431

Grazed
Posted on June 24, 2024 by David M Willis

431 thoughts on “Grazed”

  1. NGPZ

    Tetris also works for that.

    Video games are drugs and im a cook (:p)

    also congratz on 7-month buffer again Willis! ^^

    *plays “Sanctuary Guardian” from Earthbound Sountrack on hacked muzak*

    1. True Survivor

      “Alexey, we need to cook.” – Vadim Gerasimov

      (yes I know those two individuals should be inverted, but it sounds better this way)

    2. NGPZ

      Speak of the devil,

      and BLAZE IT!!!! ??

      420 comments brothaz!!!!! ^^

  2. Ana Chronistic

    reality bores Sal but she hasn’t quite mastered Shion’s Reality Warping power, so she breaks game realities

    1. cmd1095

      So I need fanart of Sal in Shion’s outfit now, complete with the sword

    2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      Maybe she needs to join a club with a time traveler, an esper, and an alien witch?

      1. nobodybasically

        Does that make Danny Kyon?

        1. Smallmoon

          No, Danny is John Smith. 😛

      2. BarerMender

        Esper! I haven’t heard that term since, like, 1962.

        1. clif

          Sh. There are youngsters present.

        2. BarerMender

          Oops. Beg pardon.

        3. Taffy

          That’s weird, I hear it so much I hate it now. Anime ruins everything.

        4. BarerMender

          I remember it from the A.E. van Vogt novel _Slan_ Don’t look it up. Awful. Even though I loved it when I was 13.

  3. butts

    clearly amber has been reading the comments section

    1. Svankensen

      And she’s right too.

      1. Groove

        I’m assuming this is a prank on Amber at this point .

    2. butting

      Amazi-Girl’s superpower: breaking the laws of physics
      Amber’s superpower: breaking the fourth wall

      (and when Amazi-Girl complains about the slash-fic anthology in her head? that’s Amber, coming for YOU)

  4. IntangibleMatter

    I can never tell if Amber is medium-aware or just terminally online.

    Is it both? It’s probably both.

    1. butts

      i think this is just her slashfic brain

      1. Dante

        Nay, my friend. This, too, is yuri.

    2. DailyBrad

      Terminally online, though it does allow for medium awareness to a degree.

    3. RassilonTDavros

      Third possibility: the nature of the Dumbiverse is such that sufficiently-advanced terminal-onlineness is indistinguishable from medium awareness.

      1. IntangibleMatter

        Abed Nadir

      2. MM

        You’d think Walky would have a better handle on things if that were the case.

    4. Proto

      Definitely the latter, but when you live in a soap opera world, memorizing TV Tropes basically makes you medium-aware by accident

    5. Needfuldoer

      Both. Both is good.

    6. Lokitsu

      Is medium-awareness rare?

      1. Needfuldoer

        Awareness is best cooked medium-rare.

      2. TerribleTransit

        Well-done medium awareness is rare.

    7. S.R.

      Honestly, it’s a pretty apt comparison.

  5. Animedingo

    Mary will prolly get sued at some point

    1. Throwatron

      I mean, she’ll DEFINITELY sue somebody at some point.

    2. PedanticJerkass

      *probably

      1. wwwhhattt

        *problees

        1. Taffy

          *premium unleaded

    3. PhyrexianRogue

      Or marry a girl called Sue?

      1. staszu13

        My name is Sue, how do you do, now you’re gonna die!
        (Johnny Cash/Shel Silverstein ref)

    4. TlalocW

      Surely, you can’t be serious.

      1. Bobbi

        I am serious… and don’t call me Shirley

  6. morhek

    Now Amber, slurs are beneath you.

  7. BBCC

    I died laughing at these two and at how well Willis knows his comment section. Y’all are speaking to my ghost now.

    (It’s okay, at some point something really cool will happen or Linda will show up and need to be yelled at and I’ll claw my way out of the grave).

    1. DailyBrad

      Willis has been doing webcomics for longer than some of the readership has been born. Of course they know how the comments are going to play out.

      1. staszu13

        Indeed, some of us have waited nearly 30 years for Danny and Sal to f**k, since the Roomies days

    2. Needfuldoer

      Pressing F to pay respects.

      F o7

    3. eh, whatever

      You’ll get better.

  8. Grimey

    Not the insult I expected.

  9. VolticEXE

    Y’know, if we put the Yellow Strip back on her, its like nothing changed at all.

    1. NGPZ

      I am half convinced those are the Kamui from Kill La Kill

  10. Tan

    It’s an internet insult. It’s devastating. You’re devastated right now.

    1. Dante

      Amber, when she put peeps in the chili pot (and adds the M/Ms)

      1. NGPZ

        ngl i sometimes use candy like that to substitute sugar in tomato based recipes

        (one of my friends said she uses Mexican chocolate in one of her tomato soup recipes, but i kinda forgor)

        1. NGPZ

          but like if you talkin about those TikTok videos where they put like, marshmellow sauce on barely cooked steak, those are so fucking cringe

        2. Aura

          Both comments are quotes from the good place 🙂 This is the scene Dante was quoting, but you have to kind of have watched all of it up to that point to get the context
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c-AawAKZ14

        3. Aura

          PS The Good Place is an excellent show and I love it so much everyone should watch it ok that’s it the end goodbye

        4. Tan

          The Good Place is so forking good. It knows exactly what it wants to be, and lasts exactly long enough to be that without trying to milk itself into perpetuity. It is funny, and it is heartful, and it is worth every moment. Strongest recommend.

        5. lur

          those are worse than cringe, actually, those are fetish content

        6. Taffy

          Marshmallow on steak fetish?

        7. NGPZ

          fetish content?

          oooh, is this what earthlings refer to as “food porn” ?

        8. Taffy

          No no, that’s the meals in anything by Studio Ghibli.

    2. jeffepp

      Worse. It’s a 1970s Star Trek Fandom Nerd Zene FanFic slur.

      1. Taffy

        The most specific kind of slur.

    3. june gloom

      I just saw that episode last night, lmao.

  11. Svankensen

    Next book she will break the olympic marathon record accidentally while jogging. But I will be spared because I’ll not be reading this comic anymore.

    1. Bittersweet

      Because Sal implausibly broke a speed running record, this is the point at which the comic has become unsalvageable? Like, don’t get me wrong, sometimes there are things I disagree with in the comic (the whole laundry machine thing could have and should have been handled better imo, but ai’ve harped on it enough and accepted it), but like…

      Evil dads, mafia killings, superheroes, etc. and THIS is what breaks suspension of belief so irreparably that the entire comic needs to be thrown out? I know speed-running is serious to many people, but this is kinda just Sal pulling a Forrest Gump for gamers.

      1. Svankensen

        Well, there were things before, but yes. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back. The others weren’t related to suspension of disbelief, but writing. Which, well, this is too. It’s just lazy.

        1. HueSatLight

          bye

        2. Chris Phoenix

          This comic has literally-impossible things all through it. When Amber ziplined along a wire by hanging from a pair of bolt cutters? Way, way too much friction in real life. That was years ago, but I remember it because it was just physically impossible.

          So, either get used to Willis putting impossible things into the comic to move the story along, or find a different author.

        3. aelfwine

          You can have things being literally impossible, like people teleporting, as a gag.
          You can have the impossibility subtle enough that most people don’t notice, like bolt-cutter fiction, in plot elements too minor to care about, and which nobody in the story focuses on.
          But here we’re supposed to care about Dororthy being frustrated at Sal doing the impossible, and yet not feel frustrated ourselves at the same impossibility in a story arc that supposedly takes this plot point seriously enough as an instigator of important characterization for Amber?

          That’s like Joyce going back to Jesus because her teleportation abilities prove miracles happen. If something impossible is a gag, keep it a gag, don’t make it a crucial plot point.

        4. TerribleTransit

          This is basically the uncanny valley of impossibility. It’s clearly not a gag, nor does it skate by on the rule of cool in an action scene. It’s so closeto possible, but a large portion of the reader base is familiar, at least possibly, with just how impossible it is. Ziplining down a cable on bolt cutters might but work, but you don’t have an entire body of semi-popular media devoted to explaining why it won’t work.

        5. Strain of Thought

          Describing things that shake suspension of disbelief like this as being part of the “uncanny valley” phenomenon is really clever, I never thought of them in those terms before. I used to be really into science fiction and I was very consciously and deliberately willing to accept all kinds of bullshit made up about how alien biology and space travel worked but then when the writer would put a computer in the story and give it impossible nonsense traits it would drive me up the wall. You can make up stuff about aliens and FTL because those don’t exist in real life, you can’t strictly get it *wrong*, but computers are very real and all around us so if they misuse concepts like “networking” or “viruses” or using stupidly big or small units data storage it just shatters suspension of disbelief.

          I just never thought to generalize that idea to acceptable breaks from reality in all fiction, that as breaks from reality move towards more concrete, real world, familiar and everyday things they are unconsciously subjected to higher scrutiny by the reader even if the reader isn’t choosing to, and so there’s a sudden dip in plausibility when stuff gets *almost* perfectly realistic, the same as we get creeped out by almost-but-not-quite-perfect imitations of common everyday things. Of course this depends significantly on the audience’s background as to what everyday familiarity means for them, but yeah David Willis the terminally online comic artist making a comic for a terminally online audience is gonna struggle to pull off his usual reality-defying comedy when he makes the jokes about real universally played video games.

          I haven’t seen anyone talk about it in the comments since the early days of Dumbing of Age but I think one of Willis’s biggest issues with doing a mundane reboot of the Walkyverse is the handful of characters for whom their super powers were an integral part of their personalities- particularly Sal, Mike, and Robin. Sal without super powers just doesn’t make sense as a human being, because abusing her ridiculous levels of strength and agility were how she coped with the ridiculous degree of psychological abuse and other horrifying hardship she endured. Her super powers are load bearing in her day to day pattern of behavior. Willis had to keep writing her climbing in windows even if she can’t leap twelve feet in the air or be only lightly bruised from slipping and falling from a second story because making her own entrances and exits was essential to her personal brand of petty defiance of authority in the face of ironic existential powerlessness. In the Walkyverse Sal wasn’t a Mary Sue because so much awful stupid shit happened to her, her excessive power levels didn’t allow her to really *accomplish* anything in the face of super powered threats, and her being one of the strongest supers still didn’t actually put her that much further ahead of everyone else around her- if anything there she was some sort of perpetual victim of ironic fate. So yeah, it’s hard to imagine a way to write someone like that without super powers while still being recognizable as themselves.

