In a world where magical girls and their battles are commonplace, loss has become all too common as well.
Sister Claire
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In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Saint for Rent
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Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
Barbarous
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A crummy wizard and an anxious monster have to get over themselves and bring order to an apartment building full of misfits.
The Golden Boar
Magnolia Porter Siddell
A young woman joins a group of summoners who call forth Guardian Beasts to protect their isolated magical island. Unfortunately, her Guardian Beast is nothing like she'd imagined, and he's about to change her life, and everything she thought she knew about herself...
The Messenger
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In a ruin-abound town cursed with bad luck, Kai and Kalla--a young boy and a fledgling dragonbird spirit--take on a quest in hopes the reward will solve all of their problems.
Heroes of Thantopolis
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A living boy fights to save the City of the Dead.
The Weave
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A young woman pursued by bad luck is witness to the murder of the Fairy Queen of Summer. Can she get to the bottom of this mystery?
Stand Still, Stay Silent
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A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
Freakshow
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A festival of broken people, blood flows in the center ring. Come one and come all, to the greatest show in all of Paris.
Sakana
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Our heroes must navigate a hazardous dating scene, overcome personal anxieties, and wrangle unruly seafood in order to find love, peace of mind, and a paycheck.
Guilded Age
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Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Augustine
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August and her ragtag group are just like everyone else, simply surviving in the treacherous Crater... When they stumble into what may be an artifact of the ancient past, their lives are thrown into a much bigger loop as they trifle with bounty hunters, monsters and gods.
Dumbing of Age
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Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Nerf Now!!
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A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Namesake
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There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
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A troupe of wandering "adventurers" down to their last silver "acquire" a map only to find the real treasure was the fiend they dug up along the way.
Not Drunk Enough
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Logan Ibarra is possibly the unluckiest repairman in the world. A late night job should not have landed him in the middle of a mad scientist's squabble, but he soon finds himself surrounded by monsters and further madness with little tools to get out.
Three Panel Soul
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It's a pretty rigid format but we keep the content loose, you know?
Empowered
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A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Angel's Orchard
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After the events in Demon's Mirror, Gerda has accepted her role as a Demon Hunter, and Cezar has traveled back to the Demon City. Demons have existed alongside humans for millennia, so things begin to return to normal. But an impossibly powerful Relic has been taken by one of the Demon Masters, and a silent war enters its final stages.
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Lysander's aimless and carefree life is turned upside down when he accidentally discovers that the cute boy next door, Simon, is a literal monster
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Heather Vodihn is on a simple mission: find her father. However she becomes entangled with two strangers with mysterious powers being stalked by a group with bizarre demands. Heather must learn to trust her new traveling companions, even if she is untrustworthy herself.
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Darkling Bright
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For a few years I lived in a town where the grid was made out of scrap wire and happy thoughts, we lost power there almost every time there was more than a stiff breeze. A cable modem and a couple LED lights can run for a surprisingly long time off a 1500 watt UPS.
Municipal grids are run so much better than the big-name energy companies up here it’s not even funny. My rate now is 1/3 lower than it was there, and I haven’t lost power once in years.
(Carefully adjusts elbow and knee pads, rings bell to alert pedestrians of her presence, and makes it about fifty feet before stopping dutifully at a crosswalk until the signal changes. She’s still very much within earshot.)
Today is July 19th, 2021. You know what that means! Happy (a word which here means “extremely unhappy and in fact somewhat traumatic”) 18th anniversary of thisIt’s Walky! strip!
1/2c Reader’s Tears
1c (2 sticks) Crack Ships, melted, then cooled
2 tsp Lies
3c Reader’s Frustrations Over Unexplored Story Elements, sifted
1/2c cocoa powder (because of course it’s chocolate)
2 Tbsp Damn You Willis (it’s potent)
Mix all ingredients together (it’s a dump cake, of course), and pour into well-greased cake pans. Bake in the fiery depths of Willis’ imagination for 20 years, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Coat with Slipshine Money glaze (recipe on pg 20). Devour immediately.
I imagine that gets sprinkled on top, like chocolate shavings or sprinkled sea-salt.
Unless it’s drizzled over a slice once plated, just before serving.
Garnish with a nickel, for your mom.
Oh come on, it can’t be THAT bad. I’m guessing that it’s a flourishing land between two nearly endless rivers of 90s toy nostalgia and Transformers media, with the occasional storm of a Christian nightmare if he still has those.
The actual single greatest moment in David Willis’ entire career.
I know that kinda sounds like a dunk because its 18 years old, but I sincerely mean it. One of the most emotionally devastating deaths I’ve ever experienced in a work of fiction, that absolutely perfect build up, that brief tease at hope, god I love it.
Yeah, but I have to hold out for the rain incident being the emotional high point of the Walkyverse. Which is not to say that Dina’s death wasn’t moving. But Joyce being at her lowest point ever and Walky, for once, hitting it out of the park in language starkly poetic, at once comforting and personally honest, but not minimizing anything.
People die, characters die, but perfect moments live forever.
I’m partial to ‘I die because I’m fucking awesome. You die because you’re a shitstain,’ myself, particularly since the sequence around it is so strong. (Among other late Shortpacked contenders. Amber’s last respects to Blaine, ‘you make me not want to run anymore,’ and the last wedding still get me emotional. And I’m genuinely looking forward to have the second kidnapping arc in print to reread it soon.)
It’s Robin to Leslie. I think when she proposed, but I’m not going to check because I don’t want to spend the evening reading through SP again. I swear it’s worse than tvtropes.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure ‘My family are high-ranking mobsters’ is like, Level Eight backstory, minimum. And that’s cutting out like 70% of the worrisome shit to make the shortest, least concerning version of that backstory possible. Jennifer knew him before college, she gets a +1 to backstory knowledge.
First panel, I agree; don’t feel like yesterday’s strip really warranted that. Of course, that just escalates Sal, and I do kind of appreciate Raidah’s line in the last panel.
Calling her mere hostility and sneering ‘tantrums’ when she could have easily stayed silent, since it really had nothing to do with her, but she just couldn’t help herself.
That was about past personal experiences that had nothing to do with Sarah, Dana, Dina, Joyce or Jacob before you settled in with Asher, Carl, and ‘It’s Jennifer Now’ wasn’t it? No other reason to try to have the last word with someone you now know you really don’t want to have to talk to again, is all I’m saying…
Be nice if members of the main cast weren’t always finding reasons to go back for a bad penny when they stumble afoul of her yet again. Sal made herself heard to both relevant parties. The rest is up to those two.
While it required far more people, it only took 3 years for the Manhattan Project to make a *boom*. DyW has demonstrated the ability to build to a dramatic climax over a decade. And yes, I meant ignite. I doubt we are even remotely close to full explosion of the initiator, let alone compression of the plutonium, fission criticality, subsequent hydrogen compression or fusion. But this is all sliding timescale stuff, and it will be fun to see where Willis goes over the next decade, and whether they intend to out do themselves in terms of dramatic climax.
Let us not forget the incredible funding the Manhattan Project had during wartime.
A Uranium bomb only requires compression to start the reaction. A Plutonium bomb, on the other hand, requires an implosion. Here, two hollow semispheres of explosives have to be made to be nigh PERFECTLY symmetrical to ensure that the plutonium core can be made to collapse upon itself and start the reaction. If there is even a LITTLE asymmetry between the two shells whatsoever, fuel will just leak from one side to the other.
Even today, building a plutonium bomb is a miraculous feat of engineering, requiring state of the art metallurgy, pyrotechnics, and synthesis. Any amateur plutonium bomb would almost certainly be a dud.
So yeah, besides that free science lesson there, I’m sticking calling the situation being a toxicity trashcan full of thermite.
If the terminology of an explosion that provides compression, the amount of money that was required, and the degree of engineering is what your focused on, then you’re missing the point of my metaphor.
But to acknowledge yours, I disagree that this is the start of something small. I expect this is the start, slow though it may be, of part of the next large arc. But it’s conjecture since we don’t know the mind of Willis, so I’ll sit back with my bowl of popcorn and enjoy the carnage.
This is just the firework to let everyone know this group will be the worst and will be rolling downhill from here. Positive character development? No, NEGATIVE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT ONLY CLUB.
Yeah, I don’t anticipate Raidah and Jennifer will bring out the best in each other – they’ve both got a pretty high school mentality in play, and Raidah’s ‘I’m so grown up and wise, unlike these freshmen (kid you’re 19, just, no,)’ is clearly a thing Asher and Jennifer picked up on/was similar enough to ‘yeah the past sucked but it’s over, I’m Brand New Jennifer who Beat Therapy Forever now’ to sync well. (While the focus there is definitely on Jennifer because we’ve had more time to see her psyche, Asher may well be similar. It depends on exactly how much he’s lying to himself that he definitely won’t get involved in the mob again, because there’s no way anyone else could figure out he stole from them, it was totally only Blaine! I lean towards him genuinely thinking that sincerely but he could be a lot more worried in private and really good at acting.)
I suspect Raidah and Jennifer are also likely to come into conflict at some point, likely due to Joyce – again, Jennifer did (very minorly) help with the Seduce Jacob plan, though she may not have realized it involved breaking up an existing relationship. Jennifer’s also distanced herself from her old dorm, but I don’t think she’d respond super well to a ‘whose side are you on’ ultimatum.
Either way, Raidah’s DEFINITELY been introduced again so that her plot can move forward again now that we’ve settled in post-timeskip, and reset to more ‘teenagers being disasters to each other’ conflicts rather than Evil Dads and Mobsters for a while. It’s also really interesting that she’s present, having been the victim of a ‘break up the relationship so I can date him’ gambit herself, for Sal’s weirdness that seems to include jealousy. I suspect that’ll matter down the line. Carl mostly looks like set dressing here but who knows, he could get a plot.
Sal had a plan here it seemed to go over to Jennifer and explain all the evil shady shit that Asher was up to because she knows that they’re exactly alike: EVIL!
1. Except Asher has been honest with her.
2. Asher is adjusting quite well.
3. Sal, unlike Asher, isn’t evil.
So this is quite probably her biggest failure ever.
We don’t know if Asher has been completely honest with Jennifer. He has admitted ro a criminal past but we don’t know if that includes the links to the mob, or his role in the kidnapping.
I still don’t know if Jennifer knows Asher’s grandfather is literally a mob don. Asher may have just ambiguously told her he’s rich and influential, so she categorized him with her own father and Clint.
…honestly, considering how condescending Raidah was towards Dina (which is probably the only truly bad thing she’s done, Sarah and Joyce were genuinely in the wrong during the Jacob shipping war), I could totally see her and Becky being enemies.
Harassing Sarah for trying to do her normal schoolwork and getting her roommate who was in a downward spiral the help she needed was pretty rancid too.
