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Joyce wasn’t planning on attending a reading of the first draft of Sk8r Grrrl: The Carla Rutten Story, but it looks like she’s gonna have to clear her schedule.
Or like Stage Xanadu, which I mention solely because the protagonist has to get on a Pegasus prop while still in roller skates, and also singing.
(Stage Xanadu apparently also casts some of the muses in drag for some reason, at least in the OBC, so not the best example. But really, Carla riding a Pegasus/flying Ultra Car was too good an image NOT to share.)
Now I want to publish Riveting Tales, the story of wandering rivetter and fabricator of wondrous devices whose aid forever alters the lives of those she comes in contact with.
I’m glad Sal stuck to her no, especially in the face of that charisma adding iguana.
And I’m double glad that Carla’s story isn’t anything you couldn’t find out via googling her parents, so she hasn’t revealed anything personal or private. Carla’s crafty like that.
I don’t even wanna know what reddit has to say about Carla’s parents.
I find with other Trans folks it’s either this or an open book, and often which one you get depends on context. Carla is craftier than most, for sure, though. She may have thought a few more steps ahead than. Well, myself.
I like how Fuckface, while still adorably persuasive, can no longer compel people to do things they don’t want to do (like reveal personal info for Carla or any info at all for Sal).
Yeah, the iguana added so much charisma, everyone with it on their head was too cute to refuse – to an extent, anyways. Like, you could get someone else to cover your shift for you.
Hasn’t learned to not to yet due to adequate consequences to force her to reconsider her actions. Usually people just go ‘eh’ or ‘knock it off >_>’ but not strongly enough to make her actually stop. They shouldn’t have to. But Joyce tends to stay in fixed patterns unless strongly course corrected.
I don’t think Joyce would purposely be so guilt-trippy. Her intentions at heart are good of ‘if I don’t know enough, then tell me a personal experience that could give me better insight’. Her goal is good. Her desire for further insight into other people’s views is good. Her pushing at it is bad. Her demanding of it is bad. Her pressuring people is bad.
Yeah, Joyce has been too fucked by her upbringing to know what they are by default – I really think she’s going to need to suffer serious lasting consequences for crossing them, be told that is explicitly why, and have that prompt another reassessment of her life for her to really understand that what she’s doing is bad, much less why.
Yeah. The concept of boundaries is just.. so antithetical to that worldview. It’s gonna take a while for her to wrap her head around it, and even after she accepts that it’s a healthy concept, it might still feel wrong and uncomfortable for a while.
Homeschooling does Bad Things to your head unless you have some other opportunity to go somewhere else for several hours a day away from your parents and do things other than Be Their Child.
And religious homeschooling in a religion that specifically prioritizes ‘saving your soul’ over people’s actual wishes?* And no possibility of non-religious socialization because that could corrupt a child? With media heavily monitored and banned for such reasons as ‘portraying parents as fallible’? With an emotionally abusive parent, and at least one other abusive parent in the immediate social circle? Yeah. Joyce needs outside intervention to learn what boundaries are, and it’ll probably be years of false starts and backslides and therapy before she starts having or consistently respecting them.
* Actually, one other thing that could prompt Joyce’s Immediate Life Reassessment: her ‘witnessing’ line yesterday suggests some of the same religious framework here. Said religious framework was Toedad’s justification. If Joyce has that spelled out for her, she’ll probably respond SOMEHOW, but it’s not as though Becky had a chance to develop healthy boundaries either and she’s the one in the best position to do so.
Unless the storytime you ask for is something she’s traumatized over. Talking about Ryan was long an example. She does have boundaries, but they’re only for the big things.
And then of course she doesn’t recognize that she might be probing at other people’s traumas.
Pushing, or more accurately, trampling, boundaries is of the essence to fundagelicals. They’re trained to do it, and the higher you rank in the hierarchy the more you get to revel in doing it.
Probably because she’s a sheltered 18 year old kid with a messed up and wildly inadequate upbringing. I doubt she really understands boundaries as a concept, and from what I’ve gleaned about her parents they never really let her have any. (Extremists like them rarely let their kids assert boundaries/independence/grow up.)
Joyce is hardly perfect and can be grating, but I somehow don’t see how she’s somehow worse than anyone else in the cast; everyone has their own flaws. I don’t get the Joyce hate.
“Joyce needs to learn boundaries” is the mildest criticism for a character that I have ever seen. No one here is even saying she’s anywhere near the worst character or worse than anyone else in the cast, but (rightfully) pointing out a flaw of hers that makes people uncomfortable. Even then, there is like.. barely any Joyce hate. Just criticism for her behavior and actions, which people have a right to do.
Did I imagine that there were once days when the comments section WASN’T just people complaining about the characters and classifying any wrongdoing as “this person is awful”? Because I find myself nostalgic for them, but I’m unclear if they actually existed.
(I know, I know. If I don’t like them, I don’t have to to read them. The hypocrisy is not lost on me.)
Yeah, back in the days when the comments section was full of people defending the actual villains. At least until it became impossible, at which point they became implausible strawmen.
Except noone was defending the ACTUAL villians, like Toedad, Ryan, or Blaine(at least nobody worth listening to was). It was mostly Joe and Mike, supporting protagonists with not more or less flaws than anyone else in the cast but are acceptable targets because they happen to be white dudes.
Oh, BULLSHIT. People absolutely defended Toedad. There were a few who defended Blaine too (and a few others who still felt Amber was worse for hitting him) and I recall a handful defending Ryan too. They just eventually, for the most part, ended up in the spam filter.
Second of all, plenty of people defended Joe up until the List was actually leaked and even then a bunch of people were trying to shift it as his private little black book being hacked and even now there’s a few people saying it was blown out of proportion.
Third – Mike? Really? The guy who’s whole schtick is maliciously hurting other people for shits and gigs? That guy is no worse than people who do crappy things but generally try to be decent people? And still has a zillion people defending him as some sort of Asshole Sage?
It’s fuckface. The adorableness of him being on someone’s head adds charisma. It’s an old joke from Shortpacked! Over there it was almost hypnotic. Now it’s just adorably persuasive.
Well, Joyce would be a weird combo to have that power with. She’s kinda got her own Charisma already. It just manifests in a way that doesn’t always clicks the way she wants. It’s how it’s packaged in “Jesus kid,” really.
This is like that scene from Order of the Stick where Haley used the Potion of Glibness and basically gained the power to alter peoples’ reality just by talking, and Sal is the anti-magic zone before the jail cell. I guess in this analogy Sal’s backstory is Haley’s dad? Fuck this got confusing.
Thankfully, the worst that ever comes of it is getting someone to cover someone else’s shit which, so far as we can tell, didn’t disrupt said person’s plans.
Yesterday, I feared the cosmic terror that is FuckFace-Joyce, but today I welcome our inscrutable doom from beyond the stars. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Fuckface J’oyce wgah’nagl fhtagn!
I love Joyce’s finger-wiggle. I wanna call her out for doing something that her family would almost certainly call “satanic” since it evokes spellcasting, but it’s just too cute!
ugh, I second yesterday’s comments that Joyce is still treating Sal like an object, either something to covet or something to entertain herself. Sal’s trauma is not your soap opera drama, Joyce, eff off
Yeah, it’s a bit odd to throw that out there and then shut down. Not saying Sal doesn’t quite obviously have her reasons, but given the fact she is privy to some of Joyce’s most intimate secrets, I can see where Joyce would want to know more about Sal, particularly since Joyce has been so sheltered. Sal’s experiences are quite alien to her.
there’s a difference between “I’d like to know more about you, I would like to get to know you” and “storytime!”
Joyce is treating Sal like entertainment and Sal reacts accordingly
Joyce makes it into a power struggle here. She wants Sal to be her entertainment bad girl turned good story, and Sal doesn’t want to be. (Or anyone’s whatever story ever).
Telling life stories is something that can be relieving for the teller and enlightening for the listener, but only if a) the teller wants to tell someone b) the listener actually listens with an open heart and is strong enough to deal with the shit that will come.
I’m doubt if Joyce is strong enough to listen to Sal’s story.
But her church probably had (unspoken) rules about what to tell that made it all into lying in telling and listening.
It opens the door to a tactful and sensitive effort to get to know her better within the limits of her comfort zone it doesn’t open the door to trying to obnoxiously bludgeon personal information out of her.
I’d think that the door would be open to ‘okay, so is there anything you’d like to tell me?’ which puts the ball in her corner, but demanding ‘story time’ is …not that.
While I admit that Joyce isn’t always my favorite character, so I find myself biased somewhat against her, she’s just driven Sal out of her own room because she didn’t want to respect her privacy.
Please tell me this will be an eye opening moment for her. The woman needs to learn she can’t keep doing stuff like this.
Probably not. This probably isn’t a strong enough shock to make Joyce reconsider her ways of acting yet. We might be building up to one, but this itself isn’t it.
That’s probably exactly where this is going, since we haven’t had a good Joyce freakout in a long while, and we haven’t made one the focus of an arc in an even longer while.
I’m guessing that was a text-to-speech or autocorrect, not a deliberate spelling error. Text-to-speech tech is now in the uncanny valley where it’s good enough that you don’t proofread, but bad enough that you really should.
Totally real not at all fabricated rotten Rutten reddit fact #1. They introduced nanomachines into the local water supply in order to seize complete control of the population at an opportune time of their choosing.
Cue a linked article about Ruttech nanotechnology advances (for added bonus, about something completely innocuous like electrical wiring or glass protection) as ‘proof’.
I’m assuming now that Carla’s parents are the Dumbingverse equivalent of Elon Musk, who is very much not loved on Reddit, and any mention of his name in a favourable light will get a hundred upvotes, and a dozen “more-enlightened” redditors crying that he’s the worst ever because X, Y and Z.
