224

Rewatch
Posted on March 13, 2021 by David M Willis

224 thoughts on “Rewatch”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    Carla can never be wrong

    it would go against the principle of Carla never being wrong

    1. Dave Van Domelen

      Carla knows where Willis lives.

      1. Sam

        In a building.

        1. RassilonTDavros

          In a society.

    2. ktbear

      Yes but which bit is correct dammit?? Damn you Willis!

      1. Clif

        Either way, Carla is admirably genre savy.

    3. GreyICE

      When she’s right, she’s right.
      When she’s wrong, she’s also right.

    4. Stu

      “The difference is, I know I am right.”
      “Spoken like a true autocrat.”

      1. anonymousethatscurriesinthedarkness

        facepalm.gif

  2. Phil

    Ana, where are you?

    1. Phil

      Oh, there you are. I was worried when I came on here and there were zero comments 😐

      1. Thag Simmons

        jumping the gun a little, eh

      2. Jeremy Betts

        You were SO close.

    2. Demoted Oblivious

      You missed by seconds. You both stamped, 12:03.

  3. Sirksome

    Maybe if Carla got a more screen time that would happen. As it is now we’ll
    save it for the Carla spinoff a few years down the line.

    1. Needfuldoer

      If she sticks with this class, and does roller derby (with Sal, Amber, Malaya, and Marcie), she’ll get plenty of screen time and regular interaction with a good cross-section of the primary cast.

  4. Thag Simmons

    Is Carla physically capable of being humble?

    1. Beef Jerky

      Why would she need to be?

    2. Spencer

      Humility is for peasants, not goddesses.

    3. milu

      she has been vexed though. there were a few patreon comics where she tried to start a pranking feud with Mike. Mike won by refusing to engage. Carla was pissed.

      1. Sombrero

        That doesn’t count, Mike was just Carla in disguise. She got bored with that prank and now there’s no more Mike.

        1. Needfuldoer

          You say that like Carla doesn’t have access to holographic projection technology. Mike was just the Mark I EAH and the batteries died in his mobile emitter.

        2. Sombrero

          I suspect Booster are Mark II.

    4. Opus the Poet

      Yes, but she has so far displayed no need for it.

    5. Deanatay

      Hubris? For this to be ‘hubris’, Carla’s pride would have to be overweening. Carla’s pride is, in fact, exactly the right amount of weening.

      1. SolomonK

        I thought weening was Walky’s gig

    6. Needfuldoer

      She’s a rich kid, so that’s debatable.

    7. Chris

      She would be, if she had anything to be humble about.

  5. BBCC

    Look, her promised motorcycle babe isn’t here, so this class is clearly a bust.

    1. BBCC

      Huh. Another Joyce. Neat!

      1. Sirksome

        Another BBCC thread. Another opportunity to roll the grav dice!

        1. Sirksome

          Ruth! Somewhat topical. I guess I’ll keep it for the day.

        2. BBCC

          Ruth is a national treasure. I approve.

        3. Opus the Poet

          Yes, but she is a Canadian national treasure.

        4. Clif

          An Intergalactic Canadian national treasure.

        5. Sombrero

          More like a Canadian anomaly national treasure.

        6. BBCC

          Well, I’m Canadian, so that works for me. 😛

        7. Bogeywoman

          Beep boop

        8. Bogeywoman

          Oh hey, samesies!

        9. Dej

          I have been walky my last 3 times switching the email let’s see how this one goes.

  6. RassilonTDavros

    Really hoping that the shading on Carla’s face in the last panel isn’t, like, ominous or something. I don’t want to see bad things happen to Carla.

    1. Regalli

      It’s foreshadowing Carla’s eventual turn to cartoonish supervillainy, once she finds a suitable Evil Lair. She doesn’t know what EXACTLY she’ll do with the lair yet, but there will be incredibly theatrical science!

      1. DailyBrad

        Finding a quality lair is worth doing for its own sake. Once you’ve got it, the rest will fall into place.

        1. Thag Simmons

          Yeah, I want a quality lair. A nice cozy lair with a shark tank would be sweet

        2. Opus the Poet

          Who doesn’t like tropical fish? What, you think there aren’t any tropical sharks?

        3. Regalli

          Oh, of course. The lair can help you tailor the appropriate scheme just as well as a scheme can decide the proper lair.

          She’s definitely decided it’ll be WAY better than a shitty motel room or someone’s Airbnb, though. (I am 100% willing to buy that Blaine was, in fact, dumb enough to get an Airbnb for his kidnapping and murder plans. Would it make more sense to use a house being renovated? Sure, but he also paid for the app scooter with his own card and phone. Blaine was not a very good evil mastermind. Carla can do way better and she’s not even evil.)

        4. Some Ed

          I’d say not being evil tends to be helpful for would be evil masterminds. Part of being evil seems to fundamentally be tied to being very short-sighted. “I want to do this thing and I don’t want to think about why I should not do this thing” makes it difficult to prepare for the consequences of ones actions.

          Meanwhile, being good has clearly been shown to not preclude one from being an evil mastermind. So many really amazing evil masterminds started down their path because they wanted to save the world. I feel like there really should be more Bond villains who started out wanting to save the world. They seem to be significantly underrepresented. Admittedly, I don’t recall having watched any Bond movies since my best friend got married. She was the one who got me to watch all the Bond movies, and now she has someone else to have watch them with her. So if the franchise has started to correct this flaw, I’d have no idea.

        5. Needfuldoer

          My headcanon says Blaine was dumb enough to use a house under renovation by his own carpentry shell company as the kidnapping lair.

        6. Regalli

          Also reasonable! And that could lead to a bit more scrutiny about said shell company, putting the mob in an even testier mood than they were already. (They have People to deal with that, of course, but they really would have preferred no attention at all.) Which could be useful whenever that plot thread comes up again – Asher’s continued presence in the strip all but guarantees it will.

