Booster should still read her fanfic and likecommentandsubscribe
look, BOOSTER is not at fault, please don’t take it out on them, even in a passive-aggressive snark like that
although what are the odds Walky secretly was glad Joyce took over so she could do the heavy lifting but he could conveniently step in and say “SEE I SHOULDA DONE IT” if she missteps like that
There was a bonus strip of him and Carla that makes it clear he really wanted to do the introductions himself, so I don’t think he had any sinister intentions.
I had completely forgotten about that! And yet if Walky had REALLY been adamant about doing the introductions, he wouldn’t have let Joyce do it, saying HE was the host, not Joyce
but eh, laziness takes over
(I get the Rule of Drama, mostly musing out loud here in my posts)
I feel like you’re both giving Walky too little and too much credit. Too little because I don’t think he would want to potentially inflict emotional trauma on someone to get a one up on a woman he doesn’t like. And too much because… well, that kind of implies a level of empathy and understanding that says he could predict both Joyce’s introduction and Amber’s response ahead of times, and this is the guy who couldn’t understand why his girlfriend might not be into jean-pyjamas.
Well, I am under the impression that she barely looked at them (if at all), so it stands to reason she wouldn’t comment on their face or looks.
As for the name, many people do introduce themselves with a nickname rather than a name when in an informal setting, which might be her assumption as well, even if Joyce’s interjection of “They/Them” has the potential to tip her in the right direction.
That might be the difference then, not seeing the silhouette. I looked at the silhouettes, and Booster ended up filling, what was to me, the Mike shaped silhouette. And even before then, it was iffy, because the hair was too short. But the silhouette was around the right height and I though “oh, maybe he lost hair cause head trauma”. But really, they ain’t that similar at all.
Well, aside from their uncanny knack for reading people. Booster does seem (at least thus far!) to be what would happen if you gave Mike’s strengths to someone with, ah, a bit more warmth, let’s say.
Agreed. I thought Booster’s silhouette was going to be Mike but with his trademark gravity-defying hair chopped off. (It’s not unrealistic that the hospital would have buzzed him to treat his head wounds, and it wouldn’t grow back to the way it was in just three months.)
Aside from that, their heads are a similar shape (pointy chin, squared-off hair in the back) and they’re both very similar in build and height.
I think it basically worked because we were looking through the silhouettes trying to match them up with characters.
Danny’s might look like Mike, but it’s also the only clearly Danny shaped one. There was no one else in the known cast that Booster’s silhouette could be.
I’m still a bit unclear on how you think it will be “dealt with”. He could have died as long as two and a half months ago. It’s likely that the group period of mourning, the announcements to the students, the period where grief counselors are available from the Uni are all over and the only thing we’ll see is the continuing effects on the people who were actually close to him. And there are very few of them.
Well, that’s part of the problem. We the audience got blindsided by Mike’s death being casually dropped in panel 2 of a strip about Lucy awkwardly flirting with Walky.
The cast has skipped over the part where they’re deep in grief but the Mike fans in the audience are playing some serious catch up.
Okay, but why do you expect things to happen in the comic that Willis seems to have intentionally skipped over? People talking about Ruth announcing his death at the meeting and such?
Also….most of the main cast weren’t close to Mike, at best. He was a dick to everyone all the time and most of them didn’t like him. I don’t doubt they’re sad he’s gone because nobody deserved that and he went out trying to save people, but most of them are probably through the worst of it, if not finished mourning.
I just came out as nonbinary on my Facebook for National Coming Out Day – like, literally, two minutes ago. And like, bisexual too I guess but I don’t know how people wouldn’t have already known that part.
I am pleased with myself but also anxious out of my fucking mind. I considered but then deleted a part saying, “Please do not be mean to me about this or weaponize my identity against me.”
I hope all goes well for you! And if it doesn’t throw the offenders out the window (the second story one will do fine) and replace them with some of the people from here.
MAYBE there would be a few of the accidental meanies or not-exactly-but-sorta-well-intentioned meanies who it would encourage to second-guess what they’re writing?
Congrats!! For a hot minute this morning I wanted to come out as they/them non-binary but then got hit with Ye Olde Impostor Syndrome. Not to mention preemptive exhaustion at having to explain my existence. I guess she/whatever will have to do for now.
Welcome to the enby society! We have innate skill with plants, and when you get to level 15 we also develop the ability to convince the plants to do our bidding. Best of luck to you on your quest! 💛💜🖤🤍
Definitely how I’ve been feeling about Booster’s appearance so soon after Mike’s death was confirmed. Though I’m starting to warm up to Booster a little bit.
I think it more likely that Walky took Booster’s shoulders and Joyce (having realized it was time to get out of there) got them by the thighs. That would explain the height their feet are at.
I b’lieve that Booster is the comic’s new Super, to replace Amazi, and Amber will be ok with this, because she is SO done with rescuing others. It’s time to get to work. (Ship-breaking and Salvage).
So Booster jus t picked them up and They all just flew out of the room.
Yeah, this situation is awful. I know Walky and Amber weren’t going to work out, but I didn’t knew how bad the break up would be… was there even a break up?
Mike’s death will haunt these people for years, and that is like the biggest middle finger the audience will have to endure for the next decade.
See you in 10 years! I have practice from Homestuck and Adventure Time.
It was more of a non-starter than a breakup, I guess. Walky couldn’t go on with it because of Sal at first, followed by being hung up on Dorothy too much to feel like he was giving it a fair shot.
I dont think so amber made it clear it was just a friends with benefits thing and when Wally said he was in love with someone else so they should stop she didnt seem that upset about it. I think shes more upset about how chill everyone is acting about Mike’s death.
Are you kidding? Actual logic and evidence is how we round out the crack theory with absurd justifications.
For example, OBVIOUSLY Booster took advantage of the medical facilities to engage in a bit of transitional surgery into their new identity, and obviously that involved some cosmetic surgery as well.
There, you see, the theory becomes more robust the more we criticize it, and that means it’s solid, just like any good crack theory!
Speaking as a nonbinary person: I don’t know. I asserted to my friend in college that I was “very cis” once and it felt true at the time. I don’t know if my identity shifted or if my understanding of gender and therefore if myself shifted. I also don’t know if it matters.
