If Joyce ever had to choose between Sal’s motorcycle and Malaya’s iguana, she’d probably renounce her religion right there, because what loving God could ever force such a sadistic choice on her?
“Father please don’t make me choose / Either way it’s more than I can bear to lose / Either way it’s ripping out my heart / This choice is tearing me apart!”
Malaya doesn’t look good, she just looks less dangerous. This is the friend who doesn’t care enough about your life to take an active part in it and risk screwing it up, times four because Sal’s need to confront people and “fix” things applies to bystanders as well.
I think the bigger problem is the not thinking through potential problems via splash back, but yeah. Although, that said, I have a VERY hard time being at all upset Sal joined in on giving Ryan and his bros a beat down or about her going to defend women who are speaking out about Ryan from his sickening supporters who want to do god knows what to them.
I think if those were the start of this getting Marcie involved, she’d mind it way less. (There’s no real indication she had trouble with Sal’s part in the Great Becky Rescue, after all.)
Frankly, considering that it looks like creepy home invader wannabes put hands on Sal first (ripping her jacket), if Marcie were the type of friend who expected Sal to let them put hands on her so as not to escalate, Sal’d be better off without Marcie. Thankfully, I’m 99.99% sure Marcie wouldn’t object to beating the living hell out of them in that scenario.
But this is post-voice losing and post-promise and Sal’s escalation had a role in Marcie losing her voice and also got Sal sent away from her for five years, so yeah, bad history.
Also I doubt the story mentioned that Creepy Home Invader laying a hand on her, since the source was likely him, and he likely put it out that she attacked him unprovoked.
Yeah, the story probably went either that way, or (if a more pro-AG publication) said AG and Sal beat up mysterious guys hanging around a house that was purported to have a woman speaking against Ryan in it. Either way, probably not much about them touching her first.
At least for the bro-attacking-other-victims-thing, the reasonable thing to do would have been to call the police. For several reasons. One of them being that this could have ended with her being beaten into the hospital or raped or worse. They wanted to attack someone. They could have been armed. Or one of them could have been a better fighter than her.
There wasn’t anyone in immediate danger there. There was time to try to resolve the situation differently.
And for the beating-up-Ryan-thing, why wasn’t security involved? They are more and they usually have means to communicate. And they usually cover all entrances. They might have stopped him from getting away in the first place, so Amber wouldn’t have had to cut him up, Dorothy would have been less terrified and Ryan would be in jail now, instead of being in the hospital.
In the first case – blame AG, mainly, who put the fake doxx address to an empty house rather than to a police or other public safety station. If Sal were inclined to call the police (and given she’s a black woman with a criminal record and bad experience with authorities, unlikely,) they might not even be able to do anything because there’s a LOT of loopholes in how Internet-based threats and the like are investigated that rarely end well for the victims. (Frankly AG and Sal are super lucky these douchebags went in person rather than trying to SWAT them. Which has a serious problem with prosecution because it isn’t a federal crime and the Internet means that a lot of them cross state lines!… *ragecombust*)
In the second case, Marcie actually called her supervisor in when it was just AG stalking. Said supervisor sided with AG over Sal, because shit fucking sucks. Then with Ryan AG didn’t explain much and as we saw with Robin and Frida in the aftermath, the organizers chose to back their intern with (implied) Important Parents over an anonymous report.
Anonymously call emergency and tell them you saw a bunch of people threatening someone while you were passing by. It’s not even untrue.
Sal literally was sent to the “security friend” by ag. She went to beat up some boys instead. And this incident alone (holding down and beating someone) would have been enough to at least get a hold of them. Everything else would have had more time to figure out. I mean, this was a fist fight in public. Getting into a fist fight usually is enough to at least make security stop you. And even if they were released afterwards, their names would have been known.
If the organisers chose to side with them, they knew them. Tracking them down would have been easy for the police. “I was roofied, I don’t know his name, but this guy knows his parents”. Still, easily solved by communicating.
Because you have really good chances of getting someone convicted of roofing?
There wasn’t any evidence (might have shown up in the blood if they went to a doctor directly after the incident, but without finding the stuff on him, his culpability couldn’t be proven). It’s not like we really know what other people saw besides AG and Sarah attacking that guy.
Asking the police to do something serious about that guy weeks later is hopeless as long as they are not actively searching for the guy because someone he roofied later went to have it prosecuted and was important enough to actually do something about it.
Then why bothering in the first place? If nothing will come out of it anyway?
Crimes like that are often reported weeks or even months later. Police knows that. It’s getting difficult to prove something, but that doesn’t mean it’s useless. Especially in this case, because the gash and the timing of this wound will give credibility to her story.
You imply the police is interested in catching young men of good family who are sexual predators. Past events prove that you have to be lucky to get officers who are interested in doing so.
We hashed a lot of that out in the threads at the time.
Watsonian answer: Amazi-girl wanted the photo and a name, basically so she could do what they did and spread word of him, since there wasn’t anything more practical she could do. Was also happy to have the excuse to beat him into the ground. Amazi-Girl wasn’t going to report to the cops – Joyce didn’t want to report, AG’s would be hearsay and AG would likely be arrested for her vigilante actions.
The security people were there and chose not to interfere in the superhero fight. Sal stayed out of it until AG was pinned and no one else was intervening. Her trying to talk security into doing something at that point would have been pointless.
Doylist answer: They’re super hero/action movie protagonists. The security guards are mooks. Of course this is what they do. How else do you get the cool action scenes.
Both Sal and Amazi-Girl are confident in their ability to handle themselves even against multiple opponents. And apparently justifiably so.
I understand that’s not realistic, but that’s how it is. How tough they are isn’t realistic.
The short version is as a queer Hispanic woman with questionable legal status, Marcie has a lot more to lose than Sal–who has already escaped prison time despite being a black woman.
Can I just say I love this strip Willis. Like the hovertext confirmed my suspicion that we’ve never had a “full sign language conversation” transcribed for us, and I really like it. Of course it wouldn’t translate 1:1 and that’s fine, it’s still super cool.
Okay… this seems like a bit more of a clue to Marcie’s accident. Sal must have been getting justice/payback on the bully that originally got anyway with it… and Marcie, the one she was avenging, got hurt and lost her loud talking voice. (As opposed to the non-loud one she’s using now)
Huh, well at least Marcie is self aware enough to realize Malaya also has a lack of integrity. Granted she is more willing to overlook that one, mostly since she is too busy staring at dat ass.
A big part of the suggestion here is also that Sal blamed herself for what happened to Marcie because Sal started a fight or something and Marcie got hurt, Sal promised no more fights in the aftermath (that part we’ve seen)… and then Sal proceeded to not honor that promise in several ways.
We know Sal feels tremendous guilt for whatever involvement she had in Marcie’s injury (more than a thirteen-year-old should have to shoulder,) but from Marcie’s perspective? I have to imagine the money that never arrived meant way less to her than Sal’s promise to stop engaging in super-dangerous behavior and then getting Marcie involved.
And it is SUPER-DANGEROUS behavior. Like, phenomenally dangerous. I salute people who are willing to beat the shit out of Dudes Who Gather Around The (Alleged) Home Of Someone Accusing A Rapist, the Venn Diagram between them and other kinds of extremely dangerous shitheads is pretty much a circle, but at the same time Sal COVER YOUR FUCKING FACE, these people are trying to doxx even if AG circumvented it. Marcie is entirely justified in wanting to be out of the splash zone of that one.
Damn, Marcie had to permanently lose her voice so she wouldn’t have every other character dead to rights instantly, didn’t she?
(I know it’s because she knows Sal best, but still. That is so much perception win, if she were around Billie or Joyce for a couple minutes and they didn’t have to learn ASL to know what she was saying we would solve at least four plot lines in like three minutes.)
She definitely had that scene where she started typing to Malaya rather than wait for Malaya to Google the signs, so there’s some options.
Did Marcie stay in Indiana all five years or follow Sal south? I can’t remember if anything on that subject was ever established. Either way, enough information about Billie may have percolated down to her since arriving mixed with what she would have already known to realize Billie is kind of a goddamn mess. I wish they actually interacted now, that could be interesting.
No canon info either way, but moving south would probably have been prohibitively expensive, plus Marcie’s parents may have had something to say about that.
Yeah, that’s where I’m leaning. The bigger question is really ‘did Marcie move out early, specifically during that last year or so,’ which ultimately boils down to what Marcie’s relationship with her parents is like. Which is not Jordan-levels of mystery, but is still pretty up in the air. (We can’t all be as mysterious as Jordan.)
It seemed like Marcie liked them as a kid, trying to reassure Sal with words they said. They also were probably the ones who set up the gofundme (since Sal was too young). That said, Marcie’s also disabled now and also bi (Word of Willis is her parents are Catholic) so who knows how that went?
Yeah, I’m hoping they turn out to be good and understanding, and it’s not entirely unfounded… but. Good things. This strip. Hahahaha.
(Counting it, actually… we have three parents/sets explicitly unsupportive of their LGBT child – Toedad, Naomi/Saul, Carol as a safe bet – two explicitly supportive – Ruttens and Saruyamas – and then at least one set implied supportive with Sierra’s parents and a possible supportive with Hank. On the other side I’ve been figuring the Wilcoxen and Billingsworths are probably not super supportive. And then also there’s Clint who will certainly weaponize things, but he’s just completely terrible. If the numbers continue to be roughly even then the Diazes could turn out to be on the good end. That would be nice. I want Danny and Billie to eventually never talk to their parents again anyway.)
Precisely. The only difference is that maybe she doesn’t take his attention substitute money.
Or she does take it, and donates some portion towards, say, nonprofits helping homeless LGBT youth or something else she cares about and he would hate.
It doesn’t really make sense as you suggest, but it doesn’t feel like there’s been a 5 year separation there. Unlike with the rest of Sal’s family. Sure, they could have kept in touch through text or whatever, but it seems like there would have been more need for adjustment or at least acknowledgement than we saw at the start.
Smarting of Age: Same comic setup, but Marcie and Carla fix all plot lines before they can even start. It runs for a month and ends with Ruttech just adopting everyone who needs it and making a generous donation to the campus to be spent towards hiring more and better-equipped counselors and promoting the value of diversity on campus and training the staff to do better.
(Will it work on the Asshole Professors With Tenure? No, but most of the problems with adults we’ve seen have NOT involved people who are functionally unfireable!)
Oh wow, weird. I’m just seeing the same text as from patreon (“C’mon Marcie!” etc. and “I need actual evidence” etc.)(not posting the full dialogue just in case Willis would frown on that).
Yeah, even when they were starting to hang out, Marcie comments AG deserves a medal for punching her. And every time we’ve seen her interested in Malaya (except the time they’re cuddling in malaya’s bedroom) it’s been Marcie wanting to bang or checking her out (or, trying to get Malaya to check her out).
