…He’d actually be really good at that. I don’t even mean tabloids, like, can you picture him in an interview? His specialty is asking biting questions to make someone squirm, and the tougher his target the better. Give him a mike in an election year and watch the ratings roll in.
My username is from back when I was saying we should have something mostly following Daisy, Dorothy and Billie writing for the school paper. I guess I’d allow Mike in there, too.
Stewart is amazing, but too good natured. Mike is pissed off basically 24/7.
Know who Mike would be? Spider Fucking Jerusalem. That guy once talked six politicians into committing suicide using only a telephone. His columns tore down two presidential administrations. He carries a Bowel Disruptor gun that makes people who annoy him crap themselves.
Paxman is the brick the BBC throws at corrupt politicians when they want to take them down a few notches. It is a proven fact that he hates that you – yes, you specifically, whoever you are – share the same planet as him.
Exhibit A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rEqiC8ItM8
Mike could do well as a journalist, it’d allow him to channel his assholery to the greater good. However, I always thought he’d derive the most personal pleasure from psychiatry. One is a shallow screwing of an entire population of people, while the other would be a deep, penetrating screw of a single person.
IIRC, it’s based on when he created the character. Walky has dots bc he looks odd with whites at this point, but newer chars like Dina get the more realistic eyes because that’s Willis’ current style.
Joyce, Mary and Billie had sclera from the start, all the way back in Roomies. They’re consistently drawn with eyelids even in black and white, and the sclera become visible when they appeared in the occasional colored page back then. Dina and Ruth also consistently had visible eyelids, suggesting the presence of sclera– but Ruth was bespectacled and Dina was asleep in Roomies until the start of It’s Walky, so it’s hard to tell. Sarah was an odd case in that she had consistent eyelids but not sclera in the colored pages.
Meanwhile, Amber– one of the newest characters– has no sclera. Go to the page where she changes into the Amazi-Girl costume during the Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit story to see it, as she is otherwise rarely barefaced.
I remember reading something about why some characters do or don’t have sclera, but “age” doesn’t seem to have much to do with it. Maybe it was more about how “this is just how David Willis always drew them” instead?
Actually, he’s drawn normally non-sclera’d eyes with sclera, and normally sclera’d eyes as beady. It seems to be a context thing for Willis, depending on what emotion he’s trying to convey. Here, it’s lazy, comfortable teasing.
And when those guys routinely harass the people around them, assault people in public, steal from their roommates, and convince abuse victims that they’re exactly like their parents, they tend to not be allowed to hang around anymore, yet everyone just passively accepts Mike’s continued presence.
Huh. That mystifies me a bit, too. I’d like to see Mike go too far for someone’s liking at least once. Just to get the realistic reaction out of someone else in the cast. Since this is a remotely grounded series, he’s not going to get off scot-free forever… if only because he’d grow boring if he did. I don’t see him upping the ante and getting away with it.
Amazi-Girl beats people up all the time! You can’t mention the fact that he beat up Joe once! Also, he lives there and goes there! If he wants to hang around you, there’s little you can do to get rid of him. Lastly, as you say it’s remotely grounded. Remotely. A girl dresses up and beats on bullies. Mike and people’s acceptance of him are not that absurd.
I used to love Mike because he revealed what was wrong with people. He was mean to them and he was RIGHT! Recently he’s just sorta being a dick, however he his commenting on the unreasonable expectation of becoming President.
Amazi-Girl is a costumed vigilante, mentally unhinged, and a minor celebrity in a college. The moment the authorities are contacted, she’s done.
Mike is a disgusting shithead who makes a point to actively harass everyone for his personal amusement. He assaulted Joe in public, with witnesses. More importantly, I don’t care what Mike wants, I want the characters to react to him they should act towards the scumbag. Inform the school that they’re being constantly harassed by some blond asshole, fucking break his nose. I don’t care, I just want him gone.
“he his commenting on the unreasonable expectation of becoming President.”
If you by commenting mean “actively discourages”. I’m sure a woman who wants a high profile career has never before been told that her expectations are “unreasonable”. I’m sure it’s not part of an active patriarchal structure to discourage women from reaching high office in large and small ways. Especially not with an undertone of slut shaming.
“So you want to be president, huh? Seems pretty unlikely.” – that would be commenting (still a bit assholy, but not that different from Walky’s reaction to Joyce’s plan to be a housewife).
“So you want to be president, huh? Let’s take a photo of you in a private moment and put it on internet so it will be readily available for anyone who wants to work against you at any point of your career, and let’s make sure you understand the implied undertones that you want make it because you have a boyfriend and is therefor an irresponsible slut.” – that’s active discouragement, bullying and edges close to career sabotage.
Chrissy: Yup, the mechanism is similar to Doxing. The goal is to make the victim feel vulnerable and restrict her behavior while still keeping a sliver of legitimacy. “Come one, I didn’t do anything bad. Those were just photos. I can’t help what other people used them for.” The key point is that Dorothy has no say in how he takes and uses photos of her.
While I agree with you guys in general and agree that Mike is an asshole and not contributing much these days, remember, right now they’re in his room. If he wants to be an asshole at Dorothy now he can, right now she’s invading his private space without his permission.
I’m not saying he’s not aasshole, or that he’s not slut shaming. I’m just saying he has a point. He doesn’t care about Dorothy’s sex life, but he knows she cares about her public image. Her actions/relationship with Walky is at odds with her EXPECTATION to become President. Mike is exposing that cognitive dissonance and in the most asshole/indirect way possible is trying to get her to resolve it (while having fun).
…that’s not how shared dorms work. She is in Mike’s AND Walky’s private space, and you can make a case that Walky is overstepping the bounds by inviting her, but to leap from that to say that Mike is allowed to harass her is just bizarre.
He IS allowed to ask her to leave or to contact the RA, though, and if he truly has a problem with Dorothy being in their room, rather than just being an asshole for its own sake, I really hope he will do it.
Garrett: then I suppose my question is: So what? Why should Dorothy care what he thinks about her career plans? What does his motives matter if they don’t justify his behaviour?
To take another example, Blaine tried to teach his daughter to be strong and independent, but that doesn’t justify his abuse or change the fact that he is the worst thing in the Dumbiverse.
Dumbiverse Mike hasn’t gone through anywhere near the character growth that Walkyverse Mike has. Dumbiverse Mike very occasionally “hurts to help,” but he is far more often just wantonly being an asshole, mainly helping people by accident rather than by intention.
I figured that it was because he never actually harms anyone (except Joe, but that was obviously on orders), and his unvarnished insight is unnervingly useful to have around.
Plus, Joyce seems to trust him, and that’s good enough for me.
Mike is the furthest from reality of all the characters (possibly even including Amazigirl), and he has caused more pain and sadness than MARY. “Oh, but he’s doing it for their own good!” Remember that Mary often thinks she’s doing thinks for people’s own good too. This is the only Willis comic I’ve read, and so far, Mike does not fit in this universe. Everyone else is a complex, flawed character, and so far Mike is one dimensional. Just a complete abusive dick “for people’s own good”?
Hey, it’s a university campus. There is no simple hide when you have so many means of complete disposal. Either the buckets of Dermestidae or tanks with voracious Nephropidae as well as access to things like this https://www.science.mcmaster.ca/~accelerator/images/KN.jpg
You have this realistic cast of characters and then this asshole to whom the rules don’t seem to apply.
No one in the cast would let another character get away with what he does and the people in comments come down way harder on other characters for way less.
They come down less hard because they think he’s funny. Also there’s no point in reacting to him, he thrives on your discomfort and anger. That’s what makes him so different and why hating him is pointless, he actively wants you to, if you give it to him he’s getting exactly what he wants, no other character functions like that.
On one of the sites I follow they have a running segment about used cars titled “Nice Ride Or Crack Pipe”. Well, here we have “Nice Ride AND Crack Pipe”!
Clearly the solution is to get him to hook up with Sierra. Maybe she’ll be a good influence on him? … Or at least it’ll clear one of the rooms for a night.
(I figure DoA-Mike is really Walkyverse-Mike just before “someone” brought him back from death. Free from the whole abduction-superpowers thing, he’s able to live a normal life – but he’s had more time to work on that unnervingly insightful side to him.)
(Disclaimer: perpetually drugging someone into dating you is extremely fucked up even if the drugged person is 95% asshole otherwise. Even with that in mind, Dina’s evaluation of Mike’s response is not wrong.)
Well Bush had drug addict and an alcoholic when he was young, and he got the job. I mean, he did have quite a bit of help getting the position…and he’s a white male…
But I mean maybe that could give you a little hope? Also it’s your boyfriend you’re in bed with, so I feel like a good portion your voters will say “meh.” Not ALL of them…but if she’s going for universal popularity, then she shouldn’t be running at all.
But that’s the problem in a nutshell. Even with no concrete evidence — none whatsoever — the “birthers” have kept this nonsense going for almost seven years now. Should Dorothy ever get her shot at the presidency (and given just how dirty politics are now and how much worse they would likely be 20 years hence), just think what an opponent would be able to do with an actual photo that *DOES* show her in bed — clothed or not — with someone not her husband.
Yes, but you can also ask to be moved to a different room if it’s too terrible for you. I had a few friends who did that, and my roommate and I nearly did it, but decided to stick it out.
You know. The fact that Mike could photoshop a crack pipe in there would give the picture less heft. What picture is real in a world where photoshop exists?
Been waiting for that, he doesn’t get enough screen time and its not really fair, he was such a great character in short packs and I want to see more of him now.
Willis has said before that Mike works best as a drop in character and wants to avoid over using him like he did in Shortpacked. Mike’s a walking gag, nothing more.
Walky needs to get up, go over to Mike and tell him in so many words that he is an asshole, and take the phone out of his hands and delete those pics. Problem is, too many smartphones (especially iPhones) automatically back up the pics to the “cloud” so it would be no better than tearing up a print while the photographer still has the negatives (old school references, I know).
I wish I’d bought ECCC tickets. When they came on sale I was still recovering financially from being unemployed, and by the time I recovered they were all gone. 🙁
Mike’s parents are insanely pleasant. Mike’s behavior doesn’t quite match the self-centered profile of a spoiled-rotten kid, though. That’s more Billie’s thing.
I want Mike to try to get at Carla and fail. I feel like Mike could only suceed by being super transphobic, but that’s not his style. Mike makes you feel bad by being better than you by YOUR OWN standards, not society’s.