        6. zee

          ☝️?

      2. Kyrik Michalowski

        As a gamer: some gamers treat speedruns like holy events, and speedrunners are their prophets.

        Is it possible that Sal(or someone else) could do something like this? Yes.
        Is it plausible that Sal(or someone else) could do something like this? No.

        Unfortunately some people take speedrunning way to seriously; however many people do speedruns for fun, and wouldn’t be bothered by this myself included.

        1. Svankensen

          No, it isn’t possible. That’s the whole point. She wouldn’t even know how to do half of the tricks by just watching them performed. Even by asking about it. And that’s not even touching on RNG. Or on creating muscle memory. It’s simply not possible. The best of the world at this have to grind for months to get it. Maybe if it was a relatively unknown game, underoptimized. But not this, with a serious competitive scene. As I said, the same as cassually breaking an olympic record.

        2. Regret

          You’re using a different definition of impossible. Reality allows for ridiculous amounts of luck. It isn’t fair, and it feels like it doesn’t make sense, but reality is under no obligation to make sense and reality definitely is not under any obligation to make the ridiculously improbably not happen.

        3. justin8448

          I feel like this comment was written by Douglas Adams.

        4. aelfwine

          Some things are implausible enough that we can round them down to impossible for all intends and purposes, and this is one of those things.

        5. Regret

          If you’re doing risk assessment, yes. But if you’re trying to determine if the impossible happened in reality, then no. This could happen. It is absurdly unlikely, but again, the universe is under no obligation to make the ridiculously unlikely not happen. That said, you could say that our expectations of fictional universes should be higher than of reality, I can’t argue against that.

        6. thejeff

          Not completely true, since there’s always the possibility of cheating to watch out for.

      3. Derek

        more like the evil dads and superheroes already had jumped the shark a long time ago but some of us stayed on because it couldn’t get any worse, but now it has.

        you know what a story is when reality warps around characters to make sure they’re interesting is? boring.
        it’s fucking boring

        1. AMagicalDuck

          Sounds like you just don’t like this comic and are reading it to make yourself angry. Maybe try doing something else with your time

        2. Derek

          see I USED to like this comic until the second kidnapping (the fact that I have to specify it’s the second one is a huge part of why my enjoyment cratered), now I stay around because I want to see where this trainwreck goes.

          this is not to say it’s all bad, most days are okay, but we still get these “aw, come on ” moments, evidenced by people’s reaction to this plot development

        3. PedanticJerkass

          And yet…

          …you’re still here.

          Go figure.

        4. Annarchy

          Announcement everyone. IMPORTENT announcement.

          DEREK no longer enjoys a thing and needs you to know how much.

          This has been a announcement.

        5. clif

          No one’s going to read an important announcement like that way down here. You need to put it up near the top on the first comment without a reply so that people will see it.

        6. Nymph

          Boring to you.

          I hope you find a comic you enjoy reading, instead!

        7. Mark

          Hm. Read the news for a week and you’ll learn of people who make the evil dads here seem like pale imitations.

          As for superheroes: AmaziGirl isn’t really a SUPER hero. No X-ray vision or anything. She occasionally does things that shouldn’t work. But, there’s a whole book out there on how to become Batman. The news is also full of people doing extraordinary things, when the extraordinary is needed.

          The thing that strains our belief, I think, is that most of us will never see even one of the extraordinary things that happen here, but these characters seem to attract the extraordinary. They are average people but their lives are not average. Which I find to be fun.

        8. Derek

          the difference between real life kidnappings and murders and the ones in this fictional comic strip is that in real life we’re rarely fully witness to the internal monologue and motivations of the perpetrators; there are times that we can only classify certain horrible acts as senseless violence because the thought process of these people is so inscrutable.

          With these fictional characters, we know their thought process, we know their motivations; and I found to be bad writing. Also the fact that it happened twice makes it seem lazy.

          Amazigirl might not have super strength, but the author himself admitted he had to bend the laws of physics to allow the highway car chase stunts.
          See I was willing to suspend my disbelief for that because it was cool and it worked with the tension of the scene.
          But it happens AGAIN and now I am bored because I know the characters will be fine, because the laws of physics won’t allow them to die or become horribly injured.

        9. thejeff

          Looks at Mike.
          Unless dramatically appropriate, I guess.

          I find it weird for that to bother people so much, because it’s how fiction works. You watch an action movie, you don’t really worry about the hero catching a bullet and dying (unless it’s the kind of movie where the point is they go down in a hail of gunfire in the climax.) The fun is watching them get out of impossible situations.

    2. mneme

      It’s not an airport.

      Byeeee!

      Honestly, the speedrun thing is entirely plausible. Speedrunning involves two things:

      1. Theory: Working out implausible sequences of technqiues and sharing them.
      2. Execution: Actually performing the implausible techniques to do a speedrun.

      Obviously, going from 0 to breaking the reccord in 70 minutes is impausible. But doing it in execution — watching playthroughs, asking questions about how some of the less visually obvious things are managed, and then managing to duplicate the existing runs and even beat the top one (based on the theory which takes a -lot- more time to learn since it involves deep knowledge of the game and speedrunning in general) isn’t unreasonable. Particularly for someone with good manual reflexes, which apparently Sal has despite not having the wrist flexiblity to be as good at guitar as she used to.

      It’s just that you’d normally need a week or two to build up the exection even with phoenomeal talent, not 70 minutes. As for me, I have enough issues trying to get combo with a just-frame in a fighting game to come out reliably.

      1. Wraithy2773

        No, its not plausible.

        If this were a niche game, one that’s got a small but dedicated group of speedrunners that are still finding new things in it, that’d be one thing.

        But Super Mario Brothers might well be the most heavily analyzed and researched game in existence. The number of times people have pounded their heads at it is nigh-impossible to calculate.

        As I’ve stated in previous threads, this isn’t a massive problem for me in terms of the comic. Its an eyerolling, implausible plot point that could be written better, but (presumably) isn’t going to be a core factor of the strip going forward. Its a minor flaw, not a crippling one.

        But folks really need to be willing to say “yeah, this is flawed, but I’m still enjoying it more”, instead of trying to justify why every flaw is, in fact, not a flaw at all actually.

        1. Yotomoe

          Yeah. Amber was attempting to surpass the human limit. A speedrun that by definition has been widdled down to such an amount of perfect timing that it’s heavily theorized that it’s not possible to go faster. Amber has been attempting this since the Timeskip happened for months and months constantly without end. And honestly if SHE achieved it I would have found it unbelievable. This issue is simply compounded by it being Sal.

        2. Adam Black

          I think the answer here is butts.

          I don’t know what the question is, but draw some butts and maybe it will be revealed to you

        3. Mark

          As obliquely mentioned today, what Amber was attempting and what Sal seems to have done are not the same feat. I think it’s important to keep that in mind when debating the possibility of either.

        4. deliverything

          It’s possible that, in the Dumbiverse, Super Mario Brothers hasn’t been as intensively worked on as it has in our universe. Maybe Sal lucked into a glitch previously undiscovered in the setting.
          At least, it’s a possible headcanon that could make this strip more bearable to some.

        5. Dave

          You know how in 9 Chickweed Lane a dude and his Nazi double-triple-quadruple-agent spy lover crack the Enigma Code by making disgusting gargling noises into each others’ mouths

          That was real stupid, in a comic that’s already extremely bad

          You know how Dina was playing the Jurassic Park theme on a piano and had a pre-written statement indicating that while she enjoys the film, she cannot give it her full endorsement due to its inaccuracies

          Listen, us commenters kvetching about this twist still enjoy this world wide web comical strip, but it’s just ridiculous in our subjective views, because the exact degree to which it’s outrageously improbable if not impossible is well documented in a way that a college freshman becoming Batman or a dad becoming a supervillain or a very short woman stealing booze is not

        6. Taffy

          Out of everything else that’s been said here the last few days, that first sentence is the worst. How could you?

        7. Dave

          I used a keyboard, it’s pretty easy

        8. Nymph

          Ew, with your hands?

        9. clif

          I can’t type with my toes, but I knew someone who could. Not fast or anything but he could do it. He could also pinch really really hard with those same toes. Admittedly, being that dexterous with your feet is pretty rare.

          Maybe Dave types with the tongue?

        10. TerribleTransit

          While that would certainly make the plot point more plausible, it would also defeat the purpose of choosing it as the game to use in the first place. At that point Willis could have picked literally almost other any other game in existence (or a completely fictional game, for that matter) and it would have accomplished the same thing while also being much more believable.

          Either the impossibility is the point, or SMB1 was a poor choice of game for the storyline.

      2. Masumi

        So what you’re saying is – she speedran learning to speed run.

      3. Joy

        ADHD hyper focus. I’ve learned to play entire musical instruments in less time.

    3. Taffy

      Okay, see you tomorrow.

      1. Svankensen

        Oh, I’ll be here tomorrow. Waiting to see if it was an elaborate hoax or something.

        1. HueSatLight

          you don’t have to rage quit again tomorrow, if we promise to remember you already did it

        2. Taffy

          It’s probably gonna continue not being an elaborate hoax, so if you keep coming back with that expectation, you’ll just be setting yourself up for eternal disappointment. There’s a Discord server for people who’ve done that to themselves with this comic, if you’d like a circle jerk with your self-inflicted misery.

        3. Svankensen

          Wow, you really are just trying to insult people here, aren’t you? Because they didn’t like what you like. May want to get that checked.

        4. Taffy

          No, I’m insulting people in the Discord server. Not that other thing you said, that would be ridiculous and doesn’t match my MO.

