220

Blame
Posted on December 7, 2016 by David M Willis
SPECIAL HOLIDAY SALE EVENT THINGAROONIE magnetset1Every* order I get in the online store this week, lasting from last Monday to the end of Sunday five days from now, will get a free character magnet included!  Just thrown right in there.  You can't choose your magnet -- it'll be random -- but, hey, free character magnet!  Buy a book?  Free magnet!  Buy a buttload of books?  Free magnet!  Buy magnets?  STILL A FREE ADDITIONAL MAGNET. So, yay! *does not include buying the links to Joyce and Walky! comics, because i can't throw a magnet into an email

220 thoughts on “Blame”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    “dang, these targeted pop-ups are gettin’ creepy”

    1. TheAnonymousGuy

      okay this and the Ouija board are the two worst fucking apps ever created.

      1. Reltzik

        That and the ap that sends you an alert to let you know that an ap’s trying to alert you of something.

        …. it’s recursive.

      2. Ana Chronistic

        What about “I am rich“?

        1. Pablo360

          Conspicuous consumption: Wasting resources in as masturbatory and ego-inflating a manner as inhumanly possible since the invention of pointless, foppish class conflicts.

        2. Yet_One_More_Idiot

          Is that a tracker designed by Amazi-Girl to track that Attempted Rapist Guy’s phone, or is it a tracker designed by Amazi-Girl to let Sal track Amazi-Girl?

        3. Joe Archer

          Yes.

        4. thejeff

          It’s a tracker designed by Amazi-Girl to let Amazi-Girl track Sal’s phone once she activates it. 🙂

          Nah, AG installed it when she borrowed Sal’s phone to track her phone which Ryan had run off with. So it will let Sal track Amber’s phone

        5. androiddreams

          no, much, much worse. ryan installed it and everyone can now track her phone

        6. Yet_One_More_Idiot

          Ooooor Joyce installed it on Sal’s phone so she’d always know where her new idol is. 😉 Because why not.

  2. AnvilPro

    …wut?

  3. Porto

    WOT

    1. Felix

      Web-Of-Trust?

  4. ridtom

    World’s Greatest Detective at work.

    1. Gwen

      Seriously. Amazigirl is getting sloppy, leaving that program behind.

      1. Leorale

        Maybe she wants to be found, and is waiting for her. That would be pretty wacky though.

  5. Pigeon Pollyx

    wait what? apps are pretty dang hard to code who in the seven hells made this for Sal?

    1. C baker

      Well, I think we know one person capable of coding.

      1. Bicycle Bill

        I think we’ve seen already that Amber is no slouch when it comes to computer skills, so I think there are at least two persons.

    2. Reltzik

      Amber made it. Amazi-Girl downloaded it on Sal’s phone last night, in order to find Ryan and get the Amazi-phone back.

      1. TheOthin

        Wait, was that just last night?

        1. Fart Captor

          Late last night / early this morning, technically

        2. Reltzik

          Night and morning do overlap, yes.

        3. Fart Captor

          No they’re adjacent

        4. Thursday Violist

          I thought maybe they were perpendicular?

        5. Pablo360

          Actually they’re a squid. It’s all very complicated, and it involves application of Stokes’ theorem over a number of dimensions homeomorphic to an elementary biology textbook.

        6. Ana Chronistic

          THEY ARE TANGENTS

          TANGENTS ARE BAD

          ERASE AND START OVER

        7. Clif

          Technically a space squid.

        8. AngelBadman

          IMHO
          Night = dusk to dawn
          Morning = 12am to 12PM
          YMMV

        9. thejeff

          Night – end of a chapter.
          Morning – start of a chapter.

          The Ryan fight/chase was this morning.

        10. Emperor Norton II

          Personally, I find the English “morning” to be so vague as to be pretty much useless. The period it covers is as different as night and day, dammit!

          By comparison, the Norwegian “morgen” is more or less defined as “hour before dawn*” (or during the worst of winter, around 06:00) until about 09:00. Then we have “formiddag” which is “pre-midday” or “prenoon”, which lasts until noon. Then our words for afternoon and evening covers pretty much the same ground, And finally, the night lasts beyond midnight, all the way until the next pre-dawn hour again. Much more sensible!

          *Note that due to Norway being so far North and thus moving slower, it takes quite some time from when it gets light enough to start winking out the stars; until the sun actually breaches the horizon.

        11. Joe Archer

          They are perceived by individual bias. When my alarm sounds a bit before 5 o’clock, it sends me a signal that I should regard it as morning, even though it really is deep in the night. (When I was still studying, that time could be a late evening…)

        12. Reltzik

          No, they’re overlapping.

