178

Shake out
Posted on September 22, 2018 by David M Willis
One week from today, I'm gonna be at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) here in my very own hometown of Columbus, Ohio.  It's an annual comics convention held at the library downtown!  And, like, one of those real comics conventions, with actual comics people there.  There's bigtime comic book folks this year, like Brian Michael Bendis and Matt Fraction, and also us webcomic folks are represented, like Melanie Gillman, Ngozi Ukazu, and Blue Delliquanti.  And also, crazily, announced at the last minute is special guest Olivia Jaimes, the enigmatic new artist behind the newspaper strip Nancy.  She's gonna have a late Sunday panel and we don't even know who she really is, it's exciting! It's also a incredibly nice-looking location, with lots of windows.  90% windows.  I mean, it's a library.  An amazingly-nice library.  I was there a few hours last year and it was just... cozy. Anyway, I'll be there!  I'll be at table 6!  (It's first thing on the right hand side, can't miss me.)  I'll have books and magnets and probably some prints.

178 thoughts on “Shake out”

  1. toby

    BOY PROBLEMS
    WHO’S GOT EM
    I’VE GOT EM TOO

    1. Sporky

      naaaa na na na na

  2. Ana Chronistic

    “What? I don’t have any boy pr–OH WAIT OK SORRY”

    1. MatthewTheLucky

      Well, he has one boy problem.

      1. MatthewTheLucky

        The problem is Mike.

        1. abysswatcher1993

          Mike is a problem source.

        2. The Chosen One

          Blah blah mike issues blah blah ethan’s lifetime subscription

        3. MatthewTheLucky

          Blah blah, five cent nightly, blah blah

  3. AnvilPro

    I like Ethan’s approach, of ignoring reality and just talking about things he likes

    1. lilyliv

      Yep. It’s probably considered a “negative coping mechanism” in the long run, but in the short term, A++, would recommend, drives all my friends batty but I enjoy it.

    2. Foxhack

      Hey it works for me

      Kinda

    3. Deanatay

      ITYM talking about things that are important.

    4. Needfuldoer

      That’s kind of what we do here in the comments every day!

      Yeah there’s important stuff too, but most of the time it’s comic related chitchat.

    5. keithcurtis

      “ignoring reality and just thinking about things I like” is how I deal with insomnia. You will never solve a problem while lying in bed trying to sleep.

    6. Cute Carla

      I mean, that worked pretty well for me until it landed me in a therapist’s office talking about complex trauma.

  4. ShinyNeen

    Forget your Boy Problems, it’s time for TOY PROBLEMS!

    1. Kris

      Why not just combine your boy problems with your toy problems and have boytoy problems!…….wait.

      1. ShinyNeen

        Dammit, you cracked the code.

        1. Stoodmuffin

          Was gunna say. Good job, Krys.

  5. DailyBrad

    I relate, Ethan, but yeah, back on task.

  6. BBCC

    We are having SERIOUS boy problems, Ethan!

    Also, in that poster, it kinda looks like Marcie’s checking Sal out.

    1. Reltzik

      Technically, I think these are more girl problems.

      1. BBCC

        Nah, the problem is Walky is related to her arch-nemesis. Boy problem. 😛

    2. CJ

      She probably did at one time or the other. When Marcie put Sal down that one evening she started a fight with Malaya, there was this ” what do you want with her you can’t do with me” moment. And Sal immediately backed off and left them to it after getting the answer.

      1. BBCC

        Maybe! It’d certainly add something to that exchange.

    3. Deanatay

      Hey, Unite Grand Galvatron is a boy!

      I think.

  7. Shanunu

    So what is it then? Ethan had met Sal before and didn’t recognize her as the convenience store person? Is it that now that he has a name he is able to put everything together?

    1. BBCC

      He met Sal, but now that Amber’s told him it was Sal at the robbery, all the pieces fall in place.

    2. tim gueguen

      The Sal Ethan met that horrible day was several years younger, had a different accent, and a different hairstyle.

      1. Agemegos

        And was shorter and more pre-pubescently shaped. Wore fewer motorcycle jackets.

        1. BBCC

          Plus she was still all baby faced and squishy.

        2. Zee

          Well she did have a motorcycle jacket on that day. Or just a leather one

    3. Durandal_1707

      Took me a while, but I found it:

      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/applestoapples/

      You know, it would be really nice if the tags feature on this site let you specify more than one at a time. It would be great if we could search for comics with both Ethan and Sal in them instead of just one or the other.

      1. BBCC

        You actually can! Just put a plus behind the first person’s name and add whoever.

        1. Durandal_1707

          Holy crap, it works! This is awesome. Thanks!

        2. BBCC

          No problem! It’s definitely a huge timesaver when you just want to know if folks have met.

        3. Durandal_1707

          Especially if you’re like me, and you’re terrible at remembering things from years ago in a webcomic. 😉

        4. Amazi-Stool

          But in some cases it won’t work.

          Like yesterday, which is still tagged ethan, walky, while it actually was “amber, ethan”!

        5. BBCC

          That’s more a tag problem than a search bar problem. The plus method would still work in general.

      2. Agemegos

        Put a “+” between two tags. Or for that matter, string together as many as you want with “+”

        http://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/ethan+sal+amber/

        1. Agemegos

          Ninja’d!

        2. Needfuldoer

          I’ve never gotten that to work with more than three names, but that still covers over 99.9999% of use cases anyway.

        3. thejeff

          I just want to be able to subtract names: like Joyce+Walky-Dorothy.

        4. thejeff

          Four names works for me.

      3. Stoodmuffin

        Oooooooooh.

        And WAIT.

        That thing with Danny finding out he was bi because of the twins actually HAPPENED?!

