Man, if Quirrell had long hair, Voldemort would have been in for a rough time. He’d be constantly choking, and everything he said would have been muffled.
Incidentally, one of my favorite things ever was reading that book for a second time and noticing that there’s a scene where Fred and George enchanted snowballs to throw themselves at the back of Quirrell’s head. They were hitting Voldemort in the face! True heroes of the series!
He seems very punchable when you first meet him, but a reminder that Blaine had an influence on his upbringing makes him seem remarkably well-adjusted and I just wanna get him, like, some kind of deprogramming treatment to learn how to be less creepy.
WTF…how is that even…
Okay, seriously, what. Someone explain exactly how the stepmom is liable for Amber’s college costs…unless it’s actually Blaine who’s liable and the stepmom here is just blaming Amber?
As Blaine’s wife she feels that she should have a say in how his income is distributed and resents the portion that goes toward court-mandated tuition.
That or Blaine has misinformed her as to what percentage of his income is going toward his daughter’s tuition and uses that to justify not having enough to save a penny toward Faz’s theoretical college fund.
I was wondering if she was saying that mostly for Blaine’s benefit, seeing as he’s in the car. It wouldn’t surprise me if she either buys into his twisted views (Stockholm Syndrome maybe?) or will say she does to keep him from turning on her as much as possible. Given how abusive he’s been shown to be, either one seems plausible without her actually being that horrible herself.
Though of course, horrible is as horrible does and in this case she definitely doesn’t look good.
Just a minor thing for clarification, I think you meant Faz, not Blaine?
I think she might just be horrible in the sense of being against Amber – mostly because she probably never heard anything good about Amber and her mother from Blaine, didn’t have anything to do with the both of them, so it’d be pretty easy for her to put all kind of faults onto Amber’s existence (like, having no money – which I doubt is the case, but maybe we’ll get to see a bit more of Faz’s life at home).
NEVERMIND, I just realised (also by seeing other comments) that Blaine’s in the tags, don’t know how I could’ve so obviously misread this! (I should pay more attention, before I write something)
Blaine’s first appearance included the ‘I pay your tuition, I paid for that laptop*’ bit, so yeah, totally his fault and her blaming Amber for existing/the courts for demanding Blaine financially support her. * (Which Amber got used and refurbished, probably to minimize how much she owed him and did I mention Blaine is the Worst? Augh)
“This family” = Yuri, Faz and Blaine. Blaine is responsible for paying for Amber therefore the three of them as a family unit have less disposable income.
Although if Blaine isn’t Faz’s dad, there is presumably somebody else out there who may be considered liable for *his* college expenses?
Yeeeeeeah, but given the incredibly poor judgment shown by bashing Faz’s stepsister immediately after he came from a visit with her – and it’s hardly Amber’s fault that the child support settlement came down this way! – I’m going to say we need to see their financials before we assume she isn’t exaggerating well out of proportion.
Faz told Amber that his father doesn’t care what he does. That implies his father is still alive and either an extremely permissive parent or absent entirely.
I don’t think so… Amber makes a point to say, “Not your Dad, MY Dad, your step-dad”. So, there is at least another man out there that is thought to be Faz’s biological father. (Even with Amber questioning that Blaine really is that, anyway… which just makes everything muddier if it’s true)
That exchange makes a lot of sense if there is no Faz Father in the picture. Faz is talking about Blaine. Amber wants to believe he’s talking about his hypothetical absent real father – who obviously doesn’t care, since he’s completely out of the picture. Faz doesn’t correct her, because she’s not supposed to know.
99% sure Blaine isn’t Faz’s biological father (iirc DW confirmed Blaine only has one biological child), and I’m maybe 80% sure that he was referring to Blaine anyway. It doesn’t seem that unlikely to me that a child would call their stepfather “father” occasionally- and it sounds like he’s been around in their family for a long time, although there’s nothing concrete there.
I was relying on that earlier too, but Willis said a bit earlier in this chapter that he’d forgotten about the earlier tumblr comment. Given that, all the hints seem to be leading up to something.
Pretty sure you’ve got it. I think Yuri’s only responsible in-so-far as she made the (awful, terrible, horrible) decision to marry Blaine, and therefore he can’t contribute as much to the family coffers as he would otherwise.
I’m placing my bet on, ‘that requires reporting your LEGAL income and they don’t want that scrutinized too closely’. Until proven otherwise, I’m taking Richard’s mob line as fact.
I haven’t had to personally deal with college financing in decades, but my understanding is that college financing nowadays is a mishmosh of financial aid, scholarships, grants, student loans, etcetera etcetera.
Off the top of my head, two things that could make getting scholarships difficult:
1) Faz and/or Yuri being undocumented
2) Blaine’s mob connections making it risky for him to disclose income and/or employment
But Blaine appears to be legally married to Yuri, which would rule out 1. And presumably the courts already have enough of his financial record to compel him to pay Amber’s tuition, which would rule out 2.
Paying for college in the US has become a Kafkaesque exercise, and, for most people, putting together a financial package starts at difficult, and can wind up at impossible.
But Yuri seems to be putting a kibosh on the whole idea from the start, and that’s just not right.
I think it’s more like Blaine bullies her into paying Amber’s tuition, while parading as paying it himself. We don’t know how abusive Blaine is in this family, so I’m going with very.
I actually missed it before the comments and can only express my dismay in emoticon: D: At least it means tomorrow when we see him it won’t be as nasty a surprise? Just leaving our horror for whatever he says. I reiterate: D:
He finally got out of the hospital after the beatdown/curbstomping he got from Amber/AmaziGirl, and Faz escaped while Yuri was helping with the paperwork.
I always assumed that Yuri had some serious issues, just on the basis that she married Blaine. I’ve just been waiting to see exactly what those issues are.
Eh. Ross actually was trying to give a shit about his daughter. Obviously he was completely in the wrong with trying to haul her off to conversion camp or whatever, but I could see a redemption arc for him happening one day if he pulled his head out of his ass – Becky is totally the type to forgive him if he acknowledged what he did. I say that as a queer kid myself who’s parents talked about hauling me off to those camps as well – our relationship is still kinda tense, but it’s also healed up a great deal the last few years.
Blaine is an abusive jerk who (god I desperately hope I’m wrong about this) looks like he’s about to rape his stepson, which may somehow not even be the most fucked up shit he’s ever done? The only redemption he gets is from swallowing a shotgun.
Judging by the look on Faz’s face I think you are wrong. I think that there is a generally fucked up thing happening here though that judging by Yuri’s and Faz’s faces is almost as bad. I think Faz is about to get to drive the car because Yuri is going to be told to get in the back seat. I think this happens a lot. I think Blaine treats Yuri like his personal whore instead of like his wife. I think that Faz is… well… I think he compartmentalizes and doesn’t think about the fact that if he sees anything in the rear view mirror that it is his mom and step dad. I think that he’s a lot more messed up than anyone realizes and this is why Amber is on Garbage Roof. 🙁
Could we maybe not try to put a measuring system on abuse?
What we CAN say is that Becky came out of hers far more emotionally balanced and able to move forwards. But abuse is abuse. If you put numbers on it, if you rank it, you’re inherently saying that some type of abuse is “not that bad” compared to another type of abuse, and that’s not okay to me. The thing that matters is how a person experienced it, and how they move forwards with it.
(And I’m saying this as a person who was abused throughout childhood but felt unable to acknowledge it because hey, I wasn’t being beaten, so clearly it “wasn’t that bad”.)
It’s awfully hard to make a measurement when the meter goes to 100%, and both ToeDad, Blaine and “Sir” are awfully close to that line on the shit-o-meter.
In my book, ToeDad is still in the lead for the gun-thing (and that was even before we learnt about Bonnie), but Blaine is working REAL hard to catch up.
ToeDad made a strong play with the gun attack, but it went with an early retirement from the competition, since Becky never has to see him again and is now free to be a Lesbian and become a scientist. Blaine still has a chance to lose more points, and Sir is definitely working on it.
Personally, I don’t think there should really be a comparison? They’re all really awful. Sure, Blaine never pulled a gun on his daughter (that we know of), but he still has years of physical and emotional abuse that he heaped onto his wife and daughter, and very well onto his second wife and son.
They are certainly all three well above the more interesting lines like “acceptably awful”, “redeemable awful” or “not awful enough to warrant shipping them all to some remote island where they can be awful together rather than inflict it on their children, seriously what’s wrong with them.”
Thank you, 100% agree. You can’t say one type of abuse is “worse” than another- one person might be largely unaffected by verbal abuse, whereas another might be able to shrug off violent abuse, but they might be completely devastated in the other situation. Yes, some types of abuse are more likely to leave permanent psychological scarring, but to say one person’s experience with abuse is inherently “worse” is diminishing the validity of the experience being compared to.
I would say that for the top three, the mothers are the primary instigators of feel-bad-territory. Definitely with Linda and Naomi, their respective husbands’ primary role was utterly failing to stop their awfulness.
I feel like Charles’ comment was coming from a place of caring. Absolutely problematic, I agree- both the racial aspect (which I suspect he’s unaware of) and suggesting his daughter is less pretty as she is. But I felt it was a bungled, “how I remember you is how I like you” intent.
Agree or disagree, I think that he wasn’t outright cruel- and he did seem pleased to see her. And utterly, completely ignoring one of your children- who you haven’t seen for a long time- in order to fawn over the one you saw recently sends a very strong message, and a cruel one. To me- admitting that there’s personal feelings there- Linda feels way worse.
And yet, Charles is the one who actually insulted Sal to her face. Linda’s definitely the more blatant one, but Charles does more than not stop her.
Ditto for Saul actually. He’s the one who told Ethan that women were like beer and he’d feel gross at first but learn to like it. Like…..that sounds a lot like wannabe conversion therapy (Granted, Naomi’s not much better about that).
That doesn’t even make sense. Sal’s hair was curly at the robbery. Most of the time he’d seen her, her hair was not relaxed. And while it’s possible, I sincerely doubt he’s ignorant to the implications of saying Sal’s hair looks better straight, since Sal seems to feel her hair is one of the things that make her parents prefer Walky (who ‘came out whiter’).
And saying ‘how I remember you is how I like you’ is still pretty shitty since that’s NOT how she looks anymore (and, again, never really did).
And frankly, I’m lousy at social graces, but even without dealing with an estranged daughter or the complexities of black hair politics, I know better than to tell a girl with a new hairstyle I liked it better the old way.
Carol is a Trump supporter according to Willis additional art, Linda favors Walky over Sal and didn’t care about Sal’s friend being racially discriminated, Naomi wanted Ethan to rape Joyce (which Ethan didn’t approve), and Sharon and her husband treated Danny like garbage just because he was single. What a bunch of horrible mothers.
I don’t think Naomi actually wanted Ethan to rape Joyce. She just wanted them to fuck, in hopes he’d actually start to like it. Which is creepy and gross, but not quite that bad.
