Amber: “Did I not already mention endorphins? Stop talking about my stupid dead dad and fuck me already.”
Walky: “But I don’t hav-”
**Amber pulls out AG branded condoms**
Amber: “Always prepared.”
Sidenote, apparently Daisy, Dorothy, and Billie have only shared 3 pages together (and they are consecutive pages for that scene). The chest window page also has the only tag for power girl
Except Walky already told Billie that Amber was Amazi-Girl, and there’s no way that Billie would go on believing otherwise after it’s been explicitly spelled out to her.
Billie excluded, I think the highest-tier character who doesn’t know yet is *checks tag cloud* Joe, followed by Leslie, Roz, Robin, and Mary. (Or at least I don’t remember any of them knowing, and Leslie and Roz’s potential tag trawls there would be WAY too long and Joe’s would probably require going back to when Danny was dating AG/AmbG he thought he was dating both and they were more in sync on the whole/It’s Complicated.)
… I don’t want Mary finding out any time soon and have reservations about Robin, but Leslie and Roz? Those could be interesting.
Not to derail the point, but is Mary considered a high tier character still? It’s actually been a long while since she’s done anything. Her last real involvement in a storyline was in 2017, and the big Carla verses Mary storyline was 2016.
Went entirely by the size of nametag in the tag cloud! Mary’s is the same size as Robin, Roz, Leslie, and Marcie (who already knows.)
Now agreed, not all these characters have active roles in the story at the moment, but I think Mary is being set up to take a bigger role now that the Evil Dads are gone. (Her dislike of Malaya while Malaya is basically unaware is a dangler.) But we’ll see.
It’s quite useful. ‘Sorry your dad murdered a guy in front of me,’ ‘sorry your dad was probably a statutory rapist,’ ‘sorry your dad was still conscious to kidnap us and your best friend/my roommate isn’t, even if he was kind of a dick,’ ‘sorry your dad didn’t just kidnap us, he did it INCOMPETENTLY,’ ‘sorry your dad just, in general, was a person that existed in this world and didn’t conveniently die the moment Faz was conceived’… so many things you can encompass in there.
Have not yet figured out why you hate him. He reminds me of me at 18; absolutely a sea in situations I hadn’t encountered before. High school didn’t prepare me for college, and my Dad had little advice to give. Getting slapped for being shallow is how we learn depth? No?
Meh. A big part of it’s just a bit. Nothing saying I have to like every character. It’s fun to dunk on a few. Walky’s not the worst. He’s not overtly malicious like a Mike or a Mary, or dangerous like a Ryan or well nearly every parent. But Walky just kind of sucks to me. He doesn’t seem like a guy who can really be relied on. He just comes across as this really annoying guy who makes snarky comments but doesn’t really contribute anything meaningful. I think he’s trying to be better, like I think he’s all mopey right now because time with his parents makes him realize what a little shit he was to Sal during their childhood, but this is a real slow burn on that. and it does not make up for it.
Also good things just kind of happen to him for no reason and that’s annoying.
People use phrasing from movies, books, stuff other people said to express feelings all the time. As long as he’s honest about his feelings, he’s honest. He isn’t writing an essay, where it would be wrong to plagiarize someone.
Yeah, that’s perfectly normal. Sometimes I still have an easier time processing my emotions through song lyrics than actually trying to find my own words for them. (Like 30% of my brain is loose trivia and phrasing rattling around. Another 40% is just Pokemon.)
When you are doing something new and/or haven’t experienced it yet, it’s ok to use whatever phasing you’ve heard from others, until you’ve had time to write yer own scripts/parse what’s best to say. First time I was at a funeral of a kid who Despisedtheir Dad, it blew me away. How can you not love your Dad? It was a while before I learned that there Could be monsters.
While Amber couldn’t find it in herself to kill him, I don’t think she will be sad that he is dead, all things considered.
So Walky should be saying “Congradulations for your dad.”
Walky could be referring to him being sorry her dad put her in yet another shit situation rather than thinking she’s grieving.
