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First, it was the missing semi-colon that messed up the ampersand-code for ampersand (extra irony) – that was a simple brainfart.
The other was reversing the less than (<) and greater than (>) signs – this is a common problem of mine – left/right, east/west and less than/greater than keep reversing in my head – it’s a frigging annoying problem. Replacing the > with the ampersand code wouldn’t prevent the parser from reading it as HTML if the < was done in plain text.
“What do you look so shocked for, man? Fat bastard does this all the time. He thinks just ’cause he doesn’t say anything, it’ll have some huge impact when he does open his fuckin’ mouth… “
Oh, no, I’m not ashamed of knowing nerd trivia. I mean, if you’ve seen me around the comments, you’ll notice I drop a lot of minutia about Willis’ other comics.
No, I’m really just ashamed that I know this sort of stuff about Kevin Smith movies.
I love Kevin Smith’s movies, too. I probably wouldn’t if I were to watch the for the first time today, but back when I did see them for the first time, they made something click in me. Chasing Amy in particular. I still revisit that movie once in a blue moon, because of that impact.
Until it is revealed how Marcie became mute, I chose to believe in a tragic accident involving a hedge trimmer, a bouncy ball and several metric tonnes of noodles.
Considering how ludicrously explicit AmaziGirl = Amber had to be made and even then Willis had to declare “ULTRA CAR JOKES ARE BANNED”… I wouldn’t count on it.
Damn you Baltimore!
My mom says when she was a kid, her little brother thought Baltimore was a curse. Then he swore using the phrase “kid nammit Baltimore!”
I mean, I guess I always knew Marcie wasn’t actually deaf, just mute? But I guess people regularly assume that those who are mute and signing are probably deaf. Hrm.
Anyways, yes Malaya, Marcie now knows all your secrets.
I was confused by it, since Sal was always talking to her rather than signing. Never even considered that she might not actually be deaf until I saw the responses to yesterday’s comic.
Marcie is my favorite character. I don’t even know why. She just has the coolest design and even if she hasn’t shown up a lot, she just sticks with me. So yeah. Awesome. Marcie story \o/
This comic does a great job of introducing everything to the reader explicitly while keeping everything natural. The exposition is never forced. It may be forced on the characters, against their will, but never us.
Maybe it’s because it’s a trope to have the one character who speaks another language be only understood through the one translator who talks to them back in English, and people don’t really consciously think about the implications.
because “can hear but is physically unable to talk” is not a common enough trait for people to recognize, so they overlay “cannot hear” as a thoughtless first impression; e.g. “Oh that person is signing, therefore she must be deaf”
I am always dumbfounded that it is possible to extract enough information from mouth movements for it to be a thing. I guess that is because my fine motor skills are not so good, and I tend to avoid looking at faces…
You can get a list of possible sounds that could be said through the shape of the lips, but there’s a bunch of info you will never get. You will never know if the syllable is vocalized and there’s a lot you have to do with your tongue to shape the sound. Lip reading is better than nothing but it’s got a lot of caveats attached to it which makes understanding far more difficult.
Yeah, well, it isn’t. Skilled lip readers can only extract a small fraction of the information from a speaker. (If you don’t believe it, try for yourself. Then look up the the McGurk Effect. All speaker/hearers turn out to be expert lip readers.)
And, of course, you can only read someone’s lips when they’re in front of you and facing you.
Kind of depends on what Malaya’s been saying to Marcie while thinking she was deaf, doesn’t it?
“Okay, as long as it’s just the two of us for a moment, I think I’ll try out reciting the next chapter of my David Cross/David Bowie slashfic. Okay. ‘And then, in the darkness, David suddenly felt a hand on his dick. Stretching it out. And then, ‘twang’! Like a guitar string.’ “
Malaya’s actually not being particularly INSENSITIVE. I mean…if someone said something in Spanish, I’d probably have to ask for a translation too. I’d also be surprised to find out that they’re not from a spanish speaking country considering they speak ONLY spanish.
Except that ASL does not necessarily imply that one can not hear. If they only understood, ASL, one could more easily make that assumption, but using it only implies an inability to speak.
Oh, I wasn’t referring to Malaya asking for a translation. I was more talking about her automatic assumption that Marcie is deaf, despite the fact that her use of sign-language is one-way for the most-part with Sal.
So it’s less a matter of a genuine misconception, and more likely Malaya not giving enough of a shit to pay attention to what’s right in front of her.
And then me talking smack about you in English, right in front of you, assuming you couldn’t understand me, would be kind of a dick move, wouldn’t it? Same thing’s happening in the strip, just with signing.
Returning to my hastily-cobbled metaphor, you then replying to me in English, signaling to me, the audience and maybe the laugh track, would be comedy pyrite, amirite?
Malaya wasn’t talking smack about her. At all actually, though. Unless we’re implying that her being a “Wall” is calling her fat and not just really good at standing her ground like an immovable object like how I interpretted it.
What she says in this strip is complimentary, but on the other hand, given a) Malaya’s reaction to finding out Marcie isn’t deaf and b) Malaya in general, it’s not a bad bet that smack-talking has happened off-panel.
But they’ve been hanging out for at least since the beginning of the school year. It’s pretty, well, dumb to make that assumption when you even see that person often, especially since she can see Marcie off camera and we can’t.
I might be messing up comic time. I thought they were both with Sal at the beginning (around the time of the beach, I suppose, though not necessarily there)
Considering Sal obliquely referenced the Walmart parking lot alcohol trips as early as before the fateful party (and therefore beach), it’s possible they’d already met Malaya by then.
Although it still is the beginning of the school year, so if they only meet a few times a week, for only as long as it takes to split a six-pack of booze, and Malaya barely gives a damn about people who aren’t Malaya, it’s entirely plausible that Malaya never found out Marcie’s ears are functional in the maybe ten times they’ve met.
