452

Good cop
Posted on September 26, 2023 by David M Willis

452 thoughts on “Good cop”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    with all due respect, Tennessee is worse than juvie

    (came from there, would know)

    1. Ana Chronistic

      12:13, server!!

      1. Schpoonman

        Right? I’m mashing buttons over here while Patreon gets their 11:55 update every time.

        1. Devin

          And for a mere $5/month, you too can receive reliable (and early) updates on a large and professionally-maintained platform with significant infrastructure backing it!*

          Or you can do what I do, which is just wait a bit longer and get it when I get it.

          *this is not a knock on the way Willis runs this site, it’s just reasonable to have higher expectations from a site that literally has more resources devoted to it.

        2. BBCC

          It’s a Hiveworks thing iirc. The clock resets eventually and then we get updates ‘on time’ again.

        3. Jo_cubstar

          But when is it going to reset!?!?

        4. Decidedly Orthogonal

          When it feels like it. And right now it apparently isn’t feeling very appreciated by us. ?

    2. Nono

      What about Tennessee juvie?

      1. Reltzik

        The fact that you can have both anchovies and vegemite on the same pizza doesn’t stop one from being worse than the other.

        (And yes there are some people who like anchovies on pizza, just like there are some people who like Tennessee.)

        1. Laura

          Tennessee was the most beautiful, most gorgeous place I have ever visited…

          …and yet the casual racism and sexism in everyday conversation (slurs and all) make it intolerable at the same time.

          Strange.

        2. Kimi

          I know that I have a bias against the south, since I grew up in a place in New England that was very proud of its abolitionist history. I’ve really thought that I should get better about it (especially since I can’t say that the north didn’t have issues either), but I can’t say the things I hear about the south help much. Always heard good things about the scenery, the people on the other hand…

        3. Laura

          The people are wonderful: warm and kind and welcoming.

          And racist.

          And sexist.

          It’s such a bizarre contradiction. Southern hatred with the smile of Southern hospitality.

        4. Laura

          I shouldn’t generalize, sorry! Just meant the folks I worked for, there.

        5. thejeff

          It’s a generalization and there are always exceptions of course, but the cultural differences are very real. Both the Southern hospitality and the casual bigotry.
          It’s a very weird experience as a white Northerner visiting.

          Which isn’t to say there isn’t plenty of bigotry in the Northeast either, but the style is different. The baseline assumptions aren’t the same.

        6. danimagoo

          I grew up in Texas. I’ve lived in Oklahoma, Missouri, and, as of 4 years ago, New Jersey. I live in Ocean County, NJ, to be specific. This is Trump country. The casual bigotry is no different than the casual bigotry I grew up with in Texas. The baseline assumption, that people who are not straight cis white men are lesser, is the same. The south does not have a monopoly on hate.

        7. NGPZ

          Yeah, in fact some of the most insidious bigots are the ones that break from classical iconography of American bigotry via culture and class in the north.

          Alt-right self-proclaimed “ethno-nationalists” from the north with $90 haircuts, 9 Chickweed Lane style vocabulary, pocket protectors and other class signifiers short-circuit the brains of white moderates and even a lot of leftists because they still for the most part associate racism with “”white trash”” — low-income working class whites from fly-over states.

          “The alt-right can’t be as bad as everyone says. I mean, who ever heard of a racist going to HARVARD?”

        8. Mark

          Some of the people are great. Some, not so great. Just like everywhere else.

        9. Mr.Morningstar

          To be fair it’s not the area that’s the problem it’s the people who reside in it

        10. BarerMender

          I liked Memphis. Of course, I didn’t have to live there.

        11. Pergola

          Vegemite on pizza? Google is my friend.

          “With mild horror, I, an Aussie living in New York City, watch on as Giovanni adds a generous squirt of my favorite sandwich spread onto a classic pie at the restaurant he owns, Rosa’s Pizza…”

    3. True Survivor

      My Father is from Tennessee. He whenever he tells me stories about his childhood I am always mortified. He insist they are funny or happy memories, but to be honest I think most of them are just terribly scary or sad (though yes sometimes a little funny).

      1. Leorale

        Is there a word for this kind of story, where the teller thinks of it and/or presents it as fun, but actually it’s something awful? There ought to be a word for this, it comes up.

        1. morleuca

          It feels like it should be a German word.

        2. Laura

          Lachenschmerz, maybe?

          ¿Chistes tristes?

        3. Laura

          Tragicomedic?

        4. Kimi

          Maybe because it sounds like something Germans would name.

        5. Quirdry Tawks

          Well, they gave us schadenfreude, so yeah probably.

        6. PedanticJerkass

          Weltschmerz is a good one, too.

        7. thejeff

          I’m not sure about a word, but we’ve talked about this before here, in the context of kids growing up in abusive families. Telling funny stories about their childhood, while the audience is horrified.

        8. Decidedly Orthogonal

          Didn’t expect to find people talking about home today. Love to all who can use the reminder. You deserve it, just because you’re you. And it can be found, without going “home”.

        9. Laura

          That is so sweet. Thank you so much! (( <3 ))

        10. Laura

          That was meant to be a heart inside a hug. ^

        11. Bogeywoman

          Dark comedy is how I’d refer to it. Or black comedy, but that gets mixed up with capital B Black comedy (ie African American).

        12. thejeff

          I think it’s different. The context for this is that the teller is just seeing it as normal and not realizing how awful it sounds to the audience.

          Dark comedy relies on joking about the horror – and usually only works properly when the audience has a shared experience of the horror.

        13. Orange Lantern

          i think the word you’re looking for is tragedy (in a theatrical sense). A tale about woe that occasionally is funny but the laughter may feel wrong.
          Theatrical comedy is the other way around: Funny but also tragic in most parts. In fact, theatrical comedy doesn’t even need to be funny. It’s about the tragical absurd.

          (i am german, btw. There is no other specific word for this in our language and I would rather expect the greek to have one, seeing as they delivered the ones that came to my mind first.)

    4. Angel

      I wonder why it was TN specifically as opposed to somewhere closer if they wanted to find a ‘catholic’ boarding school tho idk if all of the ppl attending there were necessarily ‘problem’ students unless that’s the way to deal with some kids while they’re in a religious group as opposed to a long term community service or a minor/teenage version of house arrest

      1. Tan

        Possible that there wasn’t a closer reform school that had an immediate opening, possible that they explicitly wanted her far enough away that she wouldn’t have contact with presumed/actual bad influences, possible the judge and/or prosecutor has a relationship with the particular school (whether appropriate like they’ve worked with them before and had good results, or inappropriate like their friend/family member runs the place and offers kickbacks)

      2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        OK, I know nothing about Tennessee laws or anything else. But I know that places that do “conversion therapy” and other horrible things to “fix” “broken” kids often locate in states where the laws restricting what you can and can’t do to kids are lax or poorly enforced.

        More mundanely it may have just been that sending her far away was supposed to disconnect her from the “bad elements” who were corrupting her.

        Also, sending her far away would appeal to the authorities because then she is someone else’s problem. More interested in moving problems around than in solving them.

        1. Daniel M Ball

          far more likely it was about sending her far away than anything else. The Walkertons don’t strike me as being particularly religious people…of any sort. Sally being a ‘troubled’ teen may just not have sat well with her mother’s imaginings of a perfect family with perfect kids, so the first chance she got, she got rid of the one that caused her the most difficulty in her fantasies.
          This is not that unusual among the upper middle class to upper classes, and never has been, especially if their kid’s actions don’t line up with the lies they tell themselves and their ‘friends’.

      3. Daniel M Ball

        it was far away and Mrs. Walkerton could pretend her ‘defective daughter’ didn’t exist. You think I’m joking? ask around, there ARE families where the love IS conditional, and your support ends up hinging on their ability to maintain appearances, rather than any actual affection.

    5. Freezer

      To be fair, there’s the big cities (Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Chatanooga Jackson) and the college towns… Ad THEN there’s Tennessee.

    6. Crytter

      She got sent to Gatlinburg.

      1. Ana Chronistic

        I actually have some fond memories of Gatlinburg!

        ‘spose it depends on whether you’re a tourist

    7. MisterJinKC

      Have you been to juvie?

  2. morhek

    “Dad, being Good Cop still makes you a cop.”

    1. Proxiehunter

      Ain’t no such thing as a good cop.

      1. Angel

        “no one ever says fuck the firemen” (well there is that one song but that was just a smartass replying to ppl saying that phrase lol, i just know it exists but idk if it’s actually good lol)

        1. ktbear

          Thank you Angel, tracked it down and have to say, loved it! “Fuck the Fire Department, by Vincent E. L.”

        2. elebenty

          Maybe they don’t say it derogatorily to the group as a whole, but plenty of folk would like to fu…

          I mean, they have calendars and everything.

        3. Quirdry Tawks

          Many people wanna fu… SOME firefighters.

          I’d say less than five percent are anything CLOSE to being conventionally “hot”. And even that’s mostly females. xD

        4. khn0

          Where I live, it’s legally impossible for firemen to intervene in “hot” suburbs without cops being there. As a symbol for the state, they sometimes get stoned by young people, like bus drivers or other state/municipality functionaries. It’s also likely because some firemen, bus drivers and so on call the cops on the youth rather than just doing their jobs without moral judgement.

          Also fuck the firemen is pretty much the theme of Joao Pedro Rodirgues’ movie called Fogo-Fatuo (NSFW).

        5. Kimi

          If we had public pools and other cool places for people to go that weren’t expensive, I think it would solve the issue faster than calling the police on kids. I suppose it would get people complaining about the expense, but I still think it is better than people causing “trouble” because they are way too hot or bored.

        6. Psychie

          I’m not entirely sure I understand what you mean by “intervene in ‘hot’ suburbs”, but presuming you’re referring to their stated mission of fighting fires, there’s actually a decent reason cops show up too. Having an escort of police cruisers can help clear the path for the fire truck, and the cops can help clear the area and keep bystanders away so the firefighters can focus on doing their job and fighting the fire, and if there does happen to be an arsonist on-hand to arrest, having them there already is helpful, but that’s unlikely.

          Similar reasons why police often get sent to emergency calls for an ambulance, the cruisers can clear the path for the ambulance, they can keep people from getting in the way of the EMTs doing their jobs, and if someone needs to be arrested for causing the injury then they can handle that while they’re there.

          I get why there’s so much hate for the police, and I agree that the US’s system is in serious need of reform (and other countries as well, but the US is the one I’m familiar with since it’s where I live), but there are legitimate reasons for at least some of what they do, and personally I’d rather have a broken system than no system (granted, the way the system is broken *does* tend to cast law enforcement as just a bigger gang for some groups of people, so it definitely isn’t better for those people since they effectively already live in a system-less society).

        7. eh, whatever

          Wait.

          People don’t clear paths for fire trucks and ambulances in the US???

          Or do you happen to live in some bizarre libertarian enclave?

        8. Mark

          We do clear the way or, at least, we are so taught. OTOH disasters cause crowds, and crowds aren’t always instantly aware of things outside of whatever attracted their attention, and first responders need access now, so having people on the spot who are trained and empowered to direct crowds makes a lot of sense.

        9. Azhrei Vep

          In my experience, most do.

          MOST. Some people are asshole.

          And occasionally things are so backed up that it’s basically impossible to get out of the way. But that’s rare.

        10. Kimi

          Walking back from watching fireworks in Washington DC many years ago and it amused me that people would not clear the roads for drivers honking to get through but would for emergency vehicles (pretty quickly for the amount of people too). In general, I think people clear the way, but it could be that they get into shock seeing something and forget to move then.

        11. Psychie

          Sure, we pull over when there’s lights and sirens going, whether it’s a cop car, firetruck, or ambulance. The issue is that sometimes, like for instance at intersections with stop lights, it can be tricky to get out of the way since we’re already stopped and lined up, or if the cross traffic has a green light people might not see the lights or hear the sirens in time to get out of the way and stop (I nearly got t-boned by an ambulance once because of this, the light was green so I didn’t bother to slow down and all of a sudden there was an ambulance careening toward me when I hadn’t heard sirens or seen lights until it was right there, I barely managed to slam my breaks and swerve to the side in time to avoid getting smashed up). This can cause delays since they need to slow down or even stop at these intersections to ensure people are actually aware of them and not going to hit them/get hit by them.

          Having a police escort gives some buffer room that enables people to have more time/opportunity to get out of the way so the ambulance/firetruck doesn’t need to slow down or stop as much for the sake of safety, the lead cop car can handle doing that and then when the intersections are visibly cleared they can continue with their journey, if they have enough spacing between vehicles the firefighters/EMTs don’t need to slow down at ALL when they otherwise might have to every few intersections for the sake of safety.

