Is it just me, or does Mike seem to be… crisper? It almost feels like he’s drawn in an older style, like his art hasn’t been updating along with everyone else. Or maybe it’s just lighting?
If this is a serious theory – then I’ll reiterate again, Booster Sanchez is nonwhite and I am entirely confident Willis won’t be doing a “brownface reveal” in this comic.
What does Europe have to do with whiteness? I have it straight from Ben Franklin himself that Europeans are swarthy browns. Only the English and the Saxons are white.
“And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased.” –Benjamin Franklin
While true, comparing the color used for Booster’s skin against the white cast makes it evident enough that Booster is intended to be of slightly darker skin (looks kinda olivish to me)
The only “Mike lives” theory that is remotely plausible to me is the “Mike’s death was faked and he is in witness protection”, and I think that actually happening is about as likely as the Head Alien showing up
the old kliban cartoon: “love to eat them mousies” etc. i had it on a tshirt, and was once serenaded by one of my gaming pals with those lyrics to the tune of “ode to joy”
Did you ever hear “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island?” Doctor Demento played it ONCE, then the guy who wrote it got sued by Led Zeppalin, AND the writer of the Gilligan’s Island theme! (I think this was before the “parody rule” had been enabled.
That sounds faintly familiar. I used to listen to Dr D a lot when I was in the Army; the Armed Forces network carried it (at a decent hour) so I got exposed to a lot of great parody songs. (like “Dead Puppies”, “Boot to the Head”, and “Marvin, You’re A Rotten Jerk”, and of course Weird Al Yankovic, before he became famous)
Our old pal Puddles made a kickass cover of the parody mashup, with the blessing of the guy who (apparently) made the original! (Links in the description.)
haha ok i knew that strip, i’d just forgotten about it ^^
i’m still one of the Emily-Dickinson-sung-to-the-tune-of-Gilligan’s-Island lucky 10,000 though!
(although based on Randall’s calculation that assumes both of these are in the “everyone knows” category, which is maybe an overstatement in both cases)
You jokers are killing me XD
But srsly, it’s sobering to see Amber needs an imaginary friend. I guess Mike is her biggest fan rn. He might be dead, but he’s left her a fandom.
speaking of drinking, you know, they say you should quit wine you’re ahead. there could w’ale be something to that. there’s a pint where you start to go for cheap shots. I hops i’m not quite there yet but… disaster’s brewing. i can pitcher it.
Not really. Mike actually seemed to be getting a little character development, then, boom, he was dead. I suspect the Mike in Amber’s head is eternally stuck on “gratuitous asshole”, and in this context, it’s not even a little amusing.
The character has long been established as a dick, and what better dick move than to tease character development and then die before you can follow through
Yeah, I would’ve preferred if Mike had lived and become a better person instead of dying shortly after he realized he needed to become a better person.
I think the problem there is that there really wouldn’t be much of a “Mike becomes a better person” story.
Mike realized in his final moments that he was a huge piece of shit and made Amber’s life even worse, and this whole time he thought he was toughening her up. He knew better than everyone, particularly his two favourite victims, and he was fully convinced he was making their lives better.
I think the issue here for a Mike Redemption Arc is that he’s not really changing his personality like, say, Ruth or Joe. Mike realized he had done wrong, but if he ever woke up where does he go from there? He knows he’s made life worse for everyone, he’d have to make amends with every single cast member, the only person who’d outright forgive him was Ethan.
Ruth had to stop drinking, stop herself from being a cruel abuser to Billie, and get help for her depression.
Joe immediately put the kibosh on his No Feelings Fun Sex Bro person when Joyce spelled out in block capital that he was making her feel unsafe around all men, because any of them could objectify her, except removing that comfort and stability he had in that persona’s left him adrift trying to figure out who she’s supposed to be strike>and that’s Joyce’s husband.
Mike abused people and learned he needed to stop abusing people, particularly his two closest friends. What is there to grow from? He’s Ruth in a sea of Rachels and Sals, people around him constantly judging him for things he actually definitely did and are totally his fault, except Ruth has relationships with characters who aren’t Rachel and Sal so even though they’re right to resent her, they’re not a constant presence in all Ruth strips the way Mike can’t really interact with anyone without someone mentioning “hey Mike remember when you mocked Billie’s depression over Ruth’s hospitalization to Walky’s face” and “hey Mike remember how Blaine driving Amber to the convenience store that night is totally your fault.”
How do you change Mike in a way where he remains interesting?
I occasionally hallucinate while driving, which is pretty bad since i don’t see the road anymore, but i found a workaround for that, which involves sleeping well before ever hitting the road, since i only start seeing shit when i’m tired, and when driving tired is inevitable, well, i arrive at point B with several slap marks on my face, drives the hallucinations away instantly, if i’m aware enough to give myself the slap.
Let’s not think about the times i’m tripping so badly i can’t raise my arms anymore…
I will say I’m starting to get a little upset with how Amber treats Dina sometimes. It just feels a little one sided every now and then, especially with Amber repeatedly using/manipulating Dina as a buffer because she couldn’t control her horniness around Walky. Now she’s getting snippy when Dina shows legitimate concern? I know they’re friends. AG did save her girlfriend once or twice. But like Amber just comes off like a jerk to Dina sometimes.
That feels a bit harsh. Not that I disagree on the surface of it but Amber is not in a good place and I feel like slack-cutting is in order? I’m prone to depression and while close ones showing concern will always be appreciated in the long run, in the moment it may feel invasive and infantilizing, and I may go to some lengths to avoid them. I think it’s a depression thing
This is all true, but it’s a fairly open part of Amber’s character that she does infantilize Dina.
Amber sees Dina as Amber used to be; unable to understand people, needs things explained, can’t grasp nuances. This is partly true in that Dina does have some major social blinders, but an undercurrent to their interactions has been Amber placing herself as Dina’s guide to faking it till you make it, unaware that Dina’s lapped her a thousand times by now because Dina recognizes her own social issues, resents them enough to challenge them, and grows and adapts and makes connections, whereas Amber’s been on a pretty consistent spiral of worsening mental health since she beat the hell out of her dad that one time.
There are a few characters who simply view everyone else as context-free support fountains. This is just bad practice. Not necessarily because they’ll stop, but because people aren’t utilities.
Also, I’ve only now realized that Amber’s starting to revert to her late-Shortpacked!-era hair length, after having spent the pre-timeskip period occasionally lamenting the fact that she was stuck with the “stupid short haircut [she] got for prom”.
OK but that list is from 2013/september!
I think an update could be in order both for sliding time scale reasons, and on account of four months being a long time when you’re 18.
That said I know what Buli Buli meant but I don’t see Amber being into Amy Winehouse. Also, I don’t think she would have the self-awareness and self-deprecating humour to imply that she might in fact need help. The Jonathan Coulton song she’s assigned at present is pretty good, but I think she might be into something with more of an edge musically. Idk I don’t have anything just now.
Oh right. I forgot that Mike actually lived and just blue-scadooed his way into Amber’s head so that he could persist his existence and annoy her forever. That is what I am going to believe.
Considering Amber’s preference in erotic literature I find it quite possible Ethan and Mike have been together in her head already. Or maybe that’s weird? Is it weird to imagine your friends banging? I’m sure that wouldn’t stop her though. That would put kind of a happy spin on Mike’s death. At least the hypothetical memory of him and Ethan are happy.
Until Amber dies or goes insane? Depending on one’s exact definition, that ship may have already sailed. But all her problems never stopped her from being outstanding and making a difference for people. Or at least she used to.
It might be for the best though. AG was kinda operating on a very thin line between helpful and problematic. She saved some lives so I think it’s good she ended her masked vigilante carreer on a high note.
AG’s unambiguously helpful actions didn’t need to come from a masked vigilante, and the ones that did need to come from a masked vigilante may have been unnecessary risks that put everyone in more danger
Dunno. Some people are adults at 17, some of them because they’ve had to be. Some of us reach 72 without ever really growing up and becoming a responsible adult.
it’s true i would never have guessed until i first saw you mention your age, or you made an obscure cultural reference way before my time, whichever it was. is this an uncool thing to say? i thought it sounded like an invitation to be surprised about your age, so i’m obliging =)
i should know by now expecting people of any given age to talk or behave a certain way is an ass-u-me situation, but uh.. guess i can’t help myself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Like, I’m not gonna fight about it, but it’s a personal pet peeve of mine, yeah. You’re an adult at 18. You’re new to adulting and might need help with it but that goes for anything new. And I’m pretty sure if we start listing out any sort of criteria for what counts, you’ll find people under whatever your cut off is who meet it and people over your cut off that don’t.
yeah, “adult” has a perfectly fine legal definition but it’s basically useless as a maturity benchmark. it’s subjective and almost inherently normative.
honestly even “maturity” is dodgy as a concept i think. everyone sucks at SOME skill that, in one context or another is considered core to being an adult. no one nails all the possible requirements for maturity.
in this particular situation, being able to help your friend who struggles with her mental health is something many adults will be absolute rubbish at. i don’t think it’s got very much to do with adulthood honestly.