Note: I have no opinion one way or another, I just used to moderate a sub, and every time Elon Musk was mentioned favourable in a fictional scenario, some jerk came to modmail to accuse us all of being butt-kissers or something. Solely on the basis that we wouldn’t remove content that painted him in a positive light.
I really hope Ruttech workers are allowed to unionize, you know? And also that their workplace is OSHA-compliant at all times and injuries are rare but reported and properly treated.
There are multiple, separate complaints about the work environments in several of these huge billionaire companies – Musk isn’t the only one, but he’s a closer comparison here than Bezos and not all douchebag CEO behavior goes public. (Friend whose parents worked at Apple in the 80s has some Stories about Steve Jobs, for instance.) The one I’ve heard is removing danger signs and the like on inspection days because Elon Musk apparently hates yellow? Which is a level of bizarre I really can’t process but nonetheless why would you make something that weird and hard to believe up?
Yeah, here’s one fun recent story about him specifically headbutting a car because he didn’t like that the assembly line had automated safety features.
Mind you, the media reports around everything Tesla and Musk are all sorts of wacky lately, thanks to various pressures to report negatively against Tesla. (Simple clickbait, stock market manipulation, etc.)
(There’s photographic evidence that the “hates yellow” thing is fabricated. AFAIK the headbutting thing has been denied, too.)
Musk isn’t someone that I’d call a nice guy deserving of fawning adoration, but it seems like the Musk circlejerk has been replaced in the media with an anti-Musk circlejerk, and neither is helpful.
In manufacturing and related fields there’s an epidemic of hiring “temp workers” exclusively or almost so, specifically to get around both the ability of workers to organize and safety regulations. They feel they can legally “pass the buck” and say that somehow, any worker accidents/deaths/etc. are actually the fault of whatever random paperwork bureau the worker is legally actually employed by, so the entire factory can just ignore safety standards because no “actual” workers will get hurt.
Ah. Over here, a company has the public insurance responsible for workers there over after any work accident that results in injuries enough for someone unable to work for more than an day.
At work, you are automatically insured against accidents (if you are legally employed) and they want to keep their costs down. So they inspect the accident site and give you a list of safety measures to be applied (and it gets expensive for a company if they don’t).
Unions are not involved. Just the insurers self interest.
I struggle with the concept of billionaires being good people. They might be nice people but possessing that incomprehensibly obscene degree of wealth while people die of poverty is inherently morally indefensible to me.
There are three things you can do with money. You can spend it on stuff you want. You can invest it in things that might make more money. You can give it away. Most billionaires you would have heard of do all three.
I can understand it in certain fictional worlds because those worlds don’t necessarily need to have people dying in poverty and it might be theoretically possible to make a billion dollars without someone being exploited somewhere down the line, but in more realistic settings? Yeah, at the very least I need to see stuff like that being addressed.
No, we’re not.
But I think it makes narrative sense for them to be.
I suppose Willis could set up a conflict where Carla becomes aware of their workplace abuses and is torn between her personal experience with them and the larger picture, but I’ve seen no signs of it yet. They’re pretty much a blank slate other than “rich and supportive of their trans daughter”.
I’d didn’t read it as the reddit stories being less charitable to the Ruttens but that assuming she’d read about them in Time was more charitable to Joyce.
I don’t think Joyce will learn about boundaries from her friends i.e. people who like or (in Sal’s case) grumpily indulge her. We’ve seen so far that only jarring encounters that hit close to home can really change some of her deep-rooted irritating/problematic personality traits.
That’s part of why I’m expecting/hoping/dreading (yes all at once) that the Jacob thing blows up in her face, with Jacob finding out and telling her exactly what lines she crossed and how not okay that was, and then not talking to her again for at least a while, possibly permanently.
Harsh? Yes. And I do like their dynamic and think they could be good College Boyfriend/Girlfriend to each other had they met while Jacob was single. But Joyce really poisoned the well, and even though I seriously dislike Raidah, Joyce should not under any circumstances end up dating Jacob. (My ideal timeframe with that blowup goes ‘Brother meetup goes poorly, partly due to drama but partly due to Raidah getting elitist again prompting Jacob to realize how gross she can be, cue breakup soon after,’ ‘Joyce immediately makes a move on hearing this,’ ‘Jacob puts pieces together and tells her no and that it is absolutely because of her not respecting that he was in a relationship’.)
It’ll be awful to watch, no doubt, but Joyce needs to LEARN, and that seems like the most likely plate spinning right now to force a big change like that.
Yeah. And even being told no here didn’t seem to really phase her… Which on the one hand is, like, cool, strength of character, but on the other hand, “ahh why does this part of your character have to be so strong” >.<
It would be nice, though, if Joyce didn’t quite literally need an extreme reaction every time in order to start character development in simple areas like respecting personal space.
True, but the fact she does just shows how deeply ingrained in her it is that this is ‘normal’ behaviour and how much her upbringing has truly convinced her that there is nothing wrong with pushing at people regardless of their relation to her. And the worst thing is that her pushing like this probably used to work on people back home all the time. Which is likely a part in how it became so ingrained as acceptable.
She HASN’T needed an extreme reaction every time. With Ethan, he just had to tell her he needed to come out on his own terms, not to make her feel better.
Becky only had to explain once that she needed time & space apart from her when she was still getting over her crush on her.
Jocelyne sitting her down for a brief conversation was it took for her to learn to check in with Becky before making a stink about something on her behalf
Dorothy only had to tell her once to butt tf out back when she was still judging her for having premarital sex
She struggles the most with stuff where her upbringing explicitly trained her NOT to have boundaries. What she’s doing her is gonna be especially tricky since it understandably puts people – even ones who like her – in a too bad of a mood to explain how she’s being crappy. (Not that it’s other people’s job to do that, just that when her friends have been willing to do so, it helps)
Uh, I’m not specifically talking about just personal space right now. Yes, that’s the focus because that’s what’s going on, but Joyce has needed an extreme reaction before she begins to unlearn harmful behaviors or start character development.
ex. It didn’t take until Leslie’s class about LGBT and Roz yelling at her that her church supports the oppression of LGBT youth that Joyce realized dating a gay man to turn him straight was a shitty thing to do. Not because she listened to Amber, Sarah, or Dorothy, who told her very gently (well, not so gently in the case of Amber), but because she was filled with overwhelming guilt about Becky and Ethan.
Also, consider her ongoing plot with trying to seduce Jacob. Dorothy and Joe have both gently tried to convince her not to do it, because it’s morally and ethically wrong, but the closest she gets to reconsider it is when Walky says she’s horny. If the story continues, most likely Joyce is not going to stop unless it turns into an actual confrontation with Raidah and Jacob about it.
The point is that she still invades people’s privacy regularly (going into Sal’s and Dorothy’s rooms while they’re asleep, harassing Dorothy in the business law bathrooms) and hasn’t listened so far when people said no.
Yeah, I wouldn’t really count that. It was taking her up on an old invitation and she obviously was expecting her to be up already. (I guess Sierra was and that’s why the door was unlocked?)
I can sort of see it, since IIRC, she just walked right in. I’d think most people would knock first. If for no other reason than to make sure the other person is dressed.
Joyce has gone into Dorothy’s room to wake her up to go jogging. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/02-this-is-the-way-that-we-love/sweatband/ It’s not as bad as when she wakes up Sarah, and Sal (Billie? as well??) by hovering over them until they wake up, but she’s still just walking into her room while she’s asleep. I can’t remember if she’s ever hovered over Dorothy though.
I couldn’t find a strip of her hovering over Dorothy the same way she does over Sal or Sarah, so I can rescind that. However, she still climbed on top of a bathroom stall to yell at Dorothy, which still counts as a gross invasion of privacy.
“Long story short, sometimes people you think are your brothers are really your sisters, especially if they are really cool and help you burglarize houses”
Probably not, no. However, when we next see Joyce (having listened to the unburdening of Carla’s soul off-screen), she will likely have a sense of how much weirder the world can be than she ever imagined before.
I’m hoping this chapter is finally going to be the “Joyce’s complete disrespect for the boundaries of the people around her blows up in her face and she finally learns a lesson about that” one.
“My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.”
Carla is one of my favorite cast members, so I’m enjoying getting to know her a bit more. She a sophomore? I think she, Sarah, and Ruth are some of the older main cast. could see her being a sophomore since Carla already had her own room and Ruth was obviously well aware of Carla’s situation prior to the comic beginning.
She was definitely established as a relative upperclassman before – all the others already had some rapport with her in her first big dorm appearance in Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit, and she had a line about ‘all these new freshmen’ not knowing her reputation as an Asshole (mainly because she does so little actually assholish things.)
The vast majority of Carla’s asshole-rep from last year was probably people giving her shit for being trans. The only person we’ve seen do that this year is Mary
I mean, there’s definitely a performative aspect of ‘I don’t care what you think of me, so HA!’ that’s a clear coping mechanism that’s been around for a while, with a little added smugness on top. I could see the rest of the hall hearing Carla claim she’s Above Such Things and going ‘yeah Carla, of course you are,’ especially since the ‘oh right, we forgot you’re kind of an asshole’ line is really mild and could be taken sarcastically anyway. I’m not sure how real her reputation as a troublemaker really is (heart attacks the first time you’re in the hall and suddenly she’s skating towards you aside.)
But yeah, pretty much anything she would have done above the level of skating in the halls, maybe occasionally bragging about her family, and Not Caring when you try and talk to her about boring stuff was almost certainly in retaliation. Maybe a Grand Reputation-Establishing Gesture in the first week as well, but I find it highly unlikely Carla’s ever actively tried to hurt someone. Which is what sets her apart from Mike in my eyes.
