I think we have heard it a couple of times? “Dana’s mom died, and instead of being there for her when she was feeling bad, her roommate Sarah called her dad and got her taken out of college and ruined her life.” Ignore everything that doesn’t make Sarah look as bad as possible, and tell it to everyone she meets at the slightest provocation.
Sarah did it first. No reason to keep around someone who does stuff like that when it clashes with the rest of the group’s sensibilities and priorities that hard.
You mean that time Sarah first went to Raidah & Co. to try to get them to find a way to help Dana other than just waiting for everything to blow over, and then when they flat-out refused, she finally resorted to contacting Dana’s father about the situation?
Because that’s what happened. I’m sure Sarah wasn’t the best person to be Dana’s roomie at that point–hell, Sarah’s sure of it, too, for that matter–but I don’t see her actions as deliberately ‘jettisoning’ anyone. Dana’s father was the one who decided to remove Dana, presumably so he could help her get well again with a bit more direct supervision.
Yeah, I think Carl’s very (stoned) words were “I know Dana, she will bounce back” – this after he had not had one sober conversation with Dana after her mom died. None of them had any idea what was happening or any interest in doing anything to support their friend who, to reiterate, was grieving for her mom.
It’s interesting that they still aren’t curious. They have apparently never even considered if Sarah might have had other reasons for taking action besides being a narc and a life-ruiner who takes pleasure in spoiling everyone’s fun so they stop bothering her. They have the narrative of Sarah being a villain and that’s all they need.
Or, as we have seen, it’s all they need until they start gossiping about Sarah to people who then get to hear her version. That’s so going to blow up in Raidah’s face and I can’t wait for it.
Needfuldoer
Nope. Sharah must be evil because Raidah’s narrative says she is.
Okay, correction, Carl’s very words were “Don’t worry, I know her. She will snap back to normal eventually”. And he wasn’t stoned. Don’t put me in webcomic jail for slander your honor.
BOOSTER SHOT
She deliberately jettisoned Dana from her life. That’s what happened. I’m not saying it wasn’t justified, but that’s what happened. When someone does that to a member of your friend group, jettisoning them is a completely valid response. Especially if from jump that person made it as difficult as possible to be friends with them. There was no earthly reason to keep Sarah around after what she did. You may not have noticed, but this is a comic where tattling to Dads usually breaks pretty badly for the daughter.
Sarah did what needed to be done for her, and that’s valid. The friend group she burned doing the same in return is equally valid. Sarah was toxic for that friend group, and that friend group was toxic for her. Joyce loves Sarah as she is, which none of that old friend group seemed to do.
It is completely valid to remove from your life someone who takes executive decisions over other people’s lives without their consent. It feels fucking bad. Developing a weird multi-step plan to ruin any attachments that person has primarily via the medium of passive-aggressive brunches is less valid.
Unless, of course, that person purposefully weaponized her new roommate to ruin your romantic relationship with an absolute catch of a man. Then ruining her close relationships might make more sense. Good thing Sarah never did that!
Freemage
This read only works if you believe Sarah had the ability to know exactly what Dana’s father would do. That’s a pretty hefty level of omniscience you’re putting on her–knowing the psyche of a man she’d probably never met, nor heard much about.
And calling Dana’s father was NOT her first choice–her initial effort was at getting Dana into therapy, but Dana’s oh-so-dedicated friends did jack-fucking-shit to help on that front. Sarah had no resources of her own to call on, so yes, she reached out to the one person she knew was responsible for Dana’s well-being. (If she’d just wanted Dana out of school, she could have just called the campus administration–“My roommate is doing drugs and it’s interfering with my studies” would’ve been a much surer way to get Dana booted from school in a heartbeat.
As for “tattling to Dads” in this comic… First off, Sarah doesn’t actually read this comic. She has no idea she’s in a constructed narrative where ‘being a parent’ and ‘being a monster’ are damned near synonymous. In the real world, calling Dana’s father was the right freaking call, even if it led to less than ideal consequences (which is something we still don’t really know for sure–we only have Raidah’s word for it that Dana isn’t doing well, and that was from months ago).
Now, since the flashback era, Sarah’s done some deeply and profoundly messed-up crap, it’s true. Both assaulting Raidah and then the whole Jacob mess are on her, 100%.
