So if I understand you correctly Ethans costume would only cover a Top* Position, where as young Danny’s would be more of a cover for the *Bottom variety? Quite an interesting dynamic reversal for costuming of a Hero and his Side kick one might say.
P.S Thank you for providing me with the most epic of segways for which to post my first reply here.
Do /you/ wanna be the one to tell the punchy girl who does back flips off buildings that she can’t do that anymore? Cuz I think her description is enough to allude to the fact that she’s too freaking crazy for that to work out in your favor.
Not really. I think I understand Sal, but how can she expect Danny to stop the white girl in the cap that goes around punching people?
If I’m not understanding Sal, and if she meant to say “No, I completely understand that you’d have no chance at all to stop the crazy white girl in the cap who goes around punching people if she decided you were her boyfriend,” then that makes a lot more sense.
But then, I’m pretty sure I do understand Sal. And Sal probably thinks that most people can accomplish things as easily as she probably thinks she can. Despite her juvenile delinquency, her failed relationship with her mother (and father?), and her several other glaring weaknesses she probably considers herself to be a strong, confident person who can do whatever she wants to do. She just doesn’t want to do them, neener neener.
I’m pretty sure, first off, that she means “how in hell” as in “why hasn’t this happened”.
And second, I mean, generally speaking people tend to listen more closely to their loved ones. The answer to her question is that Amber doesn’t have any loved ones who 1) know she’s Amazi-Girl (her mother, presumably) 2) don’t have way too complicated a relationship to tell her shit (Ethan) and 3) aren’t doormats (Danny). But Sal doesn’t know that.
“3) aren’t doormats (Danny). But Sal doesn’t know that.”
Um, i think I was saying exactly this.
Danny is a doormat and Sal does not know this because Sal think that all people are strong just as she thinks that she herself is strong. Despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Sal is asking him why he hasn’t got his GF to stop the Amazi-Girl thing. She’s banking on the idea that most people listen to their loved ones and would stop doing something so insanely dangerous if asked/begged by someone who loves them. That’s specifically why she asked to make sure he was actually dating her first.
This is a fair enough question to ask considering Amazi-Girl seems to be extremely reckless in Sal’s eyes – she almost died trying to save Becky and Sal herself had to save her.
And we ourselves already saw what happened when Amber told him the full story – he didn’t say ‘whoa, that was dangerous, you could have died!’ – he got all starry eyed like ‘you’re amazing’ without seeming to realise for even a moment that everything she did was reckless and dangerous and that if she wants to live, it’s probably a good idea to stop doing it.
When Amber told Danny what happened he wasn’t starry eyed; he was terrified for her life because she was talking about how she was two separate people and that she almost died.
^ This. Also, I think it’s only recently that he’s started to have a problem with her Amazi-Girl schtick. He was into it when they first met, and it’s only as he’s gotten to know how damaged Amber is that he’s realized it may not be healthy.
Sal doesn’t know that. She only knows that when she was talking to AG in the forest, right after saving her life, it seemed like no one else had ever said this shit to her before.
Also, even right here, Danny is acting like it’s just something super cool and not, yknow, horribly dangerous and self-destructive
he’s only just now figuring out to what extent she needs saving (and also to what extent he’s ill-equipped to do said “saving”). up until recently he thought amazi-girl was just a fun hobby for amber, not the mess that it is.
I have a feeling Danny’s been waiting to use that line for a long time.
Though I guess it’s kind of weird for him to go “yeah having a superhero girlfriend rocks” after the last chapter, where he learned that Amber was in a far worse place than he initially thought.
An internet term, like ‘troll.’ It’s got a lot of different subtle uses, but the bottom line is that it’s a term with negative connotations that refers to someone rushing to the defense of strangers on the internet.
Troll isn’t in my experience, referencing someone rushing to the defense of ANYONE on the internet. Quite the contrary. Trolls usually do just the opposite, especially continuing to bring up a hot topic that they are very aware of IS a hot topic and seeing how much trouble they can stir up.
No I think the “troll” bit was brought up as a comparison to the term “white knight” – to provide context to it. As in “it is a piece of internet vocabulary, which also includes the term “troll”.” And then DS goes on to explain the definition of the term “white knight”. That’s how I understood it, at least.
Trolls and white knights are pretty much the opposite of each other; I was only comparing them as common internet terms – they often come up around each other, given that they describe folks inclined to flamewars. The description I gave was solely on white knights.
Ol’ timey internet wisdom: Back In Ye Day, we used “Trolling” interchangeably with “Trawling”. That is, “you’re trawling for replies”. By which we meant like the fishing technique where you drag a net as close to the bottom as you can. Then someone who couldn’t spell “trawl” spelled it “troll”, people thought ‘guy who hangs out under a bridge attacking passersby for no reason besides “they’re passersby” ‘ also fit the bill, and there we have it. White Knight is about five generations of internet slang younger than that.
Trolling is also a fishing term; a bit before my time, so I’ll take your word on it starting as ‘trawling,’ but to quote the top result on Google, “Trolling is a method of fishing where one or more fishing lines, baited with lures or bait fish, are drawn through the water. This may be behind a moving boat, or by slowly winding the line in when fishing from a static position, or even sweeping the line from side-to-side, e.g. when fishing from a jetty.” Basically the same, but with lines instead of nets, which seems like a more appropriate metaphor to me, unless the troll in question is coding bots or something for mass saturation of bait.
Trolling is a technique where bait on hooks is dragged behind a slow-moving boat, trawling is similar except with nets which are sometimes dragged along the bottom of whatever body of water is being fished.
White knight has evolved to have connotations of someone who rushes in to defend others who may not need and/or want defending with zero concern about what the person they’re defending’s opinion is of the matter.
Think the dudes who are self-proclaimed “champions” of women’s rights and get pissed off and/or condescending to women who tell them we’d actually kind of prefer them to stop because the problem we’re talking about is how dudes dominate the spotlight and conversation in all issues, and while Mr. White Knight is giving a very good illustrative example of exactly the issue in question, this particular situation is one wherein women should be doing most of the talking. (Alternatively: That white person who rushes in to defend PoC from racism while condescendingly explaining to the PoC how racism works, or that abled person who demands that autistic people use person-first language with absolutely zero grasp of why that’s a loaded issue in the autistic community [long story] or I could go on).
Basically, think Roz. Roz is a classic white knight: She’s so consumed with thinking of herself as some Great Savior Of The Downtrodden And Oppressed that she’s incapable of examining her own internalized bigotries. It simply does not even occur to her that maybe if she wants to help said downtrodden and oppressed, she should start by actually listening to them and letting them take the lead as they know best what their needs are. She appoints herself Champion of their problem and expert on their issues, even above those with first-hand experience of said issues, and has no grasp of exactly how arrogant (and, for that matter, bigoted – it’s a manifestation of the sort of bigotry that assumes the dominant group isn’t dominant because they’ve stacked the social deck in their favor but because they’re simply better at everything than the oppressed group. A more obvious manifestation of this phenomenon is how every time a wage gap issue comes up, you will have dozens and dozens of people popping up to argue very passionately that Straight White Abled Dudes simply make better life choices than women/PoC/disabled people/trans people/LGB people and/or are just innately better suited to high-paying jobs) that is to do.
To be fair, there is also the use case where “white knight” is used as an insult by the trolls themselves, aimed at anyone who is picking the side they are attacking.
I’ve seen examples of blogs “swarmed” by harassers where they would chuck “oh, stop being such a white knight” at everyone who told them to stop being assholes.
I agree with tangled_z; “white knight” is generally used by trolls of the MRA variety to mean “guy who pretends not to hate women* so he can get in their pants” these days. I think the earlier definition has been given to “mansplainer” and the like.
*Trolls of the MRA variety appear to be incapable of believing that men who honestly don’t hate women the way they do exist.
Someone who compulsively picks a side in an argument on the internet ,of which they were not already a part, usually on behalf of a girl or someone they think is a girl.
Also usually includes the assumption that the person who actually has a stake in the argument can’t argue for themselves; leaping to the defense of people who don’t need defending.
In meatspace, a guy whose relationships are always with girls/women who have heavy damage, and whose identity as a man is wrapped up in attempting to fix that damage, when what really needs to happen involves therapy of some kind or possibly police intervention.
I know somebody like that. One stalker, two other failed relationships, and almost three decades later, he nearly destroyed his marriage because his wife identified her own damage and found appropriate help and then he didn’t know what to do with himself. :/
Sounds like the guy of the quitting couple in the couple weekend in BFF (great film, btw). If he cannot help, he doesn’t know what to do in a relationship.
Yeah, Danny tends to that, that’s part of why he drove Dorothy crazy.
I suffer from this. My love interests tend to be damaged, and I tend to try to protect them. It’s taken me some time to realize that their damage is their own, and that they don’t always want protecting.
In the end, it generally means someone who jumps to people’s (ladies (and presumed ladies) primarily if not exclusively) defense on the internet, generally to make himself feel good more than to actually help (and usually is misguided in their (his) attempts).
The worst you can accuse a “white knight” of is helping someone else out without being asked to.
Which, you know, is a non-thing. Just saying.
If someone is an asshole, that’s not related to the white knight thing. It’s like calling someone a social justice warrior. Boy, sure hate me some social justice.
Well, it’s not about wanting to help without being asked. It’s usually considered to be someone wanting to “help” without considering the feelings or opinions of the person they’re trying to “help”.
Well, white-knighting can be a trifle patronising, if the damsel (or whoever) isn’t actually in distress and can handle it themselves. In an internet context it can easily slide into mansplaining, for example.
“The worst you can accuse a “white knight” of is helping someone else out without being asked to.
Which, you know, is a non-thing. Just saying.”
Ehhh… ever hear “the path to Hell is paved with good intentions”? I think it is important to be an ally and speak out, but I’ve too often seen it go wrong when the White Knight gets a little to high up on his high horse. Sometimes it leads to the White Knight unintentionally hurting the group he is supposedly defending.
“It’s like calling someone a social justice warrior. Boy, sure hate me some social justice.”
Exactly! If someone uses the term “SJW” with me (unless they’re discussing the term itself as you just did), they have basically failed my litmus test and are no longer worth my time.
I doubt he’s forgotten yesterday. Seeing as how most people (judging from the Whiteboard Ding Dong bandit chapter) think Amazi Girl’s awesome, I’m not surprised that he’s willing to brag.
“I have a feeling Danny’s been waiting to use that line for a long time.” I have a feeling he’s been practicing to get the properly demure facial expression.
But we’re talking about THIS strip in particular. Sal knows Amazi-Girl is not only practicing vigilantism, which is illegal in this country (Comic Canon, too?), but the last major encounter she had with a bad guy could’ve killed off her subplot, Becky’s subplot, Joyce’s subplot, Sal’s subplot, and maybe but Danny’s, Ethan’s, Walky’s, Dorothy’s, Dina’s, and like, THE REST OF THE COMIC GOES TO A GRINDING HALT BECAUSE PEOPLE DIED.
This doesn’t call for easy listening music from Saints Row 2 (Why that game in particular?)
As well he should be. Pay no attention to the person who has suffered from bigotry her whole life from her own parents and is perfectly willing to display instant bigotry to the very notion of a “superhero “
This isn’t “bigotry” toward superheroes. This is Sal’s entire experience with Amazi-girl being an overly aggressive busy-body who picked a fight, a physical fight, with her for no reason and then having to save this same overly aggressive busy-body from death on the high way after performing a really dangerous stunt that while cool should have been left to the police.
Sal then extended an olive branch to Amazi-girl and it was thoroughly rejected. Despite this, Sal is able to empathize with Amazi-girl’s actions because she sees her past self in them. Sal has no inkling who Amazi-girl or even Amber are during any of this.
What bigotry? Feel free to ignore if you were being sarcastic.
It’s within my capabilities. But it’s in the same probability space as pigs sprouting wings and Trump suddenly becoming a nice person. I know it’s technically possible, just not likely.
“Because I respect her decisions as a person and understand the persona is necessary for her dealings with deep emotional issues, some of which you had a direct hand in causing?”
“Yeah, but neither of us know that last bit.”
“Good point.”
Physical assault is socially unacceptable for a reason. A lot of reasons.
More to the point, we can see from the continued fragility of her emotional state that using Amazi-girl as a coping mechanism is not working.
Nope. As can be seen by the fact that they exist out here in the real world, where we do know her activities.
Some of you freak out, because you think all vigilantism is wrong. But, in actuality, there has been exactly one situation where she put others at risk, and she has every right to put herself at risk.
And, as people seem to forget, she beat up her dad as Amber. She flat out said Amazi-Girl didn’t do it.
I mean, the whole car chase sequence was Amber being crazy violent and escalating. It was already a bad situation
And like, even if Amber’s presence was meant to be a positive, since David Willis mentioned how physics was intentionally bruised and that Becky was being rescued by a gosh darned superhero, and later on we have Becky and Dina treat her like a hero for her actions, that still ended with Sal admonishing her for nearly getting herself killed over her need to prove herself.
I’d say that whole car chase sequence was Ross being crazy violent and escalating. I mean really, climbing out on the roof of the car you’re driving to shoot someone? Without that bit of pure insanity, the whole sequence gets a lot saner.
Amazi-girl even tried to flag down the cops.
Without her, Becky’s plan was to try to escape later and then never come back, so Amazi-girl trying did actually work out.
It’s really hard for me to read that as intended to be both a superhero saving Becky and proof that Amber’s out of control and just makes everything worse. Sal’s admonishment doesn’t have to be Word of God there, just her perspective on Amazi-girl. Which continues to set up this conflict and hopeful eventual resolution.
The way I see it, I think it is both. Amber saves Becky, but then Amber almost gets herself killed. IIRC that’s what Sal mentions, and even says that she “underestimated” her, while still pointing out how Amber made the situation dangerous.
“Until she beats up the wrong guy, someone who didn’t deserve it, and it’s suddenly unacceptable again”
And then many of the in-universe people who’d been going “Amazi-Girl’s so cool!” would be going “oh man, Amazi-Girl’s terrible, who did she think she was hitting people for fun?” like _that_ and pretending they’d never been pro-AG.
Except that Amber/Amazi-Girl is a fictional character. She’ll only beat up the wrong guy if that’s what Willis wants her to do. I’m not at all convinced that Amazi-Girl’s plot arc is an inevitable descent into a monster who needs to be stopped.
It’s like saying Superman is only a hero until he beats up the wrong guy, then he’s a horrible monster. That’s true, but that’s missing the whole point of Superman.
@gc I’m all for neurodiversity, but Amber is pretty dang miserable in her current coping system. I think you’d have a point, if AG ran around doing parkour for fun (without punching people), and Amber was really happy about her rad masked exercise routine, and she felt good about herself whether she was wearing the mask or not. As it is, the Amber/AG split is quelling some of her anxiety, but it’s also reinforcing her self-hatred of Amber and making her pretty unhappy.
This is an incredibly unhealthy coping mechanism, you’re right. It’s not bad because it’s different, it’s bad she’s putting herself and others at risk in order to vent out her aggressions. In one of the earlier strips, you can see her trying to instigate violence against two graffiti artists, and her fun is immediately removed when the mechanism of coping isn’t violence. Amber is using the danger she puts herself in as an escape, and her brand of vigilante justice is more destructive than noble. She or someone who doesn’t deserve it is going to end up hurt physically, in addition to the emotional damage she’s doing to herself that you described.
We saw it more than once. In the first confrontation with Sal, Amber/Amazi-Girl goes out of her way to try and goad Sal into attacking her. It was kinda creepy, in fact.
It’s really only a matter of time before her violent behavior isn’t just a response to some perceived wrongdoing, it’s the response to anything and nothing. That’s what we were seeing when she berated Danny.
She did and it was kind of creepy. OTOH, that’s Sal, her evil nemesis and she still didn’t attack, just tried to provoke the attack Sal was obviously going to make because she’s an evil monster.
It didn’t go according to script and she’s still processing that.
But even in that worst case, she didn’t attack.
It might be a necessary way of dealing with it in her mind, but it’s the best way to deal with it in the same way that putting salt on it is a good way to deal with an open wound.
I’d liken it more to pressing a shit-smeared rag to the open wound to stop the bleeding and ignoring the risk of infection; I don’t think salt would help at all.
let’s remember though, comic safety cushioning atmosphere aside, that jumping from car to car, in the real world, is not a good coping mechanism. it is a good way to die, if you’re lucky only the second or third time
Certainly an important thing to remember for those of you thinking of taking up Amber’s hobby in the real world.
This web comic however is not actually the real world.
Because he’s a bumbling, lanky dork whose very name has become a synonym for fucking up and she’s a physically adept vigilante whose emotional state is constantly teetering at the edge of a very dangerous cliff and could crumble completely at literally any moment?
Oh doy I just realized that she’s got mad experience doing real motorcycle driving, that’s probably why she’s so good at Kart. Though she doesn’t go-kart, as far as we know (would that make Joyce think go-karts are super cool?)
Honestly, if there’s anyone who can help Amber through this, it’s Ethan. He was the one who was held hostage at the gas station, he’s been with her through all of this, he gets her better than anyone.
(And no, I’m not just saying that because I came here from Shortpacked! and I really like the Ethan + Amber + Mike friendship, that is a completely ridiculous assertion how dare you.)
Don’t get hung up on the obvious. The robbery-attemp was a decisive moment in Ambers life, but her non-dad has been fucking with her mind (hopefully only that) long before. He already berated her in the car before anything happened, and it became quite clear that emotional abuse has been going on all her life already.
Ethan might be the one able to help because he knows this, but not especially because of being involved in the robbery and being the trigger of her greatest guilt-trip.
Either way, Danny is definitely not equipped to be the one to help Amber right now. Honestly, given a few hours to stew on it, I’m not sure anyone can help her right now. She’s in a very dangerous place emotionally, what with basically being neighbors with one of her triggers and her whole “I don’t want to be like my abusive dad so I’m going to compartmentalize my anger into a completely separate personality.”
Which, really, is the crux of it all, isn’t it? After having taken the brunt of her dad’s anger and abuse so long, she doesn’t know how to express her own anger in a healthy way, so she just gives it to this infallible persona she’s crafted and hopes that’ll do the trick.
… I reiterate my previous statement of “fuck Mr. O’Malley.” I feel like no matter how often the members of the comment section might disagree, that is one sentiment we can get behind. Just… just fuck that guy. There’s not a circle of hell painful enough for him.
“help” doesn’t necessarily mean “up and fix it”
the minimum definition of “help” is “make it less worse than it would have been without you” and I honestly think Danny is capable of doing that. Hell, he’s doing it right now by picking up on her laundry duty while she isn’t capable of it.
This is why people talk about “support network”. It’s not about one person being a crutch in all the ways, it’s about lots of people doing little things that put together make an awful situation noticably less awful.
The “all or nothing” approach here is horrible and wrong both for the helper and the helpee. Danny doesn’t deserve to be expected to ‘fix’ Amber. Amber doesn’t deserve to be denied what little bit of help he can extend.
I do, however, reiterate the statement of “fuck that guy” as well. Because honestly, seriously, fuck that guy.
The way you write it as “summery” it feels like it means “the state of things in the process of being summed”. Like “fuckery” in the context, for example, of “Cease this fuckery” (cease that happenings of things being fucked around). “Summary” (the actual word), however, is a finalized, culminated resulting product in short form. It’s weird how one letter difference can make things sound so different.
The current fanboy theory is that SG’s real power is rule-of-funny nerfing of bad-guys’ powers or abilities.I mean a few issues back she took out the entire Avengers in one fight plus Spiderman, and took Spidey’s web-slingers. Can you think of any bad-guys who have even come close?
Or, as it’s sometimes stated, extreme luck-based, reality warping powers. Whatever can go wrong for her opponent will go wrong, and in a hilarious manner.
And, why wouldn’t it work on Amazi-Girl? Because she has no real powers? Because you can’t think of a funny way for Squirrel Girl to thwart her, since AG is a tragic character?
I’m pretty sure SG has handled both of those situations before. The main issue is that none of SG’s defeats ever actually stick, either. Something funny would happen to AG. She’d be frustrated for a bit, then she’d pretty much forget about it once the reality warping had been gone a while.
I mean, no one stops Sal from driving her motorcycle because she paid for it with her own money and has a license. No one stops Sal and her friends from getting drunk because they dont go out and commit acts of violence.
Just saying, Sal being a bit of a punk and drinking some alcohol is not at all equivalent to Amazi Girl’s illegal violent actions.
^ This. Sal has a license and is overage. Sure, drinking isn’t always good for you, but we have no evidence that she drinks and drives and I personally doubt that she does. Ditto yes, driving a motorcycle can be dangerous, but she doesn’t seem to drive it recklessly (stunts don’t necessarily count). Whereas Amber’s behaviour is both self-destructive and potentially dangerous to everyone around her.
Ah, okay, I as thinking in UK terms where 18 is definitely legal. On the other hand, underage drinking doesn’t harm anyone else unless you combine it with other things, like doing stupid things WHILE drunk. And if we’re going to get at Sal for drinking, we’d be hypocritical not to criticize a large proportion of the cast too… not saying that underage drinking is good, but Amazigirl’s behaviour is more harmful by far.
Sal knows enough: she experienced AG trying to pull her into a physical altercation and then she rescued AG from the hood of a car during a high speed pursuit. I know you normally need a minimum n=3 to achieve statistical significance, but I think those two instances are all the data points necessary to draw her conclusion. Plus she sees her own past anger and pain in AG.
Looking back, Sal isn’t really that much of a troublemaker. Riding a motorcycle can be dangerous, I guess, but so can a lot of things, like skateboarding, or skydiving. People can do these things without being self-destructive thrillseekers. Her hobby is something plenty of people do, and potential injury can be minimized. It is not the same thing as picking fights with criminals.
As for the drinking, we’ve already seen Dorothy and Walky get drunk during Joyce’s dorm party. Arguably, that was worse because it made Joyce uncomfortable. She’s not an alcoholic, and the worst we’ve seen her is having Jason carry her back to her dorm. She has some bad habits, but so do plenty of college students. I’d say Sal’s fairly in control, at least in those regards.
