Sugar, spice, and everything nice
These were the ingredients chosen
To create the perfect BFF
But Professor Siegel accidentally
Added an extra ingredient to the concoction:
Crippling Social Anxiety
Thus Amazi-Girl was born!
but yeah, the point stands. i still don’t know if amber has grown as much as sal since she stabbed her through the hand, but she has shown real progress in the last few arcs.
I don’t know about growth, but I’d say Amber’s changed more drastically since the robbery than Sal has. The crippling social anxiety is mostly under control, for example – compared to back then at least.
Sal’s grown, but Sal isn’t dealing with serious undiagnosed or treated mental illness, so it’s not really that fair to compare them.
It’s also partly meant for Amber as well who is falling into the hero of justice “you created me” trope and more or less saying blame can’t all be assigned to him when they all made their own choices.
Except Blaine…soooo much blame can be put on him for so much.
*EMTs wheel the bloody, beaten Responsibilor away*
Robin: You know, they never actually hurt anyone…
Batman: Stockholm Syndrome’s a very powerful thing, Robin, but some crimes cannot be forgiven. There’s only one way to deal with one’s crippling feelings of loss…
She’s known Walky his entire life, it doesn’t take a mastermind level intellect to know he’s likely to still be slacking off.
She’s basically saying “Look, if you have so much time to be making the world a better place by hiding in bushes and punching people, maybe you could better yourself by doing the actual college work of learning calculus, like you’re paying to be here to do.”
The non-street-legal Jeep ripoff that gets around being a Jeep ripoff (legally, at least so far) by not having the seven-slotted grille? I feel like you’re going for a metaphor here but I’m not quite making the connection yet.
Not exactly a ripoff. Mahindra has had a license to build Jeeps since shortly after WWII. They just can’t use the seven slot grill in the US because Fiat-Chrysler owns the trademark. The Roxor (and the Thar it’s based on) are about as close as you can still get to the classic CJs.
The early history of the Jeep is weird and confusing, as you’d expect from something designed by committee when the US’s manufacturing industry was drafted. Apparently Ford contributed a lot to the design, including the iconic stamped steel grill. That’s why none of the owners of the Jeep trademark, from Willys through to FCA, can claim they “invented” the Jeep.
The TJ was the last real Jeep, if you ask me. The most recent ones are huge. A CJ, YJ, or TJ makes more sense than those side-by-sides from the likes of Polaris and John Deere.
Sal wants Walky to do well, and she also wants to do well, and it shows. and it also shows that she cares about Walky, otherwise she wouldn’t have told him to study.
Uh….it’s worrying that Amber can actively try to give a person who didn’t even know her or have anything related to her, the role as “Archnemesis” that Sal previously had.
No, he didn’t create you Amber. Anymore than that poor store Clerk.
She’s just desperate to deflect. As soon as she discovered that Sal was too complex to project the blame on, she was all too willing to project on someone else. She really hasn’t learned anything in the grand scheme.
To be clear, Walky is guilty of this too. He blamed Sal for their bad relationship, then sympathized, then leaped at the chance to blame someone else (besides his mommy). But I feel like this is an explicit lesson that we all thought Amber had learned in the last arc.
Well I got to wonder how far away the boarding school was from where she before, If it wasn’t that close then I guess they moved out over there on a whim because the area was cheaper to live in?
Evansville, where Sal and Marcie are from, is literally across the river from Kentucky, so not far from the South. But still over a hundred miles from anywhere in Tennessee.
D’oh! TN, not VA. She admitted to picking-up the accent at boarding school. To someone in Walky’s circle, when they asked about it. But, far enough away, that Walky couldn’t visit.
She probably visited during summer and holidays, given apparently Sal didn’t get to go home then (which is probably the most fucked-up thing about the Walkertons’ decision if I am recalling correctly).
Religious schools usually offer some scholarships — possibly including a full ride — to needy students.
However, if Marcie had actually attended and graduated from Sal’s boarding school, she probably would have been urged to go to college, and gotten help in finding ways to do so.
Maybe Marcie had relatives there, and some arrangement was worked out among family members?
However it happened, Linda Walkerton must have been pissed when she found out.
My guess is a relative or something like that – maybe she didn’t have to live in the school and so could cut costs a little?
It’d be easier if we knew what Marcie’s school life was like before Tennessee – did she just go to a different school then Sal, was she homeschooled, or what’s up?
I think we can take it as a given that if Marcie’s parents could afford boarding school, they’d have invested the money in her surgery instead.
As they were probably illegal immigrants, i don’t know if that would rule out getting a scholarship. I tend to think so.
And Marcie never was in the same school as Sal, the principal didn’t want to punish Leyland because Marcie was not his responsibility. So I suspect she never went to school regularly (because she had time to hang out at Sal’s school).
So it think she somehow asked her parents to go to where her friend was.