          2 AM is morning, because it’s in the AM half of the day.

          2 AM is also night, unless you’re really close to the sunward pole during summer, because the sun is very much down. Not even a hint of dusk or dawn on the horizon.

      2. Victor Riley

        But I thought she got her phone back… they found that the picture had been deleted. (Am I mixing up my continuity?)

        So, how did this app get on Sal’s phone? Or is this Amazi-Gir’s phone? And that’s what she uses to track other people’s phones?

        1. BBCC

          I have a post coming up to explain it, just give it a bit to get out of moderation.

        2. Positron

          The short answer is that Amber/Amazi-girl’s phone was the tracking device (the item being tracked), and she needed another phone to use as the receiver – Sal’s phone. The purpose of that app was to enable recovery of her phone in the event of theft, by putting it on *someone else’s* phone in order to read back her own phone’s location, rather than tracking other people’s phones with it.

    3. Lailah

      Just roll with it, sweetie. That this is 8 kinds of bullshit is nowhere as important as the plot importance XD

      1. BBCC

        If you go back and reread the strips, AG DID leave before getting Sal to delete the app and we know she downloaded it to Sal’s phone because she told us. In hindsight, we definitely should have seen this coming.

        1. John

          I seem to recall someone in the comments calling it even before the phone-tracker app made its actual appearance.

        2. BBCC

          Yeah, I recall someone far more clever or prescient than I calling it back then too.

        3. Lailah

          Isn’t she handling her own phone right now? I mean, she’s talking about not getting texts, and I’m pretty sure AG has her phone back.

        4. BBCC

          Yes, but the phone tracker app was uploaded onto SAL’S phone so they could get AG’s back from Ryan and she never deleted it

        5. AngelBadman

          Yep, you are correct and yet I did not see this coming.

  6. Spencer

    So since Ethan and Amber have separated again (did Amber have a class?), I’m guessing he won’t end up putting the dots together today.

    I wonder if, perhaps, Sal tracks her to her room, and that’s what ends up making Amber put the costume on again today. Because she should be out tracking Ryan instead of wasting her time with pointless Amber things like socializing with close friends and enjoying herself.

  7. MightionNY

    Uh…. I’m going to assume sal is using her own phone… I is confused,

    1. Reltzik

      Amazi-girl borrowed Sal’s phone in order to get her own phone back from Ryan.

    2. Positron

      Amazi-girl used her tracking app running on Sal’s phone to track her own phone, and left that app on Sal’s phone after she was done by mistake.

  8. Stephen R. Bierce

    *plays Cheech Marin’s “I’m Not Home Right Now” on the hacked Muzak*

  9. Reltzik

    SOMEONE forgot to delete her ap from Sal’s phone.

    …. also, SOMEONE’S about to have a sudden meeting, leading to catatonia and/or panicked rage.

    1. Spencer

      Amber will probably have another panic attack, but at this point we’ve seen that Amber now automatically shifts to Amazi-Girl because of Sal’s presence.

      Amber can’t even move when Sal is near her, so I don’t think she’ll take a swing at her or something, and Amazi-Girl’s now turned her hatred for Sal against Amber.

      1. Reltzik

        Yeah, I’m guessing panic attack leading to either wild flight or catatonia followed by Amazi-Girl. But I still think there’s a bit of a wild-card element, so I’m hedging my bets.

        1. Spencer

          We’ve seen twice now that Amber skips the flight. When she saw Danny with Sal, and when Sal was talking outside her room, she automatically switched personas.

          She’s gotten worse, basically. It used to be she could run away.

        2. Pablo360

          It used to be she stabbed her in the hand and now she wears gloves to this day and doesn’t even take them off when she’s sleeping. I’d say she’s gotten significantly better over time.

        3. BBCC

          He meant Amber has gotten worse.

        4. Pablo360

          That’s what I’m saying the opposite of. This is why I hate pronouns as a general rule and not just in the specific instances where they aid in the alienation of trans and especially nonbinary folx.

        5. BBCC

          Ahhhh okay. The gloves focus made me think you meant Sal got worse.

        6. Disloyal Subject

          It’s possible that Amazi-girl is assuming control more immediately to prevent Amber from choosing Fight over Flight. I don’t really know how DID works, but if Amber gets pissed off enough to reassert herself when AG is holding a conversation with Amber’s nemesis…

        7. BBCC

          That doesn’t really fit with their history though. AMAZI-GIRL is the one who stalked, harassed, and fully intended to assault Sal and used law as a pretext. AMAZI-GIRL is the one who got angry and yelled at Danny for merely being outside at the same time as her. AMBER, in contrast, has only ever run from Sal.

