406

Box
Posted on May 29, 2016 by David M Willis

406 thoughts on “Box”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    WOW, it’s like getting the punchline early! Or, a bonus punchline!!

    …I’m curious what contingency Carla had in case it had been Roz to open the door

    (unless she informed Roz, or planned for Roz to not be there, or Roz herself just knew to GTFO this weekend)

    1. sjmcc13

      Her sister is campaigning, and Roz is probably gone to a party.

    2. nobodybasically

      I imagine Roz spends as little time in their room as possible, if only because Mary is mostly naked in there as late as 3 PM.

      1. SmilingNid

        Still an odd habit for some one as prudish as her.

        1. JessWitt

          I thought that was just a joke or a rumor or a rumoke?

        2. Disloyal Subject

          Nah, we only found out about it because Billie ducked into her room as a hiding spot and Mary was clad only in panties.

        3. Harvey Janus

          And wristbands, IIRC, there was a big deal made about her wristbands in the comments.

        4. tim gueguen

          My personal theory at the moment is that if she doesn’t simply wear them because she likes them Mary wears wristbands because she has wrist problems of some sort.

        5. xtravisage

          Or she might just be Shadow the Hedgehog.

        6. JoyceParty

          When I think of people who wear wristbands, it’s either athletes or anime kids. For some reasons, wrist bands are a thing with anime fans. We know Mary is the latter, so that’s my guess as to why she’s often wearing wristbands…

        7. HDimagination

          Or they are concealing something. You know, like Scars….

        8. slicey

          From my experience cutters and attempted suicide by…. that method also wear wrist bands a lot. Unless you’re like me, then you just accept teenage past who hated herself for being different.

        9. Kryss LaBryn

          I’m pretty sure we saw her wrists without the bands at one point, and they didn’t have any scars (that we could see). So, yeah, it might be an anime thing, sort of like Sal’s Mickey Mouse look at home (lol).

        10. Makkabee

          When was this again?

        11. Harvey Janus

          I know it’s way late but here: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/05-media-rumble/dressed-2/

          I don’t know HTML very well.

      2. Van Jealous

        Thanks Willis! Nothing like a little Raymond Scott music to cheer a guy up at 3AM;-)

    3. TheAnonymousGuy

      So, the device as whole was a ploy? or was it behind the spring arm.

      1. Silvester Crow

        I believe the spring arm is the distraction needed to keep Mary on her X.

        1. Reltzik

          It’s Morton’s Fork. She’s doomed if she goes for the box and ignores the contraption, and she’s doomed if she focuses on the contraption and ignores the box.

        2. Clif

          Feathers or lead?

          But really I think Mary is just predictable.

        3. Clif

          Morton’s fork is more about alternate paths of reasoning rather than alternate choices. John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor under Henry VII reasoned that anyone who was living extravagantly was rich, and so could afford high taxes, whereas anyone who was living frugally had saved a lot, and so could afford high taxes

        4. Osaru Sensei

          Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

        5. SmilingNid

          Just from looking at the device there is something in the balloon I wonder what.

        6. Deviant

          Tbh, as long as she’s doomed, I’m happy.

          Doom her more plz!

        7. Silvester Crow

          Yeah, send her to Mars and make her the player character in doom. That way we can die on purpose alot more and still feel good about ourselves.

      2. showler

        The device will only set of sparklers to celebrate.

        The key was for Mary to pie herself after stealing the box. Carla is not to blame for Mary getting pied.

      3. Pedantic Peanut

        The device is probably just a ploy. It was entirely about getting Mary to do something of her own free will so that Carla is not to blame. Mary cannot demand disciplinary action for yanking a box with a spring load pie from Carla’s hands. Carla can simply claim she was making it for a clown skit or something.

        Although clowning on campus might actually be an offense grievous enough to warrant expulsion . . .

    4. Cass

      Roz wouldn’t have grabbed the box, so she would have just watched a convolted way of blowing a balloon around then Carla would have had to reset it.

    5. Rukduk

      Simple:
      Carla: “Oh, hey Roz. Want to see this Rube Goldberg set up I made.”
      Roz: “Umm. I guess. Uh, what’s in the box?”
      Carla: “It’s for Mary.”
      Roz: (devious smile) “How can I assist?”

      1. John Brewer

        My Headcannon is:
        Roz: Hey, Carla. Cool kinetic sculpture.
        Carla: Thanks.

    6. Kay

      Honestly, I just imagine Roz walking past it unconcerned; they both know it doesn’t involve her, after all.

    7. Kay

      ….Or better yet, she could go back inside, grab Mary, and push her out the door to deal with it instead.

    8. Cerberus

      That’s the sheer brilliance of the plan, there was no way it would have worked on anyone but Mary.

      I mean, here’s the thing, that measuring earlier? That wasn’t just to get Mary’s attention and her curiosity, it was to confirm that when Mary and Roz are inside, only Mary goes to investigate soft noises. Mary’s the curtain twitcher and she always does the little door pull and head poke outside pretty quickly the second anything and I mean literally anything is happening in the vague surroundings of her door.

      So that’s contingency number one. The second part is that the Rube Goldberg machine wasn’t the trap, the box was. So even if Roz accidentally tripped it, all it would do would be the Rube Goldberg step which so far seems to mostly be subterfuge and distraction. So, if Roz tripped it, it’d just be cool and nifty and Roz would go, ooh, now what’s the point?

      Contingency number 2. The third is that the box is the trap. So, Carla needed Mary to follow her to Billie and sneak around and get curious/paranoid about the box and to be enough of an asshole to yank the box out of her hands even when she said it was nothing. Roz wouldn’t have been that type of asshole, so the real trap wouldn’t have gone off in her face.

      Basiclally, Carla perfectly designed this trap so the only possible person it could actually hit was Mary.

      1. Ana Chronistic

        I don’t mean the trap, the “what if Roz opened the door and set off the thing while Carla stood there and both watched the thing do its thing” scenario

        but doesn’t matter I guess since it went off without a hitch =d

        1. Cerberus

          That’s the thing, it would have been a cool RG machine. And if Mary was in there, she’d come rushing out to investigate the noise and get distracted by the box anyways. And if Mary was not, Carla would have likely just reset the RG machine and explained the plan to Roz.

          And I’d bet money that Carla staked out Mary’s room a bit to make sure she hadn’t already left for the day.

        2. DSL

          The Rube Goldberg machine does nothing but blow the balloon around and maybe pop it. Had Roz opened the door, that’s all that it would have done. The whole point of the exercise is to focus Mary’s attention on the box (while appearing to try to distract her from it) so that Mary’s own suspicions take over and she springs the trap on herself, machine or no machine. It’s the script to every Chuck Jones Coyote-and-RoadRunner cartoon, complete with “Machine Shop” musical accompaniment (used by musical arranger Carl Stalling to suggest machinery flailing away to the point of self-destruction, with the usual result a coyote doing an impression of an accordion).

    9. jeffepp

      Punch(line) and Pie!

    10. H3xx

      Likely the Rube Goldberg does absolutely nothing and the goal was to get her heart pumping hard enough that she’d forcefully take the most obvious path of protection. Good to know exactly what kind of person she is. If we’re on a sinking ship she’s the one who would push children in the water so she can get in the boat.

      1. JustCheetoDust

        I’m pretty sure George Costanza is a role model.

      2. Cerberus

        Those children were sinners or the progeny of sinners and are filled with the diseased mentalities of the sinners. Thus, it is only right that she, Mary, prioritize her own rescue so she may continue to minister to others and spread the good word and ensure the overall spiritual health of those who’ve survived. So, outta my way sinner kids, I have a boat to glare people at from.

    11. TheGrimCorsair

      It’ll probably end up a pie-rrhic victory.

    12. PeachyM

      Ana, how did you predict that pie way back in January!? That is amazing prescience. you must be a psychic pie-chick!

      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/blindeye/

      1. Tabitha Desanto

        Probably due to the character she is based off of.

        http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=1831

  2. sjmcc13

    can’t say she did not warn her 😉

    1. Clif

      Her revenge was cold, swift, and absolutely ridiculous. And something that Mary wound up doing to herself, taking the box away from Carla and opening it. — Well done, Carla.

      1. StClair

        Exactly.

      2. Kryss LaBryn

        Obviously Mary never ever watched “The Smurfs” cartoon. Heh.

  3. Icalasari

    That is an amazing trap there, Billie

  4. Cheshrin

    HAHAHAHA YESSSSSS

  5. kkiten

    yassss. Well timed Calra!

    1. kkiten

      CARLA. CARLA and Billie.

      1. Kingmabel

        *Cal-Ra of Kryton

        1. Zababcd

          *Formerly of Kryton, now of Eath.

        2. kryptoknight

          Headcanon accepted.

        3. Opus the Poet

          It’s a banana. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB-NnVpvQ78

        4. Djer

          No, it’s a small, off-duty Czechoslavanian traffic warden.

  6. Mr. Mendo

    Satisfying! ^_^

  7. poofdepoof

    Cute 🙂

  8. Stephen R. Bierce

    We have ridicule! Repeat, we have achieved ridicule!

    1. Stephen R. Bierce

      And I don’t have to provide any Muzak content because of the YouTube video.

  9. Too Old To Be Cool

    Nice to see Acme Corp. is still in business.