Back in fifties, my grandfather used to regularly meet with Russian scientists in his field of expertise. They were always accompanied by a ‘translator’ (read: minder.) Typically, after a few minutes, the Russians would start answering questions before the translator even started translating for them.
Neat! If I had to guess, Marcie might be selectively mute. But there are a lot of ways this could go, so I’ll hold my tongue until I know more about it.
Considering Willis said in the comments she intended to get caught, thus forcing her parents to pay attention, means she wouldn’t be getting anything out of the robberies. Well, she got a fun new scar.
Ah, that explains it! I’d wondered about how Marcie was understanding what Sal was saying a while back, when Marcie seems to be deaf and Sal wears a full facemask motorcycle helmet.
And no angst from Sal regarding the mute Marcie indicates it isn’t all Sal’s fault. Whew.
We don’t know yet. We don’t know if brain injury happened or if there was some physical damage to the vocal cords. All we know at this point is Marice and Sal started their friendship young.
Speaking as a person who is good at spoken languages but utterly failed to learn ASL after years of trying, for some of us, it IS that hard. I trained for a career as a sign language interpreter, but had to abandon it.
It’s amazing how people don’t understand the disconnect between visual and spoken word–besides that it means bothering them at a specific time vs. whenever they feel like checking e-mail, I hate calling people because it often takes me longer to understand what they say even when I can understand their words (and it’s harder to misinterpret something that’s both typed and in front of my face for as long as I need it to be, vs. “I already forgot what you just said”).
My bf made fun of me once because I couldn’t immediately process a word joke he said, but think about the sounds connected to letters and trying to play with those sounds mentally vs. being able to see the letters and rearrange them. [Also, how long it took people to see the idiot pun in my name.]
This. I’m terrible with spoken language, both understanding and speaking. Talking on the phone with anyone other than my mother is a daunting chore to me, I will go to great lengths to avoid using phones. Speedreading is like second nature to me though, and I can read music and bits of other languages. I picked up the sign alphabet easily as a kid, but would have been useless as an interpreter due to my failings with spoken language.
Oh wow, it took me SO long staring at your name to get it. I even came up with a couple terrible ideas of what the pun could be and almost settled for one of them. Then I decided to google “jen aside” “is a pun” and found your earlier discussion… you said to say it out loud and suddenly I finally stopped separating the two words in my head. I always thought of Jen Aside as just a nice sounding, memorable name.
Anyway. Yeah, if someone’s judging your intelligence like that then they have a poor idea of what intelligence really is. We all make little mistakes or take a while to get certain things (besides having different strengths and weaknesses). But we vary in how much we show these little moments. Since people usually get the idea in their heads that I’m pretty smart, I can get away with admitting more mistakes without much social cost; and so I do, at every opportunity, because I always find mistakes entertaining. So for example I’ll reveal what I thought someone said in the half-second before I found out what they really said, when nobody really would have noticed the pause. My point being, though most people will laugh along, some people will react more like ‘oh, well then, you were wrong, because that’s wrong, for thus and such reason’, pointing out and correcting my mistake that I just pointed out and corrected. I guess certain people get pretty used to presenting a public face of infallibility, but also expect that of others. Or people like to use mistakes to establish superiority? In any case, intelligence is not instant or infallible; even for something very simple like a circle or the color red, there is a small amount of time before the brain can recognize it. Intelligence is a process which eventually arrives at the right answer; the steps in between are not mistakes.
Wandering back on-topic a bit, I definitely find writing is a better way of having interesting conversations. I do have trouble getting people to do it, though.
I feel like the only person in the world who doesn’t really care for Marcie. Mostly I just don’t like that there’s no subtitles for her. Especially since her signs are often used as a punchline, it feels like a joke I’m not in on.
There is a very literal subtitle for her today. It’s the page title, directly below (“sub” to) the page itself: “Fun.”
This has happened at least twice before. http://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/marcie/page/2/ (“Crazy” and “Bullshit”) The pages that don’t subtitle Marcie’s signs will generally have Sal translate. (The notable exception is when Marcie signed “medal” when Carla asked if they should give Amazi-Girl one after they watched her clothesline Malaya.)
You know, I do believe most colleges offer ASL as a foreign language elective. I only had to take 1 semester (B.S. Degree), so I never obtained any level of fluency, but it’s a neat language to learn.
Not the Marx Brothers – The Ratpack. Sal is Frank, Marcie is Dino, Carla is Sammy Davis (’cause) and Malaya is… Peter Lawford? Because eventually she’ll piss Sal off and get kicked out?
I don’t know if Sal is smooth enough to be Groucho (Groucho would never blow his top; he’d just snark at his enemies until they self-destruct), and Marcie isn’t quite animated enough to be Harpo (though I guess that makes sense, replacing Harpo’s pantomime with actual ASL). And it was usually Chico who served as Harpo’s “translator.”
Carla could be Zeppo, though. Only brought in when they need something.
Eh, other than one of them being mute, there’s not really any parallel with the Marxes. The Marx Bros. are agents of chaos surrounded by people who expect a world that makes sense.
I work with a man who is deaf, but he reads lips so everyone at work is still able to talk to him. I know a few signs here and there and I use them so he feels someone speaks his language. He’s a good soul, always smiling and making visual jokes too.
Are they on a Roller Derby team?
I’ve got a cousin who is a total sixties hippy-radical throwback. But her teenage daughter has been in Junior League Roller Derby for several years. Last I heard anyway.
No doubt about that, first time Marcia wearing rollers and helmet, and Malaya’s comment is pretty clear, so yes, Marcia joined Malaya’s team recently, she has had at least practice games and she is rocking it.
Also I think that Marcia’s comment refers to Malaya’s chatter during or after the games, lockers room chat and stuff I guess, that is bothering her it seems.
However that makes Malaya dumber, how could she has been teaming with Marcia and NOT noticed that she can hear? Is it pretty possible that the couch raised the question first thing as a matter of need.