Carla does like to pull pranks, apparently. For instance, after she established that the dick on her whiteboard was something that happened to everyone and not just her, she thought it was hilarious (prompting Rachel’s ‘oh, yeah, you’re an asshole’ line) and Sarah later said that that sort of thing was exactly up Carla’s alley (although Carla would demand credit for it).
I love how not only does Sal refuse, but Carla’s ‘storytime’ is so blunt and simplified that it’s basically a shutdown as well. No, Joyce, no amount of sweet smiling with iguanas can make people bare their souls to you when they do not want to. (Also, tying back to one of BBCC’s comments yesterday about how all of these Not Okay behaviors are established from Joyce, I am definitely thinking this is a deliberate choice to compound them all and then show someone not playing along – even when Jouce’s Boundary Issues are played for laughs, they’re still out of line and I think we are eventually leading to her learning that.)
Yeah, Carla’s ‘story time’ is basically what you could glean off her parent’s wikipedia articles (which I’m assuming they have, being zillionaire tech giants).
Joyce, if you keep saying “storytime” one more time you will become the zombie “storytime” guy from Sinfest. Exclusionary Radical feminism ruined that webcomic.
It’s definitely extremely SWERFy, to use the buzzword versions, which tends to result in the same thing via hanging out with the same people and reading the same authors.
Sal is being far nicer to Joyce than I would be in this situation. Joyce’s lack of respect for other people’s boundaries and privacy is a huge problem. She thinks the world revolves around her and that she deserves everything she wants. People really need to stop indulging her. Someone needs to be direct and forceful in telling her that this is unacceptable
Might be a problem as Joyce eventually wants sex and Carla is sex-repulsed. Plus I don’t think she’s Carla’s type anyway. (Joyce’s sexuality being, in this as in all matters, Complicated.)
Though I could totally see them way down the line having Ultra Car-watching sleepovers and stuff. Maybe queerplatonic if Carla were interested in that, but that’s not a given.
Carla is definitely homoromantic, though, and I fully support her getting a girlfriend and they treat each other like the motherfucking goddesses they are and being totally satisfied with their romantic lives together. Unfortunately, I’m not sure any character in the strip is awesome enough for her and not otherwise involved.
What would be nice is if Hoyce mentioned this to Walky and he realized his sister isn’t as put together as she seems, which causes the two of them to actually TALK to each other and see each other as more than their baggage.
But that won’t happen.
My next preference would be all that, but Walky knowing he and Sal aren’t ready to open up to each other, he gets Marcie to talk to Sal.
That won’t happen either.
It will most likely be Amazi-girl. Sal might even redownload that app and find Amber, who will pretend to be Amazi-girl, which is how she’ll find out exactly how separated their personas have become as well as start to see Sal as more than a villain.
Lastly, as a dark horse, Malaya hears from Carla what happened, starts to tease Sal, and they end up talking like civilized roommates.
Joyce is already cute; Fuckface on her head increases that cuteness to the point where Sal has to retreat or start squealing like the 13-year-old she never had the opportunity to be.
I came across a Kids React to ‘Queen’ video on YouTube in which several of the DoA cast are recognisable — at the age I was when Queen were performing.
Wait, they did? How do we know? She doesn’t seem spoiled-rotten to me.
(And no, hand-making her a toy doesn’t count. That can easily be an act of love, and received as such, and it was in this case. Acts of genuine love don’t spoil kids.)
So, we’ve learned Sal’s only real weakness: Cute religious girls with iguanas perched on their heads. I also can’t believe that I typed that but, somehow, it makes sense that it would be something statistically extreme like that!
I’m old, so this may mean nothing to most of you — but all I can think of is the time when Joan Embery of the San Diego Zoo, in one of her frequent appearances on the Tonight Show (hosted by legendary late-night icon Johnny Carson), brought a marmoset on the show with her. The critter made for the top of Johnny’s head, from where it … uhhh … relieved itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGqFNFyqkyo
Also damg commentators, the whole cast has flaws. (y’know, like Joe’s hot chicks list and Amber’s unhealthy coping mechanisms) The majority of them are 18 for pities sake, and a lot of them have some intense trauma/screwed up history under their belts. Its honestly creepy how Joyce is attracting this much hate, it feels unwarranted. She’s just one dumb kid, only a months out from under her extremist parents’ thumbs, and we have already seen her learn from her mistakes and improve herself.
What hate? Where is this hate? At most, you have people rightfully criticizing Joyce’s behavior for what it is- rude, invasive, and disrespectful- but no one is being hateful towards Joyce in any way, or if they are, it’s an extreme minority. And criticism is not the same as hating a character. People are allowed to dislike characters and their actions and right now, Joyce is being extremely invasive and disrespectful to Sal, like she has consistently been to almost everyone she’s met in comic, and people are allowed to express their frustrations with that.
If you want to see hate, just wait for a comic with Malaya or Roz in it. This? This is nothing.
Honestly I just need to learn not to read the comments when a lady type character does something questionable or objectionable in a webcomic. I’ve noticed a double standard where when the guys goof up and no one cares, or it gets justified, but the instant one of the gals does there’s hell to pay. That’s why I’m complaining here, and to be honest this is more a general trend I’ve noticed on previous updates where Joyce is involved in some way. People are being perfectly civil about her latest screw-up… so far.
Also I don’t think Malaya or Roz deserve the responses they get, even though I do dislike Malaya. (Roz isn’t the best but I can understand where she’s coming from.) And this isn’t a dig at your person, but notice how all the examples you listed are once again all gals?
Its just gross that dude types still seem to get a lot more leeway than the gals. Both in fandoms and to real people IRL.
Same song and dance I’ve seen happen on….
Prague Race
Homestuck
Gunnerkrigg Court
and more!
That’s mainly a question of how a given character is portrayed. Female characters are more often portrayed as if we’re supposed to sympathize with them. If we had a female variant of Mike, she’d be getting the exact same treatment as male Mike currently is.
People want to fuck male Mike too, right? I think so, at least.
Well part of that is the fact that the cast is primarily women and there are like 5 dudes who matter who aren’t villains but I definitely agree there’s a double standard especially if you compare the amount of hate Roz got for like being rude to Joyce once to every response to Mike doing something objectively horrible ever combined.
One difference is of context. Roz being an asshole is done as a sincere, character drama action, while much of Mike’s assholish moments (like the bit Clif mentioned) are done for the sake of comedy.
Basically, we know Mike’s an asshole, he does assholish things, there’s really no debate that he’s an asshole (rather just why he’s an asshole), but the comic doesn’t really take his assholish moments seriously because, hey, strip-a-day comics really need that character that can pop-in for a joke.
Which is amusing, because we routinely see people complaining about how the guys here get crucified for anything, but the women get a pass.
I think it’s nonsense, but it’s definitely there.
Mike even commented on it. And IIRC, Willis has said he wrote Anna using Mike’s habits and she was hated from the start.
Anna was repeatedly called abusive in her appearances, and people conjectured that if she got into a relationship with Leslie, she’d be emotionally abusive towards her.
Yeah, but there was much, much less support for Anna. And on much less evidence – for example, Anna had not declared her plan to seduce Leslie was an evil scheme.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t hate Joyce. I don’t like this part of her though and yes, when it’s relevant to the strip, I’ll comment on it. The fact she’s 18 and will learn from it doesn’t make it less irritating to me now, the same way the fact I knew Joe’s list would be called out didn’t make it less creepy or annoying to me before. I’ll agree hate for characters like Roz or Malaya gets overblown but criticizing poor behaviour in the strip at hand is not the same thing as hate.
As Emily pointed out, there are much less male characters that really matter that aren’t villains. Walky, Mike, Ethan, Danny, Joe, Jacob? I think that’s all of them. And most of them are.. okay. Of those, Mike, Danny, and Joe regularly received criticism, although Danny moved away from that once he became a good egg. It’s definitely a double standard in that Mike is considered “morally ambiguous”- by that I mean, you’ll have just as many people trying to convince others that when he does the things he does, he’s really just doing it to teach others a lesson or to kickstart their character development- and so he receives only half as much criticism as any of the girls, but much less vitriol.
That being said, I would argue that Joyce receiving this criticism isn’t unwarranted. In the context of the comic, she’s only been at school for a few months, so of course she’s still learning. The context outside of the comic? Joyce has been like this for eight years. People are tired. I am tired. And I’d like to point out that any time someone expresses criticism for Joyce’s behavior, there will always be someone going “Joyce will learn from this and get better! Just wait!” but that kind of forgiveness isn’t extended to characters like Malaya, Raidah, Roz, Anna… Now Joyce is the main character and has more screentime and cause to start off this character development, true, but notice how all the characters I just listed are mean WOC, but Joyce is a nice white girl. Where I’m coming from is that Joyce regularly displays rude, insensitive behaviors to other people, but it’s treated as a cute quirk and she’s offered much more leeway than other characters, who at their very worst have just been.. slightly rude. But they’re labelled as ‘abusive’, meanwhile Joyce just has ‘room to grow’.
tl;dr there’s a double standard in how the guys are treated compared to the girls, but there’s also a double standard in how Joyce is treated compared to other girls. Joyce will be forgiven or justified much more quickly than anyone else.
Part of that is because she gets more screen time, but part of it is because that’s very much the point of the comic: Joyce’s growth arc.
Which isn’t necessarily the case for minor characters. There’s been little sign of Malaya, Raidah, Roz or Anna getting arc at all, rather than being foils for more major characters. (A few hints for Malaya and Roz, but not much follow through yet.)