I appreciate your self reflection and caution though. (Those aren’t precisely the words I want but I suppose those are what I traded for even being awake right now my word, I should go to sleep)
Oh, actually, I think in general it’s not a new identity, no. The transition is more so a reference to loving more authentically as yourself and taking active measures to achieve gender euphoria and diminish gender dysphoria.
To my understanding. I can’t speak for other trans people especially not binary trans people.
I’m not entirely sure there’s a breakup there, so much as she and Walky still haven’t gotten to act on their horny impulses beyond a couple makeouts? But the weight of grief might also have snuffed that flame now
I suspect what’s tearing her up inside besides Mike’s death, which is like 80% of it, is Ethan blaming her for everything, like he said he would
Especially after Harry Morgan played that other crazy major general in another episode.
To really bend your mind, go watch mediocre Disney movie The Cat From Outer Space. It stars both McLean Stevenson and Harry Morgan, and it was released in 1978 so MASH was still in production at the time. It’s almost as weird as learning the Stalag 17 set at Desilu was used to shoot a sexploitation grindhouse movie after Hogan’s Heroes wrapped up.
Haha yeah isn’t it interesting how Mike got fridged offscreen (around Halloween? or Thanksgiving? over winter break?) and the only serious acknowledgement of it is occasional jarring reminders of Amber’s trauma?
I don’t really think Mike got fridged though. Maybe it’s just me but I tend to think “fridging” a character as more exploitive or manipulative. We didn’t actually see him die but I think he got his fair due. The time skip I think was in part not to spend potentially years of reading all the cast reacting to it because of how slow time passes. That would get tedious prettg quickly.
Not to mention that realistically-speaking, the longer someone’s in a coma due to head trauma, the typically less likely it would be that they would ever wake up again. If you’re in a coma for more than a few days, you’re generally in a Very Bad Situation.
(And that’s not even getting into possible additional damage done when Amber moved him, which she even acknowledged in-strip while stating that the need to get him away from the Dads was a bigger priority)
Though before the time skip he’d been in a coma for around 2 days – the night before the kidnapping, with the day after being the last day before the skip.
Even beyond the fact we’re dealing with narrative, not reality, we can’t even really argue “he’s been in a coma too long”.
Roughly three days, actually; Mike’s fall was shortly after midnight in To Remind You of My Love (end of chapter = 1 day), the kidnapping was in When It Crumbles (end of chapter = 2 days), and our last sighting of Mike in his hospital bed was in Is a Song Forever? the day after that (end of chapter = 3 days), which is already edging into “dangerously-long” territory – and the last time we saw Amber and Ethan speaking, Amber mentioned Mike’s last words and basically told Ethan to consider the possibility of Mike’s death.
I think that’s a disservice to both Booster and Mike as characters. Booster acts nothing like Mike and besides an unintentionally slightly misleading silhouette Booster really has nothing in common with Mike and is shown to interact with the rest of the cast in a fundamentally different way. Universe logic wise Mike was always going to be replaced by the school. That’s not Booster’s fault.
I said something similar elsewhere, but I do think you could reasonably view Booster as a counterpart to Mike, albeit not his exact opposite. It’s more that they fill the same socially savvy, incisive role but with open compassion rather than Mike’s cold contempt.
That being said, we’ve also seen them for all of fifteen minutes, so we’ll see where they go.
Subaru Brat was a micro pickup truck with no power and rear-facing seats in the bed. It was useful for groceries and drive-in movies, and not much else.
first panel – it’s cute that Joyce is five minutes into this new-for-her territory and has already become the friend who stands next to you and asserts your pronouns to everyone you meet like an audible pronoun pin [note: do not do this unless your friend has made it clear they want to assert their pronouns on every introduction the way Booster has]
I’m not sure it’s just about Booster. I think that Joyce is also genuinely happy to see Amber and to see that she’s well enough to throw around cracks about her RL to online life balance.
Well, Jacob’s main role in the first season is pretty wrapped up too. Sarah used Joyce as a proxy to break him and Raidah up, and his last few scenes cut off any clear possibility of him pursuing a relationship with Joyce on his own any time soon. Outside of that, he had a bit part as Joe’s workout buddy.
I expect we’ll see more Jacob/Raidah stuff at some point. A bit too much of a set up for Raidah as a villain for it to be dropped completely. She wasn’t quite vowing vengeance on Joyce in her last appearance, but it wasn’t that far away.
Can’t see that happening, if she was going to become a villain it would have done so already regarding Sarah / Dana and that was resoved (sort of) earlier in the comic. Dana was much more important than Jacob to Raidah.
Frankly, Jacob always seemed like a tertiary character to me. He wasn’t even introduced until Ethan admitted to Joyce he was gay. Whereas Ethan has always seemed like a secondary/lower primary character, introduced at the same time as Amber and Mike at almost the very beginning. Ethan’s neuroses and issues with his homosexuality have been a clear, independent storyline of its own from the start, whereas Jacob has never had his own storyline. I wouldn’t be surprised to not see Jacob again until he becomes relevant to someone else’s storyline again, but I would be surprised to see Ethan relegated to such a “supporting character” status (let alone written out entirely).
I do think that it’s nice that Joyce and Walky are aware of Amber’s feelings but I’m not sure that they’re interpreting Amber’s reactions correctly. Panel 6 makes me wonder if she’s resenting people tip-toeing around her on the subject of Mike and not actually bothering to find out how she really feels.
In any case, it’s a bit unfair to treat Booster like an embarrassing fact around her, especially as they likely know next to nothing about what happened and even less about Mike himself.
If she doesn’t want people to tiptoe, she wouldn’t have mentioned Mike, though, right? They arguably wouldn’t have tiptoed before that, but her reaction is understandable given that this is a sensitive subject, and we don’t know if Amber is getting therapy… yet.
What if losing Mike is the thing she doesn’t want everyone tiptoeing around? In her kind they’re probably all walking on eggshells around her, so they don’t ‘set off her unbridled rage’. Maybe she thinks she can head off the Mike-related sympathy by being blunt about it.
Plus she’s probably been hearing mixed sympathies for the last three months, and we all know how well she accepts pity. (Besides, the constant reminders are like picking at the wound.)
Then she wouldn’t have referred to Booster as “Mike’s replacement”. I get Amber is in a rough place but that is rude AF especially to someone you just met and it shows that she is still sensitive to that subject.