Well, my cousin’s daughter does have pretty ginormous thighs. She was talking about roller derby and offering free demonstration hip-checks, but I declined.
My guess is that Sal pushed Marcie off the Casa de Marcie and caused her muteness. Then she felt bad and they became friends.
Watch how gloriously wrong I will be!
“A condition characterized by either partial or total loss of the ability to express oneself, either through speech or writing. Hearing comprehension is not affected. This condition may result from a stroke, head injury, brain tumor, or infection.”
There are also the traumatic lesions to the vocal system itself, like bite off your own tongue or injure the nerves or muscles that control the zone.
Except that Broca’s aphasia affect the language centers of the brain, which would damage one’s ability to communicate and to understand communication, not simply one’s ability to speak. Sign language is still communication – Broca’s would damage that, too. Marcie may be mute, but she still manages to communicate effectively. To most people.
That’s true, also usually there are other problems present that Marcie do not show, I was answering the “how that [a fall] would cause muteness” question, not he Marcie’s case in particular. I should have said that.
However despite meaning processing in both gesture and spoken language involve the same main brain areas, there are some areas involved exclusively in the gesture processing. Also being left or right handed matters, and others details too.
Some specialist think that could be possible have highly damaged the speech while slightly damaged the gesture expression. Probably not in a Broca’s aphasia, though.
I even knew about a patient that was unable to speak in English but could speak in German. I do not remember which of them was his native language, I guess the latter.
Two things: persons with profound damage to Broca’s area can vocalize perfectly well and can construct meaningful sentences. They just can’t express them in speech or sign. More than that, though, head trauma which affected the left temporal lobe that severely would have wiped out more than just Broca’s area. If that were the case, Marcie whould be effectively unable to communicate at all.
persons with profound damage to Broca’s area can vocalize perfectly well
Right, the expression is mostly automatic, though.
Marcie whould be effectively unable to communicate at all.
Yes, probably. However brain lesions are quite variable. It is not the same bleed, swell or ischemia. The age greatly influences (she could be very young which is positive). Lots of parameters. The outcome is pretty different from case to case.
You have from patient that lost both expression and understanding in every way, to those who can’t understand you speaking but gestures is ok, to others that only are unable to speak correctly while can understand almost without problems and read and write just fine,
Also the language abilities, especially writing, is different distributed on left-handed persons, thus similar lesions cause different problems.
You’re right — I hadn’t thought about how young Marcie would have been when she lost speech. That would argue even more strongly against any temporal aphasia, since she would have been likely to retain enough plasticity to recover partially.
I don’t think that Marcie is brain damaged at all, though. I’m betting on damage to the recurrent laryngeal nerves, which would completely explain Marcie’s symptoms. Or, perhaps, a wizard did it; Willis isn’t required to be well-versed in functional vocal anatomy.
ok i totally want malaya to learn the language, and then slowly bond with marcie and then they find that they like spending time in each other company and –
The only time she was ever asked in the Walkyverse, her response was, “I want to fuck whatever [UltraCar] is.” In the Dumbiverse context, very hard to say. She seems attracted to people who are as abrasive and antisocial as she is. Gender really hasn’t come into play.
So, a potential way to make things needlessly dramatic for Marcie… she meets a mute/deaf romantic interest! But this romantic interest is British, and so only speaks… BSL dun-dun-derrrrrr!!! D: D: D: …Or, you know, DoA could continue not being a ridiculous soap opera, but where’s the fun in that?
Next week, on DoAys Of Our Lives: Dina finds out Sarah is her real mother, who gave her up for adoption! An illicit tryst between Joyce and Mike… until it’s revealed they’re actually sisters, and now Mike is pregnant! And how will Billie’s new heroin addiction be accepted by a newly crack addicted Ruth??
But I’m pretty sure the universe would implode if Mike and Joyce had an illicit tryst, and then it would explode. That much force being located in the same space would cause a freak chain reaction that would make Chernobyl look like a holiday. The powers involved in such a meeting of good and evil would be too much, it would be nigh immaginable.
Neither Broca’s and Wernike’s aphasia prevent vocalization; they merely cause radically distorted speech and/or sign. Interestingly, Broca’s aphasia doesn’t always block communication completely: it turns out that many patients can sing, even though that can’t speak sensibly.
I wonder if Marcie’s roller-derby name makes reference to the fact that she doesn’t talk. Y’know, something like “The Hoosier Hush”, “The Silent Slammer”, or “The Quiet One”.
Maybe I am wrong, but all the webcomics I have read have given me the super-power of silly theory making.
Chances are Marcie became mute but could have been saved by a certain surgery she couldn’t pay. Hence, Sal stealing whatever she could to get the money and assist her BFF in times of need. That way, Sal will be redeemed to our eyes, and she will be 100% part of the “good guys”.
That would definitely put Sal’s actions in a moral grey area. You might be onto something. We still don’t know why she robbed the gas stop. I mean, we know about the racism she faced for looking blacker than Walky, but the reason still really isn’t there on why she did it. Sal looked very much like she didn’t want to do the robbing, but she felt she had to for some reason. She was likely pressured by another person or the circumstances she faced.
I guess I never thought about it, I just saw that she used sign language, but was able to understand Sal’s spoken English (while not looking at Sal… in a dark parking lot…) and moved on with the story.
So, what is Marcie? Mute? Or is she just so good that she can roller skate without having to see? An echolocation without having to use noise sort of thing…
I think it’s more likely Marcie’s mutism is due to an illness or physical trauma to her brain, tongue or vocal cords rather than from a psychological/emotional trauma. While Willis tends to write more pychological causes, he also is diverse in what his characters deal with. Marcie appears socially confident in general and trusting/close with Sal in particular. This seems to rule out selective mutism which is anxiety based. Can’t discount the possibility that the sound of her own voice is painful/distressing and she chooses not to speak regardless of her relationship with Sal. Perhaps Marcie is the token physically disabled character who is completely comfortable with her disability. Personally it is refreshing to have a character without psychological angst of some sort.