We think they’re still in contact, at least. ‘Last I checked’ is vague enough it could have been months before that particular strip, and that was the last time Raidah’s mentioned Dana at all. I think it may be the last mention of her in general but I’m not up for the full tag trawl on Sarah that’d require.
Admittedly late to the discussion but why are we assuming Dana or Raidah’s home is unsafe? Maybe Dana has a some slight hints what with emotional spiral, but Raidah has shown no signs of abuse of any kind. Maybe she just finds her parents annoying like most young adults do.
It’s possible, but the only evidence that it’s not is that one “not according to Dana” line from Raidah. That’s not an awful lot to build this sand castle on, especially given that Raidah thought Dana was getting better in college while she was actually spiraling down.
A couple folks who work with adolescents were also concerned about a few things in Sarah’s flashbacks (the immediate yanking her out of school, Dana never mentioning her dad when she went home for the funeral, etc.) but yeah, nothing concrete yet.
We really don’t have enough information to say, especially since we have no idea how well Raidah and Dana knew each other – were they best friends since childhood, or did they meet in class this semester and Raidah checks her Facebook page every couple months? Biiiiiig difference in how well Raidah would be able to assess Dana’s home life, especially since we know she wasn’t doing super well when Dana was there.
(That doesn’t preclude them being best friends – note how Joyce had no idea Becky’s mom died from the aftereffects of a suicide attempt and how that’s clearly had some lasting complicated feelings on Becky’s part, including covering the trauma when they broke into Becky’s house. Joyce is more socially oblivious than average, but it’s not impossible Dana DID have a really good mask from years of covering up. We genuinely don’t have enough information on her to know anything, including the accuracy of ‘not according to Dana, last I checked’.)
I think persecuting someone for something she has done you don’t agree with like she does with Sarah is not „has done nothing bad“.
And really, if Dana hid her depression and downward spiral from her, why do you suppose she‘d share an unsafe home situation with her?
And what formidable enemies they might be. Becky is, after all:
– Dina’s Girlfiend
– Joyce’s Best Friend
– A PoliSci major who due to plot reasons likely shares classes with someone going for a Law track, even if they’re one year apart.
I’m not her biggest fan after the way she’s treated her roomie. I loved her! Still do but the bullying HAS to go. This, though. I’d unleash the height of Beck’s social engineering skills on Raidah and watch the smiting with popcorn.
Glad to see Raidah continuing to be a piece of shit, which should surprise no one. I know we just had a death but maybe we can convince Willis to speed up her execution.
I mean, if we want to watch the dramatic equivalent of drying paint. I suppose the gang generates enough of their own adventures… but sometimes a little external conflict is nice to shake things up.
That’s actually the reason why I hate the concept of Hell so much.
How ridiculous would it be if we had a human legal system where everything from stealing a piece of fruit to bar fighting to genocide was met with a life sentence?
Why on earth did religion have to come into this? How’s about we keep the theology out of our silly little commentary on how public opinion tends to be judgemental and overly harsh?
The existence of the concept of Hell is a very illustrative historical example of potential conservation when public opinion tends to be judgemental and overly harsh.
And by the way, I meant to tell that specifically to Thag Simmons.
No idea of why this person jumped at your throat, but they messed up first by throwing the idea of exaggeration to a logical extreme into your conversation with Thag.
If: – In the Court of Law, people are innocent until proven guilty. – In the Court of Public Opinion, people are guilty until proven innocent.
And: -In the Court of Public Opinion, crimes are over-exaggerated until they fit the punishment.
It follows that “nobody’s righteous”, with an infinitely growing list of crimes, which would also imply an ever-broader definition of what Crime ™ is – So no innocence can be proven. You’d have to get a special-made place where there’s “infinitely exaggerated punishment to be doled out, forever, to everyone who deserves it” which is the very concept of “Hell”. Plus, y’know, religious abuse being pretty central to this comic. It’s a logical jump :3
I’m not going to tell anyone to go read the bore that’s Kant, or the slightly more entertaining Discipline and Punish, but y’all. As in y’all, Comment’s Section, do yourselves a favor and go watch The Good Place. It’s funny as hell (lol) like a proper Michael Schur story, super heartfelt, and somehow summarizes like 8747 years of Ethical Philosophy into “Empathy: Here’s Why”.
Just Empathy? Or compassion? Empathy feels closer to shipping thoughts and prayers vs compassion and actually taking action. And thanks for the summary W.Lynx. … 8747 years? What is your starting event that you’re counting from?
I feel like the correct sentence would be to lock them all in a storage closet together until they’ve talked it all out and done some necessary self-reflection.
By the time the Janitor unlocks the closet one of them might just be dead, but who knows, it might just work.
So she can hold on to the idea that she’s blameless in everything and the victim of it all without having to watch things fail to play out “as they should” with her life?
That’ll let her off easy…I say, let her see her cowardly illusion of a life to the very end, when she’ll end up all alone with no one left to use as a scapegoat or a distraction.
Raidah, three months ago you were talking about how deeply immature freshmen were (except the one you were dating of course,) you really think these two aren’t about to trip into disasterdom again in twenty minutes?
I kinda hope Raidah finds out at some point that Jennifer did do some minor wingwomaning in the whole Joyce thing (via strategic unbuttoning, so I do mean minor https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/fresh-2/ ) if only because it’d be interesting to see the fallout. Raidah is probably vaguely aware she was in Sarah and Joyce’s friend group – she was at the room party and present at the mall – but I don’t think she’d befriend someone for the sole purpose of payback at another unrelated person, especially since Jennifer’s been distancing herself from her old hall. Raidah’s an asshole, but not THAT duplicitous to our knowledge.
They can’t be that immature. They’re hanging out with her. That’s like an automatic level up in maturity, because we all know Raidah is a paragon of maturity, ight?
Though at least that feels like standard teenager I’m So Mature immaturity and not the Stepfordy vibe of Asher and Jennifer earlier. Seriously that was just WEIRD.
“I’m dangerous” ok whatever you say but don’t you think you’re trying a little bit to hard there Darkwing?
That aside, personally I wouldn’t say Sal is “Losing her rebel status” because of the new activities she has going on in her life as if it means she conforming to some social system.
It’s not like someone else chose her new path in life for her, Unlike how for example Linda chose what major was acceptable for Walky to pursue. No Sal simply has manage to do what most people had hoped to do when they leave their hometown or move out to college. She rediscovered herself and managed to sort out her own shit and she did it on her own terms. Much like how Joyce has done so far.
I’m still not over Jennifer describing roller derby as ‘settling down’ in any way, shape, or form. Like, yes it’s an organized sport, but the way Jennifer was talking about it had a distinct vibe of Linda Walkerton Would Approve of This Decision that I just CANNOT imagine, because roller derby has too much of an edgy counterculture vibe for Linda to get anywhere near it without combusting into flames of outrage.
Also the way she says settling down like they’re all getting married and having their 2.5 kids and house in the suburbs. Seriously, it’s just weird to hear from an 18-year-old character.
it’s The Best i’m loving hearing this from 18yos it is Spot Fucking On. graduated school, making decisions for yourSelf, still a Fucking Buffoon, amazing.
If someone is hanging around scumbags, it could be because they are a scumbag too.
Plus, remember that he took no action when sarah mentioned Dana’s problems with drug use/depression, and did not defend sarah when she was attacked by the riadah clique.
I’ve been arguing about Raidah for like two days now, I could probably go for three, but I should probably realize at some point that I’m doing it to myself.
Carl and Dana broke up after coming back to school. No details given, but according to Sarah that’s when things really got bad with Dana. But it sounds like regardless of details Carl was out of the picture mostly, so I think its premature get negative on Dana’s ex this early.
And Dana was able to mask with her friends – she just couldn’t do it full-time, so Sarah saw a lot more as her roommate. The issue was that they didn’t listen to Sarah as Dana’s roommate or acknowledge that therapy could still be helpful. (Even if she was actually getting better, grief from the death of a parent is one of those things most therapists are going to know how to handle competently. And there were A LOT of potential factors in that death – was it a long cancer treatment, or discovered in an advanced stage and she died soon after? Had she been in remission before? Was it genetic, meaning Dana’s at risk herself? Do they know? All of these are potential trauma vectors.) Doesn’t help that they showed no sympathy towards Sarah’s other concern of ‘Dana’s smoking A LOT of pot in our room and covering for her is affecting my grades and therefore scholarship, and if it gets found I would likely be in serious trouble.’ Since Sarah appears to have been the only one in that friend group whose family wasn’t fairly wealthy – that comment about parents owning law firms from Dana – the scholarship issue was pressing for her in a way I don’t think the others got at all.
Also, between the rich white girl with the recent death in the family and a lawyer daddy and the broke black girl only there on scholarship, who do you think the school would come down harder on if they found pot in their bedroom?
Yeeeeeeep. I didn’t say it explicitly but that is definitely the risk Sarah would be running, and I don’t blame her for not trusting that if it WAS found Dana would immediately, unequivocally take the fall, Sarah had nothing to do with this, all punishment should be on Dana. It would be nice if Dana would have in some AU where it reached that point, but a lot of kids in a similar situation would try and wiggle out of it and blame the roommate. (For instance, see Becky’s ex-roommate.)
Case in point, surgeons who have scrubbed up, with their arms forward and wet hands in the air. We’re used to seeing it, because television, but aesthetically, it does look silly.
It just proves he didn’t get the point. It’s not like Sal tried to say she is never following safety procedures but that she’s an unsafe person to be around, just like Asher is an unsafe person to be around.
Sure, when he’s outdoors with people around. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop and have it revealed that Carl has a basket of human ears in his closet.
Why is her reaction to insult Sal instead of, I dunno… Defend Asher by acknowledging that he used to be a criminal but has grown to be a better person now?
Oh, definitely. You’d think if you have the nerve to pose as a guy’s girlfriend in front of his brother, and even go out to dinner with him, you’d have the courage to say “Jacob, I think I might have a crush on you.”
…Well, maybe. In her shoes, it does feel like she’s risking putting him off. Being in the audience, I think Jacob would probably not let that bother him too much. He’s a checklist sort of person, and probably imagines it’s easy to compartmentalize these things. …I’m not sure if he would have ever realized he had a crush on her, though. He might have, since he had a habit of unconsciously flirting with her. But it can be hard to notice signs in your own behavior, especially when you’re predisposed to think that your interests lie elsewhere. Would he have broken up with Raidah and professed his love for Joyce? Or, if he realized his feelings, would he distance himself from Joyce and try to prioritize time with Raidah?
