Well, as far as we know, Sal was only at the rally to hang out with and talk to Marcie (except that Marcie was busy and it was difficult for her to get her hands free enough to respond to Sal. So Marcie was stuck there listening to Sal rant and unable to respond. I imagine that’d get annoying.) and then Amazi-girl tried to fight Sal while Marcie was right next to her.
In fact, the crowd of people that wanted to see a fight and were egging it on left an empty circle in the middle containing Amazi-Girl and Sal *and* Marcie. And Marcie didn’t appear to do anything to stop that fight.
(I’m trying to think of it from the point-of-view of a manager of a security company trying to deal with a political rally that ended up with the assault of several university students. An event in which a reasonable solution might be to find an excuse to fire someone just so you can tell your client that you’ve taken care of the problem.)
Not just students but volunteers with the campaign running the space, not to mention “antagonizing”* the rally attendees.
Yeah, I definitely see Marcie and Sal being thrown directly under the bus in order to distract from the main security officers refusing to intervene because they wanted to watch the superhero fight and the general bad press and disaster of the event.
*Not really, but I’m going with the likely framing of the campaign and Marcie’s boss
Except Marcie held Sal back the entire time she was confronting AG and that didn’t end in a fight. AG then proceeded to get in a fight with Ryan and Sal stepped in when that went from a one on one fight to a grossly unfair ‘three guys holding her down while Ryan is about to knock her teeth in’.
After Amber stalked her – stalking is a violent crime, Sal is entitled to confront her and respond in kind. Not great timing for Marcie, no, but what Sal did constitutes self-defence.
I’m not addressing her employers, just the person above me’s comment. Even if her employer’s don’t know what happened, AB should have.
That said, I’m not sure how Marcie’s employers could say Sal ‘started a fight’. She yanked AG down (in self-defence, which Marcie can explain) sure, but then…nothing happened. They stood there yelling at each other, with Marcie holding her back (albeit not very well), and then Sal backed off (for unknown reasons assuming silent security footage, but that’s what Marcie’s there for – to fill in the blanks).
Even with Ryan and his bros, Sal pretty clearly did not begin that fight – Ryan did.
Assuming of course they didn’t just toss the ‘thug’ black girl under the bus and weren’t interested in hearing Marcie out, which is probably what happened.
Stalking is a violent crime — You mean that if I think you’re stalking me then in fear of my life I can pull out my registered handgun and turn around and start blasting away and it’s self-defence?
No, but you can take measures to defend yourself that are actually reasonable.
Sal had reason to believe AG was going to pounce on her and beat her up, since she literally had the drop on her, and had tried to do it before. The amount of force she used was justified.
Is that how it works in the US? Here in Italy there’s quite a bit of talk about rewriting the laws about self-defence because some perceive them to be too restrictive, which includes that you can’t claim self-defence if you initiated the violence, even if you did as a measure of self-defence.
For example, I can’t beat up a burglar who has sneaked in my home unless I am sure they mean harm to me – and this means they have to clearly threaten me or initiate violence.
Roughly, but the details of how that works varies wildly from state to state. And even within states, the way it’s enforced can depend far too much on who was defending themself, rather than on how reasonable it was for them to feel threatened, and how reasonable / proportionate their response was.
Some states are smart, and lay out specific requirements, but many states only specify that it must be ”reasonable”.
Except stalking is already a violent crime, entitling Sal to respond in kind. Even if stalking wasn’t inherently violent, AG has very obviously been looking for reasons to attack her, and tries to goad her to fight every chance she gets. Sal KNOWS AG is stalking her with the intention of getting in a fight. So does Marcie. Again, self-defence.
Laws vary from state to state, right now, the big back and forth among law makers is about whether you need to try to get away before you can claim that you were defending yourself. Like Italy, most states in the US expect people to call the police for a non-violent burglar or stalker, particularly in places where the police can get there quickly.
In rural Alaska or Texas, many people live more than an hour from the nearest police station, so the laws often allow for people to handle problems themselves. I don’t know as those loose approaches apply to the college town where this fight was, they obviously have the ability to get police onto campus promptly.
I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of either of these ladies legally. Defending that behavior is probably possible, but lawyers who are good at court room explanations are expensive. Also, the presence of security affects things. Would anyone be able to claim that they expected to be gravely harmed, when there was a security officer right there to stop the fight?
For a non-violent stalker, great, except Sal knows for a fact AG is not a non-violent stalker. For that matter, so does Marcie. And Sal is legally entitled to confront her stalker.
No, no you couldn’t. Force begets force, not lethal force. Sal was not trying to kill AG. She threw her out of the place where she had the drop on her and confronted her, which she is legally entitled to do. Much the same way she’d be entitled to block a punch and then punch back to get her to stop had AG tried to punch her.
The law might have a few things to say about this too – “violent” doesn’t mean “lethal force”. Violence begets violence, sure. Lethal force begets lethal force. For that to fly you have to be reasonably fearful for your life. AG has no weapon, nor does Sal have any reason to believe she had a weapon, nor has AG ever expressed a desire to do anything but hurt (hurt, not kill) her. Also, Sal is black and therefore tends to be judged more harshly, so no, practically, legally, and ethically speaking, she could not have justified shooting AG.
Nnnn. With stalking, the threat of violence, in a vacuum, can easily be lethal, and you can’t reasonably be expected to know – and in the states, taht pretty much always means you can be lethally violent in self defense. The only reason we have to think it won’t be lethal is that it’s Amazi-girl doing the stalking. But she could have changed her mind (And was certainly in a much darker place wrt Sal than she was before, so I’m not even entirely sure it was off the table) – because Sal can’t know it wasn’t lethal here, she probably can legally respond to lethal force.
You know, before we get the actual execution of the law mixed up and then it’s a black criminal shooting a misguided but ultimately innocent white girl. I mean, christ, we’re omniscient viewers who loudly profess to be against racism and we still have bullshit like Clif’s comment here.
That’s true, and stalking often does cause fear for one’s life precisely because it’s hard to know what they’ll do. Lethal force (or fear thereof) does beget lethal force.
I actually feel there’s a duty to retreat, but the problem with that is it’s predicated on retreat not endangering you – and Sal can’t count on authorities to help. It’s not helped by the fact that theoretically attentive authorities would, on average, also be using lethal force.
The fact that your weapon is far more likely to injure or kill someone in a domestic dispute or accident than in any form of self-defense that even the US’s extremely permissive self-defense laws would call justified, means I can’t see any good reason to own a handgun – given that you are more likely to harm someone who hasn’t done anything than a threat to your safety, owning it strikes me as grossly negligent at best. Combined with the fact that easy civilian access of firearms means it’s cheap and easy for criminals to obtain them, and that ownership of a firearm is pretty much concordant with arguing that you SHOULD totally be allowed to have that firearm and that firearms are actually useful, it strikes me as unethical.
Hunting weapons can be different, particularly with stringent storage requirements, and even if I thought hunting shouldn’t be permissible for the general public as a leisure activity (I’m from a place where it actually was needed to cull a population sometimes, so I’m pretty okay with it as a leisure activity just so that there’s folks available for when it is needed), there are some people who legitimately need to deal with dangerous animals as part of their job. It’s not that big a deal in most states, but sometimes, it is, and there are other places /not/ in the USA where it comes up.
Nothing you said remotely connects to whether it’s right or wrong to own a firearm. It’s a bunch of tortured logic to get to a preordained conclusion.
With this and crying racism when there isn’t any, I’m starting to wonder if you’re actually the fabled straw liberal that all the conservatives are afraid of. The one that makes all the rest of us look bad.
“A thing you’re doing is probably going to cause harm” rather directly correlates to whether it’s right or wrong to do the thing. It’s not the whole story, but if you /are/ going to cause harm, there needs to be a justification. And boy howdy am I doubtful you can provide a satisfactory one for this. Especially not to a pacifist, but frankly, I doubt you can provide one satisfactory to the rest of the developed world either.
As to ‘crying racism where there isn’t any’, are you a jackass? The primary place it’s come up lately in the comment section is:
1) the comment section’s reactions to characters
2) the fact that Amber unfairly enforces the law on Sal
Now, I know you haven’t really been /reading/ anything I said if you think 2 is ‘crying racism where there isn’t any’, because I quite pointedly don’t talk about amber’s heart of hearts. I don’t talk about her intentions. I talk about her /effects/. What she /does/ and says has been primarily racist towards Sal, even given that her motivation has nothing to do with racism. I know white people struggle with this, but your intentions don’t really factor into anything that much. Or, to borrow a phrase I feel reasonably confident a fundie White Person is familiar with, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
as far as 1), that’s pretty uncontroversial. Willis has been saying it for literal years, even. Usually some variant of “it’s so weird how much angrier non-white character X gets people than white character Y for doing the same thing” (Malaya and Mike being the most archetypal example.)
Ooo, I think the other funny one that you, specifically, denied was the racism inherent towards the jewish people when y’all talk about how Iesos was their messiah. I think they know their holy books and concepts better than you, dude; there is a reason he isn’t one.
I think it’s pretty dangerous to own a weapon. And a lot of pro gun people assume absolutely everyone who owns a gun are responsible owners. But the thing is, they’re responsible until they’re not – and in any confrontation where a gun is involved, escalation I’d think would be more likely, just by virtue of the lethal option being there.
I’m not saying no private citizen has ever benefitted from owning a gun for self defense, but it seems like there is more violence than protection, given that many of perpetrators – think of family murders and murders of of women by their abusers for example – ALSO tended to obtain their guns be LEGAL meanss, or by borrowing from someone else, etc. And not stealing or black market. If you can get a gun, so can the guy who wants one so he can steal or hurt you.
And the things people say they want defense from are events that don’t tend to happen that often, frankly. You’re more likely to get into a car accident or get an illness than be killed by an armed robber, but having a gun gives the illusion of control over the unpredictable.
And that’s assuming you even know how to react. Everyone thinks they’re Indiana Jones until they’re actually put in that situation.
Uh… the heck… why did you suddenly escalate this to shooting people?
Especially with the dark context we all know wherein any white man with a gun can shoot an unarmed black person and be found innocent even if they were stalking the kid before hand and where any black man with a legal to carry gun is blamed for his own murder when he uses said legal right to own a gun.
Also, um, stalkers are dangerous. They really are. Far too many rape or kill or severely injure the people they are stalking and that persistent terror acts as a low-level terrorism against freely living one’s life.
I’ve been stalked before and it severely curtails how free one can be in both online and offline spaces and means worrying that an attempt to get out and have fun is going to get you or a close person to you hurt.
And the road Amazi-girl was on… yeah, that could have been really bad if she let AG build up her escalation to justify “getting the drop on her” when Sal was all alone. Really, Sal confronting her here where AG could see herself reflected in the crowd was the only way that was going to de-escalate without one of them getting severely hurt.
Especially with the dark context we all know wherein any white man with a gun can shoot an unarmed black person and be found innocent even if they were stalking the kid before hand and where any black man with a legal to carry gun is blamed for his own murder when he uses said legal right to own a gun.”
The point of them was to point out white people are more likely to get away with crime, including violent crime, while black people are more likely to be murdered by law enforcement. The use of the word ‘any’ is hyperbolic, but it doesn’t change the original point, which you have either missed or are ignoring.
I’m really sorry, this came out really snappy and temperamental and you didn’t deserve that. I stand by my point that hyperbole doesn’t change whether a point (in this case, grossly unequal applications of the law) is valid, but I should have made my point better. My apologies.
Sal does not criticize others. She pretty much keeps to herself. She told AG to get her head out of her ass and stop blaming her past on everything and start living for today. That was after Sal saved her ass from being spread all over the road by Becky’s crazy damn father.
Sarah criticizes others when they step on her. Can’t blame her a bit.
Oh, of course. Their skin is different, so of course they must be perfect cinnamon rolls who never make stupid decisions like all those other silly people. It’s not as if the comic is called Dumbing of Age – oh wait.
I said, in no uncertain terms, and repeatedly, that Sal has probably betrayed an agreement with Sal, and that Marcie has every right to be angry. It’s not that Sal didn’t fuck up. It’s that the way she fucked up has nothing to do with y’all dragging her through the dirt. I’m not blind.
Look at the actual thing that spawned this thread. Sarah is being targetted and she’s neither in the comic, nor does she have any real connection to Sal besides a skin color, and we had someone reach like whoa.
So you know. Fuck off. There’s like, one person who maybe implied Sal was blameless.
Yeah, I noticed you’re acknowledging and analyzing why Marcie’s upset with Sal, but I was feeling a little snippy and I’m tired of people dismissing criticism as persecution, or saying that the “commentariat” you keep mentioning are holding a grudge against the black gals when Charles was just pointing out that neither of them takes criticism very well despite being pretty on-the-nail when dishing it out.
I felt a little sarcasm was warranted.
They really aren’t in similar situations. That’s kind of the thing. Look up – the original post is almost definitely a weird inside joke, or a typo. Phipps then decided to try to link them – on a thing they really aren’t linked by, nor is it even particularly true of them (Not in a way that isn’t true of basically everyone, anyway). Now, I don’t mind saying I misread him, but to pretend y’all don’t drag on these two constantly, wherein y’all is “A particularly loud plurality of the comments section”? That’s funny. At this point, nonsense is better assumed to be racist – especially when that nonsense is mocking someone who’s not white and isn’t even here or actually really related at all.
True friends are often the people who aren’t afraid to tell you to get your head out of your ass, or otherwise blunt but necessary things so you can improve yourself. The people who really don’t care that much will just watch you crash and burn, a la Napoleon’s advice.
Sarah doesn’t always restrict herself to those who cross her. Iirc, she was pretty catty and judgemental about Joyce spending time with Billie.
I’m extremely fond of her, but she’s not free of blame.
I mean, Billie is also a huge jerk though – she treats most of her friends like crap. If I were Joyces friend, I would advise her to quit tolerating that.
Funny, if I were Joyce’s friend, I would commend her for the patience and understanding she’s shown with her severely depressed friend.
Especially since Billie has gotten shouty and mean with Joyce all of one time, and it was pretty clear that – while very surprised – she did not take it personally.
Joyce is very patient, yes. And Billie needs support, that is obvious too. But being sick doesn’t give you the right to treat others like shit, and it’s not like Billie is only a little bit mean. That’s almost her natural state, even before the Ruth stuff came along, let’s be real.
I’m not saying she should be a lone and unsupported, but I am saying that if you habitually treat people like crap, no matter the reason, there’s a good chance at least one of those people is gonna think you’re a jerk which is not unreasonable at all. Even if you’re in a bad place, there are consequences to your actions. I say this from experience of being the person on the other end of a very sick person’s shitty behaviour.
Yes, thank fucking goodness we’re not letting any of the mentally ill skate by without someone angrily pointing out how their mental illness puts a strain on their relationships as if this was something they were doing on purpose, and not because they badly need therapy and help to learn to manage their problems.
It’s weird af that Billie and Joyce is the hill to die on here. Like, Joyce’s relationship with Billie is either her second or third best, as far as the two of them being kind to each other. Friend of Dorothy or not (heh.), she’s been a much bigger bastard towards Dotty than either Dotty or Billie has been towards her.
She stepped on a mine w/ Billie, but that’s seriously /it/.
At a Christmas party with many deaf persons in attendance, I reached over and offered hand sanitizer to the one that continuously making lewd jokes. He didn’t get it, but once it was explained (“wash ones mouth out with soap” idea), they either humored or thought it very clever.
They’ve been friends for at least 10 years, there’s no way it’s their first fight. Maybe their first adult fight. Not to say that their kid-fights weren’t probably intense and meaningful, based on the flashbacks a while back.
Hmmm. I know I certainly would’ve mentioned to my best friend if some weird wannabe superhero girl was stalking me, but then Sal is a lot less chatty than I am.
The thing between Sal and AG didn’t end up being a fight, though, and Marcie was there when AG was stalking Sal and attacked them earlier, as well as when she showed up at the rally.
But Marcie didn’t see anything that happened with Ryan, though.
I definitely think this is more about the second fight rather than the first. The first being much less of an actual fight and only sort of a confrontation. Even if Sal was in the right in both cases, she certainly didn’t do Marcie any favors by being involved.
Marcie knwos enough facts that she could arrive at the correct conclusion, but many people don’t think of anything but the first swing as starting the fight – which was Sal, even if Amber was threatening her with violence.
What Sal did is a textbook definition of self-defense. She’s the target of a violent crime (stalking), – not only is she being stalked, but it’s by someone who has made explicit threats of violence in the past (assault). Even if, outside of context, the stalking weren’t a violent crime (and it carries with it an implicit fear of violence, so it’s considered, rightfully, to /be/ a violent crime), it would /still/ be violent here.
In response to a threat of violence, Sal responds with non-lethal force in a confrontation – at a time of her choosing, but still in the middle of the violent crime against her (pretty hard not to confront a stalker while they’re stalking you, tbh). It’s true that she ‘threw the first punch’, metaphorically, just as last time. But like last time, this is after Amazi-girl has, in both legal and ethical terms, ACTUALLY started the fight (Last time through assault, this time through stalking).
Seriously. Even if that throw was supposed to be as violent as it would’ve been in real life (and it wasn’t, she would’ve had more than the wind knocked out of her), Sal deescalated from that point.
If she’d wanted to, she could’ve pummeled the crap out of AG while she was still dazed. Instead, having gotten AG out of a position where she could have literally jumped her, Sal demands answers.
Even AG couldn’t convince herself she wouldn’t have been the aggressor if she’d thrown a punch at that point, and she really wanted Sal to be the violent one.
I agree with you Lailah, but I’m willing to bet that Marcie’s boss(es) watched soundless security camera footage of the events inside, saw Sal make the first punch, and since they likely had already mentally labeled her a “thug”, decided from that that Sal started the fight.
Add to that the fact that before the fight Sal had just been standing there talking to Marcie and that she likely wouldn’t have been there if not for Marcie, and it’s not at all inconceivable that Marcie’s bosses would blame her.
It doesn’t matter if it was self-defense…the combination of Sal’s skin color, the skin color of the guys she was defending against, and the ideology of the crowd means that it’s considered to be Sal’s fault, and it wasn’t a secret that Marcie’s the only reason that Sal was there.
It most likely doesn’t really matter if Sal is legally or morally in the right in the context of Marcie’s employers, though. As far as they’re concerned the friend of their trainee appeared to start a fight. With management the truth is often less relevant than it should be.
I’m not even sure Sal’s presence is important to Marcy getting fired. Ignore the logistics of how the fight started for a minute: Security said, in no uncertain terms, to the right-hand woman of their client, that they would do nothing to prevent the Free Interns from being trashed. True, Marcy didn’t say that, but I guarantee Frieda or one of her subordinates gave them an earful. That guy might also be fired. But Marcie is a trainee – that means she probably had room for exactly no fuckups, and there was a fuckup. So she’s probably gone for that reason. I don’t think they saw security footage, and I doubt Frieda knows the YBF who ‘started’ the fight (according to one of her interns) and Marcie are friends.
Yes, stalking is a violent crime.
Sal responded in a reasonable manner, from our perspective, as we know about the stalking issue.
Her response was proportionate.
A good example of a disproportionate response is calling somebody a motherfucker for their fairly reasonable comment. Please just educate them on the matter instead of insulting them first, because being mean makes people sad, and insults before explanations make people unwilling to listen to you and learn your point.
Nah, I’m gonna go with “swearing is a proportionate response to perpetuating, even inadvertently, racist jackassery.”
Also, ‘a fairly reasonable comment’? On what planet? It’s a statement that is blatantly false – one the narrative made no bones of disproving. Amazi-girl has clearly done wrong – you could try to argue it wasn’t violent (and therefore doesn’t merit violence), but given her past actions, and her trajectory on the book’s arc, and her immediate actions after being found, you would be hard-pressed to actually do so successfully – notwithstanding that the crime is inherently violent because your target does not know your intentions.
as far as ‘please educate, don’t insult’, no. I am, in fact, not being paid to put someone else’s feelings ahead of my own, nor do I see any real benefit in doing so. I will not, in fact, be /nice/ when people are perpetuating racist bullshit exonerating the white girl (whom the narrative has spared no effort to demonstrate is in the wrong – it’s not often you have a mob echo your internal violent monologue) while castigating the black girl. Ignorance is a poor excuse when the writing makes it so clear what’s happening. I may not be particularly mean, but I will not intentionally go out of my way to be kinder than is earned – and again, swearing is an extremely proportionate response to racism.