But we’ve also seen her try to be better–she actually listened when Joyce asked her to NOT call her parents, even though she was seriously worried about Joyce’s health. And she’s taken a big sister role in Joyce’s life since then, even taking it so far as to be a better sibling to her actual little sister.
Raidah, meanwhile, seems to actually be getting worse than her first-semester self.
thejeff
My read is that Sarah should have assaulted Raidah earlier. 🙂
But I read those initial couple incidents of harassment of Sarah we saw at the start of the comic as something that had been going on all last year, since the Dana incident and were starting up again with the new semester. They stopped cold after the punch.
Maybe that’s not the intent, but that’s how I read it.
Trying to break up Jacob and Raidah was bad, but she did try to stop it. Joyce was already too invested for herself by then though.
BBCC
TV lied. Sometimes hitting the bully DOES work.
Sometimes it makes things way worse but that’s true with all methods of dealing with a bully.
thejeff
Yeah, I’m pretty much non-violent in most circumstances, but if my read on events is at all accurate, it seems to have worked here when nothing else had.
zee
Agreed. Most people need a good punch or smack to the face at least once in their lives. Especially a bully.
Sarah did not make the choice to remove Dana from school. And of the options available, we don’t know whether removing Dana from school was the best option or not but notifying Dana’s father was certainly one of the only options available to Sarah, the other one being reporting Dana’s substance use to the school. Your friend having to leave your friend group *so they can get help for their substance abuse problem* is not toxic. Getting your friend into treatment for their addiction is not toxic. What is toxic is doing nothing to help your depressed and drowning friend. If Dana had left school to be hospitalized instead of to get addiction treatment, Raidah and the others would’ve blamed Sarah just as much for not preventing Dana’s addiction from escalating.
Liliet
I actually don’t think they would have blamed Sarah for that. It’s a trolley problem thing – action you DON’T take just doesn’t count as much, to most people’s ethics sense, as action you DO take. From their point of view Sarah overstepped. They themselves were holding back to not overstep. That is, for Raidah, the right thing to do.
MoreWLessG
That’s not what happened. Sarah wasn’t trying to get rid of Dana – she was trying to get Dana help. Because she had a problem. A problem that was so bad it affected other people around her – endangering Sarah’s ability to continue to BE at that school.
Yeah… the read being applied here to the Sarah/Dana situation is **very** biased and utterly lacks the insight Booster has for things. Probably time to turn in the username.
Char’s last name was Meleon. But she got married off screen to a man named Mr. Izard. After which some say she had somewhat of an evolution and she gained the ability to fly. On a plane. Out of Indiana. To live with her new husband. Who lives in Japan. Somewhere in the Kantou Region in Honshu.
I sincerely wish her well. Sounds like she chose to be the very best, like no one ever could be.
Yotomoe
Yeah honestly wish it wasn’t so hard to catch her. But ever since she went to Japan she stopped feeling Blue. Though since she’s new to the country she’s still a little Green.
temperaryobsessor
A heard you can catch her at a mall, but I don’t remember which one.
I really hope Dana returns someday. I want to see her back and thriving to just really explode Raidah’s idea of what happened to her. Just completely shatter that reality.
I want this to be the case so much, I’m hoping the way Carla outing Billie and Ruth resulted in Ruth getting better even if it meant her horrible grandpa paying her a visit is foreshadowing.
That would be perfect actually. She returned after break and no one knows because she’s just been avoiding her old “peer group” as Raidah would say. Maybe she’s chilling with Alice. That one girl Jennifer was bffs with in high school, just living an interesting life away from the DoA cast until it’s dramatically appropriate.
There are so many similar characteristics between Radiah and Jennifer I would have no problem believing their former best friends see them the same way. Jennifer was so oblivious to being cut out of Alison’s life I could see Radiah being the same.
Walky and or Lucy are gonna cause shit with Sarah because they’ve been fed the Rad narrative, and then Dana rolls up and supports Sarah to reestablish the status quo.
Sarah verbally guts Jennifer when she tries to shame Sarah for what she did, drawing the line between her self destructive relationship with Ruth and how Dana’s probably not an Ominous Doom Foretelling Oracle like Ruth’s sliding into.
