Yeah. I don’t think any Mary-redemption-arc could ever stick long-term. Hell, if we count the old continuity, it’s failed once already, and this Mary has done way worse things than that one ever did. If there ever was a chance, it has passed and been forgotten.
Not saying she’s as bad as Mary… but Joyce also once said she wished Amber had killed Ryan.
It’s different because Ryan is an unsympathetic buttwipe, of course.
Fay
Joyce wishing death on a serial predator who drugged and attempted to assaulted her, thereby traumatizing her is absolutely no where near Mary wanting someone to die just because they happen to be queer.
One is a common and(debatably) valid response to a personal trauma, the other one is the basis of a fucking hate crime.
JBento
Amber should, indeed, have kept stabbing. For Ryan to be merely a waste of space, he’d need to improve tremendously. He’s a pernicious little shit whose only contribution to the world is to make thigns worse for other people.
Username Taken
Imagine the good he could do for local worms if he were six feet under!
Segnosaur
I wonder whatever happened to him, and whether we will hear any follow-up to Ryan’s case.
I believe the last we heard was that Ryan was hospitalized and there was a potential lawsuit against Amber over the stabbing. I assume he would have been released by now… would there have been enough time for any lawsuit to have been dismissed during the time skip? Or will we see Amber dragged into court (or arbitration)?
Username Taken
Ryan pulled a knife on two students right in front on the dorm entrance, which is usually a spot with security cameras. IMO it’s an easy self-defense case in a state like Indiana that has stand your ground laws, so I hope that any lawsuit is dead, both for Amber’s and the story’s sake. It would be exhausting if this comic spent weeks covering court proceedings and Ryan’s legal team attempting to spin him as some sort of victim.
Segnosaur
I agree… it SHOULD be a slam-dunk case of “dismissed”. But, weird things do happen.
For example they could claim “excessive force”. (A B.S. claim, but they still might make it.) They may find that Amber had stabbed someone before, or that because her dad was evil, that she likewise was evil. Or they may just have a lot of money to spend on lawyers and thus can outspend Amber’s family (even if the lawsuits are meritless).
JBento
Like UT says, last we heard of Ryan he had been hospitalised. We don’t know if he has been released yet and, if so, he remains nearby or has been yanked home.
We haven’t heard anything further on the lawsuit, except that Joe’s dad is bankrolling Amber.
if i’ve notived one thing in this comic than it is that the bad characters dont change. Good Characters may become bad but bad characters like Mary or Malaya always stay bad.
Malaya is an obnoxious jerk, but I wouldn’t say she’s a villain or antagonist. It’s the villains that stay rather static, probably because Willis wants to avoid the Very Christian Thing of, “If you just ~forgive~ your enemies, they’ll always end up being good deep down!”
Mary is completely allowed to be other than awful. She could reject death cult evangelicalism, and she could reject fascism, and she could work to oppose those systems and attempt to make amends with those she’s harmed.
She’s not going to do this, of course, because she thinks being Like This is cool and great, and everyone else deserves to suffer. She’s very committed to hee shitty ideology.
Well, Jennifer told corrected Mary about her name like, seconds ago (yesterday’s strip), so I’d assume Mary’s just being an asshole. But maybe she has a condition where the only J-name she can remember is Jesus.
Because I have Japanese as a second language, this line had a special double entendre to me… The Japanese word for hobby (趣味 shumi), also means ‘kink’. So I actually heard her shout “Jesus is my kink!”
Huh, so that’s what RA stands for. I’ve been in college long enough I should know that, but I guess my education is so full of acronyms all ready that my mind just assumed I’d been told what it was and moved on.
I think she’s pretending she doesn’t remember Jennifer’s name, y’know because she cares so little about Jennifer and what she’s doing. I swear if I didn’t know any better this borderline feels like a crush that Mary doesn’t understand or know what to do with.
Last time it seemed like Mary might have had a crush on a girl it turned out that she very much did not, I suspect it’s something similar here.
