Amber about to punch out some low level crook, when Danny swings in a kicks her in the skull.
“Did that hurt “Amazi-Girl” I learned it from watching you!”
Spider-Dan, Spider-Dan
Friendly neighbourhood Spider-Dan
Passively aggresses
Buckles fore real stresses
Look out, here comes the Spider-Dan…..
You all just want to see Danny as Catwoman, don’t you?
I think they saw him already.
Also, credit goes to Ana Chronistic(I think) for making this.
What the fudge, Amaziegirl. Even in your idiotic, paranoid worldview where Danny somehow betrayed you, throwing his ex-girlfriend at him is just petty.
On the other hand, it IS the most effective way to make Dorothy see what’s really going on.
In fact, it’s so stupid so I almost believe it is self sabotage – a way to push away Dorothy too before SHE does something that can hurt amazi-girl.
Seriously, it’s such a pointless and exploitative action and really highlights how badly her illness is starting to poison her decision making and her empathy. I’m really not looking forward to how AG/Amber is going to top this.
I don’t think the ex-girlfriend thing has much to do with it. It’s not like she sought out Dorothy to do this. Dorothy proved herself an ally, so now AG thinks she might be able to convince Danny, since Danny is “obviously wrong.”
The main fear I see in Amber is in being wrong about this whole thing. It’s why she broke down when Sal saved her, or when she was nice and offered to help her pick up her laundry. And it’s why she flipped when she saw Sal and Danny together.
If Dorothy convinces Danny, that not only fixes her problem, but “proves” that Sal was actually up to no good this whole time. It goes a long way in assuring her that her worldview is correct.
I like that reading way better than mine. Unfortunately I think that since she used the phrase “our ex boyfriend” there is a strong element of just wanting to be hurtful to get back at Danny for “betraying her”.
I agree with it being a test to confirm that she is right about Sal, but I ALSO think that it’s a way to cull out further “non-faithful” people (i.e. pushing away people who are close to her and therefor might hurt her emotionally).
I really don’t think there is a lot of rationality going on now. I think Amber/Amaziegirl is still in the middle of one of the biggest freakouts to date and she scrambles to keep just the tiniest amount of control over her narrative. Pushing away people that might challenge it is one way of doing that.
I didn’t even know Amber knew about Danny and Dorothy. I thought the “our” meant “Amber and Amazi-girl’s”.
Remember, everyone, Amazi-Girl’s TRUE super power: Being Immune to Criticism!!!!
(Also, wow. Jumping *on* roofs instead of off them… It’s just crazy enough to make people stare and not chase you!)
I wouldn’t want to mess with that kind of leg strength.
She’s gonna pay for all that in a decade or two when she’s 30 with the knee, hips and ankles of an 80 year old.
Oh holy fuck, I just got it.
That’s the twist on that. Like, in the Walkyverse, Amazi-girl’s “being immune to criticism” was a crucial thing for an insecure nerdy girl coping with a cruel misogynist customer base. It was a way of blocking out inaccurate and mean “criticisms” as well as dressing downs.
But here, being immune to criticism, means being immune to constructive criticism. Criticism meant to give her more coping strategies, or reach out with worry, or call out dangerous or abusive behavior. She’s immune to the concept of ever being wrong, so everything she does must be righteous even if chosen for non-righteous means.
Amazi-girl being “immune to criticism” in this universe is George W Bush’s “moral clarity”, a means of simply refusing reality when it says “you are wrong” and doubling down instead.
Decide a kid who’s reformed from their criminal past is your arch nemesis despite them doing everything in their power to avoid such a confrontation and they saved your life? So what, AG’s decided they were bad, so that must have been an act of violence against them as well.
Decide an ex-boyfriend has betrayed you for not shunning said girl despite knowing literally nothing about any of this situation? So what, AG’s decided that that was a betrayal so no amount of facts will change her mind.
Said ex-boyfriend or girl bring up excellent points that would normally cause a moment of introspection? So what, Amazi-girl is immune to criticism. And thus what these traitors babble about might as well be the crash of the ocean waves for all she cares.
I can’t believe I didn’t see this before!
That’s why she effectively doomed the relationship when she decided that only Amaziegirl and not Amber dates Danny. In a relationship you CAN’T be immune to criticism.
Not in a healthy non-abusive relationship, no.