For once, we get a solid idea of what exactly is going on between Marcie and Sal… and it’s a bit heartbreaking. I can’t fault Marcie at all. She IS on the receiving end of Sal’s actions. Repeatedly. I wonder just what happened the night that Sal and Amazi-Girl teamed up against Gashface – did Marcie get some sort of reprimand? After all, she was clearly the friend of the person who would have been seen as causing the entire fight.
Marcie is completely in her rights to decide to distance herself from Sal for this. She’s endured a heck of a lot and stood loyally by her side, and Sal doesn’t exactly think about the consequences of her actions a ton.
Where this sucks is… Sal’s mom wanted Sal to stop hanging out with Marcie because she thought that hanging out with Marcie would be ultimately harmful to her daughter. And here we are, how many years later, and Marcie is deciding not to hang out with Sal because Sal is ultimately harmful to Marcie.
That’s gotta hurt deep. And I feel bad for Sal, for seeing just how desperate she is to prove that she’s changed.
Linda wasn’t right about anything. Her deal was she thought Marcie was a hoodlum who was making Sal act out and making her and Charles look like bad parents. No part of that statement is correct. Marcie’s a good kid, she didn’t make Sal do anything and Linda and Charles are actually terrible parents, not just looking like them.
I meant more in the sense that them hanging out would ultimately lead to problems, which it apparently has. I’m not seriously giving her credit, as she was wrong about everything else lol
1) Nowhere did I say they weren’t serious problems or that Marcie didn’t get screwed over.
2) That still does not make Linda right. Considering we’ve spent the past couple weeks with all sorts of crap to say Linda’s not so bad, my tolerance for that is low, even as a joke or in the sort of ‘so general that even if she were right it wouldn’t matter’ sense.
When you lay out the specifics of what Linda thought, as you did, obviously she was wrong in every way. But, jeez, it’s really clear that Irredentist was referring to the broader idea that Linda thought the relationship was harmful, she was just wrong about who it would harm (and, yes, wrong about every nitty-gritty detail of the thought process). Seems like you’re willfully misinterpreting what Irredentist said just so you can argue.
Yeah, no, not giving Linda credit for that either because every relationship has problems, but it’s been pretty largely shown that for the most part theirs has been positive. And frankly, I’m not interested in giving Linda credit for that, even if it were true, because literally everything about her thought process and the details of that idea were wrong. That’s like giving a student credit for an answer that was 99% wrong because they got the name of the book right.
This seems to be a pattern in the comments section lately…that people aren’t really listening to each other and misconstrue day others comments and talk past each other and argue with a statement that isn’t what the other person actually said. It’s too bad because I used to find this comments section to be a sort of safe haven from the usual internet tear downs 🙁
I like your name by the way, nice phoebe reference
It’s just a nice, healthy reminder to everyone that if you’re ever going to say something that could possibly be taken as supportive, understanding, empathetical, or even humanizing about a Hated Character, that you better include either a healthy disclaimer about just how wrong and horrible you think the Hated Character really is, or rewrite what you say so you don’t accidently include any positive mention of said character.
Not too hard, as Willis usually builds his antagonists with absolutely no redeeming qualities so they’re easy to hate. Real life, in comparison, fails to meet that standard in my experience. I’ve never yet met an all-black hat.
I don’t know, we’ve had plenty of people arguing Linda’s good points (and how awful Sal is) throughout this whole arc.
And the general pattern for Willis villains here is that they go directly from people defending them as not so bad and accusing anyone pointing out the warning signs as judging them unfairly to cartoon villain as soon as it can’t be denied anymore. All the while other people are saying, “Yeah, this was my life.”
Partly it’s that we’re mostly dealing with parents from their kids point of view and in the case of the villains, abusive ones. They may have plenty of good qualities to the rest of the world, but when we’re seeing the abuse and its results because we’re focused on the kids, it’s pretty overwhelming.
Yeah, remember John? Remember how Cerb was pointing out warning signs and then everyone was surprised when he turned out to be an asshat?
Hell people were like ‘oh maybe he’s reasonable’ about Toedad up until the gun came out, and we knew going in that this dude pulled Becky out of school to ‘fix’ things with regards to her sexuality and didn’t let her have a phone. Those weren’t just red flags, that was a full-scale performance of Les Miserables shouting warnings.
Yeah, I hear you about the villain pattern, but you’re talking about the comment section. What happens is that we get an incomplete picture of a person drip-feeded (because after all, how complete can the image be with just a few panels each day?) and the comment section divides up – half thinking this is a normal person, who might be somewhat right and somewhat wrong, and the other seeing this as a representation of someone who had wronged them or people they’re close to, and therefore beyond redemption. Then in a day or two, that villain does something really extremely evil and kills any argument towards “Oh, maybe they’re just a normal person after all” when they show themselves as just one more abuser.
The downside to this is that if you think this is how real life is, you’ll end up writing off a LOT of people who were either just mistaken , or wrong, or who might someday turn around. Granted I’m sure there are a ton of Linda Walkertons and Blaine O’Malleys out there. But there are far more Boromir of Gondors and Mundungus Fletchers and Ebenezer Scrooges out there, with varying levels of good and bad, who aren’t all good or all bad, and very well might redeem themselves if given half a chance.
But the main characters here fill that niche quite nicely. All seriously flawed with much nuance and levels of good and bad. Ruth’s violent abuse. Amber’s temper. Sal’s attraction to fighting. Jason sleeping his student. Joyce various and sundry flaws.
I don’t think any of our younger characters (with the possible exception of Dina) are pure good or pure evil. (Ryan excepted.) Even Mary and Mike have hints of more.
There’s also a handful of the adult characters who do have some degree of nuance:
– The Saruyamas unwittingly allowed Blaine into Amber’s dorm out of politeness, and apologized as soon as they realized things were… fraught. By all other indications they’re perfectly great people, but that was a FUCKUP.
– Hank’s making serious steps towards improvement, but his past track record is pretty terrible. He was pretty dickish in that White Male Christian way on Freshman Family Weekend, and including the backstory he allowed one child to be driven away entirely and contributed to a second growing up in an environment that was thoroughly hostile to her existence. Jocelyne doesn’t trust him to be on her side. And even his current steps forward appear to involve putting off some pretty inevitable conflict. I have hope, but he has a lot to go.
– Alan Rees and (Old/pre-transition) Alex were both bad teachers, but not necessarily worse than the curve there. (Though Professor Rees should definitely have stepped in and paid attention somewhere. Jason could maybe have learned to be a not-shitty teacher and Penny should have been sacked way earlier, she was not at all discreet.) Assuming Alex is Alex, her bad teaching was apparently not because she didn’t care, but because she didn’t have the energy cycles.
– Speaking of, Jason is not necessarily a terrible person forever, but as a teacher? Awful.
– Stacey is clearly trying and does a lot of things pretty well, but at the same time she is woefully ill-equipped to recognize or do anything about her daughter’s serious mental illness and dismissed it as low blood sugar.
– And there’s a couple who are at the moment pretty bad but who I think might be capable of doing better – Richard, Joe’s Dad, is not a great dude but I think if he ever seriously tried to work through his issues then maybe he could improve, much like his son is. And then there’s Yuri – objectively terrible stepmother to Amber! Probably not a great mother to Faz! Could have mob ties! We know very little of her, and pretty much none of it is good. But we also have indication that she’s been abused and possibly even groomed by Blaine, so some of that awful may well be her brain being fucked with for somewhere between five and over sixteen years. Who knows. I currently have a tiny amount of sympathy for her in the hopes that maybe someday she can realize how fucked up things are. And/or kill Blaine. (This is also why sympathy for both Howard and Faz skyrocketed after their respective reappearances.)
– Also Dean McHenry. Tony has turned out to be hilariously decent of a dude given his stereotypical jockiness, that had to come from somewhere, but the Dean’s handling of Roz’s sex tape didn’t exactly endear us to him.
@Regalli: Another thing about Hank is that he is half-responsible for raising his children in a prejudiced way that Joyce is continually having to unlearn the harmful lessons that were taught to her from her parents and her community. Hank appeared to be improving with how he reacted to Becky, but the fact still is that he originally had these beliefs to begin with and then passed them onto his children.
@thejeff @Regalli I hear you guys. I completely agree that the main characters are fleshed out, three-dimensional people with their own strengths and weaknesses. Sal, for all the harm she’s been responsible for with Amber, Ethan, Marcie, is not what you would call a *villain*. Nor are all the adults *villains*.
But it seems like when someone has been decided to be a ‘villain’, they just don’t have any redeeming qualities anymore. There’s nothing to Blaine other than this overarching desire to dominate and destroy his daughter. Nothing to Ross other than the desire to dominate and change his daughter. Nothing to Linda other than a desire to have her kids fit exactly the mold she imagines, or nothing to Carol other than fear and disapproval at anything that doesn’t fit her narrow mold of the world. Nothing to Mary other than her sense of self-importance and contempt for others not like her. We don’t see anything else.
As for the people you mentioned, Regalli – You make the VERY GOOD point of mentioning Richard, a person who by all accounts *should* be a Hated Character (womanizer, cheated repeatedly on past spouse, is probably single-handedly responsible for Joe’s sexism and objectifying behavior) and yet… he’s actually portrayed as a sympathetic character who’s recognized how he’s failed in the past and is trying to change. And that definitely contradicts the “Bad guys in the Dumbiverse are completely unredeemable monsters” theory.
Nothing to Ryan but being a rapist. Maybe we should get into the nuances of how he’s kind to puppies.
Perhaps it’s just because we’re focusing on the main characters, not their parents or random antagonists. That’s why they get more nuance.
And I’d actually disagree on Richard – though he’s never been actively abusive, so he’s not a full-on villain, he’s shown no signs of recognizing his problems or trying to change. He just isn’t interested in cheating right now.
I feel like I’m still missing a part of the puzzle. Why is what happened to Marcie Sal’s fault? Because she stands up to bullies and isn’t afraid to fight? I can appreciate the desire for non violence. But that approach is not always possible. Granted, Sal has sometimes resorted to violence when unnecessary. But that was out of guilt, to get money for a friend. But why does she feel so guilty? What actually happened to Marcie?
But what’s the splashback? Fighting is who Sal is, she lives to resist authority and evil, a good friend wouldn’t want to take that away from her. What actually happened to Marcie?
She got fired because of the fight with AG (or at the very least suffered some sort of blowback – which, yes, still pisses me off considering her bosses were present and didn’t do jack jolly shit) and it looks like whatever accident that took her voice happened either during a fight or as retaliation for Sal getting in a fight with someone.
I’m just still not seeing how any of that leads to Sal being at fault for what happened to Marcie. I can understand her guilt, and I can understand Marcie’s blame, given what was taken. But I don’t see it that way.
I have a hard time blaming Sal for yanking her stalker out of hiding and then going to beat the shit out of a rapist when it was clear AG was out of her league, but like…it did very much have splash back on Marcie and I have a hard time faulting Marcie for wanting to get some distance until she’s sure Sal’s making an effort to fix that.
Sure, I understand the reaction, but if Marcie was looking at things honestly, she’d see that the real source of all her problems are the exact same forces that Sal has been fighting against this entire time.
