874

Hopping
Posted on January 19, 2016 by David M Willis

874 thoughts on “Hopping”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    the Asshole Workout Regimen

    1. inqntrol

      “Burn those calories!”

      1. Reltzik

        Ride’em Calfgirl!

    2. Doctor_Who

      And the best part is, they BOTH get a workout. Mary’s heartrate is through the roof right now.

      1. Ana Chronistic

        that could just be an ulcer tho

        1. JoyceParty

          We can only hope.

      2. Needfuldoer

        Maybe someday it won’t be two sizes too small anymore.

    3. Shiro

      No, no, it’s her calves she’s working out

      And I’m rather impressed she can sustain this, we used to jump in place for warmups at tae kwon do and it was not easy.

      1. Ana Chronistic

        well THAT kind of workout is called “diarrhea”

        1. Moonshine McGee

          you mean like this?

        2. Squirrel_Empire

          Well… I watched that. I hope you’re proud of yourself.

        3. Plasma Mongoose

          Watching Japanese girls exercising to “I got a bad case of diarrhea”, now that’s entertainment.

        4. TheGrammarLegionary

          Not at all what I expected… I’m a little… why did all their tops say ‘Fräulein’?

      2. Reltzik

        It’s like how extreme bursts of adrenaline can make people capable of superhuman feats, except instead of adrenaline it’s assholery.

        …. yes, you stupid spellcheck, assholery is a word.

        1. Rutee

          Make sure to teach it jackassery too.

        2. Reltzik

          It already knows that.

          … oh, you mean teach it the WORD. Got it.

    4. Plasma Mongoose

      Asshole Workout Regimen sounds like a gay euphemism for loads of buttsex.

      1. ninja_jesus

        But Carla is a girl.

      2. Chaucer59

        Why “gay”? At any given moment, of the people in the world partaking of anal penetration for pleasure, the majority are straight. And don’t THAT make your brown eye blue?

        1. Strangeshapes

          If it turns blue you should really see a doctor.

        2. Tan

          I am interested in the statistics and any intervening math you are using for this declaration.

          I’m not doubting you, I just… I just want those numbers in my life.

        3. Lin

          Not necessarily proof of “majority,” but data on anal sex in heterosexual people: McBride, K. R., & Fortenberry, J. D. (2010). Heterosexual anal sexuality and anal sex behaviors: a review. Journal of sex research, 47(2-3), 123-136.

        4. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          I’d like to point out that on average, most people are bi.

        5. Salmo

          Only if you’re the kind of person who tells other people what their sexuality is and refuses to let people self-identify.

        6. Yet_One_More_Idiot

          Really? I’d like to see the stats you’re basing that comment on. 🙂

          (I’m a man, I once took the Kinsey test, it came out with a 0 – completely straight; this in spite of the fact that Amazon and a lot of people online identify me by my personal tastes and behaviours as a teenage girl. Yes really. :P)

        7. jmr3

          and the average human has approximately one breast and one testicle.

    5. motorfirebox

      No, no, she’s working out her calves.

      1. Willoughby Chase

        Always thought she’d be a farmer.

  2. Pan

    super carla has super hopping powers

    1. John

      s/super/Ultra/g

      1. Pan

        Ultra Car
        Super Carla
        Very different characters

    2. Yet_One_More_Idiot

      Is that really a hop or a jump? I thought that hopping was single-leg only…?

  3. miados

    not story relevant but i love how her hair looks with the multiple angles for her puff bouncing.

    1. Shiro

      Somehow it never registered with me how MUCH hair she has. I wanna braid it.

      1. Disloyal Subject

        Ditto. Well, ditto on the realization; I suck at braiding.

    2. Rutee

      Ditto.

  4. Disloyal Subject

    Well, there’s a great silver lining.

  5. Mkvenner

    My opinion on Carla has changed.

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      For the better or worse?

      1. Reltzik

        Those are the only two directions?

        1. Dean

          No, you can dis/like her the same amount, but for different reasons.

      2. A Scientist

        Laterally.

        1. Yet_One_More_Idiot

          My opinion of her has changed by some quantity in the chalk-cheese direction… >_>

          [/Flatterland] xD

  6. Jacques Cornelius Parrot III

    I thought the exact same thing about Carla’s calves when reading yesterday’s comic

  7. Bagge

    All good and fun until someone loses an eye.

    1. Guairdean

      All good and fun until someone loses an eye, then hey, free eyeball!

      1. Reltzik

        Does it count as free if it comes out of the socket, or does the retina have to detach as well?

        1. TheNinthShader

          As long as its out of the socket, you can grab that sucker and rip it right out.

        2. DSL

          The retina should be included with the eye. If it isn’t, you shouls look for another eye dealer.

        3. Inspector Hound

          Also, be aware that there are plenty of retinas that pre-date IEEE 11073 standards, so check the certification of your eyeball.

    2. Cacturne

      They lose an eye, but get awesome calves!

    3. John

      Then it’s a postapocalyptic future?

      1. Captain Button

        Not until you get the Hand of Kwll also.

        1. NelC

          I’m holding out for Head of Vecna.

        2. heyman

          I had only heard about the Hand of Vecna

        3. Captain Button

          Do not ask about the, well, other head…

  8. jepmz

    Is there a video that demonstrates what this looks like? The background noise words seem intense

    1. Ana Chronistic

      It… looks like someone hopping up and down while on skates with immobile wheels?

      I imagine it actually isn’t too much louder than normal hopping, with an added rattle, but we had kind of thick floors… (also, a loose pipe that BANGED on the wall at all hours of the day that no one decided to fix)

      1. Doctor_Who

        I’m basically picturing this sound but louder.

        1. Disloyal Subject

          Too spring-y.

      2. jepmz

        I forgot what my reply was supposed to be because I’m totally speechless D:

  9. timemonkey

    Oh please be going to complain. It’d be sweet.

    That may be the first time I’ve ever wanted this version of Ruth to appear.

    1. Kryss LaBryn

      Yup, and she will tell Mary to fuck off, and then Mary will complain that she never does anything about anything, in violation of her very specific job description, including addressing the issue of the drop-out lesbian girl living down the hall. And then she goes and complains to the Dean about Ruth, and her relationship with Billie, and about Becky, and everyone is sad forever.

      Plus Carla’s wheels still don’t work.

      1. DudeMyDadOwnsADealership

        Bet her contrarian approach to life (if you could call what she’s devoting her energy to as ‘having a life’) continues to work just fine regardless.

        1. Spencer

          I kind of doubt Ruth is gonna be riding on the deliberate ignorance of her superiors for much longer. That bridge is gonna collapse one of these days.

  10. DarkoNeko

    This ain’t gonna end well.

  11. chris73

    Its nice that these two diametrically opposed people can still be a big a jerk as each other

  12. Mr D

    taking in account how Willis writes? These two are gonna bang SO hard.

    1. Sterling

      Unlikely, given that Mary is even further into bullshit fundamentalism than Joyce (albeit significantly more promiscuous; she’s just probably very anti-gay), and more importantly, Carla is ace.

      1. Andrew

        Has that been established, actually? I know she’s trans, but I can’t remember any mention of her being asexual in this universe.

        And Ultracar was also asexual, but that didn’t stop her from banging the heck out of her girlfriend.

      2. Dana

        Mary’s promiscuity or lack thereof is unestablished in this continuity, and while Willis has promised that characters’ sexual preferences would remain unchanged in the two continuities, Carla seems like a confusing case that he could take in whatever direction he likes. She wasn’t even human before, after all. Ace seems likely, but she needn’t be anything so easily labeled.

        1. Cerberus

          She’s ace:
          http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/125122471272/in-dumbing-of-age-and-its-walkyshortpacked-i

        2. Captain Button

          Digressing, I’ve never figured out if “This is totally babies” is supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing.

        3. Cerberus

          Given Willis’s recent posts, we can all say it’s definitely a shitty thing. Eh? Eh? … yeah, I’ll just escort myself out for that one.

        4. MeghanTheDreamCrusher

          Well according to this it’s terrible when everything is totally babies.

          http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/122824933327/willis-is-everything-totally-babies-are-you

          I thought Willis might be being sarcastic here though cause…well that’s 90% of what he speaks, and plus this was right before he told us about the babies so yeah.

          But then, I did more digging and found this
          http://itswalky.tumblr.com/tagged/this-is-so-babies

          And then I found confirmation “This is totally babies negative” (Unless you don’t use it that way)
          http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/20905063955/can-this-is-so-babies-be-positive-as-well-as

          And just for fun
          http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/10276926286/its-a-damn-good-thing-its-the-weekend-willis

        5. Buhzim

          Robin coined the expression and the thought of having kids horrified her then, so it’s meant to be a THIS BLOWS thing.

      3. Captain Button

        Do we know anything definite about Mary’s, err, history that way? Or is it just the usual commentariat ultraextrapolation?

        1. thejeff

          Extrapolation. Spawned by the Roomies version. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it carry over in some fashion, if only to emphasize her hypocrisy.

          There are definitely hints that there’s more going on with Mary than it seems at first glance. Enough fuss was made about the “naked at 3PM” thing to suggest it was more meaningful then her changing or something.

    2. JessWitt

      But Mary isn’t of Asian descent, I think.

      Then again he is pairing off redheads with brunettes so it works out. Guess that’s why Mandy dyed her hair.

  13. tim gueguen

    I wonder how many HPM(hops per minute) Carla can sustain.

    1. Captain Button

      How well is this going to work going down stairs? Taking the elevator hardly seems prudent.

    2. Dellaran

      Depends whether she’s drinking an IPA or a Belgian ale.

  14. JessWitt

    Someone else start the band “The Don’t Care Committee” ’cause I’m tone-deaf.

    1. Leorale

      It’s okay if you’re tone-deaf, the rest of the band don’t care.

      1. merbrat

        Here we go… Judy Garland doesn’t care:
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-Q3gd6S1as

        1. Needfuldoer

          Phil Collins used to care, but not anymore.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLpfbcXTeo8

  15. Captain Button

    Mary, is it really a good idea to go off somewhere leaving your door open and unlocked behind you? With Carla behind you, really pissed off?

    Is there something in the Christian homeschooling movement that encourages this mistake?

    1. Ana Chronistic

      She habitually leaves her door unlocked WHILE DRESSING so

      1. John

        The reason Mary was wearing only panties and wristbands at 3 PM has not been established.

        1. Disloyal Subject

          I think underwear with a single accessory is a fairly common lounging outfit for college students, but that could be confirmation bias.

    2. Cerberus

      While a joke… yeah, there kinda is. Assuming that Mary, Joyce, and Becky all grew up in suburban environments and assuming that Mary and Becky are only children. They probably did have environments where they never had to worry about locking the door because there weren’t other people their own age they were living with.

      So locking one’s door might actually be a new skill for them if they come from that background.

    3. Rukduk

      Well, she might not have her dorm key with her at the moment. And if that’s true, then leaving her room becomes an even more questionable idea.

    4. tim guegue

      Was Mary actually homeschooled? Born again doesn’t automatically mean homeschooled. I had the idea pass through my head the other day that Mary is the only highly religious person in her family, and that her parents are actually quite liberal by her standards.

  16. Airyu

    If Mary brings this to Ruth, she’ll just be bringing it to another member of the don’t care committee

  17. Falcon

    Hmm. If Mary’s going to complain, that would be a proper solution taken later than it should have been. The problem for Mary is that any remotely fair authority is going to make her compensate Carla for those skates.

    If she’s going to Ruth, I hope she doesn’t find Ruth drunk, or for that matter blackmail her with her knowledge of her relationship with Billie.

    1. Shiro

      Yeah…at this point, any resolution from an authority figure is going to involve Mary paying for the skates and maybe also the carpet, so she didn’t do herself any favors.

      1. Reltzik

        Depends how reasonable the authority figure is.

        ….

        Also, I don’t think that would count as a resolution to this conflict.

        1. Falcon

          Authorities in this case are not meant to resolve personal conflicts. If personal conflicts are resolved, that is a happy side effect of fulfilling the authority figure’s primary purpose: stopping disruptive behavior.

      2. random832

        I don’t know why everyone’s still assuming it’s carpet. The last time this came up I actually found a picture of a Read Hall dorm room showing the actual floor is tile.

        1. Shiro

          Eh, tile, carpet, it doesn’t really matter. Anything stronger than Elmer’s is gonna be a pain/impossible to get up without damaging the tile.

        2. BLACKOUT

          Yeah, and I know of a few kinds of glue that actually eat away at some of the more common types of tile.

        3. Erwin

          Dunno. I get the feeling that judgements here are biased by Mary’s personality. At least, in my dorm, the guys who ended up drinking battery acid under the impression they were sneaking someone’s vodka ended up with fairly stern warnings.

          Glue in skates, if it worked (doubtful), would have gotten Mary style points. (Along with some time cleaning the floor). And Carla would have ended up unable to skate in the halls, probably with a warning, to be followed with eviction.

        4. Cerberus

          Yes, schools definitely care more about skating in the halls than destruction of property. They love students who make lots of paperwork by breaking the things of others (and yes, the skates are broken, removing things like super glue or rubber cement is really near impossible for things that are plastic like skate wheels) as well as the property of the school. They would have given her infinite high fives and offered to second her first child’s christening.

          Oi, you know what’s sad? I fully admit I’m in the tank for Carla. Carla is awesome and representation for an identity I just don’t get to see in other media. And Mary is a bitter vile homophobe who’s eventually going to be dropping some ugly transphobia when she cottons on to the fact that Carla is trans (oh you all know that Willis is not going to let that ticking bomb tick on forever, it may take a year or two, but it’ll definitely be a plotline, probably in conjunction with Jocelyne coming out).

          So, yeah, 100% super ultra mega biased for Carla, but so many posts arguing about how we’d totally see how Carla is the real evil one if we weren’t so biased seem to have a totally alien way of viewing how the world works.

        5. Athedia

          Carla is kinda being a poopface with her behavior and I would have probably reported her to a nicer RA (not Ruthless, I would be hiding under the bed from her). But I like her because (at least in the other ‘verse) she was one of the first Ace characters I ran into and I don’t see many and it made me happy. I like my identity being affirmed. (Also apologies for day late comment. Didn’t catch up til today after break).

  18. Sailormoon

    Even when being difficult Carla is still all cute O.O Has anyone else notice this or is it only me?

    1. caesaria82

      Carla is the absolute cutest and your taste is clearly impeccable and correct.

      1. Cerberus

        Heartily agree with both of you, Carla’s cuteness has completely peaked the cute-o-meter.

        1. Dana

          I love Carla and have been wanting to see more of her, but 100% on the cute-o-meter is defined by Dina.

        2. Cerberus

          No, Dina makes the cute-o-meter catch fire. Dina and Becky cuddling makes the cute-o-meter into an incendiary device capable of leveling small buildings.

        3. Captain Button

          When will they learn to make these thing with logarithmic scales?

        4. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          I think it was.

    2. Emily

      I find being an impossible ass generally detracts from a person’s cuteness pretty steeply.

      1. heyman

        Your avatar would….

  19. caesaria82

    I just love Carla the most, you guys.

  20. Idris

    Can’t wait for this storyline to be over. It’s aggravating on every level.

    1. Uniqueantique

      Yeah they both are pretty aggravating. But at least it doesn’t involve guns, kidnapping, punching, etc…..yet.

  21. Memyself

    Yup, Carla’s still a horrible person.

    1. chris73

      Carlas being a jerk, Marys being a jerk and it’ll probably have to involve Ruth so a real triumvirate of jerk wads

      and yet I’m quite looking forward to seeing Mary and Ruth interact…

      1. Memyself

        Yeah, Mary’s being such a jerk for trying to study and expecting someone not to make a horrible amount of rude noise outside her dorm.

        1. chris73

          She was in the right about Carla skating first but then she damaged college property with the glue (and Carlas skates) instead og taking it up with Ruth first

          Don’t get me wrong Carla is still being a big jerk but Mary is also being a big jerk as well

        2. Memyself

          One: Ruth’s track record for taking care of things is very poor, and likely everyone knows this – particularly someone as nosy as Mary.

          Two: Mary may have damaged the carpet, but that hasn’t been an issue yet, and certainly isn’t what Carla cares about.

          Three: Mary’s always a bit of a jerk, but in this instance, Carla is the instigator and problem.

        3. chris73

          One: this is true so is Mary going to play the blackmail card on Ruth?
          Two: Its still a jerky move by Mary to damage the carpet
          Three: I agree

        4. Uniqueantique

          Ruth has only one way that I’ve seen for of taking care of things.

          The only meeting I saw her preside over was the mandatory Freshman Indoc. meeting at beginning of the semester. She threw someone over a couch when they disagreed with her.

          Handing someone their femurs is a good way to calm down any situation. Not the best way, but it does work.

        5. Memyself

          She’s also known for vanishing, and clearly hasn’t been taking care of her basic job requirements.

        6. Amazi-Stool

          There was another meeting about misusing the fire-alarm.

        7. Emily

          Mary got assaulted the last time she tried to bring an issue to Ruth.

        8. Betty Anne

          It is entirely possible to bypass your RA and go straight to the hall manager. I did it on a regular basis, because my RA was either in class when I needed someone or it was an issue that was impacting the entire hall, not just my floor.

          Actually, outside weekly check-ins and floor meetings, and me being bongoed out once for talking too loudly on the phone, I’m not sure that I ever spoke to my RAs, come to think of it.

        9. Cerberus

          Yes. Yes, she is.

          There is no expectation of quiet in a dorm, midday on a Friday. Zero, zilch, none. And if she had that expectation, there are specifically designed study areas on every floor for that express purpose or study dorms she could have signed up for with much stricter quiet hour policies.

          Her expecting quiet and trying to enforce it would be like me screaming at the kids in my apartment complex to knock it off every time they played a game of tag in the halls. Even if I had the slimmest glimmer of a point, I’d get real unpopular real fast.

          Part of dorm living, part of why it is required is to train students on how to live with others without having suburban expectations of peace and quiet at all times.

          So yeah, Mary actually is being a jerk for expecting peace and quiet. She really is.

        10. Memyself

          Mary didn’t scream. She asked politely, and Carla responded horribly. The burden here is on Carla to try and be considerate. She absolutely refused in the most condescending manner. And so it escalated. That’s on the aggressor, that’s on Carla.

        11. John

          Carla started out – probably not even intentionally – doing something mildly annoying, and escalated to deliberately obnoxious when she discovered that Mary didn’t like it.

          Mary started out with a reasonable request to stop, and when Carla didn’t comply, immediately escalated to trying to force Carla to stop, in a manner that betrayed that she cared less about the study conditions that she was using as a pretext than in making Carla comply with her wishes, and then to vandalizing both Carla’s personal property and the public dorm spaces, in a way that stood a real chance of injuring Carla.

          Yeah, Carla’s an asshole. Ask her, she’ll tell you. But Mary can die in a fire.

        12. Memyself

          Considering Carla is a total asshole, why should there be any concern over her personal property or well being? Carla is a bully. If it was Amber’s father bullying someone, people would cheer him getting his face illegally smashed in. But because people like Carla, everyone is a lawyer.

        13. Shiro

          …well, for starters, someone being an asshole is not sufficient justification for actual bodily harm. Decades of abuse is a completely different animal from skating in the halls.

        14. Disloyal Subject

          I think it has more to do with Mary’s shitty actions and priorities, plus the commenters’ much higher tolerance for Carla’s petty not-touching-you assholery than Blaine’s outright violent physical abuse. The bias in favor of Carla and against Mary, while present, doesn’t really enter the equation.

        15. John

          I actually don’t like Carla. She’s an asshole. But she’s never done anything even remotely close to what Blaine did to earn that beatdown, and I can’t believe that you’re even seriously trying to draw that parallel.

        16. Cerberus

          What Shiro said.

          And yeah, reiterating what everyone else said about skating in the halls =/= decades of regular and sustained physical and emotional abuse.

        17. Rutee

          Not to mention, some of us are actual pacifists who weren’t okay with Blaine being beaten into the dirt well after he stopped being a threat to Danny. Decades of sustained abuse might be considered a mitigating circumstance, but even THAT is not a justification of a beatdown. And uh, Carla doesn’t eve register on that scale..

        18. Liliet

          “Considering Carla is a total asshole, why should there be any concern over her personal property or well being?”
          holy crap
          hooooly craaaap
          I hope you never go into law enforcement

        19. Memyself

          @Liliet

          If you use a personal possession to disturb the peace and harass people, chance are law enforcement will take it away from you. I mean seriously, what exactly do you think Ruth would do? Let her keep the skates? Cause she’s shown a concern for obnoxious peoples well-being and possessions when?

          “hooooly crap” indeed. Pay attention to the context.

        20. Rutee

          Law enforcement doesn’t actually h ave a justification to sieze something on a single offense. They might do so in the States, but that’s because USian c ops have ridiculous levels of authority that can’t be challenged (It’s on the tip of my tongue, but it’s a form of seizure for ‘evidence’ purposes that says you’re never ever getting it back, even if you factually committed no wrongdoing), not because they’re actually given the right to take away your nice things if you annoy someone with them for an afternoon (which, fucking lol).

        21. JQuire

          @Rutee

          Are you perhaps thinking of civil forfeiture?

        22. Memyself

          @Rutee

          No, they don’t have justification. But as you say, it happens in the US anyway.

          As for my opinion that I don’t care if a specific cartoon character that is acting like an asshole loses her personal property? Yeah. I don’t. She acted horrible. She brought it on herself. It was great seeing her get some comeuppance.

          Of course, someone then tried to paint this into a reflection about my personal morality in the real world, because said people are acting like Carla.

        23. Shiro

          Memyself: Well, since you made it personal…it’s abundantly clear why you apparently think Mary is the sinless little lamb in this situation.

        24. Memyself

          Shiro: And where exactly did I make it personal? Yup, I think Carla is the one who created this scenario. No, in the context of this obviously cartoon world, I do not take issue with Mary’s actions HERE. I’m an atheist, so your allegations of “sinless” mean nothing. I think Mary allowed herself to get dragged into Carla’s drama. The situation (as I have said repeatedly) escalated. That doesn’t make Mary blameless, but it does mitigate blame, and IN A CARTOON WORLD, make it easy to take pleasure in seeing the provoker face plant.

        25. Falcon

          You know, there are higher authority figures than Ruth. If Mary feels Ruth can’t do her job, she can bring the case higher.

          It doesn’t matter how condescending the other party is. Carla started the trouble. It’s not “so it escalated”. It’s “Mary chose to escalate it”, and to the level of property destruction and physical endangerment, neither of which were remotely justified. I wonder if you’d be singing a different tune if Mary had clotheslined Carla and ripped off the wheels with her bare hands, because there really isn’t a substantive difference for whether that would be justified.

        26. Emily

          You know what those higher authorities are gonna do? They’re gonna pass the buck to Ruth. And there’s a very substantive difference: 1) there is no reasonable basis to believe that getting glue on skates is going to make them stop dead in their tracks and pose any kind of danger to the wearer that’s ridiculous cartoon logic for the sake of comedy, and 2) if you use something to badger and annoy someone and they break that thing to make you stop that’s too bad welcome to actions having consequences maybe don’t be such a jackass in the future.

        27. Falcon

          The fact that Carla was stopped by glue Mary placed on on the floor for that specific purpose is fact. There’s no disputing this. Whether glue would in real life actually do that is irrelevant. So I will reiterate: there is no substantive difference between what Mary did to Carla and clotheslining Carla then ripping her skates apart by hand.

          Your assumptions on what the higher authorities would do seem unfounded to me. It is in the school’s interests to have a workable dorm environment, and they have plenty of other options to threaten Carla, their student living in their dorm, with if she does not comply with the rules.

          Being a jackass is not a crime. It has social costs, and that’s it. Answering a minor infringement with a serious crime is not a valid legal answer. Mary is not in any position of authority to punish Carla (or anyone else for that matter) by destroying their property. Emotional cartharsis doesn’t make it right or legal.

        28. Emily

          Stop applying real life ethics to an unreal scenario. She only face-planted because of the rule of funny not because there was any actual likelihood of Mary’s actions causing it.

          Legal =/= right. In fact legality frequently has no meaningful connection to what is right because it’s usually subjective. Yeah, Mary overreacted but to be quite honest I don’t give a single damn about Carla’s skates regardless of what the law has to say on the matter because like the vast majority of human beings my moral compass isn’t slavishly dictated by the law.

        29. Falcon

          If real world ethics are broached, then I will answer. You are responding to *my* post regarding the real world ethics of this situation, so if you’re here to say the topic is irrelevant you’re just wasting our time.

          Rule of funny is only peripherally applicable to ethics. When women beat up men in anime over minor incidents, it’s certainly meant to be funny, but that doesn’t mean they’re not vastly overreacting and thus shouldering the majority of the blameworthiness.

          Your preferences does not equal right either. If you were glad Carla faceplanted, good for you. I was too. It’s not very relevant to what’s right. If you don’t care about Carla’s skates, sure. It’s not very relevant to what’s right.

          Now, the difference between legality and what’s right is a topic I’m willing to discuss, if that’s your wish. I am obviously making the legal argument for morality, and tort law is meant to promote equitable solutions to the results of tortuous behavior.

          There are many approaches to morality. Frankly, right is what we decide it is. There is no universally, holy, one true right code of ethics. I generally go with a rational approach, in that is to be wrong it must have a practical harmful effect. It so happens this parallels the modern law in many, though not all, respects.

        30. Falcon

          Well crap, sorry for the poor grammar there. Busy day. I think it’s still understandable.

        31. Memyself

          The difference lies in the context. this is a comic strip. These are cartoon characters. The scene depicted was one used for humor. It was ghosting the roadrunner and the coyote. My judgement on it is entirely based on the context it was presented. This wasn’t real life, nor was it presented as a brutal act of violence.

          So yeah, my reaction would have been different if it had been portrayed different. But it wasn’t.

        32. Rutee

          Rather a hollow claim after all the arguing for real world reasons why Mary’s justified, don’tcha think?

        33. Memyself

          And where exactly did I do that, Rutee? Quotes please.

          Because as I have stated REPEATEDLY, the discussion of “real world” was made in RESPONSE to someone else saying “Yeah, but in the real world”.

          The “real world” was never my argument. Which I have now clarified over, and over, and over.

        34. Falcon

          Let’s be clear: Mary’s act was not a “brutal act of violence”, not in DoA or in the real world. Her primary aim wasn’t to hurt Carla, but to stop the skating. It was simply a reckless action that posed serious risk of bodily harm and destruction of property, the latter of which Carla suffered. Mary is thus directly responsible for the destruction of Carla’s property, and Carla’s annoying behavior in violation of dorm rules does not remotely justify that.

          Any serious attempt to assign blame necessarily relies upon rational analysis of the facts. That applies in comic strips and in the real world. In this case, DoA takes place in the United States, and despite some low-end outliers like Amazigirl is largely similar to how the real world operates. Thus, while enjoying Carla falling on her face is up to people’s individual preferences, assigning blame is a fairly objective process with relatively little difference between the real world and DoA. At most, you could say that Carla was less likely to suffer traumatic injury than in the real world. There was still an unreasonable risk of bodily injury, and her skates are still ruined.

        35. JQuire

          “Could you not?” is, for me, a really rude and condescending way to address a complaint. Far from Mary asking Carla to move it along ‘politely’.

        36. JQuire

          Also, Mary’s total communication with Carla has been “STOP IT THAT’S AGAINST THE RULES.”

          And while we know it’s because she’s trying to study and finds the noise disturbing, she has not at all communicated that to Carla. As far as Carla knows, Mary is just angry that she has any joy in life.

        37. Buhzim

          Well, it’s implicit that it’s against the rules because it’s noisy and disturbing. If you’re gonna complain, IT’S NOT ALLOWED has more weight than just I DON’T LIKE IT. Also at first she did tell Carla to go skating outside where she can have her joy without pestering anyone, but breaking the rules is part of the fun for Carla so she refused.

