Well, speaking for myself, I’ve only been curious and waiting since the one where kid Marcie spoke. And that was just, um, a little earlier in the semester.
I’d be surprised if it was Leland. They’re a bit older than in the previous flashback with him, and I feel like emphasizing him as the cause of Every Problem In Marcie’s Life would kinda feed the narrative that racism is just a couple bad apples doing shitty stuff and not The Entire Culture That Enables Them. I could get proven wrong in a couple strips though!
I made a joke that requires acknowledging that teens masturbate. That’s all. If I could’ve thought of a way someone could injure their throat while pooping I might’ve gone that route instead and I would’ve seen it as equally not-sexual
I only saw it as a thing people do that would be embarrassing to have result in hospitalization
That’s already far more thought than I put into it. Which I probably should’ve.
idk. In retrospect I can’t blame anyone for interpreting it as something more gross than what I intended, so hopefully Willis deletes it because the joke wasn’t worth it
Sorry everyone. I should’ve considered the context a bit longer there
Twelve year olds masturbate too.
Like, feelings about the joke aside, kids that age have a huge range of where they’re at in sexual development/exploration. I don’t think it changes the justification much that they’re 12 rather than 13.
Pretty sure a friend said they started at like 8 or 9, so yeah 12 is definitely a normal starting place. Still try to make sure a characters 16 before making sex jokes about them please
Is that confirmed? I mean, this could have happened after the convenience store. She already has her hair straight and in the robbery flashbacks, it’s curly and short.
Sal mentioned Marcie being 12 at the time of these events in comic. Also, they’re currently in their hometown (see writing on ambulance), not out of state like Sal was sent post robbery.
Sal told Danny that she hasn’t sang since she was 12 (presumably because of Marcie losing her voice). The robbery was when she was 13. Also, Sal would most NOT have been allowed out of the house between the robbery and shipping her off unless her parents were with her, so I sure hope this isn’t post-robbery or she’s in for it when her parents find out.
I think this might take place just before the robbery. I’m guessing this is one of the things that made her start to change her behavior into a more rebellious kind.
I’ve thought for ages, that Sal robbed the store because she wanted to raise money to help Marcie.
And even though Sal thinks it’s her fault, I wonder what actually happened.
Calling it now (thought it since the previous flashback): Marcie was being bullied, Sal tried to stick up for her, the bullies doubled down and did something that crushed Marcie’s throat.
Barring the mother of all timeskips, 2024 is too optimistic – consider that we’re only about a month and a half into the semester now and that the comic’s been running for eight years, and a more likely minimum for when it’d be would be ~2034.
This has been your irregularly-scheduled reminder of how webcomic time flows in Dumbing of Age. 😛
As Needfuldoer pointed out some while ago, flashbacks have already messed with the traditional empirical method of calculating DoA time flow with regard to real-world time flow. And that was back when the flashbacks were few, and short.
It is still possible to calculate the current DoA/real-world time ratio. But making any sort of prognostication requires making statistical assumptions about anomalies (flashbacks, time skips) for which we do not yet have statistically meaningful data sets.
Do flashbacks really mess with it significantly? Even without flashbacks, some days have more going on and take up more time.
The longest chapters so far were: Just Hanging out with my family
The Only Dope for Me is You
The Butterflies won’t fly away
When God Closes the Door
Glower Vacuum
The Thing I Was Before
Faz is Great
Of Mike and Men
A couple of those have flashback sequences of various lengths, but not all.
I think chapters have generally been getting longer, but I’m not convinced flashbacks have a big role in it.
The calculations will only get REALLY screwy if these flashbacks jump all over the place. If one chapter consistently covers one DoA day, they should still be in pretty good shape.
The old figure was about 1 DoA day every 66.67 real-world days, but the last couple chapters were longer than that. Now that Of Mike and Men has wrapped, it’s probably a good time to break out the calculator, newspaper clippings, bulletin board, and red string and figure the timeline out again.
I’ve been wondering how long we still have to go before we get to see Joyce’s reaction to Halloween. I was assuming about two more years, but then I heard that this flashback is pretty long, so I’m pushing my guess to three.
To be clear, I was stating that 2024 was the absolute *earliest* possible date. Frankly, 2027 already seems overly optimistic, but y’never know what kinda timeskips we might get. Your estimate is probably more on point, though. 😛
Who’s the most shit mom in DoA now that we brought it up? I’m thinking of 4 contenders and that’s Carol, Linda, Naomi, and Yuri.
Personally I think Yuri comes last because she’s not really a bad mom to Faz but a shitty person since she had a helping hand in braking apart a family then holds resentment twords the child of that family because her new spouse has to pay child support for her.
Then Carol and Linda would come a tie for second place making Noami #1 because honestly I think the anger I used to have for Eathen is now resurfacing twords her. That last Flashback she was involved in pissed me off.
I’m quietly ruminating on the theory that Yur is an active member of the Korean mob that Blaine is a part of and that her resentment toward Amber runs deeper than simply the child support
Sometimes I hope. (I mean, based off Shortpacked she was probably from a mob family. If she got involved in the business then that means she has way higher access to resources with which she can kill Blaine.)
It’s really a tie between Linda and Carol, mostly because of the extent of their influence. Carol’s part of a church community that echoes her beliefs, she has four kids, at least one of whom is just as toxic as she is, and another who’s only now undoing some of her brainwashing.
On the other hand, Linda’s had that much more of a negative effect, with Sal lashing out by committing actual crimes. Unlike Carol, Linda also faces no real opposition since Charles doesn’t really defend their kids.
I’d probably give it to Carol. Linda’s pretty bad but her problems are generally made worse because she had multiple children to play favourites with. Carol would be just as bad if John was her only kid.
Shaming your child into suppressing his sexuality is a tough crime to overlook…as much as Linda may be a shitty mom, Sal might be doing her crimes for the right reasons even if they are misguided. She’s a natural rebel, she would have done what she did despite her mother’s love.
Naomi willingly forces Ethan to try to be heterosexual and is doing her hardest to ensure that he stays that way. She is screwing up him internally and if he didn’t have Mike and Amber’s support he might have done the worst thing possible: kill himself.
I take treating your children differently over forcing your child to feel like crap for liking the same sex…sorry, but I do
Linda makes Sal feel like crap for being black, so is that really better?
And everything we know indicates Sal’s a ‘natural rebel’ because it’s something she developed to push back against people like her parents treating her like crap. I see no reason to assume she’d still be a rebel if Linda were decent (especially since Charles is a shit father too).
Unsure about Yuri – we still don’t know that much about her, including the very vital question of when her relationship with Blaine started and how old she was then. If it’s as bad as Amber fears, then honestly her being groomed is definitely a mitigating factor to me in how shitty she is as a person – anyone who groomed a teenager was gonna cheat on his wife regardless, and she wouldn’t have been equipped to see how fucked that situation was because teenagers or had as much power to refuse and avoid the shitstain. I’m also on the fence about her parenting skills (maybe Faz was lying when he said Amber was nicest to him, but we can’t tell now and her ‘you’ll never go to college because child support has robbed us of a future’ bit was out of line,) but really I don’t have much hope. (I make a similar ‘okay we know nothing and I don’t have much hope but there COULD be reasons’ thing for Billie’s maternal figures. Her dad’s clearly neglectful and awful and could not be garbage, but her mother might not have had as much choice in the matter. We just don’t have anything to work from there.)