I guess Joyce did ultimately set him off on a path of questioning his internal suppositions, and distinguishing between “what I want” and “what I want to want”. But it definitely burned all bridges with him, so while it turned out good for Jacob’s development, it was a bit of a suicide gambit (if you’ll pardon the term — I couldn’t think of a less triggering descriptor).
Well, her tactic was the kind of thing that does lead to breakups or cheating a lot of the time. It’s probably far more effective than just telling someone.
You get under their defenses by making it all seem innocent and start building the emotional romantic attachment and then one day they turn around and realize they’ve got a massive crush that seems to have come out of nowhere.
I like the writing here cos my take is Sal is being a big Dweebus trying to like, drop hints and be ominous, but it doesn’t work because Jennifer knows (or at least thinks she does), and failing to land a Charisma check is The Worst so Sal gets more het up, BUT THEN Raidah says something Also Dumb and We Like Sal so Fuck You Raidah and fuck you Extra cos this interaction is going poorly for Our Sal. Asher and Jennifer feel generally positively toward Sal so their reaction has landed on confusion which also is not a success on Sal’s charisma rolls.
Sal, you can both be kickass and a rebel and a good person. You’ve always been good, no matter what you’ve been told. The burning rage is because you have a strong sense of justice, big enough to include yourself in it… Most times. Not here, though.
Raidah is as hateable as ever, pushing and pushing until of course this new person snaps, which allows her to go “oh how uncouth” from her high horse, just as planned (Was I the only one who thought the “choir” comment was a racist microaggression?) And Carl achieved Huge Asshole status with a single comment, which is impressive. Legit wanna throw this whole group into a sinkhole. Nothing of value would be lost.
The whole thing reeks even more because Sal’s clearly been struggling with suddenly having friends and activities she likes and somewhat of a future, all things she felt most undeserving off for a long time thanks to Linda Walkerton. The “you mean I’m not truly an unloveable accident waiting to happen?” instinct is so hard to overcome, the Mean Girls clique might have pushed Sal to do something reckless just to prove she’s… Still an unlovable accident waiting to happen, which is familiar territory and therefore less scary.
Hmmmm…. I took it that Sal joining the “choir” was only mentioned as support for the group’s toxic condescension about how she was “finally growing up” (*throws up in mouth a little*).
How exactly would “choir” be a racist micro-aggression?
I read choir as aggressive, as it’s often seen as something very boring and established. Something someone does who has settled down into a routine life.
Don’t quite see how racism could come in there, but might be missing cultural nuance?
I’m not an expert, but I think it’s because she’s black. In a lot of places in the USA, black people being in choir (especially gospel choir) is A Thing. Not saying it Has To Be that, of course, but I also kinda got that reading.
I first saw it indeed intended as a “oh, so you’re in a choir? how quaint and routinary, props on that” barb. But then someone else started explaining what the difference between “choir” and “ensemble” was (the former word having a religious connotation), and it started sounding like “and you totally sing gospel there, right?” as well.
This might be in my head, which is why I was asking if anyone else saw it. There’s a storied thing about Sal getting racial microaggresion (and actual aggression) from others, and I think I remember Raidah being a sorta-secular Muslim which would mean… Middle-Eastern descent? Because she doesn’t cover her hair in her day-to-day. Though it could also be that Raidah is a black Muslim, and the comment is only classist instead (“oh, so you’ve reformed from crime and found Christianity? this certainly confirms Certain Biases!”)
Sorry ^^;; I’m not from the USA, and while I do my best to stay on top of the cultural stuff (to better pick at media), sometimes I’m left grasping at straws.
I think Raidah is smart enough, and also enough of a nasty snob, to sharpen a dart that way. Sal’s accent might already prompt a classist smirk ^^;; So it’s good to know I’m not alone here, thank you!
Don’t sweat it; I’m from the US, and I can tell you that, at least I’m my experience, trying to stay on cultural stuff these days is like trying to put your finger on a ball of mercury. I guess it might just be because I don’t use social media, though.
Ahaha, honestly? You’re wiser than most. And also, that’s an amazing metaphor on both the toxicity of the goal, how hard is to attain it, and what accumulative exposure means |DD
Thank you. And must I say, I highly admire your insights as well!
Keeping with the themes of this comic, I reckon that the dysphoria, depression and other damage caused by peoples’ practical worship of social media these days is eerily similar in nature to that which is caused by religious worship.
According to philosopher Ludwig Fuerbach, people create gods in their own image from an amalgamation of our greatest virtues, and then cling to these gods and invented religions, preferring these “dreams” to the real world. With this process, people become alienated from themselves through an unfavorable comparison of themselves to a god they forgot THEY created. Sound familiar?
We already have a whole world history to demonstrate the damage that can result from magical thinking. The implications of an empirically and anecdotally damaging drug that’s smart enough to learn how to increase our habit, I do not even want to imagine. At least, not for now.
Ok, then it’s partly a cultural thing. In Germany, choir is a group of people singing together, no Christianity attached to half to most of them. They can quite differ in skill and themes, 10 years ago, I knew more than ten lesbian/queer choirs in Berlin, and I didn’t know about all of them, but anything calling itself an ensemble is made up of a handful of people who all have soloist skills.
I’m willing to give Raidah and Carl a bit of a pass, because if they don’t have the very specific information necessary here (ie, Asher’s grandpa isn’t just rich and powerful, he’s a mob boss, and if Asher’s at all smart he’s not going to drop that information casually – especially since I’m pretty sure at least one of their fathers owns a law firm and we have no idea what area of practice,) Sal does in fact come off as needlessly abrasive last strip.
Of course, that’s after Jennifer and Asher’s introduction of Sal talked over her, framed choices she may not have actually made as ‘growing up,’ being hypocritical in the process, (because while we don’t know why Sal doesn’t have her motorcycle, the fact that she doesn’t want to talk about it implies it’s not just garaged for the winter, and the line’s rich either way coming from someone who’s riding his motorcycle in the winter himself,) and generally talked about her like Linda showing off her Finally Respectable Daughter would. And Jennifer would know that would’ve put Sal on the defensive if she realized that’s what it sounded like to us, and thus likely also to Sal. There were some weird vibes to that that aren’t all on Sal knowing Asher’s shady and Sal also, TOTALLY UNRELATEDLY, thinking Asher’s hot. Seriously, can Sal’s siblings stop introducing her with ‘and she has a criminal past!’?
Good job growing up Jennifer, you picked Raidah! A beacon of positive character choices for the rest of us to aspire to. Look at her! Look at how frequently she references her own maturity!
This is what grownups do, as everyone knows. Constantly whinge about their own extreme, all-encompassing maturity.
Saying Raidah isn’t a complete knob after several years of every single on-panel appearance consisting of her being a knob, well that would just be silly.
If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say she stands in front of a mirror blowing herself and chanting “I’m a grown-up now, I’m so mature, I wear big girl pants” over and over.
I can see Raidah being on a straight track to becoming a mob lawyer who believes it’s actually ethical to cook the books and/or cover up some murders for her buddies since she likes them and doesn’t like the do-goody types who interfere with their business.
But, I’d really honestly like to see her developed into a sympathetic human character more.
The purpose of passive-aggression is to insult someone to their face while hiding behind plausible-deniability in the event that target pushes back. It’s only use-case is to lie about the intent behind one’s words rather than owning up to the truth of one’s intentions. So, yes. Cowards. Every one. Every time.
It is also otherwise used to attempt to hint at something bothering you instead of just outright telling someone when something is bothering you and tends to escalate things into much larger problems by attempting to avoid directly acknowledging them.
Sniping at someone instead of being direct that when they do X, it bothers you or when they leave Y to you all the time, it drives you up the wall, does not in fact prevent problems. It just leads to more anger if they don’t understand or because you are sniping at them. So you’re not wrong that it kind of is cowardly as it usually comes from avoidance of actual confrontation or communication.
I feel like this interaction would reflect pretty poorly on Sal, except for, you know, ALLL the context we have on the rest of the folks in this conversation
But but but Sal did something bad too, which makes these folks absolute saints! I mean sure, Asher definitely helped get two people killed, Billifer wrapped a car around a tree, Raidah has continuously harassed Sarah for months, and Carl has a skin collection, but Sal knocked over some shelves and held a knife to a kid’s throat, so their transgressions may as well be hopscotch.
I would also like to point out that Raidah’s biggest consequence has been Sarah punching her one time, Asher keeps getting away with stuff, and Carl still haunts the campus to this very day. Jennifer is a little more complicated. Sal, on the other hand, has a permanent scar and loss of motor function as an immediate consequence and as a long-term consequence, was literally sent away from her whole life for half a decade, is constantly reminded of what she did, and has even made a sort of friendship with the people affected. She’s the one who’s grown and learned and changed the most from her shitty behavior, but she’s the one getting talked around and condescended at here, entirely by people who haven’t outwardly learned jack shit and who pretty much keep doing the thing even when people are outright demanding they stop doing the thing.
All the little shitbird had to do was exercise some restraint and not pull a fire alarm. That’s all it would have taken for the whole goshdamn plan to fall through the floor. Nobody goes outside, nobody gets swiped, nobody gets killed in a fit of pique. All he did was let the robber into the elevator, it’s not like he shot Uncle Ben himself.
Asher’s options for not getting killed by the mob at some point pretty much consist of ‘go to the feds, get witness protection (likely leaving Indiana forever in the process, DEFINITELY leaving everything and everyone from your old life forever,)’ ‘rejoin the mob, you can never leave, and beg Gramps’s forgiveness,’ and ‘transfer the fuck out of here to somewhere with no presence of any syndicate linked to your family at all, stay there forever.’ Not great options, but I am wondering why he didn’t at least try and leave the state. My guess is ‘doesn’t want to cut contact with all family members and probably also friends permanently,’ and he figures moving to Australia would be taken as an admission of guilt. Maybe also a willingness to leave his options open if the going straight thing doesn’t prove to be working out… like he did with Lester once Blaine showed up.
Unfortunately, the rules of drama guarantee that at some point, there’s gonna be another mobster knocking at his door.
Sal is desperately trying to said to Asher that she and he are perfect for each other… pretty awkward! Everyone is watching her in disbelief. Go Sal! Run away from them! You are better than this.
Yes, nothing makes you horny like categorical betrayal from a mobster’s son. I’m genuinely confused what you’re referencing. Sal’s a pretty straight shooter.
I did a word-search on the inciting page earlier, and there are about 75 separate instances. Granted, at least a dozen were from people realising what happened and having a bit of fun with it.
It became a filter due to overusage towards Roz I think. One of the female characters. It is kind of a community thing that once you are here long enough, you start typing it as bongo in the first place and you stop remembering it is even a filter because it is normal here.
Yeah it was a strip where Roz lashed out at Joyce after Becky ran away to the college and Joyce was suddenly hit by what her entire culture does to Queer folks, so Roz got in her face that Joyce had been a direct participant.
