off topic but do you also have notifications set up somehow? i’m curious how you always get here so fast. (i wrote an overcomplicated horrible mess of a script the other day that sends me a discord webhook approximately immediately after the comic goes up (if any of y’all want it in your servers too dm me there @ easrng))
I used to think that Ana was actually Willis, using a literary double, but I have been dissuaded of that belief.
Now, it’s my opinion that Ana is MRS. Willis, and as such has certain posting privileges denied to the rest of we mere mortals.
Comic comes out midnight Eastern Time. Server time isn’t exactly Eastern Time, but it’s very close, and there is a consistent correlation. Anyway, if you refresh at the right moment, which is about 12:05 Eastern, you’ll be first.
That explains why I didn’t see the comic when I tried checking at 12:01! I’m in Europe so I had to calculate in timezone differences. Thought maybe I was checking an hour too early.
RSS readers get you updates nicely, but they don’t (generally; you code one to accept feed-level hints) usually update at convenient times or too often; instead they will have some reasonable and not-too-fast period they used to poll the server. But if you want up to the second updates, you want to be pinging the server, not constantly but more frequently near the time it usually updates, so rss is likely not the best solution.
self-replied to add, also, doa in specific has had a history of inconsistent rss updates relative to actual updates. feed readers don’t usually check the comic itself; they checks a summary file (.rss or .atom) that tells them what the latest updates were without having to scrape the site. As such, since the site does publish rss, sometimes in the past there have been weeks in which the rss was broken or otherwise not updating correctly, and rss folks suddenly saw close to a week of updates at once. Good for narrative flow; bad for getting in first.
Yep, I use RSS and always arrive here after dozens upon dozens of comments have already been made; plus sometimes the feed just doesn’t update anymore for several days.
RSS isn’t instant unless WebSub is set up, and I don’t think the feed here has it? I am actually checking the RSS feed, I just also have it set up to start checking at exactly midnight server time so it gets it as fast as possible 🙂
What’s really impressive is that her comments are always funny or insightful or both. I wouldn’t even be able to “first” that fast. Agreed with Needfuldoer– don’t question the magic.
I’m surprised nobody mentions it but Ana has said in the past that she reads the strip in advance via Patreon membership, prepares the comment with plenty of time, and then just posts it as soon as the strip goes up
They are being so nice! They are so relaxed and cheerful now. Danny is really a gem. I do suspect they will let their guard down and be even more blatantly racist now though.
Maybe they’re on their relaxed, nicer behavior, because the black, tense, and troubled daughter (from their pov) is with a white, relaxing, and nice boyfriend.
Just remember that she’ll probably be the reverse of this when she’s talking to Walky and Lucy. Suddenly she can see his flaws that she never mentioned before, just like she can suddenly see Sal’s strengths.
Just remember she didnt bother to ask the same thing to Lucy and Walky about their relationship. Or just imagine how this might have turned out differently if Danny was black/poc. Yeah.
Yeah, turns out people can do racist shit and also be relatable. They’re not an entirely different species. They do in fact be just like us. You know, human.
That’s why it’s important to be analytical. So we don’t stop our assessment just because they made us laugh.
It wouldnt’ necessarily excuse it but if linda had a ‘wild’ side as a child/teenager it would sorta explain her being stricter on sal than she was walky
As a parent of one son and two daughters I was more strict about males with my daughters because of possible pregnancies, and females with my son for the same reason.
I could never be a parent, i’d be too tempted to be like “Do whatever you want, but i’m not going to bail you out if you get arrested” (tho idk the legality of that/how much you’re obligated to do that while they’re still a minor versus like 16-17, unless you literally have no money or so) but at the very least in this case ppl can have sexual education with kids (or even encourage them to be gay, because while it can still happen i’d assume stds with teens fooling around would be lower compared to teen pregnan cy lol)
I think maybe the most obvious thing they have in common, well outside of this, is that both have a self-righteous side. Sal is just thankfully more justified in it when we’ve seen it come up.
Yes, Sal slept with a TA while trying to get help with her math, but I don’t recall it being quite so transactional. I seem to recall her getting help from him first and then sleeping with him to maintain his interest. Am I misremembering?
That’s how it seemed to Jason at the time, too. Based on her angry reaction to the bad grade she still ended up getting afterward, Sal seemed to disagree.
Mmm… I just wonder if she will then feel weirdly pressured to stick with Danny no matter what, out of fear that her parents will treat her the way Danny’s parents treated him after Dorothy broke up with him.
Yeah, given the authors tendencies (Choir intones “All Damn you Willis”), Sal trying to dump Danny because it makes her the “good child with an acceptable partner” despite everything does seem probable.
I doubt it. Too much to do with this relationship to kill it yet.
Especially since Sal deliberately brought him here hoping for their approval. I suspect this conversation’s still going to blow up, but it might be interesting if it didn’t and she’s left in the unfamiliar state of parental approval. Knowing full well it’s completely contingent
He’s been a good egg for a while now. His heart’s (almost) always been in the right place, he just… needed some knocks against the head to get THAT on track.
Was Charles the T.A.? That would actually make so much fucking sense. As to why they are married, why she is angry that one of the twins was less white than the other (beyond the whole base racist angle).
I don’t think anyone knows. People know Jason was fired for slapjackin’ with a student, but no one knows who it was.
Joyce was there when Sal got her grades, but not for enough of the confrontation to pick up on it. If it had been closer to Jason getting canned, the hints might have been enough, but there’s been no hints that she knew.
This new attitude towards Sal is disgusting, and I hope Sal knows that. They would never be praising her like this if she had brought someone who isn’t the whitest person on earth(I’m exaggerating, don’t come to me with your pitchfork and torches.)