On that note since neither one of these two know what’s going to happen to each other next by the end of this semester they could chose now to get busy if they feel like it…or not, they’re might be a better time.
“I can’t give you my whole heart, but I can give you…
Eight percent of my love
Eight percent of my love
Eight hundredths of the time
You’re the only girl I’m dreaming of, yeah yeah yeah
Eight percent of my heart
Eight percent of my soul
Just point-oh-eight, but girl, you’re great
You’re the only one that makes me whole…”
That’s the thing, isn’t it, Amber? For all he’s a doormat and an enabler of Linda’s worst excesses, Walky still loves Charles. The fact that you’re glad Blaine is dead and are seriously fighting down the urge to go to the morgue and spit on his corpse’s face is something that he’ll never be able to understand.
Also, girl? You do not have to ‘settle’ for anything. You’re worth more than that, no matter how hard you may find it to believe that.
Thing is, Walky was still given affection (conditional as it may be).
We haven’t seen Blaine show Amber any, except in his twisted “tough love” narrative. It’s possible he did at one point, but given his other issues he may not have been able to express it in a way a young child can parse as positive.
The closest thing we’ve seen Blaine do was arrive (late) to her birthday party and call her a potato as though it’s an endearment, which his previous interaction with Mike reveals really, really wasn’t.
It’s an extremely low bar to show more parental affection than that.
This is reminding me that the reason I was pissed off at Dorothy for dumping Walky was not that she had, but why she had, and the smug, superior, detached attitude she took towards the whole thing but during and after the execution.
That Walky ain’t shit is clear as day, and probably the only reason Amber’s hot on him is a) because she literally hates herself and thinks she deserves him and b) there are no other eligible sexually compatible males in the cast not named Danny.
No, seriously, count em up.
Either the Garbage Scow sails, or interesting things either have to happen with the cast list or Amber’s sexuality. Or she just ends the strip single.
Not unbelievable.
I don’t know where I was originally going with this, but on an unrelated note-is anyone else’s cat hopelessly addicted to grass?
Yeah, there’s really not too many options in the main cast, especially with Mike in a coma. Plus, Amber doesn’t seem to want a relationship from what I can tell. She just wants someone to distract her, which is actually not that bad of a way to respond to this kind of stress.
As for pets eating grass, the fiber helps with digestion and can help with treating intestinal worms. It’s possible your cat just needs more fiber in their diet, though some animals just like the taste and feel of grass.
Dorothy saw an immature sexy caramel plaything who she kept falling in love with, distracting her from the goals she thinks she wants. What Amber sees is more complicated, but includes fellow self-identifying garbage, so no pressure.
Like, he’s a goofball who’s totally out of his depth with things like his sister(s, though he was the one to be actively noticing and worrying about Billie and has tried to do better on both fronts) or relationships, and his grades are crashing and burning right now… but. He’s also damn perceptive on some fronts (recognizing Billie was in a bad place, recognizing Amber and AG were different, Sal’s grades improving and him deciding not to take the cheat because that was something she had worked hard for,) and genuinely pretty empathetic. His screwing up his relationship with Sal is clearly at least in part wrapped up in how Linda abused them (distancing himself as the Good Smart One because that keeps him out of trouble, for one, and I strongly suspect his joking is at least partially an attempt at deescalation and appeasement,) and he’s taking active steps to improve it and apologize.