Then the strip afterwards Leslie chastises her and Roz goes “so Joyce just gets to talk over gay people her whole life?!” and then Leslie tells her that is what Roz is doing right this second.
Can’t remember… Did Carl show up in Sarah’s memories as one of her early friends who ostracized her for turning in her junkie roommate? Or is Carl a brand new piece of toilet paper for the butthole that is Raidah?
Dana’s Ex who clearly sided with Raidah’s ‘Dana had no problems!’ Song and dance despite likely having a front-row seat for at least some spiraling and red flags, even.
Literally every time we see Raidah, she’s involved in some sort of patting herself on the back for her maturity and I know she’s fictional but I hope that in her thirties she looks back at her 19-year-old self and cringes so very very hard.
I feel like given what happened just a few months to Sal and Jennifer, which was at least somewhat news, even if the details didn’t get out, I don’t really see Sal as coming off unhinged, maybe just unfriendly and cryptic. She wasn’t shouting until Raidah escalated things by calling what Sal was doing a ‘tantrum’.
Well I’m really late to the game on this one since I was away from a computer or device with internet access, but it’s never too late to mention that even in a strip where he has no lines I still don’t trust Asher…That is all.
Actually that’s not all, I find it strange Raidah’s getting hate here. I don’t like her as I’ve previously mentioned but she appears to be acting pretty neutral here. Sal’s actually coming off as kind of rather unlikeable in comparison.
Raidah hasn’t lost her holier-than-thou attitude and is being condescending about the fact that within let’s say 5 minutes of her friend group meeting someone new they already pissed them off. Then again, that requires the self-awareness to realize that her friend group was being insufferable in the first place, which I don’t think Raidah has.
If Raidah did recognize that her friends were being insufferable, she just decided to throw more oil on the fire by telling Sal she was throwing a ‘tantrum,’ which is just all sorts of a social no-no in arguments. She wasn’t trying to fix things or make Sal reconsider. She intentionally went to low-brow to piss Sal off more. And when it worked, Raidah acted like Sal was the problem despite the introduction being sabotaged the second Jennifer opened her mouth.
I wish Raidah was acting neutral here, but she’s being antagonistic and bringing out the worst in herself.
She is not being neutral, she is being antagonistic and condescending, even if she might genuinely think she is trying to deescalate from her expression, her words absolutely are fighting words because talking down to someone as if they are less mature than you for not being gleefully happy for the most fakey couple around tends to make people angry.
The previous strip does not at all warrant the lead in on this strip that Raidah has to write off Sal as having tantrums. If Sal was the one that barely knew them, it would be more fair for Raidah to try to write this off as unwarranted and for Sal to need to chill. But that is not the case. Sal has known Jennifer and Asher for years. Raidah has no way of knowing if Sal’s warning is warranted on this literal first meeting. And therefore should have kept out of it.
Someone in the last couple days pointed out the strip where then-Billie was trying to keep Sal’s mom from bullying Amber into dropping out. And it was revealed Blaine was dead to then-Billie, Walky, and Sal.
I wonder if Sal put together enough dots to realize Asher was the reason Blaine died, and that’s why she’s insisting Asher is dangerous?
I really want Sal to be in the room when Asher confesses that he’s the reason all her friends got kidnapped.
A laugh and to cover his own ass. Not a great look either way you slice it, especially given Sal doesn’t like snitches.
But it really does seem likely that at some point – maybe in the timeskip, maybe onscreen – AmbG and Sal are going to put the pieces together that AmbG’s mob stooge dad worked for the same particular mob that Sal’s childhood It’s Complicated was born into, is trying to get away from, and stole tuition money from to do so. From there, they might start wondering, especially because Blaine definitely needed people who could get on campus and into the building without being noticed (though he seemed to have a few of them in the Nameless Mooks wanting vengeance on AG, so I don’t think they’d suspect another was needed for the fire alarm specifically straight away.) I don’t think we’re getting that plot thread unraveled any time soon, but oh do I look forward to it when it shows up.
I think Asher explained it as “I thought it was funny” (and then following it up with “I didn’t say it was funny”) but I can’t remember if he said he did it to cover himself too.
Yeah that’s a lot more sensible than just “for the lulz.” That would make him come off like an unhinged maniac instead of a somewhat sensible crooked kid.
What tantrum, Raidah? The last couple strips Sal’s been acting fairly neutral. Yeah, *after* she’s accused of having a tantrum, she kinda throws a tantrum, but last couple strips haven’t been anything that I would consider a tantrum. She wasn’t yelling and screaming and throwing shit around, she was being resistant to how she was being talked about and saying that Asher wasn’t a person you were safe around. Maybe not particularly mature from Raidah’s point of view, but not a tantrum.
Hopefully if she lapses into her excessive drinking soon enough, she may just destroy whatever brain cells are necessary for her to be completely swallowed. It’s better she be an honest, drunken mess than a broken wheel with a new paint job.
No, I went back and read from the moment this group came across Sal. The first shot Jeniffer fires: they used to knock off stores together. Asher’s introduction was actually good
But then he goes Sal found some nerd friends, etc. That’s kinda irritating. Third, it’s heartwarming to see Sal is looking out for Jeniffer. Fourth, Raidah obviously doesn’t know the backstory, she’s so condescending.
I say, this thing does a rather fantastic job at demonstrating the fact that lawfulness and moral standing are NOT related whatsoever.
However, this chart seems to suffer from a similar problem to the tier lists in Tier Zoo; there seems to be some kind of unspoken “need” to make the characters evenly distributed throughout the quadrants here, without reckoning that some characters are better off sharing the same quadrant so that we could better predict (instead of project) character outcomes (as well as we could ever do that with two independent variables).
If this only intends to be funny, however, it does a pretty nice job. But I you could take this kind of thing SO much further.
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thanks for that, Carl
[inb4 stupid storm power outage kilt teh internet all yesterday]
For a few years I lived in a town where the grid was made out of scrap wire and happy thoughts, we lost power there almost every time there was more than a stiff breeze. A cable modem and a couple LED lights can run for a surprisingly long time off a 1500 watt UPS.
Municipal grids are run so much better than the big-name energy companies up here it’s not even funny. My rate now is 1/3 lower than it was there, and I haven’t lost power once in years.
*power goes out* Whoop, looks like we just lost the happy thoughts…
Carl, I hate everything you stand for, but in this particular moment you are beautiful.
“Ah ain’t safe neither!”
(Carefully adjusts elbow and knee pads, rings bell to alert pedestrians of her presence, and makes it about fifty feet before stopping dutifully at a crosswalk until the signal changes. She’s still very much within earshot.)
kek
Today is July 19th, 2021. You know what that means! Happy (a word which here means “extremely unhappy and in fact somewhat traumatic”) 18th anniversary of this It’s Walky! strip!
(runs to hide behind rock)
this was the worst i could do.
Congratulations on being old enough to vote, painful Walkyverse death?
Also, *cursing*.
I really didn’t need to be reminded of that….
*drinks the rest of hard lemonade*
Hey! That was Mike’s lemonade!…. Oh wait. Mike’s dead.
That strip is now old enough to vote.
And August 22nd will be this series’ 4,000th installment.
Wonder how Willis will celebrate…..
No doubt with a Webcomic Misery Cake!
Webcomic Misery Cake
Feeds: 1 Hungry artist
Prep Time: ~20 years
Ingredients:
1/2c Reader’s Tears
1c (2 sticks) Crack Ships, melted, then cooled
2 tsp Lies
3c Reader’s Frustrations Over Unexplored Story Elements, sifted
1/2c cocoa powder (because of course it’s chocolate)
2 Tbsp Damn You Willis (it’s potent)
Mix all ingredients together (it’s a dump cake, of course), and pour into well-greased cake pans. Bake in the fiery depths of Willis’ imagination for 20 years, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Coat with Slipshine Money glaze (recipe on pg 20). Devour immediately.
Oh! Almost forgot:
1c Mike’s Dead, Get Over It (optional)
I imagine that gets sprinkled on top, like chocolate shavings or sprinkled sea-salt.
Unless it’s drizzled over a slice once plated, just before serving.
Garnish with a nickel, for your mom.
“……fiery depths of Willis’s imagination”?
Oh come on, it can’t be THAT bad. I’m guessing that it’s a flourishing land between two nearly endless rivers of 90s toy nostalgia and Transformers media, with the occasional storm of a Christian nightmare if he still has those.
But I dunno. Your guess is as good as mine!
The actual single greatest moment in David Willis’ entire career.
I know that kinda sounds like a dunk because its 18 years old, but I sincerely mean it. One of the most emotionally devastating deaths I’ve ever experienced in a work of fiction, that absolutely perfect build up, that brief tease at hope, god I love it.
Yeah, but I have to hold out for the rain incident being the emotional high point of the Walkyverse. Which is not to say that Dina’s death wasn’t moving. But Joyce being at her lowest point ever and Walky, for once, hitting it out of the park in language starkly poetic, at once comforting and personally honest, but not minimizing anything.
People die, characters die, but perfect moments live forever.
I’m partial to ‘I die because I’m fucking awesome. You die because you’re a shitstain,’ myself, particularly since the sequence around it is so strong. (Among other late Shortpacked contenders. Amber’s last respects to Blaine, ‘you make me not want to run anymore,’ and the last wedding still get me emotional. And I’m genuinely looking forward to have the second kidnapping arc in print to reread it soon.)
Oh god that quote rings a bell but it’s been a while. When was it said? ;A; My memory isn’t the best.
It’s Robin to Leslie. I think when she proposed, but I’m not going to check because I don’t want to spend the evening reading through SP again. I swear it’s worse than tvtropes.
That it is! The first one is Leslie to someone I didn’t want to get into because it’s a massive dramatic spoiler for Shortpacked, as well.
I miss Shortpacked Leslie and Robin sometimes.
Won’t be 19th for two more hours
Yeah, we only care about one (1) timezone here, and for some reason it’s not the timezone of the comic!
The only timezone I even keep track of these days is PDT, because that’s the one that handles shutting down FF14 for maintenance.
This seems healthy
Look, Sal, WE know Asher is shady at best, but yeah, you look kinda unhinged to someone not in the know.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure ‘My family are high-ranking mobsters’ is like, Level Eight backstory, minimum. And that’s cutting out like 70% of the worrisome shit to make the shortest, least concerning version of that backstory possible. Jennifer knew him before college, she gets a +1 to backstory knowledge.
But we also know that group is fuckin’ insufferable. Seriously Raidah, shut up.
basically, yeah, but I also don’t get the impression she’s torn up about not making a good first impression on Carl and Raidah.
Ergh, Raidah is so condescending.