It seems so, yes. I expect it to be formally confirmed at the floor meeting at which Ruth will likely announce when the college is holding a formal memorial service for him.
I doubt it. I’m guessing he died during the time skip before winter break because part of the point of the time skip was to give characters time to mourn. Obviously Amber and probably Ethan are still there but it’s easier to take two characters versus the whole cast.
I’ve heard a theory about witness protection, but I really don’t see it happening with the corrupt police force, so sadly, I don’t think there will be dinner reset button pressed on Mike’s death.
Once the live version goes, it’s still in the Wayback Machine. (Thanks, Internet Archive! You’re the Internet’s Smithsonian / poster child for compulsive hoarding.)
That’s a really short description though, so I dunno if I buy it.
I’ll fully admit that it could very well be wishful thinking on my part, but everything about it seems very abrupt for it to be as simple as “he’s dead now”.
Maybe so, but I dunno, there’s just something about the whole thing that doesn’t sit right with me for me to think it’s as simple as that right now.
I’ll accept it if and when we hear more about it (likely/hopefully when Ethan appears and/or is brought up), but right now, yeah, still firmly in the “I’m not so sure he’s actually dead” camp.
You know I have been around for A Very Long Time and I have never seen someone yanked by the arm hard enough to have their legs approaching horizontal from the combination of inertia and acceleration, and if they did it would probably result in a dislocated shoulder.
Now I have seen a gag rigged where the stuntman’s legs went almost horizontal, but that was a frigging huge bungee cord and a quick release attached to a parachute harness under a costume, and the stuntman sprained his neck doing the stunt and had to be hospitalized overnight for “observation”.
Willis, thanks for making a they/them person for the main cast. My brother has a friend that uses they/them pronouns and I’m always worried I’m gonna slip up around them. This gives me a way to practice thinking/talking about someone fictional, so if I screw up I don’t actually hurt the person. I appreciate the opportunity.
I use they/them and still slip up pronouns sometimes. I actually practiced by using they/them for my pet rat (RIP Zin) which also gave my friends and family a chance to get used to it ^^
Poor Amber. Looks like Ethan didn’t want to return to the school (or at least the dorm) where his dead best friend used to live. But she gets to go back to the scene of so much trauma and is expected to be happy about it. Of those who will dearly miss Mike, only Amber is left.
The hope that Mike is somehow coming back ignores that DYW has clearly turned a page. The hopeful kids of the first semester have changed, to the extent that some of gone and new ones are showing up. Looks like he has dropped Billie. There is a precedent for drugged up freshmen getting pulled from school, since it happened to Sarah’s roommate. Plus it happens so often in real life.
There’s still one more silhouette in the new banner, which may or may not be Billie. (Yes, the silhouette’s got a bob cut, but from a practical standpoint Billie’s gigantic ponytail must have created shot framing challenges. Besides, she had short hair in the old continuity.)
There are plenty of times where Billie’s either behind other characters, or up against the edges of a panel so it’s not taking up panel space. It’s not as disruptive when it was somehow sitting in front of her shoulder for a few chapters, or when she just lets it down, but I wonder if Willis finally just got tired of workarounds and said “fuck it, I’m cropping it”. We’ll find out! She’ll be back eventually!
All of these very young adults are handling this badly.
Amber: Yes, you’re hurting. No, smearing the hurt on other people is not a good coping mechanism. No, they’re not going to pretend Booster doesn’t exist.
Joyce: You forgot, in the excitement of learning New Things Yay and meeting New People Yay, that asking Amber whether she was up to meeting the new duderino BEFORE bringing them by would have been a good idea.
Walky: Just escalated the tension in the room by about 300%. Rehearse responses ahead of time if you’re the easily flustered type.
The college: Provided no advice about how to handle any of this? Way to go, y’all.
Booster: …no, Booster didn’t mess this up. Booster just got handed the Awkward Ball.
Booster could have caught up on the first 10 years of the strip, but they signed their contract for this season anyway. They knew what they were getting themselves into.
Whelp, I’m glad we skipped a couple of months, because if Amber is not exactly a bundle of joy right now, imagine how bad it must have been immediately after Mike (& Blaine, I guess) died. Get your ass to the therapist, folks! It’s important.
Maybe some people like other combos, like she/them? Or is it in support of those who go for other pronouns like ze/zheir/zhem, for example, just as one giving out pronouns like he/his/him could be seen as supportive of nb folk giving out pronouns like they/them?
The format is also used to introduce neopronouns, which people are less familiar with (for instance, xe/xem, xe/hir, or ey/em). The subjective and objective forms are the ones people use the most often in casual conversation, so those are the ones you want to be sure people know. Some people also use more than one set of pronouns, which this format can indicate (for instance, she/him), though in my personal opinion it’s easier to parse if you use the same form when listing multiple pronoun sets (she/he).
Also, speaking as a they/them nonbinary person, one time I explained they/them pronouns to a coworker who, I cannot stress this enough, taught grammar for a living, and she sincerely, inexplicably thought I meant to use they/them in place of ALL pronouns referring to me, including first and second person. She was giving me instructions for a particular student and kept saying “they” instead of “you”, and I was utterly baffled thinking she was talking about the student somehow until I asked for clarification (more than once, because she still used “they” in place of “you” while attempting to confirm that I was the one who needed to do things). It’s possible that at some point, some cis person heard “they” by itself and tried to use the subjective everywhere a pronoun went in a sentence.
So, Mike being brought up again made a thought occur to me:
While I’m still not sold on Mike being dead (the casual way it was dropped felt a little too anticlimactic to me), it seems that he’s being treated as such. I wonder if (and hope, honestly) it’ll ever get brought up that this kind of makes what Danny said even worse, ’cause now he’s essentially gotten what he said he wanted.
I was just thinking something along the same lines. It might even explain why Ethan’s not on the cast ensemble graphic thingy. Dan danned things up with him so bad that it created a rift and drove him away from the group.
I’m still vaguely optimistic. Amber *might* be in therapy. I’m holding out hope that she’s getting help until we see for a fact that either 1) she’s not in therapy or 2) she’s in sucky therapy.