As far as “people only listen to niceness :)”, I will only say “that’s extremely untrue in my experience.”
I’ve been reading it as one-sided dependency. Marcie might have been dependent upon Sal when they were younger, but she presents herself as pretty put together now. Plus she’d been trying to get Sal to be less dependent upon her recently.
I mean, I could’ve missed something… heck, I’m tempted to archive-binge to find out if I did.
I think so also.
Marcie and Sal met when Sal beat up a bully who hurt Marcie in the school yard. She didn’t do it until the teacher brushed the incident off because Marcie was a poor kid and Sal black.
They’ve been best friends since. Then Marcie got the hots for Malaya (I think). Sal got jealous of them. Then when she realized that Marcie was serious, she backed off to give them space.
After the AG collision, Sal has been considering that maybe she should try for a friend herself, and said ‘look at me, making friends’ after she and AG parted.
Also, she is trying to talk to Billie too.
But, I don’t think Sal has ever been dependent on anyone.
Just to clarify, I was saying Marcie seemed independent. Sal seems rebelious, sure, but much like Becky’s smile, it seems to me like it’s more for the benefit of others.
A sort of: “Hey, look at me on my motorcycle, I’m all confident and junk!” while also secretly going: “Hey, Marcie, you’re the only person I trust, am I doing this right?”
She’s still pretty stable, but every time Marcie seems further from her, she clings more tightly. What I’m trying to say is that, sure, Sal can fend for her self, but she depends heavily on her friendship with Marcie. It’s not always a bad thing, but recently it’s led to Sal stomping all over every other part of Marcie’s life.
Nah, she was in a uniform. It wasn’t a one-night gig. I mean, it was as far as the company is concerned, but it was a shot at a steady job for Marcie. Was being the likely correct verb tense.
I used to straighten my hair. It was terrible to keep hydrated. I now have natural hair style. It’s now terrible to find a product that keeps it hydrated. I’m thinking of getting it blown out, leaving it like that for a while, and chopping it off and starting again, but it’s difficult to find a *good* salon that will accept less than an arm and a leg.
I have no idea about what you like in an hairstyle, but if you are willing to go for it, just straight shaving your head and going “bald” for a while might be the cheapest option you.
oh boy, the “piece of shit” part worries me; that’s usually an insult I reserve for people I don’t care about, if I fight with my friends that doesn’t get thrown around.
Technically Sal threw Amazi-girl down, which started a commotion but not a fight.
The real fight began when Amazi-girl confronted Ryan, did Marcie see that?
Also, even if the AG thing did turn into a fight, AG was stalking her. Stalking is a violent crime. Sal is entitled to confront her and, since stalking is violent, entitled to respond in kind. Legally speaking, Amazi-Girl started that confrontation.
But the world doesn’t revolve around Marcie. The question is whether or not what Sal did was right. It would be horrible of Marcie to expect Sal to put their friendship over doing what is right.
If I had any friend like that, that would be a friendship ending moment. Because that’s a “friend” who doesn’t understand right vs. wrong.
Ethically too, I’d point out. Pacifism is not about ignoring direct violence directed at you. But she’s likely fired and not really concerned with that kind of thing in the face of job loss.
I thought she was only working security as a one off thing? Granted, it probably made that one-off a lot harder, but security isn’t her primary income or even a regular secondary income.
I’d read ‘a quarter of the way’ to mean she was one-quarter through training, and just being conflated with a cop by Sal, rahter than like, Rent-a-cops counting as one-quarter cop.
Basically, everything that’s been said strongly implies she’s working multiple jobs. Security trainee is one (Assuming that’s being footed by the company, which seems unusual but definitely still plausible as a story device) and the other being retail stockgirl. If she finishes her training she’ll get paid more, and thus can drop her hours as a stock girl (possibly entirely), which is why she’s doing this.
Ahhh, I see. I thought that was meant as ‘security guard’ = about a quarter of an actual cop. If Marcie actually wanted to be a cop, that’d require at least a secondary school education and possibly also post-secondary. So I think being an actual cop is unlikely. Same with security guards – most places want at least secondary. That’s why I think it’s more likely to be a one-off or odd job type thing.
It does say a quarter “o[f] the way” to becoming a cop, which implies it’s part of a progression, I think. So most likely that she’s a quarter through with her training. The confusion is understandable, though.
That’d work for a security guard, yeah. Probably not for becoming a cop though, if that’s her actual end goal. Possibly, but I wouldn’t put a bet on it.
I think Sal was saying, “quarter of the way there” in the sense that security is an enforcement profession, like being a cop is an enforcer of the law who judges people’s lives. Security guards also have the power to judge people, become physically confrontational, and bar people from existing in areas on their own whims. As an extension of that, she’s referencing racist cops by indicating that Marcie is security at a racist rally. So basically, by supporting the rally, she’s supporting the racist ideals that a lot of cops have, thus she’s “almost there”.
I think it’s a little simpler than ‘supporting the rally’ and more just ‘trying to become a security guard’. The fact that she had to guard a woman who wanted to throw her out of the country (Note that I’m pretty confident Marcie is a citizen) just demonstrates the point that security is too much like cops.
and yes, I think she’s just trying to become security. Compared tot he absolute minimum wage, it pays a higher salary (and comes with training – afaik, that training is usually footed at /your/ cost, which is part of how that works, but it does transfer and is at least somewhat skilled labor).
Ah- I know Marcie just wants to be a security guard. We’re in agreement there. By working for a place like the deSanto campaign, she is implicitly supporting it, even if she doesn’t personally agree with the ideals. It’s like the Wells Fargo scandal – yeah, a lot of those employees were in a shitty position, but they still scammed millions of dollars out of millions of people collectively.
I guess a better way of saying my point would be that Sal is implying Marcie is selling out for her job. Not all cops are racist, but then again we don’t see too many of them coming out of the woodwork when something racist happens.
Not really – I’m more concerned about the lack of post-secondary if she wants to be a cop. If the end game was ‘security guard’ secondary will probably be fine.
There’s an implicit threat of violence and a reasonable fear of harm/murder entailed in it. This is especially true because stalking entails (From the 2005 Violence Against Women Act): “engaging in a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to A) Fear for his or her safety and/or the safety of others, B) Suffer substantial emotional distress.”
Another good definition is “The repeated and wilful following, watching, and harassing of another person”.
And even if there might be theoretical reason to doubt the law in general (and there isn’t), in this specific case, Amber (Well, Amazi-girl) was 100% waiting for Sal to do something nominally illegal so she could play vigilante.
Exactly – AG was stalking her for the express purpose of getting in a fight and SAL KNOWS THIS and more importantly SO DOES MARCIE. AG was not shy about picking fights the LAST time she stalked Sal.
Even before a stalker physically confronts their obsession, stalking is the violation of a citizen’s personal space, physical space, work, school, recreation spots, etc and their peace of mind. Some people have been stalked for years. In that way, it’s incredibly violating, can severely disrupt the quality of life and psychologically devastate an individual.
Forms of stalking include physically following the person around or being a peeping tom, installing cameras or hacking webcams, etc. A person can be stalked for a number of reasons. It can be a romantic obsession, a revenge fantasy obsession where the stalker seeks to “punish” their obsession. many people who escape abusive relationships are stalked by their abusers (and many are killed).
But the terrifying part about it the victim has no way of knowing whether or when the stalker will become physically violent or try to goad them into a confrontation, like AG has done to Sal before. So it’s especially unhelpful for victims when law enforcement don’t take it seriously unless the stalker basically tries to murder or attack them.
If you isolate the act on its own, especially because most people seem to focus on the non-physical aspects of stalking, (ie, watching from a distance), it can seem like not a particularly violent crime or not a big deal, but the important thing is the context, and frankly, a crime is a crime is a crime.
I wonder if stalking is not being considered such an awful thing by some young people today simply because they seem to have absolutely no sense of privacy. Their entire lives are out there on FB, Snapchat, and their cell phones. Keeping aspects of themselves out of the public eye is not so essential to many young ones today.
Just wondering if there is anything to this thought.
Thanks! I think there’s a lot to that. There are even underage people who think because someone asks for a selfie of any nature, even an explicit or sexual one, that they *have* to do it or tolerate the person spamming their lives with information. Privacy, as we know it in places where social media is prevalent and relevant, has really vanished. People don’t know what it is, and, I think SM has something to do with this, a lot of people seem to think they are entitled to “viewing” people’s lives at their own leisure in that way.
I think of the people who only watch the presidential debate if it’s “entertaining” or when semi-famous people die or have trouble, the fans are “owed” an explanation. Like, you realize this person doesn’t actually know you? And it has seeped into the workplace – an 8 hr schedule doesn’t exist anymore. Your boss can contact you whenever he wants. Don’t be SM friends with your co-workers, because anything you say can and will be used against you. You must exercise your right to a private profile and remain “silent”.
It’s like this weird inversion of reality where real, physical life becomes a virtual commodity to be accessed with levity at all times, like a TV show. Our attention spans are shorter. We’re overstimulated and try to relax by stimulating some more. If it’s not entertaining we won’t entertain it. The sense of reality vs make-believe or carefully tailored becomes very warped.
I think socialization on the internet has a very positive impact, like here we share and support each other. I actually feel safe on this website because I feel it’s more private than Facebook, for example. I and others can share things we wouldn’t share with others. I’m definitely not saying it’s completely worthless of value, but there are also downsides to it as well.
I mean, that’s possible. But if Marcie and Sal normally meet at that time and place (as the strip implies) my bet is on Marcie simply sending a text at approximately the time Sal normally gets to that location. And she knows Sal well enough to know that not only will Sal be there… She will also be wondering why Marcie isn’t there. Perfect.
And yes, mute not deaf. I just don’t think she is physically right there. She knows Sal well enough to pull a Gibb without any need to be within seeing or hearing distance.
Okay, I’m sure this fight is going to be very upsetting, but I’m sorry, Marcie’s too damn adorable for me to find her anger intimidating. It either makes me want to laugh or want to ‘aww’. A fatal mistake I’m sure, and she’s got every right to be pissed, but something about Marcie is too adorable to intimidate me. Something about her face, I think.
Amazi-Girl Started the fight and attracted the crowd. It’s not really terrible for Sal to react to her stalker confronting her. Sal didn’t run away, but if Marcie and the security were doing their jobs then both Sal and Amazi-Girl should have been escorted out before it escalated any further.
It really sucks to be totally new on the job and crazy shit happens, though. When you’re low on the totem pole, the higher ups can blame you for pretty much anything, and then you’ll be gone. So I understand that she’s mad because she might have to find another job now.
Maybe now in the future Marcie will set stronger boundaries with Sal. Fighting aside, it’s not really professional to have people you know hanging around while you’re working, as that alone can get you into hot water in many places.
I had a friend when I was in college who would invite me to hang out with her while she was working and I did because her boss was fine with it, but I made it clear to my friends that the type of job I had would be jeopardized if people were hanging around the office all willy nilly talking to me. Ironically, like in this case, I notice that the people who like to socialize too much on the job never seem to get a substantial amount of work done (ex. very talkative cashiers, secretaries who take long personal calls at their desks, etc.).
Oh, the second fight. Yeah, AG started that one, and I have no idea how Marcie could believe that – didn’t AG actually physically confront Ryan, yell at him, and THEN Sal got involved? Marcie was standing right there though. No matter which way, it’s kind of a failure on the part of security…
The narrative that Frieda probably sold involves a variant of “YBF started a fight that escalated at my rally and security did nothing.” And in fairness, the salient point for Frieda is completely true – Security did nothing while a fight happened. Pointedly, to her face, while her free interns were trashed.
At a guess, everyone was censured (at bare minimum), but as a trainee, Marcie was let go period. Marcie probably caught on from context at some point that the viglante was stalking Sal (what with /being there the last time/), but the whole mess ultimately started because Sal fought (back). And even if she doesn’t actually blame her for defending herself (Which I actually wouldn’t be particularly mad at, given that this cost her a job, and she’s on the margin as is), everything about those panels signalled an agreement between the two of them that Sal let’s marcie decide when she fights – because Sal /doesn’t/ make those decisions without getting other people hurt in the process – and Sal ultimately violated that.
I’m reading a LOT into her angry stare and the bits with Leland, but it seems the obvious narrative step. if it gets revealed now, I’ll be happy, since I called it at the stare or the day after (whenever I commented on the stare itself).
Regardless of the first part with AG/Sal, Sal actively chose to get involved in the second fight between Ryan and Co. and AG. It might have been a good thing for Sal to do, but it didn’t do Marcie any favors and Marcie absolutely has every reason to be mad about it even without factoring everything else in.
This is true. I just mean to say that the whole thing isn’t entirely Sal’s fault. Marcie and security co. failed in their role, which is to immediately nip things in the bud when trouble is brewing. I don’t think it’s Marcie’s fault the fight happened, I’m just wondering why no one on security thought to do anything about the situation at all, as there were many chances for that. And Marcie’s just a trainee anyway, and she wasn’t the only security there – it seems like someone higher up needs a scapegoat.
But tbh, given the face of sheer /anger/ Marcie has while Sal runs off to play vigilante, I think the genesis of her anger starts with an implicit agreement to let someone else play shoulder angel – an agreement that exists because /this/ stupid horse shit keeps happening, and keeps hurting the poor girl of the two.
Might not even be implicit – almost every time Sal gets fighting mad (here defined as ‘ready to start swinging’), Marcie talks her down (sometimes with Sal saying ‘okay you’re right, as always’). There’s very few exceptions to that.
4 out of 13 of those strips have Marcie not talking her down or otherwise stopping the fight. Only two scenarios actually result in her failing to talk Sal down (once with Leland which was years ago, and last night with Ryan).
I’m pretty sure Leland rendered Marcie mute (not intentionally, as such, but recklessly) in retaliation for Sal hitting him directly without ‘provocation’, despite Marcie yelling ‘no, stop!’ (or whatever it is she yelled, I’m not looking up exact wording). The trick with the theory is that I can’t figure out how to figure the robbery into it, and I feel like it sort of has to.
Not sure if this will appear in the right place but I suspect Sal tried to rob the store to get money to help Marcie pay for medical treatment to maybe NOT end up mute.
‘He hit her pretty hard so I hit him and he always held a grudge and when he got the chance he beat her and damaged her larynx so bad it would need time-sensitive surgery to fix and her family can’t afford it and my parents won’t pay for it even though it’s all my fault coz they didn’t want us to be friends and are pissed with me for not listening to them and I need to pay for it and I can’t afford it and I’m really REALLY desperate and freaking our here and I have to do something…’
I kinda figure this also played into her lenient sentencing – she did something bad (and stupid) but there were extenuating circumstances…
I think that Sal has the same primary character flaw as Walky, if you’ll hear me out: Neither of them is very good at considering how their actions are going to affect others in the short and long term (Walky is worse at it than Sal, yes – but Sal is still struggles with it). Both of them also have a tendency to not consider what other people feel about situations before they make choices concerning those other people. And unfortunately, I would not be surprised if, like Sal tends to get the fallout for Walky’s choices, Marcie is usually the one who tends to get fallout for Sal’s choices.
As one example: Sal beat up Leeland in plain sight (despite Marcie asking her not to). She was probably justified in doing so, but her actions resulted in Marcie getting banned from a playground where she had fun, as one example.
I imagine that Marcie is the one who makes Sal stop because Marcie is the one who gets authorities bellowing at her, “Why didn’t you stop her?!” and who gets punishment for literally just knowing a hothead.
I don’t think Marcie would go straight to “piece of shit” if this wasn’t an issue with history for the two of them. “What the fuck?!” sure. Asshole, maybe (where I live, piece of shit is stronger invective than asshole – YMMV by regional dialect). But piece of shit is an insult used by someone who has had it up to here with a certain aggravation and they’re not going to take it anymore.
Marcie is pissed.
And I don’t blame her. Especially since Marcie hasn’t been around to see most of AG’s harassment of Sal – and I don’t think Sal is the “confide in others” type, even to Marcie. We know Sal was justified in confronting AG – all Marcie knows is that Sal hip-tossed a popular vigilante across the room at a major-for-the-city political event, where Marcie’s job depended on her keeping the peace, when Marcie didn’t really want Sal there in the first place because she was trying to work. Given Marcie’s context here, I’m surprised she’s even talking to Sal.
@ ischemgeek – Marcie was banned from the playground before Sal hit Leland. That happened when she tried to report him, the ‘proper’ way to deal with it.
Also, Marcie may not have seen the fight post-Toedad, but she was there for their first confrontation, where AG made it very clear she was only interested in goading Sal into a fight and using the law as a pretext. She knows this stalking is not a one-off thing. Even if, for argument’s sake, she didn’t – Sal said clearly and loudly that AG had been stalking her all day long. Anything she did to AG falls under self-defence.
I don’t think Marcie was too upset about Sal hanging out with her before AG showed up – a little bit ‘oh god’ when Sal was being dickish about her new job, sure, but other than that she didn’t seem to mind. Whether she should’ve is up to discussion, but I don’t think she was annoyed Sal was there until the fight broke out.
Eh, I’m on Marcie’s side here. Sal refuses to ever think how her actions affect her friend and basically refuses to ever explain situations either. She expects 100% emotional availability from Marcie while giving nothing in return. It’s also a pattern because as soon as Marcie was thrown in the pit, Sal ended up strangling the kid the next day despite her friend’s obvious desire for her to let it go.
I’m with Raidah, sometimes you need to remove toxic people from your life.
I think Sal can be impulsive, which manifests itself as selfishness, but I disagree that she doesn’t *ever* explain or think about Marcie, which is an absolute.
I think the unhealthiness of their relationship is more mutual than you say.. for example, if the job is so important and Marcie really doesn’t want to screw it up, why let Sal come in the first place? It’s like partying the weekend before a big exam – why take the chance in the first place if you want to eliminate as many complications as possible? Honestly, it’s more than a little unprofessional, especially because she’s new and in training. When you are *training*, I’m assuming there should be no distractions whatsoever.
Additionally, I agree with you about Sal’s temper because she immediately threw AG on the ground instead of going to Marcie first. Although given the hostility of the crowd, I don’t know how that could have worked out.
I think their relationship is changing because previously they were inseparable, and now Marcie wants to differentiate herself and get her own jobs and her own life outside of Sal’s friendship, and Sal is not used to that. It’s strained because Sal is still relating to Marcie the way she did this whole time, since they were kids.
And Marcie’s changed, and Sal is reacting negatively to it because that’s always how they’ve interacted and Marcie changing will force her to change too. And now it seems like Marcie has to either force Sal to realize that or distance herself further.
We don’t know why Sal showed up- it’s possible that if Marcie mentioned working at the rally to Sal. she may have just assumed that Marcie wouldn’t mind her showing up.
Even if she shows up, turn her away and tell her to spend her time somewhere else. If Sal is a good friend, she will understand and leave and they can just hang later.
Could be, but I also think Marcie would tell her not to if it was actually against the rules, especially if this was important. As much as Sal’s been wanting to hang out, she seems to back off when Marcie tells her to.
I don’t agree with you assessment of the situation at all. Sal had every right to react against AG for the stalking. She did very well to help AG when she found out why she was chasing Ryan.
As to never thinking about Marcie: she beat the bully up to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. Maybe you aren’t aware of the fact that the only way to handle a bully is hit them back-its the only thing they understand. And no, I’m not interested in the poor little bully’s physic inner child.
As to never thinking about Marcie: you seem to be forgetting that Sal walked away when Marcie asked her too while Marcie was trying to bed Malaya.
And maybe you missed that conversation where Sal says she is there because Marcie asked her to be: its the only way they get to talk awhile as Marcie can’t on her other job.
The only ‘toxic’ person in your comment, imo, is Raidah. Who harassed the living shit out of Sarah when Sarah did what she thought was right. And actually was the right thing to do, it maybe saved her doper roomies life. While Raidah ignored her supposes BF dopers roomies problems.
Bull. Fucking. Shit. The whole entire reason she attacked the bully was because of Marcie. She was making sure that he would never think that was okay again. Thinking about Marcie and how it would affect her was her only motivation.
And it would have been horribly, horribly wrong for Sal to put saving face for her friend above doing what was right. She alone, out of everyone there, actually stepped in to keep Amazi-Girl from being beat up from a group of four people attacking her.
And not only are you now calling Sal toxic, you’re directly referencing someone else who did bullied someone else with that exact phrase. Towards someone we know did the right thing and is not remotely toxic.
When you’re quoting one of the villains of the comic as a moral standpost, you’ve gone way, way too far.
