238

Reenactment
Posted on July 26, 2023 by David M Willis

238 thoughts on “Reenactment”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    Then Amber falls into TVTropes and is never seen again

    1. morhek

      Like Iocaine powder, Amber has consumed so many tropes she’s resistant to what would kill a normal person.

      1. Queen Anthai

        morhek: If there was a Like button for comments I’d smash it right now

      2. Crotonhurst

        I second Queen Anthai’s smashing of the imaginary like button

        1. Rose by Any Other Name

          Thirdded.

          Not often you get a Princess Bride reference. Respect.

        2. motorfirebox

          Never bet a nerd on the internet won’t make a PB reference WHEN DEATH IS ON THE LINE

        3. thejeff

          Inconceivable.

    2. CitrineMonster

      How dare you link to the very same thing that will destroy us all

      1. Casi

        Ana isn’t forcing you to click it. Just because the button is there with a big red sign saying “press me” doesn’t mean ana is responsible for your actions

    3. Bicycle Bill

      TV Tropes is the closed thing we’ve got IRL to the Dark Side of the Force.

      1. Bicycle Bill

        grr…. CLOSEST thing, etc….

        1. Ophidiophile

          Well, at least you didn’t write “closet thing”, cuz that would have been scary AND made sense.

        2. elebenty

          The Lion, the Witch, and the TVTropes closet-thingy.

          You know you’d read it. And never escape.

    4. Angel

      as if she isn’t some part time ‘top ten’ contributor/volunteer on there and the wikis

      1. Thag Simmons

        Amber doesn’t seem like a TVTropes editor to me, I don’t think she has the fascination with categorization and taxonomies that you need for it.

    5. Francoinblanco

      Damm im almost went into that rabbit hole and search for that trope

    6. Needfuldoer

      TV Tropes links need warning labels!

    7. Amós Batista

      Any adult will be consumed if went there. I was reading the DoA page and got 3 hours straight checking each trope.

  2. TrueVCU

    Sal: FORBIDDEN PLEASURE

    1. GholaHalleck

      Danny IS kind of sitting there like “Is that the sex face? That looks like a sex face…”

      1. Francoinblanco

        He is not alone with that. I dont know if this is embarrassment or “yes yell at him more, he was naughty boy”

  3. NGPZ

    Fuck you Linda! ???

    I’m with Sal, I think I’m just gonna be out of here for a bit, pigging out with a Hawaiian Pizza. ??

    1. NGPZ

      ooooooh she means like a Twin Connection, aaaawwww ?

    2. Hoboturtle

      Honestly considering how Walky was apparently flunking (I thought it was just Math. Apparently not) I think this might actually be reasonable.

      College is expensive.

      1. Bittersweet

        Yeah, as someone who just struggled with university in general, I actually think Linda is in the “normal mother reaction” zone here. Almost flunking out is no joke (if it was more than one class), and sometimes this can help by adding someone to check in and make sure you’re actually doing the work.

        Which, now that I type it out wasn’t actually Walky’s problem so it’s not the greatest approach, but I can understand how a mom might feel this is the best solution when given no context for what actually happened.

        I’m willing to bet on the next page she pulls the next Mom trick out and goes “you can’t be dating anybody while X, Y, and Z are going on, you’re too distracted by girls.”

        1. Bittersweet

          (Also going to clarify here that I don’t know if I condone such action. I did flunk out of uni once and just never could finish my Bachelor’s after three more attempts before realizing that it wasn’t really worth it for my situation. I lack the life experience to really know what the best approach to this situation realistically would be.)

        2. NGPZ

          Sorry to hear that bruh. ?

          Yeah I wouldn’t be surprized if Walky eventually dropped out for the sake of a Television degree not even being worth it. Less than 40% of Au/DHD students and students with disabilities actually get a degree after starting a 4 year school, and even for neurotypicals, less than 50% of all college students actually get a job in their field of study.

        3. Kimi

          I think a lot of that is due to getting a job in your field is all about connections and not your actual degree (or even experience). I can’t tell you how many jobs I have tried to get in my field (biology/ecology) where I was told to work a minimum wage position under them (like janitor) in order to get the connections to work for them (as in already working for the company). Some of that was for entry level positions. Just a whole lot of bs of it being more who you know not what you know. It feels like kids with parents that are scientists (even if they are only teens) would have more luck getting interviews than I do. All just “you seem very nice” but never what they were looking for.

        4. NGPZ

          I swear with the human species, it’s just been Rule by the Accident of Birth all the way up, for thousands of years in thousands of different packages. ?

        5. eskimolos

          Right, even in biomed we’re encouraged to do internships and build connections while we’re at school, and encouraged to do at least a master’s so we have more time and chance of becoming known for the work we do.

        6. Miri

          In fairness I picked my degree course in large part because of all of the transferrable skills it would give me. It was only 3/4s through my last year that I realised that working in publishing is something real people are actually allowed to do… And luckily found a small company that were willing to give me a chance with no directly relevant experience ❤️ (And once I had a relevant job, some training courses, and over a year’s employment there, them deciding to downsize which involved redundancy (thankfully with loads of notice, and in time to get a new job before the 2008 economic downturn started to affect things) meant I had the push to go to a bigger company in plenty of time before my health also went completely to pot… Better pay, probably more job security… Theoretically more directions I could go in…)

        7. Masumi

          Maybe sometimes having someone check in with you would help, but I’m pretty sure that requires the ‘someone’ to be someone you trust and whose respect you don’t want to lose, not a screech demon who will give you anxiety about getting tests back. Honestly if my mother had still tried to supervise me in college I might have flunked out just to be free.

