Mistranslation?? Booster is neither a miss or trans, I don’t get it.
Socks
Nonbinary people do fall under the trans umbrella. It’s not like anyone’s really assigned NB at birth, so identifying as such is basically always gonna be different from your assigned gender. Whether or not an individual enby wants to identify as trans is, of course, a personal decision. But they are under the umbrella.
Johan
I thought your joke was funny and didn’t warrant a well actually.
To be fair it kind of sucks to be treated like we’re not welcome under the trans umbrella as a NB, and while this joke is harmless its not helping. (Unfortunately this is an issue at Pride/in the community) And for this NB hearing the joke just reminds me ‘ugh yep that’s right not welcome’.
Its right up there with people being all ‘lol triggered’ kind of?
plasticwrap
Could’ve been an honest mistake born of ignorance. Plenty of straight folks read this comic too (I think). Idk, but it might not have been someone trying to exclude you, just someone less-than-ideally educated. Just saying, you needn’t take this as another time someone tried to exclude and invalidate you. I mean, there are shitty legbutts who will do that, but I believe the vast majority of this comic’s readers are tolerant and inclusive. Also they were trying to tell a joke and most jokes don’t leave room for nuance.
Delicious Taffy
I don’t even understand what Yoto’s joke has to do with gender. I thought it was a reading pun.
thejeff
Yoto’s joke actually works. It’s ktbear’s response claiming Booster isn’t “miss” or “trans” that fails.
thejeff
OTOH, even if it’s an honest mistake out of ignorance and made as part of a joke, it’s still a reminder that you don’t belong. No malice in it, most likely, but it still just another little bit of pain.
“microaggressions”
Dana
A solid plurality of the people I know who read this comic are straight. I don’t know that me and one of the other four people I know read this comic qualify as “plenty of straight folks”, but I assume we’re representative of a plenty big group.
crow
I found it kind of unnecessary, as Booster’s identity doesn’t need to be brought up in completely unrelated conversations.
I don’t think they were that off with Joyce. She HAS always been a kind, passionate person and I think she’s had doubts for a long time she didn’t want to acknowledge to herself. She herself wonders if she ever REALLY felt god when she prayed in her dream with Rich Mullins. She’s changed a lot in some ways, but in others, this is who she’s always been, even if part of her might not have wanted to admit it.
clif
But Joyce herself commented on how far off they were with her.
Wack'd
She also did it in the final panel where a punchline usually goes, so I think we’re meant to assume that’s more denial.
clif
Scoff. Scoff.
Clif
Seriously, was it not clear that Emily was making a joke? I thought it was clear.
There’s always the option where they know, and they just don’t care, because their fun is more important than other people’s feelings. Can’t rule that one out.
This is just the casual regular reminder that people don’t hate Booster because “queer people aren’t allowed to be flawed”, they hate Booster’s characterization because Willis decided to lead in with Booster’s sole characterization being a mean-spirited and almost entirely unchallenged takedown of characters everyone already liked, which predisposed us to dislike them in a way that, say, Billie’s and Joyce’s introductions did not—even though both were very obviously deeply flawed people on their introductions. Billie was repeatedly challenged to make us feel bad for her, while Joyce was introduced in intimate and sympathetic scenes showing her point of view.
Oh, and they both benefited from already being known in other canons thanks to the Willisverse effect.
Jerk characters can be introduced in a way that they’ll be liked by fans, and Willis is very good at that. Sometimes. He’s choosing not to give Booster that benefit.
This isn’t “NB People Have To Be Perfect”. This is “Jerk Characters Don’t Have To Be Hated, So This Is A Choice Willis Seems To Be Making”.
Oh, and we only had to deal with Mike saying, like, one or two lines at a time. So no, Mike and Booster weren’t handled the same. Imagine if the comic had opened and Mike had been given entire scenes where he just mercilessly bullied the entire rest of the cast, instead of just Ethan and Amber, and was the main focus of those scenes.
