Janneke is apparently a Dutch name? Honestly yeah I can see it.
Also with both her parents being blonde, maybe Carla is one too?
AMagicalDuck
There was a patreon bonus strip like 9 years ago that showed Carla was blonde as a child
BarerMender
I believe it’s canon that Carla dyes.
Nono
I mean it was a given, that shade of red wouldn’t be natural for most people. Just wasn’t clear what her natural hair colour would be.
Qube
I would’ve assumed “attention seeking”
GreyICE
Ah yes, the only reason a person would change their appearance is to seek attention!
Mr D phone posting
While I would normally agree with you, this *is* Carla we are speaking about.
thejeff
I’d say with Carla it’s more attention deflecting. Focus on what I want you to focus on, not on me being trans.
Which makes me wonder, did she start dying her hair after all the publicity about her coming out and the the law suit?
Sirksome
I thought it was specifically to look more like her favorite character Ultra Car who is red.
Dr. T
What are you talking about? My hair is exactly her shade and used to be even more scarlet in my youth.
eh, whatever
For any people.
anon
Billie did say ‘not a natural redhead’ and made joyce freak out about it in aflashback when she was still acting like afundie
Needfuldoer
She is. She dyes her hair dark red.
PipersSon
Actually, to me, it looks a bit like her mom is a strawberry blonde and her dad has light brown or dirty blonde hair. But I believe it has also been stated that Carla does dye her hair.
I think part of the issue is the fact that we have an unusual problem with the LGBTA supporters among the characters having their activism there running into the activism for the Muslim-coded Bulmeria. Joyce doesn’t care about Bulmeria. It’s not on her radar and she didn’t go down to the protest to do anything other than to save her trans sister from being outed. Carla’s incredibly pro-trans rights billionaire parents (the opposite of Elon) are also apparently all in on Bulmeria arms trafficking with Carla forced to confront the issue. Hank is pro-his queer daughter and anti-Bulmeria (probably because the Book of Cheese says that it’s necessary to bring about the apocalypse).
It’s not a deliberate thing, Dorothy clearly intellectually knows the Bulmeria situation is terrible and protested for all of five seconds. Jocelyne is trans and is absolutely caring about Bulmeria. Asma is apparently queer as well and pro-Bulmeria.
But the story may or may not be setting a Western problems versus Eastern problems one. Possibly with some racial tensions underlying them.
Poor Carla and Joyce must both choose between allying with their family versus growing in greater oppression consciousness.
Nuance and the comments here are like vampires and sunlight.
Pocky
Nuance? In DoA? Blasphemy! /s
Although; I will never say the message has been subtle. Especially with lines like “I was heroically gay. I deserve a medal” coming out of the heel of the arc. Or the hilarious Willis quote of “suck it Raidah haters”. Its got all the subtlety of a jackhammer lol
I think at some; if people can’t tell where Willis is leaning in this plotline, they may just have to brush up on their media literacy.
Taellosse
You sure? I kinda feel like Willis’ overarching message – not just in this storyline, but in most of DoA – is “life and the world are complicated and messy. Nothing and no one are just one thing all the time and from every angle, and a big part of growing up – which is, fundamentally, what DoA IS about – is confronting the reality that the simplistic answers and categories we learned to divide reality up into are just that: simplistic. The real world defies easy, neat, one-sided explanations, and people are messy. They’re hardly ever just good or bad, right or wrong, no matter how much you try to force them to be.”
Or maybe I’m just projecting my own distaste for blind partisanship and pat narratives. Yeah, that must be it. “The characters I like are good, and the ones I don’t are bad. The events that remind me of things I disagree with are wrong, and the ones that make me think of things I enjoy are right.” Yes, this must be the real message, after all!
Pocky
the comic is called DUMBING of Age for a reason. Bunch of college kids being messy, getting into relationships, facreolling through schooling, and dealing with family drama. I actually think a lot of said family drama has been great; especially well handled, given how dark the themes got during the whole kidnapping arc.
I think the added layer of a real world genocide allegory did kind of muddy the waters though. Willis hasn’t exactly handled that with the same level of nuance. Especially when a lot of it is also still tied into the whole controversial Joyce/Dorothy ship.
Also probably because Willis really wanted to put out the Slipshine stuff. That might’ve also played a part in it lol
C.T Phipps
My take on the subject is Willis never intended the protest to be anything other than a backdrop but now has realized it’s a very cool subject to tackle: which is the growing awareness of politics beyond your immediate area and concerns.
And its throwing a lot of people for a loop because Dorothy and Joyce’s bisexual awakening and Carla’s parents with their trans support are now getting muddied with a larger subject outside of anything normally related to the story.
