Yeah this would be an excellent time for her to discover people don’t think as highly of her as she thinks they do. Let’s see, what few friends does she have here? Jason? I don’t think he’ll be happy to speak with her after she lost him his job. Billie? She’s losing touch with her old dormmates because she’s finally found some who actually look up to her. Danny? He comes off nice but he doesn’t stick up for someone who lets him down. Amazi-girl? Sal doesn’t even know who she is.
Ethan will probably let her down the most gently, which is why her finding him first is going to make this discovery especially painful.
I blame Penny. She is more at fault for it than anyone else is, and she didn’t even know about Jason sleeping with Sal. Jason and Sal both had a hand in making Jason get fired, but more than anything it was Penny’s fault.
Eh, what Penny did was shitty, but if he hadn’t actually banged Sal, it would’ve been a minor inconvenience. “Penny said you banged a student.” “What? That’s a bald faced lie!” “Yeah, everybody knows she hates you, but we had to ask, you know?”
Hell, if he was even halfway willing to fight for his job,he could’ve gotten around it, maybe without even lying. “I know I shouldn’t have had relations with a student, but I did give her work to another TA to grade, I was absolutely clear to her she would not get preferential treatment, and she is now working with a different tutor.” I mean, it’s not ideal, but he’s taken steps to minimize the conflict of interest and he is a -student- TA. I mean, Ruth’s situation has already shown us the administrative culture in the school is willing to sweep some things under the rug. (Her situation was also arguably much worse than Jason’s.)
Your description of Sal’s friends doesn’t really make much sense to me.
Jason doesn’t appear to be holding any kind of grudge against Sal; like BBCC said, the one most responsible for Jason getting kinda-sorta fired is himself (with Penny being the distant second). Billie and Sal have never been all that close, even when they were roommates. Regarding Danny, how exactly has Sal let him down recently? Failing to notice that he was saying goodbye isn’t exactly a relationship-breaker. And as for Amazigirl, the fact that Sal doesn’t know who it is under the mask is pretty irrelevant, considering that Marcie wouldn’t consider her a good reference anyway.
Out of all of them, Ethan is probably the least likely to turn Sal down. Remember, Ethan was the one that sought her out to talk about the convenience store incident. What is it about their interaction afterwards that makes you think Ethan’s gonna tell her “Sorry, can’t help you, you’re super violent and unstable, please go away,” or something to that effect?
How about the fact that Marcie did exactly that thing despite being Sal’s best friend?
Seriously, did I miss an entire chapter? When we last saw Marcie before this chapter, she and Sal had been getting along pretty well, with Sal having just realized what the problem was between her and Marcie. (At the time it was heavily implied there wasn’t a problem, that Marcie just wanted to plow the asshat with the lizard). What the heck happened? Where was the chapter where Marcie just said ‘f off my main dude’?
The part where Sal got into a fight at the political rally where Marcie was a trainee in security. (Aka when Ryan came back into the plot.) This at least got Marcie reprimanded and almost certainly cost her the job, especially since the big fight that broke out was between Sal and AG (two unrelated people, one of whom Marcie invited) and the rally’s interns. Which was actually a while ago, you didn’t miss a chapter so much as a book.
This isn’t really about Malaya, though the two of them being completely unable to exchange basic pleasantries without hating each other is an issue given they’re also roommates. It’s about Sal’s tendency to start fights getting MARCIE in trouble by being close by, and probably the fact that Sal promised after Marcie’s injury no more fights and hasn’t been able to keep it.
I’d say distant because Jason actually banged the student. Which is what I’d say instigated the whole thing. (Arguably Sal instigated the banging, but that doesn’t really matter because it’s his job not to bang students, even if they want to.)
Yeah, if Jason HADN’T banged a student, then Penny’s baseless spite-filled accusation would be met with him going ‘what student?’ and either getting a name and some odd behavior to which he could go ‘yeah no, my office hours just didn’t work with their class schedule’ or get nothing and respond ‘so you believed an employee who was getting fired, who hates me, on no evidence? You realize any student I would produce to contest this would be an admission of something inappropriate, yes? And that anyone sexually extorting their students for grades would continue to extort them into coming to their defense?’ Or something less critical of the system, probably.
But because the accusation WASN’T baseless and there apparently WAS a name or something attached, Jason saw it, went on an angry monologue at another student admitting his guilt, and then decided to just take the firing. This was policy. Jason knew he could get fired for it and knew why the rule existed and apparently knew that Sal was doing this for grades per Slipshine, which a responsible authority figure should respond to up front with ‘I will not change your grades for sex, if you want your grades changed you should find a tutor whose style suits you better, if you want sex you should find someone who’s not currently your teacher.’ Jason getting fired is Jason’s fault.
I don’t think she thinks ANY of them think highly of her. That’s sal’s whole thing. Some of them idolize shit she *does* like riding a motorcycle, but she knows she doesn’t have many friends. Closest she has atm are Danny, maybe carla, n Joyce. (Danny n carla moreso than joyce, bc duh)
I think Ethan has more of that sort of look that says “who’re you lookin’ at? no, I did not look in your direction and totally have no knowledge in events which may or may not be transpiring somewhere near me but outside of my peripheral vision please ignore mejustscootinthroughguysplease”
So many memories! Thank you for this. Now every time I see your avatar, it will remind me of the time that Becky grew up and started living. It will remind me of the BEGINNING.
Oh yes! I love Willis explanation of how he was very conscious of the common use of gay characters in media, as a side character in someone elses story. They do their bit, they induce character growth and they leave (too often fatally).
Becky DID help Joyce grow and learn a number of life lessons*, but that was not all she did – she also firmly planted the foundation of HER OWN story, and when the chapter was over, the dust had settled and the Toe were carried away by all the cops, Becky was not gone, she was there to stay.
Not the end, but the beginning. And what an awesome story it is!
*) Dina as well, but that’s a completely different, much more dofusi story.
Brings new meaning to the lyrics of ‘Let Me Take a Selfie’ by The Chainsmokers.
And looking at the lyrics, I see it almost seems to be mentioning DoA characters. It has Jason, Sierra, and possible mention of Sal. I suspect the song could be told from the perspective of Penny.
When did Marcie’s problem with Sal shift from her reckless conflict-causing to her being antisocial? The first is a thing she does, the latter is how she is. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with being people-averse? It’s bothering me a bit that it seems like Marcie is making her friendship conditional on … Sal making other friends? Sure, in an ideal world she should make new friends but that’s particularly hard for Sal, and it won’t be any easier if the one friend she does have places these terms and conditions on their relationship.
The friends thing was a problem before the reckless conflict causing. Sal bringing it up (in addition to her bringing up her talk with Ethan) is probably her trying to say she knows what Marcie’s concerns are and she’s trying to address them. Marcie needs evidence over anecdotes this time because she is being cautious and trying not to get hit with more splash back, and so is (for now) keeping her distance.
In fairness, Sal’s the one that made it about her being friendless. First with saying in front of Marcie that Malaya was stealing her friendship away (despite Marcie telling her earlier that day exactly what her problem with Sal was), and now here where Sal is saying that she’s making friends. If I were to make a leap, I’d say that Sal is trying to say that she’s making normal friends besides Amazi-Girl who are less likely to lead Sal into situations where there is significant splashback onto Marcie. But she’s missing some of that extra information and so it feels like she’s just switching focus entirely, ignoring that that’s not the problem here.
I also want to point out that at no point did Marcie ever create a stipulation or conditions that Sal has to make more friends besides her. The only thing that Marcie has ever told Sal was that her actions tend to have direct consequences for Marcie. And.. if there’s any conditions put on a relationship, “stop doing shit that negatively affects me” isn’t entirely unreasonable, especially when that often involves physical violence.
On a deeper level, Sal’s long been focused on “I only need one friend”, with strong implications that Marcie should be the same way. She’s been threatened by Marcie doing other things and not spending enough time alone with her – partly her work schedule, but also Malaya and roller derby in general. Sal being able to make other friends lessens her dependence on Marcie and that may well be good for their relationship.
Even though it’s not something Marcie’s talked about before on panel, there have been enough hints and she seems to confirm it here.
Side note: Did Marcie start roller derby to get closer to Malaya? In that “I wanna hit that” strip way back, Sal and Marcie are in the audience. Marcie wasn’t on the team yet?
There was a flashback, but Marcie was on the team as of at least When Somebody Loved Me. That said it could’ve been her first game? So: possible, not certain. If it were their first encounter with Malaya it makes Sal’s immediate assumption of wanting to punch her and Marcie meaning the same pretty unreasonable, so maybe they already knew Malaya and she invited Marcie to roller derby? Not sure. Counting scenes, first interaction they share is the car park beer sharing that ends in AG showing up, where they seem to already know each other, followed by the conversation after Marcie’s recruited and playing… But that still leaves several weeks for them to meet beforehand that we don’t know timeline on.
I feel like a lot of people are kind of crapping on Sal for some pretty harsh reasons.
Why SHOULD someone have more then one good friend in an idealistic world? Man, sometimes I’m lucky to have even that. But here we have Marcie chasing after a girl for sex, and maybe crushing on her a little, while doing it at the cost of a friendship she had, before that point, actively encouraged to be… veeeery close.
It’s fine that Marcie makes more friends. Its fine that as time goes on, she wants to spend time with people other then Sal. But she never spends time just with Sal. She always bring along someone who is this horrible little brat who regularly insults Sal for, as far as we can see, little reason other then because she can.
Honestly, aside from years of friendship, why does Sal even like Marcie? Marcie seems to be bringing up this Splashback stuff out of nowhere (because the flashbacks happened, I guess?), never hangs out with Sal alone, is spending most of her time with a girl that is extremely caustic and venomous when dealing with Sal, all for what seems to be some sex or a rather hidden agenda for a relationship, while Sal does her best to…
What, exactly? What caused Marcie’s sudden doubt and dislike? Last time we saw these two before this chapter actually do anything significant, it was wrapping up their last bit of drama, where Marcie straight up admitted she was ditching Sal for a chance at some tail, something which has multiple different awful connotations considering how she’s ditching an apparently life long friend for it and not being straight with Malya, instead doing things like hanging in the same bed under false pretenses. Guys get flak for that kind of crap all the time but it’s okay here because Marcie is cute?
But really, what does Sal need to prove? I get why she’s bothering to try, Marcie is her best friend, but why do people in the comics think she should given how very little ‘friendship’ we’ve seen come from Marcie in recent comics… or in the comics in general?
As I said upthread, you missed the inciting incident of this fight: Sal costing Marcie a job with her fighting. The splashback thing is relevant because that’s exactly what Marcie is actually angry about and has actual, very recent consequences for Marcie.
And remember, Marcie’s not a student – she came up here just to be closer to Sal and has to keep terrible minimum wage jobs to share a crowded apartment. That’s a huge show of friendship (and Marcie’s the only one who apparently stayed in contact with Sal after she was shipped off to Tennessee, also a big deal to Sal,) and also a whole lot of effort that means Marcie’s free time is significantly less than Sal’s and Sal costing her that job was especially shitty.
I didn’t miss that. I missed how Sal defending herself and another woman from assault somehow makes her a bad person. Is she just supposed to stand around and do nothing? Marcie’s been a prick since the start when it comes to Malya but this really takes the cake if that’s why she’s made.
that’s the bad part, imo. as much as I like sal, insisting on fighting there was a real jerk move, even before we knew she’d promised to not do exactly that.
after that, amazi-girl gets the blurry photo, finds and confronts “ryan”, fights him and his minions, sal joins in to save her, and they go on the chase for the amazi-phone. that part’s pretty noble; it probably added to marcie’s trouble too, but honestly, she was probably already fired by then anyways.
No one said that Sal was a bad person. Sal stepping in to help AG fight off Ryan and his goons was due to her sense of justice and it was noble, yes, but Sal didn’t appear to tell Marcie or any of the staff what was going on. Neither did Amazi-Girl, until after they beat up the rest of the guys and Ryan got away. To the security team and to the organizers of the event, you have these two women assaulting four of their interns out of nowhere. Literally no one but Sal and AG know why they are doing what they are doing.