I don’t think the dads have a worse track record than the moms. Blaine and Ross are worse than their respective mothers, but… We don’t know Joe’s mom; while both Walkertons are bad, Charles is at least less actively bad than Linda; both Wilcoxen are bad; Sierra has two dads, both of whom are cool; Hank is way better than Carol – though even he has a ways to go, he’s shown improvement and potential to improve more; both Mike’s parents are fine (aside from producing Mike); Dorothy’s parents are annoying in a ‘they mean well’ way, but evenly so…
Us as in Blaine, who is Amber’s father, and basically has a judgement against him regarding what he did to her and her mother. He takes it out on, or of, Yuri.
So far as we know, Blaine and Yuri are married and are definitely living together. His income will be garnished to cover alimony and child support payments. From Yuri’s perspective, since she likely has to partially cover his costs due to this, that money comes out of them both… this before any spin from Blaine is accounted for.
Covering education expenses is part of child support proceedings and Blaine is likely required by court order to cover a portion of those expenses after grants, loans, etc until Amber is 21 so long as she stays in school. Under normal divorce proceedings an agreement between Blaine and Stacy would have had to have been reached via arbitration regarding amount of child support until 18 or finished with secondary school and any split on further education coverage until Amber is 21 (the latest legal enforcement on such things is required to end by in most states), but with what we know about his history with Stacy, Blaine was likely forced to just accept what the court drew up for them which would not be in his favor.
On a related note, any alimony Blaine is required to pay Stacy (since butts broached that topic) will end once she remarries and is likely indeed being used to cover at least some of her part of Amber’s education expenses. That being the case, Stacy will likely not remarry until Amber reaches 21 in order to keep any such alimony coming in and thereby pressure on Blaine.
Child support laws. For the parent with the greater income to pay the bulk of their child’s college tuition is not unreasonable.
It’s 25k a year for residents… if she’s not eligible for any sort of financial aid at all. And if she’s not, then Blaine must be positively rolling in cash and has nothing to complain about.
Yuri just sees all of Blaines income as her own.
Considering that there’s a court order for Blaine to stay away from Amber, divorce was probably grated because he’s an abusive shit and therefore no mitigation of his financial responsibilities.
And it’s extra bullshit because if she’s so concerned about her son’s education, why is she expecting it to be paid by a man not his father?
Of course a decent stepfather would help as much as possible but it’s rich that she resents that Blaine is paying for *his* child because she wants his money for *hers.*
Unless, as seems increasingly likely, Blaine is his father.
In which case, Amber (and Stacy) have been draining money that rightfully should have been Faz’s and hers for 16 years now. In her mind at least.
Actually, the canon form, as established way back in the Nightstar forums is just: DAMN YOU WILLIS
(no commas or other punctuation except maybe a period at the end. Definitely no exclamation point. I think the ALL CAPS part is so it was similar to the voice of “Death” in the Discworld books)
Romeo and Juliet law and age of consent are two different things. Romeo and Juliet laws are for people below the age of consent. Faz is a few weeks off from the age of consent. Age of consent in Indiana is 16, so Faz is 15.
Yeah, he said he was two weeks from the age of consent for the benefit of those listening who otherwise would be unable to take immediate advantage of the “Romeo and Juliet Law” that he printed out and carries around.
Assuming move-in day for both of them is August 29, DoA year + 2, that would put their move-in day about 689 days from now. On the 66.67 average, that’s 45,936 strips in the future, around February/March 2144.
(That figure will change when the DoA:Realtime ratio gets recalculated at the end of this arc.)
Faz’s long run as a character gives weight to another character with his smile not smiling even two strips into her tenure and without actually having Faz stop smiling, and I like that.
To add, if- and I mean IF, faz is Blaine’s bio kid then that would mean Yuri has been under his thumb since she was a teen. Even if he has some real non Blaine dad out there, she still would have been fairly young when she met Blaine. Maybe early to mid 20s, as a single mom. It would have been easy for Blaine to manipulate her way of thinking
DEpends on why you’re hoping she’s nice. I mean, even before this we knew she had mob connections and that faz had run away from her. There’s not a lot of good reasons to assume she’s nice in spite of those.
On the plus side before realising that was Blaine, I was trying to work out if Yuri had a client of hers in the back or was pimping her underage son out…
I really really REALLY hope that Blaine is not talking about being sucked dry in that context in a manner relating to Faz, or even in front of him… Squick ;/
Are actually seeing it happen? Are we going to see him form a legion of doom or some type of sinister six with toe dad and Ryan against Amazi-girl after figuring out who she is?
I’ve always wondered if this will happen. Willis did this already in his previous comics and I’m not sure if he’d like to repeat this again in a mostly grounded and realistic situation.
But it’s up to him and in a setting where a caped vigilante fights crime, maybe a League of Evil (or some smaller panel) could formulate.
He might be banned from the campus, which means he’s probably hiding so he can’t be detected. Remember, he had to sneak into Amber’s dorm to begin with.
I can ALMOST understand Yuri here. It must be beyond frustrating to not be able to pay for your child’s education because your husband has to shell out for his daughter (and because she didn’t seem annoyed until Faz brought up making friends of his own at the university). It’s not right, fair, or justified, but it is human. Especially since Yuri is in a relationship with Abusive Bastard Blaine and it’s probably easier and SAFER to take it out on Amber instead of blaming her husband. Double especially since Blaine is in the back seat and can hear every word she’s saying. Not to mention Blaine may be controlling enough not to allow her to work to make it less likely she’ll leave him. Blaine may be the family’s only income.
Not to mention, if Yuri is unhappy in this relationship and realizes the effects Blaine has on life in general and Faz in particular… going away to college can help get you out of an abusive parent’s orbit.
And if the suspicions are true and she’s (nearly) as young as she appears – she was a single teen mom, possibly getting some support from Blaine, but probably just enough to keep her dependent on him.
He may have been that controlling of her, her entire adult life.
I’m not actually mad at her for this opinion. I mean she married Blaine. Blaine!!!. So whatevs. She’s not even a 4 on the jerk parent scale but there’s plenty of room for improvement.
I don’t think that’s completely fair to the parents. This comic is heavily from the perspective of the students. We rarely get any context for the parents actions are dialog. Most of them are jaded adults who deal with real problems beyond “Oh no I’m making out with a guy I hate” or “I don’t like this hot guy’s girlfriend!” I mean I’m being purposefully snarky there but you get it.
Yuri has a legitimate gripe that Amber drains the money that could be used for Faz’s tuition.
That being said you wouldn’t be wrong to expect the worst.
But a lot of the parents in this webcomic *are* shitty parents – and (almost) all of the prominent parents are. It’s not just that they have worries outside the scope of their kids, but in their actions and words they show a certain amount of shittiness. (Even here with Yuri – it’s fair of her to be worried about money, but she shouldn’t really be griping in front of Faz and she really shouldn’t blame Amber for it – and telling Faz that it’s Amber’s fault, in effect, it makes it look like Yuri’s trying to set up Faz to resent Amber which is reaaaally not on. Even if that’s not her intention it’s still not cool)
The kids are the main characters here, and shitty parents are fitting antagonists for some of them. Antagonists just plain ol’ advance the plot more than Lawful Good tertiary characters do. There’s only so much you can do with, say, “Falyn Snow shows up with a big platter of cookies for everyone”.
This just in: “Everybody” does not, apparently, refer to Dina, Carla, Dorothy, Sierra, Mike (whose parents are arguably too nice), Mary (whose parents are/were reportedly “alright folks” according to Willis on tumblr)…
If someone has a bad parent and wants to avoid reading about bad parents, that’s a legitimate reason to quit reading. It doesn’t help to list the good parents.
…re-reading their comment and your reply to mine, I sincerely apologize. It didn’t register to me on the first pass over their comment, and though I didn’t intend it, I seem to have messed up and misinterpreted the context of their comment – and I’m sorry for that. I…don’t really know what else to say, but…yeah.
Mhmm. I did the same with Gunnerkrigg Court- and here and there over the years I’ve had to take breaks from other comics for a bit. I did it here actually, when Ryan caught up with Amber and Dorothy.
The nice thing about taking a break is you get to come back when things have moved on, and you can go to the next storyline and the things that make you happy about the comic. 🙂
I know Willis has already weighed in, but all those parents you mentioned? Are extremely tertiary, in the grand scheme of things. Most of them don’t even have names beyond ____’s parents, and have barely any characterization or role in the story, aside from showing up in the background on parent’s day.
I understand what you’re going for, but like, in comparison to the bad parental figures who are very prominent and have much more character built up for them, it’s not an equivalent exchange.
Those who don’t have a bad impact are seldom mentioned in real life.
College especially is the age where you don’t usually talk about your parents with your peer, expect to vent.
My friends and peers regularly talked about their families. Like, stories about family stuff and questions like ‘how’s your family’ don’t just go away.
Maybe this changed since when I was starting college?
Talking about parents was way uncool then. With your peers, you talked about the shitty state of world peace (at that time we though we’d reached the bottom with US presidents because they elected an ex actor who had had at least some experience in politics through 8 years as a governor. Little did we know…), what you wanted to do with your life, next party/demo, the upcoming or past tests, how to chance university politics on xyz, how best to work around the prof that got his tenure in the 50ties because there were not enough tenured personal in the field and who was shitty to everyone smarter than him (practically everybody), ….
Parents were rarely mentioned and carefully hidden from view if they happened to visit.
(The idea of a parents visiting day for students who live on campus is in itself totally mind-boggling to me. Nearly no one lived on campanyway, but still…)
I disagree, I find that really comes down to your own experiences. There are plenty of people who talk about what a positive impact their parents have had in their lives, even while at college.
What’s more, this is a fictional story. And while yeah, sure, there’s a lot that you miss in real life, you can show a lot more with a fictional story, seeing POVs that the characters cannot see or that would otherwise not be apparent. With this context in mind, having no bad impact is not the same as having a good impact, and if you want to compare ‘good’ to ‘bad’, using characters that are at best ‘neutral’ is not a strong argument.
There are good parents in DoA, and parents that want to be good and are trying. Hank and Stacy are both parents who have made mistakes, but have shown that they want to get better and be better for their children. And that’s good! And that’s strong!
All I’m saying is that for the point of this discussion, using characters that 1) don’t have names, 2) might not even have dialogue, 3) have had little to no impact on any of the characters or story, 4) may not have even shown up in the comic as examples of ‘good’ parents is not a strong example. It’s like pointing to the Twi’lek slave girls in Return of the Jedi as an example of more female characters than Leia. It means very little, in the grand scheme of things.
Though parents who may not have appeared, but who’s influence we can see through their kids do still mean something. As others have said, the good parents don’t get plotlines, because there’s no conflict. (Unless it’s between parents, which suggests at least one bad one.)
Carla’s parents haven’t appeared, for example, but that they’re rich and supportive has been important on screen a few times. Dina’s parents being happy with her finding a girlfriend was a nice contrast with Becky’s father (and Joyce’s parents) even if it didn’t take much screen time.
Most of those mentioned above do have names, btw. Any that have appeared. Mary’s don’t, since we haven’t seen them. Nor Carla’s. Mike’s, Dorothy’s, Sierra’s, and Dina’s all do. And some of the examples of bad parents don’t either – Billie’s, for example.
