Happy “Good riddance to that dumpster fire of a planetary rotation” to all!
butts
Now let’s usher in the next dumpster fire of a planetary rotation.
Nothing changes. Ever.
Durandal_1707
It mystifies me that people are expecting the year that’s going to be the recipient of 2016’s shittiness to be better than the year that dished it out.
We now know in advance that this year is going to be shit. We have to do all we can to make sure it doesn’t hurt us as much as it can.
butts
“Knowing it’s going to be shit” is not the same as “knowing what we’re in for.” As president, Trump could do pretty much anything. I’m not arrogant enough to predict exactly how he’s going to fuck shit up. Are you?
well, he’s given us almost two months’ indication of his potential administration’s composition, and their combined history is a bit of a hint
not to mention starting an arms race w/o even being inaugurated yet
Willoughby chase
The UK is still in denial abt the effects of Brexit.
Charlie Spencer
It mystifies me that people ever see anything worth celebrating in incrementing the digits used to measure a period of time defined by an arbitrary starting point. The sun rises every morning; this one is no different from the day before or the day after tomorrow. Celebrate them all.
Silly Name
So… You’re saying I should get drunk everyday?
I can do that.
Reltzik
NO!
It’s not a planetary rotation!
It’s a planetary revolution!
REVOLUTION!
And yes, new revolution time!
Abel Undercity (@AbelUndercity)
“But here’s some advice, boy. Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re called revolutions.” – Sam Vimes, Night Watch
A planetary rotation is a day. A solar rotation is a year. Besides, 2016 was a pretty good year up til November.
butts
“pretty good year up til November”
— The entire dumpster fire of a campaign before that
— Orlando shooting, Nice attack, Brussels bombing
— Aleppo!
— Brexit, plus the continuing collapse of democracy in Poland
— The ongoing refugee crisis
— The American opioid crisis
— Zika epidemic
Actually, the sun rotates (spins) a bit like Earth’s does, but because it doesn’t have a solid surface it doesn’t have a fixed rotation period. Rather, different sections parts of its (gaseous/plasma) surface complete rotations in different lengths of time, as measured by movements of sunspots. A sunspot on the solar equator rotates about once every 24 and a half (Earth) days, while sunspots closer to the solar poles rotates about once every 38 days. So, a solar rotation is an imprecise period of time somewhere between 24.5 and 38 days. But it’s not an Earth year.
The phrase you’re looking for is “planetary revolution”, or “one revolution of Earth about the Sun”, or “Earth revolving around the sun” or something like that.
I won’t disagree that Roz has a terrible attitude about this whole deal, but she’s kinda right about Dorothy. Like approachability is a REALLY important aspect of being an RA and Roz is infinitely more approachable than Dorothy if you’re not in either’s immediate circle of friends.
Roz is not “infinitely more approachable,” because she’s a jerk. Not just a slight jerk (like Walky), but a real jerk. Grade-A.
Dorothy would be nice, would be supportive, and would really try, and that’s basically what’s required of an RA. An RA isn’t supposed to be (and rarely is) everybody’s best friend, they’re supposed to be, well, like Dorothy.
[Also Dorothy, unlike Roz, would also learn from her mistakes.]
invisiblemoose
Where are people getting that Roz wouldn’t learn from her mistakes? ??? ?
trlkly
Because she hasn’t learned from them before this. She seemed like she might be learning, but then she did the R.A. thing, and then now is celebrating her hatred of her own sister (and not even worried about what it will do to her “favorite teacher.”)
Roz has been consistently portrayed as a jerk. What growth she seemed to be having seems to have dissipated. So people don’t think she can change.
At least, not if she won and had her jerkishness validated.
Joyce’s arc went on for a while with her barely learning anything before any actual change started to sink in.
Not to mention Roz has only a tiny fraction of the appearances where such change could be depicted
Charles RB
“Roz is not “infinitely more approachable,” because she’s a jerk. ”
She just has to fake not being a jerk, or at least ‘our jerk’, until she’s in. Then she doesn’t have to care! (It seems unlikely she was planning on really doing anything once she had the role)
However, this strip makes it pretty clear that her end-goal wasn’t “get my sister to admit her own sexuality since I’m concerned for her”. It was “ruin my sister’s political career so that the candidate I support wins”.
Pylgrim
I think it was even more insidiously self-serving? “ruin my sister’s political career because it reflects poorly on my own beliefs and desired career path”.
3-I
Some people’s sisters aren’t very nice, and shouldn’t be in politics.