We do know of at least one instance Marcie was vulnerable and Sal stuck around to go through it with her – when Marcie lost her voice and the two of them learned ASL together.
Hoo boy, my mental processes just got a bit of a workout, trying to imagine a voice to go with Marcie’s text, and then realizing why that felt weird. Human-media interaction, I tell ya.
Willis tweeted a link to a thing where you put in your name and it tells you what kind of boss battle you would be, so I decided to do it with some of the characters. Here are most of them I tried (I didn’t copy them all like I thought I did). Feel free to think they took the test themselves…
*Note: Searching once and putting the name in a second time got me the same results so I didn’t submit until I found one I liked.
Joyce, the King of Boredom, spares the main character if they win the fight.
Sarah, the Legendary Death, is known for knocking inattentive players off the stage.
Sal, the Goddess of Lost Souls, waits menacingly on Floor 100 of the bonus dungeon.
Marcie, the Beast of Valor, waits menacingly on Floor 100 of the bonus dungeon.
Billie, the Soul born from Hunger, was infamously difficult due to a high learning curve.
Ruth, the Heart of Suffering, gives tank mains worldwide PTSD.
Amber, the Undying Cooking, is mentioned on “Which boss do you HATE?” discussions.
Amazi-Girl, the Eater of Oblivion, is gonna give the player a bad time.
Dorothy, the Dragon of Money, became unusually popular to the male audience.
Dina, the Master of Sleep, has lots of funny dialogue throughout the fight.
Becky, the Burning Heaven, becomes recruitable after their boss fight.
Mary, the Mourning Cuddles, is fought only if the player killed their friends
Jocelyne, the Savior of Innocence, drops a pretty mount… not that you’ll get it.
Walky, the Ancient Thunder, was the player’s close friend… but not anymore.
Mike, the Wielder of Flowers, is still undefeated to this very day.
Danny, the Daughter of the West, used to be much harder but got nerfed due to complaints.
Joe, the Iron Fist of Beer, makes healer mains cry.
Jacob, the Child of Fear, returned in the next game as a playable character
Jason, the Wielder of RNG, singlehandedly caused people to refund the game.
Galasso, the Ruler of Sex, becomes recruitable after their boss fight.
Monkey Master, the Master of Knights, was a pushover in the beta but got buffed.
And just because
Willis, the God of Boredom, has lots of funny dialogue throughout the fight.
“I claim the title sovereign lord of this ‘sex’ thing you keep mentioning! As its monarch, I order you to cease discussion of it and get back to work!”
There’s no way Marcie’s talking about the non-fight between Sal and Amazi-Girl, but people seem to be jumping at the chance to either blame Sal for picking fights (when she didn’t), or Marcie for her poor choice of company.
Sal started exactly zero fights. She protected herself from getting jumped by AG. Roughly, yes, but after pulling her down, she didn’t start throwing punches. Later, when she did get into an actual fight, it had already started, and she jumped in to stop Ryan and his goons from beating the crap out of AG in a room full of useless bystanders.
Sal and AG were fighting four interns for the DeSantos campaign, in a rally full of DeSantos supporters, which included a good number of bigots who’d been cheering for Sal to get beat up only a minute earlier.
Sal actually did nothing wrong that night. Marcie’s (no doubt former) employers don’t know that. Neither does Marcie. Sal and Amazi-Girl are the only ones who know that Ryan is a rapist. AG even tried to his boss about it, but Frieda immediately got defensive:
Yuuuup, almost guaranteed she’s talking about the interns. Even if Sal yanking AG down was considered wrong by her employers, Marcie undoubtedly heard Sal saying AG had been stalking her all day.
Yes, but I’m referring to this specific scenario. Even if Marcie didn’t know about this previously, she STILL would know this was the case because Sal made it very clear very loudly, and she had no reason to doubt Sal was telling the truth (and AG’s behaviour certainly seemed to corroborate it).
I’m also sure that Marcie witnessed the whole fight. She was holding Sal back at some point, a crowd gathered around them, and AG and Sal took off after Ryan.
Marcie saw none of the fight with Ryan. She was holding Sal back when it still looked she and AG might end up fighting.
When Ryan was spotted and AG went after him, Sal followed, and Marcie stayed at her post, doing her job. For she knew, it looked like things were cool and she could relax.
We see other security people later, but we don’t see Marcie again until the bros are down and Ryan has fled, when she pushes through the crowd to see what happened:
it actually looks to me like Marcie followed the two of them through the crowd. The motion lines imply that she was pushing through the crowd in time to see them run away. I stand by my point, though- this is a shitty one, but a political rally nonetheless. The proper thing for security to do would have been to escort Sal and AG out, regardless of whether it looked like it had died down. If it were a club, maybe, but since a congresswoman was there, any commotion should not be tolerated.
Even if Marcie understood why Sal got involved, her job and the jobs of her co-workers dictate that they get them out of there. So her job would have been to get backup and follow them, not assume that it got taken care of.
She clearly only just arrived there when we see her. The implication being that she heard none of AG and Sal’s conversation about Ryan, or saw how the fight started (Ryan taking a swing at AG), or why Sal got involved in it (rescuing AG).
Regardless of whether Marcie would have or should have been fired, my point was that if she’d known the full story, she wouldn’t be pissed at Sal.
Not that any of the non-trainees who responded to Marcie’s alert earlier did any more than she did, so I doubt she’d be the one sacked for not doing what the fully-trained guards weren’t doing either.
I concede that she just arrived now that I look closely, but I really doubt she didn’t hear the commotion they caused – a fight is really easy to hear.
I think she might have been angry at Sal anyway, because according to the flashbacks it usually happens like this. Something happens, Sal reacts to it, and Marcie in whatever way ends up cleaning up the mess/watching Sal be hurt by her actions. Marcie would definitely understand, but I can see her being pissed at Sal anyway, because she wants this dynamic from their childhood to stop.
I think she’s mad at herself for allowing Sal to tag along once again, she’s mad at Sal because their tired dynamic has happened for the nth time and now she has no job because of it, and she’s mad because she lost her job. She could feel that even if any of those reasons might be unfair.
The fully trained guards weren’t doing their job, but it was her post, Sal is her friend and wouldn’t have been there had she just told her to get lost for a while, and she was the one who was a trainee. Additionally, the client is “always right” – if Freida said she wanted Marcie to go, she would have been gone. In situations like this, the lowest on the totem pole are often the first to go because it takes the heat off of everyone else. It’s massively unfair, but that’s the way it works in a lot of places.
Quick note – Marcie does still have her job as a stock girl. Everything else is right, but it’s not true Marcie has no job now. A poorly paying one that isn’t enough (or at least would majorly benefit from a second income), yes, but she does still have a job.
I’m sorry, I know I point this little nitpick stuff out a lot. It’s not that I disagree with your overall post – it’s a good point – it’s just that little canon mistakes bug me and I like to try and point out what happened.
Marcie is absolutely right to be mad or at least has every right to be, but yeah, I don’t see why people are jumping so quickly to blame either Sal or Marcie for this.
I agree – Marcie definitely has the right to feel angry about losing her job. When I say above that Marcie shouldn’t invite Sal, I don’t mean don’t be friends with her, I mean there are times and places where you can’t have your friends around period, even if they’re quiet as church mice, simply because it’s considered unprofessional. I’m also playing devil’s advocate to the people analyzing their friendship.
Also, I mean that in the context of Marcie being mad at Sal in particular, or at least directing her anger at Sal for everything that happened (and i do think she means AG too, because that was the argument that drew the crowd and Ryan close enough for her to notice him at all in a sea of faces).
I think it’s all around shitty, especially because Marcie lot her job, and it also seems like Frieda chose to blame Sal and co. and choose Ryan over them…which doesn’t surprise me at all, because like FC mentioned, racist employers who think like that are always going to screw you over. It just happened to Marcie, almost comically sooner.
Marcie lost her job but I’m also pretty sure Frida’s not hiring that firm again (if they’re a private, any-job-we’ll-do type). So it’s probably not just Marcie’s money that got cost, but her boss’ money as well, which means that Marcie’s money is definitely getting cost.
Lessons learned all around, shitty lessons, but lessons nonetheless.
She’s right, based on what she knows. Even knowing the whole story, it’s still be understandable if some of her anger over unfairly losing her job ended up getting directed at Sal.
I think what FC means is, while Marcie’s anger is absolutely valid, she is missing some important context in the fight with Ryan that might (or might not) change her tune.
She’s allowed to be mad. But she called her “friend” a piece of shit. Unless that’s something between them, that’s really wrong. That’s like trying to end the friendship.
I’m kinda with Marcie on this one. Who knows how challenging it is for her to get another job? (IIRC: Marcie’s undocumented, with a disability that is relevant to many jobs, and possibly a GED or HS degree at best). She has to pay rent, you know!
I’m not sure how Sal could have deescalated either situation, but it didn’t seem to cross her mind to do so. She didn’t take it outside.
I really doubt Marcie is undocumented. Security is a gig that requires licensing (granted, possibly not in Indiana) and is often predisposed to the sort of people who’d love to actually throw the odd co-worker out who’s illegal. Her parents might be, but I’m pretty sure they have rock-solid proof that Marcie isn’t.
It helps that her other job appears to be ‘retail clerk’, which is a normal minimum wage job (and those absolutely check your documentation).
Marcie’s a stock room worker, not a clerk – think Ultra Car’s job from Shortpacked, as opposed to early Amber’s.
Otherwise, agreed. If that job wasn’t a one-off/odd job type thing, they’d definitely be looking for documentation. Sal also only mentioned her parents would be deported, not Marcie herself. Now granted, there are a bunch of racist programs that can get even legal immigrants deported (or at least threaten them with such) but Sal seems pretty confident Marcie herself is not threatened by it, which means she’s probably a US citizen.
My understanding from subtext is that Marcie’s parents are undocumented, but she was born in the US and is thus a US citizen.
But even still: She’s a disabled Latina without post-secondary education. It’s gotta be fucking hard to find work. Well-paying work is gonna be even harder, because most jobs that pay even half decently without post-secondary are hugely male dominated (like security) and are thus both hard to get as a woman and harder to keep as a woman. I worked security for two years. Conveniently, it was always the boob-havers who didn’t get hours when they were short on contracts. Fancy that. And if you don’t get hours, you need to find other work and you can’t move up. Also all the sexual harassment. Try being a 5’5″ 115lb 19YO female-coded person working on a shift when literally everyone else is a cis dude, most of whom are middle-aged cis white dudes. EVERYONE is assuming that if you do anything at all nicer than telling them to fuck off the moment they open their mouth around you, you want in their pants (and if you are a raging asshole, then you’re a crazy bongo who needs to be fired).
I do have some funny stories from that job though – like the time I talked down a high-on-something military guy from picking a fight with me and we bonded over hating paperwork.
They could be citizens, even native-born, and still be justified with MAGA Robin (as a proxy for the actual Donald Trump) trying to deport them. Granted, it doesn’t work as well with Representative Robin, even as a Trump Stand-in. The reason that’s scary is that the Executive actually /does/ have extremely broad powers in the prosecution of immigration, and Robin, carny-boobed or not, is only running for a seat as a Representative, not the presidency. The legislature has broad authority too, but not ‘a legislator’.
YUP. There’s quite a few racist programs that have gotten both legal immigrants and legal citizens threatened with, if not actually, deportation. Accidental (or ‘accidental’) deportations are a thing.
Punching Ryan in the face was the most right thing she’s ever done.
Even then, she did try to keep it from escalating, by trying to talk AG out of any “vigilante shit”, and then staying out of it herself when she wouldn’t listen.
She only jumped into that fight to defend AG, when the fight was about to turn into a viscous beating. Based on her timing, she must have been keeping an eye on the situation.
It may be hard on her to get another job. But she is blaming Sal when she knows that Sal didn’t do anything wrong. She doesn’t know about the rapist, but she does know that Sal only fought to defend someone else who was being hurt.
It’s as if she wanted Sal to let the girl get beaten up. If that’s Marcie’s response, then maybe security isn’t for her.
That’s the just the thing. Marcie doesn’t know that Sal didn’t do anything wrong.
From the incomplete / inaccurate picture of events Marcie has, it looks to her like Sal fell back into old behavior she was supposed to have quit years ago, so she’s mad as hell.
Hm, assuming she didn’t hear AG, that’s actually true, given that as far as she’s seen AG is a crazy stalker who starts fights w/ people. There’s no reason to assume Ryan started the fight if she wasn’t specifically paying attention.
There was a huge crowd between Marcie and Ryan that she only pushed through when Sal and AG were running off – she almost definitely doesn’t know what happened there, just that Sal was presumably involved in thrashing some interns for the campaign that hired her company.
I’m seeing a few comments here wondering how Marcie will get a job here and I just want to remind everyone she DOES have a regular job – she’s a stockroom worker. The security thing was either a one-off/odd job thing or training for a second one. Her stock room job isn’t a great one, no, but she’s not completely out of work.
Hence why I said she’s not completely out of work. I got the impression that the second job was a very new thing, but it’s likely she definitely needed the income either because it was a necessity for the things she needed (food, rent, etc.) or to provide breathing room/a little security (pun intended) while using stock to pay the bills.
Both in-universe and out, we see how easy it is to obfuscate facts and scapegoat Sal. We all know that Sal started zero fights yet so many people are saying they side with marcie as if anything that happened at the rally was truly Sal’s fault.
It’s funny to me, because I definitely see how to get kinda annoyed at Sal on Marcie’s behalf, and nobody else seems to have picked up on the ‘sub’text that Marcie is supposed to have a say in when Sal fights.
Marcy is signing her love in that phone pic it’s so cute and jarring but a teeny bit reassuring but also worrying that it will disappear as Sal continues to take her for granted.
Okay, I feel like an asshole just dropping that line here, so I’m just gonna note this is a reference to Shortpacked – http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=2186 and hope I didn’t come across as being a dick or disagreeing with Lipke when I don’t.
Haha, I don’t think anyone would have been stupid enough to think that, especially with the lil’ xD face and all.
Then again, there are some very stupid people on the internet…
Thank you for reminding me of that strip, by the by. 😀
Sometimes tone and intent don’t travel well through the internet, so I like to cover my bases. Especially when I only started commenting not even a few weeks ago, yikes.
It’s one of my favourites. Thought if nothing else people would get a laugh out of it.
In the boldest move possible, I’ll suggest they’re *both* right.
Sal did the right thing, preventing the “good guy” in a fight from being teamed up on and seriously hurt when she realized security wasn’t doing anything and intervention was her only option.
Marcie is right to be upset with Sal, because even though Sal did the right thing, what she did also came back to reflect negatively on Marcie on her first day in a presumably important new job.
I do not agree that something reflecting badly on Marcie makes her anger right. It’s understandable, but it’s not right.
Especially because of her response. Unless “piece of shit” is a sort of playful thing between them, that response was uncalled for. You do not call someone a piece of shit, garbage, trash, etc.
Sal sort of started it by grabbing Amazi-Girl’s cape and throwing her to the ground (there were sort of two fights, the first of which never went beyond Sal and Amazi-Girl shouting accusations at each other whilst the baying crowd egged them on).
^ No. AG stalking Sal is what started the fight. Legally and ethically, Sal is entitled to confront her stalker. Force begets force. Stalking is a violent crime, entitling Sal to respond in kind. Even if Marcie didn’t know this was a recurring thing (which she should, since she was there the first time), she would have heard Sal VERY LOUDLY say AG had been stalking her all day.
Except, again, for the fact she’s legally entitled to confront her stalker. And, again, another part of self defence law is ‘violence begets violence’ – since AG is committing a violent crime, Sal is entitled to use violence to get her to stop. The duty to retreat usually applies to the use of lethal force, which Sal was not using. It also does not apply to stand your ground states, of which Indiana is one.
Amazi-Girl started that confrontation by stalking Sal, but since that (fortunately) didn’t escalate into an actual fight, I was referring to the fight right after that between Amazi-Girl and Ryan and the Desanto supporter guys. Sal definitely did not start that fight, in fact she didn’t get involved until Amazi-Girl was having trouble.
Something tells me that Sal is going to have to practice a new skill – mortified and embarrassed apology – if she wants to talk to Marcie any time soon. What is more, she’s going to need to be good at it!
On Marcie’s side here, it looks like she got fired from her job here because of this and in the first place Sal shouldn’t have even been hanging around with her while she was working.
Sal might not have ‘started’ the fight, but she was still a clear part of it, she could’ve just told Marcie about Amazi-Girl stalking her and got her sent out the building via *security* instead of grabbing her instead and having a fight over it. Sal hasn’t felt threatened by AG at all really (unless I’ve missed something!) and just finds her stalking more weird than anything, so I can’t really see this as self-defence, more Sal wanting a fight/wanting AG to get out of her face all the time.
Probably not a good idea to start these things where your best mate works though.
I’m sorry that Sal wasn’t trembling sufficiently for you to allow her to defend herself, but guess what? She’s not required to.
AG had stalked and attacked her earlier, had demonstrated how she was harboring an irrational grudge when she got mad at Sal for saving her life, and was in a position where she could have hurt Sal very badly if she’d attacked again. It isn’t self defense only if you’re visibly frightened and panicking. It’s self-defense when you defend yourself (duh) from a perceived threat.
Sal had every reason to believe AG would attack her again, and that she might have even attacked if she’d simply been outed to the authorities.
It might have been possible to defuse the situation completely gently, but Sal’s actions were completely reasonable.
You are missing a very, very important part of self-defense law: the duty to retreat. At that point, Sal could have easily gotten away.
Fortunately, she didn’t actually fight Amazi-Girl–she just kept goading her into a fight, and AG did not accept. (I am treating the cape pulling event as a comic thing, as, in real life, it actually could have hurt her.) She only fought after Ryan started a fight, and was doing so to defend someone else, which is also actually self-defense.
Now, maybe you can argue she was morally justified (though I would not agree, as hurting people is a last resort action), but she legally was not.
It also typically refers to the use of lethal force, and it is not used in stand your ground states (Indiana is a stand your ground state), if my research is correct.
That’s not really a thing in American defense law, much less before non-lethal force. It’s been eroded beyond the point of uselessness. *I* care, but the law doesn’t seem to anymore.
It /is/ a thing elsewhere, and in some jurisdictions, and it is technically on the books (so expect to see it as a black person.)
But at any rate, the duty to retreat basically starts before LETHAL force. Not non-lethal. So inapplicable as a legal matter.
Unless it was about the second fight, in which case that was all AG’s doing! Though ofc Marcie will still blame her friend instead of the unknown stranger
Probably because Marcie’s boss blamed her and her friend who was obviously tied to the girl in the costume somehow, rather than the nice young men working for the campaign. And Marcie apparently didn’t see the start of the Ryan fight, so she can’t offer much of a defense.
So, Sal may have been morally and even legally justified in her actions, but Marie pays the price for them. Again.
Marcie’s boss probably blamed all of security who were at the incident – intervening in those sort of situations was the point of them being hired in the first place. Sal was totally justified in throwing AG to the ground, but I’m not sure she was LEGALLY justified in intervening in the AG/Dudebros fight (that depends on the Indiana laws concerning those situations). One might argue that AG was morally justified in going after Ryan (she certainly wasn’t legally justified), but since no-one told Marcie or her boss or pretty much anyone about WHY, I’m not really going to blame them for not seeing it that way.
That was totally legal for Sal unless Indiana is the blue unicorn that actually lets you respond to fighting words with violence (Fighting words can be censored by the state, but they don’t give you an actual justification for fighting except maybe in some individual state somewhere.) Even if Indiana strips the right to self-defense from AG for provoking a fight (not actually unreasonable in a vacuum, albeit uncommon as a rule and difficult to pull off in this specific instance in any case), that probably gets into very interesting waters for Sal, as she wasn’t colluding with AG, nor was she provoking the fuckboys. It’d become a question of very specific legal issues.
But in all probability, AG actually had her full right to self defense, even given that she intentionally provoked that fucking asshole. Everything I’ve said about VIOLENT crime sort of emphasizes the VIOLENT CRIME part for a reason. AG threatened Ryan with civil censure over what he’d done, and he responded with force – as it happens, you basically can’t do that. AG actually would have been defending herself – and therefore, Sal was acting in self-defense as well (Or well, defense of others).
I mean, that’s not what would happen in court, but those are the facts of the matter, easily gleaned by us as omniscient viewers. Sal is almost definitely in the clear at every step here, legally.
