Sarah is the only human left in a world full of mythical creatures and monsters. All she wants to do is live a quiet life, but everything changes when she meets her guardian angel, Jacob.
Whomp!
Ronnie
A depressed, portly, hirsute anime fan stumbles through life in the ever-pursuit of chicken nuggets and other life-shortening indulgences.
Girl Genius
Phil Foglio, Kaja Foglio
In a time when the Industrial Revolution has become an all-out war, Mad Science rules the World...with mixed success.
Wychwood
Varethane
When Tiara's pyrokinesis is finally noticed, she is captured by a magical research organization for study. If she cooperates, she could be helping to save humanity from a dire threat - but can she trust them?
Hazy London
Scotty
A story about messy relationships. From friendly foes to crazy families. Nothing is black and white, just full of color. But, all colors can get a little hazy...
Star Impact
Jack McGee
A young, energetic woman fights her way up in the world of super-powered boxing after discovering the mighty gloves of her missing idol!
Love Not Found
Gina Biggs
Abeille is on a quest to find someone who wants to do it the old-fashioned way in a time when touching has become outdated.
Kiwi Blitz
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
Steffi thinks she can use her kiwi mech to become a superhero. This idea turns out to be very stupid.
This is Not Fiction
Nicole Mannino
What do you do when the person you're in-love with is an anonymous romance novelist? Get your best friend to hire your worst enemy for help!
Kochab
Sarah Webb
A YA F/F fantasy comic about Sonya, a lost skier trying to survive a snowy wilderness and find her way back to her village; and Kyra - a fire spirit trying to fix the home that she let fall apart around her.
Astral Aves
Moon Cabal
A fantasy coming-of-age following the adventures of Astra The Black and friends, as they navigate the mysterious world around them. It's politics, adventure, and the supernatural; oh, and crazy hair.
Godslave
Meaghan Carter
Edith has been thrown into the dangerous world of modern-day Egyptian mythology. Fighting monsters and dealing with family drama of godly proportions.
Paranatural
Zack Morrison
Superpowered middle schoolers fight evil spirits in their rural hometown. Come for the jokes, stay for the cast, the creatures, and the mystery that ties them all together!
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Monster Pulse
Magnolia Porter Siddell
Four kids run afoul of a creepy secret organization's experiments, which turn their body parts into fighting monsters. Part sentimental coming-of-age story, part monster-training shonen manga, with just a bit of sci-fi body horror.
Starhammer
J.N. Monk, Harry Bogosian
A teen girl inherits a powerful alien artifact and proceeds to make a series of increasingly poor decisions
Sam & Fuzzy
Sam Logan
Troubled by gangster rodents, lovesick vampire stalkers, or confused ninja assassins? Don't panic! Sam and Fuzzy are here to help. (For a reasonable fee.)
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Jailbird
Charlie Davis
An all-ages comic about a recently escaped prisoner's struggle to understand the outside world, and vice-versa. Also, a magic cape!
Sufficiently Remarkable
Maki Naro
Two young women living in Brooklyn discover that you're always coming of age.
Goodbye to Halos
Valerie Halla
Cuddles, gay flirting, weird feelings, and magic-fueled knife fights - it's an adventure across the queer multiverse!
The Lonely Vincent Bellingham
Diana Huh
Vincent is an unkind man looking to disappear, and finds himself in the care of a vampire and her two wicked children.
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
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.
The Automan's Daughter
Mike Stamm
Aisha Osman and her uncle Siddig outwit bikers, spies and kidnappers while gearing up for a showdown with the formidable Widowmaker mecha.
Widdershins
Kate Ashwin
A series of light-hearted Victorian-era adventure stories featuring grumpy bounty hunters, accidental thiefkings, and more, in England's magical capital city Widdershins!
The Witch Door
Anni K.
Katariina Lehto discovers her neighbor is a witch called Jousia Muotka. Jousia introduces Katariina to the strange people and places beyond the witch door...
[un]Divine
Ayme
A highschool senior thought giving up his soul for a demon was a good idea. It wasn't.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Atomic Robo
Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener
The robot punches monsters and bad robots and one time he was a cowboy.
Cut Time
Juby
Rel and her trusty avian friend Fugue are on a quest to save a world that's lost track of time. Follow them and their new recruits, in a story written with help from the stars.
The End
August Brown, Cory Brown
Two aliens crash a sci-fi convention and accidentally take seven nerds on an adventure that spans the galaxy!