        8. Disloyal Subject

          Aside from, you know, that time Amber shoved a knife through Sal’s hand.
          Amazi-girl is an outlet; she takes action so Amber doesn’t have to, because when Amber takes action it tends to be destructive. When AG realized that stalking and harassing Sal was fucked uo and wasn’t helping anyone, she stopped. Amber has yelled at Danny far more violently, and all but said to his face that Amazi-girl exists to keep her from losing her cool like that.

        9. BBCC

          Yes, other than when she stabbed Sal, which is an instant she’s found nothing but traumatic since, hence why she’s run from Sal every time she’s seen her since. This has happened often enough that’s it’s a noticeable pattern with her. AG may have realized she was fucking up by stalking and harassing Sal, but that doesn’t change that she’s the one who did it – Amber didn’t MAKE her do anything of the kind and her blaming Amber for that is actually really worrying me. She is the one who chose ‘fight’ with Sal. Every time Amber’s had the chance to choose since the robbery, she’s chosen ‘flight’. When Amber yells at Danny, she’s horrified and runs off in tears. When AG blows up (over something far smaller, mind you), she demands he stop being around a person (whom she got angry he was merely IN THE VICINITY of – she hadn’t confirmed he even knew her yet), accuses him of ‘turning against her’ and says he’d buckle under a light breeze, while also (interestingly) saying she needs AG far more than Danny and then she goes off to go beat the shit out of people on fairly thin pretexts and stalks Sal with the intent to seriously hurt her. Again, all of that was on AG. Amber did not make her do anything and she needs to show some responsibility for that. She might think she’s protecting Amber, but she’s shown a lot of very worrying behaviour and anger all on her own – the only times we’ve seen Amber blow up like that were when she was fighting Blaine or snapping under his verbal/emotional abuse after a traumatic event (the stabbing). Both of which she’s found traumatic and triggery. AG has yet to show she’s so much as second guessed any of her own explosive anger and she really REALLY needs to. Even if Amber’s anger is worse, she at least recognizes it is not a good thing and wants it to stop. AG can’t even bring herself to admit she’s done something wrong (and on that note – her apology to Sal is flimsy as hell since she didn’t actually admit she did anything wrong and is foisting responsibility off on Amber).

        10. BBCC

          I should note the ‘over something far smaller’ thing was in reference to when she got mad about the booze which, while petty, was actually illegal for Danny to consume and against school rules. As for the kiss….I’d argue that that was also smaller, since that was something she knows Danny did whereas, for all she knew, he didn’t even know Sal was there when she came up to rip his head off for it and treat him like a criminal because Sal happened to exist in the same general public area as him at the moment, but ymmv on whether the kiss was bigger on that one.

        11. BBCC

          Aaaaand I should clarify that the stabbing was her lashing out after Blaine was a shithead about the traumatic event, not the traumatic event he was shitty about.

          Also that wrt to AG’s failure of an apology – she did not anything SPECIFIC she did wrong, which she needs to do if she plans on taking responsibility for and actually apologizing for those things.

          I apologize, it is 3AM and I failed at editing and so now I keep finding a million mistakes.

        12. AngelBadman

          My guess is Amber is gonna freak and Amazi-Girl is about to get a badass sidekick.

        13. BBCC

          I hope not. AG’s stalked her twice with violent intent. Making Sal her sidekick after that feels skeezy.

          Besides, Sal’s the one who’s saved her twice, talks her down and keeps her head better in their team up, and she has her own vehicle. Maybe AG should be Sal’s sidekick instead!

    2. Disloyal Subject

      I thought she had no intention of doing so, and planned to leave it on as a gesture of trust, though one she may jave forgotten about in the heat of the moment and the crushing emotions of having ‘failed’ to catch the guy. That said, I don’t remember if the comic supported that perception of mine at all.

  10. Larkle

    Did Amber hack Sal’s phone or something?

    1. Suzi

      She borrowed Sal’s phone when badrapistdude stole her phone to delete his face off of it, and installed that personal app she created. I guess she forgot to delete it

      1. onetwoduck

        It’s confusing that amber is both the disturbed antihero trope and the hammer trope.

  11. brionl

    Dun, dun, DUN?

  12. Raulwicke

    I am hesitantly excited about this development….

  13. Jay Eff

    TWIST:

    That button does not activate the Amazi-Girl Phone Tracker. It actives Wonder Twin powers, instead.

  14. Kernanator

    What could possibly go wrong?