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ok, not so Slipshiningly then
…
Booster should still read her fanfic and likecommentandsubscribe
look, BOOSTER is not at fault, please don’t take it out on them, even in a passive-aggressive snark like that
although what are the odds Walky secretly was glad Joyce took over so she could do the heavy lifting but he could conveniently step in and say “SEE I SHOULDA DONE IT” if she missteps like that
I really hope Walky didn’t think that cause that’s pretty awful.
There was a bonus strip of him and Carla that makes it clear he really wanted to do the introductions himself, so I don’t think he had any sinister intentions.
I had completely forgotten about that! And yet if Walky had REALLY been adamant about doing the introductions, he wouldn’t have let Joyce do it, saying HE was the host, not Joyce
but eh, laziness takes over
(I get the Rule of Drama, mostly musing out loud here in my posts)
I will excuse Walky if Joyce is stronger than both Walky and Booster (very likely)
No necessarily physically stronger, though that’s quite possible, but she can sweep them all along just by force of personality.
I feel like you’re both giving Walky too little and too much credit. Too little because I don’t think he would want to potentially inflict emotional trauma on someone to get a one up on a woman he doesn’t like. And too much because… well, that kind of implies a level of empathy and understanding that says he could predict both Joyce’s introduction and Amber’s response ahead of times, and this is the guy who couldn’t understand why his girlfriend might not be into jean-pyjamas.
Don’t think of Booster as Mike’s replacement. Think of them as more of a sequel.
Mike 2: Electric Boostaloo
Mike 2: The Boostering
Dorm Wars Episode V: The Boostpire Mikes Back
Live Booster or Die Mi-sorry, Amber
Amber: I’ll live…Mike didn’t.
…too soon?
You’d be surprised what you can live through.
^A knife that cuts both ways^
A phone does it better.
Hey, Amber expressed this sentiment without throwing any shade at Booster’s name, face, or style!
Recent events may have given me the impression this is a high bar.
I mean, Joyce actually got it right this time. She’s learning quick
I wasn’t necessarily referring to the characters.
Well, I am under the impression that she barely looked at them (if at all), so it stands to reason she wouldn’t comment on their face or looks.
As for the name, many people do introduce themselves with a nickname rather than a name when in an informal setting, which might be her assumption as well, even if Joyce’s interjection of “They/Them” has the potential to tip her in the right direction.
She’ll live. The way Mike didn’t.
I feel better. My brain went “Mike didn’t” after reading her line. I think Mike would respect it.
That’s how I heard it too and it punched me in the gut.
Yeah uh…Amber’s not doing to well and that was totally uncalled for.
AMBER NO we finally got the comment section off that ‘Booster’s replacing Mike’ train!
Though I’m sure they’ll be thrilled she’s transparently miserable about it.
All aboard!
Toot! Tooot!
NO. I am dismantling this railroad. 😛
And don’t forget to melt down the engine and carriages for scrap, too
Well, of course. I’m not an animal. 😛
Oh, I get it. Ships are for ill-advised relationships, but trains are for pains and also when the comments section becomes a trainwreck.
I view it as less of a Booster is replacing Mike train and more of a Booster is the second coming of Mike for reasons train.
I have less of a problem with those.
I…think clif was implying that Booster actually is Mike.
Booster does kind of look like they could be Mike’s player 2 pallet swap, but with shorter hair.
They really really don’t imo. I don’t see any similarities. Mind you, I didn’t even see it with the silhouettes so.
That might be the difference then, not seeing the silhouette. I looked at the silhouettes, and Booster ended up filling, what was to me, the Mike shaped silhouette. And even before then, it was iffy, because the hair was too short. But the silhouette was around the right height and I though “oh, maybe he lost hair cause head trauma”. But really, they ain’t that similar at all.
Well, aside from their uncanny knack for reading people. Booster does seem (at least thus far!) to be what would happen if you gave Mike’s strengths to someone with, ah, a bit more warmth, let’s say.
I’m gonna be honest, I thought the most Mike shaped silhouette was Danny’s.
Agreed. I thought Booster’s silhouette was going to be Mike but with his trademark gravity-defying hair chopped off. (It’s not unrealistic that the hospital would have buzzed him to treat his head wounds, and it wouldn’t grow back to the way it was in just three months.)
Aside from that, their heads are a similar shape (pointy chin, squared-off hair in the back) and they’re both very similar in build and height.
That reveal was a well played red herring.
It wasn’t a red herring. Willis didn’t foresee anyone mistaking that silhouette for Mike. Much like me, he didn’t see it.
I missed that. Did he say it over on Patreon?
That reveal was a well played unintentional red herring.
I think it basically worked because we were looking through the silhouettes trying to match them up with characters.
Danny’s might look like Mike, but it’s also the only clearly Danny shaped one. There was no one else in the known cast that Booster’s silhouette could be.
And honestly, it still looks like Mike to me.
I think it was in the comments not too long after Booster showed up or it might have been on twitter.
But yeah, it was a very handy little unintentional red herring.
I won’t be off this train till mikes death is dealt with dammit!
We are taking apart the train, you need to leave. 😛
I’m still a bit unclear on how you think it will be “dealt with”. He could have died as long as two and a half months ago. It’s likely that the group period of mourning, the announcements to the students, the period where grief counselors are available from the Uni are all over and the only thing we’ll see is the continuing effects on the people who were actually close to him. And there are very few of them.
Well, that’s part of the problem. We the audience got blindsided by Mike’s death being casually dropped in panel 2 of a strip about Lucy awkwardly flirting with Walky.
The cast has skipped over the part where they’re deep in grief but the Mike fans in the audience are playing some serious catch up.
Okay, but why do you expect things to happen in the comic that Willis seems to have intentionally skipped over? People talking about Ruth announcing his death at the meeting and such?
Also….most of the main cast weren’t close to Mike, at best. He was a dick to everyone all the time and most of them didn’t like him. I don’t doubt they’re sad he’s gone because nobody deserved that and he went out trying to save people, but most of them are probably through the worst of it, if not finished mourning.
The point being that though they’re through it, we’re not. Because it was offstage.
Yes, you will.
Well, who is gonna speedrun through the stages of grief now?
DoA: Door peeking necessary
Well, I’m definitely not going to go through the stages of grief.
In fact, how dare you imply that I should! I have better things to do!
Though tell you what, I’ll do the first two if you handle the rest.
Wait, that was three! Sigh, guess I might as well finish, not like I’m good for much else.
But you know what? This was cleansing. Thank you for suggesting it!
upvoted comment
Take all my internets.
