What priorities? That certainly looks like a very effective avenue of removing Sal from the premises. The pachycephalosaurus gets to have Sal and eat her, too.
(Fun fact: so far as I am aware, that is the genus of dinosaur with the single longest name, even before taking its specific epithet – M. hongtuyanensis – into account.)
I like to imagine that Dina would “remove” Sal from the room by asking her ever-so-sweetly if she wouldn’t mind leaving, and then Sal just cheerily says “Sure thing, Dina” and leaves.
I imagine that if Dina wants to remove you from the room, it just sort of happens. No violence, you just blink and your at the natural history museum, looking at an iguanodon.
If it does… Pretty sure that makes Joyce a confirmed ladylover. We’ve literally seen her appear from behind a box being set down.
Perhaps it’s some sort of Destiny’s Bond with Becky, instead? Joyce is Becky’s best friend and former crush, Dina is Becky’s first real romantic girlfriend.
We can add Sal to the list of people that make for amazing comics when combined with Dina. The list technically contains every character in existence, but we put a check next to the ones that are confirmed
If this were Sal’s room, yeah, it could be. But this is like the “person of interest” sitting backwards in a chair in the Interrogation Room, not the person playing “good cop”.
For sitting in a chair, sitting in it backwards is the most defensive way to sit, as the backboard covers a human’s vulnerable parts. Sitting in it regular fashion would be the most diplomatic, as expressing vulnerability is needed to open negotiation.
Sal, as we all know, is not a diplomat. But, she is trying.
But that’s precisely WHY it’s so often a “let’s talk” stance. Because it gives people a lottle distance while they talk about things; makes them feel less vulnerable. They’re then able to open up more.
I believe what Amber is intimating is that she’s got enough aggression problems that she can’t actually tell the difference between taking a knife away and stabbing someone who is attacking her, and taking a knife away and stabbing someone who is no longer able to attack her.
No, it might actually work as they have shared pasts that intersected and can understand one another on a level others can’t.
Sometimes the best therapy is going through the troubles together, and the two do need a friend who isn’t trying to get in their pants or afraid of their own shadow or afraid to fully come out of the closet.
She might not, but she also might set aside her bias against them and try to help Amber by encouraging her to get help from someone who can give it to her- like herself
Amber should definitely get a therapist, but I don’t think Sal’s ever going to be the one to give her that advice. I do think she’s definitely going to try to talk things out and make terms, but Amber’s wider issues (fury, anxiety, PTSD) need more than Sal can give, whether she’s willing to advise a therapist or not (and I strongly suspect the answer will be no).
Exactly what I had in mind. she talks to Amber, we only see her from neck up. Last frame, she’s put them in a line, and looks at Dina, calmly starting to explain why that one is at the end~
that’s if she doesn’t smile with glee over someone getting her obsession with dinosaurs…Sal does seem like the kind of person who would understand her(but wouldn’t show it)
Dina, you are a treasure and let no one say otherwise.
Also, I am super glad that Sal is having this conversation with Amber, I think it will do both of them some good. And maybe even get Amber to get help maybe? Or at least talk to Sal instead of trying to get all her therapy through beating up various criminals. Am I being too optimistic?
She advised Joyce to get help, just from a friend rather than a therapist. Which isn’t going to significantly help Amber tbh, but at least I don’t think she’d advise Amber just to stew over it.
If anyone in the floor saw this they would ship it harder than I am right now (knew two lesbians in highschool who didn’t figure out they were gay until too late or they would have been a Sal/Dina)
She got a girlfriend, what might be her first date(s), a friend who doesn’t judge her obsession since she has the same kind of obsession, has shown more backbone than all but a few others in the strip, and who is liked by everyone even with her quirks?
Amber has had a positive impact, despite Amber’s issues.
She finds it considerate that her roommate labels her personas, and it actually helps her and makes her feel more comfortable. So while Amber definitely has some problems, it’s a net gain for Dina.
May it be that Coffee Of Doom is a decades old establishment that Dora purchased from someone else, existing since DoA’s present-ish and yet active QC’s future-ish?
I didn’t realize I needed Sal and Dina to be friends until this went live last night. I LOVE this. <333
And oh, Amber, honey. It's only the same in that both involve a stabbing. It hurts me she doesn't see the difference in attacking someone who was no longer a threat and restrained vs eviscerating a rapist attacking her with a knife. I'm guessing this is more about her temper and her fear of it than thinking rationally. My poor baby.
And I am really worried that that moment of safety she felt where she thought she could handle Sal on her own without snapping or needing AG was connected to a physical victory (at least in her own mind) after all.
I really hope Sal and Dina become friends, they seem like they would make excellent friends even when not discussing dinos.
And yeah, Amber’s logic is lost when it comes to Sal unfortunately but here is hoping this talk does some good for her. This is a good chance for both of them and I hope it goes better than it has so far.
I agree. Between Joyce, Carla, Danny, Billie and Dina, I think there’s potential for Sal to make friends who aren’t named Marcie who she can enjoy the company of despite their hideous not-Marcie-ness.
I think Amber’s in a really dark place, self worth and mental health wise. I hope this ends well but I will settle for not stabby.
Looking on the bright side, I’m pretty sure Dina has completely preempted any stabbing. How could anyone possibly get stabby when there are pachycephalosauruses to rank?
wait is she talking about the incident at the gas station? I thought she was talking about the brawl they just had. Holy shit Amber stop being such a piece of shit.
I read panel one as ‘Oh, so you think you can stop me from stabbing you?’ and yeah, her equating the two stabbings, even if she’s not saying Sal is as bad as Ryan (which I don’t think she is).
I kind of think it is all of the above. She thinks she’s a monster and that Sal and Ryan are victims but also vice versa. I’ve lost faith that Amber is capable of recognizing the differences in her actions or the ones of those she’s been in conflict with. It’s clear she shuts that part of her brain off as a defense mechanism.
Sounds like she’s demonizing herself… she feels she’s a bad person, a monster… I wish I could give her a hug and tell her it’s going to be okay and she’s not a bad person.
Yeah. I know it’s almost a meme to say Amber needs professional help at this point but it is so true. She has a fundamental misunderstanding of reality. It’s really sad actually and not something that can be solved even with a conversation with Sal.
lolwhat? i know ambers doing the edgy slash self hatey thing right now but don’t put that dunkass brawl with Sal in the same box of fucking up that rapist, dipshit.
The way Amber sees herself is as an abusive monster just like her father. That’s what her “direct it away from good people” line is about. She didn’t stab Ryan in self-defense she stabbed him because he was a accepable target to vent her anger.
A large part of her Pachycephalosaurus and general dinosaur toy collection likely remains at her parents’ house. It simply wasn’t practical to bring them all. 😛
I mean, I think he can do it most of the time, but getting up and down repeatedly for retakes of the same scene really isn’t good for him? That’s also why Riker leans so much.
Called it. Wasn’t a threat, Amber was warning Sal. And Sal is in the unfortunate position of having to convince a person who thinks she’s mad, bad, and dangerous that she’s wrong in her self-assessment.
Problem is, Amber is “mad” (she is mentally ill and has an incredible amount of rage stored inside her), though not bad, and dangerous just on special occasions.
To clarify: the only thing Sal can wholeheartedly dispute is “Amber is bad”. This is also the most important point to dispute, because this conclusion of Amber about herself leads to Amber not seeking help (as she obviously doesn’t deserve it etc.)
I took it that she is saying what she did to Ryan wasn’t justice, it was vengeance, and that to her, it’s no more laudable than stabbing Sal was, which is to say, not at all. I don’t think she is comparing Sal and Ryan.
I also thought she was referring to Blaine! It wasn’t until I read the comments that my brain did a soft reboot and I was like “oh, yeah… That other monster she fought.” (And then I went “wait, are we comparing Sal to Gashface?” and that’s where I am at the moment).
She’s saying that she’s a violent, vindictive monster who’s perfectly capable of brutally stabbing Sal again in the present day because she recently stabbed Ryan. She didn’t see what she did to Ryan as self-defense or justice, just proof that she’s becoming Blaine.
Which is fair, in a way. The circumstances obviously matter on one level, but on another they don’t. It’s still a symptom of the same basic problem Amber has. That it got triggered in an acceptable direction that time, doesn’t mean it won’t go off inappropriately another time. And hurt someone like Sal.
Which is why it’s so important she was able to fight Sal and stop herself.
It’s fair for her to see it as another case of this symptom she’s so afraid of and worries will overtake her life, but I do think she’s being waaaay to hard on herself. But hey, she and Sal have a lot in common and tunnel vision on an emotion (In Amber’s case, anger, in Sal’s case, often guilt) to the exclusion of the actual circumstances is one of them.
I…know Amber’s kind of anger intimately. I have a problem with my temper; it runs in my family. And I tend to vascillate between SO furious that I just want to punch and kick things (I am not nearly as athletic as Amber, so I mostly just hurt my hands and feets – I am pretty sure I once broke one of my toes by kicking a wall while wearing steel-toed Doc Martens) and being SO sad about how I fail at life that I just start uncontrollably sobbing.
I also love Dina. One of the things my partner does when I get too angry/sad is to bring up random things. For example, last night while I was sobbing he started talking about the “Bumblebee” movie (I HAVE THOUGHTS). But we started debating whether or not that film should be a thing, and I got distracted and felt better.
(Please note that I am on anti-depressants and in therapy and I am not a danger to myself or others. I am also sorry if my post upsetted anyone.)
Thank you as well! I was lucky to grow up with my psychologist mom, so therapy and psychiatric meds don’t carry the same stigma for me that they seem to do for a lot of U.S.ians. (My mom has said that almost EVERYONE can benefit from good psychotherapy at some point in their life.)
So Amber stabbed Sal, a restrained brown girl, in a fit of rage (not self defense, because the ordeal was over by then), and got away with it; and years later, she’s still accusing SAL of being the monster, “the same” as Actual Roofie Rapist Ryan Who Tried To Kill Two Girls. Wow, Amber.