And that’s the entire problem. What Sal did was for a good cause, but she didn’t tell Marcie anything about what was going on before stepping in, and she didn’t wait for authority to step in to take care of it because she doesn’t trust it, and the end result is that it all negatively reflects back onto Marcie, because she’s the only reason Sal was at that event to begin with. Marcie is then unfairly blamed for the fight, loses her job, and at the end of it, still doesn’t appear to know why Sal did it. And at no point did Sal explain what happened or apologize for it.
Even though Sal was doing a good thing, her actions directly lost Marcie her job. And for Marcie, who lives in poverty in an apartment with several other roommates, that’s pretty significant. That’d be pretty significant even if she were relatively well off otherwise. That’s a shitty thing for a friend to do, whether intentional or not.
what the heck! doesn’t Sal defend herself from Malaya’s idiot comment yesterday? Doesn’t MARCIE defend Sal??
Marcie might be angry at Sal, but what Malaya said is blatantly wrong and Marcie knows it! But instead of telling Malaya anything, she just lands another hit on Sal. Marcie knows that Sal is upset and she throws this at her again?
It feels like Marcie is just pushing Sal further and further away. Like I know Marcie doesn’t OWE it to Sal to be her emotional support, it just feels like she’s constantly cold and unpleasant for someone who is supposedly her best friend
Sal always takes the (verbal) hits without fighting back. It’s like she feels it’s better to save face than to try and look petty defending herself against someone who may or may not believe her.
I more meant in how many times she’s probably had to defend herself to her mom and other authority figures, than that she had a martyr complex. I mean, my mom was not nearly like Linda and I still have so many things similar to that ingrained, and I moved out seven years ago.
Well I wonder how many times Sal has “defended” Marcie in the past when maybe Marcie didn’t actually want or need defending or Sal pushes everyone away except for Marcie because she doesn’t want to seem as if shes deserting Marcie even though Marcie may not want to be smothered by Sal
Like when younger and Sal decided that is was up to her to raise the money for Marcie, did Sal really think Marcie would have accepted or been impressed by Sal raising the money through robbery or had Marcie accepted her condition but Sal couldn’t let her self-imposed martyrdom go, that she had to “fix” it
For someone who’s Sal’s oldest friend, Marcie sure doesn’t seem to be doing much to try to maintain that friendship right now. And I don’t think Sal’s really done anything to intentionally hurt Marcie either.
That’s part of what’s pissing me off about Marcie. Sal seems more than willing to explain herself but Marcie doesn’t want to hear any of it, so while the excuse that she doesn’t know why Sal reacted the way she does to Amber at that rally is true, it’s also something Marcie’s had a hand in- she could have known if she’d listened.
Sal got stalked and harassed repeatedly until she got tired of it and snapped- and jumped into a fight against a group of men pinning down a lone woman (one of whom was a rapist.) If Marcie had asked instead of freezing Sal out, she’d have known that. Marcie lost her job, but that fight was more Amber’s fault than Sal’s and blaming Sal for it is pretty stupid, in my opinion.
(Sal’s recent team up with Amazigirl against the petty criminals is another thing altogether, but Marcie’s cold shouldering wasn’t even about that.)
Basically Marcie is okay hanging out with Malaya who doesn’t have an ounce of morality and actively treats nice people like trash, who she admits is lacking in Sal’s higher character, but is willing to accept because her lack of integrity means Marcie’s safer. Which is fine, but…I mean, in my opinion, awful. She’s very lax on Malaya’s failings and severe with Sal’s, I guess because when Malaya’s an asshole to someone it doesn’t affect her personally.
I’m just very disgusted with Marcie right now. Both Sal and Marcie have had a hand in the way the friendship is falling apart, but Sal seems willing to work on it and Marcie is just putting it all on her and again putting Sal in the position where she feels like she has to somehow ‘prove herself’ to someone she cares about.
I 100% support Marcie distancing herself from Sal when it’s dangerous to her (even non-literally), has lost her a job, and so on, and I get why Malaya, despite being an asshole, is easier to be around, but I agree with the rest of this. It seems like Marcie doesn’t want to keep being friends, and since she’s the one setting up hoops, it feels like she should be the one to say that she wants a break, or to not hang out anymore, or whatever. Because right now, it feels like she might ghost Sal.
I want to clarify that I am not disgusted with Marcie as you are, I just think she’s doing everything in a shitty way, and if she’s not actually trying to create distance, she’s doing an even worse job.
Yup. I think Marcie should be honest and say why she doesn’t want to be friends anymore at least for now (with some good reason) instead of dangling the promise of making up in front of Sal with strings attached when in fact nothing Sal does will be good enough.
Right now I think what’s left of their friendship hurts both of them and it’d be better to call it quits, as sad as that is.
Marcie has, though – the splashback and Sal getting in fights. Marcie didn’t really set up a hoop so much as ‘I can see you’re continuing to get in fights and that means I am not safe.’ The making other friends thing isn’t what the fight is about, Sal’s just deciding that for herself.
Marcie should have listened to Sal about why the rally fight happened (at least, the Ryan part of it – Marcie called her supervisors the moment AG was out of the shadows and it was clear she was stalking. Things hadn’t really escalated past that before the supervisor appeared, sided with AG automatically because said supervisor’s shit, and AG got the rally of racism realization and saw Ryan, prompting the real fight that actually got Marcie in trouble.) But Sal never bothered to check in with Marcie after that fight, even to confirm to her that SAL was okay – she doesn’t realize Marcie is pissed until Marcie’s not waiting for her after class as usual. That is… not a good move either. They both failed communication there.
What I mean is that Marcie is suggesting to Sal that Sal can “redeem herself” in her eyes by doing certain things, and then that’s never good enough.
Marcie should be honest here if she doesn’t want to be around Sal anymore. Yes, she has suffered due to events that Sal caused and has good reason to not want to be friends any longer, but putting pressure on Sal like she’s doing now is not friendship.
Marcie wants evidence Sal is actually doing those things though. She’s been pretty consistent about that. Marcie’s still willing to call Sal her friend right now, but she’s getting her distance until she has evidence Sal’s working on things. Not just Sal’s word or anecdotes. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
Marcie’s been trying to get Sal to make more friends so she’s less emotionally dependant on Marcie exclusively. It’s been a thing since before the rally. And she wants to see proof Sal’s working on her tendency to escalate situations without thinking about consequences for those around her (particularly Marcie).
Wait, wait, wait… Are you implying that Marcie is mad at Sal because Sal defended herself and another woman from a group of violent thugs, one of them a rapist? Is that… really why she’s angry?
If that’s really it then I’ve lost what little sympathy I had for Marcie.
Marcie never heard why Ryan was attacked until either seeing the blurry photo passed around or hearing about him in the aftermath of the stabbing. When Marcie got angry, all she knew was Sal and a vigilante (who had previously been attacking Sal for no reason) attacked an intern at the political rally Marcie was guarding. I think she would be a bit more sympathetic to the fights if Sal actually explained herself in full – ‘I’m going after a rapist and the people who continue to harass his victims now that he’s dealt with and they’ve come forward, and the person helping me doesn’t tell me up front she seeds the threads doxing these women with dummies so I think people are actually in danger’ – but 1) Sal doesn’t really explain herself, which I agree is probably because her shitty parents made it clear she won’t be believed or reasons valued, and 2) Sal really doesn’t appear to get that the problem is the fights.
I don’t know if she’d be angry if she knew exactly why the fight happened, so I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt there. She might still be angry about losing her job and she might still, to some extent, blame Sal if she thinks Sal shouldn’t get into fights ever because she made a promise at fourteen years old.
I think she’s angry at Sal because she thinks Sal’s only solution to being antagonized is to escalate into violence (which honestly is not true and is kinda racist and feeds into the angry black woman stereotype), she hasn’t really talked to Sal about why the fight happened and doesn’t seem to care.
Basically I don’t blame Sal for the loss of Marcie’s voice or her job. I don’t believe in assigning blame to people for things they only tangentially ‘contributed’ to and without intent. If Marcie lost her voice because a bully retaliated for Sal sticking up for her, that’s on the bully and not Sal. If she lost her voice because of a Dumbledore situation in which Sal got into a fight with someone and a blow accidentally got Marcie, that’s not anyone’s direct fault either. I don’t think Marcie’s emotions are invalid, but you’re allowed to feel your feelings and realize that you’re holding irrational resentment at the same time.
(Also, I know it’s called Dumbing of Age not Smarting of Age but I am allowed to be annoyed or frustrated at the particular configuration of emotional idocy I’m reading.)
I think the ‘no fights’ thing has an underlying concern, though – ‘don’t make other people collateral damage for your bad decisions’, which is one of those rules that is reasonable for most human beings. Sal DID apparently get into a lot of fights as a young kid, that’s why she made Marcie that promise, and she IS getting in them now. Marcie HAS been seriously negatively impacted by being around Sal when they happen. Neither of those is a hypothetical. And while Marcie agrees with Sal’s passion and sense of justice, Sal herself has pointed out that beating up Ryan’s mooks isn’t a good long-term solution.
And even if Marcie getting fired was her supervisors’ fault, it’s also a very foreseeable consequence of Sal’s actions. Sal came to the rally to hang out with Marcie (and only that – she hated Robin and openly talked shit about the situation.) Sal then, alongside a vigilante, beats up some interns at the rally who are by all accounts fine upstanding citizens (consider who we’re dealing with here,) and by the shitty supervisor’s shitty perspective, it was Marcie’s undesirable friend who brought the vigilante and thus Sal and by extension Marcie caused this unpleasantness. It was a shitty job with a shitty supervisor, but Marcie needs employment too much to be picky so it’s pretty important that Sal not jeopardize things.
The voice thing was probably not actually Sal’s fault, but if Sal assigns this huge blame to herself and then keeps getting in situations that get Marcie in trouble? That’s a sign that Sal isn’t really a safe friend to be around because even knowing her actions have consequences for other people and feeling bad about them, she keeps charging headlong into situations that end up hurting those other people. And that Sal DIDN’T consider the consequences to Marcie after the rally and apologize immediately and confirm she was safe or anything of the sort makes it even worse. (For instance, an apology and explanation paired with ‘do you want help finding something else in that pay grade? I promise not to hang out while you’re there until I can be sure nothing like this happens again’ would go over way better than one without.)
I’ve seen your argument all along this thread and I just don’t agree with it at all. None of the ‘trouble’ that followed Sal in that rally was her fault: one was being constantly forced into a defensive situation by a stalker that she actually repeatedly tried de-escalation techniques with (like in the parking lot where she refused to fight her), and I don’t blame her for finally lashing out. And then the fight that was the last straw? She jumped in to save someone and I will never blame anyone for doing that. Sometimes you have to get into a fight. It sucks that Marcie got fired but I can’t see an ideal alternative because if Sal had not intervened in the fight when she did, Amber would have been severely injured.
Your whole middle paragraph there about the bullshit logic of the supervisors: while I understand why they fired Marcie and their shitty perspective, it still doesn’t make it Sal’s fault. It’s still the supervisor’s fault! If my friend got sleazed on by someone in my restaurant and punched them and I lost my server job because of it, I would not blame my friend! And I am a broke working class person in more Marcie’s position than Sal’s. I get that this is causality from Sal being in a fight, but the fight wasn’t started by her and honestly should have been stopped by security before it got to the point where Sal felt like she had to jump in and help.
The last paragraph is the point I’ll give you, that Sal could have apologized to confirm she was safe or asked after her job. But my point has always been that they are both actively fucking this up and Marcie is annoying me MORE because it seems like she is putting all of it on Sal instead of examining how she’s dealing with the situation too.
Sal, you don’t have to prove anything to Marcie. If she wants to hang out with Malaya, so be it. You don’t owe her anything anymore. Also, please don’t drag Ethan into this already convoluted drama.
Oh Sal.
I do kind of wish for Malaya to find out why Marcie is interested, but only b.c I’m morbidly curious what would happen. Other than that, this could be good for Sal, but also eh forced.
That she’s making an effort to address Marcie’s concerns – to wit, Sal’s lack of other friends and emotional reliance on Marcie, and her tendency to get into reckless situations without thinking about potential consequences for those around her (particularly Marcie).