Awaken
Koti Saavedra/Flipfloppery
Superpowers, monsters and conspiracies. Piras, the spoiled Dameschi heir, fights to recover his identity after becoming a terrorist!
Ghost Junk Sickness
Studio CARTRIDGE, Laura Lee
Two hunters try to survive and end up being pushed to pursue a deadly bounty dubbed "The Ghost".
The Sanity Circus
Windy
Magic, monsters and mysteries await in the odd city of Sanity. It's up to Attley and a colorful group of characters to find out just what is going on.
Wilde Life
Pascalle Lepas
Oscar decided to rent an old haunted house, and that's when things got weird...
Cassiopeia Quinn
Gunwild, Psudonym
A cute, pantsless thief is pursued across the stars by a buttoned-up military officer in the spacey, laser-filled future.
Devil's Candy
Rem, Bikkuri
A lush fantasy about boy genius Kazu Decker, the girl he constructed for his 9th grade science project, and the world of devils and monsters they live in.
Fireweeds Moors
Gato Iberico
A cat-headed man and a girl with a sandwich hankering accidentally end up in a myth-infused country where magic chalices are a really big thing.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Real Science Adventures
Brian Clevinger
Spin off stories and other adventures from the world of Atomic Robo!
El Goonish Shive
Dan Shive
WARNING: This comic often ignores the Laws of Physics
Lilith's Word
inkPangur
If you had the power to make any wish come true using just one word, what would you say?
Demon's Mirror
Harry Bogosian
Based loosely off of "The Snow Queen", a story by Hans Christian Andersen, we see things take a different turn as the demons become central characters, and the side characters stick around. Yup, that's the only differences. Enjoy!
Lighter Than Heir
Melissa Albino
A young Volant woman joins the military in an effort to upstage her war-hero father.
Knights Errant
J.R. Doyle
Wilfrid's humble quest for revenge becomes bigger and bloodier by the day.
Tigress Queen
Allison Shaw
A barbarian warlord and a pampered prince try to avoid a marriage alliance that could end decades of violence.
Star Trip
Gisele Weaver
Jas is a human taken from her home planet on a trip across the galaxy she will never forget.
Alice and the Nightmare
Misha Krivanek
Alice finally attends University to learn to collect the dreams of humans, meet new friends, and deal with a pesky reflection along the way.
Go Get a Roomie
Clover
Experience the queer journey of an upbeat hippie and the friendships she makes along the way! A tale of self-discovery and love of many forms.
Monsterkind
Taylor C
Wallace Foster, a young, bright-eyed human social worker, has his entire world view rocked when he's suddenly relocated into a city primarily inhabited by monsters.
Anarchy Dreamers
Emily Ree
Sparkly undead kids fight society's worst Nightmares in this pastel-punk urban fantasy coming-of-age!
Between Failures
Jackie Wohlenhaus
The low stakes adventures of an assorted group of 20 somethings trapped in the declining years of American retail. They are naughty and say lots of swears.
Never Satisfied
Taylor Robin
Lucy Marlowe, a magician's apprentice, competes against other apprentices for an important, magical, Goverment Job.
BOOKMARK Click "Tag Page" to bookmark a page. When you return to the site, click "Goto Tag" to continue where you left off.
BUFFER WATCH
Comics are currently drawn and uploaded through:
Galasso has one. It’s disguised concealed under a cocktail-style Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga machine. Now you know why every pizza restaurant has one of those.
The secret code for ordering a resurrection is “anchovies”. It’s brilliant, no one ever questions that pizza restaurants have that on the menu even though nobody ever orders it.
Think we are seeing Dorothy coping with her own trauma using her old ‘work harder’ mindset. Problem is, this was a situation where working hard wasn’t needed, everyone just needed to relax and acting presidential is really out of place here.
I dunno. Depends on your background. Lots of people celebrate their version of Dia de Muertos around the time of Halloween and spend that holiday week remembering and celebrating their beloved dead.
Don’t know if that was what Dorothy had in mind, but it’s pretty common.
Dorothy does have Catholic family, and the All Hallows Eve / All Souls’ Day / All Saints Day holidays are Catholic traditions. Is what I mean. Just a hypothesis.
Good guess, but nah, she’s a well established atheist and probably doesn’t celebrate any Christian holidays except for the popular secularized versions of Easter and Christmas.