And like. Look. I went into college never having had a romantic relationship, blazed through grade school academics so I didn’t really know how to study, and had an undermanaged anxiety disorder and a developmental disability that makes standard studying techniques difficult. I didn’t screw up as hard as Walky in some ways, sure, but I did screw up badly enough that at the end of my junior year fall semester, I had stopped going to class or appointments due to an anxiety spiral and required my mother driving up to campus to ensure I was alive (as I was also not answering my phone, hoping if I ignored it, it would stop ringing eventually. This was not a rational mindspace, if you couldn’t tell.) I had to take an extension on three out of four classes to do all the papers I’d gotten behind on and was too ashamed not having them done to come into class, and ended up taking an F on one of them. So you know, I kind of get where Walky’s at, and that breakdown was building for several semesters and took several more to recover from. With adequate support from my parents and student services, which Walky is not getting. (It ultimately required a medical leave of absence which I honestly should have taken a semester sooner. Linda wouldn’t like that.) There’s indication Walky’s issues are both ‘lack of study skills’ but also ‘everyone else’s study methods Do Not Work, which after Dorothy and Amber have tried suggests he may well be neurodivergent and no amount of trying will make these methods work.’ And I do think he’s made genuine attempts with them, though not particularly long ones. I get being frustrated that this arc is such a slow burn, but this is actully FASTER burnout than it normally takes.
Now, he also has a lot of toxic masculinity to unpack (so does Joe,) he’s only just starting to confront the racism in his family unit and how that impacted Sal in particular, and I do think he needs to get better at reading the room. Among other things. But Walky is making genuine growth, and the shit he’s dealing with is generally REALLY slow to identify and work through.
He also handled the actual breaking up with Dorothy much more maturely than I could have at that age – or than I think most 18 year olds losing their first love could.
“I’m going to have to break up with her for her sake” is a hard thing to reach and even when she did take the initiative after breaking the pause, he tried to make it easier for her, rather than doing anything to get her to not end it.
And yeah, the “breezed through high school without learning to study” rings a bell. Didn’t really hit me until my senior year though, which wasn’t a good thing.
Agreed. Granted, part of that’s Walky has terrible self-esteem (because seriously: Garbage Roof,) but compare Walky’s response to the breakup while having low self-esteem on the whole to Danny, in the exact same position with the same issues.
(I want everyone in the cast to talk through their issues with a competent and supportive professional. They all need it.)
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“STOP BRINGING MY DAD INTO MY GIRL BONER”
Phrasing!
It was already bad
Now it’s worse
Look, I knew you were garbage and I still hooked up with you.
Fuck yeah Amber, nobody asked Blaine. Worm chow doesn’t get a vote.
Amber: “Did I not already mention endorphins? Stop talking about my stupid dead dad and fuck me already.”
Walky: “But I don’t hav-”
**Amber pulls out AG branded condoms**
Amber: “Always prepared.”
Amusingly enough, Walky is already quite familiar with AG branded condoms.
Re: the alt-text. I want to slowly whittle down the number of people who don’t know who Amazi-Girl is to just Billie.
Even characters we haven’t seen in years, like Daisy or Penny, must be fully aware before Billie can be.
I think Daisy has shown up in a preview recently so that one has potential.
We saw character art at least.
She’s still waiting to hear about that cleavage window, by the way.
I think she got an answer about the chest window, but it wasn’t what she wanted:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/05-media-rumble/chestwindow/
Sidenote, apparently Daisy, Dorothy, and Billie have only shared 3 pages together (and they are consecutive pages for that scene). The chest window page also has the only tag for power girl
If she wishes hard enough, reality will change.
(Really though I forgot Billie dignified that one with a response.)
Except Walky already told Billie that Amber was Amazi-Girl, and there’s no way that Billie would go on believing otherwise after it’s been explicitly spelled out to her.
*completely straight face*
I admire your ability to keep a straight face.
Billie excluded, I think the highest-tier character who doesn’t know yet is *checks tag cloud* Joe, followed by Leslie, Roz, Robin, and Mary. (Or at least I don’t remember any of them knowing, and Leslie and Roz’s potential tag trawls there would be WAY too long and Joe’s would probably require going back to when Danny was dating AG/AmbG he thought he was dating both and they were more in sync on the whole/It’s Complicated.)
… I don’t want Mary finding out any time soon and have reservations about Robin, but Leslie and Roz? Those could be interesting.
Not to derail the point, but is Mary considered a high tier character still? It’s actually been a long while since she’s done anything. Her last real involvement in a storyline was in 2017, and the big Carla verses Mary storyline was 2016.
