There is ZERO in text evidence of him being abused
BIG DECK GETTIN WRECKED
He’s also a child
James
Blaine is an abuser who needs to control and belittle the people under his power. That is absolutely text, and it is in no way reaching or inventing to infer that he does so with his current family as much as he did with Amber and her mother.
But ok, if we need to be spoonfed all evidence for something to count, there’s also zero text in evidence that Faz is lying here or in the past about regretting his involvement in this.
Svata
Only the evidence of blaine being a known abuser, and it being wildly not-blaine to not abuse faz.
Random832
you may consider it weak evidence, but the fact that he’s Blaine’s son is, by itself, evidence that he is abused. So is the tone with which he mentioned that he was “very disappointed in” him here [and here’s the strip this refers to, where he says Amber is nicer to him than Blaine – not explicit, but doesn’t exactly paint a picture of him being treated well at home]
She also lives far away and may not have made it to town yet.
clif
Also she’s busy at the moment. You wouldn’t believe what she and Joedad get up to.
Needfuldoer
+1 upvotes for “Joedad”.
Nono
Does she actually live that far away? I know that she had to drive to get here, but we’ve had three sets of parents show up within a day.
thejeff
Dorothy’s, Joyce’s, Sal & Walky’s, Dina’s (in Patreon) and Mike’s – who had to fly back from a cruise.
It is possible Stacy’s here, but we just haven’t seen her. I’d be shocked if Ethan’s weren’t here, but we haven’t seen them either.
SeanR
Amber grew up in the same town as Sal, Walky, Billie, Ethan and Mike, at least. While Mrs O’Malley? may have moved since her daughter graduated high school, my impression is that they all lived in a near by town.
That said, she may have been constrained by job responsibilities and unable to drop everything and rush to her daughter’s college, or drop everything and stay in the college town for several nights: We know that the Browns took a hotel room, (although the Browns apparently aren’t from the same home town.)
I suspect she’s making the commute after work, as she can, but can’t afford to stick around, and just be there, for as much of this time as the others.
Or, she may show up in the next strip, having just visited the bathroom/gift shop/cafeteria.
thejeff
Amber, Ethan and Mike were from the same town. Sal, Walky and Billie were not.
The convenience store incident was on a road trip for Amber and Ethan.
I think we’ve seen enough about Stacy to know when both her and Amber and together, Amber assumes all the real parental responsibilities and Stacy probably just subtly criticizes Amber when her actions become irresponsible.
Amber at least has accepted this. People like Stacy are about receiving support, and if whatever little they can give isn’t going to cut it simply because they “tried their best,” it’s better not to get them involved.
If I recall she doesn’t have a ton of money to begin with, and Ryan’s parents are suing her. She may literally be unable to afford to come see Amber right now.
Here’s hoping, after listening to his griping, they “miss” one. Somewhere where it won’t be life threatening, even with a punch to the gut, but will be excruciating.
I’m willing to bet at some point we will have a scene of Carol being escorted out by Security, her and Hank spotting each other, and Hank turning away from her to go have lunch with Joyce and her friends.
Best description found of that type of coping mechinsm was from Dark Knight Rises, when John Blake is telling Bruce how he knew who Bruce really was, because he practiced the same look in the mirror to put a mask over the sort of pain that doesn’t go away.
That’s so painfully familiar. We would get punished for what our parents thought we were thinking based on facial expression. If eyes narrowed in anger it was called the hate look and your face was getting slapped. That sarcastic look, bongoy face were also perilous. If you cried they gave you something to cry fo: If you smiled you were laughing at them and you’d get punished. I was a stress grimacer as a child. Yeah. Slapped. We all developed a complete blank face when under pressure. It was the safest thing we could do.
Blaine is in the same hospital as Mike. That is concerning. There is no way he’ll be able to turn the situation around by hurting Mike, but he might just be spiteful enough to try anyway.
He is almost certainly handcuffed to a policeman with a second one in the room so when the first one needs the loo he is still handcuffed to a policeman. So long as neither policeman is corrupt and willing to be found in the room with a comatose patient on monitors when they crash when there is no need for them to be there… (And so long as both of them aren’t corrupt enough for Blaine to ask them to murder an unconscious teenager and almost definitely go to jail for it…) I doubt Blaine has enough clout for that.