Yeah, adulthood is a super arbitrary concept that we’ve mostly drawn to decide who’s actually responsible for completing whatever responsibilities that are assigned to the majority (like voting, taxes, etc.)
Maturity has a little more basis with biological concepts but it’s still based on averages, and in this case it’s irrelevant. Nobody gets a brain scan before it’s decided they’re allowed to help out with someone’s mental health.
yeah, i know nothing about the neurological basis of maturity… i’ve heard the thing that Spencer says about the brain being mature at 25 on average, but since i have no clue what this could possibly mean either physiologically or cognitively, and suspect most laypeople don’t either (not talking about you or Spencer, i realize this place is crawling with nerds of all stripes) i think most conversations about maturity aren’t really about biology at all but rather focus on skills and responsability, i.e. on a timeline of growth in both material autonomy and ethical integrity.
and i think while there’s a case to be made that part of becoming “mature” (socially speaking) is acknowledging that worrying about your friend/roommate showing signs of mental distress is expected and desirable behaviour, while ignoring them is a sign of being either a dickbag or (benefit of the doubt) immature, and surely there are those who still need to learn this at 18, i feel like this attitude has more to do with personality than with a well-adjusted sense of responsability.
If you are trying to insinuate I am suggesting Dina is not capable due to her (undiagnosed?) autism spectrum – fuck you. You’re intentionally misreading what I said. So fuck you.
None of the main college cast are adults. They’re still teenagers. The eldest (Dina) is 19, who is not Capable Adult status. That’s “Teenager that can probably survive if you toss them in the wild” at best.
Dorothy’s been 19 since the beginning of the comic (unless she turned 20 during the timeskip) so actually she’s the oldest of the freshman cast. Dina’s the second-oldest freshman, having turned 19 during the course of the comic itself.
Oh my…. I am SO sorry, I didn’t know where my mind was when I wrote that!
I was infantilized a lot as a child, and even when I went to college it STILL didn’t stop, and I guess I just get really ticked off when people deny the capacity and maturity of college students who deserve much more credit then they’re given. That, and I’m kinda having a bad time where I am right now.
Wait, you think she has ASD? I always read it as a social anxiety disorder kind of thing, given that’s what I was diagnosed with, and I used to (and still do) share many of Dina’s difficulties. I guess there’s a lot of overlap with things like that.
It’s never been stated in-comic, but majority fandom consensus definitely seems to be that Dina’s on the spectrum, yeah. I believe there’s also a Willis tumblr post specifically discussing Dina where he concludes something like “yeah, she’s probably undiagnosed [autistic]” (IIRC “Asperger’s” was used in the original post but I personally heavily dislike that term).
That’s alright; for me it mainly stems from how Hans Asperger himself was a eugenicist, fascist, and literal Nazi. That’s not even really getting into me being queer, autistic, and with a Slavic and (ethnically) Jewish background–any one of which would’ve gotten me killed by the Nazis if he’d been around me back in the day.
Thinking about it, I guess there’s awful history behind pretty much any label like that, given that area in psychology came out of a really bad place.
For instance, what they don’t tell you about “autism” is that when it was first coined, it literally meant “morbid self absorption”. And I’m here looking at the modern autism diagnosis, and I’m like, “how do you get THAT from THAT”. I probably don’t even wanna know.
Anyway, with all honesty and respect, I definitely like “traits not labels” when it comes to characters and writing them, mostly because of the sheer baggage that comes with the latter.
That’s fair. I’m pretty sure Willis has even said that they didn’t initially intend to either write Dina as An Autistic Person or write Amber as A Person With DID, but simply gave them particular traits which happened to resonate with readers who were, and it kind of organically grew into them being depicted that way more overtly/with actual intent over time.
I know this seems very troubling (and it is) but let’s be honest here. Amber’s mental state is so compromised that any day she’s still functioning is a victory for her. Realistically she has all the excuses to go full “We live in a society.” at any moment.
Starscream was made ruler of Cybertron and Bumblebee was killed off in an event, and then a ways in Starscream started hallucinating Bumblebee giving him advice on not being the world’s biggest douche with no friends.
I think it eventually turned out Bumblee was still alive and remotely projecting himself at Starscream or something.
Huh, somehow I reposted that. Anyway, the way things are going, Amber will have two chapters in the next DSM, Amber will have one, and projection Mike will have a sidebar. At least.
I think she was ignoring Amber’s sass and is bringing her food anyway. That’s just my interpretation, could be wrong. Only “The Willis” knows for certain.
An Sarcasm was attempted, but she’s currently uncertain whether it landed. She’ll observe the reaction when she returns.
(That’s one side effect of having ASD that primarily affects social cues, you can pull off some impressively deadpan snark once you advance the tech tree enough to unlock “sarcasm”.)
Go for the nose, or if you can manage it, the right eyebrow. It looks almost like eye contact, without the actual shock of looking at their eyeballs. 7 or 8 years of noses, and I was able to unlock actual eye contact with people I know and like.
Statistically-speaking, the longer you’re in a coma the less-likely you are to ever wake up from it again. This is especially the case when it comes to TBI-induced comas, like was the case with Mike. We’ve also been told in-comic, multiple times, that he died during the timeskip.
recently watched 28 Days Later for the first time (it slaps), and that movie has a hilarious take on what a person with brain trauma who’s spent, well, 28 days in a coma, can achieve a few days out the gate. i was like “wtf/ok”
This is so scary! Amber really is slowly going insane, but only the few person who know her can see it and they have no success in helping her. Ethan may be able, but he’s in a similar situation… I wonder if Sal and Danny will help them both.
Is it just me, or is Mike’s image becoming more blocky and crude?
This is NOT a criticism of Willis’ art – I only see it in Mike, not the rest of the art, so if it’s real I assume it’s deliberate. Could it be an indication that Amber’s mental model of Mike is slowly fading or degrading?
If so – Mike was a one-note character even when he was alive. As bad as knowing Mike would have been, having a cardboard-cutout caricature of him stuck in one’s head would probably be worse…
Not just you, exactly what I noticed here. Less detail, less shading, just more simple an image.
I don’t think this is a sign that he’s becoming a cardboard-cutout caricature. I think its more that she’s forgetting what he looked like, hence the loss of detail, on the biggest, easiest to remember bits are showing right now (scowl and the hair). Not even any detail on his shirt.
Checked it. It’s the same lack of detail as his other “Ghost” appearances except the first one where he had slightly more detail. Nothing to it yet as far as I can tell
I confess it was very fun to make. It took me a lot of years to learn to code fast, and I got less than a week to do it.
I’ve planned some improvements, like separate the chart into storylines. It will depend of people interested or not.
As I said before, I tried ask permission to Willis, because it’s not exactly a fan art or similar. If he want me to drop the page off, I will.
whhaaaaaat that’s amazing Amós, although to be fair i have no idea of the amount of work this represents =D In any case it looks really cool!!!
question, is this updated in real-time with each new comic?
i do have a few suggestions for making it more useful and convenient, if you’re interested!
1- i don’t imagine this is something you can do much about without a major overhaul, but it is pretty slow on my end? is there a way to make it load a wee bit faster when selecting a character? at present, ok my laptop is a bit old i suppose but ah… it takes over 15 seconds to load ><
2- would it be possible to see the character we've selected being highlighted somehow? at present when i click on, say, Roz, i see her and all her “contacts” highlighted in the same colour.
2- there’s some weirdnesses. like if i click on a very obscure character, like “Sue”. In your graph she seems connected to Roz only; except we also see Roz’s connection to some other people. i guess those are only the people that Sue also appears with. but it’s a bit odd that they’re connected to Roz, and not directly to Sue??
3- could we see a number on the lines somewhere, that says how many strips these characters have in common?
4- maybe another option might be to see either “absolute numbers” being represented, or a percentage of total strips the character is present in? (this may be tricky because the ratio will be different for either character in a link)
5- full screen option maybe?
6- the physical engine is very funny. i love grabbing a character and just shaking them a bit and seeing everyone else bob around XD …that wasn’t a question
7- do you want corrections on the text? there are a few mistakes. it’s all perfectly clear and understandable though, so it’s really optional
I’m working in fix the layout issues, but some things can be very hard to do it. I’m using VIS for the graph, and it is very slow when I set a lot of data. And I alreadt cut 30~40% of all data I crawled from DoA site.
i created a github account and corrected your grammar in a new branch. now, i don’t know if you need me to create a pull request or if that’s not necessary? …to be honest i don’t know what any of what i just said means =P
Wow this is nice! Are you using any javascript packages to help with the visualizations? When I’m doing visualizations I usually use d3 and at work we tragically use jquery. I see you’re using nuxt, which i can’t remember if it’s a Vue only thing or if that works with vanilla nodejs or react, but it’s super neat to see that being used in the wild.
