Pleases
Posted on July 23, 2016 by David M Willis

498 thoughts on “Pleases”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    “GOTTA RIP ‘EM ALL” – BandAidMon

    1. Ana Chronistic

      BandAidMonGo: Carla runs around and rips bandages off people

      (mostly the literal ones, not figurative)

      1. Kris

        This just in! BandAidMonGo has over 10 million users in it’s first week!

        1. Kirby

          Almost all of them unwilling and reporting her to the police for charging them money to rip off their bandages.

        2. MortartarSaws

          Or cookies. Preferably cookies.

        3. zoomer296

          But not the cheap kind.

      2. Charlie Spencer

        I’ve had it with people going to cemeteries, memorials, and other places deserving dignity just so they can rip off their BandAids.

        1. Deanatay

          PULBIC NOTICE

          All Band-Aids in this office are being used to heal our employees. PLEASE do not invade our privacy to rip them off. This is not appreciated, and will get you arrested.

          Thank You,
          The Management

    2. butts

      Found your face!

      1. Robin

        Your FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE

        1. Chandra

          GIVE ME YOUR FAAAAAAAAAAAAACE

        2. Chandra

          Wait, I’ve forgotten how dated Transformers movie one-liners were. ._.”

        3. Robin

          Don’t worry, that was perfect XD

        4. Yet_One_More_Idiot

          I guess it’s time again for Carla to get in someone else’s FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIC

        5. thejeff

          Stop the Faces!

    3. nobodybasically

      Wouldn’t BandAidmon technically be a Digimon?

      1. Who Izzy

        That’s what I thought it was supposed to be at first…was fairly confused

  2. butts

    Aww, poor Mary, losing her leverage. So sad for her.

    1. inqntrol

      “Yeah, now she can’t blackmail Ruth! Poor girl.”

      1. David

        Why not? The threat never was to blow their relation to the dorm but to the authorities.

        1. Andy

          Given how much of a gossip-pit any dorm is, outing Ruth/Billie to the dorm residents is pretty much the same thing as outing it to the authorities.

    2. TheAnonymousGuy

      poor mary? poor Carla, prime targ- I mean clients right behind her. Turn AROUND CARLA!

      1. Heavensrun

        Yeah, pretty sure that’s the point. Walky and Amber aren’t back there by accident.

        1. TheAnonymousGuy

          that’s the joke. notice I start off saying targets.

    3. JessWitt

      Ah, that’s why she’s upset. Good! Easy come, easy goes the blackmail material.

    4. Plasma Mongoose

      Still better than losing your cleavage. ( \)(/ )

      1. butts

        This is Mary we’re talking about.

        1. David

          There’s cleavage and cleavage. How fittingly your avatar is named for discussing this topic!

    5. Cerberus

      It is kinda amazing that now Carla has both defanged Mary’s attempt at transphobic harassment as well as defanged her blackmail attempt against Ruth and the power and fear she was drawing from that.

      I have a feeling that if Mary tries to go to the Forces Downstairs she’ll defang that too. Not because she thinks Ruth doesn’t deserve to be fired, but just to deny Mary even the semblance of a victory.

      1. butts

        I’m honestly not sure how she could get Ruth out of this without a firing.

        1. Cerberus

          Seems unlikely, but then I also wasn’t expecting Carla to straight up dead-lift Billie and out them, so, yeah, we’ve got one hell of a wild card on the field and if I was to put money on any character to figure out a way to prevent that firing, then it’d be on Carla.

        2. chris2315

          Nah, I don’t really see Carla has the “solving problems with diplomacy” type. She will fix your shit, no matter the consequences, but don’t expect her to fix the consequences too. She is very much chaotic good, I think.

        3. Cerberus

          Oh, I guarantee if she decides to “solve” that problem, it will be by means so far away from “diplomatic” it’ll make Nigel Farage’s speech to the EU look like the Gettysberg Address.

        4. Jhon

          Just like the Dirty Pair.
          “We will solve any problem for you.”
          Usually by turning it into a worse one.

        5. Foxhack

          Nobody knows they were in a relationship.

          As far as everyone knows, Carla told Billie Ruth was acting weird, and Billie reacted like that to save her.

        6. butts

          Suuure. They’ll totally buy that.

        7. Cerberus

          Ironically enough, they’ll probably first believe that Carla was really worried about her girlfriend and brought in aid. Or maybe that Carla and Ruth and Billie are all in a triad relationship. I dunno, I don’t see them letting go of the Carla dating Ruth idea any time soon.

        8. butts

          Now, that seems plausible.

        9. Emily

          Dammit now I want that why did you do this to me Cerberus?

        10. Cerberus

          *evil grin*

        11. Yet_One_More_Idiot

          Yesssss…

          Carla/Ruth/Billie…I just need a name for this new ship that I sail on…

          Bicaruth? *runs suggestion up flagpole, waits to see if anybody’ll salute*

        12. RIP12081990

          Easy carla has rich parents who offer the collage money

        13. Darkoneko

          thinking about it, so does Billie.

        14. begbert2

          Fairly confident that Carla is sitting on the bigger pile of cash though. Her parents send her lasers!

        15. Ellegos

          What affair? Mary just saw Billie going to Ruth’s room. Turns out Ruth has been depressed and suicidal, and Billie was trying to help her in secret. Depression is a legitimate condition, and I’m not sure what the university can really do about it other than require that she seeks help.

          I mean I ACTUALLY don’t know what else they can do. Can they fire her for it without inventing other reasons? Either way, it gets rid of the biggest offense of RA authority abuse by being in a romantic situation with someone on her floor.

        16. Lovely Monsters

          How bad would it be, exactly, if Ruth *were* fired? Because it’s starting to seem like keeping the RA position is a lot more trouble than it’s worth.

        17. Spencer

          She’d lose the free room and the paycheck she gets from it. Given the implied relationship she has with her grandpa, this would not be a good thing.

        18. Charles Phipps

          The other option is student loans which will cripple her for decades after college but will happily help her until then!

          CAPITALISM!

        19. Cerberus

          Yeah, “sir” would get a lot more power to dictate and control her life as well as a new tool to abuse her (“you couldn’t even keep down a RA job, I’m so disappointed in you and your continued failures”), which would be the biggest loss of the whole thing and what’s got her downright terrified of losing this position (when she doesn’t welcome it as an act of self-destruction).

        20. Achallenger

          well if they are anything like william 7 maru and seversl other universities, they will straight up expell ur ass for possibly being suicidal, to protect the school

      2. Rukduk

        Carla needs to be careful from now for one reason and one reason only: if she keeps this up people will keep coming to her with their drama problems convinced that she’s a drama guru. This would both a) really damage her misanthrope reputation/projection and b) impede her studies.

        1. zoelogical

          on the other hand, if she spins it right she could get PAID.

        2. NelC

          In cookies!

        3. zoelogical

          take up a side job as the cookie monster

      3. Dragon_Nataku

        She also got Mary to actually call her by her name. Win!

        1. thejeff

          Nice catch.
          Apparently the light show worked.

      4. Deanatay

        Ah, but what you’re not seeing is, Mary has no real interest in actually turning Ruth in. It was the power the secret gave her over Ruth that she enjoyed. That’s why she’s the one panicking right now – she sees her power slipping away, as the secret becomes public.

      5. Z

        I cannot be bothered doing an archive trawl, but IIRC it isn’t hard to figrue out. Ruth tried to shut down Mary. Mary threatened blackmail in front of Carla (IIRC!). Carla called out Ruth for being out of line. Suddenly Carla’s being dragged into whacky hijinks to keep Ruth alive.

        Not really hard to put 2 and 2 together and get “Ruth ended this to try and protect Carla from Mary”. I’ll bet that’s a good chunk of why she’s gone along with it. Half a thing of cookies isn’t really worth it, her personality isn’t known for its penchant for charity work.

    6. Zach

      She only wanted to study blackmail!

      1. SgtWadeyWilson

        I studied blackmail once. (By which I mean I binge watched some cool crime shows.)

    7. H3xx

      Her outfit looks a little germany circa 1930… fitting for her, really…

      1. Rukduk

        It’s definitely 1930s paramilitary. I see the Brownshirt resemblance, but it’s also someone reminiscent of outfits worn by female militia members fighting for the Republican forces during the Spanish Civil war in place of actual uniforms.

      2. zoelogical

        …i was going “dang that’s a good fashion choice DAMMIT MARY” but now that you’ve said that i can’t unsee it

        so…i guess…thank you???

        ugh i love the way that scarf flows tho

        1. Darkoneko

          That outfit is definitly so very cute.

          (the character, less so)

        2. zoelogical

          honestly like take out the boob pockets and let the scarf flow freely and u are golden

        3. Cybersnark

          Say what you will about the Germans, they’re always the most stylishly dressed army in any war they’re in.

        4. zoelogical

          didn’t their uniforms, like, trip them up in combat bc they were so stylish

        5. Gigafreak

          They were slipping and falling all over the place, they were so fucking smooth

  3. miados

    Can i bring you a list carla?

    1. Doctor_Who

      May take a day or two, since it will have to go by freight.

      1. miados

        with the last few comics i kind of wish i had a carla in my life honestly.

        1. Z

          I really need a Carla in my life. _-_

      2. Merle

        Damn it, we have enough problems with shipping in this comic already

        1. SgtWadeyWilson

          *ba-dum tsssh*

    2. Reltzik

      I like how the last frame includes a good place to start.

      Walky: “I’m struggling in class and I don’t want my girlfriend to know.”
      Carla: “I just texted her.”
      Walky: “GAH!”

      Amber: “My alternate personality is Amazi-girl.”
      Carla: “I just texted the cops. Also, warned them you’re mentally unstable. I suggest you take the next ten minutes to contact them and negotiate a peaceful surrender rather than coming face to face with them cold.”
      Amber: “Uh…. okay? Can I kill spiders for five of those minutes?”

      Dina: “I’m preparing for a rematch against a noncanonical Indominus Rex using my raptor combat style, but I am planning to cheat by fighting in the style of the noncanonical Jurassic Park raptors rather than the actual historical creature.”
      Carla: “…. I need more cookies.”

      1. Reltzik

        Dina: “I have also discovered that dishonesty brings out my contractions.”
        Carla: “Let’s play poker for cookies.”

      2. Architex

        This is the healthiest scenario for this web comic to end. Nice job.

      3. Leorale

        I like this. My only qualm is sending the cops after Amazi-Girl. I’d send a mental health outreach person instead. But AG respects and likes cops, so maybe either would work.

        1. Silly Name

          Well, I’m pretty sure some of Amazi-Girl’s actions aren’t fully legal, and aren’t mental institutions required to inform the police anyway of any illegal activity their patients might have committed?

        2. ruhrow

          Nope! They’re required to inform only if there is clear and *present* danger to anyone (including the patient themselves). Actually, I take that back…it’s more like they’re *permitted* to inform only in those circumstances. Patient privacy is king, especially when denying said privacy → patients not getting treated.

        3. Silly Name

          Preface: not from the US. Isn’t being aware of a crime and not reporting it to the police a crime in itself, though? Here where I live (Italy) only close relatives (parents, spouses and children) are allowed to not report a criminal, as it is assumed their relationship makes them emotionally unable to do so. But for everyone else, not reporting a crime is against the law.

          And it makes sense: I mean, if your patient confessed to having killed that girl 8 years ago, shouldn’t you tell the police, even if the patient isn’t dangerous right now?

        4. marianne

          Not really, if the doctor assesses them to be no longer dangerous. The dead girl can’t be helped, but the patient still can. Plus, it seems this Italian law covers all crimes, so a much more likely scenario is something like drug users being afraid to seek medical help. Which is horrible.

        5. Silly Name

          Remember that in Italy we have a public health service, and we aren’t as hard on drugs as in the US. Here, a drug user (emphasis on user, not dealers), would be sent to rehab, not in prison. They’d get appointments with social workers that help them deal with their problems and detox.

          Also, while it is true the dead girl is, well, dead, if you have evidence to solve a case, wouldn’t you bring it to the police? What if somebody had been unjustly declared guilty? Shouldn’t the girl’s family get closure? And if the crime hasn’t yet reached its statue of limitations, the killer should get put on trial.

        6. Silly Name

          Oh, and here in Italy, the crime is *possession*, not use in itself. If you go to the hospital to get in rehab, the cop can’t put in prison, because they can’t prove that you ever owned the drugs.

          Heck, even if the cops find drugs on your body, as long as it’s below the threshold that is considered dealing (meaning more than one dose for personal use), you might not even be put under arrest.

        7. CJ

          There is a concept of doctor/therapist-client-relationship needing to be confidential for it to work. There was a large discussion about that in Germany recently after that depressed pilot suicided by crashing a plane full of people into the alps.
          (and we might get it again because the stupid youth who killed 9 people yesterday also was depressed. Or not, people thinking it was part of a larger terrorist attack for several hours with all accompanying panics and stuff might overshadow that).
          Actually, for a crime in the past professional etiquette probably demands to convince the perp to go to the police himself. If its clear that new crimes will be committed, I think that you have inform the authorities.

        8. Ntrovert

          To answer your question a bit more directly, it is true that failure to report a crime is, in itself, a criminal offense. However, it is typically only enforced when the crime in question involves death, serious bodily harm, sexual abuse, or a criminal act that harms several people. In a negative sense, this can be used to try to compel someone to inform on someone else. In a more positive sense, it can be used as a lesser charge against someone who does cooperate with police when they might have been charged with a more serious offense.

        9. Reltzik

          The difference is that Amber wouldn’t HAVE to go to conventional therapy. Giving her an option she won’t take solves nothing, and that doesn’t fit with Carla’s present state of mind.

      4. Spencer

        ahahaha its funny because Amber’s mentally unwell and thus needs to be locked up lol so true

        1. anonymsly

          Um, it’s not funny, and the police would be contacted because Amber has committed multiple assaults, at least once on someone essentially nonviolent who wasn’t (to our knowledge) fighting back. (The backpack thief who got punched in the face so hard he fell down.)

          Amber is mentally unwell, there are no two ways about it, but that doesn’t mean that when she assaults someone it’s not criminal or assault.

