321

Purple and skates
Posted on September 26, 2014 by David M Willis

321 thoughts on “Purple and skates”

  1. Jen Aside

    Wish I could rock Carla’s ensemble there, tbh

    1. Camachri

      Don’t we all…

      1. LeslieBean4Shizzle

        +1

    2. Romanticide

      sigh me too 🙁

      1. Jen Aside

        wait

        cosplay’s still a thing, isn’t it??

        OH SNAP NOW I HAVE IDEAS

        1. David Herbert

          Nah, go as Amazi-girl.

        2. AndromedaRage

          Done that! 😀

        3. Jen Aside

          THERE ARE ALREADY AMAZI-GIRLS I LIKE TO DO NEW THINGS

        4. artemi

          Go as Malaya! No one will EVER copy you!

        5. Jen Aside

          Your Grav now makes me wonder if anyone has ever gone as Aslan at a bus stop

  2. Maveric1984

    Oh my god alt text. I haven’t watched a Chip and Dale cartoon in forever, and all of a sudden I’m flashing back…

    1. Ancestral Hamster

      That’s where I learned that rhyme too. Was it exclusive to that cartoon or was it current in the U.S. when that cartoon was originally released?

      1. Jen Aside

        It’s apparently a generic kid’s thing, like kancho [which people mistakenly think kids got from Naruto–more like the other way around!]

        1. Ancestral Hamster

          Okay, thanks. It’s that a number of “kid’s things” seem to have missed my part of SoCal when I was growing up.

        2. Maveric1984

          Well, considering that cartoon was released in the 30s, I think it’s more of a generational thing than a regional thing.

        3. isitsevenyet

          This. I never understood what on earth Chip and Dale were talking about when I saw those cartoons, and yes that’s where I first heard the rhyme too.

      2. Deanatay

        Probably not, I’ve seen it in old Looney Tunes cartoons.

    2. Giant Speck

      Ch-ch-ch-Chip and Dale!

      1. MrSirk

        Some times, some grimes.
        Go slippin through the cracks
        but these two, gumshoe
        are pickin up the slack!

        1. showler

          Chip and Dale’s Rescrub Rangers

        2. djaevlenselv

          I don’t want to be insufferably nitpicky, but it’s “sometimes some Crimes” and “these two gumshoeS”.
          See, the words fir with the theme of the song.

  3. MrSirk

    Heh, Malaya needs a qualifier.

  4. durrrr

    so Carla is trans? did I miss something?

    1. vonnegut

      Yep. Yep. lol

    2. DavidMcG

      She’s a car.

    3. Ghola

      Manual or auto though.. That’s the question.

      1. Amazistool

        Manual! After all “The name’s SCHTICKSHIFT!“

    4. Jen Aside

      a TransAm LOLOLOLOL

      *gets lynched*

    5. Ceetee

      Yeah, it was implied with her commenting that a dick drawn on her door would be a hate crime.

      1. Fnord

        Ohhhhh. And here I just figured that was a throwaway line about it being kind of misogynistic. That makes much more sense.

        1. Brady Kj

          There was a discussion on that page. I asked if the hate crime comment somehow had something to do with her being asexual and uninterested in penes, which I thought was likely because Ultra Car is asexual. As it turns out, Willis had previously announced on some blog or twitter page that Carla is transgendered, which Willis decided because he considered it similar to a car taking a humanoid robot form. That seemed counterintuitive to me, but other people seemed to have jumped to that conclusion without reading Willis’s announcement.

        2. QD

          That seems…kind of weirdly transphobic? Like it seems really close to the “woman trapped in a man’s body” rhetoric that is considered problematic and outdated.

        3. BobaFett2

          In Shortpacked!, Carla was assumed to be male by her creators – it’s in her discussion with her mother about her relationship with Malaya (because she has no genitals).

      2. isitsevenyet

        I just totally missed that line, somehow. I had no idea about Carla either.

    6. Serpent

      My guess is her legs are prosthetic beginning somewhere below her knee. It’s why she always has on leg warmers of some kind, and why she likes skating. She can still use her knees, which would probably be enough mobility to skate (although possibly not enough to deftly maneuver around blindly leaping romantic). Being able to move so freely would be amazing to someone who would experience natural immobility, too.

      1. Eve

        Yeah I figured it was prosthetics as well, go with her whole alternate self being a robot thing

        1. The kid

          Perhaps she is trans and has prosthetic legs?

        2. Gigafreak

          I so want to make a “third leg” joke but I wonder if it might be completely tasteless

        3. Chris

          The old “wooden leg with a kickstand” joke wouldn’t be any more tasteless than usual. Plus it’s sort of transformer-ish.

        4. Gigafreak

          “She was already missing two legs, so excising her third was no big deal.”

          There.

      2. LordDragonfang

        Maybe it’s just inline skates, but from my experience, you use your ankles a lot when skating. I’d be surprised if anyone with prosthetics would have an easy time on skates.

      3. TemplarKnight

        Prosthetics generally make you shorter, not taller(much to the chagrin of my friend who was already short before she lost her legs at the shin). And she is transgender. It makes sense coupled with the “hate crime” joke in the whiteboard ding dong bandit.

        1. Cybersnark

          “Prosthetics generally make you shorter, not taller”

          Just ask Ed Elric (from a safe distance).

    7. 4th Dimension

      Yup she is a transmision, used to be manual stick transmission though.

      * I’m horrible at this *

    8. Marianne

      ♫ Transformers, females in disguise! ♫

      1. Gigafreak

        I feel cheated. Mulan never turned into a helicopter!

        1. begbert2

          Now I’m visualizing, in that scene where they’re supposed to climb that pole with the weights, that after the first dudes try, Mulan suddenly transforms into a full-sized apache helicopter, flies up, hovers above the pole, and then turns back into her fully-organic human-sized self and plops down to sit upon it. And then just repeated shots of everybody staring silently at her looping forever.

        2. Brady Kj

          What does Mulan have to do with anything?

        3. Jen Aside

          You mean the Disney Princess female-in-disguise?

        4. Brady Kj

          Yes. A transgendered person is not particularly similar to somebody who wears a disguise of another gender to fight in a war. One of these two is in disguise, and the other one is trying to be herself.

    9. SinbadEV

      She’s transhumanist.