    1. The Phantom's Belch

      And their quality has improved! (Either that or they ship the crazy coyote all their malfunctioning stuff….)

      1. Disloyal Subject

        If he’s their beta tester, it explains how he can afford all that stuff.

        1. Rukduk

          Holy crap. He’s they’re quality control tester. He doesn’t really want to catch the roadrunner, he just wants to make sure the products work. Roadrunner is probably an ACME employee as well, maybe even Wiley’s subordinate since he is a participant in these quality assurance tests.

        2. mister gray

          that explains so much!

        3. Tunaro

          Thanks for the new, less depressing headcannon! Never thought I’d ever leave the comment sections of one of the comics on this site happier than I was before…

        4. AgentKeen

          The salt and cutlery is just his way of keeping in-character…
          Yeah…

        5. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          Right, because someone being your coworker means you don’t want to kill them.

        6. jeffepp

          If you watched the cartoons, you would know the answer to that. Beep-Beep, zip-tang!

      2. Baronbrian

        The Roadrunner owns Acme. That’s why the Coyote gets the bad stuff.

      3. Boxilar

        The coyote gets store credit though.

  10. Kingmabel

    Can we give Carla the internet? I’m pretty sure she just won the internet

    1. Reltzik

      But then what will we give her tomorrow when the Rube Goldberg machine finishes?

      1. Clif

        Yeah, it looks like the scoop on the end activates something back at the very begining.

        1. jeffepp

          The pin will pop the balloon, releasing the item (an egg?) inside, into the receptical, which will roll down the shoot, and then…

        2. Dr. T

          It’s going to blow noisemakers and throw confetti to celebrate Mary getting hit in the face with a pie.

  11. Dana

    Lies that work on Mary are the best lies.

    1. Spidergirl

      Wouldn’t most lies fall under that category? She’s not exactly the brightest bulb in the box.

      1. Gigafreak

        But there isn’t a bulb in the box

        It was a pie

        1. Jon Rich

          I had to jam my hand in my mouth to keep from laughing loud enough to wake people up. Thank you, Gigafreak, that was awesome.

      2. jeffepp

        Sharp as a sack of wet mice.

        Dumber than a bag of hammers.

        As cold as a nudist on an iceberg.

        Subtle as a hand grenade in a barrel of oat meal.

        This is going to cause more confusion than a mouse in a burlesque show.

        1. DSL

          I imagine all your examples recited in a comic-opera Suthun voice with the first two words followed by “Ah say” and repeated.

        2. jeffepp

          HMMmmmmM… Could beee!

  12. Phi-01

    Bad. Ass.

  13. Ethan

    Wow. SO many people called that. I’m glad Willis didn’t change the punchline.

    1. Orion Fury

      Eh, it was more hopeful than called. I think a lot of the cream pie predictors are here from Shortpacked. It was kinda her thing, and we’ve missed it. We’ll probably never see it again, except for in our dreams.

      1. Cerberus

        Yup, it’s a total call-back! Right down to the robot arm!

    2. -Sentinel-

      Given Willis’s buffer, I doubt he ever changes a strip at the last minute, because it would likely require him to change several subsequent strips.

      1. de Combys

        Yeah and then it makes people proud when they were right, which is pat on the back for an otherwise pretty mistreated (in a good way) audience.

    3. Lumino

      Speaking of calling punchlines….

      Really? Nobody?

      We’re not gonna talk about how Mary just got pie’d in the FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!

      1. Orion Fury

        No. Maybe later.

        1. Silvester Crow

          After we take your mom for a nickle.

    4. thejeff

      I could have missed it, but while many people called the machine being a distraction and the pie being in the box, I don’t recall anyone suggesting that Mary would have to spring it on herself.
      Which was the final, most brilliant part.

  14. Nemirthel

    Ah, Mary. When will you learn that being overly suspicious of everything is a bad idea?
    Oh, that’s right, never. Because you’re an idiot.

    1. Cerberus

      The best part, the absolute best part is that it takes the thing Mary was priding herself on (snooping around in order to get the information she needed to blackmail people) and flipped it against her. This plan relied on her being a snoop who tries to take the upper hand by force. This plan relied on her being a curtain-twitcher who goes peeking out into the halls at the slightest of noises.

      And it punishes her for it. It makes it so that which gave her all this blackmail on Ruth and got her all up in Carla’s business in the first place was also the thing that condemned her to be the butt of this elaborate prank.

      1. Tgape

        Also, Mary has no legal ground for complaint, since her “injury” was caused by her stealing from someone else. (Not a lawyer, so I don’t know the exact term for the crime Mary committed, but forcibly taking from someone else something that one doesn’t have a property interest in certainly has to be some kind of crime. Whether it’s called “mugging”, “purse snatching”, or something else is the only real question.)

        1. Rutee

          Varies by state, but theft is usually stealth, fraud is usually deception, and robbery is everything else (but connotes violence)

  15. fishamaphone

    Ah, literally the oldest trick in the book.

    1. Tunaro

      The Kansas City Shuffle (am I using that right?) with the Rube Goldberg machine or the pie in the face?

  16. JessWitt

    Cream pies for those commenters who called it.

  17. Marisa Mockery

    Please tell me another pie is on the way

    1. Kingmabel

      There’s gonna be some pie soon, but it’s not for Mary

  18. Heff

    Clif called it yesterday, love it.

    1. Clif

      Among others.

  19. caesaria82

    I love absolutely everything about this. IN YOUR FACE, MARY. Literally.

  20. Dafydd

    Mmm, pie. 😀

  21. Clodia

    :DDDDDD

    I had hoped so!

  22. newllend(henryvolt)

    Of course what else was this going to be, honestly the real reason why I’m laughing right now is that for some reason I didn’t see this coming.

  23. figureaddict

    Wondered what had happened to ultra cars chest arm.

    1. Dara

      YES! Return of the arm! 😀

    2. Dara

      I actually headcanon that this box is a Futurama Dimension Box, and that’s actually Ultracar, giving a sister a…

      …helping hand…

      (ar ar ar ar ar)

      …with her enemy.

      And I’m hoping that the RG device isn’t finished yet. Maybe it’ll launch a little victory parade down the hall. That’d be good.

      1. brionl

        Out pops a roll of paper towels.

      2. Cerberus

        If I remember right, Carla in this universe is obsessed with the Ultra Car tv show, so this might actually be a working replica of Ultra Car’s robot arm in the cartoon.

        1. Dara

          Oh? I totally missed that.

          Well, okay, it’s both.

        2. Cerberus

          Both/and! 😀

  24. Danni

    Hail Mary, face full of pie

  25. Uncertainty Moth

    Ultra-Car nostalgia? Sign me up!

  26. ICarus

    If she hadn’t been a vindictive suspicious bongo then she wouldn’t be bothered, it was literally a trap for her specifically bwa ha ha

  27. Mr Ak

    #BEST

  28. Redsg

    I give it 3.14 Stars.

    1. merbrat

      What you did there. I see it.

      1. jeffepp

        The rest will come around.

  29. DinaWho

    She concealed the shark in a school of red herrings. Excellent revenge plan.

    Excellent strip.

    1. JessWitt

      +1 for an excellent figure of speech. Metaphor, I think?

    2. Mishyana

      I dunno, I’m still kind of wondering if the Rube Goldberg device isn’t going to just heap more delicious, delicious misery on.

      1. DinaWho

        Another commenter suggested the posts might shoot water or confetti, either of which would make an excellent follow-up.

  30. Carms

    <3

  31. JessWitt

    Yes! Best outcome – and most delicious!

  32. Rukduk

    Holy crap but that was amazing. Despite many of us calling something like this happening, it is still just pure unadulterated schadenfreude. Plus, Mary took the box, because Carla played her like a fiddle. I think I’m going to refer to her as Carla the puppet master from now on, since Mary just danced like one for her.

    1. Cerberus

      I think this arc proves that the last thing you want is Carla’s complete and undivided attention.

  33. MM

    Now strand her in the Amazon!

    1. Orion Fury

      Ah, if only.

      1. JessWitt

        Strand her in the recycling bin full of empty Amazon package boxes.

        1. inqntrol

          And then the bin gets picked up by a garbage truck.

        2. Orion Fury

          Is Casey Jones driving it?

        3. begbert2

          “Oops!”

        4. Orion Fury

          This. Though I always heard “Whoops.” Another favorite quote of mine.

        5. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          Or just have an amazon-style drone with a bucket of water on standby.

  34. Indiana Bones

    I’m pretty sure that if I were to see this go down in real life, I’d have almost the exact emotional reaction of Dr. Grant in Jurassic Park when he sees the dinosaurs for the first time

  35. Lan

    Goddamnit that was glorious. I need to read that again or maybe see it animated. Someone give Willis an award for “Best Payoff to a Plot Arc” trophy. It CAN be yet another BotCon Custom Ratchet.

  36. Just Here

    Awesome!

  37. Emi

    I love Carla and she is everything I aspire to be in life

    1. Cerberus

      Seriously! I’m so happy that not only is there a character who is a trans ace girl like me, but that she’s also just the world’s biggest badass.

  38. Jason

    That’s great, but I’m assuming the machine is not done yet….

    1. Orion Fury

      It is technically still running.

