Sugar, spice, and everything nice
These were the ingredients chosen
To create the perfect BFF
But Professor Siegel accidentally
Added an extra ingredient to the concoction:
Crippling Social Anxiety
Thus Amazi-Girl was born!
but yeah, the point stands. i still don’t know if amber has grown as much as sal since she stabbed her through the hand, but she has shown real progress in the last few arcs.
thejeff
I don’t know about growth, but I’d say Amber’s changed more drastically since the robbery than Sal has. The crippling social anxiety is mostly under control, for example – compared to back then at least.
Sal’s grown, but Sal isn’t dealing with serious undiagnosed or treated mental illness, so it’s not really that fair to compare them.
It’s also partly meant for Amber as well who is falling into the hero of justice “you created me” trope and more or less saying blame can’t all be assigned to him when they all made their own choices.
Except Blaine…soooo much blame can be put on him for so much.
Also the Resposibilor: “I’ve arranged for you to have weekly appointments with a therapist, and here is the number for a bereavement support group.”
Deanatay
*EMTs wheel the bloody, beaten Responsibilor away*
Robin: You know, they never actually hurt anyone…
Batman: Stockholm Syndrome’s a very powerful thing, Robin, but some crimes cannot be forgiven. There’s only one way to deal with one’s crippling feelings of loss…
Robin: Punching bad guys?
Baatman: Punching bad guys.
Jamie
I thought it was punching Nazis, but since it’s Batman, I guess that doesn’t work.
She’s known Walky his entire life, it doesn’t take a mastermind level intellect to know he’s likely to still be slacking off.
She’s basically saying “Look, if you have so much time to be making the world a better place by hiding in bushes and punching people, maybe you could better yourself by doing the actual college work of learning calculus, like you’re paying to be here to do.”
The non-street-legal Jeep ripoff that gets around being a Jeep ripoff (legally, at least so far) by not having the seven-slotted grille? I feel like you’re going for a metaphor here but I’m not quite making the connection yet.
Needfuldoer
Not exactly a ripoff. Mahindra has had a license to build Jeeps since shortly after WWII. They just can’t use the seven slot grill in the US because Fiat-Chrysler owns the trademark. The Roxor (and the Thar it’s based on) are about as close as you can still get to the classic CJs.
The early history of the Jeep is weird and confusing, as you’d expect from something designed by committee when the US’s manufacturing industry was drafted. Apparently Ford contributed a lot to the design, including the iconic stamped steel grill. That’s why none of the owners of the Jeep trademark, from Willys through to FCA, can claim they “invented” the Jeep.
The TJ was the last real Jeep, if you ask me. The most recent ones are huge. A CJ, YJ, or TJ makes more sense than those side-by-sides from the likes of Polaris and John Deere.
Sal wants Walky to do well, and she also wants to do well, and it shows. and it also shows that she cares about Walky, otherwise she wouldn’t have told him to study.
Uh….it’s worrying that Amber can actively try to give a person who didn’t even know her or have anything related to her, the role as “Archnemesis” that Sal previously had.
No, he didn’t create you Amber. Anymore than that poor store Clerk.
She’s just desperate to deflect. As soon as she discovered that Sal was too complex to project the blame on, she was all too willing to project on someone else. She really hasn’t learned anything in the grand scheme.
To be clear, Walky is guilty of this too. He blamed Sal for their bad relationship, then sympathized, then leaped at the chance to blame someone else (besides his mommy). But I feel like this is an explicit lesson that we all thought Amber had learned in the last arc.
Well I got to wonder how far away the boarding school was from where she before, If it wasn’t that close then I guess they moved out over there on a whim because the area was cheaper to live in?
Virginia or WV? Another state. Sal picked-up the regional accent, there, too.
Marsh Maryrose
Tennessee. Where in Tennessee? Not known.
Evansville, where Sal and Marcie are from, is literally across the river from Kentucky, so not far from the South. But still over a hundred miles from anywhere in Tennessee.
merbrat
D’oh! TN, not VA. She admitted to picking-up the accent at boarding school. To someone in Walky’s circle, when they asked about it. But, far enough away, that Walky couldn’t visit.
