Shortpacked! by David Willis
Toys are serious business.
Convention appearances:
Calgary Expo Calgary, AB: April 26-28
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
Multiplex
Sorcery 101
Templar, AZ
The Transformers Wiki
Hail to the Slash
80 page GIANT
Axe Cop
The Book of Biff
Butt-Taco
Comics Curmudgeon
College Roomies from Hell!!!
Diesel Sweeties
Dinosaur Comics
Dr. McNinja
Dresden Codak
Fans!
Fleen
Gastrophobia
Girl Genius
Girls with Slingshots
Goats
Hark, a vagrant
Hijinks Ensue
Intrepid Girlbot
Legend of Bill
Medium Large
Not Invented Here
Octopus Pie
Overcompensating
Penny Arcade
PhDcomics
Power Nap
Questionable Content
Real Life
Rob and Elliot
Bad Machinery
Schlock Mercenary
Sheldon
So Far Apart
Something Positive
Two Lumps
Wapsi Square
Wonderella
Wondermark
Frumph.NET
Sorcery 101
Templar, AZ
The Transformers Wiki
Hail to the Slash
80 page GIANT
Axe Cop
The Book of Biff
Butt-Taco
Comics Curmudgeon
College Roomies from Hell!!!
Diesel Sweeties
Dinosaur Comics
Dr. McNinja
Dresden Codak
Fans!
Fleen
Gastrophobia
Girl Genius
Girls with Slingshots
Goats
Hark, a vagrant
Hijinks Ensue
Intrepid Girlbot
Legend of Bill
Medium Large
Not Invented Here
Octopus Pie
Overcompensating
Penny Arcade
PhDcomics
Power Nap
Questionable Content
Real Life
Rob and Elliot
Bad Machinery
Schlock Mercenary
Sheldon
So Far Apart
Something Positive
Two Lumps
Wapsi Square
Wonderella
Wondermark
Frumph.NET
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hahaha, awesome as always Willis. what does leslie know!?
That Mike is secretly gay! Because as a gay person she has a built in gay-dar.
AMBER IS PREGNANT!
You know how it happened? You got it, with his penis.
Now they’ve gotta find Amber and Faz’s dad for a traditional shotgun wedding.
Yeah, that guy COULD do with a buckshot enema. Would be the perfect wedding present for Amber and Mike!
i thought it was because amber and mike love each other very much.
I lol’d at that man. Nice one.
agreed she has a creepy crawler in the monster maker (I get nerd points for figuring out how to make a toy ref for bun in the oven right?)
I prefer to think that she’s building her own little minicon.
With Mike involved it’s gonna be a Unicron *snerk*
WOOSH. Looks like people called it.
Well. Shit.
Willis, I don’t believe you’d pull that off. I don’t believe it.
*waits for tempting fate*
Also, “I was selfish and couldn’t pull the trigger” is the most freakin’ adorable line I’d ever thought I’d hear Mike say truthfully. Even if he’s drunk.
Also makes a pretty good euphemism. I just need to find out for what…
It is a euphemism for not pooping in a public place because you don’t want people to hear.
On an unrelated note, Amber is pregnant.
Mr. Willis knows how to pull our strings, he’s getting *too* good. (¬_¬) And now everyone’s jumping on the suspected baby wagon.
Well not this time, Mr. Willis..not this time, you won’t get me this time…
I call a bet. If this turns out to be the truth you must lick your elbow!
If it’s wrong i SHALL LICK MINE!
Do we have a deal Silver?
That’s a weird fetish you’ve got there.
DEAL!
“I should probably mentioned that bottle from last weekend wasn’t pink lemonade.
Speaking of which, I need you to pick the cat up from the vet.”
Oh god she IS fine with it? Ugh. Well I guess offering to pay for his therapy is something but…UGH.
“Mom shagged the hottest guy I know? Aww, she deserves it.”
I guess?
Because paying for the months if not years of therapy is totally going to make up for the lost time in his life he’s gonna have to spend dealing with it.
Has anyone really tried to look at this from amber’s mom’s point of view I mean if you think about she got to hook up with this big young hunk guy while she is middle aged and passed the young age where a guy would look at you. Anyway though she probably isn’t fine with it but she wasn’t surprised when it happened. I mean this is mike we are talking about, will he ever not mess with anyone?
Not really, since her mom wasn’t all that hurt. She had a fun time and didn’t know about Jacob’s past problems. She’s kind of innocent in it all. Mike set it up, Amber enabled it, and Jacob has to pay the price for it all. So, Mike’s a dick, Amber’s a bitch, Jacob’s a victim. Amber’s mom was just kind of there.
Amber enabled it?
By what?
Existing?
By looking like her HOT MOM
I reckon’ it’s one of those things – you can’t very well undo stuff, so you’ll have to deal with the fallout. Jacob might have fallen off the wagon at a later point, of course, it’s even something likely with people with addiction issues. The key difference here is that rather than falling to some other temptation (both Roz and Conquest were after him earlier, after all) he was caught in the crossfire of one of Mike’s schemes _because_ of his crush on Amber, which means, yeah, it’s partially their responsibility now.
So standard “being an adult” business. They can at least communicate with Jacob now, so that’s a good start, and he has already admitted he has a problem. Talking to Ethan might actually end up good for both of them even.
Of course, for Amber’s mom, this was not a bad thing. It’s not just a loss-loss issue (things rarely are).
Well, rambling on. In short: They don’t have a TARDIS, so they need to fix things somehow, not much you can do about things that have already happened. It’s called being an adult.
If being an adult means I can’t have a Tardis, then I don’t want to be an adult. There!
He’d already fallen off the wagon with at least 4 women (implied to be far more)- and it seems that the Amber mom connection might be what finally lets them talk Jacob out of the hole he’s in. Um, let me rephrase that.
More hints to a pregnant Amber?
Food poisoning, calling it now. (though from experience Willis doesn’t do much bait and switch stuff)
Why did it go to this? Dammit Willis? You better have something completely redonkulous. Like A gaint beaver eating the world. And that is not a metaphor.
Oh he doesn’t, does he? Have you forgotten the Gilligan photo? I’m calling it now: After the audience is done squeeing about babies, it’ll be revealed that Amber was throwing up not from pregnancy, but from digestive problems….that are caused by pregnancy. <_<
Yes, good thing she got that promotion. Because she really needs to get started on that “second born” thing.
Don’t you do it Willis. I know what that last panel is implying. Don’t you do it
Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!
Don’t you fucking do it!
Its already done and nothing can stop it.
What’s been done cannot be undone!
(Ok, actually it can since it hasn’t technically happened yet, but it’s coming very soon. And when it comes, it can’t uncome.)
Just like Mike.
I’m pretty sure that’s actually true of most guys.
In your mom.
I should note that I didn’t catch how dirty that sounded until just before posting. I just left it in because it works pretty well given the situation.
Ffffffuuuuuuu
It’s too late.
The seeds have been planted.
in your mom. for a nickle.
As long as he doesn’t do a miscarriage story arc.
Miscarriage is more common than many people think and perfectly valid as a topic for any author.
Except it was used as a cop-out in the comic that is being referenced any time someone snarks on that.
Though, a good friend of mine and my step-sister both had a miscarriage this year. Both weren’t expecting to get pregnant and by the time they got used to the idea is when it happened so they were both pretty devastated.
I’d be fine if my mom plowed a young black guy too.
Ha, that just reminded me of that one scene in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul where the mother tells her family she’s marrying some young black guy and they all lose their shit.
Referencing a Fassbinder movie. NEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRD!
