Congrats Becky, you’ve survived your first and only(?) parental response to a party. Now you just need to do the horizontal tango with Dina and have Robin or Leslie accidently walk in. Then you will truly be living the life you missed out on. Is there anything else I am missing?
There are numerous direct flights from DC to Indy, and commuter flights to Bloomington. No need to route through Detroit, you can get those martinis on the more direct route.
Yeah, SP Robin being in a goofier universe and clearly having the soft gooey heart of gold helped a lot. Also the change in parties and dynamics cross-universes didn’t help matters – a Representative who behaves as goofily as Robin became much less funny post-Palin, and what we know of her politics here is ‘opportunistic and will sell you out for three votes.’ I don’t think we really ever saw SP Robin do much politicking that wasn’t related to toys – all I remember was the Dinobot Hall of Fame campaign and her first winning the seat on a sugar vendor by courting the necrophiliac Star Wars fan vote.
Ah yes, the most trustworthy kind of boss – the kind that acts friendly and doesn’t set hard expectations of what is appropriate in your relationship, turning it into a constant guessing-game to please them while they can change the rules at a whim.
Robin might have provided her with the apartment, but it’s hers. She’s allowed to host a small birthday party there. That has nothing to do with her job.
It’s possible Becky used campaign funds for pizza, but really the issue here is that Robin lives in this apartment with her employee. Even if Becky weren’t vulnerable, young, and totally dependent on this job, that’s not a dynamic that good things come out of.
Yeah, that reads different to me than ‘relatively small apartment you share with the Congresswoman you do PR for.’ There’s positions where that’s at least not unheard of (say, live-in nanny,) but your unrelated campaign manager isn’t one of them.
And the person upthread who mentioned the showing up at Galasso’s thing… kind of suggests it’s a pattern. (Bad enough Becky is now living with her boss.)
And this gets everyone out the door who wasn’t already on their way out. Robin is a master of the parental technique of embarrassment. This is offset by it being the only technique she knows.
Just wait until she puts on the Macarena and insists on dancing.
Yes, I know she’s probably too young to have grown up with that song. Doesn’t matter, it’s the most embarassing choice, and to teenagers anyone over 21 is basically 60 anyway.
Robin’s served at least one term in the House of Representatives, which means she’s 27 at minimum. The Macarena came out in 93, so she was probably young for it, but still old enough to remember hearing it and everyone doing the dance at events. (That was my experience with it, at least, and I’m only a year longer.) Of course the timescale means this won’t last, so I suggest trading a slight amount of embarrassment factor for being several years younger – do the Cha Cha Slide instead.
Leslie’s a lesbian mom. Like, if you cut her down the middle without it becoming gory, her insides and bones and stuff would somehow be arranged to spell out “LESBIAN MOM” on one side (and then the same thing on the other side, but you’d have to put it against a mirror).
Leslie is extremely mom, possibly even more mommish than Dorothy. HOWEVER, this doesn’t mean she isn’t still a billion times better older sister than Robin. (This is as much to do with Robin being an awful racist as anything)
Weirdly, Leslie wants to be a lesbian mom and Becky has no interest in her being a lesbian mom. Becky doesn’t look at Leslie as an authority figure whatsoever–just a role model.
I feel Becky might consider Hank a dad but as far as she’s concerned, she HAD a mom and is an adult now.
Becky wanted a lesbian mom. Not an authority figure, perhaps, but still a mom figure. Following Leslie to the store so she could tie her tie is probably the most obvious example.
And now for a short joke about lesbians that has nothing to do with Dumbing of Age.
“mom, dad” I adopted.
“what? How?”
“It was a wild night and when I went to the bathroom in the morning I found I had a baby”
“How could this happen!?”
“It was Amelia, wasn’t it! I swear I’ll kill her.”
“Hey, I’m responsible for my own body and its ability to drunkenly go down to the adoption center and sign the papers! Just because Amelia co-signed has nothing to do with it!”
On a side note, I’m hit with the most nostalgic of feels right now.
Marie Fredriksson, of world-famous band Roxette has passed away. My late childhood/early teens definitely had this band on the CD player a lot.
