Seeing as Sal was specifically responding to a question about open relationships, that might just mean that Marcie is poly or at least Marcie and Malaya have an open relationship.
Yeah I think this is a story about Amber channeling her inner jerk, hopefully with a payoff of her deciding to work more on herself instead of thinking she’s “the monster”.
Still catching up and late to the party, but I hadn’t even considered that she was talking to Mike and not Danny there, I just thought she meant whatever happened between Danny and Ethan combined with her history with him the result was EEE.
I really doubt it’s influence from Joe’s dad. (Richard? Is that his name?) Dude’s been in her life maybe 6 months tops most of which was spent banging her mom off campus. One holiday break doesn’t seem long enough to absorb habits from him. And he also specifically said he wasn’t going to try and replace her father.
Most likely “Amber” and not AG just doesn’t have muvh she feels like communicating or relating to her peers so she’s just defaulting to being a creepy sex pest. Also lack of sleep.
I think it’s more due to Amber’s main social circle up to this point pretty much enabling her worst habits (Ethan didn’t really ever put his foot down and Mike just goaded her).
In other words: She didn’t have any friends who’d tell her “This is fucked up, could you please stop?”
I think that’s the point being made though, that Danny is one of the first people Amber is/was emotionally close to telling her that an idea is pretty messed up and to stop. Arguably Ethan has hit his limit as well, but I think there’s a lot more baggage that got him there.
Amber lost both of the Big Bads her mental comic book superhero origin story were built on. (Blaine’s dead, and Sal turned out to be more than a one-dimensional character.) Now she’s adrift and turning inward.
Looks like all this focusing on Ethan and Danny getting together for her amusement is her being being passive aggressive with Sal. The first thing she did after Sal told her was go to Ethan and try to get him to say something bad about Sal. Now she’s latched on to the “threesome” idea to justify her ex hooking up with another guys she’s had feeling for to avoid thinking of Sal and Danny as a real couple.
Hey, it’s really early and I’m not even 50% awake, so genuinely asking: Am I doing it wrong that I’m not seing anything when I hover my mouse pointer over Don’t forget that?
Not that I don’t enjoy a nostalgic, mildly fucked up commercial like this and the Slim Jim ones, but did he just say that he couldn’t get “real” coffee in WEST AFRICA?!?! 🤨
That’s where like HALF of all coffee beans come from!!!
I honestly doubt this is due to Joe’s dad being a bad influence.
Amber’s always been a shipper and not the most socially well-adjusted person. It doesn’t help that her best friends were both people who’d pretty much just enable her (Ethan by not putting his foot down, Mike by intentionally goading her into it).
I feel like blaming this on [insert person] is just trying to absolve her from any responsibility for acting like a shitty person.
I figure she’s reduced her social connections to 2D cutouts. They’re not exactly real people to her, if that makes sense. Like celebrities. And in her current state of mind, that means she can’t properly empathise with them. Maybe she’s trying, but she’s all askew. Treats them like fictional characters. Which, as we all know, they definitely are not.
That is my hope too.
I am weirdly torn between still feeling really, really bad for her and being super grossed out by her.
Either way she needs Therapy like yesterday.
Apparently Amber already is in therapy. She said as much in her first appearance this arc. It was just sprinkled in a bit of dialogue for a passing joke and it has never been shown so it’s pretty hard to retain as credible but it is possibly happening.
You might know them better as PMs. Private messages. On a website, this means sending others a message that is not posted publicly where everyone could see it, whether that be a social media website, a forum, etc.
People would whine that it wasn’t realistic or something, because the only possible source of entertainment is horribly overwrought interpersonal melodrama. Not MY opinion, mind you, but that’d be the complaint.
I mean it would be pretty weird for that specific storyline to be totally healthy and mature when literally no other storyline in the entire comic has been
Eh, we’ve Grace and Mandy scrap a bit. They clearly like each other a lot, and I’m rooting for them to turn out well considering how badly things went for them in the old comic, but they’re not a perfectly drama free couple.
Not entirely sure what the dynamic becomes once Sierra gets involved.
Specifically thinking about the section with the LGBT+ support meeting, in which Dina is mostly a camera, the bits with Toedad and Becky are pretty main plot significant.
I mean, the last one we did saw a TON of expansion on Dina’s character and she catapulted into the core cast pretty quick. Before that, she was around but she didn’t pop up near as often and wasn’t as focused on.
That is sort of the thing with doing a side-character focused episode. Once you’re done you tend to want them to be more than a side character, especially in an ensemble cast that can afford to grow
According to the It’s Walky! commentary, after being killed in the final battle against the JFO Mandy, Grace and Sierra were eventually brought back using the Martian Resurrection Chamber and now run a cute little cafe.
I kind of wish we got to see that as a Shortpacked! april fools strip. It sounded charming. Grace and Mandy deserve a happy ending, Sierra is great, and Guns would also be there.
(This comment goes on a bit of a tangent, warning in advance. Just ignore it if you want to!)
Eh. Not every poly relationship is as complicated as some people (mostly monogamous people, from what I’ve seen) insist. It’s a little harder if not everyone is dating each other, but if you have, say, a triad of people all with each other? Not any more difficult than a couple IMO.
Of course, this is just in my experience – I know some poly relationships aren’t easy, especially if any of the people involved are particularly dramatic LOL. I’m just always confused how people take if as a given you can pretty easily have more than one BFF, but make it romantic and suddenly it’s supposedly SUPER COMPLEX. (Often with a side of “nothing against those weirdos, of course, but I just couldn’t be poly, it’s not for me”, whiiich starts to sound a whole lot like how some people talk about being queer. I know that’s not how every monogamous person talks about polyamory, but I’ve definitely noticed some similarities. But maybe that’s just me being extra cynical as someone both queer and poly, haha.)
But yeah tangent aside I’d always be down for more poly representation. 😀
” I’m just always confused how people take if as a given you can pretty easily have more than one BFF …”
Wait, hold up. That doesn’t even make any sense. You can’t have more than one BFF. It’s right there in the name: “Best Friend Forever.” There can’t be multiple bests, that goes against the meaning of the word. By definition, only one friend can be best, and everyone else has to settle for some lesser friend position.
The forever part also doesn’t make any sense, now that I think about it. Neither of you are going to last that long.
There’s also a level on which romantic relationships already tend to be more difficult to manage than even close friendships.