Sal is trying her hardest here, but man, right when I think Amber can’t sink any lower… Well, at least her shitty character makes for entertaining writing.
I don’t think that’s what Amber is saying. I think she’s trying to say she (Amber) is very violent, as proven by her slicing and dicing Ryan (even though it’s a completely different scenario, but Amber’s so… fucked in the head I guess it doesn’t matter).
My impression was that Amber was saying that in both cases, she lost control of her violent impulses, which is why she’s so afraid here. She’s afraid that even though Sal is not the bad, scary person she thought she was as a kid that she’s still going to stab her again, thus “For *her* safety.”
Coming back to say, though, that I do get your reading, considering the racial (and racist) overtones of things like, oh, Amber stalking Sal and picking a fight with her and her friends over a little underage drinking (who do police statistically over-target and historically use drinking and drug use as excuses to beat, arrest, and kill?) and so on. And even if that was never the intent, you (switching to general you here) don’t grow up in a racist society without at least some unconscious racism being ingrained, no matter how “good” a person or aware a person you are. It’s in the water, practically, and whether that’s self-directed or something you have to watch for in yourself not just in the way you treat others, but in the way you think about things, it’s there and it’s especially important for white people to be aware of how their actions bear out, whether they fit a certain narrative that is borne out all too often in your society.
Which is to say, much more clearly than my “YMMV” did: while I do think that what Amber means is that she is out of control, I also think your reading is valid.
And even if you went with another reading, it is another case of Amber not thinking her words and actions through and realizing what awful implications they have. Like, seriously, yes, Amber, even if you’re concerned the end result will be the same (lots of stabbing), they are *very different* contexts, and that needs acknowledging. You’ve slotted Sal unfairly into the category of criminal often enough, and putting her on the same level as a rapist, even if it’s just as an accidental and unfortunate implication, is beyond gross.
The problem is that Sal is an object to her – not a person, despite Sal having *literally saved her life*, helped her (and Amazi-girl, MANY times, if we’re going to separate the two). Sal is an object and a “monster” to be taken down – this is why she has stalked her, threatened to disown her friends (and DID disown Danny) for talking to Sal, stood over her in triumph after beating her bloody, and is now threatening her.
She sees people as objects – HER objects to stalk (Walky and Sal), berate (her mother, Ethan, Joe, Danny, Sal), discard (Danny), and to try to break (Sal) if she chooses. Mike was right back in that old strip where Amber said she doesn’t want to be like her mother. The real problem is that she’s so afraid of her mother that all this time – no matter what she says about not trying to be like him – she has been trying to be her father.
“Beating” Sal has always been Amber trying to live up to her father’s ideal of what she should become. And she’s openly embraced that already.
I 100% agree that Amber’s reaction was NOT okay and that there is some very not-okay racial politics in her association with Sal.
As I said above, I DO understand Amber’s anger because I have experienced it. I REALLY don’t want to offend or bother anyone, but at least for me, once you get down to that level of rage, race, culture, and gender don’t matter. (IMHO) I once broke someone’s nose in a mosh pit with one of my rings. My ring got covered in blood and my partner and my best friend literally had to pull me away from that person. I also once (I think) put someone in the hospital in a Hatebreed mosh pit. I had a chain wrapped around my hand like jewelry, and the lead singer said, “Look to your right. Then look to your left. And BEAT DOWN the person on your left!” And I did just that, because I was and am an angry person.
I am not proud of that and I am sorry if it sounds like I am. My Mom Who Knows Everything is a Freudian psychologist and has said, when we get down to the level of the Id, we are getting down to an “animal” level where we don’t even recognize stuff like race and culture and gender: it mostly just comes down to “I want,” and dang anyone or anything who keeps us from getting what we want! For example, I have three cats. But they have scratched and bitten me when I don’t give them what “they want” – which may include keeping them from eating my food and shooing them off bookshelves. (And I AM a responsible pet owner – my Mom Who Knows Everything grew up on a farm and she taught me that it is REALLY important to take good care of animals for which you are responsible. As I think I have mentioned here before, my oldest kitteh – Annabel Lee – has chronic kidney failure. My partner and I have already spent over $1000 on vet bills and we have to give her subcutaneous fluids every night and also feed her VERY stinky medicated food and she is RIGHT NOW trying to flop on my iPad!)
Where was I?…sorry for rambling. In any case, I think it is SUPER important to be mindful of racial politics. But the level of rage that Amber has unfortunately reached, and which I think I kind of understand, may go beyond that kind of mindfulness and tap into the “monsters from the Id.”
Amber thinks SHE is the monster in the Amber/Sal confrontation – both in the past, and today. She has to be Amazi-Girl because Amazi-Girl is in control. Except she can’t be Amazi-Girl all the time.
Amber can’t see that there’s a difference between stabbing rapist Ryan in self-defense and stabbing Sal, nor even that stabbing Sal was in some way mitigated by her traumatic experience plus long term emotional abuse by her father. To Amber, this is all proof that she’s wildly out of control and monstrous. (And to be fair, her anger management and general mental health IS spiraling violently out of control. But that’s not because she’s a monster.)
I love Sal as a character but she threatened to slice the throat of a young gay boy in public and got off with being sent to a posh boarding school. The facts don’t always tell the full story.
1) Nobody’s ever used the word ‘posh’ to describe the place. That’s all you. The things we have heard are ‘like prison’ and ‘not much different form juvie’.
2) The choice between school and juvie was probably due to the officer’s incompetence which let Amber stab Sal.
3) …And? None of that changes she was restrained and no longer a threat when Amber stabbed her or that Amber was not sanctioned for it.
threatened to slice the throat of a young gay boy in public
Would it be okay if she threatened to slice the throat of a young heterosexual boy in public?
No it wouldn’t, and that makes it super stupid to mention Ethan’s homosexuality (which even he wasn’t aware at that time) in this context!
The point being that Sal’s actions were horrifying and the fact we know the reason is why they’re sympathetic. Sal needs to confront Amber about the incident every bit as much as Amber to Sal.
Oh my fucking god. We get it you went to a nice boarding school but guess what: your experiences are not universal. Lots of boarding schools fucking suck and it’s kind of the point because they exist to beat the “wrong” out of the kids sent there.
And whether or not the boarding school can be objectively said to have sucked (not wandering into that at all) there’s a huge difference between going to boarding school and being sent there and mostly written off at the same time.
It is DEFINITELY not okay that Sal threatened to do that. (And, IMHO, NO ONE should ever threaten anyone’s life, no matter what personal identities either/both of them have). But as other commenters have pointed out, boarding schools are not necessarily “posh.” Phillips Academy in Andover, MA (where I went to the public high school – my mom couldn’t afford Phillips) certainly is. However, a quick internet search (Google is your friend!) shows that a lot of U.S. boarding schools have gotten in trouble for having low educational standards and abuse. IIRC, and someone correct me if I’m wrong about this, wasn’t Sal sent to a Catholic boarding school? While I am not Catholic, from what I understand, that religion does sometimes focus on the idea of sin and repentance. I can see Sal, especially as a person with brown skin, getting frustrated and angry by that.
She also was, as a fairly young person, sent away from her family and her home. I can’t even IMAGINE what that would have felt like to me when I was Sal’s age. Even if her boarding school was “posh,” she was still exiled in a pretty significant way, which mirrors the way people of colour are often “exiled” in the U.S. (Didn’t Sal once say that her family loved her brother more because he had whiter skin?)
My partner went to a Catholic elementary school in the 80s/90s and yes, the teachers were nuns. His mom sent him there because it offered a better education than the local public schools. (And it wasn’t a boarding school.) IIRC, my partner has said that the nuns used to sometimes hit students’ desks with a ruler, which he said was kind of scary.
The history of corporeal punishment in schools isn’t THAT far gone. My mom went to a rural public school in the 1960s and she told me she once got hit in the face by a teacher to whom she’d been “rude.” And that wasn’t considered a big deal AT ALL. Even now, private and charter schools in the U.S. kind of get to make their own rules because they are not covered by federal education regulations. (For example, I have read cases of charter schools being sponsered by McDonald’s, or someone, so they don’t actually offer nutritious school lunches but rather fast food and soda.)
I’m not trying to bash Catholic schools or U.S. schools in general, but I think it is pretty likely that Sal had a very bad boarding school experience and I think it’s likely that her parents sent her to a more “disciplinarian” type of school. It would be interesting to find out if her current “rebel” persona is something she adopted as a reaction to being sent away to boarding school.
I think it’s equally possible that Sal’s experience in boarding school was simply a kind of purgatory (irony). She clearly didn’t make any new friends and she seems focused on her family relationships. I don’t think she actually had any new trauma (simply because they weren’t referenced) but it did nothing to treat or help her situation. Clearly, she at least picked up motorcycle riding and fighting skills, though, so there’s a story there of some kind.
That Sal picked up fighting skills and developed an instinct to strangle people who she finds hovering over her while she sleeps strongly suggest that it was a stressful environment to grow up in, even if it wasn’t 100% bad.
Ok Dina with the greatest of respect please go away so these two can, hopefully, talk about whats happening without being interrupted by your inanities
Ok so Sal comes across to me as a bit arrogant, a bit “I know best because you’re all children and I’m an adult” and has the problem where she thinks everyone knows what she means without having to spell it out
Like how Joyce sees her as a cool, bad ass, loner rebel because thats the image Sal portrays, inadvertently, yet doesn’t take the time to explain why shes not what Joyce thinks she is
Same with telling Danny to get on her bike, Sal didn’t say Dannys name because why would she, Danny and Amber should just know who Sal was referring to and then not actually asking Danny if he wanted to go on a life threatening motor bike ride she just assumed that he would because who wouldn’t
When Sal went to Ambers room she, by her very presence, escalated the situation and no doubt made Amber feel trapped, I mean the girl Amber just had a major fight comes knocking on her room, her sanctuary, the place where she should feel safe and so it was on Sal to deescalate the situation which she could have done with a simple “I’m not here to fight” or similar but instead she went with “no you won’t” which could easily have made Amber feel threatened even more or more defensive
Now this is just me but sitting that way on a chair always came across as a little bit like an interrogation type pose but beyond that
I think Sal has the best of intentions but this could have gone really badly (it probably won’t) for both of them and on the plus side maybe Sal will get through to Amber
Though the sitting, even if it’s an interrogation pose, still drops the threat level, which helps.