As we saw in the previous panel, she’s just standing on an unofficial soapbox like a grown-up Lisa Simpson
Feels a little weird to me, especially since she volunteered to say something when that wasn’t asked for or intended. I guess everyone there probably does know Mike but this feels random to bring up unprompted.
Agree, whether Mike has passed away or is on life support at this time everyone seems to be trying to temporarily forget what happened. Dorothy has seriously misread the room here.
True, but some people are “culturally Catholic,” and still have their own special holidays to celebrate in a secular way, even though they don’t believe in the theology behind it. The Halloween / Hallow’s Eve / Dia de Muertos / Souls Day traditions strike me as those kinds of secular holidays that some folks might see as both somber and celebratory at the same time.
yeah other than at his wake/a gathering in memory of it, seems like ethan and amber would have their own private thing about it. dunno if ruth/billie will walk in together later as well with even more awkward timing
Is this wrong or something? Sounds perfectly fine to me. It is the school where Mike is from. It’s not just Mike who’s gone, he’s a student from that school who is gone, that almost everyone knew of him existing
she’s trying really hard to ease the tension by addressing it by name instead of letting it be the elephant in the room — I honestly understand Dorothy way too well, I’m exactly that kind of ‘let’s fix it by leaning in’ problem solver who would not let the sleeping dog lie in an awkward situation.
if someone just died very recently you will be thinking about them, and almost everyone at this party is. the whole situation was very traumatic, and everyone responds to it differently. i dont have a problem with dorothy politely and gently acknowledging that ((and it helping her work through her trauma))
Some people see any occasion where people gather and… stop, basically (stop working or whatever) as a chance to “bring some things up”. Some of these people are well-intentioned. Others are social pursuit-hunters, and will do that at EVERY occasion until stopped.
Yeah, if Mike turns out to just be in witness protection this whole time, I would laugh really hard. It also would be a very Mike thing to only tell Walky he was alive – knowing he is the one goof-ball no one would believe.
I feel like it has been pretty well established in the comments section that Mike’s death is to be taken provisionally, and if it is a fakeout, it might on a loooong. time.
witness protection for what, though? the only people he witnessed committing a crime are dead. like, it would not surprise me if he was still alive having faked his own death but witness protection would very unlikely be one of his ways unless he saw that shitgrill get murdered in the hospital.
I do have to wonder how useful Mike’s knowledge would have been against the mob overall. From what we’re told, Blaine was basically the equivalent of a door greeter for them, was he not?
Blaine had a front business that existed for the mob to launder money through it, and Mike got a good look at the receipts back in a flashback strip.
If he remembered all that stuff (which was years ago, but Mike is VERY good at remembering inconvenient facts forever), and Blaine for whatever reason didn’t preempt it by moving things around (which might cause the mob to ask questions and learn that Blaine was clumsy enough to spill their secrets)?
…then Mike could point police to a huge money trail. And also a huge amount of money. Both of which the police would be happy to get their hands on.
It’s not a troll. Mike is dead. Walky just doesn’t know because he’s not close enough to Mike’s family to know. Families don’t normally inform a person’s roommate on their condition. That’s a very low priority call.
According to this strip, Walky was at the funeral. (Ok, a little reading between the lines, but Sal wouldn’t offer condolences over Blaine, and starting to quote Walky saying something about the funeral certainly indicates he was there.)
The funeral probably hasn’t happened yet. I’m not super sure on how the timeline shakes out but Amber was informed and this is maybe a day or two after that. Funerals can take weeks to get setup. Even preparing the body for viewing if they chose to do that can take a few days. Walky can still attend the funeral and not know Mike is dead in this moment.
This is supposed to be Halloween, which was a least a week or two after the garbage roof get together.
Also, since Amber seemingly got the news at that get together, it’s really doubtful she wouldn’t tell Walky during this time.
Actually now that you mention it I think that would be incredibly in character for Amber to not tell Walky Mike died. She is not good at sharing important information or being emotionally vulnerable.
Well, it’s possible from that reading that maybe they were talking about Blaine’s funeral, not Mike’s. But now I will either need to re-read the last like, year’s worth of comics to see when and where it explicitly says MIke is dead. Or just wait a day or two and see if the next strip makes more sense.
That only makes his comment even more confusing, but given that everyone else in the room is awkwardly looking at him as he says that, I doubt they’re under the impression Mike is still alive at this time.
I am pretty sure Mike is dead and Walky is either very missinformed or he overheard Amber talking to ghost Mike, thinking she was just on the phone and this about to get real akward.
