If I were these two, I’d just be glad that they and the motorcycle are apparently all still in one piece despite hitting the ground at a 45° angle yesterday.
The idea that most of the characters are psychologically torturing each other for all eternity in an artificial hell kind of checks out considering they’ll never graduate.
i am 48 damn years old. when i have a nightmare, it is always me at 20ish, walking through campus looking for the right building to find the right room to talk to the right person about what i actually need to do in order to graduate. and i cant remember the name of the person *or* the building, and i’m infinitely too embarrassed to ask anyone i know for advice.
and, you know, that exact thing happened, more than once, so i get to think of it sometimes when i’m awake.
“I want everything to be fixed, I just have no idea how to fix it.” Ah Sal, you read my mind. If only wanting to fix things was enough to actually fix them.
Thx f’r the link! I find lit’riture moving, poetry consuming, great graphic art to be bling!. They all grab me by the soul. Fine.
But music, ahhh,… That grabs my spine, and rattles existence in my brain, like a demon playing craps, and never crapping out. King Crimson, Eric C., Los Orishas, Burt Jansch, A’Segovia, Some-Bach, some of the stuff from the Andes, contra-punctual drumming, Maddie Pryor, BTO, BOC, Stevie-Ray, …
Its like submitting to mind control, and I’m just their puppet. Its scary on bad days, … “Oh, and by the way, which one’s pink?” “Sid, Sid was.”
..Well, shit, Sal’s super relatable. And I’m happy to know I’ve been thinking in terms of stuff she wants accurately! I’ve had long conversations written out in my head like this (albeit with Sal and Marcie, not Sal and Danny).
And Danny, you deserve all the encouragement in the world, you absolute fucking button.
Sal told Danny to shut up. Danny kept talking. It actually helped her that Danny kept talking, it made her feel better in some way.
The final panel is her saying she would like it not to have helped her, perhaps because it annoys her that he made a correct decision when she told him not to do so.
She wishes (facetiously) that Danny would have taken her advice, and shut up. It was bad advice, because he helped by not being Marcie. She wishes she gave good advice and his silence would have made things better. Instead, Danny ignored her advice, and made things better by talking.
Is that snow in the background or just really white sand? Do we finally see the sign of the slow, unbeatable passage of time. The Dumbiverse’s eventual progression to winter??
One of the two years I lived in St. Paul, MN, the first snow was on Columbus Day (October 8 or 9). But as I recall, it was an unusually cold winter, and anyway St. Paul’s latitude is well north of Bloomington’s.
(Raises hand politely.)
TL:DR – While you’re technically correct for australia, not really.
We don’t really have “thanksgiving” in Australia. You could substitute Australia Day, but the date of that is subject to some dispute (to put it mildly). We also don’t really celebrate Halloween, despite recent marketing attempts and American cultural osmosis (probably because for us Spring is becoming summer and we’ve got enough scary things lurking around without having to invoke the supernatural).
I’d put us in the “not applicable” category for now. Check back in a decade.
Erntedankfest and Thanksgiving are two quite different beasts, the former may have a fixed Sunday in the church year but not much feast around it nowadays and the latter creeped in in the last 15-20 years and was no thing at all in Germany before.
Just like Valentine’s Day is now marketed worldwide, Halloween is, too. It crept in with Woolworths marketing customs for Halloween and took Trick or Treat is something kids learned from US movies.
It has become a cultural reality in Germany by know. On the day the Lutheran dominated states of Germany have a holiday for remembering Luther putting up his thesis against the corruption of the Catholic Church.
The Catholic dominated states have a holiday, All Hallows’, the day after, but as far as I know even there, the hubbub about Halloween is a recent developement.
Yes, the natural progression of holidays.
Thanksgiving, Halloween then a nice break with no big holidays to eat turkey in one month before Christmas(too much turkey in 2 months!) THEN christmas
Lake Monroe? They’ve crossed over into the XKCD verse?
Oh my, this will end with a massive battle between Mike & Black Hat Guy resulting in the destruction of both realities, I can feel it. 🙂
Black Hat Guy knows why he is the way he is and fully accepts it, Mike has no amo there. He could effectively be a bit of a bummer whenever BHG basks in ego?