But yeah, that’s not far from how I see it.
Neither of these two are good at communication though. Amber does the same thing, especially with her disassociation. Constantly dropping lines that only make sense if you already know about it, but are easily misread or just confusing otherwise.
I kinda do, too… Although ‘hate’ isn’t the right word. But reading the comics with her in it have made me angry at her nearly every single time for quite a long while now.
Also, if she was a person I’d come into contact with in real life, I’d make sure to get the hell away from her.
I like the way Sal chooses to sit in the chair. I mean, on the one hand, it’s the sort of “cool” way (I say, even though I, a not at all cool person also like to sit in chairs that way), but also, it provides a barrier between them, giving Amber a bit of room.
I also really like Dina’s enthusiasm tempered by her willingness to kick someone out if needed, even though she really, really wants to talk pachycephalosauruses with them.
Heh, and we KNOW Sal has met too many psychologists and youth counselors who tries (and most likely fails) to be cool with the troubled teens.
Now, when she finds herself in the chair of reason, so to say, it would actually be hilarious if she tries to emulate those who tried – and failed – to do the same thing with her.
No need. Tomorrow when Sal wakes up, the first thing she sees will be Dina’s and Becky’s grinning faces filling her entire field of vision.
Becky: “I HEARD YOU LIKE DINOSAURS!!!”
Dina: “I have gathered an alarming number of pachycephalosaurus toys for you to evaluate”
Becky *whispering*: “Just remember, I saw her first“
true but I’d like Sal to offer, esp. because Malaya’s not there RN (though, I’d like to see a scene with her and Dina, idk what they’d make of each other)
Malaya won’t care about Dina at all and Dina will only care about Malaya as “someone who owns a lizard”. The only thing I wonder about is if Dina will show an interest in Fuckface or dismiss him as a non-dinosaur.
If we’re going by word of Willis, yes. If we’re going by exact words used in strip, all that’s been strictly established is that Sal is not currently banging Marcie.
Besides, I’ve said it again – what exactly does canon have to do with shipping?
While the alliteration works, ‘pack’ is usually reserved for hunting carnivores.
For pachys, “herd’ works best of the traditional group nouns. A group of rhinos is sometimes called a ‘crash’, tho, I think that would work best for pachys.
Oh dear! It seems that Dina has decided that Sal’s unusual choice means that she’s a friend!
Sal’s actually doing something smart here. She’s not withdrawing but she’s also not advancing. Putting the chair in the place she has also creates this sense of separation between them. Once Amber’s panic reaction runs dry, there’s going to be nothing to reinforce it.
Yup. Sal is doing a stellar job here. Relaxed body language, making herself smaller rather than bigger. The only problem is the room design, where Amber might still feel trapped with Sal between her and the exit. Sal is all the way towards to wall so there is space, but it’s still a bit cramped.
I don’t know about stellar, but it’s a definite improvement on yesterday. The body language and especially sitting down are good.
The words … not actually so great. “learned your lesson” could easily come across as “learned that I can beat you”, though I don’t think it’s intended that way. And she still hasn’t given Amber a clue as to why she came in the first place.
Yeah thats the thing, all Amber knows is that the girl that she just recently fought, that choked her out, who Amber asked to end it (her) has now just appeared at her room.
When Sal appeared she started talking about keeping enemies close and broithers closer which to me sounds a bit antagonistic and then when Amber threatens her to keep away Sal says she wont, I mean damn you know its not the best way to show someone you don’t mean any harm
I’m wondering if Sal is repeating all the things that was used on her in therapy/counselling, like going with what you know, and as such doing a really bad job of it
Different people got different favorites! And I wonder how often those favorites make for successful metaphors about the people that like them. I don’t really know much about dinosaurs so I’m going to assume the answer is ‘basically always’.
She actually didn’t. Though it seemed implied. She told them to go to their separate rooms and that she’d get the authorities involved if they laid one more hand on each other, but that’s it.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing for Sal to make this overture now, but it’s off to a rocky start, partly because Sal wasn’t at all clear that’s what she was doing. Today’s better. Hopefully it’ll improve.
Sal’s approach wasn’t perfect but this is an honest attempt to make some sort of peace and we can’t expect everyone to be Ethan.
I’m not actually sure if Amber saw her approach this time as aggressive or if she saw Sal came in peace but honestly believes if Sal gets too close, raises her voice, makes sudden movements, cuts off her escape, if there is an unrelated crash, she may not have the willpower/presence of mind to not magic a knife into her hand and stab Sal.
I think more of the former in this case. Her comment about being out of “fight or flight” last strip suggests this is more of a bluff than anything else. I’d expect too much fight or flight to lead to the latter. Could be wrong.
Sal’s approach is actually terrible. It’s too soon after the fact, she’s cornering Amber in her room, and has already refused to leave when told to do so. The non-terrible approach would require AT LEAST tomorrow, and a public location.
I honestly think the best approach would be either to talk to Ruth, or get out her DS to open dialog. Yea this should wait at least until the morning but they live on the same floor they at least need to establish a protacall for seeing each other around with in the next few days.
I think there are good places this could go, so I’m reserving judgement on the basic idea of coming to talk with her and only addressing how she goes about it. Tactics, not strategy, as it were.
Today’s a lot better than yesterday, though still not great. She has in fact, not gotten closer. She’s sat down, which makes her less of a threat, both psychologically and practically. What she’s actually saying isn’t really helpful though. Especially yesterday, when she had the chance to try to set the tone and failed. She needs to get to the point. And not be distracted by Amber’s bluster and threats, if she isn’t going to take them seriously.
Dina on the other hand has mastered this, entirely unintentionally. She makes it clear that Sal’s presence here is conditional and she will be removed if necessary, then she effectively moves to break the tension. Well done.
The complete inability to distinguish between an active fight with a murderous rapist, and talking things out with someone who already ended the fight.
The comparison she’s making is really on the hear and now but more between the two past events with when she stabbed Sal vs When she stabbed Ryan, but she’s making the argument that how she reacted then was no different then how she reacted to Sal.
Ahh, that feeling of trying very hard to wait patiently for people to finish their conversation so that you may begin talking to one of them about the interest you just discovered you both share.
That shared conversation is probably really important and you don’t want to be rude but also NEW FRIEND!!!
What’s Amber going to do when she discovers that the monster is no longer in the hospital? (Somebody already said this by now, but I didn’t have the time to read all 170+ comments…)
To be fair he could have done some real damage with a phone, all he was able to do with a knife was get stabbed. Turns out that was real damage, but at least Joyce and Dorothy are more or less safe, and he wasn’t able to summon enough friends to make up the difference.
Honestly I feel like Amber’s a good example of how easily and sneakily self-loathing can make someone self-centered. Like, she no doubt means here that there’s no difference between the situations because she sees them both as a result of her inability to control her anger and proof she’s inherently unsafe. But by doing so, she’s still saying that there is no difference between attacking an unarmed kid already in police custody, and attacking a known rapist actively trying to hurt her. Which is obviously untrue, and also a pretty terrible thing to say to the unarmed kid.
Actually I see the point your making and I can’t say your wrong. What happened to Sal was uncalled for considering the position she was in while what happened to Ryan was something he brought on himself.
But the thing is with Amber is that she doesn’t discriminate or rather rage doesn’t discriminate and that’s the problem she focusing on. If I were to use a random metaphor for a second let’s say innocent bystander out somewhere near the woods being assaulted by a murderer and then a random animal comes along and mauls the killer to death, then right after mauls the bystander as well. A random beast doesn’t discriminate between who deserves to be killed or not it only it only concerns itself with feeding and Amber is afraid she’s becoming that beast.
Still though she should learn to think outside the situation as to why it affects just her. On hand what she did the Ryan turned out good for everybody in the girls dorm but arguably she’s only focused on whether or not it was good for her.
Very good point! I’ve been pretty appalled at how narcissist Amber is, but it really all comes from a point of self-loathing.
I actually have a friend who used to do something a bit like this (though way less bad) — she had very low self-esteem and somehow projected this onto all other women, leading her to be a proper misogynist. Made me mad to no end. Luckily she got over it; I hope Amber does, too.
But this time she stopped. Unlike Ryan. Unlike Blaine. Unlike Sal when they were kids. This time she stopped when she got her down. She didn’t lose control. She didn’t go too far.
…I don’t really see how that has anything to do with what I said? Unless you mean Amber’s proven to herself in that fight that she’s not inherently dangerous, and just falling back into that narrative to scare Sal? In which case… it’s still terrible to say ‘there was no difference between hurting you while you were unarmed and arrested and hurting a violent rapist trying to kill me’, and she’s still refusing to accept anyone else’s perspective of her and her actions as valid. That vehement refusal really doesn’t look like just bluffing to get Sal out to me.
No, it was sort riffing off this bit of discussion and perhaps not quite as on target as I’d intended. 🙂
I hope the fight has shown her she’s not as bad as she’d thought and I do think that she’s mostly bluffing with the threats here, but I agree that the vehemence in that refusal is “they were the same because I couldn’t stop”, not “you’re the same as him”.
I feel like this comment was maybe this posted here by mistake. Probably meant for someone else….also yeah maybe it wasn’t really a bluff like I thought, she probably thinks that she really will do it if she’s not careful.
Sal is thinking of Ryan on panel 3, right? Joyce was the one who took out Ross, and she doesn’t know about Blaine.
Meanwhile, Amber has to be talking about Blaine on panel 2 – Ryan only fought her ONCE, so there’s no lesson he’d learn about fighting her.
