You know, the Marcie bit of your comment – that is exactly what I’m expecting to happen. Marcie followed her and sees her fighting with her “new friends”.
I happened to be listening to In The Woods Somewhere by Hozier while reading this and it shouldn’t fit but somehow it does, especially considering the previous comic.
That would be lucky, at this point. They’re going down stairs. Plot armor forbids that one of them actually breaks their neck, but it’s a terribly relevant risk.
There’s some superhero physics in this comic. But remember that Joyce (probably) broke a toe. And people can walk around with broken ribs. So I wouldn’t be surprised if Sal got a broken bone out of this.
Yeah, but Sal’s one of the main characters for when Willis needs to get a good action sequence in, and while you can walk on a broken rib a big blowout fight like this is definitely not feasible for weeks. (Which in our time would be years.) Might be interesting to forcibly remove Sal from the superheroics for years on end, but I don’t think he wants to close the door on her in action sequences like that.
Bold assumption! Joyce sprained her wrist and walked around in a cast for ages, and frequently stares at the scar on her palm. Willis has been building up to this confrontation for most of the comic, I’m honestly 50/50 on one of them getting seriously injured or worse. Remember Amber went psycho on Ryan, suggesting if she feels justified she’ll Go There. Frankly though I’m a bit disappointed it’s come to this, Amber seemed like she was mainly upset with herself about the gas station these days, and sal never seemed to bear any resentment to the girl who freaked out and stabbed her in the hand when she was holding up a convenience store and holding her friend hostage. At least it’s been made clear they’re both fixating on other issues and using each other as punching bags, effectively, it just seems kinda meh honestly. From a comic that so often tries to show its morality clearly, letting this traumatic event for both parties lead to a fistfight feels… kinda childish and just milking the scene to get some cool action/ drama going.
Okay, okay, so! Sal’s getting kicked down the stairs. Ethan might have bailed, or at the very least isn’t stopping them. And it looks like people inside the building might be watching. This is, uh, going well?
Oh, the sky’s gone full Red Panel now? Welp. This is terrible!
She got stabbed through the hand after she was already in police custody. (According to book pdfs, ALL THE WAY THROUGH.) It doesn’t work well anymore. She can’t play the bass, which she liked to do before. It almost certainly required surgery and physical therapy. It left a really nasty scar in a very noticeable place, and it apparently hasn’t healed to be less noticeable in five years.
Right, yeah, I was thinking of it as a single injury with a double-sided scar but yeah. The gloves 24/7 are literally the only way Sal can avoid it being constantly noticed and reacted to – and I can’t imagine she wants to tell that story nearly as often as she’d get asked about it.
Also, and this is the part that makes me flinch – the scar is drawn like a diagonal slash. That implies that the tip/blade didn’t just punch between the bones; it would have had to break several or even most of them.
(if you look at the anatomy of the hand, there’s a “natural” way for a knife to stab through, which IMO would result in a more or less “vertical” scar along the median. A wound that’s not aligned in that way suggests the stab had enough force behind it to basically shatter the hand, or there was a lot of twisting and damage to soft tissue after the initial blow, even if the actual through-and-through was relatively clean.)
Hand bones are terribly fragile, as far as bones go. I feel many people have been deluded into thinking otherwise by depictions of crucified Jesus with nails through the hands, instead of through the wrists or the forearm.
And while Sal was recovering from that traumatic injury, she had either already been sent away or was at home with a mother who thought she deserved it.
As awful as the stabbing itself was, the part that makes me feel most for Sal is imagining how alone she was as she went through physical therapy and came to terms with the fact that her hand would never fully recover.
Sal has a scar on her hand, which she on some level still probably considers to be a result of her own actions, but her family could afford the health care for her to regain at least some function despite the injury.
Marcie had an injury, which Sal definitely considers the result of her actions, but Marcie didn’t have access to the privileges that Sal did, and basically everybody who could have done anything was powerless to intervene as Marcie almost died and permanently lost her voice.
Not only can Sal easily feel responsible for both outcomes, but she doesn’t even end up suffering half as badly as her friend, who was wholly innocent. In her head, it’s all her fault and it’s brutally unfair.
Okay, looks like I was wrong. Willis really is giving us a fight! Amber actually performed a sweep which is a move that requires some training. Dave, if you’re listening, has Amber received any training, or did she just get lucky?
Also, she ran track and field in high school, while Sal has been riding her motorcycle and smoking cigarettes. The only advantage Sal has over Amber is a longer reach.
I think Sal likes to work out too – she wears a few shirts that say things that look like work out stuff to me and she may not like sports, but she might enjoy unstructured work outs.
Like at least 40% of the bad coping mechanisms that make up AG can be traced back to ‘therapy? All she needs to do is learn how to fight so she won’t freeze up like a *insert asshole Blaine shit here* next time.’ Probably also related Blaine abuse and Amber escaping to comic books were major contributors, but AG wouldn’t think violence is the only outlet for anger and stuff if she were legitimately taught some other outlets. (I’m pretty sure Blaine talked Stacy out of therapy at least in part to avoid said therapist testifying during the divorce proceedings, but I’m also completely certain Blaine has genuine Opinions about therapy being a waste because asshole garbage.)
Well, mind-set counts for a lot, but Tony Blauer once said that the will to win differs little from will to prepare. (At least I think it was Tony Blauer.)
I imagine Sal was already in a shitty mood, Malaya being Malaya, and Marcie being Marcie. I guess on the bright side, barring some hijinks, those two should be long gone by now, though it’s not like Marcie is in any real position to be any less of a friend than she already has been, short of leaving the state of Indiana.
I don’t think Sal has any real physical advantages over Amber, and Amber is probably a lot more willing to do actual damage as opposed to rough housing.
If we have to pretend this fight will have a winner, it’s Amber.
Sal is bigger and has a lot of experience getting into fights, so I wouldn’t assume Amber is gonna win just because her training has been more “formal”. Amber also doesn’t take hits often—she’s good enough to avoid it. Sal might very well be a lot more used to taking hits and staying up.
Also, Amber’s wearing glasses. Bad idea in a fistfight.
2 to 1 is fair, though as you said, there are no winners.
Getting stabbed in the hand, permanently disabled, and then stalked is a stupid thing to want to fight someone over?
ed anger.
Like, they’re both legitimately super traumatized here, but yeah if I were Sal I would totally want to deck Amber too. It’s a terrible idea that will end well for literally no one, but at the same time there is some really justifi
Maybe reread the last few strips. Sal didn’t know that Amber was the girl that stabbed her and also masqueraded as a superhero at night. She thought they were separate people. She has just realized that Amber is the same girl that stabbed her, stalked her, assaulted her on two separate occasions, manipulated her to fighting guys at night by giving out a false address, and start smacking on her brother, the whole time lying to her about their past and immediately getting defensive when called out on it.
You can’t move past something if you never addressed it in the first place.
Oh, how I wish I could enjoy this this fight as if it took place in a fantasy comic with superheroes and where characters can sex it up just for fun. The drama is so delicious but this fight will get both of them in more trouble with everyone and I’m so worried! And Sal doesn’t know she isn’t fighting her friend Amazi-Girl with the comfortingly strict moral code but the off-the-rails Amber instead.
It has to be a character whose death wouldn’t be mourned by our cast for so long the time skip would mean abandoning other plots. Also no one in the cast who isn’t expendable can get in serious trouble for the death (which I think may be the only reason Toedad and Gashface both survived their adventures.)
Same reason I’m fairly confident no one will ever burn down a dorm.
I hope we have a link to Willis’s word that nobody dies.
I’m also following Stand Still Stay Silent, where the comments section thought for the longest time that we had a similar promise that nobody would die. And look how that worked out.
The author there, IIRC, said that she “wouldn’t be killing off characters left and right” after the prologue; still technically correct by an Exact Words reading.
As much as Amber may think she’s a monster, she’s not a murderer. I’d still love for someone to intervene since this is self-destructive for them both, but neither of them is the sort of person to try to kill the other.
I would disagree that Amber wouldn’t try to kill Sal. She wouldn’t intentionally be going for it, no, but Amber has past precedents of losing control and needing to be stopped before killing someone. Blaine and Ryan were both left severely injured, and it’s not known exactly how bad Ryan is. Depending on how this fight plays out, this could be the third instance.
In both of those cases, someone she cared about was threatened. Sal isn’t about to start threatening Ethan.
She’s obviously lost control of her anger here, but it’s not the same as either of those situations. She’s not going to try to kill Sal any more than Sal will try to kill her. They’re each trying to punch the other into submission to prove a (really irrational, angry) point, and dead people can’t watch while you gloat.
Well, last comic I was hoping that Sal would lose obviously and it would give her a way out from the “such a badass rebel” reputation that gives her so much trouble. But now I see, since Sal landed the first punch, if the cops get called they’ve got an excuse to haul her off even if Amber is beating her senseless when they roll up.
Maybe her “such a badass rebel” rep will only be heightened, because now she’ll be in jail.
