Discussion (137) ¬
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Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social ⋅ 19d
Gwen Snyder is uncivil @gwensnyder.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
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preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 2d
Hunter S Schafer @bolt451.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
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(he/him)
⚧
New game! BOLTED 
is TVTropes basically a spellbook then
I did, in fact, think you would link there.
Like this?
Man I wish.
Yes.
Thank you for your restraint
…Walky, you didn’t.
I really hope he did.
But did he?
Sure did
I think Mike would have wanted it that way.
It’s almost as if I could hear Mike’s voice.
Oh, hi mom.
Why are you rolling nickels?
I’m guessing it didn’t go over at Mike’s, then?
On the contrary, Mike saw enough television to get it. But he was too contrary to do it, for spite’s sake.
I mean he was also a little bit dead.
What is death, if not spite persevering?
Death is all about not persevering. Spite persevering is more a trauma thing
As the semi-resident dead guy, it is possible to not stay dead because of contrariness. I think it’s how I wasn’t put in the bodybag.
I lol’ed
“There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn”
We did see a glimpse of Mike’s funeral or some sort of memorial over in Something Positive: https://somethingpositive.net/comic/hardly-appropriate/
Is Walky becoming aware of his status as a comic character? Next thing you know he’ll be throwing toys at us.
I don’t think we’ve crossed over to Abed levels of medium awareness yet, this is within reason for someone who watches far too much TV
I don’t think he’s aware of it, he’s just been living life like he’s a TV character for a long time now. And honestly, it has seemed to work out for him for the most part.
I kinda wonder what that funeral looked like.
Yeah, this is the first we’re hearing of Mike’s funeral and not just his death. Plus confirmation that Walky was in attendance.
I choose to believe that Mike’s nice parents are the family weirdos, and the rest are all scowling grouches with geometrically impossible hair.
Sad and awkward and, because most of the teens would be too shell-shocked dealing with the reality that someone their age could die (violently and traumatically,) probably most of the remembrances and such if any were from family members and friend’s parents and the like who’d give a very different set of memories than the actual parents would. General sense that someone that young shouldn’t die, it just shouldn’t be possible, across the board.
I’ve been to a lot of funerals. They’re never enjoyable affairs, but the one for a kid two years younger than me when I was eighteen was one of the worst. (It was cancer, not an accident or the like, but very much a He Was So Young situation.) Sudden tragedies likewise suck, because of the shock. Mike hitting both, and in such a traumatic way, pretty much guarantees it was just very sad in ways that weren’t necessarily ABOUT Mike, as he was, but more the idea of that cute little kid they knew.
* Actual FRIENDS would. I should go the fuck to sleep.
Lotta sad moms, pockets jingling from the nickels.
And Mike got a Nickelback CD to play during the descent.
Humor is a valid coping mechanism, just maybe be sure everyone around understands that’s what you’re doing
Please tell me I’m not the only one here who’s reminded of that scene from Grown Ups?
It’s good that she’s gone. Good for all parties.
Da fuck Walky?
That’s not even funny. It’s just weird and uncomfortable even for people who “get it”.
If Walky made everyone weird and uncomfortable, then he did exactly what Mkike would’ve wanted him to. I mean, if you’re going to use a funeral to actually honour the dead, he did the right thing.
“Good riddance to him, the free-loading bastard”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkxCHybM6Ek
Mike probably would’ve preferred his funeral to be weird and uncomfortable.
I mean, one of the big themes to Walky, post time-skip, is that he is NOT handling Mike’s death well. It’s going under the radar a lot of the time, because he’s good at covering it up, but it’s pretty obvious from an outside view that he really does need help managing that, and that everyone else is just taking his largely unperturbed outside attitude to be what’s really going on under the hood.
Remember, be sure to handle your grief and trauma in only socially acceptable ways.
Weird and uncomfortable? How do you figure?
