Great to see you Milu! Care to share more delightfully dark dreams? If you share yours, I’ll share mine!
milu
kinky! i don’t always remember mine, but i’ll definitely tell you next time i get a Vision From Yonder as i like to call them.
(i’m just messing with you)
do tell me yours though =)
Wagstaff
Last one was absolutely incredible. I was leaping super fast and super high like a ninja through a giant Costco (and I mean GIANT, like 10x bigger than any I had ever seen). One point I leaped so high that I made on to a platform that was like a room hidden in the roof, where I found Dpug Rattman or someone preparing for the apocalypse or something (he had a fully stocked store fridge and everything).
I was in complete control of my moves too, and I felt this kind of energy pulsing through my body the entire time I was moving! Also there were these moments were time just seemed to slow down, and one were I shot straight across the concession area perfectly!!!
I even managed to pay for what I got at the end, which included an odd magazine and a box of TV cookies which my aunt had somehow got hooked on.
Overall, a very bizarre and amazing experience!!!!
milu
oh my god that’s an amazing dream!!
i don’t often do crazy shenanigans like that in my dreams, maybe i should play videogames?? (i had to look up Dpug Rattman)
i love the dream-logic of knowing someone’s ready for the apocalypse because, like, their fridge is full XD
Wagstaff
That was my first guess. Why else would someone have a hidden living arrangement in the roof of a Costco?
milu
wait you mean that was your guess inside your dream, or once you’d woken up and thought back on it?
personally i think keeping loads of perishable stuff inside a fridge is bad survivalism
Wagstaff
My guess was kinda post hoc after I had the dream.
The fridge looked like it was stolen from an isle in a convenience store or something. Also there was a rack full of chip bags. The suggestion of apocalypse preparation was the first product of my heuristic in seeing stockpiles this advanced and incredibly hidden from view.
Also, just curious, what’s the story behind your alias? Is it a reference to the Hawaiian underworld diety by any chance?
milu
oh wowwww do you know i’ve never searched for it anywhere, not even on wikipedia?!
i guess one reason is i’m not all that social online, i mostly just roam and lurk.
most days this is the only online space i actually interact in. so, idk, i’m not led to think of my pseud all that much.
also, no, it’s a nickname i also have offline that’s actually a riff on my last name! sorry it’s kind of a non-story lol. i do like stories about online aliases, for many people they’re sorta like that slightly embarrassing tattoo you got when you were 19 and now you just gotta own ^^
well fuck, there’s also a song by a brazilian popstar called “Milu”, it has 300M views lol ok
where’s yours from?
Wagstaff
Glad you asked!
Wagstaff is a character from a game I play. He’s an inventor who embodies my curiosity and will to benefit the world with the power of science!
If you look carefully, you’ll find that I use a subtle reference to his background whenever I play music here!
Chekhov’s date. Of course this is meaningful. DYW is too economical to include characters at random.
Council
I think you are right. At the same time, Sal mistaking it for more than just an innocent date, when that’s all it really is, would be meaningful as a plot point.
I don’t trust him either. I don’t hate him, necessarily, but I sure as hell don’t trust the guy who had a man assassinated to cover up his involvement in a crime.
As for why he’s here… it’s a sporting event? I dunno, he doesn’t really need a reason. Plus he and Jennifer both grew up with two of the people on the team.
Just another reminder that if Asher stealing his grandfather’s money to pay his way through college in spite of his grandfather’s wishes (information that Blaine even blackmailed Asher over!) came out, Asher would very likely be dead himself. The Mob doesn’t tend to play around with people who steal large sums of money from them.
Sirksome
He shouldn’t have stolen the money then. Not in an ethical sense. Who really gives a shit if you steal from criminals? But it’s just a really stupid thing to do if it puts your life at risk. It’s not really a justification if you created the situation where someone has leverage over you.
Clif
What’s the world coming to when a godfather can’t trust their own grandchild?
