Too bad it can’t be used for good/helpful stuff like, “Don’t eat healthy foods/stuff yourself with pizza!” tho idk how long diets like that can last if you can’t find ways to flavor/season healthier stuff and portion and all that
I literally function off of spite. I hate myself so much that when my depression says I can’t or shouldn’t do something I do it because who am i to tell myself how to live my life right?
Laura
I’m sorry to hear that you have to deal with that. I know how hard that is.
SpaceDorf
I wish I could do that, I try bit it usually ends up sucking even more.
My sister kinda did this with her kids. She always told her kids not to eat so many vegies and that they had to eat other things before they could have more. They became obsessed with eating nothing but vegetables. Now they snack on vegies like candy. Only difficulty now is getting one of them to eat meat. (no, she isn’t trying to be vegetarian or vegan, she just is convinced that she doesn’t like it the same way lots of kids are convinced that carrots are bad).
Leorale
Meat has a very strong taste, some people don’t like it. No reason to believe the kid has “convinced” themselves they don’t like meat. Or carrots, or whatever food they dislike.
You may have more success with the starting point that the kid is telling the truth about their likes/dislikes, and believing them that they don’t like meat (at least as it’s made currently).
Are they a ketchup kid — what if they can cover it in ketchup?
My parents used to “punish” me with healthy food and “reward” me with deeply unhealthy food, unlike every sibling that had to go through that and is now in the habit of eating unhealthy, I personally became a healthy eater to spite them. I also eat cookies ice cream and pizza and fried chicken literally whenever and not on special occasions because those things are fine to eat so long as you also enjoy vegetables. Anyway I want to learn how to make raddish kimchi. Also my little beer microbrew should be ready soon!
Oh yeah.. But at least Sal is smart enough to not outsmart herself, give vent to the urge but not actually let her ‘rents ruin her good thing with Danners.
You said this before. Why would Danny say such a hurtful thing? Do you think that would be realistic for this comic? Marcie is very much alive and gets by without using her voice just fine.
And unlike Mike, Marcie wasn’t a colossal asshole to Dan.
Casi
but mike wasn’t really being an asshole! He was being a jerk with a heart of gold, and was just misunderstood, and he wasn’t actually doing emotional abuse, he was just doing tough love! /s
DrunkenNordmann
I mean, it was still dickish of Danny to say that Mike would be better off dead to one of Mike’s grieving friends right outside of the room he was lying in.
There’s a time and place for everything and that wasn’t it.
Mark
I read his comment as musing on the thought that maybe everyone else would be better off if Mike were no more.
tunasammich
Winner winner chicken dinner
thejeff
It wasn’t even “dead”. Just that he “not wake up for awhile”.
And he was likely thinking mostly about Ethan being better off without Mike around.
Dr. T
At what point did Danny get to see Mike be anything that wasn’t prickish behavior? WE got to see it, as did Amber, Ethan, and even Walky, but that’s it.
thejeff
Few and far between for all of them (until the end for Amber). Especially for Walky.
LiterallyJustSomeGuy
‘/s’ is an “end of sarcasm” sign. Casi is joking and actually means the opposite of everything they said.
clif
I hear they’ve invented this thing called the Internet.
thejeff
I think, especially if you reread his last interaction with Mike at Becky’s party, Danny was far more concerned about how Mike treated Ethan (and Amber) than himself.
The whole point of his comment was that Ethan would be better off without Mike around. For awhile – he wasn’t actually thinking about Mike dying, much less saying it, though it’s understandable for Ethan to take it that way in retrospect.
Bash
People forget this, but at the time no one thought Mike would die. Most of the cast had not dealt with death, and it seemed impossible for someone their own age to die. Ethan didn’t say Mike might die, he said he might not wake up for a while. Danny was probably thinking a few weeks without Mike would be okay for everyone. He starts to take it back, but then he decides to say how he really feels about Mike. If he Danned anything up, it was by taking things personally and running away instead of talking it out with Ethan.
thejeff
Saying it at all to someone in Ethan’s state was already Danning it up. He blurted something out that he hadn’t intended to say and there was no way it was going to come across well. Even if it was true.
It just annoys me that readers remember it as even worse than it was.
Yumi
I can’t believe Danny spit on Mike’s dying face in front of his parents.
Glad Sal has enough self awareness to realize whether her parents like or dislike Danny shouldn’t affect how she feels. Now with Danny’s parents she going to have to real8ze they will like her more then they like Danny.
Are Danny’s parents even that bad to him in the Dumbiverse? I re-read their appearance on Freshman Family Weekend and they’re mostly fine until they hear Dorothy dumped him.