I am surprised to learn that they pull ribs out of lungs whilst people are conscious, with their family watching. Although it is Blaine so I’m not complaining about them not doing this under general anaesthetic or in an operating theatre… (I am also willing to accept that Faz was irritating Blaine when he was waiting to go to theatre, but prefer the first mental image.)
And no, they will not perform procedures like that in front of family. Anaesthetic or sedation is generally used unless someone on the team knows what Blaine did.
(no, they wouldn’t withhold really do that.)
I must admit that Amber has . . a better mental fortitude to be able to talk to Faz so casually like this then I would in her situation. Especially considering it’s been . . not even a day I think since the whole kidnapping of their friends, kidnapping Joyce a second time, helping his father with both.
At the very least a punch to the gut before talking with him like this. Or . . something I don’t know.
Perhaps she is just too emotionally *exhausted* right now after everything. Which . . .tracks with what we’ve seen not too long ago with her talk with Ethan.
I don’t remember if Joyce ever talked to Amber about Faz, but he’s pretty clearly being abused in a way that doesn’t give him a good way out. He either helps Blaine or gets hurt. To your point though, I think I’d be handling all this way worse than Amber if I was 18.
“Get Faz out of here first. He’s just a kid.” “But… Yep.” They may not have talked about it properly, but Joyce expressed the bare bones of it when she was still in a van, having just discovered a rescue operation was on the cards, and Amber accepted the validity of it.
Regalli
Per Amber’s Garbage Roof Talk with Walky at the end of Faz Is Great, she tries not to think about the odds Faz is her biological half-brother in part because it helps her feel less awful about leaving him alone in Blaine’s care. (Which, oh, sweetie, no. Also worth noting Walky’s ‘it’s what I’d do’ given his and Sal’s situation has some parallels. Gotta wonder how consciously he realizes that one. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/choosing/) Seems likely then that she’s made the same assumption we have (assuming she doesn’t already know) that Faz is almost certainly being abused.
Speaking of, it’s nice seeing her not object to ‘our father’ after all Blaine’s insistence on stepfather. Growth! And acknowledgement that, genetics or not, Blaine is the only father figure either of them have ever had, and doesn’t THAT just suck balls.
thejeff
I think she’s accepted it since that Garbage Roof talk.
Regalli
Oh, certainly. Still nice to see there’s been some potentially positive growth there. Hopefully it includes ‘recognizing that she is still effectively a kid herself and could not singlehandedly protect Faz from Blaine Being Blaine even if she had been exposing herself to more of that garbage, and the best she can do for him is try and find safe outlets to contact each other now,’ though I’m not getting my hopes THAT high.
thejeff
Hopefully, but not likely. Self-blame is deeply rooted in Amber and will take more work to get out than we’ve seen yet.
He Who Abides
My take is that she’s not acknowledging their shared connection via Blaine, but that, genetics or not, she accepts Faz as a brother. She’s just too burnt out to say it.
I’d like to know when we are as well.
Are we later in the same day that the sun rose on kidnap victims in the front yard, or is it the day after?
I *think* it’s the same day, but not sure.
It’s the day after.
That whole day was the kidnap sequence and a little bit of aftermath, mostly skimmed over. Ended with Sarah and Joyce going to bed.
We appear to be the day after that. Timeline as I have it figured is they’re kidnapped overnight, get free early in the morning, probably mid/late morning getting back to dorms to go to sleep. Somewhere in there Sarah’s parents visit (Joyce: “was that the worst part of yesterday”) and presumably other parents arrive (Dorothy’s are “still” in town today). I’m assuming they had to talk to cops, figure out midterms, sleep.
Dorothy might be driven enough to take a midterm with no sleep and 10 minutes after being in kidnapped; Ethan I think less so. Mike’s parents didn’t get in until today, but they were on a cruise.
Seems like we’re about noonish the next day right now – the Keeners are taking people to lunch.
Pretty sure it’s been a few days since last chapter. More than enough time for Joyce to talk to Amber and explain some things that she might’ve missed about her brother.