Walky. What the hell have you done
Also, Walky apparently visited Times Square before
You can reference places without having personally been there, and Times Square is a pretty well known place
is it really ?
So I’ve been told.
He’s an American who watches a lot of TV and movies. Whether or not he’s been to visit, he is definitely familiar with Times Square
I’m across the border on the other side of the continent. It’s gotta be common enough in media. Prob first noticed it because my parents would watch the new years countdown events there, but in more recent history, Ninomae Ina’nis’s simps rented out some space there to show off fanart on her birthday
Oh yeah, I know Times Square! [has never been west of Barcelona.]
…it’s where people’s balls drop, isn’t it? I may have got that wrong.
That is accurate, from a certain point of view.
I think I’ve figured it out. At the funeral someone (possibly Walky himself) farted loudly, and then Walky dropped the “it’s almost like I can hear his voice” line.
IIRC Walky and Amber broke up on Halloween, so either Halloween was before the funeral or Halloween was the funeral, because if they were still dating then I’m pretty sure Amber would have dumped him then and there.
Halloween would be pretty soon for a funeral, given that Mike wasn’t dead yet only a few days earlier.
I think it’s more likely Mike died on Halloween.
…… well SHIT.
Halloween seems like a time when a lot of shit went down, and Mike dying is a fairly likely inciting incident for it.
Don’t see how Mike dying would’ve led to Ruth and Jennifer’s breakup, but it’s not like their breakup happening on the same day would’ve been the biggest coincidence ever.
Indirectly, probably. Spat between Walky and Amber kicking off a fight between Ruth and Jennifer seems plenty plausible, and there’s probably a lot of other ways that I’m not thinking of.
Mike came out of his coma just long enough to hear the doctor explain that there was no way he was going to make it. He then waited until it was Halloween, when he pulled the plug on himself just to be sure he ruined the day for everyone.
Actually, it hadn’t occurred to me before, but if it was a pull-the-plug situation, that would probably have made it even worse for everyone.
Halloween would be about 7-10 days after Mike went into a coma, if I’m remembering the timing right. Theoretically by that point, there could still be hope of recovery, but given the circumstances of said coma (particularly that he seems to have lapsed into it before AG could get him to a hospital, and she’s not an EMT and so probably wasn’t handling him ideally) and the fact that he apparently hadn’t shown very promising signs by Is A Song Forever two days later (‘the doctors say it might be a long time’ says to me in hindsight ‘oh yeah they were probably concerned then about him waking up at all’,) it wouldn’t be super surprising if Halloween was around the point of a very frank, very sad conversation about Mike’s prognosis between his doctors and parents.
I’m not so sure, Amber seems to me like she might appreciate that humor even without Mike as a headmate.
Ethan would probably have been livid.
I was about to be like ‘yeah, pretty much the law of fiction” until I got to the last panel.
WALKY NO.
Yeah, I get why, because humor’s Walky’s go-to coping mechanism and this would be super traumatic even WITHOUT the Weird Complicated Feelings Because Mike, but also WALKY NO.
Just, oof. I suspect he’d get a bit of leeway from being an eighteen-year-old who’s probably in shock because *broad gestures* everything related to that, but I’m certain they still weren’t amused. Just maybe pitying while walking away.
Also, it might not have been entirely humor.
Yeah, that strip was on my mind, too. Unfortunately, it’s hard to explain to your roommate’s grandma that he psychologically abused you so much in two months that you struggle to believe he didn’t fake his death as an elaborate prank, because it wouldn’t be that far out of line with what he DID do as elaborate pranks.
Depends on how well they knew Mike.
(I can just imagine everyone giving shocked looks and one grandma going “What? You were all thinking it)
But yeah, certainly not likely to go over well with most of the family.
I feel like a solid 80% of these comics could be responded to with “[insert character] NO”
As, in fact, they are
Sort of the concept of the comic from the get go.