Silly Name
I agree, but Roz isn’t the selfless hero she claims to be here. I am questioning her motives, not the result of her actions.
Ok, I’m also questioning that because this could have serious, dangerous consequences for both Leslie and Robin, but Roz is telling others (and perhaps herself?) she is awesome for doing this. For them. Celebrate and appreciate Roz, guys, she will solve all your problems, because us queer people need other people to do that.
Not exactly. The only thing she has clearly said that she didn’t snap the photograph herself, and that she preferred it for Robin to have outed herself.
She may very well have indeed told a photographer where to find her sister. That’s not precluded from her words.
Kris
What I find really detestable about Roz here is her pretending to know what Robin’s sexuality is. Robin might not even know what that is yet! As far as the context of the comic she hasn’t done anything overtly homo or even heterosexual. She’s shown an interest and attraction to Leslie and joked about sucking an imaginary dick. What overwhelming evidence! My point is what does Roz actually know so who is she to say Robin should out herself?
thejeff
Roz is her sister. She’s known her all her life. She may have some reason to think so from before the start of the comic.
And of course, she’s right. If she wasn’t, none of this would have happened.
No, outing a gay person against their will is always wrong. No amount of “poetic justice” can justify it.
butts
Ehh. Depends on your moral/ethical system.
Pylgrim
Once you go down the rabbit hole of “depends on one’s ethics”, you are as bad as homophobes, many of which base their anti-gay beliefs on a somewhat consistent code of personal morals.
Bad is bad, even if it’s to cause some good. i.e., if you were forced to resort to it, it is a cause to be remorseful, not gloating.
Pat
Being consistent is unrelated to them being evil.
Daniel Rodriguez
The fact that we’re still arguing about it as a comment section five days after it comes out shows that not everyone feels that way. There will always be radicals, those who do what others see as wrong, and amongst their own will be seen as right. Whacky, isn’t it?
Meta
What if it’s a case of saving lives and not just poetic justice?
I’m not sure how I feel about this, but I don’t think it’s that simple.
Rosicrucian
It should always be the decision of the person in question whether or not they make their sexuality known, both to individuals and to the public at large. That is a basic thing that has to be a line in the sand. You can’t muddy that with qualifiers or you end up in some really ethically dodgy places in a goddamn hurry. Same goes for trans people. Nobody is more qualified to make the decision of disclosure than the person in question. Full stop.
I think part of the problem lies in the chance that it further justifies outing other queer people who are not making life harder for others.
It’s kind of similar to the issue of misgendering shitty people – if it were allowed to happen to these shitty people, then what is to stop a person ‘deserving’ of this respect from making a mistake/ticking someone off and having it happen to them as an act of ‘justice’?
Pat
Misgendering people is a willful expression of hatred for a minority group. It’s, uh, not at all a good analogy.
Terry
I agree that a person should be able to choose when, where, and how to disclose their orientation (sexual or otherwise); however, also I believe that if you publicly attack a person or group of people for something, you give up your privacy in that area. Just like any kind of publicly shared information, moral claims should be verifiable, especially when those claims impact other people. If a politician advocated for reduction of economic support on the premise that “people should manage their money more responsibly” and then it turns out that he declared bankruptcy three times, I think that fact should be made public. If he never voiced an opinion on the matter, I wouldn’t care, but hypocrisy ticks me off more than just about anything else. Especially when it negatively affects other people.
Victor
No, sorry.
If a LGBT politician is actively harming other LGBT people while in the closet, it’s not even a question for me.
Out them, as loudly as possible.
There’s no ethical quandary about that as far as I’m concerned, it stops being their choice when they’re causing harm.
Pylgrim
Sad thing is that I hear all the time the same “removing their choices for the benefit of our community” rhetoric from certain anti-LGBT Christian groups. That’s why I keep insisting that we need to be better than that. Whenever we decide to infringe on the rights of other peoples to protect our own, we are setting up ourselves for a never-ending escalation of self-righteous justification to be horrible to other human beings.
It is possible to be an activist without being a criminal.
Pat
It’s also always wrong to punch people in the face.
Except when it isn’t, because the face’s owner is a threat to other people.
Greyson
It’s not saving lives. Outing Robin would stop her political career, but someone just as bad (or worse) will always be right there to replace her. Outing people just reinforces the idea that being gay is something shameful to be hidden, and that being found is a horrible scandal. It may prevent her from winning the upcoming election, but it won’t have any long term benefits.
StClair
… except for Roz!
