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Fantomestein
Beka Duke
Desperate for companionship, Frankenstein's Monster pretends to be the Opera Ghost. A grave mistake.
Cyanide & Happiness
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Paint the Town Red
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Winona runs a werewolf shelter with partner in crime, Odile in the Gothic city of Merlot. One day they take in an injured vampire, and soon unravels many of the dark secrets of Merlot.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Beeserker
TJ Cordes
This comic is about a robot powered by bees, but it's also about the kind of people who think filling a robot with bees is a good idea, and why they're wrong.
2 Slices
RJ Morel
After a case of mistaken identity, will awkward Daisuke find help from excitable Mamo, or will his love life be thrown completely off track?
Countdown to Countdown
Velinxi
Iris Black is a self-proclaimed inventor with the curious ability to bring his drawings to life, and yearns to find a space where he can use his powers freely.
The Otherknown
Lorian Merriman
Chandra is a 12-year-old accidental time traveler with a reluctant new dad, who happens to be a member of a feared galactic crime syndicate.
Slightly Damned
Chu
Rhea Snaketail returns from the dead, befriending a Demon who falls in love with an Angel. The afterlife ain't what it used to be!
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Mac Hall
Matt Boyd
The legendary early-aughts webcomic that inspired a wave of webcomic creators.
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
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It’s as bad as the badmouthing I’ve seen of dumpster fires! Dumpster fires are contained, shed light, and get rid of garbage. They don’t deserve the comparisons I’ve seen made.
Don’t forget that people who took the reasonable precaution of voting early and not standing in line are underrepresented by the currently reported numbers.
So is it the USPS or one or more of several three letter agencies doing what they do except this time they did it so much that it was actually noticed by enough people that they couldn’t shut them up?
I don’t know of any 3 letter agency shenanigans this time around. DeJoy is definitely using the post office as a election weapon though. Has been for months – completely blatantly.
Well, keep in mind that we have an administration that has been working to shut down the USPS for a while now. I know that in many places mail delivery is not even daily at this point because they do not have the personnel.
A lot of it seems to be sloppiness, poor record-keeping, and understaffing, rather than actual malice. … though as thejeff says, there’s been some Republican malice to be identified in why the post office was understaffed in the first place.
“Hey, there’s a huge pandemic that our side only halfway believes exists, demand for mail services have drastically increased, the upcoming election is going to see an unprecedented amount of voting by mail… but mostly by the people voting Democrat. Let’s dismantle the postal service!” I’d ask what they were thinking, but it’s pretty obvious what they were thinking.
The judges response sounds pretty hostile to the USPS which sucks, since the USPS has been working heroically to try and carry on service despite the well publicized evisceration of the service.
Not just hubris, but that would have avoided most of the chance to steal through lawsuits.
And an overwhelming rejection of fascism would have been nice, but I wasn’t really expecting that.
Biden’s odds definitely look good though. The Senate is a huge long shot at this point though, which means Biden’s not going to get any ambitious plans accomplished.
I WAS optimistic about Biden’s chances, until it turned out that there was an error in Arizona, and instead of Biden leading by three points with 98% of the vote counted, he’s leading by 3 points with 86% of the votes counted, and the votes that have yet to be counted are overwhelmingly from areas expected to go heavily for Trump. Biden certainly CAN win without Arizona (and he still might win Arizona, for that matter), but a Biden win in Arizona would have certainly made a Biden overall victory far more likely.
Yeah, like… at least both Mike and the narrative agreed that Mike was an unhelpful asshole. It kind of doesn’t feel like either are true for Booster, at least not yet. I hadn’t realized how similar their shticks were, but right now, I’m seeing it.
Also I’m just waiting for Booster to turn to the audience and say “You just love overanalyzing the lives of these people like some kind of god but it won’t feel the whole in your life.”
“You like to draw attention to forgivable mistakes in the hope that it distracts strangers from the truly terrible things you know that they couldn’t possibly know about you.” Booster probably.
Ooh. That’s close! If I’m being honest Booster would definitely pull the “It’s obvious that your extreme disdain for Walky is because he’s similar to how you used to be or maybe fear you still are.” Which uh…would probably piss me off if I was in that room and they said that to me yeah.
This, IMO, is at the root of at least half the hate that Danny gets. He’s who many people here used to be and they refuse to forgive themselves him for that.
(mind you, sometimes he does something to deserve it, but… well, see comic title.)
In that case I hope that my comment was something you could enjoy as part of our meta joke thread, and didn’t come off as me doing the same thing as Booster
I choose to believe Booster meant the last two as a joke / vague bullshitting, and got uncomfortably lucky. Cold reading really do be like that sometimes.
*Continues down the line* “You’re still looking for something you’re not sure exists” “You like to think of yourself as ‘the fun one'” “You wish you had more free time but you can’t afford to drop classes this semester”
They’re not penetrating insights. They’re surface reads with some prose. He literally just said Ruth is acting like a tryhard, Rachel is pissing about something that nobody else is pissing about, and Joyce is hiding something.
It’s also turning what was at first Ruth and Rachel holding everyone else hostage over mutual petty attitude into something that included everyone else and could be a more constructive use of their time.
No. They’ve got Sherlock’s ability to read a person in seconds, plus enough psychology knowledge to put the impressions into words. The only person Holmes COULDN’T read was “The Woman!”
I’ll be laughing if this particular arc ends with Booster turning to the fourth wall and saying: “And do you keep looking in here because these characters remind you of someone in your life who has wronged you, or you think has wronged you, and you hope to see them get their comeuppance? Or is is really something you don’t want to admit you don’t like about yourself?”
I’m not sure what Willis is trying to accomplish with this, but it isn’t working for me. It’s a magic act – doing dime store (and relatively negative) analysis on people that Booster barely met – and it both comes across as heavy-handed exposition and makes the character look like a jerk. Willis may have a game plan that makes this work out, but for me the character has used up whatever goodwill they started with.
Booster was a totally normal nonbinary person until they got stuck with Mike’s katra.
Now all the cast has to do is steal a spaceship, recover Mike’s body, and outwit the Klingons.
And it’ll all be directed by Mike.
I refuse to accept Ruth giving them an invitation as an excuse for Booster’s behaviour. Yeah, Ruth asked for it, but if Booster has this level of insight then they could very easily reckon that Ruth was reacting poorly to being attacked and engaging in some serious self-destructive behaviour. There’s no way this isn’t just malicious.
Triggering is a horribly over-used word and carries connotations of non-responsibility for the allegedly “triggered” party. People deserve care and sympathy, absolutely, but to say a person who is upset by something is triggered dangerously implies that they are
a) a loaded weapon
b) not responsible for what happens after their trigger is pulled
c) not able to control their own reaction or behaviour to the stimulus.
None of these are reasonable assertions about the vast majority of adults in civilized society (i.e. all of us). Is Booster stepping into Mike’s much-maligned asshole shoes. Apparently, but should Booster be concerned that a dangerous situation may arise as a result of sharing their thoughts? That’s for you to answer. Is violence really an appropriate response to words?
(n.b. Arresting an individual for shouting fire in a crowded theatre doesn’t become violent unless the person physically resists arrest, but I’m curious if people can think of other examples.)
Absolutely.
Should I run away from my counselor ex boyfriend?
Obviously not.
If he uses his skill set to hurt me, easy given the intimate info he has to work with, why should his actions be considered less dangerous than other forms of violence?
If you want to argue that words can’t constitute violence, or that violence shouldn’t be met with violence, there are good arguments, that I disagree with, to be made.
There is very little that would excuse constant bitterness towards someone that is actively trying to improve themselves. I don’t hate Rachel for it as there was clearly some damage, but I doubt I would vindicate her even with new information.
I wil respectfully disagree.
While Rachel exagerates with her “redemption is a story” schtick, it’s also true she’s under no obligation to forgive.
No matter how much an abuser “improves”, their former victims should still be recognized as such and their resentment should be validated.
yeah I worded this poorly. I don’t like the way Rachel speaks of Ruth but I do think we will hate on her /less/ if we find out what happened between the two of them. Still, a lot of things she has said about ruth are fucked up, so…but speaking as someone who has been abused (though there’s really no reason for us to assume ruth was abusive towards rachel) I antagonized my abuser whenever I could. it made me feel in control.
If we assume that Booster is 100% right in his observations, sounds like Ruth was engaging in some sort of sketchy/not-okay behavior before. I mean, have we known Rachel to have been “quiet” about Ruth at ANY point? (And if Ruth was the victim of something Rachel was quiet about before, speaking out against her now wouldn’t exactly be compensating….)
Yeah… Just from a storytelling perspective, Ruth’s been on a redemption arc. Now, we know Rachel doesn’t believe in those, but even so, it would be really effective storytelling for it to be working, and then we get the flashback to the moment Ruth killed and ate Rachel’s puppy, and everyone is appalled and starts understanding her and hating on Ruth as much as they used to.
Rachel didn’t… but she’s being nasty, so MAYBE it’s called for. MAYBE.
Roz… not so much? And really, her older sibling is a real sore point for her, so definitely a party foul.
Joyce… yeah, you definitely need to pump the brakes here, Booster.
I think the next step is for Ruth to body-slam eject Booster from the meeting, or at least give a shut-up-or-be-ejected warning. They’re not supposed to be here anyway and they’re being disruptive.
*to be clear, I’m not saying that Roz doesn’t deserve this type of shut-down in general. That’s a whole ‘nother debate that I’m not touching with ten-foot polling data. But her conduct here, tonight, has not merited it.
Yeah, not knowing anything about what a crap person Roz generally is, just seeing this one interaction from her, she is really reasonably trying to defend Rachel from a pretty vicious (if merited) attack, and Booster just went for the fucking throat in response. What the hell?
Keep in mind that this wasn’t the first time Roz spoke at the meeting… She also belittled the kidnappings of her fellow students by claiming that the previous term was good because her sister lost the election.
Not a good way to treat your fellow students, seven if you support left wing politics.
I find it pretty likely that Booster did know about the Day of the Dads, the kidnapping of several students and murder of one is the kind of thing that’d show up in the news, and enough details during the brief introductions where said that it’d be reasonable for her to figure out that they where the kids in question even if the news had anonymized them (which isn’t guaranteed).
I mean, Booster isn’t new at the school, and it was likely in the news, too.
Plus, Roz’ sister was a public figure, and Roz had a sex tape. The Roz conclusion has some basic info to work with.
Okay, I guess it’s reasonable to assume that someone as curious as Booster’s shown themselves (themself?) to be would likely know about the Day of the Dads. And Becky’s involvement in that was very public and very visible. And Roz’s sex tape was public and visible as well, and Booster’s interest in Amber’s slashfic suggests they would have been interested in that too. Yeah, that all adds up.
… unrelated question, why do we still call it a sex tape if it wasn’t filmed on tape?
In “Sherlock,” (and, actually, in one of the stories) Holmes analyzes Watson’s brother through the phone given to Watson. (In the books, it was a pocket watch) the only thing show-Holmes gets wrong is that the phone came from Watson’s SISTER! Everything else was on point, and upset Watson no end. As Holmes points out multiple times, he’s a fully functional sociopath who has problems understanding people’s feelings at his revelations. Booster is the same way, they’re on the jazz (to bring in another fictional character) and they’re either not realizing, or incapable of realizing, exactly how deep these cuts are going.
Truthspeaker Booster reporting for duty! Being able to cold read people so accurately points to Booster having seen some serious shit of their own, and being brutally authentic.
Walky’s told Booster a bit about Ruth, and Booster could’ve gotten the rest with a bit of inference and cold reading. You know, the stuff psychics do when trying to convince someone that they’re hearing a ghost from their past? That whole “but you healed from that, this is something new” is a classic recover-and-try-again technique.
How perceptive are they really being?
They’re halfway wrong about Joyce, and other than Roz being a middle child we don’t know how right or wrong they are about the others.
Comparative to some stories I’ve heard, that they’re anywhere remotely on the same page as opposed to the equivalent of going to WebMD for a stomach ache and being told you have cancer is relatively accurate, vagueness and all. They could be extrapolating a HELL of a lot more.
With Arizona called, we’ve basically won this – the remaining vote in WI/MI is skewed towards Democrats, and those three (plus NE-2, or any other state) is enough to put us over the edge.
Unless you mean the fact that this isn’t a double-digit victory, and that Trumpism is here to stay, with all it’s cruelty and bizarre conspiracy theories, in which case… Yeah, I don’t see that going anywhere good.
Yeah, no disagreement there. This shouldn’t be a real race.
I really can’t understand, emotionally, how there are still millions of people willing to risk death at the hands of an uncontrolled pandemic just so that they can spite everyone who’s not a white man.
Actually, he’s selling them the myth that they’re NOT risking death, and they really really really want that myth. … also, the myth that they’re not responsible for the pandemic being twice as bad as it would have been had Trump not been elected the first time.
It amounts to the same thing, but it’s more understandable.
…. and yes, race ties into that (and everything else) in subtle ways. But I don’t think that’s the only factor.
Sure, but when you know someone who died of Covid-19, or was hospitalized because of it… That myth becomes a lot harder to sustain. They might tell themselves they believe it in order to get by day-to-day, but I’m not convinced that most of them really believe that everything is fine.
As for race… I mean, he started his campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, locks children in cages, and says that we should shoot people who request that the police stop murdering black people. It might not be the only factor, but it’s definitely what he built his initial appeal upon, and one pretty much has to be at least tacitly racist in order to look past his human rights abuses. His cruelty towards PoC and women are really the only things he’s delivered anything on, so it’s not as though he has anything else that his voters can point to in order to explain their vote.
I hate to say it but… Biden locked children in cages too. It’s just that they were Black and it was Business As Usual and it took me a while even to realize it… but Biden’s policies when he was a Senator literally split up families for years and locked children in cages.
I voted for Biden because Anyone But Trump. I’d probably have voted for him even without Trump. But he doesn’t have all the moral high ground.
Oh, yeah, it’s bullshit, but it’s tempting bullshit.
And I’m right with you on HIS character. But my sense is that a large chunk of the people voting for him are voting less for him and more on the issues of: 1) Abortion and/or 2) Unhappiness over COVID restrictions and/or 3) Still believing in the Hollywood version of the unambiguously heroic police officer and supporting that. He’s definitely bringing in the shithead-white-supremacist crowd as well, and that might put him over the edge and certainly did last time, and I’m sure there are a lot of subtler forms of racism going on (implicit bias, assumptions about crime rates or education, etc) but the hardcore racists aren’t the bulk of his voters.
