Except Danny’s not trying to buy her. These things sometimes get more complicated than they need to be. People can do nice things without having ulterior motives, even if there is some romantic intent. Sal is just jaded.
I’m suprised to find myself kind of agreeing with Danny on this one. I personally HATE most of the “conventions” about cishet dating and marriage in the U.S. (and elsewhere, but I live in the U.S. so that is my frame of expertise). I’m Queer, but have been with my male partner for over a decade, and have made it VERY CLEAR that I’m never going to marry him because I don’t believe in marriage as an institution. I never went on many dates, but I went on some, and the ONLY time I didn’t insist on splitting the check was when I literally thought it might come to a fist-fight if I didn’t let the guy pay.
For context, this was a male-presenting fellow student who had done me a favour by recording my senior thesis presentation so I could send it to my faculty mentor, who was in India doing research at the time. I agreed to go to dinner with him (the student, NOT the faculty mentor) as a thank-you. He made reservations at the most expensive restaurant in the immediate area, insisted on ordering the most expensive stuff on the menu, and throughout the entire meal kept bragging about how he had never had a job in his entire life and that he was only in the U.S. to get a medical degree. One he had the degree, he claimed, his father who owned the most presitigous hospital in *country redacted* would immediately make him head surgeon. Oh, and he also was maybe hoping to meet a U.S.ian woman to marry.
*HEADDESK*
SO, yeah, within about 5 minutes I realized this date was a bad idea and he and I had NOTHING in common (I’ve been working one way or another since I was about 16 and was at college on a combination of scholarships and loans and while – at the time this happened – working 30+ hours/week for the school so that my mom wouldn’t have to worry about paying for any of my expenses and things like school fees.) But when I pulled out the money to pay for my half of the meal he got VERY angry. When I said it’s important to me that I pay for myself he got angrier. Hence the letting him pay to avoid what could have degenerated into a fist-fight.
tl:dr I emphasize with Sal about not wanting to be “bought.”
HOWEVER, sometimes nice things are nice. Danny apparently thought it would be nice to offer Sal flowers. I doubt that broke his bank. One thing I’ve had to learn over the years that conflicts with my Sal-like mentality of never accepting any help, especially monetary help, is that sometimes people do nice things because they like you, not because they are trying to “buy” you. And sometimes nice things are just nice.
From which afternoon soap-opera did you escape? I didn’t thought date like that and people behaving like that existed in real life.
(Just to be clear, I am in no way trying to imply I don’t believe you, I do, just flabbergasted at such a sitcom situation happening in real life. Hop my comment didn’t make you feel insulted)
Nope, not offended at all! Trust me, I kind of didn’t believe it myself when it was happening! I was lucky enough to get into and get enough loans/scholarships to attend a not-quite Ivy League, but very prestigious, East Coast school so some of my fellow students were wealthy and entitled on an almost *unbelievable* level.
For example (this is another story I am NOT making up), my freshman year roomate came from a really, REALLY rich family. She got about $1000/month in “allowance” from her family. (Remember how I said that I worked for the school on top of a full-time classload just so that my mom wouldn’t have to pay for anything else for me because she’d already spent enough on me? Yeah.) One month my roomate had SOMEHOW run through that $1000 (also bear in mind this was a while ago – with inflation we would be probably be talking maybe $1500/month now) and desperately wanted some $900 designer purse but didn’t have money left for it. I think it was Fendi, or Versace, or something – I honestly can’t remember.
So she went to a pawnshop to pawn SOME of her diamonds. (Yes, you read that last sentence correctly.) She came back to the room angry because the guy would only give her $100 for everything and that wouldn’t pay for the bag and she called her father and he wouldn’t give her any more money until next month. She was trying to sell a diamond tennis bracelet and a diamond ring. Now, I know and knew something about gemstones and jewelry; my mom and I used to collect antiques, including antique jewelry. While my roomate’s jewelry wasn’t worth, say, $10,000, it was worth a HECK of a lot more than $100. The tennis bracelet was maybe 3-4 carats total of diamonds set in 14 carat gold and the ring was a diamond band also in 14 carat gold with about 2 or so carats of diamonds. All the diamonds looked pretty clear to me (clear white diamonds are the most valuable). I told Roomate that she would be getting ripped off if she pawned her jewelry to this guy because it was worth much more than he was offering. I said that, if she wanted, I could call my mom and see if she wanted to buy it (because, you know, collecting and also as an investment).
I also asked Roomate (and this is ANOTHER thing I am NOT MAKING UP) if she was totally sure she wanted to sell it. I said something to the effect of, “This is really nice jewelry. Maybe you should keep it! This is a beautiful ring; if you have a child, you might want to give it to them to be an engagement ring.”
Roomate said (NOT making this up), “Oh, this is just my *junk* jewelry. I would be SO OFFENDED if a man ever offered me a ring this small as an engagement ring.”
So, now my mom owns a very nice diamond tennis bracelet and ring.
This is only vaguely related, but decades ago I tried to pawn a diamond ring (just little chips in it, very cheap). It had been bought for $300 only a few months earlier, so I was hoping to get at least half that; but the guy only offered me $75.
He said that the problem was that no one went to pawn shops for nice jewellery, so his resale market was really small, so he could only sell them if the price he offered was really low, so in order to make any money on the sale, he had to offer peanuts for it.
Doesn’t sound like much has changed. These days, in that same situation, I’d bring it by the store I bought it from (if I knew/it was close by), or another, unbranded jewellery store if not, and see if they wanted to buy it back.
Failing that, if I wasn’t in a hurry to get it, I’d offer it online.
–As it was, I hung onto it and ended up selling it to a friend for $150 later. But that seems to be why pawn shops aren’t good places to hock jewellery, especially the good stuff.
AND, to provide another terrible date story for which no one asked, while at this same college I had another date on the absolute opposite end of the spectrum. A guy in my classes asked me to dinner after months of alternately flirting and hitting on both me and another girl in our classes (we were all in a severely tracked major – that meant that the same 30ish people were essentially in every single class together). I was so young and inexperienced that I was flattered that he “picked” me. He asked me where I wanted to go to dinner, I mentioned a reasonably nice restaurant downtown, and he made the reservations, IIRC.
We had a very yummy meal. At the end of that meal, he told me that he didn’t have any money, but it was his birthday (that was actually true), and hoped that I would pay for it as a birthday present for him. Well, I had no intention of dining and dashing, so I paid for it. While I was MORE than prepared to pay my half, but hadn’t planned to cover the entire thing. I had to put it on a credit card that my mom had given me for emergencies, which did NOT make her happy.
I was too young and stupid to see red flags when they were RIGHT IN MY FACE. I landed up dating this guy for over 5 years and moving in with him when I went to grad school. The relationship dramatically exploded…like on a soap opera…for a whole bunch of reasons, one of which was that he STOLE ALL MY MONEY and OVERDREW MY BANK ACCOUNT.
Did I mention I was young and stupid? But at least he hadn’t been replaced by his evil twin who had been in a coma for the past decade…as far as I KNOW. 😛
While I was in grad school and in the process of breaking up with my Ex Who Stole All My Money, I made a bunch of friends at the school gaming club where Ex hung out (I started going there because sometimes Ex wouldn’t come home until super late at night and I got worried about him. When I discovered that the gaming club showed movies on a big screen in the dorms, and often ran “one-off” RPGs, I starteed spending time there because it was just fun. Ex did not like that.) That is where I met Partner; the first time I met him was at a heavy metal concert that I went to SPECIFICALLY because Ex said I probably shouldn’t go (I had an incredible time, BTW.) Then the gaming club did a screening of “Clockwork Orange,” which I had never seen before, and Partner and I spent over an hour afterwards discussing it. That made Ex very, very nervous.
