It ends with Amber agreeing to be his beard in her place, but Joyce proves unwilling to give him up and somehow he finds himself with two girlfriends.
Conquest sees both the women fawning over him and comes on over for a piece of the pie.
Little did Dorothy realize that she accidentally left her camera on and recorded the entire proceeding. When she hands in her story Daisy finds the accidental footage and decides it’s a worthy addition to the gossip column which Dorothy is immediately reassigned to much to her chagrin.
So word gets out about this polyamorous ladykiller and that’s when shit hits the fan. Women from all over campus throwing themselves at him. It’s a regular womanularity.
Joe doesn’t take kindly to no longer being the campus’s greatest womanizer and challenges Ethan to a sex-competition. Whoever nails the most women in a week wins. People are shouting and cheering and the cameras are recording and Ethan can’t even make himself heard over all the fuss. The machine has begun to move on its own.
He organizes a charade. Arranges for his friends to don various disguises and disappear into a room with him where he will pretend to elope. Again and again he meets his “dates” and heads off to jump on the bed and make poor immitations of what they imagine sex sounds like.
It’s day seven, he meets his date, heads into his room and thanks his friend for all they’ve done to help keep his identity a secret. A look of shock on her face. It is revealed that this is in fact Joyce in disguise. Amber had had enough and arranged for her to be the next date without his knowledge. What Amber did not anticipate is how shocking this would be to Joyce’s sheltered sensibilities. She panics and runs screaming Ethan’s sexuality through the halls all the way back to her own room. The secret is out, but now it’s a school wide scandal that makes the papers. People who have never even met Ethan now know him as that gay guy.
Ethan is ostracized. He’s bullied. All his friends have withdrawn from his presence. A lot of sulking. He goes to consult all the sources of wisdom in his life. Sad music is playing as he walks around at nighttime. He turns to the drink and passes out. Has a dream where he meets himself as a child. His child-self is crying. He asks his child-self what’s the matter and his child-self tells him about his favorite superhero had been revealed to be evil. He’d trusted the superhero. Looked up to him but it had all turned out to be false pretense.
Ethan wakes up and he remembers what it felt like. He makes his resolution and runs off.
Joyce comes to school and finds this huge campaign being run. There are posters up all over the school and desks set and long lineups. Ethan had called in every favor. Even hooked in friends who were no longer speaking to him. He’d gathered all Joyce’s questinaires and pulled from memory everything Joyce ever told him and began the hunt for Joyce’s Prince Charming. With so much manpower covering so many people even ridiculous standards prove achievable as they bring to Joyce twelve candidate husbands who are very interested in Joyce after Ethan personally told them how cool a person she is. They hire a carriage and send Joyce off to live out a real life fairy tale. All is forgiven, Ethan’s friends see that he’s learned his lesson, they walk off into the sunset laughing about everything that’s happened and the credits roll.
*cries and claps* That was beautiful, man. I may need to draw something from this. It’s just too good.
Melvin Schlock
That’s all weel and good, but I’m petty sure Willis would end it with Mike punching someone in the junk.
That’d actually look pretty good in the sunset silhouette.
Melvin Schlock
That’s all well and good, but I’m petty sure Willis would end it with Mike punching someone in the junk.
That’d actually look pretty good in the sunset silhouette.
I’m preparing to be irritated with Ethan in Shortpacked!, too, because I’m not sure how the storyline is sustainable if Ethan isn’t about to do something really stupid.
tyren22
You mean for finishing out the week or in a longer term? Cause I can see the next couple of days just being him going over the incident after the fact with one of the other cast members.
It’s safe to say that he knows Amber well enough that he would pick up on her crimefighting activities. Hell, maybe she’s done that sort of thing before.
Well she first started Amazi-girling in Willis’s other webcomic, Short packed. I don’t really know how that relates chronologically to this comic though
Yotomoe
It doesn’t. Different universe. Different Amber. Different Ethan. Different Setting. Different everything.
Heimdallw32
“Different universe. Different Amber. Different Ethan. Different Setting. Different everything.”
But same great taste!
Chronos
Now under 10 calories!
Josh
Available now at any good food store!
Mal
Right next to your Mom, still selling for a nickel.
Khrene Cleaver
That was so funny I laughed my femurs off.
xKiv
Not true! There’s still the one universal constant – Ethan is that obsessive robot collector geek guy.
“The term is sometimes used as a synonym for incongruous and applied to ‘every trivial oddity’ in situations where there is no double audience.”
Basically I read “every trivial oddity,” as “Oddly enough…” and since those would be acceptable (even if somewhat derivative) synonyms then hes not using the word wrong, because “Ironically” and “Oddly enough” are interchangeble in his sentence.