Some states will allow fighting words as a defence for fighting – as in, words that could reasonably cause someone to lose their temper and snap, causing a confrontation, either physical or verbal(for example, mocking someone for losing a parent to cancer or something). It probably won’t get you in the clear, but it’d mitigate your sentence. you might know it as provocation?
The whole situation is tricky based on the fact that Ryan is never going to be accused of anything without Joyce’s testimony (who has clearly said she just wants the whole thing to go away quietly). No judge is going to let “I was going to tell the world he’s a rapist” fly when no charges are going to be pressed against Ryan, let alone a conviction. Legally speaking, what you have right now is AG in the process of doxxing Ryan and him trying to stop her from doing so. I have no idea how doxxing stands on legal grounds, but that strikes me as a violation of the rights to your own image and the right to privacy right off the bat.
Doxxing requires her to release personal and identifying information, of which she had none. Not even a name. At worst, he could force her to delete the post and maybe get some money off her – bad, but she’s not going to jail for it in all likelihood. Also, while Joyce never reported him, AG has a few people who reported Ryan to her – Dorothy, Sarah, and Sal confirmed she knew of the incident. Dorothy even confirmed it was him. She has every reason to believe her information is true. You don’t need a conviction to say ‘hey, guys, this person may be dangerous, avoid him in this area’.
I’ve never heard of it, but I’m pretty sure ‘fighting words’ are basically dead letter at this point regardless. The only rock solid ones are ‘impugning the chastity of one’s mother’ (Scalia was a bastard, make no mistake, but when not being horrible, he was occasionally, if probably unintentionally, hilarious).
I wouldn’t be surprised at a state actually providing that as a justification for violence, b/c we really like fighting, tho, and in practical terms, I’m pretty sure ‘rapist’ would be considered fighting words (A bit moreso than I am ‘racist’, the pendulum hasn’t swung that far yet.). So if Indiana is one of those unicorns, then Sal is fucked (she probably shouldn’t be, b/c it’s not impugning the chastity of one’s mother, but)
Counterpoint: “Sal is fucked” is impugning the chastity of someone’s daughter. Does that count, or does it need to be a mother? Passing knowledge of Scalia indicates that it needs to be a WHITE mother/daughter, though.
…
Hold on. How do you impugn the chastity of someone’s MOTHER? If someone’s a mother (I’m assuming even suggesting to Scalia the existence of non-biological mothers would have made his head explode), wouldn’t lack of chastity be a foregone conclusion?
That your mother slept with your father is assumed – but having done so before marriage, or that she slept with someone else (EG ‘Your mother’s a whore) would still be on the table.
Like I said, it might be called something different. “Provocation” maybe. But it is a defence for assault. Usually it overlaps with what’s called hate speech but fighting words can also be applied to picking at sore spots. Either way, accusing someone of a crime wouldn’t qualify. It applies to words used to incite hatred and violence from someone – goading them into a fight basically or words that can tend to cause either a verbal or physical confrontation. A verbal confrontation might have been justified under that, but Ryan lost that when he took a swing at AG, who was not saying these things to get him to hit her (or at least could argue she wasn’t).
I should probably point out that I am Canadian and so most of my knowledge of criminal law/defences is Canadian. Fighting words were a thing in the US, but I’m not sure if they still are. It’s still on the books as a defence here (under provocation – it probably won’t get you off, but it will get you in less trouble).
Also, if he didn’t lose that ‘fighting words’ thing when he took a swing at her, he did when he got other people involved and had them hold her down and went to knock her out (or beat her really badly). That’s excessive, beyond ‘reasonably pissed’.
See, I’ve never seen provocation come close to a /defense/ to battery. I’ve seen it as a mitigating circumstance, and (in some jurisdictions) strip your right to self defense, but /never/ a justification for battery. ‘Fighting Words’ in particular, given the extra constitutional leeway to do something about them, probably have a state somewhere do it, but it’s got to be like, one. It’s rare enough to lose your right to self-defense for starting a fight with words. It just runs into the issue that it’s really hard to claim something is fighting words now, in theory (in practice, I’m still pretty sure rapist counts)
When I say ‘defence’ I don’t mean it will get you found not guilty (unless they were either supremely dickish or the ‘fight’ amounted to like, one punch or something that wasn’t very serious), but it will get you less of a sentence. It is hard to claim, but even if rapist did count, he went beyond it when he dragged in other people and had them hold her down so he could knock her teeth in. And AG, again, could argue she wasn’t trying to get him to take a swing.
@Lipke: I most certainly DO know what zoids are (were?). I had 5-6 of the things when I was a kid. I mean, they were Alien Dinosaur Zombies, you don’t get much cooler than that!
One would think Marcie would give her best friend the benefit of the doubt and give her a chance to explain. But I’m guessing getting fired doesn’t put one in the most reasonable of mental spaces.
More like “fired for not doing your job.” As security, I’m going to go on a limb here and say Marcie’s job description included either preventing fights from breaking out or stopping them when they did.
Seriouslyy, if anyone should have been fired, it should have been THIS useless asshole who blatantly said he was not going to do his job. Marcie seemed like she was posted at the door, what’s this jackass’ excuse? http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/paid-3/
It isn’t. He should’ve been fired right alongside Marcie (and perhaps he was).
Rereading this strip, though, do we know Marcie has been fired? Her use of “WAS a security trainee” certainly seem to imply so, though I think during the incident we were working on the assumption that that was a one-shot job and Marcie had been hired specifically to provide security for that event. The conclusion is simple:
We need more details on Marcie. GIVE US MORE MARCIE, WILLIS!!!
This guy’s arguably worse since Marcie’s job seemed to be directed the crowd along that door. She may not have been allowed to leave that post. Again, what is this asshole’s excuse?
I suppose it could also mean that she’s using ‘was’ because the incident was last night. I’m guilty of that often enough.
That said, I think being fired is meant to be the implication.
Fuel to the fire (under the guy’s ass): he’s probably also her superior. She’s a trainee, he LOOKS old enough to be higher on the hierarchy. Bonus points because he was pretty much told to stop the fight by the employer (client?) and pretty much wen ‘eh, nah.’
Possibly. As a trainee, it’s possible her job description includes “and if shit goes down, you ring your superiors and let them handle it. You don’t get involved in violence until you get more experience under your belt.”
He’s a rent-a-security guy working for probably a couple bucks above minimum wage. He’s probably supposed to politely but firmly escort the occasional disruptive protester out, probably with a couple of others.
One guy jumping into a melee between a superhero, a biker chick and 4 dudebros isn’t going to accomplish anything but getting his own ass kicked. I bet the job doesn’t provide insurance either, though he might be able to sue for workman’s comp, but I bet there’s a line in his employee handbook about calling cops and/or backup in the case of actual fights/crime.
A fair assessment, though I’m pretty sure he didn’t even do THAT (call the cops, I mean). Of course, his justification isn’t “it’s not worth it for what you’re paying me,” nor “I’m afraid of needing hospital treatment I can’t afford,” it’s just “I’unno, Amazi-Girl.”
That COULD mean “it’s Amazi-Girl and she’ll kick my butt,” but from the gist of the arc and his “meh, whatever” attitude, it strikes me more like “Amazi-girl is kicking someone’s butt so they clearly deserve it, even though I know nothing about this situation and I was hired specifically to deal with it should it arise” (even if it’s just by calling the cops).
In which case the thing to do is to call backup and then say ‘Okay, all of you BREAK IT UP or I’m calling the police.”
It’s not to sit on your ass and do jack shit, especially when a congresswoman is there. And his justification isn’t ‘I’ve called the police/backup and am waiting for them to arrive’, ‘confronting fights is against company policy’ or even ‘I don’t have insurance and I don’t get paid enough for this’. It’s ‘Amazi-Girl’. He’d rather sit there and watch AG than do his job and he hung Marcie out to dry if she got fired instead of his ass.
Considering that we have been shown that Sal and Marcie are more-or-less friends — and in at least one instance saw Marcie act as Sal’s counterbalance — perhaps Sal should get anger management classes so that she stops fucking Marcie’s life.
The more-or-less friends was just to keep as much of Bycicle Bill’s original text as possible, for better contrast.
And I think it WAS an anger issue. I get the feeling Sal is like The Avengers Banner. Her secret is that she’s angry ALL THE TIME, so she needs little reason to punch her anger out.
This is true (well, the correct response was for security to do their goddamn jobs, but when useless dumbasses abound, I guess a girl’s got to take action). This doesn’t mean that how quickly she goes for the violent way out isn’t an issue. Of course, I’m just speculating here – on the other hand, it isn’t like life hasn’t given Sal enough reasons to be angry.
In Sal’s defence, she’s stepped down from a fight (or been talked down relatively easily) almost every time we’ve seen her mad – except for last night and with Leland. I don’t think it’s true to say ‘she needs little reason’ or that she’s angry all the time.
Kindly refer to the strip Lipke linked above to see how quickly Sal goes violent at Malaya when she (rightfully) calls her out.
Sidenote: I momentarily thought YOU had linked that strip. This is what I get for talking to two people with the same avatar. Fun for the whole neural network.
Kindly refer to the strip where Marcie stops Sal from hitting her, drags her off and gets her to back down relatively easily. Refer to when Sal wanted to tear AG to shreds in that parking lot and backed off pretty quick when Marcie told her not to. Refer to Sal not taking any swings at AG after she drags her out into the limelight (and Sal was PISSED there). Refer to Sal getting snapped out of her anger by Walky and Carla at different times.
Even if we are counting her fight with Malaya, that’s three incidents. Sal’s been in over 200 strips. Having a temper does not equal ‘angry all the time’ nor ‘she needs little reason to resort to violence’. The most common thing you could argue for violence is she has a tendency to grab people (usually by their shirts) when they’ve REALLY pissed her off. Note that, other than her throwing AG around like a rag doll and the aforementioned fight with Malaya, nothing comes from her grabbing these people, fight wise. Either she calms down, someone snaps her out of it, or (if you’re Jason) she drags said person along to wherever she’s going.
Maybe we are working on a different definition of “anger issues” here. To me, grabbing someone by the collar, throwing them against a wall, and lifting them bodily off the ground because they call you out on acting like a condescending prick and they don’t want to hang out with you, and only stopping when your best friend physically intervenes is a problem.
Marcie also holds Sal back after she tosses AG (but this is irrelevant, because if there were two situations on which Sal was justified on punching people in the face until they had no face, this was one of them).
If you keep needing other people to wind your anger down from violence, you might have an anger issue.
On a semi-related note, I wonder if one of Sal’s outbursts might have been indirectly connected to Marcie becoming mute (say, if Leland retaliated against Marcie) and that is partly why Marcie is the most effective at stopping Sal on her tracks.
Well, it’s time for me to turn in, and no doubt tomorrow’s strip will bring about a whole new slew (SLEW!) of topics to discuss (unless it’s another Dina+Becky strip, in which case there’ll be nothing to discuss because we’ll all be too busy going “d’aaaaaw” and covering our ears so Bagge’s screams of “DOOFUSES” do not deafen us), so I suppose on this one we’ll have to settle by agreeing that our bars for problematic anger are set at different levels.
*shrugs* Fair enough. To me, if it’s that easy to snap you out of it, it’s not too bad. If she couldn’t stop herself and it took a lot more effort for other people to stop her I’d be more concerned.
I don’t see how it can be concluded from this text that Marcie was fired from her job. A fight broke out and Marcie followed the correct procedures by alerting her superior since she’s still a trainee. The problem is if Sal can be connected to Marcie which means going forward they can’t hang out while she’s on the job since it would be highly suspicious and likely cost her the job. If there’s a reason Marcie is angry it’s because this is yet another incident where Sal acted rashly and now they can’t be seen together at work and possibly beyond depending on how much scrutiny Marcie is under.
It’s the “was” in the text. Of course, it CAN mean “I was a security trainee last night,” but it being “I was a security trainee and your antics got me fired” is not an unreasonable take.
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“Marcie, yer job’s no fun”
“NO SHIT WORK ISN’T FUN”
“yeah, fuck work”
“>8(“
Yeah, it sounds like Marcie’s getting worked up about it.
I apologize for nothing.
Nice of Marcie to wait until after Sal’s class to call her a piece of shit
Marcie got in trouble because she knows Sal?
Probably because they were hanging around and Marcie didn’t seem eager to try and stop Sal.
Even if she did her job, her friend was hanging around and got in a fight, and it sounds like Sal is being blamed for starting it
Well, as far as we know, Sal was only at the rally to hang out with and talk to Marcie (except that Marcie was busy and it was difficult for her to get her hands free enough to respond to Sal. So Marcie was stuck there listening to Sal rant and unable to respond. I imagine that’d get annoying.) and then Amazi-girl tried to fight Sal while Marcie was right next to her.
In fact, the crowd of people that wanted to see a fight and were egging it on left an empty circle in the middle containing Amazi-Girl and Sal *and* Marcie. And Marcie didn’t appear to do anything to stop that fight.
(I’m trying to think of it from the point-of-view of a manager of a security company trying to deal with a political rally that ended up with the assault of several university students. An event in which a reasonable solution might be to find an excuse to fire someone just so you can tell your client that you’ve taken care of the problem.)
Not just students but volunteers with the campaign running the space, not to mention “antagonizing”* the rally attendees.
Yeah, I definitely see Marcie and Sal being thrown directly under the bus in order to distract from the main security officers refusing to intervene because they wanted to watch the superhero fight and the general bad press and disaster of the event.
*Not really, but I’m going with the likely framing of the campaign and Marcie’s boss
Except Marcie held Sal back the entire time she was confronting AG and that didn’t end in a fight. AG then proceeded to get in a fight with Ryan and Sal stepped in when that went from a one on one fight to a grossly unfair ‘three guys holding her down while Ryan is about to knock her teeth in’.
Hey, she didn’t start the fight.
feel the rythem, do the crime, hold on folks its bobsled time…. no wait how does it go
Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme,
get on up,
it’s bobsled time!
COOL RUNNINGS.
I’m sorry, it’s obligatory watching here.
It was always fighting since the world’s been… fighting…
I’m not on my A-game tonight.
Don’t worry, that’s exactly where my brain went too.
No, I didn’t write it, but I tried to fight it
She didn’t start the fight
They were always qaurreling
since the world’s been whirling
Genius
It is hard to think of another word, though.
She was, however, the only non-white person involved in said fight. Which was taking place in the middle of, well, THAT political rally.
Yeah, most of the folks at that rally would write Sal off as a “thug.”
Fists were always throwing since the world’s been turning.
Well, she did pull Amazi-Girl off that ledge
Yes she did, Sal grabbed Amber and threw her to the ground.
After Amber stalked her – stalking is a violent crime, Sal is entitled to confront her and respond in kind. Not great timing for Marcie, no, but what Sal did constitutes self-defence.
But this isn’t about right or wrong, it’s about Marcie’s employers and how they reacted. From Marcie’s text they don’t see it that way.
I’m not addressing her employers, just the person above me’s comment. Even if her employer’s don’t know what happened, AB should have.
That said, I’m not sure how Marcie’s employers could say Sal ‘started a fight’. She yanked AG down (in self-defence, which Marcie can explain) sure, but then…nothing happened. They stood there yelling at each other, with Marcie holding her back (albeit not very well), and then Sal backed off (for unknown reasons assuming silent security footage, but that’s what Marcie’s there for – to fill in the blanks).
Even with Ryan and his bros, Sal pretty clearly did not begin that fight – Ryan did.
Assuming of course they didn’t just toss the ‘thug’ black girl under the bus and weren’t interested in hearing Marcie out, which is probably what happened.
Stalking is a violent crime — You mean that if I think you’re stalking me then in fear of my life I can pull out my registered handgun and turn around and start blasting away and it’s self-defence?
Cool!
No, but you can take measures to defend yourself that are actually reasonable.
Sal had reason to believe AG was going to pounce on her and beat her up, since she literally had the drop on her, and had tried to do it before. The amount of force she used was justified.
Is that how it works in the US? Here in Italy there’s quite a bit of talk about rewriting the laws about self-defence because some perceive them to be too restrictive, which includes that you can’t claim self-defence if you initiated the violence, even if you did as a measure of self-defence.
For example, I can’t beat up a burglar who has sneaked in my home unless I am sure they mean harm to me – and this means they have to clearly threaten me or initiate violence.
Roughly, but the details of how that works varies wildly from state to state. And even within states, the way it’s enforced can depend far too much on who was defending themself, rather than on how reasonable it was for them to feel threatened, and how reasonable / proportionate their response was.
Some states are smart, and lay out specific requirements, but many states only specify that it must be ”reasonable”.
Except stalking is already a violent crime, entitling Sal to respond in kind. Even if stalking wasn’t inherently violent, AG has very obviously been looking for reasons to attack her, and tries to goad her to fight every chance she gets. Sal KNOWS AG is stalking her with the intention of getting in a fight. So does Marcie. Again, self-defence.
Laws vary from state to state, right now, the big back and forth among law makers is about whether you need to try to get away before you can claim that you were defending yourself. Like Italy, most states in the US expect people to call the police for a non-violent burglar or stalker, particularly in places where the police can get there quickly.
In rural Alaska or Texas, many people live more than an hour from the nearest police station, so the laws often allow for people to handle problems themselves. I don’t know as those loose approaches apply to the college town where this fight was, they obviously have the ability to get police onto campus promptly.
I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of either of these ladies legally. Defending that behavior is probably possible, but lawyers who are good at court room explanations are expensive. Also, the presence of security affects things. Would anyone be able to claim that they expected to be gravely harmed, when there was a security officer right there to stop the fight?
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/04/us/table.selfdefense.laws/
For a non-violent stalker, great, except Sal knows for a fact AG is not a non-violent stalker. For that matter, so does Marcie. And Sal is legally entitled to confront her stalker.
Of course, Sal had legitimate reasons to suspect AG would initiate violence on her because she did in the past.
I dunno. Are you white?
I suggest making sure the stalker is dead, so they can’t tell their side of the story.
No, no you couldn’t. Force begets force, not lethal force. Sal was not trying to kill AG. She threw her out of the place where she had the drop on her and confronted her, which she is legally entitled to do. Much the same way she’d be entitled to block a punch and then punch back to get her to stop had AG tried to punch her.
Maybe if she knew AG carried a weapon.
But thanks for the hyperbolic reaction.
Legally, that is exactly the case, and this is where I’d say law and ethics diverge – but mostly because you shouldn’t have a handgun.
Like, you have to /reasonably/ think people are stalking you, you know? The thing is, *Sal did reasonably think that. because Amber was.*
Jesus fucking christ, white people are all over themselves to try to say Sal is the worst.
The law might have a few things to say about this too – “violent” doesn’t mean “lethal force”. Violence begets violence, sure. Lethal force begets lethal force. For that to fly you have to be reasonably fearful for your life. AG has no weapon, nor does Sal have any reason to believe she had a weapon, nor has AG ever expressed a desire to do anything but hurt (hurt, not kill) her. Also, Sal is black and therefore tends to be judged more harshly, so no, practically, legally, and ethically speaking, she could not have justified shooting AG.
Nnnn. With stalking, the threat of violence, in a vacuum, can easily be lethal, and you can’t reasonably be expected to know – and in the states, taht pretty much always means you can be lethally violent in self defense. The only reason we have to think it won’t be lethal is that it’s Amazi-girl doing the stalking. But she could have changed her mind (And was certainly in a much darker place wrt Sal than she was before, so I’m not even entirely sure it was off the table) – because Sal can’t know it wasn’t lethal here, she probably can legally respond to lethal force.
You know, before we get the actual execution of the law mixed up and then it’s a black criminal shooting a misguided but ultimately innocent white girl. I mean, christ, we’re omniscient viewers who loudly profess to be against racism and we still have bullshit like Clif’s comment here.
That’s true, and stalking often does cause fear for one’s life precisely because it’s hard to know what they’ll do. Lethal force (or fear thereof) does beget lethal force.
I actually feel there’s a duty to retreat, but the problem with that is it’s predicated on retreat not endangering you – and Sal can’t count on authorities to help. It’s not helped by the fact that theoretically attentive authorities would, on average, also be using lethal force.
There’s also the fact she’s legally entitled to confront her stalker, but the fact that the authorities are less likely to help her out.
Wait, you’re saying it’s unethical to own a pistol? What the fuck?
Escalation is dangerous, I agree, but how is ownership of a weapon unethical?