        2. Sean

          Yep. And telling the police she has some sort of mental disorder or trauma is probably the best way to ensure she gets treatment rather than just getting tossed in jail for the assaults. Jail without some sort of mental help is not gonna go well, and while some of her violence might just be her personality, some of it is pretty obviously more PTSD than personality quirk.

          …i mean, i don’t think directly calling with ‘hey police, a mentally unstable person is going around assaulting people’ is a good idea, that will end badly. But Amber is past the point where she can be expected to seek help herself (hell, she’s actively ostracizing anyone who even suggests it) and Amazi-Girl is past the point where everyone else can blithely ignore her. Getting her arrested for her criminal acts and then ensuring the police know enough to at least get her a psych eval would probably be the best thing for her right now.

        3. Spencer

          Considering going to jail would kick her out for the remainder of the series, that ain’t happening.

          And, I mean, it’s not like Amber’s the only character who’s ever provoked unnecessary violence in this series. Sarah, Sal, Joyce and Mike, and Ruth, for example. They aren’t going to face consequences for that either, and the actual important part about Amazi-Girl has pretty much always been as a symbol of Amber’s worsening mental health.

      5. Amazi-Stool

        When reading the comic, i came to that same conclusion about last panel, with the exception of Dina.

        Her dark secret is not that she plans to cheat when fighting a stupid noncanonical Indominus Rex.

        Her secret is that her first girlfriend, the person she loves most, is squatting on the campus dorms and is risking to get expelled from campus grounds – maybe even get tossed back to the fundie-circles she came from!

        So Carla: It’s named band-aid for a reason!

        It may not be the best solution for the long term, but sometimes not-the-worst-solution-for-short-term is all that is available.

        Hm, wondering why she doesn’t know?
        Nuking the closet – that she is trans – may have worked for her, but she has the support of her rich parents. I would assume that she is aware of other trans people who are not in that situation. People that must keep their status secret to keep their jobs, keep their rented flats, keep the support of their families ….

        Has she ever read a book from Jocelyne?

  4. Wheelpath

    The prospect of cookies should make her smile a little more

  5. Kris

    You don’t get cookies for TELLING secrets Carla.

    1. Tunaro

      Assuming Ruthie comes out OK (Please Willis, for the love of all things pure and good) ? I wouldn’t be surprised if Billie didn’t try to get her the keys to a friggin’ Mrs. Fields.

      1. Kris

        Physically I’m I think Ruth’s okay. She did talk to Carla for a brief moment. Mentally who knows?

        1. miados

          as someone who has literally been in ruths situation of not eating or leaving the bed except to not soil the bed basically its not mentally appealing.

        2. Reltzik

          Mentally, definitely not. The question is the degree to which she’s not okay.

        3. Cerberus

          It seems like depressive catatonia, so… immensely not okay, but probably safe-ish assuming that Billie and Carla can get her to eat and drink something and hide anything Ruth can hurt herself with.

        4. Regalli

          Yeah, bad but workable until they can get a counselor. Important part is she’s not dying right now.

        5. Cerberus

          Yeah, having cared for people in that state and having been in that state before. It’s essentially about emotional triage, stemming the bleeding, keeping them alive and worrying about long-term damages and other dangers when the person is stabilized and walking about.

      2. David

        Well, don’t get your hopes too high, judging from Ruth’s roomieverse fate.

    2. Mollyscribbles

      The cookies come from loved ones who are thankful that the person got the help they needed now that the information is out.

  6. AnvilPro

    Well placed Walky and Amber in the final panel

    1. Doctor_Who

      Dina too. Her terrible secret is that when she was little she loved dinosaurs because of …Dragonzord.

      If it gets out, she’ll be humiliated.

      1. miados

        I always liked triceratops but mostly because of the blue ranger.

      2. TheAnonymousGuy

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUf9rDrSxn0

      3. Orion Fury

        I think that was why I liked dinosaurs.

      4. trlkly

        Hence why she prefers green dinosaur clothing–despite the inaccuracy.

  7. Umbrella Paint

    I hope by the end of the comic Carla has a business that runs entirely on cookies.

    1. JessWitt

      A spin-off of Ruttech that’s all about cookies.

    2. Cerberus

      Well, depending on how Ruttech handles its web businesses…

    3. TachyonCode

      I’d be happy with a *car* that runs entirely on cookies, personally.

    4. tangled_z

      Cookie Clicker, Carla Edition?

      1. Darkoneko

        Orteil would be proud.

        1. tangled_z

          Maybe Carla can be the final boss of the game?

          “Can you bake enough cookies before Carla eats them all?!”

        2. Darkoneko

          It’s like the grandmas, a some point she starts appearing and eating your stock

  8. Ellie

    I love Carla

  9. spriteless

    Oh thank God.

    Carla: You’re welcome!

    1. butts

      “Do whatever the hell you want, you mother-fucking goddess”

  10. Tunaro

    I don’t think I could bake enough cookies for my issues, to be honest.

    1. TheAnonymousGuy

      dido.

      1. Orion Fury

        ditto.

        1. zoelogical

          *cracks knuckles* guess i better start baking

        2. SgtWadeyWilson

          *Pulls out phone* A Ditto! Where?

        3. Amazi-Stool

          Beth Ditto?

      2. David

        l

    2. Needfuldoer

      You need more grandmas.

  11. Stephen R. Bierce

    I am stuck on Carla brand ’cause…

    1. TheAnonymousGuy

    2. Terry

      What if my issue is that I am secretly obsessed with baking cookies? I don’t even really like to eat them… just bake them…

      1. Leorale

        This would be a very good issue and you’d make many friends.

      2. Deanatay

        The dough is tastier, anyway!

    3. Orion Fury

      bigotry doesn’t stick on me?

  12. xtravisage

    Sounds like Carla’s gonna need to get put on a bus lest she just resolve all the conflicts in the comic for us. She’s like Mike, but way more forward.

    1. Doctor_Who

      If only she was a mom, it would be love at first sight.

    2. Reltzik

      Nah, she just needs to develop drama secrets of her own. Then all her superpowers will be nullified.

      1. Umbrella Paint

        She’d just use her powers on herself then. She’d run through the hall screaming every secret she’s had since the beginning of time.

    3. zoelogical

      what if..resolving conflicts…creates MORE conflicts…

    4. Deanatay

      Mike: fucks moms for nickles
      Carla: solves problems for cookies

      Wait, Billie said cheerleaders are problem solvers – does this make Carla a cheerleader??

      Carla Rutten: Mercenary Cheerleader

    5. Z

      She’s not actually a busy body, she doesn’t have the drive to help others for the sake of helping others. If this were JOYCE? There’d be trouble. But if Carla really had to choose between getting out of this mess or having to dig deeper? I think she’ll go back to harassing Mary with skates and pies.

      1. thejeff

        You mean like everyone though she’d do after knocking this morning, checking it off her list and walking away?
        Or like after she’d brought breakfast, was told Ruth was “fine”, walked away and got into a cartoon argument with Walky?
        Carla’s not a busybody, but show her someone in trouble and she can’t keep up the asshole facade.

  13. Achallenger

    nbothing i smarm can keep up with that alt-text

  14. cmd1095

    Carla is me when I watch any sort of contrived drama shenanigans. I get in those situations and I give no fucks, I just rip off the band-aids with gusto

  15. Pogo

    I don’t want dumbing of age to end, but I think Carla yelling everyone’s secrets and solving them her special way would be the best ending ever.

    1. Umbrella Paint

      I can kind of imagine how that’d go.
      “HEY DID YOU KNOW BECKY’S A LESBIAN!?”
      “We know!”

      1. Cerberus

        “Uh… Grace and Mandy are dating?”
        “Know that too!”
        “Amber is Amazi-girl”
        “Uhhhh…”
        “Woo, I just won another $20!”
        “Damnit, Grace!”

        1. Umbrella Paint

          “Umm… Ethan’s gay?”
          “He was dating JOYCE.”
          “No, wait, I’ve got one, Mary is a hypocritical bongo!”
          “NOW YOU’RE JUST STATING FACTS!”

  16. Reltzik

    Publicity: Every blackmailer’s worst nightmare. Their ammunition stops working if other people know it.

    1. Cerberus

      Yup, if everyone already knows it, you can’t use the fear of it getting out to control the person you’re targeting. And for Mary, control has always been the point.

      She feels she needs to control everyone around her and only then does she believe she’ll be happy and in her element. Control how they love, how they pray, how they react to what she wants when she wants it, even who is allowed to be on the floor.

      And the sad thing is that personality type isn’t even uncommon.

      1. ischemgeek

        IME, Mary types are disproportionately represented in authority figures: Because authority gives them actual legitimate power, and a position of prestige through which they can enable and cloak their bullying of others.

        Especially, they’re over-represented in those positions of authority that the public seems to think can do no wrong: Police, teachers, etc. Not saying that all police and all teachers are Marys, cuz that’s not true, but Marys do gravitate to and thrive in those fields, in large part because they know for damn sure what the answer to, “Who do you think they’ll believe? Me, a respectable cop/teacher, or you, some delinquent kid?” is gonna be in the real world.

        (…and consider that I say that as a white person. I know for damn sure that 1, my experiences have a fuckload more to do with me being autistic than me being white, and 2, my experiences, from what I’ve been told, are pretty damn close to the average experience for a PoC.)

        1. ischemgeek

          (… in terms of severity if not flavor. I get called ableist slurs and targeted because I act obviously different – I fly a lot for work and have yet to not be hauled out of the line for extra questioning in one of the larger airports in this country frex and usually get told that I wouldn’t be hauled off for questioning if I would just “relax” and “make eye contact like a normal person” [hi, I’m autistic, we can’t really do eye contact normally]. A PoC would instead get targeted because they fit a profile or were acting “suspicious” where suspicious = had brown skin in public.

          My advantage is that my skin color is a protection – they’ll harass me, but they won’t beat me. PoC don’t have that protection, and even in Canada, racist cops and security are an ongoing, physical danger to PoC, but especially to black and native people.)

        2. Cerberus

          Ugh, the teachers that are Marys infuriate me to no end, because I’m a teacher and how dare they abuse that role just to pick on (or worse) kids. But yeah, they hang around and they’re unfortunately more likely to become administrators than any other type of teacher.

        3. ischemgeek

          Yeah.

          Every time I hear a teacher say, “Things have swung too far the other way nowadays. Now you can’t do anything to the little brats to make them mind,” I feel sorry for their students.

          Because frankly: A teacher who’s greatest over-riding frustration with the education system is that you can’t beat children and get away with it anymore is very often a Mary type who is pissed off that their power has been curbed.

  17. Jess

    Carla! Here to save the day!

  18. Heff

    Carla: the asshole Mike only dreams he could be.

    1. butts

      Are you kidding? Flip that around.

    2. Emily

      No Mike’s just an asshole whose trying top be an asshole and succeeding, Carla is a good person whose trying to be an asshole and regularly failing.

    3. Deanatay

      Nah, remember, this is a YOUNG Mike. He’s only learning how to be an asshole, growing into the monstrous world-fucker we all know he’ll become.

      Carla? Carla is Mike’s ROLE MODEL.

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        Now picturing Carla giving Mike the “I made you” speech from the Conan movie.

        1. SgtWadeyWilson

          “What? What? What are you talking about?”
          “I made you, you made me first.”
          “Hey, bat-brain, I mean, I was a kid when I killed your parents. I mean, I say “I made you” you gotta say “you made me.” I mean, how childish can you get?”

          (Different movie, different speech, but it fit for the thread.)

  19. Carms

    Dat hova text tho.

    Love the last panel – what’s dina’s secret? Homeless gf?

    1. Cerberus

      Homeless gf seems like the biggest one she has. It definitely was the one to make her scared of the RA for the first time.

  20. JessWitt

    And thus Schtickshift was born. Maybe? please?

  21. Leorale

    Especially digging Carla’s power stance in the last panel. How many tucks? None of them.
    Also Mary’s a snappy dresser.

    1. MeghanTheDreamCrusher

      Well of course she is, evil always has the best uniforms.

    2. shadowcell

      the Nazis wore Hugo Boss, after all…

      1. inqntrol

        You have to look good when you conquer the world, right?

        1. Orion Fury

          [Insert Hipster Statement Here]

        2. SgtWadeyWilson

          Mary was evil before it was well dressed.
          Nonono… That’s not right.
          Mary’s only dressing like a facist soldier ironically.
          Ehh… Maybe…
          Mary was a cold-hearted bongo bigot before it was cool. (Hey! I told you that’s still not cool! That will never be cool!)

    3. inqntrol

      Cold-blooded villains always dress in style

      1. JessWitt

        Like Cruella de Vil. Or Ann Coulter.

        1. Orion Fury

          If she doesn’t scare you, no evil thing will…

        2. SgtWadeyWilson

          I still want that car. Also, I sometimes think about bleaching half of my hair. That is probably a bad thing.

        3. Orion Fury

          Well yeah, don’t you need hair to bleach half of it?

        4. Dellaran

          One is a farcical caricature of evil. The other is a Disney character.

      2. Screwball

        Evil does tend to have the coolest looking stuff. That’s why I signed up…

        Monomaniacal leaders who tend to kill subordinates do put a dampener on things tho…

        1. Opus the Poet

          That reminds me of the Monty Python Star Wars special, people pretending to get Force Choked and putting on false moustaches and beards to change identities. It was either Python or Robot Chicken pretending to be Python with action figures.

  22. Rukduk

    And like that, Carla has established herself as the go to person for the fixing of drama. In fact, I’m pretty sure now that her “do what ever you want you motherfucking goddess” note to herself wasn’t just a healthy dose of self love but in fact the truth and Carla is indeed a literal goddess or avatar of one. I’d say avatar of Khali.

    1. zoelogical

      carla is an avatar of carla take no replacements sign no refunds

    2. DonDueed

      If the goddess part is true, that would also explain the mother fucking.

  23. Moose

    Is it just me or does Mary look like a member of the militia of a USSR-ish nation?

    1. butts

      Oh my, yes. Not quite sure what it is about it, but it’s definitely got a brownshirtish vibe.

    2. JessWitt

      Rumor time! Mary is disguised Russian operative.