And there’s no answer for this because none of them can really change anything in Bulmeria.
Morrison
You are wrong, C.T. Phipps. Your one of my favorite authors by the way. There is some sort of right-wing commentator from It’sWalky! that Willis has been asked about a few years ago if he would show up. Willis confirmed he does exist in the DOA universe. “I know where HE’S at. I know what HE’S doing.” This was shorty after Gash-Face met Amber. I thought Willis meant this guy would show up representing Ryan in court or being a correspondent on it or something. Now I see a new possibility. Being a major player in this political storyline, featuring former congressional representative Robin DeSanto.
I mean, Dumbing of Age itself doesn’t really do “nuance”, and neither did the Walkyverse. Every character Willis has ever written has either been “kind of rude but basically good” or “literally Hitler”. Which is fine! A lot of haters call that a “flaw” but it’s a Scrubs-esque dramedy webcomic and wouldn’t benefit from making, like, Mary into a morally gray antihero or whatever. But it’s not a great precedential framework for a Very Special Episode.
Especially when the inciting incident of the Very Special Episode wasn’t written to be such, because nothing at the protest portrayed Joyce as in the wrong and there were no meaningful consequences from it (the idea that the school newspaper is the only source of information about a major student protest is preposterous), so all your metaphors are scrambled from the jump because they’re not meant to be metaphors.
Sirksome
I feel like there’s a discussion here about the nature of storytelling I’m not quite articulate enough to communicate. Like it’s been very apparent from the start that DoA is a fairly low stakes, slice of life, dramedy. So why is Willis being so heavily scrutinized for telling a story at a protest that’s not about the protest? It was just a narrative choice to justify certain characters being involved and motivate action but it’s turned out to be very polarizing. Is that just subjects to be avoided if you’re inherently trying to present a political message? I personally think you should be able to tell a silly romance drama set in the middle of a protest. Everything is fair game. If people didn’t like it just try harder next time to improve.
Like now we’re debating Carla’s parents and the implications of billionaire morality and war profiteering, but is that really the story Willis planned to tell or is it just fun that Carla has billionaire parents?
I don’t think I’m conveying my ideas well here but I hope someone understands what I’m getting at.
Nono
It’s because DoA itself raised the stakes. From murderous fathers to mob justice to war protests.
If social commentary about billionaire funding wasn’t meant to be a part of the plot, then Booster wouldn’t have brought it up to Carla, and Mary wouldn’t have rubbed it in Carla’s face, and Charlie wouldn’t have brought it up again. Note that nobody really cared about Carla having rich parents til it was brought up in the story, but because Willis introduced it, it becomes a topic of discussion.
DoA is considerably lower-stakes compared to the Walkyverse but even it struck out with the reality of vigilante justice in like the first couple years.
Opinion
Its because its a slice of life low stakes comic and that’s fine. But when you introduce protests and genocide and weapon sales you get significantly less “low stakes”.
The protest didn’t happen it was a writing choice Willis made to have a protest, to introduce the concept of Bulmeria and imply all hes implied about it. But when you introduce that level of weight and stakes you have to deal with that level of stakes.
thejeff
I guess, in a sense, but the comic has always dealt with larger issues. We had an attempted rape early on. Kidnappings, murders, abusive parents, a homeless lesbian teen, political campaigns. I don’t think protests are really higher stakes than what these kids have already dealt with.
Genocide would be, but they’re only dealing with that abstractly and would be no matter how well Willis handled it. They’re not being genocided. They’re protesting a genocide far away. The stakes for them don’t change.
Lys
I may be mistaken, because it’s not a sentiment I share, but I get the impression some people don’t like it when certain sensitive issue are used as background elements in someone else’s story. For example, consider a story focusing on a man’s feelings when the rape of a woman he doesn’t know affects his social circle, particularly if the events surrounding that are integrated into his personal journey of self-actualization. I’m fairly certain many people would find that offensive, because they consider rape to be too serious a subject to be brought up and not centered, especially if it’s the rape of a woman being used in a story about how a man feels. I think some of the readership here is the same way about the Bulmeria situation reading as equivalent to the Palestine situation. To them, brown people being genocided is too serious a matter to use as a background element in the story of two white girls being gay for each other.
Now, personally I think you can use anything as a background element because all actions and events have consequences, and all stories about those consequences are valid. It’s okay for Joyce and Dorothy’s personal journey to get tangled up in a serious protest about a serious issue they don’t really care about, because that’s how things happen in the world sometimes.
eh, whatever
nothing at the protest portrayed Joyce as in the wrong and there were no meaningful consequences from it
I find that a remarkably impatient take. How many days have passed since the protest? One?