          Either way, Blaine left one hell of a paper trail for Lester to burn behind him.

      2. Geneseepaws

        Well the first thing to do is paint it, then move some of your furniture into the rooms. Then things get more complicated; installing a power plant. Is there enough residual heat in the volcano to drive steam generators? Or go with nuclear? Then hiring, or renting, some Loyal Minions.

        1. StClair

          (this is where I remind everyone that Evil Genius 2 is coming out Soon)

        2. RowenMorland

          Is making ab overly complicated web of traps more viable this time? Or is it just going to boil down to BEES!

    2. crow

      Don’t worry, she just walked into a shadow

  7. Josh Spicer

    Carla doesn’t care about Murphy and his silly made-up things called “laws.”

    1. milu

      which to be fair, is silly, and made-up, and not an actual law.

      1. Clif

        But in fairness, remarkably accurate all the same.

        1. milu

          i’m being censored for my subversive take on Murphy’s Law!!!
          ….or maybe for trying to include too many wikipedia links. one way or another, you win, spambot. I give up

        2. Clif

          Try one link at a time.

        3. milu

          Meh, essentially I was linking to a bunch of cognitive bias and logical fallacy articles. Like selective attention bias, hindsight bias, confirmation bias etc.

        4. deliverything

          If it’s any help, https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ gives a quick overview of lots of them. It doesn’t go into great detail, but it gives enough to help people pursue more information themselves.

        5. milu

          cheers!
          I realize, though this D+1 and so doesn’t really make sense anymore, I should’ve quickly explained what I meant, if only because this is internet and assuming common ground is always a bad idea.

          Murphy’s “law” is a joke, it’s not a law in the sense of a regularity with statistical significance, it’s more of an aphorism meant to represent subjective lived experience, and to be brought up to (humorously) explain failure by pretending it was inevitable.

          the reason i was bringing up cognitive biases is because some of them help explain why Murphy’s law can feel so “true”: e.g. hindsight bias which is the tendency to interpret events as more predictable in hindsight, or the frequency illusion which is when after having heard of something (like Murphy’s law) it suddenly seems to pop up everywhere; or again confirmation bias which is when, for instance, you feel that Murphy’s law is probably true and you (unconsciously) keep much stricter tallies of failures that confirm this pre-existing assumption, than of those times things run smoothly and would thus tend to disprove it.

          That being said I have no quarrel with Murphy’s law per se, i love a good old bad-faith Murphy’s Law joke, but it does vaguely alarm me when people talk about it without seeming to acknowledge that it’s not real. It’s the Dina in me. I’m like, “you…do know this is not a thing though right?… I’m not unwittingly supporting your anti-empiricism am I?”

  8. Nono

    Carla and Roz should interact.

  9. Androiddreams

    Big then perish vibes in the last panel

  10. Kelli

    Did Carla just break the fourth wall… in the fourth panel?

    1. RassilonTDavros

      Aw shit the meta has escaped the Joyce storyline

    2. Sombrero

      “That” (the 4th word in the 4th pannel).

  11. MixMax

    wow it’s Me

    hell yeah

    gender successfully mastered

    u go carla

  12. Octopus Ink

    “Nope”, Carla said, leaving the classroom with a jaunty bounce in her smug step.
    Fate considered itself duly tempted.
    “Challenge Accepted”, It whispered, twirling its noncorporeal, theoretical mustache in a manner most wicked.

    1. OBBWG

      Fate had no idea what it was in for.

    2. Joe Moose

      “…while (let us imagine) half within the wings stands the imminent figure of Fate jerking wildly at the wrong strings, and mixing things up in her usual able manner.”
      -O. Henry, ‘The Enchanted Kiss’

    3. Joli

      Ok so, clearly in this universe, the Drama Tab has been well and truly pulled.

      Is it possible that Carla has managed to keep her PERSONAL Drama Tab intact? It would explain a lot.

  13. avistel

    NGL, Carla’s pseudo-ironic egomania is eventually going to drive her into “unintentional parody” territory. I think it’s already there for me.

    1. Clif

      well then, by all means you should complain about it so things will change. It’s the Internet thing to do.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        I dunno, a lot of people complained about Toedad and now he’s perished. That’s how that happened, right?

    2. Deanatay

      Main characters in stories aren’t allowed to be perfect – they have to have flaws, so that they can learn and grow through them.

      Carla, however, isn’t a main character, so she can be as Mary Sue as Willis wants her to be.

      1. Joli

        didn’t Carla literally have a storyline about how she’s not perfect and it’s hypocritical to expect her to be.

  14. Axel

    nice

  15. C.T Phipps

    I’m hoping that Dina does get seriously thrown for a loop by Doc Brown’s class.

    1. milu

      gender:Carla = evolution:Dina

    2. Demoted Oblivious

      Yeah, I’m really at a loss as to why Dina would be thrown for a loop by Dr. Brown’s class.

      That said, I was also originally writing asking why she or Carla would be thrown by Gender Studies because I TOTALLY MISREAD the question, due to not expecting it to be about Dina or Doc Brown follwoing today’s comic. Honestly I kind of expect either Dina or Carla would be able to rock either class, or both.

      1. C.T Phipps

        Dina having her beliefs challenged about natural selection (there are many different interpretations of how evolution work after all among biologists. Creationists are a silly stupid target but HOW evolution works among scientists is a great topic) as well as biology would be an awesome story.

        College is where you’re supposed to change after all.

  16. Proto_Eevee

    Carla once again proves she is the best character on the series.

  17. brumagem

    Someone tell Carla that bending over backwards to subvert expectations is the reason the ending of Game of Thrones sucked.