Except that outright demanding that she “prove” such a thing is just encouraging her emotional reliance on Marcie – something that should be intuitively obvious from the one making the demand. She’s exercising power over Sal that she has to know she has, and when something like “make friends” or “improve yourself” essentially becomes a command, the friends can’t be genuine, no lessons can be learned, and it serves as an inherent drain on self-worth.
Marcie is being at least as unreasonable as Sal here, and is failing to understand her current position.
That’s a good point; If you’re told by someone to go make friends, then your motivation for making those friends is ultimately to do what that person says. Then they get the easy out to turn around and say “Well, you’re only doing it because I said to, so you clearly don’t actually care about these people and you’re just putting on a show.” It’s sketchy at best.
Marcie’s been trying to get Sal to make other friends even when they were still hanging out. Sal’s not pulling that out of nowhere. That’s very much a ‘Look, I heard what you were saying before, I’m working on it, really’. Unfortunately for Sal, since Marcie got burned not that long ago, Marcie wants to see evidence she’s working on it rather than taking Sal at her word.
The only slight justification I can think of for Marcie here is that it’s been maybe a week since Marcie was apparently fired from her security job, because Sal and AG were brawling with honest volunteers at Robin’s rally. (Yes it was probably spun that way). Losing her job, potential career, money, livelihood, only a week ago, because of Sal. Good intentions or not that still stings. I would understand if Marcie’s even holding a grudge for that.
It does irk me that Marcie’s been okay to play spectator while Malaya continues to berate Sal, and possibly even clued Malaya in to Sal’s association to AG giving her ammunition to make that dig. (I doubt Malaya figured it out on her own). Yet she’s also requesting for Malaya to “be nicer” which obviously isn’t working and Malaya’s trying nowhere near as hard as Sal but gets a free pass because…? She’s hot I guess? She has less “splash back”? I get it, but you’re kind of torturing your friend Marcie.
So the next chronological preview panel on the Tumblr was for… *checks* the next strip, actually, and it shows Ethan and Amber meeting outside in late-evening lighting.
And this strip has Sal chasing after Ethan while they’re both outside.
Use the A tag. [a href=”URL”]TEXT[/a]
Change [ and ] to , and [a href=”ttps://media3.giphy.com/media/Zsxh9Cbq7VCy4/giphy.gif?cid=3640f6095be911e255656468453824e4″]for example[/a] would produce this link, for example.
Looks like you got it. Glad to be of help. Sorry about the brackets, not sure where they disappeared to. In my defense, thumb-typing is hard. I’m sure I could have done better with a real keyboard and meece.
My not-optimistic guess is, she tells Marcie to wait, and, as Marcie watches, grabs Ethan (by the shoulder or whatever), setting off Amber, for a potential fight or a break down, either of which would look worse to Marcie.
I mean, not physically fighting Malaya there (and not attempting to, for Marcie to intervene) is a marked improvement, though Sal maybe shouldn’t point it out.
I feel like Sal should just take a (more intentional) break from Marcie. She has shit she has to work on, she also has (presumably full-time) classes, and maybe if she spent time working on it without looking for Marcie’s approval, it would go further- in helping her find other ways to cope, in that she could make more visible improvements before seeing Marcie next, and just in making it something that is completely for herself.
It’s a shitty thing to have to do, but it’s what I’d do.
That also doesn’t suggest anything helpful re Malaya living with her, as Malaya’s unlikely to leave Sal alone about any of that happening.
Prove that you’re making friends by wearing matching jackets with Carla.
In seriousness though, the more the rift continues, I wonder if maybe their friendship is just ending. It seems like a lot of things have been compounding for Marcie from their friendship, it’s not that she no longer likes Sal or thinks that she’s a bad person, she just finds Sal hard to hang out with nowadays. And eventually, if Sal is continually rebuffed, she’ll stop trying and start thinking, maybe the only thing she can do is fade out of Marcie’s life, since that seems to be what she wants. Maybe they just have too much history at this point?
I personally want them to be friends again and would rather look at vehicles for that, but yes to this as a possibility. I don’t think either of them are getting much from the friendship right now.
I mentioned yesterday that this was a possibility (in different terms.)
Sal can’t keep trying to prove she’s a better person if Marcie just… doesn’t seem to notice it. Or care. It’s better for her to leave her be for some time.
While it’s good that Marcie is making Sal hang out with other people, it seems to be more a case of her just being really into Malaya rather than actually wanting Sal to reform and work out her issues. In the long run, this is a good thing, since it will help Sal become more of her own person rather than defining herself around Marcie. In the short run though, Marcie is tethering herself to someone comes across as kind of narcissistic.
The more this arc goes the less I think of Marcie, yeah Sal has dicked on Marcie quite a bit but this behavior of Marcie seems almost like dangling the prize just out of reach and the prize being Marcies friendship
Not all friendships last forever and maybe now since the dynamics have changed its time for this friendship to be put to rest and Sal can look to others for friendship instead of worrying about deserting Marcie
The last conversation they had was Sal telling Marcie she was able to de-escalate a situation for once, and then in the last strip her immediate response to Malaya offering her to hang out was, “And watch you continue to steal my best friend?”Sal is not doing herself any favors here.
And it’s only been a few hours since their last conversation about Sal fighting thugs with a masked vigilante. The goalpost hasn’t changed, Sal hasn’t changed in the last few hours. If Sal’s going to tell Marcie that she’s in control, that she’s genuinely getting better, she has to actually do something. Because Marcie doesn’t have the knowledge that the comic audience does and she can’t see all the development Sal has and is currently going through. All she has seen is Sal continuing the same reckless behaviors with apparently no consideration for the fallout for the people around her.
Malya was actively insulting Sal while talking to her, has ALWAYS actively insulted Sal while talking to her, and has never been repentant about it. Sal is a fricking saint if that’s all she’s going to do when it comes to replying to Malya being an ass.
Yeah, Malaya was rude when she made the offer. And like I said yesterday, Sal has 0 obligation to hang out with people she doesn’t want to and should absolutely reject them when she can. But Sal chose to do so by claiming Malaya is stealing Marcie’s friendship away from her, in front of Marcie, which is completely childish. It’s not true in the slightest, least of all because Marcie told Sal exactly why she was keeping her distance. Malaya’s a safer friend to Marcie because she has less splashback, so Sal lashes out at Malaya stealing Marcie away. It’s ignoring the root of the problem entirely.
Yeah, even if Marcie weren’t hanging out with Malaya (Currently in a team sport context where she’s probably hanging out with the other derby girls too, she wouldn’t just skip out on this, but earlier for instance,) Marcie would still be deliberately hanging out with Not Sal.
That’s true, but the way Sal focused on Malaya stealing Marcie’s friendship away ignores how her own actions have pushed Marcie away. That was my point. And if Marcie had overheard Sal say that to Malaya, that could be a cause of concern. Frankly, if one of my friends claimed the other was stealing my friendship away after I had told them that I’m keeping my distance until they clean up their act, that would seem like a red flag. That’s kinda shitty behavior.
Sal could step out of a situation without going for the scapegoat that is Malaya. She could just say, “No thanks.” and carry on her day. It’s one of those situations where she comes across poorly to the people she’s with, because she just had to get a jab in at Malaya, who had made a (rude) but seemingly sincere offer.
*holds him at knifepoint* “Gimme all your friends!”
Except it’s not a knife; she’s offering him a candy bar and asking to join his friend circle, but the delivery comes across very badly.
Jeez this sentiment hit me hard. I just recently did something similar for my sister.
Im a problem solver type of person and i like to try to help the people i care about by solving problems for them. Usually its like fixing a thing or giving them a gift that they might not get for them selves to make life easier on them. Occasionally they come to me for advice.
Back in june my sister and i were plannin on taking my friend barcade hopping for our birthdays (he and i were born in the same month so we like to celebrate together). This whole thing is for him because he’s had a rough time growing up, and i want him to know that he has friends who are willing to go all out for him.
Well we had to change the date for later in the month because he couldn’t get time off for work, and my sister flipped out on me. Started talking about how she’s been depressed and talking about how our family is made of terrible people and how the thoght of me has kept her sane for years but any time she actually interacts with me things just get worse for her.
After hearing all of this the only thing i could think about was how her problem was that her ideal of me and the reality of me didnt match up and so the only solution i could come up with was to remove the reality of me from the equation, and let her have her ideal. It’s been months since i removed myself from her life and it’s been hard. Shes my sister and i love her, and if something is upsetting her and i can do something about it, im going to.
It’s been rough, and the visits are awkward now. But my parent’s say she’s been a lot happier lately, so ill just be happy hoping that ive helped her in some small way.
I wanna say Marcie’s being a little cold here, but this also proves none of them actually noticed Danny! That’s a sin! They have seen Sal hanging out with him right? That kinda blows Marcie’s whole get some more friends crusade out the water! They literally just came back from bike riding?! You’re mute Marcie, not blind!
Marcie seems like such a fun friend to hang out with for Sal these days: always judgemental and never a normal conversation. And am I the only one that finds it annoying that a ‘friend’ needs to prove her every word?
Yeah, I agree here. If Marcie keeps rebutting Sal’s every attempt to hang out and won’t accept an apology for what happened at that rally, Sal should back off and let it be.
This does not feel like a healthy friendship at all. Sal is still blaming herself for Marcie’s injury, and now job loss, and Marcie can’t forgive her (not saying she has to) and is consequently leaving alternatingly Sal hanging out cold and putting pressures on her that no friend should. Under these circumstances it may be better for both of them to call it quits.
Y’know, Sal, if you’d just make friends, instead of dragging your friendly acquaintances to Marcie and yelling ‘see, I make friends, please take me back’, you might actually have better luck convincing Marcie you’re making friends.
This is so true. Sal is so dependent on her connection with Marcie that she doesn’t seem to be able to properly function without it (or with Marcie limiting their contact). That isn’t healthy for her and I think Marcie has come to realise that.
Sometimes, you have to hurt a friend to help them. Forcing Sal to make emotional connections with people other than her (although I don’t think Marcie is necessarily going the right way about it) is something that will benefit Sal in the long run.
Y’know, I am having trouble remembering when Marcie last smiled or at least didn’t frown at Sal, her friend.
Instead she’s all smiles around Malaya, who seems like being mean to people, including Sal.
Doesn’t sound like a friendship worth keeping, to be real honest.
Marcie is a terrible friend. She’s a non-friend because she knows Sal’s history and social issues. Plus she literally drove there with a friend, so…yeah….
Marcie needs to come right out and say “I don’t want to be your friend, we are not friends anymore period,” because this “prove it” crap is borderline abusive.
Sal’s got problems, even more than we can see from our angle, but Marcie’s behavior is baffling if she thinks she might patch things up with Sal. I’m almost convinced Marcie’s only hanging out with Malaya because she knows how much it hurts Sal to see Marcie hanging out with someone Sal hates.
Really, Sal is doing a pretty good job making new friends. All she actually needs to change is her late-night brawls and her habit of taking Malaya’s bait. And so far, Marcie seems mooooostly reasonable about wanting to see some proof of Sal’s growth. It’s bordering on manipulative, right on the line, if I’m being nice. Now, if Sal keeps on her track of improvement, and Marcie sees that and tries to move the goalposts even a tiny bit, Sal’s better off without her, no matter how long they’ve been friends.
I speak from experience here, having been in roughly Sal’s position. Sometimes, nothing is good enough for your supposed friend, and they just dangle their friendship in front of you while treating every single thing you do as an act of hostility. Once that starts to happen, fuck ’em. They’re not worth your effort. I’d love to see Marcie not fall into that, but with her picking Malaya’s childish ass as a friend, I don’t have high hopes.
Well, you’re not wrong. Marcie seems to be doing similar, except with the opposite sort of company. She makes an effort to spend more time with abrasive jerks, while Sal’s budding friendships seem to be mostly harmless nerds (and AG).
Lets not forget also, that Marcie ,apparently,mainly spends time with Malaya because she wants to get with her in a sexual way. If that doesn’t pan out, Marcie could find herself alone without any friends at all.
I mean, the only other person she hangs out with seems to be Carla, and she seems to be a bit “meh” about deeper relationships between friends, at least so far.
Unpopular opinion:I don’t blame Marcie here. She is just saying that after Sal has engaged in a pattern of walking all over her boundaries, Sal needs to earn her forgiveness. That’s reasonable.