Yotomoe
In comic? 0
In the real world? Months.
I think ‘impatient” isn’t the best word choice given how long the wait has been.
Yeah, I honestly think the story has bitten off more than it can chew, topic-wise.
If this is gonna be a story about Carla reckoning with her parents being supportive of her but complicit in other bad things, I’m not too beat up about it. But that’s about the only version that seems clear enough to work into the comic’s flow without derailing a lot of stuff.
Especially when it’s a sort of slice-of-life comic about college kids. Now we have people involved that might actually change the world, like Carla’s parents, and the scale of conflicts might start increasing more.
The cops weren’t just hanging out at the protest coincidentally, they were there because the school called him in advance of the protests. Asma was tear-gassed by her own boss, and that angle hasn’t come up yet at all.
We saw in real time people basically competing over who got to be thrown under the bus first during that last election; and all it did was just result in two communities doing a synchronized roll under the bus together. Fighting fascism takes unity, but fascists are REALLY good at dividing minority groups, and neoliberals are really bad at being allies when it rubs up against money.
Carla’s parents being super supportive of her is wonderful; but its up against the background of the whole genocide stuff. So; like a lot of real life people in the 1%, they can have left leaning positions, and still be totally willing to not have any left for the people they stand to profit in hurting. Doubly so if they actually care about their kids who are LGBTQ+.
Willis; you better not cut away to something else before this conversation becomes super uncomfortable. Gotta let people stew in it! lol
Personally I think it’s a very usual problem. Queerness does not erase whiteness and white queers placing their own interests over that of nonwhite people is a common issue. Often it’s genuine naivety, particularly with younger people. I definitely had a rough education during my early uni days. It’s a big part of the criticism Willis got over the tear gas kiss, and I think it’s pretty suitable for it to be an in-comic topic as well.
Do we really need, have a deficit of coming out narratives where coming out is immediately shamed for White Centrism and Narcissism?
Maybe clueless queers is a story that needs to be told or talking padr people of color.
But in Coming out stories where people are already routinely shamed and ostracized?
I don’t see how thats anything anybody needs. Especially casting people of color as the foil.
How is that not talking past Queer people of color who get this from all sides ?
I think this hits different a year after Trump is elected.
.
I think it would help if we knew…a single thing about Bulmeria? How long has this civil war been going on? Why is there a civil war? Are the “civillians” being killed actually violent rebels teying to overthrow a democratically elected government? Is thebgovernment actually a junta conductingvthebusual junta ethnic cleansing? What form of government does Bulmeria even have? Where even *is* Bulmeria (They’re Muslim coded but let’s not forget the biggest Muslim nation in the world isn’t in the Middle East)?
I think there’s actually some interesting things to be said that Joyce had no idea what Bulmeria is about and thus doesn’t care. Dorothy does but probably only a laywoman’s knowledge because it’s not a subject she’s invested in.
Jocelyne knows a lot.
But Joyce doesn’t CARE to learn because she has her own thing going on and is annoyed everyone is distracting her from it.
Veronica
Joyce knowing nothing about Bulmeria is the most believable part of this whole arc. A first year uni student (a previously home-schooling one at that) who doesn’t know *anything* world events or even her own country’s politics? 100000% believable
Jon
Hell, I (attempt to) communicate with full-grown adults in various fora who know nothing of either world events or their own nations’ politics (from Americans who are unaware that Puerto Ricans are American citizens to Brits who don’t quite grasp that Brexit means they’re no longer in the EU to at least three Nigerians who don’t believe racism in America is a big deal). A freshman in college? One who arrived there still in the grip of Evangelical fundamentalism, whose primary goal was to find a husband and learn just enough to home-school her kids? Yeah, I buy that she doesn’t know anything about anything, and is proud of herself when she picks something new up.
This. ‘Why don’t you care about Bulmeria’ rings kinda false when the author doesn’t really seem to care about Bulmeria, and the place is just a nebulous prop to use in this story of privileged American college life. in this case, as a background for Joyce and Dorothy’s self-discovery.
I’d be happy if Willis decided to do some serious world-building, and describe where Bulmeria supposedly is/what all the issues are there in a reasonable amount of detail. I’d also be happy if Willis decides to drop Bulmeria entirely as an aspect of these stories (surely America has enough civil issues of its own that these could now be the primary focus of protests going forward), and I’d also be happy if Willis just rips off the Bulmeria bandage and just starts openly using, say, Israel-Palestine or the Sudanese Civil War. Because right now, for all the supposed ‘seriousness’ of Bulmeria, all it really comes across is a supporting crutch for a cast of mostly privileged Americans (and one Englishman, one Canadianwoman, one Asma and one Sarah (is she really the only main-cast student that a scholarship has been mentioned for?))