    1. Thag Simmons

      Carla being narcissistic and hyperconfident is hardly subverting anyone’s expectations

      That’s her schtick

    2. Proto_Eevee

      The difference is that Carla is superior to all, and has no flaws.

    3. Thag Simmons

      Also there was a lot more wrong with the back half of Game of Thrones than that. Just irredeemably awful writing trying to coast on production value and good will from back when they could leech off someone who actually knew how to write worth a damn

    4. Spencer

      Carla turned loving her parents into an act of rebellion.

      Like there’s no beating that. She’s won. Carla’s going to roller blade away into eternity flipping us the bird the entire time.

    5. Jane

      Ended? So far as I know, Martin is still writing novels, and while it’s been ages since I read the last one, I expect the next novel to be quite good.

      …Oh, the HBO series, you mean? No, sorry, I refuse to watch anything past where the last book ended. And kind of wish I could erase my memory of some of the other episodes as well, honestly.

      1. BBCC

        God, I wish that were me. The ending really yanked the wool off my eyes. I admitted the show was very different but I still enjoyed it so I didn’t care. The ending was what it took to make me see that, yeah, the writers didn’t give a DAMN about the characters, setting or story and hadn’t for a long time.

      2. King Daniel

        I didn’t even get that far, I was already feeling leery after Season 3 and dropped the TV series somewhere in Season 4, when they were still allegedly going off book material

        1. Jane

          Well, despite my harsh-sounding words… I’m actually exaggerating how much of it I actually did watch. I had a friend at the time who watched the series, and the only episodes I caught were with her. I did steadfastly refuse to watch past the book, though, and covered my ears when she tried to tell me about what happened anyway – I didn’t want to hear anything that even had a chance of being a “real” spoiler. A bit ironic, considering how poorly later seasons were received… And that I’d probably have long forgotten anything I heard by the time the next book is out.

          That said, I really didn’t appreciate how much more focused the show was on sex, considering how many of those scenes were meant to come across more as disturbing or shocking than sexy in the book, how Cersei was a lot more stupid and less tragic in the show, nor how a lot of the underlying messages of the books seemed to be lost in translation. And there’s more, but… Well, it was a while ago, and I only ever saw a few episodes. I’d hate to be critical of something that was fine in the broader context of the series.

  18. DailyBrad

    I like Carla, and I mean, it kinda makes sense this is a subject she has had to think about a lot, whether she wanted to or not. Trans folks don’t just magically know everything about gender, obviously, but we aren’t really given the luxury of opting out of awareness of the topic.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      Yeah, that’s why I’m really hoping this doesn’t lead to “humble Carla.”

      I’m definitely curious to see what her favorite movie is, though. Walkyverse Ultra Car’s was Short Circuit, I think?

      1. He Who Abides

        Yup. And her (their? Ultra Car’s pronouns never fail to confound me) least favorite movie was Stealth.

        1. RassilonTDavros

          I’m fairly certain UC was using she/her pretty consistently by the end of Shortpacked!

        2. Regalli

          Yep. Homoromantic asexual transchassis woman, was how she described herself at one point.

        3. Joli

          According to Willis Ultracar’s pronouns are indeed she/her and her gender is woman!

          https://rambleonamazon.tumblr.com/post/78717559275/i-kinda-find-the-dumbiverse-ultracar-couterpart/amp

    2. Regalli

      Yeah, I’d expect to see her views being challenged more in the ‘things she overlooks due to being a white, ridiculously wealthy tech heiress’ department than last semester’s class (which focused primarily on Joyce, Joe, and Walky a lot of the time, who bless them, have way less awareness of Ways In Which Gender Is A Social Construct and Heteronormativity Is Bullshit.)

      1. Sirksome

        Sometimes I forget Carla is actually like a billionaire with a ton of privilege white or otherwise. She might actually have some things to learn here afterall. Possibly even the privilege she was afforded to transition at such a relatively young age cause her parents were both very understanding and supportive and could afford it. Of course her being Carla she may already be aware of that. But it would be a nice subject to see talked about briefly.

        1. RassilonTDavros

          You both raise good points.

          If you’re waiting for a “but,” there isn’t one from me.

        2. Needfuldoer

          Yeah. I vaguely remember a strip where Carla and someone else (Joyce? Sal?) were talking about Becky’s then-situation, and Carla’s response was something like “why doesn’t she just go home?” To which the other character replied “because her home isn’t safe!”. (If anyone can find that, you win an Internet point.)

          Carla’s the “illustrated guide to PHDs” version of gender studies. She’s well versed in her particular situation, not all situations like she seems to think she is. This class will help her fill in those blind spots, especially with Becky, Leslie, and Ruth there to learn from. Her home life is a stark contrast to theirs.

          http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

          (Not that I wouldn’t like to see her shallow “I am the best because I am me!” schtick humbled a bit, because I think it stands in the way of her developing as a character. We saw hints of what lies beneath the surface when she got dragged into the Ruth/Jennifer plot leading up to Ruth’s hospitalization, it would be nice to continue exploring that. We’ll be seeing a lot more of her if she sticks with this class and gets involved with roller derby; that opens up opportunity to show multiple facets of her personality.)

        3. RassilonTDavros

          She’s talking to Jennifer about Ruth’s situation, not about Becky’s, but this is probably what you’re thinking of.

        4. Needfuldoer

          Yup, that’s the one!

          Take your Internet point: +1

        5. Regalli

          Oh, yeah. I could see Carla just Not Getting why, say, being closeted is a choice people make with their families (or at least not getting the full degree – she doesn’t typically say it outright but because she’s had her transition covered by at least one magazine, I think she assumes most people in the dorm know,) whereas Becky and Leslie both spent time homeless after being disowned by their religious families for being gay. (And Becky’s, of course, got actively violent to try and bring her back in line.) From the sound of things Ruth’s attraction to Billie took her a bit by surprise? But either way she wouldn’t let on about ANY relationships she had to Clint given the choice, because people who care about her make her harder to control. I’d also bet her parents couldn’t just afford transition, but could keep looking for a doctor who’d be receptive if the first one they found was gatekeepy. Carla does not have to worry about insurance coverage. She gets GENDER, no doubt, but likely doesn’t get the same degree of mental calculus for safety someone who doesn’t have supportive billionaire parents would get – I’m not certain she even had the option of being low-profile about it, given the parents being public figures aspect.