  5. Mr. Random

    More about Carla now?

    1. Leorale

      I hope so!

      1. meghantheworldeater

        Do you really hope so? Every time we learn more about a character it seems to always be so depressing D:

        1. Ghola

          That’s the joy of Willis Brand Comic Narration.

        2. Synthetic Phylum

          Hence his Twitter ID being @damnyouwillis!

        3. Volkai

          Dear God Yes.

        4. Deanatay

          Like Willis, we feed on others’ misery.

        5. isitsevenyet

          I think it can be interesting. It’s been my experience that pretty much everyone in the real world has some sort of awful past anyway.

  6. Doctor_Who

    Donald Duck: “…Me!”
    (gets his with apple)

    Sorry, that was one of my favorite cartoons when I was a kid, I can’t see that rhyme without thinking about it.

    1. showler

      I gotta admit, I thought it was “apple core, food no more, who’s your friend”

      1. isitsevenyet

        I googled it once, apparently there are a few different versions of it. I think one said “not no more” or something.

    2. The_Master

      We meet again.

      1. Gadgeteer Smashwidget

        oh shit.
        *ducks behind conveniently-placed strategic cover*

  7. Plasma Mongoose

    Malaya isn’t Miss Popularity? Gazooks!

    1. Maveric1984

      Hello Dum Dums!

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        *hehe*

      2. Opus the Poet

        Voiced by Harvey Korman.

  8. Emperor Kiva

    Um……..ok….I dunno what to say

  9. Flimsyfishy

    Oh Malaya, you’re so Maligned.

    1. Doctor_Who

      We could call her Malign-‘Ya.

      1. Jen Aside

        Malaya…dy?

    2. Plasma Mongoose

      Maladjusted?

      1. Gadgeteer Smashwidget

        Malayadjusted?

  10. SUGauthor

    Why wouldn’t they care?

    1. Salmo

      Why would they?

      1. Rosicrucian

        Yeah. Derby girls are a pretty nonjudgemental lot.

      2. SUGauthor

        Yes, that one.

        1. Plasma Mongoose

          I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a number of M2Fs in sports like Roller-Derby.

        2. Clank clank

          In the uk they actually have a trans* policy saying you’re only allowed to skate in either the guy or gal league but which league is up to you and they won’t ask but if you get shit for it they will back you until the end of time. ^_^ And they also say that they’re trying to work out more inclusive policies for gender fluid peeps.
          It is actually the best.

        3. Gadgeteer Smashwidget

          That’s actually really freakin’ cool of them.

        4. Thomas64

          Forgive my ignorance, but what does the asterisk in trans* signify?

        5. Phlebas

          Anything.

        6. airyu

          It’s to be more inclusive, because it implies not just transwoman or transman, but transandrogynous and other non-binary genders as inclusive in the trans community. But there has bee a lot of pushback against the asterisk by the trans community, because why should people assume trans without the asterick mean non-binary in the first place, and the * implies a lot of inclusivity that might not be there (the trans community has a lot of classist and other non-inclusive problems). typing in “trans asterisk” and “trans asterisk problematic” into google; the first few sources are pretty good in people’s opinions on the debate, especially sources that talk about why people have used it for a while and then stopped, or not used it at all, or didn’t use it and then started.

        7. gwalla

          It’s a wildcard character.

        8. JWLM

          It’s a wild card — fill it in as appropriate. For what it’s worth, I prefer ‘genderqueer’ instead of ‘trans*’, because it emphasizes the innateness of the gender — a transwoman didn’t ‘start male and become female,’ but rather was female from birth, although she was incorrectly assigned a male gender. Transition is a process through which a genderqueer person comes to express their true gender.

        9. Plasma Mongoose

          From what I have noticed, genderqueers refuse to live by strictly male or female standards instead embracing a kind of gender-otherness, a good fictional example would be BMO from Adventure Time.

        10. LabRat

          The same is true in the US. The official WFTDA policy (the big dog league in derby) is that transwomen can absolutely skate, they just have to have begun living as a woman. They don’t care if you’re on hormones or what’s under your hotpants. “It would be an unfair advantage” is not really a thing in derby- there’s a ton of size differentials, coed games are common, and honestly being male isn’t necessarily an athletic advantage in the game anyway. Men are bigger and can theoretically hit harder, but men have wide shoulders and narrow hips and their center of gravity in their hips, and that is a DISadvantage in derby.

          Derby in general is very queer-friendly. Local leagues almost always skate in pride parades whether the skaters themselves are straight or not, and the big game everyone looks forward to at Rollercon is the Vagine Regime vs. the Caulk Suckers. Since Vagine Regime has a hell of a lot of the star players in the sport, they so far have always won.

        11. Chengrel

          This is the second webcomic I follow that features a transgirl who does roller derby. I think there is a trend.

    2. Maveric1984

      It hasn’t been spelled out in the comics (though there have been hints), but Carla is trans.

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        She’s a Pontiac in this reality?

        1. Opus the Poet

          Worse, she’s a Ford.

        2. Jen Aside

          …but I like Mustangs =<

        3. Kelly

          Don’t start with that alternate timeline stuff! Impala all the way!

        4. Maveric1984

          Could be worse. She could be a DaeWoo

        5. Plasma Mongoose

          You don’t see too many Daewoos on the road anymore.

        6. Opus the Poet

          With good reason, they made Hyundais look like Jaguars. Only without Lucas electrics.

        7. Dean

          Cos they went bankrupt in 1999. Daewoo Motors is owned by General Motors now.

        8. WaytoomanyUIDs

          Aah, so that’s one of the reasons why they are sold as Chevrolets in Britain, although that doesn’t explain why they don’t use the Opel or Vauxhall brand, which are better known and trusted more here, particularly in the small car categories.

      2. SUGauthor

        Oh right. I guess comes down to whether there’s more Malyayas or more Marcies on the team. Poor Carla.

        1. Salmo

          Hey, say what you want about Malaya (no, really, do) but in the other universe she likes Ultra Car as a person and doesn’t care about her original body shape. I like to think this Malaya would be similarly inclined.

        2. Plasma Mongoose

          I cannot say for certain but Willis isn’t likely to do the same pairing in more than one universe.

        3. Salmo

          Not in terms of a pairing, though, just in terms of general worldview.