Went entirely by the size of nametag in the tag cloud! Mary’s is the same size as Robin, Roz, Leslie, and Marcie (who already knows.)
Now agreed, not all these characters have active roles in the story at the moment, but I think Mary is being set up to take a bigger role now that the Evil Dads are gone. (Her dislike of Malaya while Malaya is basically unaware is a dangler.) But we’ll see.
She’ll get outed on the front page of the paper and Billie will believe it’s a trick to cover up Sal’s secret.
Well, they are both being honest about their feelings for each other. That’s something.
I’m very proud of them
“Sorry about your dad” is a good blanket term that doesn’t necessarily mean “I’m sorry that your dad is dead”.
It’s quite useful. ‘Sorry your dad murdered a guy in front of me,’ ‘sorry your dad was probably a statutory rapist,’ ‘sorry your dad was still conscious to kidnap us and your best friend/my roommate isn’t, even if he was kind of a dick,’ ‘sorry your dad didn’t just kidnap us, he did it INCOMPETENTLY,’ ‘sorry your dad just, in general, was a person that existed in this world and didn’t conveniently die the moment Faz was conceived’… so many things you can encompass in there.
Sorry that awful dead guy was your dad.
Precisely! Of all the dads in the world, she had to get THIS guy, and I am sorry about it.
Yep, can just as easily mean “Sorry your dad sucks so bad.”
Well, in Amber’s case, sucked.
Just keep giving her pieces of your heart until you’ve got a full heart piece.
Doo Doo Doo DOOOOOO!
Thanks for the excuse!
Have some Janis.
Ugh. He totally stole that line from Dorothy. I wanted to give him just a shred of credit for being honest too, but I can’t now.
I don’t know if using someone else’s phrasing because you’re an immature 18-year-old who’s bad at expressing himself makes you dishonest, though.
It doesn’t. In all honesty, this is a nice bit of growth from Walky. But I hate Walky so I don’t want to give him any credit even when he deserves it.
Also he’s pretty lucky to find a girl okay with him admitting he has feeling for another person. To me that is very annoying and very Walky.
Have not yet figured out why you hate him. He reminds me of me at 18; absolutely a sea in situations I hadn’t encountered before. High school didn’t prepare me for college, and my Dad had little advice to give. Getting slapped for being shallow is how we learn depth? No?
I mean, look how Joyce gave Joe some depth by having Mike slap him around on their date.
Meh. A big part of it’s just a bit. Nothing saying I have to like every character. It’s fun to dunk on a few. Walky’s not the worst. He’s not overtly malicious like a Mike or a Mary, or dangerous like a Ryan or well nearly every parent. But Walky just kind of sucks to me. He doesn’t seem like a guy who can really be relied on. He just comes across as this really annoying guy who makes snarky comments but doesn’t really contribute anything meaningful. I think he’s trying to be better, like I think he’s all mopey right now because time with his parents makes him realize what a little shit he was to Sal during their childhood, but this is a real slow burn on that. and it does not make up for it.
Also good things just kind of happen to him for no reason and that’s annoying.
People use phrasing from movies, books, stuff other people said to express feelings all the time. As long as he’s honest about his feelings, he’s honest. He isn’t writing an essay, where it would be wrong to plagiarize someone.
Yeah, that’s perfectly normal. Sometimes I still have an easier time processing my emotions through song lyrics than actually trying to find my own words for them. (Like 30% of my brain is loose trivia and phrasing rattling around. Another 40% is just Pokemon.)
Word is that when George Washington was faced with mutinous officers he cribbed heavily from a novel he read in his younger days.
When you are doing something new and/or haven’t experienced it yet, it’s ok to use whatever phasing you’ve heard from others, until you’ve had time to write yer own scripts/parse what’s best to say. First time I was at a funeral of a kid who Despisedtheir Dad, it blew me away. How can you not love your Dad? It was a while before I learned that there Could be monsters.
