wish MY roommates would’ve had the consideration to drop the pretenses that quickly
or at least PAID me to (badly) forge their documents as promised
[ahahaha my sweet revenge when that one got caught… look, I followed the instructions to the letter to the best of my ability, not my fault the plan was trash]
Oh my, there is a story here. You probably can’t tell it because legal reasons, but that’s okay because we can fill in the blanks with something maybe half as good as what actually happened.
Roommate wanted to fake to the parents having been accepted to a program after basically flunking out, nbd ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Bathymetheus
[sigh]
lying as a problem-solving tool.
That always works.
Marsh Maryrose
I told my parents I graduated a year before I actually did (I still had one English course to finish). Luckily — or maybe they knew me too well, and anyway I was putting myself through college at that point — at any rate, they never asked to see the diploma.
So I guess lying really did work that time. But it helped that there was nothing really on the line.
There seems to be a confusion there between snark and edgyness.
Edgy is when you act “dark” or “cool” to the point where it becomes cringey.
Not when you’re snappish and happen to be covering bleak topics.
Well, to put it in more detail: Originally, edgy meant “at the edge of [eg, of fashion]; avant-garde”. Then, people tried too hard to be edgy, and edgy became associated with.. well, the hipster approach to edgy. A lot of fakeness, a lot of absurdity, a lot of cringe. 😛
So, basically, if someone isn’t acting like a hipster (or, more appropriately, a hipster variation of a goth [See: Emo] ), then “edgy” just wouldn’t apply. Moreover, “edge” has an association with “Look at how badass this thing I’m doing is”, so you’re not going to see it associated with hipsters or cringey rich-person attitudes or the like, either.
Which makes sense- you could cut an artery and shower strangers in a restaurant while quoting bad poetry, and I’m sure the sprayed individuals would be less cringed out than if they had to deal with a nose-in-the-air sort [like a Hipster]. So y’know, edgy people don’t deserve to be confused with those other sorts. 😛
These days, Emos and Chunnis are [to my experiences] usually where you see the most “edge” associations. Just think of it as someone trying too hard to be cool in just about the most baffling, out-of-touch way possible, and you should have the right idea. 😛
Except when it’s used to boast about unconventional and un-PC you are. Which is what leads to it being used to diminish and dismiss. Every edgelord I’ve seen proclaim his edginess has turned out to be a sexist and most often racist jerk.
TemporalShrew
Except that Ruth is absolutely being edgy here, in the purest sense of its more modern connotation, and your dismissal of it as applicable to absolutely anything merely because its meaning has changed over time doesn’t change that. There’s nothing “snarky,” for example, about trying to shut down any and all social interaction with a person you just met – in front of their family, mind you – in the most obnoxious conceivable way, with the most glowering possible face. She’s got a good reason not to be sociable, but this? She’s behaving like a caricature of people who’ve actually gone through what she has.
Ruth’s being a cantankerous dick for absolutely no reason, immediately after demonstrating the active ability to be cordial, and that, my friend, is edgy. I don’t like Rachel, but attempting to defend *this* as a first interaction with anyone is a lost cause.
I actually doubt it. Rachel would, 100%, call campus on Ruth if she was obviously boozing and get her expelled. Unless there was emotional manipulation involved.
Shane Wegner
The read I got was just Rachel is kind of a crusader who wanted to denounce Ruth.
Could be she gets in a pattern of acting like this, tryign to get better, failing. Or she had another ‘bully someone you like’ thing and got away with it and so to Rachel it’s just that Ruth keeps doing the same bad things over and over.
Ruth basically talking to the audience in panel 1: “Wouldn’t it be weird if I were happy and well-adjusted after dead parents and abusive grandparent?”
I can just see Willis chortling: “Hey, hey. Remember that Mike flashback- huh, huh? Yeah, you remember it, right? Look, look, this is like that, right, right? YEAH, NO IT ISN’T. I FOOLED YOU. JAHAHAHA.”
That.. that’s a thing Willis does, y’know. True Story.
Clif
Hmm. I would say its exactly what he did with the Mike flashback; it was just much shorter.
HeySo
Nah, Mike’s flashbacks were all about showing a kinder Mike and how the world let him down. It invoked some sympathetic responses in the comics. Ruth’s flashbacks are still at the post-world-let-me-down stage, with Ruth still as sandpaper-y as ever. The comments pretty much treat the flashback as a quick laugh.
I like it. “Leave me the fuck alone, and you get to pretend you have no roomie!”. How the fuck did she screw up such a great deal?! Probably by Ruth drinking… Yeah…
She grew up in Kaladar, Ontario, an unincorporated rural town. Grandpa Dickwad moved her and Howard to Carmel, Indiana, a wealthy suburb of Indianapolis.