She probably visited during summer and holidays, given apparently Sal didn’t get to go home then (which is probably the most fucked-up thing about the Walkertons’ decision if I am recalling correctly).
Religious schools usually offer some scholarships — possibly including a full ride — to needy students.
However, if Marcie had actually attended and graduated from Sal’s boarding school, she probably would have been urged to go to college, and gotten help in finding ways to do so.
Maybe Marcie had relatives there, and some arrangement was worked out among family members?
However it happened, Linda Walkerton must have been pissed when she found out.
My guess is a relative or something like that – maybe she didn’t have to live in the school and so could cut costs a little?
It’d be easier if we knew what Marcie’s school life was like before Tennessee – did she just go to a different school then Sal, was she homeschooled, or what’s up?
I think we can take it as a given that if Marcie’s parents could afford boarding school, they’d have invested the money in her surgery instead.
As they were probably illegal immigrants, i don’t know if that would rule out getting a scholarship. I tend to think so.
And Marcie never was in the same school as Sal, the principal didn’t want to punish Leyland because Marcie was not his responsibility. So I suspect she never went to school regularly (because she had time to hang out at Sal’s school).
So it think she somehow asked her parents to go to where her friend was.
So We’re ramping up for midterms, good I can’t wait to see us semester. Though I wonder who’s going to stay for winter semester. It probably won’t take as long since winter is only 1 month while Fall and spring is 3.
IU-Bloomington doesn’t have any sort of winter session. For 2019-2020, the Fall semester ends Dec. 20, the Spring semester begins Jan. 7, and I’ll bet the campus is completely shut down (including the dorms) between those two dates.
For 2010, the day-of-the-week calendar that DoA follows, those dates were Dec. 17 and Jan. 10, respectively.
If IU is anything like the state university in Wisconsin I used to work at, classes are suspended during the holiday break (inter-semester break), but those students who are not going home for the break are allowed to stay in the dorms, and other support services such as maintenance, campus police, parking enforcement, and (limited) food services are still available.
Marsh Maryrose
I’m sure this varies system-to-system, campus-to-campus, and year-to-year as funding is available.
There is a 2018 Indiana Daily Student article to the effect that “for the first time” IU-Bloomington students will be able to stay in their own rooms over the Spring break — as opposed to having to temporarily move to another dorm during that period. (That is what I had to do at a small private college in St. Paul.)
thejeff
Yeah, it’s generally not worth keeping all the dorms open for a couple students each. Too expensive in terms of keeping all the services up.
I don’t think I even had that option, though I don’t remember looking into it specifically. Most breaks I either stayed with relatives or friends (for the shorter ones) or rented a place. I could usually sublet from some other student who had an off-campus apartment and did go home for the break.
In-universe winter break is about 11 years away at the current rate. That’s if Halloween, Election Day, and the Thanksgiving break don’t significantly affect the timeline-real world ratio.
Only when combined with childhood abuse and a traumatic triggering event. I’m not really giving much blame to the comics here.
Likely, with the same past, but no comic superheroes as role models, the split still would have occurred but the Amazi-Girl equivalent wouldn’t have had even as decent a code to guide her as she does.
I haven’t read through all the comments, so I’m hoping it’s been thoroughly discussed, but it makes me sad that Walky listened to Asher, known (former) terrible person, before he believed Sal about their parents’ problematic parenting…
The thing that makes me saddest about that is how realistic that is.
He probably wouldn’t have if Sal hadn’t started him on that train already. He even listened to it enough that after a time he went to discuss it with Billie.
The only reason he listens to Asher is because he listened to Sal. Had they not had their previous conversations Walky likely would have just punched him again.
122 thoughts on “Ponderin’”
Nono
Dorothy really brought ‘jag’ back!
Doctor_Who
Little does Amber know she was actually created by a Transformers nerd.
Her life would make a lot more sense if she did.
