Asma has won this month's vote for Patreon bonus strip! Any and all patrons can go check out the strip at the Dumbing of Age Patreon. Liked
Asma has won this month's vote for Patreon bonus strip! Any and all patrons can go check out the strip at the Dumbing of Age Patreon.
190 thoughts on “Liked”
Ana Chronistic
oh god I sympathize with Faz
the world is ending nooooooo
Ana Chronistic
(srsly tho, dang)
shadowcell
the world ends, not with a bang, but with Faz’s erection
King Daniel
It is written in ancient prophecy that the world will only truly end Wen bangs Faz’s erection.
Screwball
Yep, that’s it, I’m flying to another planet if that happens. FIRE UP THE SPACE BRIDGE…
Dave
…*ahem* TAKE ME WITH YOU!!!
Arawn
An end is just another name for a butt. Let us lead into all endings with Faz’s erection! This ending is a new beginning, for Faz!
Marsh Maryrose
So, I was free associating about the end of the world, and then I was trying to work in a Fenrir Wolf connection, and then I thought of Tyr’s hand…and then I winced and tried to forget everything I know about the Norse eddas.
(JK they are delightfully twisted, and apropos of nothing, where is my copy of The Merry Spinster?)
Mr D
But Tyr’s Hand got eaten by a giant protodragon, and thus the blacksmith of the keepers made him a new, shining hand of silver, and after which he named his Hammer.
smparadox
I was confused by this response, then I remembered to check the date it was posted…
motorfirebox
This makes Faz sad, for Faz dearly wished to bang.
Schpoonman
I knew Faz was going to be a more worthwhile character than Malaya.
Marisa Mockery
Especially with that particular gravitar
doomska
Hey now. I am excited about this development too, but let’s not be silly.
No one is a more worthwhile character than Malaya.
Djaevlenselv
Ha, yeah! Even NO ONE is a more worthwhile character than *Malaya!* >:D
That was what you were trying to say, right?
SomeDumbGuy
Well that escalated quickly
Shiro
…chaaaaaaaracter development?????
Doctor_Who
Great. Now I feel sorry for Faz. That’s like feeling sorry for athelete’s foot.
Stephen Bierce
*draws a Venn Diagram…
…Faz Circle…
…Athlete’s Foot Circle…
…Sets a magnifying glass to where they overlook–
“JOCK ITCH”*
Chris Phoenix
Thank you – best laugh all day.
smparadox
Cue Rimshot!
AnvilPro
I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Screwball
Joyce going to perform “sympathy salvation” on Faz?
Oh damn, that just sounds soooo bad…
King Daniel
“Faz and Joyce Perform a Sympathy Salvation”?
plz no
Stu
Yeah, don’t think any of us saw THAT coming.
Anyone else reminded of “Moral Orel” with Shapey (the little hellion) saying “When I’m thirsty, it feels like I feel when I’m alone.”
abysswatcher1993
According to tv tropes, the creator of the series wrote that because it is something his kid said to him once. Dino had many familiar problems, including his divorce that inspired the episode where Clay rants about why he embraces the things he hates.
King Daniel
I misread Faz’s line in the last panel, and thought he was talking about not having maintained his erection in quite some time.
Needfuldoer
Poor kid needs to go to the hospital soon, if that’s the case.
Needfuldoer
(Maintaining all this time without thinking about it, that is. Blood clots aren’t a joke.)
Nono
When AMBER is the nicest person in your life…
Regalli
Yeah, I think we all read the Blaine situation with him correctly (or, everything is terrible,) and this suggests that whatever his mom’s doing keeping her from answering Amber’s calls, it’s not looking for him. Ouch.
Inahc
hmm. Amber’s not gonna like finding out about that, she’s still pretty intent on seeing herself as garbage.
Regalli
I mean, all that means is she’s a step up from Blaine. … Though that’s probably still a step up from where she’s seeing herself, so you’ve got a point. Maybe she’ll find some way to twist it off onto AG? Who knows.