A bunch of people in the club, including me, had made plans to attend a rock show featuring Filter (remember them?) in nearby (big city name redacted). When the day of the show happened, it turned out that no one else was able to attend for various reasons (lack of money, lack on interest, papers due) except Partner and me. SO we both went to the show together. It was NOT meant to be a date, and was kind of weird that it was just the two of us, but by the end of the night we were having a great time and laughing and basically just having fun.
MANY years later, we claim that as our “first date” (and bear in mind that we both bought our own tickets to the show). And we’re still together and I honestly can’t imagine a reality in which we wouldn’t be…even if I’m too much like Sal sometimes. 🙂
She certainly just owned herself pretty good there, yeah.
Sal’s not used to unconditional affection. Linda and Charles ‘support’ her as long as she abides by Linda’s whims. Many of her peers like having her around, but (at least she feels like) she has to play-act the aloof rebel they typecast her as. About the only ones who support her without expecting something in return are her brother (who kowtowed to Linda and undoubtedly threw her under the bus at least a few times) and Marcie (who told her before that she keeps being “her collateral damage”). If anything, I bet Danny just wanted to go on rides with her sometimes, like when they went to Lake Munroe on her motorcycle that time she needed to blow off steam.
Positive relationships are transactional in Sal’s world, and that’s just sad. Danny’s unprompted, zero-sum generosity does not compute.
@Needfuldoer: That’s very insightful and it has personally taken me a LONG time to realize that relationships DON’T always need to be transactional.
While I like to think I’m getting more insightful about stuff, I’ve gotten Partner, mom, and her husband VERY mad at me when I refuse to accept any help. There’s something deep in me that insists if I can’t do something on my own, I don’t DESERVE to do it. Intellectually I understand that is bullsh!ite. My entire PROFESSION (Ph.D. in literature and a tenured professor over here) depends on COLLABORATION. But I’ve still kind of got this idea that I’ve got to “prove myself” before I can accept any help from anyone, and that the ONLY way I can accept help is if I’ve done something equivalent or better for the person in question, and maybe not even then.
YES, I am MESSED UP and apologize for having my feels all over this comment section.
Sounds like you need to prove to yourself that you can accept help. You’d better accept the help on your own first though, just to be sure you can do it.
[disclosure: I understand very much your perspective, except I haven’t earned a PhD. 🙁 ]
Danny: Thoughtful gestures, presented in a way that puts no pressure or expectation on the recipient, who he knows values her independence very highly.
Joe: Crawling around classroom floors to ask the friends of the girl he likes why she’s unhappy, and managing to make her MORE unhappy by revealing that she was to the very person she didn’t want to know about it.
Danny officially has more game than Joe. We’re in the mirror universe here.
I mean, Joe DID reveal when Danny came out that a lot of his supposed trysts were made up to make him sound more successful than he actually was. Plus, I don’t think Joe’s ever tried DATING anyone, just casual sex because if emotions happen he will hurt her and does not want that. By contrast, Danny’s had two whole relationships and has apparently learned some things since ‘go to the same school as your girlfriend even though she wants to transfer to Yale, she’ll change her mind, love’s more important than Yale!’ (While still being just this shy of too much – Sal definitely seems like she might be receptive, but I could see this scaring her off, too.)
Y’know I don’t think anyone has ever actually pursued Sal sincerely. So itmakes sense to me when you say she might be scared off. Her history as far as we know has either been her as the initiater like with Jason or some implied guys (possibly older) offering her free booze which is usually as sleezy as it sounds. So this is probably very new to her.
Yes, thank you. I’d forgotten that date but I also agree that it wasn’t a date with intent of actual relationship, just a date with intent of one-off sex because it’d be ‘good for her’. (I do think Joyce will eventually need to deal with her sexuality-related anxieties and hangups, in that feeling terrifying shame for HAVING sexual urges is unhealthy, but she can’t rush that, especially as it’s become tied up in Ryan trauma since that disastrous ‘date’.)
Sal may have ranted about her mother to him on occasion, or he might have gotten parts of the story from other people. But even if so, it’s pretty reasonable for him to have no clue how much Sal associates gift-giving with exploitation and control as well as being Not For Her.
Danny my boy! Pierce that maiden’s heart with that mighty arrow and one day you too might be able to secure longlasting romantic relationship the likes of which this state of Indiana has never seen!
I **love** how in a single panel you can see Sal go from Normal operating protocols to the Gears in her head catching and grinding to a halt at that single line of dialogue puncturing her self-defense mechanisms.
this panel is really quite awesomely done. I don’t know whether sal’s going to react with a change of heart or just more aggressively push him away, though
In europe they even sell waterproof canvas that wraps/skirts a vespa. (Think like a car bra) But instead of protectung the vespa, it comes back and protects you from the waist down when driving in rain or puddles. And you might not believe how many people can ride together on a single Vespa.
But then, like all previous cadiac cycles, the ventricals compressed, squeezing the blood to the arteries and lungs, and Sal’s heart returned again to its original size. Only to grow and compress again and again. The absurd monotony of growth and contraction forever driving it madder and madder with every Sisyphean beat. ba-DUM, ba-DUM, ba-DUM…
I mean, there is that whole part where her mother stole money from her (intended for her best friend’s medical costs) and made its return dependent on her cutting ties with said friend. That’s gonna give you a complex about a lot of things re: oweing people and what you actually own in any meaningful way. (I can’t imagine Sal isn’t worried about Linda trying to get her to change majors or something someday because Sal owes her for Linda paying tuition. I’m pretty much certain that’s gonna be one of her tactics when it’s time for Walky to realize he’s a pre-med major.)
Also ‘you can keep the knife, and hey if you just so HAPPEN to want to try and rob another store on your own we’ll drop you off there, definitely no strings attached and we absolutely won’t call the cops so we get away clean!’
You mean being unable to afford a treatment for her best friend when they were kids, that she feels responsible for, because her mom stole her money that she had been saving up for, wouldn’t make her just a wee bit on edge about independence and material issues?
Why wouldn’t Joyce F-bomb Linda? Why wouldn’t anybody? Have you heard her open her mouth? If I had the money, I’d try bribing Willis into a background cameo spot where all I get to say is an appropriately timed: “Shut the FUCK up lady. Seriously!”
(I kid. This isn’t directed at you Clif. At first it was just meant to be a joke, and you made tye setup. But then it rolled into wanting to Bribe Willis, and the whole idea made me smile and I wanted to share it)
I mean I get all that and the points Regalli mentioned but this situation is different. I’m not sure how Danny can leverage a bike and some flowers into controlling Sal. She holds all the power here. I think Sal’s just projecting issues with other men (Asher) onto him.
Projection born of trauma, yeah. Your hangups and complexes don’t just go away because this particular person isn’t your abusive mom. It takes a lot of work and a lot of trust built up with people to recognize that this experience isn’t actually the norm and these people, specifically, are safe and will not approach relationships transactionally. It’s a long, long process to defuse the garbage you’ve internalized.