First panel, I agree; don’t feel like yesterday’s strip really warranted that. Of course, that just escalates Sal, and I do kind of appreciate Raidah’s line in the last panel.
That appears to be the guy on the right, Not Raidah
…That’s not the line I mean. Raidah also speaks in the last panel.
It is a good line.
Calling her mere hostility and sneering ‘tantrums’ when she could have easily stayed silent, since it really had nothing to do with her, but she just couldn’t help herself.
That was about past personal experiences that had nothing to do with Sarah, Dana, Dina, Joyce or Jacob before you settled in with Asher, Carl, and ‘It’s Jennifer Now’ wasn’t it? No other reason to try to have the last word with someone you now know you really don’t want to have to talk to again, is all I’m saying…
She’s insuferrable.
“Look how immature you are compared to us!”
Yeah, keep on being condescending there, Raidah. It must be lonely up there on your high horse.
Horse so high they named it Ketamine.
The best part is, Ketamine was originally designed to be “safe” for human consumption.
Lmao Raidah you are 19 years old
And given some of her past behaviour I suspect Raidah behaves a lot like the cliche “queen bee” so beloved of teen dramas.
Save sooo much more controlling.
Be nice if members of the main cast weren’t always finding reasons to go back for a bad penny when they stumble afoul of her yet again. Sal made herself heard to both relevant parties. The rest is up to those two.
How long before the inevitable Queen Bee vs Alpha Bongo Cheerleader headbutting escalates into a full argument?
I give it two weeks, in-universe.
So like two years but we’ll be waiting with bated breath anyway?
They are both supremely confident the other is a sidekick. They’re so vain, they’re sure the comic is about them.
Right? I’ve been cringing a little from Raidah and Billie these last couple of days
So I take it this was the heat of the “toxicity bomb”? Kind of mundane, if you ask me….
I don’t think the innitiator has ignited to compress the plutonium yet.
Don’t you mean implode?
And by the way, in the real world, building a plutonium bomb is actually one of the hardest engineering tasks in the world.
The situation here is at the very most more like a toxicity C4 if you ask me.
I don’t think it has detonated yet, tbh. This feels like foreshadowing of something much worse.
Hmmm… maybe a better comparison would be a toxicity trashcan full of thermite.
While it required far more people, it only took 3 years for the Manhattan Project to make a *boom*. DyW has demonstrated the ability to build to a dramatic climax over a decade. And yes, I meant ignite. I doubt we are even remotely close to full explosion of the initiator, let alone compression of the plutonium, fission criticality, subsequent hydrogen compression or fusion. But this is all sliding timescale stuff, and it will be fun to see where Willis goes over the next decade, and whether they intend to out do themselves in terms of dramatic climax.
Let us not forget the incredible funding the Manhattan Project had during wartime.
A Uranium bomb only requires compression to start the reaction. A Plutonium bomb, on the other hand, requires an implosion. Here, two hollow semispheres of explosives have to be made to be nigh PERFECTLY symmetrical to ensure that the plutonium core can be made to collapse upon itself and start the reaction. If there is even a LITTLE asymmetry between the two shells whatsoever, fuel will just leak from one side to the other.
Even today, building a plutonium bomb is a miraculous feat of engineering, requiring state of the art metallurgy, pyrotechnics, and synthesis. Any amateur plutonium bomb would almost certainly be a dud.
So yeah, besides that free science lesson there, I’m sticking calling the situation being a toxicity trashcan full of thermite.
If the terminology of an explosion that provides compression, the amount of money that was required, and the degree of engineering is what your focused on, then you’re missing the point of my metaphor.
But to acknowledge yours, I disagree that this is the start of something small. I expect this is the start, slow though it may be, of part of the next large arc. But it’s conjecture since we don’t know the mind of Willis, so I’ll sit back with my bowl of popcorn and enjoy the carnage.
This is just the firework to let everyone know this group will be the worst and will be rolling downhill from here. Positive character development? No, NEGATIVE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT ONLY CLUB.
Yeah, I don’t anticipate Raidah and Jennifer will bring out the best in each other – they’ve both got a pretty high school mentality in play, and Raidah’s ‘I’m so grown up and wise, unlike these freshmen (kid you’re 19, just, no,)’ is clearly a thing Asher and Jennifer picked up on/was similar enough to ‘yeah the past sucked but it’s over, I’m Brand New Jennifer who Beat Therapy Forever now’ to sync well. (While the focus there is definitely on Jennifer because we’ve had more time to see her psyche, Asher may well be similar. It depends on exactly how much he’s lying to himself that he definitely won’t get involved in the mob again, because there’s no way anyone else could figure out he stole from them, it was totally only Blaine! I lean towards him genuinely thinking that sincerely but he could be a lot more worried in private and really good at acting.)
I suspect Raidah and Jennifer are also likely to come into conflict at some point, likely due to Joyce – again, Jennifer did (very minorly) help with the Seduce Jacob plan, though she may not have realized it involved breaking up an existing relationship. Jennifer’s also distanced herself from her old dorm, but I don’t think she’d respond super well to a ‘whose side are you on’ ultimatum.
Either way, Raidah’s DEFINITELY been introduced again so that her plot can move forward again now that we’ve settled in post-timeskip, and reset to more ‘teenagers being disasters to each other’ conflicts rather than Evil Dads and Mobsters for a while. It’s also really interesting that she’s present, having been the victim of a ‘break up the relationship so I can date him’ gambit herself, for Sal’s weirdness that seems to include jealousy. I suspect that’ll matter down the line. Carl mostly looks like set dressing here but who knows, he could get a plot.
Sal had a plan here it seemed to go over to Jennifer and explain all the evil shady shit that Asher was up to because she knows that they’re exactly alike: EVIL!
1. Except Asher has been honest with her.
2. Asher is adjusting quite well.
3. Sal, unlike Asher, isn’t evil.
So this is quite probably her biggest failure ever.
We don’t know if Asher has been completely honest with Jennifer. He has admitted ro a criminal past but we don’t know if that includes the links to the mob, or his role in the kidnapping.
I still don’t know if Jennifer knows Asher’s grandfather is literally a mob don. Asher may have just ambiguously told her he’s rich and influential, so she categorized him with her own father and Clint.
Jennifer know Asher since childhood and children talk about this. So it’s really probable she knows everything.
Somehow I don’t think mob boss kids are quite so open as you think.
I seriously doubt Asher confessed to his involvement in getting a bunch of Jennifer’s friends kidnapped and Amber’s dad killed.
Little does Sal know that Raidah is actually the one they have to worry about.
Little does Raidah know that Becky is the one she has to worry about.
Little does Becky know that it was Agatha All Along!
…Just kidding, Agatha is currently dancing with glee because the batteries in the smoke detectors just got changed.
…honestly, considering how condescending Raidah was towards Dina (which is probably the only truly bad thing she’s done, Sarah and Joyce were genuinely in the wrong during the Jacob shipping war), I could totally see her and Becky being enemies.
Harassing Sarah for trying to do her normal schoolwork and getting her roommate who was in a downward spiral the help she needed was pretty rancid too.
Raidah is still in contact with Dana. Sarah isn’t.
I’d note the possibility of this being a situation where Dana’s home is not safe
We think they’re still in contact, at least. ‘Last I checked’ is vague enough it could have been months before that particular strip, and that was the last time Raidah’s mentioned Dana at all. I think it may be the last mention of her in general but I’m not up for the full tag trawl on Sarah that’d require.
Where as Raidah’s home was never safe to begin with, as I think she gets it from her family.
I mean, there is an alt text during Freshman Family Weekend about how Raidah was “so glad” she doesn’t have her parents show up this time.
Admittedly late to the discussion but why are we assuming Dana or Raidah’s home is unsafe? Maybe Dana has a some slight hints what with emotional spiral, but Raidah has shown no signs of abuse of any kind. Maybe she just finds her parents annoying like most young adults do.
Because we have to find some reason why nothing is Raidah’s fault.
Interpretations of the text are only good I’d they’re mine.
I thought that was Sarah? I don’t remember Raidah even appearing during Freshman Family Weekend.
It’s possible, but the only evidence that it’s not is that one “not according to Dana” line from Raidah. That’s not an awful lot to build this sand castle on, especially given that Raidah thought Dana was getting better in college while she was actually spiraling down.
A couple folks who work with adolescents were also concerned about a few things in Sarah’s flashbacks (the immediate yanking her out of school, Dana never mentioning her dad when she went home for the funeral, etc.) but yeah, nothing concrete yet.
We really don’t have enough information to say, especially since we have no idea how well Raidah and Dana knew each other – were they best friends since childhood, or did they meet in class this semester and Raidah checks her Facebook page every couple months? Biiiiiig difference in how well Raidah would be able to assess Dana’s home life, especially since we know she wasn’t doing super well when Dana was there.
(That doesn’t preclude them being best friends – note how Joyce had no idea Becky’s mom died from the aftereffects of a suicide attempt and how that’s clearly had some lasting complicated feelings on Becky’s part, including covering the trauma when they broke into Becky’s house. Joyce is more socially oblivious than average, but it’s not impossible Dana DID have a really good mask from years of covering up. We genuinely don’t have enough information on her to know anything, including the accuracy of ‘not according to Dana, last I checked’.)
I think persecuting someone for something she has done you don’t agree with like she does with Sarah is not „has done nothing bad“.
And really, if Dana hid her depression and downward spiral from her, why do you suppose she‘d share an unsafe home situation with her?
And what formidable enemies they might be. Becky is, after all:
– Dina’s Girlfiend
– Joyce’s Best Friend
– A PoliSci major who due to plot reasons likely shares classes with someone going for a Law track, even if they’re one year apart.
I’m not her biggest fan after the way she’s treated her roomie. I loved her! Still do but the bullying HAS to go. This, though. I’d unleash the height of Beck’s social engineering skills on Raidah and watch the smiting with popcorn.
Yeah yeah Carl gets a line, but what about Carld that was tagged a few days ago??
https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/carld/
#neverforget
Carld is clearly an alternate universe version of Carl and they swapped places with each other for a brief moment before swapping back.
are you sure it’s not an alternate universe version of Carla?
Carla Carlb Carlc Carld
“No bloody A, B, C or D.”
Glad to see Raidah continuing to be a piece of shit, which should surprise no one. I know we just had a death but maybe we can convince Willis to speed up her execution.
Just imagine what our lives could be without her.
If we are making a list of characters to get rid of I think Mary is at the top also maybe just transfer Radiah and Mary out no need to kill anyone.
Hm, I’d kind of like to sic Raidah on Mary. I think she’d have a lot to work with.
Well if we get Raidah and Mary out then we should drop Malaya too, that would make for a much more peaceful comic.