Is Sal doing this just to prove a point or is she actually buying into this?
She has a smoldering ember of hope left that she’ll ever get it, and she’s not yet ready to tell herself she won’t. Like someone said yesterday, today is a last-ditch hail Mary to get a taste of it.
well other than passive aggressive stuff and some comments that might not necessarily read as insulting to an acquaintance/friend/partner, they wouldn’t necessarily be all like “Well, she always was the family disappointment ” (tho i dont put it past some parents to do that)
other than maybe like “I knew sending her off to that boarding school was the right thing to do” or so
It could. But a more generous interpretation than Linda probably deserves is, “You said it was a funny story, and you said you tried to tutor her in math, not that you did, so I imagine there’s more to it. Go on…”
Yeah, I suspect it’s no coincidence that the camera is off Sal for those last 3 panels. We’ll probably see the reaction tomorrow, though it’ll likely be more to “schtupping the TA”.
She might enjoy it for a bit, but she’ll quickly get sick of it. I’m guessing the bubble is gonna burst once she witnesses Linda being shitty to Lucy/Walky and tries to defend them to her parents but gets immediate pushback.
This literally started with her saying “You are exactly the sort of boyfriend they would want me to have, let’s see how that goes.” And coming so soon after The Lucy Incident, I don’t think she’s under any illusions as to why Danny is exactly the sort of boyfriend they want her to have.
She just wants to know what it’s like to have parental approval, at least for a moment.
It’s weird. I know they’re awful, particularly Linda. I’m just not sure if Linda being highly supportive of her is something Sal is going to have an adverse reaction to.
Most everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop. To an extent, so am I. But for the time being, I’m just happy Linda is not acting like a gremlin. It would be nice to have a villain who is not clownshoes every single time we see them.
It kind of makes sense, in a way, that them seeing their daughter in a new light would come this way, but I do question if it’ll last.
Good on Danny, though. It’s been said that if you are wanting to teach, you had better be ready to learn in the process, and he seems to have the humility to do just that. Glad he and Sal could figure out what her mental hangups were with math.
Oscars Wilde said “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his” hopefully Sal does does not follow this trend and Walky does follow.
Awww, I just remembered Animal from the old forums. Anyone else? Either the Keenspot boards or the Nightstar Zoo? Animal was one of the more prolific participants on the board, and he’d call it shtupping all the time. I wonder how he’s doing?
They aren’t real people. We don’t have to boo and hiss at them every single strip, including ones where they’re acting charming and fun, in order to maintain our anti-Racist street cred.
Mmh. I could see it, but it’s in the context of Danny using the phrase first, and saying it was a funny story, so this could just as easily be, “you’re setting things up, go on…”
Okay, you’ve made your claim (someone is forgiving racism), now where’s your evidence? It’s not on everyone else to deny it in case you’re talking about them.
When they first had the Sal/Jason paring they did not give any indication that this was being done for “grades”. (At least in my opinion.) Sal’s motivation seemed to be “I have been without sex for a while and need something to get rid of tension”. And Jason just seemed to be a convenient warm body (i.e. her comment “you’ll do”.)
I was actually a little surprised when a later strip had her confront Jason with a failed test and an accusation that she should have gotten an A.
Sal said “Effort don’t matter, I’m just being judged against my marks” too. The slip shine preview had him reply “That is NOT WHAT I MEANT and you know it.”
Along with the “You want to get out of here, Ah want to get out of here …” bit. If she just wanted leave, she could just leave. The only way sex is involved in getting out is if it fixes her grades.
I can see Jason missing it, since it’s easy for some guys to just think women are that into them for little reason, but it’s clearly what Sal’s talking about.
Charles’ comment makes me wonder if he’s noticed a few of the same things as Sal. Definitely not all of them because he’s made racially charged comments to her too but some.
I’d say “well, hey, now she can’t give Sal a hard time about that if she finds out” but that didn’t work with smoking either.
I feel like Danny is being pretty good so far here. Hes emphasising how Sal is smart, and that the way she approaches things is admirable. It could go wrong at any moment of course, but I do feel like Danny can relate to being the unfavourable child enough that even if he misses the racial context he’ll note the rest.
On that note. We’re all pretty sure Walky has ADHD, and autism is already being tackled in the storyline. Both are genetically linked. I wonder if Sal “approaching things differently” is because she needed a different explanation to make logical sense of the processes in her field before it properly clicked? I didn’t get that, at A-level, and my grade dipped from 99% to a middling D. AuDHD diagnoses hit a month back.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if Linda were autistic, the way she just bluntly comes out with such bold, dramatic things, and her general control freak black-and-white thinking could be nudged that way more by it. She’s done literally no work on any of herself regarding this of course and is still a bigoted, opinionated, racist hypocrite, that’s unimpacted here, just saying it isn’t totally impossible. Likewise Charles is an enabler and seemingly quite downtrodden in many ways but he could also well have inattentive type ADHD and/or ASD in the way he’s missing context hints and sort of just going along with everything around him despite slightly more warmth and slightly better intentions..?
ok am i prudish that i feel uncomfortable that Linda admitted that she would sleep for grades next to her husband, daughter and her boyfriend the first time she met him?
If it were just an aside, I think the dialogue balloons would have the little wiggly tails they’ve had while they’ve been whispering to each other about how they can’t believe this is Sal’s boyfriend.
Nope. Some people will calmly say things that others wouldn’t admit even to themselves. It makes me uncomfortable, too, and I tend to avoid them. To me it’s an abrasive trait.
C’mon, Linda, that is one of those things we don’t say out loud, remember?
