True, its unlikely to makes things worse but I cant imagine sitting down and playing a song while some goon is monstering my gf. Which is why I have a criminal conviction so maybe she has a point.
I would also point out that Sal is the one monstering here? Like Asher isn’t helping deescalate but he’s not the one talking about rearranging people’s faces either.
Seriously, is someone watering down the boozeohol to stretch it as the bottle runs out? Lucy’s been drinking something, but she doesn’t have the bubbles everyone else does.
She’s also been shown drinking more than anyone else and while admittedly that might not be a great indicator since some characters are drunk seemingly from just holding the cup like Sarah, we have seen Lucy take a least four sips. Everyone has seemed buzzed after one or two. She’s either been smartly nursing that first drink or she holds her booze well. Sweet, kind, god fearing Lucy is somehow the most experienced drinker here.
Or genetically fortunate. I barely touched alchohol when I was younger but went out drinking (as a culinary student) with some other culinary students and some nursing students. It ended up beong an unofficial drinking contest and I was left the last one standing and vaguely bemused. At a later point I did the math and realized I was drinking pints to their bottles so thank you, Irish ancestors, I guess??
Yeah! And honestly, I think she’d make a good mediator. Either everyone cringes as Danny’s ukulele skills, gets distracted, enjoys it, or even sings along! Either way it’s a disruption from the fighting. Good way to draw Sal’s attention away from Asher to her boyfriend.
She’d be good at it, but she’ll have to learn that sometimes you have to do what has to be done and not everybody’s going to be completely happy with the outcome.
This is very funny to me because when I get tipsy I become a problem-solver. I’m the one who wants to babysit people so they stay safe and don’t get sick. I hand out water. I come up with goofy solutions to conflicts.
It’s a very weird reaction to being tipsy. I don’t think I’ve seen it portrayed in media before.
You can share a room and not want to know anything about someone. I just remember my freshman roomate having the biography of Richard Nixon on his end table and belonging to the Young Republicans or something like that. I just remember coming home one day and him being gone. Had to ask at the front desk to find out that he moved out.
It worked for me, I had an open double to myself.Though frankly I needed to be around more people then. A bunch of bad stuff happened in my life at that time.
Considering she dated Sal’s brother, roomed with her childhood-frenemy, probably knows some of her history with Asher via other group, met her racist mother, and has better social awareness than most of the cast, I’d say well enough considering their limited interaction
Sure, although i can imagine given walky’s…emotional constipation(?) he might not really get too much into their past and stuff (considering he wasn’t necessarily as ‘aware’ of his parents being bad or just more in denial til just recently versus him considering himself that close to his sister)
Lucy this entire party is an emergency, if a dude playing the ukulele is needed to save the party then the party should just be called for rain lololol
What song will Danny play to heroically save the evening y’all think?
Something that Sal likes to sing along with, and has good feelings about. Something to remind her 1) someone loves her 2) Danny is actually more sexy than this mob dude 3) she knows how to be happy and have fun.
I never understand how people sort by two characters. I get that you can look up one character’s tags, but two? Are you doing it manually by looking through all of one person’s appearances? Surely not.
When you look up their tag, the web address includes their name at the end and ends with a forward slash.
If you want to look up more than one person, you add a plus sign and the other character’s name (no spaces of course, since it’s a web address) before the slash (so, for example, it would end in “lucy+danny/“)
If you do 3 people (or more, I assume, as I’ve only searched for 3 at most), you would add another plus sign and the 3rd character’s name (“lucy+danny+sal/“).
… her words are negative but her face is awfully close so i think itd be funny if she tried something really break-upable. i don’t necessarily think it’d be realistic or likely i just think it’d be funny. terrible for danny. terrible for ethan if asher doesnt shut it down. but funny. to me.
Take it from an ex-uke player…unless the players name is Paul McCartney (or the late quartet of: Iz, George Harrison, George Formby and Don Ho), it’s usually not advisable to ask someone to play the ukulele in public. It can get scary pretty quickly…
Feel like I’m missing / forgetting conrext with the Sal/Asher interactions. Did Sal ever betray anybodys trust? I’m not getting Ashers rebuttals about projecting betrayal or where he got the idea that Sal was claiming to be feeling forgiving. Is he meant to just be drunkenly self projecting his own issues?
It doesn’t have to be time skip related. We know a lot of their baggage and Sal claimed their past was water under the bridge but she’s never actually trusted him. They could just be calling back to this multi strip interaction.
Except look at how that series of strips ended, with Sal and Asher kinda just accepting that the past is the past and they’re probably not the same people that they were five years ago.
And then the kidnapping happens, that we know Asher had some complicity in, even if none of the other characters in the comic are (at least, visibly).