I suspect that poly might be for me in many ways, but I’m barely capable of managing one romance.
I… disagree that they’re so different by default. But maybe that’s just me and how I approach my relationships?
I will say it helps a LOT with logistics if everyone in your polycule is also with each other, though. There have definitely been some poly situations I’ve heard of where even I’m like NOPE TOO COMPLEX
Um. Amber, Sal is a lot less tolerant when it comes to disrespectful behaviour. This is a really bad idea.
Also, I’d love to see Sal go check on ethan. Not expecting it to happen. But still, I’d love to. That would be interesting.
Is Amber being made this awful to try and make Joyce looks better in comparison? Wouldn’t work anyway, December has given me enough seasonal depression to be bitter enough at BOTH > _ >
I mean, she means it in the sense that she thinks it’s a great angle to manipulate her friend to do what she wants, because she might be able to get him to believe that bullshit, to the point that it motivates him do do what she wants. You know, like manipulation. She’s being manipulative. Doesn’t really matter if she believes what she’s saying, or not. It’s a goal-oriented form of social aggression.
Two things. a} Amber desperately needs some therapy. Intensive. Possibly time in a good hospital. b} I wish Sal realized she’s become the voice of sanity in this group. Or at least, relative sanity. [She does know that she’s hot, right?]
this is weirdly untense tension.
I guess the like, moving average of tension between Sal and the AmberAlgamation is still PRETTY FUKEN HIGH so while this would be pretty serious tension between Regular people, it’s not much of a blip on their interpersonal landscape
OK AMBER THAT’S ENOUGH i passed out last night so I didn’t get to comment TwT But holy shit, while it’s funny in a weird way, I’m glad Sal stopped this on its tracks. And I actually think she nailed the actual motivation on this.
Like, yes Amber is a horny mess who gets off to slash daydreams of people who’re actually in her life; but also… It’s possible she believes that while she doesn’t have a way to cheer Ethan up, Danny could. If they were talking enough to bone, at least. Because everything about those two including the way Ethan talks about him are very much fanfic tropes, and it’d be even more if there was some addition of Healing Cock.
It’s cool to try to live outside the control of colonial empires, and people who took a letter of mark are sellouts who deserved to get smashed like a bowl of eggs actually
The only difference between a pirate and a privateer is whether the ruler said it was OK today.
Francis Drake doesn’t really care who he’s plundering — knight him, write that letter of marque, and set him on the Spanish Armada!
(Plus, Queen Elizabeth gets a layer of plausible deniability: whoops, sorry Spain, Drake will be Drake! I’ll give him such a stern talking-to when he gets back to England and shares all that wealth with me.)
A letter of marque also makes a difference to what happens if you get caught. Privateers are supposed to follow laws of war, so they’re to be treated as POWs, whereas pirates are hanged immediately. (I don’t know whether privateers typically followed those rules. But, if you get captured, you definitely want to have your permission slip ready.)
Sometimes pirates would get fake letters of marque, just like they flew fake flags, so there was a whole court system about it. (There were quirks here, too – like maybe you thought you were an Irish privateer under James II, but the English court doesn’t recognize James II’s rebellion, so you get hanged as a pirate.)
ANYWAY it is interesting, and it’s probably for the best that we don’t do it anymore.
On the subject of pilates, the color of the flag was VERY important. In the 1600s, privateers flew red flags and those that eventually turned pirate continued the practice which eventually just became a pirate thing. The black flag was adopted by pirates due to it being used to signal a plague ship and thus not one to be messed with. The colors were given meaning with black indicated that those who did not fight would live (the pirates taking valuables and/or prisoners) and was meant to intimidate their target to surrender without a fight while red meant no quarter would be given (no survivors). These flags were also not meant to fly all the time with pirates flying “friendly colors” (the flag of some nation) until they were close to a target.
Any pirate flag was called a Jolly Roger regardless of design or lack thereof. In fact, no design was the standard for a long time and what most still used even when some started adding embellishments. Embellishments would usually be in white, but yellow or red were also used. The imbelishmnts were usually various symbols of death, violence, and the devil, but symbols of time, lacking shame, or the captain could be used and some had initials (either alone or with other things) to represent the captains initials (either name or alias) or their enemies. Very VERY few of the embellished flags survived meaning the examples we know of are mostly due to eyewitness accounts that were usually vague. Two skull and crossbone flags have survived (none from the golden age of piracy), one red with realistic bones sitting at an angle and the other is black and a little more realistic than the one usually see, A third is black and cartoonish, but might be fake.
damn amber is really shitty here, both in attitude and in strategy.
like if you’re gonna go full asshat and try to hook up ethan and danny you gotta at least be smart enough about it to not get into a mexican standoff with your athletic equal.
Let’s be honest: Amber in panel 4 is not sincerely/in good faith arguing “you owe him for (X)”, but “I’ll say anything if it might get you all to Perform a Sex for my voyeuristic entertainment.”
Sal and Danny are a couple of very wise person. Amber has to resolve her own problems alone, not dragging into it others for make they do all the work. But I’m having a doubt. Has Sal understood that Amber is talking about Danny AND Ethan?
Confident Danny is what actually makes men sexy, but there’s no way for men to understand that if they start out unconfident because they think their looks or whatever are important. If the way you look comes off as fucking intentionally put-together, that’s all that really matters for men. Even if you think you’re fuck-ugly. The reality is, girls have broader aesthetic tastes on average than men, and if you have a weird face, a huge number of girls still think that face is hotter than Brad Pitt, because he’s conventionally sexy and that’s generic and boring and they’re bored of looking at him.
At this point I’ve given up on believing that its not in her pants. The only doubt I have is that Mind Mike could be telling her to keep that hand hidden specifically to mess with Danny.
Yeah, I’m sure Amber would love for you to think that. She’d love to think that, herself. If someone were to suggest it to her, she’d probably decide it’s true, and then decide that it’s her own idea.
I’m done trying not to be harsh on amber, i don’t even care if this is a depression fueled self sabotage, it’s also insane levels of sexual harassment. You can’t reason out sexual harassment with “oh i was going through such and such” “oh i didn’t realize that recontextualizes things let’s talk it out bro”, this is just a gross objectification and infringement on her friends. And i hate when people project but yeah, “friends” reducing friends to sexual objects hits close to home. Just. Fuck you Amber.