Do I wish she would say it explicitly so Sal knows what the conditions are? Sure, but this is Dumbing of Age, not Emotionally Adulting of Age.
If Marcie cannot forgive Sal (and that would be perfectly OK given what’s happened) she should tell her so, and then they can move on.
A friendship that relies on somebody having to struggle to redeem themselves in some way at the mercy of the other person (especially when they’re struggling with other things, too) is not healthy. In fact, I would say it’s not a friendship at all.
At that point they should just call it quits.
I think Marcie DOES want to forgive Sal, but I think she’s not ready to because, as ischemgeek said above, this is not Sal’s first time causing Marcie problems by not thinking through what she’s doing. I don’t think it’s wrong for her to want evidence Sal’s actually working on her concerns rather than taking Sal at her word, since this is a repeat issue.
It’s also hard to just take Sal at her word, when there’s seemingly evidence to the contrary.
“I met the kid I held hostage and we had a normal conversation. I de-escalated a situation!”
“I know you’ve been going around fighting street thugs with that superhero.”
“And I made sure to object before punching people in the face!”
Marcie doesn’t know all the information about what Sal is doing or who all is involved, all she knows is that it’s the same kind of reckless stunts that tend to negatively impact her. It’s not unreasonable to want solid assurance that Sal actually has things in control and isn’t going to do something that ends up with her going away again or with somebody getting hurt.
Separate issue, but I also really don’t get why Sal making other friends is relevant to Marcie forgiving her somehow.
As I said, I totally understand if Marcie can’t forgive Sal (yet) and does not want to spend time with her, I just don’t think placing weird demands on Sal that are basically impossible for Sal to meet (what are “enough” friends?) and thus disappointing Sal over and over again is the right way to go.
I really don’t think that was ever something Marcie asked of her, but something Sal took upon herself.
There’s only two things that I can think of as a reason for that.
1) If Sal has “normal” friends besides AG, then she is less likely to get into bad situations with negative fallout and would actually have a chance to work on her shit without bad influences.
2) Sal is heavily dependent on Marcie and her friendship, and if Sal was able to make more friends, that would spread out the emotional labor for the both of them and it would be a much healthier situation overall. Even for people that only have one good friend, it’s still not healthy to rely on one person and one person only for all of your emotional needs. Sal making more friends would be healthier for her, but also for Marcie as well.
But again, Marcie never once makes that demand of Sal onscreen, Sal is the only one that brought up making friends.
The friends thing is something Marcie was bringing up before she started getting her distance because she realized Sal was too reliant on Marcie, emotionally. Sal bringing up making friends is the same reason why she’s brought up de-escalation earlier – she’s trying to show she’s addressing Marcie’s concerns, but Marcie’s not going to take Sal at her word without evidence that this is true because the primary reason they’re not hanging out (the fight) is a repeated problem.
Oh okay, so it’s like the second point I had made. Gotcha.
I still gotta say, that’s not an unreasonable ask of Marcie. I still don’t think she’s demanding that Sal make more friends, let alone making their friendship conditional on that, but requesting that Sal make the effort. And I say that as someone who had to be the sole emotional support for someone else for years. It is a burden, to put it plainly. When you’re the sole emotional support for someone, you have to walk on eggshells and be prepared to be emotionally available at all hours. You stop having time for yourself and with other people, because you have to dedicate so much time to this other person. And my situation was a lot different from Sal’s, I know, but I could see it devolving into that.
Sal doesn’t have to have a whole other best friend, nor does she need to have a certain quantity of friends. And some people are really only able to be close to one person and any other friends they have are more casual, and that’s fine! I get it. But the problem comes when you only have the one friend and you are intentionally socially ostracized aside from them, making them your one and only support. That is not an easy position for anyone to be in, and it’s not a light burden either. Marcie’s not asking Sal to make more friends to be a dick to her, Marcie’s asking her so Sal isn’t as dependent upon her. And that’s not wrong to ask for.
Oh no, I agree with you. I don’t think Marcie’s unreasonable for thinking Sal should find other friends she can be vulnerable with or for wanting evidence Sal’s addressing her concerns. I just want to clarify why Sal brought it up.
We know sal has had it hard, but Marcie his in a much tougher situation Sal went to a private boarding school and is now in college, which is being paid for. No job or need for one.
Marcie lost her voice, which probably affected her schooling dramatically and has very poor economic prospects. No savings. No secure place to live. No security at all. There’s a limit to how good a friend she can be to someone who endangers her. Life on the margins is hard and calls for hard choices.
Sal doesn’t get along with her college roommate. Marcie is living in poverty.
I would say you have a fair point that Sal’s attitude could cost Marcie further jobs and work if it wasn’t for the fact that she is still hanging out with Malaya who is more actively obnoxious and more likely to purposely aggravate people.
Except that it’s Sal who actually has. Sal who comes and hangs around with her when she’s supposed to be working and then gets into fights. Sal who makes demands on her limited time.
Malaya is more obnoxious, but less intrusive from what we’ve seen.
Marcie not telling Malaya off, heck, not even correcting her means that she’s 100% okay with Malaya believing and telling everyone that Sal is a fake poser that bases her entire personality on what people think a cool rebel is.
Malaya is NOT subtle about the fact she has the same misconception as LINDA. Think about that. Every time Malaya calls Sal fake, Sal could be reminded of her own horrible mother. Perhaps I’m assigning more trauma to Malaya’s words than is warranted, perhaps Sal is just pissed at her on a more shallow level.
Still, Marcie of all people knows that being called “rebel without a cause” or whatever is a SORE point for Sal, one that has driven her away from her own parents and brother.
I think it’s not that Marcie is telling Sal to make new friends, rather that Marcie is telling Sal to prove what Sal is telling her.
Marcie is telling Sal to put up or shut up when making claims that she’s improving her social skills.
Marcie’s coldness is reasonable when I remember that it’s at most a week or two since she lost her job “because of Sal.” The injury is still raw.
Yep. She’s not reacting to ‘I can make new friends,’ she’s reacting to ‘I’m getting better’ – where getting better to Marcie specifically means ‘don’t get into situations where I’ll get in trouble for bringing or being around you.’ Malaya’s obnoxious, but she also knows to behave enough to not get Marcie fired from a job, and her lack of principles does mean she’ll never care enough to feel guilty she told someone not to go to the police so they don’t feel safe walking around outside anymore, so seeing a rapist she will at least avoid a violent confrontation and go with the low-effort blurry pic. (Simplified, but still. Also even if AG had caught Gashes that night, pretty sure her assaulting him at a rally without evidence of him currently drugging someone would’ve gone over poorly with the police, and she was the only present witness who could say she had seen him that night or who heard him talk about Joyce. The rally was a bad choice of fight venue all over – that confrontation needed someone who could be subtle and get a cover story to get his info and the clearer photo. We need to add Billie to the superheroics party, basically.)
OK, less inclined to throw Sal in the woodchipper now because I feel bad for her. I’ve been in the position where no matter what I do, it ain’t good enough and I can sympathize with that
I’m sorry but hasn’t it already been established that Marcie wants from Malaya what she couldn’t get from Sal. What with Marcie being into women and Sal being into men?
So why does Sal still feel so threatened? If it all works out, Malaya will just be the girlfriend! Not that it means nothing but it’s on a different wavelength as far as differing relationships and all.
This is not about that and this is not about Marcie not being able to get it from Sal. Marcie has already established that it is more about just hooking up with Malaya, not with forming an actual romantic relationship.
Sal broke a promise to Marcie about not getting into any more fights which then got her, presumably from context clues, fired. Sal is trying to make amends with her and prove she can do better. Malaya being her obnoxious self and yet still getting to hang out with Marcie would of course feel like Malaya is stealing her best friend and Malaya is just generally obnoxious and does things Sal can’t stand (such as acting like she knows her when she really doesn’t). Sal is naturally hurt that she is trying and Marcie doesn’t believe her.
I’m now wondering if this arc is about friendships that’ve run their natural course and the ability to let them go (or at least change them) or end them rather than drag them out
Since Sal is making friends she won’t need Marcie as much and since Marcie doesn’t need as much “protecting” (in Sals mind) as she used to then maybe the main reason (or glue) for their friendship has ended so maybe its time to go their separate ways
Me personally, if I was in Sal’s shoes, i don’t know how I would feel about Marcie if after all the completely off-base things Malaya said about me, all she got was a “you need to be nicer.” The petty sniping the two of them share is one thing but Malaya goes above and beyond. Even if Marcie vents to Malaya about this situation a lot, that’s one of your best friends and you let a newcomer just say whatever about them? Even if i’m mad at a friend i’m not gonna do that.
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“yo, Hostage, where’s the library so I can get a book and learn how to make friends“
I hear that Dale Carnegie has *just* the book for Sal!
I think if Sal was to read that book she would spontaneously combust.
I was thinking:
“Yo, Hostage, come over here and be my friend for my other friend who’s more important to me than you!”
My theory: Sal is going to go through every single character before she finally breaks down and hangs out with her biggest fan Joyce.
I especially look forward to her parading Mary and Galasso in front of Marcie.
Also, every character will agree, then leave awkwardly while Sal and Malaya trade barbs.
Yeah this would be an excellent time for her to discover people don’t think as highly of her as she thinks they do. Let’s see, what few friends does she have here? Jason? I don’t think he’ll be happy to speak with her after she lost him his job. Billie? She’s losing touch with her old dormmates because she’s finally found some who actually look up to her. Danny? He comes off nice but he doesn’t stick up for someone who lets him down. Amazi-girl? Sal doesn’t even know who she is.
Ethan will probably let her down the most gently, which is why her finding him first is going to make this discovery especially painful.
Jason lost himself his job.
It was a team effort.
Yeah, no. Jason’s the one who’s obligated to turn her down.
True I guess, after getting accused (framed), he fessed up. Oops!
Well, that and sexing up a student in the first place.
Sure but for that he was never caught. In a way, it caught up to him. But it easily could have slipped through the cracks.
But that was the reason he was fired and the only connection to Sal anyway. You can’t blame Sal and dismiss him banging her at the same time.
I blame Penny. She is more at fault for it than anyone else is, and she didn’t even know about Jason sleeping with Sal. Jason and Sal both had a hand in making Jason get fired, but more than anything it was Penny’s fault.
Eh, what Penny did was shitty, but if he hadn’t actually banged Sal, it would’ve been a minor inconvenience. “Penny said you banged a student.” “What? That’s a bald faced lie!” “Yeah, everybody knows she hates you, but we had to ask, you know?”
Hell, if he was even halfway willing to fight for his job,he could’ve gotten around it, maybe without even lying. “I know I shouldn’t have had relations with a student, but I did give her work to another TA to grade, I was absolutely clear to her she would not get preferential treatment, and she is now working with a different tutor.” I mean, it’s not ideal, but he’s taken steps to minimize the conflict of interest and he is a -student- TA. I mean, Ruth’s situation has already shown us the administrative culture in the school is willing to sweep some things under the rug. (Her situation was also arguably much worse than Jason’s.)
Your description of Sal’s friends doesn’t really make much sense to me.
Jason doesn’t appear to be holding any kind of grudge against Sal; like BBCC said, the one most responsible for Jason getting kinda-sorta fired is himself (with Penny being the distant second). Billie and Sal have never been all that close, even when they were roommates. Regarding Danny, how exactly has Sal let him down recently? Failing to notice that he was saying goodbye isn’t exactly a relationship-breaker. And as for Amazigirl, the fact that Sal doesn’t know who it is under the mask is pretty irrelevant, considering that Marcie wouldn’t consider her a good reference anyway.
Out of all of them, Ethan is probably the least likely to turn Sal down. Remember, Ethan was the one that sought her out to talk about the convenience store incident. What is it about their interaction afterwards that makes you think Ethan’s gonna tell her “Sorry, can’t help you, you’re super violent and unstable, please go away,” or something to that effect?
How about the fact that Marcie did exactly that thing despite being Sal’s best friend?
Seriously, did I miss an entire chapter? When we last saw Marcie before this chapter, she and Sal had been getting along pretty well, with Sal having just realized what the problem was between her and Marcie. (At the time it was heavily implied there wasn’t a problem, that Marcie just wanted to plow the asshat with the lizard). What the heck happened? Where was the chapter where Marcie just said ‘f off my main dude’?