My only 2-cents says that tooltips on hover might be good for character names, to make it look a little less cluttered, and also bc the grey blends in with the background if it doesn’t have a bubble drawing attention to it.
I’d love to see this go further, tbh! It’s very interesting to me.
Not least because it reminds me of Twilight, when Bella was doing dumb shit because she would hallucinate Edward showing up and trying to control her telling her not to do the dumb shit. Except that in this comic it would feel painful and real and in-depth rather than creepy and pathetic.
…Okay, maybe just all of the above, since creepy and pathetic is also the realm of this comic. just in a, like…good way??
Could also be that Mike became an introject – An alter based on somebody else, whether real or fictional. We already know she has DID (Amazigirl), and DID can form from severe trauma
With all that happened… This could be a fracture in Amber’s mind creating an alter based on Mike to deal with the trauma of losing him
I find this distressingly plausible (far more so than all the “Booster is Mike” stuff, which I have to assume is at least half-joking, because the other half / option is “absurdly desperate”).
Introjects are alters so they usually form as a result of trauma like any alter but not necessarily a specific single trauma. New traumatic events in later life can result in new alters forming for people that already have DID or OSDD. Basically once you have DID or OSDD, new brain roommates can show up forever. And yes, it will usually be because of trauma.
Whether they are INITIALLY harmful or helpful depends on who the introject is actually based on. An introject based on say, Cinderella, may be very helpful in literally every area of your life. One based on Scar from the Lion King may be belittling and rude and yet may also have the ego and wit to chide anyone else who tries to. While one based on the person that hurt you most, which is the most commonly spoken of kind, may hurt you long after the original person is gone.
An introject regardless of the form they take though, is trying to help, even if it doesn’t initially look like it and even if they start with misguided methodology. Any alter can learn to use more constructive and healthy methods, none are doomed to be known as ‘evil’ forever or anything. And any harm they inflict will almost always be directed inwards at system members, not outwards at friends or anything. Morality for systems is complicated but to my understanding if the system as a whole will not do something, individual alters won’t either, which is why this is the case, even if the person the alter is based on would have less restraint.
And introjects can also acquire their own unique traits separate from the source as obviously they can experience new things and change based on those experiences. They aren’t fixed as staying exactly like what they were originally based on. So even if two different people have introjects of the same person or character, the individual alters may still behave in different ways to each other.
Depending on why precisely this alter was ‘needed’ changes what memories they will have access to and what your brain ‘thinks’ they should know like any other alter. A baby alter may not know what a cat is because it doesn’t need to while a tiger alter may be able to read, write, count and so on. It depends greatly on the individual system and what each individual alter is for. Sometimes alters will come with backstories that feel like their real lived lives to rationalize why they are the way they are which are entirely separate from the body’s actually lived history and sometimes they won’t.
The way they think will pretty much be just like how any normal person thinks unless they are specifically an alter that is designed not to (some animal alters act just like animals, some robot or alien alters may lack emotions or have restricted ones) or they are currently unable to (some alters are stuck in looped traumatic memories).
If you mean, how do they perceive themselves, an introject may think they are an outside person to the system or that they can hurt the system without hurting themselves. But this is not unique to introjects – other alters sometimes don’t realise they are part of a system or that they are all sharing a body either. While other times, alters know to begin with that they are alters. It is very variable.
I am uncertain if you could create an introject or any alter without trauma and my best guess would be that it depends strongly on the system. Some systems will have such a low stress threshold that smallish stressors can create fragments and alters. So I suppose they could in theory create enough internal stress to do so on purpose without something as big as a trauma.
I don’t know if you could intentionally create an introject specifically though. It might not be impossible, but I imagine trying to do so would be unpredictable and from what I know, splitting can be a very distressing, disorienting and unpleasant sensation for some systems or it can vary in intensity for them. So I can’t imagine a lot of them would want to try and risk making things harder for themselves.
Sam, I thank you oh so DEARLY for all this information!!! If you could list further sources with which I could continue research on this introject phenomenon, I would REALLY like that too!
Just two or three more questions, if you could answer them.
When loved ones die, many of us continue to behave as if they’re with us. We talk about them, we talk TO them, and we
reflect on physical reminders of them. When we do these things with enough frequency and focus, the “as if” seems to fade. How does this phenomenon compare with the nature of the introject, if at all? How does it contrast?
Also, does a trauma or event need to be real to trigger the formation of an introject or alter? Can it be in a dream? And if so, could it be in a lucid dream?
Hey, I’m still trying to figure out how he found a chain of links from site about a my little pony mug to a site with pictures of Phyllis Schlafy as a teen.
There are AI models now that have been trained to go from pixilated cartoon images to realistic portraits. milu, I wonder what it would make of yours.
oh no, i was trying to counter JB’s excellent pun on “philistine” with a pun of my own. (…and now i’m suspecting that if i’m explaining a joke to you it means either the joke was not very intelligible, or you’re making a joke of your own and i’m the one who didn’t get it.)
i’m sure there’s AIs that extrapolate realistic portraits from blurred-out photographs; but from pixellated cartoons? for real? who does that.
i admit there might be a pronunciation issue. but i searched and found like 4 different possible pronounciations for “philistine”. anything goes, basically. ‘fil-uh-stine, ‘fil-i-steen, even fil’uh-steen according to some wiktionary contributor.
another thing that i didn’t make quite clear is that i didn’t, in fact, find any picture of Phyllis Schlafly as a teen. which is probably for the best.
ok! this joke is dead and buried now, thank you everyone, goodnight
So I finished my third read of It’s Walky! (which is fortunate, because now all of Joyce & Walky! is done too) and something kind of popped out to me reading it this time that I was sort of cognizant about as I read it years ago, but really only see now: It’s Walky! is really incompetent.
Ha, psyche! Bet you thought I was gonna go dunking on it but nah, I still friggin’ love that comic and I’m gonna forever (and would pay money for the whole thing in paperback hint hint), and the defining reason for that is that It’s Walky! lets its characters just be utterly, ruinously terrible when it wants to, and I don’t get enough of that anymore. They are incompetent, all of them; Squad 128, SEMME, the Head Alien, the JFO, even the Cheese, they are all extremely, extremely bad at this. Joyce has an evil clone who’s only evil because she represents thoughts Joyce wants to bury, so Joyce blows her head open with a gun. Walky gets so utterly tilted at the Head Alien he drops Sal’s dead adoptive parents onto him, crashing through the floor and crushing his boss to death. Dina dies in what is, and I mean this utterly and sincerely, one of the most gut-wrenching deaths a work of fiction has put me through, because she took a chance fighting Britjas (British Ninjas) instead of taking a mindwipe, so she chucks a bomb into another room, gets shot, and then scrambles into that same room and has just long enough to think about whether or not anyone will remember her despite being useless in the last years of her life. Danny almost straight up cheats on Billie for Sal and he sure as hell was emotionally, and you know you’re dealing with a vortex of failures when you can imagine any Danny cheating.
It’s not even just the protagonists either! Linda gets put in charge of SEMME and it turns out she’s a plant three times over and has to watch the son she stole from another family to hide Sal get his face turned into hamburger meat, because he turned on SEMME after everyone stopped caring he existed once Sal’s relation to Walky was revealed. The Head Alien is handed actual omnipotence and an army of pissed off Martians and he still screws it up because of his ego, and there was no other way he’d go out; he’s a cunning manipulator, except he’s a cunning manipulator of a few people in their 20s he has all the receipts for, and his victories and losses are in equal aplomb. Hell, even one of the biggest movers and shapers of the backstory, Jason’s dad Dargon, gets casually offed by Penny because he runs his evil organization under “you have failed me for the last time!” rules and never once considered that the henchman he’s about to dispose of might have a second opinion.
It’s this genuinely engaging story about people who are all emotion and all ego, totally convinced of their ability to get it done no matter what anyone else says, especially if someone says they’re wrong, and what sticks out to me most of all is how infrequent it is to see that kind of story these days. It’s not something where I feel particularly confident when talking about, I feel it and recognize it when I see it, but that’s not just a perspective from my anecdotal evidence, it’s one that used to indulge in the same kind of “ugh, why are the characters being so dumb” analysis, where the actual emotions of the story didn’t matter, it was the endpoint.
And that’s weird! It’s weird I indulged in that thinking for as long as I did! I’m pretty sure what changed my mind was an errant piece of media analysis criticism (that is, criticism of real bad fandom takes) on a tumblr I follow that made me go “so what does a story mean to me, anyway?” because I think at some point I started processing stories as a linear line to the most optimal ending, and anything that diverted away from that like, say, characters doing things that cause interesting drama in the name of exploring themes and ideas at the hands of the artists creating their work, was bad and wrong.