The fact that your weapon is far more likely to injure or kill someone in a domestic dispute or accident than in any form of self-defense that even the US’s extremely permissive self-defense laws would call justified, means I can’t see any good reason to own a handgun – given that you are more likely to harm someone who hasn’t done anything than a threat to your safety, owning it strikes me as grossly negligent at best. Combined with the fact that easy civilian access of firearms means it’s cheap and easy for criminals to obtain them, and that ownership of a firearm is pretty much concordant with arguing that you SHOULD totally be allowed to have that firearm and that firearms are actually useful, it strikes me as unethical.
Hunting weapons can be different, particularly with stringent storage requirements, and even if I thought hunting shouldn’t be permissible for the general public as a leisure activity (I’m from a place where it actually was needed to cull a population sometimes, so I’m pretty okay with it as a leisure activity just so that there’s folks available for when it is needed), there are some people who legitimately need to deal with dangerous animals as part of their job. It’s not that big a deal in most states, but sometimes, it is, and there are other places /not/ in the USA where it comes up.
Nothing you said remotely connects to whether it’s right or wrong to own a firearm. It’s a bunch of tortured logic to get to a preordained conclusion.
With this and crying racism when there isn’t any, I’m starting to wonder if you’re actually the fabled straw liberal that all the conservatives are afraid of. The one that makes all the rest of us look bad.
“A thing you’re doing is probably going to cause harm” rather directly correlates to whether it’s right or wrong to do the thing. It’s not the whole story, but if you /are/ going to cause harm, there needs to be a justification. And boy howdy am I doubtful you can provide a satisfactory one for this. Especially not to a pacifist, but frankly, I doubt you can provide one satisfactory to the rest of the developed world either.
As to ‘crying racism where there isn’t any’, are you a jackass? The primary place it’s come up lately in the comment section is:
1) the comment section’s reactions to characters
2) the fact that Amber unfairly enforces the law on Sal
Now, I know you haven’t really been /reading/ anything I said if you think 2 is ‘crying racism where there isn’t any’, because I quite pointedly don’t talk about amber’s heart of hearts. I don’t talk about her intentions. I talk about her /effects/. What she /does/ and says has been primarily racist towards Sal, even given that her motivation has nothing to do with racism. I know white people struggle with this, but your intentions don’t really factor into anything that much. Or, to borrow a phrase I feel reasonably confident a fundie White Person is familiar with, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
as far as 1), that’s pretty uncontroversial. Willis has been saying it for literal years, even. Usually some variant of “it’s so weird how much angrier non-white character X gets people than white character Y for doing the same thing” (Malaya and Mike being the most archetypal example.)
Ooo, I think the other funny one that you, specifically, denied was the racism inherent towards the jewish people when y’all talk about how Iesos was their messiah. I think they know their holy books and concepts better than you, dude; there is a reason he isn’t one.
I think it’s pretty dangerous to own a weapon. And a lot of pro gun people assume absolutely everyone who owns a gun are responsible owners. But the thing is, they’re responsible until they’re not – and in any confrontation where a gun is involved, escalation I’d think would be more likely, just by virtue of the lethal option being there.
I’m not saying no private citizen has ever benefitted from owning a gun for self defense, but it seems like there is more violence than protection, given that many of perpetrators – think of family murders and murders of of women by their abusers for example – ALSO tended to obtain their guns be LEGAL meanss, or by borrowing from someone else, etc. And not stealing or black market. If you can get a gun, so can the guy who wants one so he can steal or hurt you.
And the things people say they want defense from are events that don’t tend to happen that often, frankly. You’re more likely to get into a car accident or get an illness than be killed by an armed robber, but having a gun gives the illusion of control over the unpredictable.
And that’s assuming you even know how to react. Everyone thinks they’re Indiana Jones until they’re actually put in that situation.
Uh… the heck… why did you suddenly escalate this to shooting people?
Especially with the dark context we all know wherein any white man with a gun can shoot an unarmed black person and be found innocent even if they were stalking the kid before hand and where any black man with a legal to carry gun is blamed for his own murder when he uses said legal right to own a gun.
Also, um, stalkers are dangerous. They really are. Far too many rape or kill or severely injure the people they are stalking and that persistent terror acts as a low-level terrorism against freely living one’s life.
I’ve been stalked before and it severely curtails how free one can be in both online and offline spaces and means worrying that an attempt to get out and have fun is going to get you or a close person to you hurt.
And the road Amazi-girl was on… yeah, that could have been really bad if she let AG build up her escalation to justify “getting the drop on her” when Sal was all alone. Really, Sal confronting her here where AG could see herself reflected in the crowd was the only way that was going to de-escalate without one of them getting severely hurt.
Yeah, uh, this here?
“this to shooting people?
Especially with the dark context we all know wherein any white man with a gun can shoot an unarmed black person and be found innocent even if they were stalking the kid before hand and where any black man with a legal to carry gun is blamed for his own murder when he uses said legal right to own a gun.”
This is what you call an “overgeneralization”.
This is what you call ‘missing the references’.
I am completely aware of the references.
The point of them was to point out white people are more likely to get away with crime, including violent crime, while black people are more likely to be murdered by law enforcement. The use of the word ‘any’ is hyperbolic, but it doesn’t change the original point, which you have either missed or are ignoring.
I’m really sorry, this came out really snappy and temperamental and you didn’t deserve that. I stand by my point that hyperbole doesn’t change whether a point (in this case, grossly unequal applications of the law) is valid, but I should have made my point better. My apologies.
Sal ain’t part of your system!
Sal decides to try this some more.
Sal: “I wonder when a million dollars will rain from the sky?…Shoot.”
Sal: “I wonder if Tom Hiddleston is looking for a date nearby?…Damn.”
Sal: “Hmmm. I wonder what the smallest dinosaur was?”
Dina (walking by): “A new, crow-sized theropod, Microraptor was recently found in China. It is about 16 inches (40 cm long) and may be an adult.”
Sal: “Knew I could count on her.”
+1
Meh, hummingbirds are smaller.
Yeah, hummingbirds can be freaking tiny.
that’s the buzz I’ve heard
Yeah, this is why Sarah has no friends
Sarah just can’t catch a break today, she isn’t even in this one
She really can’t.
I actually have zero idea of what the relevance to Sarah is with this?
Sal and Sarah could be besties but they’re incapable of being criticized the way they criticize others.
Sal does not criticize others. She pretty much keeps to herself. She told AG to get her head out of her ass and stop blaming her past on everything and start living for today. That was after Sal saved her ass from being spread all over the road by Becky’s crazy damn father.
Sarah criticizes others when they step on her. Can’t blame her a bit.
It’s extremely important to let the commentariat hold their grudges against the black gals, hon.
jfc
Oh, of course. Their skin is different, so of course they must be perfect cinnamon rolls who never make stupid decisions like all those other silly people. It’s not as if the comic is called Dumbing of Age – oh wait.
I said, in no uncertain terms, and repeatedly, that Sal has probably betrayed an agreement with Sal, and that Marcie has every right to be angry. It’s not that Sal didn’t fuck up. It’s that the way she fucked up has nothing to do with y’all dragging her through the dirt. I’m not blind.
*an agreement with Marcie.
Look at the actual thing that spawned this thread. Sarah is being targetted and she’s neither in the comic, nor does she have any real connection to Sal besides a skin color, and we had someone reach like whoa.
So you know. Fuck off. There’s like, one person who maybe implied Sal was blameless.
Actually, I was thinking they could be besties because they’re both misanthropic loners with hearts of gold.
Yeah, I noticed you’re acknowledging and analyzing why Marcie’s upset with Sal, but I was feeling a little snippy and I’m tired of people dismissing criticism as persecution, or saying that the “commentariat” you keep mentioning are holding a grudge against the black gals when Charles was just pointing out that neither of them takes criticism very well despite being pretty on-the-nail when dishing it out.
I felt a little sarcasm was warranted.
No, Sarah was being brought up because they are in similar situations. This was obvious when everyone was talking about it.
You assumed racism because it gives you an excuse to attack others. This is far from the first time you have done so.
I would suggest you look at John, because you’re doing the same thing he did to Joyce, just from a different direction.
Leilah, of course. Charles Phipps is fine here, even if I vehemently disagree with him further down.
ಠ_ಠ
They really aren’t in similar situations. That’s kind of the thing. Look up – the original post is almost definitely a weird inside joke, or a typo. Phipps then decided to try to link them – on a thing they really aren’t linked by, nor is it even particularly true of them (Not in a way that isn’t true of basically everyone, anyway). Now, I don’t mind saying I misread him, but to pretend y’all don’t drag on these two constantly, wherein y’all is “A particularly loud plurality of the comments section”? That’s funny. At this point, nonsense is better assumed to be racist – especially when that nonsense is mocking someone who’s not white and isn’t even here or actually really related at all.
True friends are often the people who aren’t afraid to tell you to get your head out of your ass, or otherwise blunt but necessary things so you can improve yourself. The people who really don’t care that much will just watch you crash and burn, a la Napoleon’s advice.
Mike is the best friend.
Sarah doesn’t always restrict herself to those who cross her. Iirc, she was pretty catty and judgemental about Joyce spending time with Billie.
I’m extremely fond of her, but she’s not free of blame.
I mean, Billie is also a huge jerk though – she treats most of her friends like crap. If I were Joyces friend, I would advise her to quit tolerating that.
Funny, if I were Joyce’s friend, I would commend her for the patience and understanding she’s shown with her severely depressed friend.
Especially since Billie has gotten shouty and mean with Joyce all of one time, and it was pretty clear that – while very surprised – she did not take it personally.
Joyce is very patient, yes. And Billie needs support, that is obvious too. But being sick doesn’t give you the right to treat others like shit, and it’s not like Billie is only a little bit mean. That’s almost her natural state, even before the Ruth stuff came along, let’s be real.
I’m not saying she should be a lone and unsupported, but I am saying that if you habitually treat people like crap, no matter the reason, there’s a good chance at least one of those people is gonna think you’re a jerk which is not unreasonable at all. Even if you’re in a bad place, there are consequences to your actions. I say this from experience of being the person on the other end of a very sick person’s shitty behaviour.
It’s nice to see this. People were saying this all the time with Amber, and it really threw me that we didn’t see it with Billie.
Yes, she’s depressed, but it doesn’t make her abuse of others okay.
Yes, thank fucking goodness we’re not letting any of the mentally ill skate by without someone angrily pointing out how their mental illness puts a strain on their relationships as if this was something they were doing on purpose, and not because they badly need therapy and help to learn to manage their problems.
It’s weird af that Billie and Joyce is the hill to die on here. Like, Joyce’s relationship with Billie is either her second or third best, as far as the two of them being kind to each other. Friend of Dorothy or not (heh.), she’s been a much bigger bastard towards Dotty than either Dotty or Billie has been towards her.
She stepped on a mine w/ Billie, but that’s seriously /it/.
It’s almost like there’s another reason Sarah gets dragged through the dirt so much. by the commentariat.
…I mean there /is/, but in this case it was probably just a brain fart.
Yeah, in retrospect, it was probably just a typo…
Goodness Marcie, do you shake hands with your mother with those fingers?
At a Christmas party with many deaf persons in attendance, I reached over and offered hand sanitizer to the one that continuously making lewd jokes. He didn’t get it, but once it was explained (“wash ones mouth out with soap” idea), they either humored or thought it very clever.
👏👏👏
(Just in case those emojis don’t show, they’re the applause one)
Yeah, English idioms just don’t transfer in to ASL very well. Though, to be fair, ASL idioms and phrases don’t translate to English very well either.
Woah, someone P.O.’d at Sal. Wonder if this si their first fight. Sal doesn’t seem to upset by it, so far.
They’ve been friends for at least 10 years, there’s no way it’s their first fight. Maybe their first adult fight. Not to say that their kid-fights weren’t probably intense and meaningful, based on the flashbacks a while back.
They met when they were 5, so probably closer to 13.
Ooooh… It might take more than a few beers to smooth this one out!
I disagree with the directionality of that statement. Sal did not start the fight, she merely escalated it.
Marcie doesn’t know that.
Hmmm. I know I certainly would’ve mentioned to my best friend if some weird wannabe superhero girl was stalking me, but then Sal is a lot less chatty than I am.
The thing between Sal and AG didn’t end up being a fight, though, and Marcie was there when AG was stalking Sal and attacked them earlier, as well as when she showed up at the rally.
But Marcie didn’t see anything that happened with Ryan, though.
I definitely think this is more about the second fight rather than the first. The first being much less of an actual fight and only sort of a confrontation. Even if Sal was in the right in both cases, she certainly didn’t do Marcie any favors by being involved.
There was also not any better options.
She could have:
(A) Gotten beat up by Amazi-Girl (even just turning around and shouting at her would’ve lead to a fight. That’s what AG came for)
(B) Let Ryan and his bros beat the snot out of AG after they got her pinned
Marcie knwos enough facts that she could arrive at the correct conclusion, but many people don’t think of anything but the first swing as starting the fight – which was Sal, even if Amber was threatening her with violence.
Well the first swing that connected.
Maybe it is different in Indiana, but grabbing someone and throwing them to the ground, when they have done nothing wrong, counts as starting a fight.
What is stalking, motherfucker?
jfc
What Sal did is a textbook definition of self-defense. She’s the target of a violent crime (stalking), – not only is she being stalked, but it’s by someone who has made explicit threats of violence in the past (assault). Even if, outside of context, the stalking weren’t a violent crime (and it carries with it an implicit fear of violence, so it’s considered, rightfully, to /be/ a violent crime), it would /still/ be violent here.
In response to a threat of violence, Sal responds with non-lethal force in a confrontation – at a time of her choosing, but still in the middle of the violent crime against her (pretty hard not to confront a stalker while they’re stalking you, tbh). It’s true that she ‘threw the first punch’, metaphorically, just as last time. But like last time, this is after Amazi-girl has, in both legal and ethical terms, ACTUALLY started the fight (Last time through assault, this time through stalking).
Seriously. Even if that throw was supposed to be as violent as it would’ve been in real life (and it wasn’t, she would’ve had more than the wind knocked out of her), Sal deescalated from that point.
If she’d wanted to, she could’ve pummeled the crap out of AG while she was still dazed. Instead, having gotten AG out of a position where she could have literally jumped her, Sal demands answers.
Even AG couldn’t convince herself she wouldn’t have been the aggressor if she’d thrown a punch at that point, and she really wanted Sal to be the violent one.
I agree with you Lailah, but I’m willing to bet that Marcie’s boss(es) watched soundless security camera footage of the events inside, saw Sal make the first punch, and since they likely had already mentally labeled her a “thug”, decided from that that Sal started the fight.
Add to that the fact that before the fight Sal had just been standing there talking to Marcie and that she likely wouldn’t have been there if not for Marcie, and it’s not at all inconceivable that Marcie’s bosses would blame her.
Assuming she’s talking about the AG fight, not the Ryan fight, which actually seems less likely.
As you say, watching the security footage, you’d have no context for stalking, so if Sal was actually justified, it wouldn’t appear that way.
And AG certainly provoked the other fight, so Sal joining in isn’t necessarily justified either.
It doesn’t matter if it was self-defense…the combination of Sal’s skin color, the skin color of the guys she was defending against, and the ideology of the crowd means that it’s considered to be Sal’s fault, and it wasn’t a secret that Marcie’s the only reason that Sal was there.
It most likely doesn’t really matter if Sal is legally or morally in the right in the context of Marcie’s employers, though. As far as they’re concerned the friend of their trainee appeared to start a fight. With management the truth is often less relevant than it should be.
I’m not even sure Sal’s presence is important to Marcy getting fired. Ignore the logistics of how the fight started for a minute: Security said, in no uncertain terms, to the right-hand woman of their client, that they would do nothing to prevent the Free Interns from being trashed. True, Marcy didn’t say that, but I guarantee Frieda or one of her subordinates gave them an earful. That guy might also be fired. But Marcie is a trainee – that means she probably had room for exactly no fuckups, and there was a fuckup. So she’s probably gone for that reason. I don’t think they saw security footage, and I doubt Frieda knows the YBF who ‘started’ the fight (according to one of her interns) and Marcie are friends.
Yes, stalking is a violent crime.
Sal responded in a reasonable manner, from our perspective, as we know about the stalking issue.
Her response was proportionate.
A good example of a disproportionate response is calling somebody a motherfucker for their fairly reasonable comment. Please just educate them on the matter instead of insulting them first, because being mean makes people sad, and insults before explanations make people unwilling to listen to you and learn your point.
Except this person has been told already that what Sal did constitutes self-defence. At this point, they are not listening.
Nah, I’m gonna go with “swearing is a proportionate response to perpetuating, even inadvertently, racist jackassery.”
Also, ‘a fairly reasonable comment’? On what planet? It’s a statement that is blatantly false – one the narrative made no bones of disproving. Amazi-girl has clearly done wrong – you could try to argue it wasn’t violent (and therefore doesn’t merit violence), but given her past actions, and her trajectory on the book’s arc, and her immediate actions after being found, you would be hard-pressed to actually do so successfully – notwithstanding that the crime is inherently violent because your target does not know your intentions.
as far as ‘please educate, don’t insult’, no. I am, in fact, not being paid to put someone else’s feelings ahead of my own, nor do I see any real benefit in doing so. I will not, in fact, be /nice/ when people are perpetuating racist bullshit exonerating the white girl (whom the narrative has spared no effort to demonstrate is in the wrong – it’s not often you have a mob echo your internal violent monologue) while castigating the black girl. Ignorance is a poor excuse when the writing makes it so clear what’s happening. I may not be particularly mean, but I will not intentionally go out of my way to be kinder than is earned – and again, swearing is an extremely proportionate response to racism.
As far as “people only listen to niceness :)”, I will only say “that’s extremely untrue in my experience.”
Stalking is a violent crime. Sal is entitled to respond in kind.
Aw Man! Why must there be more drama added to the pull of drama. This isn’t a drama tourniquet, is it?
Oh Marcie… You do know Sal oh-so-well. That is true friendship.
She called her a piece of shit. Unless that’s a term of (angry) affection, that’s not friendship at all.
*plays Paula Abdul’s “Blowin’ Kisses In The Wind” on a boombox behind one of the trees*
And so we go from one codependent relationship to another.
I’ve been reading it as one-sided dependency. Marcie might have been dependent upon Sal when they were younger, but she presents herself as pretty put together now. Plus she’d been trying to get Sal to be less dependent upon her recently.
I mean, I could’ve missed something… heck, I’m tempted to archive-binge to find out if I did.
No, I think you’re right.
I think so also.
Marcie and Sal met when Sal beat up a bully who hurt Marcie in the school yard. She didn’t do it until the teacher brushed the incident off because Marcie was a poor kid and Sal black.
They’ve been best friends since. Then Marcie got the hots for Malaya (I think). Sal got jealous of them. Then when she realized that Marcie was serious, she backed off to give them space.
After the AG collision, Sal has been considering that maybe she should try for a friend herself, and said ‘look at me, making friends’ after she and AG parted.
Also, she is trying to talk to Billie too.
But, I don’t think Sal has ever been dependent on anyone.
They met on the playground when they were five. I remember because Sal’s mother was a bag of dicks about it.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/evilspacestation/
^^ Marcie and Sal’s first meeting.
Just to clarify, I was saying Marcie seemed independent. Sal seems rebelious, sure, but much like Becky’s smile, it seems to me like it’s more for the benefit of others.
A sort of: “Hey, look at me on my motorcycle, I’m all confident and junk!” while also secretly going: “Hey, Marcie, you’re the only person I trust, am I doing this right?”
She’s still pretty stable, but every time Marcie seems further from her, she clings more tightly. What I’m trying to say is that, sure, Sal can fend for her self, but she depends heavily on her friendship with Marcie. It’s not always a bad thing, but recently it’s led to Sal stomping all over every other part of Marcie’s life.
“I WAS a security trainee.” I guess Marcie got fired.
I mean, it looked like a one night gig.
Nah, she was in a uniform. It wasn’t a one-night gig. I mean, it was as far as the company is concerned, but it was a shot at a steady job for Marcie. Was being the likely correct verb tense.
Or promoted!
… of course, makes no sense in context and all, but still works with that line (?)
I think I like you. x3
I think I like me too! <3
Damn Marcie. She’s obviously been struggling because she’s been working extra shifts and this couldn’t have helped her situation. 🙁
How does Sal’s hair deal with being the blanket between her and the standing stone? Lots of wear and tear there?
And she gets it straightened too, which is hell on hair unless it gets pomaded, something I don’t see Sal doing.