The songs of Roxette could be good, or silly, or sometimes quite cheesy… But her distinct voice would always raise the level of them. She would pour her heart and feelings into every tone, every word. And because of that, you’d recognize that voice anywhere. She was queen of The Feels.
Without her and her amazing musical chemistry with Per Gessle, Roxette would absolutely not be the mega-success it became.
The last panel while being very cringy for a person like me… it’s a quite exact moment of knowing her voters extremely well… and yes I don’t mean it as a compliment to the voters…
New York Times, Sept. 23, 1983. “WATT ASKS THAT REAGAN FORGIVE ‘OFFENSIVE’ REMARK ABOUT PANEL”
Secretary of the Interior James G. Watt asked President Reagan’s forgiveness today for making a ”morally offensive” statement in describing an advisory panel as ideally balanced for including ”a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple.”
I know tht Robin was present in previous Willis strips, but having started with Dumbing of Age, I always found Robin to be pretty confusing and completely unreadable… She seems to be presented as lively and cool, whereas she seems to be planning from a political point of view every single thing she does…
But planning so openly and badly that you can’t see how it would ever work. Not so much here, since she’s talking about photos she could show to others who won’t have heard the cringey phrasing, but think of Leslie’s class when she was openly asking in front of the audience how pandering she should be?
That’s because Robin’s actual intelligence and knowledge are constantly in conflict with her impulsive, act now think later, nature and they rarely align due to her self-driven and in the moment nature making it difficult for her to consider the long-term. She isn’t stupid but she ends up acting the fool a lot because of it. Robin knows a lot of the ins and outs of politics but without people scheduling her every move for her, she kind of just flails about, not really knowing how to manage herself.
Being self-driven like she is leads to her making equally very moral and very immoral decisions as well. The former being when she would rather fire all her staff than let a rapist go because she felt furious at him, the latter being things like refusing to leave Leslie’s damn house because she felt comfortable there.
Robin doesn’t know what she’s going to do next either because she doesn’t know what whims and impulses will come to her along the way.
The campaign funds here was pure assumption, I think. She did spend them on Dina’s giant stuffed dinosaur.
Even if she did fund this with campaign money, it’s not like it’s a lavish party. It seems like the most expensive thing would have been the pizzas. No one would ever notice or care. (Actually the most expensive thing probably was the pull down banner saying it was a DeSanto party and that’s almost a legitimate use.)
The pizza has been explicitly called out as Little Caesars. Whatever else you can say about them, they are the least expensive pizzas around. Even if she splurged on 10 pies, that’s only $50.
So yeah, decorations in general or that banner specifically would have taken the lions share of funding.
I mean, Becky gets paid as part of her job right? This party doesn’t have to be funded with Campaign funds. If it is paid for out of Becky’s salary, it is not subject to any Campaign fund restrictions since it is Becky’s money.
When she was introduced she was a redhead, but a little while back Willis had her start dyeing her hair to make her stand out a little more as a character.
Robin. Go back to wearing a sombrero so I can pretend to tolerate you. This of blend being silly and goofy mixed with pandering politics is smacking too close to home. *Resumes teaching highschool political science after a period of crying in disbelief*
I get asked “what (race) are you?” all the time. And it’s like, I gotta say mixed to keep it simple or I gotta explain how Cali-West Afro-Insular Celto-Judeo Germanic-Ibero-Caribbean works for 5 minutes. Or try and simplify it as much as possible like… Albi-Boricua?
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I mean tbh I don’t know what Robin would’ve even pretended to be mad about, no one said no partyin’ and shiz
Mad she wasn’t invited? I don’t know, I’m sure Robin could find a reason given time.
“Free pizza, but no free candy?!”
It seems to be Robin standard. She did it to Becky over at Galasso’s.
Nice try, tho ?
this is a bruh moment
Dubiously perfect.
Robin, no duck lips
Isn’t the duck lip thing passe? Which, if it is, works perfectly with Robin being clueless.
Everything about this is passe.
it is ? Thanks all the gods, finally.
“Finally”? I got sick of hearing about people being sick of hearing about it about six years ago.
As is the ‘selfie thing’, the ‘diversity thing’, and of course, the ‘Republican party thing’. SOOO passe.