Maybe in 30 years America will start to change it’s unhealthy view of sexuality. Maybe that will be reflected in some groundbreaking Supreme Court ruling. And maybe after that, Indiana will get pissy, demanding it’s right to discriminate. Maybe it’ll make some LGBT Hoosiers very sad.
Still trying to get GenCon to come to Toronto since TO has way more con space, hotel space, a subway system and a downtown that doesn’t smell like ass. Really? Steam pipes in the sewers?
Too many rules to get things (merchandise) across the border to have a con that will attract mostly Americans in Canada. Ask Willis; I think he ran afoul of some of that at an earlier con that was in (IIRC) Calgary.
I think that would be a perfect career path. From reporting about politicians to being one. Now and then using that against them at press conferences.
“Now, what you want to do is give me several rapid questions in short order to keep me off balance, much like you did, Mrs Washington Post, but you could be sharper about it.”
I don’t understand why she just doesn’t kill the dissenters? Like, if she wants to be President of your pitiful little fleshling commune, why doesn’t she just seize the power now?
Right now, her priorities are out of whack. She needs stop paying attention to this one minion and work on building an army of thousands. (Well, at least thousands, millions is better.) If you can get them to all look like reflector, the better.
Iirc presidential candidates have to be a minimum of 35 years old, so she has a bit of living to do before she can run. Or I guess she could team up with galasso.
>Galasso is president and Keener is vice president
>Under United States law, the vice president is promoted to president if the current president dies
>Keener can become the president if she pulls off a successful Starscream and has Galasso assassinated, or convincingly fakes his death without implicating herself
>Galasso’s megalomania is such that he believes a Starscream figure is necessary for his power structure anyway
And horror of horrors, here I am without popcorn handy!
I can’t help but like Mike. He’s honest. He challenges baseless assumptions and prejudices around him. He can see that Walky and Dorothy just won’t work, what with Dorothy’s goals, and Walky’s lack of goals. Just look at the pajama jeans arc. He’s undoubtedly more asshole-ish, because his parents are such genuinely nice people. As a sidenote, no one in the comic asked him if it was cool to bang in there room. Asshole r not, that’s just bad manners.
Did they bang? I assumed not because of the thing with the laptop and eyeglasses.
Not that having someone even sleep over in a shared bedroom without clearance from the other occupant is entirely according to Miss Manners. Or so I should imagine: I somehow got a two-person room to myself when I was in college.
I doin’t agree with the “Walky and Dorothy” part. Just because they (assumedly) aren’t meant to stay together their whole life doesn’t mean Mike has to ruin anything *now*
It wouldn’t matter if Mike had psychic abilities and knew that Dorothy and Walky were going to break up tomorrow at three PM. That doesn’t make it okay to take pictures of them in bed and post the pictures to Facebook without their consent, never mind altering the pictures to show that they’re doing illegal drugs.
Yeah sure, a crackpipe on two sleeping people. I don’t know Mike, sleeping after crack is kinda unbelievable, nobody will fall for that! You can do better, I believe in you.
And yet we get neither. It’s like a comic of real people and Mike is from a different, less realistic comic. He was more real in Shortpacked and he had superpowers in that.
I don’t know that anyone has said he only does it to people that deserve it. Mike only does it when it’s funny (when you aren’t the one he’s doing it to). But oddly enough he manages to do it in a way that frequently helps people. A lot of times this is by making them face painful dissonances in their thinking, goals, etc. At this point in his life, the goal may not be so much to help people as to amuse himself. He’s also young as of yet — an unfinished Mike.
I said it my OP that the people who say he is doing it for the betterment of other can go elsewhere.
If I had a “friend” like that they wouldn’t be my friend for very long.
Also, no, he assaulted Ethan because it was fun and he tried to break up Walky and Dotty more because he is a shit than because of some abstract shit about them being embarrassed about their relationship.
I will be charitable and assume that Mike is joking and that is phone is actually out of battery (although nothing he has done so far suggests it). This is still classical harassment. Make sure the victim can’t keep their guard down, keep them on their toes. The message he is sending Walky is that he is not safe in his room. His things may disappear, his girlfriend may be harassed, his privacy may be violated. Maybe not this time… but maybe next time. Better if he keep out of the room as much as possible. You know, the one place in college Walky should be allowed to use as a safe haven when things get to crazy.
And what he does to Dorothy is pure slut shaming. How dare you let your guard down and be intimate with someone when you want to have an important job in the future?
I think it’s time for Walky to apply for a new room mate.
Walky hasn’t done anything about Mike, which is kiinda unrealistic. How about when Mike let others use Walky’s DVDs as a skateboard ramp? We haven’t seen any fallout from that.
Mike gets away with way too much, and the issue is most of the guys he could have roomed with are way too passive. The only guy that would have done something at this point is Joe.
On top of that, Mike seems to be pretty good at picking his victims. If he were rooming with someone who would actually shut him down (I agree that so far Joe and maybe Jacob are the only ones who’d really try) I think he’d just ignore that person as ‘no fun’.
“How about when Mike let others use Walky’s DVDs as a skateboard ramp? We haven’t seen any fallout from that.”
—————
Refresh my memory. Did he actually do this, or did he just *SAY* that he had done this?
…College-age women and men typically don’t think, act, or respond the same way to the same thing. And even if he puts that picture on Facebook, it’s clearly two people spending a quality moment together (how’s he going to prove that she spent the night? They’re fully clothed and look like they’ve just taken a quick break). Harassment typically has a intimidation component to it, and for whatever reason his M.O. is to reveal uncomfortable truths rather than show that someone is inferior.
No one is safe in their own room nowadays, thanks to the internet, and the outside world is even less hospitable or comfortable; that’d be a pretty good summation of the comic’s thesis. Safety without effort is an illusion at best, and there really is no excuse anymore for a lack of personal vigilance – in a less interconnected world, maybe.
Dorothy and Walky _ought_ to be learning “how dare you let…” as a lesson.
Um, politely, I want to note that logic that works on, oh people affected by another person’s bad actions, how could you have possibly been so short-sighted as to let that other person do that thing to you is very difficult to see as something other than victim-blaming.
And that is especially awkward when some of the biggest flare-ups on the internet of late have been caused by a bunch of assholes doing crappy slut-shaming things to women or otherwise violating or harassing them with very similar things to do and everyone deciding to blame the woman because she dared to date people who exist, or because nudes of her exist on her personal phone or the phones of others that can be hacked off of it.
Learn to see it as not “victim-blaming”, then, because the issue is more complicated than can be surmised with a single hyphenated word. It’s not “how could you have let that person do that thing to you” so much as “why on earth did you trust your mass-produced phone’s security to that extent”. There _are_ always precautions you can take (and if not, you really aren’t safe in your own room).
There is a difference between “being victimized” and “being an easy target”, and the important thing to understand is that they do not necessarily come with each other – they’re “and/or”. I agree that it is _definitely_ victim-blaming and unconscionable to say such of someone for the former (where someone else was enough of an ass to break through all of your reasonable precautions); but leaving your front door unlocked (not open, just not locked like it reasonably could be) and then complaining when your stuff gets stolen? Not so much.
(Here, they know Mike is an asshole, and that he has a history of doing stuff like this. Dorothy’s room is available, and Sierra even seems to be cool with Walky staying over, but they spent the night in the room that Walky and Mike share.)
Or they could learn the lesson “when someone is making you feel unsafe in your own room, it’s not okay and that person should be removed from your life if possible.” I feel that that lesson is equally valid.
You said “no one is safe in their own room,” as if it was always going to be true. My argument is that if someone is making you not-safe in your own room, you are entitled to do what you can to stop them, rather than just accepting that your room isn’t a safe place and being on guard at every moment. Because you should be safe in your own room, and the problem is them, not you. If that’s what you meant, I did not get that out of your comment.
(I don’t know if Walky actually has any options about Mike; I don’t know what procedures for redress or room-change are available to him. But in an ideal world, he would have options to deal with an asshole roommate other than “put up with it and spend as little time as possible in my own room”.)
Yes, you should be safe in your own room. Problem is, you aren’t – not in this millennium. Believing in and acting towards the former is wishful thinking that is detrimental to your actual ability to be safe (however you define that), was my point.
I’m sorry you are not safe in your room. I am safe in mine, and people who would make me not-safe are not welcome in it. Because until technology develops a mind of its own, it’s people who make you safe and not-safe. (In the context we’re discussing, anyway.) I mean, that’s presumably why you said that it would be preferable to spend time in Dorothy’s room; it’s not because it’s in any way different from Walky’s, but because Dorothy doesn’t have an asshole roommate. The asshole roommate is the problem, not the existence of the Internet.
And I think that’s one of the more frustrating things about dumbiverse Mike. He punches down, not up. And he especially targets people who are unlikely to defend themselves and is happy to exploit terrible situations with a highly privileged sort of assholery.
Oh, does societal sexism treat your sexuality as a woman as a shortcoming? Great. I’ll just do some public slut shame and echo society telling you to abandon your dreams, because maybe then you’ll only ever sleep over at your own room and I will have less Walky in mine.
Oh, hey do you have really strict and controlling religious parents and are in a crisis point because your evolving stance on moral issues is getting you more and more dangerously close to being disowned? Awesome, let me see if I can put you in even more hot water on that because I think it’s personally funny.
Oh hey, do you have issues with being comfortable with your own sexuality? Awesome! I’m going to endlessly harass you with dick drawings on your whiteboard because I know it makes you uncomfortable and it’s not something you want. Or by just being the worst friend possible.
Oh hey, were you horrifically abused when you were younger? Awesome! Let me fuck with your insecurities by calling you the same type of person, which since I’ve known you a long time, I also know is something that is a major fear/trigger for you and a source of deep-seated emotional issues regarding the healthy processing of anger or fear.
Oh hey, you’ve got messed up ideas of masculinity that keep you from being as supportive of a boyfriend as you could be? Awesome! Let me encourage that bad behavior by exploiting jealousy, cause toxic masculinity plus jealousy has never had a bad consequence in the real world. Oh no sir.
And worse, when he has an opportunity to do something about corrupt authority, he turns it on the least powerful individual involved. His reaction to, oh our TA is fucking one of the students was to slut shame Sal for it.
