128

El Bistro
Posted on December 7, 2020 by David M Willis
November's second Patreon bonus strip is about Arnold! And his hoodie. All patrons can go read the strip at the Dumbing of Age Patreon. And remember, you can pledge up to always read tomorrow's strip today!

128 thoughts on “El Bistro”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    AND people

    …

    Danny just seems like he’s humouring Joe at this point, like “fuck it, I need to eat and if it makes Joe

    feel better that I might be date-trolling, w/e”

    (that or like, he’s getting nowhere in Melody of Memory and how is Kingdom Hearts still going anyway)

    1. Ana Chronistic

      how big was El Bistro to people outside of campus? bc I’m p sure the literal closet that was the deli by our office is shuttered bc nobody went there except the office workers in the same or nearby building (doubt the handful of people in the fancy apartments go there enough to support it)

      1. Needfuldoer

        It sounds vaguely familiar, but probably just because that’s an extremely generic name you’d expect to find in dining halls, mall food courts, hotels, and office buildings all over the country.

      2. KJ

        I think it still exists, but only at a few locations (1 or 2 od the c-stores). A lot of them were replaced by Erbert and Gerbert

    2. Kyrik Michalowski

      I syill need to start KH3, I’ve done a good job avoiding spoilers so far, but I really need to sit down and play it before I do get spoiled.

      1. Matthew Wells

        Darth Vader is Sora’s dad.

    3. Mr. Random

      I remember making a joke comment asking about what major plot revelations Melody would reveal.

      Only for someone to very sincerely say they didn’t want to spoil anything and telling me to just watch youtube if I wanted to know.

      The games are just their own level of ridiculousness that it’s hard to not enjoy the mild insanity.

      1. WikiDreamer

        At this point, this is pretty much why I play most of the mainline games and a VERY few exceptional “side games” (358/2, 3DS, 2.8…yes these are actual subtitles). I mean, so long as I’m not treading old ground, I’ll happily play through Nomura’s Wild AF Ride.

    4. Delicious Taffy

      Kingdom Hearts is still going because it’s genuine, and even in our post-ironic world of layered circumstantial enjoyment, that’s something people want in their entertainment. Listen to that fucking theme music after all these years and feel nothing, I challenge you.

      1. Ana Chronistic

        Full confession: I hate the slow theme enough it stops moving me (I’ve also overplayed the fast version that it’s less effective than used to be)

        I also really loved the first game… until I thought about replaying it from scratch, and… ugh. JRPGs really don’t do what they used to for me, and I replayed Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy IV about a hundred million times, from scratch.

    5. Regalli

      I love Kingdom Hearts dearly but I tend to assume Nomura keeps getting them greenlit because for a while Disney just didn’t care beyond sales numbers, and then they saw the KHIII hype and realized ‘wait, shit, there’s money in this,’ and there hasn’t been enough development time since III actually released for them to have truly realized ‘wait, fuck, this is somehow even fucking weirder than it was when we decided to just sign the checks.’

      Alternately, there is some unsung hero in the middle-upper rungs of Disney management who knows exactly how bonkers this franchise is and considers it a feature, not a flaw, and they keep signing off on new games. (I say unsung hero because let’s face it, even if you don’t like the more recent KH games, I think we can all agree that there’s value in Disney having this one franchise that’s just complete JRPG Nonsense while they’re otherwise putting out the safest possible Entertainment Product. If only the value of snickering at how Disney keeps hyping their First Ever Onscreen Gay Character over and over again because it’s all half-assed and easily removed for international markets while the video game branch just has this convoluted series that accidentally wrote an entire game around a trans narrative that one time.*)

      * Between Xion’s JRPG Nonsense Deal and the fact that her storyline is a struggle for identity when the authority figures in her life see her, quite literally, as an entirely different person than she sees herself as and keep trying to force her to be that person with no regard for her autonomy? Again, I’m under no illusions this was Nomura’s intent or Disney’s, but at the same time that summary is actually how we’re supposed to read her storyline in Days and it’s queer as hell.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        I never thought about Xion’s story that way. For years, I was like “Oh, she doesn’t matter. She’s from the crappy DS game.” Then I watched just the cutscene in the HD remasters and thought “Huh. There’s somethin’ to this kid after all.” You bring up an interesting point.