Even though Sal has good motivations and is attempting to be virtuous, it reflects back and affects Marcie negatively by association. Twice because of Sal, Amazi-Girl has shown up and caused a fight. The first time, Marcie was able to get away with everyone else, but could very well have gotten the shit kicked out of her for the crime of underage drinking. And the second time, Marcie most likely lost her job, maybe even suffered some repercussions by having her pay deducted because of her association with Sal. That’s not Sal’s fault, it was Amazi-Girl’s fault both times. But Sal was AG’s reason for doing so.
Since this whole storyline is superhero-themed, it’s reminiscent of the familiar trope from cape comics where the bystander friend of the superhero keeps getting targeted by villains or keeps having their lives negatively impacted by villains. Spider-Man’s still a great guy, saving the city, and sacrificing so much to his own personal cost. But that’s not something that Mary Jane, for example, should have to sacrifice as well. And if she keeps being negatively impacted, despite him doing good and being a hero, she’s well within her rights to walk away. The same applies to Marcie here.
Though I don’t think Marcie blames Sal for that first one. None of them know why AG was after Sal then or even really that she was. From her point of view that one was random harassment.
True, Marcie probably doesn’t blame Sal for it, but even if it’s not consciously known, it’s still a point where Marcie’s association with Sal had led to a negative outcome. If Sal had not been there that night, AG would not have shown up to assault them.
Ultimately it’s not really fault so much as the fact that Sal engages in some pretty dangerous behavior and Marcie gets hurt once it starts. (And Sal tends to come out of things not as badly affected.)
Whatever happened to Marcie, Sal did blame herself and fighting was involved, and Sal didn’t honor that ‘no more fights’ promise. To Marcie, then, how much did Sal really understand that what she did was dangerous? How much did she really get that her behavior hurts people who don’t want to be involved?
With AG and Ryan, yeah, Marcie’s supervisors were at fault for the initial fight escalating that much. But the end result is still the same: Sal escalates things, Marcie gets in trouble for it while Sal walks away. (And there’s probably also a little bit of it that Sal was talking shit about that job and then didn’t seem to realize until after that math class the next day that this has consequences for her friend, or even have a ‘hey are you okay’ check in before that point. Kind of like there’s maybe a little bit of Sal insisting she’ll pay for all this and get Marcie a surgery that fixes Marcie’s voice while Marcie’s trying to adjust to her new reality.)
Marcie has been hurt a lot, and unjustly. This world is like that; the innocent suffer for no cause save prejudice. And sometimes fighting back means losing everything. But that doesn’t mean the sacrifice isn’t worth it.
I’m being too hard on her I think. Not everyone can be like Sal, and damn the consequences. Some people just want to live in peace.
Not everyone’s up for putting themselves in that particular line of fire. (Hi, my joke is ‘My issue with punching Nazis is that I have chronically low muscle tone!’) And those that are should probably consider as their first line of responsibility to not make everything worse. That’s part of why white people at racial equality protests are told to amplify and follow what the organizers say – if things get violent, it doesn’t matter who in the crowd started it, what matters is who’s most likely to get hurt.
Fighting injustice is noble and necessary. Doing so literally is sometimes necessary as well. But if you’re putting the people you’re trying to protect in harm’s way in the process, and they don’t want to be there? Then yeah, they’re allowed to not be thrilled by that.
But Marcie didn’t get to choose to lose everything. That’s something that’s happening to her as a splashback and just.. general result of being in the vicinity of Sal’s actions.
It’s been implied that Marcie’s injury, the one that prevents her from being able to talk, was caused when Sal fought back against the kid bullying her. Sal mentioned she knows she didn’t do it but that it’s her fault and swears to never fight again.
Despite this, she still pulls a knife on another kid and it’s reasonable to assume Marcie faced some backlash (Though it’s not explicitly stated). At least from Linda.
And then, she fights in front of Marcie. The one thing she promised not to do. Which she has done several times now, but is connected directly to Marcie. Marcie was on duty, it was her job to prevent fights, and she got fired because of it.
Obviously we see things mostly from Sal’s perspective so it’s easy to sympathize with her, but Marcie has clear reasons to be upset.
I agree, I don’t think Sal’s willingness to stand up to and sometimes fight bullies is a bad thing. And I think we’re missing a bit of backstory on how exactly Sal’s fighting those bullies has hurt Marcie. Because it just seems odd to me that Sal should feel guilty for that.
I don’t think that it’s Sal’s fault in that she was the direct cause. However, I think that Sal was probably the cause of the general incident that affected Marcie. Maybe she was hit by a flying body or tried to intervene and got shoved into whatever injured her. Hence the term ‘spashback’. Marcie has the tendency to be affected by the response Sal’s aggressive behaviour just by being around her.
1) So far, all of the people Sal & Amazi-Girl have beaten up were all unequivocal bad guys. What if they misunderstood a situation and assaulted an innocent?
2) What if they got into a fight with someone who actually knows what he or she is doing? I mean like a boxer or a Krav Maga black belt or an MMA fighter?
If you’re trying to avoid being deported by attracting the attention of the authorities and/or get a job in law enforcement, your closest friend going around as part of a vigilante squad of ass beaters is not helping your life.
These are superhero/action movie tropes we’re working with here.
1) Wacky misunderstandings happen, but no one get seriously hurt in them.
2) Then they’ve obviously met a major villain and will have to get away and come up with way to beat them in the inevitable rematch.
I don’t know how many superhero things you’ve seen, but innocent people do get seriously hurt by misunderstandings. That’s.. kind of a recurring thing.
Like, Create Your Own Villain is a trope built entirely upon that. Two examples I can think of in recent years that both come from the same event: Captain Marvel leading an ambush and an arrest on an innocent woman because some kid that sees the future saw that she was part of a splinter cell that she wasn’t, and Spider-Man hovering over a rehabilitated villain because of the same future kid seeing that he turns bad, which directly leads to the villain turning bad again. This isn’t even the tip of the iceburg of instances happening in comics, this is literally two examples from the same event.
And this was part of a giant crossover event about how this whole thing was bad.
It’s rarely however as simple as “superhero jumps down, punches guy she thinks is stealing something, but he’s actually innocent and she leaves him with permanent damage.” Which is more along the line of the original post.
The ways they screw up aren’t the ways real life people trying to do superhero things would actually screw up.
That kind of stuff still happened, though. Whenever they wanted to make a point of ‘don’t judge books by their covers’, they would have superheroes mistakenly assault people and realize they horribly misunderstood the situation. The original post didn’t even say anything about permanent damage, that was you. They just said “assaulted an innocent”, which is very plausible to happen.
I think it’s naive to not even consider that there could ever be a twist in a twist, given Willis’ writing style and given that this whole comic has made a point to have characters, like Sal, criticize AG’s method as being dangerous to herself and to others and to show that AG’s issues can have serious consequences to the people she’s fighting. Amber has put two people into a hospital, and those were ones who more or less “deserved” it. It’s not unreasonable to think that maybe someone that gets ready to assault people over underage drinking as a guise for their own issues might assault someone who doesn’t even have that as a flimsy justification.
Like, AG punching out a dude for thinking he’s lifting his own bike and not believing him at his word is not a reach.
The whole Sal thing was its own bad thing, I sort of feel like its seperate from the vigilantism thing because most people don’t have the same personal history with Amber Sal does.
Amazigirl tried to escalate vandalism into a fight though and since they were strangers its actually shows how she operates on a normal basis.
That’s very true. I think she did that at least twice. There were the guys tagging a sign, and there was a guy trying to break into a car, both of whom she was ready to fight despite them not going for it.
And she’s openly said that she uses punching criminals in the face as a way to work through her issues. Like, excessive force is Amazi-Girl’s whole bag. Her sense of justice is skewed because she will show up ready to fight and then come up with a justification before she throws the first punch. It’s just waiting for something to go horribly wrong.
Sal, Ethan did nothing wrong in your first encounter. He didn’t attack you or accuse you when bringing it up. He seems to have put a good amount of effort into not escalating this situation himself. He let you dismiss him and return to him you were ready to talk about the incident.
I’m sure you could have screwed this up if you tried hard enough but de escalating situations were a video game you’d be bragging about surviving the tutorial. I wish I had time yo bring this up yesterday.
That wasn’t a disproportionate response when Amber did it, yet alone if Ethan did it. It wasn’t the right thing to do and was illegal but she could have killed him regardless of her intent.
If she’s escalating over a retaliation directly to her which was less than or equal to what she knows she did directly to him she’s 100% the problem. Yet alone thinking its what happened but not knowing, or thinking its his fault for having people care about him.
The fact is she wants credit that she did not essentially look for excuses to bully him. I believe if bullying was Sal’s default behavior Marcy wouldn’t even be looking to give her a chance.
Stabbing Sal when she was already detained and no longer a threat was disproportionate, it was just understandable under the circumstances.
As for the tutorial – yeah, pretty much this. That said, when you’ve struggled to play the video game at all, managing to complete the tutorial is definitely a step in the right direction.
I see. That’s how this loops back to the “A” girls. Not that I disagree with the concerns, raised. But. I mean. That exact “splash back” is kinda why that maybe Sal is the wrong one to point fingers at Amaze girl. Something neither of them KNOW at this point, but WE do. So. I wag finger at Sal via this knowledge even though that’s flawed on my end
Sal blames herself and promised Marcie shortly after that there would be ‘no more fighting’. We don’t know for sure yet, but there are definitely Implications.
Then the rally fight happened and definitely had at least SOME backlash for Marcie (it hasn’t been explicitly confirmed she was fired, but in Marcie’s angry text she says she ‘was’ a security trainee, past tense.) So it’s been at least twice.
Marcie thinks Malaya has less splashback but how can she claim that if neither of them comprehend how they put the splash of fruit juice flavor in every starburst piece?! Stay humble Marcie!
Marcie, I don’t think lack of integrity is something to search on a friend. Why are you even friends if Malaya has shown her interest in casual sex with strangers?… I am not going to kinkshame you, Marcie, but this is weird. Also, since when punching rapists and rapist apologists is collateral to you?
The current stuff with AG hasn’t affected Marcie, but she’s been staying away. When Sal got involved in the Ryan fight, Marcie got in trouble because she was a security trainee at the rally it occurred at. (And Marcie uses ‘was’ which says to me ‘is no longer’.)
Heavens knows, there’s no possible collateral damage to Malaya’s screw authority approach to life. That said, Malaya has been nicer than she had to be to Joyce, Marcie, and even if Carla’s manner of flirting freeks her out a little, Carla. And she takes no grief from Mary. Malaya may be a disaster waiting to happen, but it would take an absolute curmudgeon not to like her a little.
Why would Malaya’s interest in casual sex with strangers make Marcie not want to be her friend? Now, her apparent lack of interest in (casual or non-) sex with Marcie might be a problem.
Seriously, what does Malaya’s casual sex habits have anything to do with Marcie being her friend? Why would they stop being friends just because she has casual sex with people? Even if you’re going at it from the “Marcie’s interested in her angle”, Marcie’s only interested on a casual level too.