Yeah, if Sal can’t recognize a healthy person, it’s only because she’s been starved of examples of genuinely healthy people to use as models. And not many people in her childhood fit that criteria, did they?
Why do I suddenly want there to have been a *live action* series and a crossover with Jurassic Park?
“Littlefoot, I’m scared. Why must journey beyond the land under shadow?”
“It’ll be okay Cera. My mom and the other longnecks will be waiting for us there….
Blue, stop nibbling on Cera’s frill”
Elsewhere on the island, in the pen *next* to the indominous, Owen is inside, with his clicker. “C’mon Chomper. *click click* Spike is waiting for us to go walkies. *click click click click* “Petrie, I see you there! Don’t worry. You can come too. C’mon, hop up here.” (baby Petrie hops into Owen’s arm and holds on to Owen’s shoulder.).
It’s because the last two guys she had some degree of emotional intimacy with, respectively, sold her out to the cops and banged her for an A-grade, and now that one guy she hangs out with and she can earnestly believe every word that comes out of his mouth is suddenly making these big gestures like buying her a bike and then using those gift cards she threw at him to buy her flowers and every part of her brain is on fire telling her that Danny’s about to start using her the way Asher and Jason did.
I don’t know if Jason actually used her. That situation is kind of grey karmically speaking since Sal initiated that. It’s more like he didn’t hold up his end of the implied bargain. Jason was definitely a bit of an ass especially since he profiled Sal pretty hard but I think they kind of broke even at least if you ignore the unbalanced academic power dynamic inate in the relationship from the start.
It’s less that Jason outright got close to her and then threw her away and more the circumstances of how it went down between them.
How do I put this: Jason starts with a pretty inappropriate comment towards her, then Sal figures what the hey and bangs him because she’s horny and the grade’s all that matters. Jason regrets this later so he refuses to change her grade, and then they bang again in the heat of the moment.
Afterwards Sal has a brief little vent towards him because of how lonely she is, and then she sees him off one last time when he starts working at Galasso’s. I don’t think these matter as much, moreso the former.
Sal had sex with Jason twice, she is not unattracted to him, but they get along like oil and water. Sal’s only real interactions with Jason were two quick lays, Jason got what he wanted out of her, and then they just never speak again. Right now, with Sal’s emotional state regarding her feeling isolated (I think it’s been made blatantly clear by her talk with Amazi-Girl last night that Sal is lonely, specifically, for companionship, considering the targets of her lashing out have been Asher, Jason and now Danny), what was previously just sex with some jerk she sorta knew became another example of someone getting what they want from her and then they just move on and never think about her again, as evidenced by how Jason is an asshole because he was handcuffed to Ruth’s door, and Sal had Opinions about that.
Okay Sal, you need to get the stick out of your ass. Maybe Danny has alternative motives for these gifts, but you indicated in the past that you might not mind that. You are, of course, welcome to change your mind on that but it still would not justify that response.
If Sal is sailing against the wind, is Danny running before the storm?
C’mon sing with me,
“Sally, forget that guy, Ash-sher, hallelujah,
Sally row Danny’s ship for sure, hallelujah.”
“I saw this flower and thought of you because it’s pretty and, well, I don’t really like it, but I thought you might like it ’cause you’re pretty. But I like you anyway. I’d… uh, uh, I’m in trouble.”
I am beginning to identify more and more with Danny. Willis, did you know me in a previous life?
I absolutely guarantee you, without a shadow of doubt, that Linda fairly regularly used promises of money and the things it can buy, and threats of withholding same, to control her kids. Her outright stealing Sal’s money that she was saving up for Marcie is HOPEFULLY the most egregious example, but there is simply no way that that was an isolated incident.
Agreed. Like I said in a parenthetical upthread, I guarantee that whenever Linda’s decided it’s time for Walky to stop fooling around and go into pre-med like he’s supposed to, ‘I pay your tuition bills so you will major in what I say you will’ is going to come up.
Unfortunately, I’d also bet that Linda’s financial abuse is a factor in why Sal no longer has her motorcycle – refusal to pay insurance, threats of pulling tuition, there are quite a few ways Linda can financially abuse her daughter to get her way even if legally, she has no claim on the motorcycle. (I am CERTAIN Sal opened a bank account her parents have no in for as soon as she possibly could.)
There are also no-scripts for chrome and firefox. You can tune them to allow most ad sites on doa, and block just those maybe. Or just disable it, load the page once for the add, then enable the block and reload to see the actual comic.
The problem isn’t getting attached to toys, the problem is getting attached to toys that are major characters in the best TF fiction ever who then get killed off in the very first issue of the continuity reboot.
At least I have the IDW Beast Wars comic, which is good as long as you read it six issues at a time.
There *are* darker sextions of the internet. Deep corners encrusted in, uh, shadows. And they may have fan fiction, or even pictures. You know what they say: yo tomoe live once.
Probably Sal will feel horrible later for what she just said to Danny. She knows he’s not that kind of person, but she’s still too angry for that Asher and Jennifer thing. She needs a break in her room. Even because if this conversation continues, there’re a lot of possibilities that it could go worse and I don’t want to see Sal seriously insulating someone that’s just nice with her.
I don’t know how long this comic will be, I don’t know if it will focus on just one year or the full scholarship, but as an old Danyy/Sal shipper from It’s Walky, this’d better be endgame.
Heartbreaking to think that Sal has been hurt enough not to trust this. I hope Danny can appreciate and respect that about her, because he’s being a nice guy, not a Nice Guy, and I think they could be a cute couple if he can learn to be mindful of her traumas. But Sal’s response is entirely justifiable, even if his motives are misunderstood; she’s not got a nice guy to base this action on.
PS: whoever approves this post at the mod end, I changed my email because the femme gravatar was a little gender dysphoric, and I was hoping for a masc one.
For future reference, if you want a different avatar for any reason here on this site, you can just change the capitalization of your email. Any combination gives a new one.
Or follow the link to Gravitar and set up a stable of avatars that you can easily swap. That’ll get you options beyond DYW characters. I prefer the control rather than roulette.
As fit today’s comic -thus shines a good deed in a weary world. No wonder it stops Sal in her tracks.
I am ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that her mother is EXACTLY the sort of person who gifts lavishly but the gifts come with many strings attached (and we know Billie has those tendencies, too). We also know that Mrs Walkerton is EXACTLY the sort of parent who has that, “everything you have is mine because I paid for it, even if I gave it to you or you bought it with your own allowance, and therefore at any time for any reason I deem appropriate your things can and will be held hostage by me or destroyed by me in a fit of pique. Comply or see everything dear to you turned to ash.” Attitude.
My parents had the exact same attitude and as a result huge gifts made me very wary (still do) and like Sal I tried to get as independent as possible as soon as possible so nobody could hold my needs hostage to ensure compliance. In my case, see what you care about turned to ash was literal on a couple occasions. It didn’t make me super compliant, just sneakier, with a hard time feeling like I can trust what’s mine to stay mine (so why take care of it if it can be taken away whenever, wherever), and with a deep and abiding aversion to perceived attempts to make me owe someone.
So I completely get Sal here. Danny doesn’t mean it that way, genuinely he’s just trying to be nice, but Sal’s already triggered based on her interaction with Asher and Jennifer earlier so she’s not in a head space where she can see it for what it is. I feel bad for both of them here.
