DUMBING OF AGE BOOK 8 KICKSTARTER UPDATE
Surprise magnet JASON is unlocked! Go find the JASON MAGNET tier if you want just him, or consider him for your PICK THREE or PICK FIVE MAGNETS tiers! And, of course, if you got COMPLETE MAGNET POWER, Jason is added to your pile.
Also, there’s now the new DIGITAL PLUS MAGNET tiers, if you want just a magnet and a PDF, not a physical book!
The next stretch goal is a WALKY MAGNET at $45k! Just $2700 to go.
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bad at human interaction so hand it off to someone equally bad but woth no shame, sounds like my M.O.
Preach
I feel like removing the shame would make people a lot better at human interaction though. Especially Amber.
Warning! Removing shame may result in a good time!
The catch here is that you have to be good enough at human interaction to have at least one person to hand it off to.
Hey, I’m just glad Amber and Walky are talking.
Dogs can be trained to carry and deliver things.
I am Walky in this context. Social interaction? Probably gonna screw it up. Don’t care, doin it anyway.
I’m trying to take that approach again lately. Anxiety fucking hates it, but it seems to be working out, since one of my husband’s co-workers (or spouse thereof?) said something to the effect of “you’re fun, I’m glad you’re here” when we were out drinking recently. 🙂
More like, bad at interaction so hand it off to someone equally bad at interaction–who is the target’s family, and therefore unlikely to be rejected.
Booya
*plays the Prince song “Cream” on the hacked Muzak*
Not that there’s anything at all wrong with the BAND Cream, mind you.
I didn’t care for it when it was supoposedly a hit.
Hell yeah, twin bonding time.
*Grabby hands* Gimme gimme!
Livin’ in Beverley Hills?
I mean, sometimes —not very often, grant you— sometimes, you just need someone who generally has no shame and just plunges through a social interaction without letting the weirdness of the situation bother them is just what you need.
And we even know where Amber learnt it from: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/01-face-the-strange/rich/
I can do that! Although it’s not so much a lack of shame as it is “Not really understanding social cues very well but being an extrovert at heart”.
Though these days I do first have to turn off the ‘how to human interaction properly’ sim that I.. seem to have built in my head and constantly refer back to.
/I should, upon further reflection, probably seek a formal diagnosis.
YAY AWKWARD TWIN INTERACTIONS! 😀
And bonus awkward Sal and Amber interactions, nice.
Walky and Amber both mean well, but …yeah. There’s a lot of unpleasantness there and Sal looks super uncomfortable. And yeah, Amber and Sal are moving on, but it still happened, as did Walky ignoring her issues for 18 years (partially because of his parents and partially as a conscious choice, as he deemed her feelings ‘too complicated’ for him and lbr, he probably didn’t want to confront the awkward, uncomfortable things that Sal’s parents treatment of Sal revealed about them and about Walky’s status as the ‘golden child’. Nobody likes feeling like they have an unearned, unfair advantage. Even the most privileged people often convince themselves it’s not unfair, they’re just smart/hardworking/ambitious/etc.)
He was a kid with the same parents she had. I’m not sure where Walky would have learned the social skills that eluded her, too, in order to navigate the metric ton of baggage Linda and Henry dropped on Sal. What matters is what he does now.
(not saying Walky’s blameless, obviously, but it’s supremely easy to forget he was a minor for like, most all of that, same with Sal. Not a hugging kind of family, as both twins have acknowledged, so even if Walky had reached out earlier, Sal wasn’t ready for that. It’s only recently that she’s retreating less from Walky’s reaching out. There’s not much to suggest it’d have done a lot of good for him to try to mend that gap earlier.)
Per Walky’s own words, Sal reached out to him when they were younger, but her feelings were complicated and so Walky tuned them out. That’s not me rephrasing things to be hard on Walky, this is how Walky describes his interactions with Sal not long before Freshman Family Weekend.
Sal probably has a few more social skills than Walky. We know she had at least on friend, and we’re not sure what happened at the Catholic school. I don’t think Walky ever had friends except Billie, who became his bully when she became popular.
Sal’s implied she’s had other friends besides Marcie, but they were not good people.
Awkward twin powers activate!
Would cream make a difference five years after the injury?
It wouldn’t do anything about the scar. It might or might not make the skin around it feel better, if that were a problem for Sal in the first place, and if it were, Sal would probably already be using her own hand cream.