I wouldn’t. Then I’d feel obligated to pay for his therapy.
if… if SHE plowed HIM? I don’t think that’s what happened… I never got any indication that Amber’s mom or Jacob are into that sort of thing.
yeah, and off the top of my head, the only time i’ve seen anything remotely farming-related on shortpacked! is when gardening batman was introduced.
Haha.
“Bend over, my dear…”
…Wow. I think…I think we’ve actually found someone worse than Mike. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER, MIKE?
…Pregnancy’s like, karma in the Walkyverse, isn’t it?
I don’t see how any of this makes Amber worse than Mike.
Not worse, but pretty damn close. Mike is proactive, Amber is reactive. She simply doesn’t care what Mike does and makes excuses about it not being that bad. I mean, I like Mike. He’s a fun character. But he’s usually fun because no one makes excuses for him. “He’s a dick, just don’t give him a reason and you’ll be fine.” Now Amber enables him. I mean, Jacob was a FRIEND of hers, or so I thought. And the most she can manage to muster is “Eh, we’ll give him money from my super high toy store assistant manager salary.”
She’s not making excuses. She’s looking at it reasonably. Her mom had a good time, and now her friend is screwed up so she’s going to try and help. She’s simply not freaking out like everyone thinks she should be. She’s used to Mike’s antics, it makes sense this doesn’t phase her terribly.
She was livid when Jacob suggested that she could do better than Mike. She was completely fine and passive about Mike wrecking Jacob’s life. She’s making excuses.
She seemed fine with Jacob saying she could do better until he said her acceptance of Mike’s issues was just her low self-esteem talking. Jacob insulted her.
Say what you will about the nature of addiction, but Jacob is responsible for his own decisions. He didn’t have to have sex with Amber’s mom just because she knocked on his door, nor did he have to bottle up all of the related emotional turmoil, quit his job, and hide in his apartment for months on end. Those were choices Jacob made, and has to live with.
That’s a huge huge issue for Amber: having the freedom to make your own choices. The grand story of Shortpacked is, as much as anything else, the story of Amber crawling out from the shadow of her abusively controlling father to assert this freedom for herself. She sees the value in having the freedom to make your own mistakes — versus controlling someone’s life to prevent them from being able to. It’s one thing to offer support and advice to a friend, but quite another to suggest that the personal choices they’ve made are flat-out wrong.
That’s why Jacob’s comment about Mike offended her so deeply: saying she deserves better than Mike and is only with him due to a lack of self-esteem is tantamount to Jacob saying he could run her life better than she does.
Mike’s actions didn’t wreck Jacob’s life — after just a tiny nudge, Jacob did that well enough on his own. It was Mike’s inaction that he should (and apparently does) feel guilty over — he knew was what happening with Jacob, but didn’t offer him support, or telling anyone who could have helped. But even in that, Mike waited and hesitated because he (foolishly) thought it would serve the greater good once he set up a love-sick Jacob with a heart-broken Amber.
Amidst all this, I just realized one reason why Amber loves Mike: He’s really not a controlling person. His grand manipulative schemes aren’t done to force people into making certain choices, they’re usually done to prove a point that will help the people involved be more informed when making their own choices. Amber, perhaps uniquely of all the characters, understands this about Mike.
Clearly I fail at blockquotes. This is what I meant to quote:
“Amidst all this, I just realized one reason why Amber loves Mike: He’s really not a controlling person. His grand manipulative schemes aren’t done to force people into making certain choices, they’re usually done to prove a point that will help the people involved be more informed when making their own choices. Amber, perhaps uniquely of all the characters, understands this about Mike.”
I imagine that wedding plans would be off by now, if not for what I’m pretty sure is coming.
tHIS CALLS FOR THE Drama Button!
http://www.hiyoooo.com/
Oh what the hell. He’s giving me god damn whiplash with the number of things going down this week.
Also- how did I not see this coming from the moment she got sick?
Whenever a girl gets sick in fiction, everyone’s first thought is always “morning sickness!” So in order to still *have* morning sickness and have it be a surprise, you have to make sure there’s an immediate, plausible scapegoat for it, like… a nasty-smelling pile of pizza boxes. And then cross your fingers like a motherfucker.
I mean, uh… *whistles*
*walks away*
And of course on Monday you said it was sad that everyone always jumps to the “morning sickness” conclusion in fiction.
It is sad. Because it means Willis can’t sneak that kind of thing by us as easily.
(She’s actually dying)
it’s cancer, isn’t it? pretty soon amber will go through chemo and willis is going to struggle will drawing facial expressions for a person that doesn’t have eyebrows.
but at least she won’t have to worry about having a faz haircut!
now now this isnt Funky Winkerbean.Theres not going to be any ghost Ambers
No, it indeed isn’t. There’s other ways to keep characters around, though.
This feels like a red herring to me. If you really didn’t mean to say that you could have just deleted the comment, since, you know, you have that power.
There’s just no telling. No telling at all.
Hi my name is David, webcomic writer and defender of the castle of shipping. Fabulous powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magical pen and said:
BY THE POWER OF DELETING! I HAVE THE POWEEEEEEEEEER! WIL-LIS!
lulz
It’s a pleasure to see the thoughts behind the writing.
Awesome comic, Mr. W.
Stack of pizza boxes…. Like… um… those in Jacob’s apartment?
!?!?
Gosh darn it Willis. You’re enjoying this far too much. *glares* :p
I thought that if someone gets sick in fiction that was a clear sign… OF ZOMBIE PLAGUE!!!!!
Wait. You’re puncturing the stereotype of female nausea always signifying pregnancy by having female nausea signify pregnancy?
….where did I say I was “puncturing” anything?
But yes, Mike should momentarily believe he successfully drove Amber away because his proposal caused Amber to flee him due to implantation bleeding or the darkening of her areolas.
“Amber, will you marry me?”
“Can’t answer now, have to go eat a weird sandwich.”
Too bad the mood swings tend to happen later in pregnancy. They would’ve worked well from a plot standpoint.
You did not notice that her breasts were bigger?
People pay attention to breasts in this comic? Really?
I’m too enamored by the story to tell. Really. (Also, Amber IS naturally thick, so even then, it’s kinda hard to tell…)
Women’s breasts can change shape and size without cis women getting pregnant. You know, they’re part of our bodies and change as we change, not just some sack of fluid and fat that sit on top of our chest like helium. And they can keep growing with time, just like the rest of the body.
Seconding that Amber’s always had big boobs as well and that Willis is a cartoonist; Robin’s breasts have changed in size and shape dramatically as his style has changed, for instance. The same thing can happen with Amber.
Cis women’s breasts generally don’t start growing until seven or eight weeks into pregnancy. Amber, depending on her menstrual cycle, would notice something was off, what with not getting her period in two months. Unless she was on BCP, which causes less bleeding for different reasons less frequently, but if she was on BCP the chances of her getting pregnant would be like… 1 percent.
Then again, Mike IS a former SEMME employee with all that alien tinkering, so maybe some of that tinkering rendered BCP inefficient (if she was on BCP).
Or maybe when Mike orgasms during penetrative sex it’s strong enough to break the condom if they use condoms.
I’ll give you Amber’s boobs looking a bit bigger in the few strips, but they’re pretty unassuming here, when Mike first started the proposal. So it might be a case of Willis misleading readers, or Willis changing things as he goes so as to not spoil anything, like changing Mike’s tags to “Drunk Mike” after the fact.
In short, a woman’s breasts growing does not automatically mean she is pregnant.
I haven’t been drawing Amber’s boobs any differently. As you say, sometimes the size of them just fluctuates from panel to panel, as I am not a machine.
A perfectly-sized-boob-drawing machine!