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“Best character week” continues at an excellent pace.
This is why Marcie should be an option on the main character poll!
JSYK
Well, it [i]is[/i] the title of the strip today.
You’d be amazed how many people don’t notice that, despite Willis doing that every single time Marcie signs
I put 2 and 2 together myself when I couldn’t locate “fun” in the strip.
I don’t notice titles in general, for some reason.
If it were every time, Marcie would be making weird remarks like “whoops i think someone’s goin’ in the penalty box” and “that giraffe has a twitter“.
Not the alt-text.
The title – which you can see not only under the strip, but also in your URL bar (once you go to comments page).
Oh right. The text you get by hovering on an image is also called its title-text, you see, so I got mixed up.
So if the title were always what Marcie signs, in those two strips she would be saying “Roller derby” and “Hank”.
I meant when it’s not explicitly addressed in the comic itself
[also, “helmet” is a little complicated for a static-image comic]
When you try and use HTML tags in your comments you want to use angle brackets (), not square brackets ([ ]).
Okay, so apparently I cannot actually type angle brackets in for an example.
You need to use the ampersand code &gt; for the greater than…the software takes it as HTML otherwise. >>
shit…that should be < Ooooh, the irony.
You forgot a semicolon. You should have typed &gt;, so it would render as >
*crossing my fingers and hoping this works*
There were two errors in my initial post.
First, it was the missing semi-colon that messed up the ampersand-code for ampersand (extra irony) – that was a simple brainfart.
The other was reversing the less than (<) and greater than (>) signs – this is a common problem of mine – left/right, east/west and less than/greater than keep reversing in my head – it’s a frigging annoying problem. Replacing the > with the ampersand code wouldn’t prevent the parser from reading it as HTML if the < was done in plain text.
THANK YOU! I -KNEW- I knew that sign but I couldn’t remember it for the life of me
I really do like her. She’s very… Sarcastic.
Yes, but which one?
Very cool, both Marcie and Sal. And Malaya just don’t learn :0
Marcie’s signs know what you did in the DAAAAAARRRRKKKK.
Also, what did Marcie do in Roomies/IW/J&W?
She was on that SEMME squad of nymphomaniacs. And I think she actually spoke once, to say “Holy shit!”
Willis later retconned this to ventriloquism.
I did not know this! Now I wonder who put the words into Walkyverse Marcie’s mouth.
“Um, Marcie, when I said I had sexual fantasies about Robocop, I knew you could hear me and was joking, okay?”
“MARCIE, don’t give me that look! Marcie, you know his 4th directive was to get me off! Marcie, stop signing judgemental things at me and listen!!!”
“you can buy me for a dollar, any day.”
Sadly, the going rate is a nickel.
Only when mums are involved.
I’ll be damned, I thought she was imitating Silent Bob.
Silent Bob has never used sign language in any of his appearances.
I am ashamed that I know this.
Wow, I honestly thought he did.
Silent Bob isn’t actually mute – he can speak when he needs to, and does. No need for sign.
He does do charades.
He’s just a naturally quiet guy.
He does get lines, but it’s like six words every other movie.
And suddenly turns downright eloquent, once in the whole series.
For the “explain the title of the movie since none of the characters are named Amy” scene.
“What do you look so shocked for, man? Fat bastard does this all the time. He thinks just ’cause he doesn’t say anything, it’ll have some huge impact when he does open his fuckin’ mouth… “
My ex-coworker accused me of “sniping” like this.
For me, though, it’s that I’ve gotten in trouble for talking when I shouldn’t have =p (have rarely regretted NOT saying anything!)
Never be ashamed to know anything. Nerdy trivia is the best trivia.
Oh, no, I’m not ashamed of knowing nerd trivia. I mean, if you’ve seen me around the comments, you’ll notice I drop a lot of minutia about Willis’ other comics.
No, I’m really just ashamed that I know this sort of stuff about Kevin Smith movies.
Hey, I love Kevin Smith’s movies
How old are you? That’ll likely pass in half a decade or so.
23 and no it won’t I have loved his movies since I was 15 when I saw DOGMA
The only Kevin Smith worth watching is the New Zealander who played Ares, pity he died about 12 years ago.
I love Kevin Smith’s movies, too. I probably wouldn’t if I were to watch the for the first time today, but back when I did see them for the first time, they made something click in me. Chasing Amy in particular. I still revisit that movie once in a blue moon, because of that impact.
She was in the other universe. Not in this one.
Does this mean that we won’t find out why Marcie doesn’t speak anymore any time soon then? BUMMER!
Talking’s lame. She wants to be cool and mysterious like Garnet.
Heh. “Mysterious.”
s/mysterious/deeply traumatized/
Talking’s lame? I see what you did there . . .
Talking’s lame; walking’s dumb.
Honestly at this point I’m guessing she fell off that slide and hurt her larynx or something.
Until it is revealed how Marcie became mute, I chose to believe in a tragic accident involving a hedge trimmer, a bouncy ball and several metric tonnes of noodles.
Wait wait, the hedgetrimmer and bouncy ball I get, and I can accept noodles, but ACCIDENT?
Ah, the infamous noodle incident
Head canon accepted.
I hope that this in-comic acknowledgement (that Marcie is physically mute and is not deaf) helps with the comments pertaining to same.
I hope so too. Then again, considering the Internet…
She wears opaque glasses/goggles, let’s just assume she’s blind from now on.
She’s Daredevil’s lovechild. Maybe she’ll work with Amazi-Girl one day.
If she was that I would expect for the lack of voice to cause problems with using echolocation, since she can not generate her own “pings”.
You only need a tongue for echolocation clicks, not vocal chords.