We could also look at mean WOC who are main characters and see that they tend to get similar treatment to Joyce – problems and criticism, but also defense. I’m thinking mostly of Sal and Sarah here.
My point is that hardly anyone even entertains the notion that maybe Raidah or Malaya will go through a similar arc and develop. And yet, there’s still some people who hold out hope for Mary. Mary. And I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but the people who compare Mary against Anna and Malaya and make Mary out to be the better of them as if either of them are anywhere near her level of maliciousness are suspicious.
Also, I wouldn’t generally characterize Sal as mean. Snarky, sure, but I wouldn’t say she’s a mean person. Nor Roz, really. Like, say what you want about her, but she’s not typically malicious unless she’s really frustrated (like with Joyce and with Robin). Malaya, yes, but it doesn’t help we see her with Sal a lot – and Sal’s started 90% of their arguments (and that only because I don’t remember the whole archive and can’t be bothered to check that figure).
Yeah, damned if I know what the Mary defenders are on about. They’ve been there since the start though. “She only wanted to study.”
An arc for Malaya’s possible. Raidah less so. At least at any point in the near future. 10 years down the road Willis may set something up. That’s just where their role in the comic stands.
I’m waiting for Malaya to walk in and, before she can react to Joyce’s new hat, Carla loudly announces to her: “I’ve got a new role model that isn’t you!”
if carlas (and others in the strip) parents/guardians are so rich and the like why are their kids going to a second tier school like IU and not Harvard ect ?
B) IU’s hardly a second rate school unless the only criteria for a good school is being in the Ivy League, in which case there are only 7 or 8 (don’t remember off the top of my head) good schools in the country.
C) Maybe Carla’s parents went to IU? Just because they’re rich tech giants now doesn’t necessarily mean they started out that way.
D) More pessimistically – it’s easier to buy/bully their way into IU respecting Carla’s womanhood than an Ivy with similarly rich students?
Not in Shortpacked!, but Carla’s putting up a bit of a fight too – she’s telling a story, but only publicly available info, so she doesn’t spill anything private or personal.
So as a dude who doesn’t like people to push boundaries, sometimes they have to for me to grow. I get that it’s not cool now, but I’ve gained a lot from people making me do things I was uncomfortable doing. That may not always be the case, but the line might be hard to draw.
Now I’m wondering why Carla is at a *public* university. Not to say public universities aren’t awesome (I went to one), but because you’d think tech-giant parents would send their kid to one of those fancy-pants schools.
They made a car, an intelligent, sarcastic, kind of evil, car who decided she was a girl.
Yas this was her original backstory on the other comic, she was a robot car that became an android girl.
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“BOO I’VE HEARD THIS STORY ALREADY”
…
“OKAY I DIDN’T ACTUALLY HEAR IT BUT IT’S KINDA OBVIOUS”
Carla needs to sing the story while strumming on a guitar.
Get Danny up there for musical accompaniment.
That could work too.
Joyce wasn’t planning on attending a reading of the first draft of Sk8r Grrrl: The Carla Rutten Story, but it looks like she’s gonna have to clear her schedule.
Honestly, a one-woman show by Carla kinda sounds like the best thing ever. Joyce should make some popcorn and settle in.
I’d buy a copy of Carla’s memoir.
It’s all on roller skates, right? I mean, obviously yes but I just want to confirm.
It’s basically told entirely through interpretive dance, but “interpretive skating” instead.
Sort of Starlight Express, but awesome because it’s Carla instead of Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Or like Stage Xanadu, which I mention solely because the protagonist has to get on a Pegasus prop while still in roller skates, and also singing.
(Stage Xanadu apparently also casts some of the muses in drag for some reason, at least in the OBC, so not the best example. But really, Carla riding a Pegasus/flying Ultra Car was too good an image NOT to share.)
Yeah I’m picturing like, Disney on Ice but with roller skates.
Carla skates in, sits down to remove her skates, and reveals that she was wearing a second, smaller pair of skates underneath
That’s why she’s so tall, she’s got half a dozen pairs of recursive skates on at all times.
It still may be an extensive and unexpected learning experience for Joyce, possibly giving her some unexpected insights about her own family!
Carla: I have just met this lizard and I would die for him *.*
Fine! My neighbor’s lizard is better anyway and he leaves his door unlocked at night.
.
Truly a riveting story of our time.
https://www.thefabricator.com/blog/my-story-how-i-became-a-welder
Now I want to publish Riveting Tales, the story of wandering rivetter and fabricator of wondrous devices whose aid forever alters the lives of those she comes in contact with.
Sounds a touch steam-punky to me
Steam Punk without the steam.
I think you just described the plot of Girl Genius
even sal has trouble resisting the combined adorableness of joyce and fuckface
Looks like she barely managed to resist them in panel 2.
JOYCE.
FOR FUCK’S SAKE.
LEARN TO TAKE “NO” FOR AN ANSWER.
that would be
.
.
.
noyce
*Facepalm*
I love you.
Noyce for the nonce.
Noyce :3
This. so much. good job, Sal, for not humoring Joyce’s prying.
JOYCE IS ABOUT TO LEARN SOMETHING SHE NEVER WANTED TO KNOW BUT NEEDS TO BADLY
Oh crap maybe
god i wish
I’ve been wanting that scene for ages
Willis has to leave some drama for the future.
I’m glad Sal stuck to her no, especially in the face of that charisma adding iguana.
And I’m double glad that Carla’s story isn’t anything you couldn’t find out via googling her parents, so she hasn’t revealed anything personal or private. Carla’s crafty like that.
I don’t even wanna know what reddit has to say about Carla’s parents.
I find with other Trans folks it’s either this or an open book, and often which one you get depends on context. Carla is craftier than most, for sure, though. She may have thought a few more steps ahead than. Well, myself.
I like how Fuckface, while still adorably persuasive, can no longer compel people to do things they don’t want to do (like reveal personal info for Carla or any info at all for Sal).
Either they are more conscientious with their power, or just the writer has grown. Either way, I concur. ESPECIALLY for Carla’s sake.
Yeah, that…would not be funny.
No. Or good in any possible way.
Was that a thing in Shortpacked!? I don’t remember.
Yeah, the iguana added so much charisma, everyone with it on their head was too cute to refuse – to an extent, anyways. Like, you could get someone else to cover your shift for you.
Oh my god why can’t Joyce not push boundaries
Good point. I think she still has a really hard time seeing that as WHAT she’s doing
A.K.A. “But MY boundary-pushing is different!” I know the type well.
Hasn’t learned to not to yet due to adequate consequences to force her to reconsider her actions. Usually people just go ‘eh’ or ‘knock it off >_>’ but not strongly enough to make her actually stop. They shouldn’t have to. But Joyce tends to stay in fixed patterns unless strongly course corrected.
Or, should they actually resist with enough intention to make her ‘feel bad’, then suddenly they’re the bad guy for ‘not wanting to open up’.
Not that it’s happened yet, but I could see it.
I don’t think Joyce would purposely be so guilt-trippy. Her intentions at heart are good of ‘if I don’t know enough, then tell me a personal experience that could give me better insight’. Her goal is good. Her desire for further insight into other people’s views is good. Her pushing at it is bad. Her demanding of it is bad. Her pressuring people is bad.
Maybe it do her some good if she had a taste of her own medicine.
You can’t invade the boundaries of somebody who doesn’t recognize boundaries. You ask her for storytime and you’ll get it, and regret it.
Yeah, Joyce has been too fucked by her upbringing to know what they are by default – I really think she’s going to need to suffer serious lasting consequences for crossing them, be told that is explicitly why, and have that prompt another reassessment of her life for her to really understand that what she’s doing is bad, much less why.
Yeah. The concept of boundaries is just.. so antithetical to that worldview. It’s gonna take a while for her to wrap her head around it, and even after she accepts that it’s a healthy concept, it might still feel wrong and uncomfortable for a while.
Homeschooling does Bad Things to your head unless you have some other opportunity to go somewhere else for several hours a day away from your parents and do things other than Be Their Child.
So, religious homeschooling… Bad Things(tm)
And religious homeschooling in a religion that specifically prioritizes ‘saving your soul’ over people’s actual wishes?* And no possibility of non-religious socialization because that could corrupt a child? With media heavily monitored and banned for such reasons as ‘portraying parents as fallible’? With an emotionally abusive parent, and at least one other abusive parent in the immediate social circle? Yeah. Joyce needs outside intervention to learn what boundaries are, and it’ll probably be years of false starts and backslides and therapy before she starts having or consistently respecting them.
* Actually, one other thing that could prompt Joyce’s Immediate Life Reassessment: her ‘witnessing’ line yesterday suggests some of the same religious framework here. Said religious framework was Toedad’s justification. If Joyce has that spelled out for her, she’ll probably respond SOMEHOW, but it’s not as though Becky had a chance to develop healthy boundaries either and she’s the one in the best position to do so.
Unless the storytime you ask for is something she’s traumatized over. Talking about Ryan was long an example. She does have boundaries, but they’re only for the big things.
And then of course she doesn’t recognize that she might be probing at other people’s traumas.
Boundaries are for crossing
PRETTY BORDERS COALLITION DEMANDS EASILY READABLE MAPS AND CONQUEST.
Just ask Mike.
Parental example.
And upbringing in a religious tradition that extolls busybodying and enforced conformity.
biggest brother is watching.
Pushing, or more accurately, trampling, boundaries is of the essence to fundagelicals. They’re trained to do it, and the higher you rank in the hierarchy the more you get to revel in doing it.
Because she’s written as a person with flaws, and it’s actually very interesting as a reader to see her slowly grow in that regard?