I view voting to criminalize abortion as “spiting everyone who’s not a white man”, though. They might not view it that way personally, but that’s still the end result.
My words may have been harsh, but I’m not just condemning the open white supremacists in his base – I’m also condemning those who are voting on behalf of policies that have the same effect. If they voted for him because he was promising them all new good-paying jobs (and was running on an actual plan for that, and hadn’t spent four years accomplishing nothing) but was also a terrible racist, then, well, that’s a terrible trade, but one I could understand a desperate person making. Trump isn’t doing that, though; he’s spent the last year running on how black people are “rioting” when they engage in peaceful protest, how they “need to be brought back in line” with bullets and tear gas, and on confirming a Supreme Court Justice to strip the rights of women and the LGBT community.
I just don’t see how any of that can appeal to a decent person.
@Jane Okay, I can get 90% onboard with that anti-abortion characterization. Close enough to call it agreement.
And I don’t really disagree with the broader characterization either. Though I will point out that a lot of the people voting for Trump DON’T like him, for the reasons you say, but are voting for him on the basis of certain issues.
I guess I could best explain my more… moderate characterization as goal-motivated. I try to understand the mindset as step 1 of identifying how to change minds and attitudes. In that context, it’s valuable to distinguish the “women are property” anti-abortionist crowd from “loss of bodily autonomy it’s a lesser evil than letting babies get murdered” anti-abortionist crowd. (Strong disagree with both of those attitudes, to be clear, just using the phrases to characterize attitudes of different groups.)
Sometimes I forget that other people don’t parse things to that level of detail. But I’m definitely not going to demand that of anyone else. Just how my mind works.
For nearly any other candidate, I can and do extend the same courtesy – as a general rule, I’m not really interested in moral judgments, simply in building a more equitable society. I can see someone assuming that Romney or McCain would have just made things work so that their policies wouldn’t actually harm anyone… Somehow. They’d be wrong, obviously, but I can understand a normal voter extending those candidates that trust.
But Trump is different. He goes out, and he actively promises to harm the “enemies” of his base – be they liberals, outsiders, the press, anyone who’s different or who dares lecture his base about how the world is more than a simple fight between conservatives and the rest of the (obviously evil) world. There’s no interest in fixing the side effects of his policies – indeed, his base takes glee in the “punishing” those that dared stand in the way of Trump’s vision. He’s a blunt sledgehammer to slam into anything about society that he doesn’t like.
So for a normal candidate, a distinction between those who actively desire the negative consequences of their policies and those who just assume it will work out somehow is valuable – one is persuadable, and one is not. But for Trump? It’s extremely obvious that there will be no effort to mitigate said negative consequences, and that he may even deliberately make things worse – if they still simply do not care, then there’s very little practical difference between them and someone who wants said consequences. Especially considering the disturbing zeal with which most Trump voters seem to support him.
I’d also mention that the mail-in vote is being counted last in most places, so the margin of victory will only go up from here on out – this race might not be nearly as narrow as it looks at first glance.
North Carolina and Georgia are still on the table because of them, for instance, when last I looked – and we don’t actually need those states for any likely map (presidential, at least, we need more senate seats still), they’d just be running up the score at this point.
Right, but they won’t end up looking how they’re currently looking – counties report at different rates even in a normal year, with rural districts usually finding it easier to report their votes more quickly, and this year has also seen a significant partisan split in how they cast their votes, exacerbating this issue.
Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have all stated that it will take them several more days to count all of the votes – Pennsylvania isn’t even touching the mail-in vote before tomorrow. If we were looking at Trump having a significant lead with 80% of the vote reporting, that would be one thing – but the polls had Biden up by 10 in WI and MI, and I see no reason to think they were off by that much thus far.
And you’re welcome to do so, though I’d argue there’s a difference between being off by five and being off by ten, but…
What we’ve seen is still consistent with Democratic votes being counted later. There aren’t many commenters who are arguing that Biden is likely behind in WI or MI, especially with Minnesota having been safely called for Biden.
With Arizona, NE-2, WI, and MI, and no weird surprises on the other uncalled states, Biden wins.
Oh, just an addendum since Kornakee (apologies for butchering his name) is doing Wisconsin right now – Milwaukee is only at 36% reporting, and is a big source of Democratic votes.
Writing off Wisconsin now just because Trump is up by a couple of points is to write off a massive Democratic stronghold.
Pennsylvania is a lot closer than I’d like. I still like Biden’s chances. I just don’t like them as much as I did this morning. But Arizona is looking good.
Democrats voted by mail at a substantially higher rate than Republicans, though, and Pennsylvania law prohibits the same-day counting of mail-in ballots – we’re going to get a healthy surge there once our votes are properly counted.
That said, it’s the only one of the three that I think there’s a chance that we lose – but we also don’t need it at this point. I mean, I want it, obviously – but we don’t need it now, so long as we keep WI and MI, which are on more solid ground.
Arizona’s been called? By whom? I’m looking at the AP map right now and it’s still up in the air.
Also, everyone not already familiar with the term google Red Mirage to understand what’s going on with the map right now. (Basic version, we can expect states like Pennsylvania to swing back towards blue. I can’t say whether they’ll swing back ENOUGH, but they’re showing red at exactly the moment forecasters were saying that there’d be an artifice making it look like Trump has far more votes than he actually did.)
Fox News – the channel itself is partisan drivel, but their state calls are usually accurate. Apparently, there was a bit of a fight over the call that’s lead to some entertaining clips on Twitter, though I haven’t seen it myself. I only knew because I’ve been following 538’s liveblog.
Yeah I’m pretty sure this is a dick move from Booster. The question is why? Trying to impress people? Trying to show their not someone to be trifled with lest they unleash more psychoanalytic power on the mere mortals? Or maybe it’s just a compulsion of Boosters.
Yeah, not a fan of this. It seems high key unethical to publicly analyze a bunch of strangers who never asked them for it. Especially Joyce, who was just asking a question and clearly wasn’t trying to get involved.
Ethics is more like not being a dick specifically in regards to your profession. Booster’s profession right now is “student,” so being ethical is stuff like not cheating, doing your work on time, etc.
Oh, yeah, 100%. Jumping into it with Ruth was already pushing it, imo, and I am interested to see how all of these piercing insights will be explained beyond just psychology major powers. My working theory is that they just so happen to have been in the background for a lot of the comic’s more public events, and are drawing on what they overheard back then now that they’ve realized “Oh, wait, that was all *these people*.”
Except they’re actually not really touching on anything likely to have been heard. The “middle child” bit being a possible exception – Roz and Robin being pretty high-profile.
Yuuuup. As much as I can enjoy calling these characters out on their bullshit, and as much as these aren’t particularly difficult call outs, it’s still an incredible dick move and not great character writing.
Same! I have nothing but respect for this: there are so many people in this series who are desperately clogged up with festering drama: homie is just clearing the drains.
There’s a difference between what Booster is doing and what Carla did (which was still a bit of a mean move but that was slightly better since actual lives were at stake).
There’s a time and place for unasked for brutal honesty, and this is definitely not it.
So you respect someone calling out someone with a ton of mental health issues and trauma in front of a crowd? A crowd they were just attacked in front of? Furthermore, are you okay with them proceeding to analyze people that didn’t consent to this kind of analysis?
Come on. Even if you say Ruth asked for it, if Booster is smart enough to deduce all this shit about everyone then they’re definitely smart enough to get that Ruth was engaging in some serious self-destructive, red flag waving behaviour and that indulging them probably isn’t good for their well-being.
I love them too but I think they’ve gone a bit unrealistic now. They’ve been there only a few hours (I think), how in the heck can they nail the other characters so easily?
I didn’t like the Amazi-Girl storylines either. DoA generally does okay with realism until it veers into superhero hijinks and characters who are eerily accurate at reading people. At least Mike seemed to only mostly just be ‘good at observing but buried under cynicism’. It’s only one strip but if Booster is just ‘really good at noticing traits because they’re a psych major’ I’m not gonna like their narrative role.
It could still be saved if it’s “Booster decided to be a psych major because they’re good at noticing traits.” I’ve met people like that. I slam the shutters down behind my eyes the moment I realize they’re like that, because they’re unnerving, but they do exist. (They make gret social workers, I just don’t want them on my case.)
As an aside, it’s not that easy to read people. Booster hasn’t even spoken to half of these girls. You can definitely pick up a vibe or two, but I imagine Booster could rapidly fall into ‘profiling people by textbook case studies’ territory.
Also, if you’re calling people out on traits not even 30 seconds into meeting them, whether or not you’re good at it or not, you’d be a very bad psychologist, at least ethically.
My only guess for the Joyce one is the fact that they spent some time being wheeled around by Joyce, and anything Walky had said about her, like in “Aren’t in” when he said “Joyce was practically a Mary six months ago, but she’s been course-corrected from extreme right to *maybe* center left.” Also her face and voice when she says “yep, keepin’ the god stuff” in “Ditchin'”
(if you can’t tell, I don’t know how to hypertext)
Somebody Boostered me like this once (she Boostered most of our circle, but one-on-one, not in public, and we kinda asked her to.)
It’s a shame she was engaged to someone else. But at least her influence finally pushed me out of both my “edgy atheist” AND “college Republican” phases entirely. I look back on those days and loathe my old self.
Booster WTF are you doing here? You don’t need education, you are already quite the head shrink. You looked at the room and had everyone’s number at once. You are the master here.
On the one hand this is actually kind of funny but that’s the thin veneer over how weirdly triggering this apparently is so I’m going to go take my meds and hope someone just full on cracks them across the jaw because the time to stop was A While Ago
No, you know what? I know what this is. I know what the problem is.
Booster is basically going up to abuse survivors they don’t know from shit and saying things that sound like “haha I know every fucked up thing that happened to you and I’m gonna choose to tease you over how Bad this makes you”.
And while that may be unrelated to the intent, the level of… it’s rage-inducing. It is absolutely rage-inducing.
Yuuuup. It makes me somewhat uncomfortable seeing how many commenters are enjoying Booster being an out and out dickhead to these people. It’s kinda sadistic.
Like man, I don’t like Amber or how she’s chosen to handle her entire situation, but I wouldn’t enjoy seeing her attacked like this. She just doesn’t deserve this.
Mike pulling this kind of thing was so nakedly vindictive it felt like a cartoon villain. Booster pulling it just feels kind of petty and arrogant. I’d have maybe been able to interpret it as an innocent mistake if not for that little sneer in panel four.
This is one of the most satisfying comics in Dumbing of Age history, and for better or worse, I am really liking Booster. May this wonderful person continue to Frasier Crane everyone with such brutal accuracy.
Eh, I don’t think Crane would have done it like this unless he was really worked up. He’d have tried to politely bow out of this rather than publicly embarrass anyone, then end up in a series of unlikely coincidences that lead to him doing it anyway.
After panel two, Booster is being a lil bit of a dick. Responding to what Rachel said to them makes sense, and I can’t say I didn’t want Roz to get dunked on (even if it’s rude), but throwing in Roz and Joyce in their psychoanalysis was not Asked For. Still love them tho.
You know I’m genuinely starting to wonder if Booster is actually just Mike deep in disguise and this is like the longest possible con he’s ever pulled?
I don’t know if I would consider making snide assumptions about what vague “sibling archetype” the person you’re arguing with fits in a cheap attempt at a gotcha “telling it like it is,” though.
Nope, because this is:
1) Not a session, there is no confidentiality expectations.
2) Booster is not a professional hired to do this.
3) Literally any person in the dorm could psychoanalyse everyone else. It’s not a KIND thing to do and say out loud. There is no ethics that stops you from doing it though. Malaya tries to do it with Sal all the time, she is just always wrong.
Rachel started a conversation she wasn’t ready for in order to beat on a dead horse and Roz had that coming for a while. As for Joyce I don’t know, boggles my why she’d jump to the head of the line by putting herself out there like that if she knew what’s going on.
this is why they should teach the ethics of psychoanalyzing people before they teach how to do it! or in other words, Booster, just because you CAN tell these people what is wrong with them, doesn’t mean you SHOULD.
I was rooting for you! Stop being a douche! Brutal honesty is just that, brutal. It doesn’t help the person you’re being honest with 90% of the time. If you must display your uncanny read of everyone in the room compassionate honesty is kinda key.
What the hell booster? This isn’t psychoanalyzing everyone, this is just ripping their deepest insecurities out of their hearts for the whole room to see.
I’ve been thinking for several pages now that Booster is basically a college-aged avatar for the current David Willis. They’re interested in Amber’s “dirty” fanfic, they’re enby, and they’re funny. And now apparently they know everything about the main characters, which is more evidence for my hypothesis. Booster is clearly David Willis from 2020.
I believe that all the characters represent some aspect of Willis. Amber has nothing on any really creative person. But I’m much less inclined to say this character represents Willis at a particular stage in life. Above all, Willis is a story teller and the story and the characters evolve together.
So “he” is still okay to use for him, cool. I would have learned to use “they” for Willis eventually if “he” were not a option, but just sticking to “he” is going to be easier for me as long as it’s okay with him.
Booster’s room-mate refused to use neutral pronouns/Booster’s n.b. name in retaliation for Booster not respecting their privacy and constantly analyzing them publicly.
Just a theory. File it with Area 51, 9/11, Kennedy, flat earth and the cheese moon.
This would be super obnoxious if it were real life. As fiction, I’m not sure how to feel. It’s kinda rude but…
Who among us hasn’t wanted to just lay bare everyone’s deepest insecurities and secret motivations though? Or is that not super common.
They haven’t consented to this though. I mean Ruth asked but no one else did.
That’s my only issue, if anyone had gone “Ooh me next!” That’s fine, but Joyce literally just asked “Are we doing all of us now? I thought it was just Ruth” and Booster took a chance to dig into her.
I mentioned this in a reply, but I think it’s worth repeating here.
We don’t KNOW how accurate Booster’s being.
They definitely missed the mark a bit with Joyce. Kinda. Sorta. … huh, okay, that’s going to get into philosophical deepity. Let’s just put a question mark by it.
Rachel… no confirmation whatsoever.
Roz… well we know Roz is a middle child, so maybe that’s half a point? Not exactly a deep insight into her, though.
Nearly all of these “insights” are absent specifics, helped along by Walky giving background briefs for most of the day, and smack of a mix of hot-reading and cold-reading techniques. I don’t think these are mad psych skills, I think these are passable bullshitting skills.
