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Like I said before I don’t blame Rachel for her justified disdain twords Ruth nor do I hate her character, it’s just that disagree with this particular part of ideology. In a world where nothing stays the same, why would the human individual be the exception to that rule?
Daniel here. There is a saying, “Change is the only constant in the universe”. That goes for people too…
It does typically take a fair bit of effort however, unless something traumatic is involved. Could take even more effort to convince others of the change, especially if the others don’t want to believe…
That little speech still infuriates me. What does she know of redemption? Of growth? Of change? Everything she knows about the world comes from the stories she so confidently derides.
Redemption is hard. It is soul-consuming. If it were anything less, it would not be redemption. But redemption is real. It is every recovering alcoholic. Every reformed criminal. Every repaired relationship. To go up to someone who is trying to alter their path to something better, to look them in the eye, and say to not bother?
She’s at best naive, and more likely ignorant.
It is ironic that most of the irredeemable are only so because they can’t imagine they could be anything else. That is their curse. That is their path.
I think that would be a pretty bold guess to assume she has no experience but stories. I think that whole spiel pretty well sets up for a reveal someone Rachel was close to kept hurting her, apologizing and turning it around. It’s POSSIBLE it was Ruth, based on this newly revealed backstory, but I think we don’t have enough information to say that for sure.
If Rachel finds herself in using absolutes against others, she should not find it shocking when such is used in kind.
It is hard to imagine that one who has only been in college for, at this point, roughly two years has the same realm of experience as those who have done more.
I do not discount the experiences of youth lightly, I myself am 24 and know just how little I know, but it is when they declare what is impossible, what is fantasy, what is nothing but lies, with such vehement, poisonous certainty that credentials must be called into question.
Maybe you’re right, maybe Rachel had a trusted loved one who took advantage of her forgiveness. That is one single experience. In the course of one’s life, they will be witness to countless stories of redemption, betrayal, tragedy and triumph. It becomes dubious to take a person’s limited experience seriously when one has seen dozens of things more unbelievable happen before their eyes.
I hold Rachel and those like her accountable to this failure in perspective. To do any less would be to make excuses for an altogether autonomous individual, taking away their agency. To do any less would be an insult. A failure not corrected quickly becomes a failing.
If we do not have enough information to question why Rachel feels the way she does of redemption, she does not possess enough to question Ruth’s path to the same. A refusal to compromise another’s path of self-betterment is selflessness at it’s most quintessential. That includes preventing others from doing it themselves.
Assuming your experience is universal isn’t a youth thing and most people tend to count things they actually went through over things they’ve heard of or seen.
I’d assume there’s actual backstory among all of the sophomores in Read. It’s just that in this case we’re getting to see the actual backstory between these two.
The diegetic world: it’s not just for film critics anymore.
Alright, Daniel the Human doesn’t know how all this “Junior, sophomore, etc” stuff works, so how about you Americans explain it for the rest of the world? Daniel the Human may just ignore it, but it keeps busting my processors…
There’s no particular logic for driving on the right-hand side of the road versus driving on the left-hand side of the road, but it does make life easier if everyone in the local region agrees which side of the road to use.
Apart from people whose right hands were in a cast at the time, the only person I ever knew who offered his left hand to shake was someone whose right hand was completely atrophied (by a congenital condition).
In some cultures there are greetings without body contact — there’s the namaste, the wai, the ojigi, among others — and honestly, there is a certain level of fraughtness/am-I-doing-this-right? with all of them. But offering the right hand to shake is pretty universal among hand-shaking cultures.
And if you’re looking for rational explanations for human social customs…I wish you good luck in your quest.
It’s because left and evil are nearly homonyms in Latin. It sounds dumb but the ruling classes of all of Europe were also incredibly inbred for a few centuries which totally explains that.
Actually, shaking the right hand had a couple understandable origins.
One: most people are right-handed, so offering the right hand was a signifier that you did not plan to pull a weapon on the person. There was nothing preventing the person from pulling one with the left and stabbing while shaking, but it was a gesture of good will that everyone understood. Since it was just a gesture, it wouldn’t matter what the actual dominant hand is, just that it was understood between the people making the gesture.
Two: there is an expectation in some cultures that you do certain things with certain hands, like wiping after using the toilet with the left hand, so you make sure to eat and greet people with your right because otherwise, that would be gross
Do those cultures also have a stigma against washing their hands? Also, do they wipe with their bare hands, instead of toilet paper or, like, a leaf? It’s not gross if your hands are clean.
@DT: that particular custom predates toilet paper and indoor plumbing. It’s not often remarked on (though I have seen it mentioned) but up until relatively recently, pretty much everybody was really stinky.
Because, born-in-a-barn person, you offer your right. It’s been the norm for centuries. Offering the left throws people into confusion. And why would she insist other people shake with their non-dominant hand?
Why does it matter so much, though? I guess I’m just an idiot or something, but when people offer me their left hand for a good firm shake, I just respond with my own left hand and think nothing of it. It’s never once occurred to me to take offence.
From what I’ve heard, It only mattered back when people would wipe their ass with their left hand and not be able to clean it properly. These days we have wonderful inventions like toilet paper and soap.
As a left-handed person, the most annoying custom is when people expect you to *eat* with only your right hand. Thankfully nobody’s actually hassled me about it but I’m sure there’s been some people silently judging my “wrong” eating.
i am right-handed so i also wipe with my right hand. i’m less likely to get accidents wiping with my more dexterous hand and yes i wash both hands afterwards before i touch anything or anyone.
Right, but you live in culture and a time with ready easy access to good sanitation.
Now imagine living in time and place without running water and toilet paper. Or in some cases even the leaves suggested above (deserts, northern winters).
Why do you care about such a nonsense thing, I dont give a damn what hand people shake with and nobody else should either. Its a damn hand, I swear to god people look for any reason to look down on other people.
One of the origin stories behind offering the right hand is to show you were not armed. Why would you not want to shake using your right hand as a lefty? It just allows you to use your left hand to stab them after!
The fact that I had to google “swan to goodness” only shows how little I know about American dialects, and how much I would have sucked had I actually gone into linguistics.
In the Appalachians, “I swan,” is, as the dictionary puts it, “a mincing substitute for ‘I swear.'” It originated in New England as a contraction of “I should warrant.” In the deep South, it has, for some reason, shifted to “I swanny.”