*thumps the hacked Muzak with a fist and awaits the cry-in-your-PBR Country song that might come out of it*
*Muzak somehow lands on Here’s A Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares)*
(a very, very Mike song, IMO)
Mike’s song is “Here’s a Nickel, Call Your Mom”.
Fuck off Walky
I almost feel like with Jennifer out of easy reach, Walky is looking for new joke snipe targets.
Oh no, I’m already dreading the wars with Joyce.
Sniper no sniping! Sniper no sniping! Sniper no sniping!
*drops rifle* aww maaaaaaaan : (
Crikey!
…..The hell did you do walky!?
The first couple of panels are great. I mean, so’s the last one, obviously just in a whole other way.
Walky and Joe is a dynamic I am quite fond of.
You know it’s kinda funny, he actually DID see a girl with a flat butt just a bit ago.
Well there aren’t a lot of male/male dynamics in the first place, especially with Jacob being AWOL and Ethan only just resurfacing.
We’ve seen Danny/Ethan. Walky/Ethan sounds… potentially terrible, with Walky throwing jokes left and right and Danny being… Danny.
Well, we might get some Walky/Ethan interactions since they’re two of the three people grieving Mike.
<—— somehow missed the word "roommate's" the first time reading and has now seen it upon reading it a second time
"oh…OOOOOOH that is why everyone in the comments is mad at Walky"
0 _ 0;;
I’m torn, on the one hand, that was in SPECTACULARLY bad taste on Walky’s part.
On the other, it feels like what Mike would have wanted, To go out trolling people.
Maybe he had some kind of last will with such a wish?
Walky, just as a word of warning right now the expression Joe is ‘advertising on his chin’ is “Fighting urge to seize by neck and squeeze until it stops moving…fighting the urge, and LOSING”.
Don’t fight it Joe
I’ve been to several funerals, some for teens , some for olds, and it never gets any easier. It doesn’t matter if yore going to an old’s funeral as a teen or a teen’s funeral as a teen, or an old’s funeral as an old, or a teen’s funeral as an old. It’s just sad unless the celebrant had a painful disease that they are free from the pain of it finally.
I’m having an existential crisis because no one but my spouse and kids would be at my funeral, as things are now. All my friends are long distance and all my family is estranged. Can you just not have a funeral?
I need to make some in person friends. We moved cross country before the pandemic.
Funerals are 100% optional, only thing that’s mandatory is body interment (burial, cremation, other). The governments tend to not like it when you just leave bodies in random places, for some reason.
That’s why I always make sure to hide all the bodies I make.
Considerate!
Leaving them just lying around just felt so UNTIDY, you know?
Welcome to Pandemic America. My Great Aunt Judy recently passed away, but in Ohio. With friends and family in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, New York, Arizona, and Oregon? Nobody flew in, but we had a Memorial service over Zoom. It was… not bad. After every window (some relatives shared) shared a remembrance or a feeling, we all thanked the family, promised to stay in touch in the future, and then hung up the call. It wasn’t a funeral, but it wasn’t half bad.
Also @milu re: this from a couple days ago: first of all, sorry I didn’t reply sooner, been kind of indisposed the past few days. Secondly…wow, yeah that “Sindarin Translator!” site you linked is kind of…not great. xD But yeah–won’t pretend I’m a total expert or anything, but I’ve had at least some knowledge of it ever since I taught myself from reading The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings/The Silmarillion as a kid; never fluent in it, but then again I never fluently picked up Russian either despite being born there and living on-and-off in it (or neighboring countries with linguistically-related languages) for over half my life. I’ve coincidentally been working my way through the books again as of late, and thought I would brush up on some of that old stuff while doing so…and then that opportunity appeared in the comments. Having a lexicon to hand certainly helped there, of course, but still.