        1. Regalli

          I think I first found the idea posed on TV Tropes like, pre-3D’s release (though it focused more on the stuff I didn’t allude to here than the story arc itself, IIRC,) but it’s stuck with me ever since and the more I consider the storyline, the stronger it reads that way.

          The HD remaster movie also cuts out a LOT of good character moments (for Roxas as well – there’s an excellent scene and boss fight with Saix that gets cut entirely since it was all text-only,) unfortunately. If you can find a playthrough somewhere that lets you read the text, I recommend it. But yeah, Days is one of my favorite games in the series entirely off Xion. Is the gameplay good? No. Are the cutscenes and game areas clearly structured to save cartridge space as much as possible? God, yes. Is the story itself made of retcons that you can almost, but not quite, justify from a couple odd lines in II? Yep. But as a 16-year-old coming out of a depressive episode, that ending really got to me, and Xion resonated a LOT with my Terrible Kingdom Hearts OC Days. (I don’t know what the Japanese fandom looked like, especially pre-II, but it is definitely Something that both Namine and Xion read so much like self-insert characters in an existing group, and then both their storylines are identity crises as their presence interferes with Sora’s life on a fundamental level. In distinctly different ways, even.)

          Then again, 3D’s also up there on my favorites list, and not just because it has the TWEWY kids. So my taste in KH is already a bit odd.

      2. StClair

        I was into KH at the start because of the implied promise (which turned out to not actually be one) of mashing Classic Disney and Classic Final Fantasy together in new and interesting ways. I was there for the total fanboy nostalgia trip, basically. When Nomura decided to head off at a 90 degree angle deep into his own weirdness, I sadly checked out of the series and haven’t really looked back.

        Like, I get why he wanted to make this his own thing. But I was there for the Square ‘member berries (compare Dissidia, or Record Keeper), mashed up with Disney’s. I’m shallow, I admit it. 🙁

        1. Regalli

          I was a preteen when the first game came out and have always had a stronger tie to the KH characters than the Final Fantasy ones, but III choosing to include no Square Enix crossover characters whatsoever was deeply disappointing. (I accept 3D containing only TWEWY since there’s a vague implication they could be the canonical versions of the cast, and I love The World Ends With You and this was around the point we started resigning ourselves as a fandom to eternal disappointment at the thought of Square Enix ever doing something with them again so we were desperate. Which is now no longer the case! 😀 ) It’s absolutely a crossover fanfic that outgrew both its source materials, and I do not blame people who wanted the more straightforward series KHI promised instead of the lengthy musing on the natures and conditions of personhood that we’ve gotten.

  2. Leorale

    more like El Bi-stro.

    1. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

      nyuck nyuck nyuck nyuck nyuck

      1. Geneseepaws

        A Wilde Just Some Guy with a Grendel Pooch icon is just so confusing like Pascal Ashwin or Kate Lepas. Just ….?

    2. BBCC

      I love it.

    3. Chaucer59

      Was wondering who would toss that out first (?toss that — off?).

    4. Airyu

      Genuinely good one

  3. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

    Oh no, the joycons! Those joysticks will never be the same again!

    1. Rose by Any Other Name

      I honestly didn’t even realize he was playing on a Switch until I saw this (and other) comments about his abuse of his joy cons.

      Now that I’ve seen this, I cannot unsee it.

      I regret my previous comment about relating to Danny at all. Why didn’t he put the joy cons back to charge? How could he toss one over his shoulder? WHY?!

      1. SuperZero

        You can only charge so many Joy Cons at a time.

      2. Ana Chronistic

        I mean, he… COULD be throwing them onto the bed relatively safely

        …

        no he’s not, it’s Danno

  4. Kyrik Michalowski

    I’m proud of Danny for being equal opportunity in his desire to scope out potential mates. Now if only he could find a way to not Dan it up every single time.

    So what are the odds he Dans it up this time?

    1. Reltzik

      I’d say the odds of that are pretty poor.

      Mostly because him having some moderate success now greatly increases his ability to Dan things up far worse in the future.