Daniel here, Scouting Movement survivor . The right handed shake started off as a means for people greeting each other to show they’re not holding any weapons (since most people are right handed) and mean no harm. With no weapons in the primary hand, it is harder to start a fight. In the Scouts & related groups, you offer a left handed shake as Lord Baden-Powel (creator of the Scouting Movement) discovered many African tribes showed they were unwilling to fight by carrying their weapons in their right hand, again reducing their ability to attack quickly, and offering the left hand as a greeting. When he started the Scouts, he passed the left hand shake as a not-so-secret group handshake…
Have humans only evolved more powerful non-dominant arms or maybe basic multitasking capacity in the past few decades? I’m a filthy right-hander, but if I’ve got a bat in my left hand, I can still swing it. It’s no harder to perform that task, regardless of which hand is holding the object. What am I missing, here? What do people do with their left hands that would prevent them from holding something in them while the right hands are grabbing each other?
You can swing it, but you’d be at a disadvantage fighting someone with their weapon in their dominant hand. Think sword fights, not baseball bats.
And yes, it is harder. You’ll have less power, less control. Especially if you’ve spent years training with your dominant hand, which you would do because you’re better with it.
Who’s fighting anybody? I might have a little bit less precision with my left, but not to such a drastic degree that I wouldn’t have time to stab or cosh somebody within handshake distance. Especially if they’re staring obsessively at my right hand the whole time.
Right, we’re talking about why the custom started, not “Is it a completely logical reason to continue it today?”
We continue it today because it’s a custom. Just like Europeans tend to shake hands rather than bow as the Japanese do. There’s no logical reason to prefer one over the other, but “when in Rome …”
I remember from my Scouting days that use of the left hand was because it was closed to the heart. But that may be just a story they told us now that I think about it.
“Closed to the heart” implies a lack of blood flow, which could lead to an impaired ability to use the arm, which would really help explain this impression I’m getting, that people are expected to be incapable of performing basic tasks with their left hand.
Well the brain seems to have extra capacity to remember minute details of things that got drilled into us in childhood… and also, song lyrics of songs we didn’t even like!
Dorm rooms at IU Bloomington are configurable. You can have lofted beds (the default in Read), or you can have non-lofted beds (which are the default almost anyway else on campus), and bunk beds are also an option in most dorms.
In 2019, there’s a website where you as an IU student can go to (once you have your room number), but in days of yore? I’m guessing there was sometimes some confusion, especially if the roommates in question didn’t know each other. Wouldn’t surprise me if that sometimes resulted in rooms without beds.
If you’re wondering why only Read has the lofted-bed option? I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing it’s because only Read has rooms with like nine-foot ceilings. Lofted beds probably wouldn’t work nearly as well in dorms that have normal-sized ceilings.
So Rachel hates Ruth not only because of recent fuck ups Ruth did, but she also probably did something that made Rachel be a jaded asshole? This blue memories always show the origin of something: Mike being distrustful after seeing his teacher be a jerk towards Amber, Amber becoming traumatized because of the abuse of her father and Sal’s assault on Ethan, Sal doing that assault out of desperation because Linda is a horrible mother and a racist “a la Jane Crocker”, and there’s also the extra comics that show when Carla came out as transgender and when Jocelyn took Joyce to trick or treat.
I’m not sure if I believe Ruth will be the root cause of Rachel being that way. I think Ruth will be a contributing factor but likely not the root cause because Rachel has still hung around in this dorm area specifically, which you wouldn’t do if someone did something lifechangingly awful to you. But you might if you just thought they were an ass.
So, since in-our-world Move-in day is in September of 2010, Two-Years-Ago-in-comic Move-in day would be somewhere around December 1876 in-our-world, if I haven’t screwed up the math.
Well, I was going to object that most of the cast wouldn’t be allowed in, but IU actually went co-ed early – first women admitted in 1869.
Still no black students though.
And the girls certainly wouldn’t have been sharing a dorm with boys, much less a floor.
Rachel’s happy… RUTH is happy… and we’re going to find out how everything falls apart. And we’re being shown this because it’ll be relevant, I’m betting. Choppy waters ahead.
Ruth has been broken since before this, I suspect. She just hasn’t lost the ability to fake it, yet. That isn’t a “happy” Ruth, it’s a “this is a new opportunity away from Clint, I’m going to do my best to fit in” Ruth.
Unless Ruth does some incredibly unlawful, incredibly fucked-up shit in this flashback, nothing’s going to justify Rachel’s unhinged, absolutist rant from before, but this should be interesting.
bUt hEr WOrdS HuRT mY FeeFEEs WhILe ruThS ACtioNS oNly HarMEd SOmeoNE ElsE
See also, every American centrist: “Sure, the current administration is putting children in literal death camps and ICE agents are laughing at the kids as they die, but the people enabling it are being called racists, and isn’t that SO MUCH WORSE?”
People tend to be more upset with Rachel over Ruth because Rachel was a relatively minor character who made a controversial statement with nothing at the time to suggest anything aside from her projecting her feelings onto Ruth.
Ruth meanwhile people had seen across the story for years thanks to her being a main character and had been humanized, putting her actions into perspective after seeing why she did certain things and the environment she was forced to live in.
Even if they didn’t necessarily agree with what Ruth had done or even liked her, she at least had in series reasoning to put things into perspective, compared to Rachel who seemed to be making an absolutist comment on a very touchy subject just to be a jerk.
tl;dr People sympathize more with what they understand and know more despite the harsher action, rather than something with little information and a controversial idea behind it.
Ok, I think I’ve replied to comments like three times in my entire life despite having followed DoA since its beginning, but I’ll bite:
A lot of the commenters, myself included, have dealt with mental illness. I’m going to just use the things that would be known from an outsider’s perspective (no Ruth POV): If my abusive RA suddenly crashed and burned, and it came out she’s been suicidal for the longest time, while saddled with the responsibility of being an RA, and had trouble with alcohol, and she had just came back from the hospital after trying to kill herself… And she was acknowledging her faults, and promising to do better, also admitting she’s in therapy now, medication included?
Dude, I wouldn’t trust her outright, no. But I’d give her the benefit of doubt.
And you can absolutely bet I’d /hate/ any dorm mate who gave a spiel like that (potentially jeopardizing her recovery, which is in the best interests of the dorm as well).
Patently false. I don’t think Ruth’s actions are justifiable whatsoever, but Rachel’s diatribe transcends Ruth and condemns *millions* of people, forever, for absolutely no reason. Her current worldview is as edgy as the one Ruth espouses in today’s strip.
I actually don’t like the finale lite of Steven Universe because I believe what I believe Rachel was trying to say.
People change all the time, but positive improvement usually takes actual work and its easier said than done.
Sometimes people will change just enough and just long enough so they can get back to the status quo, or make promises to change than not follow through they might not even realize that they are doing it.
Its some peoples MO and Rachel has no reason to believe its not Ruth’s.