King Daniel
Sure, but it’s not like he had a whole lot of options for getting away – gramps was already pressuring him to join the family business (and we know he was “disappointed” when Asher declined), and what little we know of child!Asher implies that he probably didn’t have the best home life, either. If that’s the case, I can’t exactly fault him for wanting out, even if he ended up Dumbing his way of going about it.
Needfuldoer
I think he’s “doing the wrong things for the right reasons” with questionable morals. He says he wants to leave the family business, but he’ll still call in favors. He’ll eventually get a redemption arc, or he’ll end up as DoA’s Michael Corleone.
Like others have said, he hasn’t really earned trust or derision yet.
He called a hit on BLAINE, surely that’s a tick in his ‘good deed’ column?
RassilonTDavros
Blaine being dead is, overall, a good thing. However, Asher didn’t kill him because he was a piece of human garbage; Asher killed him because he knew too much. We have no reason to believe he wouldn’t do this to anyone who knew enough about him that they could even potentially expose him.
When you date someone, you tend to learn things about them. Jennifer is a reporter, and as off-base as her speculations can be (hello, “Amazi-Sal”) she still has a very inquitive nature and it’s likely she’ll see something she wasn’t supposed to. Furthermore, as a reporter, Jennifer can easily make things known to large numbers of people. She, moreso than others, could very easily become a “liability.” The longer she dates him, the more danger she is in.
Some1
I mean, even if his reason for killing Blaine was just because Blaine’s a monster, ordering a man shot in a hospital bed still doesn’t make you the good guy, at best that makes you an anti-hero.
misanthropope
“Good. Bad. I’m the guy with the guy with the gun”
Wagstaff
Even if that is Asher’s rationale, Jennifer’s apparent lack of alcoholism after the time skip means such escalation of danger might take much longer than usual for her.
BBCC
Asher FREELY ADMITTED he took the money to Sal. That’s not something to do if you’re trying to keep anybody from knowing too much. BLAINE was actively blackmailing him with the info. I know Jennifer is very good at bad decisions but she’s not QUITE good enough at bad choices to not realize publishing something that will get Asher dead in a ditch is a bad idea.
RassilonTDavros
Oh, Jennifer’s absolutely smart enough not to publish something that would get Asher killed. The question is whether Asher would trust her not to do it. Just knowing too much is enough to make her a potential liability in Asher’s eyes, whether or not she intends to publish.
BBCC
“Just knowing too much” just isn’t true or he wouldn’t have told Sal. I think it depends who knows, how they know and what they intend to do about it. Blaine was an active threat, but he doesn’t have any problem with Sal knowing.
Wagstaff
Wait, you mean he bribed a cop?!?!
BBCC
The cop was mob. At best, Asher used old ‘family friends’ to be notified when Blaine was shot. At worst, he told said family friend to do it. Most likely, imo, is he texted grandpa to turn on channel 8 (or whatever) news and grandpa texted him to let him know when the inevitable happened. Because seriously, if Asher didn’t call in to let gramps know, it was only a matter of time. That shit made state news.
Wagstaff
Honestly, I didn’t even know a mob existed in DoA! Care to point me to some key comics to full me in?
Jenn
I don’t really have links to share, but it’s been brought up several times that Blaine is part of a mob, and I think we found out Asher was part of the same mob shortly after we met him. There’s a flashback of Mike figuring it out as a kid, and another one of him telling Amazi-girl (after he fell off a balcony) that some of the cops are “on the take.” At this point it’s pretty well established.
thejeff
Or, as I suspect, Gramps told him to contact Lester and have him handle it.
I doubt he could have done it on his own – even if Lester would have taken an order from Asher without confirmation, he would have checked in at some point and Gramps would have learned about it. But I also suspect would have wanted to push him to do it, keeping him tied to the family.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, even if he had no mob association or implied connections to Blaine’s death (which a lot of people actually really like him for) he still sold Sal out and setup that kidnapping scenario. He’ll always choose to sace his own skin even if he’s not really malicious or “evil”. He’s already done it twice, one more and it’s a pattern. It’s really convenient there’s always an excuse for him too. I may be wrong about him but I haven’t seen anything redeemable yet.