          None of which is to say I don’t love Carla, but there’s some ripe ground for an arc if Willis chooses to go there in the fact that her parents are tech startup billionaires who are awesome to her, personally.

        6. thejeff

          Even on GENDER, she may still be missing a lot outside of her personal experience. She’s likely up on transgender issues, though there could be blind spots even there, but “gender studies” covers a lot of other things.

        7. Regalli

          Also true! I think Carla’s more than capable of learning, but it won’t be an absolute review of things she knows.

        8. RassilonTDavros

          Oh, I would kill for an arc where Carla meets Jocelyne.

          I mean more Jocelyne is always a good thing in general, but still. The contrast between the two would be really interesting, with Carla having her parents’ unconditional love while Jocelyne knows full well how conditional her parents’ love is. If Carla is in need of a reality check, then that’s the one. Maybe throw in Joyce, and have Jocelyne try to get a read on what her sister thinks of trans people without giving herself away.

        9. Regalli

          Oh, 100%. Carla’s at least vaguely aware that Ruth’s guardian is Unsafe, and under the circumstances she almost certainly knows about Toedad, but I could see her thinking that those are more or less isolated incidents. Joyce’s dad DIDN’T side with the evil dead guy, so he’s fine, right?

          And then Jocelyne is still assessing just how much Hank’s changed (and how well she thinks Joyce could keep a secret, if that’s what it took, and how much freakout before ultimate supportiveness Joss is willing to deal with right now,) and making sure there is NOTHING that will give Carol access to her life so that once she’s out, she isn’t balancing that against a kidnapping attempt. It’d be fascinating to watch.

        10. Joli

          OMG I need to see this so badly

        11. Joli

          Partly just because I need to see Jocelyne come out and live her best life

        12. Sirksome

          I’m still 99.99% confident Jocelyne will make an appearance sometime this semester! It has to happen. Basically everything going on in Joyce’s life points to it happening.

        13. Joli

          Interestingly, Carla’s trans status does seem to be generally known from early on–Mary certainly knew, and presumably Ruth–but Joyce did not (some remark from her about how “Carla uses a separate shower for some reason). This implies that while Carla doesn’t keep her trans status a *secret* per se, she also doesn’t blab widely about it. And that she reads fairly often as a cis woman to folks not in the know.

          given her privileged, semi-celebrity status, it makes sense she wouldn’t have a sense of secrecy that some, vulnerable trans people might have, while also not having the YEAH IM TRANS WANNA MAKE SOMETHING OF IT attitude that other, *unescapably visible* trans folks (hi) might have.

          It’s a really interesting intersection of marginalization and privilege that I’m looking forward to seeing explored in Leslie’s class.

        14. Joli

          (Not that Carla’s never faced anti-trans discrimination or aggression! “I’m used to being everyone’s acceptable loss.” And she’s certainly capable of being fighty about it when it *does* come up. “There is a DICK on my whiteboard. That is a HATE CRIME.” It’s just that she occupies an interesting–and privileged–middle ground between “I just want to quietly live my life as my gender and not have trans shit be a THING” and “Hi I’m trans have you heard I’m TRANS, trans rights now!”*)

          *for the record I’m more the latter

        15. milu

          Carla mentioned being out since a certain Newsweek cover. So obviously her transness is fairly public.

          I don’t think Joyce is a benchmark for how visibly trans Carla is, especially back in, what was it book 4? ^^

        16. Joli

          I mean Joyce is naive, yes, but I think she’d be more likely to blunderingly misgender a visbily trans person than read them as cis, unless–

          wait.

          Oh WAIT

          Joyce has needed glasses for a long time.

          I retract Joyc’e statement from evidence ^^;

        17. Joli

          Still though, I don’t think Carla is universally read as trans. Her early conversation with Sal demonstrates that her trans status is an “if you know, you know” kinda thing. Sal clocks her but not everyone does necessarily.

          “You’d do well [at roller derby]. Yer pretty dang tall.”

          “There’s a reason for that.”

          “Yeah ah know. They wouldn’t care.”

          The conversation also shows that Carla is, under her bluster, a little sensitive and insecure about clockable traits like height. I recognize very well that “It would be nice to be included as one of the girls but would I be, REALLY?” anxiety.

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

        18. Joli

          (also I must issue a minor correction, I misremembered Joyce’s remark as being about Carla using a separate shower but it was in fact about her having a dorm room all to herself)

        19. milu

          well spotted re: the convo between Carla and Sal. As an added data point, recall that Sal has a Ruttech jacket that she got with her bike, and she pointedly avoids wearing because she doesn’t want to abet Carla’s egotism (then Joyce pulls out the jacket, Carla instantly materializes, hijinks ensue).

          All I’m saying is maybe she does clock her, but maybe she’s heard about her before from motorbike-related gossip.

        20. thejeff

          I think it likely was the bike-related gossip. Carla’s publicly out. There’s basically no way anyone in her position could avoid it. The Rutten’s are in the public eye enough that their child would be known and then her transitioning would be a public story.

          It’s just a question whether any of the kids in the dorm read Newsweek or pay attention to tech news. Sal likely knew of the Rutten connection – maybe looked into it when she heard Carla’s last name. Mary likely googled everyone on the floor looking for blackmail material.

