790

Blind eye
Posted on January 22, 2016 by David M Willis

790 thoughts on “Blind eye”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    there are not enough middle fingers in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE for her

    better break out the PIE

    1. inqntrol

      If I could break the fourth wall I’d punch her, but I’m a man so that’s a problem.

      1. Doctor_Who

        Nonono, you punch from ATOP the fourth wall, and you do it while declaring “I AM A MAN!”

        1. Bibulb

          …goddamnitsomuch.

        2. das-g

          “Man” as in “I am male” or rather in “I am human”?

        3. Malisteen

          As in a reference to a running gag from web show comic reviewer ‘Linkara’.

        4. Inyo

          I prefer to imagine “I’m a man” in the Neko Case sense. Which would come with some punching.

        5. HMRC4EVR

          Maybe Linkara will have a guest cameo so that will happen?

          But if not let me say this…”Mary-you are a bongo.”

        6. begbert

          While not the most horrible person in the strip, she is definitely the largest drum amongst the student body.

        7. DudeMyDadOwnsADealership

          Worst part is, her gambit was 95% *provoked*. The remaining 5% solely because she said skating in the halls is against the rules when she should’ve said she was trying to study.
          This bigoted, hate-swollen lout now ready to go on a rampage with her new-found bargaining power is basically a demon that crawled out of the reality of Ruth’s ‘Tightly-Run Ship.’
          Seriously, Ruth just gave her dorm-floor’s winner of the Most Likely to Take a Rifle to a High Tower and Shoot at Random People award a ‘stand your ground’ excuse in hopes there’s enough other people on their dorm-floor who are bigger time-bombs than she is on her s*#t list to make the problem resolve itself! Things haven’t even begun to get ugly….

        8. Linkara

          No, first I’d throw lemonade in her face just so I could scream, “Damn you and your lemonade.”

      2. RandomGuy

        What if you put a pillow in front of her face and then punch the pillow, you wouldn’t be punching her, technically…

      3. Disloyal Subject

        Why, exactly, should gender matter?

        1. Freemage

          In this hypothetical? Damage potential. On average, men are larger and have more upper body strength. Our punches will, in general, do considerably more damage. Another woman punching Mary, barring Roussy getting a spot in the strip, will be a punch, but not likely lead to a concussion.

        2. AeromechanicalAce

          I dunno. I’d put money on both sal and amber being able to do that kind of damage.

        3. Yet_One_More_Idiot

          Exactly. Whereas I, for example, am a man, but a pretty weak one so I wouldn’t expect to do as much damage with a punch.

          Also I used to fight my sister when we were kids – physically, we were about equal (although I’d end up being the one who’d get in trouble, for hitting a girl. (My parents were a bit traditional regarding gender equality and the “should never hit a girl” stereotype…)

        4. Disloyal Subject

          I always hated that rule. You shouldn’t hit a person, and if you do anyway for whatever reason, you should make damn sure they aren’t getting up to hit you back.
          Sparring being the obvious exception.

        5. LiamKav

          You should be thinking really, really hard about hitting someone so hard that they are knocked out and possibly concussed. But then, “If you have to hit someone, make sure you give them brain damage” doesn’t sound good as a movie quote.

        6. Kryss LaBryn

          The rule in our house is you don’t get to hit someone just for being annoying.

          The only time you get to hit is if someone is actively trying to hurt you, and you can’t get away, and using your words isn’t working. At that point you are allowed to hit; but the focus is on getting away.

          Also they will never get in trouble from us for defending themselves.

        7. Ana Chronistic

          Related: 4 Good Reasons For A Man To Hit A Woman

        8. thejeff

          Well, I’d add to that: If she’s hitting you.
          Basically, the same circumstances it should be acceptable to hit a man. Not when a certain kind of macho culture thinks it’s ok to hit a man, but basically self-defense or defense of others. In which case, as Disloyal Subject says, you should be aiming to disable, since if it isn’t that drastic a situation, you shouldn’t be hitting at all.

        9. ischemgeek

          I think you’re neglecting the impact of choosing an effective target. If Carla targets throat or solar plexus, it doesn’t take much strength at all to put Mary down.

          I have been in martial arts for 12 years and have been punched in both those places many times. Most embarrassing one was when an 8 year old hit my throat instead of the bag I was holding for him to punch, after I was after him to hit as hard as he could (he was afraid of hurting people holding the bag and wouldn’t go all out – it wasn’t on purpose on his part, I misjudged his level of ability and forgot that newbies tend to punch straight out from their shoulder unless they’re explicitly thinking about targeting, so I was crouched too low and left myself open for it. My mistake – and let me tell you, it’s not one I’ve ever repeated! Throat punches hurt. A lot). But yeah, 8 year old can put down someone with at-the-time-8-years of martial arts experience with a throat punch. And I weighed over twice what the kid weighed. He wasn’t out-strengthing me.

          That said, if you’re at a strength disadvantage, IME there’s basically two strategies that work: either adopt a defensive, in-and-out style of counter-boxing and hope technique and endurance will wear them out before they do much damage to you. Idea being that you wait for them to make a mistake and then capitalize on it. It works really well if, like me, you’re pretty light on your feet and also have a boatload of endurance. (note that there is a similar strategy for ground work, which if you watch Royce Gracie on the first few UFC videos you can see done by a master. My grappling game is nowhere near as effective as my sparring, but his matches are a really good example of how technique can trump strength and size even when the fight goes to the ground, as most real fights do sooner or later). Second option is to go hyperaggressive rabid wolverine at them and hope your technique and aggression will surprise the hell out of them and allow you to win quickly by triggering their freeze response (fairly effective IME, even though I’m not much good at the strategy because it requires a level of fearlessness I just don’t have. I’m getting better at emulating it, though. Anyway, reason why it works is that stronger people tend to be bigger, and bigger people tend to expect you to back off and be wary of them if you’re small. If you don’t show respect for their size, a lot of the time they don’t know how to react. Mind you this is risky if it turns out the other person is a counter-boxer because they’ll just sit back and wait till you get tired because letting aggressive opponents punch themselves out is what counter-boxers do. Clay Guida used to use this strategy to great effect in his earlier fights, but the risk with is is that if the other person isn’t thrown off by your aggression and knows how to wait it out, your pace is unsustainable and you’re going to tire out sooner or later, and then the other person wins). Either way, you don’t ever try to match strength-for-strength against someone stronger than you because that’s how you lose.

          It’s a lot like go, for those who’ve played that game: You don’t try to take on your opponent’s stronghold. Instead, you maximize your own strong points and hammer away at their weaknesses.

          Sorry for the novel – I’m a bit of a martial arts nerd, can you tell?

        10. RP

          Gender matters here for the same reason that guy in the comic had to explain why it didn’t matter to him.

        11. LiamKav

          Because women are far more likely to be the victims of domestic violence than men. So yes, in an equal society you should be able to hit everyone equally. Real life is far more complex than that.

      4. Aeron

        All DoA readers exchange glances for a moment then unanimously declare “We’re gonna allow this.”

      5. Chris2315

        Hey, I believe in gender equality. I punch everyone equally!

      6. Ilerien

        She is drawn…. Use eraser

      7. LiamKav

        Okay, Mary is a terrible, terrible, terrible person who makes you angry. That’s fine. But I’m getting fairly disturbed by the constant “Mary has annoyed me, so I want to inflict physical violence on her”. Blaine getting a beat down was at least karmic retribution (and still, slightly disturbing), but Mary’s punishment should be appropriate to what she’s done.

        Wanting to hit someone who has annoyed you is not a healthy attitude to have.

        1. Mr. Random

          I, uh, kinda noticed this too. Had a discussion last page and the words “act of violence” was used to describe what Mary did.
          It just sorta seems like they’re trying to justify more violence.
          It’s weird. Because I understand, but I have to disagree on principle.

        2. Lin

          Trans women are murdered using the same reasoning that Mary is using. Carla damn well knows that as a trans woman. The violence is quite literal in this case – the paychological damage of misgendering her and reminding her of how vulnerable she is IS violence. Mary isn’t annoying, she’s a violent asshole.

        3. LiamKav

          We can’t condemn her for things she might do, only what she has done. She has used hate speech, discriminated and victimised at least two people. Those are the crimes she has committed. Whether you think they are better or worse than, say, beating up trans people is another matter. (The glue thing does make the argument less clear, depending on whether you want to put that under “cartoon violence” or “real-world assault”, so I can understand if that’s where you are coming from.)

          Genuine question, do you think Mary should then get physical violence on her in return? Do you believe in corporal punishment? And how do you react when “our” soldiers have been caught torturing enemy combatants?

          I don’t want to antagonise. I’m genuinly interested in other people’s arguments and reasonings, so I’m sorry if I offend. It’s just that I can’t see a massive beat-down on Mary doing anything more than making her a million times worse, without improving the situation for anyone else.

        4. thejeff

          I don’t. I doubt most of the other people suggesting it really want Mary beaten either – however viscerally it might appeal in the moment.
          There is a certain appeal to solving problems violently in fiction. It’s quick, simple, emotionally satisfying, you don’t have to face the actual consequences of injured people and since it’s fiction, it can actually work.
          Enjoying such things in fiction, doesn’t mean you want to employ them in the real world.

        5. LiamKav

          True. As I said elsewhere, the cognitive disonance comes from this being a relatively “grounded” comic. I can see the fun and cartharsis in wanting the Head Alien (or any popcorn villain) to be phsyically hurt. But the people in DoA seem much more “real”, so it makes the violence and threats of violence much more real. None of us could beat up Darth Vadar (well, we could maybe throw sand at him and see if he cries), but Mary? She exists. She’s a real 18 year-old girl. And that’s why (to me) the “fists need to hit her face” comments feel wrong.

        6. thejeff

          1) It’s only sort of a relatively grounded comic, which leads to a lot of cognitive dissonance.
          2) I see it in about the same way as the constant calls of “Now kiss” or shipping any two characters who appear on scene together. Not very serious, even in what they want for the comic, much less what they’d be doing in a similar situation in real life.

        7. LiamKav

          True enough. Not being able to see people’s faces when they say these things means it’s a bit hard to tell how serious eveyone is. I will try and assumet that people aren’t being constantly literal with everything they say. 🙂

    2. butts

      Uncountably infinite middle fingers, just flippin’ the bird at Mary forever

      1. Yet_One_More_Idiot

        So which uncountably infinite cardinal number are you using there? The cardinality of the set of real numbers, c? Aleph-one? (Or are you using the continuum hypothesis in which case those two are equal?) Aleph-omega? Theta = Aleph-theta? Something larger?

        (Transfinite numbers are cool lol)

        1. Aleksis

          Wow there, continuum hypothesis doesn’t say there are equal. It states that there is no set whose cardinality is between those of the integers (Aleph-0) and those of the real numbers (Aleph-1). I think it’s quite easy to prove the cardinality of the real numbers and the integers -is- different.

        2. Gretchen Hall

          Not quite! OP got it right –
          Aleph-one is the next infinite cardinal after Aleph-null.
          c is defined as the cardinality of the reals.
          We know c is greater than Aleph-null, and hence greater than or equal to Aleph-one. The continuum hypothesis asserts c and aleph-one are equal.

          Regardless, Mary get’s _ALL_ the middle fingers. ALL OF THEM!

      2. Geneseepaws

        Kinda Sleppnir-like? So Wodin can flip Mary off while still doing other useful things?

    3. altalemur

      i join this line of people giving Mary the finger. perhaps we can make a chain long enough to encircle the world.

      1. DarkoNeko

        a lot of people would drow

        1. Kamino Neko

          The driders would be more useful.

    4. Doctor_Who

      In one of my other favorite webcomics, Order of the Stick, they did the old pie in the face gag, but the pie was full of acid spitting beetles.

      I don’t suppose that bakery is anywhere near campus?

      1. tim gueguen

        Galasso wanted to offer those pies, but the EPA wouldn’t let him.

      2. Smiling Cat

        Japanese Hornets or Bullet Ants would be easier to get.

        1. Boojum

          Why not both?

        2. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          Or platypus venom.

    5. DarkoNeko

      Now we slowly wait for karma to strike back.

    6. Nicster216

      i get the feeling once you see the strip you think of the firsts phrase that pops in your head and type it XD whatever it is your comments are HILARIOUS

    7. Critias

      Y’know, I bet it’d really hurt to get kicked in the shin by someone wearing skates — sturdy, solid, kicking-platform, stable, wheels-glued-in-place skates — while the RA had her back purposefully turned.

      M’just saying.

      1. Just Saying

        As a roller derby girl – It hurts REALLY REALLY BAD to get kicked with skates.

        1. ObiKemnebi

          Never did roller derby, but I have a brother. I concur.

      2. Bibulb

        You MIGHT be right, but I think we really just wouldn’t know unless we had some rigorous testing performed. And double-checked and reconfirmed, just in case of experimental error.

    8. Bicycle Bill

      Mary deserves the triple bird.
      img src=”http://i.imgur.com/WXEFSjc.gifv” alt=”” />

      1. inqntrol

        No, she deserves <a href="http://i.imgur.com/wAmPLid.gif&quot; rel="nofollow".this.

        1. inqntrol

          Messed up the link, oh well.

        2. Znayx

          Yeah, two messed up links in a row… But I definitely agree with both of you. Second one is better though.

  2. butts

    Huh. I’d assumed Carla would have slaughtered Mary by now.

    1. Leorale

      She’s stunned by how hurtful Mary was. And now she’ll probably be stunned by getting zero support from anyone. Damn indeed.

      1. butts

        Yeah, but this is CARLA we’re talking about.

        1. miados

          yes but she reacted to the dick drawings badly until she saw everyone had them. this one topic might be sort of a trigger to her.

        2. Cerberus

          I don’t see how it couldn’t be. Growing up in central Indiana… no, growing up anywhere as a trans girl? You deal with a lot of transphobia and a lot of hateful conjecture about your genitals.

          No matter how “above it all” she presents herself as, there’s no way that she’s fully immune to that kind of junk. And I know because out in the world I make a big show of minimizing the sort of junk I’ve been through or burying it completely, but this sort of stuff still fucks me up enough that I’m on pharmaceutical medication for it.

        3. morg

          Did I miss or forget something? Is Carla confrimed trans? Or is that just an assumption because in the other universe Ultra Car seemed to have a male personality but then got a female looking though actually neuter Carla like body?

        4. Jengoci

          There were alot pf hint like why Carla is so tall and have a room for herself, and otside the comic Willis confirmed that she’s trans and asexual

        5. DeathsApprentice

          According to Willis, she is trans.

        6. Jesus DeSaad

          Yeah, it’s CARLA we’re talking about. An asshole in two separate universes.

          If it was somebody else being counterbullied so hard I might have cared, but this particular person, I don’t care at all.

        7. BassBone

          There’s no excuse for what Mary did. None.

        8. Shiro

          Good for you, I guess? Those of us who’ve been where Carla and Ruth are right now, or who are capable of actual empathy, have stated why you should care.

        9. MrZombieScordo

          yeah, she’s annoying, but she doesn’t attack people. She’s rude but she doesn’t make people feel like shit. There are different levels of assholery. Carla annoys people a bit, Mary goes out to tear people down and ruin them.

        10. RP

          How very convenient that you’re able to pretend transphobia and transmisogyny is just “bullying”.

          It doesn’t stop being oppression just because the target was annoying first.

        11. jaimehlers

          RP, no sort of bullying is “just ‘bullying'”. All forms of bullying are attempts at oppression by the actual bullies; what makes it so damaging is the fact that most people turn a blind eye to it, making the target feel like they’re in the middle of a hostile crowd.

        12. Mr. Random

          All forms of opression are subsets of bullying.
          Althoguh, I do want to know,
          What do you define as bullying,
          And how does it differ from discrimination, as you view it?

        13. Ana Chronistic

          Also, how can something “just” be bullying? Bullying’s kind of a big deal.

        14. 3-I

          So, like, did you hate her this much when she was still a car, or did you only decide she wasn’t worthy of being treated like a human being when she started looking like a woman?

          Wait, hold on, I bet I already know.

        15. Stara

          I despise her as a car and groaned whenever she showed up. I only enjoyed th prospect of catching up with Joe in her plots. I still disliked her in Dumbing of Age, though less so– NOT because I magically prefer an asshole who is from a socially disadvantaged minority, but because I really appreciate the author having the brass to portray a super flawed and super sassy trans woman who isn’t easily liked or an angel. Also, her identity doesn’t revolve around her gender. She’s totally a woman (and I think this lack of day-to-day hyper absorption in identity is part of why it’s so forceful to suddenly hear Mary say that, to strip away her identity and reduce her to something just physical. Double blow because it also implies that Carla as herself doesn’t matter; that above all, all she is is an
          man pretending to be a young woman).

        16. LiamKav

          I had similar thoughts. Everyone loves Jocalyn, but at the moment Carla is a far more interesting. She can be extremely annoying, but as Cerberus and others have highlighted that being trans is possibly what’s caused her to have such a spikey personality. Or it could just be her. I don’t know. The fact that you can like and dislike and feel sorry and be annoyed and sympathise and find her grating and talk about her actions and motivations for ages shows that she’s a great character, far more than I realised even a week or so ago.

      2. Just Me

        I would think that Sal might have a thing ore three to say about this. Saying without words, that is.

        1. Tacos

          Yes. 100% less words and 100% more fists.

        2. BLACKOUT

          200% more fists. Have to remember that there are two of those, after all.

        3. No Name

          Well, if we’re starting from zero fists, then it infinite% more fists. Which sounds far more impressive than it actually is.

        4. Gigafreak

          Less like a manifesto and more like a many-fist-ow.

        5. Jonathan

          *SNORT*

      3. Kabo

        I don’t think she’s stunned. I bet she’s pretty used to stuff like this, and that’s why she’s adopted her f**k you attitude. Doesn’t mean she’s not hurt, of course. But “stunned” implies she has no way of dealing with stuff like this, which I’m pretty sure she has.

        Why hasn’t she curbstomped Mary? Well, you know, violence is still illegal, and if somebody would be undisposed to uphold college dorm omertà, it’s Mary.

    2. Foxhack

      Carla knows she can’t do anything right now.

      But Mary can’t remain in the building forever…

    3. Lee

      Not everyone can do the whole “physical violence” thing, but I really wish she had a pie on hand. :^(

    4. Cerberus

      You can’t really be physical in resistance as a trans person. Sadly. Either it ends in worse violence for you and potential death or it ends in jail time, because trans women especially aren’t really allowed socially to use violence even in defense of their own lives:

      http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/11196-no-justice-when-women-fight-back

      Plus there’s the fact that Carla doesn’t have a violent bone in her body. Hell, even in the fight with Amazi-girl she straight up goes out of her way while simply restraining her to apologize and state that usually her method is harmless pranks instead.

      1. Shiro

        Which is what gives me hope for the rest of this storyline. No, no, Mary, you misunderstand. Your punishment hasn’t even started yet.

        1. Captain Button

          That’s why I have high hopes for that door she left open.

      2. Kabo

        And that news story isn’t even a very good analogy. Mary hasn’t attacked Carla in any way that would legitimize using physical violence in self-defense.

        1. Random832

          Well, she did deliberately and recklessly cause her to trip and fall.

      3. Gamaran Sepudomyn

        How the fuck is that even legal. How the fuck.

  3. Leorale

    noooooo

    1. butts

      My thoughts exactly?

      1. butting

        Word.

        (I feel oddly compelled to post here before the next gravatar juggle)

        1. butts

          😀

  4. miados

    saving face but scared as f%^@k it seems. I want something to happen to her, but not anything like death or hospitalization. I do want something to happen though.

    1. Doctor_Who

      I want Mike to happen to her. Mike hasn’t happened to anyone recently.

      1. EvergreenFir

        Mike and Mary… Now that I want to see (in Slipshine?)

        1. LimeSheep

          willis drew them making out once and i still dont know if that means its gonna happen or if it was like, a commission or something

      2. Baf

        That’s not what your mom says.

        1. Mada

          and I did her for a nickel no less!

  5. EvergreenFir

    Damn it Willis

    1. Kaos

      don’t forget he feeds on tears and despair once in while. it is his drug. xD

  6. Captain Button

    Where is Mary going now? Is it away from the open door to her room?

    1. Jacques Cornelius Parrot III

      Hopefully it’s through a window

      1. inqntrol

        Which leads to the centre of the Earth.(because logic)

    2. DarkoNeko

      shouldn’t that be the other way ?

  7. Jepmz

    no!!! Turn around Ruth!!! AAAHHHH

    1. Captain Button

      Turn around, Bright Eyes.

  8. Andrew

    Oh jeeze

  9. ½©

    Ruth? Ruth you’re just getting some distance so you can get a running start and dropkick her right? I mean, you wouldn’t really be fine with what’s about to go down right?

    Right?

    Oh fuck Sal’s going back to jail.

    1. AeromechanicalAce

      Can’t go to jail if the entire dorm swears you were somewhere else at the time of the unspeakably brutal beatdown in question.

      1. Jesus DeSaad

        1) Go to police.
        2) Report a crime.
        3) Show your wounds.
        4) Say who did it.
        5) Police arrive at certain someone’s dorm room, search for evidence.
        6) Police question everybody around.
        7) Police find evidence.
        8) College kids aren’t forensic specialists, they don’t know what to hide beside what they’ve seen on TV and movies.
        9) Sal gets arrested if found. Otherwise, on the run and wanted.

        1. Emily

          You are precisely zero fun whatsoever.

    2. Kernanator

      Now I’m imagining Sal bursting into the hall on her motorcycle and leaping off of it to punch Mary.

      1. ½©

        Aren’t they on the third flo-
        You know what never mind, logistics.

        1. Badluck1313

          She took the elevator.

        2. Gigafreak

          Sal usually enters and leaves through the window rather than the doors, though.

          This means she’s much more likely to ramp off of something to smash through the window on her bike. In slow motion, probably.

      2. Sageress

        RIDER KICK

    3. AeromechanicalAce

      My ideal scenario:
      Mary crosses some sort of line, probably extortion of ruth.
      Amazigirl not only exposes her, but delivers a blaine-level beatdown.
      Amber FINALLY realizes how violent and unstable she’s become and seeks help afterwards.
      Mary leaves school in disgrace.

      1. ½©

        I’m not really sure how she’d be able to expose anything, it’s like everyone’s been saying about Mary’s threats, they’re all hearsay. That and a masked vigilante beating the shit out of a student would never be turned into a positive, if there’s no proof that is.

        I’m still not for anyone getting that much shit kicked out of them. Regardless of what’s being said.

        1. tonyt94

          Hearsay is when a witness repeats something that somebody told them (and can’t know the real truth of) instead of knowing firsthand.

          Mary’s comments to Ruth’s superiors would presumably have incomplete proof but would be from first-hand observations.

    4. Durandal_1707

      Am I forgetting something? What does Mary have on Sal?

      1. ½©

        Carla is friends with Malaya. Malaya is doing the two person tangle with Marcie. Marcie is BFF’s with Sal.

        Sal’s fist, by the way, is attached to Sal.

        1. No Name

          Also, Sal and Carla have a more direct “friendly acquaintances” relationship.

        2. Wublub

          Did Marcie and Malaya ever actually get together? I was hoping they would, because it seems like it would make them both so darn happy. (Although I’m hoping it doesn’t turn out like MalayaxLeslie in Shortpacked where she was just experimenting.) But I don’t think there was ever a follow-up strip saying whether they ever started dating or just stayed friends.

        3. Captain Button

          Are they? I thought Marcie was lusting after Malaya in her heart and was working up to actually doing something about it, but that Malaya might well have no idea Marcie feels that way.

        4. Jestam

          That was the impression I got.

  10. Leishycat

    I seriously hate Mary SO FUCKING MUCH right now >:(

  11. Mr. Mendo

    Anyone else thinking “blanket party”? That seems like something that would happen to Mary…

    1. buckybone

      And nobody ever deserved it more.

    2. tonyt94

      You think that a bunch of teenagers should commit premeditated felony assault together?

      That doesn’t exactly give everyone else the moral high ground…

      1. Disloyal Subject

        Sometimes, it’s not about morality so much as catharsis.
        Few people see themselves as a villain, but it’s not like everyone ever thinks they’re always in the right, or even tries to be.

      2. Mr. Mendo

        Considering that the cast includes a violent vigilante, I think that ship may have sailed, mate. 😉

      3. Mollyscribbles

        the problem with these avatars is that I don’t know how I should take your comment.

        1. modulusshift

          That’s not a default Mike avatar, must have been specifically chosen. If that helps.

  12. Kyran

    I was really hoping this strip would be Ruth twisting Mary’s head off like a bottle cap.

  13. Pat Myers

    FUCK OFF, MARY.

  14. Nicster216

    Mary has been waiting for this moment for so long! (4 books to be exact)

    1. ½©

      That’s as many as four ones!

      And that’s just awful.

      1. Svata

        Bravo sir. 5/7.

        1. Kelli

          Oh, wow… a perfect score!

        2. Tacos

          Math is hard yo.

        3. Shiro

          Oh my word, I love the internet. I had no idea that photoset was even infamous enough to reference in an unrelated place.