Walky has never, ever shown any acknowledgement that Amber’s DID is real, so of course he would treat Amber talking to Mike as if it’s a fun little gag.
Yeah, Walky is the only person I can think of who picked it up on his own and one of the few who actually gets it.
To be fair, he got a bigger clue than anyone else did and wasn’t confused like Danny was by a lot of interaction with her when the personas were much closer.
You know what else is awkward? Misspelling awkward and missing several commas. I swear the more I proof-read my posts the more grammatically incorrect they become.
I assume he doesn’t know. Like Amber didn’t want to talk about it when she got the text, and others learned independently, but Walky got skipped, and their break-up maybe has to do with her using him as a refuge from her friend’s death without acknowledging that he should maybe know his roommate is dead.
Has he actually not died yet and the “flashback-in-a-flashback” thing Amber getting a message that he won’t pull through but they haven’t pulled the plug yet for some reason?
If he were in protective custody, Walky would be a moron to just blurt it out like this. As it is, could be that despite the earlier red panel flashback (and mention of a funeral), the plug hasn’t been pulled on Mike just yet.
Let’s all remember that we’ve seen present day Walky tell Booster that he feels, in his gut, like at any moment Mike might jump out of his closet or something and make fun of him for falling for the god-tier troll of faking his death for four months.
And let’s take this information with us on our way to any conclusions we might arrive at.
I was really surprised Mike died. I recalled, perhaps mistakenly, Willis saying nobody was going to die. But now that I think about it has anybody definitively said Mike is dead?
Also, Willis’ twitter handle is “DamnYouWillis”, so they reserve the right to troll the hell out of is as they desire, they are constantly warning us :D.
I think originally it was that no main characters that people cared about would die, but then Willis said at some point that he “broke a rule” but it wasn’t specified which one. People assumed it was the one about not killing off main characters (or protagonists, rather). I am still open-minded about whether it is all a con or not.
Willis said he wouldn’t let someone die bc the mourning would take up to much screen time at the pace the comic develops, so doing this at the beginning of a time skip to avoid just that totally makes sense.
As this comic has more realism and only a miracle or alien tech could have turned Mike back into a functioning human after he fell of a roof landing on his head, …
Wait, does Walky not know? Or does he know something that everybody else doesn’t know? Or has eating a whole helmet full of junk food impaired his memory recall?
It’s possible that Mike is brain dead at this point, and he’s still on life support because his parents aren’t willing to accept the fact. Walky might not get that.
That is possible. And certainly would be the logical thing in reality.
I don’t know if Willis would do a cliffhanger beat for that kinda thing, though. Outside of trolling, at least. I’ve been wrong plenty, but right now I’m leaning towards taking the cliffhanger panel as a more serious revelation.
He was there in the last pre-skip scene on Garbage Roof, where Amber found out Mike died. You’d think everyone there would’ve found out in that moment.
Ooh… Now this is interesting. Looking at it, yeah, it very clearly implies he died and Amber regrets believing she had a longer period of time during which she could visit him before he passed.
But… If we’re going by literal definitions of what’s there… It’s not an outright confirmation. She never says “Mike” or “dead” or any of those things.
So, there remains a possibility that it’s referring to someone else or something else and has been a bait-and-switch.
As posited above, perhaps it was longer before he was put into witness protection and moved. But then again, whole point of witness protection is to make the person unfindable. If the people who would hurt Mike truly believe he’s dead, then that would make them less likely to look for him. So why would they tell anyone perhaps other than his closest family, like his parents, that he wasn’t dead?
I mean, Amber might qualify for that “close enough to tell” category, but Walky? Definitely not.
Honestly, the more likely scenario to explain Walky’s behaviour is that he truly believes Mike isn’t dead and that everything was faked to put him into witness protection.
(Also, prediction: At least part of Walky’s rationale for this belief is that he was not automatically given straight-As, therefore, according to the logic of the old urban legend his roommate cannot possibly be dead)
Mike is definitely already dead in this strip. It’s more likely that Walky has constructed some elaborate fantasy for himself to stop from confronting that fact.
As an aside, I’m not sure why everyone is bagging on Dorothy for wanting to say something here.
When I was in high school, one of my classmates had most of his family slaughtered in what sure seemed like it could have been a mob hit (though he was elsewhere at the time and therefore okay). If one of our mutuals had taken it upon themselves at a Halloween party shortly thereafter to ask for a moment of silence, I can’t imagine anyone at all objecting to the idea, despite the fact that we were an incredible bunch of irreverent teenage assholes.
