I wonder if this is part of why he seemed -especially- annoyed about her acting different. He just did something to emulate a part of her he respects, and she’s gone ‘no you’re right I should be different.’
We did have an arc with Joyce where we established that when others need to be negative for a bit, they siphon it off of her and she gets suspiciously cheery
Is it just me or did Jacob seem to have… designs for this interaction?
it’s obvious he cares about Ethan as much the rest of his close friends, but it seems like he setting up some kind of narrative in which he gonna be seen as a dick no matter what he does, quite possibly to justify something toxic he’s done or about to do which may not necessarily related to Ethan
or at least that’s what I catch from the face he makin in the last panel
And feeling bad that he did Sarah wrong, sending her over the edge.
Corronchilejano
Are we seeing Jacob dumping Lucy for Sarah in the near future?
Samniel
Probably not the /near/ future, but this certainly is him understanding Sarah’s choices and how much of what Raidah told him about her was poisoned by incomplete information. It’s certainly something that he should be talking to HER about.
well besides being recently openly objectified by Sarah, Jacob probably also reluctant to talk to her immediately on account of her smiling constantly like she about to pull a “knock knock” LOL
GholaHalleck
*Sal walks through the comments with a boxing placard that says “Four and a half weeks” on it.*
Reltzik
Probably not, but if he and Lucy do break up, Sarah will be the first possibility for a rebound..
…. and that will be the second instance in a pattern that Lucy will NOT be happy noticing.
Nymph
The second instance in what pattern?
Reltzik
Breakup with a boyfriend followed very swiftly by him hooking up with a previous love interest.
Nymph
Ahhhh okok ty
wilddeath
The pattern of lucy getting what she deserves and remaining forever alone.
I honestly think he’s just relating it back to Sarah with that last bit? She definitely leaned into her role as the grumpy one in the friend group until extremely recently.
Inversion seems to be the theme all around here. We’ve got Joyce doing drunken parties and hoping for drunken sex while Joe’s been infected with her former evangelical purity culture. We’ve got Dorothy turning into an irresponsible, purposeless mess, Carla’s found a person that she likes just as much as herself, and Dan hasn’t danned anything up for weeks now.
Okay, except “Joe’s been infected with her former evangelical purity culture” is entirely Roz’s interpretation, and Roz has some weird inverse-slut-shaming thing going on.
Throwatron
This is definitely true. Joe didn’t exactly reveal the true nature of his sexual trauma with Roz, because Of Course He Didn’t. They’re not that close. In Roz’s defense, she got a deeply incomplete sense of what Joe was worried about.
Roz is so dogmatically sex-positive, that she is only used to engaging with the issue from the perspective of a sexually confident and empowered person. In her worldview, basically no sex can be wrong, if consent was obtained and retained. She has no sense that maybe she might seriously wound herself with regret over sex she initially chose to have, because there’s nothing within her internally, which could put her in that position. So, it all gets lumped into “immature fundie stuff that sensible people should never waste their mental energy with,” because to her, that’s all it can be.
Joe presented her with the question “yo, what if I like, ruin myself with this,” because it was the only language he had to describe what he was feeling. Roz naturally missed the subtext, that Joe wasn’t asking “what if I hurt or damage myself through having sex;” the question that Joe wanted to ask, but didn’t know how to, was “how do I know for certain, that I won’t hurt my partner, because I care deeply about them, and they have sexual baggage?” Which, to be fair…from her position, I don’t think Roz would have been prepared to answer that question tactfully, anyway.
Laura
Amen!
Reltzik
Sure, and I echoed her with my tongue in cheek, but underlying it is definitely a sort of inversion for Joe.
I really like these strips. This is some great nuance right here, as well as great continued understanding for the position Sarah had previously been in. Sometimes life doesn’t offer up good alternatives or good choices. Sometimes solutions aren’t clean. Sometimes choices come with consequences. And if Jacob’s consequence is that his roommate is a bit rankled with him, he’s willing to live with it compared to the alternative of a dead roommate on his conscience.
It is also a bit easier to deal with something like that mentality/emotionally if you start acting the part. A ‘everyone treats me that way, so I might as well act that way’ type of thing. It could either be that you don’t see the point of wasting energy being nice to others if they are just going to misconstrue it, or as almost an emotional soothing technique where you do stuff that you feel actually deserves the abuse. It is less stressful if you agree with everyone that you have done wrong things vs always trying your best and being nice while still being called bad. You don’t have to constantly reaffirm your definition of whether your actions actually are good that way, if that makes sense.