  15. Dave

    Did anyone else read that title as “Blaine”?

  16. Keulan

    Does this app only give Sal the ability to track Amazi-Girl’s phone, or can she use it to track anyone’s phone?

    1. Lailah

      Sal is one of the more level-headed class members, but she’d still probably go mad with power in Morgan Freeman’s shoes. Which makes it funny.

  17. Spencer

    I’ve decided Amber coded this so Danny could find her in the event she had been restrained by a supervillain.

    It would be cute.

    1. Lailah

      A little. Mostly it’s sorrowful. Which makes it better, given the basis of the comic.

  18. tim gueguen

    “Dang, where’s the Marcie tracker app on this thing?”

  19. Victor Riley

    Wait… what is this is Amber/AmaziGirl’s phone? Did they perhaps get switched?

    Which means that the earlier text she got from Marcie calling her an a-hole for starting a fight… that was meant for Amazi-Girl… and Marcie is in contact with Amazi-Girl.

    1. Spencer

      Amber downloaded her app onto Sal’s phone to track hers because it was stolen by Ryan. She then forgot to delete it off of Sal’s phone.

      1. BBCC

        I have a post with the relevant strips coming up, just waiting for it to get out of moderation.

      2. Lailah

        Oh, right, she /had/ made it in advance, I’d totally forgotten about that.

    2. Fart Captor

      Why would Amber put an app for tracking her phone on her phone??

      All it would need to be is a blank screen that says “you’re holding it”

      1. Disloyal Subject

        She’s probably made that too. Her Intro to Computer Science class is awfully dull, so she has plenty of free time to goof around with coding.

      2. Victor Riley

        I would think it’s an app for tracking other phones. Amazi-Girl is skirting the lines of morality, much like Batman did in The Dark Knight with basically hacking every cell phone in Gotham. That’s what I originally interpreted.

        1. BBCC

          It seems like an app to track her phone in case it’s stolen/lost. A contingency plan for emergencies, basically. Hence why it’s labelled an ‘Amazi-Girl phone tracker’ and they used it to find her phone specifically when Ryan stole it.

        2. Bicycle Bill

          I agree with BBCC.  Appears to be a customized version of the “Find my iPhone” or “Find my Droid” app that allows you to locate your own phone using another device.

        3. Commodore Jeep-Eep

          Probably just swapped the splash screen assets.

      3. Pat

        It’s blank and it has words. She’s very good.

        1. thejeff

          Do those formal documents with “This page intentionally left blank” on the obviously not blank because it has those words on it page drive you crazy too?

      4. Thursday Violist

        Have you ever spent forever looking for your phone only to realize it was in your hand (or pocket) the whole time? That’s a situation it would be useful.

        “Hey, Dina! Have you seen my phone? Let me use my fancy tracker app to see if I can find it. It keeps on pointing at me.”

      5. Needfuldoer

        It needs a map with a blinking red dot that shows your GPS location. It can zoom in through several levels that de-pixelate as they render, like a stereotypical big-screen on a police procedural.

        1. Bicycle Bill

          I work as a customer service rep for a major cell phone carrier, and you have no idea how many people call us if they’ve misplaced their phone because they believe that we already have that capability.

        2. anonymsly

          /signed! And at least once a week I had to take the call of ‘I need those old deleted text messages for a court case! Send my SMS history to me, TV says you have all my old messages.’

          We honestly didn’t. It would be a form of wiretapping, and doing that without a valid warrant ahead of time would be super illegal. But try and explain that to people who’ve seen ‘we got your text messages from your carrier’ on every legal procedural ever. Stupid TV.

      6. foamy

        I have lost track of glasses that I was wearing at the time, so I would entirely want that use case.

  20. Thor

    How does she operate a touchscreen with boxing gloves on?

    1. tim gueguen

      Thin gloves and lots of practice.

    2. Disloyal Subject

      I have a pair of cheap bicycle gloves with fingerpads that are conductive for touchscreen compatibility. I’m sure that with a little time and effort, Sal can find a pair she likes, and since she even sleeps in gloves I’d say they’re important enough to her that she’d have no problems tracking down a good pair.

    3. BBCC

      She’s been wearing gloves for five years and she rarely takes them off (though she may have been forced to during her school hours at the boarding school). It isn’t that hard to use a touch screen even in thick gloves – I do it in the winter.

      She also has multiple pairs – I’m sure at least ONE is easily conductive to touch screens.