        4. Dr. T

          I’ve seen it memed a bit. The look on his face is what really seals the deal for me.

        5. Mr. Random

          Cool, other Imgur users!

  15. shadowcell

    so how much extra money do we have to give you on the next kickstarter to see horrible things happen to mary

    1. Doctor_Who

      Stretch goals on Patreon, maybe? If we agree to put the twins through college, can we get a direct meteorite strike?

      1. The Articulator

        No no no, that’s much too quick. She wouldn’t even feel a thing.

        1. Disloyal Subject

          Well, I don’t know if Willis has the stomach to go to Happy Tree Friends extremes with it, even if he were willing to specifically draw horrible violent things happening to Mary. Rakes & pies style slapstick is probably fine, though.

          …huh. If it were somehow able to survive the descent, how far would a pie dropped from low orbit splatter on impact?

  16. brumagem

    NOW’S YOUR CHANCE CARLA DON’T WASTE IT.

    1. Leorale

      Earlier, Carla has expressed discomfort at beating up Amazi-Girl (because she’d rather assert her dominance via sweet pranks). Mary tends to forget to lock her door, though. It may be time for more shenanigans.

      1. Wublub

        THE RETURN OF THE DING-DONG BANDIT
        No, but really. If everybody in the hall just waited until Mary went to class and then drew dicks on everything in her room, I would not complain. And it would really match Mary’s personality.

        1. Betty Anne

          Dicks on duct tape on everything in her room.

          Take it from someone who’s witnessed it firsthand…there is no sweeter justice than to see someone who’s been an asshole come home to find his/her belongings all covered in duct tape, after hacking his/her way through the duct tape bars stretched across his/her bedroom door.

        2. butting

          What a shame there’s no-one on the floor with dozens and dozens of empty illicit bottles they need to dispose of.

        3. Silamy

          What print of tape would annoy Mary most? Lips? Mustaches? Skulls? MLB? NFL? Clear? Glow in the dark all across her ceiling -who’s the poor fool stuck rooming with her? And what about dusting everything Mary owns with a fine layer of glitter -nice, feminine, impossible to get rid of glitter?

        4. Disloyal Subject

          Roz lives with her.

          No! Anything but the glitter! Not even Mary deserves that!
          …though it does mesh nicely with the vampirism jokes.

        5. Deanatay

          “craft herpes”

        6. tonyt94

          Mary needs to pay for new wheel bearings, not have her property vandalized in turn.

          Her further verbal harassment needs to be dealt with and possibly punished by a third party authority, not vigilantism.

          Carla and Mary probably both owe money to the school for trashing the floor, especially if it was carpet.

        7. Shiro

          Why should Carla have to pay for Mary deciding to put glue on the floor instead of contacting a responsible adult?

        8. tonyt94

          Carla was already trashing the floor with her skates before Mary did anything.

          I’m guessing it’s supposed to be tile given that it was clearly audible from the rooms, which would get scuffed up pretty fast.

          Glues may or may not be readily cleaned up, but Willis’ portrayal transcends even industrial epoxies and ventures into the realm of Looney Tunes territory, so who knows.

        9. Shiro

          Willis confirmed in the comments on another strip that it was carpet. As far as I’m aware, skates don’t do any more harm to carpet than shoes do.

        10. Random832

          Read Hall has tile floors in real life, but apparently in the comic (or at least in the comments section) it has carpet.

        11. Ana Chronistic

          Part of it’s Roz’s room, though, so that’s kinda the same thing??

          [or is that why Mary studies in the dark]

  17. Adj

    That’s it. Gotta take a week off. I can live in a real world where Mary succeeds, but I can’t visit a fictional one that does. Not this week.

    1. Captain Button

      Take care of yourself.

    2. Carolyn

      You do what you’ve gotta do. Take care.

    3. Leorale

      Sounds wise. See you in a week or so.

    4. caesaria82

      *hugs* Sometimes fiction really hits too close to home. Take care of yourself!

    5. a4lbi

      <3

    6. Gigafreak

      In a hilarious and/or horrible coincidence, both generic gravatars in this comment thread are Mary.

      Lady Luck has a twisted sense of humor.

  18. Plasma Mongoose

    If Ruth had a tail, it would be between her legs right now.

    1. inqntrol

      To put it to better use she could use that tail to “accidentaly” trip Mary.

  19. John

    Panel 4 Ruth .oO{Omigod, I almost slammed her up against the wall and kissed her. Billie would have kicked my ass.}

    1. Idonea

      What the hell, dude?? Not only is that always just a terrible idea in general, but she’s into women &, just, read the mood. Yikes.

      1. saltchocolate

        Ironically, that’s just how Ruth herself misjudged with Billie, earlier.

        1. John

          That was, in fact, the joke.

        2. Idonea

          I’m aware, and that’s a really awful moment for me to read in the comic too. I’m really glad she got smacked down hard at the time rather than play into that gross shit. Billie was asking for stability and clarity and got the exact opposite w/ violence thrown in. Jfc, Ruth. What a mess that was.

          Like, even if it was my girlfriend who did that (she wouldn’t, but hypothetically) my panicky ass would bluescreen. It’s not fun, and it doesn’t recall good, healthy experiences (especially as a dyke & it generally being guys who pull that crap).

          P.S. I don’t think Ruth-the-suicidal-lesbian-actively-driving-everyone-away-for-an-uncomplicated-exit came from remotely the same place as “You’re cute when you’re mad”/”*kiss to shut up “””romantically”””*” does in dude-tropes. Just very, very unhealthy trainwreck of a person. Which thankfully is working out better these days, relatively speaking.

      2. SDGlyph

        It took me a moment to parse the “.oO{…}” as a thought bubble, i.e. Ruth’s thought, not John’s. Did you misread the same way?

        1. Idonea

          Oh. Yup, never parsed like that at all to me. Just read like “Dang, she looks hot Upset, I sure would like to sexually assault that lesbian.”.

          Read the oO like a “o_o” emoticon or something.

        2. Pl0x

          Ruth is bi, actually.

        3. Idonea

          Only ever seen this asserted because of “A guy was mentioned in her proximity once. A decade ago. In Canada.”, which is a hella lesbophobic reason, sooo.. nah. non-specific sapphic characters are open to whichever. and trying to divine some sort of True Sexuality out of past interactions is just a direct path to being super-shitty to real people.

          Like, I was just a fucked up lesbian in the past who thought I was attracted to men because-I-should-be, and anyone who’d tell me that I am Actually Bisexual can, well, I’m sure you can fill in a few paragraphs of expletives here.

          And it’s not like “fucked-up lesbian” isn’t easily applied reading Ruth or Joyce etc. 😛

        4. SDGlyph

          Ruth’s bi.
          (I appreciate that isn’t the most… conspicuous of confirmations, it’s just the first one I found and is word of God.)

          I can’t remember if it’s explicitly confirmed in-strip; I recall she told her brother she “wasn’t sure what she was looking for,” but she was bi in the Walkyverse and characters generally carry their sexuality over. Point is, you’re right to say a character isn’t automatically bi (though we’ve been having dicussions lately about assuming a character isn’t bi when they are!), but in this case she’s confirmed.

  20. Zagreus

    LOCAL UNIVERSITY FRESHMAN ATTACKED BY STUDENT MOB

    “Yeah It Was Brutal But TBH She Kinda Deserved It”, Sources Say

    1. DarkoNeko

      so, so brütal.

    2. miados

      local student has every posession stolen out of her down and set on fire in the quad. dorm mates and ra have no leads.

  21. tim gueguen

    So, who is about to bring the wrath of the dorm down on Mary, Sal or Joyce?

    1. Carolyn

      My money is on Joyce flipping her shit when she finds out that Mary is threatening Becky’s living situation.

      1. inqntrol

        One more uppercut incoming.

      2. Dr. T

        Let’s not forget that Jocelyn was shown in some of the preview images, probably related to Joyce’s trip home. Maybe Joyce learns the truth about her sister, which would definitely lead Joyce to seriously lose her shit on Mary if she overheard her verbally abusing Carla.

        I’m beginning to think that Joyce will have her wrist in a cast for the remainder of the series because she keeps breaking it on someone’s face.

    2. Athedia

      What about Amber? She could take off the mantle to protect someone. Or again, TELL LESLIE!

  22. Lia47

    ah jeez

  23. phildog

    Can’t “the cheerleader” just switch dorms with someone on another floor? Wouldn’t that settle this whole thing?

    1. Leorale

      Yep. “Dumbing” of age.

    2. Tacos

      Only part of it. There’d still be the whole Becky situation to deal with after.

    3. Spencer

      That requires Billie to be sober long enough to formulate a plan.

      1. Spencer

        tho now that’s kind of shot since Becky’s taken up residence in her room, plus Billie probably thinks that putting that much more distance between her and Ruth could cause problems.

    4. John

      I want her to switch rooms with Malaya. Then Billie can live in Ruth’s room like she’s doing anyway, Lucy’ll have Becky for unofficial roommate, and Sal and Malaya will be roommates. It’ll be hilarious.

    5. Lord Stoneheart

      Is it really that easy to switch rooms officially? When I lived in a dorm you had to jump through a lot of hoops to get a room change.

      1. Ana Chronistic

        I don’t recall precisely, but I do know my original roommate wanted to trade so she could share with a friend, and I just ended up moving everything in one day. Don’t think I talked to any officials about it…

        tbh I don’t know how I made it out of college–it really was DoA but (*cough*mumble*) years ago

        1. modulusshift

          There’s paperwork involved, but they tend to make it so that most of the process can be done by one or two of the people involved, and everyone else just has to verbally assent to it. That way there’s no hassle for the people who aren’t as enthused about the move but are still fine with it.

      2. Silamy

        I wonder -if Ruth goes to head office and says, “look, with her history with alcohol -and you know my story -I don’t think I can treat her fairly”, AND Billie knows someone somewhere else who’d be okay switching with her… combine that with Ruth’s well-established behavior of picking on Billie from day one, and it might be feasible?

  24. Stephen R. Bierce

    “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”
    “Revenge rides a swift horse.”
    “To the Gods, vengeance is an ART.”

    1. Gigafreak

      Revenge is an ice sculpture of the Grim Reaper?

  25. DarkoNeko

    Panel 2 : “now kiss”

    1. ½©

      I mean, that’s how she and Billie got together soooo….

    2. -Sentinel-

      All of the nope.

      1. DarkoNeko

        That’d have stunned Mary long enough for Carla to tie her shoelaces together.

    3. Yotomoe

      Mary would never cheat on her waifu.

      1. ½©

        You could cut the sexual tension with a garden hose.

        …wait.

      2. caesaria82

        Wait who is Mary’s waifu? ……….. Jesus?

        1. inqntrol

          No, the snake.

    4. Scott John Harrison

      You never kiss a biggot.

  26. Squirrel

    Now can we punch her?!

  27. Synnerman

    It’s Nomi Malone time! Mary meet stairs!

    1. caesaria82

      Love a good Showgirls reference!

  28. Alex

    Can’t blame Ruth for doing what she did, but if I was in her shoes? I’d go down and take Mary with me.

    1. tim gueguen

      That may yet happen, depending on how Billie reacts to all this and what Mary tries next.

      1. Bagge

        I think Billie might try an Alpha Bongo Head Cheer Leader type of solution… Which would suit Mary just fine because that would further create just the kind of toxic environment she thrive in.

  29. Saaaam

    Ruth you’re fucking up so bad

  30. Eukie

    Ruth just gave Carla a carte blanche to do whatever she likes to Mary. Carla has access to marijuana. Ruth does “random” drug searches.

    1. Wublub

      Well, when you put it that way…
      Seriously, though, if I was Carla I’d rather have authority figures stand up for me than just say, “Yeah, you can beat her up if you want and I won’t tell.” Because you know if Carla DID try to get revenge, Mary would just report her to a higher-up and pretend that whatever Carla did was completely unprovoked.

      1. Eukie

        Oh, for Carla that would surely be preferable. I just point this out as a possibility for how Carla and/or Ruth can get the upper hand/revenge in this situation as it stands.

      2. Cerberus

        Sadly… when you’re trans, you learn rather quickly not to trust authority figures to have your back or enforce the rules that exist. And to know that going to an authority is a request to be harassed by said authority more times than not, especially if you show vulnerability.

        And that might be underlined here for Carla (though admittedly under very extenuating circumstances) seeing as how Ruth (through no fault of her own) is letting Mary get off scot free here despite having directly overheard the abusive action by Mary.

        1. Leorale

          I’m not ready to absolve Ruth of fault. I mean, you hear something like that, you do *something*, even if it might get you fired for your own previous actions. (I mean, I’m sure that the RA job is helping her to stay in school, but even so, she can find another way; a job isn’t worth her humanity.) Act with integrity!

          Even if Ruth isn’t brave enough or can’t figure out a way to survive getting fired, she could at least have said “Carla, let’s get out of here, away from this moron” or something, she didn’t have to leave Carla all alone with the triumphant bigot.

        2. Cerberus

          “she didn’t have to leave Carla all alone with the triumphant bigot.”

          Yeah, that part is immensely fucked up. Especially since her little departure totally threw her under the bus. Like, oh, yeah, I’ll turn a blind eye if Carla here wants to beat your ass, welp, time to flee. Like, oh thanks Ruth, you’re a pal.

        3. Bagge

          She is…. not a very good RA. That is very clear for her in the last panel. And Carla could REALLY use a good RA now.

        4. Ruthmost

          It unlikely would be Billie, she shares the same sins as Ruth except she even hid Becky.

          The way everyone conspired to hide the ‘perverted vagrant’, if the RA changes they might as well appoint “stands for no BS” Mary.

        5. Gordon

          I kinda feel like a lot of people are forgetting that Ruth also just had some homophobia spit directly into her face. Something she is actively guilty about, and something she expressed open discomfort/insecurity about when she was talking to her brother. Who is the only person other than Billie(and Mary) to know this about her. Unless I’m misremembering. It’s been a few years since I read those panels.

          I’m thinking the thing about Becky just barely registered in the face of that. It’ll definitely come up in the argument she’s going to have with Billie, but that’s not what has her freaked out her. She was just outed.

          Ruth is a bad RA, definitely, and should have already lost her job. And she did fail Carla just now. But it’s hard to expect too much action from her in a very similar way that it’s hard to expect too much action from Carla in the face of this.

          At least that’s my take on it.

          TLDR: Carla wasn’t the only one who just got metaphorically punched in the solar plexus by Mary’s bigotry.

        6. Cerberus

          That’s true. In comic, she’s still very much in the point of her life of just coming to terms with being bi and being in her first ever relationship with a woman and doesn’t even have terminology for speaking about her life experiences much less any type of community. And she very much not only ate a massive dumb of homophobia, but just got blackmailed. They’re really both left reeling right now.

        7. Bagge

          Oh, absolutely. Mary WON this one. Mary hit her where it hurts. So, yeah, I don’t blame Ruth for not being better equipped to handle this immediate situation. It is VERY hard to stand up to a determined bully.

          But I do blame her for ruling the Clark Wing with fear, for teaching the residents that the last thing they want to do is to involve the RA in any of their problem, that bullying is a legitimate way of getting what you want. That creates exactly the kind of atmosphere where people like Mary thrive.

    2. Foxhack

      Mary can say Ruth planted the stuff if she does the search.

      But if someone else does it… like… a university employee… while Ruth is not in the building…

      1. Historyman68

        …Someone who can climb in windows?
        I’m picking up what you’re putting down.

    3. Jesus DeSaad

      You DO realize if anything like that happens Maria will have the police on Carla in two seconds flat, right?

  31. Carolyn

    …I knew today’s comic would probably leave me feeling enraged. What I didn’t expect was to get so pissed off that I bit the inside of my cheek and made it bleed. Whoops.

    1. inqntrol

      Be glad that you didn’t bit your tongue. Not being able to properly talk for a couple of hours is painful in both ways.

  32. SpoopyFox

    oh she is gonna get her ass handed to her

  33. Vivvav

    KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT

  34. Sara Hysaro

    Oh man, Carla’s definitely going to yell at Ruth for this.

    1. Eukie

      Maybe, but she was right there when Mary made her threats, so Carla probably understands that’s something’s not right. She also seems furious with Mary over threatening Ruth (or just over winning the confrontation) rather than at Ruth for retreating.

      1. Sara Hysaro

        That glare is directed precisely at Ruth. Perhaps I’m wrong, but she doesn’t seem to care about Mary at this point – Mary is just a bigot. Ruth is the one who left Carla to fend for herself. Is it understandable? Yes. I’m not sure that eases the sting of the bigot effectively winning yet another battle, though.

        That’s just my interpretation, though. I could definitely be wrong.

        1. Eukie

          Ruth is leaving to the right side of the panel, while Carla is glaring to the right, in the direction to Mary. Carla’s facial expression in the panel where she’s looking at Ruth is one of surprised; because she’s shocked that Ruth would betray her like that, because she’s shocked Ruth “Ruthless” Lessic would back down, because she’s shocked to learn Ruth and Billie are together, or because she’s shocked to learn that Mary has that much power over Ruth. It’s not entirely clear.

        2. Sara Hysaro

          She’s facing Mary, but she doesn’t seem to be looking at Mary.

        3. Sara Hysaro

          Ehhh, I could have probably phrased that better. As it is I’m concerned that it downplays the horribleness of being a bigot – not my intent! Being a bigot is worse than what Ruth did by far. I’m just reading a betrayal vs hate spin into things.

        4. Frootloop

          I agree, maybe not 100% with how much anger Carla has towards Mary but definitely with how angry she is with Ruth. Ruth’s job is to take appropriate action when stuff like this happens, and she walked away. Ruth deserves every bit of that heartbreaking glare Carla is shooting her.

    2. a4lbi

      Before or after she reduces Mary to a smear on the dorm carpet?

  35. read all over

    Is that foreshadowing?

  36. Wublub

    Ruth, no. Please tell me you’re just bluffing until you can find a way to hide Becky and make it look like Billie’s still living in her own dorm.

    I mean, I still think Ruth is a bad RA. But if she ever gets fired I don’t want it to be because of MARY.

    1. merbrat

      Ruth isn’t really aware of Becky *living* there. Billie is, since she gave Becky her room. Ruth was giving Becky the side-eye, but people were successful in mis-direction about Becky. Ruth wanted Billie to spy for her at Joyce’s party, but she didn’t report anything (since she was drinking and sharing). Ruth will NOT be pleased to find Billie knew about Becky. The others have been helping Becky avoid Ruth all along.

  37. Captain Button

    Just a typical case of American Blind Justice.

    1. Leorale

      and the judge wasn’t gonna look at the twenty-seven 8×10 coloured glossy photographs with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one, explaining what each one was, to be used as evidence against them.

      1. merbrat

        *moseys off, humming* “You can get anything you want…”

  38. Victor Riley

    Please Carla, just go all Roller-Derby on her butt…

    1. ½©

      Well that sounded dirty.

    2. Io

      Carla already established that she’s a pacifist. Though her normal preference is sarcasm and sweet pranks, so maybe violence is in order… But I just really don’t think that’s the kind of person she is, and statistically speaking she’s been subjected to violence before and is probably not keen on dishing it out.
      :c She’s an annoying brat but she’s never been mean to anyone before, just annoying.

    3. Cerberus

      Sadly, it wouldn’t be safe for her to, even if she wasn’t a pacifist.

      1. AeromechanicalAce

        What about Amazi-Girl? This sounds like a job for Amazi-Girl.

  39. Nicster216

    did…….did mary talk crap to ruth and NOT get her femurs broken?

  40. Someone

    I feel that a lot of people are getting violently angry about how much they hate Mary, and sure she is despicable, but doesn’t having that much hate towards a fictional character take away a lot of energy? Especially because there are so many awful people in the real world you could hate!

    1. Nicster216

      i actually thought it was cool mary stood up to ruth. you know when you think about it all the characters in the story are having all these wacky adventures in college meanwhile all mary wants is to be a normal college studentXD would explain why she doesnt want to get involved with people’s shenanigans

      1. KarkatTheDalek

        Being a fundamentalist bigot rather undermines all of that, I should think.

        1. ½©

          I view it as this. You see a bunch of people running away from a Tiger but then there’s this Nazi trying to punch it. It’s cool that you see somebody punching a tiger, it just sucks that it’s a Nazi doing it.

        2. KarkatTheDalek

          And while the Nazi’s punching the tiger, they’re going on about how they want to exterminate all tigers, or how they’re part of a grand Jewish conspiracy, or something like that.

      2. Wublub

        “Wanting to be a normal college student” doesn’t excuse misgendering Carla, being mean to everybody, calling lesbians perverts, and blackmailing people.

        If Mary was so damn concerned about what an awful RA Ruth is, she should have reported her when she was being abusive. Hell, she even could have reported her for slapping her that one time. But she didn’t do that. She just filed away all the information about her until it was convenient to bring it up for her own uses. She isn’t standing up to Ruth. She’s being a disgusting bully and trying to force Ruth into standing by and letting her do it.

      3. Cerberus

        The problem is that she wants to be the “normal” college student. In the sense that she views herself as that which is natural and normal and right and thus the world of her college experience should radiate from her and support her and her whims and everyone else, especially those with minority identities are the “deviants”, the “perverts” who are so beneath her as to be beneath any attempt at treating like a full human being.

        And this has been her consistent behavior. She has looked down on every other student who hasn’t measured up to her very narrow worldview and has been shown in comic glaring at a 12 year old and writing her off as already tainted and not even worth engaging with civilly.

        And that worldview gets ever the more toxic with someone like Carla or Ruth, because their marginalized identities as trans and queer women means that the social treatment of themselves as “deviant” and “not normal” carries a horrible radiation with it that burns and scars.

        And sadly, too often, kills.

        1. modulusshift

          Especially supported by “I’m finally starting to enjoy how this place is run.” She doesn’t really have a problem with everything being terrible as long as it supports her side.

    2. Fallingivy

      Part of the anger is the experience of meeting people like Mary in real life and the knowledge that people like Mary in real life do this shit on the daily and walk away just as consequence free as she does. Some of the anger is coming from *being* trans and dealing with cruelty and hatred from real people like Mary and seeing it reflected in the character. It’s not anger stemming from nothing, is what I’m saying. It’s hating people in real life who are represented by Mary, basically.

    3. Li

      What you’re missing is that a lot of the most violent hate being directed at Mary is from people who, in the real world, know people just like her who have hurt them personally.

      Mary symbolizes real world people. It is towards those people that this anger is actually directed, in an amalgamation of all the bigoted douchebags who have bullied them, who have literally oppressed them.

      It’s not as weird or disproportionate or irrational as you’re making it sound.

    4. a4lbi

      Hating people in meatspace is exhausting.

      Hating fictional people (especially when there’s consequences to their actions- something that doesn’t happen nearly enough offline) is catharsis.

    5. a4lbi

      But seriously.

      Way to trivialize the anger that is understandably present because people like Mary exist in the real world, too.

    6. Shiro

      The people I hate in the real world can actually hurt me. Bigoted fictional characters are safe targets that I can vent my spleen on in peace.

    7. caesaria82

      But we are passionate about this particular piece of fiction, isn’t this why we’re all here? So naturally we get invested and emotional about it. I find people who never get angry at angry-making fictional characters suspect, tbh. Get angry! Let it out! Especially because this storyline hits so close to home for a lot of people and a lot of us commenters are not willing to let these injustices stand. Even fictional ones. Because… idk. Because we’re human beings with beating hearts, I guess.

    8. miados

      I think it is similar to why people hate umbridge more than voldemort. it has to do with relatability and more people have experienced a mary villian than most of the villians in the real world. at least first hand.

    9. Cerberus

      I dunno. Marys have kind of a regular fixture in my life for pretty much all of my life and even ruled my life for a time. And in reality, they tend to get away scot free like this close to 100% of the time as the best we can often do is just minimize the fallout of their horribleness and limit its splash radius.

      I don’t “hate” her per se, but any disliking of her is rather easy because it’s just what I deal with all the time at its worst in a smug little package. There’s no need for effort to find that distasteful and unwanted.

      1. LiamKav

        Not wanting so speak for Someone (the person who posted above, not an abstract person) I think his problem might be the “violently angry” part. I can emphasise completely with the fact that in real life people have had bad shit happen to them and they want to direct that anger to a fictional person. (Although I get that I can’t completely “get it” because it doesn’t happen to me, being cis myself.)

        I get that anger, but it’s the violent revenge fantasies that are slightly disturbing. Especially because, as you say, Mary is a person that actually exists. Violence happening to the Head Alien doesn’t count, because he’s a crazy over the top villain who drops dead parents on people’s heads. But Mary exists, and so it reads to me that when people say they want her to die, it means they want all bigots to die.

        But, as I said, I don’t really experience that sort of thing, so I don’t want to de-legitimise (if that’s a word) people’s feelings on the matter. It’s more just worry about “violence creates more violence creates more violence creates…”

        1. Noëlle Anthony

          It’s really easy to say “violence begets violence” when you’re not affected by the situation. Maybe take the time you’re spending tone-policing trans people who are saying (hyperbolically or not) they’d *like* to hurt the people hurting them, and spend it going after the bigots who are literally killing trans people.