If this turns out to be like, the mike alter taking over I’m going to be annoyed, but i doubt willis will go there.
Sal is hot. Sal is good. I like sal here. I want Sal/Danny time.
She’s doing something wrong, she’s doing something viscerally hateful to me as a person, I do feel genuinely disgusted with her in the moment.
Is she these moments, though? I hate her right now, I hate that she thinks things that real people that I hate do, but even those people I hate are more than those moments even if those moments are enough for me to hate them without any real care to the contrary.
It was public in the sense that he handed it to anyone who’d ask. He didn’t just numerically rate the women around him, he also put in little notes and commentary on how to score.
Rachel revealed she wasn’t the one who leaked it, because she would never leak a glossary of women on campus made by some creepy sex hound a few days after a predator was made into a pin cushion.
Yeah, but Joe is a boy doing naughty heterosexual casual sex. That carries the baggage of systemic oppression through authoritative power structures, so it’s automatically gross and wrong to the max, because it represents that thing we all already don’t like. That means he’s a monster who is part of the problem.
Amber is our little mentally ill bean, and she needs 100% all of our support all the time, and we must never criticize anything she does! And this is tangentially queer, and tangentially progressive in nature, and will make gay shit happen, so it has to be not so bad, or else you’re homophobic and polyphobic, and you just don’t like it because you’re a regressive troll.
She must be thoroughly woobified at all times, and given the biggest benefit of the doubt because we have decided that any character in a comic who has poor social skills, is autistic-coded, so it isn’t their fault, and it makes it normal for to act like them making utterly destructive choices and be borderline abusive, because everybody knows autistic people are practically children and we just can’t expect them to take responsibility for their actions, and hold them to any kind of scrutiny because they’re oh so wooby and disadvantaged…
Except there is a literal autistic character in the comic, and while her social skills are constantly the butt of the characters joke in-universe, she is practically one of the most socially adept characters in the comic, and is theliteral voice of reason. Amber is definitely mentally ill. She also, when she is sick, engages in personal and inter-personal behaviors so broadly destructive related to her poor impulse control, related to her physical emotions, that are all her responsibility not to perform, to a completely reasonable degree – all while using her general fear of actual introspection to mislead herself about her own intentions. She is trying to blow up Danny and Sal’s relationship, because she doesn’t like the way it feels for her. That is what she is trying to do, deep down. She’s just convinced herself, conveniently, that she is blind to that, because she doesn’t want it to be true, and so she’s substituting her extreme horniness as a surrogate explanation for her behavior, to both herself and others, so she can do the thing she wants to do, without actually believing she is doing it, because she wants to do it for a reason that feels like she didn’t have control of, such as her horniness, because she is too hideously narcissistic to accept that she wants to do a bad thing which she knows is wrong, to correct her bad feeling related to Danny and Sal dating, but also too full of herself to “actually do a bad thing, like I’m not supposed to, like I always do, because I’m garbage,” so she needs to find an alternative reason to do the bad thing, that isn’t “about” the bad thing, so her poor impulse control still gets to do exactly what it wants, she gets exactly what she wants, and she doesn’t feel responsible for the outcome, yet the thing that made her feel bad no longer exists, so everything is great for Amber.
Amber is partially blind to this, yeah. It’s very difficult to unpack 20 years of narcissistic abuse when it’s so deep that it’s the literal foundation of your personality. But Bunivasal is right: this is way way way way way way way way WAY grosser and more directly abusive than anything Joe has every done, and it’s not even close. If you’re reading this, and you just really really really feel the need to defend her behavior, because she’s the main character or the character you like, or whatever, I really implore you to think of it out of context. Like, literally, if Joe were doing this right now, would you be setting alight the pyre? What if, like, Asher was doing it? Or another character we already do not like, and are naturally suspicious of?
Sorry about the poor formatting and run-ons, but I’m so not used to BBcode anymore, and I also just didn’t want to properly edit this month. The reality is, I lived the Amber x Ethan co-dependent friendship for over a decade. Amber either gets better, or doesn’t. Let me tell you, if it doesn’t seem like it, Ethan is totally in the right, here, and if you don’t get that, you need to see Amber’s life-long behavioral patterns from his perspective. She can easily repair their friendship right now, but it would involve her doing some friend work to actually help Ethan with his problems, which she is terminally unwilling to do, and it would involve her actually coping with her bad feelings, whether constructively, or just, at all, instead of trying to rope Ethan into hijinks to change the source of those feelings for her, so she can have additional plausible deniability that she didn’t just do the bad thing she wanted to do, because she could do it, and then use her poor impulse control and strong feelings related to her trauma as an excuse.
Let me tell you, I wish to death that I was still friends with my Amber. I still love her. But I also know damn well, the over-under on people like Amber in the real world is that they will not successfully improve or change, even with immense support around them, and if they are too destructive to your own life or your own health because of that fact, you will get much healthier when they discard you for having the audacity to put up basic boundaries. Ethan is huge in the right, here. Amber has treated him like shit. Amber treats everyone like shit, because she treats herself like shit, because she was taught to treat herself like shit by a person who treated her like shit because he thought she was shit. But the only think Amber knows with certainty, is that literally nobody else will look out for number one, and because her moral spectrum is fucking children’s comic books, her need for basic self-advocacy guarantees she will be needy, which means she will have to take help from people, which means she is taking what she has no right to possess from them, which means she is inherently a bad evil villain who can only take from people, and that’s an innate part of what she is, and she can’t change that because people can’t change because everything is black and white. The problem is, since being better seems impossible, because her self-esteem is zero, this belief about herself is more comforting and freeing a conceit, than a problem, since it’s not her fault and she can’t change it, so people have to accept it, or abandon her like she deserves. She will act terribly to anyone who will put up with her, and then take their eventual withdrawal as a fated abandonment which was inevitable because of how uniquely bad they are, and then resent being alone and find somebody else who will put up with their abuse, because the alternative is accepting that they are literally in control of, and responsible for, their own actions.
There’s maybe one more webcomic other than this whose comments section I’d expect to be more generally supportive of polygamy than this one, like this is one of the most thoroughly and intentionally progressive strips and communities out there?
Typically I just drop a one-liner and forget to check comments, but… I’m just… genuinely annoyed that the pushback against Amber’s idea here is being misconstrued(?) as hating on polyamory, where the majority of us (OK, me and at least one other person) are taking issue with the toxicity on display here.