          It’s not about people NOT stopping for them, it’s about the practicality of people not always having TIME to do so safely.

        12. thejeff

          But if you only legally require the firetrucks to be accompanied by police in certain areas, then that almost certainly says something about the authorities attitude towards those areas.

        13. khn0

          Exactly. I once had to explain to a fireman that the person that they were trying to help (they do some emergency jobs here), living in the streets, had escaped in order not to be confronted with the cops, and that the person who called the firemen should not be detained because he was black.

      2. shrub

        You are wrong, I’ve known good cops (and not so good)

        1. Freezer

          The real problem there is the “Good Cops” tendency to either stand up for the bad cops (“Back The Blue” and all that) or stay silent and/or quit.

        2. shrub

          The real problem is the cops are an easy, safe target to score points against

          Yeah there are some bad cops, some good, some indifferent etc etc

          But how many who bag the police are willing to do their job?

        3. Devin

          Maybe their job is incorrectly framed and shouldn’t be done at all.

          Maybe instead of dumping more money into a profession that does not actually do what it purports to do, we should divert those funds and efforts to addressing root causes.

        4. shrub

          The basis for lower crime rates and less poverty is always a strong economy and law unemployment

          Start with that

        5. Devin

          Sounds pretty good to me. I think a good way to start is re-allocating resources away from making the cops a paramilitary force and put those funds towards things like UBI and infrastructure jobs. There are so many problems we could address together and so much money tied up in the cops.

        6. shrub

          Law unemployment…lower unemployment sheesh

        7. shrub

          No. That is a silly, immature or naive (take your pick) idea.

          You want to see what happens when you remove the police then just remember what happened at the CHOP

          Instead do both, at the same time

        8. Laura

          CHOP?

          Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia?

        9. AlexaSpuds

          you are honestly one of the most gullible people I’ve ever seen

        10. Kimi

          Considering you get business owners that want higher unemployment in order to not pay their employees as much, or the fed that wants to raise unemployment to curb inflation (rather than targeting said CEOs), good luck.

        11. Wilddeath

          My father is a retired police officer. His opinion is also that there is no such thing as a good cop. He also won’t talk to me about anything he heard or experienced while he was on the job, i think he has like ptsd from it. He get’s this sort of look in his eyes when he remembers sometimes.

        12. Devin

          The wildest thing is my cited idea didn’t actually mention fully removing them. It was about reducing the furtherance of making them a paramilitary force.

          You’re beyond reason at this point. You’re just wrong. Good day.

        13. Laura

          Oh, no, by CHOP you meant the Seattle Capitol Hill Occupied Protest. Sorry: Philly folks always call the Children’s hospital CHOP.

          Just looked it up:
          https://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-city-life/2021/06/history-of-chop-capitol-hill-protests-seattle

          Got a whole new chapter of social history to read and learn more about — thanks! 🙂

        14. thejeff

          “remember what happened at CHOP” is just allusions to right wing propaganda.
          It’s the same kind of thing as talk about how BLM and antifa burned down entire cities.

        15. clif

          They did? How come I never heard about it? What cities were those?

          Was Mrs. O’Leary’s cow secretly antifa?

        16. Zero

          Uh, there shouldn’t be bad cops. They should be held to that standard. It’s a minimum. It should be a requirement.

          But bad cops are instead protected. And therefore… ?

          You know the rest of the words that go to the expression “a few bad apples,” right?

        17. Mark

          There shouldn’t be bad cops. The good cops should kick them out. The bad ones make the job harder and more dangerous for everyone.

          I will admit that I’ve never been a peace officer and don’t fully know what their lives are like, the context of the decisions they have to make. But every profession needs a way to expel those who are bad for the profession.

        18. thejeff

          Cops need not just a way, but a desire.

          The problem is not that departments want to get rid of the bad cops, but aren’t able to do so, it’s that police culture (and very often the local government/political culture) sees the bad cops as good cops. Maybe just going a little too far or being a little too obvious, but still doing the necessary hard job. The “thin blue line” protecting innocent normal people from the hordes of hardened criminals and if they have to break a few rules and few heads in the process, that’s a small price to pay.

        19. Mark

          Maybe there are two (or more) “real problem”s. Maybe they are in synergy.

        20. clif

          Hey, this is the Internet. We can’t be having nuance here.

        21. HueSatLight

          The good cops get driven out of the job. There are cops on the job who want to be good, but that doesn’t mean they are. sorry, it sounds like your friends are tricking you.

        22. Comic.phile

          If they’re a good cop, they don’t back bad cops.

        23. Wraithy2773

          If they’re working alongside bad cops and not working to arrest the bad cops for their illegal actions, then they’re not good cops. That’s the entire origin of the concept, that the so-called “good cops” let the bad cops get away with crimes, because if they don’t they’ll get ostracized into retirement, retaliated against, denied backup in dangerous situations, or outright murdered.

          There are no good cops, because they either cover for the bad ones, or end up dead.

        24. shrub

          Serpico is not representative of every police department though it was a good movie

        25. Devin

          I haven’t seen Serpico. What I have seen is the unwillingness of cops to even admit that bad cops exist, much less condemn their actions, much MUCH less (read as: not at all) actually do something about them.

        26. khn0

          Mensch, it’s like every police department in the world!
          Who to corrupt but the cop and judges (and within these parameters, hwo’s the cheapest)?
          Who beat the most their wives (and possibly track them if they leave)? In every. Fucking. Country.
          Who’s been the basis for every reactionary regime rising?

          Subsidiary question: how many “good” cops get to call bad behaviors without quitting?

        27. thejeff

          Serpico’s a slightly different angle, since that was focused on corruption, rather than excessive force. I think that corruption in that sense – cops being paid off by criminal organizations – is way down since those days.
          The current problems are even more entrenched and seen by many as part of actually doing the job.

        28. HueSatLight

          right. usually they’re all in on the blue wall of silence.

        29. Freezer

          For the record: Frank Serpico was a real person and the events of the movie were based on real events. Including the ambush that nearly killed him.

          No officer received so much as a reprimand for that scene, BTW.

        30. Dara

          Yeah for real.

          I’m from Seattle. You may have just recently seen a video going around of a Seattle cop laughing about another cop killing a 26 year old grad student and laughing about it, saying she was 26 so of “limited value.”

          This kind of shit isn’t a one-off. Only a few months before we found out about them taking trophies from memorials left for people killed by police, putting them up in the break room with the giant TRUMP banner.

          IN SEATTLE.

          We’re 15 years in on “Police Reform” and I don’t give a single goddamn fsck what the court wants to pretend, it hasn’t done a _single goddamn thing_. They laugh at it and talk about how they’ll learn the right answers to fill in the forms and go off about how big a waste it time it is, _because that’s what they actually think_.

          And no, that’s not speculation either, that’s from a Seattle cop chat room.

          Neither was “We wouldn’t have all these problems if more people would just like our Trump government.” Saw that on livestream myself. Saw them pushing people into the street them arresting them for being in the street. Saw bike cops hitting people on the back with their bikes, having the person spin around and in doing so touch the cop, and get arrested for assaulting an officer.

          And they always, always, always, always, always fall into line to protect all of it.

          This and a lot more are why I say there are no good cops until the “good” cops stop protecting the bad cops. And I don’t see that happening, which is why I write regularly about how we need to take all non-actual-policing functions away from police and give them to other parts of government (like they did with ambulance service decades ago), and then tear the rest down and rebuild it from the ground up.

          Maybe – maybe – then we’ll start to see a few “good cops.”

        31. Zalfi

          Yeah, I remember a number of years back my cousin was looking to become a cop in the Seattle area but was looking to go to school first. He distinctly asked someone he knew if he should study law in school and was explicitly told “No don’t study law we will teach you what you need to know at the academy.” Which is just an absolutely gross and extremely telling answer.

          Thankfully he did not, in fact, become a cop.

        32. Bubbletea

          Pretty much. I mean, my cousin quit but it was because he was told the other cops wouldn’t have his back in a situation. And all he did was back up another cop when she reported the racist ‘hazing’ she was getting.

        33. Keulen

          This. The actual good cops either quit, get fired, or end up being “accidentally” killed by their fellow cops.

        34. James

          I’ll posit that you’ve known cops who have not hurt you personally.

        35. shrub

          I’ve also never mouthed off to the police either

        36. Devin

          Wouldn’t it be nice if mouthing off to the police (not a crime) didn’t come with a risk of being harmed by them?

        37. shrub

          How about not mouthing off in the first place or is personal responsibility not a thing anymore?

        38. CMasta1992

          If someone mouths off to a teacher and the teacher attacks the person, they’re fired pretty immediately. In fact almost every profession would be punished for causing bodily harm but for some reason police who we should be holding to a higher standard is immune to this.

          Why do you think that is

        39. brute

          ahaha there it is, the inevitable “cops aren’t bad so long as you treat them like they’re above you at all times”

          fyi that whole freedom of speech thing is pretty specifically about the government not being able to stop you from expressing yourself, so if you’re expected to not express your concerns with government agents (cops) without violent retaliation, then that’s amendment #1 down the toilet.

          also I have also never mouthed off at a cop, but i have had one start casually saying racist shit to me because i was white and… there, i guess? and of course any disagreement could be seen as “mouthing off” by people like you so despite being too angry to stop myself from shaking with rage, i couldn’t bring myself to say anything as this person with a gun and the power to kill without consequence voiced his opinion about Certain People.

          the very culture of fear around police in the US is a big part of why there aren’t good cops; because there genuinely isn’t anything in place to create good cops.

        40. brute

          also why is being mean to a grown -ass adult somehow considered a lack of personal responsibility, but not the violent things cops get away with every fucking day in this country? where’s THEIR sense of personal responsibility? if they have guns and the ability to ruin anyone’s lives on a whim, why the fuck don’t you expect them to grow up and handle people not treating them like infallible godkings without resorting to violence? seriously what’s wrong with you?

        41. JBento

          You REALLY like the taste of jackboot polish, eh?

        42. Zero

          You can be in favor of violent crime in response to rudeness, or you can pretend to care about “personal responsibility.”

          You can not do both.

        43. fireprincesslily

          You’ve gone from licking the boot to creating entire three course meals with it.

          I hope you grow as a person.

        44. Uly

          Why don’t the police have the personal responsibility to not harm others?

        45. Taffy

          If I say something a cop doesn’t like, they get to suplex me into the pavement without repercussions. If you think that’s fine, you’re fucking stupid.

        46. Devin

          How about the cops shouldn’t have nearly unlimited discretion on how to handle getting their feelings hurt? Including violence and actions that could ruin someone’s entire life?

          At this point your credibility of what might constitute a good cop is in the toilet, because as far as I’m concerned your ideas of what constitutes “good” are questionable.

        47. HueSatLight

          I was wrong, your goon friends on the force aren’t tricking you, you just think police doing violent crime makes them good.

        48. Mym

          Wow

        49. HueSatLight

          ~12:30: there’s good cops.
          ~3:30: If cops feel someone is insufficiently deferential, they should be able to do violent crimes to them without being criticized.

          Are you doing a parody?

        50. NGPZ

          “The card says *MOOPS*” -_-

        51. AlexaSpuds

          You clearly aren’t a regular reader of this comic and came in just to antagonize people and get into arguments.

          Go back to reddit creep, or better yet go touch grass, maybe then you’ll stop this fatherless behavior.

        52. Psychie

          Why do people associate reddit with this kind of behavior? It’s basically a forum host with built in searching for forums on topics you like, plenty of really well moderated subs with good people who treat each other with respect. I was on reddit for a year or so before I started seeing the redditor stereotypes discussed and I genuinely don’t see where most of them are coming from. The only one that makes sense is the “likes to argue” stereotype, but that’s because people who like to argue for the sake of argument don’t tend to do well on platforms that are built to form echochambers like facebook (that’s not a political stance, btw, facebook’s algorithm is specifically designed to feed you things you like to engage with and hide things you don’t, that’s how echochambers form if you don’t actively engage in confrontation/argumentation).

        53. Songbird

          I find it weird too. I’m on a LOT of various subreddits, and outside of one minor incident where I got a little heated with one single argumentative jerk, pretty much everyone I’ve interacted with has been pretty chill and decent. I genuinely don’t know where the stereotype of the “obnoxious, creepy redditor” is supposed to come from.

        54. Decidedly Orthogonal

          As a redditor, it’s a valid criticism. It’s not a single community, but a diverse range of communities, and how they end up interracting demonstrates classes of behaviour. There’s some classics like trolling that predate it, but there’s newer ones, such as brigading, that are used by some groups to engage in bigotry, or politically motivated coordinated attacks on discussion forums that don’t support a certain viewpoint.