        Sometimes so much happens in this strip I almost forget which writer I’m dealing with, here.

        1. insomniac

          He knew he was bisexual before that, after working through being tackled by Ethan. He hadn’t realized that the two nearly-identical people he’d hung out with separately were twins.

        2. Gigafreak

          In retrospect, Danny’s extreme obliviousness (e.g. to Amber being Amazi-Girl) and Ethan’s extreme obliviousness (e.g. to Sal being That Armed Robber) either makes them perfect for each other or would make both their lives comically difficult if they ever did end up getting together.

        3. thejeff

          Interesting that no one mentions Sal’s obliviousness for not remembering either Ethan or Amber from the robbery. Or along with everyone else not realizing Amber was Amazi-Girl.

          I’m quite sure none of those are intended to be extreme obliviousness.

        4. Gigafreak

          What’s so extreme about that? She likely never knew Ethan’s name (whereas he knew hers from the police) and I’m not sure she even ever laid eyes on Amber during the robbery.

          Far fewer hints have been given to Sal than were given to Ethan and Danny. Ethan’s “surprise, you oblivious dolt” compilation is today’s comic; Danny had one previously, for being unable to piece together that Ethan was gay after multiple other characters had already been shown noticing it within moments of meeting him. Amber and Amazi-girl had also attempted to hint to him repeatedly that they are the same person, and every last one of the hints flew right over his head until the final reveal– at which point even he remarks on his own obliviousness.

          There may eventually be a reveal for Sal, and there may be more hints dropped for her to catch or miss. At this moment, though, she hasn’t had enough hints to miss for her obliviousness to really feel as extreme as the others’.

        5. MatthewTheLucky

          Pretty sure she remembers Amber from when Amber was stabbing her.

        6. BBCC

          Sure, in general ‘girl who stabbed me’ terms, but Sal probably never got a good look at her. Amber was hiding during the robbery and stabbed Sal from behind, and after that Sal was a little busy screaming (and lbr, probably crying) to get a good look at her. Depending how judicial proceedings went, it’s debatable whether she’d have ever got her name either.

        7. Roborat

          Yup, one of them would just have to wear glasses, or change their shirt, and the other wouldn’t recognize them, leading to all sorts of wacky hi-jinks.

        8. Regalli

          It did in It’s Walky, but only retroactively. In DOA it was more promoted by the Ethan thing, as stated below.

      4. Screwball

        That’s Sal showing up, here’s where Ethan almost recognized her…
        http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/tall/
        I did that right, right?

  8. Stephen Bierce

    Today’s strip is brought to you by David Willis’ marketing nemesis–Starbucks. Either way, it is PSL season.

    1. Needfuldoer

      The pumpkin spice must flow.

  9. Kris

    The only transformer I own is a twelve inch Luigi statue that doesn’t transform. I don’t have your problems Ethan.

    1. Regalli

      … How is that a Transformer, then? Did you mean an Amiibo? I do enjoy Amiibo.

      1. Kris

        It’s not a tranformer unless you count its power to transform into relevance again since Nintendo confirmed Luigi’s Mansion 3! Or it’s general ability to transform my sadness into joy! If you can’t tell, I was joking. It’s an actual plastic statue. It was a rewatd for cashing in Nintendo points back when Club Nintendo was cool.

        1. Regalli

          Ah, I miss Club Nintendo rewards. I got a game pouch and case from them and a part of me is still sad I got that particular case because the Zelda one came out right before it shuttered. (I’m sure I could find the other slipcovers online somewhere, but it just wouldn’t be the same.)

          Also the new Gold Points for Switch Software setup is ridiculous and terrible. I’d rather have an actual discount on select software than have to spend so many points for anything to mean anything. At least the wallpapers are cool sometimes.

  10. Proxiehunter

    Wearing a cape I thought the usual problem was crushing on your arch nemesis themselves, not their siblings.

    1. Amazi-Stool

      Wait, was Darth Vader crushing on Luke or/and on Leia?

      1. Bathymetheus

        At one point he was eagerly anticipating introducing Leia to the dark side of the Force. I will leave to your imagination his preferred method.

  11. Circeus

    Amber, you don’t get to complain about the topic change when it was YOUR suggestion, even if sarcastic.

  12. newllend(henryvolt)

    Hey guys it’s no big deal, I mean Ethan all that happened to you was that she took you hostage in a Robbery with a knife aimed at your neck I’m sure it wasn’t that big a deal; and Amber all you did was stab her so hard that you might have crippled her ability to ever use her left hand to play music again.

    I’m sure it wasn’t that traumatic.

    1. Kris

      Honestly it really seems like most of it has kinda blown over by now. Amber’s clearly the most effected but Ethan and Sal both seem to have moved on pretty well adjusted, and most of Amber’s problems pre-date the incident itself. Blaine is probably more responsible for Amber’s trauma than Sal. Calling Sal an “arch nemesis” is a bit of a stretch.

      1. newllend(henryvolt)

        Guilt and PTSD don’t just blow over, Ethan was given proper methods to cope while Amber was not and as for Sal well even if it is in the past and they’re both different people I don’t see her seeing this as a big issue.

        Like what do you guys think her reaction would actually be “Aw damn those two kids whose lives Ah Threatened and emotionally/mentally scared while I was on my self destructive crime spree are here?….Eh not my problem anymore, Ah know A’m ok now and that’s all that matters.” No I don’t see her reacting like That, she more sympathetic than that.

        But honestly I guess the sadistic part of me just wants one thing, And that’s to see Sal sweat bullets over this when she pieces it all together and then spend some time seeing her trying to work up the nerve to approach Amber about it so they can both cope and Make up. Then we can call it even.