        5. Wraithy2773

          “if you’d like a circle jerk with your self-inflicted misery” doesn’t exactly come across as polite and diplomatic…

        6. Taffy

          Yes, and that’s deliberate. I’m being intentionally rude to the Discord server. There’s no call for it, I’m just being an ass about their circle jerk because “I’m not reading this anymore, but I’ll be back tomorrow” is inherently funny to me.

        7. Svankensen

          You did talk about my “self inflicted misery”. Don’t throw a stone and hide the hand. It makes it worse.

        8. Taffy

          The hypothetical self-inflicted misery of repeatedly returning to the comic with unreasonable expectations, yes. If you thought I was talking about some other misery you’ve inflicted on yourself, that’s your own fault for ignoring context.

        9. Adam Black

          Your comment works perfectly as Amber angrily talking to Sal.

        10. TerribleTransit

          Is “you are inflicting misery on yourself” supposed to be an insult? It mostly just seems like a statement of fact.

        11. Nymph

          People lack reading comprehension I guess. Honestly that makes some of the outrage over things in the comic make a little more sense.

        12. Adam Black

          You had me at “Circle jerk”

        13. StClair

          It won’t be. You already know this.

        14. clif

          A hoax? It could be I guess. Sal getting revenge for Amazigirl involving her in rape-bro beatings. I don’t think Sal knows that Amber is separate.

          But I would be surprised. It’s funnier if Sal actually did it.

        15. Nymph

          You went from “I’ll not be reading this comic anymore” to justifying why you absolutely will be reading this comic anymore very quickly.

          Almost like you just enjoy coming here on the daily to get cranky about whatever Current Thing is.

        16. Svankensen

          Weren’t you talking about reading comprehension? I said I won’t be here for the next book.

        17. Nymph

          What I wrote is a direct quote from you, not a rephrase. You said you wouldn’t be reading the comic “anymore”.

          anymore
          adverb
          to any further extent; any longer.

          But go off I guess lol.

        18. Svankensen

          Yeah, by the next book, where Sal will probably win the nobel prize. I didn’t change my mind there.

        19. Nymph

          If I said “Next week, you’ll be even more unbearable than you are today. But I will be spared because I’ll not be replying to you anymore.” Would you expect me to continue replying until next week or expect me to stop replying to you with immediate effect because I said “anymore”?

          Like, I’m sorry you didn’t write a clear enough message? That sounds like a you problem, I can only read the words you wrote, which include the quote I used, clarified with definition slightly under, and now this example <3

          Hope that helps!

        20. Svankensen

          Second time you have deliberately insulted me. You are not a good person and should look for help.

        21. Taffy

          Watch out, y’all. A brand new username has taken it upon themselves to dictate who is or isn’t a good person based on a few internet comments on a comic they’re not gonna read anymore. This should be taken very seriously and you should hold their assessment of your personhood in high regard.

          /s (tag added for the dense)

        22. Nymph

          I actually haven’t insulted you at all? I’ve pointed out a few facts about how you’re communicating (or failing to) and you don’t like them so you’re pivoting to a pity-ploy.

          Anyway, see you tomorrow ?

        23. clif

          I’m confused. Why do you think we should help Taffy not be a good person?

        24. HueSatLight

          But we thought he was gone and now he’s come back again
          Last week it was funny and now the joke’s wearing thin
          ‘Cause everyone knows now
          That every night now will be Svankensen’s last night in town

        25. Nymph

          lmao perfect.

    4. Needfuldoer

      See you tomorrow.

    5. zee

      K, bye. You won’t be missed

  12. Coatl

    Haha, Sal doesn’t even flinch.

    1. Mark

      Sal is only about 10% there. The rest of her is in the game.

  13. Dante

    Look, I’m proud of Amber for screaming her frustration instead of lunging for the throat here.

    I adore Sal and admittedly, I’m not sure I would’ve fared much better in an equivalent (non-gaming) situation.

  14. Yeet

    I get why amber is frustrated but that is such a self burn

  15. Kenny Williams

    The commenters just got called out lol

    1. Svankensen

      Yeah, dobling down on a bad choice. Not a good thing.

      1. James

        And once again the actual punchline here is the people getting genuinely mad over a more nonsensical than usual plot point in a free internet comic strip.

        1. James

          ….this was meant to be a standalone comment and not a response, but you know what, I’m gonna roll with it.

        2. PedanticJerkass

          It definitely works as a reply, in this case.

        3. Svankensen

          I’m not mad James, I’m just disappointed.

        4. James

          Sure, Jan.

        5. Ray Radlein

          and another thing: im not mad. please dont put in the newspaper that i got mad.

        6. aelfwine

          Good to know that the actual punchline is the author deliberately doing a crappy comic so that he can diss his readership for not liking crap.

        7. Nymph

          It’s called a joke. I liked the joke. I’m also his readership.

          If you don’t like the joke, there are less zany comics available online that will aggressively adhere to realism. A trait I find unbearable in comics, but which you seem to enjoy.

          Have fun searching them out!

        8. zee

          Nah the punchline is you’re a massive fucking nerd throwing a tantrum over a fake speedrun record

        9. Aelfwine

          Oh, no, I’m a “nerd”.

          Do please explain in what universe you think you allowed to use “nerd” as an insult?

        10. IntangibleMatter

          Nerd isn’t an insult, it’s a descriptor. As a self-described and proud nerd, though, some people who are nerds about things are fucking insufferable because of it. Like you’re being. Hope that cleared things up!

    2. Wraithy2773

      Just as a general rule, lampshading that an incredibly implausible thing has happened is not a good justification for why that incredibly implausible thing has happened.

      It mostly comes across as “I know this is dumb but I don’t care”. And could come across as “and I don’t want to bother trying to write my way around this obvious-even-to-me problem”.

      1. Seralyna

        It depends a lot on to what end, really. If the idea is “I need this thing to happen but cant justify it, so ill just lampshade it!’ then that is relativley fair of a criticism.

        If the point is ‘I put an implausible thing in entirely to joke about how implausible it is’ then it’s pretty obviously intentional.

        I don’t really think its clear right now which it is, but i will add that if its the former I don’t really think its particularly high stakes either way

      2. Bittersweet

        Oh my goooodddddd, why does it matter that it’s intentionally dumb? It is a joke. A punchline. It is a catalyst for the rest of the story of the chapter, it can be as stupid af. This could have easily been Sal breaking a milk drinking record or a backflip record or a record for most consecutive sit-ups in 70 minutes, this isn’t a life changing moment for anybody here. It might make Amber double down on speedrunning, but like… it doesn’t matter because it is INTENTIONALLY goofy and everyone in the comic is reacting in a humorous fashion.

        1. Sirksome

          I wish Sal had broken a sit-up record, cause then she would have abs and we need more girls with abs in this comic.

    3. Dave

      Lampshading a plot development as being real dumb and disbelief-shattering does not prevent that development from being real dumb and disbelief-shattering any more than telling a racist joke “ironically” prevent that joke from being racist

      I’m still open to seeing where this is going but so far it’s still pretty dumb, in my subjective and biased objective ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      Anyway here is an entertaining Youtube video with ~8 million views for your enjoyment

      1. Dave

        in my subjective and biased opinion, rather

      2. Taffy

        It’s not a Rick Roll. Saved you all a click.

  16. Bittersweet

    I feel like this is my new favorite strip of the comic, there’s something about the way Amber is just spinning over there in rage that is sending me lololol

    Probs the first time I’ve ever heard her voice in my head and I can’t figure out who she sounds like right now, but I can hear it.

  17. JA

    Is this lampshade hanging or Amber’s fanfic obsession coming through?

    1. Dana

      Could be the former, but is definitely the latter.

  18. HueSatLight

    Sounds like Sal’s quitting smoking, good for her.

    1. HueSatLight

      Ya, ya, I know. that’s not what she said. And she’s smoking in a preview panel… unless it’s a misdirection, like Dina’s booze jug.

      1. morleuca

        I swear at one point she had said something about not lighting them but holding them on her lips for a placebo effect kind of thing.

    2. Needfuldoer

      Smoking less is still a good goal!

  19. C.T. Phipps

    Sal: So will you now learn that you should be devoting your life to something important and not video games?

    Amber: VIDEO GAMES ARE IMPORTANT!

    1. aelfwine

      Are you claiming that the totally-impossible thing that happened is supposed to be evidence for some sort of moral teaching?

      That’s on the level of the Key & Peele sketch where doing drugs has the consequence of a wrecking ball materialing out of thin air to knock you over.

      CONSEQUENCES!

      1. C.T. Phipps

        It’s a lesson that Amber is taking something utterly unimportant as a reason to be angry at her friend.

  20. John

    Get therapy, Amber.

    1. anon

      i don’t know if she’s given any a chance since…all the last 3-4 arcs or whatever but i vaguely remember her saying something like “As if *any* therapist is equipped to deal with me” And Booster isn’t certified yet tho i feel like it’d be a ‘conflict of interest’ to have a patient you already know even if you aren’t necessarily friends

      1. Needfuldoer

        I’d hope she would be past some of the “I am beyond help because I’m extra-special broken” mindset by now. The vast majority of it was formed by the scars Blaine’s abuse inflicted.

  21. M!a

    Ugh… I feel so stupid right now, and I know I’ll just feel all the more so afterwards, but… I don’t get it… ?

    I think I get what a Mary Sue is, but I’m still lost. :/

    1. Bittersweet

      A Mary Sue is a character who is written very shallowly to be good at everything and beloved by everyone with no actual character flaws or obstacles to overcome and no character arc to speak of. It’s often thrown around these days at any female character doing anything, but it comes from an old Star Trek fanfic I think? I might be conflating its origin with something else, but basically “Author’s Pet” is kind of a synonym for Mary Sue.

      1. Dara

        That’s the supposed origin story, yeah.

        I believe she was a lieutenant.

        1. mneme

          Ensign.

          The original Ensign Mary Sue was a deliberate sendup of self-insert fanfic, with the OC “Ensign Mary Sue” who could out-medicine McCoy, out-engineer Scotty, and who Kirk would suddenly hand the captain’s chair to when Spock was out of comission. (or whatnot). It hit hard enough that it became the trope namer for fanfiction where your OC (usually a self-insert) was suddenly more capable than the main cast with no real justification for it because your fanfic was a not-at-all disguised personal fantasy.