          A common topic that sees such, is criticism of law enforcement. It’s also notable how many more “buddy cop” videos get (re-)posted to forums and outlets after incidents like Uvalde and police killings.

          Reddit has communities that seem to essentially work as a training ground for this.

        55. StClair

          I’m old enough to remember when Reddit was Usenet. Or vice versa.

        56. Mym

          If you mouth off to ANY profession and they ATTACK you, they lose their job. It’s disgusting how you’ll defend their rights to harm the public. Is it ok for them to kneel on a person’s neck for nine minutes for mouthing off, too?

        57. Regret

          Did they work in a district with bad cops? Then they’re not good cops. The barrel needs only one bad apple for the rot to spread. It is irrelevant that not all apples are rotten yet, the problem is the barrel cannot be trusted. All apples in it must be thrown away (i.e. never allowed to have power again) and must be disinfected or destroyed.

        58. yak

          “Fuck the police but individual cops are ok sometimes” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

        59. Rose by Any Other Name

          @shrub
          Have you considered that the current system makes it effectively impossible for any cop, no matter how personally altruistic, to effectively be a good cop because the system itself is fundamentally broken and completely corrupted?
          When a good person is forced to do bad things, that may cause them pain, but they are still doing the bad things.
          Moreover, much of what the ‘police’ do are things done on the government level, independent of any one cop. For example, police steal absolutely insane amounts of money from schools. Not, like, actual stealing – through local government taking money that was earmarked for schools and sending it to the police instead. No cop was involved in that theft, but it is still the police taking the money, so they are still complicit – all of them.

          When people say ‘fuck the police’ it isn’t an attack on an individual, it’s an attack on an institution, so defending an individual is pointless. Like… the German officer in Schindler’s List. He personally saved thousands of lives… but he also committed war crimes. He was an individual hero in an utterly evil system. But he was also complicit in that system.

          And yes, I did just invoke Godwin’s law by comparing Police to Nazis. You’re welcome.

        60. Uly

          They also steal absolutely insane amounts of money from individuals via “civil asset forfeiture”. Which is so much nonsense I can’t even.

        61. Gwyn

          This. There are good people who decide to become cops for what they consider to be good reasons. But the institution of policing is so flawed and harmful that once they join the force, there is no way to be a good cop.

        62. Cait

          If they were cops, they weren’t good people.

        63. zee

          No, you know cops who are individually nice people. But as cops they are inherently part of an evil and broken system designed to be a cudgel against the poor and minorities. Genuinely good cops get fired or murdered for not playing along. The system doesn’t allow for good cops. Acab doesn’t mean literally every individual police officer becomes a cartoon villain when they put the badge on, it means that under such a deeply broken amd corrupt system, it is impossible to participate in a “good” way

        64. BBCC

          Now now

          Sometimes good cops also get harassed until they quit or fall in line too. Or get shipped to a mental ward, an oldie but a favourite for controlling people!

        65. Vulcanodon

          Police departments are heavily infiltrated by white supremacists. Police violence is not rare. Police sexual assault is not rare. Police figure highly in statistics of domestic abuse. And there is a reason that departments are called ‘road pirates.’ They are protected by Qualified Immunity, and except in unusual cases, nothing is done.

          You might know some good cops, but the saying isn’t “One good apple fixes the whole barrel”

          What’s that saying about a bad apple? Do you just leave it in the barrel?

        66. ACAB. Even Your Cop Friend.

          But even if good cops exist, they don’t stick around anyway– they either get fired/killed or be employed/live long enough for them to be complicit in the system regardless of their intent.

          So uh. Get that boot outta your mouth.

        67. Bogeywoman

          The “no good cops” and ACAB phrases are more indicative of the broader issue of the police as a systemic problem. Some cops might be kind, generous and compassionate people but they are active participants in sustaining a fucked up status quo. Their jobs require them to unhouse people, “move on” homeless people and use force against vulnerable and mentally ill people. Like, I love my cousin and he’s a good egg, but his job requires him to prevent desperate people from seeking asylum (national police). So he’s not a good cop.

          (Like, my state, Queensland, Australia, is having its second inquiry into the police force because of how invasive it’s racism and sexism is. Blak children are dying in custody, there is active harm done to domestic violence and sexual crime victims, and the police force controls sex work.)

        68. Kreiger

          I’m going to devil’s advocate a little here.

          First off I want to say that there are 100% bad cops. I do not personally trust police, nor am I friendly with them. I advise everybody I know to “Shut the fuck up Friday” 24/7. Do not give permission to enter homes/search vehicles, do not answer questions. You gain almost nothing from it unless you are directly reporting a crime.

          THAT BEING SAID, there is without a doubt a push to demonize police in this country.

          Lets look at the killings of unarmed black men:

          A poll was recently conducted across political spectrums, asking people simply “How many unarmed black men are killed each year by cops”. The further Left/Liberal you went, the more people thought were killed, into the thousands on the farthest left, and on the Right, the lowest was about 5-10.

          The number is actually about 12.

          Now, that is 12 too many. That is 12 people who should be alive now to live their lives and go about their business, whether that be raising kids and holding down a job or selling drugs on the street. or anything in between, but if you look at the scale of how many times a day, an hour, people have interactions with police and nothing of interest happens besides a warning or a traffic ticket or a ride downtown, 12 is NOTHING.

          We just only know about the 12 because thats what we’re shown, thats whats plastered over our TV sets and on our reddit feeds. Nobody does a front page article about the dude who got pulled over for going 40 in a 35, got a ticket and went home. Nobody tweets scathingly about police reform when they pick up somebody drunk and take them to the station to sober up.

          If you want concrete evidence of this, look at Jacob Blake. The dude was kidnapping children at knifepoint and tasers had already been deployed, and then the media (I hate that term cause it sounds so Qanon) not only left ALL that out, but said he was killed. Dudes still alive. Paralyzed, but alive. and we all know what happened next.

          This was a rant. it’s not a simple as “ACAB”. Lets have real conversations about it, just PROBABLy not here.

        69. BBCC

          This is inappropriate and ignores every other issue with police, including that the cops aren’t supposed to kill guilty people either. That is not their job. It ignores abuse of ticketing powers, how disproportionately police ignore certain crimes, how police treat the homeless and mentally ill, etc. You’re right, lots of uneventful interactions happen too but those interactions don’t take place in a void. Those officers still work with the officers abusing their power and the public trust and, overwhelmingly, choose not to do anything about them or support them. It’s been studied and shown repeatedly that when a bad cop acts, the “good cops” close ranks and defend their fellow officers. Even if they don’t defend their fellow officers and follow all the rules and plan to make things better, they still need to enforce unjust rules and laws to get to that position to make things better. There are a lot more issues with police than just murder of unarmed people.

      3. Tan

        There are bad cops, there are complicit cops, and there are cops that haven’t had to make the choice yet. (guess which one Charles is, because it ain’t #3)

    2. Rose by Any Other Name

      @morhek
      Welcome to the ‘I just made a joke, why is there a huge, passionate argument thread in reply to it’ club.
      Been there.
      **offers a drink**

  3. Uratnik

    Yeah these upload Wait times are getting ridiculous

    1. Devin

      Whole entire minutes! The indignity!

      How very dare we receive this thing which does not require us to pay a cent for at anything other than the stroke of midnight!

      1. Lucretiel

        It’s not that I’m mad as much as confused. Like as a professional software guy I really want to dig into the layers of caching / CDN and find where the bug is.

        1. TheLurkerAbove

          Yea, I’ve handled different CMSes and blogs before, there shouldn’t be a delay this long. Really am curious too.

        2. Devin

          Have you considered privately reaching out to Willis and offering your services to address the issue?

          Honestly I’m curious about it too, but I think actually complaining about it (which no, you personally have not done) is inappropriate. And deserves a bit of light mocking.

        3. BBCC

          It’s a hive works drift problem. Eventually it resets and goes back to midnight but it can take a bit.

        4. Mark

          I hear that!

          Are the decision makers at Hiveworks even aware that there are people poised over their keyboards at 11:59:59 waiting for the clock to tick so they can get their daily fix the second it drops? I mean, I like doing a good job, but I would never have guessed that this is the #1 priority issue for a comics host if I hadn’t seen all the grumbling. [see my post times]

    2. Amós Batista

      A delay to page come? How much this delay was, three minutes?

      1. Diane

        15 minutes. Some people miss when it updated maybe 3 minutes after the next day. Could always be worse. Could update at midnight PST.

        1. Amós Batista

          It’s a Cold War here in DoA.

        2. Devin

          I used to have a bunch of comics that updated precisely at midnight. Now for a variety of reasons, DoA is now the closest one I follow to achieving that. I do kind of miss my old midnight ritual of getting a whole bunch of new comics, but again, this is an experience I pay nothing for. It seems massively inappropriate to complain about it.

        3. clif

          Welcome to the Internet.

        4. Devin

          Where lightly mocking is getting off easy! lol

        5. NGPZ

          Prolly not 3:00 AM EST, given Willis probably wants to retain the option to say whatever here in the first few minutes of any strip uploading.

  4. newlland(Henryvolt)

    My personal issue with the Tennessee thing wasn’t just sending her there, its that if by chance they had just as much contact with her as they allowed Walky then they made very little to no effort to keep in touch with her.

    It seemed like they wanted an easy out and a first class ticket to get what they viewed as the black sheep of their family out of their lives, and when they were presented with the first opportunity to do so they took it.

    It’s like a “We don’t talk about Bruno” situation.

    1. Mr. Random

      See that’s the only sticking point for me.
      We have no “on-screen” way to understand how often she was visited. Plus it’s not like she’d be very receptive for the first couple of times, and Charles might have interpreted that as a signal to NOT visit.
      Or based on his comments yesterday, they always fought every time. Always the same fight.
      I’m curious since all we have are “general vibes” at least that I can remember. I’m curious if we’ll get more on that soon.

      1. BBCC

        All we know for sure is Walky hadn’t seen and had hardly heard from her since she was sent away at the start of this comic. Personally I don’t think that bodes well.

        1. Quirdry Tawks

          Well, recall that Walky was really bad at communicating to begin with, and avoidant of any kind of personal responsibility until just a few months ago in DoA Time.

        2. BBCC

          This is true, but I also feel it doesn’t bode well for the Walkertons that he NEVER saw her if they were visiting.

        3. thejeff

          That might mean he didn’t try to defy their parents in order to contact her – which isn’t surprising for a golden child who knows on some level how contingent that status is.
          It’s very unlikely to mean they were encouraging him to stay in contact and he was defying them in that. It still means she didn’t come home for 4 years. And that when they visited, they didn’t bring Walky.

      2. Devin

        Even if this were the case, the act of interpreting that signal as such and giving up accordingly would be incredibly damning.

      3. thejeff

        I’m going to keep believing that the parents at least visited occasionally, even if they deliberately didn’t bring Walky along. I just can’t imagine otherwise.

        I can barely comprehend that this boarding school was year-round and that students there didn’t go home for the holidays and summers. Is that even a thing?

        1. BBCC

          It is, but it’s also usually optional. Which would mean that the Walkertons just….chose not to have her home.

        2. Mr. Random

          Or Sal, angry and not wanting to deal with them and the restrictions or subtle and overt barbs, chose to remain away.

        3. thejeff

          At those ages, especially early on, you’re not usually given the option.

          Now, sure. At 14?

    2. Angel

      Walky told asher “We’re never, ever getting that time back” idk if they were esp close before then, but I imagine any visitations would’ve been extremely rare, and walky doesn’t strike me as the type to write letters

      he might’ve made an off handed comic at the very beginning of the series

      https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/02-uphill-from-here/helmet/ yep, i think this implies that he wasn’t a part of her life for those five years

      1. thejeff

        I think it’s at least implied that he was discouraged from contacting her. Which with his role in their abusive family goes a long way.

    3. Plaaaaaa

      Wouldn’t just sending her ti Juvenile Detention have done that too, onlynthen she would be much more likely to get stabbed by another inmate or get raped by a guard.

  5. Yotomoe

    So like…not to distract from this intense character moment but…I was hit by a bout of inspiration last night and made this comic
    https://imgur.com/a/9xdLOUk (Suggestive)
    o3o Still haven’t gotten my fill of this scenario.

    1. butts

      god damn

    2. morhek

      Even Abraham and Job weren’t tested this severely.

      1. OnyxIdol

        Maybe Other Jacob was

        1. OnyxIdol

          D’oh I read Job as Jacob

      2. NoNamePlaceHolder

        This is what Satan would’ve tried on the 41st day of Christ’s temptation

    3. Jeff K!

      Good gravy, Joe’s disassociation blank smile in the last panel… ?

