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Ana and toby Birthday Double-Feature! Yeah, happy birthday to you both!
And toby, would this be too random a time to mention that your Thunder Over Eden comic is pretty cool? I’m not familiar with the story it’s adapted from (did I get that right?), but I do really like the art!
Later on in the Walkyverse, before he hooked up with Amber and mellowed out somewhat, he was fond of breaking people out of ruts by putting them through shitty situations that forced them to reassess and change.
I think he’s trying to make Ethan get way too into him to break him out of, well, what he described in the last page. Ethan just figured out he was gay like, last year. His self pitying nonsense about never being able to find a partner is pretty over the top.
Oh, I remember it, I just have no idea how this factors into mike’s plan. Danny isn’t the “wishy washy twerp” that Mike said he was before, and I’d be surprised that Mike thinks that hooking up with Ethan will turn Danny into a whimpering mess
You know, rereading this and the strip before it I would say that first Mike is genuinely weirded out by Ethan’s morbid curiosity/fixation about his own self failings and then immediately after that…. if I didn’t know any better I’d say Mike is kind of hurt that Ethan said he’s only 50% sure that they’re friends.
I know it’s terrible, but I would laugh hysterically if he did indeed send an explicit picture to Naomi. It would be completely in character for him—he *did* answer Joyce’s phone with “Hail Satan!” when Carol called, after all.
Jeez, I don’t think Mike would stoop that low. Knowing Naomi, sending a picture might actually get Ethan pulled from the school and get removed from the cast, or at least lead to a very, very, very messy outcome.
Alright, here is the catch, I knew Mike couldn’t be doing this entirely to help Ethan. There may be some small sliver of desire to help Ethan but it is buried underneath “Mike bullshit” as usual. At least hell hasn’t had to close the roads due to ice.
I don’t think that was masochism? I think that was… pride, maybe, that Amber was finally putting her foot down and taking no shit. Definitely positive feelings towards Amber, I think, not just “I got hit and that turns me on”.
Hell, maybe even being turned on by the gesture of strength from Amber.
If DOA were a TV series, I can see the transitional graphic right in the midst of the conversation….”A Dozen Dicks Later…..” (complete with a lilting,Brady Bunch-esque motif fluttering in the background).
Mike’s been getting laid–or, okay, at least got laid once that I can remember–so if it’s that, it seems like there’s also some element of “by Ethan” with it.
Ok consider my past Hypothesis wrong, I no longer know what the hell Mike’s deal is. Either he genuinely wants a relationship with Ethan or he is going to do something freaking horrible.
It was an aside to the audience, closest thing to a thought bubble we usually get around here, so yeah.
Beyond that, believe the asshole when he tells you he’s an asshole. Making up less nasty motivations to excuse him just lets him break your heart easier.
He said he wanted to turn one of them into a “jealous, whimpering mess”, but he didn’t say whether that was an end goal or a step in a plan.
After so many years of reading comics by Mr. Willis, I suspect there is a reason all this is happening before we’ve gotten much of Mike’s backstory. The backstory will inform the current day story and vice versa.
Ethan, seriously. This will end in pain and tears and probably Mike finally getting ostracized permanently and while that is good I don’t want you to suffer to prompt it. You can do better, Ethan. You can get a guy who doesn’t record his roommate crying for fun.
As to Mike… Fuck’s sake, man, just buy a copy of The Sims and kill them all off in hilariously inventive cartoon ways like a normal person. It’s easier and less socially damning.
He could always graduate to Crusader Kings 2. The murder is somewhat less personal, maybe, but it’s also far more frequent and inventive. And the Cruelty Potential is just sky-high.
“I thought I was a good person. I was wrong.” —Actual Steam Review
…..Yeah, I suppose I’ve now got a headcanon where Mike secretly plays CK2 when he’s bored or something.
Probably hasn’t played the newest expansion pack yet, though. (Though I think EA’s already patched the ‘athletic wear in winter leads to rapid Sim death’ thing.) Crusader Kings sounds like it would totally work though. Long Lige The Queen, maybe, if he wants the personal touch of raising a single teenage girl to her inevitable gruesome demises and then finally making her a terrifying tyrant.
Surviving it is kind of a low bar. One that can sometimes be or feel really hard to clear all the same, but still. I’ve survived plenty of things that I would have rather just had not happen.
For a long time, that strip was somehow in my computer’s memory over any other strip, so often the easiest way of getting through the site was going to that comic.
So yeah, that’s pretty big in my mind when these two interact.
Also I think there’s one where Mike sees them together and writes it down, or there’s a checklist or something? Either way: THIS CAN ONLY END HORRIBLY.
Forgot about this. I wonder if this is Mike’s convoluted, sociopathic approach to matchmaking. At any rate, I don’t think Danny will be made into “a jealous, whimpering mess”. After all, he has a dapper hat and a ukulele.
The only problem I can see with Mike’s plan here is that I’m pretty sure Danny doesn’t know yet that Ethan and Mike are a thing. Plus I’m not sure if Danny’s the type to get jealous anyway.
Mike’s plan (at this point) seems to hinge on Ethan letting it slip to Danny what he and Mike are doing — which Ethan has so far failed to do, even when he had the opportunity. Also, Danny tends to be a bit oblivious, despite having had some hints (IIRC).
As far as Danny being the laid-back sort — that’s a fairly recent development, along with the ukulele and cool hat.
There’s nothing stopping Mike from just walking up to Danny and telling him except, you know, human decency which is a trait Mike does not possess anyway.
I never really thought Mike was the sort of person anybody should actually have to put up with, but… I’ve been disappointed in myself for forgetting just how awful he can be. I mean, there are quite a lot of comics to drive that point in!
Amber just recently (start of this storyline or so?) described Ethan dating Mike as something Ethan could “survive”. Survive! Yikes!
It’s because Mike fans constantly cherry pick out the like 3 instances where Mike’s abuse could kinda be perceived to have a positive result if you squint past all the pain it caused but ignore every other interaction with anyone he’s ever had where people just get hurt and nobody benefits at all.
It’s really kind of disturbing how we see this playing out in the comments. We know what Mike is like. We’ve been told and shown again and again what Mike is like. Mike has explicitly told us what he’s doing here.
And we still see so many of the comments filled with excuses for him. In this story arc it’s not even so much the usual asshole sage nonsense, but straight up romantic or at least lust. He’s jealous. He likes Ethan. He just wants sex.
It’s like we’re watching an abusive relationship and a lot of the commentators are just right into the role of abuse victims making excuses.
Without even the excuse observers have in the real world of not seeing what’s real going on or being swept up in hormones and emotions like the victims.
It’s a scary but important comparison, and one that I personally don’t really want to fault people for falling into when we’re talking about a webcomic character. Especially since ‘the asshole’ is kind of a common archetype, or at least one I’ve seen plenty of in webcomics.
I really don’t have any experience or significant understanding of abusers myself. But I do know that Mike in specific makes a point of finding ways to refute expectations about him- this recent interaction came to mind, though maybe it’s not the greatest example. The bit with the pajama jeans, maybe? I’m worried that if I put another link in, this post will require moderation.
Anyway, with bits like that, Mike makes you feel bad for trying to write him off as an abuser, and makes it harder to believe others who call him out on his shit. At least, it worked on me like that. Would probably work on me in real life, too >_>
Guys, i dont know what mike is up to but I’d be lying if i said i wasnt hoping for a slipshine. Not because i think theyd make a cute couple but because ive been feeling like the only way we’ll ever see an ethan slipshine is if its with someone he knows..
I mean his stated goal is to sleep with Ethan to turn Danny into a jealous, blubbery mess. But his motivation for doing that is currently up for debate.
Is he jealous that Ethan likes Danny and doesn’t like Mike the same way? Or rather, Ethan didn’t like Mike until Mike put in the effort to deceive and seduce him, with Ethan still being suspicious of him anyway. And thus Mike is mad that his self-defeating friend distrusts him and mopes about never finding any guys to date even though he has been LITERALLY RIGHT THERE the entire time?
Is it that Mike is trying to play matchmaker because he’s naturally meddlesome and likes changing people’s lives in ways he thinks are improvements? …but has a past where direct confrontation bites him or the people he’s helping in the butt, so he’s started to try and subtly manipulate situations and people instead?
Is it that Mike just wants to fuck with them because he’s an established asshole who fucks with people?
All of these are possibilities, and honestly I can even see all of them being true at the same time.
The history told us that Ethan was crushing on Mike when they were 13 or so. It’s hard to do that 5 years down the line after you spend so much time telling yourself not to.