That’s a good point about Ethan not going to class that wasn’t brought up. It might not have even taken to the end of the semester (when he’d get failing grades) depending on the attendance policies and if he’s ever gone to various classes. He could get removed from classes for not attending/responding, and even if it wasn’t al of them, if he doesn’t qualify as a full-time student, he could get booted from the dorms. That…wouldn’t help things.
Amber’s been doctoring his grades, etc, to cover for what he’s been doing, but that’s only going to go so far. He really needs to proactively do better than this.
Yeah, and there’s a decent chance his classes are big enough that she could change an attendance record unnoticed. For some of mine, if the professor saw someone never came or came the first class but then didn’t return for x number of classes, they might drop them from the roster (after trying to contact the student). But again, that depends on the professor noticing.
Does Jacob have any reason to know that Amber is helping Ethan by hacking the system?
If Amber has a paranoid mindset (the fewer people know, the better), she wouldn’t tell Jacob. So all Jacob has to go on is what he sees Ethan doing. Or not doing. As in, not leaving his room.
Ah. Just checked the relevant comic. Put the string “speakingof” after the site URL for the comic for August 5, 2023. Ethan says “Yeah, somehow I still have perfect attendance.” and Amber says “It’s a mystery!”. So Ethan figured it out, but he’s probably not going to tell Jacob that Amber has been hacking his attendance record and such.
Mark
Ironically, none of Ethan’s prof.s ever look at attendance records. College students are supposed to be adults, blabla — if they do the work they’ll do well enough; if they don’t do the work then they’ll wash out somehow; not my concern….
Dr. T
I have experience teaching at two very different universities, one being IU itself. While smaller schools may definitely care about attendance, for the most part IU does not. They will let you fail and keep your tuition money.
DailyBrad
I doubt Jacob knows anything about Amber’s interference, no. He is I think one of the few main cast at this point who is pretty oblivious of Amazi-Girl in general, I think, like I am sure he’s heard of her, but doesn’t know it’s Amber, etc.
I think Willis didn’t enroll in classes for the second semester, which is a little different (more likely to get you booted faster, I imagine).
When I was in my third year of college, I had to get a medical withdrawal from my courses during spring semester (because brain bad), and then since I was living in the dorms, I had to move. There was a window of time before I officially needed to be gone, but it wasn’t that long. At the time, it kind of sucked because it meant I had to move away from whatever I had in terms of a support system in the area (I did semi-desperately see if there was someone I knew off-campus I could move in with), but ultimately it was better for me to be back home.
sorry to hear what happened to ya, was for the best to make your well-being a priority ^^
after two years of physics courses at University i had to drop out cuz of depression, disability, and of course the 2020 pandemic that turned just about everyone’s lives upside down
considering that a degree for me was by no means guaranteed, let alone a job actually in my field, would probably not be worth it to return any time soon, so oh well.
coding games ain’t no NASA rocket, but at least my brain and the rest of my insides are still (mostly) in-tact, and ya know wat? good enough
Kimi
Brain bad is horrible in all times, but even worse during schooling. I ran into that while I was in grad school (combined with the therapists connected to campus constantly changing personnel and being so overbooked that they could only see you once a semester). I ended up not completing grad school because of that and covid. Still regret it and the cost it has had on my life.
225 thoughts on “Reached out”
not someone else
Defs not anyone specific.
Doctor_Who
Plot twist: it’s Galasso.
Dude’s got a whole subplot we never get to see.
Librain
So that’s what the “(and subs)” stands for!
Adept
Feels like Sarah should be tagged.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Naw, it’s just her ears that are burning.
Nono
Jacob describing Mike’s origin story
Sirksome
Please…please don’t compare this to whatever Mike became. Dude took it too far.
Clif
Mike leaned into it a bit too far.
DJTsurugi
for a nickel ~<3
Ana Chronistic
Mike leaned into it a LOT too hard
VicMortimer
Like your mother. For a nickel.
King_Salty
Ah he figured it out.
Sirksome
Has Jacob become Sarah!? We’ve come full circle folks!
Axel
I wonder if this is part of why he seemed -especially- annoyed about her acting different. He just did something to emulate a part of her he respects, and she’s gone ‘no you’re right I should be different.’
TheLurkerAbove
I love that last expression, it’s practically Sarah.
Needfuldoer
It had to migrate somewhere…
Kazuma Taichi
We did have an arc with Joyce where we established that when others need to be negative for a bit, they siphon it off of her and she gets suspiciously cheery
Reltzik
When will humanity ever escape, or are we forever cursed to perpetuate this cycle of jerkitude?
NGPZ
Is it just me or did Jacob seem to have… designs for this interaction?
it’s obvious he cares about Ethan as much the rest of his close friends, but it seems like he setting up some kind of narrative in which he gonna be seen as a dick no matter what he does, quite possibly to justify something toxic he’s done or about to do which may not necessarily related to Ethan
or at least that’s what I catch from the face he makin in the last panel
Jonah (firelight_waltz)
that’s what it felt like to me :0
Dana
Sounds more to me like he’s describing how he imagines this went for Sarah.