Black Hat Guy, I think, would win. But these are reasoning monsters with no standing quarrel… It will be up to Berret Guy to save us/confound us into suicide. Also, he wins because he’s the only one with his subduction license.
You’re probably right, though I think that claiming that BHG has “no standing quarrel” with anyone/thing is a tenuous statement at best. 🙂
Beret Guy’s easy enough to deal with most times. A bag of scones (or pastries) will suffice, at least as a distraction. Though you are correct that the subduction licence would be a formidable challenge (mainly because it might destroy the bakery before the scones are done). 🙂
Sorry, Danny, but insisting that you shouldn’t be encouraged is, like, super likely to backfire and get you encouraged instead. You might just end up having to accept positive reinforcement or something!
Also, I’m not entirely sure how to word this, but I feel like Sal has, in the face of everyone else’s judgements, had to spend far more time trying to figure out ‘who she is’ than most people should have to. I like her answers, though. Wanting things to be better is important!
Pffft, like either of these two are gonna do anything but skate over, ignore, deflect, or joke about positive reinforcement (at the very least, I don’t recall either accepting one off the bat). I mean, it’s better than rejecting it the way Amber does, but like…yes, more of that for Danny please.
Oh, shoot, yeah, I meant to respond to you on Patreon and totally forgot, sorry!
And, I dunno, I feel like the difference with Amber’s self-hatred is mostly a matter of scale? Or maybe it just all comes out the same way? They can’t give themselves the goodness they want, and they all need any external support to be overwhelming before they’ll allow any change in their self-images. In that regard, Danny’s definitely made the most progress thus far by deciding not to worry as much about dating for a while.
Actually can DOA just end with a massive hug pile in which everyone makes a massive blanket nest and cuddles and then Mary runs away from the happiness as it burns her?
Dorothy goes to one, but she’s probably the only one to seek one out unsolicited. There’s a lot of stigma and baggage over going to therapy, despite it being a healthy thing to do for yourself.
Judging by the circumstances, it’s a safe bet they were approaching it from the “fixing her” angle. That was never going to work; Sal needs support and encouragement to sort her problems out on her own terms, but she also needs to open up to someone to get that. The closest we’ve seen her get is with Marcie, and now Danny.
Likely tied to the basic problems of forcing anyone into therapy – even for good therapists, it’s really hard when the person wants nothing to do with it.
She may well have had lousy ones or ones who came at it wrong, but even for the best, it’s an uphill battle if you don’t want to be there at all.
I think in her case, it may be the result of them expecting her to lie and her expecting them to not believe her. It’s really hard for someone in a position of authority (as you are when therapie has been mandated) to get someone with that number of bad experiences with authority to trust you.
And I’m not sure how many would really care to try.
Plus, if it was court mandated (or parent mandated), the therapists might be more concerned with what got her referred to them rather than whatever may have helped for Sal to talk about (especially if the parents picked the therapist – they seem like the type to talk to a therapist before they officially make an appointment for Sal and ending up giving the therapist an idea what the parents want them to talk about).
I identify with this comic strip on so many levels, and I am sure many people do to. We want happy lives, but we don’t want to get rid of the pain that motivated us to reach our goals. We want to be free, but we don’t want to be alone.
I’m pretty sure she’s not looking for physical intimacy. At least, not yet. Any such move on his part would totally destroy the budding relationship – if that is what is happening.
I assume some people are shipping them but I’m still kind of shipping Danny and Ethan and I think Danny and Sal work really well as very good trusting platonic friends.
Yeah, this is more or less what I posted yesterday: Sal’s big problem is that she’s been so busy trying to not be certain things, she’s failing really to be anything. This has had the side-effect of making all those things that she doesn’t want to be seem to be her genuine nature.
No matter how much she denies it, Sal will always be the ‘cool and edgy anti-hero’ type. It’s become so much of a reflex for her that I doubt she’ll ever be able to quit!
It reads a little oddly because the other panels make you think it will be, “and I want you to talk to me even if I tell you to be quiet”, rather than, “and I hate to admit it but you talking to me has helped.”, with some colloquialisms thrown in.
