355

Busy
Posted on July 10, 2016 by David M Willis

355 thoughts on “Busy”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    ah yes I love remembering that stuff exists, THANKS OBAMAWARNER

    :barfing:

    1. Wheelpath

      Ahhh, Mike’s assholeyness is reaching out to make unknowers Google search

      1. SLICEY

        wait, people google the stuff mike talks about? IS SURVIVAL INSTINCT DEAD!

        1. Clif

          Curiosity always trumps survival instinct.

          What you don’t realize is that Mike has a setup in his rloom to refresh and plot Google statistics so he can watch the jump today in searches for “Guro.”

        2. Pearl

          That’s not true. I’m well-adjusted and as such have no problem not finding out weird shit on the internet.

        3. a snow mous e

          Shame. Sounds boring.

        4. Nice

          “Curiosity always trumps survival instinct.”
          or…
          “There’s something here that doesn’t make sense. Let’s go and poke it with a stick” Doctor Who

        5. Reltzik

          Yup. It died in every slasher movie ever.

      2. Deanatay

        I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?

        1. Deanatay

          I REGRET SO MUCH

        2. ICSM

          Look on the bright side. At least you didn’t google Vore.

        3. Hamstadini

          I’d say Guro is squickier than vore by a factor of three.

      3. Charlie Spencer

        I refuse to yield to the temptation. I am stronger than Mike’s / Willis’ Google bait.

        1. Falling Star

          The UrbanDictionary definition is actually pretty tame.

        2. Darkoneko

          Half of UD is invented gross définitions, another half are people either patting themsleves on the back/insulting someone else ; and the third half is garbage

        3. Disloyal Subject

          There’s also a fair amount of half-assed erotica. Is that filed under garbage?

        4. Darkoneko

          I put those in the gross definition, all the invented sex terms ^^;

        5. Roborat

          Good, DO NOT succumb to that temptation.

  2. AnvilPro

    Always nice to see Mike, as long as you aren’t a character in the comic. Then it is normally a bad thing to see Mike.

    1. Orion Fury

      But great for Drama™!

    2. TheAnonymousGuy

      I wonder if this mean this version of mike visits ambers fanfiction page? that may even lead into the question of how frequently he checks on it?

      1. Z

        Seeing as he knows that you can judge her mental state by her fanfiction- I’m guessing he was a bigger support to her than I would’ve expected. It’s possible that he checks it periodically as a way to check on her.

        Given that he acknowledges that it’s “incredibly fucked up” fanfiction and looks displeased to have this knowledge- I’m guessing he’s not reading it for personal enjoyment.

        1. Disloyal Subject

          Pretty sure that’s his default expression, especially when pointing out to someone (currently Ethan) flaws in their assertions.

    3. Reltzik

      Actually, NOT being able to see Mike would be cause for worry.

    4. Cerberus

      Yeah, he’s kinda an edgelord in the comic.

  3. Skizz

    Not googling “Guro”

    I mean it

    Not gonna do it

    Nope

    Oh, sod it…

    1. Doctor_Who

      Have fun? Stopped retching yet?

      1. Skizz

        Actually, kinda cool. Tame compared to a some Biblical art studies…

        1. Sageress

          Then you haven’t seen the correct level of guro yet my man

        2. podian

          No, you haven’t seen the correct level of biblical art studies.

        3. Skizz

          Yeah, I had a good look around, I have album covers stronger than this stuff. The Old Masters would have been very disappointed.

        4. Skizz

          Probably mot, I only googled it.

        5. Sageress

          I can provide links.

        6. Doctor_Who

          Oh, you think so now, but in a few years you’ll be dealing with deep seated psychological issues poorly by putting on a cape and beating people up.

          That’s how it happened to Batman.

        7. doubleW

          *A gunshot*
          *a string of pearls falling in slow motion*
          *a google search that returns a picture of a girl being disemboweled*
          *a swarm of bats*

        8. Tunaro

          *cue theme music*
          *creepy dude at computer sinisterly uploading something online*
          *sound of a window breaking*
          *looming shadow rises up behind him*

        9. TachyonCode

          *old live action Batman theme suddenly interrupts*
          *cut to slow-speed chase of The Penguin*
          *channel changes to footage of a live owlectomy*
          *sound of Pennywise roaring drowns out all other audio*
          …

        10. Baronbrian

          I like the narrative arc of this string.

      2. Mindlink

        See… this is what I don’t get.
        I keep forgetting what guro is, so I keep googling it every time it comes up. And every time people are talking about the one time they googled it and scarred them for life. But ALL of the main hits I get, EVERY TIME, are mostly long, boring academical articles about wood cuttings and Japanese art history, without illustrations. Only whenever I get to the end of these articles do I find references to the term also being used to label some modern erotica fore gore fetishists.
        Very few hits seemed to concern the “mordern” guro, and unless you do a image search, you’d have to do more than a bit of googling to actually SEE anything.

        1. Gigafreak

          Google remembers the things you have previously searched for, and prioritizes similar results in future searches– it sorts by Relevance, after all. So if you have previously used Google to search for art history or wood carvings or something, I can see this happening to you.

        2. Z

          I just googled ‘guro’ and the first thing that came up was a wikipedia article on the modern idea/gore fetishits/etc. And the google image search is all gory images. Really amateur ones, mind you. So I think gigafreak is right that this is a case of google remembering things.

          I think this is something where, if I were reading porn and unknowingly it went guro- I’d be really revolted. But just individual pictures aren’t actually that shocking. As others have pointed out- there’s far more gruesome classical art. Nowadays, it’s unfortunately quite common to come across news articles with more gruesome situations.

    2. Reltzik

      See, I did the SMART thing. I hit wikipedia instead. It was very easy to pick the correct, brief, clinical description out of the disambuation page with no mental scars at all.

      ….

      … of course I’d encountered the stuff before without knowing what it was called, so that doesn’t help me. But the point is, I’m smarter than everyone.

      1. JustCheetoDust

        I’m kind of annoyed that Wikipedia doesn’t have entries for the Portuguese Breakfast, Rusty Venture, Alabama Hot Pocket and Alaskan Pipeline.

        1. TheGrammarLegionary

          Have you ever considered a career as a supervillain?

        2. Clif

          Hasn’t everyone?

        3. Badeyes

          It’s not a career, it’s a way of life.

        4. JustCheetoDust

          Watching The Venture Bros. made me worry that there’s some secret bureaucracy when going that route.

        5. Rutee

          Is a Rusty Venture actually a thing? I thought that was a joke on The Venture Bros.

        6. Baronbrian

          Considering it seemed to be a chance to setup an The Aristocrats style joke on the show, I think you could apply it to real life. A Rusty Venture is any horrible, depraved sex act that no one has actually done but hashe heard that it is done by someone else.

        7. JustCheetoDust

          It was a layered joke, starting with what Baronbrian stated above and then it added the Alchemist and Shore Leave telling stories to mess with Dr. Venture before wagering a Rusty Venture on who’s right. I guess it served another purpose as a way to check in on characters not seen in a while (Col. Gentleman, then Watch and Ward)

      2. DSL

        “But the point is, I’m smarter than everyone.” — Isn’t that the real point of 99.99 percent of online comments?