Note that the Sierra/Mandy/Grace polycule has been much more positively received.
as much as I love polyamory and thruples, i don’t think this one would be healthy or interesting right now. I’ll ship a polycule involving Becky, Joyce, Dorothy, and Dina, but uh yeah no Ethan, Danny, and Sal just aren’t a good fit imo. I used to want Danny and Ethan to be together too, but it’s clear that won’t work, especially right now, anymore than Joyce would be able to have a healthy relationship with . . . anyone? oof
Loading ...
“I’d like an order of rump, and I’ll eat it straight off this table”
Danny really needs a way to disengage his mouth from his thoughts.
pretty sure an order of table rump would disengage his voice quite effectively.
I figure if Sal fucks his brains out that will happen pretty directly.
is marcie still not with malaya or was that more of a fling?
Was Marcie ever with Malaya to begin with?
(Other than in a strictly physical “I’m sitting here with you” sense)
What about that one bonus comic?
Serious hint at future development or bonus gag?
At this point, it’s anyone’s guess. I guess.
I think she is still with Malaya(to whatever degree Malaya admits), as Sal is talking about a threesome.
Yeah, it doesn’t work as well if Marcie’s single.
Amber doesn’t know what she’s missing! 😲
Seeing as Sal was specifically responding to a question about open relationships, that might just mean that Marcie is poly or at least Marcie and Malaya have an open relationship.
Considering that, last I checked, Sal is still Not A Fan of Malaya, I can see Sal saying this regardless of Marcie and Malaya’s relationship status
Careful Danny, Sal might make you take responsibility with comments like that. Not that we would mind. Right everyone?
She’d need a grappling hook first.
What is the grappling hook for? I’m genuinely confused.
I’m pretty sure it happened once in a slipshine.
Why are my messages getting eaten?
The server hungers.
’cause you aren’t using a grappling hook?
For playing superheroes, duh. We know that is what Danny likes.
That makes sense too.
I’m glad for this confirmation that Danny either wants to eat Sal’s ass or eat food off of her ass. It’s very humanizing and grounds his character.
Eating food off her ass, or eat her ass? Porque no los dos?
Yeah I think this is a story about Amber channeling her inner jerk, hopefully with a payoff of her deciding to work more on herself instead of thinking she’s “the monster”.
Considering Brain Mike is probably talking to her during all of this… yeah.
Given that comment about “We made him. Together.” I assume the line between her and Mike has blurred.
Still catching up and late to the party, but I hadn’t even considered that she was talking to Mike and not Danny there, I just thought she meant whatever happened between Danny and Ethan combined with her history with him the result was EEE.
With her father dead, Regular Amber may no longer have a seething rage driving her.
Regular Amber may instead be motivated by just gross inappropriateness. Which may come from Joedad’s influence replacing the abusive psychopath.
I really doubt it’s influence from Joe’s dad. (Richard? Is that his name?) Dude’s been in her life maybe 6 months tops most of which was spent banging her mom off campus. One holiday break doesn’t seem long enough to absorb habits from him. And he also specifically said he wasn’t going to try and replace her father.
Most likely “Amber” and not AG just doesn’t have muvh she feels like communicating or relating to her peers so she’s just defaulting to being a creepy sex pest. Also lack of sleep.
I think it’s more due to Amber’s main social circle up to this point pretty much enabling her worst habits (Ethan didn’t really ever put his foot down and Mike just goaded her).
In other words: She didn’t have any friends who’d tell her “This is fucked up, could you please stop?”
And yet Danny just did so…
“Didn’t have”, past tense.
I think that’s the point being made though, that Danny is one of the first people Amber is/was emotionally close to telling her that an idea is pretty messed up and to stop. Arguably Ethan has hit his limit as well, but I think there’s a lot more baggage that got him there.
And Amaziber dumped him in response.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/teensiest/
Amber lost both of the Big Bads her mental comic book superhero origin story were built on. (Blaine’s dead, and Sal turned out to be more than a one-dimensional character.) Now she’s adrift and turning inward.
Also, as a philosopher would say, her brain is trash and she lives on the Internet.
I have that t-shirt.
It’s Richard yeah, it’s a Dick joke. Because y’know.
She’s always had a horny side, she’s always been a shipper. This is an extreme version of established behavior.
Nope, that’s just her, there’s no outside dad influence to blame.
Looks like all this focusing on Ethan and Danny getting together for her amusement is her being being passive aggressive with Sal. The first thing she did after Sal told her was go to Ethan and try to get him to say something bad about Sal. Now she’s latched on to the “threesome” idea to justify her ex hooking up with another guys she’s had feeling for to avoid thinking of Sal and Danny as a real couple.
I don’t think that’s what she’s doing. I don’t that’s the motive, at least
No conciously atleast but she is severely sleep deprived right now.
And just like that this instantly becomes palatable and at least an order of magnitude more entertaining.
Ah, Danny caught the turbohorny
Looks like Amber is Patient Zero.
Don’t forget that.
Woops nevermind looks like Joe or Joe’s Dad might be the OG Fap Fairy.
Well, Amber says she made herself, so at this point, inconclusive.
Hey, it’s really early and I’m not even 50% awake, so genuinely asking: Am I doing it wrong that I’m not seing anything when I hover my mouse pointer over Don’t forget that?
Cheers.
Oh, you’re doing it right.
I just used the acronym tag because the true underline tag isn’t supported here.
From objectifying people to suggesting Ethan is “owed” a sexual relationship by anyone, for any reason
And this is setting aside that Ethan made it very clear he hates Danny and wants nothing to do with him
Amber’s making a strong case for being named grossest character in the comic
I appreciate this to an extent because it’s nice to see equality in grossness.
I blame Joedad’s influence on his new daughter.
Yo! I haven’t even thought of THAT factor!
*recalculating*
I would point out that she and Faz are siblings.
Faz is rubbing off on her?
I would avoid wording it like that.
This isn’t Shortpacked!, and even that version of Faz burned the pillow when he found out they’re related.
This Faz put Amber off limits from the start; she gets “act out the part of the pesky little brother” Faz instead.
No Folger’s Christmas commercial energy here.
Folger’s instant coffee?
I don’t get it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMwFWDIFVCU
This is an actual Folger’s commercial which aired on American broadcast television. Judge the vibes for yourself.