Honestly, I’m still just waiting for Amber’s exes to all hook up with each other, although recent events have made that a bit less likely
Amber may be okay with that, but I get the feeling that Walky isn’t / doesn’t work that way.
Hey, he’ll do a lot for free pizza.
He may have admitted/suggested as much?
Somebody tell Amber. This is information she can use.
Uh, that’s only for free GAY pizza. That’s been established.
While Amber couldn’t find it in herself to kill him, I don’t think she will be sad that he is dead, all things considered.
So Walky should be saying “Congradulations for your dad.”
As mentioned above, ‘sorry about your dad’ can mean many, many things not necessarily including his death.
Virtually any other apology for her dad besides the death one will probably be accurate on some level. Unfortunately.
Stop trying to sink the Garbage Scow, Walky.
Garbage Scow running aground on the Reefs Of Love?
Walky could be referring to him being sorry her dad put her in yet another shit situation rather than thinking she’s grieving.
On that note since neither one of these two know what’s going to happen to each other next by the end of this semester they could chose now to get busy if they feel like it…or not, they’re might be a better time.
Next person who says “sorry about Blaine” will get Am-slapped. They should really understand how evil he was.
I mean, as stated above “sorry about your dad” can equally mean “I’m sorry he was a piece of shit who scarred you and all of us for life”
“I can’t give you my whole heart, but I can give you…
Eight percent of my love
Eight percent of my love
Eight hundredths of the time
You’re the only girl I’m dreaming of, yeah yeah yeah
Eight percent of my heart
Eight percent of my soul
Just point-oh-eight, but girl, you’re great
You’re the only one that makes me whole…”
“I ain’t got nothing but love, girl,
Two days a week.”
Besides, she doesn’t need dead dad to ruin the mood any more. Now she’s got imaginary Mike.
That’s the thing, isn’t it, Amber? For all he’s a doormat and an enabler of Linda’s worst excesses, Walky still loves Charles. The fact that you’re glad Blaine is dead and are seriously fighting down the urge to go to the morgue and spit on his corpse’s face is something that he’ll never be able to understand.
Also, girl? You do not have to ‘settle’ for anything. You’re worth more than that, no matter how hard you may find it to believe that.
Thing is, Walky was still given affection (conditional as it may be).
We haven’t seen Blaine show Amber any, except in his twisted “tough love” narrative. It’s possible he did at one point, but given his other issues he may not have been able to express it in a way a young child can parse as positive.
The closest thing we’ve seen Blaine do was arrive (late) to her birthday party and call her a potato as though it’s an endearment, which his previous interaction with Mike reveals really, really wasn’t.
It’s an extremely low bar to show more parental affection than that.
Yeah. Blaine was a sociopath, Charles is a doormat.
Walky, stop to be so cool!!!!
Billie: YESSS!! Now EVERYONE knows Sal is Amazi-Girl!!
Everyone Else: UMMM….
This is reminding me that the reason I was pissed off at Dorothy for dumping Walky was not that she had, but why she had, and the smug, superior, detached attitude she took towards the whole thing but during and after the execution.
That Walky ain’t shit is clear as day, and probably the only reason Amber’s hot on him is a) because she literally hates herself and thinks she deserves him and b) there are no other eligible sexually compatible males in the cast not named Danny.
No, seriously, count em up.
Either the Garbage Scow sails, or interesting things either have to happen with the cast list or Amber’s sexuality. Or she just ends the strip single.
Not unbelievable.
I don’t know where I was originally going with this, but on an unrelated note-is anyone else’s cat hopelessly addicted to grass?
Yeah, there’s really not too many options in the main cast, especially with Mike in a coma. Plus, Amber doesn’t seem to want a relationship from what I can tell. She just wants someone to distract her, which is actually not that bad of a way to respond to this kind of stress.
As for pets eating grass, the fiber helps with digestion and can help with treating intestinal worms. It’s possible your cat just needs more fiber in their diet, though some animals just like the taste and feel of grass.