I reserve my Internets, but that was still impressive.
Well, it’s been months and she’s still on depression, so it’d be us and not Amber.
Oh no, Amber……:-(
Yikes.
🙁
Dang auto emojis! If I type a colon and a left bracket that means I wanna type a colon and a left bracket!
the worst are upside down smilies, typed specifically so it wouldn’t emoji
*plays Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” on the hacked Muzak*
“Funeral for a Friend”?
Love Lies Bleeding
The wheels on the bus.
If we’re going the comical route, I feel like Mike might appreciate the irony of “Freefalling”.
Or “Free Fallin'” rather, my mistake.
Booster is the replacement for Mike who was the previous Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher
Tom Riddle really wanted to be Walky’s roommate, so when he didn’t get it he cursed the position.
I prefer to think of it as Mike being the dark arts teacher.
JUST MAKE OUTI just came out as nonbinary on my Facebook for National Coming Out Day – like, literally, two minutes ago. And like, bisexual too I guess but I don’t know how people wouldn’t have already known that part.
I am pleased with myself but also anxious out of my fucking mind. I considered but then deleted a part saying, “Please do not be mean to me about this or weaponize my identity against me.”
Hey! Congrats, and welcome to the club!
I get the anxiety. Folks can be cruel. And I think you’re really brave for doing it anyway. You’re more than entitled to be pleased with yourself.
For anybody who has to be told that, it probably wouldn’t help.
Can you imagine if it did though? It’d be like that kids’ cartoon, Dora the Explorer.
“Swiper, no swiping!”
“Bigot, no bigotry!”
“Bigot, no bigotry!” had me laughing a lot.
I hope all goes well for you! And if it doesn’t throw the offenders out the window (the second story one will do fine) and replace them with some of the people from here.
MAYBE there would be a few of the accidental meanies or not-exactly-but-sorta-well-intentioned meanies who it would encourage to second-guess what they’re writing?
… nah, probably not.
‘Grats!
Nonbinary and Bisexual fistbumps!
Hey, congrats. I hope the responses you get are positive, and if there are negative ones, I wish you the strength and support to handle/ignore them.
Congratulations, and I hope you get treated with the respect you deserve.
Congrats.
Nice. Hope it goes well! 🙂
Congrats!! For a hot minute this morning I wanted to come out as they/them non-binary but then got hit with Ye Olde Impostor Syndrome. Not to mention preemptive exhaustion at having to explain my existence. I guess she/whatever will have to do for now.
Congratulations. *Evangelion clap*
Congrats!
Congrats on coming out! I hope all goes well.
Congrats!
Congratulations, and good luck!
Congrats from a fellow non-binary folk! Hope everything goes swimmingly 🙂
Welcome to the enby society! We have innate skill with plants, and when you get to level 15 we also develop the ability to convince the plants to do our bidding. Best of luck to you on your quest! 💛💜🖤🤍
Congratulations!
Congratulations! 🙂
May you be recognized for your personhood and be loved just for being you. <3
*Evangelion voice* Congratulations!
Amber has tapped into my feelings… or most likely vice versa since these are written in advance.
Definitely how I’ve been feeling about Booster’s appearance so soon after Mike’s death was confirmed. Though I’m starting to warm up to Booster a little bit.
Did Walky basically pick both Joyce and Booster up and run away with them? He’s more impressive than he looks.
Dina technically yanked Becky up the side of a wall. I think the rule is funny before logic.
I think it more likely that Walky took Booster’s shoulders and Joyce (having realized it was time to get out of there) got them by the thighs. That would explain the height their feet are at.
Evidence that even if they aren’t romantically entangled, they get each other.
I b’lieve that Booster is the comic’s new Super, to replace Amazi, and Amber will be ok with this, because she is SO done with rescuing others. It’s time to get to work. (Ship-breaking and Salvage).
So Booster jus t picked them up and They all just flew out of the room.
The comic takes excursions into funny-physics the way it goes into action-physics as needed for entertainment.
Maybe Walky has finally grown into those muscles that let his twin catch someone one-armed while driving a motorcycle.
and there’s Amber, with the lampshade.
Yeah, this situation is awful. I know Walky and Amber weren’t going to work out, but I didn’t knew how bad the break up would be… was there even a break up?
Mike’s death will haunt these people for years, and that is like the biggest middle finger the audience will have to endure for the next decade.
See you in 10 years! I have practice from Homestuck and Adventure Time.
It was more of a non-starter than a breakup, I guess. Walky couldn’t go on with it because of Sal at first, followed by being hung up on Dorothy too much to feel like he was giving it a fair shot.
I dont think so amber made it clear it was just a friends with benefits thing and when Wally said he was in love with someone else so they should stop she didnt seem that upset about it. I think shes more upset about how chill everyone is acting about Mike’s death.
I’m still not convinced he’s actually dead and not in a coma or otherwise no longer in school.
It’s no coincidence that Booster looks exactly like Mike except with glasses.
they’ve, uh
also got a fair bit more melanin
Shhhhh
The crack theory can’t work if we apply actual logic and evidence!
Are you kidding? Actual logic and evidence is how we round out the crack theory with absurd justifications.
For example, OBVIOUSLY Booster took advantage of the medical facilities to engage in a bit of transitional surgery into their new identity, and obviously that involved some cosmetic surgery as well.
There, you see, the theory becomes more robust the more we criticize it, and that means it’s solid, just like any good crack theory!
… erm, potential ignorant-cis faux pas… is it NEW identity when you transition, or is there a better way to say that?
Speaking as a nonbinary person: I don’t know. I asserted to my friend in college that I was “very cis” once and it felt true at the time. I don’t know if my identity shifted or if my understanding of gender and therefore if myself shifted. I also don’t know if it matters.
I appreciate your self reflection and caution though. (Those aren’t precisely the words I want but I suppose those are what I traded for even being awake right now my word, I should go to sleep)
Oh, actually, I think in general it’s not a new identity, no. The transition is more so a reference to loving more authentically as yourself and taking active measures to achieve gender euphoria and diminish gender dysphoria.
To my understanding. I can’t speak for other trans people especially not binary trans people.
Sadly, logic can be used to prove false statements, if you start by assuming false premises.
Yeah, this above all else is why I dearly hope Booster isn’t actually Mike.