  5. Kyrik Michalowski

    Also, who is “I” and why are they tagged?

    1. Rose by Any Other Name

      I assumed it was a place holder for el bistro in case it still exists. Could be wrong – that was just a guess.

    2. a/snow/mous/e

      this is the first time the letter “i” has been used in the otherwise lipogrammatic Dumbing of Age
      honestly, no idea. typo, maybe?
      or did danny name his nintendo switch “i”? does joe have an alter named “i” who is depicted without eyebrows?

      1. a/snow/mous/e

        oh it’s gone now

        1. Rose by Any Other Name

          Musta been a typo. **shrug**

        2. a/snow/mous/e

          My next guess was going to be the “i” formed by that red block on the wall behind Joe’s head in the last panel, and the little circle above it.

    3. BarerMender

      All I can figure is it refers to Willis’s self reference in the floating text.

      1. a/snow/mous/e

        Since the tag is gone now, I think it was just a typo.

      2. BarerMender

        Or maybe it’s the pronoun “I”, which appears six times.

        1. a/snow/mous/e

          or only four, if you don’t count contractions

    4. a/snow/mous/e

      Golden Grahams got a tag, “i” got a tag (temorarily), and yet there’s still no tag for Mister Bellybutton

      1. a/snow/mous/e

        if willis isn’t careful, he may spark navel warfare in the comments section

        1. clif

          We certainly wouldn’t want to torpedo the possibility.

  6. BBCC

    Ohh, these two.

  7. Rose by Any Other Name

    One of the best things about dating/marrying another bi girl who was also my best friend for several years before we hooked up is the fact that we can go places and be like “oh! that person is so hot – don’t you think?” and the other is like “oh yeah! we should, like, go over and talk with them.”

    What I’m saying is this is a rare moment when I actually get Danny. I know, it feels weird for me too.

    1. Yotomoe

      I’ve only ever dated bi girls and I can’t tell you how cathartic it is to be like “man this character is so hot” and she’s like “right!?” Honestly I’m nervous about dating someone who isn’t bi at this point.

      1. Exarch

        ^^

  8. cmasta1992

    I’m up for some Danny/Joe hijinks

  9. Proto_Eevee

    Danny just doomed his joy-cons to eternal drift

    1. lia

      in the first panel by using them normally

      1. Regalli

        There’s no escape from the drift. It comes for us all in time.

        Unless you manage to find a game that somehow never uses the joysticks in which case, impressive!

        1. Gizen

          …I don’t understand how it feels like everyone in the world has their joycons drift but me. I got my Switch only a couple months after launch, never had any problems with the joycons (did have some problems with the wifi connection it breaking somehow). Got a second Switch, never had any problems with those joycons either. Hell, I’ve never had stick drift on ANY controller I’ve ever had in my entire life, for any console, and yet I hear about it so often (and see so many returns because of it while working retail) that I feel like some kind of freak anomaly.

        2. Delicious Taffy

          The Chosen One has been revealed! Alert the High Elder!

        3. Needfuldoer

          I’ve abused the joysticks on my Lite plenty with Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing, and they’re still fine. (CTR is worse, because I subconsciously start wrenching on them like the old DualShock sticks…)

        4. Regalli

          From what little we’ve been able to figure out, it seems like it’s partly luck of the draw when they start drifting (since every theory about the issue is that it’s a mechanical issue stemming from picking either a joystick or potentiometer or both that don’t hold up well, meaning every joycon has the issue that can cause it) and partly length of time being used to really wear it down, at least as much as the intensity of the gameplay. Because seriously, I traded my launch Switch for the Animal Crossing model, had a backup set of joycons to switch off with frequently that were bought only a month or two before, and have definite drift in one set and what I suspect is drift in the other. Not only have I almost exclusively been playing Animal Crossing in that time, there were chunks of the summer and early fall where I could only play for about twenty to thirty minutes a day because of tendonitis, so that was the only game I was playing. So who the fuck even knows.

  10. C.T Phipps

    Somehow, I think Dan is even a bigger creep than Joe.

    1. Sunny

      Maybe he’ll learn how to play that song on the ukulele yet.