I don’t think you’re prudish; I think that’s a very normal response. Most people (at least in my experience) don’t talk about sex with their adult kids or their parents.
A teenage boy is told off by his parents for dating an “easy” girl, and snarks about the fact they’re telling him this while an STI is spreading in the army. His father lets slip that his mother served in WWII, which he hadn’t known, having had somewhat rude notions about the women’s auxiliary (slightly censored in the published version, leading to an orphaned “neither”). Then he catches them having sex while smoking pot and listening to his KISS records.
One of the blessings of auditory processing issues, I s’pose. Can’t tell how dopey the lyrics are if I can’t tell whether or not the song is in English.
Yup, that was their big break. First time I saw them in concert, way back in the early eighties, when they sang this song they tossed some KISS records into the crowd.
Plot twist – They are on campus because the Dean has something to discuss with them. That something turns out to be that the Dean finally read Penny’s report.
I realize they’re trying, for Danny’s sake, to put a positive spin on themselves and their relationship with Sal. Still, I’m shocked to see Linda outright praising Sal with no backhand compliments or damning-with-faint-praise. I was expecting something more along the lines of, “We always suspected Sal was more intelligent than she let on,” and/or “We knew our little wild child would eventually settle down and come to appreciate good people.”
For a long time now I’ve been entertaining… not so much a theory as a scenario in which Sal has misdiagnosed Linda’s bigotry. Where maybe instead of racism, it was more classism or something like that. (Which yes might become racism in terms of who it discriminated against, but on the level of individual psychology would be different.) I’ve never really committed to the idea but it was always there as a devil’s advocate view of “I want to see something that specifically shows this scenario false before I’m convinced it’s about race” sort of thing.
This exchange here just reinforced it in my head… except it comes just a little bit after what looks like stark disapproval of Lucy for inscrutable reasons? Mrrrf, I don’t know what to think now.
Honestly? I see it. I’ve wondered myself if Sal just perceived her mother as racist.
Don’t get me wrong, Linda OBVIOUSLY has a favorite golden child and a scapegoat child. That doesn’t necessarily mean she’s RACIST, she’s just an asshole in a different way. She might just see herself in her daughter too much, which can cause strife.
It’s extremely aggravating. No, it’s not sexism. It’s not classism. It’s not Linda seeing too much of herself in Sal and them butting heads because they’re similar. It’s not Sal’s lashing out. It’s not because Walky was more manageable. It’s racism.
As Willis has put it, this is not going to be a story where it turns out the racism is AKTSHUALLY all in the black woman’s head. Which is good because that would be racist as shit.
I haven’t seen that quote, but I’m not surprised. It’d be at best a tremendous disservice to Sal. That said, I really feel like the Walkerton Parents have built up a tremendous wall of denial in their heads re: their very real racism, but in part that’s how it worms its way into a lot of people. They aren’t consciously judging Lucy by her skin, but they’d be hard-pressed to justify it in some other way that wasn’t at best pointing at something after the fact.
Theres enough aggression towards Marcies family that shes probably still racist, but maybe not towards black or white and rather *the dirty vagrant immigrants.* This exchange makes me wonder if their butting of heads on the individual scale is butting of heads due to similarities paired with different stances on the social justice issues.
Except that could easily be the product of classism instead of racism. (Again, talking specifically about the type of racism that is personal prejudice based on the race of individuals, without examination of whether its part of and reinforces the larger society-wide pattern of inequity.) Linda’s attitudes towards Marcie + family were awful, but I don’t think there was anything to indicate WHICH kind of awful it was.
I’m having trouble seeing any reason for her response to Lucy as anything other than racism, though. It might be that we misinterpreted Linda as disapproving when she wasn’t? Maybe Linda made Dorothy-specific plans? But both of those are a stretch and I’m not prepared to bend that far backwards to make this what-if theory work.
If they weren’t racist, maybe they should’ve said something when their jackhole elementary principal called her an ‘illegal’. Not to mention the shit they give Sal for her hair and how Walky says SAL is black but he’s ‘generically beige’.
I mean have you considered that generally speaking societal oppressions- including the kind that are purely personal beliefs- don’t come in nice easily-seperated containers, and that class and race especially are often deeply intertwined? Because I’m pretty sure Linda’s racist because she thinks “acting Black” is low class and also has not done anywhere near enough introspection to recognize that as a coherent thought.
When Sal shows up with WonderBread suddenly she’s great. Hmm… I can’t wait to see how they’ll interact with Walky and Lucy. The dinner has all the ingredients of ‘boom’.
This just makes it so apparent how racist and low Linda is by the difference in reaction from Lucy to Danny. All of a sudden they compliment Sal because she’s snagged a good white dude, as if Sal’s worth has been upped by who she romances.
Really fucking creepy what a 180 Sal’s parents do once she hauls along a nice white boyfriend and I hope it doesn’t lead to her doubting her decision to be with Danny.
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yeah, but did Linda get a SLIPSHINE out of it??
(don’t answer that, don’t wanna know)
off topic but do you also have notifications set up somehow? i’m curious how you always get here so fast. (i wrote an overcomplicated horrible mess of a script the other day that sends me a discord webhook approximately immediately after the comic goes up (if any of y’all want it in your servers too dm me there @ easrng))
Motivation and time.
and a time machine!
I used to think that Ana was actually Willis, using a literary double, but I have been dissuaded of that belief.
Now, it’s my opinion that Ana is MRS. Willis, and as such has certain posting privileges denied to the rest of we mere mortals.
Ditto exactly this comment
> Mrs. Willis
I’m gonna tell him
Tell me what?
heh, meh.