Marcie has also had a history of bad stuff happening to her via association with Sal. It’s not really Sal’s fault, but Marcie has: lost her voice, been attacked over beer, lost her job if not also her wages for that night. And that’s just the stuff we know about. Following that train, the collateral that Marcie’s likely talking about is if someone recognizes who Sal is because she doesn’t bother to hide her appearance, and then later goes after Marcie because they saw the two of them together. It’s happened before. She doesn’t want to be around for it to happen again.
She is heavily implying that both Malaya and Sal have a lack of integrity. But Sal’s particular lack of integrity (i.e. promising she wont fight anymore, keeps fighting and holds up a convenience store. Reprimanding Amazi-Girl based on her own experiences but then going along with amazi-girl’s shit anyway. etc) has a history of turning Marcie into collateral damage, whereas thus far Malaya has caused no such blowback.
That being said, obviously Marcie recognizes Malaya isn’t that great a person. She just thinks Malaya is fun to be around, hot, and she wants to bang her. Malaya showing interest in casual sex with strangers is…only going to make that potentially more viable?? The only issue being if Malaya is down for any kind of sex, casual or no, with women. Which is still up in the air, at the moment, but previous incarnations of Malaya indicate that yes–she is probably down to clown.
Sal doesn’t react when Marcie says “I keep being your collateral damage.” There’s a lot of character development implied there!
Sal felt, and surely still feels, that she was responsible for Marcie’s loss of voice. And now Marcie refers to it directly, and Sal does not respond with defensiveness or guilt. It’s just accepted between them that this thing happened and can be discussed openly.
Sal is apparently taking responsibility for that in a very mature way that many people don’t ever achieve. And Marcie knows she can trust that – even in the middle of a difficult conversation, directly invoking that in passing is not going to derail the conversation.
In addition to their maturity, it seems like evidence of a deeper level to their friendship than we’ve seen on-panel.
I get the impression Marcie is trying very hard to fly under the radar in an America that is abelist and not too friendly to the children of illegal immigrants (who may include Marcie). She got seriously injured in what’s implied to be a result of Sal pushing back against bullying and has had to cope with that. Sal keeps pushing back and, of course, Marcie gets fired from her security job that she felt was a way into the police force. Marcie may agree with Sal but she wants to avoid attention and just get as much happiness as she can.
Iiiii’m always ready for a war again…
Go down that road again…
It’s all the same.
Iiiii’m always ready to take a life again…
You know I’ll ride again…
It’s all the same.
Tell me whoooo’s gon’ save me from myseeeelf?
When this life is all I knooooow?
Tell me who’s gon’ save me from this heeeeell?
Without you, I’m all aloooooone!
Who gon’ pray for me? (pray for me)
Take my pain for me? (take my pain for me)
Save my soul for me?
Cause I’m alone, you see…
If I gon’ die for you… (gon’ die for you)
If I gon’ kill for you… (gon’ kill for you)
Then I’ll spiiiill this blood for yoooou!
Sometimes, tragically, friendships don’t last. Sometimes, the way you look at the world and what you feel that you need to do in order to make the world work (not just for you) are just too different from your friend’s and things just can’t last. I feel that this is probably what is happening here.
I’m still pretty sure they’ll make up eventually, but it’s gonna take work for Sal to figure out how to consistently make de-escalating solutions (or even escalating ones that don’t blow up on Marcie).
Posted without irony: Being the friend of a costumed vigilante is not a healthy place to be. Even if no-one directly targets you for reprisals, the stresses and dangers of their life choices will inevitably impact on your own life.
Pretty accurate. Probably why Amber keeps her costumed identity so far away from her (besides the obvious reason). Still…. between the two, I rather take my chances with Sal’s justice over Malaya’s abrasive nature, but I am super biased because I don’t like her and you (and everyone else) are more than welcome to disagree. ^_^U.
Wow, okay a couple of things.
1) I did not expect Marcie to be such an eloquent speaker.
2) After years of only reading her via interpretation and expression, I suddenly have a unique voice for her in my head. (Yes I know she spoke as a child but all kids have the same voice to me honestly).
3) It is amazing just how much more endearing Marcie suddenly feels to me after this single comic…
It’s interesting that Sal had asked Danny to talk to Amazi-girl because she correctly pointed out that Amazi-girl was putting herself and others in danger along with escalating things to an over the top level. I’d almost say the things she said to Amazi-girl post-chase with Becky’s dad would then make her a hypocrite here BUT…
I think what’s going on here is basically like an addict falling off the wagon. After the robbery and such, Sal couldn’t really fight the way she had all her childhood and so she cooled down. And so Marcie felt safe to hang out with Sal. Even their initial fight with Amazi-girl was pretty tame and escalated by Malaya/Amazi-girl. Sal also backed down when prompted by Marcie. After drawing comparisons between herself and Amazi-girl, now they’re kicking ass together despite Sal previously thinking Amazi-girl should stop the superhero gig.
Poor Danny, lol. Sal suggests he tell Amazi-girl to stop only for her to join in, and his girlfriend broke up with him for talking to Sal, only for her alter to become close buddies with her. Maybe this was the true love triangle all along.
Oh boy, the person for whom Danny would be Maria Castle would make Amazi-girl look tame and rational. To be fair though I AM a bit of a Punisher fan so I’d kind of like to see that scenario.
What was the problem exactly with the last “splashback?” It was Marcie’s job to do nothing about it and call police. She didn’t lose her security guard job.
I’m still mad that they couldn’t be bothered to do anything because ‘Iunno, Amazi-Girl’. Like if they’d said ‘Dude, you’re not paying me anywhere near enough to get involved in that’ I could at least understand that. Or hell, even ‘Policy is call the cops and stay out of it’ but no, apparently that’s too much work.
My mom is half deaf and she does that when she’s signing with other people. I imagine it’s different for other people like I think sometimes my mom talks while signing to keep others in the room keyed into the conversation. The other reason for it that also fits with my mother, is just being used to talking and maybe it helps the thought process for signing too? I’m not very sure since I know maybe ten signs in ASL, but my parents and some extended family all sign. If they don’t talk, they tend to mouth their words.
I should also mention that with my parents/extended family, my mother is the only one who technically ‘needs’ to sign, everybody else is more like Sal in that they learned to communicate.
[snorts] I think there was this gif of Kakashi and some other ninja (or maybe it was Sasuke…) doing hand seals at each other and the caption was “When two deaf kids get into an argument”
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dang, when MALAYA looks good by comparison
I mean…. have you seen her booty?
and her iguana.
Sal doesn’t have an iguana.
If Joyce ever had to choose between Sal’s motorcycle and Malaya’s iguana, she’d probably renounce her religion right there, because what loving God could ever force such a sadistic choice on her?
“Father please don’t make me choose / Either way it’s more than I can bear to lose / Either way it’s ripping out my heart / This choice is tearing me apart!”
Finally, someone else in the world who knows about “Children of Eden”
She’d just do a Solomon and cut herself in half. problem solved!
Sal needs a python.
Triple entendre!
What, Jason doesn’t count?
Sal has a motorcycle, though.
Malaya doesn’t look good, she just looks less dangerous. This is the friend who doesn’t care enough about your life to take an active part in it and risk screwing it up, times four because Sal’s need to confront people and “fix” things applies to bystanders as well.
That probably looks “good” to Marcie.
:/ What do you even say to that?
“Hey, I can lack integrity too, you know! I could sell that shit on eBay if I wanted to!”
“I’ll give you an umbrella.”? XD
Marcie gets Splashback, Amber gets Flashback, think there’s a character for whom associating with Sal results in getting Cashback?
Oh wait, that was probably Linda.
(i know, i’m a monster)
;____; too soon
I’m sorry, all I heard was ‘We’re friends’.
But seriously though, yeah, Marcie isn’t exactly wrong or unreasonable here.
She’s not wrong at all. Even if Sal’s doing objectively good things, she’s still doing them via violent crime.
I think the bigger problem is the not thinking through potential problems via splash back, but yeah. Although, that said, I have a VERY hard time being at all upset Sal joined in on giving Ryan and his bros a beat down or about her going to defend women who are speaking out about Ryan from his sickening supporters who want to do god knows what to them.
I think if those were the start of this getting Marcie involved, she’d mind it way less. (There’s no real indication she had trouble with Sal’s part in the Great Becky Rescue, after all.)
Frankly, considering that it looks like creepy home invader wannabes put hands on Sal first (ripping her jacket), if Marcie were the type of friend who expected Sal to let them put hands on her so as not to escalate, Sal’d be better off without Marcie. Thankfully, I’m 99.99% sure Marcie wouldn’t object to beating the living hell out of them in that scenario.
But this is post-voice losing and post-promise and Sal’s escalation had a role in Marcie losing her voice and also got Sal sent away from her for five years, so yeah, bad history.
Also I doubt the story mentioned that Creepy Home Invader laying a hand on her, since the source was likely him, and he likely put it out that she attacked him unprovoked.
Yeah, the story probably went either that way, or (if a more pro-AG publication) said AG and Sal beat up mysterious guys hanging around a house that was purported to have a woman speaking against Ryan in it. Either way, probably not much about them touching her first.
At least for the bro-attacking-other-victims-thing, the reasonable thing to do would have been to call the police. For several reasons. One of them being that this could have ended with her being beaten into the hospital or raped or worse. They wanted to attack someone. They could have been armed. Or one of them could have been a better fighter than her.
There wasn’t anyone in immediate danger there. There was time to try to resolve the situation differently.
And for the beating-up-Ryan-thing, why wasn’t security involved? They are more and they usually have means to communicate. And they usually cover all entrances. They might have stopped him from getting away in the first place, so Amber wouldn’t have had to cut him up, Dorothy would have been less terrified and Ryan would be in jail now, instead of being in the hospital.
Less heroic, less backslash, less people hurt.
In the first case – blame AG, mainly, who put the fake doxx address to an empty house rather than to a police or other public safety station. If Sal were inclined to call the police (and given she’s a black woman with a criminal record and bad experience with authorities, unlikely,) they might not even be able to do anything because there’s a LOT of loopholes in how Internet-based threats and the like are investigated that rarely end well for the victims. (Frankly AG and Sal are super lucky these douchebags went in person rather than trying to SWAT them. Which has a serious problem with prosecution because it isn’t a federal crime and the Internet means that a lot of them cross state lines!… *ragecombust*)
In the second case, Marcie actually called her supervisor in when it was just AG stalking. Said supervisor sided with AG over Sal, because shit fucking sucks. Then with Ryan AG didn’t explain much and as we saw with Robin and Frida in the aftermath, the organizers chose to back their intern with (implied) Important Parents over an anonymous report.
Anonymously call emergency and tell them you saw a bunch of people threatening someone while you were passing by. It’s not even untrue.