          Then, of course, it ~20 years later became the word used for any female character in any fiction that does anything, because we can’t have nice things.

        2. Taffy

          Ensign Amethyst Star Enoby Aiko Archer Picard Janeway Sue, your new medical officer.

        3. deliverything

          http://www.fortunecity.com/rivendell/dark/1000/marysue.htm was apparently the first one, but https://www.claremoseley.com/ensign-sue-must-die/ensign-sue-must-die-01/ is one of the best known parodies (and the one from which Taffy’s current avatar is taken).

      2. june gloom

        In other words what some people think Joyce is, lol.

    2. Taffy

      A Mary Sue is any female character who does anything.

      1. Kyrik Michalowski

        No it is not. Stop twisting things to fit your world view. Just because the term has a female origin, does not mean that most of the time jt is used to degrade women. It can be used for characters of any gender.

        Are there some people who use it to insult female characters? Of course, and there always will be, but the majority of it’s use is gender neutral.

        1. Taffy

          LOL

        2. pyrock_mania

          I mean, I think I’ve maybe heard it used maybe 3 times in earnest and every other time I’ve heard it is coming from someone frothing at the mouth about how a female character can’t possibly do the things they’re doing in the plot, often in cases where another male character has done that thing elsewhere in the story without objection. While the “academic” use of the term is theoretically gender-neutral (though I’ve seen others use “Larry/Gary Stu” for male characters), in practice it has become a term so overburdened with social baggage as to be unhelpful in most discussions outside of mockery.

          Also you have to remember 90% of Taffy’s comments are at least somewhat sarcastic 😉

        3. Taffy

          Now now, tone is hard to convey over text. I obviously should have typed a much longer comment to make it extremely obvious I was havin’ a giggle at the expense of people who say that kind of thing in earnest. You have to type the whole thing every single time, or else you’re misbehaving.

        4. Kyrik Michalowski

          I’m sorry, I had a debate right before all this and I was already annoyed. I didn’t take time to understand and I apologize for that.

        5. Taffy

          See, this is why I avoid any serious debate as much as possible. It just leaves me agitated and froggy, and I end up taking it out on others. We’ve all been there, don’t even trip.

        6. pyrock_mania

          I didn’t realize whose comment it was until I doubled back to mention their name.

          This is SO unlike you. For Shame 😛

        7. Regret

          A sarcasm tag is sooo hard to type. /s

        8. Taffy

          See, this is the comedy we’re all here for.

        9. zee

          Sometimes I wonder how much lower the comment number would be if you used tone indicators. But people missing the joke/sarcasm and flipping their lid is like half the entertainment value here. I freak out too much about being misunderstood, so I commend/envy/live vicariously through you

        10. Taffy

          If I have to use tone indicators, every other commenter has to do it as well. I won’t be held to a unique standard that doesn’t apply to anyone else. Not that I’m saying you’re saying that, but that’s basically my reason for not doing it. Like what, I’m supposed to just infer everyone else’s tone but I have to spell mine out explicitly? That’s pretty much ableism and I get enough of it in person, where my tone can be heard.

        11. Mark

          You could think of it as leadership.

        12. Nymph

          Mark, is this sarcasm? I can’t tell because you didn’t put a tonal marker.

        13. Kyrik Michalowski

          I’ve heard it mostly used on male characters(and twice on a character who was I think nonbinary) whenever I read fanfic, and I make the mistake of reading the comments.

          Also, if I misinterpreted Taffy’s comment then I apologize; sarcasm is hard for me to pick up in text.

        14. Aura

          90% seems low 😛

        15. Paradox

          Not really. There’s a whole other gendered version of it for guys called a Gary Stu but I don’t follow enough communities to know how often folks are applying either term to male vs female character.

        16. Yotomoe

          I hate Gary Stu, personally.
          1. Because Mary-Sue is a very specific reference to a fanfiction character and there’s no need to gender the name.
          2. Gary-Stu is not a name in the same way Mary-Sue is. It feels awkward to say.

        17. Dday

          Yeah I would just call male Mary Sues “Mary Sue”, that’s just the name of the phenomenon, same as calling someone a Pollyanna or Debbie Downer. Like how Goku is the Maryest Sue that ever Mary Sued.

        18. Taffy

          Goku isn’t a Mary Sue. He’s stronger than God, there’s a difference.

        19. Yotomoe

          I’m not being pedantic here, but I don’t think Goku fully qualifies as a Mary-Sue. At least not completely.
          Early Dragonball Goku might be the closest, considering he constantly learns techniques like the kamehameha after just seeing them once and casual tanking Gunfire like it ain’t no thang.
          But as the series goes on Goku finds himself struggling on the backfoot more often than not.
          -Piccolo soundly defeats him and this is before he uses the dragonballs to return his youth
          -Goku has to beat piccolo by basically flying his limp corpse of a body into him.
          -Goku can’t beat raditz and literally just has to hold him still for Piccolo to fire a beam through his chest.
          -Goku can only match Vegeta by using the Kaioken a technique that basically destroys his body and EVEN THEN Goku basically loses that fight and only eeks out a victory because of the combined efforts of Krillin, Gohan and Yajirobe.
          And I could go on but I think I’ve made my point. Mary Sues tend to be characterized as always having the answer or being able to overcome the odds with new powers and while Goku ALMOST does that, he’s so often on the back foot and often time just flat out losing that I don’t feel like it applies.

        20. Max

          And the only reason Goku beat Frieza is because Frieza was an idiot. If Frieza had gone full power in the beginning it would have been over very quickly.

        21. zee

          All shounen protagonists are Gary stus (I just like that word more okay?). That’s what happens when your main purpose is wish fulfillment for young boys. My personal favorite is Ichigo kurosaki, the human fullbringer Quincy soul reaper (both part time and half biological) who mastered bankai, a feat that takes decades, at 16. Love him. And he’s still the least Gary Stu of the big three bc he’s not a literal god

        22. thejeff

          I’m not sure “Mary Sue” really makes any sense outside of fan fiction. It’s really entirely focused around being a self-insert into an existing work that outdoes the main characters, generally while also having at least some of them fall in love with Mary.

          Even wish-fulfillment protagonists aren’t quite the same

        23. Yotomoe

          I would say that the biggest Mary-Sue to ever Mary Sue in shonenanga is Medaka Kurokami from medaka box. Insomuch that her being a Mary Sue is basically plot relevant. She is so powerful and hyper competent and beloved by everyone that she sorta becomes a bit of a sociopath who can’t relate to people. My favorite example of this is in the beginning of the manga she holds a tutoring session (because she has the best grade.) And the whole time she just teaches them how to remember to put the date on your test or make sure you’re not circling the answers off by one. Because she can’t fathom that they actually don’t know the answers.

      2. Nymph

        Especially if that woman does a thing in [insert IP men think they’re the only fanbase of]

    3. Adam Black

      In fanfiction, usually a self insert character that functions as extreme wishfullment; and through inconsistent writing manages to impossible plot armor, break all the other characters: all the men fall in love with her, is somehow better or stronger than everyone despite lack of training.

      The male version is all of this but edgy and angsty, a Marty Sue. The classic Marty Sue of modern fiction is … Batman.
      Writing Mary Sues is a normal part of being an author. Imaging oneself in a fictional world you live as wish fulfillment.

      The sexest element of the trope is that boys accept “because I’m Batman” as an empowering excuse from male characters.

      The irony is Sal has been compared to Batman and fits the MartySue profile.
      Amber is lamoshading the unbelievable instant skill of sal as if Sal is a poorly written fanfic. But we’ve already accepted ‘Sal is awesome so just because Sal’s since the Truck incident.

      (When a no superhero powered character might fight supes through extreme skill there is always the possibility they become Mary Sue like overtime. ) But Mary Sues can be good if there is a cost or they have flaws, as long as they are not perfect. A great example of a subverted Mary Sue is . GwenPool. She’s written to be one on purpose as a wish fulfillment for comic readers. She’s awesome because her power is reading comic books so being genre savvy. And has very genuine character arcs. Breaking the fifth wall and messing with established characters is done for humor and satire. Wesley Crusher was disliked for being a Mary Sue. Mary Sues can be averted , subverted or lampshades if there is an in established in universe reason for having plot breaking powers. Example: In Wheel of Time some characters (tavaren) are used by the wheel to create story for others. Matt Cauthon is a Mary and Marty Sue but it’s established early on he has plot breaking and making powers. He has no magic just plot armor to have luck and gain skills, destiny.
      In the end it’s about reader Buyin. If you like a character and accept awesomeness as a reason it’s ok. If they are annoying and make better characters you like seem less than, they suck.

      1. eh, whatever

        Or you could just have linked to the TV Tropes article on “Mary Sue”.

        1. eh, whatever

          I’m actually quite surprised nobody has already done that.

        2. Adam Black

          Both thoughts occurred to while writing.
          Then I remembered I’m not evil today.

        3. Username Taken

          Excuse me, but linking to TV Tropes is a war crime.

        4. Aura

          This! You won’t catch me with your insidious snares. Tonight, I go to bed on time! (… ish)

        5. Michael Steamweed

          I don’t know what you’re talking about! Such a harmless website. Hardly takes any time to peruse the relevant information. 😀

        6. Adam Black

          This Username gets it

  22. Newlland(Henryvolt)

    Amber there is no need to say such a mean spirited meta thing to your fellow comic character.

  23. Kyrik Michalowski

    Careful with that 4th wall Amber; wouldn’t want to break it. 😛

  24. BarerMender

    I don’t do gaming. Could saving a frame really make a difference?

    1. BadRoad

      Normally Super Mario Bros only checks to see if you’ve completed the level every 21 frames, so you’d need a 21-frame improvement, but the last level ends immediately, so it would be possible to save one frame, and this is one game that has been thoroughly optimized.

      1. BarerMender

        Um, right. I understood that. Of course I did. You’re not doubting me, are you? But is there a way saving a frame would help Sal set a new record?

        1. thejeff

          Saving the frame was the new record. She did it one frame faster than the old record.
          It’s not a technique that helped her set the record, it’s the measurement of the record.