      1. Yotomoe

        There’s a reason he’s crossed his leg.

    4. DailyBrad

      Oh my god.

      1. Dara

        Yeah. Exactly my reaction. Oh my gods. xD

    5. Dday

      master of pulling spice out of not technically lewd content

    6. Amós Batista

      Oh, that’s bad it is low resolution, this is so great.
      Omg, poor Joe…

      1. Yotomoe

        Right click the image and click “open in new tab” and it’ll be in full resolution.

    7. OnyxIdol

      V hot

    8. Rose by Any Other Name

      I fucking love this.
      And yeah, thanks. That ‘fuck the police’ conversation above was super heavy and required me to do research, so it’s nice to read something funny.

      I particularly love how happy Joyce looks that she’s doing a good job while Sarah fakes an orgasm at Joe. It’s perfect.

      1. Yotomoe

        I’m always torn between “Joyce is blissfully unaware.” And “Joyce doesn’t actually care.” Leaning more towards the former in this instance.

        1. Plaaaaaa

          Joyce is a closet bisexuality and refuses to admit she’s getting turned on too.

        2. Yotomoe

          I mean yeah. That’s definitely part of it.

    9. Taffy

      The only question I have is, how far will Sarah go for this, and how far will Joyce let her? That’s technically two. The only two questions. Actually, how far will Joe let her go, come to think of it? So three questions.

      1. Yotomoe

        Probably not looking for real answers but here I go.
        1. In this AU Sarah realized just getting Joe to say “ok sure” isn’t Gonna work so her goal is to now seduce him into a “point of no return.” Kinda banking on him to make the first move or else it sorta defeats the point. (She’s kinda losing the plot a bit.)

        2.AU Joyce is enjoying the extra attention from Sarah. She’s annoyed that Sarah is going to such lengths to try to break them up but also she’s very happy that Joe hasn’t really given in. Shows a lotta growth. She’s pretty down for shenanigans as long as Joe isn’t uncomfortable or asks Sarah to stop. She’s open to the idea of them messing around as long as joe is honest with her about it. (Joe and Sarah are unaware of this fact.)
        Also she’s a bit more implicitly bi so Sarah is hitting her with a lotta stray shots)
        3. Joe is really on guard after his last screw up. He does find Sarah hot but its easier to ignore her when he’s thinking of joyce. On one hand he finds it annoying. On the other hand part of him is really enjoying the attention and doesn’t wanna tell her to stop. Which makes him feel guiltier. He feels if he so much as puts his hands on her he’s broken the trust (Joyce would be chill about it.)
        So I guess to answer all 3 questions. “About 2nd base.”

        Probably weird for me to make these aggressively divergent headcanon from the source material for the sake of a scenario I find kinda hot. Im just having a lotta fun and got carried away.

        1. Rose by Any Other Name

          Is second base sweater-puppy town or handy’sberg?

          I always thought it was the former, but I’ve heard it can also be the later.

        2. Yotomoe

          The way I’ve heard it, it’s both.

          1st base is kiss city, 2nd is swater-puppy town/Handy’s berg, 3rd is Mouthville and 4th based is Penetration Nation.

        3. zee

          Huh. I always knew it as just kiss, tits, crotch, sex. Feels simpler

        4. Yotomoe

          Yeah that’s probably better.

        5. Yotomoe

          (Which I guess means Sarah OR Joe could give each other a real good squeeze.)

  6. DiDi

    Oh… seeing that heartbreak on Sal’s face hurts me more than I would have expected.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      I think it’s because she so rarely lets it show.

    2. Angel

      Bad dad-ness aside, i wonder how successful it wouldve been if he had ‘fought for her’

      maybe their relationship would be better at the very least

  7. Animedingo

    I knew tennesee was somehow at fault

  8. Nono

    Well, at least he’s still using Sal instead of Sally…?

    1. Diane

      Yep, Linda couldn’t even bother with that.

      1. Angel

        at this point she (at least i’d be tempted, maybe) woudl wanna change every aspect of my name to be as far away as possible from the family ties

  9. butts

    don’t see Dad too often without Linda

    1. Gwyn

      At least the second time we’ve seen one parent behave better when they talk to their kid alone. Third if you count Amber’s mother.

  10. BOOSTER SHOT

    WHAT HAPPENED TO JUNIOR MINTS AT THE MOVIES?

    1. Dara

      Frozen Junior Mints at the movies in particular. #yum

    2. NGPZ

      Eh, I prefer hotdogs and popcorn at the movies if anything

      1. Angel

        last time i went to a movie theatre there was some pretty decent varities, there was even a mini starbucks and section that sold like pzizas tho wouldn’t be surprised if overpricedl ol

  11. Schpoonman

    Every time “Good cop, bad cop” gets mentioned I think of The Other Guys’ “Bad cop, bad cop”.

    1. Schpoonman

      “STANDING AT THE CONCESSION, PLOTTING HIS OPPRESSION.”

      Okay, Power Hour with Spongebob soundbites is definitely happening.

    2. Schpoonman

      Sal’s face in panel 1 hurts more than anything else. Too little too late, and even daddy dearest reaching out feels, like Sal said, like “good cop, bad cop” and it’s just more manipulation.

    3. Bogeywoman

      Also the name of a great band fyi!

    4. Just an Armadillo

      Let’s also not forget Paranatural’s “good cop, good cop.”

      1. Thag Simmons

        “Advanced Interrogation Techniques!?”

        1. Just an Armadillo

          MAKE HIM TELL US WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW

        2. Quirdry Tawks

          More like, make him tell us what we want to hear. They already know the narrative they intend to present to the judge.

    5. Agemegos

      Once, for a game at an RPG con, I wrote a pair of police detectives as PC whom I described as playing “bad cop, worse cop”.

      1. Schpoonman

        Is that how Disco Elysium got its start?

  12. RassilonTDavros

    …please, please let this sink in. I don’t have much hope, but I have plenty of wishful thinking.

    1. Regalli

      Unfortunately, at least for Charles, I think the trust’s already so burned that… it’s maybe not IMPOSSIBLE for him to rebuild it, if he turns around NOW, but I think it would take years of consistent work to really convince Sal. He’s burned her enough times before, compared to, say, Hank and Joyce. (Where as soon as Joyce needed him, he had her back, and he was already realizing he didn’t like what he was seeing with Carol and the church *before* it hit the crisis point.) I suspect if there is anything to salvage with Charles and Sal, it’ll probably be a slower process.

      1. Bruno

        The difference between Hank and Charles has to do with more than just effectiveness. Hank was an actual ally with Joyce, who adopted Joyce’s position and advocated for it. Charles just wants to smooth things over between Linda and Sal and restore the status quo, which is something Sal doesn’t want and that would hurt her.

        Charles is not actually on Sal’s side, he’s just so ineffective and timid with his own position that anyone can squint and just kinda project onto him the ideas they wish he had, Sal included.

        1. Regalli

          Oh yeah. The FIRST TIME Joyce meaningfully broke ranks, Hank stood up for her, and that let Hank change his views going forward. Hank has consistently been on her side since. No one was ever seriously doubting, after the second kidnapping, that Hank WOULDN’T be on Joyce’s side. We pretty much all called it was going to end with them divorced before HE realized this was going to end with them divorced. Even then, I suspect it’ll take longer to rebuild trust with Jocelyne and Jordan if he tries, because the things they need to trust him for are BIG. (Jocelyne to trust he’s safe to come out to, Jordan to trust it’s worth trying to unestrange themselves.) Hell, if he hadn’t taken Joyce’s side so strongly and openly at Family Weekend and after the first kidnapping, I’m still not sure we’d trust him as an Actually Safe Person now even after he divorced Carol and condemned Ross after something TRULY over the line. It just mean he has a line he won’t defend past.

          Sal and Linda have been in conflict MANY times before this. This hit crisis point before the comic even started. Charles has not, to this point, been on Sal’s side at all. This is his last chance to start taking it, and I don’t think a single dramatic gesture will fix it even if he DID make one, because there have been so many smaller points where he so consistently didn’t. He’ll have to do it repeatedly and significantly and even when Sal’s not around to hear about it.

        2. Wilddeath

          But what if, and this is purely my own fantasy fulfillment, charles verbally slapped the taste out of lindas mouth and not only divorced her but turned all of her family friends against her turning her into an outcast in her own social circle, forcing her to move to boston where there is a notoriously uncaught hit and run driver in a red car waiting for her…

        3. Bruno

          That would be domestic abuse.

        4. Random832

          Did you miss the “verbally”? [and, yes, it is possible for purely verbal stuff to qualify as abuse, but there’s also a lot of room in the metaphor for stuff that doesn’t]

      2. Sporky

        I don’t think it’s about rebuilding the trust here – I think that’s completely lost for all intents and purposes. Just getting to the point where he’s willing to fight for Sal, at all, would be an improvement

      3. pyrock_mania

        This moment makes for an interesting comparison between the Walkertons and Joyce’s family (vis a vis “the moment where the parental bloc crumbles” and parental trust). Joyce’s family was largely happy and light on major drama, so it became VERY clear that things were different with both Toedad incidents. This made it impossible for Hank to avoid making a choice while staying in his daughter’s circle of trust (and I think it’s safe to say he managed a solid “he’s a little confused but he’s got the spirit”). The Walkertons, by comparison, have had all kinds of parent-child conflict and other drama, especially around Sal, so it’s far easier to fall into a groove where it’s harder to notice that the choices are bad and/or important because there’s so much precedent, and simultaneously so much noise/clutter. Charles’s “You still talk to me” (and yesterday’s “this fight feels a little different”) SCREAM “we have this routine down so tight it could be a vaudeville act,” and in that context it can be easy to miss the finer details because you’re just trying to get to the part where you can finally get back to your paper or whatever. I don’t doubt it’s going to be a seriously difficult road if Charles decides to change before Sal will believe it, but I do think there is still a needle he can thread here to at least keep a window open. The fastest/easiest way might be to offer to still do a Father/Daughter lunch and make a point of not including Carol (giving them a chance to talk seriously without her derailing the conversation), or basically leaving the invite there “if she finally decides to get over herself” but I think that’s a bit much to hope for here from Charles “Your hair looks so much better straightened” Walkerton).

        1. pyrock_mania

          Sorry, it’s late, I accidentally flipped Carol and Linda at the end there. Also the last part should read as Linda is the one that needs to get over herself. Gotta remember to proofread better.

        2. Regalli

          I’ve been actively fighting not to get the two Awful Moms mixed up myself, no worries.

          The thing is, we know there WAS significant conflict in the Brown family before this – with Jordan – and that whatever went down, it ended with “Hank is not in contact with one of his kids, and regrets that.” Which does I think significantly inform how he approached things with Joyce. (Linda, too – she thinks they should have come down STRONGER then.) But that conflict was never with Joyce, and they seem to have managed to keep it away from her entirely. I agree, what we see in the comic were the first times Joyce meaningfully disagreed with her parents, whereas it’s happened so often between Sal and Linda with Charles probably trying to smooth things over that yeah, it’s basically a script.

          The first time with the Browns is actually Freshman Family Weekend, back when they realized Joyce’s new best friend was an atheist. And Hank started that one saying some pretty awful shit*, but when Joyce stands firm, he changes his mind and opens himself up to the idea that maybe he’s wrong. And I think that left him a bit more set up to realize how serious the situation with Becky was, and more open to the idea that maybe the rest of the congregation was wrong, and also very aware of the fact that Joyce will stand firm for her friends and he knows very non-abstractly what it is like to be estranged from a child. If Charles has that particular danger meter set, he certainly does not have it as calibrated as Hank does. If he wants to keep things okay with Sal, he’s probably going to have to figure it out fast, because mild attempts at appeasement isn’t working for her anymore.

          * “Hitler was an atheist” was already pretty bad but now that we know at least one side of Dorothy’s family is Jewish, even if Dorothy herself doesn’t consider herself such, it is SIGNIFICANTLY worse. I am impressed the Keeners kept their cool at that, in hindsight, even if this background probably wasn’t decided for them at the time. Sadly given how often it falls on marginalized people to stay “reasonable” in a disagreement like that, they probably had a lot of practice and knew they had to keep their cool.

        3. BBCC

          The background had been established by then. It was part of why her family raised her areligiously – one was Catholic and one had a Catholic parent and a Jewish parent (I wanna say her dad).

          And yeah, sadly, given how antisemitic a lot of places are (and that’s only gotten worse, which affects them sliding time scale wise) I’m sure they have lots of practice. “Hitler was maybe partly Jewish” would probably annoy them more and even that can be a drop in the bucket with some of the shit that goes on.

        4. Regalli

          Aah, roger. I forgot it came up that early.