People process things in different ways, and this seems pretty obviously part of Dorothy’s process. And even if it isn’t, it’s only a moment of freakin’ silence.
fully agreed with JBento: interrupting a party to bum everyone out is like throwing cold water on them. It’s also not like Dorothy particularly liked Mike or was close to him or anything, so this her hashing everyone’s mellow just because she likes saying “official” things
That’s a bit dramatic. It’s a moment of silence, which is, generally, just a nice or respectful gesture. Since she also knows that there are people who were close to him and might appreciate people remembering their friend.
Plus, she DID say Halloween is a day to have fun in spite of death, so… no reason not to have fun.
Maybe. It’s unlikely they’ve actually forgotten. Sometimes it can just be acknowledging the elephant in the room and wind up letting people be more relaxed about it.
I think we’re very different people, because if I was trying to relax at a fun party and someone brought up the fact that someone close to us died, and died in an event that traumatized nearly everyone in the room, that would definitely kill all my fun and I would be thinking about that for the rest of the party and be unable to enjoy myself.
Call it dramatic if you will, but I don’t find it nice or respectful to bring up someone else’s tragedy to bring everyone’s mood down.
Is this speech for everyone, or for Dorothy? Because she seemed game for Sarah to give a speech, which wouldn’t necessarily include a moment of silence. It feels like Dorothy just wants a speech for the sake of it because people have gathered. She’s not doing anything bad IMO, just socially awkward.
I think she means well, but I’m not sure if she’s read the room correctly. Regardless, things are headed sideways now that Walky has chimed in.
Yeah, I can’t believe Dorothy told everyone to shut up and start crying right then and there, and also told them they aren’t allowed to experience any sort of joy at this party. What’s wrong with her? She’ll never be president but also she’s exactly like a politician.
Much as the Oracle gets on my nerves, they never said anything about Dorothy doing anything of the sort, and neither did anybody else. I don’t think tearing down people we disagree with like that (for something as low-stakes as a frankly mundane opinion on a webcomic character’s behavior) is very useful.
Unless of course, you’ve pivoted to a jokey tone meant to paint Dorothy as some sort of war criminal for comedic effect, in which case it’s hilarious and please carry on. I’m not your mom.
Take two: I can’t believe Dorothy brought out Mike’s dead body, dropped it in front of everyone and told them “You’re not allowed to be happy ever again.”
I’m generally neutral-to-intrigued by Dorothy, but if I could posit on a perspective that isn’t “bluh the people who dislike a character I like are joyless misanthropes”…
Dumbing of Age is a very slow burn comic. Two months pass by in a year. Characters change, but not all at once, meaning if a character is relatively static or changes slowly than others, and they have a trait that you find frustrating, it’s easy for that frustration to build over time, especially in a daioy webcomic. If you spend every day watching a character continue to do things that sandpaper on you, that feeling of “Uuuuuuuugh just knock it off” starts to grow. (I got this feeling a low during the last arc, where Becky did jack all besides tell people how she and Dina had sex — I get the characterization, but Becky’s sex hangups have never interested me as much as Joyce’s and seeing the same joke repeated for three months straight every time Becky showed up got grating fast.) It may not be necessarily fair, but a frustrating character trait snowballing into Bongo Eating Crackers isn’t the most unsurprising thing.
In addition, the narrative has done more to actively highlight the weak spots in Dorothy’s character than it did at the start. Part of this is, as this arc is starting to show, due to the slowly-emerging fact that Dorothy is basically pasting over the cracks of her trauma with Idealized Personality Spackle because she’s nineteen and coming to terms with your trauma sucks at any age, but part of it might be that Willis is setting up a huge shift in the status quo once “Dorothy got into Yale” gets revealed, one that can’t really be supported if Dorothy continues to fill the Generally Unoppositionally Nice role she sat on for a near decade.
Characters in-comic are starting to highlight and call out Dorothy’s inability to read a room and pathogical need to take charge of a situation (“maternal vulture” as Jennifer put it). Hell, Sarah was riffing on it yesterday. Hard to blame readers too much for picking up what the comic is actively putting down.
Sorry if this is incomprehensible, I literally just woke uo and back pain is fogging the brain.
I don’t say this because I *like* Dorothy, I say this because I don’t think she deserves the specific kind of sht she’s getting.