        38. JQuire

          I don’t think that it is implicit that it’s “against the rules” (assuming that there is a specific rule against skating in the halls) because it’s noisy. The more obvious reason to prohibit such activity is because the combination of speed, other people, blind corners and unexpected obstacles can become pretty dangerous if you’re not careful.

          Mary never said a damned thing about Carla going outside. I know, ’cause I assumed she did at first too, and then went back and realized there were only two strips before Mary broke out the glue: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/skff/

        39. Emily

          Rollerskating in dorm halls is 100% against the rules in any remotely competent college. It’s a safety hazard and it’s bad for the floors.

        40. Buhzim

          It’s also implicit that by “You cannot skate inside, it’s forbidden!” she means Carla should do it outside. If I’m shouting about your clown shoes not being allowed by dress code, you know that I’m telling you to change into regular shoes and not just making an observation.

        41. JQuire

          Emily: if you read my statement closely you would see that I am not at all suggesting that skating in the halls wouldn’t be against the rules.

          I am saying that a rule specifically prohibiting skating in the halls (rather than something broad which the behavior could arguably fall into, like this bit from the IU housing policy handbook: ” Using or attempting to use university property in a manner inconsistent with its designate purpose is prohibited.”) Would be justified by the fact that it is dangerous (as you point out!), not that it has the potential to disrupt the studies of others (as Buzhim asserted).

          Buzhim: …you’re not entirely wrong. But it’s not the obvious, or most likely interpretation of the exchange. Mary says stop. “It’s against the rules” is her follow up, trying to explain to Carla that she should comply with Mary’s wishes, and one that Carla doesn’t find particularly compelling without further reasoning.

        42. segnosaur

          Once again…. the Indiana University student handbook states (on page 11):
          “Residents have the right to sleep and study in their rooms AT ANY TIME without interference from those around them….Residents are expected to demonstrate courtesy and consideration toward others at ALL TIMES and, if asked to respect this right, are expected to comply immediately”

          Notice where its says “All times”? Not “when most other students think its a good idea to study”. It says “all times”. End of story.

          As for the completed claim of “use the study rooms”, you are assuming that those rooms are available (and are soundproof), and that whatever Nancy is studying she can easily pick up and move (which means she has a limited need for materials to drag to the other room).

          I find it a little disturbing that so many people think that people in dorms are supposed to learn to deal with “expectations of peace and quiet”, and not “how not to bother others with noise”. I sure hope I’m never in a movie theater with anyone like that. “Oh, you shouldn’t have an expectation of quiet!”

        43. lejwocky

          Yes. This.

        44. John

          Notice where it says that if they don’t comply immediately, you’re allowed to exercise any form of vigilante justice you can conceive, including damaging their property, college property, and their person, to force them to comply?

          Oh wait it doesn’t.

          (Nancy?)

        45. Cerberus

          Heh. Yeah this.

          Also, yeah, that rule is in there, so that RAs can stop things like Carla’s little stunt. It’s not technically in quiet hours, but it’s a “disturbance” so fucking knock it off. It’s not meant to be used as a cudgel to demand people absolutely hew to the quietest person’s day studying schedule nor is it intended as a get out of jail free card for committing destruction of property and attempt to injure.

          And study areas are study areas. Midday on a Friday? I’m gonna guess that they’re pretty damn free right now.

        46. segnosaur

          You are right… it doesn’t allow students to engage in ‘vigilante justice’ or destroy property for those who don’t comply with a request to keep quiet. Never claimed it did, and when Mary pulled her stunt with the glue, she lost the moral (and legal) high ground.

          I was referring to the initial problem… Carla making noise. Its been suggested over and over again that people can’t expect quiet except at certain times. By referring to the student handbook, I was demonstrating that yes, students CAN expect quiet, even at a time when many people might think “nobody should be studying now”.

          Of course the problem is how to enforce it, if a student like Mary well and truly is trying to study. Destroying property is wrong. However, she asked Carla to stop, but she didn’t. She could ask Ruth to get involved, but Ruth is at best incompetent, at worst hostile to Mary. She could go down to the lobby, but that might waste a significant amount of time, with no guarantee that they would do anything (and more than likely just tell her “go tell your RA”.)

        47. Rutee

          You can’t. The rules don’t actually say to expect quiet, they say you can expect people not to be annoying deliberately.

        48. Emily

          @Rutee Which is EXACTLY what Carla was being so what’s your point here?

        49. Rutee

          It’s like I picked my words deliberately or something. Like my diction means things.

          Carla wasn’t being particularly unreasonable until MARY asked. Do you not understand why Carla can easily have ‘fuck mary’ as a perfectly valid policy in general? This, and people still seem to expect actual quiet for mary. Actual, factual, quiet. Like Segnosaur. That’s not happening. What should happen is that people aren’t going out of their way to make noise, but that’s not the same as quiet, even slightly.

        50. Emily

          Carla IS going out of her way to make noise. Like she has been since Mary asked her to stop and the fact that it’s Mary who asked doesn’t change the fact that the moment she asked Carla was breaking the rules by continuing. Plus she was almost certainly breaking the rules in the first place because I find it utterly unbelievable that people are allowed to skate in the dorm halls it’s an enormous safety risk that no school would accept. I’m fine with a general “fuck Mary” policy right up until you start breaking rules to maintain it.

        51. Rutee

          Golly gosh darn, pointing out that Carla’s being an abrasive asshole? I hadn’t considered that! I guess it was totally outside my expectations!

          Yes, I’m aware that Carla has broken, and is breaking rules. That’s why I’m not going to shed a tear if Ruth or Asma tells her to knock it off. And yes, she probably is breaking rules by skating (If she isn’t, she’s still being a safety hazard). But why are the rules the issue all of a sudden? The reasoning behind those rules can be pretty important, sure, but the rules themselves only change what authority will respond to (Which Carla appears to be perfectly cognizant of). To the extent I’m annoyed at carla, it’s the safety hazard thing (I’m sure she’s sure it won’t be a problem. She’s skilled – and young, and stupid). The noise is pretty minor – most people will deal fine, except that one asshole. And given that she really just wants to skate, and seems to view annoying that one asshole as a side benefit, I’m reasonably okay with it.

          Though at this point I feel pretty bad for whatever poor bastards are on the floor beneath them.

        52. Buhzim

          If she “really wants to skate”, then why not do it outside, where it’s allowed and you don’t bother anyone? Carla is acting like Jerry in those episodes where Tom is just laying there and the mouse decides to steal the food that is right in front of him. Come on man (mouse), couldn’t you take the food from somewhere else in the kitchen, or at least wait until he’s sleeping? Of course not, if you did he wouldn’t chase you and you would be bored. It was never about the food, was it?

        53. Rutee

          “Where it’s not bothering anyone else” seems rather a gamble, given how many people hate fun. As to w hy she’s not outside, I suspect she just got her new skates. Like, she literally just opened the package. I imagine before Fuck Mary protocols kicked in, she was going to head down in relatively short order. But I could be wrong about that.

  22. Skizz

    I would hate to live or try to study around either of these people.

    1. Betty Anne

      I could handle Carla. Mary would annoy the shit out of me if I ever had to cross paths with her. :/

      1. Cerberus

        Yeah, Carlas are the easy ones to deal with. Marys… Marys are the ones that make living areas suck. I’ll take someone who’s going to be loud and dumb as a neighbor on occasion over one who’s always taking careful notes over every single infraction and calling in to the supervisor every time I try to walk around my apartment.

      2. Emily

        Nah, Carla is an unbearable person who makes it a point of pride to try to get under people’s skin with her douchebaggery. They’re both awful.

        1. Rutee

          I’d rather deal with Carla’s in the US and in Denmark, but once I’m gration fully settles, a Mary might be less of a problem in Denmark. Marys will try to blackmail you using stuff that shouldn’t be an issue. Rather a problem for me, especially since the US doesn’t protect housing status based on sexual orientation.

        2. Buhzim

          I believe that Mary’s blackmail wouldn’t consist of “I will tell that Ruth is a lesbian” (not illegal, most people wouldn’t care and Ruth could piledrive them if they do), but “I will tell that Ruth sleeps with a student she’s responsible for and their room is filled with beer bottles” (big no-nos that could get Ruth kicked out, at least the former would according to what Jason told Sal)

        3. Spencer

          Ruth is bi.

          I’m not super concerned with Ruth getting fired, honestly I think she deserves it for being an abusive asshole who is terrible at her job, but Mary is less concerned with the rules of that and more asserting power over Ruth (which, you know, Ruth did slap a dong drawing onto her face). If she found out something less damning she could still use to assert control, she’d go with that.

        4. Rutee

          I don’t think she knows about the beer. But here’s the thing – she’s collecting those infractions which aren’t an issue for her and using them for blackmail purposes. When people can have blackmail on me for /existing/, that is BAD. I would rather deal with Carlas, even putting aside that Mary is the bigger asshole here.

        5. heyman

          Mary has possible blackmailable info on Ruth because of Ruth’s actions, not because she exists.
          Clutch your pearls and identify with the situation if you like, but you may be reading things incorrectly.

        6. Spencer

          It seems pretty likely that Mary’s hatred is amplified by Ruth being a queer lady.

        7. heyman

          I agree with you.

        8. Rutee

          That literally does not matter to my situation at all, and you are not following the course of the conversation. I, personally, would rather deal with someone who is annoying than someone who tries for blackmail. I, personally, can be blackmailed for my existence.

        9. Betty Anne

          I had a Carla in one of the dorms I lived in – a dude who thought it was okay to bounce his basketball up the stairs and down the halls all the way from the ground floor entrance to his room on fourth. Every day.

          The day I got tired of it, I picked up my phone and dialed Res Life. “Hi, I’m in Ross Hall 236…there’s this kid who bounces his basketball in the hall every day on his way home from class…yeah. All the way up the stairs and in the hall. I don’t mind if he bounces it indoors, like in his room or hallway or something, but it seems dangerous to be doing it on the stairs….Great, thanks…nope, that’s all I needed, thanks.”

          End of story. The basketball was never bounced in the building again. It was mentioned, briefly, at our next dorm meeting that outdoor sports equipment could not be used indoors except in the rec area of the basement designated for it. Everyone knew who was doing it, including the RA of his floor, so once someone complained, it was dealt with.

          I did NOT act like a 12-year-old and trip him on the stairs, or puncture his basketball when he wasn’t looking, or put glue on the bottom of his sneakers, or otherwise try to “handle it” myself in the manner of an immature brat. I didn’t even open the door and yell, “Yoooooooo, could you not?” even though I wanted to. I never spoke to the kid once the entire time I was in school there.

          If you want to deal with an annoyance whom you know is an annoyance and everyone else knows is an annoyance in a general sense, there are much better pathways than escalating it to physically hurting them and/or their property and/or dorm property.

        10. Memyself

          Had your RA slapped you last time you made a complaint? Because that’s the scenario here.

        11. thejeff

          So call the higher ups.
          That example was also everyday, not a one-shot annoyance.

        12. Betty Anne

          No, but it didn’t matter, because I didn’t call the RA. I didn’t even call the hall manager. I went right to the top and called the Res Life office, who passed it down to the hall manager, who passed it down the the fourth floor RA. Does she think the hall manager is going to slap her? Does she think the Res Life director is going to slap her? I had an RA in a different hall end up having to withdraw from school to go to drug rehab; I did not think the hall manager, other RAs, OR everyone in the Res Life office were druggies.

  23. Plasma Mongoose

    It might be great for her calves, but is it good for her hips and femurs?

  24. Ruthmost

    Well, either Ruth does something about it, or Mary goes to higher authority and complains Ruth isn’t doing her job.

    1. Viktoria

      If Mary goes to Ruth, Ruth walks her to the quiet room that’s literally down the hall and LOCKS HER IN. If Mary goes to a different authority, she has to replace Carla’s skates, possibly the dorm carpet, and possibly a further punishment for risking seriously injuring Carla with the little glue prank. She’s screwed and it’s her own fault, as always.

      1. Cerberus

        Heh, I’d love to see that first sentence happen. It’d be such a Ruth way to handle it that cuts through all the bullshit, even if it’d be a bit fucked up.

        1. Emily

          “A bit fucked up”? If by that you mean completely illegal. I’d like to see both of these assholes punished for their behaviour because Mary being awful doesn’t absolve Carla of being awful.

      2. segnosaur

        Well, locking Mary in a room would probably be considered forcible confinement/kidnapping.

        I do have to wonder what the long term effect of Mary reporting this to the authorities would be. Destruction of personal property is wrong, but I would suspect Carla would want to avoid people knowing about her skating in the halls, since that might be considered an injury risk (e.g. collision with someone if they leave their room.)

        I could see things going like this:
        Mary: Carla is being loud
        Carla: Mary destroyed my skates
        Authority: How did she do that?
        Carla: She squirted glue on them while I was skating in the hall!
        Authority: You shouldn’t skate in the hall. You’re being punished for breaking the rules.

        Here’s another question… would the university have the authority to force Mary to pay for Carla’s skates? That sounds more like a case for small claims court.

        1. Emily

          I find claims that the university would give a damn about her skates super dubious. It’s much more likely to go: while you’re not supposed to be wearing them in the halls so we aren’t responsible for them being damaged there, but the FLOOR on the other hand.

        2. Willoughby Chase

          Damaging University property by putting glue on the floor? I think you’ll find – rightly or wrongly – that that will warrant a visit to the RA who may have to boot it upwards, depending who gets to call maintenance in.

          Let this be a life lesson for Mary.

    2. Buhzim

      99% chance that higher authorities will tell Mary “take it to your RA, bro”. Yes, even if the complaint is “my RA is a lazy asshole”. Unless the dorm is looking like something out of Lord of The Flies, the dean won’t leave his chair.

  25. Lapin

    I really just have the worst feeling about how this is going to play out. If Mary finds out about Carla, she is going to pitch a fit allt he way up to administration, if I had to guess, based on her previous behaviors.

    1. Cerberus

      And she probably won’t win, but will definitely make Carla’s schooling a lot more stressful and miserable in the meantime.

    2. Paul

      What is there to “find out” exactly? I thought the reason that Carla has a single room was that some appropriate person at the school knew about her transitional status and made sure that she had a single room to avert student or parental freakouts. And that this is in accordance with a policy already in place regarding transgender students.

      Does Carla’s room have its own shower, though?

      1. Captain Button

        I don’t think the danger is that Mary will tell the university administration, who already know. The danger is that Mary will tell people in general that Carla is trans, leading to parental complaints, news media attention, and Carla’s harassment* by other people.

        * Or worse. Possibly much, much worse.

  26. newllend(henryvolt)

    Well she’s optimistic.

  27. altalemur

    i love Carla’s bouncy hair. i hope Ruth exacts the cost of the carpet repair to get the glue out or replace the carpet from Mary.

  28. LimeSheep

    mary looks like shes throwing a tantrum and for some reason i think its adorable
    what the heck

  29. Stephen R. Bierce

    *plays Alice Cooper’s “Under My Wheels” on the hacked Muzak*

  30. Cerberus

    I am 110% in the tank for Carla, but here we actually see some positive actions from Mary. She’s moving on, presumably to tell on Carla, instead of escalating physically. It’s what she should have done in the first place before she got Carla’s complete and utter attention. I mean, it doesn’t make up for her continuing to act like “rule-breaking” justifies ruining someone’s stuff and trying to cause injury, but it’s a positive step which is a lot for Mary.

    Also, I’m with Carla in the last panel. Her calves are going to look and be fantastic after this!

    1. Memyself

      No, the first thing Mary should have done was politely ask Carla to not make a huge amount of noise. She tried that, and Carla was awful about it.

      1. Shiro

        If only there were other conflict-resolution techniques she could try, you know, on the spectrum between asking nicely and destruction of property.

        1. Memyself

          See below. The next thing Mary tried was passive resistance.

        2. Shiro

          Do you mean the glue, risking injuring Carla, or lying down in her path and risking injuring them both? Is that really a reasonable and adult response? So really, if your defense here is “Carla was being immature and impolite,” they’re both more or less equally culpable.

        3. Memyself

          No, Mary tried a step between asking and the glue.

        4. Shiro

          So you meant the lying down in her path? Still risking bodily harm for them both, which is uncalled-for and not a proportionate response. Still impolite, still immature (if not stronger words for both).

        5. Memyself

          Passive resistance.

        6. Shiro

          Okay, passive resistance. Still could’ve resulted in bodily harm for them both. Still impolite and immature. Still not a reasonable or proportionate response to someone skating in the halls.

        7. Memyself

          It’s a secondary step in the escalation. Could Mary have handled it better? Sure. Is she the problem here? No. She asked Carla to stop. the response was awful. She attempted a passive way of ending the problem. Again, an awful response. Then the next escalation, which put an end to Carla’s actions. Carla brought this on herself. Plainly.

        8. segnosaur

          It was a hallway, and as such quite long. From previous panels it looked like Mary had been lying there for at least a few seconds, so Carla would either 1) seen Mary and not proceeded to skate down the hall, or 2) stopped well short of her. So Mary was providing no real danger. (Its not as if Mary jumped out in front of Carla in when she was 2 feet from her door.)

          The only real danger came when Carla decided to jump over Mary.

      2. Zatar

        ……So just change “first thing” to second thing and her point still stands.

        1. Memyself

          Second thing Mary tried to do was create a passive resistance. That’s not a bad approach. Carla persisted. She engaged in bad behavior multiple times. She brought the ruins of her skates on herself.

        2. Shiro

          Okay, in the real world, if you start smashing up people’s stuff and trying to injure them because “they started it,” it’s gonna go real bad real fast.

        3. Memyself

          In the real world, if someone provokes you and you respond to that provocation, your culpability is mitigated.

        4. Shiro

          Not…really. You still destroyed their property and tried to injure them. Best case, you’ll only have to pay for the damage.

        5. Cerberus

          Nope…. okay, stand your ground creates a weird muddled ground so long as you’re white and male and cis, but for the rest of us, yeah, no, you don’t get a “get out of jail” free card just because your victim was annoying.

          That kindergarten excuse doesn’t work in kindergarten and outside being fuckers like George Zimmerman, it also doesn’t work in the real world.

        6. Memyself

          If provocation didn’t potentially mitigate legal circumstances, there would never have been an “insanity” clause.

        7. Cerberus

          That’s not… That’s not what an “insanity” clause means.

          It does not mean that you get to hurt someone because they are “crazy” or because they are “annoying”. It just means that if someone is actually having a psychotic break and happens to hurt someone flailing around on the ground or during a hallucination, they may be directed to spend their internment under severe psychiatric care.

          Also… not to be that asshole, but given your behavior on this thread, I gotta ask, why you talking about real world legal circumstances. I thought you said that your arguments were all about cartoon logic and we’re just idiots who conflate cartoons with reality?

          It’s almost like that argument was in bad faith or something.

        8. Rutee

          Yes, use a legal defense that never works as your justification for a particular idea you have. That is a fine way to continue along your merry way.

        9. Memyself

          Because I was ASKED to examine it from a real world perspective. Take a moment and read the conversation and approach it with context. And yeah, I know all that about provocation as a legal defense, this is a tangent, and there is such a thing as using hyperbole in a discussion to make a point.

        10. Memyself

          And in regards to the insanity clause, take a closer look at it’s history of defense with crimes of passion.

        11. Rutee

          “Unsuccessfully, on the whole”. You got tricked by a media narrative, schmuck. The insanity defense almost never works, much less for a crime of passion. It almost never works for the people it’s designed to work for, but it works even less for NT folks. The insanity defense in those cases is usually ‘we got nothing, and we know it’ for NT folks, and surprise, it doesn’t work. When you base your idea on ‘the insanity defense totally works for this’, you done fucked up.

          I mean, it’s telling that you aren’t actually using the principles underlying the insanity defense here. Because they don’t fucking apply. Mary and Carla know full well what they’re doing, and what’s going to happen.

        12. heyman

          Zimmerman turned out to be an asshole- but Martin reached home safely, THEN (per R. Jenteal’s testimony) went back to where Zimmerman was and physically attacked him (per residents’ testimony). Tragic, but SYG had nothing to do with it.

        13. Rutee

          Zimmerman was stalking Martin and his family. According to USA law, physical assault is actually justified as self-defense in that situation, especially if you have a reasonable belief you’re in physical danger – a reasonable belief that was clearly ACCURATE, to boot.

          This notwithstanding that in florida, if you provoke a fight (Which Zimmerman did, with his stalking), you literally can’t claim self defense to it. It’s almost like there’s a reason why Zimmerman was given a break (Which, FYI to Cerberus, isn’t him being white, it’s Martin being black. Zimmerman is Latin@, and is in fact part of my reasoning for thinking Latin@s will be white within my life time, although Trump would set Latin@s several steps back).

        14. Falcon

          I believe you misunderstand the degree to which provocation works as a legal defense. You never get to destroy someone’s property and deliberately cause them to fall at high speed just because they are annoying you. Never. No first world rules system condones that.

          The passive resistance approach was really kinda dumb, as it put both Mary and Carla in danger. The proper remedy was Ruth, and if Ruth didn’t work then the school authorities themselves. Carla, despite all her attitude, is immensely vulnerable to any finger the school lifts in her direction.

          Cerberus: Stand Your Ground laws apply to self-defense, and even then only when the defendant did not recklessly put themselves in a dangerous situation. Mary doesn’t qualify for this defense.

        15. Memyself

          I think you misunderstand a great deal – first and foremost the difference between a comic strip and the real world.

        16. Falcon

          If you try to bring real world justifications for Mary’s actions, then you will get real world responses.

          If you want to revel in Carla’s pain, go right ahead. But that’s not what you’re doing. You’re trying to rationally parse out fault. And the fault for the present situation lies heavily on, if not entirely on, Mary.

        17. Memyself

          And the fact that you cannot parse out the difference between the bully and the one bullied ends the conversation.

        18. Liliet

          Mary was “the one being bullied”? I mean, yeah, I see your point with Carla being deliberately annoying in a way that can become bullying if it’s systematic. But from there to justification for what Mary did a bottomless chasm lies.

          It’s like if you said that school shooters that open fire on students that bullied them are fully justified, CAN’T YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BULLY AND THE BULLIED?

          I mean, you aren’t defending literal murder, but you are defending bodily harm, and like I said, Carla’s actions weren’t systematic bullying, it was a one-time minor assholery.

        19. Adam Black

          Attempted Tripping someone isnt passive.
          Mary didnt have a right to absolute quiet. Her rights werent being violated.

          Mary responded very rudely, and with Bullying, which is why her requests were ignored.

        20. Memyself

          As someone else pointed out, it’s a long hallway. Mary was lying out in the open. The action appeared to be more of an attempt at stopping the skating than attempting to trip someone. But it could be as you read it. Can’t say 100%.

          Mary’s first attempt was polite. It was ignored.

        21. Falcon

          No dispute that Mary started off with a perfectly reasonable request.

          It’s her actions after her perfectly reasonable request was ignored (specifically the one that resulted in destruction of Carla’s property and causing her to fall) that a lot of people,including myself, have a problem with.

      3. Uniqueantique

        Yes she was. And then the next thing Mary should have done was to go for authority, not attempt to hurt her and damage property. Not getting her way didn’t justify that at all.

        1. Memyself

          Never said that Mary’s reaction was justified, just that she is the provoked party and her reaction is understandable. Carla is being horrible, and Mary is reacting to that awfulness.

        2. Cerberus

          You know, as someone who is “provoked” quite frequently, I don’t actually go around breaking people’s stuff and trying to physically injury them.

          Standing up to them and telling them to fuck off? Sure. And if that’s all Mary did or if she reacted like this comic the first time? Hey, all right then, she’s a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, but all right, whatever.

          Mary escalated this to physical violence and destruction of property and Carla is actively not committing any physical actions against her, simply escalating nonviolent action, reiterating the fact that Mary has committed a rather serious crime against her resulting in the destruction of a cherished object, and not really giving a fuck about her protestations.

          That last part makes her a bit of a dick, but I reiterate, you are not actually allowed to escalate to violence just because you are up against someone who is a bit of a dick.

        3. Memyself

          Let me ask you this, how did you feel about Amber putting her dad in the hospital?

        4. Cerberus

          Given that I know a number of individuals who are often and repeatedly abused by their parents? It’s a nice bit of wish fulfillment. Amber still has committed a felony, to whit, assault with an attempt at manslaughter. But so often abused kids can only escape their shitholes of parents, hoping at best just to never again to have to deal with their shit. Never getting a sense of closure.

          And in that particular comic, Blaine had just taken her boyfriend hostage:
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/grounds/

          A much better call for self-defense and physical action than “someone was being an asshole skating in the hall”. And arguably justified morally, if not necessarily in the eyes of the law (defense of loved ones, known physical danger, kidnapping, all that, same logic applies to Joyce laying Toedad the fuck out).

          And it’s also a wish-fulfillment fantasy as I said. So often assholes like that abuse and get away with it. Seeing one get his face stomped in does fill me with a sick sort of satisfaction to the more angry parts of my mind, which is not exactly right per se, but is part of the imperfection of my humanity.

        5. Rutee

          She kept hitting him when he was down. Danny’s hostage-taking doesn’t justify her morally for what she actually did.

          But yes, at the end of the day, none of a decade or more of sustained abuse matters one whit to Carla, who behaved like a childish bully, and Mary escalated by being the same thing, but more successfully. And given that it’s Mary, I’m not going to get too mad about Carla being a childish bully, given that Mary’s a permanent mid level threat to her.

        6. Cerberus

          A fair point and largely why I say it’s my less savory part of my mind that takes some satisfaction in it.

        7. Memyself

          Wish fulfillment against bullies is wish fulfillment against bullies, and applauding Mary for stopping a bully does not equate to an inability to separate reality from fiction any more than it does when you take pleasure from Amber beating down her father.

        8. Cerberus

          Dude, you came up with that self-justification just now. Shiro already caught you out over the fact that you’ve been arguing in terms of real-world behavior and actions, so you can knock it off with this post hoc cover job.

          Also, Carla is not a bully. Not under any definition of the term. She’s a goofball nuisance at best.

        9. Rutee

          Eh, I’m willing to say ‘deliberately annoying someone when asked to stop’ is bullying behavior, but Fuck Mary.

        10. Rutee

          Oh, and Mary is being a bully back, so I don’t know what the hell you think you’re saying, memyself. Carla’s taking cheap thrills in minor annoyance, and Mary’s taking absolute pleasure in ruining someone’s day (If not at the consequences of having them point their undivided attention at you)

        11. Memyself

          @Cerberus

          It’s funny that you jump on something so completely incorrect, and try to wave it around like a fact. Shiro made a “but in the real world” comment to me, and I responded. It’s called a “tangent’ and it sometimes happens in conversations. Look it up, “teacher’.

          If you’re going to try and pull “gotcha” moves on me, have the courtesy to read what I actually said, and pay attention to the context. Context is quite important. Look it up as well.

        12. thejeff

          Also, that was practically a psychotic break for Amber. Not a rational reaction at all. She had to physically pulled off of him.
          Some wish-fullfillment perhaps, but more a sign of how badly damaged Amber was. Over years. By him.

          If someone wants to draw a parallel here, they’d have to be claiming Mary is so traumatized by Carla’s “bullying” that she can’t take it anymore, snaps and lashes out at her. Which isn’t at all what happened.

        13. Drakey

          I felt pretty bad about it. I’m pretty sure even those of us who saw it as something that he totally deserved felt bad about it because it wasn’t a healthy thing for Amber to do.

          And of course, Carla’s skating is only the latest in years of physical and psychological abuse she’s inflicted on Mary. That’s why these situations are exactly the same.

        14. Memyself

          Did someone claim they were “exactly” the same? No? Okay then.

        15. Liliet

          You say they are comparable, and we are comparing them.
          The ‘systematic’ aspect of both bullying and abuse is pretty significant. Absurd retaliation only becomes sympathetic when you know that EVERYTHING ELSE you could to protect yourself has already failed. Which includes going to the study hall (and expecting to not be followed), waiting this particular annoyance out (and expecting Carla to not start this up again as soon as you are back to your room), ignoring Carla (and expecting her to not harrass you in return).
          Note those “expecting” in the parenthesis: if Carla’d done those, then yeah, I would have agreed she was bullying Mary and cheered wholeheartedly for Mary fucking up her skates, even if it was still technically wrong.

