AG is Scott and Sal is Ramona. Lucy gets jealous over this anti-hero cool girl her hero keeps hanging around with. Sal probably doesn’t have a collection of evil exes though, so maybe it’ll be seven evil dads.
I suspect that Sal would be gentlewomanly enough to politely turn her down. However, I’m not sure how the ‘hand-off’ between the two personae might go if Amber steps back to the steering wheel in the middle of an intimate conversation between Sal and Amazi-Girl!
Yep. At least if Sal and AG are apparently regularly teaming up to beat down on people, said people are assholes who deserve every punch they have coming to ‘em. Also, Gashface as a name is now in-universe. Delightful!
Oh my gosh, yes! What you said, and the characters have felt extra expressive, and also the framing’s been really cool lately. Like, the jump kick yesterday was sweet! Panels 2-3 today are really neat, too!
I shouldn’t be surprised that a rapist would have supporters willing to dox or physically attack his victims, but somehow 1.) it never crossed my mind and 2.) now that it has, I’m grimly certain that bit’s taken straight from RL
I suspect that’s it. They don’t need to be tied directly to Ryan. This kind of doxxing and harassment happens to accusers pretty regularly.
Possibly with a more openly violent turn here, to generate action scenes for Amazi-Girl. Often it’s “just” internet harassment and threats. But you never know when one of those will turn physical.
And Ryan did have the bros and whoever it was that picked him up in the car on his side. That seemed suspicious at the time – especially that we never saw the driver.
Probably not a campus MRA group – I’d expect a lot less fighting and a lot more running and whimpering from them. MRAs tend to produce the occasional mass shooter and the depressingly common abusive asshole, but people willing to fight against people who can actually fight back? Not so much.
What I find odd isn’t that a group of people would try to attack women who report rape, its that they would appear to be otherwise normal college students and they wouldn’t be wearing white hoods and tiki torches.
never underestimate the power of frat boys willing to rally around one of their own…unwritten code among them, lie about sexual encounters and blame the women until they recant. If all else fails, intimidate them into submission
One thing that should be mentioned is that, iirc, Gashface was an intern on a political campaign, and likely has some political connections through his family to boot. So you get routine “This claim of rape is suspect!” claims coupled with “They’re just trying to smear the name of a good family!”
Maybe. Unpaid intern handing out flyers at a rally isn’t really a prestigious position. Son of a preacher likely gives him more clout, especially with Robin denouncing him.
Galasso would never doxx anyone. Resorting to subterfuge like that is beneath him. If he cannot best an adversary in honorable combat (or, at least, if his minions cannot best that adversary) then he has found the one to give him an heir.
I didn’t mean the final boss of this whole [doxxing, etc] mess, we all know that’s Ryan. Much like Blaine, he’s a reoccurring villain, while Toedad was a one-off. I mean, Galasso is the final boss of the entire comic. 😛
Basically, if Amazi-Girl is Batman, then Ryan is Two-Face, Blaine is Hugo Strange, Toedad is Humpty Dumpty, and Galasso is Ra’s al Ghul. Mike, in his antagonistic-yet-oddly-helpful way, is likely The Riddler. Naturally, Sal is Catwoman.
Robin is Robin, duh. Just kidding, Robin is Walky, Malaya is Huntress, Dorothy is Oracle, Marcie is Batgirl, Red Hood is Mike, Red Robin is … eh … Jacob? Idk. Other than Mike, not a lot of smartypants mcgees…
Also Galasso has only recently been informed, after great struggle, what an ‘internet’ is. In celebration, he has designed a new ‘web site’ for Galasso’s Pizza (and Subs), the better to spread its glory!
Its glory mostly consists of ugly animated backgrounds and jpegs from the late 90s/early aughts. A midi of the Batman Animated Series theme plays. There is a hit counter. Terribly ornate vaguely-gothic font, in colors that clash with the background. The employees are all too young to realize history is repeating itself.
(All except for Pamela, of course, who has been quietly managing their web presence for well over a decade. Conquest helps.)
there are already two who have: Toe Dad and Blaine. Blaine is still out there plotting something and Toe Dad could always make an appearance because of some technicality…
A) Yes, please, god, punch them. I do not want to know what they were planning to do in that house.
B) I like how Sal’s punching with the hand she was stabbed in in the last two panels. Nice touch.
C) Sal’s eyes are bigger and more emotional when she says she’s not a fan of knives. Always nice, reader wise, to get more elements of character’s trauma.
It’s weird that I actually kinda missed shades guy. Nice to see he’s doing well. Does he still work the word “gay” into every sentence? Also why are they even still attacking people on campus?
Well, according to today’s comic, they’re in league with Ryan, and trying to harass women who were speaking out in regards to Ryan’s abuses toward them..
Yeah, but see that’s been established as a lie. Ruth admitted it’s an intimidation tactic and while her intimidation stats are maxed she doesn’t actually have any femurs. Ruth’s impressive. She flipped Blaine that one time. But I’ve seen Joyce send a man stronger and heavier looking than Blaine flying off the ground in one punch! And no I don’t believe god funneled his strength into her, because I also saw her kick in a window frame like a week later!
I will say, Ruth flipping Blaine was especially impressive given she was in unsupported withdrawal at the time. Given how fucked she was after that must’ve taken a lot out of her.
That said, the most powerful person in this comic is clearly Asma, who deals with heavy packages and bullshit all day long (and according to a Patreon strip, apparently carries those packages on her person during non-work hours.)
Kicking in a window frame isn’t actually that difficult apparently. And I’d like to note that in both instances, Joyce is angry and anger can fuel a lot of adrenaline and strength. See also why Amber seems a lot stronger when she’s pissed off. We don’t know what her baseline is.
One’s a troubled young woman with bad parents, violent tendencies, a history of acting out, and a trademark outfit!
One’s a… pretty much the same, only black!
They Fight Crime!
To be fair, that’s basically just gender-flipped Arrow.