I’ve been on the record that Asshole Rachel waited a very long time before she ever start “fighting back” (and that she specifically waited until she knew Ruth was at her lowest) but now that she’s keeping herself in Ruth’s orbit for the chance to attack her she doesn’t have any ground on which to stand.
I don’t think Booster has any preternatural analyzing abilities. They’re doing a lot of cold reading / Forer type observations. “You have middle child energy” isn’t the same thing as saying “I can tell you’re a middle child.” If you’re not a middle child, it’s easily played as just a dig. Their analysis of Joyce wouldn’t be a bad Forer statement for Freshmen in college. Even if Walky hadn’t more or less told them during introductions.
I think Mike’s behavior was different. He used plain insults a lot more. His general abrasiveness let people play analysis off as just him being an asshole.
None of this is particularly deep or insightful, it is literally all vague things that apply to a lot of people. Booster only really needed the notes from Walky and a little bit of natural perception to pick up on Ruth trying too hard and Joyce trying to self-deceive. It is 90% cold reading, 5% already supplied info, 5% actual perception from the events they were a part of.
Booster doesn’t have magical insight. It’s not to hard to work out a basic narrative of a person with cold reading which is why scams based around it work: people will see it as deeply personal but it is really not, as many of these types of narratives apply to many people then you just narrow it down based on information and reaction.
Like if I said ‘you have received unfair treatment from someone you thought you could trust’ on the surface, that looks very specific. But that literally applies to any betrayal from any type of person around you so it could be parents (abuse of any kind, unfair rules), ex-friends/partners (cheating, giving away secrets), old teachers (abuse of position, manipulation, cruelty), authority figures (abuse of power). It can further apply to multiple instances or a one time incident, a multitude of behaviours e.g. long-term chronic abuse is just as applicable as someone not believing your side of events. Then usuallly the person themselves will supply information that verifies it about a specific event they recall.
None of this is something Booster couldn’t have worked out, just most people don’t because most of them aren’t cold reading and trying to work out what problems everyone around them has got.
And here we see the difference between “smart” and “wise.” Booster’s going to have to live with these people. This is not the best way for Booster to show Booster’s going to be easy to live with and befriend.
(I’m not avoiding their pronoun, it’s just impossible to use it unambiguously in the previous sentence! Why oh why couldn’t xie have caught on?)
I really don’t think it would have been that confusing to just say “This is not the best way for Booster to show they’re going to be easy to live with and befriend”. It’s not like we get THAT confused if someone refers to two different men in one sentence that also uses a pronoun at some point, like it wouldn’t be that confusing to say “John is going to have to live with Bob, and this isn’t the best way for John to show he’s going to be easy to live with and befriend”. I think you might be overthinking the grammatical implications of the “singular they” thing.
This version is kind of funny though, it sounds a bit like a three-year old called Booster who hasn’t really mastered pronouns yet and keeps referring to themselves by name.
Friendly reminder, a psych is a medical professional who helps cure mental ailments, and has the training to guide you through the requisite steps gently.(Or stuff you with what they hope are the right meds because they have way too big a district to give you proper care, but let’s not get into that right now.)
A psych is a person who studies how the brain works in abstract terms, knowledge which is passed on, among others, to psychiatrists, see above.
Describing people’s issues in these abstract terms tends to sound harsh as hell.
As one of the latter, I have some ways to help people out with their problems. But I think the best mental health advice I ever gave to someone who asked was ‘Talk to a professional, I’m a scientist, not a doctor.’
Booster, my gender-nonspecific friend. Stick to your lane, will you.
Well, not quite. Psychologists can diagnose and treat patients (clinical and counseling psychologists for example), and there are psychologists who only study and pass on information (experimental and research psychologists, psychometrics). The main difference really is that psychiatrists can prescribe medication
Not really sure where you are going with that. A clinical psychologist or a counselor primarily offer some form of talk therapy. Which is largely on a sliding scale between telling patients what they can do with themselves and subtly tricking them into doing it(and swinging too much into the latter is such an ethical hoo-ha that I’d ask we do not go too deep into this either).
It is largely examining the patient through a scientific lens and talking to them about their results, as well as working with them to figure out a solution – like I described in the first post, you study the mind, and share what you find.
Ideally, people come to you for preventative treatment without fully fledged mentally disordered behavior under their belt. And while, every so often, you completely nail someone’s problems on the head, tell them in a way they have no problem hearing, and they walk out a better person after a half hour session, it’s rarely that easy or pleasant. Talk therapy is a bitter pill, and you, ironically, need a healthy mindset to swallow those willingly.
A diagnosis of a serious issue is, in turn, followed by us passing their treatment at least partially to an -iatrist, if we aren’t also one ourselves, because it’s beyond our paygrade. But more to the point, that sort of therapy is optional, and many times, people who come to see you should have come to see you a long time ago.
When someone tells me they are contemplating suicide and barely felt anything for the last few years, I’m going to Treat them, sure – to a fast track into a psychiatrist’s office who can give them medication.
Because ultimately, a psychologist is a scientist, not a doctor. They shouldn’t swing their deek around giving flinging people in serious need of help(like Dumbing of Age’s poor idiots) a bunch of flippant, technical babble and hope they will do something useful with it.
I’m curious, where do you live? Your views on this seem different than a lot of people I know in the field, and I wonder if location has anything to do with it.
What difference, exactly? And personally I don’t think area is the factor – I live in rural Hungary. And I don’t believe I ever heard of us being seen as outliers one way or the other.
As a personal difference, I am a lot more frank about than my colleagues(whom I find paint a much more positive picture than they have to or should) regarding our field or what we do, if that’s what you see as odd.
Iunno man, psychoanalyzing people who ain’t asked for it is kinda shit. Like someone could say what I know is wrong with me that I keep trying to avoid acknowledging and could be totally right, but putting all that out in the open in a crowd of people without my consent or even knowing me as a person would make me angry and feel like that person saw me as nothing but a puzzle to solve for their own recognition
I would say that Rachel’s strong response to the ‘because you were quiet’ non-sequitur suggests strongly that Booster was dead on the mark with her. I’m guessing she believes that she enabled an abuser at some point and is trying to atone by confusing Ruth with whoever that is.
Roz is… a no-brainer basically.
As for Joyce, her reaction at least indicates that she’s thinking about it. When you consider all the secret mischief that young Joyce and Becky got into that we’ve seen in flashbacks and random bits of dialogue, I think it’s true that she’s never quite been the perfect girl she tried to present herself as and, at least subconsciously, I think that she’s trying to stop pretending otherwise. That’s going to be a tough thing for her to face, though.
Mike got the good plastic surgery/identity change package.
“I’ve got this resting grump face that puts people on guard. Could you make my face look open and friendly and maybe a little androgynous — like, with full, pouty lips?”
((You know, I love this rabbit hole, but at this point there are enough people jumping down it that I feel impelled to point out that it is a rabbit hole.))
On one hand, I really like this strip. Because Rachel and Roz being told off and Joyce being told something she needs to hear is narratively very pleasing as an experience to me.
On the other hand, this is a really overconfident attitude and it’s not cool when Malaya tries to do this to Sal and Booster did not need to continue after Roz. Ruth, they were invited to even if it isn’t something you should take up on, that’s an easy mistake to walk into when consent is given but it is a self-destruction trap rather than a true invitation. Rachel, I get, that was a question, not a hard statement, and Rachel nearly flew off the handle at them for that alone. Roz was interjecting needlessly (Rachel doesn’t need you speaking on her behalf). But then doing it to Joyce was unnecessary.
I don’t think Booster’s judgement is that unrealistic either. Walky gave away a lot of info very easily and his insight on Rachel and Roz isn’t even deep, it’s something you could guess. Joyce and Ruth, Booster was given some info on by Walky and it still isn’t even that deep. With a little perceptive ability, they could see Ruth is trying too hard, and that Joyce wasn’t fully telling the truth earlier when they talked. This is basically how fortune tellers and psychics and other scams seem like they have ‘deep’ insight about you, but it didn’t really require deep analysis, it’s not hyper specific. It’s just cold reading.
Booster is going to get punched in the face even if he is saying things that are true…you can’t go around psychoanalyzing people without their permission
I almost said “he”, then i remembered, still saying “They” feels like if I was talking about multiple people, and it feels weird when starting a sentence ….but that’s more about the evolution of language than about social norms.
Actually, if you aren’t a paid professional you *can* go around psychoanalyzing people without their permission, it being a free country and all. I don’t know that I would recommend it though.
They are psychoanalyzing people that didnt consent to it.. thats kinda not cool. The bit with Ruth? sure, she asked.. everyone else? Nooooo bad psyche major.
Same. I mean, yeah this would be bad irl but in a comic where everyone needs to be called on their bullshit (especially roz and rachel in this case), its just. So enjoyable to watch
Interrupting Roz like that is really a low blow and, well, simply rude. Almost sound like a deflect like he knew she might have been able to make a good point.
Yeah, starting to like Booster less and less. All this sure is a lot to assume from a bunch of short first impressions. I mean, even if they’re right, it’s still a dick move. Basically, just a more brazen and extroverted version of Mike’s whole thing.
Yes, he is. He’s hoping that the inconvenient insightful person will therefore not notice him and not too clearly explain to him his problems and what he needs to change.
Oh my god. Booster is fanon!Mike. Like when the comments state Mike was an asshole nearly always for peoples best interests! Was always kind of frustrated when people did that (even if I didn’t hate Mike either) but with Booster it actually could be true.
Still a massive dick move mind but it’s actually kind of amusing too. I’ll admit apart of me finds this unrealistic but then even Mike got the read on people easily as a kid given Amber’s teacher.
Just remember folks! Despite what it looks as though it ought to mean, “psychoanalysis” actually denotes the specific theories and methods of the Freudian school. To psychoanalyse someone is to put them through the Freudian course of treatment.
Wow. Yesterday I was hoping they were just being thoughtless, but now they’re just outright being a dick. No one else consented to this shit and Booster shouldn’t have taken Ruth’s bait and analyzed her after she was attacked by Rachel.
I started off liking Booster, but now they’re just an asshole.
Hm
Are we sure that Booster isn’t a figment of the imagination of everyone in there?
They seem to know a lot of things for the girls, with only just a glance…
This is pretty boilerplate “writing a psychologist” – like the Oracle having to argue without explaining how they know in a game of Werewolf, it’s really hard for a writer to make a psych-background person make reasonable mistakes (especially if the writer doesn’t have an actual psych degree). That takes an extra two layers of thinking about things, relative to having the psych person be right all the time.
But “analysis that’s clever but wrong” is another really good kind of scene – Actually one end to this scene would be for someone to warn Booster that they’re about two sentences from getting throttled, “Good Will Hunting style.”
For someone who prefers gender-neutral pronouns Booster sure is being a dick.
You don’t do this shit. It’s bad if you’re wrong and worse if you’re right – and both doubly so if the whole thing is public. ONE person asked for this. The rest are just there, and taking part in the conversation is not consent to have their laundry aired out.
I imagine Booster reading a psych textbook and looking at the people around them and getting really excited because they GOT it, they could see what was going on with those folks, and they’re still just this immature kid who has this new tool and hasn’t quite realized yet that the tool’s dangerous to swing around.
I don’t think the body-slam will be physical. And it may not come from Ruthless. But I suspect it’s coming.
So, Joyce’s analysis is actually off? I liked what Booster was doing at first, but after reading the comments I realized their intentions were not just to put Rachel back in her place. Are they also socially clueless? Are they mean? I don’t want to believe that.
Maybe the interest in psychology is specifically because of their own undiagnosed condition which they’re coming to grips with. Or Booster’s just an asshole. Or Option C, which we will eventually discover.
Chances are I have the same undiagnosed condition, as I find Booster’s analysis mostly impressive. Gives me Psych!Sherlock vibes. And, what’s so wrong about helping people understanding each other better? It’s not like they’re using non-publicly-available information, everyone’s drawing their own conclusions anyway…
(Yes, occasionally people do suddeny get offended at me, at seemingly random times, why do you ask? :V (It’s quite stressful actually, never really being sure what will offend people, so often I just say nothing. Ever.))
The issue is: No one asked to be analysed or consented to it.
Even Ruth wasn’t truly asking when she offered consent, she was being self-destructive by challenging people to analyse her.
This type of behaviour isn’t kind, it upsets people (because no one wants told what is wrong with them by people they barely know and sometimes even by people they do), and it lacks compassion for their feelings that these are sore spots they *didn’t* want to talk to anyone about. No one wants to hear what problems you think they have or for you to speculate what problems other people might have.
There are always things that are better left unsaid and it’s not always your place to try to make people understand each other. Sometimes they’re not going to because they don’t want to try to. And you can’t make them.
Booster’s not helping them understand each other better. Booster’s been here all of five minutes and saying their private shtick out loud with no regards to privacy. Whatever it is they’ve correctly assessed, I guarantee you is already known by the relevant people, regardless of what’s said out loud. Whatever it is they’ve incorrectly assessed remains out there for people to speculate about. It’s a lit torch in the gunpowder factory, not a therapy session.
I’m pretty sure being a second year psychology major doesnt give you psychic powers to home in on why people are behaving like they do or find their insecurities with a glance.
I mean surface level idea with joyce I can believe since they were actually hanging around her before this. But unless he creeped on their social media or can read damn minds I dont know how he can guess those after such short interactions
Booster may be spot on with psychoanalysis, but can they fix any of them? If not all they are doing is pissing off a bunch of people who already know their problems.
Booster’s kinda losing me but I do like the added context to Rachel’s grudge and it answers the lingering bugbear of “what was Rachel doing before everything went to hell?”
She wasn’t. She just stood there and did nothing, so now that she’s involved she’s going to be a thousand times harsher on Ruth to make up for her own failings dealing with her previously.
OK is this strip opening up a supernatural branch office where Mike’s departed soul is inhabiting another person? Because Booster is at Sherlock Holmes levels of first-impression insight.
I don’t hate Booster but I question the need for a character who holds painful truths over the heads of the rest of the cast when the last person who did that got yeeted off a balcony to their death.
These aren’t painful truths. Painful truths give you the criticism to make yourself better, these are just painful, maybe not even true. Just dragging up their regrets and insecurities as though those are the only reasons behind their actions.