I know people have been hoping for this kind of twist ever since the first Dana Flashback but honestly it feels way too… emotionally and morally simple for a DOA storyline lol. Plus there’s that line from Raidah about how Dana is “not in a better place according to her”.
My best is that if Dana ever comes back she’ll be mad both at Sarah (cause she’s ‘not in a better place according to her’) AND at Radiah and Co. for not reaching out to her more or seeing past her phoney happy act better.
Honestly the outcome I want is “yeah my dad sucks and going home sucked, for all the reasons you know, but also it actually sucked less than staying here and literally saved my life probably”. The one where the information Raidah is implied to have is correct but also Sarah read Dana correctly, too.
I like this idea but don’t see it happening before an in-setting year has passed, at minimum. We’re in semester two, and do not yet know if there will be a semester three (summer classes) covered at this same week-a-year pace or not.
Yeah I’m gonna continue sitting here with my “Raidah has been systematically feeding Jennifer the idea that Joyce and co. are toxic for her” hat.
Also, weird of Raidah to apologize for Jennifer when Jennifer is, like… sitting right across the table. Jennifer can apologize for herself if she wants, and if she doesn’t, that’s fine to. I wonder what Jennifer’s face is like during this strip, if she’s confused, put out, or nodding along.
I dunno, I’ll give it to Raidah that last strip and this one are the first we’ve seen of her treating Jennifer like a child. Her behavior otherwise has been presenting herself as ‘saving Billie from a bad night by introducing her to new people’ and just sorta chilling around her. Definitely condescending in the first instance, but to Jennifer’s face she’s been cordial. Behind her back, that’s a different story.
Its just Radiahs way of turning the conversation towards bashing Sarah, she deliberately blamed walkys peers group for Jennifer gossiping so Walky would ask who she was talking about. As though Sarah had any influence of Jennifer, it’s a clumsy way to turn of conversation to jettsioning when nobody was talking about it.
372 thoughts on “Cherish”
Ana Chronistic
incoming Dana lore?!?
(Carl To Adventure! Defeating College With A Skill Board)
Ana Chronistic
broke my tags, dang
(shoulda had hovertext “Carlaboshi Haruki lol”)
Thag Simmons
Very badly want to hear Raidah’s version of this story.
GholaHalleck
*Does the I was Right dance to the horror of all involved*
Amelie Wikström
I think we have heard it a couple of times? “Dana’s mom died, and instead of being there for her when she was feeling bad, her roommate Sarah called her dad and got her taken out of college and ruined her life.” Ignore everything that doesn’t make Sarah look as bad as possible, and tell it to everyone she meets at the slightest provocation.
I’d like to hear Dana’s version, though.
DarkoNeko
Carl is Dana’s ex boyfriend https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/05-saturdays-all-right-for-slighting/carl/
Liliet
Ahhhhh yes let’ssssssss
Ana Chronistic
hahah just noticed the poll
Huttj
I dunno, they sure as heck jettisoned Sarah when she became “inconvenient.”
Decidedly Orthogonal
Yes. How does it go? Ah… Gas-light, Obstruct, Project
BOOSTER SHOT
Sarah did it first. No reason to keep around someone who does stuff like that when it clashes with the rest of the group’s sensibilities and priorities that hard.
Freemage
You mean that time Sarah first went to Raidah & Co. to try to get them to find a way to help Dana other than just waiting for everything to blow over, and then when they flat-out refused, she finally resorted to contacting Dana’s father about the situation?
Because that’s what happened. I’m sure Sarah wasn’t the best person to be Dana’s roomie at that point–hell, Sarah’s sure of it, too, for that matter–but I don’t see her actions as deliberately ‘jettisoning’ anyone. Dana’s father was the one who decided to remove Dana, presumably so he could help her get well again with a bit more direct supervision.
Amelie Wikström
Yeah, I think Carl’s very (stoned) words were “I know Dana, she will bounce back” – this after he had not had one sober conversation with Dana after her mom died. None of them had any idea what was happening or any interest in doing anything to support their friend who, to reiterate, was grieving for her mom.
It’s interesting that they still aren’t curious. They have apparently never even considered if Sarah might have had other reasons for taking action besides being a narc and a life-ruiner who takes pleasure in spoiling everyone’s fun so they stop bothering her. They have the narrative of Sarah being a villain and that’s all they need.
