Dumbing of Age

The parts I'd label DEM would be:

- The driver helping out Amber even though literally anybody would probably scream and immediately slam the brakes.

- Sal magically appearing in the nick of time and then catching Amber with one arm.

Stuff like Amber being hollywood damaged but still pulling off all her wacky stunts and Becky coming out of a flipped over car completely unscathed and still sassy and jokey is more of a lame "oh come on" thing.

edited 25th Nov '15 3:15:56 PM by Mr.Badguy

Not to mention Toedad being thrown from a fast-moving car as it rolled over, and still being intact enough to get to his feet and act like an arse instead of being ... well, dead, or near enough.

Nor do I recommend getting on a skateboard and letting yourself be towed behind a car that's moving at full urban speeds. Unless someone can show me an example of someone getting away with that - without very special equipment - I'll think that Amazi-Girl should have been lying in the road with multiple broken bones after a few hundred yards.

Sal's motorcycling down a flight of stairs was merely unwise by comparison.

(Oh, and while Amber did pass out, she then recovered, banged her head again, stood up, and apparently walked home.)

edited 25th Nov '15 3:42:45 PM by Spindriver

These are not Deus ex Machina. They are not. That is simply not what the trope is about. A solution you don't like is not automatically a DEM. The fact you are happy to throw this trope around even though it is not even remotely applicable is why I call bs on you saying it is bad writing.

Anyway, the arc was physically implausible, true, but that is not the first time this sort of thing happened in the comic. The comic established itself as not being particularly realistic the moment we were shown Amazin-Girl being a reasonably competent super hero who performs dangerous and improbably physical feats on a regular basis without getting hurt. I understand this is not something you guys enjoy, but it is not new to the comic. It is not bad writing for a fictional story to decide what are the boundaries of its own 'realism'.

edited 25th Nov '15 5:01:41 PM by Heatth

Except it does line up, dude. Amber's able to continue because she happened to land on the one person on Earth who would help her catch up to Toedad. She's a completely new character introduced who solves Amber's plight, and then, as Amber is about to die for about the 5th time that day, Sal appears literally out of nowhere, leaping into midair in front of a speeding truck as Amber apparently volleyed off Toedad's car with so much force she flew upward, then is caught with one arm (which is impossible) and everyone lands completely safely.

If I'm misusing DEM, then okay, but I don't see how it makes the scene any less terrible. I'll settle for "bullshit plot convenience" if it makes you feel better.

Anyway, you're right that there's an element of suspension of disbelief and romanticism in Amazi-Girl, but problem is that it's never been thrown into the wood chipper before. Other than one scene I'll get into in a bit, Amber always just got into fistfights with people or otherwise completely harmless stuff.

And as for the truck sequence, what made it work was that it didn't last long enough for it to matter, and more importantly the plot didn't ride on her doing completely impossible shit. You know how long it took for Amber to zipline onto the truck and speed off? Two pages. Dorothy gets her fangirl moment. Amber gets to look cool while she's in the middle of her mental breakdown after confronting her bogeyman, and then it's completely done and we move on to more important things. We didn't get three full weeks of Amber parkouring onto speeding cars like she's Batman.

It's not bad writing for a story to decide its own levels of realism, but it's pretty crappy to arbitrarily break them because you feel like it. When Ruth's alcoholism and relationship gets exposed it'd be pretty stupid if the Dean just shrugged it off and allowed it, and then kicked Mary in the face for good measure.

edited 25th Nov '15 5:19:06 PM by Mr.Badguy

Yeah. The zipline trick would count as impressive in real life - it'd call for exceptional strength and precision - but it could probably just about be done by a real human being. And I too don't recall Amazi-Girl pulling off anything else even that dramatic.

But then she suddenly starts pulling stunts that would look dubious in a Batman story. That's not just the author defining his comic's reality; it's him redefining it on the fly. It's Willis's god erupting from the machinery to turn Amber into Peter Parker, because Becky is cool.

...I'd call the Zipline Truck more ridiculous than anything in the past month, personally.

Why?