We’ve been told already in-comic that this is the day after the last chapter. And even if we hadn’t, we’ve always previously been told immediately by one of those omniscient narration-box thingies whenever we’ve had a timeskip of a day or more.
I’m really loving this version of Faz. His edges are rounded, he’s showing more enorion, and he makes more sense since he’s an abused kid. I hope he and been stay in touch.
181 thoughts on “Upstairs”
Ana Chronistic
surprised he can even talk without his ribs
dang, why do I gotta feel bad for Faz =C
Bunny
Because Faz is a refugee. He’s every bit the abused child Amber is, only his mother is Blaines partner and team mate.
He Who Abides
I’m willing to bet that he’s more abused than Amber (I get a feeling that Blaine didn’t pull his literal punches with Faz).
Christ, what a miserable competition that would be.
adam Black
hes not a “refugee” he is a criminal accomplice.
There is ZERO in text evidence of him being abused
BIG DECK GETTIN WRECKED
He’s also a child
James
Blaine is an abuser who needs to control and belittle the people under his power. That is absolutely text, and it is in no way reaching or inventing to infer that he does so with his current family as much as he did with Amber and her mother.
But ok, if we need to be spoonfed all evidence for something to count, there’s also zero text in evidence that Faz is lying here or in the past about regretting his involvement in this.
Svata
Only the evidence of blaine being a known abuser, and it being wildly not-blaine to not abuse faz.
Random832
you may consider it weak evidence, but the fact that he’s Blaine’s son is, by itself, evidence that he is abused. So is the tone with which he mentioned that he was “very disappointed in” him here [and here’s the strip this refers to, where he says Amber is nicer to him than Blaine – not explicit, but doesn’t exactly paint a picture of him being treated well at home]
Yotomoe
To be fair, everyone’s worse than delicious tasty ribs.
tim gueguen
You’d get food poisoning from Blaine’s ribs. Or hit in the head with a hammer. Or both.
Nono
…Where’s Stacy in all this? I wouldn’t fault her for not wanting to be there with her cesspool of an ex-husband, but… her daughter is here.
He Who Abides
Stacy’s . . . not as attentive to her daughter as she should be, sometimes.
BBCC
She also lives far away and may not have made it to town yet.
clif
Also she’s busy at the moment. You wouldn’t believe what she and Joedad get up to.
Needfuldoer
+1 upvotes for “Joedad”.
Nono
Does she actually live that far away? I know that she had to drive to get here, but we’ve had three sets of parents show up within a day.
thejeff
Dorothy’s, Joyce’s, Sal & Walky’s, Dina’s (in Patreon) and Mike’s – who had to fly back from a cruise.
It is possible Stacy’s here, but we just haven’t seen her. I’d be shocked if Ethan’s weren’t here, but we haven’t seen them either.
SeanR
Amber grew up in the same town as Sal, Walky, Billie, Ethan and Mike, at least. While Mrs O’Malley? may have moved since her daughter graduated high school, my impression is that they all lived in a near by town.
That said, she may have been constrained by job responsibilities and unable to drop everything and rush to her daughter’s college, or drop everything and stay in the college town for several nights: We know that the Browns took a hotel room, (although the Browns apparently aren’t from the same home town.)
I suspect she’s making the commute after work, as she can, but can’t afford to stick around, and just be there, for as much of this time as the others.
Or, she may show up in the next strip, having just visited the bathroom/gift shop/cafeteria.
thejeff
Amber, Ethan and Mike were from the same town. Sal, Walky and Billie were not.
The convenience store incident was on a road trip for Amber and Ethan.
Needfuldoer
Known hometown groups:
?
Amber, Ethan, Mike
Evansville
Billie, Sal, Walky
La Porte
Becky, Joyce
Mishawaka
Danny, Dorothy, Joe
DudeMyDadOwnsaDealership
I think we’ve seen enough about Stacy to know when both her and Amber and together, Amber assumes all the real parental responsibilities and Stacy probably just subtly criticizes Amber when her actions become irresponsible.
Amber at least has accepted this. People like Stacy are about receiving support, and if whatever little they can give isn’t going to cut it simply because they “tried their best,” it’s better not to get them involved.