And, yanno, what everyone else said about upbringing.
Probably because she’s a sheltered 18 year old kid with a messed up and wildly inadequate upbringing. I doubt she really understands boundaries as a concept, and from what I’ve gleaned about her parents they never really let her have any. (Extremists like them rarely let their kids assert boundaries/independence/grow up.)
Joyce is hardly perfect and can be grating, but I somehow don’t see how she’s somehow worse than anyone else in the cast; everyone has their own flaws. I don’t get the Joyce hate.
“Joyce needs to learn boundaries” is the mildest criticism for a character that I have ever seen. No one here is even saying she’s anywhere near the worst character or worse than anyone else in the cast, but (rightfully) pointing out a flaw of hers that makes people uncomfortable. Even then, there is like.. barely any Joyce hate. Just criticism for her behavior and actions, which people have a right to do.
Did I imagine that there were once days when the comments section WASN’T just people complaining about the characters and classifying any wrongdoing as “this person is awful”? Because I find myself nostalgic for them, but I’m unclear if they actually existed.
(I know, I know. If I don’t like them, I don’t have to to read them. The hypocrisy is not lost on me.)
Yeah, back in the days when the comments section was full of people defending the actual villains. At least until it became impossible, at which point they became implausible strawmen.
Except noone was defending the ACTUAL villians, like Toedad, Ryan, or Blaine(at least nobody worth listening to was). It was mostly Joe and Mike, supporting protagonists with not more or less flaws than anyone else in the cast but are acceptable targets because they happen to be white dudes.
0.o
Oh, BULLSHIT. People absolutely defended Toedad. There were a few who defended Blaine too (and a few others who still felt Amber was worse for hitting him) and I recall a handful defending Ryan too. They just eventually, for the most part, ended up in the spam filter.
Second of all, plenty of people defended Joe up until the List was actually leaked and even then a bunch of people were trying to shift it as his private little black book being hacked and even now there’s a few people saying it was blown out of proportion.
Third – Mike? Really? The guy who’s whole schtick is maliciously hurting other people for shits and gigs? That guy is no worse than people who do crappy things but generally try to be decent people? And still has a zillion people defending him as some sort of Asshole Sage?
Youngest child.
…. yes, I know, that’s not EVERY youngest child, but it’s THIS youngest child.
Woo, storytime complete! Everyone can go do something else now.
I’m thinking the version of the story from Reddit is not something anyone with a soul should read.
Was it Joyce’s “pureness” or “sparklies” that did this to them or was it… It couldn’t have been fuck face because Sal does not LIKE Fuck face.
Those two aren’t as “innocent removed” as they like to think.
OMG. Malaya has a damn POINT. About SAL. What?
(I don’t think this is the first time for that actually but still note worthy)
It’s fuckface. The adorableness of him being on someone’s head adds charisma. It’s an old joke from Shortpacked! Over there it was almost hypnotic. Now it’s just adorably persuasive.
Oh yyyyyyyyyeaaaah. I DO remember that.
Well, Joyce would be a weird combo to have that power with. She’s kinda got her own Charisma already. It just manifests in a way that doesn’t always clicks the way she wants. It’s how it’s packaged in “Jesus kid,” really.
Everyone can do with a charisma boost now and then! Except for Joyce, who is abusing her iguana privileges.
This is like that scene from Order of the Stick where Haley used the Potion of Glibness and basically gained the power to alter peoples’ reality just by talking, and Sal is the anti-magic zone before the jail cell. I guess in this analogy Sal’s backstory is Haley’s dad? Fuck this got confusing.
Fuckin’ lizard gives her too much charisma.
The more I learn about Shortpacked the more correct I feel in my decision to drop it.
Thankfully, the worst that ever comes of it is getting someone to cover someone else’s shit which, so far as we can tell, didn’t disrupt said person’s plans.
*shift.
Pretty much the same thing in context.
The correct decision. More Shortpacked for the rest of us.
OMG, someone get Fuckface off of Joyce’s head ASAP! She’s grown to powerful and self aware of it!
Yesterday, I feared the cosmic terror that is FuckFace-Joyce, but today I welcome our inscrutable doom from beyond the stars. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Fuckface J’oyce wgah’nagl fhtagn!
It’s like giving Doctor Doom the Infinity Gauntlet.
She’d need five more iguanas for that.
From what I remember of Iguanas, I would not suggest that, even without the incredible cosmic power problem.
Relax. She’d need Iguanas all the way up.
I love Joyce’s finger-wiggle. I wanna call her out for doing something that her family would almost certainly call “satanic” since it evokes spellcasting, but it’s just too cute!
“My reputation trumps your reptile. Deal with that!”
And in the news, a techno-industrialist married couple is buying Time magazine. If David planned THAT in advance, all available Damns on him I say!
Oh, god, she’s become aware of her powers and is using them for evil! None are safe!
Even with the iguana buff Joyce didn’t pass the skill check.
Sorry, Joyce, you must be a level 40 friend to unlock Sal’s tragic backstory.
Right now, only Marcie’s gotten that far (and there’s a level grinding joke to be had there but I’m going to bed and can’t think of one).
Danny banked a couple moons and is getting closer though.
He’s also recently taken up the bard class which implies an adequately high charisma stat.
Danny still needs to do a few more bard-specific quests first.
He’s high enough to get snippets and hints dropped. Not yet high enough for the whole thing.
Although, tbf, Marcie had an unfair advantage – she was there for most, if not all of it.
Level 40? Jeez, that’s a high Epic-level challenge.
Which is more appropriate than not, now that I think of it.
I’ve been playing Cooking Fever lately and each restaurant has 40 levels. Basically I’m saying Joyce needs to max out their friendship first.
ULTRA-FRIENDS!!!
I think Joyce is legitimately trying to get to know Sal better as a person, it’s just how she’s going about it is not great
It’s also not clear to me that she’s specifically asking for THAT story, or just ANY story about herself
Dang it, that was supposed to be a reply to Derek’s comment
ugh, I second yesterday’s comments that Joyce is still treating Sal like an object, either something to covet or something to entertain herself. Sal’s trauma is not your soap opera drama, Joyce, eff off
Saying “you don’t know anything about me” opens the door to some extent, though.
Yeah, it’s a bit odd to throw that out there and then shut down. Not saying Sal doesn’t quite obviously have her reasons, but given the fact she is privy to some of Joyce’s most intimate secrets, I can see where Joyce would want to know more about Sal, particularly since Joyce has been so sheltered. Sal’s experiences are quite alien to her.
there’s a difference between “I’d like to know more about you, I would like to get to know you” and “storytime!”
Joyce is treating Sal like entertainment and Sal reacts accordingly
“You don’t know anything” is a shutdown in this scenario, not an invitation to ask questions, I think.
Joyce makes it into a power struggle here. She wants Sal to be her entertainment bad girl turned good story, and Sal doesn’t want to be. (Or anyone’s whatever story ever).
Telling life stories is something that can be relieving for the teller and enlightening for the listener, but only if a) the teller wants to tell someone b) the listener actually listens with an open heart and is strong enough to deal with the shit that will come.
I’m doubt if Joyce is strong enough to listen to Sal’s story.
But her church probably had (unspoken) rules about what to tell that made it all into lying in telling and listening.
It opens the door to a tactful and sensitive effort to get to know her better within the limits of her comfort zone it doesn’t open the door to trying to obnoxiously bludgeon personal information out of her.
I’d think that the door would be open to ‘okay, so is there anything you’d like to tell me?’ which puts the ball in her corner, but demanding ‘story time’ is …not that.
While I admit that Joyce isn’t always my favorite character, so I find myself biased somewhat against her, she’s just driven Sal out of her own room because she didn’t want to respect her privacy.
Please tell me this will be an eye opening moment for her. The woman needs to learn she can’t keep doing stuff like this.
Probably not. This probably isn’t a strong enough shock to make Joyce reconsider her ways of acting yet. We might be building up to one, but this itself isn’t it.
Jedi mind tricks don’t work on the strong willed, joyce.
I like you.
You’ve got a point
blease dont cut away
No guarantee. But no Guarantee there won’t be a cut back, either!
I’m worried Karla will say something about herself that she doesn’t want to be known in general.
That’s probably exactly where this is going, since we haven’t had a good Joyce freakout in a long while, and we haven’t made one the focus of an arc in an even longer while.
Also, Karla? Really?
I’m guessing that was a text-to-speech or autocorrect, not a deliberate spelling error. Text-to-speech tech is now in the uncanny valley where it’s good enough that you don’t proofread, but bad enough that you really should.
Truth.
So it’s basically grammar check?
Not for me. Voice recognition is hilariously bad at my accent. Using Siri is basically impractical for me.
What text-to-speech program defaults to Karla with a K?
I messed up, sorry. Carla with a K tends to be the default spelling used by people down here.
1: Sorry
2: Carla is usually written with a K where I live. Force of habit.
3:
What really repugnant Rutten rumors were revealed on Reddit?
The rotten Rutten kind.
Totally real not at all fabricated rotten Rutten reddit fact #1. They introduced nanomachines into the local water supply in order to seize complete control of the population at an opportune time of their choosing.
Cue a linked article about Ruttech nanotechnology advances (for added bonus, about something completely innocuous like electrical wiring or glass protection) as ‘proof’.
I’m assuming now that Carla’s parents are the Dumbingverse equivalent of Elon Musk, who is very much not loved on Reddit, and any mention of his name in a favourable light will get a hundred upvotes, and a dozen “more-enlightened” redditors crying that he’s the worst ever because X, Y and Z.