Shocker, I know, but there is a middle ground between like and she’s the worst. ;P
I just continuously get the feeling that Dorothy making mistakes and having flaws is somehow worse to some people than other characters making mistakes. Gives me the impression some people just hate when characters geniuenly want to be good people, and they jump at every fuckup, making it out to be this sacrilege when it’s really just … a fuckup.
Like getting angry at her ‘trying to bum everyone out’ by ‘reminding them that someone died just recently’ is a really exaggerated read of the situation.
Not really different than other characters.
We overreact constantly here. Tearing characters apart for minor flaws. (Or whitewashing problems completely – which is just the other side of the coin.)
Something I’ve noticed is that people usually seem more willing to forgive an antagonistic or evil character if they do one thing right, or are starting to get better, vs when a character who is the protagonist or has at that point been perfect/nice/good/etc makes a mistake. I think it’s because when someone is evil, an antagonist, or an underdog of some kind, we wanna root for them to improve and get better. Whereas if someone already ‘seems’ better, we want them to remain perfect and flawless and if they show a flaw, they have let the audience down. It’s a very interesting phenomenon that I’ve noticed in many different fandoms.
Hm. Morning!Chesh was admittedly a bit excessively passive aggressive. My apologies; I’ll do better to tamp that down in the future.
Perhaps I should clarify that I just feel like “people are just haters on people Doing Their Best” was a bit of a reductive and perhaps mean-spirited take on other human persons with years of shaped opinions on a story and character that they’re not necessarily going to completely dump in a single comment on a single in-universe moment at like 3 in the morning.
Like, I’ll dump out an essay about my character feelings 6 AM, but I assume most people in this comment section are not quite as impulsive and long-winded.
Same. Everyone’s experience of grief is different, obviously, but I’ve found taking a moment to remember and be candid about missing the person and hearing stories from everyone about them to be massively helpful. Humans developed grieving rituals (including wakes and shivas and receptions with little deli plates) for a reason.
Wait, maybe it’s a joke Mike asked Walky to pull at some point, in case he died, and Walky was like “pchea sure whatever, now gimme back my nuggies”, and only just remembered a while ago. I could see that.
Can we aim some of that toward Danny, too? He hasn’t said anything about it yet, but he did blunder twice just walking into the room, and we know he was rude about Mike before. I’m not confident he can hold his tongue here.
Walky, keep your fucking mouth shut. You’re gonna give away “””Billie’s””” cover, and then it’s all for nothing. You dope. You clown. You imbecile. Ruining the operation over here.
I also wanna add (without specifically directed language) that I feel the overall vibes of the comments have been particularly rancid lately. People at each other’s throats, in-fighting between folks who ultimately agree, certain individuals refusing to just drop something out of misplaced stubbornness, and the like. I don’t wanna come off as a scold or tone police here, but I do feel like we could all stand to take a step back, detach from the vitriol a little, and ask ourselves if the people we’re talking to are really against us. Maybe people are frustrated that the actual people who cause and intend harm aren’t receptive so it’s all getting redirected toward whoever’s closest, intentionally or not.
Either way, stepping away for a little while has caused a noticeable improvement to my mental health. Make of that what you will.
I remember when Maritza Campos was doing this, in her own college roommates comic, when a character named Mike died. Readers noticed that the death wasn’t completely confirmed, and even the funeral scene afterward avoided mentioning whose funeral it was and could plausibly have been for a different supporting character. So she spent a while trolling the readers with dialogue like “Remember, MIKE ISN’T REALLY DEAD. He lives on in our hearts.”
high-fives to thejeff and Ray Radlein and RedCat for being so composed and commonsensical and empathetic <3 love y'all.
i think Dorothy is doing a net Good Thing here any way you slice it.
• talking about death and grief and trauma is not easy, especially with the massive death-taboo we have in western cultures, exhibit A: today's comment section. so at least she's helping to make it a thing, that people can express and react to.
• "not bumming people out" and "not ruining the mood" and "reading the room" are all garbage values in my book and not worth taking seriously, ever. the world is not always funny-ha-ha, deal with it. If your mellow is harshed by people talking about a dead friend, then maybe your mellow is self-involved escapism and i'm not interested in preserving it.
• if it did turn out that "the room" was "bummed out" by Dorothy's unsollicited eulogy, so what? people will stop thinking about Mike in a matter of seconds after the interruption as they return to their individual chats. She gave whoever needs it permission to express themselves (what Walky is doing rn though, i have no idea, we'll see about that tomorrow), and whoever doesn't feel like being on that wavelength will just tune out. It's fine, y'all.