@Veronica: I don’t think the details really matter. And giving some details would likely just lead to arguments about what they mean, mostly based on analogy to real conflicts that people already had strong opinions about.
We know enough and we can basically accept Willis’s narrative slant on the conflict without dissecting it the way we might if we had more details. We know it’s a genocide – which strongly implies one ethnic group being targeted. We know the government has access to US weapons. We know US right wing/mainstream media is calling the opposition terrorists. It seems to be an internal conflict, but I don’t think we’ve seen anyone calling it a civil war – which implies a very strong power imbalance.
In theory, without giving the details Willis could pull some kind of twist and have the government of Bulmeria actually be the good guys and the leftie protesters here completely wrong, but we know that’s not going to happen. I don’t see what more details on the conflict actually gives us.
The Queer Agenda [frog memes]
This. We should all be able to agree that y’know, genocide bad, no matter who it’s happening to? There’s unfortunately no shortage of current ongoing war crimes around the world. I think it’s probably best to leave writing about a specific one to stories centered around it. This comic is probably going for a story about sheltered college students discovering what intersectionality is, and there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just telling a different story.
It’s pretty safe to assume the side that’s sending snipers and riot cops against a peaceful student protest is the bad one, and extrapolate from there.
“Unusual Problem” is coding for Willis making mystifying editorial decision to Pitt a decades long coming out narrative of the main character against racism.
He knows his audience is babies. And can barely stand proud coming out narratives.
Everyone getting mean and ugly at commenters needs to remember it was deliberate.
People actually defended Mary for transphobia and comments had to be locked.
Blaine was kinda in deep with the mob… I think if nothing else that puts him as an equal
Thag Simmons
Blaine was a money-washer for a regional crime syndicate. These two run a major military contractor
These are an order of magnitude apart
Alongcameaspider
Just one order of magnitude?
Doopyboop
With how easily he turned to violence and kidnapping I don’t think he was only involved with monetary crimes.
Gotthammer
Unless he killed half a million civilians in the last two decades he’s well behind anyone involved with arming the US.
Doopyboop
*sighs and waves a lil white flag like a looney toon*
Qube
y’ever read that Discworld book, “Going Postal”? Mr. Pump’s dressing-down of Moist von Lipwig’s “harmless” crimes springs to mind; like, just because he wasn’t an actual murderer and only swindled “guilty” people doesn’t mean he didn’t indirectly drive a lot of innocent people to an early grave
or like… y’know how a lit match is obviously way hotter than an ice sculpture, but the ice sculpture has so much more mass- and thus more overall thermal energy- that there’s no way that match could ever melt it?
like carla’s parents might be vanilla-strawberry sweetie pies who could never bring themselves to harm anyone directly, but just because a person is “harmless” doesn’t mean they’re “good”. and you don’t make a billion dollars by being a good person
Jon
@Qube: Puts me in mind of a line from one of the Witch’s songs in “Into the Woods”.
You’re so nice –
You’re not good, you’re not bad,
You’re just nice…
anonymsly
Given that the US purchases arms with taxpayers funds, may I say that I resent the seeming implication that every single individual person who has ever paid any form of tax person in this country is worse than Blaine O’Malley?
Gotthammer
Oh come on. Obviously, given the context of all the previous comments, I was specifically meaning Carla’s parents and other military contractors not that every single USAmerican is worse than Blaine (who is also American – so would he be worse than himself?).
Next you’ll be saying I said we should be pissing on the poor
256 thoughts on “Pumpkin”
Ana Chronistic
ₓ˚. ୭ ˚○◦˚(✪▽✪) 【☆】ω【☆】.˚◦○˚ ୧ .˚ₓ
True Survivor
Alright! Ana’s back!
Lokitsu
I can see where Carla gets her mean streak from. XD
Welcome back Ana!
EtchJetty
not!joe and not!rachel revealed… after all these years
C.T Phipps
“Mom, dad, are you war criminals?”
“Is it a war crime to provide weapons to the Bulmerian government to defend itself?”
“Does defending itself mean killing thousands of children?”
“oops, sorry, bad connection! You’re breaking up.”
“I can see you making the hissing noises, dad.”
KM
I feel they will preface this with a “oh pumpkin [sadface]”
Doctor_Who
Aw man, they already have names.
I was hoping for Jo and Raphael.
Thag Simmons
They’re good names!
Nono
Janneke is apparently a Dutch name? Honestly yeah I can see it.
Also with both her parents being blonde, maybe Carla is one too?