        2. BarerMender

          Um… yeah. Thanks for explaining that. I definitely understand now. No, really, I… um…

    2. Wraithy2773

      The last time the Super Mario Brothers speedrun was broken, it was by a factor of 167 ms. That amounts to an improvement of 4 frames (I believe SMB runs at 24fps?).

      That was the first improvement in the speedrun time in 11 months.

      1. bhtooefr

        NTSC versions are 60 FPS, so it should be 16.7 ms per frame, and 167 ms would be 10 frames saved.

    3. PhyrexianRogue

      In the same sense that a microsecond matters in normal running. Ordinarily no, but when specifically going for records even the tiniest improvement matters.

      1. shork

        In most video games where runs are measured in tens of minutes saving a few frames is inconsequential even when going for speedruns. Super Mario Brothers is a comparatively simple game that has been taken apart so thoroughly in the interest of beating it ever so slightly faster that it’s coming down to the frame

  25. Reltzik

    The world’s greatest video gamer doesn’t fear the worlds second-greatest video gamer. She fears the newb who just picked up a controller for the first time and doesn’t know what she’s doing.

    1. Dante

      Videogames cause #Violence, and boy, Amber is about to reach Heaven through ’em.

    2. Wraithy2773

      I know you’re going for a joke, and it is a good one, but I do want to comment on something here, because its something I appreciate about the subculture.

      A speedrunner’s reaction to their time getting broken, by and large, and particularly for high profile categories, is generally one of enthusiastic praise for the one breaking their record. There might be a bit of envy or somesuch in there, but its largely a very collaborative community, and the rivalries that do form often are in the manner of two people pushing each other forward.

      Less “you beat me and I hate you” and more “you beat me, so I gotta try even harder now to beat you!”

      1. thejeff

        I might be wrong and it’s hard to tell because it doesn’t just happen, but the reaction might be different if the record breaking wasn’t a rivalry, but just someone coming in and breaking it because they were bored one day.

        1. Big Z

          Some of that different in reaction, IMHO, is going to be that in the real world someone coming out of nowhere and just breaking a record is infinitely more likely to be just cheating somehow.

  26. UrsulaDavina

    Amber you can just say that she is using a laptop and it doesn’t count unless your using the orignal famicon on a CRT television.

    I honestly don’t know if that is a thing for speed running also my old NES had difficulty running on my family’s 500lb crt (not actually 500lbs but it was heavy )

    1. BadRoad

      Speedrunning on a CRTTV should be easier since there’s less latency.

      1. UrsulaDavina

        The TV was bad and the NES was second hand I was happy if I could get it to ply Legend of Zelda for an hour2

    2. Wraithy2773

      For what it’s worth, SMB speedrunning isn’t even done on the original hardware, instead on emulators on PC. Largely for convenience (its a bit hard to find an NES and SMG cart in working order these days), but also because some of the techniques needed for the current speedruns can’t be done with the original NES controller (that D-Pad was a touch clunky…).

  27. sdrainbow

    I wasn’t gonna USE that term but it was for sure the one I was thinking.

    This is salvageable but I’m dropping my rating to about 30%, particularly after peeping at Willis’s bluesky.

    1. anon

      unlikely to happen but be amusing of some ‘chain reaction’ of dina, becky, joyce and a few others that have only ‘dabbled’ in games to also break some of ambers other speedrun records

      or even like ethan like

      “Oh you beat the (insert transformers game level) speedrun?”

      “Actually iwas just letting asher borrow my account”

      “Come ON!”

      1. Mark

        Then Amber wakes up, screaming.

    2. jeffepp

      This is about the only valid criticism of the last two days. Willis can be obsessively critical of others comics. And, he fully expects people to be equally obsessed with this one. He encourages it. He fuels it. He’s go a whole meta-nickname based on it, that he personally identifies as. This is his jam.

      This is the biggest problem I have with him. He hate reads, and assumes everyone else does too.

      1. nicoleandmaggie

        That’s a depressing thought. I hope it’s not true.

    3. Needfuldoer

      I suspect he re-shared this comic for a reason…

  28. Alongcameaspider

    So let me see if I have the past few days comments summed up correctly

    Dina having the ability to almost literally teleport: perfectly fine

    Sal being good at speedrunning: literally the worst thing this comic has done

    1. Kyrik Michalowski

      People get worked up over stupid shit all the time, but this is hilarious to watch because it is both hilariousm due to seeing people make stupid arguments, and tragic when you realize how many people are freaking out over something that is entirely possible, despite being highly implausible.

      1. Seralyna

        There is a pretty interesting confluence here where fans of speedrunning specifically are more likely to be sensitive to ‘this is theoretically possible’ being an unnaceptable responce.

        Cheating in speedrunning is such a prevelant issue that most people familiar about the topic know about how the biggest communities need to be extremely vigilant for not just things that are impossible, but implausible too.

        When someone new joins a community and immediatley smashes every record its usually cause for investigation, because they rightfully understand that it just kinda not at all very likely to happen and that the simpler explanation is cheating, and very often have been proven right

        This isn’t a condemnation of the comic btw (i think this is very silly and fun) but it is interesting to see a lot of people butting heads over ‘plausibility’ specifically becasue of the nature of those communities

    2. Taffy

      Dina can teleport and move unnoticed without consequence. Joyce can also teleport, I think specifically to Dorothy. Amber can jump around like Sly Cooper. Danny is invisible.

      But Sal can’t play a video game fast, that’s unreasonable. It’s honestly strange that anyone could possibly not dislike this plot element, it’s so unbelievable.

      1. zee

        To Dorothy and away from Muslims (limited range) specifically. Occasionally up into trees around her boyfriend

        1. Taffy

          Muslims? ?

        2. Dana

          The time she teleported a few feet away from Raidah when invited to Islamic worship service. I’m hoping her personal growth has caused her to lose that superpower.

        3. NGPZ

          This came as a shock to me too, but no wonder, they’re probably referring to this:

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/01-face-the-strange/guzzle/

          Not surprising honestly, given the other scary things Joyce actively endorsed when she was still fresh out of fundamentalist homeschool, not to mention the unfortunate reality that Islamophobia is especially common in a religious red state. 0-0

        4. NGPZ

          ???

    3. Wraithy2773

      So, “people say that a thing doesn’t make sense” means “its the worst thing the comic has done”?

      Can we please freaking cool it with this? I don’t like this plot point, but anyone that’s been through the fucking Spanking strips knows that this isn’t remotely the worst this comments section has been.

      Its been people going “hey, this thing doesn’t make sense”. There’s been a few idiot hotheads and I think they need to go calm the hell down, but you can also just step back and try to understand what other people are saying instead of jumping to the dismissive mockery.

    4. Adam Black

      Joyce.. actual Teleporting to Dorothy or whoever says the Bible wrong.
      Also Joyce making joes beard extrude.
      Sal. moving faster than a speeding truck while catching someone mid air.

    5. Tan

      To be clear, this is not “Sal being good at speedrunning”, this is “Sal being inhumanly good at speedrunning without effort”. Which personally I’m fine with, but honestly in terms of the comments, I’m finding the people thumbing their noses at those who understand the context of how absurd this is a lot more insufferable than the people having difficulty suspending their disbelief over this particular issue and trying to explain why.

      (well, except maybe the ones who feel compelled to announce their departure, that’s always the most eyerolling)

  29. Matrix

    Mary Sues are only in fic… tion
    Is Amber seeing beyond the veil?
    Does she know?

    1. anon

      any ‘irl’ mary sues prolly have more effort behind the scenes. or reincarnated like “this is my third time having a life” or so XD; if not born into wealth/privilege’s lol

    2. zee

      I mean amber has already confirmed she doesn’t see real people as real people

  30. Dday

    Lol called ittt

  31. PedanticJerkass

    Go back to superheroing, noob.

    1. anon

      hasn’t she ‘retired’ from superhero activities for a while , tho?

  32. Derek

    this might be just me, but to the commenters saying “this comic has superheroes and a league of evil dads, THIS is what bothers you?” no, that shit was stupid as fuck too, this is just more recent

    1. Taffy

      At least the dopey dad stuff had people getting murdered. That was cool.

    2. Yotomoe

      True. I’m very selective with my criticism because I don’t wanna just come off as a hater but this is is far from the first thing in DOA that I don’t like.

      “Then why do you still read the story if you don’t like it!?”

      Cuz I’m invested in the story and characters and even if it doesn’t always do stuff I like it hasn’t gotten to the point where I feel like dropping it completely.

      1. Wereg

        I feel you, but in the opposite way. Whenever superhero stuff starts being the focus I just kinda… check back in a couple of weeks later.

    3. Dante

      I mean, I liked that shit. I also very much remember quite a lot of the Commentariat enjoying it back in the day.

      1. thejeff

        It was controversial though. Lots of people thought it went too far over the top.

        I said yesterday that I think part of it is that we already have genre expectations for that kind of thing, so if you just shift your mindset over to “this is an action movie or superhero comic”, then it all fits. There’s no real equivalent for this.

      2. Derek

        you do you, but I personally hated it.
        I got hooked on this comic because it was the story of a hyper-religious girl slowly learning that the world is bigger and more complicated than her church taught her. And to be fair, we did stay on this theme for a long time

        But by the time you have an evil league of dads IN DOMINO MASKS kidnapping five or six young adults in the broad sober daylight and said young adults doing fucking ninja stunts to fight their way out of the murder house, I think things went off the rails. I’m not invested. I don’t have any reason to believe anyone is in real danger because the situation is so ridiculous and over the top.

        Toedad threatening Becky with a rifle? That was scary in a real way.
        him somehow recruiting several frat bros to commit felonies with no real goal? I can’t even muster a reaction to it.

        1. Pizzasgood

          For the record, the kidnapping didn’t happen in daylight, broad or otherwise. It was before dawn and very dark. I question the “sober” part as well — they weren’t inebriated, but they were probably pretty groggy due to having just been woken up by a fire alarm in the middle of the night.

          This isn’t meant to change your opinion or anything. I just abhor misinformation and try to correct it when I can.