The part where Sal got into a fight at the political rally where Marcie was a trainee in security. (Aka when Ryan came back into the plot.) This at least got Marcie reprimanded and almost certainly cost her the job, especially since the big fight that broke out was between Sal and AG (two unrelated people, one of whom Marcie invited) and the rally’s interns. Which was actually a while ago, you didn’t miss a chapter so much as a book.
This isn’t really about Malaya, though the two of them being completely unable to exchange basic pleasantries without hating each other is an issue given they’re also roommates. It’s about Sal’s tendency to start fights getting MARCIE in trouble by being close by, and probably the fact that Sal promised after Marcie’s injury no more fights and hasn’t been able to keep it.
You know, you could click the ‘Marcie’ tag and see all the previous strips with her in it, where they show how the conflict started.
Like this: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/waitin/
Or the one from a few weeks ago, where Marcie said she keeps being Sal’s collateral damage.
idk about Penny as DISTANT second, since she instigated it. Jason just happened to not contest it.
I’d say distant because Jason actually banged the student. Which is what I’d say instigated the whole thing. (Arguably Sal instigated the banging, but that doesn’t really matter because it’s his job not to bang students, even if they want to.)
Yeah, if Jason HADN’T banged a student, then Penny’s baseless spite-filled accusation would be met with him going ‘what student?’ and either getting a name and some odd behavior to which he could go ‘yeah no, my office hours just didn’t work with their class schedule’ or get nothing and respond ‘so you believed an employee who was getting fired, who hates me, on no evidence? You realize any student I would produce to contest this would be an admission of something inappropriate, yes? And that anyone sexually extorting their students for grades would continue to extort them into coming to their defense?’ Or something less critical of the system, probably.
But because the accusation WASN’T baseless and there apparently WAS a name or something attached, Jason saw it, went on an angry monologue at another student admitting his guilt, and then decided to just take the firing. This was policy. Jason knew he could get fired for it and knew why the rule existed and apparently knew that Sal was doing this for grades per Slipshine, which a responsible authority figure should respond to up front with ‘I will not change your grades for sex, if you want your grades changed you should find a tutor whose style suits you better, if you want sex you should find someone who’s not currently your teacher.’ Jason getting fired is Jason’s fault.
I don’t think she thinks ANY of them think highly of her. That’s sal’s whole thing. Some of them idolize shit she *does* like riding a motorcycle, but she knows she doesn’t have many friends. Closest she has atm are Danny, maybe carla, n Joyce. (Danny n carla moreso than joyce, bc duh)
Woo! New friends!
Ah, that good deed paid off.
ethan just didn’t notice her because he’s distracted by manny’s butt
I assume you’re the expert on getting distracted by butts.
I think Ethan has more of that sort of look that says “who’re you lookin’ at? no, I did not look in your direction and totally have no knowledge in events which may or may not be transpiring somewhere near me but outside of my peripheral vision please ignore mejustscootinthroughguysplease”
That or he just overheard someone off-panel talking about Transformers.
“Wanna that motor cycle ride now?”
where did you get that Becky avatar?
From the BESTEST Becky strip
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/unlimited/
(You can set your own gravatar and tie it to your email address with the “Get a gravatar” link next to your name below.)
(which, given that you have a non-standard gravatar you presumably know already.)
So many memories! Thank you for this. Now every time I see your avatar, it will remind me of the time that Becky grew up and started living. It will remind me of the BEGINNING.
Oh yes! I love Willis explanation of how he was very conscious of the common use of gay characters in media, as a side character in someone elses story. They do their bit, they induce character growth and they leave (too often fatally).
Becky DID help Joyce grow and learn a number of life lessons*, but that was not all she did – she also firmly planted the foundation of HER OWN story, and when the chapter was over, the dust had settled and the Toe were carried away by all the cops, Becky was not gone, she was there to stay.
Not the end, but the beginning. And what an awesome story it is!
*) Dina as well, but that’s a completely different, much more dofusi story.
That *is* the BESTEST Becky strip and that is the bestest Becky face.
In STIFF competition.
This is either the best possible timeline or a big yikes waiting to happen.
Guess..
I want popcorn. This is gonna be INTERESTING.
Red Skies at night (Red Skies at night)
Oh oh (oh oh)
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh….
I’m glad that Sal has that one good relationship where she doesn’t have to feel like she has to constantly prove that she’s not awful or unredeemable.
Yeah, too bad its with Danny
What’s wrong with Danny?
I still think that taking a selfie sounds like a slang term for wanking.
Sal actually isn’t about to go chasing down Ethan, she’s just making the jerk off motion toward him.
That’s not necessarily something one should take a selfie of.
Brings new meaning to the lyrics of ‘Let Me Take a Selfie’ by The Chainsmokers.
And looking at the lyrics, I see it almost seems to be mentioning DoA characters. It has Jason, Sierra, and possible mention of Sal. I suspect the song could be told from the perspective of Penny.
In Korea and possibly other Asian nations they call it a selca instead.
When did Marcie’s problem with Sal shift from her reckless conflict-causing to her being antisocial? The first is a thing she does, the latter is how she is. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with being people-averse? It’s bothering me a bit that it seems like Marcie is making her friendship conditional on … Sal making other friends? Sure, in an ideal world she should make new friends but that’s particularly hard for Sal, and it won’t be any easier if the one friend she does have places these terms and conditions on their relationship.
It’s possible that Marcie feels like she can’t spend time with her other friends because she’d be deserting Sal, who has no other friends.
The friends thing was a problem before the reckless conflict causing. Sal bringing it up (in addition to her bringing up her talk with Ethan) is probably her trying to say she knows what Marcie’s concerns are and she’s trying to address them. Marcie needs evidence over anecdotes this time because she is being cautious and trying not to get hit with more splash back, and so is (for now) keeping her distance.
In fairness, Sal’s the one that made it about her being friendless. First with saying in front of Marcie that Malaya was stealing her friendship away (despite Marcie telling her earlier that day exactly what her problem with Sal was), and now here where Sal is saying that she’s making friends. If I were to make a leap, I’d say that Sal is trying to say that she’s making normal friends besides Amazi-Girl who are less likely to lead Sal into situations where there is significant splashback onto Marcie. But she’s missing some of that extra information and so it feels like she’s just switching focus entirely, ignoring that that’s not the problem here.
I also want to point out that at no point did Marcie ever create a stipulation or conditions that Sal has to make more friends besides her. The only thing that Marcie has ever told Sal was that her actions tend to have direct consequences for Marcie. And.. if there’s any conditions put on a relationship, “stop doing shit that negatively affects me” isn’t entirely unreasonable, especially when that often involves physical violence.
On a deeper level, Sal’s long been focused on “I only need one friend”, with strong implications that Marcie should be the same way. She’s been threatened by Marcie doing other things and not spending enough time alone with her – partly her work schedule, but also Malaya and roller derby in general. Sal being able to make other friends lessens her dependence on Marcie and that may well be good for their relationship.
Even though it’s not something Marcie’s talked about before on panel, there have been enough hints and she seems to confirm it here.
Side note: Did Marcie start roller derby to get closer to Malaya? In that “I wanna hit that” strip way back, Sal and Marcie are in the audience. Marcie wasn’t on the team yet?
There was a flashback, but Marcie was on the team as of at least When Somebody Loved Me. That said it could’ve been her first game? So: possible, not certain. If it were their first encounter with Malaya it makes Sal’s immediate assumption of wanting to punch her and Marcie meaning the same pretty unreasonable, so maybe they already knew Malaya and she invited Marcie to roller derby? Not sure. Counting scenes, first interaction they share is the car park beer sharing that ends in AG showing up, where they seem to already know each other, followed by the conversation after Marcie’s recruited and playing… But that still leaves several weeks for them to meet beforehand that we don’t know timeline on.
I feel like a lot of people are kind of crapping on Sal for some pretty harsh reasons.
Why SHOULD someone have more then one good friend in an idealistic world? Man, sometimes I’m lucky to have even that. But here we have Marcie chasing after a girl for sex, and maybe crushing on her a little, while doing it at the cost of a friendship she had, before that point, actively encouraged to be… veeeery close.
It’s fine that Marcie makes more friends. Its fine that as time goes on, she wants to spend time with people other then Sal. But she never spends time just with Sal. She always bring along someone who is this horrible little brat who regularly insults Sal for, as far as we can see, little reason other then because she can.
Honestly, aside from years of friendship, why does Sal even like Marcie? Marcie seems to be bringing up this Splashback stuff out of nowhere (because the flashbacks happened, I guess?), never hangs out with Sal alone, is spending most of her time with a girl that is extremely caustic and venomous when dealing with Sal, all for what seems to be some sex or a rather hidden agenda for a relationship, while Sal does her best to…
What, exactly? What caused Marcie’s sudden doubt and dislike? Last time we saw these two before this chapter actually do anything significant, it was wrapping up their last bit of drama, where Marcie straight up admitted she was ditching Sal for a chance at some tail, something which has multiple different awful connotations considering how she’s ditching an apparently life long friend for it and not being straight with Malya, instead doing things like hanging in the same bed under false pretenses. Guys get flak for that kind of crap all the time but it’s okay here because Marcie is cute?
But really, what does Sal need to prove? I get why she’s bothering to try, Marcie is her best friend, but why do people in the comics think she should given how very little ‘friendship’ we’ve seen come from Marcie in recent comics… or in the comics in general?
As I said upthread, you missed the inciting incident of this fight: Sal costing Marcie a job with her fighting. The splashback thing is relevant because that’s exactly what Marcie is actually angry about and has actual, very recent consequences for Marcie.
And remember, Marcie’s not a student – she came up here just to be closer to Sal and has to keep terrible minimum wage jobs to share a crowded apartment. That’s a huge show of friendship (and Marcie’s the only one who apparently stayed in contact with Sal after she was shipped off to Tennessee, also a big deal to Sal,) and also a whole lot of effort that means Marcie’s free time is significantly less than Sal’s and Sal costing her that job was especially shitty.
I didn’t miss that. I missed how Sal defending herself and another woman from assault somehow makes her a bad person. Is she just supposed to stand around and do nothing? Marcie’s been a prick since the start when it comes to Malya but this really takes the cake if that’s why she’s made.
“defending herself and another woman from assault “? what?
the incident started with amazi-girl stalking sal at the rally. then sal insisted on trying to fight amazi-girl over marcie’s attempts to stop them: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/beef/ (and the page after that)
that’s the bad part, imo. as much as I like sal, insisting on fighting there was a real jerk move, even before we knew she’d promised to not do exactly that.
after that, amazi-girl gets the blurry photo, finds and confronts “ryan”, fights him and his minions, sal joins in to save her, and they go on the chase for the amazi-phone. that part’s pretty noble; it probably added to marcie’s trouble too, but honestly, she was probably already fired by then anyways.
No one said that Sal was a bad person. Sal stepping in to help AG fight off Ryan and his goons was due to her sense of justice and it was noble, yes, but Sal didn’t appear to tell Marcie or any of the staff what was going on. Neither did Amazi-Girl, until after they beat up the rest of the guys and Ryan got away. To the security team and to the organizers of the event, you have these two women assaulting four of their interns out of nowhere. Literally no one but Sal and AG know why they are doing what they are doing.
And that’s the entire problem. What Sal did was for a good cause, but she didn’t tell Marcie anything about what was going on before stepping in, and she didn’t wait for authority to step in to take care of it because she doesn’t trust it, and the end result is that it all negatively reflects back onto Marcie, because she’s the only reason Sal was at that event to begin with. Marcie is then unfairly blamed for the fight, loses her job, and at the end of it, still doesn’t appear to know why Sal did it. And at no point did Sal explain what happened or apologize for it.
Even though Sal was doing a good thing, her actions directly lost Marcie her job. And for Marcie, who lives in poverty in an apartment with several other roommates, that’s pretty significant. That’d be pretty significant even if she were relatively well off otherwise. That’s a shitty thing for a friend to do, whether intentional or not.
what the heck! doesn’t Sal defend herself from Malaya’s idiot comment yesterday? Doesn’t MARCIE defend Sal??