Sal even chooses to mitigate some of her risks, like by wearing a helmet and special motorcycle suit (which might be just for show, but imo probably has special protective gear in it). Motorcycles are still really dangerous, but Sal has looked at the odds and made a conscious choice. Amber/AG just react. They don’t consciously choose, and they definitely don’t mitigate risks (with the exception of the Amazi-Condoms).
Marcie. Marcie stops Sal from being violent and indulging her temper. Sal has said as much before.
(and now that Walky’s around, he also has stopped Sal from engaging in violence)
Sal isn’t demanding Danny single-handedly tackle and tie Amber up until she quits feeling punchy, but rather that he be her voice of reason when she’s seeing red, the same way Sal’s friend and brother are to her.
I mean, considering Amazi-Girl tried to beat the shit out of Sal FOR drinking, whereas Sal has (even after that) saved her life and tried to caution her away from escalating things…
The latter kind of stopped. She’s most likely asking because of the Toedad incident where Amazi-Girl almost died. What she’s doing is pretty obviously dangerous so even though Sal doesn’t particularly get along with her, it makes sense for her to be concerned about whether or not Danny is actually doing anything to try to stop her from you know, dying.
Danny’s face in the sixth panel. My gosh. He’s such a cute dork. Look at him! His little face! oh my god.
It almost detracts from the likely crushing conversation he’s about to have~ Cause, from Sal’s perspective, Amazi-girl is a dangerous vigilante that’ll get herself killed. Danny sees a hero. Neither are wrong, or right. Amazi-girl is heroic, but also dangerous.
Oh, I know… just feeling that moment when the train wreck goes into slo-mo… you can’t stop watching, you know it’s gonna get all kinds of ugly… and yet you hope.
I have a feeling this is going to enter the territory of how Amazi-Girl has the luxury of being able to do what she does because she’s white and isn’t harmed from upholding the existing justice system. (I mean, for a certain definition of “existing justice system” since you know, superheroes aren’t normally part of it.)
She very rarely takes the Lord’s name in vain. My head canon is the Catholic school she was sent to didn’t take too kindly to such swearing and employed … drastic measures.
It works fine, though. It’s what allowed me to have a voice for her in my head. You only need hints of an accent to pull it off. Overdoing it is actually a lot worse.
“Well… allow me to provide a simulation of how that conversation would start:
“Hey honey. Remember that time three big guys assaulted me in the middle of the night, and you rescued me? Well, I think you should have just let them beat me up!”
(This is not me saying Sal is necessary wrong about the whole thing, but, from Danny’s perspective, well…)
She’s got some of it right, and some of it wrong. There’s not an easy answer to whether Amazi-Girl is good or not. I maintain she’s ultimately a force for good, but there’s a whole lot of bad in there.
And Danny does need to realize this. I just hope it doesn’t go too far. I hope that Sal actually learns some of the good stuff about her, too.
I think the main question Sal is asking is whether or not it’s good FOR AMBER. Which, unquestionably, it is not. She needs real actual professional help.
Wait
So Sal interacts with Amber, and then the next person she sees, she talks about Amazi-Girl.
I think Sal is making the connection nobody has ever made before.
i doubt it. she just happened to encounter danny and had a question for him about something she’d read in the paper (although really why the hell the identity of amazi-girl’s boyfriend was even IN the paper, DOROTHY, is another question entirely), which just happened to be immediately after she encountered amber and helped her re-gather her laundry (and triggered a panic attack, but she doesn’t know that).
besides, if sal ever made the connection between amber and amazi-girl, confronting amber about it would be the most fruitless endeavor possible, as evidenced by the gobbled speech a couple strips ago. although said confrontation would possibly trigger the switch to amazi-girl…and would still be fruitless, on account of amazi-girl’s unwillingness to listen, as opposed to amber’s inability.
*shrug* but no, i don’t think sal knows. there’s always the possibility that dan will misspeak in their upcoming conversation, though. boy means well, but smh.
The relationship being in the paper may be from back when Billie was still somewhat on the AG beat – Danny told her they were dating one time when he was trying to check up on AG.
It’s so surreal to have Sal as the calm and collected voice of reason, knowing how she turns out one parallel universe over. Amazing what an absence of murder-happy aliens and black ops brainwashing will do to improve a gal’s mental health!
Of course, Sal may well be thinking of herself, here. But who stopped her, from her rages?
There may have been some therapist that we haven’t seen yet, but an obvious answer that comes to mind is Marcie. Marcie has been seen multiple times getting Sal to back down, successfully.
So maybe Danny (and/or Ethan, but Sal doesn’t know that yet) needs to talk to Marcie about successful de-escalation techniques. Oh, wait. Does Sal need to translate? Maybe not; Marcie looks like she’s perfectly capable of using messaging and chat systems.
This is all chaos theory, but I think I should commit a crime or something one night to summon her. Give Amazi-Girl a fight she can’t win. Maybe that’ll get her to back down?
I think what Wolf’s trying to get here is to have Wolf come in (Mistake #1: Wolf is from another fandom. I don’t think the devs of PAYDAY would be too happy about it.) and detains Amazi-Girl without killing her (Mistake #2: Wolf does this to people, especially people like Amazi-Girl:
SUMMARY: Wolf uses a drill to kill a cop, while laughing.) While the loss of a fight in his case may mean she’ll stop in his mind, I doubt Amazi-Girl will just stop right there.
While both may have mental problems, they have very different problems, Wolf being completely fine until his family became homeless, and Amber’s case being her childhood.
I dunno what this Wolf (or the rest of the PAYDAY gang) is doing here, but I think Wolf might be some not-thought-out result of a broken Amber who went too far.
That’s the thing. Sal knows when to walk away, and listens to people. Amazigirl/Amber has no common sense filter, and violently (verbally or physically) reacts to people who try to talk her down.
Yeah, that’s where I’m at, too.
Amber has to want to reach equilibrium with AG, and/or to develop her non-AG coping skills, or something along those lines. At the moment, she’s clutching to AG for dear life and is unlikely to tolerate any threats to her system.
…on the other hand, this is going to be a really useful conversation for Danny, to move him towards a more active, spine-having role, whatever that will look like. We’ll see how he manages with a situation that’s way over his head, if-and-when he’s pretty sure he ought to do something about it.
So how is that Sal can address Danny as White Bread, and it is not causing any bells and whistles to go off. It is a derogatory term.
Guess he just is so happy someone notes a guy like him has a girl like AG?
I think she has the right idea, in that a boy friend could maybe stop her, but that boyfriend ain’t Danny. He cares about her but, he is in over his head.
Huh. I was going to make a milquetoast comment, but then Wikipedia showed me that it was, in fact, a misspelling of “milk toast,” an actual type of food. I learned something today. Thanks.
To be fair she’s calling him “Wonder bread” which is is a brand name. It’s still a boring plain white bread though, but without any racial connotations.
Any one else ever noticed how similar Danny and Sal are?
They both have asshole parents who prefer a sibling over them. The only difference is that Sal’s issues have racism involved, and that while Danny pushed in and became meek, Sal pushed out and became desperate for attention.
While no other can completely replicate the mighty Faz, as you can see on this chart Danny is currently at about 80%. Genuine Faz is still 20% greater!
He’s probably one of the few people who could. I mean, the comments section REALLY bashes Danny, and I don’t think it’s 100% warranted, but despite his flaws – and hell, he’s far from the only character with flaws, flaws make a character GOOD – his heart is in the right place, and he can get Amber, at least, to listen. It might take a lot of work, but if he can convince Amber that she is worth as much as Amazigirl, it would do wonders for her.
That, or if we go the more dramatic group, if he pushes Amber to see sense she might lash out, hurt him, and finally realise how bad Amazigirl is for her and everybody around her. At least, Amazigirl in her current state.
what?! pssh Sal, that’s ridiculous… I mean, being a superhero that isn’t super is good and cool right? right? everybody else in the comic seems to think so.
Heh. You remember when Malaya described everyone else in Sal’s life as being in a “oh, you’re so cooool” cult for Sal? Sal’s encountering someone else with that sort of deal going on, and she doesn’t like it one little bit.
Despite having one, she doesn’t like it for herself, either. The person who probably best meets that description in regards to Sal is Joyce, and she’s not only uncomfortable with Joyce’s adulation, she also encourages Joyce to find her own identity rather than imitate Sal.
The thing that’s important to remember is that Sal and Danny have had completely different experiences and interactions with Amazi-Girl. Danny was rescued by her and has only seen her being a “hero”. Sal, however, has only encountered the version of Amazi-Girl tainted by Amber’s own personal hatred towards Sal, and was actively antagonized by AG for no real reason. I think it’ll be good for Danny to hear a practical view of Amazi-Girl that’s not all sunshine and unicorn farts, because that’s not what she is, let’s be real.
I don’t think Sal wants Danny to stop her because she feels victimised. I think she wants Danny to stop her because she can recognize how ungodly unhealthy Amazigirl’s behaviour and thinking is.
No, yeah, I completely agree. I just meant that Danny seems to think that AG is perfect, but Sal can see that she’s not. And yeah, Amber’s behavior is completely out of control, and this needs to be corralled before she really hurts someone.
But it’s also not that Danny’s blinded and Sal’s seen the truth. Sal’s seen one side and thinks that’s all there is. She has just as distorted a view. Maybe even more so, if Danny’s starting to see the flaws.
Yeah, this. Sal is right that Amazi-Girl needs to stop, because all she’s seen of Amazi-Girl is her being uncontrollably violent.
Though I wonder if Sal would warm up to her if she found at that she has protected people from theft and assault before, since Sal herself thinks cops are useless and that you need to take matters into your own hands sometimes.
There is absolutely nothing fucking racist about Amazi-Girl/Amber. We have never once seen her be racist.
If you’re going to make up bullshit like this, then there’s no point in talking to you.
Hell, this is quite close to doing what I told people is wrong to do to Danny. Because you hate Amber, you’re making up shit about her. It’s the same shit that pissed me off about the Becky-haters.
Yeah, stabbing a black girl in custody and walking away scot-free is such a non-racist action. Getting smug about a criminal record that makes a black woman’s life a living hell when it wouldn’t touch a white girl nearly as badly (And by all rights, SHE should have a criminal record too) is totes non-racist.
She’s ignorant about what her race affords her and acts based on that ignorance. It’s racist to do this. I’m not saying she’s a trump supporter (That’s more like super-racist, or fascist-racist, or white-supremacist), but she’s absolutely held up racist structures, and used them to disparage Sal.
Her asshole dad is the one who riles her up and gets it in her head that she’s useless if she didn’t “defend” Ethan and if she has trauma responses and who piles too much on an already scared and hurting girl. Amazi-girl has since blamed Sal for the incident, to the point where she has full-on flashbacks and panic attacks when they meet, but has more or less let her dad off the hook for his role in fucking her up.
And yeah, it’s a bit racist to dump all the blame of a life-time of abusive dad shit on a teenage black girl who made a mistake, because the idea of truly blaming her father for the depths of what he did to her is beyond her at the moment.
Which, worth noting two things. One, Amazi-girl intended to pick a fight with Sal. She thought her identity was being released the very next day and she’d no longer be able to be a vigilante and so purposely stalked Sal way off campus to a Wal-mart parking lot in order to fight her over the “using her as a symbol of all her father ever dumped on her” thing.
Two, the underaged drinking is the excuse and she admits that, noting that it makes things easier that Sal is technically breaking a law (a law that almost everyone in college breaks at some point or another), because it gives her the excuse to confront her.
Which, “white” (yes, I know he’s white hispanic, but let’s be honest, the culture he identified with and the culture that supported him from crime-scene to trial were white as fuck) person stalking a black kid long distances, looking for any excuse or sign of potential law-breaking to justify taking violent action against them? I just described George Zimmerman.
Oh, and Sal actually checked in with her, asking her directly if she was just some tightwad or was actually targeting people like her directly as an excuse for harassment and Amazi-girl straight up says it’s the latter. Like, the point of it was more that Amazi-girl was looking for any means of picking a fight with Sal, but it at least looks racist as all hell to be admitting to preferential enforcement of laws to harass a young black woman: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/curbstompings/
Which gets worse when you note that her response to Billie underage drinking, the people at the party underage drinking, her boyfriend underage drinking was to get a little sanctimonious at Danny and nothing else. No picking fights, no visiting them in the middle of the night to put the fear of Amazi-girl in them, no harassment. And that, well, does make it racist as fuck, because even if it was ostensibly for a different reason, she still selectively enforced a personal code to justify harassing a black woman but not any of her white or white-passing friends: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/expulsion/
Like, the whole desperate to pick a fight thing to justify hurting Sal excessively (and let’s not kid ourselves, Amber has made Sal to be the symbol of all the hurt and fear she has ever felt thanks to Blaine, if she were to actually have a knockdown mono-a-mono fight and if Amber got the upper hand, there’s a very good chance she’d go full Amber-on-Blaine on her) is fucked up.
And that type of harassment happens a lot in their interactions.
Especially since the harassment and the desire for a physical encounter is entirely to treat her mental illness and because she thinks if she beats this symbol, she will stop feeling scared, because she will have defeated the “demon” in her head that she’s made Sal out to be: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/fightme/
Which, demonizing a black girl, viewing her only as a symbol for “criminality” instead of a real person and demanding said real person be dehumanized to maybe almost sorta not really be a mental health tool is really messed up and definitely is at least well-lubed by societal racism.
Backing away so furiously that she slams into a tree reinjuring herself because she’s so scared of the black woman standing over her? Yeah, that looks racist as all hell even if it’s more panic attack fueled and Sal would be more than justified in assuming racism given their other encounters not to mention what happens next.
Sal checking on her medically, informing her that she helped save her life, doing her a total solid? Amazi-girl throws it back and picks a fight because the idea of her owing Sal some gratitude ruins her mental image of Sal as criminal cypher. And that’s where she starts really showing the racist side of things as a means of trying to justify a world view she has already decided on.
I mean, Amazi-girl hears Sal’s words there, because she specifically uses one of them in the most callously casually racist way she can, emphasizing Sal’s status as “criminal” and literally only seeing that over everything else she has done, including for Amazi-girl in the very recent past, which she must of heard, because that line confirms she was listening.
Not to mention that focus on a record ignores:
A) Amber’s white privilege aiding her from getting a record for stabbing and permanently injuring Sal.
B) Sal’s note that Amazi-girl is also breaking the law with this costumed vigilante shit.
C) Sal noting the reality of racism and how it impacts her, which Amber dismisses with a “you’re just a criminal”, which so thoroughly echoes the white response to Black Lives Matter that it’s uncomfortable.
D) And then doubling down on that unfortunate connotation by seeing it as a good thing that Sal faces an increased likelihood of being gunned down by cops because of her skin color and her history. Like, I dunno, if Amazi-girl realized that, seeing as how she’s just in “must antagonize Sal because she’s my Joker and not an 18 year old girl trying to go to school” mode there. But damn is that callous and fucked up.
Sal notes a lot of good points, shows compassion and relates to her own experiences surrounding wells of anger, and notes once again her role in literally saving Amazi-girl’s life.
And Amber throws that back at her because she needs her mythology of Sal as the Joker more than she cares to see Sal as a person. And so that means literally dismissing the positive she has done to justify the worldview she has of Sal as someone who has done “wrong”. And that is a cornerstone of racist power-structures.
Treating black people as a class as this mythology of criminality and discounting any real accomplishments or heroic actions done by a black person, especially if it is in aid of a white person in favor of an inaccurate mythology of black people just posing existential threats to white people.
Her mental illness feeds into it and I doubt any of this is intentional, but Amazi-girl feeds into racist oppression whether she likes it or not and Sal would be very justified in seeing her as racist, because there’s definitely an undertone of race that adds brutal context to her actions.
The problem is that there’s a difference between looking racist and actually being racist. I was bullied by a black kid in elementary school. If I saw him walking down the street (and somehow magically recognized him after over a decade), you can damn well bet I’d cross the street to avoid him.
That would look pretty racist, but since “people who bullied me in elementary school” wasn’t a race the last time I checked, it’s not actually racist: it just looks terrible in the context where racism exists.
If you actually go to the extent of calling Amazi-Girl/Amber racist, then any time a person of one race has a conflict with a person of another race, that must be racism.
Sometimes people just hate each other because they hate each other. Not all hate is racism.
Yeah, basically what Drakey said there. I can see how Sal might think so and I can see how Amber’s white privilege likely helped her after the robbery & stabbing, though we have no real idea how the legal end of that played out.
But privilege isn’t racism. That’s the whole point of talking about privilege.
Amber definitely has a problem with Sal and has built her up in her head as a monster, but that’s a personal problem with Sal, with as far as we know nothing to do with her race. It’s all about that initial encounter with Sal and what it’s come to mean for Amber. That’s sure as hell not right and not at all fair to Sal and it’s something Amber’s going to have to deal with before she can start to get her head straight, but it’s not about race.
The Zimmerman analogy doesn’t work because he assumed Martin was a criminal because he was black and stalked him with no other evidence than that. Amber’s not assuming Sal’s a criminal because she’s black, but because she was traumatized by Sal during the actual robbery.
True, but it’s extremely reasonable for Sal to come to the conclusion that Amazi-girl is racist as fuck and while a lot can be chalked up to coincidence, there are definitely moments she plugs into a toxic general culture in ways that she probably doesn’t intend but nonetheless perpetuates.
So it’s not about her being Klansman burning the cross levels of racism, but rather that she’s not really being aware if cultural racist messages have informed why Sal has become an acceptable target to dehumanize and dump responsibility for all her baggage on.
No, there isn’t a bloody difference between looking racist and being racist. You reinforce racism, you /are/ racist. She doesn’t /mean/ to be, but who the fuck here cares? (White people, mostly). There’s a difference between doing racist shit because you’re racist in your heart of hearts, and doing racist shit because , and sometimes isn’t horrible, but A: I dn’t care about Amber’s heart of hearts, and B: /is shit in Amber’s case/. Seriously, “This person traumatized me so they’re my nemesis forever, even though they have suffered immensely for it already, both legally and at my own hands” is NOT a good reason to do things.
Whoa. Where did the “racist” come from? I could see Sal thinking that, though it hasn’t been more than hinted at. There’s certainly no evidence that it’s true.
Yeah we are.
Amber certainly benefits from white privilege. That quite possibly, even probably, affected the legal consequences for the stabbing, though we don’t know exactly what happened afterwards.
If she gloated about the record it was because Sal got that record traumatizing her. She’s certainly prejudiced against Sal.
And sure, she’s ignoring the effect that record’s had on Sal’s life afterward, but that’s because of her personal problems with Sal. Nothing to do with race
It basically became about race when the line was “White girl in the cape, punches people”. Like there’s a slew of them, and it had to be narrowed down.
I don’t know if this has been commented on in a previous comic, but it seems you can tell someone’s Lawful-Chaotic Alignment by their opinion of Amazi-Girl.
Heh. I tend to identify as Chaotic Good (and when I have to choose between them, Good wins). I think that Amber/AG is a coping system that makes Amber unhappy, and she needs help. Do those match?
That would make you Neutral Good. First, if Good wins over Chaotic or Lawful, that automatically swings you towards Neutral. Second, your focus is on the damage it does to her psyche, not the damage it does to Bad Guys or Bystanders. You care about what’s healthy for her – this, here, splitting her mind up, avoiding clear ptsd & ctsd, is NOT healthy. That means you are Neutral, because you are more concerned with that than her freedoms or the damage she causes to others.
Presumably Leorale has opinions about law and chaos about topics other than Amazi Girl.
Uh, as a side note I’m not really sure what alignment I would give DOA characters with strong opinions of Amazi Girl other than Sal being Chaotic and Dorothy being Lawful. And looking at everything in a vacuum I’d assume that Lawful people would be more disapproving because the law doesn’t look favorably upon vigilantes. (Of course looking at it in a vacuum would be silly as you would be ignoring essential parts of Dorothy and Sal’s characters that explain why they hold the opinions of Amazi Girl that they do)
I wouldn’t be able to put Amazi-Girl in the chaotic category for one reason: she told Danny that she feels she has to enforce the law. (in regards to drinking.)
Sure, she’s violating the law herself as Amazi-girl, but she does hold everyone else up to the law.
There’s a reason that D&D’s alignment system is often said to be too simplistic.
I mean, blatant hypocrisy aside, that struck me as a bullshit rationalization to get physically violent about underage drinking to start with. She can’t tell the truth – it matters because Sal did it.
What? She has no idea Sal was even at the party. The party was specifically set up where she and Sal didn’t have to meet, as otherwise there would have been this sort of freakout back then.
I even remember thinking how convenient it was at the time.
No, you’re starting with the wrong point. She’s mad about underage drinking at the party /because prior to the party, she saw Sal drinking before the age of 21/. She needed to pretend that was a horrible thing to do to get her Righteous Anger on and try beating Sal, and can’t just drop it now.
No, it doesn’t. Chaotic Good is by definition more Good than Chaotic. It means you value being good above order, and will use chaotic means to accomplish Good.
Valuing Chaos above being Good is what puts you in Chaotic Neutral category.
My understanding was that alignments without a “neutral” component don’t automatically prioritize either the moral or the ethical axis. Two CG people could disagree vehemently on some political issue that involved an intractable conflict between personal freedom and the safety of innocents. Prioritizing the former would mean drifting toward CN and the latter would mean drifting toward NG, but neither side of the argument is un-CG if they fundamentally agree that both aspects are important.
It’s incomplete, but it’s not bullshit. It is in fact a huge argument that happens all the time. I know plenty of people who think that following the law == good, and other people who think this makes those people actually evil.
The battle between Chaotic Good people and Lawful Good people is extremely common in the real world. D&D just is too simplified–people don’t fit into nice alignment boxes like that.
The concept of absolute order or absolute chaos isn’t really something people can ‘get’ to start with. Human opinions about human iterations are generally more about the iteration.
Sal, are you suggesting that putting on a superhero costume and running around looking for people to punch in the face might be _bad_ and something to stop? Surely not.
Honestly, I’m pretty sure Willis has been hinting that the longer she keeps up the double life, the more pronounced she’s splitting her personality.
