294

Arrangement
Posted on August 17, 2018 by David M Willis

294 thoughts on “Arrangement”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    little heartbreaker

    in the VERY WORST SENSE

  2. Nep

    My heart is breaking for Mike.

    1. Michael Steamweed

      A sequence of words I did NOT expect to see.

      1. LookingIn

        Hey, even demon spawns can have moments where you feel bad for them…

    2. Doomska

      Save it for the victims of his shitty behavior, maybe.

      1. Zee

        Maybe let people enjoy a character?

        1. Lauralot

          Impossible! How can we flaunt our moral superiority if we can’t denigrate people for having Wrong Opinions?

        2. 3-I

          This. This this this.

        3. MrSpkr

          So, you learned something in your 21st Century American Politics class.

    3. Yet_One_More_Idiot

      Don’t make Mike angry. You wouldn’t like Mike when he’s angry…or at any other time, really… >_>

      xD

      1. Crusading Barista

        Mike: “Trust me, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” “That’s my secret, Ethan… I’m always angry.”

        1. 3oranges

          If Bruce Banner had eyebrows like he hated everything and everyone, it wouldn’t have been much of a secret.

  3. General Tekno

    Interesting; my read here (valid or no) is proving to be “Mike doesn’t actually derive pleasure from being an asshole; he does it because someone has to and in fact he’s kinda dead inside.”

    1. Sambo

      I see it more as he enjoys being an asshole to screw over people who deserve it, but the cost of protecting himself from blackmail, which is isolation, is still hard on him.

      1. LookingIn

        The anti-hero paradox. He does bad things for good reasons, but at the expense of happiness.

        It was on display in Shortpacked! and occasionally in It’s Walky! but for different reasons

    2. Snippy Harold

      Mike always has a reason for what he does. It’s just that the reasons may not be the ones other people (or he) want.

    3. Arawn

      Mike’s motives are nearly inscrutable. However, he’s never really hurt Ethan or Amber irreparably. He’s dinged them here or there but he never got them fired or kicked out of school or arrested. However, it’s apparent that he’s done that to people that hurt them.

      If you want to believe the best of Mike, he’s just an incredibly insecure person who can’t reveal that he likes anyone or anything for fear of being hurt. He does have people he considers friends and even tries to help them.

      It’s almost tragic, but he doesn’t even let people like him. The asshole facade isn’t an accident. It’s carefully calculated to keep everybody at arm’s length.

      The big question is why and what personal trauma caused it. Sounds like he hates his parents so that’s a good place to start.

      1. Vee

        GOD this kills the man. spot on, though

      2. Drunk Mike

        It was because Blaine tried to use his friends to hurt him.

      3. Rain

        You’d think so, but the Warners have always been portrayed as really nice people.

        I’m more inclined to agree with Drunk Mike on the source of his trauma.

        1. thejeff

          But he was already at least partly like this. Blaine might have changed his direction, but he was already this weird savant observational/manipulative genius. The plot to get rid of Mrs Phillips was underway before the confrontation with Blaine, for example.

        2. Rain

          Yeah, to clarify I think DM is more on the right track, but not necessarily exactly right. That’s what I meant by “more inclined”. 🙂

    4. Chronos

      Oh hey, someone with a similar opinion of Mike. Hi!

    5. Zee

      My personal read is that he started acting like an asshole to push people away, so Blaine couldn’t hurt them to get to Mike. And then after doing that for a while it just became his personality

  4. Shiro

    Last-panel-Mike giving me whiplash is starting to be a Thing

    1. ShinyNeen

      Fellow whiplash victim! There’s so much Mike, so little time, and so much hurt!

    2. JessWitt

      You’re telling me. I’ll need a neck brace by this storyline’s end.

    3. Keulen

      Same here.

  5. adjudicus

    … Huh. Is this the first time Baby!Mike wore the black T-shirt?

    1. ShinyNeen

      A quick search suggests that he’s worn black tees a couple times, but always under a hoodie before now.

      So A: That seems like some quick, neat symbolism, and B: nice catch!

  6. Versen

    Damn Mike, your machinations run deep. Power play out of nowhere, but a heavy cost.

  7. Stu

    So… Mike fucked the QB in order to coerce him into getting into getting nudes from the teacher that was being unfair to Amber? I’m a bit curious as to why he couldn’t just cut out the middleman in that situation and do it himself.

    1. Phil

      He and Ms. Philips were already at odds, so she wouldn’t want to be nice to him. Then, this whole thing taking place over the internet means he could’ve just faked being someone else, but whatever.

      1. Phil

        Then again*

      2. Jason

        That was the impression that I got- that he was using Brent to get whatever it was he used to fake being him to get to the teacher. Not that Brent himself was in a relationship of any sort with the teacher.

    2. Lone Duck

      Mike already pissed the teacher off in their initial confrontation, she probably would’ve been on guard.

      1. Stu

        I was under the impression that Bret wasn’t being up-front about being a student though? All it’d have taken was tracking down her dating profile and going with a “Bart the Lover” scheme. She’d still get fired for “corruption of a minor”, though maybe Mike wanted to distance himself from the fallout?

        1. Tori

          I’m not under that impression at all — I think her knowingly beginning a relationship with a student is the linchpin of the entire scheme. If Mike had misrepresented himself online to sucker her into a “relationship” with a minor, then she’d have plausible deniability. If Brent represents himself accurately and then flips on her, she doesn’t have that wiggle room. And Mike gets to distance himself from the whole thing as a bonus.

        2. Freemage

          And having distance is now key to him–Blaine showed him the danger of being too blatantly responsible for the attack.

  8. Roe

    WAT

  9. Stephen Bierce

    *plays Dionne Warwick’s “Heartbreaker” on the hacked Muzak*

  10. jeffepp

    “In four years, I will alienate him from her, and have him all to my self.”

    1. Doctor_Who

      The long game.

    2. Vi

      I REALLY don’t think so. I think Mike likes Amber. i think he cares about her as well.

      1. Clif

        Mike got rid of Ms. Phillips for Amber.

  11. Lone Duck

    Poor Bret. Least thing Mike could’ve done is point him towards Ethan.

  12. Inahc

    can blaine die get sent to hospital-then-prison yet? 😛 fucking hell.

    1. Doctor_Who

      Toedad getting a cellmate?

      1. Wizard

        Thus forming a low rent super villain team.

        1. abysswatcher1993

          Those already exist. Too many super villain teams in the market, like Mr. Glass and the Horde, Brainiac and Lex Luthor, and league of villains led by Bad Horse. Bard Horse, Bad Horse, Bad Horse…

        2. Deanatay

          Giddyup move ’em out,
          Signed Bad Horse

          (Oh, and it’s “The Evil League of Evil”)

        3. Ferret

          The Thoroughbred of Sin?

  13. inqntrol

    Is Ms.Phillips the teacher that hit Mike? If she is then she deserves to be fired.

    1. Tacos

      She is indeed.

    2. Snippy Harold

      Yeah, that alone is enough to get you fired at this point. (Maybe less so in this part of Indiana? But probably not.)

      1. Viktoria

        There are states in the US that still legalize physical punishment, and schools that use it. I have no idea if Indiana public schools do, though.

        1. LookingIn

          It’s legal in Indiana…but the thing with Mike is being new means she automatically gets the benefit of the doubt regardless, so the whole “worst possible thing you can do with a student” fits better especially in a paranoia against paedophelia world

        2. Proxiehunter

          To my knowledge though in states where child abuse by school officials is still legal there are very specific procedures and forms that must be followed. You can’t just haul off and slap the kid across the face because they pissed you off. Or at least you’re not supposed to be allowed to do that. When I was in school in Mississippi it was a wooden paddle on the (clothed) ass and a second teacher had to be present as a witness and it was supposed to take place out of sight of other students. Anything else was a violation of policy. Whether or not such violations would actually amount to anything probably depended on a lot of factors.

        3. thejeff

          Plus the whole, “no evidence, not witnesses” thing. Mike setup the thing with Bret, not just because of paranoia about it, but because it could be easily documented – especially since it was an online thing.

  14. meep

    Well, Mike is turning out to be a complex character

    1. Artschoolrage

      I definitely think he has been for a while. It’s very interesting and mike is becoming one of my favorite characters.

      1. LookingIn

        He has been since he was first introduced, if you reread his earliest remarks he’s a driving force for characters: calling Billie on her BS, prompting Ethan to force Amber out of her room to go to lunch(hilariously), punching Joe for being a lecherous douche etc.

        He’s only really a jerk when others are acting stupid, he’s a decent person he just doesn’t like fakes and frauds

        1. VanVelding

          How is this still a secret?

        2. DailyBrad

          I think one of the more complex things we’d seen Mike do was call Amber out on some of her symmetry with Blaine. Given the way she began treating Danny near the end of that relationship, he was 100 percent correct about her having an abusive streak. hopefully something she has caught in time, once she’s done Peter Pan-ing away from her problems.

        3. thejeff

          You mean the way she yelled at him once, when he surprised her with a kiss, even though he was supposed to be dating her alter, not her? The horror. Definite abuse there.

          The last damn thing Amber needs is anyone reinforcing her belief she’s a monster.

        4. Red Comet

          Imo, It wasn’t just that she yelled. It was the belittling nature of her insults. Tied to the fact that she was making him jump through sometimes unnecessary hoops and distancing him depending on which mindset she was in.

          Her psychological break isn’t her fault but it’s a pretty shitty relationship situation for Danny to be in and seemed to make him feel made him feel a little down and unwanted unwanted a lot of the time near the end. He would be hyper focused on her current moods but she didn’t seem to notice his at all. Not everyone can easily compartmentalize something as important as a relationship.
          And not everyone should have to, regardless of the way we are rooting for Amber to get better or get help.

          Maybe abusive is strong language. But I could see things going that way if the relationship had continued. I think she was right to end it when she did and don’t think that she is a monster.

        5. thejeff

          I’m not saying Amazi-Girl would be easy to date, especially when you didn’t actually realize she and Amber were really separate personas, as opposed to a secret identity pretense kind of thing. Remember, Amber wasn’t dating him.
          But yeah, she snapped at him once, for about one panel before catching herself in horror and running away. And not in the usual abuser, smooth it over and minimize it kind of way either.

          Nor did she end it for any reasons like that. I don’t think she’s a monster either. She does.

          She needs love and hugs and support and piles and piles of therapy. Not some asshole calling her out on being an abuser. She’s got plenty of internal support for that already.