Vanessa
And feeling bad that he did Sarah wrong, sending her over the edge.
Corronchilejano
Are we seeing Jacob dumping Lucy for Sarah in the near future?
Samniel
Probably not the /near/ future, but this certainly is him understanding Sarah’s choices and how much of what Raidah told him about her was poisoned by incomplete information. It’s certainly something that he should be talking to HER about.
NGPZ
well besides being recently openly objectified by Sarah, Jacob probably also reluctant to talk to her immediately on account of her smiling constantly like she about to pull a “knock knock” LOL
GholaHalleck
*Sal walks through the comments with a boxing placard that says “Four and a half weeks” on it.*
Reltzik
Probably not, but if he and Lucy do break up, Sarah will be the first possibility for a rebound..
…. and that will be the second instance in a pattern that Lucy will NOT be happy noticing.
Nymph
The second instance in what pattern?
Reltzik
Breakup with a boyfriend followed very swiftly by him hooking up with a previous love interest.
Nymph
Ahhhh okok ty
wilddeath
The pattern of lucy getting what she deserves and remaining forever alone.
Doki
I honestly think he’s just relating it back to Sarah with that last bit? She definitely leaned into her role as the grumpy one in the friend group until extremely recently.
Nymph
This is absolutely what’s happening. Maybe even a bit of realization that THIS is what’s going on with Sarah.
Hazel
He’s just thinking about how much of a dick Sarah can be despite or because of her attempts to do good.
NGPZ
…. he’s trying to be substitute Mike isn’t he? ?
Yumi
No.
NGPZ
yeah you right, Jacob don’t got nothin to gain from pushin that button, or at least i sure hope not
Clif
Agreed. He didn’t even know Mike well enough to aspire to Mike levels of Mikeness.
True Survivor
Quite possibly. That is a good insight.
However, I should point out he lured Naomi to their room with concerns over her son’s wellbeing and not the promise of loose change.
Regret
His only “designs” are to prevent Ethan from killing himself.
Reltzik
Maybe also to prevent him from flunking out.
Adept
This seems like a thing Jacob would do
zee
No, p sure he just had a realization/thoughts about Sarah at the end there. He didn’t start this interaction, Ethan did
Doki
OMG the Sarah and Jacob ~vibes~ inversion this chapter has been absolutely wild. Really nice complementing arcs!
True Survivor
I agree.
Coatl
Oh…True
Reltzik
Inversion seems to be the theme all around here. We’ve got Joyce doing drunken parties and hoping for drunken sex while Joe’s been infected with her former evangelical purity culture. We’ve got Dorothy turning into an irresponsible, purposeless mess, Carla’s found a person that she likes just as much as herself, and Dan hasn’t danned anything up for weeks now.
Daibhid C
Okay, except “Joe’s been infected with her former evangelical purity culture” is entirely Roz’s interpretation, and Roz has some weird inverse-slut-shaming thing going on.
Throwatron
This is definitely true. Joe didn’t exactly reveal the true nature of his sexual trauma with Roz, because Of Course He Didn’t. They’re not that close. In Roz’s defense, she got a deeply incomplete sense of what Joe was worried about.
Roz is so dogmatically sex-positive, that she is only used to engaging with the issue from the perspective of a sexually confident and empowered person. In her worldview, basically no sex can be wrong, if consent was obtained and retained. She has no sense that maybe she might seriously wound herself with regret over sex she initially chose to have, because there’s nothing within her internally, which could put her in that position. So, it all gets lumped into “immature fundie stuff that sensible people should never waste their mental energy with,” because to her, that’s all it can be.
Joe presented her with the question “yo, what if I like, ruin myself with this,” because it was the only language he had to describe what he was feeling. Roz naturally missed the subtext, that Joe wasn’t asking “what if I hurt or damage myself through having sex;” the question that Joe wanted to ask, but didn’t know how to, was “how do I know for certain, that I won’t hurt my partner, because I care deeply about them, and they have sexual baggage?” Which, to be fair…from her position, I don’t think Roz would have been prepared to answer that question tactfully, anyway.
Laura
Amen!
Reltzik
Sure, and I echoed her with my tongue in cheek, but underlying it is definitely a sort of inversion for Joe.
Doopyboop
I really like these strips. This is some great nuance right here, as well as great continued understanding for the position Sarah had previously been in. Sometimes life doesn’t offer up good alternatives or good choices. Sometimes solutions aren’t clean. Sometimes choices come with consequences. And if Jacob’s consequence is that his roommate is a bit rankled with him, he’s willing to live with it compared to the alternative of a dead roommate on his conscience.