My sympathies, and agreed, I feel bad for them both. Danny knows, at most, a FRACTION of Sal’s parental issues (and that assumes she shared more with him than we’ve seen, which I wouldn’t count on,) and he’s coming back from winter break with his own parents… who probably weren’t very supportive of his efforts to find himself independent of his romantic relationships, given what we saw of the Wilcoxen at family weekend. I could see that pushing him back towards the Big Gestures mindset again with the girl he already likes, missing that that is EXACTLY the wrong take with Sal and doubling down here only makes her more uncomfortable.
It just occurred to me that, god forbid, if Sal and Danny got together, I feel pretty confident Linda would be a huge turd about it.
“Oh you finally found yourself a nice boyfriend, he’ll guide you down the right path, make an honest woman out of you.”
I already know Linda’s gonna be an ass about Walky dating Lucy instead of Dorothy, but Sal/Danny feels like something that make her go Super Ass Fighter II Turbo.
Sal could announce she was joining a convent to become a nun because Catholic school showed her The True Way of God and Linda’d still be a huge judgy turd about it.
Though honestly that’d be kinda hilarious for her to do as a joke that didn’t involve Linda. Every individual aspect would implode Joyce’s brain in its own unique way, it’d be great.
See I’m kinda thinking it not as “of course Linda would have a bad reaction” because I don’t think Sal would care about that the way Walky’s dreading his mom finding out he’s not with Dorothy anymore, I think the problem is that Danny’s a nice, stable, white normal guy who’s just perfect for getting Linda’s unruly daughter to settle down and stop acting out all the time.
Sal wouldn’t be dating What Mom and Dad Hate, she’d be dating someone they’d approve of, and that would be the worst.
Oh yeah I forgot to write this. All strips that involve Danny and romance inevitably lead to some talk about Ethan, so I wanted to share my thoughts.
Ethan for a very long time has been super boring, and I am so excited for him to make a big comeback to the series.
Ethan never really showed up a lot, but he was pretty much always the same character. He’s a mother hen, he’s nice, he’s supportive, he doesn’t fight back against his friends, Danny thinks he’s neat, I think every comic needs a straight man (fnar fnar) but I think Ethan took it too far. He was perpetually there, he had problems but you couldn’t really laugh about because his problems were that he was a traumatized gay kid with abusive parents and none of it was his fault, even his relationship with Joyce was mostly about Joyce, and once it ended it’s not like they hung out anymore because there wasn’t much character chemistry. Yeah sure I guess there’s the unintended consequence of Joyce replacing her Gay Boyfriend with her Gay BFF, but like, how the hell do you still stick Joyce and Ethan in the same strip? What do they talk about?
So the prospect of putting him in No Appearance Baby Jail for a bit certainly lets me get over that initial “ugh Ethan” feel I’d get when he’d reappear and still be Ethan, but more importantly is that the context of the timeskip (where he displays as much of a spine as he ever has to both Danny and Amber) and the small hints from Walky about his current status quo means I’m actually looking forward to his return. It’s getting built up, there’s a weight to Ethan’s grand re-entrance into the plot, and the prospect that he’s started dressing and acting like Bully Maguire is not only fucking hilarious, it’s a soft reboot for Ethan’s character. He’s new, he’s not going to have the same reactions he used to, there’s a genuine room for character drama with Danny and Amber because one of them said fucked up shit about Mike before he died and the other left Mike in the hospital for a whole day and didn’t tell Ethan.
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That is good Sal. There is no price to high to pay for the right to own yourself.
Except Danny’s not trying to buy her. These things sometimes get more complicated than they need to be. People can do nice things without having ulterior motives, even if there is some romantic intent. Sal is just jaded.
Well of course. Danny just isn’t too familiar with the place Sal is coming from.
If or when Joyce drops the F-bomb on Carol, she’s gonna deserve every burning joule of it.
I mean on Linda. Fuck.
WARNING: Long personal rant incoming!
I’m suprised to find myself kind of agreeing with Danny on this one. I personally HATE most of the “conventions” about cishet dating and marriage in the U.S. (and elsewhere, but I live in the U.S. so that is my frame of expertise). I’m Queer, but have been with my male partner for over a decade, and have made it VERY CLEAR that I’m never going to marry him because I don’t believe in marriage as an institution. I never went on many dates, but I went on some, and the ONLY time I didn’t insist on splitting the check was when I literally thought it might come to a fist-fight if I didn’t let the guy pay.
For context, this was a male-presenting fellow student who had done me a favour by recording my senior thesis presentation so I could send it to my faculty mentor, who was in India doing research at the time. I agreed to go to dinner with him (the student, NOT the faculty mentor) as a thank-you. He made reservations at the most expensive restaurant in the immediate area, insisted on ordering the most expensive stuff on the menu, and throughout the entire meal kept bragging about how he had never had a job in his entire life and that he was only in the U.S. to get a medical degree. One he had the degree, he claimed, his father who owned the most presitigous hospital in *country redacted* would immediately make him head surgeon. Oh, and he also was maybe hoping to meet a U.S.ian woman to marry.
*HEADDESK*
SO, yeah, within about 5 minutes I realized this date was a bad idea and he and I had NOTHING in common (I’ve been working one way or another since I was about 16 and was at college on a combination of scholarships and loans and while – at the time this happened – working 30+ hours/week for the school so that my mom wouldn’t have to worry about paying for any of my expenses and things like school fees.) But when I pulled out the money to pay for my half of the meal he got VERY angry. When I said it’s important to me that I pay for myself he got angrier. Hence the letting him pay to avoid what could have degenerated into a fist-fight.
tl:dr I emphasize with Sal about not wanting to be “bought.”
HOWEVER, sometimes nice things are nice. Danny apparently thought it would be nice to offer Sal flowers. I doubt that broke his bank. One thing I’ve had to learn over the years that conflicts with my Sal-like mentality of never accepting any help, especially monetary help, is that sometimes people do nice things because they like you, not because they are trying to “buy” you. And sometimes nice things are just nice.
From which afternoon soap-opera did you escape? I didn’t thought date like that and people behaving like that existed in real life.
(Just to be clear, I am in no way trying to imply I don’t believe you, I do, just flabbergasted at such a sitcom situation happening in real life. Hop my comment didn’t make you feel insulted)
Nope, not offended at all! Trust me, I kind of didn’t believe it myself when it was happening! I was lucky enough to get into and get enough loans/scholarships to attend a not-quite Ivy League, but very prestigious, East Coast school so some of my fellow students were wealthy and entitled on an almost *unbelievable* level.
For example (this is another story I am NOT making up), my freshman year roomate came from a really, REALLY rich family. She got about $1000/month in “allowance” from her family. (Remember how I said that I worked for the school on top of a full-time classload just so that my mom wouldn’t have to pay for anything else for me because she’d already spent enough on me? Yeah.) One month my roomate had SOMEHOW run through that $1000 (also bear in mind this was a while ago – with inflation we would be probably be talking maybe $1500/month now) and desperately wanted some $900 designer purse but didn’t have money left for it. I think it was Fendi, or Versace, or something – I honestly can’t remember.