(actually that should be sex-flipped, but that isn’t a real term that I know of, and we have the “gender flipped” storyline going on in the other webcomic, so I suppose the term is grand-whatevered in)
But, um, flooding with dummy addresses is a really sketchy thing to do. AG and Sal can’t be at EVERY address if the forums(?) are “flooded”–what about the people in the house? AG says “not this one”, but I find it hard to believe every dummy address is to an unoccupied house, statistics wise. Maybe she picked addresses of frat houses? Or men-only, so these guys would go away upon not finding women? Still sketchy to traumatize random people like that. Getting the forums(again, ?) shut down would be a better route (then patrol the real addresses).
There are other options — list the address of a convenience store that’s got measures in place to protect the staff, list the address of a police station, list the address of a karate studio, list the address of a cop bar.
Also, dummy addresses are not necessarily real addresses. Though I wouldn’t count on these creeps being cool-headed enough to refrain from targeting 235 Outlook Lane just because 237 Outlook Lane doesn’t exist.
Better to send them down a winding back road that doesn’t actually have any houses on it. It’ll take ’em an hour to get there and back after realizing that there’s nothing there but a cement factory, which is an hour that won’t be spent harassing innocent people.
Also, she says she flooded the forums with dummy addresses, not that she spammed the forums with a flood of dummy addresses. That nuance gives the phrase a potentially different meaning.
In other words, it may just be a half dozen addresses that she spread across the various boards to make sure they had high visibility, not necessarily a ton of different addresses all posted willy-nilly. When you consider the matter logically, the first approach seems far more likely, as the latter one has pretty much no utility or benefit whatsoever.
That makes sense—but honestly I can see either interpretation being valid in the phrasing. I don’t really see how your distinction in phrasing makes any difference whatsoever; they seem largely the same to me. BUT you raise a good point that she could have found 6 uninhabited addresses that she repeated and not 2 dozen, at least when it comes to interpreting her use of “spammed”
The latter phrasing is more precise [notice the extra words! :P], that’s the distinction. 🙂
I wasn’t trying to imply her initial phrasing was carefully considered, just that it could have been what it was to express an intent different than the one you interpreted (versus more precise phrasing which would have closed off that option).
I don’t see why not – Bloomington’s a large city. There’s probably lots of unoccupied houses and apartments for AG to send people to. Or, as people have suggested, businesses that are closed this late at night, places like hospitals/police stations, etc.
I have a friend who volunteers with an organization that works with survivors of domestic abuse, and the address given on the website is for a police station.
One day, said friend and I were in that police station as my friend needed to get finger printed for a name change. While we were waiting, a guy came in asking if this is where he could find the people with the domestic violence organization. This is when my friend told me how the organization had set that up.
The suggestion of closed businesses (or police stations, which is just lovely) makes a lot of sense, but at least in this strip, Sal seems to think she’s protecting a regular house. There is absolutely no evidence these dummy addresses are to anything besides real places people may potentially live, even if no one does. That said, the larger the city, the larger the demand for housing and thus the less available housing. If Bloomington really is a large city, it seems unlikely for many places to be totally vacant, especially so close to a college town (assuming the witnesses/sal/AG aren’t too far).
Right now, their focus is protecting witnesses from intimidation and attack. If the gang wants to stake out 12345 Notareal Boulevard, that’s not an issue.
So it’s okay to allow/facilitate random people getting attacked/traumatized, as long as a certain group of people are protected (because they’re valuable to a potential court case)? ….okay
And as everyone who’s ever been to Night Vale knows, just because you see people inside a house doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be there when you open the door.
Of course, no one who’s ever been to NIght Vale is going to have returned, so how would they impart that information to anyone?
Okay this I can unreservedly get popcorn for. Will it blow up in their faces? (AG’s primarily, but also Sal’s when her new mutually-enabling friend turns out to be a source of her trauma and Marcie’s fucking pissed?) Oh, certainly. But hey, if Sal can forgive the stalking then maybe there’s hope for friendship after all!
Probably after another brutal betrayal-fight, but hey!
I’m guessing that Ryan’s defence will make ‘persecution of this fine, upstanding young man and his harmless group of high-spirited friends by a group of lawless vigilantes’ a central plank of their mitigation.
I really don’t have any problem with what Amazi-Girl and Sal are doing here although if you’re not willing to resort to violence providing the address of police officers is a nice way of sending doxers in a direction they will soon regret.
Well it sure looks like some of them are getting punched! So presumably some of the others were as well. I mean, maaaaybe one or two heard enough of the story being told unbiased enough to realize he stalked several women to their doors with a knife and that was their line? Maaaaybe even that included them not knowing he drugged women so he could rape them?
I don’t think either event is at all LIKELY of course, but who knows? Maybe one of them has a functioning soul.
I strongly suspect that the hints of non-memory sharing are true.
Amazi-Girl said she had trouble finding her mask because she doesn’t know where Amber left it. She never found it and had to quickly craft another one from some yellow cloth.
I further suspect she and Sal have been doing the hero-and-sidekick thing for a while now. They seem so nonchalant and casual about the whole thing. They’re actually bantering, like fighting thugs is a normal thing and the only abnormal part of it is that Amber was running late. Late enough that Sal was looking for her (on Garbage Roof) and eventually gave up and went crime-fighting on her own.
Sal is also having so much fun fighting that she’s completely abandoned her promise to Marcie. I’m guessing she used to get into fights a lot, before the accident that hurt Marcie and took her voice, and has been “on the wagon” ever since. She’s relapsing, becoming “old Sal” from before. This is evident in the loss of her accent, which she obviously didn’t have growing up.
They’re becoming a dangerous couple. They’re both powderkegs, and it’s only a matter of time before they explode.
IMHO, the fact that the Ryan issue is being discussed in a realistic way rules out a fantasy or dream. Amazi-Girl probably left Walky asleep and went to work.