The problem this is not what Rachel said and everyone in the room heard what she said. If you believe positive improvement simply does not happen you have no reason to try to be better than your past self why put in the effort if its not going to make a difference, and if you have changed its painful and discouraging to hear that none of your improvement will matter in the end.
Also I think we can agree its fucked up when you apply it to things that mostly hurt yourself.
You will never not be an abuse victim.
You will never not be homeless.
You will never get healthy.
I’m not fully subscribed to what Rachel said but yeah there are limits to forgiveness and redemption. And honestly I feel like society in general seems to generally favour the perpetrators over victims all too often. But yep the problems with her speech was more that there were unintended targets.
I think in general a better attitude would be that redemption exists but it can and should not come at the expense of those you hurt. Perpetrators have to leave if their presence is harmful.
And in a fictional sense since you brought it up:
God did Steven Universe go too far when it tried to make nazis in space sympathetic. The warning signs were there before hand but Jesus.
Yea I think that’s a good rule. Its not fair to let people use redemption like a no punching back rule or to force people who were hurt beyond a certain point to give the perpitraitor a second chance or suffer their presence.
The truth is I know Ruth did worse things than giving that speech but I fall victim to main character bias.
Look at that bird’s-eye view in panel 2! Those dorm rooms in Read sure are high-ceilinged, aren’t they?
I kid! They really are high-ceilinged. There’s a video online in which two apparently normal-sized women show off their Read dorm room, which has a ceiling about twice as tall as they are.
I wonder if Ruth is bipolar instead of depressive. It could be she starts off very nice and sweet then horrible then apologetic–only for Rachel to think this works in cycles.
I have thought about it myself. I’ve got Bipolar II: The cycles are very long-lasting, fluctuate between “normality” and “depression” with some hypomanic episodes peppered in, and… You shouldn’t give us antidepressants. They bring in Actual Mania while doing jackshit to our type of depression.
Yeah, it does seem like Ruth has something Bipolar-ish going on. She started yesterday pretty manic (painting her entire dorm room on a whim), and ended it on a low.
I bet we’ll see her change meds at some point, if she has a follow-up with Dr. Beverly and is upfront about how the one she’s on now is affecting her.
This might’ve been addressed in previous comment sections, but do these dorms not come with furniture? I’ve only experienced one dorm, but the beds, desks, table and chairs were all provided and set up before the students arrived. I assumed that was standard.
Per Willis on his Patreon – depends on the year at IU. There have been years where they had to bring in the furniture, sometimes because the roommates didn’t have a layout arranged ahead of time.
As I noted elsewhere, the dorms in Read are configurable, which means that at least one of the roommates has to make a choice ahead of time. I’m guessing that if no one makes a choice, the day-one state of the room is indeterminate — furniture-less being one of the possibilities.
As everyone who has ever dabbled in programming/web design/UI/UX knows: when you offer users a choice, you also have to deal with the fact that some of the users, for whatever reason, won’t make a choice, and what happens then? If you’re a professional, there’s money involved, sometimes a lot of it.
In the case of Read, where incoming residents have a lot of options, I’m guessing that the nobody-chose-anything default is to leave the room bare because disassembling-and-then-reassembling costs more than leave-bare-and-assemble-on-demand.
This is probably not an issue for most dorm rooms in most colleges, where you get what’s there and that’s it.
And if you are working in UX and are lucky, you’ll get developers who don’t insist on showing all possible choices at once (because they would want that), thus making it more likely people give up on choosing.
Though in case of college rooms, I’d probably stick to a default configuration because planning a room layout from scratch is not easy. If you are not experienced at all, you forget to include enough spaces to move in.
German dorm rooms are all single and came with desk, bed, wardrobe and two chairs, and nobody objected to you moving them around. (In German dorms, you only had to share showers and kitchen space. Dorms often are away from campus so only extremely large ones have their own cafeteria.)
Why is there no furniture in a dorm room?
I they are on a freshman floor. Sarah’s still there cause no one else wanted to room with her I thought. Now I’m curious why Rachel is still there especially with Ruth being the RA?
Mauriat’s instrumental version was a number one hit in 1968, but if you remember the lyrics, you probably remember the version recorded by Vicky (aka Vicky Leandros). I didn’t know this until I googled it tonight, but she recorded versions in German, Italian, and Dutch as well as the more well-known English and French versions.
I remember Paul Mauriat’s version in 1968. I don’t remember Vicky’s version—was it not played much in the US? I do remember a sung version by Al Martino.
I don’t remember either of them from the time. Most of the late sixties music is like that for me — I was just a little too young to be listening to it at the time, but the big hits were still being played a few years later, which is when I would have heard it.
Vicky, with “L’amour est bleu,” was Luxembourg’s Eurovision entry in 1967, and you can easily find that performance on YouTube. That presumably was the origin of all the other versions/covers of it. Wikipedia informs me that her version was a modest success in Europe and a big hit in Canada, though whether the latter was the French or English version isn’t specified.
I am honestly not sure if I ever really heard Vicky’s version at all until much later than it was released. As anyone who has ever read or listened to Elizabeth Loftus knows, memory is not only unreliable, it is malleable.
Hey, Willis, ever considered doing least favorite character polls? Character you most want to see expelled. Character you most want to see castrated. Character you most want to see homeless and thirty pounds lighter in a decade. Character you most want to see Dina lunch in the face. Character you most want to see stuck in a compromising position in Blowjob Cat.
Or at least she’s still capable of faking it for a little while. Probably helped by the prospect of being out from directly under Clint’s thumb for the first time in years.
Actually, her eyebrows are giving me a lot of dissonance: her left eye is going “Hi, you” while her right is going “everything sucks and I’m sad”, like her brain suddenly went “shit, other people, fake you’re ok, fake you’re ok, fake you’re ok” halfway through deciding on her facial expression.
Try covering one of her eyes and then the other and see if that doesn’t give you two totally different smiles.
Having a difficult year with a roommate and then coming back to find her as RA? That would totally suck. This will parallel Sarah’s experience but with no help for Ruth except being put in charge of the asylum.
If someone who abused you was given a promotion and put in a position of authority over you, you might doubt their redemption narrative. Especially if they continued to be abusive without consequences.
And then her abuses come to light, she sleeps with one of her charges, and is clearly currently mentally unfit to have the responsibility of handling a dozen rowdy teenagers who are out of their parents’ eyesight for likely the first time, and she STILL GETS TO KEEP HER JOB.
Sleeps with the one of her charges that she’s been blatantly bullying and abusing. Remember not only the initial abuse, but the cover story of Ruth and Billie fighting – not knowing that’s a cover story then finding out they’re having sex, it looks like the abuse is the relationship.