    3. C.

      There’s a definition on at the beginning at the Google search you can look at without going any further.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Or hit up Urban Dictionary for a text-only, clinical definition.

    4. Plasma Mongoose

      My first exposure to Guro was visiting a site called gurochan and lets just say that if you can imagine what a website would be like if Hannibal Lector, Buffalo Bill, Freddy Kruger and many other Hollywood psychos were into drawing art anime style, you can guess what the artworks entails(pun intended).

      1. AndroidDreams

        More like ENTRAILS AMIRIGHT?

      2. brasca1

        Since I presumed it was NSFW I couldn’t look it up until later. I was dreading it might be 2 girls and a cup, but it was actually not all that horrible.

      3. Wizard

        I stumble across a little guro now and then, and the part that disturbs me the most is how well done some of it is. While I should probably know better, it just strikes me as wrong that people with genuine talent would use it to depict that. Plus, I find myself looking closely before I realize just what it is. “Hey, pretty girl, looks like she’s having fun with- Oh, dear gods, is that a saw?”

  4. Rosie

    *flashbacks to high school*
    *screams*

    1. Orion Fury

      I know the feeling.

      1. Tunaro

        Honestly I think that’s the real reason the drinking age starts when people finish high school.

    2. Doctor_Who

      You know, I never have the “I’m late for a test and I haven’t studied and I can’t find the classroom, and I’m in my underwear” dream about COLLEGE, even though those classes were much tougher and had greater consequences.

      It’s always high school. Something about that experience leaves deep scars.

      1. Ana Chronistic

        hahah funny, deep scars and guro

        :barfing:

        1. magicallady

          need another bag there, ana?

      2. Tunaro

        See, the latter part of that dream no longer makes any sense to me since the dress code at my college is lax enough that a lot of the people in morning classes straight up just go in their PJ’s.

      3. Darkoneko

        I always assumed this kind of dreams was for people who were overly worried about school. I never cared enough I guess.

  5. Regalli

    Mike… That is kind of impressive considering it’s you.

    1. inqntrol

      He didn’t act like a jerk at all, I was surprised by that too.

      1. Lucretiel

        He made many DoA readers google the term “Guro.” His assholeness transcends even the DoA/Walky Multiverse.

        1. Dave

          This is “Deadpool” levels of dicketry in here, and that’s saying something.

        2. SgtWadeyWilson

          I believe the something is called a compliment.

      2. Reltzik

        Eh, I’m filing this in the “Mike sees a happy delusion bubble and punctures it first chance he gets” folder. Which is one of his “nicer” modes, but still in-character.

        1. Clif

          Yes, but I think the “Mike is a meta-dimensional jerk” argument has it’s points.

        2. Deanatay

          It has already been made clear that Mike is the only DoA character who has fourth-wall sense.

        3. Annie

          There’s also the point that Ethan probably doesn’t know what it is, but he will soon.

  6. tim gueguen

    If you don’t know what guro is you probably shouldn’t look it up.

    1. spriteless

      Look up vore instead. >_>

      1. Tekkactus

        Or futanari!

        1. tim gueguen

          I suspect that’s not a term to mention around Carla.

        2. tim gueguen

          And yes, I do know what it refers to.

        3. Orion Fury

          But if you mention it to everyone else would she find it hilarious?

        4. butts

          “That is a hate crime. …Now it’s hilarious!”

        5. Rutee

          It probably wouldn’t be hilarious at that point. There’s kind of an issue when ‘you’ are being treated as fetish material, which depending on what Carla considers endgame for her body, may or may not actually include her. But she’s likely aware that it’s an issue, whether she likes it or not.

        6. JetstreamGW

          Why not? Is Carla intersex? I thought the going theory was she was trans?

        7. vivid

          the fetishization of futanari lines up pretty neatly with the fetishization of trans women. they’re highly linked

        8. Cerberus

          Yup.

          Not to mention that weird thing where the group or state that most seeks out porn fetishizing a group are also most likely to be aggressively hostile to real people who are of that group (most notably that recent thing where porn companies have released some of their internal data noting that places passing anti-trans ordinances where also deliberately seek out trans porn to masturbate to: https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/take-a-guess-at-what-the-most-downloaded-kind-of-porn-is-in-anti-lgbt-states ).

          Not to mention chasers in general and the fucked up bag of awful they inevitably are and their massive consumption of futanari and (slur for trans women) porn.

          Also, it’s very possible to be both intersex* and trans, because the doctors in our current system “have” to assign one or the other gender, and so frequently guess wrong.

          *Interestingly every intersex person I’ve ever known has actually despised futanari stuff and other (slur for intersex person) porn because often times it’s the only cultural waypoint folks have for what intersex “is supposed to look like” and that frequently leads to a lot of negative discrimination or just dehumanizing assumptions by potential romantic partners.

        9. Z

          “because the doctors in our current system “have” to assign one or the other gender, and so frequently guess wrong.”

          I’ve actually seen a few intersex people who do not identify as trans even though the doctor is wrong. Just because they don’t identify with their assigned sex, it doesn’t necessarily mean an intersex person will identify as trans. People like that more feel that it’s a part of their identity as intersex.

          There are also a lot of intersex conditions that are never obvious or don’t result in androgynous adults. So you can be transgender as a result of that. I think there’ve been a few people who didn’t find out they were intersex until they came out as trans and sought HRT/surgery/etc.

          Every intersex person I’ve seen talk about or have spoken to about at birth assignments have explicitly advocated for intersex babies to be assigned a sex at birth. The way it is now- everyone else is assigned a sex, so to refuse to assign sex to intersex kids is to immediately out and other them. What I’ve seen intersex people advocating for most often is to be assigned a sex WITHOUT non-consensual surgeries because going to that level is a shitty thing to do.

          Until it’s more mainstream for cisgender parents to raise dyadic sex kids without assigning a gender, and start pushing to be allowed to leave the birth certificate without a sex marked, I don’t think many intersex people will be okay with the idea of intersex kids automatically being unassigned even though dyadic kids always have an assigned sex.
          (cisgender parents because, of course, if us trans folk do it then we’re just ~pushing our agenda~ on poor innocent children, but if cis folk do it then they’re being progressive/edgy/whatever)

        10. Mitsukara

          I’m a transwoman (I’ve even been on estrodial and androcur- after having health problems with spironolactone), and I like futanari. I’ve viewed, collected, and even drawn it.

          There’s also genderfluid people that like it. And all kinds of people.

          I think people too often condemn pornography and people who view/collect pornography (especially of any drawn kind, but also anything consensually made, really) and condemn people who view pornography.

          Yes, there are jerks who are into pornography, but there’s perfectly nice people who are into it too, and there are also jerks who aren’t into it, for that matter. People can make arguments about trends and averages among people’s behavior, and that can be legitimate, but it’s important to remember that it’s not a universal thing.

          Furthermore, shaming people who like any given kind of pornography accomplishes nothing good. At best, it just makes people feel bad and starts internet arguments. In the very worst cases it gives some people a “in for a penny, in for a pound” mentality and encourages actual crimes, by villainizing healthier outlets through viewing art and fiction.