I put Carol, Linda and Naomi all on about the same level, same as Toedad with ‘Sir’ and Blaine. Their methods differ but the results are all so terribly screwed up as a result of their actions that determining a ‘worst’ is basically splitting hairs.
for me its
1. Carol, because i cant stand brainwashy, super controlling religious parents who put their faith before their own kids, and i happen to be surrounded by the children of such folks
2. Naomi and Linda tie in horribleness for me
The ambulance says ‘Evansville’, which means this is still in Indiana and therefore pre-holdup. Probably not by too much, though, barring further details clarifying things.
Most noticeable thing for me here actually is that while Sal’s hair appears to be shorter than present-day (though not dramatically,) it’s also straight. So that confirms she was straightening it while still living with her parents and wearing it curly during the holdup may have been a deliberate thing. Or she was due for an appointment and couldn’t get one for whatever reason. So yeah, fuck you Charles, you knew what a time commitment it was and made pointed comments anyway. (And given she does it because her parents prefer it that way, oy. That is a very long regular appointment for someone that young to sit for something she doesn’t care about personally but matters a lot to her parents. Fuck you, Linda and Charles.)
Marcie lost her voice when she was 12, according to Sal. The robbery was when she was 13 (or close enough – regardless, she was in 7th grade). Then she was away for 5 years.
Oh good, we have a better timeline! Useful, thanks!
Yeah if this were something she actually WANTED to do then it would be totally fine. Her time to spend and her money to have to budget it with once she was living on her own. But since it seems like she’s currently doing it out of inertia and trying to please those jackasses? Sal you could rock whatever hair you wanted, I say go nuts next time.
A part of me is thinking she should shave it all off or get an undercut, and then I worry about how awful the parents would be over holiday breaks about it and don’t want her to suffer through more of that than she has to, and then I go back to the first part, realize they will be awful to her no matter what, and am back on ‘go for it Sal’. It’s a moot point because there’s no way with the timescale she would get a redesign THAT drastic, but still. Future older Sal who’s done giving a shit about what her parents think about her hair should experiment with it as much as she wants and know she’ll look awesome.
Personally, I think it’d be great if she went natural. I think that’d be an excellent ‘fuck you’ to her parents. Mind you, her feelings may also be more complex than just her parents being shitty, so we’ll see if that comes up more.
I mentioned this earlier but I’m guessing this is one of the reasons, if not THE big reason, that caused the change in Sal’s behavior, which eventually drove her to the robbery / stickup. Which means she might have cut her hair short and stopped straightening it as a form of rebellion…
(honestly, does anyone not come out of childhood at least a *little* traumatized? the only people I’ve ever met who’ve said they weren’t tend to have a pretty long list of things that they have to specify “don’t count”)
I almost feel a little guilty being someone who can honestly say happy & trauma-free childhood. Never knew that was considered a rarity until several decades into adulthood.
Yeah, but I would also say that something like this particular thing (or at least what we know about it), seeing a friend get seriously injured, is the kind of thing that happens to a lot of people who wouldn’t necessarily qualify as full-on traumatized-as-children, y’know? Like, in order to go 18 whole years without even one serious bad thing happening to you you have to get pretty lucky.
I was a little traumatized, but not on the scale of these kids. We moved a lot and it made me insecure. I still had a good childhood with loving family and no drama.
This story gets progressively less plausible as we pack more and more into these first couple months of college.
No family-related trauma. I was groped by a stranger at 12 but apart from that, my childhood was fine. And since I completely suppressed the memory until I was 20something, I was a happy child.
The day I finally remembered was pretty hard though.
I dont remember much of my childhood before 11/12 so thats probably not a good sign. Beyond being molested by a childhood family friend i think my childhood was pretty normal. Then again, i almost started crying the other day because my friend called me slow (in the context of my computer taking too long to load up a game), which is something i used to get bullied a lot for because i have learning disorders and motor skills issues, so i guess im a little more traumatized than i thought.
Dina seemingly gets on rather well with her parents.
Joyce, well, ignorance was bliss and she had Becky.
Walky, again, ignorance was bliss, but he also had a sister who had a really rough time, and another sister figure become a teen alcoholic, so that was maybe not a sweet gig, either.
Dina almost certainly suffered from isolation and casual bullying, given that she’s struggled to get people to take her seriously and she’s developed markedly better social skills over the course of the comic despite it only being two months or so.
I dunno, personally I suspect my own brain just wasn’t *ready* to parse social skills in high school. I somehow ended up with a good group of friends anyways, but most of my learning about humans happened in my mid and late 20’s. some of it in rather intense bursts.
I didn’t really *suffer* from isolation, it just… was the only thing I’d known. *now* I can suffer from it, now that my brain actually wants to be social.
then again, maybe things would’ve been different if there’d been more kids around when I was little. who knows. and Dina isn’t me.
Based off how Dina seems familiar with the infantilization and ‘oh, you’re… special’, I suspect you’re right. Sounds in line with my childhood at least. (And while we don’t have a confirmed diagnosis that she’s neurodivergent, speaking from experience you can tell when you’re the Weird Different One and the other kids definitely treat you differently because they can tell too. Not having a diagnosis can actually make it worse, because you don’t have a name or reason for the Different.)
Teachers probably contributed too, with the whole “special” treatment. They probably meant well, most people who give that treatment do i think, but just went about it in a really bad way
Add in the way Walky’s crashing now and I’d say he probably wasn’t exempt from the emotional abuse, he just processed it differently (by writing their treatment of Sal off as her fault until he realized the treatment predated the holdup) and got it from a different angle (you are the Good One and must do as I expect of you or you’ll be a disappointment like your sister.) I also have no frame of whether Billie got any of that or if it’s her biological family’s neglect and abandonment that was the bigger problem.
Sierra seems to have grown up in a loving, supportive environment that encouraged her to be herself even if she was socially atypical, though!
Being the twin to an emotionally abused and neglected child is not really a healthy, happy situation. Plus, as pointed out, Walky doesn’t talk or act like somebody who had a happy childhood. His reaction to failing math can be summed up as “If I don’t succeed effortlessly, Dorothy will dump me because nobody loves a failure”. It seems funny that he said “My sister is black, but I’m ambiguously brown” until you realize that his sister perceives the parental favoritism as racist in origin (and given that they clearly don’t like her with unstraightened hair, she may be right on that front).
Honestly, Sal’s the lucky one. She was sent off to boarding school, which means she was able to get away from that dynamic a lot earlier – and because she was the scapegoat, instead of the golden child, she had a vested interest in rejecting it entirely.