But he didn’t figure out his sexuality until prom night, when Amber and him were in a hotel room. He knew Mike qas awful enough he didn’t want to room with. He needed Amber’s confirmation that messing around with him primarily coz he apparently has amazing abs is OK…
There’s something about Mike’s eyes in the last panel that seem to me like there’s a bit of… authentic longing in there.
I don’t feel like Ethan having sex with Mike would be bound to be bad in the aftermath… Mike has so far been up front about in being just a sexual thing and not emotionally close (although last panel’s face makes me doubt it somehow). So Ethan could know what he’s getting himself into. If he’s still got the old crush on Mike or develops new feelings, he might be lovesick afterwards – so what. Growing up you get a lot of lovesick whether you fucked someone or not. You’ll a) get over it and b) know better concerning what you want from sex and relationships.
Also, even if it’s his first time sex (with a guy)… there isn’t necessarily the need for hollywood’s idea that you need to do it with someone special. First times tend to be awkward.
But it’s up to Ethan. If he’s curious and wants to just experiment what it’s like, i think Mike seems an okay person to do it with.
If he is rather looking for romance, Mike is certainly not a good pick from what we know so far (and at least from Mike claiming he’s not interested).
I want so badly for this to be legit Mike having repressed feelings for Ethan and this is how he’s showing it and not that he’s putting his ridiculous plan of turn Danny into whimpering mess into motion but hey it’s Mike. I can’t read this manboy
Yeah I don’t really buy that Ethan is going to go for it. He’s a lot more aware of Mike Bullshit than he was in SP! and I don’t think he’ll be able to overcome that suspicion that there’s something horrible going on.
I like Mike a lot but I don’t want to see them go ahead with this for the reasons outlined in ‘percent’. That would be a real moral line for me. Sex is not a tool with which to change people’s behaviour.
And that’s putting the good spin on it, that he’s actually trying to change Ethan’s behavior in some kind of positive fashion, rather than just messing with him.
Ugh I can’t remember which comic but a long time ago he decided to seduce Danny or Ethan and since Ethan insisted on Mike staying away from Danny he’d seduce Ethan. UGH
OK I seriously don’t know how the hell I should be feeling about this. Mike seems to be genuinely nice to Ethan here but at the same time, this is Mike we’re talking about so…
I can’t help but think about the relationship between Mike and Amber in Shortpacked! I thought for sure that was gonna burn in flames, but uh…nope. Never did.
The thing between Mike and Amber started with her blackmailing and “controlling” him. That’s what Mike fell for. Someone who can stand up to him and mess with him back,. That relationship was messed up in all sorts of ways, especially at first, but it was still close to equal.
This is Mike playing Ethan for a patsy. There’s nothing there for Mike to fall for.
Doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen at some point in the future, but Ethan would have to change a lot and I don’t think he’s going in that direction. If so, this would be more like that first sex scene where Mike simultaneously seduced Mike and Amber (with Faz’s help, IIRC).
Well, it’s implied Mike set Amber up to find the blackmail material because he knows what he’s like, but yeah. This. Mike is not likely to fall for Ethan.
“Maybe I’m happy being miserable the way I am.” This is literally how I felt while being skeptical of antidepressants that I should’ve taken more regularly.
Yeah, depression does that to ya. And anxiety for that matter.
If someone could release a bug patch for brains, that’d be great right about now, thanks. Or at least make it funny instead of ‘crushing malaise’. I’d take an AC: Unity bug right about now.
I’ve cast my brain problems in a humorous light for a long time now. I mean, it used to be part of the depressive cycle, yeah. But nowadays the humor is part of how I celebrate my progress!
… of course we’re talking about brain problems, so I can’t be 100% sure it isn’t still feeding into the cycle somehow, bleh.
Does anyone here remember the PSAs that used to play during commercial breaks a few years (at least a decade) back, on recognizing the warning signs of depression?
Every single time I saw them, I saw that most (if not all) applied to me. I always said, “But that doesn’t mean anything! Those apply to everybody!” Then one day I was on medication that had a side effect (on me, anyway) of lifting a lot (if not all) of those symptoms. I felt like someone who’d lived under an overcast sky all my life, and who didn’t even know what a sunny day was like — and didn’t know that I didn’t know — and now the sun had come out.
I told a psychiatrist about that, and he told me, “Yeah, clinical depression is like that.” Wow. Shocker. I didn’t know I was depressed because I didn’t know what it’s like NOT to be depressed. Eat your heart out, Alanis Morissette.
“i thought everyone feels this way” is such an unhelpful byproduct of everyone trying to edit their lives for public consumption.
Often we really need the reality check that “no, not everyone feels this way and is just better at coping“ but also “just because i am well at coping doesn’t mean i struggle.“
Visibility is so important for mental health topics!
So your fear is that your family only likes you unhappy and unhealthy?
If they are worth anything at all, they’ll be happy about you getting better. And they’ll adapt to the side effect of your behavior changing a bit. Family works like that.
He’s not! It’s part of his plan to make Danny jealous! Getting laid might be a bonus but his overall intention is to fuck with Danny and Ethan’s relationship.
I think I get this. Mike is a self identified Asshole, but he’s also Ethan’s good friend. Mike isn’t just mean for mean’s sake, he just shines light on, usually, self deceitful behavior. Maybe Danny ends up a simpering mess, but what happens after that? It’s not like Ethan has feelings for Mike, just boners for. Didn’t y’all ever do it with a friend in college, kinda just fer?
I believe that at least 75% of the time when Mike is screwing with someone it is for their own good in some way. In this case i hypothesize he is trying to get Ethan to realize that being a shy gay nerd doesn’t mean being alone forever.
It will inevitably end with Ethan putting more into the relationship then intended and getting his heart broken but it should also open him up a bit more
Yeah, Mike is helping people in his own twisted and highly unrecommended way. And that’s the easiest way to see what he’s doing with Ethan. Still I have my doubts (and what if it ends with Mike getting his own heart broken, revealing his personhood? That would be progress.)
At this point, i’m pretty sure that Ethan broke Mike’s heart in high school when he went to prom with Amber instead. I feel like 95% of Mike’s being-an-asshole interactions are: person X is lying to themself and that lie causes them to neglect other people so I’m gonna be an asshole in ways that highlight the lie. That’s a really specific MO, and i have a feeling it’s motivated by specific events that will be revealed over the course of this story arc.
He’s playing him. He literally explicitly stated that this is what he was going to do as part of a scheme to hurt Danny. Why is everyone so confused about Mike’s motives when he has never been at all subtle about the fact that they are “to be an asshole.” It’s not that deep y’all stop looking for the bad boys hidden depths sometimes people are just bad people.
^ Thank you. Unless you drastically misinterpret half of what comes out of Mike’s mouth and what he does, there’s no way that the “He’s helping people” motivation makes sense for him
I mean Mike has stated before that even he sometimes needs to blow off steam and in Shortpacked it is shown that sex is a desire he has.
I still doubt that he is capable of caring for or loving anyone (at least in a way that isn’t in some way emotionally abusive)… but I think he totally does still like sleeping around.
Kind of like Joe…but at least Joe isn’t also plotting for his lovers downfall mid-orgasm.
Mike isn’t incapable of non-abusively caring for people – pretty sure Amber and Donna are evidence of that – but here, he chooses not to, which honestly I think makes him worse in that regard.
“Well, sure, I could be sucking a dozen dicks, but I hear Joyce is going to get to suck like a billion dicks, so I’m still not going to be that far ahead.”
Broad-strokes-wise, character personalities and backstories remain consistent across both universes (kind of like how sexualities remain the same) – Joyce was still a cheerful Christian fundamentalist, Dina still loved dinosaurs, Joe was still a horndog with divorced parents and who didn’t want to get tied down, etc. – so while this isn’t literally the same Mike (as in, this Mike won’t portal over to become the other universe’s Mike or vice versa), they’re similar enough to draw plenty of comparisons at the very least.
Yeah, but we’ve seen people with caricature personalities become much less caricature in DoA. And Walkyverse Mike was probably the most caricature-ish of the Shortpack cast. I think people are assuming way too much about Dumbiverse Mike’s motivations based on extrapolation from the Walkyverse version.
But so far there really doesn’t seem to be a plausible motivation for him other than doing it for kicks. For every “helpful” thing he’s done, there’s another where he’s just being a ginormous asshole (making Walky cry to record him, telling Amber she’s destined to become her abuser, passive aggressively trying to undermine Walky and Dorothy’s relationship, and here, trying to seduce Ethan to turn Danny into a “jealous, whimpering mess”.