AMagicalDuck
There was a patreon bonus strip like 9 years ago that showed Carla was blonde as a child
BarerMender
I believe it’s canon that Carla dyes.
Nono
I mean it was a given, that shade of red wouldn’t be natural for most people. Just wasn’t clear what her natural hair colour would be.
Qube
I would’ve assumed “attention seeking”
GreyICE
Ah yes, the only reason a person would change their appearance is to seek attention!
Mr D phone posting
While I would normally agree with you, this *is* Carla we are speaking about.
thejeff
I’d say with Carla it’s more attention deflecting. Focus on what I want you to focus on, not on me being trans.
Which makes me wonder, did she start dying her hair after all the publicity about her coming out and the the law suit?
Sirksome
I thought it was specifically to look more like her favorite character Ultra Car who is red.
Dr. T
What are you talking about? My hair is exactly her shade and used to be even more scarlet in my youth.
eh, whatever
For any people.
anon
Billie did say ‘not a natural redhead’ and made joyce freak out about it in aflashback when she was still acting like afundie
Needfuldoer
She is. She dyes her hair dark red.
PipersSon
Actually, to me, it looks a bit like her mom is a strawberry blonde and her dad has light brown or dirty blonde hair. But I believe it has also been stated that Carla does dye her hair.
Blibdoolpoolp
The biggest reveal in my time as a fan, and I saw a guy plummet to his death.
Miafillene
Your name seems kinda…Fishy…
???
Imp
Shh. Anger not the Kuo-Toa.
C.T Phipps
I think part of the issue is the fact that we have an unusual problem with the LGBTA supporters among the characters having their activism there running into the activism for the Muslim-coded Bulmeria. Joyce doesn’t care about Bulmeria. It’s not on her radar and she didn’t go down to the protest to do anything other than to save her trans sister from being outed. Carla’s incredibly pro-trans rights billionaire parents (the opposite of Elon) are also apparently all in on Bulmeria arms trafficking with Carla forced to confront the issue. Hank is pro-his queer daughter and anti-Bulmeria (probably because the Book of Cheese says that it’s necessary to bring about the apocalypse).
It’s not a deliberate thing, Dorothy clearly intellectually knows the Bulmeria situation is terrible and protested for all of five seconds. Jocelyne is trans and is absolutely caring about Bulmeria. Asma is apparently queer as well and pro-Bulmeria.
But the story may or may not be setting a Western problems versus Eastern problems one. Possibly with some racial tensions underlying them.
Poor Carla and Joyce must both choose between allying with their family versus growing in greater oppression consciousness.
Donovan
Its certainly…fraught.
C.T Phipps
Nuance and the comments here are like vampires and sunlight.
Pocky
Nuance? In DoA? Blasphemy! /s
Although; I will never say the message has been subtle. Especially with lines like “I was heroically gay. I deserve a medal” coming out of the heel of the arc. Or the hilarious Willis quote of “suck it Raidah haters”. Its got all the subtlety of a jackhammer lol
I think at some; if people can’t tell where Willis is leaning in this plotline, they may just have to brush up on their media literacy.
Taellosse
You sure? I kinda feel like Willis’ overarching message – not just in this storyline, but in most of DoA – is “life and the world are complicated and messy. Nothing and no one are just one thing all the time and from every angle, and a big part of growing up – which is, fundamentally, what DoA IS about – is confronting the reality that the simplistic answers and categories we learned to divide reality up into are just that: simplistic. The real world defies easy, neat, one-sided explanations, and people are messy. They’re hardly ever just good or bad, right or wrong, no matter how much you try to force them to be.”
Or maybe I’m just projecting my own distaste for blind partisanship and pat narratives. Yeah, that must be it. “The characters I like are good, and the ones I don’t are bad. The events that remind me of things I disagree with are wrong, and the ones that make me think of things I enjoy are right.” Yes, this must be the real message, after all!
Pocky
the comic is called DUMBING of Age for a reason. Bunch of college kids being messy, getting into relationships, facreolling through schooling, and dealing with family drama. I actually think a lot of said family drama has been great; especially well handled, given how dark the themes got during the whole kidnapping arc.
I think the added layer of a real world genocide allegory did kind of muddy the waters though. Willis hasn’t exactly handled that with the same level of nuance. Especially when a lot of it is also still tied into the whole controversial Joyce/Dorothy ship.
Also probably because Willis really wanted to put out the Slipshine stuff. That might’ve also played a part in it lol
C.T Phipps
My take on the subject is Willis never intended the protest to be anything other than a backdrop but now has realized it’s a very cool subject to tackle: which is the growing awareness of politics beyond your immediate area and concerns.