Loading ...
“it’s laik, why do ah gotta CHANGE to change, that’s stupid”
It’s like Einstein said; the definition of genius is ding the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results.
Ding. Ding is clearly what I meant to say. I obviously proofread that before I posted it.
I mean that’s basically just a Skinner box.
Cue The Doubleclicks:
“I’d rather just leave
Than grow, change, or learn”
S: They tell me science has brought so many things, but I’d rather be happy than right.
A: And are you?
S: No. That’s where it all falls down, you see?
If I were these two, I’d just be glad that they and the motorcycle are apparently all still in one piece despite hitting the ground at a 45° angle yesterday.
They’ll be fine. I’m pretty sure AG got hit by a car once and walked away.
I’ve survived worse and come out with the ability to use everything below the neck. Yes, everything.
They’re probably fine.
You imply you still have no use for the stuff above the neck.
(jk)
They aren’t. I recognize that lake from The Good Place.
The idea that most of the characters are psychologically torturing each other for all eternity in an artificial hell kind of checks out considering they’ll never graduate.
I mean, that basically described my college experience.
Except for the never graduating. It only felt like never.
But this is just an overly complex dream and you’ll wake up tomorrow back in class.
i am 48 damn years old. when i have a nightmare, it is always me at 20ish, walking through campus looking for the right building to find the right room to talk to the right person about what i actually need to do in order to graduate. and i cant remember the name of the person *or* the building, and i’m infinitely too embarrassed to ask anyone i know for advice.
and, you know, that exact thing happened, more than once, so i get to think of it sometimes when i’m awake.
Oh, that’s not good…
If you start feeding a wild Danny encouragement he’ll never leave!
There should be a new “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” book called “If You Give a Danny Some Encouragement”
I suppose that’s why almost no one else in the comic ever tries it.
“I want everything to be fixed, I just have no idea how to fix it.” Ah Sal, you read my mind. If only wanting to fix things was enough to actually fix them.
I told you not to wander around in the dark
I told you about the swans that they live in the park…
Then i told you ’bout a kid, now he’s married to Mable.
*George Harrison/Eric Clapton unison riffing*
Thx f’r the link! I find lit’riture moving, poetry consuming, great graphic art to be bling!. They all grab me by the soul. Fine.
But music, ahhh,… That grabs my spine, and rattles existence in my brain, like a demon playing craps, and never crapping out. King Crimson, Eric C., Los Orishas, Burt Jansch, A’Segovia, Some-Bach, some of the stuff from the Andes, contra-punctual drumming, Maddie Pryor, BTO, BOC, Stevie-Ray, …
Its like submitting to mind control, and I’m just their puppet. Its scary on bad days, … “Oh, and by the way, which one’s pink?” “Sid, Sid was.”
Ahhh, back to the lake!
..Well, shit, Sal’s super relatable. And I’m happy to know I’ve been thinking in terms of stuff she wants accurately! I’ve had long conversations written out in my head like this (albeit with Sal and Marcie, not Sal and Danny).
And Danny, you deserve all the encouragement in the world, you absolute fucking button.
Agreed on both counts. I think this is now one of my top 5 pages of this comic.
… “I want you talking to me despite me telling you to shut up to not have helped a little tiny bit.”
Okay, I’ve read that sentence about a thousand times and maybe I’m a dumbass but I have no idea what Sal’s trying to express.
I told you to shut up. You’re talking to me anyway. That helped. The fact that you ignoring my order was a good thing annoys me.
Sal told Danny to shut up. Danny kept talking. It actually helped her that Danny kept talking, it made her feel better in some way.
The final panel is her saying she would like it not to have helped her, perhaps because it annoys her that he made a correct decision when she told him not to do so.
Try breaking it up like this: I want you [talking to me despite me telling you to shut up] to not have helped a little tiny bit.
-> I want the thing not to have helped a little bit. Thing being you talking despite me telling you to shut up.
It took me a second read through to get it.
She wishes (facetiously) that Danny would have taken her advice, and shut up. It was bad advice, because he helped by not being Marcie. She wishes she gave good advice and his silence would have made things better. Instead, Danny ignored her advice, and made things better by talking.
