I’m not sure what I was expecting from this one, but it wasn’t this. I find it interesting that Joe’s finally starting to show remorse for the list. I still think it’s too little, too late, but he’s at least learning.
They’re not wearing the same shirt! Sal’s has a blue collar, and Joe’s collar is… red? Wait, or is that green? Red? Green? (pulls out Digital Color Meter) Okay, red. Point is it’s not blue. Damn colorblindness!
It could be foreshadowing (or Jason, or everyone), but I kind of took it to mean in punishment catholic school, and moreso with correction officer types.
I am glad we read it the same way (esp because I thought I might be reaching, even though it was my first instinct), I just didn’t catch that was what you meant.
Catholic school and judicial stuff are both pretty bad culprits.
There are a lot of hints Sal has some sort of particular badness standing out from her time in school (other than her parents being emotionally abusive shitheads and the juvie-like school in the first place). Some of them are circumstantial, but when you put them together it makes my concern bells go off big time.
Hm. I mean. Out of everyone I know, I’m the one who has experienced the LEAST creepy male attention. And I still know Sal’s p4 is true about me. It’s pretty standard procedure for women- some moreso than others, and in many different flavours.
Sal’s a standardly attractive woman of colour,and she exists in a world modelled closely on this one. Objectification is a given
I’m guessing she means not being seen as a person by various people, but as her criminal record and her mistakes in general. She was a very angry teenager, acting up a lot and spiraling out of control. She is not from a problem-background, at least not a criminal one, her family is probably upper middleclass and has different problems. She is very different now. Her only friend is Marcie, so she likely didn’t make many in boarding school. She puts up a cool and distant front because she doesn’t want to get hurt, or even disappointed. But she still doesn’t like how much people judge her without actually knowing her.
She gets along with Danny, who is just nice and pretty oblivious, so he wasn’t really intimidated by her. And maybe because she needed a friend, because Marcie is still angry and they’re not talking. So, yeah.
tl;dr: I think this is about her past, and people, and/or the legal system only seeing her mistakes in her, disregarding her as a person with feelings and motives.
Certainly possible that it’s that too, though I suspect in this case, she’s thinking more about the sexual side of it – Jason and whatever previous experiences she’s had.
It could also include objectification for non-erotic reasons, as exemplified by Jago mentioning being seen as a criminal record and not a person. Another example would be what just happened in Sal’s perspective – Malaya seeing her as a bastion of fakeness, without taking anything else into account.
Probably a harpy’s lady deck or Amazon deck. Just any deck with the monsters mostly women. If he’s going to be participating in a nerd activity, he’s at least going to have some eye candy.
What class does she share with Amber? I’m not even sure we’ve seen any of their classes except one for each (Sal math, Amber computers), let alone share a class with each other.
I honestly wonder if Faz has an undiagnosed mental disorder. Looking into it, I found Verbal Dsydecorum. Which is in lay-mans terms, the inability to censor yourself.
However, it is pretty rare, and Willis would have had to heard about it for it to actually be what Faz has.
Unlikely, I think.
Remember that Faz was created for Shortpacked!, with much the same behaviors and no real exploration of the reason for them.
Mind you, it’s possible something like that could be used here, but it would almost certainly be a retrofit.
I…I can’t tell if Willace doesn’t know how people actually smoke cigarettes, or if this is some kind of meta-commentary on how Sal is trying so desperately to look cool by smoking even though she doesn’t know what she’s doing…
I dunno. As someone who used to smoke quite a lot, it just looks so unnatural. In all three panels, it’s like she’s just got her lips puckered, which is how you might take a drag, but not how you’d just hold it. I mean, how is she even talking like that?
Okay, so I am not a smoker, but a google image search (which I’m fairly sure Willis uses for references) shows a lot of people holding their cigarettes like that. Maybe it’s a personal thing?
Also I don’t think Sal is desperate to look cool. No one who’s desperate to lol cool is able to achieve it as well as her. I don’t think any of the “cool” things she does are for effect. I think she does what she wants.