      1. Queen of the freckles

        http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/littlebit/ She took them of here actually, so only when she has to be the perfect daughter sal

        1. BBCC

          Yep, she very rarely takes her gloves off or is seen without them

          – Freshman Family Weekend is one of them (which suggests that either her school wouldn’t let her wear gloves during day hours or her parents insist she not even though she clearly prefers to cover her hand) – she hid her right hand behind her back the entire time.

          – The flashbacks to the robbery

          – Sort of in ‘It’ in I Was A Teenage Churchmouse when she’s pulling on another pair.

          – Also in any of the flashbacks where she’s a child.

          – When she was checking on Amazi-Girl post Toedad and needed to wake her up, she took off a glove to snap her fingers at her.

          Interestingly, the only time WE’VE seen her right hand is when she was talking to Danny about tutoring her, when her gloves had cutouts in them – I’m assuming they were cut outs and not just brown patches on her gloves anyways. And of course, her hand was always far enough from the screen we wouldn’t see any details….and in the one close up panel, the cutout is conveniently off camera. Which, considering the book pdf says that Amber’s knife went THROUGH Sal’s hand and not just in it, and we see that Amber yanked the knife out rather than leave it in……yeah, two things: A) Sal’s incredibly lucky she can still use her hand, and B) She’s almost certainly still got a nasty scar (and possibly sensory nerve damage, which will make this a bongo come winter).

        2. thejeff

          I would assume that, if she’s wearing gloves to hide the scar, then the gloves actually hide the scar. If they have cutouts, the scar is still covered.
          Otherwise there’s little point in constantly wearing them.

        3. BBCC

          That’s what I would think too. Thinking back, I’m pretty sure the cutouts are higher than the scar would be, so we’ve not actually seen that part of her hand.

        4. BBCC

          And upon actually looking back, looks like they’re actually LOWER than where her scar would be – she got stabbed what looks like just beneath her knuckles (daaaaamn, Amber really went for what SHOULD HAVE BEEN a disabling injury, shit) and the cutouts are near the centre of her hand.

          …Yes, I archive dive for the most trivial minutiae possible, why?

        5. BBCC

          Actually, I think the cutouts were a drawing goof. She doesn’t have them earlier when she goes to class or later when Amber sees her at the elevator. Since she didn’t have them more often than she did, I’m happy enough to discount them. Though, if the cutouts WERE supposed to be there the entire time, again, they weren’t in the right spot.

    4. nlips

      +1 internet points for StrongBad reference.

    5. Needfuldoer

      They’re not gloves, they’re her hands.

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        Actually she lost her hands back when, and invented robot hands to replace them. Marcie was her lab assistant.

        She is sure she has solved the problem with the hands going rogue and strangling people without orders. Mostly.

        1. tim gueguen

          So she’s actually Clinton Augustus in an elaborate disguise.

        2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          THEY’RE NOT TWINS!

    6. Bagge

      By being awesome, that’s how.

  21. Bagge

    “Oh well, time to hang out with my new friend.”

    1. Spencer

      “Get you a pair of skates and some goggles and ah won’t even notice the difference.”

      1. butts

        “Marcie, you’ve been replaced.“

        1. Jason

          Your avatar makes every one of your comments funnier.

        2. butts

          Guilty as charged.

    2. Bagge

      I of course refer to this fine person
      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/stubb-2/

  22. BBCC

    For those of you wondering what the hell is with the app:

    http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/dispel/

    and here:
    http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/locator/

    Looks like AG just forgot to take it off. Which makes sense because she left not long after Ryan did.

    1. L!ghtn!ng

      Thank you!

    2. trlkly

      Weird that you had to wait. I thought links to the comic were whitelisted, so that they didn’t trip the “possible spam” filter.

      I know I’ve gotten links in–albeit, not two in the same post.

      1. BBCC

        I knew posts with lots of links sometimes got filtered, but I didn’t realize it bit with more than one!

        Ah well, more motivation to make lists instead of post links! Yay, lists!

  23. Cerberus

    Speaking of Batman…

  24. butts

    Wait wait wait, what?!

  25. Cerberus

    But seriously, here’s Sal deciding to check out the app that Amazi-girl left on her phone last night… to check this app out during the day when she’s likely to be in Amber mode, thus likely triggering a panic attack and a pissed off AG likely to be in a terrible headspace.

    This is going to get trainwreck levels of bad.

    1. butts

      Yyyyyeah. Amber is not prepared to handle that.

      1. Reltzik

        …… actually, I predict that the sitcommy hijinks will continue, with Sal not realizing that the person she’s looking for is Amber, because no way it’s Amber, and so Sal won’t say anything about the app and AG will have less cause to be mad.