Lauralot
If I recall she doesn’t have a ton of money to begin with, and Ryan’s parents are suing her. She may literally be unable to afford to come see Amber right now.
BBCC
Fuckin’ Blaine, man. He deserves ribs in his lungs.
Regalli
Agreed.
SeanR
Here’s hoping, after listening to his griping, they “miss” one. Somewhere where it won’t be life threatening, even with a punch to the gut, but will be excruciating.
Lexi
Dangit I was hoping we’d get to see Ruth suplex a granny.
Doctor_Who
It’s better in my head.
Ruth is dressed as the Undertaker, and Billie is off to the side, holding an urn, and yelling “OH YES” in a high pitched voice.
NinjaNick
Suplex with femurs.
BigDogLittleCat
Dibs on that for my band name.
Mr. Random
I smell fanart.
David
Spurious “n”.
Needfuldoer
Ruth suplexes Carol off the top of the cage, and she plummets 16 ft through an announcer’s table.
fire_daws
I’d prefer a chokeslam through the cage.
Roborat
Don’t forget the weird lighting on Billie’s face.
Lumino
I’m willing to bet at some point we will have a scene of Carol being escorted out by Security, her and Hank spotting each other, and Hank turning away from her to go have lunch with Joyce and her friends.
JessWitt
Whoa. It would be the best show of “it’s finally time we separated.”
Jhon
Patreon? Maybe?
Jhon
For the suplex-hungry, here’s the
suplex she did on Blaine.
NinjaNick
That’s got to sting. I mean for Faz, not Blaine.
clif
And yet I’m not sure that Blaine isn’t right. It’s Faz after all.
abysswatcher1993
Faz expressing so much sadness without facial expressions is really painful.
jmsr7
Victims of abuse learn to put up a deceptive front to conceal their pain.
abysswatcher1993
Like Becky.
Abbe_Faria
Best description found of that type of coping mechinsm was from Dark Knight Rises, when John Blake is telling Bruce how he knew who Bruce really was, because he practiced the same look in the mirror to put a mask over the sort of pain that doesn’t go away.
Bunny
That’s so painfully familiar. We would get punished for what our parents thought we were thinking based on facial expression. If eyes narrowed in anger it was called the hate look and your face was getting slapped. That sarcastic look, bongoy face were also perilous. If you cried they gave you something to cry fo: If you smiled you were laughing at them and you’d get punished. I was a stress grimacer as a child. Yeah. Slapped. We all developed a complete blank face when under pressure. It was the safest thing we could do.
BarerMender
Man, that’s sad. I had abusive parents, but not that abusive.
Gulby
That hits (almost literally) too close to home.
ischemgeek
My parents were similar. If you expressed pain after they smacked you, they would insist it didn’t hurt and that you were just being manipulative.
Regalli
Internet sympathy gestures for all of you.
Mra
Blaine is in the same hospital as Mike. That is concerning. There is no way he’ll be able to turn the situation around by hurting Mike, but he might just be spiteful enough to try anyway.
Miri
He is almost certainly handcuffed to a policeman with a second one in the room so when the first one needs the loo he is still handcuffed to a policeman. So long as neither policeman is corrupt and willing to be found in the room with a comatose patient on monitors when they crash when there is no need for them to be there… (And so long as both of them aren’t corrupt enough for Blaine to ask them to murder an unconscious teenager and almost definitely go to jail for it…) I doubt Blaine has enough clout for that.
I am surprised to learn that they pull ribs out of lungs whilst people are conscious, with their family watching. Although it is Blaine so I’m not complaining about them not doing this under general anaesthetic or in an operating theatre… (I am also willing to accept that Faz was irritating Blaine when he was waiting to go to theatre, but prefer the first mental image.)
woobie
He is likely restrained to the bed.
And no, they will not perform procedures like that in front of family. Anaesthetic or sedation is generally used unless someone on the team knows what Blaine did.
(no, they wouldn’t withhold really do that.)
bryy
I think Blaine’s arc is done. It would be way too much. We just did the Blaine arc.
William Leonard Reese Jr.
I must admit that Amber has . . a better mental fortitude to be able to talk to Faz so casually like this then I would in her situation. Especially considering it’s been . . not even a day I think since the whole kidnapping of their friends, kidnapping Joyce a second time, helping his father with both.