        1. Regalli

          I tend to think it’s Amber who brings it up first – from what I saw yesterday doing a tag trawl, I really don’t think Sal got that good a look at Amber to identify her, and she’s had so few interactions with Ethan he’s not on her radar to connect the dots about. But I think when Sal figures out, there’s gonna be a lot of emotions. Shame might be one of them, ‘that explains a lot’ if it comes with the AG reveal, but a lot of anger and hurt is also possible and merited. (I mean, there’s not a lot of ways to explain ‘I stabbed you while you were restrained, became a vigilante, and then stalked you this year’ that don’t sound terrible or like you’re trying to make excuses.)

          I think her and Ethan having a good talk that ends with ‘I can be okay with you if you’re okay with me’ is pretty likely, but Amber… that will be a mess.

        2. Alanari

          Not every trauma evolves into ptsd. Basically, a trauma is a wound in your mind. It can heal normally (usually within half a month) or begin to fester and become a reoccurring problem, that’s ptsd. Factors that decide this include how deep that trauma was (different personalities react differently to the same injury), how healthy and stable you were to begin with and how well it was treated. It also is kind of a question of being lucky. A trauma heals, ptsd changes you forever.

          Ethan is shocked, especially since he had friendly interaction with her, but judging by the time until he manages to joke about it, his trauma probably healed. Nevertheless, he surely has the need to process this and talk about it and Amber just telling him to stop feels unfair.
          Sal had several therapists and while she didn’t like them, she probably learned a lot from them about how traumas work and how to face them, if getting stabbed traumatized her. Not every bad memory is a trauma. I’d expect her to do better than Amber when/if they finally talk.

        3. Regalli

          Doing better than Amber isn’t a high bar to clear in this regard, but agreed. Bad experience with therapists may still have taught her something. I don’t think she’ll take the reveal all that well, but then ‘hey five years ago I stabbed you and now I’m dating your brother’ is not something you have to find traumatic to take badly.

        4. BBCC

          I honestly don’t think Sal learned much of anything from her therapists – she said she’s never met one worth shit. If she’d learned something, that’d still be something even if she didn’t like them. I think thus far Sal’s been pretty thoroughly let down by any authority figures in her life and that includes her therapists.

          Also, it’s pretty hard to learn from therapists if they’re shitty.

        5. Alanari

          Well I’m pretty sure she knows a lot about this stuff. Her first reaction to the car chase thing basically was “welp, all traumatized now”. So, she knows enough about this to immediately link those situations to being traumatic (she also was the only one who linked this to traumas at all). Also, her reaction to Joyce not being able to walk alone. she was able to put pieces together pretty fast, so she knew possible consequences of a traumatic experience.
          She also was able to immediately identify codependence by billlie saying something like “she (ruth) is all I’ve got left”. Not trauma-related but also shows that she’s good at brain error stuff.
          Either she taught herself that too or she learned a lot from her therapists. I’m assuming the ladder, most teenagers don’t start reading up stuff life this for fun and reading a few books about traumas literally was part of my therapy.

        6. thejeff

          Yeah, it’s quite possible stuff soaked in from those sessions, even if the therapists weren’t directly helpful

        7. BBCC

          Except I doubt her therapists bothered to talk to her about trauma. From how Sal talks about them, I think it’s more likely they focused on whatever the court and her parents said were her problems than anything Sal might have wanted to talk about (assuming she was interested in speaking to them at all). Also, Sal doesn’t strike me as particularly likely to actually do therapy homework. I think it’s more likely she’s recognized things from other people she’s met (its implied some of her friends and exes were not exactly savoury characters). And just being able to recognize a potentially traumatic situation doesn’t really require any specific therapeutic knowledge. I can recognize potentially traumatic situations too and I’ve never been in therapy.

        8. Alanari

          Dunno what it’s like in usa but here, therapy is for the patient. You get the therapy you need, regardless of what others want. In her case, that would have included talking about being stabbed and about whatever happened to Marcie.
          Literally no one else in this comic spoke about possibility of someone being traumatized after all this. That’s what made sal stick out. Also, she didn’t ask why having been drugged at a party prevents her from going to places. Which isn’t an obvious link. The comic explained it to the viewer, sal figured it out without any help immediately. She also immediately knew that Joyce needs someone she could talk to. “Talk about what your mind does” is important. You feel like you are going crazy, and talking makes it feel less threatening.
          To really learn something from another person about his trauma, you need a pretty close relationship. That’s really personal stuff. And you won’t learn to understand it just by watching someone from the distance. The only person that got close enough to her to do that was Marcie. And I doubt that she was in therapy, thanks to her being poor and the us health system being kind of broken.

        9. Regalli

          @ Alanari – even good therapists in the US who the patient decides to see because they feel they have problems can be massively sucky. Add in the fact that Sal’s was probably court-mandated and she was a minor, and I can definitely see the therapists she got taking the ‘these are the things I have to cover, which I probably got from your parents’ route. (There’s an entire ethical tightrope with therapists who see minors if their parents aren’t 100% supportive or they don’t tell their parents everything and the parents want to know. Confidentiality is complicated when your patient isn’t the one paying. Now add in the fact that Sal’s parents consider her a Disappointment and Sal probably wasn’t that interested in building rapport with someone reading off stuff Linda told them or her criminal record.)

          @ BBCC – Honestly thinking about it, I could see Sal deciding to study psychology at least a bit on her own just to satisfy her feeling that these therapists are all crap and she could do better herself. Though I’m betting you’re right – She could have picked up on Joyce’s responses to trauma because it’s not her first time seeing someone in the aftermath of a sexual assault, distressingly enough, and maybe that person reacted a similar way.