You know, the position of RA is unknown in Germany. Once you start university, you are legally an adult (can legally drink) and expected to solve your own problems. Large dorms exists, and I suppose there are some mechanisms to facilitate problems between people living there, but still, not something like an RA. The idea of curfew or dorms that don’t allow alcohol are both totally ridiculous to someone from here.
So is sharing a room.
That said, Ruth and her bullying ways are just part of the strange behavior that is part of a foreign culture.
Given how she has been shown to us, especially her reaction to Mary’s blackmail attempts, I would be really astonished to find Ruth intentionally bullying Rachel while there are rommmates. It seems more like a role she acquired to deal with having to be the RA. Though she could have been a hell of a roommate just because someone as unhappy as her is likely to either be aggressive without noticing or making her feelings known without intending to. And we don’t know when the drinking started.
In America, you’re not really a full adult until you’re about 25. Sure you reach the age of majority at 18, and you can do adult things like buy cigarettes and vote and buy real estate and rack up mountains of debt and join the military, but you can’t buy alcohol or rent a car yet. It’s almost like you’re an adult-in-training.
We may get there, but at this point Ruth’s being friendly, not mean. I’d be shocked if her problems don’t show up soon, but it’s hard to see any sign of them yet.
Willis, you start a storyline where Rachel and a seemingly happy Ruth start out as roomies. You then post artwork that says “Winter Is Coming”, and THEN state it’s “Not a metaphor”.
*wraps self in heavy furs, grips Ice grimly in both hands*
It's #webcomicday? We have a special day???
Well, my name is Pat McHoarney and I draw 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd, a multigenerational story about women who all have sexy legs and probably other features. There was a grandmother, but she wasn't hot and so she died off-panel.
Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. Her partner, Billy Evans, is now trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics.” nyti.ms/3FbtZm9
www.ebay.com/itm/23609767...
selling my netflix war for cybertron megatron -- the walmart exclusive one that came with pinpointer and lionizer (but being sold here without pinpointer and lionizer)
Gran... IS ALIVE?
okay, juliette still has brown hair, so this is probably definitely a flashback
i'm just surprised that the comic has remembered her, at all
Good morning. I spent my Easter eating chocolate and drawing Transformers Armada characters for the laugh. Here are Red Alert and Hot Shot. More drawings to come. Same cannot be said for the chocolate.
Take a look at That Sexy Bear! It's just under $5000 from funding and has 11 days left!
Iron Circus Comics@ironcircuscomics.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
GOOD MORNING BLUESKY! We're just $30 from $10,000 and 3% to big, funny number!
Yaya loves handouts! She's a bear! Even if she can't understand them, nothing that the humans give her (or just plain takes if left unattended) makes her life harder-- right?
www.kickstarter.com/projects/iro...
"That Sexy Bear!" needs YOUR HELP! This weird and wonderful book has only 11 DAYS LEFT on Kickstarter, and it's nowhere near close to funding!
The critics love it, and we think you will, too. Why not take a look? ebook copies are just $10!
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it's fucked up that we know the names of so many genociders and tyrants and im thinking about how we don't know who invented al pastor and maybe that's why the great man theory of history is horse shit
The New York Times @nytimes.com ⋅ 2d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 3h
Iron Circus Comics @ironcircuscomics.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
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oh
OH
…oh…
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/redemption/
First thing I thought of, too.
Like I said before I don’t blame Rachel for her justified disdain twords Ruth nor do I hate her character, it’s just that disagree with this particular part of ideology. In a world where nothing stays the same, why would the human individual be the exception to that rule?
Daniel here. There is a saying, “Change is the only constant in the universe”. That goes for people too…
It does typically take a fair bit of effort however, unless something traumatic is involved. Could take even more effort to convince others of the change, especially if the others don’t want to believe…
That little speech still infuriates me. What does she know of redemption? Of growth? Of change? Everything she knows about the world comes from the stories she so confidently derides.
Redemption is hard. It is soul-consuming. If it were anything less, it would not be redemption. But redemption is real. It is every recovering alcoholic. Every reformed criminal. Every repaired relationship. To go up to someone who is trying to alter their path to something better, to look them in the eye, and say to not bother?
She’s at best naive, and more likely ignorant.
It is ironic that most of the irredeemable are only so because they can’t imagine they could be anything else. That is their curse. That is their path.
I think that would be a pretty bold guess to assume she has no experience but stories. I think that whole spiel pretty well sets up for a reveal someone Rachel was close to kept hurting her, apologizing and turning it around. It’s POSSIBLE it was Ruth, based on this newly revealed backstory, but I think we don’t have enough information to say that for sure.
If Rachel finds herself in using absolutes against others, she should not find it shocking when such is used in kind.
It is hard to imagine that one who has only been in college for, at this point, roughly two years has the same realm of experience as those who have done more.
I do not discount the experiences of youth lightly, I myself am 24 and know just how little I know, but it is when they declare what is impossible, what is fantasy, what is nothing but lies, with such vehement, poisonous certainty that credentials must be called into question.
Maybe you’re right, maybe Rachel had a trusted loved one who took advantage of her forgiveness. That is one single experience. In the course of one’s life, they will be witness to countless stories of redemption, betrayal, tragedy and triumph. It becomes dubious to take a person’s limited experience seriously when one has seen dozens of things more unbelievable happen before their eyes.
I hold Rachel and those like her accountable to this failure in perspective. To do any less would be to make excuses for an altogether autonomous individual, taking away their agency. To do any less would be an insult. A failure not corrected quickly becomes a failing.
If we do not have enough information to question why Rachel feels the way she does of redemption, she does not possess enough to question Ruth’s path to the same. A refusal to compromise another’s path of self-betterment is selflessness at it’s most quintessential. That includes preventing others from doing it themselves.
Assuming your experience is universal isn’t a youth thing and most people tend to count things they actually went through over things they’ve heard of or seen.
I had a bell ringing at the back of my mind, but couldn’t really place it. Thanks for the reference
Ah, so they dislike each other because they were former roommates.
Makes sense, Doctor Doom has the same origin story.
You too, right?
Wasn’t that a frathouse?
Does Ruth dislike Rachel? I can’t recall any interactions between the two of them before Ruth’s situation imploded.
*checks tag combo*
…if Ruth dislikes Rachel it seems Ruth was too busy terrorizing otherpeople (read: Billie) to give it any panel time. :B
Oooooooooh. This explains a lot.
Including why she is Rachel and the other Rachel is other Rachel: Rachel moved into their room first. Other Rachel came when Ruth became RA.
Okay, I just saw the story title, and if we don’t get some Austin Powers style hijinks, I want my money back!
I’m sorry Ms. Jackson (oh), I am for real
Never meant to make your daughter cry…
…I apologize a thousand times…
https://youtu.be/MYxAiK6VnXw
I don’t.
https://dami-lee.com/illustrated-internet
You mean to tell me there’s actual backstory between these two?