Comic comes out midnight Eastern Time. Server time isn’t exactly Eastern Time, but it’s very close, and there is a consistent correlation. Anyway, if you refresh at the right moment, which is about 12:05 Eastern, you’ll be first.
I guess it’s more like 12;07 now. (Posted at 12:40)
That explains why I didn’t see the comic when I tried checking at 12:01! I’m in Europe so I had to calculate in timezone differences. Thought maybe I was checking an hour too early.
You prolly could also get an rss reader and then get notifications that way.
RSS readers get you updates nicely, but they don’t (generally; you code one to accept feed-level hints) usually update at convenient times or too often; instead they will have some reasonable and not-too-fast period they used to poll the server. But if you want up to the second updates, you want to be pinging the server, not constantly but more frequently near the time it usually updates, so rss is likely not the best solution.
self-replied to add, also, doa in specific has had a history of inconsistent rss updates relative to actual updates. feed readers don’t usually check the comic itself; they checks a summary file (.rss or .atom) that tells them what the latest updates were without having to scrape the site. As such, since the site does publish rss, sometimes in the past there have been weeks in which the rss was broken or otherwise not updating correctly, and rss folks suddenly saw close to a week of updates at once. Good for narrative flow; bad for getting in first.
Yep, I use RSS and always arrive here after dozens upon dozens of comments have already been made; plus sometimes the feed just doesn’t update anymore for several days.
RSS isn’t instant unless WebSub is set up, and I don’t think the feed here has it? I am actually checking the RSS feed, I just also have it set up to start checking at exactly midnight server time so it gets it as fast as possible 🙂
Don’t question Ana’s superpowers! You’ll ruin the magic!
What’s really impressive is that her comments are always funny or insightful or both. I wouldn’t even be able to “first” that fast. Agreed with Needfuldoer– don’t question the magic.
I’m surprised nobody mentions it but Ana has said in the past that she reads the strip in advance via Patreon membership, prepares the comment with plenty of time, and then just posts it as soon as the strip goes up
I mean, she hasn’t gotten it YET…
I-I kinda like Linda more now. That feels gross to say.
They are being so nice! They are so relaxed and cheerful now. Danny is really a gem. I do suspect they will let their guard down and be even more blatantly racist now though.
“Mommy’s alright, daddy’s alright, they just seem a little weird”.
It’s the next lines that have me worried:
“Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away”.
Wow that sure is the chapter title… O.O
To be honest, I was not expecting this chapter’s A plot to be about Sal’s relationship with her parents.
She has a lot in common with her daughter, more than either would like to admit.
It’s honestly probably part of why they never got along. Obviously not the only reason, but they share a decent amount of traits.
“They’re too much alike” is a perfectly valid reason for people to butt heads.
(hehe buttheads)
See also: their mirrored body language earlier in the chapter:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/whispering/
Always thought Charles asking “which of you smells like smoke?” when Linda confronted Sal was a particularly telling line.
Maybe they’re on their relaxed, nicer behavior, because the black, tense, and troubled daughter (from their pov) is with a white, relaxing, and nice boyfriend.
Yes, the validation of white male approval casts her in a whole new light, to them.
Well she’s one o’ them consistently moral bigots at least.
No wait.
I know… I feel them as kinda likable during the last updates…
<..>
It scares me. O.O
Just remember that she’ll probably be the reverse of this when she’s talking to Walky and Lucy. Suddenly she can see his flaws that she never mentioned before, just like she can suddenly see Sal’s strengths.
Made my comment before seeing yours but yeah exactly!!!
Just remember she didnt bother to ask the same thing to Lucy and Walky about their relationship. Or just imagine how this might have turned out differently if Danny was black/poc. Yeah.
Yeah, turns out people can do racist shit and also be relatable. They’re not an entirely different species. They do in fact be just like us. You know, human.
That’s why it’s important to be analytical. So we don’t stop our assessment just because they made us laugh.
Outside one box, inside another.
That was more of someone else inside her box.
Hey, that’s two ways they’re alike.
Sal comes by it honestly.
I wonder if she’s filing that away.
Hope so, but she might be a little dazed by the Nice Words they have for her today.
“Always terribly perceptive.”
“Always incredibly sharp.”
Never once told that.
So perceptive and sharp she picked up on the racism. 🙂
I’m wondering how similar Sal is to her mom.
With parents and children that can often be a major source of conflict, especially when they don’t realize it.
It wouldnt’ necessarily excuse it but if linda had a ‘wild’ side as a child/teenager it would sorta explain her being stricter on sal than she was walky
As a parent of one son and two daughters I was more strict about males with my daughters because of possible pregnancies, and females with my son for the same reason.
I could never be a parent, i’d be too tempted to be like “Do whatever you want, but i’m not going to bail you out if you get arrested” (tho idk the legality of that/how much you’re obligated to do that while they’re still a minor versus like 16-17, unless you literally have no money or so) but at the very least in this case ppl can have sexual education with kids (or even encourage them to be gay, because while it can still happen i’d assume stds with teens fooling around would be lower compared to teen pregnan cy lol)
I think maybe the most obvious thing they have in common, well outside of this, is that both have a self-righteous side. Sal is just thankfully more justified in it when we’ve seen it come up.
I think “justified self-righteousness” is just regular righteousness.
Well, let’s take a moment to imagine Sal with Linda’s haircut…
…Abort! Abort!
I tried to make an edit of exactly this concept any my WiFi abruptly shut off right as I was about to make it my gravatar.
speaking of Gravs, what is that in yours?
Like mother, like daughter.
Sal’s mom would not be happy to hear her daughter did the same thing though.