Him just being a perceptive, suprisingly upfront asshole to whose actions sometimes end up having positive side effects to those he targets would make more sense
Recording Walky crying to use the recording to give him a sense of perspective later. Telling Amber she’s destined to become her abuser so that she doesn’t. Trying to passively agressively undermine Walky and Dorothy’s relationshipship that is predicated on Walky feeling unworthy of Dorothy and Dorothy lying to herself about what’s important to her. Mike seducing Ethan to make Danny jealous enough to not just ignore his feelings for Ethan out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to Amber. And we haven’t even talk about Mike’s relationship with your Mom.
Literally every single one of those things could be accomplished without the gratuitous cruelty that Mike employs. But he goes with cruelty because really the cruelty is the whole point of the exercise and everything else is just an excuse. Also, what’s your justification for him threatening to release compromising pictures of Dorothy to ruin her politically? What’s your justification for him assaulting Joe? What’s your justification for him keeping a list of ways he can exploit people’s emotional vulnerabilities? What’s your justification for him answering Joyce’s phone call from her devout mother with “Hail Satan?”
Mike is a monster and all of the excuses for his behaviour are exhausting and emblematic of our society’s pathological refusal to hold white men accountable for basically any kind of bad behaviour.
The Hail Satan thing did have the side effect of breaking Joyce from her previous freak out into a new one and distracting Carol, both of which were slightly helpful. But really, there were still better ways to do that and it’s only making Carol worse in the long run.
It was also really funny, unlike a lot of Mike’s gags. And gave Walky a moment of awesome.
I’d enjoy Mike more as a character if there was more of that and less of this.
No, the “HAIL SATAN” made her MORE suspicious. It was WALKY who actually calmed her down and bought Joyce time.
Given what Carol believes about homosexuality, there’s absolutely NO way Mike made her LESS concerned about Joyce being corrupted. It probably contributed to her wanting to pull Joyce out of college
Yeah, any distraction he offered was momentary. I did remember Walky actually handling things well, forgot Carol wasn’t just more ‘college is a bad influence’ but also suspected Becky was there.
Walky could actually have effectively defused things from the start, I suspect. And would have done it in a way that didn’t make Carol Fear For Joyce’s Soul.
Adding onto what thejeff said, he has no knowledge of the issues in Dorothy and Walky’s relationship when he tries to undermine it, and he didn’t even point out those issues , he just manipulated Walky to reduce trust in their relationship. And him sticking around in gender studies class specifically to harass Dorothy and Walky seems to be based on his dislike of Walky’s farts, not on any bullshit about problems with the relationship. Bear in mind, this is the DAY after they hooked up.
We’ve had 10 years to draw conclusions on DoA Mike’s character I really don’t think anyone’s jumping the gun by taking him at face value at this point. If Willis wanted to portray him as a complex character with hidden depths it’s kinda too late for me because I just do not care anymore.
To be fair, we’re getting a look at some of those depths, or at least the backstory that made him what he is, in the flashbacks.
I doubt that it’s going to be some huge revelation that everything he’s done is somehow for the best for his targets. Humanizing the bad guys so we understand them better is good storytelling. Doesn’t mean they become good guys.
Snapdragon, as I see it, DOA. Mike is a younger dumber less experienced version of Mike, not as good at what he does, but as we’ve seen in the flashbacks, even junior-high Mike was pretty formidable.
DOA Mike not JUST inexperienced or bad at what he does. He’s far less mature, his motives are worse, and most of all he lives in a far more realistic universe. IW! Mike was probably a shitty edgelord as a teenager too, but I don’t think DoA!Mike will grow up to be like him. He’s not going to have super powers or become a force of nature.
He could become more like the other Mike on a moral level, but simply getting better at what he does won’t cut it. In DoA’s far less cartoonish universe, if you drop a piano on someone, they’re going to be more than just bruised and angry, they’re going to be seriously injured. If you ship a person to the Amazon, there’s going to be a lawsuit and probably criminal charges. If you manipulate people and use their insecurities to do so, you’re a piece of shit, even if you’re trying to help them. Even if you succeed, because that wouldn’t give you the right to treat people – who didn’t even ask for your “help” – the way Mike does.
This Mike is going to have to learn to respect people’s boundaries at some point, because this universe has far more realistic limits to what he can get away with and still have friends who aren’t as awful as he is
* Mike gets his dick sucked
* Ethan gets to practice sucking dick until he knows he’s doing good
If we ignore emotions and that Ethan can’t even work out if Mike’s his friend, and the fact that Mike has an interest in driving Ethan/Danny incoherent with jealousy – everybody wins?
Also, what if his end goal is Amber? (I liked them in the Shortpacked universe…)
* He seemed to be trying to genuinely help her in the flashbacks
* He wanted her company (going with Ethan to try to persuade her to go hang out, bringing a crowbar to help, and looked pissed when she was ignoring them for electronic gadgets)
* He is targeting both her exes here (I mean, it’s not good logic, but if his goal is to make them feel bad coz they made her sad there would be something recognisable as logic in place with this…)
* He SO knows who Amazigirl is, and his response to her tackling and pinning him… *cough*
* In his own special Mike way he tried and succeeded to convince her to go back into the dorm buildings after stabbing Ryan (his methods might have fed into her anxieties, but I don’t know if he knows how dissociative she can be)
I could see it being the case… I don’t necessarily believe it is, and I’m not sure how I would feel about them in this universe, but it might be true, and they could work…
I wouldn’t want to revist Mike/Amber. I feel like they’d wind up in too similar a place. I really only like the redos if they are different enough that it feels like new territory (Jason/Sal felt completely different because of the student/teacher dynamic).
I think Willis said that he’s not going to revisit the ‘biggest’ canon relationships in the Walkyverse… Danny/Billie, Joyce/Walky, Leslie/Robin etc, so Mike/Amber isn’t happening.
I wonder what he’ll do with Malaya/Ultra Car though.
Oh look, Mike wasn’t being nice he was just manipulating Ethan for his own ends. What a shocking departure from literally every interaction he’s ever had with anyone.
I mean, except the flashback comics, unless you can make out a way in which it benefitted him being physically thrown out of a class room by a teacher, who he confronted about Amber’s grades. I can#t.
Pretty unrelated to your comment but this made me remember. When we were in high school, this one girl I’m friendly acquaintances with had a rumor about her which said she had performed oral sex on… several girls, i forgot the exact number but probably something between 5 and 20, on a parking lot.
She took it with pride, maybe because it was too absurd to take seriously, but still, I wondered about the mechanics of it
Mike is not a bad person. He’s an asshole, but he’s not a bad person. I also think he grew a soft spot for Ethan and Amber when they were teenagers and cares about them both a great deal.
No, Mike is a bad person. He’s just not always a bad person for the sake of being a bad person.
People are complicated sometimes. They have contradictions. But, Mike, in general, practices cruelty for its own sake. That there are exceptions doesn’t eliminate the majority time.
Ethan can do much better than Mike. Alone would be better than Mike.
I really don’t understand how asshole is not a subtype of bad person. It involves not treating people they way they would like, and upsetting them instead. How is that a neutral trait?
Because upsetting people doesn’t always mean making their lives worse in major ways in the long run. Assholes -can- be bad people, but they don’t have to be. Mike seems to people in a way that shakes their world a bit but doesn’t contribute to their longterm suffering. I think we’d need more damning evidence to demonstrate that he is a genuinely bad person.
Thought experiment: you buy food at a restaurant. In one scenario you tell the server “thank you!” In another, you tell them “you sure are ugly to work with the public!” In both cases, it happens they forget about it pretty soon. Does it then really have no bearing on whether you are a good or bad person?
Because that sort of answer feels like something from the twilight zone to me. Mike makes people around him miserable. He lied to his roommate and taped him crying. Just because Walky isn’t going to suffer long-term from that, doesn’t mean it isn’t genuinely bad. Cruelty is always bad, it’s only a question of degrees.
It’s an interesting definition of asshole that doesn’t count as bad person.
I suppose you could be an asshole and make up for it in other ways. To riff off 3oranges example, tell the server they’re ugly, but leave a really huge tip.
Of course, there’s no reason to think Mike does so.
What defines a “bad person”?
I sort of dislike labels like that because it implies people are unchangeable and act alike in all situations and with all persons.
Blaine is an abusive controlling asshole and we know that he enjoys to see Amber suffering and intends to hurt her more. So I wouldn’t object in everyday life if someone called him a bad person, even though I’d prefer to be more specific.