          Can I give a fictional character a nice 3DS game? I think she’d like Pokémon and I want her to have a bunch of adorable monster friends who will love her forever.

        10. BBCC

          Other characters didn’t notice it, no, but when I was there age I’d done some reading into trauma response and how trauma and PTSD worked due to other interests and knowing others impacted by those things. We know Sal’s friends weren’t good at supporting her, sans Marcie, but knowing Sal, I wouldn’t be surprised if she supported them. There’s also more than one red flag about Sal being involved in a sexually abusive situation, whether as the person who was attacked or supporting that person, so it’s not impossible she learned it because she’s seen it before.

          She also explicitly told Joyce, when she said it was important to talk about these things, NOT to talk to a therapist because therapists, in her experience, were worthless. She told Joyce ‘don’t talk to a therapist, talk to a friend you trust’. That’d suggest to me, if anything, she spoke with Marcie about things more than her therapist. If her therapist was where she found useful information, I don’t think ‘not worth shit’ would be her descriptor. It also doesn’t sound like Sal to listen to a therapist enough to answer any questions in a meaningful way or do actual therapy homework. I can already SEE her saying something like ‘I’ve known you for three hours and I’ve enjoyed none of them, I’m not taking homework from you.’

          @ Regalli – That sounds more like Sal to me too. And Willis has said her favourites would be bug types. Is there a sim somewhere where you can just train one specific type?

        11. Alanari

          Well, there’s a difference between being able to walk a patient through basic mechanisms of a trauma and being able to earn the patients trust. Or being an adequate therapist for a patient. Frankly, I don’t expect Sal to have been an easy or cooperative patient.
          This is not about having been able to help her, this is about having taught her how a trauma works. You can do the ladder without achieving the former.

          In my country, a minor’s parents don’t get to know the content of the therapy of their child if the child is grown up enough to be aware of all aspects of his/her situation. And even if not, the parents get information. They don’t decide what therapy a child gets, as in “I know my patient is traumatized but I won’t adress that”.
          Not sure how it works with therapy due to having committed a crime.

        12. Regalli

          Not an official game, but there are self-imposed Pokémon monotype runs. They’re a lot harder, but bug’s one I think you can get a lot of coverage with (and frankly Sal would be up for a challenge like that pretty quickly – competitive Pokémon is hard, but single player? Not nearly as demanding. Tricky in some parts, but you won’t live or die based off how many hours you spent breeding out perfect IVs.)

        13. BBCC

          You can also learn how trauma works without going to therapy. My point is I think A) Sal did not have good therapists, and B) I don’t think Sal’s going to be cooperative. Depending what the therapist knows about her (and, lbr, what the court and therapists have told them about her which is probably where they’d get their jumping off point) they may not even think to address trauma, especially if Sal’s not inclined to share any problems she’s having (And to a stranger she didn’t want to visit but was made to by her parents and/or court? Yeah, no, not likely). That also ignores that Sal thinks therapy was totally worthless. If she’d learned anything useful, I think that’d impact that view more towards “It sucks but it helps” than “Fuck no, therapists are worthless, just talk to your friend instead.”

          @ Regalli – Yeah, sounds right. LBR, after she has a few bugs, her starter’s never getting used again.

        14. Alanari

          *half a year. Not half a month. If trauma symptoms exist for longer than 6 month, ptsd comes into play.
          Sorry. Wasn’t completely awake yet..

        15. Zee

          Hi, unrelated but since you seem to know a lot about this stuff, what if trauma symptoms don’t crop up until a few years after the incident, and then stick around for a long time? Would that be PTSD?

        16. Alanari

          I’m no therapist, so take my answer with a grain of salt.
          For me, I tried to normalize my past for years. Tried to make them seem normal in front of myself. As a result, I was stable for years. But not very well. To protect myself, my subconscious detached me from my life. I was distant, disconnected from my life. I didn’t even know that this wasn’t normal. It was how my life felt like. I didn’t know that joy or sadness could feel more intense than what I was experiencing. The only symptom of ptsd I had for years was the lost of trust in people. I didn’t identify this as not being normal either, I thought it was normal to expect the worst from everyone.
          The ptsd “breakout” finally came when I was forced to face the truth about myself. That nothing of this was normal. The result was a breakdown. Depressed, suicidal for times, afraid to leave the house, horrible dreams, unable to concentrate, the whole thing.
          I think a trauma will always influence you on some level until you deal with it. It can be subtle though, even unnoticeable for you (and others). For me, the real bad ptsd stuff came several years after the traumatic experience. so, I’d say yes, symptoms can pop up later. I’m however not sure what it would be called if they would vanish after two month or so. Could be ptsd that spontaneous healed (that does happen for unknown reasons), could still count as trauma that healed normally, albeit postponed.

        17. thejeff

          @Alanari: I don’t think Amber’s telling him to stop about the Sal revelation. The “pivot to toys” part is sarcastic and she doesn’t want to derail onto that entirely.

        18. Alanari

          He’s the one who had his life threatened. He just got to know that he played cards with the girl who held a knife to his throat. If he needs to talk about transformers for a few minutes to counterbalance that until he has processed it, he should be given this time.
          Ambers drama will still be there in a few minutes. No hurry.

        19. Regalli

          Sadly, that’s one of those things that would require Amber knowing how to address traumatic situations pretty much at all. And well, she doesn’t.

          Someone please help Amber.

    2. BarerMender

      Right hand.

    3. CJ

      Trauma research shows that being or feeling extremely helpless plays a big role in how traumatic an event is. In the robbery, Amber was unable to act because of her fears and that was just the point Blaine used to shame her immediately afterwards.