So We’re ramping up for midterms, good I can’t wait to see us semester. Though I wonder who’s going to stay for winter semester. It probably won’t take as long since winter is only 1 month while Fall and spring is 3.
IU-Bloomington doesn’t have any sort of winter session. For 2019-2020, the Fall semester ends Dec. 20, the Spring semester begins Jan. 7, and I’ll bet the campus is completely shut down (including the dorms) between those two dates.
For 2010, the day-of-the-week calendar that DoA follows, those dates were Dec. 17 and Jan. 10, respectively.
If IU is anything like the state university in Wisconsin I used to work at, classes are suspended during the holiday break (inter-semester break), but those students who are not going home for the break are allowed to stay in the dorms, and other support services such as maintenance, campus police, parking enforcement, and (limited) food services are still available.
I’m sure this varies system-to-system, campus-to-campus, and year-to-year as funding is available.
There is a 2018 Indiana Daily Student article to the effect that “for the first time” IU-Bloomington students will be able to stay in their own rooms over the Spring break — as opposed to having to temporarily move to another dorm during that period. (That is what I had to do at a small private college in St. Paul.)
Yeah, it’s generally not worth keeping all the dorms open for a couple students each. Too expensive in terms of keeping all the services up.
I don’t think I even had that option, though I don’t remember looking into it specifically. Most breaks I either stayed with relatives or friends (for the shorter ones) or rented a place. I could usually sublet from some other student who had an off-campus apartment and did go home for the break.
In-universe winter break is about 11 years away at the current rate. That’s if Halloween, Election Day, and the Thanksgiving break don’t significantly affect the timeline-real world ratio.
Only when combined with childhood abuse and a traumatic triggering event. I’m not really giving much blame to the comics here.
Likely, with the same past, but no comic superheroes as role models, the split still would have occurred but the Amazi-Girl equivalent wouldn’t have had even as decent a code to guide her as she does.
I haven’t read through all the comments, so I’m hoping it’s been thoroughly discussed, but it makes me sad that Walky listened to Asher, known (former) terrible person, before he believed Sal about their parents’ problematic parenting…
The thing that makes me saddest about that is how realistic that is.
He probably wouldn’t have if Sal hadn’t started him on that train already. He even listened to it enough that after a time he went to discuss it with Billie.
The only reason he listens to Asher is because he listened to Sal. Had they not had their previous conversations Walky likely would have just punched him again.
Yeah. I remember that. I still say it was not wrong for her to choke Leland. I’m just sorry it had to come to that because nobody had the integrity to discipline that piece of shit beforehand.
Choosing not to get caught up in 5 year old grudges doesn’t make you a doormat, she doesn’t have to forgive Asher but she also doesn’t need to waste her time dwelling on what happened more than she and everyone else already has.
This strip has a simple message to it, “There’s no need to keep getting hung up in the past, what matters now is the here and now and what comes after”…. besides if anyone has earned the right to move on from all of this after everything that’s happened it’s Sal.
After 3 yrs of holding rage because of what myroommate and ex best friend did to me Im finally letting go of the desire of revenge and Im mopving on with my life. That doesnt make me a doormat what the hell.
I have to. It was eating me inside. Im choosing to pick my mental health over my need for revenge. Im accepting that Im probably never going to get an apology, that itll never be made even. Holding it forever would only kill me in the end, and for what? To get back at a man who doesnt care?Who moved on with their life while I stew in hatred and pain? No. For the first time in my life Im setting some damn boundries. Im moving on, he is NOTHING. He will never be able to be a part of my life again. That is not being a door mat. Choosing to let go is not being a door mat. I choose to not let my hatred of him destroy my life because for me I have to, for my well being I HAVE TO. Im more important.
You are making that choice. It’s not an obligation. You know your own situation and I’m sure you’re making the right decision for you. That doesn’t make everyone else obligated to make the same decision as you and they’re not morally lesser for not making it (and no, I’m not asserting that that’s what you were saying). I do object to the idea that anyone ever ‘has’ to let things go and do nothing. That’s a BS moral and I reject it in its entirety. That line of thinking is exactly what KEPT me in an abusive situation for several years. You can CHOOSE to let it go, absolutely, I’m not saying choosing to do so makes you a doormat. I’m saying the idea there’s an obligation to do so does nothing but create doormats. That’s what it did to me.
I think you’re kind of taking what Bagge said to an extreme here. No one is saying leave present grievances unaddressed/ignored but like, this particular one was 5 years ago and hasn’t worked out that badly for her, so it is better to let it go than seek revenge for it. Sometimes it isn’t worth it. Sometimes it is mild in the grand scheme of things. Other times it might not and it won’t be simple like that but saying SOMETIMES you’ve just got to let things that happened in the past go isn’t wrong as long as you get that it isn’t for every situation.