        2. LiamKav

          Okay, I’m not trying to upset you, but…

          1. I’m really not trying to tone-police. I’m not keen on real-life physical violence so it upsets me when I see people advocating it so much. I can see how it would look like I am doing the whole “well, if black people would just complain nicely, then we’d listen” argument though, so I apologise.
          2. I really don’t think the choices in my day are “post on a comments section on a webcomic” and “go after bigots who are killing trans people”. Do you mean on twitter? In real life? Give money and time to causes that help people who suffer from domestic and other sorts of violence? You have literally no idea how I spend the rest of my time. I do know that shouting at someone who wants to kill trans people on the internet will produce exactly zero results, though.

        3. LiamKav

          Sorry, that might have come out harsher than I meant it to. I’m trying to have a conversation, not an argument, but if it’s upsetting I will stop.

        4. Cerberus

          When I’m hurting a lot and I’m suffering and I’ve had an exceptionally awful day where I’ve been threatened with death or sexually harassed and/or so forth, there’s a dark piece of me that does wish all the bigots would die off already so that I can live my life in piece. So I can drop the 19 layers of emotional armor I have to put on to go to the store and just relax and not have a constant layer of fear and anxiety blanketing most every interaction with the world.

          I am not proud of that feeling. I do not think of it as a good thing. But it’s there at times when I’m at my most vulnerable.

          Given how triggering this is for people, I can see the violent fantasies, because those fantasies are often the only recrimination we’ve got when someone actively hurts us or echoes that hurt. I can see people getting frustrated and saying something impolitic towards the mainstream to vomit out all their pain and suffering that has no social weight to it.

          And I can’t fully condemn it because I know my black heart when I get down that deep. And I know that sometimes it’s the only cold comfort we get then.

    10. KarkatTheDalek

      I find it takes surprisingly little energy, actually. And really, I don’t think you can tell anyone how to spend their time.

  41. Meg

    So Ruth, upset, tells Billie. Billie, being a more level-headed form of sneaky fabulous, realizes that this was the perfect delay. They get all their ducks in a row (including relocating Becky) and then do exactly what Ruth planned to do initially – show everyone what a malicious, hateful, POS Mary is.

    Right?

    Right? (hopeful whimper)

  42. Psychotic Mantis

    I can’t even hate Mary any more. I just want to take her aside and tell her why she doesn’t have to be so hateful. Everyone deserves a second chance, and I think it’s about time for Mary’s. She really doesn’t understand that what she’s doing is ‘wrong’, does she? She’s fully convicted that she’s right in being transphobic, homophobic, and just generally a bongo.

    And you know what? I want to hug her.

    Mary seems like the person that lacked a lot of human compassion in her childhood and thus grew up VERY (maybe worse than Joyce) entrenched in the Bible. I don’t think Mary even quite understands that what she’s doing is wrong. I think she legitimately believes she’s right, and that she SHOULD have won this argument. And I just want to hug her and tell her why she doesn’t have to be so hateful.

    I can’t hate someone without giving them another chance. And neither should you. I must admit my initial reaction to this scenario was rather knee-jerk, but nobody here seems willing to show the slightest bit of sympathy to Mary. But that may be just what she needs to pull a Becky and turn herself around.

    1. 0kami

      You give the rest of us cause for hope.

      Here, have this internet.

      1. Psychotic Mantis

        Thanks. I just don’t think that Mary should be the only three-dimensional character (Ryan, Blaine, and Toedad obviously don’t really count since they’re pretty one-note.) not given a second chance.

        If we start dehumanizing Mary like most people in this section have been, we’re no better than her.

        Also, I feel the urge to point out I’m not condoning her actions at all. At that age, I’d probably have literally strangled her to death. What she said was absolutely vile, cruel, and uncalled for.

        But everyone deserves to have some faith put in them (Toedad, Blaine, and Ryan notwithstanding), and I’m not the one to withhold that faith.

        1. Ruthful

          Mary is exactly as one dimensional as Ryan, Blaine, and Toedad. You’re contradicting yourself by saying everyone should get a second chance, “except” these other people that you actually don’t want to get a second chance. I complained in much earlier strips that I wish Mary would get development beyond being a one-dimensional character who exists solely to be hated, but we’re past that point, and she is in exactly the same camp as Blaine and Toedad. Completely hateful bigot with no character traits at all beyond that she’s hateful and religious. She is a cadboard cutout villain just the same as them, and as such I wouldn’t feel bad for a second if she got hit by a truck.

        2. Ruthful

          Actually, on second thought, even Toedad had more depth than Mary. At the very least he had a sympathetic motive, “I only want what’s best for my daughter and family” – it just so happened that that motive was backed by a completely warped worldview. But at least he had one. Mary is just hateful for the sake of being hateful.

        3. Psychotic Mantis

          But we can’t immediately jump to that conclusion without offering at least some thought to why she’s so hateful. It’s entirely possible, nay, maybe even likely, that Mary was very enclosed as a child.

          Perhaps she was constantly harassed when she was younger, and that drove her even further into what was ‘holy’ and ‘right’. This, obviously, could lead to her acting the way she does now. But you can’t just assume that Mary’s just spiteful because she can be.

          That’s not fair to anyone.

          (And I acknowledge your comment regarding Toedad. He had what he perceived as correct motives, but was hateful and angry because of them. But is it possible that Mary may have the same convictions, if not just more manipulative in her methods?)

          (Mary is not a good person right now. I know that. She’s a sheltered, hostile, and generally very xenophobic religious young woman. Remove the hostility from the equation, and who do you get? Hint. It’s Joyce at the beginning of the comic. And she got better. Who are we to say that Mary won’t either?)

        4. LimeSheep

          you can say that about toedad or blaine too. literally anything could have happened to them off screen. but if it isnt shown, its not a part of the story.

        5. Psychotic Mantis

          It hasn’t been shown, sure.

          But that doesn’t mean it isn’t part of the story. It means that it COULD be, but it just hasn’t been fully revealed yet.

    2. Foxhack

      I really wish everyone deserved a second chance. But there are some who will never, ever admit they were wrong – and so, they will never think they deserve one.

      I have relatives that are like Mary. They can’t be changed because they refuse to be changed. They’d rather live in their own little ball of hatred than think they may be hurting others. It’s why my specific branch of the family no longer interacts with them. It sucks because they were a part of my life growing up… but we can’t live with such hate hanging over our heads. Dad – who WAS part of that branch, and passed away six years ago – would agree with us.

      🙁

      1. Psychotic Mantis

        Then someone needs to show them they do deserve one. Someone needs to prove them wrong in a way that doesn’t also empower their hateful beliefs. Insults and wounds solve nothing. Calm, rational, compassion is what solves things like this.

        If you act soon enough, in my experience before 30 years, anyone can be turned towards a more loving, peaceful path. Nobody is born to hate. Even if they refuse to change, they deserve to have someone TRY to help them.

        1. Foxhack

          We tried. Believe me, we tried. But you can’t change 60+ years of hate overnight.

        2. Psychotic Mantis

          I’m glad you tried, at least. That’s all I’m trying to do, as well. It’s entirely possible that it’s in vain, but I want to try to give everyone a chance.

        3. thejeff

          Of course, you could look at all of Mary’s other bits of lower profile bigotry as her first chances and see this as her failed second chance.
          I mean, if she shows signs of changing at some later date, fine. People can change and grow. But she hasn’t shown them yet. No signs of anything but taking advantage of prejudice.

        4. Psychotic Mantis

          Perhaps you have a point.

          This entire comment tree I’ve started is really only supposed to convey a simple message: don’t instantly call for someone to be despised and/or hurt without looking at every piece of evidence.

          I’m tired of people, fictional or not, being instantly hated for what they do on the surface. Maybe they genuinely perceive themselves as doing good. Maybe they were justified. Maybe not.

          I’m not saying Mary is right, but I’m sick of all the hatred every character in this comic seems to get before we know all the details. It happens enough in real life, but if we at least tried to be understanding or peaceful towards others, we’d all be better off.

          You can’t fight hate with hate, I guess is what this is all about.

        5. thejeff

          I just think you’re applying that generally good idea to the wrong target here. We could see background that gives us more insight into why Mary is so horrible, and I would like that, but I don’t think we’re going to see any evidence that isn’t going to leave her pretty horrible.

          I’m not even sure who else in this comic fits that bill? Who’s been hated before the evidence was in and then revealed to not be so bad? Other than Danny and that hate was as much a comment section joke as anything else.
          Ross was hated on before he got definitively revealed as awful, but there were plenty of people defending him up to that point, and some after.

    3. Someone

      My thoughts exactly, if I hated everyone that every was mean or said something wrong, I would live my entire life hating people. To err is human to forgive divine. Of course I’m so blindly forgiving that I have trouble seeing why people hate Roomies Danny so much. (this may not be a good thing) You have to be really evil for me to categorize you as hopelessly evil. Blaine, Ross and Ryan all pass this point.

      1. Psychotic Mantis

        Your first two sentences are perfectly descriptive of this.

        If you hate everyone who is hateful without at least trying to show them a better, more compassionate way, you’re no better than them.

        Nobody is perfect, and some people need more love and caring than others. Mary seems like one of those people, because she’ll only get more and more vile as time goes on if nobody steps in to (and this is going to sound way worse than I want it to) correct her.

        1. butting

          A big frustration I’m feeling is that Ruth has proved Mary’s assessment of her entirely accurate by suggesting mob violence and walking away. Carla, who I’m guessing is more alert to the perils of mob violence to her personally, is being massively let down.

          Which makes things really, really hard for anyone to step in to correct Mary.

          I’d like to put my money on Joyce, as she’s inside the tribe and has done some reflecting on where this leads for people she cares about (which is a good start for caring about people in general, and is just one of the ways she differs from Mary), but her earlier shut-down-and-walk-away from Leslie makes me real nervous there.

        2. Psychotic Mantis

          Ah, yes. Your last paragraph raises an excellent point, which I shall address before blacking out.

          Joyce would be excellent for again, attempting to bring Mary to a point of view similar to her own…Once she gets past all the recent changes that have been and will be happening to her.

          Perhaps I haven’t made this clear in my other comments: I know that, at this moment in the comic, Mary is irredeemable. Trust me, I’m aware and EXTREMELY frustrated by that fact. But we do have to remember that things change in this comic a LOT.

          Who knows? Maybe Joyce and Becky can tag-team Mary’s religious views in a few (in-universe) weeks or maybe a (still in universe) month or so? Of course, this is while Mike writes and films a documentary about it.

        3. 3-I

          No. No, you’re wrong. You’re wrong and you need to stop.

          Mary is a hateful bigot who treats people like shit and actively hurts them because it makes her feel superior to them.

          We are NOT as bad as she is. Not unless we decide to go out of our way to HURT people to make ourselves feel big.

          I don’t care what backtracking you do. There is a fundamental difference between a person being abusive and a person not forgiving abuse. There is no way to excuse any other opinion on the matter.

        4. Psychotic Mantis

          No offense, but who are you to judge whether or not an opinion is excusable? I’m trying to prevent further arguing and spite by offering a more calm, peaceful interpretation of what’s to come. Why isn’t that “excusable”? You can’t make me stop being optimistic about someone possibly ( I understand that it may not happen. ) turning a new leaf.

          I choose to try to see the good in others, and if people don’t agree with that, I won’t judge. But I will NOT let someone say whether or not my choice of viewing someone’s potential for compassion can be excused. If you don’t agree with my comments, fine. But don’t judge me lest you be judged yourself.

        5. Greenygal

          You already judged. You said:

          “If you hate everyone who is hateful without at least trying to show them a better, more compassionate way, you’re no better than them.”

          That is an immensely judgey statement, and one that moreover puts a lot of the load on the victims of hatred. It’s a statement that says that if Carla doesn’t turn around and try to help Mary, she’s no better than Mary–and that the same is true of their real-life equivalents. If that’s not what you meant…well, that’s still what you said.

          It’s fine if you want to offer compassion and redemption to bigots. If you have the energy for it, more power to you. But it’s not okay to insist that everyone must do that, and it’s extra not okay to say that those who don’t are morally equivalent to the bigots.

    4. DarkoNeko

      It seems to me she took the habit of keeping track of people’s dirty laundry in her previous schools.
      ….I’m not sure I want to imagine the atmosphere in those. Kinda remind of some scandal news article about fundie-school I read a while ago.

    5. Leorale

      I really wish we lived in a world where hugs were that transformational to such deeply entrenched hatred. We don’t, though. Some people really are that committed to their hateful views, and it makes them toxic, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You just have to stay the hell away from them, and try to reduce their impact on your life as much as you possibly can. If they’re running for office, you vote for the other person. And you surround yourselves with awesome people instead. Yes. Awesome people are the best.

      1. Psychotic Mantis

        But you have to try. A hug may not be the pivoting point, but simple acts of compassion towards even those you greatly dislike or hate? That can go a long way.

        A simple hug won’t break the spell of hatred that Mary is under. I realize that. But it would help tremendously, because the simplest acts of kindness, when alongside the most convincing arguments for a more loving worldview can sometimes have greater long-term effects than short-term.

        1. Psychotic Mantis

          And keep in mind isolating yourself from them without even attempting to introduce them to some form of kindness (the kind that Mary seems to have lacked as a Church-going youth) can often make it worse. That just makes them more enclosed and reclusive.

          You have to at least TRY, peacefully and calmly, to shatter this illusion of bigotry and phobia that many of Mary’s type fall victim to.

        2. Fallingivy

          No. You do NOT have to try. NO, you do not have to literally be someone else’s punching bag in order for them to step into the light. I was in that place. I used to think that everyone could be reasoned with, cared for, loved and hand-held into kindness. And maybe, with enough energy, time, and commitment, almost anyone can. Who’s to say? But here’s the thing: people who are full of hatred like Mary, who devote their time to being cruel, who make it their life’s mission to hurt and oppress others, are not *entitled* to the time, patience, energy, and kindness of anyone.

          And especially, especially not the energy of the people they bully and harm. You are basically saying that it is the job of the victim to cure the bully with kindness, and if they don’t try to, they’re no better than the bully. People have free will. People are responsible for their own actions. If a person takes it upon themselves to be hateful, harmful, toxic and abusive, no one needs to help them. No one should be judged or shamed for choosing to shield themselves and stay away from poison. If there are people willing to help them, fine. But they are not entitled to the time and kindness of anyone else, least of all the people they harm and hurt.

          I tried to help someone I thought was a friend. I thought they couldn’t understand what they said about LGBT people, fat people, women. I thought if I talked to them about it and shared my feelings, they would eventually understand. That a friend would understand. I spent so much energy, burned myself, caused myself so much pain, constantly running myself up against a wall of hate, contempt, and ignorance. They didn’t care how I felt. My feelings were weakness to be ridiculed. My identity was a joke to them. My boundaries weren’t real, and any time I ‘challenged’ them too much, they reacted violently.

          I cared deeply about them for eight years of what I can clearly see now as a relationship that was the equivalent of constantly swallowing poison. A relationship that involved him putting his hands on my throat in a room full of people who never told him he went too far. When I stopped trying to change him, when I cut myself off from him, it was like I could breathe freely again.

          If I could go back to the first time I met him, I would cut him off completely and without guilt. I would save myself eight years of misery, self-doubt, self-hatred, and the poison of trying to make him see I was important.

          NOT EVERYONE deserves my compassion. Not everyone deserves my pity or care.

        3. Psychotic Mantis

          Maybe they don’t deserve your pity or caring. But they deserve mine. Everyone does.

          Everyone deserves at least one chance to make amends. Eight years is far more chances than he obviously deserved, and I’m sorry you had to go through that. If Mary refuses to change, I’ll leave it at that. But it’s not fair to anyone to not give them a second lease on life, so to speak.

          And to, again, dissuade any notions of this type: I don’t like Mary right now, at ALL. She’s vile, mean, and manipulative. But she does deserve, perhaps at the most, one. More. Chance.

          She isn’t the only character who we’ve given one more chance to, now is she?

        4. Fallingivy

          So, I feel like we may be talking about two different things? I’m talking about some very real life experiences. In actual real life if I met a person like Mary, they would not get a second chance from me and I would steer clear of them. As a character, I am open to the idea of her redeeming herself, despite finding it unlikely. If she does, great! Ideally such redemption would not be built on the backs of the people she abuses, however.

          I dislike the rhetoric of her somehow ‘deserving’ this and the way you phrased ‘you have to forgive’ to include basically everyone. If you personally think everyone is deserving of your compassion, then go ahead. But don’t tell other people how to deal with something like this. Don’t tell people, some people who are having very visceral, painful memories and responses to this, that they have to forgive a fictional character of all things and prioritize her character journey over their anger and pain, okay? It’s cool that you want to extend this personal compassion to everyone, but it doesn’t work like that for lots of people and it’s not even necessarily the best choice for everyone, and Mary isn’t even someone people can hurt by being angry at, so this forgiveness talk seems a bit heavy handed at best.

        5. Psychotic Mantis

          I’m sorry, pardon?

          You don’t think I haven’t been through this kind of utter bullshit before? Let me make a quick graph of how I came to terms with my sexuality:

          Original gender —> Not comfortable with it —> Considering going Trans, told friends —> About half of them left me —> Got called TERRIBLE THINGS, someone (Rather awkwardly, actually) tried to assault me that year —> Decided upon Asexual/Agendered —> Lost a few more friends because of it —> Got called ‘Freak’ and had someone (attempt to) rape me in order to ‘fix’ me.

          I’m not going to go past that because that’s when things started getting REALLY uncomfortable. But I was angry, and scared, because nobody seemed to respect me for who I wanted to be. I got hurt, yelled at, and isolated from a lot of people. I was in bad shape for a long time.

          I eventually came to a realization, however. I couldn’t force them to appreciate who I had decided to become. That tall, awkward, agendered kid wasn’t someone they wanted to associate with. They had become hateful towards me, and I tried to resolve it peacefully. I did. But it didn’t work. However, that didn’t mean I couldn’t stop OTHERS from being spiteful and unsympathetic.

          So for you to claim that I’m not having “real” responses to this is extremely unfair. I’m not forcing these ideas upon anyone. I’m just trying to spread my opinion, and message, that everyone deserves one more chance.

          One. Just one.

          If they refuse after that, then I will accept their opinions and leave it at that. But you seem to be misinterpreting my intent here. I’m not forcing people to forgive Mary. I can’t force them to. But I’m trying to convince them that there might be hope for an otherwise irredeemable character.

          It’s truly sad when an attempt at fostering peace, or at the least a sense of acceptance, even in the face of what I and countless others (yourself included, as you have mentioned) have been through, causes more conflict.

        6. Psychotic Mantis

          And, since this seems to be a subdued opinion here (though I may be severely misinterpreting it), I’M NOT SUPPORTING MARY. What she is now is a horrible, hostile person who lashes out and manipulates others. She’s the kind of person I would have been tempted to set on fire when I was much younger.

          But I don’t see why you dislike the fact that I’m TRYING to prevent further conflict here. I’m TRYING to stop others from dehumanizing Mary in the same way she dehumanizes Carla (though under vastly different circumstances) hence we become just as spiteful as Mary herself.

          Is that so wrong? Is that “real” enough for you?

        7. Fallingivy

          I’m going to respond to your response here, because there’s no option for me to reply there:

          A) At no point did I say you have never suffered. At no point did I accuse you of speaking from a position of someone who has never suffered. I assumed you were talking about the character in a meta sense and I had made a mistake in reading your comments. If I was going to accuse you of never having been bullied, I’d have been much more direct.

          B) When you phrase your opinions with a general you, such as ‘you have to give them one chance or you’re just as bad as they are’ or ‘you need to forgive people’, or ‘you have to at least TRY,’ you are forcing your ideology on people. Maybe that wasn’t your intent, but that is how it comes across. If you’re talking about yourself, it’d be better if you say something like: “I personally try to extend compassion to everyone” and try to sound a little less judgy with comments like ‘keep in mind isolating them makes it worse’ or ‘you’re being just as bad as they are’. Those are statements that assign guilt to the people cutting off toxic people instead of choosing to engage.

          I don’t feel the need to write the laundry list of my own issues with being ace, nonbinary, and queer, but I assure you I understand the issues that come with coming out as ace. (I was rejected and called a sociopath when a pedophile was accepted and treated as being edgy and fun.) However, the way I deal with these experiences are not the same as yours. I don’t put up with other people’s hate and toxic behavior. I am burned out. I am not interested in shaming other people for choosing to disengage, cut off people, isolate toxic people, and even lash out against people who harm them instead of extending the olive branch.

          Short summary: forgiveness is good if you have the energy and are in a place where working with someone won’t hurt you. If not, not, you don’t have to extend the olive branch. Run away, shut your doors, don’t engage. Don’t feel guilty for it. The bullied always will be prioritized over the bullies, for me.

        8. Psychotic Mantis

          And again, hey, if you don’t want to be compassionate towards Mary, that’s your deal.

          The way my comments are meant to be interpreted is “If you’re like me and you want to see a slightly more (though not by any means entirely) calm, peaceful resolution to this entire situation, you need to start by considering giving Mary at most one more chance to redeem herself.”

          If I came across as demanding that you forgive a character who is, right now by all definitions a total bongo, I apologize. I’m tired of all the fighting and hatred in the real world, so the least I can do is at least try to affect a fictional world and make it less hateful.

          Again, if you don’t share this opinion, that’s fine. My comments are meant to ATTEMPT to orient people on a less hostile, hypocritical point of view. I’ve tried to make a convincing argument with you, and if you accept it, that’s cool. If not, that’s still fine. I tried, and I failed, and I’ll leave it at that.

        9. Psychotic Mantis

          Right now, I’m extremely sleepy. So I’m typing a bit slower than usual, and I’m a bit on edge. But I’m not trying to step on any toes here. If I did respond to your comments in the wrong context, I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intent, and I respect your opinions.

          I’m truly sorry that you’re burnt out with all the toxic behavior. I just try to make some attempt at a peaceful, understanding solution, but you still raise several good points.

          Nobody is obligated to be forgiving, here. I’m just trying to get those that are capable of being sympathetic, even SLIGHTLY, to understand that we can’t be hateful towards haters, lest we become the haters ourselves.

        10. Psychotic Mantis

          Gah, that came out wrong at the end. I meant capable of being sympathetic towards (as far as we, the readers know) unsympathetic characters.

          I’m going to sleep now.

    6. NoHeart6265

      Fine, I’ll but away my torch and pitchfork… for now. but if she has no desire to be redeemed or understand why her actions are wrong then I’m not sure much can be done for her.

      1. Psychotic Mantis

        That’s perfectly fine. If she ends up having a stalwart rejection of any concept of changing her point of view, perhaps we can return to hating her. But remember, just a nary few strips ago, Joyce expressed a similar resistance to change.

        It’s a world-view we’re talking about here. We can’t immediately hate Mary for that world-view with out taking time to understand what could have caused it and how to make it more compassionate, or at the least, less hateful.

        Remember, Mary is very similar to Joyce except for her extremely hostile tendencies. But as I’ve said ad nauseam, she deserves one more chance to pull a Becky or at least a Joyce out of her hat.

        Plus, there’s the possibility of the self-harm scars under the wrist coverings. We have to consider every possibility and remain open-minded to each one. If we don’t, we’ll end up being much more hateful and unsympathetic towards people like Mary, Joyce, Becky, and Hell, even Ross, to an extreme extent.

        1. miz

          Just a note on the last part of that; Mary’s wrists have been uncovered this whole storyline. We haven’t gotten a close up look at them, but a good amount of skin between her hand and sleeve is totally open. Willis confirmed it on tumblr, that theory is dead in the water.

        2. Psychotic Mantis

          Ah, I was unaware of that. Thanks for clearing it up before I made more similar mistakes! Much appreciated.

        3. thejeff

          Yeah, Mary is just like Joyce, except for everything important. The religious upbringing is the same, but hostility is the core to what we know of Mary, while openness and compassion has been Joyce’s core all the time. She’s been hurtful at times, painfully so. I suspect she’d say something horribly painful if she found out about Carla, even know. But she’d blurt it out on the spot in surprise and shock, rather than save it up for maximum damage. She doesn’t taken pleasure in hurting people. She doesn’t blackmail and manipulate.
          Mary does. Mary’s mean. It’s not the religious world-view that’s Mary’s problem. Her similarities to Joyce are superficial. The differences are deep. That’s why she’s a good foil to contrast with Joyce.
          All that said, I’d like to see more of her background and where she’s coming from. I think Mary does have secrets. Understanding her better would be good. But I don’t want a redemption arc. That’s just sending her down Joyce’s path and isn’t particularly interesting. We’re already doing that. You can understand a character and still have them be a villain.

        4. Psychotic Mantis

          I guess time will tell whether or not Mary gets any form of ‘redemption’, won’t it? But you raise a good point. I made a bit of an incorrect comparison earlier with Mary and Joyce, and I see that now. Mary’s hostility (looking back through the archives here and there) looks like it could have a decent amout of religious basis, but you’re right. She does seem to just be plain hostile for whatever reason.