Dorothy, Joe, Danny, and Walky all seem to have had pretty good childhoods. Some of them ended up screwed up anyway, but they weren’t traumatized, which is a low but important bar.
I think we can distinguish between Dorothy’s hangups (which appear to all be pressure that was self-inflicted, or at worst ‘We believe you can do whatever you set your mind to but you’ll have to work hard’ combined with how ridiculously rigorous academics these days are and a cultural devaluing of relaxation as a vital health aspect) and Walky’s issues (which, again, are from emotional abuse.)
Dorothy’s parents support her in her goal to be president because it’s what she wants. Linda wants Walky to be a doctor/lawyer whether he wants to be or not because that’s what her son SHOULD be, and sees his goofball nature and interests as something he’ll grow out of and put aside in due course to be the Respectable Son.
And Danny’s self esteem has clearly been flattened by his parents criticizing him and saying he won’t amount to much. Maybe not trauma, but certainly not nothing.
Given Joe’s incredibly helpful advice to Joyce on dealing with an emotionally unsafe situation, I don’t think his childhood was that good. He’s 18 years old, and not particularly studious. This isn’t information 18 year olds normally have on tap unless they needed to figure it out in order to survive.
I used to work as a volunteer in the local PCYC. I knew a kid there who slept on a mattress in the ceiling cavity because his father couldn’t get up there when drunk. I like not to trivialise that by using “abused” too freely.
I had a theory at one point saying that Sal tried to rob a store to pay for Marcies medical bills and now that’s looking more likely. But now I’m even more curious as to how it was because of Sal that this happened, was it do to her being in a accident she caused or is it just survivors guilt. Regardless though, a lot of the tragedy that unfold because of this could have been avoided if we had Medicare for all for fucks sakes
Given that this shitstain bully we saw in earlier flashbacks saw he could hurt Marcie without repercussions there is also the option that someone went for Marcie to hurt Sal.
Or that Sal had the idea to some game which ended up with Marcie being hurt though it wasn’t something she caused, but feels responsible because it was her idea.
I’ve been pondering the possibility Marcie got hurt skating lately and that’s why Sal doesn’t like to skate anymore, because she blames herself (meanwhile, Marcie does NOT blame Sal and so does things like try to get her to join roller derby).
Considering how quick Marcie was to assign blame for something that was only sorta Sal’s fault I kinda find it hard to believe she’d let it go if Sal actually was responsible for her suffering a crippling injury.
Oh I never thought of it that way. Also it seems Marcie may have gotten injured trying to protect Sal from someone? That’s why she’s feeling guilty? Either way, what a whiplash.
“My fault, Marcie. My fault that I hold up a liquor store in a year, causing a girl to stab my hand during a temporal flux event, causing a feedback wave that redirects the injury back in time to hit your throat. In the future, I will be forever damned to wear gloves at all times so that you can never find out the truth, that your throat was injured in place of my hand.”
Yeah, uhm. That seems like a completely plausible scenario you’ve got going on there..?
I’m guessing that this is BEFORE she went rebel chick on her parents, back when she was still trying to look the way they wanted. That means straighteners.
Yep, Charles is the one who insulted Sal’s hair. I mean, Linda’s pretty shitty too (still mad at how she referred to Marcie) but that one was on Sal’s dad, not her mom.
There’s a Rich Burlew quote I want to send to every person who automatically assumes that anything that confuses them is a sign the author made a mistake: “Rather than making assumptions that don’t fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text? “
You are missing the point. I’m not saying that authors are infallible. I am saying that for some reason, when a reader encounters something in a work that they don’t understand, 99% of the time they immediately jump to the conclusion that the author fucked up rather than consider the possibility that they are the one who is making the mistake.
It’s the Damn You Oprah Willis show! You get a traumatic childhood! And you get a traumatic childhood! And YOU get a traumatic childhood! EVERYBODY GETS A TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD!
But at least in this version no-one (hopefully) is getting treated by hacks like Phil and Oz and Deepak Chopra.
I was gonna say probably clavicle until I realized Marcie’s tagged in this strip, does not appear to be on-panel, and that blood was used to tag a character once already.
I really don’t WANT this to be right, and her tagging to be either an oddity (like Sal being untagged in the last red flashback) or her in the ambulance, but. Yeah I’m worried right now.
98% sure it’s not blood. Ambulance driver clearly states “her friend’s coming in with a throat injury”, but I don’t think Willis has ever drawn Marcie with any kind of scar on or near her neck. Secondly, if there had been blood enough to get on Sal’s neck, you would think there would be bloodstains on her shirt too.
In circumstances where you see questions like that pop up, you should always assume there’s some kind of company/legislative/etc policy involved. In other words, they’re checkboxing data, not making assumptions about the specific individuals.
Sal suggested they summon Adam Sandler, Marcie went along with it reluctantly. The ritual worked, and he showed up with his Click remote, hit the mute button, and then vanished into the aether.
Or maybe something less stupid happened. We’ll probably never know.
Jeez, these kids are really committed to becoming professional football players. They’re taking the faked injuries thing a little too far, though. A gentle brush should only lead to them rolling across the field like a tumbleweed, not a needless hospital visit followed by several years of never speaking.
The gag is that I’m undermining the characters’ tragic backstory, which drives a lot of their present-day interactions, by making it about something completely asinine.
It’s probably not that funny, and that’s fine, but let’s not go overboard.
I asked this once before and I ask it again: How do you injure your throat in such a way that you damage your vocal chords but dont’ drown in your own blood???
She will obviously get blood in her lungs, but unless Sal waited a lot longer to get help than we can probably assume she did, it’s not likely to get near the point of drowning, unless whatever caused the damage came in through the carotid (in which case, she has other problems).
I reckon that a puncture from the front ought to do it. There are no significant blood vessels anterior to the larynx, and the trachea is not richly supplied with blood.
Besides, I’ve seen someone drown in her own blood. It takes a while. She was still alive when the ambulance got there.
This why I predict that they’ll end up as good as sisters (maybe even therapy-buddies and I post that without a hint of humour). They’ve both got innocent blood on their hands due to matters arguably only partially under their control and they’ve both responded to it in remarkably similar ways.
My vote is this is Leland’s doing, and Sal blames herself because the little shit probably said something like “your firend isn’t here to protect her now” or some crap like that.
One thing that kind of strikes me with this is how the ambulance driver says “I didn’t want to leave her there alone.” If Leland (or anyone else) was involved, it sounds like they skedaddled before Sal called for help. I wonder if Sal’s parents knew where they were and are going to wonder when she doesn’t come home, or if they’re that oblivious they won’t even notice until they get a call from the hospital.
My prediction is someone was picking on Marcie for being an illegal, potentially due to her singing a vaguely ethnic song, and Sal stepped in to stick up for her but also escalated things, which were counter-escalated and got Marcie’s windpipe mangled. PROBABLY by relative accident, i.e. shoving her without realizing she’d then fall onto a fence throat-first or something like that.