        6. Matticus

          She also snapped at him for talking to Sal and turned his not wanting her to get hurt as a personal attack against her. She then proceeded to become MarioKart buddies with Sal and casually dismissed Danny’s frustration at her hypocrisy.

        7. Fart Captor

          Amazi-Girl lost her temper and dumped Danny over talking to Sal (and suggesting she last off the vigilantism) because she has some serious trauma that involved Sal and which she was not handling in a healthy way.

          It’s not hypocrisy that both Amazi-Girl and Amber end up making peace with Sal (even while Sal STILL sets off panic attacks for Amber). That was change. That a massively positive development

          Even then, no, she didn’t dismiss Danny’s frustration. When he spotted AG and Sal after the rally, she explained as much as she could.

        8. thejeff

          Arguably, Amazi-Girl yelled at Danny and broke up with him when he told her he liked Amber better and wanted Amber to stop being Amazi-Girl.

          That’s easy to miss because Danny wasn’t thinking of it that way, but when thought of in terms of alters instead of secret identities and risk, it’s actually pretty harsh.

        9. Inahc

          that I can agree with; she was showing some red flags. it looked like a sign that without self-improvement, becoming abusive *was* an option for her. luckily she seems to have realised at least some of that was Not Okay, and her desire to not-hurt-people is pretty damn strong (hence all the beating herself up about also having desires to hurt people at times). She’s not *going* to go down that path, but that’s because she’s *choosing* not to. because she doesn’t want to be that kind of person.

          heck, even when she tells herself that she doesn’t care any more and tries to be “bad” (gee thanks mike), what does she actually end up doing? chatting with walky on Garbage Roof.

          ….okay, that did eventually lead to changing his grades, but that’s an entirely different kind of morally questionable. 🙂

        10. Clif

          And she owes it all to Mike.

        11. Emily

          I mean Amber’s abusive streak is way better shown in the way she dresses up in a costume and beats up total strangers over petty crimes to vent her frustration.

        12. thejeff

          1) That’s Amazi-Girl. She’s currently not talking to Amber.
          2) It’s still nothing at all like Blaine and thus not relevant to Mike’s comment to her. If he’d called her out on Amazi-Girl’s violence, that would be a different story.

        13. Scott

          I think one driving factor behind that comment was her never going for mike because she feared being like her Mom in a relationship.

        14. BBCC

          Except that happened long after Mike said it. Amber can’t be called on something she hasn’t done yet.

  15. Kris

    I dunno? I kinda feel worse for Bret than Mike here.

    1. Regalli

      Yeah, kid gets manipulated into fucking with a teacher and then dropped derisively immediately after.

      1. Annamal

        I thought Mike just used his identity?

      2. Zaratuir

        Do we actually know that he got manipulated into getting into a relationship with the teacher? I took it more as Mike found out about the relationship and manipulated himself into Bret’s life to use that information against the teacher, not that he pushed him into the relationship from the start.

    2. Doomska

      Congratulations you have a functioning moral compass.

      That’s not sarcasm btw, apparently this is legitimately a rarity in this comments section.

      1. Sporky

        yeah no kidding

      2. Jago

        You are a pleasant person with a very openminded worldview, huh?

        That *was* sarcasm.

      3. Lauralot

        Why do you bother reading the comments if nearly everyone in them is a morally bankrupt idiot?

      4. Mr.Fat

        WOW you seem like a really nice person doomska calling people immoral because they dont agree about with your assessment of a comic

  16. butts

    …Huh.

  17. Tacos

    Arrangement? What exactly was their arrangement?

    1. HeatherJean

      Tutoring? Possibly horizontal.

  18. Regalli

    … holy SHIT Mike.

  19. skittylover3

    Bret cheated on mike with the teacher and mike found out. The teacher that hit him. Woooowwww.

    either that or
    Mike started hanging out with brett and got him to hit on the teacher online. Pretending to be older or something.

    1. skittylover3

      Like secret dating kinda thing either way.

      I don’t know. The latter is more likely

      Like mike giving those sweet make outs for brett or something like that ((maybe helping him out with his homework)), in return brett started hitting on the teacher online.

    2. Gizen

      Almost certainly the latter.

  20. nlips

    Dang Mike. That’s like 3 levels of manipulation deep just to punish a teacher who isn’t being fair to your friend. And nobody will ever connect the dots.

    1. Matthew Traver

      Yeah, because he continually tortures himself with isolation to avoid blackmail, and to make sure those dots don’t get connected.

    2. Rabid Rabbit

      Teacher who wasn’t fair to his friend and who hit him, to be fair.

  21. Artschoolrage

    HMMMM. Mike had something to do with that. This js now two adults that Mike has successfully neutralized (in some capacity), and each time there was a third party at play.

    I wonder if Mike’s abrasive attitude comes from the idea is that kindness is his weapon against people who make mistakes? I’m talking Gon Freecs level of weird morality.

    If we look at mikes previous asshole behaviors, there was always a point or some old school grimms fairy tail lesson into it. Maybe mikes idea of morality is encouraging people to be their whole truth? And that he’s mean to people who need a version of what he considers a reality check? Is mike chaotic neutral? Or is he in some twisted way chaotic good?

    Either way I’m really fucking in to it. What a complex and slightly mysterious dude.

    1. lilyliv

      I have NO idea what Mike’s moral code might be, but I know he’s always a character who keeps me on the edge of my seat. Whether one likes him or not (and I ended up in the former camp somehow), he always makes things interesting. Part of me wonders if we’re ever going to find out exactly what does make Mike tick. I enjoy the mystery, but I also enjoy knowing what’s going on inside characters’ heads, so…? *shrug*

      1. artschoolrage

        I think he’s a really interesting, complex, and exciting character because he’s obviously friends with the “good guy” side, so obviously the main cast finds a lot of his faults tolerable- because he obviously isn’t a pariah to them.

        Do I necessarily *agree* with his choices? Nah, that’s not really my style. But its an example of great writing to enjoy someone who isn’t quite a villain but isn’t quite a hero as well. I like my theory of him being good in a grimm’s fairy tale way.

        1. thejeff

          The only one who really is “friends” with him is Ethan. Even Amber’s only tolerating him for Ethan’s sake. And Ethan’s only about 50% sure he’s Mike’s friend.
          The others put up with him because he lives there.

    2. Doomska

      Yeah it turns out abusing people because you want them to be better people is still abuse and please stop romanticizing it just stop it what is wrong with this comments section why are you people going around trying to glorify this toxic, disgusting, harmful, malicious creep who consciously and willfully hurts people, including his friends, on a routine basis? What fucked up enabler logic is this?

      1. JoeCovenant

        It’s a comic.

      2. Mercury

        I think you’re confusing defense with trying to understand.

        Mike may not be an excellent person, but he’s an excellent character. He’s complex. He’s brutally honest 90% of the time and the other 10% of the time he’s lying through his teeth in the worst way. He accomplishes things that no one else can, with near-supernatural efficacy.

        He’s an abusive asshole, sure. But he’s a good character. And one of the things that makes him such a good character is the mystery about what’s going through his head. What are his motivations? Who does he care about? Is there any hope for him to become a better person?

        And people spend time talking about these things because they legitimately want to know and talk through it. That doesn’t mean that what Mike does is defensible. But it is worth talking about.

        1. thejeff

          I don’t know. People really are saying things like “there was always a point or some old school grimms fairy tail lesson”, which is really kind of stretching it.
          Sometimes there seems to be.
          Sometimes you can read something into it if you try hard enough.
          Sometimes it’s really just bullshit.

          Mike might be an interesting character. It’s not clear to me even now how coherent he really is.

        2. artschoolrage

          If I remember correctly, “old school grimes fairy tails” lessons were incredibly dark, fucked up and somewhat roundabout ways where “”good”” outcomes were achieved in super messed up ways. I think that goes along with Mike’s character of helping people arrive to the “”good”” outcome (example: pointing out Dotty’s treatment of walky as not cool) but using a super fucked up and shitty way to do it (Insinuating she was using him).

          He’s a complex interesting character that has a super strange moral code and I want to know why he does what he does.

        3. Emily

          I think it’s an apt comparison because most of the aesops in Grimm fairy tales are horribly backwards and not actually good.

        4. Geneseepaws

          So well put. Thank you for stating that so well, Kudos! Or Milkyway, yer call.

      3. Mr.Fat

        you legit need to get over yourself

      4. artschoolrage

        Not everyone likes all of the happy-go-lucky good characters. There are people who like an appreciate people who are anything less than goody two shoes . There is a reason “dark AUs” with traditionally good people are so interesting. Its super popular in the comics area of the world- with heel face turns from people like superman, batman, etc.

        I think you’re conflating me enjoying a really interesting, complicated character as condoning and even supporting his actions, which is not only demeaning, Its concerning that you genuinely think enjoying a complex character means that the person who enjoys that character is abusive.

        That mindset is not only harmful to others, its harmful to yourself. Holding on to that hard and fast belief of toxicity makes it difficult for you or anyone to have shades of gray.

      5. autogatos

        It’s a fictional characterrrrrrr.
        You can enjoy messed up fictional characters even if their behavior would abhor you in a real life person. It’s fiction. If you don’t like him, nbd, but I wish people would stop acting like people who like Mike as a CHARACTER are somehow condoning abusive behavior in real life.

        Separating fiction from reality is often a crucial part of enjoying fiction.

        1. thejeff

          Fine and I agree, but can we also stop pretending that people are only saying they like Mike as a character and not also making excuses for his abusive behavior?
          Today hasn’t actually been that bad on that front compared to some other recent strips and I think Doomska’s overreacting here, but even most of their comments were responding to excuses for Mike, not to “I like Mike as a character” posts.
          We’ve seen the “chaotic good”, the “teaching moral lessons”, the “Mike’s schemes are always for the good of the target” and all the rest of the usual bullshit.
          If you like Mike as a character, great. I’ve not been fond of him, but I’ve liked him a bit better in this storyline, especially young!Mike. But I like him as a jerk who’s causing interesting stuff to happen, not because I think he’s a good person.

        2. Jago

          Or in other words, you like him as a character, but not as a person?
          (Just like everyone else, yes even the people who say they only like him as a character. Especially those, because they literally said it.)

        3. thejeff

          Except for all the ones saying he’s really good and he’s just helping his targets face hard truths and everything mean he does works out for them in the end?
          You know, the ones making excuses for him being an asshole.