Dorothy is likely being groomed to be AG’s nemesis, or maybe Girl Most Likely To Be Found By Her Roommate Aspirating Her Own Vomit After Overdosing On Psychopharmaceuticals and Alcohol. Or Both.
Dorothy is going to be the ‘Lois Lane’, I think – the overconfident and over-curious truth-seeker who ends up causing problems that Sal and Amber have to fix.
“Harry Osborne”. Maybe Dorothy will convince herself that AG has ruined her life, her plans for Yale and a career in politics, and has stolen two boyfriends. And they are, for all practical purposes, roommates, which can complicate things. Or be hilarious.
Which sides, if any, of the Jack-and-Jill/Johnette/shared-half-bath have locks on them again?
I don’t think so. She threw it down the stairwell, and Amber likely spent one more time with Walky so it’s less “couldn’t find the mask” more “I don’t have time to get it”
So she grabbed a spare.
Amber knows what’s happening and has the memories, amazi-girl is a coping mechanism (and a very very very unhealthy one at that)
I do know there was one time it happened, but it seemed like “amazi-girl” didn’t remember either so I’d be more likely to say she was more sleep walking (sleep crime fighting?)
I’m not sure why you think Amazi-Girl didn’t remember either. This is the first time we’ve seen her since then.
And AG said “couldn’t find my mask” last strip. After Amber threw it away. That’s another strong hint she doesn’t remember.
All indications are that they’re separate personas and that they’re no longer sharing memories. How much more explicit does it need to be?
Which doesn’t mean you’re not right about Amazi-Girl being (or at least starting as) a coping mechanism and being unhealthy. Just that they’re kind of stuck with each other now, however much they deny it.
This. It’s quite clear that this is well into dissociation territory. They’re well past the point of “stop the ride, I wanna get off” being an option; Amber and AG need to learn to live with each other (with the help of a very good therapist).
Yeah, once someone else reminded me of this strip I stopped considering Amber with DID a theory, particularly as of the ‘AG out at night and Amber doesn’t remember, Amber actively talking at and being antagonistic towards AG’ development. It is increasingly obvious that even if they ever were compartmentalizations of specific thoughts and feelings in one shared experience, they are so separate Amber felt like a terrified passenger in her own body and no longer has that much awareness when AG is in control. Call it what you will, but it’s clearly past the point where the current tools and coping mechanisms are sufficient and Amber and AG can course-correct without some outside support.
@nlips: Though it seems like this isn’t random trolling for bad guys or “patrolling”. They’re working together against a specific problem – dudebros stalking Ryan’s victims who have come forward.
Likely that’s how Sal justifies it to herself. Of course, she also likes the fighting.
Yeah, I had kind of hoped that what had happened to Ryan would have given his fan-club pause. Naive of me, in retrospect; they probably consider him to be some twisted sort of martyr! It also makes me think that something that I posted back then might be right and that there may be a fully-organised rape club in the town!
What’s the bet that his defence will be that he is a”fine young man with great potential and his whole life ahead of him”, who shouldn’t be ruined by the “youthful mistake” of multiple rapes?
Isn’t it generally known that Amber did the deed?
(And if he is going to trial… then surely Amber’s going to have to be involved in that… if not one of her own, also)
(Also… Why is there an apostrophe before stabbed?)
Yeah, I’d definitely say the latter, and that it’s ‘for the cause’ rather than Ryan specifically- if anything that he’s become a figurehead/martyr for them, rather than that many of them actually even knew him before.
That’s my guess. At least until we see more.
That’s the point of internet doxxing and hate campaigns. To gin up random sympathetic idiots to attack your targets.
They don’t even have to be “his buddies” at all and he could be an absolute nobody. They’d still have found in the news this case about this poor, poor straight white man being knifed by some “psycho-B” (carefully removing any context) and that would be enough to get them in arms to protect one of their “facing extinction” kind. Also, any excuse that allows some people to exercise their hatred for other people is good enough.
Amber/Amazi Girl may be a dangerous dissociative vigilante, but I think she did right by beating the crap out of that rapist. Also, why would that guy have people defending him online?! Is he an alt right mouth piece like Milo Yianopoulous? Is he a preacher? Is he the leader of a gang?
He’s the son of a bigshot. Implied political connections. Add in potential frat-brother like connections and you get a group of people socially, professionally (it’s less what you know and more who you know), and financially invested in standing up for their friend.
He’s ‘one of us’ (a privileged male) and thus everything he does is explicable and excusable to certain sorts of people. I bet that every one of his victims has been demonised in the forums as ‘asking for it’, a liar or ‘a Feminazi trying to destroy a nice guy with a future’.
This is a thing that happens, though usually to a less blatantly violent degree to woman who make rape accusations. Doxxing, threats, harassment.
If there’s dramatic license, it’s making the harassers brave enough to actually try something this drastic offline. That’s always a terrifying possibility, but actually having a gang come to the house at night is rare.
He doesn’t need to be any of that (though as some people have pointed out, he’s not nobody either). “MRAs”, like any other discriminatory group that tries to maintain a facade of legitimacy, are constantly trailing the news to find cases were men were victims of women (regardless of how rightful it was) to “prove their point”. It’s not that they care for Scarface at all; it’s that he gave them an excuse to flex their hatred for women.
I just had a horrible thought. We know Amber and AG aren’t sharing memories anymore. Does that mean Amber is now dormant? Or is she still conscious, watching helplessly through AG’s eyes, knowing that she’ll forget everything when she retakes control?
She’s likely ‘asleep’; that has been the pattern before. Amazi-Girl has never shown she is strong enough to force Amber out of control whist she’s awake.
Almost forgot: good luck to Americans on the Kavanaugh thing, and you’re going to need it, because the time to actually DO something about it was last November.
There was no way to ‘do’ anything about it last November. There weren’t any elections to the US Senate last November, only one special election in December (which was won by a Democrat).
Does Sal not know that Amber is Amazi-Girl? I thought she did? Or I thought that at least if there’s anyone in the entire Dumblrverse smart enough to see through the mask it’d be her.