And Bagge also isn’t wrong that this is a lesson Sal learnt from what happened with Leland and Marcie. Sometimes it is not your place to be the one to do something even if you want to and have righteous fury. If Sal had been the victim originally, that would be different. If Marcie was the one who stood up to Leland, that would be different. Sal’s escalation led to a worse situation for Marcie. She couldn’t have known that then. I don’t blame her for not knowing and for thinking she was just standing up for her friend by getting revenge. But sometimes you have no good options. Sometimes your options are do nothing, knowing someone will get no consequences or escalate, risking further harm to the person who was hurt and that fucking sucks. It isn’t being a doormat to accept that sometimes doing something will be worse than doing nothing and that is unfair as hell, but sometimes that is just how it is.
I also can’t blame Sal for not knowing or expecting Leyland’s reaction to be to physically attack and permanently maim her friend. She had no reason to expect that kind of escalation. No one would. They’re all just kids.
I can’t condemn Sal’s actions in standing up for her friend, when she would have expected it to go down as it usually does in these kinds of playground matters: Leyland would get mad, probably throw a punch at Sal, they’d get into a fight where, sure, Sal might come out of it with like a broken nose; but she’d also get enough licks in that Leyland would decide it wasn’t worth hassling Marcie anymore. And they’d all go home and nurse their bruises and Sal’s parents might yell at her and ground her for like a week for getting into fights, and that would be that.
You can’t blame Sal, especially not at her age and probable life experiences (coming from a better-off family and probably not having to had deal with any threat of actual violence in her day-to-day life), for not anticipating his reaction and basing her own actions in confronting him accordingly. His reaction was extreme (whether he intended to hurt Marcie so badly or not); he attacked her with a(n improvised, but still) weapon, severely enough to not only break the skin but to do lasting damage to her larynx.
Saying that Sal ought to have anticipated his violently extreme reaction to her standing up for her friend, and stepped back and not confronted him about his already heavy-handed bullying of Marcie (which would not have stopped and likely would have escalated, given his reaction), is to do Sal an injustice and is victim-blaming.
TL;DR: I agree with you about not blaming Sal for not expecting his extreme reaction. We can’t blame her; his escalation was to a ridiculous level. He’s a goddamned psycho.
We still don’t know exactly how the events around Marcie’s injury went down, do we? We saw the actual injury and we know Sal blames herself, but that’s about it, right?
I’m not sure it’s even reasonable to say that Leland’s attack on Marcie was a direct reaction to anything Sal did.
It’s an obligation not to make things worse for people around you. Sal learned that lesson. I hope whatever is eating you, your situation does not risk the same.
1) Yeah, choking Leland meant he attacked Marcie. So did not doing shit to him – he first attacked Marcie when she and Sal were just hanging around and not doing anything to him.
2) Even if it were, Leland escalated far beyond what most people would see as a reasonable progression of events – most people wouldn’t foresee a 12 year old smooshing another 12 year old’s throat with a rock and running off with her skateboard.
3) Even if we grant that Leland wouldn’t have done anything if Sal hadn’t choked him and we grant that Leland’s escalation was foreseeable to an average reasonable person (specifically, an average reasonable twelve year old), that doesn’t automatically equate to ‘therefore, you’re obligated to do nothing’. There’s nothing wrong with retaliating in that scenario – it just means you have to make sure you’re being smart about it and (ideally) it can’t be traced back to you. Fire ants in his locker maybe?
4) My situation’s long over, but thank you for your concern.
I disagree your sentiment applies to Sal here. She is not saying she does not want revenge. She is saying they were and still are in control of the choices they make. I think what she means is “yeah, he did something aweful. It’s our choice whether we become aweful in response, or grow and be better people”. Does not mean she’s no longer angry at him… Tbh I would not be surprised if Sal gets to punch him when they meet.
Sal’s life lesson was specifically about the price of escalation of retaliation. Her not punching Asher (despite him being a piece of shit) is her following that hard-earned lesson.
Remember “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury? Everything that has happened in the past leads to the present we live in now… and the same holds true for one’s personal life as well. The decisions I made in my life have made me the person I am today. Had I made some other decisions — stayed in school and gotten my degree, for example, or gotten married and raised a family — I would probably be a different person in a different situation in life with different memories, experiences, and attitudes…. maybe better, maybe not. And since you don’t get a ‘do-over’, the sooner you learn that you need to be content with the past, accept the present, and work on the future, the better you will be for it.
My entire professional career unfolded as it did because I happened to walk through the Student Union at a particular time. It was in the first week of the semester and a music ensemble was playing there to recruit people, and I was recruited on the spot.
A couple of years later, the director of that ensemble got a Silicon Valley job and recommended me as her successor in a music library job that she was leaving. And that was my foot into the world of libraries and eventually into library IT, from which I eventually retired.
But if I’d walked into that building 10 minutes earlier, or an hour later, my life would have been completely different. Better, worse? I don’t know. But definitely different.
Walky is projecting. He could have written letters and called. Basically he could have been as close as he wanted to be. He’s just not happy with the level he chose. Anyway, any time he wastes now is on him.