        4. Leorale

          Seconded. I think Malaya is way too self-absorbed to notice that Carla’s trans, but that if she was told, she wouldn’t be an extra-super-jerk about it. (Just her regular amount of jerk.)

        5. Annie

          I could see Malaya asking rude, but very blunt questions of Carla if told outright she’s trans. And all the while not really knowing, nor really caring, that they’re rude questions.

        6. Jen Aside

          JasonxSal happened in both tho?

        7. 4th Dimension

          And it’s a bloody disaster waiting to happen as in IW!

        8. gwalla

          IIRC all he’s said is that people aren’t going to end up with the same partners.

        9. JWLM

          He’s teasing us with Robin/Leslie (although it’s really Leslie/Robin in DoA,) and with Ruth/Billie (canon in IW before Billie gets involved with Danny.)

        10. Brady Kj

          I thought the robot shape made her horny.

        11. Dorje Sylas

          Not shape. She got excited by both the purely mechanical and the human-replica arms. Don’t discount the attraction to the mind of UC as a big factor. She wouldn’t have gotten the same fulfillment with another sentient car-in-human-form. Very similar personalities, with pranking and snark and such. She’d likely get alone famously with May over at QC, yet another snarky synthetic intelligence. But not Pintesize (perv aka The Faz), or Momo (geek, everyone she pranks in).

      3. buckybone

        More than hints, Willis said it in the comments of at least one strip (might’ve been when she found a dick drawn on her door).

        1. Kiapdx

          Yeah but “word of god” is separate from in-story. While we can all be happy knowing all the representation that’s in the story from what he’s posted outside of the comic, those two hints (for anyone who doesn’t read the comments/tumblr/etc) aren’t enough in comic. The “hate crime” comment and the legs/no one cares bit could reference anything to those who don’t already know about Carla.

          (Carla being trans is hella cool, but if I didn’t already know I might think it was references to rape & prosthetic legs or something instead, for example)

        2. lipstick_suckerpunch

          I didn’t understand this strip at all. I read it completely wrong. I thought when Carla said “there’s a reason for that.” she was referring to the reason why she isn’t in Derby. Then when Sal said ” ya, they wouldn’t care.” I thought that was the reason. That the girls wouldn’t care if she played or not…. It was bugging me because I kept rereading it trying to understand. Then I read the comments and they saved me lol.

      4. Dorje Sylas

        But what if she also has prosthetic legs as well…. O_o?

    3. maxyai

      To quote a classic movie “Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina.”

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        Boys have poles, girls have holes.

        1. Juliecat

          Not always

        2. JA

          if you get the right chromosomes, you can have both!

        3. Deanatay

          Only if you have more than your fair share of chromosomes….

        4. fit-to-freak

          why would you say this though :/

        5. Kiapdx

          Everyone has holes. Some people have in front of their holes. This is unrelated to their identity and pronouns.

        6. Kiapdx

          *poles in front of their holes

      2. Just Karen

        The thing that makes us boys or girls is the organ between the ears, not the organ between the legs. Most of the time the organs between the legs match. Sometimes they don’t.

      3. Viktoria

        Nope. Talk to any biologist. Actual, scientific determination of sex is far more complicated than that, and many of the factors can get fairly blurry fairly quickly. It’s far easier to just go with what a person says they want to be called, and ask them about chromosomes, hormones, or genitals specifically if there’s a legitimate medical reason you need to know.

        (To be clear, unless you are the person’s doctor, YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOW)

        1. Jen Aside

          This is the awesomest: Parents Keep Child’s Gender Secret for 5 Years

        2. SomeGuy

          Those comments sure aren’t, though.

        3. Jen Aside

          Internet comments NEVER are!

          wait

        4. Gadgeteer Smashwidget

          I… why would they stop their kid from playing with firetrucks? Those don’t have an inherent gender association to the kid, only to the parents.

        5. Plasma Mongoose

          It might have been better if they only kept their gender a secret for about 3 years or so and instead of denying them any gender-biased toys, provide ‘blue’ toys, ‘pink’ toys and plenty of purple(?) toys.

        6. begbert2

          I think I’m psychologically disposed to be a horrible person, because my innate drive to categorize things in consistently definable ways shrieks in horror when a person who by all perceptible measures is clearly one things claims to be the other, and that’s somehow not wrong.

          I address this flaw by never going out in public.

        7. xKiv

          You might want to think about it as three separate classes of categories. Simplified (and “borrowed” from some old usenet group):
          Gender – what’s between your ears.
          Sex – what’s between your legs.
          Sexuality – who’s between your legs.

          And each of those is a complex thing in itself.

        8. Mrak

          Yeah, the problem there is your claim to “all perceptible measures”.

        9. Applejam

          Here, think of it this way. Men and women have physiologically distinct brains, right? There’s different amounts of receptors for androgens and estrogens, there’s a few size differences in certain parts (The BSTc region is a famous example, but the A E Brain blog has plenty more), each responds to certain pheromones different ways, etc.

          In the case of trans people, as that blog above shows, it really does come down to having a brain that’s physiologically one way and a body that doesn’t match it. And try as we might, we’ve not yet figured out how to physically change the brain to make the two align, but we HAVE figured out how to change the body to make the two pretty darn close in alignment, and that process has an overwhelming majority (~98%) showing significant improvements in quality of life across the board, including health, stress, and emotional stability.

      4. buckybone

        Except the ones who don’t…funny how people like that became the majority of my close friends.

      5. fit-to-freak

        whyyyyy though

  11. oatmonster

    Yay, more Carla!

  12. Xailenrath

    The pause that refreshes!

  13. Opus the Poet

    So Sal knows Carla is trans* ?

    1. Rosicrucian

      Knows. Doesn’t care. That’s how it should be.

      1. Opus the Poet

        The only reason I care is so I don’t use the wrong pronoun until gender becomes obvious. I hate mis-gendering someone, even by mistake. And I know a lot of trans* people so keeping gender straight is a problem for me. And don’t ask why I know so many trans* people that keeping who’s what straight (and otherwise) would be a problem (and it doesn’t help that there are two with the same names only reversed, they are basically swapping their pre-transition names even though they barely know each other).

        1. Rosicrucian

          Well here’s the thing. Everyone calls Carla by female pronouns, and she seems cool enough with it. So nothing changes.