Congrats Becky, you’ve survived your first and only(?) parental response to a party. Now you just need to do the horizontal tango with Dina and have Robin or Leslie accidently walk in. Then you will truly be living the life you missed out on. Is there anything else I am missing?
Hopefully there isn’t another parental response coming to this party. Everyone knock on wood and don’t jinx it.
Leslie is here now, so it’s possible, but I’m betting on a more public venue.
So she can learn that there “there’s no way you can remove your head from another girl’s crotch in a nonchalant manner”?
Or finally learn to lock the darn door?
Might have been a three-martini connection from Detroit.
There are numerous direct flights from DC to Indy, and commuter flights to Bloomington. No need to route through Detroit, you can get those martinis on the more direct route.
I really want to like you Robin, but you make it so difficult sometimes.
I liked Shortpacked Robin, but this universe’s version of her is too terrible for me to like.
Yeah, SP Robin being in a goofier universe and clearly having the soft gooey heart of gold helped a lot. Also the change in parties and dynamics cross-universes didn’t help matters – a Representative who behaves as goofily as Robin became much less funny post-Palin, and what we know of her politics here is ‘opportunistic and will sell you out for three votes.’ I don’t think we really ever saw SP Robin do much politicking that wasn’t related to toys – all I remember was the Dinobot Hall of Fame campaign and her first winning the seat on a sugar vendor by courting the necrophiliac Star Wars fan vote.
I’m like, 60% confident there’s a good person somewhere deep inside of her. Very, very deep, but I’m decently sure it’s there.
Reality messed with Robin. It turns out that buffoonish politicians only out for the perks not only exist but are horrifying.
You’re not kidding. She was modeled after Sarah Palin, but it turned out that she was all that and a terrible person to boot.
There are times i really wish that the “moral majority” people cared more about morality than power.
First she was Palin, then Rubio and Cruz and now she’s the pile of human slime in the white house.
TROF
That Racist Orange Fucker.
Ah yes, the most trustworthy kind of boss – the kind that acts friendly and doesn’t set hard expectations of what is appropriate in your relationship, turning it into a constant guessing-game to please them while they can change the rules at a whim.
oh no D:
this is wildly close to home augh
Robin might have provided her with the apartment, but it’s hers. She’s allowed to host a small birthday party there. That has nothing to do with her job.
It’s possible Becky used campaign funds for pizza, but really the issue here is that Robin lives in this apartment with her employee. Even if Becky weren’t vulnerable, young, and totally dependent on this job, that’s not a dynamic that good things come out of.
Especially since she wasn’t supposed to.
She said she was lending it to Becky’s, then asked if she could stay one night.
But there are (hopefully temporary) work situations where you live where you work. I’ve had a few jobs like that (camp counselor).
Yeah, that reads different to me than ‘relatively small apartment you share with the Congresswoman you do PR for.’ There’s positions where that’s at least not unheard of (say, live-in nanny,) but your unrelated campaign manager isn’t one of them.
Let’s be honest though, anyone around DoA Robin will end up being her nanny at some point.
Point.
And the person upthread who mentioned the showing up at Galasso’s thing… kind of suggests it’s a pattern. (Bad enough Becky is now living with her boss.)
Thankfully she’s not Ruth’s stuffy ol’ grandpa either.
When she says it like that, it just makes me think of those college flyers.
Ah, Robin…Only Stephan Molyneux has a greater ability to make me cringe every time they open their mouth…
^^^^^^^^^^ upvotes
I don’t know whether to upvote you for making such a correct observation, or downvote you for reminding me about GamerDouche McSexist Extraordinaire.
And this gets everyone out the door who wasn’t already on their way out. Robin is a master of the parental technique of embarrassment. This is offset by it being the only technique she knows.
Just wait until she puts on the Macarena and insists on dancing.
Yes, I know she’s probably too young to have grown up with that song. Doesn’t matter, it’s the most embarassing choice, and to teenagers anyone over 21 is basically 60 anyway.
Robin’s served at least one term in the House of Representatives, which means she’s 27 at minimum. The Macarena came out in 93, so she was probably young for it, but still old enough to remember hearing it and everyone doing the dance at events. (That was my experience with it, at least, and I’m only a year longer.) Of course the timescale means this won’t last, so I suggest trading a slight amount of embarrassment factor for being several years younger – do the Cha Cha Slide instead.