          But if Mary does anything even remotely similar to what’s happened in these last few strips, then I’m going to take that as apparent that she won’t change and go back to hating her like I did at the start of this little arc.

          And you’re also right that a villain can still be a perfectly understandable, in-depth character. But I’m just trying to see things at least a little positively here, even if it is misplaced positivity.

          Hm.

          Hmm.

    7. Shiro

      Second chances are worthless when it’s clear the person in question isn’t going to change. If there are signs they’re going to reform and make amends? Sure, let’s have a redemption arc. But a second chance right now would be wasted on Mary the god warrior.

      1. Psychotic Mantis

        At this moment in time, sure. But we can’t discard the possibility that Mary could, with much more calm, transitional methods, be turned to a less hostile point of view.

        I’m not saying she should ditch her religion entirely. But she could be redirected to be less xenophobic about it. She’s very similar to Joyce, except she’s much more hostile and manipulative with her religious convictions. But Joyce has begun to make amends.

        I’m not saying she will, but Mary might make amends as well, by the end of the comic.

        1. Shiro

          Sure, I’m not discounting an eventual turn over of a new leaf with amends to those she’s wronged. Eventually. Once she’s realized what an utter shitface she’s being right now.

        2. Psychotic Mantis

          And that’s the least anyone deserves.

          It may be all that Mary deserves, but everyone deserves that kind of (even if it is slightly wary) open-mindedness.

          Except Ryan. He seems to be the only truly horrible person in this comic so far. Blaine is an INCREDIBLY close second, but we have some depth with him, as little as it may be.

      2. Someone

        There have been plenty of characters in the past that changed despite seemingly totally evil. Vegeta for starters

        1. Psychotic Mantis

          This, but the circumstances were a bit different.

        2. LiamKav

          Also, even after he became “good”, he got bored and decided to be evil and kill a lot more people.

          Vegeta’s redemption is allowed because:

          1. Mass-murder is more forgivable than racism or kicking a dog.
          2. They had Dragonballs which basically fixed the whole “constantly murdering people” thing.

        3. Someone

          Mass-murder is more forgivable than racism, is a sentence I didn’t think I’d ever see.

        4. LiamKav

          Not in real life, just to clarify. I mean in media. Some crimes are more forgivable than others. Magento can have literally murdered large numbers of people, but he’s more sympathetic and usually more forgivable than Hank Pym, a guy who hit his wife.

          I think it’s a TVTropes page. It’s how you can do lots and lots of bad things and the audience will forgive, but once you kick a puppy, you are unforgivable.

    8. Spencer

      I guess the way I view the “peace and understanding” approach is that it shouldn’t be expected from people who have actually had to suffer the effects of bigotry.

      I’m fine trying to educate, but I’ve never been victimized for who I am.

      1. Psychotic Mantis

        Not to judge, but the final bit of your first paragraph? That’s a bit of a ‘what’ for me. I’m not sure I like the (at least, how I’m reading it) implication that I’ve never suffered bigotry for being who I am.

        I was originally considering becoming trans, when I was MUCH MUCH younger, but decided that wasn’t the kind of balance I was looking for. But I lost a lot of friends when I told them my original plans. I was mad at first. They started calling me names, and I eventually wanted to kill them, then myself. But I eventually found the sexual identity I was looking for.

        When I finally aligned myself as asexual and agendered, I got called horrible, horrible things. Some of those words were flung by my former friends.

        I got even madder, and wanted to kill them, myself, everything far more than I did back when I considered going trans. But I eventually forgave them, because I didn’t want to become hateful like them. I’ve made it a goal of mine to stop others from becoming like them either.

        Back to the point.

        Maybe I’m reading your comment wrong. Maybe. But I openly oppose the perception that people who try ‘peace and understanding’, despite how they’ve been treated, have never suffered bigotry. Because you can’t just make that claim. Ever.

        You don’t know if someone’s experienced bigotry unless they tell you, and trying to infer it is a risky gambit.

        But that’s just my two cents.

        1. Spencer

          I wasn’t referring to your life at all in my post but either way I’m sorry that, regardless of what I was trying to say, I’ve hurt you.

          My point was that too often we expect the marginalized groups to be the providers of peace and compassion in the face of overwhelming prejudice. I don’t think it’s fair to ask them to devote time and resources to coaxing folks out of their ignorance. I’ve never suffered the effects of biphobia in my life. It’s not the constant white noise for me the same way it is for so many Queer folks, so I feel willing to confront those worse viewpoints and try to coax people out of them, but I do it because I choose to. I couldn’t ask someone who has suffered at the hands of ignorance to join me.

        2. Psychotic Mantis

          Ah. My sincere apologies then. I was unaware of the point you were trying to make, and I’m glad you cleared it up.

          You didn’t hurt me in any way, I just got a bit riled.

          You make an excellent point, and I’m glad you haven’t suffered biphobia. If it’s anything like what I’ve seen inflicted upon my friends and even just strangers on the streets (homophobia, transphobia, etc. etc.) you are extremely lucky.

          I am glad you choose to at least make an attempt to coax them out of their caves, even if you do not ask others to join you. That is truly admirable. The fact that you even try makes me extremely glad.

          Again, I’m very sorry I misinterpreted your earlier statement. No harm was done, I simply read it wrong.

        3. Spencer

          It’s cool. I’d rather people call me out on what they think is bullshit than for me to actually say it and let it slide.

    9. miados

      mary reminds me of my cousins. homeschooled and no chance to socialize outside of the family. one cousin ran from the police leading them on a speed chase to home because he was more worried about his dads reaction if they were home late because the cops pulled him over than the cops doing what ended up happening.

    10. modulusshift

      Yeah, I’m going to have to chime in on the whole “if you have the strength and the will to shovel yet more shit, sure, go for it.” I know people that would literally break themselves trying to pursue solutions like this, but I definitely agree that it should, in theory, be done. It’d be a long, hard road with this one, though.

      Thank you so much for continuing being a shit shoveler yourself, and best of luck. 🙂 I’ll help as much as I can bear, too.

      1. Psychotic Mantis

        All aboard the shit-shoveling train! *Choo choo!*

        No, but you’re welcome and thanks for the “Thank you”. It’s nice when people at least try to appreciate my efforts, even if aforementioned efforts are in vain.

        And you’re absolutely right. Mary’s ‘road to redemption’ is going to be long and tedious. But as long as she doesn’t do anything like this strip again (without someone stepping in to correct her accordingly, preferably), it might just work out. It’s important that we, or at least I, make some effort to TRY to get Mary to see things less spitefully.

        But if she pulls something like this again? You know, hate-speech, blackmail, destruction of property, etc. etc. all rolled into one? Well, there goes her second chance.

    11. Noëlle Anthony

      The line that’s upsetting people in this post is “And neither should you”. You can choose to make forgiveness and understanding your response to hate and bigotry. That’s fine! Nobody’s going to argue with that. But the second you start telling other people how they “should” respond to the hate and bigotry they receive, you’re overstepping your bounds. No one is obliged to forgive or give second chances, just like you’re not obliged to not forgive.

  43. Catullus

    Mary Bradford: Only happy when literally no one else is

  44. Moonshine McGee

    Ruth hasn’t been acting with a lot of integrity as an RA. I think she’s starting to have some regrets.

    1. Liska

      The full force of these realisations seem to be hitting her like a truck, really.

      1. Io

        ;-; This gives me so much alternate universe sads.

      2. caesaria82

        Nooooo, keep her away from trucks!!

      3. modulusshift

        The Ethan smile makes this comment for me.

  45. Spencer

    So like, being honest, I guess I’m not super on board with how Mary v. Ruth is playing out. There’s legit reasons to think Ruth is shit at her job and deserves to be fired, let alone from somebody who has actually been manhandled and slapped by her, and instead the real reason for Mary’s antagonism is that she’s a bigoted asshole, and not the hundred valid reasons why somebody could hate Ruth. Ruth just gets to skip by her abuse again.

    And a bigger deal to me than that is that Carla only gets victimized for being trans because Ruth needed to swoop in and help. Carla was completely incidental to Mary’s bullshit. She was just there, and I hate hate hate hate hate when that happens to Queer characters.

    1. Cerberus

      I dunno. There’s a lot of preview panels upcoming with Carla in them including a couple where she’s actively looking hunted and trying to downplay it.

      I have a feeling that the trans arc is far from over and that this piece of it is just the stinging reminder for Carla that once again the authority figures set supposedly to protect her have left her to fend for herself again, eating the bigotry and watching her victimizer escape unpunished.

      And on a separate note, I think that last bit is why the universe shift has been the best for Carla. Because in the last universe, Ultra Car was a jerk, but thanks to incidents like this, we see exactly why Carla has zero faith in the system and has a reason to hate people and put up a hard exterior.

      Her dickishness makes sense, because if she’s fun goofy skate girl she’s not the trans girl in the hallway powerless to do anything but glare at the person who has dumped their transphobia over her like a bucket of blood at prom.

      1. Spencer

        I really hope so, though I guess it’s not exactly pleasant that Carla’s increase in panel time comes from dealing with transphobic bullshit.

        At least she looks super happy and fun in that one March preview panel with Amber. I think she might even have new skates too given the crazy air she has.

        Also agree on liking the more nuanced approach to Carla in this verse. Ultra Car was great, but this Carla has all the best aspects of her counterpart while also being able to explore heights previously blocked off to UC.

        1. Eukie

          Characters tend to get focus when real-life issues come calling. Becky was the first major lesbian character, and her entire arc is based on homophobia and the real-world issues gay people face. Much of the central conflicts involving Ethan have been related to homophobia. It’s not exactly unexpected that a comic with this as the premise then has its main trans character face transphobia.

        2. Cerberus

          I’m not sure you could adequately focus time on a trans character set in the “real world” and do them justice and not include a major amount of them dealing with transphobia.

          Even if you don’t think it will. The transphobia comes and swallows everything you loved in your life and you just grab out the pieces that remain and fashion a little hat out of it.

          That’s what happens. To be trans often means dealing constantly with microaggressions and shit like this. Because our world really is not very nice or accepting of our existence just yet. We can no more cut the transphobia from our daily lives than someone of color can cut the racism from theirs. (TWOCs get all my love for dealing with both at the same time).

        3. Spencer

          Yeah, it’s, well it’s the truth.

          It’s like, to accurately represent being queer in fiction, it has to be there. Ethan can’t be the Toy Guy anymore, he has to deal with the effects of what him being gay means to literally everybody around him who all feel they need to chime in. Claire from QC can be a pun loving dorkface who’s happy with her boyfriend, and still get a strip where she acknowledges that she lives in danger because of who she is. It can’t not be a part of the Queer life experience, because it’s always there.

        4. Cerberus

          And I guess that’s what I’ve decided to fight my life for. That when I finally pass on, maybe the generation that grows up then won’t have to have that be true. They can just be kids who happen to be gay or trans or ace without having to deal with society’s scorching scorn. And it won’t then have to be a necessary part of the storyline to be halfway believable.

        5. modulusshift

          Lots of love, friend, and good luck. I’ll be right there with you, somewhere out in this crazy world.

        6. altalemur

          pretty much that is why i love and hate reading transgender characters in fiction. while i love the representation and being able to really empathize with the character in ways i can’t with cisgender characters, all of them have very painful lives and many of them do not have happy endings.

        7. thejeff

          I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that while Carla’s going to have some painful bits, she’s going to get a happy ending too. Or as much of an ending as anyone in this strip gets before Willis dies and it ends six months later. 🙂
          Because he’s very much aware of the usual issues with trans characters.

        8. LiamKav

          It’s a tricky balancing act. If you’ve got trans, gay or other non-cis characters, you’ve got storytelling potential about those issues. Not every story involving them should be about it, but to ignore those parts of their personality seems a waste.

          This is a comic about growing up, so issues relating to not fitting a vague societal idea of “standard” is going to come up. If we were dealing with a group of people in their 30s who had all come to terms with their sexuality etc, then it would make more sense for those things just to be background information. But we’re not dealing with that. We are dealing with people who are just becoming adults, most of whom would have probably only come out relatively recently. It’s a much bigger deal to them, and so will be part of stories.

    2. Sabrina Pandora

      Well, Carla did push Mary to the breaking point, to be fair. It wasn’t her first go-to- she did try discussion and reason first. Carla wasn’t victimized here- she was the one assaulting Mary until she had the trans card played on her. Not ‘just there’- she was the architect of this situation until she took a shot to the security.

      1. Spencer

        Carla and Mary were being annoying buttholes to each other and then Mary decided to be a terrible asshole. It stopped being equal at that point.

        For real, I’m willing to acknowledge that Carla was being annoying early on, even deliberately so, but I honestly don’t even care to even try for that anymore because holy shit, Mary is being the absolute worst. I don’t play devil’s advocate for people who pull this shit. There’s lines you just don’t cross, period.

      2. Leorale

        Nope. Following somebody around and making noise should not be a breaking point to vile hatespeech. Mary should not even *have* a breaking point after which she goes for hatespeech. There are some things that you just don’t say, ever.

        You and I have both been a lot madder than Mary was, and yet, we have probably managed never to tell somebody that who they are means that they don’t belong in their home. Not even once, I would hope.

        1. Leorale

          …my point is, please don’t victim-blame. Being annoying and obnoxious does not remotely deserve/cause hatespeech like Mary’s. Mary did that herself.

        2. Sabrina Pandora

          Not excusing hate-speech, truuuust me. Just pointing out that Carla is not an innocent victim here up to this point.

        3. Leorale

          How innocent does she have to be, to deserve a place where hatespeech isn’t thrown in her face? Personally, I think it is an inalienable right.

        4. Sabrina Pandora

          It ought to be, but that’s not a world in which she- or us- live. We’re getting there slowly but surely though.

      3. Luxlucis

        Indeed. Hopefully that will be part of her character development, if you are an asshole you are setting yourself up for people to be an asshole to you. What Mary did was reprehensible but I so wish her jerk side would have come with another character so that the very real issue of insulting a trans character would have come up because she was trans and not an asshole.

      4. Lord Stoneheart

        Okay.

        First Carla was obnoxious. Mary rudely told her to stop. Mary was rude, but at that point in time in the right. Instead of figuring out any other means of recourse, Mary tries to cause Carla to trip in an attempt to get her to stop. This could have injured Carla, Mary, or a bystander. (The reason there’s a no skating rule is because of the risk of injury. Stopping Carla from skating by injuring her defeats the purpose really).

        In any case I don’t see “Pushed to the breaking point.” with Mary. I see someone who knew a secret of someone else and waited until the moment where she could use it to inflict pain on another person. (I mean just look at the stuff she threw at Ruth. She had many opportunities to go to the proper authorities about it. Instead she waits until the right moment to deploy it as blackmail. That’s not the actions of someone pushed to the breaking point. That’s the actions of a cold, calculating, bigot)

      5. caesaria82

        Carla was in no way ‘assaulting’ Mary. She was annoying and made loud noises and was all around obnoxious. But IN NO WAY is that assault. And in no way does that (or anything anyone ever does, EVER) justify hate speech (and destruction of property and endangerment, which Mary is also guilty of). You’re victim-blaming.

        1. Random832

          Charging at someone only to turn away or (as in this case) jump over them at the last minute is assault. It’s not battery, but it is assault. It’s also reckless (what if she hadn’t made the jump)?

      6. Cerberus

        Please don’t.

      7. Briny

        @ Sabrina Pandora… gonna have to disagree. While it is true that in the small-scale this wouldn’t have happened right then if Carla stayed home or something, Mary had a whole pocketful of blackmail ready to go.

        If all she wanted was peace and quiet, and she was genuinely upset over what she saw around her, she could have gone over Ruth’s head and reported what she had to report.

        That she didn’t, but instead used it to double down when called on behaving like a jackass, pretty much tells me that she was nursing it and waiting for ‘provocation’ to unload it as a sort of blackmail ultimatum.

      8. DSL

        You have an interesting definition of “assault.”

        1. DSL

          … Sabrina, I mean.

      9. 3-I

        Okay, no. Carla was skating. Mary did not try discussion, she tried threats. And then Mary LITERALLY COMMITTED A BATTERY with that glue. Carla confronted her, and Mary started in with hate speech. Carla did nothing to deserve this, and you need to stop. You’re expecting the victim to be totally free of any blame before you even start considering that Carla has been physically attacked and faced with transphobia today, just because Mary likes to feel superior to “sinners.” Stop.

    3. Adam Black

      re: “Carla only gets victimized for being trans because Ruth needed to swoop in and help.”

      I think we need to give Dave Willis more credit on plotting.
      ( Buckets and Buckets of credit. )
      Benefit-of-the-doubt . Hes added characters with lots of care and planning with longterm payoffs.

      A Carla vs. Mary conflict was inevitable once she was written in. I wouldnt be surprised if it was originally a Roz vs Mary conflict ( as they seem written to be Comedy odd-couple which is never shown ) and it was switched to Carla to give her more visibility .

      For example, I’m expecting Joyces parents to announce a divorce this weekend, and Jocelyn to come out to more people. But its unfair to say its just happening to advance Joyces story. Even if its true.

      You could flip it around and say Becky was terrorized just so Joyce would have to go home for that upcoming drama.

      Its the nature of the comics medium to maximize all potential interactions for plot threads , otherwise they would take even longer to play out.

      Carla is very well written character, and i think Willis fully intends to give her a more detailed story arc. i think a lot of DOA is about stories Not told in Walkyverse. That explains why Ruth and Billie has gotten so much attention.
      The rise of Becky. Dorothy/Walky. Amazi-girl as a main story.

      You like Carla, I like Carla. Willis is doing this character for real. There will be a real payoffs with her.

      Im hopin for more Lucy. Lucy could switch rooms with Billie, and solve two problems.

    4. BenRG

      I’ve posted this before but I wonder if Mary honestly thinks that Ruth’s violent and abusive methods are an example of how authority figures should act. This, in turn, raises troubling questions about her own family background.

    5. SDGlyph

      I’m not buying for a second that this is the end of the Carla/Mary/Ruth line. Ruth failed Carla badly here, to save her own skin, and she knows it. There’ll be consequences for that – she already thinks she’s a worthless failure* – and I’m still hoping for a Huck Finn moment. Damn, but Carla deserves the support right now.

      Say what you will about ‘agendas’, but Willis does like his villains to eventually get their comeuppance, even if they’re allowed to win in the second act. And Mary looks like she’s being bumped from ‘irritant’ to ‘actual villain’ here, at least in Carla’s story (which, to judge by the preview panels, we’ll be seeing quite a bit of in this chapter). I’m kinda bummed that we’ll be back with Joyce and her parents in about a week, and it looks like this will necessarily be left unresolved in the background while we build up even more drama over there.

      (*God damn, I didn’t expect Ruth’s lines about Billie ‘complicating’ things by giving her a reason to stay alive to come back with such a punch.)

      1. modulusshift

        Ruth is about to crawl over to her room and drink and cry, and Billie is going to want to go all righteous avenger herself, but then realizes that she’s just as vulnerable to blackmail via Ruth as Ruth is.

        Even odds she manages to pull some strings to drag more people into it, though.

      2. Spencer

        I know it’s not over, and will be followed up on hopefully with more Carla focus, but that’s my thing, I guess. The A-Plot of the situation is Mary using her power over Ruth, and Carla was only attacked by Mary because there needed to be a scenario in which Ruth can be the big damn hero and tell Mary to stop being such a bint, only for Mary to operatically reveal her blackmail to get at Ruth. Even if we get Carla chewing Ruth out, it’s still about Ruth, Ruth’s failures as an RA, and how Ruth’s relationship with Billie is being used as blackmail.

        I just really, instinctively hate it when Queer characters are victimized by villains as a way for the hero to look cool, let alone in a situation with a morally grey character like Ruth for whom there are genuine reasons to hate, but get ignored because we need to know who to root for. I sincerely, sincerely hope that this sequence becomes the catalyst for more Carla focus, and for all kinds of Carla stories, but right now it just bugs me.

    6. thejeff

      As others have said, this isn’t over yet. I was actually a little concerned about this storyline having room to play out properly, since we know we’re going to focus on Joyce going home for awhile.
      I think this works well narratively. The villain has won. The forces of good are in retreat and disarray. Things look bleak. Then we shift focus away, let the situation simmer for awhile before coming to a head again.
      Mary will push her new-found power. Ruth (and Billie) won’t tolerate it forever. Carla will find a way to retaliate. Others will get involved. There’s plenty of ways and plenty of time for Ruth’s real problems to become the issue again.

  46. Dana

    I’m wondering if Carla’s kindness to Amber will play into this.

    1. DarkoNeko

      Oh my, if amazi-girl sees this…

      1. ½©

        What does Amazi-Girl have to do with Carla being nice to Amber?

        Everybody knows that Amazi-Girl is just Joe in a wig.

        1. Psychotic Mantis

          That comment made my night.

    2. BenRG

      I am fairly sure that Amber (nor Amazi-Girl) will be involved in Carla’s story, as the consequences of this strip play out.

      1. BenRG

        I meant ‘not Amazi-Girl’, by the way. Damn auto-correct !

  47. tim gueguen

    So, how many comments will this strip generate? I predict one trillion zillion!

    1. Captain Button

      The DoA commentstorm is just the cyberspace manifestation of what is happening to the eastern US right now.

      It’ll get worse before it gets better.

      (cue!)

      1. inqntrol

        And what exactly is happening to the eastern Us right now? If it’s about politics, then no wonder I didn’t hear anything on the news. I hate politics.

        1. tim gueguen

          Nope, big storm coming in.

        2. Captain Button

          Snow. Lots of snow. Or lots of rain further south.

  48. Rick Robin P. Cagnaan

    Pissed off Carla hates Mary’s guts…

  49. caesaria82

    Multiple people called this, I think, over the last couple of updates. On the one hand I am glad that Ruth didn’t resort to violence even though she must have been clearly tempted. On the other hand, by walking away she is giving Mary the Supreme Evil Jerkface ™ a sense of satisfaction and ‘winning’ that I find very hard to stomach.

    Then again, I also understand where she is coming from. I don’t *like* what Ruth does here, but I understand why she does it – she has been threatened and she is scared of what might happen to her, what she might lose if her relationship with Billie comes to light in front of any kind of authority figure.

    So I do get it. But maaaaaan, I hate it. I hate it completely. Especially always considering how Carla must feel. She must feel like her RA is not standing up for her and is letting Mary’s transphobia ‘slide’. Makes my skin crawl just to think about how Carla must be feeling right now =/

    And then of course Mary rubs it in at the end. Supreme Evil Jerkface ™ confirmed.

    1. A

      And then there was the fucking jagweed who posted this entire transcript yesterday, after throwing out slurs and hate speech at commenters.

      Thanks, Patreon. Another day’s comic spoiled.

  50. Jay Eff

    I think Run-DMC said it best:

    “Mary, Mary Why ya buggin’?”

  51. tonyt94

    this is why authority figures REALLY can’t do things they could get blackmailed for.
    instant corruption of their capacity to oversee justice.

    1. pjeseb

      Well, ideally, nobody would do things that they could get blackmailed for, but people are people. Which is probably why blackmail is, y’know, illegal.

  52. Sabrina Pandora

    I didn’t want to see it go down this way, but Mary’s been building her case over time. The worst part is that she’s right- Ruth’s relationship is against the rules, Becky is squatting in the dorms illegally and Carla was being an ass.

    Doesn’t excuse the boy’s dorm thing. For that Mary’s in the wrong, and I’d very much like to see her encounter some enlightenment in some form. Deftly told as always Mr. Willis- you do keep us on the edge of our seats.

  53. Cerberus

    Oh hey, Mary now owns a shiny new RA to play with. Now for Ruth and Billie’s life to start increasingly sucking until it gets to the point where Ruth is 100% okay with either murdering Mary in the middle of the night or offering herself up to her bosses for sacrifice.

    And in the meantime, Mary believes that she’s untouchable in a dorm full of what she considers to be sinners needing of “correction”.

    Things are about to suck beyond belief.

    1. DarkoNeko

      It seems the first measure would be for Billie to move out of Ruth’s room. But that’s gonna cause a logistical issue.

      1. Cerberus

        Yup, Billie deliberately burned her bridge back, which is bad because honestly with that, Ruth would only need to have Billie move back to her old room, clear out the bottles, and then report Mary independently for hate speech, thus making any action Mary took in response look like a sad attempt at retaliation.

        1. Kraken

          Which bridge did she burn?

          I thought the main issue was that Becky needs a place to stay that’s less tenuous than in someone else’s dorm in violation of the lease.

        2. Cerberus

          Removing all her things and giving away her room. Makes it much harder to just pop back and for them to make it seem like Mary is full of shit. Now, it would require coordination and a concerted moving effort like her giant laundry basket method before, all of which is likely to be picked up on by a gloating Mary looking to smile evilly at Billie the next time she pokes her head outside the room.

        3. Peduncle

          The Wikipedia article on hate speech doesn’t hold out much hope. Rules prohibiting hate speech in public universities usually lose in court to the First Amendment.

        4. Meredian221b

          Indeed they do. I am black. My white roommate at a predominately white uni called me the n-word with impunity. Our RA’s suggestion was that I try not to be so “sensitive.” The Resident Halls Council’s suggestion was that I do a direct room switch. It was never suggested that my racist roommate stop being an asshole, but hey.