Meagan
Now that all this information has been laid out, I first thought “Oh Asher is dangerous,” but then I thought, actually maybe he is not that bad. It seems Blaine was blackmailing him and he really didn’t know how to get out of that without risking death – but as soon as he figured out a solution (have Blaine killed), he used it. I don’t think that what someone said above about him being ruthless to have someone threatening him killed is accurate. Self-defense (having someone killed who would potentially do something to have you killed, and is also threatening others) is not aggression.
It’s probably not very surprising that shit can happen at troublingly young ages, but lets choose to be idealistic about the world we live in. I feel like it’s a situation where they could’ve had a thing but missed out on it and it’s both their faults and they both know it. Like in a perfect world where Sal didn’t rob a convenience store and/or Asher didn’t rat her out, maybe they both just made slightly better choices, they’d be dating right now. But Sal knows she can’t trust him and that’s why she hans this tension when looking at him. He did admit to her that he stole his tuition money. A smart enough person can put some connections together.
BBCC
I mean, ‘a thing’ doesn’t have to be age inappropriate. They were like….11 or 12. “A thing” probably means they hung out and skated together and sometimes held hands. Maybe even a middle school first kiss. Big whoop.
Sirksome
Pffft. I’m so old now I’ve forgotten something like that would even be considered anything at all when you’re that young. It would be really funny if Sal is staring at him like that because she’s thinking about that one time they held hands in 5th grade!
I don’t remember the exact language for that, but it’s possible that was just Walky misinterpreting a more casual relationship – or the events leading up to the robbery for that matter.
BBCC
Even the way he described it sounded pretty casual – “I think they might have had a thing? As much as you CAN have a thing when you’re like eleven or twelve anyway.”
My money’s on they hooked up before he got with Billie. Or, even more drama, he’s hooking up with sal on the down low. Doubt that one’s it but it would be fun
That doesn’t really seem like Sal. I could maybe believe Asher and she hooked up once before the time skip since they were both checking each other out, but Sal doesn’t seem like the type that would be cheating with somebody or be their side chick or whatever the kids are calling it. Especially not with the guy dating essentially her step-sister. And frankly I don’t think Asher really ranks high on the scale of guys Sal would bang at least not in the present. He’s got looks, but I actually think Danny would have a better chance than him.
Looks like flat-track derby, if today’s panel 1 (and the overhead view of the lineup for the start of the jam from Tuesday’s installment, ‘Slowpokes’) are anything to go by.
197 thoughts on “Laps”
Ana Chronistic
THROW HER INTA SLAMBER
…
for asSALt and battery
Deanatay
THAT’S SLAMAZI-GIRL DAMMIT
Clif
This!!!
Just what Sal needs. More distractions.
Wagstaff
*plays “RE” by zeroSCAR on Voxola PR-76*
khn0
well since this derby thing begun, all I can hear is the battucada playing the speed of noise by Total Fucking Destruction…
milu
link
sick tunes, both of you. cheers \m/ d-_-b \m/
Wagstaff
Thanks!!!
Great to see you Milu! Care to share more delightfully dark dreams? If you share yours, I’ll share mine!
milu
kinky! i don’t always remember mine, but i’ll definitely tell you next time i get a Vision From Yonder as i like to call them.
(i’m just messing with you)
do tell me yours though =)
Wagstaff
Last one was absolutely incredible. I was leaping super fast and super high like a ninja through a giant Costco (and I mean GIANT, like 10x bigger than any I had ever seen). One point I leaped so high that I made on to a platform that was like a room hidden in the roof, where I found Dpug Rattman or someone preparing for the apocalypse or something (he had a fully stocked store fridge and everything).
I was in complete control of my moves too, and I felt this kind of energy pulsing through my body the entire time I was moving! Also there were these moments were time just seemed to slow down, and one were I shot straight across the concession area perfectly!!!
I even managed to pay for what I got at the end, which included an odd magazine and a box of TV cookies which my aunt had somehow got hooked on.