Yes, OK. I was kidding, folks! See the winky at the end of my post?
That being said, how can AmaziGirl be preggers? It boggles the imagination.
Was immunity to pregnancy one of her powers? I can never remember.
is pregnancy a form of criticism?
In the darkest corners of postmodern literary theory, probably.
Willis has entered terminal Stage IV Butts Disease, he can no longer draw boobs.
someone needs to invent a machine that simply draws perfectly sized , round, firm ,and fully packed breasts! ^_~
You mean a camera?
no thatd take pictures of real ones we`re talking about cartoon ones! though I suppose you could take photos of a perfectly drawn set but that`d not really count and it`d be only from the one angle always
I can imagine that Mike regularly breaks condoms.
Men can break condoms with an orgasm?
That’s bad news for a few people I know.
Hahaha-! Wait…
HOLY SHIT. O___O
Their child will burn the world to the ground. Also, this must terrify Mike.
The child will come from a mix of the genes that lead to both Mike and, in a way, Faz. *Begins stocking disaster kit*
OTOH, if Mike’s contrarian genes take precedent, given how he acts compared to his parents, the child will be the second coming instead of the Antichrist.
Ah but what if it isn’t Mike’s child???
Ah but you forget the child shall be raised by Galasso, as per their agreement. Just for that added touch of meglomania.
Sorry forgot she negotiated it down to second born, just ignore me.
Luckily she just promised Galasso her second born.
That’s right, Leslie: you have to explain the facts of life to *all* the heterosexuals in this store!
I love her pragmatism: her mother finally had good sex, good for her, and we’ll pay for our friend’s therapy since it’s kind of our fault. Well then.
Good to see that Amber isn’t evil like Mike, just a little…um…I don’t even have the word.
Unflappable?
i think the word you’re looking for is pragmatic. or maybe just callous.
Jaded?
I suppose callous is it, though I like the above “unflappable” better. I don’t even think she’s being all that callous. Something nice happened for her mother (assuming that you’re the type who thinks of good casual sex as “something nice”–not really my way of thinking, but for these characters, I can buy it), and now that she knows that she, her mother, and Mike had a hand in a friend’s misfortune, she’s going to take steps to fix it at cost to herself. Yelling at Mike or even being mad at him wouldn’t accomplish much–it’s the sort of reaction Mike wants from the world in general and Amber in particular in this case. So rather than make the effort of being shocked, horrified, and disgusted by Mike’s terrible actions (because if she always did, she’d be exhausted by now), Amber finds the silver lining and the way to fix the worst of the damage.
…
A little miffed to see a pregnancy subplot, but eh, should be fun.
I agree with you about that but I think willis is ether giving hints to do a twist or he is conceeding and just letting it happen.
Oh? What do you object to about a pregnancy in the setting?
I’m geared to read “pregnancy” as “jumping the shark.” Less the case with, say, Real Life Comics, but since it’s a comic largely about the creator and his wife and that pregnancy-and-subsequent-infant reflects the presence of an actual infant in their lives, it still plays.
Well, heck, if I’m pressed to think about it, in most good stories a pregnancy isn’t a bad plot-shock at all, it just signifies a change in how some jokes/stories/characters will play out. But my kneejerk reaction, thanks to TV and all, is “oh dear, let’s make her throw up and then have her be surprised at being pregnant!”
Willis’ll do a good job, I’m sure. Like I said, knee-jerk reaction.
Time for Robin to throw “Actions have Consequences” back at Amber.
I’m gonna go with unshakable. Nothing Mike can do will scare her off, but her moral compass hasn’t gone away completely.
“And go back to being me, but I was selfish and couldn’t pull the trigger”. DA-YUM! That’s more inner Mike than I ever thought I’d know for sure.
“I know, I will rid myself of these troublesome “feelings” by foisting my love onto another man after elaborately arranging him to fuck her mom! Brilliant!”
Mike may be totally evil, but he’s not Batman Genius about it.
Thank god.
He lacks in romantic experience, and the ability to handle the strong feelings involved, due to being Mike.
As smart as he can be, this is a new and unexpected situation for him and one that has challenged his *own* idea of who “Mike” is. No surprise that he got confused and messed up, and Amber is more empathic so it’s no surprise that she can see all the nuances.
Dammit Willis I thought you were above this D:
your gravitar scared the crap out of me!
Well, what else is Amber supposed to do? Her mom wasn’t negatively impacted and for all we know had anyone else shown up at his door that day the outcome would’ve been the same. The best Amber can do in this situation is help Jacob the best she can. Breaking up with Mike isn’t going to fix anything, especially since he just said that without Amber he’d be back to his old self. Like it or not, being with Amber has changed him some. (Old Mike, for example, wouldn’t have given two shits about Leslie’s allergies and brought the cat in anyway.)
I actually have to respectfully disagree about “old Mike” not caring about Leslie’s allergies. Mike is an asshole, and an insensitive prick, certainly. But just about every action he’s taken, as horrible as it seems on the surface, seems to have some sort of effect on that person’s life that moves it in a better direction. Whether it be opening that person up to understand themselves better, or giving someone a reality check, his asshole maneuvers seem to have a sort of twisted good intention behind them.
I don’t know about that. I’m pretty sure Faz hasn’t been helped by Mike’s constant beating on him.
Then again, it’s Faz, so who cares?
Perhaps through a repeated tempering process, Faz will be forged into something better. Or Mike also likes to dole out the harshness to those who deserve it. Take your pick.
So Mike is a magical girl?
A baby out of wedlock? Somewhere in the world Joyce’s Christian senses must be tingling.
On a different note, this is so not babies.
Hopefully it won’t go the way of another comic (CAD) and use that miscarriage plot.
I have confidence that this writer has the balls and creativity to just tackle a baby in the setting.
if that happens, remind me to call CPS.
they do frown on baby tackling. it`d be funny though !
Even funnier if the baby is the one doing the tackling. He/she would probably have some abductee DNA from Mike, so it could be possible.
Or that the baby isn’t really Mike’s. It would be quite a twist if the baby turned out to be Faz’s or Jacobs. Or maybe it’s a tiny purple dragon, who knows how often Amber get’s around.
Spy and Pyro refrence
…wait, doesn’t this situation have to be so babies by definition?
She could have kittens.
If she’s going to be having animal babies I think we should assume the father is Anakin.
Time travel is involved. Amber is Singularikitty’s real mother.
Nah, I think Joyce has matured past that. A long time ago, even.
Great, Shortpacked! is jumping the shark, now I’ve got to find another comic to fill the void that is going to be left by its loss of popularity.
Well, Sinfest is always awesome.
That being said, how many times have we all gone, “Oh, this* is going to happen!” only to have Willis turn our theories on their heads in the past couple weeks?
Wow were seriously playing the Pregnancy card here? Just saying it seem’s kind of predictable.
idk, this comic runs in real time, and the characters are getting older. I mean, this continuity has been running since 1997. I expected something like this eventually, and if anyone can pull it off, it’s Willis.
I wonder if it’ll still be “the pregnancy card” when everyone’s sixty years old.
(Okay, at that point it’s the medical impossibility card.)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1189068/Britains-oldest-mother-Elizabeth-Adeney-gives-birth-5lb-3oz-boy.html
improbable not impossible (age 66)
Heck, in B.C. a few years ago we had some 70 year old using technology get pregnant and successfully have the baby. And now that I’ve posted this, I’m probably going to find out the lady was only sixty and I’m being stupid.
As someone approaching 30 I have to say: it’s pretty normal in a group of friends for at least one couple to start having babies. Usually more.
My Facebook feed currently has four babies less than a year old being reported on and several bumps being tracked.