Panel 5 Sal seems to be looking at Dina thinking “What? You’re like half my weight, soaking wet.”, ignorant of the fact that Dina jumped a shotgun-wielding, fully fit Ross. Not sure you’d win this one, Sal.
The lesson Sal’s referring to is ‘what happens when you stab someone’. Amber’s asserting that Ryan being in the hospital after she cut him up is proof she hasn’t.
And I choose to believe Dina could totally get Sal to leave – by basically shoving a zillion toys at her and asking to go to the cafeteria to eat and talk about the cool dinosaur.
Interesting. I appreciate all the people pointing out that Sal would have seen a bunch of counselors at various points whom she’s probably partly emulating (despite their failures to help/understand her) due to lack of a better roadmap. In a real world sense, she really is approaching this quite poorly – staying after being asked to leave, coming into Amber’s space where she should be able to retreat, doing this TODAY instead of later. But at the same time, I actually feel like later would never have the chance of working that right now has? Amber’s defences are down (out of fight and flight) in a way that might let Sal’s words affect her. Or even just prove to her that she can control the violence even while “weak” sometimes, assuming she doesn’t actually attack Sal.
They’re both pretty terrible communicators. It didn’t occur to me until looking at the comments that Sal might take the interpretation that several commenters have about the stabbings being “exactly the same thing” being a comparison of *her* to Ryan, as opposed to being all about Amber. And of course, since she was part of what happened, and faced the consequences of Amber’s actions, it can’t help but compare them to an extent. She and Ryan are both seen on some level as acceptable targets for Amber’s anger, which sucks. Not only is Amber too wrapped up in her own self loathing to think about how her words and actions actually affect others, she really does categorize Sal as a villain still.
And Sal’s words “you won’t” clearly came off to Amber as threatening rather than conciliatory, and her follow up could too. She’s trying to make it clear she comes in peace with body language and such, but she really should explicitly say it.
Sal has a tendency to skip over parts of a conversation that she sees as self explanatory – or perhaps as nonspecific and thus irrelevant – when they really really aren’t. I sort of wonder if she sees it like – saying she comes in peace before she *proves* she comes in peace is not going to cause belief and is thus pointless noise? This might be a bad habit she picked up in opposition to a bunch of unhelpful counselors – both because when enough people say “I’m here to help” and then do nothing of the kind you might start really disliking “I’m here to help”, and also because if statements about herself are never believed or taken seriously, why bother making them? Why bother trying to tell Malaya or Joyce that she’s not doing what she’s doing because it’s “cool”? (Especially when she partly is sometimes.)
Yeah, they’re both bad at this. As we’ve seen before with Sal.
There’s little reason Sal should take that “exact same thing” as anything else, since she’s got no context to see why they’re the same to Amber. It’s more annoying when commenters do, because we do have the context.
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Priorities!
(I eagerly await these next two weeks’ strips)
/me realizes like five minutes later that the Patreon comment of “and that will take up the next two weeks of strips” didn’t make it to the main site
/me says fuck it and goes to draw pachycephalosorting
There: http://sgpsketch.tumblr.com/post/180676174879/doa-pachycephalosorting
I’m getting strong Erfworld vibes from Sal in that sketch…
What priorities? That certainly looks like a very effective avenue of removing Sal from the premises. The pachycephalosaurus gets to have Sal and eat her, too.
Pachycephalosauruses are herbavores
It’s FAR more important to discuss Pachycephalosaurus than to remove Sal, DUH
What are Dina’s thoughts on Micropachycephalosaurus?
(Fun fact: so far as I am aware, that is the genus of dinosaur with the single longest name, even before taking its specific epithet – M. hongtuyanensis – into account.)
Or her thoughts on Dracorex which may or may not be a young Stygimolch.
Which in turn is most likely a subadult Pachy
I like to imagine that if necessary, Dina can transform into a dinosaur to get stuff done.
I fully believe it
I know we got the hat removal and all, but I still imagine a glass dome underneath with a tiny raptor operating levers.
And inside that raptor’s head is another smaller raptor.
So you are saying it is raptors all the way down.
Yes, she releases the raptor. Snarrgl!
I like to imagine that Dina would “remove” Sal from the room by asking her ever-so-sweetly if she wouldn’t mind leaving, and then Sal just cheerily says “Sure thing, Dina” and leaves.
I was thinking more along the lines of Sal saying “Yeah, how are you going to remove me from….wait, where am I?”
A thousand upvotes for that comment!
And one downvote, because I logged on specifically to say that, but you beat me to it.
Every time I think I couldn’t possibly love Dina more… I am happily proven wrong.
Ethan and Transformers
Dina and Dinotoys.
Sal’s getting a crash course in nerdy hobbies.
Keep in mind she said, “every pachycephalosaurus toy I have in this room”, meaning she has more at home.
She has probably also made a mental inventory of every pachycephalosaurus toy she has encountered in OTHER rooms, and can fetch them if needed.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Dina you cutie
I imagine that if Dina wants to remove you from the room, it just sort of happens. No violence, you just blink and your at the natural history museum, looking at an iguanodon.
The only exceptions are removing Joyce from a room containing Dorothy, and spaces with no hinged doors.
Wait…
Does lesbianism give one the power to teleport in this universe?
Does nuking a closet from space count as teleportation? I think it does.
If it does… Pretty sure that makes Joyce a confirmed ladylover. We’ve literally seen her appear from behind a box being set down.
Perhaps it’s some sort of Destiny’s Bond with Becky, instead? Joyce is Becky’s best friend and former crush, Dina is Becky’s first real romantic girlfriend.
Well, she is a friend of Dorothy. The biggest!
I keep forgetting about that turn of phrase…
This strikes me as very much in-character. Gosh, I love Dina.
‘It was exactly the same thing, because a monster got what they deserved.’
Amberrrr
No, I think Amber is viewing it as “I lost it and stabbed someone, therefore it is the same thing.”
We can add Sal to the list of people that make for amazing comics when combined with Dina. The list technically contains every character in existence, but we put a check next to the ones that are confirmed
You’ve already lost Amber, she’s dino bonding with Dina. Soon they’ll be besties and she’ll be around all the time.
You mean “beasties”.
“Beast Wars” in the States.
Amber? Learning her lesson? What comic are you reading, Sal?
Naw, but really, hope Amber is able to get…SOMETHING from this.
Tomorrow, Amber reveals that Pachycepholosaurus is her favorite too.
…and that the Pachycepholosaurus’s name is Martha
*flinch*
WHY DID YOU SAY THAT MEME
Because a pachycepholosaurus can bleed?
two dinosaurs well-equipped for butting heads, yes, that seems relevant here
Sal’s opinion on Pachycephalosaurus is the only reason I read this webcomic
It’s not the only reason for me, but I really want to see Sal talking about pachycephalosaurus with Dina now.
Ana Chronistic posted some art further up you may be interested in…
C’mon Amber, Sal is sitting backwards in a chair. How much more of a signal for “let’s talk” do you need?
It can also be an ‘interrogation’ stance.
If this were Sal’s room, yeah, it could be. But this is like the “person of interest” sitting backwards in a chair in the Interrogation Room, not the person playing “good cop”.
It worked for Michelle Pfeiffer in that Coolio video!
not so much for her in the movie that video was made for…
For sitting in a chair, sitting in it backwards is the most defensive way to sit, as the backboard covers a human’s vulnerable parts. Sitting in it regular fashion would be the most diplomatic, as expressing vulnerability is needed to open negotiation.
Sal, as we all know, is not a diplomat. But, she is trying.
But that’s precisely WHY it’s so often a “let’s talk” stance. Because it gives people a lottle distance while they talk about things; makes them feel less vulnerable. They’re then able to open up more.
There can be only one….Dina, : Starts playing prince of the universe :
Is she implying that she would be willing to slice Sal the fuck up? Sheesh, Amber
I believe what Amber is intimating is that she’s got enough aggression problems that she can’t actually tell the difference between taking a knife away and stabbing someone who is attacking her, and taking a knife away and stabbing someone who is no longer able to attack her.
She’s afraid of herself.
Frankly, she needs a goddamn therapist 😛
I’m trying to campaign to make ‘get Amber a therapist’ a tier on patreon but thus far it’s fruitless.
She’s got Sal.
Maybe, if Amber’s lucky, Sal picked up enough in the way of general approaches to ease Amber’s resistance to seeing a professional.
Amber is never lucky? I remember when she fell upwards off the back of a speeding car.
I think Sal would be the last person to steer anybody to a therapist.
No, it might actually work as they have shared pasts that intersected and can understand one another on a level others can’t.
Sometimes the best therapy is going through the troubles together, and the two do need a friend who isn’t trying to get in their pants or afraid of their own shadow or afraid to fully come out of the closet.
That’s not the same thing as telling her to see a therapist though. Talking it out? Sure, Sal might go for that. See a therapist? Not a chance.
She might not, but she also might set aside her bias against them and try to help Amber by encouraging her to get help from someone who can give it to her- like herself
Amber should definitely get a therapist, but I don’t think Sal’s ever going to be the one to give her that advice. I do think she’s definitely going to try to talk things out and make terms, but Amber’s wider issues (fury, anxiety, PTSD) need more than Sal can give, whether she’s willing to advise a therapist or not (and I strongly suspect the answer will be no).
Sal literally told Joyce NOT to see a therapist (just before the shooting)
Though, she might agree therapy is better than beating people up every night.
Yeah, no, Sal’s not advising anybody to speak to a therapist.
I feel like that willingness was already communicated. Y’know. When Amber drove a knife through Sal’s hand.
It’s hard to imagine Dina being able to remove anyone from the room.
Except Faz.
All it would take is for them to say five words- ‘My favourite dinosaur is Barney.’
…if she didn’t toss you out into the hallway after that then there isn’t anything that will work(except being Faz, that always works)
I want Amber and Sal to get back to their conversation, but I also want Sal to be silently sorting the Pachycephalsaurs as the conversation goes on.
