You have to be at least three standard deviatons off from the mean. Between Nosferatu and Carmilla (she was scary to SOME people, I think) lies the dreaded unscary valley.
Clif
True. But you also have to allow for the fact that humans can adopt to almost anything.
Taellosse
I feel like you probably meant adapt, though your word choice is weirdly accurate as well?
Maybe this will be good for the S.S. Joeyce. Joe can see that looks aren’t everything and maybe Joyce /could/ like him for being something more than being a McBeef. If Joe can see Sal seeing something in Danny like, maybe *maybe* he can extrapolate.
I’m not convinced Dina wouldn’t take her dinosaur thing a little too far and incorporate a lot of biting.
Which is, y’know, kinky fun if done right, but human bites can be quite dangerous if not done with care, our mouths are gross.
Wagstaff
On that note, I haven’t seen any of the Slipshines, but I sure hope the characters in them were wise enough to brush their teeth and wash out their mouths before performing oral sex!
It’s a little more ambiguous than that because it’s implied Amber may have just given up at the end to let Sal kill her….which is all kinds of uncomfortable to think about for both of them.
Sirksome
Here’s the strip that implies it in a rather dark conversation between Ruth and Amber.
Yeah, I’ll admit that I was originally rooting for “close boy+girl friendship, not romantic” when this whole thing started, because we don’t get a lot of that in American media.
It can still happen I think. Part of the reason the dynamic has worked so far is because they work well as friends. Even if it transfers over to something more romantic I don’t think we’ll lose that energy. The real problem is there aren’t really that many relationships to show in the comic so far. Most of the guys don’t hang out with the girls except for Walky. Joe’s totally sex obsessed so there’s not really much to work with for close platonic friendships.
Spencer
Yeah I think it’s just that a lot of the main dynamics between characters have been romantic and Sal and Danny have been each other’s primary dynamic since the timeskip.
So you’ll see Joe/Dina talk about stuff in biology class, but Joe’s “main” relationships are with Danny and Joyce
We don’t, no.
But I never really thought that’s where this was going.
Spencer
Yeah I was pretty adamant it’d never happen. There’s no drama since they already get along so well, it’s like Danny getting rewarded for outgrowing his oldest white knight behaviour (where the hell did this come from?).
It’s times like these I remember I am not a professional writer for over two decades who intimately understands these character dynamics through being the one who made them.
milu
hm! interesting point! i don’t see it.
sure, that’s how Joe might see it, but within this story Sal is a fleshed-out character with agency, not an empty hotness signifier.
…re-read the whole sal+danny tag just now, and i really don’t see how this relationship (which has been foreshadowed for a while) can be reduced to the sort of trope you describe. Danny has been a bit of a jerk at times but he’s been super decent towards Sal herself, except for a couple inappropriate comments about her physique early on. i don’t remember him being white-knightish to other characters, but he hasn’t had that attitude towards Sal.
this arc might be less for the benefit of Danny (who doesn’t seem especially unhappy with singlehood) and more for Sal’s. So far she’s the one whose story is getting some serious mileage out of this.
milu
that was unclear
*i don’t remember him being white-knightish to other characters, but having checked just now, he for sure hasn’t had that attitude towards Sal.
Spencer
Well, I didn’t say it was right.
Danny at the start of the comic was a bit of a twerp about the women in his life. He never tried to pressure Dorothy into giving up on Yale so much as he acted the way he did because he had this big romantic fantasy as his Wife’s Husband and Dorothy was part of that, so eventually she’d realize for herself that Yale is stupid and love conquers all.
Then later he lies about why he didn’t want to sleep with Billie by saying “I didn’t want to take advantage of her!” like that’s just the default state (his actual reasoning was sensible of course, it’s that he used that specific lie) and then later when Dorothy came to ask about borrowing his shoes for Walky, Danny made it this weird test where Dorothy had to choose between the shoes or interviewing him about Amazi-Girl and he all but states he did it because he wanted to prove Dorothy would give up Walky for her ambitions.