    2. RedCat

      I think he’s one of those guys who seem inexperiences and awkward and it can come across as really weird.

  11. Jamie

    Yo Willis, you tagged “I”. Please tell me it’s a new character.

    1. a/snow/mous/e

      i

  12. Golden Yak

    Let’s leer equally!

    1. clif

      Seems fair.

  13. Stephen Bierce

    Does playing Burger Time on the Switch at noon make you hungry? Asking for a friend.

  14. timemonkey

    What other hot guys are there to check out?

    1. Keulen

      I’m assuming there’s still plenty of random background students. Some of them are probably hot.

  15. Nono

    Okay okay but I want to know more about Arnold’s sexy hoodie

    1. SuperFroakie82

      Maybe Arnold is one of the hot dudes?

    2. BBCC

      The patreon strip is fully satisfying.

  16. Amara Rezby

    Man, dude is still heartbroken over Ethan huh. Dan just does not get over anybody. He’s probably still hung up somewhat wrt Dorothy and Amber/Amazi too.

    1. C.T Phipps

      Danny: It’s like he blames me for something!

      Joe: Telling him his lover and friend should probably die before they did?

      Danny: I DIDN’T KNOW HE’D DIE.

      Joe: He was in a coma from brain damage.

      1. Rabid Rabbit

        Danny: You’re the one whose dad’s a doctor! How was I supposed to know that was serious???

        (Note: in Danny’s honor, I made sure to put the bold tag before the italic one.)

      2. Anon A Mouse

        He wasn’t wrong. It’s good Mike is dead. Good on Danny for saying it.

        1. He Who Abides

          ^This. He might’ve picked a bad time, but his words needed to be said at some point.

        2. C.T Phipps

          Saying Mike should die for being a jerk is less Mike-ish than Blaine-ish.

        3. thejeff

          He didn’t actually say Mike should die. It’s easy to see how Ethan would take it that way, especially after the fact, but he didn’t say it and likely didn’t mean it.

          It seems very likely that what he intended to say is that Ethan would be better off with the abuser around for a while.

        4. monkyvirus

          Yeah, I get why ethan would just not want to be around Danny after that incident. But Danny was right and I’d probably have said the same thing (and then regretted my lack of tact). Mike was a horrid person.

        5. Anon A Mouse

          Mike should’ve died long ago for being a cartoonish villain who’s only contribution was making people feel bad cause he’s an edgelord.

        6. clif

          But would your mom agree?

          I loved Mike across incarnations, first because I recognize impulses and aspects of my own personality that I have to work to keep under control (and as Mike’s creator, I suspect this must be true of Willis as well), and secondly because there was always this delightful ambiguity in Mike’s motives. And even though he will always be there in rereads, I miss Mike. Even when he wasn’t on screen, there was always the potential he could show up in the next panel as Booster does here.

          None of which means I would want to deal with Mike in real life.

    2. Airyu

      Oh I didn’t even think of that at all! That was so long ago, I wonder if him and Ethan have really interacted after that…

  17. PB

    You know, coming from Joe, that was almost sweet. Almost.

  18. Bagge

    It’s just gonna be Sal and asher standing in opposite corners looking hot, right?

    1. Eldritchy

      Judging by Danny’s previous girlfriends I’m not sure if Sal would be his type… let’s wait for Joyce to try those glasses on.

      1. vlademir1

        I kinda wanna see Joyce and Danny date in this continuity just to see all the Joe reactions.

  19. Dr. T

    Technically, EVERYTHING restaurant in the dorms are closed as, outside of a few that some international students are stuck in, the dorms are actually made so no one will even want to try to stay beyond Thanksgiving (the campus is virtual until February). That means all restaurants closed, all public facilities shut off (so no showers), and the heat turned down to the point where it is just warm enough to prevent pipes from freezing.

  20. Supersonic92

    The funny thing about seeing a Switch here; the 3DS and Wii U weren’t released yet when their first semester began. The entire release life cycle of both consoles lasted less than 5 months…

    1. powerpowerpow

      Sal and Danny went from playing Mario Kart DS to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe over the course of a few months.