Like smoking, stealing and dating a black person, its always do as I say not as I do.
I’d like to point out there is nothing wrong with the last one.
When did Linda steal?
The money that Sal had saved to pay for Marcie’s care.
Oh, yes. That. Thanks!
Hey man I tell you what, man, it’s just like that there nature versus nurture, talkin’ ’bout dang ol’ apples n’ trees, man.
Yep
Mmhm.
Yes, Sal slept with a TA while trying to get help with her math, but I don’t recall it being quite so transactional. I seem to recall her getting help from him first and then sleeping with him to maintain his interest. Am I misremembering?
That’s how it seemed to Jason at the time, too. Based on her angry reaction to the bad grade she still ended up getting afterward, Sal seemed to disagree.
See https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/more-quietly/
(And the surrounding strips)
Sal described it later in transactional terms, though Jason had failed to perceive it as such.
No, he didn’t. Slipshine’s preview makes it clear he knew exactly what she meant, he just didn’t want to do it.
Yeah, she moved to sex for grades after hours of her not getting his explanation and him not varying it up.
THE LORE WE NEEDED THE LORE WE DESERVED
how dare this storyline make me like danny so much so suddenly
He’s such a gem! Sal deserves some parental approval even if it’s conditional.
Mmm… I just wonder if she will then feel weirdly pressured to stick with Danny no matter what, out of fear that her parents will treat her the way Danny’s parents treated him after Dorothy broke up with him.
I’m worried that Sal will feel (internal) pressure to dump Danny because this is a terrible basis for parental approval
Yeah, given the authors tendencies (Choir intones “All Damn you Willis”), Sal trying to dump Danny because it makes her the “good child with an acceptable partner” despite everything does seem probable.
I doubt it. Too much to do with this relationship to kill it yet.
Especially since Sal deliberately brought him here hoping for their approval. I suspect this conversation’s still going to blow up, but it might be interesting if it didn’t and she’s left in the unfamiliar state of parental approval. Knowing full well it’s completely contingent
I am eagerly awaiting Walky and Lucy showing up to dinner with the Walkertons and Danny’s gone full Wonderbread.
Walky’s meltdown on being on the outs while Sal’s star is rising will be amazing.
I hope Danny shows Walky his new sneakers. I think Danny deserves a little nose tweaking on him.
Sneakers?
I assume something to do with Walky borrowing Danny’s shoes one time twenty years ago.
He’s been a good egg for a while now. His heart’s (almost) always been in the right place, he just… needed some knocks against the head to get THAT on track.
That makes me think… Dorothy might have found this same approach from Danny as patronizing, but it does so much good to Sal
God she sucks
Literally
Was Charles the T.A.? That would actually make so much fucking sense. As to why they are married, why she is angry that one of the twins was less white than the other (beyond the whole base racist angle).
It may also have been the Dean.
Linda married McHenry first, though.
When she was quite young.
no stop how dare they be relatable
well dang if THAT’S not the second-most perfect gravatar for the occasion
but if Sal did that (and you knew) you’d disown her more than you already have
unless this is why she was going to introduce them to the dean
…wait does DANNY know?
well, joyce kinda knew though i think she was there when sal went off on him for not raising her grades
idk if she told danny yet tho
Nor does she have to. A relationship is not a deposition – you don’t owe someone every detail of every previous hook-up you’ve ever had.
I don’t think anyone knows. People know Jason was fired for slapjackin’ with a student, but no one knows who it was.
Joyce was there when Sal got her grades, but not for enough of the confrontation to pick up on it. If it had been closer to Jason getting canned, the hints might have been enough, but there’s been no hints that she knew.
Maybe not the exact details but there was this conversation so he might have some idea.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-13/01-bring-me-to-life-drawing/girlfriend-2/
*HISSSSSSSS*
That wasn’t me, that was the snakes that hiss at evil mothers
*HISSSSSS*
I have no idea why they could possibly be hissing right now
This new attitude towards Sal is disgusting, and I hope Sal knows that. They would never be praising her like this if she had brought someone who isn’t the whitest person on earth(I’m exaggerating, don’t come to me with your pitchfork and torches.)
Is Sal doing this just to prove a point or is she actually buying into this?
She’s is probably desperate for a missed lifetime of parental approval.
She has a smoldering ember of hope left that she’ll ever get it, and she’s not yet ready to tell herself she won’t. Like someone said yesterday, today is a last-ditch hail Mary to get a taste of it.
This may be one of a vanishingly few times she’s heard her parents praise her without a “BUT” attached to the end of the sentence.
well other than passive aggressive stuff and some comments that might not necessarily read as insulting to an acquaintance/friend/partner, they wouldn’t necessarily be all like “Well, she always was the family disappointment ” (tho i dont put it past some parents to do that)
other than maybe like “I knew sending her off to that boarding school was the right thing to do” or so
That cocked eyebrow and smirk in panel 2 implies, “You tried, huh? Yeah. We couldn’t teach her anything either.”
It could. But a more generous interpretation than Linda probably deserves is, “You said it was a funny story, and you said you tried to tutor her in math, not that you did, so I imagine there’s more to it. Go on…”
Sal hasn’t shared her thoughts with the fourth wall yet. Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt until she does.
Yeah, I suspect it’s no coincidence that the camera is off Sal for those last 3 panels. We’ll probably see the reaction tomorrow, though it’ll likely be more to “schtupping the TA”.
She might enjoy it for a bit, but she’ll quickly get sick of it. I’m guessing the bubble is gonna burst once she witnesses Linda being shitty to Lucy/Walky and tries to defend them to her parents but gets immediate pushback.