Exactly what I had in mind. she talks to Amber, we only see her from neck up. Last frame, she’s put them in a line, and looks at Dina, calmly starting to explain why that one is at the end~
that’s if she doesn’t smile with glee over someone getting her obsession with dinosaurs…Sal does seem like the kind of person who would understand her(but wouldn’t show it)
Dina, you are a treasure and let no one say otherwise.
Also, I am super glad that Sal is having this conversation with Amber, I think it will do both of them some good. And maybe even get Amber to get help maybe? Or at least talk to Sal instead of trying to get all her therapy through beating up various criminals. Am I being too optimistic?
Sal doesn’t think much of therapy so I don’t think she’ll advise her to get help.
She advised Joyce to get help, just from a friend rather than a therapist. Which isn’t going to significantly help Amber tbh, but at least I don’t think she’d advise Amber just to stew over it.
If anyone in the floor saw this they would ship it harder than I am right now (knew two lesbians in highschool who didn’t figure out they were gay until too late or they would have been a Sal/Dina)
Anyone else feel sorry for Dina for having to live with this mess?
Sorry for Dina for having to live with a person who has always been kind to her and helped saved her girlfriend from being kidnapped by her dad?
No, I can’t say I feel you there.
I think by ‘mess’, Ivy meant the general drama surrounding Amber’s life, not Amber herself.
That hasn’t had any negative impact on Dina either.
Good for her. Dina is the best.
She got a girlfriend, what might be her first date(s), a friend who doesn’t judge her obsession since she has the same kind of obsession, has shown more backbone than all but a few others in the strip, and who is liked by everyone even with her quirks?
Amber has had a positive impact, despite Amber’s issues.
Amber has given Dina many valuable tips on how to fake being “normal “
To Dina, it’s probably no more or less bewildering than anything else involving other people.
There was a comic from Dina’s point of view where she is grateful to Amber specifically because of her issues: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/socialcircumstances/
She finds it considerate that her roommate labels her personas, and it actually helps her and makes her feel more comfortable. So while Amber definitely has some problems, it’s a net gain for Dina.
Dina still has the Coffee of Doom T-shirt.
I ship it.
How’d she get that all the way from Boston? “Internet shipping”
Northampton’s way out by Springfield, it’s closer to Hartford than to Boston. She could hop on a short regional flight to Indiana.
Now I want to see DoA-verse QC. Although it saddens me to think that they might not have robots.
Dina’s officially appeared in a QC comic.
May it be that Coffee Of Doom is a decades old establishment that Dora purchased from someone else, existing since DoA’s present-ish and yet active QC’s future-ish?
Faye apeared in the DoA-verse during Freshman Family Weekend, but her dad was there too. Does QC happen in DoA’s future?
I almost missed it !
I didn’t realize I needed Sal and Dina to be friends until this went live last night. I LOVE this. <333
And oh, Amber, honey. It's only the same in that both involve a stabbing. It hurts me she doesn't see the difference in attacking someone who was no longer a threat and restrained vs eviscerating a rapist attacking her with a knife. I'm guessing this is more about her temper and her fear of it than thinking rationally. My poor baby.
And I am really worried that that moment of safety she felt where she thought she could handle Sal on her own without snapping or needing AG was connected to a physical victory (at least in her own mind) after all.
I really hope Sal and Dina become friends, they seem like they would make excellent friends even when not discussing dinos.
And yeah, Amber’s logic is lost when it comes to Sal unfortunately but here is hoping this talk does some good for her. This is a good chance for both of them and I hope it goes better than it has so far.
I agree. Between Joyce, Carla, Danny, Billie and Dina, I think there’s potential for Sal to make friends who aren’t named Marcie who she can enjoy the company of despite their hideous not-Marcie-ness.
I think Amber’s in a really dark place, self worth and mental health wise. I hope this ends well but I will settle for not stabby.
Looking on the bright side, I’m pretty sure Dina has completely preempted any stabbing. How could anyone possibly get stabby when there are pachycephalosauruses to rank?
Fair point! A worthy distraction.
Let’s not pretend Dina isn’t objectively better friend material than Marcie. Or really anyone.
I don’t think Sal’d agree with that, but I do really want Dina and Sal to be friends.
wait is she talking about the incident at the gas station? I thought she was talking about the brawl they just had. Holy shit Amber stop being such a piece of shit.
I read panel one as ‘Oh, so you think you can stop me from stabbing you?’ and yeah, her equating the two stabbings, even if she’s not saying Sal is as bad as Ryan (which I don’t think she is).
She’s calling herself a monster for both incidents? She’s not insulting Sal here.
Amber’s saying that she herself was a dangerous, terrible, violent person both times she stabbed someone. She’s not comparing Ryan to Sal.
I kind of think it is all of the above. She thinks she’s a monster and that Sal and Ryan are victims but also vice versa. I’ve lost faith that Amber is capable of recognizing the differences in her actions or the ones of those she’s been in conflict with. It’s clear she shuts that part of her brain off as a defense mechanism.
That’s definitely not what the words she is saying sound like to the person she’s been actively demonizing for 5 years.
Nor did I say they did, but we the audience have a wider perspective.
Sounds like she’s demonizing herself… she feels she’s a bad person, a monster… I wish I could give her a hug and tell her it’s going to be okay and she’s not a bad person.
Yeah. I know it’s almost a meme to say Amber needs professional help at this point but it is so true. She has a fundamental misunderstanding of reality. It’s really sad actually and not something that can be solved even with a conversation with Sal.
See, panel 4 is the angry face Amber was trying to do yesterday to scare Sal off, but that time her eyes weren’t quite selling it
She tried to reroll her intimidate check, but unfortunately, though she got a better roll than last time, so did Sal on her willpower save…
HEY! I LOVE DINA!
There is/has been a lot going on with Amber and Sal which I’m also really interested in, but Dina kind of eclipsed all of that in this moment.
I see you, QC ref.
lolwhat? i know ambers doing the edgy slash self hatey thing right now but don’t put that dunkass brawl with Sal in the same box of fucking up that rapist, dipshit.
Also Dina continues to be perfect. Maybe if nothing else she and Sal can become friends.
The way Amber sees herself is as an abusive monster just like her father. That’s what her “direct it away from good people” line is about. She didn’t stab Ryan in self-defense she stabbed him because he was a accepable target to vent her anger.
“Coffee of Doom”
She picked up a souvenir that time she visited.
I wonder if she got anything on her trip to Londinium.
That armful of pachycephalosaurus toys are just the ones that Dina has in the room.
Well yes.
A large part of her Pachycephalosaurus and general dinosaur toy collection likely remains at her parents’ house. It simply wasn’t practical to bring them all. 😛
Too bad Sal didn’t use the “Riker Maneuver” to sit down.
The single best way to sit!
I read somewhere that Jonathan Frakes had a back injury, and sitting down normally was uncomfortable for him.
I mean, I think he can do it most of the time, but getting up and down repeatedly for retakes of the same scene really isn’t good for him? That’s also why Riker leans so much.
Called it. Wasn’t a threat, Amber was warning Sal. And Sal is in the unfortunate position of having to convince a person who thinks she’s mad, bad, and dangerous that she’s wrong in her self-assessment.
Problem is, Amber is “mad” (she is mentally ill and has an incredible amount of rage stored inside her), though not bad, and dangerous just on special occasions.
To clarify: the only thing Sal can wholeheartedly dispute is “Amber is bad”. This is also the most important point to dispute, because this conclusion of Amber about herself leads to Amber not seeking help (as she obviously doesn’t deserve it etc.)
<3 Coffee of Doom <3
Dina is a goddamn national treasure.
(checks character tag archive)
This is the 3rd time that Dina has been visibly wearing the Coffee of Doom souvenir T-shirt, I see.
I took it that she is saying what she did to Ryan wasn’t justice, it was vengeance, and that to her, it’s no more laudable than stabbing Sal was, which is to say, not at all. I don’t think she is comparing Sal and Ryan.
I somehow forgot for a minute that Ryan exists and was really confused as to why Amber would think Blaine’s still in a hospital.
I also thought she was referring to Blaine! It wasn’t until I read the comments that my brain did a soft reboot and I was like “oh, yeah… That other monster she fought.” (And then I went “wait, are we comparing Sal to Gashface?” and that’s where I am at the moment).
She’s saying that she’s a violent, vindictive monster who’s perfectly capable of brutally stabbing Sal again in the present day because she recently stabbed Ryan. She didn’t see what she did to Ryan as self-defense or justice, just proof that she’s becoming Blaine.
That’s a valid interpretation. Thank you for your insight!
Basically this. She can only see the bare facts of it -she lost her temper and got stabby. The whos, hows and whys don’t matter.
Which is fair, in a way. The circumstances obviously matter on one level, but on another they don’t. It’s still a symptom of the same basic problem Amber has. That it got triggered in an acceptable direction that time, doesn’t mean it won’t go off inappropriately another time. And hurt someone like Sal.
Which is why it’s so important she was able to fight Sal and stop herself.
It’s fair for her to see it as another case of this symptom she’s so afraid of and worries will overtake her life, but I do think she’s being waaaay to hard on herself. But hey, she and Sal have a lot in common and tunnel vision on an emotion (In Amber’s case, anger, in Sal’s case, often guilt) to the exclusion of the actual circumstances is one of them.
Yeah, I think that’s it considering how she’s reacted to being thanked or praised for stabbing Ryan
Does Dina have access to a rope?
If yes, Sal is removed.
In AmaziGirl’s room? Yes. Yes, she has access to a rope.
As can be seen here.
I actually really want to hear Sal’s answer to Dina’s question.
Me too.
Dina is actually the best roommate ever
Dina is so much me sometimes. Oh gosh.
I…know Amber’s kind of anger intimately. I have a problem with my temper; it runs in my family. And I tend to vascillate between SO furious that I just want to punch and kick things (I am not nearly as athletic as Amber, so I mostly just hurt my hands and feets – I am pretty sure I once broke one of my toes by kicking a wall while wearing steel-toed Doc Martens) and being SO sad about how I fail at life that I just start uncontrollably sobbing.