        4. autogatos

          I mean, many of the people saying that stuff have also said MULTIPLE times, they’re not excusing his behavior, just looking for explanations for it, or describing his motives in the context of his own intentions.

          For example, if I say, “Spike does what he does because he genuinely loves Buffy,” or, “House may almost kill his patients but he always gets the answer right in the end,” I’m not excusing their behavior or saying this is an acceptable way for real people to act. I’m simply explaining their behavior within the context of the FICTIONAL story in which they exist.

          By accusing people who explain a fictional character’s actions/motives, or assign positive qualities to them, in the context of a fictional story, as condoning abusive behavior IRL you are literally putting words in their mouth and attributing statements/beliefs to them that they do not actually hold which is, in itself, really shitty behavior except you’re doing it to REAL people, not fictional ones.

      6. Zee

        Hey
        Hey
        Hey
        Guess what?
        Fictional characters do not exist, and thus are literally incapable of hurting anyone. If someone is triggered by Mike’s behavior because they know someone like him, it’s up to them to avoid the comic. People are allowed to enjoy fictional bad people. Hell, lemme say it louder for the people in the back
        PEOPLE ARE ALLOWED TO ENJOY FICTIONAL BAD PEOPLE

        1. thejeff

          As I said just above, I enjoy Mike the fictional character. He’s an asshole, but he can be fun to read about.
          If I’m triggered by anything here, it’s not Mike, but commentors defending not Mike the character, but Mike the fictional person.

        2. Zee

          I was speaking more to doomska

        3. thejeff

          Even Doomska was talking about glorifying and romanticizing his behavior, not about enjoying him as a fictional bad person. There is a difference.

        4. Jago

          I got the impression they wanted to yell at people for having opinions they didn’t like, while simultaniously trying to justify their behaviour by posing it as the morally right thing to do. It doesn’t, however. It’s still very insulting, and blowing the comments in question out of proportion. It’s not really fair, either.

        5. Jago

          doesn’t= isn’t.

  22. Wright

    Just have been reading through a lot for he archives recently.

    There are few times when Mike makes an asshole move where the ultimate outcome is not, in some way, positive. For example: sitting in at Gender Studies to provoke Dorothy to slight Walk you ultimately ended in Dorothy getting over some of her hangups and instead validating Walk you as a person worthy of respect.

    1. Wright

      Ugh, Autocorrect.

      sitting in at Gender Studies to provoke Dorothy to slight Walky ultimately ended in Dorothy getting over some of her hangups and instead validating Walky as a person worthy of respect.

    2. Inahc

      he pushed ethan back into the closet early on.

      1. Inahc

        oh, and messed with walky just to record him crying.

        and encouraged amber to believe she was doomed to become her abuser.

        1. timemonkey

          You mistaking what he said for what he was trying to accomplish.

        2. Doomska

          Yeah you’re just rationalizing abuse and it’s kind of gross.

        3. Emily

          What you assume he was trying to accomplish because he has never in fact stated beneficent motives and even if he did it wouldn’t matter because the ends don’t justify the means.

        4. Fart Captor

          I don’t get why this is so hard for some people to grasp. Good intentions, being right, or even having (eventually) positive results wouldn’t actually excuse how he treats people.

          There is not one thing he’s supposedly done to help people that couldn’t have been accomplished WITHOUT being an asshole to them

        5. Emily

          It bums me out how eager people are to lionize Mike despite him being a pathological abuser and to even portray that abuse as helpful when that’s, you know, the exact mindset many abusers use to justify their treatment of others.

        6. thejeff

          Or maybe he was trying to hurt them and when it turned out good was when it backfired?
          Maybe he’s just messing with people, with no higher purpose.

          What exactly was he trying to accomplish with weird schemes to make Walky cry and record it, then play it later on for his friends? Where’s the higher purpose there?

          If he’s just good at spotting weaknesses and poking at them, you’d wind up with some cases where the person pokes reacts by overcoming the weakness. That doesn’t mean it was his intent.

        7. timemonkey

          Letting them know Walky wasn’t as okay as he liked to pretend? Or maybe he just hates Walky and is fine with his suffering?

        8. King Daniel

          The latter. Remember, Mike tried to break up Walky and Dorothy because he was pissed at a giant fart Walky had once let out in their room.

        9. Regalli

          Seven recordings. Only one is known to be about the breakup, and at least one was the result of an elaborate scheme involving faking web pages to lead Walky to believe his favorite sho had been cancelled.
          That is, first, a pretty ridiculous amount of effort to screw with one guy, and second, implied to be how a lot of those recordings were prepared.

          Either way, crying the night of your first serious relationship’s breakup is perfectly normal. No one would expect him to be fine, and it’s not a sign of long term distress because it happened mere hours ago. And Mike’s attitude about them was more ‘look, he’s crying.’ He didn’t even bother to bring up the previous night’s recording (and he can identify which video had which cause, another thing that’s seriously weird,) just showed Sarah one of his collection.

          This is not anywhere remotely appropriate behavior.

      2. Carms

        Indicative of malice, or fallibility?

        1. Doomska

          Yeah he only hurts his friends because he wants them to be better people. I’m glad people aren’t just spouting enabler logic to rationalize a shitty and toxic character.

        2. Aurora

          You keep conflating “debating complex character motivations” with “unequivocally supporting abusive actions as if it were real life”. Chill. Just let people enjoy an interestingly written character.

      3. Mr. Random

        I think you’re referring to the strip before this one, but I think his reaction here was supposed to show that he thought the closet was worse for Ethan.
        http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/wow/

        1. thejeff

          Look, he’s either a Xanatos level manipulator who gets credit when his schemes cause things to work out for the best, despite it not being obvious that was his intent, in which case he also gets the blame when they do damage, or he isn’t.
          When we don’t have clear motivation, it makes no sense to assume all the asshole things he does are for good reasons and any time things don’t work out is a failure on his part. That’s just twisting any evidence that doesn’t agree with your reading of the character.

      4. Lone Wolf

        Pretty sure his suggestion to Ethan to go back to hiding in the closet was him being sarcastic/facetious. When he found out that Ethan had started dating Joyce in an effort to actually do that, he got rather visibly upset, which is kind of a rarity for Mike.

        1. Red Comet

          It was 100% sarcasm, as was his entire conversation with Ethan in those few strips. In fact, reading them now right after these new ones you can see that Mike basically made the exact same arguments about Ethan’s hangups both times. The more recent strips just took away the sarcasm but the meaning is the same.

          Ethan is hung up on his family expectations way too much and is shouldering stuff that isn’t his burden to bear. He’s internalized who his mother thinks he should date. He’s dismissing his own real feelings (and possibly depression).

          Mike also called himself Ethan’s (only) asshole friend.

          Basically I think Mike certainly has ulterior motives for everything he does, and he is an asshole. But i do think he considers Ethan and Amber his friends.

          Sometimes people you are friends with are also just dicks for the fun of it, and abhor any slight whiff of (perceived) hypocrisy. Especially when you’re 18 and being an edgelord is seen as intelligence.

        2. thejeff

          And when you’re a dick for the fun of it and tear at the only people with low enough self esteem to put up with your bullshit – or those, like Walky, stuck with you as a roommate, then you’re an asshole.

          Even if you’re just being sarcastic.

      5. Jason

        Agreeing with those who said that Mike didn’t actually seem to be trying to push Ethan back into the closet. He was NOT subtle about disapproving of it.

        1. Inahc

          Wright was talking about “ultimate outcome”, though.

    3. Fart Captor

      @Wright:

      There’s a significant problem that often seems to get overlooked when people describe the final outcomes of Mike’s shitty actions towards his friends as “positive”, even while acknowledging that Mike was being an asshole.

      The pajama jeans incident is a good example, because I would agree that even though Mike clearly was pushing Walky in a direction that he knew would create problems for him, in the end Walky & Dorothy’s relationship was in a better place.

      But the thing is, even though Mike’s involvement helped determine both the timing and nature of the final outcome, which DID end up being better than how things were before Mike’s involvement, it doesn’t actually follow that Mike’s actions caused the better outcome.

      The problem with just stopping there is that it would be (inadvertently) glossing over the harm Mike’s actions did simply because the harm wasn’t permanent. If the initial result of Mike’s actions was harm, then it’s not enough for the eventual result to be better than things were before he acted. It also has to be better than what would have happened if Mike had stayed the fuck out of things, and sufficiently better to offset the harm Mike did in the process.

      Obviously, we can’t know exactly what would’ve happened if Mike had done nothing, but it’s still an important thing to consider.

      Dorothy and Walky wouldn’t have had that specific conversation where they finally talked things out, but that doesn’t mean they would never have worked through that. It probably wouldn’t have happened when it did, but they also might not have had to break up to get there.

  23. Derek

    what just happened?

  24. caesaria82

    So… Mike got that teacher fired? Is that what happened here? By basically catfishing her? With Bret as .. what? A front? There are layers to Mike’s Mike-ness here.

    That is. That’s a teenage criminal mastermind right there. All he needs now is an evil laugh and maybe an eye patch.

    1. lilyliv

      But… But… he’s intimidating enough already! XD

    2. Jason

      That’s the word I was after, catfishing. That was my read on the situation.

      1. Clif

        Mike doesn’t need an evil laugh and an eye patch.

  25. Doomska

    I feel like the best response to the fan-theorizing about Mike being secretly good and noble is just that Bojack Horseman quote- “There is no *deep down*.”

    That’s a slight overstatement of course, but the fact remains that how people act is a lot more important to judging them than any notion of a secret inner life that doesn’t actually impact other people in any way. We’re social creatures. The most important thing is how people behave towards others.

    Like even if Mike has been secretly in love with and pining after Ethan all this time- so what? Does that mitigate the harm he’s done? How does that redeem him?

    1. Doomska

      Or full quote

      “That’s the thing. I don’t think I believe in deep down. I kinda think that all you are is just the things that you do.”

      1. Brotato

        I both do and don’t agree with this, because social creatures or not, we are all incredibly complex and actions are not one-dimensional things. Actions can be interpreted in many ways, and different people will see them in different ways.

        In this instance, what matters os how Amber and Ethan perceive them, but, intent is something that still matters as well because Mike is ALSO. a person. He has his own perspective on his actions, as well as his own perspective on THEIR actions.

        It’s a little bit oversimplified and, IMO, emotionally lazy for people to reduce others to only what THEY perceive their actions to mean. Take “This Is Water” for example (David Foster Wallace, I believe?). It’s very important to stop and think about WHY someone is performing certain actions.