She doesn’t know because her interactions with Amber have been extremely limited and often Amber hides from, runs from or evades her. Amber and AG have had pretty much the exact OPPOSITE reactions to her as well (Amber picks flight, AG picked fight but then changed her mind about it and now gets along with her).
… Good question, actually. I don’t think we have evidence one way or the other yet?
The stabbing could have been another catalyst point, or it could have been Amber’s rejection of AG after. I don’t know enough about DID to say what’s more likely.
It is a REALLY interesting new angle on this strip if AG DOESN’T know Amber did it.
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Knives will be sad to hear that
(j/k Sal isn’t Scott so w/e)
Knives Chau
17 years old
Gods dammit. Now I’m picturing Knives Chau in an AG-esque costume as AG’s sidekick. Thanks you two. :p
I’m too old. 🙁 I thought this thread was going to be about Knives.
I would pay cash money for this crossover.
I would pay cash for most any Scott Pilgrim cross over.
You’re in luck! lol
Do you think Knives is friends with Guns?
Everyone always makes fun of me when I try to take Knives to a fight with Guns, though? :/
you never take Knives to a Guns fight- she is just too sharp on her wit and always to the point!
Gun fights always seemed to be Knives’ forte.
Ironically enough, if Guns did exist in the Dumbiverse, those sweet biceps would be really useful to AG and Sal right now.
You Knives people are so edgy.
NO GUNS EVER.
(David Willis quoting Batman (who can breathe in space, donchanau))
Dave Willis is Bruce Wayne.
You can tell because the names are similar, and because they’re both Batman.
Knives to meet you
Knives is SUCH a Lucy, guys. It’s her destiny.
AG is Scott and Sal is Ramona. Lucy gets jealous over this anti-hero cool girl her hero keeps hanging around with. Sal probably doesn’t have a collection of evil exes though, so maybe it’ll be seven evil dads.
Seven evil parents, there’ll be an evil mom too.
Is the story going to be that Amber and Walky are banging, but “Amazi-Girl” has the hots for Sal?
That would not workout for Amazi-Girl. In fact that might be the worst thing to happen for her….which means of course that’s where this is going!
I suspect that Sal would be gentlewomanly enough to politely turn her down. However, I’m not sure how the ‘hand-off’ between the two personae might go if Amber steps back to the steering wheel in the middle of an intimate conversation between Sal and Amazi-Girl!
Seeing the last panel in the corner of my eye, I thought it was a ‘chance moment when our faces are really close’ pre-kiss between Sal and AG.
But instead we’re gonna get a flashback to Marcie’s throat (could’ve been a knife??)/Sal’s hand.
And, flashback:
hmmmm i wONDER WHY THAT MIGHT BE, THAT’S SO STRANGE
AMAZI-GIRL, HAVE ANY IDEAS?????
Sal just didn’t like Trigun very much.
Blasphemy!
Oh, okay, fuck these guys. Like, I figured, but it’s good to know why they’re getting beaten up.
Same. Destroy them without qualm or mercy, y’all.
Yep. At least if Sal and AG are apparently regularly teaming up to beat down on people, said people are assholes who deserve every punch they have coming to ‘em. Also, Gashface as a name is now in-universe. Delightful!
Druggo McStabbed was better IMO. Because Joe.
I was wondering why Sal and Amazi-Girl were beating these guys up. Glad to see that they’re assholes who deserve it.
Yeah, I thought I’d missed a strip somehow, at first.
Nope, Willis is just using some o’ dat sweet ‘In Medias Res’.
Oooooooooh. I like this strip. I like it a lot. If only Sal knew half of the info being played on here.
I know! There’s SO MUCH GOING ON!
Also, is it me, or has the strip’s art been on fire lately? Like, it’s looking a lot crisper and the colouring’s been outstanding.
Oh my gosh, yes! What you said, and the characters have felt extra expressive, and also the framing’s been really cool lately. Like, the jump kick yesterday was sweet! Panels 2-3 today are really neat, too!
Oh boy, doxxers.
BREAK THEIR KNEECAPS, GIRLS.
Jesus fuck how many fans did Gashface have?
The Patriarchy has an army of millions!
I shouldn’t be surprised that a rapist would have supporters willing to dox or physically attack his victims, but somehow 1.) it never crossed my mind and 2.) now that it has, I’m grimly certain that bit’s taken straight from RL
Really only like 4-10, its just that they keep fighting the same guys every night because Amazi-Girl never actual bothers to arrest anybody.
Not fans of the guy himself, just scumbags who don’t want a trend started of rapists getting caught and charged.
I suspect that’s it. They don’t need to be tied directly to Ryan. This kind of doxxing and harassment happens to accusers pretty regularly.
Possibly with a more openly violent turn here, to generate action scenes for Amazi-Girl. Often it’s “just” internet harassment and threats. But you never know when one of those will turn physical.
And Ryan did have the bros and whoever it was that picked him up in the car on his side. That seemed suspicious at the time – especially that we never saw the driver.
These may simply be friends of his. He had bros at the rally who were willing to fight for him, after all; maybe they’re out for revenge.
Maybe he was a popular member of a fraternity?
Or REALLY active in some campus political group.
Or the campus MRA group.
Probably not a campus MRA group – I’d expect a lot less fighting and a lot more running and whimpering from them. MRAs tend to produce the occasional mass shooter and the depressingly common abusive asshole, but people willing to fight against people who can actually fight back? Not so much.
To quote Neil Gaiman, in an ancient tweet already seven hours old, after some comicsgate randos showed up in his twitter:
“I don’t think they’re my fans. They arrived, sent by someone else, who doesn’t quite get it.”
What I find odd isn’t that a group of people would try to attack women who report rape, its that they would appear to be otherwise normal college students and they wouldn’t be wearing white hoods and tiki torches.
They started leaving those behind when AG started threating using them for the beatdowns.
The tiki torches were inside them all along.
Not really.