It’s a Christmas staple, along with making fun of Wonderful Christmastime and The Christmas Shoes.
https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1206615168404393984
Not that I don’t enjoy a nostalgic, mildly fucked up commercial like this and the Slim Jim ones, but did he just say that he couldn’t get “real” coffee in WEST AFRICA?!?! 🤨
That’s where like HALF of all coffee beans come from!!!
I honestly doubt this is due to Joe’s dad being a bad influence.
Amber’s always been a shipper and not the most socially well-adjusted person. It doesn’t help that her best friends were both people who’d pretty much just enable her (Ethan by not putting his foot down, Mike by intentionally goading her into it).
I feel like blaming this on [insert person] is just trying to absolve her from any responsibility for acting like a shitty person.
Bold of you to assume Amber would even listen to anything Joedad says.
I figure she’s reduced her social connections to 2D cutouts. They’re not exactly real people to her, if that makes sense. Like celebrities. And in her current state of mind, that means she can’t properly empathise with them. Maybe she’s trying, but she’s all askew. Treats them like fictional characters. Which, as we all know, they definitely are not.
Exhibit A: Ghost Mike, who is a literal 2D cutout of Mike. He doesn’t even have shadows!
I feel like grossness is relative, she’s certainly not her father but she is not innocent either.
I’ll give her a solid 7/10
Maybe she’s trying to cure her self — by grossing herself out to the point to which she downright vomits out all her melancholy.
I sure HOPE it’s just her lack of sleep that’s making her do this though.
Like I said, she’s been living with Joe’s family. It’s entirely possible they’re influencing her social norms.
i still holding out hope that she’s sabotaging herself out of self-loathing / guilt.
That is my hope too.
I am weirdly torn between still feeling really, really bad for her and being super grossed out by her.
Either way she needs Therapy like yesterday.
Apparently Amber already is in therapy. She said as much in her first appearance this arc. It was just sprinkled in a bit of dialogue for a passing joke and it has never been shown so it’s pretty hard to retain as credible but it is possibly happening.
Faz still exists, though we haven’t seen him in a while.
Iirc last we saw Faz he was learning not to be as gross
*plays Weird Al’s “Eat It” on the hacked Muzak*
DMs?
Not Doc Martens, I take it.
Direct messages
In which case: I don’t understand what Sal is saying.
“Slide into dms” is slang for “send someone a message in the hopes of hooking up”
You might know them better as PMs. Private messages. On a website, this means sending others a message that is not posted publicly where everyone could see it, whether that be a social media website, a forum, etc.
Ah, the tech company urge to call something that already has a well established term something different for no good reason.
I feel like Willis is going to have to start a full 4th webcomic if he ever wants to write about the complex relational dynamics of a polycule.
Isn’t there a;ready canonically one in this webcomic? Mandy/Grace/Sierra?
He could just do a storyline about them.
I’d love this, but they seem (relatively) happy and drama free, why hurt those poor, sweet babies?
Imagine he does like a week or two of them being well adjusted and not having any drama
Not in MY formerly christian comic
People would whine that it wasn’t realistic or something, because the only possible source of entertainment is horribly overwrought interpersonal melodrama. Not MY opinion, mind you, but that’d be the complaint.
I mean it would be pretty weird for that specific storyline to be totally healthy and mature when literally no other storyline in the entire comic has been
That’s a good thing. Nobody would know how to react. We’d have to completely upturn the comments-section response formula for a bit.
Eh, we’ve Grace and Mandy scrap a bit. They clearly like each other a lot, and I’m rooting for them to turn out well considering how badly things went for them in the old comic, but they’re not a perfectly drama free couple.
Not entirely sure what the dynamic becomes once Sierra gets involved.
I’d love a storyline focused on the side characters
Yeah! The could offer help to the mains, like polyamorous wonder pets!!!
Honestly I’m more imagining them doing their own thing while the main plots drama goes on in the background
So Walking With Dina except even less tied to the main plot?
Specifically thinking about the section with the LGBT+ support meeting, in which Dina is mostly a camera, the bits with Toedad and Becky are pretty main plot significant.
Perhaps a short patreon side story? Or a extra in the books.
I mean, the last one we did saw a TON of expansion on Dina’s character and she catapulted into the core cast pretty quick. Before that, she was around but she didn’t pop up near as often and wasn’t as focused on.
That is sort of the thing with doing a side-character focused episode. Once you’re done you tend to want them to be more than a side character, especially in an ensemble cast that can afford to grow
According to the It’s Walky! commentary, after being killed in the final battle against the JFO Mandy, Grace and Sierra were eventually brought back using the Martian Resurrection Chamber and now run a cute little cafe.
I kind of wish we got to see that as a Shortpacked! april fools strip. It sounded charming. Grace and Mandy deserve a happy ending, Sierra is great, and Guns would also be there.
I’d read it.
(This comment goes on a bit of a tangent, warning in advance. Just ignore it if you want to!)
Eh. Not every poly relationship is as complicated as some people (mostly monogamous people, from what I’ve seen) insist. It’s a little harder if not everyone is dating each other, but if you have, say, a triad of people all with each other? Not any more difficult than a couple IMO.
Of course, this is just in my experience – I know some poly relationships aren’t easy, especially if any of the people involved are particularly dramatic LOL. I’m just always confused how people take if as a given you can pretty easily have more than one BFF, but make it romantic and suddenly it’s supposedly SUPER COMPLEX. (Often with a side of “nothing against those weirdos, of course, but I just couldn’t be poly, it’s not for me”, whiiich starts to sound a whole lot like how some people talk about being queer. I know that’s not how every monogamous person talks about polyamory, but I’ve definitely noticed some similarities. But maybe that’s just me being extra cynical as someone both queer and poly, haha.)
But yeah tangent aside I’d always be down for more poly representation. 😀
” I’m just always confused how people take if as a given you can pretty easily have more than one BFF …”
Wait, hold up. That doesn’t even make any sense. You can’t have more than one BFF. It’s right there in the name: “Best Friend Forever.” There can’t be multiple bests, that goes against the meaning of the word. By definition, only one friend can be best, and everyone else has to settle for some lesser friend position.
The forever part also doesn’t make any sense, now that I think about it. Neither of you are going to last that long.
OH uh… I guess I’ve always been poly in terms of best friends too haha?
