123

Base level
Posted on January 15, 2020 by David M Willis

123 thoughts on “Base level”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    *Morgana pops out of bag* “Hey, hey!”

    “OH YEAH I HAVE TO CHANGE SOMEBODY’S HEART OR BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN”

    /still waiting for SOMEBODY to finish the boat palace so I can watch

    1. Ana Chronistic

      *Morgana lies under Amber’s desk* “That sounds about right.”

      Alex: “Why do I hear a cat?”

    2. Myth

      That game is SO GOOD! Tell your somebody that they’re almost done! The boat Palace is the last proper Palace in the game, then it’s endgame time. They can probably finish the game in one or two more play sessions (possibly three if they don’t have much progress in the boat Palace)

      1. Ed Rhodes

        What game are we talking about here?

        1. abysswatcher1993

          Persona 5!

      2. abysswatcher1993

        I am still waiting for Royal and Scramble! The anxiety is killing me, and I want to make more Joker x Makoto art!

        1. TheStranger

          I’m down for Royal; wish it had been for Switch though.

        2. Warren

          Must there be a *reason* to make more Joker X Makoto art?

    3. abysswatcher1993

      Persona 5 reference happens

      Me: “THEY NEVER SEE IT COMING!”

      On topic:
      Walky: “Okay magical cat, what is the answer of question 3?”
      Morgana: “I am a thief, not a mathematician.”

      1. Warren

        “But hey! The teacher’s not paying attention! Now would be a great time to build bombs right here at your desk!”

  2. CC

    “Paranoia’s never let me down … which makes me suspicious”

    1. Someguy

      Can I even trust my paranoia? My own intuition could be trying to kill me! This is just it luring me into a false sense of security!

      1. Some Ed

        No, you can’t trust your paranoia. Do you not understand the phrase “Trust no one!”? OMG, we’re all doomed.

        1. Jon Rich

          Constant vigilance!

        2. thejeff

          “Keep your laser handy.”

        3. KarlBob

          “Happiness is mandatory.”

  3. sirconanad

    Maybe Amazi-Girl and Amber should share a journal together to solve the memory issue.

    1. CC

      Hey, if it works for Ryoko 😛

    2. Pablo360

      They didn’t have memory issues before… before at some point. A refusal to share is exactly the problem.

      1. Ron again

        I think AG is willing and trying to share but amber is (on a subconscious level) not ready to listen.

    3. Doctor_Who

      Darkness…No Parents…

      What do you mean, both my parents are still alive.

      I have half an announcement for you…

      1. Happilychaotic

        I… would be surprisingly okay with this.

  4. BBCC

    Ahhh, brain weasels. Aren’t they fun? Good luck, Amber.

  5. Reltzik

    InB4 everyone demanding Willis tell us what happened to Mike:

    Look, people, simmer down already. OBVIOUSLY Willis has moved on from that scene. He hit the plot points and left the stage. It would be totally unrealistic for us to expect him to come back so quickly after such a definitive Mike drop.

    1. Beef

      damn it

    2. Bicycle Bill

      Puns are the lowest form of humor …. and I am firmly convinced that whoever first made that statement did so because he was upset that someone else had beaten him to it.

      1. Ed Rhodes

        Amen, BB! The glory of a pun is in the “oy” of it’s beholder!

      2. Khno

        I don’t know id the english version comes from that, but here it supposed to come from Victor Hugo “Le calembour est la fiente de l’esprit” (Les Misérables, 1862) [pun is the excrement of spirit], and the good sir was, like all Besançon natives, a serial punist.