        2. Opus the Poet

          Yeah, but almost all the trans* people I know started transitioning after I met them. And before someone says anything I had nothing to do with that. I think, probably.

        3. Juliecat

          Carla uses female pronouns. Therefore there should never be a reason NOT to use female pronouns unless Carla explicitly requests it.

        4. Anonymous

          By default, I’d assume that almost half the trans people you know started transitioning before you met them, but had no reason to tell you.

        5. 00a86b-FF00FF-FFFFFF

          A fair point, but there’d probably a significant difference depending on how old Opus is. If they’re 18, then likely transitioning would have been far more difficult for people they know until pretty recently, not so much if they’re 30.

        6. buckybone

          I know exactly where you’re coming from, I’m still early enough along that you’d have to know what to look for to realize that I’m not actually a guy…but Carla is pretty clearly feminine (and VERY open about it), which makes female pronouns a very safe assumption.

      2. The_Master

        Thank you, preachy mc preachy pants.

    2. Plasma Mongoose

      Carla seems to be the type that wouldn’t hide this fact about herself.

      1. Annie

        I kind of wonder if she sees college as her chance to rewrite herself. Be who she is. Maybe she originally is from out-of-state and intentionally picked a school where there wouldn’t be anyone from her hometown and therefore no one that knew her pre-transition.

        I can see where she wouldn’t necessarily hide her gender from people, but she wouldn’t want to be known as “that trans-chick” either and especially wouldn’t want to be known as “that boy Carl [or whatever her pre-transition name was] that dresses like a girl.”

        1. Gigafreak

          So Carla is Ethan 2.0?

        2. Mo

          THAT BOY CARL

        3. Jen Aside

          wait what

          www

      2. Applejam

        Speaking as someone that’s worked while publicly “out,” and someone that now lives stealth…

        Maybe Carla is braver than me but I will shamefully do whatever I have to to keep stealth status. Even just yesterday I didn’t speak up when a classmate was denigrating trans people, and I’ve felt bad about it since, but if I could travel back in time those 24 hours I wouldn’t have done it differently.

    3. That Damn Rat

      Seems like it isn’t actually a secret, Carla initially thought the ding dong incident was an attack on her gender identity, which would imply people must know.

      1. Jon P

        I read that more as a “Someone found out and is outing me by drawing a dick on my door.” Though it could easily be the way you read it.

        1. Kiapdx

          This is how I read it too.

  14. Wonder Wig

    I got confused, “It’s already past midnight, why are there only 13 comments?” Then I realized that I’m not on the west coast anymore….

    1. Jen Aside

      b/c there’s no Slipshining going on

      [“YET LOLOLOLOL” NO SHUT UP]

  15. Cattleprod

    Well, now I want to see Zoidberg with Fuckface sitting on his head.

    1. Arkadi

      …and now I want to see it too.

      1. AgentKeen

        “Why not Zoidberg, and his little land reptile?”

  16. rachel

    I SHIP IT

  17. Cal

    Has Carla been confirmed as transgender?
    Explains why the whiteboard ding-dong was a “hate crime” before being hilarious.

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      This might help.

      http://www.dumbingofage.com/cast/attachment/2014castcarla/

      1. Gigafreak

        Unless I’m missing something obvious, that page doesn’t say anything about her gender being different in the past. The only hint is the “single room” thing at the end, and not everyone knows what that implies.

        1. Avery

          In my experience, it implies severe roommate trouble or transferring from another institution late in the game.

        2. Brady Kj

          Where I went to school, that just implies you didn’t want a roommate. I spent much of my college time without roommates. Doesn’t UI give people an option to live alone?

        3. Gigafreak

          At Indiana University, trans* students were generally assigned to single rooms until recently. (Those rooms weren’t in Read Hall, but eh, details.)
          http://thehawkeyeonlinenews.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/faces-of-lgbt-at-iup/
          “Before then, transgender students were placed in a single-room dorm in University Towers”

          There was a whole discussion about why Carla had to be in a single because of her gender identity, but I can’t find it for the life of me.

        4. Gigafreak

          The longer I spend searching for it and coming up with nothing, the more worried I am that I may have dreamed/hallucinated the whole thing…

        5. Brady Kj

          Yes, but surely, there are hundreds of IU students who live alone simply because they feel like it or because things didn’t work out with their previous roommate. Unless IU has a policy of requiring students to have a roommate unless they have an unusual situation that prevents it.

    2. Maveric1984

      It hasn’t been spelled out in the comic, but Willis has said so elsewhere.

      1. buckybone

        Yep, he’s said it in the comments before.

    3. insomniac

      Pretty sure we have Word of Willis, but it hasn’t been spelled out.

  18. meghantheworldeater

    Is it just me, or is that a joint and not a cigarette in Carla’s mouth? Am I just crazy?

    1. Rosicrucian

      Hand-rolled cigarretes are an actual thing.

      1. meghantheworldeater

        Okay valid point…I’m gonna head canon it as weed though…until I’m proven wrong…

        1. Dr. Zeus

          That avatar makes that comment so much better.

    2. Cypherfox

      It is definitely a joint.

    3. Plasma Mongoose

      If this was in Oz, the tobacco would be Drum and the rolling paper Tally-Hos.

      1. Kelly

        My step mom used Drum, actually. And that was in Montana. No Tally-Ho rolling paper here that I know off though.

      2. Thomas64

        In Holland, the papers would have been RIZ LA + Blue. (RIZ LA + Red or Mascotte for cigarettes, RIZ LA + Blue for joints, because it burns more slowly and holds the ash cone together better).
        Some people I knew who were really confident in their rolling skills would roll big, multi-paper joints with glueless papers, Club, I think.

      3. fogel

        For me, Drum and Zig-Zags.

  19. sps48

    And Zoidberg!

  20. Malchus

    Those legwarmers. Why can’t I stop staring at those legwarmers?!

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      I’m having Rock Lee flashbacks myself.

      1. thekit10666

        I am just waiting for her to take the weights off.

    2. Deanatay

      Pink Legwarmers of Speed!

      1. Gadgeteer Smashwidget

        “Da pink wuns go fastah!”