Although, hey – she knows Amazi-Girl’s identity. That might be a decent bargaining chip with the cops.
If it’s a fight, the police will haul them both in. If you say, “He hit me first,” the judge will say, “Was it a fight?” Yeah? You’re both guilty of fighting and disturbing the peace. Sentenced to time served (overnight in the tank). Unless someone is seriously injured.
Amber put two people in hospital (that we know of) and probably still is wanted for one of them.
This could end really bad, with both of them hospitalised. Sal is wearing a jacket that could be protective gear for her motorcycle and therefore might protect her from body hits. But both of them probably can easily hospitalise someone.
Three people, actually: Blaine, Toedad, Gashface. And while they dismissed Gashface as self-defense it’s gonna be a very different story if they find out she’s the masked vigilante (since it’s both a pattern of behavior then and a very easy case she could have removed the threat of Gashface with much less dangerous force. At the very least his parents will DEFINITELY win that civil suit then.)
Amazi-Girl did kick him, but I think that only knocked the gun out of his hands. Joyce punched him, but it was probably the crash that did the most damage. Arguably, Amazi-Girl caused the crash with the caltrops. (Also arguably, Ross letting go of the wheel to climb half out the window to shoot her caused the crash.)
Yeah I was primarily citing the car crash and AG played a huge role in that. (And causing the car chase that made a ton of really risky situations – it saved Becky, but I’m sure the police would have preferred a chase not involving caltrops on a busy highway.)
I’m under the impression Blane lied to the police. While I guess it could be the police not letting Amber know they are on to her, Blane has plenty of reason to lie. First of all he was only beat up because he was stalking Amber and kidnapped her boyfriend, secondly anything worth pursuing will get the police to pay attention to him, finally being beaten by his daughter would be an embarrassment. I mean Amber didn’t even have a knife.
This is amber we’re talking about. She put a grown man in the hospital and turned rapey mcstabstab into a bloody picaso with his own knife. Shes going to go in for the kill here
I mean, it really would not take very much at all for cops to show up on campus. People have called cops for less. All anyone has to do is say that Sal looks “shifty” and a police car would be sent down.
Hey come to think of it, shouldn’t there be campus police for this exact reason? I mean, I know my uni has campus police but maybe that’s not an American thing
WOw i didn’t expect the fight to be this intese But I suppose I should have. Amber and Sal are both prone to violence and can handle themselves in a fight. I can only hope that after the dust settles this gives them the catharsis they need.
Personally I’m Team Sal in this. She has her moments (like this one where she doesn’t just walk away) but at least she doesn’t annoy me on the same consistent and very frequent basis that Amber does.
As someone who somewhat identifies with Amber and at least kind of understand Sal, I’m on Team Nobody’s Actually Going To Win This In Any Real Sense Because It’s Just Two Sets Of Self-Destructive Impulses.
I’m on Team “Ethan is going to get hurt pretty bad, isn’t he?” Because…he’s probably going to try to break them up. And it’s the easiest way to traumatize Amber even more.
I can’t stand amber and even though I think sal is going to get beaten badly, and ambers totally going to try beat her into a pile of blood and bones,
FUCK HER UP SAL
Any time I am annoyed at their behavior, I remind myself that these are two kids whose families failed them. They needed emotional support, guidance, and a nurturing environment growing up. Instead, they got almost criminal-level of neglect and emotional abuse.
I hate to see them fight. They need help. They aren’t getting it and they don’t know how to ask for it.
Hey remember once I was actually want to see this fight a couple years back but after some time went by and the two of them seem to have gotten a bit closer to where they almost considered each other friends and it felt kind of good?
Now I bet it kind of feels like we’re thinking “Hold up stop we guys we can work this out we can find a common ground right now if you do just stop now please!” But in the grand scheme of things this was kind of inevitable and also necessary if we were going to move past this; right now they’re both fighting the Demons of the past who have tooken the form of each other.
All I got to say now is that David Willis really knows how to flip the expected outcome on it’s head. Way back when at the start of this conflict I was expecting these two to fight first then friendship would come along I didn’t think they would make nice get a bit close then they start fighting. I bet was it sitting up as that’s right now laughing maniacally saying “You guys still want this fight? You still want this fight!?” Guy really knows how to support expectation I’ll give him that.
The sad thing is no matter who “wins” just by fighting they’ve both already lost. I highly doubt either of them will get out of this scott free. Especially Sal since she was accused of starting that fight at Robin’s rally.
And Amber already stab someone for the second timer life, despite him having it coming she’s still getting heat about that… yeah this does not bode well if word about this gets out.
I’m part excited and part disappointed. Eh who knows, maybe some good old violence is what they need to get the anger out of their systems and they can talk it out later. It works out for shonen protagonists so why not for them…
Same… I’m disappointed in Sal for rising to Amber’s bait but even more upset at Amber for doing this anyway. What happened to those strips where she and Sal played PS3 (? or something, I’m not good with video games)
3DS – a PS3 is one of the large hooked-up-to-a-TV types. (Which come to think of it, the dorm might have options for in the common area, but Willis is very much a Nintendo dude.)
And Amber was shakily making tiny amounts of peace with Sal in a controlled environment where Sal didn’t know who she was to be angry about her. (Again, reasonable reaction to finding out the woman who seriously, permanently injured you has been STALKING AND ASSAULTING YOU for like a month for existing. Shit’s creepy.) All of this before the stabbing and ‘redemption is a myth’, too, which DEFINITELY set Amber way back.
That mindset is what really bothers me. It implies that she’s not sorry for what she did. She doesn’t seem remorseful at all and worse than that she’s given up on trying to improve. Instead embracing the bad person she thinks she is and thusly becoming it. What happens after this fight for Amber? I doubt beating Sal in a fist fight will be very satisfying. Here rage won’t disappear because she beat up that one girl who scared her when she was thirteen.
She needs to come to a revelation and try and seek help or else she’ll start to become a danger to others. Well more of a danger, there’s no pretense of justice in brawling with Sal here. If Amber does win this fight I hope it’s a trigger to her realizing she’s gone too far with this obsessive feud she’s created.
In honor of Stan Lee, a distraught onlooking Ethan nervously folds and refolds a Transformers figure into the shape of the Cosmic Cube, whereupon the combatants find themselves enveloped in a Corruscating Nimbus of Power
The truly brutal thing about this story development is that the outcome of this fight is damaging to both parties in the worst possible, most ironic ways.
Amber is about to be part of a court case where her primary defense against what constitutes a brutal mauling of a man of high social standing (which we, remember, have the unrealistic level of insight necessary to know how justified it was) is that it was purely in self-defense, because he was stalking a woman, while the opposing legal team’s best course is to try to establish a pattern of violence on her part to show that she is not an innocent person and is prone to brutality. Win or lose, getting into a bare-knuckle fist-fight with another person at roughly the same location, days later, is a gift to the opposition the likes of which she cannot afford. Further, consider that Blaine – who despises her and wants to wash his hands of his court-mandated responsibility to her – is the one stuck paying her legal bills, and just got credible evidence that ties her to being Amazi-Girl, a uniformly hyper-violent and petty vigilante who primarily operates in the same radius, and whose MO is to stalk targets for the purpose of assaulting them, which is exactly what Amber (truthfully and rightfully) paints what’s-his-ass of doing. Amber is literally destroying the legal defense that would protect her from ending up in prison, and protect her mothers’ financial future, punch-by-punch.
Sal, meanwhile, is desperately trying to regain the love and respect of probably the most important person to her in the entire world. But, despite the fact that she isn’t exactly looking for a way out of this fight, she’s not the one who started it…but, Marcie isn’t going to believe that. The narrative that Marcie will create in her mind of the events here is that Sal tried to get the proof she needed to back up the lie she told about meeting Ethan, provoked her traumatized victims as a result, and ended up in a fight. It’s actually the same thing that always happens to Sal when she ends up in trouble: Her suffering is usually not primarily due to her actual culpability in the trouble she finds herself in, but due to the narratives that authority figures and people she cares about in her life project onto her because of who they see her to be.
And, here’s the kicker where that pattern truly ties in: In her mother’s eyes, Sal the perpetual trouble-maker is off at school on her dime, getting into fights with a defenseless-seeming, mousey white girl who is also her favored son Walky’s new girlfriend. It doesn’t matter what actually happens, because it’s very easy to see the narrative that Mrs. Walkerton will construct around learning of the event second-hand. It’s not just possible, but likely, that Sal’s own family will immediately take Amber’s side and not Sal’s. Amber represents something that Mrs. Walkerton probably wants dearly for her prodigal son: a white – and thus, acceptable – romantic interest or spouse. Amber represents Walky going down the idealized road of “correct” behavior that Mrs. Walkerton associates with whiteness, which is why she sees her son coded as white and loves him. She doesn’t see this in Sal, which is thus a major component of her neglect, as she blames her daughter for looking and acting in a way that she codes as non-white, and thus wrong and indefensible from her disgustingly racist world-view.