But we can arrange that.
never underestimate the power of frat boys willing to rally around one of their own…unwritten code among them, lie about sexual encounters and blame the women until they recant. If all else fails, intimidate them into submission
One thing that should be mentioned is that, iirc, Gashface was an intern on a political campaign, and likely has some political connections through his family to boot. So you get routine “This claim of rape is suspect!” claims coupled with “They’re just trying to smear the name of a good family!”
Maybe. Unpaid intern handing out flyers at a rally isn’t really a prestigious position. Son of a preacher likely gives him more clout, especially with Robin denouncing him.
I’m really looking forward to a day when Ryan stops darkening the lives of the cast. Whenever the hell that may be.
Why? That would mean something worse has taken his place.
Nah, the relative badness of the villains is all over the place, we got Blaine before Mary for god sake! I wouldn’t worry to much.
We all know the final boss is Galasso, anyway. 😛
Many Fools and Doxxers will know what it is to be roasted in the depths of a pizza (and sub) that day, I can tell you!
Galasso would never doxx anyone. Resorting to subterfuge like that is beneath him. If he cannot best an adversary in honorable combat (or, at least, if his minions cannot best that adversary) then he has found the one to give him an heir.
I didn’t mean the final boss of this whole [doxxing, etc] mess, we all know that’s Ryan. Much like Blaine, he’s a reoccurring villain, while Toedad was a one-off. I mean, Galasso is the final boss of the entire comic. 😛
Basically, if Amazi-Girl is Batman, then Ryan is Two-Face, Blaine is Hugo Strange, Toedad is Humpty Dumpty, and Galasso is Ra’s al Ghul. Mike, in his antagonistic-yet-oddly-helpful way, is likely The Riddler. Naturally, Sal is Catwoman.
I like this assessment a lot!!
AG: I work alone.
Danny, Dorothy, Walky, Sal, Dina and Joyce: Hi!!
OK who is Robin, Red Robin, Red Hood, Oracle, Batgirl, and Huntress? 😀
Robin is Robin, duh. Just kidding, Robin is Walky, Malaya is Huntress, Dorothy is Oracle, Marcie is Batgirl, Red Hood is Mike, Red Robin is … eh … Jacob? Idk. Other than Mike, not a lot of smartypants mcgees…
Joyce isGolden Age Robin. :p
I was thinking Dorothy was Vicki Vale, but I guess I probably shouldn’t be shipping her and Amazi-Girl. >.>
Also Galasso has only recently been informed, after great struggle, what an ‘internet’ is. In celebration, he has designed a new ‘web site’ for Galasso’s Pizza (and Subs), the better to spread its glory!
Its glory mostly consists of ugly animated backgrounds and jpegs from the late 90s/early aughts. A midi of the Batman Animated Series theme plays. There is a hit counter. Terribly ornate vaguely-gothic font, in colors that clash with the background. The employees are all too young to realize history is repeating itself.
(All except for Pamela, of course, who has been quietly managing their web presence for well over a decade. Conquest helps.)
He has also added a pizza shaped like the internet to the menu.
… I really, really want to see what Galasso’s idea of an Internet-shaped pizza looks like, and at the same time really, really don’t.
there are already two who have: Toe Dad and Blaine. Blaine is still out there plotting something and Toe Dad could always make an appearance because of some technicality…
A) Yes, please, god, punch them. I do not want to know what they were planning to do in that house.
B) I like how Sal’s punching with the hand she was stabbed in in the last two panels. Nice touch.
C) Sal’s eyes are bigger and more emotional when she says she’s not a fan of knives. Always nice, reader wise, to get more elements of character’s trauma.
It’s weird that I actually kinda missed shades guy. Nice to see he’s doing well. Does he still work the word “gay” into every sentence? Also why are they even still attacking people on campus?
Well, according to today’s comic, they’re in league with Ryan, and trying to harass women who were speaking out in regards to Ryan’s abuses toward them..
Oh man.
Also now I wish this was a legit beat ’em up game. Amazigirl, Sal, Sarah with the Bat, uhh, Joyce cold-cocked Toedad, so sure, he’s in.
Don’t sleep on Joyce. She’s physically the strongest girl in this comic. I challenge anyone to prove me wrong on this!
Ruth and her femur collection would disagree.
Yeah, but see that’s been established as a lie. Ruth admitted it’s an intimidation tactic and while her intimidation stats are maxed she doesn’t actually have any femurs. Ruth’s impressive. She flipped Blaine that one time. But I’ve seen Joyce send a man stronger and heavier looking than Blaine flying off the ground in one punch! And no I don’t believe god funneled his strength into her, because I also saw her kick in a window frame like a week later!
I will say, Ruth flipping Blaine was especially impressive given she was in unsupported withdrawal at the time. Given how fucked she was after that must’ve taken a lot out of her.
That said, the most powerful person in this comic is clearly Asma, who deals with heavy packages and bullshit all day long (and according to a Patreon strip, apparently carries those packages on her person during non-work hours.)
One Punch Joyce?
Kicking in a window frame isn’t actually that difficult apparently. And I’d like to note that in both instances, Joyce is angry and anger can fuel a lot of adrenaline and strength. See also why Amber seems a lot stronger when she’s pissed off. We don’t know what her baseline is.
Some people here seem to have forgotten that Joyce is a Fitness Conquistador.
Only recently. 😛
Joyce isn’t actually normally that strong, but she’s a barbarian and gets a big strength boost while raging. 🙂
No fighting skills though. Someone teach that girl how to throw a punch, so she doesn’t break her wrist again.
So, Joyce is The Hulk?
Wouldn’t strength boost while raging make her a Berserker rather than Barbarian?
Depends on the edition of d&d/pathfinder.
And don’t forget who gave Scarface his scar in the first place.
DumbingBrawling of (r)Age:Congratulations! You’ve unlocked co-op mode!
Dina attacks from the side while your attention’s drawn. Clever girl.
There’s always Mii Fighters in Smash.