Ironically, the grammar nazi turned out to be wrong.
Even more ironic, is the fact that a grammar nazi was out grammar nazied by a non grammar nazi.
Even more still, you’re not correcting his grammar, you were just correcting his definitions, but because of the way the word has evolved and “definition nazi” doesn’t have the same ring.
Oddily enough, that whole evolution of words thing is how this comment started…
Man I shoud really go a day on energy drinks and an empty stomach more often!
~CHEERS because now I’m British.
Robin
Yes, I know. I just didn’t find “something being a thing” being a thing odd or incongruous. It’s fitting, but not unexpected.
This, however, I do find ironic: I’m usually not a grammar nazi (or a “definition nazi” or a “spelling nazi”), but I saw an opportunity for a bit of word play and couldn’t let it pass. So what we really had here is a non-grammar nazi out grammar nazi-ing a non-grammar nazi. 😛
thomas0comer
Ironically, that STILL isn’t irony, not even with this alternate definition you use.
It would ONLY fit that definition if the memetic phrase “____ is a thing” would be reasonably expected to not be memetic. Since the statement refers to memetic trends itself, it seems far more fitting than it does incongruous for the statement itself to be trending. A much better word to use would be “coincidentally,” or even “incidentally,” as the following statement was relevant to a term used in the discussion and not the discussion itself.
Just because people use the word ironic to refer to any little coincidence does not in any way mean that they are using it correctly. The definition you provided only applies to “oddities,” or things that are different from (but not necessarily contrary to or in reversal of) expectations.
Some people bug Ethan about being gay. Amber beats the shit out of them. Ethan points out that that’s sort of illegal. Amber goes off, puts on a costume, then comes back and beats them up again, claiming inpenetrable anonymity. Ethan rolls his eyes, but accepts her logic. His parents wake up later and don’t remember a thing due to massive head trauma.
This new crimefighter gains a reputation citywide for pounding the crap out of anti-gay bigots, rednecks, priests, those types. A local non-Ethan stereotypical gay declares that the mysterious hero is “Just amazing. I mean, faulous!” “Fabu-Girl is briefly considered for a superhero name but rejected. The end.
205 thoughts on “Looped”
Jen Aside
“OH HEY AMBER WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE DOOR”
PetrePan
And now the rest of dumbing of age becomes loops! Loops of sadness!
Ancestral Hamster
That sounds like a breakfast cereal for Goths. “Loops of Sadness. With 100% of the RDA of Angst!”
pan_dim_onium
This needs to happen!
Kelloggs Loops of Sadness
Turns your milk black like your soul, and salty like your tears!
JCfromNC
Where do I ship your internet?
Ancestral Hamster
Glad you folks liked it!
@Kelloggs Loops of Sadness: Thumbs up for your quote!
sidhe3141
…ick.
Neospector
Really? Because that used to happen to my milk back when I ate regular fruit loops…
Notebooked
Froot Loops of Sadness!
Free My Chemical Romance pin in every package!
Gordon Blvd
that comment is so much of Awesome =)
Notebooked
*takes bow, steals bowtie*
Icalasari
Too far Ethan! Too far! Reverse! Reverse!
Erika Hammerschmidt
Reversing a loop doesn’t make it stop being a loop.
Plasma Mongoose
No, it just turns it into a pretzel.
BranTheQuixotic
Fiiiiinaaaallly. Ethan can’t talk his way out of this one…. right?
There’s no way this conversation ends with Ethan continuing to date Joyce.
….right?….
ASmellyOgre
Oh, God, I hope not.
Sam
*eats some popcorn, stares blankly for a moment, shrugs, continues to eat popcorn*
Plasma Mongoose
If Joyce does find out about Ethan’s gay status, I wonder if she will react by trying to ‘save him’.
Alex
I’m worried Ethan would be tempted to try that.
Resne
She’ll probably flip shit on Amber.
Rowen Morland
And it triggers the kind of relationship she had with Danny waaaay back in the beginning?
Tan
Well, to “fix” gay, all you have to do is ignore the gay feelings and act heterosexually, right? So isn’t Ethan already doing it exactly right?
gangler
It ends with Amber agreeing to be his beard in her place, but Joyce proves unwilling to give him up and somehow he finds himself with two girlfriends.
Conquest sees both the women fawning over him and comes on over for a piece of the pie.
Little did Dorothy realize that she accidentally left her camera on and recorded the entire proceeding. When she hands in her story Daisy finds the accidental footage and decides it’s a worthy addition to the gossip column which Dorothy is immediately reassigned to much to her chagrin.