• Finally: is Dorothy doing this because she enjoys being the centre of attention? Well duh, that's how extroverts work. They do extrovert stuff, because they enjoy it. But also, sometimes it benefits everyone. We shy nerdgoblins need extroverts to use their powers for good sometimes. Sometimes they take a chance, and maybe it turns out they misjudged. in this situation, i'd be mortified for days. an extrovert just brushes it off like "oh yeah, happens to me all the time haha!" and just goes on prancing about, nbd. extroverts are magical poneys, y'all. appreciate!
I’m not touching most of this with a 10-foot pole, but “reading the room” is not a “garbage value”. Nobody is calling for everything to be “funny-ha-ha” (nice reduction btw), and it’s especially rude to call it “self-involved escapism” if people would rather just enjoy a party for being a party.
It’s just needlessly dismissive, is all. One person’s need to bring up a morbid topic should not inherently override the wants and overall mood of everyone around them.
i have my frustrations to deal with when it comes to this topic, that much is clear and i’m doing some unfair projecting here. like i said below, i felt that i was actually being self-centered myself. sadness leads to anger, angers leads to hate? the vibe i get from a lot of comments rubs me the wrong way but i didn’t need to go ahead and snipe at people for having a different read than mine. i’m sure there were better ways i could have expressed myself.
okkkk thanks for the reality check Taffy and sorry for my tone.
cue touch-grass time
No worries, it was just a weird vibe to start with, and it’s an overall touchy subject for a lot of people, so I get it.
That said, I agree that people shouldn’t hide from any mourning or even just mentions of death, and it doesn’t necessarily get the proper space in people’s “allowed” emotional expression. I do think, though, that there’s a time and a place for bringing it up, and people should be able to “opt in”, so to speak, rather than being stuck having to “opt out” because somebody sidelined them with the topic. For example, one could say that anyone who doesn’t wanna talk about Dead Mike for the 300th time this week could just leave the room, but I wonder if they should have to when they were here for snacks and costumes and a good time.
Of course, there are some mitigating factors, like Dorothy doing this pretty close to the start so there’s more time for the vibes to sorta self-correct, and it’s also a Halloween party, which is basically the sort of event you could maybe expect it to come up during.
Things could play out in any direction from here, though. Scene’s not over, so maybe everyone will turn out to be fine with Dorothy addressing the room. I just figure we’re all reacting to events in the moment and have more time to think about them than the characters, for whom this is all taking maybe several seconds.
And, in Dorothy’s defence, this is ten days or so after Amber got the ‘Mike died’ text. The funeral was recent. While I can’t fault anyone for not wanting to discuss it, especially Amber, I also can’t fault Dorothy for wanting to talk about it. Everyone seemed okay, if quiet, until Walky piped up so I don’t think she’s doing anything horrifically wrong here.
Back from my literal grass-touching expedition (i sat in the park listened to rebetiko and watched the full moon rise, what up)
thanks for your understanding Taffy. and thank you for trying to de escalate stuff around here. i assume most of us are in the northern hemisphere and overheating something silly— i know i am. i don’t often complain about the heat, because my threshold is way up, but yep, it’s starting to get to me now. not making excuses, but also maybe that plays a small role in the, as you say, increasingly aggro tone of the comments of late?
Anyway, i still don’t agree with you et al., but you’re right it’s a small thing, it’s not worth getting all, murder murder murder kill kill kill.
signing off on this topic at least, y’all take care and again, sorry for being an asshat, (but also some of y’all are also being asshats, but also also, that might be a reason but it’s not a good reason. right, byeee)
Ok, quick addendum. Maybe i’m giving my own experience too much weight, so i welcome counterpoints.
my experience with grief has everything to do with how frustratingly hush-hush our culture tend to be about death and its emotional aftermath, and nothing to do with being annoyed that people brought up my (or their) loss while i was chilling and not thinking about death.
however in my case, thank god for the queer community. We/they (i’m sort of at the periphery, but somehow all of my friend circle is firmly within) know about grief, and in my experience tend to be good at supporting each other through it. Queer folk know those feelings needs an outlet, they know it takes time, that rituals tend to help, and that grief might be monotonous from the outside (the stages of grief etc), but that actually it’s always irreduceable and unique, because it’s about love and intimacy and all the big and tiny things that make a person irreplaceable.