The Wilcoxen certainly aren’t the likes of Blaine and Clint, but the brief time we see them, they blame and insult Danny instead of comforting him or bucking him up or being kind to him in the wake of an awkward breakup.
Much more pervasively, it’s *how Danny reacts to things*, like somebody whose self-esteem was consistently discouraged by people around him in childhood. (For example, why does this nice people-pleasing fellow think it’s “no big deal” for Amber to yell at him that he’s stupid?)
The longer he lives away from his parents, the more free he feels to learn about himself, and experiment, and start standing up for what he believes in. The longer he’s without them, the comfier he begins to feel in his own skin.
Subtle stuff, but enough that the commentariat seems to suspect that they’re low-key sucky.
That’ll be interesting to see. With all the drama over the Walkerton’s reaction to Danny, I hadn’t really considered how Sal would play out in Danny’s family dynamic. How that’ll parallel Danny’s acceptance by Sal’s parents and how she’ll react to it.
Of course, I’m not sure they really will like Sal. They want a girl who’s “going places” and Sal’s bad girl might not work for them. She’s no Dorothy, after all.
Yeah, that’s mainly how it reads to me as well. Thank you for putting it so well!
To start with, her expression seems too serious for this to be purely joking (though maybe I misunderstand her sense of humor). But it makes sense with her character for her yelled, contrary statement to have some basis in her feelings – not towards Danny, but towards her parents. But, while she feels the need to say that to express her anger towards them (and to a lesser extent, to be contrary), it doesn’t *actually* make Danny a bad boyfriend. I feel like this is character growth for her to recognize that her own feelings are being unhelpful… I don’t remember specific instances, but in the past, I thought she leaned more towards contrariness.
But I don’t know, maybe there’s a bit of jokiness in there, too. Maybe she’s doing something akin to the say-what-you-mean-but-pretend-you’re-joking thing, but with the added caveat of actually-is-joking-but-still-kinda-feels-that-feel-and-wants-to-blow-off-steam.
Or, maybe Walky’s love of tropes is rubbing off on her.
That’s how I read it too, and I’m actually really surprised that people think she’s joking. I think it was a feeling that was building all day, it finally burst out of her, and then she admitted that it doesn’t make sense.
Yeah, she knows it’s just reflexive and irrational, and Danny thankfully doesn’t seem to be that torn up about it. Of course, we’ve seen Danny take all kinds of verbal abuse from people in stride, so this is probably hardly fazing him.
Sending mixed singles. I guess Sal learned something from rooming with Jennifer last semester. Great technique here. Leave em confused, that’s what keeps em interested.
I’m choosing to believe Sal is trying to be playfully self-aware of her own bullshit and just massively missing the mark on what is “Fun” vs “Genuinely Upsetting.”
She goes full-on Walky here. This is the playground “I don’t like your stupid face!” that has the opposite meaning, like we saw between Jennifer & Ruth.
166 thoughts on “Goodnight”
Ana Chronistic
ah, spite, letting people dictate your preferences through opposites
Angel
Too bad it can’t be used for good/helpful stuff like, “Don’t eat healthy foods/stuff yourself with pizza!” tho idk how long diets like that can last if you can’t find ways to flavor/season healthier stuff and portion and all that
wilddeath
I literally function off of spite. I hate myself so much that when my depression says I can’t or shouldn’t do something I do it because who am i to tell myself how to live my life right?
Laura
I’m sorry to hear that you have to deal with that. I know how hard that is.
SpaceDorf
I wish I could do that, I try bit it usually ends up sucking even more.
Mark
“Please don’t throw me in that briar patch!”
Sometimes it only has to work for a second or two.
Briar
Please don’t use reverse psychology to get someone to throw you into my patch. I don’t know you like that…
Thanatos
My sister kinda did this with her kids. She always told her kids not to eat so many vegies and that they had to eat other things before they could have more. They became obsessed with eating nothing but vegetables. Now they snack on vegies like candy. Only difficulty now is getting one of them to eat meat. (no, she isn’t trying to be vegetarian or vegan, she just is convinced that she doesn’t like it the same way lots of kids are convinced that carrots are bad).
Leorale
Meat has a very strong taste, some people don’t like it. No reason to believe the kid has “convinced” themselves they don’t like meat. Or carrots, or whatever food they dislike.
You may have more success with the starting point that the kid is telling the truth about their likes/dislikes, and believing them that they don’t like meat (at least as it’s made currently).
Are they a ketchup kid — what if they can cover it in ketchup?
Laura
I’ve done a diet like that. It did work. Just messed with my blood sugar too much.