Actually slut shaming is his most common go-to, looking through the archives for just Dumbiverse stuff. It was his weapon when he stalked his target into his women studies’ class and shat all over the class by making it about his harassment (I mean look at his comments, it’s all about how Dorothy must have no standards and how just inhumanly slutty she must be to find a messy guy hot).
Hell, the only time he’s been remotely close to “being an asshole for good”, it has been when he’s basically been being an asshole to Ethan about his sexuality, either sarcastically suggesting closet tactics or by pointing out his financial support for bigoted institutions or just otherwise interfering with his attempts to rebuild a friendship with Amber.
In fact, he’s been very good at the isolation thing with regards to his “friends”, getting them to feel like they are all alone in the world with no one but him for support. And then he doesn’t give them any.
In a more fictionalized universe, Mike gets to be this unstoppable force, but in a more realistic world, he’s painting a very accurate picture of an abuser and worse, one of those abusers who decide to try and casually ruin someone powerless’s life “for the lulz”.
And it’s very awkward to see the free pass for this because of his gender and his character in Shortpacked when characters like Becky are hyper-scrutinized and are seen as doing no right.
You also hit on the one point that possibly COULD make Mike redeemable in my eyes – if he started to hit upwards. He could target Ruth for her abuse of power, Jason for sleeping with a students (people may or may not agree that Jason deserved to be targeted for that – but as you pointed out he DID target Sal for it), the Dean for slutshaming Roz, about 3/4 of the parents… He could try to do good in a way similar to Amber, and would make an interesting foil and lead to an interesting debate on how far it would be right to go (I would still think most of his antics would be too far even with an acceptable target). But that’s not what he does.
I hadn’t realized until now, but we haven’t seen Mike target anyone in positions of authority yet. Like he stays away if he could actually get in legimitate trouble.
Kinda like a bully.
Who’s a bigger one though, Mike or Ruth? Remains to be seen.
Both are really bad. Asking who is a bigger bully is about as unconstructive as asking who you prefer to ship, it all comes down to compare personal preferences.
Both do horrible, damaging things. With Ruth we know that she fights enormous personal problems and that a lot of her behavior is a coping mechanism to retain at least the illusion of control – especially in her interaction with Billie. Does that make it more OK? I root for her and hope good things will come her way, but that certainly doesn’t make it easier for the people who live in the Clark wing.
With Mike it seems like he just does what he does out of idle amusement. Like this morning. He could have woken up, thought “huh, Roomie’s girlfriend is still here” and left the room for breakfast or whatever. Instead he stuck around to harass them. Why? What does he gain? It just feels so pointless to make people miserable for no reason whatsoever. Maybe he has a reason, but we don’t know. We just see him from the eyes of the other characters.
I suppose the one thing I can see in Mike’s favor compared to Ruth is that he does not have any official power to abuse – but he certainly abuses the position of trust he has gained from being Walky’s room mate and being part of their social circle (such as when he grabbed Joyce’s phone after being invited to their table).
The one concept I have in my head is that Mike is actually really bored and lonely – we haven’t seen him with any friends of his own, but pulling off stunts like this is a way to grab some form of recognition, even if it’s negative.
He’s probably a model person in all other regards – he gets decent grades, doesn’t do underage drinking, doesn’t smoke, possibly due to his parents’ upbringing. But he needs to act out, and he’s lost that ability to be genuinely social.
Yeah, I think we’re on the exact same page about that.
And sadly I think that’s not something we’ll see from him, because it might put him in some genuine risk and he couldn’t just feel smugly superior about it and wander off to the next target.
Following up on the punching down not up thing as this is a big part of my problem with him, it’s worth noting that his only reaction to systems he condescendingly looks at as bad is to shit on those caught on the bottom of them and be superiorly smug about it.
He never is seen campaigning to address a wrong or using his asshole powers to fight someone in authority or piss on say, a major corporation he sees as contributing to the hurting of his friend. Instead, he goes after mostly people suffering an axis of oppression and acts smug because he isn’t caught up in the same system as them.
And I think we’ve all encountered the cis white guy who just acts smugly superior to everyone in our lives (they are especially rife in college) and I think it’s why his character in this universe ends up being so much worse.
On that note, I’d say Carla is the asshole character that made off the best with the universe shift, because being a misanthropic sarcastic grump makes perfect sense for an alienated transwoman who’s been through shit.
I just can’t stand Mike anymore and sincerely hope he never appears again. It’s one thing if he were just an abusive asshole, but he’s an abusive asshole we’re expected to find hilarious. There’s nothing to his character, to the point where I’m surprised he can even exist in a series with such well rounded characters.
…You’re focusing on individual issues, and ignoring the larger ones. (And confusing what Mike is/could be aware of, with what the _reader_ is.)
Walky is mixed; racism is just as valid a point where a mixed-gender voting population is concerned. (And that’s not even getting into what “crack pipe” implies.) It’s _Walky_ who suggests sexism.
The “All Hail Satan” thing? Even if he didn’t know the details, he’s nearby and could work out for himself that there’s something behind Joyce not picking up her phone when it’s on the table. He comes up with a plausible distraction that Joyce’s Mom could believe. (If she’s not fundy, it’s a harmless prank; if she is, it’s a weird prank.)
He can’t possibly be _certain_ of Joyce’s level of comfort with her sexuality (or even be aware of what happened at the party), or how Danny feels about an ex he really should be letting go of as quickly as possible (they don’t seem to have met beforehand). If he’s aware of Amber being Amazi-Girl, he has good reason to suggest that she’s becoming her father; if he isn’t, he still has good reason, as it means she’s in danger of “using” Danny like her dad did her mother. (Either way, he uncrosses his arms afterwards – he’s getting ready for her to beat the ass out of him.)
The TA thing was a fluke and he admits it. The situation is highly unethical, particularly for the reasons Sal accidentally confirms it began for. Reminding Sal of that fact is just the fastest way to end it (she started it, and would react badly if Jason ended it). He could still go after Jason for it, as this strip can’t be more than 12 hours in-world after he found out about it.
“Slut shaming” only works on Dorothy because she’s so tightly wound up. If at any point she replies with “…So what?”, it stops working. (Plus, what happens if _Mary_ finds out about her and Walky? Not the lying together in bed part, but the pre-marital hanky-panky.)
…He also listens to Ethan and is on friendly terms with him – neither Ethan’s nor Amber’s isolation is Mike’s fault, and getting Ethan temporarily back in the closet actually gets him some new friends even when it’s clearly not a healthy long-term solution. (Depending on if Ethan’s depression is clinical or not, serious prompting from outside is practically a requirement for any kind of change. Keeping someone like that from going too “low” takes higher immediate priority than making sure his life is perfectly fulfilled – which then needs to come later.)
I think the reason this keeps coming up in the comments, is because it’s very easy to pay attention to his individual actions in individual comics, but harder to go back and follow the aftermath throughout the rest of the arc (the other characters’ reactions to them/him as well as how well the situations he prompts actually end).
This requires ignoring the extent of his insight into others, while simultaneously bashing him for acting on it so well. This whole thing falls down to giving him too much credit after cherry-picking reasons to do so, then attacking him for credit _given_ to him.
Here: If he can read people so well that he can cut people so deeply, why do the situations keep ending so well? Why not set everyone up on a complete trainwreck (as actual abusers are capable of), if he’s such a good manipulator _and_ is that malicious?
(Plus, would Ethan really hang out with Mike if he’d been the only other person pushing for Amber getting self-defense training? This is why it’s not good to only focus on strips with Mike in them, doing something.)
Ugh, OK, that out of my system. I really don’t want to spend time on Mike.
Dorothy and Walky are freaking adorable. I love how comfortable they are getting with each other. Methinks they impressed each other yesterday when they tried to help Joyce and Becky. “Wow, Walky was supportive and didn’t say anything stupid.” “Wow, Dorothy talked to friends about FEELS even when it was hard.”
Their moment of intimacy in panel two is beautiful. I like to believe that they nodded off while looking at the cartoons, and Joyce and Becky tucked them in, giggled and slipped out. Because of the adorableness factor.
Of course you can. Maybe not very comfortably, but.if you can sleep two then you can sit four. I.can’t think of any comfortable way to fit for people in front of a laptop in a college dorm anyway.
Now I kinda want fanart of the four of them watching Monkey Master
Yeah, off camera Mike helps little old ladies cross the street, disarms stolen Russian tacnukes, and provides important clues to researchers fighting potential pandemics.
I like to think Mike is an equal-opportunity asshole and is doing the same to anyone who might potentially run against her. This would be time-consuming, but everyone needs a hobby.
Speculation, anyone? What’s up with the butterflies. Are they just lazy? This is still autumn, right? Not many butterflies around (if it were in spring I could imagine Dina being covered in butterflies in a park or something.
Are they a metaphor? Butterflies in my stomach? Will we see someone with an adorable crush? Or a tragic crush? (Becky: “I tried to get over you, Joyce, I really tried, but the butterflies just won’t fly away.”)
I think it’s referencing “butterflies in the stomach.”
We know there’s going to be some Danny focus in this arc, so I think we’ll be seeing him trying to come to terms with his attraction to Ethan and how it will conflict with his relationship with Amber.
Likewise, the last arc made it clear that Becky is still carrying a serious torch for Joyce, so we’re probably going to see that play out as well.
Willis’ titles often have a double meaning, so there’s likely to be more than one application. Possible meanings:
– Nervousness, as mentioned above.
– Short attention spans, flitting from place to place.
– Something that’s free to fly away, not doing so – sacrificing freedom for happiness?
– Fragile creatures showing courage?
– Butterflies, like many insects, are attracted to light. An unhealthy attraction?
I read this as a reference to an Elton John song, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”. There’s a passage in the lyrics that goes —
“And someone saved my life tonight, sugar bear
You almost had your hooks in me, didn’t you dear
You nearly had me roped and tied
Altar-bound, hypnotized
Sweet freedom whispered in my ear
You’re a butterfly
And butterflies are free to fly
Fly away, high away, bye bye”
the thing about Mike is that it’s really hard to say why he’s doing anything. he’s an enigma. he’s Schrodinger’s asshole. like he could just be doing it to be a jerk, but he could also be doing it for some other purpose while being a jerk. who knows??? he is Schrodinger’s asshole cat
Except it doesn’t work as well in this comic. When passage of time is as slow as it is in DoA, enigmatic characters only serve to frustrate more than anything, it’s not like in Shortpacked! where you can have day-to-day one-off jokes.