She is trying to be witty. YMMV
Oh, man, thank all of you for explaining, that was driving me nuts.
Right!?
Sal’s penultimate speech bubble is basically my life these days.
Is that snow in the background or just really white sand? Do we finally see the sign of the slow, unbeatable passage of time. The Dumbiverse’s eventual progression to winter??
I don’t think we’ve even hit Halloween yet, and we certainly haven’t hit Thanksgiving. It’s still pretty early for there to be snow.
Based on the timeline on Walkypedia, it’s currently October 14.
One of the two years I lived in St. Paul, MN, the first snow was on Columbus Day (October 8 or 9). But as I recall, it was an unusually cold winter, and anyway St. Paul’s latitude is well north of Bloomington’s.
(And no, I don’t call it Columbus Day anymore.)
Halloween happens *after* Thanksgiving in all *righteous* nations.
No, just the nations whose summers are too short.
America: After
Canada: Before
Australia: After
Liberia: After
Netherlands: After
Saint Lucia: Before
Philippines: After, then before, now not really celebrated at all.
Germany: Before (also not technically Thanksgiving but close enough)
(Raises hand politely.)
TL:DR – While you’re technically correct for australia, not really.
We don’t really have “thanksgiving” in Australia. You could substitute Australia Day, but the date of that is subject to some dispute (to put it mildly). We also don’t really celebrate Halloween, despite recent marketing attempts and American cultural osmosis (probably because for us Spring is becoming summer and we’ve got enough scary things lurking around without having to invoke the supernatural).
I’d put us in the “not applicable” category for now. Check back in a decade.
Erntedankfest and Thanksgiving are two quite different beasts, the former may have a fixed Sunday in the church year but not much feast around it nowadays and the latter creeped in in the last 15-20 years and was no thing at all in Germany before.
The latter above means Halloween please ignore the grammar.
There were carved radish, though. An Samain. So basically, Halloween.
Where?
It was turnips, not radishes. And Samhain was a Gaelic festival, not a Germanic one.
Just like Valentine’s Day is now marketed worldwide, Halloween is, too. It crept in with Woolworths marketing customs for Halloween and took Trick or Treat is something kids learned from US movies.
It has become a cultural reality in Germany by know. On the day the Lutheran dominated states of Germany have a holiday for remembering Luther putting up his thesis against the corruption of the Catholic Church.
The Catholic dominated states have a holiday, All Hallows’, the day after, but as far as I know even there, the hubbub about Halloween is a recent developement.
Yes, the natural progression of holidays.
Thanksgiving, Halloween then a nice break with no big holidays to eat turkey in one month before Christmas(too much turkey in 2 months!) THEN christmas
Could always be gravel or something.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one confused and wondering.
Aha! It’s whitish rocks. A little bigger than gravel:
http://lakeconnected.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Lake-Monroe-Rotate.jpg
Lake Monroe? They’ve crossed over into the XKCD verse?
Oh my, this will end with a massive battle between Mike & Black Hat Guy resulting in the destruction of both realities, I can feel it. 🙂
Black Hat Guy knows why he is the way he is and fully accepts it, Mike has no amo there. He could effectively be a bit of a bummer whenever BHG basks in ego?
Black Hat Guy, I think, would win. But these are reasoning monsters with no standing quarrel… It will be up to Berret Guy to save us/confound us into suicide. Also, he wins because he’s the only one with his subduction license.
You’re probably right, though I think that claiming that BHG has “no standing quarrel” with anyone/thing is a tenuous statement at best. 🙂
Beret Guy’s easy enough to deal with most times. A bag of scones (or pastries) will suffice, at least as a distraction. Though you are correct that the subduction licence would be a formidable challenge (mainly because it might destroy the bakery before the scones are done). 🙂
Wow, the background of the comic illustration looks a lot bigger than the real-life equivalent. Maybe it’s a matter of perspective.
So they’re somewhere near the Fairfax Beach pin on Google Maps?
That is Fairfax beach actually
Thanks!
I thought it was snow at first as well.