Then he starts dating Amazi-Girl, and while we now recognize Amber and AG as plural at the time of writing she really was Amber in a mask, or a fantasy she created to cope with life, and Danny was all in on that until he finally realized Amber was genuinely suffering and it wasn’t just fun kinky superhero girlfriend time.
“White knight”, in that someone is trying to be extra special nice to girls so they’ll sleep with him, is the wrong term, but I meant it more that Danny in the first four-ish years of the comic exhibited a lot of self-absorbed and delusional thought processes regarding how he processed romantic relationships. He’d throw himself into them assuming it’d all work out and that any problem will be overcome as long as his fantasy narrative continues. Danny’s long since overcome this behaviour, the final punctuation is, I think, in how he and Ethan had a fight at the hospital where Danny would normally submit and instead he stood up for himself.
Which then gets me to Sal.
Danny from day one has approached Sal without any kind of expectation the way he did with Amber and probably Ethan too once he figured what that was about. He is uninterested in dating her, ergo by the time he was freed up for that he had already established a friendship with her based on mutually hanging out and being real at a pace they both appreciated, since neither of them really had that with someone else. Danny never came at her thinking about what they were supposed to be, and that’s what Sal needed in someone other than Marcie.
Tying this all up, and I went into a longer and more rambling take on this a while ago, but my initial perception of Danny and Sal hypothetically getting together was “Danny outgrew being a Nice Guy and now gets a girlfriend”, and I came to realize that thought process came from wanting to avoid the Nice Guy narrative so hard I was trying to say that a guy who used to kind of have those same thoughts growing up and becoming a better and more mature person and then dating someone after that character development was “rewarding him for not being a Nice Guy anymore”, and I’ve realized that was really stupid because I’m basically saying that Danny isn’t allowed to date girls anymore because otherwise that’s “a Nice Guy narrative.”
This is why I am not a professional writer, because I think dumb things.
Sirksome
I agree with this for the most part. Especially concerning Danny’s relationship with Dorothy which was probably him at his worst. Makes sense for the start of the comic since he hadn’t developed at all.
But I do have to say that shoe thing was totally unfair to him. Dorothy was asking for too much from her ex just because they were still technically friends. She chose to end that relationship and it’s hugely selfish to then expect favors from him to solve problems she created and advance her ambitions. Danny’s nice but there is such a thing as being too nice and helping her there was. Walky should have had two pairs of shoes.
Also for a long time Danny wasn’t aware AG and Amber were the same person and even when he found out neither of them were fully aware of the disassociation aspect and frankly Amber just kind of made the rules up as she went along and expected Danny to get it instead of explaining it *Not that she really could*
Spencer
Oh gosh I did not think that would be that rambling
milu
hey it’s cool, i love it that people here take this story so seriously and i appreciate the effort you went to. i admit i don’t remember a lot of the early stories, so i only have vague memories of those events you describe, so, no notes.
one extra thought i’ve had in the meantime (while buying groceries) is that under this framing, Danny must be getting “more” out of dating Sal than she out of dating him. social capital, sure, but beyond that (pretty hollow) value, it’s not at all clear who in this story is a catch for whom. Danny’s a pretty awesome person, i think. at least from what we’ve seen of him lately.
anyway, i hadn’t realized you were shaking your head at your past self, your original post makes more sense now lol ^^
also also you’re a bit hard on yourself, being a thoughtful and insightful reader (which you are) who sometimes gets something wrong (and readily admits it) doesn’t make you a bad writer? i don’t know that you are a writer, mind. well, aside from all the thoughtful and insightful comments
milu
that being said, i do agree that this comic fails to improve the overall media landscape wrt opposite-gender friendships!
i have spoken.
Clif
Where Sal is concerned, I feel that it is far too early to rule out the possibility of drama.