Which has been “subtly” affecting her life.
This may be the most adorable Danny AND the most adorable Sal’s yet. I love how Sal is still acting like she missed a few pages of plot and is aware of how weird it sounds.
That’s a good question and I don’t know if Sal is going to be happy with the answer. You see, to Danny, what Amber is doing is a good thing. He’d be happier if she wasn’t trying to compartmentalise her psyche but, overall, he thinks that she’s more a positive influence of events in Bloomington than a negative one.
Honestly both Sal and Dorothy are probably the most ‘mature’ major characters in the comic (Marcie would beat Sal and rival Dorothy- hell I think she probably beats her too- but she’s fairly minor as a character) so even were it not for the past they share/AG’s direct antagonism of her…. it just fits that she sees AG as not that great despite the rest of campus seemingly worshiping her.
Dorothy is too enamored with the whole idea of Amazi Girl herself (will there potentially be a wake up call in the future? Will Dorothy have to come clean when AG goes too far?). Sal is probably all too aware that white people on vigilante power trips would need to be stopped before its too late- just the internet would inform her of that- and hell given the whole parking lot incident and then the whole Becky thing- it practically is only a matter of time to her unless something gives. In the real world either AG would eventually die on the line or she will kill someone else if it doesn’t stop. They are never really like the comic books even if they like to think they are.
But Sal doesn’t believe in the police either for understandable reasons so, despite her not giving an outward ringing endorsement for Dorothy’s ‘speech’ way back about community picking up the pieces when wider society fails- well to her all you’re left with is the people who care about you. For Sal that was never her parents. Sal has Marcie for that for those times she’s about to do something which would be ill-advised. Billie even offers some support for her feelings against her parents and her brother is coming around and trying. It fits she’d think Amazi Girl’s boyfriend should do something similar.
Even though its doubtful Danny would have the ability to do so. But then Sal doesn’t really know their current dynamic and probably only has a bare hint of Danny’s self esteem issues from that one math tutoring session, which wasn’t even enough for readers to catch onto until later relationships unfolded- and she was distracted by Mario back then anyway.
And even without the self esteem issues just one person probably can’t do this. Sal had time as well as dependable Marcie. AG is running out of time before something even worse happens. She needs to hang up the cape for good but she won’t do that or be convinced to do so in anyway easily.
Danny can’t stop AG. Not alone. Ethan needs to not only be giving background support but standing next to him. Dorothy might even be there too in the future. They are the three who know who she is, though in a lot of ways Sal really has her pegged. She may be the catalyst for what needs to be done.
Sal is the most aware of racism basically in this comic (for personal reasons) and everyone else on campus is basically worshipping the ground AG walks on. Only Sal seems to really know its a shit idea (though Ethan isn’t thrilled and Danny is starting to see cracks) and I feel a part of that reason is not just because of her own experiences of Amazi Girl- or heck even how she thinks she’s using it as an unhealthy emotional outlet like she did once- but because white people who decide to play vigilante are pretty much /always/ a bad idea. Especially for people like her. Just look at history. Just look at today. It’s probably another layer to the shit sundae she’s thinking on even if its not the only one she has on AG in my view.
It doesn’t help that through not knowing about their past connections Amazi Girl probably comes across as subconciously racist like it or not. She has no clue on her past. And honestly AmaziGirl says shit to Sal in such a way which definitely doesn’t help.
Also being white- like it or not- also means Amazi Girl has probably meant more leeway has been afforded by the general public as well (lets face it she would have probably been caught otherwise by now, or we’d have more a show of people trying to track her down and ‘put her in her place’). Even for someone /without/ Ambers self esteem issues- where she gets almost all of the praise she craves through violence, after having had a childhood where she was continually put down- it would turn /many/ a persons head for the worse. And the last thing AG needs is encouragement to push it further. She already almost killed herself. She will put people in danger and if it is some black kid with a record like Sal, people will bend over backwards to blame the victim or try to absolve AmaziGirl.
Not really. White privilege exists, and because Amazi-Girl is white, people are more willing to accept her than if she was black.
Like, I can walk down the street, but because I’m a dude I’m probably not going to be cat called, and because I’m white I’m probably not going to have folks call 911 on me for Suspicious Walking.
Acknowledging the fact that someone will be treated differently for their race isn’t necessarily racism. Just pointing out that people are more suspicious of the actions of black people than white people isn’t racist. (Unless you’re going to argue that black people who point out how unfairly they’ve been treated are the real racists. In which case I’m just going to merge into some nearby bushes and avoid the rest of that conversation)
I’m not making assumptions. I know that white privilege exists, and I know that I benefit from it. It doesn’t make me a bad person, it doesn’t somehow make me undeserving of the life I live, but it’s still real and I can seek to counteract its worst effects.
I know we all want to live in a world where everyone is judged solely by their actions, but that isn’t the case right now. I mean it’d suck if someone walked up to me and called me a cracker ass honkey, but like, that doesn’t somehow end up equivalent to the systemic oppression felt by people who don’t benefit from the privilege I receive from being a white man. Minute instances of prejudice against white people just aren’t as big a deal as addressing the real issues plaguing our society.
You’re very close to the point where any recognition of racism
is itself racism.
To go back a few generations for obvious examples: you might be able to point at a specific lynching as racist, but assuming blacks were more likely to be lynched would be racist?
Racism may be subtler today, but that doesn’t change the basic argument.
What everyone else says. Recognizing unequal treatment because of race is not racism, because the fantasy that everyone is equal when they’re not is a cornerstone of racist power structures (there’s a reason segregation was sold as “separate but equal” after all). And honestly, you probably already know that.
But back on topic to Heather’s point, yes, there’s so much there between how white people view the idea of a “vigilante hero” versus black people. Like, for a lot of white people, vigilantes conjure images of superheroes in fictional stories, people who stop the bad guys and make it safe to walk the streets. So when one appears on their campus, wearing tights and helping stop annoying petty crimes and making it safer to walk around on campus, that’s like a bit of comic magic come to life.
But to black people? Vigilantes have always meant badness. The KKK were vigilantes dispensing mob “justice”, as were the various lynching communities. Vigilante to them means George Zimmerman and Dylan Roof and various people who stalk them on the streets or in stores and endlessly harass them, because “folks like you ain’t ever up to no good”. Vigilante is an open threat.
And since Sal’s experiences in comic have been of what has looked like a racist white girl who harassed her and her friends for no reason and keeps trying to pick a fight with her personally, she has no reason to view Amazi-girl any differently.
And I’d love to see that explored more and more in-depth because that disconnect also leads to deconstructing problems in superhero mythology in general (including the idea of stopping random “street thugs” who are almost always evil and meaning people physical harm (often in the form of sexual assault, because white male writers love them an opening hook of hero rescues woman from sexual assault)) that are kinda messed up or would be in real-life.
Racism is more complicated than that. Racism is a social institution which in North America privileges white people over people of color, based on prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination. In action, it is a complex interaction of racially bigoted beliefs, social structures, social institutions, and individual actions.
You cannot be racist against white people in North America, because we’re the ones with the power, and we’re the ones who set up the social institutions in our favor. Put bluntly: Sal does not have the weight of society behind her when she calls Danny “Wonderbread.” Walky’s parents do have the weight of society behind them when they treat Sal as a troublemaker and demand she go to great lengths, time and expense to change the texture of her hair before she will be seen as pretty.
Lastly, it’s not at all racist to acknowledge that racism exists. In fact, a refusal to acknowledge that racism exists enables racism and is part of what gives racism such a strong foothold in our society (see also the term “colorblind racism” which is the mistaken belief that pretending to “not see color” magically solves centuries of institutional oppression and that people pointing out institutional oppression are the real racists. The problem with this ideology is that you can’t do anything to solve a problem if you refuse to acknowledge the problem exists or to talk about it, so by insisting on a colorblind approach to things, you’re actually perpetuating the status quo of a racist society).
You can be prejudiced against white people. When you are prejudiced against white people, you do not have the same weight of society backing you up as someone prejudiced against black people does.
We can quibble over whether that distinction changes the definition or not, but it remains a very important distinction.
When PoC can orchestrate an overarching societal structure such that a white person driving a nice car is seen as a suspected car thief until proven otherwise, when a white-seeming name on a resume worse than halves your chances at a call-back, and when a white person can’t walk with a PoC without being harassed by cops about whether or not they’re “bothering” the PoC? Then maybe I’ll see it your way, Guairdean Beatha.
Until then, nope. There is a big freaking difference between the impact an individual act of racial discrimination has on an average white person, and how society sees said act of discrimination, compared with how PoC are treated. That’s racism.
I’m not saying white people can’t be victims of racial discrimination. I am saying society isn’t set up to knock us down and kick us a few times while we’re down there, and then sabotage our every attempt to get back up, all the while making excuses about how we’re down and bleeding on the ground because we just don’t want to stand up hard enough. For PoC (and, in my country, Native and black people especially), it is.
Less than 20 years ago, in Canada, there was an organized cultural genocide under way against Native folks (that is when the last of the residential schools closed, which were explicitly designed to try to destroy Native culture, religion and language). Today, go on any news story about said cultural genocide, and you will find people arguing that Native people deserved it because racist stereotypes. Open up a high school history textbook older than about five years old, and if it’s mentioned at all, it will be in a positive light about how the virtuous and godly settlers were only trying to civilize the primitive and savage first nations people. Y’know, we only stole their land, ruined their environment, destroyed their way of life, beat their children for trying to keep their language and culture alive, broke up families, and sent the kids to school where they would be denied food and experimented on, and where conditions were so dire that school officials had to keep winter jackets locked up lest kids try to escape in the night… and some of them tried to escape anyway because death by hypothermia was less unbearable than staying in the school. But it was for their own good, really. They were the uncivilized ones. */sarcasm*
Here’s what Danny should say: “I don’t know how. I’ve tried reaching out to her, but it hasn’t really worked. I’m really worried about her.”
Unfortunately, here’s what Danny is more likely to say: “Why would I try to stop her? I think she’s doing a good job of her vigilante activities.”
This is very possible. Like Danny seems to think the only issue /is/ Ambers own issues right now. But Amber could be the picture of ‘put together’ with perfect parents who loved her perfectly- but it would still be a bad idea for her to be a vigilante anyway.
I guess this is how Danny grows up. Comic book heroes shall be ruined forever.
While I am pretty much totally on Sal’s side in this, I do think it’s worth pointing out that Sal gets into fights with about as much justification as Amber does. She straight up slammed Malaya against a wall for not kowtowing to her insults and because Malaya was taking up her time with Marcie, and when she was drunk with Jason she repeatedly told him to let her find someone, anyone, to fight.
So like, I do think Sal is right, at the very least her perspective on Amazi-Girl as someone being a violent, uncontrollable loon is perfectly valid given their history, and even with the one fight Sal’s actually gotten into, Amazi-Girl still has anonymity.
Yes, but nobody except some of the commentariat was on her side for that. The next thing that happened in comic was her best friend in the entire world physically intervening and telling her to knock it the fuck off. Amber receives adulation.
Sal is not the driven snow, but vigilante bullshit is still bullshit.
Of course (actually that’s why I added that second post, because I thought I came off as “Sal got into a fight once that means Amber’s legit). There’s a huge difference between getting into a fight that was immediately stopped and where Sal took the brunt of the damage, and what Amber does.
TLDR is that I don’t think this is Sal being sanctimonious because she also gets into dumb fights for dumb reasons and it’s just her voicing how she feels the same way she did when she told Joyce that cops and therapists are dumb and I disagreed because I think Joyce would really benefit from seeing a therapist. She’s making her own judgement because of her own experiences with Amber being a violent nut and not like making the judgement that we the readers are meant to unilaterally side with since we know more about Amber’s history and motivations for her actions than Sal does, but Sal doesn’t really need to care about that because an angsty backstory doesn’t give you an excuse to punch people.
I need to lie down. Or puke my guts out. Either will do.
Yeah, also want to echo that yeah, Sal and Amber are very similar. And Sal has recognized that, especially in how both respond to anger. And in that way, Sal is Amber plus some wavery self-control. She’s been through the ringer of the legal system and she’s recognized that her first instincts in things aren’t always the best and so tries to remain unflappable to avoid going “punch-happy against Malaya” in her interactions as often as she can.
And that makes it interesting because she’s most often just seeing her own past flaws in the Amazi-girl alter, but Amber is too focused on the idea of Sal as symbol of criminality to accept her offer of mentorship and support towards healthier ways of dealing with the well of anger.
I mean, I think that once you’re in a speeding car chase with somebody and having to save other people from them, you have the right to an initial opinion.
People really need to recall that nobody in this situation, including Amber, actually has a full picture of what’s going on and what Amazi-Girl’s impact is on other people. Hell, given the comedy-drama boinging back and forth with said character, I don’t think we’ve seen the full extent of this yet either.
As much as I love this comic, the absolute lack of empathy, stupidity, and inability to imagine characters complexly (despite the writer’s hammering home of the complexity of these characters) is absolutely astounding.
People seem to lack the capacity to notice that pretty much every single character in this comic (except villains such as toedad, mary, blane, or arguably Joyce’s mom) have acted in an absolutely reasonable manner given their knowledge and circumstances. Like, at every point in this comic. No one is blameless, and yet no one has done anything wrong. That’s the dang point. But everyone wants to use some character or the other as a scapegoat for the problems present, and that ignores the whole point of the story. No one is really doing anything wrong. No one is acting unreasonably in the circumstances presented to them.
Both of the reactions “yeah, why hasn’t Danny done anything?” and “who is Sal to say that” are so absurdly oblivious to the entire theme of the story that it astounds me.
What exactly was Danny supposed to do? Because short of outing her as Amazi-Girl to someone with the authority to force her to get help and possibly getting her imprisoned for, you know, violent vigilantism he’s got no real options here. He’s not her guardian and he’s been dating her for all of a month so it’s ridiculously unreasonable to expect him to be able to “stop her.”
It’s not reasonable for us to think that Danny should have stopped her. It’s perfectly reasonable for Sal, with her perspective and partial understanding of the situation to wonder why he hasn’t.
Yeah, I don’t think this sequence is meant to be “Sal is objectively right” in the same way that she wasn’t when she told Joyce not to go to the cops or to not see a therapist, and unlike how she was objectively right telling Walky about how their parents had treated her. She’s right to think the way she is now, but she doesn’t have the full picture.
Very much both of these and the OP as well. Both have their respective pieces.
To Danny, Amazi-girl is the superhero fantasy come to life from the pages of his book. He sees the people excited to see her when she appears and sees the people coming to thank her for doing wonderful heroic things. And he’s just heard about how she risked life and limb to save a kidnapped girl recently. Combine that with NRE, and you have one hell of a “Amazi-girl is wonderful and can do no wrong” effect, so of course he’s going to take pride in someone that awesome being with frumpy old him (not his real character, but rather what he’s been taught to view himself as, i.e. to view himself as an accessory for someone “better” than him).
Sal, on the other hand, has only seen Amazi-girl at her worst. Reckless, picking fights to have an excuse for violence, enforcing the most petty of laws, harassing the black person, looking racist as all hell by freaking out or getting pissy when she sees her and focusing on her “criminal past” without seeing the grown woman she is. And who in their last encounter, needed to be rescued from dying in a truck and who then antagonized her immediately afterwards.
And I’m going to guess that things will be a little more acrimonious between them because of this clash of perspectives and the fact that Danny’s going to be very resistant to the idea that Amazi-girl is something that needs to be “stopped” rather than supported.
It is always unreasonable to expect a teenager to be able to deal with someone else’s violent mental illness. Sal is fully aware that Amber is dangerously unstable and she still expects this kid with the self confidence of a moist towelette to be able to rein her in? That’s unreasonable.
From Sal’s POV, Danny just thinks Amazi-girls hero schtick is cool, also implying that he’s more or less encouraging her to do the horribly self-destructive, violent, and dangerous shit she does. As opposed to, you know, trying to help her or, yes, to talk her down when she’s going around threatening to beat the shit out of people for heinous crimes like loitering in a parking lot.
Like, even if she didn’t think that before, his reaction here would clinch it.
Pretty much, yeah. Have you already forgotten what happened when Danny merely threatened her compartmentalization between her Amber persona and her Amazi-Girl one? I find it incredibly unlikely she’d have responded one jot better to him trying to strip away her Amazi-Girl persona which is basically her only refuge from her own self-loathing and fear.
Uhm, What people are reacting to is called Dramatic Irony, where the audience knows things the characters don’t and we’re complaining about the them not knowing it.
It’s kind of a long used trope that goes back hundreds of years.
But you know, or you could just complain about the audience, yeah, that works.
And complaining about them not knowing it is, you know, a dumb thing to do. As you admit, it’s dramatic irony. It’s useful. It’s not something to complain about.
How *could* he stop her? How much control over your life do you typically give the people close to you, Sal? Amazi-Girl, like Sal, does what she wants.
Yea sorry to the people that think Amazin-Girl is a healthy way to cope with PTSD. It’s not. Amber needs professional help and a better way to deal with her anger than essentially assaulting people. Which is what she’s doing by the way. Yea maybe she’s stopping petty crime, but it’s illegal and she can get in serious trouble for it. Plus let’s not forget she doesn’t actually have super powers and tried climbing up and onto a speeding car. She has a death wish.
Sal just said, “you’re her boyfriend, why haven’t you told her what to do?” Seriously? Where does one even start to respond to a remark like that. I can’t even…
Well, there’s a level of both. I’d say it’s more like “You’re her boyfriend, why haven’t you stopped your alcoholic girlfriend from drinking” or “Why haven’t you stopped your girlfriend from being depressed.”
Good goals, at least from Sal’s perspective, without the sexist implications of “why haven’t you told her what to do”, but way beyond reasonable expectations.
I would agree with that. Danny is not a steward of his girlfriend’s mental condition and if he tried to “fix” Amber, that would be wildly unsuccessful and honestly quite uncool because that’s not how things like that work.
It’s an unreasonable request, but it may clue him in that not everyone is viewing his girlfriend being a real life superhero in the same light he is.
I don’t know why people are getting all het up about this, either. Right now, we’re still in okay territory. Sal is just asking. Her experience with Amazi-Girl is that she only tries to stir up shit. She doesn’t know about the vast majority of her actions, which do not actually involve punching people, or getting into angry fugues. She tells people to stop doing what they do, and if they attack her, then she responds.
The real issue is what happens here. Does Danny explain how, while it’s not good for her, Amazi-Girl is ultimately a force for good? How the distinct lack of police involvement on this campus shows that they need someone? I mean, they didn’t even have a police officer escort Blaine out–they had the mail clerk do it.
It is not a good thing if Amazi-Girl goes away. It is a good ting if Amazi-Girl gets a handle on her anger and PTSD. If she stops being an alter for Amber, and instead a way to hide her identity.
But, like it or not, Amazi-Girl has done a whole lot of good in this comic. You may not approve of her methods, but she does accomplish good things. And things would be worse for everyone if she did not exist.
That’s actually the dichotomy. What’s good for society isn’t necessarily good for Amber. Which is why I gave what I think is the only good resolution–one where she is still Amazi-Girl but stops being a problem for Amber.
I think I’ve commented on this before, but there’s no real indication there’s a lack of police on the campus. Just not an overwhelming one, with an officer present in each dorm at all times.
Blaine was led away by Asma instead of a cop because he was willing to go with her rather than have security called. The alternative was to wait and not have anyone official even ask him to leave until a cop showed up.
Basically, the reason there’s so much petty crime on the campus is to justify the existence of Amazi-Girl stories, the same way that when Batman shows up, suddenly everyone starts wearing vinyl catsuits and carrying freeze rays.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but whenever Amber’s fighting someone who isn’t an important or named character, it’s read as legit the same way we do when we read a comic that opens with Batman kicking a dude in the face. Batman’s the protagonist so we just assume he’s on the level, and that the person being kicked probably did something to deserve it, because otherwise we realize we’re reading a story where a grown man dressed as a furry violates due process and basic human dignities to sort out his daddy issues.
Well, the interesting thing about the crime that she targets is that there seems to be 3 groups:
1) Crimes of street harassment (which tend to be horribly unpoliced everywhere and also tend to be ubiquitous, especially around college campuses, because harassers like targeting young women and girls, and where Amazi-girl is unmistakably the heroine for stopping that shit)
2) Petty crimes (usually theft or defacement of property), which start getting a little murkier, because while they do help people usually (preventing a car from being broken into, a bike being stolen, recovering a stolen purse) and while this is somewhat reflected in reality (dumb teenagers doing petty crime on a slow boring night around campus? Definitely), it also borders on being disproportionate. There’s more than one comic where she’s deliberately trying to make the thief fear for their safety and it’s implied she has beat them up. Overall, one would probably say that she’s doing positive helpful actions, but the methods raise some red flags.
3) PTSD-fueled actions. These can be positive (Amber rescuing Becky from being kidnapped) with some high-risk moments (caltrops on a freeway!, nearly dying herself), but these can also be really negative (all of her interactions with Sal). And it’s in those that she resembles a petty authoritarian looking for a fight the most.
And the interesting thing is that Sal only has experience with the last one. She hasn’t been around for Amazi-girl the person who’s helped women with street harassment or Amazi-girl the thief-stopper. She’s only seen Amazi-girl the escalator, Amazi-girl the genuine threat.
And that leads to the interesting bit you mention. That we’re seeing what this sort of superhero identity would be in reality. What Batman really is when you strip away the supervillains and focus just on what Batman does day in and day out and the nebulous space that occupies.
Now, your analysis of the three types of sitations AG has been in are absolutely spot-on.
I am, however, questioning Sal’s knowledge level a bit. Not that I disagree that her own first-hand experiences are of the third kind, but I’m not so sure that Sal hasn’t read about AG in the college newspapers, obviously “off screen”. -If- so, then she probably knows what other people think about AG… But she’s one of the few people that’s also experienced the third side. And the list of people who’s experienced that side tend to be people that nobody is listening to much. Or in the case of Malaya, too self-absorbed to even consider the implications of AG’s actions that night they met.