        5. thejeff

          It’s actually why the “Hitler was maybe partly Jewish” thing came up.

          People like Dorothy (atheists) gave us Nazi Germany -> She’s partly Jewish -> Who else was maybe partly Jewish!

        6. Quirdry Tawks

          Hitler, 1941: “I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.”
          Hitler, date undetermined but from a credible source (Speer) from his inner circle: “Not a Catholic, but a German Christian.” (lip service given to Lutheranism)
          Hitler, later still and from multiple sources: lip service given to Germanic and Norse mythology.

          I think it’s fair to say that Hitler was never an atheist. He believed fervently in the worship of himself.

        7. Quirdry Tawks

          Sorry, to sum up: Please stop dumping the Holocaust on atheists.

        8. clif

          So was it instead the fault of the Catholics? The Jewish people themselves? Or was it a thing which just happened and no groups fault?

        9. thejeff

          It it’s unclear, I was paraphrasing the conversation Joyce had with Hank and Carol back on Family weekend, not blaming the holocaust on atheists myself.

        10. thejeff

          We can blame centuries of Christian anti-Semitism in general and fascist ideology in particular. Along with Hitler himself, of course.

        11. NGPZ

          It’s controversial highly what religion Hitler was, but that besides the point.

          No matter where it happens, Fascism’s goal is to harness class resentment and redirect it towards a scapegoat. The bigotry fire it fans is always localized to existing prejudices in the region — the regime of Fascist Italy scapegoated Slovenes to start, then the citizens of Libya and Ethiopia when they invaded those places as well. The KKK’s following of the fascist pattern targeted Blacks, Jews, queers, Catholics, immigrants. Spain under Francisco Franco wanted to determine the country’s exact racial make-up so he could cast people out for having the “wrong mixture of bloods”.

        12. Quirdry Tawks

          Blame a psychotic, self-fellating asshole who just happened to be good at giving speeches.

          Blame the people who wanted easy answers to complex problems, and were all too willing to accept any scapegoat offered.

          There’s no reason to hang this on any religion, or the absence thereof.

          Except maybe Scientologists. Seriously, fuck them.

        13. StClair

          But who will the righteous blame, if not the godless?
          (Wait, I know this one: heretics.)

        14. Kelibath

          Just wanted to thank you for this deep and insightful comment into why those grooves become entrenched. It’s so easy to blame the kid, especially when their response – speaking a bit personally here – is to freak out and catastrophise over the apparent impossibility of escaping that and similar injustice every time it happens. Sal is cool as ice in comparison to how I responded to this kind of treatment, mainly because she’s already at several-arms-length to her folks by now and doesn’t rely on them for a safe day to day life. If you have no distance, safety, and the impact of the pattern hurts you every night, it can absolutely wreck a child’s mind, and then any resulting outburst or reaction to the continued abuse just solidifies their scapegoating more in the eyes of those already predisposed against them. Younger Sal(ly) acting out (see, “trying to save her friend in an injust world”) is as much as anything else a very natural reaction to constantly being pigeonholed as a problem kid in this way. It’s incredible that Sal has reached this level of poise by the age she’s at.

        15. thejeff

          I do kind of think that awful as it surely was, the boarding school might actually have been better for her than continuing to live with her parents.
          Which really says something about them.

  13. FlyingSunspot

    Yhgyjhgfy

    1. FlyingSunspot

      This comment because the mobile site always thinks I want to leave a comment and won’t let me cancel it. So gibberish

      1. Devin

        See I thought it was a keysmash of emotions. Which I often feel but infrequently (if at all) post. In that interpretation, it was very relatable.

      2. Needfuldoer

        What?

        The reply box always appears at the bottom of the page, on desktop and mobile (because it’s the same page) whether you intend on posting a reply or not. You don’t have to type anything into it.

        1. Savail

          Sometimes when you’re scrolling the comments, it decides you hit the reply button. Even if you have your thumb on the other side of the screen while scrolling (I kind of wonder if the mobile version has a thing where clicking any part of the comment triggers a reply, but never been arsed enough to check the source to see). And when you do that, it pops up the reply box in-line with the comments, which takes up a lot of the screen. Usually you can click the little “cancel” button, but sometimes you can’t. I don’t usually have that problem with this comic, but I do with a couple of others, so I get the annoyance.

      3. clif

        That’s what you say, but we all know what Yhgyjhgfy really means.

        1. Needfuldoer

          Everybody fhqwhgads.

        2. Schpoonman

          I said, come on…

  14. Alongcameaspider

    The next few pages are crucial for Sal’s dad (I genuinely forget his name)

    Does he recognize that he hasn’t been the best parent for Sal and make an effort to be better, stand up for her to Linda

    Or does he back down at the first chance he gets?

    1. Reltzik

      Or do we instead cut to whatever new level of unhealthiness Dorothy’s engaged in rather than being in her room when Sarah was looking for her?

      1. MisterJinKC

        You nailed it.

    2. Mark

      Perhaps he’s realizing that sometimes life sucks and you have to choose which relationship to hazard.

  15. Mr. Random

    Honestly, I understand her pain on that, but I’m not sure I’d make a different decision if it was my kid.
    I don’t know how you’d fight things on that level.

    1. Dday

      Yeah, I feel like the narrative isn’t meant to give us easy answers about this. Not clear about why she had to get sent all the way to a different state just for boarding school tho, don’t they have anything like that in Indiana?.

      1. Just an Armadillo

        Going from the emphasis on ‘her’ that Sal gave here? I’m guessing Linda pushed for Sal to be sent further away so that she was away from all the ‘negative influences’ that got her in trouble in the first place.

        If I’m right about that then I suppose it’s true since Linda is the worse influence in Sal’s life by far.

        1. Archieve

          Probably, Linda always like to make a point of figthing the official ruling when it’s something she doesn’t like, the fact that they didn’t make any effort to keep their daugther closer to home in itself shows no effort was made on their part to offer emotional support.

    2. BadRoad

      Wasn’t Sal robbing the convenience store to pay for Marcy’s surgery that Sal had already saved up the money for but Linda stole it? Or have I got events out of order?

      1. Just an Armadillo

        You’re right about everything except the amount Sal had. She’d only saved up 700 bucks, she still needed thousands for the surgery.

        1. Leorale

          That would’ve been a really, really good time for Charles to actually help Sal. A wealthy adult has SO many more options for raising money than Sal did. He could’ve stood up to Linda (“our daughter is loyal, resourceful, and generous, she has independently raised $700 for charity at age 14. Our amazing philanthropist! Do not take the money”). He could’ve given Sal opportunities to raise the difference among his other wealthy buddies, sought helpful connections/resources, straight-up contributed towards the fund, etc.

          But he did nothing of the sort. He didn’t fight for her at all, he just let Linda steal the money away, as though there was nothing he could do.

          So, robbery.

        2. Tarnagh

          Considering how good Linda is at making Sal look like the bad guy, I wonder if Charles even knows Linda stole that money from Sal.

          I think Sal knew she was going to need more money than that, but she was saving up money to help her friend. She didn’t resort to attempted robbery until after her mother robbed her.

        3. thejeff

          Charles was there when it happened.

          He might not have seen it as stealing, but he knew about it.

        4. Tarnagh

          Ooof. So he was. 🙁 Linda told Sal she wasn’t stealing her money, that she could “have it back later.”

          I wonder if Linda ever gave Sal that money back? Somehow, I doubt it.

        5. BBCC

          Having it back was contingent on her not seeing Marcie anymore, so I highly doubt it.

          If anything, it probably was used as part of the payment for boarding school.

        6. BBCC

          Even if the money wouldn’t help the surgery, it surely would’ve still come in handy for a family without a ton of money with a newly disabled child.

    3. Kelibath

      I think what Charles really needs to realise is that this argument is not, and has never, been ‘just’ about the boarding school. It has been about Sal never having a supporter, someone who will go to bat for her, within the family.

    4. zee

      I mean you’d probably make the decision to keep in touch and let her twin maintain a relationship with her. At least I hope you would. Be pretty fucked up if you didn’t.

  16. Regalli

    Oof, yeah. Sal’s finally processed what she seems to have already known on some level, or at least is finally putting it in words: Charles can’t be an actually good dad so long as he’s conceding to Linda. Charles can’t be an actually good dad so long as his opinions are substantially the same, just delivered more pleasantly. He either has to leave Linda or openly, actively, consistently come to Sal’s defense, and she no longer trusts him to do that.

    1. Bryy

      He also can’t consistently go to the kids AFTER THE FACT and still act like a good guy without actually doing anything.

    2. I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

      Yeeup! This strip has been an excellent zenith point for the overarching Sal v. Walkerton Parents arc. By establishing that Sal has fully lost all confidence to form a mutual, healthy and happy relationship with both of her parents, Charles (a fairly neutral to inoffensive non-character) can’t go back to being a passive figure both in and outside the diegesis anymore. Regardless on how Charles responds to this moment, he now has to react, and the weight of that reaction now matters more than ever.

      Bit of a dorky confession from my end, but this strip right here is a great example of the kind of slow-burn payoffs that DOA is excellent at executing. I’m very excited to see what happens next.

      1. I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

        Oh goddammit the HTML attributes got all wonky, dang it.

      2. Regalli

        Yeah, same!

        He’s now aware of what I think we’ve all known for a while (or at least, has been a reasonable conclusion to draw since at LEAST the money incident): Sal is going to end up estranged from Linda. Probably as soon as she can manage it. Sal last strip officially realized she could give up trying, and she wants to, and the best he can expect from here on that front is the bare minimum to try and avoid conflict until she’s financially independent from her parents. She might not even be willing to do that much, but I don’t think Sal’s going to drop out and she can ignore them until the next time she has to go home for break. Linda will let her. If she drops out sophomore year that’s like a decade down the line, minimum, it doesn’t matter.

        Charles might not be aware of it in those exact terms, and he’s definitely not aware that this is probably going to be a problem like five years down the line (their time, probably) with Walky, too*, but he is definitely realizing he is losing Sal and that it’s critical he do something MEANINGFUL if he doesn’t want to be part of the estrangement. He can be her ally, or he can be Linda’s, but he can’t be both. He really couldn’t for a long time, now.

        * Linda has established she will financially abuse her children to get what she wants. Linda has established that Walky, in her opinion, IS pre-med, and he just hasn’t realized it yet. Linda is in a position to actively hold Walky’s tuition hostage. This is going to reach crisis point eventually, I don’t expect it this weekend but I DO expect it, and while Walky very much isn’t Sal the potential for it to get THAT BAD combined with Walky already being primed to the parental bullshit in general makes me think it could very well end with both of the twins going no contact or low-contact with their parents. Maybe not in the course of the comic itself, but eventually.

        1. Archieve

          Still wondering If the whole premed thing was the reason Linda came. Who her kids are dating is just a distraction and walkys already finishing his 1st year so in Linda’s mind a perfect time to start thinking of his “real major”

        2. I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

          In all honesty, is it kinda sad that i can really see that being the cherry on top of the shit cake that has been this family visit so far?

      3. Quirdry Tawks

        I would love to be a fly on the wall, each time Charles has to report back to Headquarters from his frequent brief departures, after every time “they” talk to Sal.

  17. True Survivor

    And another father has to take a hard look in the mirror. I am sensing a recurring theme.

  18. Angel

    I crave popcorn now

    And lol hopefully the message sinks in but i don’t see a divorce around the corner even if htere’s a crack in the relationships now but baby steps i guess

  19. CMasta1992

    Not gonna be a popular opinion but while I get how Sal feels this isn’t a fair line of attack. Her actions put her parents in a no-win situation. If they do what they did, she feels like they abandoned her but really her parents kept her out of jail which I think is good parental action. If they do nothing, they left her to her fate to go to jail which would’ve been far worse.

    1. Amelie Wikström

      I’m thinking Sal doesn’t want to have an argument about if sending her away was the best they could do or not. If she lets the parents debate the merits of any one thing they’ve done to her, it just ignores the problem that they have never, ever believed in her, supported her or cared about anything she has to say.

      1. Regalli

        Yes, this. You can justify a lot of the most egregious things they’ve done, or at least make an argument that they might not have been completely unreasonable.

        The problem is that when you take them as a whole, it’s a pattern, and a pretty damning one.

    2. Regalli

      The problem, I think, isn’t just the school. He didn’t come to her defense when Linda stole the money she’d set aside for Marcy, which is what caused the convenience store incident. (Because she was sneaking out and skipping choir, but really because Linda didn’t approve of Marcy as a friend.) He didn’t come to her defense for Marcy, ever. (Because he is… very likely, not without prejudice himself there.) He’s the one who said her hair was so pretty when it was straight and didn’t protest when she brushed them off for an all-day appointment straightening it. By all accounts, Walky didn’t really see Sal when she was gone, and it’s unclear whether or not Charles and Linda visited. Either way, they didn’t force the issue with Walky and sure, it would suck to know your brother really doesn’t want to be here but they could have *tried* to lessen the feeling that she’d been rejected from her own family. He did not.