  21. Bill

    Sal: “You’re pretty danged tall.”
    Carla: “There’s a reason for that.”
    Sal: “Ah know. They wouldn’t care.”

    This is about as clear as mud.  Last time I checked, a person was tall because of genetics….or use of hormones, usually HGH (human growth hormone) although testosterone has also been shown to influence height as well.  So are we to assume that (in this universe) Carla is also transgender and is actually a post-op Carl?

    And if so, how would Sal have learned this?

    1. meghantheworldeater

      Sal did not learn it. She always knew. She’s omniscient. (In all seriousness though, it’s safe to assume Carla told her at some point off screen. I mean the met off screen too.)

    2. Rosicrucian

      Carla doesn’t have to be a post-op anyone.

      Surgery or lack thereof isn’t what makes you trans.

      1. Just Karen

        Not to mention ciswomen (cis=same, Opposite of trans, used to differentiate those whose assigned gender and actual gender align) can be tall. I’m tall (6’3), but I know a ciswoman the same height (Brienne of Tarth’s actress is my height as well).

        1. meghantheworldeater

          Brienne of Tarth is six foot???? O.O

        2. Rosicrucian

          Gwendoline Christie is 6’3″, yeah.

          She mightay mightay.

        3. Dr. Zeus

          Just letting it all hang out.

        4. kelticat

          Paternal great-grandmother 6+’, paternal grandfather 6+’, father 6+’, Male cousin 6+’ female cousin 1 5’11”, me 5’10”, sister 1 5’9″, sister 2 5’8″, paternal aunt 5’6″, female cousin 2 5’2″. The last one takes after my paternal grandmother.
          Genetics definately played a big role in the family height.

        5. Opus the Poet

          Don’t forget the WNBA…

        6. Annie

          I was 6’1 before my back surgery shrunk me a couple of inches. But, women my height *are* few and far between. This can especially be true regionally. And at 18 a lot of the guys I knew who ended up being my height or taller by the end of college were shorter than me at the beginning of it. And out of everyone I knew in college the only people my height or taller were men.
          So, while women being quite tall happens, I can see where Carla might assume she’d have been shorter had she been born physically female.

        7. Gigafreak

          Women can be tall, but Carla is probably referring to the fact that the male average height is 6-9% taller on average worldwide.

        8. Gadgeteer Smashwidget

          huh, thought there was ~10% difference.

      2. JWLM

        Not to mention that having shifted garb and being on anti-androgens and on estradiol leads to a female appearance. Since Carla piles on feminine hair and a somewhat rounded face, in fact, there’s no reason to think she’s doing anything chemical or physical to change the gender she presents.

    3. Bill

      And if Carla was revealed as transgender in the past month or so, then I apologize for belaboring the obvious.  It’s just that my computer was out of commission and while I was keeping up with the daily strips on my smartphone it was just too damned difficult to follow the comments.

      1. meghantheworldeater

        I know Willis stated it at some point (but I forget where…sorry I can’t link.) though it’s never been explicitly stated in comic. Maybe if we yell about it enough he’ll come and settle the dispute again.

        1. Kamino Neko

          He’s stated it on his tumblr, and repeatedly in the comments. And, honestly her first line in the Whiteboard Ding Dong Bandit arc should have made it pretty obvious. (Not that it apparently did.)

        2. Rabid Rabbit

          I have to admit I’m in the ‘apparently didn’t’ camp. Reading the comments, I knew what that was about, but in-strip, what we knew at that point about Carla was:

          1) Kinda tall;
          2) Kinda cranky.

          The reaction to the ‘hate crime’ line (for those unaware) is more likely to be ‘WTF is that cranky girl on about?’ than anything else. It would probably take several mental leaps to come to the correct solution, and even then you wouldn’t be sure.

          Therefore, I’m delighted that there are more hints coming out in-strip, because the dichotomy between word-of-god insisting we interpret things correctly when the strip itself hasn’t given us enough info is getting annoying. (And this is coming from someone who in other fora, rants about how the death of the author is bullshit.)

        3. Killjoy

          Bravo. Well said.

        4. Gadgeteer Smashwidget

          /agree wholeheartedly

        5. Killjoy

          Nothing about that comment makes it obvious.

          Her reaction could just as easily be because she was lesbian. Or simply because she was the sort to to refer to having a dingdong drawn on her door as a “hate crime” — I’ve run into those sorts.

      2. Salmo

        I don’t think Carla is too secretive about it, for one thing, given that she was willing to announce when she thought the whiteboard dingdongs were an attack on her. Also… People just know these things. She’s got a single room while everyone else has a roommate, she’s notably tall, we don’t know what she sounds like… It’s possible they just know and no one makes a big deal out of it.

      3. insomniac

        It’s never been spelled out, but I think it’s fair to assume it isn’t a well-guarded secret (even if it isn’t exactly shouted from the rooftops).

      4. meghantheworldeater

        So I found some word of god on this. I think I remembered this being more of an unambiguous yes, but I think it’s good enough…right?

        http://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/91322448607/is-carla-going-to-be-acknowledged-as-canonically-trans#notes

    4. Leorale

      I kinda assumed that Carla doesn’t quite “pass” for cis-female, in part due to her height.

      1. Just Karen

        You’d be surprised. I’m 6’3″, and had assumed (when I first transitioned) that the height would be a constant giveaway. It’s not. Now that I’m away from people that knew me before, I’m almost never misgendered. I even have a coworker that recently learned I was Trans (because I was bongoing about TSA gropeage) and she had a literal jaw drop reaction with several seconds of “wait, what?”… and we’ve been working together for three months.

    5. buckybone

      Estrogen causes the long bones to stop growing sooner, which means she’s taller than she’d be if she hadn’t started male puberty.

  22. newllend

    I…have nothing to say tonight, maybe tomorrow.

  23. Travesty

    The presentation of Carla in this series makes me incredibly happy. In fact, I’m astonished at just how much I like Carla when she’s divested of the baggage of ever having been Ultracar, who’s tied with Malaya for ‘oh god I simply can’t stand this character.’

    1. Charles Phipps

      Strange how much I love Carla given how much I want Ultracar to die in a fire.

      A “car” fire.

      I do think it’s sad Carla isn’t Joe’s sister, though. Or his other parent’s child. Either would have worked.