        1. Khno

          The whole quote (note it is itself a wordplay if you change the place of letters)
          « Le calembour est la fiente de l’esprit qui vole. Le lazzi tombe n’importe où ; et l’esprit, après la ponte d’une bêtise, s’enfonce dans l’azur. Une tache blanchâtre qui s’aplatit sur le rocher n’empêche pas le condor de planer. Loin de moi l’insulte au calembour ! Je l’honore dans la proportion de ses mérites ; rien de plus. Tout ce qu’il y a de plus auguste, de plus sublime et de plus charmant dans l’humanité, et peut-être hors de l’humanité, a fait des jeux de mots. Jésus-Christ a fait un calembour sur saint Pierre12, Moïse sur Isaac, Éschyle sur Polynice, Cléopâtre sur Octave. Et notez que ce calembour de Cléopâtre a précédé la bataille d’Actium, et que, sans lui, personne ne se souviendrait de la ville de Toryne, nom grec qui signifie cuiller à pot. »

    3. DiDi

      *snorts and chokes*

    4. Deathjavu

      You win today’s comments.

    5. AbacusWizard

      …well played.

      1. Clif

        Reltzik is the master and we are not worthy.

        1. Needfuldoer

          That punchline certainly had impact.

        2. King Daniel

          We all fall before his punning prowess.

    6. sirconanad

      Maybe the next chapter will open with a flashback of Mike doing a somersault and perfectly landing on the ground while the rope rips and Blane crashes and breaks his neck.

      A man can dream, can he not?

      1. Geneseepaws

        Still NOT convinced that the gloves hand belongs to Lame-Blaine, looks to me like it goes with Amazi-Girl’s uniform, but hey, my eyes aren’t what their once were.

        1. King Daniel

          Amazi-Girl doesn’t have sleeve cuffs that go up to her wrists; this can be confirmed by going back just a couple of strips prior to the fall. It was almost certainly Blaine’s hand which grabbed the rope in that panel, and certainly not Amazi-Girl.

    7. Banzo

      Goddamit. That was good.

    8. Deanatay

      BECAUSE we love and appreciate this pun, we’ll give Reltzik 5 seconds to flee for his dear punning life before t3h b3@td0wnz begin…

  6. Woomy

    What if the entire situation was just Amber’s stress-dream, and she just woke up from it and has no idea why everything feels off

    1. King Daniel

      1) Willis stated that it was the Chekhov’s Gun of Amber and Amazi-Girl no longer sharing memories going off, so implicitly not a dream, and 2) that wouldn’t explain us seeing everything that happened before Amazi-Girl showed up, which was quite a bit.

      1. Hugo Bedward

        Plus the new character refs for Joyce, Dorothy and Amber already imply something’s going down.

      2. Questionor

        Yea I took Willis’ statement about Chekhov’s gun to imply that too.

    2. Questionor

      Cept it would be Amazi-Girl’s dream, not Amber’s.

  7. Stephen Bierce

    There’s a hole in my heart that goes all the way to China…
    And though you can’t see the bottom believe me–IT’S A LONG WAY DOWN!    –Cyndi Lauper

    1. Stephen Bierce

      *follows up with Bruce Hornsby’s “Look Out Every Window”*

      1. Stephen Bierce

        Oops.

  8. Dunedon

    You know the penny is going to drop when someone asked where Mile is for the midterm.

    1. Reltzik

      Mike isn’t in their computer class, and Penny got kicked out of the college weeks ago.

      1. Bagge

        I love how take joke never stops to be funny.

    2. Shane Wegner

      Dead, or maybe just chained up and tortured somewhere.

  9. Suet

    Statistically worse than updating buffer by only 13 days.

    Can’t believe the last mention about midterms was almost 7 months ago. Darn you, Malaya’s haircut.

  10. DailyBrad

    Fucking mood, Danny.

    I wonder what the reveal is going to be. If Mike were just, like, dead, I feel like “hey someone died on campus” is something that’d have been discovered, especially since I really don’t know what incentive Blaine and Ross would have to hide him, and Amazigirl also wouldn’t have just let them do it. So, hospital, maybe?

    1. Myth

      Apparently (according to another comment on here) Willis has explicitly said nobody is going to die in Dumbing of Age. So, you’re right that it’s not going to be that, but beyond that I have no idea. Although if Amazi-Girl didn’t save him from that fall or some other lucky break, I’d find it very strange if he wasn’t in the hospital, ‘cause that looked like a really serious height to fall from.