Then the time skip. And after the time skip, it feels like Sal’s glaring daggers at Asher at every opportunity.
I think something happened in that time skip. Maybe Sal found out about it, maybe something else, it wouldn’t exactly shock me if Sal and Asher fucked at some point on a whim or something (panel 5 is leveling a ton of subtext towards *that* end). Something changed Sal’s view of Asher from “he was a backstabbing jackass as a kid but maybe he’s different now” to “he’s still a backstabbing jackass”…
I could buy that actually. She once told Danny she was a fuck buddy but we don’t actually know any other buddies she could be fucking although maybe that would apply to Jason if you’re generous although I personally saw that as the shameful secret.
In that latter strip, I think she was mostly talking about how he used her for his own crime back in the day, but when she wanted his help he wouldn’t help her, resulting in her “having to” take matters into her own hands.
Also it could just be a general statement regarding how clearly he didn’t ACTUALLY tell Jennifer the WHOLE truth (“My dad’s powerful too” makes it sound like Asher danced around the truth long enough she filled in her own blanks and he didn’t correct her). If you really intended to do right by someone, hiding the fact that you come from a CRIME FAMILY and that you took part, at least obliquely, in the ACTUAL VIOLENT CRIMES is a pretty clear betrayal of their trust. That said, what we’ve seen of Jennifer shows she only half listens at any given moment and just assumes the blanks don’t matter (see: “that’s basically what she told me” re: Sarah), so it’s also very possible that he DID tell Jennifer the truth and she just ignored/missed that part and only heard “my dad is a really powerful *STATIC NOISES* and it was hard to get out from under his shadow with all the *MORES STATIC* that he tried to use to get me to stay.”
If Sal IS just clocking Asher’s noodling Ethan as him cheating, I just can’t wait for her to tell Jennifer only to be told “no, there’s no way he’s doing that, this must be some weird power-play you’re making.”
Or Sal could be mad that Asher is here with Ethan when he was with Jennifer.
It’s doubtful that she knows the full context of their relationship and sees this as cheating.
Sal is surprisingly disapproving of people moving on quickly from one relationship to another, at least if we go by how she reacted when she first caught Walky and Amber together.
I doubt cheating is what she means, but it is a possibility that I haven’t seen anyone mention.
I think it makes sense that Sal might be sensitive about people moving on so quickly. In a previous strip with Danny, she indicated she had been a one-night stand, a fuckbuddy, a secret, but never a steady girlfriend. Inside her tough-girl exterior, she might still have a wound about that. And be defensive and ‘uncaring’ about it.
Asher called to police on Sal when they were robbing stores. He stole money from the Korean crime family he was associated with. Yeah, I’d say he’s betrayed trust.
The robbery, I believe. The comic seems to imply Asher genuinely tried to bury the hatchet and Sal is being weird suddenly, hence “oh you’re just trying to gratify yourself.” She’s accusing him of being a dirtbag despite his new leaf, and he’s accusing her of projecting.
Given Asher called the execution on Blaine, they’re both kinda right here.
Everyone here is a surprisingly emotional drunk. Where are the sleepy drunks that slowly withdraw into a corner to pass out at? How about the drunks that just stand around awkwardly out of self consciousness not realizing they were even drunk until the hangover? This party lacks representation!
I think this entire group was reprogrammed right out of being awkward-sloshed or sleepy-sloshed, when they got kidnapped and lost Mike. They’ve all still got some heavy shit going on.
Sand off all their rough edges, punish all misbehaviors to the fullest extent allowed by the United States legal system, recondition them all to speak like they’re trying to get a good grade in therapy. It’s for the good of the clan.
Scooting him a chair is such a funny detail. I mean, I approve of the dramatics of it, seems like the way to do what she’s trying to do, but the ukulele is like, one of the easiest instruments to play standing up. There’s not even a strap, usually.
As a veritable Orpheus aboard the Argus, his sweet, solemn, dulcimer tones shall pacify the impassioned hearts of his wayward fellows, spreading concord and goodwill throughout.
All I can think of is he’s referring to this conversation, during which Sal seemed to be trying to let go of her grudge. This was the last time they had much on-screen conversation, and Sal knows Asher and Jennifer aren’t a thing anymore, so I’m genuinely confused as to what has her so riled up. Hopefully we’ll find out soon.
1. Sal, it is totally projection. Also not a good idea to rile someone who’s grandpa can make you sleep with the fishes (or whatever Korean mafiosi do)
2. Lucy if this crazy idea works you’ll be my favorite character here.
3. Danny, play. This just might earn Ethan’s willingness to forgive
This may add to the “they fucked during the time skip” theory that’s starting up, but if they did while he was with Jennifer then that is disloyal. We don’t have a time frame for when Asher and Jennifer started dating.