      1. Rukduk

        1) If she’s the daughter of sleeper agents and one herself, she chose one hell of a cover, and is also one hell of an actor.
        2) What’s Mary’s last name again? I kinda want it to be a Russian one for this little bit of twisted logic: “No one would expect a Russian sleeper agent to have a Russian last name. It would be to obvious. Thus, it helps me to hide in plain sight.”

      2. Dellaran

        In Soviet Bloomington, bongo beats on you.

        1. Rukduk

          “Do you have any idea how infuriating hard that cover was to pull off? Going to church? Practically worshipping Reagan? Acting like a self-absorbed self-righteous bongo? The only thing of my real personality was the drawing? But now, now that the glorious worker’s revolution has begun, I can finally be myself. How would you like to become a member of the Worker’s Party Roz? Want to be an Amerikansk Tovarisch?”-Soviet Mary (with slight Petersburg accent. Also, sorry if I butchered the spelling on those last two words which are Russian)

        2. Liliet

          There are two options there… especially as I’m imagining she’s addressign Carla
          “Want to become an Amerikansky tovarisch?” <= with a male ending, but there isn't really a frequently used female counterpart for 'tovarisch'…
          "Want to become Amerikanskim tovarischem?" <= with Russian cases for some reason??? mostly because this form kept knocking on my cranium and I figured that must be linguistic intuition
          "Want to become an Amerikanskaya tovarka?" <= the rarely used female counterpart for tovarisch
          "Want to become an Amerikanskaya podruzhka?" <= the word for female friend, as foreign friends are usually called just that, friends. Tovarisch is just an official gender neutral way of addressing people like 'sir' or 'ma'am', you won't be asked if you want to be that.

          Actually, Amerikanskaya podruzhka sounds kind of dirty… it has 'girlfriend' connotations with an euphemism vibe at that… that would be hilarious

          okay, it's "Want to become an Amerikanskaya podruga?" <= same as above, but without a diminutive suffix that made it weird.

          Want to become an Amerikanskaya podruga, Carla?
          0
          (A male character would be Amerikansky droog… to make it clear, podruga is also pronounced with an 'oo' sound, it's just not usually used in transliterations, but 'drug' is just um)
          (Multiple characters would be Amerikanskie druzya)

          I'm not sure why I wrote all this, but here you go, an expert opinion from a native Russian speaker XD

        3. Rukduk

          Thank you. Russian isn’t one of the languages I’ve really studied at all (and even the ones I have studied intensely I can’t speak at all), and I just remember it being mentioned by my grandfather as what he remembered hearing a Russian soldier say during the closing days of WW2 on the Elbe, so I thought I would try my hand. Very nice to have an actual phrase though.

        4. Rukduk

          Also, I want to apologize again for horribly butchering your language.

    3. Rukduk

      Honestly, kinda reminded me a bit of a picture of a Spanish militia women from the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), although it is an outfit that would work for fighting in the trenches, so that’s probably why.

    4. Mistah J

      Funny, my first thought was “she looks like Carmen Sandiego”

      1. Leorale

        Carmen Sandiego is also a snappy dresser.
        (I know somebody who dresses just like Carmen Sandiego in real life; whenever she gets asked, she claims she’s here in NYC to steal the Empire State Building.)

  24. Kris

    Pfffft Dina’s still pissed at Walky! I mean it’s probably only been like five minutes but still…..Also just sayin Sierra could’ve been in this scene. I think she’s Dorothy’s roomate so it would work.

    1. Cerberus

      He defeated her ironclad defense with a non-canon dinosaur. I have a feeling that Dina will be glaring at him for at least a day or two over this one.

      1. SgtWadeyWilson

        So in real time that’s what… a year or so?

  25. nobodybasically

    So no Scandal Savage?

    At least she got a small reference. More than Legends of Tomorrow could bother with *coughcassandrasavagecough*

  26. Shiro

    The fictionverse needs more Carlas. For obvious reasons, but also for this reason.

    1. butts

      ‘Carlaing of Carla.’ Dumbing of Age with all of the characters replaced by Carla.

      …Could work.

      1. Shiro

        No I mean, like, more things need Carla. Export Carla to other canons. Fix everything.

        1. tim gueguen

          The X Files perhaps?

          “Curses, the Carla human has become aware of our plans. Okay, everyone, get on the ship and let’s get the hell off this rock.”

        2. Cerberus

          Just imagine the carnage Carla could wreck in a Shakespearean comedy. All of those comedy of errors and miscommunications would get tied up in a second.

        3. SgtWadeyWilson

          Again I ask: would Mercutio survive?

          Then you ask: wasn’t Romeo and Juliet a tagedy?

          And to that I say: I think you just read it wrong.

  27. buddy

    i would die for carla and i would do it happily

    1. Dandi_Andi

      But what good does it do a person to die for them? No, I would LIVE for Carla every day of my life.

      Until I got bored.

  28. NF

    Carla is now my favorite.

    (Have you accepted Carla as your Lady and Saviour yet?)

    1. Cerberus

      Carla is joy! 😀

    2. Rukduk

      I’ve already surmised that she is an avatar of Khali, but I don’t personally worship or venerate Khali, so…sorta?

      1. Jhon

        If you did, you’d be a Thug, so I hope not.

  29. Just Here

    Carla contains more awesome than the normal human body can handle. We need to get her a SO of whatever variety she prefers.

  30. Teddae

    I hope mary realises, I really hope she does
    hope she realises that her biblical lgbtq bashing ways are hurting people and killing them

    I know she most likely wont since i know people like her who are stubborn to no end, but a man can dream

    1. Reltzik

      …. but would she CARE?

      1. Cerberus

        I theorized yesterday that she would mostly eel her way out of taking responsibility for her contribution to Ruth’s mental collapse.

        Like, it’s not my fault. She was already depressed. It’s her “unhealthy lifestyle”. She would have been fine if she just accepted Jesus and did what I said.

        I mean, her response to seeing her target catatonic on a bed with her girlfriend literally going “oh no” over and over again was to yell at Carla for ruining her blackmail attempt.

        She’s learning jack shit from this about the cost her actions have.

        1. 3-I

          I think this comment is tremendously unfair to eels, who have done nothing to deserve comparison to Mary.

        2. takashid

          +1

        3. Regalli

          Prayer solves everything, after all. If you’re truly righteous, there’s no reason to be depressed. People like these sinners or Bonnie just aren’t trying hard enough. (Excuse me that hurt to type.)

        4. thejeff

          Depression is a Godpertunity

        5. Charles Phipps

          I believe in God but will have words with her when I die over depression and a few other conditions.

        6. ischemgeek

          I am less charitable.

          She will take malicious glee in it. It is God’s judgment striking down a sinner in action – if Ruth doesn’t want to be depressed, all she has to do is give up her sinful ways and return to the glory of God. Gloat,gloat, gloat haha watch God give the sinner her comeuppance. Etc.

          (Hi this is what happened to me when it got out I was suicidal and in counselling in high school. And the harassment got worse. Because ppffft, you’re not just a weirdo dyke b**** who’s probably a secret boy,* you’re crazy, haha, no wonder nobody likes you.)

          *A big part of my bullying was related to how boyish I am, which is a big part of why actually questioning my gender is being so damn anxiety-provoking because oh, the baggage that requires unpacking.

        7. Cerberus

          CONTENT WARNING: Harassment of suicidal individuals, triggering language

          That would fit with the form of most modern harassers and harassment movements. When a “target” reveals they are depressed, usually this triggers the abusers piling on even more, because “maybe we can get this one to off themselves” or “they’re weak and ready for the strike” or because it’s viewed as a personal character flaw or because the target is “crazy” and that somehow means attack them and so on.

          So yeah, them learning their victim is depressed just makes the bullies and harassers more likely to stay on the attack rather than trigger their empathy and realize what a scary dangerous game they’re “playing”.

          *And so many *hugs* about the bullies making it more fraught to figure out gender stuff. Just know that you are awesome and we’ve got your back.

        8. ischemgeek

          Good news: I got a haircut this week and if I comb it right, it makes me look right and it’s awesome. 😀

          (between that and shaving off the peach fuzz on my face, it’s the first time since I grew out my hair after shaving it at 13, that I’ve been able to look in the mirror and the face looking back is almost right. I’d like the face to be leaner and the shoulders bigger… but for now I’ll take it because it’s closer to looking like ‘me’ than I’ve felt in a good 15 years)

        9. Cerberus

          YAY! I’m so happy!

        10. Spencer

          Congrats!

        11. Pat

          Any time I’ve mentioned suicide neither my mother (I never said I was suicidal, but I have twice mentioned facts about it), she immediately became meaner and more focused on pointing out how worthless she thinks I am. Both times it lasted about a week until she apparently bored of it and forgot.

        12. Reltzik

          I don’t think she’d feel a shred of guilt that she would need to eel her way out of.

          Mary views all of this as kind of a low grade holy war. If the enemy dies… well, she was trying to capture them into Christianity rather than kill them, so not exactly a victory, but no great loss either. Individuals don’t matter. What matters is the overall outcome.

          Ruth dying would be bad for Mary, not because value of human life or as-yet-unredeemed-sinner or whatever, but because right now Ruth is a prospective tool. With a little more work, Mary can have the entire dorm wing being led in mandatory prayer sessions.

          This is something that underlies everything Mary does in DoA. She’s not interested in people. She doesn’t value them as people. She doesn’t seem to have a single friend in the world… and she’s not looking for them either. Either she has no intrinsic, instinctive empathy for others, or it’s entirely subsumed by her religious beliefs. She has no emotional need for human contact… which is fine on its own, but truly sucky when paired with the rest. Walkyverse Mary… didn’t exactly grow out of it, but did at least waver from it. DoA Mary has yet to show any sign of even that.

  31. EvilMidnightLurker

    Bets that Mary thinks “everyone will know” something that has absolutely nothing at all to do with… anything?

  32. Architex

    Amber: *Raises hand*

    1. Cerberus

      Carla: “Shoot.”
      Amazi-girl: “My ex has teamed up with a supervillain to personally destroy me by saving my life and I need help destroying this archvillainess.”
      Carla: “… Yeah, I’m gonna need a lot more cookies for this one.”

      1. StClair

        (alternatively)
        “… do you have any idea how fucking crazy that sounds? You need professional help. Literally.”

        1. Deanatay

          “Seriously, I just outed a near-suicidal person, but I’m thinking YOU’RE the one who needs a therapist.”

  33. ajm5007

    Nice background on panel 5.

  34. Commodore Jeep-Eep

    Why am I expecting things to get worse.

    1. detective boomwolf

      Because it most likely will.

      1. MeghanTheDreamCrusher

        Things? Worse? Most likely? In a Willis comic? Preposterous!

    2. JessWitt

      It’s the last chapter of this book, that’s why.

    3. JustCheetoDust

      Classical conditioning, maybe?

    4. Cerberus

      There’s still plenty of time for things to start literally being on fire.

      1. Silly Name

        “Some men just want to watch the university burn, Miss Brown”

  35. Mr. Random

    It’s hard to blackmail someone when everyone knows.

    1. Orion Fury

      I doubt that’ll stop her from trying.

  36. TheLurkerAbove

    I love Carla! That’s all I have to say.

  37. Icalasari

    So Carla is basically the comment’s section given agency

    …She is now my second favourite character, right behind Dina

    1. butts

      It’s a testament to Willis’ character writing abilities that whichever secondary character is currently getting the spotlight quickly becomes everyone’s favorite.

      (Except Mary. Obviously.)

      1. Cerberus

        Well, she became some people’s favorite.

        … Those people are no longer with us.

        1. butts

          …No murdering the transphobes.

        2. Cerberus

          More they got banned, but now that you mention the idea…*

          * No, not seriously.

        3. Silly Name

          Oh, heavens no. It wasn’t murder, nothing so messy.

          We simply locked them in a perpetual orbit around a point three seconds to the left of the future.

        4. Orion Fury

          But then wouldn’t they be to the right of us, and thus in their twisted minds be right?

        5. Opus the Poet

          That’s what makes it perfect! In their minds they will be right and no way to prove it to anyone. Eternal frustration!

        6. Orion Fury

          Alright then. Or is it all left, then?

        7. Amazi-Stool

          M’all colm in the middle, then!

        8. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          I would have sent them to LaGrange Terrace, personally.

        9. zoelogical

          look. i don’t know what they do in your household, but around here we take out the trash to the dumpster not the cemetery

    2. Orion Fury

      If anyone needs more proof that Carla is the comment section, they’re on their own.

  38. gears

    Ok, I’m super conflicted on this one.

    1) On the one hand, Mary is clearly taking that position because she’s lost her leverage. On the other, she’s right about not outing other people’s personal business like this. I hate Mary, but I can’t hate her at this exact moment.

    2) Ruth needs professional help, and keeping this a secret wasn’t getting her there. She’s going to lose her job over this. On the one hand, Carla has achieved what needed to happen. On the other, she did it in the worst way possible.

    1. Reltzik

      Airing the secret likely results in Ruth being fired.

      Keeping it likely results in Ruth being dead.

      Easy call.

      1. Commodore Jeep-Eep

        On the other hand it’s Ruth possibly being expelled for her behavior, being send to useless councillors and being sent back to her abusing grandparents. All in all, Carla fucked the pooch.

        1. Cerberus

          Yeah, Carla prioritized short term over long term and that’s probably gonna fuck Ruth and hard.

          That said, she was pretty much fucked from the second Mary decided to start blackmailing her, cause she’d either have had to deal without any support network, a Mary constantly chipping away at her self-esteem, and no Billie for potentially the rest of the year or ripped the band-aid off herself.

          And she was in a state of self-destruction that she was really only 2-3 more run-ins with Mary away from spilling the secret herself just to get it over with.

          I’m actually not sure what would have been the correct situation here. She definitely needed her support network, but her support network is codependent. She definitely was in a no win situation with Mary, but now Mary has witnesses. But then on the flip-side, that’s a queer girl heavy crowd and Mary just let slip a giant hint that she was blackmailing Ruth about her sexuality and depression, so I can also see that crowd being willing to protect Ruth like they did Becky.

          It’s a clusterfuck and this moment is gonna lead to a whole bunch of changes for our pair.