I propose two theories:
– Booster is Mike’s Player 2 pallet swap
– Mike was Booster’s Wario
I’m not entirely sure there’s a breakup there, so much as she and Walky still haven’t gotten to act on their horny impulses beyond a couple makeouts? But the weight of grief might also have snuffed that flame now
I suspect what’s tearing her up inside besides Mike’s death, which is like 80% of it, is Ethan blaming her for everything, like he said he would
At least give Booster a chance, Amber, I mean, it was sad when Colonel Potter replaced Henry Blake but it ended up being a good thing!
Especially after Harry Morgan played that other crazy major general in another episode.
To really bend your mind, go watch mediocre Disney movie The Cat From Outer Space. It stars both McLean Stevenson and Harry Morgan, and it was released in 1978 so MASH was still in production at the time. It’s almost as weird as learning the Stalag 17 set at Desilu was used to shoot a sexploitation grindhouse movie after Hogan’s Heroes wrapped up.
Haha yeah isn’t it interesting how Mike got fridged offscreen (around Halloween? or Thanksgiving? over winter break?) and the only serious acknowledgement of it is occasional jarring reminders of Amber’s trauma?
I don’t really think Mike got fridged though. Maybe it’s just me but I tend to think “fridging” a character as more exploitive or manipulative. We didn’t actually see him die but I think he got his fair due. The time skip I think was in part not to spend potentially years of reading all the cast reacting to it because of how slow time passes. That would get tedious prettg quickly.
Not to mention that realistically-speaking, the longer someone’s in a coma due to head trauma, the typically less likely it would be that they would ever wake up again. If you’re in a coma for more than a few days, you’re generally in a Very Bad Situation.
(And that’s not even getting into possible additional damage done when Amber moved him, which she even acknowledged in-strip while stating that the need to get him away from the Dads was a bigger priority)
Though before the time skip he’d been in a coma for around 2 days – the night before the kidnapping, with the day after being the last day before the skip.
Even beyond the fact we’re dealing with narrative, not reality, we can’t even really argue “he’s been in a coma too long”.
Roughly three days, actually; Mike’s fall was shortly after midnight in To Remind You of My Love (end of chapter = 1 day), the kidnapping was in When It Crumbles (end of chapter = 2 days), and our last sighting of Mike in his hospital bed was in Is a Song Forever? the day after that (end of chapter = 3 days), which is already edging into “dangerously-long” territory – and the last time we saw Amber and Ethan speaking, Amber mentioned Mike’s last words and basically told Ethan to consider the possibility of Mike’s death.
Hard agree.
And like, even if Ethan and Amber are still in the deepest, darkest, rawest part of grief, that’s still only two characters vs the whole cast.
It’s kind of a bummer that Amber finally started making progress last chapter and then got blindsided by All New, All Different Trauma.
Okay but then Booster IMMEDIATELY showed up and was like “hi I’m the new cast member in mikes spot”
sooooo, fridged.
I think that’s a disservice to both Booster and Mike as characters. Booster acts nothing like Mike and besides an unintentionally slightly misleading silhouette Booster really has nothing in common with Mike and is shown to interact with the rest of the cast in a fundamentally different way. Universe logic wise Mike was always going to be replaced by the school. That’s not Booster’s fault.
That’s not even what fridged MEANS.
So, the main way Booster is Mike’s opposite is that Mike was an ass to everyone, and vice-versa with Booster?
Booster is Anti-Mike? They give moms a nickel to not have sex with them?
I said something similar elsewhere, but I do think you could reasonably view Booster as a counterpart to Mike, albeit not his exact opposite. It’s more that they fill the same socially savvy, incisive role but with open compassion rather than Mike’s cold contempt.
That being said, we’ve also seen them for all of fifteen minutes, so we’ll see where they go.
Aw jeez Amber 🙁
I…aw JEEZ. JUST. AMBER 🙁
she’s in the worst place, in an 82 Subaru Brat
That’s … remarkably accurate.
Subaru Brat? I don’t get the reference.
Subaru Brat was a micro pickup truck with no power and rear-facing seats in the bed. It was useful for groceries and drive-in movies, and not much else.
The main thrust of the reference was that in the comic Achewood, when someone goes to Hell, they’re given an ‘82 Subaru Brat.
Then they drive around and are subjected to torment (mostly emotional torment.)
Amber is there.
Somehow, I don’t see Booster as the doing your mum for a nickle type…
Booster’s more of a quarter person themself.
It was a nickel when the comic started but now with the timeskip inflation’s caught up
Major “YIKES” aside
first panel – it’s cute that Joyce is five minutes into this new-for-her territory and has already become the friend who stands next to you and asserts your pronouns to everyone you meet like an audible pronoun pin [note: do not do this unless your friend has made it clear they want to assert their pronouns on every introduction the way Booster has]
I’m not sure it’s just about Booster. I think that Joyce is also genuinely happy to see Amber and to see that she’s well enough to throw around cracks about her RL to online life balance.
Joyce is so proud in panel two it’s heartwarming.
What I’d really like to know is if Jacob needs a replacement roommate. 🙁
I didn’t realize until your comment that we haven’t seen Ethan yet, and that there’s no silhouette for him.
Well Ethan did have a somewhat complete coming-out and start-sexually-exploring character arc. So, yeah, bye-bye!
…. look, I don’t write the rules of narrative arcs!
It’d be kinda nutty for his arc to end after he came out of the closet, fooled around a bit, and then a friend died so he disappeared forever.
Ethan will stick around, just gotta give him time to show up.
Well, Jacob’s main role in the first season is pretty wrapped up too. Sarah used Joyce as a proxy to break him and Raidah up, and his last few scenes cut off any clear possibility of him pursuing a relationship with Joyce on his own any time soon. Outside of that, he had a bit part as Joe’s workout buddy.
I expect we’ll see more Jacob/Raidah stuff at some point. A bit too much of a set up for Raidah as a villain for it to be dropped completely. She wasn’t quite vowing vengeance on Joyce in her last appearance, but it wasn’t that far away.
Can’t see that happening, if she was going to become a villain it would have done so already regarding Sarah / Dana and that was resoved (sort of) earlier in the comic. Dana was much more important than Jacob to Raidah.
Plus, Mary still has her teeth, so our “Villainous Student” slot is still full.