At least she didn’t try something obnoxious, like dabbing or a dance from that battle royale game the kids apparently aren’t playing anymore.
“What is up, fellow kids?”
– Robin, probably.
She’ll put on Rebecca Black’s “Friday”.
Um, I’m 19 and I grew up with that song. I figured it was the kind of song everyone grew up with
Of course it works. It is shenanigans. Robin likes shenanigans.
Blech. Robin.
Becky’s so cute here though, it balances out.
Robin was almost okay, then the last panel happened.
To be fair, panel 5 isn’t great either. Leslie is a billion times better slightly older sister than Robin.
Leslie’s not an older sister.
Leslie’s a lesbian mom. Like, if you cut her down the middle without it becoming gory, her insides and bones and stuff would somehow be arranged to spell out “LESBIAN MOM” on one side (and then the same thing on the other side, but you’d have to put it against a mirror).
Leslie is extremely mom, possibly even more mommish than Dorothy. HOWEVER, this doesn’t mean she isn’t still a billion times better older sister than Robin. (This is as much to do with Robin being an awful racist as anything)
Weirdly, Leslie wants to be a lesbian mom and Becky has no interest in her being a lesbian mom. Becky doesn’t look at Leslie as an authority figure whatsoever–just a role model.
I feel Becky might consider Hank a dad but as far as she’s concerned, she HAD a mom and is an adult now.
Becky wanted a lesbian mom. Not an authority figure, perhaps, but still a mom figure. Following Leslie to the store so she could tie her tie is probably the most obvious example.
QUILTBAG Auguries?
Eeeeh.
I know political points and all, but that last sentence….
just so skeevy.
“Skeevy” pretty much DEFINES Dumbiverse Robin.
“What kind are you?” Human, that’s what kind I am.
At least she didn’t say “blue Skittles flavoured” to be sarcastic coz Robin might have licked her…
Apparently some people really do ask that question using those words but ICK doesn’t begin to cover it.
And now for a short joke about lesbians that has nothing to do with Dumbing of Age.
“mom, dad” I adopted.
“what? How?”
“It was a wild night and when I went to the bathroom in the morning I found I had a baby”
“How could this happen!?”
“It was Amelia, wasn’t it! I swear I’ll kill her.”
“Hey, I’m responsible for my own body and its ability to drunkenly go down to the adoption center and sign the papers! Just because Amelia co-signed has nothing to do with it!”
“Have you considered abortion?”
“Bit late for that.”
I was right about Robin being ok with the party but maybe too right
TIL that hair dye can change your ethnicity.
“You don’t sound blue hair’d”
I’m sure there’s a decent-sized portion of right-wingers who think that Dirty Liberals think this unironically.
Of course, that’s what the TV and poorly edited memes their friends shared on social media told them liberals believe! It must be true!
(Shout-out to everyone who’s had to block otherwise rational relatives on social media because they inexplicably fall for this stuff and re-share it.)
On a side note, I’m hit with the most nostalgic of feels right now.
Marie Fredriksson, of world-famous band Roxette has passed away. My late childhood/early teens definitely had this band on the CD player a lot.
The songs of Roxette could be good, or silly, or sometimes quite cheesy… But her distinct voice would always raise the level of them. She would pour her heart and feelings into every tone, every word. And because of that, you’d recognize that voice anywhere. She was queen of The Feels.
Without her and her amazing musical chemistry with Per Gessle, Roxette would absolutely not be the mega-success it became.
Rest in peace, Queen of The Feels, Queen of Rain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27eClHQxXls
May she Rest In Peace.
She was a little bit dangerous but we loved her.
<3
The last panel while being very cringy for a person like me… it’s a quite exact moment of knowing her voters extremely well… and yes I don’t mean it as a compliment to the voters…
Wow… Her level of racism makes me feel more uncomfortable than normal.
Yeah, she’s got a history of sucking on that front. It’s why Sal doesn’t like her.