Okay, in light of the context of this entire conversation, can you see my point of bringing up Sierra’s parents as a counterpoint to Blaine or Sir or Ross? Of bringing up Mike’s? They are such background characters that it is easy to forget that they even showed up in the comic. Like with my Star Wars example, you can’t just point to such a minute side character and act like they hold the same equivalence as a character with a name, face, personality, backstory, and plot significance as Blaine, Sir, or Ross.
My point is that pointing out these characters that barely exist within the story as a counterpoint to shut down someone pointing out all the prominent bad parents is.. bad. It’s not an equivalent exchange. And for someone wanting to see examples of good parents, pointing to someone that appeared in comic for maybe two pages? Not a great example.
Also, I gave two examples of good parents that have plotlines??? Hank and Stacy are both two arguably good parents that have plotlines about them getting into conflict with their kids and trying to do better. It’s bogus to say that good parents don’t get plotlines because there’s no conflict, because they absolutely can and do.
No, I do mostly agree. Just pointing out that they were’t quite that irrelevant.
But even in your example of good parent plotlines, those are both quite tightly tied to the bad parent plots: Hank with Carol and Stacy with both Blaine and Richard.
A disquieting speculation: Evidently, Blaine from the backseat is about to weight in on the subject of Amber’s tuition being a drain on the family. One way to eliminate that would be for Amber to get kicked out of school. But that would require evidence of some kind, and that would necessitate someone to get said evidence. Which makes me suddenly very suspicious of how Faz came to be on campus in the first place…
(The most obvious ground for Amber to expelled would be for her Amazi-Girl activities to come to light. However, it’s not clear from her fight with Blaine that he managed to put two-and-two together to deduce AG’s secret identity. It’d be an interesting bit of drama if Faz stumbled upon that but didn’t let his father know…)
Eh. She could just claim it’s Amazi-girl cosplay. Besides, Amazi-girl is well liked right now.
If he really wanted to go that route he would need to dress up somebody in similar clothing and have them tarnish her good name. And since Amber has no idea when she acts as her alter ego anymore, she might even believe she’s the one committing those acts, that the “bad” side is corrupting the good side.
The laws on vigilantism are tricky and it’s not quite clear to me if she’s been breaking them or not.
Interactions with Sal and with Ryan at the rally excepted, she interfered in ongoing crimes, she didn’t track down people and punish them after the fact.
On that note, Faz would have had to find something off-screen. What did we see him do?
– Get chased around the dorm by Amber
– Go to class with Amber
– Get passed to Joe, then to Joyce
– Get left behind in Forest Quad (probably the most likely place he’d pick up some Amazi-Girl stories, but no physical evidence)
And he told the police it was a big guy iirc- or was it two? But yeah, definitely tried to soothe his pride by lying about it, so I doubt he’ll take that route.
Damn it, Yuri. I see a lot of people giving her the benefit of the doubt, but I’m wondering if maybe it’s because she’s a woman. In real life, I see some horrible-behaving women being excused for things no man I’ve met would ever get away with. My nmom, for example. So, I’m still side-eyeing Yuri here, with very cautious optimism that Blaine’s presence is a major contribution to her crappiness.
I would say it is partially because we already know how abusive Blaine is and an abusive partner’s presence can influence the things you say and do to be more like their own. So it is a possibility this is largely a Blaine thing and Yuri is a victim that is repeating his kinds of thoughts and behaviours he has because he is right there and could hurt her if she doesn’t.
But there is also the distinct possibility that Yuri by herself is also just awful in general and that they are both abusive to each other and their children.
We don’t yet have enough information to say whether this is another manifestation of Blaine’s true evil or if Yuri herself is also just malicious to begin with.
Amazi-Girl unmasked –> Amber committed or imprisoned or at least expelled –> Amber absent from college –> Blaine not paying Amber’s college costs –> more money for Nice-Mom! (For Faz’s tuition, honest.)
I don’t know why anyone in the comments would have felt comfortable assuming she was nice anyway…I mean, Faz said that Amber was the nicest to him. Amber. Of course, he does seem to have a different interpretation of their interactions, so maybe there was still room for Yuri to be decent.
I never assumed she was, though.
Yeah, he probably tries to avoid his dad like the plague.
Was it me or does panel 5 indicate that Yuri isn’t particularly happy to have Blaine around either? The guy is an ass and I can’t see any woman being happy having him and his abusive ways around her.
Well damn, that is one awful court. Dumping tuition costs on a single mother who isn’t even related to Amber? Obviously blaming Amber isn’t the best reaction, but that is a lot of injustice to take without finding some sort of outlet.
Or Blaine may claim he has no independent income and keep the proceeds of his crimes for himself, forcing Yuri, the only contributor to their joint accounts to keep both herself, Faz and pay Amber’s maintenance award.
Well Blaine claimed to be the one paying for her schoolin’ so I get the impression that she means her family is not doing as well thanks to the combined payments of alimony, child support, and now college fees.
I find it more likely that she’s either exaggerating or deluded about the size of the expense. my own mother was perpetually worried about money (I started having recurring dreams about it when I was about 5), and it took me far too long to figure out that my dad (and a bunch of his family) was actually quite well-off and there was no goddamn need for me to feel horribly guilty about persuading him to buy me a $20 toy I didn’t need. 😛 (I still feel guilty about it sometimes anyways. stupid brain.)
…of course tuition costs can be quite high, but, well, that was another thing I worried about for no good reason. “high” is very much relative to income, and I assume blaine’s mob connections get him enough income that paying for college is more of an inconvenience than a strain.
Out of those two possibilities, I’d find it more likely that Blaine is either lying about how much money he has or how much her tuition cost is. She certainly seems to believe its not an insignificant amount of money.
I was expecting this drop, and I feel for Faz, but I’m kinda creeped out at comments I see acting like the family situation is her fault for getting with Blaine when the implication of this storyline is that she was a literal god damn child when that happened and it feels creepy to blame a teenager groomed by an abuser for being a homewrecker/being with the guy who knocked her up?
Like if she’s shitty to her kid that’s on her but, her relationship with Blaine seems to be her being preyed on and on him?
Also is this one of those states where alimony ends when people get remarried? Because Ambers mom is currently in a happy monogamous relationship and Blaine may be free of the horror of having to support his own god damn kid.
Really Blaine is the problem, and the solution would be for him to never get to have a family. He’s so incompetent at being a person he shouldn’t be inflicting himself on people unsupervised. But then, in that just world Amber wouldn’t have been born. I don’t think the game of could’ve-would’ve-should’ve has any perfect answers, but the best these people can do is deal with Blaine’s damage as best they can.
Maybe in the form of a support group. But I don’t know that we can ask a lot from the people currently manipulated by Blaine themselves.
So, Faz’s a$$hol3 parents both hate his half-sister and try to turn him against her. Yet he still wants to bond with her. This _might_ be a good sign for his personal development?
Amber has said he cheated on her mom with no room for misunderstanding at least once, albeit it was when she was running away from him on family day.
So the question is how reliable a narrator you find her to be.
We know Blaine’s a cheater, but we don’t know if Yuri’s the mistress Amber was referring to at the time. There could be another woman involved, maybe even right now.
Hasn’t been confirmed, but there have been strong hints. We know he cheated – or Amber claimed so. We know they must have married soon after Stacy and Blaine’s divorce – to allow time for contact with Amber before she didn’t see him for years. We’ve got the strong suspicions that Blaine actually is Faz’s father.
OTOH, that last, considering Yuri’s relatively young age, pushes it from “woman who had an affair with a married man” to “teenager groomed by an abuser”.
I didn’t make a joke about it but it’s about where my mind first went – I tend to hear/think of “bleeding dry” when the context is Mikey . Although I didn’t realise it was Blaine at first and wasn’t sure if Yuri was pimping Faz or a “working woman” with a client of hers in the back
DoA shows up at 7 in the morning here in Norway, so I always check it when I get out of bed. This certainly woke me up! Bad enough how Yuri’s talking, but then the tags shows just WHO is in the backseat … I’m worried. I’m very very worried.
Well she seemed nice. I have to wonder if Blaine is also the biological father of Rose and Zaph or if Willis chose to go a different route than Shortpacked.
I’m getting the impression Yuri doesn’t actually work? Isn’t only Blaine who needs to pay? And I’m guessing Blaine is super rich which makes Faz disqualified for financial aid and scholarships?
“Financial aid” is just marketing speak for “Loans”. They want you to think about grants and scholarships when you read the pamphlets and talk to the advisors, but the vast, vast majority of “financial aid” in the US consists of private and federal student loans.
Not that student loans are inherently bad, they do count toward building your credit score and they let you pay for school (plus interest) over a longer period. You just have to remember that every penny of “financial aid” you take, that isn’t a grant or scholarship, will be repaid (plus interest) in due time. (Student loans are not discharged in bankruptcy, either.)
Remember that when you shop around for schools, prospective college students reading these comments!
On a more serious note though. She has no one to blame but herself. She knows that Blaine pays alimony to Amber and her mother. It wouldn’t take much effort to find out the divorce details and learn what a piece of shit Blaine is.
Abuse victim, quite possibly since she was a teen. She’s been primed with Blaine’s version of the story for years. The rest of it is just lies his ex made up to get his money. (Except for the cheating part – she knows that’s true.)
even if she wasn’t an abuse victim since the conception and birth of Faz, it’s incredibly likely that she’s an abuse victim NOW because Blaine is just that shitty. I would not be surprised if all his partners have been mistreated by him
Yuri is a shitty parent, but should not be blamed for marrying the absuive, manipulative, probably predatory fucknuckle that we all hope makes some sort of fuck up with his mob connections that gets him killed.
…yes, she should. Parents have responsibilities to their children, and when they choose to be with someone who abuses their children, unless they literally can’t conceive of escaping, they are letting their children down. Yuri shows no hint that she’s scared of Blaine.
We’ve seen her in two strips so far. This strip has caused many to reevaluate her already. It’s certainly possible there are more revelations in store.
We know Blaine is an abusive manipulator. That he hasn’t been abusing her is one of the least likely options.
It’s been heavily implied that he likely groomed her and is in fact Faz’s father. Blaine has likely been a prominent influence on her entire adult life and he’s proven to be incredibly manipulative, so she probably can’t conceive of escaping.
It’s always nice to see Blaine is screwing people over even while he is not around… (sarcasm). Well lady, on a good note, by the time Faz is old enough to go to college, Amber should be out or at least 21.
Also as some people stated, she looks like she is either going to her “job” or possibly picking up Blaine from the hospital. I honestly don’t know which is worse…….
talk about giving new meaning to wicked step mother . bleeding this family dry oh well once maybe amber completes her education maybe she will decide to not bother the family any more .
Of course someone this awful would be married to Blaine. Also, Amber isn’t sucking money. Blaine is her biological father, got divorced because he is an asshole that beat Amber’s mother, and by law he has to pay monthly. Superman: “Freedom, Justice and the American Way”. If Faz can’t go anywhere outside and have friends isn’t because of Amber benefiting from liberal policies, but because Blaine is a greedy bastard that doesn’t want to afford for his second kid, you angsty bongo.