          And yes, I think all this stuff I’m saying applies to guro too. It’s drawings of fictional situations. I’m sure a huge portion of people who are into guro (which, yes, there’s a subset of guro that I do find interesting) have no desire to make it a reality. In fact, there’s a huge demographic of people who fetishize things they don’t want to have happen to them, such as being raped (themselves). This is a thing for some people. People’s preferences are extremely diverse, and are very, very often different from each other.

          So I think it is very important not to judge or condemn others (especially if they don’t actually tangibly harm people- I say tangibly, because I’ve had people tell me that being gay or being trans was “harmful” to others by “setting a bad example” and being blasphemous and so on), but rather to either try to understand others better, or just avoid whatever you personally don’t like.

          It’s a pretty good idea to try to understand yourself and others more accurately and honestly, though, and to respect differences, unless people are actually hurting each other. And I tend to think the best way to prevent that is by being nice to them even if you think what they’re into is gross or misrepresentative of something you’re passionate about- that is, not condemning people for viewing futanari, just trying to educate them better about what the realities of the situation are, in a friendly way.

        11. Tunaro

          Or maybe a little CBT!

        12. Historyman68

          Ew, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

        13. magicallady

          like the pavlov’s dogs thing?

      2. magicallady

        vore is not that much different from guro

        1. Plasma Mongoose

          Vore isn’t always gory, just weird in the way that things like body inflation and people turning into inanimate objects is weird.

        2. Andrusi

          Speaking of weird, the first thing I thought when I read this comment was to wonder whether you consider petrification to be a subcategory of people turning into inanimate objects or a separate fetish.

          So now I’m going to go take a moment to regret the decisions I’ve made in life because surely I could have made different choices that would lead me to have a different reaction than this.

        3. magicallady

          petrification is definitely a subcategory of people turning into inanimate objects

        4. Gigafreak

          You don’t wanna know how I know this, but petrification is usually subcategorized under ASFR, the robot fetish, probably because the result is still humanoid. I suppose you could consider the robot fetish to be a subcategory of the inanimate object fetish, but I can’t see Malaya trying to paint a smiley face on her furniture and then trying to fuck it. (I mean, maybe she would, though? I don’t know her life.)

        5. magicallady

          ultra car did let malaya masturbate with the extendable glove hand, so im not putting that out of the question for this universe’s malaya

      3. Foxhack

        Casual murder? No thank you.

        It’s always awful when I see a new artist with cute artwork then two pages into looking at their galleries they start with the eating other people without remorse. It ruined Kevin and Kell for me.

        1. Z

          I never know how to feel about that aspect of Kevin and Kell.

  7. Nemirthel

    Oh, this is TOTALLY going to end well.

  8. Mandy

    I don’t know what that means and I’m sure I don’t want to know.

    1. Rutee

      You’re correct!

      1. Clif

        Aye.

    2. Rex Vivat

      Just know that there’s a reason why “guro” and “gore” are similar words. You don’t want to hear any further than that.

      1. Chris Phoenix

        Actually, it’s derived from “grotesque” and not “gore.” (Which I didn’t know until I googled it a few minutes ago.)

    3. Darkoneko

      I’m sure May would want to know.

      1. Needfuldoer

        May would already know.

        1. Cerberus

          May would be drawing it as a means of getting back at humans.

  9. Gram91

    Oh wow, that’s some totally fucked-up fanfiction.

    1. Doctor_Who

      Amber’s got some darkness in her.

      1. Rutee

        Oh yes.

        1. Insomniac

          SHE IS THE NIGHT

      2. Darkoneko

        is that… how Danny calls his ?

  10. Orion Fury

    Do I want to know what the term means?

    1. Nemirthel

      No.

    2. inqntrol

      It’s Hentai related. Trust me, don’t google it.

    3. Opus the Poet

      I looked it up and no you don’t want to know.

      1. Opus the Poet

        When the description of the milder forms includes “skull fucking” and amputations…

      2. Thursday Violist

        I looked it up on Bing and the only things that showed up were Filipino martial art teachers and a people from the Ivory Coast. I assume that’s what Mike was talking about, because I’ve heard of Filipino martial arts in a fanfiction once, and I wouldn’t have learned of it without fanfiction either.

        1. magicallady

          its gore porn

    4. Sageress

      GORE PORN

      1. Orion Fury

        What, no spoiler tags?

        1. Sageress

          IT IS PORN CONTAINING GORE

        2. Needfuldoer

          They should have called it “gorn”.

        3. Samuel Erikson

          I gots some gorn for ya right here

          http://i.imgur.com/GLKNEia.jpg

        4. ganymedeanoutlaw

          Out of context that pose looks like it’s going somewhere else.

          Great. Now I want to write fanfiction.

    5. Ana Chronistic

      “Trust me on this: you don’t wanna know. Audrey, don’t tell him. You shouldn’t’ve told me, but you did, and now I’m telling you, you don’t wanna know!”

      1. StClair

        Love that movie, even if (or perhaps because) it’s basically Disney’s version of Stargate.

    6. magicallady

      gore porn

      1. Andrusi

        Or, for short, gorn.

      2. Deanatay

        Pore gorn?

        1. ganymedeanoutlaw

          Do gorn have pores? I mean they’re reptiles and I don’t think reptiles have pores, but I’m not a expert in reptile skin, and they’re also aliens so who knows, really.

    7. Tunaro

      That question has destroyed me so many times over. Every time I think there isn’t anything left inside me to break, I look into the abyss and ask this. And I am proven wrong.

  11. Sapphic-Sunshine

    Well, now we know Mike’s tragic supervillain backstory….erotic fanfiction

    1. Indiana Bones

      so… while you may be correct, given the context I very much hope you are not

    2. Orion Fury

      Isn’t that a good chunk of most college kids tragic backstory?

    3. Cerberus

      Hmm, I wonder… So Mike in this universe is essentially an edgelord, right? Like casually harassy, unable to really handle real emotions, constantly derailing things into the most awful thing to say at any moment in a way that frequently makes problems infinitely worse. Like, even if one were to subscribe to the theory that his asshole ways are somehow intended to help, that’s still his baseline and methodology, right?

      So if we were to imagine him in a normal human world where he’s not the ur asshole comic relief, but just a guy growing up in a world not unlike ours… It actually would make a lot of sense if Mike’s “origins” really were as mundane as being friends with young Amber who was plugged into this whole fetish community with fanfiction and googling it.

      But instead of googling it and falling in with fetish tumblr or fanfiction or anything like that, he falls in like a number of young men with shock websites and places like the chans or reddit that exacerbated his early edgelord tendencies that sort of moved him more in the direction of seeing life on and offline as a game and casual harassment and cruelty being just how you bond with people.

      I feel like that might just explain why Dumbiverse Mike is the way he is (Walkyverse Mike obviously being a much different story and a much different person given the contexts). Because a lot of his actions are the stuff that would be taken as hilarious by certain online communities if he was to describe them to them (you told that fundie “Hail Satan”? Hilarious, bro. lol).

  12. Kris

    Mike! I thought he was dead.

    1. Orion Fury

      So long as hate exists in the universe, Mike exists.

      1. inqntrol

        That means he’s infinite!

        1. Orion Fury

          Yup, infinitely in our hearts.

        2. Insomniac

          And in your mom.

        3. Clif

          For a nickle.

        4. JustCheetoDust

          Since it’s happening infinitely, at some point counterfeit nickels are involved.