Bagge
I figure a big part of it is not Amber being nice to him, but her being able to stand up to Blaine.
Fart Captor
Amber may be grumpy, but she’s a very nice person. You could do a fuckton worse than having nobody nicer than her in your life.
Nono
She’s caustic, anti-social, and potentially violent. She’s got her good points for sure, but her closest friends are either very passive (Ethan/Danny), not great at social cues (Dina), or just, well, Mike.
Marsh Maryrose
You’re not disproving the point of anyone in this chain. It’s entirely possible that, with all that you’ve pointed out, Amber is still literally the nicest person he knows.
The question is, who else does he have to turn to? And it may be that the answer is, no one.
Fart Captor
Amber is introverted, which has absolutely no bearing on how “nice” someone is. The fact that she doesn’t like being around lots of people has not stopped her from repeatedly showing kindness to her friends, and to people she barely knows, like she has with Joyce, and with Walky up on the roof.
Also, WTF do the personalities of her friends have to do with her being nice or not?
If you’re not a rapist or in the middle of violently attacking someone, you’re safe from Amber.
doomska
You’re kind of confusing how she is with strangers and/or people who she has demonstrable reason to view as hostile.
Like by all accounts she was the one doing the heavy lifting of Ethan’s coming out for him, which is staggeringly nice and consider, kind of excessively so actually.
Also she routinely risks her life, health, and freedom to help people in need as an actual goshdarn superhero so
KaitouKidisBae
It’s not staggeringly nice and considerate to try and force someone out of the closet when they’re not comfortable or ready to come out yet. In fact, it’s the exact opposite of that. Coming out is pants-shitting terrifying and having someone trying to push you to do it when you’re not ready makes things worse not better.
DannyUniverse
I don’t think that we have indication that she pressured Ethan to come out to his family? It is true that she got angry at him reclosetting himself, which is shitty, though it was fairly apparent that was because she was jealous. Not good behaviour. But after that she did cool down and more or less accept that it was Ethan’s right to proceed as he chose, especially if he wasn’t lieing to Joyce about it.
You might be right that she pressured him post prom, but I don’t think that we have seen any evidence of that.
Nono
She’s literally flipped a table at Ethan, too. And blown up at Danny multiple times to the point where he’s apologizing just to calm her down when he has no idea what he did wrong.
The point isn’t that Amber isn’t a GOOD person. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have consoled Joyce or saved Becky. But you can be a good person while not being very nice at all. Ruth and Carla and Billie are all good people, and they’ve all done things out of kindness, but I’d rarely call them nice people.
NelC
Batman is good, but I don’t think anyone would call him “nice”. Except maybe the Joker, if he was trying to wind him up.
Fart Captor
She had an angry outburst that she reined in almost immediately. It is entirely possible to have a temper problem AND be a nice person.
Hell, she recently spent an entire day TRYING to be mean to make Amazi-Girl look bad, and FAILED.
thejeff
Amber has anger issues. Among her other issues.
I’d say she was nice, despite that. I don’t see her as caustic. She’s generally been friendly and helpful, if withdrawn – except when she loses control of her anger. I can’t think of a time when she’s been deliberately mean.
Compare with Sarah or Carla, who are also both good people, but aren’t nice.
Deanatay
Amber’s a good person. She is NOT what I would call a nice person.
Charlie Spencer
Maybe if he wasn’t such an ass, more people would be nice to him, including people outside his family.
poofdepoof
It doesn’t really matter how nice Amber is in general; it’s more about like, how nice is Amber to Faz? From what I can tell, that’s not very nice.
Fart Captor
He showed up out of nowhere, without invitation, and she has spent most of her day trying to keep him out of trouble to protect him from his abusive step dad.
That’s pretty damn nice, imo
Blackouthart
Oh jeez. Does he live with one of the Worst Dads ever, Blaine? (Is that his name? I deleted it from my memory due to him being so awful.)
Oh Faz.