I don’t even *like* Mike, but he was handled with a lot more subtlety than Booster. Also, everyone in the cast constantly ragged on Booster. Seriously, can we stop acting like we just dislike Booster because “how dare Willis write a flawed queer character” as if Ruth and Billie and Carla aren’t massive fan favorites?
Yenklette
*constantly ragged on Mike. As in, other characters acknowledged Mike was being a jerk in-universe, both explicitly and frequently, and wanted very little to do with him. We might be seeing that starting with Booster, but… well, we’ll see.
Booster’s unsolicited psychoanalysis is like Mike’s snark with the edges rounded over, but they don’t have the benefit of 10-20+ years of being an established character to help make it more palatable. It’s also pretty much the only facet of their personality that we’ve seen in the thirty-odd strips they’ve appeared in so far.
“You guys have been friends for a long time” is a weird note to introduce yourself with, but it’s not really that personal. I’m sure they’ll start digging in a moment.
Azhrei Vep
Good thing that’s not the note they introduced themselves on. They introduced themselves on a spitroasting joke, which is about as perfect a way to introduce oneself as I can imagine.
That’s one of the problems I have with Booster – that they by definition have perfect knowledge of each character (even more than the readers), so their little magic show is (so far, anyway) Willis just using them as an on stage Greek Chorus. But as an onstage character, their knowledge and the way it is presented is far less palatable than if presented by an off-stage chorus. I have no idea where Willis is going with this character, but I certainly hope it is somewhere different than where he is now.
this. even mike’s eye-rolling displays of omniscience could (mostly) be attributed to long periods of observation. this frood just walks up, looks at the painting on your wall, and declares you married the wrong woman. thou shalt not suffer a GMPC to live
though in this particular strip i see none of that. i am not one ten-thousandth as bro as joe but 35 years later i am observably different with friends i made before high school than i am with friends i made after.
thejeff
Yeah, even most of the other stuff was pretty straightforward from what I recall. A bit of a stretch in some cases, but not much given what they’d already been told and how people were reacting.
BBCC
Yeah, a lot of what they guessed wasn’t that much of a stretch given how people were acting except Joyce, who they spent a chunk of time with that day with her introducing them to people.
They already missed twice. There’s no reason to credit Billie with changing Ruth when it was the not drinking, meds and therapy that changed Ruth – all of which Billie actively worked against.
And the line about Joyce “becoming who she always was” only hits in the sense that a horoscope can hit by being incredibly vague and generic. In fact, I think I’ve seen that horoscope before. That’s a miss in my book.
I’m just gonna say, sending kids to the principal over this is undermining your own authority as a teacher. It’s like saying that you can’t handle basic classroom discipline and/or kindergarteners.
Clif
Have you seen kindergarteners nowadays?
Needfuldoer
From what I understand, the little shits will stare at a screen for the hours it takes YouTube to drift from poorly animated, vaguely creepy counting videos to conspiracy theories, but they need constant monitoring to pay attention to a Kindergarten teleconference for more than 5 minutes at a time.
Delicious Taffy
Right-wing indoctrination is easier to focus on than basic baby math. Takes less brainpower, too.
Needfuldoer
They know their target audience and how to keep them hooked.
Don’t think, just take everything you’re told at face value. Tune into the 24 Hours Hate every morning to make sure you’re up to date on the outrage of the moment and what your opinions about it are supposed to be!
Deanatay
24 Hours Hate? Is that what they’re calling Twitter now?
This is why I like grace. It’s fun to sit with a group and see who else doesn’t close their eyes and pray. I’m an atheist, so I sit politely and don’t interrupt, after all I am thankful to my hosts for the meal, but grace lets you learn something about the people at the table that might otherwise not come up during the evenings conversation.
Kinda like living in ancient rome and drawing this in the sand: (
Okay so my Catholic high school didn’t really give a shit if you closed your eyes or not (or even if you prayed, as long as you weren’t an ass to the people who were) so poll time – how’d your schools handle it?