      2. Svata

        Okay, Zeromus.

        1. Mitsukara

          Final Fantasy IV would be much better if Cecil was Ethan and Zeromus was Mike. And Golbez was Galasso.

  13. Stephen R. Bierce

    *plays “Let Your Love Flow” on the hacked Muzak*

    1. Stephen R. Bierce

      Am I being ironic or just twisted? I forget. -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dft63gHqqKo

  14. ischemgeek

    Cue all the people who have not encountered the existence of guro yet and who are a bit too curious losing a bit more faith in humanity.

    1. Orion Fury

      I will hold the line and remain blissfully unknowing of it. I’ve lost too much as it is with Jonathan.

    2. Spencer

      Turns out the person Mike’s trolling this strip is us.

      1. Clif

        This has always been true.

  15. DSL

    You know, about a dozen people from my small-town high school graduating class went to the same university I did, a campus much smaller and insular than IU. We hardly ever saw each other.

    1. DSL

      *more insular

  16. Nono

    Ethan’s head almost looks tacked on in those last couple panels. Is he secretly a robot?

    1. Mx Miki

      It’s how he maintains perfection

  17. JessWitt

    Well, I know “guro” means teacher in Tagalog but that’s probably not what is meant by Amber’s use.

    1. magicallady

      no probably not

    2. Svata

      Very no. And you don’t wanna know.

      1. magicallady

        even though todays comments has the answer at least 10 times by now

        1. Chris Phoenix

          And most of them are wrong. (It’s “grotesque” not “gore.”)

  18. Corseus

    …look some people just have tastes, ok!

    1. magicallady

      i know i do

    2. Plasma Mongoose

      The taste of human entrails.

      1. Willoughby chase

        Lovely with a nice chianti and side salad.

        1. JustCheetoDust

          Food guro, courtesy of Rule 34 of Good Eats that the world didn’t ask for Hannibal Lecter.

      2. Darkoneko

        Or the good old finger salad.

  19. Sageress

    A girl with violent tendencies, anger management issues, and potential personality disorders writes guro fiction?

    This either leads to a comic where somebody gets murdered by Amber or I get disappointed by Amber.

    1. inqntrol

      Why not both?

      1. Orion Fury

        Both is…good?

      2. Sageress

        Because this either leads to murder or it’s just another reason for me to not like Amber.

        At least murder is fun.

        1. Reltzik

          Nice gravatar, btw. I didn’t recognize her as Walkyverse Penny until that post.

        2. Sageress

          I’m happy because all of my comments are snark, and her smug face helps complement those.

        3. Clif

          Remind me not to tell you to have fun.

        4. SgtWadeyWilson

          What if instead I told Sageress to listen to Wang Chung?

          Plausible deniability, right?

  20. LynziGraye

    I hate it when my curiosity overcomes my good sense. I’ve seen worse, but that wasn’t one of my favorite Google searches.

    1. magicallady

      worse, like goatse?

      1. LynziGraye

        Well, YMMV insofar as where your personal squick buttons are, but for some reason scat stuff squicks me worse than this. Tubgirl especially (for the love of all that is good and holy, do NOT Google this if you don’t know what it is! NSFW!)

        And then there was the day a webcomic comment somewhere led me to Return of Kings, and then I was horribly depressed for a couple of days. Same with any site espousing clearly-deeply-held beliefs I find personally reprehensible.

        1. magicallady

          WELP TOO LATE, I JUST FOUND OUT WHAT TUBGIRL IS!

        2. Amazi-Stool

          Well today a lot of commentors find innovative ways to play “google seppuku”!

          Googling that term should be safe unless you follow too much links!

        3. Darkoneko

          It reminds me of That handmade poster saying “tired of the usual politics ? Join the Lemon Party at lemonparty(.org, …I guess it’s tame compared to the other websites discussed here, but nonetheless You do not wanna check)

          That was both evil and genius

        4. Darkoneko

          Some person had glues a bunch of them on the street pylons

        5. LeftWingFox

          <—Insert Mark Hamill joker laughing

      2. magicallady

        or even tubgirl?

  21. showler

    I was going to ask if Mike and Ethan switching places was related to Willis initially drawing the first panel wrong, but I’m thinking it has more to do with keeping the character positions the same to make it easier on the reader.

    1. Orion Fury

      Didn’t even noticed till you pointed it out. Now it kinda bugs me. But it’s not like Willis will go back and fix it anyways, right?I can suffer.

      1. Clif

        Mike switched position between panels specifically to mess with your mind.

  22. Neil R.

    IMHO, I sometimes think Mike is to Dumbing of Age what Ninja Rick was to Shortpacked: He served his purpose early on, and now just sort of lingers on because of nostalgia.

    I’m fond of both characters, but they’re niche characters that don’t always fit in smoothly.

    1. Clif

      Keep believing that if it helps you sleep at night.

    2. Spencer

      That’s kinda how I see it.

      You don’t need Mike for harsh truths, because Mike’s harsh truths are holding women’s sexual history over their heads and telling Amber she was doomed to become an abuser because she finds solace in a safe partner, and you don’t need him for wacky hijinks because Carla and Walky already got that covered.

      Mike lives in a universe where he can’t dress up as his dead boss for Halloween.

      1. Cerberus

        Yeah. This.

        I really do think that Mike is the jerk who made out the worst with the universe switch. Because Mike in a hyper-reality with a lot of jerks and where reality-bending powers are a thing? He can thrive there and be some extrahuman force of nature. But in a world where everything’s normal, he’s just that edgelord jerk in your friend circle who’s obsessed with trolling people.

        And in our real world, edgelord jerk trolls are kinda the worse and at the center of a lot of really nasty harassment movements that have hurt a lot of real people and are the center of things that are making a lot of spaces super toxic to women, sexual and gender minorities, and non-white people.

        Mike in this world ends up being too human and too reminiscent of actual awful people to be the same reality-defying force for chaos he used to be. He’s also been completely bumped out of any niche that could easily redeem him or justify his inclusion. We’ve already got a misanthropic character who dispenses hard advice to try and help people in Sarah. We’ve already got the damaged jerks using their jerkitude as a defensive shield in Ruth and Carla.

        As such, the space he ends up occupying is just that guy who happens to mostly harass women and is a complete dick to anyone who is misfortunate to hang out with him. (It’s notable that the people who most hang out with him are also the ones he’s actively contributed to negative effects for (Amber in not seeking out friend support for mental health stuff, Ethan getting back in the closet)).

        And I think that lack of a good space to fill outside villain is part of the reason we rarely see him in comic.

        1. Solenoid

          Unless he’s not using the jerkitude as a defensive shield but to actively drive people away. Just spitballing. Because we already have villains, too.

        2. Cerberus

          True. And that’s I think the rut Mike as a character is stuck in. And that driving away point is interesting, because I think whether he’s trying or not, he’s succeeding and his closest friends mostly go to others for comfort and so he usually only gets play harassing Dorothy or Sal or being dragged by Ethan when he’s extra worried about Amber.

          Which also means less time in comic overall.