        5. Leorale

          Augh, how incredibly frustrating. I’m sorry that you had to deal with that unjust garbage.

        6. Sabrina Pandora

          Yuuuuup. Transfolk don’t have a lot of rights and very little recourse in matters like these or more serious ones like workplace discrimination. When we are having to fight the concept that we are bathroom predators you kinda know history isn’t really on our side just yet.

        7. Cerberus

          This.

          Us being allowed to pee like human beings is a “hotly contested issue” that often still favors the bigots. Even in locations with trans-specific protections, they tend to be about as fierce and protective as wet tissue paper.

    2. Captain Button

      I didn’t expect the Bradfordian Inquisition!

  54. Ruthful

    I miss Roomies’ Ruth. “Act with integrity, no regrets!”

    Then again, the last time she did that she disappeared from the strip and the same would probably happen here if she lost her job while taking Mary down.

  55. Edupoet81

    The look on Ruth’s face on panel four. She’s terrified, and Mary knows it, judging by her smirk. It also seems that she and Billie will be having an argument in the near future. I suspect these events have something to do with it.

    http://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/131141602277/february-4-2016

    1. ½©

      Man like, I’ve never understood why so many people get drawing doing that weird finger pose thing. I’ve never seen anyone besides people in stage plays do that.

      ….Is DoA a stage play and we just don’t know about it?

      1. Leorale

        Really? I’ve totally seen it and done it naturally. Maybe it’s regional or something.

        1. Leorale

          but if DoA is a staged play I hope it’s a musical.

        2. ½©

          I don’t know, that whole third act where Toedad had his duet with Amazi-Girl hanging off the back of the car was weird.

  56. Amanduh

    I can see why Ruth responded this way but…this doesn’t actually solve anything. If someone else does screw with Mary, and Ruth does nothing, that just hands more ammo to Mary. She can go to the authorities with the complaint that Ruth should have stepped in, but refused to.

    And yes, if she goes that route, the entire story that makes her look bad will be probably come out. But Mary is wrapped in the armor of self-righteousness, and I suspect she would be fine with going down on the Titanic as long as she manages to trap the people she hates on there with her, too.

    1. Meredian221b

      If Mary gets into a situation like Joyce nearly did, where she is roofied by some guy but doesn’t have the good fortune of Sarah coming to her rescue, and she goes to Ruth for help and aid and Ruth turns her blind eye, then Ruth will be irredeemable to me. And I’d really hope not to see any justification of such a fate for Mary among commenters.

  57. Historyman68

    This is only the moment when Batman gets beat up the first time and discovers he needs to work out a new strategy against this villain. Don’t worry, Batman will come back in the third act and throw hot chicken soup in the villain’s face and defeat them and it’ll be even more glorious because of how much adversity Batman overcame.

    Come on Ruth, be Batman.

    1. Jay Eff

      That was a good Batman episode.

      1. butting

        Batman episode? I thought that synopsis was the next Slipshine.

  58. Frootloop

    god that look of heartbreak and betrayal on Carla’s face in those last two panels is just… wow.

  59. Meredian221b

    Yeah, that’s not gonna work either. Whether Ruth likes it or not, she’s in a position of power. If someone hurts Mary and it was known that Ruth didn’t prevent it or even encouraged it, Ruth’s not only out of a job, she’s out on her arse.

    I loathe Mary, and I really want to see less of her, but Ruth is a terrible RA. She needs to not be one – at all. I adore Billie, though, and am resigned to the fact that for the forseeable, she and Ruth are a package deal. Oh well.

    1. Pedantic Peanut

      On the one hand she’s a terrible RA. On the other hand, in my experience, the ratio of terrible to good RA’s is so abysmal as to suck away most of the bite that should have.

      1. Meredian221b

        This is very, very, VERY true, sadly.

  60. Shiro

    …:(

    I will keep faith that Mary will eventually get comeuppance, because in the end the bad guys always lose.

    Maybe the entire floor will get wind of her ratting on Becky and start a subtle but pervasive campaign of making her life more difficult in little but effective ways. Nothing extreme. Just letting her know she has no friends in this place.

    1. DarkoNeko

      Oh, she already knows. She pretty much made it that way.

      1. Gordon

        On purpose. She views herself as the Lone Bastion of Morality. The Light in the Darkness, Shining out the Truth. In her mind, the reason no one likes her is because they’re all Irredeemable Sinners who have to be forced to see the Light, or at least be properly chastised(insulted, beaten, etc.) at every turn.

        The fact that she’s a hateful asshole who can’t pass up the chance to tell people how much better she is than them is merely secular PC liberal hate-mongering against a Real, True Christian.

        1. modulusshift

          “You must be the counter culture against this Culture of Death.” (not even exaggerating.)

          Christianity is one of those religions with a deep cultural memory of martyrs and persecution which traumatized it enough that it’s trying to make sure that can never happen to itself again, by any means necessary. The fact that this is primarily through persecution is played far too straight to even register on the irony meter. Apparently it’s the Roman Catholic Church by means of Nero, not the Pope. (Not that they’ve been particularly distinguishable at times.)

        2. thejeff

          Even more, those “deep cultural memories of martyrs and persecution” make many modern Christians perceive themselves or want to perceive themselves as victims in the same way. Even in a country where Christianity is so dominant, a certain strain sees Christians as the persecuted minority.

        3. DarkoNeko

          She seems to dislike people at large and trust no one.
          I’m kinda trying to piece up a theory on the kind of school she was at before, but hmmm..

  61. Kraken

    I bet Ruth is going to Billie to confirm all this stuff. She just got blindsided by Mary and she wants to know what’s going on. However, I really think she should’ve taken a moment with Carla her to provide some sort of support. Even if she can’t discipline Mary yet, she could still put her issues on hold to make sure Carla is alright. Carla would be very cross with her, but some sort of dedication to do what’s right even eventually is important. Plus whatever after care she’s been trained to provide after stuff like that.

    It’s rough, though. Mary’s definitely got the upper hand for now, and I can totally see her wanting to dismember that hand before anything else.

    It could also just the limitation of the strip, and Carla will catch up to give Ruth an earful, tomorrow. As it stands, though, this strip definitely reinforces the abandonment of Carla as she’s left alone with her antagonist, and then alone altogether.

  62. Just Me

    Funny thing is, it’s possible that Mary sees herself as the ‘Good Guy’.

    1. Leorale

      She definitely does. The one lone bastion of (her version of) Christian morals. A crusader, a martyr, a hero.
      Friggin’ Mary.

      1. SDGlyph

        She’s the stereotype holier-than-thou Asshole Paladin.

    2. Bwoof

      Most people do, especially when they’re getting revenge for something. It’s an endless cycle of people thinking that if they just hurt someone else a liiiittle bit more, somehow it’ll make everything okay.

    3. caesaria82

      The bigots always do.

      1. DarkoNeko

        Everyone does.

    4. Kamino Neko

      It’s not only possible, it’s explicit.

    5. Buhzim

      Everyone considers themselves to be good (right). “I can’t help it” or “I had to do it to survive” are the go-to excuses if you’ve been particularly naughty.

  63. LimeSheep

    ruth, noooooooo

  64. Just Me

    Last Panel, Carla isn’t upset, she’s downright angry. Probably planning her revenge.

  65. Just Here

    Okay, yeah, Ruth is a pretty terrible RA. And she does need to be brought to account for it. But Mary… well Mary needs an ass-whuppin. Either literal or metaphorical.

  66. 6Qubed

    A fun The South joke is that in any court of Southern Law, “He Needed Killin'” is a valid legal defense.

    Would somebody with sufficient The South authority please declare this college Southern Enough?

    1. Cathy Garrett

      IU is in Bloomington, IN, a.k.a. East San Francisco. It’s in southern Indiana, which a good friend of mine calls “the northernmost southern state”, but IU is lightyears away from Southern culture.

  67. Strangeshapes

    Oh wow, I just realized Mary’s whole arc. She’s going to have an ill-advised but consensual hook up with Ryan, get knocked up and abandoned, and have to drop out of college. I would feel the malicious thrill of schadenfreude, but I feel bad for any kid born to that horrible person.

    1. Salmo

      Wishing sexual humiliation and punishment on a woman is probably not going to win you any friends here.

    2. Smiling Cat

      I’m certain that mary would ensure that no evidence of the unexpected pregnancy ever sees the light of day.

      1. ½©

        That’s horrible.

        I’m mean…jeez what makes you think a person would honestly do that?

        1. Smiling Cat

          Because Mary is a monster.

        2. ½©

          No she’s a Capital B with an itch, what you’re implying goes way fucking beyond that and it’s sickening.

        3. Wublub

          Why would getting an abortion make her a monster? I personally don’t think I’d ever have one, but I can see why other people might get one, especially if the father is a fucking rapist.

        4. ½©

          The way I took it, is that Mary is a Christian girl who was brought up to not believe(That’s not the right word but I can’t think of anything else) in abortions.

          So she’d have the kid and….

          See where this is going?

        5. Smiling Cat

          No, I figure she’d get an abortion and go right back to condemning people for it. She preaches, but when the chips are down she’ll never believe that the rules she demands others to follow apply to her.

        6. SDGlyph

          I just want to be clear in my interpretation that you think Smiling Cat meant she’d have the child and then quietly dispose of it (fatally), right? Sometimes these things need to be spelled out… (I’m already not liking the connecting of ‘abortion’ and ‘monster’)

        7. ½©

          Yes.

        8. Smiling Cat

          It’s not that, it’s that Mary would get one then go right back to condemning everybody else who might get one. Which I expect she would.

        9. SDGlyph

          That hypocrisy’s actually pretty standard for the bigot club – as I understand it, evangelicals get divorces, unplanned pregnancies and abortions at about the same rate as everyone else. Even though ‘being anti-abortion’ is one of the Fundamental Tenets of the Christian Faith according to them. (And even though they supported abortion a generation ago, but don’t try to remind them of that.)

          I could well see Mary having a teenage abortion and channelling that dissonance into ever more more vitriolic condemnation of other people to cover her own shame (I’m really not phrasing this well). In fact, wasn’t that her story in IW!? I read the whole thing, once, in a long, sleep-deprived binge and don’t remember very clearly.

    3. Wublub

      You’re the second person I’ve seen today hoping that Mary gets her “commupence” by having sex with Ryan. (Although at least in your version it was consensual. The other guy, who I think got deleted, actually wanted her to get raped.) Like, can you guys not see that Ryan the Rapist is way worse than Mary the Bigot? She’s a horrible person, but she doesn’t deserve to get stuck with a rapist, even if he doesn’t specifically rape *her*.

    4. Cerberus

      Dude. Please no. Please please no. I very very much dislike Mary, but please never wish a rapist on anyone ever. No one deserves that. And yes, I’m sadly speaking from personal experience here.

  68. LimeSheep

    and carlas abandoned by yet another authority figure probably

    1. invisiblemoose

      Exactly. Carla is the loser here, Mary’s leverage means she has to have someone say disgusting things unchecked.

  69. Mep

    Does anyone but me remember just how goddamn awful Ruth was to everyone? Suddenly she’s sympathetic. Not to me. She was terrible. It’s a shame an even more terrible person has called her terribleness out. She is abusive and failing at her job.

    1. Someone

      I just pity her, and I do think she should quit. Not for the other members of the dorm, but for herself. She is going to kill herself if she doesn’t get some sort of help, she probably would have already if Billie wasn’t there. Is whatever perks she gets as the R.A really worth not being able to seek help for the alcoholism and depression?

      1. Idris

        The problem is, quitting after getting slapped down like this will probably be even worse for her depression than hanging on and trying to deal with this.

        Quitting would have been a sensible and helpful step at one point in time. We are now past that.

    2. caesaria82

      You can have sympathy for a character’s inner struggle while simultaneously not agreeing with that character’s actions, you know? I don’t think anyone has forgotten what Ruth has done. Doesn’t change the fact that what she’s going through here is eliciting sympathy and understanding from some of us because it’s a terrible situation. She is a multi-layered character. She’s not an all-out evil person like Mary, she is struggling with a lot of aspects in her life right now. She’s well-written, which means we’re all gonna have different opinions on her. But I don’t think her previous anger issues have been excused or forgotten by anyone.

    3. Wublub

      I do think Ruth needs to be called out for being an awful RA, and I think she needs to quite and deal with her own issues. But that doesn’t mean I want Mary to blackmail her until letting her bully people. Ruth has done some bad things, but it’s obviously killing her to just walk away and let Mary treat Carla like shit. She needs to buck up, report Mary, and face the fact that she’s probably going to be fired, and for good reason. It would be the right thing to do. But that doesn’t make it any easier for her.

  70. Cathy Garrett

    Nope. Even after someone gets power over her, and she didn’t explicitly give it to them, I still hate Ruthless. She’s still a bully. Known for a long time to be a self-destructive bully. Now, she’s just shown to be an incompetent bully, as most all of them are.

  71. TSB

    I feel awful for Carla in this strip. Ruth just walks away and leaves her there. Maybe Carla will pursue this on her own, either in terms of reporting it to the administration or vigilante retaliation? But she shouldn’t have to. How terrible and gutting to have an authority figure just walk away after watching someone say something like that to your face.

    Ruth should resign her position. Her poor mental health and her rules violations are preventing her from protecting vulnerable students from hate crimes. She had reasons for doing all that stuff but reasons are not excuses.

    1. Leorale

      Strongly agree.

    2. Cerberus

      You get used to it. You get really used to it.

      1. Emily

        Unfortunately.

  72. caesaria82

    Whoops, comment I was replying to disappeared into thin air while I was typing. Good riddance.

  73. ½©

    People, please, PLEASE stop saying Mary needs to die. I’m fucking guilty of wanting Ruth to dropkick her butt but that doesn’t mean we all need to automatically head straight for violence.

    What, what if Carla actually told Mary how much that comment hurt her in the next strip yeah? They’d actually talk to each other instead of just leaving all this hate floating around to come back and bite them in the ass later.

    Awww fuck why can’t we have nice things.

    1. Petra

      Hey, most people aren’t saying she should die. And honestly? Mary would probably say ‘good’. Just because someone expresses hurt doesn’t mean the other person is listening, and Mary, unlike Joyce, puts up barriers between herself and the possibility of feeling genuine empathy for other human beings different from her narrow definition of ‘good’. She wouldn’t even go to Sierra’s church bc they played rock music, and decided Sierra was a ‘fake christian’ bc she doesn’t wear shoes!

      1. ½©

        Goddamnit I just want one fucking redemption! Just show us that shitty people can be turned to the light side or some shit!

        I need something to believe in for fucks sake!

        1. Sabrina Pandora

          It happens. I change lots of people’s minds… one at a time.

        2. Petra

          Yeah, I get that. But people who don’t want to change aren’t going to change. Mary… miiiight not be the horse to bet on.

        3. Cerberus

          I hear the Joyce Brown is a fine-looking horse this year.

        4. Petra

          Joyce Brown, hopefully Ruth – not that Ruth is a bigot that we’ve seen, but she’s a bully. Entirely to cover up her own insecurities and depression, but doesn’t make her more pleasant to be around.

        5. Emily

          People have this weird idea that because Joyce is generally polite and nice about her bigotry that it makes her not a shitty person.

        6. thejeff

          Maybe it’s weird, but I don’t think Joyce is a shitty person. I think Joyce has a lot of shitty ideas from her bigoted fundy upbringing.
          The reason I don’t think she’s a shitty person is that as she’s come into contact with actual people she’s prejudiced against she’s changed those shitty ideas. Often with an initial offensive reaction in her shock, but even then not with malice – which doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be painful. But she’s changed, again and again she’s chosen people over her beliefs.
          Not even in the stereotypical Christian “Hate the sin, love the sinner” kind of way. Nor is she generally polite and nice about her bigotry – she’s often rude at first, then she actually accepts. I’m not even sure what she’s still bigoted about: Her best friends are a lesbian and an atheist and she’s okay with both of them. She’s supporting Ethan being gay, even pushing him to be more open about it. She’s still freaked out about open sexuality, I guess.
          And I’m sure her first confrontation with someone’s who’s trans will be unpleasant. Then I’m also sure she’ll accept them once she has a chance to understand. Especially if it’s Jocelyn, not Carla.

          If you want to be pedantic, I suppose you could say the meta-plot of the whole comic is Joyce changing from a shitty person to a good one, but I’d say it’s a good person shedding her shitty beliefs.

        7. Lord Stoneheart

          It’s not that because Joyce is polite and nice that makes me have hope for her. It’s the fact that when it comes down to it, Joyce will stand up for people over sticking to dogma, and she’s willing to reconsider and change her bigoted opinions. She’s able to recognize that she can do wrong and unintentionally hurt people with her views, and endeavors to change her worldview to help people.

        8. Petra

          *The horse to bet on in the time-frame of the comic, I mean. She’s pretty dug-into her bad beliefs, because they make her feel like a good person, and a pure person, and a person who is better than others. That’s a hard drug to let go of.

    2. Shiro

      “What, what if Carla actually told Mary how much that comment hurt her in the next strip yeah? They’d actually talk to each other instead of just leaving all this hate floating around to come back and bite them in the ass later.”

      That’s so heartbreakingly optimistic, but Mary knows what she’s doing. That comment was calculated to hurt. A soul-baring conversation about it…won’t really solve anything.

      1. Petra

        Yeeeah. I don’t think Mary is irredeemable – mostly people lose the capacity to change once they’re dead, in my opinion – but she KNOWS she hurt Carla, and she not only doesn’t feel bad, she feels good, because it makes her feel Right and Pure. Vicious cycle.

    3. Kamino Neko

      ‘Of course it hurt, you fucking degenerate, it was supposed to. Maybe I’ll save your damned soul by hurting you by telling you you’re a man, and not a woman, you deluded pervert.’

      1. Kamino Neko

        Of course, assuming Mary has any interest in ‘saving’ Carla, rather than just lording her self-identified ‘superiority’ over her is already pretty optimistic.

      2. 3-I

        This is exactly what would happen. Mary gets off on hurting people and feeling morally superior to them.

        Seriously, that Garnet avatar. Change it. You’re defending someone who would be attacking Garnet for being who she is.

        1. Psychotic Mantis

          You’re kinda domineering, yeah? You said my opinion was inexcusable, and now you’re yelling at someone (mild hyperbole) to change something as minor as an online icon.

          Relax, friend.

    4. Psychotic Mantis

      This so much. We don’t need to descend into calling for violence and hatred against a hateful bigot.

      Fire with fire never works well.

  74. KingHadas

    Is Carla, Billie and the rest of the gang gonna beat Mary? That’d be fucked up.

  75. Io

    NO
    This is Not how I wanted this to end! Ruth get back in there and rip out her femurs!
    Carla… I wouldn’t be able to beat her up in that moment right there either.
    Just… That’s it. Any retaliation on Carla’s part is just going to be tarnished, Mary won and anything after this will be cold revenge and that’s not Carla’s style at all.
    Geez I hate this. I can’t even see how this gets better, unless maybe Amazigirl comes in and beats her up.
    I just
    There’s gotta be something to do with Amber to tie her into this with that delightful foreshadowing earlier.
    :c This isn’t okay guys.

    1. Cerberus

      In reality the way this plays out, for Carla at least, is that Carla eats it. She takes in that transphobia and the systems complete lack of caring and she lets it roll around on her skin and she tries to stoic it out while it fucks up her weekend a bit and she hopes her scar tissue is strong enough to weather it. And Mary faces no consequences socially or legally.

  76. Petra

    You can tell Mary is emotionally mature because she’s got stripes on her shirt.

    Serious comment: I bet she was the kid who constantly tattled to the teacher, but only when it would benefit her or she wanted to knock the other kids down for something else she disapproved of.

    1. Petra

      *immature

    2. Lord Stoneheart

      The way she would rather use blackmail than actually reporting rule violations make it pretty clear she only cares about the rules to the extent that following them make her look good.

      1. Meredian221b

        Not sure I agree it’s blackmail, per se. She called Ruth’s bluff. Mary is well aware that she was using hate speech. As RA, Ruth was well within her rights to report her for it and Mary was basically saying “OK, fine. Let’s go. And while we’re there, I’ll just drop the bombshells that you’ve abused your authority, bullied people, oh and there’s an unregistered student just kicking back in the dorms against policy.” Ruth needed to suck it up and push this. She basically has hung Carla out to dry and has, in the bargain, declared that if someone goes to town on Mary, too bad. These were both horrific things to do on Ruth’s part.

        1. tonyt94

          Ruth seriously needs to be fired, for numerous reasons.

          Remember that the school is paying her (or at least discounting her tuition) to provide some benefit to the administration and the residents, in theory.

          She needs to get some therapy, not be watching over a madhouse of teenagers.

        2. Petra

          Ruth does need to be fired from her RA position. Not only is she doing a bad job of it, the pressure is clearly not helping her already careening mental state.

          But Mary’s evaluation of why she needed to be fired was wrong. The only thing she was technically right about was Ruth’s relationship with Billy – but Mary objects to that because it’s two women, not because of the power imbalance.

        3. Kamino Neko

          This.

          Mary does not have a point. She sort of swoops through reality – Ruth shouldn’t be banging Billie, Carla shouldn’t be skating in the halls – but she doesn’t think it’s wrong because there’s a power imbalance between Ruth and Billie, or because Carla could injure someone in her carelessness.

          She thinks they’re wrong because Ruth’s banging a girl, and because Carla was making a minuscule amount of noise.

          That she didn’t bring up the threats and violence – the bullying that makes Ruth a bad RA – but she did feel the need to call Becky a ‘pervert’…it’s telling. And what it’s telling us that any relation to a point Mary has is entirely accidental.

        4. Lord Stoneheart

          Okay it’s not technically blackmail because Mary isn’t demanding money in exchange for not divulging damaging info about Ruth.

          My point is, if Mary actually cared about the rules, she would report Ruth right away for the violence, and the bullying, and so on so forth. She wouldn’t play this game of “I won’t report your transgression if you don’t report my transgression.”

        5. Bicycle Bill

          Blackmail is an act involving unjustified threats to make a gain (commonly money or property) or cause loss to another unless a demand is met.

          Threatening to get Ruth bounced from her RA position would definitely fit the “cause loss to another” provision.

        6. Kamino Neko

          Blackmail doesn’t require money – nor do other forms of extortion. A ‘service’ (‘walking away’ and letting Mary get away with her bigotry, in this case) can also be extracted through threats.

          This is entirely blackmail, not calling a bluff.

          Ruth wasn’t bluffing. She would have done something, had Mary not threatened to reveal the least of her misdeeds to her superiors. We know this, because she was in the midst of doing so. But her self preservation instincts kicked in at the worst possible time, and Mary was able to save herself from the consequences of her actions by threatening Ruth with consequences from hers.

        7. Buhzim

          Best possible time, you mean. If Ruth punches her, she just goes through with her threat, and Ruth is out of the dorm. At least this way they can get back at Mary in the future.

        8. Kamino Neko

          No, the worst.

          Carla has been left vulnerable to the bully, and had her belief that authority figures won’t have her back validated. Mary has had her belief that she’s in the right validated, and been allowed to harass Carla without consequence.

          This has, at best, postponed Ruth’s reckoning, has benefited Mary, and has made a bad situation worse for Carla. This could not have gone worse without Mary upping to worse physical violence than she’s already unleashed.

        9. Lord Stoneheart

          I ended up checking a dictionary after I got Meredian’s response to my comment, and it mentioned money in the first definition, though I didn’t check the others. (Though I’m going to go back to my initial position of it doesn’t requrie money) I assumed Meredian was being a pedant, but rereading their response I’m not even sure what point they’re making. Ruth wasn’t bluffing about threatening to report Mary for her little speech.

          In any case my point is that Mary only cares about rules violations in how they affect her, and how she can use them to her advantage. She’d rather pull shit like this, than actually have the rules be followed.

  77. heyman

    She’s just plain Ruth now.

    1. Kamino Neko

      No, now she’s less Ruth.

    2. Marius_wynyard

      I think she should be called spineless now. 😛

  78. Smiling Cat

    Wow. This strip hurts.

    I mean it, physically. This hits me in a very unpleasant and familiar place. The reasons and inciting events are completely different, but the outcome is very familiar. I don’t like the feeling.

    Willis, you do fantastic work, but I may have to take a break.

    1. Leorale

      Your gut feeling is totally legit. If you do choose to take a break, we’ll still be here when you get back. <3

    2. Cerberus

      Yeah, there are a lot of gut punch moments for me too this arc. And I fear there’ll be a fair amount more before it finishes.

      1. Emily

        It’s getting exhausting.

  79. caesaria82

    Yeah can people stop calling for Mary’s murder or rape or any other terrible thing? I mean, I’ve seen it in a joking/hyperbolic way, which isn’t ideal either but I don’t think anyone actually takes seriously (unless it’s taken too far and definitely NEVER about the rape thing, that’s just not something you joke about) – but can we stop suggesting that someone actually straight-up MURDERS A PERSON!? Even a person like Mary? Because that’s just not cool. NO MATTER what anyone has done.