        2. Dante

          Agreed. Also, Toedad got murdered with a blunt instrument in front of the characters; and I’m glad for the commenter, because if they don’t know how strong of a drug adrenaline can be in an extreme situation… Honestly, after that kind of horrific violence, I didn’t think weird the characters fought for their lives.

          … Also, that was the climax of that entire First Season. Shit was going in crescendo for years, it had to get to a boiling point. It was several years ago, too.

          I kinda love that DoA is so big it’s reached “some readers hate the direction the comic has had for years and keep reading to complain it was better back in the Golden Age” status.

    4. Seralyna

      no to be clear that stuff was super fun. Like, amazigirl was in book 1, I don’t know what else he could do to establish ‘this is a comic with goofy unbelievable stuff’
      I dunno why you would read it if you weren’t interested in that

  33. Wereg

    Pot, kettle.

    1. jeffepp

      Very much. The frustration for Amber is she trains to be the best, if she needs it or not, obsessively. Sal just does it, or doesn’t.

  34. shrub

    A short, stocky young woman (Amber) can beat up multiple larger, stronger opponents and that’s OK, Sal can break physics on a motorbike and thats not a problem but doing well on a video game is going too far?

    1. Yotomoe

      Yes.

    2. GoodbyBallad

      Several people within the fiction have established that improving the record is impossible. The genre and the drama allow for a little superheroics. Also, there are short women who can fight well, Amazi-Girl’s fighting is arguably less implausible than hitting a speed running record that probably can’t be pushed further.

      1. Nymph

        That speedrunning record was literally broken nine months ago. The argument that it “can’t be pushed further” seems flimsy.

        1. aelfwine

          Improving the human record isn’t impossible, a newbie doing it the first 70 minutes of attempting it is impossible.
          Perhaps the comic will reveal that Sal had months or years of speedrunning practice before, but I kinda doubt it.

        2. Nymph

          It’s not impossible, actually. Just improbable. Unlikely. Comic-book level, if you will.

        3. Taffy

          One might even call it “cartoonish”.

        4. Aelfwine

          in the same sense that it’s only “improbable” and not “impossible” that a five-year-old without training might successfuly perform heart transplant surgery, I guess?

      2. thejeff

        In reality, no it’s not. AG and Sal are both just dead from the stunts they’ve pulled off. They’re far past “can fight well”.

        And it’s also been established within the fiction that some newbie upstart might come along and break it.

        1. Taffy

          Amber got shot by “Toedad” on the highway and fell in front of a semi truck. Sal tried to catch her and the sudden weight threw off he balance, so she fell off the bike. Both were flattened by the truck, which has no time to react. Becky still wasn’t fully kidnapped though, because the cops shot Ross through the window while he was still driving. The car still tumbled though, so Becky broke both of her arms and is still recovering.

        2. Fuzzy

          Established by the same person who just called it an “impossible-to-beat record”.

        3. Taffy

          Fictional characters can be wrong, it’s fine.

  35. Wraithy2773

    I really want to send off all the “THIS SPEEDRUNNING THING IS THE WORST THING EVER” and the “ANYONE THAT IS EVEN SLIGHTLY CRITICAL OF THE SPEEDRUNNING THING IS TERRIBLE AT SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF” to their own comment section.

    Or maybe an arena with livestreaming support. Surely we could sell a few ads to the battle royale there.

    Remember folks, two things can be simultaneously true:

    1: This particular plot point may not work if you know a great deal about the subject involved, and it draws you out of the story in ways that you wish weren’t there. (note the “may” there, I know some who are into speedrunning disagree, that’d be a fun thing for a polite discussion about!)

    2: This plot point isn’t, on the whole, a huge deal. Its not about Super Mario Bros, its about Amber and Sal’s relationship, and how it seems like the universe keeps pitting them against each other and driving them into conflict despite both being good and very friend-compatible people.

    Its like a show fumbling some medical jargon to describe why a beloved character is on death’s door and all the other characters are sad. It’s a factor in the scene, and may well warrant discussion on its own, but it’s not the core of the scene either.

    So, please, can the extremes cool it just a bit?

    1. Wraithy2773

      Also? I’m just now realizing how much today’s QuestionableContent strip aligns with this whole subject :D.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Haha okay.

    2. Wren

      There’s probably a name for it or something but…

      I trained as a therapist. I walked away in year three of four years, but it still means a lot to me and I want to go back to it.

      My spouse was watching a show that I was apathetic about- until it came to an episode which was around a therapist who did something Very Very Bad as a therapist but it was never portrayed as such. Different country and different rules but still, it was just… a complete breach of how we were taught to handle things. After that I actively, pretty strongly disliked that show, whereas before it was just ignorable to me.

      My point is… I think it’s much harder to take something being portrayed in a way which is unrealistic in stride in fiction when it’s something we know and care about, and I think we’re seeing that in some of the reactions here.

    3. PedanticJerkass

      Well, the important thing is that you’ve found a way to feel superior to both.

  36. Abdomino

    Whelp, there it is. My absolute favorite comic in the series.

    Dude managed to write a story where a character can say “Mary-Sue” in-character, without sounding annoying. Then, have it be *accurate* enough to hit his other character with as an insult, but only through the lens of the character calling her that. Sal isn’t *actually* a Mary-Sue. She’s made mistakes, knows she isn’t perfect, and receives reasonable criticism in the story.

    I would fight to put this in a textbook on character writing.

    1. Abdomino

      I just saw the rest of the comments. Y’all, don’t let facts get in the way of a good story. Yeah, Willis could’ve named a less analyzed game to do the “new guy plays thing and shakes up meta” but that would’ve sacrificed some of the readability to those not as much into gaming. I’m saying this as a gamer, a (very) casual speedrunner and as someone who just likes good storytelling.

      Someone else said it right: it’s not about the frame, it’s about the character interplay.

      1. Taffy

        I wonder if people would have gotten upset if the game had been something completely fictional. The biggest point of contention seems to be that it’s specifically the first game with Mario in it.

        1. Wraithy2773

          That’s a thing I’ve suggested a few times. As others have mentioned, there’s been plenty of times where someone tries something weird out of the blue, and uncovers a brand new skip that bypasses a huge portion of the game. Sometimes when not even speedrunning. And a fictional game with a smaller speedrunning community can easily justify a newcomer stumbling into a big time skip.

          It’s just hard to picture something like that happening with this specific game. Partly because its so heavily speedrun as it is, and partly because its just so… simple.

        2. Abdomino

          Almost certainly the case. I doubt I would have thought twice if it had been a fake game like the monkey blaster cartoon or whatever.

        3. Adam Black

          Is this GenX age bait?

        4. Needfuldoer

          Every Taffy post has at least a hint of rage bait in it. As a treat.

        5. Taffy

          The best part is, it’s not even intentional. I’m just slightly incorrect about a lot of stuff and people can’t stand it.

        6. zee

          Rage baiting Gen x is fun…and easy

        7. Taffy

          Yeah, you just mention the existence of a brand from their youth. It doesn’t even have to be negative, you can be completely neutral and they’ll do an acrobatic pirouette off the handle at you.

        8. zee

          Homestuck spotted ☝️

        9. Nymph

          I think people would have been upset no matter what, tbh.

        10. Big Z

          Almost certainly true that people are MORE upset because of the specific game, given the number of comments discussing the (fascinating, actually) fact that the record for SMB1 was for a while (I don’t think it still is) almost literally at the theoretical limits of human perfection, where the only really plausible improvements are on the order of “a few frames” or “discovering a completely new technique after decades of people banging on it.”

          Granted, I’m enough of a speedrunning fan to watch AGDQ and the like, but on the whole *I* think it’s a perfectly reasonable fit for a comic that’s just over the borderline from true reality.

        11. Username Taken

          Please, everyone knows that Mario first appeared in Mario’s Cement Factory.

        12. Andrusi

          You’re mistaken. The first game with Mario in it was Wrecking Crew.

        13. Jon S.

          Donkey Kong?

        14. Taffy

          No.

        15. HueSatLight

          You shouldn’t count that mosaic they found in Pompeii. That’s actually Luigi and they just accidentally used red tiles because every single Roman was red/green color-blind because they didn’t have a word for green.

        16. Taffy

          They thought the ocean was wine red, for Patroklos’s sake.

        17. HueSatLight

          Homer, the poet known for his ability to see.

      2. Dante

        Honestly yeah, pls let the author cook. Willis knows how to tell a good story and I’m with you here – I’d never ever seen “Mary Sue” used both accurately and non-obnoxiously: It’s Amber’s lingo, it fits the situation, and yet we’re privy to Sal’s struggles so we know it’s not true.

        It’s funny in the same way Carla was when she summoned a pie cannon to get out of Class War & Feels with Booster. (And then there was a fight about whether it was assault or not.) This is Shenanigans, yo.

        1. Nymph

          No hijinks! Only a brutal adherence to the boring realities of every day life.

        2. Mark

          I’m amused by the level-crossing: a fictional character calling another fictional character a fictional character as an expletive.

    2. Adam Black

      I just realized OG Mary was a Mary Sue ( as was Danny) until the Author decided he hated one and needed to break the other

      1. Abdomino

        I’ve only read DoA, so the only Danny & Mary I’m familiar with are these ones, so forgive me if you’re talking about

        I don’t really remember Danny being a Gary-Stu. His opening character moment was “chase the girl to university and get dumped despite all the good advice being given to you.” He’s just always been kind of a twerp, but he’s grown up a lot and embraced the simple goofball vibe in a way Walky can only pretend to be.

        1. LiamKav

          Roomies! Danny was partially based on DW (check the initials) but he screwed up all the time so he wasn’t really a Gary Stu.

          Mary was originally designed in Roomies! as the best most awesome girl but DW realised after a few strips that he actually hated her and her personality started to shift.

        2. Taffy

          Roomies Danny’s initials are RD, though.

        3. blizzarddragon

          Walky was the one partly based on Willis, hence his real name being “David Walkerton”, like “David Willis”.

        4. HueSatLight

          All the characters are self-insert. Joyce here, in her religious upbringing and then deconversion. Danny from Roomies was before Willis went through that, and he’s frequently chiding other characters about the consequences in a way that shows past-Willis thought he was always right.

