You know… I’m kinda onboard for that. So long as Ethan is aware and gives consent, I mean, why not?
Also… if only we could all have a version of our trauma in the form of a hot guy we could fuck… hmmm…
**tries to picture a hot guy that somehow represents the US medical insurance system**
Yeahhh but if Ethan finds out Asher had *any* part in the night that got Mike killed, he might attempt to murder him, and I don’t want Ethan to have to be on the run from the Korean Mafia. Though I could absolutely see him joining AmaziGirl with his own alter/secret crimefighting identity after that mind melt, if he and Asher did hook up before he found out about that night.
Bash
He did things on that night, but I don’t think it has anything to do with Mike deciding to lure Blane away and get into a fight with him. Mike pretty much decided to do that on his own.
Needfuldoer
And it sounds like Blaine had Asher over a barrel, with regards to his setting that night into motion.
GeekyWarrior
Seperate nights though. Asher pulled the alarm on a different noght than Mike getting fatally injured
EnerPrime
I mean, it probably wouldn’t be too hard for Asher to get Ethan to see him as another of Blaine’s victims since Asher was blackmailed (with something that could potentially lead to his death, even) into helping Blaine.
And really, I can’t see the corresponding truth about Asher getting Blaine whacked being anything but a positive in Ethan’s book.
Does Ethan have a roommate? I’m only asking cause his room seems like a dark void right now and I gotta wonder how the dude sharing that room rolls with that.
Last I checked, his roommate was Jacob, right? Did Jacob move out after the incident with Joyce and Jacob’s brother? Seems like Ethan is always alone in his room when we see him.
Jacob is a character who has been conspicuously absent post-timeskip but he’s been mentioned a few times so he’s still probably around.
Sirksome
Part of me thinks Jacob’s gonna show up again when it’s time to pick Lucy up off the Walky rebound.
Comic.phile
That would be good for her. I hope its not too much of a rebound, like she was for Walky. Walky and Lucy are cute, but there is no way they’re lasting. He’s just not that into her.
Jamie
Hmmm. I don’t know how I feel about that relationship. Genuinely neutral, not unsettled. I guess it kinda depends how far Lucy moves towards the spotlight of the comic and we see her go through her own inward journey and examining her religion, then I might see a Lucy/Jacob ship being a good idea.
But right now, I don’t think they actually have any common interests. I see no legitimate reason to want them to get together, other than being there and available.
Comic.phile
They have sameish religious beliefs, but that’s all I can think of.
Comic.phile
Oh, and a positive opinion of Raidah.
Sirksome
They just seem very romantically compatible. Lucy’s already been compared to Joyce but she doesn’t have problematic baggage with Jacob. More importantly they’re both looking for the same thing, a serious relationship. Jacob doesn’t play games and Lucy falls in love very quickly, not to mention Jacob’s hot and Lucy is super horny. It almost feels too setup. Like it wouldn’t happen because it’s too easy.
saltchocolate
Clearly, the most DoA thing to happen would be for Jacob & Sarah to somehow end up with a second chance of getting together. Sarah had a crush on him way before Joyce, but would Joyce see a Sarah/Jacob ship as a betrayal anyway? It may all depend on whether Joe is is really the one for her or not.
Pre-timeskip, at the very least, he was roommates with Jacob, and we hear someone talking to him from within his room in a Patreon strip. Presumably it’s still Jacob, though since the roommate is off-screen it’s hypothetically possible that Ethan’s roommate is now someone else.
If I recall correctly, which is a real 50/50 shot honestly, Willis often draws the interior of rooms like this when a character is talking to another from the hallway, likely to save time (I wouldn’t want to design and draw the unique interior of a character’s dorm room either). However, I think this technique is most often used only for characters that it would make sense for – like Ethan and Ruth when they are going through hard times.
other than jacob transferring for some reason there’d be no reason to change but even if he’s not going to class enough to be noticeable, jacob would also be busy with his own classes to not know if ethan’s holed up in his room all day unless he also doesn’t shower/spray febreezer or so
Even if he noticed, I don’t think Jacob would push the issue. He’d make his opinion clear and then let Ethan do his own thing, I think. Jacob isn’t really shown to insert himself into situations: when Sarah pushed him away, he walked.