Bunny
Im onna level with you. I thought you meant ethan
Doctor_Who
Sugar, spice, and everything nice
These were the ingredients chosen
To create the perfect BFF
But Professor Siegel accidentally
Added an extra ingredient to the concoction:
Crippling Social Anxiety
Thus Amazi-Girl was born!
Marsh Maryrose
You know what? I thought the same thing on the first reading.
coru
I mean, kinda true. She definitely wouldn’t have been the same person without him.
Marsh Maryrose
God this took me back:
Cat and Girl meet their maker.
3-I
To be the next Catwoman, right?
Gotta update the transformers wiki!
Willinwoods
Has anyone made a version of the fourth panel, with Walky’s line replaced with “Damn You Willis”?
etherealdesiign
i really like sal’s take on all this. she’s grown up a lot since holding a knife to amber’s throat.
Schpoonman
Ethan’s throat.
etherealdesiign
whoops! i feel like a dumb dumb now.
but yeah, the point stands. i still don’t know if amber has grown as much as sal since she stabbed her through the hand, but she has shown real progress in the last few arcs.
thejeff
I don’t know about growth, but I’d say Amber’s changed more drastically since the robbery than Sal has. The crippling social anxiety is mostly under control, for example – compared to back then at least.
Sal’s grown, but Sal isn’t dealing with serious undiagnosed or treated mental illness, so it’s not really that fair to compare them.
Abbefaria
It’s also partly meant for Amber as well who is falling into the hero of justice “you created me” trope and more or less saying blame can’t all be assigned to him when they all made their own choices.
Except Blaine…soooo much blame can be put on him for so much.
etherealdesiign
dads are always a valid target for the “you created me” trope, for so many reasons.
Clif
So is Mike in this case.
Zach
For challenging Blaine?
Lumino
For fucking your mother.
Schpoonman
Yeah, do that, and then TELL HIM ABOUT HIS GRADES, AMBER.
Lacuna
I’d like to see a Batman villain with Sal’s mindset.
Was that supposed to be some general sibling advice to steer him away from Asher or does she know about his grades somehow?
Doctor_Who
Batman: “You fiend! What have you done with Robin?!”
The Responsibilor: “He’s locked in that room with no phone and a history textbook. Why do you have him fighting crime on a school night?”
Dean
Also the Resposibilor: “I’ve arranged for you to have weekly appointments with a therapist, and here is the number for a bereavement support group.”
Deanatay
*EMTs wheel the bloody, beaten Responsibilor away*
Robin: You know, they never actually hurt anyone…
Batman: Stockholm Syndrome’s a very powerful thing, Robin, but some crimes cannot be forgiven. There’s only one way to deal with one’s crippling feelings of loss…
Robin: Punching bad guys?
Baatman: Punching bad guys.
Jamie
I thought it was punching Nazis, but since it’s Batman, I guess that doesn’t work.
DailyBrad
I think he’s brought up having trouble in math before, or she might just be saying it since it’s the class the two have together.
Shane Wegner
She’s known Walky his entire life, it doesn’t take a mastermind level intellect to know he’s likely to still be slacking off.
She’s basically saying “Look, if you have so much time to be making the world a better place by hiding in bushes and punching people, maybe you could better yourself by doing the actual college work of learning calculus, like you’re paying to be here to do.”
Tan
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/03-sometimes-the-sky-was-so-far-away/switched-2/
Stephen Bierce
*plays Rush’s “Free Will” on the hacked Muzak*
Stephen Bierce
Today’s strip was sponsored by the Mahindra ROXOR all terrain vehicle.
DSL
The non-street-legal Jeep ripoff that gets around being a Jeep ripoff (legally, at least so far) by not having the seven-slotted grille? I feel like you’re going for a metaphor here but I’m not quite making the connection yet.