  39. Orion Fury

    Maybe there’s 13 of ’em, but they’re small?

  40. Archivist

    Very dynamic layout today, Willis!

  41. Charles Phipps

    Is it too much to hope the pie is full of horrific acid and she’s about to become Two-Face?

    1. Orion Fury

      That implies that she’s hiding a darker part of herself. Or maybe a lighter side.

      1. inqntrol

        Lighter side? I don’t think there was ever good in her.

        1. Some1

          though I feel that if any of the strips villains commit a heel face turn, its going to be Mary. She’s fairly young, and she hasn’t reached the level of evil that Ryan or Ross or Blaine have. You can’t really compare the girl who says slurs with the attempted (hopefully there wasn’t anyone before Joyce) rapist, the guy who has hit his daughter and wife, and the guy who kidnapped his daughter with a shotgun. Mary is awful, but she’s not irredeemable.

        2. Cerberus

          That would be cool, but I feel there’s still so much more narrative power Mary serves for awhile as a potential foil for literally every other character in the cast.

        3. Rukduk

          Mary’s just too good of a heel. We hate her, but we love to hate her. She’d probably be quite boring as a face.

        4. Some1

          She could stay slightly evil, and work with everyone else more out of necessity then a real desire to change. Her anger would make a great foil to Joyce’s sweetness.

    2. Some1

      It would be both cool and horrifying to see Mary go full blown nutcase

      Mary: (holding a knife to Joyces face) I’ve always hated that stupid smile of yours, lets see if we can’t get rid of it. (slasher smile)

      or

      takes knife and carves a cross into her cheeks.

      1. Orion Fury

        Why so pious?

        1. David M Willis

          ha ha ha “pie-ous”

        2. Orion Fury

          I know, right? Don’t know when I’ll be able to get another joke like that again.

        3. Rukduk

          Well, here’s one of mine: I guess you could say Carla’s a pie-romancer.

          …

          You know, cause she’s controlling pies, and it can sound like pyromancer?

          …

          Sorry.

        4. Amazi-Stool

          +1

        5. trlkly

          Noticed some scaling artifacts on your gravitar, so I thought I’d offer you this file I made. I tested it, and it looks great.

          http://imgur.com/Quc914B

        6. trlkly

          (Don’t scale the above image. Just save it and upload it as-is to gravatar.com)

        7. Orion Fury

          Pyromaniacs, just loves that burnt smell. Let the implication sit in their minds. Funnier that way.

    3. Disloyal Subject

      I was thinking acid-spitting beetles.

      1. heyman

        Demon cockroaches?

        1. Tan

          *ahem*

          BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES

          *bows, leaves*

        2. StClair

          Bees. My god.

        3. CianM1301

          Not the bees!

      2. Gamaran Sepudomyn

        Fun fact: ladybugs are vicious predators.

        1. Opus the Poet

          But only for aphids, mammals have nothing to worry about.

  42. Janet

    Where does Carla find the time to build all this stuff? Doesn’t anyone in this dorm ever study or do homework?

    1. JessWitt

      That could be her engineering homework, like a freestyle project.

    2. Cerberus

      I don’t think Carla has actually slept since Mary unleashed her bucket of transphobia. Which is the only way I can think of why she’s been up in the early morning of late.

    3. jeffepp

      Where does she get such wonderful toys? Well, go ask her!

      1. Cerberus

        She built it all in a room with a box full of scraps!

  43. tim gueguen

    https://youtu.be/YQPHsONF_tE?t=5m43s

  44. Hawke

    Is…is this the first time Mary’s sworn in DoA?

    I mean, she nearly swore at Ruth during the Ding-Dong Dilemma, but she was cut short by a (very rightly deserved) bongo slap. Hence, I think this might be Mary’s first time swearing without interruptions.

    1. Orion Fury

      I was confused at first, then remembered that ‘hell’ is a swear.

      1. Tunaro

        Hell is a swear?

        1. Orion Fury

          To Christians. Perhaps other religions that use it in their lexicon.

        2. heyman

          It isn’t one of Carlin’s seven, but nobody ever used it while addressing a teacher, for instance.

        3. DonDueed

          It couldn’t be in Carlin’s seven, since by then you could say it on television.

          For example, Bill Shatner said it in a Star Trek episode in 1968. Not sure if that was the very first time, though.

        4. heyman

          I now recall someone in Texas (of course) where the phone is answered with a cheery “Heaven-o!”

        5. trlkly

          Especially protestant Christians, since Catholics seem to have fewer problem with it.

          I mean, my sister picked up OMB–Oh My Buddha to avoid saying Oh My God.

        6. Sam

          It is a swear to particular people, just as things like bloody and damn are considered swears to particular people when used for emphasis but I’m not sure if Mary herself actually regards it as a swear.

        7. trlkly

          Based both on Joyce’s upbringing, which is apparently the same as Mary’s, plus my own, I would think she would.

          Not Hell the place, but you have to say “heck” in any other context.

        8. Harvey Janus

          Technically, it’s a curse on the person it’s directed at, wishing they’d go to hell. Same for Damn. Protestants are overly sensitive about it because they’re a bit more… Kooky about the whole idea.

  45. Rosicrucian

    Carla’s majoring in engineering.

    She paid special attention to social engineering.

  46. Bicycle Bill

    I’m calling it now; there is more to come.  Chekhov’s Three-Armed Upright Posts, you know.

    Perhaps that item I saw leading offscreen to the left yesterday is plumbing, and there’s a little marble that falls out of the balloon and rolls down the track, and as it does it triggers switches so that she gets sprayed, one by one, by sprays of water like the Dancing Fountains in front of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.

    1. CianM1301

      My theory is they’re party poppers full of confetti to celebrate Mary’s ridicule.

      1. WaytoomanyUIDs

        Ooh, that would be brilliant. And a noise maker or two

        1. CianM1301

          I think that’s what the balloon is for. Someone before mentioned the balloon was there to attract attention from the other people living in the dorm to look out their doors and see Mary humiliated.

    2. Jhon

      I’d say a ping-pong ball rather than a marble. But yes, the machine is not done yet.

  47. Skizz

    And the elaborate trap is still unfolding. Inwas expecting Rube Goldberg and got Spy V Spy. Nice one.

    1. DSL

      You got both.

  48. Rukduk

    What was in the box? What’s in the box?!? What’s in the fuckin’ box?!?!?

    1. Orion Fury

      Pie?

      1. Rukduk

        Sorry, trying to make a Se7en reference/joke. Guess I needed to try to type out Brad Pitt’s inflection a bit more.

        1. Orion Fury

          No, I got it. Just never seen the movie. I’d of given a parody quote if I had.

        2. Rukduk

          If you like Kevin Spacey, see it. I’d argue the man gives Anthony Hopkins a run for his money as “best movie villain psycopath/sociopath” with his performance in that movie.

        3. Orion Fury

          One of many, one of many.

    2. Disloyal Subject

      “Who gets the box? What’s in the box? How much is what’s in the box worth?”

      1. Rukduk

        “Price War. What I want, gentlemen, is a simple war. Not class war, not drug war, not race war, and certainly NO COLD WARS!! (Blue balled for over fifty years.) No what I want is a true war. A German war. The sequel you’ve all been waiting for. I WANT WORLD WAR 3!!!!”

        1. Tan

          London Bridge… Is falling down.

        2. Rukduk

          “Falling down?”
          ” Falling down!”
          “London Bridge is falling down. My dear lady…Integra what do we do?”

    3. heyman

      Universe A?

  49. Dr. T

    I think this will be even better later. The RG machine will probably blow celebratory streamers, Mary will try to get Carla in trouble for the pie only to get rebuffed because Carla merely points out that it was an anti-theft device, and Mary gets a warning over taking other people’s things from them (she did rip the box out of Carla’s hands, after all).

  50. Guairdean

    I forget who called it first, but the predictions of a pie in the face were spot on. I’m still hoping there’s glitter in the balloon.

  51. Fallingivy

    This is a wonderful revenge scheme but I can’t fully enjoy it because I’m worried about what Mary will do in retaliation for this.

    1. Orion Fury

      But, we need our pre-drama tag moment!

  52. The Phantom's Belch

    I said it yesterday: Don’t mess with engineering majors!

    And yes, the balloon popping on the needle has to do *something* besides make noise…

  53. Catapostrophe

    Of course it was a pie, what else would it be? And yet I am still grinning from ear to ear at this strip (and the accompanying soundtrack). Bless you, Willis.

  54. Kamino Neko

    Distraction…the ultimate weapon.

  55. Foxhack

    Did Carla spontaneously get six inches taller from the previous comic?

    1. Orion Fury

      Most of the reference points from the bottom up seem fine, but the door behind her seems to be shorter. Like the man said, he’s got twin babies and is doing 13 panel comics. Something gave.

    2. Cerberus

      Carla is really fucking tall.

  56. Jack

    GLORIOUS. Well played, Carla.

  57. Owlmirror

    What’s really great about this is that Mary has no recourse to complain to any authorities. I mean, what can she even say?

    Mary: Carla made a thing that flung a pie in my face!

    Carla: Excuse me, but I was peacefully holding my boxed pie flinger, not bothering anyone, and Mary violently grabbed it from me, setting it off.

    Mary: But what about the… the… trap thing?