Sal literally was sent to the “security friend” by ag. She went to beat up some boys instead. And this incident alone (holding down and beating someone) would have been enough to at least get a hold of them. Everything else would have had more time to figure out. I mean, this was a fist fight in public. Getting into a fist fight usually is enough to at least make security stop you. And even if they were released afterwards, their names would have been known.
If the organisers chose to side with them, they knew them. Tracking them down would have been easy for the police. “I was roofied, I don’t know his name, but this guy knows his parents”. Still, easily solved by communicating.
Because you have really good chances of getting someone convicted of roofing?
There wasn’t any evidence (might have shown up in the blood if they went to a doctor directly after the incident, but without finding the stuff on him, his culpability couldn’t be proven). It’s not like we really know what other people saw besides AG and Sarah attacking that guy.
Asking the police to do something serious about that guy weeks later is hopeless as long as they are not actively searching for the guy because someone he roofied later went to have it prosecuted and was important enough to actually do something about it.
Then why bothering in the first place? If nothing will come out of it anyway?
Crimes like that are often reported weeks or even months later. Police knows that. It’s getting difficult to prove something, but that doesn’t mean it’s useless. Especially in this case, because the gash and the timing of this wound will give credibility to her story.
You imply the police is interested in catching young men of good family who are sexual predators. Past events prove that you have to be lucky to get officers who are interested in doing so.
We hashed a lot of that out in the threads at the time.
Watsonian answer: Amazi-girl wanted the photo and a name, basically so she could do what they did and spread word of him, since there wasn’t anything more practical she could do. Was also happy to have the excuse to beat him into the ground. Amazi-Girl wasn’t going to report to the cops – Joyce didn’t want to report, AG’s would be hearsay and AG would likely be arrested for her vigilante actions.
The security people were there and chose not to interfere in the superhero fight. Sal stayed out of it until AG was pinned and no one else was intervening. Her trying to talk security into doing something at that point would have been pointless.
Doylist answer: They’re super hero/action movie protagonists. The security guards are mooks. Of course this is what they do. How else do you get the cool action scenes.
@Regalli: SWATing wouldn’t really have been a problem in this case, since it was an empty house and Sal wouldn’t have attacked the police team.
Both Sal and Amazi-Girl are confident in their ability to handle themselves even against multiple opponents. And apparently justifiably so.
I understand that’s not realistic, but that’s how it is. How tough they are isn’t realistic.
The short version is as a queer Hispanic woman with questionable legal status, Marcie has a lot more to lose than Sal–who has already escaped prison time despite being a black woman.
:/
Can I just say I love this strip Willis. Like the hovertext confirmed my suspicion that we’ve never had a “full sign language conversation” transcribed for us, and I really like it. Of course it wouldn’t translate 1:1 and that’s fine, it’s still super cool.
I like this method for long conversations. The usual “blue arms” format doesn’t scale up this much.
Sal, you need some P.R. or something. At this rate everyone is going to call you AG’s sidekick!
Okay… this seems like a bit more of a clue to Marcie’s accident. Sal must have been getting justice/payback on the bully that originally got anyway with it… and Marcie, the one she was avenging, got hurt and lost her loud talking voice. (As opposed to the non-loud one she’s using now)
She doesn’t have a non-loud voice. Those blue lines are translating her sign language.
That’s the point, yes. What Victor is saying is she still has a voice – sign language. And she’s using that voice, now – it’s just not aurally “loud.”
Ahhh, I see. I misunderstood what was meant by ‘non-loud’ voice.
i guess malaya is what she needs right now
At least until the iguana feels threatened by her sign language.
Huh, well at least Marcie is self aware enough to realize Malaya also has a lack of integrity. Granted she is more willing to overlook that one, mostly since she is too busy staring at dat ass.
Got to love it when people make decisions with their lizard brain… :/
Marcie’s expression in #5!
Also, I’m glad for evidence that Marcie is aware that Malaya is…well, Malaya.
A lack of integrity finally paying off.
lack of integrity
no regrets
DAMMIT I was going to say that!
*”Kodachrome” concludes*
Ah, so it’s not *really* about the job so much as a larger pattern. Understandable enough, even if I do think she’s being a bit unfair here.
A big part of the suggestion here is also that Sal blamed herself for what happened to Marcie because Sal started a fight or something and Marcie got hurt, Sal promised no more fights in the aftermath (that part we’ve seen)… and then Sal proceeded to not honor that promise in several ways.
We know Sal feels tremendous guilt for whatever involvement she had in Marcie’s injury (more than a thirteen-year-old should have to shoulder,) but from Marcie’s perspective? I have to imagine the money that never arrived meant way less to her than Sal’s promise to stop engaging in super-dangerous behavior and then getting Marcie involved.
And it is SUPER-DANGEROUS behavior. Like, phenomenally dangerous. I salute people who are willing to beat the shit out of Dudes Who Gather Around The (Alleged) Home Of Someone Accusing A Rapist, the Venn Diagram between them and other kinds of extremely dangerous shitheads is pretty much a circle, but at the same time Sal COVER YOUR FUCKING FACE, these people are trying to doxx even if AG circumvented it. Marcie is entirely justified in wanting to be out of the splash zone of that one.
Damn, Marcie had to permanently lose her voice so she wouldn’t have every other character dead to rights instantly, didn’t she?
(I know it’s because she knows Sal best, but still. That is so much perception win, if she were around Billie or Joyce for a couple minutes and they didn’t have to learn ASL to know what she was saying we would solve at least four plot lines in like three minutes.)
She has a phone. Shot in the dark, she has text-to-talk?
If not, that’s why God created texting.
She definitely had that scene where she started typing to Malaya rather than wait for Malaya to Google the signs, so there’s some options.
Did Marcie stay in Indiana all five years or follow Sal south? I can’t remember if anything on that subject was ever established. Either way, enough information about Billie may have percolated down to her since arriving mixed with what she would have already known to realize Billie is kind of a goddamn mess. I wish they actually interacted now, that could be interesting.
No canon info either way, but moving south would probably have been prohibitively expensive, plus Marcie’s parents may have had something to say about that.
Yeah, that’s where I’m leaning. The bigger question is really ‘did Marcie move out early, specifically during that last year or so,’ which ultimately boils down to what Marcie’s relationship with her parents is like. Which is not Jordan-levels of mystery, but is still pretty up in the air. (We can’t all be as mysterious as Jordan.)
It seemed like Marcie liked them as a kid, trying to reassure Sal with words they said. They also were probably the ones who set up the gofundme (since Sal was too young). That said, Marcie’s also disabled now and also bi (Word of Willis is her parents are Catholic) so who knows how that went?
Yeah, I’m hoping they turn out to be good and understanding, and it’s not entirely unfounded… but. Good things. This strip. Hahahaha.
(Counting it, actually… we have three parents/sets explicitly unsupportive of their LGBT child – Toedad, Naomi/Saul, Carol as a safe bet – two explicitly supportive – Ruttens and Saruyamas – and then at least one set implied supportive with Sierra’s parents and a possible supportive with Hank. On the other side I’ve been figuring the Wilcoxen and Billingsworths are probably not super supportive. And then also there’s Clint who will certainly weaponize things, but he’s just completely terrible. If the numbers continue to be roughly even then the Diazes could turn out to be on the good end. That would be nice. I want Danny and Billie to eventually never talk to their parents again anyway.)
I mean, Billie pretty much already never speaks to her parents so what would be the difference?
Precisely. The only difference is that maybe she doesn’t take his attention substitute money.
Or she does take it, and donates some portion towards, say, nonprofits helping homeless LGBT youth or something else she cares about and he would hate.
Billie says she doesn’t want his guilt money, but she does. She totally wants his guilt money.
Hey, if it means her and Ruth’s therapy and Ruth’s meds are paid for and they can afford to support Howie, it works right?
It doesn’t really make sense as you suggest, but it doesn’t feel like there’s been a 5 year separation there. Unlike with the rest of Sal’s family. Sure, they could have kept in touch through text or whatever, but it seems like there would have been more need for adjustment or at least acknowledgement than we saw at the start.
Yeah. I mean, it probably helps that Marcie debuted about a week into classes, but there really doesn’t feel like they’ve been split.
Dang it, as if Carla wasn’t enough of a threat to the narrative tension in this comic.
Oh jeez and they already know each other, too. They could totally team up and put Willis out of a job!
^^^ The real reason Marcie can’t have text to talk.
Smarting of Age: Same comic setup, but Marcie and Carla fix all plot lines before they can even start. It runs for a month and ends with Ruttech just adopting everyone who needs it and making a generous donation to the campus to be spent towards hiring more and better-equipped counselors and promoting the value of diversity on campus and training the staff to do better.
(Will it work on the Asshole Professors With Tenure? No, but most of the problems with adults we’ve seen have NOT involved people who are functionally unfireable!)
Marcie and Carla are pretty great.
ah my heart is breaking for Sal 🙁
Oh, huh, the first couple panels are different from patreon’s. Interesting.
Huh, different how? I’m lookin’ at both versions and I’m not seeing any differences, at least on my end.
The first two panels in the version on this site I see are
Sal: So, like, great, now ah’m ALSO a liar.
Marcie: I need more than a crazy anecdote. I need evidence that you’re working on this.
Oh wow, weird. I’m just seeing the same text as from patreon (“C’mon Marcie!” etc. and “I need actual evidence” etc.)(not posting the full dialogue just in case Willis would frown on that).
S’neat too, though. Like getting bonus dialogue!
It’s probably an old cache. Or Willis has updated the strip but didn’t do Patreon’s.
They’re back to normal.
Aww, I only see the one version too.
So, Marcie is aware that Malaya has a lack of integrity, at least.
Does that mean she’s not really interested in a ‘romantic’ relationship with Malaya so much as a ‘physical’ one?
I think that’s been pretty strongly implied from the beginning.
Yeah, even when they were starting to hang out, Marcie comments AG deserves a medal for punching her. And every time we’ve seen her interested in Malaya (except the time they’re cuddling in malaya’s bedroom) it’s been Marcie wanting to bang or checking her out (or, trying to get Malaya to check her out).
Also Malaya has an iguana that’ll ride around on your head.
…Maybe Sal should look into getting a pet. Like a snake or something.
This is surprisingly painful to read.
For once, we get a solid idea of what exactly is going on between Marcie and Sal… and it’s a bit heartbreaking. I can’t fault Marcie at all. She IS on the receiving end of Sal’s actions. Repeatedly. I wonder just what happened the night that Sal and Amazi-Girl teamed up against Gashface – did Marcie get some sort of reprimand? After all, she was clearly the friend of the person who would have been seen as causing the entire fight.
Marcie is completely in her rights to decide to distance herself from Sal for this. She’s endured a heck of a lot and stood loyally by her side, and Sal doesn’t exactly think about the consequences of her actions a ton.
Where this sucks is… Sal’s mom wanted Sal to stop hanging out with Marcie because she thought that hanging out with Marcie would be ultimately harmful to her daughter. And here we are, how many years later, and Marcie is deciding not to hang out with Sal because Sal is ultimately harmful to Marcie.