          But Carla didn’t. Mary still had reasonable avenues of non-escalating non-engaging actions open to her.
          (See, bullying is something you can’t just disengage from. It’s targeted at you, and it follows you. If you attempt to ignore it, it’s still an interaction, it’s just one-sided.)

          So, there’s a goddamn huge difference here. Fuck off with your weird comparisons.

        16. Memyself

          @Lilet

          Now you’re just lying. I never said the two instance were comparable. I compared the pleasure the audience can take from the two scenarios, I pointed out that this doe snot translate to taking similar pleasure from real world suffering. if you can’t parse such simple things, and you need to lie to make your point, you should really reexamine your opinions.

          And what’s your “reasonable avenues” you think Mary should have taken? Complain to the authority figure that physically assaulted her last time she had a complaint? Good plan there. Really good.

        17. Cerberus

          What Liliet said about bullying. The worst aspects of bullying are the way it feels all-pervasive, either because it cottons on to real-world oppression or because the perpetrators hunt and follow you. Skating in the hallway does not fit that description unless Mary has specific traumas surrounding skating noises that Carla knew about and was trying to exploit.

    2. Rutee

      Work that body, work that body , make sure you don’t hurt nobody.

      I’m dating myself aren’t I.

      1. Spencer

        Space Jam is eternal.

    3. Bagge

      I completely agree that reporting Carla to the authorities is the right thing to do and what Mary should have done in the first place.

      The problem is of course that the authorities are Ruth, and that Mary knows that reporting Carla will make herself a target for Abuse From a Position of Authority, which is a bad place to be in.

      Which leaves her with only bad options. Of course, Mary being Mary she picked one of the really bad ones.

      1. Bagge

        …and now I realise it has been debated back and forth ten times already. That’s what I get for zoning out a few days.

      2. Cerberus

        No worries, I’m sure she’ll find a way to make it even worse.

        1. Bagge

          It takes talent and hard work, but she does not back down from a challenge.

  31. Liz

    So…..going to the RA, presumably? To discover Ruthless’s depression and/or girlfriend?

    1. Reltzik

      Don’t forget substance abuse!

    2. Lord Stoneheart

      Mary knows about Ruth’s girlfriend.

      I suspect Mary has a card to play when Ruth inevitably tells her to fuck off.

  32. Gob Hobblin

    We don’t have TIME to discuss this in a committee!

    1. Reltzik

      “I’m not a committee! …. I just have multiple committees in my head, but collectively I’m not a committee!”

      1. Gob Hobblin

        Contain the orderly voices in your head, we’re taking off!

  33. Undrave

    Carla needs to start munching on carrots.

    1. Rob

      I would not be totally opposed to her wearing a bunny suit…

      1. Captain Button

        Does this make Mary Yosemite Sam?

        1. Rukduk

          1)That is way too hilarious an image
          2) I was thinking Daffy Duck instead

        2. Leorale

          3) somebody please draw this.

    2. Idris

      The problem with that is that Bugs Bunny generally annoyed people who went after him. Carla’s more like Woody Woodpecker, the wisecracking cartoon animal that went after people who just wanted to be left alone.

  34. Kraken

    Mary finally decides to talk to the nearest authority figure.

    Y’know, the one hit her last time she had a complaint.

    I bet it’ll go well.

    1. Emily

      Basically my response to everyone who keeps saying she should have gone to an authority figure: “Which one, the one who assaulted her the last time she brought a concern to them or the one whose going to tell her to go to the one who assaulted her?” Like, no her response was not appropriate but that’s not a viable alternative come up with an ACTUAL solution to the problem that isn’t “Cave in to Carla’s behaviour.”

  35. Rob

    When an immovable object meets an immovable object

  36. Yotomoe

    http://i.imgur.com/ukYrLCq.png
    Oops, I did another one.

    1. Spencer

      Never leave us, you perfect cinnamon roll.

    2. Willoughby Chase

      +1

      1. saltchocolate

        +2

  37. Fallingivy

    Never thought I’d be on Mary’s side about anything, but here we go anyway.

    1. chris73

      Its some damn fine writing for that to happen I think

    2. Adam Black

      IKR:
      Its funny how all it took was a transgirl skating a tiny bit too loud—
      ( and Not violating school loudness policies )
      for all of these people to suddenly to suddenly take the side of the hateful escalating religious fundamentalist .

      Who would have guessed?

      1. Emily

        It’s not about her being trans it’s about her being an enormous jackass. And totally violating school policies wrt stopping a disruptive activity in the dorms upon request by a fellow resident. Like, Mary started this conflict 100% in the right it’s only after she got glue all over the floor that she sunk down to Carla’s level of conduct.

        1. Rutee

          Like, you’re saying she ‘sank to Carla’s level’. No, she transgressed well beyond it – one was annoying, and the other was larcenous. It’s not a great argument for ‘but Carla’s just a titanic jerk’ when you reduce the jerkishness of other people to try to sell that narrative. Sure, Carla’s a jerk. Mary’s a bigger one (Almost by definition, since only one of them is trying to harrass lesbians for being lesbians), though, and focusing on how Carla’s a jerk to the apparent exclusion of Mary (Or, well, the Elephant’s Asshole in the room, Mike) raises hackles for good reason.

        2. Emily

          They are all jerks. They are all awful people with awful attitudes.

        3. Rutee

          But they are not /equivalent/ jerks. Much like in the real world, there are levels.

        4. Captain Button

          Now I want to look up what prestige classes you can go into from straight Jerk.

        5. LiamKav

          I knida get the impression that Mary making that comment to Billie about homosexuality was less a “gay people should all burn”, and more just a way of getting one over on Billie for being in a secret and possibly unethical relationship (I’m not sure what the rules are regarding RA’s sleeping with students). The homosexuality jibe was a means to an end. Which doesn’t excuse it, but it’s less about the homsexuality than the power Mary can have over Billie for knowing their dirty little secret.

          Of course, if she comes out and makes negative comments about Dana/Becky then I’m wrong and apologise.

        6. Buhzim

          “I’m not sure what the rules are regarding RA’s sleeping with students”

          RA gets fired. Ruth told Billie so when the latter was walking around the dorm with the Leafs shirt, and Jason told Sal the same after their little session at that empty classroom.

        7. Rutee

          Jason’s a TA, not an RA, so he might have different rules. I’m actually not clear if Ruth gets fired for dating a student in her hall, or for Sexy Lesbian Suicide Pacts with another student period. Probably the former, though.

        8. Rutee

          She already made shitty comments about Mandy and Grace, so I’m pretty sure she despises gay people. Putting that aside, she is from the same sort of fundie background as Becky and Joyce, and has at every turn proven herself to be even stricter on the community rules and less likely to focus on the people than Joyce; she’s not from the exact same group as joyce, but there aren’t a whole lot of fundie communities that do not hate gay people (at least, yet).

        9. LiamKav

          (looks at tomorrow’s strip). Well, gues that answers that.

          I kinda think that Mary is nasty enough that she’s not homophobic/transphobic for “moral” reasons (the way, say, Joyce probably sincerely believed that is was wrong and that gay people would go to hell). She realises that it’s something she can use to get one over on people. It’s a power trip, and rules for the sake of rules without thinking about any sort of reasoning. Joyce is a good person despite her initial troubling viewpoints, and her current struggles reflect that. Mary is a nasty piece of work and would probably be like that with or without the religious element.

      2. LiamKav

        One of the nice things about Carla is that she’s a trans person who is a bit of an arsehole. She’s allowed depth and to “not be perfect” in a way that’s often denied to non-white/non-male/non-cis people in media. Having greater representation is a good thing, but true equality comes when those people are allowed to have as many shades of grey as the standard white male leading man. Making out that the people who dislike Carla do so because she’s trans and they’ve just been waiting for a reason to legitimise that dislike does diservice to both the character and DW’s writing. Especially as the comments section has largely disliked Mary since basically forever.

        1. Rutee

          Given that it’s the fanbase that (mostly) worships Mike as Asshole jesus, it strikes me as an entirely fitting thing to mention – which Willis has repeatedly pointed out himself, in both SP! and DoA. It doesn’t do a disservice to willis’ writing to point out that disparity – rather the opposite, since it imputes a difference that is largely on the fans on… the fans, rather than the artist.

        2. Cerberus

          Mmhmm.

          I agree with Liam, it’s nice that Carla is a bit of an asshole and allowed that depth of character and it is also very telling how characters like Carla, Raidah, or Roz are treated when they are assholes as compared to Joe or Mike.

        3. Shiro

          Yeah, we very recently had an instance of Joe being an objective asshole while people insisted he was totally a-okay and just having a bit of fun.

        4. Emily

          I hate Mike with every fibre of my being capable of hatred. He’s a sociopathic asshole.

        5. RP

          Yeah, I thought about bring up Mike in the latest bashing of Sarah the other day but decided it wasn’t worth it.

        6. LiamKav

          Mike (in Shortpacked! at least) was bi. I think. I mean, I know he does it out of spite, but you’d think there’d have to be some level of attraction required in order to do it.

          Mike is also, well, not a real character. Which is possibly why he’s less in DoA with it’s more grounded nature. He’s a guy who arranged getting his girlfriend’s mum to sleep with the recovering sex addict in order to propose to said girlfriend in the most horrible way possible. That’s… not normal.

          Regarding Joe compared to Carla, Raidah or Roz, I suspect that he’s riding hard on having been a “main character” in Willis’s other work for several years. We’ve grown to like him. Raidah is brand new, and Roz was not very nice in Shortpacked! (Leslie didn’t like her, and I trust Leslie’s opinion on almost everything).

          I’m not trying to excuse it. I’m just kinda hoping that the fanbase isn’t actually horribly sexist (as the men do get an easier ride than the women) without actually realising it. But, again, I could easily be wrong, so sorry in advance.

        7. Rutee

          Mike probably was bi, which still leaves a rather salient pair of differences between him and Carla, Malaya, Sarah, etc (Sometimes more than a pair, usually not). He is in DoA less, but so are actual characters, and he changed from being omnipotent to being entirely, mercifully fallible (Which is part of why I don’t need an ‘…except Mike’ qualifier when I say “I like All of the Dumbs.” Note that I don’t need an ‘…except Mary’ qualifier either, I love to hate her, so she’s doing her character’s job rather handily). He’s still terrible, he’s just less capable of acting on it.

          Leslie liked Roz, fyi. There’s a reason she got to stay after Robin was ejected. DoA Leslie seems to (and I could easily be wrong) like her but consider her a disruption just the same (Been there with professors personally). And it’s not really ‘horribly’ sexist, it’s more just averagely so. I m ean, Carla was an MC of SP! at the time it ended, so you’d think people would be as quick to defend her as Joe (Or nearly so; Joe was an MC longer, but Carla was an MC far more recently, and they’ve both been side characters in DoA)

        8. LiamKav

          “Leslie liked Roz, fyi”

          I was going off this strip:

          http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=953

          Leslie: “I can’t stand her. I mean, yeah, I’ll make nice since she’s your family, but she’s so… slimey. She’s obnoxious and I don’t really believe a word she says. Like a used car salesman. You’re authentic. She’s got nothing on you.”

          Plus, Roz also described Amber as “the fat one” and on discovering Jacob was a recovering sex addict, immediately went and had sex with him. I’ve not gone back through Shortpacked! for a while, but Imy main memory of her was that she had a sex-positive lifestyle and insisted that everyone should share her viewpoint on that, even in situations where it wasn’t compatible, like Jacob. She was outwardly friendly but didn’t actually care that much about other people, compared to Robin who was more outwardly selfish but DID care about others.

          I might have forgotten some later stuff though.

        9. Rutee

          That… was a massive while ago. I mean, it’s SP!, everything was, but…

          http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=1280

          http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=1366

          http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=1765

          Like, I’m not saying Roz is that amazing and everyone has to like her (I do like her, but I can see how she’d grate on others), but Leslie does genuinely like her for a lot of good reasons (Even if she is sometimes annoying). Even in this verse, I’m not convinced that she dislikes her, but she’s still a disruption in class, like or not, and some college professors will throw you out for the day even if they do like you. But also, Roz does nice things without making it obvious too (The marriage proposal where she’s kinda going :3 in the corner made me think ‘she might have given Robin the advice on how to handle the proposal (Maybe it was all Robin too, and Roz is just :3ing because her sister’s getting married whoo~~~! Either seems possible), and also does nice things. But hey, you’re not obligated to like her even if she is on balance probably a good person. Dislike her all ya want, if you please.

      3. Fallingivy

        Seeing as I’m trans and queer as fuck and have an innate reaction of disgust when I so much as see one of those bible belt ads on the side of the road, I think it’s safe to say it’s not that in my case. (I am not denying that there are people who will dislike the character because she’s trans, but so far in the comments there seem to be people either on one side or the other or just saying both of them are being equal assholes here, so.)

      4. Buhzim

        It’s not always about sexuality, Adam

        1. Spencer

          Not that I disagree that it is perfectly valid to dislike Carla for reasons separate from her gender identity, not unless everyone who has disliked Danny for the past five years is massively biphobic, but gender identity and sexual identity are two separate things.

  38. Megatron

    Carla is best fleshling. She will get Springfield.

    1. Shiro

      Which one? Or all of the above?

      1. Megatron

        There’s more than one?

        1. Shiro

          So many!

        2. Megatron

          Well, that’s inefficient. They should at least number them. When I rule this mud ball, I’ll number them all.

        3. Rutee

          Please do this. The USA is going to be so much funnier with all our copycat names changed to name + numbers. I think my home town might actually have a low number, but I’ve seen so many copies of famous Yuropan city names.

        4. Megatron

          You know what, I think I’ll rename one of them to Megontronia.

        5. Megatron

          Or all of of them.

          With numbers.

    2. Rutee

      Well, at least our eventual overlords have taste.

  39. dailybrad

    I want a pogo Carla for christmas. It’ll be the season’s hottest toy.

  40. Zagreus

    SEND CARLA TO THE MOON FOREVER

  41. Uniqueantique

    Send ’em both to the moon. They could keep each other company as Carla gets some great bounchs on those skates, and Carla won’t hear a sound.

  42. Uniqueantique

    Should’ve been, and Mary wont hear a sound. Sigh.

  43. Kirby

    As much as I’m enjoying watching Carla torment Mary, I feel like this will end badly. >.>

    Willis, you have destroyed my ability to enjoy things without dreading what the price will be.

    1. Kirby

      Woohoo, I was right!

      *cries in the corner*

  44. zmm

    I do adore Carla next to Dina. So happy with this bit.
    I hope she doens’t fall down the stairs and end up paralyzed though

    1. Cerberus

      She’s skating on the ceiling in future preview panels, so I’d say that’s a long shot, luckily.

  45. Cerberus

    Okay, as a teacher, I have to say I’m somewhat dismayed and disappointed at the number of adults who seem to believe that violence and destruction of property is a perfectly justified and natural action in response to someone being an asshole.

    Cause, no, it wasn’t right or acceptable when kids are in kindergarten, it didn’t magically become okay when they entered into middle school, and it’s still not okay now. If someone is being annoying or a douche, you use your words, not your fists and you don’t get to break someone’s favorite stuff just because they were annoying you.

    And the fact that so many don’t seem to understand that or are using the same excuses kindergartners tried to pull with me is somewhat disheartening. Like, did your teachers not hammer home that lesson? Or what?

    Cause no… no, you’re not allowed to hurt people just because they’re “annoying” or “doing something you don’t like”. That’s bully logic and it’s what people use to justify really awful actions in the real world.

    1. Shiro

      Yyyyyyeah, with you on that one. It’s kind of worrying me.

    2. Memyself

      This is a comic with a superhero, with people cheering when bullies are put in the hospital, where people hope to see awful people pay for their awfulness over and over again.

      It’s fantasy and wish fulfillment. If people here are cheering violence, they are cheering cartoon violence. That’s not the same as endorsing real world violence, and as a teacher you should know that.

      1. Shiro

        …but there are multiple people straight up saying “Carla deserves to have her property destroyed for being a mild annoyance.” That’s not fantasy superhero stuff, that’s the shit that happens in real life and is somewhat different.

        1. Memyself

          “where people hope to see awful people pay for their awfulness over and over again.”

        2. Cerberus

          Yup, it’s the Fundie Hell mentality.

          The idea that if someone is a sinner, not has sinned, but is the category of sinner as defined by their transgressions against the holy rules, then they are now an unperson, one whose suffering must be cheered.

          And that has real consequences in the real world. It’s largely behind a lot of institutional homophobia, arguing that of course queer individuals should suffer and die and be bullied because they have “sinned against God”. It’s behind the anti-choicer ideas that carrying a pregnancy to term should be the “punishment” for women having sex in the unapproved way (while unmarried or in a manner that the patriarchs of a religion think is unclean).

          And most notable of late, it’s part of why our broken prison system keeps getting worse and why we make it so hard for former prisoners to reintegrate into society. And it’s definitely a major part of the dehumanizing campaign that has been going on with unarmed black kids in order to justify their deaths by cops and douchey stalkers who like to pretend that they are cops.

          Oh, Michael Brown might have stolen something. Eric Garner didn’t comply fast enough with cops. Trayvon Martin may have once smoked weed. Tamir Rice has family members who have committed crimes.

          Clearly, because of these “transgressions”, their murders are no longer tragic and become justified.

          Because they are “unpersons”. They are “sinners”. And all punishment is justified against a “sinner”. Eternally.

        3. Shiro

          I just want to say that yesterday when I tapped out with my hands thrown up in disbelief, it was with the knowledge that you’d be along at some point to be more eloquent than I could be 🙂

        4. Captain Button

          Finding excuses to throw people away.

        5. Liliet

          Thank you oh god thank you. This really is so awful to see play out.

          When the original situation was playing out, I thought it was funny. I was amused both my Carla hopping over Mary and by Mary successfully stopping her with glue. I wasn’t thinking of it as real world, it was just a cartoon, I wasn’t picking sides.

          But now, we are discussing it from real world perspective. And from real world perspective, Mary did far worse than Carla.

        6. Memyself

          “If people here are cheering violence, they are cheering cartoon violence.”

        7. Rutee

          Do you seriously think ‘this is a work of fiction, so what I endorse and why is literally meaningless’? No, wait, after your complete failure to justify it with RL reasons you only shifted to this. Well, sadly, we also know it’s not true. I’d really like for you to be right on this, because USians tend to endorse some pretty god damn fucked up shit through their fiction, but you aren’t.

        8. Memyself

          Quote me trying to justify my stance with real life reasons, and see if you can manage context while you do so.

          So you think all the times anyone cheers to see the death of a character, it reflects what they want to see happen in the real world? Interesting. You really think very little of most of the readers here, I guess.

        9. Rutee

          “In the real world, if someone provokes you and you respond to that provocation, your culpability is mitigated.”

          “If provocation didn’t potentially mitigate legal circumstances, there would never have been an “insanity” clause.”

          I can’t “quote context”, and I want you to picture me doing the air quotes as sarcastically as that Turian. That becomes an exercise in replicating the entire comment thread. Why you think that’s possible or up to me is beyond me. The context is indeed that you’re responding to others, but I’m not clear why you think that matters. You still made the arguments. You may not have brought it up, but you still responded, and you did try to justify your stance with real world logic, repeatedly. I’d say you failed, but effort counts.

          And yes, it does tend to say something when people call on unnecessary suffering, even of cartoon or comic characters. Enjoying something that isn’t remotely applicable to the real world is one thing (Wile E’s gravity shenanigans for instance, since you’re fond of trying to use the Coyote and Roadrunner). Enjoying things that happen, but are rendered comedically, is another (Wile E. getting hit by a truck is generally pretty funny, preference or no.) But when you specifically congratulate or call for suffering, it tends to say something. For instance, look at 24: Plenty of people argued for Jack Bauer’s completely unjustified actions. The USA is still pretty okay with torture (And was moreso when 24 was actually made), provided it’s done for the ‘right reasons’. Plenty of people were glad Blaine and Ross getting beaten into the dirt, and a good number of those people were USian. USians generally have a hard time getting /really/ fucked over police beatings unless the victim was a Lamed Vav Tzadikim. Yes, what we argue for in fiction tends to have some reflection in reality, even if it’s not a 1:1 correlation. And no, I don’t have a particularly low opinion of folks around here. They’re less terrible than the US average, which is still a solid improvement (I don’t recall anyone being glad Ross was going to be ‘raped in prison’, f’rex, and that seems like the sort of thing that’d get shut down).

          I mean, if you want to argue that people’s opinions about fiction are actually irrelevant, go right ahead, but I’m going to need more than your silly attempts at one liners if you want to actually convince me.

        10. Memyself

          I don’t understand why this is so hard for you. I have clarified this probably a dozen times already. CONTEXT. Those quotes you pointlessly hurl around absolutely require them, because those statements were in DIRECT RESPONSE to Shiro saying this to me:

          “Okay, in the real world, if you start…”

          I wasn’t talking about the real world. Someone else introduced that, and I responded to the tangent. And I have clarified so many times that this was not at the heart of my opinions on this matter. But you can’t follow that? Seriously?

          And your suggestion that those quotes you so badly cite were being used to “justify” my stance? Nope. Try again.

          Or don’t. Really. It’s gotten boring. You can be a total toolbag and continually TELL me what I was saying, or you can choose to LISTEN. I don’t care for your little game of trying to score imaginary points in this discussion. You’re not winning anything when you try and “prove” what I actually was saying. You play the game of knowing what I think better than I do, you fucking lose. Now go away.

        11. Rutee

          …I don’t know why you think that matters. You used real world stances and statements. Sure, let’s assume Shiro did it first. It literally doesn’t matter to what you said. It’s rather like the example of provocation – yes, someone tried to start a fight with you, so their culpability is exacerbated, but if you punch them, /you still committed assault/. Sure, someone else may have brought up real world actions first, but you /still responded using real world logic, and you still said things based on that/. “I did not entirely set the terms of the conversation” is the norm for a conversation. “Context” does not mean “the things I said in response to someone else don’t matter.

          You may not have meant to say what you actually did, in which case you should try walking back what you said a bit. But what you actually said is just that – that it’s okay that Mary did what she did, because she was provoked/Because Carla is an asshole. You /also/ said “I don’t care because it’s a comic”, but that’s not really what people have objected to. So yeah, you can say ‘try again’ all you want, but I don’t see a need. Your argument is currently ‘it doesn’t matter what I said because I responded to someone else.’ Beyond that, if basically everyone has ‘misunderstood’ you, it’s possible you actually miscommunicated.

          I mean, you can say I’m not ‘winning’, and all, but the evidence strongly suggests that you’re miscommunicating badly. Well, that’s the nicest thing it suggests, at least.

        12. Memyself

          In addition to the post below, in case you miss that it was directed at you, here’s quotes of me REPEATEDLY clarifying my position. I’m sure you’ll still insist “But you SAID!”. You play that game, you can push whatever interpretation of someone else’s position you want. But that is a childish GAME borne more out of bullying than anything else. I have made my intent clear – if you can’t accept that, it’s on you. Not me.

          “My judgement on it is entirely based on the context it was presented. This wasn’t real life, nor was it presented as a brutal act of violence.”

          “The “real world” was never my argument. Which I have now clarified over, and over, and over.”

          “I was ASKED to examine it from a real world perspective.”

          “Shiro made a “but in the real world” comment to me, and I responded.”

          “I engaged with Shiro in discussing the real world aspect of this as a response, hardly as a reflection of my stance.”

          “Yes, you made it about the “real world” and so we discussed a tangent about how things play out in the real world. This however, is a cartoon.”

          “Yes, if this were a real world matter it would change my perspective on both blame and taking pleasure in seeing Carla’s comeuppance”

          “Maybe the entire discussion for YOU has been about the real world. For me, it has not.”

          “The fact that this is NOT the real world has been at the heart of the discussion for me from the start, other persons tangent aside.”

        13. Memyself

          “You may not have meant to say what you actually did, in which case you should try walking back what you said a bit.”

          I have clarified my INTENT over and over and over and over. What exactly does it fucking take?

          Clearly nothing. Because you are too busy trying to score imaginary points in a discussion about a cartoon character and cartoon violence to grant a little actual human courtesy to a real human being in a casual discussion.

        14. Cerberus

          This.

          People are not going, hey, in the fantasy world, throw them both some ACME hammers so they can go looney-tunes. They are saying that Carla deserves violence because she instigated.

          That’s making a statement about the real world and the way we socially treat violence and “fault” in our society.

        15. Memyself

          So you actually think that people in this thread who think that response was warranted are actually that devoid of context? That people cannot separate real world consequences of a live human being experiencing actual pain and that of an arrogant comic character getting her comeuppance?

          I point that this is fantasy because people do fantastic things without apparent real-world level consequences. They skateboard off the back of cars and they jump off buildings. No one expects Carla to have suffered real world injury from a joke that was actually a coyote and roadrunner shout out. No. You are conflating the real world and the cartoon world. Only you. And you should know better.

        16. Cerberus

          Really, dude? You really want to throw that shit up?

          Why don’t you sit the fuck down and think for a second about your actions and then we’ll talk?

        17. Shiro

          …frankly yeah, that’s what it’s been sounding like. I pointed out that her actions would be unacceptable in the real world some time ago, and your response was (I quote): “In the real world, if someone provokes you and you respond to that provocation, your culpability is mitigated.”

        18. Cerberus

          …and check and mate.

        19. Memyself

          Pff. Try again.

        20. Cerberus

          What a thorough and compelling rebuttal…

          Kid, you’re so not worth my time. Grow up or shut up. At this point, I really don’t care which.

        21. Memyself

          Really? Because I haven’t actually rebutted the falsehood enough? I engaged with Shiro in discussing the real world aspect of this as a response, hardly as a reflection of my stance. You being unable to parse context is your failure, not mine.

          You think a childish “check and mate” is worth a constructed response? You think that paints you as mature? It’s always telling when someone in a discussion engages in attempted ageism to make themselves sound better and smarter.

          Teacher. Pff.

        22. Memyself

          Yes, you made it about the “real world” and so we discussed a tangent about how things play out in the real world. This however, is a cartoon.

        23. Shiro

          This entire discussion has been in the context of if this were playing out in real life. It’s incredibly bad faith debating to suddenly pull the “it’s just a comic” line.

        24. Shiro

          That said–if this situation were playing out in real life, would you agree that Mary was way out of line? Or is she still justified in whatever she does because Carla was being annoying?

        25. Memyself

          @Shiro:

          Yes, if this were a real world matter it would change my perspective on both blame and taking pleasure in seeing Carla’s comeuppance. First and foremost, concern for physical harm. Second, property damage. I’ve clarified this many times over.

          But it’s a cartoon, and I have as much sympathy for Carla as I would for Wile E Coyote when his traps backfire (though I understand that is a reversal of roles played out in DOA).

        26. Emily

          In the real world THIS WOULD NOT HAPPEN. Glue does not behave that way. This scenario is inherently fantastical as skating over regular glue would AT WORST ruin your skates it would not cause you to face plant 3 seconds later. This is not a real world situation and it does not translate into the real world it is based in cartoon physics so stop applying real world ethics to it.

        27. Cerberus

          Well, she wouldn’t pratfall like she did in the comic, but super glue onto the wheels would definitely make them roll janky and with the potentiality for stops and starts and would be ruined in any attempt to clean them. And I have literally no reason to assume she used anything other than super glue or krazy glue for this.

        28. Memyself

          Maybe the entire discussion for YOU has been about the real world. For me, it has not. We’re talking about a cartoon world where people can jump off of buildings with little consequence. The only time I moved into talking about the “real world” was in response to you. If we’re talking real world, yeah, everything changes. no kidding. Don’t care.

      2. Falcon

        This would be totally fine if they were just enjoying Carla being in pain. That’s a matter of taste.