I’d assume there’s actual backstory among all of the sophomores in Read. It’s just that in this case we’re getting to see the actual backstory between these two.
The diegetic world: it’s not just for film critics anymore.
“Two years ago” makes them juniors.
So it does. Fortunately, I’m old enough that little brain farts like that are a normal and unremarkable part of my life.
*senility high five*
Alright, Daniel the Human doesn’t know how all this “Junior, sophomore, etc” stuff works, so how about you Americans explain it for the rest of the world? Daniel the Human may just ignore it, but it keeps busting my processors…
4 years of college, starting as a Freshman. Freshman leads to Sophmore, which leads to Junior, then finally to Senior.
The last four years of regular schooling follow the same pattern.
Kind of a bummer how in the German School Systems, we only got a rising number for our school years…
Well I can’t wait for the Sarah/Carla backstory then.
Oh… this won’t be good. Damn you blue shading of the past, why must you hurt us with the things we ask for?
DoA Omnibus Title: “Why Must You Hurt Us With the Things We Ask For?”
Satan grins, leans in, and says, “You’re Welcome.”
NICE.
At last, we will get the origin.
Ruth! Offer your right hand. You and Dorothy, I swan to goodness.
Ruth is a lefty. Why would she offer her non-dominant hand?
Because that’s the norm. I’m a lefty and do the same thing.
There are a lot of norms that don’t seem to have any reasonable basis.
There’s no particular logic for driving on the right-hand side of the road versus driving on the left-hand side of the road, but it does make life easier if everyone in the local region agrees which side of the road to use.
Apart from people whose right hands were in a cast at the time, the only person I ever knew who offered his left hand to shake was someone whose right hand was completely atrophied (by a congenital condition).
In some cultures there are greetings without body contact — there’s the namaste, the wai, the ojigi, among others — and honestly, there is a certain level of fraughtness/am-I-doing-this-right? with all of them. But offering the right hand to shake is pretty universal among hand-shaking cultures.
And if you’re looking for rational explanations for human social customs…I wish you good luck in your quest.
Sure, but that doesn’t account for why it should definitely be the right hand, or why someone should take exception to the left.
It’s because left and evil are nearly homonyms in Latin. It sounds dumb but the ruling classes of all of Europe were also incredibly inbred for a few centuries which totally explains that.
Once again, “inbred Europeans” is the best explanation in the thread.
Actually, shaking the right hand had a couple understandable origins.
One: most people are right-handed, so offering the right hand was a signifier that you did not plan to pull a weapon on the person. There was nothing preventing the person from pulling one with the left and stabbing while shaking, but it was a gesture of good will that everyone understood. Since it was just a gesture, it wouldn’t matter what the actual dominant hand is, just that it was understood between the people making the gesture.
Two: there is an expectation in some cultures that you do certain things with certain hands, like wiping after using the toilet with the left hand, so you make sure to eat and greet people with your right because otherwise, that would be gross
Do those cultures also have a stigma against washing their hands? Also, do they wipe with their bare hands, instead of toilet paper or, like, a leaf? It’s not gross if your hands are clean.
@DT: that particular custom predates toilet paper and indoor plumbing. It’s not often remarked on (though I have seen it mentioned) but up until relatively recently, pretty much everybody was really stinky.
Because, born-in-a-barn person, you offer your right. It’s been the norm for centuries. Offering the left throws people into confusion. And why would she insist other people shake with their non-dominant hand?
Why does it matter so much, though? I guess I’m just an idiot or something, but when people offer me their left hand for a good firm shake, I just respond with my own left hand and think nothing of it. It’s never once occurred to me to take offence.
From what I’ve heard, It only mattered back when people would wipe their ass with their left hand and not be able to clean it properly. These days we have wonderful inventions like toilet paper and soap.
As a left-handed person, the most annoying custom is when people expect you to *eat* with only your right hand. Thankfully nobody’s actually hassled me about it but I’m sure there’s been some people silently judging my “wrong” eating.
i am right-handed so i also wipe with my right hand. i’m less likely to get accidents wiping with my more dexterous hand
and yes i wash both hands afterwards before i touch anything or anyone.
Right, but you live in culture and a time with ready easy access to good sanitation.
Now imagine living in time and place without running water and toilet paper. Or in some cases even the leaves suggested above (deserts, northern winters).
Why do you care about such a nonsense thing, I dont give a damn what hand people shake with and nobody else should either. Its a damn hand, I swear to god people look for any reason to look down on other people.
One of the origin stories behind offering the right hand is to show you were not armed. Why would you not want to shake using your right hand as a lefty? It just allows you to use your left hand to stab them after!
The fact that I had to google “swan to goodness” only shows how little I know about American dialects, and how much I would have sucked had I actually gone into linguistics.
In the Appalachians, “I swan,” is, as the dictionary puts it, “a mincing substitute for ‘I swear.'” It originated in New England as a contraction of “I should warrant.” In the deep South, it has, for some reason, shifted to “I swanny.”
” ‘Way, down upon the Swanny River…”
Suwannee River
In the Scouts one offers the left as the hand of peace. It’s a sound option.
Daniel here, Scouting Movement survivor
. The right handed shake started off as a means for people greeting each other to show they’re not holding any weapons (since most people are right handed) and mean no harm. With no weapons in the primary hand, it is harder to start a fight. In the Scouts & related groups, you offer a left handed shake as Lord Baden-Powel (creator of the Scouting Movement) discovered many African tribes showed they were unwilling to fight by carrying their weapons in their right hand, again reducing their ability to attack quickly, and offering the left hand as a greeting. When he started the Scouts, he passed the left hand shake as a not-so-secret group handshake…
It is scary I remember all that…
Have humans only evolved more powerful non-dominant arms or maybe basic multitasking capacity in the past few decades? I’m a filthy right-hander, but if I’ve got a bat in my left hand, I can still swing it. It’s no harder to perform that task, regardless of which hand is holding the object. What am I missing, here? What do people do with their left hands that would prevent them from holding something in them while the right hands are grabbing each other?
You can swing it, but you’d be at a disadvantage fighting someone with their weapon in their dominant hand. Think sword fights, not baseball bats.
And yes, it is harder. You’ll have less power, less control. Especially if you’ve spent years training with your dominant hand, which you would do because you’re better with it.
Who’s fighting anybody? I might have a little bit less precision with my left, but not to such a drastic degree that I wouldn’t have time to stab or cosh somebody within handshake distance. Especially if they’re staring obsessively at my right hand the whole time.
“Who’s fighting anybody?”