        1. Cerberus

          Except that would then be worse, because all she would know is that Sal is randomly showing up a lot more where she is like a haunting.

    2. Fart Captor

      But they’re friends now! Everything will be fiiiiiiiine

      1. butts

        gumdrops and ice cream, sugar and chocolate

    3. Bluewind

      Fingers crossed Sal discovers it’s Amber and steps back to try and figure out how to approach it, do some recon to figure out why Amber has such hate for her, or that she pretends she just randomly bumped into Amber (or if at her room has a tech question for her or a question for Dina like literally anything dinosaur related).

      1. thejeff

        At which point Amber panics and runs or more likely switches to Amazi-Girl.

        As she’s done everytime she’s seen Sal.

    4. Rukduk

      Yeah, shit is going to hit the fan pretty hard.

    5. BenRG

      I think that Sal’s planning on using the App to hunt down Marcie so she can try to apologise in person. The thing is that Sal’s idea of apologising probably has a lot to be desired in terms of tact, empathy and self-awareness.

      1. BBCC

        I’m pretty sure the app only works on AG’s phone, which makes sense because it seems to be a contingency app for emergencies.

        That, and I’m pretty sure she knows Marcie’s address. And where she works. And where her roller derby is. If she wanted to meet up with Marcie in person, there are a bunch of places she could go and wait for her.

  26. Lipke the Articulate

    Oh this is worrying…

  27. BBCC

    This is going to end….dramatically.

  28. Scar Man!!!

    got each other’s phone huh?

    1. BBCC

      No, AG put a tracker app on Sal’s phone to get her own back after Ryan stole it.

      If AG had Sal’s phone, she’d be wondering why this tiny badass she doesn’t know is calling her a piece of shit out of nowhere.

      1. Scar Man!!!

        ok

        1. BBCC

          I have links above that would better explain it.

  29. Pablo360

    I guess Amber doesn’t believe in security through obscurity.

  30. Gesc

    Well she hasn’t pressed it yet.

    Sal sorta minds other people’s privacy, it seems.

    1. BBCC

      Even for her stalker, yeah. That’s a testament either to restraint or how much less hate she’s got for AG (though she still doesn’t like her, imo), possibly both.

  31. Jason

    Thank you BBCC and other commenters, otherwise I would have no idea what was going on!

    (At first I assumed that AG gave Sal an app for Sal to contact her, then I thought maybe AG gave Sal a way for AG to contact Sal, but neither interpretation made sense….)

    1. BBCC

      Yeah, I have a post in moderation with links that should make this clearer, but the link trapping moderation part is not kind to friendly neighbourhood archive divers. Grrrr.

      1. Disloyal Subject

        Thanks for taking the time to explain it to folks. I was grumbling to myself about it needing to be done, and then I found you’d handled it already before I could talk myself into staying up for it.

        1. BBCC

          No worries. I like going back through the archives and looking for this stuff. It’s fun for me!

  32. Megatron

    Can I get one of those for Prime?

    1. Disloyal Subject

      Perhaps if you ask him very nicely?

  33. Daisy

    It’s version 1.02 which at least suggests Amber had made something like this already, prior to whipping it out on the fly last night.

    *whispers* I wouldn’t put it past Blaine either.

    1. BBCC

      She may have made a few early versions for testing, since this seems like a contingency app.

  34. Leorale

    I know they were in the previous scene, and that it’s meant to establish Sal’s feeling that “AG could be anyone”, but it’s still creepy somehow, the way status Agatha and Other Rachel are sorta zombie-ing down the hall.

    1. Leorale

      (‘status’ was an autocorrect for ‘that’. I don’t know why, it just was.)

    2. BBCC

      Oh thank god, I’m not the only one who thought that was creepy.

      Seriously, you two were excited 0.2 seconds ago, why the long faces?!?

    3. Fart Captor

      I just thought Other Rachel was belching :/

  35. Griffin

    im very glad i wasn’t the only person who was super confused.

  36. DSL

    Will the touchscreen work with Sal wearing those gloves? (Yes, I know there are touchscreen gloves; motorcycle gloves would seem to be more Sal’s speed.)

    1. ahecht

      Most leather gloves are touch-screen compatible, what with leather being cow skin and all.

    2. BBCC

      She’s been wearing them for a long time and doesn’t ever take them off except to put on a new pair and hopefully to shower. Using a touch screen with gloves on isn’t that hard – I do it all the time in winter.

  37. newllend(henryvolt)

    Oh fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-

  38. BenRG

    Well, well! It looks like a very significant bit of temptation has fallen into Sal’s lap!