    Carla: You mean my Device for Inducing Lateral Motion in a Balloon? My little project for demonstrating interacting subsystems that can’t even hurt a fly?

    (and so on and so forth)

    ===========================

    Hey, I just noticed that when Carla got the box from Billie, it had flaps, but now it has a lid (pfft, I know, work of a moment with some glue).

    1. Cerberus

      Yup, she’ll still try because appeals to authority and violence are her only two responses to embarrassment, but she’s got literal nothing and if she tries to escalate to downstairs, they’ll just shake it off like the dumb college prank that it is and something that’s mostly her own fault.

      Hoisted by her own vile petard.

  58. timemonkey

    Beautiful! And since she snatched the box out of Carla’s hands any attempt to report it will make it look like her own damned fault!

  59. PanzerVaughn

    And then she died to a SEVERE cream allergy.

    1. JustCheetoDust

      Unless the Rube Goldberg machine releases an epinephrine shot.

    2. CianM1301

      Little did we know that Mary was severely lactose intolerant.

      1. James

        “Sorry Principal Skinner, but it only counts as assault if they KNEW you were lactose intolerant.”

      2. DSL

        Well, she’s everything else-intolerant, so why not?

  60. Tomas

    I know Willis is invoking Bugs Bunny here, but it mostly reminds me of how Sean Connery beat Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love.

    1. CoolCoolCool

      Actually he is self-referencing his own webcomic “Shortpacked!”. Its pretty good and a lot of characters are from there 🙂 including Carla, in which she is obsessed with throwing cream pies.

  61. kelticat

    I keep wondering if Carla’s true revenge will be Mary going to the RA’s office to spew her venom, only we find out the RA is post-operative trans (very sympathetic to Carla), a lesbian (sympathetic to Ruth, Billie, Becky, et al) , or both.
    At which point Mary’s demands to have a student removed from the dorm will find fertile ground, and the RA will remove Mary from the dorm.

    1. Creatrix Tiara

      Ruth is their RA.

      1. kelticat

        I mean Ruth’s boss. If Mary goes to a higher authority than Ruth.

  62. Catapostrophe

    Tomorrow:

    Mary: *licks cream from her lips* …Sweet pickle pie? With whipped cream on top? Where the hell do you even get sweet pickle pie?!

    (Carla would probably have to bake it herself, I imagine, because who sells those?)

    1. Opus the Poet

      Nearest I can find on the Internet only sold at the Sunglow Motel in Bicknell UT https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Sunglow_Motel-Cafe_Pickle_Pie

  63. Rob S.

    Duh DAH duh, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah dah, duh DAH dah, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah dah, duh DAH duh, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah dah… Dah duh-duh-duh DAH dah!

    (Part B of “Powerhouse”, by Raymond Scott, commonly used by Carl Stalling in various Looney Tunes)

    1. CianM1301

      You mean this? https://youtu.be/qaC0vNLdLvY?t=1m15s

      1. CianM1301

        You mean this? https://youtu.be/qaC0vNLdLvY?t=1m15s
        EDIT: Oh wait, Willis has it in the link up-top.

        1. Rob S.

          I didn’t see that…. O_O

  64. TheHorseCouncil

    i did so miss carla pie-ing people in the face. Now all i need is a triple bird flip.

    1. Cerberus

      She’s got the three hands now to do it.

  65. Marie

    I really hope she also needed the rube goldberg machine for a class (or at least extra credit), excluding the box, because then her only thing is that she tied it to Mary’s door without telling her (but hey, it did nothing to her anyway and doesn’t obscure her path to the elevator/classes)

    1. Marie

      Not that making a rube goldberg machine for fun would be against the rules, but for class is a more reasonable reason to be testing it in the hallway

  66. Tunaro

    OK, so I’m thinkin’ of how you’d actually design one of those arm box things and I’d appreciate a little input.
    I’m thinking a bunch of torsion springs chained together to make the arm connected to some kinda pressure activated switch, hence why it activated after Carla let go. What I’m having trouble conceptualizin’ is how the box lid just flies off without getting in the way of the pie’s trajectory.

    1. Reltzik

      That’s easy. You use spring-loaded rams on one side of the box to pop it off a quarter-second before the arm activates.

      The two real challenges are: A) keeping it from going off midswipe, and B) making sure it flings the pie in the right direction. Of the two, B seems more serious. I think you’d need the arm to be on a turntable at the bottom of the box, and… let’s say there’s a few infrared cameras hooked up to some simple circuitry to aim it.

    2. foamy

      What puzzles >me< most is the flawless aim and perfect timing.

      And also what the devil Mary's arms were up to in panel three…

      1. trlkly

        That’s just comic physics. The same ones Amazi-Girl used to avoid dying. Or, more controversially (ironically), that slap mark Ruth left on Mary’s face.

  67. Hiraku

    What could Mary have possibly overheard Carla and Billie talk about? All she heard was “This will do great with my needs.”

    1. Rosicrucian

      Mary always assumes everything is nefarious.

      After all, the devil is sending his minions to mess with the righteous.

      1. Cerberus

        Yeah, that’s the beauty of it. Carla didn’t actually set up much reason for Mary to get obsessed about the box, but Mary is the type to see collusion against her personally in everything anyone does and to obsess about things like that and get all possessive about them. And so of course she freaked about the box and tried to steal it.

  68. Alexx

    I only dealt with one newborn (now he’s three months) and I feel like I can’t get ANYTHING done. Your comics are a feat of strength.

  69. Idontcarenomore

    Awesome. Absolutely fantastic.
    Mary hates ridicule (we all do, but most of us have a sense of humor at least).
    Mary does not.

    And what can she do now, run to the office and say she snatched a box out of another students hand and he sprung a pie in her face? How to explain why she snatched the box? Hehe.

    Great flashback to Ultra-Car and flinging cream pies.

    I wonder what happens when the pin is pricked by the ballon and the gun goes off? It may be just a flashy bit of setup for the pie-in-the-face, but….

    1. Idontcarenomore

      drat edit…supposed to read “…..snatched a box out of another students hand, and it sprung a pie in her face…”

    2. Kamino Neko

      Gun?

  70. JepMZ

    I don’t know why but the site is completely unloadable on a wii u browser

    Hmm, I wonder if the balloon has feathers in it or is just an alibi to give Mary a friendly balloon

  71. Brasca1

    Now that’s the Ultra Car-la I know. Of course it takes longer since she lacks the internal pie factory and third arm.

  72. Rick Robin P. Cagnaan

    That one reminds me of Ultra-car splatting a pie at Ethan. Nice touch, dude!

  73. Wack'd

    In this world we call our home there’s lots of room to roam
    Plenty of time to turn mistakes into rhyme

  74. Also Becky

    Engineers are fucking magical. I mean, I’m assuming Carla is an Engineering Student, no one else would be capable of building that beautifully complicated monstrosity of wonder.

  75. Just Me

    So, DoA Carla and Walkyverse Carla really do share a love for Pies in the face via mechanical arms. Nice! Plus we get sound effects to go with it.

  76. Brian K. Pittman

    Carla is going to be an amazing engineer.

  77. Kensou

    Amazing, the gag is actually funny if the victim deserves it.

    1. Cerberus

      And the best part is that it had no means of going off unless the victim was a total prick. Like, anyone decent in its vicinity would just see a cool RG machine in the middle of the hall. Only someone who was enough of a fuck to get obsessed about the box and snatch it out of Carla’s hands was ever at risk of getting pied.

  78. Kelli

    That video was not bad, but the audio edits were odd and poorly executed. I like this one: w3FCRr3t9WU or this one: qaC0vNLdLvY a bit better. The latter one is the full original song.

  79. Saaaam

    It’s a pie! Pie!

  80. Packy

    Four words from a Patreon person: it gets better tomorrow!

  81. AgentKeen

    So, the balloon pop that’s imminent is just to make enough noise to get everyone out of their rooms so they can see the pie on Mary’s face?

  82. DarkoNeko

    Carla’s calculation included which angel Mary would hold the box from. nice !

    1. DarkoNeko

      …angLE.

      1. Orion Fury

        There was probably some kind of Angel involved as well. Laughing it’s ass off, but still.

  83. NinjaNick

    You just got Punk’d, Mary. 😛

  84. BenRG

    Carla is obviously far smarter than for which I previously gave her credit. She’s also clearly a mistress of deductive psychology (at least in Mary’s case).

    That aside, oddly enough my strongest emotion is anger that Carla has wasted a perfectly good cream pie on this stunt!

    1. Arian

      I didn’t realise cream pies were edible. I thought their sole purpose was to be splatted on people’s faces.

      1. DSL

        If the prankster has any brains, sense or decency, a prank pie is shaving cream.

        1. Dr. T

          No, I bet Carla made it out of whipped Caesar salad dressing so that Mary can eat some fish-flavored pie (you know, in the event that the double entendre could make it even more humiliating for Mary).

  85. Darwin

    YES. That’s the song I heard the instant Carla’s rube goldberg device was triggered.

  86. RandomMadman

    This was a beautifully designed Rube-Goldberg Machine. A lot of the old designs had a human element, and here we see Carla implementing Mary as part of the machine. Most of the machine including Carla’s whistling had an end goal of ramping up Mary’s paranoia so she’d take the box. Carla has spent the whole weekend setting this up by conditioning Mary for this moment.