I mean, technically he isn’t wrong that Asher is why they were apart, but he only feels this way about it now because he has started to actually work on his relationship with Sal and regrets how much time he wasted not caring about connecting with her.
Well, I mean, teeeechnically their parents are why they were apart. They seem quite well-off; a good lawyer could have argued that it was a first-time offence; that Sal had been led astray by falling in with a bad crowd from the wrong side of the tracks; no one had gotten hurt (except Sally herself); and that she had already been punished enough just from the stab wound to her hand, which would likely give her issues for the rest of her life and be a constant reminder of the consequences of her poor choices in the matter. –Which choices, in themselves, could be argued to be silly teenage rebellion, because seriously? A knife against bulletproof glass? Then grabbing some other kid in a panic? Obviously such stupidity and poor preparation is not indicative of a hardened criminal, and is absolutely in line with a naive thirteen-year-old girl who fell in over her head.
Sally’s always been a good girl until now; and she’s had her hand slapped pretty hard and literally. *Sal looks at her bandaged hand, contrite, and rubs it, in obvious pain* All she needs is to get away from these juvie kids, and to find some more positive role models in her life. To that end, Your Honour, we propose that a sentencing of community service would be the most appropriate in dissuading her from a further life of crime, and to teach her that her actions can have a positive impact on her community and life.
Sal getting sent away, out of the bloody state, for years, was absolutely her parents’ choice, and I’m positive they could have prevented it and kept her home and out of any kind of detention entirely–had they chosen to do so. But they didn’t. Bastards.
Heck if the mom had just listened to Sal about how the money was from a go fund me to help Marcie. That would have been easy to check rather than assuming Sal stole it.
If she is, that is perhaps a step towards reconciliation with her alter. A very small step, to be sure, but considering her terrible self-esteem anything is an improvement.
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Dorothy really brought ‘jag’ back!
Little does Amber know she was actually created by a Transformers nerd.
Her life would make a lot more sense if she did.
Im onna level with you. I thought you meant ethan
Sugar, spice, and everything nice
These were the ingredients chosen
To create the perfect BFF
But Professor Siegel accidentally
Added an extra ingredient to the concoction:
Crippling Social Anxiety
Thus Amazi-Girl was born!
You know what? I thought the same thing on the first reading.
I mean, kinda true. She definitely wouldn’t have been the same person without him.
God this took me back:
Cat and Girl meet their maker.
To be the next Catwoman, right?
Gotta update the transformers wiki!
Has anyone made a version of the fourth panel, with Walky’s line replaced with “Damn You Willis”?
i really like sal’s take on all this. she’s grown up a lot since holding a knife to amber’s throat.
Ethan’s throat.
whoops! i feel like a dumb dumb now.
but yeah, the point stands. i still don’t know if amber has grown as much as sal since she stabbed her through the hand, but she has shown real progress in the last few arcs.
I don’t know about growth, but I’d say Amber’s changed more drastically since the robbery than Sal has. The crippling social anxiety is mostly under control, for example – compared to back then at least.
Sal’s grown, but Sal isn’t dealing with serious undiagnosed or treated mental illness, so it’s not really that fair to compare them.
It’s also partly meant for Amber as well who is falling into the hero of justice “you created me” trope and more or less saying blame can’t all be assigned to him when they all made their own choices.
Except Blaine…soooo much blame can be put on him for so much.
dads are always a valid target for the “you created me” trope, for so many reasons.
So is Mike in this case.
For challenging Blaine?
For fucking your mother.
Yeah, do that, and then TELL HIM ABOUT HIS GRADES, AMBER.
I’d like to see a Batman villain with Sal’s mindset.
Was that supposed to be some general sibling advice to steer him away from Asher or does she know about his grades somehow?
Batman: “You fiend! What have you done with Robin?!”
The Responsibilor: “He’s locked in that room with no phone and a history textbook. Why do you have him fighting crime on a school night?”
Also the Resposibilor: “I’ve arranged for you to have weekly appointments with a therapist, and here is the number for a bereavement support group.”
*EMTs wheel the bloody, beaten Responsibilor away*
Robin: You know, they never actually hurt anyone…
Batman: Stockholm Syndrome’s a very powerful thing, Robin, but some crimes cannot be forgiven. There’s only one way to deal with one’s crippling feelings of loss…
Robin: Punching bad guys?
Baatman: Punching bad guys.
I thought it was punching Nazis, but since it’s Batman, I guess that doesn’t work.
I think he’s brought up having trouble in math before, or she might just be saying it since it’s the class the two have together.
She’s known Walky his entire life, it doesn’t take a mastermind level intellect to know he’s likely to still be slacking off.
She’s basically saying “Look, if you have so much time to be making the world a better place by hiding in bushes and punching people, maybe you could better yourself by doing the actual college work of learning calculus, like you’re paying to be here to do.”