The difference is that most of those commenters do realize that opposite gender relationships can be non-sexual… they just don’t WANT it to be in that case.
(Actually I’m guessing most of the JoJo shippers would be more interested in the romance and relationship than the sex, but that’s how it ties into this thread, so.)
zee
I mean the sex would be interesting too, with Joyce’s hangups and all. Wonder if she’ll ever let slip that she watched his sex tape
Miri
Also, learnt that sex isn’t the boy rubbing his thingy against the girl’s belly button from his sex tape…
Sure, but when Danny’s story ends with “… and then she kissed me.” I don’t blame Joe for running with that. My apologies to anyone who wants to do more platonic kissing.
I really wish multishipping and the understanding of ‘I don’t expect or even necessarily want this to be canon, but I like playing with this dynamic’ were more common. Sometimes there’s a relationship you don’t think would actually work, but has one particular aspect that’s really fun to think about and work with. Sometimes the relationship is clearly a trainwreck, but is a really compelling trainwreck that’s fun to explore. Sometimes you just think it’d be hot and/or funny to pair these two characters up.
(For an example of the first: Sal/Carla obviously isn’t gonna work. Sal is too straight, and Sal seems to want sex in her romantic relationships where Carla’s a sex-repulsed ace. Totally incompatible orientations. At the same time, while ‘what would Linda think’ shouldn’t be the only factor in a Sal or Walky ship, there’s something I really enjoy about Sal introducing her girlfriend to the parents and them having to deal with all the unexamined biases and the fact that Carla’s every bit as rebellious and uninterested in what authority figures think of her as Sal, but is also a tech heiress whose social clout FAR eclipses the Walkertons. I enjoy Sal and Carla’s dynamic in general, but that particular aspect is what I’d write a fic about because Carla would DESTROY Linda.)
I don’t write nearly fast enough to commit to anything, but with my longstanding interest in this series it seems more likely than not to happen EVENTUALLY.
milu
=D
Hypothetically, this would happen on ao3?
Regalli
If a fic ever happens, the comments section will know.
168 thoughts on “Wha-wha-wha?”
Ana Chronistic
HOTNESS = SCARINESS, didn’t you know
Kyrik Michalowski
What about ugliness being equal to scariness? Because if I’m stuck being ugly then I should at least be scary.
Reltzik
You have to be at least three standard deviatons off from the mean. Between Nosferatu and Carmilla (she was scary to SOME people, I think) lies the dreaded unscary valley.
Clif
True. But you also have to allow for the fact that humans can adopt to almost anything.
Taellosse
I feel like you probably meant adapt, though your word choice is weirdly accurate as well?
Clif
Rented fingers.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Maybe this will be good for the S.S. Joeyce. Joe can see that looks aren’t everything and maybe Joyce /could/ like him for being something more than being a McBeef. If Joe can see Sal seeing something in Danny like, maybe *maybe* he can extrapolate.
…
maybe
Doctor_Who
Danny’s opinion of Sal.
Wagstaff
Yeah, basically.
Besides Sal, what other characters here do you think would be able to perform Death by Snu Snu?
Doctor_Who
I’m not convinced Dina wouldn’t take her dinosaur thing a little too far and incorporate a lot of biting.
Which is, y’know, kinky fun if done right, but human bites can be quite dangerous if not done with care, our mouths are gross.
Wagstaff
On that note, I haven’t seen any of the Slipshines, but I sure hope the characters in them were wise enough to brush their teeth and wash out their mouths before performing oral sex!
Needfuldoer
Amazi-Girl, and probably Amber.
Thag Simmons
Also, y’know, you’ve seen her kick the crap out of a superhero.
Nono
Wasn’t that kind of a draw?
Thag Simmons
Not really
Sirksome
It’s a little more ambiguous than that because it’s implied Amber may have just given up at the end to let Sal kill her….which is all kinds of uncomfortable to think about for both of them.