        Arguments that Mary’s use of glue to destroy Carla’s skates and cause her to fall would be okay in the real world, however, those have thus far been baseless.

        1. Memyself

          Is it being argued that this would be acceptable in the real world?

        2. Cerberus

          Yes.

        3. Memyself

          Not by me. By who?

        4. Lord Stoneheart

          (Looks upthread). Ummmm… Those posts are still there you know.

        5. Memyself

          Quote me then.

        6. Falcon

          Any argument about blame necessarily follows real world logic by default, changed only when made necessary by the context of the medium (in this case, DoA). Whether it was played for laughs becomes irrelevant. Carla’s likelihood of being seriously hurt does indeed go down from the real world, and apparently glue does work way faster in DoA. However, it is indisputable that Mary took actions that would destroy Carla’s property and put her in physical danger.

          Basically, the moment any argument went from “Carla’s was being an ass, I’m glad she suffered for it.” to “Carla deserved it”, real world logical parsing of blame was invited in.

        7. Memyself

          Now apply that same logic to the Roadrunner cartoons the strip was echoing. I can say that Wile E Coyote brought his fate on himself without delving into a real world analysis of the episode. I can discuss the dynamic between Roadrunner and his nemesis without being concerned about the real world ramifications of the injuries sustained by the coyote.

          The suggestions to the contrary do not hold up.

        8. Falcon

          When you say Wile E. Coyote brought his fate upon himself, you are already applying real world analysis into the cartoon. It just so happens the Roadrunner cartoons operate in a much more nonsensical, simplified world, but even then rendering a moral judgment inherently means one is applying a morality system, and rendering a cause/effect judgment means one is applying a rational analytical system from the real world and likely adapting it to compensate for the different rules of the fictional Looney Tunes world. Those systems don’t come from Roadrunner. They come from ours.

        9. Rutee

          Wile E. Coyote is a sapient creature who was trying to eat what is, as far as we know, a non-sapient animal. Are you an Animal Rights activist, who believes this behavior is at its face wrong (This is not the only variety of animal rights activist)? Or perhaps, that he was doing so in a manner insufficiently peacable, and should have purchased less-cruel mass produced meat? (I would understand this position – Wile E. is generally trying to cause massive damage, after all).

          I mean, The Roadrunner is ‘innocent’, but it’s also not portrayed as sapient. It’s pretty easy to be innocent when you aren’t particularly self aware. It’s actually pretty common, afaict, to prefer the Coyote (I sure as hell do – he’s an actual character.) When you say “Wile E. deserves it”, on what grounds do you make that claim?

        10. Memyself

          Wile E was a jerk who did jerk things and paid a jerk price. Same with Elmer Fudd hunting Bugs, same with daffy numerous times he was a jerk. And in the skating and glue instance, so was Carla. Take your attempts to over analyze it and harass someone else with it.

        11. Rutee

          Bugs and Daffy are sapient creatures; trying to kill them for food is markedly different. Daffy gets involved in drama on top of that, and is generally being, in his own words, “A greedy, craven little coward”. Wile E. is trying to eat a non-sapient creature. In what sense is this ‘jerk’ behavior? We generally acknowledge that this is an acceptable thing to do, hence the sale of hamburgers. He’s tried to get Bugs before, so in that one he was being a ‘jerk’ (to put murder mildly; which sure, let’s do, they’re slapstick cartoons), but in the majority of his cartoons, he’s hunting an apparently non-sapient animal that still manages to be smarter (and considerably luckier) than him.

          Carla was a jerk. Even in your own examples, however, Mary’s response isn’t actually warranted – part of the point is that Bugs almost /never/ reaches the level of his aggressors. He always manages to win by being better than them (even if he’s sometimes a jerk back). Fudd, Sam, the Tiny Mobster, and the like, aren’t just screwing with Bugs. They are trying to /kill/ Bugs. Bugs, in turn, does not kill Fudd, Sam, the Tiny Mobster, et al. Bugs and Daffy is generally less clear cut, but he generally only ever uses Daffy’s shens against him (Most iconically, “Wabbit Season!” “Duck Season!”) Again, Bugs does not surpass his aggressors (Which would be hard – with the exception of Daffy, they’re usually trying to kill him). Where Bugs /does/ surpass his botherers, he’s usually portrayed as a heel (Bugs was offended at the idea of a ‘toytle’ beating a rabbit in a race, and pretty much every Cecil B. Turtle cartoon is about what a colossal dick Bugs is in comparison. Duck Amuck, as famous and well received as it is, generally seems to have folks agreeing Bugs is the asshole)

          This isn’t overanalysis – this is more or less the surface level reading. It’s so surface level, we know it’s true from interviews and statements by the animators – the way they justify Bugs’ actions is by putting him up against someone worse. That was important, because they wanted folks to /side/ with Bugs (most of the time), rather than have a Tom and Jerry situation where you often end up hating both of them.

          And I’m saying this because Carla was surpassed as a jerk by Mary. And again, by your own logic, Mary is a huge jerk. If anything, loony tunes rules are on Carla’s side. Carla’s being annoying and cute in response to a massive asshole. The only difference is that the first offense of the massive asshole wasn’t shown right before the camera was rolling. But it’s also, yanno, there.

        12. Falcon

          The only true over-analysis is one that impedes necessary action.

          You responded to *my* first post on this subject, and started out by asking on-topic questions. You don’t get any valid claim of harassment, legal or social just because you’ve run out of counter-arguments.

          Nobody (that I am aware of) is arguing that Carla isn’t being a jerk, or that she shouldn’t pay a price. What a bunch of people putting forward similar arguments to mine are refuting is the notion that Carla is the bigger jerk in this situation compared to Mary.

        13. Memyself

          @Falcon
          My above comment wasn’t actually directed at you. You’re not the only person in the mix here. Regardless, you responded to me, and the dialog continued from there. I’m not out of counter argument, I’m tired of repeating myself. It’s an over analysis, and has been from the start. The skates and glue scenario were never a real attack. It was cartoon violence with no real consequence. The real attack is in today’s strip, where comments are disallowed. Carla brought the ruin of her skates on herself. She did not bring what came next. If it were otherwise, it would be a pretty poor comedic beat. You don’t drop the serious punch until the end, and too many people were looking for it early out of a desire to side with Carla, because Mary is overall a horrible person and Carla is fun.

          @Rutee. See above. And stop trying to force analogies to be perfect. the point wasn’t that the scenarios were identical (which I clarified earlier in this thread, anticipating such an overreaction), the point was that we can recognize cartoon violence for what it is, and you literally can trace the beginning of the cartoon conflict to one person – Carla. That’s a fact, and you can’t over analyze your way out of it.

        14. Rutee

          Your analogy says t he exact opposite of what you want it to, though. That’s not asking your analogy to be perfect, that’s asking your analogy to be /serviceable/. And you can only trace the ‘beginning of the conflict’ to Carla if you are focused on the surface level and assume that after a month, Carla doesn’t know her hallmates (To be fair, that’s easily possible for a misanthrope. I don’t think I *EVER* learned all my hallmates in college dorms as a hermit, after all). Mary is a jerk to queer people. She’s been obviously so, on camera, repeatedly, and she’s been that in a way that is entirely foreseeable. Carla is queer. The conflict only begins with Carla if you forget these basic facts (Or, potentially, did not know the second, but that seems doubtful by now, or let’s be charitable and say you think Carla doesn’t know these facts).

          And again, it’s not ‘overanalysis’ to repeat the animator’s fairly obvious intentions, stated in interviews. Just because the relatively obvious setup of children’s cartoons eludes you does not make it ‘overanalysis’ (Frankly, it barely enters the realm of ‘analysis’ at all, since I am, again, mostly repeating things I know are true about the setup’s intent because the creators said them.)

        15. Memyself

          You’re engaging heavily in fan fiction, attempting to source out possible things that have occurred off camera. Nope.

          Your over analysis is contextual to the application required for this conversation. We don’t need to break down the nuanced relationships of these characters to understand that the violence that befalls an antagonist remains satisfying. We can recognize cartoon violence for what it is, and you literally can trace the beginning of the cartoon conflict to one person – Carla.

          Unless you’re engaging in guess work of off-panel interactions, which is wholly irrelevant.

        16. Rutee

          Hahahaha. Okay. “Someone knows the most annoying neighbor that isn’t her in the hall” is ‘fan fiction’ and ‘overanalysis’ now. You are one shallow schmuck, especially since we know offscreen interactions happen. And you still think ‘read what animators had to say about children’s cartoon programs’ is ‘overanalysis’, apparently.

        17. Memyself

          Over-analysis in context to the point, yes. It clearly is. We don’t need to break down the nuanced relationships of these characters to understand that the violence that befalls an antagonist remains satisfying. We can recognize cartoon violence for what it is, and you literally can trace the beginning of the cartoon conflict to one person – Carla.

          A point you seem unable to counter.

          And it is literally impossible to judge what has occurred off panel. Everyone and anyone might have a different interpretation, and engaging in that kind of fan bullshit is a pointless endeavor.

          This isn’t the real world. It’s a story. And it’s being doled out in a very constructed manner. I am NOT interested in playing games wondering what these characters might or might not do when not “on screen”. They don’t do anything their creator doesn’t want them to do, because they are fictional. If establishing that relationship was important to the point at hand, then it’s up to the storyteller to present it. So yeah, I judge by what I’m given to read. I base my opinions on how I feel about the characters based on the context of what this is – a comic strip. With cartoon logic and soap opera melodrama. With characters that can be shallow or nuanced depending on the context as presented. You can’t handle that, your problem – not mine.

          As for the “shallow schmuck” bit, fuck off, bully.

        18. Rutee

          Oh, this is cute. *Props up hands* What else will you misunderstand. Let’s read down rather than up, this’ll be a treat.

          Like, again, cartoon violence generally says the person who escalated is in the wrong. That’s part of why I went more in depth on Looney Tunes. It’s why I referenced Tom and Jerry. Escalation is generally bad in cartoons – the name of the game is usually to win while being a better person. That’s why Daffy’s generally not a protagonist who wins (He sometimes is, and to the extent he has an actual antagonist and not a force of nature or himself opposing him, the antagonist will be even worse). We laugh, and there’s cartoon violence, but cartoons are generally still pretty moralistic, and on some level enforce a ‘right and wrong’, it’s just not one that’ll come up much in society (If you’re hunted for food, that is kind of a massive problem tho)

          You keep insisting ‘she’s an antagonist’, but Mary’s a bigger one, from literally every single perspective. It’s actually kinda cute to call Carla ‘an antagonist’. To whom, exactly, is she an antagonist, besides plausibly Mary? she’s been a side character, and has provided valuable and intentional support to two of the protagonists. Mary has been an actual antagonist, with Billie, and has had a different form of relationship with Joyce; not an antagonistic one, but in providing a contrast in how far Joyce has come. But none of this makes Carla an antagonist /except to the perspective of Mary/. And according to you, in cartoons we’re not supposed to care when an asshole’s wellbeing is harmed. That’s kinda true, but only because the asshole isn’t supposed to be that badly harmed (Again, Bugs does not /kill/ Fudd, he /aggravates/ Fudd and possibly destroys some of his property). But okay, let’s pretend that’s unconditionally true – Mary is still an asshole, and a much bigger one.

          It’s actually really annoying that the first person I’m not married to who will acknowledge, out loud, that characters only do what their creators tell them to, is you. Yes, this is a basic fact. Creators also rely on subtext and inferrence. You are not always going to be shown a thing that happened, but you are still supposed to come to the conclusion that it happened. Further, Willis explicitly LIKES this kind of thought – there’s a reason he only rarely gives internal monologue. He gives numerous small hints, that you are supposed to infer from (Or that you /can/ infer from, at least). A good writer tends to do that.

          And well, if you want to just stop at ‘cartoon logic’, yer kinda mistaken. Yeah, there’s a superhero (You get really stuck on that.) The superhero has, on camera, been told she’s a harmful person exacerbating people’s problems – Willis was not shy about showing that Amazi-girl’s relationship with Sal is fucked up, as is her reaction to everything else. You claim you can deal with nuance, but thus far, you’ve avoided all but a /bad/ surface level analysis. Even at the surface level, the shallow one, you can’t seem to do a decent job. No, I really don’t think you can handle nuance, much less actually decide when more nuance is called for.

          And well, it’s extra funny that you’re now claiming I’m a bully. No, see, I insulted you. You’re being a complete jackass and perpetuating… really a bunch of harmful notions. If I insult you, it’s because you’re kind of fucking toxic. I know you can twist your perceptions so that clearly, someone who opposes something is a bully regardless of the facts, and I’m pretty okay with that.

        19. Rutee

          Yepperoni! Well, except for the part I paid the electric bill with it, but I wouldn’t say I’m that good either, just that it’s gotten easier to pay the electric bill with your writing. It’s not my primary income either. Amateur suits me.

          Doesn’t mean shit to your inability to analyze things though~

  46. ½©

    Three things are bound to happen.

    1. Mary gets Carla to follow her all the way to Ruth’s door with the intent of telling on her, but catch Ruth either with a whiskey bottle in hand or they catch her and Billie in the “act”

    2. Mary is in fact off to call campus security(because why not) and is trying to get away from Carla. Carla keeps bothering her and Mary probably says something horrible about Carla being Trans(she is right? I’m pretty sure. Like 79%), and then Joyce just happens to be passing by and now we’ve got a big ol’ Christian Slobberknocker because our Church Mouse ain’t takin’ no hate bah gawd.

    3. It turns out Mary has a secret snake pit that she led Carla right to. She goes back to studying.

  47. Lordess of Madness

    There’s a positive in it after all

  48. dejadrew

    ♫ The wonderful thing about Carlas! Is Carlas are wonderful things! ♫

    1. Captain Button

      +1

  49. Pinja

    Morality based on who is doing things, not what they are doing

    Never change DOA commentators

    1. Shiro

      Let’s make it a doubleblind thing, then!

      Person A: Is engaging in a situationally inappropriate activity, in this case skating indoors. Is being generally rude and unwilling to consider the feelings of person B.

      Person B: After cursory efforts at verbal resolution, engages in deterrant behavior dangerous to both parties, in this case lying in person A’s skating path to create a physical barrier. When that proves ineffective, destroys expensive personality property belonging to person A (skates).

      Thoughts?

      1. Needfuldoer

        Is anyone else besides Person B bothered by Person A’s behavior?

        Person A is being a jerk for (perhaps unintentionally) being disruptive. Person B lost the moral high ground when they escalated. Person A made things worse by turning up the wick when they learned that Person B is bothered by their behavior. Person B made the situation worse again by taking actions with lasting consequences. (The skating would have ended eventually, but that glue isn’t coming out of the wheels.)

        1. segnosaur

          * Person A is being a jerk for (perhaps unintentionally) being disruptive

          Even if Carla initially didn’t realize she was disrupting people’s studying at the beginning, the moment she was asked “could you not?” and continued skating, her actions became intentional

        2. Shiro

          That’s about where I am. They were both at fault to some degree, but Mary was the one who escalated it way past where it should’ve gone. Destruction of property (or physical injury) is my usual line.

  50. Rukduk

    This is going to be interesting to say the least. On I somewhat unrelated note, while looking through some old photo albums I found a picture of my mom from when she was a senior in high school, and she looks so much like Mary it’s disturbing. Really weird. What’s next, my dad looked like Joe when he was 19?

    1. Captain Button

      There are only about 200 real people in the world. It only looks like more because of special effects and time-travel looping.

      1. Rukduk

        Holy crap, I just found a picture of my dad when he was 19 and he actually looks like a black-haired Danny. I’m freaking out here man! I’m freaking out!!!

        1. Cephalo the Pod

          …We’re all just an AU of the Walkyverse.

  51. JustcallmeSoul

    is it just me or does this feel like filler?

    why do i need to ask? ive seen Naruto and Bleach.

    this is filler.

    bluuuuuhhh

    1. Captain Button

      It hasn’t taken them a week of half-hour episodes to get down the hallway. Not yet anyway.

    2. Lia47

      i mean, its a comic strip. it cant be tears all the time

    3. DarkoNeko

      you’ve… only seen that ?

    4. Rutee

      Eh, it’s not really possible to have filler in a slice of life, and drama isn’t filler in a drama, so either way…

    5. Lord Stoneheart

      Aren’t things filler if the only purpose is to take up time in an adaption as they wait for the source material to make more stuff?

      In any case even looking at this with what’s posted so far, it’s not filler. Even if it isn’t relevant to any other plotline it’s a comic interlude. It’s a break from storylines like Billie’s depression, or the collapse of Joyce’s worldview. Things can’t be 100% dramatic 100% of the time you know.

      And if Mary is going to see Ruth right now, I have a feelin this comic interlude may play a bigger role in the story than we might have initially thought. Remember that Mary doesn’t like Ruth, and that she has blackmail material on Ruth as well.

      1. Captain Button

        This may complicate the meeting this evening about the gun incident last Monday.

    6. Buhzim

      I feel it’s setting up some future plot point, most likely Mary using her dirt on Ruth to force her to do her job.

      I’m also not sure if DoA needs filler since the counter on the sidebar says Willis is sitting on months of unpublished strips. Unless he gets some really hardcore artist block, he doesn’t need filler.

    7. Cephalo the Pod

      Ehh, I figure that the comic is developing these two characters for when they get used in later, larger storylines.

    8. Willoughby Chase

      Oh ye of little faith!

  52. Drakey

    I think the thing that bothers me about the dialogue on these strips is that people keep calling Carla a bully.

    They’re right. But the thing is that Mary is being just as much of a bully.

    Carla has engaged deliberately on a mission to piss off Mary. She’s doing this to get a rise out of her, at first. Mary, in turn, has taken immense satisfaction in ruining Carla’s good time. Look at the smile on her face when she lays down in Carla’s path. That’s not the face of passive resistance. That’s the face of a bully who thinks they’re getting their way. I should know, because I’ve seen it probably hundreds of times.

    At the same time, Carla rises to the level Mary sets with that and puts both of them in danger by choosing to jump over her. You can interpret that comic as Mary lying down where she’s likely to injure both of them, but it seems pretty clear that Carla chose to escalate there as well.

    And at that point, Mary’s been a little reckless, but Carla was the party that was out of line. That doesn’t change on Carla’s part, but Mary takes it to a whole other level when she deliberately inflicts property damage and (let’s be optimistic about this; she might not have thought out the physics too well) unintentionally puts Carla in danger of serious injury.

    Carla then comes back (probably after checking herself over for bruises and broken bones, which are both a possibility after a fall like that. I’m surprised her nose is still the same shape, and that speaks to the level of her skill as a skater and therefore indirectly implies that that was some really expensive stuff Mary just destroyed) an hour later (look at how long it’s been between these incidents. There’s been some time elapsed) and starts provoking Mary again.

    Mary’s response, now that physical force has failed, is to go to the authorities.

    As a child, I was on the receiving end of both of these kinds of bullying, and of a mix of the two, but the thing that really gets me is that Mary is choosing now to appeal to authority. That’s one of the most effective tactics a bully can use. Once you’ve been provoked into doing something against the rules, they only have to point to you and yell “bully” and the victim is the one in trouble.

    Carla and Mary should both get into trouble, and any kind of equitable solution sees both of them receiving some kind of consequence, but most people seem to think that one of them is “right.”

    It would be perfectly reasonable to make Carla check her skates in and out at the front desk. Maybe she should be kicked out of the dorm for persistent disruptive behavior. I don’t know.

    It would ALSO be perfectly reasonable to make Mary pay for the damages, and given that she, a legal adult, committed a blatant act of reckless endangerment, she could easily face criminal charges and/or a civil suit.

    This is a situation that was allowed to get way, way, way, way out of hand, and a shocking number of people are talking like it’s a schoolyard tiff, or like one or the other of these people is innocent.

    Mary did the worse (dangerous, violent, and damaging) thing and compounded my emotional reaction to her and her supporters by resorting to the bullying tactic used against me by people who understood how to manipulate my neurological disorders, and it’s easy to say that the blame and consequences should all fall on her, but that’s also wrong.

    They’re both bullies. You’re not watching Darth Vader take on the Rebel Alliance; you’re watching him argue with Boba Fett over whether or not he’s going to freeze Han.

    1. Jack Stamper

      Completely agree, and have been since this started. This is a situation, where we need Ruth. She’s tough, but so far has been fair…you know, as long as she is not also crushing on you and therefore gets extra cruel.

      Carla crossed the line first, and Mary took the invitation and followed. Which really shows what kinds of bullys they are. Carla builds her entire personality around the fact, that she doesn’t care what others think and loves the label asshole. Mary tries to position herself as the biggest force for good around here, the last moral bastion. So when Carla openly broke the rules right outside her front door, she had a field day, she was absolutely right in opposing her, and every means of stopping her was justified. passive protest by sitting down was a very moral thing to do, and the glue was effective and clever. She was the hero of this story. So obviously, the authorities must agree with her on this. Or else they are wrong.

      1. segnosaur

        Ruth is “fair”? News to me.

        In addition to the torment that Ruth gave to Billy (break and enter, theft, assault), she also:
        – Threw Joyce’s gloves out the window, for no other reason than she didn’t like Joyce’s attempt to be “cool like Sal”
        – Slapped Mary, a case of assault. (Yes, Mary was being a jerk at the time, but this was after Ruth expressed no interest in dealing with the “whiteboard ding-dong bandit”)
        – Barged into Joyce’s room uninvited during her dorm party
        – Expressed pleasure when Dina was scared of her

    2. Memyself

      Are you even considering the fact that the only authority figure in question here has already hit Mary once? Maybe if the dorm had an actual authority to appeal to, the arguments you make might be valid. But there is no such authority shown in the strip as of yet. So Mary is on her own, and attempted politely asking – and she was bullied. She attempted to passively (yes, it’s still passive if she is smiling) block Carla, and then she ended the situation with glue – something that did not actually injure Carla.

      Should Mary have found another way? Sure. But regardless she was provoked, and the blame falls on the one provoking – Carla.

      1. Rutee

        You know, that’s not what provocation does, at all. Provocation can remove defenses in court (If you goad someone into a fistfight, you generally can’t legally claim self defense, it’s just assault. You weren’t ‘justified’ in violence), but it doesn’t change what the person being provoked does. If you punch someone who ‘impugns the chastity of your mother’ (Was it Scalia who wrote that in? I feel like it was, sometimes he manages great lines from a humor perspective) , and they hit you back, they may have committed assault, /but so have you/.

        Also have you like, forgotten that Ruth exists, or are you contending Ruth simply allows people to play human bowling, rather than say, being in class during it?

        1. Memyself

          This isn’t a court of law.

          My statement above is clearly taking Ruth into consideration. Read it again with context. Regardless, Ruth is irrelevant in most ways as an authority figure. She’s more likely to punch anyone who complains to her, and Mary has no reason to have any faith in her.

        2. Rutee

          Oh, my mistake. After you contended provocation was a ‘legal defense’ earlier, I assumed you were continuing in that vein. Well, socially, provocation only lets you rise so far. Had Mary stuck to annoying Carla (Perhaps by playing Psalms on a speaker), she’d be totally justified. Breaking her shit, however, is exceeding the bounds of what the provocation permits. To the extent provocation is an acceptable reason to do something, it’s usually to respond /in kind/. we might laugh about what someone does (Say, keying ‘I don’t know how to park’ into the side of that asshole who double parks his mah baby car’), but people don’t generally argue that shit would be actually okay, merely understandable.

          I did read it with context – your writing sucks, tho. I disagree with your synopsis. Given the level of fear most of the floor has of her, and her leeway with those higher, it’s a pretty safe bet she WOULD do something about an obvious disruption of the hall. Her actual, factual reason she’s given leeway to be a jerk to her charges is riding on it.

        3. Drakey

          Additional note: anyone who takes the time to reply to every comment on the most talked about issue with the opinion that pisses off the most people is probably being a troll, especially if they use the same two to seven arguments over and over until you want to hurl.

        4. Drakey

          Not talking about you, Rutee.

        5. Memyself

          If you’ve “I can recall that expresses an opinion about the issue”, then your sense of recollection is quite poor.

        6. Memyself

          Yeah, controversial opinions are bad. No one should voice them. If they do, they are bad people.

        7. Drakey

          Yeah, that would work better if you weren’t picking this fight with literally everyone you can.

          I’ve seen your name in every comment thread I can recall that expresses an opinion about the issue other than “Carla is terrible and Mary should be elevated to sainthood for finding a way to make things quiet again.”

          It’s like you just love the sound of your own voice, only I really doubt you’re reading all your miniature essays out loud.

        8. Memyself

          Actually, Drakey, quite a few of my comments have been in response to other people picking a fight with me. How nice of you to keep score, but you might need to take better notes.

          And again, your recollections are obviously poor.

          You want some proof? Between us, who came after who?

          Oh wait, that was YOU assigning an argument to me I didn’t make. I didn’t approach YOU. Nope.

        9. Memyself

          The bit about provocation as a legal defense earlier was part of a tangent where one poster started asking “yeah, but what about in the real world”. The fact that this is NOT the real world has been at the heart of the discussion for me from the start, other persons tangent aside.

          Provocation in comedy often leads to escalation. Sometimes through the destruction of property of inconsiderate people. If Carla hadn’t acted like a toolbag, she would be skating now. She created a situation, and she is responsible for the consequences. Is the real world a bit more complicated? Yes. But even if the law protects someone who is a total toolbag from getting their recreational property destroyed, they still will be responsible for placing themselves on a course of action hat led to the consequences they now face.

          If we’re talking about inflicting physical harm on another human, then yeah, shit changes. But Carla wasn’t hurt and doesn’t seem concerned about that angle, so why should anyone else?

          Thanks for the writing critique. I feel similarly about your own approach.

        10. trlkly

          No matter who brought it up, you have defended the very behavior in the real world that you are defending in the comic–that of out-of-proportion escalation. The only way you can claim that what you said does not apply in the real world is to take back something you said earlier–the one thing you seem to be completely unwilling to do.

          It’s not as if your logic even works in the comic. “Considering [Mary] is a total asshole, why should there be any concern over her personal property or well being?” is an equally valid statement. If you don’t think caring about the well being of comic assholes makes sense, then we have no reason to care that Mary was trying to study.

          And, like it or not, what you said had real world implications from the start. You didn’t just say you didn’t care about Carla. You asked why anyone would. The answer to that question is found in real-world morality. People care because they are suspending their disbelief and treating the comic as real.

          And, finally, this isn’t complicated in the real world. In the real world. Mary would be the one who committed assault. There is something called proportional response that works both in law and in social convention. Carla is annoying, but Mary is the psychopath.

          Oh, and save the reply where you say I’m bullying you or make up some reason to attack me back. I won’t see it.

        11. Memyself

          False. The end.

  53. Jack Stamper

    And suddenly, when Mary and Carla approach the staircase, the glue gives in and the skates move again, surprisingly propelling Carla forward into Mary and both down the staircase. They tumble down and land half a level lower, Carla landing on Mary, their eyes meet inches from each other for a couple of tense seconds…

    1. DarkoNeko

      and they both have broken bones

      1. Captain Button

        A Bandage Babe Slipshine?

        1. inqntrol

          Is there a fetish for mummies?

        2. Leorale

          Of course there is – anything that can be seen, done or imagined, somebody’s really, really into it. (And somebody else is trying to make money off of it.)

          ‘Mummification’ is unusual, but it’s a form of bondage. It’s about being unable to move, though, not about being a dead ancient Egyptian monarch.

  54. Charles Phipps

    I’m personally for the Fight Club story of Mary. Carla is the disguise she puts on to become her trans asexual self.

    1. Charles Phipps

      Okay, there’s a lot of holes in this theory. I need to work on it.

      1. Charles Phipps

        MARY is the Tyler Durden as Carla remembers the people from her judgmental home town.

        Okay that’s better.

        *writes down his theory notes*

        1. KarkatTheDalek

          But Carla’s taller than Mary…

        2. Captain Button

          She has those adjustable prosthetic femurs. Or she is a Face Dancer.