And do not forget that behind her “rebel without a care” mask, Sal is genuinely smart; having quite often shown an insight into situations that few others have even started considering. Sure, she’s got her own “blind spots” (such as not realising that Marcia has a thing for Malaya), but she’s still one of the more perceptive characters in the DoA universe.
In fact, after reading today’s strip, I more than ever have a feeling that Sal either knows or suspects that Amber is AG; I just can’t get this nagging feeling that this is why she started talking to Danny about this in the first place.
So yeah, I think Sal is currently one of the persons that knows AG better than practically anyone; maybe even including Danny.
Yeah, I think you perfectly summed it up there. There are moments in the series where Amazi-Girl is meant to be unambiguously heroic, saving Danny from Beef and his friends as an example, moments where she’s on shakier moral ground, like how she tried and failed to pick a fight with those guys trying to tag a street sign so she stole it herself to clean it up, and moments where she’s allowing her history to push her into genuinely terrible actions, like attacking Sal.
Danny, Dorothy and Dina can cheer and appreciate Amazi-Girl, because they only see the good parts, while Sal is totally right to be wary of her because all she’s seen is the violent thug.
You say that as if pretty crime doesn’t happen a lot on college campuses. The type and amount of crime depicted in this comic isn’t different than how it is in real life.
Yeah, but we only have strips about it because we need there to be someone Amazi-Girl can punch with a guilt free conscious. If Amber stops being a vigilante then, on a meta level, crime on campus stops because there’s no reason to focus on it anymore.
Some dirty bike thief stole Danny’s bike in Roomies!, and there wasn’t any Amazi-Girl around then.
For that matter, DoA’s other named characters not infrequently commit crimes as part of their own plot lines. Amazi-Girl has tagged in, at least tangentially, on most of them, but not all. (e.g., Amazi-Girl knows nothing about Sarah punching Raidah in the face, and never got involved in Ruth’s stealing and vandalizing Billie’s cheerleader uniform, or stealing some other girl’s as a present.)
Yup. Is this leading to where i thought it’d lead long ago?
Sal wants to help someoen before they get hurt. she’ll find out she’s the cause.
lots of crap will go down with her trying to keep her from self destructing.
Leading to a sal motorcycle accident.
I really can’t see Sal blaming herself. I do hope that some kind of reconciliation will eventually happen between the two, though. Like… by the time I’m 50.
Yeah, Amazi-Girl isn’t Sal’s fault; she’s not Joe Chill. Sal was arrested, stabbed without any retribution, tried, sent to a boarding school*, and now she’s in college.
I think Sal is moral enough a person that she would feel guilt for doing something terrible to Ethan when she’s confronted about it, and I feel that would compel her to try and stop Amber, but she doesn’t need to feel obligated to. She served her punishment for committing her crime and she doesn’t need it held over her head anymore.
*Though how did that happen, anyway? Was Sal not given any official punishment for the robberies? Was being sent to a boarding school a part of that or just something the Walkertons decided on their own?
I think it was implied that she went to juvie and spent a lot of time with court-ordered therapists and that when she got out she was immediately sent to boarding school for a couple of years, but I might be mistaken on that.
She definitely spent time with therapists, but she also mentioned that she got to choose between juvie and boarding school, where she was sent for five years.
So since Sal didn’t go to juvie, I’m thinking the timeline is Arrest > Court mandated therapy for a few months > Boarding School. I’m woefully ignorant on the matter of juvenile crime, so I don’t know if this is something that Sal could avoid for performing a robbery and hostage taking with a deadly weapon, and it was just her parents who sent her, or if being sent to a boarding school was her legal punishment.
Juvenile justice (at least in the state in which I have some experience) strives to be restorative rather than punitive. You’re not necessarily going to be locked into a detention facility if you’re tried as a minor. You’re going to be talking with a social worker, checking in regularly and there’s going to be an assessment and hearing as to what the best disposition of a given case is. There are a number of ways that could go…probation. Ankle bracelet tracking. Mandatory therapy. Commitment to a group home. Commitment to a ‘school’ style placement. Obviously socio-economic background plays a role here…your parents are middle class, involved and have the money to ship you off to military school? Ditto for whether this is a first offense.
Boarding school might have been a placement…or it might have been a decision on her parents’ part. It’s really not clear.
She’s got a record. She’s had bad experiences with therapists. I don’t remember any actual mention of juvie.
I wonder if some kind of deal was struck that got Sal out of actual jail time and let Amber off the hook for stabbing her? Possibly including getting Sal out of area to boarding school.
It always seemed really weird to me that the boarding school was apparently full year. At the start it seemed like Walky hadn’t seen her in years.
That’s possible, considering her family is rich and probably has a lot of connections. I guess, I was just assuming juvie, because I don’t see how you don’t at least spend a little time there for a crime involving a deadly weapon, but I’ll definitely admit, I don’t know anything about juvie crime either.
In Canada, it strives to be restorative and rehabilitative rather than punitive. With the exception of violent crime, juvenile offenders pretty much never do time, and tend to get probation or community service, orders of therapy, etc, instead.
(In some cases, non-violent crime by a repeat offender may see time in juvie if the kid is seriously endangering people with their crime – like the case of a kid who had a habit of stealing cars and going on joyrides with them, and who had put a bunch of people in hospital when he inevitably crashed said cars who hit the news here a few years back, but the vast majority of the time, a young offender does not do time for anything short of a violent offence, and even violent offenses do not always get time automatically).
Additionally, and this is somewhere Canada differs from the US, young offenders’ names here are protected by a publication ban, and your record is wiped clean at 18 or when you finish your most recent sentence, whichever comes later. Automatically. Kids get a clean slate to start-over with once they hit adulthood. Full stop, no exceptions.
The idea being that if you, say, broke into a house and stole stuff at 12, or if you had a really bad temper at 16 and have a few assaults on your record, or even if you were part of a gang and got into organized crime shit for a few years, but you’ve genuinely turned your life around and are trying to make something good of it, your past should not be haunting your job prospects at 30. People grow and change a lot during the teen years, and the clean slate is based on the belief that it’s unfair to have someone who is trying to turn themself around be haunted by stuff they did before they were done puberty. There’s some debate here about it, and it can get heated. Some people I know believe strongly in the power of social disapproval to dissuade someone from bad behavior and think names should be published and records should follow people forever, while I as someone whose extended family tends toward checkered teenaged behavior records see it from the side of “a lot of people close to me would not be able to have their current successful, happy lives if what they did at 12 or 13 came up on a criminal record search, and until we as a society accept that rehabilitation is possible and that what someone did as a preteen has very little bearing on the person they are in their late 20s, it would be inhumane to insist teenaged records follow people around in adulthood.”
I should also note: Personally, I think that once you’re done your parole or what have you, that should be it and it should be gone from your record in a criminal record check. Because otherwise, we’re punishing people looong past when the law says they’ve paid in full for the crime. It is hard to get a job with a criminal record, and how the hell does it make sense, if we’re ostensibly trying to help people be rehabilitated and become successful, to gut their chances of finding work?
Buuutyeah. Canada tends toward leftist politics relative to the US, but we’re not that leftist, so most people tend to laugh in my face when I express that opinion.
Actually, I was just now, here in Ukraine, getting a criminal record paper for applying to a job, and the paper I got in the police said that I had no ‘pending’ criminal record. I don’t remember the exact wording, and I mean it was in Ukrainian anyway, but it very clearly implied that if I had served jail time in the past it wouldn’t be on that piece of paper any more than it was now, with me clean as a freshly washed window.
I don’t think everyone’s giving Sal enough credit. I think out of all the main characters- Sal is one of the least we know about. We know she got in some trouble, has problems with her parents, and Marcie has been with her through it all. We’ve yet to see her fight anyone and at most has given anyone a severe tongue lashing. Marcie is always by her side giving her the voice f reason to not be violent.
I bring this up because while we all know AG is a force for good- it is also an escape from the anger, fear, and the violence within her she can’t deal with as Amber. We only saw her lose it with her father. But if you remember the images in red she saw while beating her father were of Sal. Every time she sees sal she sees the red. Now I’m not going to say what that means but every time Sal is there she does she reach for the mask.
Sal can’t know the reason for Amber’s actions. But I do think she’s spot on when she says she knows the reason why AG exists. Now I’m speculating here but I think that reason for both of them is: being helpless. Amber was helpless in trying to protect her mom from her dad. And what was the birth of AG- helpless in trying to protect her best friend. I think Sal’s helplessness came more from dealing with her parents though I can’t get the exact situation around that.
Point is that the feeling she had then pushes her to prove that she’s not helpless. That she can do anything. And there is danger in putting other’s at risk from proving that- which is Sal’s main concern. Remember Sal threatened someone’s life to rob a store and who knows who else was caught in her streak of trouble. There’s a bigger risk to herself- which Sal’s experienced and see’s that end for AmaziGirl too.
Ever since seeing Sal and her Dad again it’s bringing those emotions back and she’s slowly been getting angrier. We saw her slip a nasty word to Danny and sure that’s minor to what she could do- it stands that it’s not something she can control seeing hr reaction after she said it. We know Amber is unstable and we don’t like to think she would or could do something to endanger someone’s life while trying to prove something- we don’t know. On top of that- it’s more likely Amber will hurt herself beyond repair and that’s the thing that will be inevitable if she doesn’t get help.
“We’ve yet to see her fight anyone and at most has given anyone a severe tongue lashing. Marcie is always by her side giving her the voice f reason to not be violent.”
I’d somewhat disagree with this. Since coming to DoA, she’s been involved in at least two (admittedly short and aborted) fights that I can remember.
First one was when she grabbed Ruth (for being Ruth) hard. Hard enough to make it a violent action (at least in my opinion). And Walky was the one to stop her from really giving it to Ruth when Ruth elbowed her. Still ends it with basically throwing Ruth away in a way that makes Ruth fall down. Still pretty violent.
And then there was the interaction with Malaya, Sal’s main blind spot in her otherwise very smart and perceptive brain. Admittedly it was Malaya who started using her hands, but the things Sal told her was… Well, I for one would call it “verbal violence”. She was being downright horrible. Doesn’t matter that Malaya’s quite a jerk herself; Sal stepped over some serious lines that night.
And I say this knowing that I have done similar things myself in the past. I know that certain people are my blind spots, that I would probably never be able to have a conversation with without insulting them over and over. And that of course, would frankly make me the bigger jerk in that particular situation. Good thing I do not have to interact with any of these people, especially offline.
I suppose you can look at those things that way.
But those interactions were at most slight altercations.
A fight- a real fight where blows are exchanged- a real fight that we’ve seen Amber get involved in [her dad did put up something of a fight but it looked as though she very much overwhelmed him]- that we haven’t.
Just so sad that the DoA world is full of idiotic adults. Are there no responsible adults around who could have helped with the Becky situation? It is strange that it escalated to the extent that it did without any of the adults around doing anything about it.
But yeah Danny, no matter how much in the right Amazi-girl was about her almost reckless actions, the fact of the matter is that she could have died. I hope you realize that at some point.
“Because despite all attempts I have yet to develop mind control powers. If you happen to punch yourself in the face, though, you can take that as a sign that I have finally managed it.”
Gotta admit, when I first read Sal’s lines in the last panel, my first thought was “Oh Shit, has Sal already recognized Amazigirl as Amber?”
She obviously doesn’t recognize Amber as the girl who’s best friend she held hostage, she only barely recognizes Ethan & doesn’t know where from. But if she recognizes Amazigirl as Amber, it would make for an interesting confrontation…
*Sal walks down the path towards her motorbike when Amazigirl jumps down from a tree*
*gravelly voice* “HALT, evil-doer…”
“Urgh, now what…”
*Voice* “We still haven’t finished our ‘talk’ about underage drinking…”
“Oh come on, your boyfriend was drinking at that party before I left, AND I helped you with your laundry in the hallway…”
*Voice* “Yes, I’ve spoken to him-wait what did you say?”
“Remember, in the hallway, you dropped your laundry & I picked it up for you?”
*Voice unsteady* “That wasn’t me-I mean I don’t know what you’re talking about…”
He’s her boyfriend, he’s not the boss of her. Someone up-thread said he could call the cops but what would he say?
“Officer, this woman saved me from an assault and then later saved me from a hostage-ish situation! Yes, I am admitting I withheld information on that man’s assault. Now arrest her!”
I guess we’ll find out soon what Sal thinks Danny should have done, but I can’t think of anything that would actually work.
She probably figures that Amazi-Girl is obviously a weird, violent wreck, and that everybody who would spend time with her would come to the same conclusion.
Sal’s interactions with Amazi-Girl have all been terrible. She’s right to be skeptical.
everybody who would spend time with her would come to the same conclusion.
That would make sense if Amazigirl had not had a positive interview published in the school paper. It wasn’t just an article; Amazigirl say down and talked with someone and they didn’t get the impression that she was a weird, violent wreck. So it doesn’t make sense for her to think that anyone who’s been around her to get that impression. She already knows that’s not true.
I’m just wondering if she’s assuming he’s seen her go off or if she thinks Amazigirl actually admits to picking fights or if she thinks that Amazigirl is like this even when she isn’t in costume or…what, I don’t know.
I am not saying she shouldn’t be skeptical. I just think, “Do you know she goes around harasing people and picking fights” would have been first.
Sal’s the only main character who’s seen Amazi-Girl at her most genuinely terrible. Otherwise she’s got Dina and Becky praising her for the car chase rescue, Dorothy swooning about how she’s an inspiration, Danny thinking she’s just the greatest, and the entire girls dorm talking about how she’s awesome.
Danny’s just the first person Sal’s actually talked to about Amazi-Girl. I’d say it’s almost a certainty that she brings up how she tried to beat the hell out of Sal and her friends for drinking in a parking lot, probably the car chase too.
Oh, she’ll probably bring up some of AG’s more problematic sides.
But RP’s first question was how could she know that -Danny- thinks she needs to be stopped (as of the moment of this strip). And the short answer is, he doesn’t. Maybe… In fact, probably, he should have known, but he doesn’t.
What Sal’s about to tell him may change this. Or maybe not. He’ll probably get defensive about AG and try to convince Sal how amazing she is.
Well, I’m not too sure about that last part. He’s definitely going to defend her, he did as much with Dorothy when she tried to pry some info out of him, but given how he’s recently learned that Amazi-Girl is not as cool and romantic as he thought, I imagine Sal telling Danny that she tried to beat her and her friends up and mentioning the car chase, how Amazi-Girl was reckless and would have died if it wasn’t for Sal, will be enough to at least start tipping him over.
Maybe because Sal knows that Amazigirl is a danger to herself and others? I mean, besides the fact that she keeps trying to beat up Sal and Sal has no idea why, she also almost got everybody killed in a car crash when she went to save Becky. Sure, it all worked out in the end, but that was mainly due to luck. Amazigirl could easily end up killing somebody someday, and Sal is worried about that.
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N-nerds, amirite?
Rite!
Lol. Don’t get involved, man. Nerds will eat you alive
Remembering your email…is tricky
I know right?
It seems like capitalization matters to the avatar assignment algorithm, too.
Yes it does. If I’m all lower case I have Mandy.
He plans to, but his super-villain costume hasn’t arrived yet.
His super-villain costume is pajama pants. Thats all.
So we see Danny’s bare chest? Gross!
If it makes you feel better, Ethan is the henchman, and his costume is a mask…just a mask. (Heavily implying that his costume is nudity and a mask.)
So if I understand you correctly Ethans costume would only cover a Top* Position, where as young Danny’s would be more of a cover for the *Bottom variety? Quite an interesting dynamic reversal for costuming of a Hero and his Side kick one might say.
P.S Thank you for providing me with the most epic of segways for which to post my first reply here.
Don’t comment while riding a Segway, you might crash!
BTW, the word’s “segue”, pronounced like the Segway.
Yeah, that’s rite, and you probably hate superheroes as well.
Don’t ruin it.
YES!
Cosplaying as the original supervillains in Watchmen, good choice
I think at least one of those was into kinky bondage, right?
Very good question :-/
Sal notices a lot more than she lets on.
Wonder if she will notice that he is carrying that girls laundry.
Then connecting the dots.
Do /you/ wanna be the one to tell the punchy girl who does back flips off buildings that she can’t do that anymore? Cuz I think her description is enough to allude to the fact that she’s too freaking crazy for that to work out in your favor.
especially sinc ehe’ll probably go do that as she’s still recovering from meeting Sal.
I’m not sure it is, entirely, either from the point of view of the comic or in the abstract.
Not really. I think I understand Sal, but how can she expect Danny to stop the white girl in the cap that goes around punching people?
If I’m not understanding Sal, and if she meant to say “No, I completely understand that you’d have no chance at all to stop the crazy white girl in the cap who goes around punching people if she decided you were her boyfriend,” then that makes a lot more sense.
But then, I’m pretty sure I do understand Sal. And Sal probably thinks that most people can accomplish things as easily as she probably thinks she can. Despite her juvenile delinquency, her failed relationship with her mother (and father?), and her several other glaring weaknesses she probably considers herself to be a strong, confident person who can do whatever she wants to do. She just doesn’t want to do them, neener neener.
I’m pretty sure, first off, that she means “how in hell” as in “why hasn’t this happened”.
And second, I mean, generally speaking people tend to listen more closely to their loved ones. The answer to her question is that Amber doesn’t have any loved ones who 1) know she’s Amazi-Girl (her mother, presumably) 2) don’t have way too complicated a relationship to tell her shit (Ethan) and 3) aren’t doormats (Danny). But Sal doesn’t know that.
“3) aren’t doormats (Danny). But Sal doesn’t know that.”
Um, i think I was saying exactly this.
Danny is a doormat and Sal does not know this because Sal think that all people are strong just as she thinks that she herself is strong. Despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Sal is asking him why he hasn’t got his GF to stop the Amazi-Girl thing. She’s banking on the idea that most people listen to their loved ones and would stop doing something so insanely dangerous if asked/begged by someone who loves them. That’s specifically why she asked to make sure he was actually dating her first.
This is a fair enough question to ask considering Amazi-Girl seems to be extremely reckless in Sal’s eyes – she almost died trying to save Becky and Sal herself had to save her.
And we ourselves already saw what happened when Amber told him the full story – he didn’t say ‘whoa, that was dangerous, you could have died!’ – he got all starry eyed like ‘you’re amazing’ without seeming to realise for even a moment that everything she did was reckless and dangerous and that if she wants to live, it’s probably a good idea to stop doing it.
When Amber told Danny what happened he wasn’t starry eyed; he was terrified for her life because she was talking about how she was two separate people and that she almost died.
^ This. Also, I think it’s only recently that he’s started to have a problem with her Amazi-Girl schtick. He was into it when they first met, and it’s only as he’s gotten to know how damaged Amber is that he’s realized it may not be healthy.
Sal doesn’t know that. She only knows that when she was talking to AG in the forest, right after saving her life, it seemed like no one else had ever said this shit to her before.
Also, even right here, Danny is acting like it’s just something super cool and not, yknow, horribly dangerous and self-destructive
Ooooh good questions sal. I mean he is a white knight to an extent you would expect him to want to save her at some point.
he’s only just now figuring out to what extent she needs saving (and also to what extent he’s ill-equipped to do said “saving”). up until recently he thought amazi-girl was just a fun hobby for amber, not the mess that it is.
the wonderbreadest knight of them all.
I have a feeling Danny’s been waiting to use that line for a long time.
Though I guess it’s kind of weird for him to go “yeah having a superhero girlfriend rocks” after the last chapter, where he learned that Amber was in a far worse place than he initially thought.
“white knight”?
An internet term, like ‘troll.’ It’s got a lot of different subtle uses, but the bottom line is that it’s a term with negative connotations that refers to someone rushing to the defense of strangers on the internet.
Troll isn’t in my experience, referencing someone rushing to the defense of ANYONE on the internet. Quite the contrary. Trolls usually do just the opposite, especially continuing to bring up a hot topic that they are very aware of IS a hot topic and seeing how much trouble they can stir up.
No I think the “troll” bit was brought up as a comparison to the term “white knight” – to provide context to it. As in “it is a piece of internet vocabulary, which also includes the term “troll”.” And then DS goes on to explain the definition of the term “white knight”. That’s how I understood it, at least.
Trolls and white knights are pretty much the opposite of each other; I was only comparing them as common internet terms – they often come up around each other, given that they describe folks inclined to flamewars. The description I gave was solely on white knights.
Ol’ timey internet wisdom: Back In Ye Day, we used “Trolling” interchangeably with “Trawling”. That is, “you’re trawling for replies”. By which we meant like the fishing technique where you drag a net as close to the bottom as you can. Then someone who couldn’t spell “trawl” spelled it “troll”, people thought ‘guy who hangs out under a bridge attacking passersby for no reason besides “they’re passersby” ‘ also fit the bill, and there we have it. White Knight is about five generations of internet slang younger than that.
Also, the Kaiser stole the number 20.
Trolling is also a fishing term; a bit before my time, so I’ll take your word on it starting as ‘trawling,’ but to quote the top result on Google, “Trolling is a method of fishing where one or more fishing lines, baited with lures or bait fish, are drawn through the water. This may be behind a moving boat, or by slowly winding the line in when fishing from a static position, or even sweeping the line from side-to-side, e.g. when fishing from a jetty.” Basically the same, but with lines instead of nets, which seems like a more appropriate metaphor to me, unless the troll in question is coding bots or something for mass saturation of bait.
Trolling is a technique where bait on hooks is dragged behind a slow-moving boat, trawling is similar except with nets which are sometimes dragged along the bottom of whatever body of water is being fished.
bravo, did we all just get trawled about trolling in this massive fansplainging thread?
It was quite a ride though
https://i.warosu.org/data/fa/img/0078/33/1393115948377.png
White knight has evolved to have connotations of someone who rushes in to defend others who may not need and/or want defending with zero concern about what the person they’re defending’s opinion is of the matter.