Overall, a very bizarre and amazing experience!!!!
milu
oh my god that’s an amazing dream!!
i don’t often do crazy shenanigans like that in my dreams, maybe i should play videogames?? (i had to look up Dpug Rattman)
i love the dream-logic of knowing someone’s ready for the apocalypse because, like, their fridge is full XD
Wagstaff
That was my first guess. Why else would someone have a hidden living arrangement in the roof of a Costco?
milu
wait you mean that was your guess inside your dream, or once you’d woken up and thought back on it?
personally i think keeping loads of perishable stuff inside a fridge is bad survivalism
Wagstaff
My guess was kinda post hoc after I had the dream.
The fridge looked like it was stolen from an isle in a convenience store or something. Also there was a rack full of chip bags. The suggestion of apocalypse preparation was the first product of my heuristic in seeing stockpiles this advanced and incredibly hidden from view.
Also, just curious, what’s the story behind your alias? Is it a reference to the Hawaiian underworld diety by any chance?
milu
oh wowwww do you know i’ve never searched for it anywhere, not even on wikipedia?!
i guess one reason is i’m not all that social online, i mostly just roam and lurk.
most days this is the only online space i actually interact in. so, idk, i’m not led to think of my pseud all that much.
also, no, it’s a nickname i also have offline that’s actually a riff on my last name! sorry it’s kind of a non-story lol. i do like stories about online aliases, for many people they’re sorta like that slightly embarrassing tattoo you got when you were 19 and now you just gotta own ^^
well fuck, there’s also a song by a brazilian popstar called “Milu”, it has 300M views lol ok
where’s yours from?
Wagstaff
Glad you asked!
Wagstaff is a character from a game I play. He’s an inventor who embodies my curiosity and will to benefit the world with the power of science!
If you look carefully, you’ll find that I use a subtle reference to his background whenever I play music here!
Sirksome
Oh he’s here for some reason…..I don’t trust Asher. That is all.
Shitbird
Neither do I
MacareuxMoine
funny to hear that from a Jennifer Avatar 😉
Proxiehunter
Neither do I but in this case it could be an innocent date with Jennifer. Probably isn’t, but it could be.
Bryy
Narrator: It was not.
hof1991
Chekhov’s date. Of course this is meaningful. DYW is too economical to include characters at random.
Council
I think you are right. At the same time, Sal mistaking it for more than just an innocent date, when that’s all it really is, would be meaningful as a plot point.
King Daniel
Tell that to the time Willis unexpectedly threw Amber’s mom Stacy in a bar with Leslie for a single strip, catching everyone by surprise, and then never brought it up again. (And everyone was speculating as to what it could mean at the time, too!) Sometimes Willis likes to put in a red herring or two, keep us on our toes.
thejeff
Wasn’t completely a red herring. It was a hint that Stacy hadn’t gone home and would show up again the next day – this time with Richard.
RassilonTDavros
I don’t trust him either. I don’t hate him, necessarily, but I sure as hell don’t trust the guy who had a man assassinated to cover up his involvement in a crime.
As for why he’s here… it’s a sporting event? I dunno, he doesn’t really need a reason. Plus he and Jennifer both grew up with two of the people on the team.
King Daniel
Just another reminder that if Asher stealing his grandfather’s money to pay his way through college in spite of his grandfather’s wishes (information that Blaine even blackmailed Asher over!) came out, Asher would very likely be dead himself. The Mob doesn’t tend to play around with people who steal large sums of money from them.
Sirksome
He shouldn’t have stolen the money then. Not in an ethical sense. Who really gives a shit if you steal from criminals? But it’s just a really stupid thing to do if it puts your life at risk. It’s not really a justification if you created the situation where someone has leverage over you.
Clif
What’s the world coming to when a godfather can’t trust their own grandchild?
King Daniel
Sure, but it’s not like he had a whole lot of options for getting away – gramps was already pressuring him to join the family business (and we know he was “disappointed” when Asher declined), and what little we know of child!Asher implies that he probably didn’t have the best home life, either. If that’s the case, I can’t exactly fault him for wanting out, even if he ended up Dumbing his way of going about it.