Frankly, Jacob always seemed like a tertiary character to me. He wasn’t even introduced until Ethan admitted to Joyce he was gay. Whereas Ethan has always seemed like a secondary/lower primary character, introduced at the same time as Amber and Mike at almost the very beginning. Ethan’s neuroses and issues with his homosexuality have been a clear, independent storyline of its own from the start, whereas Jacob has never had his own storyline. I wouldn’t be surprised to not see Jacob again until he becomes relevant to someone else’s storyline again, but I would be surprised to see Ethan relegated to such a “supporting character” status (let alone written out entirely).
Oof yeah. If Ethan moved out of IU, Amber loses an in-person best friend to cope with the other best friend’s death.
Oh, Amber 🙁
I do think that it’s nice that Joyce and Walky are aware of Amber’s feelings but I’m not sure that they’re interpreting Amber’s reactions correctly. Panel 6 makes me wonder if she’s resenting people tip-toeing around her on the subject of Mike and not actually bothering to find out how she really feels.
In any case, it’s a bit unfair to treat Booster like an embarrassing fact around her, especially as they likely know next to nothing about what happened and even less about Mike himself.
If she doesn’t want people to tiptoe, she wouldn’t have mentioned Mike, though, right? They arguably wouldn’t have tiptoed before that, but her reaction is understandable given that this is a sensitive subject, and we don’t know if Amber is getting therapy… yet.
What if losing Mike is the thing she doesn’t want everyone tiptoeing around? In her kind they’re probably all walking on eggshells around her, so they don’t ‘set off her unbridled rage’. Maybe she thinks she can head off the Mike-related sympathy by being blunt about it.
Plus she’s probably been hearing mixed sympathies for the last three months, and we all know how well she accepts pity. (Besides, the constant reminders are like picking at the wound.)
Then she wouldn’t have referred to Booster as “Mike’s replacement”. I get Amber is in a rough place but that is rude AF especially to someone you just met and it shows that she is still sensitive to that subject.
Unless she thinks that’s what they’re tiptoeing around saying and just wants to get it out there.
I don’t actually think that, but it’s at least plausible.
They are a very lightweight person.
Very convinient to move Booster around your place! I feel like that would be a selling point on their infomercial :p
Is it official that Mike’s dead?
It seems so, yes. I expect it to be formally confirmed at the floor meeting at which Ruth will likely announce when the college is holding a formal memorial service for him.
I doubt it. I’m guessing he died during the time skip before winter break because part of the point of the time skip was to give characters time to mourn. Obviously Amber and probably Ethan are still there but it’s easier to take two characters versus the whole cast.
Walky said his roommate died. Seems pretty official.
Well, Walky’s the only person to actually say Mike is dead thus far.
I don’t *entirely* buy it.
It can be ‘official’ without being true. But I suspect Mike’s death is canon.
Mike– or a reasonable facsimile, will still be around, as Amb-Mike, at least until Amber works out some of her issues.
Yup. If you can find your way to Mike on the cast page, it even says as much on his blurb.
I’ve heard a theory about witness protection, but I really don’t see it happening with the corrupt police force, so sadly, I don’t think there will be dinner reset button pressed on Mike’s death.
Mike’s cast page character description says he is.
I expect Brain!Mike will pop in occasionally, though.
I don’t see him on the cast page. Link?
I think he may have been removed. He used to be accessible from Joe’s page, but the next link from there isn’t to him anymore.
It’s not linked to anymore, but (for now at least) it’s still up.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/cast/attachment/2014castmike/
Once the live version goes, it’s still in the Wayback Machine. (Thanks, Internet Archive! You’re the Internet’s Smithsonian / poster child for compulsive hoarding.)
That’s a really short description though, so I dunno if I buy it.
I’ll fully admit that it could very well be wishful thinking on my part, but everything about it seems very abrupt for it to be as simple as “he’s dead now”.
It was even shorter back in 2015.
http://web.archive.org/web/20150322103950/https://www.dumbingofage.com/cast/attachment/2014castmike/
Maybe so, but I dunno, there’s just something about the whole thing that doesn’t sit right with me for me to think it’s as simple as that right now.
I’ll accept it if and when we hear more about it (likely/hopefully when Ethan appears and/or is brought up), but right now, yeah, still firmly in the “I’m not so sure he’s actually dead” camp.
Well, you can say what you will about Booster, they seem to be very portable. I think that’s a plus, right? Very easy to move around :p
You know I have been around for A Very Long Time and I have never seen someone yanked by the arm hard enough to have their legs approaching horizontal from the combination of inertia and acceleration, and if they did it would probably result in a dislocated shoulder.
Now I have seen a gag rigged where the stuntman’s legs went almost horizontal, but that was a frigging huge bungee cord and a quick release attached to a parachute harness under a costume, and the stuntman sprained his neck doing the stunt and had to be hospitalized overnight for “observation”.
Cartoon physics! You’ve got to love it!
As Roger Rabbit explained, cartoon characters can do anything but only when it’s funny.
Come to think of it, Booster might just be as light as a small branch…
Willis, thanks for making a they/them person for the main cast. My brother has a friend that uses they/them pronouns and I’m always worried I’m gonna slip up around them. This gives me a way to practice thinking/talking about someone fictional, so if I screw up I don’t actually hurt the person. I appreciate the opportunity.
I use they/them and still slip up pronouns sometimes. I actually practiced by using they/them for my pet rat (RIP Zin) which also gave my friends and family a chance to get used to it ^^
Aww, your rat was like you! (I mean, probably most animals are non-binary anyway, right? Since gender norms are more of a human thing? Anyway…)
An immediate apology when you slip up, and a continued genuine effort, is probably enough for most people. Perfection is hard.
I know, but I want to try my best to make people comfortable. Misgendering can cause serious harm for some people, so it’s good to have the practice.
Not super important but, Joyce’s facial expressions are very cute this strip.
And this is how Booster learned that Walky is a strenght based superhuman
Walky gained superpowers after being exposed directly to Hymnal
In that case, did Joyce’s latent teleportation ability get activated by proximity to Walky?
So this is why the SS Garbage Skowl sunk? Makes sense.
… okay, I’m more on board with Lucy/Walky now. Or Lucy/Booster, depending on how their chemistry develops. Maybe something poly involving all three?
Wait… wut?
Garbage scow – a boat used to transport garbage.