Or maybe Amber and Dorothy see something in Walky you don’t.
Dorothy saw an immature sexy caramel plaything who she kept falling in love with, distracting her from the goals she thinks she wants. What Amber sees is more complicated, but includes fellow self-identifying garbage, so no pressure.
That “immature sexy caramel plaything” kind of conflicts with “falling in love with”, doesn’t it? Unless Dorothy is really shallow.
Dorothy liked the snark, but fell in love with the mature bits that Walky usually hides.
Dorothy returned Walky’s “I love you” because it was the most convenient way to keep her toy obedient until she had no further use for him.
She’d deny ever literally thinking those thoughts, but her actions are much louder.
Like, he’s a goofball who’s totally out of his depth with things like his sister(s, though he was the one to be actively noticing and worrying about Billie and has tried to do better on both fronts) or relationships, and his grades are crashing and burning right now… but. He’s also damn perceptive on some fronts (recognizing Billie was in a bad place, recognizing Amber and AG were different, Sal’s grades improving and him deciding not to take the cheat because that was something she had worked hard for,) and genuinely pretty empathetic. His screwing up his relationship with Sal is clearly at least in part wrapped up in how Linda abused them (distancing himself as the Good Smart One because that keeps him out of trouble, for one, and I strongly suspect his joking is at least partially an attempt at deescalation and appeasement,) and he’s taking active steps to improve it and apologize.
And like. Look. I went into college never having had a romantic relationship, blazed through grade school academics so I didn’t really know how to study, and had an undermanaged anxiety disorder and a developmental disability that makes standard studying techniques difficult. I didn’t screw up as hard as Walky in some ways, sure, but I did screw up badly enough that at the end of my junior year fall semester, I had stopped going to class or appointments due to an anxiety spiral and required my mother driving up to campus to ensure I was alive (as I was also not answering my phone, hoping if I ignored it, it would stop ringing eventually. This was not a rational mindspace, if you couldn’t tell.) I had to take an extension on three out of four classes to do all the papers I’d gotten behind on and was too ashamed not having them done to come into class, and ended up taking an F on one of them. So you know, I kind of get where Walky’s at, and that breakdown was building for several semesters and took several more to recover from. With adequate support from my parents and student services, which Walky is not getting. (It ultimately required a medical leave of absence which I honestly should have taken a semester sooner. Linda wouldn’t like that.) There’s indication Walky’s issues are both ‘lack of study skills’ but also ‘everyone else’s study methods Do Not Work, which after Dorothy and Amber have tried suggests he may well be neurodivergent and no amount of trying will make these methods work.’ And I do think he’s made genuine attempts with them, though not particularly long ones. I get being frustrated that this arc is such a slow burn, but this is actully FASTER burnout than it normally takes.
Now, he also has a lot of toxic masculinity to unpack (so does Joe,) he’s only just starting to confront the racism in his family unit and how that impacted Sal in particular, and I do think he needs to get better at reading the room. Among other things. But Walky is making genuine growth, and the shit he’s dealing with is generally REALLY slow to identify and work through.
He also handled the actual breaking up with Dorothy much more maturely than I could have at that age – or than I think most 18 year olds losing their first love could.
“I’m going to have to break up with her for her sake” is a hard thing to reach and even when she did take the initiative after breaking the pause, he tried to make it easier for her, rather than doing anything to get her to not end it.
And yeah, the “breezed through high school without learning to study” rings a bell. Didn’t really hit me until my senior year though, which wasn’t a good thing.
Agreed. Granted, part of that’s Walky has terrible self-esteem (because seriously: Garbage Roof,) but compare Walky’s response to the breakup while having low self-esteem on the whole to Danny, in the exact same position with the same issues.
(I want everyone in the cast to talk through their issues with a competent and supportive professional. They all need it.)
I don’t think we’d have a comic if they all did that.
I really wish it were that simple. My father’s been dead for five years and he’s still ruining my mood on a daily basis.