Of course he could also just be talking about their relationship as friends. Her being disloyal to him and not really forgiving. Projecting her mistakes on him after all she did make the choice to rob that convenience store regardless of Asher snitching on her. The outcome was a result of her actions, not his.
“Her being disloyal to him and not really forgiving” It’s Asher who was disloyal to Sal, not the other way around.
What she is criticising Asher for is not something she did herself, so there isn’t really any projection, there. She chose to rob that store, but she isn’t calling him a robber, and he is partially responsible of the outcome as he is the one who called the police on her. Not that it makes what she did better, but she is not saying it’s his fault she robbed a store.
She is calling out the snitching and nothing else and she is right to do so.
it’s not a Western saloon brawl unless the piano man plays a jaunty tune on his slightly out-of-tune instrument. This is going to be the modern version of that.
This is awesome; it’s just like that scene in Casablanca where the German officers are pissing everybody off by singing a German patriotic song and there’s nothing anybody can do about it, but then Victor commands the band to play La Marseillaise and everybody else in the whole bar sings along and shouts VIVE LA FRANCE and drowns them out.
Asher is a snitch, though apparently nobody wants to kick his ass that badly for something he did when he was thirteen. Sal is quite right not to trust him anyway. “Not a mobster anymore” my ass.
Hang on, that second link was supposed to be to the strip where a dirty cop shoots Blaine in the hospital and Asher gets a text about it. Well, I think we all know how that went down.
But the point is none of the characters who spend their days with Asher know. We don’t know how much Asher knew about Blaine’s kidnapping-murdering-employing-a-bunch-of-pro-rapist-minions plans when he decided to help out, and we don’t know exactly how much he knows about the dirty cops that killed Blaine and probably killed the comatose Mike, but he knows something. And not only doesn’t he tell any of the characters who might be interested in knowing which cops to avoid, but he just doesn’t seem to be bothered at all by this extreme violence he’s witnessed/enabled/stood lookout for. I sure would like to see some strips from his perspective, but as it stands, boy am I glad Sal is around to warn people about him.
I think this is probably more to do with her involvement in his crimes at the age of thirteen, followed by him doing a runner when the convenience store hold-up went south. I mean, since that’s why she’s been mad at him literally every time they’ve shared panel space.
I’m assuming the ukulele will diffuse things a bit by reminding Sal that Danny is there and adorable, while being ear cringe enough to snap others to a bit of attention.
If it works just because he’s straight up good, well. Bravo Danny.
I like Lucy’s idea. The music will probably be able to calm Sal, maybe she will even start singing for everyone. It’s also impressive that Lucy seems to be the only one able to stay sober after drinking that extremely strong beverage, even Sal is out! I wonder what poison Jennifer made her drink for make her like this.
I get that this is a tense emotional character beat, but I’ve just noticed Asher’s stubble pattern, and if you have him grow that mustache-beard combo my man is going to look *incredibly* hot
This has already been guessed above, but nevertheless:
If a song is shown as being practiced several hundred strips earlier, it will go off be played when a distracting song is needed in the present.
Chekhov’s WAP
Frankly Asher has my respect for doing that — given how many mob connections Blaine had, the bastard would have probably went on to commit and get away with absolutely horrific crimes had he not been put to a cold hard stop, unfortunately.
Asher has privilege, whether or not he wants to, but at the very least he can refrain from using it for the sake of selfishness.
He probably would have flipped on the cops and the rest of the mob to the feds. Asher used his privilege to silence a probable snitch. please banish the idea that Asher and the mobbed up cops were executing Blaine, who was in custody, from doing more mob crimes or stop him from being abusive.
If Asher wanted to execute Blaine before he did any more violent crimes, he would have done it before he helped Blaine do a violent crime.
Blaine was blackmailing Asher because Asher stole from his grandfather. So Blaine not only could have snitched to the feds, he already threatened to snitch to the mob boss.
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I mean it can’t make things worse!
And I can think of someone she’s never betrayed – Marcie! 😀
True, its unlikely to makes things worse but I cant imagine sitting down and playing a song while some goon is monstering my gf. Which is why I have a criminal conviction so maybe she has a point.
Nothing has actually happened. So far, they’re just talking, and it’s by no means guaranteed that anybody’s face will be rearranged.
“Monstering” in this case is “making her out to be a monster”, like, verbally, so I think that’s what ktbear means.
Oh that’s what it means? Hm… still seems like that’s Sal?
I would also point out that Sal is the one monstering here? Like Asher isn’t helping deescalate but he’s not the one talking about rearranging people’s faces either.
It’s Sal, though, who is picking the fight.
There are far worse reasons to have a conviction. Respect.
Lucy’s all “Just pick up the ukelele! Only then can the healing begin.”