Mike, he is a guy that goes out of his way to provoke people, no matter if they trust him or not, to make them feel bad about themselves. We know he likes to plot. His enjoyment is hard to see (even if he’s doing everybody’s mom for a nickel, you don’t get the impression he’s enjoying himself, do you?
I don’t know what the words “bad person” say about him.
I wouldn’t want him in my life for sure, but people don’t need to be bad persons for me not to want them in my life. It’s much easier to decide not to interact with people if you don’t drag in “good” and “bad” as total value character descriptions for either them or yourself.
As you say, he goes out of his way to make people feel bad about themselves. Particularly vulnerable people or people in vulnerable moments.
Feel free not to use the label if you like, or to substitute a more specific one, but we’re dealing with D.S’s claim that he’s not a bad person. I really wouldn’t want to try to argue he isn’t.
This is fair, there’s definitely a lot lost in trying to reduce people to ‘good’ and ‘bad’. And people improving is one of the biggest themes of the whole comic, and probably what I love the most about it!
But there’s advantages to keeping things simple too, so I hesitate to fault people for using labels like that too. This isn’t something Mike does, but some people will try to guilt you for reacting to them defensively or negatively, on the basis that they aren’t ‘completely’ bad. They’ll argue that you have to tolerate their presence with arguments that boil down to that they aren’t entirely bad people. And I don’t know if everyone should have to form full, coherent justifications for reacting like that to people that they have unhealthy interactions with.
Personally I’m with you, and I prefer to fully understand people whenever possible. But I know a couple people over whom I’ve given myself a lot of undue anxiety, because I’ve tried too hard to be fair and balanced towards them. Personal issue, tied in with how my brain works, but I don’t think it’s a perspective unique to me.
And of course you weren’t arguing that at all, CJ, but I guess I felt it was worth pointing out.
Yes, some people will argue with you, that they are not “all bad” to manipulate you to let them hurt you further.
It doesn’t matter if they are “bad” or not. You always have the right to draw the line even if there is no reason anyone else can see. It’s your life.
Hm, this is what both Billie’s ex and Raidah are doing, btw: they decided they don’t want someone in their lives because they are bad, toxic was the word Billie’s ex used. And this is what makes their behavior aggressive and unfair (Raidah more so because she goes out of her way to tell total strangers Sarah’s a bad person.)
I have not dispute at all with Raidah no longer wanting to be around Sarah, but with Raidah bullying and badmouthing Sarah.
this is my very first comment on DOA, made to support this theory. Mike can dress it up as a scheme all he wants but deep down he’s into it for Ethan’s sake.
To be frank (or maybe Hawkeye, as I wouldn’t want to be Frank Burns), Mike Warner being sensible and kind is far more disturbing than Mike Warner being a total dick.
So this is genuinely to help Ethan while ALSO guiding him into his attack on Danny to try to make him jealous. Certainly an interesting tactic for one such as Mike. I’m interested to see where this goes because we knew Mike’s kindness to him BEFORE was manipulative by destroying all the Tranformer chumps online for Ethan, and this does still have threads of that to it in that it leads into making Danny jealous, but me wonders if he is still thinking about that right now in the moment.
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WHAT A BIRTHDAY TEASE
there’d BETTER be a Slipshine comin’
Oh, someone will be comin’, that’s for damn sure.
OH HI SAME BIRTHDAY
(and same reaction)
Happy birthday both of you!
thanks, council of horses!
Ana and toby Birthday Double-Feature! Yeah, happy birthday to you both!
And toby, would this be too random a time to mention that your Thunder Over Eden comic is pretty cool? I’m not familiar with the story it’s adapted from (did I get that right?), but I do really like the art!
aaa gosh thank you on both counts! (It’s adapted from a novel manuscript by my friend, so don’t feel weird about not knowing the original!)
May the candles on your cakes
Burn like cities in your wakes!
I always preferred
May the cities in your wake,
Burn like candles on your cake!
Happy birthday!
That’s it Ethan.
Go be with… Bumblebee.
The transformer or the RWBY ship?
I am kidding, he is a transformer nerd.
I thought it was a Gladiator reference…
I like my m/m ships like the next guy, but nO
I mean its not like they’re actually gonna start dating. Like he said, casual.
Even casual involvement with Mike seems like a giant mistake.
A real learning experience.
Joke’s on you, Mike! You and Ethan haven’t known each other for ‘forever’, and the audience knows it!
*Inception Horn Blares in the Middle-Distance*
Due to sliding timelines and alternate universes, they have known each other for decades.
“BUT I DON”T KNOW IF RIGHTIE IS GAY!”
Unfortunately he doesn’t KNOW any guys who’re into guys that he’s known forever.
* That wouldn’t be a terrible idea to bang anyways.
That clarification makes all the difference.
Amen.
… what. Mike. What in hell are you trying to do?
Get a blowjay.
In part, it seems, get his dick sucked.
Ethan. Clearly.
Later on in the Walkyverse, before he hooked up with Amber and mellowed out somewhat, he was fond of breaking people out of ruts by putting them through shitty situations that forced them to reassess and change.
I think he’s trying to make Ethan get way too into him to break him out of, well, what he described in the last page. Ethan just figured out he was gay like, last year. His self pitying nonsense about never being able to find a partner is pretty over the top.
Has everyone forgotten this strip?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/percent/
Oh, I remember it, I just have no idea how this factors into mike’s plan. Danny isn’t the “wishy washy twerp” that Mike said he was before, and I’d be surprised that Mike thinks that hooking up with Ethan will turn Danny into a whimpering mess
Mike’s an idiot misanthrope who assumes the worst of everyone regardless of evidence to the contrary.
I had forgotten that strip, and was a little horrified about that until I realized it was from _two years ago_.
… exactly two years ago, yesterday. How interesting.
You know, rereading this and the strip before it I would say that first Mike is genuinely weirded out by Ethan’s morbid curiosity/fixation about his own self failings and then immediately after that…. if I didn’t know any better I’d say Mike is kind of hurt that Ethan said he’s only 50% sure that they’re friends.
In addition to get a BJ, set Ethan up for future manipulation, and mess with Danny, there’s also the possibility of him sending a picture to Naomi.
I know it’s terrible, but I would laugh hysterically if he did indeed send an explicit picture to Naomi. It would be completely in character for him—he *did* answer Joyce’s phone with “Hail Satan!” when Carol called, after all.
Jeez, I don’t think Mike would stoop that low. Knowing Naomi, sending a picture might actually get Ethan pulled from the school and get removed from the cast, or at least lead to a very, very, very messy outcome.
It might lead to a confrontation where Ethan finally stands up to her. This is something Mike may want. I know I do.
Spite boners, activaaate
Woah.
I know they’ve kissed and shit.
But WOAH.
I really don’t know how I feel about this.
Yay!
Alright, here is the catch, I knew Mike couldn’t be doing this entirely to help Ethan. There may be some small sliver of desire to help Ethan but it is buried underneath “Mike bullshit” as usual. At least hell hasn’t had to close the roads due to ice.
Mike was always fond of helping people through a … very generous definition of “tough love”.
That, and a small streak of masochism (occasionally he’d piss people off just to get beaten up).
Hence the super creepy smile when Amber punched him?
I don’t think that was masochism? I think that was… pride, maybe, that Amber was finally putting her foot down and taking no shit. Definitely positive feelings towards Amber, I think, not just “I got hit and that turns me on”.
Hell, maybe even being turned on by the gesture of strength from Amber.
Sucking A Dozen Dicks: Dumbing of Age Book 7
I know it won’t be so, but I wish it would be anyway.
If DOA were a TV series, I can see the transitional graphic right in the midst of the conversation….”A Dozen Dicks Later…..” (complete with a lilting,Brady Bunch-esque motif fluttering in the background).
Get. It.
I am excited.
Hm. I can see this going several ways.
A) Mike is trying to worm his way into Ethan’s heart via his own manipulative methods.
B) He is trying to set Ethan up for a fall.
C) Mike is genuinely trying to help his friend but going about it ALL the wrong way.
Personally I am a fan of option A myself.
Manipulative? If that’s what he actually wants, he just said it outright.
Double-reverse psychology! That sly bastard!
No, he didn’t; “heart” and “pants” are two different things.
A, B and C are not incompatible.
Mike wants to get laid
Mike’s been getting laid–or, okay, at least got laid once that I can remember–so if it’s that, it seems like there’s also some element of “by Ethan” with it.