        5. Adam Black

          That’s legit

          But each one has a main author avatar. In shortpacked it’s Ethan for love of Transformers.

        6. Adam Black

          It’s different In roomies as the characters are brand new, and much closer tied to DW when he was still a fundie, initially.

          Mary started out as ideal Christian Girl. A sweet suck up who looked up to Danny and thought he was better than others. Danny was a generic author avatar. DW suddenly realized he hated Mary and she breaks bad and becomes a hypocrite. The characters in DOA s
          Mostly start out as more complex but reflect their full run. Except Mary, here she’s cartoonishly evil. In Roomies she starts out as a bit of a mix of DOA Lucy and Raidah.

          Danny starts out dating Sal in Roomies. And it’s Joyce ( a very different version of her) exists mostly to be a female peppie le pew and throw herself at Danny. Joyce in DOA is a mix of later Joyce comics and being the new author avatar.

  37. Suet

    Say no to smoking, say yes to smoking Amber’s dreams world records.

    Ooh, more big fonts, how big can we go

  38. UrsulaDavina

    How has this generated so much controversy already it’s just a speed run and it’s not a real speed actual speed run.

    Hopefully this comment section will not generate as much toxicity as actual forums and youtube comment section of actual speed runs.

    1. Taffy

      Nah, I’m pretty sure we’re all havin’ a goof and a gaff here. I don’t think anyone is like, actually bothered by it all.

    2. Wraithy2773

      Trust me, I’ve seen the comments when people are actually angry. This is nothing…

    3. anon

      i think some are nitpicky but i imagine some dont care enough about speedruns to rly notice the lack of ‘realism’ or so

      tho the concept of speedruns seems silly anyways, i mean it’s cool that it’s snowballed into having ‘records’ to begin with but there are prolly other competiive sports out there

      1. Wraithy2773

        Speedrunning is very silly indeed, but its also kinda fascinating as a practice.

        A lot of it is about the way that the games were coded, what shortcuts and cheats they used in order to work in the first place, the bugs that slipped in that few, if any, could possibly notice.

        You learn huge amounts about how the game was made and how it works. Like the basic question: How does a game know when you’ve beaten it? Usually by beating the final boss or level, but how does it know you should be facing it? Do you have to complete every level? Even every “mandatory” level? How does the game know you’re not cheating it?

        Every game turns into a unique puzzle with solutions that might make no sense until you look closer (and even then…).

        Of course, this is like a lot of weird, niche subjects. A ton of things look really silly, at least right up until you start to understand more about it.

      2. Adam Black

        It’s awful. What destroys the realism for me, is that it’s only 2 dimensional.
        Cmon, what kind of speed run is this. Sal doesn’t even have a full nose.

        I’ve never seen someone beat SM without eye lashes.

    4. Needfuldoer

      This is the Internet. People get big mad about video games.

      1. Nymph

        Last three words unnecessary tbh.

        1. Taffy

          “This is […] people”

        2. Nymph

          I stand by this.

        3. thejeff

          “To summarize the summary of the summary: People are a problem.”

  39. TlalocW

    Next I hope Sal conceives a baby using nothing but the Force.

    I’m just here for the drama.

    1. Proto

      “Have you ever heard of Darth Sal the Wise?”

    2. PedanticJerkass

      Sal was totally using her midichlorians to break the speedrun record.

  40. anon

    i mean given what she’s been through she deserves a win

  41. Ophidiophile

    Is Willis using Amber to tell us that Sal is Willis’s self insert character?

    1. Adam Black

      Danny, Walky, Ethan now Joyce is the current author avatar.

      Willis used Amber to solve the Dingdong bandit. Joe is part-time . So is Amber . And anyone who picks up a Transformer or watches Dexter.

  42. Aviator

    And then Amber woke up and it was all a bad dream

  43. Francoinblanco

    She is not wrong though. Sal pick-up something and reached a world-class level in that in 70 minutes and is better than a previously established professional in this field
    Textbook example of the mary sue trait or shoen Main character

    1. Adam Black

      She studied Amber’s.
      Everyone acting like it’s cannon she never played before. This is Willis. He can retcon a childhood playing it, and then getting to study Amber’s save.

      1. Francoinblanco

        true, but a sudden flashback giving the excuse that someone knows something but never had the opportunity to boast about it may be negatively assessed by the reader as a lazy explanation for the story. I see in the comments that there were stripes about Sal being good at playing Mario Kart, so there was some introduction, but I personally didn’t remember it, so the shock of breaking the world record out of boredom was greater for me.

        1. Mr D

          I think the important part of her being good at Mario Kart is the way she did it: By finding ways to break the track. Going off-track and skipping, that’s the part that implies a certain talent for speedrunning.

        2. Chubseus

          It’s been a while for us, but Sal being really good at Mario Kart was established way back when she met Danny. It’s part of how they became friends in the first place. I’ve found it very believable. It reminds me of that story years back when a journalist randomly realized his wife regularly beat the world record for Tetris for fun and didn’t realize it.

    2. Needfuldoer

      I wonder if it’s all a ruse, and the chat’s just saying Sal broke the record as a way to motivate Amber to break past the wall she’s been stuck at for days. That seems like the “cruelty with wholesome intent” sort of antic Twitch chat would get up to.

  44. APersonAmI

    Aww, Sal’s great. And the composition here is fantastic.

    Still don’t at all grok Ambers anger here, I’d be really happy for my friend and fellow survivor, but after thinking about it, sure, I can imagine someone not-me getting angry about this.

    Oh, we are changing the goal posts! I see. Amber was trying to beat the TAS, and said in previous strips that Sal had broken the record, but now she’s saying that Sal broke the NTAS, which is not the thing Amber was trying to do.

    This still makes no sense, but it is nice seeing what Willis was bending reality to get to.

    Because todays comic is neat.

    Don’t use gendered slurs though Amber, that’s not cool.

    1. Bash

      Amber has a lot of insecurities, and video games was one of the things she was really good at. Now Sal, a person who doesn’t know or care much about games, has done something she was unable to do. Without any real struggle.

      1. nightshade

        it reminds me of a piece of my childhood ……. when I lived with my grandparents it was possible to watch wheel of fortune 2 or 3 times a day due to different channels in their area

        Well, id get bored after a while and wander off well a few times id be passing by the tv as they were trying to solve the puzzle and id just blurt out the answer after looking at it for 10 seconds and they’d get soo pissed at me ………..sometimes id have to go watch the tv in the other room ….

      2. Sirksome

        I don’t think this is entirely true. Sal plays and enjoys games regularly. It’s partly how she and Danny first became friends and she even bought a DS with her own target gift cards. She’s a gamer she just chooses not to make it her personality, because she chose smoking and motorcycles instead.

  45. Amós Batista

    No way, Amber! Only insecure boys can blame a woman character as Mary Sue.

    1. Taffy

      Insecure boys with huge dicks, in particular.

      1. PedanticJerkass

        Insecure boys with (the false impression that they have) huge dicks.

        Or maybe… insecure boys with (the personality attributes associated with being) huge dicks.

  46. Peter Huppertz

    This is one of the most hilarious days in the comment section I’ve come across. I guess that’s what you get when someone expects a web comic to provide a plausible description of reality.

  47. GUIGUI

    So… Is Sal trying to stop smoking?

    1. darkoneko

      Finally someone asking the important questions !
      (that or she’s just lazy to go out right now)

  48. Doom Shepherd

    This is funny like a guy yelling “bad writing” when his sole contribution to any genre is plagiarized restroom wall graffiti. That he misspelled.

    I love it.

    1. Doom Shepherd

      Sorry, by “this” I mean the comment section, not the comic, which is also funny to me but in a different and personal way. I will not be taking questions.

      1. Taffy

        Imperative sentences aren’t questions. You will drink a refreshing Coca-Cola.

  49. Amelie Wikström

    What I’m taking away from this strip is Amber’s spending too much time reading fanfic. Well we already knew that when she started shipping people IRL and telling them about it like she thinks that’s a normal thing to do, but this too. Maybe she’d even have got there before Sal if she spent that time playing videogames instead?

  50. DashWallkick

    I’d almost think Sal was antagonizing Amber if we didn’t have 15 years of this comic to see she is just naturally good at things and her total apathy for rules was rewarded by the comic.

    However; Amber has not been this angry in a long time. I, uh, am not really sure how she’s going to take Sal being so much better than her in half an hour at something she’s been doing for literally years of our (comic reading) time.

  51. C.T. Phipps

    Fanfic and Mario Kart were Amber’s refuge from the real world. Now she realizes they don’t care about her.

  52. Adept

    Mary Sue is right. Dammit Willis.

  53. Pylgrim

    Fucking goddamn rolls off the tongue easier than goddamn fucking, Amber.

    1. Aura

      I think goddamn fucking is what happens when you start out with goddamn and realise you need to go harder.

  54. Juanoku

    Sal’s lack of media literacy will always be equal funny as it is frustrating

  55. Schpoonman

    Dorothy browbeating Joyce into masturbating was like, three lines of dialogue away from being actual sexual assault and this is what sets people off? This is what gets a bunch of readers to cry “This is too far, Willis! I can’t read this anymore!”?

    Jesus fucking Christ.

    1. Big Z

      As someone who takes speedrunning seriously but has a sense of perspective about the goofy nature of this webcomic in particular, yeah. That sums it up.

    2. Adept

      Those things have nothing, _nothing_, in common. What annoys me here is how utterly unbelievable and silly it is. This is literally something that can not happen, unless Sal has actual super powers.

      1. thejeff

        Yeah, neither of them particularly bother me, but they’re vary different in kind so it’s not surprising they provoked different reactions. One being essentially a moral issue and the other a suspension of disbelief one.
        Also kind of ignores that a lot of people did have big issues with that sequence.

    3. Fuzzy

      I at least dislike both of those things! I almost stopped reading during the laundry room scene. If I had commented during it, I would’ve had a real hard time staying calm because it was too uncomfortable. So I didn’t comment during it.

      Idk why you think the people mad at this scene are different from the ones mad at that scene anyway, the comment section was popping off back then way more than it is now.