FacelessDeviant
Kaladar. I thought you were joshing there by doing some “this is actually a fantasy village and she’s the lone hero” thing. But there actually is a place with that name, and it isnt from a Robert Jordan book. Thats neat!
Lensipensi
“and it isn’t from a Robert Jordan book” made my day 😀
HeySo
Apparently it’s pronounced Kale-adur, rather than Kal-adar.
Also:
Kaladar : township in Addington county, Ontario, erected
in 1820.
The origin of this name is uncertain. Some writers think the
word may be derived from an East Indian word, Killahdar or
Killedar, meaning “the Governor of a Fort”. Kalandar is a term
applied to a vagrant saint in India. There is a tradition in the
township that its name is a corruption of “kill a deer”.
MK15
Mind you I’m 40 minutes away, not a local, but I’ve never hear anyone say anything but “KAL-uh-dar.”
HeySo
I’ll go off your accounting, then; I was basing that on a news article I found discussing the region, with the individual stating that they’d been saying it wrong all along and realized that after visiting and talking to the locals.
Compared to a random article, I’ll take a (semi)local’s viewpoint as being the more reliable source. 🙂
Apparently Kaladar is the real-world foundation for the fictional city of Avalon, the site of Josh Phillips’s “Avalon High” webcomic. Avalon High and It’s Walky! were sort of webcomic littermates, and you’ll occasionally find Avalon High references sprinkled throughout the Willisverses.
I’m guessing it’s a reference to the number of mass shootings by various nutjobs in the US compared to Canada and just about any other civilized country in the world.
It’s 230 days into the year, we’ve had 320 mass shootings, and our political leaders are taking money from the gun lobby and blaming video games and a lack of compulsory religion in schools instead.
We’re up to 320? Damn, just a hundred more and we get the weed number. That’s not funny. People are getting shot left and right, and nobody is doing anything about it.
Catman
It’s alarming that it’s closer to the weed number than the sex number.
Most of the world doesn’t have a specific “person” and cult leading their government.
HeySo
Well, the ones that do at least have the dignity to have the military, secret police, or hit squads do the shootings, rather than outsourcing it to rednecks and the mentally ill. Saves on budget, I suppose, but seems a bit less beneficially focused.
Well, not like they’ve dragged anyone out of their homes in the middle of the night yet, either. Yet.
During Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Era? I’m sure some of those “rednecks” did their share of yanking people out of their homes in the middle of the night and killing them.
Reltzik
“People are doing nothing about it”?
Thoughts and prayers count as doing something, right? Right?
Discussion (181) - “Resort”
Ana Chronistic
wish MY roommates would’ve had the consideration to drop the pretenses that quickly
or at least PAID me to (badly) forge their documents as promised
[ahahaha my sweet revenge when that one got caught… look, I followed the instructions to the letter to the best of my ability, not my fault the plan was trash]
Marsh Maryrose
Oh my, there is a story here. You probably can’t tell it because legal reasons, but that’s okay because we can fill in the blanks with something maybe half as good as what actually happened.
Clif
You can tell us. There’s nobody here but the Internet.
Ana Chronistic
Roommate wanted to fake to the parents having been accepted to a program after basically flunking out, nbd ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Bathymetheus
[sigh]
lying as a problem-solving tool.
That always works.
Marsh Maryrose
I told my parents I graduated a year before I actually did (I still had one English course to finish). Luckily — or maybe they knew me too well, and anyway I was putting myself through college at that point — at any rate, they never asked to see the diploma.
So I guess lying really did work that time. But it helped that there was nothing really on the line.
CMasta
Always was a bit of sunshine wasn’t she.
JessWitt
Not defending Ruth’s attitude but the aforementioned trauma plus living with her equally ray-of-sunshine grandfather certainly didn’t help.
Lore Krajsman
Honestly, the way she describes it, she sounds like a pretty easy roommate. Worst is having to put up with yelling during Hockey season.
Zero
That does sound pretty bad.
Also I had a roommate who barely spoke to me for a year; it wasn’t particularly pleasant.
temporalshrew
Oh god, someone help, I can’t stop the bleeding, there’s just TOO MUCH EDGE.
Delicious Taffy
Can we save it for when someone actually edgy comes along?
HeySo
There seems to be a confusion there between snark and edgyness.
Edgy is when you act “dark” or “cool” to the point where it becomes cringey.
Not when you’re snappish and happen to be covering bleak topics.