Anyone else think that Marcie is going to require therapy or medical care that her family can’t afford? Thus causing Sal to take matters into her own hands and try to rob convenience stores to get the money?
There’s probably a delay before it gets to that point. The robbery doesn’t happen for at least another year or two, and it sure looked like her first attempt.
We know Sal robbed two convenience stores before she was sent off, and somehow I doubt Sal would’ve had the ability to rob a second store after the whole hand-stabbing thing went down.
(It’s a good show! If you ever catch it, watch the ambulance montages carefully. They had footage of a Ford and a Chevy ambulance and just stitched them both together at random.)
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ohhh nooo i want to find out what happened but i know itll break my dang heart :C
Dear Willis,
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/marcie/
I have been waiting.
For a while
Well, speaking for myself, I’ve only been curious and waiting since the one where kid Marcie spoke. And that was just, um, a little earlier in the semester.
I think we know.
Starts with an L and ends with an eland.
I’d be surprised if it was Leland. They’re a bit older than in the previous flashback with him, and I feel like emphasizing him as the cause of Every Problem In Marcie’s Life would kinda feed the narrative that racism is just a couple bad apples doing shitty stuff and not The Entire Culture That Enables Them. I could get proven wrong in a couple strips though!
Was it even clearly racism in Leland’s case? I don’t recall anything specific – he could have been just a run of the mill elementary school bully.
The school’s response definitely was, which put it cleanly in the “Entire Culture That Enables Them” category.
D=
D= D=
D= D= D=
not red E
Red is for panic attack flashbacks.
Put it together. “Not red E”=”Not ready”
OHH FUCK
indeed.
Oh no oh no oh no :c My babies
Man, these flashbacks really leave me feeling blue.
Albeit a slightly different shade of blue, I think.
Predicting the panels get progressively redder as time flies by.
The most important thing to remember when engaging in autoerotic asphyxiation is to take safety precautions -_-
JESUS!!!
Hi you’re talking about children
Gotta bite down on that lemon
Who’s biting a lemon? I Google the phrase, but it just gave me dental advice.
It’s a BoJack Horseman reference.
You’ve been a reader of this comic for how long and you still think making jokes like those about children is okay?
I made a joke that requires acknowledging that teens masturbate. That’s all. If I could’ve thought of a way someone could injure their throat while pooping I might’ve gone that route instead and I would’ve seen it as equally not-sexual
I only saw it as a thing people do that would be embarrassing to have result in hospitalization
Marcie’s not a teenager though. She’s 12.
That’s already far more thought than I put into it. Which I probably should’ve.
idk. In retrospect I can’t blame anyone for interpreting it as something more gross than what I intended, so hopefully Willis deletes it because the joke wasn’t worth it
Sorry everyone. I should’ve considered the context a bit longer there
All I can say is that if you injure your throat while pooping, I have to believe that you’re doing it wrong.
She’s also not real
That’s …not actually relevant.
I disagree. Making jokes about fictional characters is fine imo. It’s not like they have feelings.
Foxhack wasn’t objecting to me hurting anyone’s feelings, especially not the characters’
I’m aware. I’m not sure why that means correcting a small bit of misinfo matters?
aaactually in this flashback they’re only twelve.
Twelve year olds masturbate too.
Like, feelings about the joke aside, kids that age have a huge range of where they’re at in sexual development/exploration. I don’t think it changes the justification much that they’re 12 rather than 13.
Pretty sure a friend said they started at like 8 or 9, so yeah 12 is definitely a normal starting place. Still try to make sure a characters 16 before making sex jokes about them please
Is that confirmed? I mean, this could have happened after the convenience store. She already has her hair straight and in the robbery flashbacks, it’s curly and short.
Sal mentioned Marcie being 12 at the time of these events in comic. Also, they’re currently in their hometown (see writing on ambulance), not out of state like Sal was sent post robbery.
In a previous strip, Sal mentioned that Marcie lost her voice around age 12, and Sal was 13 when the robberies took place.
Sal told Danny that she hasn’t sang since she was 12 (presumably because of Marcie losing her voice). The robbery was when she was 13. Also, Sal would most NOT have been allowed out of the house between the robbery and shipping her off unless her parents were with her, so I sure hope this isn’t post-robbery or she’s in for it when her parents find out.
I think this might take place just before the robbery. I’m guessing this is one of the things that made her start to change her behavior into a more rebellious kind.
I’ve thought for ages, that Sal robbed the store because she wanted to raise money to help Marcie.
And even though Sal thinks it’s her fault, I wonder what actually happened.
Calling it now (thought it since the previous flashback): Marcie was being bullied, Sal tried to stick up for her, the bullies doubled down and did something that crushed Marcie’s throat.
Nah that joke was hilarious nice
Dumbing of Age Book 9: The Laughs Never Stop
Coincidentally, also the title of The Joker’s auto-biography.
I mean, the latter part. Presumably not the first.
That’d be more Deadpool’s style than The Joker’s. 😛
god DAMNIT willis please don’t make us wait too long for the full story D:
Don’t worry, he’ll give it to us within 3 months.
…comic time.
Look forward to 2024!
Barring the mother of all timeskips, 2024 is too optimistic – consider that we’re only about a month and a half into the semester now and that the comic’s been running for eight years, and a more likely minimum for when it’d be would be ~2034.
This has been your irregularly-scheduled reminder of how webcomic time flows in Dumbing of Age. 😛
As Needfuldoer pointed out some while ago, flashbacks have already messed with the traditional empirical method of calculating DoA time flow with regard to real-world time flow. And that was back when the flashbacks were few, and short.
It is still possible to calculate the current DoA/real-world time ratio. But making any sort of prognostication requires making statistical assumptions about anomalies (flashbacks, time skips) for which we do not yet have statistically meaningful data sets.
I meant to add this:
tl;dr: It’s all a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff.
Not having statistically meaningful data sets has never stopped us from dead reckoning before. I’m with King Daniel on this one.
Can someone please tell The Doctor to stop messing with the timestream!!!!
I swear, he’s a madman with a box at times…
Do flashbacks really mess with it significantly? Even without flashbacks, some days have more going on and take up more time.
The longest chapters so far were:
Just Hanging out with my family
The Only Dope for Me is You
The Butterflies won’t fly away
When God Closes the Door
Glower Vacuum
The Thing I Was Before
Faz is Great
Of Mike and Men
A couple of those have flashback sequences of various lengths, but not all.
I think chapters have generally been getting longer, but I’m not convinced flashbacks have a big role in it.
Time skips are more unpredictable.
The calculations will only get REALLY screwy if these flashbacks jump all over the place. If one chapter consistently covers one DoA day, they should still be in pretty good shape.
The old figure was about 1 DoA day every 66.67 real-world days, but the last couple chapters were longer than that. Now that Of Mike and Men has wrapped, it’s probably a good time to break out the calculator, newspaper clippings, bulletin board, and red string and figure the timeline out again.