    ‘She deserves to die because her opinions are shitty’ is straight-up murderer/psychopath/serial killer logic and yeah. Ugh. Idk. It irks me.

    1. ½©

      I’ll be honest, you got fucked over in the icon department. Not a lot of people gonna’ be able to look past that without thinking “Irony!”

      1. caesaria82

        Let alone if someone actually does muder her, I’mma have to run around with a ghost on my icon and who wants that?

        (that said, I’m too lazy and uncreative to get my own custom avatar, so I’m actually not bothered)

    2. Someone

      I kinda hope Willis deletes any comments calling for rape, that shit could trigger someone.

      1. ½©

        Kinda’ weird talk about yourself in the third person like that but yeah, that shit ain’t cool.

      2. caesaria82

        There was already one. It was deleted quickly, thankfully!

      3. Petra

        Yeah, that’s disgusting. It’s not something anyone can deserve.

      4. LiamKav

        Even if you’re not triggered, you should as a human being be disgusted by anyone saying that someone needs to be raped.

    3. Psychotic Mantis

      This. Just…this.

  80. Rukduk

    I…I can’t swear hard enough about this. But I can try. Mary es eine fakakta kvetching shlock shtuping goyim pisher hunden!!! (I don’t know how to do an Umlaut on an iPod otherwise I’d put one over the “u” in hunden) Curtesy of my late great aunt.

    1. DarkoNeko

      have a ü.

      1. Rukduk

        Danke.

        1. DarkoNeko

          Oh, right. in my phone I have to keep the letter pushed to have the accent list pop up. not sure how that’d work on an apple device tho.

      2. Rukduk

        Then again, I’m not entirely sure if German flavored Yiddish requires an Umlaut or not.

        1. Bicycle Bill

          Yiddish does not use the umlaut.  This is because while Yiddish may appear to be derived from German, it also contains elements co-opted from various Slavic languages, one of which is the absence of the umlaut.

  81. Hakase

    I just want to see Mary wake up the next day dumped in the Amazon.

    >.>

  82. Charles Phipps

    This just makes me feel sad. Poor Carla needs support.

  83. Zatar

    I am so fucking angry right now. Just EVERYTHING about Mary makes me furious. The sadistic joy she takes in hurting people, the smug satisfaction at the fact that no one is stopping her, the fact that she’s only going to get worst from here now that she has power over someone, and worst of all that unlike the Head Alien the that people like her are a very much real and something people have to put up with every day.

    GRAH I NEED TO PUNCH SOMETHING.

    1. ½©

      PUNCH THE AIR! It can’t fight back and all it does is lay around taking up space all day!

      1. Zatar

        YEAH FUCK YOU AIR.

        1. Someone

          FUCK YOU, YOU NEEDED TO SURVIVE ASSHOLE!

        2. ½©

          JOKES ON YOU, I’M A PROFILE ON A COMMENTS SECTION! I DON’T NEED TO BREATHE!

        3. a4lbi

          What a tweest!

        4. The Air

          Awe… 🙁

  84. Megatron

    I’m confused. Is Carla waiting for her fusion cannon?

    1. brasca1

      Carla doesn’t have a fusion cannon. She’s a Stunticon.

    2. Psychotic Mantis

      Dammit Megatron, I’ll tell you what I told that one person that one time: not everyone had a fusion cannon readily available. Carla’ll probably have to settle for a proton cannon instead.

  85. Liz

    So…Mary’s in charge now?

    NOT ideal.

  86. hueloovoo

    The Carla in my vision took that moment to spin up like a hammer drill and plant one of those glue-filled skates right in Mary’s smug, hateful face. This one will probably face less assault charges though.

  87. Lordess of Madness

    If this keeps up, Mary has become the tyrannical dictator of their dorm wing. I bet she’s got much worse than a dick drawn on her coming for her.

    1. Galatine

      If this keeps up, the students will realize that Mary has no protection from them whatsoever. At that point, if Mary believed in evolution, she would see what’s coming.

      But she doesn’t, and she hasn’t come to terms with the fact 75% of God’s laws come down to “Don’t Be Like Mary.” So this will be a learning experience.

  88. Chris2315

    Dear God, Mary has the most punchable face I’ve seen since Martin Shkreli.

  89. a4lbi

    …It’d probably be wise for me to put DoA on the “Don’t Read the Comments” list for the next week.

    1. Cerberus

      Yeah, I’m instituting a strict regimen with myself because I know what vulnerable spaces the more recent comics have been putting me in and allowing myself to comment only to specific bits and skip past what I would normally stand up against and try and educate about.

      But I would be willing to bet that I’ll be following in suit before the arc is over.

      1. 3-I

        What the hell happened here? There are TONS of comments up there that are impossibly victim blamey. There were so many fewer over the last few days. What changed? =/

        1. Cerberus

          There was a victim.

          And when a victim is also marginalized. It makes people scared, because it reveals the edges of institutional oppression and the daily reality of people who are not them and that life might not be fair and even more unfair than they think.

          And oh god, am I expected to fix all that, I’m just barely keeping it together all ready and ah, so many things I don’t understand and-

          It’s so much easier to just shut down empathy at that point, decide that the victim deserves it, not necessarily because of their marginalized status, per se, but because… they were being loud in the halls or they are super out and not behaving like a victim or they are a bit of rebel loner with a tough-girl aesthetic.

          Once there is a victim, there is a massive spike in victim-blaming. This is no exception.

      2. LiamKav

        I understand that attitude completely, but if it helps I always find what you’ve got to say very interesting and insightful.

        1. Cerberus

          It’s more an attempt to stay in the comment threads where I can, because I’m not willing to put myself through what I did the night before for my own mental health.

          And that mostly means skipping over a lot of the tired victim-blaming posts.

  90. brasca1

    Keeping things in perspective it’s not like Ross got away with Becky and stuck her in a gay deprogramming camp. Mary has leverage, but now that Ruth knows about it she can take action to nullify such advantages and by turning a blind eye she’s leaving Carla to even the score if she seeks retribution for damaged skates and slights against her gender. Keep in mind the company she keeps.

  91. WingedBeast

    Um, Mary, you do realize that the lawless nature of the place won’t help you, either, right?

    I mean, most people in that floor don’t like Ruth. I mentioned earlier about the physical assault and the intimidation. That’s not likely to get people on your side (which is why people likely wouldn’t cover for her if Mary were to report on her).

    But, now there aren’t any rules. And you have offended… everybody. You hate gay people and transgender people and anybody who doesn’t and that’s… seemingly everybody but you.

    Really, honestly speaking here, as much as the rules weren’t enforced to your liking, they were protecting you, much the same as the 1st Amendment was protecting you. You might not like that it protects people you don’t like, but you won’t like suddenly being without it.

    I don’t like you, Mary. But, I keep hoping that, somewhere in that head of yours, you are actually selfish enough to have self-interest in mind. But, like so many people I’ve known, you are just too assured of your own goodness to even consider that, maybe, you could back down. Even self-interest won’t stall the evil of those who are convinced they’re good.

    1. Silly Name

      People don’t like Ruth, but they FEAR her. Now, Ruth fears Mary, which means Mary is at the top of the social scale. She now has the potential to make Ruth do whatever she wants, which is honestly frightening.

      To make an example, most people don’t like organized crime, but a lot of people find themselves doing as the mob wants because it’s “safer”. Now, Mary has become the boss of the mob boss, and she can rule over the dorm.

  92. christiannemarie

    I’m a little on Mary’s side of things. Carla was being extremely annoying and I feel she got what she deserved. But Ruth decided that Mary was the one out of line.

    1. Spencer

      You’re aware that Carla, a trans woman, had hate speech directed at her by Mary, right? Does it matter what Carla did at that point? Nothing she could do would deserve that.

    2. Cerberus

      Please don’t.

    3. Lord Stoneheart

      Violence (tripping Carla) and hate speech is an acceptable response for someone being obnoxious? Who knew?

      You must be so proud to be the first person to express such views in these comments. I mean you would be wrong on both counts, but whatever.

    4. Shiro

      Mary is the one out of line because hate speech is worse than skating in the halls.

    5. butting

      A bigot using hate speech to shit on someone vulnerable after intentionally damaging her property is somehow not the one out of line? O-kay, glad this has been sorted out for us…

      1. Timmy

        Where exactly are you getting ‘vulnerable’?

        Are you under the impression that Mary has some position of authority here, or do you just not know what the word means? You’re not vulnerable automatically by virtue of being in a minority group, there has to be an actual power differential.

        1. Silly Name

          Well, Mary has just demonstrated she has power over their R.A., so, yes, she has made Carla vulnerable by virtue of being able to get away with things she normally couldn’t.

        2. MrInsecure

          Actually, yes, people are vulnerable, simply because they are members of a minority group.

          This is how power dynamics work. Mary is a part of the white, Christian, heterosexual, cisgender majority, which wields the vast majority of political and economic power in her country. Carla is not. Both of them are well aware of this. And when Mary makes a transphobic remark, she is implicitly wielding the power of that majority against Carla, knowing full well that Carla’s minority status means that she is far less likely to be able to retaliate through legitimate means.

          This is why Mary is so smug and happy. She has successfully cowed the system into enabling her bad behavior, a result she sees as just and proper, and so the majority may continue to wield its power against the minorities. Nevermind the psychological damage she has caused through her behavior, nevermind that she’s just blackmailed her RA and opened the door for further transphobic abuse against Carla- she’s happy and that’s all that matters.

    6. Trina

      I love how Carla is “obnoxious” and “rude” for being loud initially, and yet everyone who seems to care so much about politeness doesn’t extend that need to Mary being polite about being interrupted, or being polite at all~ ever.

    7. Trolldrool

      The thing is that we’re talking about two completely separate situations. In the first couple of pages, your comment might have been relevant because then it was still about destruction of property vs disturbing the peace. All that got thrown out the window when Mary threatened Carla.

      I hope I’m making this clear, I really do. The moment Mary brought up Carla’s gender identity and used it against her, the situation changed. We now have two different discussions that need to be debated completely separate from each other while you’re stuck on the first one where it’s no longer relevant.

      To be precise; the subject of whether or not Carla was being an ass is no longer relevant past the last three strips. That subject, if it’s going to be continued at all, must be had in a setting where we pretend the last three strips didn’t happen because the situation is now completely different.

    8. Derek

      What exactly did Carla deserve? To have her identity denied and have the knowledge that someone that hates her guts has personal information about her that she’s VERY LIKELY to use in the worst way possible?
      Tell me, does Carla honestly DESERVE that for making annoying noises?

    9. Wublub

      That’s because Mary WAS out of line. Carla was being really really annoying, yes. If Mary had reported her to somebody for skating in the halls, I wouldn’t have complained. If the two of them had just stuck to continuously trying to annoy the hell out of each other, I wouldn’t have complained.

      But Mary crossed a huge line when she
      a) Started bullying Carla based on her gender identity, not her actions, and
      b) Blackmailed Ruth into letting her continue to bully Carla.

      She isn’t bringing up good points about anything. She isn’t saying anything that could justify her. She’s saying, “You’re a horrible RA (because of lesbians, though, not any of the actual bad things you’ve done) but I won’t report you… IF you agree to let me shit on minorities with no repercussions whatsoever.”

    10. Psychotic Mantis

      Er, no. Mary took it way too far with the ‘boys wing’ remark. Carla was an annoyance at most. Mary is just a bigoted bongo.

  93. newllend(henryvolt)

    Well someone needs to tear her down a peg

    1. Galatine

      One? I’d say Mary needs to drop a couple pegs. Three at the inside.

      Little pachinko machine with her bouncing around inside it. Inside one of those hamster balls, of course. She deserves an unpleasant ride based on who she is and what she believes about others.

      You know, just like everyone she victimizes gets.

    2. Kamino Neko

      She needs all her pegs removed and to have a bruising fall on her ass at the bottom of the pegboard. Then, maybe, she’ll learn some humility.

      Unfortunately, probably not.

  94. saltchocolate

    Fuck.

    I feel horrible for Ruth, who is being threatened because of her sexuality as much or more than because of her position as Billie’s RA—and who will not feel like she can kick Becky out given that Becky’s homeless because of *her* sexuality—and who clearly wishes she could properly defend Carla from the wrongful attacks on her. Mary’s all-purpose bigotry is formidable . . . but not, I think, invincible.

    I don’t spend much time analyzing the Tumblr, so I may be way off-base, but I predict that it’s going to be Joyce—not Sal or Amazi-girl—who defends Carla and shuts Mary down. But that’s not going to happen right away (DoA-to-IRL conversion = 2-3 years from now!).

    1. Cerberus

      It’s what makes Mary such an impactful villain. She’s society and its shittiness personified.

      She’s the background radiation of homophobia and transphobia that makes lives so much harder for queerfolk, but embodied into a petty teenager, eager to win, and eager to hurt those she sees as “tainted”.

      1. saltchocolate

        “She’s the background radiation”

        ^ This.

    2. Gecko

      That would be an interesting confrontation; Joyce vs Mary, after Joyce’s recent development. They’re from similar environments, used to share many preconceived ideas, but clearly approach people differently. And one of them has been rethinking her ideals lately whereas the other hasn’t.

      1. Kamino Neko

        Even at the very beginning of Joyce’s journey from ‘sheltered and reflexively homophobic and racist’ to ‘oh, wow, so many of the attitudes I grew up with are wrong’, it was clear that Joyce was coming from a fundamentally good place (and therefor had much potential for the growth we’ve seen in her), where Mary was coming from a fundamentally dark and twisted place (making growth difficult, to say the least).

        1. merbrat

          Joyce’s initial reaction to Carla’s “uniqueness” would be the “Joyce Faaace”. But, I think the timing of learning about Jocelyn, while at home, will be enlightening. (has Joyce even seen/met Carla, yet?)

        2. Kamino Neko

          She knows her well enough to point her out to Becky (‘she has a room to herself, for some reason’ ‘lucky!’).

        3. saltchocolate

          Yes! It would either come from her acceptance of her sister or help her deal with Jocelyn’s coming out to her.

  95. A Scientist

    I don’t understand why any of this makes Ruth nervous. The absolute worst-case scenario here is she gets fired, but she’s not going to get kicked out of school, and there’s a decent chance they just move her or Billie to another residence hall or floor. If she does get fired, she’ll lose money, but she can find another job to help cover for that a bit.

    Mary and Ruth both seem to be convinced Mary has leverage here, but she doesn’t have nearly as much leverage as they think, and it wouldn’t be that hard for Ruth to get in front of any of it by reporting to her superiors first, with her own spin on things, to make the right arrangements to eliminate the issue entirely.

    The drinking is something else entirely, and she would be fired for that, but Mary either doesn’t know about it, or she is keeping that a secret. Even then, though, it’s pretty likely the university tries to find help for Ruth (even if that help isn’t effective) rather than get rid of her.

    Ruth still has the authority here, she still has control of the situation. I hope she realizes it.

    1. Galatine

      The issue may be that Ruth cannot afford to stay at this university without the compensation from being an RA.

      1. Cerberus

        The issue may also be that the person on the phone in that one comic (her grandpa?) who was abusing her may see the loss of independent income on her part as an excuse to abuse her more and consider her even more worthless and “a disappointment”.

        She may also be in a situation where this job is giving her some measure of financial freedom and the loss of that might place her in a position where she has to accept more control by this person who drives her to drink herself nearly to death simply by talking to her.

        1. Galatine

          You’re right. I didn’t think of that. And the combination of both… Oh, bloody hell.

          Well, that’s our Mary. Right, but only in a way that causes the most amount of trauma and damage across as many people as possible. Hahaha. I’d wish truly awful things on her, but then I’d be worse than she is if I were a DoA character. Besides, terrible things happening to Mary would probably break her completely before they caused her to reevaluate her life.

        2. merbrat

          This where Billie (and her handy $20s) might come in to play. They can just get an apartment. Of course, the boozing will commence, since they wouldn’t have to sneak it. Disaster imminent.

        3. Buhzim

          Oh yeah, Billie is somewhat rich, right? But I don’t think they’re far enough in the relationship for Ruth to consider that an option.

        4. Cerberus

          Freshmen are not allowed to live off campus their first year at IU as it is viewed as critical social training in how to live with others and deal with communal living.

          So Billie could get Ruth a place, but she’d desperately want to live there too and would be doing so quite illegally, though Sal would definitely not bother to tell. And Mary has another angle to play martyr with (oh, my Lord, I am forced to live with heathens and perverts who corrupt my soul simply by proximity because of the wicked secular university).

    2. Meredian221b

      Actually, if it is discovered that she was drinking underage and allowed Billie to do so as well, those could be grounds for expulsion for both of them. Big 10 schools are very strict about underage drinking in the dorms.

      Also, generally an RA is “paid” in room and board. It is possible that Ruth would not be able to afford to attend school without those perquisities. She is not only out-of-state but out-of-country, so she is already paying possibly more than double the tuition than in-state students. Suddenly saddling her with a bill for room and board could render going to IU beyond her means.

    3. Petra

      We dunno how much she needs the money or how it ties into scholarships. I’d also hazard a guess, as someone with depression myself, that this might be symptomatic. Even when I am literally incapable of doing a thing, it’s very hard for me to accept the fact that I’m not going to die/deserve to die if I do not do the thing, or try the thing and fail. There’s a narrowing of potential options you can consider, when you’re depressed, which means obvious situations are really easily overlooked. Ruth might not have considered if she could manage better without the RA job.

    4. Timmy

      No, she doesn’t.

      When you actually take a paid job supervising a bunch of people, some of them minors, the whole ‘providing alcohol to minors’ thing no longer becomes a minimum-sentence community service deal, and the university no longer has the luxury of not reporting the offense because, as their representative, if they don’t turn you over for prosecution the school becomes liable.

      Additionally, the supervising position makes her (for bonus points, emotionally abusive) relationship with Billie pretty much sexual harassment by definition the instant she decided not to disclose it formally.

      Ruth is looking at jail time at this point. Not serious decades-in-prison jail time, but on the order of a year to two years of her life in a cell instead of a dorm, plus enough civil penalties to ensure she can never afford further schooling. She’s right to find the situation fairly intimidating, since the worst penalty Mary’s looking at is an official letter from the school telling her to stop being an asshat to other students (Mike can witness that being an ass isn’t yet an actual crime in this setting) and maybe being told to move to another dorm. Mary isn’t playing anything up at all, the situation’s pretty much exactly as she’s describing it.

      Though, that said, Mary’s about to catch a bloody nose for her trouble and there won’t be much she can do about it, since she pretty much started the altercation. Probably worth noting that by letting it happen Ruth is racking up another misdemeanor, though, so even the ostensible karmic justice is only digging Ruth’s hole deeper.

      1. thejeff

        It’s not actually clear to me that “providing alcohol to minors” is a serious issue when you’re a minor yourself. Ruth’s not legal to buy alcohol herself.

  96. Galatine

    Well.

    Well.

    I hate you, Mary. I hate you and everyone who thinks like you. In your universe and in my own. You are the sticky gluey stuff that holds the rollerskates of society locked firmly in a past that never really existed, rather than boldly rolling into the future.

    That said, that is a nice smirk you’ve got there. I like it. Too bad it usually turns up only when a cartoon character is about to suffer a just recompense, but hey. You enjoy that feeling.

  97. Kay

    Eff you, too, Mary. Eff you too.

    1. Galatine

      That is a perfect gravatar for that.

  98. Jnew

    How awesome would it be if Joyce punched her?

    1. Jnew

      Granted it wouldn’t be because of the transphobic comments (because I don’t think Joyce knows what being trans is, never mind being able to understand gender identity in one panel) but Mary did imply a threat to her bff

    2. BenRG

      No, I want Joyce to quote chapter and verse to explain why, Biblically, Mary has just renounced her identity as a Christian. That would hurt her the most.

      1. Kamino Neko

        ‘The devil can quote scripture for his own purpose.’

        Mary ‘knows’ what the Bible says, and ‘knows’ what it means, and ‘knows’ that whatever interpretation Joyce had put on it is just her sinful nature justifying associating with sodomites and heathens.

      2. MegaBee

        That’s the confrontation I want to see, and I know that Willis can write it properly.

  99. pendrake

    That is it then, Ruth is done. Ruth is no longer “Ruthless,” she is not even the R.A. any more. Mary now has free reign to spread her hate without restraint or repercussion.

    If you give into blackmail, even once, then however you had your life before, is over. Done.

    Because by giving into blackmail, your life is no longer free, it is owned, and not by you.

    Whatever “life” (note “quotaitons”) you are living while under blackmail is a lie, with a slave collar that only you can see and feel.

    1. pendrake

      Bah, and screwed up the boldface part. Wish we could edit.

      -_-

      1. smashman42

        Kinda hoping there’s a callback later where someone else decks Mary and Ruth grins and turns away.

  100. Bagge

    Mary doesn’t kid – she loves this kind of stuff. Now she can lord over everyone else with their nasty little secrets and insecurities.

    That’s the problem with a tyrannic RA, it destroys your normal channels for fixing social friction, it sets a really bad example and it opens the door for people like Mary.

    1. pendrake

      Yep. If anyone thinks someone like Mary is not going to use (abuse) her newfound power over others, they are deluding themselves.

      No blackmailer ever stops at just one use of blackmail. None.

      1. Bagge

        This was the TEST RUN, to show that she could and to win one over Ruth. Now the Clark Wing is hers to play with. Joy…

        1. Timmy

          Meh. The only reason this worked is that Ruth’s actions range from verging on to actually crossing the line into the literally criminal. When you’re charged with the safety of a group that’s partly minors and you sexually harass one of them, neglect your oversight responsibility to the point homeless people can move into the dorm without you noticing, spend half your time blackout drunk, etc… well, being fired is about the best outcome you can hope for; a lot of the potential outcomes involve some jail time.

          Hell, Ruth wasn’t even doing her job THIS time. Her job was to note the argument happening and mediate: even if she was just ‘kind of’ negligent she should have been out there within moments of the skating noise starting, and telling the skater to go outside. Instead, she didn’t show up until the incident, which was loud enough to prevent people from reading from the first second, had been going on most of an hour and escalated to shouting… and then instead of trying to intervene, she just picked the most immediately unsympathetic arguer and targeted them for _physical bullying_.

          Basically, Ruth’s issue is that she’s a legitimately bad person in every sense of the word, while Mary’s is that she’s an asshole. This is like 99% something Ruth set herself up for, basically anyone else in the setting can respond with “Hey, Mary, you’re an asshole” and then ignore her for the rest of the semester. In fact, that’s… probably what Carla was going to end up doing before the world’s most criminally inept RA busted in to remind us she’s the worst in the world at her job. It’s not actually that big a deal, “ignore the assholes” is one of those non-academic life lessons people always tell you about college teaching you.

          Well, admittedly, Carla’s an asshole herself so maybe more difficult for her, but the point is that this was a pretty minor bit of personal animosity and the fact that it escalated is, frankly, mostly Ruth’s fault. Her behavior is outright physically abusive and thus demands that people worried about becoming her next victim prepare a pretty extreme defense.

        2. Silly Name

          While I do agree that Ruth has abused her power, continues to, and is a generally negligent R.A., and while it might be true that Ruth’s intervention might have worsened the situation, it was still Mary who decided “I should blackmail her to get away with what I want”. Is Ruth an asshole and a bully? Yes. Does this means Mary is justified for using blackmail? No.

          The severity of a crime isn’t judged by how innocent/guilty the victim was: if you kill a mob boss, you’re still going to get in jail for murder.

          Also, I think the moment Mary pulled out the “Transphobia” card, this stopped being personal animosity. We know her well enough to know she despises Carla for being trans, even if Carla were the nicest person in the world. Right now, this is bullying, hate, bigotry and blackmail. Mary’s action can’t be excused in any way.

          And let’s not forget that now Mary can control Ruth. She basically has power over the whole wing because Ruth has to obey her or lose her job, at a minimum. And I believe Mary was going to try to blackmail Ruth sooner or later, anyway. Remember her smirk when she saw Billie going into Ruth’s room? Yeah, she had already decided she would use this to get her own way.

          Now, were Mary going to authorities and saying “My R.A. is an alcoholist and a bully, has threatened physical violence and assaulted other students, and I have a list of many other crimes/violations of the university’s rules”, that would be different: she would be REPORTING Mary, which is, objectively, a good thing. She’d be playing by the rules and actually upholding them, instead of being an holier-than-thou asshole who wants to lord over others.

        3. thejeff

          Leaving aside all the problems with Mary’s approach, which Silly Name goes into, you seem to have a fundamentally wrong idea about what RAs are supposed to do. They aren’t supposed to monitor every detail of their dorm 24/7. Do we even know if Ruth was home when Carla started skating? RA’s are students. They have classes. They need to study. Ruth isn’t a horrible failure for not stopping Carla instantly. Or for not picking up on and mediating every argument that starts on her floor.

          Also, as a side note, the incident didn’t go on for most of an hour. There was the initial skating, ending in the glue, followed by an intermission while Carla tried to clean her skates, then picking up again she started hopping when she realized she couldn’t. Near as I can tell, that’s when Ruth picked up on it and was probably actually headed to intervene when she heard Mary’s transphobic attack and switched targets.