Sirksome
Here’s the strip that implies it in a rather dark conversation between Ruth and Amber.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/02-but-the-sun-still-shines/communityservice/
BarerMender
It doesn’t count if the hero let her do it.
Thag Simmons
It doesn’t become a draw just because you took a dive
Delavan
No, it becomes an illegitimate underground fight that doesn’t count for measuring purposes.
Why would MegaloBox lie to us?
Sirksome
Danny has made solid points I approve of! But also Sal is totally into him and he’s been doing a good job of playing it cool.
Jenn
Yeah, I’ll admit that I was originally rooting for “close boy+girl friendship, not romantic” when this whole thing started, because we don’t get a lot of that in American media.
Sirksome
It can still happen I think. Part of the reason the dynamic has worked so far is because they work well as friends. Even if it transfers over to something more romantic I don’t think we’ll lose that energy. The real problem is there aren’t really that many relationships to show in the comic so far. Most of the guys don’t hang out with the girls except for Walky. Joe’s totally sex obsessed so there’s not really much to work with for close platonic friendships.
Spencer
Yeah I think it’s just that a lot of the main dynamics between characters have been romantic and Sal and Danny have been each other’s primary dynamic since the timeskip.
So you’ll see Joe/Dina talk about stuff in biology class, but Joe’s “main” relationships are with Danny and Joyce
StClair
We don’t, no.
But I never really thought that’s where this was going.
Spencer
Yeah I was pretty adamant it’d never happen. There’s no drama since they already get along so well, it’s like Danny getting rewarded for outgrowing his oldest white knight behaviour (where the hell did this come from?).
It’s times like these I remember I am not a professional writer for over two decades who intimately understands these character dynamics through being the one who made them.
milu
hm! interesting point! i don’t see it.
sure, that’s how Joe might see it, but within this story Sal is a fleshed-out character with agency, not an empty hotness signifier.
…re-read the whole sal+danny tag just now, and i really don’t see how this relationship (which has been foreshadowed for a while) can be reduced to the sort of trope you describe. Danny has been a bit of a jerk at times but he’s been super decent towards Sal herself, except for a couple inappropriate comments about her physique early on. i don’t remember him being white-knightish to other characters, but he hasn’t had that attitude towards Sal.
this arc might be less for the benefit of Danny (who doesn’t seem especially unhappy with singlehood) and more for Sal’s. So far she’s the one whose story is getting some serious mileage out of this.
milu
that was unclear
*i don’t remember him being white-knightish to other characters, but having checked just now, he for sure hasn’t had that attitude towards Sal.
Spencer
Well, I didn’t say it was right.
Danny at the start of the comic was a bit of a twerp about the women in his life. He never tried to pressure Dorothy into giving up on Yale so much as he acted the way he did because he had this big romantic fantasy as his Wife’s Husband and Dorothy was part of that, so eventually she’d realize for herself that Yale is stupid and love conquers all.
Then later he lies about why he didn’t want to sleep with Billie by saying “I didn’t want to take advantage of her!” like that’s just the default state (his actual reasoning was sensible of course, it’s that he used that specific lie) and then later when Dorothy came to ask about borrowing his shoes for Walky, Danny made it this weird test where Dorothy had to choose between the shoes or interviewing him about Amazi-Girl and he all but states he did it because he wanted to prove Dorothy would give up Walky for her ambitions.
Then he starts dating Amazi-Girl, and while we now recognize Amber and AG as plural at the time of writing she really was Amber in a mask, or a fantasy she created to cope with life, and Danny was all in on that until he finally realized Amber was genuinely suffering and it wasn’t just fun kinky superhero girlfriend time.