It’s the flipside of Captain America – you know, his famous quote (I will mangle it a bit), “When the whole world tells you what is right, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the world, ‘No, YOU move’.” Unshakeable moral character is not ALWAYS a good thing.
Yeah, just saw Civil War yesterday. Still processing parts of it.
Yeah, that quote always creeped me out.
Sure, it’s a great thing, if you’re actually right.
But it gives the same encouragement to the deluded. To those stuck in the past, seeing the nation change for the better around them. To those rights given to other religions, other races, to women, to homosexuals and transfolk. In their minds, they’re the ones ignoring what the world says is right, planting themselves like a tree beside the river of truth and saying “No, you move”.
That analogy can be fixed so easily, too. It’s a river of truth. It moves–slowly, but it moves. Your tree isn’t going to be by the river forever. And you’ll be far away from the truth.
ToeDad never moved from his morality either.
trlkly: “…you’ll be far away from the truth”
ToeDad: “EROSION DOES NOT EXIST, THE RIVER IS JUST WHERE GOD ALWAYS PUT IT. NOW I’M GOING TO POINT MY GUN AT THINGS. GUN, GUN GUN”
…sorry, I’m sure I had a point at some point.
Yeah, I think a major subtheme of this comic is the toxicity of inflexible morals. We see it in Mary, in Toedad, and now we see it in Amazi-girl as well.
When you decide that in the fight between reality and what your worldview says the world is like, reality should back off and adapt, that opens the door to some pretty scary and awful actions.*
*There is value in standing against what society says the world is like, but that’s because society is often awful and slow to adapt to reality. But that’s a bit different than responding to the existence of other people or challenges to assumptions you’ve made due to social conditioning by putting your fingers in your ears and going la-la-la-la.
We’re seeing that difference right now play out with the “should trans people have the right to pee without harassment” “debate” happening right now.
That’s a very good reading of the comic, and that’s again why Joyce is such an incredibly awesome character. She changes her morals, not because she HAS to in order to survive (like Becky) but because it is the Right Thing To Do.
And this is when Dorothy will learn the truth that Amazi-Girl has issues.
Dammit Dorothy don’t fuck this up please
This gonna be good.
Reminds me of the title of a blues song: “I think your husband is cheating on us.”
Danny: *is the one in the right for almost the first time ever*
Dorothy: *wonders if it’s possible Danny did something that made Amazigirl this angry*
Comment Section: GODDAMNIT DOROTHY YOU IDIOT HOW DARE YOU JUMP TO A PERFECTLY REASONABLE CONCLUSION GIVEN WHAT LITTLE YOU KNOW ABOUT THE SITUATION AND PAST EXPERIENCES. DANNY IS COMPLETELY RIGHT ABOUT AMAZIGIRL, NO BODY MENTION THE FACT THAT SAL HAD TO POINT IT OUT TO HIM BEFORE HE SAW IT.
Yay!! 😀 I’m so happy the comments are finally on Danny’s side (*⌒∇⌒*)
Sorry but it’s never a reasonable conclusion to assume the person who is literally in the process of hunting down people to physically assault is the one in the right in any kind of confrontation. Like this interaction is so full of red flags it’d make a communist blush.
Isn’t that what pretty much all superhero comics teach people ?
Yes, but if you’re not 12 you recognize that superhero comic morality doesn’t actually transfer one-to-one to real life. If there had been someone on my campus running around beating up petty criminals idolizing her would be the last thing on my mind.
I’m not saying she thinks Amber’s in the right. She’s assuming Danny did something horrible that upset her.
Which, if you want to be -really- technical, he did, but not nearly in the way that Dorothy’s thinking he is now.
Ohhhh boy, Amazi-Girl’s really going all out with the “alienate all the person’s friends by giving them misleading implications” tactic.
On Dorothy’s part, though, these feelings are perfectly reasonable. But I’m glad she reminded herself to hear both sides of the story, and I hope she follows through on that before passing a solid judgment on Danny.
Amber has learned bher father’s lessons well. She’s got ‘poisonously manipulative’ and ‘punishment by social isolation’ down pretty much perfectly! 🙁
Ah shit, that was her dad’s two favorite tactics weren’t they? That and the angrily yelling at people and treating anything other than 100% getting his way as an act of violence against him…
Shit. She’s carrying her father’s ghost and it is poisoning her everything.