This literally started with her saying “You are exactly the sort of boyfriend they would want me to have, let’s see how that goes.” And coming so soon after The Lucy Incident, I don’t think she’s under any illusions as to why Danny is exactly the sort of boyfriend they want her to have.
She just wants to know what it’s like to have parental approval, at least for a moment.
That’s not thinking outside the box, that’s thinking with your box.
It’s weird. I know they’re awful, particularly Linda. I’m just not sure if Linda being highly supportive of her is something Sal is going to have an adverse reaction to.
Next time Sal appears in the strip, she’ll be covered in hives.
Most everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop. To an extent, so am I. But for the time being, I’m just happy Linda is not acting like a gremlin. It would be nice to have a villain who is not clownshoes every single time we see them.
This exactly. Dumbing of Age has some great character work but its villains aren’t exactly…nuanced.
They’re mostly realistic though. A lot of people aren’t exactly nuanced.
Blaine went over the top in that last arc, but other than that.
Mary was very nucenced.
Sal was always a little too perceptive for Linda, really.
Now this is the comment of the day.
Nonsense. Ana always has the comment of the day.
With the matching grav and name “not someone else” this definitely looks like a self nomination LOL
said nice things
then ewww
There would definitely be a box involved, one way or the other.
I just hope Dan & Sal’s relationship survive this :S I’m a big fan of the pairing!
Saaaame
Oof, now they’re schmoozing a bit much. These two smh.
*Shakes my head and laughs*
It’s nice to hear Sal’s parents singing her praises. I wonder how long that will last. (Also, what the heck, Linda? Your standards are so weird.)
Cue awkward music/record scratch lol
Danny is definitely the one you want interacting with parents
I Give Good Parent – https://g.co/kgs/Z1reMb
It kind of makes sense, in a way, that them seeing their daughter in a new light would come this way, but I do question if it’ll last.
Good on Danny, though. It’s been said that if you are wanting to teach, you had better be ready to learn in the process, and he seems to have the humility to do just that. Glad he and Sal could figure out what her mental hangups were with math.
Sal learning she takes after her mom in the 2nd worst way possible
See, Sal? THAT’S why you don’t bang the TA. It makes you like your mom.
Oscars Wilde said “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his” hopefully Sal does does not follow this trend and Walky does follow.
*Oscar apparently I say Oscars more then Oscar so my autocorrect just replaced the two.
That’s the correct plural for when you have more than one Oscar Wilde, like “attorneys general” or “passersby”.
It’s a singular Oscar in this case.
I dunno, I think his perso amity was big enough to hebpluralized.
Ok that’s a weird autocucmber.
It’s okay; you obviously meant weird “autocucumber.”
Actually that’s more of an “Inside the box” kinda thinking.
OK, who invited Joe?
I opened the comments solely to look for this comment. Should have known it would be you.
I had to do a quick scroll to make sure nobody beat me to it and to my SHOCK nobody had. Y’all had 22 minutes. I’m disappointed!
*inside MY box thinking
Her box. Not mine. I regret this reply.
Anyone have a link to what Danny’s talking about in “getting schooled”?
I think it was Mario Kart on the 3DS or DS Sal is a bit of a prodigy.
Sure, but was she perceptive with the schtupping? It was sharp, tho.
Maybe I’m just like my mother, too bold
…Maybe I’m just like my mother. She’s never satisfied.
Why do we scream at each other?
“More like “Inside the Box” ammi right?”
“Get out of here Joe!!!”
Are we about to learn that Linda was just like Sal?
ok ok but wait consider… the dean… he seems too old to have been linda’s TA… but he could have been her PROFESSOR??
Total awkward pause all ’round!
*reads last panel* Ha… Sal is her mother’s daughter…
Awww, I just remembered Animal from the old forums. Anyone else? Either the Keenspot boards or the Nightstar Zoo? Animal was one of the more prolific participants on the board, and he’d call it shtupping all the time. I wonder how he’s doing?
He used to be around here for a while. I dunno where he went.
I hear he got a gig with Sesame Street.
I have to say, a lot of y’all are super willing to forgive their racism just cause they are being nice in this strip.
I’m not sure who you’re talking about. I don’t think I’ve read a single comment suggesting someone forgives their racism.
They aren’t real people. We don’t have to boo and hiss at them every single strip, including ones where they’re acting charming and fun, in order to maintain our anti-Racist street cred.
I don’t see forgiveness here in the comments. Riffing on the punchline isn’t forgiving.
I forgive you for this comment.
In either case, Linda’s not being nice in this strip. “TRIED, huh?” is very definitely being a full-blown asshole.
Mmh. I could see it, but it’s in the context of Danny using the phrase first, and saying it was a funny story, so this could just as easily be, “you’re setting things up, go on…”
Okay, you’ve made your claim (someone is forgiving racism), now where’s your evidence? It’s not on everyone else to deny it in case you’re talking about them.
Well, except Linda really isn’t being super nice? Being a passive aggressive racist bongo, that’s what.
Sal: I tried shtupping the TA. I learned you have to agree on the quid pro quo ahead of time.
Linda: Well, you’ll know next time.
Jason knew the quid pro quo. He just didn’t wanna do it.
Yeah but not spelling it out for Jason gave him some leeway not to do it since there was no actual verbal agreement.
When they first had the Sal/Jason paring they did not give any indication that this was being done for “grades”. (At least in my opinion.) Sal’s motivation seemed to be “I have been without sex for a while and need something to get rid of tension”. And Jason just seemed to be a convenient warm body (i.e. her comment “you’ll do”.)
I was actually a little surprised when a later strip had her confront Jason with a failed test and an accusation that she should have gotten an A.