Tobias
I became a vegetarian out of spite and have kept to it for 20 years
Joy
My parents used to “punish” me with healthy food and “reward” me with deeply unhealthy food, unlike every sibling that had to go through that and is now in the habit of eating unhealthy, I personally became a healthy eater to spite them. I also eat cookies ice cream and pizza and fried chicken literally whenever and not on special occasions because those things are fine to eat so long as you also enjoy vegetables. Anyway I want to learn how to make raddish kimchi. Also my little beer microbrew should be ready soon!
Decidedly Orthogonal
Oh yeah.. But at least Sal is smart enough to not outsmart herself, give vent to the urge but not actually let her ‘rents ruin her good thing with Danners.
AY
She’s trying her best!
clif
What’s life without a little crazy?
Lilith
genuinely jumpscared
Grimey
I too live in a world of contradictions, Sal.
C.T. Phipps
Hopefully Danny won’t Dan this up like saying Marcie would be better off dead.
Thomas
You said this before. Why would Danny say such a hurtful thing? Do you think that would be realistic for this comic? Marcie is very much alive and gets by without using her voice just fine.
Dark_T_Zeratul
And unlike Mike, Marcie wasn’t a colossal asshole to Dan.
Casi
but mike wasn’t really being an asshole! He was being a jerk with a heart of gold, and was just misunderstood, and he wasn’t actually doing emotional abuse, he was just doing tough love! /s
DrunkenNordmann
I mean, it was still dickish of Danny to say that Mike would be better off dead to one of Mike’s grieving friends right outside of the room he was lying in.
There’s a time and place for everything and that wasn’t it.
Mark
I read his comment as musing on the thought that maybe everyone else would be better off if Mike were no more.
tunasammich
Winner winner chicken dinner
thejeff
It wasn’t even “dead”. Just that he “not wake up for awhile”.
And he was likely thinking mostly about Ethan being better off without Mike around.
Dr. T
At what point did Danny get to see Mike be anything that wasn’t prickish behavior? WE got to see it, as did Amber, Ethan, and even Walky, but that’s it.
thejeff
Few and far between for all of them (until the end for Amber). Especially for Walky.
LiterallyJustSomeGuy
‘/s’ is an “end of sarcasm” sign. Casi is joking and actually means the opposite of everything they said.
clif
I hear they’ve invented this thing called the Internet.
thejeff
I think, especially if you reread his last interaction with Mike at Becky’s party, Danny was far more concerned about how Mike treated Ethan (and Amber) than himself.
The whole point of his comment was that Ethan would be better off without Mike around. For awhile – he wasn’t actually thinking about Mike dying, much less saying it, though it’s understandable for Ethan to take it that way in retrospect.
Bash
People forget this, but at the time no one thought Mike would die. Most of the cast had not dealt with death, and it seemed impossible for someone their own age to die. Ethan didn’t say Mike might die, he said he might not wake up for a while. Danny was probably thinking a few weeks without Mike would be okay for everyone. He starts to take it back, but then he decides to say how he really feels about Mike. If he Danned anything up, it was by taking things personally and running away instead of talking it out with Ethan.
thejeff
Saying it at all to someone in Ethan’s state was already Danning it up. He blurted something out that he hadn’t intended to say and there was no way it was going to come across well. Even if it was true.
It just annoys me that readers remember it as even worse than it was.
Yumi
I can’t believe Danny spit on Mike’s dying face in front of his parents.
Chronos
Have Danny and Marcie even met?
Username Taken
Why would he say that? Danny has never said that any of his peers would be better off dead.
C.T. Phipps
It still takes a colossal asshat to be so self-absorbed that he doesn’t notice his friend is visiting another in THE HOSPITAL.
Doopyboop
It’s okay Danny! You aren’t at that cement wall thing! Therefore, not a breakup!
Mark Sebree
Actually, the line “My parents like you so AH don’t like you!” sounds like a good book title.
Bogeywoman
I’d buy a totally random book with that title and invest my life in reading the prior and subsequent comics, for sure
clif
Sounds like we have a winner then. Wonder what the title of the next chapter is. Let’s see.
Everybody’s Looking for Nothing. Hm.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
I hope tomorrow isn’t Opposite Day.
NGPZ
Kinda? It’s a new moon IIRC
Freezer
She just had to get that out of her system.
Mr. Random
Sal’s got issues.
It’s weirdly cute.
Zane Becker-Byrd
*Quiet Screaming into my Pillow*
Corronchilejano
“I can’t be seen as a person unless I’m with you”
Jo_cubstar
Panel 4 Danny is so ?
UrsulaDavina
Glad Sal has enough self awareness to realize whether her parents like or dislike Danny shouldn’t affect how she feels. Now with Danny’s parents she going to have to real8ze they will like her more then they like Danny.
Freemage
This is why I keep faithful to this ship. They just work so damned well together, and really bring out the best in the other.