Marcie might be angry at Sal, but what Malaya said is blatantly wrong and Marcie knows it! But instead of telling Malaya anything, she just lands another hit on Sal. Marcie knows that Sal is upset and she throws this at her again?
It feels like Marcie is just pushing Sal further and further away. Like I know Marcie doesn’t OWE it to Sal to be her emotional support, it just feels like she’s constantly cold and unpleasant for someone who is supposedly her best friend
Sal always takes the (verbal) hits without fighting back. It’s like she feels it’s better to save face than to try and look petty defending herself against someone who may or may not believe her.
She’s probably spent plenty of time learning that people won’t believe her.
Yes Sal does have a very strong martyr sense about her
I more meant in how many times she’s probably had to defend herself to her mom and other authority figures, than that she had a martyr complex. I mean, my mom was not nearly like Linda and I still have so many things similar to that ingrained, and I moved out seven years ago.
Well I wonder how many times Sal has “defended” Marcie in the past when maybe Marcie didn’t actually want or need defending or Sal pushes everyone away except for Marcie because she doesn’t want to seem as if shes deserting Marcie even though Marcie may not want to be smothered by Sal
Like when younger and Sal decided that is was up to her to raise the money for Marcie, did Sal really think Marcie would have accepted or been impressed by Sal raising the money through robbery or had Marcie accepted her condition but Sal couldn’t let her self-imposed martyrdom go, that she had to “fix” it
No, Sal is a child of abuse who has been conditioned to expect being treated as a failure and disappointment.
For someone who’s Sal’s oldest friend, Marcie sure doesn’t seem to be doing much to try to maintain that friendship right now. And I don’t think Sal’s really done anything to intentionally hurt Marcie either.
That’s part of what’s pissing me off about Marcie. Sal seems more than willing to explain herself but Marcie doesn’t want to hear any of it, so while the excuse that she doesn’t know why Sal reacted the way she does to Amber at that rally is true, it’s also something Marcie’s had a hand in- she could have known if she’d listened.
Sal got stalked and harassed repeatedly until she got tired of it and snapped- and jumped into a fight against a group of men pinning down a lone woman (one of whom was a rapist.) If Marcie had asked instead of freezing Sal out, she’d have known that. Marcie lost her job, but that fight was more Amber’s fault than Sal’s and blaming Sal for it is pretty stupid, in my opinion.
(Sal’s recent team up with Amazigirl against the petty criminals is another thing altogether, but Marcie’s cold shouldering wasn’t even about that.)
Basically Marcie is okay hanging out with Malaya who doesn’t have an ounce of morality and actively treats nice people like trash, who she admits is lacking in Sal’s higher character, but is willing to accept because her lack of integrity means Marcie’s safer. Which is fine, but…I mean, in my opinion, awful. She’s very lax on Malaya’s failings and severe with Sal’s, I guess because when Malaya’s an asshole to someone it doesn’t affect her personally.
I’m just very disgusted with Marcie right now. Both Sal and Marcie have had a hand in the way the friendship is falling apart, but Sal seems willing to work on it and Marcie is just putting it all on her and again putting Sal in the position where she feels like she has to somehow ‘prove herself’ to someone she cares about.
I 100% support Marcie distancing herself from Sal when it’s dangerous to her (even non-literally), has lost her a job, and so on, and I get why Malaya, despite being an asshole, is easier to be around, but I agree with the rest of this. It seems like Marcie doesn’t want to keep being friends, and since she’s the one setting up hoops, it feels like she should be the one to say that she wants a break, or to not hang out anymore, or whatever. Because right now, it feels like she might ghost Sal.
I want to clarify that I am not disgusted with Marcie as you are, I just think she’s doing everything in a shitty way, and if she’s not actually trying to create distance, she’s doing an even worse job.
Yup. I think Marcie should be honest and say why she doesn’t want to be friends anymore at least for now (with some good reason) instead of dangling the promise of making up in front of Sal with strings attached when in fact nothing Sal does will be good enough.
Right now I think what’s left of their friendship hurts both of them and it’d be better to call it quits, as sad as that is.
Marcie has, though – the splashback and Sal getting in fights. Marcie didn’t really set up a hoop so much as ‘I can see you’re continuing to get in fights and that means I am not safe.’ The making other friends thing isn’t what the fight is about, Sal’s just deciding that for herself.
Marcie should have listened to Sal about why the rally fight happened (at least, the Ryan part of it – Marcie called her supervisors the moment AG was out of the shadows and it was clear she was stalking. Things hadn’t really escalated past that before the supervisor appeared, sided with AG automatically because said supervisor’s shit, and AG got the rally of racism realization and saw Ryan, prompting the real fight that actually got Marcie in trouble.) But Sal never bothered to check in with Marcie after that fight, even to confirm to her that SAL was okay – she doesn’t realize Marcie is pissed until Marcie’s not waiting for her after class as usual. That is… not a good move either. They both failed communication there.
What I mean is that Marcie is suggesting to Sal that Sal can “redeem herself” in her eyes by doing certain things, and then that’s never good enough.
Marcie should be honest here if she doesn’t want to be around Sal anymore. Yes, she has suffered due to events that Sal caused and has good reason to not want to be friends any longer, but putting pressure on Sal like she’s doing now is not friendship.
Marcie wants evidence Sal is actually doing those things though. She’s been pretty consistent about that. Marcie’s still willing to call Sal her friend right now, but she’s getting her distance until she has evidence Sal’s working on things. Not just Sal’s word or anecdotes. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
What are those things? What does Sal making other friends have to do with her friendship with Marcie?
Marcie’s been trying to get Sal to make more friends so she’s less emotionally dependant on Marcie exclusively. It’s been a thing since before the rally. And she wants to see proof Sal’s working on her tendency to escalate situations without thinking about consequences for those around her (particularly Marcie).
Wait, wait, wait… Are you implying that Marcie is mad at Sal because Sal defended herself and another woman from a group of violent thugs, one of them a rapist? Is that… really why she’s angry?
If that’s really it then I’ve lost what little sympathy I had for Marcie.
Marcie never heard why Ryan was attacked until either seeing the blurry photo passed around or hearing about him in the aftermath of the stabbing. When Marcie got angry, all she knew was Sal and a vigilante (who had previously been attacking Sal for no reason) attacked an intern at the political rally Marcie was guarding. I think she would be a bit more sympathetic to the fights if Sal actually explained herself in full – ‘I’m going after a rapist and the people who continue to harass his victims now that he’s dealt with and they’ve come forward, and the person helping me doesn’t tell me up front she seeds the threads doxing these women with dummies so I think people are actually in danger’ – but 1) Sal doesn’t really explain herself, which I agree is probably because her shitty parents made it clear she won’t be believed or reasons valued, and 2) Sal really doesn’t appear to get that the problem is the fights.
I don’t know if she’d be angry if she knew exactly why the fight happened, so I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt there. She might still be angry about losing her job and she might still, to some extent, blame Sal if she thinks Sal shouldn’t get into fights ever because she made a promise at fourteen years old.
I think she’s angry at Sal because she thinks Sal’s only solution to being antagonized is to escalate into violence (which honestly is not true and is kinda racist and feeds into the angry black woman stereotype), she hasn’t really talked to Sal about why the fight happened and doesn’t seem to care.
Basically I don’t blame Sal for the loss of Marcie’s voice or her job. I don’t believe in assigning blame to people for things they only tangentially ‘contributed’ to and without intent. If Marcie lost her voice because a bully retaliated for Sal sticking up for her, that’s on the bully and not Sal. If she lost her voice because of a Dumbledore situation in which Sal got into a fight with someone and a blow accidentally got Marcie, that’s not anyone’s direct fault either. I don’t think Marcie’s emotions are invalid, but you’re allowed to feel your feelings and realize that you’re holding irrational resentment at the same time.
(Also, I know it’s called Dumbing of Age not Smarting of Age but I am allowed to be annoyed or frustrated at the particular configuration of emotional idocy I’m reading.)
Spot on.
I think the ‘no fights’ thing has an underlying concern, though – ‘don’t make other people collateral damage for your bad decisions’, which is one of those rules that is reasonable for most human beings. Sal DID apparently get into a lot of fights as a young kid, that’s why she made Marcie that promise, and she IS getting in them now. Marcie HAS been seriously negatively impacted by being around Sal when they happen. Neither of those is a hypothetical. And while Marcie agrees with Sal’s passion and sense of justice, Sal herself has pointed out that beating up Ryan’s mooks isn’t a good long-term solution.
And even if Marcie getting fired was her supervisors’ fault, it’s also a very foreseeable consequence of Sal’s actions. Sal came to the rally to hang out with Marcie (and only that – she hated Robin and openly talked shit about the situation.) Sal then, alongside a vigilante, beats up some interns at the rally who are by all accounts fine upstanding citizens (consider who we’re dealing with here,) and by the shitty supervisor’s shitty perspective, it was Marcie’s undesirable friend who brought the vigilante and thus Sal and by extension Marcie caused this unpleasantness. It was a shitty job with a shitty supervisor, but Marcie needs employment too much to be picky so it’s pretty important that Sal not jeopardize things.
The voice thing was probably not actually Sal’s fault, but if Sal assigns this huge blame to herself and then keeps getting in situations that get Marcie in trouble? That’s a sign that Sal isn’t really a safe friend to be around because even knowing her actions have consequences for other people and feeling bad about them, she keeps charging headlong into situations that end up hurting those other people. And that Sal DIDN’T consider the consequences to Marcie after the rally and apologize immediately and confirm she was safe or anything of the sort makes it even worse. (For instance, an apology and explanation paired with ‘do you want help finding something else in that pay grade? I promise not to hang out while you’re there until I can be sure nothing like this happens again’ would go over way better than one without.)
I’ve seen your argument all along this thread and I just don’t agree with it at all. None of the ‘trouble’ that followed Sal in that rally was her fault: one was being constantly forced into a defensive situation by a stalker that she actually repeatedly tried de-escalation techniques with (like in the parking lot where she refused to fight her), and I don’t blame her for finally lashing out. And then the fight that was the last straw? She jumped in to save someone and I will never blame anyone for doing that. Sometimes you have to get into a fight. It sucks that Marcie got fired but I can’t see an ideal alternative because if Sal had not intervened in the fight when she did, Amber would have been severely injured.
Your whole middle paragraph there about the bullshit logic of the supervisors: while I understand why they fired Marcie and their shitty perspective, it still doesn’t make it Sal’s fault. It’s still the supervisor’s fault! If my friend got sleazed on by someone in my restaurant and punched them and I lost my server job because of it, I would not blame my friend! And I am a broke working class person in more Marcie’s position than Sal’s. I get that this is causality from Sal being in a fight, but the fight wasn’t started by her and honestly should have been stopped by security before it got to the point where Sal felt like she had to jump in and help.
The last paragraph is the point I’ll give you, that Sal could have apologized to confirm she was safe or asked after her job. But my point has always been that they are both actively fucking this up and Marcie is annoying me MORE because it seems like she is putting all of it on Sal instead of examining how she’s dealing with the situation too.
Sal, you don’t have to prove anything to Marcie. If she wants to hang out with Malaya, so be it. You don’t owe her anything anymore. Also, please don’t drag Ethan into this already convoluted drama.
Oh Sal.
I do kind of wish for Malaya to find out why Marcie is interested, but only b.c I’m morbidly curious what would happen. Other than that, this could be good for Sal, but also eh forced.
I do honestly feel like Marcie’s being a little harsh. What does Sal have to prove?
That she’s making an effort to address Marcie’s concerns – to wit, Sal’s lack of other friends and emotional reliance on Marcie, and her tendency to get into reckless situations without thinking about potential consequences for those around her (particularly Marcie).
Except that outright demanding that she “prove” such a thing is just encouraging her emotional reliance on Marcie – something that should be intuitively obvious from the one making the demand. She’s exercising power over Sal that she has to know she has, and when something like “make friends” or “improve yourself” essentially becomes a command, the friends can’t be genuine, no lessons can be learned, and it serves as an inherent drain on self-worth.
Marcie is being at least as unreasonable as Sal here, and is failing to understand her current position.
That’s a good point; If you’re told by someone to go make friends, then your motivation for making those friends is ultimately to do what that person says. Then they get the easy out to turn around and say “Well, you’re only doing it because I said to, so you clearly don’t actually care about these people and you’re just putting on a show.” It’s sketchy at best.