You’ve still got Danny, Sal. We’ve all still got Danny.
What’s the ship name for Sal and Danny? Surely there is one.
I vote either for wonder cycle or motor bread
I second “motor bread”!
Thirded, but only if you write it as Motörbread.
Motorbrot?
(My kbd doesn’t umlaut.)
Beat me to it.
Like this? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7-sbiGlzw
DS (Danny-Sal).
Mario Kart
S.S. Danally
Danny and Sally. Bonus it sounds like a mountain in Alaska.
Friend. Friendship.
The S.S. Getalong.
Sorry, Danny, but insisting that you shouldn’t be encouraged is, like, super likely to backfire and get you encouraged instead. You might just end up having to accept positive reinforcement or something!
Positive reinforcement? Directed at my Danny? It’s more likely than you think.
(Is this meme dead yet? I know too much information theory to understand Internet memes.)
I think any meme over 3 days old is dead these days.
“X? In my Y?” is old enough to have its own YTMNDs, so it must be long since dead and buried…
What you say!!
[GIF of Conan clapping while popcorn pops out of his hands]
Also, I’m not entirely sure how to word this, but I feel like Sal has, in the face of everyone else’s judgements, had to spend far more time trying to figure out ‘who she is’ than most people should have to. I like her answers, though. Wanting things to be better is important!
Pffft, like either of these two are gonna do anything but skate over, ignore, deflect, or joke about positive reinforcement (at the very least, I don’t recall either accepting one off the bat). I mean, it’s better than rejecting it the way Amber does, but like…yes, more of that for Danny please.
Oh, shoot, yeah, I meant to respond to you on Patreon and totally forgot, sorry!
And, I dunno, I feel like the difference with Amber’s self-hatred is mostly a matter of scale? Or maybe it just all comes out the same way? They can’t give themselves the goodness they want, and they all need any external support to be overwhelming before they’ll allow any change in their self-images. In that regard, Danny’s definitely made the most progress thus far by deciding not to worry as much about dating for a while.
No worries! It happens!
That’s a fair point. I think Amber’s is more obvious because she’s more vocal or obvious about being ‘teflon to praise’ as Becky put it.
Seriously can we give Sal a hug?
Can we give everyone hugs?
Actually can DOA just end with a massive hug pile in which everyone makes a massive blanket nest and cuddles and then Mary runs away from the happiness as it burns her?
I’m certainly on board, but I think we’d need to start a petition to get that to happen. Or some kind of fan spinoff. *Shrug*
Sarah has objections.
I have an alternative she might like –
Noise cancelling headphones and study guides.
Ah, peace and quiet? Sounds amazing to me, wish I owned a pair of noise cancelling headphones.
I figured Sarah might like it too.
Gotta love comment-Gravatar synergy.
Or she could go study in a bakery with Claire.
Aw, Sarah’s warming up to hugs! Well, she had at least one heartfelt hug that didn’t kill her. Close enough right?
I have issues with this idea, but the sentiment is nice.
If hugs are unwanted, they can be swapped for another appropriate gesture of support of choice.
Don’t most universities offer counseling services?
Dorothy goes to one, but she’s probably the only one to seek one out unsolicited. There’s a lot of stigma and baggage over going to therapy, despite it being a healthy thing to do for yourself.
Danny should definitely make use of them.
Sal would probably benefit but unless the person suggesting it is Marcie, they’re gonna lose some teeth.
Sal might still feel that she has talked to a sufficient number of therapists in her life.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/agoraphobia/
Yeaaaahhh, and from everything she’s said about them they were, ah, unhelpful to be polite about it.
Judging by the circumstances, it’s a safe bet they were approaching it from the “fixing her” angle. That was never going to work; Sal needs support and encouragement to sort her problems out on her own terms, but she also needs to open up to someone to get that. The closest we’ve seen her get is with Marcie, and now Danny.
Likely tied to the basic problems of forcing anyone into therapy – even for good therapists, it’s really hard when the person wants nothing to do with it.
She may well have had lousy ones or ones who came at it wrong, but even for the best, it’s an uphill battle if you don’t want to be there at all.