A) The earliest we see her smoking is the robbery, so I’m guessing it started as a stress thing.
B) Not all her gloves are fingerless, but so what if they were? She’s got what’s probably a nasty scar on one of her hands.
C) There’s never been an indication Sal’s accent is exaggerated other than Malaya saying it was. Since we’ve seen Sal keep her accent while angry (which is what Malaya said was when she slipped) and Malaya admitted 5 seconds later she was (partially) giving her a hard time because Marcie’s mad at her, I’d take that with a grain of salt.
We know she distances herself as a defensive thing, is the cool act really such a stretch?
But it isn’t that she’s just full of herself, it’s largely that she wants to be left alone while also wanting attention. And feeling like you’re hot feels great. We KNOW it’s a persona, because only Dina doesn’t have one. This comic seems written with mask theory in mind at all times.
Honestly? Yes. Because while mask theory is definitely a theme in this story, none of those masks encompass everything about the character. Becky is legitimately cheerful and goofy and plays that up when she’s masking. That doesn’t make her not cheerful and goofy. This whole ‘Sal’s only pretending to be cool’ thing only works if everything about her except music (which is new) is not true and frankly I don’t buy that. It also doesn’t work because unlike Billie, she really doesn’t seem to care when she’s alone and nobody pays attention to her. If what Malaya said was 100% true, she’d be a lot more annoyed when she was alone than she is. She’s upset Marcie specifically isn’t paying attention to her anymore, but Marcie seems to be an exception to most of Sal’s thoughts about people in general because she’s her best friend. And her parents, yes, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be mad at your parents for 18 years of emotional abuse and neglect, no.
In some ways, I think that Joe is rather poor in communication. That’s why, away from his relatively narrow comfort zone, he starts to babble incoherently.
when all you gotta keep is strong, move along move along like I know you do;
and even when your hope is gone, move along move along just to make it through.
Something I really, really like about this comic is how real the characters feel. And by that I mean how well they are written. I’m not sure if I’d meet these characters in real life (but then again, American society is different to mine and I have never been to a college campus, so I don’t know about you guys’ hijinks), but they are (well, most of them) layered, have different character traits, reasons for their behaviour and feelings. And it’s interesting and fun to see them develop over time.
I find it really helps that the comic literally updates throughout a day in their lives in college and usually doesn’t have huge timeskips, we literally see them solve their issues day to day and deal with them. Something I think a LOT of people forget about especially when they’re judging character on their flaws. I noticed it most during the List leak arc when people were bongoing about Joe for not instantly changing when it had only been like an hour.
I get the impression that the misadventure/fiasco with Jason was more a case that Sal decided to play the role she’s been playing for a while that feeds into her cynical view of life and the world and that Jason was too stupid to tell her to snap out of it.
While Jason should be attributed some blame theres some extenuating circumstances and thats an attractive young women opening her top and straddling him and it can’t have been that bad since she went back for seconds
Jason shouldn’t have gone there sure but I’m assuming Jason is in mid to late 20s and is single and so when Sal says lets go I can’t really blame him all that much for his actions
Good test for Joe. She tells him to move along, then tells him again, then tells him again. Can he just move along? Time for a distraction to save him.
I like the body language in this one. Joe looking down towards the ground as he apologizes does seem to imply his remorse is genuine and starting to see that it was wrong to make the list in general, even if he hadn’t (somehow) gotten caught.
9, would be 10 if she wasn’t a smoker (which really just means if any creepers who subscribed to the list don’t mind smoking, they very well might become extremely annoying).
I found out that my wife always gets the last word. She doesn’t even realize she’s doing it. She completes a conversation with an “end” statement after the last person speaks, almost like a programmer closing a loop. Even if it’s just something like “ok, good!” or “got it” or “good night” or “I love you.”