Scowl – facial expression not unlike a frown.
Skowl – ? An unhappy edgy garbage boat? Used to ship Walky and Amber. Actually, yeah that fits. I’ll stop armchairing.
The k was a typo that a bunch of people insisted we keep, but otherwise, that’s precisely correct.
Is “I’ll live” Amber talking or Mike? Because good job.
Incidentally, love the layouts here
Wow, way to make the new person welcome, Amber.
*feel welcomed
I woke up early.
This is why my school would leave the spot empty (even if it was a single)
Walky looks really worried for Amber. Is still a open wound for both.
How tall is Mike compared to Walky again? Is it Proven that this isn’t Mike with make up on?
Mike was about half a head taller than Walky.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/particular/
Poor Amber. Looks like Ethan didn’t want to return to the school (or at least the dorm) where his dead best friend used to live. But she gets to go back to the scene of so much trauma and is expected to be happy about it. Of those who will dearly miss Mike, only Amber is left.
The hope that Mike is somehow coming back ignores that DYW has clearly turned a page. The hopeful kids of the first semester have changed, to the extent that some of gone and new ones are showing up. Looks like he has dropped Billie. There is a precedent for drugged up freshmen getting pulled from school, since it happened to Sarah’s roommate. Plus it happens so often in real life.
There’s still one more silhouette in the new banner, which may or may not be Billie. (Yes, the silhouette’s got a bob cut, but from a practical standpoint Billie’s gigantic ponytail must have created shot framing challenges. Besides, she had short hair in the old continuity.)
And no-one has walked over to forest quad yet. If Willis wanted to avoid a cut-scene mid-introductions this would fit.
From some shots, Billie’s ponytail is partially hidden behind her head – just look at the panels here: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/blog/slipshine-spring-sale/
If she’s looking almost straight at the camera, yeah, but it tends to get in the way in side-on shots because it sticks out an extra head width.
For example, Ruth is right up at the edge of the panel in this one, otherwise she’d be hidden:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/02-to-remind-you-of-my-love/performative/
There are plenty of times where Billie’s either behind other characters, or up against the edges of a panel so it’s not taking up panel space. It’s not as disruptive when it was somehow sitting in front of her shoulder for a few chapters, or when she just lets it down, but I wonder if Willis finally just got tired of workarounds and said “fuck it, I’m cropping it”. We’ll find out! She’ll be back eventually!
So, how soon will Mike appear as Amber’s hallucination/third personality again?
All of these very young adults are handling this badly.
Amber: Yes, you’re hurting. No, smearing the hurt on other people is not a good coping mechanism. No, they’re not going to pretend Booster doesn’t exist.
Joyce: You forgot, in the excitement of learning New Things Yay and meeting New People Yay, that asking Amber whether she was up to meeting the new duderino BEFORE bringing them by would have been a good idea.
Walky: Just escalated the tension in the room by about 300%. Rehearse responses ahead of time if you’re the easily flustered type.
The college: Provided no advice about how to handle any of this? Way to go, y’all.
Booster: …no, Booster didn’t mess this up. Booster just got handed the Awkward Ball.
Booster could have caught up on the first 10 years of the strip, but they signed their contract for this season anyway. They knew what they were getting themselves into.
Depending on how long ago Mike passed, the school might have made grief counselors available. Doesn’t mean they were particularly successful.
Whelp, I’m glad we skipped a couple of months, because if Amber is not exactly a bundle of joy right now, imagine how bad it must have been immediately after Mike (& Blaine, I guess) died. Get your ass to the therapist, folks! It’s important.
1st panel: Things are clearly NOT OKAY between Walky and Amber.
… and given the last scene before the timeskip, I DON’T think it’s because of Mike. What did that do to the Garbage Roof crowd?
Can someone explain to me why a lot of people say “they/them“ instead of just “they“? Isn’t that redundant?
Maybe some people like other combos, like she/them? Or is it in support of those who go for other pronouns like ze/zheir/zhem, for example, just as one giving out pronouns like he/his/him could be seen as supportive of nb folk giving out pronouns like they/them?
The format is also used to introduce neopronouns, which people are less familiar with (for instance, xe/xem, xe/hir, or ey/em). The subjective and objective forms are the ones people use the most often in casual conversation, so those are the ones you want to be sure people know. Some people also use more than one set of pronouns, which this format can indicate (for instance, she/him), though in my personal opinion it’s easier to parse if you use the same form when listing multiple pronoun sets (she/he).
Also, speaking as a they/them nonbinary person, one time I explained they/them pronouns to a coworker who, I cannot stress this enough, taught grammar for a living, and she sincerely, inexplicably thought I meant to use they/them in place of ALL pronouns referring to me, including first and second person. She was giving me instructions for a particular student and kept saying “they” instead of “you”, and I was utterly baffled thinking she was talking about the student somehow until I asked for clarification (more than once, because she still used “they” in place of “you” while attempting to confirm that I was the one who needed to do things). It’s possible that at some point, some cis person heard “they” by itself and tried to use the subjective everywhere a pronoun went in a sentence.
That’s a very sweet way, at least she did try to not misgender you!
So, Mike being brought up again made a thought occur to me:
While I’m still not sold on Mike being dead (the casual way it was dropped felt a little too anticlimactic to me), it seems that he’s being treated as such. I wonder if (and hope, honestly) it’ll ever get brought up that this kind of makes what Danny said even worse, ’cause now he’s essentially gotten what he said he wanted.
Yeah I’m thinking the same. Danny’s gonna need to do a lot of groveling to make up for that.
Bad idea. Grovelling just means more opportunities to put his foot in his mouth.
Let’s be honest, Danny will always find a way to put his foot in his mouth.
I was just thinking something along the same lines. It might even explain why Ethan’s not on the cast ensemble graphic thingy. Dan danned things up with him so bad that it created a rift and drove him away from the group.
If Mike really is dead then Ethan is for sure not getting written out for any extended period of time.
I’m still vaguely optimistic. Amber *might* be in therapy. I’m holding out hope that she’s getting help until we see for a fact that either 1) she’s not in therapy or 2) she’s in sucky therapy.
I really doubt it…
i remember everyone what she can do with a knife…
Wait a minute how do I have TWO usernames here?!?
Different computers or IP addresses. Don’t worry, you’re still you.