Sirksome
Knowing Mary I doubt it’s a crush too, but she’s way more emotionally invested in this than what you’d expect. It costs a lot of energy to hold grudges and most people fall back to indifference. Take Rachel for instance. She clearly has something against Ruth but she doesn’t spend her time plotting comeback scenarios and schemes.
C.T. Phipps
Mary obsessively stalked Carla and tried to blackmail Ruth into letting her “have” her. I think she’s not actually just a bigot, she’s an actual hate criminal plotting something serious.
Bryy
I mean she literally tried to force Ruth and Billie to kill themselves.
Thag Simmons
I don’t think Mary has actual plots. She has a lot of people she hates and wants to hurt, and when she saw an opportunity to cause some serious harm she took it, but she’s not particularly clever and she doesn’t have any actual power. I think her blackmail threat was as dangerous as she gets, and she’s not going to be in a position to do something like that again
In the DND campaign that I’m in, I made Jessica a very common male name for people in my character’s background culture. My character’s pre-exile best friend was a boy named Jessica, and there are hints that he’s going to become more relevant to our current story.
All this to say, I’ve gotten so used to associating “Jessica” with “he/him” that at first I thought Mary was implying something along those lines.
I definitely prefer to play online between my vocal dysphoria and all else, but yeah that sounds really cool! Also that campaign sounds amazing! ?
powerpowerpow
I always feel weird when I think about the fact that I’ve played D&D pretty much exclusively online, since we started during the pandemic and my friends are all spread out around the world across four different time zones. I’d love to be able to regularly play in person someday…
Kicking the door seems like a less than ideal way to begin that conversation, but I don’t think Jennifer is in the best headspace, no matter how much she may claim otherwise.
I feel like this strip is more just calling out Jennifer’s hypocrisy where she is ALSO terrible at letting things go and she also needs to get a hobby.
173 thoughts on “Wages”
The Wellerman
Careful Mary!
This is likely the setup for some kind of trap! A trap for YOU, most likely!
Better think fast! ?
*plays “Face First” by the Paranoyds on hacked muzak*
True Survivor
Carnage Bargain – great album title.
Stanistani
Don’t break your femur. There are specialists who handle that.
Needfuldoer
Looks like Jennifer is about to summon one.
Clif
The sign had it coming.
Yumi
Just some teenagers, coping super well.
Laura
Both Jennifer and Ruth are taking out their frustrations on other people.
Yumi
And doors.
Azhrei Vep
And Mary.
Rororoyourboat
I guess Mary is one of the few characters not to change between semesters.
C.T. Phipps
She may have gotten worse.
Bryy
Mary actively wants people to die. She’s acted on that. There’s unfortunately no coming back from that.
RassilonTDavros
Yeah. I don’t think any Mary-redemption-arc could ever stick long-term. Hell, if we count the old continuity, it’s failed once already, and this Mary has done way worse things than that one ever did. If there ever was a chance, it has passed and been forgotten.
Nono
Not saying she’s as bad as Mary… but Joyce also once said she wished Amber had killed Ryan.
It’s different because Ryan is an unsympathetic buttwipe, of course.
Fay
Joyce wishing death on a serial predator who drugged and attempted to assaulted her, thereby traumatizing her is absolutely no where near Mary wanting someone to die just because they happen to be queer.
One is a common and(debatably) valid response to a personal trauma, the other one is the basis of a fucking hate crime.
JBento
Amber should, indeed, have kept stabbing. For Ryan to be merely a waste of space, he’d need to improve tremendously. He’s a pernicious little shit whose only contribution to the world is to make thigns worse for other people.
Username Taken
Imagine the good he could do for local worms if he were six feet under!
Segnosaur
I wonder whatever happened to him, and whether we will hear any follow-up to Ryan’s case.
I believe the last we heard was that Ryan was hospitalized and there was a potential lawsuit against Amber over the stabbing. I assume he would have been released by now… would there have been enough time for any lawsuit to have been dismissed during the time skip? Or will we see Amber dragged into court (or arbitration)?