I mean, look at the extended time Becky had to start grating on people as an example. It shouldn’t have bothered people if the real:comic time ratio was more even, but the length of real life time people had to see it started to have an effect.
eh. Mike would be just as much of a frustrating enigma if he was published in a book. He’s like salt – he’s a side character used to accentuate the emotional highs and lows of other people. And he points out the things that people need to hear, even if they don’t particularly want to hear them – and he does it in an assholey way, but he does it. And then he does stuff like order the women’s jean-sweats for Walky.
…I mean I’m actually really enjoying how much more open and emotive Mike’s facial expressions have been in DoA so far. especially in his first strips. there’s a clear emotional arc going on there, it’s just…there’s no words, so I can say I think I know what’s going on in his head, but I don’t know know. if that makes sense. I think that this Mike is a lot less of an asshole and a lot less manipulative than Shortpacked!Mike is, but he’s just as perceptive.
He reminds me of the witch from Into the Woods – he’s not nice, he’s not good, he’s just right. and, I mean, I find that sort of assholery kinda refreshing, because niceness can be overrated. niceness is not the same thing as kindness. and it’s not that Mike’s kind, but he’s also – he has no toleration for dishonesty. which is something I appreciate.
and, I mean, if Mike took a picture here – wow, how horrible, there’s a picture of the past president sleeping in a bed and fully clothed with her then-boyfriend! how scandalous! not really at all. but there is a very real political reality that, if Dorothy isn’t careful and/or dates a couple of jerks, her romantic history could come back to bite her, and it would not hurt her at all to be careful.
…honestly, I think people’s reactions have been pretty normal for serialized works…it’d be interesting to go back and read people’s reactions to Charles Dickens as he published his chapters. this particular format is a lot more tensiony than Shortpacked was because it’s four panels a day. But we actually get more, I think, because it’s 28 panels a week. I think Shortpacked was running at 2 strips a week? so that’s approximately 18 panels a week. but it doesn’t feel like that, because we don’t know when the tension will end.
Okay, this innocuous picture Mike is taking of Dorothy sleeping with her boyfriend? Were she actually to run for any political position that would be dragged up to paint her as some kind of hellbound slut. It shouldn’t be Dorothy’s responsibility to make sure she’s not being photographed without her consent, and who Dorothy chooses to sleep with isn’t anybody’s fucking business, and yet it’s still going to be used against her later in life.
WOW this timing. Sometimes Willis’s buffer makes him seem a bit psychic. This strip packs an extra punch right on the heels of the Penn State fraternity Kappa Delta Rho getting caught taking nude photos of unconscious/sleeping girls and posting those photos online without the consent of the girls and then defending their actions because “it was funny.”
Wow, this webcomic starts a lot of discussions, huh? I mean, whether or not Becky was overstepping the line by putting a hand on Joyce’s shoulder while she slept was creepy or not (NOT trying to restart that 1), Today it’s whether or not Mike is being an straight up asshole, Asshole that actually helps people, or something else…
Guess that’s a sign of a good webcomic, amongst other things. I know I’m gonna stick around…
It helps that some of us have been here for 10 to 15 years :X
If you plan to understand half of what we talk about, you should make sure to read up on Willis’ earlier works [Roomies, It’s Walky, Joyce & Walky, Shortpacked].
As for the other half of what we talk about..
It’s not really understandable in the first place, just roll with it.
I’m not complaining. Have been known to start scrolling when they start turning into long posting discussions, usually don’t have time to read them all sorry…
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just so long as her first broadcast words aren’t “fucking shit”
“…fuck you San Francisco…………………………………..Well, that all went well…”
…was that comment too subtle?
Was going for ‘Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy’ actually. Guess it didn’t work… :$ 😛
Mike getting a headstart on a journalism career
…He’d actually be really good at that. I don’t even mean tabloids, like, can you picture him in an interview? His specialty is asking biting questions to make someone squirm, and the tougher his target the better. Give him a mike in an election year and watch the ratings roll in.
Can that be a spinoff to DOA?
Yes.
My username is from back when I was saying we should have something mostly following Daisy, Dorothy and Billie writing for the school paper. I guess I’d allow Mike in there, too.
He’d be in cahoots with Wikileaks and Anonymous, but would also fuck over activist groups if they got too full of themselves.
It would be great. He would be like John Stewart at his most effective, but with more lasting shame.
Stewart is amazing, but too good natured. Mike is pissed off basically 24/7.
Know who Mike would be? Spider Fucking Jerusalem. That guy once talked six politicians into committing suicide using only a telephone. His columns tore down two presidential administrations. He carries a Bowel Disruptor gun that makes people who annoy him crap themselves.
That’s Mike.
Don’t forget the Chair Leg of Truth.
It is wise and terrible.
Do not offend the Chair Leg of Truth
I’ll tell you exactly who Mike is.
Jeremy Paxman.
Paxman is the brick the BBC throws at corrupt politicians when they want to take them down a few notches. It is a proven fact that he hates that you – yes, you specifically, whoever you are – share the same planet as him.
Exhibit A:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rEqiC8ItM8
Paxman is the undisputed heavyweight of BBC journalism. 😀
Exhibit B: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwlsd8RAoqI&t=4m10s
Or making creepy coffee table books.
You mean like this?
https://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6220/6305491510_42c655f890_z.jpg
Mike could do well as a journalist, it’d allow him to channel his assholery to the greater good. However, I always thought he’d derive the most personal pleasure from psychiatry. One is a shallow screwing of an entire population of people, while the other would be a deep, penetrating screw of a single person.
You know, like, your mom.
Why not both – sort of a cross between DrPhil [burnitwithfire] and The Colbert Report with a side order of Judge Judy.
He’d be the type of journalist who would lead off an interview with a question like “when did you stop beating your wife?”
Those eyes in Panel 2. Gaaaaahhhhhh.
How Becky longs to make those eyes with Joyce
You know things are intense when the girls with the black bead eyes develop sclera.
I wonder how DW picked which characters would have tiny eyes and which wouldn’t when designing them.
I feel like I remember reading something he wrote about this, but can’t remember if it was in one of the books, on Tumblr, or where . . .
IIRC, it’s based on when he created the character. Walky has dots bc he looks odd with whites at this point, but newer chars like Dina get the more realistic eyes because that’s Willis’ current style.
Dina isn’t new. She’s been around a really long time. She was just dead in the other universe for most of it.
Joyce, Mary and Billie had sclera from the start, all the way back in Roomies. They’re consistently drawn with eyelids even in black and white, and the sclera become visible when they appeared in the occasional colored page back then. Dina and Ruth also consistently had visible eyelids, suggesting the presence of sclera– but Ruth was bespectacled and Dina was asleep in Roomies until the start of It’s Walky, so it’s hard to tell. Sarah was an odd case in that she had consistent eyelids but not sclera in the colored pages.
Meanwhile, Amber– one of the newest characters– has no sclera. Go to the page where she changes into the Amazi-Girl costume during the Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit story to see it, as she is otherwise rarely barefaced.
I remember reading something about why some characters do or don’t have sclera, but “age” doesn’t seem to have much to do with it. Maybe it was more about how “this is just how David Willis always drew them” instead?
Actually, he’s drawn normally non-sclera’d eyes with sclera, and normally sclera’d eyes as beady. It seems to be a context thing for Willis, depending on what emotion he’s trying to convey. Here, it’s lazy, comfortable teasing.
Much bedroom eyes. Panel 4, however, contains bathroom eyes.
New story all about Mike trolling c’mon!
Well. Yer picture be makin’ that comment.
She’s already planning on running as an atheist, Mike. The crack pipe can only improve her chances, as she’ll get votes from all the drug dealers.
Finally the fringe minorities will get some representation in the White House.
Yeah, see, the nation will probably accept a premaritally sexual president and a crack-smokin’ president before it gets around to electing an atheist.
I’m pretty sure we’ve already elected a few of those XDD
I want Mike to die in a fire.
He’s not funny anymore.
Was he ever? He’s a complete asshole, who gets off on ruining lives.
And bondage. I’m pretty sure he also gets off on bondage.
Wow. It’s not like they’re naked, or cheating on spouses, or anything. I don’t know that a single life will be derailed by this.
I hate Mike. I hope he gets the shit kicked out of him.
No see that’s just all part of his master plan to somehow ruin their day! Mike wins in the end!
I want him to stop existing forever. He’s a complete fucking chode and has no place in an even remotely grounded series like DoA.
A remotely grounded series acknowledges that complete fucking chodes, unfortunately, exist.
And when those guys routinely harass the people around them, assault people in public, steal from their roommates, and convince abuse victims that they’re exactly like their parents, they tend to not be allowed to hang around anymore, yet everyone just passively accepts Mike’s continued presence.
Huh. That mystifies me a bit, too. I’d like to see Mike go too far for someone’s liking at least once. Just to get the realistic reaction out of someone else in the cast. Since this is a remotely grounded series, he’s not going to get off scot-free forever… if only because he’d grow boring if he did. I don’t see him upping the ante and getting away with it.
Amazi-Girl beats people up all the time! You can’t mention the fact that he beat up Joe once! Also, he lives there and goes there! If he wants to hang around you, there’s little you can do to get rid of him. Lastly, as you say it’s remotely grounded. Remotely. A girl dresses up and beats on bullies. Mike and people’s acceptance of him are not that absurd.
I used to love Mike because he revealed what was wrong with people. He was mean to them and he was RIGHT! Recently he’s just sorta being a dick, however he his commenting on the unreasonable expectation of becoming President.
Amazi-Girl is a costumed vigilante, mentally unhinged, and a minor celebrity in a college. The moment the authorities are contacted, she’s done.
Mike is a disgusting shithead who makes a point to actively harass everyone for his personal amusement. He assaulted Joe in public, with witnesses. More importantly, I don’t care what Mike wants, I want the characters to react to him they should act towards the scumbag. Inform the school that they’re being constantly harassed by some blond asshole, fucking break his nose. I don’t care, I just want him gone.
“he his commenting on the unreasonable expectation of becoming President.”
If you by commenting mean “actively discourages”. I’m sure a woman who wants a high profile career has never before been told that her expectations are “unreasonable”. I’m sure it’s not part of an active patriarchal structure to discourage women from reaching high office in large and small ways. Especially not with an undertone of slut shaming.
“So you want to be president, huh? Seems pretty unlikely.” – that would be commenting (still a bit assholy, but not that different from Walky’s reaction to Joyce’s plan to be a housewife).