Or, as we have seen, it’s all they need until they start gossiping about Sarah to people who then get to hear her version. That’s so going to blow up in Raidah’s face and I can’t wait for it.
Needfuldoer
Nope. Sharah must be evil because Raidah’s narrative says she is.
BOOSTER SHOT
If you could please point out the indications in this strip that Carl is currently very stoned, that would be great: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/05-saturdays-all-right-for-slighting/grieve/
Amelie Wikström
Okay, correction, Carl’s very words were “Don’t worry, I know her. She will snap back to normal eventually”. And he wasn’t stoned. Don’t put me in webcomic jail for slander your honor.
BOOSTER SHOT
She deliberately jettisoned Dana from her life. That’s what happened. I’m not saying it wasn’t justified, but that’s what happened. When someone does that to a member of your friend group, jettisoning them is a completely valid response. Especially if from jump that person made it as difficult as possible to be friends with them. There was no earthly reason to keep Sarah around after what she did. You may not have noticed, but this is a comic where tattling to Dads usually breaks pretty badly for the daughter.
Sarah did what needed to be done for her, and that’s valid. The friend group she burned doing the same in return is equally valid. Sarah was toxic for that friend group, and that friend group was toxic for her. Joyce loves Sarah as she is, which none of that old friend group seemed to do.
It is completely valid to remove from your life someone who takes executive decisions over other people’s lives without their consent. It feels fucking bad. Developing a weird multi-step plan to ruin any attachments that person has primarily via the medium of passive-aggressive brunches is less valid.
Unless, of course, that person purposefully weaponized her new roommate to ruin your romantic relationship with an absolute catch of a man. Then ruining her close relationships might make more sense. Good thing Sarah never did that!
Freemage
This read only works if you believe Sarah had the ability to know exactly what Dana’s father would do. That’s a pretty hefty level of omniscience you’re putting on her–knowing the psyche of a man she’d probably never met, nor heard much about.
And calling Dana’s father was NOT her first choice–her initial effort was at getting Dana into therapy, but Dana’s oh-so-dedicated friends did jack-fucking-shit to help on that front. Sarah had no resources of her own to call on, so yes, she reached out to the one person she knew was responsible for Dana’s well-being. (If she’d just wanted Dana out of school, she could have just called the campus administration–“My roommate is doing drugs and it’s interfering with my studies” would’ve been a much surer way to get Dana booted from school in a heartbeat.
As for “tattling to Dads” in this comic… First off, Sarah doesn’t actually read this comic. She has no idea she’s in a constructed narrative where ‘being a parent’ and ‘being a monster’ are damned near synonymous. In the real world, calling Dana’s father was the right freaking call, even if it led to less than ideal consequences (which is something we still don’t really know for sure–we only have Raidah’s word for it that Dana isn’t doing well, and that was from months ago).
Now, since the flashback era, Sarah’s done some deeply and profoundly messed-up crap, it’s true. Both assaulting Raidah and then the whole Jacob mess are on her, 100%.
But we’ve also seen her try to be better–she actually listened when Joyce asked her to NOT call her parents, even though she was seriously worried about Joyce’s health. And she’s taken a big sister role in Joyce’s life since then, even taking it so far as to be a better sibling to her actual little sister.
Raidah, meanwhile, seems to actually be getting worse than her first-semester self.
thejeff
My read is that Sarah should have assaulted Raidah earlier. 🙂
But I read those initial couple incidents of harassment of Sarah we saw at the start of the comic as something that had been going on all last year, since the Dana incident and were starting up again with the new semester. They stopped cold after the punch.
Maybe that’s not the intent, but that’s how I read it.
Trying to break up Jacob and Raidah was bad, but she did try to stop it. Joyce was already too invested for herself by then though.
BBCC
TV lied. Sometimes hitting the bully DOES work.
Sometimes it makes things way worse but that’s true with all methods of dealing with a bully.
thejeff
Yeah, I’m pretty much non-violent in most circumstances, but if my read on events is at all accurate, it seems to have worked here when nothing else had.
zee
Agreed. Most people need a good punch or smack to the face at least once in their lives. Especially a bully.