Genuine question. People keep acting like that one brief moment of perfectly timed stuntwork that played into how Amber drives herself as Amazi-Girl that lasted all of two pages is comparable to weeks of complete nonsense.

For starters, because it demonstrates skill and competence on her part, while for most of these two weeks she's sorta been fucking up.

At no point has any of this been presented as ideal, or planned, or as her being in control of. Well. Anything, really.

She's scrambling and improvising because she doesn't want to let Joyce down.

And she gets lucky a lot.

Like, I feel like the panels are framed to show that.

Her falling off a car and nearly into being hit by a truck doesn't show her to be an uber badass.

She's not able to flip the double bird while riding off into the sunset. She's not that composed. She's driven by adrenaline and desperation.

And, like.

Sometimes head injuries take a while for their effects to become really obvious.

The fact that she's not going to the hospital will probably bite her in the ass eventually.

None of this is beyond the limits of the same Amazi-Girl who stood upright on that truck as it drove away.

What is beyond the limits is if you assume she gets out of this completely unscathed and somehow I don't think she will. This isn't over yet. Or, rather, it is, but.

I mean, Sal calls her out on it. And Sal's a reckless adrenaline junkie herself.

Batman would be able to do all of this without getting a concussion. Batman would usually be shown to be in some degree of control of the situation. Batman usually doesn't lose his cool or pass out in chases like this.

Batman stories don't usually like acknowledging how ridiculous and dangerous it all is.

In most Batman stories the day gets saved because Batman's that good.

Like, right now Ross has whiplash and is in traction.

...I don't know how, what with the lack of neck, but.

And his legs seem to be a bit fucked up.

The thing with the human body is that. Pain is the body's way of telling you to stop doing dumb shit you're doing. Adrenaline is the body's way of blocking pain so you can do what you need to do in a dangerous situation.

edited 25th Nov '15 6:28:52 PM by unnoun

Okay, but she's not Batman. Batman doesn't inhabit a world of any remotely grounded thought. Amber does.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure Amber is coming out of this unscathed considering we have a timeskip coming up. I wouldn't mind it if she was grounded for a bit and had to deal with her rage issues without delving into Amazi-Girl to sort them out.

As for the main argument, well, I disagree. Ambr was constantly shown making the exact right movement at the exact right time, she's able to swing around the car and kick Toedad and duck in through the window to grab the wheel, and she does all this so quickly and efficiently that it's impossible to just call it luck. It's the same thing the Uncharted series does where Nathan Drake is always screaming and grunting despite perfectly executing these amazing jumps. It's supposed to be this crazy improv and instead it comes off as completely canned.

Saying that, the truck scene was nowhere near as outlandish as this. Even beyond the pacing issues of it being done in two strips, and the narrative necessity of having Amazi-Girl be this incredible, powerful figure for Dorothy to stand in awe and for Amber to further lose her into, all she did was land on the truck, and that's it. We didn't have enough time to think about how it couldn't happen, and really, it can. At the least, it's way more within the realm of possibility than this sequence.

edited 25th Nov '15 6:33:50 PM by Mr.Badguy

Four days later

Time advancement, in DOA? WHAT DEVILTRY IS THIS

edited 25th Nov '15 9:22:03 PM by Adannor

Ruth was the one who had to rake the yard as a child, thus her hatred of leaves.

It's nice to see moments like this

Eh.

Ehh.

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

overachiever, ehhh?

EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I think she's still haunted by the "poison" comment

Billie used Trick! It's super effective!

I love the way those two have proceduralised their Belligerent Sexual Tension.

So what exactly IS Ruthless supposed to say at this meeting? "Don't get kidnapped by your dad at gunpoint, it's against school policy"?

Providing all the information the university officially has, addressing questions, referring people to counseling if necessary?

I feel like it's supposed to be a counseling thing. Which, of course, Ruth is kinda terrible at, hence all the resistance on her part.

Yeah. On the positive side, it's making sure that nobody is quietly having a nervous breakdown in their room over the incident (which Ruth might just notice, but would have trouble making herself do anything about); on the cynical side, it's showing that the university cares and isn't being actionably complacent (which Ruth doesn't and is).