Perhaps some element of “seduce Ethan to make Danny a jealous whimpering mess”, like he told us.
And it looks like the previous time he got laid was set up – conveniently timed to be seen by Ethan leaving the room to plant the seeds for this.
Could it be all three?
He’s already told us. Mike is being honest here.
and Mike is Being honest here.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/percent/
This might be the first MIke scheme I 100% approve.
Mike teaches Ethan how to Gay.
Ethan gets Laid repeatedly with a hot guy
Danny and Ethan have to stop sacrificing their feelings.
Amber gets to fulfill a slash fantasy of hers.
and maybe one day we will get an Amber / Danny/ Ethan slipshine .
We should have come home in pairs
Instead we have single-hand affairs
– Sondre Lerche, ‘Single-Hand Affairs’
Ok consider my past Hypothesis wrong, I no longer know what the hell Mike’s deal is. Either he genuinely wants a relationship with Ethan or he is going to do something freaking horrible.
Or he just wants to get his dick sucked.
I believe that he is trying the break Ethan out of his self pity rut.
Making Danny miserable via jealousy. He literally told us.
And you believe Mike?
It was an aside to the audience, closest thing to a thought bubble we usually get around here, so yeah.
Beyond that, believe the asshole when he tells you he’s an asshole. Making up less nasty motivations to excuse him just lets him break your heart easier.
He was talking to himself at the time, so the probability that he was lying is lower than usually.
yup i do.
He said he wanted to turn one of them into a “jealous, whimpering mess”, but he didn’t say whether that was an end goal or a step in a plan.
After so many years of reading comics by Mr. Willis, I suspect there is a reason all this is happening before we’ve gotten much of Mike’s backstory. The backstory will inform the current day story and vice versa.
Ethan, seriously. This will end in pain and tears and probably Mike finally getting ostracized permanently and while that is good I don’t want you to suffer to prompt it. You can do better, Ethan. You can get a guy who doesn’t record his roommate crying for fun.
As to Mike… Fuck’s sake, man, just buy a copy of The Sims and kill them all off in hilariously inventive cartoon ways like a normal person. It’s easier and less socially damning.
He’s done too much of that.
He could always graduate to Crusader Kings 2. The murder is somewhat less personal, maybe, but it’s also far more frequent and inventive. And the Cruelty Potential is just sky-high.
“I thought I was a good person. I was wrong.” —Actual Steam Review
…..Yeah, I suppose I’ve now got a headcanon where Mike secretly plays CK2 when he’s bored or something.
Probably hasn’t played the newest expansion pack yet, though. (Though I think EA’s already patched the ‘athletic wear in winter leads to rapid Sim death’ thing.) Crusader Kings sounds like it would totally work though. Long Lige The Queen, maybe, if he wants the personal touch of raising a single teenage girl to her inevitable gruesome demises and then finally making her a terrifying tyrant.
Suck more wieners than a hot dog factory.
Mike…?
…left hand…?
Mike’s Left Hand…?
Well, now I’ve got memories flooding back.
Casual sex can still mess you up*
I hope whatever happens that Ethan comes through it okay.
*Nothing against casual sex itself, but Ethan doesn’t seem that into it at the moment, which makes for a bad combination.
As amber said. “He’s bad for you… but you can survive someone who is bad for you”
Surviving it is kind of a low bar. One that can sometimes be or feel really hard to clear all the same, but still. I’ve survived plenty of things that I would have rather just had not happen.
I think turning Ethan into someone confident, happy, and entirely TOO GOOD for Danny is it’s own reward. Getting laid in the process is a nice bonus.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/percent/
This seems like a good place to leave this.
For a long time, that strip was somehow in my computer’s memory over any other strip, so often the easiest way of getting through the site was going to that comic.
So yeah, that’s pretty big in my mind when these two interact.
Huh. That was two years ago, almost exactly.
Also I think there’s one where Mike sees them together and writes it down, or there’s a checklist or something? Either way: THIS CAN ONLY END HORRIBLY.
Strip right before it
Oh right I forgot Mike keeps a comprehensive catalogue of people’s emotional vulnerabilities. But he’s totally well intentioned guys!
Forgot about this. I wonder if this is Mike’s convoluted, sociopathic approach to matchmaking. At any rate, I don’t think Danny will be made into “a jealous, whimpering mess”. After all, he has a dapper hat and a ukulele.
Yeah, Mike wasn’t prepared for the hat.
And Sal.
Jealousy plots are always bad so even if that’s his intention fuck him regardless.
Ah Hell, this was foreshadowed.
The only problem I can see with Mike’s plan here is that I’m pretty sure Danny doesn’t know yet that Ethan and Mike are a thing. Plus I’m not sure if Danny’s the type to get jealous anyway.
Mike’s plan (at this point) seems to hinge on Ethan letting it slip to Danny what he and Mike are doing — which Ethan has so far failed to do, even when he had the opportunity. Also, Danny tends to be a bit oblivious, despite having had some hints (IIRC).
As far as Danny being the laid-back sort — that’s a fairly recent development, along with the ukulele and cool hat.
There’s nothing stopping Mike from just walking up to Danny and telling him except, you know, human decency which is a trait Mike does not possess anyway.
I would be very disappointed in Mike if he didn’t arrange for Danny to walk in on them.
Mike said he told Danny he was banging Dorothy, which was a lie. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/file/
He did tell him that, didn’t he. Or second base, at least. (in the next strip.)
I’m pretty sure Mike will openly brag to Danny.
He already did it once when he pretended to bang Dorothy.
Now he will be classic Mike, doing bad for the sake of ( supposed ) Good.
If Danny gets Jealous and it forces Ethan to go after him, all the better.
I never really thought Mike was the sort of person anybody should actually have to put up with, but… I’ve been disappointed in myself for forgetting just how awful he can be. I mean, there are quite a lot of comics to drive that point in!
Amber just recently (start of this storyline or so?) described Ethan dating Mike as something Ethan could “survive”. Survive! Yikes!
Sadly, that strip made me laugh, while at the same time making me want to kick Mike in the nuts. HARD.
It’s because Mike fans constantly cherry pick out the like 3 instances where Mike’s abuse could kinda be perceived to have a positive result if you squint past all the pain it caused but ignore every other interaction with anyone he’s ever had where people just get hurt and nobody benefits at all.
Though, to be fair, that was as much a lament for herself and Danny as anything.
I have trouble enough surviving the people who are good for me.
Fucking thank you.
It’s really kind of disturbing how we see this playing out in the comments. We know what Mike is like. We’ve been told and shown again and again what Mike is like. Mike has explicitly told us what he’s doing here.
And we still see so many of the comments filled with excuses for him. In this story arc it’s not even so much the usual asshole sage nonsense, but straight up romantic or at least lust. He’s jealous. He likes Ethan. He just wants sex.
It’s like we’re watching an abusive relationship and a lot of the commentators are just right into the role of abuse victims making excuses.
Without even the excuse observers have in the real world of not seeing what’s real going on or being swept up in hormones and emotions like the victims.
It’s a scary but important comparison, and one that I personally don’t really want to fault people for falling into when we’re talking about a webcomic character. Especially since ‘the asshole’ is kind of a common archetype, or at least one I’ve seen plenty of in webcomics.
I really don’t have any experience or significant understanding of abusers myself. But I do know that Mike in specific makes a point of finding ways to refute expectations about him- this recent interaction came to mind, though maybe it’s not the greatest example. The bit with the pajama jeans, maybe? I’m worried that if I put another link in, this post will require moderation.
Anyway, with bits like that, Mike makes you feel bad for trying to write him off as an abuser, and makes it harder to believe others who call him out on his shit. At least, it worked on me like that. Would probably work on me in real life, too >_>
Guys, i dont know what mike is up to but I’d be lying if i said i wasnt hoping for a slipshine. Not because i think theyd make a cute couple but because ive been feeling like the only way we’ll ever see an ethan slipshine is if its with someone he knows..
oh hey it’s my birthday! time for some SUSPENSE
Happy birthday!
Wait…
…does Mike actually want to be with Ethan, it’s just that his asshole persona is making it impossible to admit that even to himself?
I mean his stated goal is to sleep with Ethan to turn Danny into a jealous, blubbery mess. But his motivation for doing that is currently up for debate.
Is he jealous that Ethan likes Danny and doesn’t like Mike the same way? Or rather, Ethan didn’t like Mike until Mike put in the effort to deceive and seduce him, with Ethan still being suspicious of him anyway. And thus Mike is mad that his self-defeating friend distrusts him and mopes about never finding any guys to date even though he has been LITERALLY RIGHT THERE the entire time?