      This is one big dramatic unforgettable thing where, yeah, there weren’t good options left so it’s not the best at demonstrating the point, but there were things he could have done that would have kept it from getting that bad. There were things he could have done AFTER that crisis point to make it less terrible than it had to be. He doesn’t seem to have done any of those.

    3. HueSatLight

      Charles is just a schmuck trying his best, and his best falls short. I feel bad for both of these two.

      1. Quirdry Tawks

        Consistently following the path of least resistance is hardly trying his best.

        1. Teddae

          ^agreed.

        2. Leorale

          Headcanon: Charles is like a Walky who never learned to stand up for anyone.

          Like, if Walky hadn’t learned to stand up for his sister this year, he would’ve been doomed to become just like Charles someday for his own kids.

          He’ll still have to practice, of course, but he’s now on a different path than becoming just like his dad.

      2. HueSatLight

        It’s his best. A person can have gray hair and still not know the ideal thing to do or how to do it.

        1. HueSatLight

          And what we’re seeing is that it feels like he didn’t stand up for Sal enough. That doesn’t mean he didn’t stand up for her at all. It can mean he tried and failed. Parents not fighting around the kids or not sending mixed messages doesn’t mean they’re not disagreeing or fighting.

        2. thejeff

          But if the one who tries to stand up keeps failing and keeps it private, then the kid still justly feels like no one’s standing up for them. Even if they fight about it privately, by avoiding mixed messages, they’re sending a clear message to Sal.

      3. zee

        Don’t feel bad for him. He’s not trying his best, he’s making an active choice to idly watch Linda abuse their kids. He’s never tried to de-escalate a situation, he’s never once stood up for sal or walky. At best he just swoops in afterward for some feel good points. Maybe he’s scared of her in some way, I don’t honestly care. Because he’s implicitly agreeing with her, and he’s left his kids -especially sal- with nothing. We’ve never seen them rely on him, not even walky. They know they’re at their mother’s mercy and there’s nothing they can do about it, because they have 0 support

    4. pyrock_mania

      Without the hidden details we can’t really say, but the story has laid the groundwork/context that this deal wasn’t on the level of, say, a plea deal and more of a “do something or I’m going to press charges,” and instead of fighting for middle ground Linda either caved or even put the idea forward, so we really only have her parents’ word that it was a no-win situation. Unreliable narrators all around, so idk where that puts us.

      That said, the “Boarding School” incident was the centerpiece in a pattern of behavior from her parents, and while it may not be entirely fair to make it the crux of the argument, Sal has a valid point and it’s the example so obvious that to talk around it seems silly. She felt like they didn’t think her worth fighting for, but whether or not they COULD have fought THAT time, stating this aloud gives her dad a new perspective with which to consider other decisions they made. It’s never just the one time for stuff like this, and if you haven’t been doing the right thing when you have the choice, the moments where you don’t have a choice do extra damage.

      To frame it differently, if your parents show a pattern of being in your corner, fighting for you every chance they get, and then you do something and their hands are tied, it’s reasonable to assume you’d be more willing to believe them that they didn’t have a choice this time and not hold it against them. If, instead, they show a pattern of devaluing you and siding against you, of believing everyone else before you, of avoiding making the choice to fight for you, and THEN they say “we had no choice,” how are you supposed to believe them that suddenly they would have fought for you but “aw shucks” they just can’t this time?

      Maybe I’m too close to this to be objective, my mom used many of the same tactics as Linda, though my dad had more backbone than Charles does (I vividly remember a family squabble one night where he came in and had a reasonable and calm conversation with me and my sister, going over what happened and why it was a problem and so on when my mom came storming out all but yelling “I didn’t send you in there to chat, I sent you to punish them!”)

      1. Zach

        Sal held a knife to someone’s throat and demanded money.
        She was hauled off by police.

        Her mom must have called in some amazing favors and blown a judge for Sal to not be in juvie.

        It’s like she’s doubling up on effort thinking it gets her out of needing to do emotional labor.

        1. pyrock_mania

          It’s like the annoying Rom-Com trope of the “grand romantic gesture” had a really intense cousin, the “grand moralistic sacrifice”

        2. BBCC

          She probably just agreed not to press charges against Amber and threatened to sue the police for allowing Amber to grab the knife and stab an already restrained Sal.

          And just a note but Sal was not hauled off Ethan by the police. She surrendered. That might have helped too.

        3. Zero

          Linda stole the money from her in the first place–and it wasn’t even Sal’s money.

          If it doesn’t ever even occur to her that the entire incident was her fault, she hasn’t given the matter any actual consideration at all.

    5. Alongcameaspider

      It’s not just the school though, that’s just the freshest wound so to speak

      It seems like Sal is talking about a pattern of behavior from him, where while he’s more polite about it, he doesn’t do anything to stand up for her

    6. Wilddeath

      So it’s unfair that her mom would want to have lunch with just her daughter?

      1. thejeff

        Linda didn’t want to have lunch with just her daughter. It was Danny not coming along that started this. She didn’t want to have lunch with her daughter without her new respectable boyfriend.

      2. Alongcameaspider

        That is quite literally the opposite of what started this conversation

      3. Quirdry Tawks

        What Linda wanted was lunch with Danny. If it were Sal that couldn’t come, Linda would have been just as delighted. Maybe more so.

  20. Amelie Wikström

    I think you’ve got to contradict the bad cop to be the good cop. Charles is just a bad cop apologist. And he’ll never do even that in front of Linda.

    1. Teddae

      People like Charles make me want to hurl, because they use their kindness to make the victim forgive their abuser so that things will be ‘normal’. They make the victim trust them but never stop the abuse. And you get others saying that victims shouldn’t be upset at the enablers because they never did anything wrong or they’re trying their best in the situation given. But they’re ultimately part of the problem because they never even try to stop it.

      1. Archieve

        Yeah he seems nice at first but all he cares about is bringing people back into line revolving around his wife.

    2. Crow

      acab

    3. Rogue 7

      No, that’s the con. The “good cop” (ACAB) and the bad cop are on the same team, working together. The bad cop comes in and threatens your life, and the good cop goes “hey, I’m not like him, you can trust me, I won’t let him hurt you if you confess.” Then they get donuts together and laugh at the schnook. The entire point of the routine is that the “good cop” implicitly threatens you with the bad cop unless you cooperate. Sal is right on the money here.

      1. Amelie Wikström

        But Charles doesn’t in any way suggest he has a different agenda from Linda or can do anything to protect the kids from her. He’s saying “you can trust me” without trying to back it up. At best he offers a different perspective on why Linda is right and you should give her another chance. It’s more like bad cop, bad prosecutor

      2. Mturtle7

        No, I think Rogue 7’s point is spot on here. By saying “that was a concession to keep you out of juvie”, Charles is implying he DOES protect Sal from Linda – as in, Linda wanted to Sal to go to juvie, and it was only his gracious intervention that convinced her to send her away to Tennessee instead. Which, like Rogue 7 said, is a very classic “good cop, bad cop” thing to do: try to get the mark to agree to something which is obviously bad for them, with the justification that it’s the only way they can possibly escape the even worse option that’s presented by your partner. People trust the good cop because he says that he can use his influence over the bad cop to protect you from them…as long as you, well, make some concessions.

        1. Amelie Wikström

          I didn’t get the idea that was a concession to Linda, but I guess it depends on how you read the “them”/”her” part. In that case Charles may have played the good cop. I think the confusion is Charles is still talking about Tennessee while Sal is walking away from the whole abusive relationship she has with her parents, as discussed about ten posts up.

  21. Bryy

    “You still talk to me.”

    Oof, Charles. You really have no fucking spine, do you?

    1. Archieve

      Words that never lead to action are hollow Charles.

  22. William

    /hug Sal

    1. Quirdry Tawks

      Right? All teh hugs. 🙁

  23. Qube

    the problem with good cop/bad cop is that they’re both still cops

    1. Teddae

      Yup.

  24. BBCC

    Honestly though, depending how he takes this, this could be the first productive conversation they’ve had in at least five years.

    Yeah, okay so who did you concede to when you didn’t see her or talk to her except to call her a failure for five years? Because I have a strong suspicion the answer to that if the “bad cop” in this. Seriously dude, even if you had to send her somewhere, did it have to be out of state and you suddenly couldn’t write or pick up a damn phone? While your kid is newly disabled no less.

    And so help me god I’m gonna go nuclear if it turns out that school was part of the troubled teen industry.

    1. Regalli

      On that last sentence: Sadly, do you really want to bet? (Realistically I doubt we’ll delve TOO deeply into that school just because it’d take a pretty lengthy interlude just to establish things there but eh, we might, who knows.)

      And yeah. I hope this is his wake up call.

      1. BBCC

        Jury’s out on me. I’m seeing warning signs but also things that may indicate it wasn’t.

        On one hand, the TTI is VERY popular with judges, it’s sickening. And this seems like the kind of situation they’d go for – kid in trouble with the law, it’s in a state fairly far away, she hasn’t seen at least her brother in five years, it ‘wasn’t much different’ from juvie.

        On the other, we know Marcie went to the school with her and those things tend to be EXPENSIVE. Marcie’s family doesn’t have much money so that’d probably be cost prohibitive for her. And most of them aren’t Catholic (although apparently there’s a few so).

        1. pyrock_mania

          I get the feeling from the current dancings-around-of-the-point that this concession was not made in a legal arena (i.e. as a plea deal). Linda seems the type who doesn’t even want charges on the record if she can weasel out of them, even at the cost of her daughter’s well-being.

        2. BBCC

          Sal has a record so we know it was at least partially settled by a court official. And courts, lawyers and “educational consultants” are known to offer troubled teen industry facilities as a way out of juvie – along with other, not evil alternatives.

        3. Chubsius

          Did Marcie go to the same school? I had assumed it was a similar situation to now, with her being nearby and hanging out with Sal.

        4. BBCC

          All we know is Sal said Marcie followed her to boarding school. Regardless, a troubled teen industry facility wouldn’t let her hang out with Marcie whenever, so that makes it more unlikely.

          Not to mention just the move would probably be expensive for her parents.

        5. Laura

          Sal frequently climbed out of the windows. She would have seen Marcie during her escapes. My impression is that Marcie left her parents’ home after she became mute.

        6. Bittersweet

          Having windows is kind of a point against it being a troubled teen internment facility, from my understanding those don’t have windows in the bedrooms.

        7. BBCC

          Yeah and they’re very strict on allowing contact and making sure there ARE no escapes. If Sal was sneaking out every night, there’d be hell to pay.

        8. thejeff

          Yeah, but this is Sal. She’s basically Batman.
          She was definitely sneaking out regularly. That’s how she learned to use windows instead of doors.

        9. BBCC

          Batman or not, if she’s sneaking out every night from a troubled teen industry facility, there’s hell to pay. Those places are heavily, seriously monitored, windows or not.

          Which is why I’m saying her being able to see Marcie, sneaking out or otherwise, is a sign it wasn’t.

        10. thejeff

          Which is kind of insane on its own. A 13 year old, newly mute kid, leaving her parents for another state?
          That’s a recipe for the worst kinds of trouble, but nothing seems to have happened there.

        11. Laura

          Either that or we the audience just don’t hear that part of Marcie’s story.

          I can’t find the strip now, but I recall there was one, I think it’s where Marcie says something like, “You always do what’s right, and I bear the consequences.” Something like that.

        12. thejeff

          Yeah, but there’s canon stuff for that, none of which goes nearly as far as living on the streets at 13.

          It’s also possible that Marcie stayed in touch and followed later.

        13. BBCC

          Which is why I tend to think she was actually attending the school. How, I dunno. If they have an interpreter or something, I could see Marcie’s school (if she has one) paying for it. Alternatively, we know her parents aren’t well off, but she may have a family friend or extended family member who paid for it (or hell, maybe even Leland’s parents if they agreed not to press charges, I don’t know).

        14. thejeff

          There’s a lot about this whole part of the background I just can’t wrap my head around.

        15. Laura

          Sometimes folks can get scholarships to Catholic schools. So that’s a possibility. Or, yeah, I could see maybe Leland’s family paying to send his victim far, far away.

        16. Axel

          I mean, her family might have all moved, in order to get Marcie away from the kids who maybe tried to kill her considering what they did to her throat, and accepted the option of Tennessee when Marcie wanted to follow Sal

        17. BBCC

          @ Axel – Marcie’s family moving is definitely a possibility, but I’m talking about how Marcie could have paid for the school.