I feel like a total kiss-ass saying this here, I just don’t know how to handle how a webcomic that ended when I was 12 is still, like, a go-to example of a story about characters who fuck up all the time and not for some big dramatic point about the human condition where we all learn something today, they just ruin things and then pick themselves up and keep going.
Maybe I need to read a book or something. Or stop getting my understanding of how people processes stories from fan forums. Anyway tldr: It’s Walky! good, go read it.
I feel bad for Amber. I know she is not perfect but I hope she is able to get help in some form. I do not know if therapy is a viable option because she likely has trust issues from her manipulative dad. But maybe there is something that can help her coming up in the next storyline.
I suspect the meta reason why we’re stuck with Ghost Mike is that he and Dina are the only two people Amber can still interact with amongst the cast. Without GM, any arc of hers would boil down to a hundred strips of her playing video games and sending Dina out for snacks.
Loading ...
oh we’re still doing this, ok
Mike getting a lot of screen time for a dead dude
You’re only truly dead if people forget about you. So in a way Mike is essentially immortal.
Sure, we may forget him, but our mothers will always cherish those nickels.
And don’t forget all the inexplicable woodpeckers.
<3
> inexplicable woodpeckers
Bladeglory already mentioned our moms.
Mike! I hope you’re enjoying your… this.
“As the souls of the dead live for’er in my mind”
or in the archives
Is it just me, or does Mike seem to be… crisper? It almost feels like he’s drawn in an older style, like his art hasn’t been updating along with everyone else. Or maybe it’s just lighting?
I, for one, welcome our hallucinatory overlords.
I still think Booster is Mike after reconstructive surgery and on enough pain killers to be nice similar to Drunk Mike.
If this is a serious theory – then I’ll reiterate again, Booster Sanchez is nonwhite and I am entirely confident Willis won’t be doing a “brownface reveal” in this comic.
White hispanics do exist, though.
Source: am white hispanic
Hah! Next, you’ll tell me Spain is in Europe!
What does Europe have to do with whiteness? I have it straight from Ben Franklin himself that Europeans are swarthy browns. Only the English and the Saxons are white.
“And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased.” –Benjamin Franklin
That’s a true quote and not a joke, BTW.
While true, comparing the color used for Booster’s skin against the white cast makes it evident enough that Booster is intended to be of slightly darker skin (looks kinda olivish to me)
Yes, but is Mike a white hispanic?
The only “Mike lives” theory that is remotely plausible to me is the “Mike’s death was faked and he is in witness protection”, and I think that actually happening is about as likely as the Head Alien showing up
Mike is actually Jennifer.
Amber gets into pottery in this chapter.
When I stay up all night gaming, I just see purple spots in front of my eyes.
They aren’t very sarcastic. Though they sometimes recite Emily Dickinson poems to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme.
🎶 Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality. 🎶
+1 internets for you.
I like to sing Gilligan’s Island & the Brady Bunch theme as operas, but this works well too!
the old kliban cartoon: “love to eat them mousies” etc. i had it on a tshirt, and was once serenaded by one of my gaming pals with those lyrics to the tune of “ode to joy”
the opening verse of the original Pokemon theme is also in Common Meter, do with that as you will
Did you ever hear “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island?” Doctor Demento played it ONCE, then the guy who wrote it got sued by Led Zeppalin, AND the writer of the Gilligan’s Island theme! (I think this was before the “parody rule” had been enabled.
That sounds faintly familiar. I used to listen to Dr D a lot when I was in the Army; the Armed Forces network carried it (at a decent hour) so I got exposed to a lot of great parody songs. (like “Dead Puppies”, “Boot to the Head”, and “Marvin, You’re A Rotten Jerk”, and of course Weird Al Yankovic, before he became famous)
Our old pal Puddles made a kickass cover of the parody mashup, with the blessing of the guy who (apparently) made the original! (Links in the description.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4MKQMTHplI
WELL. Count me as one of today’s lucky 10,000.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSta5iO–Lg
ok i don’t get that reference but uh…
that was a thing =) thanks for sharing
Well then you’re also one of today’s lucky 10,000!
https://xkcd.com/1053/
haha ok i knew that strip, i’d just forgotten about it ^^
i’m still one of the Emily-Dickinson-sung-to-the-tune-of-Gilligan’s-Island lucky 10,000 though!
(although based on Randall’s calculation that assumes both of these are in the “everyone knows” category, which is maybe an overstatement in both cases)
“Yellow Rose of Texas”, too.
My English teacher in high school taught me about that, and I’ve never shaken it.
I usually sing Dickinson to The Yellow Rose of Texas, but Gilligan’s Island works, too.
So does “House of the Rising Sun”. Try that to Gilligans Island sometime.
Also I’s the By what builds the boat.
I prefer Stairway to Gilligan’s Island.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTCYLbFxTpI
Dangit! I already sing Emily Dickenson to Battle Hymn of the Republic and Yellow Rose of Texas. I don’t need another alternative!
What are you doing here, Jennifer
Just passing through.
Oh hey Hallucination Mike.
You’re still here.
What makes you believe he ever left?
The triumphant return of Ghost Mike.
Well that happened fast.
right on schedule.
Oh, goodie! Looks like we ARE gonna get some trippy sleeplessness-induced hallucinations after all! 😆
Also, hi Mike!
Dina is such a spirit animal for me, “I will get you some fruit loops” is fucking precious.
I…actually think Dina made a funny.
Amber is clearly losing it, so Dina decides to bring her the cereal that can be used as a euphemism for madness.
You can get away with a lot of snark if you deadpan it well enough.
Are we speaking from experience?
“What rot, sir! Why, you’re the very model of sanity. Oh, by the way, I pressed your tights and put away your exploding gas balls.”
I like the idea of Ghost Mike existing only to Amber, like an evil Hobbes to her desperately-in-need-of-therapy Calvin.
I’d say that SOMEONE should be telling Amber that there’s cause for concern regarding her mental health… but then again, Dina did Warner.
That she did, but Mike-oncern is that Dina already’s doing the best she could do for Amber.
Just the opposite. Amber’s managed to hold it together for a long while, but now that Dina’s enabling her, Amber’s going to break fast.
You can’t scramble an egg without breaking omelets.
Or something like that.
Too bad we never got to see ghost-Mike on Halloween, would’ve been nice to see how he reacted to all the “boo!”ze.
Maybe that shocking twist was the reason for the record-(length-)skip.
You jokers are killing me XD
But srsly, it’s sobering to see Amber needs an imaginary friend. I guess Mike is her biggest fan rn. He might be dead, but he’s left her a fandom.
Yeah. Looks like Amber’s stuck with him, whether that’s wraith or wrong.
(hopefully he won’t make a spectreacle of himself)
i mean in a sense this is heartening. imagine if he’d just ghosted her!
That’d be cowardly; I don’t think Mike would be such a poltroongeist.
well, maybe. as far as post-death etiquette goes, ouija-st don’t have that much to go on.
There are those that claim they do, but they’re mostly psychopompous asses.
I love this thread and feel like I should make some kind of contribution, but somehow I just can’t get into the spirit of it.
After sleeping on it, I think I’m ready to pun again.
It’s Mike. He’s all about the shade.
Yeah, he always put his soul into it.*
*It being your mum. For a nickel.
Have we drunk our fill of wordplay yet?
speaking of drinking, you know, they say you should quit wine you’re ahead. there could w’ale be something to that. there’s a pint where you start to go for cheap shots. I hops i’m not quite there yet but… disaster’s brewing. i can pitcher it.
The pun cup floweth over.
Oh boy, this is certainly a bad sign. Not that I can say much since I have my own hallucinations.
So who is excited to see “Mike” again?
Not really. Mike actually seemed to be getting a little character development, then, boom, he was dead. I suspect the Mike in Amber’s head is eternally stuck on “gratuitous asshole”, and in this context, it’s not even a little amusing.
I, on the other hand, am always pleased to see Mike.
As long as it isn’t in reality.
Long live the Mike, for some value of live.
Yeah, head-Mike is definitely depicted as a flat character.
I see and appreciate what you did there
I’m still sore about the “Mike dying right when his character had some development and became interesting for me” – thing.
“You left – just when you were getting interesting.”
Henry Jones, Sr.
The character has long been established as a dick, and what better dick move than to tease character development and then die before you can follow through
Yeah, I would’ve preferred if Mike had lived and become a better person instead of dying shortly after he realized he needed to become a better person.
I think the problem there is that there really wouldn’t be much of a “Mike becomes a better person” story.
Mike realized in his final moments that he was a huge piece of shit and made Amber’s life even worse, and this whole time he thought he was toughening her up. He knew better than everyone, particularly his two favourite victims, and he was fully convinced he was making their lives better.