Hmmmm. I can understand why she would feel resentment about how Amber is taking money from what could be used to support Yuri and her family, but based on how she seems to not focus on Faz’s disappearance, I’m wondering if she’s a mother who is either:
A) Doesn’t see how HER kid could ever do anything wrong.
or
B) Doesn’t care at all about her own kid and treats him as an extension of her.
Since Blaine is already B), I’m assuming that Yuri is A).
I say this because Yuri’s resentment over the money is based on how it affects her life. And figuring out WHY and WHO she’s concerned about can tell us more about her character.
All in All, she seems like a pleasant woman who probably married Blaine because he seemed wealthy.
You know it’s funny, I was writing a story and I created a character that was meant to be a massive jackass and I usually name characters based on posters hanging around my workstation, so I picked O’Malley as a last name cause of my Amazi-Girl Strikes poster and I sat and thought… “What’s a good first name for someone who’s this much of a dick?” My literal first thought was Blaine… and then I realized that it was already taken by a much bigger dick.
yeah I think shes resentful because he was nice successful looking and gave her a presentation of BS and if she was a really young teen probably thought of him as prince charming and didn’t realize it was BS until she got pregnant and it was too late
Also I bet he gives her nothing but how amber and her mom are the worst and the cause of everything bad in their lives while hes out spending cash on hookers and blow while shes trying to figure out how to pay the electric bill ……
you know I just realized willis did something clever …… In real life its the first wife and kid whos acting like faz’s mom is because dear old da’s blowing all the money on the second family while the first family is eating dirt
and its usually the half brother and sisters whos getting college and the cars ect while the first wife has 2 jobs and food stamps
But if theres any real type of mafia ties there involved in too because believe it or not even if your divorced there taking care of your family or making sure your helping so no ones getting snippy to the police fbi ect
Realife examples al capones family is still being taken care of and john gotti almost got taken out by the old guys because he blew so much money that his wife signed up for public assistance to pay the bills …..lets just say a chat was had …..
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oh shit, does she have Voldemort living in the back of her head
Man, if Quirrell had long hair, Voldemort would have been in for a rough time. He’d be constantly choking, and everything he said would have been muffled.
Incidentally, one of my favorite things ever was reading that book for a second time and noticing that there’s a scene where Fred and George enchanted snowballs to throw themselves at the back of Quirrell’s head. They were hitting Voldemort in the face! True heroes of the series!
Even worse, she has Blaine in the back of her head
…and in the back of her throat?
(Sorry. I’ll get my coat)
I’ll hold the door for you… for making that joke before I could!
i briefly misread that as “Bane”. this is worse, though.
Oh. Okay then.
Faz is about to get humanized some more.
I think Humanized is a very gentle word for what’s about to happen here
Yikes, well said. :/
He seems very punchable when you first meet him, but a reminder that Blaine had an influence on his upbringing makes him seem remarkably well-adjusted and I just wanna get him, like, some kind of deprogramming treatment to learn how to be less creepy.
If by “well-adjusted” you mean “surprisingly not as sociopathic as one would generally be led to expect”, sure
Was that not obvious?
What I was aiming for, yeah. I love Amber, but Blaine’s parenting has not left her psychologically stable.
Not stable is putting it mildly. Blaine compares unfavorably to Gendo Ikari, FFS.
At the sake of Yumi losing some.
wait what
Oh god the Creepy/Evil vibes just went through the roof
Oh, it’s all Amber’s fault, is it. Welp, she seemed nice the first time. Now, not so much.
WTF…how is that even…
Okay, seriously, what. Someone explain exactly how the stepmom is liable for Amber’s college costs…unless it’s actually Blaine who’s liable and the stepmom here is just blaming Amber?
It’s actually Blaine who’s liable and the stepmom here is just blaming Amber.
As Blaine’s wife she feels that she should have a say in how his income is distributed and resents the portion that goes toward court-mandated tuition.
That or Blaine has misinformed her as to what percentage of his income is going toward his daughter’s tuition and uses that to justify not having enough to save a penny toward Faz’s theoretical college fund.
Knowing Blaine its probably the second thing
… that last bit is disturbingly possible. Maaaaaan, fuck Blaine.
I was wondering if she was saying that mostly for Blaine’s benefit, seeing as he’s in the car. It wouldn’t surprise me if she either buys into his twisted views (Stockholm Syndrome maybe?) or will say she does to keep him from turning on her as much as possible. Given how abusive he’s been shown to be, either one seems plausible without her actually being that horrible herself.
Though of course, horrible is as horrible does and in this case she definitely doesn’t look good.
Just a minor thing for clarification, I think you meant Faz, not Blaine?
I think she might just be horrible in the sense of being against Amber – mostly because she probably never heard anything good about Amber and her mother from Blaine, didn’t have anything to do with the both of them, so it’d be pretty easy for her to put all kind of faults onto Amber’s existence (like, having no money – which I doubt is the case, but maybe we’ll get to see a bit more of Faz’s life at home).
NEVERMIND, I just realised (also by seeing other comments) that Blaine’s in the tags, don’t know how I could’ve so obviously misread this! (I should pay more attention, before I write something)
Yep, the last panels speech bubble is coming from the back of the car.
She could just be a shitty person.
Blaine’s first appearance included the ‘I pay your tuition, I paid for that laptop*’ bit, so yeah, totally his fault and her blaming Amber for existing/the courts for demanding Blaine financially support her. * (Which Amber got used and refurbished, probably to minimize how much she owed him and did I mention Blaine is the Worst? Augh)
“This family” = Yuri, Faz and Blaine. Blaine is responsible for paying for Amber therefore the three of them as a family unit have less disposable income.
Although if Blaine isn’t Faz’s dad, there is presumably somebody else out there who may be considered liable for *his* college expenses?
Unlikely, since Yuri says they won’t be able to afford to pay for him to go to school due to the financial strain of paying for Amber’s.
Yeeeeeeah, but given the incredibly poor judgment shown by bashing Faz’s stepsister immediately after he came from a visit with her – and it’s hardly Amber’s fault that the child support settlement came down this way! – I’m going to say we need to see their financials before we assume she isn’t exaggerating well out of proportion.
It’s possible, but regardless, it seems like Fazdad isn’t around.
Perhaps the Fazfather is no longer alive. Or wasn’t alive in the first place.
Faz told Amber that his father doesn’t care what he does. That implies his father is still alive and either an extremely permissive parent or absent entirely.
Or is blaine.
I don’t think so… Amber makes a point to say, “Not your Dad, MY Dad, your step-dad”. So, there is at least another man out there that is thought to be Faz’s biological father. (Even with Amber questioning that Blaine really is that, anyway… which just makes everything muddier if it’s true)
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/stepdad/
That exchange makes a lot of sense if there is no Faz Father in the picture. Faz is talking about Blaine. Amber wants to believe he’s talking about his hypothetical absent real father – who obviously doesn’t care, since he’s completely out of the picture. Faz doesn’t correct her, because she’s not supposed to know.
99% sure Blaine isn’t Faz’s biological father (iirc DW confirmed Blaine only has one biological child), and I’m maybe 80% sure that he was referring to Blaine anyway. It doesn’t seem that unlikely to me that a child would call their stepfather “father” occasionally- and it sounds like he’s been around in their family for a long time, although there’s nothing concrete there.
I was relying on that earlier too, but Willis said a bit earlier in this chapter that he’d forgotten about the earlier tumblr comment. Given that, all the hints seem to be leading up to something.
I don’t think so. He says “Father” as if he’s both theirs and she corrects him to father and stepfather.
You’re assuming her ex is financially solvent.
And not dissolved in a vat of acid, given their mob connections.
Pretty sure you’ve got it. I think Yuri’s only responsible in-so-far as she made the (awful, terrible, horrible) decision to marry Blaine, and therefore he can’t contribute as much to the family coffers as he would otherwise.
Presumably, Yuri knows about scholarships. If she is choosing not to share that information with Faz, that would speak poorly of her.
Maybe in their case scholarships are unlikely, for whatever reason?
Then financial aid. There is some option to cover his tuition somewhere.
Grants, work study, no-interest loans. Despite popular misinformation, college isn’t as expensive as claimed especially for a state school.
I’m placing my bet on, ‘that requires reporting your LEGAL income and they don’t want that scrutinized too closely’. Until proven otherwise, I’m taking Richard’s mob line as fact.
I’m only responding to the scholarship route. It’s hard to say without knowing the financials and likelihoods of the whole thing.
My word choice was poor.
I haven’t had to personally deal with college financing in decades, but my understanding is that college financing nowadays is a mishmosh of financial aid, scholarships, grants, student loans, etcetera etcetera.
Very true and debt plus availability is an issue.
“Financial aid”, “student loans”, po-tay-to po-tah-to.
Off the top of my head, two things that could make getting scholarships difficult:
1) Faz and/or Yuri being undocumented
2) Blaine’s mob connections making it risky for him to disclose income and/or employment
But Blaine appears to be legally married to Yuri, which would rule out 1. And presumably the courts already have enough of his financial record to compel him to pay Amber’s tuition, which would rule out 2.
Paying for college in the US has become a Kafkaesque exercise, and, for most people, putting together a financial package starts at difficult, and can wind up at impossible.
But Yuri seems to be putting a kibosh on the whole idea from the start, and that’s just not right.
I think it’s more like Blaine bullies her into paying Amber’s tuition, while parading as paying it himself. We don’t know how abusive Blaine is in this family, so I’m going with very.
….Whyyyyyyy is Blaine in the tags? D:
OH SJHIT THAT’S BLAINE TALKING IN THE LAST PANEL
HE WAS IN THE CAR THE WHOLE TIME HE WAS THIS CLOSE TO AMBER
Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Yeah but I mean they’re leaving now, nothing happened
…yet…
Fat man exposition…
Erk erk erk erk erk erk erk erk
Chocolate sauce down the drain.
Oh shoot. I didn’t catch that. Well crap.
I actually missed it before the comments and can only express my dismay in emoticon: D: At least it means tomorrow when we see him it won’t be as nasty a surprise? Just leaving our horror for whatever he says. I reiterate: D:
Oh shit I just realized Blaine is in the tags. I thought it was Yuri talking in the last panel until now too.
Me too! I was examining the panels trying to find him and was about to post “where?!?” when i saw the speech wasn’t coming from her.
Look at the tags? No, I never think to do that. Why do you ask? *derp*
He finally got out of the hospital after the beatdown/curbstomping he got from Amber/AmaziGirl, and Faz escaped while Yuri was helping with the paperwork.
That was during The Only Dope for Me is You, which was September 19. Today’s October 12.
She beat the stuffing out of him if he was in the hospital for a month. Maybe an outpatient care return visit?
And I just realized that other speech bubble came from the back seat.
Blaine… it has to be Blaine.
Oh crap.
Ah, so that’s Yuri’s damage. I was wondering why Faz would still prefer Amber’s company over Yuri, but well, there you go.
Also, those tags… oh dear.
I always assumed that Yuri had some serious issues, just on the basis that she married Blaine. I’ve just been waiting to see exactly what those issues are.
wuh oh
worst dad incoming
2nd worse. Of the two dads who have kidnapped children in this comic, this is the one who DIDN’T brandish a rifle while doing so.
…Man, it’s so fucked up that that’s the bar to clear, huh?