Think the dudes who are self-proclaimed “champions” of women’s rights and get pissed off and/or condescending to women who tell them we’d actually kind of prefer them to stop because the problem we’re talking about is how dudes dominate the spotlight and conversation in all issues, and while Mr. White Knight is giving a very good illustrative example of exactly the issue in question, this particular situation is one wherein women should be doing most of the talking. (Alternatively: That white person who rushes in to defend PoC from racism while condescendingly explaining to the PoC how racism works, or that abled person who demands that autistic people use person-first language with absolutely zero grasp of why that’s a loaded issue in the autistic community [long story] or I could go on).
Basically, think Roz. Roz is a classic white knight: She’s so consumed with thinking of herself as some Great Savior Of The Downtrodden And Oppressed that she’s incapable of examining her own internalized bigotries. It simply does not even occur to her that maybe if she wants to help said downtrodden and oppressed, she should start by actually listening to them and letting them take the lead as they know best what their needs are. She appoints herself Champion of their problem and expert on their issues, even above those with first-hand experience of said issues, and has no grasp of exactly how arrogant (and, for that matter, bigoted – it’s a manifestation of the sort of bigotry that assumes the dominant group isn’t dominant because they’ve stacked the social deck in their favor but because they’re simply better at everything than the oppressed group. A more obvious manifestation of this phenomenon is how every time a wage gap issue comes up, you will have dozens and dozens of people popping up to argue very passionately that Straight White Abled Dudes simply make better life choices than women/PoC/disabled people/trans people/LGB people and/or are just innately better suited to high-paying jobs) that is to do.
To be fair, there is also the use case where “white knight” is used as an insult by the trolls themselves, aimed at anyone who is picking the side they are attacking.
I’ve seen examples of blogs “swarmed” by harassers where they would chuck “oh, stop being such a white knight” at everyone who told them to stop being assholes.
Yeah, there is that, too.
I agree with tangled_z; “white knight” is generally used by trolls of the MRA variety to mean “guy who pretends not to hate women* so he can get in their pants” these days. I think the earlier definition has been given to “mansplainer” and the like.
*Trolls of the MRA variety appear to be incapable of believing that men who honestly don’t hate women the way they do exist.
Someone who compulsively picks a side in an argument on the internet ,of which they were not already a part, usually on behalf of a girl or someone they think is a girl.
Also usually includes the assumption that the person who actually has a stake in the argument can’t argue for themselves; leaping to the defense of people who don’t need defending.
I obviously didn’t refresh before posting, +1 to this and to Moonshine
In meatspace, a guy whose relationships are always with girls/women who have heavy damage, and whose identity as a man is wrapped up in attempting to fix that damage, when what really needs to happen involves therapy of some kind or possibly police intervention.
I know somebody like that. One stalker, two other failed relationships, and almost three decades later, he nearly destroyed his marriage because his wife identified her own damage and found appropriate help and then he didn’t know what to do with himself. :/
Sounds like the guy of the quitting couple in the couple weekend in BFF (great film, btw). If he cannot help, he doesn’t know what to do in a relationship.
Yeah, Danny tends to that, that’s part of why he drove Dorothy crazy.
I suffer from this. My love interests tend to be damaged, and I tend to try to protect them. It’s taken me some time to realize that their damage is their own, and that they don’t always want protecting.
In the end, it generally means someone who jumps to people’s (ladies (and presumed ladies) primarily if not exclusively) defense on the internet, generally to make himself feel good more than to actually help (and usually is misguided in their (his) attempts).
It’s slightly ridiculous, of course.
The worst you can accuse a “white knight” of is helping someone else out without being asked to.
Which, you know, is a non-thing. Just saying.
If someone is an asshole, that’s not related to the white knight thing. It’s like calling someone a social justice warrior. Boy, sure hate me some social justice.
Well, it’s not about wanting to help without being asked. It’s usually considered to be someone wanting to “help” without considering the feelings or opinions of the person they’re trying to “help”.
It’s a non-thing until their told to stand down and don’t.
Well, white-knighting can be a trifle patronising, if the damsel (or whoever) isn’t actually in distress and can handle it themselves. In an internet context it can easily slide into mansplaining, for example.
“The worst you can accuse a “white knight” of is helping someone else out without being asked to.
Which, you know, is a non-thing. Just saying.”
Ehhh… ever hear “the path to Hell is paved with good intentions”? I think it is important to be an ally and speak out, but I’ve too often seen it go wrong when the White Knight gets a little to high up on his high horse. Sometimes it leads to the White Knight unintentionally hurting the group he is supposedly defending.
“It’s like calling someone a social justice warrior. Boy, sure hate me some social justice.”
Exactly! If someone uses the term “SJW” with me (unless they’re discussing the term itself as you just did), they have basically failed my litmus test and are no longer worth my time.
ETA: oh god, thank you for that filter, Willis. I meant the abbreviation of “social justice warrior”, but that will do nicely too.
that is a filter i was unaware of until just now, and as an aside I may have just died, so Thank You Willis
I doubt he’s forgotten yesterday. Seeing as how most people (judging from the Whiteboard Ding Dong bandit chapter) think Amazi Girl’s awesome, I’m not surprised that he’s willing to brag.
“I have a feeling Danny’s been waiting to use that line for a long time.” I have a feeling he’s been practicing to get the properly demure facial expression.
*Plays Walky Talky on the borrowed Hacked Muzak*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq2c2AAwGUI
You’re seriously going to play relaxing music? At a time like this?
It’s until the last panel.
But we’re talking about THIS strip in particular. Sal knows Amazi-Girl is not only practicing vigilantism, which is illegal in this country (Comic Canon, too?), but the last major encounter she had with a bad guy could’ve killed off her subplot, Becky’s subplot, Joyce’s subplot, Sal’s subplot, and maybe but Danny’s, Ethan’s, Walky’s, Dorothy’s, Dina’s, and like, THE REST OF THE COMIC GOES TO A GRINDING HALT BECAUSE PEOPLE DIED.
This doesn’t call for easy listening music from Saints Row 2 (Why that game in particular?)
It’s until the last panel… Wait, How do you know what Saints Row 2 is about?
I’m kind of digging Jacket’s music for this, but I think I’d put some Marvin Gaye up for a close second.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j3okb3kuts
And here I was going to play more Rick Astley.
Hey, It beats the crap that the chicken’s playing.
That… is not the song I was thinking it was (though I think I got the name wrong, so.)
He spelled the song title wrong, too.
So I didn’t read closely enough and was expecting a completely different song. Was wondering how that song fit with the strip.
This song is the one I was expecting, by the way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7UvbwCjXUk
*thunk*
And the question has pierced the armor!
Al-foil armour.
Danny does make a great foil.
Has it? TUNE IN TOMORROW to see just how oblivious Danny can be!
As well he should be. Pay no attention to the person who has suffered from bigotry her whole life from her own parents and is perfectly willing to display instant bigotry to the very notion of a “superhero “
It doesn’t make Sal a bad person, just a human one.
This isn’t “bigotry” toward superheroes. This is Sal’s entire experience with Amazi-girl being an overly aggressive busy-body who picked a fight, a physical fight, with her for no reason and then having to save this same overly aggressive busy-body from death on the high way after performing a really dangerous stunt that while cool should have been left to the police.
Sal then extended an olive branch to Amazi-girl and it was thoroughly rejected. Despite this, Sal is able to empathize with Amazi-girl’s actions because she sees her past self in them. Sal has no inkling who Amazi-girl or even Amber are during any of this.
What bigotry? Feel free to ignore if you were being sarcastic.
Sal, can you even imagine Danny being half that assertive.
We all can. That is why we are always disappoint.
It’s within my capabilities. But it’s in the same probability space as pigs sprouting wings and Trump suddenly becoming a nice person. I know it’s technically possible, just not likely.
Finally, the outside perspective he needs.
“Because I respect her decisions as a person and understand the persona is necessary for her dealings with deep emotional issues, some of which you had a direct hand in causing?”
“Yeah, but neither of us know that last bit.”
“Good point.”
“Necessary”- maybe, but even if it is it’s not adequate.
The sooner she gets a socially acceptable form of therapy and becomes just like everybody else, the better.
Physical assault is socially unacceptable for a reason. A lot of reasons.
More to the point, we can see from the continued fragility of her emotional state that using Amazi-girl as a coping mechanism is not working.
IS it socially unacceptable? Because Amazi-girl has gotten a lot of admirers for it.
Well, Disloyal Subject thinks it is.
You’re the one who brought it up.
And I think Amazi-girl’s admirers only know about a fraction of her activities.
Nope. As can be seen by the fact that they exist out here in the real world, where we do know her activities.
Some of you freak out, because you think all vigilantism is wrong. But, in actuality, there has been exactly one situation where she put others at risk, and she has every right to put herself at risk.
And, as people seem to forget, she beat up her dad as Amber. She flat out said Amazi-Girl didn’t do it.
I mean, the whole car chase sequence was Amber being crazy violent and escalating. It was already a bad situation
And like, even if Amber’s presence was meant to be a positive, since David Willis mentioned how physics was intentionally bruised and that Becky was being rescued by a gosh darned superhero, and later on we have Becky and Dina treat her like a hero for her actions, that still ended with Sal admonishing her for nearly getting herself killed over her need to prove herself.
I’d say that whole car chase sequence was Ross being crazy violent and escalating. I mean really, climbing out on the roof of the car you’re driving to shoot someone? Without that bit of pure insanity, the whole sequence gets a lot saner.
Amazi-girl even tried to flag down the cops.
Without her, Becky’s plan was to try to escape later and then never come back, so Amazi-girl trying did actually work out.
It’s really hard for me to read that as intended to be both a superhero saving Becky and proof that Amber’s out of control and just makes everything worse. Sal’s admonishment doesn’t have to be Word of God there, just her perspective on Amazi-girl. Which continues to set up this conflict and hopeful eventual resolution.
The way I see it, I think it is both. Amber saves Becky, but then Amber almost gets herself killed. IIRC that’s what Sal mentions, and even says that she “underestimated” her, while still pointing out how Amber made the situation dangerous.
Until she beats up the wrong guy, someone who didn’t deserve it, and it’s suddenly unacceptable again
“Until she beats up the wrong guy, someone who didn’t deserve it, and it’s suddenly unacceptable again”
And then many of the in-universe people who’d been going “Amazi-Girl’s so cool!” would be going “oh man, Amazi-Girl’s terrible, who did she think she was hitting people for fun?” like _that_ and pretending they’d never been pro-AG.
And a bunch of others will say, “I’m sure that guy deserved it, otherwise why would AG beat him up. Quit defending the criminals!”
See: Police officers.
(Not all police officers, obviously, but the ones who do should really be kicked off the force, not coddled)
Except that Amber/Amazi-Girl is a fictional character. She’ll only beat up the wrong guy if that’s what Willis wants her to do. I’m not at all convinced that Amazi-Girl’s plot arc is an inevitable descent into a monster who needs to be stopped.
It’s like saying Superman is only a hero until he beats up the wrong guy, then he’s a horrible monster. That’s true, but that’s missing the whole point of Superman.
@gc I’m all for neurodiversity, but Amber is pretty dang miserable in her current coping system. I think you’d have a point, if AG ran around doing parkour for fun (without punching people), and Amber was really happy about her rad masked exercise routine, and she felt good about herself whether she was wearing the mask or not. As it is, the Amber/AG split is quelling some of her anxiety, but it’s also reinforcing her self-hatred of Amber and making her pretty unhappy.
This is an incredibly unhealthy coping mechanism, you’re right. It’s not bad because it’s different, it’s bad she’s putting herself and others at risk in order to vent out her aggressions. In one of the earlier strips, you can see her trying to instigate violence against two graffiti artists, and her fun is immediately removed when the mechanism of coping isn’t violence. Amber is using the danger she puts herself in as an escape, and her brand of vigilante justice is more destructive than noble. She or someone who doesn’t deserve it is going to end up hurt physically, in addition to the emotional damage she’s doing to herself that you described.
We saw it more than once. In the first confrontation with Sal, Amber/Amazi-Girl goes out of her way to try and goad Sal into attacking her. It was kinda creepy, in fact.
It’s really only a matter of time before her violent behavior isn’t just a response to some perceived wrongdoing, it’s the response to anything and nothing. That’s what we were seeing when she berated Danny.
She did and it was kind of creepy. OTOH, that’s Sal, her evil nemesis and she still didn’t attack, just tried to provoke the attack Sal was obviously going to make because she’s an evil monster.
It didn’t go according to script and she’s still processing that.
But even in that worst case, she didn’t attack.
Oh,. I’m sure Sal suspects the whole superhero thing is an emotional outlet. But that doesn’t make it a good one.
Yeah, Sal says as much after the car chase. She thinks Amazi-Girl is motivated by the same feelings that drove her when she as a kid.
It might be a necessary way of dealing with it in her mind, but it’s the best way to deal with it in the same way that putting salt on it is a good way to deal with an open wound.
I’d liken it more to pressing a shit-smeared rag to the open wound to stop the bleeding and ignoring the risk of infection; I don’t think salt would help at all.
I like to think my analogy was less crass, but yes, I concur.
let’s remember though, comic safety cushioning atmosphere aside, that jumping from car to car, in the real world, is not a good coping mechanism. it is a good way to die, if you’re lucky only the second or third time
Certainly an important thing to remember for those of you thinking of taking up Amber’s hobby in the real world.
This web comic however is not actually the real world.
Because he’s a bumbling, lanky dork whose very name has become a synonym for fucking up and she’s a physically adept vigilante whose emotional state is constantly teetering at the edge of a very dangerous cliff and could crumble completely at literally any moment?
Seriously, Sal, look at him.
“whose very name has become a synonym for fucking up” She doesn’t know that, though.
Oh doy I just realized that she’s got mad experience doing real motorcycle driving, that’s probably why she’s so good at Kart. Though she doesn’t go-kart, as far as we know (would that make Joyce think go-karts are super cool?)
Dann. Meant to reply to the one below about Rainbow Road.
Don’t forget: Sal beat Danny’s time trial in Rainbow Road, and for all we know, she hadn’t even touched the game.
Honestly, if there’s anyone who can help Amber through this, it’s Ethan. He was the one who was held hostage at the gas station, he’s been with her through all of this, he gets her better than anyone.
(And no, I’m not just saying that because I came here from Shortpacked! and I really like the Ethan + Amber + Mike friendship, that is a completely ridiculous assertion how dare you.)
Don’t get hung up on the obvious. The robbery-attemp was a decisive moment in Ambers life, but her non-dad has been fucking with her mind (hopefully only that) long before. He already berated her in the car before anything happened, and it became quite clear that emotional abuse has been going on all her life already.
Ethan might be the one able to help because he knows this, but not especially because of being involved in the robbery and being the trigger of her greatest guilt-trip.
Pretty much this. Amber may have been traumatized by the robbery, but she was a trauma victim long before, because of her dad.
That sort of abuse isn’t something Ethan is equipped to handle, even if he was present for a lot of it.
No, but he is in a better position than Danny in that regard.
Both fair points.
Either way, Danny is definitely not equipped to be the one to help Amber right now. Honestly, given a few hours to stew on it, I’m not sure anyone can help her right now. She’s in a very dangerous place emotionally, what with basically being neighbors with one of her triggers and her whole “I don’t want to be like my abusive dad so I’m going to compartmentalize my anger into a completely separate personality.”
Which, really, is the crux of it all, isn’t it? After having taken the brunt of her dad’s anger and abuse so long, she doesn’t know how to express her own anger in a healthy way, so she just gives it to this infallible persona she’s crafted and hopes that’ll do the trick.
… I reiterate my previous statement of “fuck Mr. O’Malley.” I feel like no matter how often the members of the comment section might disagree, that is one sentiment we can get behind. Just… just fuck that guy. There’s not a circle of hell painful enough for him.
“help” doesn’t necessarily mean “up and fix it”
the minimum definition of “help” is “make it less worse than it would have been without you” and I honestly think Danny is capable of doing that. Hell, he’s doing it right now by picking up on her laundry duty while she isn’t capable of it.
This is why people talk about “support network”. It’s not about one person being a crutch in all the ways, it’s about lots of people doing little things that put together make an awful situation noticably less awful.
The “all or nothing” approach here is horrible and wrong both for the helper and the helpee. Danny doesn’t deserve to be expected to ‘fix’ Amber. Amber doesn’t deserve to be denied what little bit of help he can extend.
I do, however, reiterate the statement of “fuck that guy” as well. Because honestly, seriously, fuck that guy.
Pretty astute summery of the entire situation.
The way you write it as “summery” it feels like it means “the state of things in the process of being summed”. Like “fuckery” in the context, for example, of “Cease this fuckery” (cease that happenings of things being fucked around). “Summary” (the actual word), however, is a finalized, culminated resulting product in short form. It’s weird how one letter difference can make things sound so different.
To be fair, Danny-boy lacks the squirrel based powers needed to stop AG.
Danny seems like more of a chipmunk.
Danny with Squirrel Girl’s power is a horrifying thought.
Danny in Squirrel Girl’s costume is an intriguing thought.
I feel confident saying Amber would ship it.
The current fanboy theory is that SG’s real power is rule-of-funny nerfing of bad-guys’ powers or abilities.I mean a few issues back she took out the entire Avengers in one fight plus Spiderman, and took Spidey’s web-slingers. Can you think of any bad-guys who have even come close?
And can you imagine that having any effect on AG?
Or, as it’s sometimes stated, extreme luck-based, reality warping powers. Whatever can go wrong for her opponent will go wrong, and in a hilarious manner.
And, why wouldn’t it work on Amazi-Girl? Because she has no real powers? Because you can’t think of a funny way for Squirrel Girl to thwart her, since AG is a tragic character?
I’m pretty sure SG has handled both of those situations before. The main issue is that none of SG’s defeats ever actually stick, either. Something funny would happen to AG. She’d be frustrated for a bit, then she’d pretty much forget about it once the reality warping had been gone a while.
(She’d only remember if SG showed up again.)
On the one hand, Sal has a point. On the other hand, it sounds so patronizing and arrogant/hypocritical of her to say it.
I mean, who stops Sal from driving her Motorcycle fast, getting drunk with her friends and so on?
Wonder how Danny is going to handle it?
I mean, no one stops Sal from driving her motorcycle because she paid for it with her own money and has a license. No one stops Sal and her friends from getting drunk because they dont go out and commit acts of violence.
Just saying, Sal being a bit of a punk and drinking some alcohol is not at all equivalent to Amazi Girl’s illegal violent actions.
^ This. Sal has a license and is overage. Sure, drinking isn’t always good for you, but we have no evidence that she drinks and drives and I personally doubt that she does. Ditto yes, driving a motorcycle can be dangerous, but she doesn’t seem to drive it recklessly (stunts don’t necessarily count). Whereas Amber’s behaviour is both self-destructive and potentially dangerous to everyone around her.
Sal’s not of age for alcohol. She and Walky are both 18, drinking age pretty much everywhere in the U.S. is 21.
Ah, okay, I as thinking in UK terms where 18 is definitely legal. On the other hand, underage drinking doesn’t harm anyone else unless you combine it with other things, like doing stupid things WHILE drunk. And if we’re going to get at Sal for drinking, we’d be hypocritical not to criticize a large proportion of the cast too… not saying that underage drinking is good, but Amazigirl’s behaviour is more harmful by far.
At least Sal knows the risks and accepts them. Amazi-Girl, as far as Sal can tell, either can’t or won’t.
But Sal really knows nothing about Amazi-Girl, and doesn’t want to. It just seems off to me.
Sal knows enough: she experienced AG trying to pull her into a physical altercation and then she rescued AG from the hood of a car during a high speed pursuit. I know you normally need a minimum n=3 to achieve statistical significance, but I think those two instances are all the data points necessary to draw her conclusion. Plus she sees her own past anger and pain in AG.
Looking back, Sal isn’t really that much of a troublemaker. Riding a motorcycle can be dangerous, I guess, but so can a lot of things, like skateboarding, or skydiving. People can do these things without being self-destructive thrillseekers. Her hobby is something plenty of people do, and potential injury can be minimized. It is not the same thing as picking fights with criminals.
As for the drinking, we’ve already seen Dorothy and Walky get drunk during Joyce’s dorm party. Arguably, that was worse because it made Joyce uncomfortable. She’s not an alcoholic, and the worst we’ve seen her is having Jason carry her back to her dorm. She has some bad habits, but so do plenty of college students. I’d say Sal’s fairly in control, at least in those regards.
Sal even chooses to mitigate some of her risks, like by wearing a helmet and special motorcycle suit (which might be just for show, but imo probably has special protective gear in it). Motorcycles are still really dangerous, but Sal has looked at the odds and made a conscious choice. Amber/AG just react. They don’t consciously choose, and they definitely don’t mitigate risks (with the exception of the Amazi-Condoms).
Marcie. Marcie stops Sal from being violent and indulging her temper. Sal has said as much before.
(and now that Walky’s around, he also has stopped Sal from engaging in violence)
Sal isn’t demanding Danny single-handedly tackle and tie Amber up until she quits feeling punchy, but rather that he be her voice of reason when she’s seeing red, the same way Sal’s friend and brother are to her.
You say that like Sal’s gone on to assault random people and /needs/ to be stopped.
I mean, considering Amazi-Girl tried to beat the shit out of Sal FOR drinking, whereas Sal has (even after that) saved her life and tried to caution her away from escalating things…
Wait, “stopped” as in broke up with her, or “stopped” as in got her to quit being a vigilante?
She’s probably referring to that “Toedad” incident.
The latter kind of stopped. She’s most likely asking because of the Toedad incident where Amazi-Girl almost died. What she’s doing is pretty obviously dangerous so even though Sal doesn’t particularly get along with her, it makes sense for her to be concerned about whether or not Danny is actually doing anything to try to stop her from you know, dying.
Danny’s face in the sixth panel. My gosh. He’s such a cute dork. Look at him! His little face! oh my god.
It almost detracts from the likely crushing conversation he’s about to have~ Cause, from Sal’s perspective, Amazi-girl is a dangerous vigilante that’ll get herself killed. Danny sees a hero. Neither are wrong, or right. Amazi-girl is heroic, but also dangerous.
Right? So adorable. Poor guy. Every time he gets a hint of self-confidence it’s immediately snatched away.
Very impressive Sal. She’s going to bring up the parking lot incident!