I think the issue here for a Mike Redemption Arc is that he’s not really changing his personality like, say, Ruth or Joe. Mike realized he had done wrong, but if he ever woke up where does he go from there? He knows he’s made life worse for everyone, he’d have to make amends with every single cast member, the only person who’d outright forgive him was Ethan.
Ruth had to stop drinking, stop herself from being a cruel abuser to Billie, and get help for her depression.
Joe immediately put the kibosh on his No Feelings Fun Sex Bro person when Joyce spelled out in block capital that he was making her feel unsafe around all men, because any of them could objectify her, except removing that comfort and stability he had in that persona’s left him adrift trying to figure out who she’s supposed to be strike>and that’s Joyce’s husband.
Mike abused people and learned he needed to stop abusing people, particularly his two closest friends. What is there to grow from? He’s Ruth in a sea of Rachels and Sals, people around him constantly judging him for things he actually definitely did and are totally his fault, except Ruth has relationships with characters who aren’t Rachel and Sal so even though they’re right to resent her, they’re not a constant presence in all Ruth strips the way Mike can’t really interact with anyone without someone mentioning “hey Mike remember when you mocked Billie’s depression over Ruth’s hospitalization to Walky’s face” and “hey Mike remember how Blaine driving Amber to the convenience store that night is totally your fault.”
How do you change Mike in a way where he remains interesting?
One of these days I will learn the folly of HTML tags.
I view it as Mike as the dispenser of harsh truths, except those harsh truths are meted out through two frames that contextualize it:
– Mike had a huge profile on Amber, so Amber has a good idea of what he’d talk like.
– This is Mike inside the brain of someone he repeatedly abused and then died saving her life.
Sufficed to say, it’s complicated.
I occasionally hallucinate while driving, which is pretty bad since i don’t see the road anymore, but i found a workaround for that, which involves sleeping well before ever hitting the road, since i only start seeing shit when i’m tired, and when driving tired is inevitable, well, i arrive at point B with several slap marks on my face, drives the hallucinations away instantly, if i’m aware enough to give myself the slap.
Let’s not think about the times i’m tripping so badly i can’t raise my arms anymore…
If you haven’t ever been checked for sleep apnea you might have a word with your doctor. Could save your life.
As someone who does suffer from that, heartily seconded.
Nope. Head for the light, Mike.
I will say I’m starting to get a little upset with how Amber treats Dina sometimes. It just feels a little one sided every now and then, especially with Amber repeatedly using/manipulating Dina as a buffer because she couldn’t control her horniness around Walky. Now she’s getting snippy when Dina shows legitimate concern? I know they’re friends. AG did save her girlfriend once or twice. But like Amber just comes off like a jerk to Dina sometimes.
That feels a bit harsh. Not that I disagree on the surface of it but Amber is not in a good place and I feel like slack-cutting is in order? I’m prone to depression and while close ones showing concern will always be appreciated in the long run, in the moment it may feel invasive and infantilizing, and I may go to some lengths to avoid them. I think it’s a depression thing
This is all true, but it’s a fairly open part of Amber’s character that she does infantilize Dina.
Amber sees Dina as Amber used to be; unable to understand people, needs things explained, can’t grasp nuances. This is partly true in that Dina does have some major social blinders, but an undercurrent to their interactions has been Amber placing herself as Dina’s guide to faking it till you make it, unaware that Dina’s lapped her a thousand times by now because Dina recognizes her own social issues, resents them enough to challenge them, and grows and adapts and makes connections, whereas Amber’s been on a pretty consistent spiral of worsening mental health since she beat the hell out of her dad that one time.
yeah. i guess i’m reacting to Sirk’s comment based solely on today’s interaction, where i can empathize with Amber, but yeah, i see both of you mean.
*what both of you mean
There are a few characters who simply view everyone else as context-free support fountains. This is just bad practice. Not necessarily because they’ll stop, but because people aren’t utilities.
ah, my favourite catalyst<3
I’m partial to the Trinity Ghoul’s catalyst personally.
Also, I’ve only now realized that Amber’s starting to revert to her late-Shortpacked!-era hair length, after having spent the pre-timeskip period occasionally lamenting the fact that she was stuck with the “stupid short haircut [she] got for prom”.
I like it, it suits her.
She won’t stop until she can hide inside her hair like Cousin Itt.
Whelp. This has gone from concerning to unsettling.
Does Dumbing of Age have character songs?
Cause I nominate Rehab by Amy Winehouse for Amber.
Given her comment about therapy and all.
Yeah
OK but that list is from 2013/september!
I think an update could be in order both for sliding time scale reasons, and on account of four months being a long time when you’re 18.
That said I know what Buli Buli meant but I don’t see Amber being into Amy Winehouse. Also, I don’t think she would have the self-awareness and self-deprecating humour to imply that she might in fact need help. The Jonathan Coulton song she’s assigned at present is pretty good, but I think she might be into something with more of an edge musically. Idk I don’t have anything just now.
Oh hey imaginary phantom Mike is still hear, cool I can still get some inspiration for some wicked cool “I fucked your mom” jokes.
Also, do stay tuned tonight! Or today, depending on where you are!
Amos Batista looks like they have something in store for us!
Oh right. I forgot that Mike actually lived and just blue-scadooed his way into Amber’s head so that he could persist his existence and annoy her forever. That is what I am going to believe.
If only Amber could put Ethan in her head as well. Then he and Mike can be together until Amber dies or goes insane.
Considering Amber’s preference in erotic literature I find it quite possible Ethan and Mike have been together in her head already. Or maybe that’s weird? Is it weird to imagine your friends banging? I’m sure that wouldn’t stop her though. That would put kind of a happy spin on Mike’s death. At least the hypothetical memory of him and Ethan are happy.
I’ve never imagined my friends banging but I’ve defiintely shipped friends with each other.
Well as far as I’m concerned, “weird or not” as long as you’re not hurting anyone, you can imagine literally anything you want!
If it makes her happier and more mentally sound all the while, why not?
As I recall, when Ethan and Mike did bang, she needed details.
I mean she’s DEFINITELY imagined it
Until Amber dies or goes insane? Depending on one’s exact definition, that ship may have already sailed. But all her problems never stopped her from being outstanding and making a difference for people. Or at least she used to.
Now she plays Roller Derby.
It might be for the best though. AG was kinda operating on a very thin line between helpful and problematic. She saved some lives so I think it’s good she ended her masked vigilante carreer on a high note.
AG’s unambiguously helpful actions didn’t need to come from a masked vigilante, and the ones that did need to come from a masked vigilante may have been unnecessary risks that put everyone in more danger
ah, so we’re still talking about Batman, then?
Batman trained to be the best at everything, including being the topic of conversations about a comic he isn’t a part of.
Remember, Batman can breathe in space.
Gasp!
Sweets to the sweet.
And Froot Loops to the fruit loop.
Walkyverse Amber is canonically a froot loop.
Oh, wow. Nice catch.
Does this still count as the longest call-back ever, given that it’s a reference to Amber from a different comic?
I don’t think it breaks the top ten
Follow your nose
It always knows
The flavor of DEATH
Whereever it goes! *heavy metal guitar riffing*
Yeah, sarcasm goes straight to you headright, Mike?
*kindly borrows Hacked Muzak from Mr. Bierce and plays “Becoming Insane” by Infected Mushroom*
Usually a good sign when ur hallucinating ur dead friend!
Not when you feel somewhat responsible for his death, it isn’t.
Oh sorry this was sarcastic, generally u DONT wanna hallucinate dead friends it’s usually considered unhealthy
Da-da-daah-dun daah-dun
Da-da-da-da-daah-dun
(hopefully i transcribed this rhythm in a form that is vaguely recognizable)
Ohhhhhh yeah, no, that’s not good.
Except Dina. Dina is a good friend.
OH COME *ON*.
How many times is that now?
Dunno, I lost track. Maybe four in a row?
No, skipped one day for Amber.
Good. Never skip Amber day.
Delightful.
Now that you’ve been trapped, you can never escape the caramel-sculpted abs of… the Walkerton!
Yeeeaaahhhh . We need a Capable Adult ™ to get involved here. Poor Amber.
Uh…. “capable adult”?
I don’t mean to be too nit-picky, but are you suggesting that Dina is…. you know?
A 19 year old is not an adult, no.
Yeah, it is, but in this specific circumstance, she’s really not capable to give the kind of help Amber needs.
Nobody under twenty is an adult, you cannot change my mind about this.
And few people under twenty-five deserve the title either.
The older you get, the higher the “people under X aren’t real adults” line gets.
be it because you feel like you‘ve only recently reached true adulthood… or because you’re still waiting for it to happen o3o
Dunno. Some people are adults at 17, some of them because they’ve had to be. Some of us reach 72 without ever really growing up and becoming a responsible adult.