  21. Yotomoe

    On one hand it DOES sound creepy. On the other hand that implies that looking for hot ladies is any more morally skeevy than looking for hot dudes. Sometimes you just wanna see some hot people. And you want hot people to see you.

    1. C.T Phipps

      Danny has a lot of issues I assume stem from his upbringing.

      1. Liliet

        Also from having interacted with Joe for an extended period of time.

  22. Arianod

    Equal opportunity predating!

    1. Yotomoe

      I believe in everyones right to predate something. In fact I believed in it before anyone else!

      1. Arianod

        Predatory X2 combo!!!

  23. TemplarKnight

    Not gonna lie, the predatory thing is why I preferred women older than me to women younger. Guys dating women younger than them always seemed creepy and wrong, even if it was just a few years.

    Don’t even get me started on how they decided to use math to make it not creepy.

    1. Yotomoe

      I just prefer older women cuz I’m one of those guys who’s always preffered the company of older people. Still part of me finds it a bit hypocritical, if not a little condescending, that a guy dating a younger woman automatically makes it seem like he’s being a creep and not that they had a real connection and they like each other. Like the girl is just being used and not that she made a decision herself based on her own thoughts and feelings regardless of her age. I guess after all these years men as a whole have accidentally pissed away all the goodwill so people’s knee jerk is to assume there’s an ulterior motive.

      1. Svankensen

        It is more that there’s already a power imbalance between men and women. Being older usually accentuates that.

        1. Demoted Oblivious

          Really it’s about abuse rather than the imballances themselves. If consenting adults (of any combination) get involved, there can be a power imballance (arguably there always is in some fashion). The issue is whether either party is seeking to exploit that imballance, which is abuse, or if both parties have an open and agreed understanding of what works for them and how to resolve problems that come up.

          The older man trope has taken a beating recently because only recently (past several years) has the world really been calling out the abuses people in power do. Since they were getting away with it for so long there is a definite build up and thats also allowed many men in power to get significantly older while living that way. But it’s not like they were innocent, turned 50 and started trying shit. They were always trying, their target demographic didn’t change, but they continued to age while still getting away with their abuses. C&H recently covered this idea very well:

          https://explosm.net/comics/5733/

          These people seek out imballance, or create it themselves, specifically to abuse it.

  24. PiotrW

    That’s actually a… disturbing statement by Danny. Gay people can be predatory, too.

    1. Eldritchy

      Double Standards in full swing

    2. RedCat

      He said “it feels like”, not that he believes that.

      1. C.T Phipps

        i go with the interpretation of Dan that Dan is actually a judgemental controlling creep.

      2. monkyvirus

        I think the fact it leans in to the existing societal prejudices faced by women is why it feels more skeevy. Though objectifying people is trash which ever way you slice it.

  25. dwayne

    We haven’t seen Ethan since August?

    1. AGV

      Who’s Ethan?

      1. Needfuldoer

        The guy from D4: doors and desk and doctor and depression.

  26. Keulen

    When I was in college I usually went to the cafeteria to eat food, but to each their own I guess.

  27. Lone Duck

    Only predatory if you act like a predator. Joe, for all his many relationships, hasn’t tried to exert control over any of the women he slept with. Danny was in a position of control with Amber (knowing a secret) and did not exploit that. Going out to maybe meet new people isn’t a bad thing. Not saying these boys are perfect, just that they aren’t predatory.

    1. Sam

      Predators aren’t defined just by how they act, but how they view other people. Joe’s list shows he can have a predator mindset where he just sees women as conquests not as people. Also one of the first things he said this semester was that older women would now see him as an adult since it was the second semester (kind of predator-like to have stock of what groups of people might bang you at all times, though also kind of immature and easy to prey on himself). He’s not ‘active rapist’ tier like Ryan was or an edgy af lunatic about it, but he can still view people in a predatorish way at times that can make people uncomfy.

      1. Zaxares

        Joe definitely straddles the line, I agree. His one saving grace is that if the lady says no, he always accepts it and departs. He never tries to press his attentions if it’s unwanted. That said, I could easily see situations where women who are shy or are not confrontational by nature have difficulty saying no, and Joe could easily interpret that as “well, she didn’t REJECT me.”