Considering how ludicrously explicit AmaziGirl = Amber had to be made and even then Willis had to declare “ULTRA CAR JOKES ARE BANNED”… I wouldn’t count on it.
Yeah, I was confused for a bit.
Is she any good at Pinball?
Any good?? Even at my favorite table, she can beat my best.
You are a wizard!
Is Ethan gay in this univ–*bricked*
*A piano falls out of the sky to crush said meme further into the ground*
You know, you can write *over* the permanent market with a dry erase market . . .
Gods DAMMIT, you beat me to it. >_<
Damn you Baltimore!
My mom says when she was a kid, her little brother thought Baltimore was a curse. Then he swore using the phrase “kid nammit Baltimore!”
You _do_ realize they’re trolling you, right?
Wait, she’s mute, not deaf?
I mean, I guess I always knew Marcie wasn’t actually deaf, just mute? But I guess people regularly assume that those who are mute and signing are probably deaf. Hrm.
Anyways, yes Malaya, Marcie now knows all your secrets.
I was confused by it, since Sal was always talking to her rather than signing. Never even considered that she might not actually be deaf until I saw the responses to yesterday’s comic.
Marcie is my favorite character. I don’t even know why. She just has the coolest design and even if she hasn’t shown up a lot, she just sticks with me. So yeah. Awesome. Marcie story \o/
+1
QFT +1
Funny but that sign doesn’t seem to say that, is Sal referring to one that Marcie is doing ‘off screen”?
Yeah. She is.
This comic does a great job of introducing everything to the reader explicitly while keeping everything natural. The exposition is never forced. It may be forced on the characters, against their will, but never us.
I just love Sal a lot.
Me too..she looks especially beautiful when she smiles
Indeed she does. Happy Sal makes me happy. Happy Marcie is pretty awesome, too.
+! on the grav
+1 on your grav.
Why would you think she was Deaf? She’s able to hear Sal all the time.
Maybe it’s because it’s a trope to have the one character who speaks another language be only understood through the one translator who talks to them back in English, and people don’t really consciously think about the implications.
because “can hear but is physically unable to talk” is not a common enough trait for people to recognize, so they overlay “cannot hear” as a thoughtless first impression; e.g. “Oh that person is signing, therefore she must be deaf”
Plus, lip reading is a thing.
I am always dumbfounded that it is possible to extract enough information from mouth movements for it to be a thing. I guess that is because my fine motor skills are not so good, and I tend to avoid looking at faces…
You can get a list of possible sounds that could be said through the shape of the lips, but there’s a bunch of info you will never get. You will never know if the syllable is vocalized and there’s a lot you have to do with your tongue to shape the sound. Lip reading is better than nothing but it’s got a lot of caveats attached to it which makes understanding far more difficult.
Under ideal conditions, a lipreader can only really understand about 30% of what is said, the rest is determined by context. Source: a Deaf friend.
Yeah, well, it isn’t. Skilled lip readers can only extract a small fraction of the information from a speaker. (If you don’t believe it, try for yourself. Then look up the the McGurk Effect. All speaker/hearers turn out to be expert lip readers.)
And, of course, you can only read someone’s lips when they’re in front of you and facing you.
I never claimed that it was foolproof, just that it existed. It relies a lot on context.
I’ve known a few people who were deaf. None of them were mute.
Malaya didn’t deserve that burn, Marcie.
It was still a good one though and kind of necessary in my opinion since she wasn’t informed on that.
Malaya always deserves that burn.
Kind of depends on what Malaya’s been saying to Marcie while thinking she was deaf, doesn’t it?
“Okay, as long as it’s just the two of us for a moment, I think I’ll try out reciting the next chapter of my David Cross/David Bowie slashfic. Okay. ‘And then, in the darkness, David suddenly felt a hand on his dick. Stretching it out. And then, ‘twang’! Like a guitar string.’ “
You don’t know what Malaya’s voice sounds like.
Perceptions of Marcie may or may not change.
Malaya’s level of sensitivity, however, remains the same.
Malaya’s actually not being particularly INSENSITIVE. I mean…if someone said something in Spanish, I’d probably have to ask for a translation too. I’d also be surprised to find out that they’re not from a spanish speaking country considering they speak ONLY spanish.
Except that ASL does not necessarily imply that one can not hear. If they only understood, ASL, one could more easily make that assumption, but using it only implies an inability to speak.
Speaking only Spanish does not necessarily imply one is from a Spanish speaking country. With enough practice, I could probably start doing THAT.
Oh, I wasn’t referring to Malaya asking for a translation. I was more talking about her automatic assumption that Marcie is deaf, despite the fact that her use of sign-language is one-way for the most-part with Sal.
So it’s less a matter of a genuine misconception, and more likely Malaya not giving enough of a shit to pay attention to what’s right in front of her.
But if I spoke Spanish all the time, you’d start to think that maybe I don’t speak English.
And then me talking smack about you in English, right in front of you, assuming you couldn’t understand me, would be kind of a dick move, wouldn’t it? Same thing’s happening in the strip, just with signing.
Returning to my hastily-cobbled metaphor, you then replying to me in English, signaling to me, the audience and maybe the laugh track, would be comedy pyrite, amirite?
Malaya wasn’t talking smack about her. At all actually, though. Unless we’re implying that her being a “Wall” is calling her fat and not just really good at standing her ground like an immovable object like how I interpretted it.
What she says in this strip is complimentary, but on the other hand, given a) Malaya’s reaction to finding out Marcie isn’t deaf and b) Malaya in general, it’s not a bad bet that smack-talking has happened off-panel.
OK, remove the word “smack” from my comment. Metaphor still holds.
Weird. I reply as Joyce, then reply to a reply to my reply as Sarah. I have you surrounded. Or maybe I have myself surrounded.