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/03-sometimes-the-sky-was-so-far-away/switched-2/
*plays Rush’s “Free Will” on the hacked Muzak*
Today’s strip was sponsored by the Mahindra ROXOR all terrain vehicle.
The non-street-legal Jeep ripoff that gets around being a Jeep ripoff (legally, at least so far) by not having the seven-slotted grille? I feel like you’re going for a metaphor here but I’m not quite making the connection yet.
Not exactly a ripoff. Mahindra has had a license to build Jeeps since shortly after WWII. They just can’t use the seven slot grill in the US because Fiat-Chrysler owns the trademark. The Roxor (and the Thar it’s based on) are about as close as you can still get to the classic CJs.
https://jalopnik.com/this-is-why-mahindra-can-build-tiny-jeeps-1823472625
The early history of the Jeep is weird and confusing, as you’d expect from something designed by committee when the US’s manufacturing industry was drafted. Apparently Ford contributed a lot to the design, including the iconic stamped steel grill. That’s why none of the owners of the Jeep trademark, from Willys through to FCA, can claim they “invented” the Jeep.
The TJ was the last real Jeep, if you ask me. The most recent ones are huge. A CJ, YJ, or TJ makes more sense than those side-by-sides from the likes of Polaris and John Deere.
Probably for the best at this point.
Mature sister is mature.
Twins or not, Sal is definitely the older one.
Sal wants Walky to do well, and she also wants to do well, and it shows. and it also shows that she cares about Walky, otherwise she wouldn’t have told him to study.
Alt text: “You made me!”
Relevant Batman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOB13T6Zmh8&t=159s Which is kinda appropriate if you think about it 🙂
Also, this is one of the best short fanfilms i’ve ever seen.
Is it just me or is “midterms” the scariest thing anyone’s said recently in this ‘verse?
Also, kudos to Sal for not operating on Comic Book Origin Logic. (Amber especially, and Walky… well, it’s pretty in-charachter/s for both of them)
Uh….it’s worrying that Amber can actively try to give a person who didn’t even know her or have anything related to her, the role as “Archnemesis” that Sal previously had.
No, he didn’t create you Amber. Anymore than that poor store Clerk.
She’s just desperate to deflect. As soon as she discovered that Sal was too complex to project the blame on, she was all too willing to project on someone else. She really hasn’t learned anything in the grand scheme.
To be clear, Walky is guilty of this too. He blamed Sal for their bad relationship, then sympathized, then leaped at the chance to blame someone else (besides his mommy). But I feel like this is an explicit lesson that we all thought Amber had learned in the last arc.
Freewill always exist… except in Black Mirror Bandersnatch and most of Homestuck. Destiny sucks!
Okay, but I’ve never figured this out – exactly how was Marcie there? Could her parents afford to move or send her to boarding school?
Well I got to wonder how far away the boarding school was from where she before, If it wasn’t that close then I guess they moved out over there on a whim because the area was cheaper to live in?
Virginia or WV? Another state. Sal picked-up the regional accent, there, too.
Tennessee. Where in Tennessee? Not known.
Evansville, where Sal and Marcie are from, is literally across the river from Kentucky, so not far from the South. But still over a hundred miles from anywhere in Tennessee.
D’oh! TN, not VA. She admitted to picking-up the accent at boarding school. To someone in Walky’s circle, when they asked about it. But, far enough away, that Walky couldn’t visit.
She probably visited during summer and holidays, given apparently Sal didn’t get to go home then (which is probably the most fucked-up thing about the Walkertons’ decision if I am recalling correctly).
Sal says that Marcie followed her to boarding school, which usually means going to the same school, not visiting once in a while. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/idontknow/
Also, did Sal not go home for the summers?
Nope. Walky hadn’t seen her or talked to her in five years before the story opened.
Religious schools usually offer some scholarships — possibly including a full ride — to needy students.
However, if Marcie had actually attended and graduated from Sal’s boarding school, she probably would have been urged to go to college, and gotten help in finding ways to do so.
Maybe Marcie had relatives there, and some arrangement was worked out among family members?
However it happened, Linda Walkerton must have been pissed when she found out.
My guess is a relative or something like that – maybe she didn’t have to live in the school and so could cut costs a little?
It’d be easier if we knew what Marcie’s school life was like before Tennessee – did she just go to a different school then Sal, was she homeschooled, or what’s up?
I think we can take it as a given that if Marcie’s parents could afford boarding school, they’d have invested the money in her surgery instead.
As they were probably illegal immigrants, i don’t know if that would rule out getting a scholarship. I tend to think so.
And Marcie never was in the same school as Sal, the principal didn’t want to punish Leyland because Marcie was not his responsibility. So I suspect she never went to school regularly (because she had time to hang out at Sal’s school).
So it think she somehow asked her parents to go to where her friend was.
Yes choices. Just like how Walky will most likely choose NOT to study for his calculus midterms.