      1. BBCC

        Willis has also said he recently broke one of his major story rules for Dumbing of Age and also that his word of god is not immutable and unchanging, he reserves the right to change his mind.

      2. Jamie

        Well, the fun thing is that the reason people keep giving is that “it would take too long to get past the grieving.”

        But this is Mike. Would the cast actually feel that much grief about his death?

        1. King Daniel

          We do have an in-comic example of Walky, for instance, talking about how Mike’s death would be a good thing.

        2. Meagan

          I feel like it would be such a cop out though. Like, difficult character has a major realization, does something redemptive, and dies. It leaves out the hard, long work of actually working to change your habits that aren’t healthy, which to me would be much more interesting to see in Mike.

        3. Nep

          I cannot agree hard enough with your comment. Gold stars, fireworks, medals, awards. It’s such a cop-out. (And honestly, I can’t see Willis wanting to skip the hard work that Mike would want to do and the interesting ripples in the rest of the cast it would cause.)

        4. thejeff

          Maybe not grief exactly, but given the circumstances it would be devastating for Amber and Becky at least. Becky in the “he died because Ross came looking for me” sense and Amber in a more direct “because AG failed” sense.

        5. Nep

          Amber and Ethan would be genuinely grieved if he died. He’s an asshole, but he’s their asshole.

        6. thejeff

          That too, but in this case it would be the circumstances that would hit Amber worst.

  11. Bagge

    awwww. Danny and amber are slowly reaching a new sort of normality together. That’s good. They deserve each other as friends (YES, amber, you deserve him as a friend).

  12. Keulen

    I’m sure what she’s forgetting has absolutely nothing to do with Mike, or Blaine and Ross either.

  13. Sudoku

    Wait, is Amber actually blacking out when shes Amazi-Girl? Is there a page that sorta shows the first instance or is this the first time?

  14. Rikunda

    And no one remembered Mike ever again…

    1. woobie

      Who?

      1. King Daniel

        Why?

        1. Sunny

          Where?

        2. Reltzik

          Whence?

        3. Questionor

          Mom never has nickels anymore ?

        4. Shane Wegner

          Wherefore?

  15. Agemegos

    I’m betting on Our Willis to string this cliffhanger out until after [The Order of the Stick[/i] resumes updating on the 6th of February.

    Go Willis! You can do it! Show those doubters!

    1. Deathjavu

      Willis mentioned a previous cliffhanger on twitter, so I went to check:

      Ryan storyline came up 6/4/17, and was not addressed in comic at ALL until 6/24/17, and we didn’t see Amber again (well, not even see, she’s hiding behind a tree) until 7/19/17. And while that was a 3 day timeskip, this one involved a much smaller circle of characters in the immediate term.

      So yeah, 6th of February is totally possible. Who’s actively going looking for Mike?

      1. Nono

        Walky might notice his roommate is missing after a day or two.

        So uh, in a few months, I guess.

        1. thejeff

          Meta reason for Walky sleeping at the party. He won’t even have the “Mike didn’t come home last night” curiosity.

          Or alternately, we don’t have to see that he did come home

  16. Tacos

    We’re never gonna learn what happened to Mike for like a year aren’t we?

    1. inqntrol

      Do you mean a year in real life or comic time?

      1. Tacos

        Yes.

  17. abysswatcher1993

    This is all a nice build up, but from the last weeks of seeing all this unfold, I have come to the realization that I am not troll enough to be as obnoxious as Willis when it comes to writing. Sometimes I have this feeling that Willis writes to spite us, and we read to spite him, like some sort of kismesitude (Homestuck term).

    Also, college exams are really stressing.

    1. Deathjavu

      Well, he’s writing this out as a coherent story en total, and we’re being drip fed 1 panel a day. So cliffhangers that are totally normal and useful in other stories feel agonizing to us.

      Pretty sure I remember Hussie talking about this as well, how Homestuck was written primarily to be read in 1 go, because it would be on the internet as a whole work for longer than it was running.