I mean, if we want to watch the dramatic equivalent of drying paint. I suppose the gang generates enough of their own adventures… but sometimes a little external conflict is nice to shake things up.
I guess being an unpleasant bongo is a capital offense now
In the Court of Law, people are innocent until proven guilty.
In the Court of Public Opinion, people are guilty until proven innocent.
I mean she’s guilty, but let the punishment fit the crime, y’know?
In the Court of Public Opinion, crimes are over-exaggerated until they fit the punishment.
Or excused and whitewashed away
That’s actually the reason why I hate the concept of Hell so much.
How ridiculous would it be if we had a human legal system where everything from stealing a piece of fruit to bar fighting to genocide was met with a life sentence?
Why on earth did religion have to come into this? How’s about we keep the theology out of our silly little commentary on how public opinion tends to be judgemental and overly harsh?
The existence of the concept of Hell is a very illustrative historical example of potential conservation when public opinion tends to be judgemental and overly harsh.
And by the way, I meant to tell that specifically to Thag Simmons.
*potential consequences
No idea of why this person jumped at your throat, but they messed up first by throwing the idea of exaggeration to a logical extreme into your conversation with Thag.
If:
– In the Court of Law, people are innocent until proven guilty.
– In the Court of Public Opinion, people are guilty until proven innocent.
And:
-In the Court of Public Opinion, crimes are over-exaggerated until they fit the punishment.
It follows that “nobody’s righteous”, with an infinitely growing list of crimes, which would also imply an ever-broader definition of what Crime ™ is – So no innocence can be proven. You’d have to get a special-made place where there’s “infinitely exaggerated punishment to be doled out, forever, to everyone who deserves it” which is the very concept of “Hell”. Plus, y’know, religious abuse being pretty central to this comic. It’s a logical jump :3
I’m not going to tell anyone to go read the bore that’s Kant, or the slightly more entertaining Discipline and Punish, but y’all. As in y’all, Comment’s Section, do yourselves a favor and go watch The Good Place. It’s funny as hell (lol) like a proper Michael Schur story, super heartfelt, and somehow summarizes like 8747 years of Ethical Philosophy into “Empathy: Here’s Why”.
Just Empathy? Or compassion? Empathy feels closer to shipping thoughts and prayers vs compassion and actually taking action. And thanks for the summary W.Lynx. … 8747 years? What is your starting event that you’re counting from?
I feel like the correct sentence would be to lock them all in a storage closet together until they’ve talked it all out and done some necessary self-reflection.
By the time the Janitor unlocks the closet one of them might just be dead, but who knows, it might just work.
It’s fiction, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This whole party is pretty shitty so far… I fear what Carl might be like.
Carld is really nice, he does knitting and babysit’s his cousins on the weekends.
That doesn’t count, for all we know he could be knitting his cousins.
So she can hold on to the idea that she’s blameless in everything and the victim of it all without having to watch things fail to play out “as they should” with her life?
That’ll let her off easy…I say, let her see her cowardly illusion of a life to the very end, when she’ll end up all alone with no one left to use as a scapegoat or a distraction.
Raidah, three months ago you were talking about how deeply immature freshmen were (except the one you were dating of course,) you really think these two aren’t about to trip into disasterdom again in twenty minutes?
I kinda hope Raidah finds out at some point that Jennifer did do some minor wingwomaning in the whole Joyce thing (via strategic unbuttoning, so I do mean minor https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/fresh-2/ ) if only because it’d be interesting to see the fallout. Raidah is probably vaguely aware she was in Sarah and Joyce’s friend group – she was at the room party and present at the mall – but I don’t think she’d befriend someone for the sole purpose of payback at another unrelated person, especially since Jennifer’s been distancing herself from her old hall. Raidah’s an asshole, but not THAT duplicitous to our knowledge.
They can’t be that immature. They’re hanging out with her. That’s like an automatic level up in maturity, because we all know Raidah is a paragon of maturity, ight?
Ah yes! Naturally. I forgot that.
Though at least that feels like standard teenager I’m So Mature immaturity and not the Stepfordy vibe of Asher and Jennifer earlier. Seriously that was just WEIRD.
“I’m dangerous” ok whatever you say but don’t you think you’re trying a little bit to hard there Darkwing?
That aside, personally I wouldn’t say Sal is “Losing her rebel status” because of the new activities she has going on in her life as if it means she conforming to some social system.
It’s not like someone else chose her new path in life for her, Unlike how for example Linda chose what major was acceptable for Walky to pursue. No Sal simply has manage to do what most people had hoped to do when they leave their hometown or move out to college. She rediscovered herself and managed to sort out her own shit and she did it on her own terms. Much like how Joyce has done so far.
I’m still not over Jennifer describing roller derby as ‘settling down’ in any way, shape, or form. Like, yes it’s an organized sport, but the way Jennifer was talking about it had a distinct vibe of Linda Walkerton Would Approve of This Decision that I just CANNOT imagine, because roller derby has too much of an edgy counterculture vibe for Linda to get anywhere near it without combusting into flames of outrage.
Also the way she says settling down like they’re all getting married and having their 2.5 kids and house in the suburbs. Seriously, it’s just weird to hear from an 18-year-old character.
it’s The Best i’m loving hearing this from 18yos it is Spot Fucking On. graduated school, making decisions for yourSelf, still a Fucking Buffoon, amazing.
Glad to know I’m still really justified in thinking Raidah and this crowd are the worst.
Carl is innocent, leave him out of this.
Why are we assuming Carl is innocent?
If someone is hanging around scumbags, it could be because they are a scumbag too.
Plus, remember that he took no action when sarah mentioned Dana’s problems with drug use/depression, and did not defend sarah when she was attacked by the riadah clique.
I’ve been arguing about Raidah for like two days now, I could probably go for three, but I should probably realize at some point that I’m doing it to myself.
Welcome to the Internet.
Hold on to your socks!
Carl and Dana broke up after coming back to school. No details given, but according to Sarah that’s when things really got bad with Dana. But it sounds like regardless of details Carl was out of the picture mostly, so I think its premature get negative on Dana’s ex this early.
And Dana was able to mask with her friends – she just couldn’t do it full-time, so Sarah saw a lot more as her roommate. The issue was that they didn’t listen to Sarah as Dana’s roommate or acknowledge that therapy could still be helpful. (Even if she was actually getting better, grief from the death of a parent is one of those things most therapists are going to know how to handle competently. And there were A LOT of potential factors in that death – was it a long cancer treatment, or discovered in an advanced stage and she died soon after? Had she been in remission before? Was it genetic, meaning Dana’s at risk herself? Do they know? All of these are potential trauma vectors.) Doesn’t help that they showed no sympathy towards Sarah’s other concern of ‘Dana’s smoking A LOT of pot in our room and covering for her is affecting my grades and therefore scholarship, and if it gets found I would likely be in serious trouble.’ Since Sarah appears to have been the only one in that friend group whose family wasn’t fairly wealthy – that comment about parents owning law firms from Dana – the scholarship issue was pressing for her in a way I don’t think the others got at all.
Also, between the rich white girl with the recent death in the family and a lawyer daddy and the broke black girl only there on scholarship, who do you think the school would come down harder on if they found pot in their bedroom?
Yeeeeeeep. I didn’t say it explicitly but that is definitely the risk Sarah would be running, and I don’t blame her for not trusting that if it WAS found Dana would immediately, unequivocally take the fall, Sarah had nothing to do with this, all punishment should be on Dana. It would be nice if Dana would have in some AU where it reached that point, but a lot of kids in a similar situation would try and wiggle out of it and blame the roommate. (For instance, see Becky’s ex-roommate.)
The Crows and the Crane. If Carl wants to be innocent, he’ll have to find a crowd that won’t make him an accomplice.
Yeah judging by their behavior in the past few strips and this strip, I don’t think this group are nearly as mature as they’re claiming they are.
Nothing says maturity like condescension, as always stay classy Raidah.
If you are the kind of person who makes fun of others because they are wearing a helmet, even indirectly, you are a shite-bag.
Sometimes proper safety procedure looks silly
Case in point, surgeons who have scrubbed up, with their arms forward and wet hands in the air. We’re used to seeing it, because television, but aesthetically, it does look silly.
In fairness, it’s not so much “making fun of” as “acknowledging that wearing safety gear makes claiming you’re unsafe look a little silly.”
It just proves he didn’t get the point. It’s not like Sal tried to say she is never following safety procedures but that she’s an unsafe person to be around, just like Asher is an unsafe person to be around.
Carl’s got his head on straight.
Sure, when he’s outdoors with people around. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop and have it revealed that Carl has a basket of human ears in his closet.
Look, Carl, the motorcycle is gone for whatever reason. Unless and until it reappears, you’ll have to make do.
Sal is making vroom noises as she bikes away to hide the pain.
(I mostly stole this comment from Patreon)
Why is her reaction to insult Sal instead of, I dunno… Defend Asher by acknowledging that he used to be a criminal but has grown to be a better person now?
Because her act of maturity is just that, an act. Raidah might be marginally more mature than some but she’s not a paragon of maturity.
That’s unpossible. She is a sophomore. They are mere freshmen. Basically children.
She is obviously the most mature.
It’s pronouned, “the maturest,” as in, “I’m the most maturest of all of us, so there. nyah
Because Raidah wants to feel mature and smart, not actually defend Asher in this moment. It is about herself more than Asher.
Sal’s got a point. I don’t trust Asher. at. all.
But he’s hot, so we have to dismiss any wrongdoing he’s ever committed.
And Raidah continues to be her unpleasantly patronizing self.
Jacob is literally too good for her.
And apparently too good for Joyce as well.
I still hold that Joyce absolutely shot herself in the foot on that one.
Oh, definitely. You’d think if you have the nerve to pose as a guy’s girlfriend in front of his brother, and even go out to dinner with him, you’d have the courage to say “Jacob, I think I might have a crush on you.”
…Well, maybe. In her shoes, it does feel like she’s risking putting him off. Being in the audience, I think Jacob would probably not let that bother him too much. He’s a checklist sort of person, and probably imagines it’s easy to compartmentalize these things. …I’m not sure if he would have ever realized he had a crush on her, though. He might have, since he had a habit of unconsciously flirting with her. But it can be hard to notice signs in your own behavior, especially when you’re predisposed to think that your interests lie elsewhere. Would he have broken up with Raidah and professed his love for Joyce? Or, if he realized his feelings, would he distance himself from Joyce and try to prioritize time with Raidah?
I guess Joyce did ultimately set him off on a path of questioning his internal suppositions, and distinguishing between “what I want” and “what I want to want”. But it definitely burned all bridges with him, so while it turned out good for Jacob’s development, it was a bit of a suicide gambit (if you’ll pardon the term — I couldn’t think of a less triggering descriptor).