One of the biggest fights we got into was after I realized this, and wanted to see what happens when I spoke last instead of her. I tried to use closing statements to end the conversation, and she would respond again. She got confused that the conversation wasn’t ending, and eventually angry. When I explained the experiment she denied she does any such thing.
To this day I don’t think she realizes she does it. But it’s subtle things like this that indicate a dominant personality — you’re not talking to her, she’s talking to YOU. The conversation starts and stops when she wants it to. I think that’s what is so hard for Joe here. He’s used to being in the dominant, in-control position. He talks to girls. He chooses when to engage or disengage. The girl doesn’t have a say. She’s forcing him to accept that he isn’t ending this conversation on his terms – she’s ending it on hers.
my dad and I do a similar thing out of conflict-avoidance or something. it can take several minutes to end a phone call because we both keep saying variants of “goodbye” but expecting the other person to actually hang up. 🙂
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Faz shall have the last word
Assuming Faz hasn’t already taken the opportunity to bolt.
That was my thought, too.
Like Joe, Faz is a mere iron filing in the grip of Sal’s sexual magnetism.
What do you mean? Do you see him? I don’t. Didn’t even make the tags. He is already gone.
Faz is Lord English?
Now we just need someone with the right gravy.
“This isn’t the shirt you’re looking for. Move along.”
Cold sweat really deserved there.
And it naturally makes a Question Mark.
What’s not stated is that Joe’s in said cold sweat because Joe is stifling the comment that he’s incredibly turned on by Sal’s “angry energy”.
Nahh, she’s having a smoke right now, and that’s not his thing: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/chubby/
Oh wow, that’s right. Joe was once clean shaven.
Yeah, he looks better with the scruff.
Well one of us is going to have to change
Seems to me you don’t wanna talk about it
Seems to me, you just turn your pretty head and Walk Away…
Cool guys don’t look at explosions…
I’m not sure what I was expecting from this one, but it wasn’t this. I find it interesting that Joe’s finally starting to show remorse for the list. I still think it’s too little, too late, but he’s at least learning.
“Sincerity – if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” – George Burns.
Too little too late to apologize (good song BTW) or too little too late to change?
Cause the first part of changing is to admit you were wrong and the second part is to apologize.
Two for two on goofy character reaction faces this week
They’re not wearing the same shirt! Sal’s has a blue collar, and Joe’s collar is… red? Wait, or is that green? Red? Green? (pulls out Digital Color Meter) Okay, red. Point is it’s not blue. Damn colorblindness!
Quit while you’re intact, Joe. Besides, Faz doesn’t need the extra room to escape.
Welp, that’s a ‘fuck off’ if I’ve ever heard one.
Also, my concern bells are going off about Sal’s panel 4 line.
Could be talking about Jason.
….. or, like, five random people a day.
Could be both.
It could be foreshadowing (or Jason, or everyone), but I kind of took it to mean in punishment catholic school, and moreso with correction officer types.
I also took it to mean something that’s happened during her high school time. Hence my concern bells.
I am glad we read it the same way (esp because I thought I might be reaching, even though it was my first instinct), I just didn’t catch that was what you meant.
Catholic school and judicial stuff are both pretty bad culprits.
There are a lot of hints Sal has some sort of particular badness standing out from her time in school (other than her parents being emotionally abusive shitheads and the juvie-like school in the first place). Some of them are circumstantial, but when you put them together it makes my concern bells go off big time.
The most direct hints seem to be towards hazing from the other girls though – waking up prepared to choke, for example.
There’s a few hints at relationship badness too, but yeah, I’d not be shocked if there was a fair bit of hazing too.
I’m sure it did. Whether there’s something specifically horrible or “just” the general background radiation is still the question.
Hm. I mean. Out of everyone I know, I’m the one who has experienced the LEAST creepy male attention. And I still know Sal’s p4 is true about me. It’s pretty standard procedure for women- some moreso than others, and in many different flavours.