So she went to a pawnshop to pawn SOME of her diamonds. (Yes, you read that last sentence correctly.) She came back to the room angry because the guy would only give her $100 for everything and that wouldn’t pay for the bag and she called her father and he wouldn’t give her any more money until next month. She was trying to sell a diamond tennis bracelet and a diamond ring. Now, I know and knew something about gemstones and jewelry; my mom and I used to collect antiques, including antique jewelry. While my roomate’s jewelry wasn’t worth, say, $10,000, it was worth a HECK of a lot more than $100. The tennis bracelet was maybe 3-4 carats total of diamonds set in 14 carat gold and the ring was a diamond band also in 14 carat gold with about 2 or so carats of diamonds. All the diamonds looked pretty clear to me (clear white diamonds are the most valuable). I told Roomate that she would be getting ripped off if she pawned her jewelry to this guy because it was worth much more than he was offering. I said that, if she wanted, I could call my mom and see if she wanted to buy it (because, you know, collecting and also as an investment).
I also asked Roomate (and this is ANOTHER thing I am NOT MAKING UP) if she was totally sure she wanted to sell it. I said something to the effect of, “This is really nice jewelry. Maybe you should keep it! This is a beautiful ring; if you have a child, you might want to give it to them to be an engagement ring.”
Roomate said (NOT making this up), “Oh, this is just my *junk* jewelry. I would be SO OFFENDED if a man ever offered me a ring this small as an engagement ring.”
So, now my mom owns a very nice diamond tennis bracelet and ring.
This is only vaguely related, but decades ago I tried to pawn a diamond ring (just little chips in it, very cheap). It had been bought for $300 only a few months earlier, so I was hoping to get at least half that; but the guy only offered me $75.
He said that the problem was that no one went to pawn shops for nice jewellery, so his resale market was really small, so he could only sell them if the price he offered was really low, so in order to make any money on the sale, he had to offer peanuts for it.
Doesn’t sound like much has changed. These days, in that same situation, I’d bring it by the store I bought it from (if I knew/it was close by), or another, unbranded jewellery store if not, and see if they wanted to buy it back.
Failing that, if I wasn’t in a hurry to get it, I’d offer it online.
–As it was, I hung onto it and ended up selling it to a friend for $150 later. But that seems to be why pawn shops aren’t good places to hock jewellery, especially the good stuff.
Pawn shops also know that most people who go there are desperate and will often take whatever they can get. It’s an exploitative business by design.
AND, to provide another terrible date story for which no one asked, while at this same college I had another date on the absolute opposite end of the spectrum. A guy in my classes asked me to dinner after months of alternately flirting and hitting on both me and another girl in our classes (we were all in a severely tracked major – that meant that the same 30ish people were essentially in every single class together). I was so young and inexperienced that I was flattered that he “picked” me. He asked me where I wanted to go to dinner, I mentioned a reasonably nice restaurant downtown, and he made the reservations, IIRC.
We had a very yummy meal. At the end of that meal, he told me that he didn’t have any money, but it was his birthday (that was actually true), and hoped that I would pay for it as a birthday present for him. Well, I had no intention of dining and dashing, so I paid for it. While I was MORE than prepared to pay my half, but hadn’t planned to cover the entire thing. I had to put it on a credit card that my mom had given me for emergencies, which did NOT make her happy.
I was too young and stupid to see red flags when they were RIGHT IN MY FACE. I landed up dating this guy for over 5 years and moving in with him when I went to grad school. The relationship dramatically exploded…like on a soap opera…for a whole bunch of reasons, one of which was that he STOLE ALL MY MONEY and OVERDREW MY BANK ACCOUNT.
Did I mention I was young and stupid? But at least he hadn’t been replaced by his evil twin who had been in a coma for the past decade…as far as I KNOW. 😛
Wow!
It’s interesting just how much can change in as little as five years, huh?
Maybe he was the evil twin.
Hey thanks for sharing your stories about terrible people Jaime, they’re very entertaining ^_^
Um feel free to keep going °3°
Since I’ve gotten a request…
While I was in grad school and in the process of breaking up with my Ex Who Stole All My Money, I made a bunch of friends at the school gaming club where Ex hung out (I started going there because sometimes Ex wouldn’t come home until super late at night and I got worried about him. When I discovered that the gaming club showed movies on a big screen in the dorms, and often ran “one-off” RPGs, I starteed spending time there because it was just fun. Ex did not like that.) That is where I met Partner; the first time I met him was at a heavy metal concert that I went to SPECIFICALLY because Ex said I probably shouldn’t go (I had an incredible time, BTW.) Then the gaming club did a screening of “Clockwork Orange,” which I had never seen before, and Partner and I spent over an hour afterwards discussing it. That made Ex very, very nervous.
A bunch of people in the club, including me, had made plans to attend a rock show featuring Filter (remember them?) in nearby (big city name redacted). When the day of the show happened, it turned out that no one else was able to attend for various reasons (lack of money, lack on interest, papers due) except Partner and me. SO we both went to the show together. It was NOT meant to be a date, and was kind of weird that it was just the two of us, but by the end of the night we were having a great time and laughing and basically just having fun.
MANY years later, we claim that as our “first date” (and bear in mind that we both bought our own tickets to the show). And we’re still together and I honestly can’t imagine a reality in which we wouldn’t be…even if I’m too much like Sal sometimes. 🙂
Yayyyy Partner!
Boooo Ex!
Never heard of Filter but i’m sure they’re a worthy band to have your first date at a concert thereof.
So.. what I’m hearing is that you Filtered some toxic sludge out of your life?
Band name checks out.
I don’t think Danny is trying to “buy” Sal, but doing this on the heels of the bike thing makes me understand where she’s coming from.
She certainly just owned herself pretty good there, yeah.
Sal’s not used to unconditional affection. Linda and Charles ‘support’ her as long as she abides by Linda’s whims. Many of her peers like having her around, but (at least she feels like) she has to play-act the aloof rebel they typecast her as. About the only ones who support her without expecting something in return are her brother (who kowtowed to Linda and undoubtedly threw her under the bus at least a few times) and Marcie (who told her before that she keeps being “her collateral damage”). If anything, I bet Danny just wanted to go on rides with her sometimes, like when they went to Lake Munroe on her motorcycle that time she needed to blow off steam.
Positive relationships are transactional in Sal’s world, and that’s just sad. Danny’s unprompted, zero-sum generosity does not compute.
@Needfuldoer: That’s very insightful and it has personally taken me a LONG time to realize that relationships DON’T always need to be transactional.
While I like to think I’m getting more insightful about stuff, I’ve gotten Partner, mom, and her husband VERY mad at me when I refuse to accept any help. There’s something deep in me that insists if I can’t do something on my own, I don’t DESERVE to do it. Intellectually I understand that is bullsh!ite. My entire PROFESSION (Ph.D. in literature and a tenured professor over here) depends on COLLABORATION. But I’ve still kind of got this idea that I’ve got to “prove myself” before I can accept any help from anyone, and that the ONLY way I can accept help is if I’ve done something equivalent or better for the person in question, and maybe not even then.
YES, I am MESSED UP and apologize for having my feels all over this comment section.
Sounds like you need to prove to yourself that you can accept help. You’d better accept the help on your own first though, just to be sure you can do it.
[disclosure: I understand very much your perspective, except I haven’t earned a PhD. 🙁 ]
“NICE? Who DOES that???”
Is that word even in Sal’s vocabulary?
Agatha does that.
She’s scary.
I mean, it WAS her all along….
Sounds fake
“Fakey!”, accuses Malaya from her window.