And its throwing a lot of people for a loop because Dorothy and Joyce’s bisexual awakening and Carla’s parents with their trans support are now getting muddied with a larger subject outside of anything normally related to the story.
And there’s no answer for this because none of them can really change anything in Bulmeria.
Morrison
You are wrong, C.T. Phipps. Your one of my favorite authors by the way. There is some sort of right-wing commentator from It’sWalky! that Willis has been asked about a few years ago if he would show up. Willis confirmed he does exist in the DOA universe. “I know where HE’S at. I know what HE’S doing.” This was shorty after Gash-Face met Amber. I thought Willis meant this guy would show up representing Ryan in court or being a correspondent on it or something. Now I see a new possibility. Being a major player in this political storyline, featuring former congressional representative Robin DeSanto.
C.T Phipps
Thanks, Morrison! Appreciated!
Morrison
You’re so welcome!
ESM
I mean, Dumbing of Age itself doesn’t really do “nuance”, and neither did the Walkyverse. Every character Willis has ever written has either been “kind of rude but basically good” or “literally Hitler”. Which is fine! A lot of haters call that a “flaw” but it’s a Scrubs-esque dramedy webcomic and wouldn’t benefit from making, like, Mary into a morally gray antihero or whatever. But it’s not a great precedential framework for a Very Special Episode.
Especially when the inciting incident of the Very Special Episode wasn’t written to be such, because nothing at the protest portrayed Joyce as in the wrong and there were no meaningful consequences from it (the idea that the school newspaper is the only source of information about a major student protest is preposterous), so all your metaphors are scrambled from the jump because they’re not meant to be metaphors.
Sirksome
I feel like there’s a discussion here about the nature of storytelling I’m not quite articulate enough to communicate. Like it’s been very apparent from the start that DoA is a fairly low stakes, slice of life, dramedy. So why is Willis being so heavily scrutinized for telling a story at a protest that’s not about the protest? It was just a narrative choice to justify certain characters being involved and motivate action but it’s turned out to be very polarizing. Is that just subjects to be avoided if you’re inherently trying to present a political message? I personally think you should be able to tell a silly romance drama set in the middle of a protest. Everything is fair game. If people didn’t like it just try harder next time to improve.
Like now we’re debating Carla’s parents and the implications of billionaire morality and war profiteering, but is that really the story Willis planned to tell or is it just fun that Carla has billionaire parents?
I don’t think I’m conveying my ideas well here but I hope someone understands what I’m getting at.
Nono
It’s because DoA itself raised the stakes. From murderous fathers to mob justice to war protests.
If social commentary about billionaire funding wasn’t meant to be a part of the plot, then Booster wouldn’t have brought it up to Carla, and Mary wouldn’t have rubbed it in Carla’s face, and Charlie wouldn’t have brought it up again. Note that nobody really cared about Carla having rich parents til it was brought up in the story, but because Willis introduced it, it becomes a topic of discussion.
DoA is considerably lower-stakes compared to the Walkyverse but even it struck out with the reality of vigilante justice in like the first couple years.
Opinion
Its because its a slice of life low stakes comic and that’s fine. But when you introduce protests and genocide and weapon sales you get significantly less “low stakes”.
The protest didn’t happen it was a writing choice Willis made to have a protest, to introduce the concept of Bulmeria and imply all hes implied about it. But when you introduce that level of weight and stakes you have to deal with that level of stakes.
thejeff
I guess, in a sense, but the comic has always dealt with larger issues. We had an attempted rape early on. Kidnappings, murders, abusive parents, a homeless lesbian teen, political campaigns. I don’t think protests are really higher stakes than what these kids have already dealt with.
Genocide would be, but they’re only dealing with that abstractly and would be no matter how well Willis handled it. They’re not being genocided. They’re protesting a genocide far away. The stakes for them don’t change.
Lys
I may be mistaken, because it’s not a sentiment I share, but I get the impression some people don’t like it when certain sensitive issue are used as background elements in someone else’s story. For example, consider a story focusing on a man’s feelings when the rape of a woman he doesn’t know affects his social circle, particularly if the events surrounding that are integrated into his personal journey of self-actualization. I’m fairly certain many people would find that offensive, because they consider rape to be too serious a subject to be brought up and not centered, especially if it’s the rape of a woman being used in a story about how a man feels. I think some of the readership here is the same way about the Bulmeria situation reading as equivalent to the Palestine situation. To them, brown people being genocided is too serious a matter to use as a background element in the story of two white girls being gay for each other.