This conversation has the potential to go south rather quickly.
Welcome to Dumbing of Age!
Oh, I know… just feeling that moment when the train wreck goes into slo-mo… you can’t stop watching, you know it’s gonna get all kinds of ugly… and yet you hope.
That’s how I feel about the U.S. election news coverage.
I have a feeling this is going to enter the territory of how Amazi-Girl has the luxury of being able to do what she does because she’s white and isn’t harmed from upholding the existing justice system. (I mean, for a certain definition of “existing justice system” since you know, superheroes aren’t normally part of it.)
Also, gaddanged? For real?
Don’t question Sal’s vocabulary. You’ve seen what she can do.
She very rarely takes the Lord’s name in vain. My head canon is the Catholic school she was sent to didn’t take too kindly to such swearing and employed … drastic measures.
I read it as an accent.
I mean, I think that’s the intent, but I was mostly just shaking my head at how bad Willis is at writing a Southern accent. (He’s admitted as much.)
It works fine, though. It’s what allowed me to have a voice for her in my head. You only need hints of an accent to pull it off. Overdoing it is actually a lot worse.
Oof, I hope not.
Danny: IT IS MY FETISH
you heard it here first folks! Danny is TrueVCU’s fetish!
It’s true! I won’t hide in the shadows any longer! I LOVE WEAK, ENABLING DWEEBS!
“Well… allow me to provide a simulation of how that conversation would start:
“Hey honey. Remember that time three big guys assaulted me in the middle of the night, and you rescued me? Well, I think you should have just let them beat me up!”
(This is not me saying Sal is necessary wrong about the whole thing, but, from Danny’s perspective, well…)
She’s got some of it right, and some of it wrong. There’s not an easy answer to whether Amazi-Girl is good or not. I maintain she’s ultimately a force for good, but there’s a whole lot of bad in there.
And Danny does need to realize this. I just hope it doesn’t go too far. I hope that Sal actually learns some of the good stuff about her, too.
I think the main question Sal is asking is whether or not it’s good FOR AMBER. Which, unquestionably, it is not. She needs real actual professional help.
Wait
So Sal interacts with Amber, and then the next person she sees, she talks about Amazi-Girl.
I think Sal is making the connection nobody has ever made before.
Sal senses the disturbance in the force.
Dina made it.
Dina had extra clues others did not due to being Amber’s roommate and being easily forgotten/invisible.
Sal is good at noticing things. She’s been overlooked a lot, and Amber is a walking cry for help.
i doubt it. she just happened to encounter danny and had a question for him about something she’d read in the paper (although really why the hell the identity of amazi-girl’s boyfriend was even IN the paper, DOROTHY, is another question entirely), which just happened to be immediately after she encountered amber and helped her re-gather her laundry (and triggered a panic attack, but she doesn’t know that).
besides, if sal ever made the connection between amber and amazi-girl, confronting amber about it would be the most fruitless endeavor possible, as evidenced by the gobbled speech a couple strips ago. although said confrontation would possibly trigger the switch to amazi-girl…and would still be fruitless, on account of amazi-girl’s unwillingness to listen, as opposed to amber’s inability.
*shrug* but no, i don’t think sal knows. there’s always the possibility that dan will misspeak in their upcoming conversation, though. boy means well, but smh.
The relationship being in the paper may be from back when Billie was still somewhat on the AG beat – Danny told her they were dating one time when he was trying to check up on AG.
First he would need some sort of Backbone, possibly spine like object, then he would need to grow up and realize he’s not Lois, he’s Bonnie
It’s so surreal to have Sal as the calm and collected voice of reason, knowing how she turns out one parallel universe over. Amazing what an absence of murder-happy aliens and black ops brainwashing will do to improve a gal’s mental health!
I kinda hope that Danny cool down hugs Amber, and its framed in same way that he hugged Sal, when she almost destroyed the world.
Because Amazi-Girl is immune to criticism.
Huh. Interesting.
Of course, Sal may well be thinking of herself, here. But who stopped her, from her rages?
There may have been some therapist that we haven’t seen yet, but an obvious answer that comes to mind is Marcie. Marcie has been seen multiple times getting Sal to back down, successfully.
So maybe Danny (and/or Ethan, but Sal doesn’t know that yet) needs to talk to Marcie about successful de-escalation techniques. Oh, wait. Does Sal need to translate? Maybe not; Marcie looks like she’s perfectly capable of using messaging and chat systems.
This is all chaos theory, but I think I should commit a crime or something one night to summon her. Give Amazi-Girl a fight she can’t win. Maybe that’ll get her to back down?
Alright, I’m bored of this man.
You. Me. Right now.
DANCE-OFF!
This’ll fit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9FZCGUlOm0
Fancomic, Ho!
A fight she can’t win means Amber dies.
At this point in the comic, anyways. She needs to be convinced that backing down is something she can do before trying to force her to back down.
We already know she’s willing to die to do her “job.”
I think what Wolf’s trying to get here is to have Wolf come in (Mistake #1: Wolf is from another fandom. I don’t think the devs of PAYDAY would be too happy about it.) and detains Amazi-Girl without killing her (Mistake #2: Wolf does this to people, especially people like Amazi-Girl:
https://youtu.be/G78CMTqZhB8?t=9m10s
SUMMARY: Wolf uses a drill to kill a cop, while laughing.) While the loss of a fight in his case may mean she’ll stop in his mind, I doubt Amazi-Girl will just stop right there.
While both may have mental problems, they have very different problems, Wolf being completely fine until his family became homeless, and Amber’s case being her childhood.
I dunno what this Wolf (or the rest of the PAYDAY gang) is doing here, but I think Wolf might be some not-thought-out result of a broken Amber who went too far.
But what about me?
Walky also convinced her to walk away when Ruth elbowed her, but she told Joyce she’d never met a therapist worth shit.
Huh, for some reason I’d remembered that as ‘worth spit,’ even though it seemed odd for Sal.
That’s the thing. Sal knows when to walk away, and listens to people. Amazigirl/Amber has no common sense filter, and violently (verbally or physically) reacts to people who try to talk her down.
Easy for Sal to say, but I’m not sure what Danny–or just about anyone in this comic–could do to stop Amber, that would actually work.
Yeah, that’s where I’m at, too.
Amber has to want to reach equilibrium with AG, and/or to develop her non-AG coping skills, or something along those lines. At the moment, she’s clutching to AG for dear life and is unlikely to tolerate any threats to her system.
…on the other hand, this is going to be a really useful conversation for Danny, to move him towards a more active, spine-having role, whatever that will look like. We’ll see how he manages with a situation that’s way over his head, if-and-when he’s pretty sure he ought to do something about it.
So how is that Sal can address Danny as White Bread, and it is not causing any bells and whistles to go off. It is a derogatory term.
Guess he just is so happy someone notes a guy like him has a girl like AG?
I think she has the right idea, in that a boy friend could maybe stop her, but that boyfriend ain’t Danny. He cares about her but, he is in over his head.
Eh, its not really the most offensive of words, maybe its regional but no one where I live would be offended if you called the wonder bread.
Are you new? That’s been Sal’s nickname for Danny since they met. If Danny took offense to it he’d have spoken up about it before now.
Seems unlikely.
I assume its more like calling him milk toast than anything.
He’s pale and squishy and comes in a half baked loaf.
‘milquetoast’
Huh. I was going to make a milquetoast comment, but then Wikipedia showed me that it was, in fact, a misspelling of “milk toast,” an actual type of food. I learned something today. Thanks.
I always thought ‘white bread’ meant ‘boring’. I didn’t think of it as a racial term.
Yeah, she means it in a “you’re the most boring, uninteresting, non-threatening person I’ve ever met”.
Still not nice, but it doesn’t means “I hate you ‘cuz of your skin color”
I don’t think Sal hates him anyways. She just seems sort of bemused he could live eighteen years and still be. Well. This.
To be fair she’s calling him “Wonder bread” which is is a brand name. It’s still a boring plain white bread though, but without any racial connotations.
Because calling whites white doesn’t do anything to actually societally oppress them?
Because Danny want to be AG’s boy-wonder-bread.
Any one else ever noticed how similar Danny and Sal are?
They both have asshole parents who prefer a sibling over them. The only difference is that Sal’s issues have racism involved, and that while Danny pushed in and became meek, Sal pushed out and became desperate for attention.
does danny have any siblings? i don’t remember…
He has an older brother in the army
Penultimate panel is so anime.
Bishie Danny is best Danny.
Nah, it’s Faz
While no other can completely replicate the mighty Faz, as you can see on this chart Danny is currently at about 80%. Genuine Faz is still 20% greater!
Actually, Genuine Faz is 25% greater. 20 percentage points is 25% of 80%.
Sounds like something that Faz would say.
Pfffft! Because Danny can stop her.
He could y’know do the responsible thing and report her to the police?
But that would, again, violate the basic premise of this comic.
Sal is not asking Danny to involve the police. Police aren’t her friends.
He’s probably one of the few people who could. I mean, the comments section REALLY bashes Danny, and I don’t think it’s 100% warranted, but despite his flaws – and hell, he’s far from the only character with flaws, flaws make a character GOOD – his heart is in the right place, and he can get Amber, at least, to listen. It might take a lot of work, but if he can convince Amber that she is worth as much as Amazigirl, it would do wonders for her.
That, or if we go the more dramatic group, if he pushes Amber to see sense she might lash out, hurt him, and finally realise how bad Amazigirl is for her and everybody around her. At least, Amazigirl in her current state.
That look, maybe he’s born with it…
Or maybe it’s Maybelline?
Sal knows self-destructive behavior. For a wild-child hooligan, here comes the pragmatic common-sense explanation.
what?! pssh Sal, that’s ridiculous… I mean, being a superhero that isn’t super is good and cool right? right? everybody else in the comic seems to think so.
Heh. You remember when Malaya described everyone else in Sal’s life as being in a “oh, you’re so cooool” cult for Sal? Sal’s encountering someone else with that sort of deal going on, and she doesn’t like it one little bit.
Also, excellent “boom.” moment.
Despite having one, she doesn’t like it for herself, either. The person who probably best meets that description in regards to Sal is Joyce, and she’s not only uncomfortable with Joyce’s adulation, she also encourages Joyce to find her own identity rather than imitate Sal.
The thing that’s important to remember is that Sal and Danny have had completely different experiences and interactions with Amazi-Girl. Danny was rescued by her and has only seen her being a “hero”. Sal, however, has only encountered the version of Amazi-Girl tainted by Amber’s own personal hatred towards Sal, and was actively antagonized by AG for no real reason. I think it’ll be good for Danny to hear a practical view of Amazi-Girl that’s not all sunshine and unicorn farts, because that’s not what she is, let’s be real.
I don’t think Sal wants Danny to stop her because she feels victimised. I think she wants Danny to stop her because she can recognize how ungodly unhealthy Amazigirl’s behaviour and thinking is.
No, yeah, I completely agree. I just meant that Danny seems to think that AG is perfect, but Sal can see that she’s not. And yeah, Amber’s behavior is completely out of control, and this needs to be corralled before she really hurts someone.
But it’s also not that Danny’s blinded and Sal’s seen the truth. Sal’s seen one side and thinks that’s all there is. She has just as distorted a view. Maybe even more so, if Danny’s starting to see the flaws.
Yeah, this. Sal is right that Amazi-Girl needs to stop, because all she’s seen of Amazi-Girl is her being uncontrollably violent.
Though I wonder if Sal would warm up to her if she found at that she has protected people from theft and assault before, since Sal herself thinks cops are useless and that you need to take matters into your own hands sometimes.
“It’s totally fine for the racist white girl to keep doing racist shit because she did some okay shit too!”
I fuckin’ hope not.
There is absolutely nothing fucking racist about Amazi-Girl/Amber. We have never once seen her be racist.
If you’re going to make up bullshit like this, then there’s no point in talking to you.
Hell, this is quite close to doing what I told people is wrong to do to Danny. Because you hate Amber, you’re making up shit about her. It’s the same shit that pissed me off about the Becky-haters.
Fuck that bullshit.
Yeah, stabbing a black girl in custody and walking away scot-free is such a non-racist action. Getting smug about a criminal record that makes a black woman’s life a living hell when it wouldn’t touch a white girl nearly as badly (And by all rights, SHE should have a criminal record too) is totes non-racist.
She’s ignorant about what her race affords her and acts based on that ignorance. It’s racist to do this. I’m not saying she’s a trump supporter (That’s more like super-racist, or fascist-racist, or white-supremacist), but she’s absolutely held up racist structures, and used them to disparage Sal.
Amazi-girl being or looking racist:
Stabbing an unarmed arrested black girl and then getting off scot free (and then later pointing to her own clean criminal record as a sign of her being morally right in any confrontation between them):
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/down/
Also, worth noting in this moment:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/freezeup/
Her asshole dad is the one who riles her up and gets it in her head that she’s useless if she didn’t “defend” Ethan and if she has trauma responses and who piles too much on an already scared and hurting girl. Amazi-girl has since blamed Sal for the incident, to the point where she has full-on flashbacks and panic attacks when they meet, but has more or less let her dad off the hook for his role in fucking her up.
And yeah, it’s a bit racist to dump all the blame of a life-time of abusive dad shit on a teenage black girl who made a mistake, because the idea of truly blaming her father for the depths of what he did to her is beyond her at the moment.
Picking a fight with Sal:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/my-share/
Which, worth noting two things. One, Amazi-girl intended to pick a fight with Sal. She thought her identity was being released the very next day and she’d no longer be able to be a vigilante and so purposely stalked Sal way off campus to a Wal-mart parking lot in order to fight her over the “using her as a symbol of all her father ever dumped on her” thing.
Two, the underaged drinking is the excuse and she admits that, noting that it makes things easier that Sal is technically breaking a law (a law that almost everyone in college breaks at some point or another), because it gives her the excuse to confront her.
Which, “white” (yes, I know he’s white hispanic, but let’s be honest, the culture he identified with and the culture that supported him from crime-scene to trial were white as fuck) person stalking a black kid long distances, looking for any excuse or sign of potential law-breaking to justify taking violent action against them? I just described George Zimmerman.
Which on that note, harassing the black woman for petty crime? In a similar way that petty crime laws are disproportionately enforced against young black people, including drug laws that almost everyone has violated at one point or another:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/comeatme/
Oh, and Sal actually checked in with her, asking her directly if she was just some tightwad or was actually targeting people like her directly as an excuse for harassment and Amazi-girl straight up says it’s the latter. Like, the point of it was more that Amazi-girl was looking for any means of picking a fight with Sal, but it at least looks racist as all hell to be admitting to preferential enforcement of laws to harass a young black woman:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/curbstompings/
Which gets worse when you note that her response to Billie underage drinking, the people at the party underage drinking, her boyfriend underage drinking was to get a little sanctimonious at Danny and nothing else. No picking fights, no visiting them in the middle of the night to put the fear of Amazi-girl in them, no harassment. And that, well, does make it racist as fuck, because even if it was ostensibly for a different reason, she still selectively enforced a personal code to justify harassing a black woman but not any of her white or white-passing friends:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/expulsion/
This whole thing:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/beforesunrise/
Like, the whole desperate to pick a fight thing to justify hurting Sal excessively (and let’s not kid ourselves, Amber has made Sal to be the symbol of all the hurt and fear she has ever felt thanks to Blaine, if she were to actually have a knockdown mono-a-mono fight and if Amber got the upper hand, there’s a very good chance she’d go full Amber-on-Blaine on her) is fucked up.
And that type of harassment happens a lot in their interactions.
Especially since the harassment and the desire for a physical encounter is entirely to treat her mental illness and because she thinks if she beats this symbol, she will stop feeling scared, because she will have defeated the “demon” in her head that she’s made Sal out to be:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/fightme/
Which, demonizing a black girl, viewing her only as a symbol for “criminality” instead of a real person and demanding said real person be dehumanized to maybe almost sorta not really be a mental health tool is really messed up and definitely is at least well-lubed by societal racism.
And then, their last encounter:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/bruised/
Backing away so furiously that she slams into a tree reinjuring herself because she’s so scared of the black woman standing over her? Yeah, that looks racist as all hell even if it’s more panic attack fueled and Sal would be more than justified in assuming racism given their other encounters not to mention what happens next.
On that note:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/highstrung/
Sal checking on her medically, informing her that she helped save her life, doing her a total solid? Amazi-girl throws it back and picks a fight because the idea of her owing Sal some gratitude ruins her mental image of Sal as criminal cypher. And that’s where she starts really showing the racist side of things as a means of trying to justify a world view she has already decided on.
I mean, Amazi-girl hears Sal’s words there, because she specifically uses one of them in the most callously casually racist way she can, emphasizing Sal’s status as “criminal” and literally only seeing that over everything else she has done, including for Amazi-girl in the very recent past, which she must of heard, because that line confirms she was listening.
Not to mention that focus on a record ignores:
A) Amber’s white privilege aiding her from getting a record for stabbing and permanently injuring Sal.
B) Sal’s note that Amazi-girl is also breaking the law with this costumed vigilante shit.
C) Sal noting the reality of racism and how it impacts her, which Amber dismisses with a “you’re just a criminal”, which so thoroughly echoes the white response to Black Lives Matter that it’s uncomfortable.
D) And then doubling down on that unfortunate connotation by seeing it as a good thing that Sal faces an increased likelihood of being gunned down by cops because of her skin color and her history. Like, I dunno, if Amazi-girl realized that, seeing as how she’s just in “must antagonize Sal because she’s my Joker and not an 18 year old girl trying to go to school” mode there. But damn is that callous and fucked up.
And yeah, kinda racist as all hell.
And then capped off with:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/prove/
Sal notes a lot of good points, shows compassion and relates to her own experiences surrounding wells of anger, and notes once again her role in literally saving Amazi-girl’s life.
And Amber throws that back at her because she needs her mythology of Sal as the Joker more than she cares to see Sal as a person. And so that means literally dismissing the positive she has done to justify the worldview she has of Sal as someone who has done “wrong”. And that is a cornerstone of racist power-structures.
Treating black people as a class as this mythology of criminality and discounting any real accomplishments or heroic actions done by a black person, especially if it is in aid of a white person in favor of an inaccurate mythology of black people just posing existential threats to white people.
Her mental illness feeds into it and I doubt any of this is intentional, but Amazi-girl feeds into racist oppression whether she likes it or not and Sal would be very justified in seeing her as racist, because there’s definitely an undertone of race that adds brutal context to her actions.
The problem is that there’s a difference between looking racist and actually being racist. I was bullied by a black kid in elementary school. If I saw him walking down the street (and somehow magically recognized him after over a decade), you can damn well bet I’d cross the street to avoid him.
That would look pretty racist, but since “people who bullied me in elementary school” wasn’t a race the last time I checked, it’s not actually racist: it just looks terrible in the context where racism exists.
If you actually go to the extent of calling Amazi-Girl/Amber racist, then any time a person of one race has a conflict with a person of another race, that must be racism.
Sometimes people just hate each other because they hate each other. Not all hate is racism.
Yeah, basically what Drakey said there. I can see how Sal might think so and I can see how Amber’s white privilege likely helped her after the robbery & stabbing, though we have no real idea how the legal end of that played out.
But privilege isn’t racism. That’s the whole point of talking about privilege.
Amber definitely has a problem with Sal and has built her up in her head as a monster, but that’s a personal problem with Sal, with as far as we know nothing to do with her race. It’s all about that initial encounter with Sal and what it’s come to mean for Amber. That’s sure as hell not right and not at all fair to Sal and it’s something Amber’s going to have to deal with before she can start to get her head straight, but it’s not about race.
The Zimmerman analogy doesn’t work because he assumed Martin was a criminal because he was black and stalked him with no other evidence than that. Amber’s not assuming Sal’s a criminal because she’s black, but because she was traumatized by Sal during the actual robbery.
True, but it’s extremely reasonable for Sal to come to the conclusion that Amazi-girl is racist as fuck and while a lot can be chalked up to coincidence, there are definitely moments she plugs into a toxic general culture in ways that she probably doesn’t intend but nonetheless perpetuates.
So it’s not about her being Klansman burning the cross levels of racism, but rather that she’s not really being aware if cultural racist messages have informed why Sal has become an acceptable target to dehumanize and dump responsibility for all her baggage on.
No, there isn’t a bloody difference between looking racist and being racist. You reinforce racism, you /are/ racist. She doesn’t /mean/ to be, but who the fuck here cares? (White people, mostly). There’s a difference between doing racist shit because you’re racist in your heart of hearts, and doing racist shit because , and sometimes isn’t horrible, but A: I dn’t care about Amber’s heart of hearts, and B: /is shit in Amber’s case/. Seriously, “This person traumatized me so they’re my nemesis forever, even though they have suffered immensely for it already, both legally and at my own hands” is NOT a good reason to do things.
Whoa. Where did the “racist” come from? I could see Sal thinking that, though it hasn’t been more than hinted at. There’s certainly no evidence that it’s true.
1: Look slightly above this
2: She gloated about Sal’s criminal record to her god damned face. Are we really having this fucking conversation?
Yeah we are.
Amber certainly benefits from white privilege. That quite possibly, even probably, affected the legal consequences for the stabbing, though we don’t know exactly what happened afterwards.
If she gloated about the record it was because Sal got that record traumatizing her. She’s certainly prejudiced against Sal.
And sure, she’s ignoring the effect that record’s had on Sal’s life afterward, but that’s because of her personal problems with Sal. Nothing to do with race
It basically became about race when the line was “White girl in the cape, punches people”. Like there’s a slew of them, and it had to be narrowed down.
When your actions reinforce racism, they are racist. Period. Amber’s motivation /is completely meaningless to that/.
She did have that recent moment where she snapped and gave him a tongue-lashing just like her dad would do to her.
I don’t know if this has been commented on in a previous comic, but it seems you can tell someone’s Lawful-Chaotic Alignment by their opinion of Amazi-Girl.
Heh. I tend to identify as Chaotic Good (and when I have to choose between them, Good wins). I think that Amber/AG is a coping system that makes Amber unhappy, and she needs help. Do those match?