    And as others have pointed out, Mary can’t really do anything due to having essentially robbed Carla. Though Carla may get a reprimand for testing her model in the dorms, which despite requiring Mary to open the door wouldn’t have done anything to her. It’s a smooth revenge.

    1. Cerberus

      Yup, and it’s a lovely bit of classical conditioning. Setting up the tone and associating it with danger and promise so that when the time came, she’d come streaming out the door at the slightest hint of the tune and have her attention drawn to Carla and her box and the paranoia that elicits.

  87. Raza

    I read this on my phone, so actually had to scroll over to see the last panel. Oh, it was sweet moment. ?

  88. Jacques Cornelius Parrot III

    That last panel is the part in the 1812 Overture where the cannons start being fired.

  89. AriBerri

    Congrats on the twin newborns!!

  90. Teddae

    Classic Ultra ca–I mean Carla

  91. Arianod

    Flawless execution.
    http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/070/061/d96.jpg

  92. Adept Arcanist

    The Goldberg Rube was a… DISTACTION!

    1. Adept Arcanist

      …I’m sorry, I just couldn’t resist.

      1. Arianod

        Well, you are not wrong ^^

  93. Tan

    There is a recent/current CBS TV sitcom by the name of Mom. In the first season, one of the main characters, Christy, works as a waitress. At one point, she gets in a fight with the restaurant manager in the kitchen over personal issues between them. As they are arguing, the head chef (played by French Stewart) walks over next to Christy and holds out a baked good. Christy, still angry, turns to him and snaps, “What is this??” Calmly, the head chef queries back, “What do you think it is?” Christy pauses a moment, says ‘Oh’, takes the banana cream pie and splats it right on the restaurant manager’s face. It is a great moment, and I wish I could find a clip of it on Youtube.

    What I’m saying is… The classics never get old, and pie to the face is a true classic.

  94. c

    THERE IS PIE!!!!

  95. Kay

    …I love you, Carla. ;;;;;;;;;; I would ask you to marry me, if I thought I could handle a lifetime of face pies.

    1. Reltzik

      Just imagine every day is your wedding day and she’s shoving cake in your face.

      1. Marie

        That is the worst. THE WORST. WHY IS THAT A TRADITION???

        1. DSL

          Worse than the garter? I’ve wondered more and more lately why a woman would allow that to be done, or think it’s “fun.” Last wedding reception I attended, a little creep of about eight years old grabbed the garter and did the leg slide — to the uproarious approval of nearly all the guests. Kid’s got a brilliant future.

  96. Miko

    *clapping intensifies*

  97. Big Box

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F4qzPbcFiA

  98. Marie

    I want to echo what someone said on yesterday’s comic- this is a great strategy because while also not harming Mary or being able to get Carla in trouble, it also shows that she is by no means powerless.

    1. Cerberus

      Yup, it’s Carla taking her power back in emphatic terms. Letting Mary know she’s not the passive little victim for her power play who can be brushed aside just because she’s bought out the local authority figure. Carla is something that Mary doesn’t want to fuck with, because Carla is fucking down with being pushed around by bigots.

  99. Keulan

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIgfiSzCy1o

  100. Bagge

    THERE IS PIE!!!

    1. Arianod

      LET THERE BE PIE!!!

  101. Spencer

    I feel like I’ve been waiting my entire life for this moment.

  102. Cerberus

    Prank Analysis:

    This plan is utterly brilliant on every level, because it’s perfectly waited to respond to Mary on every single level and shows just how fully Mary has bought Carla’s full and careful attention.

    First? It’s non-violent, but embarrassing and humiliating for Mary and makes her feel played. And Carla knows that’s the shit that drives Mary up the wall, because embarrassing Mary and short-circuiting her little roadbump plan was what got her all het up and looking to destroy her skates.

    Plus it’s a cheeky answer to Mary’s little “oh, do you want to punch me in the face, no? Well then, you’re just my little toy to abuse” shtick after Ruth ran away telling Carla to deal with her. Like, no, Carla is not violent. Carla will not strike anyone and doesn’t even like to physically restrain people. But she will pie them in the face, planting right on their kisser the “strike” Mary asked for without breaking her pacifist nature.

    Second? It relied on every level on Mary being a shit and specifically being a shit in the same exact ways that allowed Mary to get the upper hand on Carla and Ruth in the first place.

    Carla got on Mary’s radar in the first place because Mary is a curtain-twitcher who responds to the slightest bit of noise outside her door with contemptuous curiosity. So Carla is polite but weird in front of her door and leaves whistling the 1812 overture to classically condition her to that tune.

    Next, Mary used her tendency to snoop and spy on queer students (especially Billie) from a distance in order to build up the list of blackmail material she dumped on Ruth in front of Carla. So Carla immediately travels back to Billie’s and asks for this box, knowing that Mary wouldn’t hear most of the conversation and would simply assume the worst. Especially if Carla kept up the menace by deliberately walking past her whistling the overture.

    Finally, Mary freaks out and tries to gain the upper hand by force when she feels lost and discombobulated. When Carla called out her bluff and refused to take Mary seriously, Mary escalated to violence and property destruction and clearly doesn’t value Carla or her things.

    So Carla only needed to hold onto the box while looking at the machine while whistling to get Mary all paranoid and grabby about the box and try and snatch it out of her hands to peer into it all greedily.

    Every step relied on Mary being exactly the type of shit-stain she is or else it wouldn’t have worked and so by completing it, it proves just how petty and mindlessly abusive Mary really is.

    Third? It has a huge amount of plausible deniability. Carla’s machine has done nothing to her in retaliation. Carla has not done anything directly in retaliation. Mary did it to herself by snatching the box out of her hands. When Mary goes to report this there’s no way she can really spin this where she doesn’t look petty and kinda awful.

    Fourth? Carla did not fall to her level or get sucked in by her abuse. She kept calm and steady and stuck to her plan, never being anything but either whistling or unfailingly polite. No one can even say she uttered a slur against Mary and in fact did her due-diligence to try and discourage her from grabbing at the box.

    Fifth? It reverses the power dynamic. Mary has treated Carla as a thing or a tool. Something beneath human and beneath contempt. Where she’ll destroy her things and abuse her with nasty transphobia and expect no form of retribution for it.

    And here? Carla reminds her to be fearful of her intelligence and her presence. And she even refuses to back down by being much more visible during the daylight hours in the hall so that if Mary had come crawling earlier she would have seen her not buckling down and weeping, not going away, but standing strong.

    This is a reminder that if Mary continues to attack her, she will retaliate and she will do so in ways that wound Mary’s pride, which is far more deadly to Mary than actual physical harm.

    There’s not enough ways I can praise this plan and Carla enough.

    She’s truly a prank mistress and a terrifying force when angered and I absolutely love her for it. Because this shit is what we trans folk dream about every time someone intentionally misgenders us or yells at us to get out of the bathrooms or rants endlessly about how we’re child molesters.

    And it is so, so, sooooo satisfying.

    1. The Phantom's Belch

      Well said.

      I’m not trans, but I am bi. I don’t flaunt it, but I’m not in the closet about it, either. I’ve faced discrimination about that, too, particularly from homophobic fundies (but also from some gay/lesbian types who are “straight or gay; pick a side!”), so I empathize with trans folks. (I can be a bit cruder in speech than typing, but where I’m from we developed thicker skins towards words in general growing up. I honestly believe some folks go looking to be offended, regardless of their orientation.)

      As for the bathroom bits, I’m thinking of starting a petition in my county asking for communal unisexual bathrooms in government and business buildings. No male bathrooms, no female bathrooms, just … bathrooms. Let the genders mix. 😉

      1. Arian

        “some gay/lesbian types who are “straight or gay; pick a side!” ” Which is just so weird. Presumably they’d claim to be gay by nature, and not able to become straight just by deciding to be, so what makes them think you could change just by choosing to any more than they can?

        1. Spencer

          Basically the idea is that if we say we’re bi, it’s either because we’re straight people trying to be trendy, or we’re actually gay but trying to “hold on” to some vestige of straightness to be more normal.

          Then there’s some idiots who know that bisexuality exists, but believe the only legitimate relationships we can have are same sex, because otherwise we’re “invoking our straight passing privilege.”

        2. Cerberus

          Yeah, the biphobia in queer spaces is pretty disgusting and often presumes that bisexuality isn’t a real orientation, merely a position of indecision between straight and gay or is otherwise awash with terrible stereotypes like “a bi partner will always cheat, a bi partner will leave you for a partner of a different gender than you, a bi person is inherently untrustworthy about their life experiences”.

          Always gets me extra pissed off (beyond the fuck you and your bigotry angle) because I’ve frequently been the partner of bi and pan folks and I hate it when people talk that ignorant shit about people I love.

        3. AutobotDen

          Pretty much. And pansexual folk like me are in a similar boat, too.

        4. Spencer

          Yeah, it’s weird to say this, because they really don’t have the capacity to cause as much damage as the constant sense of looming physical and emotional violence from outside, but prejudice from within the Queer community strikes me as so much more painful, with shit like bi and pan erasure and TERFs. Like, Christ, we’ve been there. We should know more than anybody how much it can hurt, and then we pull it on people who are different enough to hate.