I used to straighten my hair. It was terrible to keep hydrated. I now have natural hair style. It’s now terrible to find a product that keeps it hydrated. I’m thinking of getting it blown out, leaving it like that for a while, and chopping it off and starting again, but it’s difficult to find a *good* salon that will accept less than an arm and a leg.
I have no idea about what you like in an hairstyle, but if you are willing to go for it, just straight shaving your head and going “bald” for a while might be the cheapest option you.
oh boy, the “piece of shit” part worries me; that’s usually an insult I reserve for people I don’t care about, if I fight with my friends that doesn’t get thrown around.
Technically Sal threw Amazi-girl down, which started a commotion but not a fight.
The real fight began when Amazi-girl confronted Ryan, did Marcie see that?
Also, even if the AG thing did turn into a fight, AG was stalking her. Stalking is a violent crime. Sal is entitled to confront her and, since stalking is violent, entitled to respond in kind. Legally speaking, Amazi-Girl started that confrontation.
You aren’t wrong, but that also doesn’t mean Sal was doing Marcie any favors by getting into it then and there.
But the world doesn’t revolve around Marcie. The question is whether or not what Sal did was right. It would be horrible of Marcie to expect Sal to put their friendship over doing what is right.
If I had any friend like that, that would be a friendship ending moment. Because that’s a “friend” who doesn’t understand right vs. wrong.
Ethically too, I’d point out. Pacifism is not about ignoring direct violence directed at you. But she’s likely fired and not really concerned with that kind of thing in the face of job loss.
I thought she was only working security as a one off thing? Granted, it probably made that one-off a lot harder, but security isn’t her primary income or even a regular secondary income.
At least, that’s what I thought was implied by Sal’s use of ‘tonight’ here: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/cadet/
I’d read ‘a quarter of the way’ to mean she was one-quarter through training, and just being conflated with a cop by Sal, rahter than like, Rent-a-cops counting as one-quarter cop.
Basically, everything that’s been said strongly implies she’s working multiple jobs. Security trainee is one (Assuming that’s being footed by the company, which seems unusual but definitely still plausible as a story device) and the other being retail stockgirl. If she finishes her training she’ll get paid more, and thus can drop her hours as a stock girl (possibly entirely), which is why she’s doing this.
Pretty much how I interpreted it. Companies providing on-the-job training isn’t so unusual.
No, but security tends to require licensing, and helping you with /that/ is, afaik, unusual.
Ahhh, I see. I thought that was meant as ‘security guard’ = about a quarter of an actual cop. If Marcie actually wanted to be a cop, that’d require at least a secondary school education and possibly also post-secondary. So I think being an actual cop is unlikely. Same with security guards – most places want at least secondary. That’s why I think it’s more likely to be a one-off or odd job type thing.
It does say a quarter “o[f] the way” to becoming a cop, which implies it’s part of a progression, I think. So most likely that she’s a quarter through with her training. The confusion is understandable, though.
Training for a security guard job, maybe. To become a cop? Not unless she has a secondary or post-secondary education we’re unaware of.
Working in the USA requires completing a secondary education in most practical terms. She likely completed a G.E.D.
That’d work for a security guard, yeah. Probably not for becoming a cop though, if that’s her actual end goal. Possibly, but I wouldn’t put a bet on it.
I think Sal was saying, “quarter of the way there” in the sense that security is an enforcement profession, like being a cop is an enforcer of the law who judges people’s lives. Security guards also have the power to judge people, become physically confrontational, and bar people from existing in areas on their own whims. As an extension of that, she’s referencing racist cops by indicating that Marcie is security at a racist rally. So basically, by supporting the rally, she’s supporting the racist ideals that a lot of cops have, thus she’s “almost there”.
I think it’s a little simpler than ‘supporting the rally’ and more just ‘trying to become a security guard’. The fact that she had to guard a woman who wanted to throw her out of the country (Note that I’m pretty confident Marcie is a citizen) just demonstrates the point that security is too much like cops.
and yes, I think she’s just trying to become security. Compared tot he absolute minimum wage, it pays a higher salary (and comes with training – afaik, that training is usually footed at /your/ cost, which is part of how that works, but it does transfer and is at least somewhat skilled labor).
Yeah, I didn’t get the idea that this was a long-term thing – potentially, maybe, but not at the time.
Ah- I know Marcie just wants to be a security guard. We’re in agreement there. By working for a place like the deSanto campaign, she is implicitly supporting it, even if she doesn’t personally agree with the ideals. It’s like the Wells Fargo scandal – yeah, a lot of those employees were in a shitty position, but they still scammed millions of dollars out of millions of people collectively.
I guess a better way of saying my point would be that Sal is implying Marcie is selling out for her job. Not all cops are racist, but then again we don’t see too many of them coming out of the woodwork when something racist happens.
*And this is Sal’s point of view in my interpretation of it, I’m aware that the issue is much more complex than that.
Is there a reason to think that Marcie didn’t finish high school? I don’t recall, but I could have missed something.
Not really – I’m more concerned about the lack of post-secondary if she wants to be a cop. If the end game was ‘security guard’ secondary will probably be fine.
I can understand stalking may be a prelude to violence, but do not get how it is a “violent crime” by itself.
There’s an implicit threat of violence and a reasonable fear of harm/murder entailed in it. This is especially true because stalking entails (From the 2005 Violence Against Women Act): “engaging in a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to A) Fear for his or her safety and/or the safety of others, B) Suffer substantial emotional distress.”
Another good definition is “The repeated and wilful following, watching, and harassing of another person”.
And even if there might be theoretical reason to doubt the law in general (and there isn’t), in this specific case, Amber (Well, Amazi-girl) was 100% waiting for Sal to do something nominally illegal so she could play vigilante.
Exactly – AG was stalking her for the express purpose of getting in a fight and SAL KNOWS THIS and more importantly SO DOES MARCIE. AG was not shy about picking fights the LAST time she stalked Sal.
Even before a stalker physically confronts their obsession, stalking is the violation of a citizen’s personal space, physical space, work, school, recreation spots, etc and their peace of mind. Some people have been stalked for years. In that way, it’s incredibly violating, can severely disrupt the quality of life and psychologically devastate an individual.
Forms of stalking include physically following the person around or being a peeping tom, installing cameras or hacking webcams, etc. A person can be stalked for a number of reasons. It can be a romantic obsession, a revenge fantasy obsession where the stalker seeks to “punish” their obsession. many people who escape abusive relationships are stalked by their abusers (and many are killed).
But the terrifying part about it the victim has no way of knowing whether or when the stalker will become physically violent or try to goad them into a confrontation, like AG has done to Sal before. So it’s especially unhelpful for victims when law enforcement don’t take it seriously unless the stalker basically tries to murder or attack them.
If you isolate the act on its own, especially because most people seem to focus on the non-physical aspects of stalking, (ie, watching from a distance), it can seem like not a particularly violent crime or not a big deal, but the important thing is the context, and frankly, a crime is a crime is a crime.
^ Also all of this.
A very good summary of the act of stalking.
I wonder if stalking is not being considered such an awful thing by some young people today simply because they seem to have absolutely no sense of privacy. Their entire lives are out there on FB, Snapchat, and their cell phones. Keeping aspects of themselves out of the public eye is not so essential to many young ones today.
Just wondering if there is anything to this thought.
Nah, that implies the previous generation really gave a fuck about it.
Thanks! I think there’s a lot to that. There are even underage people who think because someone asks for a selfie of any nature, even an explicit or sexual one, that they *have* to do it or tolerate the person spamming their lives with information. Privacy, as we know it in places where social media is prevalent and relevant, has really vanished. People don’t know what it is, and, I think SM has something to do with this, a lot of people seem to think they are entitled to “viewing” people’s lives at their own leisure in that way.
I think of the people who only watch the presidential debate if it’s “entertaining” or when semi-famous people die or have trouble, the fans are “owed” an explanation. Like, you realize this person doesn’t actually know you? And it has seeped into the workplace – an 8 hr schedule doesn’t exist anymore. Your boss can contact you whenever he wants. Don’t be SM friends with your co-workers, because anything you say can and will be used against you. You must exercise your right to a private profile and remain “silent”.
It’s like this weird inversion of reality where real, physical life becomes a virtual commodity to be accessed with levity at all times, like a TV show. Our attention spans are shorter. We’re overstimulated and try to relax by stimulating some more. If it’s not entertaining we won’t entertain it. The sense of reality vs make-believe or carefully tailored becomes very warped.
I think socialization on the internet has a very positive impact, like here we share and support each other. I actually feel safe on this website because I feel it’s more private than Facebook, for example. I and others can share things we wouldn’t share with others. I’m definitely not saying it’s completely worthless of value, but there are also downsides to it as well.
Sado Masochism?
Gives an interesting color to ‘SM friends’.
Marcie’s mute, not deaf, right? Five bucks says she’s nearby and heard Sal, and is actively answering the question via texted Gibbs smack.
I mean, that’s possible. But if Marcie and Sal normally meet at that time and place (as the strip implies) my bet is on Marcie simply sending a text at approximately the time Sal normally gets to that location. And she knows Sal well enough to know that not only will Sal be there… She will also be wondering why Marcie isn’t there. Perfect.
And yes, mute not deaf. I just don’t think she is physically right there. She knows Sal well enough to pull a Gibb without any need to be within seeing or hearing distance.
That’s supported by the alt-text, as well.
Sal and others always communicate with her by talking, so she’s definitely mute but not deaf.
Ooooooooh…well seems like they have a new batch of issues to work out.
At least she was considerate enough to not text during her class.
I thought those obelisks were portable toilets, and tha tMarcie was going to emerge from one. Broken-hearted.
I was just about to say those pillars look like porta-potties!
I was right there to start with. Porta-loos we’d call them. See Kenny
So why exactly would a fight the previous night prevent her from seeing Sal? I’m not quite sure I understand.
She’s mad at Sal being the point here.
It’s not preventing her from seeing her, she’s mad at her because Sal has probably ruined a job opportunity for Marcie.
Even though it wasn’t Sal that started the fight. She only jumped in to help Amazi-Girl against Ryan and the Bros.
Okay, I’m sure this fight is going to be very upsetting, but I’m sorry, Marcie’s too damn adorable for me to find her anger intimidating. It either makes me want to laugh or want to ‘aww’. A fatal mistake I’m sure, and she’s got every right to be pissed, but something about Marcie is too adorable to intimidate me. Something about her face, I think.
Not the best avatar for telling someone to fuck off.
Amazi-Girl Started the fight and attracted the crowd. It’s not really terrible for Sal to react to her stalker confronting her. Sal didn’t run away, but if Marcie and the security were doing their jobs then both Sal and Amazi-Girl should have been escorted out before it escalated any further.
It really sucks to be totally new on the job and crazy shit happens, though. When you’re low on the totem pole, the higher ups can blame you for pretty much anything, and then you’ll be gone. So I understand that she’s mad because she might have to find another job now.
Maybe now in the future Marcie will set stronger boundaries with Sal. Fighting aside, it’s not really professional to have people you know hanging around while you’re working, as that alone can get you into hot water in many places.
I had a friend when I was in college who would invite me to hang out with her while she was working and I did because her boss was fine with it, but I made it clear to my friends that the type of job I had would be jeopardized if people were hanging around the office all willy nilly talking to me. Ironically, like in this case, I notice that the people who like to socialize too much on the job never seem to get a substantial amount of work done (ex. very talkative cashiers, secretaries who take long personal calls at their desks, etc.).
I don’t think that’s the fight Sal’s getting blamed for.
I think Frieda has successfully pinned the blame for the fight with Ryan on her, and that seems to be the story Marcie got.
Oh, the second fight. Yeah, AG started that one, and I have no idea how Marcie could believe that – didn’t AG actually physically confront Ryan, yell at him, and THEN Sal got involved? Marcie was standing right there though. No matter which way, it’s kind of a failure on the part of security…
The narrative that Frieda probably sold involves a variant of “YBF started a fight that escalated at my rally and security did nothing.” And in fairness, the salient point for Frieda is completely true – Security did nothing while a fight happened. Pointedly, to her face, while her free interns were trashed.
At a guess, everyone was censured (at bare minimum), but as a trainee, Marcie was let go period. Marcie probably caught on from context at some point that the viglante was stalking Sal (what with /being there the last time/), but the whole mess ultimately started because Sal fought (back). And even if she doesn’t actually blame her for defending herself (Which I actually wouldn’t be particularly mad at, given that this cost her a job, and she’s on the margin as is), everything about those panels signalled an agreement between the two of them that Sal let’s marcie decide when she fights – because Sal /doesn’t/ make those decisions without getting other people hurt in the process – and Sal ultimately violated that.
I’m reading a LOT into her angry stare and the bits with Leland, but it seems the obvious narrative step. if it gets revealed now, I’ll be happy, since I called it at the stare or the day after (whenever I commented on the stare itself).
Regardless of the first part with AG/Sal, Sal actively chose to get involved in the second fight between Ryan and Co. and AG. It might have been a good thing for Sal to do, but it didn’t do Marcie any favors and Marcie absolutely has every reason to be mad about it even without factoring everything else in.
This is true. I just mean to say that the whole thing isn’t entirely Sal’s fault. Marcie and security co. failed in their role, which is to immediately nip things in the bud when trouble is brewing. I don’t think it’s Marcie’s fault the fight happened, I’m just wondering why no one on security thought to do anything about the situation at all, as there were many chances for that. And Marcie’s just a trainee anyway, and she wasn’t the only security there – it seems like someone higher up needs a scapegoat.
I don’t even thinkt hey need a scapegoat.
But tbh, given the face of sheer /anger/ Marcie has while Sal runs off to play vigilante, I think the genesis of her anger starts with an implicit agreement to let someone else play shoulder angel – an agreement that exists because /this/ stupid horse shit keeps happening, and keeps hurting the poor girl of the two.
Might not even be implicit – almost every time Sal gets fighting mad (here defined as ‘ready to start swinging’), Marcie talks her down (sometimes with Sal saying ‘okay you’re right, as always’). There’s very few exceptions to that.
Who wants to play archive dive?
….
Well I do.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/help/ – First time we see Marcie nip things in the bud. Sal’s not even fighting mad here, but the point stands that Marcie gets it to stop before it gets to that point.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/01-pajama-jeans/authority/ – One of the exceptions. Walky gets to Sal before she starts throwing punches and Sal decides it’s not worth it.
During her first confrontation with AG:
– At first, Sal decides to walk away on her own (no Marcie!prompting necessary): http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/curbstompings/
– But when that’s about to change, she backs off when Marcie tells her no: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/fightme/
– While not actually ready to swing at anyone (despite her claims) Sal mentions here that Marcie stops her from fighting when she is: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/walking/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/embed-2/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/fuck/ – In these two strips, Marcie actively breaks up the fight with Malaya, drags Sal off, and they talk about what happened. Sal backs off once Marcie explains her end of the situation.
Marcie isn’t here in this one, but Sal’s jolted out of her anger when Carla brings up that someone’s life is at risk: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/brucewayne/
Marcie spent the majority of the AG/Sal confrontation here holding her back (albeit not very well) and urging her not to fight. Sal protests, but acquiesces until AG is about to get knocked out/violently beaten by Ryan, whom Sal knows is a rapist, and his bros. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/beef/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/nickname/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/alert/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/snap/
Also, flashback bonus points – Marcie tries to talk Sal down here. She fails, but there is definitely an effort to calm Sal down.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/balances/
4 out of 13 of those strips have Marcie not talking her down or otherwise stopping the fight. Only two scenarios actually result in her failing to talk Sal down (once with Leland which was years ago, and last night with Ryan).
That’s a very good point.
I’m pretty sure Leland rendered Marcie mute (not intentionally, as such, but recklessly) in retaliation for Sal hitting him directly without ‘provocation’, despite Marcie yelling ‘no, stop!’ (or whatever it is she yelled, I’m not looking up exact wording). The trick with the theory is that I can’t figure out how to figure the robbery into it, and I feel like it sort of has to.
I feel like I should let you know a long ass archive crawl is coming up. Stuck in moderation. Sorry!
Not sure if this will appear in the right place but I suspect Sal tried to rob the store to get money to help Marcie pay for medical treatment to maybe NOT end up mute.
‘He hit her pretty hard so I hit him and he always held a grudge and when he got the chance he beat her and damaged her larynx so bad it would need time-sensitive surgery to fix and her family can’t afford it and my parents won’t pay for it even though it’s all my fault coz they didn’t want us to be friends and are pissed with me for not listening to them and I need to pay for it and I can’t afford it and I’m really REALLY desperate and freaking our here and I have to do something…’
I kinda figure this also played into her lenient sentencing – she did something bad (and stupid) but there were extenuating circumstances…
I think that Sal has the same primary character flaw as Walky, if you’ll hear me out: Neither of them is very good at considering how their actions are going to affect others in the short and long term (Walky is worse at it than Sal, yes – but Sal is still struggles with it). Both of them also have a tendency to not consider what other people feel about situations before they make choices concerning those other people. And unfortunately, I would not be surprised if, like Sal tends to get the fallout for Walky’s choices, Marcie is usually the one who tends to get fallout for Sal’s choices.
As one example: Sal beat up Leeland in plain sight (despite Marcie asking her not to). She was probably justified in doing so, but her actions resulted in Marcie getting banned from a playground where she had fun, as one example.
I imagine that Marcie is the one who makes Sal stop because Marcie is the one who gets authorities bellowing at her, “Why didn’t you stop her?!” and who gets punishment for literally just knowing a hothead.
I don’t think Marcie would go straight to “piece of shit” if this wasn’t an issue with history for the two of them. “What the fuck?!” sure. Asshole, maybe (where I live, piece of shit is stronger invective than asshole – YMMV by regional dialect). But piece of shit is an insult used by someone who has had it up to here with a certain aggravation and they’re not going to take it anymore.
Marcie is pissed.
And I don’t blame her. Especially since Marcie hasn’t been around to see most of AG’s harassment of Sal – and I don’t think Sal is the “confide in others” type, even to Marcie. We know Sal was justified in confronting AG – all Marcie knows is that Sal hip-tossed a popular vigilante across the room at a major-for-the-city political event, where Marcie’s job depended on her keeping the peace, when Marcie didn’t really want Sal there in the first place because she was trying to work. Given Marcie’s context here, I’m surprised she’s even talking to Sal.
@ ischemgeek – Marcie was banned from the playground before Sal hit Leland. That happened when she tried to report him, the ‘proper’ way to deal with it.
Also, Marcie may not have seen the fight post-Toedad, but she was there for their first confrontation, where AG made it very clear she was only interested in goading Sal into a fight and using the law as a pretext. She knows this stalking is not a one-off thing. Even if, for argument’s sake, she didn’t – Sal said clearly and loudly that AG had been stalking her all day long. Anything she did to AG falls under self-defence.
I don’t think Marcie was too upset about Sal hanging out with her before AG showed up – a little bit ‘oh god’ when Sal was being dickish about her new job, sure, but other than that she didn’t seem to mind. Whether she should’ve is up to discussion, but I don’t think she was annoyed Sal was there until the fight broke out.
‘Young, Black, and Fabulous’ (Google is my friend?)
Young Black Female. I don’t think it’s archetypal like YBM tho.
Ah, I was guessing ‘felon.’
Eh, I’m on Marcie’s side here. Sal refuses to ever think how her actions affect her friend and basically refuses to ever explain situations either. She expects 100% emotional availability from Marcie while giving nothing in return. It’s also a pattern because as soon as Marcie was thrown in the pit, Sal ended up strangling the kid the next day despite her friend’s obvious desire for her to let it go.
I’m with Raidah, sometimes you need to remove toxic people from your life.
I think Sal can be impulsive, which manifests itself as selfishness, but I disagree that she doesn’t *ever* explain or think about Marcie, which is an absolute.
I think the unhealthiness of their relationship is more mutual than you say.. for example, if the job is so important and Marcie really doesn’t want to screw it up, why let Sal come in the first place? It’s like partying the weekend before a big exam – why take the chance in the first place if you want to eliminate as many complications as possible? Honestly, it’s more than a little unprofessional, especially because she’s new and in training. When you are *training*, I’m assuming there should be no distractions whatsoever.
Additionally, I agree with you about Sal’s temper because she immediately threw AG on the ground instead of going to Marcie first. Although given the hostility of the crowd, I don’t know how that could have worked out.
I think their relationship is changing because previously they were inseparable, and now Marcie wants to differentiate herself and get her own jobs and her own life outside of Sal’s friendship, and Sal is not used to that. It’s strained because Sal is still relating to Marcie the way she did this whole time, since they were kids.