      1. Annie

        Joe’s dad gets around, though doesn’t he? I thought I remembered that being part of his character. His basically being Joe Sr. So maybe Carla is Joe’s half-sister.

      2. 4th Dimension

        She does live in the same building as her “mum and dad”.

  24. caesaria82

    I just love Carla’s entire outfit. And just Carla in general. And also Sal. So basically, these two need to interact more, because it just makes me really happy. Yay fab, beautiful ladies 🙂

  25. Lonas

    Pauses help the world.

  26. Stephanie

    Woot! Carla! I hope this leads into a story about Carla/Heavily involving Carla.
    Also love her outfit 🙂

  27. Leorale

    It’s also extra-nice to see that Sal, who was largely educated in a Catholic school in Tennessee, is effortlessly not a jerk about transpeople.

    1. Kamino Neko

      Can’t have been that largely since she was only sent there after she knocked over the convenience store. (I don’t think it was specifically mentioned when that happened (I can’t find it if so), but it wasn’t more than 4 or 5 years ago – even if Amber, Sal, and Ethan weren’t clearly in the throes of puberty, preteens don’t often have the freedom to knock over convenience stores.)

      1. Leorale

        In the flashbacks, I thought Sal looked most like an eighth-grader, which would put her in Tennessee for all of high school. However, exact age is hard to tell, especially when stylized.

        1. 4th Dimension

          Do we know how old Amber was then? Because they should be about same age.

        2. Rabid Rabbit

          I believe Willis mentioned her as being 13 at the time. Something about how difficult it was to make her both worrying and adorable.

        3. Amazistool

          It was indicated really early in the comic:

          Walky: “I haven’t talked to you much in, like five years.“

        4. Avery

          Highschool is 4 years, which makes it only 1/3 of one’s pre-college mandatory schooling. Plus, don’t think the Catholicism “took”.

    2. timemonkey

      She was sent there as a punishment and took up sneaking out through windows and smoking while she was there.

  28. Mrmyerst

    Off topic, but with the poll question:

    The answer is clearly Dina- This is the story of how she observed a bunch of weirdos and decided she would stick to dinosaurs, because screw drama.

    You may think I am kidding, but The Great Willis has clearly framed this story through her perspective- with great attention to detail, and little judgement on the characters, just curiosity as to what makes them tick.

    Sorry for putting this post here- couldn’t spot anywhere more appropriate to put it.

    1. meghantheworldeater

      I like your theory.
      But we all know that the Great Faz is the true hero of not just this story, but of all stories.

      1. Camachri

        It is well documented that the hero of the story gets the girl, and Faz has noticed there are many girls within this story.

        Faz is ready.

  29. Pacce

    What time is it?
    PETTY COMPLAINT TIME!
    Since Carla’s a transwoman and presumably on hormones, she really wouldn’t be able to smoke. Shit fucks up the effect and no decent doctor would prescribe her hormones until she quit smoking.
    PETTY COMPLAINT OVER!
    Yay, more Carla!

    1. Annie

      But it looks like it might be a joint. Would 1 joint every once in a while have that big of an affect?

      (I’m genuinely asking because I have no clue what-so-ever.)

      1. Stephanie

        Actually my doctor told me that you should not be doing Marijuana either while on hormones.

        1. Pacce

          Looking around, there is disagreement on the subject, but in any case, yeah it does clearly appear to be a joint and, so long as it’s an occasional habit, it would not LIKELY cause serious problems.

      2. Pacce

        To my understanding, no actually. It’s the nicotine that fucks everything up.
        Here’s a forum talking about this very subject:
        http://www.tgboards.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=14124

        1. Annie

          I feel enlightened. I seriously thought any danger in smoking while on hormones would be the same danger, maybe more pronounced, as smoking regularly while on hormonal birth control. An increased risk of blood clots. I had no earthly idea it could reduce the effects of the hormones.

        2. Sabrina Pandora

          Yet people continue to smoke even knowing it is killing them. Trust me, girls on mones do a lot stupider things than smoke in some cases. People are people, trans or not, and we are all unique in our life choices.

        3. Pacce

          That’s fair.

        4. liahansen

          very good to know…

  30. BH

    Speaking as a transwoman who loves to skate, I feel Carla’s pain. I would like to get into roller derby, but I would be accused of having an unfair advantage due to my “male body”. Even though long-term hormone replacement therapy pretty thoroughly negates any and all testosteroney-muscleyness >.>

    1. Annie

      That’s pretty shitty that people have to be assholes like that. I’m sorry.
      I’m broader and more muscley (or, was when I was younger, anyway) than my brother. Your physical gender and/or the one you had in childhood isn’t the end-all-be-all of how you’re built in adulthood.
      I figured Roller Derby would be one of the more open sports about that sort of thing. I could see the Olympics or the NFL being that petty and stupid, but a small sport in a fairly small town? Seems like they’d be more welcoming. That’s really sad that that’s not always the case.

    2. OnnaStik

      http://wftda.com/wftda-gender-policy

      Apparently the governing body of the sport has officially defined femaleness, for their purposes, as hormonal rather than anatomical? I don’t know how binding that is on individual leagues, so I don’t know if this is good news for you, but it might be!

    3. Clank clank

      I’m really sorry to hear that. When did you last try it? A couple of the ladies in my friend’s league started life off as dudes and zero damns are given about it and I think this year the derby leagues came out with a policy of “you are the gender you say you are, we don’t need to know anything you don’t want to tell us”. It might be worth trying again maybe?

      1. BH

        It has been a few years. Maybe it bears looking into again…

        1. Clank clank

          Good luck!

        2. StClair

          Seconded.

    4. Wrecks

      The derby crowd is really dang accepting. I’ve been a part of two WFTDA teams now, one who knows my trans-status and another who does not. No problems with anyone. People just want to skate. You should skate, too!

    5. Brady Kj

      I’m confused. I thought roller derby was designed to give an advantage to female bodies. I thought that was the entire point of the game.
      And aren’t tall people with high centers of gravity easier to get knocked over when they’re on skates?

  31. Don't Mind Me

    If it weren’t for the comments, I would’ve had no idea what was going on. I was actually wondering if her leg warmers concealed stilts or something.

    1. Yoohoo

      Don’t feel bad, I’m right there with you. With many very tall women in my family I didn’t know where that comment was going. Guess I haven’t been paying close enough attention.