          Nor would any RA I ever knew have picked up on Becky. At least not this fast. There were always people in and out, boyfriends or girlfriends staying over, friends visiting at all hours and even the occasional homeless kid couch-surfing longer term. If no one brings attention to it, the RA isn’t going to know or act.

          The sexual harassment was of course an issue. As is the relationship. And the alcoholism. And Ruth’s general physical violence and terror approach to running the place. She’s definitely not a good RA and should lose her job. Just not for the reasons you or Mary think.

  101. ARM

    Okay, was nice yesterday. Am not nice today. I hope whatever punishment is ultimately unleashed on Mary is brutal and cruel. I’ll find out in a month; this has me frustrated in a way Toedad never did, because with his extremes you KNEW he had to get punished. Mary is worse because she is exactly the kind of monster who not only gets away with this shit in real life, but thrives their whole life thanks to their evil.

    Hate to be that guy, but I need to walk away from the table for a little bit. Willis, you are amazing and have been for a dang long time. I have faith this’ll go well. But I can’t be here for the interim without just raging incoherently on a daily basis.

    1. Leorale

      Your feeling is legit, you can totally be that guy who wisely takes care if himself. 🙂 Be well.

      1. Leorale

        (Or takes care of themselves. I totally just assumed you were a man because of the Jacob gravatar. Good night!)

  102. Eric

    Bad move Ruth, as far as she’s concerned, she now owns you.

    1. BenRG

      Ruth may not care; she may not expect this to be an issue for her in 24 hours time as she doesn’t intend to be alive.

  103. Eric

    And what’s more, its a loss of credibility with all of them.

    So, very bad choice.

    1. pendrake

      Exactly.

      By giving into blackmail, Ruth’s life as she had it before is done.

      Even if Ruth later negates the blackmail, any credibility she had before is lost. Ruth can beat-up the entire floor, she will never get her level of authority/credibility back.

  104. Jesus DeSaad

    Now, if Maria says nothing to anyone about the entire thing, and just keeps it as leverage to enjoy quiet reading time without melodramatic bullshit during her stay in college, and at the last day goes and tells Carla “sorry but I needed to study and you were an asshole so I had to keep you in check somehow, I went overboard but saw no alternative way other than caving in to noise bullying” she’ll have redeemed herself in my eyes.

    But we all know this isn’t going to roll out that way.

    1. Shiro

      …nah. She’ll still be an overbearing, self-righteous asshole who used hate speech and homophobic threats to browbeat people into doing what she wanted.

      1. Jesus DeSaad

        Yeah but if you think about it she hasn’t demanded anything else, has she? She’s had all this information all along, and hadn’t used it for anything, until she felt she had no other alternative, so she could study, of all things.

        If Willis writes this right Mary will remain the college asshole, but she will disturb nobody unless she is disturbed first.

        1. Shiro

          …the fact that you seem to think making a bit of noise in the halls calls for dehumanization, and there’s nothing wrong with that, means there’s nothing more to be said here.

        2. butting

          She’s demanded the right to abuse others based on her bigotry, homophobia and transphobia.

          “Overboard”? “Hasn’t demanded anything else”?

          The hell with that. That shit is far more than anyone gets to inflict on those around them without consequences.

          And if you really think that her goal here is needing-to-study, you’re looking at a very different Mary to the rest of us.

        3. ½©

          I’m confused, where did she demand the right to abuse people? All it looks like is that if Ruth is willing to bring up her language then she’s willing to bring up the other shit.

          It’s like, if you tell on me for this I’ll tell on you for that. I don’t think she made any demands besides for Ruth to walk away.

        4. Shiro

          She is demanding Ruth walk away so that she may continue to verbally abuse and terrorize Carla.

        5. hatless

          She’s already leaving at the end of this strip. Unless she can abuse or terrorise though a locked door, that’s unlikley.

        6. butting

          Exactly.

          And if she can get away with speaking to Ruth as she just has, she can get away with speaking to anyone like that.

          Anyone’s a viable target.

          Ooh, look. Carla. I wonder she might count as an anyone for Mary’s suddenly-validated reign of terror?

        7. hatless

          Should we wait for the reign of terror to start first?

          (Mary’s malevolent, but she’s not motiveless. Her motive for this scene so far was ‘make that noise stop.’ She might go a rampage of all-spectrum evil later, but she’s not done so yet.)

        8. BenRG

          She was basically saying to Ruth: “I’ll call people whatever I want to call them and you’ll like it or I’ll destroy you.”

        9. SDGlyph

          What?

          Seriously, fucking what?

          If you think Mary “had no other choice”, that she’s isn’t thoroughly enjoying the power trip her blackmail affords her, if you think that she is justified in any way whatsoever in what she’s doing, you are flat wrong. I’m not going to mince words with ‘opinions’ and the like.

        10. EvolutionistX

          Pro tip for anyone trying to study in a dorm while other people are beigng noisy and you can’t stand the noise, get a pair of earplugs and a pair of headphones. Wear the earplugs under the headphones while you study. If that doesn’t work, go study in the library.

          No dorm mates need be threatened to achieve peace and quiet.

        11. Kamino Neko

          But it’s so much more reasonable to force people to float noiselessly through the halls….

    2. pendrake

      No Blackmailer ever stops at just one use of blackmail. None.

    3. DSL

      “Hi, I just wanted you to know I dehumanized you so I didn’t have to listen to you any more. Nothing personal, you understand. We’re cool now, right?”

      — a reporter colleague of mine was once called, in public, a racist by a politician in a public meeting over which the politician had authority. (It’s worth noting that said reporter was pretty much the opposite of a racist.) At the close of the meeting, said politician took the reporter aside and said: “I don’t really think you’re racist. I just had to keep my cred. You understand.”

      Oh, we understood. So did the politician, eventually — he understood everyone, especially those to whom you’re trying to pander, can smell bullsh!t, once it comes their way.

    4. Lord Stoneheart

      Okay, I call bs on any of Mary’s actions being justified just because she wants some peace and quiet. But other people have already countered that argument pretty well.

      All I have to say is, look at Mary’s facial expressions these past few strips. That is not the facial expression of someone doing something they don’t like for some sort of greater good. Mary is relishing every second of her awfulness.

    5. Buhzim

      Maria?

      https://youtu.be/-NP-RsRGzVo

  105. brasca1

    Paraphrasing the Joker for a moment: Mike gives away Walky’s DVDs and everyone laughs. Mary ruins Carla’s skates and the whole comment section loses its mind.

    1. Jesus DeSaad

      Yeah, it’s not fun if it’s done to a trans person. Which wasn’t done because she is a trans girl, it was done because she was a noisy asshole and disturbing someone’s studying.

      1. Cerberus

        I’m afraid the likelihood that it was done for reasons completely unaffected by her identity as a trans girl got vanishingly small the second she pulled out that little bit of transphobia.

    2. Shiro

      Well, tbf, I wasn’t around for that but thought it was out of line when I archive-read. It’s just that the narrative played that off as a joke (“Good thing I still have the blurays,” I think it was?), while this is being treated seriously.

    3. Kabo

      That’s not why people got mad.

      1. ½©

        I don’t know, those were pretty nice skates.

        And do you know how much carpet costs these days?

        1. Buhzim

          I don’t think Carla herself ever cared that much about the skates. Her reaction was bouncing and joking about working her calves.

        2. Cerberus

          I’m pretty sure that Carla’s skates and the act of skating is a major thing she uses to resolve her dysphoria and find joy in the world. See her smile when she exuberates about her new skates. See her dour expressions when her skates were busted and she had to resort to walking for a week. See how much she talks about them in her hopping strips.

          Those wheels are something critically important to Carla and her identity and her feelings of safety and happiness in the world.

          So yeah, she definitely cares. And it makes Mary’s actions destroying them less like someone making someone drop their ice cream sundae and more like Ruth cutting up Billie’s cheerleading outfit.

    4. Bicycle Bill

      But did he actually give them away?  Remember, he first said that he shouldn’t have sold them and then admitted that saying this was a joke.  So why couldn’t the “I gave then to some skateboarders to prop up their ramp” statement also have been another Mike-in-douchebag-mode joke?

    5. Silly Name

      The difference also lies in how the situation was presented. Mike giving Walky’s dvds to skaters was a joke, a punchline.

      Mary’s actions towards Carla aren’t a punchline. And, honestly, this isn’t about the skates anymore: this is about Mary being a transphobe and using blackmail to get away with it; whatever your opinions on Ruth are (and she IS a terrible R.A.), blackmail is never right.

      tl;dr: An asshole is still an asshole, even when being an asshole to other assholes.

  106. Skizz

    I don’t suppose just leaving Mary the hell alone for the rest of the semester is an idea that will fly with anyone?

    1. ThatGuy

      id be on board with them erasing her files and cleaning out her room because no one lives there because they dont know she exists on paper lol

    2. Gordon

      Oh no. That wouldn’t work. Mary thinks she has power now.

      When they have power, people like Mary have to use to. They have to Fix everything they see Wrong. I mean, she can’t just let the perverts do whatever the hell they want. They can’t be allowed to be Happy in their pervertedness while she around to stop it.

  107. Kitschensyngk

    Cue the wanton judgment montage.

    Followed by Mary waking up in the middle of the night to find Sal cracking her knuckles in pre-ass-kicking mode.

    1. Cerberus

      What was this ya said about mah roommate bein’ a “perverted vagrant”?

  108. Dr-Calamity

    I am full of rage.
    And flashbacks to the time my brother crushed a transphobe’s testicles hard enough to lift him off the ground.

    1. Silly Name

      Your brother sounds awesome. In both the modern sense and the “awe-inspiring” meaning.

  109. BenRG

    Mary really sucks at reading people’s expressions; I’d be scared if Carla looked at me like that!

    Meanwhile, I think that Billie had better be around because poor Ruth looks ready to drink herself into a coma. I wonder if Mary would feel guilty if she did? Probably not; her sort have a talent for disconnecting their actions from their consequences.

    1. Bagge

      Oh, she can read it all right. She would LOVE for Carla to do something that Mary can make her regret.

  110. Peter Sadlon

    I don’t agree with Ruth often but in this case I really do.

  111. Kathleen

    I’d like to take a moment to admire Mary’s chin.

  112. Anywhere

    DANGIT now Mary is an antagonist WITH LEVERAGE.

    1. Anywhere

      Which means we have to care about what she’s doing.

  113. NullSet

    Next strip: Carla strands Mary in the Amazon

    1. GreyDefender

      Thank you, I needed that.

    2. LimeSheep

      we can all only hope

    3. altalemur

      yes, please.

  114. Acher4

    No!
    Ruth go back, go back Ruth! Go back!
    Kick her ass!

  115. SDGlyph

    Goddammit.

  116. Jackson

    You know, I think I’m finally done wanting to like Mary.

  117. ChrisHerself

    I have blue balls of hate right now

  118. ½©

    Anyone else actually waiting to hear what Carla has to say? I mean it’s great that Ruth stood up for her…or maybe not I guess. I can’t tell if this is gonna’ be one of those situations where Carla ends up a little mad at Ruth because she’s capable of taking care of herself or not.

    Either way I anticipate at least one more panel of her hopping away.

    1. LimeSheep

      the problem wouldnt be that ruth stood up for her. itd be that, actually, she didnt. when faced between continuing to defend carla or walking away, she walked away.

      but i dont think carla will be that mad at her because its probably not the first time an authority figure has let her down and plus she just saw mary blackmail her so

    2. BenRG

      I honestly expect Carla to drift away in a gloom, realising that there’s nothing she can do that Mary can’t turn against her (and likely get the support of the authorities in doing so). That’s when she runs into Amber, who is in a deep gloom about her own self image and both her relationship with Danny and that enjoyed by her alter-ego.

      That’s when I suspect that things may become interesting.

      1. Nono

        The best thing Carla could legally do at the moment is to band the other girls together. Nobody LIKES Mary, and between all of them they can just simulatenously make life for her in the dorm really annoying. She doesn’t have dirt on anyone other than Ruth, Billie, and technically Sal (since that’s who Becky’s rooming with).

      2. Cerberus

        I could see that. Both the gloom part and the Amber part. If Amber finds out about that, that’ll probably trigger Amazi-girl to come out and Amazi-girl will remember that Carla did Amazi-girl a major solid after the car wreck.

        I could definitely see a future Mary/Amazi-girl conflict. Unfortunately for Amber, I can see Mary just standing up against that and presenting a situation similar to Mike of “you can use violence against me but that’s just about it and it probably won’t even work” leaving Amazi-girl in crisis on how she can help and if she can even help this time.

  119. Otter Girl

    I wanna say damnit because this is the most painful cliffhanger I’ve seen yet.

    And I can’t wait until next week when Marcie and Malaya pay that jerkface transphobe a visit. Or maybe it’ll be Sal.

    1. RP

      Doesn’t he post updates daily?

      1. Gigafreak

        I think she means that she suspects that tomorrow’s comic will focus on someone else in a different location.

  120. M02

    Humperdink lives.

  121. Tan

    If you have read this far into the comments, and you are sad, hurt, and/or angry about all the real world terribleness that makes this storyline believable, this comment is a hug for you. Yes, you. I hope you’ll accept it.

    *hugs*

    Whether you are trans, cis, or genderqueer; bisexual, homosexual, heterosexual, or asexual; whatever your race may be, whatever your religion or lack thereof may be, know that in this particular moment one random internet stranger loves and supports you.

    Good luck with the rest of your day.

    1. Cerberus

      Oh you are awesome. *thank you huggles*

  122. chris73

    So someone stands up to the bully Ruth, challenges her and wins so this is a very good thing…except Ruth was actually trying to do something good for a change and its Mary thats won

    Ruth is an bully who physically, emotionally and sexually abuses people all the while cheerfully threatening everyone else so I’m hoping this sees her losing (or resigning) her position as its the least she deserves

    So thanks to Mary Ruth manages to (inadvertently) place the blame on Carla if the situation continues (hey shes turning a blind eye but maybe amazi-girl will turn up) and Mary is (for the time being) on top

    So once again Mr Willis damn you (for keeping it real)

  123. Oddi

    I hate her sooo much

  124. Torra

    ahhhh mann ruth. You seriously need to get your shit together. Having to let this go is giving up a lot of respect from Carla as well as knowing that you’ve fucked up.

    Mary is just ugh. Maryyyy. I used to like her because she was so terrible in a harmless sort of way, but then she got even MORE terrible. I’m just waiting for the point where she loses. Thats gonna happen right?

    I’m feeling for Carla though. That’s got to be a huge punch in the gut especially when an authority figure you sort of trusted to do the right thing turns their back on you.

    I feel like all of this is gonna get worse before it gets better though

    1. Cerberus

      It is.

      And sadly, you get used to it. Cause it happens all the damn time, over and over and over…

  125. Tyramisu

    Two large pieces of wood, nailed and glued together in an X shape. Fastened securely to,
    2 Large Pillars, set into concrete in the ground
    4 large iron spikes with side shanks.
    1 Hammer.
    Add one Mary, Waste of Human Flesh, and there we have a Tree of Woe.
    And we let her contemplate her actions while hanging upon it.

  126. Kaos

    Ruth. You walked away.. not because you feared to be revealed.. but feared to hurt Mary right? You were this close to punch Mary and realized that. the best idea for you is to resign and search for help like many did suggest.

    Mary. I think you are in for a surprise. You want to transfeer Carla to the Boy’s dorm. if you did talk with the people in the charge. they will turn it Down. even tell you that you need to stop being a biased idiot. Carla will even tell them that you did ruin her skates. So you are the one with the risk to move from the dorm instead perhaps. or they will keep an eye on you for very long time. “treat people as you want them to treat you” will bite your ass big time. I should hate you. but you are just a Waste of time to hate. instead i will just pity you. that much you deserve at least.

    1. BenRG

      I don’t think that Mary wants Carla transferred. It was just the petty little comment calculated for maximum emotional harm that teenage girls seem to be so adept at crafting and using.

      1. Bagge

        She doesn’t want Carla transfered – she wants her right her where she can do Mean Things to her.

        1. Cerberus

          (CONTENT WARNING: TRANSPHOBIA)

          She wants to hurt Carla and remind her that she’s not, in her eyes, a “real” woman. But if Carla was actually moved on, that wouldn’t serve her well, because she needs people like Roz and Carla and Becky and all the bi girls on her floor to exist, so she can play-act her little martyr play of the good Christian girl besieged on all sides by ugly liberalism and it’s “PC gone amuck” culture.

          But now that she’s exploited her first band of privilege and power, we can probably expect to see her continue to bully Carla in an attempt to “solve the problem” by other, more permanent, means.

  127. OnyxIdol

    The reasonable thing for Ruth to do at this point would be to go the management and come clean, even if it means losing her job. But that’s not gonna happen is it.

  128. Ruthmost

    I expect Mary is going to push the advantage, not just sit on it for another day.

    Ruth knows it and will run to throw the alcohol (so that it’s her word against Mary’s), going feral and kick Billie out back to her room (saving appearances) and find Becky lounging there (femurs ready for action).

    Ruth’s entire position is jeopardized if any of those can stick by the time the manager hears of it, and leaving those open is not an option if she needs her position safeguarded.

    1. Ruthmost

      There’s still the evening meetup about the shooter.

      Things will be said, and if dots connect the ‘perverted vagrant’ will be revealed to have been the reason why the shooter even came to the campus.

      1. Silly Name

        Which will only reinforce Mary’s point (in her view): “See? Her presence here is a danger to everybody! We must kick her out!”

        Of course, I hope the rest of the dorm will just tell her to shut up.

        1. BenRG

          Question: If they DO tell her to shut up, do you think that she’d take that as a weird kind of validation of her own special righteousness that places herself above her peers and therefore no longer obliged to care about their opinions and happiness?

        2. Silly Name

          I’d say yes, except for the last part: Mary has NEVER cared for other people’s opinions and happiness.

          But, yeah, anybody who antagonizes Mary is a villain in her mind, and having the whole dorm telling her she’s wrong will make her a martyr, somebody who suffers for the “right cause” and is being mistreated because of that.

          People like Mary live in their own world where they’re right 100% of the time, and those who disagree are pure evil. She has divided all of humanity into “Good” (read: her side) and “Evil” (read: anybody else), and refuses to ever change because that would be giving in to “Evil”.

        3. Cerberus

          Unfortunately, this.

          Bigots like Mary love being the “martyr” due to people’s social disgust at their bigotries, because it allows them to pat themselves on the back for how “Christ-like” they are suffering for their religious views and play-act like the real oppressed class.

          Because when you are as dominant and privileged and devoid of genuine hardship as people like Mary, you start to resent the marginalized classes even more for still having one thing you don’t (the moral high ground of actually withstanding oppression) and so play-acting like the real oppressed and those same people as your oppressors because you’re not allowed to call people slurs and so on lets you get that rush without paying any genuine social cost for it.

          So, yeah, having the dorm call her out would just make her even more Mary.

  129. Parzival

    Man, I REALLY hate Mary.

  130. JessWitt

    So apparently Mary used the c-word and I don’t recall that happening. Or was it Ruth? Anyway, can someone link this incident back?

    1. Doopyboop

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

      The closest I can think of is this comic, though the c-word is implied since she is cut off. With Mary’s vocabulary, I think it’s plausible that she meant clown, coward, cow, or any other vaguely insulting word that starts with a c.

      1. SDGlyph

        I assumed she was going to say ‘cow’.

        1. altalemur

          or possibly Canadian. but given Mary’s general demeanor, no one says “Canadian” with that look on their face.

        2. Wublub

          I mean, she could just be REALLY passionate about the War of 1812.

        3. Cerberus

          Damn Canucks burning down our White House! Nevar forget!

  131. Derek

    Sadness. I think Ruth did a mental calculation and realized Mary was going to get away with being transphobic either way. Still, I wanted see her stand up for Carla 🙁

  132. Derek

    Wait Carla! This means you can retaliate with the blessing of Ruth! Gather your troops (Sal, Marcie… and Malaya) at dawn and I guarantee Sal will have an intimidation tactic and Malaya will have something nasty thought up.

    1. Emily

      Trans people can never retaliate without fear of violence. It doesn’t matter how justified we might be or how mild our response is it always has the potential to backfire onto us horribly.

      1. Derek

        It’s up to Carla to decide if the consequences are worth the risk. At this point anything bigger that Mary does that’s worse what’s she’s already done is definitely going to land her in trouble, Ruth or not.

        1. Emily

          No I don’t just mean from the person they’re retaliating against. I mean from the authorities who should be on their side but almost never are. The authorities who usually take their assailant’s side either through inaction and indifference or through active persecution.

        2. Derek

          I think you’re talking in more general terms while I’m talking about this situation (Mary vs. Carla) specifically. I agree, statistically, authorities are most likely to side against a trans person; but I’m rooting for something different to happen with Carla and this particular situation. Remember, the odds were stacked against Becky too (the confrontation with her father would have turned out REALLY different without Amazi-girl).

  133. Aprion

    I’m gonna sound like a total jerk but: Please someone punch that smug bongo off her high horse and into the dirt where she belongs.

    1. notlegato

      damn that’s dark, but i wouldn’t exactly be against this plot development.

      1. Gigafreak

        Violence is wrong! Two wrongs don’t make a right!

        Even if they’re really, really satisfying to imagine!

  134. RP

    No, what you’re missing is that this is bigotry. The bigotry is not happening because Carla was loud. The bigotry is happening because Mary is a bigot.

    Your argument that someone has to be a “perfect victim” before it counts is complete BS and you know it. That you expect any one else to buy this ridiculously flimsy excuse is insulting.

    1. RP

      This was supposed to be a reply to the latest person arguing that transphobia is OK as long as the victim isn’t a perfect angel. However, since I’ve seen multiple people doing it, just consider this a reply to everyone who said it or agrees with them:

      Nobody deserves or causes their own oppression and you’re not fooling anybody by assigning equal blame. You are a bigot and you are not going to convince anyone who isn’t that bigotry is OK if you don’t like the victim.

      1. Cerberus

        This. Also, everyone who feels the instinct to post your flavor of “but guys, Carla’s actions” or “but guys, she deserved it” bullshit, please do me a really big favor. Please spend just 5 minutes googling “victim blaming” and have a good solid think before posting. Think about whether or not you believe your actions fit under that description and if you do believe that they do, please maybe think twice about posting your 30th in a row garbage post.

        And on that note, it is really telling that the posts blaming Carla have not ceased now that Mary has escalated to physical violence and destruction of property and now escalated again to transphobic hate speech and now escalated even more to blackmail and an all-the-isms vomitfest.

        Because it’s really not about Carla or Mary, it’s about people not wanting to live in a world where inequality is that stark, where people doing things that awful is something that just regularly occur, so in order to protect illusions about the “fairness” of life, Carla must deserve it or be partially culpable and Mary must be cartoonish or the real victim. Because otherwise we have to look at the incident and its parallels directly.

        That trans women are frequently targeted for violence and harassment if they dare show joy in public.

  135. erejnion

    SDGlyph, you are missing the purpose of slurs. They are an attack to someone’s identity. All of them. So stop whining, the actual problem here is that Mary is blackmailing people.

    And why the fuck would she apologize? Stop living in a hugbox. Her actions now actually make her an interesting character for me, I’ve started to like her.

    1. SDGlyph

      Huh, looks like my comment vanished, presumably because of the one it was attached to. Shame.

      I suspect this one will vanish too.

    2. Emily

      Wow.

    3. Cerberus

      Enjoy your ban.

  136. jaimehlers

    I think this is the first time Ruth has ever had someone able to push back against her, and she doesn’t know what to do except try to save face.

    Too bad she doesn’t appear to be a student of history. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” would have been a great thing to say here.

    1. Gigafreak

      Ruth did something like that when Billie attempted to blackmail her with the booze bottle photos. Ruth gleefully counter-threatened Billie with “mutually-assured destruction.”

      The difference between then and now? Ruth had nothing to lose back then. She does now.

      1. Killian

        Also, depending on university policy, Mary being a transphobe might have just been a slap on the wrist kind of thing compared to losing her job and potentially getting kicked out of school. Whereas, Billie having booze in her room on a dry campus is automatic grounds for expulsion.

  137. SDGlyph

    Reposting this from a deleted thread, because I think it makes important points: (very glad I typed it up offsite before pasting!)

    [To people arguing that Carla “isn’t innocent” and that commenters are giving her a free pass:] Then you’re projecting your assumptions, because people have said – over and over and over again – that Carla was being an asshole. That Mary was justifiably pissed off with her. Their feud was practically slapstick at first – basically two kids needling each other in frustrating but essentially harmless ways. (Yeah, Mary escalated to property damage – but it was still played for laughs and, you know what? It’s just not in this league.)

    When Mary went to a transphobic slur (“the boys’ wing, where you actually belong“), she changed the situation completely. She went from justifiably being pissed at Carla’s actions to attacking her identity. Mary is saying, quite explicitly, “You don’t belong here in the girls’ wing. You’re not a girl. You have no right to exist here”. Can you not see the difference? That you (and possibly Mary) seem to think this is somehow equivalent, is even part of the same ‘game’ as Carla’s asshattery, is a problem.