          It’s like folks think LGBT stands for Lesbian Gay Bacon Tomato.

        5. trlkly

          See, I don’t understand any of that crap. Why would someone who has experienced prejudice would realize that prejudice in other contexts? I mean, it’s how I became vehemently anti-prejudice–because I realized one day that people were teasing me for being different. Not any particular form of prejudice, but just prejudice. Seems to me it’s easier to make a global rule than to have all these little things you accept and don’t accept.

          I mean, I know on an intellectual level. It’s the natural group bonding thing, combined with projecting your own anger at bigots towards others–giving you a feeling of empowerment. Or just that, being a minority, you think you don’t have to monitor yourself for bigotry–at least, not as often. But it still makes no rational sense, and you’d think that all it would take is one person pointing it out and they’d get it.

          At least I get it when, say, black people aren’t kind to gay people–the minorities are so different that a black person might not get that it’s the same issue. But bisexuality and homosexuality are so frickin’ close.

          Nor do I get gay men who are sexist towards women. I mean, come on! The prejudice you experienced for being gay has a lot of commonalities with those women experienced. Is it just that you can theoretically live your life without knowing any women? Is it because some women abused you in the past because you weren’t attracted to them?

          Sorry, I guess I’m getting a bit far from the point. All I guess I’m saying is that bigotry from within groups that explicitly exist to fight bigotry is just so fucking stupid!

        6. StClair

          It’s a tribal thing, and “fuck you, got mine”. Both things that humans do VERY well. 🙁

        7. Orion Fury

          I want to comment here, but having difficulty parsing out my thoughts. The only coherent and /or straight-forward thought I can given is “Why do people have to hate so?”

        8. StClair

          My own, rather bleak take:
          Because the world is never exactly as we want it to be, never as good as we wish it was, and neither are we; and so we look for someone to blame for that. And if we didn’t have anyone else – even someone we made up! – then we’d have to blame ourselves, hate ourselves, and be miserable. Which a lot of people end up doing.

        9. StClair

          (and at the risk of getting really crude)
          It’s like shit. We all produce it, just by living. It’s almost impossible not to. So we either have to find a place to put it, a way to get rid of it – by burying it (which takes effort) or throwing it/dumping it on other people (which is easy, and sometimes fun, in a really bad way) – or we end up just sitting in it. And that stinks.

        10. Sam

          It’s because they think:

          a) You are actually straight but claiming to be ‘bi’ to seem more open-minded. There are people who do this to try to impress people.

          b) You are actually gay but you think claiming to be ‘bi’ makes it easier for people to accept. Some people do this for their own safety.

          c) Bisexual people don’t exist or if they do must like both genders completely equally otherwise they are actually just gay or straight and pretending to be bisexual for one of the two reasons above.

          d) All bisexual people would pretend to be straight at any opportunity to. They don’t have any real pride in their sexuality and would dishonestly lie to their partners, friends and families that they are straight no matter what. Therefore the only bisexuals worth recognising and supporting are the ones who would choose to appear gay because otherwise they are too much like the straight people.

          So they’re either making assumptions, being horribly stereotypical or just being judgemental as hell about who is ‘openly bisexual’ enough to deserve support. There is a lot of ‘infighting’ in the LGBT+ community about who deserves support when it should be everyone, not just the ones that fit in specific boxes or show off that they’re LGBT+ constantly…

        11. The Phantom's Belch

          I’ve run into all of the above, at one point or another 🙁

    2. StClair

      Beautiful.

    3. DoggySpew

      Note the box is labelled “Jennifer”, making it look like she was the target, not Mary.

      1. Lucena

        Who is Jennifer?

        1. Mika

          Billie. Jennifer Billingsworth. 🙂

    4. anonymsly

      Adding to the whole thing, a little, we haven’t yet seen what the Rube Goldberg device actually does.

      I’d bet that the end result is actually something pretty, like glitter flying up out of the containers attached to the poles (like non-burning fireworks). And Carla can then claim (when Mary tries to get her in trouble) that the pretty display was an APOLOGY for annoying Mary in the first place, despite the actual truth of it being THE PERFECT REVENGE. Thus making Mary look even more petty, even more vindictive, and driving her even more crazy.

      All the applause for Carla, she’s covered every single base.

  103. KSClaw

    Suckeeeer!

  104. lia47

    MISDIRECTION

  105. Ryek Hvek

    I think it’s a rule that mechanical arms delivering pies to the face must terminate with a gloved hand.

  106. CianM1301

    I feel like this is appropriate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZBcVBqAAUI

  107. skdk

    yessss

  108. StClair

    that Grinchy expression…

  109. theheroesofcrash

    It’s… beautiful. Just beautiful.

  110. DoggySpew

    And nice detail: The box is labelled Jennifer, so Mary can’t bongo about being the target.

  111. Mr.Morningstar

    Get rekt

  112. L!ghtn!ng

    This just made my entire day! Thank you, Willis!

  113. Leila

    Hey, for once Willis gave us EXACTLY WHAT WE WANTED with no strings attached! YAY, PIE!

    1. Janet

      I dunno… we’ve been seeing Mary and Carla escalate this silly feud for a while now. I kind of wanted to see them come to some kind of middle ground instead of… well, just continuing to escalate things.

      Sure, they’re never going to be besties, but they’re supposed to be adults (young adults anyways) and it would have been nice to see Mary acknowledge that Carla has every right to be there and for Carla to recognize that Mary just wants to be able to study for her classes and they should both stop escalating this conflict.

      You’re always going to find people in life who rub you the wrong way. The mature thing is to try and mediate the conflict, not continue antagonizing each other.

      1. thejeff

        Gah. No. There is no equivalence here. There’s no middle ground. This isn’t a “silly feud” between people who rub each other the wrong way.

        Your premise is wrong. For “Carla to recognize that Mary just wants to be able to study for her classes” would be wrong, because Mary doesn’t just want to be able to study. That’s her excuse. Not her reason.
        Everyone else in the dorm isn’t bothered by Carla skating. Roz isn’t bothered by noises that make Mary jump up and check the door. Mary didn’t gather blackmail material because she just wants to be able to study. She’s not using it because she just wants to be able to study.
        She’s a bigot and she’s using it to control and punish those she’s prejudiced against. Carla backing off would just show her that she’d won. And then she’d escalate again, because why shouldn’t she? It’s working. Doing this shows her that she hasn’t. That Carla will stand up for herself.
        Sure, if you could find a way to teach her to overcome her bigotry, that would be better, but this isn’t that kind of after-school special. Carla isn’t that kind of character – she doesn’t exist to magically teach bigots that transfolks are real people by virtue of her suffering. She’s a jerk, though not as much of one as she wants to be thought. She’s a prankster and she has no fucks to give. And that’s alright. She doesn’t have to be That Perfect Girl.
        Because Mary’s prejudice isn’t her fault and isn’t her responsibility. She doesn’t have to fix it. By example or otherwise.

        1. Janet

          Like I said – I’m not suggesting they suddenly an inexplicably become besties. Mary has her prejudices and that’s not something that changes overnight, or even at all for some people.

          Yes – Carla should stand up for herself, but she could do that without resorting to a petty revenge scheme. She could rise above the fray and be the mature one here.

          I guess what’s bothering me is that I’m just not sure what Carla’s endgame is here. Is she just trying to escalate the feud? That seems beneath Carla. Is she trying to harass Mary until she moves to another dorm or goad her into doing something that gets her expelled? If so, what kind of message is that sending?

          Speaking from personal experience – the world is full of people who, for whatever reason, just aren’t going to like you or get along with you. Sometimes it’s prejudice, sometimes it’s bad experiences, sometimes there’s no reason at all. It sucks (especially if you’re like me and you wanna be friends with everyone), but these people exist and you can’t expel them and you can’t pie them all in the face (tempting as it might be!)

          You learn to live with them or you learn to avoid them, but you always strive to stay above them

        2. AUnicornNoOneAskedFor

          “You learn to live with them or you learn to avoid them.”

          Or you learn to stand up for yourself against them and stop living like it’s your job to not make waves.

        3. Cerberus

          It’s always put upon trans folks to “be above the fray” and accept the abuse of bigots who literally want us dead and to extend the olive branch towards them and act as if the assholes who call us child molesters and “it” are the equivalent of some roommate who listens to their music too loud sometimes.

          It’s always expected that we are never to be petty, that we are never to point out just how dehumanizing it is to literally beg for our humanity, that we are the ones to back down and compromise on the issue of whether or not we are people deserving of life.

          And since there is never any pressure put on the bigots, they and the world simply see it as normal that trans people consistently eat the abuse and put on a brave smile as people literally call for their death or try and drive them to suicide.

          And that adds up in a lifetime. Being constantly told that in an argument for your very right to exist, that you must “consider both sides” and “extend the hand of friendship”. That you shouldn’t give in to frustration or acknowledge the poison beneath your feet. You start to believe that, yeah, I must be worth less than cis people. My anger must not be legitimate. My suffering must just be a burden and an annoyance to all in my life. My life must not have worth.

          And then the rest of the world blinks and tut-tuts at the truly staggering numbers of trans suicides wondering why that keeps happening and never makes the connection to how it stems from how trans people are treated in society and what they are told are the only acceptable means of pushing back against communities that literally want us to die or disappear.