    2. Jason

      Well, yesterday Willis finally explicitly stated in-comic that Marcie was mute and not deaf, so maybe soon it will be explicitly stated in-comic what Carla’s deal is.

      1. buckybone

        He’s said it in the comments before…

        1. Rabid Rabbit

          Comments don’t count. Even when they’re from God the Creator, they just don’t count.

        2. Killjoy

          I tend to agree with this sentiment in general — for some reason it really bugs me when major character revelations, plot explanations, etc, take place outside the story itself.

          While the author gets final say on everything about their work (I utterly reject both fan-canon, and the lit-crit New Criticism movement), absolute and total final say, I’m conversely always tempted to assert that if it doesn’t take place in the story, it doesn’t count.

        3. Rutee

          Oh, are you going to be my unicorn who understands what ‘New Criticism’ is saying before you reject it? Because I like unicorns.

        4. Killjoy

          To be fair, I have a low opinion of literary criticism in general… just read the damn book, and stop arguing over the best way to tear it apart.

          New Criticism’s simultaneous rejection of the context in which a book was written and claim to objectivity, is laughable.

          Reader response is either lost in blithering postmodernist subjectivism, or treats the reader as a “spherical chicken of uniform density”.

          Marxist lit theory is just another example of Marxists treating everything like a nail because they only have the one hammer (and the sickle that goes with it).

          Etc.

        5. Rutee

          Darn, I wanted a unicorn. Oh well, I guess I can pick up some MLP toys or something.

        6. Killjoy

          Well, since I can’t reply to Rutee’s comment… we’ll allow anyone reading this to decide if her smug vagueness is justified, or just a front.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Criticism
          http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/new.crit.html
          https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/03/
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_Author

        7. Rutee

          Nice try, but your complaints often don’t make sense if you specifically mean 1950s New Criticism. I mean ‘postmodern’? Which postdates its heyday considerably? Also, even if they were better contemporaries, ‘postmodernist subjectivism’ + ‘claim to objectivity’…. yer aware of what postmodernism is nominally about, yeah?

          Now if you want to say you understand the concept of the Death of the Author? Sure, I’d buy that. That’s an easy concept. But claiming to be attacking New Criticism when you’re just making generic claims common of literary critics in general? If you were being literal, brava for attacking a dead school; perhaps next you’ll go for the Mercantilists. IF you weren’t, which seems more likely, well…

        8. showler

          I largely agree with that, but Sal’s comment and the white board comment is it taking place in the story. This is how the audience is supposed to figure out that she is Trans*.

          It’s not much different from Jocelyn dropping the email address.

        9. Killjoy

          You’re right on those moments as the reveal happening in story.

          The subject of in-story vs word-of-author is broader and relates to some other things, such as Marcie being mute not deaf, etc.

    3. Deanatay

      Springs. Inspector Gadget-style.

  32. JessWitt

    I always thought after applecore came “Roger Moore”.

  33. motorfirebox

    Oh, so that’s Carla’s deal. Cool.

  34. Jesus DeSaad

    Dear Willis. I get it, you want to introduce characters from the entire population spectrum, but I have to warn you, the second you introduce someone who says they’re otherkin and people take them seriously I’m leaving the comic.

    1. AHR

      that seems like an oddly specific threat. Did an otherkin kill your puppy or something?

      1. motorfirebox

        No. An otherkin killed his parents. As he sat alone in his mansion, trying to figure out how to strike fear into the hearts of furrydoers, a human flew threw his window. And so he became… Manman.

        1. Crumplepunch

          With the proportionate strength of ONE MAN! Able to leap low obstacles in a single bound! Capable of lifting objects of average weight with minimal strain! The hero of today!

    2. liahansen

      I don’t see what any of that has to do with anything

    3. Spiny Creature

      “Warning” would imply Willis wants you to stick around…

      1. Jesus DeSaad

        You’re implying that a webcomic creator doesn’t care if fans stop visiting his page. You’re clearly failing to understand some things.

    4. Thomas64

      You should read this, item #3 in particular.

      1. motorfirebox

        I just wanted to point out that #8a is a total strawman.

        1. Salmo

          It’s a totally neon and playskool strawman. Wait, which comic am I on?

        2. Amazistool

          And #5 is totes double standards, as violated by the author himself many many times, especially in the alt-text!

          (But maybe the rule does not apply to alt-text?)

      2. Jesus DeSaad

        I respect Willis too much to just leave without explaining why. As a comic book artist I like people telling me what I did wrong to turn them away from me.

    5. Pacce

      Listen, is cool and all for you to have things you don’t like, but you kinda don’t have any sway at all here.
      Author gonna do what they want. Drop it or don’t, but remember, no one is gonna cry if you do and Willis will probably make fun of any parting comment you make.

      1. Jesus DeSaad

        I hope it doesn’t come to that, because it’s not just a personal quirk or a pet hate, but a valid reason to be pissed off at people who equate transgendered people to what’s basically the only Monty Python skit that has overstayed its welcome.

        1. Pacce

          Well, I’LL quit the comic if he doesn’t include otherkin!
          Now we’ll see which one of us Willis really loves!

    6. greengeekgirl

      “I get it”

      Somehow, I doubt this.

    7. Cybersnark

      So you don’t want Dina to start self-identifying as a dinosaur trapped in a hominid body?

      1. JWLM

        +1.

        1. Avery

          +100

    8. clodia

      Are you equating being trans to identifying as otherkin?

      1. Amazistool

        He clearly makes a distinction here, with only one of them being a reason for him to leave.

        1. Jesus DeSaad

          Oh Amazistool, only you understand me.

  35. KiTA

    I was going to call it — Carla’s a Transwoman. But apparently this is already well known? Huh.

    Well, ok. It makes sense given Ultra Car’s history in the other universe.

    1. darkgloomie

      I’m pretty sure Willis mentioned it… somewhere in the comments maybe?

      Plus, after the whole “there’s a penis on my whiteboard, it’s discrimination! Oh wait there’s one on every whiteboard, then it’s just funny” it was kind of foregone.

    2. timemonkey

      It was known long before she even showed up.

  36. MO

    It’s nice to see that even Willis has fully embraced Malaya as the worst

    1. AgentKeen

      Actually, I think this is just another reason he would think she’s The Best.