        18. Quirdry Tawks

          Honestly, can’t that just be a backstory item that was never fully thought out?

          Even Frank Herbert could only create his worlds down to so granular a level. And those who have tried to, like George Lucas, had to come up with the most ridiculous ideas to cover for plot contradictions. Christ, every film since *The Empire Strikes Back* was the equivalent of God creating the platypus.

        19. Quirdry Tawks

          Actually, it’s platypuses all the way down, God. C-minus work, at best.

        20. BBCC

          I have no idea what Willis is intending for the school. I’m allowed to speculate about stuff that will probably never be revealed or fully elaborated on. 😛

        21. Quirdry Tawks

          Ahhhh. Canon til proven otherwise. Well played.

        22. BBCC

          Honestly, it’s not even a full head canon for me, just a sinking gut feeling it may have been like that. I’m not convinced yet, because Marcie being there makes it much more unlikely. It’s not 100% impossible though and that concerns the ‘worst case scenario’ fictional speculation part of my brain. 😛

  25. Icalasari

    NOW I get Charles’ deal. Yerk…

  26. Dev

    Gosh this hurts so much… poor Sal.

  27. DailyBrad

    I feel like sending Sal away is one of those things that could have seemed like the only move, and why Charles rationalizes it like this, but the reason it got to that in the first place was Linda’s total lack of support and taking the money Sal was raising for Marcy, putting Sal in a state of desperation.

    Like, would having Sal go to juvenile detention have been the right move? The answer isn’t easy, but it’s also a question we have to ask due to decisions Linda made and Charles stepped aside for.

    It does make me think back to Charles saying how Amber broke the law for Walky and him basically saying it made her a keeper, essentially. Makes me wonder if Charles sees Linda as someone who is willing to stick her neck out or make hard decisions, and that this lets him gloss over some of her cruel behaviors.

  28. Segnosaur

    Just to play devils advocate here…

    Was there really that much they COULD have done? After all, I think the evidence was fairly strong that Sal committed armed robbery. I figure she would have been subjected to SOME form of punishment, regardless of how much her parents fought on her behalf.

    (Not that that doesn’t mean her parents are bad. Just that in this particular case, juvie vs. out-of-state school might have been the only options.)

    1. BBCC

      They probably could’ve gotten her in an in-state school if they fought for her at the very least. Outside that, there’s a host of rehabilitative options for young first time offenders, even serious ones.

      And frankly, if the sinking feeling in my gut that the school was a “troubled teen industry” facility, Sal would’ve been better off in juvie.

      1. Laura

        Had a friend who died from one of those sick twisted “schools’.

        1. Laura

          Sorry, sorry! *Trigger Warning*

          I should know better.

        2. BBCC

          *hugs* I’m so sorry. Nobody deserves to be in one of those hellholes.

      2. Needfuldoer

        For her sake, I hope it was a strict Catholic boarding school, not an Elan School…

        (If you know, you know. If you don’t, finding out is eye-opening and traumatic.)

        1. Laura

          Yup. “The Elan School” was the one my friend went to. No emoji exist to convey the sadness.

        2. Needfuldoer

          Oof. I’m so sorry. 🙁

          Just reading Joe Nobody’s graphic novel about the place is rattling enough.

        3. BBCC

          Oh no. Again, I’m so sorry.

        4. Laura

          Thanks, Needfuldoer and BBCC.

          We miss him.

          The twisted legacy of Synanon…

        5. BBCC

          That whole industry needs to burn. I wish Paris Hilton every success in her trying to get legislation against it.

        6. Laura

          That is amazing she’s working on that. Respect! 🙂

        7. BBCC

          Yep! She was stuck in one of those hellholes for a while.

    2. Devin

      It’s hard to say, we don’t have much actual knowledge of that process. It’s possible that they did in fact do the best they could manage in practical terms, but the practical factors aren’t the only ones to consider. Charles’ behavior with Sal has been much more “I’m going to try to smooth things over superficially” rather than actual standing up for Sal. It isn’t unreasonable to assume that that probably was the case there as well. Sometimes even just putting up more of a display can make someone feel better regardless of the influence it had on the outcome.

    3. Just an Armadillo

      There might not have been anything they could have done at that point, but Linda definitely drove Sal to the point of committing armed robbery by stealing her money in an attempt to blackmail her into abandoning her best friend. There were many opportunities to have stopped it from getting that bad, but none of them were taken because Sal’s parents never once gave her real support. Charles only really seemed to give empty platitudes when things got bad. Linda could never be bothered to even give that much.

    4. sdrainbow

      Don’t lose the forest for the trees. This isn’t about Catholic school, this is about how Sal’s felt her entire life and Catholic school is just an easy figurehead.

      1. Doopyboop

        ^This comment is exactly right. Sal’s not arguing whether Charles and Linda could have fought the justice system, she’s saying her father has never fought her mother about her decisions, tying into the first mention of ‘good cop bad cop’. When you’re being interrogated, the ‘good cop’ isn’t really on your side. He’s just using kindness to manipulate you. Charles isn’t really on Sal’s side, not as much as he should be. If Linda demanded that they leave and never talk to Sal again, I don’t think he’d fight that.

        And that’s exactly the problem.

        1. NGPZ

          Charles is in the Sunken Place — seeing the injustice, unable to speak or act on her daughter’s behalf, he paralyzed by what The System threatens to take from him T_T

    5. Regret

      Are you talking about a specific event or Sal’s entire life?

    6. Chubsius

      Based on the story so far, I can easily imagine the Walkertons being give a short list of options, and Linda choosing the one that would specifically separate Sal from Marcie to the extreme. Or special requesting it herself. I wonder if Sal would have preferred Juvie, provided she got love and support from her parents, rather than being exiled and shunned.

      1. BBCC

        Thankfully she failed in that regard since Marcie, somehow, followed her to Tennessee.

    7. Needfuldoer

      If it was her first serious offense, there must have been other options.

      Worst case scenario, Linda saw an opportunity to “set her straight” and used the justice system to punish Sal.

    8. Zero

      The fact that Sal was trying to recover funds that Linda stole from her in the first place is something that should be having a significantly more, uh, significant impact on the way Charles and especially Linda feel about it.

    9. thejeff

      Even if sending her to boarding school was the best of the bad choices, they could have done a lot more to mitigate it. Visiting more often. (Bringing Walky along?) Bringing her home for holidays.
      Maybe fight for a deal where it isn’t for the whole rest of her childhood, but just a couple years.

      Or you know, helping her with Marcie in the first place, so she never goes down that road.

    10. StClair

      IMO, this devil already has plenty of advocates. They don’t need another.

      1. NGPZ

        THIS.

        I know Segnosaur don’t mean it that way, but bigotry flourishes well beyond hate-filled hearts.

        “No malice needed, no slurs required, just lack of concern for how the past shapes the present.” — Ruja Benjamin, Author of Viral Justice

  29. pyrock_mania

    On a lighter note, this strip would indicate Sal is NOT going to sabotage her relationship with Danny over these events, because he IS pretty much always in her corner and would fight for her. We can all exhale (at least a little).

    1. Bruno

      I don’t really think anybody was worried about that.

      1. Bruno

        Nevermind, forgot where I am.

      2. Segnosaur

        I was a little worried. (Maybe not greatly worried but had the thought in the back of my mind.)

        What if Sal thinks (rightly or wrongly) that she was ONLY dating Danny because he would give her some respectability with her family, and since she realizes she doesn’t WANT that, then she will see Danny as “not needed”.

        I mean, its not likely, but we have seen other characters make worse decisions before.

    2. Devin

      I wasn’t really worried about that after this strip.

      1. NGPZ

        Me neither, she just ventin’

  30. Devin

    I wonder if Willis knew there would be referenda in the comments about cops and the existence (or lack thereof) of good cops.

    I’d like to think this was expected behavior. They’ve observed us long enough.

    1. JBento

      Dumbing of Age is just WIllis’s social experiment for his psychology thesis.

    2. HueSatLight

      There’s a bonus strip about the cop who executed Blaine and all the other cops pranking him by saying there’s going to be an investigation or whatever.

    3. Quirdry Tawks

      All cops.

      ALL cops.

      ALL FUCKING COPS.

      Are members of a paramilitary arm of local government. They protect and serve the interests of power.

      “Power is the ability to harm or coerce. Authority is when those harming you grant themselves permission to do so.”

      Anyone wanna guess who wrote that?

      1. Devin

        Best I got is you, right here.

        1. Quirdry Tawks

          *DING DING DING DING* xD

  31. Sarah

    The “good” parent is still the one who lets the bad parent get away with murder, and it’s heartbreaking when you realize that really, even the one you trusted and depended on wasn’t a good parent. There’s a real sense of loss with it. My heart goes out to Sal.

    1. thejeff

      I don’t think Sal has actually trusted or depended on Charles for a long time.

  32. DashWallkick

    I mean, Charles might be playing the soft hand but he’s got a point. It’s hard to blame him when she stabbed someone and tried to rob a store. It’s not like the cops are letting you off with a warning, dude knew what was up for a black kid involved in “Thuggery.” Yeah he didn’t fight for you Sal, he probably knew to keep his head down on this one.

    1. Devin

      We do know that didn’t happen in a vacuum though, and Linda was a driving force in what led up to it. Given his inability or unwillingness to stand up to Linda, it seems easy enough to lay some blame for what came of it at his feet.

      1. DashWallkick

        At the very least, he should have stopped the thing that led to Sal robbing a store – Linda taking the money. My hope is that this is him starting to realize he’s let this get out of hand for 18 years and he’s gotta start now.

        1. Mark

          I keep wondering how much Charles knew about any of that, up to the point where he had to be told and the options were all bad.

          I get the feeling that he’s rarely told anything unless he’s going to find out anyway. Linda likely sees no need to keep him informed, and Sal has learned to tell no one anything until the deal is done.

        2. DashWallkick

          That would be an incredible reveal but I think it’s a bit too melodramatic for this comic. It’s much more reasonable that he knew she took the money and knew there was no talking her out of it, but then Sal tried to rob the store and his focus was elsewhere because he was trying to keep his daughter out of juvi. Plus, it’s very human to sense you had a part in something bad and just compress it down.

    2. eskimolos

      Pretty sure sal didn’t stab anyone, though she held Ethan hostage, triggering amber, which caused amber to stab *her*.

      1. Tarnagh

        I may be misremembering but wasn’t it Amber’s father who provoked Amber into her attack on Sal? Holding Ethan hostage wasn’t so much the trigger there but her father’s hateful digs about what a coward she was.

        1. Axel

          yeah, she was upset and scared, then he taunted her into it

    3. Quirdry Tawks

      …except I haven’t heard about anytime he actually put his head UP…

    4. Chubsius

      The courts for sure required they do something, but maybe there were better options on the table than what Linda picked. Maybe, Linda gleefully went with the most punishing option, or just never cared enough to try and fight and keep her daughter in-state. The courts certainly didn’t require that Sal’s parents treat her like she was exiled and shunned.

      As Sal says here, the problem wasn’t just being sent away, it was how her parents made her feel about it. There’s a key difference in being required to attend a reform school, and being “sent away” and cut off from all familiar bonds and supports. The first was required, the second was a choice.

      1. Zero

        Remember that the reason that Sal was stealing money was because she had money that was desperately needed, and Linda stole it from her in the first place.

        1. DashWallkick

          Yeah, the fact that she’s being a tiger mom and he just kind of let her do so because he’s a bit of a wimp is definitely not speaking well of his choices. He should rein her in and it seems like he’s a little checked out, even if it makes him sad.

    5. Needfuldoer

      Sal was the stabee, not the stabber.

      1. DashWallkick

        Was stabbed, sorry. A lot happens in this comic!

  33. Amós Batista

    Charles really have the Jerry Smith’s vibes.
    They are siblings. Like twins. Like monozygotic gemini.

  34. Sirksome

    Oof. This is a rough one. “Black girl could go to juvie” I don’t know what you do in that scenario that makes everyone okay. Probably impossible, but that still left Sal feeling unwanted. Maybe her feelings are a bit selfish, but I feel like her parents failed her even after sending her away.

  35. Archieve

    Glad Charles is finally being called out too, the way he’s kind to characters faces but make no action to help just gives people ( I’m thinking Lucy here too) a false sense of hope that they have an alley who will speak up for them. He can’t have it both ways, pretending he’s an open ear then doing whatever his wife does regardless of the other person’s side of the story.

  36. Null Set

    Funny how Sal’s aggressive contraction spits out an archaic “t’was”.

    T’was I who set the house ablaze!