        2. adam

          Do you think Mary might be partly motivated out of empathy ( to be closeted ) and Mary is a closeted self-hating Gay ?

        3. Cerberus

          Prolly not.*

          *Honestly, I’m somewhat soured on the notion that every homophobic bigot is a closet queer person and Mary hasn’t made any of “those” arguments like “homosexuality is a choice” or “gay sex is just so seductive an enticement for new recruits” that can only seem accurate when you’re actually queer.

        4. Emily

          Wait people actually say “gay sex is just so seductive an enticement for new recruits” and then try to pretend they’re not at least a little bit gay? That’s almost hilarious.

        5. Regalli

          Yes, yes they do. (See also Ethan’s dad, who we’re pretty sure has some sexuality hang ups himself, but yeah, irl, this is totally a thing)

        6. adam

          Well IT IS, if you are doing it right.
          But I assume they are mostly talking from personal experience.
          Its like a Pringles can, once you open it , you have to go down on the whole thing. Maybe I should be a preacher .

        7. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          Statistically though, it’d be nigh impossible for a given bigoted group not to consist mostly out of closeted bisexuals.

        8. Pat

          Hate groups are not random samplings.

          Also, “mostly”?

        9. adam

          “93.6% of all statistics on the Internet are made up”
          —Abraham Lincoln

        10. adam

          I have an in-comic logic reasons also.

          (1) We know Mary is hypercritically judgemental.
          In roomies ( like DOA ) she had an antagonism with Billie.
          She was judging Billie for drinking and sex, while doing the same thing while pretending she was Pure and virtuous.

          So I am expecting Mary to get discovered to be a massive hypocrite about something. With her anti-lesbian bullying to Billie and antitrans bullying to Carla this seems the obvious choice. If we dont get something its a major core character change . The other shoe will drop. It will be something.

          (2) Her reaction here seems very extreme. It seems like she genuinely doenst want Ruth exposed. It could be that she doesnt want her blackmail to lose its power. But its more interesting if its a combination. That she genuinely WANTS Ruth to be in the closet. That NOT outing someone might be the only morality she has. Even if shes cruelly willing to use to bribe people.

          (3) Mary had Excellent Gaydar. And she advertised this. Without having access to roomies, Billie X Ruth in DOA , are not an obvious match-up.

          Those are why i think this. Its not definitive.

        11. Liliet

          To me, this notion just reeks of ‘it’s the problem that lgbtq people, closeted and self-hating vs not, have between themselves. There is no way that I, Secure Confident Straight Cis Person, am in any way contributing to the problem!’

        12. adam

          Im not sure if you are sub -commenter to me ( or not ).

          If yes, I will just point out that Mary isnt secure.

        13. adam

          also Not secure confidently straight
          secure determined http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bent

        14. 3-I

          I’m still not willing to blame Carla for that. This is Mary’s fault. That’s the end of it.

        15. ischemgeek

          I should note: Something similar happened at my uni (only with a het couple). The uni’s approach was, “Oh, well, fine, you’re getting a warning because starting a relationship with your charge isn’t exactly responsible, but then we’ll move one of you to a different dorm and then it’s not a conflict of interest for you two, problem solved. Listen we get it that hormones happen in the late teen years but just don’t make a habit of it, okay?”

          … which is probably what would’ve happened if Ruth and Billie had gone to Ruth’s bosses right off the get-go.

          But then this wouldn’t be Dumbing of Age. 😛

        16. Reltzik

          I think Carla’s think that Ruth’s long-term prospects are no better than the odds of her short-term survival.

        17. Dandi_Andi

          I have been suicidal. I may well not be alive today if not for an incredible team of “useless counselors”.

          Ruth is suicidal. She has attempted suicide once in recent history and expressed suicidal thoughts minutes ago. Left untreated, depression is very likely to kill her. I know many of us have negative feelings about psychiatrists and psychologists because mental health treatment is in its infancy compared to physical health, but depression is killing her and she needs help NOW, regardless of her privacy.

        18. Cerberus

          This. Psychologists and psychiatrists literally kept me alive during the worst period of my life.

          And I’ve had a phase of my life long before that where I was dealing with suicidal ideation and not seeking any form of mental health care. That was also the phase in which I had the most actual suicide attempts.

          A bad therapist or psychiatrist can be awful or as good as no help or sometimes even worse than no help, but a right one is literally a game-changer and can help a person actually get a hold of their life and start living it.

          Ruth. Ruth is a girl who needs anti-depressants in the worst way and a therapist worth a damn. She also needs the number of life five different suicide hotlines like yesterday.

          Also, important addendum, suicidal ideation is often triggered by one’s pain exceeding one’s coping resources. Someone blackmailing her and attacking her every time she steps out of her room by telling her how she’ll destroy her life is one massive avalanche on the pain side, and she’s had to do without ANY of her coping strategies* out of fear of letting Mary win and losing her job.

          *Unhealthy coping strategies are still coping strategies and going without any, when you’re trying to stay alive is a bad bad road. Which is why it’s important to build new healthier coping strategies before removing toxic old ones.

        19. Peter

          Let me just say that I am glad that you both got the counseling you needed.

        20. ischemgeek

          I want to also pipe in to draw a line between legit suicidal ideation and suicidal intrusive thoughts.

          I have an as-yet-undiagnosed brain cootie that results in suicidal intrusive thoughts. I am not actually suicidal (as in wanting to or planning to hurt myself), it’s just that my brain cootie likes to put gore porn on in my head for no apparent reason several hours of the day unless I chant stuff to block it out or work out several hours a day (yes OCD is in the realm of possibility among others) and sometimes the gore porn it chooses is images of my own suicide in various methods. That said, I have no intention of or desire to be thinking about these things and frankly the fact that my brain plays these images to me is rather disturbing for me.

          This is different from suicidal ideation, which is where you fantasize about dying, seriously consider dying by suicide, or plan your death by suicide. Suicidal ideation is def what Ruth is experiencing, and she may or may not benefit from hospitalization at this point (she’s likely an active and ongoing danger to herself – she needs help). When I had suicidal ideation, it was actually kind of relaxing or reassuring or comforting to think about it – it was a twisted sort of life-line, that if I hit the point of can’t-handle-it-anymore, there was a way out (part of why I didn’t comment on Ruth’s “That would be nice.” thing – hit a bit too close to home. I remember that feeling and it sucked and oh Ruth you need help like yesterday but you’re not in a place to be able to get it for yourself. 🙁 )

          Just FYI. I’ve had both, and both at the same time which really sucked (suicidal intrusive thoughts coupled with suicidal ideation makes for a dangerous combo I can say from experience). Just, figured I’d point out in case there’s anyone else dealing with the intrusive thoughts thing – the most common cause of recurring thoughts of suicide is being suicidal, but if you know you’re not and can’t figure out why you’re thinking about it, talk to a therapist about intrusive thoughts because that’s a thing that exists too and it’s more common than you’d think, and a good therapist can easily tell the difference between the two and give you coping strategies that will help with either or both as appropriate.

          It’s not what Ruth is dealing with (and everyone here is reacting entirely appropriately to Ruth) but yeah not everyone that thinks of suicide is suicidal. Most are. Some are like me and have jerk brains that like playing intrusive thoughts. Either way, see a therapist – they can help.

        21. Cerberus

          Huh, never thought about separating those two before because I’ve always experienced them together (my head gets… fuuuuun when I’m suicidally ideating), but thinking back, you’re right that they are distinct experiences like romantic attraction and sexual attraction.

          Thanks for that! (no, genuinely, no sarcasm, I like learning new things about how the world works)

        22. RIP12081990

          In a completely contradictory situation I got closer to actually committing suicide because of a bunch of useless counsellors but was saved by my current partner 7 years ago through a method very similar to carlas ( throwing my then girlfriend out of the window because she assumed that she was the cause as it turns out she was correct)

        23. Anorak

          you threw your girlfriend out a window?

        24. Liliet

          No, their current partner threw their ex out of the window.
          I think?

        25. Siburyo

          I second this… I have seasonal depression, and in my last cycle, my counselor was trying to convince me to stop avoiding things that make me want to kill myself, and that the cycle would never turn and things would never get better. Knowing that winter will end is the only thing that keeps me from killing myself in the winter. So, if it wasn’t for my husband, and for me having more faith in the knowledge gained from my own experiences than in what other people say, I probably would have just killed myself.

          I mean, anyone who’s been helped by a counselor, that’s great and I’m happy for you, but you shouldn’t just assume all counselors help people, or even refrain from harming them.

        26. Amazi-Stool

          “you are just winter; and winter passes!”

    2. Icalasari

      Considering the limited information Carla had and how bad a situation Ruth is currently in, I’m not sure there was a better option. For all she knew, Ruth was going to kill herself at any moment, or was about to poison herself. It went from cute shipping stuff that mildly annoyed her to learning that Ruth was suicidal in essentially a few hours

      We have the luxury of getting this over days and weeks, along with having all the info, what ways things could go wrong, all the stuff at stake, etc.

      Carla did not

      1. Cerberus

        Yup.

        And she also at least has the triggers of being trans and knowing the horrifying suicide rates of her community if not first hand experience losing a trans acquaintance to suicide, which probably made her extra “no, intervene first, sort damages later” in response to figuring out her charge was suicidal.

    3. Huttj509

      On 2…not the worst way possible. Definitely not the worst. Possibly not the best, but not the worst.

  39. Lurlock

    Carla is the only one in the wold who knows how to put the Drama Tag back in.

    1. StClair

      More like she sets it on fire and throws it out the window.

    2. Laurel Raven

      This is exactly what I thought about when reading this…you beat me to it!

      By many hours, apparently.

  40. Screwball

    Damn, so many comments in so little time…

    On a side note, Daniel the Human got his PC fixed & back online, so I get to swing by again… 🙂

  41. Just Me

    Will Carla do 4th Wall Breaking? She’d be perfect for it.

    Oh, and hey Carla, don’t forget to out Mary’s Secret.

    1. Deanatay

      She might also be an excellent closet-demolisher, if the field suited her. Of course, she’s the least closeted person in this comic, so, maybe not.

  42. modulusshift

    So, I’m curious. Why is it morally defensible to live in a cave of villainy without calling it out? Blackmailing a sinner doesn’t help them. She should be helping them not sin, by force if legally permitted, to save souls. She shouldn’t be blackmailing them in the first place.

    So Mary isn’t even morally defensible by her own beliefs? Or at least the commonly accepted terms of Christianity? Sheesh. Sorry I’m only catching on to that now that it’s not particularly relevant anymore.

    1. modulusshift

      To be clear, I’m not saying it’d be great to act in said “morally defensible” manner, just that at least she wouldn’t be a narcissistic hypocrite if she did.

      1. Cerberus

        Ah, but you see, to Mary, it’s not about saving the heathens, it’s about saving herself by showing her resistance to the heathen hordes. Sure, you have to go a bit underhanded at times, but if that’s the path to more prayer in schools and kicking out the degenerates infesting your floor, then surely God will show favor to her good fight.

        It’s a twisted theology, yes, but I definitely see her viewing her petty bullying self-serving horseshit as some genuine blow against Big Sin, serving as “God’s gentle reminder” as she puts it.

    2. zoelogical

      Mary is less concerned about people’s wellbeing, more concerned about their conformation to her particular set of beliefs, I think. less grace, more obedience. she’s not morally defensible, which is why she hasn’t told anyone what she’s doing I think. it’s just that her set of beliefs make her feel entitled to enforcing those beliefs. i doubt she really cares much about Billie, Ruth, or Carla; she just wants them to stop being themselves because she finds them repugnant.

      like. idk. my theory is that the flip side of being perceptive and observant is the ability to manipulate, and Mary has that in spades. so she sees Ruth in pain and she sees opportunity. she doesn’t seem to care very much about the pain, as long as she gets what she wants. and what she wants is power. it’s about the homophobia and transphobia, yes, but it seems to me to be even more about the power. christianity, homophobia and transphobia are just vehicles to that power.

      idk when she was yelling insults at them for being lesbians and trans she really didn’t seem to say much about sin so i don’t think that’s so much of a problem for her. a short list: misplaced freak, monkey, perverted vagrant, and a swear! shoutout to “defiling the cheerleader”, that’s memorable. that’s actually all on the first page of the mary tag.

    3. Reltzik

      There’s a pernicious streak in Christianity which is unfortunately more than just a streak in Red America, wherein the concept religious freedom translates into a tyranny of the majority. It’s about spreading The Word and making sure everyone behaves according to (their interpretation of) the Bible, in order to transform the world into readiness for the seconding coming, or just follow God’s commands… the details vary.

      But the point is to secure for exclusive Christian control (and exclusively for the RIGHT TYPES of Christianity) the mediums through which information flows and people get their sense of societal norms. Government, education, media, business culture, all of these have to be transformed into explicitly Christian institutions and then be used not only to spread the message, but to model and coerce the desired behavior. This includes things like businesses gaining and using the right to discriminate against customers based on conformity to religious laws, or fire employees based on that. It includes teachers having the right to force their students through led prayers… so long as they’re the right type of prayers… and the right of school administrators to fire teachers for not being the right type of Christian… and the right of students not to learn (and to actively disrupt the teaching of) subjects like evolution. So on.

      Mary’s USING what she sees as sin to bring about what she sees as a Christian culture in the dorm, including led prayer with mandatory attendance. Here, it’s not so important to stop the “sinful” behavior, as to shroud it with shame and public censure and drive it into the shadows, which is a side-benefit of blackmail. It doesn’t “fix” the sin, but it reinforces the religious standards in the collective conscious and keep or make them the norm. That is the main objective.

      1. Cerberus

        Yup, and in Pre-Millennial Dispensationalist Rapturist culture, saving souls and buying time by creating “Christian culture” is not only the most moral thing to do, but the only moral thing to do, because God’s so angry at us he’s going to end the world any second now and making the world a very specific form of inflexible Christian is the only way to delay that or prevent that and the Forces of Sin are so without morals, they’ll target your kids or try and infect your mind and conscience to get you to believe they’re people.