The Blueprint System
Sarah did not make the choice to remove Dana from school. And of the options available, we don’t know whether removing Dana from school was the best option or not but notifying Dana’s father was certainly one of the only options available to Sarah, the other one being reporting Dana’s substance use to the school. Your friend having to leave your friend group *so they can get help for their substance abuse problem* is not toxic. Getting your friend into treatment for their addiction is not toxic. What is toxic is doing nothing to help your depressed and drowning friend. If Dana had left school to be hospitalized instead of to get addiction treatment, Raidah and the others would’ve blamed Sarah just as much for not preventing Dana’s addiction from escalating.
Liliet
I actually don’t think they would have blamed Sarah for that. It’s a trolley problem thing – action you DON’T take just doesn’t count as much, to most people’s ethics sense, as action you DO take. From their point of view Sarah overstepped. They themselves were holding back to not overstep. That is, for Raidah, the right thing to do.
MoreWLessG
That’s not what happened. Sarah wasn’t trying to get rid of Dana – she was trying to get Dana help. Because she had a problem. A problem that was so bad it affected other people around her – endangering Sarah’s ability to continue to BE at that school.
Bruh
LOL
Lmao even
Decidedly Orthogonal
Yeah… the read being applied here to the Sarah/Dana situation is **very** biased and utterly lacks the insight Booster has for things. Probably time to turn in the username.
Jodka
Agreed. The almost seem to be defending Raidah of all people
Plaaaa
Walky’s really gonna flip when he realizes Lenny is right next to Carl, as always.
shrub
Nice
Sirksome
Carl is actually nothing. Also what happened to Char and…the other Char. They both sucked and are no longer around as if maybe they’d been jettisoned.
UrsulaDavina
They were ejected not jettisoned
JessWitt
Other girl is Chan (or Chanise).
Yotomoe
Char’s last name was Meleon. But she got married off screen to a man named Mr. Izard. After which some say she had somewhat of an evolution and she gained the ability to fly. On a plane. Out of Indiana. To live with her new husband. Who lives in Japan. Somewhere in the Kantou Region in Honshu.
Sirksome
I sincerely wish her well. Sounds like she chose to be the very best, like no one ever could be.
Yotomoe
Yeah honestly wish it wasn’t so hard to catch her. But ever since she went to Japan she stopped feeling Blue. Though since she’s new to the country she’s still a little Green.
temperaryobsessor
A heard you can catch her at a mall, but I don’t remember which one.
Amós Batista
She were even more toxic than this group.
Mark
Carl is very important. He’s been assigned to say the things that Raidah probably shouldn’t say.
Keulen
Both Char and Chan were actually bigger jerks than Raidah, which is kinda impressive.
Caro
raidah your jettison count is 3
The Wellerman
Welp, that’s the third strike, she’s OUTTA THERE! ?
Schpoonman
There is no comment I could make that could top the hovertext, fuck. That is kinda-sorta-not-really exactly what Danny did!
Doctor_Who
Danny’s been playing the long game all this time.
Everyone dances on strings! Ukulele strings!
jeffepp
(Obligatory “I accidentally hit the Flag while replying” apology. )
This whole conversation has been hinting at the eventual spiral down to a Danny and David dating scenario.
During the double date, the girls go to the restroom, and the question and answer happen. Then Danny Danny continues with, “I’m bi, you see.”
Walkie’s all “Oh? OH!” Danny gets that grin. And, in two shakes of a bag of tacos, they are making out.
The girls come back to this.They look at one another, and one says, “Ah ain’t inta girls, ya know.”
“I’m not either.”
They look back at the boys, each other, and shrug. Then proceed to make out too.
Later, they will all form an ouroboros.
GholaHalleck
“we were already Eskimo bros, we just cut out the middle man.”
zee
That was his exact plan the first time he flirted with sal.
And then he seduced her by being the biggest fucking dork softie alive
Sirksome
I really hope Dana returns someday. I want to see her back and thriving to just really explode Raidah’s idea of what happened to her. Just completely shatter that reality.
I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams
I’ve been secretly rooting for a cameo from Dana for a while now tbh, so if it somehow happens in this arc I’d be very happy 🙂
Alongcameaspider
I’m of the opinion that if Dana ever comes back she’s going to thank Sarah for what she did
Itd be a nice way to close out that plot thread whenever Willis decides to
Archieve
I want this to be the case so much, I’m hoping the way Carla outing Billie and Ruth resulted in Ruth getting better even if it meant her horrible grandpa paying her a visit is foreshadowing.