FUDGE YOU BLAINE!!!!
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1 part 1: No, Amber, bad Amber, that’s not the lesson you should have taken away from Dorothy reminding you of how people look up to you. Damn you and your immunity to criticism and your new habit of bending your interpretation of reality to support the courses you’ve already chosen for yourself and others.
Panel 1, part 2: Eeeesh, Amber? Uh… you’re getting really really creepy on the emotional abuser scale. Like, echoing cult leaders? Asking your ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend to finish your job gaslighting him? Treating your life as some holy mission that should be worshipped and never questioned? Like, literally none of that is even the remotest bit okay and ugh, that “he seems to have… lost the faith” at the end is so skeezy it makes my skin crawl. Stop being creepy and awful, AG/Amber!
Panel 1, part 3-one hundredy billion: I think I focused on this one above in a response, but I’m really scared of how much further she’s slipping into this self-reinforcing spiral of conspiracy theories and splitting with reality. Like, she’s decided anyone speaking out against her or in any way not agreeing with her is “a betrayal” and she’s deluded enough to think anyone will “see the righteousness of her case” if they see the facts. And she’s also decided that more and less controlled violence is the proper coping strategy for being so “betrayed”.
Like, this is so clearly a loop setting up for her to lose everyone who’s supported her and for her to become more and more erratic as her brain interprets this as “proof” of a vast conspiracy by Sal to erode the support force for her “mission”. Like, this has always had the possibility of going off the rails, but I feel like we’re seeing the beginning of some Alex Jones-esque shit.
If she steals Carla’s whiteboard, I’m gonna get really scared.
Panel 4: Yes, violence is a great coping strategy and not at all likely to worsen your abusive tendencies and won’t at all train you to associate hurting people unconsensually as a way to feel good and relaxed.
And it won’t at all corrupt Amazi-girl’s positive aspects, turning that alter into a frightening authoritarian terror looking for any excuse for violence that will cause many of her former fans to turn on her… nosiree…
Panel 5: Seriously, AG/Amberwhatthehell?!?
Bonus reaction: Assuming my DID theory is correct, Amazi-girl taking such thorough control here for such an extended period of time and drifting further and further into a militaristic “civilians, combatants, and the mission” framework means that she’s pushing that disassociation hard and we may actually see the personalities stop being able to share all their memories soon.
Even if that doesn’t happen, though, AG/Amber is in such a bad space mentally and is making such terrible terrible decisions for the health and safety of herself and others.
I don’t think Ethan and Danny have the perspective to do this, but she might need a 72-hour 5150 and observation soon if things continue down this bad road.
Carlas whiteboard?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/revenge-2/
Hate to be anal, but the white writing on a green background is extremely uncharacteristic of a ‘white’ board – looks like a standard old-fashioned chalkboard, to me.
OK, admittedly, I DON’T hate being anal.
Yeah, chalkboard. Sorry, I wasn’t aware that was the point of Adam’s question.
Dotty seemed to pause a bit at the “nothing beating up more people can help me work through” but her view of Danny gets in the way, unfortunately.
Keeping my fingers crossed she will see what is actually happening, but right now I don’t have much hope.
Making her a confidant is a really shitty move on Amber/AGs part.
It’s your fault, Danny. Just admit it. it’s always your fault. Even when it isn’t.
Welp… for all the people expecting Dorothy to see through this. I’m kinda hoping you’re right, but I think you’re wrong. Between the fangirling, the jumping straight to “WhatthehellDanny”, and the not seeing any of the stuff Danny has, I’m really afraid she just got hit straight in the cognitive bias.
She may straight up not buy Danny’s story if he does get it out straight, and that’s if there’s no miscommunications. And, let’s face it, there’s plenty of room for something to get said poorly here.
I’m hoping I’m wrong here. But I’m expecting this to get worse before it gets better.
Piling on that issue, is the fact that Danny is likely to buckle under any accusation Dorothy makes. Sure, he saw Sal’s point, but knowing Danny, how likely is he to stick to it faced with aggressive disagreement from both AG and Dorothy?
One need only look at how he reacted to Ethan asking what happened to realize that this is the case. He seems to think that he was the one who messed up and deserves to be punished for it.
Poor Danny.
AG just weaponized Dannys support system against him. Its vindictive.