      I don’t think Sal has a chance to recognize Ethan. The skinny kid he was and the gorgeous guy he is now are difficult to put in the same mind space.
      And if there was no trial, she only saw him once.

  13. Dave Van Domelen

    Get a trackball, Ethan.

  14. Reltzik

    So we’ve gotten a few hints, here and there, about how Amber feels about that robbery and the impact it had on her. And I recall that we red a few flashback comics.

    …. but what about ETHAN? How did it effect him? I’m not saying he’s more important here (he isn’t, it’s not his boy-toy that this is complicating his relationship with), but still…

    1. Regalli

      Last we saw things addressed were the strips a lot of people linked yesterday (in which he said ‘it’s crazy, but we were kids and so was she and she must have changed,’) and the immediate aftermath flashback with Mike where he was pretty clearly Not Okay, but was okay to go back to school before Amber. (Which probably had something to do with her committing a crime in addition to witnessing one.)

      He seemed to have processed things well enough in five years, but actually being confronted with things can make it Weird, Amber’s whole situation is super-Weird, and that’s probably dredging up unpleasantness he thought was dealt with (or which he just shoved into the Trauma Box never to be seen again. Who knows. Could’ve worked if the hand of fate wasn’t against him.)

      1. thejeff

        Going back to school first probably also had something do with not being a long-term abuse victim who was barely okay enough to go to school in the first place and whose abuser surely kept using it against her rather than giving her support.

        1. Regalli

          Also true! Amber would have been an anxious mess and then no one gave her therapy she sorely needed.

  15. Regalli

    Aaaand it looks like Ethan was okay knowing Sal was on campus in abstract, but knowing he’s actually interacted with her makes it Weird. In other words he maybe wasn’t as okay with it as we thought. Understandable! The whole situation is in fact Weird and we don’t actually know if he did get therapy or not, just that his parents didn’t actively make the situation worse the way Blaine did. (And maybe the way Amber threw herself into helping Ethan over the summer after he came out, Ethan ignored his issues by throwing all his worrying into worrying about Amber instead? We don’t really know, but it would fit in with Ethan being a people-pleaser and stuff.)

    But yes, this is totally freak-out worthy. (And I’m pretty sure that even if Walky’s inclined to forgive Amber for stabbing and stalking his sister, her hiding this fact for much longer will not go over well. A day or two with ‘I was kind of freaking out and didn’t know what to do with this’ can be salvaged, no intent to tell is not good.)

    And then we have the grades, and the dissociation… This is why you should’ve waited to kiss him, Amber!

    1. Kyrik Michalowski

      Also the implied hookup that happened after they threw the burrito at the mask and left garbage roof. Really there were multiple things she could have waited to do before telling him about all of this, plus the whole grade cgange thing she hasn’t addressed. Amber is not good at this.

      1. Regalli

        I have to assume they didn’t immediately hook up last night. For one thing, they clearly didn’t go to one of their dorms (Dina would recognize Walky as New Paramour if they went to Amber’s, and Mike would have merited another strip to begin plotting,) and that roof isn’t so deserted they could bang without risk of discovery – at least one person goes up there to smoke weed, and no matter how chill you are fucking on a public stairway is not gonna go over well. For another, AG would probably notice if Amber either fell asleep in an unfamiliar room or had a boy in her bed, and that would not go over well for anyone. I’m not certain Amber would be up for it immediately after finding things out, either. She was shaky last night, and sex isn’t really something she does as a coping mechanism. Neither was Walky, come to that – if he was feeling like garbage liking and kissing a girl the day after the Dorothy breakup, he would feel like even worse garbage having sex with her then. Becky’s line aside (and Becky has no idea what they were up to, since she was surprised by it,) there’s not a lot indicating it. I could be wrong, but I hope not, that just has ‘remarkably worse idea than this entire concept’ written all over it.

        Also if they have already had sex I’m gonna need another moat for my Inevitable Disaster Fort.

        1. Kyrik Michalowski

          That is a fair point, it also makes more sense for them not to have done so considering that Amazi-Girl went out to help Sal last night. So her being there means she probably had time alone to get away or was only around someone like Dina, who wouldn’t stop her.

        2. Regalli

          Yeah, add in time for AG looking for and making a new mask, and there’s not a ton of leeway for sex there. (Sal probably waited on the roof a while longer, but probably not hours when she thought people were in trouble, and she’d get where she was going faster with the motorcycle. That fight didn’t seem to have gone on for too long before AG arrived, and I doubt there was any real attempt at negotiation with those assholes. Dudes who decide they’re gonna all go together to the living quarters of someone who accused their rapist stalker dudebro of being a rapist are not going to respond well to a single woman telling them to back the fuck off.)

        3. Michelle J. Caboose

          I have to agree. I don’t remember it being implied that just because they made out, that they automatically had sex before Amazi-Girl took over and beat up some lowlifes with Sal.

      2. thejeff

        Also, Willis is usually more explicit about sex happening. At least when it’s an important development. Not Slipshine explicit, but he makes it clear before it fades to black.

    2. Foxhack

      I… I don’t think Walky knows Amber is the girl that stabbed Sal. It seems that Sal doesn’t even RECOGNIZE Amber.

      1. Regalli

        He doesn’t! Which is why that last paragraph is me saying (probably badly phrased, because I have some issues expressing points cleanly here especially this late at night) that Amber continuing to not tell him will end very badly for her when Walky inevitably DOES learn.

        I’m not even a hundred percent sure Walky knows Sal was stabbed, or how serious the injury was. (I’m not a hundred percent sure Sal ever really came home after the holdup, or if Walky visited in the hospital. He basically seems to have followed his parents’ lead in formally Giving Up on Sal after the holdup, and they may have shipped her off to Tennessee as soon as possible and made her do whatever recovery she got there. I mean, probably the surgery was immediate, going off BBCC’s friends’ guesses on what a knife wound like that would mean, but probably not the physical therapy.)