Matthew Davis
My parents often say to me “yeah, but we like her” when talking about my spouse. It’s mostly a joke. Mostly.
Needfuldoer
Are Danny’s parents even that bad to him in the Dumbiverse? I re-read their appearance on Freshman Family Weekend and they’re mostly fine until they hear Dorothy dumped him.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/wilcoxes/
Leorale
The Wilcoxen certainly aren’t the likes of Blaine and Clint, but the brief time we see them, they blame and insult Danny instead of comforting him or bucking him up or being kind to him in the wake of an awkward breakup.
Much more pervasively, it’s *how Danny reacts to things*, like somebody whose self-esteem was consistently discouraged by people around him in childhood. (For example, why does this nice people-pleasing fellow think it’s “no big deal” for Amber to yell at him that he’s stupid?)
The longer he lives away from his parents, the more free he feels to learn about himself, and experiment, and start standing up for what he believes in. The longer he’s without them, the comfier he begins to feel in his own skin.
Subtle stuff, but enough that the commentariat seems to suspect that they’re low-key sucky.
Nedlum
The most damning thing we’ve seen about the Willcoxes was in a strip where they didn’t show up and weren’t mentioned:
I’m kinda used to being called stuff like [a piece of shit]. It’s not really that big a deal to me.
It feels clear that however the Wilcoxes treated him at Family Weekend was not exactly them at their worst.
Leorale
Yes! Thank you, that’s the strip I was thinking of, and it was, appropriately, worse than I remembered.
thejeff
That’ll be interesting to see. With all the drama over the Walkerton’s reaction to Danny, I hadn’t really considered how Sal would play out in Danny’s family dynamic. How that’ll parallel Danny’s acceptance by Sal’s parents and how she’ll react to it.
Of course, I’m not sure they really will like Sal. They want a girl who’s “going places” and Sal’s bad girl might not work for them. She’s no Dorothy, after all.
Stephen Bierce
The Fallacy of the Ultimate Binary
DailyBrad
I take that as her instantly knowing she is being ridiculous and to sleep it off.
bemisawa
Yeah, that’s mainly how it reads to me as well. Thank you for putting it so well!
To start with, her expression seems too serious for this to be purely joking (though maybe I misunderstand her sense of humor). But it makes sense with her character for her yelled, contrary statement to have some basis in her feelings – not towards Danny, but towards her parents. But, while she feels the need to say that to express her anger towards them (and to a lesser extent, to be contrary), it doesn’t *actually* make Danny a bad boyfriend. I feel like this is character growth for her to recognize that her own feelings are being unhelpful… I don’t remember specific instances, but in the past, I thought she leaned more towards contrariness.
But I don’t know, maybe there’s a bit of jokiness in there, too. Maybe she’s doing something akin to the say-what-you-mean-but-pretend-you’re-joking thing, but with the added caveat of actually-is-joking-but-still-kinda-feels-that-feel-and-wants-to-blow-off-steam.
Or, maybe Walky’s love of tropes is rubbing off on her.
bejouled
That’s how I read it too, and I’m actually really surprised that people think she’s joking. I think it was a feeling that was building all day, it finally burst out of her, and then she admitted that it doesn’t make sense.
DailyBrad
Yeah, she knows it’s just reflexive and irrational, and Danny thankfully doesn’t seem to be that torn up about it. Of course, we’ve seen Danny take all kinds of verbal abuse from people in stride, so this is probably hardly fazing him.
RassilonTDavros
Not sure if I really think they can overcome this, or if it’s just wishful thinking. But one can hope…
Onward to Book 14!
William
Welp, that was frightening. Glad she wasn’t serious though.
newlland(Henryvolt)
Sour patch kid Sal.
CMasta1992
Well on the plus side Panel 4 Danny, Walky probably won’t date your ex this time.
Sirksome
Sending mixed singles. I guess Sal learned something from rooming with Jennifer last semester. Great technique here. Leave em confused, that’s what keeps em interested.
UrsulaDavina
Pretty sure she was just joking with him.
Sirksome
I know. I was trying to joke myself.
Needfuldoer
Mostly.
She’s hiding a genuine fear under there.
Joe Moose
♫ Give ’em the old, double whammy
Daze and dizzy ’em ♪
ANeM
I’m choosing to believe Sal is trying to be playfully self-aware of her own bullshit and just massively missing the mark on what is “Fun” vs “Genuinely Upsetting.”
Thomas
She goes full-on Walky here. This is the playground “I don’t like your stupid face!” that has the opposite meaning, like we saw between Jennifer & Ruth.
StClair
I had the thought that this was basically on the level of “I don’t know how to deal with these feelings, so I’m going to throw a toy at you.”
The Jighole Man