Now Dorothy is going to go in all guns-ablazing, Blaming Danny for the breakup, and saying Danny didnt learn from their breakup, and isnt supportive to womens goals.
Its literally the last thing he needs to hear.
i doubt dorothy will say that. i think she’ll say “hi danny what happened between you and amazi girl?”
Normally, No.
But Dorothy isnt perfect. Danny literally got dumped for the same thing ( seemingly ) 1 one month. Only one time he was wrong and the other right.
Dorothy is likely to make him defensive , first. And I expect Danny to be justifiable hurt, bullshit, and feel like his self-respect is being bartered.
AG made it unequivocally clear she is always a greater priority to Amber than Danny ever will be. That relationship is dead. It cant grow.
This is also Dorothy’s pet-peeve. She may not come out and accuse him of dannying it up again.
But I expect the same in softer words.
Will she ? Will she now ?
So hey, I guess it’s a good sign that she wants Dorothy to try and sway Danny back to her, right?
can somebody get me a stepladder I’m having a real hard time grasping for all this strawOh yeah enlisting OTHER people to guilt trip and crush his self esteem is totally a step in the right direction.
Try a pitchfork instead, that’s what they’re for.
Nah, This is actually a manipulative inoculation.
AG has preemptively staked a claim to Dorothy against Danny.
Afterall, there is literally nothing for Dorothy to convince Danny of.
This way Dorothy is more likely to take AG side,
if Danny to tries to “turn her againt AG” the Persecution fantasy she is running.
I think the best I can do right now is “it’s a good sign that she hasn’t killed anyone yet”.
Not for lack of trying/reckless disregard for the safety of others.
dorothy said something that is a very common phrase that doesnt in any way mean that she is angry at danny? SHE MUST BE THE DEVIL
Of course she is. She an atheist.
whatthehelldanny= i thought danny loved her and was happy with her? *i* think shes cool, why would he want to not be with her? did he have to mess up this relationship that seemed to do him good?
whatthehelldanny=/= FUCKING DANNY YOURE THE WORST GO KILL YOURSELF
The very first three things are accusative attacks, that automatically blame Danny. It not “What happened” Its ‘How did Danny screw this up’ ? ( with a background of He did it again ) . Its even reasonable for her to think this. It still doesnt make the next scene that will follow right.
No one is saying Dorothy is evil. Shes an almost perfect human. BUt the comic is called “Dumbing of Age”, ( not Perfect College Kids ) and men, especially Danny not respecting womens careers is a hot-button for her. ( For good reasons )
Amaz-girl just laid this on Dorothy, and Asked for her ‘help’ .
Try and see through Dannys eyes. Hes been dumped twice and told hes worth less than am outside goal or hobby. He already has bad self-worth.
What AG said to him is shitty. Its going to hurt double when Dorothy blames him first.
Dorothy will probably listen to Danny and believe him—eventually. But not when hes hurt or after he feels blamed by Dorothy.
Not only that, but it’s not like you’d have to have Dorothy’s flaws for this to work.
It’s perfectly reasonable for her not to realize what’s actually going on, even though we do. We have more information about what AG has done and her mental state. We have the text right in front of us and can see what was said, instead of just hearing thing. And, quite importantly: We don’t have a couple (maybe even 3) friends who have been heroically saved by AG.
There are some that seem to be making out like Dorothy is being horribly negligent not to pick up on what they see as obvious red flags. And that’s just a little odd to me.
Oh, and there’s not much to see through Danny’s eyes yet. We’re just speculating on what may happen. I’m sure there will be some sort of misunderstanding, but I don’t think she’s going to say what she said here. She does have one other “flaw” you didn’t mention: that of giving people too much of a benefit of the doubt. And that could work either way.
A vigilante is a giant, blaring red flag on their own, for those of us without the luxury to believe otherwise. The path she’s taking is entirely expected (A lot of it happens to actual police as well, to boot, which actually IS relevant to Dorothy’s career trajectory *AND* ambitions; and therefore ought to be coming up soon in college, if not yet because it’s only what, 5 or 6 weeks in?)
The weird thing about red flags is you only notice them when you notice the first one in a person. It’s surprisingly easy to miss the red flags on a person in the way they treat others or the views they hold until you are a bit more enmeshed with them than you’d like. And so it can be a little embarrassing sometimes to see a red flag and then look back and realize there’s been years of red flags littering the road behind you.