I have faith in Blaine’s ability to somehow one-up even *that* by the time he’s through.
Eh. Ross actually was trying to give a shit about his daughter. Obviously he was completely in the wrong with trying to haul her off to conversion camp or whatever, but I could see a redemption arc for him happening one day if he pulled his head out of his ass – Becky is totally the type to forgive him if he acknowledged what he did. I say that as a queer kid myself who’s parents talked about hauling me off to those camps as well – our relationship is still kinda tense, but it’s also healed up a great deal the last few years.
Blaine is an abusive jerk who (god I desperately hope I’m wrong about this) looks like he’s about to rape his stepson, which may somehow not even be the most fucked up shit he’s ever done? The only redemption he gets is from swallowing a shotgun.
Ross was trying to correct his wayward property. That’s not exactly the same as “trying to give a shit about her”.
In that sense, Blaine also gives a shit about Amber – he’s trying to mold her into some image of his own.
And I really doubt he’s going to rape Faz. Didn’t even consider it until you said that.
Judging by the look on Faz’s face I think you are wrong. I think that there is a generally fucked up thing happening here though that judging by Yuri’s and Faz’s faces is almost as bad. I think Faz is about to get to drive the car because Yuri is going to be told to get in the back seat. I think this happens a lot. I think Blaine treats Yuri like his personal whore instead of like his wife. I think that Faz is… well… I think he compartmentalizes and doesn’t think about the fact that if he sees anything in the rear view mirror that it is his mom and step dad. I think that he’s a lot more messed up than anyone realizes and this is why Amber is on Garbage Roof. 🙁
Could we maybe not try to put a measuring system on abuse?
What we CAN say is that Becky came out of hers far more emotionally balanced and able to move forwards. But abuse is abuse. If you put numbers on it, if you rank it, you’re inherently saying that some type of abuse is “not that bad” compared to another type of abuse, and that’s not okay to me. The thing that matters is how a person experienced it, and how they move forwards with it.
(And I’m saying this as a person who was abused throughout childhood but felt unable to acknowledge it because hey, I wasn’t being beaten, so clearly it “wasn’t that bad”.)
He was doing the opposite of that.
They are both terrible people. We don’t have to rank them.
I’m not sure if Blaine is worse than Toedad, both are pretty awful.
It’s awfully hard to make a measurement when the meter goes to 100%, and both ToeDad, Blaine and “Sir” are awfully close to that line on the shit-o-meter.
In my book, ToeDad is still in the lead for the gun-thing (and that was even before we learnt about Bonnie), but Blaine is working REAL hard to catch up.
ToeDad made a strong play with the gun attack, but it went with an early retirement from the competition, since Becky never has to see him again and is now free to be a Lesbian and become a scientist. Blaine still has a chance to lose more points, and Sir is definitely working on it.
Personally, I don’t think there should really be a comparison? They’re all really awful. Sure, Blaine never pulled a gun on his daughter (that we know of), but he still has years of physical and emotional abuse that he heaped onto his wife and daughter, and very well onto his second wife and son.
They are certainly all three well above the more interesting lines like “acceptably awful”, “redeemable awful” or “not awful enough to warrant shipping them all to some remote island where they can be awful together rather than inflict it on their children, seriously what’s wrong with them.”
So… Price is Right rules… highest without going over…
Whose parent is the most awful without warranting shipping off to some remote island?
Immediate thoughts come to mind are Joe’s dad, Joyce’s mom, and Ethan’s parents, but there are others I’m not thinking of off the top of my head.
I have a strong feeling both Danny’s and Ethan’s parents will turn out to be worse than we have seen so far, as soon as we get to know them better.
Thank you, 100% agree. You can’t say one type of abuse is “worse” than another- one person might be largely unaffected by verbal abuse, whereas another might be able to shrug off violent abuse, but they might be completely devastated in the other situation. Yes, some types of abuse are more likely to leave permanent psychological scarring, but to say one person’s experience with abuse is inherently “worse” is diminishing the validity of the experience being compared to.
Oh.
OH FUCK.
What? A parent, acting antagonistic toward our beloved main characters? I totally did not expect that sudden twist.
You usually expect that from the dads, when the mom turns heel it’s a rare occasion.
Carol, Linda, Naomi, and Sharon may all want to weigh in on that.
… Is it sad that my first thought is ‘Wait, who’s Sharon’?
Oh right, that’s why I don’t remember Sharon! I think of the Wilcox parents as a single, terrible unit.
Nope.
Mostly because my first thought was “Who are any of them?”
Carol = Joyce’s mom
Linda = Sal and Walky’s mom
Naomi = Ethan’s mom
Sharon = Danny’s mom.
I mean granted, in the last three, their husbands are no prizes either but still..
I would say that for the top three, the mothers are the primary instigators of feel-bad-territory. Definitely with Linda and Naomi, their respective husbands’ primary role was utterly failing to stop their awfulness.
Though Charles was the one who nailed Sal with the comment about her hair. OTOH, at least he talked to her.
Not much to choose from there, I guess.
I feel like Charles’ comment was coming from a place of caring. Absolutely problematic, I agree- both the racial aspect (which I suspect he’s unaware of) and suggesting his daughter is less pretty as she is. But I felt it was a bungled, “how I remember you is how I like you” intent.
Agree or disagree, I think that he wasn’t outright cruel- and he did seem pleased to see her. And utterly, completely ignoring one of your children- who you haven’t seen for a long time- in order to fawn over the one you saw recently sends a very strong message, and a cruel one. To me- admitting that there’s personal feelings there- Linda feels way worse.
And yet, Charles is the one who actually insulted Sal to her face. Linda’s definitely the more blatant one, but Charles does more than not stop her.
Ditto for Saul actually. He’s the one who told Ethan that women were like beer and he’d feel gross at first but learn to like it. Like…..that sounds a lot like wannabe conversion therapy (Granted, Naomi’s not much better about that).
That doesn’t even make sense. Sal’s hair was curly at the robbery. Most of the time he’d seen her, her hair was not relaxed. And while it’s possible, I sincerely doubt he’s ignorant to the implications of saying Sal’s hair looks better straight, since Sal seems to feel her hair is one of the things that make her parents prefer Walky (who ‘came out whiter’).
And saying ‘how I remember you is how I like you’ is still pretty shitty since that’s NOT how she looks anymore (and, again, never really did).
And frankly, I’m lousy at social graces, but even without dealing with an estranged daughter or the complexities of black hair politics, I know better than to tell a girl with a new hairstyle I liked it better the old way.
Worst I’ll do is not comment.
Carol is a Trump supporter according to Willis additional art, Linda favors Walky over Sal and didn’t care about Sal’s friend being racially discriminated, Naomi wanted Ethan to rape Joyce (which Ethan didn’t approve), and Sharon and her husband treated Danny like garbage just because he was single. What a bunch of horrible mothers.
I don’t think Naomi actually wanted Ethan to rape Joyce. She just wanted them to fuck, in hopes he’d actually start to like it. Which is creepy and gross, but not quite that bad.
I don’t think the dads have a worse track record than the moms. Blaine and Ross are worse than their respective mothers, but… We don’t know Joe’s mom; while both Walkertons are bad, Charles is at least less actively bad than Linda; both Wilcoxen are bad; Sierra has two dads, both of whom are cool; Hank is way better than Carol – though even he has a ways to go, he’s shown improvement and potential to improve more; both Mike’s parents are fine (aside from producing Mike); Dorothy’s parents are annoying in a ‘they mean well’ way, but evenly so…
Sierra has a mom and a dad, but otherwise generally agreed.
Hmm…you’re right. I’m certain there was someone with two dads during family weekend, but I can’t figure out who I’m thinking of.
I don’t recall anybody but it’s been a while and I’ve been having trouble falling asleep the past few days (as in, taking a few hours).
Yeah, looking back, I’m not seeing it… My memory is clearly faulty, here.
damn you willis
hopefully he’ll still look a little beat up from his last real appearance? *nervous sweat*
I mean, theres got to be a reason why his head is conveniently hidden behind Yuri’s
Pretty sure he was barred from setting foot on IU campus. His hiding in the backseat was his way of getting around it.
Wait, why would the courts force anyone to pay someone else’s tuition? Is that a real thing?
Blaine’s alimony, I suspect, a substantial portion of which would probably then be devoted to Amber’s tuition.
Oh! Okay, that would make sense. Thanks, butts!
Us as in Blaine, who is Amber’s father, and basically has a judgement against him regarding what he did to her and her mother. He takes it out on, or of, Yuri.
So far as we know, Blaine and Yuri are married and are definitely living together. His income will be garnished to cover alimony and child support payments. From Yuri’s perspective, since she likely has to partially cover his costs due to this, that money comes out of them both… this before any spin from Blaine is accounted for.
Covering education expenses is part of child support proceedings and Blaine is likely required by court order to cover a portion of those expenses after grants, loans, etc until Amber is 21 so long as she stays in school. Under normal divorce proceedings an agreement between Blaine and Stacy would have had to have been reached via arbitration regarding amount of child support until 18 or finished with secondary school and any split on further education coverage until Amber is 21 (the latest legal enforcement on such things is required to end by in most states), but with what we know about his history with Stacy, Blaine was likely forced to just accept what the court drew up for them which would not be in his favor.
On a related note, any alimony Blaine is required to pay Stacy (since butts broached that topic) will end once she remarries and is likely indeed being used to cover at least some of her part of Amber’s education expenses. That being the case, Stacy will likely not remarry until Amber reaches 21 in order to keep any such alimony coming in and thereby pressure on Blaine.
Child support laws. For the parent with the greater income to pay the bulk of their child’s college tuition is not unreasonable.
It’s 25k a year for residents… if she’s not eligible for any sort of financial aid at all. And if she’s not, then Blaine must be positively rolling in cash and has nothing to complain about.
Yuri just sees all of Blaines income as her own.
Considering that there’s a court order for Blaine to stay away from Amber, divorce was probably grated because he’s an abusive shit and therefore no mitigation of his financial responsibilities.
And it’s extra bullshit because if she’s so concerned about her son’s education, why is she expecting it to be paid by a man not his father?
Of course a decent stepfather would help as much as possible but it’s rich that she resents that Blaine is paying for *his* child because she wants his money for *hers.*
Unless, as seems increasingly likely, Blaine is his father.
In which case, Amber (and Stacy) have been draining money that rightfully should have been Faz’s and hers for 16 years now. In her mind at least.
It’s also possible she doesn’t have a job (he may not let her) or that he’s the primary breadwinner.
Precisely. What better way to keep her dependent on him, even while he was still married to Stacy.
Gentlemen…BEHOLD!
Godsdamnit, Willis.
For the record, it’s “Damn You, Willis”.
I dunno, sometimes it seems necessary to call the gods’ own damnation down upon him for some of the stuff he pulls…. 😛
(Teasing, teasing)
Actually, the canon form, as established way back in the Nightstar forums is just: DAMN YOU WILLIS
(no commas or other punctuation except maybe a period at the end. Definitely no exclamation point. I think the ALL CAPS part is so it was similar to the voice of “Death” in the Discworld books)
Um, actually, Death speaks in sᴍᴀʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘs, not ALL CAPS.