        3. Silly Name

          You, sir/madam, are my new favorite person in this comment section.

      2. Captain Button

        Time travel. Either loop back or across, your choice.

  55. Daisy

    This is why I like Carla. She’s always an optimist.

    1. Bagge

      +1

  56. Emily

    You’re going to fuck up your joints and cartilage is what you’re going to do.

    1. Captain Button

      Why I don’t run anymore.

      1. Emily

        Ugh it’s MURDER on the knees.

  57. Penguin Zero

    Starring David Willis, Mary Bradford, Carla Rutten, and Weena Mercator as the Hopping Woman.

    (Thinking about how old this reference is now makes me feel ancient.)

  58. Willoughby Chase

    She’s gone to get Ruth, hasn’t she …

    Hilarity (or some measure thereof) will ensue.

  59. Luke74

    I ship it

  60. Timmy

    Since both of these characters seem to automatically escalate a conflict until they win, I look forward to this ending with some sort of kung-fu gunfight involving Amber (because obviously she’ll have to join in without actually being helpful, that being HER thing) and everyone being arrested instantly by police who are actually on the ball after the last incident.

    1. Emily

      If there’s one thing Amber is good at it’s escalating a situation straight into a fistfight.

      1. thejeff

        Examples? I suppose you could count both the fathers, but those were really “escalating” kidnapping/hostage situations into fistfights/car crashes and it’s not entirely clear that’s “escalating”.
        In a couple of her more background actions she escalated things into fistfights, when she interrupted the crime in progress, by them reacting and attacking her.

        The Sal and her gang encounter is the only real case. And even there she tried to provoke them into attacking rather than doing so herself.

    2. Rukduk

      I think this is starting to become a Monty Python sketch, isn’t it?

  61. Dave

    I’m on the both are bullies side of this argument but I would argue first count of reckless endangerment goes to carla. She jumped over Mary rather than stopping. If she was going so fast she didn’t have time to stop when someone lay down a distance in front of her then she was endangering anyone leaving their rooms. OK this time she made the jump but something could have gone wrong and one or other of them could have ended up in hospital. However the both of them facing repercussions argument is (in my opinion) a very good one. Also does anyone really believe that going to the study hall or informing someone in authority would have worked? Personally I am 90%+ sure Carla would have followed her to the study room and it seems unlikely (from personal experience of organisations with authority) that Carla would at most have been asked to leave and would have just returned later.

    1. JQuire

      I’d vote common law assault before reckless endangerment. Carla is really competent on her skates, since she spends most of her time on them. I doubt that she was going so fast she couldn’t stop, or that Mary was actually likely to be significantly injured. But Mary sure as hell could’ve reasonably anticipated an unwanted touching!

  62. Z2

    Please tell me both of these characters asshole each other to death.
    Off-panel.

  63. Spencer

    I guess I’m in the minority for viewing this confrontation between the two up until now as completely, wholly cartoonish. Like, in the real world this obviously wouldn’t fly and they’d both be harshly reprimanded, Carla for being a disturbance and Mary for destroying her property, it just feels like Bugs and Yosemite Sam pulling out successively bigger guns than anything else.

    I don’t really see this as a legitimate, character building conflict in the same way I don’t view Amber beating up Beef and his bros as having any impact on her, or Dorothy smacking Walky upside the head as some kind of actual instance of abuse. It’s just the two getting up to some slapstick. That’s why they’re being jerks inflicting misery onto one another.

    1. Deanatay

      *shrug* I agree, this is totally Willis’ comic relief. However, he has a tendency to weave the comic relief threads into the main plot, so what starts as slap-schticky quickly turns serious.

      For example, this may be Mary’s ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ moment, the event that makes her decide, “OK, NOW EVERYONE BURNS.”

    2. Leorale

      Right there with you.

    3. Buhzim

      The situation itself is cartoonish (Mary shouldn’t have access to NASA rocket glue and Carla’s neck isn’t broken), but at this point people are having a general philosophical argument about whether it’s okay to answer to repeated minor agressions with a bigger one, like when Charles Atlas dislocates the jaw of the big guy who kicked sand in his face and tried to steal his bodacious babe.

      I also think this definitely counts as character development, since it shows how those two relatively unused characters react to conflict and future interactions between them will take this into account.

    4. Cephalo the Pod

      If discussing Willis’s work has taught me anything, it’s that nothing is too cartoonish to be real.

  64. Hmmm

    Wow finally caught up to current. Not sure where to begin. Have rather enjoyed the story but I just wish there were some of the varient of Christian that I normally meet in this story. Namely a Christian that isn’t a closed-minded idiot, understands and enjoys all science, still follows the Bible, isn’t “wayward” and can interact with and get along just fine with gay/bi/etc people…

    1. David M Willis

      1. trlkly

        Problem is, at this point in the comic, we have no reason to believe that Becky is still a Christian. It hasn’t come up since. She hasn’t wrestled at all with how to combine what she is learning with Christianity. And we don’t know enough about her like we did Joyce to say that she should still be a Christian.

        My sister had a friend at church named Tim, who discovered he was gay, and he pretty much walked away. He had been told all his life that God rejected gay people, so he effectively rejected God.

        In fact, I was fully expecting Becky to be the counterexample–the former fundamentalist who did walk away completely, as opposed to Joyce who would not. Especially since I got the hint that she was never as into it as Joyce but just pretended to be because she liked Joyce so much. Kinda like Tim, who had tried to overcompensate.

        1. David M Willis

          If you think the comic has shown you no evidence that Becky still believes in God — nay, that it has not even come up since — then you do not read this comic very well at all. From how you describe Becky and what you expect of her, it seems to me like you are projecting tropes onto her and not paying attention to what she has been actually saying and doing.

        2. Hmmm

          That’s not quite what I mean Willis (David?, which is preferred?). I’m still of the opinion that homosexuality is wrong, BUT I respect people’s ability to do what they want. I’d like them to not be that way, but trying to talk them out of it is foolhardy and unproductive and doesn’t achieve anything (and I would never try to make what they do illegal). Becky wants to still be Christian because that is how she was raised but still live a gay lifestyle. She’s welcome to think she’s a Christian (and I know plenty of people who are in this boat) but she really isn’t and can’t be.

          Full disclosure, going into highschool (I went to a semi-public school for the last 3 years of high school) I was somewhat homophobic. I didn’t “hate” gays but I did find them at the level of, “they are horrible and icky”. This was not taught me by my parents and was not founded on biblical beliefs. I met several people and had a bisexual friend and quickly discovered that they’re normal people and that illusion disappeared.

          Also FYI, Joyce was partially wrong in the 2015-01-15(YYYY-MM-DD) comic. Being gay isn’t a sin, acting on those desires in wedlock or not, IS (and I hate having to say this). Joyce is also on a moral relativism slippery slope there that I’ve seen many heavily sheltered Christians ride all the way to atheism/agnosticism (likely a similar path that you followed Willis). Some also go too far and go off the deep end and become drug addicts and or fall into crime because they’ve blown past all their natural stopping points (afterall, if everything they’ve been taught is wrong, what makes following the laws of society right too?, kind of logic). Interestingly if the kid is raised not heavily sheltered and hidden from the world (as many of my friends have been) then they stay happily Christian and know how to jive all the information together.

        3. Spencer

          In hindsight, it should have been really obvious what “wayward” meant in your post.

          Goodbye forever.

        4. Hmmm

          Huh?

        5. Hmmm

          Did I break the “no proselytizing” rule? That wasn’t my intention.

        6. Spencer

          I know you think you’re being objective and impartial but “I think homosexuality is wrong and Becky can’t be a real Christian because she’s living a gay lifestyle” is a fucking wretched thing to say.

        7. David M Willis

          “why can’t you have any real christians in your strip who aren’t terrible bigots” says commenter who says homosexuality is wrong

        8. Hmmm

          Not sure how to respond exactly then. Maybe I can explain by example. I’m an engineer. I can look at something in the world and say “I think it works like X”. That doesn’t mean X actually works how I just proposed. I can believe it works like X and there’s a large subdivision of people who also think X works in the same way. But there is also a manual for X that describes exactly how X works in all the details. It also says what an X is and what it is not. If I then go and tell one of those different-believing people “No X actually works like this”, telling them so is not “cruel” (trying to force them to believe that would be cruel) it’s just pointing out the facts. That’s all I did with the statement you find objectionable.

        9. David M Willis

          You are a bigot.

          Begone.

        10. thejeff

          And yet many people read that same manual and disagree with the conclusions you draw from it. There are entire denominations full of Christians who differ from whatever denomination you are, not just on homosexuality, but on many other issues as well. They all think they’re interpreting the Bible correctly, just as you think you are.
          There have been wars fought over such doctrinal differences.
          Now you come along and say “You’re not Christian if you think X”. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re interpreting the Bible correctly and everyone who disagrees with you is wrong. Maybe some of them are right and you’re wrong. Maybe you’re all getting hung up on details that God doesn’t actually care about.
          You might consider a little humility and not be quite so sure you know what God wants and all the scholars who disagree with you are wrong.

          But what do I know. I’m an atheist. I don’t decide who’s Christian and who isn’t. I assume that the people who claim to be Christian qualify. Beyond that, not my problem.

        11. Chip

          You’re an engineer, but you think we should ignore real world observations in favor of the manual? Manuals get revised. Manuals contain errors. Manuals can’t take all use cases into account. I hope you don’t work on anything that human lives depend on.

        12. Lord Stoneheart

          Oh. I retract Becky fitting the description you gave. I’m which case I think Mary fits the description quite well however.

          Really your post has it all. The “We having nothing against being gay, just acting on it.” The “I have LGBT friends!”. The “It’s all a slippery slope!”. It’s all new and exciting arguments here!

          Did I say new and exciting? I meant annoying and tedious. You say you were homophobic in high school? Because I think the description might still apply.

        13. Cerberus

          I unironically love this comment by hmmm. Reason being that every time, literally every time someone makes an argument about how there’s “no positive portrayals of Christians” in the comic, all my alarm bells go off. And I start wondering if the reason they believe that is because they are using the fundie definition of Christian (someone who believes exactly like me and belongs to a “proper” church and so on).

          And so of course Danny, Billie, Becky, and Sierra don’t count. Because they’re queer. And of course Joyce doesn’t count, because she has doubts and thinks some orthodox is wrong. And so on and so forth. And so the complaint mostly becomes why doesn’t the author agree with the limited hateful ideology of Pre-Millennial Dispensationalist Rapturist Christianity and make it look good rather than pointing out the real emotional cost of the worldviews that it spews forth?

          That’s what I suspect every time and finally someone’s stuck around long enough to reveal that… yes, that’s exactly what they’re thinking. Becky really doesn’t count because she’s a lesbo and so forth. And so thank you asshole for confirming my internal theory on this oft-spewed claim.

        14. thejeff

          “Why can’t we see a Christian who properly thinks being gay is all evil, but is actually a nice person and isn’t toxic and hateful and bigoted?”
          Because that doesn’t work in the real world. Not once you’re actually interacting with real LGBTQ people. It is toxic and hateful. It is bigotry, no matter how you dress it up in “Hate the sin, love the sinner” language.

          Really, we’ve had that character here. That was Joyce. In some ways it still is. But she’s fundamentally good enough and self-aware enough to see that it’s hurting people. And there’s her basic conflict.

        15. Lord Stoneheart

          Becky is definitely still Christian.

          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/originalsin/

          “So evolution maybe, probably definitely, happened. What’s the big deal? It doesn’t contradict nothin’ (sic) important.”
          That conversation between Joyce and Becky would have gone differently if Becky no longer believed in God and Christ at all.

          (There’s also “God answers lesbian prayers, but I’m blanking on which strip that popped up in)

        16. Lord Stoneheart

          And I’ve been beaten to the punch. My bad.

        17. Captain Button

          Dina: You will kiss me.

          Becky: Oh, good, God answers lesbian prayers.

        18. Captain Button

          See also the preview for a Patreon bonus strip in the box below the main strip here.

        19. WingedBeast

          I guess part of what might confuse some people is that for most Christians, Christianity doesn’t come up all that often.

          Most of the Christians I know don’t face a moral problem and look in the bible for the answers, because most Christians aren’t bound by faith to believing that the bible has all the answers, or at least not the specific ones. Most of the Christians I know, when facing a moral quandary, look at the issue, look at who’s harmed (that they can spot) and who’s helped (that they can spot).

          Sure, that opens up a lot of people to talk about how “they’re not really Christians” or “they’re not Christian enough” because they don’t openly say things like “I need to pray on it” when talking about getting a DSL versus Cable internet. And, others get to act like the ones who *do* that kind of ostentatious religiosity display are the ones who own and run Christianity. But, no. They’re the majority. And, like the majority of Americans, they support gay rights.

          Have Walky or Sal discussed their religious status?

          By the way, I’m bad with names, but I’m sure that young lady who eschews shoes isn’t a horrible person.

        20. Athedia

          As someone from a side of Christianity that I often have to explain is Christian (Quakers as we are commonly known) people often make the mistake that Christianity has to look like their form of worship. But really what ties all Christians together is a belief in Jesus, God and the teachings however they are interpreted. Even though I don’t agree with the teachings of my Catholic grandfather, my Episcopal friend, my Presbyterian friend, the Mormons down the street from me growing up or the non denominational who attempted to save my soul from DnD, I acknowledge that they are all Christian.

      2. heyman

        Yay! Bonus drawing!

    2. segnosaur

      In addition to Becky that Willis pointed out, another candidate might be Sierra…. She doesn’t get much in the way of character development, but she has been with Joyce to church, yet seems to have no problem being roomates with Dorothy (an atheist who engages in pre marriage hanky-panky).

      1. Spencer

        Also Danny, who considers going to church a part of his normal routine.

        1. segnosaur

          Does he? I remember a strip where Danny was talking to his parents and said he was “thinking” of going to church.

        2. Spencer

          He considers it something to pursue, anyway.

          Come to think of it, there’s more LGBT+ characters who are religious practitioners (Danny, Becky, Billie, Sierra, Jocelyne, Ethan(?)) than there are straight ones (Joyce, Mary, Amber and maybe Agatha).

        3. Silamy

          Are Danny and Billie practicing? I got the sense that Danny was raised to think that it’s a thing he’s supposed to do and that he was, as they say where I’m from, “fixin’ ta” make it one day, not because he cared or because it meant anything to him, but because that’s what he’s supposed to do. Similar sense with Billie -that she believes in god because yeah, that’s a thing people do, not that it’s any particular declaration of faith or religious interest.

        4. Spencer

          Perhaps faithful would have been a better word, then. I used “practicing” as a way to say that the character believed in a higher power.

          Willis did describe him as “nominally Christian” so he might just be above Billie’s level of “I believe now let me go back to sleep.”

    3. Lord Stoneheart

      Most of the characters in the story are Christian unless they have been specified as something else. I think there even may be a character who fits all of your criteria. (Sees the photo posted by Willis). Oh right.

    4. scrimp

      They’re college kids, you’re expecting too much maturity out of them

      1. Hmmm

        I graduated college two years ago. I changed a tiny bit going through college, namely got slightly more adjusted to society, but still have all my beliefs in place. (Oh and yes I was also raised homeschooled, non-denominational protestant and had very bible following parents who I still get along with and have very few disagreements with.) And actually in this story, the college kids are more mature than their parents.

        1. Lord Stoneheart

          Okay? And here we have the story of someone changing quite a bit more because of college. Joyce may have started with similar beliefs to yours, but she’s been experiencing different things in different ways.

          Though there’s still characters that fit your description in your first post. I recognize they might be quite a bit different from you, but they still fit the description you asked for.

    5. Tenn

      “Why aren’t there any christian characters who don’t hate gay people in this comic?”

      “Um, Becky?”

      “She doesn’t count because she’s gay.”

      *facepalm*

      You’re either a troll or an idiot. Either way, fuck off.

      1. thejeff

        “Well of course they shouldn’t hate gay people. They just have to realize homosexual activity is a sin, because that’s how I define Christian.”
        If he actually keeps reading this next storyline, I suspect Joyce’s mom will actually fit his criteria. And it’s going to be terrible. Because, whatever you think the Bible says, that’s a horrible way to treat kids.

        And it enables the even worse ones. Like Ross.

        1. Regalli

          Especially when some of those kids aren’t straight and cisgender. (I continue feeling so, so, SO bad for Jocelyne.)

        2. Cerberus

          It’ll be fine. What’s the worst that could happen… (looming shadow of the worst possibly happening in a manner of days in comic)

        3. thejeff

          Especially so. It’s a horribly toxic environment to grow up in, constantly being told how evil you are.

    6. Bagge

      That person you describe would be rad.

  65. Lan

    Goddamnit we have had some really cute Carla faces recently. Damn you Willis for making cute jerk faces.

  66. Cerberus

    One important thing I want to note in general is this oft-brought up idea that Carla is a bully.

    Like, no, Carla isn’t actually a bully. Bullies engage in sustained actions of dehumanization and abuse, usually capitalizing on identities of power to create a feeling of intentional persistent emotional damage in their target. Their goal is to hurt, perhaps to drive their target to suicide.

    Carla? Carla is a prat. The type of kid who sings loud songs in class. She didn’t actively target Mary in her initial horsing around, she’s threatened no forms of violence, she’s not attempting to cause any form of long-term emotional damage or fear. And here, she’s mostly focused on a quite legitimate grievance surrounding the destruction of her property by someone who has been shown in comic to be a bully like Ruth. Who has gone out of their way to cause long-term fear in their target (Billie), who does concoct excuses for physical violence based on the other being annoying (glue incident), and who believes in enforcing a sort of “natural law” (very common among bullies).

    Does anyone here really believe that if Mary knew of an axis of privilege and power over Carla (say the fact that she is trans) and if Carla had the same (over I dunno, there’s the fan-theory that she may have issues of suicidal ideation in her past or an abortion or the like), that it wouldn’t be Mary in a heartbeat who would use it to wound?

    And that mentality and fact really hammers home the key difference between them. Carla will go out of her way to annoy someone who has genuinely caused her harm, but not retaliate with violence herself. Mary on the other hand tried to cause injury and ruined a personally significant and expensive object simply because Carla embarrassed her.

    Not only are the actions unequal, the motivations are.

    And it becomes grosser when people try and use this supposed “bully” identity of Carla’s to justify anything awful that happens to her.

    1. Spencer

      All of this.

      Carla is not a bully. She’s kind of an annoying butthead sometimes, but that’s not being a bully.

      1. S-N

        I don’t see either of them as bullies, if “Bullies engage in sustained actions of dehumanization and abuse, usually capitalizing on identities of power to create a feeling of intentional persistent emotional damage in their target” is our definition. It seems so much simpler. They’re animals who share territory, who’ve come into conflict because each wants control over the space, no? Maybe Carla should consider Mary’s desire for quiet and take her skating elsewhere. Maybe Mary should suck it up and put on a pair of headphones, since she should consider too the fun Carla gets out of skating around. This is just what happens when two id’s prevail over their respective super ego’s, I guess. I don’t know why it all elevated to an O.J simpson trial level analysis of “this one’s a bully, this one’s not”, yada yada.

        You know its good writing when you can defend or decry the actions of either party, and no one comes away the clear winner.

        1. Regalli

          Mary deliberately asked Joyce about condemning “homosexual actions” in front of Billie to make Billie uncomfortable earlier, remember. Not to mention insulting Ruth and her authority for not doing anything about the whiteboard dingdong bandit immediately, with “immediately” looking like she was going to class or the like. She’s subtle about it, but I fully believe Mary is capable of persistent, deliberate emotional damage if and when she doesn’t get her way.

        2. TheGrammarLegionary

          Wait for it…

    2. Rutee

      Eh, the problem here is that the word has multiple meanings. Bullying doesn’t just refer to systemic behavior, it really can and does also refer to one offs (I can certainly think of instances that were bullying in my past that were one off).

      However, a lot of the recent RL campaigns about bullying, and where the worst damage comes, is absolutely systemic bullying. Sometimes, people consciously invoke those campaigns to talk about someone who is doing the former. I’d say with Carla, we have one of those cases (People are trying to word drop bully to pull in those entirely justified campaigns against her, when she genuinely doesn’t do that shit so far as we know)

    3. ischemgeek

      Also: That someone is a bully does not make it okay for you to engage in oppression and/or harassment of them. Even if Carla were a bully (she’s not. Contrarian brat, sure, totally, no arguments here on that one, but she’s not a bully. She doesn’t have the malice necessary to be a bully), it would not be okay for Mary to be transphobic to her.

      There are some things that should be dealbreakers. Using intimate knowledge you have about a way in which a person’s identity, mind, body, etc, is stigmatized to maliciously hurt that person, to me, is one of them. (note: see also why I want to smack Walky whenever he taunts Sal about her record).

      1. Spencer

        Yeah, no matter how much these two are antagonizing one another, attacking Carla using her gender identity is completely unacceptable. I’m glad that there’s no one around here trying to say that it’s okay for Mary to jump to this kind of attack just because of their previous fight.

  67. Ubuntu4Ever

    SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQIE4jtt3So

    1. Spencer

      It doesn’t suddenly become ironic and funny if you shamelessly self promote by saying you’re going to do it.

  68. Trolldrool

    It’s not a matter of whether or not Mary is innocent. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone even try to pretend that she isn’t in the top 3 most deplorable students in the comic. What people are trying to argue is that who Carla is being an asshole to shouldn’t exempt her from being an asshole.

    We all know that if Mary knew about Carla being trans, she’d try to use it against her in every malevolent way possible. Hell, if she didn’t, I think everyone reading this would call Willis out for violating his own established canon. Her evil grin at Ruth and Billie is permanently burned into our brains. It’s the exact sort of behaviour we expect from her.

    I also don’t think anyone would try to argue that Mary did the right thing by trying to hurt Carla instead of immediately going to Ruth. Usually, resorting to violence is what people do when they’ve run out of other options, so the fact that Mary did that before reporting it to an authority figure says a lot about her.

    I’m not upset about Mary being bothered. I’m upset because as a student, I find this kind of behaviour on campus intolerable in general.

    1. Spencer

      Literally nobody has said it was okay for Carla to annoy Mary. Literally nobody.

      The farthest anyone will go is saying “yeah it’s annoying but I like Carla and Mary sucks so lol”and we can do that because it’s a comic. Nobody is actually getting hurt by this.

      1. Trolldrool

        Alright, my mistake then. I see so many opinions going in either direction that it’s difficult to keep track who is taking what stance or when which extreme is being sarcastic.

        1. Spencer

          For the most part, the consensus has been “okay Carla is annoying Mary, but Mary has escalated that further than necessary instead of dealing with it rationally, so now it’s also on her and her actions can’t be judged as purely reactionary anymore.”

      2. segnosaur

        Well, multiple people have claimed that you can’t expect quiet on a week day in a dorm, that part of your education should be learning to put up with disturbances, that Mary should just inconvenience herself (go to the library, etc.) and a while lot of things that seem to put the blame for things squarely on Mary.

        To many people, it sounds like people were saying “Carla can annoy Mary and its Mary’s job to deal with it”.

        1. Spencer

          I mean, they’re right. Dorms are noisy sometimes, you can’t always have the peace and quiet you want, and you should probably just remove yourself from a bad situation if it’s inconveniencing you.

          The minute Mary decided to deal with this by personally involving herself, that’s when she lost the high ground. That’s when we couldn’t view her as an inconvenienced victim.

          Carla shouldn’t have been skating in the halls, especially if it causes enough noise that it can be heard, but then Mary decided to deal with that by laying in the hall and then destroying Carla’s skates. If she desperately needed to be in her room at the time, she should have gone up to an authority figure and gotten them to sort this shit out.

          tldr: if somebody said Carla should be allowed to do whatever she wants than they’re wrong, but that doesn’t mean Mary gets to wreak vengeance upon her.

        2. Amias

          Agreed. Carla skating in the hall was definitely an issue for both volume and safety reasons, but it was an issue that Mary should have taken to Ruth or a building manager (sometimes it’s easier to get in touch with your RA’s boss and nag at them to do something than to expect the RA to do anything). Carla really shouldn’t have done the whole glue thing – funny as it was – and that could actually get her in more trouble than Carla would have been.

        3. thejeff

          And to be honest, at that point she’d already invested more time and effort into stopping it than could possibly be lost by some noise while studying. It’s possible, but I really doubt Carla was going to continue skating in the hall for more than a few minutes, until it became a moral imperative to not give in to Mary.
          Or better yet, way back when Carla first said “New skates!” fake a minute or two of interest, chat a bit, then gently suggest outside. Might well have worked, even with Carla. Of course, that would require someone who wasn’t Mary.
          But even if she’d just gone back into her room and gritted her teeth for a bit, Carla probably would have stopped soon.
          If she does it for an hour or so or if she’s doing it regularly, then it’s time to get someone to intervene.

      3. Rutee

        I’m pretty cool with Carla annoying Mary, actually. I feel she’s a jerk because of it, but she’s justified because… it’s Mary (More specifically, Mary is an asshole to pretty much everyone on the floor, for reasons that apply to her other friends as well, and I suspect she knew Mary would drop cissexist shit even if she thought Mary didn’t know she was trans).

        But believing she’s basically justified in this instance doesn’t change that she’s an annoying jerk, and that she’s been an annoying jerk to other people as well. She’s just an annoying jerk who’s justified in this one instance.

    2. Buhzim

      “Usually, resorting to violence is what people do when they’ve run out of other options, so the fact that Mary did that before reporting it to an authority figure says a lot about her.”

      Which figure, Ruth (“Fuck off” *pimpslap*) or her superiors (“Why are you bothering me with this petty crap? Take it to your RA”) ? Campus security staff maybe, but theyprobably won’t care either since Carla isn’t running into people.

      1. Silly Name

        Mary could have still taken a more graceful exit than putting glue in Carla’s skates (and on the floor). I mean, yeah, Mary was in the right wanting silence to study (that’s why one goes to college, after all), but if she realized that Carla wasn’t going to stop, and she knows her RA won’t be of any help, she might have put on headphones, or went to a study room or library or so many other options.

        Both Mary and Carla are in the wrong, and both are equally responsible for this situation. Carla initiated this, which was the wrong thing to do, but Mary decided to turn this into a kindergarten-level fight and continue it.

  69. Jonathan

    this fascinates me so so very much… Willis writes a four panel comic with maybe 100 words in it….within 12 hours, fans write 10,000 words worth of comments. It’s full of awesome.

    1. Jonathan

      you’re all counting the words in the comic now and trying to decide if “stomp stomp stomp” counts. Please don’t lose the intent of my comment in your analyses…

    2. Amias

      I really love the comments here, to be honest. Not only is there so much discussion happening about the update, but:
      1. Nearly all the discussion is well-thought out, and often annotated
      2. There’s a stunning lack of spam comments – either due to proper comment moderation, or overwhelming numbers of good comments
      3. The discussion is heavily about the characters, people’s ideas of the characters, or expected progression about the story
      4. There’s not much agression in the comments, and the agression that is there is usually just people trying to make more of their point

      Because of all that, it’s really interesting to join in on the discussion! I’m a big fan of good discussions, especially about good webcomics.

      1. Uniqueantique

        Agree.

  70. nothri

    Okay, Mary….I don’t mean to alarm you…but the last time things got this antagonistic between a self proclaimed Christian and a glasses wearing redhead it ended with lesbians.

    1. Spencer

      Billie and Ruth are bi.

      1. nothri

        You just keep on picking your nicks elsewhere, sir. Your kind aint welcome around these parts.

        1. Spencer

          I believe you mean “picking your nits”.

          (also I’m just going to be a gigantic buzzkill and say that correcting the misinformation that Billie and Ruth are gay and not bisexual is important to me)

        2. Kate

          While it did not, technically end with lesbians, it ended with what one of the bisexuals involved called a ‘lesbian suicide pact,’ so the use of the term might not be proclaiming them gay, just leaning toward Ruth in language. Not that agreeing with Ruth about anything is generally the healthiest plan.