Now, personally I think you can use anything as a background element because all actions and events have consequences, and all stories about those consequences are valid. It’s okay for Joyce and Dorothy’s personal journey to get tangled up in a serious protest about a serious issue they don’t really care about, because that’s how things happen in the world sometimes.
eh, whatever
I find that a remarkably impatient take. How many days have passed since the protest? One?
Yotomoe
In comic? 0
In the real world? Months.
I think ‘impatient” isn’t the best word choice given how long the wait has been.
Jon
Yeah, I honestly think the story has bitten off more than it can chew, topic-wise.
If this is gonna be a story about Carla reckoning with her parents being supportive of her but complicit in other bad things, I’m not too beat up about it. But that’s about the only version that seems clear enough to work into the comic’s flow without derailing a lot of stuff.
Nono
Especially when it’s a sort of slice-of-life comic about college kids. Now we have people involved that might actually change the world, like Carla’s parents, and the scale of conflicts might start increasing more.
ESM
The cops weren’t just hanging out at the protest coincidentally, they were there because the school called him in advance of the protests. Asma was tear-gassed by her own boss, and that angle hasn’t come up yet at all.
Pocky
We saw in real time people basically competing over who got to be thrown under the bus first during that last election; and all it did was just result in two communities doing a synchronized roll under the bus together. Fighting fascism takes unity, but fascists are REALLY good at dividing minority groups, and neoliberals are really bad at being allies when it rubs up against money.
Carla’s parents being super supportive of her is wonderful; but its up against the background of the whole genocide stuff. So; like a lot of real life people in the 1%, they can have left leaning positions, and still be totally willing to not have any left for the people they stand to profit in hurting. Doubly so if they actually care about their kids who are LGBTQ+.
Willis; you better not cut away to something else before this conversation becomes super uncomfortable. Gotta let people stew in it! lol
Bogeywoman
Personally I think it’s a very usual problem. Queerness does not erase whiteness and white queers placing their own interests over that of nonwhite people is a common issue. Often it’s genuine naivety, particularly with younger people. I definitely had a rough education during my early uni days. It’s a big part of the criticism Willis got over the tear gas kiss, and I think it’s pretty suitable for it to be an in-comic topic as well.
Adam Black
Is it tho?
Do we really need, have a deficit of coming out narratives where coming out is immediately shamed for White Centrism and Narcissism?
Maybe clueless queers is a story that needs to be told or talking padr people of color.
But in Coming out stories where people are already routinely shamed and ostracized?
I don’t see how thats anything anybody needs. Especially casting people of color as the foil.
How is that not talking past Queer people of color who get this from all sides ?
I think this hits different a year after Trump is elected.
.
Veronica
I think it would help if we knew…a single thing about Bulmeria? How long has this civil war been going on? Why is there a civil war? Are the “civillians” being killed actually violent rebels teying to overthrow a democratically elected government? Is thebgovernment actually a junta conductingvthebusual junta ethnic cleansing? What form of government does Bulmeria even have? Where even *is* Bulmeria (They’re Muslim coded but let’s not forget the biggest Muslim nation in the world isn’t in the Middle East)?
C.T Phipps
I think there’s actually some interesting things to be said that Joyce had no idea what Bulmeria is about and thus doesn’t care. Dorothy does but probably only a laywoman’s knowledge because it’s not a subject she’s invested in.
Jocelyne knows a lot.
But Joyce doesn’t CARE to learn because she has her own thing going on and is annoyed everyone is distracting her from it.
Veronica
Joyce knowing nothing about Bulmeria is the most believable part of this whole arc. A first year uni student (a previously home-schooling one at that) who doesn’t know *anything* world events or even her own country’s politics? 100000% believable
Jon
Hell, I (attempt to) communicate with full-grown adults in various fora who know nothing of either world events or their own nations’ politics (from Americans who are unaware that Puerto Ricans are American citizens to Brits who don’t quite grasp that Brexit means they’re no longer in the EU to at least three Nigerians who don’t believe racism in America is a big deal). A freshman in college? One who arrived there still in the grip of Evangelical fundamentalism, whose primary goal was to find a husband and learn just enough to home-school her kids? Yeah, I buy that she doesn’t know anything about anything, and is proud of herself when she picks something new up.
Adam Black
I don’t give a crap about learning any Bulmeria details.
Darfur is basically getting fully erased and the news is burying all details.
I have zero responsibility For learning pretend Genocide details during a massive real one.
Kammon
This. ‘Why don’t you care about Bulmeria’ rings kinda false when the author doesn’t really seem to care about Bulmeria, and the place is just a nebulous prop to use in this story of privileged American college life. in this case, as a background for Joyce and Dorothy’s self-discovery.