Public school in a small northeast town in the 50’s, as long as you didn’t talk during a minute of silent prayer you were fine. Now messing up the lodge of allegiance, that was serious business.
clif
Pledge of allegiance. :-/
Sunny
I think you’re about to go see the principal.
Clif
What? Again?
Demoted Oblivious
Why is it, that in my head concept of the Clif’s,
clif – is Big Clif (clif the elder)
and
Clif – is Little Clif (clif the younger)
?
198 thoughts on “Kindergarten”
Ana Chronistic
I vaguely regret that my excellent spouse and I met through my less-than-excellent ex
eh, not sure how else it would’ve happened tho
Yotomoe
I misread that as “less than excellent sex” and was thinking “wow that’s a heck of a way to meet someone”
clif
But see, it saves the relationship from all kinds of unrealistic expectations.
Moonie
Perhaps your less than excellent ex primed you to see how excellent your excellent spouse is
Chris
One of these days, Booster is going to read someone and be completely wrong.
Yotomoe
If you try to read someone incorrectly would you call it a mistranslation?
ktbear
Mistranslation?? Booster is neither a miss or trans, I don’t get it.
Socks
Nonbinary people do fall under the trans umbrella. It’s not like anyone’s really assigned NB at birth, so identifying as such is basically always gonna be different from your assigned gender. Whether or not an individual enby wants to identify as trans is, of course, a personal decision. But they are under the umbrella.
Johan
I thought your joke was funny and didn’t warrant a well actually.
Doongus
This comment made me smirk.
Lorien Inksong
To be fair it kind of sucks to be treated like we’re not welcome under the trans umbrella as a NB, and while this joke is harmless its not helping. (Unfortunately this is an issue at Pride/in the community) And for this NB hearing the joke just reminds me ‘ugh yep that’s right not welcome’.
Its right up there with people being all ‘lol triggered’ kind of?
plasticwrap
Could’ve been an honest mistake born of ignorance. Plenty of straight folks read this comic too (I think). Idk, but it might not have been someone trying to exclude you, just someone less-than-ideally educated. Just saying, you needn’t take this as another time someone tried to exclude and invalidate you. I mean, there are shitty legbutts who will do that, but I believe the vast majority of this comic’s readers are tolerant and inclusive. Also they were trying to tell a joke and most jokes don’t leave room for nuance.
Delicious Taffy
I don’t even understand what Yoto’s joke has to do with gender. I thought it was a reading pun.
thejeff
Yoto’s joke actually works. It’s ktbear’s response claiming Booster isn’t “miss” or “trans” that fails.
thejeff
OTOH, even if it’s an honest mistake out of ignorance and made as part of a joke, it’s still a reminder that you don’t belong. No malice in it, most likely, but it still just another little bit of pain.
“microaggressions”
Dana
A solid plurality of the people I know who read this comic are straight. I don’t know that me and one of the other four people I know read this comic qualify as “plenty of straight folks”, but I assume we’re representative of a plenty big group.
crow
I found it kind of unnecessary, as Booster’s identity doesn’t need to be brought up in completely unrelated conversations.
tim gueguen
Dina perhaps.
Emily
What do you mean, they were already very obviously incorrect with their assessment of Joyce
BBCC
I don’t think they were that off with Joyce. She HAS always been a kind, passionate person and I think she’s had doubts for a long time she didn’t want to acknowledge to herself. She herself wonders if she ever REALLY felt god when she prayed in her dream with Rich Mullins. She’s changed a lot in some ways, but in others, this is who she’s always been, even if part of her might not have wanted to admit it.
clif
But Joyce herself commented on how far off they were with her.
Wack'd
She also did it in the final panel where a punchline usually goes, so I think we’re meant to assume that’s more denial.
clif
Scoff. Scoff.
Clif
Seriously, was it not clear that Emily was making a joke? I thought it was clear.
Geneseepaws
The denial runs deep with this Joyce person.