But they’ve been hanging out for at least since the beginning of the school year. It’s pretty, well, dumb to make that assumption when you even see that person often, especially since she can see Marcie off camera and we can’t.
How do you know she’s been hanging with her that long. They might have just met like…a week ago.
I might be messing up comic time. I thought they were both with Sal at the beginning (around the time of the beach, I suppose, though not necessarily there)
Considering Sal obliquely referenced the Walmart parking lot alcohol trips as early as before the fateful party (and therefore beach), it’s possible they’d already met Malaya by then.
Although it still is the beginning of the school year, so if they only meet a few times a week, for only as long as it takes to split a six-pack of booze, and Malaya barely gives a damn about people who aren’t Malaya, it’s entirely plausible that Malaya never found out Marcie’s ears are functional in the maybe ten times they’ve met.
Back in fifties, my grandfather used to regularly meet with Russian scientists in his field of expertise. They were always accompanied by a ‘translator’ (read: minder.) Typically, after a few minutes, the Russians would start answering questions before the translator even started translating for them.
Neat! If I had to guess, Marcie might be selectively mute. But there are a lot of ways this could go, so I’ll hold my tongue until I know more about it.
*clap for apt metaphor*
Hey this is really off topic but, why did Sal rob that convenience store in the first place? Did she need the money for some reason.
Did you not read yesterday’s strip?
I’m starting to think it was for something more than just attention.
On what basis?
Considering Willis said in the comments she intended to get caught, thus forcing her parents to pay attention, means she wouldn’t be getting anything out of the robberies. Well, she got a fun new scar.
Bet you guys right now there was something more to that robbery.
It’s already an excuse to give Sal and Amber their current personalities and backstories. What more could eb needed?
She should’ve stayed off of that Jungle Gym…
http://youtu.be/34GefPx44dY?t=51s
She’s saying ” IIIIIIIIIII keep hearing footsteps, baby (in the dark) oohh, in the daaaaaark, oh in the daaaaaaaaaaaark.”
I understood that reference
Ah, that explains it! I’d wondered about how Marcie was understanding what Sal was saying a while back, when Marcie seems to be deaf and Sal wears a full facemask motorcycle helmet.
And no angst from Sal regarding the mute Marcie indicates it isn’t all Sal’s fault. Whew.
I kinda figured Marcie could hear and the silence was an affectation. There being a legit reason makes her funkier. Totally digging her.
I’ve been searching online and I can’t figure out what Marcie says in the second panel. I thought it was “good,” but the hands aren’t quite right.
Anyone know?
Check the strip title.
I posted it way above but here: http://www.signingsavvy.com/sign/FUN/1379/1
I like how the sign for ‘Butt’ is just pointing at your ass. yes I looked it up, why wouldn’t I?
You have the Butts disease!
Thanks!
Willis, do you know how incredibly frustrating it is to have a major characterization point relegated to a noodle incident?
In other news: Damn You Willis!
I doubt he plans on keeping it a mystery forever
whoops I put a space in my name, that’s weird.
uh, he might intend to show it in this storyline though??
Cinematic depiction of what Willis did to expectations, as viewed by a blind man:
“BOOM”
Just noticed the title of the storyline
I am now singing the song
I have all of the feelings
So…. Did Marcie suffer brain damage after falling from the playground?
We don’t know yet. We don’t know if brain injury happened or if there was some physical damage to the vocal cords. All we know at this point is Marice and Sal started their friendship young.
Does that means Marcie now know many of Malaya’s secrets? XD
I’m not sure Malaya actually gives enough of a damn about what other people think to bother keeping secrets.
http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=1937
Well, she does in the other dimension…
Speaking as a person who is good at spoken languages but utterly failed to learn ASL after years of trying, for some of us, it IS that hard. I trained for a career as a sign language interpreter, but had to abandon it.
It’s amazing how people don’t understand the disconnect between visual and spoken word–besides that it means bothering them at a specific time vs. whenever they feel like checking e-mail, I hate calling people because it often takes me longer to understand what they say even when I can understand their words (and it’s harder to misinterpret something that’s both typed and in front of my face for as long as I need it to be, vs. “I already forgot what you just said”).
My bf made fun of me once because I couldn’t immediately process a word joke he said, but think about the sounds connected to letters and trying to play with those sounds mentally vs. being able to see the letters and rearrange them. [Also, how long it took people to see the idiot pun in my name.]
This. I’m terrible with spoken language, both understanding and speaking. Talking on the phone with anyone other than my mother is a daunting chore to me, I will go to great lengths to avoid using phones. Speedreading is like second nature to me though, and I can read music and bits of other languages. I picked up the sign alphabet easily as a kid, but would have been useless as an interpreter due to my failings with spoken language.
Oh wow, it took me SO long staring at your name to get it. I even came up with a couple terrible ideas of what the pun could be and almost settled for one of them. Then I decided to google “jen aside” “is a pun” and found your earlier discussion… you said to say it out loud and suddenly I finally stopped separating the two words in my head. I always thought of Jen Aside as just a nice sounding, memorable name.
Anyway. Yeah, if someone’s judging your intelligence like that then they have a poor idea of what intelligence really is. We all make little mistakes or take a while to get certain things (besides having different strengths and weaknesses). But we vary in how much we show these little moments. Since people usually get the idea in their heads that I’m pretty smart, I can get away with admitting more mistakes without much social cost; and so I do, at every opportunity, because I always find mistakes entertaining. So for example I’ll reveal what I thought someone said in the half-second before I found out what they really said, when nobody really would have noticed the pause. My point being, though most people will laugh along, some people will react more like ‘oh, well then, you were wrong, because that’s wrong, for thus and such reason’, pointing out and correcting my mistake that I just pointed out and corrected. I guess certain people get pretty used to presenting a public face of infallibility, but also expect that of others. Or people like to use mistakes to establish superiority? In any case, intelligence is not instant or infallible; even for something very simple like a circle or the color red, there is a small amount of time before the brain can recognize it. Intelligence is a process which eventually arrives at the right answer; the steps in between are not mistakes.