        Because of that, nothing matters more than being seen as the “right” type of people worthy of saving by angrily fighting the “forces of sin” and their Antichrist leader and using any tactic at your disposal to create a slightly more “Christian” culture wherever you go. This is even more hampered by the faith vs works debate in that sect being so fully on the faith side, that “good” deeds are actually seen as suspect. Showing compassion in that sect is a character flaw (we see that in how Joyce has been treated by her mom and her church), especially if that compassion is towards the Satanic horde.

        Mary may not be wholly in it for the religion, but that worldview is one she draws a lot of strength from and she’s determined to win and gain power over the “evil secular college” by any means necessary.

        It’s the worldview that Carol and Toedad are in and Joyce has struggled with so thoroughly.

  43. AgentKeen

    “YOU, GET A THERAPIST!
    YOU, GET A TUTOR!
    YOU, STOP BEING A HOLIER-THAN-THOU B-WORD!”

  44. Tenzhi

    Lousy Drama Band-Aid! *riiiiiip*

  45. Carolyn

    GET ‘EM, CARLA!

  46. ARFoster

    I used to feel indifferent to Carla, but now…
    I kinda love her

  47. Reltzik

    Tonight, Grav Roulette, you have given me Carla. I am now CERTAIN that there is some significance to how you are picking them, some deep, emerging, godlike ghost-in-the-machine of my apparently simple algorithm, which I had meant to be random but which I see now is anything but. Yet I still can’t discern the pattern, perhaps because the depths of your emerging intellect cannot be plumbed by my mortal mind.

    ….. these thoughts scare me, so I’ll talk about Carla instead.

    Carla’s definitely another one in that category of “characters who represent others far better than me so I shouldn’t try to claim them”.

    I’m a bit ambivalent about her personality, actually. Yes, I see the strength in it, and as she keeps showing (including just today) she is AWESOME in a clinch. But she’s abrasive and personally I would NOT want to have to deal with her on a daily basis. Yes, she presents as an asshole to hide tenderer, caring, vulnerable depths…. but she also presents as an asshole. I would not want to live in the same hall as someone like that.

    On the other hand, watching her in action as part of the audience, that’s awesome.

    On the third hand, there’s something to be said for someone who can just cut through the bullshit. This used to be (in my mind) Mike’s principle redeeming virtue. But he’s less and less relevant in DoA and Carla’s sliding into that role beautifully. I can relate to that myself, if not to her goddess-esque self-confidence and high self-esteem.

    At the end of the day, she’s almost a force of nature. You don’t ask whether you want her around. She’ll be around regardless of your answer.

    1. Orion Fury

      I see what you did there.

  48. Kladeos

    You go, Carla.

  49. Snuka

    I’ve always kind of wondered, and I’m sure it’s been brought up in comments threads in the past, but has it been said WHY Ruth would get fired? Are RA’s not allowed to be in relationships, or just not in ones with members of their dorm, as it would be a conflict of interest?

    1. Foxhack

      That last one, yes.

      It’s basically a person of authority having a relationship with someone she’s supposed to be managing. There wouldn’t be a problem if they lived in separate floors / dorms.

      1. Cerberus

        Yup.

        The drinking would also get her a major slap on the wrist by the powers that be, but the big one is the sleeping with a charge.

        Course, the big question is anyone going to bother to report them, especially since Mary has a lot to lose if the Powers that Be examine her actions closer and see the attempted blackmail and bigoted harassment of her fellow students.

      2. Mandy

        While I get that that’s the reason/excuse, I just have a hard time with this because, at least in my experience, RA’s just don’t really *have* any power. They’re basically just glorified babysitters. I get that relationships with weird power dynamics are bad, but I just don’t see this one as being nearly as catastrophic as everyone is making it. (It’s catastrophic in other ways, just not this one.) I’m sure it’ll probably be a “you can’t be an RA anymore” situation, but definitely not an expulsion situation.

        1. Cerberus

          Yeah, it’s more the “you can’t be an RA anymore” situation puts her in a really bad position with the “sir” on the phone and means that she’ll likely be more dependent on him and his demands.

          Having one’s own job and means of supporting oneself is very critical for a college kid trying to escape an abusive controlling relative.

        2. Mandy

          Ooh yeah, good point. I forgot all about that person. Yeah, I’m sure whatever happens is going to be pretty terrible for Ruth. But honestly, if the terrible situation saves her life, it’ll still be worth it.

        3. Cerberus

          Yeah, that’s definitely Carla’s perspective as well.

        4. Commodore Jeep-Eep

          Watch this end with another suicide attempt because Carla just started the chain of events that will end with Ruth’s justified firing for her repeated acts of violence.

        5. Pat

          I didn’t really have that. After college, I had to move back in with my mother.

        6. Silamy

          They have power in a few important ways: keys, nominal authority, and a closer relationship with the actual authority figures, and in this case, experience with the school, the dorms, and the overall environment that freshmen don’t. Remember when Ruth broke into Billie’s room to steal and vandalize her prized uniform? The rules exist to keep vulnerable underclassmen from falling into that sort of situation -which is why it’s generally against the rules (if not illegal) to copy dorm keys. They don’t want kids having to deal with angry/spiteful/hurt exes/rejected people walking into their rooms whenever they want with no permission, able to plant evidence or steal or destroy at whim.

        7. StClair

          Like a lot of power that’s mostly “for show”, it depends on the actual power-holders coming down hard on anyone who might spoil the illusion. (They don’t like to bestir themselves for petty matters, which is why they put that outer tier of minders in place, to deal with the routine bullshit for them…)

    2. Lizzie

      Mostly I’ve been thinking it was because they both were drinking, and Ruth was on something for detoxification which would also indict her, but conflict of interests is a likely cause too. I looked up a list of regulations for IU resident assistants, and all it says is no dating between staff.

    3. miz

      Aside from the comment section, it has been directly covered in comic before: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/spilled/

      1. Snuka

        Ah, cool. I had a feeling that was it, thanks everyone.

    4. Janet

      Yeah, no matter how you slice it Ruth is objectively a bad RA and any one of the following would get her fired and potentially expelled in real life:

      1) Physically assaulting students in her charge.
      2) Having a relationship with a student in her charge.
      3) Drinking in the residence hall
      4) Providing alcohol to an underage student in her charge
      5) Allowing people not registered with the school to live in the dorms

      Whether or not you like Ruth as a person, she honestly has no business being an RA.

      1. Amazi-Stool

        Don’t forget: throwing possessions of students in her wing out of the window!

  50. Saaaam

    Mary looks kinda cool, like she’s going on an adventure

    1. Jackson

      Man. Now I want to read a Tintin-style adventure comic where the main character looks exactly like Mary does in this very strip but in all other respects is nothing like her.

  51. Conuly

    Yeah, Mary, now everybody knows and you have no more blackmail material. Glad to see that Christian compassion at work.

    1. StClair

      Screw “compassion”, what about all that power she just lost? And after plotting and conniving so long to usurp, I mean, acquire it!
      Mary’s the real victim here.

  52. Brasca1

    Carla might not like the results. Sarah did a similar thing for Dana and look how that worked. Moreover, labeling Carla as a snitch makes it easier to cover up the actual transphobia they have towards her.

    1. Cerberus

      Yup. And if the Dana thing is any model, the results might be in some ways worse than the status quo that existed before it. It’s gonna be real interesting to see what Mary and the Powers That Be’s follow-up is gonna be.

      1. Solenoid

        Mary has no follow-up, that’s why she’s so angry.

        As for the powers that be… there may be an opening for RA soon, and if they learn what Carla did, they might have someone to put on the shortlist.

      2. Emily

        I dunno a lot of people consider “imminent suicide” to trump pretty much any other potential consequence.

    2. Orion Fury

      Who’s “they”?

    3. No Name

      The reason Sarah got the short end of the stick is because she got invited to Dana’s friend group, and then Dana’s friend group took Sarah’s turning Dana over to her father the wrong way. Here, no one is friends* with Ruth or Carla (by design on both counts), so that history will not be repeated.

      *I do not count “girlfriends” as “friends”. Despite the name, they are very different things, especially in the Billie/Ruth case.

  53. Foxhack

    I’m not so sure Ruth will get fired over this.

    As far as everyone (except Mary) knows, Billie rushed to Ruth’s side because Carla mentioned she was laying in bed all depressed. So Billie could say she thought Ruth was, at the very least, seriously ill (physically, not mentally) so she did this thinking she’d need first aid and call 911.

    The only ones that are completely certain about the relationship, so far, are Carla, Mary and Sal. And I think Carla and Sal could come up with (or go with) that reason for barging into the room.

    1. Tom T.

      I think the relationship is sort of beside the point now. It’s her health that will keep her off the job at this point.

  54. StClair

    Nice lampshade on how much (bad) drama depends on people not talking to each other and sharing important information, even when that would be the best thing.

  55. Nono

    I can’t quite tell what direction Ruth’s room is supposed to be in in the last panel. Is it where Dorothy’s headed, or is it where Amber’s looking?

    I also just noticed that Dorothy and Amber’s doors swing in opposite ways. Which makes sense since they share a half-bath, but I imagine that’d trigger an OCD impulse or two that the doorknobs are in different places along the hall.

    1. miz

      Amber is looking in the direction of Carla and Mary, while Walky and Dorothy appear to be…fleeing the scene for some reason? Huh. I’m sure that’ll be explained shortly, but last we saw them they were still talking about cartoons…

      Maybe Dorothy, pragmatist that she is, is going to get help instead of joining the spectators?

    2. Liliet

      Oh, but they are (I assume) placed orderly in pairs of two, which is just a slightly bigger pattern than if they were all the same.
      Now, if there’s an odd number of them…

      (I don’t have OCD, but I am autistic, and have some… similar reactions)

      1. Nono

        Carla and Ruth have singles, so…

  56. Bagge

    Say what you will about Mary but she sure dresses in style.

  57. WingedBeast

    Carla was sent to us by a great spirit of storyline resolution. We are, indeed, blessed.

  58. newllend(henryvolt)

    For some reason I’m Liking this.

  59. Freezer

    Any appearance of other girls with secrets in this panel are strictly coincidental. Really.

    1. Random832

      Walky’s not a girl.

      1. Laesrif

        Yet.

      2. Laesrif

        Not that I am saying he will become one, or want to. But its a narrative, and we don’t necessarily know what will happen.

        1. Cerberus

          I’m suddenly invested in a Walky realizes she’s a trans girl plotline.

        2. StClair

          Were you here back during the Avalon crossover?

  60. Sabrina Pandora

    Carla, you are my kinda heroine.

    “What pleases me” indeed…

  61. Cerberus

    Comic Reactions:

    Panel 1: I like that Mary just followed sprinting Billie in a daze. Like, why is she running to Ruth’s door? I thought I broke them up for good. No, no. No no no no no… my plans…

    And poor Billie, seeing Ruth in the catatonia. Hell, for the first time possibly since they started dating, which means the last time she saw her on a bed unresponsive, it was during Ruth’s last suicide attempt. 🙁

    Panel 2: Huh, interesting facial expression on Carla in Panel 2. She’s saying “whatever pleases me”, but that’s a really worried face there. I think the real answer might be “panicking the fuck out and hoping ripping off this band-aid does more good than ill”.

    Also Mary’s first response to seeing her victim in a catatonic state is to yell at Carla… Bob damn is she a complete waste of space.

    Panel 3: I think Billie might have just had the same, “please don’t be dead” immediate reaction Carla did.

    Panel 4: But seriously, Mary is a complete piece of shit. Like, an amazing villain and foil, but as a person, ugh. And the worst part is that that is entirely in keeping with her character. She’s a bully and a blackmailer. A person who sees a burgeoning love affair and sees ammunition to use against her diffuse enemies. A person who pokes her head into everyone’s business just enough to gain her justification for going on the attack.

    And so of course her first reaction to seeing the carnage she has massively contributed to. Her victim broken and suicidal, a depressed catatonic mess, her gf standing over her scared shitless, and can only see her lost advantage.

    And if Carla had any doubts over her course of action, then Mary saying “no, the closet was advantageous to me” was definitely going to be the tipping point that made her feel “no, I made the right decision. She needs to be alive now. The future, we’ll deal with later.”*

    *And this is a hard one to decide if it’s actually the better solution. But Carla is an engineer and thinks in terms of problems -> solutions, so she was always gonna do something and her highest priority was resolving the scary depression happening right now and dumped on her plate one way or another.

    Maybe an older Carla will understand the value of closets as protection from abusive forces or how to handle suicidal peers with a little less blind panic, but that’s not the Carla here.

    Also, yay on her for stopping yet another arm of Mary’s plot and totally flipping the “ally learns valuable lesson solving problem for marginalized person” plotline on its face by solving not only her own problem, but also the problem of the person who “tried” to help her.

    Panel 5: Dina is gonna be snarling at Walky for a good long while after this, isn’t she?

    1. Orion Fury

      You know, we’ve been theorizing that Carla been channeling us. Was if she’s been written as channeling Gordon Ramsey?

    2. Bicycle Bill

      Not sure if I agree with your assessment of panel five.  While it appears that Dina is looking in the direction of Walky, Carla is the center of attention and making the noise here.

      Also not sure of the layout of the hallway and where Ruth’s room is in relation to these two.  Dina may be looking down the hallway at the crowd outside Ruth’s door while Amber is looking at Carla who is ranting and storming as she stomps away from it.

      And apropos of nothing, judging from the distance between the two doors, that half-bath that Amber and Dina share with Dorothy and Sierra can’t be much wider than the toilet stall on a Greyhound bus.

      1. Reltzik

        Re: Halfbath

        I know, right? Yet we’ve seen established that there’s a sink and a toilet side-by-side, rather than opposite of each other, and that two people can fit in there side by side without too much cramming.

      2. Amazi-Stool

        That half-bath is as thick as a paper-thin disguise.
        Amber, however, is used to paper-thin disguises.

  62. Yossarianduck

    Carla: Problematic as fuck, and loving every moment of it.

    1. 3-I

      … In what way?

      1. Yossarianduck

        She’s a person who has no real patience for nuance or subtlety. Sure, her airing of secrets is ultimately healing, but the fallout is likely going to be substantial. There will be losers, but Carla sees it as ultimately preferable to skulking around.