Eh, why not? Babies happen. Why not let them happen in comics?
That said, I really, *really* hope Amber isn’t pregnant (*coughexceptthatsmallpartofmethatiscurrentlyexperiencingbabyfevercough*), simply because I wouldn’t wish Mike as a father on my worst enemy. They’d be paying for therapy, all right!
She could end up aborting the child even though that would be pretty controversial for a comic. If normal birth control fails, she knows she had an abusive dad, she knows what kind of guy mike is, and she is pro choice would make personality sense as that last ditch backup.
Willis did an abortion in one of his earlier comics, It’s Walky I think.
I
what
WIIIIILLIIIIISSSSSSS!
I’m going to be honest, my fave thing about Amber and Mike is that, for all the admittedly fucked up stuff, their relationship is actually pretty functional. They call each other out on their crap, make amends in their respective ways, and communicate. Dang! Now THAT’s wild talk.
compatibility comes in all shapes and sizes. sometimes its being supportive of a hobby, other times its suggesting you put the person your partner just set on fire out before assault becomes homicide. its all about give and take, evil apparently meshes well with snarky with a streak of sadism.
A bit like how the Firefly family from Devil’s Rejects are a good family to each other despite being a bunch of sickass rape-happy mass murderers.
You DO realize that Amber is holding Mike responsible for messing up Jacob’s life, right? I just want to make sure you didn’t miss that.
I am well aware of that, but I believe my metaphor still works.
Penny in the air…
Wasn’t that a great episode?
Brilliant episode.
I would wonder if she actually does turn out to be pregnant if this would be enough to make her reconsider staying with Mike. Clearly she doesn’t give a damn about her own mental health and what his constant toxic presence could eventually turn her into but a baby? Her baby? Knowing full well what a father with a damaging personality could do to their child? But honestly at this point I don’t know what she’d do. Probably stay. Most likely stay.
Did not mean to post this comment here XD
But it makes for such a wonderful non sequitur.
My comment to the penny in the air thing was going to be something along the lines of, “Penny drops…and then they don’t mention it again for two episodes where it should have been mentioned! Why haven’t they mentioned it yet!? MENTION IT!” But I thought no one would get it!
are we talking about the same show?
If we are talking about Dr.Who then yes and replace the word penny with Melody and you’ll get my failed attempt at trying to be clever. This is why originally I wasn’t going to post it. Sometimes I think stuff and it only makes sense inside my head XP
WHY WONT THEY MENTION IT!?
I’d think that what with Amber’s upbringing she’d know full well the difference between a damaging upbringing and just a crappy or imperfect parent.
Keep in mind that if Mike were genuinely as harmful as her father that she wouldn’t be recovering and growing the way she is. That’s not what happens when you step out of one abusive relationship to another.
If anything Mike as a father would probably be more the Red Foreman scenario than the “I have bruises under my clothes and am not allowed to have friends” scenario.
Oops. That was meant to be in response to tdm88′s comment about Amber’s thoughts on raising a child with Mike.
Hahaha, yes, this.
Was it ever said that Amber’s father was physically abusive? I thought it was just being severely controlling/emotionally abusive and no I don’t think for a second that Mike would be physically abusive to his child or that Amber would ever think that. I think she’d just be more concerned about him possibly just turning their kid into a shitty human being.
I’ve never said how Amber’s father was abusive, no.
Didn’t you have a line once about how Amber needs to start trusting reality over her dad, but “reality doesn’t hit as hard”?
People can be hit hard in a metaphorical sense.
Yeah, we don’t know specifically what Amber’s dad did to her. I covered both the physical side of abuse as well as isolation, but I have no idea if either of those are actually specifically what Amber went through.
If I had to hazard a guess though at the very least I do think her dad did isolate her. I don’t get the impression that there were other caring souls willing to help pull her out of her situation before Ethan and that’s part of what the isolation accomplishes.
I really just needed a generic “Sounds like abuse” line to juxtapose an emotionally distant jerkass father with a father with a toxic presence and a damaging personality.
Though now that you mention the concern of whether she’d want her child to take after Mike that’s also pretty legitimate. I do suppose there are a lot of improper lessons a child could learn with Mike in the house.
Also, as mentioned by Amber’s Mom, she was part of the problem in a way by letting Amber do what she wants, instead of actually doing something about Amber’s Father’s influence on her. I can’t see Amber letting the same thing happen to her child.
i think she’s already considered having a baby with mike. when she bargained for her manager position, she offered galasso her second child. then a few months later she reveals her intentions to marry mike. if she didn’t want to have a baby with mike, i doubt either of these events would have happened.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Argh… kay, I am done reading the comments on the strip. >_< People make me mad.
i would ask why? what specifically is upsetting you, not that i can’t come up with ideas but i am curious. But you are unlikely to see this post let alone respond
Wow a lot of people hating on potential pregnancy. First off you don’t KNOW she is and second if she is, maybe the comic has run it’s course and it’s resolving?
Or possibly she could be pregnant and the comic could continue regardless, since life does not end when a woman gets pregnant.
Generally that’s where it begins!
I’m pretty sure this is my absolute favorite comment so far.
I love you, Willis.
Uh, in a completely platonic and fantardic way, I assure you.
Well, as long you don’t go the direction of a certain other inexplicably popular “comedy” webcomic’s pregnancy/miscarriage arc.
nooooooooooo
There is one other webcomic that has tackled miscarriage, but it was done subtle enough that enough readers has pestered the creator had to ask if it did really happen (until the webcomic artist had to draw a filler to explain what happened) and as far as I know didn’t create as much drama flak as the other webcomic.
Other than that, I beg you don’t go in the route of that other webcomic. They…did not tackle that issue quite well sadly.
I believe this is the comic you are referencing.
http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp03082009.shtml
Yeah! That’s it! Monette’s baby issue. :3
no just the husbands sex life
http://youtu.be/9CdVTCDdEwI
…and the baby’s name will be Damien.
I’m picturing Corinne’s baby Timmy from “Soap”.(old…so old…)
I can’t believe someone just referenced Soap. This is the most beautiful moment I’ve ever experienced on the internet.
i look forward to his fifth birthday party.
Yeah Amber, Jacob will be fine. Just another several years of therapy which I’m sure he wanted to go through, plus having to deal with the thoughts of sleeping with the mother of the woman he loves. But it’s okay, as long as you and Mike are happy. I really hope in the future Jacob finds out and gets sweet revenge on them both. REVENGE!
“Surprise! Jacob’s the father!”
Yeah, because obviously Jacob was forced at gunpoint to have sex with Amber’s mom- oh wait, no, I got confused for a moment there, it seems they just chose out of their own will to sleep together.
I have this weird mental image of amber’s mom gets pregnant and Jacob is the father lol
If it seems that way to you, you don’t know what addiction is.
Did the whole “addict” thing just slip by you?
I doubt it did. In the end, it was Jacob’s choice, however provoked. Look at it this way, if Amber’s mom really had accidentally left her phone behind and had gotten mixed up on her own, the results would still be the same, and Jacob would have given in without the ‘help’.
You all seem to forgot that Jacob was drunk at the time he opened the door for her, I mean alcohol really messes with inhibition so if he wasn’t drunk then he might have had more resistance but it happened and yes he might have gotten drunk from roz and connie’s passes at him but really you should not drink to solve the problem, it only makes it that much worse.
“Hey buddy. So, I hear you’re an alcoholic in a relapse. Well, y’know, I thought it’d be fine to bring over this case of beer and just leave it on your coffee table. Now, remember that if you drink it, it was YOUR choice so it will be YOUR fault. No, I don’t care you’re an alcoholic, it’s completely your choice to drink the delicious beer I put in front of you.”