The more you know
==========*
yeah. regular caps is just yelling.
(and now to read the source to see how you did that…)
…oh, it’s a unicode thing, not a html thing. darn.
Petition to delete Blaine from this comic and existence itself.
Amber tried. Didn’t stick.
Yet.
Amazigirl tried. If Amber does it, it WILL stick.
It was Amber, not AG. Just for the record.
(Which is why she denies it to Dorothy, to her, it WASN’T her.)
Nope, it was Amber. Isn’t disassociation fun?
(No)
If DoA ever makes it to the “second year” I really want Faz and Howard to be roommates. I’m pretty sure they’d be in the same class, right?
Why do you hate Howard so?
You don’t think they’d get along? They can hang out watching Game of Thrones and drawing pictures of themselves kissing the women.
At this rate, we’ll all be dead of old age first.
Faz is 15.
Pretty sure he’s almost 18.
He said he’s a few weeks shy of the Age of Consent, which is 18.
No, it’s not. In Indiana, the age of consent is 16.
I think Faz is 13 as he makes a comment in a strip that he is 2 weeks from age of consent in Indiana due to their “Romeo and Juliet Law” that he printed out and carries around. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/stepdad/
Romeo and Juliet law and age of consent are two different things. Romeo and Juliet laws are for people below the age of consent. Faz is a few weeks off from the age of consent. Age of consent in Indiana is 16, so Faz is 15.
Yeah, he said he was two weeks from the age of consent for the benefit of those listening who otherwise would be unable to take immediate advantage of the “Romeo and Juliet Law” that he printed out and carries around.
Assuming move-in day for both of them is August 29, DoA year + 2, that would put their move-in day about 689 days from now. On the 66.67 average, that’s 45,936 strips in the future, around February/March 2144.
(That figure will change when the DoA:Realtime ratio gets recalculated at the end of this arc.)
Alternatively, there’s a timeskip and it happens next Wednesday.
Faz’s long run as a character gives weight to another character with his smile not smiling even two strips into her tenure and without actually having Faz stop smiling, and I like that.
FUCK YOU, BLAINE
is it bad I still hold out hope Yuri is actually nice and she’s just being manipulated by the huge asshole that is Blaine?
No. She may have to say those things, because HE’s in the back.
Totally possible. Likely, we’ll just have to wait and see. Especially since she may have mob ties.
Yeah, I’m wondering if Yuri actually believes what she said, or if she’s just saying that because Blaine is there.
To add, if- and I mean IF, faz is Blaine’s bio kid then that would mean Yuri has been under his thumb since she was a teen. Even if he has some real non Blaine dad out there, she still would have been fairly young when she met Blaine. Maybe early to mid 20s, as a single mom. It would have been easy for Blaine to manipulate her way of thinking
DEpends on why you’re hoping she’s nice. I mean, even before this we knew she had mob connections and that faz had run away from her. There’s not a lot of good reasons to assume she’s nice in spite of those.
I don’t think we know she has mob connections – other than through Blaine, though it’s certainly possible.
Otherwise, yeah.
oh crap, I didn’t even realize the last panel implies Blaine is in the car until I read the notes D: D:
the greatness of Faz is such that it cannot be diluted or dampened by the return of Blaine
Very spiteful towards someone whose life you can of fucked over, I can kind of see what Blaine see’s in her now.
And on that note…Blaine 😡
On the plus side before realising that was Blaine, I was trying to work out if Yuri had a client of hers in the back or was pimping her underage son out…
I really really REALLY hope that Blaine is not talking about being sucked dry in that context in a manner relating to Faz, or even in front of him… Squick ;/
They mean sucked dry of money, because of Amber’s tuition.
Yep, the other shoe comes off for Yuri.
But it figures Blaine is back. And up to no good because he can’t leave well enough alone after his hospital trip.
Are actually seeing it happen? Are we going to see him form a legion of doom or some type of sinister six with toe dad and Ryan against Amazi-girl after figuring out who she is?
I’ve always wondered if this will happen. Willis did this already in his previous comics and I’m not sure if he’d like to repeat this again in a mostly grounded and realistic situation.
But it’s up to him and in a setting where a caped vigilante fights crime, maybe a League of Evil (or some smaller panel) could formulate.
Well maybe not a full-on super villain League. maybe just a ragtag team of assholes who want to get back at a specific person.
Yep, that sounds doable. And Blaine’s mob connections, it could be a mobster team.
Plot twist: The mob that Blaine is involved with is supplied in secret by Jason’s father.
Hoo, wouldn’t that be something if that was true!
What is the basis for saying Blaine is connected? You’re not the only one saying that and I don’t recall that in any strip. What did i miss?
Thx
Amber’s mum told Joe’s dad, and he told Joe on-panel: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/01-face-the-strange/disengage/
The League of Something!
They’ll need a glowing orb on a pedestal.
anyway did they not see blaine because he’s like hiding under a blanket or in the trunk or something
This is going to get very uncomfortable I am kind of hoping it cuts away to Carla doing Carla things.
I’d be happy with a flashback to, say, Mike. Perhaps cutting the brake lines on this car.
Mike tends to want his victims to know they’ve been Miked, so cutting brake lines isn’t his style.
Even a Mary cutaway would tolerable… Also in this continuity I know Faz is still creepy but he doesn’t deserve to be in a car crash.
A car crash that destroys the rear half of the car would be a plus though.
Well that’s a bummer, I guess years with Blaine does that to you. And on that note, I wonder why he’s sitting in the back. Still scared of Amber?
He might be banned from the campus, which means he’s probably hiding so he can’t be detected. Remember, he had to sneak into Amber’s dorm to begin with.
WELP there goes any shot of my sleeping tonight!
What if the only reason she drove out instead of having Amber stick Faz on a bus was because she needed to pick up Blaine from the hospital
I can ALMOST understand Yuri here. It must be beyond frustrating to not be able to pay for your child’s education because your husband has to shell out for his daughter (and because she didn’t seem annoyed until Faz brought up making friends of his own at the university). It’s not right, fair, or justified, but it is human. Especially since Yuri is in a relationship with Abusive Bastard Blaine and it’s probably easier and SAFER to take it out on Amber instead of blaming her husband. Double especially since Blaine is in the back seat and can hear every word she’s saying. Not to mention Blaine may be controlling enough not to allow her to work to make it less likely she’ll leave him. Blaine may be the family’s only income.
It still sucks though.
Not to mention, if Yuri is unhappy in this relationship and realizes the effects Blaine has on life in general and Faz in particular… going away to college can help get you out of an abusive parent’s orbit.
Plus, if we take her word for it, Amber’s college is causing a serious financial strain for them.
In-state costs for the 2017-18 school year are about $24,500. This assumes Amber didn’t qualify for any scholarships. Roughly $10,000 of that is just room and board.
Ouch.
I would go even further, I would venture he lets Yuri work and takes her money, with justification that he needs it for the tuition of Amber.
Her frustration is real and justified…
…but to blame Amber (for the great crime of…. having a father?) and to lay it out to Faz as him vs Amber, that’s just shitty.
Really, to me it’s a wonder that Faz is as WELL-ADJUSTED as he is, and I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence.
Oh, no, she’s still being shitty and unfair. Just because it makes enough sense to be understandable doesn’t make it justifiable.
And if the suspicions are true and she’s (nearly) as young as she appears – she was a single teen mom, possibly getting some support from Blaine, but probably just enough to keep her dependent on him.
He may have been that controlling of her, her entire adult life.
Blaine is the gift that just keeps giving, isn’t he?
(And with gift I mean effin’ effer)
I’m not actually mad at her for this opinion. I mean she married Blaine. Blaine!!!. So whatevs. She’s not even a 4 on the jerk parent scale but there’s plenty of room for improvement.
Dammit, Yuri… I was rooting for you….
I feel like this webcomic would be more accurately entitled “Everybody’s Parents are Awful.”
So I’m gonna nope out of this webcomic for a while. I already had to deal with one bad parent; I don’t go seeking it out in my entertainment.
It was nice while it lasted.
I don’t think that’s completely fair to the parents. This comic is heavily from the perspective of the students. We rarely get any context for the parents actions are dialog. Most of them are jaded adults who deal with real problems beyond “Oh no I’m making out with a guy I hate” or “I don’t like this hot guy’s girlfriend!” I mean I’m being purposefully snarky there but you get it.
Yuri has a legitimate gripe that Amber drains the money that could be used for Faz’s tuition.
That being said you wouldn’t be wrong to expect the worst.
Yuri may have a common but by no means legimate gripe: that her husband is responsible for kids from former marriages.
But then, she’s already proven her bad judgement by marrying him.
But a lot of the parents in this webcomic *are* shitty parents – and (almost) all of the prominent parents are. It’s not just that they have worries outside the scope of their kids, but in their actions and words they show a certain amount of shittiness. (Even here with Yuri – it’s fair of her to be worried about money, but she shouldn’t really be griping in front of Faz and she really shouldn’t blame Amber for it – and telling Faz that it’s Amber’s fault, in effect, it makes it look like Yuri’s trying to set up Faz to resent Amber which is reaaaally not on. Even if that’s not her intention it’s still not cool)
The kids are the main characters here, and shitty parents are fitting antagonists for some of them. Antagonists just plain ol’ advance the plot more than Lawful Good tertiary characters do. There’s only so much you can do with, say, “Falyn Snow shows up with a big platter of cookies for everyone”.
This just in: “Everybody” does not, apparently, refer to Dina, Carla, Dorothy, Sierra, Mike (whose parents are arguably too nice), Mary (whose parents are/were reportedly “alright folks” according to Willis on tumblr)…
If someone has a bad parent and wants to avoid reading about bad parents, that’s a legitimate reason to quit reading. It doesn’t help to list the good parents.
#notallparents
…re-reading their comment and your reply to mine, I sincerely apologize. It didn’t register to me on the first pass over their comment, and though I didn’t intend it, I seem to have messed up and misinterpreted the context of their comment – and I’m sorry for that. I…don’t really know what else to say, but…yeah.
Sorry.
Well I would hope not given that you are a parent.
Mhmm. I did the same with Gunnerkrigg Court- and here and there over the years I’ve had to take breaks from other comics for a bit. I did it here actually, when Ryan caught up with Amber and Dorothy.
The nice thing about taking a break is you get to come back when things have moved on, and you can go to the next storyline and the things that make you happy about the comic. 🙂
I know Willis has already weighed in, but all those parents you mentioned? Are extremely tertiary, in the grand scheme of things. Most of them don’t even have names beyond ____’s parents, and have barely any characterization or role in the story, aside from showing up in the background on parent’s day.
I understand what you’re going for, but like, in comparison to the bad parental figures who are very prominent and have much more character built up for them, it’s not an equivalent exchange.
Those who don’t have a bad impact are seldom mentioned in real life.
College especially is the age where you don’t usually talk about your parents with your peer, expect to vent.
?
My friends and peers regularly talked about their families. Like, stories about family stuff and questions like ‘how’s your family’ don’t just go away.
Maybe my friends and I are just weird.
Maybe this changed since when I was starting college?