Sal said “Effort don’t matter, I’m just being judged against my marks” too. The slip shine preview had him reply “That is NOT WHAT I MEANT and you know it.”
He knew she was talking about grades.
Along with the “You want to get out of here, Ah want to get out of here …” bit. If she just wanted leave, she could just leave. The only way sex is involved in getting out is if it fixes her grades.
I can see Jason missing it, since it’s easy for some guys to just think women are that into them for little reason, but it’s clearly what Sal’s talking about.
Charles’ comment makes me wonder if he’s noticed a few of the same things as Sal. Definitely not all of them because he’s made racially charged comments to her too but some.
I’d say “well, hey, now she can’t give Sal a hard time about that if she finds out” but that didn’t work with smoking either.
Kind of wish Walky was here to hear that from Linda. He might tease Sal about it again, but I could also see him joking about trying it himself.
I feel like Danny is being pretty good so far here. Hes emphasising how Sal is smart, and that the way she approaches things is admirable. It could go wrong at any moment of course, but I do feel like Danny can relate to being the unfavourable child enough that even if he misses the racial context he’ll note the rest.
Also emphasizing that the way Sal approaches things is different and you have to figure out how she’s thinking before you can help.
On that note. We’re all pretty sure Walky has ADHD, and autism is already being tackled in the storyline. Both are genetically linked. I wonder if Sal “approaching things differently” is because she needed a different explanation to make logical sense of the processes in her field before it properly clicked? I didn’t get that, at A-level, and my grade dipped from 99% to a middling D. AuDHD diagnoses hit a month back.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if Linda were autistic, the way she just bluntly comes out with such bold, dramatic things, and her general control freak black-and-white thinking could be nudged that way more by it. She’s done literally no work on any of herself regarding this of course and is still a bigoted, opinionated, racist hypocrite, that’s unimpacted here, just saying it isn’t totally impossible. Likewise Charles is an enabler and seemingly quite downtrodden in many ways but he could also well have inattentive type ADHD and/or ASD in the way he’s missing context hints and sort of just going along with everything around him despite slightly more warmth and slightly better intentions..?
ok am i prudish that i feel uncomfortable that Linda admitted that she would sleep for grades next to her husband, daughter and her boyfriend the first time she met him?
Betcha you’re not as uncomfortable with this revelation as Sal.
I think it was just between her and Charles, which isn’t aaaas bad. I mean, we don’t know their relationship or sense of humor much, either.
If it were just an aside, I think the dialogue balloons would have the little wiggly tails they’ve had while they’ve been whispering to each other about how they can’t believe this is Sal’s boyfriend.
Nope. Some people will calmly say things that others wouldn’t admit even to themselves. It makes me uncomfortable, too, and I tend to avoid them. To me it’s an abrasive trait.
C’mon, Linda, that is one of those things we don’t say out loud, remember?
I don’t think you’re prudish; I think that’s a very normal response. Most people (at least in my experience) don’t talk about sex with their adult kids or their parents.
That’s reasonable. I certainly wouldn’t talk about sex with my adult kids or parents. People tend to frown on that sort of thing.
Disclaimer – I have no kids, adult or otherwise. My parents are dead.
Though I guess that last isn’t an absolute barrier.
Like mother, like daughter?
This is the nicest they’ve been about Sal the entire comic…
*slams fists on table*
*J Jonah Jameson voice*
I NEED PICTURES OF SAL REACTING TO THE LAST PANEL
Also, it’s happening. The flippening of favouritism. It’s happening.
The swerved Walky when the met Lucy to have lunch with Sal and her goodest boy
Oh my god, are they gonna pretend like Sal was always the favored child? That would be awful. For both Sal and Walky.
Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
Well yeah. We all know that. Seems… suspicious you even brought it up.
Probably one of those war deniers. Alert the authorities.
There is no war in Ba Sing Se.
I wonder what the song the chapter title is from is about.
A teenage boy is told off by his parents for dating an “easy” girl, and snarks about the fact they’re telling him this while an STI is spreading in the army. His father lets slip that his mother served in WWII, which he hadn’t known, having had somewhat rude notions about the women’s auxiliary (slightly censored in the published version, leading to an orphaned “neither”). Then he catches them having sex while smoking pot and listening to his KISS records.
…wait, that was ironic, wasn’t it.
Is this real? Because that sounds like a hell of a song.
It’s pretty good. The synopsis up there makes it sound cooler than it is, I’d say. Judge for yourself!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgN_8cxBCWw
I think I liked the song better when I didn’t understand what the guy was saying.
To be honest, I find that true of a lot of songs.
One of the blessings of auditory processing issues, I s’pose. Can’t tell how dopey the lyrics are if I can’t tell whether or not the song is in English.
It’s hard to garble nargle vouss with all these marbles in my mouth.
“Surrender“ by Cheap Trick.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Km11HNzUY
Apparently the KISS shout-out was their way of thanking KISS for hiring thrm as an opening act, which helped them break out.
Yup, that was their big break. First time I saw them in concert, way back in the early eighties, when they sang this song they tossed some KISS records into the crowd.
Huh, they’re actually acting like decent parents. I hope Sal doesn’t grow to resent Danny for her parents being nicer when he’s around.
So what are the odds they’ve heard about Jason and immediately assumed it was Sal ?
Plot twist – They are on campus because the Dean has something to discuss with them. That something turns out to be that the Dean finally read Penny’s report.
Didn’t Penny say that she made it up and was surprised that it was actually true?
Ahahaha funny that you mention that!
The Alt -text… I-I wanna know but also not? like would that make it blackmail material??