Hopefully this immediately is followed by everyone calling Booster an asshole, thus kickstarting their active arc that just because you notice something about someone, you don’t have to bring it up. I can take that as an ongoing character arc. Mike was an issue for me in part because he wasn’t actually recognizing how harmful his actions were until the last possible moment.
For me at least it just feels like Booster is here to be the Nice Mike in this strip, where they non-maliciously point out the foibles of the cast but still cause them anger and frustration, and I don’t get the addition of a character who fills the same function as the one that just got killed off. It’s kinda like, Mike’s dead and gone, but his story function is still getting filled so there’s a weird half measure where he’s still around?
Booster’s already dealing with the baggage of filling the void Mike left because they’re in the space where he stood (quite literally in the case of being Walky’s roommate), and I think it does them a disservice to now start cribbing on one of Mike’s character traits.
Mike had to die and be replaced because he was too stubborn to put up with a redemption arc and would’ve dragged it out for like 50 years of our time
Booster might fill Mike’s role as being blunt, snarky deliverer of hard truths, minus the intentional cruelty and being constantly flat out wrong about people “needing to hear” something, and a level of rudeness sufficiently low and offset by good qualities that it’s not so baffling that they have friends
I don’t think it’s true that Mike was irredeemable, but we’ll never know because he only started acting like a real human being immediately before his death between catching feels for Ethan and his realization that he was hurting Amber. Moreover, with Mike dead, there *should* be a way to feel that loss and I think that’s undermined by Booster replacing him in terms of character function like they’re doing now.
Like, if Booster’s going to start doing Mike things like they’re doing now, then why the heck are they here? Why did Mike die only to be replaced by a character who fulfills the same function?
Mike’s not irredeemable as a person, just within the time scale of the comic. I myself am a recovered teenage edgelord, but it took more than four years to rid myself of my worst habits, and I was never as bad as Mike.
Which Booster isn’t either. They can provide the good, fun things that Mike brought to the story without the cruelty and malice that had people in the comments saying she NEEDED to be told she would become her father. Booster’s levels of jerkitude are low enough to be compatible with them not being a total garbage person. There’s much more room for their bad behavior to be fun, and not their only defining trait
I don’t think the time scale would have been a problem since Ruth started her redemption arc fairly quickly. It’s comic book time, and the pacing is up to the whims of the author. If Mike had to deal with years and years of rejection for being The Actual Worst, well, that’s a story.
But more to the point, I think Booster’s being shortchanged by taking on some of Mike’s traits. The comic doesn’t need Mike because if it did he’d still be alive. It undermines Booster because they’re now a replacement for an established character. It undermines Mike’s death because whatever he’s been brought to the comic is now still there with him dead.
Y’know, both today’s and yesterday’s installments have made me start to wonder if maybe those people who had guessed a while ago that Booster was actually Mike using a new identity might have actually been right. Mike has both the previous knowledge and the insight to figure all of this out, as well as the willingness to use it this way.
I meant personality-wise. I feel like a person who does amateur psycho-analysis on a group of people they just met is…boring? Presumptuous? I have had friends like this, and they are now former friends.
I get that fictional characters are, by their very nature, fiction, but even though some of the characters I love in strip I would find irritating IRL, I feel like Booster is coming across as annoying, both in and out of the strip. And not in the charming way Carla is.
Hate is not a limited resource? I LIKE Carla and Malaya, and would possibly even get along with them in real life, but “somebody else is worse” is a really, really dumb reason to not hate someone. That shit shouldn’t be relative
The first vote I was eligible to cast was against George W Bush and I’ve voted every year since then. Fuck off with that
“The lesser of two evils” / harm mitigation applies when you have to choose one. You can still hate all the options. Choosing the lesser evil doesn’t magically turn it good or mean you like it. It’s fucking survival
Characters in a comic aren’t even in that situation. Just like the real world you can like or hate as many or as few as you want, and it’s frankly dangerous to yourself and others to simply accept somebody as “okay” exclusively because somebody else you know is shittier
Rachel was really asking for it, so there’s Roz and Joyce who Booster is being a jerk to. Two people, maybe eight or ten seconds of conversation. If they continue in the same vein I might be concerned, but right now it looks like they could be going somewhere with this.
As a former psych major (current therapist), I had to look twice at this and yeah, this is totally what learning psych majors do. You just learned a theory and you’re eager to try it out.
Then you recognize jumping quick to conclusions closes you off to being open to other possibilities.
I had a gut reaction at first kind of squinty eyed and yeah, it’s bad if they’re always treated as accurate. But this definitely reads “excitement at the chance to test what I just learned in a text book.”
Yeah, if it wasn’t already obvious to everyone, please don’t do what Booster is doing. It’s certainly a very impressive party trick if someone ASKS for it, like Ruth did, and Rachel probably deserves it considering her past behavior… but Joyce has been nothing but nice to Booster, if a little misinformed as she usually is. And while Roz is a little blatantly loud, having to deal with her family being presumably very outspoken about their beliefs (including an older sister Congresswoman) pushes her to rebel loudly in response.
In short, yes, Booster is surprisingly accurate at surface analysis for a Psych 101 student, but doesn’t know about ANY of the context that lead to their individual personalities. And thus, Booster is judging them without ACTUALLY knowing them. Which, of course, makes them a terrible psychologist-in-training, but hopefully they’ll grow out of that.
Ok I like Booster now cuz I have waited for so long for someone to put a chink in Rachel’s I know everything about you and am better than you demeanor.
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what about the sheer POWER Booster is hefting around like a random tree branch here
or the fact that literally half of America has shit for brains rn
That is apparently an incredibly rude thing to say about shit.
Yeah, people need to stop demonizing shit. I would say ‘toxic waste’ instead. Shit has a natural role in the environment.
so does toxic waste…
They are literally the same thing.
I must take exception to that. Not all shit [continued on page 94]
Wait! Somebody ripped out page 94.
It’s as bad as the badmouthing I’ve seen of dumpster fires! Dumpster fires are contained, shed light, and get rid of garbage. They don’t deserve the comparisons I’ve seen made.
Now now, half of America does NOT have shit for brains.
… it’s just that the electoral college lets the ones who do count for extra.
Based on AP’s current results, it’s looking like about half.
Don’t forget that people who took the reasonable precaution of voting early and not standing in line are underrepresented by the currently reported numbers.
Yup, all those mail-in ballots could well make the difference for Biden.
In completely unrelated news that I’m sure is a complete coincidence, the USPS has lost track of 300k mailed ballots and did not comply with a judge’s order to locate them.
So is it the USPS or one or more of several three letter agencies doing what they do except this time they did it so much that it was actually noticed by enough people that they couldn’t shut them up?
I don’t know of any 3 letter agency shenanigans this time around. DeJoy is definitely using the post office as a election weapon though. Has been for months – completely blatantly.
Well, keep in mind that we have an administration that has been working to shut down the USPS for a while now. I know that in many places mail delivery is not even daily at this point because they do not have the personnel.
A lot of it seems to be sloppiness, poor record-keeping, and understaffing, rather than actual malice. … though as thejeff says, there’s been some Republican malice to be identified in why the post office was understaffed in the first place.
“Hey, there’s a huge pandemic that our side only halfway believes exists, demand for mail services have drastically increased, the upcoming election is going to see an unprecedented amount of voting by mail… but mostly by the people voting Democrat. Let’s dismantle the postal service!” I’d ask what they were thinking, but it’s pretty obvious what they were thinking.
The judges response sounds pretty hostile to the USPS which sucks, since the USPS has been working heroically to try and carry on service despite the well publicized evisceration of the service.
Well, it’s pretty hostile to the head of the USPS, who’s been running that evisceration.
It’s also the half everyone else has to worry about…
46.9%, by Nate Silver’s estimate of the final numbers.
70 million people, at minimum, voted for a wanna-be dictator who shits himself and has a third grade education.
I just want it to be over! :C
Me too, I guess it was hubris to have wanted it to be Election Day so badly to think it would have been a landslide
(really, “over” is what I wanted, but still anxious about wanting THAT, too)
Not just hubris, but that would have avoided most of the chance to steal through lawsuits.
And an overwhelming rejection of fascism would have been nice, but I wasn’t really expecting that.
Biden’s odds definitely look good though. The Senate is a huge long shot at this point though, which means Biden’s not going to get any ambitious plans accomplished.
I WAS optimistic about Biden’s chances, until it turned out that there was an error in Arizona, and instead of Biden leading by three points with 98% of the vote counted, he’s leading by 3 points with 86% of the votes counted, and the votes that have yet to be counted are overwhelmingly from areas expected to go heavily for Trump. Biden certainly CAN win without Arizona (and he still might win Arizona, for that matter), but a Biden win in Arizona would have certainly made a Biden overall victory far more likely.
Fools! It’s gonna take days, possibly even weeks, before we know the results. Best to avoid the Internet until then.
Of course, I’m not following my own advice, so
I hadn’t picked up on that at all.
Booster is kinda insightfully creepy, after all.
I’m gonna go ahead and say I’m not liking this side of Booster. They should probably stop soon.
We’ve replaced Mike with someone who, while not worse, is not great either.
Yeah, like… at least both Mike and the narrative agreed that Mike was an unhelpful asshole. It kind of doesn’t feel like either are true for Booster, at least not yet. I hadn’t realized how similar their shticks were, but right now, I’m seeing it.
Also I’m just waiting for Booster to turn to the audience and say “You just love overanalyzing the lives of these people like some kind of god but it won’t feel the whole in your life.”
Wow, they are good at this.
Minus the typos hopefully. Booster probably has better grammar than me!
Who cares? You are doing great.
“You like to draw attention to forgivable mistakes in the hope that it distracts strangers from the truly terrible things you know that they couldn’t possibly know about you.” Booster probably.
Ooh. That’s close! If I’m being honest Booster would definitely pull the “It’s obvious that your extreme disdain for Walky is because he’s similar to how you used to be or maybe fear you still are.” Which uh…would probably piss me off if I was in that room and they said that to me yeah.
This, IMO, is at the root of at least half the hate that Danny gets. He’s who many people here used to be and they refuse to forgive
themselveshim for that.(mind you, sometimes he does something to deserve it, but… well, see comic title.)
In that case I hope that my comment was something you could enjoy as part of our meta joke thread, and didn’t come off as me doing the same thing as Booster
Good point. They’re not doing anything that we don’t do ourselves….
It’s also kind of ridiculous that they’ve got deep, penetrating insights about people they’ve met for, what, 60 seconds each?
Mike’s super-intuition has been passed on to Booster
When did he know anything he shouldn’t about people he hadn’t known intimately?
He can read a room.
*They
Source: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/uses/
And I did that numerous times below. Thank you for your polite correction. I appreciate it.
I keep almost slipping up, too. We’re gonna learn how to do this. =)
I thought clif was talking about Mike.
An understandable mistake since they look exactly alike except for the glasses.
But I really did make that error repeatedly.
I choose to believe Booster meant the last two as a joke / vague bullshitting, and got uncomfortably lucky. Cold reading really do be like that sometimes.
*Continues down the line* “You’re still looking for something you’re not sure exists” “You like to think of yourself as ‘the fun one'” “You wish you had more free time but you can’t afford to drop classes this semester”
I’m waiting until he reaches Amber. That would be interesting.
They reach Amber.
“You….ah….er…..nope, nope, not touching that. Nope.”
“You do you, friends.”
Might not happen, if Amber’s fixated on her phone. Booster’s dishing out truth to whoever speaks up, not picking targets.
They’re not penetrating insights. They’re surface reads with some prose. He literally just said Ruth is acting like a tryhard, Rachel is pissing about something that nobody else is pissing about, and Joyce is hiding something.
It’s also turning what was at first Ruth and Rachel holding everyone else hostage over mutual petty attitude into something that included everyone else and could be a more constructive use of their time.
No. They’ve got Sherlock’s ability to read a person in seconds, plus enough psychology knowledge to put the impressions into words. The only person Holmes COULDN’T read was “The Woman!”
Look, I’m as big a Holmes fan as anyone, but he’s also a ridiculous character.
… and THESE people are reasonable?
Booster may be like Alan on Friends. Monica’s early bf who analyzed everyone?
That was definitely the first thing I thought of, and to quote half the cast, ‘I hate that guy’.
I’m not sure if Booster is out to make friends, but this is a terrible way to do it.
Seems like they want to make enemies!
I’m all for this side of Booster, give me Booster walking down the dorms calling EVERY character out on their bullshit
I’ll be laughing if this particular arc ends with Booster turning to the fourth wall and saying: “And do you keep looking in here because these characters remind you of someone in your life who has wronged you, or you think has wronged you, and you hope to see them get their comeuppance? Or is is really something you don’t want to admit you don’t like about yourself?”
at this rate, I would not be surprised.
Saaame I’m glad I’m not the only one who appreciates a good reading
I warned everyone – we’ll see Booster’s nasty side eventually. And here it is.
I’m not sure what Willis is trying to accomplish with this, but it isn’t working for me. It’s a magic act – doing dime store (and relatively negative) analysis on people that Booster barely met – and it both comes across as heavy-handed exposition and makes the character look like a jerk. Willis may have a game plan that makes this work out, but for me the character has used up whatever goodwill they started with.
Damn Booster, Mike would be proud
…I hadn’t considered that Booster is acting as replacement Mike in that regard too.
Someone’s gotta do it to em.
They really don’t, though.
Honestly at this point I’m starting to think Booster is just the drunk!Mike persona spun-off into their own separate character
It’s the hair.
Booster was a totally normal nonbinary person until they got stuck with Mike’s katra.
Now all the cast has to do is steal a spaceship, recover Mike’s body, and outwit the Klingons.
And it’ll all be directed by Mike.
Is this going to result in Mike fucking a humpback whale’s mom?
For a nickel in gold-pressed latinum.
The needs of the moms outweigh the needs of the pun.
It’s kinda impressive how quickly Booster is able to read the room, isn’t it?
nobody else consented to this wtf booster
Ruth gave them the invitation but they got over excited and started branching out to others when Rachel Jumped in.
I refuse to accept Ruth giving them an invitation as an excuse for Booster’s behaviour. Yeah, Ruth asked for it, but if Booster has this level of insight then they could very easily reckon that Ruth was reacting poorly to being attacked and engaging in some serious self-destructive behaviour. There’s no way this isn’t just malicious.
You say Booster is branching out?
Booster, the failure mode of clever is asshole. Triggering people for fun is not cool.
I think you mean “upsetting people for fun.”