I totally agree with Sal here but also when did Lucy take control of this party?
Just now, in the absence of any more qualified persons
No kidding! Who is this girl.
Lucy doesn’t get drunk; she becomes a super hero.
Seriously, is someone watering down the boozeohol to stretch it as the bottle runs out? Lucy’s been drinking something, but she doesn’t have the bubbles everyone else does.
She may not be Drinking drinking. She might also have sprite her in cup.
She got an early cup before the Sprite arrived and explicitly refused to have it de-gasolined.
She’s also been shown drinking more than anyone else and while admittedly that might not be a great indicator since some characters are drunk seemingly from just holding the cup like Sarah, we have seen Lucy take a least four sips. Everyone has seemed buzzed after one or two. She’s either been smartly nursing that first drink or she holds her booze well. Sweet, kind, god fearing Lucy is somehow the most experienced drinker here.
Lucy hangs out with Jennifer. She can probably drink most of them under the table
Jennifer is a mage, constantly dispensing buffs. Joyce got whatever you want to call this, Lucy got +10 alcohol tolerance.
Or genetically fortunate. I barely touched alchohol when I was younger but went out drinking (as a culinary student) with some other culinary students and some nursing students. It ended up beong an unofficial drinking contest and I was left the last one standing and vaguely bemused. At a later point I did the math and realized I was drinking pints to their bottles so thank you, Irish ancestors, I guess??
Sadistic smile Lucy is a great deal hotter.
I thought she was I Know You Can Do This Lucy.
She’s encouraging Danny to play. Sadistic may be correct.
Why not both?
Well it appears she hasn’t partaken. Certainly not enough to get the boozebles.
Wolverine liver.
As I recall, Sarah actually invited her specifically for that purpose. This may have been a mistake.
This is actually her in her element. Recall that she loves to organize parties. It’s just, uhh, spotty on who bothers to show up.
Yeah! And honestly, I think she’d make a good mediator. Either everyone cringes as Danny’s ukulele skills, gets distracted, enjoys it, or even sings along! Either way it’s a disruption from the fighting. Good way to draw Sal’s attention away from Asher to her boyfriend.
She’s future RA, by own Ruth estimative.
She’d be good at it, but she’ll have to learn that sometimes you have to do what has to be done and not everybody’s going to be completely happy with the outcome.
It seems that Lucy has been preparing her entire life for this type of situation, wow, she really needs to socialize.
Sarah abdicated the throne and power dynamics abhor a vacuum
She has a gift. And every party benefits from music and a show.
Panel 2?
This is very funny to me because when I get tipsy I become a problem-solver. I’m the one who wants to babysit people so they stay safe and don’t get sick. I hand out water. I come up with goofy solutions to conflicts.
It’s a very weird reaction to being tipsy. I don’t think I’ve seen it portrayed in media before.
This will be the first time in history that a party’s mood has been improved by a white guy breaking out his instrument.
He hasn’t started playing yet, it’s possible that he just makes the mood even worse like it normally does
Star Trek fight music intensifies. Well, as much as you can intensify with a uke.
Thanks I have got to see if anyone has done that on YouTube
A common enemy isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
But, but, I haven’t rehearsed for *party* music!
I hope drunk Danny goes full on Jack Black on the Uke and blows everyones mind.
I DID NOT MEAN
*plunka plinka plunk*
TO BLOW YOUR MIND
*plonka plonka plink*
BUT THAT SHIT HAPPENS TO ME
ALL THE TIIIIIYIIIIIIIIIME
“Hey/won’t you play/Another
Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song
And make me feel at home…”
*plays “It’s a Jungle Out There” by Randy Newman on hacked muzak*
If you’re doing Randy Newman, mama told me not to come is right there.
“anyway here’s wonderwall”
Someone needs to intervene or they will either kiss or fight, or both.
It seems that Lucy anticipated this quite a bit, wow, she really wants friends at all costs
how much does lucy know about sal? I know asher is technically in her ‘other’ friend group with Jen
Unless she’s thinking similar thoughts to amber fanfic wise but just in a more towned down eway
toned*
Tuned.
(Get it? It’s a pun. Because she’s holding a ukulele. And you tune a ukulele. And tuned sounds like toned. Do you get it? Do you get my joke?)
I got it and I’m politely handing it back.
Yes, I got it. I marked it “return to sender” and gave it back to the USPS rep.
It is very likely that Jennifer mentioned something, I mean, they both shared a room.
You can share a room and not want to know anything about someone. I just remember my freshman roomate having the biography of Richard Nixon on his end table and belonging to the Young Republicans or something like that. I just remember coming home one day and him being gone. Had to ask at the front desk to find out that he moved out.
It worked for me, I had an open double to myself.Though frankly I needed to be around more people then. A bunch of bad stuff happened in my life at that time.