I’m compelled to say this pretty much every time she appears, but here it goes anyway: I LOVE SAL.
I love Sal being the voice of reason here
So We’re ramping up for midterms, good I can’t wait to see us semester. Though I wonder who’s going to stay for winter semester. It probably won’t take as long since winter is only 1 month while Fall and spring is 3.
IU-Bloomington doesn’t have any sort of winter session. For 2019-2020, the Fall semester ends Dec. 20, the Spring semester begins Jan. 7, and I’ll bet the campus is completely shut down (including the dorms) between those two dates.
For 2010, the day-of-the-week calendar that DoA follows, those dates were Dec. 17 and Jan. 10, respectively.
If IU is anything like the state university in Wisconsin I used to work at, classes are suspended during the holiday break (inter-semester break), but those students who are not going home for the break are allowed to stay in the dorms, and other support services such as maintenance, campus police, parking enforcement, and (limited) food services are still available.
I’m sure this varies system-to-system, campus-to-campus, and year-to-year as funding is available.
There is a 2018 Indiana Daily Student article to the effect that “for the first time” IU-Bloomington students will be able to stay in their own rooms over the Spring break — as opposed to having to temporarily move to another dorm during that period. (That is what I had to do at a small private college in St. Paul.)
Yeah, it’s generally not worth keeping all the dorms open for a couple students each. Too expensive in terms of keeping all the services up.
I don’t think I even had that option, though I don’t remember looking into it specifically. Most breaks I either stayed with relatives or friends (for the shorter ones) or rented a place. I could usually sublet from some other student who had an off-campus apartment and did go home for the break.
In-universe winter break is about 11 years away at the current rate. That’s if Halloween, Election Day, and the Thanksgiving break don’t significantly affect the timeline-real world ratio.
Sal hires Amber to put a hit on Asher as soon as Walky leaves.
Oh FFS, Amber, stop making Frederic Wertham have a point about what comic books do to the mind.
Only when combined with childhood abuse and a traumatic triggering event. I’m not really giving much blame to the comics here.
Likely, with the same past, but no comic superheroes as role models, the split still would have occurred but the Amazi-Girl equivalent wouldn’t have had even as decent a code to guide her as she does.
I haven’t read through all the comments, so I’m hoping it’s been thoroughly discussed, but it makes me sad that Walky listened to Asher, known (former) terrible person, before he believed Sal about their parents’ problematic parenting…
The thing that makes me saddest about that is how realistic that is.
He probably wouldn’t have if Sal hadn’t started him on that train already. He even listened to it enough that after a time he went to discuss it with Billie.
The only reason he listens to Asher is because he listened to Sal. Had they not had their previous conversations Walky likely would have just punched him again.
Had they not had the previous conversation – and had it not sunk in for Walky – he probably wouldn’t have been talking to Asher in the first place.
Sometimes you have to let the past go and let past grievances stay unavanged.
Sal learnt that the hard way the day Leland attacked Marcie.
Fuck THAT noise. There’s no morality in being a doormat.
“No more trouble. No more fights.”
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-9-comic/01-flyin-to-the-red/fights/
Yeah. I remember that. I still say it was not wrong for her to choke Leland. I’m just sorry it had to come to that because nobody had the integrity to discipline that piece of shit beforehand.
Exactly what did it accomplish?
He faced A Consequence for once in his life?
Considering what happened afterwards, how beneficial was that for anybody beyond the immediate catharsis?
Yeah, because letting him go without any consequences definitely would’ve accomplished a lot too.
Her mistake was letting him live.
Choosing not to get caught up in 5 year old grudges doesn’t make you a doormat, she doesn’t have to forgive Asher but she also doesn’t need to waste her time dwelling on what happened more than she and everyone else already has.
This strip has a simple message to it, “There’s no need to keep getting hung up in the past, what matters now is the here and now and what comes after”…. besides if anyone has earned the right to move on from all of this after everything that’s happened it’s Sal.
I never said she shouldn’t move on. I’m saying that the first part of that comment is BS.
After 3 yrs of holding rage because of what myroommate and ex best friend did to me Im finally letting go of the desire of revenge and Im mopving on with my life. That doesnt make me a doormat what the hell.
There’s a difference between choosing to and having to.
I have to. It was eating me inside. Im choosing to pick my mental health over my need for revenge. Im accepting that Im probably never going to get an apology, that itll never be made even. Holding it forever would only kill me in the end, and for what? To get back at a man who doesnt care?Who moved on with their life while I stew in hatred and pain? No. For the first time in my life Im setting some damn boundries. Im moving on, he is NOTHING. He will never be able to be a part of my life again. That is not being a door mat. Choosing to let go is not being a door mat. I choose to not let my hatred of him destroy my life because for me I have to, for my well being I HAVE TO. Im more important.