Why yes, I was born in 1949. Why do you ask?
it’s true i would never have guessed until i first saw you mention your age, or you made an obscure cultural reference way before my time, whichever it was. is this an uncool thing to say? i thought it sounded like an invitation to be surprised about your age, so i’m obliging =)
i should know by now expecting people of any given age to talk or behave a certain way is an ass-u-me situation, but uh.. guess i can’t help myself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Like, I’m not gonna fight about it, but it’s a personal pet peeve of mine, yeah. You’re an adult at 18. You’re new to adulting and might need help with it but that goes for anything new. And I’m pretty sure if we start listing out any sort of criteria for what counts, you’ll find people under whatever your cut off is who meet it and people over your cut off that don’t.
yeah, “adult” has a perfectly fine legal definition but it’s basically useless as a maturity benchmark. it’s subjective and almost inherently normative.
honestly even “maturity” is dodgy as a concept i think. everyone sucks at SOME skill that, in one context or another is considered core to being an adult. no one nails all the possible requirements for maturity.
in this particular situation, being able to help your friend who struggles with her mental health is something many adults will be absolute rubbish at. i don’t think it’s got very much to do with adulthood honestly.
Yeah, adulthood is a super arbitrary concept that we’ve mostly drawn to decide who’s actually responsible for completing whatever responsibilities that are assigned to the majority (like voting, taxes, etc.)
Maturity has a little more basis with biological concepts but it’s still based on averages, and in this case it’s irrelevant. Nobody gets a brain scan before it’s decided they’re allowed to help out with someone’s mental health.
yeah, i know nothing about the neurological basis of maturity… i’ve heard the thing that Spencer says about the brain being mature at 25 on average, but since i have no clue what this could possibly mean either physiologically or cognitively, and suspect most laypeople don’t either (not talking about you or Spencer, i realize this place is crawling with nerds of all stripes) i think most conversations about maturity aren’t really about biology at all but rather focus on skills and responsability, i.e. on a timeline of growth in both material autonomy and ethical integrity.
and i think while there’s a case to be made that part of becoming “mature” (socially speaking) is acknowledging that worrying about your friend/roommate showing signs of mental distress is expected and desirable behaviour, while ignoring them is a sign of being either a dickbag or (benefit of the doubt) immature, and surely there are those who still need to learn this at 18, i feel like this attitude has more to do with personality than with a well-adjusted sense of responsability.
idk, maybe that’s just me.
Which is a weird line to draw, considering the actual maturation of the brain is 25.
Dina is a capable adult, but she’s not really qualified at all to fully deal with Amber’s whole situation and is thus not a Capable Adult™.
Dumbing of Age does not prominently feature capable adults.
If it did, it’d need a new name.
Capable Adulting of Age? Or is that too obvious?
If you are trying to insinuate I am suggesting Dina is not capable due to her (undiagnosed?) autism spectrum – fuck you. You’re intentionally misreading what I said. So fuck you.
None of the main college cast are adults. They’re still teenagers. The eldest (Dina) is 19, who is not Capable Adult status. That’s “Teenager that can probably survive if you toss them in the wild” at best.
Wait, Dina’s the oldest? I thought Ruth and Sarah were the oldest (of the main cast).
Dina is 19, Ruth turned 21 just before the time skip. Sarah I don’t remember how old she was at the birthday party, more than 19 but less than 22.
But of the freshman cast, Dina is the oldest.
Dorothy’s been 19 since the beginning of the comic (unless she turned 20 during the timeskip) so actually she’s the oldest of the freshman cast. Dina’s the second-oldest freshman, having turned 19 during the course of the comic itself.
Oh my…. I am SO sorry, I didn’t know where my mind was when I wrote that!
I was infantilized a lot as a child, and even when I went to college it STILL didn’t stop, and I guess I just get really ticked off when people deny the capacity and maturity of college students who deserve much more credit then they’re given. That, and I’m kinda having a bad time where I am right now.
Wait, you think she has ASD? I always read it as a social anxiety disorder kind of thing, given that’s what I was diagnosed with, and I used to (and still do) share many of Dina’s difficulties. I guess there’s a lot of overlap with things like that.
It’s never been stated in-comic, but majority fandom consensus definitely seems to be that Dina’s on the spectrum, yeah. I believe there’s also a Willis tumblr post specifically discussing Dina where he concludes something like “yeah, she’s probably undiagnosed [autistic]” (IIRC “Asperger’s” was used in the original post but I personally heavily dislike that term).
Huh. Care to tell me why you dislike “Aspergers” as opposed to “autism” or social anxiety disorder?
It’s alright if you don’t want to; I can understand. And thankfully to my knowledge, the “Aspergers” diagnosis has been officially depreciated.
That’s alright; for me it mainly stems from how Hans Asperger himself was a eugenicist, fascist, and literal Nazi. That’s not even really getting into me being queer, autistic, and with a Slavic and (ethnically) Jewish background–any one of which would’ve gotten me killed by the Nazis if he’d been around me back in the day.
Oh my… live and learn, I guess.
Thinking about it, I guess there’s awful history behind pretty much any label like that, given that area in psychology came out of a really bad place.
For instance, what they don’t tell you about “autism” is that when it was first coined, it literally meant “morbid self absorption”. And I’m here looking at the modern autism diagnosis, and I’m like, “how do you get THAT from THAT”. I probably don’t even wanna know.
Anyway, with all honesty and respect, I definitely like “traits not labels” when it comes to characters and writing them, mostly because of the sheer baggage that comes with the latter.
That’s fair. I’m pretty sure Willis has even said that they didn’t initially intend to either write Dina as An Autistic Person or write Amber as A Person With DID, but simply gave them particular traits which happened to resonate with readers who were, and it kind of organically grew into them being depicted that way more overtly/with actual intent over time.
I’d consider Dina an adult but there’s no way she’s equipped for this situation so your point stands.
There we go
And yet, here we are.
No matter where you go…
… there you go again.
I know this seems very troubling (and it is) but let’s be honest here. Amber’s mental state is so compromised that any day she’s still functioning is a victory for her. Realistically she has all the excuses to go full “We live in a society.” at any moment.
She’s not playing Batman anymore! That’s probably a positive development.
Well, she is, it just so happens that Batman decided to take up roller derby.
Baby steps, though.
I was about to say “art or it didn’t happen”, but…
the figment is back!
Never left.
Always right.
Why yes, I am.
Or at least I always think I am, which is frequently close enough.
Hey, it worked on Starscream and Bumblebee.
I choose to believe that Fruit Loops turned Starscream and Bumblebee’s lives around.
Wait, are you referring to that one time Megatron possessed Bumblebee I’m that one CGI Transformers?
I never got to see the end of that, but when I saw that as a kid, seriously, that was fucking TERRIFYING.
Nah, the IDW G1 continuity that has since ended.
Starscream was made ruler of Cybertron and Bumblebee was killed off in an event, and then a ways in Starscream started hallucinating Bumblebee giving him advice on not being the world’s biggest douche with no friends.
I think it eventually turned out Bumblee was still alive and remotely projecting himself at Starscream or something.
…currently imagining how much better the final year of Roomies! would have been if Danny had been haunted by Imaginary Brain Ruth.
More Ruth is always a positive.
oooh. yes.
That’s beautiful and horrific, and I would love to see a one-off or april fools comic from Willis based on that idea.
Guess who’s back
Back again
Mike’s back
Tell a friend
Not to besmirch the late Mike Warner, but is seeing his projection more or less healthy for Amber than having a superhero alter?
Why not have both?
Remember, Batman can breathe in space.
Huh, somehow I reposted that. Anyway, the way things are going, Amber will have two chapters in the next DSM, Amber will have one, and projection Mike will have a sidebar. At least.
was one of those Ambers supposed to be AmaziGirl?
I mean, IDK if Amazi-Girl is necessarily a “superhero alter” at this point.
If she’s not Amber’s alternate personality/identity who’s a superhero, then who is AmaziGirl?
a retired-superhero alter
Amber’s alternate personality/identity who’s a roller derby queen.
Both good answers – I forgot AG comes out during roller derby.
I feel like Actual Mike and amberhead!Mike should have different tags.
They do. They just look alike.
Well one of them should at least have better shading than the other.
Amber doesn’t have an arc, she’s a hamster wheel.
Ambster the Hamster
Obligatory “Mike’s rather clingy, looks like he really fell for her” shitpost.
Well she fell for him in the Walkyverse, so it’s all perfectly balanced
Mike and Amber together was always endgame.
They’re together foreeeeeverrrrrrr
Well, I’m sure the people who wanted to see Mike after the time skip didn’t have this in mind… but Amber did.
“I want sarcasm” “I’ll bring you fruit loops.”
Was… was Dina sarcastic right now?
I think she was ignoring Amber’s sass and is bringing her food anyway. That’s just my interpretation, could be wrong. Only “The Willis” knows for certain.
That’s my interpretation as well.