        21. Regalli

          I think it’s very likely that Carla is publicly out – cover of Newsweek almost certainly means ‘and at least one tabloid over the years, probably more.’ (Just look at poor John Jolie-Pitt, whose Google Search STILL pulls up their deadname and I can’t find a source for their pronouns that actually seems to acknowledge kids have awareness of their own sense of self.) She doesn’t talk about it directly when she can help it, but she also doesn’t remotely hide it, which suggests to me that she assumes most of the dorm knows and if they don’t, hey, she’ll enjoy the anonymity while she can.

          HOWEVER, Joyce and Becky were raised in an environment so restrictive they weren’t allowed to watch Frozen because it implies parents are fallible. At best, they were told their families boycotted Ruttech because its founders supported ‘deviancy in their children’ or something. (Ross could very easily have used that as a justification for Becky not having one.) But I think Hank might have a Zoomer phone, and we know the Browns noticed Jocelyne was Not Adhering To Proper Gender Roles and Had Concerns. I suspect they would’ve tried to keep the kids in the dark there to ‘keep them from getting ideas.’ (Look back to that lunch with John and his line about queerness being ‘trendy’, for example.) It’s possible Becky suspects or knows by now, because she’s had years to work on her subterfuge and Forbidden Knowledge stats and had enough political savvy to post Distracted Boyfriend UBI memes on Robin’s Twitter. Joyce does not, because she was the ‘best socialized’ (most compliant and obedient) of the kids in their community. I don’t think she ever thought to look outside the adults and approved sources for information until she started realizing they were wrong about Becky.

          So yeah, my stance is ‘Carla is publicly out, was likely supported through transition from a young age, and is tired as hell of discussing it if she can help it, and since the Annoying but Harmless Fundie in the dorm doesn’t know she’s trans she isn’t gonna deal with the bullshit of telling her’ and ‘Joyce doesn’t know because she was raised in, effectively, a cult.’

        22. BBCC

          Hank doesn’t have a Zoomer. He mentioned in the call where Joyce learned Toedad might make bail that they should switch to Zoomer.

        23. thejeff

          While it’s certainly true that Joyce and Becky are probably the least likely to know, I don’t think it’s quite that common knowledge.
          And it doesn’t need to be, even if it’s completely public. Just cause it was in Newsweek and probably tabloids a few years back doesn’t mean a bunch of teenagers noticed or remembered. The Ruttens aren’t that famous – or she’d have security and paparazzi and the whole nine yards.

        24. Rabid Rabbit

          @Regalli: We also know there was a court case involving her (Jacob’s brother was her lawyer), which got some anti-trans laws overturned — the assumption is that it was something like letting her use the girls’ room at school or something. At least, that’s the assumption — we know that Harrison got some laws overturned, and we know he worked on Carla’s behalf, so we presume that this was all the same case.

          For a while I thought it might have been about letting her into the girls’ dorm at college, but then it turns out that the brother’s memories of her are from when she was short. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/ding/

        25. Kamino Neko

          It’s her bedroom, not the shower, that Carla has to herself.

          I’m not sure if we’ve ever seen Carla at the showers, but we know from Zaph that apparently trans folk use the same showers as others of their gender.

        26. Kamino Neko

          OK, you corrected yourself while I was looking up the strip to correct you. >_>

        27. milu

          if we’re gonna be painstaking about trivia, we have seen Carla in the common showers. (“Freshman, do you even math?”)

        28. Kamino Neko

          Right, I’d forgotten they were actually in the shower when Carla offered to make shower shoes for Joyce.

        29. Joli

          yeah i ended up fact checking myself by accident

          hahaha I certainly haven’t been spending my entire afternoon rereading every Carla strip and some other characters’ related storylines as well hahahahaha

        30. milu

          ahahahahaha by a funny coincidence, i’ve also super not spent at least a couple hours doing exactly that same thing, which if i had, would explain how i came up with all those details and links, except i haven’t, ahahahaha

        31. Joli

          ahahahaha

        32. Joli

          one gem I’d half forgotten: Malaya questioning her gender and having an unhelpful-but-maybe-helpful talk about it with Carla

        33. milu

          ooh yeah, i also filed that for later when i reread it, like, “hmm let’s see if Carla ends up getting that second flavour of gratitude after all”

          …also some serious gender mastery being displayed by Carla in that exchange ^^

        34. milu

          one thing that surprised me is what a big softie Carla turns out to be behind all the bluster. OT1H she’s constantly saying things like, “if i die in here tell everyone i hated them and i was way better than them”, OTOH she gloms onto people like Malaya and Lucy and Sal with obvious affection and a touch of neediness. She barely defends herself when Lucy tells Ruth “my room seems to have become a refuge for the lonely”.

          Also her attempted gift to Fuckface?
          – Iguanas are herbivores.
          – Then this was… lettuce.
          …which escaped.

          xD xD xD

        35. Joli

          Oh I 100% hear you re Carla the Secret Softie. The way she kept making up more and more grandiose justifications for why she was helping Billie and Ruth but it DOESNT MEAN SHE CARES OR ANYTHING. And going out of her way to hang with Lucy while trying to make it seem like she’s really only there cuz its convenient.

          This is why I’m so excited for her to take center(ish) stage; she needs a chance for that shell to crack so she can become a real person. She can still be a self-aggrandizing lovable asshole, but that doesn’t have to be ALL she is.

      2. Cricket

        Yeah, when I was a white trans teen in undergrad gender studies classes, I didn’t learn a ton about gender because I had indeed done so much research already out of personal necessity, but I did learn useful things about specific trans activist history, and gender’s interrelationships with other factors like race and class.

    3. Rabid Rabbit

      The strip is setting her up to be this semester’s Roz, but at the same time apparently telling us she’s not going to fall for that. Which makes sense from a storytelling perspective, because we’ve already had that plot.