  39. PeterK

    uum, does that mean she has a rooted phone O_o?

    1. BBCC

      No, it means she hasn’t deleted the app AG installed on her phone last night when they were using AG’s stolen phone to track Ryan.

    2. Loki

      You don’t need a rooted phone to install not-available-in-the-Playstore-apps on it. You need to download the respective .apk file and then your phone will ask you whether you want to allow “Installation from untrusted sources”, which basically simply means “this is not from the Google Playstore, noone at Google verified what it does, and everything you do with it is at your own risk”. On the other hand, some apps might simply not work unless your phone is rooted, but I assume this is not one of those.

      Installation from Google Playstore basically downloads an apk file and trusts it implicitly. I assume Amber has some cheap server space somewhere to host this app, so as long as she knows the URL by heart, she can download it anywhere.

    3. Bagge

      Of course Sal has a jailbreaked phone. She’s bad influence, see
      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/useta/

  40. Bagge

    Alt text: How soon before one of the fans make that app?

    1. Bagge

      Oooh, oooh, make it am AR game!

      1. JBento

        Where you capture small copies of Amazigirl by throwing balls at them? That sounds, ahem, Amaziballs.

        1. Bagge

          *EXTREMELY reluctant slowclap*

        2. JBento

          I will make you do a *soulcrushingly reluctant slowclap* in time. I’m goal-oriented like that.

  41. Derek

    I’m actually more concerned at how angry Marcie is with Sal, I hope their friendship doesn’t break over an event that was not Sal’s fault

    1. BBCC

      This is a really weird feeling for a Willis comic, but I actually am feeling fairly confident they’ll be okay eventually. Maybe not for a while – possibly a long while – but I just have a feeling they’ll work it out eventually.

  42. DaveM

    I am so tempted to write a small android app that picks a random set of GPS coordinates within Indiana University grounds and then tells you how far away from the marker you are. Hmm, if the coordinates of “Amazi-Girl” were determined via the time and date (at IU, not local time) then everyone would get the same coordinates to home in on. It’d be like geo-tagging, but the answers always going to come out as “somewhere on the grounds of IU”.

    Fortuantely Amazi-Girl and the Amazi-Girl tracker app are the intellectual property of our author, so I can justify being lazy as “respecting copyright” 🙂

  43. Shiro

    If Amber*’s smart, she already rendered that version of the app obsolete. The question is, is she doing the smart thing?

    *iirc, Amber’s the techie, not AG, right?

    1. Joe Archer

      Amber is the Alfred to AG’s Batman?

      1. Sam

        So Amber is also AG’s butler and has raised AG singlehandedly from age 8 onwards?

        1. Joe Archer

          Amber has raised AG from her inception. No idea whether AG is already eight years old yet, though.

    2. trlkly

      I don’t think “being smart” is the right guide. It depends a lot on whether she’d want to think about all of this. She could easily not want to.

      And, of course, she could, consciously or not, want Sal to find her.

  44. Marvelman

    Oy.

  45. JessWitt

    If only Amber installed a self-destructing app on Sal’s phone.

    1. Bicycle Bill

      Samsung did that on the Galaxy Note 7.

      1. JessWitt

        Zing! +1

    2. StClair

      “As always, should you or any member of your Amazi-Team be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge.”

  46. Liliet

    Oh man
    OH MAN
    THEY ARE GOING TO TALK!!!

    1. JBento

      They’re going to do that thing where they use their words!

  47. JBento

    I know Sal’s looking out the hallway is probably to ascertain if one of the people in it is AG when she presses “Activate?”, but I like to think that she’s doing it so no-one will see her actively seeking someone to hang out with.

    1. Andy

      Of course, she can’t ever let anyone know that she’s lonely.

  48. Vulcanodon

    With that app it won’t take her long to figure out who AG is. But all I can think about is Marcie and Sal – friendships are major structural support.

  49. MacSuibhne13

    http://i.imgur.com/n2Mxyyv.gif

  50. Mr.Morningstar

    uuuuh what

    1. Spencer

      Amber left her tracking app on Sal’s phone.

  51. fire_daws

    Shit’s about to go DOWN y’all

    1. Spencer

      What could go down?

      Amber’s demonstrated over and over that she’s scared of Sal and runs away from her, and now in her Amazi-Girl persona she’s apologized to Sal for the violence she’s perpetuated on her.

      At most this ends up with up with Amber having another PTSD attack.

  52. Bicycle Bill

    Just gonna remind people that even the best currently-available locator app is only going to be able to indicate the location of the phone within a margin of error of about a hundred feet.  So while it may be possible to pin the location down to ‘Read Hall’, there’s still no way to know exactly *WHERE* in Read Hall.