Considering she dated Sal’s brother, roomed with her childhood-frenemy, probably knows some of her history with Asher via other group, met her racist mother, and has better social awareness than most of the cast, I’d say well enough considering their limited interaction
Sure, although i can imagine given walky’s…emotional constipation(?) he might not really get too much into their past and stuff (considering he wasn’t necessarily as ‘aware’ of his parents being bad or just more in denial til just recently versus him considering himself that close to his sister)
is that a problem?
So anyway here’s wonderwall…
Hmmm…..I know it’s a quick talk, but it would be interesting to see everyone participate in a song.
Lucy is very confident in that last panel.
Ohhh Sal is angry drunk.
And after one drink! I assume her lightweight tendencies in the Walkyverse carry over here
We’ve also seen her angry sober. I’m not sure the drinking has all that much to do with it.
Lucy this entire party is an emergency, if a dude playing the ukulele is needed to save the party then the party should just be called for rain lololol
What song will Danny play to heroically save the evening y’all think?
Something that Sal likes to sing along with, and has good feelings about. Something to remind her 1) someone loves her 2) Danny is actually more sexy than this mob dude 3) she knows how to be happy and have fun.
I agree with all that. That would be the most gratifying thing to silence Asher.
Exactly, all of this. Lucy’s remembered who is together here and has made a pretty good call.
I was gonna say Mr Brightside but that might be a bad idea considering the context.
WAP.
That would indeed make a splash.
Hey Soul Sister by Train
That really would be just the ticket, wouldn’t it. How could Sal resist the siren call of Danny intoning that he’s so gangster, he’s so thug?
Why’s Danny going to try to save things? Maybe the fight just needs a soundtrack.
I immediately heard Kermit singing “Rainbow Connection”.
Same. It would be hard to be angry or fight while Kermit is singing
Desperaaaadooo…
Also pretty sure this is gonna fuel Amber’s fantasies even more.
“Anyone else hear that noise? It sounds like a faucet running.”
Amber can type very accurately and quickly with only one hand.
Well at least the party lasted five minutes before devolving in a drunken brawl, which given this crowd is likely far above par. Good on them.
How well does Lucy even know Danny?
Has she been stalking the two of them?
She’s met the both of them before, even suggested a double date. Think they even technically went on a double date… By her definition
Yep, they met!
I think she knows he’s Sal’s boyfriend and that he’s made being Ukelele guy his entire personality
For the purposes of Lucy’s plan, this is sufficient.
The Ukulele is not Danny’s entire personality.
He also has a hat.
And a doofus. An occasionally smug doofus.
Here are their previous interactions prior to this party.
I never understand how people sort by two characters. I get that you can look up one character’s tags, but two? Are you doing it manually by looking through all of one person’s appearances? Surely not.
When you look up their tag, the web address includes their name at the end and ends with a forward slash.
If you want to look up more than one person, you add a plus sign and the other character’s name (no spaces of course, since it’s a web address) before the slash (so, for example, it would end in “lucy+danny/“)
If you do 3 people (or more, I assume, as I’ve only searched for 3 at most), you would add another plus sign and the 3rd character’s name (“lucy+danny+sal/“).
I’m NEVER sure which sites support multiple tag search. Sometimes, the “+” works and sometimes just throws a “sorry, no results!”.
Definitely works for more than three. I think the hard limit is the max number of characters that have all appeared in one comic.
Awesome, thank you! (You probably won’t see this, I just remembered to come back and see if anyone answered.)
https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/danny+lucy/
Also shows a few strips where they both appeared but didn’t meaningfully interact.
… her words are negative but her face is awfully close so i think itd be funny if she tried something really break-upable. i don’t necessarily think it’d be realistic or likely i just think it’d be funny. terrible for danny. terrible for ethan if asher doesnt shut it down. but funny. to me.
Take it from an ex-uke player…unless the players name is Paul McCartney (or the late quartet of: Iz, George Harrison, George Formby and Don Ho), it’s usually not advisable to ask someone to play the ukulele in public. It can get scary pretty quickly…
That might help, though.
The only way to distract from a can of worms is to open a larger can of worms.
Or something like that.
How about a barrel of monkeys?
We sympathize with you about your past. And we’re so glad you’re in the healing process.
Danny escalates the situation on accident by playing “Ballroom Blitz”.
“Are you ready Sal?”, ‘Uh huh’.
“Asher?”, ‘Yeah’.
“Ethan?”, ‘Ok’.
“Alright people, lets go!”
(plink plink, plink plink plink)
Feel like I’m missing / forgetting conrext with the Sal/Asher interactions. Did Sal ever betray anybodys trust? I’m not getting Ashers rebuttals about projecting betrayal or where he got the idea that Sal was claiming to be feeling forgiving. Is he meant to just be drunkenly self projecting his own issues?