I also love Dina. One of the things my partner does when I get too angry/sad is to bring up random things. For example, last night while I was sobbing he started talking about the “Bumblebee” movie (I HAVE THOUGHTS). But we started debating whether or not that film should be a thing, and I got distracted and felt better.
(Please note that I am on anti-depressants and in therapy and I am not a danger to myself or others. I am also sorry if my post upsetted anyone.)
Glad to hear you’ve gotten the help you need and have someone who loves and supports you close by. You keep going on. 😀
Thank you!
Congrats on getting help. I hope things continue to go well. <3
Thank you as well! I was lucky to grow up with my psychologist mom, so therapy and psychiatric meds don’t carry the same stigma for me that they seem to do for a lot of U.S.ians. (My mom has said that almost EVERYONE can benefit from good psychotherapy at some point in their life.)
Your mother isn’t wrong and I’m glad you didn’t have to struggle with overcoming any sort of familial stigma!
Sal and I have the same favourite dinosaur and I’m inordinately excited about this.
It bashes things with its head. So great.
Oh gosh this is illegal to be so adorable
This world desperately needs more people like Dina…
There goes my prediction. I thought she was going to sit on the bed.
So Amber stabbed Sal, a restrained brown girl, in a fit of rage (not self defense, because the ordeal was over by then), and got away with it; and years later, she’s still accusing SAL of being the monster, “the same” as Actual Roofie Rapist Ryan Who Tried To Kill Two Girls. Wow, Amber.
Sal is trying her hardest here, but man, right when I think Amber can’t sink any lower… Well, at least her shitty character makes for entertaining writing.
I don’t think that’s what Amber is saying. I think she’s trying to say she (Amber) is very violent, as proven by her slicing and dicing Ryan (even though it’s a completely different scenario, but Amber’s so… fucked in the head I guess it doesn’t matter).
My impression was that Amber was saying that in both cases, she lost control of her violent impulses, which is why she’s so afraid here. She’s afraid that even though Sal is not the bad, scary person she thought she was as a kid that she’s still going to stab her again, thus “For *her* safety.”
YMMV.
Coming back to say, though, that I do get your reading, considering the racial (and racist) overtones of things like, oh, Amber stalking Sal and picking a fight with her and her friends over a little underage drinking (who do police statistically over-target and historically use drinking and drug use as excuses to beat, arrest, and kill?) and so on. And even if that was never the intent, you (switching to general you here) don’t grow up in a racist society without at least some unconscious racism being ingrained, no matter how “good” a person or aware a person you are. It’s in the water, practically, and whether that’s self-directed or something you have to watch for in yourself not just in the way you treat others, but in the way you think about things, it’s there and it’s especially important for white people to be aware of how their actions bear out, whether they fit a certain narrative that is borne out all too often in your society.
Which is to say, much more clearly than my “YMMV” did: while I do think that what Amber means is that she is out of control, I also think your reading is valid.
And even if you went with another reading, it is another case of Amber not thinking her words and actions through and realizing what awful implications they have. Like, seriously, yes, Amber, even if you’re concerned the end result will be the same (lots of stabbing), they are *very different* contexts, and that needs acknowledging. You’ve slotted Sal unfairly into the category of criminal often enough, and putting her on the same level as a rapist, even if it’s just as an accidental and unfortunate implication, is beyond gross.
The problem is that Sal is an object to her – not a person, despite Sal having *literally saved her life*, helped her (and Amazi-girl, MANY times, if we’re going to separate the two). Sal is an object and a “monster” to be taken down – this is why she has stalked her, threatened to disown her friends (and DID disown Danny) for talking to Sal, stood over her in triumph after beating her bloody, and is now threatening her.
She sees people as objects – HER objects to stalk (Walky and Sal), berate (her mother, Ethan, Joe, Danny, Sal), discard (Danny), and to try to break (Sal) if she chooses. Mike was right back in that old strip where Amber said she doesn’t want to be like her mother. The real problem is that she’s so afraid of her mother that all this time – no matter what she says about not trying to be like him – she has been trying to be her father.
“Beating” Sal has always been Amber trying to live up to her father’s ideal of what she should become. And she’s openly embraced that already.
*I meant “afraid of being her mother”. Not afraid of her mother.
I 100% agree that Amber’s reaction was NOT okay and that there is some very not-okay racial politics in her association with Sal.
As I said above, I DO understand Amber’s anger because I have experienced it. I REALLY don’t want to offend or bother anyone, but at least for me, once you get down to that level of rage, race, culture, and gender don’t matter. (IMHO) I once broke someone’s nose in a mosh pit with one of my rings. My ring got covered in blood and my partner and my best friend literally had to pull me away from that person. I also once (I think) put someone in the hospital in a Hatebreed mosh pit. I had a chain wrapped around my hand like jewelry, and the lead singer said, “Look to your right. Then look to your left. And BEAT DOWN the person on your left!” And I did just that, because I was and am an angry person.
I am not proud of that and I am sorry if it sounds like I am. My Mom Who Knows Everything is a Freudian psychologist and has said, when we get down to the level of the Id, we are getting down to an “animal” level where we don’t even recognize stuff like race and culture and gender: it mostly just comes down to “I want,” and dang anyone or anything who keeps us from getting what we want! For example, I have three cats. But they have scratched and bitten me when I don’t give them what “they want” – which may include keeping them from eating my food and shooing them off bookshelves. (And I AM a responsible pet owner – my Mom Who Knows Everything grew up on a farm and she taught me that it is REALLY important to take good care of animals for which you are responsible. As I think I have mentioned here before, my oldest kitteh – Annabel Lee – has chronic kidney failure. My partner and I have already spent over $1000 on vet bills and we have to give her subcutaneous fluids every night and also feed her VERY stinky medicated food and she is RIGHT NOW trying to flop on my iPad!)
Where was I?…sorry for rambling. In any case, I think it is SUPER important to be mindful of racial politics. But the level of rage that Amber has unfortunately reached, and which I think I kind of understand, may go beyond that kind of mindfulness and tap into the “monsters from the Id.”
I don’t think so.
Amber thinks SHE is the monster in the Amber/Sal confrontation – both in the past, and today. She has to be Amazi-Girl because Amazi-Girl is in control. Except she can’t be Amazi-Girl all the time.
Amber can’t see that there’s a difference between stabbing rapist Ryan in self-defense and stabbing Sal, nor even that stabbing Sal was in some way mitigated by her traumatic experience plus long term emotional abuse by her father. To Amber, this is all proof that she’s wildly out of control and monstrous. (And to be fair, her anger management and general mental health IS spiraling violently out of control. But that’s not because she’s a monster.)
I love Sal as a character but she threatened to slice the throat of a young gay boy in public and got off with being sent to a posh boarding school. The facts don’t always tell the full story.
1) Nobody’s ever used the word ‘posh’ to describe the place. That’s all you. The things we have heard are ‘like prison’ and ‘not much different form juvie’.
2) The choice between school and juvie was probably due to the officer’s incompetence which let Amber stab Sal.
3) …And? None of that changes she was restrained and no longer a threat when Amber stabbed her or that Amber was not sanctioned for it.
threatened to slice the throat of a young gay boy in public
Would it be okay if she threatened to slice the throat of a young heterosexual boy in public?
No it wouldn’t, and that makes it super stupid to mention Ethan’s homosexuality (which even he wasn’t aware at that time) in this context!
The point being that Sal’s actions were horrifying and the fact we know the reason is why they’re sympathetic. Sal needs to confront Amber about the incident every bit as much as Amber to Sal.
Oh my fucking god. We get it you went to a nice boarding school but guess what: your experiences are not universal. Lots of boarding schools fucking suck and it’s kind of the point because they exist to beat the “wrong” out of the kids sent there.
And whether or not the boarding school can be objectively said to have sucked (not wandering into that at all) there’s a huge difference between going to boarding school and being sent there and mostly written off at the same time.
It is DEFINITELY not okay that Sal threatened to do that. (And, IMHO, NO ONE should ever threaten anyone’s life, no matter what personal identities either/both of them have). But as other commenters have pointed out, boarding schools are not necessarily “posh.” Phillips Academy in Andover, MA (where I went to the public high school – my mom couldn’t afford Phillips) certainly is. However, a quick internet search (Google is your friend!) shows that a lot of U.S. boarding schools have gotten in trouble for having low educational standards and abuse. IIRC, and someone correct me if I’m wrong about this, wasn’t Sal sent to a Catholic boarding school? While I am not Catholic, from what I understand, that religion does sometimes focus on the idea of sin and repentance. I can see Sal, especially as a person with brown skin, getting frustrated and angry by that.
She also was, as a fairly young person, sent away from her family and her home. I can’t even IMAGINE what that would have felt like to me when I was Sal’s age. Even if her boarding school was “posh,” she was still exiled in a pretty significant way, which mirrors the way people of colour are often “exiled” in the U.S. (Didn’t Sal once say that her family loved her brother more because he had whiter skin?)
I do not think Sal got off easy AT ALL.
Catholic schools also have a particular history of abuse. Apparently a lot of people still associate Catholic schools with nuns beating students.
On that note – do nuns actually teach in Catholic schools in the states? There’s like 5 or 6 in my city and they all have regular teachers here.
They did at my school. Mind you, corporal punishment was banned by the time I went in the 80s and 90s.
My partner went to a Catholic elementary school in the 80s/90s and yes, the teachers were nuns. His mom sent him there because it offered a better education than the local public schools. (And it wasn’t a boarding school.) IIRC, my partner has said that the nuns used to sometimes hit students’ desks with a ruler, which he said was kind of scary.
The history of corporeal punishment in schools isn’t THAT far gone. My mom went to a rural public school in the 1960s and she told me she once got hit in the face by a teacher to whom she’d been “rude.” And that wasn’t considered a big deal AT ALL. Even now, private and charter schools in the U.S. kind of get to make their own rules because they are not covered by federal education regulations. (For example, I have read cases of charter schools being sponsered by McDonald’s, or someone, so they don’t actually offer nutritious school lunches but rather fast food and soda.)