DailyBrad
Blaine is the name, yes. You’d be forgiven for purging it again.
doomska
Blaine is a Pain
Regalli
Yeah, Blaine’s married to Faz’s mom. (Who we know nothing about, but if Amber compares favorably when she has like zero patience for him and given she’s not answering calls, not ranking very well. Also in the old universe she was probably the daughter of a Korean mobster, possibly more involved herself, so make of that what you will.)
Khyrin
Faz’s mom STILL might have ties to the mob, as Blaine is described as “a Literal Mob Stooge” by Richard.
BBCC
So close, yet so far.
Cattleprod
Literally any character: *views Faz in a sympathetic light*
Faz: *talks about his erection*
Repeat as needed.
Jago
Kid needs a frickin filter.
Paradox
This time might be progress, though. It was him noting a trend on the graph of people not trying to get away from him as mentions of his erection also go down.
This may be a good sign.
Yumi
Baaaabyyyyy….
But I’m a bit confused; this makes it seem like Amber lived with Blaine and Faz, at least partly, or maybe has visitations with him, but when Blaine first showed up, Amber said she hadn’t seen him in years.
Nep
I’m similarly confused, I had the same read that you did.
Sionyx
She may not have seen Blaine, but may have seen Faz. If they lived in the same general area, it’s not unlikely that Faz could “happen” to show up in social areas where Amber was. Amber’s irritation with the kid now is now looking to be due to surprise and Faz acting like a teenager in a woman’s dorm.
Petra
I think that means even though they only interacted briefly, Amber was ‘the nicest’ to him. So his home life sucks, and he doesn’t want to be at home, and the one place he could think to go was where Amber lived. Which is even sadder.
Of course, Amber could have also met Faz before her and Blaine stopped interacting?
DannyUniverse
I was wondering about that too. I am guessing that at the time David Willis didn’t have plans to have Faz be in the comic much, and that therefore the storyline he is writing now does not 100% match up with a couple lines of dialogue (or requires a certain interpretation of that dialogue that wasn’t initially intended). Given how many comics have been published in this strip since it began in 2010, and the variety of amazing stories that have been told, and the constraint of so little time having passed, I think that something like that was bound to happen at some point.
And if it hasn’t happened yet, and isn’t with this storyline, I still think that it could easily happen in the future, unless David Willis has made it a priority for that to not happen. I am happy regardless, reading his stories brings so much to me, so whether his storytelling technique requires him to honour every line of dialogue or allows for occasionally changing up what he wrote long ago.. I don’t mind much
BBCC
She hasn’t seen Blaine in three years, but the divorce finalized about 5 years ago. So that’s a two year gap for her to see her step brother.
Yumi
That’s fair, though I would wonder why he wouldn’t go to where she was sooner…though, he could’ve assumed that since Amber would be with her mom, she would have sent him home (very possible) and that it could be an equally awful place to live.
BBCC
Well, three years ago Faz was only 12. If he and Blaine don’t live nearby, it’d probably be hard to get there alone.
At least with Amber in school, he knows where she lives and (thanks to visiting on parent’s day) knows how to get there from wherever he lives. He might even have a learner’s permit to drive.
Regalli
Could be that Amber drop offs occurred at a neutral site as well. Faz may not know where Stacy lives, even if it is close enough to get to himself.
BBCC
That is also possible.
Nep
It may have gotten worse at home, what with Blaine having been in the hospital. I know that physical pain (not to mention however he’s emotionally dealing with Amber having beaten him up) could easily exacerbate pre-existing abusuve behaviors.
Some1
Does he know Amber beat him up? By his perspective he was beaten by some chick in a mask.
thejeff
Are those numbers solid? All I remember is Amber saying she hadn’t seen him in years when he first showed up.
The incident with Sal was 5 years ago (they were 13), so I could see 5 as an upper limit, but do we know how soon after that the divorce happened?
BBCC
Amber said three years when Blaine came by.
As for the divorce, it finalized around the time Blaine overruled everyone wanting to give Amber therapy and got her self-defence classes, so most likely not long after.