Both characters lose out in the same ways they typically lose out: Amber’s traumatic past only seeks to drive her to self-destructive action that continually expands and emboldens looming threats that lie in her future; Sal gets blamed and punished beyond her actual guilt for a situation that is more complex than authorities and loved ones believe it to be, due to the way her own past actions, but also an uncontrollable part of her as a person, and this will result in the love and support of the people she needs those things most from being withdrawn from her. They’re actually wonderfully-crafted foils: Amber sees herself as inherently bad and undeserving of love, and yet can’t find a way to alienate the people who insist upon giving it to her; Sal sees herself as a flawed, but good, person, and yet no matter how hard she tries or what actions she takes, she can’t convince those who should be closest to her that she is deserving of love and support.
Except the most depressing thing is that in this exact situation, the outcomes I outlined are the most perfectly awful outcomes in terms of reinforcing those negative patterns and negative beliefs onto these characters who can’t escape their one-step-forward-two-steps-back paths to healing from their respective traumas. Outsiders in their circles will see Amber as the victim and Sal as the perpetrator, despite Amber feeling that she is a monster and Sal believing she’s the one in the right. Amber will likely get support she doesn’t want or feel she deserves, possibly including Sal’s own mother taking Amber’s side. Sal’s family will admonish her and Marcie, who she sees as the most important person left in her life, will probably finally abandon her.
But then, Amber being triggered by Sal’s presence also may be the thread that begins to unravel her whole defense against the unjust bureaucratic system that will turn on her to unfairly defend her attacker, using the incident with Sal to re-frame the situation as Amber being an unstable and violent aggressor. Or, an authority figure, getting an incorrect impression of an event and defending the actual aggressor, because of the optics of the situation which never would have happened if Sal had been more willing to walk away from a fight.
It’s the same thing that happened with Sal and Marcie’s bully. It’s the same situation where someone else suffered gravely for Sal’s mistakes. It’s the situation that caused Sal’s entire complex, and the whole reason she has problems with authority in the first place, and no matter what she does, it just keeps happening.
Tl;dr David Willis is actually a spectacular architect for stories and characters but he’s also an evil sadist.
Spot on. Only quibbles are that what Amber’s currently facing is a civil case by the parents: no charges were filed because there was video footage of Ryan pulling the knife. But that’s still dependent on the police NOT knowing she’s trained in unarmed martial arts and also a vigilante – they would likely charge her if they knew that for several major assault-and-batteries and a dangerous car chase. (Also, Stacy’s indication that one of the reasons she’s sticking with Richard is that he’s a doctor and SHE’S the one responsible for the legal fees a while back. Blaine will still want out but he’s not currently paying for the civil suit and may not know.)
I’m also not entirely certain how Linda will react to Amber – she’s white, yes, but also Not Dorothy and I think that will color Linda’s reaction since Dorothy’s ambition matched nicely with Linda’s ambitions for Walky. (Amber’s also not as well-off financially as the Walkertons and her parents are divorced, which may also be a factor here given Linda’s focus on appearance, and god forbid they find out about her serious, ‘scary’ mental illnesses.) Still, Linda will like Amber way more than anyone Sal will ever bring home, because Walky, and any disapproval will be directed at her because Walky’s ‘too good for her’ or some shit rather than on Walky.
The vigilantism is itself a problem. I’m not sure why that would change anything as far as “trained in unarmed martial arts”. Amber’s the one with the record of training.
If you are sufficiently trained in martial arts you are expected to use your skills effectively. That means you know when to stop attacking an opponent. Amber railed on Ryan way past that point. Don’t know how it would affect the criminal case. The police would probably just ignore it and keep it as self-defense. In a civil case it will weigh heavily against her.
Mm, maybe. Training to fight isn’t the same as being trained to handle being in life threatening situations well. One of my favourite martial arts moves is, essentially, shove your fingers in the other person’s eyes and scratch down as hard as you can. Would certainly stop an attacker, but in most cases would also absolutely be overkill. Granted, I live in a place where you can only use lethal force if you are being met with lethal force or if you’re defending a third party from lethal force. None of this castle doctrine ‘if you’re in fear of your safety you can use force or you can use force to defend your property’ stuff. Any force you use in self defence has to be proportionate here.
Amber, on the other hand, lives in a ‘stand your ground’ state.
But that’s got little to nothing to do with her being Amazi-Girl: Amber was the one in the martial arts classes. That could get brought out regardless of learning about AG.
It’s also unclear exactly what happened in that encounter after it faded to red, so it’s very hard to say “Amber railed on Ryan way past that point.”
We don’t know how long she took them, so potentially the ‘still in good practice’ could be news. (As would how good she is at it, we have no idea if she was in a discipline that had standardized skill levels.) And honestly we have no idea how deeply the police investigated her past.
And I believe the expectation with self-defense is ‘do what you need to to stop the threat and then get the fuck away from it.’ Amber being AG means she knows how to handle herself under serious, potentially lethal pressure – they have a bunch of witnesses to that from the car chase – and that, at the very least, she probably didn’t need to stab him more than once to neutrLize the threat. (Which is about the only thing we can conclude she did for sure from that strip.)
I don’t think that Marcy will be leaving Sal based on a misconception. I don’t think Marcy would have stayed friends with Sal for as long as she did if she thought Sal had a pattern of starting shit with innocent people for no reason. But Marcy has decided that she can’t afford a to have friend who escalates shit other people start. And considering that Amber was most likely done picking on Sal and Sal just had to air her dirty laundry aggressively, and lets face it when Amber dared to air her dirty laundry in turn challenged her to a fight.
I have a question: when exactly did we see Sal being prone to violence? There was, of course, the holdup incident from years ago – but did we see her get into a fight in some more recent time? I’m asking, as I see the mention of Sal being violent here in the comments, but I can’t remember any actual instance.
Also, could you guys remind me when exactly Sal became AG’s crime-fighting partner? Not sure how that came to be…
Finally, if Sal and Amber are both violent people, then does it mean they are *bad* people? I tend to think so of violent people in real life…
She got in a fight with Malaya. She talked about wanting to fight when she was drunk with Jason. There was the whole rally sequence with Amazi-Girl, Ryan and the bros.
More generally, she talks a lot about fighting, about how she’s never lost and how Marcie helps keep her in check.
Thanks! I re-read these sequences… Yeah, Sal definitely has a problem. Now I’m a bit puzzled re: my perception of this character. I used to think of her at his loveable misunderstood girl, but now I see that she does have a nasty streak…
Most people are a bit good and a bit bad. This includes this comic and it surely includes sal. She’s severely broken and she always was prone to violence, without really knowing how to control her temper. She also is misunderstood. It’s possible to be both.
But, could you guys enlighten me: why do people have trouble with controlling their anger? And how does it actually work, to have a temper like that? In my whole life, I have physically lashed out against someone only twice – I do have a temper, but I have also really strong self-control. So, I really have trouble understanding someone who’s into physical fights, like Sal is. My intuition is that there’s something really wrong with your empathy, if you are okay with hitting someone…
I mean in my experience it just overwhelms you. I like to think I’m good with self control as well but it gets to a point where its just this burning rage expanding in your chest and you just have to scream or hit something to cool it down a bit. I don’t speak for everyone though
Some of it is really high empathy for other people and a strong sense of justice – one of the fights we saw Sal start was Leland after he bullied Marcie and went unpunished. (Similarly, the fight with Ryan and the rally bros was because she knew Ryan drugged Joyce, AG told her Joyce was still traumatized and felt unsafe on her own now – which Sal felt guilty about because she was the one who told Joyce not to report it. And she continues to fight the bros because she thinks Ryan’s victims are in danger, as would AG if she went alone. Defense of others when you know they’re in serious danger – also a reason!) I dislike violence generally but I’d still punch Andrew Wakefield in the face if I got the chance for starting the antivax movement out of greed and continuing to play the victim when we know he was full of shit.
Can’t speak to other reasons, but we can tell it’s one of Sal’s big ones.
Also, once you find a coping mechanism, it can be hard to shake it, even if it’s not a great one. Sal found a way to deal with her anger, and now she needs to unlearn it and learn a healthier one. She seems to be– or have been– working on it, but her time with AG doesn’t seem to help in that regard.
Also, for the record, I don’t think there has to be anything wrong with someone’s empathy for this.
I’m sorry but amber hasn’t really come far at all. If anything, she’s repressing. Her mental state is getting progressively worse,the only thing that’s improved is the fact that she’s no longer a deer in headlights around sal. Now she’s…this. This is not better at all
Prediction: Ethan tries to break up the fight and gets laid-out by Amber, who then has (another) mental health crisis. School calls the parents. Linda tries to blame Sal, but Walky steps up to defend her and calls her a racist in front of a bunch of people. Amber feels betrayed, but Walky shuts her down hard and explains why Sal committed the robbery. Amber finally sees the light and goes to fucking therapy.
Personally, I’ve always had a bad impression of amber, but i bever really actively rooted against her. Fighting sal and thinking she’s justified in doing so- and undermining ethan’s truama in the process- is kind of her moral event horizon for me.