Marcie’s been trying to get Sal to make other friends even when they were still hanging out. Sal’s not pulling that out of nowhere. That’s very much a ‘Look, I heard what you were saying before, I’m working on it, really’. Unfortunately for Sal, since Marcie got burned not that long ago, Marcie wants to see evidence she’s working on it rather than taking Sal at her word.
The only slight justification I can think of for Marcie here is that it’s been maybe a week since Marcie was apparently fired from her security job, because Sal and AG were brawling with honest volunteers at Robin’s rally. (Yes it was probably spun that way). Losing her job, potential career, money, livelihood, only a week ago, because of Sal. Good intentions or not that still stings. I would understand if Marcie’s even holding a grudge for that.
It does irk me that Marcie’s been okay to play spectator while Malaya continues to berate Sal, and possibly even clued Malaya in to Sal’s association to AG giving her ammunition to make that dig. (I doubt Malaya figured it out on her own). Yet she’s also requesting for Malaya to “be nicer” which obviously isn’t working and Malaya’s trying nowhere near as hard as Sal but gets a free pass because…? She’s hot I guess? She has less “splash back”? I get it, but you’re kind of torturing your friend Marcie.
So the next chronological preview panel on the Tumblr was for… *checks* the next strip, actually, and it shows Ethan and Amber meeting outside in late-evening lighting.
And this strip has Sal chasing after Ethan while they’re both outside.
This can only end well.
https://media3.giphy.com/media/Zsxh9Cbq7VCy4/giphy.gif?cid=3640f6095be911e255656468453824e4
P.S. How do I do that text edit such that it puts the link as some words instead of a web address?
Use the A tag. [a href=”URL”]TEXT[/a]
Change [ and ] to , and [a href=”ttps://media3.giphy.com/media/Zsxh9Cbq7VCy4/giphy.gif?cid=3640f6095be911e255656468453824e4″]for example[/a] would produce this link, for example.
[a href=”https://i.ytimg.com/vi/WTMf9aioYnQ/hqdefault.jpg”]Thank you![/a]
Thank you! okay I think I got it this time
Looks like you got it. Glad to be of help. Sorry about the brackets, not sure where they disappeared to. In my defense, thumb-typing is hard. I’m sure I could have done better with a real keyboard and meece.
That “to , and ” was meant to be “to < and >” 🙂 (although I see you figured that out already!)
My not-optimistic guess is, she tells Marcie to wait, and, as Marcie watches, grabs Ethan (by the shoulder or whatever), setting off Amber, for a potential fight or a break down, either of which would look worse to Marcie.
Sal. No kidnapping Ethan to prove a point. Stop it.
I mean, not physically fighting Malaya there (and not attempting to, for Marcie to intervene) is a marked improvement, though Sal maybe shouldn’t point it out.
I feel like Sal should just take a (more intentional) break from Marcie. She has shit she has to work on, she also has (presumably full-time) classes, and maybe if she spent time working on it without looking for Marcie’s approval, it would go further- in helping her find other ways to cope, in that she could make more visible improvements before seeing Marcie next, and just in making it something that is completely for herself.
It’s a shitty thing to have to do, but it’s what I’d do.
That also doesn’t suggest anything helpful re Malaya living with her, as Malaya’s unlikely to leave Sal alone about any of that happening.
Prove that you’re making friends by wearing matching jackets with Carla.
In seriousness though, the more the rift continues, I wonder if maybe their friendship is just ending. It seems like a lot of things have been compounding for Marcie from their friendship, it’s not that she no longer likes Sal or thinks that she’s a bad person, she just finds Sal hard to hang out with nowadays. And eventually, if Sal is continually rebuffed, she’ll stop trying and start thinking, maybe the only thing she can do is fade out of Marcie’s life, since that seems to be what she wants. Maybe they just have too much history at this point?
I personally want them to be friends again and would rather look at vehicles for that, but yes to this as a possibility. I don’t think either of them are getting much from the friendship right now.
Yeah, I’d like their friendship to recover as well, just, I’m wondering if maybe it can’t at this point.
I think they’re going to make up eventually, but I think it’s going to take a while and a lot of character development.
I mentioned yesterday that this was a possibility (in different terms.)
Sal can’t keep trying to prove she’s a better person if Marcie just… doesn’t seem to notice it. Or care. It’s better for her to leave her be for some time.
While it’s good that Marcie is making Sal hang out with other people, it seems to be more a case of her just being really into Malaya rather than actually wanting Sal to reform and work out her issues. In the long run, this is a good thing, since it will help Sal become more of her own person rather than defining herself around Marcie. In the short run though, Marcie is tethering herself to someone comes across as kind of narcissistic.
The more this arc goes the less I think of Marcie, yeah Sal has dicked on Marcie quite a bit but this behavior of Marcie seems almost like dangling the prize just out of reach and the prize being Marcies friendship
Not all friendships last forever and maybe now since the dynamics have changed its time for this friendship to be put to rest and Sal can look to others for friendship instead of worrying about deserting Marcie
Or not
The last conversation they had was Sal telling Marcie she was able to de-escalate a situation for once, and then in the last strip her immediate response to Malaya offering her to hang out was, “And watch you continue to steal my best friend?”Sal is not doing herself any favors here.
And it’s only been a few hours since their last conversation about Sal fighting thugs with a masked vigilante. The goalpost hasn’t changed, Sal hasn’t changed in the last few hours. If Sal’s going to tell Marcie that she’s in control, that she’s genuinely getting better, she has to actually do something. Because Marcie doesn’t have the knowledge that the comic audience does and she can’t see all the development Sal has and is currently going through. All she has seen is Sal continuing the same reckless behaviors with apparently no consideration for the fallout for the people around her.
Malya was actively insulting Sal while talking to her, has ALWAYS actively insulted Sal while talking to her, and has never been repentant about it. Sal is a fricking saint if that’s all she’s going to do when it comes to replying to Malya being an ass.
Yeah, Malaya was rude when she made the offer. And like I said yesterday, Sal has 0 obligation to hang out with people she doesn’t want to and should absolutely reject them when she can. But Sal chose to do so by claiming Malaya is stealing Marcie’s friendship away from her, in front of Marcie, which is completely childish. It’s not true in the slightest, least of all because Marcie told Sal exactly why she was keeping her distance. Malaya’s a safer friend to Marcie because she has less splashback, so Sal lashes out at Malaya stealing Marcie away. It’s ignoring the root of the problem entirely.
Yeah, even if Marcie weren’t hanging out with Malaya (Currently in a team sport context where she’s probably hanging out with the other derby girls too, she wouldn’t just skip out on this, but earlier for instance,) Marcie would still be deliberately hanging out with Not Sal.
Stepping out of a situation is a form of de-escalation. And a lot more universal than counting on the other person to do all the work for you.
That’s true, but the way Sal focused on Malaya stealing Marcie’s friendship away ignores how her own actions have pushed Marcie away. That was my point. And if Marcie had overheard Sal say that to Malaya, that could be a cause of concern. Frankly, if one of my friends claimed the other was stealing my friendship away after I had told them that I’m keeping my distance until they clean up their act, that would seem like a red flag. That’s kinda shitty behavior.
Sal could step out of a situation without going for the scapegoat that is Malaya. She could just say, “No thanks.” and carry on her day. It’s one of those situations where she comes across poorly to the people she’s with, because she just had to get a jab in at Malaya, who had made a (rude) but seemingly sincere offer.
*holds him at knifepoint* “Gimme all your friends!”
Except it’s not a knife; she’s offering him a candy bar and asking to join his friend circle, but the delivery comes across very badly.
Sal should tell Marcie to F Off.
See where she finds herself when Malaya decides she doesn’t want to hang with Marcie anymore.
Jeez this sentiment hit me hard. I just recently did something similar for my sister.
Im a problem solver type of person and i like to try to help the people i care about by solving problems for them. Usually its like fixing a thing or giving them a gift that they might not get for them selves to make life easier on them. Occasionally they come to me for advice.
Back in june my sister and i were plannin on taking my friend barcade hopping for our birthdays (he and i were born in the same month so we like to celebrate together). This whole thing is for him because he’s had a rough time growing up, and i want him to know that he has friends who are willing to go all out for him.
Well we had to change the date for later in the month because he couldn’t get time off for work, and my sister flipped out on me. Started talking about how she’s been depressed and talking about how our family is made of terrible people and how the thoght of me has kept her sane for years but any time she actually interacts with me things just get worse for her.
After hearing all of this the only thing i could think about was how her problem was that her ideal of me and the reality of me didnt match up and so the only solution i could come up with was to remove the reality of me from the equation, and let her have her ideal. It’s been months since i removed myself from her life and it’s been hard. Shes my sister and i love her, and if something is upsetting her and i can do something about it, im going to.
It’s been rough, and the visits are awkward now. But my parent’s say she’s been a lot happier lately, so ill just be happy hoping that ive helped her in some small way.
Where Sal has to kidnap Ethan , for Marcie;
To Prove to Marcie she has changed.
Would it be to much in saying that Sal is turning into Linda?
Yes
Sorry, could you explain this even a little bit?
Yeah that would be too much, because what the hell are you talking about?
In what fucking way?
What the actual fuck did I just fucking read?
Yeah. Yeah, that’s about a light year too fucking far.
H-How??
Yes absolutely, because what the hell.
I wanna say Marcie’s being a little cold here, but this also proves none of them actually noticed Danny! That’s a sin! They have seen Sal hanging out with him right? That kinda blows Marcie’s whole get some more friends crusade out the water! They literally just came back from bike riding?! You’re mute Marcie, not blind!
Well, she does wear those tinted goggles. That’s gotta have some effect on her vision, especially in the evening.
Marcie seems like such a fun friend to hang out with for Sal these days: always judgemental and never a normal conversation. And am I the only one that finds it annoying that a ‘friend’ needs to prove her every word?
Yeah, I agree here. If Marcie keeps rebutting Sal’s every attempt to hang out and won’t accept an apology for what happened at that rally, Sal should back off and let it be.
This does not feel like a healthy friendship at all. Sal is still blaming herself for Marcie’s injury, and now job loss, and Marcie can’t forgive her (not saying she has to) and is consequently leaving alternatingly Sal hanging out cold and putting pressures on her that no friend should. Under these circumstances it may be better for both of them to call it quits.
No, you’re definitely not alone in being annoyed by this.
Sal, I’m pretty sure hauling Ethan around by the hand to prove how socially well-adjusted you are is an abuse of friendship!
Y’know, Sal, if you’d just make friends, instead of dragging your friendly acquaintances to Marcie and yelling ‘see, I make friends, please take me back’, you might actually have better luck convincing Marcie you’re making friends.
This is so true. Sal is so dependent on her connection with Marcie that she doesn’t seem to be able to properly function without it (or with Marcie limiting their contact). That isn’t healthy for her and I think Marcie has come to realise that.
Sometimes, you have to hurt a friend to help them. Forcing Sal to make emotional connections with people other than her (although I don’t think Marcie is necessarily going the right way about it) is something that will benefit Sal in the long run.
Ethan sure gets used a lot by girls as a prop to prove a point, huh.
I mean… can you blame them?
Whatever else Ethan’s messed up parents did for him, they certainly taught him great posture.
Y’know, I am having trouble remembering when Marcie last smiled or at least didn’t frown at Sal, her friend.
Instead she’s all smiles around Malaya, who seems like being mean to people, including Sal.
Doesn’t sound like a friendship worth keeping, to be real honest.
Gotta remember tho. Marcie’s got that ass
Marcie is a terrible friend. She’s a non-friend because she knows Sal’s history and social issues. Plus she literally drove there with a friend, so…yeah….
Sad thing is Danny’s a better friend than Marcie.
Marcie give Sal some credit for not trying to wring Malaya’s neck.
On the plus side, yay, another new character pairing! Everyone hangs with everyone!
Marcie needs to come right out and say “I don’t want to be your friend, we are not friends anymore period,” because this “prove it” crap is borderline abusive.
Sal’s got problems, even more than we can see from our angle, but Marcie’s behavior is baffling if she thinks she might patch things up with Sal. I’m almost convinced Marcie’s only hanging out with Malaya because she knows how much it hurts Sal to see Marcie hanging out with someone Sal hates.