Ethan either goes to a very large class or has a very absent minded professor not to notice that the guy he hasn’t seen in class for three weeks has a perfect attendance score. Either that or Amber’s grade altering technique has evolved from petty cyber crimes to full on coercion.
If I recall correctly, which is a real 50/50 shot honestly, Willis often draws the interior of rooms like this when a character is talking to another from the hallway, likely to save time (I wouldn’t want to design and draw the unique interior of a character’s dorm room either). However, I think this technique is most often used only for characters that it would make sense for – like Ethan and Ruth when they are going through hard times.
So to me, the whole idea that a college class is taking attendance is strange and alien. 1990s Caltech did not do that shit. Buuut I tutored some undergrads at IU in the 2000s, who told me about having ‘clickers’ they had to use in math classes to “check in”, also I think to answer “do you understand or are you lost?” questions en masse.
So it would be both “large class” and “no one is actually calling out names, it’s some automated stuff”.
Right?! I went to university in Europe, and literally was able to pass most classes by showing up for the final exam and *nothing else*. The whole idea of homework and tests and frigging attendance feels so high school like to me.
drs
Homework and tests we did have! Though at Caltech tests are mostly take-home, on the honor code; if the rules say “don’t look at a book” you’re expected to not do so. More often, you can look at notes or a book, because it’s testing skill rather than memory. But Caltech was unusual.
Charlie
USA uni seems so high school in general. They have shared dorms and don’t seem to buy groceries even??
thejeff
You had weird high schools. 🙂
I suspect part of the difference is that a lot of the US was still fairly sparsely settled when we started building up state colleges, back in the late 1800s. Many of them were built in rural areas where land was cheap. There simply wasn’t housing available, so they built their own.
drs
Classic college is some sort of dorm and dining hall/cafeteria, yes. Not at all like typical US high schools (okay, they have cafeterias, but you’re visiting school for 6-7 hours), but somewhat like UK public schools or Hogwarts.
At Caltech there were hallway (“alley”) kitchens or kitchenettes, which we needed despite mandatory food plan use because that only provided lunch and dinner Monday-Friday. So people did buy some sort of food and cooked, though that could mean sandwiches or instant ramen at the low end. For rooms, there was a mix of singles and double and a few triples. Unusually, doubles could be co-ed (mixed gender), though you couldn’t be forced into a mixed-gender room by roompick procedures. By contrast, IU had single-gender floors, and I’ve heard Berkeley has single-gender buildings.
When I was in college at a large state school, many decades ago, the freshman classes were mostly large lectures. And in any case, I don’t remember any classes – all the way through college – where attendance was taken. Your responsibility was to get the work done and pass all the tests. A few classes, mostly upper level, were heavily discussion-based, so missing those might have been considered missing required work. But otherwise, attendance was not directly an issue. Has that changed over the years?
Yes, it has changed, at least in some places. I graduated from a very large state school 5 years ago. While my large lecture courses didn’t take attendance, classes for my major (which only had ~30 students in my year) sometimes did take attendance and we were only allowed so many unexpected absences before there was some negative consequence (e.g. grade penalties or automatic fails).
the way she said ‘it’s a mystery!’ after wards she most likely altered ethan’s records like with walky’s tho i imagine a prof wouldn’t care enough to double check/care
You’d have to have a class big enough that his absence would be inconspicuous, but small enough where they took attendance. I mostly remember attendance for language classes (German, not programming languages or formal languages)
HueSatLight
oh, maybe an e-comp. my instructor was the kind of douche who might have done attendance, so I’m assuming all of them are.
cain
Some uni departments require that classes take attendance– I remember one of my instructors complaining about that. And I remember attendance clickers and sign-in forms and such that would make it easier to take attendance for large classes.
You know it’s serious when Amber hasn’t written a yaoi fanfic. I mean there’s a chance she has already ,but not telling Ethan that she has means it’s serious.
I don’t think anyone knows that. It would be fairly hard to figure out since not many people know Asher’s ties to the mob and Blaine’s ties to that same mob.