My guess is that its something that happened during the timeskip…
That makes sense, I forgot that there were still possible unknown plot threats from the skip.
It doesn’t have to be time skip related. We know a lot of their baggage and Sal claimed their past was water under the bridge but she’s never actually trusted him. They could just be calling back to this multi strip interaction.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/stomped/
Except look at how that series of strips ended, with Sal and Asher kinda just accepting that the past is the past and they’re probably not the same people that they were five years ago.
And then the kidnapping happens, that we know Asher had some complicity in, even if none of the other characters in the comic are (at least, visibly).
Then the time skip. And after the time skip, it feels like Sal’s glaring daggers at Asher at every opportunity.
I think something happened in that time skip. Maybe Sal found out about it, maybe something else, it wouldn’t exactly shock me if Sal and Asher fucked at some point on a whim or something (panel 5 is leveling a ton of subtext towards *that* end). Something changed Sal’s view of Asher from “he was a backstabbing jackass as a kid but maybe he’s different now” to “he’s still a backstabbing jackass”…
I could buy that actually. She once told Danny she was a fuck buddy but we don’t actually know any other buddies she could be fucking although maybe that would apply to Jason if you’re generous although I personally saw that as the shameful secret.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-13/01-bring-me-to-life-drawing/girlfriend-2/
It would also maybe add context to this weirdly passive aggressive or maybe just aggressive bike scene? What was this about?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/paperover/
I don’t know? Maybe not enough evidence but you could be onto something.
In that latter strip, I think she was mostly talking about how he used her for his own crime back in the day, but when she wanted his help he wouldn’t help her, resulting in her “having to” take matters into her own hands.
Also it could just be a general statement regarding how clearly he didn’t ACTUALLY tell Jennifer the WHOLE truth (“My dad’s powerful too” makes it sound like Asher danced around the truth long enough she filled in her own blanks and he didn’t correct her). If you really intended to do right by someone, hiding the fact that you come from a CRIME FAMILY and that you took part, at least obliquely, in the ACTUAL VIOLENT CRIMES is a pretty clear betrayal of their trust. That said, what we’ve seen of Jennifer shows she only half listens at any given moment and just assumes the blanks don’t matter (see: “that’s basically what she told me” re: Sarah), so it’s also very possible that he DID tell Jennifer the truth and she just ignored/missed that part and only heard “my dad is a really powerful *STATIC NOISES* and it was hard to get out from under his shadow with all the *MORES STATIC* that he tried to use to get me to stay.”
If Sal IS just clocking Asher’s noodling Ethan as him cheating, I just can’t wait for her to tell Jennifer only to be told “no, there’s no way he’s doing that, this must be some weird power-play you’re making.”
Or Sal could be mad that Asher is here with Ethan when he was with Jennifer.
It’s doubtful that she knows the full context of their relationship and sees this as cheating.
Sal is surprisingly disapproving of people moving on quickly from one relationship to another, at least if we go by how she reacted when she first caught Walky and Amber together.
I doubt cheating is what she means, but it is a possibility that I haven’t seen anyone mention.
I think it makes sense that Sal might be sensitive about people moving on so quickly. In a previous strip with Danny, she indicated she had been a one-night stand, a fuckbuddy, a secret, but never a steady girlfriend. Inside her tough-girl exterior, she might still have a wound about that. And be defensive and ‘uncaring’ about it.
Asher called to police on Sal when they were robbing stores. He stole money from the Korean crime family he was associated with. Yeah, I’d say he’s betrayed trust.
Amber and Sal get a pass for being a child but Asher doesn’t?
Who did Amber and Sal betray? And how much of a child was Asher when he betrayed his family?
Amber betrayed her father when she didn’t kill Sal during the robbery.
Sal betrayed Walky when she willingly moved to Tennessee and deliberately left him alone with their abusive parents for five years.
Calling it now– at some point tonight, Sal’s gonna accuse Asher of being an accomplice to Blaine’s kidnapping scheme.
oh that’s good. then he’ll say he had blaine killed. just as jennifer walks in.
Who did Sal betray? What’s he talking about?
The robbery, I believe. The comic seems to imply Asher genuinely tried to bury the hatchet and Sal is being weird suddenly, hence “oh you’re just trying to gratify yourself.” She’s accusing him of being a dirtbag despite his new leaf, and he’s accusing her of projecting.
Given Asher called the execution on Blaine, they’re both kinda right here.
Everyone here is a surprisingly emotional drunk. Where are the sleepy drunks that slowly withdraw into a corner to pass out at? How about the drunks that just stand around awkwardly out of self consciousness not realizing they were even drunk until the hangover? This party lacks representation!