So you think that Jacob, sober or drunk, would have gone for amber’s mom?
Was responding to greycat saying it was Jacob’s choice. It’s an addiction. He had as much of a choice as a drowning person has to breath, especially if it’s as bad as it’s being portrayed. Drunk or sober he probably would have ended up banging her, especially if she randomly showed up like that. Being drunk just made it easier at the time for him to slip.
I’m guessing Amber is not pregnant, mainly because “randomly nauseous = pregnant” is cliche, but that Leslie insisting that Amber may be pregnant really annoys both her and Mike, resulting in some sort of really funny prank on Leslie.
Knowing Mike, funny for us, not Leslie.
I love your comment for making me consider the possibility that Amber really was joking. Thank you!
WWWWWWWWWWWWWIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
G’job mate. You broke everyone. Again.
yep, everything is ruined forever.
I really hope this is where you got that quote: http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=879
Maybe she got food poisoning after all
It does take about a week or so to clear up.
…said the avatar with the chef’s hat.
Reposted: I would wonder if she actually does turn out to be pregnant if this would be enough to make her reconsider staying with Mike. Clearly she doesn’t give a damn about her own mental health and what his constant toxic presence could eventually turn her into but a baby? Her baby? Knowing full well what a father with a damaging personality could do to their child? But honestly at this point I don’t know what she’d do. Probably stay. Most likely stay.
Mike’s already shown that his (well-hidden) feelings can override his “normal” self; who’s to say that having a kid won’t have a similar effect? Besides, given how Mike’s parents are in contrast to him there’s a decent chance that the Mike-let would end up growing up with a significantly different outlook on life than his/her dad.
I also kind of have to wonder if, given her own family situation (abusive, estranged father and well-meaning but ineffective mother), Amber might find the idea of being able to lean on Mike’s parents for child-rearing support to be appealing. I mean, they’ll be geographically distant unless someone up and moves across the country, but they still seem to be better equipped to serve as a support system than anyone on Amber’s side.
I would love to see the idea of Mike, still being his usual “Evil” Mike Self, except also being the best father in the world. Imagine Mike having a daughter, and loving and cherishing only her… while having a contingency plan to napalm the world to make sure she’s always happy and safe.
I always love the idea of Evil Overlords with a soft side towards fatherhood. Mike could become a competent Dr. Doofenshmirtz. “Ah… Walky, there you are!” /Shipping… if that could even be called a Ship. What’s the term for wanting a character to become a father?
1) yay, we figured out what will happen to Jacob and that Amber still cares about him.
2) yay, Amber doesn’t irrationally hate her mom or anything like that.
3) I remember back in Roomies or “its Walky” the religious girl had a similar line with getting morning sickness so…… maybe pregnancy
BAM. This strip literally fulfilled every single major expectation that people have had since he went down on one knee a week ago, and yet still manages to feel like a total surprise. Somehow!
Well played.
How is everyone missing the obvious? Mike’s first words to this child are gonna HAVE to be “I fucked your mom.”
Well played, sir.
You sir have just won. Not entirely sure what you won, you just did.
Please. This child will be born, take it’s first breath, open it’s little eyes for the first time, the cord will be cut, the baby will be handed to Amber, and then it will open it’s pudgy little hand and give her a nickle.
Wouldn’t that be a little too much like his own dad’s behavior for comfort?
Well done! That entitles you to one of the prizes from the first row, unless you’d like to try for double or nothing.
Love it! Never should have doubted you Willis…can’t wait for tomorrow.
“What?
Whu-OH.
…
OOOHHHH!!!!
…
Damn.”
There going to talk about having it for like three months and then SURPRISE ABORTION and then everybody will be like “DAMN YOU, WILLIS” and then Ethan will meet Joe and solve his toy problem by shipping them all to him and then Lez will get serious with Malaya and Mal will freak out and dump Lez and everybody will be like “DAMN YOU, WILLIS” and then Robin will act responsible instead of taking advantage of her and then they’ll kiss and everybody will be like “DAMN YOU, WILLIS” and then SURPRISE INTERLUDE Joyce & Walky wedding in the middle of nowhere and then we come back to present and DESANTO’S UP FOR RE-ELECTION!
And that’s how it’s gonna be.
You sir are a prophet and if not then I will shout DAMN YOU ILVOS01!!!
I hope that she is pregnant and we get to see Amber and Mike’s evil evil hellspawn.
I’m glad Amber was cool with her mom nailing Jacob for exactly the same reasons I was cool with it.
Their child will break the world.
But, but–the birthing process ruins EVERYTHING down there!
…although if she does end up being pregnant, she could get a c-section…
I’m still hoping that she’s not. Or that she gets an abortion if she is. My selfish wish just to not see a pregnancy card.
Why not? *tilts head* Pregnancy is a pretty normal event in the life cycle of humans, what’s wrong with it? Sure, the Shortpacked! bunch are far from what we might consider “normal,” all of them being half-crazed in some way or another, but still. They still have plenty of relationships and breakups and successes and angst-fests, what’s wrong with pregnancy right along with all of that?
Because pregnancy is playing so often as a trope/plot point for female characters that it’s become a thing that writers do when they’ve run out of ideas. Not to insinuate that Willis has run out of ideas, though. This video, though it deals with mystical pregnancy moreso than regular pregnancies, explains why using pregnancy as a plot device is problematic. Writers rarely ever adequately portray the emotional, psychical and psyiological, and psychological changes and effects that pregnancy and child birth have on cis women. Too often it happens through no agency of the woman herself (the “surprise!/mistake! baby”), and the removal of women’s agency by any means is something that infuriates and troubles me about cultural and pop culture narratives in general.
There’s also the fact that not all women want to have children, nor are all women capable of bearing children. Amber, by conceeding her second born to Galasso as part of their deal, has implied that she would consider/has considered/would want at least one or two children, so I’m okay with that, for the most.
It’s not Willis specifically potentially doing it that bothers me, it’s the entire concept and use of pregnancy as a trope that bothers me. I trust that if she is indeed pregnant Willis will write it and play it well, I’m just being a selfish reader and complaining “why couldn’t it be done how I waaaaaant?”
I kind of figured that he would only resort to this concept to mirror real-world events…
Pregnancy in serial fiction tends to lead to either a decline in the quality of writing or a tragic, overly melodramatic miscarriage that also messes things up. This is because a lot of writers think, “Pregnancy is good drama!” but then figure out that writing around a baby is actually kind of hard if you didn’t plan for it.
Willis has probably already scripted the moment the kid’s superpowers come in and he throws a rattle through a wall.
Actually, would this be the first time a SEMME member had a kid? That could be interesting.
Billie and Danny weren’t SEMME agents, were they? We did technically see Joyce and Walky’s son around the beginning of Joyce and Walky when he went back and time and stuff, but I think that’s it.
Oh, and there was Danny and Sal’s AU kid that went back in time to their dimension that was Danny’s fault.
Babies ruin everything. It’s true in real life; it’s even truer in fiction.
This is so babies.
That being said, as other people have said, the comic does run in real time and it’s a thing that can happen to the characters (and has happened to Willis’ characters before). I’m just still a little bit miffed at some people assuming “girl being sick = it must be morning sickness!!” and in “it doesn’t have to mean that” mode.
So now I hope that Jacob is told about all of this, resultantly gets over his feelings for Amber and tell her to just get the fuck out of his and reject the offer to pay for his therapy, and then he gets to beat the crap out of Mike. Even though that last part wouldn’t really make sense as Jacob logically shouldn’t be physically capable of it given Mike has super-powers and whatnot. But I still want to it happen.