        3. Kate

          Yes! I got Leslie. Woot!

        4. thejeff

          OTOH, they are officially in a Sexy Lesbian Suicide Pact, so describing their relationship with the term “lesbian” is actually canon.

          I would say they are bisexuals in a lesbian relationship.

        5. Spencer

          Ruth has already stated that she isn’t sure what she’s after when Howard asked her if she was a lesbian, and it is super easy to assume that any form of queer attraction automatically means being gay. It’s a moot point since they’re both bi.

          Anyway, I disagree with using gay/lesbian to describe all kinds of same sex romance, especially when it comes to bi characters.

        6. Soph

          Especially since bi-erasure is such a prevalent and persistent problem.

        7. Cerberus

          They’re women loving women in a queer relationship. There’s a lot of terminology to be inclusive to bi women when talking about relationships between women that doesn’t require calling the relationship lesbian (though sexy lesbian suicide pact will be a running gag until the heat death of the universe).

        8. Spencer

          Yeah, to me it’s about including all forms of being queer into our lexicon, give us all a seat at the table.

          Sexy Lesbian Suicide Pact should never die, though. It’s inherently funny to say.

        9. Rutee

          “Ruth is gay” is factually inaccurate, but a pretty safe reading, and I’ve seen you bypass other safe readings that were probably not canon either. And while yeah, you’re bi and care extra that bi people get represented, some of us are gay and care extra that, if not represented as well, that a tleast there isn’t CONSTANT FUCKING BOTHERING on this exact point.

          None of which changes the canon that Ruth is bi – though having said that, I’ll say again that nerds care too much about one true canon, and it’s poisonous to discussing our tastes as art.

        10. Spencer

          How is “Ruth/Billie/Danny/Marcie is bi” constant fucking bothering? It’s not a safe reading because, like you said, it’s factually innacurate.

          I’m not saying anything that’s not real and it’s important that bi characters be represented. Considering how often bisexual men and women in the real world get erased, I am super fucking okay pushing on this point.

        11. Rutee

          No, that’s not what safe reading is. ‘safe reading’ means, given the evidence in the actual work, it’s a conclusion you can reasonably come to. It’s the same reason I don’t get mad that people think Carla is cis. Yes, if you know, there’s reason to know (and I think it just stopped being a safe reading), but if you don’t read Willis’ comments or his tumblr, it’s perfectly reasonable to come to conclusion (including ‘Carla is cis’, since he has actually presented her being trans realistically and not in some horrible manner). Another safe reading that factually inaccurate is “Dumbledore is Straight”; the story gives you enough to easily read that he was banging Grindelwald (I actually remembered Wizard Hitler’s name, maybe this sleep thing isn’t overrated), but it doesn’t really confirm it, so I can see finishing the work with the conclusion that he’s straight (I certainly did).

          And sure, bi people are erased. So are gay people, both in high profile ways. One of the ways queer people in general fight back is exactly this kinda thing – it’s why I didn’t get super pissy when my queer LS in FFXIV insisted Alphinaud was trans. Sure, probably not canon, but their reading actually has some neat supporting evidence. And sure, I extra don’t care about preserving some notion of cis identity, and yes, it’s more mainstream to accept gay people than bi, but it’s not like the former is that mainstream in real terms, only in the barest minimum of the law. So getting mad about it kinda has harms that it wouldn’t if you were correcting some idea that she were straight (all the moreso for being an actually valid reading, which wouldn’t be possible at this point for ‘Ruth is straight’). Until Willis’ comment that Ruth was bi, I’d actually read that as “Had assumed ace prior”, and the only line that supports it in comic is a stronger reading for being pan rather than bi.

        12. Spencer

          I guess a way I look at the mainstream thing is that you’re right that homosexuality is more known to the larger het community, and getting into that kind of feels like we’re dividing among ourselves rather than dealing with the real problems, but at the same time, because of the prevalence of bi erasure compared to a comparatively more thorough understanding of homosexuality, I do think it’s important to make the distinction.

          This is something I feel is important to pursue. Because of how often bisexuality is folded into homosexuality, treated as less of an identity, as fraudulent; that all bi men are just closeted gay dudes who kiss women to feel normal, and all bi women are just straight chicks who kiss girls for the boys’ sake, I consider it important to make that distinction. No, Ruth is bi. No we’ve never seen her with a guy in DoA, but we don’t need to actually see it play out before we’re allowed to make that call. I remember when we first found out Marcie had a thing for Malaya and the immediate conclusion was that she was gay, and I was there to say “she’s bi” because it was true; she had a thing with Jason in It’s Walky!, she’s bi. Might as well shout it out, because who else but me and Wackd would remember that.

          And like, that absolutely makes sense, much to my chagrin, but it’s also an extension of how homosexuality has become an umbrella for all queer orientations, how it’s the immediate assumption when a character displays queer affection, and it’s why I feel it’s important to say “X is bi, not gay” because of that erasure, even from within the LGBT+ community.

          If you don’t feel that way, then, well, that’s okay. We don’t need to agree on every single facet of queer sociology and I appreciate your input, but please try to understand why this is important to me and why I feel the need to make that call, because bi-erasure is too real and I’ve seen enough of it, and I want to stamp it out.

        13. Rutee

          But by getting mad about it with people who we don’t have strong cause to say they’re bi given the actual work (News to me that Marcie banged a dude, I don’t really care about the walkyverse besides SP!), you are engaging in erasure as well. I mean, technically you’re doing it anyway, we’re just usually fine with it because it’s canon, but even given that, it actually is kind of harmful to get mad or smug when you’re doing it over any other queer response (I’m still weirded out by Ruth being bi, given that what she’s said in the work is so much easier as ace or pan than bi. I mean the ‘I don’t care about your plumbing’ bit is almost the word-for-word explanation of pan I got from my pan buddy explaining it to nayve little me a decade ago). It’s harmful to know and not acknowledge the canon too, (at least, given nerd- and internet culture’s obsession with it. Context informs actions, after all, and to be sure, I’m pretty sure Nothri knows), but you’re already pointing that one out. It’s really not an easy situation, unfortunately, since those are way better.

        14. Spencer

          I just really don’t view what I’m doing as any form of erasure. Apart from it being canon and thus informing our interpretation of the character, something like “this character has only shown interest in the same sex and therefore must be gay” I do view as a micro form of erasure, as it presumes that the only way a character can express attraction for the same sex without also doing so for someone of another sex means they must be boxed into one specific, and more prevalent, Queer label.

          And like, I’m not actually *mad* that people think Ruth/Marcie/Mandy & Grace are gay, since I understand where the argument comes from even though I resent why the argument exists in the first place when it comes to bi characters, but I just don’t see anything wrong with making that correction. I’m not erasing anything that’s there, unlike how the assumption of Ruth being gay erases her actual sexuality, which is something that happens to members of the bi community.

        15. Rutee

          Well, neither does anyone erasing bi people. When it’s canon, you’re /justified/ in it, but it’s still removing a different queer reading, and a generally valid one. And again, you’re /justified/ in this – At least, by the rules of nerd and internet culture, which is what’s going to matter here. What you’re doing is removing a queer reading, but it’s okay because – Canon says you’re right, and it’s for another queer reading. But look at it from the perspective of those other queer people – I have what, three lesbians in this enormous cast? Leslie, Becky, and Daisy? Is Daisy even gay?) I, personally, am not horribly affected by this, but I go well out of my way to make the bulk of what I consume or produce have at least some gay people. I’m also older and better experienced at doing that, and as you may have noticed from my less-than-strict caring for canon, as well as my desire for fewer dramatic out-of-the-closet things RL, I am satisfied with not having a neon statement of canon, and am okay with an unlit sign (Personally – I acknowledge the value of these neon signs on a social level).

          But it’s not like it’s just me. Hell, for all I know nothri’s a gay lady who’d really like the couple to have at least one gay lady – it’s not like you can produce a pair of lesbians in this verse (I guess if Becky and Daisy had gotten together, but maybe not then). If you’re not mad, okay, and I get being curt just to get it over with, though.

          That said, your insistence on the canon has one actual problem – you keep saying that it’s not okay to ‘assume sexuality’, but it isn’t an assumption. It’s acting on the information we’re actually given. It’d be genuinely offensive to gay men to assume an attraction to women on Ethan’s part. And while Ethan is well and truly, definitively in-fiction outed, this wasn’t always the case, and even before it was, it’s a genuine stretch. ‘canon’ that isn’t properly shown is not a cudgel (Again, notice that I am not beating ‘Carla is cis’ people over the head merely for their inaccurate conclusion. I would wait for an actual defense of how taht conclusion must be the case, or it’s unrealistic, or…).

          There isn’t actually a winning move vis-a-vis assuming gay, bi, or pan, incidentally. Well, there’s full and complete agnosticism, but that isn’t how anyone behaves about, well, anything, and isn’t a realistic behavior. Where one is not eliminated, it’s more important to accept the possibility that you are mistaken and not act like it absolutely has to be the case (“Is Daisy actually gay?”, which yes, I wrote into this specifically to establish this point, but if you’d pointed it out to me that in Walkyverse she wasn’t, I’d shrug and be unsurprised, same as with Marcie.) People will assume one or the other, and given that complete and total agnosticism is not how people operate, that is probably fine.

        16. nothri

          “I believe you mean “picking your nits”. ”

          Whatever it is YOUR STILL DOING IT!

        17. Spencer

          you’re*

          :3

        18. brumagem

          I love you.

  71. Captain Button

    So are Carla’s family Seventh Day Advent Hoppists?

  72. Pecker Holder

    How is it possible for the main cast to be almost entirely consisted of assholes? Sheesh. Can’t a few people just get along?

    1. Spencer

      Hi, welcome to DoA. I hope your first strip was fun, but you should really go back and re-read the entire archives to get the full experience!

      1. Pecker Holder

        I have read almost the entirety of the comic. That is why I said what I said.

        1. Spencer

          Then I don’t get how you can read this comic and come to the conclusion that nobody gets along at all, let alone in a strip focused on two of the biggest jerks in the cast.

          Like, other than Ruth or Joe, I can’t think of a character who isn’t mostly decent to people.

        2. Pecker Holder

          Ruth? That yahoo is a sociopath that should probably have been arrested right from her first appearances.

        3. Commodore Jeep-Eep

          I’m maintaining pools on who will end up being the most screwed over in the final weeks of the comic as their chickens finally come back to roost – I’ve about 30/30/30 odds for Ruth to end up tossed of college/be arrested for going over the top/be involuntarily committed after the sexy lesbian suicide pact fails.

        4. thejeff

          Nope. Everyone redeems themselves, recovers from all their psychological issues and traumas, pairs up (or larger groups as they prefer), works their relationship issues out and lives happily ever after.

          You can’t convince me otherwise. 🙂

        5. Commodore Jeep-Eep

          You can only dodge lightning for so long – eventually, someone’s going to end up hit.

        6. fogel

          Me, I’m gonna win the Powerball!

        7. Emily

          Mike, Malaya, Sal, Carla, Mary. I’m sure there’s more I’m missing.

        8. Spencer

          I was referring to main characters (so no Mike or Malaya), and excluding Carla and Mary, who only show up to be pains and even Carla has had points where she’s pretty nice, like when she cleaned up Amber’s head wound.

          Sal’s basically alright. She’s kind of standoffish but otherwise she doesn’t really bug anyone or start shit more than anyone else.

        9. Emily

          Someone doesn’t have to be Mike tier pure evil to be an ass. Heck prior to her most recent bought of character development I would’ve included Joyce because being superficially nice doesn’t stop someone from being a toxic person either.

        10. Spencer

          People are complex and sometimes fall short of themselves. Nobody’s ever one thing forever.

          Except Mike. Mike is always a terrible asshole and sucks.

    2. Captain Button

      Obviously you have never read Something Positive.

      1. JQuire

        Vanessa is not an asshole! She’s adorably abominable.

    3. Cephalo the Pod

      First off, neither of the characters featured here are
      main characters, so I don’t know why you’re saying this here of all strips.

      Secondly, Joyce, Dorothy, Walky, Amber and Danny are pretty civil most of the time. Even Billie at her rudest was eager to assist people in personal matters.

      Going beyond main characters, Becky is a ray of sunshine, Dina is always polite, Ethan is a sweetheart, and Sal doesn’t bother people. The people who are generally assholes are Ruth, Joe and Mike.

      1. Cacturne

        AMBER may be civil, but Amazi-Girl sure as hell usually isn’t.

    4. Cerberus

      Joyce and Dorothy? Like you don’t need to scroll back that many comics to see Joyce and Dorothy being really good together and see the care that Dorothy puts into that relationship and supporting Joyce.

      1. Spencer

        Or really, any of the main cast? Danny and his concern for Amber’s mental health and Amber refusing to allow Danny to bypass her earlier instance of verbal abuse, Ethan’s genuine friendship with the both of them, Walky and his extremely strong, sibling bond with Billie that motivates him to take action when he’s concerned about her and his attempts to try and start repairing his damaged relationship with Sal, Billie trying to be Joyce’s cool big sis and explaining fuzzy boots and booty calls and hook up that annoying dork with a super smart girl, basically every moment Becky and Dina have shared, etc etc.

        Like, the comic doesn’t skip over the worst parts of the character, but the cast is, by and large, filled with genuinely positive people trying to do the right thing.

  73. Captain Button

    Now I am wondering. Is Carla bouncing by bending at the knees and hips and pushing up, or just by pushing down with her toes while pulling her heels up?

    Calves suggests the latter, but I’d think it would be extremely tiring if you were trying to keep it up for minutes on end.

    Mary should have just stood there with a nasty smile until Carla couldn’t keep it up any more.

    (Double entendre intended, for all you Marla shippers out there.)

  74. RP

    Can’t we all agree that they are both huge jerks?
    Carla started it & Mary took it too far.

    There is no need to pretend that either of them aren’t being as obnoxious as they really are. Making a ton of noise isn’t just “merely annoying” and messaging up someone’s property isn’t OK even if they were more than just annoying.

    1. RP

      Oh good lord, that should be *messing up*. Those would have to be pretty fancy skates for Mary to be able to send them angry text messages.

      1. Drakey

        I was thinking flirty text messages.

        “Hey skates, you’re pretty loud out there in the hall. Wanna come make noise in here instead?”

    2. Bwoop

      So, I just wanna point out that super glue is easily removed using acetone (nail polish remover, basically), and that Carla could fix her skates with about ten minute’s effort; just dismantle the wheel housing, coat in acetone, wait about thirty seconds, scrub vigorously. Do all this in a well-ventilated area, repeat if necessary, then wipe with a damp cloth. If necessary, apply grease and fix the wheels.

      Oh, and of course, Carla’s a jerk, Mary’s a jerk, just a big ol’ bunch’a jerks.

      1. David M Willis

        I will point out that this was discussed thoroughly in the previous-day’s comments because acetone is strong enough to damage your skates as well: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/stompstompstomp/#comment-951212

        1. Bwoop

          Oh, hey Willis. Easy solution: Apply with a Q-Tip or cloth to metal parts only. Acetone might affect the rubber of the wheels, but the actual frame of the skate will be chiefly metal. If it’s all plastic, hoo boy, you are risking your neck and you’ve had a favour done by being taken off them.

          The wheels and parts of the foot mount might be plastic, but the former can be chipped at or sand-papered, or you can just put the skates in a freezer until they’re cold enough and then remove it.

          Either way, you’re talking minimal effort to repair them, using tools that an avid skater like Carla would, one imagines, have readily available.

          Like, none of this excuses attempted property damage or the far more serious risk of personal harm incurred here, but this is eminently fixable.

      2. RP

        Even if that’s true, she shouldn’t have to fix her skates in the first place.

    3. Bwoop

      I thought I was posting my message generally, not in reply. Dangit. Still, I guess by sheer chance, it ended up somewhere appropriate.

  75. Tenn

    What does my brain think up as soon as I finish reading the strip?

    It thinks up this:

    Hoppin and Calves

    Good job, brain.

    1. nothri

      I miss that comic.

  76. Kindra

    I don’t think either of them can claim the high ground here, to be honest. Mary’s a jerk, but she started by asking Carla to stop skating in the hall. Carla said ‘no’, Mary reminded her it was against the rules, Carla continued with the skating, purposefully trying to annoy Mary…

    Sure, Mary should have gone to Ruth or someone else in authority to complain rather than messing up Carla’s skates, but… Carla’s being a little shit-stirrer herself, so I can really see why Mary is so pissed at her.

  77. KingOfGreyfell

    This feels like filler…

    Not even mad.

    1. David M Willis

      artists love when you call their comics filler, totally a friendly thing to do

      1. Eliot

        It used to be my ambition to make something ‘all filler no killer’. But then I remembered Chuck Lorre sitcoms.

      2. Cacturne

        Its not filler, turns out Carla and Mary are the main characters and Joyce and the others were only there to support them.

        1. Cattleprod

          Finally! Since day one I’d been asking ‘where’s Mary?’ whenever she wasn’t on panel, as well as Ultra Car, even before Shortpacked introduced the idea of her having a humanoid body. I was always wondering why Mary wasn’t cruising around in a magical talking car.

        2. Cattleprod

          Wow, I just picked a great moment to post a pro-Mary comment, even if it was sarcastic as hell.

      3. TamiDOA

        500 comments means it’s no “filler”!

        All are needed steps (stomps) on the way to the punchline, (as in Ruth punches them both because they’re begging to be punched).

      4. Dr. T

        Sometimes the filler in any story can be the best part.

        1. fogel

          Like the stuffing in the bird, eh?

  78. Tacos

    Well this is an amusing present for me since today is my birthday.

    At least Carla ain’t skipping out on leg day. Unlike Toedad….

    1. Cacturne

      I think Toedad skipped out on neck day…
      Y’know, when he was conceived.

      1. Captain Button

        Is Toedad related to The Criminologist, aka Judge Oliver Wright?

  79. Jhon

    @Memyself: “False. The end.”
    Only because WordPress ran out of indents. (What a wonderful troll tactic. Not that -I- would ever do anything like that.)

    1. Memyself

      I said “False. The end” with no consideration of where the indents would end, but instead saw no purpose in giving any more depth of response to someone who completely and willfully misrepresents what I have said.

  80. EvergreenFir

    What? No “hopping mad” jokes? I am disappoint.

  81. Paul

    Everyone forgets that the root of the word “dormitory”, dorm-, means “sleep”. That building is provided for people to sleep in. Anything that interferes with that sacred and primal function should carry the death penalty.

    At least kids nowadays play their music on buds buried deep within their own ear canals instead of speakers reminiscent of Stonehenge.

    1. Regalli

      It’s broad daylight on a Friday. There’s gonna be worse even before the sun sets because people come and go from class, and afterwards there’s reasonable odds of someone throwing a party. If it were a finals/midterm week or after curfew, fine, but the rest of the time you get used to annoyances like that midday.

      1. Dr. T

        I worked night on the weekends when I lived in a dorm. Trust me, Carla would have been the least of my problems getting some sleep before work.

      2. Cerberus

        This.

        Also, I dunno why, but with all the people who’ve posted some variation of “grr, I hate people who make lots of noise late at night” to the Carla/Mary comics, I kinda suspect there’s a number of people who are backlashing against Carla entirely because they are thinking about a current or former loud neighbor rather than because of her actual actions in comic.

        1. 3-I

          Seconded. Seriously, if Mary had just closed her door and let Carla skate on, it would have ended. Mary likes to confront.

    2. fogel

      Stonehenge Ala Spinal Taps stage set?

      1. Paul

        Nah, more like:

        http://cdn.avsforum.com/7/7b/7b3ce9e6_vbattach183339.jpeg

        Back in the eighties, every kid with rich parents had a stereo setup like that in their dorm room, and they would come home late at night drunk and turn the volume up to eleven. (That enough Spinal Tap for you?)

        1. fogel

          Sweet! (Once sat 6th row, in front of the stage right speaker stack on a favorite band’s PLAY IT LOUD …NO, ***LOUD*** tour . Stuffed my ears with tissue; they were still ringing the next day.)

        2. fogel

          Oh yeah: freshman dorm, we pointed speakers out the windows and blasted music till the fire fighters from the station across the street came over and told us to cut it out. Where was the resident head of the dorm? That’s another story ….)

  82. Psychotic Mantis

    I don’t know why, but Carla’s hair strikes me as really pretty. Maybe it’s the quantity. I ‘unno.

  83. Plasma Mongoose

    Looks like Willis doesn’t trust us with the next comic.

    1. chris73

      Yeah Marys really crossed the line on this one but that look on her face suggests things are going to get worse for everyone…

    2. AeromechanicalAce

      What’s there to say but chant for ruth to FINALLY follow through on the ‘beat someone to death with their own femurs’ threat?

      1. Mona

        EXACTLY what I would need a comment section for right now.

        1. Spencer

          There would be at least one “um carla was a jerk so that makes it ok for mary to jump to the worst, most atrocious thing she could possibly say” so I guess I’m kind of okay with nuking today’s comments into oblivion.

        2. 3-I

          yeah, i was kind of dreading that moment.
          As a trans person, I really would not have been okay with people saying Carla deserved that.

        3. Cerberus

          Ditto. And you know there would be a good amount pulling that argument or getting super defensive about their previous defenses of Mary and slagging of Carla.

        4. JQuire

          Cosigned.

          There were already people saying that Mary was justified in possibly injurious action which lead to property damage because Carla was being disruptive and abrasive. SOMEONE would have trotted out ‘sticks and stones…’

        5. DarkoNeko

          Meh. Willis’ house, Willis’ rules.

        6. Spencer

          Why is Willis infringing on my rights to free speech in his website on the internet

        7. Cerberus

          *shed single manly tear* Bro, you’re so oppressed, bro.

          To the Fedora-mobile!

        8. Spencer

          Mark my words, my subreddit will hear of this!

        9. Rutee

          What dudes have done to the fedora, among other things, makes the Johnny Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet cartoon from Disney read so much differently.

    3. EvergreenFir

      More likely doesn’t trust the trolls. But a huge amount of love to Willis for that comic and more so for making Ruth awesomer

      1. DarkoNeko

        Ruth : “came because of the noise, stayed for the bloodbath”

    4. Dreadhawk177

      Could get ugly. Too much blood splatter for the comment section to remain legible.

    5. Captain Button

      I felt a trivial disturbance in the Force, as if dozens of voices suddenly cried out in phobia and were suddenly silenced. I fear something wonderful has happened.

      1. inqntrol

        Somebody needs to find the cure for assholness, bigotry, racism and all other bad habits, this things are like diseases.

      2. Scott John Harrison

        I hope they also don’t get the idea of going back one day and writing in this comments.

        I sort of also hoping they do so willis can use his block button.

    6. DarkoNeko

      Can’t blame him to wanting to avoid having to manage a shitstorm of that magnitude, tho.

      1. Cody

        If the comments were open for the next comic, the word cloud would be “Bongo”

        Just floating in space.

      2. Viktoria

        True, but it would be a good way to figure out which people need to be insta-banned very quickly.

      3. Leorale

        Yeah seriously. I wouldn’t want to spend all night and day moderating hundreds of comments on this particular subject, either. See you all in a couple days.

        1. Chronos

          And yet those comments will mostly just migrate here instead. Oh well, can’t be helped.

        2. Leorale

          True. And I just keep refreshing, too, even after I thought ‘oh, good, I’ll actually go to bed’. Whatchagonna do!

        3. JustCheetoDust

          It’s not like he can’t wipe out replies and then lock this page as well.

        4. Chronos

          Fair point, true.

        5. Zababcd

          Terrible comments might remain, but genuinely trolling comments aren’t as likely to come to this page, since they’re less likely to get a response (not to mention that it’s more effort).

        6. Chronos

          From what I’ve read of the newer comments so far, you’re right, and I’m ecstatic to be wrong.

    7. JustCheetoDust

      Can’t say I blame him.

  84. Cacturne

    in response to the next comic, Mary’s gonna be looking more like a Toedad once Ruth’s done with her.

    1. chris73

      I dunno, the look on Marys face suggests shes got something up her sleeve and it probably involves what she thinks is payback

      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/male-anatomy/

      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/clear/

    2. gc

      Nah, Mary’s going to threaten Ruth with her sort-of-knowledge of her relationship with Billie. When this comic promises you a moment of righteous satisfaction, the safe guess is that you’re going to get pain instead.

      1. EvergreenFir

        Ugh yeah that’s what’s gonna happen. Question is how Ruth will handle it. Hoping she comes out (swinging with a left hook to Mary’s face)

        1. Viktoria

          Ideally, Mary says something bad enough that she gets thrown out of the dorm, and then she blows the whole Ruth/Billie thing as vengeance. That loses both the terrible bullies in one storyline.
          More realistically, I figure Ruth is self-hating enough to get fired as long as she hurts Mary somewhat before she goes. Whether it’s physically or socially is anyone’s guess.

  85. Dr. T

    I am a little new to the strip, so I am not familiar with how the comments sections go. Are there really that many trolls that find their way to this webcomic? Granted, as the parent of a trans child even one troll is too many for my taste, but I just wondered how bad it has ever gotten.

    1. Spencer

      Literally in this comments section we had a dude post for the first time about how homosexuality is wrong and Becky can’t actually be Christian because she’s gay.

      Willis’ work has a tendency to attract some douchebags amid the fandom.

      1. DarkoNeko

        “the fandom”, yeah.

        1. Spencer

          I can’t say I follow.

          Douchebags unaware that they hold genuinely vile thoughts and beliefs occasionally chime in and get all surprised when they’re taken to task for it. It happened yesterday, even.

        2. DarkoNeko

          hmmm.

        3. Spencer

          you stop that

          you stop that right now

    2. Chronos

      There are… enough of them that closing the comments was reasonably justified.

      1. Arianod

        Being late to the ‘party’ (because of timezone stuff etc) I’d like to ask: did Willis pre-emptively board up the Comments section against the incoming shitstorm, or did the storm break out and force him to close?

        1. MeghanTheDreamCrusher

          Preemptive strike

        2. Arianod

          I thought so.

        3. Lucretiel

          I was there at 12:02. Unless the douchebags were incredibly on point tonight, it was pre-emptive.

        4. Cerberus

          pre-emptive in anticipation of the douche-alanche.

        5. Arianod

          Petition to have “douche-alanche” included in the dictionary! 😀

        6. evan

          preemptive, willis overslept and wasn’t even awake when the comic went up

        7. Paul

          Is there a meta-discussion forum where that was revealed?

        8. Tricia

          Twitter.

        9. -Sentinel-

          Love the OotS avatar! Does it represent you IRL?

    3. Rutee

      It gets bad, and for all we know, Willis closed the comments because he’s not going to be around today and is sparing folks the bother of cissexist trolls going apeshit.

      1. Rutee

        But also, it gets bad and he doesn’t want to deal with it all the time. Also wow, I’m going to enjoy watching Ruth not give a fuck about the blackmail. Because she knows that she knows, and is already leading with this.

    4. Leorale

      Willis moderates the comment sections, so we are blissfully unaware of how bad it could get if he didn’t.

      1. Captain Button

        This. If comment monitoring is anything like being an IRC channel op, it gets so incredibly wearing because it never ends. Trolls never give up, and there is always another one just like them if when you ban one.

        1. fogel

          Like my cat when he wants to go somewhere we don’t want him or, even more, when I’m pouring cream into my coffee. Cats are trolls with redeeming qualities.

        2. TheNinthShader

          The trolls need batman, not jesus.

      2. DarkoNeko

        We have a florilège of the “finest” sometimes screenshoted for twitter or tumblr.

      3. Sabrina

        oh shit I never thought about that. DANG. props to Willis
        (well on top of everything else he gets props for)

    5. RP

      The comments sections for “Just Hanging Out With My Family” features people insisting that Sal, a bi-racial character, *had* to be wrong about experiencing racism. No amount of explaining from other people or escalation in the comic itself would convince them that Sal wasn’t overreacting.

      Then there were the “at least he thought he was doing the right thing” folks when Toedad showed up on a college campus with a freaking GUN.