Well, her tactic was the kind of thing that does lead to breakups or cheating a lot of the time. It’s probably far more effective than just telling someone.
You get under their defenses by making it all seem innocent and start building the emotional romantic attachment and then one day they turn around and realize they’ve got a massive crush that seems to have come out of nowhere.
I like the writing here cos my take is Sal is being a big Dweebus trying to like, drop hints and be ominous, but it doesn’t work because Jennifer knows (or at least thinks she does), and failing to land a Charisma check is The Worst so Sal gets more het up, BUT THEN Raidah says something Also Dumb and We Like Sal so Fuck You Raidah and fuck you Extra cos this interaction is going poorly for Our Sal. Asher and Jennifer feel generally positively toward Sal so their reaction has landed on confusion which also is not a success on Sal’s charisma rolls.
Sal, you can both be kickass and a rebel and a good person. You’ve always been good, no matter what you’ve been told. The burning rage is because you have a strong sense of justice, big enough to include yourself in it… Most times. Not here, though.
Raidah is as hateable as ever, pushing and pushing until of course this new person snaps, which allows her to go “oh how uncouth” from her high horse, just as planned (Was I the only one who thought the “choir” comment was a racist microaggression?) And Carl achieved Huge Asshole status with a single comment, which is impressive. Legit wanna throw this whole group into a sinkhole. Nothing of value would be lost.
The whole thing reeks even more because Sal’s clearly been struggling with suddenly having friends and activities she likes and somewhat of a future, all things she felt most undeserving off for a long time thanks to Linda Walkerton. The “you mean I’m not truly an unloveable accident waiting to happen?” instinct is so hard to overcome, the Mean Girls clique might have pushed Sal to do something reckless just to prove she’s… Still an unlovable accident waiting to happen, which is familiar territory and therefore less scary.
Hmmmm…. I took it that Sal joining the “choir” was only mentioned as support for the group’s toxic condescension about how she was “finally growing up” (*throws up in mouth a little*).
How exactly would “choir” be a racist micro-aggression?
I read choir as aggressive, as it’s often seen as something very boring and established. Something someone does who has settled down into a routine life.
Don’t quite see how racism could come in there, but might be missing cultural nuance?
I’m not an expert, but I think it’s because she’s black. In a lot of places in the USA, black people being in choir (especially gospel choir) is A Thing. Not saying it Has To Be that, of course, but I also kinda got that reading.
I first saw it indeed intended as a “oh, so you’re in a choir? how quaint and routinary, props on that” barb. But then someone else started explaining what the difference between “choir” and “ensemble” was (the former word having a religious connotation), and it started sounding like “and you totally sing gospel there, right?” as well.
This might be in my head, which is why I was asking if anyone else saw it. There’s a storied thing about Sal getting racial microaggresion (and actual aggression) from others, and I think I remember Raidah being a sorta-secular Muslim which would mean… Middle-Eastern descent? Because she doesn’t cover her hair in her day-to-day. Though it could also be that Raidah is a black Muslim, and the comment is only classist instead (“oh, so you’ve reformed from crime and found Christianity? this certainly confirms Certain Biases!”)
Sorry ^^;; I’m not from the USA, and while I do my best to stay on top of the cultural stuff (to better pick at media), sometimes I’m left grasping at straws.
I really don’t think you’re far off, here.
I think Raidah is smart enough, and also enough of a nasty snob, to sharpen a dart that way. Sal’s accent might already prompt a classist smirk ^^;; So it’s good to know I’m not alone here, thank you!
Don’t sweat it; I’m from the US, and I can tell you that, at least I’m my experience, trying to stay on cultural stuff these days is like trying to put your finger on a ball of mercury. I guess it might just be because I don’t use social media, though.
Ahaha, honestly? You’re wiser than most. And also, that’s an amazing metaphor on both the toxicity of the goal, how hard is to attain it, and what accumulative exposure means |DD
Thank you. And must I say, I highly admire your insights as well!
Keeping with the themes of this comic, I reckon that the dysphoria, depression and other damage caused by peoples’ practical worship of social media these days is eerily similar in nature to that which is caused by religious worship.
According to philosopher Ludwig Fuerbach, people create gods in their own image from an amalgamation of our greatest virtues, and then cling to these gods and invented religions, preferring these “dreams” to the real world. With this process, people become alienated from themselves through an unfavorable comparison of themselves to a god they forgot THEY created. Sound familiar?
We already have a whole world history to demonstrate the damage that can result from magical thinking. The implications of an empirically and anecdotally damaging drug that’s smart enough to learn how to increase our habit, I do not even want to imagine. At least, not for now.
Ok, then it’s partly a cultural thing. In Germany, choir is a group of people singing together, no Christianity attached to half to most of them. They can quite differ in skill and themes, 10 years ago, I knew more than ten lesbian/queer choirs in Berlin, and I didn’t know about all of them, but anything calling itself an ensemble is made up of a handful of people who all have soloist skills.
yeah totally mature to be condescending. That group is full of shit and hot air.
It makes no sense, because they were totally just being normal while Sal was being a dick. But I still hate all 4 of them.
I’m willing to give Raidah and Carl a bit of a pass, because if they don’t have the very specific information necessary here (ie, Asher’s grandpa isn’t just rich and powerful, he’s a mob boss, and if Asher’s at all smart he’s not going to drop that information casually – especially since I’m pretty sure at least one of their fathers owns a law firm and we have no idea what area of practice,) Sal does in fact come off as needlessly abrasive last strip.
Of course, that’s after Jennifer and Asher’s introduction of Sal talked over her, framed choices she may not have actually made as ‘growing up,’ being hypocritical in the process, (because while we don’t know why Sal doesn’t have her motorcycle, the fact that she doesn’t want to talk about it implies it’s not just garaged for the winter, and the line’s rich either way coming from someone who’s riding his motorcycle in the winter himself,) and generally talked about her like Linda showing off her Finally Respectable Daughter would. And Jennifer would know that would’ve put Sal on the defensive if she realized that’s what it sounded like to us, and thus likely also to Sal. There were some weird vibes to that that aren’t all on Sal knowing Asher’s shady and Sal also, TOTALLY UNRELATEDLY, thinking Asher’s hot. Seriously, can Sal’s siblings stop introducing her with ‘and she has a criminal past!’?
Yeah, I’m not a fan of them bringing that up for no reason whatsoever.
Seriously, Sal’s gotta be exhausted being the ‘neat-o anecdote’.
Good job growing up Jennifer, you picked Raidah! A beacon of positive character choices for the rest of us to aspire to. Look at her! Look at how frequently she references her own maturity!
This is what grownups do, as everyone knows. Constantly whinge about their own extreme, all-encompassing maturity.
The best way to show you’re an adult is to whine and crow about just how incredibly mature you are, especially compared to everyone around you.
So what’s Raidah majoring in, misjudging people’s character? (Gottem)
I mean, do we have proof to the contrary? She’s going into law, after all. (Gottem twice)
But watch some people accuse us of being guilty of the same, not knowing her whole story and all (♥ ♥ ♥)
Saying Raidah isn’t a complete knob after several years of every single on-panel appearance consisting of her being a knob, well that would just be silly.
Hey, we don’t know what she does when we’re not watching.
If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say she stands in front of a mirror blowing herself and chanting “I’m a grown-up now, I’m so mature, I wear big girl pants” over and over.
I can see Raidah being on a straight track to becoming a mob lawyer who believes it’s actually ethical to cook the books and/or cover up some murders for her buddies since she likes them and doesn’t like the do-goody types who interfere with their business.
But, I’d really honestly like to see her developed into a sympathetic human character more.
I already didn’t care for Raidah but that passive-aggresion means I extra-dislike her rnow. Tool of cowards, prove me wrong.
I mean, if you wanna characterise everyone who’s passive-aggressive as a coward, I guess that’s your prerogative.
The purpose of passive-aggression is to insult someone to their face while hiding behind plausible-deniability in the event that target pushes back. It’s only use-case is to lie about the intent behind one’s words rather than owning up to the truth of one’s intentions. So, yes. Cowards. Every one. Every time.
It is also otherwise used to attempt to hint at something bothering you instead of just outright telling someone when something is bothering you and tends to escalate things into much larger problems by attempting to avoid directly acknowledging them.
Sniping at someone instead of being direct that when they do X, it bothers you or when they leave Y to you all the time, it drives you up the wall, does not in fact prevent problems. It just leads to more anger if they don’t understand or because you are sniping at them. So you’re not wrong that it kind of is cowardly as it usually comes from avoidance of actual confrontation or communication.
God DAMN I like Sal’s new hair.
Sal’s hair deserves a tag of its own.
I feel like this interaction would reflect pretty poorly on Sal, except for, you know, ALLL the context we have on the rest of the folks in this conversation
But but but Sal did something bad too, which makes these folks absolute saints! I mean sure, Asher definitely helped get two people killed, Billifer wrapped a car around a tree, Raidah has continuously harassed Sarah for months, and Carl has a skin collection, but Sal knocked over some shelves and held a knife to a kid’s throat, so their transgressions may as well be hopscotch.
Holding a knife to someones throat is actually quite a big deal
The difference being, of course, that Asher and Sal know what what they did is wrong whilst Raidah continues to believe that she is the victim.
I would also like to point out that Raidah’s biggest consequence has been Sarah punching her one time, Asher keeps getting away with stuff, and Carl still haunts the campus to this very day. Jennifer is a little more complicated. Sal, on the other hand, has a permanent scar and loss of motor function as an immediate consequence and as a long-term consequence, was literally sent away from her whole life for half a decade, is constantly reminded of what she did, and has even made a sort of friendship with the people affected. She’s the one who’s grown and learned and changed the most from her shitty behavior, but she’s the one getting talked around and condescended at here, entirely by people who haven’t outwardly learned jack shit and who pretty much keep doing the thing even when people are outright demanding they stop doing the thing.
I mean, yeah. But hey, at least she didn’t long-term traumatise two people in a way that was bound to bite her in the ass later, right?
Wait Blaine and who else did Asher kill?
I think they’re implying Toedad, since he got caught up in Blaine’s shenanigans during the kidnapping.
All the little shitbird had to do was exercise some restraint and not pull a fire alarm. That’s all it would have taken for the whole goshdamn plan to fall through the floor. Nobody goes outside, nobody gets swiped, nobody gets killed in a fit of pique. All he did was let the robber into the elevator, it’s not like he shot Uncle Ben himself.