          But luckily, I cut off contact with her first semester, she cut off the money, and I made it through uni even though I had to pay rent with plasma donations, so yay XD

        8. Kimi

          I have mixed reactions here. Failing one class (especially first semester if he never had to study before in his life), isn’t the worst possible thing. There could be many other factors affecting it, including the professor or teaching style. I only failed one class (being first semester organic chemistry at 8am, got a B second semester), but my sister failed out of college. It is hard to know what to do about it, as funding for college doesn’t really allow for students to take a year break to reorganize and decide what they are going to do. If you start with one major, and it isn’t working out, it can be hard to figure out what to do next, especially on a short college timescale while still trying to do classes. While I understand the frustration about the waste of money, I also think that yelling at a child or micromanaging doesn’t solve the problem. Finding out why he wasn’t doing well (perhaps not studying), and setting him up with a counselor or someone who could help him learn how to do it correctly might work better. It can depend though, some people might fail due to not caring enough, in which case setting terms might put the motivation there. Others, like my sister, might have depression and anxiety, in which case yelling just makes it spiral worse.

        9. Uly

          Failing one class (especially first semester if he never had to study before in his life), isn’t the worst possible thing.

          If you stay in school long enough, sooner or later you’re bound to hit a wall – a subject that, for whatever reason, just doesn’t “click”, a teacher who just doesn’t explain things in a way you understand, or, as in Walky’s case, a subject which requires you to study when you’ve literally never learned how to study or take notes.

          If you’ve got a kid like Walky, who basically coasts while putting in little or no effort – and if the Walkerton parents had been paying the barest amount of attention they really should’ve noticed that Walky was putting in no effort at all – and they expect to continue on to university, then you’re really not doing them any favors by letting that continue.

          At the very least, you ought to teach them how to take notes and study even if they never actually think they’ll need to do it. If you can swing it, signing them up for an extracurricular that they will not be effortlessly good at is all the better – they’ve *got* to fail so they can learn that it’s not the end of the world and how to get better at something they’re not automatically good at.

          Failing and then improving – or knowing when to cut your losses – is a skill like any other. You gotta do it a few times before you can be good at it.

          Linda clearly doesn’t understand this concept herself, but then, she also thinks she can force her son to be a doctor. Ha, no. The medical field is already highly competitive. It’s hard enough to be a doctor even if you really want it – how’re you gonna do it if you don’t?

        10. Zero

          She has no context because she started screaming instead of asking for any.

        11. Rogue 7

          Nah, “normal mom zone” is establishing communication lines to be kept in the loop about grades. This is very much into micromanaging your adult son territory.

      2. BBCC

        So far as we and Linda know, it WAS just math. Amber kept him from failing that one class, not flunking out of school.

        1. MacareuxMoine

          WE know that it was just Math – Linda was literally told that he was ‘flunking out of school’ three strips ago.

        2. BBCC

          Okay, that’s fair. Even so she’s also been told he’s not failing anymore and turned it around so she’s freaking out over something that has resolved.

        3. Taffy

          Yeah, and instead of asking for literally even one shred of additional information, she instantaneously morphed into a rabid chimp and started shrieking loud enough to set off car alarms, pounding the table into sawdust and chicken stock.

        4. Leorale

          I would like to imagine that asking questions and listening might be normal mom behavior, but I only have one mom, I don’t really know what “normal” moms are like.
          (Mine’s a ball of anxiety sometimes, but she’s also a retired elementary school teacher, so, I assume she’s way the heck better at school-coaching than your average bear. Bears don’t even go to school.)

          Really *effective* mom/parent behavior might include asking about the scope of the problem, why was the problem happening, is he currently solving it, how, does he have somebody good who can problem-solve it with him, etc. Way more info needed about what he’s done, and what he thinks, in a way that won’t just get him to be flippant out of sheer self-defense (lol, I’ll just cheat!).

          Ineffective parenting behaviour might include unilaterally jumping to a top-down solution: “you must show me all your grades — btw, just now I scared you into a frozen response when you told me a thing I didn’t want to hear, so I am definitely the most trustworthy person to coach you through a scary difficulty together”.

      3. ESM

        Also, if this got out Walky would be expelled and his life would be ruined, and he’s casually going “And I’d do it again, too!”

        I mean, “I want you to send me a copy of your schoolwork until your grades are better” is still very much the “favored child” treatment.

        1. OnyxIdol

          I’d say his favor is pretty low right now.

        2. Devin

          But his grades are better now.

          This has been explicitly established. In front of Linda even.

        3. Laura

          I love how academic cheating and cybercrime (not to mention Amber’s office B&E they don’t know about yet) aren’t even a blip on Linda’s and Charles’s radars right now.

  4. Stephen Bierce

    *”With Or Without You” is now playing on the jukebox*

    1. saltchocolate

      I respect this choice, DJ

  5. Sirksome

    I mean he doesn’t have to tell her what his grades are. Frankly she shouldn’t even know. Amber’s a blabbermouth.

    1. Wraithy2773

      He’s still financially dependent on them, though. The rules might say one thing, but what would stop them from just refusing to pay his tuition?

      1. James

        Also it can be super hard telling a parent “no” if you’ve never had to before. And they’re, say, super domineering and controlling.

      2. Sirksome

        I feel like that creates a catch 22 scenario, cause Walky not getting an education is counter to what Linda wants.

    2. Angel

      i imagine they’re footing the bill tho, so like “This semester’s costs/text books are X dollars” and under walky’s name/mailed to his account or so (college debt aside), so maybe she would have access, not sure if it’s changed but grades would be inputted online, i think some ppl in public school would have parents check it (back in teh day we had like ‘progress reports’ for parents to sign, in retrospect prolly would’ve been easier to fake a signature if needed.)

      1. BBCC

        Yeah, they’re online, but every school I’ve heard of has those requiring a student login to look at them. Linda can’t check whenever she wants.

        1. Angel

          well unless amber or someone else talks linda into calming down, i imagine walky standing his ground and refusing to share his grades probably wouldn’t work too successfully

        2. Taffy

          What’s she gonna do, pull him out of school? Great use of $12k.

    3. Bin

      If he refuses to show the grades then they must be really bad. And if you are going to fail then why not just cut the financial aid early on.

      1. Taffy

        Because the future isn’t written in stone and if you can afford to put your kid through a medical degree (if she couldn’t, why would she push him toward it), there’s no reason to condemn him to having no higher education, since he’d never be able to afford it on his own at such a young age in this bullshit economy?

      2. Uly

        If he refuses to show the grades then they must be really bad.