      2. NoHeart6265

        I completely agree with everything you’re saying, that said however, Mike was probably my favorite character in the Walkyverse, partially because of his over the top jerkiness, and partially for the few brief moments where he seemed dropped being a jerk and acted like a real person (looking over Donna in the hospital comes to mind). I’m really hoping that Willis doesn’t leave him as the one-dimensional jerk forever, because from those quiet moments in the Walkyverse we know that that’s not all there is to him, and even if I don’t ever see him as being incredibly important to a main arc of the story, i want to see him developed in some side arc.

        1. Spencer

          Oh yeah, Walkyverse!Mike was a fantastic character, but he could also get away with being an over the top monster jerk because the universe he inhabited was silly and kooky and allowed for him to do these things and then never suffer consequences, and when he eventually did show that spark, that he had genuinely fallen in love with Amber and decided he needed to push her away only for Amber to accept his proposal and for them to realize that they were becoming parents, it had all the more impact.

          In a series like this where things are generally more grounded, you couldn’t have Mike and Amber’s completely fucked up romance that became something genuine and heartfelt.

        2. Cerberus

          I’d love to see that too. I mean, there seems to be the beginnings of something with Joe getting less awful, with Danny letting go of some of his Nice Guy TM stuff he had at the beginning of the comic, with Carla and Malaya being much more interesting and nuanced jerks in this universe and with Mary being a much more terrifying presence for the other characters all because of character shifts and adapting to the arcs necessitated of them having to become real.

          Based on the preview panels supposedly we’re going to be seeing a bit more of Mike cropping up this book, so here’s holding out hope that we see more than edgelord harasser from him.

    3. Z

      I think this might be pushing towards a different side of DoA!Mike’s character and purpose. He’s displaying a deeper understanding of Amber’s emotional state and the signs she sends off. Whereas Ethan hopped on a plane to Egypt to go swimming and is showing he doesn’t pay as much attention to the signs as Mike has.

      It’s possible that, in this universe, Mike actually provided Amber with deeper support than Ethan did when she was at her worst. He certainly seems to have his finger on the pulse of this particular red flag.

      I have no idea, it’s just speculation. I know some people will argue that that can’t be the case because Mike hasn’t been offering support, and his accusing her of being abusive was pretty nasty. But at the same time- how off base was it? She wasn’t abusive to Danny (that we saw), but she’s violent and coming more and more unhinged.

      Mike can give tough love that Ethan can’t- but he also can’t give the gentler support. He only seems to step in when she needs the tough love.

      1. Amazi-Stool

        Amber wasn’t abusive to Danny?

        What she did in her Amazi-Girl person i call emotional abuse!

        1. Amazi-Stool

          Lost an “a” on the way: persona!

        2. Spencer

          It was pretty awful of her. She was also quite literally not herself at the time, because we already know that Amber reacts to yelling at Danny by bursting into tears and repurposing it as more proof that she’s irredeemable shit, and we directly see her go PTSD over seeing Sal and slipping into Amazi-Girl. Like, from her perspective, Danny betrayed her and she was getting away from him before he hurts her again. It’s wrong, obviously, but Amber isn’t thinking rationally right now.

          @Z

          There’s literally no acceptable circumstance to tell an abuse victim who is saying “I am scared of ending up like my mother” that they’re actually just looking for their own victim. Zilch. Nada. Nope. It grosses me the fuck out that so many people look to that scene and go “see? Mike was right!”

  23. caesaria82

    I’ve been reading fanfiction for, idk, 15 years and I had never heard the term until just now and now I just googled it. I … spend my time in different fandom spaces than Amber it seems lmao.

    1. tim gueguen

      I tend to associate it more with fan art than fanfiction.

      1. JustCheetoDust

        I think I’ve only seen it as art, but since Amber writes I guess Willis has to go with guro fanfiction instead.

        1. tim gueguen

          There is fanfiction that could be labelled guro(such as an infamous example for a certain fandom I will not name, to protect the mental health of the DoA readership). But I haven’t run into such writers using the term guro.

  24. Marvelman

    What DOES “guro” mean?

    1. Tekkactus

      Gore/Mutilation Porn.

    2. magicallady

      essentially gore porn

    3. foamy

      The bland description of it is gory porn. It can get pretty extreme.

      1. magicallady

        yeah, thats true, judging from the art ive seen of guro

      2. Mav

        yikes.

    4. Moon

      To most americans, guro is gore porn, but in actuality, guro or ero guro is a pretty old art form for contemporary art, that is erotic grotesque, but not necessarily gore. But as always we westerners destroy the finer aspects of eastern art forms, much like hentai is not necessarily porn, but just perverse.

      1. magicallady

        westerners: lets pornify the hell out of everything!!

        1. Moon

          Specifically the “prudes” as most anglophones are considered… I swear us “prudes” put out the most porn.

        2. magicallady

          i wonder why that is? is it a societal thing? a religious thing?

        3. ailorn

          The more repressed the more it finds a way. You find the bible belt is the biggest consumer of porn in America.

        4. JustCheetoDust

          That statistic’s nowhere near as fun as the maps of top porn searches by state or country.

        5. Moon

          Honestly I have absolutely no idea. But I find it funny that people thought of the Puritans and other protestants as these no nonsense, no sex, practically nun people, but they were pretty wild, as long as it was within your marriage. Even funnier with the quakers and former Amish i know… from what one of my friends told me, he left when he was sixteen because he wanted to get away from the amount of sex in his village, that and he is trans and even though his village was accepting of it, he never felt right since he knew he’d never be able to grow a good manly beard, and felt that he’d be completely out of place there

      2. Deanatay

        Oh yes! Guro is a Japanese thing, Europeans don’t do anything that freaky…

        1. Cerberus

          Yay Giger! He’s pretty much my favorite artist ever!

  25. magicallady

    i didnt know guro existed until a few years ago when i was 23-24

  26. Reltzik

    Wait, if Amber runs an MMO guild, how is she always writing fanfic?

    … unless it’s an RP guild? Or she’s got her phone set up to record audio notes or something?

    (Aaaaand grav roulette go. Nowhammy nowhammy nowhammy.)

    1. Orion Fury

      Low demand guild?

      1. Reltzik

        Low demand =/= no demand. She’d have to spend SOME time running it, and that’s time not spent writing fanfic unless she can multitask.

        1. Clif

          Since we know she can simultaneously Amber and Amazigirl, it’s a pretty good bet she’s a champion multi-tasker.

        2. Cerberus

          It’s been pretty well established that Amber doesn’t really do that sleep thing all that often.

        3. Reltzik

          I’d call that a troubling data point, but honestly it doesn’t really move the needle any higher than it already is.

        4. magicallady

          wouldnt amber have memory problems from her lack of sleep?

        5. Cerberus

          Not necessarily, I went without sleep and with terrible sleeping schedules in high school and college a lot with DID and I was still able to remember things fairly well and keep things integrated.

          Of course, the wrinkle there, is that by then, I was actively doing a lot of work to make sure I was still integrated that Amber/AG is not.

    2. Reltzik

      Oh, hey, Leslie! Yay Leslie!

      Leslie is cool and collected and awesome, and also an awesome teacher. I’ve been a teacher in college, but I didn’t have the qualifications for more than the most basic levels and then only as a stopgap measure. I really loved it and I really miss it and I wish I could be as cool and awesome as Leslie.

      Sadly, I am not worthy. The gravatar roulette shall continue.