Needfuldoer
I think he’s “doing the wrong things for the right reasons” with questionable morals. He says he wants to leave the family business, but he’ll still call in favors. He’ll eventually get a redemption arc, or he’ll end up as DoA’s Michael Corleone.
Like others have said, he hasn’t really earned trust or derision yet.
Some1
Come on, what could possibly make Asher untrustworthy? I mean, outside of the time he likely called a hit on someone?
BBCC
He called a hit on BLAINE, surely that’s a tick in his ‘good deed’ column?
RassilonTDavros
Blaine being dead is, overall, a good thing. However, Asher didn’t kill him because he was a piece of human garbage; Asher killed him because he knew too much. We have no reason to believe he wouldn’t do this to anyone who knew enough about him that they could even potentially expose him.
When you date someone, you tend to learn things about them. Jennifer is a reporter, and as off-base as her speculations can be (hello, “Amazi-Sal”) she still has a very inquitive nature and it’s likely she’ll see something she wasn’t supposed to. Furthermore, as a reporter, Jennifer can easily make things known to large numbers of people. She, moreso than others, could very easily become a “liability.” The longer she dates him, the more danger she is in.
Some1
I mean, even if his reason for killing Blaine was just because Blaine’s a monster, ordering a man shot in a hospital bed still doesn’t make you the good guy, at best that makes you an anti-hero.
misanthropope
“Good. Bad. I’m the guy with the guy with the gun”
Wagstaff
Even if that is Asher’s rationale, Jennifer’s apparent lack of alcoholism after the time skip means such escalation of danger might take much longer than usual for her.
BBCC
Asher FREELY ADMITTED he took the money to Sal. That’s not something to do if you’re trying to keep anybody from knowing too much. BLAINE was actively blackmailing him with the info. I know Jennifer is very good at bad decisions but she’s not QUITE good enough at bad choices to not realize publishing something that will get Asher dead in a ditch is a bad idea.
RassilonTDavros
Oh, Jennifer’s absolutely smart enough not to publish something that would get Asher killed. The question is whether Asher would trust her not to do it. Just knowing too much is enough to make her a potential liability in Asher’s eyes, whether or not she intends to publish.
BBCC
“Just knowing too much” just isn’t true or he wouldn’t have told Sal. I think it depends who knows, how they know and what they intend to do about it. Blaine was an active threat, but he doesn’t have any problem with Sal knowing.
Wagstaff
Wait, you mean he bribed a cop?!?!
BBCC
The cop was mob. At best, Asher used old ‘family friends’ to be notified when Blaine was shot. At worst, he told said family friend to do it. Most likely, imo, is he texted grandpa to turn on channel 8 (or whatever) news and grandpa texted him to let him know when the inevitable happened. Because seriously, if Asher didn’t call in to let gramps know, it was only a matter of time. That shit made state news.
Wagstaff
Honestly, I didn’t even know a mob existed in DoA! Care to point me to some key comics to full me in?
Jenn
I don’t really have links to share, but it’s been brought up several times that Blaine is part of a mob, and I think we found out Asher was part of the same mob shortly after we met him. There’s a flashback of Mike figuring it out as a kid, and another one of him telling Amazi-girl (after he fell off a balcony) that some of the cops are “on the take.” At this point it’s pretty well established.
thejeff
Or, as I suspect, Gramps told him to contact Lester and have him handle it.
I doubt he could have done it on his own – even if Lester would have taken an order from Asher without confirmation, he would have checked in at some point and Gramps would have learned about it. But I also suspect would have wanted to push him to do it, keeping him tied to the family.
Sirksome
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, even if he had no mob association or implied connections to Blaine’s death (which a lot of people actually really like him for) he still sold Sal out and setup that kidnapping scenario. He’ll always choose to sace his own skin even if he’s not really malicious or “evil”. He’s already done it twice, one more and it’s a pattern. It’s really convenient there’s always an excuse for him too. I may be wrong about him but I haven’t seen anything redeemable yet.