Terry
Pointing out lies in politics never has long-term benefits. This politician promised to lower taxes and raised them instead. That politician passed a law that she spoke out against during the election. An anti-gay politician caught having a same-sex liaison should be a scandal. A pro-freedom-of-sexual-expression politician who is found out to be gay should be something that no one cares about. Lying and hypocrisy should be punished to discourage it in our politicians. If we don’t hold them accountable, they will keep doing horrible things. If we reward good behavior, it will encourage people to behave better. I don’t care what your stance is, but you should always live up to the ideals that your insist on holding others to.
Meta
Yes, that’s where I fail to understand Roz’s plan. In the long run, this is definitely not a win for LGBT rights — it makes the bigots braver and the ultimate backlash that much more deadly for the sake of a single seat in the House, and I’d assumed Roz would be smart enough to see that.
406 thoughts on “Gambit”
Ana Chronistic
Dotty, just get a private e-mail server (and hope they fix both the electoral college crap and Putin by the time you run)
Ana Chronistic
oh and crappy new year
Doctor_Who
Happy “Good riddance to that dumpster fire of a planetary rotation” to all!
butts
Now let’s usher in the next dumpster fire of a planetary rotation.
Nothing changes. Ever.
Durandal_1707
It mystifies me that people are expecting the year that’s going to be the recipient of 2016’s shittiness to be better than the year that dished it out.
MM
At least we know what we’re in for now.
butts
ahahahahahahaha nope
Foxhack
You’re wrong.
We now know in advance that this year is going to be shit. We have to do all we can to make sure it doesn’t hurt us as much as it can.
butts
“Knowing it’s going to be shit” is not the same as “knowing what we’re in for.” As president, Trump could do pretty much anything. I’m not arrogant enough to predict exactly how he’s going to fuck shit up. Are you?
Ana Chronistic
well, he’s given us almost two months’ indication of his potential administration’s composition, and their combined history is a bit of a hint
not to mention starting an arms race w/o even being inaugurated yet
Willoughby chase
The UK is still in denial abt the effects of Brexit.
Charlie Spencer
It mystifies me that people ever see anything worth celebrating in incrementing the digits used to measure a period of time defined by an arbitrary starting point. The sun rises every morning; this one is no different from the day before or the day after tomorrow. Celebrate them all.
Silly Name
So… You’re saying I should get drunk everyday?
I can do that.
Reltzik
NO!
It’s not a planetary rotation!
It’s a planetary revolution!
REVOLUTION!
And yes, new revolution time!
Abel Undercity (@AbelUndercity)
“But here’s some advice, boy. Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re called revolutions.” – Sam Vimes, Night Watch
a snow ʍousɐ
Polinetarical revolution!
a snow ʍousɐ
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1920/1*2ZaOLOOJjF27ahnYw5g_tg.png
Arawn
A planetary rotation is a day. A solar rotation is a year. Besides, 2016 was a pretty good year up til November.
butts
“pretty good year up til November”
— The entire dumpster fire of a campaign before that
— Orlando shooting, Nice attack, Brussels bombing
— Aleppo!
— Brexit, plus the continuing collapse of democracy in Poland
— The ongoing refugee crisis
— The American opioid crisis
— Zika epidemic
DarkoNeko
Let’s be more exhaustive
Mordecai
Hasn’t this year exhausted us enough?
DarkoNeko
Nah, they’re keeping some for 2017.
Ana Chronistic
the trailer suggests otherwise
Reltzik
Actually, the sun rotates (spins) a bit like Earth’s does, but because it doesn’t have a solid surface it doesn’t have a fixed rotation period. Rather, different sections parts of its (gaseous/plasma) surface complete rotations in different lengths of time, as measured by movements of sunspots. A sunspot on the solar equator rotates about once every 24 and a half (Earth) days, while sunspots closer to the solar poles rotates about once every 38 days. So, a solar rotation is an imprecise period of time somewhere between 24.5 and 38 days. But it’s not an Earth year.
The phrase you’re looking for is “planetary revolution”, or “one revolution of Earth about the Sun”, or “Earth revolving around the sun” or something like that.
…..
PEDANTRY MAN AWAY!
keithcurtis
“Once again, the planetary rotation is saved, thanks to Pedantry Man!”
Sev
Vive la revolution?
thomas wrobel
Plenty of good things happened last year, they were just drowned out.
Chris Hadfield made a pretty nice list of some of them on his twitter;
https://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/status/815294057102667778
Worth skimming over if you want to restore faith in humans a bit.
Schpoonman
Fuck you, Roz. Why are you being so shitty about this?
butts
Roz is a jerk.