Needfuldoer
Not exactly a ripoff. Mahindra has had a license to build Jeeps since shortly after WWII. They just can’t use the seven slot grill in the US because Fiat-Chrysler owns the trademark. The Roxor (and the Thar it’s based on) are about as close as you can still get to the classic CJs.
https://jalopnik.com/this-is-why-mahindra-can-build-tiny-jeeps-1823472625
The early history of the Jeep is weird and confusing, as you’d expect from something designed by committee when the US’s manufacturing industry was drafted. Apparently Ford contributed a lot to the design, including the iconic stamped steel grill. That’s why none of the owners of the Jeep trademark, from Willys through to FCA, can claim they “invented” the Jeep.
The TJ was the last real Jeep, if you ask me. The most recent ones are huge. A CJ, YJ, or TJ makes more sense than those side-by-sides from the likes of Polaris and John Deere.
BBCC
Probably for the best at this point.
BiOnyx
Mature sister is mature.
Jamie
Twins or not, Sal is definitely the older one.
AutobotDen
Sal wants Walky to do well, and she also wants to do well, and it shows. and it also shows that she cares about Walky, otherwise she wouldn’t have told him to study.
jmsr7
Alt text: “You made me!”
Relevant Batman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOB13T6Zmh8&t=159s Which is kinda appropriate if you think about it 🙂
Also, this is one of the best short fanfilms i’ve ever seen.
Diner Kinetic
Is it just me or is “midterms” the scariest thing anyone’s said recently in this ‘verse?
Also, kudos to Sal for not operating on Comic Book Origin Logic. (Amber especially, and Walky… well, it’s pretty in-charachter/s for both of them)
C.T Phipps
Uh….it’s worrying that Amber can actively try to give a person who didn’t even know her or have anything related to her, the role as “Archnemesis” that Sal previously had.
No, he didn’t create you Amber. Anymore than that poor store Clerk.
regina phalange
She’s just desperate to deflect. As soon as she discovered that Sal was too complex to project the blame on, she was all too willing to project on someone else. She really hasn’t learned anything in the grand scheme.
regina phalange
To be clear, Walky is guilty of this too. He blamed Sal for their bad relationship, then sympathized, then leaped at the chance to blame someone else (besides his mommy). But I feel like this is an explicit lesson that we all thought Amber had learned in the last arc.
abysswatcher1993
Freewill always exist… except in Black Mirror Bandersnatch and most of Homestuck. Destiny sucks!
Uly
Okay, but I’ve never figured this out – exactly how was Marcie there? Could her parents afford to move or send her to boarding school?
Newllend(henryvolt)
Well I got to wonder how far away the boarding school was from where she before, If it wasn’t that close then I guess they moved out over there on a whim because the area was cheaper to live in?
merbrat
Virginia or WV? Another state. Sal picked-up the regional accent, there, too.
Marsh Maryrose
Tennessee. Where in Tennessee? Not known.
Evansville, where Sal and Marcie are from, is literally across the river from Kentucky, so not far from the South. But still over a hundred miles from anywhere in Tennessee.
merbrat
D’oh! TN, not VA. She admitted to picking-up the accent at boarding school. To someone in Walky’s circle, when they asked about it. But, far enough away, that Walky couldn’t visit.
not someone else
She probably visited during summer and holidays, given apparently Sal didn’t get to go home then (which is probably the most fucked-up thing about the Walkertons’ decision if I am recalling correctly).
Ophidiophile
Sal says that Marcie followed her to boarding school, which usually means going to the same school, not visiting once in a while. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/idontknow/
Also, did Sal not go home for the summers?
BBCC
Nope. Walky hadn’t seen her or talked to her in five years before the story opened.
Marsh Maryrose
Religious schools usually offer some scholarships — possibly including a full ride — to needy students.
However, if Marcie had actually attended and graduated from Sal’s boarding school, she probably would have been urged to go to college, and gotten help in finding ways to do so.
Maybe Marcie had relatives there, and some arrangement was worked out among family members?
However it happened, Linda Walkerton must have been pissed when she found out.
BBCC
My guess is a relative or something like that – maybe she didn’t have to live in the school and so could cut costs a little?