    Nothing Carla did justifies this. Nothing. Her previous needling of Mary is irrelevant, not because we’re saying she’s an angelic bystander who did nothing at all to antagonise Mary, but because that’s simply not in the same scope as Mary’s bigotry. (Aside: Look up ‘victim blaming’ or the ‘perfect victim fallacy’.)

    And worse, when challenged, Mary didn’t apologise or back off; she spat out a stream of other *-phobic invective and blackmailed the RA into letting her get away with it. She very clearly demonstrated that her goal was to win – to be able to do and say whatever she wants to whomever she wants. In a word: power. In two words: social dominance. If you want to talk about beating someone at their own game, you could make a much stronger argument that she’s beating Ruth at her own game – and that’s a whole other topic – but you’d be glossing over the fact that she blackmailed Ruth in support of her attack on Carla. And, by extension, Billie, Becky and everyone else she disapproves of.

    That is why the comments virtually unanimously have Carla’s back, and why Mary’s name is mud.

    1. Clodia

      Well put.

    2. Random832

      The problem is I can’t understand this belief that later events can retroactively alter the context of earlier ones. “Nothing Carla did justifies this.” – yeah. No-one’s arguing against this. But nothing Carla did is justified by this, either – that’s temporally impossible.

      Re. ‘victim blaming’ – I don’t understand why it’s not possible to say that someone did something wrong without being perceived as blaming them for what happened after. The only one committing a ‘perfect victim fallacy’ is you.

      1. SDGlyph

        Mmmmmnope. Try again.

      2. thejeff

        Later events can reveal context for earlier ones that you didn’t know at first. Finding out Mary knew Carla was trans changes the context and likely Mary’s motivations during the whole sequence. That she was prejudiced against trans people we could assume.

      3. MrInsecure

        Let’s take a look at this situation, shall we?

        We have Carla, a young trans woman with a flippant attitude and a tendency to grate on people’s nerves. She’s a trickster, a prankster, maybe even a little malicious at times, but generally restrained in her actions. She likes needling people, but especially people like Mary, who Carla knows hates her, and gets a bit of sadistic joy out of pissing Mary off.

        Then we have Mary. Self-righteous, smug, and possessing a thousand little prejudices that she justifies through her faith. She’s justifiably annoyed at Carla’s behavior, but it’s not just that she’s annoyed at her behavior. Mary hates Carla, because Carla is transgender and Mary doesn’t see transgenderism as a legitimate thing. As far as she’s concerned, Carla is a perverted boy dressing up in girl’s clothing, somehow getting away with this sexual deviancy because of “equality” and “diversity” and other silly liberal notions. And now this “freak” has decided to target her for her silly pranks?

        Of course, until Mary actually says Carla “belongs in the boys’ wing,” this is not explicitly stated. The seething resentment that Mary has towards Carla as a trans person is subtext, both the rationale for Carla targeting Mary and the reason for Mary’s innate hatred of Carla. The pranks that Carla plays on Mary are similar to a jester mocking the king- Mary is a far greater position of power in society, so this form of involuntary slapstick is a way of taking Mary’s self-righteousness down a peg.

        Which is what makes Mary’s invocation of Carla’s trans identity so damaging. Mary holds the true power in the conflict, and she wields it like a cudgel to silence Carla. Mary thinks she’s in the right because she stopped in the harassment, but in doing so, she invoked the fear caused by centuries of persecution of trans people… all to win a stupid prank war.

        This is how subtext works. This is how social dynamics work. And this is why Carla’s behavior is seen as merely irritating compared to Mary’s awfulness.

      4. Cerberus

        Victim-blaming required reading:
        https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-love-and-war/201311/why-do-we-blame-victims

        Yes, you are victim-blaming and it’s perfectly rational and expected for you to do so, but you can stop doing it if you actually want to.

      5. RP

        There are plenty of people arguing that Carla deserves at least half, if not all, the blame for getting transphobia thrown in her face. There’s a lot of false equivalence being thrown around. It’s just that a lot of those comments are getting deleted. That’s why SDGlyph’s comment isn’t a reply.

        **I don’t understand why it’s not possible to say that someone did something wrong without being perceived as blaming them for what happened after.**

        Because you’re making this comment HERE, in the comments on a comic where Mary is getting away with blackmail & transphobia. You could be discussing that but instead it’s more important to reiterate that skating in the hall is against the rules.

        So yes, if Person A says something bigoted to Person B and your reaction to that is, “Person B did something wrong too” that is going to be “percieved” as victim-blaming because why else would you mention it?

  138. Griffin

    Ruth when I’m done with Mary imma fight you.

  139. BenRG

    I am genuinely worried for Ruth right now. This is the sort of traumatic blow to her self-esteem and what little mental and emotional stability that she has that could trigger a serious episode. She’ll either drink herself into unconsciousness or start self-harming in some other way.

    I am concerned that Billie might also be in danger because Ruth’s panic attack might turn into aggression towards anyone (and, in a twisted sort of way, she might blame Billie for ‘making her vulnerable’).

    FWIW, I can’t see Ruth lasting much longer as RA. But who to replace her? You could do worse than Sarah (although I bet she’d have to be tied up and forced to accept). Sarah has proven that she has the courage and the necessary anger to face down threats to her charges and that she cares for them all enough to tell them things that they might not want to hear.

    Let’s face it, in my view, Sarah always had the potential to be a ‘Den Mother’. 😉

    1. Cacturne

      I think Sarah is a good idea, but then you realize that she hates people and actively pushes them away, so it becomes a bit of a stretch

      1. MrInsecure

        Sarah may hate people, but it’s the reason she hates people that’s important here. She hates people because they do bad things to each other, because they’re willing to let someone drown in their own vomit in the bathroom so long as no one has to break up the party. She wants to hit them in the face because she can’t hug them and weep.

        Sarah, deep down, is a very compassionate person, but it is seeing that compassion rejected, seeing people make bad decisions and not being able to stop them, that made her into the misanthrope that she is today. And that compassion makes her an ideal candidate as an RA.

  140. Shrimpist Christ

    Am I the only one that thinks it’s kind of even? Carla was driving Mary up the wall; sure, one can just ignore it, or tune it out, or whatever, but some people honestly can’t. Especially if they’re raised kinda proper- follow all the rules and such. Someone skating in the hallways would certainly aggravate me to no end, but I wouldn’t start yelling at them.

    Carla is partially in the right, partially in the wrong.
    Likewise, Mary is partially in the right, partially in the wrong. A little bit more wrong just because of how totally vicious she is when she didn’t get her way, but still. A little too vicious, actually.

    …

    Yeah, actually, f**k Mary.

    1. Minder

      Carla was being an annoying asshole.

      Mary using Carla’s trans status as a weapon is worse than asshole. Like…I cannot even begin to explain how much worse Mary hurling that dehumanizing, inherently traumatizing slur with deliberate intent to do harm is than simply being a horrible jerk of any degree. The rest of the comments section has it covered in more eloquent words, but the cycle you’re picturing here merely as action → retaliation is not actually what’s going on.

    2. Bard

      Mary is way more in the wrong than Carla, but I’m facepalming at how Carla had to act like a total raging asshole over several strips before the bigoted bad guy slung that cruelty at her, because trans people put up with far worse for doing FAR LESS, and I feel like David is really dropping the ball by making Carla be an asshole and thus giving Mary some kind of motivation–unsympathetic though it may be–to try to hurt her.

      Like…Mary’s a baddie. Yes. We know this. And trans people put up with so much terrible shit. We also know this. But a trans person doesn’t have to directly torment somebody for hours(?) to get that person to intentionally misgender them. People intentionally misgender transpeople for the smallest slights or for NO REASON AT ALL, and Dave is shooting himself in the foot by making Mary misgender Carla in response to strip after strip of, let’s be honest, infuriating “wacky” provocation. I get that this is a cartoony strip, but Mary’s objections to Carla’s behavior were too reasonable, which leads people to sympathize with Mary too much for her to look like an unambiguous villain, which makes her blackmail monologue come off all Snidely Whiplash.

      1. SDGlyph

        I’m actually thinking that’s entirely deliberate – in order to showcase the point that, no matter how much of an asshole Carla is, it still doesn’t justify what Mary did. We’ve had plenty of commenters fall over themselves to say that Carla deserved it because she was being a jerk; I wonder if part of the point is to highlight the fallacy of that argument and subvert the whole idea that the victim needs to be a spotless saint before they deserve basic dignity.

        I suspect that if Willis had played this as an entirely unprovoked attack on an angelic bystander, many of the same people would be complaining about this ‘unrealistic, cartoonish villain’ (just like people did with Toedad). And Willis would be falling into that same trap; the point is that what Mary did is unacceptable, no matter who it’s directed against, not that Carla didn’t deserve it because she’s nice.

        1. Spencer

          Agreed, and I think that’s a great way to look at it.

          Carla needed to be, well, Carla for the point to be made well. Doesn’t matter if she’s an annoying butthole, you don’t fucking do that to her.

        2. Cerberus

          This. Victim blaming is very much a thing in society and a lot of the times when you’re facing all manner of transphobic garbage, people will drag anything negative you’ve ever done to justify it and we see the same thing here.

          Oh, well, Carla was skating really loud and being dismissive and rude so clearly… and the argument comes tumbling down.

          And I think it’s illustrative that those comments didn’t actually stop once it came out that Mary was escalating in the way she did because Carla was trans and she was trying to commit an act of transphobic violence.

          Because that’s also true to victim blaming. The victim has to have done wrong, because otherwise what was done is so messed up that things like that should have to change and that might include the person doing the victim blaming changing and growing and maybe feeling guilty for their statements or lingering societal baggage.

          And sadly, we saw the exact same thing with Becky and Toedad. I remember the comment threads back then and there were no shortage of posts that were along the lines of “meh, who cares what happens to Becky” or “Becky was asking for it being all annoying and queer all the time”, including, horrifyingly enough during the time she was actively being hunted by a gun (I remember one gentleman was “kind” enough to post a “well, yay, we’ve gotten rid of an annoying selfish character” on the post where Becky sacrifices herself to Toedad’s car to save Joyce’s life and emotional health).

          Honestly, any time someone marginalized is victimized, you can expect a steady increase in victim-blaming horseshit, because the sad truth of it all is that no one is perfect enough to avoid it. No one can be flawless enough or not bratty enough or do everything right in the exact right way to avoid it.

          And that was a lesson I learned the hard way trying to get my parents to still love me during the time of all the badness.

  141. Shrimpist Christ

    Also, this girl is like an Ender Wiggin. Except she’s way more aggressive, of course.

  142. Darwin

    Carla was being an annoying ass, but Mary went turbo-bongo. I’m hoping she gets introduced to a woodchipper. Feet first.

    1. Cephalo the Pod

      The Dumbing of Age comments section is weird.

      Just look at that first sentence you typed, just look at it.

  143. Deanatay

    You mean Mary’s a ‘Pleasantville’ kind of pleasant, right? Friendly on the outside, oppressive and racist on the inside?

  144. SDGlyph

    Reposting this here for those who don’t follow Willis on tumblr, because this neeeeeeds sharing.

    Headcanon accepted. Even if it’s only a JD-style fantasy cutaway.

    1. Charles

      yessssssssssss

  145. Karishi

    I don’t see Mary as having direct repercussions from this.
    But I also don’t think she’ll be able to stop. She’s pleased with this. She’s PROUD of herself.
    There was seriously less than a 50-50 chance that she’d get away with what she just did, and now she’s sure as hell going to try to do something like it again.
    Basically, she’s stuck being the kind of person she is.
    Her current actions might catch up with her and they might not, but Being Mary is sure to catch up with her in the end.

    1. BenRG

      Possibly in an odd way too. I’m thinking that, in years to come, she may find herself in the situation where her life is empty. She finds herself surrounded by many things that she wanted at the time but very few things, if anything, that she actually needs. She’ll then have to look ahead to a lifetime of sadness, regretting the things she didn’t prioritise then and now realises that she needed all the time.

  146. Shilo

    I do not like it when the bad guy wins. Even little victories.

    I do not like it at all.

  147. RocketJSquirrel

    I want someone to be able to reach Mary; not hurt her, or “put her in her place,” but make her want to do better. In such a scenario, she would stumble, relapse, probably do something even worse with a setback, but I’d rather she leave the spotlight with regret as opposed to the rage and further vindication a more black-and-white end would give her.

    Because just retribution won’t fix anything except the current situation. She’ll probably go on later to be far more horrible to someone else, if she doesn’t get some kind of help.

  148. Minder

    It’s understandable that Ruth panicked and ran. Horribly unfair, and almost certainly at the cost of doubling Carla’s trauma/emotional devastation here by adding a knife to her back, but it was a split-second decision. Being pitted against your greatest fear (and unknown others besides), your immediate instinct is to cling to survival. And Ruth panicked, and she did.

    The horribly sad thing about it (besides Carla getting thrown under the bus) is how easy it’d have been to dismantle any threat Mary posed, given enough time to think things through and one crucial piece of information that should’ve been available.

    Before this strip, Ruth, Billie, and Mary were the only three people who knew that Ruth and Billie were dating. If they hid the evidence quickly it’d be their word against Mary’s, nothing more. Even moreso, if Billie had thought to tell Ruth about Becky living in her room it’d be the easiest thing in the world to just shove Becky’s clothes somewhere to maintain the lie that she’s visiting and then find her a place to crash for as long as needed. Ideally using Leslie’s resources but more likely in Marcie’s apartment. The girls in the dorm would happily lie to cover for her. All it would’ve taken is a little thought and communication.

    But Mary had time to prepare and Mary won. Or rather, Mary won this battle and no matter what happens in the aftermath, her (and Ruth’s) damage to Carla has been done.

    1. Cerberus

      Yeah, I said before that this was where we find out how self-destructive and suicidal Ruth is feeling. And well, as you say, she’s still got that immediate instinct to cling to life, to cling to her happiness, to cling to things not falling apart into the void in terrible terrible ways.

      This might be the first time she’s directly experienced intentional homophobic oppression directed right at her and it threatened all the things she’s clinging to with her fingernails to hold on to life (her job, her academics, her Billie).

      It’s a natural instinct to cut one’s losses and run, just as it’ll be natural for her to sink back into despair rather than try and move things around and disarm this little threat.

      It’s unfortunate for Carla, but it’s sadly understandable. And on that point in particular, it’s sad for most trans people, because there is often a social cost to standing up for people like us, albeit not usually as high as Ruth here, and most people aren’t usually willing to pay it.

      And it can be rough for a trans person to see other’s pay that social cost for you. When I got discriminated out of my job for being trans, a friend of mine very angrily stood up for my defense and watching them get fucked over professionally in ever-escalating ways hurt worse at times than the actual gaslighting and impossible standards they were throwing my way.

  149. Leila

    My first reaction was “dammit, Ruth”, and then “I should have seen it coming”. It would have been nice to have another ‘act with integrity’ moment, but these are two different universes. I do agree that she has lost whatever street cred she had with the rest of the floor- if the rest of the floor finds out about this. But then, Mary can’t be OPEN about her blackmail, or it doesn’t work anymore. I just was hoping- in vain- that Ruth would make the right choice for once. My second choice was for bloody femurs or defenestration, but instead we’re all just sad and disappointed with the outcome.

    I’m still hoping for good things to come of the preview panel of righteous-looking Walky and vulnerable-looking Joyce…

    1. LS

      If it was only Ruth’s own ass and her relationship with Billie on the line, that would be one thing.

      But Mary is also threatening to make Becky homeless, which is an order of magnitude worse than anything else happening in this situation. Whether or not Ruth is aware of that, I don’t know.

    2. Cerberus

      I dunno, I can see Mary bragging a little about her new found power and letting the other “heathens” know what the new score in time is. Not necessarily saying what exactly she has on Ruth, but definitely letting them know that she owns herself a Ruth and so they better start doing what she wants.

  150. hof1991

    This is a fairly standard plot line. The villain must show that they deserve what is going to happen to them. Mary was potentially a bad person, but one we have all met. Now she is a self-declared villain and open game for whatever comes next. The sheriff can’t help you. Now we begin the rallying of good people to resolve the situation. A hero shall rise. But it will get worse before it gets better.

  151. Amber

    I’ve seen people say that we need Mary’s history for her not to be one dimensional, but the issue is that revealing hers will do one of two things: make her s sympathetic villain somehow, or just tell us what we already suspect, this wasting our time. Her story doesn’t matter because right now she solely exists to be a terrible person to Carla. She’s merely here to be the source of the issue. It’s not too different from Ryan- a character who only exists because Willis needed to give Joyce a traumatic experience. Mary is similar, except that Willis has been building up and foreshadowing this. As soon as Mary was being annoyed by Carla, I knew how it would turn out. And when Ruth appeared, I knew it was blackmail time.

    Also, Carla should not have to be the one to tell Mary how hurtful that really is. All it does is give Mary a guaranteed edge against her. Something she knows she can use at any time to be a vindictive prick.

    1. Cerberus

      Yeah. And the worst of it is that Mary already knows. She knows that’s a nice shiny weapon against someone like Carla, those last two panels really cement that home. Like, ooh, do you feel trying to act like a human being now and stand up for yourself? Bet you don’t.

      It’s what makes her a really good villain because she goes for the pain. She goes for making people hurt and exploiting social bigotries to get her way and let everyone know that they don’t count as full people, not like Mary does. And she leans on the weight of that social bigotry to give her awfulness more impact.

      She’s not going to make a cutting-remark about roller skates, she’s going to do it about being trans or being queer, because those have real-world consequences and allow her to pat herself on the back for shutting up the “perverted heathens” in the meantime. After all, it’s the “Lord’s work”.

  152. wwlaos

    Wait… why is everyone saying I’m supposed to hate Mary, again? I think I missed the part where she did anything hateworthy. :/

    1. Spencer

      She deliberately misgendered Carla as a way to harm her.

      (You may be unaware, but Carla is trans)

    2. Stephanie

      Cause she misgendered Carla purposefully and hatefully. AKA one of the worst things you can do to a trans person.

      1. Suitora

        I mean, besides the other things, like murdering us and passing us up for jobs. Misgendering is not the WORST thing. It’s just really disrespectful.

    3. 3oranges

      Even if you missed the transphobia, which I’ll agree is hard to notice if you didn’t catch that Carla is trans…
      …and homophobia (“perverted vagrants”, which I’ll agree was a little more subtle in this case…
      …you might still notice that Mary was not taking a stand against anything Ruth has done here, just using it to blackmail her about it, which is not exactly a lovable foible.

      1. 3oranges

        Typo. ), for those who were bothered that I left them trapped.

  153. Charles RB

    The nastiest part of the whole thing?

    Mary’s using the same rules that Ruth established: if you’re stronger than other people, they have to do what you say or you can do what you want as ‘discipline’, SOLELY down to might. Now Mary’s stronger and playing by the same “big boy’s rules”, and everyone’s newly fucked.

    1. thejeff

      If all works out well, Mary will lose this, but not by those rules.

      Maybe Ruth will learn something in the process too.

      It’s going to take awhile and get uglier before then though.

  154. Lan

    Someone please just kinda… 60’s cartoon villain Mary away. I mean if Dick Dastardly took her away I’m very doubtful the appropriate people would care.

    1. Emily

      She needs to like fall off a parapet Disney villain style.

  155. Notmetoday

    Not sure anything Mary said trumps the “you literally hit people, including me” argument she might have against the physically violent and fat-shaming Ruth. Ruth can get up in arms about what Mary said to Carla (which was horrible), but Ruth hasn’t been tremendously better with words, and literally worse when you count that she actually hits people that anger her.

    1. thejeff

      Though if we’re going to ignore the “cartoon violence” of slamming Carla into the ground by gluing her skates, we should also ignore the “cartoon violence” of slapping someone to leave a maker image of a dick on their face.

      1. thejeff

        “marker” image, as I saw as I pushed post

      2. Spencer

        Can glue even work that way? I kinda figured we were able to view the first part as cartoony was because of the really silly actions like Carla enjoying annoying Mary, Mary laying in the hallway like an idiot, and then Carla faceplanting.

        Either way, being slapped by a figure of authority who has constantly done physical abuse is harder to brush aside as inherently funny, unlike how I don’t care about Beef’s feelings when Amber kicked his ass.

        And like, until now, Mary hadn’t done anything that deserved being assaulted. Billie gave Ruth attitude but that doesn’t mean she gets to be clotheslined for not being contrite in the face of Ruth’s abuse.

        1. Cerberus

          Causing perfect rolling to the point of sudden faceplant? No.

          But super glue on skate wheels would definitely leave them scarred and broken like this, unable to roll or roll as safely, and prone to potentially locking up in dangerous ways that could cause a faceplant.

          And I see no reason to assume it wasn’t super glue.

        2. Random832

          Actually, I doubt it was super glue, for a couple of reasons: For one thing, super glue is very thin as a liquid, and most likely wouldn’t set in such a way as to bind together two already-moving surfaces. Also, superglue causes an exothermic reaction when placed on fabric in large quantities, and so could have started a fire if placed on carpet (not that Mary would have known that).

          Something like gorilla glue, with a high viscosity as a liquid (and thus likely to slow Carla’s wheel down enough to cause problems even without setting), is much more likely.

        3. thejeff

          No, so it’s cartoon violence and doesn’t count.

          But you also don’t leave a perfect image of what you just drew on your hand when you slap someone’s face, so isn’t that cartoon violence too?
          That was just as much (or as little) of a gag as the glue was. Also played for laughs at the time.

    2. Spencer

      Specifically against Ruth? Well, her argument is rooted in Ruth being a queer woman and that’s where most of the venom is coming from, rather than the actual abuse Ruth has handed down onto her charges and Mary specifically.

      Against Carla? Yeah there’s nothing Carla could have done to deserve that. Ruth, I’m not that concerned about, since she deserves to be fired.

  156. FlyingFish

    Ruth is an asshole. She abuses her power as an RA to lay excessive smackdown on some offenses while completely ignoring (or creating) others.

    Carla is an asshole. She violates the dorm rules for her own pleasure and is generally obnoxious and confrontational to all.

    The fact that we are not cheering for Mary indicates that HER qualities make her at least 201% asshole, potentially much higher, thus tipping the balance the other direction.

    [/Dina-style analysis]

    1. Ana Chronistic

      Speaking for myself, I can at least identify with Ruth and Carla to a degree, and they’re interesting to follow.

      Mary is a stick up someone’s ass (prolly her own) and I can’t identify with her at all.

      1. Spencer

        Pretty much.

        Ruth’s an ass, but she’s also complex and interesting. Carla can be annoying, but she’s also funny and charming. It’s the same with the entire cast.

        Mary is, well, Mary. The nicest thing I can say about her is that she really didn’t deserve to have a dong indented on her face that one time.

  157. Killian

    Since this is not real life, I am going to be patient. I know that Mary will eventually say the wrong thing to the wrong person and justice will be served, because this is comic world. But as someone raised by someone just like Mary, this hurts. So much.

    1. Cerberus

      *hugs*

    2. Emily

      Yeah, I really hope this arc is wrapped up with a quickness because this is just rough to read.

  158. Cerberus

    Has anyone seen Elana or know them outside the fandom? After their comment on suicidal ideation yesterday, I want to make sure they’re okay and safe.

    1. Peduncle

      The anonymity on this forum makes it possible for people to comment without fear of retribution (apart from exile), but it also makes it impossible to reach out to individuals. I give an email address when I post a message, but I don’t think it’s ever validated — presumably it just functions as a password. But somebody knows Elana’s email address, from the sign-in, yes? A moderator or sys admin? When somebody talks about feeling suicidal, we can’t ignore it, if there’s anything within our ability to do.

      Elana, please tell us you’re okay.

  159. IJ

    I don’t feel bad for any of the characters in this arc. They’re all awful and they all deserve each other.

    1. Spencer

      Carla doesn’t deserve to have her gender identity used to attack and dehumanize her.

    2. Wublub

      I feel bad for Carla. She was being annoying, yes. But so was Mary. They both seemed to be getting a kick out of irritating each other. I wouldn’t quite call it a *friendly* rivalry, but it seemed like they were both just messing around.

      Then Mary turned around and told her that she’s not a real woman. That she doesn’t belong in the woman’s wing. When the RA tried to stand up to her, Mary blackmailed *her* and said that if she didn’t walk away and let her continue her transphobic shit, she’d get her fired. Ruth should have stood up for Carla anyways. She’s the RA. Her job is to stop stuff like this. But she didn’t. She walked away. I mean, she had a REASON to walk away. But that doesn’t change the fact that the person who was supposed to be on Carla’s side just basically gave Mary permission to do whatever she wants to whoever she wants, including treating Carla like a pile of crap for being trans.

      1. thejeff

        Which means it never was “just messing around” in Mary’s mind.

  160. Rutee

    I’m glad I overestimated Ruthless’ suicidal desires.

    1. Emily

      This may be worse in the long run then just self-destructively taking the problem head on.

  161. Peduncle

    Nobody’s said this yet, so I have to. Sorry.

    Ruthless = toothless.

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