        As for Problematic, I use the word intentionally, as while a term in internet discourse that has lost all meaning and reduced to nitpicking finer points in the name of some kind of ideological purity, in literary studies (shout out to lit majors in the room) it’s a phase that is more like destabilising (or “problematising”) existing paradigms, and critiquing them. That’s how Carla rolls, and as a Trans woman, that’s part of who she is and it’s one of the reasons she’s so great.

        1. ScarvesandCelery

          I don’t have a problem with the fact that the word “problematic” is generally used in the “Your Fave is Problematic” sense – as a word that acknowledges examples of inequality and prejudice in the world and media. Calling out BS and prejudice is an important thing to do, and it’s nice that we have a catch all word for that.

          However, there are times when I’m slightly sad that it’s original meaning from literary criticism – a word to describe the parts of a piece of media that are interesting and worth poking with a stick to see what interpretations we can get out of them – has faded away.

    2. trlkly

      Not really a fan of trying to hold on to old meanings to words. It’s been too problmatic caused too many problems. (Especially with offensive words, but I guess this doesn’t qualify.)

      I mean, if you’re doing it and it’s obvious, fine. But you’re gonna wind up just starting arguments because people don’t understand what you actually mean.

      Language moves on. I don’t use “villain” to mean farmhand, either.

      1. Yossarianduck

        Consider this my attempt to take it back 😛

  63. Jesse

    R.I.P. Mary’s blackmail material
    20?? – 20??

  64. Opus the Poet

    Interestingly enough today was the first dose of my anti-depressant that I’m not taking to see if it interacts with my BP meds, this one I’m taking because I have 40+ years of untreated PTSD. When I first got it they didn’t even have a name for it, and nobody thought kids could get it just from moving around a lot… I started 6th grade in the US and finished in Africa, changed schools again going to 7th, changed schools 4 times in 8th on 2 continents and in 2 different states.

    I should have gotten a fukkin Purple Heart for that and that doesn’t even count getting caught in a coup between 7th and 8th grades. We had our Little League picnic with a machine gun nest outside the left field fence.

    And all of this is why I wasn’t diagnosed with getting PTSD when I got killed back in 2001, nothing changed because I already had PTSD. I need a reset button for my life, this one has been too interesting.

    1. Orion Fury

      Um, past tense in the third paragraph has me a bit confused.

      1. Opus the Poet

        Someone tried to kill me for riding a bicycle, they succeeded for about 2 minutes and then I came back as an unkillable badass (that and I totalled out the truck he tried to kill me with). Did you not catch the too interesting description about my life. I am part of Willis’ Army of Unkillable Badasses waiting to take over the world.

        I’m clinically depressed, not a total stick in the mud.

        1. Orion Fury

          Gotcha. Wait, ‘for’, and not ‘while on’?

        2. katiuska

          Drivers are surprisingly hostile to bicyclists on the road. I don’t know why–if it’s because they feel inconvenienced or whatever–but it’s a feature across every city my brother has ridden in. I don’t know if they’ve ever actually meant to kill him, but they will consistently swerve at him and try to force him off the road.

        3. Orion Fury

          Trolls that played stuff like GTA?

        4. Cerberus

          *hugs* People trying to kill you is one of those things that really fucks you up. I’m sorry you had to go through that.

        5. Bicycle Bill

          But were they trying to intentionally kill you for riding a bicycle?  Or was it more like most of the drivers in the USA who aren’t really trying to kill you when you’re on a bicycle, but wouldn’t give much of a fuck one way or the other if they did just so long as the impact didn’t screw up their car too badly?

        6. Opus the Poet

          He made a u-turn to get on my side of the road after passing in the opposite direction, and he was swearing at me to get off the road when I got hit, so yeah it was on purpose.

        7. trlkly

          Didn’t get “killed”–unless you count viruses–but was dead for 45 minutes as a toddler, due to a high fever caused by a virus. When I started breathing again, my parents were told I’d be a human vegetable.

          While I do have some psychological problems, my psychologist doesn’t think it was caused by that. He cites that there’s a family history of anxiety problems. I think there might be some residual effects, but they are minor.

    2. adam

      Wow that sounds exciting.

      BUT Please be careful.
      I’m not sure if I read your comment right due to the grammar.

      I dont know what you are taking– but many of the modern drugs you can’t suddenly stop talking, and you need to weaned off very slowly, because they cause unusual and dangerous physical dependencies.

      If it has a long half-life you can miss a few doses and it wont kill you, but could catch up with you.

      A good friend of mine missed one dose and went into convulsions in front of me. But thats rare , unless you are on short half-life drug like Zyprexa.

      You probably looked this up , or talked to your doctor , and know what you are doing.
      But Ive known other people who didnt know this, stopped suddenly , and ended up in hospital; hence warning.

  65. Sageress

    It just occured to me, something that hasn’t occured to me before.

    It’s been like a day. Ruth was doing that pretending to be nice and happy shit like the day before, yeah?

    This leads me to THREE potential explanations for how impossibly fucked Ruth has become in that short time:

    1. She’s a robot, and her fuel supply is alcohol/toxic lesbian relationships. Thus, not having it for like three days is leaving her in a state of low functionality, so she has entered rest mode until a source of power becomes available.

    2. She accidentally glued herself sideways to the bed, and is too embarassed to tell anybody what’s happened.

    3. There was a timeskip we didn’t notice. This strip actually takes place in 2020. Ruth is an old man now.

    1. Orion Fury

      No one else aged, so it’d need to be localized time-skip bubbles.

      1. Sageress

        They all aged very gracefully

    2. Cerberus

      Simpler explanation: She’s out of spoons to fake being happy and is now in suicidal catatonia.

      And that’s a common thing in depression. When I was constantly suicidally ideating nearly every waking minute and going through the worst months of my life, I still performed the role of the happy excited science teacher who’s just so nice and perky and chuffed to show you kids the wonderful world of science. And I did it flawlessly because I prioritized it.

      But it meant blowing most of my mental health spoons on that and the rest on caring for a suicidal partner at home, leaving any moment not doing either of that mostly filled with staring into space and wanting desperately to die.

      Ruth digging deep for one last reserve of energy to fake being normal and collapsing into a deep dark hole the second that failed is probably the most true depiction of how depression actually looks that you’ll ever see.

      1. Orion Fury

        It’s just good that Ruth isn’t an author avatar this go round as well.

      2. Sageress

        Nah but my point is it’s only been like 3 days since she broke up with Toxic Avengebian she ain’t been depressed that long

        1. Cerberus

          Um…

          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/tired-2/

          Ruth’s been suicidally depressed for a long long time. The breakup with Billie is a drop in the bucket for that, most notable for being the removal of one of the few twigs holding that very full bucket up.

          Depression is very much not the same thing as post-breakup sads and did not just all of a sudden happen because she’s not getting laid.

          Hell, one of the major arcs when Billie and Ruth were regularly banging each other was about how Ruth’s depression was impacting the relationship and wasn’t magically cured just because she was “getting her aggression out” on her closet door.

    3. Yossarianduck

      It’s almost like she has a disease, the symptoms of which can vary wildly in severity from day today.

      1. Sageress

        Ruth has gigantism?

    4. zoelogical

      faking being happy when you’re depressed is really, really exhausting. and it’s not the kind of thing where you fake being happy and then you end up being happy almost by mistake – you fake being happy, and you fake, and you fake, and you’re not real, and nothing is real, except for the pit inside of you that’s either screaming or numb. and it doesn’t have to be anyone’s fault, although for Ruth getting blackmailed by someone hurting one of her charges does not help.

      …i appreciate your humor. but as someone who’s been depressed i would appreciate it a lot more if you weren’t quite so…blithe about it? like. this is real. this is something people really do go through. it’s not being a robot to be stuck on your bed unable to do something. it’s very, very human. it’s one of those glitches that happen and throw you for a loop, and can happen for a long time. and sometimes they don’t get better without medication and therapy.

      1. Heavensrun

        Well said.

        1. zoelogical

          <3 thank you! haha i was staring at this late last night and going "okay should i post or no, post or no" and eventually ended up in the land of the fuckits. as in "fuckit, i've put this much work into it might as well!!"

  66. Falcon

    You know, if Billie has to move out so Ruth can keep her job, she might have a lease running till the end of the semester. Billie has to find a place to stay for herself (her parents are probably well off enough to cover most of it for her, after giving her a earful) and finds herself with a dorm room lease she can’t use. Cue Becky.

    1. 3-I

      The best solution to this is for Becky, Billie and Ruth to go live off-campus and scandalize the hell out of Joyce on a daily basis.

  67. BenRG

    Really, Mary? That’s an interesting perspective from her. I think that this plays into Cerberus’s theory that she’s a curtain-twitcher at heart. She doesn’t really care about Ruth and Billie being homosexual or Carla being a transsexual. What matters is that the mini-society of the floor be considered ‘perfect’ because only then will she be perfect too. She’s more worried about the whole thing coming out (and reflecting on her in some way) than the actual details of what is coming out.

    Meanwhile, anyone else notice that Dina is giving Walky the ol’ saw-tooth snarl? I think that he may have made a lasting enmity this day; quite an achievement with someone as sanguine as Dina!

    1. Orion Fury

      Well he did use a non-canon dinosaur in their ‘fight’.

      1. Bagge

        Some things are simply not done!

    2. Heavensrun

      Honestly I think she’s just upset that it means she can’t hold it over Ruth anymore.

  68. Fwip

    Is she concerned about someone’s health, or about losing her blackmail? Time will tell.

    1. Orion Fury

      Concerned in the sense that it’ll get better now?

  69. Grimlock64

    Oh look, there goes Carla, proving she’s one of the best characters in this comic.

    Mike, you have some competition.

    1. Orion Fury

      I know, I’m worried too.

  70. Orion Fury

    You know, “I’ll rip off that stupid adhesive bandage strip for you” just doesn’t have that certain, umph.

  71. deathpigeon

    Carla is the best.

  72. Victor Riley

    Love Carla. 🙂

    And now Mary has no more power.

    1. OnyxIdol

      She can still rat them out to the higher-ups. Which, honestly would be a good thing at this point.

      1. Victor Riley

        Yeah, but I think even she knows that once she does that… she wouldn’t benefit at all. Even for her self-righteousness, it wouldn’t be satisfying. She was only keeping her mouth shut because then she had the upper hand.

        And if she *does* go to the higher-ups… they may even say, “Yeah, and?” An R.A. dating a resident is hardly scandal-material. Ruth just thinks so, because she has an overinflated sense of her power and responsibility.

        In my college days, RAs were mainly to make sure you didn’t burn the wing down.

  73. Also Becky

    Carla my angel, whatever have we done to be blessed with such a wonderful gift as you.

  74. Dana

    Amber slowly backs into her room.

    1. No Name

      Walky slowly backs into Dorothy’s room.

  75. OnyxIdol

    The other day someone said Carla was the hero they needed. Indeed.

  76. Arianod

    Wholeheartedly agreeing with the alt text here.

  77. Aolbain

    Carla that cares might be the best DoA character.

    (Regular ole Carla is somewhere in the middle)

  78. Jimi

    Carla is the hero this college needs, but not the one Mary deserves right now.

    1. Jimi

      Wait, I messed that up. I don’t mean Mary doesn’t deserve to lose her power over Ruth. She does. I meant she doesn’t deserve Carla’s bandaid-ripping powers to be used on her for her benefit.

  79. Spongegirl Circleskirt

    I was a Ruth. I could have used a Carla in my life, but I became my own Carla eventually. Sober three years and my depression is under control. Yay meds!

  80. Sydbey

    Carla was always my favorite character because she’s funny, smart, and trans (which I also am and representation is nice), but damn this is just the best. She actually does care about people! (altho that was always shown in like mostly every strip she’s been in lol)

  81. ozzi

    Carla really is the worst.

  82. motorfirebox

    Jesus christ, Mary is unpleasant. Like, wow.

  83. podian

    Carla is the hero this comic needed from the very beginning.

  84. nellydreadful

    Can… Can this just BE the rest of the comic now? Carla angrily forcing people to confront their ticking drama bombs? Because I would read that so hard.

    1. Loki

      I thought that was what Mike did.

      1. ShockHiccups

        Well obviously Mike and Carla should unite in the ultimate ticking drama bomb trigger team. The last panel of every comic strip can be them in Charlie’s Angels poses. (Okay Carla in a Charlie’s Angel pose while Mike just stands there ignoring her.)

      2. BLACKOUT

        No, Mike does your mother for a nickel.

  85. AGV

    “You don’t get it, Carla, now I can’t blackmail them!”

  86. magicallady

    i feel like carla would prefer peanut butter cookies. or ginger snaps.

  87. GUIGUI

    Is… Is Mary upset she is losing her leverage or what?

    1. ninja_jesus

      Most likely, yeah.

    2. magicallady

      sure seems like it!

    3. Darkoneko

      I think it’s more “what the hell this isn’t how everything is supposed to happen aaaa”

  88. Clodia

    Carla is the true superhero.

  89. miz

    I’m not skilled enough to actually continue working on this so ehhh here

    1. miz

      saddingofsad.png

    2. Darkoneko

      awwwww

    3. Cerberus

      That’s amazingly well done!

    4. leafirebender

      more please

    5. Whirlwitch

      That’s lovely.

    6. miz

      Aww, thanks guys! I just posted this and went to bed, so it was great to wake up to such nice comments. Maybe I’ll dump my doodles more often sometimes. /////

      1. Jhon

        “dump my doodles”
        Um… What?
        That sounds like something I …

        1. miz

          OH MY GOD I CAN’T UNHEAR IT NOW

  90. Stairmasternem

    I like how Other Rachel’s head pops in just to say “Hey I’m here as well!”

  91. Darkoneko

    Mary litterally can’t comprehend why that’s happening.

  92. Sanity

    I’ve just now realised that the shade of brown that’s used for Mary’s eyes look a little red a times. (That is brown, right?)

  93. takashid

    ah, so this is why the suicide pact will never come to its final conclusion, because hurricane carla came in and ripped that shit out into the light of day. good job carla. ruth and billie are in for a rough time in the short term, but i think in the long term they may one day thank carla for this.

  94. Silly Name

    You know, I opened this strip on my phone this morning, so it was zoomed out and I could’t read the text in the speech bubbles. However, I noticed Mary’s horrified expression in the second panel and though “Uh, Mary can feel empathy”.