  18. Lingo

    AG in Amber’s brain: “Hey Amber, how’s that midterm going? Oh, just getting started you say? Cool cool. HERE HAVE SOME TRAUMA”

  19. Needfuldoer

    That’s how the anxiety perpetuates itself, like a software virus.

    1. PB

      It is exactly like that. (Nods)

  20. PB

    Okay NOW I’m foaming at the mouth a little.

  21. NinjaNick

    It was only a nightmare.

    1. King Daniel

      Metaphorically yes, but actually no.

  22. Charlotte

    It seems like nobody except Mike and AmaziGirl were there — nobody seems to have called the police or alerted any authorities at all. Maybe nobody except AmaziGirl is aware that Mike was gravely injured or is potentially dead (or was abducted?).

    It dawned on me that Mike’s plan was colossally stupid (and dangerous to both him and AmaziGirl/Amber) when it became clear that all he had been waiting for was for AmaziGirl to arrive. No secret recording, no genius plan to get the police involved as soon as it got dicey, nothing.
    So now it looks like nobody knows what happened to Mike except AmaziGirl, who’s not sharing. Terrible.

    1. thejeff

      To be honest, I still find AG not being able to easily handle Blaine and control that fight disconcerting. It doesn’t fit my impression of their relative abilities. In that sense, the plan should have worked.

      1. HMH

        I mean, a lot of us have been casually assuming that Blaine kills people for a living every now and then.

        Also, now he’s donned a mask. That puts him well beyond civilian levels of power, which is all we’ve seen Amazi-Girl face up until this point. That’s pretty significant a rise in stakes and power. Masks are serious.

        1. thejeff

          Possible. Though I’ve thought the hints pointed more towards “stooge” than actual mob killer. Launders money through his construction business rather than kills or beats people up for money.
          Certainly showed no sign of it in his previous fights with Amber – though that could be argued to just taking him by surprise, it certainly wasn’t clear that was the case.

        2. BBCC

          Not even hints – the phrases ‘stooge’ is the exact description we got for him. I mean, granted, Richard’s hardly the least biased source but we’ve had nothing to contradict it.

      2. Deathjavu

        Yeah, I’m still confused how a tiny hammer and some body armor moved Blaine from “easily thrashed without any injury” to “somehow a real threat”. Even saying it’s AG fighting instead of Amber, or the surprise factor of Blaine coming back, it still doesn’t add up.

        1. thejeff

          It may be, as HMH, that the genre trope of taking up a super-villain identity matters. I don’t really buy the idea that even rage Amber is actually a better fighter than AG – more dangerous in the sense that she won’t restrain herself to keep from crippling you, but not actually better.

      3. Charlotte

        Come on. AmaziGirl is a young woman, Blaine a (decently physically fit looking) professional goon, as far as we know. I don’t think it’s unrealistic at all that that fight is not obvious to win for AmaziGirl — in fact, if anything it’s unrealistic for AG to easily beat Blaine. Unless we assume that there is actually a supernatural element to AG (which I don’t think there’s supposed to be). Last time they fought, AmaziGirl hat the element of surprise on her side.

        1. thejeff

          Amazi-Girl is a young women who routinely performs impossibly ridiculous physical feats of parkour and whose hobby is going out at night and beating up petty criminals – sometimes in groups. I freely grant there’s nothing realistic about her skills and abilities, but they are canon.
          Blaine, on the other hand, has never shown any such skills. He’s been in physical altercations 3 times on panel and been completely ineffectual in all of them (punched by Amber in her room, thrown by Ruth moments later and then stomped into the ground by Amber.) It’s not actually known that he’s a “professional goon” – he’s been referred to as a “stooge” and it’s known that he owns/runs a business that launders money, but there’s been no direct evidence he’s involved in the physical side of the business.

          Basically, past portrayal of Amber/AG’s abilities are such that we can’t simply assume random guys should be able to give her any serious trouble and it’s never been established Blaine should be an exception. The only time we’ve seen her threatened before was by a group of 4 (or by Sal, who has similar hobbies). We had more reason to be worried by Ryan’s knife attack, since knives are hard for even skilled fighters to handle without getting cut and she took that away from him like he was a baby.