        (As always, fuck the Walkerton parents.)

        1. BBCC

          Physical therapy probably took place mostly in Tennessee, yeah, but surgery was probably in Indiana.

        2. Regalli

          Like, how soon do we think she got admitted to the Shitty Catholic Reform School? Was she actually in police custody for any of that time, or at home, or recovering in the hospital? We just don’t know, except that whatever it was was almost certainly unpleasant.

        3. BBCC

          I’m not sure where she’d be, but if the police released her to her parents, she’d be at home. We’re still not clear about what’s up – sending her to reform juvie like school sounds like a court thing (and it’s actually possible she’d be charged regardless of if Amber or Ethan’s parents wanted her to be – the police don’t have to drop charges if the victim doesn’t want them. Also, the store keeper probably also had an incentive to press charges). But we also know the Walkertons made the final decision of where to send her, so it’d depend what the specifics that happened in court.

      2. CJ

        Right. Whatever the store incident did to Sal, it didn’t imprint Amber image into her mind. When she helped Amber to pick up her washing, she was thoroughly confused why Amber was so skittish.

      3. Needfuldoer

        Amber was hiding behind a display aisle the entire time. We don’t even know if Sal knows she was there.

        1. Norah

          And when Amber rushed in to stab Sal, Sal was probably in too much pain to notice the face of her attacker.

        2. Regalli

          Yeah, Amber came from behind, and by the time Sal could have seen her she would have had the knife to worry about.

    3. Emily

      Honestly, Ethan seems more upset that he was so clueless to this very obvious thing than he does about the thing itself.

      1. Regalli

        It is at least part ‘how did I not know,’ but that exact flavor seems tinted with ‘this is weird’ and the subtext of ‘I should have known’ feels like he’s not 100% okay with things. Not panicking about it, but definitely not the ‘well okay then, that’s kind of weird but fine’ he had when AG told him.

        (And honestly, I can easily see why Ethan didn’t recognize her five years later the same way Sal doesn’t recognize Amber. Ethan saw she looked nervous, but then Sal grabbed him as a hostage from behind. I actually think Sal would have had a better look at Amber before she hid than either Ethan or Sal really had on each other, and given Sal was clearly not thinking things through, I have no idea how much attention she was actually paying to the other people in the store. Add in Ethan appearing to be an avoidant coping person to Amber’s fight or freeze and dwell forever and I can see him trying to put her face and name out of mind – Amber clearly didn’t think too much about the Walkerton part and she STOLE WALKY’S FILE which was almost certainly right next to Sal’s yesterday, which I do wtf over – and then he literally only interacted with her beyond ‘passing by in the halls’ the one time. Both of them changed pretty dramatically since being scrawny thirteen-year-olds, and Sal’s hair being straight versus curly makes the difference even more stark. Taking his avoidance into account I can totally see it.)

  16. Stoodmuffin

    I’m both of them, really.

    1. Stoodmuffin

      Oh sure, NOW you think about it, Am’s. Smh

  17. Archivist

    Unexpectedly on-point superhero drama happening in this Chili’s tonight

  18. cbwroses

    I feel like panels 2-4 is like the twist reveal in a thriller, almost like some usual suspects type ending.
    “Walky’s twin sister?! I’ve MET Walky’s twin sister!” Cut to a grey scale closeup of Sal’s face.
    “I’ve played APPLES TO APPLES with Walky’s twin sister!” Cut to a grey scale version of that panel where they’re playing the game and Sal asks if he met Walky.
    “I TOLD you she goes to our school, remember? Her name is Sal.” Cut to gs pic of Sal in the parking lot with Marcie. “SAL WALKERTON.” Same pic only it zooms in more on Sal with every syllable of her name.
    “WALKERTON. I remember that name now.” Gs pic of Sal when she started to rob the store.
    “WALKY.” Gs pic of Walky on Garbage Roof with his hair being blown by the wind.
    And the whole time this conversation is happening, there’s some bootleg version of the terminator drums starting off quiet and steadily growing louder with each reveal.

  19. Keulen

    Damn Ethan, this is Danny levels of dense you’re displaying here.

    1. Michelle J. Caboose

      I think it’s more that he’s moved on, and doesn’t really think of Sal. He knows that Amber has never gotten past the c-store incident, but Ethan seems not to have been traumatized the way Amber was. But then, Ethan didn’t have Blaine for a father, either.

      Or possibly, his brain tends to divert to other thoughts whenever he’s confronted with anything that makes him uncomfortable. And since he’s somewhat obsessed with TransFormers, that makes them a convenient topic to shift to. Kind of like how I tend to make stupid jokes when I’m in a situation that makes me uncomfortable.

      Maybe some of Column A, and some of Column B?

      1. Regalli

        Yeah, I think Ethan wasn’t As Traumatized – he didn’t stab anyone, after all, and that was as much a part of Amber’s trauma as the holdup – that he got at least some support afterwards to help deal with things where Amber got nothing and Sal got bad experiences, and that he tends to cope by not dwelling on things anyway when he can.

        1. Alanari

          I do think he got traumatized. He had a knife at his throat.
          I do, however, think that the trauma healed and now just is a bad memory. Uncomfortable to think about but without the trauma-related stuff like bad dreams, depression, triggers,..

        2. Regalli

          Yeah, it’s definitely a traumatic event, but it wasn’t compounded for him the way it was for Amber.