Following “Anwariel/Amazi-Girl”, It’s actually made me ponder the last couple of days as to what other characters’ names could be if they were stripped down to their original etymological meanings and then had those translated; my own name to start off–and Danny’s too, by extension–would likely be something like “Erunámyawë”. Now that’s admittedly Quenya rather than Sindarin, but there aren’t that many examples off the top of my head of mix-and-match between the languages in person/place names, so. That’s also not accounting for how Tolkien’s Elves had at least three names (sometimes four): a father-name, a mother-name, an after-name/nickname, and finally a chosen-name/self-name.
Also kind of random, but Clif using the “she” pronoun for me brought to mind the time when someone took me for a woman while I was visiting Jerusalem four or five years ago (long story), which in hindsight I think was the beginning of my Enby Awakening. Hey, you did say “No Character Limit”. XD
(As a postscript to the above Quenya name, perhaps a Sindarinized version of the Quenya would come across as “Erubadoren”, fairly different but keeping the same roots. Just a thought there.)
*Erubadoron, I meant to type there, dangit.
Aw thank you for your reply, I hope you’re doing better. probably won’t have the time to answer today (which would typically involve going down some rabbit hole or other, this time obviously sindarin and quenya grammar and/or Tolkien’s conlangs generally), let me just ask you though, is there a reason you went for “-iel” instead of “-(g)wen”? I think that one also means girl right? From the little I did look up the other day (and it’s the option the Bad Translator went with)
Also, Clif didn’t call you ” she” I don’t think, they were jokingly misunderstanding my question about you knowing Sindarin (pretending “Sindarin” was a woman who used to date Tolkien) and I was jokingly misunderstanding their joke (pretending they meant you dated Tolkien). At least I think that’s what happened ^^ sorry if that was weird, idk what pronouns you use actually? Is there a gender neutral pronoun in Russian??
…so… why were you in Jerusalem that time?
As to the question of why I went with “-iel” instead of “-wen”, the answer is twofold: first, with -iel I could get the Sindarin Anwariel to begin and end with the same letters as English Amazi-Girl–secondly, it simply fit better in my personal opinion in the given situation of altering a quote originally naming Galadriel.
As for pronouns: there’s они–”oni” in pronunciation, meaning “they”–as far as potential gender-neutral pronouns go; for myself he/they’s what I generally lean toward these days (I’m only out to two of my siblings IRL; neither of them are themselves straight, so I felt I could trust them with it in private), but I really feel fine with whatever. xD And finally regarding why I was in Jerusalem: like I said it’s a long story but summed up in essence, there’s a program for (young, about-18-to-mid-twenties-or-so) people who are either religiously Jewish or nonreligious but of Jewish parentage, which said program covers the expenses for flights-there-and-back/board/one-meal-per-day, plus guided tours and cultural stuff and transport to and from such things. One of my aforementioned sisters told me about it from one of her university groups and we signed up together, eventually spending the better part of a fortnight in Israel coincidentally right about Hanukkah, as the scheduling turned out. Stayed in Jerusalem for a few days as part of that, and that’s when that incident happened I mentioned.
Who would have guessed Liz would have such a lasting impact.
She came in like a wrecking ball….
Joe longed for company.
He got Walky.
So sorry, Joe.
*monkey paw finger curls*
I honestly forgot about Mike (in general, and the specific fact that he was Walky’s roommate) and I spent a few minutes trying to figure out if/why Walky would have gone to Booster’s grandmother’s funeral (until I read the comments, and then it made a lot more sense)
Oh right, gravatar change-up. Roz is okay but I’m gonna try re-rolling real quick
Oh nice, I like Liz! I’m just gonna comment onnne more time and see what’s behind door number three
What if Mike’s grandma didn’t get offended and instead was like “Oh sweety, you were that close to my Mikey?” and that’s what made Walky uncomfortable
Joe: I’m not sad, I’m just feeling not happy
Wally: that sounds like feeling sad
Joe: it’s totally different
Hypothetical Joe is right. That is totally different. There’s all kinds of things he could be feeling other than happy or sad.
It’s like Amber can almost hear Mike’s voice (in her head).