It’d be easier if we knew what Marcie’s school life was like before Tennessee – did she just go to a different school then Sal, was she homeschooled, or what’s up?
CJ
I think we can take it as a given that if Marcie’s parents could afford boarding school, they’d have invested the money in her surgery instead.
As they were probably illegal immigrants, i don’t know if that would rule out getting a scholarship. I tend to think so.
And Marcie never was in the same school as Sal, the principal didn’t want to punish Leyland because Marcie was not his responsibility. So I suspect she never went to school regularly (because she had time to hang out at Sal’s school).
So it think she somehow asked her parents to go to where her friend was.
Tacos
Yes choices. Just like how Walky will most likely choose NOT to study for his calculus midterms.
FaerwenOfValenwood
I’m compelled to say this pretty much every time she appears, but here it goes anyway: I LOVE SAL.
Kyoulkoa
I love Sal being the voice of reason here
Newllend(henryvolt)
So We’re ramping up for midterms, good I can’t wait to see us semester. Though I wonder who’s going to stay for winter semester. It probably won’t take as long since winter is only 1 month while Fall and spring is 3.
Marsh Maryrose
IU-Bloomington doesn’t have any sort of winter session. For 2019-2020, the Fall semester ends Dec. 20, the Spring semester begins Jan. 7, and I’ll bet the campus is completely shut down (including the dorms) between those two dates.
For 2010, the day-of-the-week calendar that DoA follows, those dates were Dec. 17 and Jan. 10, respectively.
Bicycle Bill
If IU is anything like the state university in Wisconsin I used to work at, classes are suspended during the holiday break (inter-semester break), but those students who are not going home for the break are allowed to stay in the dorms, and other support services such as maintenance, campus police, parking enforcement, and (limited) food services are still available.
Marsh Maryrose
I’m sure this varies system-to-system, campus-to-campus, and year-to-year as funding is available.
There is a 2018 Indiana Daily Student article to the effect that “for the first time” IU-Bloomington students will be able to stay in their own rooms over the Spring break — as opposed to having to temporarily move to another dorm during that period. (That is what I had to do at a small private college in St. Paul.)
thejeff
Yeah, it’s generally not worth keeping all the dorms open for a couple students each. Too expensive in terms of keeping all the services up.
I don’t think I even had that option, though I don’t remember looking into it specifically. Most breaks I either stayed with relatives or friends (for the shorter ones) or rented a place. I could usually sublet from some other student who had an off-campus apartment and did go home for the break.
Marsh Maryrose
In-universe winter break is about 11 years away at the current rate. That’s if Halloween, Election Day, and the Thanksgiving break don’t significantly affect the timeline-real world ratio.
CMasta
Sal hires Amber to put a hit on Asher as soon as Walky leaves.
Rabid Rabbit
Oh FFS, Amber, stop making Frederic Wertham have a point about what comic books do to the mind.
thejeff
Only when combined with childhood abuse and a traumatic triggering event. I’m not really giving much blame to the comics here.
Likely, with the same past, but no comic superheroes as role models, the split still would have occurred but the Amazi-Girl equivalent wouldn’t have had even as decent a code to guide her as she does.
Yet Another Laura H.
I haven’t read through all the comments, so I’m hoping it’s been thoroughly discussed, but it makes me sad that Walky listened to Asher, known (former) terrible person, before he believed Sal about their parents’ problematic parenting…
The thing that makes me saddest about that is how realistic that is.
Seregiel
He probably wouldn’t have if Sal hadn’t started him on that train already. He even listened to it enough that after a time he went to discuss it with Billie.
timemonkey
The only reason he listens to Asher is because he listened to Sal. Had they not had their previous conversations Walky likely would have just punched him again.
Kamino Neko
Had they not had the previous conversation – and had it not sunk in for Walky – he probably wouldn’t have been talking to Asher in the first place.
Bagge
Sometimes you have to let the past go and let past grievances stay unavanged.
Sal learnt that the hard way the day Leland attacked Marcie.
BBCC