Those folks don’t make for the best punch lines.
Sal has some great punch lines.
And two fists.
I think this entire group was reprogrammed right out of being awkward-sloshed or sleepy-sloshed, when they got kidnapped and lost Mike. They’ve all still got some heavy shit going on.
Why do so many commenters want to turn an interesting, dramatic, dynamic cast into the most boring group of people ever to be written about?
Sand off all their rough edges, punish all misbehaviors to the fullest extent allowed by the United States legal system, recondition them all to speak like they’re trying to get a good grade in therapy. It’s for the good of the clan.
Oh my gosh. Lucy is really good at this.
Danny’s time has come
Play me a song, you’re the piano man! er, ukelele man.
Scooting him a chair is such a funny detail. I mean, I approve of the dramatics of it, seems like the way to do what she’s trying to do, but the ukulele is like, one of the easiest instruments to play standing up. There’s not even a strap, usually.
Lucy. Problem solver*
*does not work for her own problems
Genies can’t grant their own wishes.
wonder(wall) how many comments are gonna be about wonderwall
As a veritable Orpheus aboard the Argus, his sweet, solemn, dulcimer tones shall pacify the impassioned hearts of his wayward fellows, spreading concord and goodwill throughout.
Lucy is majoring in Partymancy.
So the idea is to get them to unite against the Common Enemy?
Depends. Is he going to play Desperado?
How is that projection? When has Sal betrayed anyone? And what’s this spiel about forgiving and self gratification?
Is Asher just throwing words salad in a knlonky attempt to deflect, or is he actually making a point I am not getting?
Unless he thinks she’s AG and there’s some weird reasoning there, it sounds like deflection.
All I can think of is he’s referring to this conversation, during which Sal seemed to be trying to let go of her grudge. This was the last time they had much on-screen conversation, and Sal knows Asher and Jennifer aren’t a thing anymore, so I’m genuinely confused as to what has her so riled up. Hopefully we’ll find out soon.
She was saying she didn’t feel as mad as she expected to be. She never said she actually forgave him.
And as for why she is so riled up, what Asher did is enough to explain it. she didn’t pretend she was over it.
1. Sal, it is totally projection. Also not a good idea to rile someone who’s grandpa can make you sleep with the fishes (or whatever Korean mafiosi do)
2. Lucy if this crazy idea works you’ll be my favorite character here.
3. Danny, play. This just might earn Ethan’s willingness to forgive
How is this projection in any form? How has Sal ever been disloyal?
She betrayed her mom by being only 75% white.
This may add to the “they fucked during the time skip” theory that’s starting up, but if they did while he was with Jennifer then that is disloyal. We don’t have a time frame for when Asher and Jennifer started dating.
Of course he could also just be talking about their relationship as friends. Her being disloyal to him and not really forgiving. Projecting her mistakes on him after all she did make the choice to rob that convenience store regardless of Asher snitching on her. The outcome was a result of her actions, not his.
“Her being disloyal to him and not really forgiving” It’s Asher who was disloyal to Sal, not the other way around.
What she is criticising Asher for is not something she did herself, so there isn’t really any projection, there. She chose to rob that store, but she isn’t calling him a robber, and he is partially responsible of the outcome as he is the one who called the police on her. Not that it makes what she did better, but she is not saying it’s his fault she robbed a store.
She is calling out the snitching and nothing else and she is right to do so.
I’m liking this more assertive Lucy
She’s great!
So tempted to just go “Of course YOU would think so!” Because of your Jacob gravatar. So I did do that. But like, in a… In a indirect way. Yeah.
it’s not a Western saloon brawl unless the piano man plays a jaunty tune on his slightly out-of-tune instrument. This is going to be the modern version of that.
This is awesome; it’s just like that scene in Casablanca where the German officers are pissing everybody off by singing a German patriotic song and there’s nothing anybody can do about it, but then Victor commands the band to play La Marseillaise and everybody else in the whole bar sings along and shouts VIVE LA FRANCE and drowns them out.
And then Ruth comes in and shuts down the party, saying “There’s drinking going on in here” as Sarah hands her a cup of the XX.
I’m shocked—shocked!
Sal has no ground to stand on, here. She stabbed Amber through the hand and got away with it, explicitly because she’s pretty. It’s canon.
When did Sal stab Amber? At the flashback store robbery, Amber stabbed Sal in the hand. That’s when Sal got her hand scar.
Yeah, but Amber had her mind scarred and that’s even worse.
That’s what Sal would have you believe. She gets away with that narrative because she’s pretty.
Sheesh, all those hot people, always gettin’ away with (attempted) murder, just ’cause they’re hot.
ok, I’m lost. i thought Asher just ditched Sal when things got hot, not rat her out. Why did he do it and why does the snitch not have stitches?