Is it that Mike is trying to play matchmaker because he’s naturally meddlesome and likes changing people’s lives in ways he thinks are improvements? …but has a past where direct confrontation bites him or the people he’s helping in the butt, so he’s started to try and subtly manipulate situations and people instead?
Is it that Mike just wants to fuck with them because he’s an established asshole who fucks with people?
All of these are possibilities, and honestly I can even see all of them being true at the same time.
The history told us that Ethan was crushing on Mike when they were 13 or so. It’s hard to do that 5 years down the line after you spend so much time telling yourself not to.
But he didn’t figure out his sexuality until prom night, when Amber and him were in a hotel room. He knew Mike qas awful enough he didn’t want to room with. He needed Amber’s confirmation that messing around with him primarily coz he apparently has amazing abs is OK…
There’s something about Mike’s eyes in the last panel that seem to me like there’s a bit of… authentic longing in there.
I don’t feel like Ethan having sex with Mike would be bound to be bad in the aftermath… Mike has so far been up front about in being just a sexual thing and not emotionally close (although last panel’s face makes me doubt it somehow). So Ethan could know what he’s getting himself into. If he’s still got the old crush on Mike or develops new feelings, he might be lovesick afterwards – so what. Growing up you get a lot of lovesick whether you fucked someone or not. You’ll a) get over it and b) know better concerning what you want from sex and relationships.
Also, even if it’s his first time sex (with a guy)… there isn’t necessarily the need for hollywood’s idea that you need to do it with someone special. First times tend to be awkward.
But it’s up to Ethan. If he’s curious and wants to just experiment what it’s like, i think Mike seems an okay person to do it with.
If he is rather looking for romance, Mike is certainly not a good pick from what we know so far (and at least from Mike claiming he’s not interested).
Mike’s eyes express less emotion than a shark’s.
OH THE DRAMA!!
I want so badly for this to be legit Mike having repressed feelings for Ethan and this is how he’s showing it and not that he’s putting his ridiculous plan of turn Danny into whimpering mess into motion but hey it’s Mike. I can’t read this manboy
Also I absolutely love Ethan’s expression in the final panel lol
Looks like the Ethan fans finally get that Slipshine.
No… willis could still turn the tables.
Yeah I don’t really buy that Ethan is going to go for it. He’s a lot more aware of Mike Bullshit than he was in SP! and I don’t think he’ll be able to overcome that suspicion that there’s something horrible going on.
I like Mike a lot but I don’t want to see them go ahead with this for the reasons outlined in ‘percent’. That would be a real moral line for me. Sex is not a tool with which to change people’s behaviour.
And that’s putting the good spin on it, that he’s actually trying to change Ethan’s behavior in some kind of positive fashion, rather than just messing with him.
That all may be true but I think you’re under estimating one key factor….. just how desperate is Ethan though?
Think of it like collecting Transformers, but instead of robots becoming vehicles and/or animals, it’s dicks becoming longer dicks.
And I mean shit, it’s cheaper!
GOD DAMN IT MIKE
Ugh I can’t remember which comic but a long time ago he decided to seduce Danny or Ethan and since Ethan insisted on Mike staying away from Danny he’d seduce Ethan. UGH
It’s posted by BBCC upthread.
OK I seriously don’t know how the hell I should be feeling about this. Mike seems to be genuinely nice to Ethan here but at the same time, this is Mike we’re talking about so…
I can’t help but think about the relationship between Mike and Amber in Shortpacked! I thought for sure that was gonna burn in flames, but uh…nope. Never did.
Omigod! This is the first thing anyone has written that gave me hope. I would love to see these two end up together, for some reason.
Not going to happen.
The thing between Mike and Amber started with her blackmailing and “controlling” him. That’s what Mike fell for. Someone who can stand up to him and mess with him back,. That relationship was messed up in all sorts of ways, especially at first, but it was still close to equal.
This is Mike playing Ethan for a patsy. There’s nothing there for Mike to fall for.
Doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen at some point in the future, but Ethan would have to change a lot and I don’t think he’s going in that direction. If so, this would be more like that first sex scene where Mike simultaneously seduced Mike and Amber (with Faz’s help, IIRC).
Well, it’s implied Mike set Amber up to find the blackmail material because he knows what he’s like, but yeah. This. Mike is not likely to fall for Ethan.
“Maybe I’m happy being miserable the way I am.” This is literally how I felt while being skeptical of antidepressants that I should’ve taken more regularly.
“Who am I if I’m not Like This?”– my feelings on that subject
Yeah, depression does that to ya. And anxiety for that matter.
If someone could release a bug patch for brains, that’d be great right about now, thanks. Or at least make it funny instead of ‘crushing malaise’. I’d take an AC: Unity bug right about now.
I’ve cast my brain problems in a humorous light for a long time now. I mean, it used to be part of the depressive cycle, yeah. But nowadays the humor is part of how I celebrate my progress!
… of course we’re talking about brain problems, so I can’t be 100% sure it isn’t still feeding into the cycle somehow, bleh.
Does anyone here remember the PSAs that used to play during commercial breaks a few years (at least a decade) back, on recognizing the warning signs of depression?
Every single time I saw them, I saw that most (if not all) applied to me. I always said, “But that doesn’t mean anything! Those apply to everybody!” Then one day I was on medication that had a side effect (on me, anyway) of lifting a lot (if not all) of those symptoms. I felt like someone who’d lived under an overcast sky all my life, and who didn’t even know what a sunny day was like — and didn’t know that I didn’t know — and now the sun had come out.
I told a psychiatrist about that, and he told me, “Yeah, clinical depression is like that.” Wow. Shocker. I didn’t know I was depressed because I didn’t know what it’s like NOT to be depressed. Eat your heart out, Alanis Morissette.
“i thought everyone feels this way” is such an unhelpful byproduct of everyone trying to edit their lives for public consumption.
Often we really need the reality check that “no, not everyone feels this way and is just better at coping“ but also “just because i am well at coping doesn’t mean i struggle.“
Visibility is so important for mental health topics!
One of my “favorite” intrusive thoughts about my meds is “What if my family doesn’t like who I am while medicated and abandons me”
So your fear is that your family only likes you unhappy and unhealthy?
If they are worth anything at all, they’ll be happy about you getting better. And they’ll adapt to the side effect of your behavior changing a bit. Family works like that.
Brent Fruth, off camera, waiting for cue from Mike.
Wait… wait, wait. What the fuck. Is Mike being… genuine? I was not prepared for this!
ME NEITHER HOLY SHIT
er, I mean. *takes a minute to collect themself* …no I totally meant that.
He’s not! It’s part of his plan to make Danny jealous! Getting laid might be a bonus but his overall intention is to fuck with Danny and Ethan’s relationship.
I think I get this. Mike is a self identified Asshole, but he’s also Ethan’s good friend. Mike isn’t just mean for mean’s sake, he just shines light on, usually, self deceitful behavior. Maybe Danny ends up a simpering mess, but what happens after that? It’s not like Ethan has feelings for Mike, just boners for. Didn’t y’all ever do it with a friend in college, kinda just fer?
Man I don’t even know what to think with Mike anymore. Is he for real or is he playing Ethan? Or is it a bit of both? Aargh, (table flip emoji).
Super anime, he’s fucking with Ethan but then really falls in love, but doesn’t say it before they break up.
Weird enough to actually happen.
Last panel Mike should have Anime eyes.
I believe that at least 75% of the time when Mike is screwing with someone it is for their own good in some way. In this case i hypothesize he is trying to get Ethan to realize that being a shy gay nerd doesn’t mean being alone forever.
It will inevitably end with Ethan putting more into the relationship then intended and getting his heart broken but it should also open him up a bit more
Yeah, Mike is helping people in his own twisted and highly unrecommended way. And that’s the easiest way to see what he’s doing with Ethan. Still I have my doubts (and what if it ends with Mike getting his own heart broken, revealing his personhood? That would be progress.)
At this point, i’m pretty sure that Ethan broke Mike’s heart in high school when he went to prom with Amber instead. I feel like 95% of Mike’s being-an-asshole interactions are: person X is lying to themself and that lie causes them to neglect other people so I’m gonna be an asshole in ways that highlight the lie. That’s a really specific MO, and i have a feeling it’s motivated by specific events that will be revealed over the course of this story arc.
That’s a good theory.
I like how you think!