        That’s like saying that if you refuse to let the cops search your bag without a warrant or probable cause, you must have something to hide.

        1. James

          And yet it is almost certainly logic Linda would agree with.

        2. James

          Until applied to her, of course, because she is a Good Person and Responsible Adult.

        3. Uly

          (And also white and well-off.)

  6. Nono

    Danny’s just thinking, ‘oh wow, is THIS what it’s like to be the one not involved in a life reenactment of the fake relationship trope, at Galasso’s?’

    1. Nono

      Oh wait, “live”, not “life”. I blame panel 1 for the typo.

    2. Bin

      Amber / Danny: Wow, its like my life is on repeat
      Sal / Walky: Wow, its the literal opposite of my life

    3. TulipKitten

      For all Danny knows, this is real. He was frustrated Walky was dating his ex again.

  7. Nathan

    When did this happen before????

    I swear, this is the problem of having binged eight years of this comic in a week during the spring of 2020, it’s all blurred together in my mind.

    1. John Campbell

      Freshman Family Weekend. With the other dude at the table right now.

      1. Angel

        There was also joyce pretending to be jacob’s bf (tho he was surprised yb it too) dunno if amber found out about that tho

        1. Nono

          Don’t forget Ethan dating Joyce.

          Galasso’s has seen a LOT of dubious relationships.

        2. DrunkenNordmann

          Meanwhile, Galasso’s own relationship is entirely non-dubious.

        3. Aviator

          Im starting to think that Galasso’s is just the only game in town for a genuinely good restaurant experience.

          Or I guess they’re college students and Galasso’s prices are rock bottom.

        4. Needfuldoer

          Galasso’s is also right across the street from Read Hall and Forest Quad.

          And it’s a great reason to include Galasso in DoA.

    2. cbwroses

      On parents day.
      Danny was dating Amazi-girl and didn’t know that was Amber’s alter ego.
      His parents were giving him ? for losing Dorothy and he couldn’t give all the details on who he was dating.
      Amber was trying to get away from Blaine, saw the Danny family, and joined them by claiming to be his girlfriend (which she technically was since they weren’t separate alters then, but he didn’t know that and thought they were two separate people of both mind and body).

  8. Wraithy2773

    Sal’s reaction is just… yeah, chef’s kiss.

  9. Serendipity

    Again, this is your fault, Linda. Acting the tyrant again won’t fix anything.

    1. Angel

      if anything, putting walky under more stress and ‘surveillance’ (if that’s rly possible within college grounds then again she knows the dean), would prolly cause his grades to drop again

      1. Archieve

        That’s on brand with linda’s parenting, her over the top attempts at control just create new problems.

        1. Needfuldoer

          And if when that happens? Double down to correct it.

          /s

    2. dalniente

      It worked on Sal (sarcasm)

  10. Doopyboop

    Linda has connections, so I don’t know if that would affect anything, but I remember part of the parental orientation for my college included the college campus literally telling the parents “No matter how much you ask or demand, we legally cannot give you information about your child’s grades.” also bad Walky, don’t brag about Amber’s ability to hack your grades.

    1. Angel

      i don’t think it should be shared, although i imagine a transcript or gpa would be semi public for ppl applying to jobs that need specific requirements from collab to apply to

      1. BBCC

        No, they’re not. You have to get a copy of your transcript or GPA from the student site and send that.

    2. thejeff

      Linda can’t get access to his grades without him. She can however pressure him to give her his grades, which is what she’s doing here.

      What the college does isn’t really relevant. She’s demanding it of him.

      1. Doopyboop

        I know, I’m merely commenting because IF she is unable to pressure Walky into handing over his grades (which is completely possible, unless she like… moved into his dorm and yelled at him every day), then… yeah I’m just pretty much pointing out that she’d be unable to access the grades otherwise, unless she finesses her dean ex-hubby.

  11. Nono

    Charles is just off-panel, still thinking about Transformers preg.

    1. cbwroses

      I think he might be listening to Amber’s mutterings and knows the relationship is fake (tho he probably already did).
      Like Walky, I suspect he is more insightful than he appears behind the veil of goofiness.

  12. Angel

    lol sal being euphoric in this situation is the perf chance to sneak off and have sex withdanny lol

    1. Jo_cubstar

      You read that as euphoric? I read it as a panic attack…

      1. Angel

        maybe nervousness? usually lip biting in some comics is seen as a vague turn on or so. But i guess it can be weird to see someone else in trouble, even if she does feel sympathy for walky, she did wanna bask in her parents ‘approval’ for a while

        although she’d prolly enjoy it more if she wasn’t as close with walky/had more animosity towards him

        1. Thomas

          Look, if lip biting means turned on, then Linda’s really getting off on her anger towards Walky. Do we have to imagine her marriage to Charles involves hate-sex?

      2. Thag Simmons

        Maybe not euphoric but she’s definitely not panicking

    2. thejeff

      She says she’s “wigging out”, which might not be a panic attack, but it’s a lot closer to that than to euphoria.

  13. Animedingo

    Plot twist

    Sals kink is seeing walky in trouble over nothing

    1. Angel

      it’s the sibling superiority effect , i guess lol.

  14. Yotomoe

    Poor Amber. She thinks she’s real.

    1. Angel

      are any of us real, really? 8D;

      1. Devin

        I can’t tell, I suspect it looks the same if you’re fictional as if you’re real.

        Although my story would be boring af right now, so if I’m fictional, I’m concerned that my series might be on the verge of getting canceled.

        Or maybe I’m a side character. That feels like the preferable option. Main characters’ lives tend to not be great.

  15. John Campbell

    Amber right now updating the Dumbing of Age entry on the Fake Relationship page on TVTropes.

    1. NGPZ

      That’s a thing? confusedPikachu.gif

      1. John Campbell

        It is, though it looks like DoA isn’t on there. Get on that, Amber.

      2. Uly

        Fake dating never works. I mean, it *does* work to get the two romantic leads together, if that’s where you’re going with it, but since their original goal was never to get together, it never works.