Meagan
Now that all this information has been laid out, I first thought “Oh Asher is dangerous,” but then I thought, actually maybe he is not that bad. It seems Blaine was blackmailing him and he really didn’t know how to get out of that without risking death – but as soon as he figured out a solution (have Blaine killed), he used it. I don’t think that what someone said above about him being ruthless to have someone threatening him killed is accurate. Self-defense (having someone killed who would potentially do something to have you killed, and is also threatening others) is not aggression.
Thag Simmons
He’s the one character in the cast I don’t think I have a solid read on yet.
Doctor_Who
Slamber would be an excellent nickname if she decides to become a pro wrestler. Or play POGs professionally.
Wagstaff
And here come the Pog Champs….
Daibhid C
Or join a roller derby team.
RassilonTDavros
Oooh, “Slamber”! I like it.
Also I sense we’re about to get a flashback to Sal’s past with Asher.
Jonah Sanville
aw man slamber is a GREAT roller derby name!! i hope we get to see what everyone elses are. i LOVE roller derby!!!
Bicycle Bill
I also approve. Good derby name. REALLY good derby name!
Thag Simmons
So something definitely happened with Sal and Asher over the timeskip?
DailyBrad
Maybe, but they’ve got so much history, it needn’t have. She’d probably be given pause regardless.
BBCC
Walky thought they had a thing before she was sent away (as much as its possible to have a thing at 12-13), so,…..maybe?
Sirksome
It’s probably not very surprising that shit can happen at troublingly young ages, but lets choose to be idealistic about the world we live in. I feel like it’s a situation where they could’ve had a thing but missed out on it and it’s both their faults and they both know it. Like in a perfect world where Sal didn’t rob a convenience store and/or Asher didn’t rat her out, maybe they both just made slightly better choices, they’d be dating right now. But Sal knows she can’t trust him and that’s why she hans this tension when looking at him. He did admit to her that he stole his tuition money. A smart enough person can put some connections together.
BBCC
I mean, ‘a thing’ doesn’t have to be age inappropriate. They were like….11 or 12. “A thing” probably means they hung out and skated together and sometimes held hands. Maybe even a middle school first kiss. Big whoop.
Sirksome
Pffft. I’m so old now I’ve forgotten something like that would even be considered anything at all when you’re that young. It would be really funny if Sal is staring at him like that because she’s thinking about that one time they held hands in 5th grade!
BBCC
It would be, but sadly I doubt that’s it.
thejeff
I don’t remember the exact language for that, but it’s possible that was just Walky misinterpreting a more casual relationship – or the events leading up to the robbery for that matter.
BBCC
Even the way he described it sounded pretty casual – “I think they might have had a thing? As much as you CAN have a thing when you’re like eleven or twelve anyway.”
zee
My money’s on they hooked up before he got with Billie. Or, even more drama, he’s hooking up with sal on the down low. Doubt that one’s it but it would be fun
Sirksome
That doesn’t really seem like Sal. I could maybe believe Asher and she hooked up once before the time skip since they were both checking each other out, but Sal doesn’t seem like the type that would be cheating with somebody or be their side chick or whatever the kids are calling it. Especially not with the guy dating essentially her step-sister. And frankly I don’t think Asher really ranks high on the scale of guys Sal would bang at least not in the present. He’s got looks, but I actually think Danny would have a better chance than him.
Sam
D’aww. Jennifer came to watch and be supportive.
Schpoonman
Oh, this is different.
Spencer
come on and slamber
and welcome to the jamber
King Daniel
one hopes she’s not thrown off by the track’s camber
Bicycle Bill
Looks like flat-track derby, if today’s panel 1 (and the overhead view of the lineup for the start of the jam from Tuesday’s installment, ‘Slowpokes’) are anything to go by.
Ralph Oscar
Or by the rhythm or the timbre
Clif
Timber. Tamber. Let’s call the whole thing off.
Edwin I Callahan
Bring on the Cole Porter.