I don’t think she doesn’t wanna be friends with Sal, I think she’s just tired of dealing with Sals BS. Which is fair enough but C’MON MARC.
Just swinging by with your daily dose of “Screw Marcie and her manipulative ass”
Really, Sal is doing a pretty good job making new friends. All she actually needs to change is her late-night brawls and her habit of taking Malaya’s bait. And so far, Marcie seems mooooostly reasonable about wanting to see some proof of Sal’s growth. It’s bordering on manipulative, right on the line, if I’m being nice. Now, if Sal keeps on her track of improvement, and Marcie sees that and tries to move the goalposts even a tiny bit, Sal’s better off without her, no matter how long they’ve been friends.
I speak from experience here, having been in roughly Sal’s position. Sometimes, nothing is good enough for your supposed friend, and they just dangle their friendship in front of you while treating every single thing you do as an act of hostility. Once that starts to happen, fuck ’em. They’re not worth your effort. I’d love to see Marcie not fall into that, but with her picking Malaya’s childish ass as a friend, I don’t have high hopes.
Sal should just ditch Marcie and spend time with the friends she has that aren’t total assholes.
Well, you’re not wrong. Marcie seems to be doing similar, except with the opposite sort of company. She makes an effort to spend more time with abrasive jerks, while Sal’s budding friendships seem to be mostly harmless nerds (and AG).
Lets not forget also, that Marcie ,apparently,mainly spends time with Malaya because she wants to get with her in a sexual way. If that doesn’t pan out, Marcie could find herself alone without any friends at all.
I mean, the only other person she hangs out with seems to be Carla, and she seems to be a bit “meh” about deeper relationships between friends, at least so far.
I think Carla is less “meh” and more “I like these people but I still don’t trust them enough.”
It’s something I recognize in myself. It takes me a LONG time to open up to people.
Could be. Time will tell, I suppose.
Unpopular opinion:I don’t blame Marcie here. She is just saying that after Sal has engaged in a pattern of walking all over her boundaries, Sal needs to earn her forgiveness. That’s reasonable.
Do I wish she would say it explicitly so Sal knows what the conditions are? Sure, but this is Dumbing of Age, not Emotionally Adulting of Age.
So far Sal has cost Marcie the ability to speak and a job she badly needed, and that’s just what we know about. So, yeah.
If Marcie cannot forgive Sal (and that would be perfectly OK given what’s happened) she should tell her so, and then they can move on.
A friendship that relies on somebody having to struggle to redeem themselves in some way at the mercy of the other person (especially when they’re struggling with other things, too) is not healthy. In fact, I would say it’s not a friendship at all.
At that point they should just call it quits.
I think Marcie DOES want to forgive Sal, but I think she’s not ready to because, as ischemgeek said above, this is not Sal’s first time causing Marcie problems by not thinking through what she’s doing. I don’t think it’s wrong for her to want evidence Sal’s actually working on her concerns rather than taking Sal at her word, since this is a repeat issue.
It’s also hard to just take Sal at her word, when there’s seemingly evidence to the contrary.
“I met the kid I held hostage and we had a normal conversation. I de-escalated a situation!”
“I know you’ve been going around fighting street thugs with that superhero.”
“And I made sure to object before punching people in the face!”
Marcie doesn’t know all the information about what Sal is doing or who all is involved, all she knows is that it’s the same kind of reckless stunts that tend to negatively impact her. It’s not unreasonable to want solid assurance that Sal actually has things in control and isn’t going to do something that ends up with her going away again or with somebody getting hurt.
Separate issue, but I also really don’t get why Sal making other friends is relevant to Marcie forgiving her somehow.
As I said, I totally understand if Marcie can’t forgive Sal (yet) and does not want to spend time with her, I just don’t think placing weird demands on Sal that are basically impossible for Sal to meet (what are “enough” friends?) and thus disappointing Sal over and over again is the right way to go.
I really don’t think that was ever something Marcie asked of her, but something Sal took upon herself.
There’s only two things that I can think of as a reason for that.
1) If Sal has “normal” friends besides AG, then she is less likely to get into bad situations with negative fallout and would actually have a chance to work on her shit without bad influences.
2) Sal is heavily dependent on Marcie and her friendship, and if Sal was able to make more friends, that would spread out the emotional labor for the both of them and it would be a much healthier situation overall. Even for people that only have one good friend, it’s still not healthy to rely on one person and one person only for all of your emotional needs. Sal making more friends would be healthier for her, but also for Marcie as well.
But again, Marcie never once makes that demand of Sal onscreen, Sal is the only one that brought up making friends.
The friends thing is something Marcie was bringing up before she started getting her distance because she realized Sal was too reliant on Marcie, emotionally. Sal bringing up making friends is the same reason why she’s brought up de-escalation earlier – she’s trying to show she’s addressing Marcie’s concerns, but Marcie’s not going to take Sal at her word without evidence that this is true because the primary reason they’re not hanging out (the fight) is a repeated problem.
Oh okay, so it’s like the second point I had made. Gotcha.
I still gotta say, that’s not an unreasonable ask of Marcie. I still don’t think she’s demanding that Sal make more friends, let alone making their friendship conditional on that, but requesting that Sal make the effort. And I say that as someone who had to be the sole emotional support for someone else for years. It is a burden, to put it plainly. When you’re the sole emotional support for someone, you have to walk on eggshells and be prepared to be emotionally available at all hours. You stop having time for yourself and with other people, because you have to dedicate so much time to this other person. And my situation was a lot different from Sal’s, I know, but I could see it devolving into that.
Sal doesn’t have to have a whole other best friend, nor does she need to have a certain quantity of friends. And some people are really only able to be close to one person and any other friends they have are more casual, and that’s fine! I get it. But the problem comes when you only have the one friend and you are intentionally socially ostracized aside from them, making them your one and only support. That is not an easy position for anyone to be in, and it’s not a light burden either. Marcie’s not asking Sal to make more friends to be a dick to her, Marcie’s asking her so Sal isn’t as dependent upon her. And that’s not wrong to ask for.
Oh no, I agree with you. I don’t think Marcie’s unreasonable for thinking Sal should find other friends she can be vulnerable with or for wanting evidence Sal’s addressing her concerns. I just want to clarify why Sal brought it up.
I know, I was expanding upon my original comment. Sorry that wasn’t clear.
Okay good, I’m glad we understand each other.
Pretty much this.
I’m sad this is an unpopular opinion but I agree.
Yeah, it sucks, but Marcie’s not doing anything wrong by protecting herself, even if she’s doing so based on a misunderstanding.
If the last panel had words: CURSES!!!
OK I was with Marcie but now she’s just being a bongo.
We know sal has had it hard, but Marcie his in a much tougher situation Sal went to a private boarding school and is now in college, which is being paid for. No job or need for one.
Marcie lost her voice, which probably affected her schooling dramatically and has very poor economic prospects. No savings. No secure place to live. No security at all. There’s a limit to how good a friend she can be to someone who endangers her. Life on the margins is hard and calls for hard choices.
Sal doesn’t get along with her college roommate. Marcie is living in poverty.
Marcie does have a job. The security thing was her trying to get a better one. She’s not unemployed.
“Has a job” and “living in poverty” are not contradictory.
I know that. I’m misread the above comment – I thought the OP was saying Marcie didn’t have a job anymore.
I would say you have a fair point that Sal’s attitude could cost Marcie further jobs and work if it wasn’t for the fact that she is still hanging out with Malaya who is more actively obnoxious and more likely to purposely aggravate people.
Except that it’s Sal who actually has. Sal who comes and hangs around with her when she’s supposed to be working and then gets into fights. Sal who makes demands on her limited time.
Malaya is more obnoxious, but less intrusive from what we’ve seen.
Sal’s eyes in panel two are very effective. She’s a keep-it-on-the-inside sort, and the few times she doesn’t it gets to me.
Is it me or are the panels gradually getting redder?
It’s an artefact of it being evening and in autumn, that’s all.
Marcie not telling Malaya off, heck, not even correcting her means that she’s 100% okay with Malaya believing and telling everyone that Sal is a fake poser that bases her entire personality on what people think a cool rebel is.
Malaya is NOT subtle about the fact she has the same misconception as LINDA. Think about that. Every time Malaya calls Sal fake, Sal could be reminded of her own horrible mother. Perhaps I’m assigning more trauma to Malaya’s words than is warranted, perhaps Sal is just pissed at her on a more shallow level.
Still, Marcie of all people knows that being called “rebel without a cause” or whatever is a SORE point for Sal, one that has driven her away from her own parents and brother.
I don’t think Linda thinks Sal’s a fake rebel. I think Linda thinks Sal’s rebelling too much, against being the good little mini-me Sal can’t be.
Linda might not think Sal’s rebellion is fake, but that her “cause” certainly is
… how the hell do Marcie’s glasses (goggles? What the hell are those even?) stay on her face?
Willis doesn’t draw the sides of glasses (or goggles) but they’re there.
I think it’s not that Marcie is telling Sal to make new friends, rather that Marcie is telling Sal to prove what Sal is telling her.
Marcie is telling Sal to put up or shut up when making claims that she’s improving her social skills.
Marcie’s coldness is reasonable when I remember that it’s at most a week or two since she lost her job “because of Sal.” The injury is still raw.
Pretty much this.
Yep. She’s not reacting to ‘I can make new friends,’ she’s reacting to ‘I’m getting better’ – where getting better to Marcie specifically means ‘don’t get into situations where I’ll get in trouble for bringing or being around you.’ Malaya’s obnoxious, but she also knows to behave enough to not get Marcie fired from a job, and her lack of principles does mean she’ll never care enough to feel guilty she told someone not to go to the police so they don’t feel safe walking around outside anymore, so seeing a rapist she will at least avoid a violent confrontation and go with the low-effort blurry pic. (Simplified, but still. Also even if AG had caught Gashes that night, pretty sure her assaulting him at a rally without evidence of him currently drugging someone would’ve gone over poorly with the police, and she was the only present witness who could say she had seen him that night or who heard him talk about Joyce. The rally was a bad choice of fight venue all over – that confrontation needed someone who could be subtle and get a cover story to get his info and the clearer photo. We need to add Billie to the superheroics party, basically.)
OK, less inclined to throw Sal in the woodchipper now because I feel bad for her. I’ve been in the position where no matter what I do, it ain’t good enough and I can sympathize with that
Rev that fucker up for the others though
I’m sorry but hasn’t it already been established that Marcie wants from Malaya what she couldn’t get from Sal. What with Marcie being into women and Sal being into men?
So why does Sal still feel so threatened? If it all works out, Malaya will just be the girlfriend! Not that it means nothing but it’s on a different wavelength as far as differing relationships and all.
This is not about that and this is not about Marcie not being able to get it from Sal. Marcie has already established that it is more about just hooking up with Malaya, not with forming an actual romantic relationship.
Sal broke a promise to Marcie about not getting into any more fights which then got her, presumably from context clues, fired. Sal is trying to make amends with her and prove she can do better. Malaya being her obnoxious self and yet still getting to hang out with Marcie would of course feel like Malaya is stealing her best friend and Malaya is just generally obnoxious and does things Sal can’t stand (such as acting like she knows her when she really doesn’t). Sal is naturally hurt that she is trying and Marcie doesn’t believe her.
sal is so cute when she’s determined
Hey, Danny turned into Ethan.
I’m now wondering if this arc is about friendships that’ve run their natural course and the ability to let them go (or at least change them) or end them rather than drag them out
Since Sal is making friends she won’t need Marcie as much and since Marcie doesn’t need as much “protecting” (in Sals mind) as she used to then maybe the main reason (or glue) for their friendship has ended so maybe its time to go their separate ways
Or develop a newer, more equal friendship
Me personally, if I was in Sal’s shoes, i don’t know how I would feel about Marcie if after all the completely off-base things Malaya said about me, all she got was a “you need to be nicer.” The petty sniping the two of them share is one thing but Malaya goes above and beyond. Even if Marcie vents to Malaya about this situation a lot, that’s one of your best friends and you let a newcomer just say whatever about them? Even if i’m mad at a friend i’m not gonna do that.