        4. Mika

          Yeah. Every trans suicide was a murder. A murder by degrees. Every time they call us ‘it’, every time they treat us like a predator, every glare, every scowl, every intentional misgendering or deadnaming is killing a piece of us. And eventually there’s no pieces left, no hope left that you can ever have a life free of this constant misery or pain. And then too many of us take what looks like the only way out of the misery. It’s a suicide, but it’s a murder, too. And they’re goddamn guilty.

        5. thejeff

          In addition to what Cerberus and some Unicorn we didn’t ask for said: It’s because you’re seeing it as a “silly feud” and not as bullying.
          In a feud someone has to be the better person and stop things. With a bully, taking that high road just encourages them to do more.

        6. Cerberus

          This. All the this.

          “Taking the high road” with bullies tends to result in a long long string of abuses and dehumanizations, because they see you as a passive perfect victim to feel superior to.

          Hell, we see that right now surrounding trans people. Trans people politely and calmly protesting their humanity, carefully explaining they are real human beings, while the lawmakers that craft these laws continue to escalate, continue to publicly link the term trans woman and the term sexual predator of children in everyone’s heads. Continue to come up with more and more elaborate variations of “fuck you, you don’t get to pee unless we say you can pee”.

          And if this gets resolved sooner rather than later, it’s only because people like the ACLU and the DOJ aren’t having any of it and are laying down the legal smackdown.

        7. Cerberus

          This. And it’s why Carla is kinda inspirational for some of the trans folk on the comment boards. Like, trans people are always expected to be the “brave smile” type of trans person and every time we go through the 9000th variation of the same old ritual of dehumanization who simply do not view it as worth their time to treat us as a human being, we want nothing more than to say fuck it and be petty like Carla. To design a whole giant contraption of revenge just to communicate the depths of our fuck yous, to scream and shout and yell, and to take no fucking shit.

          And the thing is, that in the real world, when trans folks hit their breaking point for this shit, they tend to be severely punished for it. Especially by people tsk tsking why they couldn’t be the nice happy suffering in silence trans people instead.

          Because the notion that we regain our own power, that we don’t coddle the cis majority every day all day by diminishing our own worth, is one that most people simply are not used to yet.

      2. AUnicornNoOneAskedFor

        thejeff pretty much said everything I was going to say, but I’d like to elaborate upon some parts of it.

        Silly feud – The animosity between Carla and Mary is entirely grounded in Mary’s relgious-based hatred of Carla’s gender identity. She routinely makes comments to that effect, including trying to take Carla “to the boys dorm where you belong.”

        Just wants to study – Carla bothers Mary simply by existing in a way that Mary disapproves of. Mary is aggressive, threatening, and blackmails an RA in the hopes of enlisting help in creating a horrific environment for Carla. Not because she’s noisy, but because Mary thinks she’s dirt, a sinner, and that she (Mary) has the RIGHT to punish “those” people all she likes.

        Escalation – Yes. Carla is reacting to a bully in a way that isn’t kind or sweet or timid, but why should she have to be any of those things? She’s being bullied in a way which can quickly become a stomach-turning suicide-inducing way of life for people in her position. She has a right to stick up for herself and ask to be treated like a person! And when she isn’t given that respect and common decency, she is under no obligation to shrug her shoulders and go “Oh well, guess I’ll just have to deal with the constant abuse/commentary/hypersensitive reactions to my existence.”

        If Sal reacted in this manner to someone who was consistently, viciously racist towards her, damaged her property (like the skates), and blackmailed Ruth into silence about it so that the abuse could continue, would you still feel like it was a silly escalation to “rubbing the wrong way” or would you be more understanding?

        If Ethan reacted in this manner to someone who was consistently, viciously homophobic towards him, damaged his property (like the skates), and blackmailed a male RA into silence about it so that the abuse could continue, would you still feel like it was a silly escalation to “rubbing the wrong way” or would you be more understanding?

        Not everyone has the benefit of the kind of personality and history that allows you to just blow off dickheads like this. And a lot of the power to blow off stuff like this instead of having to fight it as Carla is doing comes from knowing FOR SURE that no violence/expulsion/abuse is going to happen because of one asshole with a grudge. Unfortunately many people don’t have that kind of certainty, it wasn’t so long ago that black people and women were being beaten to death for trying to get equality…but it was much more recent for transgender people. Because it was yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

        She’s allowed to be a jerk. She’s allowed to defend herself. This is not a ‘silly feud’ over studying silence.

        1. AUnicornNoOneAskedFor

          Edit: I am aware that women and people of colour STILL get beaten to death for equality outside of the US, I was talking about Carla’s area in particular. <3

        2. Cerberus

          Thank you for calling out those intentional diminishments of the situation.

          Like, it’s not some silly feud over who would fake date hot Boy Band number 3, this is about Carla’s humanity and Mary feeling she is in a position where she can harass and abuse her with transphobic violence without consequence. Hell, she straight up got away with doing that and destroying her shit before, so of course she was going to continue to escalate in order to “get her shower room” back from the, to quote her, “misplaced freak”.

          Because to Mary, nothing short of Carla being shipped over to the boy’s wings would ever be enough for her.

          And Carla understands that bigots like this escalate to violence and murder real fucking easily when left unchecked or at the very least escalate to trying to stage protests about your right to access the same public facilities as anyone else.

          And for someone to call that a silly feud is to implicitly state that trans people’s humanity is “silly” or otherwise “minor” and to explicitly treat transphobia as some meaningless puff thing.

          Is Carla escalating? Hell yeah, she is. And bully for her for not just eating the abuse like the rest of us do. Cause she’s doing so in a non-violent manner that cuts to the core issues. It’s a lovely bit of non-violent protest like a glitter bomb and has a long and proud tradition in queer activism:
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS91gT3XT_A

          And yes, holy shit, all the yes on your response to the fucking zombie lie that is “Mary just wanted to study in peace”. Like, at this point we’ve had neon blinking light proof that Mary reacts to any noise in the vague proximity of her room because it’s an excuse for her to snoop around and gather blackmail material on people or reasons to hate and loathe folks. We’ve seen her curtain twitching for the quietest of noises, we’ve seen how little she actually values her studies, we’ve gone over ad nauseum how there’s a quiet study room literally at the end of the hall if she was really the type of silence only studier who can’t handle the slightest proof that other peole exist on the hall, we’ve seen how this trap wouldn’t even work if Mary wasn’t a paranoid snoop who angrily demands that those around her conform to her perceptions or a curtain twitcher with no respect for people’s things or right to exist.

          Hell, this plan wouldn’t even work unless it took literally nothing to get Mary peeking out her door or angrily react to the mere existence of a trans person in her hall more than to the cool RG machine in front of her.

          So I’m kinda done with all these Mary denialists who want to pretend she ever had a good reason for this “feud” other than absolute hatred that a trans person exists, who recycle this debunked bunkum.

          Cause it’s been about Carla’s humanity for Mary since their first encounter. It’s been about her not being able to abide the presence of a (slur for trans woman) on her floor. And every motherfucker who is deliberately misreading the comic to keep pitching this “equal faults” bullshit probably fucking knows that, they’re just hoping that we won’t notice the awfulness of their automatic sympathy for a bigot over her victim and the fact that they are willing to discount their empathy and support for the victim because she’s not “suffering properly” in the way they are accustomed to.

          And I’m done. Cause I’m done having the only trans story modeled for me be one where the trans person nobly suffers and dies to teach all the cis characters about the badness of transphobia. I want the story where the trans person pies the bigot in the face and lets the world know that they aren’t going to take this bullshit anymore.

          Cause, like Carla, I’m kinda done being the “acceptable losses” of a society that can’t even bother to care about our humanity in fiction, much less in life.

        3. Wraithy

          *all the applause*

          I think what the Carla haters are missing here is what Carla said a few weeks ago, basically laying out why she isn’t being the pure and noble victim here: Being trans basically means that she’s expected to be the perfect and wonderful example to show all the haters wrong…

          …and she’s a teenager.

          Sure, needling Mary like this is probably not going to make things better, but Mary’s shown no indication that she wants things to get better. Carla’s realized that and said “Screw it, she wants to pick a fight, I’m going to win it”.

        4. user 18

          Well put, thanks for taking the time to write that out.

    2. jeffepp

      Actually, there is a string. It’s attached to the balloon, that’s about to pop…

  114. TOD

    That was beautiful.

  115. Lurlock

    Okay, over-analyzing the trap as it was set up on the previous page – in order for Mary to be where she is in this strip, she would’ve had to walk around or under the string that’s tied between her doorknob and the device…

    Also, why her first instinct wasn’t simply “NOPE nope nope nope nope” and close the door immediately I can’t fathom. I mean, she already knew something fishy was up, there was no way that wouldn’t end badly for her in some way…

    1. DSL

      Walking away? Not our Mary.

      1. Cerberus

        This.

        It’s why the trap is brilliant. Because anyone else would just close the door, anyone else would just wander down the hall in the other way, anyone else wouldn’t go through the trouble of ducking under wires just to angrily confront Carla and demand her shit.

        Anyone else wouldn’t have been the immense amount of asshole that Mary is. But Mary is an asshole who will go out of her way to judge someone and to try and ruin their day. Mary loves confronting people she feels are sinners and trying to make them feel scared. Mary is a bully.