“So you want to be president, huh? Let’s take a photo of you in a private moment and put it on internet so it will be readily available for anyone who wants to work against you at any point of your career, and let’s make sure you understand the implied undertones that you want make it because you have a boyfriend and is therefor an irresponsible slut.” – that’s active discouragement, bullying and edges close to career sabotage.
Bagge: YES. In before someone tries to say that Mike isn’t slut shaming, he’s just making it possible for others to slit shame
Chrissy: Yup, the mechanism is similar to Doxing. The goal is to make the victim feel vulnerable and restrict her behavior while still keeping a sliver of legitimacy. “Come one, I didn’t do anything bad. Those were just photos. I can’t help what other people used them for.” The key point is that Dorothy has no say in how he takes and uses photos of her.
While I agree with you guys in general and agree that Mike is an asshole and not contributing much these days, remember, right now they’re in his room. If he wants to be an asshole at Dorothy now he can, right now she’s invading his private space without his permission.
I’m not saying he’s not aasshole, or that he’s not slut shaming. I’m just saying he has a point. He doesn’t care about Dorothy’s sex life, but he knows she cares about her public image. Her actions/relationship with Walky is at odds with her EXPECTATION to become President. Mike is exposing that cognitive dissonance and in the most asshole/indirect way possible is trying to get her to resolve it (while having fun).
…that’s not how shared dorms work. She is in Mike’s AND Walky’s private space, and you can make a case that Walky is overstepping the bounds by inviting her, but to leap from that to say that Mike is allowed to harass her is just bizarre.
He IS allowed to ask her to leave or to contact the RA, though, and if he truly has a problem with Dorothy being in their room, rather than just being an asshole for its own sake, I really hope he will do it.
Garrett: then I suppose my question is: So what? Why should Dorothy care what he thinks about her career plans? What does his motives matter if they don’t justify his behaviour?
To take another example, Blaine tried to teach his daughter to be strong and independent, but that doesn’t justify his abuse or change the fact that he is the worst thing in the Dumbiverse.
There is a world of difference between being justified in your FEELINGS and justified in your ACTIONS.
Personally, a lot of people like Mike due to Shortpacked!
Dumbiverse Mike hasn’t gone through anywhere near the character growth that Walkyverse Mike has. Dumbiverse Mike very occasionally “hurts to help,” but he is far more often just wantonly being an asshole, mainly helping people by accident rather than by intention.
Doesn’t make it any less hilarious, though.
I figured that it was because he never actually harms anyone (except Joe, but that was obviously on orders), and his unvarnished insight is unnervingly useful to have around.
Plus, Joyce seems to trust him, and that’s good enough for me.
Mike is the furthest from reality of all the characters (possibly even including Amazigirl), and he has caused more pain and sadness than MARY. “Oh, but he’s doing it for their own good!” Remember that Mary often thinks she’s doing thinks for people’s own good too. This is the only Willis comic I’ve read, and so far, Mike does not fit in this universe. Everyone else is a complex, flawed character, and so far Mike is one dimensional. Just a complete abusive dick “for people’s own good”?
That’s what he wants, actually. Mike’s a masochist.
No, the best retaliation against a person like Mike is to ignore them. Easier than hiding the body, anyways.
Hey, it’s a university campus. There is no simple hide when you have so many means of complete disposal. Either the buckets of Dermestidae or tanks with voracious Nephropidae as well as access to things like this https://www.science.mcmaster.ca/~accelerator/images/KN.jpg
He was never funny
You have this realistic cast of characters and then this asshole to whom the rules don’t seem to apply.
No one in the cast would let another character get away with what he does and the people in comments come down way harder on other characters for way less.
Fuck Mike.
well he IS a white male
They come down less hard because they think he’s funny. Also there’s no point in reacting to him, he thrives on your discomfort and anger. That’s what makes him so different and why hating him is pointless, he actively wants you to, if you give it to him he’s getting exactly what he wants, no other character functions like that.
On one of the sites I follow they have a running segment about used cars titled “Nice Ride Or Crack Pipe”. Well, here we have “Nice Ride AND Crack Pipe”!
Oh, Mike, you really are the worst.
Clearly the solution is to get him to hook up with Sierra. Maybe she’ll be a good influence on him? … Or at least it’ll clear one of the rooms for a night.
Why would you want to do that to Sierra? D:
That’s what I was thinking; poor sweet Sierra.
Yeah she really deserves better than Mike, I was tired and forgot letting well-adjustedness rub off on Mike would require her spending time with Mike.
How high off the ground are they? He could just “fall accidentally” out the window and they delete the pictures off his phone…
Dorothy isn’t Amazi-girl.
Amazi-Girl will be all, “I tried to save him, but my grappling hook has mysteriously gone missing…“
Soooooo….. Mike is her Gwen Stacy? That makes a bit too much sense, actually.
I bet Mike has already uploaded those pictures to his cloud.
Of course he has. He lives for shit like that. “Oooops, sorry, it seems like you are completely powerless to stop me.”
Asshole
From president to cable news commentator… fickle finger of fate!
That’s assuming cable news hasn’t gone the way of newspaper.
Dorothy has far too many scruples to be a cable new commentator.
Does the “where politicians go to die” refer to the news broadcaster job… or to the crack pipe? xD
I thought it meant “in proximity of Mike”…now I’m wondering.
Or possibly Facebook.
More like Instagram.
I like to think Mike is the kind of person Calvin will grow up to become.
So you’re saying all Dorothy needs to do is kidnap his stuffed tiger, and she’s set.
Oh SHIT
Mike IS Calvin. He became Mike after Hobbes vanished in some fashion, removing the sole break on his mean streak.
More Lio than Calvin, I thought.
(I figure DoA-Mike is really Walkyverse-Mike just before “someone” brought him back from death. Free from the whole abduction-superpowers thing, he’s able to live a normal life – but he’s had more time to work on that unnervingly insightful side to him.)
Walkyverse Mike learned to care about people even before his death, but he was terrible at expressing it because he’s still 95% asshole.
(Disclaimer: perpetually drugging someone into dating you is extremely fucked up even if the drugged person is 95% asshole otherwise. Even with that in mind, Dina’s evaluation of Mike’s response is not wrong.)
Mike is the protagonist from “Fight Club”?
Well – that makes sense, somehow!
Well Bush had drug addict and an alcoholic when he was young, and he got the job. I mean, he did have quite a bit of help getting the position…and he’s a white male…
But I mean maybe that could give you a little hope? Also it’s your boyfriend you’re in bed with, so I feel like a good portion your voters will say “meh.” Not ALL of them…but if she’s going for universal popularity, then she shouldn’t be running at all.
Dubya also found Jesus somewhere along the way. Don’t think that’s going to help Dorothy.
Obama did drugs, was born in Kenya, and was still elected, so I think Dorothy is ok with a picture of her cuddling with her boyfriend in college.
Remind me again, when did Kenya invade and annex Hawaii? I’m so terrible with remembering dates…
Ten years after the Illuminati entered Phase III of their Master Plan, I think.
Shhh!!
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=obama+was+born+in
Honolulu is not part of Kenya.
Yet.
But that’s the problem in a nutshell. Even with no concrete evidence — none whatsoever — the “birthers” have kept this nonsense going for almost seven years now. Should Dorothy ever get her shot at the presidency (and given just how dirty politics are now and how much worse they would likely be 20 years hence), just think what an opponent would be able to do with an actual photo that *DOES* show her in bed — clothed or not — with someone not her husband.
So I take it having a roomate of Mike’s nature is something I’m gonna have to be warry of in a couple of years?
Yes, but you can also ask to be moved to a different room if it’s too terrible for you. I had a few friends who did that, and my roommate and I nearly did it, but decided to stick it out.
There’s also restraining orders for the really bad cases.
Don’t you mean restraints? Oh, and those nice strapping young men in their pristine white coats.
No, if anyone ever treats you the way Mike treats his victims, document everything and take it to authorities.
Something about Dorothy looks different in panel 2… I don’t think I’ve ever seen the whites of Dorothy’s eyes before.
It’s just really intense eyeshadow.
…with pupils draw on her eyelids? D:
insert that one scene from dead man’s chest here
You know. The fact that Mike could photoshop a crack pipe in there would give the picture less heft. What picture is real in a world where photoshop exists?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=035JfHSoG70
that and he’s, like, saying he’s gonna photoshop them from his phone.
Is Mike gonna get a serious subplot of his own or will he just exist on others’ peripheries?
I keep wondering this.
Been waiting for that, he doesn’t get enough screen time and its not really fair, he was such a great character in short packs and I want to see more of him now.
His entry on the cast page has a grand total of eight words, so I get the feeling it’ll be a while.
That is the question. I’m having trouble imagining what kind of plot Mike would have but it has the potential to be super interesting.
Mike needs to have a character before he can have character development.
Exactly. He’s a plot device now, not really a person.
At some point just a plot since nobody can be an asshole to everyone and live to tell about it.
Perhaps Mike isn’t alive. He’s a zombie, but instead of brains he requires discomfort in others to survive.
Willis has said before that Mike works best as a drop in character and wants to avoid over using him like he did in Shortpacked. Mike’s a walking gag, nothing more.
Ah, I must have overlooked that Word of Willis. Mike’s certainly dropping in now and then.
Mike no, Usually I’m all for your antics but I’m kind of touchy about this particular subject right now.
Walky needs to get up, go over to Mike and tell him in so many words that he is an asshole, and take the phone out of his hands and delete those pics. Problem is, too many smartphones (especially iPhones) automatically back up the pics to the “cloud” so it would be no better than tearing up a print while the photographer still has the negatives (old school references, I know).
Isn’t that also criminal mischief?
I wish I’d bought ECCC tickets. When they came on sale I was still recovering financially from being unemployed, and by the time I recovered they were all gone. 🙁
Come on, walky. You contemplated slugging becky for being uncool to Dorothy – let’s hear what you have to say about Mike.
Oh Mike. What happened to you? Who hurt you so?
I kinda hope that Mike will not be given any kind of Freudian Excuse to explain his behaviour.
Indeed. Some people are just naturally unpleasant.
Mike’s parents are insanely pleasant. Mike’s behavior doesn’t quite match the self-centered profile of a spoiled-rotten kid, though. That’s more Billie’s thing.