I actively now hope walky sees how nutty amber is and dumps her, ethan dumping her as a friend, and otherwise left alone to experience real consequences for her actions. I was never really into the whole DID/Amazigirl thing, either. She stopped being sympathetic a long time ago.
Yeah, I mean, really important point here: Amber doesn’t stalk Sal because of mental illness. Even if mental illness was an excuse for abuse*, her DID wasn’t involved in her obsession with Sal. Amber is just sort of up her own ass, and people need to recognize her DID so they can then recognize what has NOTHING to do with her DID and everything to do with her having toxic coping mechanisms.
I know people who cope with their emotional problems by fitting themselves into dramatic narratives. It kinda sucks as a response.
Exactly. It sucks her dad is awful, but trying to punish a girl who, objectively, has been punished enough under the guise of, “she’s dangerous “ is really fucked. Sal has been trying to move on. Amber is just wallowing it. I’m gonna be super mad if Amber “wins” in this situation.
Just a kinda casual reminder on perspectives here:
Sal knows Amber as the white girl who stabbed her through her hand after she was being taken in by the police. For her, that was purely an act of mean spite. Amber has since resurfaced and stalked and attacked Sal on multiple occasions.
Amber… knows Sal as an almost completely decent person who did something bad nearly a decade ago. And she has formed a narrative—because Amber always, always has a narrative—that Sal is some sort of evil nemesis.
Amber is lazy. Amber is refusing to challenge her own narratives because it’s difficult. That is understandable, but it is not an excuse for what she’s doing now.
Sal is escalating, but her reasons are sympathetic. Amber’s reasons are pitiable, but do not even come close to an excuse for her actions.
Basically, all of Amber’s emotional baggage stops being sympathetic right at the point it starts leading her to attack completely innocent people. She knows Sal isn’t some dangerous murderer. Sal is almost a friend. Amber is really grossing me out right now, and she needs to get called out way more than Sal does. I hope the fallout reflects that, and doesn’t try to force a “both sides are bad” narrative.
You don’t stalk an innocent woman for weeks, harass her, literally gloat about her criminal record, and, oh, yeah, STAB HER, and then get to claim you’re just as much a victim.
Both of them have COMPLETELY valid reasons to be pissed, and to hate the other. Not all of those reasons are entirely rational, but ANGER ISN’T RATIONAL.
NEITHER has any excuse for violence. They’re making this incredibly bad decision TOGETHER. They are equally in the wrong here.
Well that went south pretty quick.
Thing is, this might be very cathartic for both of them, IF they can keep it reined in enough that no one really gets hurt.
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they’re just, uh, BREAKdancing, yeah!
…
Marcie: *signs* this is the exact opposite of the proof I asked for, ya know
breakBONES dancing
(I hope not)
Only close friends try to beat the tar out of each other!
Sal’s a smoker. She probably has a lot of tar in her to get beaten out.
You know, the Marcie bit of your comment – that is exactly what I’m expecting to happen. Marcie followed her and sees her fighting with her “new friends”.
It is good and proper to listen to this while reading this strip.
I didn’t expect you to be right, what with the fight being tragic, but the song really is *that good*
I was hoping it would be that song.
I know what he’s actually saying, but to me it sounds like “Test: You’re white.”
And that’s not better how? It’s pretty on the nose, but race wars would be much more intertwining if they were settled that way.
I prefer this for intense close-quarters combat.
I see NiN and rebut with the Offspring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VALgi8lwZHQ
Good call.
I happened to be listening to In The Woods Somewhere by Hozier while reading this and it shouldn’t fit but somehow it does, especially considering the previous comic.
Remove. Your. Glasses.
But then everyone will know she’s Superman!
Put. On. The. Glasses.
Oh damn. This fight is already way more dynamic than I was expecting, cool that they’re already using the environment
Cool and BAD.
Seriously, this is gonna put someone in a cast.
That would be lucky, at this point. They’re going down stairs. Plot armor forbids that one of them actually breaks their neck, but it’s a terribly relevant risk.
And Sal’s hitting the metal railing while getting kicked on the other side. That’s how you crack a rib.
Which is, again, too significant an injury for Willis to pull, but seriously they’re wakking up tomorrow and taking a LOT of Aleve.
There’s some superhero physics in this comic. But remember that Joyce (probably) broke a toe. And people can walk around with broken ribs. So I wouldn’t be surprised if Sal got a broken bone out of this.
Yeah, but Sal’s one of the main characters for when Willis needs to get a good action sequence in, and while you can walk on a broken rib a big blowout fight like this is definitely not feasible for weeks. (Which in our time would be years.) Might be interesting to forcibly remove Sal from the superheroics for years on end, but I don’t think he wants to close the door on her in action sequences like that.
Bold assumption! Joyce sprained her wrist and walked around in a cast for ages, and frequently stares at the scar on her palm. Willis has been building up to this confrontation for most of the comic, I’m honestly 50/50 on one of them getting seriously injured or worse. Remember Amber went psycho on Ryan, suggesting if she feels justified she’ll Go There. Frankly though I’m a bit disappointed it’s come to this, Amber seemed like she was mainly upset with herself about the gas station these days, and sal never seemed to bear any resentment to the girl who freaked out and stabbed her in the hand when she was holding up a convenience store and holding her friend hostage. At least it’s been made clear they’re both fixating on other issues and using each other as punching bags, effectively, it just seems kinda meh honestly. From a comic that so often tries to show its morality clearly, letting this traumatic event for both parties lead to a fistfight feels… kinda childish and just milking the scene to get some cool action/ drama going.
Joyce’s wrist was sprained for about a week and a half. That’s not super long. Anything longer than a couple weeks, I’d count out.
New character! Yeeeeeeeees!
….. oh, wait, plaster cast. NM.
The fight I didn’t know I didn’t want
nooooooooooooooo
But it’s the fight we deserved … or something like that.
Maybe ‘the fight we wish we didn’t deserve’?
Wait, then what did we do to deserve this!?
I don’t know, man; I, personally, have done a lot of things.
We’re the kind of people who enjoy watching the kind of things Willis does to his characters.
The great unsung achievement of The Dark Knight is that we finally stopped getting parodies of Phantom Menace’s Fear-Anger-Hatred-Suffering sequence.
…..
…. SHUT UP IT’S MY DREAM WORLD AND I’LL LIVE IN IT IF I WANT TO!
The one thing we all have in common here?
We all read Willis’ comics. Therefore, we clearly deserve the worst.
NooOOoooooOOooo
🙁
Teah and they’re actually fighting now…….SPLASHBACK!!
Remember when Sal was learning to de-escalate? I have this foreboding feeling this won’t end well, can’t imagine why.
Her ass is being kicked down the stairs. That counts as de-escalation.
Ok now that is a step too far
She couldn’t decide between fight and flight.
It’s going to be a rough landing.
It’s not nice to stair at people.
go home
Willis is here. Tread lightly if you don’t want him railing at you.
Willis has officially warned you about the stairs.
It only counts as de-escalation if you define it in a moving reference frame where the frame is also moving down the stairs.
X
De-asscalation?
I don’t think I can bear 5 strips of 3-4 action panels each. Ethan, do something.
Honestly if I were Ethan I’d be hitting up Thad to see if I can get some action because this is so not worth his time anymore.
Ladies, that’s not how you krump. (… In fact, it is literally the opposite of krumping.)
Sal, you can’t talk and fight at the same time. Talking takes up way more brain bandwidth than you realize.
But it’s a free action.
Two overarching rules of fighting: don’t talk, and keep your head up.
She was so focused on RP that she forgot to take her bonus action to dodge.
…. wait, Sal’s using her brain for something here?
You’re all missing the point.
Amber caught Sal MONOLOGUING.
It’s proof she’s the villain in this scene.
Okay, okay, so! Sal’s getting kicked down the stairs. Ethan might have bailed, or at the very least isn’t stopping them. And it looks like people inside the building might be watching. This is, uh, going well?
Oh, the sky’s gone full Red Panel now? Welp. This is terrible!
It’s a red skies crossover! Expect the Original Walkyverse characters to wander through on their way to a different story any minute!
Sal, don’t start to monologue your chickens before they hatch.
They can’t hear you.
I… underestimated how much anger Sal was carrying from the whole “getting stabbed in the hand” incident.
She got stabbed through the hand after she was already in police custody. (According to book pdfs, ALL THE WAY THROUGH.) It doesn’t work well anymore. She can’t play the bass, which she liked to do before. It almost certainly required surgery and physical therapy. It left a really nasty scar in a very noticeable place, and it apparently hasn’t healed to be less noticeable in five years.
Anger at that is pretty natural.
If the knife went all the way through, make that two scars – there’d in all likelihood be a “matching” one on the other side, across her palm.
Right, yeah, I was thinking of it as a single injury with a double-sided scar but yeah. The gloves 24/7 are literally the only way Sal can avoid it being constantly noticed and reacted to – and I can’t imagine she wants to tell that story nearly as often as she’d get asked about it.