That would make you Neutral Good. First, if Good wins over Chaotic or Lawful, that automatically swings you towards Neutral. Second, your focus is on the damage it does to her psyche, not the damage it does to Bad Guys or Bystanders. You care about what’s healthy for her – this, here, splitting her mind up, avoiding clear ptsd & ctsd, is NOT healthy. That means you are Neutral, because you are more concerned with that than her freedoms or the damage she causes to others.
Presumably Leorale has opinions about law and chaos about topics other than Amazi Girl.
Uh, as a side note I’m not really sure what alignment I would give DOA characters with strong opinions of Amazi Girl other than Sal being Chaotic and Dorothy being Lawful. And looking at everything in a vacuum I’d assume that Lawful people would be more disapproving because the law doesn’t look favorably upon vigilantes. (Of course looking at it in a vacuum would be silly as you would be ignoring essential parts of Dorothy and Sal’s characters that explain why they hold the opinions of Amazi Girl that they do)
I wouldn’t be able to put Amazi-Girl in the chaotic category for one reason: she told Danny that she feels she has to enforce the law. (in regards to drinking.)
Sure, she’s violating the law herself as Amazi-girl, but she does hold everyone else up to the law.
There’s a reason that D&D’s alignment system is often said to be too simplistic.
I mean, blatant hypocrisy aside, that struck me as a bullshit rationalization to get physically violent about underage drinking to start with. She can’t tell the truth – it matters because Sal did it.
What? She has no idea Sal was even at the party. The party was specifically set up where she and Sal didn’t have to meet, as otherwise there would have been this sort of freakout back then.
I even remember thinking how convenient it was at the time.
No, you’re starting with the wrong point. She’s mad about underage drinking at the party /because prior to the party, she saw Sal drinking before the age of 21/. She needed to pretend that was a horrible thing to do to get her Righteous Anger on and try beating Sal, and can’t just drop it now.
Rutee-
So much this. As she said to Danny, Amazi-girl needs to be “consistent”, but Amber can be allowed inconsistency. And that being applied to drinking in specific was raised when she came back from that parking lot harassment of Sal to a completely wasted Billie:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/consistent/
She is only having Amazi-girl be all het up about underage drinking because it retroactively justifies trying to pick a fight with Sal.
No, it doesn’t. Chaotic Good is by definition more Good than Chaotic. It means you value being good above order, and will use chaotic means to accomplish Good.
Valuing Chaos above being Good is what puts you in Chaotic Neutral category.
My understanding was that alignments without a “neutral” component don’t automatically prioritize either the moral or the ethical axis. Two CG people could disagree vehemently on some political issue that involved an intractable conflict between personal freedom and the safety of innocents. Prioritizing the former would mean drifting toward CN and the latter would mean drifting toward NG, but neither side of the argument is un-CG if they fundamentally agree that both aspects are important.
Law-Chaos is bullshit to start with.
It’s incomplete, but it’s not bullshit. It is in fact a huge argument that happens all the time. I know plenty of people who think that following the law == good, and other people who think this makes those people actually evil.
The battle between Chaotic Good people and Lawful Good people is extremely common in the real world. D&D just is too simplified–people don’t fit into nice alignment boxes like that.
The concept of absolute order or absolute chaos isn’t really something people can ‘get’ to start with. Human opinions about human iterations are generally more about the iteration.
Danny couldn’t stop a paper bag on a spring breeze
You know the more I see of Sal, the more I love her. This is why.
“Boy, we’re gonna need to have Teh Talk”
Sal, are you suggesting that putting on a superhero costume and running around looking for people to punch in the face might be _bad_ and something to stop? Surely not.
That’s not silly, this is silly: “Water my partridges, young bicycle! I must jump into eleventy shopping trolleys by purple o’clock!”
No Danny it’s too early to use Sagely Smile. It won’t be very effective…
Ooooh nice. I like the direction this is going. I wonder if she’ll bring up the toedad incident?
In which Sal enlightens Danny that Amazigirl is Not At All Okay, and Danny realizes that his worth is not tied up in his romantic partner? Please?
Honestly, I’m pretty sure Willis has been hinting that the longer she keeps up the double life, the more pronounced she’s splitting her personality.
Which has been “subtly” affecting her life.
Sal makes an excellent point…
This may be the most adorable Danny AND the most adorable Sal’s yet. I love how Sal is still acting like she missed a few pages of plot and is aware of how weird it sounds.
That’s a good question and I don’t know if Sal is going to be happy with the answer. You see, to Danny, what Amber is doing is a good thing. He’d be happier if she wasn’t trying to compartmentalise her psyche but, overall, he thinks that she’s more a positive influence of events in Bloomington than a negative one.
Honestly both Sal and Dorothy are probably the most ‘mature’ major characters in the comic (Marcie would beat Sal and rival Dorothy- hell I think she probably beats her too- but she’s fairly minor as a character) so even were it not for the past they share/AG’s direct antagonism of her…. it just fits that she sees AG as not that great despite the rest of campus seemingly worshiping her.
Dorothy is too enamored with the whole idea of Amazi Girl herself (will there potentially be a wake up call in the future? Will Dorothy have to come clean when AG goes too far?). Sal is probably all too aware that white people on vigilante power trips would need to be stopped before its too late- just the internet would inform her of that- and hell given the whole parking lot incident and then the whole Becky thing- it practically is only a matter of time to her unless something gives. In the real world either AG would eventually die on the line or she will kill someone else if it doesn’t stop. They are never really like the comic books even if they like to think they are.
But Sal doesn’t believe in the police either for understandable reasons so, despite her not giving an outward ringing endorsement for Dorothy’s ‘speech’ way back about community picking up the pieces when wider society fails- well to her all you’re left with is the people who care about you. For Sal that was never her parents. Sal has Marcie for that for those times she’s about to do something which would be ill-advised. Billie even offers some support for her feelings against her parents and her brother is coming around and trying. It fits she’d think Amazi Girl’s boyfriend should do something similar.
Even though its doubtful Danny would have the ability to do so. But then Sal doesn’t really know their current dynamic and probably only has a bare hint of Danny’s self esteem issues from that one math tutoring session, which wasn’t even enough for readers to catch onto until later relationships unfolded- and she was distracted by Mario back then anyway.
And even without the self esteem issues just one person probably can’t do this. Sal had time as well as dependable Marcie. AG is running out of time before something even worse happens. She needs to hang up the cape for good but she won’t do that or be convinced to do so in anyway easily.
Danny can’t stop AG. Not alone. Ethan needs to not only be giving background support but standing next to him. Dorothy might even be there too in the future. They are the three who know who she is, though in a lot of ways Sal really has her pegged. She may be the catalyst for what needs to be done.
Wait, why are you singling out that “white people on vigilante power trips” need to be stopped before it’s too late?
Sal is the most aware of racism basically in this comic (for personal reasons) and everyone else on campus is basically worshipping the ground AG walks on. Only Sal seems to really know its a shit idea (though Ethan isn’t thrilled and Danny is starting to see cracks) and I feel a part of that reason is not just because of her own experiences of Amazi Girl- or heck even how she thinks she’s using it as an unhealthy emotional outlet like she did once- but because white people who decide to play vigilante are pretty much /always/ a bad idea. Especially for people like her. Just look at history. Just look at today. It’s probably another layer to the shit sundae she’s thinking on even if its not the only one she has on AG in my view.
It doesn’t help that through not knowing about their past connections Amazi Girl probably comes across as subconciously racist like it or not. She has no clue on her past. And honestly AmaziGirl says shit to Sal in such a way which definitely doesn’t help.
Also being white- like it or not- also means Amazi Girl has probably meant more leeway has been afforded by the general public as well (lets face it she would have probably been caught otherwise by now, or we’d have more a show of people trying to track her down and ‘put her in her place’). Even for someone /without/ Ambers self esteem issues- where she gets almost all of the praise she craves through violence, after having had a childhood where she was continually put down- it would turn /many/ a persons head for the worse. And the last thing AG needs is encouragement to push it further. She already almost killed herself. She will put people in danger and if it is some black kid with a record like Sal, people will bend over backwards to blame the victim or try to absolve AmaziGirl.
So if Amber wasn’t white then it’d be fine if she was a masked superhero?
The idea is that, since Amazi-Girl is white, folks are more willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she’s cool and awesome.
Isn’t that a racist thing to say though?
Not really. White privilege exists, and because Amazi-Girl is white, people are more willing to accept her than if she was black.
Like, I can walk down the street, but because I’m a dude I’m probably not going to be cat called, and because I’m white I’m probably not going to have folks call 911 on me for Suspicious Walking.
Isn’t it racist to treat someone or assume someone will be treated differently because of their race?
Or is it not racist because racism doesn’t count if it’s against white people?
@Decepticon
Acknowledging the fact that someone will be treated differently for their race isn’t necessarily racism. Just pointing out that people are more suspicious of the actions of black people than white people isn’t racist. (Unless you’re going to argue that black people who point out how unfairly they’ve been treated are the real racists. In which case I’m just going to merge into some nearby bushes and avoid the rest of that conversation)
I’m not making assumptions. I know that white privilege exists, and I know that I benefit from it. It doesn’t make me a bad person, it doesn’t somehow make me undeserving of the life I live, but it’s still real and I can seek to counteract its worst effects.
I know we all want to live in a world where everyone is judged solely by their actions, but that isn’t the case right now. I mean it’d suck if someone walked up to me and called me a cracker ass honkey, but like, that doesn’t somehow end up equivalent to the systemic oppression felt by people who don’t benefit from the privilege I receive from being a white man. Minute instances of prejudice against white people just aren’t as big a deal as addressing the real issues plaguing our society.
You’re very close to the point where any recognition of racism
is itself racism.
To go back a few generations for obvious examples: you might be able to point at a specific lynching as racist, but assuming blacks were more likely to be lynched would be racist?
Racism may be subtler today, but that doesn’t change the basic argument.
What everyone else says. Recognizing unequal treatment because of race is not racism, because the fantasy that everyone is equal when they’re not is a cornerstone of racist power structures (there’s a reason segregation was sold as “separate but equal” after all). And honestly, you probably already know that.
But back on topic to Heather’s point, yes, there’s so much there between how white people view the idea of a “vigilante hero” versus black people. Like, for a lot of white people, vigilantes conjure images of superheroes in fictional stories, people who stop the bad guys and make it safe to walk the streets. So when one appears on their campus, wearing tights and helping stop annoying petty crimes and making it safer to walk around on campus, that’s like a bit of comic magic come to life.
But to black people? Vigilantes have always meant badness. The KKK were vigilantes dispensing mob “justice”, as were the various lynching communities. Vigilante to them means George Zimmerman and Dylan Roof and various people who stalk them on the streets or in stores and endlessly harass them, because “folks like you ain’t ever up to no good”. Vigilante is an open threat.
And since Sal’s experiences in comic have been of what has looked like a racist white girl who harassed her and her friends for no reason and keeps trying to pick a fight with her personally, she has no reason to view Amazi-girl any differently.
And I’d love to see that explored more and more in-depth because that disconnect also leads to deconstructing problems in superhero mythology in general (including the idea of stopping random “street thugs” who are almost always evil and meaning people physical harm (often in the form of sexual assault, because white male writers love them an opening hook of hero rescues woman from sexual assault)) that are kinda messed up or would be in real-life.
Racism is more complicated than that. Racism is a social institution which in North America privileges white people over people of color, based on prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination. In action, it is a complex interaction of racially bigoted beliefs, social structures, social institutions, and individual actions.
You cannot be racist against white people in North America, because we’re the ones with the power, and we’re the ones who set up the social institutions in our favor. Put bluntly: Sal does not have the weight of society behind her when she calls Danny “Wonderbread.” Walky’s parents do have the weight of society behind them when they treat Sal as a troublemaker and demand she go to great lengths, time and expense to change the texture of her hair before she will be seen as pretty.
Lastly, it’s not at all racist to acknowledge that racism exists. In fact, a refusal to acknowledge that racism exists enables racism and is part of what gives racism such a strong foothold in our society (see also the term “colorblind racism” which is the mistaken belief that pretending to “not see color” magically solves centuries of institutional oppression and that people pointing out institutional oppression are the real racists. The problem with this ideology is that you can’t do anything to solve a problem if you refuse to acknowledge the problem exists or to talk about it, so by insisting on a colorblind approach to things, you’re actually perpetuating the status quo of a racist society).
I may have missed the sarcasm in this post. If so, I apologize, but if you truly believe that “You cannot be racist against white people”, I pity you.
Not sarcasm. Subtler than that.
You can be prejudiced against white people. When you are prejudiced against white people, you do not have the same weight of society backing you up as someone prejudiced against black people does.
We can quibble over whether that distinction changes the definition or not, but it remains a very important distinction.
When PoC can orchestrate an overarching societal structure such that a white person driving a nice car is seen as a suspected car thief until proven otherwise, when a white-seeming name on a resume worse than halves your chances at a call-back, and when a white person can’t walk with a PoC without being harassed by cops about whether or not they’re “bothering” the PoC? Then maybe I’ll see it your way, Guairdean Beatha.
Until then, nope. There is a big freaking difference between the impact an individual act of racial discrimination has on an average white person, and how society sees said act of discrimination, compared with how PoC are treated. That’s racism.
I’m not saying white people can’t be victims of racial discrimination. I am saying society isn’t set up to knock us down and kick us a few times while we’re down there, and then sabotage our every attempt to get back up, all the while making excuses about how we’re down and bleeding on the ground because we just don’t want to stand up hard enough. For PoC (and, in my country, Native and black people especially), it is.
Less than 20 years ago, in Canada, there was an organized cultural genocide under way against Native folks (that is when the last of the residential schools closed, which were explicitly designed to try to destroy Native culture, religion and language). Today, go on any news story about said cultural genocide, and you will find people arguing that Native people deserved it because racist stereotypes. Open up a high school history textbook older than about five years old, and if it’s mentioned at all, it will be in a positive light about how the virtuous and godly settlers were only trying to civilize the primitive and savage first nations people. Y’know, we only stole their land, ruined their environment, destroyed their way of life, beat their children for trying to keep their language and culture alive, broke up families, and sent the kids to school where they would be denied food and experimented on, and where conditions were so dire that school officials had to keep winter jackets locked up lest kids try to escape in the night… and some of them tried to escape anyway because death by hypothermia was less unbearable than staying in the school. But it was for their own good, really. They were the uncivilized ones. */sarcasm*
Here’s what Danny should say: “I don’t know how. I’ve tried reaching out to her, but it hasn’t really worked. I’m really worried about her.”
Unfortunately, here’s what Danny is more likely to say: “Why would I try to stop her? I think she’s doing a good job of her vigilante activities.”
This is very possible. Like Danny seems to think the only issue /is/ Ambers own issues right now. But Amber could be the picture of ‘put together’ with perfect parents who loved her perfectly- but it would still be a bad idea for her to be a vigilante anyway.
I guess this is how Danny grows up. Comic book heroes shall be ruined forever.
Eh, Batman’s a paranoid fascist anyway.
Ahhhh it’s another edition of Sal being preachy and sanctimonious about a situation she has no meaningful understanding of.
Yes. You are perfectly correct in your evaluation of the situation and there is absolutely no way anyone could possibly disagree with your opinion.
For your efforts I award you the internet cookie medal that looks like a cookie but is actually not edible unfortunately.
While I am pretty much totally on Sal’s side in this, I do think it’s worth pointing out that Sal gets into fights with about as much justification as Amber does. She straight up slammed Malaya against a wall for not kowtowing to her insults and because Malaya was taking up her time with Marcie, and when she was drunk with Jason she repeatedly told him to let her find someone, anyone, to fight.
(forgot to add this part)
So like, I do think Sal is right, at the very least her perspective on Amazi-Girl as someone being a violent, uncontrollable loon is perfectly valid given their history, and even with the one fight Sal’s actually gotten into, Amazi-Girl still has anonymity.
Yes, but nobody except some of the commentariat was on her side for that. The next thing that happened in comic was her best friend in the entire world physically intervening and telling her to knock it the fuck off. Amber receives adulation.
Sal is not the driven snow, but vigilante bullshit is still bullshit.
Of course (actually that’s why I added that second post, because I thought I came off as “Sal got into a fight once that means Amber’s legit). There’s a huge difference between getting into a fight that was immediately stopped and where Sal took the brunt of the damage, and what Amber does.
Agh. I need to go to bed or something.
TLDR is that I don’t think this is Sal being sanctimonious because she also gets into dumb fights for dumb reasons and it’s just her voicing how she feels the same way she did when she told Joyce that cops and therapists are dumb and I disagreed because I think Joyce would really benefit from seeing a therapist. She’s making her own judgement because of her own experiences with Amber being a violent nut and not like making the judgement that we the readers are meant to unilaterally side with since we know more about Amber’s history and motivations for her actions than Sal does, but Sal doesn’t really need to care about that because an angsty backstory doesn’t give you an excuse to punch people.
I need to lie down. Or puke my guts out. Either will do.
Yeah, also want to echo that yeah, Sal and Amber are very similar. And Sal has recognized that, especially in how both respond to anger. And in that way, Sal is Amber plus some wavery self-control. She’s been through the ringer of the legal system and she’s recognized that her first instincts in things aren’t always the best and so tries to remain unflappable to avoid going “punch-happy against Malaya” in her interactions as often as she can.
And that makes it interesting because she’s most often just seeing her own past flaws in the Amazi-girl alter, but Amber is too focused on the idea of Sal as symbol of criminality to accept her offer of mentorship and support towards healthier ways of dealing with the well of anger.
And also, being correct in the process.
I mean, I think that once you’re in a speeding car chase with somebody and having to save other people from them, you have the right to an initial opinion.
People really need to recall that nobody in this situation, including Amber, actually has a full picture of what’s going on and what Amazi-Girl’s impact is on other people. Hell, given the comedy-drama boinging back and forth with said character, I don’t think we’ve seen the full extent of this yet either.
Quick question, Sal, if you had a boyfriend back in the days, what could he have done to stop you?
That question is answered in It’s Walky!
The answer is: so much blood. Blood and regrets and psychological issues that will haunt her forever.
As much as I love this comic, the absolute lack of empathy, stupidity, and inability to imagine characters complexly (despite the writer’s hammering home of the complexity of these characters) is absolutely astounding.
People seem to lack the capacity to notice that pretty much every single character in this comic (except villains such as toedad, mary, blane, or arguably Joyce’s mom) have acted in an absolutely reasonable manner given their knowledge and circumstances. Like, at every point in this comic. No one is blameless, and yet no one has done anything wrong. That’s the dang point. But everyone wants to use some character or the other as a scapegoat for the problems present, and that ignores the whole point of the story. No one is really doing anything wrong. No one is acting unreasonably in the circumstances presented to them.
Both of the reactions “yeah, why hasn’t Danny done anything?” and “who is Sal to say that” are so absurdly oblivious to the entire theme of the story that it astounds me.
Bang on, you nailed it.
What exactly was Danny supposed to do? Because short of outing her as Amazi-Girl to someone with the authority to force her to get help and possibly getting her imprisoned for, you know, violent vigilantism he’s got no real options here. He’s not her guardian and he’s been dating her for all of a month so it’s ridiculously unreasonable to expect him to be able to “stop her.”
It’s not reasonable for us to think that Danny should have stopped her. It’s perfectly reasonable for Sal, with her perspective and partial understanding of the situation to wonder why he hasn’t.
Yeah, I don’t think this sequence is meant to be “Sal is objectively right” in the same way that she wasn’t when she told Joyce not to go to the cops or to not see a therapist, and unlike how she was objectively right telling Walky about how their parents had treated her. She’s right to think the way she is now, but she doesn’t have the full picture.
Very much both of these and the OP as well. Both have their respective pieces.
To Danny, Amazi-girl is the superhero fantasy come to life from the pages of his book. He sees the people excited to see her when she appears and sees the people coming to thank her for doing wonderful heroic things. And he’s just heard about how she risked life and limb to save a kidnapped girl recently. Combine that with NRE, and you have one hell of a “Amazi-girl is wonderful and can do no wrong” effect, so of course he’s going to take pride in someone that awesome being with frumpy old him (not his real character, but rather what he’s been taught to view himself as, i.e. to view himself as an accessory for someone “better” than him).
Sal, on the other hand, has only seen Amazi-girl at her worst. Reckless, picking fights to have an excuse for violence, enforcing the most petty of laws, harassing the black person, looking racist as all hell by freaking out or getting pissy when she sees her and focusing on her “criminal past” without seeing the grown woman she is. And who in their last encounter, needed to be rescued from dying in a truck and who then antagonized her immediately afterwards.
And I’m going to guess that things will be a little more acrimonious between them because of this clash of perspectives and the fact that Danny’s going to be very resistant to the idea that Amazi-girl is something that needs to be “stopped” rather than supported.
It is always unreasonable to expect a teenager to be able to deal with someone else’s violent mental illness. Sal is fully aware that Amber is dangerously unstable and she still expects this kid with the self confidence of a moist towelette to be able to rein her in? That’s unreasonable.
(Sal doesn’t know Amber is Amazi-girl.)
From Sal’s POV, Danny just thinks Amazi-girls hero schtick is cool, also implying that he’s more or less encouraging her to do the horribly self-destructive, violent, and dangerous shit she does. As opposed to, you know, trying to help her or, yes, to talk her down when she’s going around threatening to beat the shit out of people for heinous crimes like loitering in a parking lot.
Like, even if she didn’t think that before, his reaction here would clinch it.
(okay, getting that gravatar here is hilarious)
Do you believe Danny’s words are totally powerless?
Honestly? Yes. I think Amazi-Girl is more important to Amber than Danny. Or Ethan, for that matter.
Pretty much, yeah. Have you already forgotten what happened when Danny merely threatened her compartmentalization between her Amber persona and her Amazi-Girl one? I find it incredibly unlikely she’d have responded one jot better to him trying to strip away her Amazi-Girl persona which is basically her only refuge from her own self-loathing and fear.
“I’m going to reference a situation where Danny had a clear negative role by speaking to her to reinforce that Danny’s words are powerless.”