        1. thejeff

          “always accepts it and departs”? After she beats him or yells at him to leave her alone. And even then he’ll come back and keep making comments.

          When has he accepted it and departed after the lady said no? At least before his attempt at reformation.

          Joe’s more complicated than that and most of that behavior (and all of the boasting) was performative. As far as we know, he’s actually only been with 3 girls during the strip and they all likely came on to him. Still, his performance is/was definitely predatory. There was an entire story arc about why he needed to change and his attempts to do so, but that often seems to be ignored by his defenders.

        2. BBCC

          Before we found out he was bullshitting about it, he also used to say things like ‘Alcohol really helps facilitate the threesomes’. For a while it really looked like if he wasn’t a rapist, it was only by luck rather than principle.

  28. Sean Smith

    Dan has always had a complex about pursuing women. Remember how his first interaction with Billie went? Perhaps he will be more comfortable hitting on dudes.

  29. Needfuldoer

    Don’t throw your Joy-Cons, Danny. Those things are way more fragile than you might think.

  30. Sirksome

    My grav’s name is Arnold? For the life of me I thought they were just s,ome background loser which he probably is but a named loser now! With a sexy hoodie I guess.

    1. vlademir1

      You were not a Shortpacked! reader.

      1. Sirksome

        Correct. I’ve tried a few times mostly out of curiosity from the occasional comment or link about it but it’s a lot to read. I know some stuff though like how Carla is a robot in that universe. Some stuff kind of blows my mind though, like Joyce and Walky being married or Robin being a main character. That stuff seems too crazy for a humble DoA only reader.

        1. clif

          Start here – http://www.itswalky.com/comic/and-now/ – and when you catch up switch to Shortpacked.

  31. Spencer

    Danny is good, actually.

  32. vlademir1

    1. Dear gods please tell me they’re not about to go perv on the service staff.

    2. Looking around Google I can’t tell for sure if El Bistro at Read still exists, but it looks to maybe be iffy. They aren’t listed on the current IU website, and every other online listing is a few years older with 2017 as the most recent I’ve seen.

  33. ziggy78eog

    Yes, Danny, sexually objectifying everyone is as egalitarian as it gets.

  34. Joe Angel

    Looks like Danny has been following the Jeph Jacques school of romance.

    1. Proto

      Damn son, nice

  35. Wilson Phillips

    Dan, equal-opportunity predator or just a boy learning desire isn’t immediately a crime?

    1. Sirksome

      Honestly I kind of prefer Danny’s more passive mindset. This campus has a HUGE problem with predatory guys seemingly waiting in the wings to make a creepy pass at a vjlnerable young woman at the very least. We’ve seen at minimum incidents that could be classified as rape attempts in a certain light that’s without factoring in Ryan who did attempt to rape someone that we saw, not counting potential other victims that we didn’t! Who do exist cause Sal and AG beat up guys harrassing said victims that had decided to speak up about it. Danny should feel concerned that he’d come off predatory. Consent and rape is a very real problem on this campus just like in real life.

  36. C.T Phipps

    Dan seems unable to comprehend that sex can be consensual and looking up someone who wants to maybe hang out or have sex is not necessarily evil.

    Sadly Joe is stuck there too.

    1. thejeff

      Sometimes I can’t even see how people reach the conclusions the do.

      1. Spencer

        Danny was mean about Mike after he did the literal sole good act of his entire life.

        1. Yumi

          Was this meant to be a reply? I’m even more confused now.

  37. KJ

    I appreciate Joe, honestly. He’s honest about who he is and he accepts his friends as they are

    1. thejeff

      He’s not really honest about who he is though. He’s convinced himself he’s doomed to be his father and he’s rejecting emotional connections and playing this playboy role to try to avoid hurting women.

      1. KJ

        I don’t know that he is convinced of that at this point. Some people actually just genuinely enjoy casual sex and prefer that to deep relationships. His friendships are still meaningful, and while he doesn’t like conversations that go too deep, he has been shown to be quite supportive when it matters.

  38. DarkoNeko

    El Bistro

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