She’s got plenty of redeeming qualities, I understand why people like her, but you can’t say that she’s not a jerk. Because she is a jerk.
Boojum
There is no cause so righteous that a$$holes won’t be involved too.
Safgaftsa
That should be a Mike quote, and I will repeat it regardless.
Plasma Mongoose
The shittiness is her idea of crustiness.
Starz
I won’t disagree that Roz has a terrible attitude about this whole deal, but she’s kinda right about Dorothy. Like approachability is a REALLY important aspect of being an RA and Roz is infinitely more approachable than Dorothy if you’re not in either’s immediate circle of friends.
snogglethorpe
Roz is not “infinitely more approachable,” because she’s a jerk. Not just a slight jerk (like Walky), but a real jerk. Grade-A.
Dorothy would be nice, would be supportive, and would really try, and that’s basically what’s required of an RA. An RA isn’t supposed to be (and rarely is) everybody’s best friend, they’re supposed to be, well, like Dorothy.
[Also Dorothy, unlike Roz, would also learn from her mistakes.]
invisiblemoose
Where are people getting that Roz wouldn’t learn from her mistakes? ??? ?
trlkly
Because she hasn’t learned from them before this. She seemed like she might be learning, but then she did the R.A. thing, and then now is celebrating her hatred of her own sister (and not even worried about what it will do to her “favorite teacher.”)
Roz has been consistently portrayed as a jerk. What growth she seemed to be having seems to have dissipated. So people don’t think she can change.
At least, not if she won and had her jerkishness validated.
Not that she’s going to win. Nor will Dorothy.
Fart Captor
Joyce’s arc went on for a while with her barely learning anything before any actual change started to sink in.
Not to mention Roz has only a tiny fraction of the appearances where such change could be depicted
Charles RB
“Roz is not “infinitely more approachable,” because she’s a jerk. ”
She just has to fake not being a jerk, or at least ‘our jerk’, until she’s in. Then she doesn’t have to care! (It seems unlikely she was planning on really doing anything once she had the role)
Pablo360
If 2016 is any indication, she doesn’t actually have to fake not being a jerk. She just has to own it, by being a HUMONGOUS jerk.
Jess
………..Roz. You don’t out people.
Stu
In fairness, she wasn’t trying to – she was trying to get her sister to admit her own sexuality to herself from the look of things.
Silly Name
However, this strip makes it pretty clear that her end-goal wasn’t “get my sister to admit her own sexuality since I’m concerned for her”. It was “ruin my sister’s political career so that the candidate I support wins”.
Pylgrim
I think it was even more insidiously self-serving? “ruin my sister’s political career because it reflects poorly on my own beliefs and desired career path”.
3-I
Some people’s sisters aren’t very nice, and shouldn’t be in politics.
Silly Name
I agree, but Roz isn’t the selfless hero she claims to be here. I am questioning her motives, not the result of her actions.
Ok, I’m also questioning that because this could have serious, dangerous consequences for both Leslie and Robin, but Roz is telling others (and perhaps herself?) she is awesome for doing this. For them. Celebrate and appreciate Roz, guys, she will solve all your problems, because us queer people need other people to do that.
Rosicrucian
Roz is still saying she didn’t out her sister.
Elitist oars
Not exactly. The only thing she has clearly said that she didn’t snap the photograph herself, and that she preferred it for Robin to have outed herself.
She may very well have indeed told a photographer where to find her sister. That’s not precluded from her words.
Kris
What I find really detestable about Roz here is her pretending to know what Robin’s sexuality is. Robin might not even know what that is yet! As far as the context of the comic she hasn’t done anything overtly homo or even heterosexual. She’s shown an interest and attraction to Leslie and joked about sucking an imaginary dick. What overwhelming evidence! My point is what does Roz actually know so who is she to say Robin should out herself?
thejeff
Roz is her sister. She’s known her all her life. She may have some reason to think so from before the start of the comic.
And of course, she’s right. If she wasn’t, none of this would have happened.
Pablo360
I am willing to bet actual money that Roz thinks her sister’s a lesbian. So, no, I don’t think she’s “right”.
Queen Anthai
Yeah what the shit, Roz.
timemonkey
The shit is she didn’t do it but is happy it happened anyway.
Reltzik
And she didn’t.
Yes, she did set in motion events that led to her sister outing herself, but honestly that’s still pretty heavily on Robin.
GLOATING after the fact is pretty crass. This should be a satisfaction-but-remorse moment.
Lou
I don’t understand how anyone can hear what she just said and think it’s okay that she wants to be the RA for a girls’ dorm.