Username Taken
Ryan pulled a knife on two students right in front on the dorm entrance, which is usually a spot with security cameras. IMO it’s an easy self-defense case in a state like Indiana that has stand your ground laws, so I hope that any lawsuit is dead, both for Amber’s and the story’s sake. It would be exhausting if this comic spent weeks covering court proceedings and Ryan’s legal team attempting to spin him as some sort of victim.
Segnosaur
I agree… it SHOULD be a slam-dunk case of “dismissed”. But, weird things do happen.
For example they could claim “excessive force”. (A B.S. claim, but they still might make it.) They may find that Amber had stabbed someone before, or that because her dad was evil, that she likewise was evil. Or they may just have a lot of money to spend on lawyers and thus can outspend Amber’s family (even if the lawsuits are meritless).
JBento
Like UT says, last we heard of Ryan he had been hospitalised. We don’t know if he has been released yet and, if so, he remains nearby or has been yanked home.
We haven’t heard anything further on the lawsuit, except that Joe’s dad is bankrolling Amber.
Little Smile
if i’ve notived one thing in this comic than it is that the bad characters dont change. Good Characters may become bad but bad characters like Mary or Malaya always stay bad.
Nono
Hank got a serious redemption arc after his appearance in Freshmen Family Weekend.
I don’t think Mary is getting one, but we have seen turnarounds before.
Laura
I never thought of Malaya as bad. Snarky, maybe. But never bad.
Needfuldoer
Being bad would mean getting invested, and Malaya would roll their eyes at getting invested.
wwwhhattt
I disagree. At the start of the comic Toedad and Blaine were both alive, but they managed to change.
Fay
Malaya is an obnoxious jerk, but I wouldn’t say she’s a villain or antagonist. It’s the villains that stay rather static, probably because Willis wants to avoid the Very Christian Thing of, “If you just ~forgive~ your enemies, they’ll always end up being good deep down!”
Bunk
That’s because Mary is not allowed to be anything other than awful
Sajuuk-Khar
Mary is completely allowed to be other than awful. She could reject death cult evangelicalism, and she could reject fascism, and she could work to oppose those systems and attempt to make amends with those she’s harmed.
She’s not going to do this, of course, because she thinks being Like This is cool and great, and everyone else deserves to suffer. She’s very committed to hee shitty ideology.
But she COULD reject it.
DudeMyDadOwnsADealership
That means no one gets shot from a bell tower. Good times.
RassilonTDavros
Not sure if Mary is deliberately getting the name wrong to be a dick, or genuinely doesn’t know.
Yumi
Well, Jennifer told corrected Mary about her name like, seconds ago (yesterday’s strip), so I’d assume Mary’s just being an asshole. But maybe she has a condition where the only J-name she can remember is Jesus.
Needfuldoer
“Just being an asshole” is her default state.
Dark_T_Zeratul
Yesterday, it was merely “I don’t give a shit if it’s wrong.” Today, it’s definitely “I’m intentionally being wrong to spite you.”
Casi
considering the text is italicized, which is used for emphasis in world bubble dialogue, she is definitely doing it intentionally.
Sirksome
Is that really a hobby? I feel like her real hobby is just making people suffer to temporarily feel the whole she has in her heart.
Thag Simmons
It’s not, but Mary’s never been great with comebacks.
Saida
Because I have Japanese as a second language, this line had a special double entendre to me… The Japanese word for hobby (趣味 shumi), also means ‘kink’. So I actually heard her shout “Jesus is my kink!”
jeffepp
“Bartender! I need a drink!”
True Survivor
Huh, so that’s what RA stands for. I’ve been in college long enough I should know that, but I guess my education is so full of acronyms all ready that my mind just assumed I’d been told what it was and moved on.
The Wellerman
Education if full of acronym alphabet soup! ?