What other relationship conventions am I getting so wrong OMG
There’s also a level on which romantic relationships already tend to be more difficult to manage than even close friendships.
I suspect that poly might be for me in many ways, but I’m barely capable of managing one romance.
I… disagree that they’re so different by default. But maybe that’s just me and how I approach my relationships?
I will say it helps a LOT with logistics if everyone in your polycule is also with each other, though. There have definitely been some poly situations I’ve heard of where even I’m like NOPE TOO COMPLEX
Still no confirmation re. the hand not being in her pants. . .
Kinda hoping she hasn’t had her hand in her pants this whole conversation, though with how creepy Amber’s been lately I wouldn’t be surprised.
Joe is no longer the 2nd most sexist member of his family.
Look, Sal, you sat at the horny table. These are your consequences.
Is that Danny’s excuse too?
Look at the last panel. Danny is CONTRIBUTING to this being the horny table.
Sal knows her way around the horny table. She just consumes responsibly.
Eh, semi-responsibly.
Um. Amber, Sal is a lot less tolerant when it comes to disrespectful behaviour. This is a really bad idea.
Also, I’d love to see Sal go check on ethan. Not expecting it to happen. But still, I’d love to. That would be interesting.
No one is owed a threesome!
Is Amber being made this awful to try and make Joyce looks better in comparison? Wouldn’t work anyway, December has given me enough seasonal depression to be bitter enough at BOTH > _ >
I don’t think Amber’s serious about Ethan being OWED anything.
I mean, she means it in the sense that she thinks it’s a great angle to manipulate her friend to do what she wants, because she might be able to get him to believe that bullshit, to the point that it motivates him do do what she wants. You know, like manipulation. She’s being manipulative. Doesn’t really matter if she believes what she’s saying, or not. It’s a goal-oriented form of social aggression.
Can I lay it on any thicker, or are we good?
Okay, if this is how Amber has been acting since Mike’s death I wouldn’t really blame Ethan for cutting ties.
damn daniel okay
Two things. a} Amber desperately needs some therapy. Intensive. Possibly time in a good hospital. b} I wish Sal realized she’s become the voice of sanity in this group. Or at least, relative sanity. [She does know that she’s hot, right?]
Me and Danny. Same wavelength these days. I even had a hat and a Ukulele in college! Yeah I was that dick!
You’d also eat food off the horny table? 😛
I’d eat food off of most tables but ESPECIALLY horny tables.
this is weirdly untense tension.
I guess the like, moving average of tension between Sal and the AmberAlgamation is still PRETTY FUKEN HIGH so while this would be pretty serious tension between Regular people, it’s not much of a blip on their interpersonal landscape
OK AMBER THAT’S ENOUGH i passed out last night so I didn’t get to comment TwT But holy shit, while it’s funny in a weird way, I’m glad Sal stopped this on its tracks. And I actually think she nailed the actual motivation on this.
Like, yes Amber is a horny mess who gets off to slash daydreams of people who’re actually in her life; but also… It’s possible she believes that while she doesn’t have a way to cheer Ethan up, Danny could. If they were talking enough to bone, at least. Because everything about those two including the way Ethan talks about him are very much fanfic tropes, and it’d be even more if there was some addition of Healing Cock.
Lots of ACKSHUALLY in that comment which shows I’m tired as hell but yeah.
Forever sad that there won’t be a Sal/Danny/Amber OT3 thoYou passed out last night?
Well, nice to know you’re OK!
Yeah, this. I think this might be some weird manifestation of Amber’s guilt toward how Ethan ended up. :C
Hello yes I would like to suspend Amber’s shipper credentials for code violations and operating a ship without a permit or clearance.
Eh, people respect Pirates more than Privateers anyways
Depends on the flag you fly
It’s cool to try to live outside the control of colonial empires, and people who took a letter of mark are sellouts who deserved to get smashed like a bowl of eggs actually
The only difference between a pirate and a privateer is whether the ruler said it was OK today.
Francis Drake doesn’t really care who he’s plundering — knight him, write that letter of marque, and set him on the Spanish Armada!
(Plus, Queen Elizabeth gets a layer of plausible deniability: whoops, sorry Spain, Drake will be Drake! I’ll give him such a stern talking-to when he gets back to England and shares all that wealth with me.)
A letter of marque also makes a difference to what happens if you get caught. Privateers are supposed to follow laws of war, so they’re to be treated as POWs, whereas pirates are hanged immediately. (I don’t know whether privateers typically followed those rules. But, if you get captured, you definitely want to have your permission slip ready.)
Sometimes pirates would get fake letters of marque, just like they flew fake flags, so there was a whole court system about it. (There were quirks here, too – like maybe you thought you were an Irish privateer under James II, but the English court doesn’t recognize James II’s rebellion, so you get hanged as a pirate.)
ANYWAY it is interesting, and it’s probably for the best that we don’t do it anymore.
Let it be known — Amber’s letter of marque has been revoked; she is at war with the world.
Agreed
On the subject of pilates, the color of the flag was VERY important. In the 1600s, privateers flew red flags and those that eventually turned pirate continued the practice which eventually just became a pirate thing. The black flag was adopted by pirates due to it being used to signal a plague ship and thus not one to be messed with. The colors were given meaning with black indicated that those who did not fight would live (the pirates taking valuables and/or prisoners) and was meant to intimidate their target to surrender without a fight while red meant no quarter would be given (no survivors). These flags were also not meant to fly all the time with pirates flying “friendly colors” (the flag of some nation) until they were close to a target.
Any pirate flag was called a Jolly Roger regardless of design or lack thereof. In fact, no design was the standard for a long time and what most still used even when some started adding embellishments. Embellishments would usually be in white, but yellow or red were also used. The imbelishmnts were usually various symbols of death, violence, and the devil, but symbols of time, lacking shame, or the captain could be used and some had initials (either alone or with other things) to represent the captains initials (either name or alias) or their enemies. Very VERY few of the embellished flags survived meaning the examples we know of are mostly due to eyewitness accounts that were usually vague. Two skull and crossbone flags have survived (none from the golden age of piracy), one red with realistic bones sitting at an angle and the other is black and a little more realistic than the one usually see, A third is black and cartoonish, but might be fake.
It’s comments like this and Leorale’s above that make me glad I kept reading down the comment section 🙂
I’d sign that ticket.
You heard her Amber drop it and stop trying to get Danny to Dan this up, out of all the new pairs this is one I want to see last the most.