Sal’s a standardly attractive woman of colour,and she exists in a world modelled closely on this one. Objectification is a given
I’m guessing she means not being seen as a person by various people, but as her criminal record and her mistakes in general. She was a very angry teenager, acting up a lot and spiraling out of control. She is not from a problem-background, at least not a criminal one, her family is probably upper middleclass and has different problems. She is very different now. Her only friend is Marcie, so she likely didn’t make many in boarding school. She puts up a cool and distant front because she doesn’t want to get hurt, or even disappointed. But she still doesn’t like how much people judge her without actually knowing her.
She gets along with Danny, who is just nice and pretty oblivious, so he wasn’t really intimidated by her. And maybe because she needed a friend, because Marcie is still angry and they’re not talking. So, yeah.
tl;dr: I think this is about her past, and people, and/or the legal system only seeing her mistakes in her, disregarding her as a person with feelings and motives.
Certainly possible that it’s that too, though I suspect in this case, she’s thinking more about the sexual side of it – Jason and whatever previous experiences she’s had.
It could also include objectification for non-erotic reasons, as exemplified by Jago mentioning being seen as a criminal record and not a person. Another example would be what just happened in Sal’s perspective – Malaya seeing her as a bastion of fakeness, without taking anything else into account.
Ringer shirts 4 eva
At least he’s not getting hit by a truck. 😛
panel 7: “but… I can’t…”
The new season of Red vs. Blue looks great.
I was just thinking this…
Okay, but what sort of Yu-Gi-Oh! deck would Joe use?
Probably a harpy’s lady deck or Amazon deck. Just any deck with the monsters mostly women. If he’s going to be participating in a nerd activity, he’s at least going to have some eye candy.
Well, not the same shirt exactly. I’m pretty sure Sal’s shirt would not fit on Joe.
He’s learning… through treats and acts of violence but he’s learning.
I would have been run over by a motorcycle. I have hard time not having the last word even when I’m trying not to.
Does nervously reaffirming that yes, I’m going, I’m going right away, count as the last word?
Fushta!
+1 for Mel Brooks joke.
“OK, OK, I’m going…ooop”
“This, Amber, was it? We have never met, and I have no knowledge of her. Do you understand?”
“You have classes with her. And, there was that time with the chairs…”
“I SAID I have NO KNOWLEDGE of her. Do YOU understand?!”
What class does she share with Amber? I’m not even sure we’ve seen any of their classes except one for each (Sal math, Amber computers), let alone share a class with each other.
She doesn’t, as far as we know.
You guys didn’t watch enough spy/mob movies growing up.
This is the downside of making up nicknames for everyone.
I don’t think she’s ever learned Amber’s proper name anyways.
I just did a quick archive dive and no, Sal’s never learned Amber’s name.
My assumption was that calling her “Laundry girl” is part of why she didn’t bother asking.
Then again, Sal makes up names for people, even people whose names she knows. ‘Wonderbread’, for example.
I just figured she called her that because that’s where she knew her from, though you are right she never asked.
I honestly wonder if Faz has an undiagnosed mental disorder. Looking into it, I found Verbal Dsydecorum. Which is in lay-mans terms, the inability to censor yourself.
However, it is pretty rare, and Willis would have had to heard about it for it to actually be what Faz has.
I’ve being wondering the same. He’s well beyond privileged/sheltered adolescent obliviousness.
Nah, he’s just an awful person.
Unlikely, I think.
Remember that Faz was created for Shortpacked!, with much the same behaviors and no real exploration of the reason for them.
Mind you, it’s possible something like that could be used here, but it would almost certainly be a retrofit.
It also wouldn’t be the first retrofit to a character.
I…I can’t tell if Willace doesn’t know how people actually smoke cigarettes, or if this is some kind of meta-commentary on how Sal is trying so desperately to look cool by smoking even though she doesn’t know what she’s doing…
She’s been smoking since she was at least 13, so I’d say it’s probably the angle.