Yup – as I noted (late) in yesterdays’ comments, it seems that Sal and AG are now partners. In the crime fighting sense, I mean. That’s… interesting.
They need a theme song.
One’s a troubled young woman with bad parents, violent tendencies, a history of acting out, and a trademark outfit!
One’s a… pretty much the same, only black!
They Fight Crime!
To be fair, that’s basically just gender-flipped Arrow.
(actually that should be sex-flipped, but that isn’t a real term that I know of, and we have the “gender flipped” storyline going on in the other webcomic, so I suppose the term is grand-whatevered in)
*plays the Batman (1966) incidental fight music on a hidden set of Bluetooth speakers around the fracas*
BIFF!
POW!
ZAP!
Personally, Danny Elfman’s theme from Batman 1989 for Amazi-Girl and Herman Zimmerman’s ‘Is She With You?’ from Batman v. Superman for Sal.
Also, AG, when you set up dummy addresses as part of a plan, you need to TELL YOUR FRIEND THE PLAN.
Also I’m pretty sure random houses still have people living in them.
Could be empty or abandoned houses.
AG is kind of super incompetent when a situation calls for anything more complex than punching people in the face.
But, um, flooding with dummy addresses is a really sketchy thing to do. AG and Sal can’t be at EVERY address if the forums(?) are “flooded”–what about the people in the house? AG says “not this one”, but I find it hard to believe every dummy address is to an unoccupied house, statistics wise. Maybe she picked addresses of frat houses? Or men-only, so these guys would go away upon not finding women? Still sketchy to traumatize random people like that. Getting the forums(again, ?) shut down would be a better route (then patrol the real addresses).
There are other options — list the address of a convenience store that’s got measures in place to protect the staff, list the address of a police station, list the address of a karate studio, list the address of a cop bar.
Also, dummy addresses are not necessarily real addresses. Though I wouldn’t count on these creeps being cool-headed enough to refrain from targeting 235 Outlook Lane just because 237 Outlook Lane doesn’t exist.
Better to send them down a winding back road that doesn’t actually have any houses on it. It’ll take ’em an hour to get there and back after realizing that there’s nothing there but a cement factory, which is an hour that won’t be spent harassing innocent people.
Also, she says she flooded the forums with dummy addresses, not that she spammed the forums with a flood of dummy addresses. That nuance gives the phrase a potentially different meaning.
In other words, it may just be a half dozen addresses that she spread across the various boards to make sure they had high visibility, not necessarily a ton of different addresses all posted willy-nilly. When you consider the matter logically, the first approach seems far more likely, as the latter one has pretty much no utility or benefit whatsoever.
That makes sense—but honestly I can see either interpretation being valid in the phrasing. I don’t really see how your distinction in phrasing makes any difference whatsoever; they seem largely the same to me. BUT you raise a good point that she could have found 6 uninhabited addresses that she repeated and not 2 dozen, at least when it comes to interpreting her use of “spammed”
The latter phrasing is more precise [notice the extra words! :P], that’s the distinction. 🙂
I wasn’t trying to imply her initial phrasing was carefully considered, just that it could have been what it was to express an intent different than the one you interpreted (versus more precise phrasing which would have closed off that option).
I don’t see why not – Bloomington’s a large city. There’s probably lots of unoccupied houses and apartments for AG to send people to. Or, as people have suggested, businesses that are closed this late at night, places like hospitals/police stations, etc.
The idea of sending them to a police station is delightful to me.
I have a friend who volunteers with an organization that works with survivors of domestic abuse, and the address given on the website is for a police station.
One day, said friend and I were in that police station as my friend needed to get finger printed for a name change. While we were waiting, a guy came in asking if this is where he could find the people with the domestic violence organization. This is when my friend told me how the organization had set that up.
The suggestion of closed businesses (or police stations, which is just lovely) makes a lot of sense, but at least in this strip, Sal seems to think she’s protecting a regular house. There is absolutely no evidence these dummy addresses are to anything besides real places people may potentially live, even if no one does. That said, the larger the city, the larger the demand for housing and thus the less available housing. If Bloomington really is a large city, it seems unlikely for many places to be totally vacant, especially so close to a college town (assuming the witnesses/sal/AG aren’t too far).
Right now, their focus is protecting witnesses from intimidation and attack. If the gang wants to stake out 12345 Notareal Boulevard, that’s not an issue.
So it’s okay to allow/facilitate random people getting attacked/traumatized, as long as a certain group of people are protected (because they’re valuable to a potential court case)? ….okay
Punching is fine
Now, I am imagining Amazi Girl, Sal and Walky together in a Slipshine. Damn you, Willis!
Whereas I was picturing Amazi-Girl, Sal, Walky, and Danny together after yesterday’s strip
I admit to being totally flummoxed, and to having to google “doxing”.
Pick your role models carefully people.
And rule 2, never meet your heroes.
Because of COURSE they are.
*sigh* I hate that the world makes this aspect realistic.
This house has people in it?
No, Sal just thought the dummy addresses were legit because someone didn’t fill her in, AG.
Shaking my head, AG, between this and being late, you’re just in TERRIBLE sidekick form tonight.
They’re really going to freak when they find the girl who’s sunk halfway through the floor…
And as everyone who’s ever been to Night Vale knows, just because you see people inside a house doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be there when you open the door.
Of course, no one who’s ever been to NIght Vale is going to have returned, so how would they impart that information to anyone?
Through a fun podcast!
Oh man I’m glad I’m not the only one who immediately thought this
Nice, you got it.
Okay this I can unreservedly get popcorn for. Will it blow up in their faces? (AG’s primarily, but also Sal’s when her new mutually-enabling friend turns out to be a source of her trauma and Marcie’s fucking pissed?) Oh, certainly. But hey, if Sal can forgive the stalking then maybe there’s hope for friendship after all!
Probably after another brutal betrayal-fight, but hey!
I’m guessing that Ryan’s defence will make ‘persecution of this fine, upstanding young man and his harmless group of high-spirited friends by a group of lawless vigilantes’ a central plank of their mitigation.