          Either Blaine has a level in bad ass that should have been foreshadowed or Amazi-Girl was way off her game for some reason.

        2. BBCC

          I assumed she was a little off her game BECAUSE it was Blaine. Last time, Amber took over. This time, AG was solidly in the driver’s seat and she generally tries to be more restrained.

        3. King Daniel

          Yeah, it was always Amber who fought Blaine before, never Amazi-Girl.

        4. thejeff

          AG’s more restrained, but not any less skilled. We’ve generally assumed in the past that didn’t much more than that AG would stop hitting them once they went down. It was Amber that fought Blaine, but AG that goes out and beats up muggers for stress relief.

          I could buy her being off her game because it was Blaine. It makes sense. I don’t think it was really shown during the fight though, other than the initial reaction. Maybe we’ll find out more when we see AG again.

  23. BenRG

    Here’s my take at the moment: Amazi-Girl is desperately trying to tell Amber what happened and what is still happening. However, Amber is so used to ignoring everything her alter-ego says (not wanting to know, because she’s unworthy to be involved) that’s she’s rejecting the memories and thoughts.

  24. TheFlamingonator

    Aw I miss autumn when I see those red trees. Also because Spring means studying like hell.

  25. Happilychaotic

    Actually… My anxiety does this to me all the time.

    So, a fair point. Even if in this case it isn’t exactly accurate.

  26. Rabisch

    Wait. It’s Walky suppose to be at the midterm too or not?

  27. InTheory

    I thot we were going to see Joyce kiss Joe? Or will that happen off-camera and we’ll just get another morning-after frame?

    1. Shane

      We never get what we want. Such is Willis’ decree. Such is Willis’ LAW.

      The people have one singular lamentation to describe this state of affairs.

      1. King Daniel

        And lo, the cry did go up throughout the comments section, as if with one voice the hue and cry was heard and the alarums sound: “Damnations be unto thee, O Willis!”

  28. Slartibeast Button, BIA

    I know this is probably just the real building, but I really want it to start transforming or launching missiles or beams or something.

    1. King Daniel

      It’s the real CS building on campus which recently went up – Willis started drawing it in previous strips before construction was even finished, basing the comic art off of the architectural concept art.

  29. Zellgato

    I’m already checked out, the emotions never hit a cresendo for the Mike Drop arc. and now that I don’t know its ikind of *Shrugs* for me now.
    Like if we’d seen her see mike’s dead body, etc. And then this transistion here fully to her story. We’d have had a proper end to mike’s story and would be able to move to “is amazigirl dead also? Did amber break and murder them both? ” etc
    but as it stands I just can’t get invested in amber-amazigirl consequences because we never got full awknowledgement of mike’s action-consequences closure. It just skips a story beat in a way that doesn’t let me disnegage the narritive from one person to another. and unless it is revealed mike didn’t die-then this all feels like using mike’s story as a “and this happened” story for amber/amazigril’s break. (which would also reasonably remove her from the universe as well)

    THey never really showed him hitting the ground, or the parked car, or a garbage bin. They never properly showed how high it was. There were implications but since it wasn’t a roof top, we don’t know if it was literally right after the side panel where it was only 10-14feet up or if they transitioned further up between panels to 20+ feet.

    I wonder if anyone else is having that problem? Its not the “dread of not knowing” nor is it building any anxiety or drama. It just feels like a cut scene and a switch to a new arc. Kind of like one of the TV shows that ends on a cliff hanger–doesn’t get renewed but gets a movie a few years later that just entirely skips that cliff hanger and we’re left to asssume it went a specifci way due to lack of XYZ characters or lack of XYZ deaths.

    I don’t much care about not knowing, But its more that it didn’t have closure. Even amazigirl looking down intears after that “mike drop” panel would’ve given it closure enough for a story transition.