BBCC
Wondering if Jessica is a reference to something or if it’s just Mary being an asshole and not wanting to use Jennifer’s real name.
Either way, again, Mary, fuck off and die.
Sirksome
I think she’s pretending she doesn’t remember Jennifer’s name, y’know because she cares so little about Jennifer and what she’s doing. I swear if I didn’t know any better this borderline feels like a crush that Mary doesn’t understand or know what to do with.
Thag Simmons
Last time it seemed like Mary might have had a crush on a girl it turned out that she very much did not, I suspect it’s something similar here.
Sirksome
Knowing Mary I doubt it’s a crush too, but she’s way more emotionally invested in this than what you’d expect. It costs a lot of energy to hold grudges and most people fall back to indifference. Take Rachel for instance. She clearly has something against Ruth but she doesn’t spend her time plotting comeback scenarios and schemes.
C.T. Phipps
Mary obsessively stalked Carla and tried to blackmail Ruth into letting her “have” her. I think she’s not actually just a bigot, she’s an actual hate criminal plotting something serious.
Bryy
I mean she literally tried to force Ruth and Billie to kill themselves.
Thag Simmons
I don’t think Mary has actual plots. She has a lot of people she hates and wants to hurt, and when she saw an opportunity to cause some serious harm she took it, but she’s not particularly clever and she doesn’t have any actual power. I think her blackmail threat was as dangerous as she gets, and she’s not going to be in a position to do something like that again
Yumi
In the DND campaign that I’m in, I made Jessica a very common male name for people in my character’s background culture. My character’s pre-exile best friend was a boy named Jessica, and there are hints that he’s going to become more relevant to our current story.
All this to say, I’ve gotten so used to associating “Jessica” with “he/him” that at first I thought Mary was implying something along those lines.
The Wellerman
You play DND too? ? Awesome!
Online or in-person?
Yumi
In-person. We did it over video chat for a while during the pandemic, but we’ve gone back to in-person now.
The Wellerman
I definitely prefer to play online between my vocal dysphoria and all else, but yeah that sounds really cool! Also that campaign sounds amazing! ?
powerpowerpow
I always feel weird when I think about the fact that I’ve played D&D pretty much exclusively online, since we started during the pandemic and my friends are all spread out around the world across four different time zones. I’d love to be able to regularly play in person someday…
anon
probably the first or she would’ve used a ‘full name’ or so if it was referencing something else
Schpoonman
Yes, Jennifer, this is definitely what you should be doing with your time and energy.
The Wellerman
I’ve read enough Big Nate to know that Billie is probably setting up some kind of trap involving Ruth.
Needfuldoer
I just hope this is her aggressively summoning Ruth to deal with Mary, not her taking out her frustration on Ruth.
anon
lol it would either go over well over very badly to tell another christian that the “Lord is my hobby”
Hof1991
But it accurately describes Mary’s relationship to religion.
Sam
Ah yes, kicking doors unprompted is perfectly healthy and reasonable behaviour.
alongcameaspider
I think she’s specifically going to Ruth to complain that Mary is harassing her
Caro
didn’t we just see ruth outside the room and down the hall though
Caro
wait nvm she went in and chatted with jason ignore me
Devin
Kicking the door seems like a less than ideal way to begin that conversation, but I don’t think Jennifer is in the best headspace, no matter how much she may claim otherwise.
Tawdry Quirks
I think Jennifer wants to know why Ruth hasn’t taken Mary’s femurs yet.
Sam
I feel like this strip is more just calling out Jennifer’s hypocrisy where she is ALSO terrible at letting things go and she also needs to get a hobby.
Dave Van Domelen
Her hobby HORSE is the Lord.
Kravis
“The Lord” is her “hobby”?
I thought religious people, especially zealots like Mary, took “the Lord” way more serious than that.
Bryy
When you’re a zealot, you don’t need to worry about such things.
C.T. Phipps
She craves the power of damnation and fear.
Keulen