Talking about parents was way uncool then. With your peers, you talked about the shitty state of world peace (at that time we though we’d reached the bottom with US presidents because they elected an ex actor who had had at least some experience in politics through 8 years as a governor. Little did we know…), what you wanted to do with your life, next party/demo, the upcoming or past tests, how to chance university politics on xyz, how best to work around the prof that got his tenure in the 50ties because there were not enough tenured personal in the field and who was shitty to everyone smarter than him (practically everybody), ….
Parents were rarely mentioned and carefully hidden from view if they happened to visit.
(The idea of a parents visiting day for students who live on campus is in itself totally mind-boggling to me. Nearly no one lived on campanyway, but still…)
I disagree, I find that really comes down to your own experiences. There are plenty of people who talk about what a positive impact their parents have had in their lives, even while at college.
What’s more, this is a fictional story. And while yeah, sure, there’s a lot that you miss in real life, you can show a lot more with a fictional story, seeing POVs that the characters cannot see or that would otherwise not be apparent. With this context in mind, having no bad impact is not the same as having a good impact, and if you want to compare ‘good’ to ‘bad’, using characters that are at best ‘neutral’ is not a strong argument.
There are good parents in DoA, and parents that want to be good and are trying. Hank and Stacy are both parents who have made mistakes, but have shown that they want to get better and be better for their children. And that’s good! And that’s strong!
All I’m saying is that for the point of this discussion, using characters that 1) don’t have names, 2) might not even have dialogue, 3) have had little to no impact on any of the characters or story, 4) may not have even shown up in the comic as examples of ‘good’ parents is not a strong example. It’s like pointing to the Twi’lek slave girls in Return of the Jedi as an example of more female characters than Leia. It means very little, in the grand scheme of things.
Though parents who may not have appeared, but who’s influence we can see through their kids do still mean something. As others have said, the good parents don’t get plotlines, because there’s no conflict. (Unless it’s between parents, which suggests at least one bad one.)
Carla’s parents haven’t appeared, for example, but that they’re rich and supportive has been important on screen a few times. Dina’s parents being happy with her finding a girlfriend was a nice contrast with Becky’s father (and Joyce’s parents) even if it didn’t take much screen time.
Most of those mentioned above do have names, btw. Any that have appeared. Mary’s don’t, since we haven’t seen them. Nor Carla’s. Mike’s, Dorothy’s, Sierra’s, and Dina’s all do. And some of the examples of bad parents don’t either – Billie’s, for example.
Okay, in light of the context of this entire conversation, can you see my point of bringing up Sierra’s parents as a counterpoint to Blaine or Sir or Ross? Of bringing up Mike’s? They are such background characters that it is easy to forget that they even showed up in the comic. Like with my Star Wars example, you can’t just point to such a minute side character and act like they hold the same equivalence as a character with a name, face, personality, backstory, and plot significance as Blaine, Sir, or Ross.
My point is that pointing out these characters that barely exist within the story as a counterpoint to shut down someone pointing out all the prominent bad parents is.. bad. It’s not an equivalent exchange. And for someone wanting to see examples of good parents, pointing to someone that appeared in comic for maybe two pages? Not a great example.
Also, I gave two examples of good parents that have plotlines??? Hank and Stacy are both two arguably good parents that have plotlines about them getting into conflict with their kids and trying to do better. It’s bogus to say that good parents don’t get plotlines because there’s no conflict, because they absolutely can and do.
No, I do mostly agree. Just pointing out that they were’t quite that irrelevant.
But even in your example of good parent plotlines, those are both quite tightly tied to the bad parent plots: Hank with Carol and Stacy with both Blaine and Richard.
I’m sorry you’re in a spot where you need to do that. Take care of yourself.
Yeah, that seems about right.
Scared for what’s about to happen with Blaine.
Yeah cause that’s really Amber’s fault you asshole.
oO?
I don’t know how they’re forced to pay her tuition…
i could see a living expenses or just a general “money per month” or something
In some states, you can be ordered to pay college tuition as part of a divorce settlement.
I hope Blaine had to pay Stacy’s legal fees, too.
A disquieting speculation: Evidently, Blaine from the backseat is about to weight in on the subject of Amber’s tuition being a drain on the family. One way to eliminate that would be for Amber to get kicked out of school. But that would require evidence of some kind, and that would necessitate someone to get said evidence. Which makes me suddenly very suspicious of how Faz came to be on campus in the first place…
(The most obvious ground for Amber to expelled would be for her Amazi-Girl activities to come to light. However, it’s not clear from her fight with Blaine that he managed to put two-and-two together to deduce AG’s secret identity. It’d be an interesting bit of drama if Faz stumbled upon that but didn’t let his father know…)
OMG, you are a genius. That is so evil, but I truly can see that happening in real life.
Eh. She could just claim it’s Amazi-girl cosplay. Besides, Amazi-girl is well liked right now.
If he really wanted to go that route he would need to dress up somebody in similar clothing and have them tarnish her good name. And since Amber has no idea when she acts as her alter ego anymore, she might even believe she’s the one committing those acts, that the “bad” side is corrupting the good side.
Vigilantism is illegal, regardless of whether or not civilians love her. If she is caught or exposed, she’s in trouble.
The laws on vigilantism are tricky and it’s not quite clear to me if she’s been breaking them or not.
Interactions with Sal and with Ryan at the rally excepted, she interfered in ongoing crimes, she didn’t track down people and punish them after the fact.
On that note, Faz would have had to find something off-screen. What did we see him do?
– Get chased around the dorm by Amber
– Go to class with Amber
– Get passed to Joe, then to Joyce
– Get left behind in Forest Quad (probably the most likely place he’d pick up some Amazi-Girl stories, but no physical evidence)
Faz talks to Billie, comes away convinced Amazi-Girl isn’t Amber, but someone named Sal. Reports to Blaine. Hijinks ensue.
Minor nitpick, but she didn’t “fight” Blaine, so much as she “pummeled the living fuck out of” Blaine.
And he told the police it was a big guy iirc- or was it two? But yeah, definitely tried to soothe his pride by lying about it, so I doubt he’ll take that route.
Damn it, Yuri. I see a lot of people giving her the benefit of the doubt, but I’m wondering if maybe it’s because she’s a woman. In real life, I see some horrible-behaving women being excused for things no man I’ve met would ever get away with. My nmom, for example. So, I’m still side-eyeing Yuri here, with very cautious optimism that Blaine’s presence is a major contribution to her crappiness.
I would say it is partially because we already know how abusive Blaine is and an abusive partner’s presence can influence the things you say and do to be more like their own. So it is a possibility this is largely a Blaine thing and Yuri is a victim that is repeating his kinds of thoughts and behaviours he has because he is right there and could hurt her if she doesn’t.
But there is also the distinct possibility that Yuri by herself is also just awful in general and that they are both abusive to each other and their children.
We don’t yet have enough information to say whether this is another manifestation of Blaine’s true evil or if Yuri herself is also just malicious to begin with.
Now Amazi-Girl has a nemesis. Nice-Mom!
Amazi-Girl unmasked –> Amber committed or imprisoned or at least expelled –> Amber absent from college –> Blaine not paying Amber’s college costs –> more money for Nice-Mom! (For Faz’s tuition, honest.)
Why did we think Yuri was nice, again?
I don’t know why anyone in the comments would have felt comfortable assuming she was nice anyway…I mean, Faz said that Amber was the nicest to him. Amber. Of course, he does seem to have a different interpretation of their interactions, so maybe there was still room for Yuri to be decent.
I never assumed she was, though.
Because she set a good first impression for her one-panel appearance?
Because she’s pretty. And seemed polite in her first two panels.
To what extent she’s nasty on her own and to what extent she’s just another damaged victim of Blaine’s, it’s hard to say.
I’m hoping that Blain is either about to bring up hospital costs or is thirsty and wants to stop at a bar.
NOPE
…shit man
Yup, that’s him.
The shitman is in the car.
Ah, so that’s why Faz was around. Picking up Blaine from the hospital.
Yeah, he probably tries to avoid his dad like the plague.
Was it me or does panel 5 indicate that Yuri isn’t particularly happy to have Blaine around either? The guy is an ass and I can’t see any woman being happy having him and his abusive ways around her.
I wish to retract my earlier statement about Yuri as a not-bad parent.
Yuri is not a not-bad parent.
(And I’m not talking about her opinions about Amber either. Playing Faz’s beloved half-sister against him like this is just shitty.)
Ah yes, it stopped raining and started again.
That’s been pretty much weather for the past week in DC, so I appreciate the translation via comic!
How to avoid talking about bad parents – just talk about the weather! I hope Blaine drowns, and also for a sunnier forecast!
Well damn, that is one awful court. Dumping tuition costs on a single mother who isn’t even related to Amber? Obviously blaming Amber isn’t the best reaction, but that is a lot of injustice to take without finding some sort of outlet.
They probably actually gave the costs to Blaine, who may be the sole or main provider of income – or it might just be a big financial strain.
Or Blaine may claim he has no independent income and keep the proceeds of his crimes for himself, forcing Yuri, the only contributor to their joint accounts to keep both herself, Faz and pay Amber’s maintenance award.
Well Blaine claimed to be the one paying for her schoolin’ so I get the impression that she means her family is not doing as well thanks to the combined payments of alimony, child support, and now college fees.
I find it more likely that she’s either exaggerating or deluded about the size of the expense. my own mother was perpetually worried about money (I started having recurring dreams about it when I was about 5), and it took me far too long to figure out that my dad (and a bunch of his family) was actually quite well-off and there was no goddamn need for me to feel horribly guilty about persuading him to buy me a $20 toy I didn’t need. 😛 (I still feel guilty about it sometimes anyways. stupid brain.)
…of course tuition costs can be quite high, but, well, that was another thing I worried about for no good reason. “high” is very much relative to income, and I assume blaine’s mob connections get him enough income that paying for college is more of an inconvenience than a strain.
Out of those two possibilities, I’d find it more likely that Blaine is either lying about how much money he has or how much her tuition cost is. She certainly seems to believe its not an insignificant amount of money.
Is Faz’s FazSmile wavering in that last panel? :0
Well, given how negative and bitter his mother is, can you blame him?
The lesson, Yuri? Don’t start a family with a deadbeat who is going to bring you nothing but debts.
Considering the deadbeat in question is Abusive Bastard Blaine O’Malley, it may be more complicated than that.
I was expecting this drop, and I feel for Faz, but I’m kinda creeped out at comments I see acting like the family situation is her fault for getting with Blaine when the implication of this storyline is that she was a literal god damn child when that happened and it feels creepy to blame a teenager groomed by an abuser for being a homewrecker/being with the guy who knocked her up?
Like if she’s shitty to her kid that’s on her but, her relationship with Blaine seems to be her being preyed on and on him?
Also is this one of those states where alimony ends when people get remarried? Because Ambers mom is currently in a happy monogamous relationship and Blaine may be free of the horror of having to support his own god damn kid.
Remarrying ends alimony. Being in a happy monogamous relationship does not.
I forgot to put the word soon at the end of that.
But is Richard capable of a monogamous relationship?
I kinda get the vibe that Blaine is not a very good father.