Damage bad enough to still not have full usability five years later almost certainly has some measure of chronic pain, but you’re right, it might help depending what specifically the problem is (and after five years, the cream’s probably not going to be super great, especially if it’s something Amber could buy – we know Amber’s hurting for money).
I don’t remember where it was mentioned that Amber was hurting for money?
First it was when she needed new glasses – she had to wait for her mom to scrounge up the cash (which may have been an insurance thing? I don’t recall offhand) and then after she stabbed Ryan, her mom told her they were fucking broke because of the lawsuit (which is part of why it’s a good thing in her mind she’s dating a doctor).
Not quite. Stacy told Amber to hold off on hurting Joe Senior “until after that boy’s parents stop suing us”. They’re just fucking broke. the lawsuit would be even more ruinous.
Rereading the strip, the ‘they’re suing us’ and ‘we’re fucking broke’ were connected. That was why she told Amber to not murder Richard right away, but those two things do seem connected.
Maybe. It could, at the very least temporarily, moisten the scar tissue and make it more flexible, and the act of rubbing the cream in would be like a massage. I doubt it would make it heal any more than it already has, but it could very well alleviate some of the chronic problems like stiffness and possibly pain.
This is no ordinary scar cream, if its anything like the Batman original.
Maybe it would make the scar less pink by constricting capillaries near the surface?
all that matters is that there are a lot of people who think it can.
So it’s the thought that counts, in this situation.
TL:DR; It depends on what type of scar, but possibly.
Depends on what type of scarring is present. A hollywood style fine-line scar wouldn’t normally be tight or itchy after so long, but should be noticeably lighter as (amongst other things) scar tissue doesn’t tan (Though Sal wearing gloves constantly might help mask that to some degree).
The scar doesn’t appear to be red or large enough to indicate keloid scarring, which tends to leave us with a diagnosis of hypertrophic scarring. While these scars start off red and bumpy, they flatten and fade to a normal skin colour over time. They do however remain stiff and can be sore or itchy at times for no adequately explained reason.
In either of the latter cases, a cream (or oil) will be useful even after five years, as the scar will still be tender, and painful or itchy sometimes. For the first case however (a fine line scar), it’d probably be of little use.
Sal’s scar is still pretty red after five years. And while we haven’t seen it detailed in a while, it looked relatively large when we first saw it when she fought Amber.
It’s gonna be AWKWARD! *grabs popcorn*
You know what I want to know?
Where’s Ethan? We haven’t seen him react to the Amber/Sal fight at all since they departed. You’d think it’d be a more… pressing issue for him.
He’s probably trying to give them some space, but I want to see that, big time. We got to see Danny’s reaction, so Ethan’s one of the people whose reaction i am pretty interested in. Feels like it’s been a while since we’ve gotten much Ethan, anyhow.
Walky’s a weird case in that we do get a glimpse from time to time that he does still care about the fallout from an awkward situation. He just forges ahead anyway, which can sometimes be a virtue. Perfect is the enemy of good, and waiting for the right time is a great way to not do something at all.
Yeah, being willing to eat the fallout from your words is way better than being so scared you just say nothing important or avoiding difficult conversations all together.
Yeah, I gotta say–I respect that.
I thought that label looked familiar…
Renuyu
Props to willis for the stealthy Batman TAS joke.
Yeah, it went right over my head. Good eye, StClair.
And now the alt text makes a lot more sense too.
If it’s good enough for Ron Perlman.
Sal turning into Clayface is just what Amazi-Girl needs right now.
Now I’m worried that Dorothy might be disfigured in an explosion.
I was thinking re-nut as in lotion people use when they wack off to internet porn.
Neither my brother NOR I know how to read a room. (Actually, that’s a lie–I can’t read a room, and he CAN read it but just doesn’t care most of the time.) Needless to say, it makes life interesting.
Yes don’t eat the stuff. Not unless you wanna become a clay monster.
For a moment in Panel 2 I thought Sal got her jacket on rather quick. I don’t know if it’s intentional or not but it’s funny.
Salface!
…Claysal?
OH DANG I MISSED THAT REFERENCE AT FIRST
SAL DON’T OVERUSE THAT CREAM YOU’LL TURN INTO A FAILING ACTOR
Points are awarded for trying.
Wait, what kind of cream? To alleviate scar tension, I assume?
’cause it’s well past the benefits of medicating, and I can’t imagine any scar-covering makeup would last long on the palm of a hand, given its motion and moisture considerations.