I’m with you 100%
Me too! Really I just want someone to get sufficiently pissed at this!
Jacob probably will be pissed. But he was never that close to them except Amber. And Amber is used to shit like this from Mike. So that’s why no one thinks it’s that horrible. They have seen worse from Mike and this does not phase them. Jacob on the other hand will feel differently about it.
That would be a pretty good thing. Because, well…
CONSEQUENCES!!!
While it’d be satisfying to see Jacob master his own life like that, I’m afraid it would give more fuel to readers who try to justify Mike being an asshole, and let them claim that what Mike did was retroactively in Jacob’s best interests.
I’m betting Jacob will take Amber’s job offer, then he’ll find out what Mike did and an epic battle will ensue à la Ethan and Willis!
If Mike fights Jacob, Jacob will likely end up to be nothing less than a flying speck of light in the far horizon.
Mike can rip giant monsters in half. :S
http://www.shortpacked.com/2009/comic/book-10/01-this-man-this-manhattan/makemedothis/
Did Mike wipe off the blood?
Uh oh, now Leslie’s getting into it.
Drunk mike has his own tag??
As do”Amazi-Girl” and “Spider-Car.” Ahhh, alter egos.
Now you’ve got me thinking of Drunk Mike as a super hero.
Which isn’t too far-fetched, really. Not only does he already have powers, but he turns into a super nice person. I bet he’d fight crime if he witnessed one.
Mike’s the superhero. Drunk Mike is the “civilian” alter ego.
-airfox
This description contains 200% of the USDA RDA of awesomeness. Yes, mild-mannered is the alter-ego and intense is the superhero. It is spoken.
I’m just happy that they’ve decided to take accountability for Jacob’s life-ruining.
Therapy: Putting the “remedial” in “remedial adulthood”
MINI MIKE! MINI MIKE! MINI MIKE!
I want one!
Mini Mike with angry eyebrows!
OR
Mini Mike with happy smile!
Nobody is talking about possible other causes for Amber’s nausea. Like, seizmic activity along the San Andreas fault? The ground turkey meatloaf recall? The Republican Presidential candidates? The overblown and relentless media coverage of the 9/11 Anniversary? Plain, ordinary stomach influenza?
I want to say “Damn you willis” In fact, I did upon completion of the comic. However; there is nothing to say that she is actually pregnant. It could have just been nerves. Even in real life when a woman is repeatedly sick to her stomach, the people around them assume morning sickness. I was legitimately sick once (virus or something), but my friend worked me up into thinking I was pregnant. So it doesn’t just happen in fiction. I am going to hold off on making any assumptions to where this arc is going. Also, I must say internet. An impressive 109 comments in the first hour. This arc has gotten me reading the comment threads. It is that interesting. So I shall say good show Willis, as opposed to damn you.
If indeed these two bring a child into the Walkyverse, I believe the following line from “The Mummy” would be completely appropriate: “Know this: this creature is the bringer of death.”
THIS IS THE GREATEST DAY EVER. OF ALL TIME.
Cool. Baby.
Works for me. I can see so much LULZ coming from this.
So!
Many!
LULZ!
I love how pragmatic Amber is being about this.
As for the (possible) hints at pregnancy, I am less than pleased.
You’d both better pay for his therapy you psychotic twits! (Who I totally love!)
My conclusion – Amber is nuts, but at least she isn’t like “ho-ho-ho Jacob can go rot in hell; I have Mike!” So I guess I’m okay with things – for now. It’s not like I care all that much to begin with (although it is a fairly fun story – I mean I don’t care about if Mike and Amber stay together)
Given how many twists have been happening I wouldn’t be surprised if Amber isn’t pregnant but DYING; she dies and then Mike and Jacob end up together.
I’m willing to bet there is at least ONE Mike and Jacob shipper out there despite all of this – or because all of this… Somehow I feel that ruins my joke
Indeed, there are probably MORE Mike/Jacob shippers now, thanks to this.
But again I have to think about the fact that it wasn’t mike that sent jacob on a downwards spiral, he was already downwards-spiralling, that is why he welcomed amber’s mom in the first place.
I think what would be really good for him is just if Amber told him she appreciated the “kind gesture” he’d shown her mother and certainly did not think less of him for it. This wouldn’t magically fix everything, but it would let him know that she knows and isn’t holding it against him, which for a guilty conscience can be a real panacea. Also, maybe beating up mike, it’s proven to be highly therapeutic in the past!
I don’t know why, but somehow, for some strange reason… I actually think Mike could make a good father. He loves Amber, so much so that he was willing to pull out all the stops to try to protect her from himself, and the harm he thinks he’s causing her. Mike is a dick, and I’m sure he’d teach the little sprig some REALLY entertaining and odd morals and values… but I also think he’d smash into paste anyone or anything that ever tried to fuck with his family. That’s a lot more than a lot of us ever get, growing up.
Considering the number of people who predicted it, I shouldn’t be surprised. But I am.
She has food poisoning. SHE’S BEEN WALKING AROUND WITH POOPING HAMSTERS ON HER HEAD!
This is a point, though unless she’s been ingesting the hamster poop it isn’t likely food poisoning. Certainly a feces-transmitted illness is quite possible, though!
I’m just saying, she might not have noticed something falling into her food.
What worse then Mike as a father…..Uncle Faz *thunderbolts*
I don’t mind pregnancy as a subplot because yes, it is an event that happens to many adults and the practice of ignoring it seems to stem from the same manchild desires as things like “One More Day” and comics where people eternally stay late teens/early twenties. As I’ve gotten older and grumpier I get tired of reading about people with no sense of maturity or will to accept adult responsibilities. Shortpacked is refreshing in many ways, just as It’s Walky was before it, as the characterizations are strong and the characters adapt, grow or change in response to situations.
I don’t know how I feel about Amber and Mike having a child, though. It’s not that I don’t like kids, and it’s not that I think mike would ruin the child – I’m not saying he’d be a good parent but people have sure had worse and if anything the child might grow up with a thicker skin than most, which I would’ve appreciated myself. I think it’s more that they don’t feel like a couple that’s ready to take care of a child – considering the length of a pregnancy, this could change certainly, but also considering Mike just attempted to get her to leave him, it doesn’t exactly seem like a step they could really consider at this point.
So saying, and I know abortion is a flamingly debated topic and therefore unlikely to get discussed in a comic, but I’d say it feels just as likely at this point as Amber carrying through with the pregnancy. If not for the fact that such a plot twist would fill Willis’s flame box for years to come as a bunch of people unacquainted with real world decisions accosted him for portraying a real world decision, I’d assume that was the most likely outcome to this situation.
And of course, it could just be a red herring. I doubt it’s food poisoning though – having had it three times in a year, my experience is that it starts out strong (every five minutes uncontrollable stomach upheaval strong) for the first two or three days then settles down to a feeling of steady malaise before finally passing – not building over several days and ending in a crescendo.
Morning sickness is a misnomer anyway – for many women “morning sickness” can be at any point of time for as long or as little and as invasive or passive as the human spectrum allows. Amber just feeling pretty ill for a week then heaving is not the stereotype but certainly common for many women – which would be a kudos to Willis for taking a trope and Keepin’ It Real.
Ahh, the joys. My “morning sickness” is basically 30 minutes when I get up and then whenever I have failed to eat every 2-3 hours. This is totally plausible. Also, she said “extra nauseous this week” which might mean that she already knows! Typically, morning sickness doesn’t set in until 6-8 weeks pregnant, so after the first missed period…. (I’ve been spending too much time on the pregnancy blogs….)
I personally think she just has a stomach virus…
THIS IS ALL A RUSE!!!