Deanatay
In sandy Egypt, where deNile runs deep.
Dara
oof i was enjoying this strip and then you had to remind me of all that
DSL
They already are, in assuming most people welcome that sort of unsolicited, drive-by psycholanalysis.
Socks
There’s always the option where they know, and they just don’t care, because their fun is more important than other people’s feelings. Can’t rule that one out.
Clif
Sounds kind of like what Mike would do, huh.
Yenklette
This is just the casual regular reminder that people don’t hate Booster because “queer people aren’t allowed to be flawed”, they hate Booster’s characterization because Willis decided to lead in with Booster’s sole characterization being a mean-spirited and almost entirely unchallenged takedown of characters everyone already liked, which predisposed us to dislike them in a way that, say, Billie’s and Joyce’s introductions did not—even though both were very obviously deeply flawed people on their introductions. Billie was repeatedly challenged to make us feel bad for her, while Joyce was introduced in intimate and sympathetic scenes showing her point of view.
Oh, and they both benefited from already being known in other canons thanks to the Willisverse effect.
Jerk characters can be introduced in a way that they’ll be liked by fans, and Willis is very good at that. Sometimes. He’s choosing not to give Booster that benefit.
This isn’t “NB People Have To Be Perfect”. This is “Jerk Characters Don’t Have To Be Hated, So This Is A Choice Willis Seems To Be Making”.
Yenklette
Oh, and we only had to deal with Mike saying, like, one or two lines at a time. So no, Mike and Booster weren’t handled the same. Imagine if the comic had opened and Mike had been given entire scenes where he just mercilessly bullied the entire rest of the cast, instead of just Ethan and Amber, and was the main focus of those scenes.
I don’t even *like* Mike, but he was handled with a lot more subtlety than Booster. Also, everyone in the cast constantly ragged on Booster. Seriously, can we stop acting like we just dislike Booster because “how dare Willis write a flawed queer character” as if Ruth and Billie and Carla aren’t massive fan favorites?
Yenklette
*constantly ragged on Mike. As in, other characters acknowledged Mike was being a jerk in-universe, both explicitly and frequently, and wanted very little to do with him. We might be seeing that starting with Booster, but… well, we’ll see.
Needfuldoer
Booster’s unsolicited psychoanalysis is like Mike’s snark with the edges rounded over, but they don’t have the benefit of 10-20+ years of being an established character to help make it more palatable. It’s also pretty much the only facet of their personality that we’ve seen in the thirty-odd strips they’ve appeared in so far.
“You guys have been friends for a long time” is a weird note to introduce yourself with, but it’s not really that personal. I’m sure they’ll start digging in a moment.
Azhrei Vep
Good thing that’s not the note they introduced themselves on. They introduced themselves on a spitroasting joke, which is about as perfect a way to introduce oneself as I can imagine.
Otl1973
That’s one of the problems I have with Booster – that they by definition have perfect knowledge of each character (even more than the readers), so their little magic show is (so far, anyway) Willis just using them as an on stage Greek Chorus. But as an onstage character, their knowledge and the way it is presented is far less palatable than if presented by an off-stage chorus. I have no idea where Willis is going with this character, but I certainly hope it is somewhere different than where he is now.
misanthropope
this. even mike’s eye-rolling displays of omniscience could (mostly) be attributed to long periods of observation. this frood just walks up, looks at the painting on your wall, and declares you married the wrong woman. thou shalt not suffer a GMPC to live
though in this particular strip i see none of that. i am not one ten-thousandth as bro as joe but 35 years later i am observably different with friends i made before high school than i am with friends i made after.
thejeff
Yeah, even most of the other stuff was pretty straightforward from what I recall. A bit of a stretch in some cases, but not much given what they’d already been told and how people were reacting.
BBCC
Yeah, a lot of what they guessed wasn’t that much of a stretch given how people were acting except Joyce, who they spent a chunk of time with that day with her introducing them to people.
deathjavu
They already missed twice. There’s no reason to credit Billie with changing Ruth when it was the not drinking, meds and therapy that changed Ruth – all of which Billie actively worked against.