So word gets out about this polyamorous ladykiller and that’s when shit hits the fan. Women from all over campus throwing themselves at him. It’s a regular womanularity.
Joe doesn’t take kindly to no longer being the campus’s greatest womanizer and challenges Ethan to a sex-competition. Whoever nails the most women in a week wins. People are shouting and cheering and the cameras are recording and Ethan can’t even make himself heard over all the fuss. The machine has begun to move on its own.
He organizes a charade. Arranges for his friends to don various disguises and disappear into a room with him where he will pretend to elope. Again and again he meets his “dates” and heads off to jump on the bed and make poor immitations of what they imagine sex sounds like.
It’s day seven, he meets his date, heads into his room and thanks his friend for all they’ve done to help keep his identity a secret. A look of shock on her face. It is revealed that this is in fact Joyce in disguise. Amber had had enough and arranged for her to be the next date without his knowledge. What Amber did not anticipate is how shocking this would be to Joyce’s sheltered sensibilities. She panics and runs screaming Ethan’s sexuality through the halls all the way back to her own room. The secret is out, but now it’s a school wide scandal that makes the papers. People who have never even met Ethan now know him as that gay guy.
Ethan is ostracized. He’s bullied. All his friends have withdrawn from his presence. A lot of sulking. He goes to consult all the sources of wisdom in his life. Sad music is playing as he walks around at nighttime. He turns to the drink and passes out. Has a dream where he meets himself as a child. His child-self is crying. He asks his child-self what’s the matter and his child-self tells him about his favorite superhero had been revealed to be evil. He’d trusted the superhero. Looked up to him but it had all turned out to be false pretense.
Ethan wakes up and he remembers what it felt like. He makes his resolution and runs off.
Joyce comes to school and finds this huge campaign being run. There are posters up all over the school and desks set and long lineups. Ethan had called in every favor. Even hooked in friends who were no longer speaking to him. He’d gathered all Joyce’s questinaires and pulled from memory everything Joyce ever told him and began the hunt for Joyce’s Prince Charming. With so much manpower covering so many people even ridiculous standards prove achievable as they bring to Joyce twelve candidate husbands who are very interested in Joyce after Ethan personally told them how cool a person she is. They hire a carriage and send Joyce off to live out a real life fairy tale. All is forgiven, Ethan’s friends see that he’s learned his lesson, they walk off into the sunset laughing about everything that’s happened and the credits roll.
LS
Well fuck, there goes Willis’ entire comic buffer. =/
CanvasWolfDoll
buffer? dude, there goes the entirety of both ethan’s and joyce’s character arcs!
Yotomoe
*cries and claps* That was beautiful, man. I may need to draw something from this. It’s just too good.
Melvin Schlock
That’s all weel and good, but I’m petty sure Willis would end it with Mike punching someone in the junk.
That’d actually look pretty good in the sunset silhouette.
Melvin Schlock
That’s all well and good, but I’m petty sure Willis would end it with Mike punching someone in the junk.
That’d actually look pretty good in the sunset silhouette.
name
And just like that two future storylines for Dumbing of Age were either spoiled or worsen then a comment.
Anon
Bravo good sir, Bravo. I officially respect your literary prowess, and that means a lot from me.
kagato23
Fuck that. You almost had it. But you needed a proper ending.
That ending is… Rocks Fall, everybody dies.
You’re welcome.
Heavensrun
This does not end with Jorothy shipping, so I am uninterested.
Random832
Joyce or Joe?
Drunken Nordmann
Yes?
Plasma Mongoose
In a much earlier DoA comic, Joe did express interest in adding Dotty to his ‘To Do’ list.
Mogotoo
Usually, plots based on wacky misunderstandings really frustrate me, but I found this hilarious.
Lukkai
I tip my hat to you, good sir!
tyren22
My first thought on reading panel 4 was “well if nothing else THAT realization should show him how much of a dick he’s being” so I guess we’ll see.
It’s kind of funny feeling so irritated with Ethan in this comic and so irritated with the dude he’s mad at in Shortpacked.
John
I’m preparing to be irritated with Ethan in Shortpacked!, too, because I’m not sure how the storyline is sustainable if Ethan isn’t about to do something really stupid.
tyren22
You mean for finishing out the week or in a longer term? Cause I can see the next couple of days just being him going over the incident after the fact with one of the other cast members.
Yotomoe
waiiit…Does Ethan know she’s Amazi-girl? Is he the one person on campus who isn’t blind?