I’d be happy if Willis decided to do some serious world-building, and describe where Bulmeria supposedly is/what all the issues are there in a reasonable amount of detail. I’d also be happy if Willis decides to drop Bulmeria entirely as an aspect of these stories (surely America has enough civil issues of its own that these could now be the primary focus of protests going forward), and I’d also be happy if Willis just rips off the Bulmeria bandage and just starts openly using, say, Israel-Palestine or the Sudanese Civil War. Because right now, for all the supposed ‘seriousness’ of Bulmeria, all it really comes across is a supporting crutch for a cast of mostly privileged Americans (and one Englishman, one Canadianwoman, one Asma and one Sarah (is she really the only main-cast student that a scholarship has been mentioned for?))
thejeff
@Veronica: I don’t think the details really matter. And giving some details would likely just lead to arguments about what they mean, mostly based on analogy to real conflicts that people already had strong opinions about.
We know enough and we can basically accept Willis’s narrative slant on the conflict without dissecting it the way we might if we had more details. We know it’s a genocide – which strongly implies one ethnic group being targeted. We know the government has access to US weapons. We know US right wing/mainstream media is calling the opposition terrorists. It seems to be an internal conflict, but I don’t think we’ve seen anyone calling it a civil war – which implies a very strong power imbalance.
In theory, without giving the details Willis could pull some kind of twist and have the government of Bulmeria actually be the good guys and the leftie protesters here completely wrong, but we know that’s not going to happen. I don’t see what more details on the conflict actually gives us.
The Queer Agenda [frog memes]
This. We should all be able to agree that y’know, genocide bad, no matter who it’s happening to? There’s unfortunately no shortage of current ongoing war crimes around the world. I think it’s probably best to leave writing about a specific one to stories centered around it. This comic is probably going for a story about sheltered college students discovering what intersectionality is, and there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just telling a different story.
Amelie Wikström
It’s pretty safe to assume the side that’s sending snipers and riot cops against a peaceful student protest is the bad one, and extrapolate from there.
Qube
shit like this is what drove me towards adopting nihilism, morality is just too goddamn subjective
Adam Black
“Unusual Problem” is coding for Willis making mystifying editorial decision to Pitt a decades long coming out narrative of the main character against racism.
He knows his audience is babies. And can barely stand proud coming out narratives.
Everyone getting mean and ugly at commenters needs to remember it was deliberate.
People actually defended Mary for transphobia and comments had to be locked.
Alongcameaspider
Oh no they’re adorable
Bryy
And destructive more than any of the outright evil parents could be.
Doopyboop
Blaine was kinda in deep with the mob… I think if nothing else that puts him as an equal
Thag Simmons
Blaine was a money-washer for a regional crime syndicate. These two run a major military contractor
These are an order of magnitude apart
Alongcameaspider
Just one order of magnitude?
Doopyboop
With how easily he turned to violence and kidnapping I don’t think he was only involved with monetary crimes.
Gotthammer
Unless he killed half a million civilians in the last two decades he’s well behind anyone involved with arming the US.
Doopyboop
*sighs and waves a lil white flag like a looney toon*
Qube
y’ever read that Discworld book, “Going Postal”? Mr. Pump’s dressing-down of Moist von Lipwig’s “harmless” crimes springs to mind; like, just because he wasn’t an actual murderer and only swindled “guilty” people doesn’t mean he didn’t indirectly drive a lot of innocent people to an early grave
or like… y’know how a lit match is obviously way hotter than an ice sculpture, but the ice sculpture has so much more mass- and thus more overall thermal energy- that there’s no way that match could ever melt it?
like carla’s parents might be vanilla-strawberry sweetie pies who could never bring themselves to harm anyone directly, but just because a person is “harmless” doesn’t mean they’re “good”. and you don’t make a billion dollars by being a good person
Jon
@Qube: Puts me in mind of a line from one of the Witch’s songs in “Into the Woods”.
You’re so nice –
You’re not good, you’re not bad,
You’re just nice…
anonymsly
Given that the US purchases arms with taxpayers funds, may I say that I resent the seeming implication that every single individual person who has ever paid any form of tax person in this country is worse than Blaine O’Malley?
Gotthammer
Oh come on. Obviously, given the context of all the previous comments, I was specifically meaning Carla’s parents and other military contractors not that every single USAmerican is worse than Blaine (who is also American – so would he be worse than himself?).
Next you’ll be saying I said we should be pissing on the poor
Taffy
“Oh come on. Obviously, […] I was specifically meaning […] that every single USAmerican […] should be pissing on the poor”
-Gotthammer
Gotthammer
I’m glad someone got it at least