I’ve been wondering how long we still have to go before we get to see Joyce’s reaction to Halloween. I was assuming about two more years, but then I heard that this flashback is pretty long, so I’m pushing my guess to three.
I guess Joyce is following the advice Miss Einstien gave to Miss Nishikinomiya: just table it until a better time arrives.
To be clear, I was stating that 2024 was the absolute *earliest* possible date. Frankly, 2027 already seems overly optimistic, but y’never know what kinda timeskips we might get. Your estimate is probably more on point, though. 😛
BABY
Dammit! I finally stopped screaming after this came up on Patreon!
Welp, back to screaming.
No, I’m still not sure if it’s because I’m happy to get answers or just…screaming because ow.
Gotta process all of the emotions before it’s truly over.
And this isn’t going to be a short ride.
Screaming is a reasonable respons
Particularly if you’re helping out by screaming “Woop! WOOP! WOOP!”
Just make sure you take some breaks from screaming so you don’t get hoarse.
I have water. I’m good.
I’m actually kind of dreading Carol’s next appearance in flashbacks.
Linda?
Her too.
All shitty moms look alike to me to be honest.
I actually had to go back through the tags to remind myself who Carol was, all I remembered was ‘terrible mum, not Naomi’.
Who’s the most shit mom in DoA now that we brought it up? I’m thinking of 4 contenders and that’s Carol, Linda, Naomi, and Yuri.
Personally I think Yuri comes last because she’s not really a bad mom to Faz but a shitty person since she had a helping hand in braking apart a family then holds resentment twords the child of that family because her new spouse has to pay child support for her.
Then Carol and Linda would come a tie for second place making Noami #1 because honestly I think the anger I used to have for Eathen is now resurfacing twords her. That last Flashback she was involved in pissed me off.
I’m quietly ruminating on the theory that Yur is an active member of the Korean mob that Blaine is a part of and that her resentment toward Amber runs deeper than simply the child support
Sometimes I hope. (I mean, based off Shortpacked she was probably from a mob family. If she got involved in the business then that means she has way higher access to resources with which she can kill Blaine.)
It’s really a tie between Linda and Carol, mostly because of the extent of their influence. Carol’s part of a church community that echoes her beliefs, she has four kids, at least one of whom is just as toxic as she is, and another who’s only now undoing some of her brainwashing.
On the other hand, Linda’s had that much more of a negative effect, with Sal lashing out by committing actual crimes. Unlike Carol, Linda also faces no real opposition since Charles doesn’t really defend their kids.
I’d probably give it to Carol. Linda’s pretty bad but her problems are generally made worse because she had multiple children to play favourites with. Carol would be just as bad if John was her only kid.
Shaming your child into suppressing his sexuality is a tough crime to overlook…as much as Linda may be a shitty mom, Sal might be doing her crimes for the right reasons even if they are misguided. She’s a natural rebel, she would have done what she did despite her mother’s love.
Naomi willingly forces Ethan to try to be heterosexual and is doing her hardest to ensure that he stays that way. She is screwing up him internally and if he didn’t have Mike and Amber’s support he might have done the worst thing possible: kill himself.
I take treating your children differently over forcing your child to feel like crap for liking the same sex…sorry, but I do
It’s a common theory, but we don’t know Sal did the robberies for any kind of good reason.
I kind of hope she didn’t. Think it makes her journey more interesting than if she was being misguidedly altruistic all along.
Linda makes Sal feel like crap for being black, so is that really better?
And everything we know indicates Sal’s a ‘natural rebel’ because it’s something she developed to push back against people like her parents treating her like crap. I see no reason to assume she’d still be a rebel if Linda were decent (especially since Charles is a shit father too).
Unsure about Yuri – we still don’t know that much about her, including the very vital question of when her relationship with Blaine started and how old she was then. If it’s as bad as Amber fears, then honestly her being groomed is definitely a mitigating factor to me in how shitty she is as a person – anyone who groomed a teenager was gonna cheat on his wife regardless, and she wouldn’t have been equipped to see how fucked that situation was because teenagers or had as much power to refuse and avoid the shitstain. I’m also on the fence about her parenting skills (maybe Faz was lying when he said Amber was nicest to him, but we can’t tell now and her ‘you’ll never go to college because child support has robbed us of a future’ bit was out of line,) but really I don’t have much hope. (I make a similar ‘okay we know nothing and I don’t have much hope but there COULD be reasons’ thing for Billie’s maternal figures. Her dad’s clearly neglectful and awful and could not be garbage, but her mother might not have had as much choice in the matter. We just don’t have anything to work from there.)
I put Carol, Linda and Naomi all on about the same level, same as Toedad with ‘Sir’ and Blaine. Their methods differ but the results are all so terribly screwed up as a result of their actions that determining a ‘worst’ is basically splitting hairs.
One could argue she did Amber and Stacey a favor. If it wasn’t for her Blaine would be around a lot more.
for me its
1. Carol, because i cant stand brainwashy, super controlling religious parents who put their faith before their own kids, and i happen to be surrounded by the children of such folks
2. Naomi and Linda tie in horribleness for me
Well I see we’re off to a good start with the emotional devastation.
Also kudos to our Damnéd Overlord for those last two panels. Sal looks so small and traumatized and AUGH.
I believe you mean damnèd, unless you meant it to be pronounced like “flambéed”.
Oh dear, what a grave mistake!
Damneed be he who cries enough.
Slow clap.
I can never tell accent line pronunciations apart, so yes! (Ah, rarely using them in English.)
Let all cognincia know, by the authority invested in me by Emperor Norton, I hereby proclaim that the spelling shall henceforth be Engli`sh.
Also, Important Timeline Notes!
The ambulance says ‘Evansville’, which means this is still in Indiana and therefore pre-holdup. Probably not by too much, though, barring further details clarifying things.
Most noticeable thing for me here actually is that while Sal’s hair appears to be shorter than present-day (though not dramatically,) it’s also straight. So that confirms she was straightening it while still living with her parents and wearing it curly during the holdup may have been a deliberate thing. Or she was due for an appointment and couldn’t get one for whatever reason. So yeah, fuck you Charles, you knew what a time commitment it was and made pointed comments anyway. (And given she does it because her parents prefer it that way, oy. That is a very long regular appointment for someone that young to sit for something she doesn’t care about personally but matters a lot to her parents. Fuck you, Linda and Charles.)
Marcie lost her voice when she was 12, according to Sal. The robbery was when she was 13 (or close enough – regardless, she was in 7th grade). Then she was away for 5 years.
Charles can go fuck himself.
Oh good, we have a better timeline! Useful, thanks!
Yeah if this were something she actually WANTED to do then it would be totally fine. Her time to spend and her money to have to budget it with once she was living on her own. But since it seems like she’s currently doing it out of inertia and trying to please those jackasses? Sal you could rock whatever hair you wanted, I say go nuts next time.
No worries! I remember Sal telling Danny that because I was like ‘Oooh, finally, an age!’