You are making that choice. It’s not an obligation. You know your own situation and I’m sure you’re making the right decision for you. That doesn’t make everyone else obligated to make the same decision as you and they’re not morally lesser for not making it (and no, I’m not asserting that that’s what you were saying). I do object to the idea that anyone ever ‘has’ to let things go and do nothing. That’s a BS moral and I reject it in its entirety. That line of thinking is exactly what KEPT me in an abusive situation for several years. You can CHOOSE to let it go, absolutely, I’m not saying choosing to do so makes you a doormat. I’m saying the idea there’s an obligation to do so does nothing but create doormats. That’s what it did to me.
I think you’re kind of taking what Bagge said to an extreme here. No one is saying leave present grievances unaddressed/ignored but like, this particular one was 5 years ago and hasn’t worked out that badly for her, so it is better to let it go than seek revenge for it. Sometimes it isn’t worth it. Sometimes it is mild in the grand scheme of things. Other times it might not and it won’t be simple like that but saying SOMETIMES you’ve just got to let things that happened in the past go isn’t wrong as long as you get that it isn’t for every situation.
And Bagge also isn’t wrong that this is a lesson Sal learnt from what happened with Leland and Marcie. Sometimes it is not your place to be the one to do something even if you want to and have righteous fury. If Sal had been the victim originally, that would be different. If Marcie was the one who stood up to Leland, that would be different. Sal’s escalation led to a worse situation for Marcie. She couldn’t have known that then. I don’t blame her for not knowing and for thinking she was just standing up for her friend by getting revenge. But sometimes you have no good options. Sometimes your options are do nothing, knowing someone will get no consequences or escalate, risking further harm to the person who was hurt and that fucking sucks. It isn’t being a doormat to accept that sometimes doing something will be worse than doing nothing and that is unfair as hell, but sometimes that is just how it is.
Yup.
I don’t say that it’s easy or universal or anything. After all, Joyce learnt a life lesson more in line with PUNCH THE MOTHEREFFER IN THE FAAAACE.
…which Jocelyne tried to modify to “Choose your battles.”
It’s complicated.
I also can’t blame Sal for not knowing or expecting Leyland’s reaction to be to physically attack and permanently maim her friend. She had no reason to expect that kind of escalation. No one would. They’re all just kids.
I can’t condemn Sal’s actions in standing up for her friend, when she would have expected it to go down as it usually does in these kinds of playground matters: Leyland would get mad, probably throw a punch at Sal, they’d get into a fight where, sure, Sal might come out of it with like a broken nose; but she’d also get enough licks in that Leyland would decide it wasn’t worth hassling Marcie anymore. And they’d all go home and nurse their bruises and Sal’s parents might yell at her and ground her for like a week for getting into fights, and that would be that.
You can’t blame Sal, especially not at her age and probable life experiences (coming from a better-off family and probably not having to had deal with any threat of actual violence in her day-to-day life), for not anticipating his reaction and basing her own actions in confronting him accordingly. His reaction was extreme (whether he intended to hurt Marcie so badly or not); he attacked her with a(n improvised, but still) weapon, severely enough to not only break the skin but to do lasting damage to her larynx.
Saying that Sal ought to have anticipated his violently extreme reaction to her standing up for her friend, and stepped back and not confronted him about his already heavy-handed bullying of Marcie (which would not have stopped and likely would have escalated, given his reaction), is to do Sal an injustice and is victim-blaming.
TL;DR: I agree with you about not blaming Sal for not expecting his extreme reaction. We can’t blame her; his escalation was to a ridiculous level. He’s a goddamned psycho.
We still don’t know exactly how the events around Marcie’s injury went down, do we? We saw the actual injury and we know Sal blames herself, but that’s about it, right?
I’m not sure it’s even reasonable to say that Leland’s attack on Marcie was a direct reaction to anything Sal did.
Fine, call me extreme. I don’t care. I’m always going to call bullshit on the idea there’s some obligation to do nothing.
It’s an obligation not to make things worse for people around you. Sal learned that lesson. I hope whatever is eating you, your situation does not risk the same.
1) Yeah, choking Leland meant he attacked Marcie. So did not doing shit to him – he first attacked Marcie when she and Sal were just hanging around and not doing anything to him.
2) Even if it were, Leland escalated far beyond what most people would see as a reasonable progression of events – most people wouldn’t foresee a 12 year old smooshing another 12 year old’s throat with a rock and running off with her skateboard.
3) Even if we grant that Leland wouldn’t have done anything if Sal hadn’t choked him and we grant that Leland’s escalation was foreseeable to an average reasonable person (specifically, an average reasonable twelve year old), that doesn’t automatically equate to ‘therefore, you’re obligated to do nothing’. There’s nothing wrong with retaliating in that scenario – it just means you have to make sure you’re being smart about it and (ideally) it can’t be traced back to you. Fire ants in his locker maybe?
4) My situation’s long over, but thank you for your concern.