Amber and brain!Mike certainly seem to think she was.
An Sarcasm was attempted, but she’s currently uncertain whether it landed. She’ll observe the reaction when she returns.
(That’s one side effect of having ASD that primarily affects social cues, you can pull off some impressively deadpan snark once you advance the tech tree enough to unlock “sarcasm”.)
I somehow managed to unlock “sarcasm” fairly early on, while I still haven’t unlocked “flirting” and “eye contact” yet after all this time.
Grind for “eye contact” first, it’s easier.
Go for the nose, or if you can manage it, the right eyebrow. It looks almost like eye contact, without the actual shock of looking at their eyeballs. 7 or 8 years of noses, and I was able to unlock actual eye contact with people I know and like.
Not even death can stop Mike
Is- is he even dead? Wasn’t he just in a coma??
Must’ve missed some text…
Mike was in a coma and died at some point during the timeskip.
Statistically-speaking, the longer you’re in a coma the less-likely you are to ever wake up from it again. This is especially the case when it comes to TBI-induced comas, like was the case with Mike. We’ve also been told in-comic, multiple times, that he died during the timeskip.
recently watched 28 Days Later for the first time (it slaps), and that movie has a hilarious take on what a person with brain trauma who’s spent, well, 28 days in a coma, can achieve a few days out the gate. i was like “wtf/ok”
Is there still any more of Amber’s psyche to break? It seems like we’re getting dangerously close to psychotic break here.
This is so scary! Amber really is slowly going insane, but only the few person who know her can see it and they have no success in helping her. Ethan may be able, but he’s in a similar situation… I wonder if Sal and Danny will help them both.
Is it just me, or is Mike’s image becoming more blocky and crude?
This is NOT a criticism of Willis’ art – I only see it in Mike, not the rest of the art, so if it’s real I assume it’s deliberate. Could it be an indication that Amber’s mental model of Mike is slowly fading or degrading?
If so – Mike was a one-note character even when he was alive. As bad as knowing Mike would have been, having a cardboard-cutout caricature of him stuck in one’s head would probably be worse…
Ghost!Mike has previously been drawn without shading, but I would be hesitant to draw conclusions based on a single panel
Not just you, exactly what I noticed here. Less detail, less shading, just more simple an image.
I don’t think this is a sign that he’s becoming a cardboard-cutout caricature. I think its more that she’s forgetting what he looked like, hence the loss of detail, on the biggest, easiest to remember bits are showing right now (scowl and the hair). Not even any detail on his shirt.
Checked it. It’s the same lack of detail as his other “Ghost” appearances except the first one where he had slightly more detail. Nothing to it yet as far as I can tell
Amber for the love of God
Go to therapy
Hello, everybody: I’ve made a relationship graph of most recorrent Dumbing of Age’s characters.
you can click here to see it and navigate through.
Had Joyce talked to everyone? Did really Walky walked more with Dorothy than Amber? You don’t need to read all books (but I recommend it) to get this kind of insights. You can have everthing visual here, right now.
I confess it was very fun to make. It took me a lot of years to learn to code fast, and I got less than a week to do it.
I’ve planned some improvements, like separate the chart into storylines. It will depend of people interested or not.
As I said before, I tried ask permission to Willis, because it’s not exactly a fan art or similar. If he want me to drop the page off, I will.
Amós, this looks… absolutely fantastic!!!
This is honestly my favorite kind of art — beautiful, AND informative!
thank you, I’m glad you liked
Ahh, this is really cool! My partner is into data visualization, I’ve gotta send this to him
Nice, I’ll put some technical details there.
whhaaaaaat that’s amazing Amós, although to be fair i have no idea of the amount of work this represents =D In any case it looks really cool!!!
question, is this updated in real-time with each new comic?
i do have a few suggestions for making it more useful and convenient, if you’re interested!
1- i don’t imagine this is something you can do much about without a major overhaul, but it is pretty slow on my end? is there a way to make it load a wee bit faster when selecting a character? at present, ok my laptop is a bit old i suppose but ah… it takes over 15 seconds to load ><
2- would it be possible to see the character we've selected being highlighted somehow? at present when i click on, say, Roz, i see her and all her “contacts” highlighted in the same colour.
2- there’s some weirdnesses. like if i click on a very obscure character, like “Sue”. In your graph she seems connected to Roz only; except we also see Roz’s connection to some other people. i guess those are only the people that Sue also appears with. but it’s a bit odd that they’re connected to Roz, and not directly to Sue??
3- could we see a number on the lines somewhere, that says how many strips these characters have in common?
4- maybe another option might be to see either “absolute numbers” being represented, or a percentage of total strips the character is present in? (this may be tricky because the ratio will be different for either character in a link)
5- full screen option maybe?
6- the physical engine is very funny. i love grabbing a character and just shaking them a bit and seeing everyone else bob around XD …that wasn’t a question
7- do you want corrections on the text? there are a few mistakes. it’s all perfectly clear and understandable though, so it’s really optional
Yes, you can help me fix this. If you don’t have any problem in using GIT, you can make any fix here: https://github.com/amosbatista/amosbatista.com/blob/master/pages/dumbingofage_graph/index.vue.
I’m working in fix the layout issues, but some things can be very hard to do it. I’m using VIS for the graph, and it is very slow when I set a lot of data. And I alreadt cut 30~40% of all data I crawled from DoA site.
Peharps I’ll try the suggestion of @egg egg.
i created a github account and corrected your grammar in a new branch. now, i don’t know if you need me to create a pull request or if that’s not necessary? …to be honest i don’t know what any of what i just said means =P
yes, you can do a pull request pls
Wow this is nice! Are you using any javascript packages to help with the visualizations? When I’m doing visualizations I usually use d3 and at work we tragically use jquery. I see you’re using nuxt, which i can’t remember if it’s a Vue only thing or if that works with vanilla nodejs or react, but it’s super neat to see that being used in the wild.
My only 2-cents says that tooltips on hover might be good for character names, to make it look a little less cluttered, and also bc the grey blends in with the background if it doesn’t have a bubble drawing attention to it.
I’d love to see this go further, tbh! It’s very interesting to me.
Nice to see programmers here. So, I’ll keep updating the page, putting the repo and other things.
Thanks.
OK, so is she sleep-depriving herself because she wants the company of Ghost Mike? Or is this just a secondary effect?
This is a concerning theory.
Not least because it reminds me of Twilight, when Bella was doing dumb shit because she would hallucinate Edward showing up and
trying to control hertelling her not to do the dumb shit. Except that in this comic it would feel painful and real and in-depth rather than creepy and pathetic.…Okay, maybe just all of the above, since creepy and pathetic is also the realm of this comic. just in a, like…good way??
Could also be that Mike became an introject – An alter based on somebody else, whether real or fictional. We already know she has DID (Amazigirl), and DID can form from severe trauma
With all that happened… This could be a fracture in Amber’s mind creating an alter based on Mike to deal with the trauma of losing him
I find this distressingly plausible (far more so than all the “Booster is Mike” stuff, which I have to assume is at least half-joking, because the other half / option is “absurdly desperate”).
Tell me more about these “introjects”.
Are they always the product of traumas or otherwise sad and painful experiences?
Will they always be harmful, or can they be benign or even helpful?
Introjects are alters so they usually form as a result of trauma like any alter but not necessarily a specific single trauma. New traumatic events in later life can result in new alters forming for people that already have DID or OSDD. Basically once you have DID or OSDD, new brain roommates can show up forever. And yes, it will usually be because of trauma.
Whether they are INITIALLY harmful or helpful depends on who the introject is actually based on. An introject based on say, Cinderella, may be very helpful in literally every area of your life. One based on Scar from the Lion King may be belittling and rude and yet may also have the ego and wit to chide anyone else who tries to. While one based on the person that hurt you most, which is the most commonly spoken of kind, may hurt you long after the original person is gone.
An introject regardless of the form they take though, is trying to help, even if it doesn’t initially look like it and even if they start with misguided methodology. Any alter can learn to use more constructive and healthy methods, none are doomed to be known as ‘evil’ forever or anything. And any harm they inflict will almost always be directed inwards at system members, not outwards at friends or anything. Morality for systems is complicated but to my understanding if the system as a whole will not do something, individual alters won’t either, which is why this is the case, even if the person the alter is based on would have less restraint.
And introjects can also acquire their own unique traits separate from the source as obviously they can experience new things and change based on those experiences. They aren’t fixed as staying exactly like what they were originally based on. So even if two different people have introjects of the same person or character, the individual alters may still behave in different ways to each other.
Fascinating! How do these introjects and alters think? Can they access your semantic or episodic memories, or do they have to make their own?
Also, is it at all possible to gain one without trauma? Is it possible to intentionally create them within yourself?