Well, to put it in more detail: Originally, edgy meant “at the edge of [eg, of fashion]; avant-garde”. Then, people tried too hard to be edgy, and edgy became associated with.. well, the hipster approach to edgy. A lot of fakeness, a lot of absurdity, a lot of cringe. 😛
So, basically, if someone isn’t acting like a hipster (or, more appropriately, a hipster variation of a goth [See: Emo] ), then “edgy” just wouldn’t apply. Moreover, “edge” has an association with “Look at how badass this thing I’m doing is”, so you’re not going to see it associated with hipsters or cringey rich-person attitudes or the like, either.
Which makes sense- you could cut an artery and shower strangers in a restaurant while quoting bad poetry, and I’m sure the sprayed individuals would be less cringed out than if they had to deal with a nose-in-the-air sort [like a Hipster]. So y’know, edgy people don’t deserve to be confused with those other sorts. 😛
These days, Emos and Chunnis are [to my experiences] usually where you see the most “edge” associations. Just think of it as someone trying too hard to be cool in just about the most baffling, out-of-touch way possible, and you should have the right idea. 😛
thejeff
Or these days, edgy just means using decades old racial and misogynist stereotypes and pretending that’s somehow daring and cool.
HeySo
Fair point.
Clif
The edginess I’ve heard all my life predates emos, goths, and whatnot, though maybe not beatniks. It refers to being on the edge of what’s acceptable.
Delicious Taffy
Too bad. It’s a buzzword, now. A four-letter shutdown used solely to diminish and dismiss. Those are the rules. That’s how language works, today.
Delavan
Well. Aren’t you edgy.
Delicious Taffy
See, this one gets it.
thejeff
Except when it’s used to boast about unconventional and un-PC you are. Which is what leads to it being used to diminish and dismiss. Every edgelord I’ve seen proclaim his edginess has turned out to be a sexist and most often racist jerk.
TemporalShrew
Except that Ruth is absolutely being edgy here, in the purest sense of its more modern connotation, and your dismissal of it as applicable to absolutely anything merely because its meaning has changed over time doesn’t change that. There’s nothing “snarky,” for example, about trying to shut down any and all social interaction with a person you just met – in front of their family, mind you – in the most obnoxious conceivable way, with the most glowering possible face. She’s got a good reason not to be sociable, but this? She’s behaving like a caricature of people who’ve actually gone through what she has.
Ruth’s being a cantankerous dick for absolutely no reason, immediately after demonstrating the active ability to be cordial, and that, my friend, is edgy. I don’t like Rachel, but attempting to defend *this* as a first interaction with anyone is a lost cause.
Kyrik Michalowski
Well at least this is more accurate to what I expected from Ruth, although I don’t yet see how this leads to tragedy.
Deathjavu
Given what we know…probably booze.
Nono
I actually doubt it. Rachel would, 100%, call campus on Ruth if she was obviously boozing and get her expelled. Unless there was emotional manipulation involved.
Shane Wegner
The read I got was just Rachel is kind of a crusader who wanted to denounce Ruth.
Eve
Could be she gets in a pattern of acting like this, tryign to get better, failing. Or she had another ‘bully someone you like’ thing and got away with it and so to Rachel it’s just that Ruth keeps doing the same bad things over and over.
Bagge
Puh, she had me worried for a moment there.
thejeff
Yup. This is the Ruth we know and love.
Bagge
…know, at least
StClair
and have feelings about.
JBento
*speaks to intercom* Stand down, stand down. Not a doppelganger after all. I repeat, not a doppelganger.
Stephen Bierce
*plays Bowie’s “I’m Afraid Of Americans” on the hacked Muzak*
Lingo
*Sings it to the tune of “We’re the Kids of America” (whoa-oa)….*
svata
That’s more like it
Deathjavu
Ruth basically talking to the audience in panel 1: “Wouldn’t it be weird if I were happy and well-adjusted after dead parents and abusive grandparent?”
TachyonCode
I feel that in my soul.
NF
Ruth as a freshman: Surprisingly kind of an antisocial jerk?
geno
Did you just start reading yesterday or something?
Marsh Maryrose
“Unsurprisingly kind of an antisocial jerk.” FTFY!
Keulen
I was more surprised by how cheerful and friendly freshman Ruth was acting in yesterday’s strip. This is more like the Ruth I expected.
HeySo
I can just see Willis chortling: “Hey, hey. Remember that Mike flashback- huh, huh? Yeah, you remember it, right? Look, look, this is like that, right, right? YEAH, NO IT ISN’T. I FOOLED YOU. JAHAHAHA.”
That.. that’s a thing Willis does, y’know. True Story.