And yeah, I guarantee that Sal relaxing her hair is not uninfluenced by ‘But you look so pretty when your hair’s long and straight’.
Sal looked amazing with her curly hair and Charles can go take a flying fuck at the moon.
A part of me is thinking she should shave it all off or get an undercut, and then I worry about how awful the parents would be over holiday breaks about it and don’t want her to suffer through more of that than she has to, and then I go back to the first part, realize they will be awful to her no matter what, and am back on ‘go for it Sal’. It’s a moot point because there’s no way with the timescale she would get a redesign THAT drastic, but still. Future older Sal who’s done giving a shit about what her parents think about her hair should experiment with it as much as she wants and know she’ll look awesome.
Personally, I think it’d be great if she went natural. I think that’d be an excellent ‘fuck you’ to her parents. Mind you, her feelings may also be more complex than just her parents being shitty, so we’ll see if that comes up more.
12 is also a 5th-grade age and Sal could be 13 when Marcie’s 12. I’m still thinking it’s going to happen pretty soon after this flashback.
I’m thinking Marcie’s very close to Sal’s age if for no other reason than we know she’s not 17 now (only characters 18+ get to be in Slipshines).
The idea of 12 being 5th grade age is baffling to me
*7th* grade age. Grah.
I mentioned this earlier but I’m guessing this is one of the reasons, if not THE big reason, that caused the change in Sal’s behavior, which eventually drove her to the robbery / stickup. Which means she might have cut her hair short and stopped straightening it as a form of rebellion…
We saw her hair grow curly under stress before.
Man, didn’t any of these kids have a happy childhood? (Well, maybe Joyce)
Willis didn’t spend time and effort making up all these sad and messed up backstories so his characters could be happy, okay?
(honestly, does anyone not come out of childhood at least a *little* traumatized? the only people I’ve ever met who’ve said they weren’t tend to have a pretty long list of things that they have to specify “don’t count”)
I feel like “happy” and “trauma-free” are somewhat different.
I almost feel a little guilty being someone who can honestly say happy & trauma-free childhood. Never knew that was considered a rarity until several decades into adulthood.
Yeah, but I would also say that something like this particular thing (or at least what we know about it), seeing a friend get seriously injured, is the kind of thing that happens to a lot of people who wouldn’t necessarily qualify as full-on traumatized-as-children, y’know? Like, in order to go 18 whole years without even one serious bad thing happening to you you have to get pretty lucky.
Yeah, my point was just that you can have trauma in your childhood and still consider yourself to have had a happy childhood.
I was a little traumatized, but not on the scale of these kids. We moved a lot and it made me insecure. I still had a good childhood with loving family and no drama.
This story gets progressively less plausible as we pack more and more into these first couple months of college.
No family-related trauma. I was groped by a stranger at 12 but apart from that, my childhood was fine. And since I completely suppressed the memory until I was 20something, I was a happy child.
The day I finally remembered was pretty hard though.
I dont remember much of my childhood before 11/12 so thats probably not a good sign. Beyond being molested by a childhood family friend i think my childhood was pretty normal. Then again, i almost started crying the other day because my friend called me slow (in the context of my computer taking too long to load up a game), which is something i used to get bullied a lot for because i have learning disorders and motor skills issues, so i guess im a little more traumatized than i thought.
Dina seemingly gets on rather well with her parents.
Joyce, well, ignorance was bliss and she had Becky.
Walky, again, ignorance was bliss, but he also had a sister who had a really rough time, and another sister figure become a teen alcoholic, so that was maybe not a sweet gig, either.
Dina almost certainly suffered from isolation and casual bullying, given that she’s struggled to get people to take her seriously and she’s developed markedly better social skills over the course of the comic despite it only being two months or so.
I dunno, personally I suspect my own brain just wasn’t *ready* to parse social skills in high school. I somehow ended up with a good group of friends anyways, but most of my learning about humans happened in my mid and late 20’s. some of it in rather intense bursts.
I didn’t really *suffer* from isolation, it just… was the only thing I’d known. *now* I can suffer from it, now that my brain actually wants to be social.
then again, maybe things would’ve been different if there’d been more kids around when I was little. who knows. and Dina isn’t me.
Based off how Dina seems familiar with the infantilization and ‘oh, you’re… special’, I suspect you’re right. Sounds in line with my childhood at least. (And while we don’t have a confirmed diagnosis that she’s neurodivergent, speaking from experience you can tell when you’re the Weird Different One and the other kids definitely treat you differently because they can tell too. Not having a diagnosis can actually make it worse, because you don’t have a name or reason for the Different.)
Teachers probably contributed too, with the whole “special” treatment. They probably meant well, most people who give that treatment do i think, but just went about it in a really bad way
Add in the way Walky’s crashing now and I’d say he probably wasn’t exempt from the emotional abuse, he just processed it differently (by writing their treatment of Sal off as her fault until he realized the treatment predated the holdup) and got it from a different angle (you are the Good One and must do as I expect of you or you’ll be a disappointment like your sister.) I also have no frame of whether Billie got any of that or if it’s her biological family’s neglect and abandonment that was the bigger problem.
Sierra seems to have grown up in a loving, supportive environment that encouraged her to be herself even if she was socially atypical, though!
Being the twin to an emotionally abused and neglected child is not really a healthy, happy situation. Plus, as pointed out, Walky doesn’t talk or act like somebody who had a happy childhood. His reaction to failing math can be summed up as “If I don’t succeed effortlessly, Dorothy will dump me because nobody loves a failure”. It seems funny that he said “My sister is black, but I’m ambiguously brown” until you realize that his sister perceives the parental favoritism as racist in origin (and given that they clearly don’t like her with unstraightened hair, she may be right on that front).
Honestly, Sal’s the lucky one. She was sent off to boarding school, which means she was able to get away from that dynamic a lot earlier – and because she was the scapegoat, instead of the golden child, she had a vested interest in rejecting it entirely.
Can we NOT call the one who was the primary victim of emotional abuse, neglect and racism the lucky one?
Your idea of being lucky implies that the school she was in was a better place that her parent’s house and I doubt that.
Her descriptions are ‘like prison’ and ‘it wasn’t as great a choice [between her school and juvie] as you’d expect’ so my money’s on reformatory.
I believe the quote was “generically beige”, which i know because i use it for myself
Dorothy, Joe, Danny, and Walky all seem to have had pretty good childhoods. Some of them ended up screwed up anyway, but they weren’t traumatized, which is a low but important bar.
Eh, Joe has some serious issues with intimacy from watching his dad.
And Danny’s parents never believed in him.
And Dorothy and Walky’s parents believed in them too much.
I think we can distinguish between Dorothy’s hangups (which appear to all be pressure that was self-inflicted, or at worst ‘We believe you can do whatever you set your mind to but you’ll have to work hard’ combined with how ridiculously rigorous academics these days are and a cultural devaluing of relaxation as a vital health aspect) and Walky’s issues (which, again, are from emotional abuse.)