    2. Emily

      The guy who was actually held at knife point is really the last person Amber should be expecting to dwell on that incident just because she’s obsessed over it her entire life. It’s not his fault he actually dealt with it and moved on and isn’t super inclined to get back into it over half a decade after the fact.

      1. thejeff

        Is she expecting him to obsess over it? She’s telling him and it does seem to freak him out. Maybe he’s not as completely moved on as you seem to think?

        And the pivot to talking about toys seems more like an avoidance defense mechanism than actually being fine with it to me.

  20. JessWitt

    Huh, I wonder if Ethan will take the opposite approach of Amber and make an attempt to be more accepting of Sal.

    1. Michelle J. Caboose

      I think Ethan would probably have an easier time of it, seeing as how Sal isn’t a PTSD trigger for him.

      1. JessWitt

        Yeah, he seems to be at better ease with the incident. Unless, he secretly isn’t.

  21. Darkoneko

    counting Sal, ti’s also girl problems~~

  22. DT

    Ah, the most unrealistic aspect of Dumbing of Age.
    Indiana college kids who can afford all the Transformers and then the Japanese-exclusive combiners too.

    1. David M Willis

      you know, of all the things people have claimed to be unrealistic about dumbing of age, i have to say “david willis has no idea how many transformers an indiana university college freshman can own/afford” has to be probably the most baffling

      1. abysswatcher1993

        Realistic killed itself when a superhero appeared, there was a car persecution, and Dina crossed over to Questionable Content. Now instead of realism we have to warry about Out of Character moments.

        1. David M Willis

          a car persecution

        2. Rowen Morland

          Wasn’t it the red car that persecutes characters in Something Positive?

        3. 3oranges

          LOCK CAR UP

        4. newllend(henryvolt)

          Unrealistic,What are you talking about ? I can totally see someone getting pissed off enough put on a mask and go out late at night too beat up on a bunch of Street punks.

        5. cbwroses

          I’m pretty sure people do that now.

        6. Conuly

          YES ACTUALLY.

          Well, not the “beating up” part, but the putting on masks and patrolling part. Real Life Superheroes are a thing. (Really they’re the neighborhood watch but with capes, but let’s not tell them that.)

          There are also Real Life Superheroes, a different strain, that show up in the daytime to humorously chastise people for such petty villainies as failing to dispose of their litter properly, parking in the crosswalk, and not scooping up their dog’s poop.

        7. Goshii

          Hey parking and or stopping in the crosswalk is not a petty villainy. I almost got hit by a car because i had to go around a car that was stopped in a crosswalk. And i *had* to go in front of the car on the side with traffic because i was in a wheelchair and couldn’t get between the car in the crosswalk and the car behind him.

          Crosswalks are SRS BSNS

        8. BarerMender

          Amazi Girl is different from most real-life “super heroes,” in that she studied martial arts from the age of thirteen, ran track and field in high school, and is crazy as a bedbug. Of course, she still almost got killed.

        9. BarerMender

          What I’d be worried about in real life is she takes after a purse snatcher and he has a gun stuffed in the back of his belt.

        10. Emily

          Yeah, but they generally die or get arrested because it’s really stupid and really illegal.

        11. thejeff

          Or they’re more neighborhood watch types as Conuly suggests, not costumed vigilantes. I’m not sure there are any close real life parallels to Amazi-girl.

        12. Norah

          Which is why, if there ever was someone like Amazi-Girl in a campus, it’s be a big deal and people would be talking about her and the campus newspaper would want to write about her. Just like they do about Amazi-Girl.

        13. Marsh Maryrose

          Sure, but would they design a uniform that could conceal a set of caltrops AND a grappling hook?

  23. Kellen Goff

    Thrust was the only good thing about Grand Galvatron. The rest of that set are shitty repaints.

  24. abysswatcher1993

    How long before someone tells Amber she has been splitting her personality and hanging out with Sal and doing morally ambiguous things?

    1. BenRG

      I suspect that this will be Sal’s sad duty.

      1. thejeff

        Sal’s got no idea about the disassociation or that AG is Amber, so we’re in for a bunch of revelations before that can happen.

    2. thejeff

      Well she knows she’s been splitting her personality and she knows AG was working with Sal to find Ryan before she stopped sharing memories, so I don’t think that’ll be a great shock.

      But as the Golden Alter, Amazi-Girl can’t do morally ambiguous things, unless that’s Amber’s monstrous nature affecting her, so she won’t accept that.

  25. Dark

    “There was just enough space behind the mouse. If I don’t use the mouse.”

    Ethan, why is your mouse moving?

  26. BenRG

    This is the conversation where Amber and Ethan realise that Sal isn’t a very plausible nemesis at all.

  27. Bagge

    The most important thing I take from this is that if Ethan skipped the mouse altogether he would have space for another action figure.

    1. JBento

      That’s a new take on https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhatHappenedToTheMouse

      1. Bagge

        Heh, you shoehorned that in almost as well as Ethan shoehorned in his Unite Warriors Grand Galvatron

        1. JBento

          You know me, smooth as sandpaper.

        2. Roborat

          What grade? Some sandpaper is pretty smooth.

  28. illiriam

    Anyone willing to type up the hover text? It’s stopped showing on my phone for about a week now :/

    1. Bagge

      “look that set comes with cyclonus, roller, AND knockout’s husband”

      1. Bagge

        Those are the exact words of the hover text. As for their meaning… your guess is as good as mine.

        1. Regalli

          A bunch of Transformers Ethan wanted in the set that one came with who took higher priority for display?

        2. Catman

          Not quite. It’s a combiner, soall of those figures are grand Galvatron. those were just the three coolest parts.

        3. Regalli

          I mean, sound logic. Cyclonus, right?