Yeah, it’s not like Blaine was going to get Asher killed if he didn’t cooperate. Oh wait…
Asher’s options for not getting killed by the mob at some point pretty much consist of ‘go to the feds, get witness protection (likely leaving Indiana forever in the process, DEFINITELY leaving everything and everyone from your old life forever,)’ ‘rejoin the mob, you can never leave, and beg Gramps’s forgiveness,’ and ‘transfer the fuck out of here to somewhere with no presence of any syndicate linked to your family at all, stay there forever.’ Not great options, but I am wondering why he didn’t at least try and leave the state. My guess is ‘doesn’t want to cut contact with all family members and probably also friends permanently,’ and he figures moving to Australia would be taken as an admission of guilt. Maybe also a willingness to leave his options open if the going straight thing doesn’t prove to be working out… like he did with Lester once Blaine showed up.
Unfortunately, the rules of drama guarantee that at some point, there’s gonna be another mobster knocking at his door.
Sal is desperately trying to said to Asher that she and he are perfect for each other… pretty awkward! Everyone is watching her in disbelief. Go Sal! Run away from them! You are better than this.
Yes, nothing makes you horny like categorical betrayal from a mobster’s son. I’m genuinely confused what you’re referencing. Sal’s a pretty straight shooter.
There is no reason at all to think Sal might be horny for Asher. None.
Yep. She’s just confused!
But Sal’s so incredibly fine.
*sneaks a selection onto the hacked muzak*
“Deeeeeesperado….”
In the Mystery Room at the End of the Hall, Danny’s hat perks up…
Sure Carl got a line. But at what cost? AT WHAT COST?!
That’s Raidah, alright – Never involved in a tense exchange that she doesn’t immediately make worse!
Nice to know Raidah is still a condescending jerk. I still hate her.
For her every day is condescending bongo day.
Hmm the word filter changed that from one B word… to bongo.
Welcome to 2015.
Is that why everyone uses “Bongo?” I had been wondering about that for a while now!
I did a word-search on the inciting page earlier, and there are about 75 separate instances. Granted, at least a dozen were from people realising what happened and having a bit of fun with it.
It became a filter due to overusage towards Roz I think. One of the female characters. It is kind of a community thing that once you are here long enough, you start typing it as bongo in the first place and you stop remembering it is even a filter because it is normal here.
Yeah it was a strip where Roz lashed out at Joyce after Becky ran away to the college and Joyce was suddenly hit by what her entire culture does to Queer folks, so Roz got in her face that Joyce had been a direct participant.
Then the strip afterwards Leslie chastises her and Roz goes “so Joyce just gets to talk over gay people her whole life?!” and then Leslie tells her that is what Roz is doing right this second.
I like Roz. She should show up more.
Roz, Rachel, and Agatha are my favourite non-main-cast, if you discount the ones in for just comedic purposes like Galasso and Sydney Yus.
Incidentally, Roz, Rachel and Agatha gives me an idea for a Dumbing of Age D&D Character Alignment chart.
CG, LG, and NG?
Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic, Rachel/Agatha/Roz? I can see it.
Yeah. I ordered them to match Spencer’s list.
… looks around furtively …
Watch what you say about “Tuesday”.
Can’t remember… Did Carl show up in Sarah’s memories as one of her early friends who ostracized her for turning in her junkie roommate? Or is Carl a brand new piece of toilet paper for the butthole that is Raidah?
He’s Dana’s ex.
Dana’s Ex who clearly sided with Raidah’s ‘Dana had no problems!’ Song and dance despite likely having a front-row seat for at least some spiraling and red flags, even.
yes
Literally every time we see Raidah, she’s involved in some sort of patting herself on the back for her maturity and I know she’s fictional but I hope that in her thirties she looks back at her 19-year-old self and cringes so very very hard.
God, same.
Cause if not, that means she probably stays exactly like this.
People tend to remain who they are, or more often, become worse versions of themselves.
Hell I’m 21 and it’s cringy as fuck
I must say, that hair in panel three….awesome sauce.
If Willis can tag Carl’s shoulder, he can tag Sal’s hair.
Good, now I don’t have to have neutral feelings about Carl.
….Christ, Raidah, you talk like that to someone you just met?
Wait. I’m remembering the clusterfuck that was her meeting Dina. Yeah no. That’s just how Raidah handles meeting literally anyone different than her.
She’s so nasty, it’s incredible she has friends at all.
In fairness, without knowing everything we know about Asher and Jennifer, yeah, Sal seems kinda unhinged.
I feel like given what happened just a few months to Sal and Jennifer, which was at least somewhat news, even if the details didn’t get out, I don’t really see Sal as coming off unhinged, maybe just unfriendly and cryptic. She wasn’t shouting until Raidah escalated things by calling what Sal was doing a ‘tantrum’.
There is noone more up their own ass about how “mature” they are and in their belief that they’ve got everything figured out than a college undergrad.
Well I’m really late to the game on this one since I was away from a computer or device with internet access, but it’s never too late to mention that even in a strip where he has no lines I still don’t trust Asher…That is all.
Actually that’s not all, I find it strange Raidah’s getting hate here. I don’t like her as I’ve previously mentioned but she appears to be acting pretty neutral here. Sal’s actually coming off as kind of rather unlikeable in comparison.
Raidah hasn’t lost her holier-than-thou attitude and is being condescending about the fact that within let’s say 5 minutes of her friend group meeting someone new they already pissed them off. Then again, that requires the self-awareness to realize that her friend group was being insufferable in the first place, which I don’t think Raidah has.
If Raidah did recognize that her friends were being insufferable, she just decided to throw more oil on the fire by telling Sal she was throwing a ‘tantrum,’ which is just all sorts of a social no-no in arguments. She wasn’t trying to fix things or make Sal reconsider. She intentionally went to low-brow to piss Sal off more. And when it worked, Raidah acted like Sal was the problem despite the introduction being sabotaged the second Jennifer opened her mouth.
I wish Raidah was acting neutral here, but she’s being antagonistic and bringing out the worst in herself.
You said every thought I had about Raidah, and then some.
She is not being neutral, she is being antagonistic and condescending, even if she might genuinely think she is trying to deescalate from her expression, her words absolutely are fighting words because talking down to someone as if they are less mature than you for not being gleefully happy for the most fakey couple around tends to make people angry.
The previous strip does not at all warrant the lead in on this strip that Raidah has to write off Sal as having tantrums. If Sal was the one that barely knew them, it would be more fair for Raidah to try to write this off as unwarranted and for Sal to need to chill. But that is not the case. Sal has known Jennifer and Asher for years. Raidah has no way of knowing if Sal’s warning is warranted on this literal first meeting. And therefore should have kept out of it.
stfu Carl.
You know you’re a winner when the first time you open your mouth you get “stfu.”
Someone in the last couple days pointed out the strip where then-Billie was trying to keep Sal’s mom from bullying Amber into dropping out. And it was revealed Blaine was dead to then-Billie, Walky, and Sal.
I wonder if Sal put together enough dots to realize Asher was the reason Blaine died, and that’s why she’s insisting Asher is dangerous?
I really want Sal to be in the room when Asher confesses that he’s the reason all her friends got kidnapped.
Asher sold her out at the robbery for a laugh.
A laugh and to cover his own ass. Not a great look either way you slice it, especially given Sal doesn’t like snitches.
But it really does seem likely that at some point – maybe in the timeskip, maybe onscreen – AmbG and Sal are going to put the pieces together that AmbG’s mob stooge dad worked for the same particular mob that Sal’s childhood It’s Complicated was born into, is trying to get away from, and stole tuition money from to do so. From there, they might start wondering, especially because Blaine definitely needed people who could get on campus and into the building without being noticed (though he seemed to have a few of them in the Nameless Mooks wanting vengeance on AG, so I don’t think they’d suspect another was needed for the fire alarm specifically straight away.) I don’t think we’re getting that plot thread unraveled any time soon, but oh do I look forward to it when it shows up.
I think Asher explained it as “I thought it was funny” (and then following it up with “I didn’t say it was funny”) but I can’t remember if he said he did it to cover himself too.
Archive binging time! Here ya go – https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/trail/
Thanks.
Yeah that’s a lot more sensible than just “for the lulz.” That would make him come off like an unhinged maniac instead of a somewhat sensible crooked kid.
[squicky sound of bike pedaling]
What tantrum, Raidah? The last couple strips Sal’s been acting fairly neutral. Yeah, *after* she’s accused of having a tantrum, she kinda throws a tantrum, but last couple strips haven’t been anything that I would consider a tantrum. She wasn’t yelling and screaming and throwing shit around, she was being resistant to how she was being talked about and saying that Asher wasn’t a person you were safe around. Maybe not particularly mature from Raidah’s point of view, but not a tantrum.
Poor Jennifer. She’s going to be swallowed by the Axis of Growing-Ups.
Hopefully if she lapses into her excessive drinking soon enough, she may just destroy whatever brain cells are necessary for her to be completely swallowed. It’s better she be an honest, drunken mess than a broken wheel with a new paint job.
No, I went back and read from the moment this group came across Sal. The first shot Jeniffer fires: they used to knock off stores together. Asher’s introduction was actually good
But then he goes Sal found some nerd friends, etc. That’s kinda irritating. Third, it’s heartwarming to see Sal is looking out for Jeniffer. Fourth, Raidah obviously doesn’t know the backstory, she’s so condescending.
Raidah stop being a prat please, a word I’m having a lot of exposure to now that I’m hyperfocusing on Harry Potter fanfiction pieces
haha college kids thinking this is when they’re all grown up and over it
Raidah, there’s no benefit in interjecting here…
She never let that stop her before.
I made a thing.
https://i.imgur.com/AcnaubN.jpg
I feel like Carla and Sal should be swapped, but that’s mainly because I can see Carla actually building herself a supervillain lair for lulz someday.
Carla would use her supervillain lair exclusively for pulling sweet pranks on the bourgeoisie.
Well, yes, but CALLING IT a supervillain lair is what punts it into Chaotic Neutral. And I can’t imagine her calling it a superhero’s hideout, y’know?
You say that like she hasn’t already.
I say, this thing does a rather fantastic job at demonstrating the fact that lawfulness and moral standing are NOT related whatsoever.
However, this chart seems to suffer from a similar problem to the tier lists in Tier Zoo; there seems to be some kind of unspoken “need” to make the characters evenly distributed throughout the quadrants here, without reckoning that some characters are better off sharing the same quadrant so that we could better predict (instead of project) character outcomes (as well as we could ever do that with two independent variables).
If this only intends to be funny, however, it does a pretty nice job. But I you could take this kind of thing SO much further.
Allow me to demonstrate.
I’ve always regarded you as anti-fun.
Of come on! I said it Spencer’s chart was pretty funny! And pointed out it’s other value too!
And come on! The thing I posted was funny!
By the way, out of your fiends, which one are you?
*your friends.
I could have SWORN I typed that right.
Yeah bike helmets are super lame.