Note: I have no opinion one way or another, I just used to moderate a sub, and every time Elon Musk was mentioned favourable in a fictional scenario, some jerk came to modmail to accuse us all of being butt-kissers or something. Solely on the basis that we wouldn’t remove content that painted him in a positive light.
No, no, no, Lexi, that won’t work. Carla’s parents are good people.
I really hope Ruttech workers are allowed to unionize, you know? And also that their workplace is OSHA-compliant at all times and injuries are rare but reported and properly treated.
Is unionization if the Ruttens founded it, handed it off and, as members, now pay union dues?
Is safety compliance in the us only to be had in unionized places?
There are multiple, separate complaints about the work environments in several of these huge billionaire companies – Musk isn’t the only one, but he’s a closer comparison here than Bezos and not all douchebag CEO behavior goes public. (Friend whose parents worked at Apple in the 80s has some Stories about Steve Jobs, for instance.) The one I’ve heard is removing danger signs and the like on inspection days because Elon Musk apparently hates yellow? Which is a level of bizarre I really can’t process but nonetheless why would you make something that weird and hard to believe up?
Yeah, here’s one fun recent story about him specifically headbutting a car because he didn’t like that the assembly line had automated safety features.
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-reportedly-head-butted-car-at-teslas-factory-2018-8
Mind you, the media reports around everything Tesla and Musk are all sorts of wacky lately, thanks to various pressures to report negatively against Tesla. (Simple clickbait, stock market manipulation, etc.)
(There’s photographic evidence that the “hates yellow” thing is fabricated. AFAIK the headbutting thing has been denied, too.)
Musk isn’t someone that I’d call a nice guy deserving of fawning adoration, but it seems like the Musk circlejerk has been replaced in the media with an anti-Musk circlejerk, and neither is helpful.
In manufacturing and related fields there’s an epidemic of hiring “temp workers” exclusively or almost so, specifically to get around both the ability of workers to organize and safety regulations. They feel they can legally “pass the buck” and say that somehow, any worker accidents/deaths/etc. are actually the fault of whatever random paperwork bureau the worker is legally actually employed by, so the entire factory can just ignore safety standards because no “actual” workers will get hurt.
Sources:
https://www.osha.gov/temp_workers/
http://fortune.com/2015/03/05/temp-jobs-workplace-injuries/
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/temp-work-now-permanent-fixture-creating-problems-invisible-workforce-n793466
Ah. Over here, a company has the public insurance responsible for workers there over after any work accident that results in injuries enough for someone unable to work for more than an day.
At work, you are automatically insured against accidents (if you are legally employed) and they want to keep their costs down. So they inspect the accident site and give you a list of safety measures to be applied (and it gets expensive for a company if they don’t).
Unions are not involved. Just the insurers self interest.
I struggle with the concept of billionaires being good people. They might be nice people but possessing that incomprehensibly obscene degree of wealth while people die of poverty is inherently morally indefensible to me.
There are three things you can do with money. You can spend it on stuff you want. You can invest it in things that might make more money. You can give it away. Most billionaires you would have heard of do all three.
Generally though, when they give some away, they still remain incomprehensibly wealthy.
And other people still die of poverty. Jesus had things to say about this, for those who purport to follow him.
Okay?
I can understand it in certain fictional worlds because those worlds don’t necessarily need to have people dying in poverty and it might be theoretically possible to make a billion dollars without someone being exploited somewhere down the line, but in more realistic settings? Yeah, at the very least I need to see stuff like that being addressed.
Are we sure? They’re good to their daughter, definitely, but I imagine many billionaires are.
No, we’re not.
But I think it makes narrative sense for them to be.
I suppose Willis could set up a conflict where Carla becomes aware of their workplace abuses and is torn between her personal experience with them and the larger picture, but I’ve seen no signs of it yet. They’re pretty much a blank slate other than “rich and supportive of their trans daughter”.
I’d didn’t read it as the reddit stories being less charitable to the Ruttens but that assuming she’d read about them in Time was more charitable to Joyce.
OK seriously Joyce needs to learn what the fuck “boundaries” are and that they should be respected.
On another note, is this gonna be where Joyce finds out Carla is trans?
Not unless she gets on reddit.
Or she looks for a newspaper article and sees a birth announcement for a “boy” Rutten 19 years ago, but no “girl” twin.
Either way, it’s going to be a rude awakening for her.
I don’t think Joyce will learn about boundaries from her friends i.e. people who like or (in Sal’s case) grumpily indulge her. We’ve seen so far that only jarring encounters that hit close to home can really change some of her deep-rooted irritating/problematic personality traits.
That’s part of why I’m expecting/hoping/dreading (yes all at once) that the Jacob thing blows up in her face, with Jacob finding out and telling her exactly what lines she crossed and how not okay that was, and then not talking to her again for at least a while, possibly permanently.
Harsh? Yes. And I do like their dynamic and think they could be good College Boyfriend/Girlfriend to each other had they met while Jacob was single. But Joyce really poisoned the well, and even though I seriously dislike Raidah, Joyce should not under any circumstances end up dating Jacob. (My ideal timeframe with that blowup goes ‘Brother meetup goes poorly, partly due to drama but partly due to Raidah getting elitist again prompting Jacob to realize how gross she can be, cue breakup soon after,’ ‘Joyce immediately makes a move on hearing this,’ ‘Jacob puts pieces together and tells her no and that it is absolutely because of her not respecting that he was in a relationship’.)
It’ll be awful to watch, no doubt, but Joyce needs to LEARN, and that seems like the most likely plate spinning right now to force a big change like that.
Yeah. And even being told no here didn’t seem to really phase her… Which on the one hand is, like, cool, strength of character, but on the other hand, “ahh why does this part of your character have to be so strong” >.<
It would be nice, though, if Joyce didn’t quite literally need an extreme reaction every time in order to start character development in simple areas like respecting personal space.
True, but the fact she does just shows how deeply ingrained in her it is that this is ‘normal’ behaviour and how much her upbringing has truly convinced her that there is nothing wrong with pushing at people regardless of their relation to her. And the worst thing is that her pushing like this probably used to work on people back home all the time. Which is likely a part in how it became so ingrained as acceptable.
She HASN’T needed an extreme reaction every time. With Ethan, he just had to tell her he needed to come out on his own terms, not to make her feel better.
Becky only had to explain once that she needed time & space apart from her when she was still getting over her crush on her.
Jocelyne sitting her down for a brief conversation was it took for her to learn to check in with Becky before making a stink about something on her behalf
Dorothy only had to tell her once to butt tf out back when she was still judging her for having premarital sex
She struggles the most with stuff where her upbringing explicitly trained her NOT to have boundaries. What she’s doing her is gonna be especially tricky since it understandably puts people – even ones who like her – in a too bad of a mood to explain how she’s being crappy. (Not that it’s other people’s job to do that, just that when her friends have been willing to do so, it helps)
Uh, I’m not specifically talking about just personal space right now. Yes, that’s the focus because that’s what’s going on, but Joyce has needed an extreme reaction before she begins to unlearn harmful behaviors or start character development.
ex. It didn’t take until Leslie’s class about LGBT and Roz yelling at her that her church supports the oppression of LGBT youth that Joyce realized dating a gay man to turn him straight was a shitty thing to do. Not because she listened to Amber, Sarah, or Dorothy, who told her very gently (well, not so gently in the case of Amber), but because she was filled with overwhelming guilt about Becky and Ethan.
Also, consider her ongoing plot with trying to seduce Jacob. Dorothy and Joe have both gently tried to convince her not to do it, because it’s morally and ethically wrong, but the closest she gets to reconsider it is when Walky says she’s horny. If the story continues, most likely Joyce is not going to stop unless it turns into an actual confrontation with Raidah and Jacob about it.
The point is that she still invades people’s privacy regularly (going into Sal’s and Dorothy’s rooms while they’re asleep, harassing Dorothy in the business law bathrooms) and hasn’t listened so far when people said no.
We haven’t seen her go in Dorothy’s room, iirc. But she’s done it to Sarah, Sal and Billie though.
Sarah, Sal, Billie, and now Malaya can all be considered Joyce’s roommates though, at least according to Malaya.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/01-face-the-strange/smaller/
Sarah is her roommate. Sal and Malaya are only such in that they share the bathroom. Their keys probably won’t unlock the same doors.
Yeah, but that’s likely why we’ve seen her doing it to Sarah, Sal and Billie and not to anyone else. Because they’re suitemates, to steal a term.
Probably, although Pam’s including the time she entered her room to go jogging while Dorothy was sleeping.
Yeah, I wouldn’t really count that. It was taking her up on an old invitation and she obviously was expecting her to be up already. (I guess Sierra was and that’s why the door was unlocked?)
The peeing one counts though.
I can sort of see it, since IIRC, she just walked right in. I’d think most people would knock first. If for no other reason than to make sure the other person is dressed.
Pretty sure watching her pee counts as equivalent.
Definitely.
Joyce has gone into Dorothy’s room to wake her up to go jogging. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/02-this-is-the-way-that-we-love/sweatband/ It’s not as bad as when she wakes up Sarah, and Sal (Billie? as well??) by hovering over them until they wake up, but she’s still just walking into her room while she’s asleep. I can’t remember if she’s ever hovered over Dorothy though.
Ah, fair enough, then. Wasn’t sure if we were counting that.
I couldn’t find a strip of her hovering over Dorothy the same way she does over Sal or Sarah, so I can rescind that. However, she still climbed on top of a bathroom stall to yell at Dorothy, which still counts as a gross invasion of privacy.
On a completely different note, while looking through the archives I found this: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/04-the-bechdel-test/swap/
It was foretold ages ago.
Yeah, that’s more than fair. That was creepy.