Also, and this is the part that makes me flinch – the scar is drawn like a diagonal slash. That implies that the tip/blade didn’t just punch between the bones; it would have had to break several or even most of them.
(if you look at the anatomy of the hand, there’s a “natural” way for a knife to stab through, which IMO would result in a more or less “vertical” scar along the median. A wound that’s not aligned in that way suggests the stab had enough force behind it to basically shatter the hand, or there was a lot of twisting and damage to soft tissue after the initial blow, even if the actual through-and-through was relatively clean.)
It’s a big ass knife. Definitely would’ve been capable of breaking the tiny bones in the hand.
Hand bones are terribly fragile, as far as bones go. I feel many people have been deluded into thinking otherwise by depictions of crucified Jesus with nails through the hands, instead of through the wrists or the forearm.
And while Sal was recovering from that traumatic injury, she had either already been sent away or was at home with a mother who thought she deserved it.
As awful as the stabbing itself was, the part that makes me feel most for Sal is imagining how alone she was as she went through physical therapy and came to terms with the fact that her hand would never fully recover.
I really, really hope we don’t flashback to that because it’ll just hurt so damn much.
Also, consider the psychological toll:
Sal has a scar on her hand, which she on some level still probably considers to be a result of her own actions, but her family could afford the health care for her to regain at least some function despite the injury.
Marcie had an injury, which Sal definitely considers the result of her actions, but Marcie didn’t have access to the privileges that Sal did, and basically everybody who could have done anything was powerless to intervene as Marcie almost died and permanently lost her voice.
Not only can Sal easily feel responsible for both outcomes, but she doesn’t even end up suffering half as badly as her friend, who was wholly innocent. In her head, it’s all her fault and it’s brutally unfair.
And more importantly, the friend she has now lost due to her interactions with Amber/Amazigirl.
And here we go, hey best case scenario they hug it out after all of this….hopefully?
God this sucks a whole lot of eggs.
You only say that because you don’t like broken eggs.
I can only think of 20 ways this could end badly.
Seriously?
Okay, looks like I was wrong. Willis really is giving us a fight! Amber actually performed a sweep which is a move that requires some training. Dave, if you’re listening, has Amber received any training, or did she just get lucky?
Blaine sent her to martial arts training instead of therapy.
She got self-defense classes instead of therapy after the holdup/hostage/stabbing incident, because Blaine.
Also, she ran track and field in high school, while Sal has been riding her motorcycle and smoking cigarettes. The only advantage Sal has over Amber is a longer reach.
Also, Amber is crazy as a bedbug. She won’t stop until one of them is not moving.
I think Sal likes to work out too – she wears a few shirts that say things that look like work out stuff to me and she may not like sports, but she might enjoy unstructured work outs.
Well, Sal has said she’s never lost a fight so a lot of natural talent? Mixed with a lot of anger I feel.
That too.
And practice, I imagine. See “needs to learn to de-escalate”.
Heh. Well, it looks like Amber has kept up with her training!
I mean
AG antics
So, yeah.
Like at least 40% of the bad coping mechanisms that make up AG can be traced back to ‘therapy? All she needs to do is learn how to fight so she won’t freeze up like a *insert asshole Blaine shit here* next time.’ Probably also related Blaine abuse and Amber escaping to comic books were major contributors, but AG wouldn’t think violence is the only outlet for anger and stuff if she were legitimately taught some other outlets. (I’m pretty sure Blaine talked Stacy out of therapy at least in part to avoid said therapist testifying during the divorce proceedings, but I’m also completely certain Blaine has genuine Opinions about therapy being a waste because asshole garbage.)
Also, despite conveniently matching his worldview anyway, self-defense classes are a lot cheaper than therapy.
Well, mind-set counts for a lot, but Tony Blauer once said that the will to win differs little from will to prepare. (At least I think it was Tony Blauer.)
TOP
TEN
ANIME
FIGHTS
Well, shit.
I imagine Sal was already in a shitty mood, Malaya being Malaya, and Marcie being Marcie. I guess on the bright side, barring some hijinks, those two should be long gone by now, though it’s not like Marcie is in any real position to be any less of a friend than she already has been, short of leaving the state of Indiana.
I’m giving 2-1 odds on Amber. Sure, Sal’s a bad-ass, but Amber’s trained to do this sort of stuff.
that and if Sal decides she wants to shit talk her way through this, odds are she won’t last too long
2-1? A little generous to Sal don’t you think.
I don’t think Sal has any real physical advantages over Amber, and Amber is probably a lot more willing to do actual damage as opposed to rough housing.
If we have to pretend this fight will have a winner, it’s Amber.
Sal is bigger and has a lot of experience getting into fights, so I wouldn’t assume Amber is gonna win just because her training has been more “formal”. Amber also doesn’t take hits often—she’s good enough to avoid it. Sal might very well be a lot more used to taking hits and staying up.
Also, Amber’s wearing glasses. Bad idea in a fistfight.
2 to 1 is fair, though as you said, there are no winners.
Guys, guys, come on. Stop. This is a stupid thing to fight over.
Getting stabbed in the hand, permanently disabled, and then stalked is a stupid thing to want to fight someone over?
ed anger.
Like, they’re both legitimately super traumatized here, but yeah if I were Sal I would totally want to deck Amber too. It’s a terrible idea that will end well for literally no one, but at the same time there is some really justifi
* Really justified anger, thank you phone.
But like, now? Didn’t they move past that and start working together? Now they wanna fight? Just seems stupid to me.
Sal didn’t know it was her then.
Other Amber and Amber aren’t talking to Amazi-Girl I bet partially because she’s been working with Sal.
Maybe reread the last few strips. Sal didn’t know that Amber was the girl that stabbed her and also masqueraded as a superhero at night. She thought they were separate people. She has just realized that Amber is the same girl that stabbed her, stalked her, assaulted her on two separate occasions, manipulated her to fighting guys at night by giving out a false address, and start smacking on her brother, the whole time lying to her about their past and immediately getting defensive when called out on it.
You can’t move past something if you never addressed it in the first place.
Well, so much for that.
These two give me a headache and yet I still want popcorn. 😛
Well as much as I complain about them fighting I do want to see it. And in RL I’m actually eating popcorn for unrelated reasons! 😀
I had potato chips! ‘Had’ being the key word.
I love these two dummies even when they give me a headache.
┻━┻ ︵ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ︵ ┻━┻
Stop fighting!
You just reinstated this avatar, right?
Great option for the circumstance!
Oh, how I wish I could enjoy this this fight as if it took place in a fantasy comic with superheroes and where characters can sex it up just for fun. The drama is so delicious but this fight will get both of them in more trouble with everyone and I’m so worried! And Sal doesn’t know she isn’t fighting her friend Amazi-Girl with the comfortingly strict moral code but the off-the-rails Amber instead.
Ethan needs to step in NOW. Pretty sure Amber will NOT hesitate to kill Sal if given the chance
I am comforted by Willis’ “no death” rule, and yet I live in fear of a day when he reveals he was lying the whole time.
It has to be a character whose death wouldn’t be mourned by our cast for so long the time skip would mean abandoning other plots. Also no one in the cast who isn’t expendable can get in serious trouble for the death (which I think may be the only reason Toedad and Gashface both survived their adventures.)
Same reason I’m fairly confident no one will ever burn down a dorm.
I hope we have a link to Willis’s word that nobody dies.
I’m also following Stand Still Stay Silent, where the comments section thought for the longest time that we had a similar promise that nobody would die. And look how that worked out.
The author there, IIRC, said that she “wouldn’t be killing off characters left and right” after the prologue; still technically correct by an Exact Words reading.
As much as Amber may think she’s a monster, she’s not a murderer. I’d still love for someone to intervene since this is self-destructive for them both, but neither of them is the sort of person to try to kill the other.
I would disagree that Amber wouldn’t try to kill Sal. She wouldn’t intentionally be going for it, no, but Amber has past precedents of losing control and needing to be stopped before killing someone. Blaine and Ryan were both left severely injured, and it’s not known exactly how bad Ryan is. Depending on how this fight plays out, this could be the third instance.
In both of those cases, someone she cared about was threatened. Sal isn’t about to start threatening Ethan.
She’s obviously lost control of her anger here, but it’s not the same as either of those situations. She’s not going to try to kill Sal any more than Sal will try to kill her. They’re each trying to punch the other into submission to prove a (really irrational, angry) point, and dead people can’t watch while you gloat.
challenge and fighting and fighting and challenge toniiiiiiight
Y’know what this could use? Some Symmetrical docking 😛
https://imgur.com/a/sEgdNdr
Oh thank God a bit of sexy levity to break the tension.
Thank you, Yotomoe. You knew what we all needed.
Unfortunately, there’s reason to believe that we don’t DESERVE it, but we needed it anyway, so thank you again.
Well, last comic I was hoping that Sal would lose obviously and it would give her a way out from the “such a badass rebel” reputation that gives her so much trouble. But now I see, since Sal landed the first punch, if the cops get called they’ve got an excuse to haul her off even if Amber is beating her senseless when they roll up.