Anyone else get bisexual vibes from panel 2?
From Walky? No.
Why aren’t guys allowed to comment on obvious physical features on other guys? Joe’s got a hell of a square jaw. It’s a really obvious characteristic.
(the following isn’t meant to be commentary on Alex themself, but the broader topic of dudes interacting with each other and what that means. I wrote it and realized it could have come off as directed at Alex, so I’m just doing this little preamble to clarify that)
On one hand I agree, in that constantly affirming queerness in straight men isn’t a positive; it’s supposed to be good and healthy for straight dudes to be affectionate and praising towards each other, and it is likewise good and healthy for queer men to, y’know, exist and speak in fiction, but they’re different routes to the same endgoal of “hey let’s dismantle this toxic masculinity bullshit” and I think a straight dude complimenting a man getting seen as “yo is he queer?”, while not only well-intentioned but also just a good thing to want in general, I do think it has the unintended side effect of creating an othering effect where straight men acting This Way means they’re not actually who they say they are. At its worst, you get a story about two bros being emotionally intimate with each other getting complaints about queerbaiting, when queerbaiting is a thing that exists as soon as two dude characters enter a room.
On the other hand I used to headcanon Walky as bi and that his constantly stream of gay jokes was in playing chicken because that’s exactly how it played out for me where it was the only place I could verbalize liking dudes before I was cognizant of what it meant and trying to suss out if anyone would react negatively. Also his hair is soft butch aesthetique and I adore it, and I’m suddenly cursing my bisexual inability to make my hair look good.
Yeah, this. On the one hand, this interaction could just be Walky recognizing Joe’s traditionally good-looking the same way Joe recognizes it of Jacob, but on the other hand Walky sometimes gives similar Bi But Not Examining It vibes as Joyce, just in a subtly different way, so I could see it being read as bi specifically because it’s Walky.
Not really, people can notice significant features on someone else’s face without being sexually attracted to them. And let’s be real, Joe’s chin is VERY significant!!
A funeral is probably not the best time and place to making jokes like that, Walky. Though to be fair, Mike probably would’ve liked that someone did that at his funeral.
Walky totally dressed as Mike on Halloween, didn’t he.
That’d be in bad taste even for Walky.
Well, how do you mourn the world’s biggest asshole who constantly made you miserable?
I’m not so sure she’s gone forever. But she carved a hole in Joe’s heart
and that hurt, that hurt so much!
I hope she finds her way back to being old Joyce, minus religious or anti religious judgment.
True story: I went to my great uncle’s memorial service and when I *turned around from looking at the casket he was standing right there!!*
And that’s how I found out my dead great uncle had an identical twin brother
I feel bad that I laughed!!
I need to know what your reaction to this was.
In bad taste, but then again, I don’t expect much more from Walky. He’s not a bad kid, and he’s becoming a better person as the comic has been progressing, but he’s still not very mature.
Also, his sad expression in the last panel kinda makes me want to hold off on being too hard on him. (Totally understand other people being mad at him though.)
I don’t think he was just being crass, I think it’s because he’s deeply traumatized by Mike’s death and doesn’t know how to process it.
He, Amber and Ethan are the only characters who are still grieving since they’re the ones who dealt with him on a regular basis.
??? I’m not sure what you’re even arguing against here.
The comments are generally being REALLY rough on Walky today for that funeral bit, but it comes off to a handful of us less as a joke he made to be haha wacky Walky that was wildly inappropriate and immature or Walky not reading the room, and more Walky’s well-documented humor as a coping mechanism for trauma. In particular, that ‘sometimes I can still hear his voice’ followed by the reveal the person is not dead stock bit is EXTREMELY similar to his comments to Booster a couple storylines ago about how Walky still half-expects Mike to burst out from behind a door and reveal he faked his death as an elaborate ‘prank’, which was pretty clearly a sign of how traumatized Walky really was from that whole situation.