If I had to deal with his parents every day of my life for almost twenty years I’d hate the universe too.
I want Mike to try to get at Carla and fail. I feel like Mike could only suceed by being super transphobic, but that’s not his style. Mike makes you feel bad by being better than you by YOUR OWN standards, not society’s.
The ultimate battle between jerk and jerk? I’d be behind that.
Ladies & gentlemen, ‘Bots & ‘Cons, place your bets…
I kinda doubt that would happen. Carla doesn’t seem to have any issues for Mike to be Mike over. If anything, they’d team up.
I’d also be behind the ultimate team-up between jerk and jerk.
If Carla is anything like her original version, and personality was she likely is, then Mike would be able to break her fairly easily.
Maybe in 30 years America will start to change it’s unhealthy view of sexuality. Maybe that will be reflected in some groundbreaking Supreme Court ruling. And maybe after that, Indiana will get pissy, demanding it’s right to discriminate. Maybe it’ll make some LGBT Hoosiers very sad.
Who knows, this is all hypothetical.
But, in this hypothetical future Indiana, would there still be a Gen-Con?
Still trying to get GenCon to come to Toronto since TO has way more con space, hotel space, a subway system and a downtown that doesn’t smell like ass. Really? Steam pipes in the sewers?
did you just use “Toronto”, “way more”, and “subway space” in the same sentence? ,’:|
Too many rules to get things (merchandise) across the border to have a con that will attract mostly Americans in Canada. Ask Willis; I think he ran afoul of some of that at an earlier con that was in (IIRC) Calgary.
Mike is just one of those lovable assholes.
As long as he’s not messing with you, you can enjoy his presence.
Surprised he waited until they woke up to take the pic. Surely there was time for many more while they slept.
If they were still asleep how would he rub it in their faces?
You have too many words there:
Mike is just [an] asshole.
Nope. It’s her opinion and many others. She can say he’s lovable if she feels like it. Just as you can say he’s not.
…which is exactly what they did.
Joke’s on him. They’re both fully clothed.
I was going to say, “Oh no, a picture of the candidate sleeping fully clothed with another person! Scandal!”
Sadly, yes.
In the future, LGBTQ’s will have full equality and protection under the law – but snuggling, smooching, and casual physical contact will be taboo.
It’s funny, because it’s probably going to be true.
Or worse, the needle moves toward the other end and it is seen as a negative to have a white, straight, female President.
That laptop is very precariously balanced…
And the glasses had a lot of chances to get crushed, too.
Glasses wearers have a weird sixth sense about their glasses, even in their sleep. But Walky could have totally mangled them, you’re right.
I’m surprised the heat from the laptop didn’t wake him up, blankets are pretty terrible heat sinks…
I hope the energy save kicked in – it would have been a long night of Monkey Master otherwise.
I always thought she would make a better reporter then president.
I think that would be a perfect career path. From reporting about politicians to being one. Now and then using that against them at press conferences.
“Now, what you want to do is give me several rapid questions in short order to keep me off balance, much like you did, Mrs Washington Post, but you could be sharper about it.”
Here’s the thing about Mike:
He’s not wrong.
That’s what makes him super irritating.
And by super irritating, I mean hilarious.
Yes.
Break his face and phone.
I don’t understand why she just doesn’t kill the dissenters? Like, if she wants to be President of your pitiful little fleshling commune, why doesn’t she just seize the power now?
Right now, her priorities are out of whack. She needs stop paying attention to this one minion and work on building an army of thousands. (Well, at least thousands, millions is better.) If you can get them to all look like reflector, the better.
Iirc presidential candidates have to be a minimum of 35 years old, so she has a bit of living to do before she can run. Or I guess she could team up with galasso.
I think MT is suggesting less of a ‘Presidential’ career path and more of a ‘Planetary Overlord’ career path. Subtle difference, but there.
Also –
Galazzo/Keener ’16 – SUBMIT TO YOUR OVERLORDS, WORM!
>Galasso is president and Keener is vice president
>Under United States law, the vice president is promoted to president if the current president dies
>Keener can become the president if she pulls off a successful Starscream and has Galasso assassinated, or convincingly fakes his death without implicating herself
>Galasso’s megalomania is such that he believes a Starscream figure is necessary for his power structure anyway
And horror of horrors, here I am without popcorn handy!
There’s a vending machine out back. Say you’re with Screwball & they’ll give you a special deal, half triple price…
*Starts eating popcorn acquired at much cheaper price…*
There’s an energon crisis and she can’t power her weapons.
Pitty.
Hey Megsy, long time no see…
It’s important not to micromanage.
Heh heh, not a problem for me, I just raid MY Megsy’s stash when I want some more. Hardwired system back doors FTW…
Mike really like his peace and quiet, eh. (what an arse)
She looks like someone else in panel 2, but I can’t think of who… Alice, maybe?
the only solution is to marry him
I can’t help but like Mike. He’s honest. He challenges baseless assumptions and prejudices around him. He can see that Walky and Dorothy just won’t work, what with Dorothy’s goals, and Walky’s lack of goals. Just look at the pajama jeans arc. He’s undoubtedly more asshole-ish, because his parents are such genuinely nice people. As a sidenote, no one in the comic asked him if it was cool to bang in there room. Asshole r not, that’s just bad manners.
Yup.
Did they bang? I assumed not because of the thing with the laptop and eyeglasses.
Not that having someone even sleep over in a shared bedroom without clearance from the other occupant is entirely according to Miss Manners. Or so I should imagine: I somehow got a two-person room to myself when I was in college.
They apparently fell asleep while/after watching cartoons on the comp.
I doin’t agree with the “Walky and Dorothy” part. Just because they (assumedly) aren’t meant to stay together their whole life doesn’t mean Mike has to ruin anything *now*
I’m not sure I will ever understand the idea that being an ‘honest’ horrible person is somehow acceptable.
Everyone knows a ‘dishonest’ horrible person (or else he wouldn’t be recognizable as a character type). Mike is not one of those people. QED.
cf. Mary.
It wouldn’t matter if Mike had psychic abilities and knew that Dorothy and Walky were going to break up tomorrow at three PM. That doesn’t make it okay to take pictures of them in bed and post the pictures to Facebook without their consent, never mind altering the pictures to show that they’re doing illegal drugs.
Walky’s face looks very Faz-like in those early panels there. Man, I miss Faz.
Well that makes one of us…
Need to get a better targeting computer.
…Or someone with better aim…
*Slowly walks away whistling…*
And there goes Mike reminding me why he’s my favorite asshole
And I’ve changed again apparently. I want to be Sarah again!
You can settle the image you want on your Gravatar
Still Ruth. Still smugly satisfied.
Yeah sure, a crackpipe on two sleeping people. I don’t know Mike, sleeping after crack is kinda unbelievable, nobody will fall for that! You can do better, I believe in you.
You’d be surprised what people are ready to believe. (especially if they’re not knownledgable about drugs)
Can we just get rid of Mike please?
Also to all you hoopleheads saying “Oh, well, he only does it to people who deserve it”
1) He doesn’t, a lot of his acts are just purely spiteful
2) That’s still lame asshole shit and if you had a “friend” like that you’d quickly slip into a depression
I don’t see Willis ever getting rid of Mike.
I think anger would be the response to being around a Mike, not depression.
And yet we get neither. It’s like a comic of real people and Mike is from a different, less realistic comic. He was more real in Shortpacked and he had superpowers in that.
Well, he was at least better suited to the laws of narrative of the Walkyverse.
He does it to people who can take it, and there is a difference.
1) If it was just spite, Ethan and Joyce would stay well clear of him.
2) I assure you, that alone isn’t enough to cause depression. (Anger, yes, and Joyce at least has shown this.)
I don’t know that anyone has said he only does it to people that deserve it. Mike only does it when it’s funny (when you aren’t the one he’s doing it to). But oddly enough he manages to do it in a way that frequently helps people. A lot of times this is by making them face painful dissonances in their thinking, goals, etc. At this point in his life, the goal may not be so much to help people as to amuse himself. He’s also young as of yet — an unfinished Mike.
I said it my OP that the people who say he is doing it for the betterment of other can go elsewhere.
If I had a “friend” like that they wouldn’t be my friend for very long.
Also, no, he assaulted Ethan because it was fun and he tried to break up Walky and Dotty more because he is a shit than because of some abstract shit about them being embarrassed about their relationship.
STOP DEFENDING HIS CRAP
I will be charitable and assume that Mike is joking and that is phone is actually out of battery (although nothing he has done so far suggests it). This is still classical harassment. Make sure the victim can’t keep their guard down, keep them on their toes. The message he is sending Walky is that he is not safe in his room. His things may disappear, his girlfriend may be harassed, his privacy may be violated. Maybe not this time… but maybe next time. Better if he keep out of the room as much as possible. You know, the one place in college Walky should be allowed to use as a safe haven when things get to crazy.
And what he does to Dorothy is pure slut shaming. How dare you let your guard down and be intimate with someone when you want to have an important job in the future?
I think it’s time for Walky to apply for a new room mate.
Walky hasn’t done anything about Mike, which is kiinda unrealistic. How about when Mike let others use Walky’s DVDs as a skateboard ramp? We haven’t seen any fallout from that.
Mike gets away with way too much, and the issue is most of the guys he could have roomed with are way too passive. The only guy that would have done something at this point is Joe.
Walky is pretty passive and Mike is the kind of bully that doesn’t back down if you stand up to him. He just hits you harder.
Also, if Ruth it’s anything to go by, the official channels may not be very effective at dealing with bullies.
On top of that, Mike seems to be pretty good at picking his victims. If he were rooming with someone who would actually shut him down (I agree that so far Joe and maybe Jacob are the only ones who’d really try) I think he’d just ignore that person as ‘no fun’.
Basically, Mike would have a field day with Dan.
“How about when Mike let others use Walky’s DVDs as a skateboard ramp? We haven’t seen any fallout from that.”
—————
Refresh my memory. Did he actually do this, or did he just *SAY* that he had done this?
…College-age women and men typically don’t think, act, or respond the same way to the same thing. And even if he puts that picture on Facebook, it’s clearly two people spending a quality moment together (how’s he going to prove that she spent the night? They’re fully clothed and look like they’ve just taken a quick break). Harassment typically has a intimidation component to it, and for whatever reason his M.O. is to reveal uncomfortable truths rather than show that someone is inferior.