He’s playing him. He literally explicitly stated that this is what he was going to do as part of a scheme to hurt Danny. Why is everyone so confused about Mike’s motives when he has never been at all subtle about the fact that they are “to be an asshole.” It’s not that deep y’all stop looking for the bad boys hidden depths sometimes people are just bad people.
^ Thank you. Unless you drastically misinterpret half of what comes out of Mike’s mouth and what he does, there’s no way that the “He’s helping people” motivation makes sense for him
Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope
(this does not represent the full extent of my nopes, but I wish to be considerate of the comment section)
The comment section thanks you for your consideration.
Mike, your human side is showing.
I can fix you…….with my cock!!!!1!111oneoneone
just let eef have a boyfriend that isnt mike!!!!
we all know he will eventually but whatever might about to happen is going to be rough
Mike’s looking a little older lately and I like it.
DOOOOOOOOOINK
I mean Mike has stated before that even he sometimes needs to blow off steam and in Shortpacked it is shown that sex is a desire he has.
I still doubt that he is capable of caring for or loving anyone (at least in a way that isn’t in some way emotionally abusive)… but I think he totally does still like sleeping around.
Kind of like Joe…but at least Joe isn’t also plotting for his lovers downfall mid-orgasm.
Mike isn’t incapable of non-abusively caring for people – pretty sure Amber and Donna are evidence of that – but here, he chooses not to, which honestly I think makes him worse in that regard.
“Well, sure, I could be sucking a dozen dicks, but I hear Joyce is going to get to suck like a billion dicks, so I’m still not going to be that far ahead.”
Nice to know I’m not the only one who got a callback to that one.
(PS Willis, would there be any reason my comments from this computer disappear? Are they in moderation?)
(Okay, now it shows up right away. Cancel that.)
Who the fuck left hands it?
Probably left-handed people.
Yup.
Sinister people.
So, this is Mike’s endgame? This was all about trying to program Ethan to be more promiscuous? Weird guy.
No. This isn’t Mike’s endgame.
I WILL get a Silpshine subscription for this if it happens.
Genuine question – forgive me, I’m a noob –
How do we know this is the same Mike as in the other comic series?
Maybe DoA universe Mike is a different person entirely.
Is there a word from Willis on this?
Broad-strokes-wise, character personalities and backstories remain consistent across both universes (kind of like how sexualities remain the same) – Joyce was still a cheerful Christian fundamentalist, Dina still loved dinosaurs, Joe was still a horndog with divorced parents and who didn’t want to get tied down, etc. – so while this isn’t literally the same Mike (as in, this Mike won’t portal over to become the other universe’s Mike or vice versa), they’re similar enough to draw plenty of comparisons at the very least.
Yeah, but we’ve seen people with caricature personalities become much less caricature in DoA. And Walkyverse Mike was probably the most caricature-ish of the Shortpack cast. I think people are assuming way too much about Dumbiverse Mike’s motivations based on extrapolation from the Walkyverse version.
But so far there really doesn’t seem to be a plausible motivation for him other than doing it for kicks. For every “helpful” thing he’s done, there’s another where he’s just being a ginormous asshole (making Walky cry to record him, telling Amber she’s destined to become her abuser, passive aggressively trying to undermine Walky and Dorothy’s relationship, and here, trying to seduce Ethan to turn Danny into a “jealous, whimpering mess”.
Him just being a perceptive, suprisingly upfront asshole to whose actions sometimes end up having positive side effects to those he targets would make more sense
Recording Walky crying to use the recording to give him a sense of perspective later. Telling Amber she’s destined to become her abuser so that she doesn’t. Trying to passively agressively undermine Walky and Dorothy’s relationshipship that is predicated on Walky feeling unworthy of Dorothy and Dorothy lying to herself about what’s important to her. Mike seducing Ethan to make Danny jealous enough to not just ignore his feelings for Ethan out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to Amber. And we haven’t even talk about Mike’s relationship with your Mom.
Literally every single one of those things could be accomplished without the gratuitous cruelty that Mike employs. But he goes with cruelty because really the cruelty is the whole point of the exercise and everything else is just an excuse. Also, what’s your justification for him threatening to release compromising pictures of Dorothy to ruin her politically? What’s your justification for him assaulting Joe? What’s your justification for him keeping a list of ways he can exploit people’s emotional vulnerabilities? What’s your justification for him answering Joyce’s phone call from her devout mother with “Hail Satan?”
Mike is a monster and all of the excuses for his behaviour are exhausting and emblematic of our society’s pathological refusal to hold white men accountable for basically any kind of bad behaviour.
The Hail Satan thing did have the side effect of breaking Joyce from her previous freak out into a new one and distracting Carol, both of which were slightly helpful. But really, there were still better ways to do that and it’s only making Carol worse in the long run.
It was also really funny, unlike a lot of Mike’s gags. And gave Walky a moment of awesome.
I’d enjoy Mike more as a character if there was more of that and less of this.
No, the “HAIL SATAN” made her MORE suspicious. It was WALKY who actually calmed her down and bought Joyce time.
Given what Carol believes about homosexuality, there’s absolutely NO way Mike made her LESS concerned about Joyce being corrupted. It probably contributed to her wanting to pull Joyce out of college
Yeah, any distraction he offered was momentary. I did remember Walky actually handling things well, forgot Carol wasn’t just more ‘college is a bad influence’ but also suspected Becky was there.
Walky could actually have effectively defused things from the start, I suspect. And would have done it in a way that didn’t make Carol Fear For Joyce’s Soul.
And you’re making up all of those motivations.
He didn’t even play that recording to Walky, but to Joyce and Walky’s other friends. That’s not teaching Walky perspective.
Adding onto what thejeff said, he has no knowledge of the issues in Dorothy and Walky’s relationship when he tries to undermine it, and he didn’t even point out those issues , he just manipulated Walky to reduce trust in their relationship. And him sticking around in gender studies class specifically to harass Dorothy and Walky seems to be based on his dislike of Walky’s farts, not on any bullshit about problems with the relationship. Bear in mind, this is the DAY after they hooked up.
We’ve had 10 years to draw conclusions on DoA Mike’s character I really don’t think anyone’s jumping the gun by taking him at face value at this point. If Willis wanted to portray him as a complex character with hidden depths it’s kinda too late for me because I just do not care anymore.
To be fair, we’re getting a look at some of those depths, or at least the backstory that made him what he is, in the flashbacks.
I doubt that it’s going to be some huge revelation that everything he’s done is somehow for the best for his targets. Humanizing the bad guys so we understand them better is good storytelling. Doesn’t mean they become good guys.
Snapdragon, as I see it, DOA. Mike is a younger dumber less experienced version of Mike, not as good at what he does, but as we’ve seen in the flashbacks, even junior-high Mike was pretty formidable.
DOA Mike not JUST inexperienced or bad at what he does. He’s far less mature, his motives are worse, and most of all he lives in a far more realistic universe. IW! Mike was probably a shitty edgelord as a teenager too, but I don’t think DoA!Mike will grow up to be like him. He’s not going to have super powers or become a force of nature.
He could become more like the other Mike on a moral level, but simply getting better at what he does won’t cut it. In DoA’s far less cartoonish universe, if you drop a piano on someone, they’re going to be more than just bruised and angry, they’re going to be seriously injured. If you ship a person to the Amazon, there’s going to be a lawsuit and probably criminal charges. If you manipulate people and use their insecurities to do so, you’re a piece of shit, even if you’re trying to help them. Even if you succeed, because that wouldn’t give you the right to treat people – who didn’t even ask for your “help” – the way Mike does.
This Mike is going to have to learn to respect people’s boundaries at some point, because this universe has far more realistic limits to what he can get away with and still have friends who aren’t as awful as he is
Oh my god….. This is eerily similar to my life
I can’t waaait!!
Or you could could let Ethan go make his own mistakes, but that would be where the ‘dumbing’ fits for you, Mike.
So, does anyone else expect Mike to sacrifice Ethan to get the soul stone now?
Well, NOW I do.
I squee’d.
I’m worried, but I squee’d.
Does that someone happen to have 12 dicks?
* Mike gets his dick sucked
* Ethan gets to practice sucking dick until he knows he’s doing good
If we ignore emotions and that Ethan can’t even work out if Mike’s his friend, and the fact that Mike has an interest in driving Ethan/Danny incoherent with jealousy – everybody wins?