You’re right, but let’s face it. Without the obtuse prig demographic, the webcomics business model probably wouldn’t be viable at all.
Empathy is, unfortunately, a limited resource, and most of the time, people substitute projection in its stead.
Uhm, What people are reacting to is called Dramatic Irony, where the audience knows things the characters don’t and we’re complaining about the them not knowing it.
It’s kind of a long used trope that goes back hundreds of years.
But you know, or you could just complain about the audience, yeah, that works.
And complaining about them not knowing it is, you know, a dumb thing to do. As you admit, it’s dramatic irony. It’s useful. It’s not something to complain about.
It seems more like you’re complaining about the comment section of this comic, rather than the comic itself.
This is fine. Please continue.
sal, the voice of reason! interesting to see where this goes. probably due for some ‘dannying’.
OOoooooh Sal expects more from Danny!
How *could* he stop her? How much control over your life do you typically give the people close to you, Sal? Amazi-Girl, like Sal, does what she wants.
We’ve seen Marcie stop her any number of times.
Yes, because Sal is a reasonable person. What in Sal’s interactions with Amazigirl leads her to believe Amazigirl would be reasonable about this?
Sal assumes Amazi-girl is just racist and would be much easier stopped by a fellow white person.
She’s not no clue about her actual trauma
Didn’t he try? Didn’t that totally not work out at all?
Yea sorry to the people that think Amazin-Girl is a healthy way to cope with PTSD. It’s not. Amber needs professional help and a better way to deal with her anger than essentially assaulting people. Which is what she’s doing by the way. Yea maybe she’s stopping petty crime, but it’s illegal and she can get in serious trouble for it. Plus let’s not forget she doesn’t actually have super powers and tried climbing up and onto a speeding car. She has a death wish.
Sal just said, “you’re her boyfriend, why haven’t you told her what to do?” Seriously? Where does one even start to respond to a remark like that. I can’t even…
More like “You’re her boyfriend, why havent you stopped her from breaking her head open in a car chase?”
Well, there’s a level of both. I’d say it’s more like “You’re her boyfriend, why haven’t you stopped your alcoholic girlfriend from drinking” or “Why haven’t you stopped your girlfriend from being depressed.”
Good goals, at least from Sal’s perspective, without the sexist implications of “why haven’t you told her what to do”, but way beyond reasonable expectations.
I would agree with that. Danny is not a steward of his girlfriend’s mental condition and if he tried to “fix” Amber, that would be wildly unsuccessful and honestly quite uncool because that’s not how things like that work.
It’s an unreasonable request, but it may clue him in that not everyone is viewing his girlfriend being a real life superhero in the same light he is.
No, but there is a role for loved ones in trying to help their partners or help them get help.
It’s a tricky line to walk though.
True.
I don’t know why people are getting all het up about this, either. Right now, we’re still in okay territory. Sal is just asking. Her experience with Amazi-Girl is that she only tries to stir up shit. She doesn’t know about the vast majority of her actions, which do not actually involve punching people, or getting into angry fugues. She tells people to stop doing what they do, and if they attack her, then she responds.
The real issue is what happens here. Does Danny explain how, while it’s not good for her, Amazi-Girl is ultimately a force for good? How the distinct lack of police involvement on this campus shows that they need someone? I mean, they didn’t even have a police officer escort Blaine out–they had the mail clerk do it.
It is not a good thing if Amazi-Girl goes away. It is a good ting if Amazi-Girl gets a handle on her anger and PTSD. If she stops being an alter for Amber, and instead a way to hide her identity.
But, like it or not, Amazi-Girl has done a whole lot of good in this comic. You may not approve of her methods, but she does accomplish good things. And things would be worse for everyone if she did not exist.
That’s actually the dichotomy. What’s good for society isn’t necessarily good for Amber. Which is why I gave what I think is the only good resolution–one where she is still Amazi-Girl but stops being a problem for Amber.
I think I’ve commented on this before, but there’s no real indication there’s a lack of police on the campus. Just not an overwhelming one, with an officer present in each dorm at all times.
Blaine was led away by Asma instead of a cop because he was willing to go with her rather than have security called. The alternative was to wait and not have anyone official even ask him to leave until a cop showed up.
Basically, the reason there’s so much petty crime on the campus is to justify the existence of Amazi-Girl stories, the same way that when Batman shows up, suddenly everyone starts wearing vinyl catsuits and carrying freeze rays.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but whenever Amber’s fighting someone who isn’t an important or named character, it’s read as legit the same way we do when we read a comic that opens with Batman kicking a dude in the face. Batman’s the protagonist so we just assume he’s on the level, and that the person being kicked probably did something to deserve it, because otherwise we realize we’re reading a story where a grown man dressed as a furry violates due process and basic human dignities to sort out his daddy issues.
Well, the interesting thing about the crime that she targets is that there seems to be 3 groups:
1) Crimes of street harassment (which tend to be horribly unpoliced everywhere and also tend to be ubiquitous, especially around college campuses, because harassers like targeting young women and girls, and where Amazi-girl is unmistakably the heroine for stopping that shit)
2) Petty crimes (usually theft or defacement of property), which start getting a little murkier, because while they do help people usually (preventing a car from being broken into, a bike being stolen, recovering a stolen purse) and while this is somewhat reflected in reality (dumb teenagers doing petty crime on a slow boring night around campus? Definitely), it also borders on being disproportionate. There’s more than one comic where she’s deliberately trying to make the thief fear for their safety and it’s implied she has beat them up. Overall, one would probably say that she’s doing positive helpful actions, but the methods raise some red flags.
3) PTSD-fueled actions. These can be positive (Amber rescuing Becky from being kidnapped) with some high-risk moments (caltrops on a freeway!, nearly dying herself), but these can also be really negative (all of her interactions with Sal). And it’s in those that she resembles a petty authoritarian looking for a fight the most.
And the interesting thing is that Sal only has experience with the last one. She hasn’t been around for Amazi-girl the person who’s helped women with street harassment or Amazi-girl the thief-stopper. She’s only seen Amazi-girl the escalator, Amazi-girl the genuine threat.
And that leads to the interesting bit you mention. That we’re seeing what this sort of superhero identity would be in reality. What Batman really is when you strip away the supervillains and focus just on what Batman does day in and day out and the nebulous space that occupies.
Now, your analysis of the three types of sitations AG has been in are absolutely spot-on.
I am, however, questioning Sal’s knowledge level a bit. Not that I disagree that her own first-hand experiences are of the third kind, but I’m not so sure that Sal hasn’t read about AG in the college newspapers, obviously “off screen”. -If- so, then she probably knows what other people think about AG… But she’s one of the few people that’s also experienced the third side. And the list of people who’s experienced that side tend to be people that nobody is listening to much. Or in the case of Malaya, too self-absorbed to even consider the implications of AG’s actions that night they met.
And do not forget that behind her “rebel without a care” mask, Sal is genuinely smart; having quite often shown an insight into situations that few others have even started considering. Sure, she’s got her own “blind spots” (such as not realising that Marcia has a thing for Malaya), but she’s still one of the more perceptive characters in the DoA universe.
In fact, after reading today’s strip, I more than ever have a feeling that Sal either knows or suspects that Amber is AG; I just can’t get this nagging feeling that this is why she started talking to Danny about this in the first place.
So yeah, I think Sal is currently one of the persons that knows AG better than practically anyone; maybe even including Danny.
Yeah, I think you perfectly summed it up there. There are moments in the series where Amazi-Girl is meant to be unambiguously heroic, saving Danny from Beef and his friends as an example, moments where she’s on shakier moral ground, like how she tried and failed to pick a fight with those guys trying to tag a street sign so she stole it herself to clean it up, and moments where she’s allowing her history to push her into genuinely terrible actions, like attacking Sal.
Danny, Dorothy and Dina can cheer and appreciate Amazi-Girl, because they only see the good parts, while Sal is totally right to be wary of her because all she’s seen is the violent thug.
You say that as if pretty crime doesn’t happen a lot on college campuses. The type and amount of crime depicted in this comic isn’t different than how it is in real life.
Yeah, but we only have strips about it because we need there to be someone Amazi-Girl can punch with a guilt free conscious. If Amber stops being a vigilante then, on a meta level, crime on campus stops because there’s no reason to focus on it anymore.
Some dirty bike thief stole Danny’s bike in Roomies!, and there wasn’t any Amazi-Girl around then.
For that matter, DoA’s other named characters not infrequently commit crimes as part of their own plot lines. Amazi-Girl has tagged in, at least tangentially, on most of them, but not all. (e.g., Amazi-Girl knows nothing about Sarah punching Raidah in the face, and never got involved in Ruth’s stealing and vandalizing Billie’s cheerleader uniform, or stealing some other girl’s as a present.)
Ah, OK. I see your point.
Yup. Is this leading to where i thought it’d lead long ago?
Sal wants to help someoen before they get hurt. she’ll find out she’s the cause.
lots of crap will go down with her trying to keep her from self destructing.
Leading to a sal motorcycle accident.
I really can’t see Sal blaming herself. I do hope that some kind of reconciliation will eventually happen between the two, though. Like… by the time I’m 50.
Yeah, Amazi-Girl isn’t Sal’s fault; she’s not Joe Chill. Sal was arrested, stabbed without any retribution, tried, sent to a boarding school*, and now she’s in college.
I think Sal is moral enough a person that she would feel guilt for doing something terrible to Ethan when she’s confronted about it, and I feel that would compel her to try and stop Amber, but she doesn’t need to feel obligated to. She served her punishment for committing her crime and she doesn’t need it held over her head anymore.
*Though how did that happen, anyway? Was Sal not given any official punishment for the robberies? Was being sent to a boarding school a part of that or just something the Walkertons decided on their own?
I think it was implied that she went to juvie and spent a lot of time with court-ordered therapists and that when she got out she was immediately sent to boarding school for a couple of years, but I might be mistaken on that.
She definitely spent time with therapists, but she also mentioned that she got to choose between juvie and boarding school, where she was sent for five years.
So since Sal didn’t go to juvie, I’m thinking the timeline is Arrest > Court mandated therapy for a few months > Boarding School. I’m woefully ignorant on the matter of juvenile crime, so I don’t know if this is something that Sal could avoid for performing a robbery and hostage taking with a deadly weapon, and it was just her parents who sent her, or if being sent to a boarding school was her legal punishment.
Juvenile justice (at least in the state in which I have some experience) strives to be restorative rather than punitive. You’re not necessarily going to be locked into a detention facility if you’re tried as a minor. You’re going to be talking with a social worker, checking in regularly and there’s going to be an assessment and hearing as to what the best disposition of a given case is. There are a number of ways that could go…probation. Ankle bracelet tracking. Mandatory therapy. Commitment to a group home. Commitment to a ‘school’ style placement. Obviously socio-economic background plays a role here…your parents are middle class, involved and have the money to ship you off to military school? Ditto for whether this is a first offense.
Boarding school might have been a placement…or it might have been a decision on her parents’ part. It’s really not clear.
She’s got a record. She’s had bad experiences with therapists. I don’t remember any actual mention of juvie.
I wonder if some kind of deal was struck that got Sal out of actual jail time and let Amber off the hook for stabbing her? Possibly including getting Sal out of area to boarding school.
It always seemed really weird to me that the boarding school was apparently full year. At the start it seemed like Walky hadn’t seen her in years.
That’s possible, considering her family is rich and probably has a lot of connections. I guess, I was just assuming juvie, because I don’t see how you don’t at least spend a little time there for a crime involving a deadly weapon, but I’ll definitely admit, I don’t know anything about juvie crime either.
In Canada, it strives to be restorative and rehabilitative rather than punitive. With the exception of violent crime, juvenile offenders pretty much never do time, and tend to get probation or community service, orders of therapy, etc, instead.
(In some cases, non-violent crime by a repeat offender may see time in juvie if the kid is seriously endangering people with their crime – like the case of a kid who had a habit of stealing cars and going on joyrides with them, and who had put a bunch of people in hospital when he inevitably crashed said cars who hit the news here a few years back, but the vast majority of the time, a young offender does not do time for anything short of a violent offence, and even violent offenses do not always get time automatically).
Additionally, and this is somewhere Canada differs from the US, young offenders’ names here are protected by a publication ban, and your record is wiped clean at 18 or when you finish your most recent sentence, whichever comes later. Automatically. Kids get a clean slate to start-over with once they hit adulthood. Full stop, no exceptions.
The idea being that if you, say, broke into a house and stole stuff at 12, or if you had a really bad temper at 16 and have a few assaults on your record, or even if you were part of a gang and got into organized crime shit for a few years, but you’ve genuinely turned your life around and are trying to make something good of it, your past should not be haunting your job prospects at 30. People grow and change a lot during the teen years, and the clean slate is based on the belief that it’s unfair to have someone who is trying to turn themself around be haunted by stuff they did before they were done puberty. There’s some debate here about it, and it can get heated. Some people I know believe strongly in the power of social disapproval to dissuade someone from bad behavior and think names should be published and records should follow people forever, while I as someone whose extended family tends toward checkered teenaged behavior records see it from the side of “a lot of people close to me would not be able to have their current successful, happy lives if what they did at 12 or 13 came up on a criminal record search, and until we as a society accept that rehabilitation is possible and that what someone did as a preteen has very little bearing on the person they are in their late 20s, it would be inhumane to insist teenaged records follow people around in adulthood.”
I should also note: Personally, I think that once you’re done your parole or what have you, that should be it and it should be gone from your record in a criminal record check. Because otherwise, we’re punishing people looong past when the law says they’ve paid in full for the crime. It is hard to get a job with a criminal record, and how the hell does it make sense, if we’re ostensibly trying to help people be rehabilitated and become successful, to gut their chances of finding work?
Buuutyeah. Canada tends toward leftist politics relative to the US, but we’re not that leftist, so most people tend to laugh in my face when I express that opinion.
Actually, I was just now, here in Ukraine, getting a criminal record paper for applying to a job, and the paper I got in the police said that I had no ‘pending’ criminal record. I don’t remember the exact wording, and I mean it was in Ukrainian anyway, but it very clearly implied that if I had served jail time in the past it wouldn’t be on that piece of paper any more than it was now, with me clean as a freshly washed window.
It struck me as nice.
I don’t think everyone’s giving Sal enough credit. I think out of all the main characters- Sal is one of the least we know about. We know she got in some trouble, has problems with her parents, and Marcie has been with her through it all. We’ve yet to see her fight anyone and at most has given anyone a severe tongue lashing. Marcie is always by her side giving her the voice f reason to not be violent.
I bring this up because while we all know AG is a force for good- it is also an escape from the anger, fear, and the violence within her she can’t deal with as Amber. We only saw her lose it with her father. But if you remember the images in red she saw while beating her father were of Sal. Every time she sees sal she sees the red. Now I’m not going to say what that means but every time Sal is there she does she reach for the mask.
Sal can’t know the reason for Amber’s actions. But I do think she’s spot on when she says she knows the reason why AG exists. Now I’m speculating here but I think that reason for both of them is: being helpless. Amber was helpless in trying to protect her mom from her dad. And what was the birth of AG- helpless in trying to protect her best friend. I think Sal’s helplessness came more from dealing with her parents though I can’t get the exact situation around that.
Point is that the feeling she had then pushes her to prove that she’s not helpless. That she can do anything. And there is danger in putting other’s at risk from proving that- which is Sal’s main concern. Remember Sal threatened someone’s life to rob a store and who knows who else was caught in her streak of trouble. There’s a bigger risk to herself- which Sal’s experienced and see’s that end for AmaziGirl too.
Ever since seeing Sal and her Dad again it’s bringing those emotions back and she’s slowly been getting angrier. We saw her slip a nasty word to Danny and sure that’s minor to what she could do- it stands that it’s not something she can control seeing hr reaction after she said it. We know Amber is unstable and we don’t like to think she would or could do something to endanger someone’s life while trying to prove something- we don’t know. On top of that- it’s more likely Amber will hurt herself beyond repair and that’s the thing that will be inevitable if she doesn’t get help.
“We’ve yet to see her fight anyone and at most has given anyone a severe tongue lashing. Marcie is always by her side giving her the voice f reason to not be violent.”
I’d somewhat disagree with this. Since coming to DoA, she’s been involved in at least two (admittedly short and aborted) fights that I can remember.
First one was when she grabbed Ruth (for being Ruth) hard. Hard enough to make it a violent action (at least in my opinion). And Walky was the one to stop her from really giving it to Ruth when Ruth elbowed her. Still ends it with basically throwing Ruth away in a way that makes Ruth fall down. Still pretty violent.
And then there was the interaction with Malaya, Sal’s main blind spot in her otherwise very smart and perceptive brain. Admittedly it was Malaya who started using her hands, but the things Sal told her was… Well, I for one would call it “verbal violence”. She was being downright horrible. Doesn’t matter that Malaya’s quite a jerk herself; Sal stepped over some serious lines that night.
And I say this knowing that I have done similar things myself in the past. I know that certain people are my blind spots, that I would probably never be able to have a conversation with without insulting them over and over. And that of course, would frankly make me the bigger jerk in that particular situation. Good thing I do not have to interact with any of these people, especially offline.
I suppose you can look at those things that way.
But those interactions were at most slight altercations.
A fight- a real fight where blows are exchanged- a real fight that we’ve seen Amber get involved in [her dad did put up something of a fight but it looked as though she very much overwhelmed him]- that we haven’t.
Just so sad that the DoA world is full of idiotic adults. Are there no responsible adults around who could have helped with the Becky situation? It is strange that it escalated to the extent that it did without any of the adults around doing anything about it.
But yeah Danny, no matter how much in the right Amazi-girl was about her almost reckless actions, the fact of the matter is that she could have died. I hope you realize that at some point.
Oh, he’s starting to.
That’s a look of shock there, not “This is so cool!”.
“Because despite all attempts I have yet to develop mind control powers. If you happen to punch yourself in the face, though, you can take that as a sign that I have finally managed it.”
Gotta admit, when I first read Sal’s lines in the last panel, my first thought was “Oh Shit, has Sal already recognized Amazigirl as Amber?”
She obviously doesn’t recognize Amber as the girl who’s best friend she held hostage, she only barely recognizes Ethan & doesn’t know where from. But if she recognizes Amazigirl as Amber, it would make for an interesting confrontation…
*Sal walks down the path towards her motorbike when Amazigirl jumps down from a tree*
*gravelly voice* “HALT, evil-doer…”
“Urgh, now what…”
*Voice* “We still haven’t finished our ‘talk’ about underage drinking…”
“Oh come on, your boyfriend was drinking at that party before I left, AND I helped you with your laundry in the hallway…”
*Voice* “Yes, I’ve spoken to him-wait what did you say?”
“Remember, in the hallway, you dropped your laundry & I picked it up for you?”
*Voice unsteady* “That wasn’t me-I mean I don’t know what you’re talking about…”
Can we get Danny’s expression in panel 6 as a gravatar?
…Stopped her *how*?
He’s her boyfriend, he’s not the boss of her. Someone up-thread said he could call the cops but what would he say?
“Officer, this woman saved me from an assault and then later saved me from a hostage-ish situation! Yes, I am admitting I withheld information on that man’s assault. Now arrest her!”
I guess we’ll find out soon what Sal thinks Danny should have done, but I can’t think of anything that would actually work.
Also, why does Sal think Danny knows that Amazigirl needs to be stopped in the first place?
She probably figures that Amazi-Girl is obviously a weird, violent wreck, and that everybody who would spend time with her would come to the same conclusion.
Sal’s interactions with Amazi-Girl have all been terrible. She’s right to be skeptical.
everybody who would spend time with her would come to the same conclusion.
That would make sense if Amazigirl had not had a positive interview published in the school paper. It wasn’t just an article; Amazigirl say down and talked with someone and they didn’t get the impression that she was a weird, violent wreck. So it doesn’t make sense for her to think that anyone who’s been around her to get that impression. She already knows that’s not true.
I’m just wondering if she’s assuming he’s seen her go off or if she thinks Amazigirl actually admits to picking fights or if she thinks that Amazigirl is like this even when she isn’t in costume or…what, I don’t know.
I am not saying she shouldn’t be skeptical. I just think, “Do you know she goes around harasing people and picking fights” would have been first.
Sal’s the only main character who’s seen Amazi-Girl at her most genuinely terrible. Otherwise she’s got Dina and Becky praising her for the car chase rescue, Dorothy swooning about how she’s an inspiration, Danny thinking she’s just the greatest, and the entire girls dorm talking about how she’s awesome.
Danny’s just the first person Sal’s actually talked to about Amazi-Girl. I’d say it’s almost a certainty that she brings up how she tried to beat the hell out of Sal and her friends for drinking in a parking lot, probably the car chase too.
Oh, she’ll probably bring up some of AG’s more problematic sides.
But RP’s first question was how could she know that -Danny- thinks she needs to be stopped (as of the moment of this strip). And the short answer is, he doesn’t. Maybe… In fact, probably, he should have known, but he doesn’t.
What Sal’s about to tell him may change this. Or maybe not. He’ll probably get defensive about AG and try to convince Sal how amazing she is.
Well, I’m not too sure about that last part. He’s definitely going to defend her, he did as much with Dorothy when she tried to pry some info out of him, but given how he’s recently learned that Amazi-Girl is not as cool and romantic as he thought, I imagine Sal telling Danny that she tried to beat her and her friends up and mentioning the car chase, how Amazi-Girl was reckless and would have died if it wasn’t for Sal, will be enough to at least start tipping him over.
Bishounen Danny requires bubbles!
I make bubbles!
I know it’s not particularly important, but second-to-last panel Danny is weirdly cute.
It’s his pretty, pretty eyelashes.
There is an answer to that question, Sally. Now go ahead and ask if that answer is any of your business.
Amber wanted to beat her up. Of course it is.
Maybe because Sal knows that Amazigirl is a danger to herself and others? I mean, besides the fact that she keeps trying to beat up Sal and Sal has no idea why, she also almost got everybody killed in a car crash when she went to save Becky. Sure, it all worked out in the end, but that was mainly due to luck. Amazigirl could easily end up killing somebody someday, and Sal is worried about that.
Wait…DOES SAL KNOW??