Sal’s known one person who likes to have a knife time.
Danny: Thoughtful gestures, presented in a way that puts no pressure or expectation on the recipient, who he knows values her independence very highly.
Joe: Crawling around classroom floors to ask the friends of the girl he likes why she’s unhappy, and managing to make her MORE unhappy by revealing that she was to the very person she didn’t want to know about it.
Danny officially has more game than Joe. We’re in the mirror universe here.
I mean, Joe DID reveal when Danny came out that a lot of his supposed trysts were made up to make him sound more successful than he actually was. Plus, I don’t think Joe’s ever tried DATING anyone, just casual sex because if emotions happen he will hurt her and does not want that. By contrast, Danny’s had two whole relationships and has apparently learned some things since ‘go to the same school as your girlfriend even though she wants to transfer to Yale, she’ll change her mind, love’s more important than Yale!’ (While still being just this shy of too much – Sal definitely seems like she might be receptive, but I could see this scaring her off, too.)
Y’know I don’t think anyone has ever actually pursued Sal sincerely. So itmakes sense to me when you say she might be scared off. Her history as far as we know has either been her as the initiater like with Jason or some implied guys (possibly older) offering her free booze which is usually as sleezy as it sounds. So this is probably very new to her.
Regalli, Joe has definitely tried dating someone, notably Joyce, though it didn’t end well.
Joe went on a date with Joyce, on the expectation of it leading to fucking her and leaving her, by his standards, ‘better off’.
He was not attempting ‘dating’ with her in the sense of entering into a state of boyfriend and girlfriend
Yes, thank you. I’d forgotten that date but I also agree that it wasn’t a date with intent of actual relationship, just a date with intent of one-off sex because it’d be ‘good for her’. (I do think Joyce will eventually need to deal with her sexuality-related anxieties and hangups, in that feeling terrifying shame for HAVING sexual urges is unhealthy, but she can’t rush that, especially as it’s become tied up in Ryan trauma since that disastrous ‘date’.)
I dunno about game, but Danny is easily more romantic than Joe.
.. thing is, you’re wrong.
Danny has NO game.
Danny is just being honest and doing something nice… which is wht it’s simply better than “having game”.
…yeah, I get the distinct impression that Danny is missing some very particular nuance to the “ain’t nobody owns me” part
I mean, on one level, he doesn’t know anything about her mother.
Sal may have ranted about her mother to him on occasion, or he might have gotten parts of the story from other people. But even if so, it’s pretty reasonable for him to have no clue how much Sal associates gift-giving with exploitation and control as well as being Not For Her.
He said the right thing tho.
Not ever nuance needs to be followed up with a therapy session.
Dan being sincere might work this time.
Danny my boy! Pierce that maiden’s heart with that mighty arrow and one day you too might be able to secure longlasting romantic relationship the likes of which this state of Indiana has never seen!
I **love** how in a single panel you can see Sal go from Normal operating protocols to the Gears in her head catching and grinding to a halt at that single line of dialogue puncturing her self-defense mechanisms.
In other wards. . .
Dany used Kindness without expectations
. . .It’s Super Effective!
this panel is really quite awesomely done. I don’t know whether sal’s going to react with a change of heart or just more aggressively push him away, though
I want Danny to become a motorcycle rebel.
It’d be hot.
You KNOW he’d get a Vespa.
…Which can still be hot in the right hands, I’ve seen FLCL.
omg, if Danny becomes a scooter dork and Sal doesn’t get on that, she’s a fool, because that sounds adorable
In europe they even sell waterproof canvas that wraps/skirts a vespa. (Think like a car bra) But instead of protectung the vespa, it comes back and protects you from the waist down when driving in rain or puddles. And you might not believe how many people can ride together on a single Vespa.
Right???
Every time I think about these two they get cuter.
*plays “Ride on Shooting Star” by The Pillows on Voxola PR-76*
Maybe one of those cheap Honda Ruckus clones.
“If you’re gonna ride, wonderbread, ride in style”
Whaaaaaaaaat? People don’t just DO THINGS for Sal to be NICE, Danny. That’s not how the world works. Are you broken?
JFC, this is some depressing insight on Sal.
“Wait, can people DO that?” – and Sal’s cynical heart grew not one but three sizes that day.
Well, probably more like one size, but, still.
But then, like all previous cadiac cycles, the ventricals compressed, squeezing the blood to the arteries and lungs, and Sal’s heart returned again to its original size. Only to grow and compress again and again. The absurd monotony of growth and contraction forever driving it madder and madder with every Sisyphean beat. ba-DUM, ba-DUM, ba-DUM…
*cardiac cycles, damnit
I don’t know why Sal has this chip on her shoulder but she is totally blowing this. Maybe they do work better as friends.
I mean, there is that whole part where her mother stole money from her (intended for her best friend’s medical costs) and made its return dependent on her cutting ties with said friend. That’s gonna give you a complex about a lot of things re: oweing people and what you actually own in any meaningful way. (I can’t imagine Sal isn’t worried about Linda trying to get her to change majors or something someday because Sal owes her for Linda paying tuition. I’m pretty much certain that’s gonna be one of her tactics when it’s time for Walky to realize he’s a pre-med major.)
Also ‘you can keep the knife, and hey if you just so HAPPEN to want to try and rob another store on your own we’ll drop you off there, definitely no strings attached and we absolutely won’t call the cops so we get away clean!’
You mean being unable to afford a treatment for her best friend when they were kids, that she feels responsible for, because her mom stole her money that she had been saving up for, wouldn’t make her just a wee bit on edge about independence and material issues?
I hope Joyce F-bombs Carol so hard her blood pressure rises and makes her arteries burst like a piñata.
I’m a little confused. What does Joyce and her mom have to do with Sal’s issues?
Oops I meant Linda.
Damn, here I am, able to remember whole passages in philosophical and scientific texts nearly verbatim, but not names.
I think I get that, but why would Joyce be F-bombing Linda. Unless she starts dating Walky, she isn’t that likely to even meet her.
Why wouldn’t Joyce F-bomb Linda? Why wouldn’t anybody? Have you heard her open her mouth? If I had the money, I’d try bribing Willis into a background cameo spot where all I get to say is an appropriately timed: “Shut the FUCK up lady. Seriously!”
(I kid. This isn’t directed at you Clif. At first it was just meant to be a joke, and you made tye setup. But then it rolled into wanting to Bribe Willis, and the whole idea made me smile and I wanted to share it)
I mean I get all that and the points Regalli mentioned but this situation is different. I’m not sure how Danny can leverage a bike and some flowers into controlling Sal. She holds all the power here. I think Sal’s just projecting issues with other men (Asher) onto him.
Oh Sal is definitely projecting. It didn’t come out of nowhere, though.
Once again, Danny is finding himself trying to court a lady with way deeper issues than he deserves.
Projection born of trauma, yeah. Your hangups and complexes don’t just go away because this particular person isn’t your abusive mom. It takes a lot of work and a lot of trust built up with people to recognize that this experience isn’t actually the norm and these people, specifically, are safe and will not approach relationships transactionally. It’s a long, long process to defuse the garbage you’ve internalized.
Yeah, if Sal can’t recognize a healthy person, it’s only because she’s been starved of examples of genuinely healthy people to use as models. And not many people in her childhood fit that criteria, did they?
Sal’s a lone wolf. That’s just her style.