    1. Fart Captor

      Not of Amber’s phone has a second app that broadcasts it’s GPS location periodically so that the app on Sal’s phone can see it. That’d narrow it down to about 12 feet or so

      It clearly uses the GPS in some way, since they already used it once when Ryan ran off with it

    2. timemonkey

      Sal’s seen a lot of Amazi-Girl and Amber is the only one around with her colouring and body type.

      1. thejeff

        Yeah, but it’s nowhere near so easy to put together as readers tend to assume. No one else has, except Dina, who’s her roommate and a ninja. She was probably standing behind the door watching Amber put the costume away.

        1. JBento

          It helps to remember that we’re working out of only a very small pool of characters, while anyone in-universe trying to find out AG’s identity would have the entire university to consider.

        2. Spencer

          Sal also has two similar looking women constantly act erratically when near her, and if she tracks Amber down with the app then that’s going to confirm it.

        3. Tan

          Here is a similar-looking woman acting erratically when near Sal:

          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/diddlin/

        4. BBCC

          Dorothy is too tall to need heeled boots to be AG, and she’s too skinny. Plus different head shapes.

  53. Bagge

    We learnt from Willi’s tumblr that Grace and Mandy met in College… and REALLY clicked (insert your own innuendo here).

    That is awesome and adorable and sweet…. but it just makes me extra sad to contrast what happened to Kaitline and Becky when THEY tried to click.

    http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/154107076407/out-of-curiousity-in-doa-canon-did-grace-and

    1. BBCC

      If they’re anything like Walkyverse Grace and Mandy, Grace would have a near royal FIT if the school gave her shit about it. I distinctly recall her reaction to anybody suggesting disloyalty to Mandy was something akin to fuck that.

    2. thejeff

      Something about “I prefer to date outside my roommate assignments.”

  54. nothri

    Hold it. Does this lead to Amazigirl or to everybody’s favorite date rapist?

    1. JBento

      AG. She got her phone back here: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/locator/

  55. Willoughby Chase

    Already with the bugs and the incremental upgrade:)

  56. trlkly

    So, does anyone want to try for an explanation for why so many people had trouble remembering what happened?

    My guess is just that they were too focused on them almost getting ran over that they didn’t pay attention to the text, which said that AG installed an app on Sal’s phone.

    Emotional things stick in your mind better. Maybe unemotional things nearby also fall out of your mind?

    1. Spencer

      People have other things to think about then plot points from two months ago.

      1. trlkly

        Yeah, that doesn’t work. Because you do remember things that happened years ago.

        Quick, tell me. Why did Becky cut her hair? Yeah, you remember.

        1. Spencer

          I remember because I’m a cultish obsessive. The average reader probably isn’t.

        2. Fart Captor

          Those are totally different. Becky’s haircut was a significant plot point of the story at the time, which visually was impossible to miss. Plus, Becky’s “what if I were rad?” explanation was awesome.

          In contrast, AG installed that app off-panel while they were chasing Ryan, between two fight scenes, where phones changed hands.

          We only even found out about the tracking app after AG had gotten her phone back:
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/locator/

          With all the other things going on, it would have been easy enough to overlook when it happened, and easier to forget or remember incorrectly later.

    2. BBCC

      Maybe because it’s two strips from months ago and people have trouble remembering specifics from back then, especially if they’re busy or read multiple webcomics?

      1. trlkly

        See above. You have no problems remembering what happened in other situations.

        There’s no specific to remember. Just that they used Sal’s phone to find AG’s phone.

        No, there’s something else.

        1. BBCC

          I also reread each strip roughly half a dozen times a night and regularly archive dive and reread. Most readers have more active social lives than I do, I’d imagine.

          Most people probably remember ‘Sal and Amber found Ryan and he got away, they develop grudging working respect’.

          It could be a number of other things, admittedly, but I do know I have a good memory for things I read, especially stories I like, so I’m inclined to assume it’s less that people have bad memories and more that my memory is running overdrive on me again.

  57. Nathan Blood

    im gettin some overwatch vibes

  58. Woobie

    Noone else thinks it’s password protected?

    1. BBCC

      They were able to use the tracker last night when they thought it was screen locked (and it was AG’s idea, so she clearly expected it to work screenlocked/password protected). As for the app – if it has a password, Sal probably knows it from last night.

    2. trlkly

      If it is, I’d expect the UI to mention that.

  59. BBCC

    Awwww, Sal’s looking for her sidekick!

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