No one is safe in their own room nowadays, thanks to the internet, and the outside world is even less hospitable or comfortable; that’d be a pretty good summation of the comic’s thesis. Safety without effort is an illusion at best, and there really is no excuse anymore for a lack of personal vigilance – in a less interconnected world, maybe.
Dorothy and Walky _ought_ to be learning “how dare you let…” as a lesson.
Um, politely, I want to note that logic that works on, oh people affected by another person’s bad actions, how could you have possibly been so short-sighted as to let that other person do that thing to you is very difficult to see as something other than victim-blaming.
And that is especially awkward when some of the biggest flare-ups on the internet of late have been caused by a bunch of assholes doing crappy slut-shaming things to women or otherwise violating or harassing them with very similar things to do and everyone deciding to blame the woman because she dared to date people who exist, or because nudes of her exist on her personal phone or the phones of others that can be hacked off of it.
Learn to see it as not “victim-blaming”, then, because the issue is more complicated than can be surmised with a single hyphenated word. It’s not “how could you have let that person do that thing to you” so much as “why on earth did you trust your mass-produced phone’s security to that extent”. There _are_ always precautions you can take (and if not, you really aren’t safe in your own room).
There is a difference between “being victimized” and “being an easy target”, and the important thing to understand is that they do not necessarily come with each other – they’re “and/or”. I agree that it is _definitely_ victim-blaming and unconscionable to say such of someone for the former (where someone else was enough of an ass to break through all of your reasonable precautions); but leaving your front door unlocked (not open, just not locked like it reasonably could be) and then complaining when your stuff gets stolen? Not so much.
(Here, they know Mike is an asshole, and that he has a history of doing stuff like this. Dorothy’s room is available, and Sierra even seems to be cool with Walky staying over, but they spent the night in the room that Walky and Mike share.)
Or they could learn the lesson “when someone is making you feel unsafe in your own room, it’s not okay and that person should be removed from your life if possible.” I feel that that lesson is equally valid.
Doesn’t it follow the first lesson?
You said “no one is safe in their own room,” as if it was always going to be true. My argument is that if someone is making you not-safe in your own room, you are entitled to do what you can to stop them, rather than just accepting that your room isn’t a safe place and being on guard at every moment. Because you should be safe in your own room, and the problem is them, not you. If that’s what you meant, I did not get that out of your comment.
(I don’t know if Walky actually has any options about Mike; I don’t know what procedures for redress or room-change are available to him. But in an ideal world, he would have options to deal with an asshole roommate other than “put up with it and spend as little time as possible in my own room”.)
Yes, you should be safe in your own room. Problem is, you aren’t – not in this millennium. Believing in and acting towards the former is wishful thinking that is detrimental to your actual ability to be safe (however you define that), was my point.
I’m sorry you are not safe in your room. I am safe in mine, and people who would make me not-safe are not welcome in it. Because until technology develops a mind of its own, it’s people who make you safe and not-safe. (In the context we’re discussing, anyway.) I mean, that’s presumably why you said that it would be preferable to spend time in Dorothy’s room; it’s not because it’s in any way different from Walky’s, but because Dorothy doesn’t have an asshole roommate. The asshole roommate is the problem, not the existence of the Internet.
Yes, this!
And I think that’s one of the more frustrating things about dumbiverse Mike. He punches down, not up. And he especially targets people who are unlikely to defend themselves and is happy to exploit terrible situations with a highly privileged sort of assholery.
Oh, does societal sexism treat your sexuality as a woman as a shortcoming? Great. I’ll just do some public slut shame and echo society telling you to abandon your dreams, because maybe then you’ll only ever sleep over at your own room and I will have less Walky in mine.
Oh, hey do you have really strict and controlling religious parents and are in a crisis point because your evolving stance on moral issues is getting you more and more dangerously close to being disowned? Awesome, let me see if I can put you in even more hot water on that because I think it’s personally funny.
Oh hey, do you have issues with being comfortable with your own sexuality? Awesome! I’m going to endlessly harass you with dick drawings on your whiteboard because I know it makes you uncomfortable and it’s not something you want. Or by just being the worst friend possible.
Oh hey, were you horrifically abused when you were younger? Awesome! Let me fuck with your insecurities by calling you the same type of person, which since I’ve known you a long time, I also know is something that is a major fear/trigger for you and a source of deep-seated emotional issues regarding the healthy processing of anger or fear.
Oh hey, you’ve got messed up ideas of masculinity that keep you from being as supportive of a boyfriend as you could be? Awesome! Let me encourage that bad behavior by exploiting jealousy, cause toxic masculinity plus jealousy has never had a bad consequence in the real world. Oh no sir.
And worse, when he has an opportunity to do something about corrupt authority, he turns it on the least powerful individual involved. His reaction to, oh our TA is fucking one of the students was to slut shame Sal for it.
Actually slut shaming is his most common go-to, looking through the archives for just Dumbiverse stuff. It was his weapon when he stalked his target into his women studies’ class and shat all over the class by making it about his harassment (I mean look at his comments, it’s all about how Dorothy must have no standards and how just inhumanly slutty she must be to find a messy guy hot).
Hell, the only time he’s been remotely close to “being an asshole for good”, it has been when he’s basically been being an asshole to Ethan about his sexuality, either sarcastically suggesting closet tactics or by pointing out his financial support for bigoted institutions or just otherwise interfering with his attempts to rebuild a friendship with Amber.
In fact, he’s been very good at the isolation thing with regards to his “friends”, getting them to feel like they are all alone in the world with no one but him for support. And then he doesn’t give them any.
In a more fictionalized universe, Mike gets to be this unstoppable force, but in a more realistic world, he’s painting a very accurate picture of an abuser and worse, one of those abusers who decide to try and casually ruin someone powerless’s life “for the lulz”.
And it’s very awkward to see the free pass for this because of his gender and his character in Shortpacked when characters like Becky are hyper-scrutinized and are seen as doing no right.
+all the internets. I completely agree with you.
You also hit on the one point that possibly COULD make Mike redeemable in my eyes – if he started to hit upwards. He could target Ruth for her abuse of power, Jason for sleeping with a students (people may or may not agree that Jason deserved to be targeted for that – but as you pointed out he DID target Sal for it), the Dean for slutshaming Roz, about 3/4 of the parents… He could try to do good in a way similar to Amber, and would make an interesting foil and lead to an interesting debate on how far it would be right to go (I would still think most of his antics would be too far even with an acceptable target). But that’s not what he does.
I hadn’t realized until now, but we haven’t seen Mike target anyone in positions of authority yet. Like he stays away if he could actually get in legimitate trouble.
Kinda like a bully.
Who’s a bigger one though, Mike or Ruth? Remains to be seen.
Both are really bad. Asking who is a bigger bully is about as unconstructive as asking who you prefer to ship, it all comes down to compare personal preferences.
Both do horrible, damaging things. With Ruth we know that she fights enormous personal problems and that a lot of her behavior is a coping mechanism to retain at least the illusion of control – especially in her interaction with Billie. Does that make it more OK? I root for her and hope good things will come her way, but that certainly doesn’t make it easier for the people who live in the Clark wing.
With Mike it seems like he just does what he does out of idle amusement. Like this morning. He could have woken up, thought “huh, Roomie’s girlfriend is still here” and left the room for breakfast or whatever. Instead he stuck around to harass them. Why? What does he gain? It just feels so pointless to make people miserable for no reason whatsoever. Maybe he has a reason, but we don’t know. We just see him from the eyes of the other characters.
I suppose the one thing I can see in Mike’s favor compared to Ruth is that he does not have any official power to abuse – but he certainly abuses the position of trust he has gained from being Walky’s room mate and being part of their social circle (such as when he grabbed Joyce’s phone after being invited to their table).
The one concept I have in my head is that Mike is actually really bored and lonely – we haven’t seen him with any friends of his own, but pulling off stunts like this is a way to grab some form of recognition, even if it’s negative.
He’s probably a model person in all other regards – he gets decent grades, doesn’t do underage drinking, doesn’t smoke, possibly due to his parents’ upbringing. But he needs to act out, and he’s lost that ability to be genuinely social.
Of course, that’s all a lot of speculation.
Yeah, I think we’re on the exact same page about that.
And sadly I think that’s not something we’ll see from him, because it might put him in some genuine risk and he couldn’t just feel smugly superior about it and wander off to the next target.
Following up on the punching down not up thing as this is a big part of my problem with him, it’s worth noting that his only reaction to systems he condescendingly looks at as bad is to shit on those caught on the bottom of them and be superiorly smug about it.
He never is seen campaigning to address a wrong or using his asshole powers to fight someone in authority or piss on say, a major corporation he sees as contributing to the hurting of his friend. Instead, he goes after mostly people suffering an axis of oppression and acts smug because he isn’t caught up in the same system as them.
And I think we’ve all encountered the cis white guy who just acts smugly superior to everyone in our lives (they are especially rife in college) and I think it’s why his character in this universe ends up being so much worse.
On that note, I’d say Carla is the asshole character that made off the best with the universe shift, because being a misanthropic sarcastic grump makes perfect sense for an alienated transwoman who’s been through shit.
+1, you win an internet, etc etc
I just can’t stand Mike anymore and sincerely hope he never appears again. It’s one thing if he were just an abusive asshole, but he’s an abusive asshole we’re expected to find hilarious. There’s nothing to his character, to the point where I’m surprised he can even exist in a series with such well rounded characters.
How can I link to this post to explain why I don’t like Mike once the pendulum of public opinion jerks suddenly back in the other direction?
…You’re focusing on individual issues, and ignoring the larger ones. (And confusing what Mike is/could be aware of, with what the _reader_ is.)
Walky is mixed; racism is just as valid a point where a mixed-gender voting population is concerned. (And that’s not even getting into what “crack pipe” implies.) It’s _Walky_ who suggests sexism.
The “All Hail Satan” thing? Even if he didn’t know the details, he’s nearby and could work out for himself that there’s something behind Joyce not picking up her phone when it’s on the table. He comes up with a plausible distraction that Joyce’s Mom could believe. (If she’s not fundy, it’s a harmless prank; if she is, it’s a weird prank.)
He can’t possibly be _certain_ of Joyce’s level of comfort with her sexuality (or even be aware of what happened at the party), or how Danny feels about an ex he really should be letting go of as quickly as possible (they don’t seem to have met beforehand). If he’s aware of Amber being Amazi-Girl, he has good reason to suggest that she’s becoming her father; if he isn’t, he still has good reason, as it means she’s in danger of “using” Danny like her dad did her mother. (Either way, he uncrosses his arms afterwards – he’s getting ready for her to beat the ass out of him.)