Clearly Sal doesn’t read the same fanfics as Amber
Amber has a continuous news ticker of original horny fanfiction scrolling across her field of vision at all times.
Oh my god, please bring back preachy atheist Joyce, I would like to be NOWHERE near this Amber scene
A finger on the monkey’s paw curls…
Joyce shows up in the middle of this conversation . . .
And she starts agreeing with Amber…
It kind of makes sense.
Danny’s giving up on being queer to be with a girl. Must be the fear of hell.
Willis would never do this, because he wouldn’t write a storyline where Joyce fucking gets murdered.
That does make me wonder how Joyce feels about Sinful Horniness nowadays.
She ogled Joe’s absolute dump truck ass that one time but she’ll write President Doris as an amoral lust machine since Captain Julia Grey is pure.
I assume she feels a lot of things, many of which are contradictory
I wonder how Becky would react if Joyce got over her hangup about sexual stuff before she did
okay now see THAT would be a funny thing for that storyline to come around to. I would fucking DIE to see the look on Becky’s face lmao
I still prefer atheist Joyce over fundie Christian Joyce, though the huge arguments in the comments every time she appears are getting really old.
Dumbing of Age is a soap opera. Everyone appears in each book. Something one page, or more pages. Some times, everyone at one page.
Ethan didn’t appear at all in the last book.
On the one hand, Amber is a nightmare, on the other hand, Sal and Danny in the same panel gives me life.
damn amber is really shitty here, both in attitude and in strategy.
like if you’re gonna go full asshat and try to hook up ethan and danny you gotta at least be smart enough about it to not get into a mexican standoff with your athletic equal.
I like this throuple
More so as besties but take it or leave it
She didn’t say she wasn’t open to fourples…
Daniel.
Let’s be honest: Amber in panel 4 is not sincerely/in good faith arguing “you owe him for (X)”, but “I’ll say anything if it might get you all to Perform a Sex for my voyeuristic entertainment.”
Sal and Danny are a couple of very wise person. Amber has to resolve her own problems alone, not dragging into it others for make they do all the work. But I’m having a doubt. Has Sal understood that Amber is talking about Danny AND Ethan?
She’s understanding that Amber’s intruding on her relationship and she’s having none of it.
Rabisch’s grav looks like a sculpture of your grav
Btw, good call yesterday. Now, give me the lotto numbers, zeetradamus.
… these two are gonna shatter each others’ pelvises when they finally do it.
Death by Snu-Snu!
(But which two?)
I would launder money for that slipshine
I ain’t gonna lie, Danny being sexually forward lately has been doing things to me.
Confident Danny is what actually makes men sexy, but there’s no way for men to understand that if they start out unconfident because they think their looks or whatever are important. If the way you look comes off as fucking intentionally put-together, that’s all that really matters for men. Even if you think you’re fuck-ugly. The reality is, girls have broader aesthetic tastes on average than men, and if you have a weird face, a huge number of girls still think that face is hotter than Brad Pitt, because he’s conventionally sexy and that’s generic and boring and they’re bored of looking at him.
Amber’s right hand is still a no-show.
At this point I’ve given up on believing that its not in her pants. The only doubt I have is that Mind Mike could be telling her to keep that hand hidden specifically to mess with Danny.
I do actually wonder if Amber’s trying to get her main relationships in the comic (Danny, Ethan, and Sal) together in the hopes of isolating herself.
Not like “oh Amber has secret hero reasons for verbally jilling off” but more like it’s the endpoint.
But they already don’t hang out with her.
Sal does at roller derby. Danny doesn’t actively seek her out but never resented her company, and Ethan will come around eventually.
I think it’s more setting up a scenario where the people she has that intimate and visceral history with are Over There, and she is not.
I think at Roller Derby, that’s Amazi Girl, not Amber.
Well yes, but Amber’s still there.
Danny, just eat off Sal’s ass and skip the intervening step. I’m fairly confident Sal will like it better too. 😉
Here’s a thought-what if this is a new alter?
Yeah, I’m sure Amber would love for you to think that. She’d love to think that, herself. If someone were to suggest it to her, she’d probably decide it’s true, and then decide that it’s her own idea.
Louder, Danny. So that they both hear it clearly.
I’m done trying not to be harsh on amber, i don’t even care if this is a depression fueled self sabotage, it’s also insane levels of sexual harassment. You can’t reason out sexual harassment with “oh i was going through such and such” “oh i didn’t realize that recontextualizes things let’s talk it out bro”, this is just a gross objectification and infringement on her friends. And i hate when people project but yeah, “friends” reducing friends to sexual objects hits close to home. Just. Fuck you Amber.
If this turns out to be like, the mike alter taking over I’m going to be annoyed, but i doubt willis will go there.
Sal is hot. Sal is good. I like sal here. I want Sal/Danny time.
I mean, be harsh, yeah.
She’s doing something wrong, she’s doing something viscerally hateful to me as a person, I do feel genuinely disgusted with her in the moment.
Is she these moments, though? I hate her right now, I hate that she thinks things that real people that I hate do, but even those people I hate are more than those moments even if those moments are enough for me to hate them without any real care to the contrary.
We are ALL our moments.
As usual, Sal is cutting right to the heart of it.
In which Danny joins Amber in Horny Jail
Amber, I want to see your other hand.
I’m just going to say it: this whole deal is like a million times grosser than anything Joe has ever done
The list comes close but it was never meant to be public and if I recall correctly didn’t use real names
It was public in the sense that he handed it to anyone who’d ask. He didn’t just numerically rate the women around him, he also put in little notes and commentary on how to score.
Rachel revealed she wasn’t the one who leaked it, because she would never leak a glossary of women on campus made by some creepy sex hound a few days after a predator was made into a pin cushion.
Yeah, but Joe is a boy doing naughty heterosexual casual sex. That carries the baggage of systemic oppression through authoritative power structures, so it’s automatically gross and wrong to the max, because it represents that thing we all already don’t like. That means he’s a monster who is part of the problem.
Amber is our little mentally ill bean, and she needs 100% all of our support all the time, and we must never criticize anything she does! And this is tangentially queer, and tangentially progressive in nature, and will make gay shit happen, so it has to be not so bad, or else you’re homophobic and polyphobic, and you just don’t like it because you’re a regressive troll.