Oh, I’m aware. I just wonder whether knowing would impact her view of Asher (and if so, which way).
Da Boy
She already considers him a problem because of what he did to Sal. If she’d learn he had involvement with the kidnapping and basically called a hit on Amber’s father… yeah, big mess waiting to happen.
cain
Amber might consider calling a hit on Blaine to be a point in Asher’s favor, honestly.
112 thoughts on “Speaking of”
Ana Chronistic
“Have you considered that he’s a version of your trauma you can fuck?”
“Have YOU??”
“…YES”
cbwroses
Who is saying which line here?
Because it could honestly be either or.
Doctor_Who
Both are saying both simultaneously.
These to are VERY on the same wavelength when it comes to this topic.
a/snow/mous/e
I imagine Amber gets the first and last lines.
Azhrei Vep
Out loud. Ethan would think it, though.
Rose by Any Other Name
You know… I’m kinda onboard for that. So long as Ethan is aware and gives consent, I mean, why not?
Also… if only we could all have a version of our trauma in the form of a hot guy we could fuck… hmmm…
**tries to picture a hot guy that somehow represents the US medical insurance system**
Comic.phile
Yeahhh but if Ethan finds out Asher had *any* part in the night that got Mike killed, he might attempt to murder him, and I don’t want Ethan to have to be on the run from the Korean Mafia. Though I could absolutely see him joining AmaziGirl with his own alter/secret crimefighting identity after that mind melt, if he and Asher did hook up before he found out about that night.
Bash
He did things on that night, but I don’t think it has anything to do with Mike deciding to lure Blane away and get into a fight with him. Mike pretty much decided to do that on his own.
Needfuldoer
And it sounds like Blaine had Asher over a barrel, with regards to his setting that night into motion.
GeekyWarrior
Seperate nights though. Asher pulled the alarm on a different noght than Mike getting fatally injured
EnerPrime
I mean, it probably wouldn’t be too hard for Asher to get Ethan to see him as another of Blaine’s victims since Asher was blackmailed (with something that could potentially lead to his death, even) into helping Blaine.
And really, I can’t see the corresponding truth about Asher getting Blaine whacked being anything but a positive in Ethan’s book.
Tesset
Unfortunately, for many systemic American problems, the hot guy version of that trauma is Ronald Reagan.
Tesset
Which I’m suddenly realizing might not be as offputting as it should be in this particular fandom. Dangit Shortpacked!
Gigafreak
Oh, please. The US healthcare system can absolutely fuck you without needing to be a hot guy
a/snow/mous/e
Fuck the system! Stick it to the man! Tell him to shove it where the sun don’t shine!
a/snow/mous/e
innuendo insults are really low-hanging fruit
Kazuma Taichi
I dunno, I’d rather my trauma come in sapphic flavoring, y’know?
Comic.phile
While the expression on your gravitar is totes Joyce-appropriate, I bet this is Booster’s logic.
GholaHalleck
Still calling Booster in the room!
GholaHalleck
Morgan Freeman voice. “But they were both bottoms…”
Zach
Mike was. Ethan can pitch just fine. Don’t know if he’s much for playing catcher.
NickG
There’s Willis art of him being topped by Manny, so I guess h’s a switch hitter.
shadowcell
Dumbing of Age Book 13: Look, Don’t Kiss That Boy or Anything, Okay?
Sirksome
Does Ethan have a roommate? I’m only asking cause his room seems like a dark void right now and I gotta wonder how the dude sharing that room rolls with that.
Thag Simmons
Jacob seems like a dude with an active social life who gets out a lot
cbwroses
It’s Jacob.
I mean it’s still Jacob.
He mentioned it when Amber came to tell him Sal and Danny were dating.
Laura
Last I checked, his roommate was Jacob, right? Did Jacob move out after the incident with Joyce and Jacob’s brother? Seems like Ethan is always alone in his room when we see him.
Sirksome
I actually totally forgot it was Jacob. I guess Jacob just studies in the library or something.
Thag Simmons
Jacob is a character who has been conspicuously absent post-timeskip but he’s been mentioned a few times so he’s still probably around.