Triggering is a horribly over-used word and carries connotations of non-responsibility for the allegedly “triggered” party. People deserve care and sympathy, absolutely, but to say a person who is upset by something is triggered dangerously implies that they are
a) a loaded weapon
b) not responsible for what happens after their trigger is pulled
c) not able to control their own reaction or behaviour to the stimulus.
None of these are reasonable assertions about the vast majority of adults in civilized society (i.e. all of us). Is Booster stepping into Mike’s much-maligned asshole shoes. Apparently, but should Booster be concerned that a dangerous situation may arise as a result of sharing their thoughts? That’s for you to answer. Is violence really an appropriate response to words?
(n.b. Arresting an individual for shouting fire in a crowded theatre doesn’t become violent unless the person physically resists arrest, but I’m curious if people can think of other examples.)
Absolutely.
Should I run away from my counselor ex boyfriend?
Obviously not.
If he uses his skill set to hurt me, easy given the intimate info he has to work with, why should his actions be considered less dangerous than other forms of violence?
If you want to argue that words can’t constitute violence, or that violence shouldn’t be met with violence, there are good arguments, that I disagree with, to be made.
“I came out to attack Ruth tonight, and I’m feeling so attacked.”
Quite the party trick they’ve got here.
Watch them pull a Drama out of their hat!
You know, I have to say that Walky’s strategy is looking better and better.
Nothin’ up ma sleeve!
Presto!
[CENSORED]
No doubt about it – I gotta get me another hat!
Hey Rachel, go fuck yourself, maybe her story isn’t supposed to make her likable but it certainly shows she is human.
Also while I am enjoying this to a degree, I must once again state that this is not a cool thing to do, Booster.
Rachel clearly has some unresolved damage of her own driving the beef between her and Ruth
I feel like once we all learn what went on between Rachel and Ruth when they lived together, we might not hate on Rachel as much. Or maybe not at all.
There is very little that would excuse constant bitterness towards someone that is actively trying to improve themselves. I don’t hate Rachel for it as there was clearly some damage, but I doubt I would vindicate her even with new information.
I wil respectfully disagree.
While Rachel exagerates with her “redemption is a story” schtick, it’s also true she’s under no obligation to forgive.
No matter how much an abuser “improves”, their former victims should still be recognized as such and their resentment should be validated.
There’s a difference between forgiveness and not constantly looking for ways to antagonize and humiliate publicly.
Sure, but Rachel still has to live around Ruth all the time. Having to see her play the redemption card now and again must be grating.
yeah I worded this poorly. I don’t like the way Rachel speaks of Ruth but I do think we will hate on her /less/ if we find out what happened between the two of them. Still, a lot of things she has said about ruth are fucked up, so…but speaking as someone who has been abused (though there’s really no reason for us to assume ruth was abusive towards rachel) I antagonized my abuser whenever I could. it made me feel in control.
If we assume that Booster is 100% right in his observations, sounds like Ruth was engaging in some sort of sketchy/not-okay behavior before. I mean, have we known Rachel to have been “quiet” about Ruth at ANY point? (And if Ruth was the victim of something Rachel was quiet about before, speaking out against her now wouldn’t exactly be compensating….)
Yeah… Just from a storytelling perspective, Ruth’s been on a redemption arc. Now, we know Rachel doesn’t believe in those, but even so, it would be really effective storytelling for it to be working, and then we get the flashback to the moment Ruth killed and ate Rachel’s puppy, and everyone is appalled and starts understanding her and hating on Ruth as much as they used to.
I literally said “Hey Booster, do Rachel next!”
And he did.
Ahem.
**takes deep breath**
….
….
… I got nothin.
They*
Ruth DID ask for this. Literally.
Rachel didn’t… but she’s being nasty, so MAYBE it’s called for. MAYBE.
Roz… not so much? And really, her older sibling is a real sore point for her, so definitely a party foul.
Joyce… yeah, you definitely need to pump the brakes here, Booster.
I think the next step is for Ruth to
body-slameject Booster from the meeting, or at least give a shut-up-or-be-ejected warning. They’re not supposed to be here anyway and they’re being disruptive.*to be clear, I’m not saying that Roz doesn’t deserve this type of shut-down in general. That’s a whole ‘nother debate that I’m not touching with ten-foot polling data. But her conduct here, tonight, has not merited it.
Yeah, not knowing anything about what a crap person Roz generally is, just seeing this one interaction from her, she is really reasonably trying to defend Rachel from a pretty vicious (if merited) attack, and Booster just went for the fucking throat in response. What the hell?
Keep in mind that this wasn’t the first time Roz spoke at the meeting… She also belittled the kidnappings of her fellow students by claiming that the previous term was good because her sister lost the election.
Not a good way to treat your fellow students, seven if you support left wing politics.
But did Booster know about the Day of the Dads? If not, it can’t be a factor in their decision to analyze Roz.
I find it pretty likely that Booster did know about the Day of the Dads, the kidnapping of several students and murder of one is the kind of thing that’d show up in the news, and enough details during the brief introductions where said that it’d be reasonable for her to figure out that they where the kids in question even if the news had anonymized them (which isn’t guaranteed).
I mean, Booster isn’t new at the school, and it was likely in the news, too.
Plus, Roz’ sister was a public figure, and Roz had a sex tape. The Roz conclusion has some basic info to work with.
They were on campus when it happened and it was all over the news so I’d imagine so
Okay, I guess it’s reasonable to assume that someone as curious as Booster’s shown themselves (themself?) to be would likely know about the Day of the Dads. And Becky’s involvement in that was very public and very visible. And Roz’s sex tape was public and visible as well, and Booster’s interest in Amber’s slashfic suggests they would have been interested in that too. Yeah, that all adds up.
… unrelated question, why do we still call it a sex tape if it wasn’t filmed on tape?
… also why do we still call it filming?
Perhaps we could update the term from filming to Digital Motion, or DigiMon for short.
In “Sherlock,” (and, actually, in one of the stories) Holmes analyzes Watson’s brother through the phone given to Watson. (In the books, it was a pocket watch) the only thing show-Holmes gets wrong is that the phone came from Watson’s SISTER! Everything else was on point, and upset Watson no end. As Holmes points out multiple times, he’s a fully functional sociopath who has problems understanding people’s feelings at his revelations. Booster is the same way, they’re on the jazz (to bring in another fictional character) and they’re either not realizing, or incapable of realizing, exactly how deep these cuts are going.
Or, that someone turns this on Booster. I’d be very interested in seeing them analyze their need to drag out everyones insecurities like this.
Booster’s not going to have any bones left once the meeting’s over.
Truthspeaker Booster reporting for duty! Being able to cold read people so accurately points to Booster having seen some serious shit of their own, and being brutally authentic.
This is why everyone hates
moral philosophy professorspsych majors.…They do?
When they do this, people do! And oh, this is not so unrealistic as you’d think, except maybe in how they’re relatively accurate.
I guess Booster has been reading the archives to catch up on everybody’s backstory.
Didn’t have to. Booster is Mike.
Mike didn’t die, that was just a cover story for the extreme personality change after the traumatic brain injury.
Well, it is funny how he looks just like Mike except for the glasses.
They look just like Mike.
It’s okay, we’ll get it hammered into our heads, eventually.
. . . entry into witness protection program.
ARE they relatively accurate?
Walky’s told Booster a bit about Ruth, and Booster could’ve gotten the rest with a bit of inference and cold reading. You know, the stuff psychics do when trying to convince someone that they’re hearing a ghost from their past? That whole “but you healed from that, this is something new” is a classic recover-and-try-again technique.
How perceptive are they really being?
They’re halfway wrong about Joyce, and other than Roz being a middle child we don’t know how right or wrong they are about the others.
Comparative to some stories I’ve heard, that they’re anywhere remotely on the same page as opposed to the equivalent of going to WebMD for a stomach ache and being told you have cancer is relatively accurate, vagueness and all. They could be extrapolating a HELL of a lot more.
Booster, goddamn, Ruth asked you to psychoanalyze her, not come for everybody’s whole lives.
Also – I know we probably won’t know the results for another 2-3 weeks because of all the mail in ballots, but good luck to those of you in Americana.
Luck won’t be enough. We are 100% irreversibly fucked
Mark the ‘Trump 2020’ houses on a map now so you know who to loot later.
?
With Arizona called, we’ve basically won this – the remaining vote in WI/MI is skewed towards Democrats, and those three (plus NE-2, or any other state) is enough to put us over the edge.
Unless you mean the fact that this isn’t a double-digit victory, and that Trumpism is here to stay, with all it’s cruelty and bizarre conspiracy theories, in which case… Yeah, I don’t see that going anywhere good.
Frankly, the fact that he got even a single vote the first time was the point when I lost faith in humanity.
Think about how awful you have to be in literally every conceivable way to even consider doing that.
Yeah, no disagreement there. This shouldn’t be a real race.
I really can’t understand, emotionally, how there are still millions of people willing to risk death at the hands of an uncontrolled pandemic just so that they can spite everyone who’s not a white man.
Actually, he’s selling them the myth that they’re NOT risking death, and they really really really want that myth. … also, the myth that they’re not responsible for the pandemic being twice as bad as it would have been had Trump not been elected the first time.
It amounts to the same thing, but it’s more understandable.
…. and yes, race ties into that (and everything else) in subtle ways. But I don’t think that’s the only factor.
Sure, but when you know someone who died of Covid-19, or was hospitalized because of it… That myth becomes a lot harder to sustain. They might tell themselves they believe it in order to get by day-to-day, but I’m not convinced that most of them really believe that everything is fine.
As for race… I mean, he started his campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, locks children in cages, and says that we should shoot people who request that the police stop murdering black people. It might not be the only factor, but it’s definitely what he built his initial appeal upon, and one pretty much has to be at least tacitly racist in order to look past his human rights abuses. His cruelty towards PoC and women are really the only things he’s delivered anything on, so it’s not as though he has anything else that his voters can point to in order to explain their vote.
I hate to say it but… Biden locked children in cages too. It’s just that they were Black and it was Business As Usual and it took me a while even to realize it… but Biden’s policies when he was a Senator literally split up families for years and locked children in cages.
I voted for Biden because Anyone But Trump. I’d probably have voted for him even without Trump. But he doesn’t have all the moral high ground.
Oh, yeah, it’s bullshit, but it’s tempting bullshit.
And I’m right with you on HIS character. But my sense is that a large chunk of the people voting for him are voting less for him and more on the issues of: 1) Abortion and/or 2) Unhappiness over COVID restrictions and/or 3) Still believing in the Hollywood version of the unambiguously heroic police officer and supporting that. He’s definitely bringing in the shithead-white-supremacist crowd as well, and that might put him over the edge and certainly did last time, and I’m sure there are a lot of subtler forms of racism going on (implicit bias, assumptions about crime rates or education, etc) but the hardcore racists aren’t the bulk of his voters.
I view voting to criminalize abortion as “spiting everyone who’s not a white man”, though. They might not view it that way personally, but that’s still the end result.
My words may have been harsh, but I’m not just condemning the open white supremacists in his base – I’m also condemning those who are voting on behalf of policies that have the same effect. If they voted for him because he was promising them all new good-paying jobs (and was running on an actual plan for that, and hadn’t spent four years accomplishing nothing) but was also a terrible racist, then, well, that’s a terrible trade, but one I could understand a desperate person making. Trump isn’t doing that, though; he’s spent the last year running on how black people are “rioting” when they engage in peaceful protest, how they “need to be brought back in line” with bullets and tear gas, and on confirming a Supreme Court Justice to strip the rights of women and the LGBT community.
I just don’t see how any of that can appeal to a decent person.
@Jane Okay, I can get 90% onboard with that anti-abortion characterization. Close enough to call it agreement.
And I don’t really disagree with the broader characterization either. Though I will point out that a lot of the people voting for Trump DON’T like him, for the reasons you say, but are voting for him on the basis of certain issues.
I guess I could best explain my more… moderate characterization as goal-motivated. I try to understand the mindset as step 1 of identifying how to change minds and attitudes. In that context, it’s valuable to distinguish the “women are property” anti-abortionist crowd from “loss of bodily autonomy it’s a lesser evil than letting babies get murdered” anti-abortionist crowd. (Strong disagree with both of those attitudes, to be clear, just using the phrases to characterize attitudes of different groups.)
Sometimes I forget that other people don’t parse things to that level of detail. But I’m definitely not going to demand that of anyone else. Just how my mind works.
@Reltzik
For nearly any other candidate, I can and do extend the same courtesy – as a general rule, I’m not really interested in moral judgments, simply in building a more equitable society. I can see someone assuming that Romney or McCain would have just made things work so that their policies wouldn’t actually harm anyone… Somehow. They’d be wrong, obviously, but I can understand a normal voter extending those candidates that trust.
But Trump is different. He goes out, and he actively promises to harm the “enemies” of his base – be they liberals, outsiders, the press, anyone who’s different or who dares lecture his base about how the world is more than a simple fight between conservatives and the rest of the (obviously evil) world. There’s no interest in fixing the side effects of his policies – indeed, his base takes glee in the “punishing” those that dared stand in the way of Trump’s vision. He’s a blunt sledgehammer to slam into anything about society that he doesn’t like.
So for a normal candidate, a distinction between those who actively desire the negative consequences of their policies and those who just assume it will work out somehow is valuable – one is persuadable, and one is not. But for Trump? It’s extremely obvious that there will be no effort to mitigate said negative consequences, and that he may even deliberately make things worse – if they still simply do not care, then there’s very little practical difference between them and someone who wants said consequences. Especially considering the disturbing zeal with which most Trump voters seem to support him.
Sorry, just replying to see how long ago this was, and it’s still accurate based on the latest results
I’d also mention that the mail-in vote is being counted last in most places, so the margin of victory will only go up from here on out – this race might not be nearly as narrow as it looks at first glance.
North Carolina and Georgia are still on the table because of them, for instance, when last I looked – and we don’t actually need those states for any likely map (presidential, at least, we need more senate seats still), they’d just be running up the score at this point.
North Carolina have done theirs ahead of time I think. But yeah not Georgia.
I’m following too many states at the moment… It’s confusing as to which states are still in play for which reasons
.
For instance, apparently a broken pipe is what’s slowing the count in Fulton county in Georgia? Weird.
The map I’m looking at has us losing if every state ends how they are currently looking
Right, but they won’t end up looking how they’re currently looking – counties report at different rates even in a normal year, with rural districts usually finding it easier to report their votes more quickly, and this year has also seen a significant partisan split in how they cast their votes, exacerbating this issue.
Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have all stated that it will take them several more days to count all of the votes – Pennsylvania isn’t even touching the mail-in vote before tomorrow. If we were looking at Trump having a significant lead with 80% of the vote reporting, that would be one thing – but the polls had Biden up by 10 in WI and MI, and I see no reason to think they were off by that much thus far.
I haven’t trusted polls since they favored Hillary
And you’re welcome to do so, though I’d argue there’s a difference between being off by five and being off by ten, but…
What we’ve seen is still consistent with Democratic votes being counted later. There aren’t many commenters who are arguing that Biden is likely behind in WI or MI, especially with Minnesota having been safely called for Biden.
With Arizona, NE-2, WI, and MI, and no weird surprises on the other uncalled states, Biden wins.
Oh, just an addendum since Kornakee (apologies for butchering his name) is doing Wisconsin right now – Milwaukee is only at 36% reporting, and is a big source of Democratic votes.
Writing off Wisconsin now just because Trump is up by a couple of points is to write off a massive Democratic stronghold.
Pennsylvania is a lot closer than I’d like. I still like Biden’s chances. I just don’t like them as much as I did this morning. But Arizona is looking good.
Democrats voted by mail at a substantially higher rate than Republicans, though, and Pennsylvania law prohibits the same-day counting of mail-in ballots – we’re going to get a healthy surge there once our votes are properly counted.
That said, it’s the only one of the three that I think there’s a chance that we lose – but we also don’t need it at this point. I mean, I want it, obviously – but we don’t need it now, so long as we keep WI and MI, which are on more solid ground.
Arizona’s been called? By whom? I’m looking at the AP map right now and it’s still up in the air.
Also, everyone not already familiar with the term google Red Mirage to understand what’s going on with the map right now. (Basic version, we can expect states like Pennsylvania to swing back towards blue. I can’t say whether they’ll swing back ENOUGH, but they’re showing red at exactly the moment forecasters were saying that there’d be an artifice making it look like Trump has far more votes than he actually did.)
Fox News – the channel itself is partisan drivel, but their state calls are usually accurate. Apparently, there was a bit of a fight over the call that’s lead to some entertaining clips on Twitter, though I haven’t seen it myself. I only knew because I’ve been following 538’s liveblog.
Yeah, it’s kind of terrifying and definitely not the landslide we needed, but it’s not as bad as despair makes it seem.
Now there’s counting and lawsuits.
Let’s put Weird and Weird together…
I understand that reference. Urusei Yatsura.
Anyone else think Booster’s being kind of an asshole by poking at the problems of people who did not invite this psychoanalysis?
Yeah I’m pretty sure this is a dick move from Booster. The question is why? Trying to impress people? Trying to show their not someone to be trifled with lest they unleash more psychoanalytic power on the mere mortals? Or maybe it’s just a compulsion of Boosters.
Second semester psych students are just Like That, man.
Are they trying to let people know that they are Mike, miraculously back from the witness protection program?
Yes. But it’s also hilariously brutal.
Well, yes. As long as, you know, I’m not the target.
No, I think they should all hit Booster with a stick.
Yeah, not a fan of this. It seems high key unethical to publicly analyze a bunch of strangers who never asked them for it. Especially Joyce, who was just asking a question and clearly wasn’t trying to get involved.
Booster isn’t in any professional relationship with any of them, and isn’t (as far as we know) betraying any confidences.
I think they’re being a dick right now, but it’s not unethical to be a dick.
That is.. essentially what “unethical” means.
Ethics is more like not being a dick specifically in regards to your profession. Booster’s profession right now is “student,” so being ethical is stuff like not cheating, doing your work on time, etc.
Professional ethics are not the only ethics. Not by any means.
Oh, yeah, 100%. Jumping into it with Ruth was already pushing it, imo, and I am interested to see how all of these piercing insights will be explained beyond just psychology major powers. My working theory is that they just so happen to have been in the background for a lot of the comic’s more public events, and are drawing on what they overheard back then now that they’ve realized “Oh, wait, that was all *these people*.”
I never considered that Booster would possibly have a lot of knowledge of this floor from going to the same school. Ooooh, this is gonna be fun.
Except they’re actually not really touching on anything likely to have been heard. The “middle child” bit being a possible exception – Roz and Robin being pretty high-profile.
I agree that they are, but I’m also kinda enjoying seeing Booster psychoanalyzing everyone.
Yuuuup. As much as I can enjoy calling these characters out on their bullshit, and as much as these aren’t particularly difficult call outs, it’s still an incredible dick move and not great character writing.
Booster is my favorite character now.
Same! I have nothing but respect for this: there are so many people in this series who are desperately clogged up with festering drama: homie is just clearing the drains.
There’s a difference between what Booster is doing and what Carla did (which was still a bit of a mean move but that was slightly better since actual lives were at stake).
There’s a time and place for unasked for brutal honesty, and this is definitely not it.
So you respect someone calling out someone with a ton of mental health issues and trauma in front of a crowd? A crowd they were just attacked in front of? Furthermore, are you okay with them proceeding to analyze people that didn’t consent to this kind of analysis?
Come on. Even if you say Ruth asked for it, if Booster is smart enough to deduce all this shit about everyone then they’re definitely smart enough to get that Ruth was engaging in some serious self-destructive, red flag waving behaviour and that indulging them probably isn’t good for their well-being.
I love them too but I think they’ve gone a bit unrealistic now. They’ve been there only a few hours (I think), how in the heck can they nail the other characters so easily?
Lol yeah
They got really into their psych textbooks and each person, as they spoke, just brought to light a piece of info from their memory.
Or yeah, it’s a tad unrealistic. Not complaining for the most part.
Amazi-Girl was a going character for how long?
Little late to play the “unrealistic” card now, I think.
I didn’t like the Amazi-Girl storylines either. DoA generally does okay with realism until it veers into superhero hijinks and characters who are eerily accurate at reading people. At least Mike seemed to only mostly just be ‘good at observing but buried under cynicism’. It’s only one strip but if Booster is just ‘really good at noticing traits because they’re a psych major’ I’m not gonna like their narrative role.
This comment shows up in Willis’s twitter feed in 3…2…1…
It could still be saved if it’s “Booster decided to be a psych major because they’re good at noticing traits.” I’ve met people like that. I slam the shutters down behind my eyes the moment I realize they’re like that, because they’re unnerving, but they do exist. (They make gret social workers, I just don’t want them on my case.)
Mike was too calculated, he planned his callouts for maximum effect usually doing so with some bullshit prank.
Booster is just out here calling everyone out ASAP and I’m ALL here for it
goddamn, booster! going for everybody in this chapter.
Booster was locked and loaded just waiting for someone to pull the trigger
I think we need to acknowledge the hard work that Booster is putting in to make everyone dislike them.
Me: I want every single one of these characters to have all the therapy.
also me: No… not like this
Yeeeeeeeeep.
Oh, psych majors.
This is the opposite of therapy.
This is therapy like a wrecking ball is urban renewal.
(The thing about all forms of deconstruction is that someone needs to put the rubble back together afterward.)
Analysis and therapy are two different things.
Booster is acting out that video clip of the man slapping everyone at the gathering/backyard bbq
By god, you’re right.
https://youtu.be/hHZvUeAdzeI the video I’m referring to
As an aside, it’s not that easy to read people. Booster hasn’t even spoken to half of these girls. You can definitely pick up a vibe or two, but I imagine Booster could rapidly fall into ‘profiling people by textbook case studies’ territory.
Also, if you’re calling people out on traits not even 30 seconds into meeting them, whether or not you’re good at it or not, you’d be a very bad psychologist, at least ethically.
He’s a student, not a psychologist.
*They’re
Source: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/uses/
Right you are. Thank you.
Okay, I can get on board with their observations on just about everybody.
But that Joyce one? Good God, Holmes, how did you do it?
My only guess for the Joyce one is the fact that they spent some time being wheeled around by Joyce, and anything Walky had said about her, like in “Aren’t in” when he said “Joyce was practically a Mary six months ago, but she’s been course-corrected from extreme right to *maybe* center left.” Also her face and voice when she says “yep, keepin’ the god stuff” in “Ditchin'”
(if you can’t tell, I don’t know how to hypertext)
Through the powers of ~unrealistic writing~
I want to see them do Mary next.
Oh hell yes
Of course Roz speaks up for Rachel… ugh.
Somebody Boostered me like this once (she Boostered most of our circle, but one-on-one, not in public, and we kinda asked her to.)
It’s a shame she was engaged to someone else. But at least her influence finally pushed me out of both my “edgy atheist” AND “college Republican” phases entirely. I look back on those days and loathe my old self.
Ooooof Booster, it’s gonna be fun watching the whole hall unite against a new common enemy.
I mean, we already had Mary.
Well Joyce is obvious he easily could have overheard Sarah speaking.
Also Walky. Also Joyce herself.
*They
Source: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/uses/
Booster WTF are you doing here? You don’t need education, you are already quite the head shrink. You looked at the room and had everyone’s number at once. You are the master here.
Keep it up, dig up more dark secrets.
Gotta get that degree to be paid for it.
Booster making one hell of a debute tonight.
But how do they know all this??!
Wondering if the identity of Booster’s sister may explain some of this. Previous knowledge?
Walky’s big mouth?
True, Walky did give pretty detailed introductions for some people.
They know how to read a room.
Wheeeee
On the one hand this is actually kind of funny but that’s the thin veneer over how weirdly triggering this apparently is so I’m going to go take my meds and hope someone just full on cracks them across the jaw because the time to stop was A While Ago
No, you know what? I know what this is. I know what the problem is.
Booster is basically going up to abuse survivors they don’t know from shit and saying things that sound like “haha I know every fucked up thing that happened to you and I’m gonna choose to tease you over how Bad this makes you”.
And while that may be unrelated to the intent, the level of… it’s rage-inducing. It is absolutely rage-inducing.
At least they haven’t started with ‘you know what might help with your depression? Think HAPPY THOUGHTS!’ yet.
Yuuuup. It makes me somewhat uncomfortable seeing how many commenters are enjoying Booster being an out and out dickhead to these people. It’s kinda sadistic.
Like man, I don’t like Amber or how she’s chosen to handle her entire situation, but I wouldn’t enjoy seeing her attacked like this. She just doesn’t deserve this.
Mike pulling this kind of thing was so nakedly vindictive it felt like a cartoon villain. Booster pulling it just feels kind of petty and arrogant. I’d have maybe been able to interpret it as an innocent mistake if not for that little sneer in panel four.
Classic Roz, interrupting Rachel to speak on her behalf.
This is one of the most satisfying comics in Dumbing of Age history, and for better or worse, I am really liking Booster. May this wonderful person continue to Frasier Crane everyone with such brutal accuracy.
Eh, I don’t think Crane would have done it like this unless he was really worked up. He’d have tried to politely bow out of this rather than publicly embarrass anyone, then end up in a series of unlikely coincidences that lead to him doing it anyway.
After panel two, Booster is being a lil bit of a dick. Responding to what Rachel said to them makes sense, and I can’t say I didn’t want Roz to get dunked on (even if it’s rude), but throwing in Roz and Joyce in their psychoanalysis was not Asked For. Still love them tho.
Rachel wasn’t asked for either, but it was a direct response to what Rachel had said. So.
by what Rachel had said I meant that Rachel had addressed Booster first.
You know I’m genuinely starting to wonder if Booster is actually just Mike deep in disguise and this is like the longest possible con he’s ever pulled?
Hah! I love Booster. Tells it like it is – or appears to be.
I don’t know if I would consider making snide assumptions about what vague “sibling archetype” the person you’re arguing with fits in a cheap attempt at a gotcha “telling it like it is,” though.
Okay then, just presumptive observations about the people as they spoke based on what they said and how they acted.
I never took the “booster is Mike” theory seriously until today.
I hope there’s more to Booster than this.
You want more?
I responded, but my reply got kicked into the main feed and not this thread.
Basically, they come across as annoying both in and out of the strip.
We’ve had like two weeks of Booster doing not-this, so I kinda don’t think that’s gonna be the case
True, but mostly Booster was being carted around getting The Recap. This is Booster’s first big scene and they are just…ugh?
I’m not even a fan of Rachel or Roz, but Booster’s comments, based on zero evidence, comes off as rude.
A lot of the best characters in this strip are kinda rude, at least some of the time. Only Carla is allowed to have no faults whatsoever
I know they’re just a student, but doesn’t this break a Code of Ethics or two?
Pretty sure student codes of ethics refer to not cheating, plagiarizing and the like.
Nope, because this is:
1) Not a session, there is no confidentiality expectations.
2) Booster is not a professional hired to do this.
3) Literally any person in the dorm could psychoanalyse everyone else. It’s not a KIND thing to do and say out loud. There is no ethics that stops you from doing it though. Malaya tries to do it with Sal all the time, she is just always wrong.
Yeah, this is somewhat rude, but not unethical
They have no access to privileged information here. Their assessments just happen to be accurate
They’re just repeating back what Walky told them, but rudely.
Rachel started a conversation she wasn’t ready for in order to beat on a dead horse and Roz had that coming for a while. As for Joyce I don’t know, boggles my why she’d jump to the head of the line by putting herself out there like that if she knew what’s going on.
Because Joyce is very socially naive and would miss the obvious warning signs!
In another reality I think this could have been Mike’s calling.
Holy shit Booster, calm down.
this is why they should teach the ethics of psychoanalyzing people before they teach how to do it! or in other words, Booster, just because you CAN tell these people what is wrong with them, doesn’t mean you SHOULD.
Booster is trying to speed run making enemies and I applaud them for it.
Consent is a thing, Booster….
I was rooting for you! Stop being a douche! Brutal honesty is just that, brutal. It doesn’t help the person you’re being honest with 90% of the time. If you must display your uncanny read of everyone in the room compassionate honesty is kinda key.
What the hell booster? This isn’t psychoanalyzing everyone, this is just ripping their deepest insecurities out of their hearts for the whole room to see.
So listening to the psychoanlaysis of Booster is like watching South Park, or reading the final prophecy of Cegorach. In comedt nobody is safe.
…this is NOT a second semester psych student who’s just met these people a few hours ago.
THIS IS CLEARLY SOMEONE WHO’S KNOWN THEM ALL FOR MONTHS.
But who could they be that would fit that description?