        There exists an extreme on the other end, as well, excusing abusers and the like because “that’s not how they meant it,” but a good balance between the two is healthy.

        1. Jason

          Trainee counsellor here and I absolutely disagree with this. You can say that the “deep down” doesn’t matter to you, doesn’t justify a person’s actions, and that’s your opinion and is fine. But the “deep down” impacts EVERYTHING. I’ve had something like six years of counselling in the last ten years and let me tell you, I’m still unravelling how deep my own “deep down” goes and how and why it influences my behaviour. Just recently I discovered (or fully realised) two things I do, one entirely social and one almost entirely not. Leftover programming from the first twenty years of my life and the abuse and bullshit I experienced during it.
          There is a deep down and believe me when I say, the overwhelming majority of people cannot even begin to perceive the depths of our own minds and being. It’s like someone who’s never seen the ocean seeing a lake and thinking they understand the depth and breadth of the ocean. Our minds are so overwhelmingly complex and the ways we’re influenced primarily by our past and massively by our early programming are indescribable in a short post.

          I hope I’m not coming across as patronising but this is my passion, and I impulsively blurt this shit out given half the chance.
          (And I could totally analyse why it’s so fascinating to me and why I feel such a strong drive to share it but I’ve rambled enough!)

        2. ischemgeek

          My take: Deep down exists and matters to your personality and motivations and brainspace.

          Deep down exists and doesn’t matter in terms of analyzing the impact of your behavior on others. If someone’s being abusive to others, that their own parents were abusive explains it but doesn’t excuse it, and it in no way mitigates the harm they’re doling out to those they abuse.

        3. thejeff

          Yeah pretty much this.

          It’s certainly real and it matters. Understanding what’s going on deep down can help someone overcome bad behavior patterns. It’s key to a lot of therapy.

          But it’s not a justification or an excuse. If you’re doing asshole things, you’re an asshole. Even if you were a victim yourself. (Mind you, I’ll spare a good deal of sympathy for such victims who are trying to deal with their problems or trying to change.)

        4. Jason

          I agree! There’s a difference between exploring something to understand behaviour, and exploring it to justify behaviour. If something needs justification you’re trying to change the way someone thinks of the action, rather than opening up the context of the action.
          It’s just EEEE it’s the most interesting thing ever to me and I’m shutting up now because otherwise I’m just repeating points and getting more excited about how fascinating the human mind is

        5. Inahc

          brains are pretty fascinating 🙂

        6. ischemgeek

          Yeah. Agreed.

          My folks often used their own backgrounds of abuse to justify/excuse their actions to me growing up (my dad hit me with a belt, that’s real abuse. It’s not abuse for me to hit you with my hand.) and as a grownass adult who has not hit anyone in anger except in self-defense situations since I was 16 (when I was an angry little shit of a kid, but I got better), I think that’s just so much bullshit.

        7. BigDogLittleCat

          This.

        8. Elisto

          I don’t know, I have mixed feelings on this. I volunteer in a lost and found department, and we get people who are rude because they’re stressed out because they lost something important (even if we don’t understand the importance), and people are hardly at their best when they’re upset or panicking. Knowing that’s usually why they’re rude means their rudeness doesn’t bother me, or the others I work with apparently, even though in pretty much every other context I’m really sensitive to people being rude to me. This became really apparent to me when we had someone from another department fill in for us one day, and she was very angry after just one person was rude, wanting to post signs telling people to not be rude, making comments about people later on. Because the reason for their rudeness didn’t matter to her, they were rude, she understandably didn’t like it, and she was going to do things to stop people from being rude to her in the future. But that job is much harder for us and even more stressful for the customers (who we do care about or we wouldn’t be volunteering) if we ignore why they’re rude and respond to/treat all rudeness the same. I think this is different than just having sympathy for them? Expressing sympathy does help lessen their rudeness usually, but that’s different from how *I* feel personally about being treated rudely.

        9. adjudicus

          I think its to do with the magnitude of the action, and how we’re more likely to be accommodating towards actions that are on a smaller scale. Like say for example person A has had a bad day, goes home and is rude to person B. Now imagine if person A had a bad day,but instead of only being rude beats the crap out of person B. In the first scenario, the intent sort of overrides the action because of how small scale it is, but in the second it doesn’t.

        10. thejeff

          The magnitude, or the scope.
          Being a jerk once in response to some specific event that pisses you off is one thing. Once you’ve turned being a jerk into your whole lifestyle, I don’t really care, even if I acknowledge that you’ve got some emotional trauma driving you.

          That trauma might provide an insight into helping you stop being a jerk, but it’s not a reason to put up with you being a jerk. Especially if you’re not showing any signs of improvement.

      2. Jago

        I believe in a different version of that quote, but it gets close to what I think is true.
        But that doesn’t mean the reasons for you doing something don’t matter. They don’t excuse what you do, but they might explain it. And a lot of people want to know, and want to understand the reason behind certain actions.

        Of course it’s easier to say some people do bad things because they are just evil, but I don’t believe it’s that simple.

        And the answer to the questions… it doesn’t. But who said that, really? Or do you just think that because people try to find a reason, or even a good reason behind Mike’s bs makes it somehow not bs?

        1. thejeff

          I don’t. But it seems a lot of people do. Understanding his reasons is one thing.
          Pretending all his Mike things really help people or have some beneficial purpose (even if it sometimes backfires) is something else.

        2. Jago

          “It seems” – this is your interpretation, and I don’t see anyone actually doing what you’re describing, so I’d have to disagree.

        3. thejeff

          “There are few times when Mike makes an asshole move where the ultimate outcome is not, in some way, positive”

          “chaotic good”

          “He does bad things for good reasons, but at the expense of happiness.”

          “He’s only really a jerk when others are acting stupid, he’s a decent person he just doesn’t like fakes and frauds”

          “his primary motivation is punishing the deserving”

          There’s actually been less on this strip than normal, possibly since Doomska jumped in and somehow derailed everyone into defending the Mike defenders on the grounds that you can enjoy asshole characters.

        4. Jago

          I can’t say that I agree with people who think Mike is actually not a jerk, because to me it’s so obvious that he is.
          Two out of the people you quoted to aknowledge that. Which was kind of my point. People theorizing about Mike’s intentions does not automatically mean they don’t aknowledge that he’s a jerk.

    2. not someone else

      On the one hand, I agree with you that people who keep wanting to drag Mike all the way towards being a good person, or anything more than an anti-villain really, are not getting it. He may sometimes target evil people (or people currently being dicks), and his behavior can be cathartic, but… like the actions of certain other characters in the comic, we need to distinguish between the comedy strips and the realistic ones.

      But at the same time, I don’t think getting hacked off at people overempathizing with a fictional character because they can’t distinguish “well-written and humanlike” from “good person” is going to like… effectively communicate anything, much less accomplish much, to be honest? I think zooming out might be necessary.

      1. thejeff

        I’m not sure we can distinguish between the comedy strips and the realistic ones. Even the comedy strips often wind up having realistic consequences and getting brought back up.
        Look at the early comic bit of Joyce getting Mike to beat up Joe on their date (and joining in herself). How many times has that come up again and how did it influence their relationship? “What was I rated Joe, before I hurt you?”

        And as a side note, I can’t think of a case of current Mike (as opposed to flashback Mike) targeting anyone evil. Or even really targeting anyone for being a dick. Walky, for being a gross manchild, is the closest I can think of.

      2. autogatos

        Not to mention there’s also just the simple fact that you can, in fact, acknowledge a character is both an asshole, and an interesting/fun character.

        Most of my favorite characters in fiction are people I would actually hate in real life. That’s the fun thing about fiction, it’s not real and you can explore/enjoy concepts that might not be so palatable in reality.

      3. autogatos

        And I mean honestly, I would like the character less if he somehow completely redeemed himself and became a wonderful person who apologized/made up for all his wrongdoings.

        His role in the story is to be an asshole, and I am totally fine with him having some sympathetic depth. That makes me like him more (I previously made the analogy to Spike from Buffy, or other villain characters we learn to love). But I don’t want to see (and don’t think we will) his character change COMPLETELY where he suddenly becomes Dorothy or something.

  26. newllend(henryvolt)

    ….wha- OK damn talk about a revenge trip.

  27. Xccj

    I’d like to think this was getting back at the teacher for slapping him, and the deal with Amber’s dad was getting back at her for bailing on him when he was trying to stand up for her.

    But poor Bret. I wonder if he knows he was involved in that, or if Mike manipulated him too.

    1. BigDogLittleCat

      Good points!

  28. BBCC

    Okay, here’s what I’m thinking –

    1) Mike is legitimately attracted to Ethan.

    2) This will not prevent Mike from hurting Ethan in his schemes or using Ethan in schemes to try to upset others (i.e. Danny).

    3) He seems to have used whatever he and Bret did while they were hanging out to get Bret to online date the teacher and then turn her in, getting her fired. Mike then dropped the kid like a hot potato.

    I’m mostly feeling sorry for Ethan and Bret here. It’s possible Mike has more emotional complexity than being entirely dickish, but it really doesn’t matter to me at this point. It’s possible he’ll change, which is fine, but until that happens he’s been pretty shitty.

    1. BBCC

      *Brent

      1. seregiel

        He looks upset at the end. I think Bret was actually real for him because he had prioritized him over the party initially. Bret got wrapped up in the end because Mike felt obligated to push him away so Blaine wouldn’t use him after the party back fired. Maybe they bickered over him being canceled on, but once a threat was made Mike saw an ends to a means that neutralized Blaine by removing Bret and the teacher that assaulted him. Just roll with the fight as a cover story for why it is the end.

        1. seregiel

          Coming from someone who still thinks that was a messed up way to put a bow on that package, and call it a day. Not defending Mikes actions at all, just that this one seems emotionally impacting him versus him simply being the grand puppeteer trying to pull strings towards an outcome. My sympathy pool is still low for this character. As previously stated, ends don’t justify the means and although understanding can help find redemption for this character it does not negate past harm.

        2. BBCC

          I think if that were the case, he’d be looking at Brent, rather than Ethan. I also think if they fought, someone would bring it up.

        3. Inahc

          eh, I think if Mike is hiding feelings for brent, there’s no way he’d turn around and risk brent seeing those feelings.

        4. BBCC

          That’s a good point, but I think the fact he’s staring at Ethan, in context with the current storyline, moreso indicates feelings for Ethan. Plus again, nobody brings up a fight.