Really Blaine is the problem, and the solution would be for him to never get to have a family. He’s so incompetent at being a person he shouldn’t be inflicting himself on people unsupervised. But then, in that just world Amber wouldn’t have been born. I don’t think the game of could’ve-would’ve-should’ve has any perfect answers, but the best these people can do is deal with Blaine’s damage as best they can.
Maybe in the form of a support group. But I don’t know that we can ask a lot from the people currently manipulated by Blaine themselves.
Faz iz concernz
So, Faz’s a$$hol3 parents both hate his half-sister and try to turn him against her. Yet he still wants to bond with her. This _might_ be a good sign for his personal development?
Damn, four years since Blaine’s last physical appearance. Still too soon.
says the woman who had an affair with a married man…
Has that been confirmed? Amber’s mentioned the possibility, but right now all we know is that they’re together now.
Amber has said he cheated on her mom with no room for misunderstanding at least once, albeit it was when she was running away from him on family day.
So the question is how reliable a narrator you find her to be.
We know Blaine’s a cheater, but we don’t know if Yuri’s the mistress Amber was referring to at the time. There could be another woman involved, maybe even right now.
All we do know is that Blaine is scum.
Hasn’t been confirmed, but there have been strong hints. We know he cheated – or Amber claimed so. We know they must have married soon after Stacy and Blaine’s divorce – to allow time for contact with Amber before she didn’t see him for years. We’ve got the strong suspicions that Blaine actually is Faz’s father.
OTOH, that last, considering Yuri’s relatively young age, pushes it from “woman who had an affair with a married man” to “teenager groomed by an abuser”.
Iirc DW has specifically said that Blaine only has one biological child, Amber.
He said on patreon he changed his mind and forgot about that post when reintroducing Yuri.
INTRODUCING Yuri not reintroducing.
Ah! I’ve seen a couple of comments saying he’d forgotten that, thank you for clarifying where he said that!
Ah, it’s all good, he didn’t say until Amber said it on garbage roof and even then it was on patreon. So this is fairly recent.
“And ON that note, Yuri, it’s time for you to suck ME dry.”
(Seriously, how am I the first one to make this joke?)
(I mean, other than the fact that I’m a horrible person and everyone else is probably too decent to make it?)
I didn’t make a joke about it but it’s about where my mind first went – I tend to hear/think of “bleeding dry” when the context is Mikey . Although I didn’t realise it was Blaine at first and wasn’t sure if Yuri was pimping Faz or a “working woman” with a client of hers in the back
It’s possibly not a joke. Unless Blaine’s speech bubble continues in another direction tomorrow it could be the way he meant it. =/
DoA shows up at 7 in the morning here in Norway, so I always check it when I get out of bed. This certainly woke me up! Bad enough how Yuri’s talking, but then the tags shows just WHO is in the backseat … I’m worried. I’m very very worried.
Hej, glad sjuttonde maj i efterskott!
Takk 😀
Well she seemed nice. I have to wonder if Blaine is also the biological father of Rose and Zaph or if Willis chose to go a different route than Shortpacked.
Why does it seem that a parents and grandparents seem like crap in this universe?
Because the nice ones A) Are usually tertiary characters, because B) They don’t feed dramatic tension very often or generate dramatic stories.
Long story short, you can’t have drama and suffering with nice people.
Also let’s be honest one thing that you have to admit is realistic is that the world has its own Surplus of shity parents.
World is full of assholes and no one is without sin, yeah.
Mike’s parents are nice if memory serves. See the tags George and Harriet.
So are Dorothy’s! And Joyce’s dad is a good fella
Chekov’s parents. They only appear to move the narrative forward. And that is mainly by providing antagonists.
when i first saw this i thought the speech bubble was coming from yuri. of course he managed to squirm his way out of jail time.
Why would he go to jail, he got beat up, right? And I don’t think what happened before got ever reported.
i got all the shitty parents conflated in my head
Jeremy Clarkson is in the backseat?
POWWWAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!
Dumbing of Age Status: Complicated
Poor Faz
I’m getting the impression Yuri doesn’t actually work? Isn’t only Blaine who needs to pay? And I’m guessing Blaine is super rich which makes Faz disqualified for financial aid and scholarships?
Financial aid has been gutted to the point it puts you in debt for decades.
“Financial aid” is just marketing speak for “Loans”. They want you to think about grants and scholarships when you read the pamphlets and talk to the advisors, but the vast, vast majority of “financial aid” in the US consists of private and federal student loans.
Not that student loans are inherently bad, they do count toward building your credit score and they let you pay for school (plus interest) over a longer period. You just have to remember that every penny of “financial aid” you take, that isn’t a grant or scholarship, will be repaid (plus interest) in due time. (Student loans are not discharged in bankruptcy, either.)
Remember that when you shop around for schools, prospective college students reading these comments!
It’s gonna take light a long long time to reach that part of the world.
Okay, she’s definitely Plisetsky.
and one that note, something something sucking someone dry
Wouldn’t happen in Europe with free college!
On a more serious note though. She has no one to blame but herself. She knows that Blaine pays alimony to Amber and her mother. It wouldn’t take much effort to find out the divorce details and learn what a piece of shit Blaine is.
Abuse victim, quite possibly since she was a teen. She’s been primed with Blaine’s version of the story for years. The rest of it is just lies his ex made up to get his money. (Except for the cheating part – she knows that’s true.)
Do have some word of god on that? I saw some comments about how Willis claimed Amber and Faz were not related but then he changed his mind.
Oh humans why can’t you use your goddamn brains…
I’ve seen DW post about them not being related on Tumblr, but hadn’t heard about him changing his mind?
I just saw some comments talking about it in the recent strips.
even if she wasn’t an abuse victim since the conception and birth of Faz, it’s incredibly likely that she’s an abuse victim NOW because Blaine is just that shitty. I would not be surprised if all his partners have been mistreated by him
I assume he is referring to his Big Gulp needing a refill, since he is probably taking all his meals through a straw.
Yuri is a shitty parent, but should not be blamed for marrying the absuive, manipulative, probably predatory fucknuckle that we all hope makes some sort of fuck up with his mob connections that gets him killed.
Ooh, fucknuckle is a good one, I’ll have to remember it.
And yeah, Blaine should die. Give him the Zamasu treatment.
Zamasu wasn’t as bad as this ningen.
…yes, she should. Parents have responsibilities to their children, and when they choose to be with someone who abuses their children, unless they literally can’t conceive of escaping, they are letting their children down. Yuri shows no hint that she’s scared of Blaine.
We’ve seen her in two strips so far. This strip has caused many to reevaluate her already. It’s certainly possible there are more revelations in store.
We know Blaine is an abusive manipulator. That he hasn’t been abusing her is one of the least likely options.
That doesn’t necessarily excuse her, of course.
It’s been heavily implied that he likely groomed her and is in fact Faz’s father. Blaine has likely been a prominent influence on her entire adult life and he’s proven to be incredibly manipulative, so she probably can’t conceive of escaping.
It’s always nice to see Blaine is screwing people over even while he is not around… (sarcasm). Well lady, on a good note, by the time Faz is old enough to go to college, Amber should be out or at least 21.
Also as some people stated, she looks like she is either going to her “job” or possibly picking up Blaine from the hospital. I honestly don’t know which is worse…….
NO NO NO NO NO
Aaaand she turned out to be a hag.
Gross.
because of course she’s awful… *sigh* I’m not surprised
*squints* please tell me she’s not actually this nasty
i could, but
Well it might or might not be her having been brainwashed by Blaine with “his side of the story”
talk about giving new meaning to wicked step mother . bleeding this family dry oh well once maybe amber completes her education maybe she will decide to not bother the family any more .
Blaine probably isn’t in any shape to drive after the beat down. But I prefer him in the trunk. with tape over his mouth.
Of course someone this awful would be married to Blaine. Also, Amber isn’t sucking money. Blaine is her biological father, got divorced because he is an asshole that beat Amber’s mother, and by law he has to pay monthly. Superman: “Freedom, Justice and the American Way”. If Faz can’t go anywhere outside and have friends isn’t because of Amber benefiting from liberal policies, but because Blaine is a greedy bastard that doesn’t want to afford for his second kid, you angsty bongo.
Oh damn you, Willis!
… I really hate Blaine.
im glad i decided to not trust anyone who seems nice in this webcomic
Hmmmm. I can understand why she would feel resentment about how Amber is taking money from what could be used to support Yuri and her family, but based on how she seems to not focus on Faz’s disappearance, I’m wondering if she’s a mother who is either:
A) Doesn’t see how HER kid could ever do anything wrong.
or
B) Doesn’t care at all about her own kid and treats him as an extension of her.
Since Blaine is already B), I’m assuming that Yuri is A).
I say this because Yuri’s resentment over the money is based on how it affects her life. And figuring out WHY and WHO she’s concerned about can tell us more about her character.
All in All, she seems like a pleasant woman who probably married Blaine because he seemed wealthy.
You know it’s funny, I was writing a story and I created a character that was meant to be a massive jackass and I usually name characters based on posters hanging around my workstation, so I picked O’Malley as a last name cause of my Amazi-Girl Strikes poster and I sat and thought… “What’s a good first name for someone who’s this much of a dick?” My literal first thought was Blaine… and then I realized that it was already taken by a much bigger dick.
Damn, she’d beautiful, but evil!
Very rarely is that an oddity.
At least she doesn’t suffer of shkreli-face.
You KNOW when you’ve been Willis’ed!
Better than Hussied, and way better than Ishidazed.
I see that many commenters picked up on the possible sexual implication of Blaine’s remark. And that is totally valid, given what we know of him.
However, I prefer to believe that he means his bandages need changing.
I wonder if it’s off in an entirely different direction – “that note” being Amber managing to have fun and his next dastardly plan to stop that.
Possible. I was engaging in a little schadenfreud. I wouldn’t get that from increasing Amber’s misery.
Wait… I didn’t notice Blaine was in the back!
yeah I think shes resentful because he was nice successful looking and gave her a presentation of BS and if she was a really young teen probably thought of him as prince charming and didn’t realize it was BS until she got pregnant and it was too late
Also I bet he gives her nothing but how amber and her mom are the worst and the cause of everything bad in their lives while hes out spending cash on hookers and blow while shes trying to figure out how to pay the electric bill ……
you know I just realized willis did something clever …… In real life its the first wife and kid whos acting like faz’s mom is because dear old da’s blowing all the money on the second family while the first family is eating dirt
and its usually the half brother and sisters whos getting college and the cars ect while the first wife has 2 jobs and food stamps
But if theres any real type of mafia ties there involved in too because believe it or not even if your divorced there taking care of your family or making sure your helping so no ones getting snippy to the police fbi ect
Realife examples al capones family is still being taken care of and john gotti almost got taken out by the old guys because he blew so much money that his wife signed up for public assistance to pay the bills …..lets just say a chat was had …..
Oh hello there, my real life evil stephag, how’d you get in this comic?
Well shit, I feel for Faz now.
Don’t worry, you’ll get over it.
Just sit in the confusion for a sec and have it rectified as soon as he does literally ANYTHING
GROOOOSS.
How expensive is the university??