That’s gotta hurt deep. And I feel bad for Sal, for seeing just how desperate she is to prove that she’s changed.
That awkward moment when Linda was right the whole time but for the completely wrong reasons.
Linda wasn’t right about anything. Her deal was she thought Marcie was a hoodlum who was making Sal act out and making her and Charles look like bad parents. No part of that statement is correct. Marcie’s a good kid, she didn’t make Sal do anything and Linda and Charles are actually terrible parents, not just looking like them.
I meant more in the sense that them hanging out would ultimately lead to problems, which it apparently has. I’m not seriously giving her credit, as she was wrong about everything else lol
Every relationship has problems. I’d not give Linda credit for that.
How many friendships have cost you a job?
1) Nowhere did I say they weren’t serious problems or that Marcie didn’t get screwed over.
2) That still does not make Linda right. Considering we’ve spent the past couple weeks with all sorts of crap to say Linda’s not so bad, my tolerance for that is low, even as a joke or in the sort of ‘so general that even if she were right it wouldn’t matter’ sense.
When you lay out the specifics of what Linda thought, as you did, obviously she was wrong in every way. But, jeez, it’s really clear that Irredentist was referring to the broader idea that Linda thought the relationship was harmful, she was just wrong about who it would harm (and, yes, wrong about every nitty-gritty detail of the thought process). Seems like you’re willfully misinterpreting what Irredentist said just so you can argue.
Yeah, no, not giving Linda credit for that either because every relationship has problems, but it’s been pretty largely shown that for the most part theirs has been positive. And frankly, I’m not interested in giving Linda credit for that, even if it were true, because literally everything about her thought process and the details of that idea were wrong. That’s like giving a student credit for an answer that was 99% wrong because they got the name of the book right.
Also, that ignores Linda’s own role in causing many of Sal’s issues that are affecting Sal and Marcie’s friendship right now.
– A) Sal’s super clingy (because she didn’t have anyone else trustworthy she could rely on, LINDA).
– B) Linda shoves Sal into a corner, making her desperate and prone to bad decisions.
– C) Linda doesn’t bother trying to get Sal to process injustice healthily (because Linda doesn’t want to acknowledge it).
Like, that doesn’t change that Sal’s decisions are her own, but Linda definitely affects Sal and has contributed to her issues.
This seems to be a pattern in the comments section lately…that people aren’t really listening to each other and misconstrue day others comments and talk past each other and argue with a statement that isn’t what the other person actually said. It’s too bad because I used to find this comments section to be a sort of safe haven from the usual internet tear downs 🙁
I like your name by the way, nice phoebe reference
Misconstrue *each* others comments
It’s just a nice, healthy reminder to everyone that if you’re ever going to say something that could possibly be taken as supportive, understanding, empathetical, or even humanizing about a Hated Character, that you better include either a healthy disclaimer about just how wrong and horrible you think the Hated Character really is, or rewrite what you say so you don’t accidently include any positive mention of said character.
Not too hard, as Willis usually builds his antagonists with absolutely no redeeming qualities so they’re easy to hate. Real life, in comparison, fails to meet that standard in my experience. I’ve never yet met an all-black hat.
I don’t know, we’ve had plenty of people arguing Linda’s good points (and how awful Sal is) throughout this whole arc.
And the general pattern for Willis villains here is that they go directly from people defending them as not so bad and accusing anyone pointing out the warning signs as judging them unfairly to cartoon villain as soon as it can’t be denied anymore. All the while other people are saying, “Yeah, this was my life.”
Partly it’s that we’re mostly dealing with parents from their kids point of view and in the case of the villains, abusive ones. They may have plenty of good qualities to the rest of the world, but when we’re seeing the abuse and its results because we’re focused on the kids, it’s pretty overwhelming.
Linda’s perfectly polite with her ex and Dorothy’s parents.
Yeah, remember John? Remember how Cerb was pointing out warning signs and then everyone was surprised when he turned out to be an asshat?
Hell people were like ‘oh maybe he’s reasonable’ about Toedad up until the gun came out, and we knew going in that this dude pulled Becky out of school to ‘fix’ things with regards to her sexuality and didn’t let her have a phone. Those weren’t just red flags, that was a full-scale performance of Les Miserables shouting warnings.
Yeah, I hear you about the villain pattern, but you’re talking about the comment section. What happens is that we get an incomplete picture of a person drip-feeded (because after all, how complete can the image be with just a few panels each day?) and the comment section divides up – half thinking this is a normal person, who might be somewhat right and somewhat wrong, and the other seeing this as a representation of someone who had wronged them or people they’re close to, and therefore beyond redemption. Then in a day or two, that villain does something really extremely evil and kills any argument towards “Oh, maybe they’re just a normal person after all” when they show themselves as just one more abuser.
The downside to this is that if you think this is how real life is, you’ll end up writing off a LOT of people who were either just mistaken , or wrong, or who might someday turn around. Granted I’m sure there are a ton of Linda Walkertons and Blaine O’Malleys out there. But there are far more Boromir of Gondors and Mundungus Fletchers and Ebenezer Scrooges out there, with varying levels of good and bad, who aren’t all good or all bad, and very well might redeem themselves if given half a chance.
But the main characters here fill that niche quite nicely. All seriously flawed with much nuance and levels of good and bad. Ruth’s violent abuse. Amber’s temper. Sal’s attraction to fighting. Jason sleeping his student. Joyce various and sundry flaws.
I don’t think any of our younger characters (with the possible exception of Dina) are pure good or pure evil. (Ryan excepted.) Even Mary and Mike have hints of more.
There’s also a handful of the adult characters who do have some degree of nuance:
– The Saruyamas unwittingly allowed Blaine into Amber’s dorm out of politeness, and apologized as soon as they realized things were… fraught. By all other indications they’re perfectly great people, but that was a FUCKUP.
– Hank’s making serious steps towards improvement, but his past track record is pretty terrible. He was pretty dickish in that White Male Christian way on Freshman Family Weekend, and including the backstory he allowed one child to be driven away entirely and contributed to a second growing up in an environment that was thoroughly hostile to her existence. Jocelyne doesn’t trust him to be on her side. And even his current steps forward appear to involve putting off some pretty inevitable conflict. I have hope, but he has a lot to go.
– Alan Rees and (Old/pre-transition) Alex were both bad teachers, but not necessarily worse than the curve there. (Though Professor Rees should definitely have stepped in and paid attention somewhere. Jason could maybe have learned to be a not-shitty teacher and Penny should have been sacked way earlier, she was not at all discreet.) Assuming Alex is Alex, her bad teaching was apparently not because she didn’t care, but because she didn’t have the energy cycles.
– Speaking of, Jason is not necessarily a terrible person forever, but as a teacher? Awful.
– Stacey is clearly trying and does a lot of things pretty well, but at the same time she is woefully ill-equipped to recognize or do anything about her daughter’s serious mental illness and dismissed it as low blood sugar.
– And there’s a couple who are at the moment pretty bad but who I think might be capable of doing better – Richard, Joe’s Dad, is not a great dude but I think if he ever seriously tried to work through his issues then maybe he could improve, much like his son is. And then there’s Yuri – objectively terrible stepmother to Amber! Probably not a great mother to Faz! Could have mob ties! We know very little of her, and pretty much none of it is good. But we also have indication that she’s been abused and possibly even groomed by Blaine, so some of that awful may well be her brain being fucked with for somewhere between five and over sixteen years. Who knows. I currently have a tiny amount of sympathy for her in the hopes that maybe someday she can realize how fucked up things are. And/or kill Blaine. (This is also why sympathy for both Howard and Faz skyrocketed after their respective reappearances.)
– Also Dean McHenry. Tony has turned out to be hilariously decent of a dude given his stereotypical jockiness, that had to come from somewhere, but the Dean’s handling of Roz’s sex tape didn’t exactly endear us to him.
@Regalli: Another thing about Hank is that he is half-responsible for raising his children in a prejudiced way that Joyce is continually having to unlearn the harmful lessons that were taught to her from her parents and her community. Hank appeared to be improving with how he reacted to Becky, but the fact still is that he originally had these beliefs to begin with and then passed them onto his children.
@thejeff @Regalli I hear you guys. I completely agree that the main characters are fleshed out, three-dimensional people with their own strengths and weaknesses. Sal, for all the harm she’s been responsible for with Amber, Ethan, Marcie, is not what you would call a *villain*. Nor are all the adults *villains*.
But it seems like when someone has been decided to be a ‘villain’, they just don’t have any redeeming qualities anymore. There’s nothing to Blaine other than this overarching desire to dominate and destroy his daughter. Nothing to Ross other than the desire to dominate and change his daughter. Nothing to Linda other than a desire to have her kids fit exactly the mold she imagines, or nothing to Carol other than fear and disapproval at anything that doesn’t fit her narrow mold of the world. Nothing to Mary other than her sense of self-importance and contempt for others not like her. We don’t see anything else.
As for the people you mentioned, Regalli – You make the VERY GOOD point of mentioning Richard, a person who by all accounts *should* be a Hated Character (womanizer, cheated repeatedly on past spouse, is probably single-handedly responsible for Joe’s sexism and objectifying behavior) and yet… he’s actually portrayed as a sympathetic character who’s recognized how he’s failed in the past and is trying to change. And that definitely contradicts the “Bad guys in the Dumbiverse are completely unredeemable monsters” theory.
Nothing to Ryan but being a rapist. Maybe we should get into the nuances of how he’s kind to puppies.
Perhaps it’s just because we’re focusing on the main characters, not their parents or random antagonists. That’s why they get more nuance.
And I’d actually disagree on Richard – though he’s never been actively abusive, so he’s not a full-on villain, he’s shown no signs of recognizing his problems or trying to change. He just isn’t interested in cheating right now.
I feel like I’m still missing a part of the puzzle. Why is what happened to Marcie Sal’s fault? Because she stands up to bullies and isn’t afraid to fight? I can appreciate the desire for non violence. But that approach is not always possible. Granted, Sal has sometimes resorted to violence when unnecessary. But that was out of guilt, to get money for a friend. But why does she feel so guilty? What actually happened to Marcie?
I think the problem is less inherently about fighting (though that’s part of it) and more about A) Broken promises and B) Splashback on Marcie.
But what’s the splashback? Fighting is who Sal is, she lives to resist authority and evil, a good friend wouldn’t want to take that away from her. What actually happened to Marcie?
She got fired because of the fight with AG (or at the very least suffered some sort of blowback – which, yes, still pisses me off considering her bosses were present and didn’t do jack jolly shit) and it looks like whatever accident that took her voice happened either during a fight or as retaliation for Sal getting in a fight with someone.
I’m just still not seeing how any of that leads to Sal being at fault for what happened to Marcie. I can understand her guilt, and I can understand Marcie’s blame, given what was taken. But I don’t see it that way.
I have a hard time blaming Sal for yanking her stalker out of hiding and then going to beat the shit out of a rapist when it was clear AG was out of her league, but like…it did very much have splash back on Marcie and I have a hard time faulting Marcie for wanting to get some distance until she’s sure Sal’s making an effort to fix that.