“White knight”, in that someone is trying to be extra special nice to girls so they’ll sleep with him, is the wrong term, but I meant it more that Danny in the first four-ish years of the comic exhibited a lot of self-absorbed and delusional thought processes regarding how he processed romantic relationships. He’d throw himself into them assuming it’d all work out and that any problem will be overcome as long as his fantasy narrative continues. Danny’s long since overcome this behaviour, the final punctuation is, I think, in how he and Ethan had a fight at the hospital where Danny would normally submit and instead he stood up for himself.
Which then gets me to Sal.
Danny from day one has approached Sal without any kind of expectation the way he did with Amber and probably Ethan too once he figured what that was about. He is uninterested in dating her, ergo by the time he was freed up for that he had already established a friendship with her based on mutually hanging out and being real at a pace they both appreciated, since neither of them really had that with someone else. Danny never came at her thinking about what they were supposed to be, and that’s what Sal needed in someone other than Marcie.
Tying this all up, and I went into a longer and more rambling take on this a while ago, but my initial perception of Danny and Sal hypothetically getting together was “Danny outgrew being a Nice Guy and now gets a girlfriend”, and I came to realize that thought process came from wanting to avoid the Nice Guy narrative so hard I was trying to say that a guy who used to kind of have those same thoughts growing up and becoming a better and more mature person and then dating someone after that character development was “rewarding him for not being a Nice Guy anymore”, and I’ve realized that was really stupid because I’m basically saying that Danny isn’t allowed to date girls anymore because otherwise that’s “a Nice Guy narrative.”
This is why I am not a professional writer, because I think dumb things.
Sirksome
I agree with this for the most part. Especially concerning Danny’s relationship with Dorothy which was probably him at his worst. Makes sense for the start of the comic since he hadn’t developed at all.
But I do have to say that shoe thing was totally unfair to him. Dorothy was asking for too much from her ex just because they were still technically friends. She chose to end that relationship and it’s hugely selfish to then expect favors from him to solve problems she created and advance her ambitions. Danny’s nice but there is such a thing as being too nice and helping her there was. Walky should have had two pairs of shoes.
Also for a long time Danny wasn’t aware AG and Amber were the same person and even when he found out neither of them were fully aware of the disassociation aspect and frankly Amber just kind of made the rules up as she went along and expected Danny to get it instead of explaining it *Not that she really could*
Spencer
Oh gosh I did not think that would be that rambling
milu
hey it’s cool, i love it that people here take this story so seriously and i appreciate the effort you went to. i admit i don’t remember a lot of the early stories, so i only have vague memories of those events you describe, so, no notes.
one extra thought i’ve had in the meantime (while buying groceries) is that under this framing, Danny must be getting “more” out of dating Sal than she out of dating him. social capital, sure, but beyond that (pretty hollow) value, it’s not at all clear who in this story is a catch for whom. Danny’s a pretty awesome person, i think. at least from what we’ve seen of him lately.
anyway, i hadn’t realized you were shaking your head at your past self, your original post makes more sense now lol ^^
also also you’re a bit hard on yourself, being a thoughtful and insightful reader (which you are) who sometimes gets something wrong (and readily admits it) doesn’t make you a bad writer? i don’t know that you are a writer, mind. well, aside from all the thoughtful and insightful comments
milu
that being said, i do agree that this comic fails to improve the overall media landscape wrt opposite-gender friendships!
i have spoken.
Clif
Where Sal is concerned, I feel that it is far too early to rule out the possibility of drama.
Proto
We’ve gotten that with Ethan but he hasn’t been around in a while.
Jenn
Yeeeep that sounds like Danny
Leorale
He’s doing so much better at realizing what’s going on, though!
It’s a Hat of +3 Perception
AGV
Sal actually checks the gear’s stats beforehand
Not like she’d admit it if asked
David
To be fair, that was freshman moi as well. Just less self-awareness.
Jay
Honestly, he’s more perceptive and aware than I expected. Kudos.
Kyrik Michalowski
It’ll be ok Danny. Sal doesn’t bite you know…
I mean, she could if you asked her to.