And oh god, does this mean Dorothy’s going to befriend Mike somehow?
Storytime Intensifies
“Sh*t just got real.”
Not cool, Joyce.
“Long story short, sometimes people you think are your brothers are really your sisters, especially if they are really cool and help you burglarize houses”
Joyce: “I never thought of Becky as my brother.”
Is this chapter gonna be about Carla’s past?
Probably not, no. However, when we next see Joyce (having listened to the unburdening of Carla’s soul off-screen), she will likely have a sense of how much weirder the world can be than she ever imagined before.
I’m hoping this chapter is finally going to be the “Joyce’s complete disrespect for the boundaries of the people around her blows up in her face and she finally learns a lesson about that” one.
“My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.”
I smiled at this far too much.
Carla is one of my favorite cast members, so I’m enjoying getting to know her a bit more. She a sophomore? I think she, Sarah, and Ruth are some of the older main cast. could see her being a sophomore since Carla already had her own room and Ruth was obviously well aware of Carla’s situation prior to the comic beginning.
She was definitely established as a relative upperclassman before – all the others already had some rapport with her in her first big dorm appearance in Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit, and she had a line about ‘all these new freshmen’ not knowing her reputation as an Asshole (mainly because she does so little actually assholish things.)
The vast majority of Carla’s asshole-rep from last year was probably people giving her shit for being trans. The only person we’ve seen do that this year is Mary
I mean, there’s definitely a performative aspect of ‘I don’t care what you think of me, so HA!’ that’s a clear coping mechanism that’s been around for a while, with a little added smugness on top. I could see the rest of the hall hearing Carla claim she’s Above Such Things and going ‘yeah Carla, of course you are,’ especially since the ‘oh right, we forgot you’re kind of an asshole’ line is really mild and could be taken sarcastically anyway. I’m not sure how real her reputation as a troublemaker really is (heart attacks the first time you’re in the hall and suddenly she’s skating towards you aside.)
But yeah, pretty much anything she would have done above the level of skating in the halls, maybe occasionally bragging about her family, and Not Caring when you try and talk to her about boring stuff was almost certainly in retaliation. Maybe a Grand Reputation-Establishing Gesture in the first week as well, but I find it highly unlikely Carla’s ever actively tried to hurt someone. Which is what sets her apart from Mike in my eyes.
Carla does like to pull pranks, apparently. For instance, after she established that the dick on her whiteboard was something that happened to everyone and not just her, she thought it was hilarious (prompting Rachel’s ‘oh, yeah, you’re an asshole’ line) and Sarah later said that that sort of thing was exactly up Carla’s alley (although Carla would demand credit for it).
I have to bet Mary wasn’t her first ridiculously elaborate setup/ultimately silly sort of thing set up in the halls, either.
I love how not only does Sal refuse, but Carla’s ‘storytime’ is so blunt and simplified that it’s basically a shutdown as well. No, Joyce, no amount of sweet smiling with iguanas can make people bare their souls to you when they do not want to. (Also, tying back to one of BBCC’s comments yesterday about how all of these Not Okay behaviors are established from Joyce, I am definitely thinking this is a deliberate choice to compound them all and then show someone not playing along – even when Jouce’s Boundary Issues are played for laughs, they’re still out of line and I think we are eventually leading to her learning that.)
Yeah, Carla’s ‘story time’ is basically what you could glean off her parent’s wikipedia articles (which I’m assuming they have, being zillionaire tech giants).
Joyce, if you keep saying “storytime” one more time you will become the zombie “storytime” guy from Sinfest. Exclusionary Radical feminism ruined that webcomic.
“Exclusionary radical feminism” as in TERFs?
I could be wrong, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything about trans folk on Sinfest. It’s definitely shifted to radical feminism.
I suppose just not including trans characters could partly count?
It’s definitely extremely SWERFy, to use the buzzword versions, which tends to result in the same thing via hanging out with the same people and reading the same authors.
Something like that. And even if the author wasn’t a misandrist man, he ruined his own character arcs and cosnsistency.
I can see the SW exclusionary. That makes sense.
Lol. Nothing ruined Sinfest. It’s still good a.f., if not better.
But yeah, I thought about the storitime zombie too.
I can’t decide if Sinfest is genius or a trainwreck, I am still following and waiting to find out. And yes, I thought of him as well.
Sal is being far nicer to Joyce than I would be in this situation. Joyce’s lack of respect for other people’s boundaries and privacy is a huge problem. She thinks the world revolves around her and that she deserves everything she wants. People really need to stop indulging her. Someone needs to be direct and forceful in telling her that this is unacceptable
Carla/Joyce?
… Honestly I’m just on board for more WLW ships.
Might be a problem as Joyce eventually wants sex and Carla is sex-repulsed. Plus I don’t think she’s Carla’s type anyway. (Joyce’s sexuality being, in this as in all matters, Complicated.)
Though I could totally see them way down the line having Ultra Car-watching sleepovers and stuff. Maybe queerplatonic if Carla were interested in that, but that’s not a given.
Carla is definitely homoromantic, though, and I fully support her getting a girlfriend and they treat each other like the motherfucking goddesses they are and being totally satisfied with their romantic lives together. Unfortunately, I’m not sure any character in the strip is awesome enough for her and not otherwise involved.
Sierra seems pretty dang cool, likes girls, and seems to be in an open relationship/other poly scenario?
Given how Carla wanted Malaya to verbally abuse her, I think Sierra is too cheery for her.
Carla/Sal has been what patreon was howling about in this sequence.
Goddamit, Willis, if you’re going to go archaic, go all the way.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s iguana.
(Early spelling of iguana: iuanna, iwana, iguano, yguana, guana, wana, gwane)
Sal’s panic mode : enabled. I wonder who can help her ?
What would be nice is if Hoyce mentioned this to Walky and he realized his sister isn’t as put together as she seems, which causes the two of them to actually TALK to each other and see each other as more than their baggage.
But that won’t happen.
My next preference would be all that, but Walky knowing he and Sal aren’t ready to open up to each other, he gets Marcie to talk to Sal.
That won’t happen either.
It will most likely be Amazi-girl. Sal might even redownload that app and find Amber, who will pretend to be Amazi-girl, which is how she’ll find out exactly how separated their personas have become as well as start to see Sal as more than a villain.
Lastly, as a dark horse, Malaya hears from Carla what happened, starts to tease Sal, and they end up talking like civilized roommates.
Alternative: Danny notices she’s upset and gives her support without pressuring her to talk. They have another jam session. She feels better.
Eh? Ehhhhh?
Walky eventually trying to get Marcie to talk to Sal again sounds adorable though.
The power of Fuckface compels you!
OR
Heavy is the head that wears the iguana.
why does sal get shouju eyes at fuckface(/joyce+fuckface)??????
Joyce is already cute; Fuckface on her head increases that cuteness to the point where Sal has to retreat or start squealing like the 13-year-old she never had the opportunity to be.
I came across a Kids React to ‘Queen’ video on YouTube in which several of the DoA cast are recognisable — at the age I was when Queen were performing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx5ONcVtnCw
Thanks for that.
I swear I’m in love with Sal. Too bad she’s both fictional and clearly out of my league.
Actually, this is probably a good summation of the problems with my love life.
Parents who then proceeded to spoil her rotten.
spoil her rutten?
Wait, they did? How do we know? She doesn’t seem spoiled-rotten to me.
(And no, hand-making her a toy doesn’t count. That can easily be an act of love, and received as such, and it was in this case. Acts of genuine love don’t spoil kids.)
I mean, she’s also willing to freely offering other girls stock options for favours so.
This is Joyce, she probably didn’t heard about Carla’s parents in either…
I don’t see how an IGUANA of all animals adds to your charisma. A hamster? Sure. A tiny snake? Possible. But an Iguana??
It makes Joyce look cuter and, frankly, Sal has difficulty saying ‘no’ to the ultra-cute.
That’s a real handicap for a badass
But possibly explains a few things about her interaction with Danny
I want this to be constant for the whole of this arc and I want Joyce to use it for evil
Seducing Jacob?
So, we’ve learned Sal’s only real weakness: Cute religious girls with iguanas perched on their heads. I also can’t believe that I typed that but, somehow, it makes sense that it would be something statistically extreme like that!
To no ones real surprise, it will also turn out to be one of Becky’s big weaknesses.
Heh, I’m calling it. We will have a very stupid Jealous!Dina storyline that will end in her wearing a truly EPIC dinosaur hat.
*Dina walking down the hallway with a dazzled Becky under the arm. Turns to give Joyce (and Fuckface) a smug look*
“Iguanas are lizards. Not dinosaurs. So there.”
*Flicks her head, the dinosaur hat wobbles its tail towards a very confuse Joyce.*
I’m old, so this may mean nothing to most of you — but all I can think of is the time when Joan Embery of the San Diego Zoo, in one of her frequent appearances on the Tonight Show (hosted by legendary late-night icon Johnny Carson), brought a marmoset on the show with her. The critter made for the top of Johnny’s head, from where it … uhhh … relieved itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGqFNFyqkyo
………
Of all the main cast of DoA, the one that needs to understand what “No” means the most is Joyce.
…
How fucked up is that?
Quite.
But this page exactly is a mild example. If anything, this much persistence is healthy.
I’m 110% here for Carla storytime.
Also damg commentators, the whole cast has flaws. (y’know, like Joe’s hot chicks list and Amber’s unhealthy coping mechanisms) The majority of them are 18 for pities sake, and a lot of them have some intense trauma/screwed up history under their belts. Its honestly creepy how Joyce is attracting this much hate, it feels unwarranted. She’s just one dumb kid, only a months out from under her extremist parents’ thumbs, and we have already seen her learn from her mistakes and improve herself.