  16. Angel

    ‘real turn’

    surprised sh e didn’t already know that term then again mike mentioned amber writing ‘guro’ so she prolly stays away from the ‘fluffy’ rom com tropes

  17. Golden Yak

    Contain yourself, Sal.

    1. Devin

      Of the folks at the table atm, Sal is one of the more contained, tbh. Certainly top half.

  18. Samniel

    So, the plan’s going bad for Walky but surprisingly good for Sal!

    …I say surprisingly good even though both of them are currently getting hit with how much of their mother’s love is conditional and they’re one misstep away from losing it damnit Linda

    1. NGPZ

      Still holding out on Galasso’s warning being ominous foreshadowing for Linda.

  19. Brasca1

    Not a trope, but a paraphrase: “It must be hard for you. To be the disappointing child.”

  20. newlland(Henryvolt)

    Would the fake grades be to get him through class or to fool Linda?

    Anyway I feel like the issue with Linda is that her affection for her kids might be conditional. The minute they’re not meeting a certain standard or filling a role she set for them she switches up.

    Walky didn’t really fail, the methods of which he pulled it off is irrelevant the point is he faltered for what is like the first time in his education track record and that’s what got her heated.

    1. Uly

      Anyway I feel like the issue with Linda is that her affection for her kids might be conditional. The minute they’re not meeting a certain standard or filling a role she set for them she switches up.

      Oh, yeah, definitely. This shows itself in an appallingly racist way, because she’s *also* a bigot, albeit the sort who definitely thinks she isn’t – but her root problem is that she’s a terrible parent married to a husband who enables the heck out of her.

    2. Angel

      Considering walky just blurted “amber can hack my grades again” i imagine he can’t rly fake his way out of it, esp if it’s too good

      Who’s their math teacher anyways, was their face ever shown after Jason left? i suppose if hacking/digital is a worry i imagine linda would use her connections to the dean to get a direct email/copy of walky’s grades if not just do a phone call and do a confirmation to double check each time or so

      1. cbwroses

        I think his name is Professor Reles.

        1. Tan

          Professor Alan Rees.

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/02-look-straight-ahead/integral/

    3. GholaHalleck

      No might about it.

      Sal probably fell out of favor because she had the “bad hair” and hung around with the “immigrants” and it all snowballed from there.

      Walky was good at school and latched onto a white girl who could play the game because her parents were shit and she craved attention.

      1. Uly

        Billy/Jennifer’s Asian, isn’t she?

        1. cbwroses

          Half white/half Asian.

        2. Nono

          Even then her dad’s British, so depending on how racist some people are even that white part could be seen as ‘foreign’.

        3. Angel

          She’s mixed, but her family’s also rich, so i imagine she’d be ‘approved of’

          Plus ‘light skinned’ type of immigrants/asians aren’t as targeted by racism like how Linda would’ve seen it (though i’m sure if she was just like the daughter of a chinese american ‘takeout’ restaurant i’m sure she would’ve been looked down on)

        4. thejeff

          “reasonably white-passing” as she described at one point. Specifically referring to Linda.

      2. Vanessa

        Are you talking about… Billie? Lol she would hate to be accused of being Walky’s girlfriend.

        1. cbwroses

          “Latched onto a white girl” doesn’t mean they dated.
          It means they were close, as you can latch onto someone platonically or familially as well as romantically.
          Considering the well established lack of romance between Walky and Jennifer, I don’t think they meant it romantically.

        2. GholaHalleck

          Exactly, I meant it in the “Sal choose to hang out with Marcy, a dark skinned “Poor Immigrant” which “Looks bad.” While Walky found a white passing rich girl to be friends with.

          He was following her script inadvertently, so he was the Good Boy.

  21. Warcodered

    Looks like everyone gets an existential crises today.

  22. HueSatLight

    Last time was a little more complicated.

  23. Uly

    So, let’s recap.

    Up until literally this minute, Linda was not asking to check up on Walky’s grades at all. And now she wants to check up on *all* of them, all the time – but is offering exactly zero support in this whole “not failing” business.

    Yeah, that’s an appropriate response.

    And the worst part is that this is the sort of response that a perfectly normal, not at all toxic parent might have and then walk back – but because Linda isn’t that parent, omg, everything is so much worse. So if Walky tries to explain what happened to anybody who doesn’t have Linda as a mother, they won’t actually get it. Because they’re not the ones who have to live with it, so they’ll interpret it through the lens of “a normal parent is upset over something upsetting” rather than “a toxic parent is freaking out in the way toxic parents do”.

    1. Angel

      she’s probably never had to deal with walky ‘struggling’ before (tho i know back in the day some kids got money/rewarded for showing straight a’s ) but yeah it is controlling

      But i imagine she probably wouldn’t let up even if it did improve naturally. or just use it to leverage/force him to ‘change majors’ or so or whatever (like walky’s doing telecommunications because he wants to…? IDK be some kinda journalist/media job or he just thought it was ‘easiest’ but i think linda mention she wanted him to be a doctor or like “Oh he’ll be X, he just doesn’t know it yet”)

      1. Archieve

        Eventually being a doctor is probably her underlying reason for wanting to know his full grades, got to make sure he will be able to transfer over.

      2. StClair

        Walky likes games TV and cartoons, so he wants to work in TV and cartoons.
        Linda wants to be the mother of a Successful Professional who will reflect well on her.

        1. Angel

          well, i guess it’s a passion one can chase after when they’re young, tho it feels like depending on the job (esp with how toxic some ‘fandoms’/communities can be), i feel like choosing an artistic pursuit or even behind teh scenes of tv stuff might make one jaded/burnt out on it or so, even tho did wanna be a cartoonist for the daily strip he did basically admit to recycling 2/3rds of the art instead of that intense deep ‘lore/worldbuilding’ that joyce was doing with her roomies parody

    2. Nymphie

      I think it’ll depend on how specific or vague Walky’s retelling would be.
      “My mom regularly check up on me and wants to know my grades” is very different from “she literally told me im on probation and is demanding photocopies of my grades because she doesn’t trust my word of mouth if I tell her I’m doing alright”

  24. Bin

    Lucy walks in “Hey guys how…
    Sal: Get the F**k out of here (throws brick)

    Amber should know given her fake romances have turned real before.