Sirksome
Part of me thinks Jacob’s gonna show up again when it’s time to pick Lucy up off the Walky rebound.
Comic.phile
That would be good for her. I hope its not too much of a rebound, like she was for Walky. Walky and Lucy are cute, but there is no way they’re lasting. He’s just not that into her.
Jamie
Hmmm. I don’t know how I feel about that relationship. Genuinely neutral, not unsettled. I guess it kinda depends how far Lucy moves towards the spotlight of the comic and we see her go through her own inward journey and examining her religion, then I might see a Lucy/Jacob ship being a good idea.
But right now, I don’t think they actually have any common interests. I see no legitimate reason to want them to get together, other than being there and available.
Comic.phile
They have sameish religious beliefs, but that’s all I can think of.
Comic.phile
Oh, and a positive opinion of Raidah.
Sirksome
They just seem very romantically compatible. Lucy’s already been compared to Joyce but she doesn’t have problematic baggage with Jacob. More importantly they’re both looking for the same thing, a serious relationship. Jacob doesn’t play games and Lucy falls in love very quickly, not to mention Jacob’s hot and Lucy is super horny. It almost feels too setup. Like it wouldn’t happen because it’s too easy.
saltchocolate
Clearly, the most DoA thing to happen would be for Jacob & Sarah to somehow end up with a second chance of getting together. Sarah had a crush on him way before Joyce, but would Joyce see a Sarah/Jacob ship as a betrayal anyway? It may all depend on whether Joe is is really the one for her or not.
Mark
If I were Ethan’s roommate right now, well, I’d try to be supportive, but I wouldn’t spend a lot of time in a dark room full of depression.
RassilonTDavros
Pre-timeskip, at the very least, he was roommates with Jacob, and we hear someone talking to him from within his room in a Patreon strip. Presumably it’s still Jacob, though since the roommate is off-screen it’s hypothetically possible that Ethan’s roommate is now someone else.
True Survivor
If I recall correctly, which is a real 50/50 shot honestly, Willis often draws the interior of rooms like this when a character is talking to another from the hallway, likely to save time (I wouldn’t want to design and draw the unique interior of a character’s dorm room either). However, I think this technique is most often used only for characters that it would make sense for – like Ethan and Ruth when they are going through hard times.
eskimolos
I am 90% sure that this technique is being used here because Ethan has a boy in his bed. I am 40% sure that boy is Asher.
Angel
other than jacob transferring for some reason there’d be no reason to change but even if he’s not going to class enough to be noticeable, jacob would also be busy with his own classes to not know if ethan’s holed up in his room all day unless he also doesn’t shower/spray febreezer or so
Jamie
Even if he noticed, I don’t think Jacob would push the issue. He’d make his opinion clear and then let Ethan do his own thing, I think. Jacob isn’t really shown to insert himself into situations: when Sarah pushed him away, he walked.
a/snow/mous/e
I honestly wouldn’t be that surprised if Jacob transferred just so he wouldn’t have to risk running into Joyce again. 🙁
True Survivor
Ethan either goes to a very large class or has a very absent minded professor not to notice that the guy he hasn’t seen in class for three weeks has a perfect attendance score. Either that or Amber’s grade altering technique has evolved from petty cyber crimes to full on coercion.
Laura
Jedi mind tricks!
NGPZ
Hey psychological sooth-saying is Booster’s technique!
Dumbing of Age is already like Dragon Ball Z now — cast members keep stealing each others’ special moves! ?
True Survivor
If I recall correctly, which is a real 50/50 shot honestly, Willis often draws the interior of rooms like this when a character is talking to another from the hallway, likely to save time (I wouldn’t want to design and draw the unique interior of a character’s dorm room either). However, I think this technique is most often used only for characters that it would make sense for – like Ethan and Ruth when they are going through hard times.
True Survivor
Whoops – this reply is in the wrong section. Sorry about that.
drs
So to me, the whole idea that a college class is taking attendance is strange and alien. 1990s Caltech did not do that shit. Buuut I tutored some undergrads at IU in the 2000s, who told me about having ‘clickers’ they had to use in math classes to “check in”, also I think to answer “do you understand or are you lost?” questions en masse.