Kinda like the Lone Dinosaur from The Land Before Time.
… You mean the one who gets a girlfriend who teaches him that Chomper is a good Sharptooth in the animated series, or..?
I mean the one from the movie, who travels alone all over pangea fighting Sharpteeth and saving leaf-eaters.
Why do I suddenly want there to have been a *live action* series and a crossover with Jurassic Park?
“Littlefoot, I’m scared. Why must journey beyond the land under shadow?”
“It’ll be okay Cera. My mom and the other longnecks will be waiting for us there….
Blue, stop nibbling on Cera’s frill”
Elsewhere on the island, in the pen *next* to the indominous, Owen is inside, with his clicker. “C’mon Chomper. *click click* Spike is waiting for us to go walkies. *click click click click* “Petrie, I see you there! Don’t worry. You can come too. C’mon, hop up here.” (baby Petrie hops into Owen’s arm and holds on to Owen’s shoulder.).
It’s because the last two guys she had some degree of emotional intimacy with, respectively, sold her out to the cops and banged her for an A-grade, and now that one guy she hangs out with and she can earnestly believe every word that comes out of his mouth is suddenly making these big gestures like buying her a bike and then using those gift cards she threw at him to buy her flowers and every part of her brain is on fire telling her that Danny’s about to start using her the way Asher and Jason did.
Sal is not feeling well right now.
I don’t know if Jason actually used her. That situation is kind of grey karmically speaking since Sal initiated that. It’s more like he didn’t hold up his end of the implied bargain. Jason was definitely a bit of an ass especially since he profiled Sal pretty hard but I think they kind of broke even at least if you ignore the unbalanced academic power dynamic inate in the relationship from the start.
It’s less that Jason outright got close to her and then threw her away and more the circumstances of how it went down between them.
How do I put this: Jason starts with a pretty inappropriate comment towards her, then Sal figures what the hey and bangs him because she’s horny and the grade’s all that matters. Jason regrets this later so he refuses to change her grade, and then they bang again in the heat of the moment.
Afterwards Sal has a brief little vent towards him because of how lonely she is, and then she sees him off one last time when he starts working at Galasso’s. I don’t think these matter as much, moreso the former.
Sal had sex with Jason twice, she is not unattracted to him, but they get along like oil and water. Sal’s only real interactions with Jason were two quick lays, Jason got what he wanted out of her, and then they just never speak again. Right now, with Sal’s emotional state regarding her feeling isolated (I think it’s been made blatantly clear by her talk with Amazi-Girl last night that Sal is lonely, specifically, for companionship, considering the targets of her lashing out have been Asher, Jason and now Danny), what was previously just sex with some jerk she sorta knew became another example of someone getting what they want from her and then they just move on and never think about her again, as evidenced by how Jason is an asshole because he was handcuffed to Ruth’s door, and Sal had Opinions about that.
Okay Sal, you need to get the stick out of your ass. Maybe Danny has alternative motives for these gifts, but you indicated in the past that you might not mind that. You are, of course, welcome to change your mind on that but it still would not justify that response.
Goddamn it, Sal.
She’s really Salling it up right now.
Don’t worry. If it isn’t Sal, Danny will find someone.
She likes Salling against the wind.
… though to be fair Danny IS kinda tacky.
If Sal is sailing against the wind, is Danny running before the storm?
C’mon sing with me,
“Sally, forget that guy, Ash-sher, hallelujah,
Sally row Danny’s ship for sure, hallelujah.”
Aye, that’ll do Skipper. That’ll do.
“I saw this flower and thought of you because it’s pretty and, well, I don’t really like it, but I thought you might like it ’cause you’re pretty. But I like you anyway. I’d… uh, uh, I’m in trouble.”
I am beginning to identify more and more with Danny. Willis, did you know me in a previous life?
Honestly, if Danny’s gonna copy any cartoon character when it comes to flirting, he could do a lot worse than Shrek.
Hey now, he’s an all-star.
Got his game on, go…
No strings attached. Sounds like he’s figuring out her language, so to speak.
“What is this ‘nice’ of which you speak?”
And that’s why we can’t have nice things.
Yeah you’re a real free spirit there Sal
…. so I take it Sal’s still fuming over the encounter with Asher and Co.
… or maybe she’s still fuming over a bunch of times that Linda tried to buy her affection.
Or maybe she’s fuming because French for “to smoke” is fu- *vaudeville hook*
Everybody knows the French word for smoking is “souffle”.
No, that’s the French word for “blow.”
I believe it’s French for “hope you don’t have any plans, this is gonna take a while”.
I absolutely guarantee you, without a shadow of doubt, that Linda fairly regularly used promises of money and the things it can buy, and threats of withholding same, to control her kids. Her outright stealing Sal’s money that she was saving up for Marcie is HOPEFULLY the most egregious example, but there is simply no way that that was an isolated incident.
Agreed. Like I said in a parenthetical upthread, I guarantee that whenever Linda’s decided it’s time for Walky to stop fooling around and go into pre-med like he’s supposed to, ‘I pay your tuition bills so you will major in what I say you will’ is going to come up.
Unfortunately, I’d also bet that Linda’s financial abuse is a factor in why Sal no longer has her motorcycle – refusal to pay insurance, threats of pulling tuition, there are quite a few ways Linda can financially abuse her daughter to get her way even if legally, she has no claim on the motorcycle. (I am CERTAIN Sal opened a bank account her parents have no in for as soon as she possibly could.)
The pop out video ads on this page have gotten awful. Try to zoom in to read something and commercial after commercial pops out over everything.
If you’re on a mobile device, try Brave Brower.
You must be on mobile.
Have your browser request the ‘desktop version’ of the site, and the pop-up videos won’t load.
Then report the video ads to Hiveworks.
There are also no-scripts for chrome and firefox. You can tune them to allow most ad sites on doa, and block just those maybe. Or just disable it, load the page once for the add, then enable the block and reload to see the actual comic.
Danny, I fear you have a type, and that type is “entirely unstable powder keg of emotional/psychological issues.”
Ethan?
Him too, he’s just more passive about it.
Thank you, yes, exactly this.
Dude watched his best friend die. I don’t think he’s entirely stable right not and no one would expect him to be, poor lamb.
Mike was not his best friend. Mike wouldn’t even let them be actual friends.
Amber’s still alive.
No one who likes Transformers has it all sorted out up there.
Thank you. I laughed. Then laughed again. You would be a delightfully savage friend to drunk with. I mean drank with. *hic* “To friendsh”
The problem isn’t getting attached to toys, the problem is getting attached to toys that are major characters in the best TF fiction ever who then get killed off in the very first issue of the continuity reboot.
At least I have the IDW Beast Wars comic, which is good as long as you read it six issues at a time.
I probably would go smoother if she wasn’t angered by Jennifer’s group earlier
‘Stop tryin’ ta woo me, Whitebread. Ah don’t wanna have to date mah brother, later.’
“I-I’m NOT your brother! I bathe regularly! AND THE NAME IS ‘WONDER-BREAD!!”
Danny’s exes keep dating Walky, not that Danny is Walky.
There *are* darker sextions of the internet. Deep corners encrusted in, uh, shadows. And they may have fan fiction, or even pictures. You know what they say: yo tomoe live once.
See now I’m positive Sal and Danny’s gonna happen, because this joke needs to be made in-text.