Greyson
Eeugh, straight people being happy that a gay person was outed will always be digusting to me :///
Stu
Is it better if said gay person has been vocally anti-gay as their entire political career, using said career to advance anti-gay legislation?
Rosicrucian
No, outing a gay person against their will is always wrong. No amount of “poetic justice” can justify it.
butts
Ehh. Depends on your moral/ethical system.
Pylgrim
Once you go down the rabbit hole of “depends on one’s ethics”, you are as bad as homophobes, many of which base their anti-gay beliefs on a somewhat consistent code of personal morals.
Bad is bad, even if it’s to cause some good. i.e., if you were forced to resort to it, it is a cause to be remorseful, not gloating.
Pat
Being consistent is unrelated to them being evil.
Daniel Rodriguez
The fact that we’re still arguing about it as a comment section five days after it comes out shows that not everyone feels that way. There will always be radicals, those who do what others see as wrong, and amongst their own will be seen as right. Whacky, isn’t it?
Meta
What if it’s a case of saving lives and not just poetic justice?
I’m not sure how I feel about this, but I don’t think it’s that simple.
Rosicrucian
It should always be the decision of the person in question whether or not they make their sexuality known, both to individuals and to the public at large. That is a basic thing that has to be a line in the sand. You can’t muddy that with qualifiers or you end up in some really ethically dodgy places in a goddamn hurry. Same goes for trans people. Nobody is more qualified to make the decision of disclosure than the person in question. Full stop.
Vivid
I find it really hard to care about queer people actively making life harder for other queer people.
Vivid
*queer people who are
Krill
I think part of the problem lies in the chance that it further justifies outing other queer people who are not making life harder for others.
It’s kind of similar to the issue of misgendering shitty people – if it were allowed to happen to these shitty people, then what is to stop a person ‘deserving’ of this respect from making a mistake/ticking someone off and having it happen to them as an act of ‘justice’?
Pat
Misgendering people is a willful expression of hatred for a minority group. It’s, uh, not at all a good analogy.
Terry
I agree that a person should be able to choose when, where, and how to disclose their orientation (sexual or otherwise); however, also I believe that if you publicly attack a person or group of people for something, you give up your privacy in that area. Just like any kind of publicly shared information, moral claims should be verifiable, especially when those claims impact other people. If a politician advocated for reduction of economic support on the premise that “people should manage their money more responsibly” and then it turns out that he declared bankruptcy three times, I think that fact should be made public. If he never voiced an opinion on the matter, I wouldn’t care, but hypocrisy ticks me off more than just about anything else. Especially when it negatively affects other people.
Victor
No, sorry.
If a LGBT politician is actively harming other LGBT people while in the closet, it’s not even a question for me.
Out them, as loudly as possible.
There’s no ethical quandary about that as far as I’m concerned, it stops being their choice when they’re causing harm.
Pylgrim
Sad thing is that I hear all the time the same “removing their choices for the benefit of our community” rhetoric from certain anti-LGBT Christian groups. That’s why I keep insisting that we need to be better than that. Whenever we decide to infringe on the rights of other peoples to protect our own, we are setting up ourselves for a never-ending escalation of self-righteous justification to be horrible to other human beings.
It is possible to be an activist without being a criminal.
Pat
It’s also always wrong to punch people in the face.
Except when it isn’t, because the face’s owner is a threat to other people.
Greyson
It’s not saving lives. Outing Robin would stop her political career, but someone just as bad (or worse) will always be right there to replace her. Outing people just reinforces the idea that being gay is something shameful to be hidden, and that being found is a horrible scandal. It may prevent her from winning the upcoming election, but it won’t have any long term benefits.
StClair
… except for Roz!
Terry
Pointing out lies in politics never has long-term benefits. This politician promised to lower taxes and raised them instead. That politician passed a law that she spoke out against during the election. An anti-gay politician caught having a same-sex liaison should be a scandal. A pro-freedom-of-sexual-expression politician who is found out to be gay should be something that no one cares about. Lying and hypocrisy should be punished to discourage it in our politicians. If we don’t hold them accountable, they will keep doing horrible things. If we reward good behavior, it will encourage people to behave better. I don’t care what your stance is, but you should always live up to the ideals that your insist on holding others to.
Meta
Yes, that’s where I fail to understand Roz’s plan. In the long run, this is definitely not a win for LGBT rights — it makes the bigots braver and the ultimate backlash that much more deadly for the sake of a single seat in the House, and I’d assumed Roz would be smart enough to see that.