…so, did anyone else cue up “Ave Satani” after reading those last two panels?
Please don’t be about to hold up the rule that any female character in fiction ever throwing up means they’re pregnant. Please.
Fair enough. All he has to do is feature some female characters vomiting that clearly aren’t pregnant, and he’ll have averted the rule.
Tomorrow’s Strip: Robin, Leslie and Malaya all suddenly throw up for no apparent reason.
Wow. Ya know, Amber’s a real monster. I feel bad for Mike, nothing short of death is going to stop this obsession of hers.
Love. It’s love. And in case you didn’t hear him, he loves her too. And he was “selfish enough he couldn’t pull the trigger” Meaning he wants to hang onto her despite the fact he thinks she deserves better.
And besides, the heart wants what it wants. And these two people, screwy as they both may be, are fortunate that what their hearts want are each other.
‘Cause it really sucks when that’s not the case.
So we’ve been discussing this, and people are saying that Galasso is promised the second-born, and she and Mike are safe for now……
but what if…..she has twins?
Flip a coin?
hand over the least desirable twin? that’s what i would do.
Contrary to popular opinion, twins are not born at the exact same time. One comes out first.
If they came out simultaneously, well, probably 10x more painful and awkward than normal childbirth.
Actually, you’d be hard pressed to find a hospital where Twins wouldn’t be born with a scheduled c-section these days. Of course, they still come out one at a time in a c-section.
Dem burritos man. One bad burrito can give you a week worth of nausea.
Okay, this is back to making sense. And it’s refreshing to be proven wrong once in a while, even after all the analysis.
Amber’s not “okay” with what happened to Jacob (and that’s still NOT RIGHT, guys– even Mike admits it was wrong, and even Mike apparently didn’t plan it to get as bad as it got). But she views it as a problem that she and Mike both have to take responsibility for, and fix. She really was subject to a combination of nerves and morning sickness, rather than a deep subconscious realization that she and Mike would never work.
And as long as Mike actually cares enough not to do deliberate lasting harm to the people she cares about, maybe they can, after all. That’s the key point in all this. He presented his scheme to Amber, and the reader, as the culmination of a year of planning, not the accidental result of procrastination. Amber didn’t buy that aspect, which I would’ve said was denial, but Mike seems to be confirming her belief, and Nice Mike doesn’t lie.
Now, it’s possible we’ve got one more big twist to go, and that two years ago Mike secretly spiked Robin’s Cadbury egg cereal with, I dunno, some kind of asshole drug, so that the next time she used it she’d ruin her relationship. But from the evidence on the table now, it seems like this weird romance is actually functioning the way Ethan thought it was.
Mike? Spiking the Cadbury Eggs? Who’da thunk it?… and if he did, will he fess up now that he is drunk?
CALLED IT (long time ago though XD)
YEAH! I WAS RIGHT. XD I expected he did that so she would run to Jacob, and he could destroy this whole marriage deal. Yes! Thank you Willis.
This is awesome!
I knew Amber was made of stronger stuff than that. This storyline is pretty much gone how I expected.
….That was pretty amazing. Ol broad’s got skillz
Oh crap no, please don’t let Shortpacked become CTRL-ALT-DEL
This story is giving me mental whiplash. Which is a lot more awesome than physical whiplash.
At this point, I don’t really care if Amber and Mike are together or not. Either way, I’m sure it’ll be an interesting read.
When I first laid eyes on this comic, the word “therapy” jumped out at me, and for half a moment I thought Amber was gonna get MIKE some help. Then I actually read the comic.
Well, I guess paying for Jacob’s therapy is… something? Especially at Mike and Amber’s income level. Plus, realistically, there’s not much Mike could do that would meaningfully make it up to Jacob. Mike/Amber is still a pairing the makes my head hurt when I contemplate it, but that’s nothing new.
you really can’t help mike though. he’s already at the top of his game.
Willis. No. Just, no.
If you’re going to pull that trope, I hope you do it well.
Tag should be “pregnant amber”
Who’s up for a shotgun wedding?
Someone just got knocked up.
Oh my!
This is Shortpacked History in the works!
Ok… now I totally know where this story is going…
I think her mom is pregnant as well! then her mom marries Jacob and there is a 5 week orgy that goes on at their place with random pop icons showing up to give a shout out to their “peeps”
Well look at that, another webcomic I can stop following.
It was fun while it lasted.
..What. Are you going to leave just because of this? You must not have liked the comic at all…
either that or your being sarcastic about people who are saying that.
Can’t tell over the internet.
Not to mention that we’re all still making a rather large assumption here. It’s still possible Amber has had a stomach bug or something. Ok, so all the signs point toward pregnancy, but until she gets those two pink lines, I’m not making ANY bets on it at all.
Will Shortpacked follow in CAD’s foot steps?
Geez, you guys, if CAD is the only pregnancy in webcomics you’re aware of, read some other fuckin’ webcomics.
I think he’s refering to the miscarriage part which in turn lost A LOT of viewers for the webcomic.
I suppose its the only one to have her pregnant and then miscarriage other than it being a backstory but it happens, not every baby is born or even carried to term and I guess people hate that when it shows up in webcomics. I read CAD and all I was thinking is will they survive this or split up forever?
I think it was just the way it was handled in CAD. They tell us Lilah was pregnant then not too long later completely get rid of that with a miscarriage. I understand not every child is born yes, But he trated it like another one time comic and the way he made sure it would be like that was a miscarriage. That disgusted a lot of people (Yeah its XLR just changed the name btw.)
I love how it’s always “babies ruin comics” or “marriage ruin comics”. It’s called Life, peeps.
Marriage doesn’t ruin comics. Wishing away marriages in puff of Cheesy Poof dust ruins comics. I’M LOOKING AT YOU, QUESADA AND DiDIO.
This is so babies!
I see what you did there.
I like this… XD
Okay. You win.
DAMN YOU, WILLIS!
Wait, hold on here.
How the hell did Mike ruin Jacob’s life?
Mike did something very wrong to Jacob and it’s good that he and Amber acknowledged that and are working to rectify the situation.
But wasn’t Jacob ALREADY off the wagon when Amber’s mom was sent to his apartment?
Wasn’t it ROZ who originally started Jacob’s downward spiral into depression and addiction?
It’s good Mike is going to do something to make it up to Jacob, but I think we’re overstating his part in Jacob’s situation. ROZ should be paying for Jacob’s therapy. SHE was the instigator in this; Mike just added insult to injury.
Is anyone aware, besides Jacob and Roz, that they slept together though? I’m quite certain no one really knows about it. They just know the mom thing, then Jacob’s random bangings.
Just a moment. Let me clear this up.
http://www.shortpacked.com/2010/comic/book-12/01-dominus-jacobus/harmless/
When Jacob and Roz met during Amber’s mom visiting and meeting Mike.
http://www.shortpacked.com/2010/comic/book-12/01-dominus-jacobus/anyone/
An estimated (by me) ten minutes later.
Worth noting that during that ten minutes is when Mike starts drinking.
http://www.shortpacked.com/2010/comic/book-12/01-dominus-jacobus/shove/
When Mike’s buzz begins to wear off, right before he snatches the phone.
http://www.shortpacked.com/2010/comic/book-12/01-dominus-jacobus/ohmy/
Amber’s mom making the return trip, finding a surprise waiting for her.
http://www.shortpacked.com/2010/comic/book-12/03-minorities-report/stampede/
Amber encountering the aftermath of Jacob’s previously depicted relapse.
And it is the very next page, directly after Amber leaves, having emptied Jacob’s room of women, that Roz returns to sleep with a Jacob who has fallen off the wagon.