      1. milu

        But Roz’s smartassery was kind of unearned, which is why she got on Leslie’s nerves a fair bit. I would imagine Leslie would be a lot more willing to let Carla be a wise-ass in her class.

        I now have a mental image of this shtick developing between them, where everytime someone says something dumb about gender, Leslie just silently rolls her eyes towards Carla as an invitation for Carla to pulverize them.

        1. RowenMorland

          I want to know if Roz got humble end of that stick in the end.

        2. JBento

          That’s… terrible teaching. Oh, wait, it’s Leslie, it tracks.

  19. PB

    But which part was she right about, alt-text?

    1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      A great kingdom shall be destroyed.

      1. StClair

        No man can defeat her.

      2. Clif

        Nostrodamus has spoken.

    2. Keulen

      Everything, obviously.

  20. Stephen Bierce

    *plays Duran Duran’s “Girls On Film” on the hacked Muzak*

    1. Deanatay

      Is it wrong that this song reminds me of SpeedGrapher now?

      1. Stephen Bierce

        Thanks to Jeremy Clarkson I’m supposed to associate it with turbocharged Ford Escorts.

  21. not someone else

    I mean. I’m not even a big fan of Carla, but as a trans person, if Leslie were more knowledgeable about gender than a person who’s been out since roughly prepubescence and medically transitioning for a significant amount of time, I would be utterly boggled and possibly consider shenanigans on the part of the author.

    …Like, unless it involved scholastic-level knowledge of like black feminist/womanist perspectives or something that neither of them has lived experience of but Leslie might have at least read books and spoke to people about… but I’m pretty sure Gender Studies 101 is still going to be trying to gently explain to people that mentioning that misogyny as a concept still exists is not an attempt to personally climb up on their desk and take a shit on them.

    1. BBCC

      My women/gender/sexuality studies 101 had lots of womanist and international perspectives! Our teacher was a black woman, so there was some lived experience involved. She taught lots of different angles.

      1. not someone else

        That sounds pretty badass. You had good luck.

        1. BBCC

          Yeah, she was a cool teacher.

    2. Bogeywoman

      I do know some binary trans people who, while knowledgeable of their own gender experiences aren’t as open to others’ experiences. In Carla’s case her class privelege might be a barrier to understanding the intersection of class and race.

      Based on last semester I interpret Leslie’s style of teacher to be focused on challenging assumptions around gender. Everyone has assumptions and gender can be understood through different lenses, so that could be a source of confrontation for someone with a very cemented view of the world and self.

      1. Demoted Oblivious

        Especially for an intro level class, callenging the students assumptions is a very logical, and likely a necessary, first step to teaching the material. Also, it would weed out or sort out any student who really didn’t get that they can’t (or shouldn’t) study the topic effectively while holding onto their biases. (cue comments about misandry in gender studies/eyeroll)

        And hell, Carla’s background, what with apparently accepting and supportive parents, might very well miss a lot of the biases encountered typically by trans-people. However, Carla also doesn’t strike me as a person who would claim mastery of a subject just based on lived experience. She seems like she would have studied it extensively _because_ it’s her lived experience.

    3. Seregiel

      Carla is a case study of intersectionality but she’s already proven she doesn’t understand what an unsafe home life is so she might not fully understand the risks and complications of someone struggling with identity without support structure.

  22. Sirksome

    So uh…what does this class actually teach? No offense to Leslie but last semester gender politics kind of got overshadowed by politics-politics. That and learning how to shelter a freshly homeless lesbian for half a semester without getting caught. Actually this whole thing might be foreshadowing a lot of drama coming these character’s way! The return of Clint, anyone?

    1. BBCC

      Gender studies is often a mix of literature/media studies, history, politics, and sociology, and how they relate to gender. Gender studies is also often where LGBTQ+ studies are involved. Many programs used to be called women’s studies because they were formed to study contributions by and about women in an academia that predominantly focused on men but as the field became more about gender in general, some have switched titles.

    2. RassilonTDavros

      God, I cannot wait for Clint to die. Preferably via truck. Preferably via Ruth hitting him with a truck. Preferably via Ruth and Howard hitting him with a truck, while the former expresses the lack of regrets she feels over her actions! Maybe even two trucks! Each!

      Though if my current working theory about Jennifer’s post time-skip behavior is correct, then Clint’s death wouldn’t quite be enough to reunite my OTP just yet, even ignoring Asher.

      1. He Who Abides

        I was disappointed to not see Father Jack Hackett drunkenly recounting how many trucks he hit while going out for more alcohol.

    3. milu

      I feel like Leslie’s teaching style is to spark discussion and just sort of nudge it towards gender stuff, and occasionally cut in and do a bit of traditional teaching when interesting points are raised. With a teacher who has a decent handle on this format, this is far and away my favourite sort of class.

      1. Edwin I Callahan

        Leslie’s style is to spark discussion and immediately lose control because her class is full of comic strip characters acting out their comedic dramas. And that’s before the Congresswoman and the homeless lesbian teen show up. And, of course, it’s hard to maintain any kind of teaching strategy when you’re confined to a 4-6 panel daily comic strip format.
        Give all that, I think she does pretty well. I’d take her class.
        And attend it via Zoom, even if there wasn’t a pandemic.
        It’s not safe.

        1. milu

          Don’t you hate it when you walk into your classroom and there’s like 4 separate comic strip characters in it, and before the first class has even begun what’s supposed to be learning time is already being hijacked by their hoity-toity “narrative arcs”, and you just think “there we go again, guess I won’t be getting any teaching done this semester either”, but what can you do, if you open your mouth to say something even vaguely non-relevant to their all-important drama the strip immediately pans over to them squabbling with each other like they’re entirely alone in the room. Bloody fictional characters.

        2. RassilonTDavros

          “Remember back five minutes ago, before you came to get me and I learned I’m in charge of people with interlocking backstories? That was nice“.