If “violent vigilantism” isn’t a glaring red flag for you then you need to reassess your priorities. It is NOT the hallmark of a reasonable or stable person. This isn’t like some super subtle and nuanced problem that’s easy to miss, she assaults people on a regular basis.
you people have to remember that dorothy doesnt know at all what has happenef between danny and amber, just like you defended danny against amazi girl before by saying he didnt know the whole story. please bw fucking reasonable
Danny never threw his friends under the bus. the Roz thing? underestimation of how stupid Jason was.
he was stupid and messed things up because he was *too* trusting. Dorothy is not.
not Jason. wossname, the big lech dude.
Joe.
??? what??? dorothy still doesnt know what happened here????
Amber
Amber what are you doing
That roof doesn’t appear to lead anywhere interesting
Have the comics been slow at loading for anyone else recently?
Holy shit.
Amber just went from maybe abuser territory to DEFINITELY.
Actively seeking to turn someone against your chosen target, specifically choosing someone who they are emotionally close to?
That’s not cool.
Ethan was a maybe, she had no idea how ‘close’ they were. She knows completely how close Dorothy and Danny were.
Amber in this universe is hurt, badly, and needs to recover. However that does not in any way pardon her for becoming that which she hates.
This sucks.
Ok, just a theory but I can see this going critical mass very soon and i dont think the casualties will be limited to these 3. Dorothy goes to talk to danny. She ends up realizing how irrational amazi-girl is, and how reasonable and honest danny is being. This reminds her of how dishonest walky is being. She slips up and ends up back with danny and walky has to repair everything.
I think it’d be better for Dorothy to side with Amazi-Girl against Danny. It’s interesting just how much CONTEMPT she holds her ex in.
I never liked Dorothy, let alone understood all the commentariat’s love for her. I mean, right from the start she’s a coward who blames Danny for… not being psychic, I guess?
Ehh, I understand why she didn’t want to be with Danny as he had crossed the boundary from supportive to “passive aggressive stalking.” However, if she really didn’t like him as much as we see here, why didn’t she break up with him earlier?
…For not taking her stated ambitions seriously. There’s no psychic powers required here.
No, see, I’m not talking about that (though, she’s an atheist woman with as many confrontational skills as a pancake trying to make a political career in the US, soooo…). I’m talking about the fact that, instead of breaking up with Danny, her course of action was “let me just move cities here, so that I don’t have to use any actual words.”
But that’s a long thing for which to hold a grudge. Yeah, she’s not confrontational. Doesn’t make her a bad person.
But if I don’t tenderly hold my grudges, how will they know they’re loved?
That’s still not psychic powers, that’s obvious warning signs. Not 100% guaranteed signs, because teenagers are dumb, but it’s still not ‘psychic powers’.
And yes, she still should have done it sooner, outright. Obviously.
Indeed but that was also canonically her first relationship. Most people make at least one big fuckup with their first relationship because they’re still learning how to relationship.
Somehow it feel you are juxtaposing yoour personal exps on this.
“Our”
“Lost the faith”
She’s gone full loony toons.
“our” is fine. “Our ex-boyfriend” is just “your and my ex-boyfriend”.
It wouldn’t be a reference to “Amber and Amazi-Girl’s ex-boyfriend”, since Amber and Danny weren’t dating.
“lost the faith” is troublesome, but could easily be taken as a kind of joking comic booky reference.
Please do not use derogatory terms about the mentally ill. If we can avoid that shit for fictional characters who are gay, trans, black, etc., we can avoid it for those who are mentally ill.
I feel that I shouldn’t have to explain why this one would be derogatory.
Aye
Albeit, we need some terms for people who aren’t mentally ill but just have stupid beliefs and self-delusion of a decidedly sane variety.
Hence why I limit such requests to the mentally ill. I’d be a hypocrite if I tried to tell people never to say words like “crazy” and such.
My main suggestion is to focus on the beliefs, not the person with those terms. Most people I’ve talked to who find the terms offensive don’t when they are used that way.
Nah Dotty, you should really REALLY listen to both sides of the story this time. Like. Really.
Hey, guys? Wanna be really sad?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/issuesatlarge/
“Mistakes were made.”
“Which mistakes?”
“ALL OF THEM!”
Hum. She third-personed Amber there, while still having Amber-cheeks. That seems meaningful. Not sure what it means, but it seems meaningful.