Sean
It’s safe to say that he knows Amber well enough that he would pick up on her crimefighting activities. Hell, maybe she’s done that sort of thing before.
kishimobot
Well she first started Amazi-girling in Willis’s other webcomic, Short packed. I don’t really know how that relates chronologically to this comic though
Yotomoe
It doesn’t. Different universe. Different Amber. Different Ethan. Different Setting. Different everything.
Heimdallw32
“Different universe. Different Amber. Different Ethan. Different Setting. Different everything.”
But same great taste!
Chronos
Now under 10 calories!
Josh
Available now at any good food store!
Mal
Right next to your Mom, still selling for a nickel.
Khrene Cleaver
That was so funny I laughed my femurs off.
xKiv
Not true! There’s still the one universal constant – Ethan is that obsessive robot collector geek guy.
Black Drazon
Maybe, but that doesn’t make it any less sweet.
Plasma Mongoose
I believe he does, he may have been outed but she’s still in the closet when it comes to being a superhero.
Closet might not be the right term though, ‘In the Phonebooth’ perhaps?
Doctor_Who
‘In the Phonebooth’ should totally be the accepted euphemism.
John Harmon
Oh yes, “in the phonebooth” is so a thing now.
Osaru Sensei
Ironically, something being a ‘thing’ is also a thing.
Robin
Ironically, that’s not irony.
Khrene Cleaver
Actually.
“The term is sometimes used as a synonym for incongruous and applied to ‘every trivial oddity’ in situations where there is no double audience.”
Basically I read “every trivial oddity,” as “Oddly enough…” and since those would be acceptable (even if somewhat derivative) synonyms then hes not using the word wrong, because “Ironically” and “Oddly enough” are interchangeble in his sentence.
Ironically, the grammar nazi turned out to be wrong.
Even more ironic, is the fact that a grammar nazi was out grammar nazied by a non grammar nazi.
Even more still, you’re not correcting his grammar, you were just correcting his definitions, but because of the way the word has evolved and “definition nazi” doesn’t have the same ring.
Oddily enough, that whole evolution of words thing is how this comment started…
Man I shoud really go a day on energy drinks and an empty stomach more often!
~CHEERS because now I’m British.
Robin
Yes, I know. I just didn’t find “something being a thing” being a thing odd or incongruous. It’s fitting, but not unexpected.
This, however, I do find ironic: I’m usually not a grammar nazi (or a “definition nazi” or a “spelling nazi”), but I saw an opportunity for a bit of word play and couldn’t let it pass. So what we really had here is a non-grammar nazi out grammar nazi-ing a non-grammar nazi. 😛
thomas0comer
Ironically, that STILL isn’t irony, not even with this alternate definition you use.
It would ONLY fit that definition if the memetic phrase “____ is a thing” would be reasonably expected to not be memetic. Since the statement refers to memetic trends itself, it seems far more fitting than it does incongruous for the statement itself to be trending. A much better word to use would be “coincidentally,” or even “incidentally,” as the following statement was relevant to a term used in the discussion and not the discussion itself.
Just because people use the word ironic to refer to any little coincidence does not in any way mean that they are using it correctly. The definition you provided only applies to “oddities,” or things that are different from (but not necessarily contrary to or in reversal of) expectations.
Gaiash
It could be that Amazi-Girl was around when they were in high school at some point and he found out back then.
Tom T.
Back in high school, Ethan was Amber’s butler.
Josh
Amazi-Girl’s butler came out of the closet when they were about to have sex in a hotel room.
This is an origin story I have to see!
SUGauthor
Now I’m curious about amazigirl’s origin story.
begbert2
Some people bug Ethan about being gay. Amber beats the shit out of them. Ethan points out that that’s sort of illegal. Amber goes off, puts on a costume, then comes back and beats them up again, claiming inpenetrable anonymity. Ethan rolls his eyes, but accepts her logic. His parents wake up later and don’t remember a thing due to massive head trauma.
This new crimefighter gains a reputation citywide for pounding the crap out of anti-gay bigots, rednecks, priests, those types. A local non-Ethan stereotypical gay declares that the mysterious hero is “Just amazing. I mean, faulous!” “Fabu-Girl is briefly considered for a superhero name but rejected. The end.
Kernanator
This makes me smile.
ArkhamTexan
Welcome to Asteroids: Relationships Edition, Ethan. No matter where you go, you’ll always come back to being in the line of fire!
Plasma Mongoose
I haven’t played Asteroids since I last owned a Atari 2600 about 30 years ago.
Yotomoe
I have an old PC CD for it…I should play it sometime.
Tom T.
You can play it here.
http://www.onemotion.com/flash/asteroids-game/
Sailor_Arashi
That’s a terrible version of asteroids. Please this one instead: http://www.play.vg/games/4-Asteroids.html
ArkhamTexan