And the line about Joyce “becoming who she always was” only hits in the sense that a horoscope can hit by being incredibly vague and generic. In fact, I think I’ve seen that horoscope before. That’s a miss in my book.
Yenklette
They weren’t framed that way, which is what matters.
Yotomoe
Best Friends forever. I truly value Danny and Joe’s friendship. I seriously do.
RacingTurtle
Samesies
Calibus
Obviously because you werent closing your eyes in prayer while watching another kid pray, Danny.
cmasta1992
That’s why he got sent to the principal too
clif
Some day he will tell this story and suddenly get that.
Uly
I’m just gonna say, sending kids to the principal over this is undermining your own authority as a teacher. It’s like saying that you can’t handle basic classroom discipline and/or kindergarteners.
Clif
Have you seen kindergarteners nowadays?
Needfuldoer
From what I understand, the little shits will stare at a screen for the hours it takes YouTube to drift from poorly animated, vaguely creepy counting videos to conspiracy theories, but they need constant monitoring to pay attention to a Kindergarten teleconference for more than 5 minutes at a time.
Delicious Taffy
Right-wing indoctrination is easier to focus on than basic baby math. Takes less brainpower, too.
Needfuldoer
They know their target audience and how to keep them hooked.
Don’t think, just take everything you’re told at face value. Tune into the 24 Hours Hate every morning to make sure you’re up to date on the outrage of the moment and what your opinions about it are supposed to be!
Deanatay
24 Hours Hate? Is that what they’re calling Twitter now?
Deanatay
Unless you mean OANN.
You probably meant OANN.
Delicious Taffy
Orange Asshole News Network?
Demoted Oblivious
This is why I like grace. It’s fun to sit with a group and see who else doesn’t close their eyes and pray. I’m an atheist, so I sit politely and don’t interrupt, after all I am thankful to my hosts for the meal, but grace lets you learn something about the people at the table that might otherwise not come up during the evenings conversation.
Kinda like living in ancient rome and drawing this in the sand: (
Schpoonman
Joe looking vaguely like Asher in the last panel. Danny better not glance back to the right or lunch might get a little awkward.
Cattleprod
When you’re nailing a list of grievances to the door and you’re thankful for the suggested method.
clif
If it wasn’t for the invention of the nail the Reformation would have never happened.
Corneel
Christianity as a whole might have looked a bit different without nails, at the least purely cosmetically.
AbelUndercity
“Ho, Tacitus! How goes it with the crucifixions?”
“Greetings, Marcus! Not well, I’m afraid. The super glue isn’t holding like I thought it would. We’ll need to think of something else.”
Geneseepaws
We will need a new cross! Here, chop down a new tree with this herring.
Clif
I can’t tell you guys how proud I am to be a minor cog in the DOA commentariate.
Demoted Oblivious
Way to exemplify looking on the bright side of death!
He Who Abides
Just before you draw your terminal breath!
BBCC
Okay so my Catholic high school didn’t really give a shit if you closed your eyes or not (or even if you prayed, as long as you weren’t an ass to the people who were) so poll time – how’d your schools handle it?
Regina phalange
Same (at two different Catholic elementary schools). Any chance it’s a Lutheran thing? (I genuinely do not know.)
Or maybe the joke is that Danny was sent to the office too because he was annoyingly whining about a nonissue?
clif
Public school in a small northeast town in the 50’s, as long as you didn’t talk during a minute of silent prayer you were fine. Now messing up the lodge of allegiance, that was serious business.
clif
Pledge of allegiance. :-/
Sunny
I think you’re about to go see the principal.
Clif
What? Again?
Demoted Oblivious
Why is it, that in my head concept of the Clif’s,
clif – is Big Clif (clif the elder)
and
Clif – is Little Clif (clif the younger)
?
Clif
Just wait until I start arguing with myself.
And losing.