I really don’t have any problem with what Amazi-Girl and Sal are doing here although if you’re not willing to resort to violence providing the address of police officers is a nice way of sending doxers in a direction they will soon regret.
Cripes, there’s no end to Ryan’s depravity even when he’s taken out.
An interesting topic of conversation, with you two.
Willis, you and you’re layered bs, man
Now that I think about it what happened to that crew of shitheads that helped Ryan escape last time?
Well it sure looks like some of them are getting punched! So presumably some of the others were as well. I mean, maaaaybe one or two heard enough of the story being told unbiased enough to realize he stalked several women to their doors with a knife and that was their line? Maaaaybe even that included them not knowing he drugged women so he could rape them?
I don’t think either event is at all LIKELY of course, but who knows? Maybe one of them has a functioning soul.
Doesn’t look like the bros are here. And I doubt the driver of the car that picked him up is dumb enough to do this.
When knives are used, things get out of hand
And into hands…
ITYM into FISTS
I strongly suspect that the hints of non-memory sharing are true.
Amazi-Girl said she had trouble finding her mask because she doesn’t know where Amber left it. She never found it and had to quickly craft another one from some yellow cloth.
I further suspect she and Sal have been doing the hero-and-sidekick thing for a while now. They seem so nonchalant and casual about the whole thing. They’re actually bantering, like fighting thugs is a normal thing and the only abnormal part of it is that Amber was running late. Late enough that Sal was looking for her (on Garbage Roof) and eventually gave up and went crime-fighting on her own.
Sal is also having so much fun fighting that she’s completely abandoned her promise to Marcie. I’m guessing she used to get into fights a lot, before the accident that hurt Marcie and took her voice, and has been “on the wagon” ever since. She’s relapsing, becoming “old Sal” from before. This is evident in the loss of her accent, which she obviously didn’t have growing up.
They’re becoming a dangerous couple. They’re both powderkegs, and it’s only a matter of time before they explode.
Dream/fantasy/hallucination/wish fulfillment. Too bizarre otherwise. IMHO, of course.
IMHO, the fact that the Ryan issue is being discussed in a realistic way rules out a fantasy or dream. Amazi-Girl probably left Walky asleep and went to work.
What if Amazigirl can hop bodies, and this is now Dorothy?
That’s not how DID works.
No, but it’s how malevolent spirits work.
Dorothy is likely being groomed to be AG’s nemesis, or maybe Girl Most Likely To Be Found By Her Roommate Aspirating Her Own Vomit After Overdosing On Psychopharmaceuticals and Alcohol. Or Both.
Dorothy is going to be the ‘Lois Lane’, I think – the overconfident and over-curious truth-seeker who ends up causing problems that Sal and Amber have to fix.
“Harry Osborne”. Maybe Dorothy will convince herself that AG has ruined her life, her plans for Yale and a career in politics, and has stolen two boyfriends. And they are, for all practical purposes, roommates, which can complicate things. Or be hilarious.
Which sides, if any, of the Jack-and-Jill/Johnette/shared-half-bath have locks on them again?
This isn’t a fantasy story like It’s Walky, so true super-powers and supernatural plot devices are ruled out.
I don’t think so. She threw it down the stairwell, and Amber likely spent one more time with Walky so it’s less “couldn’t find the mask” more “I don’t have time to get it”
So she grabbed a spare.
Amber knows what’s happening and has the memories, amazi-girl is a coping mechanism (and a very very very unhealthy one at that)
I do know there was one time it happened, but it seemed like “amazi-girl” didn’t remember either so I’d be more likely to say she was more sleep walking (sleep crime fighting?)
This is contradicted by the fact Amber is having ‘black outs’ and finding out Amazi-Girl doing stuff about which she has no memory.
I’m not sure why you think Amazi-Girl didn’t remember either. This is the first time we’ve seen her since then.
And AG said “couldn’t find my mask” last strip. After Amber threw it away. That’s another strong hint she doesn’t remember.
All indications are that they’re separate personas and that they’re no longer sharing memories. How much more explicit does it need to be?
Which doesn’t mean you’re not right about Amazi-Girl being (or at least starting as) a coping mechanism and being unhealthy. Just that they’re kind of stuck with each other now, however much they deny it.
This. It’s quite clear that this is well into dissociation territory. They’re well past the point of “stop the ride, I wanna get off” being an option; Amber and AG need to learn to live with each other (with the help of a very good therapist).
Yeah, once someone else reminded me of this strip I stopped considering Amber with DID a theory, particularly as of the ‘AG out at night and Amber doesn’t remember, Amber actively talking at and being antagonistic towards AG’ development. It is increasingly obvious that even if they ever were compartmentalizations of specific thoughts and feelings in one shared experience, they are so separate Amber felt like a terrified passenger in her own body and no longer has that much awareness when AG is in control. Call it what you will, but it’s clearly past the point where the current tools and coping mechanisms are sufficient and Amber and AG can course-correct without some outside support.
@nlips: Though it seems like this isn’t random trolling for bad guys or “patrolling”. They’re working together against a specific problem – dudebros stalking Ryan’s victims who have come forward.
Likely that’s how Sal justifies it to herself. Of course, she also likes the fighting.
I love this action duo.
I must admit, I’m also not a fan of knives. I’m a homo sapiens, which is definitely not a fan of knives. It’s organic, for starters.
Yeah, I had kind of hoped that what had happened to Ryan would have given his fan-club pause. Naive of me, in retrospect; they probably consider him to be some twisted sort of martyr! It also makes me think that something that I posted back then might be right and that there may be a fully-organised rape club in the town!
What’s the bet that his defence will be that he is a”fine young man with great potential and his whole life ahead of him”, who shouldn’t be ruined by the “youthful mistake” of multiple rapes?
I don’t like knives either. I do like chives a whole lot though.