        3. milu

          well done =D

    4. Seregiel

      well, last semester she asked a similar question to introduce the bushdel test and see how societal eye gives roles to women in media soooo…

  23. woobie

    Is Ruth a similar height as Carla?

    1. Sirksome

      I think so. Ruth is pretty tall, but also I’m not sure if Carla is wearing her roller skates which usually augment her height.

    2. BBCC

      Word of Willis is Ruth is average American male height – about 5’10. Carla’s about 6 feet.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Here’s Carla standing next to Dina, who’s probably the shortest primary character:
        https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/fistfight/

        1. BBCC

          I think Marcie is a little bit shorter. IIRC, Willis said Dina’s about 5’1ish and Marcie’s only 5 feet tall.

        2. Joli

          “Average American male height” excuse me I believe you mean Spider-man height, theres no need to be unscientific 😉

        3. Needfuldoer

          Spider-Man
          Spider-Man
          Five-foot ten-inch Spider-Man

        4. Joli

          Do we know this?
          Yes, we do
          We read it in Handbook of Marvel U
          Confirmed! The height of the Spider-Man

        5. Kamino Neko

          Doesn’t quite beat out ‘Spins a web, any size, catches thieves, eats those guys’, but as Spider-Man parodies go, that one is good.

        6. Needfuldoer

          Is he strong? Listen, bud,
          He’s got spiders in his blood

  24. Starboi

    Sort of unrelated the the strip, but has anyone heard from Cerberus? I miseed their posts here.

    1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      Cerberus was here a week or so back.

    2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/03-see-you-in-the-funny-page/phase/#comment-1529050

  25. Smooti

    Carla continues to be the greatest character in Dumbing of Age, and also completely correct in this and every strip.

  26. Valerie

    I love Carla.

  27. Bagge

    Not humbling perhaps,

    But I bet Leslie will manage to actually teach her a lot, despite her protesting otherwise. Carla is a bit like Joe in that regard.

  28. milu

    What with this strip being all meta now, I think I’ll follow Leslie’s instructions and pick a favourite film to rewatch before the next class.

    Hm. Mulholland Drive maybe?
    Or Xenia.
    Or As Boas Maneiras.
    Or El Niño Pez.
    All my favourite films are pretty gay then I guess? huh.

    1. JBento

      I’m gonna rewatch Alien. So, the xenomorph head is pretty phallic and Lambert’s death is clearly a reference to sexual violence. Potentially, that Ripley is a whole lot more suitable to being in charge than Dallas, but that’s hard to judge without knowing their careers up to that point*. What else you got for me, Leslie?

      *This is not an invitation for you to do another prequel, Scott. Fuck you and the absolute piece of unwatchable dreck that was Prometheus.

      1. timemonkey

        Alien is interesting to discuss when it comes to gender since the entire cast was written to be male. Then they picked two characters and made them women. So Ripley being the most competent and Lambert falling apart doesn’t actually reflect the writer’s views on women.

        Lambert’s death is interesting though, as it’s actually quite different than was originally planned: she was supposed to crawl into a locker and have a heart attack out of fear. They never filmed that scene though and the part where the Alien’s tail goes up her leg is actually from Brett’s death earlier in the film.

        1. JBento

          Oh, I didn’t know that. Interesting, thanks.

          The only curio I knew was that the scene where Lambert gets slapped was NOT in Cartwright’s script, so when Ripley slaps her she truly IS shocked.

        2. milu

          Alien story!
          A friend and me watched the 4 original Alien films over a weekend. Because I have no critical autonomy I then went online and read a bunch of reviews and analyses and told my friend, “huh, there seems to be a wide consensus that the xenomorph’s projecting mouth is phallic and there’s an entire subtext of rape and traumatic pregnancy”. She snorted. “Oh come on. I didn’t see that at all. That’s just facile Freudian trope-forcing.”

          The next summer I was in Switzerland with the same friend and she found out that we were a half hour away from the house-turned-museum of H.R. Geiger, who had art-directed Alien. He basically created the xenomorph, the alien spaceship, all the visuals.

          When we walked out of that place we no longer had any doubt whatsoever that the sexual subtext was 100% intentional ^^

        3. JBento

          Thank you for sharing! ^_^

          And yeah, if you see Giger’s work there’s like zero doubt that the answer to the question “Is this thing Giger worked on sexual?” is always “100% yes.”

        4. milu

          Oops, Giger! thanks for the correction!
          Yep I will definitely no longer be making the mistake of doubting that the iconography of the Alien franchise is charged with deep sexual dread =)

        5. Clif

          I choose to believe that the Alien movies are about the Head Alien and someday I will watch this wacky Willis inspired series.

  29. Rabisch

    I don’t like that look in the last panel. This class could become a war field with Carla in the front line… PLEASE YES! Can’t wait to know what’s their favorite movie. Mine are “The good, the bad and the ugly “, “Blade Runner” and “Satantango”.

    1. Lone Duck

      Ooh, are we talking favorite movies? Mine are “The Hidden Fortress”, “Wild Strawberries”, and “Spirited Away”. In terms of a gender studies class, only Spirited Away passes the Bechdel test. Funny, it doesn’t seem like a hard set of requirements, but so many ‘classic movies’ fail it.

      1. Clif

        GenderMaster and the Tempest of Doom was pretty good.

    2. ValdVin

      I am old enough to marvel at (and be a bit envious of) the “pick your favorite move and rewatch it” ability that Leslie’s class have today.

      Won’t say how long ago, but I remember a few times when watching a movie for class meant a projector being set up in the classroom.