So it would be both “large class” and “no one is actually calling out names, it’s some automated stuff”.
Masumi
Right?! I went to university in Europe, and literally was able to pass most classes by showing up for the final exam and *nothing else*. The whole idea of homework and tests and frigging attendance feels so high school like to me.
drs
Homework and tests we did have! Though at Caltech tests are mostly take-home, on the honor code; if the rules say “don’t look at a book” you’re expected to not do so. More often, you can look at notes or a book, because it’s testing skill rather than memory. But Caltech was unusual.
Charlie
USA uni seems so high school in general. They have shared dorms and don’t seem to buy groceries even??
thejeff
You had weird high schools. 🙂
I suspect part of the difference is that a lot of the US was still fairly sparsely settled when we started building up state colleges, back in the late 1800s. Many of them were built in rural areas where land was cheap. There simply wasn’t housing available, so they built their own.
drs
Classic college is some sort of dorm and dining hall/cafeteria, yes. Not at all like typical US high schools (okay, they have cafeterias, but you’re visiting school for 6-7 hours), but somewhat like UK public schools or Hogwarts.
At Caltech there were hallway (“alley”) kitchens or kitchenettes, which we needed despite mandatory food plan use because that only provided lunch and dinner Monday-Friday. So people did buy some sort of food and cooked, though that could mean sandwiches or instant ramen at the low end. For rooms, there was a mix of singles and double and a few triples. Unusually, doubles could be co-ed (mixed gender), though you couldn’t be forced into a mixed-gender room by roompick procedures. By contrast, IU had single-gender floors, and I’ve heard Berkeley has single-gender buildings.
Otl1973
When I was in college at a large state school, many decades ago, the freshman classes were mostly large lectures. And in any case, I don’t remember any classes – all the way through college – where attendance was taken. Your responsibility was to get the work done and pass all the tests. A few classes, mostly upper level, were heavily discussion-based, so missing those might have been considered missing required work. But otherwise, attendance was not directly an issue. Has that changed over the years?
pig
Yes, it has changed, at least in some places. I graduated from a very large state school 5 years ago. While my large lecture courses didn’t take attendance, classes for my major (which only had ~30 students in my year) sometimes did take attendance and we were only allowed so many unexpected absences before there was some negative consequence (e.g. grade penalties or automatic fails).
Angel
the way she said ‘it’s a mystery!’ after wards she most likely altered ethan’s records like with walky’s tho i imagine a prof wouldn’t care enough to double check/care
HueSatLight
You’d have to have a class big enough that his absence would be inconspicuous, but small enough where they took attendance. I mostly remember attendance for language classes (German, not programming languages or formal languages)
HueSatLight
oh, maybe an e-comp. my instructor was the kind of douche who might have done attendance, so I’m assuming all of them are.
cain
Some uni departments require that classes take attendance– I remember one of my instructors complaining about that. And I remember attendance clickers and sign-in forms and such that would make it easier to take attendance for large classes.
Thag Simmons
Oh I guess the return of the Amber hacking plot was also a bit of foreshadowing for how Ethan is still in school
Bash
OH! I didn’t pick up on that at all.
UrsulaDavina
You know it’s serious when Amber hasn’t written a yaoi fanfic. I mean there’s a chance she has already ,but not telling Ethan that she has means it’s serious.
cbwroses
Well, damn.
Amber committed a crime for Ethan.
By Charles rules, that’s another body for the college f*ck pile.
Red Comet
Aw, she committed crimes for him too.
Otl1973
And she has no awareness of his involvement in the aftermath of the kidnapping.
Otl1973
His meaning Asher’s.
Sirksome
I don’t think anyone knows that. It would be fairly hard to figure out since not many people know Asher’s ties to the mob and Blaine’s ties to that same mob.
Otl1973
Oh, I’m aware. I just wonder whether knowing would impact her view of Asher (and if so, which way).
Da Boy
She already considers him a problem because of what he did to Sal. If she’d learn he had involvement with the kidnapping and basically called a hit on Amber’s father… yeah, big mess waiting to happen.
cain
Amber might consider calling a hit on Blaine to be a point in Asher’s favor, honestly.