  56. seeprybyrun

    Oh, I wonder if this is the origin of the chapter title.

    1. seeprybyrun

      (Beating the record, I mean, not calling Sal a Mary Sue)

      Also: no, Amber, Joyce is the author-insert here.

  57. darkoneko

    No no, if you’re grazing a frame it’s probably Touhou

  58. Sirksome

    Everyone complaining about Sal breaking the record or whatever but I see some signs of neurodivergence here. Hyperfixating on a videogame because you’re bored and playing it with precise execution? That’s not flagging anything to us? Walky probably has ADHD and they are twins. Joyce and Dina might not be the only ones who need a diagnosis for something.

    1. darkoneko

      “everyone”, is it ?

    2. Aura

      Definitely picking up those vibes as well! The restless when not smoking could just be addiction, but sounds more like she’s using smoking as a way of staying grounded/focused/stimulated.

    3. Taffy

      She picked up the cart racer and was immediately smashing Danny’s track records within maybe hours. I’m not sure she’s hyperfixating (come on, it’s only been like an hour), but she’s definitely hypercompetent at video games. Not all behaviors suggest a diagnosis.

      1. Sirksome

        Yeah, but where’s the fun in that? Plus Danny is trash at Mario Kart. That’s not a high bar to clear.

      2. JD

        maybe not but adhd has a strong genetic component with like 70-80% inheritability and its common for siblings of children with adhd to also have adhd so unless, like, walky got lead poisoning as a kid (apparently this will also do it) a combination of things going on with sal do actually suggest the possibility that sal might also have adhd.

        1. Taffy

          I’m aware of all of those things, yes.

  59. Arianod

    The worst insult!!!

  60. Les

    Garfiald of Mastodon had a really great thread a few years ago about how neoliberalism and the drives of “content” see the primary mode of judging a story by how much it conforms to possibilities of reality. Previous generations may have judged the poetry, the emotions, the art, the character, but now we want something believable and that is our primary metric.

    He said it better than I did, but digging through a million shitposts to find the original link is too much for me today https://mastodon.social/@garfiald

    1. Nymph

      Shame, I would have liked to read it since “previous generations” and “we” aren’t well defined there and I want to know the actual point being made by the quote.

      Not enough to trawl around on Mastodon though :<

    2. darkoneko

      heh

    3. thejeff

      I think there’s definitely something to that, but I’m really skeptical about it being linked to neoliberalism or whatever “the drives of content” means.

      I suspect it’s more linked to fandom and to the democratization of available commentary on stories. You can see the focus on this kind of world building consistency analysis at least as far back as 60s Star Trek fandom. Before that kind of fandom arose, the only real place you had for public commentary on fiction was reviews and literary criticism, which were essentially professional not amateur.

    4. Francoinblanco

      Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t

      1. Nymph

        You and I read different fiction, I think.

  61. darkoneko

    One can guestimate the amount of shitstorm throught the number of comments on a page. I’d say we’re still pretty alright.

    (buncha drama llama)

  62. Zamperla

    Yeah well who gave her the backstory, eh? Hm? She wouldn’t be so powerful without the backstory, Amber.

  63. Quiley

    This is kind of a cringe punchline I’m not gonna lie.

    1. Taffy

      me when I take a shower but forget a towel

  64. Username Taken

    All this debate about the realism of beating the Mario speedrun record is distracting from the important thing: In panel 1 Amber is 100% moving like Batman often does in comics, head/shoulders first, just without a cape flowing out behind her. 😀

    1. Yeet

      yeah I’m kinda wondering if amazigirl is gonna show up here

  65. Abel Undercity

    For the literal love of God, let’s not bring Mary into this.

    1. Taffy

      No wait, I wanna see Mary. She’s hot.

      1. Woop de doop

        Awww gross.

        1. Taffy

          Well, excuuuuuuse me, Princess. I like the way Mary is drawn, and no court of law or public opinion can stop me.

        2. HueSatLight

          BONK

        3. Taffy

          I used to bash my head against walls in elementary school (one time I even cracked one of those massive gymnasium bricks pretty badly), so you’re gonna need more than a bonk to deter me. My skull is almost as thick as my ass.

        4. HueSatLight

          haha. Ba-donk-a-donk bonk

  66. Icalasari

    Pffft the punchline is even better than if Sal was trolling Amber

  67. TGS

    Good lord folks, it’s a dramatic device. It meant to quickly and efficiently convey the tension between the two characters. It’s not like Willis hasn’t played with “reality” before. We are all suspending our disbelief for the sake of the story. This is nothing more than that.

    1. Nymph

      ~thiiiiiiiis~

    2. Chubseus

      If we can all buy into a dog playing basketball, we can buy into this. Please, people.

      1. Taffy

        Okay, but “basketball” and “dog” are at least homographs, so you get the pun.

    3. Mturtle7

      The problem (or delightful boon, depending on your perspective) here is twofold:
      a) speedrunners and other “hardcore gamers” adjacent to speedrunners have an infamous tendency to take their hobbies EXTREMELY seriously
      b) speedrunning old video games is such a niche hobby that it doesn’t get made fun of very often in popular media
      This set of particular circumstances is what has led to a vast number of normally kind of chill DoA readers absolutely losing their sh*t over this arc, I think! Personally, I think it’s hilarious, because I’m not terribly invested in either the comic or video games. Sorry, people who are invested in those things! I know I’m laughing at your suffering, but in my defense, your suffering is EXTREMELY comical.

      1. HueSatLight

        I don’t know if I find it funny anymore, but now I find Amber’s overreaction very realistic and well-written.

    4. Svankensen

      A lazy dramatic device. Which makes suspension of disbelief difficult. Bad writing bothers people. It’s not news.

  68. Serendipity

    does willis know about frame rules

    1. Jammy

      Frame rules, maybe. He’s mastered Rule 34, though.

    2. Serendipity

      (note that frame rules don’t actually apply to 8-4)

  69. ValdVin

    Well, this is better than Sal’s last bout of restlessness, after which Jason (through a combination of Rube Goldbergian circumstances) lost his TA post.

  70. HueSatLight

    Sal could have done something actually impossible, like disprove Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, and it would still be funny, because of Jason reacting like Amber is here, and it still not mattering much to Sal.

    1. HueSatLight

      This storyline is physically impossible because Sal entered the room through the window this morning, and the windows on Read Hall don’t open.

      1. HueSatLight

        nvm, she grazed the [window] frame.

    2. yak

      Sal is simply another incarnation of Sassy the Sasquatch.

  71. Wendy

    Can’t believe people are complaining about Sal breaking the record. I think it’s hilarious.

    1. Jammy

      To be fair, they’re mostly mad about poor writing, which is oddly Amber’s point here, leaving me…confused.

    2. NGPZ

      Yeah after what she’s been through, Sal really needed a win.

      I for one am pleased both at her win and entertained, munching away at my popcorn in the digital era’s analogue of the peanut gallery.

      Now, I wonder what these same commenters would make of Linda suffering an equally *impossible* loss of equal magnitude?

  72. Stormies

    I would be so pissed if I was Amber. I’m not even a speedrunner but this really grates at me. If she did something very obviously physically impossible it would be one thing, but this is just barely obscure enough that half the comment section is like “well it’s implausible but not impossible”, and I feel like the comic is gearing up to make Amber the ridiculous one for “overreacting”. Like obviously not everything in a fictional comic has to be realistic, but this just rides the line in an annoying way.

  73. Jammy

    So Amber’s mad that Sal’s badly-written? This is getting a bit too meta for me right now.

  74. Blibdoolpoolp

    Somewhat randomly beating a world record is one thing, the part I have a hard time believing though is that Sal would have not only asked questions of the stream but managed to poach Amber’s audience.

  75. JustBeth

    I’m having flashbacks to Walkyverse Sal…

  76. Yotomoe

    The backlash to the backlash has gotten pretty out of hand. It’s fine to disagree but let’s not mock and condescend each other. I feel like that shouldn’t need to be said.

    1. yak

      Sal is simply another incarnation of Sassy the Sasquatch.

    2. Yumi

      And yet it always seems to happen.

  77. C.T. Phipps

    I feel a moment needs to be taken that the problem is not Sal broke the speed record.

    It’s that Amber is ANGRY at Sal for doing it.

    Like she did something wrong or personally aggrieved Amber.

  78. darkoneko

    I’ll let y’all have your big debate in peace, but frankly, the only thing that surprised me is that Sal actually went asking for advice on Amber’s stream
    (it’s in large part because she didn’t know where else to ask, but mostly, that she asked for help/advice at all)
    i guess it’s easier if it’s strangers on the net ?

  79. ADLegend21

    Danny I’m sorry, but I’m taking your girl. She’s wife material!

  80. Pergola

    We have been led to believe that video gaming in DoA is like it is in our world. Amber tells us that speed running Mario is hard. We believe her. Nobody is upset.
    Now that bit of world-building has been thrown on its side. So something is very wrong. Shouts of ‘lazy writing!’ are heard. Does Willis have something awesome planned? Something that will leave doubters writhing in the dirt?
    Or does he intend to remind us why he has chosen to be ‘ Damn You Willis’?

    1. Taffy

      Hehe. Your name is a piece of garden architecture.

      1. NGPZ

        I see you’ve been eating the tree star medicinals again

        same here ??

    2. Pergola

      Oo, sempai noticed me!

  81. Beans

    maybe it’s like that one N64 mario glitch that was caused by a single event upset (stray photon hits it just right to switch a single binary digit, changing the code)

    or maybe Sals just That Cool, and we just gotta get over it

  82. PedanticJerkass

    Everyone who is complaining in the comments about Sal doing this is essentially Elizabeth Appleboom right now. The rest of us are Marten.

    1. mindbleach

      DOA book 14: I Think The Science Stuff Is Mostly Window Dressing For All The Fuckin’.

    2. Wraithy2773

      Yes, the line for where “This thing doesn’t make any sense and draws me out of the story” exists in different places for different people, including based on their level of knowledge of various subjects.

      Or were you just trying to mock people like a pedantic jerkass?

  83. Lumino

    Come for the comic, stay for the comments.

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