The TA thing was a fluke and he admits it. The situation is highly unethical, particularly for the reasons Sal accidentally confirms it began for. Reminding Sal of that fact is just the fastest way to end it (she started it, and would react badly if Jason ended it). He could still go after Jason for it, as this strip can’t be more than 12 hours in-world after he found out about it.
“Slut shaming” only works on Dorothy because she’s so tightly wound up. If at any point she replies with “…So what?”, it stops working. (Plus, what happens if _Mary_ finds out about her and Walky? Not the lying together in bed part, but the pre-marital hanky-panky.)
…He also listens to Ethan and is on friendly terms with him – neither Ethan’s nor Amber’s isolation is Mike’s fault, and getting Ethan temporarily back in the closet actually gets him some new friends even when it’s clearly not a healthy long-term solution. (Depending on if Ethan’s depression is clinical or not, serious prompting from outside is practically a requirement for any kind of change. Keeping someone like that from going too “low” takes higher immediate priority than making sure his life is perfectly fulfilled – which then needs to come later.)
I think the reason this keeps coming up in the comments, is because it’s very easy to pay attention to his individual actions in individual comics, but harder to go back and follow the aftermath throughout the rest of the arc (the other characters’ reactions to them/him as well as how well the situations he prompts actually end).
This requires ignoring the extent of his insight into others, while simultaneously bashing him for acting on it so well. This whole thing falls down to giving him too much credit after cherry-picking reasons to do so, then attacking him for credit _given_ to him.
Here: If he can read people so well that he can cut people so deeply, why do the situations keep ending so well? Why not set everyone up on a complete trainwreck (as actual abusers are capable of), if he’s such a good manipulator _and_ is that malicious?
(Plus, would Ethan really hang out with Mike if he’d been the only other person pushing for Amber getting self-defense training? This is why it’s not good to only focus on strips with Mike in them, doing something.)
Dammit, Mike!
Ugh, OK, that out of my system. I really don’t want to spend time on Mike.
Dorothy and Walky are freaking adorable. I love how comfortable they are getting with each other. Methinks they impressed each other yesterday when they tried to help Joyce and Becky. “Wow, Walky was supportive and didn’t say anything stupid.” “Wow, Dorothy talked to friends about FEELS even when it was hard.”
Their moment of intimacy in panel two is beautiful. I like to believe that they nodded off while looking at the cartoons, and Joyce and Becky tucked them in, giggled and slipped out. Because of the adorableness factor.
I sorta doubt you can stay at 4 on the bed, tho 😀
Of course you can. Maybe not very comfortably, but.if you can sleep two then you can sit four. I.can’t think of any comfortable way to fit for people in front of a laptop in a college dorm anyway.
Now I kinda want fanart of the four of them watching Monkey Master
Actually, I’d suspect Mike tucked them in. He only does nice things when no one can prove he did them.
Yeah, off camera Mike helps little old ladies cross the street, disarms stolen Russian tacnukes, and provides important clues to researchers fighting potential pandemics.
He also bakes delicious chocolate cakes and leaves them in communal areas. Though ‘delicious’ may also mean ‘didn’t expect the ghost pepper did you?’
Oh, and he’s turned off the water to the whole dorm somehow.
But just the hot water, he’d never dream of forcing the entire dorm to forgo showers entirely. He’d have to live in the stink.
I just thought… maybe Mike’s hair goes into another dimension… Since it doesn’t seem to really “end” anywhere….
Hah. Mike. I miss Mike. Well apparently I don’t miss him because he’s here right now, but yeah.
I like to think Mike is an equal-opportunity asshole and is doing the same to anyone who might potentially run against her. This would be time-consuming, but everyone needs a hobby.
The Butterflies Won’t Fly Away.
Speculation, anyone? What’s up with the butterflies. Are they just lazy? This is still autumn, right? Not many butterflies around (if it were in spring I could imagine Dina being covered in butterflies in a park or something.
Are they a metaphor? Butterflies in my stomach? Will we see someone with an adorable crush? Or a tragic crush? (Becky: “I tried to get over you, Joyce, I really tried, but the butterflies just won’t fly away.”)
I think it’s referencing “butterflies in the stomach.”
We know there’s going to be some Danny focus in this arc, so I think we’ll be seeing him trying to come to terms with his attraction to Ethan and how it will conflict with his relationship with Amber.
Likewise, the last arc made it clear that Becky is still carrying a serious torch for Joyce, so we’re probably going to see that play out as well.
Willis’ titles often have a double meaning, so there’s likely to be more than one application. Possible meanings:
– Nervousness, as mentioned above.
– Short attention spans, flitting from place to place.
– Something that’s free to fly away, not doing so – sacrificing freedom for happiness?
– Fragile creatures showing courage?
– Butterflies, like many insects, are attracted to light. An unhealthy attraction?
I read this as a reference to an Elton John song, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”. There’s a passage in the lyrics that goes —
“And someone saved my life tonight, sugar bear
You almost had your hooks in me, didn’t you dear
You nearly had me roped and tied
Altar-bound, hypnotized
Sweet freedom whispered in my ear
You’re a butterfly
And butterflies are free to fly
Fly away, high away, bye bye”
…Butterflies _die_ as they migrate.
the thing about Mike is that it’s really hard to say why he’s doing anything. he’s an enigma. he’s Schrodinger’s asshole. like he could just be doing it to be a jerk, but he could also be doing it for some other purpose while being a jerk. who knows??? he is Schrodinger’s asshole cat
Except it doesn’t work as well in this comic. When passage of time is as slow as it is in DoA, enigmatic characters only serve to frustrate more than anything, it’s not like in Shortpacked! where you can have day-to-day one-off jokes.
I mean, look at the extended time Becky had to start grating on people as an example. It shouldn’t have bothered people if the real:comic time ratio was more even, but the length of real life time people had to see it started to have an effect.
eh. Mike would be just as much of a frustrating enigma if he was published in a book. He’s like salt – he’s a side character used to accentuate the emotional highs and lows of other people. And he points out the things that people need to hear, even if they don’t particularly want to hear them – and he does it in an assholey way, but he does it. And then he does stuff like order the women’s jean-sweats for Walky.
…I mean I’m actually really enjoying how much more open and emotive Mike’s facial expressions have been in DoA so far. especially in his first strips. there’s a clear emotional arc going on there, it’s just…there’s no words, so I can say I think I know what’s going on in his head, but I don’t know know. if that makes sense. I think that this Mike is a lot less of an asshole and a lot less manipulative than Shortpacked!Mike is, but he’s just as perceptive.
He reminds me of the witch from Into the Woods – he’s not nice, he’s not good, he’s just right. and, I mean, I find that sort of assholery kinda refreshing, because niceness can be overrated. niceness is not the same thing as kindness. and it’s not that Mike’s kind, but he’s also – he has no toleration for dishonesty. which is something I appreciate.
and, I mean, if Mike took a picture here – wow, how horrible, there’s a picture of the past president sleeping in a bed and fully clothed with her then-boyfriend! how scandalous! not really at all. but there is a very real political reality that, if Dorothy isn’t careful and/or dates a couple of jerks, her romantic history could come back to bite her, and it would not hurt her at all to be careful.
…honestly, I think people’s reactions have been pretty normal for serialized works…it’d be interesting to go back and read people’s reactions to Charles Dickens as he published his chapters. this particular format is a lot more tensiony than Shortpacked was because it’s four panels a day. But we actually get more, I think, because it’s 28 panels a week. I think Shortpacked was running at 2 strips a week? so that’s approximately 18 panels a week. but it doesn’t feel like that, because we don’t know when the tension will end.
haha wow long post, sorry for that. also I should replace “past president” with future president in the fourth paragraph.
Okay, this innocuous picture Mike is taking of Dorothy sleeping with her boyfriend? Were she actually to run for any political position that would be dragged up to paint her as some kind of hellbound slut. It shouldn’t be Dorothy’s responsibility to make sure she’s not being photographed without her consent, and who Dorothy chooses to sleep with isn’t anybody’s fucking business, and yet it’s still going to be used against her later in life.
Where is my original Post?
That sclera though.
tl;dr: Mike is a dick, people like him anyway, Dorothy hates cable news.
Roz is best DoA student, btw.
Honestly, I think Mike would probably do better as a politician than Dorothy. He could apprentice under Frank Underwood and then kill him Sith style.
Anybody else getting yanked to an ad site? I just got pulled to: http://sponsor.adverstitial.com/view/advertisement?loc=77913&adv=2596013&camp=608468&w=300&h=250&rnd=6111672452830894138; and it was one of those “redirecting in 30 seconds” “OMG Oprah is hiding a huge secret that will bring down OWN!” kind of websites. Yes, I’m running virus scan now, just in case.
Dorothy is incredibly cute without glasses.
WOW this timing. Sometimes Willis’s buffer makes him seem a bit psychic. This strip packs an extra punch right on the heels of the Penn State fraternity Kappa Delta Rho getting caught taking nude photos of unconscious/sleeping girls and posting those photos online without the consent of the girls and then defending their actions because “it was funny.”
http://www.vox.com/2015/3/18/8253749/penn-state-kappa-delta-rho
Wow, this webcomic starts a lot of discussions, huh? I mean, whether or not Becky was overstepping the line by putting a hand on Joyce’s shoulder while she slept was creepy or not (NOT trying to restart that 1), Today it’s whether or not Mike is being an straight up asshole, Asshole that actually helps people, or something else…
Guess that’s a sign of a good webcomic, amongst other things. I know I’m gonna stick around…
It helps that some of us have been here for 10 to 15 years :X
If you plan to understand half of what we talk about, you should make sure to read up on Willis’ earlier works [Roomies, It’s Walky, Joyce & Walky, Shortpacked].
As for the other half of what we talk about..
It’s not really understandable in the first place, just roll with it.
I’m not complaining. Have been known to start scrolling when they start turning into long posting discussions, usually don’t have time to read them all sorry…
Now reread my post, but with a playful tone 😛
You shouldn’t take any of us too seriously~
Why does anyone in this strip tolerate Mike?
I get why, in previous Walkyverse versions- they needed him, for one reason or another. Not true here.