      1. Norah

        Relzik, thanks for giving me the tip about changing avatars in yesterday’s comments.

        1. trlkly

          So did you not just change your gravatar? Is there a way to just get a random avatar instead?

          I got tired of looking like Carla, as, while I love her, she’s not really me. So I kinda made me by Frankensteining some art.

          I wonder if anyone can tell the three people I put together.

        2. Mitsukara

          Not entirely sure (looks kind of like Walky’s hair?), but it looks good enough I thought it was an original drawing altogether.

      2. Norah

        Reltzik, I meant. Sorry.

    3. Moon

      I was once guild leader for a decent sized guild in SWTOR… and i delegated almost all my responsibility away so i could actually play the game, it was nice to only need to do guild leader stuff every once in a while because my officers did most of the hard work, but I was also on a lot of the time if anyone needed me for something, but I was pretty hands off, and it worked well until SWTOR took a header

      1. vlademir1

        I was in a very similarly run guild during my time with LOTRO as an officer. When you decentralize like that well, it gives everyone involved in leadership positions time to do other things than run the bloody guild… including time for other things than playing the game (we were mainly mid-20s and older, so had other stuff than just playing an MMO eight hours a day on our plates).

    4. Rutee

      Errrrr, pretty easily. From the top to the bottom:

      1: We don’t know she RUNS any guild she’s in. That helps a lot in reducing your stress levels.
      1b: Technically, she /could/ be organizing raids in spite of not running it (this is not an enviable position regardless of your position in the org chart)
      2: Even in WoW, Raids can be pugged. Pugged versions are easier, sure, and give less good loot. Amber may consider this for babies, and not do it, I guess, aside from utilitarian concerns about levelling alts (I don’t really know what WoW’s ilvlling ladder looks like right now.) Easier shouldn’t mean faceroll, but elefino. But she could just be fine doing Pugged raids, for any of a thousand reasons.
      3: Running a non-raid guild is not /that/ hard on its own merits, since you have fewer sources of drama. Personality Conflicts will never ever go away tho.
      4: As you said, she can multitask. I’m more curious when she gets schoolwork done, and if she does.
      5: PROMOTIONS. This is somewhat alluded to in 1b, where I mentioned the person doing the organizing isn’t necessarily at the top, and of course, outright stated by Moon.

  27. Cephalo the Pod

    I like Mike in this strip. Actually expressing a reaction to something.

    1. Bagge

      Yup. And Ethan brings him along as if he might be helpful rather than hurtful.

      Ethan knows Mike better than anyone. I hope he is right.

      1. Cerberus

        Yeah, but we’ve also had an arc where he’s brought along Mike to help comfort and connect with Amber only to have Mike instantly ruin it by circling all conversations back to the doubly traumatic experience of prom night.

        So his instincts on this might be a bit off.

        I think it might just be as simple as Ethan not trusting his abilities to be comforting by himself and so needing someone to be there to help give him the courage to go out there and try and comfort a socially-reluctant Amber.

        1. Darkoneko

          It looks to me Mike was the one That pushed Ethan to check.

  28. Orion Fury

    Who has time to socialize? Those sexy times between fictional characters won’t write themselves.

  29. Dalrint

    I feel like that isn’t true. Somehow, Mike would know what guro is regardless.

    It’s something that would just instinctively be part of his asshole knowledge base.

  30. Sheason

    What’s the token phrase to use in this situation?

    “Oh, Japan!”

    I think that’s it.

    1. Teddae

      either that or ‘only in japan’

      1. inqntrol

        “Only in the Land of Tentacles”?

        1. JustCheetoDust

          Karaoke, Pachinko, subway frottage…tentacle porn…those vending machines that sell used school girl panties

      2. Mitsukara

        It’s not only in Japan if it’s on the internet in various languages (not even just Japanese and English!) on international servers… the world is more united than people think!

  31. Teddae

    damn you willis mike

  32. Saaaam

    Oh the sweet innocent babes of this comments section!

    1. Bagge

      Steven King: I write horror exploring the true monsters that human can be.
      14 year old Amber: Sweet summer child…

  33. Vinny

    “Guro” – wow, you learn something new every day!

  34. Spencer

    On one hand, it’s good that Amber can find a harmless outlet for her anger, even if that means writing a fucked up fanfic, because sometimes what you need to do is put all that anger onto a page and get it out of your head. For all we know, though, she maybe just wrote one when she was a teenager and that isn’t what she’s writing now.

    I kinda think this strip’s more about how Ethan’s desperate to believe that Amber’s not mentally unwell. He’s too passive to stand up to her in any way, so he just think that whatever is wrong with her can be fixed as long as he stands around being nice and supportive. See? She’s doing a thing she’s done in a good mood! Obviously now she won’t crawl through my window talking about herself in the third person, right?

    Also it would probably have helped if Danny told him ” Amber is talking about how she’s two people and that she almost died.”

  35. Inspector Hound

    Wait a minute. We haven’t seen Amber since April 26th.

    We have only Dina’s word that she’s speaking for Amber.

    There’s only one possible answer. Dina has Amber tied up in a steam tunnel somewhere, and is even now forging her name on an insurance policy.

    Clever girl.

    1. Bagge

      We have seen Amazigirl after that, and that is just Amber in a mask, right?

      …it is SOMEONE in a mask.

      Shit, you are right.

      1. chris2315

        Hey, we have no definitive proof that Amazigirl is Amber. I mean, she could be Mary for all we know. Have you ever seen Amazigirl and Mary in the same room at the same time?

        … God, I felt sick just writing that.

        1. Amazi-Stool

          The tag search returns one result.

        2. trlkly

          Yeah, but that’s clearly an imposter Mary. She’s smiling and not mischievously.

        3. chris2315

          Dang it…

      2. DSL

        We do know Dina has tried on the costume. If Alfred can be Batman …

      3. Dalrint

        It’s Ultracar.

  36. Bagge

    As many artists, Amber draws inspiration from personal tragedies.

    I mean, you can say many bad thing about Blaine, but at least he inspired Amber to write the masterpiece “Bucky and the fleasheating lube”

    1. Spencer

      Honestly, it’d be nice if this was the extent of Amber’s coping mechanisms (and also it is nice to see that the comments section isn’t treating the violently abused kid as a total shitstain because she writes weird fanfics sometimes). A lot of how I get over my worst thoughts is writing them down. I feel like I’m getting it out of my head.

      It’s interesting to me how both of her alters are processing Danny’s “betrayal.” That Amazi-Girl has to do his laundry for him because she owes him a favour and doesn’t want that hanging over her head, but Amber isolates herself into a piece of creative writing.

      1. chris2315

        I honestly can’t understand why people give others crap over harmless hobbies. As far as coping mechanisms go, writing weird fanfiction has got to be one of the healthiest ones.

      2. Darkoneko

        Joker Blaine vs Toedad, two arseholes enter, one arsehole leave.

        1. Darkoneko

          …it Just occured to me That it would likely be a yaoi fanfic title, instead.

      3. Cerberus

        I think the internet is really positive in the form of mellowing people out about the existence of uncommon or seemingly “odd” fetishes. Like, it becomes “oh, yeah, people are into weird stuff sometimes, whatever” a lot of the time.