  29. Emily

    I would rather listen to Ethan ramble about his robot toys than listen to basically anything you have to say that isn’t “I need to make serious changes in how I live my life,” Amber.

    1. Regalli

      I’ll settle for ‘I need to have a Talk with Walky and another one with Sal’ (she doesn’t need to know his grades thing,) or deciding to go to the Counseling Center or online support. Amber’s issues are so vast and varied it’s gonna be a while before she can untangle them all, and Blaine screwed her up so badly she doesn’t think she’s worth the tools available to her. Which stinks, because the only way Amber can get better is by using some of those tools.

      1. Emily

        Yeah, but apparently she also doesn’t think the people around her are worth her making the effort to not be an active threat to their safety which is my main issue with her. Like, her avoidance was sympathetic when people weren’t being put in life threatening situations by her alter but now it’s just shitty.

        1. Regalli

          I agree, Amber’s current situation is dangerous to herself and others, I just figure we’re still a while away from her getting whatever she needs to realize shit’s fucked and change, and that Amber really can’t realize on her own how fucked this situation is.* So I’ll take baby steps, but without some external force I’m not sure she’ll recognize or succeed with that. I really, really hope Sal finds out soon, because I think she’s the only one who can get through to Amber just how bad all of this is. (For one thing – and I could be totally wrong here – if AG has been primarily out with Sal, she’s probably not appearing on social media and Amber might not know they’ve been working together for a week without Amber’s knowledge. Amber might genuinely think her attempts to get rid of AG on her own have been working. For another, Sal might not tell Amber to go to therapy but she’ll probably tell her to talk to someone and of COURSE she’s not Garbage Forever because life isn’t a long-running comic universe where things will eventually be reset. It’s like ‘life is not a romcom’ with Joyce – I think we’re close to both those breakthroughs, but probably still an arc or two away.)

          * It’s super obvious to us Amber’s in a terrible spot, but one of those things about the Brain Pit is that it makes you unable to recognize really obvious things, such as ‘you’ve been sleeping way more than usual or healthy and have no memory of the last few months and that probably isn’t good’ or ‘ignoring the phone will not make it stop ringing.’

  30. Delicious Taffy

    Ethan, Galvatron is a punk nerd who eats eggshells on all his food, insisting it “bolsters his natural antihistamines”. Lose ‘im and buy Chun Li instead.

  31. Meep

    I honestly assumed he knew and just wasn’t mentioning it. Like Therapy doesn’t solve everything, but the fact that he’s much more likely to have had some sort of gives him a leg up on Amber there.

    I sort of expected him to have recognized her at some point and watched, asked around, asked Joyce. That he’d gotten the notion that she wasn’t that same person.

    I’ve had this headcanon forever that one of the things that kept him calm, a memory he held onto, something that may even have shaped how he looked at the world: Sal was shaking too, the whole time, maybe worse than he was.

  32. FacelessDeviant

    I mean, she DID say to pivot to it. I think he’s not that into sarcasm/irony.

  33. Deepbluediver

    So I guess we’re far-past that scene of Amazigirl and Sal fighting together that it WASN’T a hallucination like I originally thought, but I still don’t get it. How did we go from attacking someone in a parking lot to cracking witicisms with them? Did I miss a chapter?
    Especially when Amber is still freaking out over this. Unless she’s not just a little kooky but is in fact suffering from a full-blown case of multiple-personality-disorder.

    1. Nate

      You did miss a chapter, or I guess several… Amazigirl and Sal have a confrontation at the DeSanto rally which leads to them uniting to try and take down Ryan (Joyce’s would be rapist.) They begin hanging out fairly regularly after that which eventually leads to the scene you’re talking about.

      As for Amber having DID it’s basically confirmed in-comic when Amber admits that she no longer has any memory of Amazigirl going out to fight at night.

      1. Regalli

        Further confirmed by AG not knowing what happened to her mask, and saying that rather than ‘issues’, Amber trying to throw the mask out and telling AG to go away during the panic attack, and that scene where Amber took out the suit saying she would ruin AG’s reputation and the suit screaming ‘Noooo!’

        There’s more, but that’s all been since teaming up to deal with Ryan. Also worth noting that before that team up starting the chapter, we hadn’t actually seen AG for months – she and Sal have been building rapport offscreen as well.

      2. Deepbluediver

        I thought I had been reading everything; maybe I just forgot or didn’t pick up on some of the implications.

  34. HeatherJean

    How did Sal go from warning AG (and Danny) that her costumed capers were going to get someone seriously hurt or killed to becoming AG’s sidekick? This is a radical (and so-far unexplained) turnabout.

    1. thejeff

      Ryan.
      I mean, Sal’s never explicitly talked about the turnabout, but we saw most of it happen.

      Their confrontation at the rally led to them fighting Ryan and the bros together, then chasing Ryan. They then cooperated on talking Joyce about it and spreading the picture on social media. And now apparently on protecting the other girls who’ve come forward against Ryan from harassment or worse.

    2. Miri

      Sal told AG that what she was doing was dangerous etc. But AG pointed out that if the proper authorities will do nothing because people like him don’t face consequences (which Sal accepts, and is why she convinced Joyce not to report the attack), and him being out there is her fault as she let him get away – what else is she supposed to do? Just stand back and let him go on drugging and raping women? Sal recognised that she had a point.

  35. Axel

    The important thing to focus on here is that you can get a roller-ball mouse and never have to move it, freeing up plenty of precious desk space.

  36. ValdVin

    Have Ethan’s eyes ever gotten that small before?

  37. Mr D

    Checking for time:

    Also, is it normal for a Jew to exclaim “Jesus”?

    1. BBCC

      It’s kinda become a fairly normal expression of shock in mainstream American culture, so maybe?

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