        And bullies don’t just back down and go away or at least not until you make them so scared that going after you will have real consequences for them.

        She was so focused on overpowering and outsmarting and winning against the (slur for trans woman) that she fell exactly into the real trap Carla laid out for her.

    2. Orion Fury

      Rule of Funny?

  116. DSL

    Heil Mary, pie in face, Carla has prank’d thee.
    Cursed are thou among hallmates and self-made is the petard of thy hoisting.
    Wholly Mary, mother of strife, prey on us freshmen now and in the hour of your embarrassment. Amen.

  117. Aquatus

    Residence Manager: Ruth what happened up there?
    Mary: Carla hit me in the face with a pie!!
    Ruth: Carla was showing us her Rube Goldberg thing and Mary jumped in at the last minute, all pissy about something, and stuck her face in the way of the pie thing.
    Mary: She was pranking me! She was deliberately trying to get back at me!
    Residence Manager: Why would she want to get back at you?
    Ruth: Mary came out on her own, and she snatched the box out of Carla’s hand. A better question would be why she’s so antagonistic towards Carla.

  118. Platypusknight

    this is the best thing.

  119. Cephalo the Pod

    This is a pretty great strip for my birthday.

  120. Zatar

    Perfection.

  121. Ryek Hvek

    wasn’t there a 1960’s TV series named I, Pie?

  122. a snow ʍousɐ

    See, I just don’t believe that bowling ball would bounce that high

    1. a snow ʍousɐ

      Or that a hairdryer would have a button on that part, or that it could be balanced on the books… tied to the torchpost maybe

  123. The Candyman

    Mary’s doing her best Grinch impression in the next to last panel.

    (As a side note, why did she even grab the box in the first place as opposed to, I don’t know, closing the door?)

    1. Nemirthel

      Because she responds to things she can’t control by resorting to aggression. If she were smart she would’ve just closed the door, but we’ve seen before that she isn’t smart. She’s so obsessed with knowing everything that happens on the floor that she feels like she HAS to know what the box is for. This entire prank relies on Mary acting like Mary.

      1. Cerberus

        Yup. The box is something she hasn’t stuck her nose in and made her business, so she aggressively does that with an evil grin on her face. Because she thinks she’s the moral arbiter of the entire floor and that everyone else’s private lives should be hers to control and dictate and certainly know everything about.

        Because that’s what a curtain twitcher does. Make up for the complete lack of life they live owing to their uptight nature by vicariously living through and judging all who surround you. Making sure to report them all or harass them all to teach them a lesson on why it is so much better of a life to be as miserable as them.

        Mary is a fiddle and Carla played her masterfully.

  124. Resulli

    The pies have returned. ALL HAIL PIE.

    1. Orion Fury

      All Hail Pie.

  125. Nezumi

    Called it, I think. Unless the other device also actually does something.

  126. zombody

    *clutches chest* that shortpacked! nostalgia tho
    the only possible satisfying conclusion

  127. Commodore Jeep-Eep

    My entire enjoyment of the joke is ruined by the fact that the inevitable retaliation will make the skate incident look tiny.

    1. CianM1301

      I’m predicting a slur will be uttered. But this time, Mary’ll have an audience, and I don’t think she can blackmail an entire dorm wing.

      1. Commodore Jeep-Eep

        I’m worried about something much more ugly than that.

        1. Cerberus

          I could definitely see Mary going ape-shit over this or trying to physically attack Carla.

          Though, I suspect what we’ll actually see is her using her Church on Sunday to “clue them in” on an issue of “safety” at her school and basically try and sic her holy rollers on Carla in order to protest her presence in the girl’s dorm.

        2. thejeff

          Certainly possible. I’m not sure it’s anymore likely now than if Carla had set back and meekly taken it.

          More likely, I suspect, she’ll try to push her leverage on Ruth farther. Make her do something about it.

        3. Cerberus

          That also seems likely. And I agree that she would probably go that route whether she was pranked or not.

        4. Orion Fury

          It’s been quite entertaining, the whole buildup we’ve been getting, but that been in the back of my mind. It’s Mary’s turn next, in essence. No good can come from this. Well, with her staying as a character.

        5. Commodore Jeep-Eep

          That possible med theft I mentioned might be the final escalation of a series starting here.

        6. trlkly

          Meh. Her parents are apparently rich as fuck. She could get new stuff overnighted to her, easy.

        7. Chonos

          Part of what makes it so hard to relate to Carla is how privileged she is. Her being trans aside, she’s white, rich, her parents accept and love her, and her transition appears to be flawless (see having rich parents who love her).

  128. Author X

    Bless you, Willis.

  129. Victor Riley

    I love Carla.

  130. Jason

    How many people called this? Many. But that may actually make this considerably more enjoyable!
    The best bit, to me, is that Mary snatched the box from Carla. She has no legitimate reason to complain. I mean, sure, she WILL- but it won’t get her anywhere. She snatched something that did not belong to her and opened it.
    She certainly got her…

    Just desserts.

    (I hate puns.)

  131. Cerberus

    Other cool thing about Dumbing of Age being set in the “real world”?

    It means that the pie in the face gag isn’t just a throwback to vaudeville and slapstick like the Three Stooges. It’s also a famous mechanism of non-violent protest of hateful bigots.

    And most famously, it is connected to the pieing of Anita Bryant by queer rights activists in protest of the hateful Briggs Initative (which was a California proposition up for state voting that would make it illegal for gay people to teach in schools or hold jobs relating to the care of children [because gay=pedophile, obviously]):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-A2Ql81WTY

    Which makes this not just about vaudeville and gaining power and paying homage to her favorite TV show for Carla. It makes this connected in a powerful way to queer history and how queer folk in a time when their enemies gleefully joked about their death and treated them as synonymous with child molesters non-violently fought back and took their power back.

    I don’t know if it is intentional on Carla’s part, but part of me wants to believe it is.

    1. Bagge

      I learnt something today!!!

      1. Spencer

        Dumbing of Age: Come for the soul crushing drama and pies to the face, stay for Cerberus education lessons.

        1. Arian

          Definitely.

    2. thejeff

      Pieings have been a tool of protest for many left wing causes. Not just queer history, but environmentalism and labor and others. Sadly the Biotic Baking Brigade seems defunct.

      Brings new meaning to “Pie in the sky” 🙂

      1. Cerberus

        Oh definitely! Proud activist tradition all over the place. Anita Bryant is just the most famous example imo.

    3. StClair

      not just the pedophile false equivalency, but because gay teachers will inevitably end up teaching the innocent, vulnerable chillins the LIE that being gay is something perfectly normal and NOT a mortal sin, etc etc.

      1. Cerberus

        To be fair to them, like 90% of my classes are just gay indoctrination into the secret Homosexual Agenda, so…

        1. Orion Fury

          And the other 10%?

    4. cmd1095

      O.o I had no idea that this was a thing but that’s amazing and I’ll have to research it further. I know what I must now bring to political protests if one ever happens by me

  132. Alex Boston

    Well I guess we discovered the rube in the Rube-Goldberg device. 😉

    1. Kamino Neko

      Nice. Thumbs up.

  133. Joey245

    Revenge is a dish best served with whipped cream and fruit filling.

    1. Bagge

      I’m kinda interested in the recipes now.

  134. The Phantom's Belch

    Hmm… I’m thinking banana creme for the pie, because that’s classic, but a lemon meringue pie would work too.

    Preferably some flavor Mary hates, too. (She’s a Hater by nature, so the possibilities are wide open.)

  135. chris73

    That face where Marys holding the box is disturbing yet I can’t look away,its like something from the original Planet of the Apes…or the face she makes when shes diddling herself

  136. Gamaran Sepudomyn

    My thoughts on this strip: Carla is awesome.

    My thoughts right now: I finally understand Comic Sans. Sans means without!

  137. Bagge

    I love Mary’s smile in the second to last panel. “Moahahahah, I got the box! I WON!!! Never mind the contraption going off just behind me or anything, clearly whoever has the box WINS!!!”

    I mean, for a less awesomely brilliantly ridiculous mind than Carla’s the box would only contain spare parts or something like that, but nope, Mary is going for THE BOX!!!

    …just like planned.

    1. Chronos

      Clearly, Mary has never seen “Let’s Make a Deal.” You *never* go for the box.

  138. Tenn

    Encore! Encore! 😀

  139. showler

    I bought a cream pie tonight to celebrate. I intend to hit myself in the mouth with it repeatedly.

    1. The Phantom's Belch

      The best kind of celebration! 🙂

    2. Bagge

      A noble endeavor

  140. avistel

    The slow pie penetrates the shield…

  141. Anonymouse

    12:04 am and I don’t have the next comic yet… AGHHH

    1. Orion Fury

      I know the feeling.

  142. Henry

    Can we have an animated gif of Mary getting a pie to the face? So we can save it for a rainy day, and pull it out when we’re feeling blue to relive the moment Christian Warrior Ass Queen Mary got her righteous comeuppance?

  143. UncleDrew

    As mean spirited as Mary seems, I would wager she wears wrist bands to hide scars from a cutting incident that she prefers not to discuss. That or she’s an anime character incarnate.

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