Take your pretend upvote, you’ve earned it.
This is confusing me. He’s buttering her up, but he’s wonder bread. Like… who is holding the butter-knife here?
Probably Sal will feel horrible later for what she just said to Danny. She knows he’s not that kind of person, but she’s still too angry for that Asher and Jennifer thing. She needs a break in her room. Even because if this conversation continues, there’re a lot of possibilities that it could go worse and I don’t want to see Sal seriously insulating someone that’s just nice with her.
Poor gal has kinda just gone from frustration to frustration today. She needs a time-out to replenish her spoons and consider things 🧡
Absolutely yes. Poor Sal.
I don’t know how long this comic will be, I don’t know if it will focus on just one year or the full scholarship, but as an old Danyy/Sal shipper from It’s Walky, this’d better be endgame.
I can tell Sal’s not used to people just doing things for her to be nice.
Nope, there’s always a quid pro quo, explicit or implied.
Except for Marcie, and to a lesser extent Walky.
C’mon, Sal, crack that she’ll open. I know you can do it.
For some reason I first saw: C’mon, Danny, cracker Sal’s shell open.
Heartbreaking to think that Sal has been hurt enough not to trust this. I hope Danny can appreciate and respect that about her, because he’s being a nice guy, not a Nice Guy, and I think they could be a cute couple if he can learn to be mindful of her traumas. But Sal’s response is entirely justifiable, even if his motives are misunderstood; she’s not got a nice guy to base this action on.
PS: whoever approves this post at the mod end, I changed my email because the femme gravatar was a little gender dysphoric, and I was hoping for a masc one.
For future reference, if you want a different avatar for any reason here on this site, you can just change the capitalization of your email. Any combination gives a new one.
Or follow the link to Gravitar and set up a stable of avatars that you can easily swap. That’ll get you options beyond DYW characters. I prefer the control rather than roulette.
As fit today’s comic -thus shines a good deed in a weary world. No wonder it stops Sal in her tracks.
Good to know, thanks!
I have been waiting for this moment.
Introducing the Guide to Grav Roulette.
Wait, you can change your icon?
I am ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that her mother is EXACTLY the sort of person who gifts lavishly but the gifts come with many strings attached (and we know Billie has those tendencies, too). We also know that Mrs Walkerton is EXACTLY the sort of parent who has that, “everything you have is mine because I paid for it, even if I gave it to you or you bought it with your own allowance, and therefore at any time for any reason I deem appropriate your things can and will be held hostage by me or destroyed by me in a fit of pique. Comply or see everything dear to you turned to ash.” Attitude.
My parents had the exact same attitude and as a result huge gifts made me very wary (still do) and like Sal I tried to get as independent as possible as soon as possible so nobody could hold my needs hostage to ensure compliance. In my case, see what you care about turned to ash was literal on a couple occasions. It didn’t make me super compliant, just sneakier, with a hard time feeling like I can trust what’s mine to stay mine (so why take care of it if it can be taken away whenever, wherever), and with a deep and abiding aversion to perceived attempts to make me owe someone.
So I completely get Sal here. Danny doesn’t mean it that way, genuinely he’s just trying to be nice, but Sal’s already triggered based on her interaction with Asher and Jennifer earlier so she’s not in a head space where she can see it for what it is. I feel bad for both of them here.
My sympathies, and agreed, I feel bad for them both. Danny knows, at most, a FRACTION of Sal’s parental issues (and that assumes she shared more with him than we’ve seen, which I wouldn’t count on,) and he’s coming back from winter break with his own parents… who probably weren’t very supportive of his efforts to find himself independent of his romantic relationships, given what we saw of the Wilcoxen at family weekend. I could see that pushing him back towards the Big Gestures mindset again with the girl he already likes, missing that that is EXACTLY the wrong take with Sal and doubling down here only makes her more uncomfortable.
Is it just me or did Danny actually approach this well?
Post-Character Development Danny is a smooth motherfucker.
It’s a last minute save from the underdog! Who could have predicted this?
It just occurred to me that, god forbid, if Sal and Danny got together, I feel pretty confident Linda would be a huge turd about it.
“Oh you finally found yourself a nice boyfriend, he’ll guide you down the right path, make an honest woman out of you.”
I already know Linda’s gonna be an ass about Walky dating Lucy instead of Dorothy, but Sal/Danny feels like something that make her go Super Ass Fighter II Turbo.
I think we can take for granted that Linda will be a huge turd about any development or lack thereof in Sal’s life.
Sal could announce she was joining a convent to become a nun because Catholic school showed her The True Way of God and Linda’d still be a huge judgy turd about it.
Though honestly that’d be kinda hilarious for her to do as a joke that didn’t involve Linda. Every individual aspect would implode Joyce’s brain in its own unique way, it’d be great.
See I’m kinda thinking it not as “of course Linda would have a bad reaction” because I don’t think Sal would care about that the way Walky’s dreading his mom finding out he’s not with Dorothy anymore, I think the problem is that Danny’s a nice, stable,
whitenormal guy who’s just perfect for getting Linda’s unruly daughter to settle down and stop acting out all the time.Sal wouldn’t be dating What Mom and Dad Hate, she’d be dating someone they’d approve of, and that would be the worst.
Linda would freak the hell out about him being….bi.
Assuming she believes bi exists and he’s not just a closeted gay man.
Danny flips the script!
Dany is a weirdo that wears a hat in autumn but is bareheaded in winter
Didn’t the hat blow away on Garbage Roof?
Yes, and he’s very sad about it.
If he can buy a bike, he can buy another hat 😐
Danny will find a dapper bike helmet to go with his vespa.
Everybody has a price
Oh yeah I forgot to write this. All strips that involve Danny and romance inevitably lead to some talk about Ethan, so I wanted to share my thoughts.
Ethan for a very long time has been super boring, and I am so excited for him to make a big comeback to the series.
Ethan never really showed up a lot, but he was pretty much always the same character. He’s a mother hen, he’s nice, he’s supportive, he doesn’t fight back against his friends, Danny thinks he’s neat, I think every comic needs a straight man (fnar fnar) but I think Ethan took it too far. He was perpetually there, he had problems but you couldn’t really laugh about because his problems were that he was a traumatized gay kid with abusive parents and none of it was his fault, even his relationship with Joyce was mostly about Joyce, and once it ended it’s not like they hung out anymore because there wasn’t much character chemistry. Yeah sure I guess there’s the unintended consequence of Joyce replacing her Gay Boyfriend with her Gay BFF, but like, how the hell do you still stick Joyce and Ethan in the same strip? What do they talk about?
So the prospect of putting him in No Appearance Baby Jail for a bit certainly lets me get over that initial “ugh Ethan” feel I’d get when he’d reappear and still be Ethan, but more importantly is that the context of the timeskip (where he displays as much of a spine as he ever has to both Danny and Amber) and the small hints from Walky about his current status quo means I’m actually looking forward to his return. It’s getting built up, there’s a weight to Ethan’s grand re-entrance into the plot, and the prospect that he’s started dressing and acting like Bully Maguire is not only fucking hilarious, it’s a soft reboot for Ethan’s character. He’s new, he’s not going to have the same reactions he used to, there’s a genuine room for character drama with Danny and Amber because one of them said fucked up shit about Mike before he died and the other left Mike in the hospital for a whole day and didn’t tell Ethan.
That rocks.