Needfuldoer
Yes! Ha ha… YES.
TheKelliestKelly
I hope she’s just returned to campus this semester and is avoiding Raidah because she realized Raidah is awful
Sirksome
That would be perfect actually. She returned after break and no one knows because she’s just been avoiding her old “peer group” as Raidah would say. Maybe she’s chilling with Alice. That one girl Jennifer was bffs with in high school, just living an interesting life away from the DoA cast until it’s dramatically appropriate.
Archieve
There are so many similar characteristics between Radiah and Jennifer I would have no problem believing their former best friends see them the same way. Jennifer was so oblivious to being cut out of Alison’s life I could see Radiah being the same.
Mark
Maybe, for a little added tension, she’s enrolled at Purdue now, and just came down to watch a Hoosiers/Boilermakers game.
GholaHalleck
Walky and or Lucy are gonna cause shit with Sarah because they’ve been fed the Rad narrative, and then Dana rolls up and supports Sarah to reestablish the status quo.
Sarah verbally guts Jennifer when she tries to shame Sarah for what she did, drawing the line between her self destructive relationship with Ruth and how Dana’s probably not an Ominous Doom Foretelling Oracle like Ruth’s sliding into.
Inbar Fink
I know people have been hoping for this kind of twist ever since the first Dana Flashback but honestly it feels way too… emotionally and morally simple for a DOA storyline lol. Plus there’s that line from Raidah about how Dana is “not in a better place according to her”.
My best is that if Dana ever comes back she’ll be mad both at Sarah (cause she’s ‘not in a better place according to her’) AND at Radiah and Co. for not reaching out to her more or seeing past her phoney happy act better.
thejeff
That I could live with. I’d really hate to see Raidah be right about this. It would devastate Sarah and not in a good character growth kind of way.
Liliet
Honestly the outcome I want is “yeah my dad sucks and going home sucked, for all the reasons you know, but also it actually sucked less than staying here and literally saved my life probably”. The one where the information Raidah is implied to have is correct but also Sarah read Dana correctly, too.
Kaiyalai
I like this idea but don’t see it happening before an in-setting year has passed, at minimum. We’re in semester two, and do not yet know if there will be a semester three (summer classes) covered at this same week-a-year pace or not.
So, giving it a decade or two.
Doopyboop
Yeah I’m gonna continue sitting here with my “Raidah has been systematically feeding Jennifer the idea that Joyce and co. are toxic for her” hat.
Also, weird of Raidah to apologize for Jennifer when Jennifer is, like… sitting right across the table. Jennifer can apologize for herself if she wants, and if she doesn’t, that’s fine to. I wonder what Jennifer’s face is like during this strip, if she’s confused, put out, or nodding along.
Golden Yak
Yeah, that was super awkward. I was reading this and thinking “What, did Jennifer go to use the restroom or something?”
TemporalShrew
Seriously – apologizing for her *in her presence.* What is she, her mommy?
Doopyboop
Either like she’s her mom, or like Jennifer is some, like, misbehaving pet. Very condescending.
Yotomoe
Jennifer wishes.
Needfuldoer
She’s in charge because she’s the one all the hangers-on hang onto in this group.
GholaHalleck
Jennifer is not the head cheerleader, she shuts her mouth and follows the momm-*coughs* Leader…
MisterJinKC
She’s been treating Jennifer like a child the entire time.
Doopyboop
I dunno, I’ll give it to Raidah that last strip and this one are the first we’ve seen of her treating Jennifer like a child. Her behavior otherwise has been presenting herself as ‘saving Billie from a bad night by introducing her to new people’ and just sorta chilling around her. Definitely condescending in the first instance, but to Jennifer’s face she’s been cordial. Behind her back, that’s a different story.
Archieve
Its just Radiahs way of turning the conversation towards bashing Sarah, she deliberately blamed walkys peers group for Jennifer gossiping so Walky would ask who she was talking about. As though Sarah had any influence of Jennifer, it’s a clumsy way to turn of conversation to jettsioning when nobody was talking about it.
Mark
How is everybody going to know that Jennifer is in a subordinate role, if Raidah doesn’t point it out?
Masumi