    What a fool I was.

  95. Black

    I’d actually be totally fine with this comic ending because Carla gets in there and solves everyone’s shitty problems.

  96. Aquatus

    Devils Advocate here:

    I don’t think Mary was horrified at losing her blackmail material. Ruth and Billie already effectively neutralized that. I think she is honestly concerned that suddenly everyone knows something that she considered to be terrible about Ruth. She never wanted that information to go public (or she could easily have started a gossip campaign). After all, she only ever threatened to take it to the Resident Manager. It simply hasn’t occurred to her that it just isn’t that big a deal to everyone else.

    1. Silly Name

      Well, but why wouldn’t Mary want this to go public, if not because everyone knowing renders her blackmail inefficient?

      The fact that she blackmailed Ruth instead of doing something like “Pray the Gay Away” (which is still horrible, but could have been a part of her upbringing, like what happened with Joyce and thinking depression is a “God-pertunity”), points to the conclusion that she doesn’t care about Ruth and Billie.

      1. Aquatus

        Because Mary might be self-righteous, but she isn’t vindictive (although she has shown bouts of pettiness). She may honestly believe that Carla shouldn’t be in their dorm, but remember she didn’t do anything about it till she was deliberately antagonized by Carla. She even asked Carla to stop far more politely than I would have back in college. She most likely believes Ruth as gay is morally objectionable, but she didn’t use it as ammo till she saw a homeless person (who was also gay) move into the dorm.

        Even Ruth acknowledges that everything that has happened has all the earmarks of abuse of power. If Ruth was the bigot, and she allowed other bigots to make noise up and down the hall, and negligently allowed homeless bigots to move in, and all of this was directly affecting Mary’s college life (in the same way that a drug using roommate affected Sarah’s), I suspect there wouldn’t be anywhere near as much automatic condemnation of Mary’s actions.

        Mary lost the fraternization card, but she was still perfectly capable of pointing out Ruth’s current physical state (detoxing). She was still capable of getting Becky in trouble too. She didn’t, nor did she try to leverage any of it.
        I’m not saying she’s an angel. I am saying that compared to wearing a mask and beating up people because of your personal issues, or being an only-just-now-reformed-yet-still-former bigot like Joyce, or being a self-confident/self-absorbed powerhouse willing to expose everyone’s bandaids to avoid discomfort, Mary’s desire to at least have a dorm where she can study in relative peace and just ignore the people she is uncomfortable with (including her sexually promiscuous roommate who released a sex video on the internet) is not all that unreasonable.

        1. leafirebender

          thank you for this. While I would never call Mary a shining example of Christian love or anything, she’s also not just out to get everyone purely at the joy of their suffering. She has motives and also has had unfair shit done to her (at least by her perspective).

        2. Silly Name

          I’m not saying that Mary is some sort of D&D Devil from the Lower Planes and her existence is only fulfilled by causing suffering, but she’s in the wrong.

          Did she get unfair shit? Yeah, true: Ruth slapped her, and Carla didn’t give a fuck about the fact she was stopping Mary for studying. She was the victim in these cases.
          But the fact is that Mary never reacted the these situations in a way that a reasonable, cool-headed person would have: If your R.A. is being a dick and abusing power, you call the higher ups, not blackmail your R.A. (and may I remind everyone blackmail is a crime). If somebody is making a ruckus outside your room and refuses to stop, you try to find somebody who can make them stop or go to a quiet place, not damage their property.

        3. Cerberus

          Worth noting that in the slap comic she harrangued the RA, threatening and calling her a slur because she wouldn’t drop everything she was doing, harm her academic standing by staying home from the class she was on route to, and do some nebulous task to aid Mary who was more interested in how to use this for power than any real action. Doesn’t make that right, but it’s not like Mary didn’t go in guns blazing there and looking for a fight.

          And Carla didn’t stop Mary for studying worth shit. Mary’s need to spy on literally every noise of humanity in the dorms stopped Mary’s studying. Like, when Mary’s been shown to drop everything she’s doing and peek into the hall because someone is softly whistling or even quietly standing near her door or HELL, sneaking out of a room around a frickin’ corner, I think we can stop buying the bullshit that she gives one fuck about “peace and quiet”.

          Sorry to go off on people, but this whitewashing of Mary’s established in comic character to paint her as some victim of circumstance rather than a partially grown woman who knows exactly what she’s playing at just stings of the general excuses people make for bigots in general (homophobes don’t actually care about cakes).

        4. Silly Name

          But that’s how blackmail works: “I have this incriminating evidence against you, but I won’t make it public as long as you do as I want”

          Mary could have gone to the higher-ups and told them about Ruth’s alcoholism, Becky, Billie and all the other problems in this dorm wing. But she didn’t: she doesn’t just want a dorm where she can study in pace. She wants a dorm that is run by her rules (see: getting away with transophobia and asking Ruth to hold a prayer circle). She wishes to enforce her own beliefs on all those she comes across, and those that refuses are sinners who deserve whatever happens to them.
          Mary doesn’t want to “fix” the dorm by having it be a quiet space, she wants it to become the equivalent of a 20’s Catholic School, only Protestant.

          Look at Mary’s face: she’s not worried, she’s angry. Angry that her blackmail can’t work anymore, that she can’t make the final call on what happens in the dorm. She’s angry that people won’t conform to her standards.

        5. Aquatus

          Blackmail works when you make demands in exchange for silence. She kept her silence, but didn’t press her demands (she mentioned she wanted to save it for something bigger, but like I said, I think she is petty, not vindictive).

          Sure, she wants to enforce her own rules over everyone else. Who doesn’t? She genuinely believes people would be better off under her beliefs. Again, who doesn’t? She had a chance to enforce her rules, made a petty demand, and when she lost a card, she didn’t bother pressing forward. It wasn’t because she didn’t have other cards, so why didn’t she?
          Well, the Ruth situation was, as far as she could tell, handled (the moral issue had been resolved). The Becky issue seemed handled as well, inasfar as she, with her curtain-twitching tendencies, hadn’t spotted the red-haired girl all weekend. None of the issues that still existed, like Carla, or Roz, or prayer at dorm meetings, was deemed of sufficient importance to her. None of it was “something big”, i.e. they were just petty concerns that she could live with (and had been, up until that point).

          You see her as angry that she can’t blackmail anyone anymore. I see her as angry because she went through the trouble of not outing them, even though she could have and should have, according to her beliefs (and, arguably, according to the dormitory contract). If she was trying to blackmail, and the blackmail failed, which it did, it would make more sense for her to be happy than angry, since now she can justifiably say she wasn’t the one who gave away the secret. That’s how people who blackmail generally act, because they like to pretend they are the good guys.

          I’m just saying that I haven’t seen anything to indicate Mary is much different than any of the other main characters, apart from the details of her beliefs. The story is already written, of course, so I could be completely wrong, but according to everything that I have seen in the comic, and not projecting personal experiences into it, Mary is just as screwed up and just as capable of redeeming herself as any of the others. I just don’t see any reason to lump her in with Toedad or Carol, as adults who’s life view is assumed to be irrevocably fixed.

        6. Cerberus

          Oh yes, sweet innocent secret-keeping Mary totally didn’t press her power over Ruth to try and earn special favors:

          Didn’t use it to try and buy out of consequences for transphobic slurs and harassment:
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/leverage-2/

          Didn’t use it to try and force her religion on the other students:
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/loads/

          Didn’t use it to try and double down on that until Ruth called her bluff that Mary didn’t actually give a fuck about outing her because she saw more value in the power:
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/cashin/

          Didn’t at all use the threat in order to establish dominance and again buy out of consequences for bigotry, this time homophobic (believe me when she says “queers” she intentionally means it as a slur, in the same way as homophobic bigots use “homosexual” as a slur):
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/charade/
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/revenge-2/

          Certainly didn’t press her power to ask Ruth to “do something” about the “misplaced freak” simply because Carla wasn’t properly in fear of Mary and her power over the RA:
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/misplaced/

          Nope, she’s sweet as pie our Mary, holding on to secrets in exchange for simple not at all homophobic tasks like “getting rid of all the queers” and she’s just bummed out that she didn’t do her sacred reporting duty before the secret got out anyways, because of all the wasted angst she spent.

          Also, Kylo Ren is the secret hero of Force Awakens. He just wants to do his grandpa proud, can’t you all understand that?

        7. thejeff

          Sure, she’s capable of redemption, like anyone else. Even adults. I’ve known people with horrible abusive parents who reconciled later in life, because the parent changed. Stopped drinking, most often, but others who eventually came to realize that seeing their kids was more important than controlling them. And of course others who didn’t change.

          Doesn’t mean Mary will change. It also doesn’t mean she’s just like the others, but with different beliefs. She and Joyce started with nearly the same beliefs, but their reactions have been different from the first. Can you imagine Joyce blackmailing someone?

        8. Cerberus

          Um, she had the blackmail planned ever since she saw Billie leave Ruth’s room:

          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/clear/

          Becky staying at the dorm was not what triggered Mary into blackmailing Ruth, it was an excuse to call her a bad RA. And I guarantee that if Becky had been straight, it wouldn’t have even made her list (no other “crimes” by straight people made the list, there wasn’t even anything about “parades of men in our dorms” about Dorothy or Roz, nor anything about Roz’s filming of sex which is definitely something that would rile her up).

          That list she had when blackmailing her was very deliberate. She was targeted because she’s gay. She’s a bad RA because she lets queer people stay in the dorms.

          The excuses come after that. Like, really? We’re still pretending she gives a single fuck about “quiet” when there’s a quiet room to study literally on her floor, not more than a 100 ft down the hall? We’re still pretending when she has been shown at every moment to be a curtain-twitching prod-nose at every opportunity?

          We’re still pretending that Carla was the aggressor “inflicting noise upon her”, when we’ve got Word of Willis saying that skates on carpet are quiet, comics showing Mary will peek into the hallway at the first sign of any human existence, and will gladly stop her work to harrangue and stalk anyone she sees as “deviant”?

          No, she’s not some innocent little lamb seeking out peace and quiet and to ignore the “sinenrs”. She’s a bully who goes out of her way to seek out those who are “deviant” on her floor and tries to control and destroy them.

          For fuck’s sake, this is a comic where her harassment victim is in a fetal position on the bed catatonic because Mary literally intentionally destroyed her support network and we’re supposed to still believe she’s not the type of person who goes out of her way to hurt people she believes are inferior?

          Puh-leeze.

        9. thejeff

          Oh joy, the “Mary just wanted a quiet dorm” people are back.

          It’s bull. It’s been bull since before she dropped the transphobic remark and started the blackmail.
          She’s not like Joyce. Despite the religion. Joyce would flip out in some horribly awkward offensive fashion if she found out about Carla. Then stammer, run away and/or apologize because Joyce likes people and doesn’t like hurting them – we’ve seen her do this again and again when she runs into things she’s been taught to hate. Mary knew, hid it and saved it up for future use to hurt Carla with. Just like she found out about Ruth & Billie and hid it and saved it up for blackmail.

          A blackmailer doesn’t get points for not acting on the secrets at once – that’s the point of blackmail.
          And what has she used that power for? To “have a dorm where she can study in relative peace and just ignore the people she is uncomfortable with is not all that unreasonable.”?
          Nah, to get away with the transphobic attack and to try to force a group, Christian prayer on the rest of the floor.

        10. Cerberus

          I also can’t help but notice that these types never seem to come out when a character they hate actually is behaving badly. It’s only when they are facing a scary or hateful situation or are having a moment of awesome.

        11. Aquatus

          Cerberus, thejeff, obviously this is a bit more personal to you than it is to me. Since I don’t have much emotional investment in the characters, and I’m not really interested in sarcasm or accusations, I’ll leave you to it. It’s not fun when people start acting like that.

        12. Cerberus

          Sorry, I don’t really have anything against you, I just have little patience for the faux-objective devil’s advocacy involving tired recycled apologia for bigoted characters. It was tired when it was people trying to woobie Toedad. It was tired when it was people trying to woobie Carol. It’s tired now.

          No sarcasm, straight shooting with you.

        13. Aquatus

          Like I said, I’m not interest in accusation, not for being a “faux-devil’s advocate” (whatever that is) or an apologist for bigots. Being tired of a topic is best solved by a temporary break to relax, not by further insults disguised as “straight-shooting”.

        14. trlkly

          You claimed to be a devil’s advocate but then spouted your actual beliefs. The whole point of a devil’s advocate is that you don’t believe what you’re saying, but are trying to look at it differently. So your very first post was a lie.

          You don’t get to declare what you are interested in. You can avoid calling names, but you have no control over others.

          You brought up the same shitty story that Mary really just wanted peace and quiet–which has been thoroughly disproven. You ignored comic after comic where Mary has been established as a vindictive asshole. You cite the very things that make Mary evil and then act like everyone does it–a common trope of bigots to defend their own bigotry.

          And now that people have shown you how wrong you are, you try and turn it around and make it their fault. You pull a John and act like they were wrong to be angry. You try to tell them how they have to respond.

          Not an apology, which would illustrate you didn’t want to offend. No, everyone getting upset is at fault.

          It can’t possibly be perfect MaryAquatus.

          People have been banned for less than this.

        15. Cerberus

          Faux-objective, not faux-devil’s advocate. It’s about presenting the devil’s advocate argument as objective and unbiased and therefore more important of consideration than one informed by life evidence or in this case, the actual events of the comic. It’s an argumentation tool.

          Which on that note, interesting thing about devil’s advocacy that you might not realize is that it’s a philosophical and debating tool, largely about fostering forth a viewpoint that you don’t share in order to test your abilities to reason around or draw forth an argument out of nothing.

          As such, it’s really only got two modes. One, the devil’s advocacy is disingenuous (not at all saying this is you), in which case it’s hiding the person’s real bigoted feelings behind “just wanting to start a conversation” and from there progresses like any other argument where the intention is to win or sway others to your side.