    1. Angel

      well, sal did vouch for her, but idk how upset walky would be if it’s like “so this was all for nothing?” and maybe cause more tension with amber afterwards but even if he ‘broke up’ with amber in front of them, showing up with lucy afterwards would be awkward given the grades bombshell

      1. Needfuldoer

        Did Lucy hack his grades? No.

        Therefore in Linda’s eyes, Lucy is better for Walky than Amber is. The plan worked!

  25. C.T. Phipps

    Sal should rescue Walky by punching Linda through time like America Chavez.

    Then the comic shifts to discussing everyone’s superpowers.

  26. DailyBrad

    Woof. Like, I am not surprised this is Linda’s takeaway, I’m really not, but still, woof.

  27. True Survivor

    There a lot of chewed lips in this strip (and on in yesterdays). I think people used to eat horse lips – has anyone ever tried anything similar?

  28. True Survivor

    Oh, hey. I just noticed that in the first few panels, Sal is slowly sinking under the table – it is always scary when moms yell.

    1. NGPZ

      Good catch, didn’t even notice until now. Poor Sal ?

    2. cbwroses

      Sal’s not sinking.
      Linda is (the only one) standing.

  29. ESM

    I feel like nearly any parent would flip the fuck out at their son going “I was failing my classes, but it’s okay because I cheated and can cheat again, all thanks to the fact I’m dating the woman who literally stabbed your daughter”.

    And his punishment is that…Linda wants to see his all grades for an indeterminate yet explicitly temporary period (since he’s “on probation”)?

    No one likes their mom yelling at them, we’re all predisposed to not like Linda, and she’s not exactly treating Walky as an independent adult here…but let’s not pretend that he isn’t *skating*. As bad as this is for Walky, he’s not only being treated way better than Sal would be in this situation, he’s probably being treated better even than the people with supportive parents would’ve been.

    1. BBCC

      He was failing one class and by Amber’s admission, he improved on his own. He brought up cheating again as a joke about her demanding to see his grades.

      1. ESM

        Then he just has to show Linda his improved grades and he’s off probation.

        Like, it SUCKS, and it’s kind of inappropriate of Linda to be asking this of her adult son, but also it’s an absolute slap on the wrist for doing something that could get him expelled.

        I’m sure tomorrow Linda will ask for Walky to cut his pinky off Yakuza-style, and then I’ll look the fool for defending things as they currently are, but as of this point Walky is being treated with kid gloves.

        1. shrub

          Agreed but only if the parents are footing the bill, if they’re not Walky can tell her to go pound sand

        2. Uly

          I’m sure tomorrow Linda will ask for Walky to cut his pinky off Yakuza-style

          So just before the pandemic a family member accidentally lost part of their point finger, and what we learned from this is that the pinky is actually the most important non-thumb finger. If you lose that, you lose nearly half your grip strength. If you lose your point finger, you can mostly just use your middle finger instead.

          And now I’ve been telling everybody ever since.

        3. shrub

          Did not know that, did you get told why that is?

        4. Uly

          Well, the doctor told us that to reassure us that the injury wasn’t that crippling. He *also* said that, while of course for everybody in the family it was the worst day ever (well, the second worst day – living in NYC, the worst was definitely 9/11), the cut was actually pretty clean and couldn’t have been done better if it had been done surgically rather than in a gardening accident.

          But I googled it at the time. Basically, if you consider how your hand is actually shaped, and think about the physics of how everything works, it’s actually kinda obvious. Or at least it is to people who understand biomechanics and physics, which I only sorta do. *shrugs*

          We also learned, if you’re interested, that if the top knuckle is *mostly* entirely chopped off, but there’s a teensy bit of the nailbed left, sometimes the entire fingernail will regrow. Because bodies are both amazing and also a little gross. (Not that I say that latter part to my nibling, gosh no.)

        5. shrub

          Cool, thanks for that

        6. BBCC

          Linda doesn’t even care about the ‘could get expelled’ part. She only cares about the ‘good student’ part. And it’s the second semester so it’s pretty okay odds that he’s already showed her decent end of term grades since this is the first of her learning this.

        7. Gwyn

          This. I feel like she’s mad about the wrong thing – I’d be way more mad that he cheated than that he was struggling in the first place.

    2. Bash

      The thing is, Linda didn’t set any terms on the probation that would actually fix the situation. “You need to attend office hours until you can prove your grades have improved,” would be a good probation. This is just Linda getting increased control over Walky until she decides to relinquish it.

      And maybe this is controversial, but I don’t think parents who pay for tuition should get special privileges to control their kids. Maybe there should be some ground rules to help the student succeed, but they shouldn’t get to change them around arbitrarily. Choosing to fund your kid’s college education is a choice you made, and you shouldn’t expect endless gratitude or obedience in return. It’s like those parents who act like their kids owe them for being fed and housed while they were young. They didn’t ask to be born, and they didn’t ask to grow up in a world where it’s impossible to fund your own college education without going into massive debt.

    3. Chubsius

      You’re missing the part where Linda takes Amber’s word about flunking at face value, despite the fact that Linda despises her and has been insulting Amber to her face. Linda, rather than asking for any kind of real explanation, whips around and goes full volume on Walky so hard that Sal has to put an arm out to restrain her. Linda flipped out before Walky had said anything. Imagine, if you will, an alternate universe where Amber was simply lying and this is Linda’s response. Yikes.

      A “normal” parent would, at least initially, assume the best of their kid and back them up. Also, I’d say not normal for a parent to get this loud, this fast, in a public restaurant in front of your daughter’s new boyfriend who you like and would want to make a good first impression on. Maybe it’s me, but I think a “normal” parent would want to get more information and then discuss this in private.

      1. eh, whatever

        It’s because Walky hasn’t tried to contradict anything Amber said.

        1. dalniente

          I don’t think Walky had the chance to contradict any of it, he panicked and froze. There’s decent odds he froze as soon as Amber blurted out what happened and he saw his mom’s expression change.