Also, what if his end goal is Amber? (I liked them in the Shortpacked universe…)
* He seemed to be trying to genuinely help her in the flashbacks
* He wanted her company (going with Ethan to try to persuade her to go hang out, bringing a crowbar to help, and looked pissed when she was ignoring them for electronic gadgets)
* He is targeting both her exes here (I mean, it’s not good logic, but if his goal is to make them feel bad coz they made her sad there would be something recognisable as logic in place with this…)
* He SO knows who Amazigirl is, and his response to her tackling and pinning him… *cough*
* In his own special Mike way he tried and succeeded to convince her to go back into the dorm buildings after stabbing Ryan (his methods might have fed into her anxieties, but I don’t know if he knows how dissociative she can be)
I could see it being the case… I don’t necessarily believe it is, and I’m not sure how I would feel about them in this universe, but it might be true, and they could work…
Mike has as many dicks as you don’t want him to.
I wouldn’t want to revist Mike/Amber. I feel like they’d wind up in too similar a place. I really only like the redos if they are different enough that it feels like new territory (Jason/Sal felt completely different because of the student/teacher dynamic).
I think Willis said that he’s not going to revisit the ‘biggest’ canon relationships in the Walkyverse… Danny/Billie, Joyce/Walky, Leslie/Robin etc, so Mike/Amber isn’t happening.
I wonder what he’ll do with Malaya/Ultra Car though.
Oh look, Mike wasn’t being nice he was just manipulating Ethan for his own ends. What a shocking departure from literally every interaction he’s ever had with anyone.
I mean, except the flashback comics, unless you can make out a way in which it benefitted him being physically thrown out of a class room by a teacher, who he confronted about Amber’s grades. I can#t.
Honestly, I’m ignoring the flashbacks because they’re completely disconnected from Mike’s current behaviour of the last 10 years of strips.
I rescind my gratitude to Mike for what he said 5 seconds ago. GET ‘IM!
Long way to go for a “so, do you wanna bone?”, but nice touch.
What a sense of self sacrifice. Or not.
I cannot wait for Ethan to grow from this, and Mike to regret it.
A dozen dicks in a row or at the same time?
Pretty unrelated to your comment but this made me remember. When we were in high school, this one girl I’m friendly acquaintances with had a rumor about her which said she had performed oral sex on… several girls, i forgot the exact number but probably something between 5 and 20, on a parking lot.
She took it with pride, maybe because it was too absurd to take seriously, but still, I wondered about the mechanics of it
Mike could drown a puppy and there are people in this community who would try to tell me it was an evil puppy.
No, it was for the puppy’s own good. He was trying to teach it to swim and how to be tough.
Not his fault the puppy took it the wrong way and drowned instead.
That is a way better way to express my point thank you.
DANGERDANGERDANGERDANGERDANGERDANGERDANGER
Then a spring loaded snake pops out of Mike’s pants.
Someone already ate the peanut brittle?
I’d say this crosses the line of Mike’s version of selflessness.
Yesterday is suddenly making a WHOLE lot more sense…
Yep. Damnit Mike!
And damn you, Willis! Those strips of Mike trying to do right were just setting us up.
Guys…what if Mike like…actually has feelings for Ethan, and this is the only way he knows how to handle them?
Mike is not a bad person. He’s an asshole, but he’s not a bad person. I also think he grew a soft spot for Ethan and Amber when they were teenagers and cares about them both a great deal.
No, Mike is a bad person. He’s just not always a bad person for the sake of being a bad person.
People are complicated sometimes. They have contradictions. But, Mike, in general, practices cruelty for its own sake. That there are exceptions doesn’t eliminate the majority time.
Ethan can do much better than Mike. Alone would be better than Mike.
I really don’t understand how asshole is not a subtype of bad person. It involves not treating people they way they would like, and upsetting them instead. How is that a neutral trait?
Because upsetting people doesn’t always mean making their lives worse in major ways in the long run. Assholes -can- be bad people, but they don’t have to be. Mike seems to people in a way that shakes their world a bit but doesn’t contribute to their longterm suffering. I think we’d need more damning evidence to demonstrate that he is a genuinely bad person.
*seems to treat people
Thought experiment: you buy food at a restaurant. In one scenario you tell the server “thank you!” In another, you tell them “you sure are ugly to work with the public!” In both cases, it happens they forget about it pretty soon. Does it then really have no bearing on whether you are a good or bad person?
Because that sort of answer feels like something from the twilight zone to me. Mike makes people around him miserable. He lied to his roommate and taped him crying. Just because Walky isn’t going to suffer long-term from that, doesn’t mean it isn’t genuinely bad. Cruelty is always bad, it’s only a question of degrees.
It’s an interesting definition of asshole that doesn’t count as bad person.
I suppose you could be an asshole and make up for it in other ways. To riff off 3oranges example, tell the server they’re ugly, but leave a really huge tip.
Of course, there’s no reason to think Mike does so.
What defines a “bad person”?
I sort of dislike labels like that because it implies people are unchangeable and act alike in all situations and with all persons.
Blaine is an abusive controlling asshole and we know that he enjoys to see Amber suffering and intends to hurt her more. So I wouldn’t object in everyday life if someone called him a bad person, even though I’d prefer to be more specific.
Mike, he is a guy that goes out of his way to provoke people, no matter if they trust him or not, to make them feel bad about themselves. We know he likes to plot. His enjoyment is hard to see (even if he’s doing everybody’s mom for a nickel, you don’t get the impression he’s enjoying himself, do you?
I don’t know what the words “bad person” say about him.
I wouldn’t want him in my life for sure, but people don’t need to be bad persons for me not to want them in my life. It’s much easier to decide not to interact with people if you don’t drag in “good” and “bad” as total value character descriptions for either them or yourself.
As you say, he goes out of his way to make people feel bad about themselves. Particularly vulnerable people or people in vulnerable moments.
Feel free not to use the label if you like, or to substitute a more specific one, but we’re dealing with D.S’s claim that he’s not a bad person. I really wouldn’t want to try to argue he isn’t.
This is fair, there’s definitely a lot lost in trying to reduce people to ‘good’ and ‘bad’. And people improving is one of the biggest themes of the whole comic, and probably what I love the most about it!
But there’s advantages to keeping things simple too, so I hesitate to fault people for using labels like that too. This isn’t something Mike does, but some people will try to guilt you for reacting to them defensively or negatively, on the basis that they aren’t ‘completely’ bad. They’ll argue that you have to tolerate their presence with arguments that boil down to that they aren’t entirely bad people. And I don’t know if everyone should have to form full, coherent justifications for reacting like that to people that they have unhealthy interactions with.
Personally I’m with you, and I prefer to fully understand people whenever possible. But I know a couple people over whom I’ve given myself a lot of undue anxiety, because I’ve tried too hard to be fair and balanced towards them. Personal issue, tied in with how my brain works, but I don’t think it’s a perspective unique to me.
And of course you weren’t arguing that at all, CJ, but I guess I felt it was worth pointing out.
Yes, some people will argue with you, that they are not “all bad” to manipulate you to let them hurt you further.
It doesn’t matter if they are “bad” or not. You always have the right to draw the line even if there is no reason anyone else can see. It’s your life.
Hm, this is what both Billie’s ex and Raidah are doing, btw: they decided they don’t want someone in their lives because they are bad, toxic was the word Billie’s ex used. And this is what makes their behavior aggressive and unfair (Raidah more so because she goes out of her way to tell total strangers Sarah’s a bad person.)
I have not dispute at all with Raidah no longer wanting to be around Sarah, but with Raidah bullying and badmouthing Sarah.
hey guys what if mike
just wants to fuck ethan
Silly, this is all part of his plans to take over the world
That’s one theory. But how does http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/percent/ fit into it?
this is my very first comment on DOA, made to support this theory. Mike can dress it up as a scheme all he wants but deep down he’s into it for Ethan’s sake.
I think it’s a twofer. He gets to mess with people AND get off. I wonder if that would create a synergistic effect for him.
To be frank (or maybe Hawkeye, as I wouldn’t want to be Frank Burns), Mike Warner being sensible and kind is far more disturbing than Mike Warner being a total dick.
Animalcrossing_lightbulb-emote.gif
So this is genuinely to help Ethan while ALSO guiding him into his attack on Danny to try to make him jealous. Certainly an interesting tactic for one such as Mike. I’m interested to see where this goes because we knew Mike’s kindness to him BEFORE was manipulative by destroying all the Tranformer chumps online for Ethan, and this does still have threads of that to it in that it leads into making Danny jealous, but me wonders if he is still thinking about that right now in the moment.
Jeez, Mike… just say you want Ethan to suck your dick. Don’t try to frame it as helping him or doing him a favor.
Ethan don’t, it’s a trap!!!!!