Wandering back on-topic a bit, I definitely find writing is a better way of having interesting conversations. I do have trouble getting people to do it, though.
Malaya suddenly regrets badmouthing her behind her back to her face.
I wouldn’t have pegged Malaya for a backbiter. Then again she hasn’t been in the strip long.
Pfft, please, Malaya. You and Sal didn’t recruit Marcie; she and Marcie tolerate you.
Or maybe the team recruited Sal and Marcie together.
They didn’t recruit Marcie.
Marcie recruited them.
(in sign)
“Nice team you got there. Although, it could use a little…. me.”
I don’t think Sal’s on the team.
I feel like the only person in the world who doesn’t really care for Marcie. Mostly I just don’t like that there’s no subtitles for her. Especially since her signs are often used as a punchline, it feels like a joke I’m not in on.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BilingualBonus
You mean it sucks to feel left out of a conversation because no one around you thinks to be inclusive of your language needs?
Huh.
You are evil. Kang approves.
There is a very literal subtitle for her today. It’s the page title, directly below (“sub” to) the page itself: “Fun.”
This has happened at least twice before. http://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/marcie/page/2/ (“Crazy” and “Bullshit”) The pages that don’t subtitle Marcie’s signs will generally have Sal translate. (The notable exception is when Marcie signed “medal” when Carla asked if they should give Amazi-Girl one after they watched her clothesline Malaya.)
You know, I do believe most colleges offer ASL as a foreign language elective. I only had to take 1 semester (B.S. Degree), so I never obtained any level of fluency, but it’s a neat language to learn.
Honestly I am just thrilled these characters have become a group. Someone make a comparison to the Marx Brothers.
Not the Marx Brothers – The Ratpack. Sal is Frank, Marcie is Dino, Carla is Sammy Davis (’cause) and Malaya is… Peter Lawford? Because eventually she’ll piss Sal off and get kicked out?
OMG… did I slip into a parallel universe?
Niiiice.
I think we’re looking at Brat Pack II.
I don’t know if Sal is smooth enough to be Groucho (Groucho would never blow his top; he’d just snark at his enemies until they self-destruct), and Marcie isn’t quite animated enough to be Harpo (though I guess that makes sense, replacing Harpo’s pantomime with actual ASL). And it was usually Chico who served as Harpo’s “translator.”
Carla could be Zeppo, though. Only brought in when they need something.
Zeppo is a deadpan parody of a handsome Hollywood leading man.
I guess Guns is Gummo.
Eh, other than one of them being mute, there’s not really any parallel with the Marxes. The Marx Bros. are agents of chaos surrounded by people who expect a world that makes sense.
SURPRISE END OF FLASHBACK
or break from flashback, who knows
Flashback hiatus. Anybody looking to start a band can get dibs on this name.
Sal’s face at the end. Man I love her friendship with Marcie. She deserves a good friend.
I work with a man who is deaf, but he reads lips so everyone at work is still able to talk to him. I know a few signs here and there and I use them so he feels someone speaks his language. He’s a good soul, always smiling and making visual jokes too.
hahaha classic My favorite is when people whisper.
You know what, I could see Sal being a really good teacher.
Maybe instructor/lecturer. I don’t know I’d she’d have the temperament for grading assignments or dealing with parental/burocractic/pedagogical BS.
Sal, a teacher? Nah… I mean, who would she make out with, then?
Are they on a Roller Derby team?
I’ve got a cousin who is a total sixties hippy-radical throwback. But her teenage daughter has been in Junior League Roller Derby for several years. Last I heard anyway.
No doubt about that, first time Marcia wearing rollers and helmet, and Malaya’s comment is pretty clear, so yes, Marcia joined Malaya’s team recently, she has had at least practice games and she is rocking it.
Also I think that Marcia’s comment refers to Malaya’s chatter during or after the games, lockers room chat and stuff I guess, that is bothering her it seems.
However that makes Malaya dumber, how could she has been teaming with Marcia and NOT noticed that she can hear? Is it pretty possible that the couch raised the question first thing as a matter of need.
*shit* Marcia = Marcie
Why is it always Marcia????
Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!
On that topic I just remembered these Willis’ guest strips at GWS: http://www.girlswithslingshots.com/comic/guest-week-david-willis-1/
So if THAT goggled jammer came against this goggled wall, would we have the Unstoppable Arse against the Immovable Assets?
Well, my cousin’s daughter does have pretty ginormous thighs. She was talking about roller derby and offering free demonstration hip-checks, but I declined.
Ok…not what i was expecting for today’s strip, but i care not. I do, however want to ask Marcie about those secrets hehehe.
My guess is that Sal pushed Marcie off the Casa de Marcie and caused her muteness. Then she felt bad and they became friends.
Watch how gloriously wrong I will be!
*crossing fingers and whispering* PleaseBeWrongpPleaseBeWrongPleaseBeWrongPleaseBeWrongPleaseBeWrong
Please!
I’m not… Entirely sure how that would cause muteness
Maybe she fell onto an errant plot device
Related to head trauma there is Broca’s aphasia:
“A condition characterized by either partial or total loss of the ability to express oneself, either through speech or writing. Hearing comprehension is not affected. This condition may result from a stroke, head injury, brain tumor, or infection.”
There are also the traumatic lesions to the vocal system itself, like bite off your own tongue or injure the nerves or muscles that control the zone.
Except that Broca’s aphasia affect the language centers of the brain, which would damage one’s ability to communicate and to understand communication, not simply one’s ability to speak. Sign language is still communication – Broca’s would damage that, too. Marcie may be mute, but she still manages to communicate effectively. To most people.
That’s true, also usually there are other problems present that Marcie do not show, I was answering the “how that [a fall] would cause muteness” question, not he Marcie’s case in particular. I should have said that.