I’ve been thinking for several pages now that Booster is basically a college-aged avatar for the current David Willis. They’re interested in Amber’s “dirty” fanfic, they’re enby, and they’re funny. And now apparently they know everything about the main characters, which is more evidence for my hypothesis. Booster is clearly David Willis from 2020.
Is Willis non-binary? I haven’t seen that mentioned.
Their twitter says he/they.
I believe that all the characters represent some aspect of Willis. Amber has nothing on any really creative person. But I’m much less inclined to say this character represents Willis at a particular stage in life. Above all, Willis is a story teller and the story and the characters evolve together.
So “he” is still okay to use for him, cool. I would have learned to use “they” for Willis eventually if “he” were not a option, but just sticking to “he” is going to be easier for me as long as it’s okay with him.
Willis made a post to that effect several weeks (months?) back. Also talked about significant feelings about imposter syndrome.
I didn’t see that. Thanks for telling me. And Willis, if you see this, congratulations on learning about yourself!
*They
Source: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/uses/
Here’s a theory:
Booster’s room-mate refused to use neutral pronouns/Booster’s n.b. name in retaliation for Booster not respecting their privacy and constantly analyzing them publicly.
Just a theory. File it with Area 51, 9/11, Kennedy, flat earth and the cheese moon.
Man, that is BRUTAL. They really are a second coming of Mike, huh.
Next strip, Carla shouts “Me next, me next!”
Believable.
Are you a witch? Can you give us some lottery numbers?
This would be super obnoxious if it were real life. As fiction, I’m not sure how to feel. It’s kinda rude but…
Who among us hasn’t wanted to just lay bare everyone’s deepest insecurities and secret motivations though? Or is that not super common.
They haven’t consented to this though. I mean Ruth asked but no one else did.
That’s my only issue, if anyone had gone “Ooh me next!” That’s fine, but Joyce literally just asked “Are we doing all of us now? I thought it was just Ruth” and Booster took a chance to dig into her.
Buster’s making ALL the friends right now.
Pretty sure Booster’s just psychic. That or the conspiracy theories about them being Mike are true.
I mentioned this in a reply, but I think it’s worth repeating here.
We don’t KNOW how accurate Booster’s being.
They definitely missed the mark a bit with Joyce. Kinda. Sorta. … huh, okay, that’s going to get into philosophical deepity. Let’s just put a question mark by it.
Rachel… no confirmation whatsoever.
Roz… well we know Roz is a middle child, so maybe that’s half a point? Not exactly a deep insight into her, though.
Nearly all of these “insights” are absent specifics, helped along by Walky giving background briefs for most of the day, and smack of a mix of hot-reading and cold-reading techniques. I don’t think these are mad psych skills, I think these are passable bullshitting skills.
It is an interesting thought for Rachel though – one I don’t think I’ve seen brought up around here in the general Rachel bashing.
Yeah, I’m thinking there might be more to the Rachel/Ruth backstory than we’ve seen in flashbacks to this point.
Or there might not. It might just be their personalities grating.
But if Ruth bodyslams Rachel, watch out.
I’ve been on the record that Asshole Rachel waited a very long time before she ever start “fighting back” (and that she specifically waited until she knew Ruth was at her lowest) but now that she’s keeping herself in Ruth’s orbit for the chance to attack her she doesn’t have any ground on which to stand.
I am loving Booster!
Me too, and I hope to never meet them.
I don’t think Booster has any preternatural analyzing abilities. They’re doing a lot of cold reading / Forer type observations. “You have middle child energy” isn’t the same thing as saying “I can tell you’re a middle child.” If you’re not a middle child, it’s easily played as just a dig. Their analysis of Joyce wouldn’t be a bad Forer statement for Freshmen in college. Even if Walky hadn’t more or less told them during introductions.
I think Mike’s behavior was different. He used plain insults a lot more. His general abrasiveness let people play analysis off as just him being an asshole.
Ok, I’m really starting to like Booster now.
I’m guessing Booster is NOT here as a Psych major, right?
Didn’t they say they were a psych major to Dorothy a few days ago? Or weeks,I have zero sense of time
Booster is maybe a bit unbelievable as a character — nobody’s that insightful about people they have literally just met.
The phrase ‘author surrogate’ has repeatedly come to mind.
It does seem Booster’s reading Willis’ background notes for the characters.
None of this is particularly deep or insightful, it is literally all vague things that apply to a lot of people. Booster only really needed the notes from Walky and a little bit of natural perception to pick up on Ruth trying too hard and Joyce trying to self-deceive. It is 90% cold reading, 5% already supplied info, 5% actual perception from the events they were a part of.
Booster doesn’t have magical insight. It’s not to hard to work out a basic narrative of a person with cold reading which is why scams based around it work: people will see it as deeply personal but it is really not, as many of these types of narratives apply to many people then you just narrow it down based on information and reaction.
Like if I said ‘you have received unfair treatment from someone you thought you could trust’ on the surface, that looks very specific. But that literally applies to any betrayal from any type of person around you so it could be parents (abuse of any kind, unfair rules), ex-friends/partners (cheating, giving away secrets), old teachers (abuse of position, manipulation, cruelty), authority figures (abuse of power). It can further apply to multiple instances or a one time incident, a multitude of behaviours e.g. long-term chronic abuse is just as applicable as someone not believing your side of events. Then usuallly the person themselves will supply information that verifies it about a specific event they recall.
None of this is something Booster couldn’t have worked out, just most people don’t because most of them aren’t cold reading and trying to work out what problems everyone around them has got.
And here we see the difference between “smart” and “wise.” Booster’s going to have to live with these people. This is not the best way for Booster to show Booster’s going to be easy to live with and befriend.
(I’m not avoiding their pronoun, it’s just impossible to use it unambiguously in the previous sentence! Why oh why couldn’t xie have caught on?)
I really don’t think it would have been that confusing to just say “This is not the best way for Booster to show they’re going to be easy to live with and befriend”. It’s not like we get THAT confused if someone refers to two different men in one sentence that also uses a pronoun at some point, like it wouldn’t be that confusing to say “John is going to have to live with Bob, and this isn’t the best way for John to show he’s going to be easy to live with and befriend”. I think you might be overthinking the grammatical implications of the “singular they” thing.
This version is kind of funny though, it sounds a bit like a three-year old called Booster who hasn’t really mastered pronouns yet and keeps referring to themselves by name.
Am I supposed to like Booster?
I’ve never been convinced that Willis wants his readers to like any of his characters.
Except Dina. I think we can all be on the same page about Dina, Willis included.
No, no. Dina is being held in reserve. Someone has to decide between Science and Becky.
Friendly reminder, a psych is a medical professional who helps cure mental ailments, and has the training to guide you through the requisite steps gently.(Or stuff you with what they hope are the right meds because they have way too big a district to give you proper care, but let’s not get into that right now.)
A psych is a person who studies how the brain works in abstract terms, knowledge which is passed on, among others, to psychiatrists, see above.
Describing people’s issues in these abstract terms tends to sound harsh as hell.
As one of the latter, I have some ways to help people out with their problems. But I think the best mental health advice I ever gave to someone who asked was ‘Talk to a professional, I’m a scientist, not a doctor.’
Booster, my gender-nonspecific friend. Stick to your lane, will you.
That was supposed to be psychiatrist and psychologist respectively.
See? You can’t trust me to dig elbow deep into someone’s psyche in pleasant conversation, I don’t have a gentle enough touch for HTML tags!
Well, not quite. Psychologists can diagnose and treat patients (clinical and counseling psychologists for example), and there are psychologists who only study and pass on information (experimental and research psychologists, psychometrics). The main difference really is that psychiatrists can prescribe medication
Not really sure where you are going with that. A clinical psychologist or a counselor primarily offer some form of talk therapy. Which is largely on a sliding scale between telling patients what they can do with themselves and subtly tricking them into doing it(and swinging too much into the latter is such an ethical hoo-ha that I’d ask we do not go too deep into this either).
It is largely examining the patient through a scientific lens and talking to them about their results, as well as working with them to figure out a solution – like I described in the first post, you study the mind, and share what you find.
Ideally, people come to you for preventative treatment without fully fledged mentally disordered behavior under their belt. And while, every so often, you completely nail someone’s problems on the head, tell them in a way they have no problem hearing, and they walk out a better person after a half hour session, it’s rarely that easy or pleasant. Talk therapy is a bitter pill, and you, ironically, need a healthy mindset to swallow those willingly.
A diagnosis of a serious issue is, in turn, followed by us passing their treatment at least partially to an -iatrist, if we aren’t also one ourselves, because it’s beyond our paygrade. But more to the point, that sort of therapy is optional, and many times, people who come to see you should have come to see you a long time ago.
When someone tells me they are contemplating suicide and barely felt anything for the last few years, I’m going to Treat them, sure – to a fast track into a psychiatrist’s office who can give them medication.
Because ultimately, a psychologist is a scientist, not a doctor. They shouldn’t swing their deek around giving flinging people in serious need of help(like Dumbing of Age’s poor idiots) a bunch of flippant, technical babble and hope they will do something useful with it.
I’m curious, where do you live? Your views on this seem different than a lot of people I know in the field, and I wonder if location has anything to do with it.
What difference, exactly? And personally I don’t think area is the factor – I live in rural Hungary. And I don’t believe I ever heard of us being seen as outliers one way or the other.
As a personal difference, I am a lot more frank about than my colleagues(whom I find paint a much more positive picture than they have to or should) regarding our field or what we do, if that’s what you see as odd.
ignore that “about” there, #letuseditthese
Iunno man, psychoanalyzing people who ain’t asked for it is kinda shit. Like someone could say what I know is wrong with me that I keep trying to avoid acknowledging and could be totally right, but putting all that out in the open in a crowd of people without my consent or even knowing me as a person would make me angry and feel like that person saw me as nothing but a puzzle to solve for their own recognition
I would say that Rachel’s strong response to the ‘because you were quiet’ non-sequitur suggests strongly that Booster was dead on the mark with her. I’m guessing she believes that she enabled an abuser at some point and is trying to atone by confusing Ruth with whoever that is.
Roz is… a no-brainer basically.
As for Joyce, her reaction at least indicates that she’s thinking about it. When you consider all the secret mischief that young Joyce and Becky got into that we’ve seen in flashbacks and random bits of dialogue, I think it’s true that she’s never quite been the perfect girl she tried to present herself as and, at least subconsciously, I think that she’s trying to stop pretending otherwise. That’s going to be a tough thing for her to face, though.
It makes sense once you realize that “Booster” is actually Mike after he faked his death and entered witness protection.
I don’t think even the threat of death would be enough to get Mike’s eyebrows to stop looking so angry.
Mike got the good plastic surgery/identity change package.
“I’ve got this resting grump face that puts people on guard. Could you make my face look open and friendly and maybe a little androgynous — like, with full, pouty lips?”
Either that or Mike’s hammered
That’s the effect of the concussion.
((You know, I love this rabbit hole, but at this point there are enough people jumping down it that I feel impelled to point out that it is a rabbit hole.))
Too late – your “Booster-is-Mike” conspiracy has taken on a life of its own, now.
On one hand, I really like this strip. Because Rachel and Roz being told off and Joyce being told something she needs to hear is narratively very pleasing as an experience to me.
On the other hand, this is a really overconfident attitude and it’s not cool when Malaya tries to do this to Sal and Booster did not need to continue after Roz. Ruth, they were invited to even if it isn’t something you should take up on, that’s an easy mistake to walk into when consent is given but it is a self-destruction trap rather than a true invitation. Rachel, I get, that was a question, not a hard statement, and Rachel nearly flew off the handle at them for that alone. Roz was interjecting needlessly (Rachel doesn’t need you speaking on her behalf). But then doing it to Joyce was unnecessary.
I don’t think Booster’s judgement is that unrealistic either. Walky gave away a lot of info very easily and his insight on Rachel and Roz isn’t even deep, it’s something you could guess. Joyce and Ruth, Booster was given some info on by Walky and it still isn’t even that deep. With a little perceptive ability, they could see Ruth is trying too hard, and that Joyce wasn’t fully telling the truth earlier when they talked. This is basically how fortune tellers and psychics and other scams seem like they have ‘deep’ insight about you, but it didn’t really require deep analysis, it’s not hyper specific. It’s just cold reading.
Oh, they’re GOOD at this game. I bet they ruin all of the parties they go to.
It’s cute you think they are invited to parties.
They got invited to a party once. Word got around, and it has not happened since.
Ugh, I don’t like this. On the other hand, I never liked Mike much easier so…
This is like that parody of “The Slap” but with psychological analysis and everyone getting dragged.
Booster is going to get punched in the face even if he is saying things that are true…you can’t go around psychoanalyzing people without their permission
I almost said “he”, then i remembered, still saying “They” feels like if I was talking about multiple people, and it feels weird when starting a sentence ….but that’s more about the evolution of language than about social norms.
And then you did go ahead and say “he” and called attention to it by talking about it.
Actually, if you aren’t a paid professional you *can* go around psychoanalyzing people without their permission, it being a free country and all. I don’t know that I would recommend it though.
I LIKE BOOSTER NOW.
They’re just calling everyone out on their bullshit and I am LOVING it.
I’m sorry for calling you the Mike replacement Booster, you’re the Mike upgrade
They are psychoanalyzing people that didnt consent to it.. thats kinda not cool. The bit with Ruth? sure, she asked.. everyone else? Nooooo bad psyche major.
Meh, everyone needed to be called out on their bullshit anyways, Mike took too long Booster is just sledge hammering their way through
Joyce did nothing to deserve being “called on her bullshit” though.
Same. I mean, yeah this would be bad irl but in a comic where everyone needs to be called on their bullshit (especially roz and rachel in this case), its just. So enjoyable to watch
Eh if I’d given Booster a pass for this sorta behavior, I’d be a hypoocrite for all the times I called Malaya out for doing the same shit.
Ah there we are. I knew Booster couldn’t remain the one normal nice character forever. There’s those personality flaws I was waiting for.
Flaws?
Nobody else consented to be psychologically analyzed Booster… consent isn’t something a psychologist should be in the dark of..
Interrupting Roz like that is really a low blow and, well, simply rude. Almost sound like a deflect like he knew she might have been able to make a good point.
Booster just lost a few notches, for me.
It’s Roz
Don’t care. I don’t see Roz often defending someone else, I wanted to hear it.
Yeah, starting to like Booster less and less. All this sure is a lot to assume from a bunch of short first impressions. I mean, even if they’re right, it’s still a dick move. Basically, just a more brazen and extroverted version of Mike’s whole thing.