Okay, I am warming up a bit to Sal’s mom.
Also, some sex joke about inside the box.
Did Linda knows about Sal and Sal’s TA?
No. It’s just runs in the family.
I realize they’re trying, for Danny’s sake, to put a positive spin on themselves and their relationship with Sal. Still, I’m shocked to see Linda outright praising Sal with no backhand compliments or damning-with-faint-praise. I was expecting something more along the lines of, “We always suspected Sal was more intelligent than she let on,” and/or “We knew our little wild child would eventually settle down and come to appreciate good people.”
Will the Walkerton’s noses start to grow or something?
Reminding me of my parents now.
So Linda talks about sex with a TA and Charles…..looks like he might be 👍 with that and maybe want a video?
Huh.
For a long time now I’ve been entertaining… not so much a theory as a scenario in which Sal has misdiagnosed Linda’s bigotry. Where maybe instead of racism, it was more classism or something like that. (Which yes might become racism in terms of who it discriminated against, but on the level of individual psychology would be different.) I’ve never really committed to the idea but it was always there as a devil’s advocate view of “I want to see something that specifically shows this scenario false before I’m convinced it’s about race” sort of thing.
This exchange here just reinforced it in my head… except it comes just a little bit after what looks like stark disapproval of Lucy for inscrutable reasons? Mrrrf, I don’t know what to think now.
Honestly? I see it. I’ve wondered myself if Sal just perceived her mother as racist.
Don’t get me wrong, Linda OBVIOUSLY has a favorite golden child and a scapegoat child. That doesn’t necessarily mean she’s RACIST, she’s just an asshole in a different way. She might just see herself in her daughter too much, which can cause strife.
And yeah, she’s definitely classist.
This theory has been a common fan theory since Linda being racist was first suggested lo these many years ago.
It’s really hard to see how it holds up even before this instant Lucy bad/Danny good thing.
It’s extremely aggravating. No, it’s not sexism. It’s not classism. It’s not Linda seeing too much of herself in Sal and them butting heads because they’re similar. It’s not Sal’s lashing out. It’s not because Walky was more manageable. It’s racism.
As Willis has put it, this is not going to be a story where it turns out the racism is AKTSHUALLY all in the black woman’s head. Which is good because that would be racist as shit.
I haven’t seen that quote, but I’m not surprised. It’d be at best a tremendous disservice to Sal. That said, I really feel like the Walkerton Parents have built up a tremendous wall of denial in their heads re: their very real racism, but in part that’s how it worms its way into a lot of people. They aren’t consciously judging Lucy by her skin, but they’d be hard-pressed to justify it in some other way that wasn’t at best pointing at something after the fact.
Theres enough aggression towards Marcies family that shes probably still racist, but maybe not towards black or white and rather *the dirty vagrant immigrants.* This exchange makes me wonder if their butting of heads on the individual scale is butting of heads due to similarities paired with different stances on the social justice issues.
Except that could easily be the product of classism instead of racism. (Again, talking specifically about the type of racism that is personal prejudice based on the race of individuals, without examination of whether its part of and reinforces the larger society-wide pattern of inequity.) Linda’s attitudes towards Marcie + family were awful, but I don’t think there was anything to indicate WHICH kind of awful it was.
I’m having trouble seeing any reason for her response to Lucy as anything other than racism, though. It might be that we misinterpreted Linda as disapproving when she wasn’t? Maybe Linda made Dorothy-specific plans? But both of those are a stretch and I’m not prepared to bend that far backwards to make this what-if theory work.
If they weren’t racist, maybe they should’ve said something when their jackhole elementary principal called her an ‘illegal’. Not to mention the shit they give Sal for her hair and how Walky says SAL is black but he’s ‘generically beige’.
I mean have you considered that generally speaking societal oppressions- including the kind that are purely personal beliefs- don’t come in nice easily-seperated containers, and that class and race especially are often deeply intertwined? Because I’m pretty sure Linda’s racist because she thinks “acting Black” is low class and also has not done anywhere near enough introspection to recognize that as a coherent thought.
When Sal shows up with WonderBread suddenly she’s great. Hmm… I can’t wait to see how they’ll interact with Walky and Lucy. The dinner has all the ingredients of ‘boom’.
Walky and Lucy were disinvited.
Walky and Lucy were disinvited for lunch, but were still on for dinner, though they’re “sorry if that mean Lucy’s unavailable”.
More like MOSTLY outside the box, amirite? 😛
This just makes it so apparent how racist and low Linda is by the difference in reaction from Lucy to Danny. All of a sudden they compliment Sal because she’s snagged a good white dude, as if Sal’s worth has been upped by who she romances.
Screw Linda!
So… was Dean McHenry a TA?
Haven’t you learned by now not to poke the Willis?
These guys remind me of the Sophisticated Adults from Kelly comics.
“Touche, Dear!”
“Results-oriented” seems a dark reprise.
This is a certified bruh moment right there. Jesus, Linda.
This is bruh moment x9000, like what in the fucking hell
the worst part is I ain’t even that surprised. This is America, the racist cup really do runneth over 👀
Really fucking creepy what a 180 Sal’s parents do once she hauls along a nice white boyfriend and I hope it doesn’t lead to her doubting her decision to be with Danny.
Like mother like daughter I guess
Big ooof on the Walkerton ladies part.
I need a reminder: Danny doesn’t know that Sal was the one who canoodled Jason, right?
Nah, not as far as I recall. She hasn’t really volunteered any of her history in that lane, which is cool of her.
“funny thing actually-“
Mother like daughter….
aw, they really are family
Sal is probably regreting now this revelation of one of the things she actually has in common with her mom XD