However despite meaning processing in both gesture and spoken language involve the same main brain areas, there are some areas involved exclusively in the gesture processing. Also being left or right handed matters, and others details too.
Some specialist think that could be possible have highly damaged the speech while slightly damaged the gesture expression. Probably not in a Broca’s aphasia, though.
I even knew about a patient that was unable to speak in English but could speak in German. I do not remember which of them was his native language, I guess the latter.
Two things: persons with profound damage to Broca’s area can vocalize perfectly well and can construct meaningful sentences. They just can’t express them in speech or sign. More than that, though, head trauma which affected the left temporal lobe that severely would have wiped out more than just Broca’s area. If that were the case, Marcie whould be effectively unable to communicate at all.
Right, the expression is mostly automatic, though.
Yes, probably. However brain lesions are quite variable. It is not the same bleed, swell or ischemia. The age greatly influences (she could be very young which is positive). Lots of parameters. The outcome is pretty different from case to case.
You have from patient that lost both expression and understanding in every way, to those who can’t understand you speaking but gestures is ok, to others that only are unable to speak correctly while can understand almost without problems and read and write just fine,
Also the language abilities, especially writing, is different distributed on left-handed persons, thus similar lesions cause different problems.
Indeed it is a far variable problem.
You’re right — I hadn’t thought about how young Marcie would have been when she lost speech. That would argue even more strongly against any temporal aphasia, since she would have been likely to retain enough plasticity to recover partially.
I don’t think that Marcie is brain damaged at all, though. I’m betting on damage to the recurrent laryngeal nerves, which would completely explain Marcie’s symptoms. Or, perhaps, a wizard did it; Willis isn’t required to be well-versed in functional vocal anatomy.
ok i totally want malaya to learn the language, and then slowly bond with marcie and then they find that they like spending time in each other company and –
NEW SHIP ALERT
Marcie may be bi, but I thought Malaya was closer to asexual.
The only time she was ever asked in the Walkyverse, her response was, “I want to fuck whatever [UltraCar] is.” In the Dumbiverse context, very hard to say. She seems attracted to people who are as abrasive and antisocial as she is. Gender really hasn’t come into play.
Marcie’s sexuality hasn’t even come up, I don’t even want to speculate.
oh please let the next flashback be Marcie and Sal being the tiniest bffs
So, a potential way to make things needlessly dramatic for Marcie… she meets a mute/deaf romantic interest! But this romantic interest is British, and so only speaks… BSL dun-dun-derrrrrr!!! D: D: D: …Or, you know, DoA could continue not being a ridiculous soap opera, but where’s the fun in that?
Next week, on DoAys Of Our Lives: Dina finds out Sarah is her real mother, who gave her up for adoption! An illicit tryst between Joyce and Mike… until it’s revealed they’re actually sisters, and now Mike is pregnant! And how will Billie’s new heroin addiction be accepted by a newly crack addicted Ruth??
+1
But I’m pretty sure the universe would implode if Mike and Joyce had an illicit tryst, and then it would explode. That much force being located in the same space would cause a freak chain reaction that would make Chernobyl look like a holiday. The powers involved in such a meeting of good and evil would be too much, it would be nigh immaginable.
Really hope we find out what happened that caused her to be mute. I’m very curious.
SURPRISE END OF FLASHBACK
SURPRISE MARCIE ISN’T DEAF
Oh. I was wondering how she could understand Sal in strip
Marcie Playground! Get it? (Yes, that would have been more appropriate in yesterday’s strip)
Broca’s aphasia would also affect her ability to sign though, so I’d guess some kind of mouth or throat injury is more likely.
Neither Broca’s and Wernike’s aphasia prevent vocalization; they merely cause radically distorted speech and/or sign. Interestingly, Broca’s aphasia doesn’t always block communication completely: it turns out that many patients can sing, even though that can’t speak sensibly.
Marcie is the best character
I’d like to applaud Sal for using “were” instead of “was”.
I wonder if Marcie’s roller-derby name makes reference to the fact that she doesn’t talk. Y’know, something like “The Hoosier Hush”, “The Silent Slammer”, or “The Quiet One”.
Silent But Deadly?
Maybe I am wrong, but all the webcomics I have read have given me the super-power of silly theory making.
Chances are Marcie became mute but could have been saved by a certain surgery she couldn’t pay. Hence, Sal stealing whatever she could to get the money and assist her BFF in times of need. That way, Sal will be redeemed to our eyes, and she will be 100% part of the “good guys”.
That would definitely put Sal’s actions in a moral grey area. You might be onto something. We still don’t know why she robbed the gas stop. I mean, we know about the racism she faced for looking blacker than Walky, but the reason still really isn’t there on why she did it. Sal looked very much like she didn’t want to do the robbing, but she felt she had to for some reason. She was likely pressured by another person or the circumstances she faced.
Go back and look at what Sal’s mom said in the last frame of the comic immediately prior to this one.
I guess I never thought about it, I just saw that she used sign language, but was able to understand Sal’s spoken English (while not looking at Sal… in a dark parking lot…) and moved on with the story.
So, what is Marcie? Mute? Or is she just so good that she can roller skate without having to see? An echolocation without having to use noise sort of thing…
I think it’s more likely Marcie’s mutism is due to an illness or physical trauma to her brain, tongue or vocal cords rather than from a psychological/emotional trauma. While Willis tends to write more pychological causes, he also is diverse in what his characters deal with. Marcie appears socially confident in general and trusting/close with Sal in particular. This seems to rule out selective mutism which is anxiety based. Can’t discount the possibility that the sound of her own voice is painful/distressing and she chooses not to speak regardless of her relationship with Sal. Perhaps Marcie is the token physically disabled character who is completely comfortable with her disability. Personally it is refreshing to have a character without psychological angst of some sort.
Malaya’s not very bright, is she?