      I am not at all surprised we can’t comment on today’s comic. If David doesn’t want to spend all day banning bigots, more power to him.

  86. whataname

    In response to the next comic:
    Someone dun goofed.

  87. Luzahn

    Oh god, Mary why? I mean, I assume Mary would be all transphobic regardless, but isn’t Carla’s status in that regard not public knowlege?

    I’m assuming she’s making some stupid comment on boys being loud/obnoxious/etc, and now Carla’s going to be accidentally outed by Ruth. Y’know, because that’s the only way this exchange could be more awful.

    1. Cerberus

      It was really only a matter of when Mary pulled out a nasty slice of transphobia against Carla. Still hit the gut like a Mack Truck though.

      1. Luzahn

        The cartoon hijinks in the last two strips almost made me forget that she’s the worst.

    2. Viktoria

      Sal figured it out on her own, I’m not surprised Mary did too. As someone pointed out a couple days ago, Carla’s outfits usually don’t help her to pass. Combine that with showers etc, and people will pick up on the clues.

      1. Cerberus

        She’s fearless and part of that is clearly not caring whether she passes or not and taking a lot of risks with her wardrobe.

        That makes her bad-fucking-ass.

        But it also means it makes her vulnerable to shit like this. Society tends to react very very violently to trans women who don’t go full high femme.

        1. Papaya Punk Pixie

          I guess it depends. We don’t know how cis Carla looks since this isn’t really a realistically drawn comic. I’m an intersex woman, raised as a boy. I dress in baggy dude clothes all the time but I’m still never identified as trans by how I dress. But to be fair, I struggled to pass as a boy sometimes back when I tried. But Carla could be read as cis, or not, hard to say.

          But Viktoria makes a really good point. I’d personally avoid bathing around anyone because of my body… or changing in locker rooms or anywhere, or being naked in general. That is something that could make people suspicious, even if you were cis and dyadic.

      2. Paul

        I assume that something as basic as the showering problem has been covered somehow. There would be no point is providing Carla with a single room to avoid student and parental freakouts without addressing the shower issue also.

        1. Cerberus

          She tends to shower at weird times when no one else is around, which is why she’s usually already dressed when everyone else is in sleepwear and hitting the showers.

    3. Leorale

      Judging by the smug satisfaction on Mary’s face, she knew exactly what she was saying, she thinks she is right, and she is pleased with the result. Mary really is that awful.

      1. MeghanTheDreamCrusher

        She does look smug but, and maybe this is just me being crazy, she also looks a bit surprised. Like she was going on a hunch rather than certainty.

        Maybe it’s just cause she looks less smug than I’m used to because when Mary gets smug she pulls all the stops http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/dvr/

    4. Carms

      this is exactly what I thought. Does Mary even KNOW
      but then, Mary’s been shown to be savvy like that- she’s probably figured out Ruth and Billie. She’s probably figured out Carla. and just as with the former, it’s knowledge she’s savvy enough to keep until it hurts

      But Carla- man she looks totally flummoxed. I think she is indeed not out, and that might be the first mis-gendering -specifically transphobically motivated or not- she’s encountered since she left her hometown. just out of the blue, in a place where no-one should KNOW to do that. (rather than ‘should know not to do that’ =/)

      1. Cerberus

        I don’t think she’s been that lucky. But it may well be the first this level misgendering she’s gotten this week. After all, she keeps weird hours, puts up a don’t fuck with me front, and deliberately times her showers to not coincide with anyone else.

        Either way though, this has to sting like a motherfucker. Especially since it’s so bloody blatant. Like, it’s one thing to have some asshole misgender you even after you correct them or deal with all the passive-aggressive shit that tends to happen to trans folk. It’s another to see someone openly and blatantly trying to hurt you like this. It happens frequently, but it’ll definitely stop you in your tracks and ruin any parts of your weekend you didn’t want to devote to feeling angry and awful.

        1. thejeff

          It’s also that this one is at home and is quite likely to out her to everyone she knows.
          Not some random asshole that hurts, but isn’t going to screw up your life.

        2. Cerberus

          Even if she doesn’t “out” her in the sense of Carla already being out, Mary knowing this means Carla’s life can get really really bad soon. Mary is exactly the type of person to start making loud complaints to administration about how “unfair it is” to share a dorm with a trans woman and to tell her local Church group all about the “ungodliness” up at the dorm.

          And while the campus is probably on Carla’s side given the non-discrimination law, there still might be some assholes on staff willing to dick around Carla because of it or make her status a “public debate” and a protest movement around her existing in the dorms by asshole fundies would make the regular process of getting to class a lot more shitty.

    5. Eve

      She mentioned it to Sal like it was a known fact, when Sal suggested she join the ladies roller derby team, and Sal said they wouldn’t care.

      1. Cerberus

        It’s probably a matter of just being already out. Like, she’s already come out to people and will assume others know her deal and definitely is not afraid to yell at the others that a dick on her door is a hate crime, but she’s not going to open every conversation with “hi, I’m Carla, oh by the way I’m trans” because yeah, already out, fuck you and all that jazz

        But being out like that also means that bigots like this will revel in trying to use it to hurt you. It’s what makes being out so potentially dangerous, especially for trans individuals.

        1. Rutee

          I don’t think she’s that out. “This is Carla, who has a room to herself for some weird reason” The sophomores might already know, but I don’t think she’s outed herself at all (Nor would I really expect her to).

        2. Tan

          I’ve been taking it as one of those ‘unspoken public knowledge’ things every place has, and Joyce not getting it is just Joyce being Joyce and no one wanting to shake the tree to explain it to her.

        3. Cerberus

          Yeah, this. Also, I’m saying “already out”, because once you’ve come out to most everybody, it’s really not on your mind to come out to every new person. Like, I’ve already “came out” to work a while ago, so I don’t bother telling new students directly, because it’s already common knowledge or so I assume.

  88. fizzywafflezsuperstore

    So, I looked at the next comic and I was thinking:
    “Huh… the comments are blocked. This must mean that at the bottom of the previous page, there should be inquiries and answers on this.”

    For once, my guesses turned out correct.

  89. LimeSheep

    motherfuck.

  90. Cerberus

    Completely off topic, but panel 3 of the next comic. Holy fuck are those skates wrecked. No wonder she’s been hopping mad the last two comics. There you go EvergreenFir, I did it for you!

  91. Rick Robin P. Cagnaan

    Mary being prejudiced against wheels is how? She deliberately ruined Carla’s skates…

  92. Dr. Smart

    I don’t comment often, though i have been following this comic for over a year now. this is the first time i have seen this happen and I understand why it happened, but OMG the one time i want to comment… guess thats sorta the point though lol

    And wow, just found out yesterday from this comment section that she was trans and then to see it comfirmed in the following script, i love it ^^ (and i wonder if it will bring up her being asexual anytime soon…)
    I never really cared too much about Mary the way most of the commenters do, it felt like i could ignore her appearances in the walkeyverse since i just didn’t really put too much thought into her character, she was just a bongo…

    but wow just wow, i was expecting her to snitch to ruth about the noise, not anything so rude, and i get it she is religious and doesen’t believe in trans identities, the fact that she knew all this time and didn’t bring it up is actually kind of surprising, i could have seen her arguing the point throughout all this time and i probably would have just seen her the same way i already did, a homophobic transphobic jerk…
    but telling carla she belongs in the boy’s dorm at this exact moment, going through a charade of leading her there… this wasn’t a random insult or transphobic arguement… this was a bongo choosing to hurt someone intentionally just because they annoyed her… this was manipulative and cruel, it shows me that mary is not meant to be a bongo that we can all just hate, but a truly horrible person who actually feels justified in hurting people for fun…
    wow now i get why the other commenters hate her so much…

    1. Dr. Smart

      wow forgot there was a censor thing… bongo indeed…

      1. -Sentinel-

        I like the word “asshole”. It’s gender-neutral.

        1. Captain Button

          That’s good for the noun, but I am still looking for a good replacement for the verb form for excessive, unwarranted, or improper complaining or whining.

        2. Shiro

          I like “whining,” “pissing and moaning,” “tantruming,” “throwing a whiny baby fit,” things along those lines.

        3. 3-I

          I like the word “bongo.” It’s funny as hell. I’m thinking of incorporating other types of drums into my vocabulary.

    2. Cerberus

      Yup. That leading directly to the boy’s area with that smug little grin is some high-quality passive-aggressive abuse and shit like that is why I think Mary is a bully. She’ll go out of her way to not just fuck over someone, but to make them hurt or fear emotionally. She doesn’t just want to get you to stop skating, she wants to break something you love. She doesn’t just want to get you in trouble, she wants to use the social power of transphobia to cause genuine emotional distress. She doesn’t just want to be a homophobe, she wants to be a homophobe who makes Billie scared and nervous to enjoy her clandestine relationship without a constant threat over her head.

      Mary doesn’t fight to the death, she fights to the pain and when she succeeds in that, it gets really really ugly.

      1. Chronos

        Huh. I’m starting to think the Mary from the Walkyverse is the more benign one of the two.

        1. Cerberus

          Yeah, this Mary is legitimately dangerous. Not physically, but definitely emotionally.

          No wonder Roz is on a hair-fuse with regards to anything fundie these days.

      2. John Cabot

        I’m stealing your assessment to share with my friend when she gets up to read the comic. Yoink.

    3. Sabrina

      Huh. I’m assuming the bongos replaced word for female dog? And surprisingly (since I like to swear a lot) I found your post more rational with the censors in. I suppose I should cut down on the swears, particularly in discussion/anger things. Swears for comedy are still funny imo.

      1. Dr. Smart

        lol i wasn’t even that emotional, i just figured that it was the best word for what i was trying to describe, guess i should have gone with jerk, but honestly rereading my comment with so many bongos is hilarious to me… and bongo was her namo…

        anyways i actually don’t cuss that much irl, but online i just tend to not care that much about what i say, i have never felt the need to cuss in this forum before so i never been filtered before that i know of, but i honestly think as long as i am on a site that presumably has a mature audience I don’t really feel the need to inhibit my cuss words…

      2. Dr. Smart

        hmm starting to see where my autism might be causing issue… I don’t read emotion.. cusswords don’t mean emotion when i read them in text, they just mean whatever i assume the writer is trying to say… same when i type them, i use them as words, not expression, i wanted to use them here to say basically a worse form of “jerk” not to express some external hatred, so at first I failed to see how the presence of cusswords really affected the rationality of my statements… especially if those cusswords were replaced with words that you can easily assume to mean the same thing… but now i guess i get it, when NTs see cusswords they empathize with the emotion usually used with those words… so i guess it would be like me screaming this at the top of my lungs or at least passive aggresivly name calling… i guess using insults as nouns is something i need to avoid in the future for clarity sake…

        1. CJ

          Could someone explain why sexist slurs against women who act like assholes are so widely accepted? I do not mind cussing, but anyone using the b-word do describe a women s/he thinks is an asshole in my eyes has just taken a large step towards assholitude themselves. I still haven’t wrapped my mind around the fact that women also do this to other women, because wtf?

        2. fogel

          Hypothesis 1: if angry at someone, grab anything powerful to hand to hurl at them, incl sexual, racial, religious, etc., slurs, even if sex, race, etc are not relevant to the issue … and thereby make it an issue

          Hypothesis 2: attributing any grevience against someone to their sex, race, etc. PRESUMABLY, only if their sex, race, etc. Differs from your own — you don’t blame assholery on someone’s maleness if you are male.

          I think that both thinks happen

        3. Cerberus

          It’s also that sexism is rather normalized in society. To the point where if someone angers you who is a woman, most of the curse words for that are sexist slurs with long histories and if someone angers you who is a man, most of the insults that are most socially represented are ones that imply the man is feminine, a woman, or a marginalized sexuality that is hated for being seen as fulfilling the “woman role”.

        4. Shiro

          What Cerb said. There’s this one woman I know who, as soon as someone displeases her, out come the sexist slurs…I mean, not to their face, but she likes to gossip. I’m…still figuring out the best way to approach that with her.

    4. fogel

      Mary delenda est.

  93. Memyself

    It seems weird to talk about the next strip here, since the comics are closed. I assume that was intended to shut down the discussion of that strip?

    1. Dr. Smart

      I think it was to shut down trolls, he just dropped a pretty big bomb for those who didn’t already know about Carla’s status and he might not have had the time to moderate a comment section if a large number of people were going to be transphobic. so instead he shut down comments (hopefully temporarily) and those of us with something productive to say chose to come here…

    2. chris73

      I’d put money on it and fair enough as well

    3. MeghanTheDreamCrusher

      It’s more because if he left it open Willis would have to moderate like six million dick-heads

      1. Cerberus

        You are optimistic. It would have been eight million within the first hour.

    4. Needfuldoer

      It’s no surprise after some of the comments that came up on this strip. Imagine the field day those types would have with today’s! (January 20th)

      Willis already has two babies to clean up after, he doesn’t need any more.

      1. Solenoid

        I applaud you for that last line. It really sums up what’s really going on when the assholes come out of the woodwork.

      2. Paul

        Two babies? I remember one announcement, which I assumed was the first, but now two?

        1. CJ

          Twins

  94. Sophia

    You know shit’s going down when the comments are closed. :’D

    1. Ana Chronistic

      yup, there went my social life =p

  95. LimeSheep

    just noticed the alt text on the new one. “in case you needed more reasons to hate mary”. well according to the comments on the previous few strips, we did

    1. Cerberus

      And the idea that those same commenters might still support Mary and hate on Carla in the next comic as well probably was reason alone to lock shit down.

      1. BassBone

        Yeah, Mary crossed the line. Carla may have been being a bit of a jerk, but Mary went full Hitler.

        1. Megatron

          Mary is almost as bad as a senator. I can totally picture her being an aid for Rabat.

        2. Brainstorm

          Nah, she’s gotta be as bad as Nova or, hell, the Senate.

          Ratbat isn’t nearly this deranged, and I know a thing or two about deranged.

  96. motorfirebox

    Bon frickin’ go.

  97. Shiro

    Hoooooooly shit I am so glad Ruth (seems to be?) on the right side on this one. Yeah, no, that took it way from “everyone here is kind of an asshole” to “holy shit Mary that’s unexcusable.”

    1. Cerberus

      Off topic, but your gravatar makes me so happy.

      1. Shiro

        Thanks! 😀 That’s why I changed it, I went looking back to reread the beginnings of this storyline, and that panel and her grin made me so happy I wanted to look at them more.

        1. Buhzim

          Half-circle smile, son of triangle smile, son of…square smile?

    2. not someone else

      Pretty much.

      Kinda hoping Ruth breaks Mary’s face. That’s probably unacceptable behavior or something but it would be nice.

      1. fogel

        Breaks her face in the comic, not IRL, right? 😉

  98. Anon

    How tall is Ruth? I keep losing track of character’s relative heights, but Carla is on skates & Ruth looks either taller or as tall with she’s-standing-closer perspective. Unless 1) Carla is a lot further back than I thought, or 2) Ruth is “looming large” in a subjective, this-is-how-YOU-see-it way?

    1. MeghanTheDreamCrusher

      Based on this strip about the same height. It’s kinda hard to say.
      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/grab/

      Carla is taller than Billie, and then Billie and Becky are about the same height and Ruth is about as high over Becky as Carla was over Billie…but without them back to back hard to say

      1. DarkoNeko

        especially since she’s always on wheels

        1. MeghanTheDreamCrusher

          On that note I just realized this strip I posted was after Carla broke her skates so she should be taller than Ruth here

        2. Cerberus

          I think that was during the time that she was out-of-wheel commission, but still, Ruth must be a freaking amazon, because she’s about as tall as Carla and definitely wider and more built.

        3. Captain Button

          Maybe she is a rogue Terminator who has turned good.

          Or Sergeant Taura with dental work. The latter would help explain the self-destructive tendencies.

    2. epershannd

      The camera seems like it’s angled upward so that would contribute to Ruth looking a lot taller.

      1. fogel

        I think that Ruth is meant to be suddenly rearing up/looming–where did she even come from at exactly The Moment she’s called for?

  99. Sabrina

    Wow didn’t realize about Carla until the next strip! Promptly, I had go re-read all of the previous strips with her in them. Bless the character tags.
    Also, thank you Willis for really making a great cast of characters. I keep thinking we’re not going to see much of a small character and then boom they’re like a real person. I looking forward to reading Dumbing of Age every day, and I have been since you started it.

    1. Adam Black

      Now you have some insight why Mary has suddenly become super sympathetic to some people

      1. fogel

        You mean Mary’s escalation is justified by Carla’s provocation, right? 😉

  100. Cerberus

    Also, for the next strip, I just want to say “well done” to Willis, because that moment left me with that same sort of wide-eyed, sinking feeling that the real thing does.

    1. AdaptiveMenace

      Yeah, I physically recoiled when I read Mary’s lines there. Plus the look in Carla’s face is perfect (in the sense that seeing it feels like getting sucker punched in the gut)

      1. Cerberus

        Yeah, and that little eye glare in it too. It’s like the perfect “what the fuck did you just say” face and really communicates that combined feeling of rage and powerlessness that that sort of thing brings.

  101. Silamy

    Has Willis ever closed the comments section before?

    1. Cerberus

      Yes, in Dumbing of Age, it’s usually in comics where Sal is talking about systemic racism because that tends to attract a flood of white supremacists and well-meaning white-splainers.

      1. Rutee

        That was true in SP! too, wasn’t it? I don’t remember him often closing the comments when something on racism was what the trolls and well-meaning folks were going to display in huge numbers, but that might just be confirmation bias.

        1. RP

          Yes, that did happen in Short packed though I can’t remember of the top of my head which ones they were.

        2. Rutee

          I guess I don’t remember it. I remember the racism ones, but… well, I guess the SLIMED! guy (Or whatever it was, the guy who said Pete and Pete nostalgia was fucking enormous but Clarissa had no nostalgia) was also misogynist, sot here was that. And the Gamergate one… yeah I’m probably totally wrong and it wasn’t just racism. Whoo, wrongness.

    2. Viktoria

      Yeah. IIRC, it was one of the ones with Sal’s parents being subtly racist during FFW. He got tired of people saying that it wasn’t racism and closed the comments, then linked to several good comments on the subject from PoC in the authors notes.

    3. evan

      Yeah, he does it sometimes for Sal comics, because apparently the white supremacists really love to come out of the woodwork :/

      1. fogel

        How do “they” even find the sites where they are “needed”? Is there a way to track appearances of the topics they want to dominate and “correct”? Like, how would “they” know when the Walkerton’s racism appears? (I hope that question is semi clear.)

        1. Kryss LaBryn

          Oh, I expect like the rest of us, this is just one of many site they enjoy just because; but as soon as a topic becomes particularly relevant to them they share it with all their racist little friends, and then it gets spread all over Tumblr or something. Or wherever they usually hang out. And then the herd stampedes in, smashing things left, right, and centre, and pooping all over the place.

        2. tim guegue

          I suspect that, in the same way there’s a Batsignal in Gotham, someplace there is a Dumbass Signal. Some day I will find it and smash its lamp to bits.

  102. AdaptiveMenace

    Well, that next strip ought to shut down whoever was calling this arc filler. To paraphrase Darth Vader: I find your lack of faith in Willis disturbing.

    1. Megatron

      Everything is just a villain origin story waiting to happen.

      “You either live long enough to become the villain, or die trying.”

      1. Spencer

        I thought you were an Autobot now.

        1. Megatron

          I stand by my statement, fleshling.

        2. Rutee

          Wouldn’t ‘carbon stick’ or something be more appropriate to a skeleton?

  103. Sara Hysaro

    Man, I just want to give Carla a hug right now. I’m doubtful she’d appreciate it, but still. 🙁

  104. NoHeart6265

    The next strip just makes my blood boil. If anyone said what Mary did to my trans friend I swear I would deck them. My gravatar doesn’t even manage to express what my rage would be like in that situation.

    1. Chronos

      Appropriate avatar is appropriate.

      1. Cephalo the Pod

        Apparently, NoHeart doesn’t think so.

  105. KSClaw

    On today’s comic, WOW Mary. WOW. Just when I thought you couldn’t be more of a horrible person, you went right there.

  106. Rukduk

    Two things
    1) Willis definitely made the right choice on closing the next comic’s comment section.
    2) I honestly don’t know if I have ever despised a fictional character as much as I currently hate Mary. I was unable to do anything, not even finish the rest of the strip, for a good five minutes after reading that line it was such an emotional gut shot. At the same time, I have never been more happy to see Ruth. So credit to Willis for great writing abilities.

    1. Rutee

      I’m really looking forward to Ruth pointing out she was just about to tear Carla a new one when Mary crossed about three hundred lines of acceptability. I’ve been happier to see Ruth, but not by much.

    2. Chronos

      Nah, I still hate a lot of the parents of these kids more. Mary’s only interacted with Carla for a month or so at most; the parents that are horrible to their children have had their kids’ lifetimes to fuck them up.

      1. Rukduk

        Now that you bring that up, I’m trying to picture what Mary’s parents must be like to create such a hateful bigot.

        1. Solenoid

          Possibly, normal and quiet on the matter. Mary could have absorbed this attitude from the culture around her, we just don’t know.

        2. Wack'd

          If bad parenting didn’t create her, a lack of it did.

    3. TheNinthShader

      I love how willis closed the comment section, but everyone just goes to the previous strip and comments about it there xD

  107. Lorien Inksong

    Wow I already didn’t like Mary, and any vague sympathy I had for her is dead and buried. Go for it Ruthless… I say while not wanting Ruth to get into trouble.

    (And the dead vague sympathy was for having to deal with loud people in the dorm, that’s it.)

  108. Tenzhi

    The alt text made no sense to me. I thought the closing of the comments was an accident. After skimming through the comments made here (which makes the closing of the comments on the next comic seem more pointless), it still seems like something getting blown out of proportion.

    1. 3-I

      Trust me, given the comments that have happened before on all NUMBER of webcomics daring to suggest that trans people exist, it was fully justified.

      I’m just thankful that for once, the regulars’ community is on board.

      1. ischemgeek

        Honestly, only recently a regular, but IMO my cisgender fee-fees can take not being allowed to talk on something for a day. Frankly, to me, NBD. This is Willis’ space, he can do what he wants.

        A trans person shouldn’t have to take people arguing they don’t deserve to exist. A lot of them can, because it happens, a lot. But they shouldn’t have to. But if you’ve any involvement in any LGBT rights activism at all, you know that cissexist assholes arguing that Mary is a jerk but maybe has a point because biotruths and chromosomes and victim-blaming is going to happen if the comment section on today’s comic is opened. If it’s not moderated, gore-porn spamming and outright hate speech will happen, too (I’m serious here. I moderate a board that used to be really active, and mod staff always had to find the balance between not being so restrictive as to kill discussion but not so easy to comment that people who wanted to post snuff pics, threats, harass marginalized people or rape victims via our private messaging system, or data-mine the site for personal info on users to enable SWATing and other real-life, dangerous harassment and stalking could get through. No, really, this stuff happens. I’ve seen some shit that would make you sick to your stomach, and I’m not even talking about the worst of it because frankly if you didn’t see it yourself you probably wouldn’t believe it). And as arguments get more heated, the trans folks will have to deal with outright aggression and hate speech (which, even if nuked by Willis, is going to be up briefly and going to do damage).

        Transphobia kills. Do you know the suicide attempt rate of trans people? 41%. 41% of trans people have attempted suicide. And why? Because trans folk live in an environment of constant harassment, abuse, bigotry, and oppression where cis folk systematically refuse to acknowledge a core aspect of their personhood.

        Willis isn’t closing the comments for his sake (or, at least, not entirely for his sake – I’m sure wading through hundreds/thousands of comments arguing over transphobia and moderating dozens of simultaneous arguments, and weeding out spam and gore porn isn’t exactly how he wants to spend his Wednesday). He strikes me as good people, so I’m pretty sure he’s mostly closing it for the sake of his trans readers. He’s refusing to let this space become part of the problem. And good on him.

        1. Cerberus

          Man, this is such a good post.

          And yeah, the comment thread for the next comic would definitely have been hit with everything from rants about the evil ess-jay-doubleyous and casual transphobia to clueless cis people wondering if what Mary did was really so bad and arguing that Carla still deserves it because loud skating makes one the antichrist because once that person had a loud neighbor who did something completely different but it pissed them off.

          Heck, I even prepared a post in advance basically begging people to think twice before reflexively defending Mary in anticipation of the shitstorm. It would definitely not be a pleasant commenting experience for me and I imagine a fair number of other trans women.

          Also, yeah, Willis is already sleep-deprived enough, he doesn’t need to waste an entire day cleaning up idiot vomit when he’s already got twin infants to vomit all over his back.

        2. Dr. T

          Man, baby vomit down the back can be so unsettling. My youngest had a very sensitive stomach and had to be given the really expensive formula if we had any hope of him keeping it down. I remember getting up and comforting him one morning only to have him puke down my back and completely cover me with a cape of vomited formula. I was rather put off by it.

          BTW, he’s 14 now and can’t stop giggling every time that story gets told.

        3. 3-I

          Thank you for this post.

    2. Rutee

      You’re not seeing the worst comments. Willis tends to nuke everything beneath a certain level of assholeitude that isn’t responded to by something really good. It is super fucking unfun to come in and see them. Granted, I haven’t caught much particularly nasty cissexism yet, but Mary hadn’t said something cissexist that jerks needed to defend either.

    3. Adam Black

      Then please Allow me, to drop some wisdom:

      I ( and willis can verify this fact ) am one of only 3 people… just 3 people out of thousands of readers ( 10,000s ? ) that listed Mary as a favorite character. Yes I did.
      ( And I really like Carla ( but she not a major protagonists nor a major antagonist /Villain. )

      Man, did I get heat for that.
      ( People were all up in my shIt because they confused liking what a character does for a narrative, with approving what they do. )

      A good story revolves around good villains and well written antagonists.
      I picked Mary because I see she has the most capacity to grow as a characters ( and less two-dimensional ) and still be a good antagonist.
      Like her or late her: She is a scene-stealer,
      ( Like Nellie Olsen , or Cordelia , early on Buffy )

      If we were acting out Dumbing-of-Age
      ( why isnt Parent weekend already on Stage? That ought to be a musical) people would fight to be Mary.

      So consider this:
      When out of thousands of people, I ( almost ) alone looked past Mary as a Hateful blood-boiling bigot, to how fun she would be as character, when I admitted the truth that we love good villains,
      WHERE-WERE-ALL-THESE- NEO Mary Lovers?

      Where were they?

      Where were all these people that suddenly care deeply about Marys feelings?

      Where were all these people now making false Equivalences ?

      Where were they ?

      Thats right. They didnt exist.
      But the only time a Transgirl irritates Mary they come out of the woodwork?

      Im not buying it.

      I took a lot of heat for liking Mary —even though i despise everything she says and does.

      All These people that now want to protect her from “scrrfss” , If they are actually going to support her as an PROtagonist, they can expect some push back.

      TLDR: I’m just not letting the bigots into my small ultra-exclusive, Mary-lovers club
      Y’all had the chance to have my back honestly and support her as Antagonist ( not a protagonist ). You can just go back to your prayer-circles , Nail your Santorum signs on your lawn and listen to DC Talk or whatves.

      And If for some reason, I’m ever put in charge of casting the DOA stage-show you can bet I will cast a Trans-woman ( or a Gay man in drag ) to play Mary.

      1. Rukduk

        When you put it that way, Mary is a good antagonist. I still hold by my above comment of hating her guts, but she is a good antagonist.

        1. Kryss LaBryn

          Agreed. She is well-written and believable–and I still want to punch her every time we see her.

          If she wasn’t so well-written and believable I wouldn’t care so much.

        2. Adam Black

          Me naming her as a favorite character for being a good antagonist,
          was actually aspirational.

          I actually want more Mary scenes , as she is ironic comic campy relief.
          But I also want her to be written with a little more nuance, so shes a more believable villain.

          i dont fully endorse she is well written and believable. Shes not poorly written and disbelievable either.