And Marcie’s changed, and Sal is reacting negatively to it because that’s always how they’ve interacted and Marcie changing will force her to change too. And now it seems like Marcie has to either force Sal to realize that or distance herself further.
We don’t know why Sal showed up- it’s possible that if Marcie mentioned working at the rally to Sal. she may have just assumed that Marcie wouldn’t mind her showing up.
Even if she shows up, turn her away and tell her to spend her time somewhere else. If Sal is a good friend, she will understand and leave and they can just hang later.
I got the impression that Sal hanging around was allowed, since she contrasts it with Marcie’s other job, where she can’t.
I think Sal means that it’s just easier for her to get away with it. I don’t know many jobs where it’s fine to talk to your friends the whole time.
Could be, but I also think Marcie would tell her not to if it was actually against the rules, especially if this was important. As much as Sal’s been wanting to hang out, she seems to back off when Marcie tells her to.
I don’t agree with you assessment of the situation at all. Sal had every right to react against AG for the stalking. She did very well to help AG when she found out why she was chasing Ryan.
As to never thinking about Marcie: she beat the bully up to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. Maybe you aren’t aware of the fact that the only way to handle a bully is hit them back-its the only thing they understand. And no, I’m not interested in the poor little bully’s physic inner child.
As to never thinking about Marcie: you seem to be forgetting that Sal walked away when Marcie asked her too while Marcie was trying to bed Malaya.
And maybe you missed that conversation where Sal says she is there because Marcie asked her to be: its the only way they get to talk awhile as Marcie can’t on her other job.
The only ‘toxic’ person in your comment, imo, is Raidah. Who harassed the living shit out of Sarah when Sarah did what she thought was right. And actually was the right thing to do, it maybe saved her doper roomies life. While Raidah ignored her supposes BF dopers roomies problems.
Actually, the issue is that Marcie could suffer very real consequences for what happened to the bully.
Bull. Fucking. Shit. The whole entire reason she attacked the bully was because of Marcie. She was making sure that he would never think that was okay again. Thinking about Marcie and how it would affect her was her only motivation.
And it would have been horribly, horribly wrong for Sal to put saving face for her friend above doing what was right. She alone, out of everyone there, actually stepped in to keep Amazi-Girl from being beat up from a group of four people attacking her.
And not only are you now calling Sal toxic, you’re directly referencing someone else who did bullied someone else with that exact phrase. Towards someone we know did the right thing and is not remotely toxic.
When you’re quoting one of the villains of the comic as a moral standpost, you’ve gone way, way too far.
Yeah, Alice would probably have been a better toxicity quote.
We do know of at least one instance Marcie was vulnerable and Sal stuck around to go through it with her – when Marcie lost her voice and the two of them learned ASL together.
marcie dialogue!!
I bet those makes for some expressive signs.
“But Maaaarcie, a white chick started the fight this time. It’s OK.”
“Was”? Ouch, no wonder she’s mad.
Hoo boy, my mental processes just got a bit of a workout, trying to imagine a voice to go with Marcie’s text, and then realizing why that felt weird. Human-media interaction, I tell ya.
Willis tweeted a link to a thing where you put in your name and it tells you what kind of boss battle you would be, so I decided to do it with some of the characters. Here are most of them I tried (I didn’t copy them all like I thought I did). Feel free to think they took the test themselves…
*Note: Searching once and putting the name in a second time got me the same results so I didn’t submit until I found one I liked.
Joyce, the King of Boredom, spares the main character if they win the fight.
Sarah, the Legendary Death, is known for knocking inattentive players off the stage.
Sal, the Goddess of Lost Souls, waits menacingly on Floor 100 of the bonus dungeon.
Marcie, the Beast of Valor, waits menacingly on Floor 100 of the bonus dungeon.
Billie, the Soul born from Hunger, was infamously difficult due to a high learning curve.
Ruth, the Heart of Suffering, gives tank mains worldwide PTSD.
Amber, the Undying Cooking, is mentioned on “Which boss do you HATE?” discussions.
Amazi-Girl, the Eater of Oblivion, is gonna give the player a bad time.
Dorothy, the Dragon of Money, became unusually popular to the male audience.
Dina, the Master of Sleep, has lots of funny dialogue throughout the fight.
Becky, the Burning Heaven, becomes recruitable after their boss fight.
Mary, the Mourning Cuddles, is fought only if the player killed their friends
Jocelyne, the Savior of Innocence, drops a pretty mount… not that you’ll get it.
Walky, the Ancient Thunder, was the player’s close friend… but not anymore.
Mike, the Wielder of Flowers, is still undefeated to this very day.
Danny, the Daughter of the West, used to be much harder but got nerfed due to complaints.
Joe, the Iron Fist of Beer, makes healer mains cry.
Jacob, the Child of Fear, returned in the next game as a playable character
Jason, the Wielder of RNG, singlehandedly caused people to refund the game.
Galasso, the Ruler of Sex, becomes recruitable after their boss fight.
Monkey Master, the Master of Knights, was a pushover in the beta but got buffed.
And just because
Willis, the God of Boredom, has lots of funny dialogue throughout the fight.
Well on the bright side, Marcie and Sal being alone on the same floor will give them PLENTY of time to discuss this!
Oh yeah. Instead of fighting the protagonist, they just end up fighting each other! XD
In an ironic twist, their floor ends up the loudest. xD
“Galasso, the Ruler of Sex.” What are the odds??
I know! Couldn’t have made that one up if I tried.
Also, did you notice that both Joyce and Willis came up as the King of Boredom!?! That made me smile ^_^
“I claim the title sovereign lord of this ‘sex’ thing you keep mentioning! As its monarch, I order you to cease discussion of it and get back to work!”
Becky is recruitable once you’ve punched out Toedad.
Some of these are pretty fitting for their respective characters! (Ruth, Joyce, Dina, Becky…)
So what’s the link to that thing?
(Google has failed me)
I believe it’s this from Willis’ twitter: You as a Boss Fight
Every single one… perfect.
And dang, Floor 100 sounds like a challenge. Time to git gud.
I’m a little confused here.
There’s no way Marcie’s talking about the non-fight between Sal and Amazi-Girl, but people seem to be jumping at the chance to either blame Sal for picking fights (when she didn’t), or Marcie for her poor choice of company.
Sal started exactly zero fights. She protected herself from getting jumped by AG. Roughly, yes, but after pulling her down, she didn’t start throwing punches. Later, when she did get into an actual fight, it had already started, and she jumped in to stop Ryan and his goons from beating the crap out of AG in a room full of useless bystanders.
Sal and AG were fighting four interns for the DeSantos campaign, in a rally full of DeSantos supporters, which included a good number of bigots who’d been cheering for Sal to get beat up only a minute earlier.
Sal actually did nothing wrong that night. Marcie’s (no doubt former) employers don’t know that. Neither does Marcie. Sal and Amazi-Girl are the only ones who know that Ryan is a rapist. AG even tried to his boss about it, but Frieda immediately got defensive:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/huff/
All Marcie knows it what Sal has done (repeatedly) in the past, what’s she’s heard from her coworkers, and what little she saw herself.
And all she saw was Sal running out of the building with AG, leaving a pile of bruised interns behind her.
Yuuuup, almost guaranteed she’s talking about the interns. Even if Sal yanking AG down was considered wrong by her employers, Marcie undoubtedly heard Sal saying AG had been stalking her all day.
Marcie was there when AG attacked Sal at the parking lot. She didn’t need to be told.
Yes, but I’m referring to this specific scenario. Even if Marcie didn’t know about this previously, she STILL would know this was the case because Sal made it very clear very loudly, and she had no reason to doubt Sal was telling the truth (and AG’s behaviour certainly seemed to corroborate it).
I’m also sure that Marcie witnessed the whole fight. She was holding Sal back at some point, a crowd gathered around them, and AG and Sal took off after Ryan.
Marcie saw none of the fight with Ryan. She was holding Sal back when it still looked she and AG might end up fighting.
When Ryan was spotted and AG went after him, Sal followed, and Marcie stayed at her post, doing her job. For she knew, it looked like things were cool and she could relax.
We see other security people later, but we don’t see Marcie again until the bros are down and Ryan has fled, when she pushes through the crowd to see what happened:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/right/
She’s already angry there. If she’d seen anything but the end of the fight, she would know Sal only got involved to defend AG.
it actually looks to me like Marcie followed the two of them through the crowd. The motion lines imply that she was pushing through the crowd in time to see them run away. I stand by my point, though- this is a shitty one, but a political rally nonetheless. The proper thing for security to do would have been to escort Sal and AG out, regardless of whether it looked like it had died down. If it were a club, maybe, but since a congresswoman was there, any commotion should not be tolerated.
Even if Marcie understood why Sal got involved, her job and the jobs of her co-workers dictate that they get them out of there. So her job would have been to get backup and follow them, not assume that it got taken care of.
She clearly only just arrived there when we see her. The implication being that she heard none of AG and Sal’s conversation about Ryan, or saw how the fight started (Ryan taking a swing at AG), or why Sal got involved in it (rescuing AG).
Regardless of whether Marcie would have or should have been fired, my point was that if she’d known the full story, she wouldn’t be pissed at Sal.
Not that any of the non-trainees who responded to Marcie’s alert earlier did any more than she did, so I doubt she’d be the one sacked for not doing what the fully-trained guards weren’t doing either.
I concede that she just arrived now that I look closely, but I really doubt she didn’t hear the commotion they caused – a fight is really easy to hear.
I think she might have been angry at Sal anyway, because according to the flashbacks it usually happens like this. Something happens, Sal reacts to it, and Marcie in whatever way ends up cleaning up the mess/watching Sal be hurt by her actions. Marcie would definitely understand, but I can see her being pissed at Sal anyway, because she wants this dynamic from their childhood to stop.
I think she’s mad at herself for allowing Sal to tag along once again, she’s mad at Sal because their tired dynamic has happened for the nth time and now she has no job because of it, and she’s mad because she lost her job. She could feel that even if any of those reasons might be unfair.
The fully trained guards weren’t doing their job, but it was her post, Sal is her friend and wouldn’t have been there had she just told her to get lost for a while, and she was the one who was a trainee. Additionally, the client is “always right” – if Freida said she wanted Marcie to go, she would have been gone. In situations like this, the lowest on the totem pole are often the first to go because it takes the heat off of everyone else. It’s massively unfair, but that’s the way it works in a lot of places.
Quick note – Marcie does still have her job as a stock girl. Everything else is right, but it’s not true Marcie has no job now. A poorly paying one that isn’t enough (or at least would majorly benefit from a second income), yes, but she does still have a job.
I’m sorry, I know I point this little nitpick stuff out a lot. It’s not that I disagree with your overall post – it’s a good point – it’s just that little canon mistakes bug me and I like to try and point out what happened.
Marcie is absolutely right to be mad or at least has every right to be, but yeah, I don’t see why people are jumping so quickly to blame either Sal or Marcie for this.
I agree – Marcie definitely has the right to feel angry about losing her job. When I say above that Marcie shouldn’t invite Sal, I don’t mean don’t be friends with her, I mean there are times and places where you can’t have your friends around period, even if they’re quiet as church mice, simply because it’s considered unprofessional. I’m also playing devil’s advocate to the people analyzing their friendship.
Also, I mean that in the context of Marcie being mad at Sal in particular, or at least directing her anger at Sal for everything that happened (and i do think she means AG too, because that was the argument that drew the crowd and Ryan close enough for her to notice him at all in a sea of faces).
I think it’s all around shitty, especially because Marcie lot her job, and it also seems like Frieda chose to blame Sal and co. and choose Ryan over them…which doesn’t surprise me at all, because like FC mentioned, racist employers who think like that are always going to screw you over. It just happened to Marcie, almost comically sooner.
Marcie lost her job but I’m also pretty sure Frida’s not hiring that firm again (if they’re a private, any-job-we’ll-do type). So it’s probably not just Marcie’s money that got cost, but her boss’ money as well, which means that Marcie’s money is definitely getting cost.
Lessons learned all around, shitty lessons, but lessons nonetheless.
She’s right, based on what she knows. Even knowing the whole story, it’s still be understandable if some of her anger over unfairly losing her job ended up getting directed at Sal.
Marcie knows the salient facts. Amazi-girl didn’t just admit to /Sal’s/ face that she uses the law as a pretext, after all.
Like, she’s allowed to be mad here, we don’t have to pretend she doesn’t know what she needs to know.
I think what FC means is, while Marcie’s anger is absolutely valid, she is missing some important context in the fight with Ryan that might (or might not) change her tune.
She’s allowed to be mad. But she called her “friend” a piece of shit. Unless that’s something between them, that’s really wrong. That’s like trying to end the friendship.
…no? It means she’s really pissed – justifiably, and on multiple levels.
I’m kinda with Marcie on this one. Who knows how challenging it is for her to get another job? (IIRC: Marcie’s undocumented, with a disability that is relevant to many jobs, and possibly a GED or HS degree at best). She has to pay rent, you know!
I’m not sure how Sal could have deescalated either situation, but it didn’t seem to cross her mind to do so. She didn’t take it outside.
I really doubt Marcie is undocumented. Security is a gig that requires licensing (granted, possibly not in Indiana) and is often predisposed to the sort of people who’d love to actually throw the odd co-worker out who’s illegal. Her parents might be, but I’m pretty sure they have rock-solid proof that Marcie isn’t.
It helps that her other job appears to be ‘retail clerk’, which is a normal minimum wage job (and those absolutely check your documentation).
Marcie’s a stock room worker, not a clerk – think Ultra Car’s job from Shortpacked, as opposed to early Amber’s.
Otherwise, agreed. If that job wasn’t a one-off/odd job type thing, they’d definitely be looking for documentation. Sal also only mentioned her parents would be deported, not Marcie herself. Now granted, there are a bunch of racist programs that can get even legal immigrants deported (or at least threaten them with such) but Sal seems pretty confident Marcie herself is not threatened by it, which means she’s probably a US citizen.
My understanding from subtext is that Marcie’s parents are undocumented, but she was born in the US and is thus a US citizen.
But even still: She’s a disabled Latina without post-secondary education. It’s gotta be fucking hard to find work. Well-paying work is gonna be even harder, because most jobs that pay even half decently without post-secondary are hugely male dominated (like security) and are thus both hard to get as a woman and harder to keep as a woman. I worked security for two years. Conveniently, it was always the boob-havers who didn’t get hours when they were short on contracts. Fancy that. And if you don’t get hours, you need to find other work and you can’t move up. Also all the sexual harassment. Try being a 5’5″ 115lb 19YO female-coded person working on a shift when literally everyone else is a cis dude, most of whom are middle-aged cis white dudes. EVERYONE is assuming that if you do anything at all nicer than telling them to fuck off the moment they open their mouth around you, you want in their pants (and if you are a raging asshole, then you’re a crazy bongo who needs to be fired).
I do have some funny stories from that job though – like the time I talked down a high-on-something military guy from picking a fight with me and we bonded over hating paperwork.
YUP, the job market is not going to be kind to this girl.
Dang I’d better re-read the whole scene to make sure I’m not misremembering the heck out of it.
Marcie’s parents may not be documented.
They could be citizens, even native-born, and still be justified with MAGA Robin (as a proxy for the actual Donald Trump) trying to deport them. Granted, it doesn’t work as well with Representative Robin, even as a Trump Stand-in. The reason that’s scary is that the Executive actually /does/ have extremely broad powers in the prosecution of immigration, and Robin, carny-boobed or not, is only running for a seat as a Representative, not the presidency. The legislature has broad authority too, but not ‘a legislator’.
YUP. There’s quite a few racist programs that have gotten both legal immigrants and legal citizens threatened with, if not actually, deportation. Accidental (or ‘accidental’) deportations are a thing.
Make America Great Again?
Yup, from Willis’ comic of his – rather, Joyce’s, parents and the Antichrist.
Punching Ryan in the face was the most right thing she’s ever done.
Even then, she did try to keep it from escalating, by trying to talk AG out of any “vigilante shit”, and then staying out of it herself when she wouldn’t listen.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/cocked/
She only jumped into that fight to defend AG, when the fight was about to turn into a viscous beating. Based on her timing, she must have been keeping an eye on the situation.
It may be hard on her to get another job. But she is blaming Sal when she knows that Sal didn’t do anything wrong. She doesn’t know about the rapist, but she does know that Sal only fought to defend someone else who was being hurt.
It’s as if she wanted Sal to let the girl get beaten up. If that’s Marcie’s response, then maybe security isn’t for her.
That’s the just the thing. Marcie doesn’t know that Sal didn’t do anything wrong.
From the incomplete / inaccurate picture of events Marcie has, it looks to her like Sal fell back into old behavior she was supposed to have quit years ago, so she’s mad as hell.
Hm, assuming she didn’t hear AG, that’s actually true, given that as far as she’s seen AG is a crazy stalker who starts fights w/ people. There’s no reason to assume Ryan started the fight if she wasn’t specifically paying attention.
There was a huge crowd between Marcie and Ryan that she only pushed through when Sal and AG were running off – she almost definitely doesn’t know what happened there, just that Sal was presumably involved in thrashing some interns for the campaign that hired her company.
I’m seeing a few comments here wondering how Marcie will get a job here and I just want to remind everyone she DOES have a regular job – she’s a stockroom worker. The security thing was either a one-off/odd job thing or training for a second one. Her stock room job isn’t a great one, no, but she’s not completely out of work.
People don’t work multiple jobs for fun though. Especially not if they live in a cramped studio apartment with 10 people.
She was doing that because either it’d pay much better once she was fully trained, or (more likely) because she needed both incomes
Hence why I said she’s not completely out of work. I got the impression that the second job was a very new thing, but it’s likely she definitely needed the income either because it was a necessity for the things she needed (food, rent, etc.) or to provide breathing room/a little security (pun intended) while using stock to pay the bills.
That’s a good point! I guess that teacher/administrator misjudged her situation back in the day, phew.
Yep, the administrator didn’t know Marcie’s situation at all, they just suggested it as a possibility (before refusing to do anything productive). No other mentions of Marcie’s documentation. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/liability/
Both in-universe and out, we see how easy it is to obfuscate facts and scapegoat Sal. We all know that Sal started zero fights yet so many people are saying they side with marcie as if anything that happened at the rally was truly Sal’s fault.
It’s funny to me, because I definitely see how to get kinda annoyed at Sal on Marcie’s behalf, and nobody else seems to have picked up on the ‘sub’text that Marcie is supposed to have a say in when Sal fights.
But, black girl.
Yeah, Sal did what Sal would have done in that situation. AG was the one who pretty much instigated everything.
Marcy is signing her love in that phone pic it’s so cute and jarring but a teeny bit reassuring but also worrying that it will disappear as Sal continues to take her for granted.
Oh wow, she is! I didn’t notice that before. That’s adorable!
…Yeah, I know I should be worried, but again, Marcie’s just so cute it’s hard to be intimidated.
What if- stay with me on this one- this issue falls into a GRAY area? *GASP*
Impossible – a social scientific myth. XD
Okay, I feel like an asshole just dropping that line here, so I’m just gonna note this is a reference to Shortpacked – http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=2186 and hope I didn’t come across as being a dick or disagreeing with Lipke when I don’t.
Haha, I don’t think anyone would have been stupid enough to think that, especially with the lil’ xD face and all.
Then again, there are some very stupid people on the internet…
Thank you for reminding me of that strip, by the by. 😀
Sometimes tone and intent don’t travel well through the internet, so I like to cover my bases. Especially when I only started commenting not even a few weeks ago, yikes.
It’s one of my favourites. Thought if nothing else people would get a laugh out of it.
I think that definitely came across as a joke even before reading your follow-up, but I suppose that could just be me.
I probably was just being self-conscious last night. Bleh.
Ah, we’ve all been there. Better safe than sorry and all that ^_^
Ah crap… just one sour turn after another…
In the boldest move possible, I’ll suggest they’re *both* right.
Sal did the right thing, preventing the “good guy” in a fight from being teamed up on and seriously hurt when she realized security wasn’t doing anything and intervention was her only option.
Marcie is right to be upset with Sal, because even though Sal did the right thing, what she did also came back to reflect negatively on Marcie on her first day in a presumably important new job.
Thus I boldly elect to not choose sides, boldly.
I’m disappointed in your lack of boldness.
Thus I boldly elect to not choose sides, boldly.
There are worse things to be compared to.