So if we’re talking chronologically, Amber’s mom happened before Roz.
My bad. I should have checked the archives first, but I was almost CERTAIN Roz sexed up Jacob before Amber’s mom.
I’m pretty sure that Roz was flirting with Jacob for a while before it happened, maybe that’s what threw me off.
Sorry!
That’s not the weird thing about the chronology here. Mike says “by waiting until your marriage ideas freaked me out”… implying that whatever he did to mess up Jacob’s life came after the marriage ideas. The revelation of it happened after the marriage ideas, but the actual actions to cause it did not.
As for Roz, even if she wasn’t directly the trigger, it’s likely that she contributed to Jacob being vulnerable. Who knows whether or not Mike
knew about that.
He had this plan in motion for a year, he just stepped it up because she said the M word. As for roz she only got with jacob after he was back off the wagon. She took advantage of the situation and tried to show him sex with issues was possible. She came (haha double entendre) for the sex stayed for the drama.
Oh my god, she is carrying a hamster in her womb!
Ruh roh.
BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!BABY!*Deep Inhale*Exhale*
huh so that’s how your word wrap works, one long word doesn’t get wrapped.
So apparently Shortpacked! and Something*Positive don’t have a lot of crossover fans?
Or are they among the few that believe Rory, Pamjee, and Shazz have ruined that comic? On top of showing the way that certain things (that are not entirely likely to happen, but still possible) should be handled?
I promised myself I wouldn’t look at the comments anymore. >_> Damnit.
Randy has said some people got really mad when Pamjee was born, for some absolutely insane reason.
No kidding. I think I remember him saying that he received almost as much ngeative response when Rory was brought into the comic, with it climaxing when there was the chance of it being Davan’s child.
Yeah, I remember his comments at the bottom of those comics. o.O People like that drive me insane….
I also remember he got so much hatemail about Davan being Rory’s dad that he almost did it out of spite. xD
So to make up for it, everyone here should get pregnant simultaneously and have quintuplets. And Billie should show up with 6 more kids. And Joyce and Walky with 4 or so.
One S*P/Shortpacked crossover fan here. I recently re-read his description of the uproar over the kids. Seems that because his characters are urban cynical types that many of his urban cynical readers assumed they were just like them in rejecting the idea of kids and family as keys to happiness, so felt betrayed when S*P characters did show there was room in their lives for children. Big case of projection mixed with character types that are similar to anti-kid people. Can’t speak to the projection of fans onto Shortpacked characters, but since the characters here spend more time building relationships than finding ways to damage people I wouldn’t expect the baby-hate to be too big an issue.
The biggest problem might be the anti-tropers concerned about the pattern in popular television of shows adding babies to boost falling ratings. Since Shortpacked doesn’t appear to be falling in popularity and makes a habit of turning tropes on their head I wouldn’t think any of those worries are well founded so much as knee-jerky. Folks will probably get over it so long as the comic doesn’t become all about a baby reacting to the cast and rehashing material that has already been done. If Amber has the baby and then it is abducted and subjected to Sound of Music, however…
Then she is required, by fan law, to name the baby JJ. Short for, Joyce Junior.
And this will be a blow from which he will probably never recover.
Sounds like something Mike would do.
Or Amber. Maybe she’ll go Scrubs on us because Mike leaves her with Robin while the baby’s being delivered.
Wait, how did baby happen? This makes no sense.
Penis in the vagina.
easy, isn’t it?
The Stork brought it and put it in Amber’s tummy.
These things happen.
Presumably during one of their epic hatefucks.
I would love to see a baby in this comic! Besides. Babies happen. A lot. Often. In real life and all that jazz. Meaning, most people end up with a baby in their life one way or another, and there is no baby here yet. So I think this is perfectly acceptable and wonderful. If it happens.
A mini mike would be so cute.
So … I guess a bunch of people saying Amber’s pregnant, called this, right?
-airfox
I think Willis has it planned out from a long time ago (either if Amber is pregnant or not).
I remember seeing one of the lastests strips’ background on his Tumblr a week ago or so.
As much as I’m expecting Amber to not really be pregnant…
I really want to see what Mike and Amber’s child would be like. Because I’m thinking glasses, dirty blonde hair and half-and-half on the complete and utter dick-dom.
… ohmygoditsmycousinwhatfreshhellisthis.
Ok, but reaaaalllllllyyyy… I want Leslie to go ‘Oh, yeah, you know that piece of bacon I gave you this morning? It was raw’. Or something.
So, basically, Dorothy from Dumbing of Age is really Mike and Amber’s kid from the future of this reality?
Surgeon General’s Warning: Pulling a drama tag voids its contraceptive properties.
*facepalm*
Oh my Cheese…
Now they have to explain the concept of MATERNITY LEAVE to Galasso.
Okay. That mental image made me giggle.
Man, that script error I’m getting at work is a pisser. Because it makes the browser freeze, I can’t scroll down to see the bottom tier of the strip, so I don’t get to see the punchline until I go online at home.
So I said “Ooooohhhh shiiiiiiit…” at home about 15 minutes ago instead of at work this morning.
Adding a baby to a TV show only becomes a problem when the writers and producers get tired of dealing with a baby and decide to have it age up over the summer so it can say cute things and mug for the camera (see any TV show of the last 25 years where a pair of 40-something parents suddenly had another kid). Mad About You and Friends did it right–they added babies, but didn’t become shows about babies.
Shortpacked! has a pretty sizable cast. If Willis decides to have Amber and Mike have a kid, I think it’s a pretty safe bet the strip won’t become The Adventures of Mike and Amber’s Baby.
You’re not the only one. SP killed my work computer, froze IE up entirely. I’m having to use my iPad.
Yeah, I’ve had that error all week, on both my computer and my husband’s. (I assumed it was a problem on my end at first.) Not really sure what the deal is.
I wasn’t going to say anything but I want to get it out.
It’s not like Amber threw up once and then OMG PREGNENT, it was actually led up too.
And not all woman have morning sickness, but at the same time, there are woman who do. Heck, my mom had terrible morning sickness, being pregnant with twins, where she threw up all the time.
I’m very excited about this. I’ve come to like Amber more then I did months ago (and at the point where I’ve accepted Amber has just almost much as a black heart as Mike, thus it works), and if there is a baby, I think it’s cool.
How did that become a reply?
Sorry person I replied too. If this wasn’t glitching so bad on my computer, I’d go back and see your username.
Yeah, I’m waiting to see if its a pregnancy too, but I’m seriously NOT getting the baby-hate. First off, when heterosexual people have sex, sometimes it makes babies. Just like eating at Subway sometimes gives you food poisoning. It happens.
Secondly, even if other comics have handled the subject badly, Willis is a pretty solid storyteller. (I believe there’s over 10 years of evidence somewhere on the interwebs if you look really hard.) I believe if Amber is pregnant, it will be integrated into the rest of the strip without WRECKING EVERYTHING. No subject is really “cliche” or a “throwaway card” if handled well.
I think whatever happens, the quality of the comic will be just fine.
And I’m not blindly fangirling here. Willis’ work has its pros and cons, but I really think he’s excellent and storytelling and character development. I’m willing to trust where this is going.
And lastly … uh …
Just in Shortpacked itself, Mike and Amber have fought a giant pastry, Ultra car has driven to the Amazon in a flash, and Robin legislated world peace after a Cadbury egg overdose. After all that, how can a BABY be jumping the shark? O.O
DAMN YOU DRAMA TAG!!!
Oh god the offspring. They will be so bitchy they will tear the fabric of the universe. It will be like the Pandora’s box of assholishness.