    1. Laura

      I’m assuming the ‘t is a silent glottal stop.

      Like how folks from Noo Joisey call the NJ state university: Ru’ ‘gers.

      1. Rogue 7

        Two things as a lifelong NJ resident:
        1. The “t” is there, it just gets reduced a lot because we like to talk fast in NJ.
        2. “Joisey” is an abomination and no one from here says that.

        1. Laura

          I grew up there too. 🙂

          When I was a kid, we’d say, “Noo Joisey” as a form of self-deprecating humor. Like an in-joke for our state. NJ’s got several different accents.

        2. Laura

          See, e.g.:

          https://www.mikeagranoff.com/lyrics/Trenton.htm

  37. AGV

    And what did you do when you listened, Charles. Did you try to help Sal of did you just give Linda more ammo to attack Sal?

  38. Zamperla

    I think a lot about how when her parents showed up the first thing he said to her was a comment about her hair not being straightened out.

    He seems like a nice enough person. But nice aint the same thing as kind, or self aware.

    1. Da Boy

      When you are being nice while following an asshole around that just makes you an enabler. Why are you just tending to the wounds your partner causes instead of preventing her from causing them?

      Whether Charles likes it or not, through his inaction he is part of the problem.

      1. Zamperla

        Yeah, I’m in full agreement. That’s why I lead with the part where he talked on her hair, which was A Screaming Nightmare thing to do.

        I really wonder if he could upgrade from Nice to Kind. I aint got a bet on it either way, but if he doesn’t, theres gonna be a day where one or both of his kids never talks to him again.

        1. Da Boy

          I’m looking at this situation and I’ve got the word Divorce floating in the back of my mind. I just see a strong resemblance between Sal and Joyce’s parents. If Charles wants to get his shit together that might be the path for him to take.

  39. shrub

    Well they probably fought to keep you out of juvie

  40. Da Boy

    Now the big question is, is Charles going to have an epiphany and realize how much he failed his child.

  41. Derek

    I am loath to agree with Charles here but he might be right on this one. Money and influence or not, it would be extremely damn hard to keep someone who took hostages at knifepoint out of juvenile hall. Sal being sent away as part of a plea deal is not a measure of the love of her parents
    Now the fact that they barely kept in contact with her for (five?) years, THAT is damning evidence

    1. shrub

      Yes the second part is not good

    2. Da Boy

      Yeah but let’s be real, it isn’t even about that. It was just the final nail for Sal, she encompasses the entirety of their shitty parenting in this one example.

    3. thejeff

      Though the fact that she got stabbed by one of the hostages while she was in police custody might help. Especially since Amber didn’t get charged either.

      1. BBCC

        The fact she surrendered probably helped too.

        1. thejeff

          Drastically reduced her chances of just being shot on the spot at the least.

  42. Kaffeeteria

    I feel absolutely terrible for Sal.

  43. AlaninDC

    “And ah still can’t eat Skittles cuz they keep FALLING THROUGH THAT HOLE IN MAH EFFIN’ HAND!”

    1. Quirdry Tawks

      You win today’s Comments Section.

  44. Rogue 7

    I think we can all agree that Sal’s general point about her dad’s behavior is true, even if her specific point about the robbery is flawed somewhat. That may have been a no-win situation.

    Keep in mind the entire point of “good cop bad cop” is that the two cops are working together and the “good cop” is threatening you with the bad cop if you don’t cooperate. Sal knows anything she tells to Charles in confidence will immediately get back to Linda.

    1. Rogue 7

      Also keep in mind that the good cop bad cop routine is, as we see here, used in all kinds of information gathering/interrogation, not just by police, so the name is something of a red herring.

  45. Theluxland

    You’ve been called out.
    The rest is up to you, Charles

  46. Mark

    Wait, a character is actually talking about her motivation, instead of shouting and storming off or clamming up? These two could actually resolve something! Is that allowed?

    All Charles has to do right now is avoid holding a defensive stance, and listen to Sal’s story from her POV. There will be some eye-openers. Then it’s his turn to open up about how the story has felt from his POV. (Which would be an excellent time for Sal to step out of her defensive stance, admittedly a supremely brave act for her.)

    Bets on whether any of that will happen?

    1. Makkabee

      Maybe in the alternate universe comic “Smartening of Age.”

  47. Chubsius

    The specifics of Sal’s arrest are small potatoes. The important thing is that Sal is using it as a metaphor for how her Dad still isn’t fighting for her right now. He’d never fight with his wife to back Sal up.

  48. Adept

    Dad’s enabling the mistreatment, and failing to stand up for her. He doesn’t deserve Sal’s time either.

  49. Rabisch

    So good to see Sal be able to tell this to her father. She really decided stop to be fake, to try to impress them and to finally open her heart admitting how much she’s still hurt. Malaya has do a great job and Danny too.

    1. Schpoonman

      Malaya is useless, let’s not act like her insane screeds have had any basis in the comic’s reality or Sal’s development.

      1. Rabisch

        Nah. In the end Malaya will become one of the most precious friends for Sal. I kinda hope she, Malaya, Marcie and Danny will end up sharing an apartment after graduation.

        1. Axel

          I could see this happening, it’s not like Malaya is actually a complete piece of shit like Mary, but nah yourself, Malaya has not been making Sal more genuine. She accuses Sal of being “fakey” when she is being genuine or neutral at worst, and thought she wasn’t being fake the one time she actually was (with Marcie). That (if you react to it) doesn’t make you be more open, that makes you stop making an effort to show any of your real self

  50. Hof1991

    Minority opinion here because I’m a graduate of a Catholic residential school. All boys instead of all girls.

    The school wasn’t the problem nor was Tennessee. Sal’s parents abandoned her there. There’s internet, email and phones. No reason they couldn’t have communicated with her and let Walky have a long distance relationship with his sister. Gone to see her. Had her home as often as possible. This didn’t happen and it was intentional.

    They were treating her like a disease that they needed out of their lives. To keep her from infecting Walky. I’m surprised they let her attend the same college as Walky.

    No good parent / bad parent here. Turtles all the way down.

    1. Yeet

      Solid points; there was absolutely no good reason to disappear her.

    2. BBCC

      We dunno what kind of school it was other than Catholic and not all that greater than juvie. That’ll also impact things.

  51. Yeet

    Obligatory there’s no good cops.
    Not sure why Charles feels like he’s gonna be able to talk to Sal meaningfully here? The problem is Linda deciding Sal is starting shit by showing up without a non-family member for a family meal.
    If he doesn’t have the balls to even politely suggest to Linda that maybe they could have lunch anyway then he’s not got a solution.
    Go tell your wife that if she doesn’t stop being a dick you’re not gonna have a daughter much longer bro.

    1. The Jighole Man

      the problem with the good cop/bad cop routine is that the “Good” cop condones the actions of the bad cop.
      There are many actual GOOD cops out there that care for their community, but the Good cop Bad cop routine is just that, a routine, a manipulation
      The bad cop scares the person into the good cop’s arms, and the good cop pretends to give a shit while manipulating you for information.

  52. HueSatLight

    ACAB includes Columbo.

    1. Mikey

      First of all, HOW DARE YOU

    2. Quirdry Tawks

      But but but Quincy. We can keep Quincy, right?

      …

      …right?

    3. HueSatLight

      He even says it himself, in Columbo goes to College, and at the end of It’s All in the Game.

    4. Mark

      Don’t forget Barney Miller.

      1. Needfuldoer

        And Barney Fife? 🙁

  53. Jason

    I really hope Charles understands that Sal’s point isn’t really about Tennessee. That’s just… a really easy big thing to point at which sums up her point.

    I was really happy with yesterday’s strip. And actually… same with today. In a situation like this, irl, there is almost certainly not going to be a satisfying way to make a point and walk off.
    Which makes the fact that Sal got to do that… incredibly cathartic.

  54. Rocketboy1313

    “Hon, you robbed a place.”

    1. Mym

      After her mom robbed her

    2. Alongcameaspider

      Who put her in a position where she felt she had to in order to help her friend again?

  55. Kelibath

    This entire plotline has been both so difficult, raw, but also so cathartic in some ways. As the child of an abuser and enabler – which is not all they were, and they truly did seem to feel they were doing their best, but that is how it panned out for sure – I ended up somehow both the golden child and scapegoat at the same time. My mother would cover for “my” trauma and reactions to the family and try to explain it all away to keep things calm and together with sticky-tape after my father regularly emotionally and sometimes physically exploded on me as his catharsis from a stressful day of work. I would ‘set him off’ by being too affectionate too soon after his homecoming, or standing in the wrong place, or even speaking out to protect someone else or because I was being already treated far less than fair. My mother would then stand by him and condemn / order me down because, I was told far later, she felt he wouldn’t be reasonable or listen to her and she had no authority to command him in the same way as me. So to siblings, outsiders, even eventually myself, I looked like the bad guy, his actions were ratified, and I had no true escape or any workable method to make it change or stop. My identity was twisted as surely as Linda’s attempts to keep Sal her little, damaged ‘Sally’ is being applied above, and it’s been a lifelong quest to first run from and then unpack that. Being autistic with similar traits to his didn’t help as it just meant I felt the unfairness incredibly keenly and didn’t know how to just live with it or walk away as Sal is doing above. Even today I have no idea how most of the wider family sees me and it’s a nightmarish question to keep bringing up.

    I just wanted to thank you Willis for describing this in such subtle, nuanced detail. Even down to the perhaps slightly frustrating ways for others that she is not able to point it all out in what we might wish as a satisfying manner. In some ways it is actually painful to see it all called out so easily as this, for me, when in reality it felt like such a torment to even try. But in others, we can see how much she’s struggling to name it properly, where she’s using examples when she doesn’t have the terms to hand. I really have to applaud her efforts within the narrative and Willis’ truth in art outside it by showing that dichotomy of a perfect lived understanding clashing with a lack of knowledge base. Without the words to describe the situation she is dealing with, words that took me fifteen long years to learn, apply, and actually make some headway with myself, Sal is still able to make her point, realise her truth of experience and current predicament, and decide to leave. And I’m so glad for her.

  56. DudeMyDadOwnsADealership

    Just as NPD types like Linda can’t get that everything shouldn’t revolve around them, CPD types like Charlie can’t get that they made a choice and took a side…And like all other choices, “right” or “wrong”, they come with consequences…

    Ya chose your woman over the other child that always “failed her,” Chuckie. Ya had to make a choice, anyway. Live with it. Let her go. Let her fade away. It’ll be better for both her and the missus in the long run…

  57. TheKelliestKelly

    Was not letting her see her twin the entire she was there another concession, Charles?

    1. RocketRelm

      That sounds at least partly a fault for Walky, and his lack of actually trying to reach out. I don’t think his parents prevented him from that.

      1. Mym

        I absolutely blame the parents for this. Having a preteen/young teenager with ADHD as hard as Walky, he would need assistance to reach out. And that’s assuming Linda didn’t discourage contact. Heavy assumption.

      2. thejeff

        Please. This is Linda.

        If she wanted him to keep in touch with Sal, she would have made sure he did. If he didn’t, it’s because she discouraged it.

        That is not something to pin on a 13 year old kid in an abusive family.

      3. zee

        Walky was a child.

  58. Archieve

    Got to appreciate how mesed up Charles question in the first panel is. Really Charles? Your wife threw a fit to avoid spending alone time with your daughter and you have to ask what’s wrong??

    1. Rectilinear Propagation

      He certainly didn’t expect to be included in the answer to that question.

      They’re always surprised when the family punching bag walks away.

      1. Archieve

        Yeah, Sal technically was avoiding them for some time but I don’t think they ever expected her to walk away from the family fights.

  59. Kitschensyngk

    When you have one bad parent and one good parent who does nothing, you have two bad parents.

  60. NGPZ

    420th comment!!!! Blaze it!!! XD

  61. Kenny Williams

    Okay, I’ll play devil’s advocate here. Sal robbed a convienance store, her parents must have pulled some karen lawyer shit to keep her out of Juvie. Vonsidering how the system treats minorities I’m surprised they were able to do that much. Sure Linda is a dick, but juvie would have been a black mark on her life.

    1. NGPZ

      You are the second devils advocate here, see above, far too many devils advocates for this in general already.

      1. clif

        But are they advocating for the same devil? Perhaps one devil is trying to garner support by positioning themselves as even more extreme than the other devil.

    2. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

      Based on what Sal and Asher have said, it seems like this wasn’t so much a concession with the legal system as it was a concession with Linda.

      Regardless of how that particular event panned out, though, the “Charles never fights for Sal against Linda” idea still comes through clearly, and the recent “fight” over Sal showing up for lunch (to which she was invited) is a great example.

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