I dunno. As someone who used to smoke quite a lot, it just looks so unnatural. In all three panels, it’s like she’s just got her lips puckered, which is how you might take a drag, but not how you’d just hold it. I mean, how is she even talking like that?
Okay, so I am not a smoker, but a google image search (which I’m fairly sure Willis uses for references) shows a lot of people holding their cigarettes like that. Maybe it’s a personal thing?
Also I don’t think Sal is desperate to look cool. No one who’s desperate to lol cool is able to achieve it as well as her. I don’t think any of the “cool” things she does are for effect. I think she does what she wants.
Sal rides a motorcycle, wears fingerless gloves, has an exaggerated accent and is an edgy teen smoker. She’s as insecure as Joe.
That’s Malaya’s theory. Though I’ve got no idea what you mean by “edgy”.
She’s definitely got issues. Not sure they have anything to do with being desperate to look cool.
Teen smoking is a desperate attempt to look cool.
A) The earliest we see her smoking is the robbery, so I’m guessing it started as a stress thing.
B) Not all her gloves are fingerless, but so what if they were? She’s got what’s probably a nasty scar on one of her hands.
C) There’s never been an indication Sal’s accent is exaggerated other than Malaya saying it was. Since we’ve seen Sal keep her accent while angry (which is what Malaya said was when she slipped) and Malaya admitted 5 seconds later she was (partially) giving her a hard time because Marcie’s mad at her, I’d take that with a grain of salt.
D) …Seriously? Motorcycle = fake now?
We know she distances herself as a defensive thing, is the cool act really such a stretch?
But it isn’t that she’s just full of herself, it’s largely that she wants to be left alone while also wanting attention. And feeling like you’re hot feels great. We KNOW it’s a persona, because only Dina doesn’t have one. This comic seems written with mask theory in mind at all times.
We all front.
Honestly? Yes. Because while mask theory is definitely a theme in this story, none of those masks encompass everything about the character. Becky is legitimately cheerful and goofy and plays that up when she’s masking. That doesn’t make her not cheerful and goofy. This whole ‘Sal’s only pretending to be cool’ thing only works if everything about her except music (which is new) is not true and frankly I don’t buy that. It also doesn’t work because unlike Billie, she really doesn’t seem to care when she’s alone and nobody pays attention to her. If what Malaya said was 100% true, she’d be a lot more annoyed when she was alone than she is. She’s upset Marcie specifically isn’t paying attention to her anymore, but Marcie seems to be an exception to most of Sal’s thoughts about people in general because she’s her best friend. And her parents, yes, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be mad at your parents for 18 years of emotional abuse and neglect, no.
Or it was a desperate attempt to look cool at 13 when she started and now it’s an addiction.
Cause smoking is addictive, you know.
Kinda think Sal wants to tell Joe something…
I got the opposite impression. Sal isn’t going to make an issue of any of this but he needs to get away and not come back.
You are right. I was just being oblivious to Sal’s repeated “move along” for (marginally) comic effect.
Huh, I was wondering about those shirts yesterday.
And Joe’s apology tour is hitting a snag.
He was doing so well, too. Just a straightforward apology, no excuses or anything. He just had to keep talking though
In general, if Joe could just shut up in the last panel of each strip he would come across as MUCH better. He shares that trait with his dad.
Point proven by the fact that Joe shut up in the last panel of this strip, and he immediately came across better.
Very true
In some ways, I think that Joe is rather poor in communication. That’s why, away from his relatively narrow comfort zone, he starts to babble incoherently.
I kinda think you are right
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/fertile/
Yeah, that’s what happens when communication is just a tool to get what you want.
when all you gotta keep is strong, move along move along like I know you do;
and even when your hope is gone, move along move along just to make it through.
SAL: “Joe, I really want to end this conversation without being rude, but you’re making this impossible for me.”