New York Times, Sept. 23, 1983. “WATT ASKS THAT REAGAN FORGIVE ‘OFFENSIVE’ REMARK ABOUT PANEL”
Secretary of the Interior James G. Watt asked President Reagan’s forgiveness today for making a ”morally offensive” statement in describing an advisory panel as ideally balanced for including ”a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple.”
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/23/us/watt-asks-that-reagan-forgive-offensive-remark-about-panel.html
I know tht Robin was present in previous Willis strips, but having started with Dumbing of Age, I always found Robin to be pretty confusing and completely unreadable… She seems to be presented as lively and cool, whereas she seems to be planning from a political point of view every single thing she does…
But planning so openly and badly that you can’t see how it would ever work. Not so much here, since she’s talking about photos she could show to others who won’t have heard the cringey phrasing, but think of Leslie’s class when she was openly asking in front of the audience how pandering she should be?
That’s because Robin’s actual intelligence and knowledge are constantly in conflict with her impulsive, act now think later, nature and they rarely align due to her self-driven and in the moment nature making it difficult for her to consider the long-term. She isn’t stupid but she ends up acting the fool a lot because of it. Robin knows a lot of the ins and outs of politics but without people scheduling her every move for her, she kind of just flails about, not really knowing how to manage herself.
Being self-driven like she is leads to her making equally very moral and very immoral decisions as well. The former being when she would rather fire all her staff than let a rapist go because she felt furious at him, the latter being things like refusing to leave Leslie’s damn house because she felt comfortable there.
Robin doesn’t know what she’s going to do next either because she doesn’t know what whims and impulses will come to her along the way.
High Intelligence, Low Wisdom
Well…
Becky…
almost faced consequences for her bad decisions…
What bad decisions? Hosting a non-alcoholic birthday party in her own apartment? Cuddling with Dina?
Using campaign funds for a personal party? That’s what a lot of people are saying she did?
The narrative was acting like she was in trouble, I kinda just assumed they were right.
Time dilation in this comic being what it is, people could be referring to something that happened like 5 years ago, far as I know
The campaign funds here was pure assumption, I think. She did spend them on Dina’s giant stuffed dinosaur.
Even if she did fund this with campaign money, it’s not like it’s a lavish party. It seems like the most expensive thing would have been the pizzas. No one would ever notice or care. (Actually the most expensive thing probably was the pull down banner saying it was a DeSanto party and that’s almost a legitimate use.)
The pizza has been explicitly called out as Little Caesars. Whatever else you can say about them, they are the least expensive pizzas around. Even if she splurged on 10 pies, that’s only $50.
So yeah, decorations in general or that banner specifically would have taken the lions share of funding.
I mean, Becky gets paid as part of her job right? This party doesn’t have to be funded with Campaign funds. If it is paid for out of Becky’s salary, it is not subject to any Campaign fund restrictions since it is Becky’s money.
Mandy dyes her hair? Dang.
( mandy stop blocking our view of grace )
When she was introduced she was a redhead, but a little while back Willis had her start dyeing her hair to make her stand out a little more as a character.
Isn’t Robin of Latin origin too, though? Does Latino politician also seek to show how they support diversity, or is it just Robin?
If you’re Republican you have to pretend to be all about diversity to appease racists who don’t want to admit that their party is racist.
Honestly a lot of republicans don’t even do that.
Ya, some try to argue that all parties are racist and when everyones racist, no one is. Its like the shittiest Incredibles misquote.
Robin. Go back to wearing a sombrero so I can pretend to tolerate you. This of blend being silly and goofy mixed with pandering politics is smacking too close to home. *Resumes teaching highschool political science after a period of crying in disbelief*
Oh yeah, I forgot she started “Wacky Hat Day” in Congress.
Aaaaand the party is ruined.
(facepalm) One step forward, two steps back.
Sierra is in no hurry to have a photo with Robin.
And we know how difficult it is to enmadden Sierra.
If her coming selfy with Dina doesn’t go viral, the DOA Internet is broken.
I get asked “what (race) are you?” all the time. And it’s like, I gotta say mixed to keep it simple or I gotta explain how Cali-West Afro-Insular Celto-Judeo Germanic-Ibero-Caribbean works for 5 minutes. Or try and simplify it as much as possible like… Albi-Boricua?
Why not just say “human”?