Well, the sort of people who you’d want to extend their empty weapon hand to show they’re not currently stabbing you, for starters.
Maybe back in ye olde tymes, but nowadays people don’t tend to carry weapons on them, so there’s nothing to check for.
Right, we’re talking about why the custom started, not “Is it a completely logical reason to continue it today?”
We continue it today because it’s a custom. Just like Europeans tend to shake hands rather than bow as the Japanese do. There’s no logical reason to prefer one over the other, but “when in Rome …”
I remember from my Scouting days that use of the left hand was because it was closed to the heart. But that may be just a story they told us now that I think about it.
*closest to the heart, not closed. Darn my insomnia-clouded mind.
“Closed to the heart” implies a lack of blood flow, which could lead to an impaired ability to use the arm, which would really help explain this impression I’m getting, that people are expected to be incapable of performing basic tasks with their left hand.
Not “incapable of performing basic tasks”, but “worse at performing complex ones” – like fighting.
You might actually be ambidextrous. I have a hard time doing things with my non-dominant hand, and I think most people do as well.
I’m definitely not ambidextrous. But my left arm isn’t vestigial, either.
Well the brain seems to have extra capacity to remember minute details of things that got drilled into us in childhood… and also, song lyrics of songs we didn’t even like!
Sarah and Dana, Rachel and Ruth, Malaya and Lucy…
…They should re-evaluate whoever is in charge of roommate assignments.
What would Dana and Malaya be better?
Roz and Mary.
That’s fine because it’s fostering the two worst options with each other rather than into other people.
Like, putting Mary with Sal would probably result in murder in two days.
I prefer Mary and Carla, only because Mary’d have a well-deserved heart attack in five minutes.
I feel like Mary and Carla would be grounds to sue the university
Especially since she paid for a private room.
I guess we’ll now know why Rachel acts how she does towards Ruth.
whoawhoawhoawhoawhoa WHAT.
Oh…. they were once roommates. That goes a ways to explaining Rachel’s hatred of her. She’s seen her abusive behavior first-hand.
oh my god they were roommates
Also, don’t dorm rooms come prefurnished? Do they actually have to install their own beds (I’m assuming that they at least supply those)?
I’m surprised too. I feel SO spoiled during my college years, and I already felt spoiled back then too.
Dorm rooms at IU Bloomington are configurable. You can have lofted beds (the default in Read), or you can have non-lofted beds (which are the default almost anyway else on campus), and bunk beds are also an option in most dorms.
In 2019, there’s a website where you as an IU student can go to (once you have your room number), but in days of yore? I’m guessing there was sometimes some confusion, especially if the roommates in question didn’t know each other. Wouldn’t surprise me if that sometimes resulted in rooms without beds.
If you’re wondering why only Read has the lofted-bed option? I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing it’s because only Read has rooms with like nine-foot ceilings. Lofted beds probably wouldn’t work nearly as well in dorms that have normal-sized ceilings.
Didn’t see the end of the strip but I called the twist.
Yay, more story time with Rachel! Time to see the straw that broke Rachel’s back with Ruth.
Wait what………
So Rachel hates Ruth not only because of recent fuck ups Ruth did, but she also probably did something that made Rachel be a jaded asshole? This blue memories always show the origin of something: Mike being distrustful after seeing his teacher be a jerk towards Amber, Amber becoming traumatized because of the abuse of her father and Sal’s assault on Ethan, Sal doing that assault out of desperation because Linda is a horrible mother and a racist “a la Jane Crocker”, and there’s also the extra comics that show when Carla came out as transgender and when Jocelyn took Joyce to trick or treat.
Well Willis isn’t going to have a flash back that doesn’t propel the story.
I’m not sure if I believe Ruth will be the root cause of Rachel being that way. I think Ruth will be a contributing factor but likely not the root cause because Rachel has still hung around in this dorm area specifically, which you wouldn’t do if someone did something lifechangingly awful to you. But you might if you just thought they were an ass.
So, two years ago comic time. That’s like the late 70’s earth time?
1770s probably.
Needfuldoer’s Ratio is still close to 66.76:1.
So, since in-our-world Move-in day is in September of 2010, Two-Years-Ago-in-comic Move-in day would be somewhere around December 1876 in-our-world, if I haven’t screwed up the math.
Can you even imagine a DoA strip set then?
Well, I was going to object that most of the cast wouldn’t be allowed in, but IU actually went co-ed early – first women admitted in 1869.
Still no black students though.
And the girls certainly wouldn’t have been sharing a dorm with boys, much less a floor.
It’s probably time to revise that, isn’t it…
Last time I did a back-of-the-envelope estimate, it was still accurate. Time skips and flashback sequences have pretty much balanced each other out.
I’m guessing it was a bad fit?
Rachel’s happy… RUTH is happy… and we’re going to find out how everything falls apart. And we’re being shown this because it’ll be relevant, I’m betting. Choppy waters ahead.
Ruth just got away from Gramps. Of course she’s happy.
Ruth has been broken since before this, I suspect. She just hasn’t lost the ability to fake it, yet. That isn’t a “happy” Ruth, it’s a “this is a new opportunity away from Clint, I’m going to do my best to fit in” Ruth.
OH NO
Oh dear. Welp, this oughta clear a few things up.
…. this is gonna be sad.
Oh great, it’s the asshole we can’t criticise because her hostility has a reason behind it.
*looks at Ruth*
*looks at Rachel*
…which one?
The hot one.
So, the one with freckles?
Doesn’t narrow it down.
Okay, the white girl with the bangs.
They’re both white.
The one from the continent of North America, then.
They’re both from North America!
Unless Ruth does some incredibly unlawful, incredibly fucked-up shit in this flashback, nothing’s going to justify Rachel’s unhinged, absolutist rant from before, but this should be interesting.
I love how we’re more upset with Rachel’s rant than with Ruth’s actual abuse.
bUt hEr WOrdS HuRT mY FeeFEEs WhILe ruThS ACtioNS oNly HarMEd SOmeoNE ElsE
See also, every American centrist: “Sure, the current administration is putting children in literal death camps and ICE agents are laughing at the kids as they die, but the people enabling it are being called racists, and isn’t that SO MUCH WORSE?”
People tend to be more upset with Rachel over Ruth because Rachel was a relatively minor character who made a controversial statement with nothing at the time to suggest anything aside from her projecting her feelings onto Ruth.
Ruth meanwhile people had seen across the story for years thanks to her being a main character and had been humanized, putting her actions into perspective after seeing why she did certain things and the environment she was forced to live in.