Act with integrity. No regrets.
Kimi
It is also a bit easier to deal with something like that mentality/emotionally if you start acting the part. A ‘everyone treats me that way, so I might as well act that way’ type of thing. It could either be that you don’t see the point of wasting energy being nice to others if they are just going to misconstrue it, or as almost an emotional soothing technique where you do stuff that you feel actually deserves the abuse. It is less stressful if you agree with everyone that you have done wrong things vs always trying your best and being nice while still being called bad. You don’t have to constantly reaffirm your definition of whether your actions actually are good that way, if that makes sense.
Yumi
That’s a good point about Ethan not going to class that wasn’t brought up. It might not have even taken to the end of the semester (when he’d get failing grades) depending on the attendance policies and if he’s ever gone to various classes. He could get removed from classes for not attending/responding, and even if it wasn’t al of them, if he doesn’t qualify as a full-time student, he could get booted from the dorms. That…wouldn’t help things.
DailyBrad
Amber’s been doctoring his grades, etc, to cover for what he’s been doing, but that’s only going to go so far. He really needs to proactively do better than this.
Yumi
Yeah, and there’s a decent chance his classes are big enough that she could change an attendance record unnoticed. For some of mine, if the professor saw someone never came or came the first class but then didn’t return for x number of classes, they might drop them from the roster (after trying to contact the student). But again, that depends on the professor noticing.
Owlmirror
Does Jacob have any reason to know that Amber is helping Ethan by hacking the system?
If Amber has a paranoid mindset (the fewer people know, the better), she wouldn’t tell Jacob. So all Jacob has to go on is what he sees Ethan doing. Or not doing. As in, not leaving his room.
Ah. Just checked the relevant comic. Put the string “speakingof” after the site URL for the comic for August 5, 2023. Ethan says “Yeah, somehow I still have perfect attendance.” and Amber says “It’s a mystery!”. So Ethan figured it out, but he’s probably not going to tell Jacob that Amber has been hacking his attendance record and such.
Mark
Ironically, none of Ethan’s prof.s ever look at attendance records. College students are supposed to be adults, blabla — if they do the work they’ll do well enough; if they don’t do the work then they’ll wash out somehow; not my concern….
Dr. T
I have experience teaching at two very different universities, one being IU itself. While smaller schools may definitely care about attendance, for the most part IU does not. They will let you fail and keep your tuition money.
DailyBrad
I doubt Jacob knows anything about Amber’s interference, no. He is I think one of the few main cast at this point who is pretty oblivious of Amazi-Girl in general, I think, like I am sure he’s heard of her, but doesn’t know it’s Amber, etc.
Rabid Rabbit
I’m trying to remember the details of how this all went for Willis. I think it’s in the commentary for the reruns of Roomies somewhere…
Yumi
I think Willis didn’t enroll in classes for the second semester, which is a little different (more likely to get you booted faster, I imagine).
When I was in my third year of college, I had to get a medical withdrawal from my courses during spring semester (because brain bad), and then since I was living in the dorms, I had to move. There was a window of time before I officially needed to be gone, but it wasn’t that long. At the time, it kind of sucked because it meant I had to move away from whatever I had in terms of a support system in the area (I did semi-desperately see if there was someone I knew off-campus I could move in with), but ultimately it was better for me to be back home.
NGPZ
sorry to hear what happened to ya, was for the best to make your well-being a priority ^^
after two years of physics courses at University i had to drop out cuz of depression, disability, and of course the 2020 pandemic that turned just about everyone’s lives upside down
considering that a degree for me was by no means guaranteed, let alone a job actually in my field, would probably not be worth it to return any time soon, so oh well.
coding games ain’t no NASA rocket, but at least my brain and the rest of my insides are still (mostly) in-tact, and ya know wat? good enough
Kimi
Brain bad is horrible in all times, but even worse during schooling. I ran into that while I was in grad school (combined with the therapists connected to campus constantly changing personnel and being so overbooked that they could only see you once a semester). I ended up not completing grad school because of that and covid. Still regret it and the cost it has had on my life.
Adept
Oh, so this is autobiographical as well?
Kimi
I do wonder if Dana had been having that issue. Not attending classes or failing them might have ended up in the same result as Sarah calling her dad.
Yumi
Yeah, and she didn’t have Amber hacking for her.
Cholma
New Book Title just dropped: “Sometimes Caring Means Being A Dick”
V
“And Then Living With Being The One Who’s A Dick, Forever. And Then Leaning Into It A Bit Too Hard.”
Nymph
there we go, the original suggestion wasn’t long enough