Dorothy’s parents support her in her goal to be president because it’s what she wants. Linda wants Walky to be a doctor/lawyer whether he wants to be or not because that’s what her son SHOULD be, and sees his goofball nature and interests as something he’ll grow out of and put aside in due course to be the Respectable Son.
And Danny’s self esteem has clearly been flattened by his parents criticizing him and saying he won’t amount to much. Maybe not trauma, but certainly not nothing.
Given Joe’s incredibly helpful advice to Joyce on dealing with an emotionally unsafe situation, I don’t think his childhood was that good. He’s 18 years old, and not particularly studious. This isn’t information 18 year olds normally have on tap unless they needed to figure it out in order to survive.
Yeah, Joe definitely had some serious issues stemming from his dad’s infidelity and his parents’ divorce.
I used to work as a volunteer in the local PCYC. I knew a kid there who slept on a mattress in the ceiling cavity because his father couldn’t get up there when drunk. I like not to trivialise that by using “abused” too freely.
All happy kids are alike; each unhappy kid is unhappy in their own narrative-enhancing way.
Dorothy had a… studious childhood. Studious is happy, right.
Carla probably had a pretty good childhood. Her parents are very supportive of her, and are wealthy.
I’m so ready.
I’M NOT
Yeah. Curious but definitely not ready here.
Just coming straight out of the gate swinging, huh.
Ohhhh shiiiiiit. That’s a hell of a way to start Book 9.
Eh, I’m sure it’s fine. Not at all related to Marcie’s muteness.
THIS IS FINE
I had a theory at one point saying that Sal tried to rob a store to pay for Marcies medical bills and now that’s looking more likely. But now I’m even more curious as to how it was because of Sal that this happened, was it do to her being in a accident she caused or is it just survivors guilt. Regardless though, a lot of the tragedy that unfold because of this could have been avoided if we had Medicare for all for fucks sakes
That’s a good question – is this ACTUALLY her fault, or is this survivor’s guilt?
Given that this shitstain bully we saw in earlier flashbacks saw he could hurt Marcie without repercussions there is also the option that someone went for Marcie to hurt Sal.
Or that Sal had the idea to some game which ended up with Marcie being hurt though it wasn’t something she caused, but feels responsible because it was her idea.
I’ve been pondering the possibility Marcie got hurt skating lately and that’s why Sal doesn’t like to skate anymore, because she blames herself (meanwhile, Marcie does NOT blame Sal and so does things like try to get her to join roller derby).
Considering how quick Marcie was to assign blame for something that was only sorta Sal’s fault I kinda find it hard to believe she’d let it go if Sal actually was responsible for her suffering a crippling injury.
That’s a good point.
Oh I never thought of it that way. Also it seems Marcie may have gotten injured trying to protect Sal from someone? That’s why she’s feeling guilty? Either way, what a whiplash.
Yes, Sal, you shouldn’t have been playing with that Stark International MKIII Positronic Cannon.
That is safer than anything created by Reed Richards.
Point.
Holy shit, did Amber stab Marcy in the throat?
If this was a joke, then for the record, I laughed.
But just in case it was serious, I’m guessing no.
Let’s agree to blame an out of control auto correct with identity issues
what.
“My fault, Marcie. My fault that I hold up a liquor store in a year, causing a girl to stab my hand during a temporal flux event, causing a feedback wave that redirects the injury back in time to hit your throat. In the future, I will be forever damned to wear gloves at all times so that you can never find out the truth, that your throat was injured in place of my hand.”
Yeah, uhm. That seems like a completely plausible scenario you’ve got going on there..?
..in fairness, that’d be pretty par for the course for Shortpacked. 😛
There seems to be an art typo here. a drawpo? Sal had frizzy hair back then, not straight.
Right, because we clearly know exactly what point on the timeline this is. That is obviously information we have access to.
Either that, or Sal’s hair is an indication that this is NOT happening at exactly the same time as other Sal flashbacks.
Given the suddenness of her previous reversion to more natural, it’s quite possible her robbery hair was the result of shock or stress.
I’m guessing that this is BEFORE she went rebel chick on her parents, back when she was still trying to look the way they wanted. That means straighteners.
Does it? I thought she got it curled to please her mother, and prefers it straight herself.
Nah, she frizzed up from shock at her grades, and just didn’t have time to straighten it back out.
Linda’s racist, doesnt like sals kinky hair
I don’t think Linda commented on the hair. That was Charles.
Linda just completely ignored Sal.
Yep, Charles is the one who insulted Sal’s hair. I mean, Linda’s pretty shitty too (still mad at how she referred to Marcie) but that one was on Sal’s dad, not her mom.
I really wouldn’t put it past her though
Me neither.
Yes, clearly you are only allowed to have one hairstyle for your entire childhood. No one ever changes their hairstyle more than once a year.
That’s not what CinemaSins told me.
(No idea if they’ve ever claimed that, but I’d 100% believe you if you said they had)
There’s a Rich Burlew quote I want to send to every person who automatically assumes that anything that confuses them is a sign the author made a mistake: “Rather than making assumptions that don’t fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text? “
On the other hand, authors do sometimes make mistakes and running down blind alleys trying to reconcile them isn’t always profitable.
I’m still wondering if Sal not being tagged in Amber’s most recent flashback panel is significant.
You are missing the point. I’m not saying that authors are infallible. I am saying that for some reason, when a reader encounters something in a work that they don’t understand, 99% of the time they immediately jump to the conclusion that the author fucked up rather than consider the possibility that they are the one who is making the mistake.
Nah, you’re only seeing the people who bother to comment about it.
Drawpo? You, you mean like a drawing typo.
Hmmm. Don’t like it.
Maybe line-mistake? Picture error? Image mishap?
Oooh! An artfart!
Predicted summary for this flashback: baby Sal and baby Marcie need lots of hugs.
I’ll start putting together the hug bomb.
The hug pile must never stop from getting taller.
I never realized how much I liked it when I didn’t know things.
Not knowing things was fine. Let’s go back to not knowing things.
Ah, finally the chapter where we dig into Amber’s traumatic childhood is over. Now lets… dig into Marcie’s and Sal’s traumatic childhood.
…OK
🙁
I’m pretty sure this digging into Marcie’s and Sal’s traumatic childhood is going to intersect with Amber’s traumatic childhood.
It’s the Damn You Oprah Willis show! You get a traumatic childhood! And you get a traumatic childhood! And YOU get a traumatic childhood! EVERYBODY GETS A TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD!
But at least in this version no-one (hopefully) is getting treated by hacks like Phil and Oz and Deepak Chopra.
Let’s not forget that last chapter also came with a side dish of showing a little bit of Ethan’s shitty child/early teenage years.
And this chapter may well include showing some flashbacks of Danny’s parents being shitty to him.
And next chapter, we’ll get to see Joe’s and Sarah’s worst childhood moments.
So much to look forward to, right?
This is no time for a trip to Juggalo Island! Marcie needs help!