I’m not trying to bash Catholic schools or U.S. schools in general, but I think it is pretty likely that Sal had a very bad boarding school experience and I think it’s likely that her parents sent her to a more “disciplinarian” type of school. It would be interesting to find out if her current “rebel” persona is something she adopted as a reaction to being sent away to boarding school.
I think it’s equally possible that Sal’s experience in boarding school was simply a kind of purgatory (irony). She clearly didn’t make any new friends and she seems focused on her family relationships. I don’t think she actually had any new trauma (simply because they weren’t referenced) but it did nothing to treat or help her situation. Clearly, she at least picked up motorcycle riding and fighting skills, though, so there’s a story there of some kind.
That Sal picked up fighting skills and developed an instinct to strangle people who she finds hovering over her while she sleeps strongly suggest that it was a stressful environment to grow up in, even if it wasn’t 100% bad.
Sal’s words about the school – again, ‘like prison’ and ‘not much different than juvie’ suggest it did, in fact, suck.
Ok Dina with the greatest of respect please go away so these two can, hopefully, talk about whats happening without being interrupted by your inanities
Ok so Sal comes across to me as a bit arrogant, a bit “I know best because you’re all children and I’m an adult” and has the problem where she thinks everyone knows what she means without having to spell it out
Like how Joyce sees her as a cool, bad ass, loner rebel because thats the image Sal portrays, inadvertently, yet doesn’t take the time to explain why shes not what Joyce thinks she is
Same with telling Danny to get on her bike, Sal didn’t say Dannys name because why would she, Danny and Amber should just know who Sal was referring to and then not actually asking Danny if he wanted to go on a life threatening motor bike ride she just assumed that he would because who wouldn’t
When Sal went to Ambers room she, by her very presence, escalated the situation and no doubt made Amber feel trapped, I mean the girl Amber just had a major fight comes knocking on her room, her sanctuary, the place where she should feel safe and so it was on Sal to deescalate the situation which she could have done with a simple “I’m not here to fight” or similar but instead she went with “no you won’t” which could easily have made Amber feel threatened even more or more defensive
Now this is just me but sitting that way on a chair always came across as a little bit like an interrogation type pose but beyond that
I think Sal has the best of intentions but this could have gone really badly (it probably won’t) for both of them and on the plus side maybe Sal will get through to Amber
Excellent. That analysis helps my understanding.
Though the sitting, even if it’s an interrogation pose, still drops the threat level, which helps.
But yeah, that’s not far from how I see it.
Neither of these two are good at communication though. Amber does the same thing, especially with her disassociation. Constantly dropping lines that only make sense if you already know about it, but are easily misread or just confusing otherwise.
I wonder if Dina watched a lot of Dinosaur Revolution growing up.
Awww….now I want a Pachy figure….or plushie…
Sal likes the Pachycephalosaurus because it headbutts things.
Since most dinos can’t punch.
Not sure what’s funnier, the level of shocked on Amber’s face in the last panel, or the level of not-shocked on Sal’s
lol I live for Dina interactions
Also I see that you’ve chosen to not draw cursed dorm chairs, Willis.
Don’t get me wrong, the writing of this comic is very strong and the characters are well developed, but goddamn do I hate Amber.
Do you really? Wow. I never would have expected you to express that particular opinion.
I kinda do, too… Although ‘hate’ isn’t the right word. But reading the comics with her in it have made me angry at her nearly every single time for quite a long while now.
Also, if she was a person I’d come into contact with in real life, I’d make sure to get the hell away from her.
Sal, why you gotta keep pushing things lol
they’re both out of fight and flight, that’s the best moment to talk it out, paradoxally
De-Escalation through mutual love for giant lizards. Good girl Dina!
Dina will make a good mom; she alread knows how to deal with squabling children!
I like the way Sal chooses to sit in the chair. I mean, on the one hand, it’s the sort of “cool” way (I say, even though I, a not at all cool person also like to sit in chairs that way), but also, it provides a barrier between them, giving Amber a bit of room.
I also really like Dina’s enthusiasm tempered by her willingness to kick someone out if needed, even though she really, really wants to talk pachycephalosauruses with them.
it reads more like a youth counsellor sit, to me
Heh, and we KNOW Sal has met too many psychologists and youth counselors who tries (and most likely fails) to be cool with the troubled teens.
Now, when she finds herself in the chair of reason, so to say, it would actually be hilarious if she tries to emulate those who tried – and failed – to do the same thing with her.
Meh, it’s okay, but it’s no Riker Maneuver.
hurry up and invite Dina back to your room to hang with fuckface and the dinosaurs Sal
No need. Tomorrow when Sal wakes up, the first thing she sees will be Dina’s and Becky’s grinning faces filling her entire field of vision.
Becky: “I HEARD YOU LIKE DINOSAURS!!!”
Dina: “I have gathered an alarming number of pachycephalosaurus toys for you to evaluate”
Becky *whispering*: “Just remember, I saw her first“
true but I’d like Sal to offer, esp. because Malaya’s not there RN (though, I’d like to see a scene with her and Dina, idk what they’d make of each other)
Malaya won’t care about Dina at all and Dina will only care about Malaya as “someone who owns a lizard”. The only thing I wonder about is if Dina will show an interest in Fuckface or dismiss him as a non-dinosaur.
I think Dina would only be interested if Fuckface was a bird.
She has a lecture on the diverging evolutionary paths of dinosaur-birds and modern lizards ready to go at all times.
Hey, Becky said she’d make out with Sal if she asked. If Dina seems interested, let her get her opportunities where she can. 😛
I thought Sal was established as strictly straight.
Weren’t we all…
+1
If we’re going by word of Willis, yes. If we’re going by exact words used in strip, all that’s been strictly established is that Sal is not currently banging Marcie.
Besides, I’ve said it again – what exactly does canon have to do with shipping?
Man, I am like, the last person to like anything Sal does, but wow amber, that is five thousand miles beyond the line. The line is a dot to you.
A… flock of pachycephalosaurus? A gang of pachycephalosaurus? A school of of pachycephalosaurus? A pack of pachycephalosaurus!
#NailedIt
While the alliteration works, ‘pack’ is usually reserved for hunting carnivores.
For pachys, “herd’ works best of the traditional group nouns. A group of rhinos is sometimes called a ‘crash’, tho, I think that would work best for pachys.
Oh dear! It seems that Dina has decided that Sal’s unusual choice means that she’s a friend!
Sal’s actually doing something smart here. She’s not withdrawing but she’s also not advancing. Putting the chair in the place she has also creates this sense of separation between them. Once Amber’s panic reaction runs dry, there’s going to be nothing to reinforce it.
Yup. Sal is doing a stellar job here. Relaxed body language, making herself smaller rather than bigger. The only problem is the room design, where Amber might still feel trapped with Sal between her and the exit. Sal is all the way towards to wall so there is space, but it’s still a bit cramped.
I don’t know about stellar, but it’s a definite improvement on yesterday. The body language and especially sitting down are good.
The words … not actually so great. “learned your lesson” could easily come across as “learned that I can beat you”, though I don’t think it’s intended that way. And she still hasn’t given Amber a clue as to why she came in the first place.
Yeah thats the thing, all Amber knows is that the girl that she just recently fought, that choked her out, who Amber asked to end it (her) has now just appeared at her room.
When Sal appeared she started talking about keeping enemies close and broithers closer which to me sounds a bit antagonistic and then when Amber threatens her to keep away Sal says she wont, I mean damn you know its not the best way to show someone you don’t mean any harm
I’m wondering if Sal is repeating all the things that was used on her in therapy/counselling, like going with what you know, and as such doing a really bad job of it
Shouty and angry as it is, Amber is TALKING to SAL about her trauma.
I really think that will turn out to be a good thing.
I had to look up that dinosaur. Think it’s because Sal likes to but heads? …I’ll see myself out now.
Amber is so confused right now, because evaluating Dina’s dinosaur toys is something she would be into.
Enh, it’s no Parasaurolophus, is all I’m saying
Different people got different favorites! And I wonder how often those favorites make for successful metaphors about the people that like them. I don’t really know much about dinosaurs so I’m going to assume the answer is ‘basically always’.
Oh my gosh same hat.. I mean dinosaur
Give me my honky lad
Is pachycephlasaurus a metaphor for Amber’s method of conflict resolution? And Dina sees this, and is giving Sal the opportunity to counsel Amber?
Am I just thinking too much?
Gotta love the Reverse-Chair sitting…
Dina is dangerous in a fight. She’s tiny, you can’t get a bead on her. It’s like fighting a mosquito.
You gotta be fast, but they ruin your wallpaper.
Didn’t Ruth specifically say they should stay apart from each other? That’s an inherently correct, chaos-reducing cooldown period.
She actually didn’t. Though it seemed implied. She told them to go to their separate rooms and that she’d get the authorities involved if they laid one more hand on each other, but that’s it.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing for Sal to make this overture now, but it’s off to a rocky start, partly because Sal wasn’t at all clear that’s what she was doing. Today’s better. Hopefully it’ll improve.
Sal’s approach wasn’t perfect but this is an honest attempt to make some sort of peace and we can’t expect everyone to be Ethan.
I’m not actually sure if Amber saw her approach this time as aggressive or if she saw Sal came in peace but honestly believes if Sal gets too close, raises her voice, makes sudden movements, cuts off her escape, if there is an unrelated crash, she may not have the willpower/presence of mind to not magic a knife into her hand and stab Sal.
I think more of the former in this case. Her comment about being out of “fight or flight” last strip suggests this is more of a bluff than anything else. I’d expect too much fight or flight to lead to the latter. Could be wrong.
Sal’s approach is actually terrible. It’s too soon after the fact, she’s cornering Amber in her room, and has already refused to leave when told to do so. The non-terrible approach would require AT LEAST tomorrow, and a public location.