Clif
Hmm. I would say its exactly what he did with the Mike flashback; it was just much shorter.
HeySo
Nah, Mike’s flashbacks were all about showing a kinder Mike and how the world let him down. It invoked some sympathetic responses in the comics. Ruth’s flashbacks are still at the post-world-let-me-down stage, with Ruth still as sandpaper-y as ever. The comments pretty much treat the flashback as a quick laugh.
Not quite exactly the same, I think.
Rikunda
I like it. “Leave me the fuck alone, and you get to pretend you have no roomie!”. How the fuck did she screw up such a great deal?! Probably by Ruth drinking… Yeah…
Lore Krajsman
exactly, it sounds like the almost perfect roommate.
Clif
Lucy and freshman Ruth would have been perfect.
thejeff
Lucy would have been dead within the week. All of it, up to the moment she died of lack of femurs spent trying to make friends with Ruth.
Now Malaya and Ruth would have been interesting. I can just hear Malaya making fun of Ruth for posing as depressed just to be interesting.
Norah
I want to apologize for my spoiler yesterday. I totally forgot it hadn’t been revealed here yet, only on Patreon.
DailyBrad
Ah, so that’s how it was.
Steve C.
50 State Murder resort? Uh….I’m not following…..
bea
she’s canadian & now she lives in america & she hates it
Steve C.
Thanks! I’d forgotten she was from Canada.
Marsh Maryrose
She grew up in Kaladar, Ontario, an unincorporated rural town. Grandpa Dickwad moved her and Howard to Carmel, Indiana, a wealthy suburb of Indianapolis.
FacelessDeviant
Kaladar. I thought you were joshing there by doing some “this is actually a fantasy village and she’s the lone hero” thing. But there actually is a place with that name, and it isnt from a Robert Jordan book. Thats neat!
Lensipensi
“and it isn’t from a Robert Jordan book” made my day 😀
HeySo
Apparently it’s pronounced Kale-adur, rather than Kal-adar.
Also:
Kaladar : township in Addington county, Ontario, erected
in 1820.
The origin of this name is uncertain. Some writers think the
word may be derived from an East Indian word, Killahdar or
Killedar, meaning “the Governor of a Fort”. Kalandar is a term
applied to a vagrant saint in India. There is a tradition in the
township that its name is a corruption of “kill a deer”.
MK15
Mind you I’m 40 minutes away, not a local, but I’ve never hear anyone say anything but “KAL-uh-dar.”
HeySo
I’ll go off your accounting, then; I was basing that on a news article I found discussing the region, with the individual stating that they’d been saying it wrong all along and realized that after visiting and talking to the locals.
Compared to a random article, I’ll take a (semi)local’s viewpoint as being the more reliable source. 🙂
Marsh Maryrose
Here’s where Kaladar is mentioned in-strip.
Apparently Kaladar is the real-world foundation for the fictional city of Avalon, the site of Josh Phillips’s “Avalon High” webcomic. Avalon High and It’s Walky! were sort of webcomic littermates, and you’ll occasionally find Avalon High references sprinkled throughout the Willisverses.
Skater Girl
The USA has 50 states and a lot of murder
Bicycle Bill
I’m guessing it’s a reference to the number of mass shootings by various nutjobs in the US compared to Canada and just about any other civilized country in the world.
Reltzik
It’s 230 days into the year, we’ve had 320 mass shootings, and our political leaders are taking money from the gun lobby and blaming video games and a lack of compulsory religion in schools instead.
I question your use of the word “other”.
Inahc
Perhaps “other” was referring to Canada. 🙂
Reltzik
Oh.
Okay, that makes sense. Objection withdrawn.
Delicious Taffy
We’re up to 320? Damn, just a hundred more and we get the weed number. That’s not funny. People are getting shot left and right, and nobody is doing anything about it.
Catman
It’s alarming that it’s closer to the weed number than the sex number.
Most of the world is closer to the sex number.
Delicious Taffy
Most of the world doesn’t have a specific “person” and cult leading their government.
HeySo
Well, the ones that do at least have the dignity to have the military, secret police, or hit squads do the shootings, rather than outsourcing it to rednecks and the mentally ill. Saves on budget, I suppose, but seems a bit less beneficially focused.
Well, not like they’ve dragged anyone out of their homes in the middle of the night yet, either. Yet.
Lore Krajsman
actually keeping ICE in mind, they already have.
Liquid Len
During Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Era? I’m sure some of those “rednecks” did their share of yanking people out of their homes in the middle of the night and killing them.
Reltzik
“People are doing nothing about it”?
Thoughts and prayers count as doing something, right? Right?