          But honestly I don’t think “scrambling to preemptively defend himself in the conversation” should be the key to avoiding this kind of reaction. A non-toxic parent who actually cared about their kid would still ask for more details, not snap straight to shouting in their face.

    4. Tesset

      The problem I’m having here is that, while this is possibly a reasonable reaction, this is essentially what my mom did to me in middle/high school (demanded to see my grades & then nitpicked them despite the overall result). And while I did start getting better grades, it’s not because I developed healthy study habits & organization strategies, it’s because I developed a severe anxiety disorder that nearly killed me in college.

      I don’t know what the right response was from Linda here, but screaming at Walky was definitely the wrong one, both short & long term.

      1. Gwyn

        This is not a reasonable reaction. I’m sorry your life experience trained you to think it might be one.

  30. Derek

    Seconding all the commenters who previously said “Walky’s plan was to piss off his mother, now he’s surprised he’s succeeded”
    I genuinely don’t know what outcome he was hoping for

    1. Angel

      well i think i was more “have a white girlfriend that makes literally anyone else look better in comparison” versus “make my mother freak out”

    2. Bash

      She was supposed to be upset about his choice of girlfriend, not his grades.

  31. Shrub

    Panel 5 kinda proves panel 4 is correct

  32. Calibus

    Danny is experiencing Walky’s suffering and Sal is definitely mooting.

    1. Angel

      well, it would be hilarious if after all this, danny ends up tutoriing him and they allbecome friends

      1. Segnosaur

        I don’t think Danny would be able to help Walky.

        Danny was able to successfully tutor Sal because she was attentive but just didn’t have a grounding in the basic concepts. Danny could work with that.

        Walky seems to understand the basics (he did well at the start of the semester when they were doing review work) but lacks the mental discipline to focus on learning new stuff. Danny would probably be as frustrated trying to teach walky as Jason was. The only thing Danny MIGHT be able to do is recognize the problem and get walky to see someone about potential ADHD, but given how oblivious Danny can sometimes be, that is unlikely.

        1. Liquid Len

          Ironically enough, Amber probably could help him. Recall it was Amazi-Girl who set up pings and reminders for Walky before midterms to help him study.

        2. thejeff

          Which he’s probably been working with since, which is why, though he’s still concerned, he actually is doing better.

  33. OnyxIdol

    Ugh being treated like a kid as an adult sucks balls.

    1. Archieve

      And probably does the opposite of making him feel confidence in his abilities.

      1. OnyxIdol

        His confidence isn’t relevant to Linda.

    2. NGPZ

      RIGHT?!?!?! Infantilization is the WORST ???

    3. Shrub

      TBF he is acting like a child

      1. NGPZ

        ?️

      2. Archieve

        It’s easy to slip into that role when your being treated like a child.

        1. shrub

          Not saying Linda isn’t to blame or isn’t an asshat (she certainly is) but Walky, equally, Walky has prided himself on not growing up, on staying a child

        2. shrub

          Far too late for me and those extra additions…

    4. Angel

      he’s probably never had to deal with consequences from his parents, but it is a bit intense

      at least he’s not like “actually i’d like to be kidnapped again” but hopefully linda can’t get too involved

      1. shrub

        Maybe he’ll learn from this

    5. Yotomoe

      I’ll be honest. 18 is still a child to me.

  34. BBCC

    Nice save, Amber.

    And yeah, this is definitely weird, Sal.

  35. Kenny

    Danny is like, “Oh yeah, I’m still here.”

  36. Kenny

    To be fair, the parent’s reaction to this is pretty reasonable. All things considered.

  37. goggleman64

    It’s kind of magical the way Amber’s TV-tropes perspective becomes a crystal-clear and mildly prophetic perspective by virtue of the fact that she actually does exist in a story.

  38. 3oranges

    Two isn’t a lot of nickels but it’s weird it happened twice.

    1. Sharaku

      I’m glad somebody finished the quote!

  39. Needfuldoer

    Sal called him “Danny”, that’s how you know she’s freaking out.

    1. NGPZ

      I mean, who wouldn’t be in proximity to an abusive mother having an outburst, simultaneously feeling a disturbance in their Twin Force? ?

  40. Steamweed

    Amber is savvy of all ship genres! (Just has to look stuff up sometimes.)

  41. Kaz

    That’s not a lot but it IS weird that it happened twice.

  42. Da Boy

    Brace yourself Sal, you might just get the Golden Child status and THAT will be weird.

    1. Segnosaur

      Just to get back into the “bad child” slot, Sal announces she will be joining al quaeda.

      1. Da Boy

        Seeing how they are back to running Afghanistan she could ask them for a refugee status.

        1. Uly

          Al Qaeda never ran Afghanistan. That’s the Taliban. They’re entirely different groups of people.

        2. Da Boy

          Huh, I always thought there was a big overlap between the two. You learn something new every day.

  43. Rogue 7

    Called it! Up his ass.

    A lot of Linda is my mom cranked up to 11. My mom was always bugging me about my grades in college (they weren’t the best, I’ll admit, but I was never in danger of failing) and so here’s Linda taking that to the heights of lunacy.

    1. Rogue 7

      The absolute funniest time that happened was my sophomore year when I had a class on hydrology- basically the science of groundwater and how it moves. That is also precisely what my mom does for her career- she’s an environmental scientist who deals with construction and remediation- two areas where groundwater comes up. Our final project was this absurdly complicated scenario where we had to figure out how the geoundwater would move through the earth, how long it would take, etc. The professor gave us a bunch of the formulas to plug in, so it should have been relatively straightforward but I couldn’t get it to work. So I asked my mom, and she couldn’t get it either. I laughed and felt very happy with my B in the class. If a professional with 20+ years of experience couldn’t do it, something was wrong with the assignment.

    2. Da Boy

      And she is buddies with the Dean. That’s potential for a Lot of shady helicopter parenting.