What hate? Where is this hate? At most, you have people rightfully criticizing Joyce’s behavior for what it is- rude, invasive, and disrespectful- but no one is being hateful towards Joyce in any way, or if they are, it’s an extreme minority. And criticism is not the same as hating a character. People are allowed to dislike characters and their actions and right now, Joyce is being extremely invasive and disrespectful to Sal, like she has consistently been to almost everyone she’s met in comic, and people are allowed to express their frustrations with that.
If you want to see hate, just wait for a comic with Malaya or Roz in it. This? This is nothing.
Honestly I just need to learn not to read the comments when a lady type character does something questionable or objectionable in a webcomic. I’ve noticed a double standard where when the guys goof up and no one cares, or it gets justified, but the instant one of the gals does there’s hell to pay. That’s why I’m complaining here, and to be honest this is more a general trend I’ve noticed on previous updates where Joyce is involved in some way. People are being perfectly civil about her latest screw-up… so far.
Also I don’t think Malaya or Roz deserve the responses they get, even though I do dislike Malaya. (Roz isn’t the best but I can understand where she’s coming from.) And this isn’t a dig at your person, but notice how all the examples you listed are once again all gals?
Its just gross that dude types still seem to get a lot more leeway than the gals. Both in fandoms and to real people IRL.
Same song and dance I’ve seen happen on….
Prague Race
Homestuck
Gunnerkrigg Court
and more!
That’s mainly a question of how a given character is portrayed. Female characters are more often portrayed as if we’re supposed to sympathize with them. If we had a female variant of Mike, she’d be getting the exact same treatment as male Mike currently is.
People want to fuck male Mike too, right? I think so, at least.
Well part of that is the fact that the cast is primarily women and there are like 5 dudes who matter who aren’t villains but I definitely agree there’s a double standard especially if you compare the amount of hate Roz got for like being rude to Joyce once to every response to Mike doing something objectively horrible ever combined.
But Mike is always respectful of other people’s boundaries. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/answer-2/
One difference is of context. Roz being an asshole is done as a sincere, character drama action, while much of Mike’s assholish moments (like the bit Clif mentioned) are done for the sake of comedy.
Basically, we know Mike’s an asshole, he does assholish things, there’s really no debate that he’s an asshole (rather just why he’s an asshole), but the comic doesn’t really take his assholish moments seriously because, hey, strip-a-day comics really need that character that can pop-in for a joke.
Which is amusing, because we routinely see people complaining about how the guys here get crucified for anything, but the women get a pass.
I think it’s nonsense, but it’s definitely there.
Mike even commented on it. And IIRC, Willis has said he wrote Anna using Mike’s habits and she was hated from the start.
She was hated? Wow. I personally was annoyed at Leslie. Anna was fun.
Anna was repeatedly called abusive in her appearances, and people conjectured that if she got into a relationship with Leslie, she’d be emotionally abusive towards her.
…I mean, that describes how a lot of people view Mike and Ethan >_>.
Yeah, but there was much, much less support for Anna. And on much less evidence – for example, Anna had not declared her plan to seduce Leslie was an evil scheme.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t hate Joyce. I don’t like this part of her though and yes, when it’s relevant to the strip, I’ll comment on it. The fact she’s 18 and will learn from it doesn’t make it less irritating to me now, the same way the fact I knew Joe’s list would be called out didn’t make it less creepy or annoying to me before. I’ll agree hate for characters like Roz or Malaya gets overblown but criticizing poor behaviour in the strip at hand is not the same thing as hate.
As Emily pointed out, there are much less male characters that really matter that aren’t villains. Walky, Mike, Ethan, Danny, Joe, Jacob? I think that’s all of them. And most of them are.. okay. Of those, Mike, Danny, and Joe regularly received criticism, although Danny moved away from that once he became a good egg. It’s definitely a double standard in that Mike is considered “morally ambiguous”- by that I mean, you’ll have just as many people trying to convince others that when he does the things he does, he’s really just doing it to teach others a lesson or to kickstart their character development- and so he receives only half as much criticism as any of the girls, but much less vitriol.
That being said, I would argue that Joyce receiving this criticism isn’t unwarranted. In the context of the comic, she’s only been at school for a few months, so of course she’s still learning. The context outside of the comic? Joyce has been like this for eight years. People are tired. I am tired. And I’d like to point out that any time someone expresses criticism for Joyce’s behavior, there will always be someone going “Joyce will learn from this and get better! Just wait!” but that kind of forgiveness isn’t extended to characters like Malaya, Raidah, Roz, Anna… Now Joyce is the main character and has more screentime and cause to start off this character development, true, but notice how all the characters I just listed are mean WOC, but Joyce is a nice white girl. Where I’m coming from is that Joyce regularly displays rude, insensitive behaviors to other people, but it’s treated as a cute quirk and she’s offered much more leeway than other characters, who at their very worst have just been.. slightly rude. But they’re labelled as ‘abusive’, meanwhile Joyce just has ‘room to grow’.
tl;dr there’s a double standard in how the guys are treated compared to the girls, but there’s also a double standard in how Joyce is treated compared to other girls. Joyce will be forgiven or justified much more quickly than anyone else.
Part of that is because she gets more screen time, but part of it is because that’s very much the point of the comic: Joyce’s growth arc.
Which isn’t necessarily the case for minor characters. There’s been little sign of Malaya, Raidah, Roz or Anna getting arc at all, rather than being foils for more major characters. (A few hints for Malaya and Roz, but not much follow through yet.)
We could also look at mean WOC who are main characters and see that they tend to get similar treatment to Joyce – problems and criticism, but also defense. I’m thinking mostly of Sal and Sarah here.
My point is that hardly anyone even entertains the notion that maybe Raidah or Malaya will go through a similar arc and develop. And yet, there’s still some people who hold out hope for Mary. Mary. And I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but the people who compare Mary against Anna and Malaya and make Mary out to be the better of them as if either of them are anywhere near her level of maliciousness are suspicious.
Also, I wouldn’t generally characterize Sal as mean. Snarky, sure, but I wouldn’t say she’s a mean person. Nor Roz, really. Like, say what you want about her, but she’s not typically malicious unless she’s really frustrated (like with Joyce and with Robin). Malaya, yes, but it doesn’t help we see her with Sal a lot – and Sal’s started 90% of their arguments (and that only because I don’t remember the whole archive and can’t be bothered to check that figure).
Yeah, damned if I know what the Mary defenders are on about. They’ve been there since the start though. “She only wanted to study.”
An arc for Malaya’s possible. Raidah less so. At least at any point in the near future. 10 years down the road Willis may set something up. That’s just where their role in the comic stands.
“Mission Failed! We’ll get her next time!”
“Next time, Gadget! Next tiiiiimmmeee!” *cat screech*
“B-but that’s just a fact not a story”
“So?”
STORYTIIIME
If Sinfest wasn’t so in-the-face radfem, I’d be saying something about storytime zombie right now.
I’m waiting for Malaya to walk in and, before she can react to Joyce’s new hat, Carla loudly announces to her: “I’ve got a new role model that isn’t you!”
Ultra Car isn’t a new role model.
UGH, i had a date with a girl like that!
A girl with an iguana on her head?
Big-eyed Sal and intense Joyce (plus her assistant] are quite a couple of panels.
if carlas (and others in the strip) parents/guardians are so rich and the like why are their kids going to a second tier school like IU and not Harvard ect ?
A) Interest?
B) IU’s hardly a second rate school unless the only criteria for a good school is being in the Ivy League, in which case there are only 7 or 8 (don’t remember off the top of my head) good schools in the country.
C) Maybe Carla’s parents went to IU? Just because they’re rich tech giants now doesn’t necessarily mean they started out that way.
D) More pessimistically – it’s easier to buy/bully their way into IU respecting Carla’s womanhood than an Ivy with similarly rich students?
I honestly don’t see a problem with D.
My only problem is it means the school’s a transphobic asshat in the first place, if buying is needed.
Maybe they wanted their kids to have a proper education, but without all the ass-sucking, “I went to Harvard” elitism?
So there I was in my mother’s Fallopian tube…
Joyce thinks she’s being friendly and endearingly cute… but she is damn wrong.
Sal could resist!?!? Is there precendent for this??
Not in Shortpacked!, but Carla’s putting up a bit of a fight too – she’s telling a story, but only publicly available info, so she doesn’t spill anything private or personal.
oh my god i love how absolutely distracted Sal is by Cute Iguana Powe
Hey yo! Your reward for reading the comments to the bottom is this
Joyce and Fuckface gravatar!
So as a dude who doesn’t like people to push boundaries, sometimes they have to for me to grow. I get that it’s not cool now, but I’ve gained a lot from people making me do things I was uncomfortable doing. That may not always be the case, but the line might be hard to draw.
And how is my random icon always Mary? I like her but man, I sure don’t say things she would say.
Now I’m wondering why Carla is at a *public* university. Not to say public universities aren’t awesome (I went to one), but because you’d think tech-giant parents would send their kid to one of those fancy-pants schools.
Maybe Carla didn’t want to go? Or maybe they ran into problems with richer schools being transphobic wads?
They made a car, an intelligent, sarcastic, kind of evil, car who decided she was a girl.
Yas this was her original backstory on the other comic, she was a robot car that became an android girl.
Joyce can be really annoying at times as she has displayed here, not giving a fig about how Sal might not actually want to share her life story.
I think it is ok to try asking someone to open up to you. As long as she doesn’t try to chase down Sal, she isn’t insisting in a negative way.
Joyce is so god damn cute here.