Which, all things considered… starting to wonder of there might not be something going on there after all…
It’d certainly explain all these suspiciously accurate inferences …
On the contrary, I’m loving them more and more
Wait… I thought Mike was dead.
Sh!
So that’s how Booster wanted to defuse the sitation… uh. But they may not make a lot of friends that way.
(is Walky still hiding in his hoodie ?)
Yes, he is. He’s hoping that the inconvenient insightful person will therefore not notice him and not too clearly explain to him his problems and what he needs to change.
I told you Walky was smart.
Oh my god. Booster is fanon!Mike. Like when the comments state Mike was an asshole nearly always for peoples best interests! Was always kind of frustrated when people did that (even if I didn’t hate Mike either) but with Booster it actually could be true.
Still a massive dick move mind but it’s actually kind of amusing too. I’ll admit apart of me finds this unrealistic but then even Mike got the read on people easily as a kid given Amber’s teacher.
Just remember folks! Despite what it looks as though it ought to mean, “psychoanalysis” actually denotes the specific theories and methods of the Freudian school. To psychoanalyse someone is to put them through the Freudian course of treatment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalysis
Wow. Yesterday I was hoping they were just being thoughtless, but now they’re just outright being a dick. No one else consented to this shit and Booster shouldn’t have taken Ruth’s bait and analyzed her after she was attacked by Rachel.
I started off liking Booster, but now they’re just an asshole.
Oh, wait, I get it now — she’s trying to get a date with Ruth!
Post-body slam, of course.
*they
Really wish we could edit these, but alas.
Hm
Are we sure that Booster isn’t a figment of the imagination of everyone in there?
They seem to know a lot of things for the girls, with only just a glance…
This is pretty boilerplate “writing a psychologist” – like the Oracle having to argue without explaining how they know in a game of Werewolf, it’s really hard for a writer to make a psych-background person make reasonable mistakes (especially if the writer doesn’t have an actual psych degree). That takes an extra two layers of thinking about things, relative to having the psych person be right all the time.
But “analysis that’s clever but wrong” is another really good kind of scene – Actually one end to this scene would be for someone to warn Booster that they’re about two sentences from getting throttled, “Good Will Hunting style.”
For someone who prefers gender-neutral pronouns Booster sure is being a dick.
You don’t do this shit. It’s bad if you’re wrong and worse if you’re right – and both doubly so if the whole thing is public. ONE person asked for this. The rest are just there, and taking part in the conversation is not consent to have their laundry aired out.
I imagine Booster reading a psych textbook and looking at the people around them and getting really excited because they GOT it, they could see what was going on with those folks, and they’re still just this immature kid who has this new tool and hasn’t quite realized yet that the tool’s dangerous to swing around.
I don’t think the body-slam will be physical. And it may not come from Ruthless. But I suspect it’s coming.
See, everybody’s something of an asshole in this comic. That’s why it’s called Dumbing of Age, folks.
That wouldn’t imply everyone being an asshole, it would imply everyone being dumb.
Yes, but this title can go on your store shelves. Besides, the implication of Dumbing of Age is that they’ll grow out of it.
the new kid just lets it all hang out eh?sad thing is he isn’t exactly wrong so far………
They’re a brick.
House.
So, Joyce’s analysis is actually off? I liked what Booster was doing at first, but after reading the comments I realized their intentions were not just to put Rachel back in her place. Are they also socially clueless? Are they mean? I don’t want to believe that.
Maybe the interest in psychology is specifically because of their own undiagnosed condition which they’re coming to grips with. Or Booster’s just an asshole. Or Option C, which we will eventually discover.
Chances are I have the same undiagnosed condition, as I find Booster’s analysis mostly impressive. Gives me Psych!Sherlock vibes. And, what’s so wrong about helping people understanding each other better? It’s not like they’re using non-publicly-available information, everyone’s drawing their own conclusions anyway…
(Yes, occasionally people do suddeny get offended at me, at seemingly random times, why do you ask? :V (It’s quite stressful actually, never really being sure what will offend people, so often I just say nothing. Ever.))
The issue is: No one asked to be analysed or consented to it.
Even Ruth wasn’t truly asking when she offered consent, she was being self-destructive by challenging people to analyse her.
This type of behaviour isn’t kind, it upsets people (because no one wants told what is wrong with them by people they barely know and sometimes even by people they do), and it lacks compassion for their feelings that these are sore spots they *didn’t* want to talk to anyone about. No one wants to hear what problems you think they have or for you to speculate what problems other people might have.
There are always things that are better left unsaid and it’s not always your place to try to make people understand each other. Sometimes they’re not going to because they don’t want to try to. And you can’t make them.
Booster’s not helping them understand each other better. Booster’s been here all of five minutes and saying their private shtick out loud with no regards to privacy. Whatever it is they’ve correctly assessed, I guarantee you is already known by the relevant people, regardless of what’s said out loud. Whatever it is they’ve incorrectly assessed remains out there for people to speculate about. It’s a lit torch in the gunpowder factory, not a therapy session.
Oh Ruth! Your disrespect for powerful artifacts was staggering. See what you’ve unleashed.
….okay but why?
Booster, stop being Mike only smarter.
I’m pretty sure being a second year psychology major doesnt give you psychic powers to home in on why people are behaving like they do or find their insecurities with a glance.
I mean surface level idea with joyce I can believe since they were actually hanging around her before this. But unless he creeped on their social media or can read damn minds I dont know how he can guess those after such short interactions
I meant they and made an extra comment by mistake instead of reply so ima stop now
I dont think airing out everyones dirty laundry as a flex at how unrealistically perceptive you are is a great way to make friends
THEY not he ffs
Booster may be spot on with psychoanalysis, but can they fix any of them? If not all they are doing is pissing off a bunch of people who already know their problems.
No-one asked them to ‘fix’ anything. That’s what makes this situation so cool for them.
Booster’s kinda losing me but I do like the added context to Rachel’s grudge and it answers the lingering bugbear of “what was Rachel doing before everything went to hell?”
She wasn’t. She just stood there and did nothing, so now that she’s involved she’s going to be a thousand times harsher on Ruth to make up for her own failings dealing with her previously.
Okay, Booster, I’m sure you’re a swell person, but I’ma gonna need you stop being an asshole right about now. Cool? Cool.
Booster: No. That’s my job.
Walky: But we thought you’d be nice!
Booster: Haha…no.
Joyce’s real and unvoiced thought: Not in front of Becky, fool!
OK is this strip opening up a supernatural branch office where Mike’s departed soul is inhabiting another person? Because Booster is at Sherlock Holmes levels of first-impression insight.
ah, one of those characters.
Ruth, i think you’re completely justified in suplexing this one.
And just like that, Booster became hated by everyone else in the comic and loved by me.
I don’t hate Booster but I question the need for a character who holds painful truths over the heads of the rest of the cast when the last person who did that got yeeted off a balcony to their death.
These aren’t painful truths. Painful truths give you the criticism to make yourself better, these are just painful, maybe not even true. Just dragging up their regrets and insecurities as though those are the only reasons behind their actions.
Hopefully this immediately is followed by everyone calling Booster an asshole, thus kickstarting their active arc that just because you notice something about someone, you don’t have to bring it up. I can take that as an ongoing character arc. Mike was an issue for me in part because he wasn’t actually recognizing how harmful his actions were until the last possible moment.
For me at least it just feels like Booster is here to be the Nice Mike in this strip, where they non-maliciously point out the foibles of the cast but still cause them anger and frustration, and I don’t get the addition of a character who fills the same function as the one that just got killed off. It’s kinda like, Mike’s dead and gone, but his story function is still getting filled so there’s a weird half measure where he’s still around?
Booster’s already dealing with the baggage of filling the void Mike left because they’re in the space where he stood (quite literally in the case of being Walky’s roommate), and I think it does them a disservice to now start cribbing on one of Mike’s character traits.
Mike had to die and be replaced because he was too stubborn to put up with a redemption arc and would’ve dragged it out for like 50 years of our time
Booster might fill Mike’s role as being blunt, snarky deliverer of hard truths, minus the intentional cruelty and being constantly flat out wrong about people “needing to hear” something, and a level of rudeness sufficiently low and offset by good qualities that it’s not so baffling that they have friends
I don’t think it’s true that Mike was irredeemable, but we’ll never know because he only started acting like a real human being immediately before his death between catching feels for Ethan and his realization that he was hurting Amber. Moreover, with Mike dead, there *should* be a way to feel that loss and I think that’s undermined by Booster replacing him in terms of character function like they’re doing now.
Like, if Booster’s going to start doing Mike things like they’re doing now, then why the heck are they here? Why did Mike die only to be replaced by a character who fulfills the same function?
Mike’s not irredeemable as a person, just within the time scale of the comic. I myself am a recovered teenage edgelord, but it took more than four years to rid myself of my worst habits, and I was never as bad as Mike.
Which Booster isn’t either. They can provide the good, fun things that Mike brought to the story without the cruelty and malice that had people in the comments saying she NEEDED to be told she would become her father. Booster’s levels of jerkitude are low enough to be compatible with them not being a total garbage person. There’s much more room for their bad behavior to be fun, and not their only defining trait
I don’t think the time scale would have been a problem since Ruth started her redemption arc fairly quickly. It’s comic book time, and the pacing is up to the whims of the author. If Mike had to deal with years and years of rejection for being The Actual Worst, well, that’s a story.
But more to the point, I think Booster’s being shortchanged by taking on some of Mike’s traits. The comic doesn’t need Mike because if it did he’d still be alive. It undermines Booster because they’re now a replacement for an established character. It undermines Mike’s death because whatever he’s been brought to the comic is now still there with him dead.
*Dr. Grey voice* Psychoanalyses for EVERYBODY!!
It IS weird how only Joyce’s is completely off!
Y’know, both today’s and yesterday’s installments have made me start to wonder if maybe those people who had guessed a while ago that Booster was actually Mike using a new identity might have actually been right. Mike has both the previous knowledge and the insight to figure all of this out, as well as the willingness to use it this way.
Booster is Mikes twin and Mike hasn’t died.
Mike was Booster’s Wario.
It’s halfway plausible. But Booster’s interaction with Amber feels a bit off in that case.
Amber said, “So you’re Mike’s replacement.” She knows.
looks a little too tall
Platform shoes?
And THAT’S why they call this person Booster Gold.
Omg this is fun. I love this
lol leave nobody unscathed
Oh! Now I get it!
Booster is the embodiment of the comment section reverse-breaking the third wall.
I love Booster now?
I meant personality-wise. I feel like a person who does amateur psycho-analysis on a group of people they just met is…boring? Presumptuous? I have had friends like this, and they are now former friends.
I get that fictional characters are, by their very nature, fiction, but even though some of the characters I love in strip I would find irritating IRL, I feel like Booster is coming across as annoying, both in and out of the strip. And not in the charming way Carla is.
I still don’t understand the Roz hate. Even at her worse she not as much as an asshole as say Mike, Mikayla or Carla are.
Hate is not a limited resource? I LIKE Carla and Malaya, and would possibly even get along with them in real life, but “somebody else is worse” is a really, really dumb reason to not hate someone. That shit shouldn’t be relative
You’ve obviously never been involved in a U.S. election.
The first vote I was eligible to cast was against George W Bush and I’ve voted every year since then. Fuck off with that
“The lesser of two evils” / harm mitigation applies when you have to choose one. You can still hate all the options. Choosing the lesser evil doesn’t magically turn it good or mean you like it. It’s fucking survival
Characters in a comic aren’t even in that situation. Just like the real world you can like or hate as many or as few as you want, and it’s frankly dangerous to yourself and others to simply accept somebody as “okay” exclusively because somebody else you know is shittier
As Rachel herself put it, ‘we can multi-task’.
Rachel was really asking for it, so there’s Roz and Joyce who Booster is being a jerk to. Two people, maybe eight or ten seconds of conversation. If they continue in the same vein I might be concerned, but right now it looks like they could be going somewhere with this.
Eventually this scene’s going to snowball into Booster touring the campus in an elaborately choreographed Broadway style musical number, giving everyone (including bit characters and background extras) their own personalized, general but suspiciously pointed dig.
dangit, definitely should have done that
We can still imagine it.
One interesting thing here too: does Roz know Rachel’s beef? Did she find out when she was trying to get Ruth’s job? (Damn there’s a lot of R names).
Yep, Booster is Mike 2.0
As a former psych major (current therapist), I had to look twice at this and yeah, this is totally what learning psych majors do. You just learned a theory and you’re eager to try it out.
Then you recognize jumping quick to conclusions closes you off to being open to other possibilities.
I had a gut reaction at first kind of squinty eyed and yeah, it’s bad if they’re always treated as accurate. But this definitely reads “excitement at the chance to test what I just learned in a text book.”
That adds up a lot and I hope Booster learns from this before everyone jumps to the conclusion that they’re just an asshole.
Booster, this is why everybody hates students who major in Psychology.
So Boomer inherited Mike’s ability to see through the matrix and perfectly divine the core of people’s issues?
So, Boomer is a dual major in investigative journalism and psychology. This should be interesting.
Anti-Mike vibes intensify. It starting to look like I called it.
I am now confused. I am kind of liking Booster now.
Yeah, if it wasn’t already obvious to everyone, please don’t do what Booster is doing. It’s certainly a very impressive party trick if someone ASKS for it, like Ruth did, and Rachel probably deserves it considering her past behavior… but Joyce has been nothing but nice to Booster, if a little misinformed as she usually is. And while Roz is a little blatantly loud, having to deal with her family being presumably very outspoken about their beliefs (including an older sister Congresswoman) pushes her to rebel loudly in response.
In short, yes, Booster is surprisingly accurate at surface analysis for a Psych 101 student, but doesn’t know about ANY of the context that lead to their individual personalities. And thus, Booster is judging them without ACTUALLY knowing them. Which, of course, makes them a terrible psychologist-in-training, but hopefully they’ll grow out of that.
I actually like that Booster is drawing out everyone to see their flaws and see they’re not as perfect as they’d like to believe.
Okay now you’re being a jerk, Booster.
Well now boosters crossing the line into annoying. But hopefully he’ll come back from it often enough to be likeable overall.
Shit they. Damn it is there a way to edit or delete.
Ok I like Booster now cuz I have waited for so long for someone to put a chink in Rachel’s I know everything about you and am better than you demeanor.