Even if they didn’t necessarily agree with what Ruth had done or even liked her, she at least had in series reasoning to put things into perspective, compared to Rachel who seemed to be making an absolutist comment on a very touchy subject just to be a jerk.
tl;dr People sympathize more with what they understand and know more despite the harsher action, rather than something with little information and a controversial idea behind it.
Ok, I think I’ve replied to comments like three times in my entire life despite having followed DoA since its beginning, but I’ll bite:
A lot of the commenters, myself included, have dealt with mental illness. I’m going to just use the things that would be known from an outsider’s perspective (no Ruth POV): If my abusive RA suddenly crashed and burned, and it came out she’s been suicidal for the longest time, while saddled with the responsibility of being an RA, and had trouble with alcohol, and she had just came back from the hospital after trying to kill herself… And she was acknowledging her faults, and promising to do better, also admitting she’s in therapy now, medication included?
Dude, I wouldn’t trust her outright, no. But I’d give her the benefit of doubt.
And you can absolutely bet I’d /hate/ any dorm mate who gave a spiel like that (potentially jeopardizing her recovery, which is in the best interests of the dorm as well).
(… Oh man. I got a Joe gravatar lmao how do I change this?)
Experiment with different capitalization of your email address.
Patently false. I don’t think Ruth’s actions are justifiable whatsoever, but Rachel’s diatribe transcends Ruth and condemns *millions* of people, forever, for absolutely no reason. Her current worldview is as edgy as the one Ruth espouses in today’s strip.
I actually don’t like the finale lite of Steven Universe because I believe what I believe Rachel was trying to say.
People change all the time, but positive improvement usually takes actual work and its easier said than done.
Sometimes people will change just enough and just long enough so they can get back to the status quo, or make promises to change than not follow through they might not even realize that they are doing it.
Its some peoples MO and Rachel has no reason to believe its not Ruth’s.
The problem this is not what Rachel said and everyone in the room heard what she said. If you believe positive improvement simply does not happen you have no reason to try to be better than your past self why put in the effort if its not going to make a difference, and if you have changed its painful and discouraging to hear that none of your improvement will matter in the end.
Also I think we can agree its fucked up when you apply it to things that mostly hurt yourself.
You will never not be an abuse victim.
You will never not be homeless.
You will never get healthy.
I’m not fully subscribed to what Rachel said but yeah there are limits to forgiveness and redemption. And honestly I feel like society in general seems to generally favour the perpetrators over victims all too often. But yep the problems with her speech was more that there were unintended targets.
I think in general a better attitude would be that redemption exists but it can and should not come at the expense of those you hurt. Perpetrators have to leave if their presence is harmful.
And in a fictional sense since you brought it up:
God did Steven Universe go too far when it tried to make nazis in space sympathetic. The warning signs were there before hand but Jesus.
Yea I think that’s a good rule. Its not fair to let people use redemption like a no punching back rule or to force people who were hurt beyond a certain point to give the perpitraitor a second chance or suffer their presence.
The truth is I know Ruth did worse things than giving that speech but I fall victim to main character bias.
I suspected a personal history, sure, but this is still closer than I had anticipated. Very interesting.
Look at that bird’s-eye view in panel 2! Those dorm rooms in Read sure are high-ceilinged, aren’t they?
I kid! They really are high-ceilinged. There’s a video online in which two apparently normal-sized women show off their Read dorm room, which has a ceiling about twice as tall as they are.
I wonder if Ruth is bipolar instead of depressive. It could be she starts off very nice and sweet then horrible then apologetic–only for Rachel to think this works in cycles.
I hope not. That’s a bit of representation I don’t wish on a character I like.
Plausible. She did swing from manic to depressive, and dramatically at that, over the course of the last arc…
I have thought about it myself. I’ve got Bipolar II: The cycles are very long-lasting, fluctuate between “normality” and “depression” with some hypomanic episodes peppered in, and… You shouldn’t give us antidepressants. They bring in Actual Mania while doing jackshit to our type of depression.
Yeah, it does seem like Ruth has something Bipolar-ish going on. She started yesterday pretty manic (painting her entire dorm room on a whim), and ended it on a low.
I bet we’ll see her change meds at some point, if she has a follow-up with Dr. Beverly and is upfront about how the one she’s on now is affecting her.
It could be the alcohol was keeping her manic side down or, certainly not helping the situation.
Ruth’s anger could have easily been caused by hypomania – mania isn’t always happy, sometimes it is angry and violent.
This might’ve been addressed in previous comment sections, but do these dorms not come with furniture? I’ve only experienced one dorm, but the beds, desks, table and chairs were all provided and set up before the students arrived. I assumed that was standard.
Per Willis on his Patreon – depends on the year at IU. There have been years where they had to bring in the furniture, sometimes because the roommates didn’t have a layout arranged ahead of time.
As I noted elsewhere, the dorms in Read are configurable, which means that at least one of the roommates has to make a choice ahead of time. I’m guessing that if no one makes a choice, the day-one state of the room is indeterminate — furniture-less being one of the possibilities.
The dorm rooms at the college I went to had beds, desks, and chairs already provided. Not sure how it is with Indiana University though.
As everyone who has ever dabbled in programming/web design/UI/UX knows: when you offer users a choice, you also have to deal with the fact that some of the users, for whatever reason, won’t make a choice, and what happens then? If you’re a professional, there’s money involved, sometimes a lot of it.
In the case of Read, where incoming residents have a lot of options, I’m guessing that the nobody-chose-anything default is to leave the room bare because disassembling-and-then-reassembling costs more than leave-bare-and-assemble-on-demand.
This is probably not an issue for most dorm rooms in most colleges, where you get what’s there and that’s it.
And if you are working in UX and are lucky, you’ll get developers who don’t insist on showing all possible choices at once (because they would want that), thus making it more likely people give up on choosing.
Though in case of college rooms, I’d probably stick to a default configuration because planning a room layout from scratch is not easy. If you are not experienced at all, you forget to include enough spaces to move in.
German dorm rooms are all single and came with desk, bed, wardrobe and two chairs, and nobody objected to you moving them around. (In German dorms, you only had to share showers and kitchen space. Dorms often are away from campus so only extremely large ones have their own cafeteria.)
And they were roommates.
And they were ROOMMATES
oh my god, they were roommates
Why is there no furniture in a dorm room?
I they are on a freshman floor. Sarah’s still there cause no one else wanted to room with her I thought. Now I’m curious why Rachel is still there especially with Ruth being the RA?
Also wait “2 years”? They are juniors now?
Ruth’s 20, so sounds right.
blue
And once again I realize how old I am:
“Blue, blue, my world is blue,
Blue is my world, since I’m without you.”
Also relevant to DoA panel color:
“Red, red, my eyes are red,
Crying for you, alone in my bed.”
Now THERE’S a blast from the past.