Sure, I understand the reaction, but if Marcie was looking at things honestly, she’d see that the real source of all her problems are the exact same forces that Sal has been fighting against this entire time.
Knowing what the source of the problem is doesn’t change that the splash back ends up hitting her though.
Even though Sal has good motivations and is attempting to be virtuous, it reflects back and affects Marcie negatively by association. Twice because of Sal, Amazi-Girl has shown up and caused a fight. The first time, Marcie was able to get away with everyone else, but could very well have gotten the shit kicked out of her for the crime of underage drinking. And the second time, Marcie most likely lost her job, maybe even suffered some repercussions by having her pay deducted because of her association with Sal. That’s not Sal’s fault, it was Amazi-Girl’s fault both times. But Sal was AG’s reason for doing so.
Since this whole storyline is superhero-themed, it’s reminiscent of the familiar trope from cape comics where the bystander friend of the superhero keeps getting targeted by villains or keeps having their lives negatively impacted by villains. Spider-Man’s still a great guy, saving the city, and sacrificing so much to his own personal cost. But that’s not something that Mary Jane, for example, should have to sacrifice as well. And if she keeps being negatively impacted, despite him doing good and being a hero, she’s well within her rights to walk away. The same applies to Marcie here.
Though I don’t think Marcie blames Sal for that first one. None of them know why AG was after Sal then or even really that she was. From her point of view that one was random harassment.
True, Marcie probably doesn’t blame Sal for it, but even if it’s not consciously known, it’s still a point where Marcie’s association with Sal had led to a negative outcome. If Sal had not been there that night, AG would not have shown up to assault them.
Ultimately it’s not really fault so much as the fact that Sal engages in some pretty dangerous behavior and Marcie gets hurt once it starts. (And Sal tends to come out of things not as badly affected.)
Whatever happened to Marcie, Sal did blame herself and fighting was involved, and Sal didn’t honor that ‘no more fights’ promise. To Marcie, then, how much did Sal really understand that what she did was dangerous? How much did she really get that her behavior hurts people who don’t want to be involved?
With AG and Ryan, yeah, Marcie’s supervisors were at fault for the initial fight escalating that much. But the end result is still the same: Sal escalates things, Marcie gets in trouble for it while Sal walks away. (And there’s probably also a little bit of it that Sal was talking shit about that job and then didn’t seem to realize until after that math class the next day that this has consequences for her friend, or even have a ‘hey are you okay’ check in before that point. Kind of like there’s maybe a little bit of Sal insisting she’ll pay for all this and get Marcie a surgery that fixes Marcie’s voice while Marcie’s trying to adjust to her new reality.)
Marcie has been hurt a lot, and unjustly. This world is like that; the innocent suffer for no cause save prejudice. And sometimes fighting back means losing everything. But that doesn’t mean the sacrifice isn’t worth it.
I’m being too hard on her I think. Not everyone can be like Sal, and damn the consequences. Some people just want to live in peace.
Not everyone’s up for putting themselves in that particular line of fire. (Hi, my joke is ‘My issue with punching Nazis is that I have chronically low muscle tone!’) And those that are should probably consider as their first line of responsibility to not make everything worse. That’s part of why white people at racial equality protests are told to amplify and follow what the organizers say – if things get violent, it doesn’t matter who in the crowd started it, what matters is who’s most likely to get hurt.
Fighting injustice is noble and necessary. Doing so literally is sometimes necessary as well. But if you’re putting the people you’re trying to protect in harm’s way in the process, and they don’t want to be there? Then yeah, they’re allowed to not be thrilled by that.
But Marcie didn’t get to choose to lose everything. That’s something that’s happening to her as a splashback and just.. general result of being in the vicinity of Sal’s actions.
Sal isn’t making any sacrifices though. Marcie is the one losing stuff.
It’s been implied that Marcie’s injury, the one that prevents her from being able to talk, was caused when Sal fought back against the kid bullying her. Sal mentioned she knows she didn’t do it but that it’s her fault and swears to never fight again.
Despite this, she still pulls a knife on another kid and it’s reasonable to assume Marcie faced some backlash (Though it’s not explicitly stated). At least from Linda.
And then, she fights in front of Marcie. The one thing she promised not to do. Which she has done several times now, but is connected directly to Marcie. Marcie was on duty, it was her job to prevent fights, and she got fired because of it.
Obviously we see things mostly from Sal’s perspective so it’s easy to sympathize with her, but Marcie has clear reasons to be upset.
I agree, I don’t think Sal’s willingness to stand up to and sometimes fight bullies is a bad thing. And I think we’re missing a bit of backstory on how exactly Sal’s fighting those bullies has hurt Marcie. Because it just seems odd to me that Sal should feel guilty for that.
I don’t think that it’s Sal’s fault in that she was the direct cause. However, I think that Sal was probably the cause of the general incident that affected Marcie. Maybe she was hit by a flying body or tried to intervene and got shoved into whatever injured her. Hence the term ‘spashback’. Marcie has the tendency to be affected by the response Sal’s aggressive behaviour just by being around her.
1) So far, all of the people Sal & Amazi-Girl have beaten up were all unequivocal bad guys. What if they misunderstood a situation and assaulted an innocent?
2) What if they got into a fight with someone who actually knows what he or she is doing? I mean like a boxer or a Krav Maga black belt or an MMA fighter?
If you’re trying to avoid being deported by attracting the attention of the authorities and/or get a job in law enforcement, your closest friend going around as part of a vigilante squad of ass beaters is not helping your life.
These are superhero/action movie tropes we’re working with here.
1) Wacky misunderstandings happen, but no one get seriously hurt in them.
2) Then they’ve obviously met a major villain and will have to get away and come up with way to beat them in the inevitable rematch.
I don’t know how many superhero things you’ve seen, but innocent people do get seriously hurt by misunderstandings. That’s.. kind of a recurring thing.
Like, Create Your Own Villain is a trope built entirely upon that. Two examples I can think of in recent years that both come from the same event: Captain Marvel leading an ambush and an arrest on an innocent woman because some kid that sees the future saw that she was part of a splinter cell that she wasn’t, and Spider-Man hovering over a rehabilitated villain because of the same future kid seeing that he turns bad, which directly leads to the villain turning bad again. This isn’t even the tip of the iceburg of instances happening in comics, this is literally two examples from the same event.
And this was part of a giant crossover event about how this whole thing was bad.
It’s rarely however as simple as “superhero jumps down, punches guy she thinks is stealing something, but he’s actually innocent and she leaves him with permanent damage.” Which is more along the line of the original post.
The ways they screw up aren’t the ways real life people trying to do superhero things would actually screw up.
That kind of stuff still happened, though. Whenever they wanted to make a point of ‘don’t judge books by their covers’, they would have superheroes mistakenly assault people and realize they horribly misunderstood the situation. The original post didn’t even say anything about permanent damage, that was you. They just said “assaulted an innocent”, which is very plausible to happen.
I think it’s naive to not even consider that there could ever be a twist in a twist, given Willis’ writing style and given that this whole comic has made a point to have characters, like Sal, criticize AG’s method as being dangerous to herself and to others and to show that AG’s issues can have serious consequences to the people she’s fighting. Amber has put two people into a hospital, and those were ones who more or less “deserved” it. It’s not unreasonable to think that maybe someone that gets ready to assault people over underage drinking as a guise for their own issues might assault someone who doesn’t even have that as a flimsy justification.
Like, AG punching out a dude for thinking he’s lifting his own bike and not believing him at his word is not a reach.
The whole Sal thing was its own bad thing, I sort of feel like its seperate from the vigilantism thing because most people don’t have the same personal history with Amber Sal does.
Amazigirl tried to escalate vandalism into a fight though and since they were strangers its actually shows how she operates on a normal basis.
That’s very true. I think she did that at least twice. There were the guys tagging a sign, and there was a guy trying to break into a car, both of whom she was ready to fight despite them not going for it.
She also tackled Mike because she thought he drew dicks on the girls’ dorm whiteboards: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/interrogation/
And she’s openly said that she uses punching criminals in the face as a way to work through her issues. Like, excessive force is Amazi-Girl’s whole bag. Her sense of justice is skewed because she will show up ready to fight and then come up with a justification before she throws the first punch. It’s just waiting for something to go horribly wrong.
Sal, Ethan did nothing wrong in your first encounter. He didn’t attack you or accuse you when bringing it up. He seems to have put a good amount of effort into not escalating this situation himself. He let you dismiss him and return to him you were ready to talk about the incident.
I’m sure you could have screwed this up if you tried hard enough but de escalating situations were a video game you’d be bragging about surviving the tutorial. I wish I had time yo bring this up yesterday.
Well, she might blame Ethan for Amber stabbing her.
That wasn’t a disproportionate response when Amber did it, yet alone if Ethan did it. It wasn’t the right thing to do and was illegal but she could have killed him regardless of her intent.
If she’s escalating over a retaliation directly to her which was less than or equal to what she knows she did directly to him she’s 100% the problem. Yet alone thinking its what happened but not knowing, or thinking its his fault for having people care about him.
The fact is she wants credit that she did not essentially look for excuses to bully him. I believe if bullying was Sal’s default behavior Marcy wouldn’t even be looking to give her a chance.
Stabbing Sal when she was already detained and no longer a threat was disproportionate, it was just understandable under the circumstances.
As for the tutorial – yeah, pretty much this. That said, when you’ve struggled to play the video game at all, managing to complete the tutorial is definitely a step in the right direction.
I see. That’s how this loops back to the “A” girls. Not that I disagree with the concerns, raised. But. I mean. That exact “splash back” is kinda why that maybe Sal is the wrong one to point fingers at Amaze girl. Something neither of them KNOW at this point, but WE do. So. I wag finger at Sal via this knowledge even though that’s flawed on my end
“I keep being your collateral damage.”
Wait. Did Sal cause the voice loss? Did I miss that part? Or is there something else going on? Do we know what collateral damage means here yet?
Sal blames herself and promised Marcie shortly after that there would be ‘no more fighting’. We don’t know for sure yet, but there are definitely Implications.
Then the rally fight happened and definitely had at least SOME backlash for Marcie (it hasn’t been explicitly confirmed she was fired, but in Marcie’s angry text she says she ‘was’ a security trainee, past tense.) So it’s been at least twice.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-9-comic/01-flyin-to-the-red/fights/
She took responsibility for it happening, at least.
Marcie thinks Malaya has less splashback but how can she claim that if neither of them comprehend how they put the splash of fruit juice flavor in every starburst piece?! Stay humble Marcie!
Oh god I needed that laugh. Thank you.
Society needs people with integrety, but they can be a pain to have as friends.
Integrity is always good, unless it is Randy Marsh’s “tegrity”.
As long as they act with it, and have no regrets?
No Ragrets.