          But two, is the theory of how it works, an earnest devil’s advocacy which is to put forward beliefs you think are monstrous or awful or defend awful people. And the awkward part of that one is that the goal of the devil’s advocate in that particular debate is to lose, to have people rip the argument to bits. That’s the philosophical theory and it runs into a lot of problems, chief among them that it requires a fair bit of privilege to not be genuinely personally affected by the events put forward. And secondly, that people who do have more personal resonance are going to react with more hostility because they actually encounter the arguments being made to genuinely dismiss their humanity.

          As such, those people are going to be more practiced in ripping apart devil’s advocacy and are going to demand a higher standard to the arguments, because recycling of bigot talking points has no value for any participant in a genuine devil’s advocacy.

          Basically, it’s a tricky thing and possibly a silly thing to pull off because you’re asking your ego to be put through the ringer with people who’re expecting a higher level of shit and who are gonna have less patience with engaging with your ideas because you openly state that your argument is entirely theoretical by calling it a devil’s advocacy in the first place.

          It’s the inherent risk of the stunt in the first place.

        16. thejeff

          It’s not actually personal to me. I’m a straight white cis male. I don’t even have close friends who’ve had to deal with the worst kind of religious bigotry – no Toedads or even Carols. Comes of growing up in a less religious time in a less religious part of the country.

          But what you’re doing here is defending the villain of the piece. A particularly bigoted and nasty one – though not to the level of some of the adult villains. The same basic arguments that have been raised since the Mary/Carla conflict started. The same kind of arguments used to defend Ross and Carol (and John) until it got too clear that they really were the bad guys. And always shifting the blame to the LGBTQ character.

          Odd that we didn’t see that with Blaine, isn’t it. Though honestly, we probably would if he wasn’t introduced until now, when it’s clear how screwed up Amber is.

        17. Spencer

          IIRC there was at least one person who said that Amber should shut up and fall in line because Blaine was just acting in her best interests.

          And on a site note, I had one of those Fridge moments that TVTropes keeps talking about and realized that when Blaine had kidnapped Danny and threatened to tell him about how much of a spaz Amber was, he was talking about revealing that she had stabbed Sal. I wonder if that’s another way Blaine asserts control over Amber, that she needs him to control her.

        18. ischemgeek

          Yeah, I’ve said it loads of times: When her upbringing and her natural empathy are at war with each other, Joyce’s empathy wins out. Fundamentally, at her core, Joyce is a nice, empathetic person who genuinely cares about the wellbeing of those around her.

          Joyce will react at first the way she’s always been taught to react, but then as she observes the real-life consequences of those actions, she sees how hurtful her actions are. She realizes on her own, usually, that the way she is treating others is wrong. And it takes her time to adjust, but she does adjust and stop treating others in that way.

          This is why, even though I genuinely dislike most of Joyce’s religion and many of her existing beliefs, I genuinely like fictional-person Joyce.

          Mary, on the other hand, has never shown Joyce’s capacity for empathy or self-examination. It’s not even that she doesn’t care that she hurts others with her actions, she actively revels in hurting others. She enjoys it. The more she sees others suffer from her actions, the more she does them, and the only time she ever backs off is when someone with more power than her puts the stop to it.

          She justifies her sadism to herself as her being an instrument of God’s will – but the reality is that she just likes having an excuse to hurt people. She likes having power over other’s lives, and enjoys being able to throw a wrench into their day whenever she feels like it. She is Mike with a coat of religion paint – only, unlike Mike, she chooses her targets more strategically.

          She picked Ruth because if she can get Ruth under her thumb, she has control over the entire dorm, and Ruth is, because of her mental illness, very easily blackmail-able (if it wasn’t her relationship with Billie, it would be the drinking). She picked Carla because Carla plays up her brat persona and because Carla is trans, so she knew for damn sure that people would be far more likely to blame Carla than help. She picked Billie for some of the same reasons as she picked Ruth, with a side of “I can get two for one this way.” Becky – lesbian AND homeless, and the only reason Mary hasn’t done more against her is that Becky makes for good leverage against Ruth.

          Notice also who she hasn’t picked: Dorothy – premarital sex and atheism, but she’s a straight-A student and white as they come. If she starts picking on Dorothy, she knows that’s a fight she’ll lose. Roz – damn near everything Mary hates rolled up into one, but her sister is the congresswoman. Again, a fight that Mary will lose, so she contents herself to snide sniping. The lesbian couple whose name escapes me (the pair who are always gossiping about who Amazi-girl is – Mandy and someone else, I think?): They’re lesbians – but they’re both seemingly well-adjusted, decent students with a minimum of drama going on in their lives and a decent support structure, so again, a fight Mary is likely to lose. I could go on.

          The fact is, Mary’s actions are governed a lot less by what she allegedly thinks is right and a lot more by who she thinks she can get away with tormenting.

        19. ischemgeek

          Yeah, sure Mary’s not vindictive.

          I mean, she totally didn’t spy on Ruth with the intention of digging up dirt on her to be able to blackmail her. Oh wait. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/clear/

          She totally didn’t hit Carla in the place she knew it would hurt the most at the slightest provocation. Oh wait. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/wrong-2/

          She totally doesn’t take a sadistic glee in having other people under her thumb. Oh wait.
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/loads/

          She totally doesn’t rub other peoples’ faces in it when she is in a position to bully with impunity. Oh wait.
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/blindeye/

          Nooooo, she’s totally not vindictive at all. Truly, she has been unjustly maligned as worse than she is. And it is such a crime, people viewing her in a negative manner as a result of her actions and the fact that we’ve dealt with people like her is truly worse than all the genuinely nasty things she has done to everyone who does not rise to her standard of morality. */sarcasm*

        20. Pat

          “If Ruth was the bigot hurting Mary instead of the other way around, we wouldn’t condemn Mary!”

          Uh, yeah? Doi.

        21. adam

          Of COURSE shes vindictive.

  97. Darkoneko

    I wonder how Mary will react on realizing she’s partially responsible of Ruthless’ current state.

    Well OBVIOUSLY the first step will be denial and retreating behind some moral high ground, but after ? Hmmmm

    1. HMH

      She won’t react, she’s pretty much immune to humanization.

  98. Charles Phipps

    I have a question – does this mean Walkyverse Ruth chose the method she did to help Danny as a way to commit suicide?

    1. Spencer

      Umm, kinda?

      Ruth sacrifices herself because she “caused” Danny’s depression and drinking like maybe two beers descent into alcoholism and had to atone for it. She wasn’t planning on dying, but the reason she ended up in the situation where she had to save Danny was because she felt responsible for him.

      She had a far less pronounced struggle with depression in Roomies! as well, though it was never really called that. Ruth just kind of assumed she was doomed to hopelessness and that she had rubbed it off onto Danny, and then she dies for some of that sweet “make people feel things” action.

  99. QWERTY

    Leave it Mary to think her blackmail is more important than Ruth’s life.

  100. Autolethia

    Carla for President 2016

  101. Chonos

    It’s hard to be too worried about Ruth with the ‘no-death’ rule in effect.
    That being said, Carla getting Ruth fired and shipped back to Canada/to rehab wouldn’t be killing her, would it?

    1. Anorak

      there are alot of bad things that arent death.

      1. Cerberus

        Yeah, I feel that’s been very demonstrated with the impressive collection of traumas that Joyce has been building up.

        That which doesn’t kill you, still involves years of recovery and lifelong therapy bills.

        1. Spencer

          Yeah, Amber didn’t die during the car chase. All it did was cause her to further her reliance on Amazi-Girl.

          Fun!

        2. Cerberus

          I’m kinda weird in that I see the no-death rule as actually raising the stakes with a lot of the drama, largely because every work with characters dying, deals with that by minimizing the death and its impact on the people surviving.

          There’s the funeral, maybe a short spell of the movie or work dedicated to their loved ones moping around, a big speech about healing and what the person would have wanted and then they are forgotten except for a mention here and there.

          Even long-running TV shows don’t let the death’s emotional impact last more than a season. There’s no resonance and the reason for that is showing people devastated and broken for the time it would take to do the impact of death justice would grind the narrative flow to a halt. People need to move on so that the major arc can progress and so on.

          And in the worst incarnations this can lead to grimdark where they’re just killing off characters to “raise the stakes”, but no one cares because the deaths are pointless and treated as pointless to the overall narrative beyond “this villain is super evil, ya guys”.

          So deaths in fiction, meh, but a work like this, where we see the character add their trauma scars to the pile with each new dehumanization. Where we see how each of those little cuts hobbles people?

          That gets me way more worried and invested in the characters, because I know those mental scars aren’t going away. Every time Ruth gets to the severe bottom, we know she’s not going to die, but we see the retraumatization of those close to her. Of Billie trying to figure out how to save the woman she loves. Of Carla freaking the fuck out because she was inadvertently put on suicide watch. Of the kids in the hall seeing someone in depressive catatonia for perhaps the first time in their life, if they are lucky (can you imagine Becky in that hall, with having discovered her mom like that? It’d be brutal).

    2. a4lbi

      Mourn the dead. Be rightfully worried for the living.

  102. MathiasMindblade

    Ruth Lives. Mary is Punished. Carla becomes the new R.A.

    1. adam

      She’s always been awesome in this comic

  103. HMH

    I didn’t give a damn about Carla at first introduction.

    Carla fucking rules.

  104. Heather

    I actually really like Mary’s outfit here. I’m not sure why but I just kind of do. That being said: what month is it? If it’s still very early september wouldn’t she roast herself in that getup? I mean Carla seems to be wearing the short shorts fine. /One/ of them is probably/should be sweating or shivering tbh in retrospect depending on whether its warm or cold. (why am I so focused on this right now)

    1. zoelogical

      mmm, body chemistry can be weird, and it can entirely depend on what you’re accustomed to. like when i moved to the midwest from a desert it was very weird to see people running around in parkas and shorts with snow on the ground. my brother runs really warm, and will be in a tank and shorts in ridiculously cold weather.

    2. miz

      IIRC, it’s the first week of October? Someone had a calendar going…

      Also, Mary has a bible and was probably headed out to church, while Carla intended to stay inside all day, so there’s that.

      1. HeySo

        There’s this lovely calendar, but it’s quite outdated: http://www.ci-n.com/~jcampbel/doatimeline.html

        You’d think the wiki (http://walkypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Walkyverse) would have a timeline somewhere, but I’m not having luck finding it :/

    3. Darastrix

      Carla looks like she’s probably just been hanging around the dorm all day. Billie, too. With the scarf and long sleeves, plus the book in her hand, Mary looks like she might be heading out (possibly to an afternoon Bible study or other Church-related thing since it’s Sunday), which could warrant warmer clothing if she’s walking to her destination, or if the destination itself tends to be overly air conditioned.

      1. Heavensrun

        Or she might’ve just gotten back.

    4. Conuly

      Autumn has definitely started, the leaves changed color and there was a hovertext about it.

  105. smooti

    Carla: The most reasonable human being in the comic so far

    Also, fuck Mary, who is now more pissed about her lack of blackmail than anything else. I hope the rest of the hall understands what’s happening and is chill about it.

  106. Ntrovert

    I think that the rest of the hall ( not to mention Carla the Goddess ) would, probably somewhat cheerfully, tell the authorities that Mary was lying/exaggerating about Ruth because Ruth would not let her (fill in the blank) and is now trying to get revenge. I don’t see any particular evidence that Mary is a dearly loved personage…

  107. Tunasammich

    I love Carla. I really want her to find a BFF. Maybe Sarah. I feel like they’d get along. She’s my favorite though so I’m biased.

    1. Spencer

      Welcome to the Glorious Sarah Fanclub. Your membership card will be arriving shortly and will include instructions to access the secret comments section, where we all laugh at these nerdlingers who don’t accept our lord and saviour, Sarah.

  108. burntnorris

    Alright, Carla’s definitely growing on me. This is basically the most rational course of action taken in the entire comic.

    1. Spencer

      I’m with you on that. Carla used to just be a random background character to me and now I can’t get enough of her.

  109. Rheios

    You know Car Carla used to annoy me sometimes. I can get behind Mike Carla though.

    1. Darkoneko

      Just make sure they don’t get behind you.

  110. Spencer

    So in completely unrelated nerd news, anyone hear about the Killing Joke film coming out?

    I’m someone who genuinely considers it the best Joker story of all time, though I also recognize why Barbara Gordon’s fridging during the comic drives people nuts and fully understand why they, and even Alan Moore himself, would want nothing to do with the comic. Still, I was pretty interested in seeing it, especially with Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill coming back.

    And hey, guess what?

    They made it even worse.

    1. zoelogical

      yuuuuuuuuuup

      idk i can ship Brucebabs in batman beyond in a “okay this is a terrible decision” kind of way because like. you know what! everyone is entitled to their bad decisionmaking!! everyone is entitled to make bad choices, and they were at a place where they were both making bad choices. it’s. it’s okay.

      …but it’s really hard to sync up what bruce does in the killing joke with someone romantically involved with barbara. unless you go with the theory that bruce kills joker at the end

    2. zoelogical

      …i mean it’s really shitty to Dick, but what else is new

    3. Phil Dog

      Eh. I’m just hoping I can skip the Killing Joke. The animated Batman films that DC has been putting out are generally very good or very bad, and this does’t seem like it will turn out well. Plus the fact is I find the joker is the kind of villian that works best when you understand the least about him.

      The joker is one of those force of nature Villains. He just wreaks havoc wherever he goes and virtually nothing can stop him. Writers who try and humanise him and understand him miss the point. You can’t understand him. He isn’t a human being, he just looks like one. That’s why he’s so terrifying. He invokes this primal fear of ‘the other’ that cannot be reasoned with or understood. Trying to understand him is what drove Harley Quinn insane.

      Giving the Joker an origin story and shit is just a dumb idea and it just doesn’t work for him.

    4. a4lbi

      They made it worse? I fucking figured.

      I wasn’t keen on seeing it because of Barbara being reduced to Trauma Porn, but… yeah. No surprise TKJ got fucked up.

  111. a4lbi

    What’s that, Mary? Didn’t expect THAT particular wrench in your reign of terror?

  112. HMH

    Actually, I just realized something from a story standpoint: If Carla does this, and everybody on the floor supports her for making a decision vis a vis Ruth’s autonomy for the sake of her mental health, and the floor applauds and supports that decision, it’s going to make Sarah unbelievably bitter. Justifiably so.

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