  44. Yeet

    I know nobody’s supposed to get hit with a truck but I’d kind of love an exception in Linda’s case.
    What are you going to do if he starts failing, Linda? Bit late to send him away to a catholic school now. Yelling doesn’t help. The Dean can’t make the ideas go into his head. Forcing him to learn from Danny would be a hilariously bad idea. And you’re exactly the kind of person who’ll never admit that your son has ADHD or some similar issue.

  45. AlaninDC

    Walky admitted his math grade was hacked. How would Linda even be able to confirm or prove that? For all she knows, he’s just talking out his ass.
    Bring the Dean into the mix? Pfft, he’s got enough to worry about, running a college. Besides, he doesn’t owe her anything; she’s probably the one who precipitated the split and he’s tired of her crap.
    And as soon as Linda actually got some traction, Amber would just hack the system and derail the investigation.
    Give up, Linda. Cut the apron strings and give David some breathing room. He’ll get it right eventually.

    1. Da Boy

      Yeah, a guy with a gun on campus, kidnappings, murder. Dude really doesn’t need another PR disaster on his hands.

    2. Da Boy

      Oh yeah, also Ryan bringing a knife to the friggin front entrance and getting Justice-shanked right there, bleeding all over the staircase.

    3. Archieve

      It’s more about control for Linda. She has zero understanding of human psychology as far as her kids are concerned. All she knows how to do is micromanage.

  46. sdrainbow

    A lot of discussion I see about people who struggle with academics as a result of being neuroatypical (non-neurotypical? aneurotypical? that thing) is at the “front end”. The ADHD makes it to where deadlines don’t process, the executive dysfunction makes them unable to prioritize tasks, the hyperfixation eats the day they meant to use writing their paper into binging the entire archive of Dumbing of Age.

    And I get it. That’s all real stuff that real people struggle with, and we should talk about it.

    But what happens next? The paper has to get written if you want to meet the requirements of the class. The test has to be studied for.

    Linda’s doing this in a terrible way, and she’s going from 0 to 100 because she doesn’t care about WALKY succeeding, she cares about how she looks being the parent of a student who failed. But…it’s an intervention. It’s an actual attempt at adding structure to Walky’s behavior in a way that could, theoretically, lead to success.

    I for one would like to see a lot more discussion about what will set up neurotypicalas for success and what those supports look like than justifying their behavior by pointing at their brain chemistry.

    1. Alan in DC

      By all means, get the discussion rolling.

      But UNscientifically, a healthy number of people also just become lazy bozos once they’re out from under Mom’s thumb and taste freedom away from home. David’s always been playful and flighty (i.e., the Himmel audition), and this is just the essence of HIM.

      As I wrote earlier, he’ll figure it out.

    2. Zoe

      The word you are looking for is neurodivergent and the answer is we flunk out or flunk a class or two and then have to start from square one and learn all the things everybody else learned as a kid but we got away without sue to our natural smarts or ability to remember things after we crammed for twenty minutes. I flunked out of high school when I hit the point where my natural smarts could no longer cover for my inability to study. And then I flunked a college class that had too many deadlines. So basically I struggled for years and eventually figured it out but some people need way more help than that.

      1. Plain Marie

        Yeah, figure it out *eventually*. … 40 years later… sigh

    3. Yeet

      it’s far more likely to add stress than structure, and additional stress and fear of failure is not what someone who was struggling to go to class because he was afraid to fail needs
      setting him up with a real tutor, an ADHD assessment, or literally anything other than “I will Know and I will Be Mad if you fail” would be a better idea
      plus, dude already knew his mother would be mad and it’s not like she has the access to know when his work is being graded
      not to mention, he’s taking a more advanced math class when he doesn’t need to because he thought basic math would be too easy; the fear of disappointing her is why he didn’t drop the class
      so she could chill out and let him take classes appropriate to his skill level without flipping out, that’d be good too.
      of course, she hasn’t dropped the “he’s actually going to be a doctor” bomb on him yet but she can just fuck off with that.
      tldr “I Will Observe Your Failure” is not helpful by any means

      1. Joy

        Thank you for sharing, I totally agree with this and was struggling to figure out how to put it.

        Also if anything the calculus class he was taking may have been below his skill level, he found it boring and slow.

        1. Joy

          Honesty one thing I experience a fucking LOT with more free form class structures that are supposed to be helpful is that they slow down when I’m struggling to pay attention, which is actually *worse.* “I’m struggling to pay attention because you’re going over it in slow, meandering parts, one at a time, instead of just showing me what I need to do at a normal speed.”

          Broadly speaking someone shows me it once and I get it immediately. But holy shit I never want to be taught the way school teachers are taught to teach ever again. It feels like a creative form of psychological torture.

    4. Proto

      I mean the real question in this scenario is is Walky actually neurodivergent or does he have the kind of “ADHD” that people just throw around when they want to say “I would rather just focus my attention on fun stuff than do work”?

      1. Tesset

        Question: How do you, from the outside, tell the difference? If you don’t know the internal experiences of the other person, how can you tell if they’re actually having regular executive dysfunction or if they’re just “”””lazy””””? Is there a difference?

        Anyway, we’ve seen plenty of the other symptoms of ADHD from Walky (hyperfocusing, hyperactivity, lack of attention to detail, etc.), so yes, he probably actually has ADHD.

      2. Uly

        Well, Walky is a fictional character, so I guess he’s not actually anything.

        He also doesn’t seem to have figured out that he’s ADHD, so I really don’t know why you’re acting like he’s a liar for making that claim.

      3. Doopyboop

        ADHD has symptoms other than executive dysfunction, for example I have auditory processing difficulties which means that if there is too much loud, repetitive sound it is literally distressing and tiring. Many of these symptoms cannot be seen or explained other than ‘this is what I feel/how I experience the world’ and to cast doubt because “you’re probably just lazy” is very irresponsible.

      4. Yeet

        short of him getting diagnosed in comic or willis just telling us, who knows?
        more importantly, the things that help people cope with ADHD could potentially help walky cope with the problems of his that overlap, regardless of diagnosis.
        other than medicine, I’m not suggesting he start doing amphetamines without specific guidance

    5. thejeff

      It’s also an “intervention” months after the fact, when he’s already been doing better. If this had come out to a better parent, while he was still in crisis, some other form of intervention from that parent might have been good.
      Here, now? Worse than useless.