I do not agree that something reflecting badly on Marcie makes her anger right. It’s understandable, but it’s not right.
Especially because of her response. Unless “piece of shit” is a sort of playful thing between them, that response was uncalled for. You do not call someone a piece of shit, garbage, trash, etc.
The family resemblance between her and Walky right now is -startling-.
The complete obliviousness to their actions is mirrored perfectly between them.
Technically, Amazi-Girl started that fight and Sal joined in, unless I’m remembering wrong.
Sal sort of started it by grabbing Amazi-Girl’s cape and throwing her to the ground (there were sort of two fights, the first of which never went beyond Sal and Amazi-Girl shouting accusations at each other whilst the baying crowd egged them on).
^ No. AG stalking Sal is what started the fight. Legally and ethically, Sal is entitled to confront her stalker. Force begets force. Stalking is a violent crime, entitling Sal to respond in kind. Even if Marcie didn’t know this was a recurring thing (which she should, since she was there the first time), she would have heard Sal VERY LOUDLY say AG had been stalking her all day.
Wrong. She has a duty to retreat. See my post further down.
Except, again, for the fact she’s legally entitled to confront her stalker. And, again, another part of self defence law is ‘violence begets violence’ – since AG is committing a violent crime, Sal is entitled to use violence to get her to stop. The duty to retreat usually applies to the use of lethal force, which Sal was not using. It also does not apply to stand your ground states, of which Indiana is one.
I think Keulan is referring to the fight between AG and the Dudebro Squad, not the AG/Sal confrontation.
Amazi-Girl started that confrontation by stalking Sal, but since that (fortunately) didn’t escalate into an actual fight, I was referring to the fight right after that between Amazi-Girl and Ryan and the Desanto supporter guys. Sal definitely did not start that fight, in fact she didn’t get involved until Amazi-Girl was having trouble.
Something tells me that Sal is going to have to practice a new skill – mortified and embarrassed apology – if she wants to talk to Marcie any time soon. What is more, she’s going to need to be good at it!
She’s in big trouble.
On Marcie’s side here, it looks like she got fired from her job here because of this and in the first place Sal shouldn’t have even been hanging around with her while she was working.
Sal might not have ‘started’ the fight, but she was still a clear part of it, she could’ve just told Marcie about Amazi-Girl stalking her and got her sent out the building via *security* instead of grabbing her instead and having a fight over it. Sal hasn’t felt threatened by AG at all really (unless I’ve missed something!) and just finds her stalking more weird than anything, so I can’t really see this as self-defence, more Sal wanting a fight/wanting AG to get out of her face all the time.
Probably not a good idea to start these things where your best mate works though.
I’m sorry that Sal wasn’t trembling sufficiently for you to allow her to defend herself, but guess what? She’s not required to.
AG had stalked and attacked her earlier, had demonstrated how she was harboring an irrational grudge when she got mad at Sal for saving her life, and was in a position where she could have hurt Sal very badly if she’d attacked again. It isn’t self defense only if you’re visibly frightened and panicking. It’s self-defense when you defend yourself (duh) from a perceived threat.
Sal had every reason to believe AG would attack her again, and that she might have even attacked if she’d simply been outed to the authorities.
It might have been possible to defuse the situation completely gently, but Sal’s actions were completely reasonable.
You are missing a very, very important part of self-defense law: the duty to retreat. At that point, Sal could have easily gotten away.
Fortunately, she didn’t actually fight Amazi-Girl–she just kept goading her into a fight, and AG did not accept. (I am treating the cape pulling event as a comic thing, as, in real life, it actually could have hurt her.) She only fought after Ryan started a fight, and was doing so to defend someone else, which is also actually self-defense.
Now, maybe you can argue she was morally justified (though I would not agree, as hurting people is a last resort action), but she legally was not.
Duty to retreat only means that she cannot use force if she’s able to escape.
Since she didn’t actually fight Amazi-Girl, how is that relevant?
It also typically refers to the use of lethal force, and it is not used in stand your ground states (Indiana is a stand your ground state), if my research is correct.
That’s not really a thing in American defense law, much less before non-lethal force. It’s been eroded beyond the point of uselessness. *I* care, but the law doesn’t seem to anymore.
It /is/ a thing elsewhere, and in some jurisdictions, and it is technically on the books (so expect to see it as a black person.)
But at any rate, the duty to retreat basically starts before LETHAL force. Not non-lethal. So inapplicable as a legal matter.
Unless it was about the second fight, in which case that was all AG’s doing! Though ofc Marcie will still blame her friend instead of the unknown stranger
Probably because Marcie’s boss blamed her and her friend who was obviously tied to the girl in the costume somehow, rather than the nice young men working for the campaign. And Marcie apparently didn’t see the start of the Ryan fight, so she can’t offer much of a defense.
So, Sal may have been morally and even legally justified in her actions, but Marie pays the price for them. Again.
Marcie’s boss probably blamed all of security who were at the incident – intervening in those sort of situations was the point of them being hired in the first place. Sal was totally justified in throwing AG to the ground, but I’m not sure she was LEGALLY justified in intervening in the AG/Dudebros fight (that depends on the Indiana laws concerning those situations). One might argue that AG was morally justified in going after Ryan (she certainly wasn’t legally justified), but since no-one told Marcie or her boss or pretty much anyone about WHY, I’m not really going to blame them for not seeing it that way.
That was totally legal for Sal unless Indiana is the blue unicorn that actually lets you respond to fighting words with violence (Fighting words can be censored by the state, but they don’t give you an actual justification for fighting except maybe in some individual state somewhere.) Even if Indiana strips the right to self-defense from AG for provoking a fight (not actually unreasonable in a vacuum, albeit uncommon as a rule and difficult to pull off in this specific instance in any case), that probably gets into very interesting waters for Sal, as she wasn’t colluding with AG, nor was she provoking the fuckboys. It’d become a question of very specific legal issues.
But in all probability, AG actually had her full right to self defense, even given that she intentionally provoked that fucking asshole. Everything I’ve said about VIOLENT crime sort of emphasizes the VIOLENT CRIME part for a reason. AG threatened Ryan with civil censure over what he’d done, and he responded with force – as it happens, you basically can’t do that. AG actually would have been defending herself – and therefore, Sal was acting in self-defense as well (Or well, defense of others).
I mean, that’s not what would happen in court, but those are the facts of the matter, easily gleaned by us as omniscient viewers. Sal is almost definitely in the clear at every step here, legally.
Some states will allow fighting words as a defence for fighting – as in, words that could reasonably cause someone to lose their temper and snap, causing a confrontation, either physical or verbal(for example, mocking someone for losing a parent to cancer or something). It probably won’t get you in the clear, but it’d mitigate your sentence. you might know it as provocation?
Either way, you’re correct – “I’m gonna blast your crimes all over social media for everyone to see” would not be considered fighting words.
The whole situation is tricky based on the fact that Ryan is never going to be accused of anything without Joyce’s testimony (who has clearly said she just wants the whole thing to go away quietly). No judge is going to let “I was going to tell the world he’s a rapist” fly when no charges are going to be pressed against Ryan, let alone a conviction. Legally speaking, what you have right now is AG in the process of doxxing Ryan and him trying to stop her from doing so. I have no idea how doxxing stands on legal grounds, but that strikes me as a violation of the rights to your own image and the right to privacy right off the bat.
Doxxing requires her to release personal and identifying information, of which she had none. Not even a name. At worst, he could force her to delete the post and maybe get some money off her – bad, but she’s not going to jail for it in all likelihood. Also, while Joyce never reported him, AG has a few people who reported Ryan to her – Dorothy, Sarah, and Sal confirmed she knew of the incident. Dorothy even confirmed it was him. She has every reason to believe her information is true. You don’t need a conviction to say ‘hey, guys, this person may be dangerous, avoid him in this area’.
I’ve never heard of it, but I’m pretty sure ‘fighting words’ are basically dead letter at this point regardless. The only rock solid ones are ‘impugning the chastity of one’s mother’ (Scalia was a bastard, make no mistake, but when not being horrible, he was occasionally, if probably unintentionally, hilarious).
I wouldn’t be surprised at a state actually providing that as a justification for violence, b/c we really like fighting, tho, and in practical terms, I’m pretty sure ‘rapist’ would be considered fighting words (A bit moreso than I am ‘racist’, the pendulum hasn’t swung that far yet.). So if Indiana is one of those unicorns, then Sal is fucked (she probably shouldn’t be, b/c it’s not impugning the chastity of one’s mother, but)
Counterpoint: “Sal is fucked” is impugning the chastity of someone’s daughter. Does that count, or does it need to be a mother? Passing knowledge of Scalia indicates that it needs to be a WHITE mother/daughter, though.
…
Hold on. How do you impugn the chastity of someone’s MOTHER? If someone’s a mother (I’m assuming even suggesting to Scalia the existence of non-biological mothers would have made his head explode), wouldn’t lack of chastity be a foregone conclusion?
That your mother slept with your father is assumed – but having done so before marriage, or that she slept with someone else (EG ‘Your mother’s a whore) would still be on the table.
Like I said, it might be called something different. “Provocation” maybe. But it is a defence for assault. Usually it overlaps with what’s called hate speech but fighting words can also be applied to picking at sore spots. Either way, accusing someone of a crime wouldn’t qualify. It applies to words used to incite hatred and violence from someone – goading them into a fight basically or words that can tend to cause either a verbal or physical confrontation. A verbal confrontation might have been justified under that, but Ryan lost that when he took a swing at AG, who was not saying these things to get him to hit her (or at least could argue she wasn’t).
I should probably point out that I am Canadian and so most of my knowledge of criminal law/defences is Canadian. Fighting words were a thing in the US, but I’m not sure if they still are. It’s still on the books as a defence here (under provocation – it probably won’t get you off, but it will get you in less trouble).
Also, if he didn’t lose that ‘fighting words’ thing when he took a swing at her, he did when he got other people involved and had them hold her down and went to knock her out (or beat her really badly). That’s excessive, beyond ‘reasonably pissed’.
See, I’ve never seen provocation come close to a /defense/ to battery. I’ve seen it as a mitigating circumstance, and (in some jurisdictions) strip your right to self defense, but /never/ a justification for battery. ‘Fighting Words’ in particular, given the extra constitutional leeway to do something about them, probably have a state somewhere do it, but it’s got to be like, one. It’s rare enough to lose your right to self-defense for starting a fight with words. It just runs into the issue that it’s really hard to claim something is fighting words now, in theory (in practice, I’m still pretty sure rapist counts)
When I say ‘defence’ I don’t mean it will get you found not guilty (unless they were either supremely dickish or the ‘fight’ amounted to like, one punch or something that wasn’t very serious), but it will get you less of a sentence. It is hard to claim, but even if rapist did count, he went beyond it when he dragged in other people and had them hold her down so he could knock her teeth in. And AG, again, could argue she wasn’t trying to get him to take a swing.
Okay, that is impressive timing.
Of course, Sal. You see, when Marcie became deaf her other senses heightened to compensate – in her case, her sense of timing got the biggest boost.
#lessonsfromDaredevil
Not deaf, MUTE. I’m on fire today as far as comments go, it seems.
@Lipke: I most certainly DO know what zoids are (were?). I had 5-6 of the things when I was a kid. I mean, they were Alien Dinosaur Zombies, you don’t get much cooler than that!
Alien Dinosaur ROBOTS, I mean. Damn the lack of an edit function!
;u;
I bought a controller and memory card for my Gamecube specifically so I could play Battle Legends.
I only ever had a few of the models, though…
One would think Marcie would give her best friend the benefit of the doubt and give her a chance to explain. But I’m guessing getting fired doesn’t put one in the most reasonable of mental spaces.
Also, Marcie usually keeps Sal from fighting, which suggests Sal has a history of (rightly or wrongly) flying off the handle.
Marcie goes way back with Sal, and she was standing right there. I suspect she knows the explanation as well as Sal does.
Fired because of something a friend did?
Pretty sure that’s a no-no.
Fired because of something a friend did?
Contact your union, Marcie.
You need a union first.
More like “fired for not doing your job.” As security, I’m going to go on a limb here and say Marcie’s job description included either preventing fights from breaking out or stopping them when they did.
Seriouslyy, if anyone should have been fired, it should have been THIS useless asshole who blatantly said he was not going to do his job. Marcie seemed like she was posted at the door, what’s this jackass’ excuse?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/paid-3/
It isn’t. He should’ve been fired right alongside Marcie (and perhaps he was).
Rereading this strip, though, do we know Marcie has been fired? Her use of “WAS a security trainee” certainly seem to imply so, though I think during the incident we were working on the assumption that that was a one-shot job and Marcie had been hired specifically to provide security for that event. The conclusion is simple:
We need more details on Marcie. GIVE US MORE MARCIE, WILLIS!!!
This guy’s arguably worse since Marcie’s job seemed to be directed the crowd along that door. She may not have been allowed to leave that post. Again, what is this asshole’s excuse?
I suppose it could also mean that she’s using ‘was’ because the incident was last night. I’m guilty of that often enough.
That said, I think being fired is meant to be the implication.
Fuel to the fire (under the guy’s ass): he’s probably also her superior. She’s a trainee, he LOOKS old enough to be higher on the hierarchy. Bonus points because he was pretty much told to stop the fight by the employer (client?) and pretty much wen ‘eh, nah.’
If not her superior, definitely her back up, since he’s one of the two to respond to her signal: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/alert/
He did jack shit then too. Seriously “Marcie, get her outside, AG, come with us.”
Holy crap, and there were TWO of them as back-up that sat on their asses. Was there ANYONE that security firm hired that wasn’t useless?
Depending on what her actual job description was (as in, if her actual job was to direct traffic at that specific door) Marcie?
Possibly. As a trainee, it’s possible her job description includes “and if shit goes down, you ring your superiors and let them handle it. You don’t get involved in violence until you get more experience under your belt.”
That is also very possible.
He’s a rent-a-security guy working for probably a couple bucks above minimum wage. He’s probably supposed to politely but firmly escort the occasional disruptive protester out, probably with a couple of others.
One guy jumping into a melee between a superhero, a biker chick and 4 dudebros isn’t going to accomplish anything but getting his own ass kicked. I bet the job doesn’t provide insurance either, though he might be able to sue for workman’s comp, but I bet there’s a line in his employee handbook about calling cops and/or backup in the case of actual fights/crime.
A fair assessment, though I’m pretty sure he didn’t even do THAT (call the cops, I mean). Of course, his justification isn’t “it’s not worth it for what you’re paying me,” nor “I’m afraid of needing hospital treatment I can’t afford,” it’s just “I’unno, Amazi-Girl.”
That COULD mean “it’s Amazi-Girl and she’ll kick my butt,” but from the gist of the arc and his “meh, whatever” attitude, it strikes me more like “Amazi-girl is kicking someone’s butt so they clearly deserve it, even though I know nothing about this situation and I was hired specifically to deal with it should it arise” (even if it’s just by calling the cops).
In which case the thing to do is to call backup and then say ‘Okay, all of you BREAK IT UP or I’m calling the police.”
It’s not to sit on your ass and do jack shit, especially when a congresswoman is there. And his justification isn’t ‘I’ve called the police/backup and am waiting for them to arrive’, ‘confronting fights is against company policy’ or even ‘I don’t have insurance and I don’t get paid enough for this’. It’s ‘Amazi-Girl’. He’d rather sit there and watch AG than do his job and he hung Marcie out to dry if she got fired instead of his ass.
Considering that we have been shown that Sal and Marcie are more-or-less friends — and in at least one instance saw Marcie act as Sal’s counterbalance — it does seem a little harsh for Marcie to open the conversation by calling Sal a POS.
Considering that we have been shown that Sal and Marcie are more-or-less friends — and in at least one instance saw Marcie act as Sal’s counterbalance — perhaps Sal should get anger management classes so that she stops fucking Marcie’s life.
This wasn’t exactly an angry issue, Bento.
I think we’ve seen that Sal and Marcie are not “more-or-less friends”- they’re best friends, at least from how I see it.
Also, !
I am just AMAZING at making those links aren’t I
The more-or-less friends was just to keep as much of Bycicle Bill’s original text as possible, for better contrast.
And I think it WAS an anger issue. I get the feeling Sal is like The Avengers Banner. Her secret is that she’s angry ALL THE TIME, so she needs little reason to punch her anger out.
Except in that particular situation, punching the problem away was the correct response to four dudes holding down a woman to beat the shit of if her.
This is true (well, the correct response was for security to do their goddamn jobs, but when useless dumbasses abound, I guess a girl’s got to take action). This doesn’t mean that how quickly she goes for the violent way out isn’t an issue. Of course, I’m just speculating here – on the other hand, it isn’t like life hasn’t given Sal enough reasons to be angry.
In Sal’s defence, she’s stepped down from a fight (or been talked down relatively easily) almost every time we’ve seen her mad – except for last night and with Leland. I don’t think it’s true to say ‘she needs little reason’ or that she’s angry all the time.
Kindly refer to the strip Lipke linked above to see how quickly Sal goes violent at Malaya when she (rightfully) calls her out.
Sidenote: I momentarily thought YOU had linked that strip. This is what I get for talking to two people with the same avatar. Fun for the whole neural network.
Kindly refer to the strip where Marcie stops Sal from hitting her, drags her off and gets her to back down relatively easily. Refer to when Sal wanted to tear AG to shreds in that parking lot and backed off pretty quick when Marcie told her not to. Refer to Sal not taking any swings at AG after she drags her out into the limelight (and Sal was PISSED there). Refer to Sal getting snapped out of her anger by Walky and Carla at different times.
Even if we are counting her fight with Malaya, that’s three incidents. Sal’s been in over 200 strips. Having a temper does not equal ‘angry all the time’ nor ‘she needs little reason to resort to violence’. The most common thing you could argue for violence is she has a tendency to grab people (usually by their shirts) when they’ve REALLY pissed her off. Note that, other than her throwing AG around like a rag doll and the aforementioned fight with Malaya, nothing comes from her grabbing these people, fight wise. Either she calms down, someone snaps her out of it, or (if you’re Jason) she drags said person along to wherever she’s going.
Maybe we are working on a different definition of “anger issues” here. To me, grabbing someone by the collar, throwing them against a wall, and lifting them bodily off the ground because they call you out on acting like a condescending prick and they don’t want to hang out with you, and only stopping when your best friend physically intervenes is a problem.
Marcie also holds Sal back after she tosses AG (but this is irrelevant, because if there were two situations on which Sal was justified on punching people in the face until they had no face, this was one of them).
If you keep needing other people to wind your anger down from violence, you might have an anger issue.
On a semi-related note, I wonder if one of Sal’s outbursts might have been indirectly connected to Marcie becoming mute (say, if Leland retaliated against Marcie) and that is partly why Marcie is the most effective at stopping Sal on her tracks.
Well, it’s time for me to turn in, and no doubt tomorrow’s strip will bring about a whole new slew (SLEW!) of topics to discuss (unless it’s another Dina+Becky strip, in which case there’ll be nothing to discuss because we’ll all be too busy going “d’aaaaaw” and covering our ears so Bagge’s screams of “DOOFUSES” do not deafen us), so I suppose on this one we’ll have to settle by agreeing that our bars for problematic anger are set at different levels.
*shrugs* Fair enough. To me, if it’s that easy to snap you out of it, it’s not too bad. If she couldn’t stop herself and it took a lot more effort for other people to stop her I’d be more concerned.
She was being STALKED.
Also – daaaaaamn is that contact picture and the actual text a contradiction.
I dunno. “I was a security trainee and you started a fight, you piece of shit! Love youuuuuuuuu.” has a nice ring to it.
Can’t argue with that logic!
I don’t see how it can be concluded from this text that Marcie was fired from her job. A fight broke out and Marcie followed the correct procedures by alerting her superior since she’s still a trainee. The problem is if Sal can be connected to Marcie which means going forward they can’t hang out while she’s on the job since it would be highly suspicious and likely cost her the job. If there’s a reason Marcie is angry it’s because this is yet another incident where Sal acted rashly and now they can’t be seen together at work and possibly beyond depending on how much scrutiny Marcie is under.
It’s the “was” in the text. Of course, it CAN mean “I was a security trainee last night,” but it being “I was a security trainee and your antics got me fired” is not an unreasonable take.
Well that’s a surefire cure to Sal’s over-attachment to Marcie.
… what, no one here just chilling and enjoying sexy Sal in small shirt, tiny shorts, and boots?
I LIKE!
Appropriate user name for this comment!