Woman of simple pleasures, this Sal
Aaah, the last word thing.
bless <3
Something I really, really like about this comic is how real the characters feel. And by that I mean how well they are written. I’m not sure if I’d meet these characters in real life (but then again, American society is different to mine and I have never been to a college campus, so I don’t know about you guys’ hijinks), but they are (well, most of them) layered, have different character traits, reasons for their behaviour and feelings. And it’s interesting and fun to see them develop over time.
I find it really helps that the comic literally updates throughout a day in their lives in college and usually doesn’t have huge timeskips, we literally see them solve their issues day to day and deal with them. Something I think a LOT of people forget about especially when they’re judging character on their flaws. I noticed it most during the List leak arc when people were bongoing about Joe for not instantly changing when it had only been like an hour.
Some people just cant take a hint….. run him down for good measure!!!!
A pleasant exchange. Meanwhile Faz is long gone.
To be fair, that’s exactly what make the exchange plesant
I think Sal is referring to Jason as well as a more indirect “my entire life as a adult woman.”
I get the impression that the misadventure/fiasco with Jason was more a case that Sal decided to play the role she’s been playing for a while that feeds into her cynical view of life and the world and that Jason was too stupid to tell her to snap out of it.
While Jason should be attributed some blame theres some extenuating circumstances and thats an attractive young women opening her top and straddling him and it can’t have been that bad since she went back for seconds
OTOH, he’s her TA and that’s a huge moral no-no as well as a firing offense, regardless of who’s coming on to who.
I’ll agree the situation is set up to be about as extenuating as casual angry sex under such circumstances can be, which is still not very.
Jason shouldn’t have gone there sure but I’m assuming Jason is in mid to late 20s and is single and so when Sal says lets go I can’t really blame him all that much for his actions
like ive said before sal seems like shes used to using her body to get what she needs to get through a situation like in a jail situation …….
Good test for Joe. She tells him to move along, then tells him again, then tells him again. Can he just move along? Time for a distraction to save him.
Run Joe run!
I like the body language in this one. Joe looking down towards the ground as he apologizes does seem to imply his remorse is genuine and starting to see that it was wrong to make the list in general, even if he hadn’t (somehow) gotten caught.
Boy, do I relate to that last panel.
If Amber and Joe’s parents get hitched, would that make Faz Joe’s stepstepbrother?
Come to think of it, Joyce might be the only character who’s not at least a little bit scared of Sal
Joe finds it difficult to let someone else have the last word, doesn’t he?
No true motorcyclist would ever run someone over with their bike. It might hurt our bike.
I forget, what was Sal’s rating on Joe’s List?
9, would be 10 if she wasn’t a smoker (which really just means if any creepers who subscribed to the list don’t mind smoking, they very well might become extremely annoying).
As does Sal it seems
Dagnabbit, that was supposed to be a reply to Storel
I found out that my wife always gets the last word. She doesn’t even realize she’s doing it. She completes a conversation with an “end” statement after the last person speaks, almost like a programmer closing a loop. Even if it’s just something like “ok, good!” or “got it” or “good night” or “I love you.”
One of the biggest fights we got into was after I realized this, and wanted to see what happens when I spoke last instead of her. I tried to use closing statements to end the conversation, and she would respond again. She got confused that the conversation wasn’t ending, and eventually angry. When I explained the experiment she denied she does any such thing.
To this day I don’t think she realizes she does it. But it’s subtle things like this that indicate a dominant personality — you’re not talking to her, she’s talking to YOU. The conversation starts and stops when she wants it to. I think that’s what is so hard for Joe here. He’s used to being in the dominant, in-control position. He talks to girls. He chooses when to engage or disengage. The girl doesn’t have a say. She’s forcing him to accept that he isn’t ending this conversation on his terms – she’s ending it on hers.
my dad and I do a similar thing out of conflict-avoidance or something. it can take several minutes to end a phone call because we both keep saying variants of “goodbye” but expecting the other person to actually hang up. 🙂
small eyes indicate the exact opposite of desire/interest
terror strikes on the steps
joe’s comfort zone has gone thataway, follow it, joe!
–Dave, gowan, geddouddahere