        And yeah, I think that’s a really good point on her alters processing things in different ways. Amazi-girl focuses on making things “square” and channeling her totally not rage into “fighting bad guys” (in a way she doesn’t fully realize is a rapidly expanding category inside her mind). And Amber focusing on a hobby that serves as both coping strategy and avoidance strategy (cause that is super common among folks with anxiety disorders as that kind of stuff can help cut through all the brain noise).

        I think of the two, Amber’s coping strategy is the healthiest, because of the reasons you note about the healing power of writing and it not involving escalating violent behavior. It’s also the process of coping that might be involving actual grieving of the relationship rather than nursing anger about it.

  37. Rex Vivat

    Did… did Amber create Mike? Is she the reason why he is the way he is?
    (Of course, the Walkyverse begs to differ, but still.)

  38. NinjaNick

    That’s bloody disturbing.

    1. Bagge

      That’s the name of one of her fics.

  39. chris73

    Dinas loyalty is commendable but i can see it backfiring on her pretty badly in the near future

    1. Cerberus

      Yeah, Dina is trying to do right by a person who saved that which was most important to her and that is being expressed in a die-hard loyalty, but Amber/AG is also in a space where she is not best taking care of herself or her mental conditions and could genuinely use some friend intervention to get her some help.

      So I can definitely see Amber/AG getting worse and worse because she doesn’t have any models for positively managing her mental health and Dina warding off friends trying to check in on her out of misplaced loyalty.

      1. chris73

        But this is dumbingofage where nothing dramatic ever happens so its all good

        1. chris73

          Awesome, I’m now Ethan!

        2. chris73

          WTF?

  40. Atoms

    This is more (implied) concern for another human being than I think I’ve ever seen Mike exhibit. I… don’t know how to feel about that.

    (In this universe, at least.)

  41. Mx Miki

    …and that was how Mike and Amber became friends

  42. OnyxIdol

    I’m actually surprised Mike considers guro to be fucked up. I didn’t think he could be fazed by anything.

    Also, having Flashbacks to Frankenfran.

    1. NoHeart6265

      Mike’s jerk who is sustained off the misery of others, but he’s never been truly evil. And guro being what it is is definitely enough to make a jerk uncomfortable

    2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      You can’t insult dead people.

      Well, you can, but they don’t react much.

      Waste of resources.

    3. Fairyth

      I actually like Frankenfran. In small doses. A few chapters at a time.

    4. Amazi-Stool

      I had to look it up and faze as a verb really exists.
      Originally i thought it was something based on Faz, like dan it up!

  43. Hiraku

    Do not look up Saya no Uta. I was a vegetarian for over a week afterwards.

    1. chris2315

      Man, I really need to get around to playing that. I absolutely love Urobuchi’s anime work, but I visual novels tend to have low availability in North America, so I have no idea where to begin to look for it. It’s already miracle we got all the Zero Escape games.

  44. chris2315

    I just googled “guro.” I will never unsee what I have just seen. It is forever imprinted onto my eyeballs.

  45. Hwajaemae

    I’ve missed Mike so much…

  46. podian

    I’d like to note that both here and on IW! Mike today is largely non-jerkish…

    1. inqntrol

      That’s what he wants you to believe.

      1. Clif

        Mike today non-jerkish? He got a ton of people to google guro, he messed with people’s minds by switching places between panel 1 and panel 4 (look at the door art) and then of course there’s his masterpiece for the day.

  47. Eldritch Gentleman

    Oh dear… does that fanfiction involve Sal and Guro and Amazi-girl? Yikes…

    1. rectilinearpropagation

      I don’t think any of us will be happier with additional details on what that hypothetical fic is like.

      1. Some1

        Amazi Girl ripped Sal’s arms of and lapped up her blood. Sal used her teeth to bite into Amazi Girl’s throat.

        1. SgtWadeyWilson

          My brain defaulted to picturing Amazi-Girl as a werewolf and Sal as a vampire to protect itself.

        2. Disloyal Subject

          Garou guro? I can dig it.

        3. Disloyal Subject

          This could be morbidly hilarious in Dwarf Fortress formatting.

  48. StClair

    I’m actually rather concerned that what Dina perceives as fanfiction is actually Amber’s extremely detailed script for how Amazi-Girl’s Final Epic Confrontation with her Arch-Nemesis is supposed to go, and ends with a higher body count than one of Shakespeare’s tragedies and Batman vs. Superman put together.

    1. Anorak

      In other words, the best ending ever

      1. StClair

        No, the “best” part is that whatever happens will all be fic-Sal’s fault. Including where poor deluded fic-Danny, seduced by the villain’s lies, jumps between them at a critical moment, is mortally wounded, and uses his last breaths to apologize to Amazi-Girl for doubting her.

        1. StClair

          and that, plus fic-Sal’s evil gloating about it, will be all the excuse/justification needed for the next few dozen pages of Amazi-Girl brutally righteously beating and torturing the “monster” to death.
          In. Detail.

    2. Cerberus

      If AG is posing as Amber now, that’s a really really bad thing for her DID condition.

      I kinda hope she’s Amber right now for her sake and that this is just how the Amber alter is handling and processing the break-up.

      1. Spencer

        Next preview panel shows Amber, so chances are this is her.

        I could easily see something like “this is what Amber does. Amazi-Girl does the punching because Amber isn’t allowed to.”

  49. Charles Phipps

    I really hope Sal’s defeat of Amazi-Girl ends with Bane’s speech from Knightfall.

    1. SgtWadeyWilson

      Dang! Now I really wish that Knightfall armor Amazi-Girl sketch had worked out!

  50. rectilinearpropagation

    My phone fought really hard to stop me from writing “guro”. In fact, it flat out deleted the whole word the first time.

    It’s like it *knows*.

  51. nellydreadful

    … I… Find it VERY hard to believe Mike didn’t find out about Guro on his own. If not for his own direct enjoyment, then definitely for the indirect enjoyment of emailing to the unwary or keeping it open in a spare tab to switch to if anyone looks over his shoulder.

    (The normal way of doing things is to keep homework in the spare tab while browsing porn, but you gotta figure mike would do the opposite for maximum brain searing.)

    1. rectilinearpropagation

      If not for his own direct enjoyment, then definitely for the indirect enjoyment of emailing to the unwary

      You can’t know to seek something out if you don’t know it exists.

      It’s also not a term that’s used much, if at all, outside of fan-fiction so unless that was something Mike would seek out on his own then him not knowing about it until Amber told him makes sense.

  52. Darkoneko

    …Mike learned part of his ways from Amber.

    woaaaah.

  53. TomatoPhalanges

    I just recently finished reading Shortstacked and seeing Mike and Ethan talking about Amber is weirdly nostalgic.

    1. Foxhack

      Shortstacked! It’s like Shortpacked, but set in an Ihop. 😀

  54. Pinja

    Is Ethan part owl? Because that much of a neck twist seems bad.

    1. inqntrol

      I think he’s a magic one. You know how you call a magic owl? Hoodini. /leaves the stage

    2. Disloyal Subject

      It’s not difficult to turn one’s head that far, but I’d expect to see his trapezius bulge a little. As is his neck looks unnervingly like a bobblehead.

  55. Catapostrophe

    Thanks, comment section, for satisfying my curiosity enough that I didn’t have to Google anything weird today!