There’s been a lot of moments where I’ve disagreed with DoA characters but for some reason this was the first time I’ve become angry. I mean, Amber here is literally asking Dorothy to “talk some sense” into Danny. This isn’t a “I’m having issues and I need help” talk. This is more… immature. Is that the word? Maybe.
She’s basically recruiting her to help gaslight her ex. It’s super fucked up of her and it’s pretty fucked up how quickly Dorothy bought into blaming Danny despite knowing literally nothing whatsoever about the situation.
I would personally find hilarious if Sal & Danny ended up dating at some point.
I totally foresee Danny sleeping with Ethan or Sal after the events of Dorothy ripping into him.
I seriously doubt Dorothy will ‘rip into’ Danny at all, especially once she gets the full story.
WILL she get the whole story? He couldn’t even bring himself to share it with Ethan, Amber’s other best friend.
(The fact that he’s trying to dodge his romantic feelings for Ethan might not have helped, but…)
If she comes off accusatory when she goes to talk to him I can totally see him getting defensive and it being a whole mess.
At the end of the day, Dorothy will side with Amazi-Girl because Danny lost the faith. EXCOMMUNICATE! UNPERSON! UNPERSON!
#IbelieveInDanny
I think Danny can take it. It won’t be nice for him, but he’s come a long way from his former pushover self.
Dorothy’s “Accomplishments”
Trying to break up with Danny by just moving away and hoping that he’d give up.
Trying to make Walky not Walky.
….
Why am I supposed to like her?
God I have so much sympathy for Danny. He tries so hard and it seems like all the people in his life who SHOULD know him the best have such low opinions of him as a person. His parents, his ex girlfriend, his best friend. Jesus Christ. No wonder he has next to no self confidence. No wonder he loves to buckle. Danny you need a new support system and fast. I’m really glad he met Ethan and Sal. And I’m really glad he seems to slowly but steadily be finding his self worth. I’m so glad he knows that he didn’t actually do anything wrong even if he got dumped for it. I do have faith he’ll stick up for himself when Dorothy comes to him about this.
Does he really know that he did nothing wrong? It seems to me that he believes that he did, which is not surprising. Take it from me, when you have no self esteem it is next to impossible to look at any one situation and not blame yourself for it, no matter how obvious it should be that it wasn’t your fault. His interactions with Ethan seem to confirm that he blames himself and that he thinks he isn’t worth having anyone be concerned about him.
Well he did say that he thought if he did everything right he could somehow avoid getting dumped. And then there was that line before that about how what he was doing with wasn’t buckling. So I think he knows his concerns aren’t wrong even if doing the right thing ended up costing him his relationship. His whole conversation with Ethan “Doesn’t she realize how much she’s damaging herself…” makes me think he has a good of a read on this situation as he can. He’s sad about the break up but he’s more concerned about the damage Amber is doing to herself. He didn’t suddenly decide his concerns were meaningless just because Amber didn’t take having them pointed out well. I’m proud of him.
I miss the Cranberries
I just had an Ugly Thought:
Becky, Joyce, and Jocelyne are going all “Cat’s Eye” at the McIntyre mansion when the lights go on.
There stands Amazi-Girl, grinning and cracking her knuckles.
I wonder how much of the peanut gallery has forgotten that we, as readers, see from a largely omniscient perspective rather than that of any of the characters.
Dorothy has no idea that Amazi-Girl nearly died performing heroics, not to mention nearly causing a multi-car pileup. As far as she knows, Amazi-Girl just runs around campus and stops petty crime. And as such, it is not unbelievable that Dorothy would assume that Danny, who she had to basically tell to stop near-stalking her near the beginning of the strip, had done something upsetting.
The real question in my mind is if Danny will think to tell her about the near-fatal incident.
AAGGHHH, YOU GUYS, NO. The reason you leave the seat down if you share a toilet with a female person is that ladybits have to be wiped. That’s usually done with the dominant hand, and so is putting the seat down. You don’t want other people’s toilet germs or under-seat accumulations of effluvia on your hand when it’s time for that hand to head down south.
Essentially, putting the seat down is a courtesy because it prevents your partner from having to touch an object covered in sewage or germs before she touches bits of herself that are warm, moist entrances to her body’s interior–all things that harmful bacteria love.