I disagree your sentiment applies to Sal here. She is not saying she does not want revenge. She is saying they were and still are in control of the choices they make. I think what she means is “yeah, he did something aweful. It’s our choice whether we become aweful in response, or grow and be better people”. Does not mean she’s no longer angry at him… Tbh I would not be surprised if Sal gets to punch him when they meet.
Sal’s life lesson was specifically about the price of escalation of retaliation. Her not punching Asher (despite him being a piece of shit) is her following that hard-earned lesson.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-9-comic/01-flyin-to-the-red/escalation/
That feels like a better description than what I got from it, but it’s also a good lesson.
She knew he was here, and she knew what he did. If she had plans to do that, she’d have done it already.
“An eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind.” Mahatma Gandhi.
Let the past die, kill it if you have to.
Remember “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury? Everything that has happened in the past leads to the present we live in now… and the same holds true for one’s personal life as well. The decisions I made in my life have made me the person I am today. Had I made some other decisions — stayed in school and gotten my degree, for example, or gotten married and raised a family — I would probably be a different person in a different situation in life with different memories, experiences, and attitudes…. maybe better, maybe not. And since you don’t get a ‘do-over’, the sooner you learn that you need to be content with the past, accept the present, and work on the future, the better you will be for it.
My entire professional career unfolded as it did because I happened to walk through the Student Union at a particular time. It was in the first week of the semester and a music ensemble was playing there to recruit people, and I was recruited on the spot.
A couple of years later, the director of that ensemble got a Silicon Valley job and recommended me as her successor in a music library job that she was leaving. And that was my foot into the world of libraries and eventually into library IT, from which I eventually retired.
But if I’d walked into that building 10 minutes earlier, or an hour later, my life would have been completely different. Better, worse? I don’t know. But definitely different.
He created them! Ashe is David Willis’ self insert character confirmed!
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The
CheeseWillis made them all.I’m pretty sure studying is the last thing Walky would like to do.
Walky is projecting. He could have written letters and called. Basically he could have been as close as he wanted to be. He’s just not happy with the level he chose. Anyway, any time he wastes now is on him.
True.
I mean, technically he isn’t wrong that Asher is why they were apart, but he only feels this way about it now because he has started to actually work on his relationship with Sal and regrets how much time he wasted not caring about connecting with her.
Well, I mean, teeeechnically their parents are why they were apart. They seem quite well-off; a good lawyer could have argued that it was a first-time offence; that Sal had been led astray by falling in with a bad crowd from the wrong side of the tracks; no one had gotten hurt (except Sally herself); and that she had already been punished enough just from the stab wound to her hand, which would likely give her issues for the rest of her life and be a constant reminder of the consequences of her poor choices in the matter. –Which choices, in themselves, could be argued to be silly teenage rebellion, because seriously? A knife against bulletproof glass? Then grabbing some other kid in a panic? Obviously such stupidity and poor preparation is not indicative of a hardened criminal, and is absolutely in line with a naive thirteen-year-old girl who fell in over her head.
Sally’s always been a good girl until now; and she’s had her hand slapped pretty hard and literally. *Sal looks at her bandaged hand, contrite, and rubs it, in obvious pain* All she needs is to get away from these juvie kids, and to find some more positive role models in her life. To that end, Your Honour, we propose that a sentencing of community service would be the most appropriate in dissuading her from a further life of crime, and to teach her that her actions can have a positive impact on her community and life.
Sal getting sent away, out of the bloody state, for years, was absolutely her parents’ choice, and I’m positive they could have prevented it and kept her home and out of any kind of detention entirely–had they chosen to do so. But they didn’t. Bastards.
Heck if the mom had just listened to Sal about how the money was from a go fund me to help Marcie. That would have been easy to check rather than assuming Sal stole it.
She didn’t say anything about assuming Sal stole it. She just “put it away for safe keeping”.
also I’m pretty sure she did hear it was for Marcie, she just didn’t care, especially since she never liked her.
Linda stole Sal’s money because it was meant for Marcie.
Agreed! I like that Walky is now mending his relationship with Sal, but he needs to take responsibility for how he’s acted in the past.
Damn, Sal laying down the wisdom on these fools
Walky: But studying is BORING. Why can’t my redemption in your eyes be INTERESTING?
Walky: “WHY DO ALL MY RELATIONSHIP ISSUES ALWAYS END UP WITH ME STUDING MATH?”
This would make a perfect collection title.
Rigby and Mordecai in the distance. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHH!
I LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOOUUUU
I think Sal’s doing an impressive job of moving on, considering how much of her past followed her to college.
You wouldn’t hit a guy with glasses on, would ya? *in Jack Nicholson voice*
I wonder if the “us” Amber is referring to is her and Amazi-Girl.
If she is, that is perhaps a step towards reconciliation with her alter. A very small step, to be sure, but considering her terrible self-esteem anything is an improvement.
Fully in love with panels five and six
Yep, Sal is one of my favorite characters.