  56. Darkoneko

    I just drew a parallel with QC’s Marigold fanfics level and I can’t stop chuckling.

    1. Kryss LaBryn

      Oh, you *know* they hang out together online. They’re probably in the same guild.

      Aaaand now I want fanfic. No, not guro fanfic, you terrible, awful people (although thanks for explaining it so I don’t need to head over to redditt/eyebleach again, not that that’s a bad thing–but the *need* is).

      1. Darkoneko

        Haha, that’s totally a crossover in the makin’

  57. Stairmasternem

    One thing I like about the Ethan/ Mike dynamic is Mike actually TALKS as opposed to just scheming ruin for others.

  58. Zaxares

    Wait, Amber writes guro fanfiction?? O.o

    *backs away slowly*

    1. Disloyal Subject

      Apparently so. I’m legitimately surprised, but I guess it’s nice to combine having an audience with irrational all-consuming rage-fuelled bloodlust.

      1. Spencer

        Well, look at it this way.

        Amber has a lot of violent ideation going on, and she’s scared of it, so she tries to find ways to distance herself from those feelings. By writing something violent, she’s taking those bottled up feelings from out of her head and putting them on a page.

        For all we know, writing gorefics was how she processed her anger before she decided to become Amazi-Girl.

        1. Fairyth

          But the problem is, is that does not work, it does not ‘get it out of her system’, it causes her to dwell on gruesome scenes, basically fantasizing about torturing people.

        2. Spencer

          It won’t work, because if Amber found healing through writing than her storyline would be pretty anti-climactic, but sometimes that’s how it works.

          At least, it does for me. It’s like I kick it out of my head. It stops being a part of me.

          Also this is literally one line about something she maybe wrote when she was 15. I’m not too convinced this has any kind of deep meaning to her character.

        3. Disloyal Subject

          That was my thinking exactly, but ‘guro’ implies that someone’s getting off on it sexually. I figure it’s the same ‘anger repurposed’ deal as Amazi-girl, channeling her emotions into giving people something they want. It could have started as her writing gore for its own sake, then realizing there are people out there that enjoy it and deliberately catering to them to legitimize the fics in her own eyes as more than just “rarr Amber angry.”

        4. Spencer

          I’m kinda guessing that she’s not into the erotic part of it. She just writes the violent part, because that’s what she’s actually interested in.

        5. Spencer

          Like, I say that because a lot of the stuff I’ve seen that’s tagged guro is just fucked up hyperstylized violence, the kind a teenager would find appealing. It just makes more sense to me if it’s about violence than any kind of erotica, especially since we’ve seen that Amber’s taste in smut tends to be lighter.

          That said, the idea of her legitimizing gorn fics is actually really clever and it’s consistent with her use of Amazi-Girl.

  59. Rob Carlson

    Mike cares! 😀 That just made my day.

    Also, Amber wrote guro in high school, apparently.

    …

    AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH

  60. The One Guy

    Really? That’s the only reason he knows of it? I just figured you stick around the internet for long enough and eventually you learn about this sort of stuff.

    1. Disloyal Subject

      Mike prefers to troll in person. It lets him savor all the little emotions.

  61. Falling Star

    From nerds to more nerds.
    Also, can we have AmberFiction book collections? ‘Cause I would read the hell out of those.

    1. chiscii

      that would actually be a real interesting character study if mike is to be believed that the content reflects on her mental state

  62. Just Me

    Dina should have let Ethan and Mike drag Amber out of her room….again.

  63. Liliet

    Ah yes, guro. My favorite thing. Always nice to get a shout-out

    *is 100% sincere*
    *is also TOTALLY trolling*

  64. Fairyth

    Well, I just skimmed the comments, so I don’t think I need to look that up. SAFE. No, really. I won’t. At all. Oh. Ok, that’s what I figured. Wikipedia explained it without traumatizing me. I really don’t think I want to check the image tab though…

  65. Jeremy

    Sigh thanks for introducing me to one more Fd up thing. (What has been seen can not be unseen.

  66. a snow mous e

    *googles “guro”*
    Sounds more like “goru” if you ask me!

    1. a snow mous e

      http://instantrimshot.com

  67. trlkly

    Naw, it’s all on you guys. I had no desire to look up “guro.” It actually did not cross my mind until I looked down. The context gives me enough info. It was YOU GUYS who made me curious. But then fulfilled that curiosity.

    I’m also very much of the persuasion that anything between consenting adults or one adult that affects no one else is perfectly fine. Sexual fantasies of any kind are fine. They may bother me, but that just means I won’t participate.

    Sure, there can be trauma that causes stuff like that, but the fetish usually remains after the trauma is dealt with.

    Still, I must admit that this is a level too far for me to even enjoy in a partner. Normally I’m like “If it turns you on, I get turned on.” But graphic gore of any kind is an exception.

    1. Amazi-Stool

      I’m also very much of the persuasion that anything between consenting adults or one adult that affects no one else is perfectly fine.
      Consenting adults? Check
      Perfectly fine? You may reconsider that!

      1. trlkly

        Only if you use the higher quality avatar I made for you last we talked. (Don’t rescale it, just upload it.)

        Kidding aside, seeing as I’m okay with voluntary suicide, I can’t really not be okay with this. Even if the idea grosses me out horribly.

        At least, as long as it’s not a depression situation where you think you want to die but could get better and not want to. That’s where I draw the line on suicide. It can’t be the mental illness talking.

        1. Amazi-Stool

          Hey thanks, i’ll try it out!

          Wasn’t aware that Gravatar’s rescaling is better than my home-made.

  68. Kay

    ….*Already knew what Guro was*

    I don’t know if I’ve ever googled _pictures_ of it, though, you silly users. But I’m more than familiar/not particularly bothered by the writings with it.

    1. Kay

      Silly google users*

  69. Kernanator

    No matter how weird you think your fetish is, there’s always a weirder one out there.

    1. magicallady

      someone, somewhere, has a toothpaste fetish

      1. Some1

        Well…toothpaste tubes are a long thin tube which you squeez between your hands to get a white (usually) liquid like substance to come out, which you then have the option of putting in your mouth.

      2. QWERTY

        someone out there has a fetish for fat men in spandex.

        1. magicallady

          theres a fetish for every occasion

        2. Roborat

          Is there a fetish about fetishes?

  70. Ntrovert

    … So gyro must be sandwich porn?

    Kinky. Just dont ask about the house sauce…

  71. boomboom

    MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKE OH THANK GOD. The hero of the series finally returns.

  72. Charles Phipps

    Now for the litmus test of Mike. Will his evil manipulations destroy or save Amber?

  73. skdk

    i loooooooove mike

  74. skdk

    oh gosh hes hot. just look at him

  75. lightsabermario

    Mike is very glad that he knew Amber in high school.

  76. Sarah

    Oh yeeeahhh, I had totally forgotten that in this verse Mike went to high school with Ethan and Amber and they considered him a friend

  77. Fang shinobi

    And I thought I knew what guro was. Apparently people here are saying it’s gore porn but I thought it was just gore in general. Then why does the guro site I go to have non-porn gore??? Which is what I mostly read there *cough*. I had a guro phase, okayyy.

  78. Aslee

    Guro: At least it’s not vore?

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