See https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/resteasy/ and the immediately following strip.
Thanks both of you
Asher is a snitch, though apparently nobody wants to kick his ass that badly for something he did when he was thirteen. Sal is quite right not to trust him anyway. “Not a mobster anymore” my ass.
Hang on, that second link was supposed to be to the strip where a dirty cop shoots Blaine in the hospital and Asher gets a text about it. Well, I think we all know how that went down.
But the point is none of the characters who spend their days with Asher know. We don’t know how much Asher knew about Blaine’s kidnapping-murdering-employing-a-bunch-of-pro-rapist-minions plans when he decided to help out, and we don’t know exactly how much he knows about the dirty cops that killed Blaine and probably killed the comatose Mike, but he knows something. And not only doesn’t he tell any of the characters who might be interested in knowing which cops to avoid, but he just doesn’t seem to be bothered at all by this extreme violence he’s witnessed/enabled/stood lookout for. I sure would like to see some strips from his perspective, but as it stands, boy am I glad Sal is around to warn people about him.
Finally, someone says it. Sal you were already my favorite but
So did Sal bang Asher back in October ?
and she’s been Jealous ever since ?
I think this is probably more to do with her involvement in his crimes at the age of thirteen, followed by him doing a runner when the convenience store hold-up went south. I mean, since that’s why she’s been mad at him literally every time they’ve shared panel space.
Dammit the report comment button is too close to the reply button…
Now you’ve done it. To cancel it out you have to report all the other comments.
You can start with this one.
Dang, the hater in me was gonna enjoy this.
I’m assuming the ukulele will diffuse things a bit by reminding Sal that Danny is there and adorable, while being ear cringe enough to snap others to a bit of attention.
If it works just because he’s straight up good, well. Bravo Danny.
What nobody knows is, Lucy put a bomb in the ukulele that will go off the moment he plays any song from Steven Universe.
It will set off after C note in “Those Endearing Little Charms” if played correctly
It’s a good thing that no other song uses the C note.
better check MY bass I bought from my friend…
Is a request for Toxic Gossip Train untimely at this point?
Hum a few bars and we’ll fake it.
I like Lucy’s idea. The music will probably be able to calm Sal, maybe she will even start singing for everyone. It’s also impressive that Lucy seems to be the only one able to stay sober after drinking that extremely strong beverage, even Sal is out! I wonder what poison Jennifer made her drink for make her like this.
The dynamics at this party are getting fuckin’ weird…
And it’s why I love it.
I get that this is a tense emotional character beat, but I’ve just noticed Asher’s stubble pattern, and if you have him grow that mustache-beard combo my man is going to look *incredibly* hot
And to counter my reaction from yesterday, we have:
Oh.
Oh, Lucy, YES.
Nice quick thinking there, Lucy
This has already been guessed above, but nevertheless:
If a song is shown as being practiced several hundred strips earlier, it will
go offbe played when a distracting song is needed in the present.Chekhov’s WAP
YES! The one he practiced thinking it was what Sal was hoping for, not the boy bandy one she actually wanted!!
Maximum comedy here kinda requires Sal and Asher to make out unfortunately
I just noticed Booster is looking in the background. That’s kinda scary.
They wanted to see a train wreck and this group is sure to deliver.
The power of the Uke compels you!
Bottom Boy just pacifying everyone XD
Time for Danny’s uke rendition of “Mr Brightside”
In case anyone forgets, Asher arranged for Amber’s dad to be murdered, like some kind of crime boss
Frankly Asher has my respect for doing that — given how many mob connections Blaine had, the bastard would have probably went on to commit and get away with absolutely horrific crimes had he not been put to a cold hard stop, unfortunately.
Asher has privilege, whether or not he wants to, but at the very least he can refrain from using it for the sake of selfishness.
He probably would have flipped on the cops and the rest of the mob to the feds. Asher used his privilege to silence a probable snitch. please banish the idea that Asher and the mobbed up cops were executing Blaine, who was in custody, from doing more mob crimes or stop him from being abusive.
If Asher wanted to execute Blaine before he did any more violent crimes, he would have done it before he helped Blaine do a violent crime.
Blaine was blackmailing Asher because Asher stole from his grandfather. So Blaine not only could have snitched to the feds, he already threatened to snitch to the mob boss.
I see.
I’m still pretty fucking happy Blaine is no longer abusing anyone, ever, even if he was killed for ultimately selfish reasons.
Even then, we are coldly reminded that there is always a bigger fish.
Allegedly.
…it’d take two people to hold down an ostrich…
Alt-text: Danny has, in fact, had someone tell him to play before.
Play, Danny. Play like you’ve never played before.
By which I mean, play well.