At the very least a punch to the gut before talking with him like this. Or . . something I don’t know.
Perhaps she is just too emotionally *exhausted* right now after everything. Which . . .tracks with what we’ve seen not too long ago with her talk with Ethan.
Foxhack
She probably feels Faz doesn’t need yet -another- person hating him.
He’s still a kid.
Amias
I don’t remember if Joyce ever talked to Amber about Faz, but he’s pretty clearly being abused in a way that doesn’t give him a good way out. He either helps Blaine or gets hurt. To your point though, I think I’d be handling all this way worse than Amber if I was 18.
Miri
“Get Faz out of here first. He’s just a kid.” “But… Yep.” They may not have talked about it properly, but Joyce expressed the bare bones of it when she was still in a van, having just discovered a rescue operation was on the cards, and Amber accepted the validity of it.
Regalli
Per Amber’s Garbage Roof Talk with Walky at the end of Faz Is Great, she tries not to think about the odds Faz is her biological half-brother in part because it helps her feel less awful about leaving him alone in Blaine’s care. (Which, oh, sweetie, no. Also worth noting Walky’s ‘it’s what I’d do’ given his and Sal’s situation has some parallels. Gotta wonder how consciously he realizes that one. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/choosing/) Seems likely then that she’s made the same assumption we have (assuming she doesn’t already know) that Faz is almost certainly being abused.
Speaking of, it’s nice seeing her not object to ‘our father’ after all Blaine’s insistence on stepfather. Growth! And acknowledgement that, genetics or not, Blaine is the only father figure either of them have ever had, and doesn’t THAT just suck balls.
thejeff
I think she’s accepted it since that Garbage Roof talk.
Regalli
Oh, certainly. Still nice to see there’s been some potentially positive growth there. Hopefully it includes ‘recognizing that she is still effectively a kid herself and could not singlehandedly protect Faz from Blaine Being Blaine even if she had been exposing herself to more of that garbage, and the best she can do for him is try and find safe outlets to contact each other now,’ though I’m not getting my hopes THAT high.
thejeff
Hopefully, but not likely. Self-blame is deeply rooted in Amber and will take more work to get out than we’ve seen yet.
He Who Abides
My take is that she’s not acknowledging their shared connection via Blaine, but that, genetics or not, she accepts Faz as a brother. She’s just too burnt out to say it.
BigDogLittleCat
I’d like to know when we are as well.
Are we later in the same day that the sun rose on kidnap victims in the front yard, or is it the day after?
I *think* it’s the same day, but not sure.
thejeff
It’s the day after.
That whole day was the kidnap sequence and a little bit of aftermath, mostly skimmed over. Ended with Sarah and Joyce going to bed.
Blob
We appear to be the day after that. Timeline as I have it figured is they’re kidnapped overnight, get free early in the morning, probably mid/late morning getting back to dorms to go to sleep. Somewhere in there Sarah’s parents visit (Joyce: “was that the worst part of yesterday”) and presumably other parents arrive (Dorothy’s are “still” in town today). I’m assuming they had to talk to cops, figure out midterms, sleep.
Dorothy might be driven enough to take a midterm with no sleep and 10 minutes after being in kidnapped; Ethan I think less so. Mike’s parents didn’t get in until today, but they were on a cruise.
Seems like we’re about noonish the next day right now – the Keeners are taking people to lunch.
He Who Abides
Pretty sure it’s been a few days since last chapter. More than enough time for Joyce to talk to Amber and explain some things that she might’ve missed about her brother.
King Daniel
We’ve been told already in-comic that this is the day after the last chapter. And even if we hadn’t, we’ve always previously been told immediately by one of those omniscient narration-box thingies whenever we’ve had a timeskip of a day or more.
Nep
I’m really loving this version of Faz. His edges are rounded, he’s showing more enorion, and he makes more sense since he’s an abused kid. I hope he and been stay in touch.
Devin
For sure. This is a much more humanized version of Faz, and Willis’ characterization really shines here.
Joe Moose
I’m missing something. Why is Blane saying he’s worse than the ribs? What was the guy expecting – bootlicking?