      1. Proxiehunter

        Also an intervention doesn’t involve screaming at the person you’re holding it for.

  47. EAG46

    Sal should just grab Danny’s arm, thank her dad for the time, and run. Run as fast as she can out of there. Maybe apologize to the staff for the ruckus on the way out.

  48. Kitschensyngk

    Uhh, Linda? He’s in college. You can’t ground a college student.

    They can get arrested, of course, but if flunking a class was a crime, our prisons would be even more overcrowded.

    1. Segnosaur

      She is however paying the bills.

      In a more “normal” family, a parent would probably not want to spend thousands of dollars on their kid’s education if the kid was going to fail/drop out anyways. I mean loving your children doesn’t mean supporting bad decisions.

      The problem of course is that Linda is a bad parent so even if she has legitimate concerns they are going to be overwhelmed by the overall suckitude of her parenting.

      1. Uly

        In a healthy family, you talk to your kid about how to drop the course before you reach the point of no return, and you talk to them about picking a major that is actually achievable and developing sensible study habits – because, honestly, for most careers, a bachelor’s is a bachelor’s is a bachelor’s.

        1. Segnosaur

          I guess the question is, even in a healthy family would the parents have thought it necessary to talk to Walky about “dropping courses”.

          He was successful in high school, and didn’t give any sort of indication that he was struggling before all this blew up, so I could see parents reasonably thinking “why talk to Walky about a problem that he doesn’t have?”

          As for picking a major that is achievable… wouldn’t “telecommunications” (or whatever Walky is in) be considered one of the “easier” courses for someone like Walky to take? (Just a guess, but probably less memorization and “rule following” in social science degrees than in hard sciences.)

          Of course, the problem is eventually ALL degrees get more difficult as time goes on… material gets more complex, professors expect more of students, etc. Even if walky could breeze through in his first couple of years, eventually his bad work/study habits might catch up with him in later years.

        2. Taffy

          That’s even more reason not to give up and send him to work in the hamburger mines at the first sign of difficulty.

        3. Uly

          As for picking a major that is achievable… wouldn’t “telecommunications” (or whatever Walky is in) be considered one of the “easier” courses for someone like Walky to take?

          Yeah, but Linda doesn’t want him in telecommunications. I’d bet anything that the math course he was taking was one of the harder options for general freshman math, and he was taking it because his mother insisted on that so she could slowly backdoor him into doing premed like she wants.

        4. Archieve

          Yep Linda’s reaction screams “you can’t fail I’ve already made plans for your residency.”

        5. Proto

          That would require Walky to have told Linda about his grades beforehand, and he was clearly not gonna take that step before Amber stepped in.

  49. Da Boy

    I seriously love Sal’s expression. The situation is so bizarre and out of her frame of reference that she seems to be on the verge of a panic attack.

  50. PB

    I can’t decide if this response from Linda is more or less intense than I expected .

  51. elfroyalty

    thank goodness for the family education records privacy act (ferpa) protecting walky from linda forcibly acquiring his grades, you can’t speak-to-the-manager your way through that 🙂

    1. Proto

      I feel like someone at that table would have to be a lawyer (and/or a law student fairly ahead in classes) for that to matter. I guess Amber could bring it up if she’s rapidly googling but after the “I hacked the grades” bombshell she’s on thin ice (and frankly the whole hacking thing is probably grounds for getting her kicked out of school so that ice is even thinner)

    2. Needfuldoer

      She’ll “I-am-your-mother” her way to that goal instead.

  52. HueSatLight

    Linda Walkerton, god-slayer.

    1. HueSatLight

      Anyways, Walky probably needs some kind of structure, not the sword of damn-o-cles micromanaging every quiz score, but more than he’s figured out for himself so far. Because skipping class until the problem suddenly goes away isn’t going to work next time.
      And a diagnosis and medication if necessary.

      1. thejeff

        Something worked for the midterm and the rest of the first semester.

        1. HueSatLight

          yes, he skipped class and the problem suddenly went away. He shouldn’t count on that happening each time he gets stumped. There was some segment of Calc 1 that he didn’t understand. Going to get stumped again if there’s a portion of Calc 2 that expects students to have a passing understanding of that. He’s probably going to have other classes that are challenging at times.

        2. Joy

          His issue was that he couldn’t pay attention because the teacher was boring and so was the textbook; this is a systemic problem and not a personal problem.

        3. thejeff

          That’s not true. It’s not what happened.
          It might not have gotten enough emphasis, but Amber and Amazi-Girl helped him find ways around the suspected ADHD that was keeping him from being able to study.

  53. mrnoidea

    I think now’s a good a time as any to retract the anger I had towards Dorothy back when she wanted to separate Joyce and Joe (better late than never). At the time she was giving me this helicopter-parent energy that reminded me too much of my own mother, and I worried Dorothy was gonna double down the same way Linda is here. But that’s unfair to Dorothy, so this is my apology.

    As for Walky, he’s not exactly doing himself any favors by suggesting grade hacking will get him through college. Though I suppose that reflects an unspoken belief he holds that *looking* like a good student is better/easier than *being* a good student through studying. And Linda reinforces that when she wants to surveil Walky for flunking rather than find out why he would flunk in the first place. I mean, asking to see his grades on a regular basis is a gentle punishment, for sure, but we’ve seen plenty of times before that Walky prefers the easy way out.

    1. Joy

      I like this comment! I’m pretty sure that this was a joking suggestion not a serious one but I can see how it would be interpreted that way

  54. Dot

    Frankly I feel worst for Danny right about now.

    1. Gwyn

      Why? He’s the only one who can wash his hands of the whole thing as soon as the uncomfortable interaction is over. For Sal and Walky – and maybe Amber – the suck will continue.

  55. IniquitousKing

    Humor being Walky’s only defense mechanism for any situation is REALLY biting him in the ass this arc. And last arc. Pretty much any point since Halloween, really.

  56. BullCityFats

    That’s not a lot, but it is odd that it’s happened twice.

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