Looks like blood at the base of Sal’s neck. Which suggests she was in front of and facing Marcie – and quite close – when whatever it was happened.
I think that’s the shadow of her collarbone.
I think that might just be how Willis draws clavicle
That’s not how he draws adult clavicles. I have no idea whether children’s anatomy is different in that respect.
Look at Walky here:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/wrongly/
Doesn’t look that different.
I see what you mean in panels 5 and 6, but 1 and 3 are more what I consider typical.
I guess we’ll have to see if any reference is made to it later (where silence means it’s not blood).
I now believe that Walky had blood on his clavical from the first kiss.
Or I guess that might have got on her while she was trying to help. So actually not much of a clue.
I was gonna say probably clavicle until I realized Marcie’s tagged in this strip, does not appear to be on-panel, and that blood was used to tag a character once already.
I really don’t WANT this to be right, and her tagging to be either an oddity (like Sal being untagged in the last red flashback) or her in the ambulance, but. Yeah I’m worried right now.
Actually, purely by coincidence, the ambulance driver is also named Marcie. 🙂
98% sure it’s not blood. Ambulance driver clearly states “her friend’s coming in with a throat injury”, but I don’t think Willis has ever drawn Marcie with any kind of scar on or near her neck. Secondly, if there had been blood enough to get on Sal’s neck, you would think there would be bloodstains on her shirt too.
? how can they see sal in order to assume she related the the driver ?
…he’s saying she’s not…Marcie’s…family…
Family of the patient only allowed to ride in the ambulance.
In circumstances where you see questions like that pop up, you should always assume there’s some kind of company/legislative/etc policy involved. In other words, they’re checkboxing data, not making assumptions about the specific individuals.
i understand now also i have made an ignorant assumption and im sorry
I made the same assumption at first. I was super confused!
Your last comment, in which you seem to be assuming criticism, definitely seems to fall under that expectation of yours, sure. 😛
Poor Sal.
WUH OH
Dear Willis,
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/marcie/
I have been waiting.
Damn, only off by six days! That was pretty good.
Somehow, hairstraightening was involved in damaging Marcie’s throat.
She dared Marcie to eat relaxer, didnt think shed actually do it
And we’re already off to a fun start
Oh shit. So now we’re gonna see how Marcie became mute, huh?
Sal suggested they summon Adam Sandler, Marcie went along with it reluctantly. The ritual worked, and he showed up with his Click remote, hit the mute button, and then vanished into the aether.
Or maybe something less stupid happened. We’ll probably never know.
Jeez, these kids are really committed to becoming professional football players. They’re taking the faked injuries thing a little too far, though. A gentle brush should only lead to them rolling across the field like a tumbleweed, not a needless hospital visit followed by several years of never speaking.
Seriously? You post something like this??
Meh. Seen much worse. Probably have posted much worse.
The gag is that I’m undermining the characters’ tragic backstory, which drives a lot of their present-day interactions, by making it about something completely asinine.
It’s probably not that funny, and that’s fine, but let’s not go overboard.
It’s definitely not that funny.
I was gonna make a Raidah joke at first, but then I remembered this is a flashback, so it wouldn’t have made any sense.
it’s a joke about fictional characters, chill. If they were real kids then it would be fucked up
I’m around 95% sure that we’re not going to be told what went on, we’re going to see the aftermath not the cause.
Maybe, but Willis usually gets around to a payoff. Sometimes much later, but still.
I asked this once before and I ask it again: How do you injure your throat in such a way that you damage your vocal chords but dont’ drown in your own blood???
Cinnamon challenge.
(Gone Wrong)
Blind luck; weird stuff happens.
She will obviously get blood in her lungs, but unless Sal waited a lot longer to get help than we can probably assume she did, it’s not likely to get near the point of drowning, unless whatever caused the damage came in through the carotid (in which case, she has other problems).
Blunt force trauma can do it.
I reckon that a puncture from the front ought to do it. There are no significant blood vessels anterior to the larynx, and the trachea is not richly supplied with blood.
Besides, I’ve seen someone drown in her own blood. It takes a while. She was still alive when the ambulance got there.
She has to be intubated on the way to the hospital, but the ambulance just so happens to hit a pothole at that very moment.
So it all comes out. There is a reason for Sal’s guilt.
Really should have seen that coming.
Sal’s Amber moment.
Oh fuck. I don’t know if I’m ready.
“Sal’s Amber moment”
This why I predict that they’ll end up as good as sisters (maybe even therapy-buddies and I post that without a hint of humour). They’ve both got innocent blood on their hands due to matters arguably only partially under their control and they’ve both responded to it in remarkably similar ways.
They have that classic superhero nemesis thing where they have very different principles but are also very similar people.
Oh nice, I’ve been looking forward to this
No, this is a flashback, so it’s in the past. You can’t look forward to the past, that would be silly.
The content of the flashback is in the past, but the flashback itself is mostly in the future.
*Spits out drink* Evansville Ambulance???
I realized it took place in Indiana but that’s too close to home.
Maybe you can check out if the Walkertons live anywhere near you?
My vote is this is Leland’s doing, and Sal blames herself because the little shit probably said something like “your firend isn’t here to protect her now” or some crap like that.
Yeah this has that Leland brat’s name plastered all over it.
Oh, this is really interesting! I wonder what happened.
One thing that kind of strikes me with this is how the ambulance driver says “I didn’t want to leave her there alone.” If Leland (or anyone else) was involved, it sounds like they skedaddled before Sal called for help. I wonder if Sal’s parents knew where they were and are going to wonder when she doesn’t come home, or if they’re that oblivious they won’t even notice until they get a call from the hospital.
As long as they know where Walky is, it’s all good for them.
My prediction is someone was picking on Marcie for being an illegal, potentially due to her singing a vaguely ethnic song, and Sal stepped in to stick up for her but also escalated things, which were counter-escalated and got Marcie’s windpipe mangled. PROBABLY by relative accident, i.e. shoving her without realizing she’d then fall onto a fence throat-first or something like that.
Anyone else think that Marcie is going to require therapy or medical care that her family can’t afford? Thus causing Sal to take matters into her own hands and try to rob convenience stores to get the money?
There’s probably a delay before it gets to that point. The robbery doesn’t happen for at least another year or two, and it sure looked like her first attempt.
We know Sal robbed two convenience stores before she was sent off, and somehow I doubt Sal would’ve had the ability to rob a second store after the whole hand-stabbing thing went down.
makes me think you’re right. She was probably “lucky” that she didn’t have to risk her family’s safety by going to the hospital. Sal attacked Leland’s throat and he probably went and did the same thing to Marcie causing permanent damage
I knew I’d screw that up, go me!
Eh, no prob–you got the point across. And now I think you might be right.
Good for you, ambulance guy.
No Muzak today?
*Cues the Emergency! theme song on the hacked Muzak*
(It’s a good show! If you ever catch it, watch the ambulance montages carefully. They had footage of a Ford and a Chevy ambulance and just stitched them both together at random.)