        5. seregiel

          Mike says “our argument is over.” He is suggesting they fought, and then turns away after dismissing him.

        6. adjudicus

          I think you misread, he’s saying “arrangement” instead of “argument”

        7. BBCC

          He said ‘our arrangement is over’.

  29. JessWitt

    Darn it Mike. I mean the teacher deserved it but not at the expense of leading Brent on.

  30. Rhiannon King

    You know what? DOA!Mike goes much, much harder than Shortpacked!!Mike.

    1. kgy121

      When you don’t have superpowers, you have to work harder to get the same results.

  31. Nono

    Wait is it Bret or Brent? Comic says one thing, tags say another.

    1. asingleplum

      Mike could be doing tbe Ron Swanson thing of purposefully calling someone by the wrong name to force emotional distance when they get too close. He liked this boy. He is actively deciding not to anymore because liking him is inconvenient.

      1. asingleplum

        Could also just be a typo. Idk.

        1. Inahc

          They’re good names, Bront! 😀

  32. Bagge

    NOOOO! Cool-hair-dude!

  33. porto

    He chose this path. Sorry Mike, your feelings may be legitimate, but that does not mean we need to respect them.

  34. asingleplum

    So I’m guessing Mike seduced Brent as a means to an end (revenge on the teacher) but developed actual feelings for him in the process and ended things asap to avoid having someone he cared about aka a potential weakness to be exploited by Blaine?

    1. BenRG

      No, I think that Willis is demonstrating that Mike has the ability to just turn off his emotions and empathy when he doesn’t want or needs to have them.

      1. thejeff

        Which has interesting implications for what people are perceiving as current!Mike’s feelings for Ethan.

      2. Nobody

        Yes I’m sure that frown in the last panel is displaying Mike turning off his emotions, surely. I think Willis is showing Mike will take action regardless of his feelings, even if it hurts him too he’ll do what he thinks needs to be done.

        1. Red Comet

          This is what I think too. Mike’s got the “holding back tears” eyes in that last panel but seems resolute.

  35. abysswatcher1993

    Mike, stop being a manipulative bastard just to give some sense of karmic justice! That guy really seemed to care about you, but as Willis states in the alt text, you are a monster like Hulk.

    1. Michelle J. Caboose

      The ending theme referenced in the alt-text is called ‘The Lonely Man,” and usually (always?) played as Bruce (sorry, David) Banner started walking along a deserted road. Alone again, naturally.

      1. abysswatcher1993

        But at difference of Banner, Mike is responsible for being lonely. He did this to himself.

  36. BenRG

    It’s these displays of border-inhuman coldness that makes me think that Mike suffers from a psychopathic behavioural disorder.

    1. Jago

      In that context “suffers from” feels like the wrong term, heh. But I also don’t know another one.

  37. Chronos

    Is it just me, or does Mike look *really* short in that last panel…?

  38. Nobody

    Alright I know everyone hates mike currently but here me out for a second. Could it be he realized he’s unintentionally caused pain to multiple parties with his shenanigans forcing Blaine to be with his family and that caused a bit of a break in him, the no one is just speech being he himself coming to terms with that. Now he’s attempting to isolate himself the most efficient way (being a giant ass) in some deluded belief that he’ll harm anyone close to him but trying to inflict his existence on those ‘deserving’ (like the teacher). Just a thought to explain why he looks so sad at the end of this strip.

    1. Emily

      It could be, but that’s a far more sympathetic reading than Mike deserves.

  39. Jago

    No, still confused.

  40. Keulen

    There’s the perpetual scowl in used to seeing from Mike. And maybe I’m not remembering his asshole behavior in the Walkyverse very well, but it seems to me like DoA Mike is way more manipulative and just more of an asshole than Walkyverse Mike ever was. I’m not sure if it’s because in DoA he has a backstory and reasons for how he became an asshole or if it’s something else.

  41. BKC

    “They’re bad dogs, Bret”

  42. Beef Jerky

    He may not be the hero they want.

    He may not be the hero they deserve.

    But sometimes he is the hero they need.

    He is…

    The Dick Knight.

  43. Orangey

    I dont know what I should be feeling here, I’m still of the mind that Mike at worst is an abusive dick and at best a bad friend, even if he has a good outcome happen from his plans, I feel bad for Bret more than I do for Mike. I just don’t believe in all this chaotic good shit- i do this for a reason etc etc – people are split up into good people or douchebags or a combination of both depending on circumstances. And Mike is to me just a douchebag

  44. Mr D

    Sssooo I see a lot of assumptions that Mike was involved (Sexually? Romantically?) with this Brent fella and I kinda don’t know if I see it? Wouldn’t it be counterproductive to his plan of getting him to screw the teach (HOPREFULLY only srew her over and not literally).

    I Guess this is again related to my rant from a few weeks ago about how people seem incapable of not seeing everything with shipping goggles.

    1. BBCC

      Amber indicates that Mike and Brent are something different from friends here: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/quarterback/

      And not necessarily. It wouldn’t be hard for Mike of all people to convince someone he was involved with to go along with one of his plans. Maybe he told Brent she hit him or that she was bullying his friend or heck, maybe Brent hated that teacher. There’s a lot of ways to get him to do it, especially if you’re getting a guy with a crush on you to do things for you.

  45. fishamaphone

    Huh. Panel 3 of this comic has a lot more subtext now:

    http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/structure/

    1. DailyBrad

      Yeah, I was not *exactly* right with my guess then, but close enough. That’s a sinking feeling if there ever is one.

  46. stoodmuffin

    Does Brett not look like Ryan?

  47. Lemonycain

    OK ok what if all this is because Mike really likes (or even has a crush on) Amber

    Like he’s sleeping with Ethan in the present because he knows Ethan becoming cool with his own sexuality will make Amber happy- and in the past he fucked over the teacher that was bullying her and her abusive dad to protect her.

    He cares about her because as a true cynic he appreciates that she’s a genuinely kind person and he hates the world so much he can’t stand to see people mistreating her because it just confirms the worst things he believes about humanity.

  48. NinjaNick

    No more Mr. Nice Mike.

  49. Sigh

    I… don’t know what’s going on.

  50. acher4

    …what is going on?
    I am kind of so confused during the last strips…
    sooooo confused… and so many feels for Mike – can’t…comprehend.

  51. Nym

    Aw, man, that “I thought we were friends” face of disappointment.

  52. Delicious Taffy

    I just got done watching Shin Godzilla (great movie, BTW), and I’ve gotta say, the people in that movie seemed to have an easier time defeating Gojira, than anyone has had convincing Mike stans that he’s just an edgy jagoff.

    1. DailyBrad

      They had better ammo, for starters.

  53. C.T Phipps

    So Mike destroys Bret to hurt a teacher who was mean to Amber.

    Probably after Bret fell for him.

    Damn, he’s awful.

  54. kitty

    even after reading comments i dont understand whats happening but i maybe dont want to know

  55. Peter

    Lot of good comments on this strip.

    It seems to me that Mike is fundamentally a really twisted person (and we need more backstory on that). He doesn’t seem to be able to relate in an overtly friendly way to anybody, despite having a deep insight into psychology, allowing him to know which buttons to push on everybody around him.

    But throughout the story, whenever Ethan and Amber have been involved, Mike has acted consistently to protect them (at least, “protect” them in a manner consistent with his twisted personality). He has had some missteps, but his motivation on this point has been clear: protect Ethan and Amber.

    Now, it’s probably more complicated than this, but Mike definitely views Ethan and Amber as something like quasi-family. Anything that he does which involves them is almost always done to help them, as he understands helping.

    So yes, Mike is a twisted, toxic guy, but his motivations are not entirely evil. Even if his actions usually are — even at his best, they can be described as “extremely questionable”.

    1. C.T Phipps

      Mind you, that Bret guy is someone Mike destroyed for no reason.

      1. Nobody

        Nah, he used him to destroy the teacher, then dropped him

  56. Darkoneko

    Woah.

  57. Zaxares

    There are multiple ways one could interpret this sequence of events, and none of them are good.

    1. Was it Bret who got into the online relationship with Ms. Phillips? Or was it Mike PRETENDING to be Bret? If the latter, that is ALL sorts of not OK. I’m presuming that the latter is indeed what happened given that Bret seems remarkably unphased by the fact that the teacher he was supposedly having an online relationship with got terminated.

    2. Even if it WAS Bret himself who actually got into the relationship, the fact that Mike instigated or manipulated Bret into it is also morally unconscionable, akin to someone who encourages a married partner on to cheat.

    3. Yes, from what we saw, Ms Philips was a mysognistic teacher who didn’t like (or even outright bullied) Amber. But cases like this should be reported to the principal or superintendent. Taking the law into your own hands, especially extreme acts of vigilante justice like this kind of sting, is going down a very dangerous slippery slope. At some point, the harm you create to oust the “enemy” is going outweigh the benefits you’ve brought.

    The only possible GOOD outcome I can see from this is if Mike had absolutely nothing to do with the situation and he’s just refusing to associate with Bret now that the truth is out. But… knowing Mike, this is highly unlikely. 😛

    1. Emily

      How is that a good outcome. Brett was victimized by a teacher so now he should be ostracized?

      1. Zaxares

        Good for Mike, that is. The synopsis of this affair seems to be that Bret (possibly under instigation from Mike) initiated the contact. Ms Phillips is guilty of not having put a stop to it when it was clear what was happening, but Bret is partially culpable for this mess.

        1. thejeff

          13 year old kids are not “partially culpable” for inappropriate relationships with adults. Ever. They’re kids.
          It’s Ms Phillips job not to do that. Regardless of provocation.
          I’ve got a friend who teaches high school. He’s had freshmen come on to him. If he responds, it’s still his crime, not theirs. They’re kids.

          Mike is of course the exception, because he’s a fictional uber-manipulative asshole. But he still couldn’t have set this up if Ms. Phillips wasn’t vulnerable to it.

    2. ischemgeek

      I agree with you right up until the last point. Having been bullied by a teacher, the only effective way to deal with it is to get the victim out of the teacher’s class. If you report to the principal, the principal talks to the teacher, doesn’t do anything to the teacher because principal will never believe a kid over a teacher unless there’s video evidence (and sometimes not even then), teacher gets pissed off and takes it out on the kid. Kid winds up worse off.

      If you report to superintendant, likewise only you also make an enemy of the principal whose pride is injured that you went over their head. Principal and teacher both take it out on the kid. Kid is worse off still.