Maybe her “such a badass rebel” rep will only be heightened, because now she’ll be in jail.
Although, hey – she knows Amazi-Girl’s identity. That might be a decent bargaining chip with the cops.
I can’t imagine Sal as the “trade information to the cops” type, honestly.
She has explicitly said she’s not a snitch.
(Can’t be bothered to search for the strip)
… yeah, you’re probably right. I guess I’m just scrabbling to find a way for Sal’s life to not spectacularly go to shit after this.
If it means getting her deranged stalker away from her brother she may be willing to compromise on that.
If it’s a fight, the police will haul them both in. If you say, “He hit me first,” the judge will say, “Was it a fight?” Yeah? You’re both guilty of fighting and disturbing the peace. Sentenced to time served (overnight in the tank). Unless someone is seriously injured.
Amber put two people in hospital (that we know of) and probably still is wanted for one of them.
This could end really bad, with both of them hospitalised. Sal is wearing a jacket that could be protective gear for her motorcycle and therefore might protect her from body hits. But both of them probably can easily hospitalise someone.
Three people, actually: Blaine, Toedad, Gashface. And while they dismissed Gashface as self-defense it’s gonna be a very different story if they find out she’s the masked vigilante (since it’s both a pattern of behavior then and a very easy case she could have removed the threat of Gashface with much less dangerous force. At the very least his parents will DEFINITELY win that civil suit then.)
Wasn’t Joyce responsible for beating up toedad? Amber and him did fight but as far as I remember, she didn’t hurt him that bad.
Amazi-Girl did kick him, but I think that only knocked the gun out of his hands. Joyce punched him, but it was probably the crash that did the most damage. Arguably, Amazi-Girl caused the crash with the caltrops. (Also arguably, Ross letting go of the wheel to climb half out the window to shoot her caused the crash.)
Yeah I was primarily citing the car crash and AG played a huge role in that. (And causing the car chase that made a ton of really risky situations – it saved Becky, but I’m sure the police would have preferred a chase not involving caltrops on a busy highway.)
I’m under the impression Blane lied to the police. While I guess it could be the police not letting Amber know they are on to her, Blane has plenty of reason to lie. First of all he was only beat up because he was stalking Amber and kidnapped her boyfriend, secondly anything worth pursuing will get the police to pay attention to him, finally being beaten by his daughter would be an embarrassment. I mean Amber didn’t even have a knife.
Do you really expect the cops to show up to two teenagers brawling on campus?
As long as none of them is seriously injured?
I’m worried they ARE going to be seriously injured. Amber’s already bleeding from her mouth.
It doesn’t take much to cause a split lip.
This is amber we’re talking about. She put a grown man in the hospital and turned rapey mcstabstab into a bloody picaso with his own knife. Shes going to go in for the kill here
I mean, it really would not take very much at all for cops to show up on campus. People have called cops for less. All anyone has to do is say that Sal looks “shifty” and a police car would be sent down.
Hey come to think of it, shouldn’t there be campus police for this exact reason? I mean, I know my uni has campus police but maybe that’s not an American thing
It is. At least for some colleges. Generally the larger ones have their own police department.
And yeah, if anyone calls it in, they’ll show up, though if things are over by then, there might not be much for them to do.
WOw i didn’t expect the fight to be this intese But I suppose I should have. Amber and Sal are both prone to violence and can handle themselves in a fight. I can only hope that after the dust settles this gives them the catharsis they need.
Ugh… 🙁 I’m kind of disgusted with both of them.
I must wonder if Ethan is such a Transformers nerd he has The Touch recorded on his phone to play during epic brawls like this.
In the last panel, is the sidekick getting a kick in the side?
How could you.
My two least favorites duking it out. I dunno who I want to lose.
…. Who am I kidding, kick her ass, Amber.
Why tho. I mean I don’t like either of them, but Amber bugs me WAY more.
I love Amber better. And not just because she’s cuter, although I do love the figure study of her in the last frame.
Personally I’m Team Sal in this. She has her moments (like this one where she doesn’t just walk away) but at least she doesn’t annoy me on the same consistent and very frequent basis that Amber does.
As someone who somewhat identifies with Amber and at least kind of understand Sal, I’m on Team Nobody’s Actually Going To Win This In Any Real Sense Because It’s Just Two Sets Of Self-Destructive Impulses.
Yeah. Team “Oh God no. Please stop.”
Team “Ethan, PLEASE break them up!” here.
I’m on Team “Ethan is going to get hurt pretty bad, isn’t he?” Because…he’s probably going to try to break them up. And it’s the easiest way to traumatize Amber even more.
Ethan is passive and will stand there and shrug. Danny is a good egg who will step in the middle and be slugged by both sides.
Yep. Team ‘This was a long time coming but it’s gonna make everything a thousand times worse for everyone.’
Someone please dunk some water on them and make it a draw.
I can’t stand amber and even though I think sal is going to get beaten badly, and ambers totally going to try beat her into a pile of blood and bones,
FUCK HER UP SAL
Any time I am annoyed at their behavior, I remind myself that these are two kids whose families failed them. They needed emotional support, guidance, and a nurturing environment growing up. Instead, they got almost criminal-level of neglect and emotional abuse.
I hate to see them fight. They need help. They aren’t getting it and they don’t know how to ask for it.
this is terrible on all accounts but mostly in regards to Amber here. I no longer root for her
I don’t know how it’ll turn out, but I hope it involves Amber connecting some dots for once.
Damn it Sal, this is why you don’t start talking in the middle of a fight.
Man, Walky’s going to be devastated in the aftermath of all of this. Dude’s already feel like crap. Now . . . this. Poor, crazy kid.
Oh shit! I was expecting someone to break up the fight today before they actually landed a punch. I’ve never been so guiltily happy to be wrong!
Amber you just got back to campus days ago after that last stairway incident. Sal, your mom is gonna have your head when she finds out about this.
But man those stairs have seen a lot.
This fight has Carla’s name written all over it.
Carla: You don’t have to fight over me, girls.
Sal and Amber: We aren’t fighting over you!
I want this to happen now.
Carla: Visual evidence indicates otherwise! GO TEAM ME!!”
At least one of them could be expelled for this
Plot armor, it would fuck up the story
Hey remember once I was actually want to see this fight a couple years back but after some time went by and the two of them seem to have gotten a bit closer to where they almost considered each other friends and it felt kind of good?
Now I bet it kind of feels like we’re thinking “Hold up stop we guys we can work this out we can find a common ground right now if you do just stop now please!” But in the grand scheme of things this was kind of inevitable and also necessary if we were going to move past this; right now they’re both fighting the Demons of the past who have tooken the form of each other.
All I got to say now is that David Willis really knows how to flip the expected outcome on it’s head. Way back when at the start of this conflict I was expecting these two to fight first then friendship would come along I didn’t think they would make nice get a bit close then they start fighting. I bet was it sitting up as that’s right now laughing maniacally saying “You guys still want this fight? You still want this fight!?” Guy really knows how to support expectation I’ll give him that.
The sad thing is no matter who “wins” just by fighting they’ve both already lost. I highly doubt either of them will get out of this scott free. Especially Sal since she was accused of starting that fight at Robin’s rally.
And Amber already stab someone for the second timer life, despite him having it coming she’s still getting heat about that… yeah this does not bode well if word about this gets out.
Nice sweep, Amber. Someone’s going to have a broken nose, I believe.
Possibly Amber after that first punch.
I’m part excited and part disappointed. Eh who knows, maybe some good old violence is what they need to get the anger out of their systems and they can talk it out later. It works out for shonen protagonists so why not for them…
Had to make me do this didn’t You?: https://m.imgur.com/FCVflqo
No! Please no! Anyone but those two!
I kind of want Sal to win, even though I know they both have already lost.
Same… I’m disappointed in Sal for rising to Amber’s bait but even more upset at Amber for doing this anyway. What happened to those strips where she and Sal played PS3 (? or something, I’m not good with video games)
3DS – a PS3 is one of the large hooked-up-to-a-TV types. (Which come to think of it, the dorm might have options for in the common area, but Willis is very much a Nintendo dude.)
And Amber was shakily making tiny amounts of peace with Sal in a controlled environment where Sal didn’t know who she was to be angry about her. (Again, reasonable reaction to finding out the woman who seriously, permanently injured you has been STALKING AND ASSAULTING YOU for like a month for existing. Shit’s creepy.) All of this before the stabbing and ‘redemption is a myth’, too, which DEFINITELY set Amber way back.
That mindset is what really bothers me. It implies that she’s not sorry for what she did. She doesn’t seem remorseful at all and worse than that she’s given up on trying to improve. Instead embracing the bad person she thinks she is and thusly becoming it. What happens after this fight for Amber? I doubt beating Sal in a fist fight will be very satisfying. Here rage won’t disappear because she beat up that one girl who scared her when she was thirteen.