I mean, after putting the Batman reference aside. Being that this isn’t Shortpacked and all, and so we can’t take it seriously. Or, well.. not seriously, but.. you know what I meant.
Scar tissue is less flexible and more prone to drying out than non scar tissue, in addition to being more fragile. Creams can help the skin retain moisture which can help with flexibility issues caused by the scar (most treatments which claim to improve scar tissue elasticity and appearance however are scams).
Speaking as someone with plenty of scars, including a scar in one of my own palms, that’s pretty much the point I’m getting at. You’re either offering something dubious, or something fairly generic, since masking doesn’t work for the location and medicating (or ‘scar removal’ treatment) is no longer going to be effective.
In short, I’m calling it a dubious gift. 😛
I mean, you’re still maybe talking 15-30$ for a jar of that size, if it’s in the typical range, so it’s not necessarily cheap persay. Still dubious, though, especially given that Sal probably already has her own favored treatment, after all this time.
Well, there’s always the cheaper homemade approach of mixing together petroleum jelly, aloe, camphor, and capscium. Though I don’t get that sort of DIY vibe from Sal to begin with. 😛
And of course, on the other end of the spectrum, there’s Crème de la Mer, at $2,160. Putting aside the questionable benefits of the cream, I don’t imagine Amber’ll be shelling out that kind of money.
So, you’ve got a typical store cream, which is bound to be scented, which may or may not be a problem, with benefits that are either generic or dubious.
I’m not sure if the thought counts for this one, or if it wasn’t well thought out at all.
Which is why I’m curious if it’s not just a typical cream. I mean, I’m not expecting nor encouraging us to get Clayface out of it, but at least it’d be one heck of a distinct gift at that point. 😛
:shrug:
I’m glad that Walky and Sal are still getting along. Also nice to see that Walky and Amber are still talking to each other at least.
Sibling bonding!
Man, this is one of the best “define Walky with a single strip” strips there is.
In the “define Walky with a single panel” category I nominate the final panel of this strip
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/amygrant/
Somewhat off-topic: last night I dreamed that Willis took a sudden break from this storyline and put up a couple strips about a DoA Superhero AU. As in, everyone was a superhero and still recognizably themselves.
Don’t remember the full details – cause dreams are assholes like that, y’know – but Joyce had superstrength and one of the girls was moping in an appropriately superhero kinda way.
FWIW, I have a stillborn post-Shortpacked! AU fan-fiction on my Hard Drive where Walky and Jason re-forms SEMMF as a private-sector Avengers-style superhero group rather than a super-spy agency. Sydney Yus was going to continue to be a recurring villain in the style of Lex Luthor.
https://shortpacked.com/index.php?id=2197
Take a reading of Worm, it is an Interesting and realistic superhero story.
Walky seems proud of it, not reading the room that is.
Walky has always had an attitude of “I’ve gotta be me” and acting in a way that pleases him even if it pleases nobody else!
Sweet family interactions including emotionally-restrained brother cliché #1: “This thoughtful gift is actually from my girlfriend but she made me do it for her.” I’m sure it’s partially true but I’m sure that Walky agrees with the gesture and is more than glad to do his part!
HE’s still with Ambeeeer
Yeah, I think that was the important point,
Look more closely. “Renuyu”. Hint: Think Roland Daggett, of Daggett Industries. Honestly, has nobody else noticed this yet?
Ahem.
I’ll eat the container if I want to, alt-text. I am a grown man and you’re not my REAL dad! *runs into his room and slams the door*
With that look, in the last panel, I think it would have been funnier, if Walky said, “but that’s what makes me adorable”.
I love the way Walky “leans into” a panel to deliver his punchlines.
Renuyou scar cream…is it made by the Dagget corporation?
The alt text is silly. How is Sal supposed to heal at any noticeable pace that way?
I know! It’s like saying don’t let kids eat shampoo. How ELSE are they supposed to grow healthy hair? Ridiculous.
Wow. Only 79 comments? This is a tiny comments section today.
The site was down for a good chunk of last night. That could be part of why.
Huh, that was actually nice of Walky and Amber. And Walky is kind of what happens to kids with AD/HD who realize that we will never be good at social cues, so just jump in and hope for the best.
I know! It’s pretty clear to me that Sal’s uncomfortable, but Walky and Amber mean well and I think that means a lot to Sal too.
Right now, Walky trying to be a better brother is my absolute favorite part of this comic
Same.
RenewYou… wasn’t that the name of the product that turned Clayface into Clayface in Batman the Animated Series?