Also: Is it happening? I’ve been looking forward to this plotline being explored! *excited noises*
Uh, just a heads up. The RSS feed stopped a few pages back at ‘Choked’.
That is, the RSS link at the top of the page stops there. The one at the bottom seems okay.
“Someone” stabbed him?
Isn’t it generally known that Amber did the deed?
(And if he is going to trial… then surely Amber’s going to have to be involved in that… if not one of her own, also)
(Also… Why is there an apostrophe before stabbed?)
Sal only knows Amber as ‘laundry girl’ and probably wouldn’t be able to put the name to a face, if she has heard it.
…. so does the fake address have people in it?
1060 West Addison
Probably an abandoned or unused house if Amazi-Girl used it for a dummy. Also it took me fifty tries to spell ‘Amazi’.
Maybe it has fake people.
…Ryan’s buddies are going through an impressively stupidly huge amount of effort to protect his keister…makes me wonder why tho?
Two primary reasons:
1) He is clearly a ‘leader’ figure and followers will always risk themselves for leaders, no matter how self-destructive this choice;
2) I strongly suspect that they consider it a duty to their gender to ‘keep (misogynistic slur) in their place’.
Yeah, I’d definitely say the latter, and that it’s ‘for the cause’ rather than Ryan specifically- if anything that he’s become a figurehead/martyr for them, rather than that many of them actually even knew him before.
That’s my guess. At least until we see more.
That’s the point of internet doxxing and hate campaigns. To gin up random sympathetic idiots to attack your targets.
They don’t even have to be “his buddies” at all and he could be an absolute nobody. They’d still have found in the news this case about this poor, poor straight white man being knifed by some “psycho-B” (carefully removing any context) and that would be enough to get them in arms to protect one of their “facing extinction” kind. Also, any excuse that allows some people to exercise their hatred for other people is good enough.
I’m real worried about Sal not hiding her face or tattoo.
Uh.
this is what half-measures gets you, amber.
Wait Sal hasn’t figured out who A-G is yet???
Nope. Never forget the Clarke Kent effect!
Amber lives in the CLARK wing, of course no one will discover her secret identity.
Holy SHIT this strip. There is just TOO MUCH IN THERE. I cannot even BEGIN.
I feel almost deprived to have attended an institute of higher learning that was thug-deficient.
Let alone the lack of hot costumed vigilante girls!
Oh.
Amber/Amazi Girl may be a dangerous dissociative vigilante, but I think she did right by beating the crap out of that rapist. Also, why would that guy have people defending him online?! Is he an alt right mouth piece like Milo Yianopoulous? Is he a preacher? Is he the leader of a gang?
He’s the son of a bigshot. Implied political connections. Add in potential frat-brother like connections and you get a group of people socially, professionally (it’s less what you know and more who you know), and financially invested in standing up for their friend.
He’s ‘one of us’ (a privileged male) and thus everything he does is explicable and excusable to certain sorts of people. I bet that every one of his victims has been demonised in the forums as ‘asking for it’, a liar or ‘a Feminazi trying to destroy a nice guy with a future’.
Psshh, did you see what Joyce was wearing at the party?
For completeness sake, I should add the he is the SON of a preacher.
I believe that’s properly the “Son of a Preacher Man”.
This is a thing that happens, though usually to a less blatantly violent degree to woman who make rape accusations. Doxxing, threats, harassment.
If there’s dramatic license, it’s making the harassers brave enough to actually try something this drastic offline. That’s always a terrifying possibility, but actually having a gang come to the house at night is rare.
He doesn’t need to be any of that (though as some people have pointed out, he’s not nobody either). “MRAs”, like any other discriminatory group that tries to maintain a facade of legitimacy, are constantly trailing the news to find cases were men were victims of women (regardless of how rightful it was) to “prove their point”. It’s not that they care for Scarface at all; it’s that he gave them an excuse to flex their hatred for women.
I just had a horrible thought. We know Amber and AG aren’t sharing memories anymore. Does that mean Amber is now dormant? Or is she still conscious, watching helplessly through AG’s eyes, knowing that she’ll forget everything when she retakes control?
She’s likely ‘asleep’; that has been the pattern before. Amazi-Girl has never shown she is strong enough to force Amber out of control whist she’s awake.
You know you’ve attained badass status when you can hold a casual conversation while street-fighting numerous thugs.
Almost forgot: good luck to Americans on the Kavanaugh thing, and you’re going to need it, because the time to actually DO something about it was last November.
Two Novembers ago…and this isn’t the place to relitigate that primary.
There was no way to ‘do’ anything about it last November. There weren’t any elections to the US Senate last November, only one special election in December (which was won by a Democrat).
wait, so these guys are showing up to harass women accusing the date-rape guy? WOW that’s pretty scummy…
Those women are half-lucky it’s these guys showing up and not SWAT.
Not so much “harass”…more along the lines of “intimidate the witness”.
Does Sal not know that Amber is Amazi-Girl? I thought she did? Or I thought that at least if there’s anyone in the entire Dumblrverse smart enough to see through the mask it’d be her.
She doesn’t know because her interactions with Amber have been extremely limited and often Amber hides from, runs from or evades her. Amber and AG have had pretty much the exact OPPOSITE reactions to her as well (Amber picks flight, AG picked fight but then changed her mind about it and now gets along with her).
Plus nobody sees through the mask. (Possible exception of Dina, for various unexplained reasons).
Amazi-Girl’s a super hero. That comes with the package.
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh
Noooope. No knives for Sal.
If SHE’D been attacked by Gash-Face, she’s simply have pummeled him into unconsciousness with her bare fists.
And then driven over him with her bike.
A few times.
And maybe peeled out a couple of times.
So how far split is Amber’s psyche? Does AM have memories of that night?
… Good question, actually. I don’t think we have evidence one way or the other yet?
The stabbing could have been another catalyst point, or it could have been Amber’s rejection of AG after. I don’t know enough about DID to say what’s more likely.
It is a REALLY interesting new angle on this strip if AG DOESN’T know Amber did it.