She needs to come to a revelation and try and seek help or else she’ll start to become a danger to others. Well more of a danger, there’s no pretense of justice in brawling with Sal here. If Amber does win this fight I hope it’s a trigger to her realizing she’s gone too far with this obsessive feud she’s created.
Ethan is sure taking his time to try to stop them.
I’m putting my money on “the fights lasts exactly up until the moment Marcie shows up”
If she isn’t nearby watching and shaking her head sadly.
Wonder if Danny might come by, too
I’m still expecting Ethan to try to break it up and get hurt.
Yeah cause that’s what we need right now. More reason for Sal to be emotionally untable.
Getting into a fistfight on a flight of stairs seems like a really dumb idea. Even dumber than just getting into a fistfight already is
Uncle Stan: Fight! Fight! Fight!
ouchie
Always fun when there are red panels in the present day. o_O
And then they both get expelled which would be honestly entirely fair at this point.
What’re you, a cop?
Right. That is what he/she is.
You know there’s a perfectly good neutral pronoun in the form of “they”, right? And it reads much less clunky than he/she?
It’s not that I don’t understand the feeling that it would be catharsic to fight this out but I did hope both of you had a tad more self-preservation.
So help me out. It the “KRUMP” the sound of Amber kicking Sal, or is it the sound of Sal hitting the rail while Amber is still winding up to kick?
You have to admit it’s impressive that Amber got up off the floor, across the room, and right on top of Sal while Sal was still falling.
KRUMP! is a good one. We may yet learn what Willis uses for the sound of breaking bones.
I wonder if we’re gonna see Amber pull another Forward, Down, Down Forward + P in this fight…
The Management asks that all smack-talk please be held over until the end of the fight.
Thank you.
In honor of Stan Lee, a distraught onlooking Ethan nervously folds and refolds a Transformers figure into the shape of the Cosmic Cube, whereupon the combatants find themselves enveloped in a Corruscating Nimbus of Power
Dammit, Sal! The zero rule of Fight Club: Don’t stop to gloat until you’re SURE that your opponent is down and out. 😛
Team no-one. My only hope for this is that Ethan doesn’t get hit by a blow gone astray.
I’m scared that that’s how this is going to go. Ethan gets hit, possibly injured, both Amber and Sal blame each other, the fight escalates…
Or both of them break it off because he got hit.
Sigh. Considering that it’s Sal and Amber, how could I have deluded myself into thinking it would go any other way?
I was hoping it would actually be solved in a non-violent way.
The truly brutal thing about this story development is that the outcome of this fight is damaging to both parties in the worst possible, most ironic ways.
Amber is about to be part of a court case where her primary defense against what constitutes a brutal mauling of a man of high social standing (which we, remember, have the unrealistic level of insight necessary to know how justified it was) is that it was purely in self-defense, because he was stalking a woman, while the opposing legal team’s best course is to try to establish a pattern of violence on her part to show that she is not an innocent person and is prone to brutality. Win or lose, getting into a bare-knuckle fist-fight with another person at roughly the same location, days later, is a gift to the opposition the likes of which she cannot afford. Further, consider that Blaine – who despises her and wants to wash his hands of his court-mandated responsibility to her – is the one stuck paying her legal bills, and just got credible evidence that ties her to being Amazi-Girl, a uniformly hyper-violent and petty vigilante who primarily operates in the same radius, and whose MO is to stalk targets for the purpose of assaulting them, which is exactly what Amber (truthfully and rightfully) paints what’s-his-ass of doing. Amber is literally destroying the legal defense that would protect her from ending up in prison, and protect her mothers’ financial future, punch-by-punch.
Sal, meanwhile, is desperately trying to regain the love and respect of probably the most important person to her in the entire world. But, despite the fact that she isn’t exactly looking for a way out of this fight, she’s not the one who started it…but, Marcie isn’t going to believe that. The narrative that Marcie will create in her mind of the events here is that Sal tried to get the proof she needed to back up the lie she told about meeting Ethan, provoked her traumatized victims as a result, and ended up in a fight. It’s actually the same thing that always happens to Sal when she ends up in trouble: Her suffering is usually not primarily due to her actual culpability in the trouble she finds herself in, but due to the narratives that authority figures and people she cares about in her life project onto her because of who they see her to be.
And, here’s the kicker where that pattern truly ties in: In her mother’s eyes, Sal the perpetual trouble-maker is off at school on her dime, getting into fights with a defenseless-seeming, mousey white girl who is also her favored son Walky’s new girlfriend. It doesn’t matter what actually happens, because it’s very easy to see the narrative that Mrs. Walkerton will construct around learning of the event second-hand. It’s not just possible, but likely, that Sal’s own family will immediately take Amber’s side and not Sal’s. Amber represents something that Mrs. Walkerton probably wants dearly for her prodigal son: a white – and thus, acceptable – romantic interest or spouse. Amber represents Walky going down the idealized road of “correct” behavior that Mrs. Walkerton associates with whiteness, which is why she sees her son coded as white and loves him. She doesn’t see this in Sal, which is thus a major component of her neglect, as she blames her daughter for looking and acting in a way that she codes as non-white, and thus wrong and indefensible from her disgustingly racist world-view.
Both characters lose out in the same ways they typically lose out: Amber’s traumatic past only seeks to drive her to self-destructive action that continually expands and emboldens looming threats that lie in her future; Sal gets blamed and punished beyond her actual guilt for a situation that is more complex than authorities and loved ones believe it to be, due to the way her own past actions, but also an uncontrollable part of her as a person, and this will result in the love and support of the people she needs those things most from being withdrawn from her. They’re actually wonderfully-crafted foils: Amber sees herself as inherently bad and undeserving of love, and yet can’t find a way to alienate the people who insist upon giving it to her; Sal sees herself as a flawed, but good, person, and yet no matter how hard she tries or what actions she takes, she can’t convince those who should be closest to her that she is deserving of love and support.
Except the most depressing thing is that in this exact situation, the outcomes I outlined are the most perfectly awful outcomes in terms of reinforcing those negative patterns and negative beliefs onto these characters who can’t escape their one-step-forward-two-steps-back paths to healing from their respective traumas. Outsiders in their circles will see Amber as the victim and Sal as the perpetrator, despite Amber feeling that she is a monster and Sal believing she’s the one in the right. Amber will likely get support she doesn’t want or feel she deserves, possibly including Sal’s own mother taking Amber’s side. Sal’s family will admonish her and Marcie, who she sees as the most important person left in her life, will probably finally abandon her.
But then, Amber being triggered by Sal’s presence also may be the thread that begins to unravel her whole defense against the unjust bureaucratic system that will turn on her to unfairly defend her attacker, using the incident with Sal to re-frame the situation as Amber being an unstable and violent aggressor. Or, an authority figure, getting an incorrect impression of an event and defending the actual aggressor, because of the optics of the situation which never would have happened if Sal had been more willing to walk away from a fight.
It’s the same thing that happened with Sal and Marcie’s bully. It’s the same situation where someone else suffered gravely for Sal’s mistakes. It’s the situation that caused Sal’s entire complex, and the whole reason she has problems with authority in the first place, and no matter what she does, it just keeps happening.
Tl;dr David Willis is actually a spectacular architect for stories and characters but he’s also an evil sadist.
stl;dr (STILL too long; didn’t read): Damn you, Willis.
Spot on. Only quibbles are that what Amber’s currently facing is a civil case by the parents: no charges were filed because there was video footage of Ryan pulling the knife. But that’s still dependent on the police NOT knowing she’s trained in unarmed martial arts and also a vigilante – they would likely charge her if they knew that for several major assault-and-batteries and a dangerous car chase. (Also, Stacy’s indication that one of the reasons she’s sticking with Richard is that he’s a doctor and SHE’S the one responsible for the legal fees a while back. Blaine will still want out but he’s not currently paying for the civil suit and may not know.)
I’m also not entirely certain how Linda will react to Amber – she’s white, yes, but also Not Dorothy and I think that will color Linda’s reaction since Dorothy’s ambition matched nicely with Linda’s ambitions for Walky. (Amber’s also not as well-off financially as the Walkertons and her parents are divorced, which may also be a factor here given Linda’s focus on appearance, and god forbid they find out about her serious, ‘scary’ mental illnesses.) Still, Linda will like Amber way more than anyone Sal will ever bring home, because Walky, and any disapproval will be directed at her because Walky’s ‘too good for her’ or some shit rather than on Walky.
The vigilantism is itself a problem. I’m not sure why that would change anything as far as “trained in unarmed martial arts”. Amber’s the one with the record of training.
If you are sufficiently trained in martial arts you are expected to use your skills effectively. That means you know when to stop attacking an opponent. Amber railed on Ryan way past that point. Don’t know how it would affect the criminal case. The police would probably just ignore it and keep it as self-defense. In a civil case it will weigh heavily against her.