Depending on why precisely this alter was ‘needed’ changes what memories they will have access to and what your brain ‘thinks’ they should know like any other alter. A baby alter may not know what a cat is because it doesn’t need to while a tiger alter may be able to read, write, count and so on. It depends greatly on the individual system and what each individual alter is for. Sometimes alters will come with backstories that feel like their real lived lives to rationalize why they are the way they are which are entirely separate from the body’s actually lived history and sometimes they won’t.
The way they think will pretty much be just like how any normal person thinks unless they are specifically an alter that is designed not to (some animal alters act just like animals, some robot or alien alters may lack emotions or have restricted ones) or they are currently unable to (some alters are stuck in looped traumatic memories).
If you mean, how do they perceive themselves, an introject may think they are an outside person to the system or that they can hurt the system without hurting themselves. But this is not unique to introjects – other alters sometimes don’t realise they are part of a system or that they are all sharing a body either. While other times, alters know to begin with that they are alters. It is very variable.
I am uncertain if you could create an introject or any alter without trauma and my best guess would be that it depends strongly on the system. Some systems will have such a low stress threshold that smallish stressors can create fragments and alters. So I suppose they could in theory create enough internal stress to do so on purpose without something as big as a trauma.
I don’t know if you could intentionally create an introject specifically though. It might not be impossible, but I imagine trying to do so would be unpredictable and from what I know, splitting can be a very distressing, disorienting and unpleasant sensation for some systems or it can vary in intensity for them. So I can’t imagine a lot of them would want to try and risk making things harder for themselves.
I have never in my entire life been so fascinated by a series of comments on the internet. Thank you for explaining all this Sam!
Sam, I thank you oh so DEARLY for all this information!!! If you could list further sources with which I could continue research on this introject phenomenon, I would REALLY like that too!
Just two or three more questions, if you could answer them.
When loved ones die, many of us continue to behave as if they’re with us. We talk about them, we talk TO them, and we
reflect on physical reminders of them. When we do these things with enough frequency and focus, the “as if” seems to fade. How does this phenomenon compare with the nature of the introject, if at all? How does it contrast?
Also, does a trauma or event need to be real to trigger the formation of an introject or alter? Can it be in a dream? And if so, could it be in a lucid dream?
Uh oh. Somebody called it, though I don’t remember who. It’s possible MANY people called it.
MEEEP
*to the tune of Ducktales*
Ghost Mike! Woo-oo!
If you don’t get sleep you’ll see a
Ghost Mike! Woo-oo!
heyyyy i have a new grav =) thanks Wellerman =)
it’s me. it’s my face. this is what i look like. hello world
Hello, milu. Huh, France needs better resolution.
it’s called pixel art you philistine *humphs*
No, THIS is a filly stein.
https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=DChcSEwiH7JeYvpr0AhUXdhgKHcWXA_AYABABGgJsZQ&sig=AOD64_3PFLLCjgLDVka4Xn6S5OLJnuWJtQ&adurl&ctype=5&ved=2ahUKEwin1IuYvpr0AhUIKhoKHelTAK4Qvhd6BAgBEFw
ok i spent way too long looking for pictures of Phyllis Schlafley as a teen.
you win.
You’ve bumped Phyllis Schlafy in the Google algorithm, we ALL lose.
Hey, I’m still trying to figure out how he found a chain of links from site about a my little pony mug to a site with pictures of Phyllis Schlafy as a teen.
There are AI models now that have been trained to go from pixilated cartoon images to realistic portraits. milu, I wonder what it would make of yours.
oh no, i was trying to counter JB’s excellent pun on “philistine” with a pun of my own. (…and now i’m suspecting that if i’m explaining a joke to you it means either the joke was not very intelligible, or you’re making a joke of your own and i’m the one who didn’t get it.)
i’m sure there’s AIs that extrapolate realistic portraits from blurred-out photographs; but from pixellated cartoons? for real? who does that.
…got a link? =D
In case you’re not seeing it, the evolution is:
philistine -> filly stein -> phyllis teen
i admit there might be a pronunciation issue. but i searched and found like 4 different possible pronounciations for “philistine”. anything goes, basically. ‘fil-uh-stine, ‘fil-i-steen, even fil’uh-steen according to some wiktionary contributor.
another thing that i didn’t make quite clear is that i didn’t, in fact, find any picture of Phyllis Schlafly as a teen. which is probably for the best.
ok! this joke is dead and buried now, thank you everyone, goodnight
No problem!
Glad you like it!!! 😁
Fuckin’ called it!
Dina in the first panel: “This is distressing. Gazing at dinosaur pictures for a few moments will help me remain calm.”
Mike, managing to make everyone’s life miserable even after his death
Welp. Guess we’re getting an Amber storyline. Fun…
Amber really needs some hard core therapy
…Ah crap that’s why I can relate to her. I have my own ‘Mike’ in my head
(Yes, I am getting therapy myself)
So I finished my third read of It’s Walky! (which is fortunate, because now all of Joyce & Walky! is done too) and something kind of popped out to me reading it this time that I was sort of cognizant about as I read it years ago, but really only see now: It’s Walky! is really incompetent.
Ha, psyche! Bet you thought I was gonna go dunking on it but nah, I still friggin’ love that comic and I’m gonna forever (and would pay money for the whole thing in paperback hint hint), and the defining reason for that is that It’s Walky! lets its characters just be utterly, ruinously terrible when it wants to, and I don’t get enough of that anymore. They are incompetent, all of them; Squad 128, SEMME, the Head Alien, the JFO, even the Cheese, they are all extremely, extremely bad at this. Joyce has an evil clone who’s only evil because she represents thoughts Joyce wants to bury, so Joyce blows her head open with a gun. Walky gets so utterly tilted at the Head Alien he drops Sal’s dead adoptive parents onto him, crashing through the floor and crushing his boss to death. Dina dies in what is, and I mean this utterly and sincerely, one of the most gut-wrenching deaths a work of fiction has put me through, because she took a chance fighting Britjas (British Ninjas) instead of taking a mindwipe, so she chucks a bomb into another room, gets shot, and then scrambles into that same room and has just long enough to think about whether or not anyone will remember her despite being useless in the last years of her life. Danny almost straight up cheats on Billie for Sal and he sure as hell was emotionally, and you know you’re dealing with a vortex of failures when you can imagine any Danny cheating.
It’s not even just the protagonists either! Linda gets put in charge of SEMME and it turns out she’s a plant three times over and has to watch the son she stole from another family to hide Sal get his face turned into hamburger meat, because he turned on SEMME after everyone stopped caring he existed once Sal’s relation to Walky was revealed. The Head Alien is handed actual omnipotence and an army of pissed off Martians and he still screws it up because of his ego, and there was no other way he’d go out; he’s a cunning manipulator, except he’s a cunning manipulator of a few people in their 20s he has all the receipts for, and his victories and losses are in equal aplomb. Hell, even one of the biggest movers and shapers of the backstory, Jason’s dad Dargon, gets casually offed by Penny because he runs his evil organization under “you have failed me for the last time!” rules and never once considered that the henchman he’s about to dispose of might have a second opinion.
It’s this genuinely engaging story about people who are all emotion and all ego, totally convinced of their ability to get it done no matter what anyone else says, especially if someone says they’re wrong, and what sticks out to me most of all is how infrequent it is to see that kind of story these days. It’s not something where I feel particularly confident when talking about, I feel it and recognize it when I see it, but that’s not just a perspective from my anecdotal evidence, it’s one that used to indulge in the same kind of “ugh, why are the characters being so dumb” analysis, where the actual emotions of the story didn’t matter, it was the endpoint.
And that’s weird! It’s weird I indulged in that thinking for as long as I did! I’m pretty sure what changed my mind was an errant piece of media analysis criticism (that is, criticism of real bad fandom takes) on a tumblr I follow that made me go “so what does a story mean to me, anyway?” because I think at some point I started processing stories as a linear line to the most optimal ending, and anything that diverted away from that like, say, characters doing things that cause interesting drama in the name of exploring themes and ideas at the hands of the artists creating their work, was bad and wrong.
I feel like a total kiss-ass saying this here, I just don’t know how to handle how a webcomic that ended when I was 12 is still, like, a go-to example of a story about characters who fuck up all the time and not for some big dramatic point about the human condition where we all learn something today, they just ruin things and then pick themselves up and keep going.
Maybe I need to read a book or something. Or stop getting my understanding of how people processes stories from fan forums. Anyway tldr: It’s Walky! good, go read it.
Well said, Spencer.
I feel bad for Amber. I know she is not perfect but I hope she is able to get help in some form. I do not know if therapy is a viable option because she likely has trust issues from her manipulative dad. But maybe there is something that can help her coming up in the next storyline.
I suspect the meta reason why we’re stuck with Ghost Mike is that he and Dina are the only two people Amber can still interact with amongst the cast. Without GM, any arc of hers would boil down to a hundred strips of her playing video games and sending Dina out for snacks.