      The literal only thing that deals successfully with a bully who has institutional power to back them up is to get the victim out from under the bully’s thumb.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        This is exactly why I dropped out of high school. How do you get help from an authority figure, when all of the authority figures are the ones causing the problem?

        1. ischemgeek

          Yep.

          I didn’t have the option of dropping out given I was 8 when the teacher was bullying me and as I aged up being bullied was all I could remember. Sooo I just was powered by spite.

        2. Zaxares

          I’m sorry to hear about your experience, ischemgeek. 🙁 However, I would say that your principal was a shitty principal who didn’t do their job properly. There was a case in my school where a teacher was bullying one of the students (heck, I got bullied too, though by a different teacher), the student told the parents who told the principal, and the teacher was unceremoniously fired the next month after an investigation.

          I do agree that the first thing to do should be to get the student out of the bullying teacher’s class though. I suppose in Amber’s case the stabbing incident kind of pre-empted that.

    3. erejnion

      Whey, who would think Mike would do something that is not morally okay. Mike is not interested in bringing benefits, and that’s exactly why we like him as a character in a fictional work.

    4. thejeff

      It’s pretty clear that whether it was actually Mike or Brent online with Mrs Phillips, it was Mike’s plan and they were both in on it – thus their “arrangement”.
      It’s also worth pointing out, since it doesn’t seem to have been, that if Mrs Phillips did actually get into such an inappropriate relationship, it’s unlikely to have been the first time. Even with Mike’s manipulation, she had to be vulnerable to it.

  58. Bob

    It’s still hard for me to quite pin Mike’s character down, but my current running theory is that his primary motivation is punishing the deserving, which he will do at the expense of protecting the innocent instead of in the service of.

    1. figureaddict

      So Mike = Lucifer?

  59. Ainara

    Wow! That’s fucked!

  60. Buli-Buli

    Well, now the subject is back, I guess I can scrap my theory Blaine was involved with Ms. Phillips. Would have been an easier scandal to reveal, even if it wouldn’t have necessarily led to her bring fired.

    I thought that because Blaine was exactly the kind of parent to talk shit about his child. Call her an idiot who ought to be failing and stuff. But he’s also the last person that would bother to ever meet his daughter’s teacher. So, if he was going to poison hervagainst Amber (because teachers are used to parents gushing about their kids) it would have to havevbeen in a differenting setting.

    So, either Blaine got dragged to a parent-teacher meeting in the past, he had a fling, or Phillips was honestly just that petty.

  61. Lauralot

    Honestly, I was of no particular opinion on Mike, but the more I read comment sections with people declaring that everyone who views him as anything other than a mustache-less Snidely Whiplash is an abuse-enabler, I now love him. Purely out of spite. Nice job breaking it, Morality Police.

    1. Lauralot

      No, but really, if Mike were a Flat Evil Character Who Is Purely An Asshole And Has No Motivation But Asshattery, we wouldn’t be spending all this time on him. The only ‘flat’ villains Willis writes are the ones we don’t see much of. Ross thought he was doing right by Becky (no, it doesn’t justify what he did). Willis cut a casually racist line from Blaine because he thought it would make him seem too lazily one-dimensionally evil in every conceivable way. Even Mary has nice parents who aren’t judgmental and holier than thou like her.

      Is Mike some unsung hero who secretly always has everyone’s best at heart? Of course not. There’s no benefit to making Walky think his favorite show was cancelled, or giving his DVDs to skateboarders to prop up their ramp. There’s no master plan in growling “HAIL SATAN” into Joyce’s phone. But Mike’s suggestion that Ethan go back in the closet was blatantly sarcastic and he displayed visible surprise and disgust when Ethan took him seriously and started dating Joyce. It doesn’t mean facetiously agreeing with all of Ethan’s self-loathing was a good idea or a part of a plan to help him, but to read Mike as at all serious with that suggestion is willfully obtuse.

      Mike’s a jerk who’s never had to grow up and has only gotten away with being an ass and a self-imposed Lone Ranger up to this point because his friends haven’t had the social capital to cut him off for being a dick. That’s going to change soon, and Mike is going to be greatly humbled and will have to change his ways or be alone and miserable forever. Understanding what makes him act this way doesn’t excuse the things he does.

      But as an abuse survivor, I’m really sick of hearing about how not immediately writing Mike off as purely awful means I’m excusing an abuser and I have no moral compass and all that jazz. I don’t make excuses for toxic people in reality, but I refuse to give up exploring nuance and potential in fiction, and I don’t apologize for that.

      1. thejeff

        To me, that’s a perfectly reasonable approach to him.

        But in every strip with Mike in it, there are always commenters talking about how his schemes alway help people or are always well intended. I think most of the people you’re reacting to (which probably includes me) are themselves reacting to the whitewashing of Mike.

        1. Nobody

          I’m not sure anyone is excusing his behavior or saying he always does the right thing, just trying to figure out why he’s doing it.

        2. Inahc

          “I’m not sure anyone is excusing his behavior or saying he always does the right thing”

          then scroll up a bit and read the comments again. there’s at least one of them almost every day. today it was “There are few times when Mike makes an asshole move where the ultimate outcome is not, in some way, positive”

        3. BBCC

          Pretty much this. I don’t mind when people like Mike as a character or want to see him get better or explore his motives, but explanations like ‘he’s not really an asshole, he’s trying to get people to be better, he’s well intended, etc.’ bother me a lot.

      2. Matticus

        This is more or less how I feel about Mike. It’s possible to find a character funny and also acknowledge that he or she is an asshole.

        I think that maybe people on both sides of the Great Mike Debate are taking the mostly-joke-a-day webcomic too seriously.

        1. thejeff

          You mean the mostly-joke-a-day webcomic that’s focused on depression and exploring prejudice and privilege and the traumas of a fundamentalism upbringing?

          Funny as it can be at times, there’s a lot of serious in this comic.

        2. Matticus

          There is a lot of serious in this comic, which is part of why I love it. But when you’re trying to justify everything an asshole character does or saying that anyone who doesn’t boycott the comic because of said character doesn’t have a moral compass, you might be taking it too seriously.

        3. thejeff

          Which I’ve never said. But I will point out some of those cases when other people start talking about how Mike’s schemes always help people (or are always intended to help people.)

        4. Matticus

          You’re not the one saying anyone that doesn’t instantly hate Mike doesn’t have a moral compass, no. That attitude, and the “Mike is always trying to help” people are the ones that need to relax.

        5. thejeff

          Even Doomska doesn’t seem to be saying that, though they go farther than I would. At least of Mike the character.
          If you’re making excuses for why Mike’s behavior is okay though, I can see wondering. Though I’d probably put it down to perception of what his behavior actually is.

        6. Matticus

          Is anyone else unable to reply to a comment if it’s more than three or four replies “deep” into a discussion?

        7. Arian

          No, you just use the last Reply link in the thread. Which might be what you meant: multiply-nested comments end up without their own Reply link, which prevents further nesting. But not further replying.

      3. autogatos

        THIS thank you yes. I keep saying I’d HATE Mike as a real person, but I love this type of character in fiction. It’s a popular character type. There’s a reason people love characters like House, Spike from Buffy, other villains in shows, etc. Fiction is a place where you can enjoy the complexity of the somewhat sympathetic asshole without the context of real world repercussions.

    2. Rain

      Both your comments to the power of 100, basically.

      Also, early on Willis talked about how he was having trouble writing Mike because he hadn’t made a good transition from IW! continuity. There were much better villains and there were much more interesting jerks, and Willis was struggling to find a new niche for Mike.

      This storyline is obviously an attempt to fix that: to find a new way of looking at and writing Mike.

      People who don’t want to see Mike become more three dimensional because they feel that sympathetic villains are always abuse apologism aren’t gonna get what they want from this.

      1. thejeff

        I’m perfectly happy with sympathetic villains. I’m unhappy with the common attempts to cast Mike into some kind of creepy hero role.

        It’s actually interesting to compare this arc with Mike to the recent one with Joe. Both characters who have serious problems and who have their staunch defenders and who were pretty one-dimensional, with only a few hints of depth.
        Joe got a modern day character growth arc, facing some of his faults and trying to grow and change. Though we’ve seen him interact with his father, we haven’t seen any real backstory beyond the obvious.
        Mike, so far, hasn’t shown any signs of change or growth in the present. A few enigmatic expressions, which might mean something, but real change as yet. Instead we’ve gotten a piece of backstory, which shows a more sympathic side, but is still very open to interpretation.

        Joe changed. Mike’s apparently staying Mike, but maybe with a different niche?

        1. Matticus

          If I had to guess, this is the first steps in a change in Mike’s niche, and possibly development of his character. My interpretation of the flashbacks and his scenes with Ethan is that when he was a kid he used his Mike-ishness to help his friends. Seeing his plans backfire and being confronted by Blaine (maybe the “I used to be like you” bit hit close to home?) turned him into what he is today.

          BUT, what he is today isn’t happy, and he’s only just starting to realize it. Whether he’ll actually change his shitty behavior as a result of this realization is an open question.

        2. Rain

          Yeah I think it’s too soon to say Mike is “staying Mike”. But I think he’s way, way deeper into the ditch of being a shitty person than Joe was, so I think it’s going to take a lot longer for him to noticeably change in terms of how he treats other people. Like, if he changed too quickly it wouldn’t be believable to anyone. (Some readers have expressly said that they aren’t going to believe ANY redemption that happens with Mike no matter what, or that they’ll stop reading in protest if he starts to get one, but the majority of readers would be more open to the change if it happened slowly.)

          I mean, Mike has been a two-dimensional jerk for a really long time. Multiple decades. I think Willis is trying to shift him into someone who’s more human and learns lessons and so on, but it will obviously take a lot longer than just one book.

          Anyway.

          I think by this point Mike superfans and Mike antis are talking past each other in every interaction, and I’m not sure whether there’s much that can actually be done except ignoring one another. (Note: Mike antis being distinct from people who just don’t like Mike – the superfans and the antis are the ones repeatedly engaging with each other in an increasingly hostile way.)

          Personally, I am more or less indifferent to Mike. Despite the fact that I have had both friends who were jerks and tore me down all the time and people I lived with who crossed the line into actual abuse – despite the fact that I have had people I thought I could trust who actually sabotaged my friendships with other people and isolated me from my family in order to better abuse me – Mike just doesn’t bring any of that up for me. I’m not bothered by him, and as such I’m also not bothered by people seemingly excusing his actions. Because those actions aren’t real, and they don’t happen to trigger me wrt superficially similar actions that were real. (I mean Mike’s never successfully sabotaged any of Ethan or Amber’s friendships, nor did he successfully sabotage Walky’s relationship – since my abusers were successful, “superficial” similarity.)