          We are getting there. I love the scene where Mary is “nice” as she cant keep it up. The longer she is nice, the bigger payoff when she cant hold back .

          The irony is that I get my wish ( mary is slightly more sympathetic ) but its spoiled by the appearance of people supporting Mary out of animus.

      2. Rutee

        Aw. I’ve said it before, but I like all of the Dumbs (That is, the kids). Every last one – even Mike, even Joe, even Mary. But yes, I like Mary because she is fun to hate, so I absolutely cede ‘Mary’s biggest fan’ to you, because fuck if I want the title. But I do think she’s a good antagonist and measuring post for Joyce. I just also despise her every fiber of her being. So yeah, I’d say I like her as a character. It’s her job to be hated.

        1. Adam Black

          Mary is def fun to Hate.

      3. Buhzim

        Mary being overall a worse person aside, I believe there’s enough non-sex-related reasons for people to side with either character in this particular case. People on Carla’s side argue that Mary did the bigger evil, physically attacking her (via trap) and breaking her skates, while the people on Mary’s side argue that Carla was looking for trouble, needlessly testing someone’s patience and daring them to do something about it. If this was Mike playing xylophones in the hall while Sarah tried to study, I imagine the reactions would be similar.

        1. Cerberus

          Please tell me this comment is only taking into account the actions up to the comic up on the top of this page rather than also the one on the next, cause otherwise, yeah, some new context rather destroys a lot of the narratives people have been building in their heads and its ability to be swapped to a white male instigator and a marginalized female responder.

      4. Cerberus

        That’s… that’s a really good point, actually. Huh, I guess you were right about some of the newfound Mary love.

      5. Cephalo the Pod

        This post is magnificent.

      6. Dr. T

        In the poll for “which character do you want to see more of?” I voted Mary. I did this partly because in my mind Willis really meant “Which character do you want me to hurt emotionally?”, so I liked the idea of Mary getting some comeupance. Even if it were simply a poll for who we wanted to see more, she does stir the pot so well that having her appear is still good.

  109. Bicycle Bill

    What do we really know about Ruth’s backstory?  Perhaps Ruth has a transgender person in her family and that’s why she reacted with such seething, barely-under-control rage?  

    1. 3-I

      I think she’s reacting that way because she is fundamentally a good person (with serious issues) and Mary just said something IMPOSSIBLY hateful and cruel.

      1. Kabo

        Well, I don’t know about being a good person, but at least she’s the kind of person that has little patience with stupidity.

        Then, being a lesbian, I suppose she has additional cause for solidarity with Carla.

        And I don’t think she’s one to let an opportunity for some righteous aggression pass her by.

    2. Adam Black

      No Bill thats not it.

      Marys comment— if she knows Carla is trans — is an attack on all trans people, not just Carla. Its assertion of privilege , class and power; one granting it to Mary, and denying it to trans people.

      Im not sure Mary knows. I can see her saying this either way.

      1. Arianod

        When Carla found the dindong on her whiteboard -before seeing everybody else had got one too- she called it harassment. I assumed that to mean that her being trans wasn’t a secret, because it doesn’t seem to make much sense otherwise (?)

        1. Bwoop

          Well, Joyce didn’t know about it, but unless Carla’s very lucky and began transitioning and hormone therapy some time ago, she might just be a bit… Obvious? Given Carla’s reaction, too, I kinda doubt she hides it but I doubt it’s broadcasted either.

          It makes sense to assume it’s harassment on her part either way, as well; drawing a phallic sign on the whiteboard of a trans person isn’t subtle.

          You’ve got me wondering now, though, how people would’ve reacted if Carla had gotten slapped for getting angry with Ruth over there being dongs drawn on the whiteboards…

        2. Rutee

          If she’d demanded that Ruth prioritize the dongs over class time with escalating anger as it’s explained that no, there’s other shit to do? Pretty good with it.

        3. Bwoop

          But… She didn’t do that. She asked “What are you going to do about it?”, and Ruth answered “Right now? Nothing.” Mary got angry, and then someone with authority over her slapped her in such a way as to leave a mark to deliberately humiliate her.

        4. Cerberus

          But she did. Ruth was wearing a backpack and was clearly heading out to class:
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/male-anatomy/

          Mary started off with a leading bit over a non-emergency problem, Ruth let her know she knew about it. She demanded to know what she was going to do about it.

          First up, why the fuck does she need to know? I mean, there’s basically two things Ruth could have done, helped clean up or try and investigate, but overall, it’s a pretty minor problem (when it’s not directed as a hate crime against Carla) with no easy solution (if she rapidly cleaned it up and it was a troll that did it, the troll would put it back up before she even got home).

          Second, there’s this vibe of treating Ruth like a servant. Drop what you’re doing and help me. And no, that’s not the words she used, but think about how that sentence would read in reality. You’re on your way to class, you say you know about an issue and someone demands to know what you’re doing about it. I’d assume they mean right now, because otherwise, if they didn’t think it was immediately pressing, they’d be satisfied with the “yeah, I know” bit assuming that they’ll solve it when they get back.

          So Ruth says she’s not going to do anything right now, because she was going to class. Because she’s not just RA, but also a student.

          Mary then responded with anger that she wasn’t going to do anything. But it’s heavily implied with “right now? Nothing” that the answer would be rather different at a later time, hence the qualifier “right now”. So clearly, Mary had an expectation that Ruth would drop everything and miss out on a class she has spent quite a lot of money on not to mention risking her academic standing just to immediately sort out a non-emergency problem.

          Mary then escalated. Arguing not only that the drawings were an outrage and that by letting them exist it proved Ruth’s incompetence (because she wasn’t patrolling the halls in the middle of the night?), basically calling into question her very qualification simply because she wouldn’t fuck herself over to handle a non-emergency problem simply because some asshole thinks they’re too Christian to be exposed to drawn dicks.

          She followed that up by escalating to using slurs against her.

          Does that justify Ruth’s actions? Fuck no. Ruth is a bully who will always turn to violence as a first resort.

          But Mary knew exactly what she was angling for when she cornered Ruth in the first place and it definitely was not a measured response when she got home later that afternoon.

        5. RP

          Yes, Mary did do that. Ruth was clearly on her way to class when she said, “Right now? Nothing.”. Mary getting angry about that is her expecting Ruth to prioritize her complaint over going to class.

          Also, she didn’t just get mad, she called Ruth the c-word.

        6. Dr. T

          You may not know this, but the laws in the state of Indiana regarding how transgendered individuals under 18 limit how much transitioning she could have done early. With her parents permission, she could have done hormone therapy to block puberty early on, but actually taking female hormones isn’t something she could have done until she was 16 and even then only with her parents’ permission. Once she turned 18 she could start having the necessary surgeries, should she decides she wanted them.

          Then again, if her parents could afford it, they could take her to either Chicago or Cincinnati and she could, in theory, start taking female hormones earlier. The surgeries would still have to wait, however.

        7. Cerberus

          This.

  110. Willoughby Chase

    Loving this arc, der Willis.

    Reminds me of my days in halls. Ah, salad days, halcyon and brimming with promise! Where did it all go wrong?

  111. ninja_jesus

    I just finished the Valhalla series, and I came here for some semblance of whimsy.

    I regret this decision.

    1. inqntrol

      This is Dumbing of Age. Things here are unpredictable.

  112. Arianod

    Am I the only one who is slightly disappointed by this turn of events? I had braced myself for a truly epic match, a close-fought showdown of nastiness and bloody-mindedness; and instead of that, Mary goes and delivers the killing blow in the very first round. That’s it, contest’s over, we have a winner. Congratulations, Mary: you’re the actual, literal and absolute worst and no one’s gonna take that away from you.

    1. Solenoid

      Nah, she’s in the quarterfinals with Blaine, Ryan(I think? The would-be rapist at the party.), and Ross.

      1. Solenoid

        I may have been thinking of semifinals, though, idk.

      2. Arianod

        Yeah, well, for these things I tend not to count the actual criminal cases because those are, like, in a different league altogether. So congratulations, Mary: you’ve come as low as one can come without assaulting/kidnapping/raping anyone.

    2. Buhzim

      Shortly after Toedad x Amazi-Girl, any conflict is going to look underwhelming

  113. Paul

    Something no one has mentioned yet: Ruth/Billie is not the only damaging secret that Mary knows. If this escalates to administrative consequences for Mary (as opposed to just a beatdown from Ruth), she could “out” Becky’s illegal presence in the dorms as well.

    1. Chronos

      I’m willing to bet if Mary managed to out Becky, Joyce would try to kill her- maybe literally.

    2. Solenoid

      If she does that, a lot of unfortunate ‘accidents’ are going to start happening to her. Books going missing, tripping over something on the floor outside her door, etc. She’ll be hated by damn near everyone in her wing.

      1. Cerberus

        If she isn’t already. There’s a lot of bi girls and not-the-type-of-Christian-Mary-is girls on her floor that she’s probably regularly antagonizing given her behavior in her appearances. But yeah, it would definitely escalate that hatred now that there’s a number of people going out of their way to actively protect her.

    3. Luzahn

      Oh god, you’re right. She’s the most dangerous villain of them all.

      Welp, now I really hope she somehow reforms. I dunno, follow Joyce’s lead or something. Stop feeling immense anger towards all things.

    4. Dr. T

      I don’t think Mary actually knows Becky isn’t supposed to be there. She openly wished Becky (along with Roz) would get pregnant so that she could get some peace and quiet, implying that she thought that she did not know of a better way to get rid of Becky.

  114. Griffin

    I love my gravatar.

  115. brasca1

    Privilege, sexuality, and gender be damned. The whole conflict is between some really unlikable people. Ruth is a bully, Mary is a self righteous scold, and Carla is a pest. No matter happens someone I don’t like is going to lose.

    1. Lord Stoneheart

      They’re not all equally unlikable though. Carla is a huge jerk, but what happens to her in tomorrow’s strip is still wrong.

    2. Cerberus

      Well, yes, when you strip out the gender identity of the person being hit with unbelievable amounts of transphobia and strip out the privilege of the person gloating in their social power, I imagine it does in fact become more mundane and meh.

      Heck, why stop there, let’s just strip out the rest of their personalities and characterizations as well and muse upon the infinite nothing of shapes on a virtual wall. What could they possibly mean? Who knows?

      1. Captain Button

        Has someone done a webcomic about characters who are all frictionless spheres of uniform density?

        1. Cephalo the Pod

          xkcd might come close.

        2. Rutee

          Not even slightly. The recurring characters have personalities. They don’t have names, but they’re still characters, even if you identify them by their headwear.

          …They’re still a thing, right? I haven’t read xkcd in ages. Monroe has had some ‘frictionless spheres of uniform density’ style comics, so it’s not impossible he moved to it, I guess.

      2. 3-I

        Boy, it’s almost as if context matters! (Thank you so much for this post, Cerberus.)

    3. Spencer

      Carla’s been a pest but Mary dropped a bomb that is completely over the line. It doesn’t matter that Carla is annoying her, Mary went for the absolute worst thing she could possibly say, directly using Carla’s status as a trans woman to dehumanize her.

      Privilege, sexuality and gender are always relevant, whether we want to admit it or not.

  116. Jimmy

    Guess today’s comic comment board was put in timeout.

  117. Jimmy

    But I am confused, why is Ruth so angry at Mary when Carla’s the one making the noise?

    1. Cerberus

      Really dude?

      Look at Panel 2 of the next comic. Now remember that Carla is trans.

      That’s why anyone who isn’t a goddamn asshole would be pissed at Mary.

    2. Lord Stoneheart

      Because Ruth heard what Mary said in panel 2?

    3. Spencer

      Jimmy, you may be unaware of facts about transphobia, so please allow me to help you.

      Carla is a trans woman, a group that faces unimaginable amounts of hatred and prejudice for who they are from ignorant shitheads like Mary. Here, Mary is using Carla’s status as a trans woman, her fundamental being, as a way to dehumanize and attack her, tell her that she is unwanted in her own home. While Carla and Mary did just have a big scuffle where they were both being annoying jerks to each other, Mary jumped to the most terrible thing she could possibly say to Carla, and regardless of the circumstances, it really isn’t okay to say it.

      1. Willoughby Chase

        Indeed.

    4. Mehri

      Hijacking this comment to ask – has it been revealed and/or hinted at in DoA that Carla is trans? I’m assuming it has in the other comic universes, but I haven’t read them. I first thought Mary’s comment was something along the lines of “You’re acting like an irritating childless boy, you should be there.” and while that’s still a dumb comment, I didn’t understand Ruth’s level of response.

      It was only after coming back and looking at the comments that I realized just how horrible Mary’s comment was. But I’m curious if I missed something previously or if this will be a reveal for some of us who haven’t read the non DoA comics. It’s possible that like me, Jimmy hadn’t realized that/so didn’t understand the real vice behind Mary’s words. I don’t follow Willis on tumblr/twitter closely and I only very occasionally browse through the comment section. Of course I may just be an idiot who somehow missed it in an earlier strip so I was just curious.

      1. Athedia

        Honestly forgot that she was trans since it has been ages since I visiting the Walkyverse. I don’t think it has been mentioned in the Dumbingverse yet. Correct me if I am wrong.

      2. Captain Button

        That Carla is trans has never been explicitly stated in the comic. But there have been several clues. Also, Willis has explicitly said on Tumblr that DoA Carla is trans and asexual.

        1. Captain Button

          Some of the clues about Carla:
          Carla has a single room for some reason not know to Joyce.
          There is a reason Carla is so tall.
          Carla says a picture of a penis on her door only would be a hate crime.

          (I am going to save this as a stock answer since it keeps coming up. The problem is it will probably get auto-moderated because of multiple links.)

      3. Rutee

        Aside from Willis saying it on his tumblr or in the comments (Not that it was recent, or like I expect people to catch it, but it did happen), it’s been hinted at pretty strongly. Her conversation with Sal had an undercurrent of it (“You don’t roller derby?” “There’s a reason for that.” “Ah know, they wouldn’t care.” or some such.), there’s also her genuine and sincere rage at having a dong drawn on her door, which she confuses for a hate crime initially (Until realizing everyone has one, which gives it a rather steep promotion into ‘hilarious’). Willis hasn’t used giant bells and whistles til now, but we’ve gotten some reasonable nudges.

      4. Random832

        “I’m assuming it has in the other comic universes”

        Ultra-car’s situation is completely different in the other comic universe. Though I suppose you could see it as a metaphor for being trans.

        1. Rutee

          She outright identifies as trans, though trans-chassis, not transgender, IIRC. Her stance as far as gender was ‘Man I never said I was a guy, you meatsacks imputed it on me.’ But it’s pretty clearly supposed to /be/ analogous, trans- identification aside.

  118. Random832

    So, uh… not sure what’s the point of closing the comments if he’s going to let everyone talk about it here anyway, but…

    A couple of questions I’ve been going back and forth about since seeing the comic last night. I’m honestly not sure on either of them, and I recognize that there are arguments for both answers to each one: 1. Does she know? 2. If she doesn’t know, does she deserve what’s about to happen anyway?

    I’d actually thought that her expression and her being ready with “Huh. Silence.” meant she definitely did know, until I realized: Why now?

    1. Cerberus

      She knows. As you note, her little smug smile rather emphatically reveals the deliberate nature of the transphobia.

      For the second question, why now, well, it’s because now she gains an opportunity to win.

      Mary has historically been shown to hold on to incriminating information, waiting to use it until its usage most benefits herself or most injures her target emotionally. She’s using it here rather than later, because it adds a nice little transphobic cherry to her earlier assault and allows her to “win” the exchange.

      Given her face at the end of next comic, she’s probably planning to do the same to Ruth.

      1. Rutee

        Most likely unsuccessfully, given that Ruth already Knows that She Knows. Ruth doesn’t strike me as someone who’d forget the things that can end her. She’s probably been, on some level, looking forward to something like this exact altercation. That way when she loses her position, her grandfather is a complete bastard about it, and she ‘has to’ kill herself (Note: I am speculating on her state of mind, having Been There), she can say ‘but it’s okay because I had a good reason’ to herself. And at least is genuinely the right thing to do; it’s much better than enforcing some sort of /petty/ rule on Mary.

    2. Captain Button

      Putting in a couple of extra steps will filter out a lot of the casual trolls, especially the drive-bys.

    3. Willoughby Chase

      “I’m escorting you to the Boy’s Wing where you belong” wasn’t clue enough?

      You know, it’s in black and white, in the cartoon.

      1. Random832

        The reason I wasn’t sure is because that is something I can easily imagine her saying to any girl whose behavior she judges to be insufficiently feminine. (Skating, deliberately making noise in the hallways, “I’m not touching you” provocation games; take your pick) Which is still, you know, sexist.

        I’d actually forgotten, myself, and did read it that way until I got to the next panel.

        1. Lucina

          If she didn’t know, and that was the only reason she said it, her reaction to the RA getting involved would be shock, not a determined glare. Saying “I’m taking you to the boy’s wing” to a particularly “masculine”-acting cis woman would be rude, but not something an RA (especially one as apathetic as Ruth) would get involved in. If that was all she meant, she would certainly be confused and/or terrified by the RA getting up in her face about it.

          But instead, she has a glint of determination in her eyes. She knows what she said; she’s getting ready to defend it.

        2. Random832

          I agree, I was just pointing out that it _does_ require reading those subtle cues, rather than being immediately apparent from the “in black and white” words that prompted Willoughby Chase to talk down to me.

        3. Willoughby Chase

          Oh, boo-hoo. Such an injured party you are.

          It’s in black and white. It’s not subtle. It’s a freaking barge-pole sticking out of the web-page.

        4. Helper

          Do me a favor and tone down the aggression. What’s obvious to you isn’t neccessarily as obvious to everyone else. No one is complaining or acting injured, but you are taking it to the next level without cause. Comments like this are the reason the section on the next page is closed, and Willis would be ashamed. Chill out.

        5. Willoughby Chase

          That, sir, is bollocks.

        6. Spencer

          I mean, I have seen that theory elsewhere, but mostly from people who were unaware that Carla was trans.

          I don’t personally subscribe to it, but if someone is missing that significant context then it kind of makes sense, even if it’s almost certainly wrong.

        7. Willoughby Chase

          > from people who were unaware that Carla was trans.

          Or from those who’ve an axe to grind.

        8. Random832

          Where the hell did that come from?

        9. Ben

          I was actually unaware (or knew at some point and had completely forgotten about it) and read it like that the first time I read the page, got to the end and wondered why everyone in the panel was so shocked/angry. Obviously got the intent on a quick reread. Privilege ignorance has a way of creeping up on you and smacking you round the backside of the head for being an idiot sometimes.

  119. JQuire

    Ugh, Carla’s face in the last two panels are killin’ me.
    It’s going to be satisfying to see Mary come down with a bad case of the Ruths.

  120. Willoughby Chase

    I like Carla’s tee-shirt. That is all.

  121. Renee J

    I Thought Mary would find out and immediately drum up public support to get Carla kicked out of the dorm. I had forgotten that she likes to keep information for her own use. Which is worse, in my opinion. She can’t use the excuse that she’s morally opposed to the situation if she can silently live with it until it suits her. (Not that being morally opposed to transpeople is right or good.)

  122. Derek

    Um, why did my comment get deleted? There’s lots of people here talking about tomorrow’s strip and speculating about Mary and Carla. What did I do? 🙁

  123. Lucina

    On top of all the other complete horseshit I’ve seen come out of today’s strip, I see a distressing amount of people trying to act like Carla singled out Mary for abuse, and saying that since there was no reason, Carla was being antagonistic, and thus, “deserved” it.

    Ignoring that Mary has already earned a reputation for being no fun and hateful (even Joyce knows her for this!), the initial confrontation happened because Carla was skating in the halls. Unless Mary is the only one living in this hall, Carla’s initial “aggression” was not directed at her; she was just the only person to stick her head out to complain. Because, as established, she’s Mary, and she’s no fun.

    Now, from there, Carla gets antagonistic, because she’s a bit of a butt, but she’s still just skating the halls; she just so happens to be focused on thwarting Mary’s attempts to stop her. She did not single out Mary as a target of random mischief; she was up to all-purpose mischief, and Mary opened the door for her to zero in on her mischief-ways.

    Then Mary ruined her skates, which, as established, are pretty important to Carla. So of course Carla comes back to antagonize her; she feels wronged, and is now striking back against this transgression! Again, Mary is not being randomly targeted; she earned this retaliation when she glued Carla’s skates.

    And, of course, the final point, as established by just about everyone else, is that Carla could have woken her up at 3 AM to shit in her bed with absolutely no provocation, and Mary would still be a piece of shit for misgendering her. So really, whether or not this confrontation was started by Carla is irrelevant to the question of “is Mary a piece of shit?” But for those of you who seem to care so much, a cursory reading will show you that Carla started out just skating around, as she does, and Mary stuck her neck out because of her aggressive insistence on following the rules. Mary started this confrontation, not Carla.

    1. Random832

      “Carla’s initial “aggression” was not directed at her; she was just the only person to stick her head out to complain.” / “Mary started this confrontation, not Carla.” – Yeah, but that was also the moment that Carla’s actions actually became aggressive, changing from “skating” to “skating knowing someone is bothered by it”. Carla was the first person in this incident who did something wrong.

      Also, I haven’t actually seen any “Carla deserved it” comments referring to the transphobic comment (as opposed to, say, the glue in the skates) Pointing out “Mary would still be a piece of shit for misgendering her” is anachronistic in reference to comments from before she did that.

      1. Lucina

        Carla’s “aggression” was skating by someone who was bothered by it, and that person broke her skates in response. If I’m bothered by someone playing guitar in the halls, I don’t break their guitar. Again, Mary is the reason this turned into a confrontation. Carla was being a bit of a jerk, but Mary upped the ante.

        And I have seen “Carla deserved it” comments. Not in so many words, but they’re out there. Especially on Tumblr.

    2. 3-I

      Seriously. Mary’s one character note is responding to shit that has nothing to do with her and deciding to make it all about her smug sense of superiority over literally everyone else. I don’t see how anyone can see EVERYTHING Mary’s done so far and still say Carla is somehow the aggressor here.

      1. Random832

        Skates on tile are loud.

        1. David M Willis

          good thing it’s carpet

        2. 3-I

          Oh, hey, shit, you’re right, I guess I’m now totally okay with the assault, property damage and BLATANT TRANSPHOBIA. ‘cus, you know, nobody has ever had to deal with anything being loud in a dormitory.

          You buy earplugs. You call campus security. You do NOT throw out cissexist jabs at someone’s gender identity. It isn’t a place you get to go to.

          For all I know, your comment was a joke, and if that’s the case, fine. But for some of us, this shit is never funny.

        3. Random832

          I wasn’t talking about that or claiming Mary’s actions were justified and you damn well know it. I was specifically responding to a comment that claimed that Carla’s initial actions (before Mary had done any of that) were not aggressive and were none of Mary’s business… that Mary did not respond appropriately doesn’t actually change that.

        4. Lucina

          But that Mary’s responses were inappropriate was an intrinsic part of my point. She escalated the conflict. She turned this into a situation. So anyone trying to singlehandedly push the blame for this situation to Carla is completely wrong, because all Carla did was skate when it annoyed someone. (Which, given it was carpet, can’t have been much louder than your average shuffle.)

        5. 3-I

          Okay. Thank you for clarifying. Allow ME to clarify: THIS SHIT IS NOT FUNNY. It affects people. In the real world. I’m sorry, do you REALLY think we need someone playing devil’s advocate here?

        6. Spencer

          I’m thinking Random was referring to their previous stuff, not this. I don’t think anyone here thinks that what Mary is doing here is okay, or that Carla previously being kind of annoying means she deserved it.

  124. 1958Fury

    I didn’t remember Carla was trans. Which is weird, because I’m trans, so I usually remember transgender fictional characters. Anyway, I totally misunderstood the strip the first time I read it.

    I thought Mary was saying, “You’re stomping around like the rambunctious boys do, so I’m going to take you to the boys.” I couldn’t understand why Ruth was so angry at that, or why Carla was suddenly so devastated. Then I remembered, and the weight of the strip hit me like a truck.

    Rereading the strip, it is amazing how much comes across in five panels. Great job, Willis. I can’t wait to see how this turns out.

    1. Random832

      I don’t think it was ever mentioned in the strip itself. Willis clarified it in the comments when everyone was confused about what she meant by a dick on her whiteboard being a hate crime.

      1. Sterling

        It was mentioned once or twice, I think. Of course, it’s really only natural that Carla’s trans, given that Ultra Car was trans.

      2. 1958Fury

        Well, I did know (once I remembered, I know I’d learned it previously), but I have no idea where I first found out. Probably in one of the comment sections like you say.

      3. RP

        It was also hinted at when Sal suggested Carla join the role derby because she was tall enough or her height being an advantage.
        Carla: There’s a reason for that.
        Sal: Ah know. They wouldn’t care.

    2. Captain Button

      See my comments on the evidence upthread.

      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/hopping/#comment-954358

      1. 1958Fury

        Thank you!

  125. RP

    As someone not as familiar with Mary’s character (I haven’t kept up with the It’s Walky (I tend to leave it and read chunks at a time) and I don’t remember her from Shortpacked.), I did NOT see that coming. I honestly thought she was going to someone with authority, even if it wasn’t going to be Ruth.

    Was she like this in the other comics? Holy crap!

    1. Lucina

      Mary was created by younger David Willis in Roomies to be the godly girl that saves Danny from hedonism.

      She then almost immediately became the no-fun, complete ass character she is today, simply by what such rigid adherence to sometimes-arbitrary rules entails.

    2. Cephalo the Pod

      As a Roomies character who rarely showed up in It’s Walky, Mary wasn’t written as effectively as she is these days.

      But the core character is much the same; a fundamentalist Christian with a holier-than-thou attitude who made it her mission to ruin the “heathens beneath her”.

      She was introduced late into Roomies, so her villainy extended pretty much to only getting rid of Billie from Danny’s life. Specifically, by calling out her beer-drinking (Roomies was weird).

      The one major aspect of her character not yet seen in Dumbing of Age is her hypocrisy. You see, back in Roomies, she betrayed her fundamentalism by having sex before marriage. We’ve yet to see her really do anything “unChristian” here.

      1. thejeff

        I think we’re getting hints of it though.
        She’s not reacting to all the “unChristian” stuff as early Joyce would have. Or even an early Joyce without the basic goodness. There’s no shock and horror.
        It’s all “Let me save this tidbit, so I can use it later.” Or hinting at it to hurt and worry her enemies.
        It’s not even clear to me how much it’s about the LGTBQ issues or even sex issues in general, as it is about weapons to use against people.

        I’d actually like to see her humanized a little more. Not make her nicer, but give us a little more insight into why she’s so horrible.
        There are some hints that there’s something more going on than we’ve seen – the bit about her being half-dressed in the middle of the afternoon that’s been brought up in the strip a couple times since it happened, particularly.

        1. Captain Button

          Another unconfirmed fan speculation about Mary is that the tried to commit suicide. The evidence for this is that she is always wearing wristbands or long sleeves, which might be to hide the scars. Or that she did “cutting” (self-injury). She wears them even when she is wearing nothing else except panties.

        2. tim guegue

          Which, if true, makes for an interesting parallel to Sal’s omnipresent gloves.

      2. RP

        OK, I do remember her some from Roomies.

  126. Brainstorm

    If my time machine still worked, I’d go back and step on this ‘Mary’ thing. Fortunately, it looks like the red one is about to clobber her.

    Go Ruth.

  127. TheNinthShader

    Willis closed the comments for the next strip, lets all talk about it here 😮

    1. Warclam

      I’m with Carla’s shirt on this one.

    2. Wublub

      I went from “Oh, come on, they’re both being cartoonishly assholish. I don’t know why everybody is jumping on Mary specifically in this particular case” to “I hope Mary falls off a cliff” in about two seconds.

  128. Griffin

    I can’t wait to see Ruth kick Mary’s transphobic ass.

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