      1. Needfuldoer

        I remember Scholastic filmstrip news reels in Social Studies class. They weren’t exactly movies, but I guess a couple dozen frames of 35mm cine film were cheap enough to distribute to schools on a monthly basis. (There was a short magazine that went with it, IIRC.) They had the unenviable task of explaining the Oklahoma City bombing, Whitewater, Columbine, and the Lewinsky scandal to elementary school kids.

        If the teacher didn’t feel like running a class though, they’d wheel in the 24″ TV strapped to a cart and played one of the Bill Nye the Science Guy, Magic School Bus, or Square One episodes they taped at home.

        1. ValdVin

          I already think Bill Nye is the coolest and I started watching him as a full-grown adult. If I were in grade school when he hit the scene my estimation of him would be even higher than it is now.

          Filmstrip newsreels weren’t a thing of my youth. The educational filmstrips then I remember largely being like the c. 1950s-1960s ones parodied everywhere.

    3. Sam

      Homeward Bound and it’s sequel are my favourite movies. Though I am very fond of Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs for its messaging and humour. Kung Fu Panda 2 is also one I am extremely fond of.

      1. anonymsly

        The Kung Fu Panda movies in general are delightful and 2 is among my favorite movies as well. My very favorite movies, though, are The Great Race (which very few people seem to have heard of) and Support Your Local Sheriff.

        1. Clif

          The Great Race was awesome. I would love to see a remake in three parts done as space opera.

        2. anonymsly

          Only if the pie fight scene and its composed-specially polka are retained!

  30. Juanoku

    Carla knows how to always be right
    And that’s by always being in situations where she can’t be wrong

  31. Keulen

    I don’t think I ever had a college class where the homework was to rewatch a favorite movie.

  32. iain

    Best. Character.

  33. Owlmirror

    Is it just me, or are the palettes of Leslie’s sweater, and Becky’s hair and jacket, and also Becky’s jacket, Carla’s sweater, and Ruth’s shirt/sweater perhaps supposed to be Significant?

    (Lesbian flag colors+Trans flag colors)

    Eh, I’m probably just overthinking things.

    1. zee

      Dina also wore a t-shirt with ace stripes on the sleeves back in “season 1”. Seems to be something willis likes doing. I think it’s extra cute with becky since the sweater + her white scarf and her hair makes her the full lesbian flag

      1. RassilonTDavros

        It’s never been seen in the main comic, but Jocelyne wears a Trans flag colored shirt in a Patreon comic that Willis posted on Twitter.

  34. Hilzabub

    One of the few strips that has an adequate amount of Carla.

    1. Eldritchy

      Roughly 66% by screentime?

  35. Alan in DC

    Oh, the surprise Carla is in for over the next two years … college has a way of stamping out youthful arrogance and narcissism and replacing them both with humility and critical thinking.

    I would not call her life up ’til now gender “mastery”, but rather merely “intimate experience and knowledge.” The rest is just a personal conceit.

    As they say in Maine, “just because a cat had kittens behind the stove doesn’t make ’em cookies.”

    1. milu

      You seem to assume Carla claims mastery of gender by sole virtue of being trans.

      But maybe she’s also read copious amounts of gender theory. Or maybe she’s dedicated thousands of hours to queer activism.

      Maybe she actually has a grasp on gender theory that outstrips most of what she’s likely to learn in a college 101? Is it really that unlikely?

      1. Joli

        “Gender, a subject I’ve already mastered” is a very trans thing to say.

        We’ve generally put way more thought and intention into our gender than any random cis person, just by the nature of our life experience, and we do, even academic settings , find ourselves having to educate everyone around us, including supposed professionals. So it breeds a bit of jaded amusement at the very notion of cis people’s quaint little understandings of gender, which we sometimes exaggerate for humorous effect.

        Not that Carla EVER exaggerates for her own self-aggrandizement, of course 😉

        1. Joli

          Now, yeah, Carla COULD have put in a lot of theory reading and/or activism hours. But it doesn’t strike me as her temperament.

        2. milu

          that makes a lot of sense.
          maybe that explains the sudden grimness of her tone in the last panel, like on one level “gender! a subject i’ve already mastered” is a flex because Carla gonna Carla but the darker side of it is that she navigates an exhaustingly clueless environment, at best, on the daily.

      2. Alan in DC

        “Thousands of hours” at age 19 is unrealistic. I’m reading more of an ego issue here than anything else.

        1. milu

          yeah alright but my deeper point was why not allow her the benefit of the doubt? I’m just prickly about adultisms such as “oh you’re so young and arrogant, see you in a few years, i think you’ll find you’ll have learned some humility then”. It just used to leave me seething, and i guess i haven’t got over it quite? not that i want to? It’s just so unfair.

          That saying is adorable though =)

    2. Clif

      Humility and critical thinking? You went to a different college than I did.

      1. Alan in DC

        In a whole different era no less.

  36. DarkoNeko

    A jack of all genders, but a master of none, is oftentimes better than a master of one ?

  37. Clif

    We meet again, at last, Obi-Wan. When I left you I was but the jack of genders. Now, *I* am the master, if only a master of one Darth. The cliche is now complete.

  38. Joli

    omg PLEASE keep Carla in the gender studies class Willis im begging you

    1. Joli

      I really appreciate how Carla’s presence in the strip has NOT revolved around her trans status but she’s a very underused character and I very much want her in the gender studies class

      1. Alex

        I agree! This has serious potential.

  39. crow

    Becky, you realize you can rewatch your favorite movies any time you want, right?

    1. Needfuldoer

      Right, like she has access to some magic box with unfettered access to nearly all audiovisual media ever devised. Come on, this isn’t It’s Walky!, there aren’t any science fiction elements here.

  40. bcb

    Oh snap, Carla has replaced Roz as the person in Leslie’s class who thinks she already knows it all!

    Though Carla probably has a degree of understanding of gender that Roz doesn’t.

  41. Perdellian

    Chekhov’s gun *and* a lampshade?
    Woah!

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