          (I’m not interested in trying to read anyone else’s mind, so I’m not going to argue that they are or aren’t actually excusing his actions.)

          Mike is a fictional character. He could reenact my exact abuse on Ethan, and I’m not sure he would trigger anything for me even then. But whether or not he’s secretly Chaotic Good and manipulating and hurting the people around them “for their own good”… he’ll still be more interesting to me during this arc than he has for the rest of DOA, and more interesting = more entertaining, so I’ll still be glad of his development, probably.

          Even stories that actively romanticize Bad Stuff like abuse and rape… those stories can be deeply healing, and even though I don’t personally cope in that way with the things that have happened to me, I respect that other people do.

          Or, put more beautifully than I ever could:

          http://betthearm.tumblr.com/post/173776104310/fuckyeahcomicsbaby-different-stories-resonate

          Different stories resonate with different people.

          I don’t know what Mike superfans get out of him and the potential that he’s an Asshole with a Heart of Gold. But I doubt that all of those people are really awful folks who would watch me being abused in RL and eat popcorn. I think it would behoove everyone in the comic section of extending them the same benefit of the doubt.

          But, lacking that, ignoring each other. Letting the folks who hate Mike vent about how awful he is without trying to defend him, and letting the folks who love Mike express that without grilling them about their real life experiences and behavior.

          (You don’t strike me as a Mike anti, btw. You strike me as someone who’s just kind of bewildered and unnerved by Mike superfans. But I want to reiterate that I don’t think you were grilling me or anything.)

        3. Inahc

          “I doubt that all of those people are really awful folks who would watch me being abused in RL and eat popcorn.”

          I don’t think anyone sees them as that sort of cartoon villain. But I do worry that their way of thinking leads to not believing abuse/bullying/harrassment victims, telling them that it wasn’t really abuse, or that it was “for their own good”, etc.

          Interpreting bad behaviour as good behaviour, especially when it’s done for people with tons of privilege, is not good for society. I want to challenge that and remind people that this stuff isn’t healthy, so they’re more likely to pay attention if a real person tells them it’s happening to them.

          But I do also think that yelling at people about it is… Not constructive. Although I’ve been close to losing my own temper too when people insist they haven’t seen anyone saying the things I’ve just posted links to people saying.

        4. Rain

          (Swapping computers, might get a different gravitar)

          Okay, so, you reject my example because it’s too extreme, but you’re still exhibiting the kind of thinking I was objecting to. It’s still not fair to assume that people who like Mike would disbelief victims of abuse/bullying/harassment or tell them it was “for their own good”*, and you’re talking down to an awful lot of people by assuming they can’t make distinctions between what’s acceptable in fiction and what’s acceptable in real life without being challenged on these points.

          As I said in my loooooong comment, I’m trying not to play mind-reader with anyone else in the comment section, so I won’t insist that no one you’ve linked to (and I’ve read your links, though I also remember most of these comments from the first time I read them) would actually defend real-life abuse, but I do want to point out that for a lot of people — and this is going by what a lot of Mike fans have said, when they’ve explained their support of him at all — do consider Mike to, himself, be so cartoonish that it should be obvious they wouldn’t condone similar actions, so they don’t always say as much explicitly.

          I’ve also seen Mike described, varyingly, as “a force of nature rather than a real character” (so far from being a real person that he’s not even a convincing fictional one!), as a God of Chaos, and as a tool Willis uses to progress the narrative. I think it’s fair to assume that people who describe Mike in these terms don’t know any real people they’d seriously say are Chaos Gods or narrative tools, and as such I’d think it’s fair to assume that people who describe Mike that way have a different attitude towards him than towards real people.

          I know I’ve also seen both anti-Mike people and Mike superfans having really unproductive conversations where there’s just this fundamental disconnect, where the people defending Mike in the present will say, “I know Mike is fictional and I wouldn’t like him if he were real and I don’t think anyone’s defending real abuse,” and then anti-Mike people provide links of people who were defending Mike’s fictional actions, and the disconnect (where the latter group of people think they’ve proven that some Mike fans defend real abuse, and the former group of people think that a thousand people defending Mike’s fictional actions will never be the same as one person defending real abuse) causes the conversation to just get weirdly stalled.

          I’d guess that’s why linking to the comments other people have made has been so frustrating for you. (Though I don’t mean to single you out — you’re far from the only person who has linked to past comics or past comments in these conversations.)

          * I mean, that they’d do it any more than anyone else would, because we’ve got a big ole culture of victim-blaming that, in particular, already treats victims of these things like we’re lying, or actually wanted to be sexually assaulted, so on and so forth. But the folks who hold these beliefs aren’t getting them from characters like Mike, and assertions that fiction effects (not a typo) reality almost always have cause and effect backwards. Like, the reason why we have so much media that treats getting a girl drunk as “getting lucky” instead of “violating her consent” is because that idea is deeply embedded into our culture already. Fiction reflects reality far more often than it effects it, and for the situations where fiction affects reality, it tends to follow some patterns. (For example, a TV show that portrays gay people as Human can have a measurable impact on the attitudes of mild** homophobes, but we’ve had a lot of shows that portray murder in a positive light and yet actual murder rates continue to decrease. Hannibal was really popular, but none of the viewers decided that cannibalism was cool. Every now and then, someone will attempt to hold up heavy metal or video games or, at the turn of the 20th century, women reading novels at all, as the cause of rising societal ills. But I don’t think there’s ever been a single study that managed to successfully distinguish between correlation — where someone who likes violence in RL might also enjoy it in video games — and causation, where a ‘normal’ person with no RL violent tendencies developed RL violent tendencies after playing too much Call of Duty***.)

          ** “Mild” being the key word. Deeply-entrenched homophobia sees this sort of thing as part of the Liberal Conspiracy to Turn Everyone Gay, and even watching the show won’t do anything to change their mind. Fiction isn’t magic.

          *** And then, too, there’s the fact that Mike’s portrayal in-comic has actually not been very romantic? Anyone who actually sees him as a “positive” portrayal of an abuser and a reason to disbelieve abuse victims must be mightily predisposed to already seeing abusers that way, because these flashback comics are the only ones where any of Mike’s victims could be described as “bad people who deserved it”, or “lying about their abuse at his hands”, and even in these flashback comics he’s also hurt Brent, and Amber herself — albeit unintentionally.

          Mike is a lovable**** asshole, which is actually pretty far from how actual abusers present themselves in public, and has a lot more to do with why people disbelieve abuse victims (“What do you mean? Him? He’s so nice and charming! I can’t believe he’d ever raise his voice to you!” “Oh, he’s told us how you can never do anything right, he’s actually a saint for putting up with you tbh.” “What do you mean, she? Women don’t abuse people!”) than characters who can literally be hired to punch your date for having impure thoughts about you. Reminding people that Mike would be a jerk in real life is of questionable value in helping them to spot RL abusers.

          **** Some exceptions apply, obviously. 😉

        5. Inahc

          I wasn’t talking about people who like mike, I was talking about people who argue that mike’s behaviour is somehow good. people who have literally used “for their own good” as a description of mike’s actions.

        6. Rain

          Again, I have read the comments that you’ve linked. I know exactly what you’re talking about, and yet we’re still having the miscommunication I described.

          Rationalizing and even defending fictional actions, even when those actions are abusive, is not the same thing as defending real life abuse.

        7. Inahc

          I disagree. Whether an action is itself good or bad is fairly independent of whether it happened in reality or fiction. If I describe an action, people can make sensible arguments about its morality without needing to know whether it actually happened or not.

        8. Rain

          Well, your disagreement is obvious, and is the source of the aforementioned conflict. I don’t really know where to go from here.

          I guess I’d argue that one important difference I’m sure we can both agree on is that if Mike were a real person, it would be morally reprehensible to stand around, like we all are, arguing about whether or not he’s a good person. All of his, Mike’s defenders and his critics alike, would have an obligation to step in and help mike’s victims (to the extent that they’d allow it — helping victims in real life is often Fraught).

          Mike’s very fictionality is what allows for arguing about his actions at all. It’s why thought experiments exist — why it’s okay for philosophy professors to ask students how they’d solve the Trolley Problem, and why students who answer the question aren’t actually all horrible people who are in favor of committing RL murder.

          And, I don’t know. I just get nervous when people start ascribing these nasty traits to other folks online that they don’t know. If another person can be turned into an abuse apologist for defending Mike, well, then it becomes acceptable to treat that person really poorly. I’m more worried about the tone I’m seeing in some of these conversations, where people come really close to calling other, real people “monsters” over their interpretation of fiction. Dehumanizing other people is so easy to do online, where you can’t see the actual impact of your words on someone else’s face, where you can become the hero of your own crusade. People start telling themselves, “It’s not really harassment if my target deserves it, right?”

          I’ve seen various fandoms make this transition, and the result is… bad.

          In the immortal words of Terry Pratchett, “Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”

        9. Inahc

          “If another person can be turned into an abuse apologist for defending Mike, well, then it becomes acceptable to treat that person really poorly. I’m more worried about the tone I’m seeing in some of these conversations”

          so you’re worried about how those people might be treated badly, kinda like I’m worried about how victims might be treated badly? 🙂
          that part does seem reasonable – I try not to tone police but I was feeling a bit uncomfortable with some of the comments too. and apparently a bunch of them got deleted now?

          I still don’t think the solution is “stay quiet and let people spread their harmful ideas about what actions are socially acceptable”. I’m gonna keep politely disagreeing with them. But I agree that attacking them isn’t helpful.

          after all, they’re not *nazis*. 😉

        10. Inahc

          aaand I just noticed these comments are not on today’s comic. doh.

        11. Rain

          I guess the question for your points in this comment are: “which victims?” and “what harm? Be specific.”

          Because I, too, am concerned about actual victims of actual abuse in the real world. Victims like, again, myself.

          But I don’t agree that “challenging” (to use your word) Mike’s superfans, even when they actually defend his actions as helpful within the webcomic, is actually “stopping people from spreading harmful ideas about what actions are acceptable in the real world”, because I do not agree that Mike’s supporters are arguing that what Mike does in the comic would be acceptable in the real world, let alone that anyone who has ever defended Mike’s actions in the comment section of this web comic has been persuasive enough, or influential enough, to spread ideas.