  37. Jesse Conlang

    Uh, did anyone else find the dialogue in this comic a little… obtuse?

    I’m terrible at subtext, but I never would have made the leap between “Carla is tall” and “Carla is trans”. I get that it’s the kind of implication that a person might want to keep on the DL, but dang, man. It read panel three a dozen times, and even then I had to read the comments to figure it out.
    I’m not just being thick, right?

    1. MrBurrows

      Well, if you know Shortpacked, you would understand that’s not “Carla’s” original body. So add in “Tall for a woman” with “changed bodies in an alternate universe”, trans is the best guess.

    2. Keebs

      Trans am, you mean… *Yukk yukk*

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        So Carla was originally CARR, KITT’s evil twin? Disturbingly plausible.

    3. agentksilver

      No, I felt much the same way. Even with the same information that MrBurrows used, I still had no idea what they were referring to.

      1. Killjoy

        Anyone reading this without the Shortpacked version of the character and the comments section to fill in information can definitely be excused for not putting together “offended when she thought the dingdong was directed at her alone” and “tall for a woman” and concluding that Carla is trans.

        Have their been any other “clues” that I’m missing there, that would have made it more obvious?

        1. agentksilver

          I’ll be honest: I read this and concluded that Carla had Marfan Syndrome. Even knowing that Carla started out as Ultra-Car in SP!, even reading that transition, I still read this and interpreted the entire scenario as “Marfan Syndrome”

        2. Jesse Conlang

          yeah, see, in my mind the subtext went something like “you’re tall” “yup, I’m tall. because I grew” “ah know you are”

    4. JWLM

      Willis is uses the ‘show, don’t tell’ approach to cartooning in DoA. That means he’s almost never going to *tell* us anything; he’s going to show us and let us figure it out for ourselves. Given that we live that way in real life, that’s actually ‘right’.

      For instance, we know Amber’s Amazi-Girl because we see her getting into the costume or with her mask off. In-universe, he goes even further; he shows us characters in-universe completely not getting it. He doesn’t ever *say* that nobody gets that; instead, we have examples of people rejecting it. Danny is faithful to Amazi-Girl, so he turns Amber down. Sarah says really nasty things about ‘that shut-in’ to…well, that shut in. Billie doesn’t believe that Amber is Amazi-Girl when she is *told* that. The only person who really gets it is Dorothy, and even she’s totally freaked out when she figures Amazi-Girls real identity.

      Carla isn’t going to say ‘Yeah, well, you know I’m trans, so they will throw me out,’ any more than Joycelyn was going to say ‘Look, Ethan, I’m really a girl.’ Willis shows us how facts about a person shape their personal narrative, and leaves us to figure out what those facts must be.

      1. Salmo

        And remember how many people thought Jocelyn’s secret was that Joshua uses a pen name?

      2. Amazistool

        Willis is the ‘show, don’t tell’ approach
        Nope, he uses the “show breadcrumbs, don’t tell”. (He used that word himself regarding the signs of racism of Walkies and Sals parents).

        Which is why it’s recommend to also read the comments, especially when you feel that you are missing something when reading the comic!

      3. Jesse Conlang

        I have absolutely no problem with that style of storytelling, and believe me, this kind of thing happens to me in real life all the time. I’m just glad I’m not alone.

      4. Yoohoo

        But AmaziGirl was easy for the audience – whether you’re well versed in the tropes or just realize AmaziGirl just looks like Amber in a jumpsuit, mask, and cape, it’s very easy to conclude Amber=AmaziGirl, whether the story actually states it out or not.

        Marcie’s deal feels more akin to this than Carla’s. It’s not blatantly in your face, but with a few context clues, it’s easy enough to guess.

        No, this feels more like Sal and Jocelyn’s situations – Sal, being grayer if you’re not familiar with her plight (heck I’m black and wasn’t sure if Willis was going there until the Dad’s hair comment), and Jocelyn — were there any clues at all that specifically pointed to being transgendered? I believe the masses were frothing at her being gay for Ethan until the email came out.

        So yeah, show, don’t tell definitely is effective, but with this medium I think some topics need to be a little more … Heavy handed? Or at least give its readers a break if they miss subtle clues the first time around. Haven’t seen ‘ZOMG how could you nooooooooot know’ comments about this, which is good though. Hate seeing ‘well in X comic by Willis..’ when he specifically says you don’t have to be well versed in those universes to know this one.

        1. LouisvilleRobin

          ^^^^this!!
          Especially the last sentence.
          At the very beginning we were told that we didn’t need to read the other comics to understand this one.
          And with how prolific the commenters are on this it is unrealistic to expect new readers to slog through many score of posts on each of the hundreds of comics, most of which are just hanging out talk.
          And comments along the lines of “Well d’uh Willis already said that in some other comics comment section.” are elitist and off putting for new readers, and I am glad at how few of them there are but…

  38. Slinx

    I wonder who else is on this derby team… *strokes beard*

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      It would be nice if it were in the same universe as GWS.

  39. but wait!

    Since when is being tall an advantage when you’re playing derby?

    1. Jesse Conlang

      uh, longer strides, maybe?

      1. Salmo

        Yup, and longer reach.

  40. airyu

    I don’t get what is so bad/annoying about Malaya. She seems like a good person and tried to help Sal and the others when they fought Amazi-girl, so why does everyone hate her? Does that have to do with Willis’s other comics?

    1. Salmo

      Yeah, she was much more insufferable in Shortpacked when she was introduced. Though she has mellowed out over there as well, largely as a result of dating Ultra Car, that universe’s equivalent of Carla. They hate everything together, and it’s actually kind of sweet.

  41. Vangeln

    Well, Ah stay up until dawn to get vengeance and sometimes to fight Amazi-whatever.

  42. Aceheart

    Hey just an idea, what if Carla is an amputee and the is why she’s so tall? If you think about it her legs are always covered from the knees down by baggy legwarmers or long socks. She could have possibly lost everything from the knees down in, say, a car accident.

    1. SwanBlossom

      She is probably alluding to the fact that she’s trans.

  43. DarkoNeko

    Something tells me it’s not only tobacco in that cig.

  44. Saki

    Ooooh wow I only just now understood the third panel. I’m slow that way.

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