Paul Mauriat, correct?
Mauriat’s instrumental version was a number one hit in 1968, but if you remember the lyrics, you probably remember the version recorded by Vicky (aka Vicky Leandros). I didn’t know this until I googled it tonight, but she recorded versions in German, Italian, and Dutch as well as the more well-known English and French versions.
I feel better knowing that 1) other folks in this space are old enough to remember this song and 2) aren’t ashamed to admit it.
I don’t remember it when it was a hit–too young–but it did stick around on the radio.
I remember Paul Mauriat’s version in 1968. I don’t remember Vicky’s version—was it not played much in the US? I do remember a sung version by Al Martino.
I don’t remember either of them from the time. Most of the late sixties music is like that for me — I was just a little too young to be listening to it at the time, but the big hits were still being played a few years later, which is when I would have heard it.
Vicky, with “L’amour est bleu,” was Luxembourg’s Eurovision entry in 1967, and you can easily find that performance on YouTube. That presumably was the origin of all the other versions/covers of it. Wikipedia informs me that her version was a modest success in Europe and a big hit in Canada, though whether the latter was the French or English version isn’t specified.
I am honestly not sure if I ever really heard Vicky’s version at all until much later than it was released. As anyone who has ever read or listened to Elizabeth Loftus knows, memory is not only unreliable, it is malleable.
MY JAW IS ON MY CHEST
… I’m lying down.
“And if you don’t reply with an appropriate greeting I’ll rip off your femurs and beat you to death with them.”
She smiles??? IT’S A CLONE REPLICANT FROM FORREST HALL!! RUN, RACHEL!!!
I’m pretty sure that Ruth wouldn’t be able to pass the Voight-Kampff test.
Panel 1: Rachel backstory! Oh yeah!
Panel 5: Rachel and Ruth backstory. Ohcrap.
Hey, Willis, ever considered doing least favorite character polls? Character you most want to see expelled. Character you most want to see castrated. Character you most want to see homeless and thirty pounds lighter in a decade. Character you most want to see Dina lunch in the face. Character you most want to see stuck in a compromising position in Blowjob Cat.
“lunch in the face?” Dina the raptor eats their face off? Interesting.
Anyway, wish granted, but all the poll options are only “Guns.”
I get the feeling this backstory is not gonna turn out happily for Rachel and Ruth.
So Ruth is Rachel’s father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate? I don’t know how I could’ve missed that.
That makes them…nothing at all.
I think that we’re about to find out why Rachel hates Ruth and hates herself so much.
And for a moment I wondered what Mary was getting a clean slate after.
And Ruth looks still open and friendly. So it wasn’t only her parents dying that made her hate herself.
I think in Ruths life the loss of parents was the hold up and the raised by gramps was the Blaine.
Or at least she’s still capable of faking it for a little while. Probably helped by the prospect of being out from directly under Clint’s thumb for the first time in years.
Actually, her eyebrows are giving me a lot of dissonance: her left eye is going “Hi, you” while her right is going “everything sucks and I’m sad”, like her brain suddenly went “shit, other people, fake you’re ok, fake you’re ok, fake you’re ok” halfway through deciding on her facial expression.
Try covering one of her eyes and then the other and see if that doesn’t give you two totally different smiles.
Ah, geez, Ruth looks so normal here…
Well yeah, she’s finally getting out of her grandfather’s proximity.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat
Oh no…. this will be’ painful.
Having a difficult year with a roommate and then coming back to find her as RA? That would totally suck. This will parallel Sarah’s experience but with no help for Ruth except being put in charge of the asylum.
If someone who abused you was given a promotion and put in a position of authority over you, you might doubt their redemption narrative. Especially if they continued to be abusive without consequences.
And then her abuses come to light, she sleeps with one of her charges, and is clearly currently mentally unfit to have the responsibility of handling a dozen rowdy teenagers who are out of their parents’ eyesight for likely the first time, and she STILL GETS TO KEEP HER JOB.
Sleeps with the one of her charges that she’s been blatantly bullying and abusing. Remember not only the initial abuse, but the cover story of Ruth and Billie fighting – not knowing that’s a cover story then finding out they’re having sex, it looks like the abuse is the relationship.
We know different, but Rachel wouldn’t.
Is it different?
They’re quite f-ed up, our two leading ladies.
You know, the position of RA is unknown in Germany. Once you start university, you are legally an adult (can legally drink) and expected to solve your own problems. Large dorms exists, and I suppose there are some mechanisms to facilitate problems between people living there, but still, not something like an RA. The idea of curfew or dorms that don’t allow alcohol are both totally ridiculous to someone from here.
So is sharing a room.
That said, Ruth and her bullying ways are just part of the strange behavior that is part of a foreign culture.
Given how she has been shown to us, especially her reaction to Mary’s blackmail attempts, I would be really astonished to find Ruth intentionally bullying Rachel while there are rommmates. It seems more like a role she acquired to deal with having to be the RA. Though she could have been a hell of a roommate just because someone as unhappy as her is likely to either be aggressive without noticing or making her feelings known without intending to. And we don’t know when the drinking started.
In America, you’re not really a full adult until you’re about 25. Sure you reach the age of majority at 18, and you can do adult things like buy cigarettes and vote and buy real estate and rack up mountains of debt and join the military, but you can’t buy alcohol or rent a car yet. It’s almost like you’re an adult-in-training.
We may get there, but at this point Ruth’s being friendly, not mean. I’d be shocked if her problems don’t show up soon, but it’s hard to see any sign of them yet.
Yes, I’m really sorry about this. I just realized it was a spoiler.
Yay, more Rachel!
*gets popcorn*
Okay maybe it’s because I’m getting a single room but as someone who’s moving into a dorm in a couple days, the rooms in this comic are huge
And so it begins.
Willis, you start a storyline where Rachel and a seemingly happy Ruth start out as roomies. You then post artwork that says “Winter Is Coming”, and THEN state it’s “Not a metaphor”.
*wraps self in heavy furs, grips Ice grimly in both hands*
I DON’T BELIEVE YOU
oh my god they were roommates
Book 10: Mostly Beds and Desks
And just think: it could have been “Book 10: Mostly Bedknobs and Broomsticks.”
Well. . . That explains a few things.
Also, Rachel is a sophomore?
Junior apparently.
Yeah, two years ago surprised me.
Is anyone else on the floor a junior, you think?
Possibly? We knew Ruth was 20 and so likely a junior, but I thought Rachel was a sophomore. We know Carla is a sophomore but anyone else, no idea.
Since when do juniors live in freshman dorms?
since they’re not freshman dorms, they’re just dorms
I’m really sorry about the spoiler. I just realized about 10 minutes ago it was a spoiler.q