She must be thoroughly woobified at all times, and given the biggest benefit of the doubt because we have decided that any character in a comic who has poor social skills, is autistic-coded, so it isn’t their fault, and it makes it normal for to act like them making utterly destructive choices and be borderline abusive, because everybody knows autistic people are practically children and we just can’t expect them to take responsibility for their actions, and hold them to any kind of scrutiny because they’re oh so wooby and disadvantaged…
Except there is a literal autistic character in the comic, and while her social skills are constantly the butt of the characters joke in-universe, she is practically one of the most socially adept characters in the comic, and is theliteral voice of reason. Amber is definitely mentally ill. She also, when she is sick, engages in personal and inter-personal behaviors so broadly destructive related to her poor impulse control, related to her physical emotions, that are all her responsibility not to perform, to a completely reasonable degree – all while using her general fear of actual introspection to mislead herself about her own intentions. She is trying to blow up Danny and Sal’s relationship, because she doesn’t like the way it feels for her. That is what she is trying to do, deep down. She’s just convinced herself, conveniently, that she is blind to that, because she doesn’t want it to be true, and so she’s substituting her extreme horniness as a surrogate explanation for her behavior, to both herself and others, so she can do the thing she wants to do, without actually believing she is doing it, because she wants to do it for a reason that feels like she didn’t have control of, such as her horniness, because she is too hideously narcissistic to accept that she wants to do a bad thing which she knows is wrong, to correct her bad feeling related to Danny and Sal dating, but also too full of herself to “actually do a bad thing, like I’m not supposed to, like I always do, because I’m garbage,” so she needs to find an alternative reason to do the bad thing, that isn’t “about” the bad thing, so her poor impulse control still gets to do exactly what it wants, she gets exactly what she wants, and she doesn’t feel responsible for the outcome, yet the thing that made her feel bad no longer exists, so everything is great for Amber.
Amber is partially blind to this, yeah. It’s very difficult to unpack 20 years of narcissistic abuse when it’s so deep that it’s the literal foundation of your personality. But Bunivasal is right: this is way way way way way way way way WAY grosser and more directly abusive than anything Joe has every done, and it’s not even close. If you’re reading this, and you just really really really feel the need to defend her behavior, because she’s the main character or the character you like, or whatever, I really implore you to think of it out of context. Like, literally, if Joe were doing this right now, would you be setting alight the pyre? What if, like, Asher was doing it? Or another character we already do not like, and are naturally suspicious of?
Sorry about the poor formatting and run-ons, but I’m so not used to BBcode anymore, and I also just didn’t want to properly edit this month. The reality is, I lived the Amber x Ethan co-dependent friendship for over a decade. Amber either gets better, or doesn’t. Let me tell you, if it doesn’t seem like it, Ethan is totally in the right, here, and if you don’t get that, you need to see Amber’s life-long behavioral patterns from his perspective. She can easily repair their friendship right now, but it would involve her doing some friend work to actually help Ethan with his problems, which she is terminally unwilling to do, and it would involve her actually coping with her bad feelings, whether constructively, or just, at all, instead of trying to rope Ethan into hijinks to change the source of those feelings for her, so she can have additional plausible deniability that she didn’t just do the bad thing she wanted to do, because she could do it, and then use her poor impulse control and strong feelings related to her trauma as an excuse.
Let me tell you, I wish to death that I was still friends with my Amber. I still love her. But I also know damn well, the over-under on people like Amber in the real world is that they will not successfully improve or change, even with immense support around them, and if they are too destructive to your own life or your own health because of that fact, you will get much healthier when they discard you for having the audacity to put up basic boundaries. Ethan is huge in the right, here. Amber has treated him like shit. Amber treats everyone like shit, because she treats herself like shit, because she was taught to treat herself like shit by a person who treated her like shit because he thought she was shit. But the only think Amber knows with certainty, is that literally nobody else will look out for number one, and because her moral spectrum is fucking children’s comic books, her need for basic self-advocacy guarantees she will be needy, which means she will have to take help from people, which means she is taking what she has no right to possess from them, which means she is inherently a bad evil villain who can only take from people, and that’s an innate part of what she is, and she can’t change that because people can’t change because everything is black and white. The problem is, since being better seems impossible, because her self-esteem is zero, this belief about herself is more comforting and freeing a conceit, than a problem, since it’s not her fault and she can’t change it, so people have to accept it, or abandon her like she deserves. She will act terribly to anyone who will put up with her, and then take their eventual withdrawal as a fated abandonment which was inevitable because of how uniquely bad they are, and then resent being alone and find somebody else who will put up with their abuse, because the alternative is accepting that they are literally in control of, and responsible for, their own actions.
THANK YOU SAL FOR SAVINH DANNY THERE
God Amber was creepy as all hell
oh boy i cant wait to see the comment section’s prescient and totally-supportive thoughts on polyamory y a y y y
There’s polyamory, and then there’s… creepy shit like this just because it’ll allow hawt mlm action. Don’t get it twisted.
Amber’s already being weirdly gross with her IRL Yaoi Fangirl shipping, but if Sal isn’t cool with non-monogamy, that’s the end of the discussion.
SRC: actually polyamorous and skeeved out at potentially toxic situations such as this one.
yeah, this is someone wanting a live-action Slipshine for her benefit.
There’s maybe one more webcomic other than this whose comments section I’d expect to be more generally supportive of polygamy than this one, like this is one of the most thoroughly and intentionally progressive strips and communities out there?
Typically I just drop a one-liner and forget to check comments, but… I’m just… genuinely annoyed that the pushback against Amber’s idea here is being misconstrued(?) as hating on polyamory, where the majority of us (OK, me and at least one other person) are taking issue with the toxicity on display here.
Note that the Sierra/Mandy/Grace polycule has been much more positively received.
If all involved parties are cool with a polyamorous relationship, that’s perfectly fine.
If someone is pressuring someone else into a polyamorous relationship when they’re clearly not cool with it, that’s not fine at all.
as much as I love polyamory and thruples, i don’t think this one would be healthy or interesting right now. I’ll ship a polycule involving Becky, Joyce, Dorothy, and Dina, but uh yeah no Ethan, Danny, and Sal just aren’t a good fit imo. I used to want Danny and Ethan to be together too, but it’s clear that won’t work, especially right now, anymore than Joyce would be able to have a healthy relationship with . . . anyone? oof