My own store
on November 5, 2021 at 12:01 amChapter: Merger and Restructuring
Characters: Amber O'Malley, David Walkerton, Donna Warner, Drunk Mike Warner, Ethan Siegal, Galasso, Jacob Williams, Jason Chesterfield, Joe Rosenthal, Joyce Brown, Ken Ichikawa, Ninja Rick, Ultra Car
Location: Shortpacked!
This got Amber shuffling off to greater things AND it also let me loop Joe more strongly into Shortpacked! stuffs, what with him kind of owning things now. This started setting the stage for stuff we’ll be seeing very shortly.
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That last panel is so sweet.
And makes me so sad in the context of the current Dumbingverse.
Pretty much the entirety of this wedding is sad in the context of the current Dumbiverse, considering Mike is dead from a fall that happened right in front of AmbG’s eyes, while she was powerless to stop it.
I started reading the Walkyverse about a year?ish before this storyline, so ‘my’ Mike was always the one who had enough character development to give Amber genuine support about what to do after Blaine died and admitted to a newborn Donna that ‘fighting aliens was easier.’
So, I dunno, DoA!Mike’s death doesn’t hurt for me as much because I long since realized he’d never be that Mike, who was a massive asshole but his Amber was able to go toe to toe with him and he could openly acknowledge people he cared about and be sincere with them. Part of that’s that being childhood friends with Amber and Ethan made his assholery come off much worse, since now he was the one eroding their self-confidence. Part of it’s that Amber and Ethan have both developed in the Dumbingverse to be much less confident and much more psychologically vulnerable, so even if Mike just met them they wouldn’t be able to match him as well as they could in Late Shortpacked. But honestly, I think it’s that we NEVER got the same willingness to be sincere to another person until his actual dying words. A couple Ambiguous Looks in the flashbacks, sure, but nothing actually expressed to another person – he’s always alone when you see anything resembling regret in DoA. Which isn’t terrible, but like. When your basis for comparison is this strip (https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/big-sister ‘You can have the angry, I’ll handle the sad.’ ‘Well, whatever he twisted you into, I like it, so at least there’s that.’ Look at that genuine support! I did not realize just how much character growth produced him then, but it was pretty amazing,) the ‘advice’ in DoA falls flat, because none of it has that same moment where you can actually, unambiguously tell Mike cares about the person he’s talking to and wants them to make a decision that’s good for them, not amusing to him. (Seriously, I can’t even imagine It’s Walky! Mike telling anyone after their abusive parent’s death that they can be as angry as they want, he’ll feel the societally-expected sadness for them. Sure, he follows it up with ‘because now I can’t punch this waste of space,’ but it doesn’t feel like the preceding line was a joke.)
For Walkyverse Amber, Mike’s death would be terrible. For Dumbingverse AmbG, I only regret that it gives him space to live rent-free in her head forever, because Dumbingverse Mike had become a second Blaine for her. Which he realized in his last moments, but that means he can never truly make amends for it.
I don’t feel like Ethan has to look very far
I feel like this is a perfect ending to Amber’s arc in Shortpacked.
Actually yeah. I never put it together, but I liked that Shortpacked!Amber was this timid girl from an abusive home and then her development is “you know what’s great? Anger! Hedonism! Indulgence!” and then she takes that so far that she marries the biggest asshole in the universe except they’re actually totally in love and genuinely perfect for one another.
Like, the typical narrative would be she’d end up with a Jacob-type, that was Mike’s whole plan. He’s soft, sensitive, kind, thoughtful, but Amber just wants someone she can be an angry, loud person at, because being loud and angry was something she got denied her whole life.
Thus DoA Ethan befriending Danny.
Okay, I snorted out loud at that one. Is that SOL?
That last panel is a mood, not gonna lie.
Huh. I had forgotten that any of this led into what’s coming.
I remember where this arc is heading, but I kinda forgot some strips in the middle that lead to it.
When I went back to look at this storyline as soon as I realized ‘oh huh we’re doing the wedding first,’ I was surprised to realize
1) That’s when This Event Occurs (I lowkey forgot,)
2) That the storyline we’re contextualizing here ran at the end of 2012-beginning of 2013, I could have SWORN it was more than three months with The Event About To Occur before Leslie NOPEs.
I think I forget just how little Shortpacked there still was after the Warner wedding. I know there’s a while between the end of the Leslie NOPEs storyline and the last wedding, but my brain still thinks Shortpacked ended later than it actually did, I suppose.
I’m assuming we’re probably skipping most of “Girthday,” a Malaya-centric story that has little to do with It’s Walky! stuff, although I think there was like one page of that story that helps set up “Leslie NOPEs.”
…yeah, this one. Not sure if that one’s getting posted, but in any case that link contains SPOILERS if you’ve never read this stuff before.