It’s not immaturity so much as the fact that Walky’s primary coping mechanism for growing up in an emotionally abusive household (and being the favorite child didn’t exempt him from said abuse, it just made him VERY AWARE that his mother’s love is conditional) was to deflect away from uncomfortable situations, or try to, with jokes. Which still applies in situations that aren’t involving Linda, like being kidnapped or at his roommate’s funeral. It’s falling flat more times than not now that he’s not so small and cute anymore, but it takes a while to recognize a trauma coping mechanism’s become maladaptive, starting with recognizing it IS a trauma coping mechanism because Linda goes beyond ‘not a great parent’ and into abusive territory. I don’t think Walky’s there yet.
Yeah that.
Walky’s transparently grieving and was one of the few (only? it’s been a while) characters who displayed being shaken up by being kidnapped. It’s really easy for me to read Walky’s Mike-related thought processes lately as him “refusing to be traumatized” so hard that he won’t acknowledge he’s in a bad space and that he’s upset Mike’s gone.
An understandable coping mechanism can still be immature. Cracking tasteless jokes at a young person’s funeral may have reasons behind it but it’s still immature. Like I said – understandable by Walky’s doing that, but I doubt this is something someone with more life experience and subsequent discernment would do.
Hopefully someone points out to Walky that he doesn’t have to open his mouth every single time he wants to say something
That he can keep his dumb ass thoughts to himself every now and then
Well, I mean it worked for my favorite JoJo, so I don’t blame Walky for thinking it would work for Mike.
Ooof Walky. Then again when there’s complicated emotions which are well, often a staple of funerals, out of stress you can say things which make you go ‘wtf is wrong with me, why did I say/do that’.
On the other other hand he doesn’t seem to acknowledge that even if grandma had got the reference it would still not be considered cool to do. But I /guess/ this could be more of Walky pulling a Becky and pretending to be ~wacky~ to run away from complicated feelings too, which he seems to do a lot. No time for thinking of how it affects others: thinking means thinking of his own feelings too and Walky has issues with that even as Booster tries to chip away at it.
So is this a major reason why he and Amber broke up? The funeral could have been on Halloween itself I suppose. (Granted I come from a place where funerals happen fast in usual times- like two days post death sometimes and America might not be like that). And people referring to it as ‘Halloween’ rather at the complicated-feelings funeral as the break up point for couples makes sense.
Like before I pondered if some outside group of jackasses dressed up as Mike for Halloween or heck maybe even the stupid costume Amber’s dad wore (because college students are sometimes… like that, hell even adults beyond college/uni can be but college/uni is a halfway point for adulthood for many and that shit is a touch more frequent or at least more concentrated at one focal point), and that Amber was hurt and Walky (seemingly) shrugged it off, but this makes sense too tbh and would probably be less complicated/involve less bringing up other characters which might not be strictly necessary.
Granted could be as folks mentioned that Mike died on that day specifically and Walky stuck one of the few shoes in his mouth a la Danny and this was the cherry on top/solidified it. Halloween in doom tones could even refer to the week the holiday was in in general. Like how all of December is sometimes christmas.
(not relevant to today’s comic)
Sharing this link because this part sounds like something Dina might say
Parasitic barnacles on the skin of plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs, and other marine reptiles have seen minor representation in marine reptile paleoart. This addition is impossible and likely due to (understandable) lack of scrutiny on the part of the artists. Epibiotic barnacles (barnacles anchored to a living thing) that can anchor on marine mammals and reptiles were found to only have evolved in the Cenozoic, eliminating the possibility of their presence on the marine reptiles of the Mesozoic.
It is well within reason to depict marine reptiles with skin parasites, and there are several plausible options for artists to choose from even though barnacles are an anachronism.
https://sobekswimmingpool.wordpress.com/2021/11/20/reconstructing-marine-reptiles-a-guide-to-soft-tissue/
Walky is hilarious