          Like, we are talking an incredibly niche audience, here. Even if we pretended for a moment that any web comic — even a super popular one — had the same kind of social influence that mainstream TV does, you’re not talking about challenging ideas present in the comic themselves but from a few fringe Mike fans in the comments on said comic. What percentage of DoA’s audience actually reads the comments at all? Of that percent, how many people choose to read the comments on contentious Mike strips, rather than avoiding the comments on those strips so as to avoid seeing this argument for the hundredth time?

          How many people are really in danger of being negatively influenced by the Mike superfans at all, much less being so negatively influenced that they start thinking abuse victims are actually benefited by abusers in real life?

          idk, it just… does not seem like an efficient vector for helping abuse victims, and so I come back around to prioritizing the people I’ve seen actually legitimately harmed by efforts to police what kind of fiction people are allowed to enjoy, versus hypothetical abuse victims who might, potentially, be harmed by having a friend disbelieve them because of attitudes towards Mike from his superfans.

          (I’m much more sympathetic to the angle that people who have been traumatized themselves might find defenses of and excuses for and rationalizations of Mike’s behavior triggering, than the argument that folks who do those things are actually affecting society in any significant way. Because… no. None of us are going to have that kind of impact on society by commenting here, for good or ill, and certainly not a profound enough impact to make someone who would have been a good ally to abuse victims into an abuse apologist.)

          However, this conversation has reminded me that I should look up shelters in my area. I currently have enough free time to donate some of it to causes I care about, and volunteering at a shelter for abuse victims would be a good way of making a positive difference at least in my local community, now that I’ve depressed myself with a reminder of how futile most arguments online usually are.

        12. Rain

          man I am just tl;dring all over the place here, but another thing to add: some people who are defending Mike or asking what he’s did that was so wrong are also just kind of… victims of how long DoA has been running. There’s a LOT of stuff to keep in your head all at once, and it’s easy to forget that something happened. (I’ve seen a lot of folks who just plum forgot that there was a strip where Mike explicitly laid out his motivations for sleeping with Ethan, although as this storyline has progressed I think it’s made more and more sense to doubt that strip — not, “I don’t think that’s really why Mike is doing this”, but “I don’t think Mike was being fully honest with himself there”.)

          like there’s a fair amount of diversity among Mike Fans. A lot of the superfans who defend him as “funny” are explicitly clinging to his very-early-IW! characterization as an EdgeLord(tm) who doesn’t care about anyone or anything. Some people think that makes for an awesome character.

          And there are a troubling amount of people who think that “trolling” and cyberbullying are a less-real, less-serious form of abuse, and those people are probably predisposed to being fans of very-early-EdgeLord(tm) Mike… but again, cause and effect are probably backwards there, and I worry that our propensity as a species to excuse harassing people online as “not ‘real’ harassment” does more to normalize that kind of abusive behavior than a thousand characters like Mike.

        13. autogatos

          Like Rain said, I think you’re reeeeally not giving us enough credit, and it’s frankly kind of insulting. I can’t speak for everyone else obviously but I can assure you I am QUITE capable of discerning the difference between fiction and reality and am very clear that what is acceptable in fiction is not necessarily acceptable in reality. I have been a victim of abusive behavior on MULTIPLE occasions in real life and frankly find it pretty offensive to be constantly accused of condoning behavior that I have been victimized by just because I like a fictional character.

          I mean your logic here basically assumes that, for example, anyone who enjoys a show like say, Dexter and is able to sympathize with the main character would also be sympathetic of serial killers in real life which is…an insane stretch.

          For whatever reason, even perfectly morally sound people may enjoy and even sympathize with antiheroes, lovable jerks, villains, etc. in fiction even while remaining perfectly capable of condemning that type of behavior in real life.

        14. Rain

          Additionally, because I realize I never said this part and it was important:

          I assume that Mike antis do find Mike triggering. And I don’t mean that they’re wrong to do so. I just wanted to… provide a perspective on how someone could be an abuse survivor of even very similar behavior and not be bothered by Mike even so, and that I think it’s feeling like I do – being somewhat neutral on Mike’s behavior simply because it isn’t real, and thus finding explorations and even rationalizations of his behavior interesting – that makes other readers seem callous.

          I don’t think I’m wrong for not being bothered by Mike. I don’t think it makes me actually-callous. I think that folks reading this comic have what amount to conflicting access needs – and that we should all be striving to remember and try to respect each other’s different life experiences and different reactions to the comic.

          And that very much goes for me, too – I don’t think my tone in the first comment on this chain was what it should have been. I swear, I do understand why the idea of Mike being redeemed really upsets some people, and I understand why the idea of other readers rationalizing and romanticizing his behavior is disquieting or upsetting for others. I swear.

          I was having a defensive moment of my own, because some of the threads about Mike have been really hard to read. But that defensiveness still shouldn’t come at the expense of other real people who are hurting when they read Mike superfans’ comments.

    3. Emily

      k

  62. WikiDreamer

    *sniffles* WHY IS SAD MIKE MY BIRTHDAY STRIP! ;^;

  63. BigDogLittleCat

    This makes the strip of June 18 very interesting.

  64. Cris

    I don’ think Mike is noble. I think Mike’s an asshole.

    But he’s an asshole who loves his friends.

  65. adjudicus

    My take on the general discussion involving Mike.

    There’s a marked difference between analysing someone’s motives and excusing their behaviour, but, that being said, there are a few people who frame Mike’s actions as being positive to his targets, and that he’s trying to help people most of the time, then use that as a crutch to come to the conclusion that he’s a helpful person, despite his actions being anything but helpful, and in my view that skews more towards an excuse of their behaviour than an analysis of motives. Because framing Mike’s behaviour as helpful involves glossing over most of what he’s done, cherry-picking evidence, and a ton of mental gymnastics.

  66. Jenna

    I have a question: I hear a lot of people in the comments section calling Mike an abuser, and I was just wondering what they were referring to? Is it something that he did during Dumbing of Age? Or at a different time in the Walkyverse?

    1. Inahc

      I’m a bit unsure on that myself. like, his behaviour is awful, but what makes it the abusive kind of awful?

      1. thejeff

        I’m not sure there’s a good word for Mike’s kind of behavior. I guess it depends on how you define “abusive”.

        I think his relationship with Ethan (and to a lesser degree Amber) might qualify. Not the sex so much, but the long term. That his two closest “friends” are both troubled, low self-esteem types is troubling. Is that why they’re putting up with him? Is his constant messing with them reinforcing that?
        To a lesser degree, there’s Walky, who’s trapped with him as a roommate.

  67. Dana

    Mike is also one of the characters that it’s most problematic to mix up their Walkyverse and Dumbingverse incarnations, because his destructiveness is more reasonably excused in a less realistic setting. The only other character I can think of who’s in the same league that way is Robin, and folks here are less apt to strain to paint her as a good guy, probably because she’s a more ancillary character and her characterization is pretty much just being Trrumpy and harassing a sympathetic character.

    1. Dana

      That was supposed to be a reply to adjudicus.

  68. Derek

    Unrelated to the comic at hand, but I feel like Becky was forced to sign a contract like this at her religious university
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/trinity-western-drops-mandatory-covenant-forbidding-sex-outside-of-heterosexual-marriage-1.4784924?cmp=FB_Post_News

    1. thejeff

      Just for the record, from what I can tell, the real Anderson University (which was Becky’s college), while it is a Christian school, has pretty decent policies on sexual conduct and on orientation. Far more on date rape and harassment than anything else. No covenants like that. A policy of not informing parents without the student’s permission, even in cases of actual sexual misconduct. A quick look doesn’t see anything out of line, though of course whether they live up to those policies or not is another question.

      The fictional Anderson is a different kettle of monkeys.

  69. Matticus

    Anyone else unable to reply to a comment if it’s more than a few comments “deep” in the discussion? Like past a certain number of indents it is just no longer possible to reply to someone?

    1. thejeff

      It’s standard here. The nesting only goes so deep.
      Probably
      to prevent
      comments
      from being
      formatted
      like this.

      Standard practice is just to reply to the last one you can reply to and reference the person’s name you actually want to respond to if that seems useful.

  70. Catman

    What horrible things has Mike actually done. I know he’s been more or less an asshole, that’s kind of his gimmick, but the only things I remember him doing are:
    Punching Joe repeatedly (on Joyce’s request)
    Filling Walkie’s bag with math books.
    Answering Joyce’s phone with “Hail Satan”
    Aaaaand now breaking Brett’s heart.
    I suppose you could argue getting the teacher kicked out is bad but A: she was unjustly marking Amber. B: she HIT him, and C: the dialogue suggests that she was willingly engaging with the faux relationship, so she deserves to be fired.

    Please correct me if I missed things, I don’t want to see Mike has a good person.

    1. thejeff

      Recording Walky crying and playing it to his friends. Seven recordings. At least one of which he instigated with a scheme involving faked Internet pages.
      That was his most recent. Other than the ongoing scheme involving seducing Ethan, which he explained in an aside to the audience he was doing to make Danny into a jealous wreck. He’d been waffling over which one to seduce, but Ethan asked him not to mess with Danny, so he picked Ethan.

    2. David Doty

      Check the tags. His name is actually Brent. If he was doing it all in some sort of “drive him away for his own good” moment, He could have accomplished that without the added twist of the knife of pretending to think his name is Bret. I mean, I do think that’s why he did it, but I think it also tapped into his true inner asshole that caused him to make it even crueler than it had to be.

      I’m surprised so many people seem to not know what to make of Mike after this story. I feel like I have a strong read on the character for the first time in either universe. I mean I may be wrong, but “used his asshole powers for good, pretended to be evil, became evil, now after sleeping with Ethan is starting to have regret for the first time in many years” seems to fit with ALL of the whiplash moments we’ve seen. For once, I feel like I have a take on Mike that doesn’t require ignoring or excusing one side of the balance sheet or the other.

  71. Clif

    Step 4 of young Mikes masterplan to create Amazigirl is now complete.

  72. D.S

    I think Mike was in love with Brett and ended their friendship to protect him. I thought he seemed really into him based on a previous flashback. Though it’s possible Mike decided to both use Brett’s name to catfish the teacher and break up with him on a whim, after the last encounter with Blaine.

  73. D.S

    Brent, sorry.

  74. Cute Carla

    So… why is Bret wearing a funny wig?

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