Mm, maybe. Training to fight isn’t the same as being trained to handle being in life threatening situations well. One of my favourite martial arts moves is, essentially, shove your fingers in the other person’s eyes and scratch down as hard as you can. Would certainly stop an attacker, but in most cases would also absolutely be overkill. Granted, I live in a place where you can only use lethal force if you are being met with lethal force or if you’re defending a third party from lethal force. None of this castle doctrine ‘if you’re in fear of your safety you can use force or you can use force to defend your property’ stuff. Any force you use in self defence has to be proportionate here.
Amber, on the other hand, lives in a ‘stand your ground’ state.
But that’s got little to nothing to do with her being Amazi-Girl: Amber was the one in the martial arts classes. That could get brought out regardless of learning about AG.
It’s also unclear exactly what happened in that encounter after it faded to red, so it’s very hard to say “Amber railed on Ryan way past that point.”
I misread part of thejeff’s original comment. You both are correct. Ignore my original response.
We don’t know how long she took them, so potentially the ‘still in good practice’ could be news. (As would how good she is at it, we have no idea if she was in a discipline that had standardized skill levels.) And honestly we have no idea how deeply the police investigated her past.
And I believe the expectation with self-defense is ‘do what you need to to stop the threat and then get the fuck away from it.’ Amber being AG means she knows how to handle herself under serious, potentially lethal pressure – they have a bunch of witnesses to that from the car chase – and that, at the very least, she probably didn’t need to stab him more than once to neutrLize the threat. (Which is about the only thing we can conclude she did for sure from that strip.)
I don’t think that Marcy will be leaving Sal based on a misconception. I don’t think Marcy would have stayed friends with Sal for as long as she did if she thought Sal had a pattern of starting shit with innocent people for no reason. But Marcy has decided that she can’t afford a to have friend who escalates shit other people start. And considering that Amber was most likely done picking on Sal and Sal just had to air her dirty laundry aggressively, and lets face it when Amber dared to air her dirty laundry in turn challenged her to a fight.
I have a question: when exactly did we see Sal being prone to violence? There was, of course, the holdup incident from years ago – but did we see her get into a fight in some more recent time? I’m asking, as I see the mention of Sal being violent here in the comments, but I can’t remember any actual instance.
Also, could you guys remind me when exactly Sal became AG’s crime-fighting partner? Not sure how that came to be…
Finally, if Sal and Amber are both violent people, then does it mean they are *bad* people? I tend to think so of violent people in real life…
http://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/sal/
Here.
She got in a fight with Malaya. She talked about wanting to fight when she was drunk with Jason. There was the whole rally sequence with Amazi-Girl, Ryan and the bros.
More generally, she talks a lot about fighting, about how she’s never lost and how Marcie helps keep her in check.
Thanks! I re-read these sequences… Yeah, Sal definitely has a problem. Now I’m a bit puzzled re: my perception of this character. I used to think of her at his loveable misunderstood girl, but now I see that she does have a nasty streak…
Most people are a bit good and a bit bad. This includes this comic and it surely includes sal. She’s severely broken and she always was prone to violence, without really knowing how to control her temper. She also is misunderstood. It’s possible to be both.
True that…
But, could you guys enlighten me: why do people have trouble with controlling their anger? And how does it actually work, to have a temper like that? In my whole life, I have physically lashed out against someone only twice – I do have a temper, but I have also really strong self-control. So, I really have trouble understanding someone who’s into physical fights, like Sal is. My intuition is that there’s something really wrong with your empathy, if you are okay with hitting someone…
I mean in my experience it just overwhelms you. I like to think I’m good with self control as well but it gets to a point where its just this burning rage expanding in your chest and you just have to scream or hit something to cool it down a bit. I don’t speak for everyone though
Some of it is really high empathy for other people and a strong sense of justice – one of the fights we saw Sal start was Leland after he bullied Marcie and went unpunished. (Similarly, the fight with Ryan and the rally bros was because she knew Ryan drugged Joyce, AG told her Joyce was still traumatized and felt unsafe on her own now – which Sal felt guilty about because she was the one who told Joyce not to report it. And she continues to fight the bros because she thinks Ryan’s victims are in danger, as would AG if she went alone. Defense of others when you know they’re in serious danger – also a reason!) I dislike violence generally but I’d still punch Andrew Wakefield in the face if I got the chance for starting the antivax movement out of greed and continuing to play the victim when we know he was full of shit.
Can’t speak to other reasons, but we can tell it’s one of Sal’s big ones.
Also, once you find a coping mechanism, it can be hard to shake it, even if it’s not a great one. Sal found a way to deal with her anger, and now she needs to unlearn it and learn a healthier one. She seems to be– or have been– working on it, but her time with AG doesn’t seem to help in that regard.
Also, for the record, I don’t think there has to be anything wrong with someone’s empathy for this.
FER FAWKS SAKE LADIES!
This storyline makes me very sad. 🙁
I feel like Amber and Sal have both come so far, I hate to see them fighting each other.
I’m sorry but amber hasn’t really come far at all. If anything, she’s repressing. Her mental state is getting progressively worse,the only thing that’s improved is the fact that she’s no longer a deer in headlights around sal. Now she’s…this. This is not better at all
…communication is good?
They’re talking WITH THEIR FISTS
This is not ending like the slipshine I initially predicted when they started fighting crime together.
Well, never say never.
Prediction: Ethan tries to break up the fight and gets laid-out by Amber, who then has (another) mental health crisis. School calls the parents. Linda tries to blame Sal, but Walky steps up to defend her and calls her a racist in front of a bunch of people. Amber feels betrayed, but Walky shuts her down hard and explains why Sal committed the robbery. Amber finally sees the light and goes to fucking therapy.
Ethan grabs Amber from behind, hauls her away from the fight. Conversation ensues. And eventually, therapy.
Alternative: Ethan tries to do that and Amber reflexively strikes him and the background goes red as she realizes what she’s done.
Yeeeeah, that sounds awfully possible. Stuff like that is why some of my close friends know they shouldn’t mock-fight me.
Personally, I’ve always had a bad impression of amber, but i bever really actively rooted against her. Fighting sal and thinking she’s justified in doing so- and undermining ethan’s truama in the process- is kind of her moral event horizon for me.
I actively now hope walky sees how nutty amber is and dumps her, ethan dumping her as a friend, and otherwise left alone to experience real consequences for her actions. I was never really into the whole DID/Amazigirl thing, either. She stopped being sympathetic a long time ago.
Yeah, I mean, really important point here: Amber doesn’t stalk Sal because of mental illness. Even if mental illness was an excuse for abuse*, her DID wasn’t involved in her obsession with Sal. Amber is just sort of up her own ass, and people need to recognize her DID so they can then recognize what has NOTHING to do with her DID and everything to do with her having toxic coping mechanisms.
I know people who cope with their emotional problems by fitting themselves into dramatic narratives. It kinda sucks as a response.
*AND IT IS NOT.
Exactly. It sucks her dad is awful, but trying to punish a girl who, objectively, has been punished enough under the guise of, “she’s dangerous “ is really fucked. Sal has been trying to move on. Amber is just wallowing it. I’m gonna be super mad if Amber “wins” in this situation.
Agreed. Sal seems to be trying (not always successfully) to move on and grow as a person. I haven’t seen anything like that from Amber.
There is never a truck when you need one.
did ethan just run off. is he getting someone to break up this fight. please let that be what he’s doing. everyone loses here.
Why is this stupid nonsense even happening.
Just a kinda casual reminder on perspectives here:
Sal knows Amber as the white girl who stabbed her through her hand after she was being taken in by the police. For her, that was purely an act of mean spite. Amber has since resurfaced and stalked and attacked Sal on multiple occasions.
Amber… knows Sal as an almost completely decent person who did something bad nearly a decade ago. And she has formed a narrative—because Amber always, always has a narrative—that Sal is some sort of evil nemesis.
Amber is lazy. Amber is refusing to challenge her own narratives because it’s difficult. That is understandable, but it is not an excuse for what she’s doing now.
Sal is escalating, but her reasons are sympathetic. Amber’s reasons are pitiable, but do not even come close to an excuse for her actions.
Basically, all of Amber’s emotional baggage stops being sympathetic right at the point it starts leading her to attack completely innocent people. She knows Sal isn’t some dangerous murderer. Sal is almost a friend. Amber is really grossing me out right now, and she needs to get called out way more than Sal does. I hope the fallout reflects that, and doesn’t try to force a “both sides are bad” narrative.
You don’t stalk an innocent woman for weeks, harass her, literally gloat about her criminal record, and, oh, yeah, STAB HER, and then get to claim you’re just as much a victim.
Yeah, I’m really uncomfortable with people blaming and hating Sal for this whole thing, for the exact reasons you described
Both of them have COMPLETELY valid reasons to be pissed, and to hate the other. Not all of those reasons are entirely rational, but ANGER ISN’T RATIONAL.
NEITHER has any excuse for violence. They’re making this incredibly bad decision TOGETHER. They are equally in the wrong here.
But it’s okay because they’re both garbage.
Well that went south pretty quick.
Thing is, this might be very cathartic for both of them, IF they can keep it reined in enough that no one really gets hurt.
Since when has Amber ever kept anything “reined in”?