    1. Deadjolras

      I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want to kill anyone’s buzz but, to be painfully honest, I never cared for the Mikening. I was far more interested in what was going on at the party itself, what with everyone’s complicated interpersonal relationships. So this break, where we’re catching up with everyone else post-party? I actually welcome it.

      I don’t know why – because I really wanted to be as invested as everyone else! – but I genuinely find every other arc far more interesting.

  30. Zellgato

    sidenote: Still amazed at how bad Mike’s plan seemingly was.
    Unless the police and the paramedics show up directly after the fall, arrested the adults, (and either medivac’d mike or collected his corpse) and Amazigirl escaped and “broke” and is just now amber.
    though if that was what was going on (phone call to cops while this was happening) then reasonably the police should be able to gather amazigirl=amber because of who Blake was and all the pretty obvious call out references. or at least she’d be under consideration by the campus p olice now.

    1. Charlotte

      Yeah. Everyone in the comments was thinking that he had this genius plan and was handling the situation so well — including me, more or less.

      And then it dawned on me that he had no plan apart from getting AmaziGirl involved, putting them both into great danger.

      Pretty scared that in fact there were no outside witnesses and Mike’s dead body is now just hidden somewhere, or that he got abducted, and the (at the very least attempted) killers are still on the loose.

  31. ADD

    Oh no, she’s going to remember right in the middle of a mid-term, isn’t she?

    1. MutantSentry

      She will enter a fugue state and where she should be writing a short essay she narrates everything that happened in a cross between Stan Lee and Frank Miller prose styles. With fully detailed black and white illustrations of key moments. Then she will stand up, scream, and pass out.

      When she wakes up she will have manifested a third personality, Dark Amazigirl, an chaotic neutral vigilante with no regard for Amber, OG Amazigirl, her friends, or human life. Amber suddenly drop out of school and disapeare as DA-G takes over. She will live in sewers and abandoned buildings, hunting Toe-Dad and Blaine until Danny, Walky and Sal find her. When she lashes out and hurts the boys she will mentally break and enter a coma.

      Six months later we find her recovering in a mental health ward, she will have been declared not-guilty by reason of insanity and involuntarily committed.

      Was that too dark?

  32. Zombycow

    why do i get this odd feeling that everyone was told NOT to tell her about mike. like, a psychiatrist/psychologist or a grief councilor wants to do it him/herself in a safe situation where she can be properly cared for.

    that’s the only reason why the don’t bring it up that i can think of.

    1. King Daniel

      The last we saw Danny interacting with Mike, he told him, “goodbye forever”. Danny, at least, has no love for Mike.

    2. Zellgato

      Realistically? if its the morning of, they may not have f ound his body yet if it was moved.
      or these folks wouldn’t have known yet.
      I forget who mike’s roommate is though. but follks woudn’t be missing him yet–given that mnost folks woudln’t know if he was still at the party, or had already left etc.
      If the police found him already they likely would be asking specific people and havent’ rand into most of them yet due to the party

      1. MutantSentry

        @Zellgato,

        His roommate is Walky, who we know didn’t get back to their room last night

    3. Needfuldoer

      Unless there was a skip to later in the morning, I don’t know when there would be time to coordinate this. There also aren’t any eyewitnesses; Amber doesn’t remember what AG does, Mike is in Schrodinger’s Box, and there’s no way Toedad and the Blaine would have come forward.

    4. Charlotte

      I just don’t think anyone knows — the fight happened on some remote part of campus, if I understood correctly, and of course Blaine and Toedad would have hidden the evidence.

      Mike probably just hasn’t been reported missing yet.

  33. Bruiser Ed

    I believe that the entire fight episode with AG and the evil dads was a dream. Remember that the very next frame after Mike fell was Amber waking up in bed? She was waking up from a dream , with only a vague recollection that something she should remember had happened.

    1. King Daniel

      Not a dream, Willis already stated that it was the Chekhov’s Gun of Amber and Amazi-Girl no longer sharing memories (which had already been established years ago, our time) going off. Also, we wouldn’t have seen everything prior to Amazi-Girl showing up if it had been a dream.

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