I think in her case, it may be the result of them expecting her to lie and her expecting them to not believe her. It’s really hard for someone in a position of authority (as you are when therapie has been mandated) to get someone with that number of bad experiences with authority to trust you.
And I’m not sure how many would really care to try.
Plus, if it was court mandated (or parent mandated), the therapists might be more concerned with what got her referred to them rather than whatever may have helped for Sal to talk about (especially if the parents picked the therapist – they seem like the type to talk to a therapist before they officially make an appointment for Sal and ending up giving the therapist an idea what the parents want them to talk about).
I identify with this comic strip on so many levels, and I am sure many people do to. We want happy lives, but we don’t want to get rid of the pain that motivated us to reach our goals. We want to be free, but we don’t want to be alone.
Sal’s a lady of contradictions, so of course contradicting her was a prescient move on Danny’s part.
“I want… I want a sweet hat and a ukulele!”
“New Danny is SO there for you”
Is this that same lake? lol
I feel like Sal, bottom of panel 4, speaks for us all.
Just… mood.
(hashtag 2018)
Danny might be a total doofus, but he doesn’t pretend to be otherwise, which is important to Sal. And more importantly, he is kind and caring.
Where are they supposed to be? This doesnt look like lake griffy or lake monroe.
It’s the same place they all went to the beach to.
It’s Paynetown beach at Lake Monroe.
Pretty sure it’s Fairfax beach
I forgot, when was the last time we saw this lake?
Approximately 7 years ago in real time, http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-2/01-pajama-jeans/rollcall/
As for how long it has been in the comic? No idea.
I miss Jen Aside. What ever happened to her? 😉
Tapir accident. Very heroic.
She became a character in the comic itself.
(check the tags)
Wow, the contrast in graphic style!
AG gets Garbage Roof and the sidekick gets Garbage Lake.
Giving Danny a compliment is like feeding a stray dog
confessional lake
Instead of Hail Marys, you throw bread crumbs to ducks.
Sal might prefer donuts or wheelies.
When I was being counseled, I was asked: “What are 10 things you like about yourself?”
Don’t think I ever completed the list.
I know I didn’t
Good relationships all around: Sal and Danny, Walky and Amber, Joyce and Fuckface.
“Kiss her, you Blockhead!”
I’m pretty sure she’s not looking for physical intimacy. At least, not yet. Any such move on his part would totally destroy the budding relationship – if that is what is happening.
(Which is exactly what Charlie Brown would think….)
I think Danny is good for Sal, not sure in what context though
I assume some people are shipping them but I’m still kind of shipping Danny and Ethan and I think Danny and Sal work really well as very good trusting platonic friends.
That is far too clean to be Lake Monroe.
Yeah, this is more or less what I posted yesterday: Sal’s big problem is that she’s been so busy trying to not be certain things, she’s failing really to be anything. This has had the side-effect of making all those things that she doesn’t want to be seem to be her genuine nature.
What is this, why am I actually finding myself liking Danny?
It’s the hat. Very dapper.
The hat is only so powerful because of his almost-mullet, though
This is adorable
Yeah, Sal’s little smile in the last panel says volumes.
Of all the free beaches and Sal chose to pay $7 to get into Paynetown. haha
Pay? What do you think that death defying jump off the road was about?
No matter how much she denies it, Sal will always be the ‘cool and edgy anti-hero’ type. It’s become so much of a reflex for her that I doubt she’ll ever be able to quit!
What’s with that grammar disaster in the last panel? o.O
Anyone wanna break down what Sal is trying to communicate, for me? 😛
She told Danny not to talk, but he did anyway and it helped. She’s annoyed that her suggestion seems to have been wrong.
It reads a little oddly because the other panels make you think it will be, “and I want you to talk to me even if I tell you to be quiet”, rather than, “and I hate to admit it but you talking to me has helped.”, with some colloquialisms thrown in.
Oh Sal
“Wanted — My best friend, but not changing so much so quickly.” http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/discreet/
You stop that right now I don’t need to cry.
Beloved protagonists saying heartbreaking things with small voice in the last panel – the comic.
Agreed. He Dannys things up less when he’s not confident.