Marcie, I don’t think lack of integrity is something to search on a friend. Why are you even friends if Malaya has shown her interest in casual sex with strangers?… I am not going to kinkshame you, Marcie, but this is weird. Also, since when punching rapists and rapist apologists is collateral to you?
The current stuff with AG hasn’t affected Marcie, but she’s been staying away. When Sal got involved in the Ryan fight, Marcie got in trouble because she was a security trainee at the rally it occurred at. (And Marcie uses ‘was’ which says to me ‘is no longer’.)
Marcie’s job was the latest collateral damage of Sal’s search for justice.
Heavens knows, there’s no possible collateral damage to Malaya’s screw authority approach to life. That said, Malaya has been nicer than she had to be to Joyce, Marcie, and even if Carla’s manner of flirting freeks her out a little, Carla. And she takes no grief from Mary. Malaya may be a disaster waiting to happen, but it would take an absolute curmudgeon not to like her a little.
Also Marcie has a crush on her and that kind of stuff tends to cloud one’s judgment.
That or she just wants the booty. Agaian, I am not kinshaming Marcie, but there’s a time an d a place for everything.
Yeah but Malaya is nice to Marcie so apparently that makes it okay that she’s a horrible person to everyone else.
Why would Malaya’s interest in casual sex with strangers make Marcie not want to be her friend? Now, her apparent lack of interest in (casual or non-) sex with Marcie might be a problem.
Seriously, what does Malaya’s casual sex habits have anything to do with Marcie being her friend? Why would they stop being friends just because she has casual sex with people? Even if you’re going at it from the “Marcie’s interested in her angle”, Marcie’s only interested on a casual level too.
Marcie has also had a history of bad stuff happening to her via association with Sal. It’s not really Sal’s fault, but Marcie has: lost her voice, been attacked over beer, lost her job if not also her wages for that night. And that’s just the stuff we know about. Following that train, the collateral that Marcie’s likely talking about is if someone recognizes who Sal is because she doesn’t bother to hide her appearance, and then later goes after Marcie because they saw the two of them together. It’s happened before. She doesn’t want to be around for it to happen again.
She is heavily implying that both Malaya and Sal have a lack of integrity. But Sal’s particular lack of integrity (i.e. promising she wont fight anymore, keeps fighting and holds up a convenience store. Reprimanding Amazi-Girl based on her own experiences but then going along with amazi-girl’s shit anyway. etc) has a history of turning Marcie into collateral damage, whereas thus far Malaya has caused no such blowback.
That being said, obviously Marcie recognizes Malaya isn’t that great a person. She just thinks Malaya is fun to be around, hot, and she wants to bang her. Malaya showing interest in casual sex with strangers is…only going to make that potentially more viable?? The only issue being if Malaya is down for any kind of sex, casual or no, with women. Which is still up in the air, at the moment, but previous incarnations of Malaya indicate that yes–she is probably down to clown.
Keep trying, Marcie. You’ll get laid eventually.
Oooooh! Good callback to what Carla said to Ruth about being her collateral damage.
Sal doesn’t react when Marcie says “I keep being your collateral damage.” There’s a lot of character development implied there!
Sal felt, and surely still feels, that she was responsible for Marcie’s loss of voice. And now Marcie refers to it directly, and Sal does not respond with defensiveness or guilt. It’s just accepted between them that this thing happened and can be discussed openly.
Sal is apparently taking responsibility for that in a very mature way that many people don’t ever achieve. And Marcie knows she can trust that – even in the middle of a difficult conversation, directly invoking that in passing is not going to derail the conversation.
In addition to their maturity, it seems like evidence of a deeper level to their friendship than we’ve seen on-panel.
It would be a lot easier for us if your characters used Signed Exact English, but possibly less realistic.
Marcie, any splashback you get from malaya right now will taste of Joe.
I get the impression Marcie is trying very hard to fly under the radar in an America that is abelist and not too friendly to the children of illegal immigrants (who may include Marcie). She got seriously injured in what’s implied to be a result of Sal pushing back against bullying and has had to cope with that. Sal keeps pushing back and, of course, Marcie gets fired from her security job that she felt was a way into the police force. Marcie may agree with Sal but she wants to avoid attention and just get as much happiness as she can.
Sal is always ready for the next fight.
Iiiii’m always ready for a war again…
Go down that road again…
It’s all the same.
Iiiii’m always ready to take a life again…
You know I’ll ride again…
It’s all the same.
Tell me whoooo’s gon’ save me from myseeeelf?
When this life is all I knooooow?
Tell me who’s gon’ save me from this heeeeell?
Without you, I’m all aloooooone!
Who gon’ pray for me? (pray for me)
Take my pain for me? (take my pain for me)
Save my soul for me?
Cause I’m alone, you see…
If I gon’ die for you… (gon’ die for you)
If I gon’ kill for you… (gon’ kill for you)
Then I’ll spiiiill this blood for yoooou!
Sometimes, tragically, friendships don’t last. Sometimes, the way you look at the world and what you feel that you need to do in order to make the world work (not just for you) are just too different from your friend’s and things just can’t last. I feel that this is probably what is happening here.
I’m still pretty sure they’ll make up eventually, but it’s gonna take work for Sal to figure out how to consistently make de-escalating solutions (or even escalating ones that don’t blow up on Marcie).
Most (read:least) importantly, Sal’s status has finally been confirmed as sidekick, regardless of motorcycle
Robin has a motorcycle too. Hmm… Does Amazi-Girl own a car?
A lack of integrity does not a good romantic relationship make Marcie..
Maybe, but at least you will not be thrown under the bus because of lofty ideals.
Hell, it doesn’t even make a lasting sexual one either…
Who’s saying she’s wanting anything more than a quick fling?
I think Marcie is implying that Sal also lacks integrity (“this is wrong” *keeps doing it*), but Malaya’s doesn’t actually screw her over.
Blow back from Sal’s justice or hanging with Malaya and her abrasive nature. Dang it Sal, why must your justice be so unhealthy for Marcie’s health.
Posted without irony: Being the friend of a costumed vigilante is not a healthy place to be. Even if no-one directly targets you for reprisals, the stresses and dangers of their life choices will inevitably impact on your own life.
Pretty accurate. Probably why Amber keeps her costumed identity so far away from her (besides the obvious reason). Still…. between the two, I rather take my chances with Sal’s justice over Malaya’s abrasive nature, but I am super biased because I don’t like her and you (and everyone else) are more than welcome to disagree. ^_^U.
Wow, okay a couple of things.
1) I did not expect Marcie to be such an eloquent speaker.
2) After years of only reading her via interpretation and expression, I suddenly have a unique voice for her in my head. (Yes I know she spoke as a child but all kids have the same voice to me honestly).
3) It is amazing just how much more endearing Marcie suddenly feels to me after this single comic…
Thoughts?
It’s interesting that Sal had asked Danny to talk to Amazi-girl because she correctly pointed out that Amazi-girl was putting herself and others in danger along with escalating things to an over the top level. I’d almost say the things she said to Amazi-girl post-chase with Becky’s dad would then make her a hypocrite here BUT…
I think what’s going on here is basically like an addict falling off the wagon. After the robbery and such, Sal couldn’t really fight the way she had all her childhood and so she cooled down. And so Marcie felt safe to hang out with Sal. Even their initial fight with Amazi-girl was pretty tame and escalated by Malaya/Amazi-girl. Sal also backed down when prompted by Marcie. After drawing comparisons between herself and Amazi-girl, now they’re kicking ass together despite Sal previously thinking Amazi-girl should stop the superhero gig.
Poor Danny, lol. Sal suggests he tell Amazi-girl to stop only for her to join in, and his girlfriend broke up with him for talking to Sal, only for her alter to become close buddies with her. Maybe this was the true love triangle all along.
I strongly suspect that, barring a miracle, Danny is almost certain to end up someone’s Lois Lane or, mind-bendingly, Mary-Jane Watson.
As long as it’s not Gwen Stacy…
Considering his luck he just might.
Absolute worst-case scenario, Maria Castle with all that implies.
Oh boy, the person for whom Danny would be Maria Castle would make Amazi-girl look tame and rational. To be fair though I AM a bit of a Punisher fan so I’d kind of like to see that scenario.
I wonder who’s going to have the fact that they snipered people for jaywalking and littering ignored, then.
Aw man. I like both of them, this hurts 🙁
What was the problem exactly with the last “splashback?” It was Marcie’s job to do nothing about it and call police. She didn’t lose her security guard job.
It looks like she did, actually. Seems like her bosses (who were right fucking there and couldn’t be assed to do shit) threw her under the bus.
Her bosses were hardworking white people, not some lazy brownskin anchor baby, why would THEY be punished?
…
JFC, I actually have to tag this as sarcasm, don’t I?
*sigh*
/s
I’m still mad that they couldn’t be bothered to do anything because ‘Iunno, Amazi-Girl’. Like if they’d said ‘Dude, you’re not paying me anywhere near enough to get involved in that’ I could at least understand that. Or hell, even ‘Policy is call the cops and stay out of it’ but no, apparently that’s too much work.
And they sided with AG over Sal the MOMENT they saw AG. Assholes.
Don’t even get me started.
oh Sal
I find it interesting that Sal seems to both be speaking out loud and using sign language at the same time.
My mom is half deaf and she does that when she’s signing with other people. I imagine it’s different for other people like I think sometimes my mom talks while signing to keep others in the room keyed into the conversation. The other reason for it that also fits with my mother, is just being used to talking and maybe it helps the thought process for signing too? I’m not very sure since I know maybe ten signs in ASL, but my parents and some extended family all sign. If they don’t talk, they tend to mouth their words.
I should also mention that with my parents/extended family, my mother is the only one who technically ‘needs’ to sign, everybody else is more like Sal in that they learned to communicate.
Without the translations it kinda looks like Marcie & Sal are having an awesome Naruto battle. Which is now what this scene really is in my headcanon
[snorts] I think there was this gif of Kakashi and some other ninja (or maybe it was Sasuke…) doing hand seals at each other and the caption was “When two deaf kids get into an argument”
GET YOUR REVENGE SAL! NEVER DESCALATE!
REVENNGGGEE!
I think I must have missed something. Why does Sal sign for Marcy?
Habit. Apparently it’s the done thing when you talk with someone who uses ASL.
*Marcie walks off*
Sal:… AN’ I AIN’T NO SIDEKICK!!
Marcie is… kinda pissing me off
I’m too focused on “that is why we are friends”. Present tense.
And because I’m a big nerd who Googled these:
Panel 1: Sal signs “big deal” (translation site showed as “no big deal” but I might be wrong).
Panel 2: Marcie signs “actual” or possibly “real”.
Panel 3: Hard to tell but I’m pretty sure Marcie is signing “justice”.
Panel 4: Sal is signing “control”.
Panel 5: Marcie is either signing “read” or “adventure”.
Panel 6: Marcie is signing “integrity”.
IIRC, Panel 1 is Sal signing “important,” because there’s no ASL that specifically means “a big deal.”
Ah! Thanks for clarifying, that was a tricky sign to find. 😀