Tawnee
Bitey Sal? Yotomoe, you know what to do.
Kyrik Michalowski
As someone who finds Sal very hot, I would be ecstatic if Yotomoe did more sexy Sal pieces.
Citizen Octopus
Danny Logic is sound logic.
Citizen Octopus
Also, panel 4 Danny is cutest Danny ever to grace this comic.
David
Ah Danny, the normal college freshman character.
Opus the Poet
Joe needs to learn that opposite-gender relationships can be non-sexual.
Opus the Poet
And that people can be into other people and it not be about having sex.
Nono
And yet half this comment section is furiously shipping Joe and Joyce.
Spencer
I’m working on the other half.
They too will see the light.
Reltzik
The difference is that most of those commenters do realize that opposite gender relationships can be non-sexual… they just don’t WANT it to be in that case.
(Actually I’m guessing most of the JoJo shippers would be more interested in the romance and relationship than the sex, but that’s how it ties into this thread, so.)
zee
I mean the sex would be interesting too, with Joyce’s hangups and all. Wonder if she’ll ever let slip that she watched his sex tape
Miri
Also, learnt that sex isn’t the boy rubbing his thingy against the girl’s belly button from his sex tape…
Dean
Not this one, though.
Scoops!
Sure, but when Danny’s story ends with “… and then she kissed me.” I don’t blame Joe for running with that. My apologies to anyone who wants to do more platonic kissing.
Reltzik
I think platonic kissing just got thrown under la bise.
Clif
Take two Internets. You probably earned them.
milu
i think Reltzik has an silly amount of internets by now, we should switch to giving them cake emojis or something
Reltzik
Nooo! I still need 12,000 more internets to complete my beowulf cluster of internets!
…. I was going to call it the interinternet.
milu
?
Keulen
They definitely can be. Though Sal is also definitely into Danny, and I’m pretty sure Joyce and Joe would both make a good couple.
EpochFlame
danny is going to have a good day
RassilonTDavros
I feel like Panel 4 is calling out people who get on other peoples’ asses about their ships
Mr D
I am so angry about people turning everything into ships. Characters share a single conversation and the fans go “OH THEY FAWKING”
Regalli
I really wish multishipping and the understanding of ‘I don’t expect or even necessarily want this to be canon, but I like playing with this dynamic’ were more common. Sometimes there’s a relationship you don’t think would actually work, but has one particular aspect that’s really fun to think about and work with. Sometimes the relationship is clearly a trainwreck, but is a really compelling trainwreck that’s fun to explore. Sometimes you just think it’d be hot and/or funny to pair these two characters up.
(For an example of the first: Sal/Carla obviously isn’t gonna work. Sal is too straight, and Sal seems to want sex in her romantic relationships where Carla’s a sex-repulsed ace. Totally incompatible orientations. At the same time, while ‘what would Linda think’ shouldn’t be the only factor in a Sal or Walky ship, there’s something I really enjoy about Sal introducing her girlfriend to the parents and them having to deal with all the unexamined biases and the fact that Carla’s every bit as rebellious and uninterested in what authority figures think of her as Sal, but is also a tech heiress whose social clout FAR eclipses the Walkertons. I enjoy Sal and Carla’s dynamic in general, but that particular aspect is what I’d write a fic about because Carla would DESTROY Linda.)
milu
ooh, please write it =)
Regalli
I don’t write nearly fast enough to commit to anything, but with my longstanding interest in this series it seems more likely than not to happen EVENTUALLY.
milu
=D
Hypothetically, this would happen on ao3?
Regalli
If a fic ever happens, the comments section will know.
BBCC
Exactly. Not every ship is ‘I want it to be canon’. Sometimes it’s just ‘ahahahaha, no, not for canon, but for hypotheticals sake, what could happen?’
milu
if so, i feel like the complaint is somewhat weakened by Joe instantly calling BS and Danny agreeing.
BBCC