I honestly think the best approach would be either to talk to Ruth, or get out her DS to open dialog. Yea this should wait at least until the morning but they live on the same floor they at least need to establish a protacall for seeing each other around with in the next few days.
I think there are good places this could go, so I’m reserving judgement on the basic idea of coming to talk with her and only addressing how she goes about it. Tactics, not strategy, as it were.
Today’s a lot better than yesterday, though still not great. She has in fact, not gotten closer. She’s sat down, which makes her less of a threat, both psychologically and practically. What she’s actually saying isn’t really helpful though. Especially yesterday, when she had the chance to try to set the tone and failed. She needs to get to the point. And not be distracted by Amber’s bluster and threats, if she isn’t going to take them seriously.
Dina on the other hand has mastered this, entirely unintentionally. She makes it clear that Sal’s presence here is conditional and she will be removed if necessary, then she effectively moves to break the tension. Well done.
Willis I am absolutely begging you for like 3 days of just Sal and Dina debating Pachycephalosaurus toy rankings.
Also Amber that’s utter bullshit and you need to shut up.
Ok, what’s your problem with her now?
The complete inability to distinguish between an active fight with a murderous rapist, and talking things out with someone who already ended the fight.
The comparison she’s making is really on the hear and now but more between the two past events with when she stabbed Sal vs When she stabbed Ryan, but she’s making the argument that how she reacted then was no different then how she reacted to Sal.
I think Emily’s reading it as comparing Sal and Ryan. Which seems to be something a lot of people did, so it’s hardly just on Emily.
I wholeheartedly support this motion.
Debate: Should said ranking include the potential future figures from the Beasts of the Mesozoic line, yea or nay?
It’s only the ones Dina has in the room.
Presumably, she has more at home.
*Captain America voice* “So! You think you’re a monster.”
I suppose no one is going to point out the reference?
Quite a few people before you have done so.
I think that Dina is already working on removing Sal from the room, although she doesn’t realize it.
Ahh, that feeling of trying very hard to wait patiently for people to finish their conversation so that you may begin talking to one of them about the interest you just discovered you both share.
That shared conversation is probably really important and you don’t want to be rude but also NEW FRIEND!!!
What’s Amber going to do when she discovers that the monster is no longer in the hospital? (Somebody already said this by now, but I didn’t have the time to read all 170+ comments…)
Blaine’s been released, but they’re probably still trying to weave Ryan back together.
There’s also Toedad. Though he probably has been released (into a prison cell) by now.
Get that Chairscoot out of here, he’s only a pale imitation of the real The Geddup Noise.
New book name! Ofcourse It’s Dina!
Nonsense. The new book name is Keep Your Enemies Close and their Brothers Closer.
Amber sure is doubling down pretty hard on the stabbing threat for someone who doesn’t have a knife
“Thinking quickly, Amber constructs a homemade knife using only some string, a squirrel, and a knife.”
The squirrel, of course, comprising the blade.
In Amber’s experience, when she needs a knife, someone will have one handy for her to use.
What an amazing coincidence.
She has a cell phone. Same thing.
To be fair he could have done some real damage with a phone, all he was able to do with a knife was get stabbed. Turns out that was real damage, but at least Joyce and Dorothy are more or less safe, and he wasn’t able to summon enough friends to make up the difference.
Honestly I feel like Amber’s a good example of how easily and sneakily self-loathing can make someone self-centered. Like, she no doubt means here that there’s no difference between the situations because she sees them both as a result of her inability to control her anger and proof she’s inherently unsafe. But by doing so, she’s still saying that there is no difference between attacking an unarmed kid already in police custody, and attacking a known rapist actively trying to hurt her. Which is obviously untrue, and also a pretty terrible thing to say to the unarmed kid.
Note: I say this with a lot of sympathy, as someone who struggled with self-loathing in a similar way, albeit without quite the same anger issues.
Actually I see the point your making and I can’t say your wrong. What happened to Sal was uncalled for considering the position she was in while what happened to Ryan was something he brought on himself.
But the thing is with Amber is that she doesn’t discriminate or rather rage doesn’t discriminate and that’s the problem she focusing on. If I were to use a random metaphor for a second let’s say innocent bystander out somewhere near the woods being assaulted by a murderer and then a random animal comes along and mauls the killer to death, then right after mauls the bystander as well. A random beast doesn’t discriminate between who deserves to be killed or not it only it only concerns itself with feeding and Amber is afraid she’s becoming that beast.
Still though she should learn to think outside the situation as to why it affects just her. On hand what she did the Ryan turned out good for everybody in the girls dorm but arguably she’s only focused on whether or not it was good for her.
In all honesty though everything you said in the first ccomment is probably what someone like Amber would need to hear.
Very good point! I’ve been pretty appalled at how narcissist Amber is, but it really all comes from a point of self-loathing.
I actually have a friend who used to do something a bit like this (though way less bad) — she had very low self-esteem and somehow projected this onto all other women, leading her to be a proper misogynist. Made me mad to no end. Luckily she got over it; I hope Amber does, too.
But this time she stopped. Unlike Ryan. Unlike Blaine. Unlike Sal when they were kids. This time she stopped when she got her down. She didn’t lose control. She didn’t go too far.
…I don’t really see how that has anything to do with what I said? Unless you mean Amber’s proven to herself in that fight that she’s not inherently dangerous, and just falling back into that narrative to scare Sal? In which case… it’s still terrible to say ‘there was no difference between hurting you while you were unarmed and arrested and hurting a violent rapist trying to kill me’, and she’s still refusing to accept anyone else’s perspective of her and her actions as valid. That vehement refusal really doesn’t look like just bluffing to get Sal out to me.
No, it was sort riffing off this bit of discussion and perhaps not quite as on target as I’d intended. 🙂
I hope the fight has shown her she’s not as bad as she’d thought and I do think that she’s mostly bluffing with the threats here, but I agree that the vehemence in that refusal is “they were the same because I couldn’t stop”, not “you’re the same as him”.
I feel like this comment was maybe this posted here by mistake. Probably meant for someone else….also yeah maybe it wasn’t really a bluff like I thought, she probably thinks that she really will do it if she’s not careful.
Wow, Dina’s got a whole desktop hidden under her bed.
I just realized that Dina is wearing a Coffee Of Doom shirt. Questionable Content shout out.
Dina tackling the real issues
Coffee of Doom! Nice shout out.
Ok, soooo…
Sal is thinking of Ryan on panel 3, right? Joyce was the one who took out Ross, and she doesn’t know about Blaine.
Meanwhile, Amber has to be talking about Blaine on panel 2 – Ryan only fought her ONCE, so there’s no lesson he’d learn about fighting her.
Panel 5 Sal seems to be looking at Dina thinking “What? You’re like half my weight, soaking wet.”, ignorant of the fact that Dina jumped a shotgun-wielding, fully fit Ross. Not sure you’d win this one, Sal.
The lesson Sal’s referring to is ‘what happens when you stab someone’. Amber’s asserting that Ryan being in the hospital after she cut him up is proof she hasn’t.
And I choose to believe Dina could totally get Sal to leave – by basically shoving a zillion toys at her and asking to go to the cafeteria to eat and talk about the cool dinosaur.
Ooooh, that makes sense, thanks.
I like how even Dina is lowkey crushing on Sal. And yes, that is how I’m reading it.
Interesting. I appreciate all the people pointing out that Sal would have seen a bunch of counselors at various points whom she’s probably partly emulating (despite their failures to help/understand her) due to lack of a better roadmap. In a real world sense, she really is approaching this quite poorly – staying after being asked to leave, coming into Amber’s space where she should be able to retreat, doing this TODAY instead of later. But at the same time, I actually feel like later would never have the chance of working that right now has? Amber’s defences are down (out of fight and flight) in a way that might let Sal’s words affect her. Or even just prove to her that she can control the violence even while “weak” sometimes, assuming she doesn’t actually attack Sal.
They’re both pretty terrible communicators. It didn’t occur to me until looking at the comments that Sal might take the interpretation that several commenters have about the stabbings being “exactly the same thing” being a comparison of *her* to Ryan, as opposed to being all about Amber. And of course, since she was part of what happened, and faced the consequences of Amber’s actions, it can’t help but compare them to an extent. She and Ryan are both seen on some level as acceptable targets for Amber’s anger, which sucks. Not only is Amber too wrapped up in her own self loathing to think about how her words and actions actually affect others, she really does categorize Sal as a villain still.
And Sal’s words “you won’t” clearly came off to Amber as threatening rather than conciliatory, and her follow up could too. She’s trying to make it clear she comes in peace with body language and such, but she really should explicitly say it.
Sal has a tendency to skip over parts of a conversation that she sees as self explanatory – or perhaps as nonspecific and thus irrelevant – when they really really aren’t. I sort of wonder if she sees it like – saying she comes in peace before she *proves* she comes in peace is not going to cause belief and is thus pointless noise? This might be a bad habit she picked up in opposition to a bunch of unhelpful counselors – both because when enough people say “I’m here to help” and then do nothing of the kind you might start really disliking “I’m here to help”, and also because if statements about herself are never believed or taken seriously, why bother making them? Why bother trying to tell Malaya or Joyce that she’s not doing what she’s doing because it’s “cool”? (Especially when she partly is sometimes.)
Yeah, they’re both bad at this. As we’ve seen before with Sal.
There’s little reason Sal should take that “exact same thing” as anything else, since she’s got no context to see why they’re the same to Amber. It’s more annoying when commenters do, because we do have the context.
Ohoooo. Coffee of Doom! I love cross comic references!
I just got it.
Pachycephalosaurs are the headbutting one.
Her favorite dinosaur can literally be described as headstrong.
Omigod. Dina is so adorable! Yes, Dina, I will be happy to sit with you and help you rank your dinosaurs. LOL!
If Sal wasn’t so wary of authority (fully justified) she’d make an awesome RA.
Also I’m thrilled my avatar is Dina
… My favorite is Coelophysis. He’s long and he has a cool name and he eats little lizards which is sad but also neat.