“talking about death and grief and trauma is not easy, especially with the massive death-taboo we have in western cultures, exhibit A: today’s comment section. so at least she’s helping to make it a thing, that people can express and react to.”
this is like saying exposure therapy is a positive thing for helping people get over their phobias and then shoving a tarantula at an arachnophobe’s face without warning. There’s such a thing as a time and a place, and most importantly CONTEXT for processing these feelings. Dorothy is not “helping” even if she thinks she is.
It would be if you threw things in their faces at random, but this is a holiday with a lot of talk about death around it, AND it’s most likely the first gathering of the whole group since Mike’s funeral, which was probably a couple days ago. A quick tribute and a moment of silence doesn’t seem that weird and nobody seems really upset by it, at least until Walky pipes up. If Dorothy thought someone would be really upset by it, I don’t think she’d say it, but she knows this group.
“not bumming people out” and “not ruining the mood” and “reading the room” are all garbage values in my book and not worth taking seriously, ever. the world is not always funny-ha-ha, deal with it. If your mellow is harshed by people talking about a dead friend, then maybe your mellow is self-involved escapism and i’m not interested in preserving it.”
Wow we would absolutely never get along if we met in real life. Here’s a sensitive topic that requires time, patience and often delicacy to tackle and your response to it is “well deal it with it, the world is harsh”. In-comic, you could expect that sort of response from a tactless, uncaring person; but in this strip the person talking is Dorothy, who is friends with everyone in this room. What sort of friend says “I’m going to bring up death and trauma right now, and if it makes you sad that’s your own problem.”?
yeah, listen i’m sorry i was so confrontational and dismissive.
i especially think that line which you and Taffy rightly picked on, was ill-chosen. i definitely wanted to convey a more subtle point than “the world sucks deal with it” (especially out of context), but obviously that choice of words made it spectacularly likely to piss people off, and i suppose when i was writing it, well, that was the intent.
it was a bad idea to be commenting at all really, and i should’ve taken notice of my state of mind, and given it an hour or two until i was able to make my point calmly.
but anyway, as i said above i’m dropping this topic for now. again, sorry i was so mean-spirited.
Oh, wait, no, I know what’s going on, Mike’s in a coma on life support and they haven’t pulled the plug yet but everyone except Walky has accepted they’re going to.
No wait, I meant we learned that all that stuff happened after the time skip. Meaning it hasn’t happened yet at this flashback point. Man this is confusing!
Billie recently said “Mike in the other wing died” as a reason against Ruth being the Grim Reaper, and Sal briefly mentioned a funeral, though it also could have been Blaine’s and Walky just went with Amber as emotional support. If the funeral was in fact Mike’s, I’m left wondering what Walky’s playing at here. It feels like a balloon being slowly filled with water, and it’s getting pretty dang thing, and any minute it’s gonna pop, leaving everyone in the room wet.
Amber wouldn’t have been broken up about Blaine’s funeral, I don’t think.
Alex, you are correct that WE first heard about it after the time skip but it occurred shortly around this point. Book Ten’s ending with everyone on garbage roof was when Amber got the text about Mike dying. The funeral was, presumably, a couple days later, and this about ten days after that garbage roof gathering.
I’m not sure who fucked up more in this moment, Dorothy reminding everyone about Mike’s death at a party where people are trying to enjoy themselves, or Walky making this dumb joke. Most likely Walky.
I don’t think it’s a joke, I think he either genuinely doesn’t know or there’s some technicality (ie he’s brain dead but still on life support to leep his body warm for aome reason) and Walky doesn’t get it
Which he is to our knowledge as Jennifer flat out stated Mike died. And she might be flawed in many ways. But I think discerning the living from the dead is one of her abilities.
Man, a strip where TWO of my least favourite characters completely mess up a social event? I gotta wonder if either of them are still feeling the embarrassment from this months down the line.
Maybe this is really obvious, but “Most of us wouldn’t be here today if not for Mike” is making my brain misfire. I know he (possibly unnecessarily) died fighting Blaine and Ross, but did he save the gang? He saved Amber I guess? Though he drew her out into a confrontation with the evil dads to begin with instead of just calling the cops…
Sorry if I’m forgetting obvious plot beats, it’s been a couple of years since the big Amber & Mike vs. Evil Dads fight.
I mean, if Amazi-Girl had been killed and unmasked that night, Blaine would have had what he wanted and cut bait with Ross instead of kidnapping everyone, probably…
But that makes a ton of sense, thank you! That’s gotta be what Dorothy is thinking.
For record I don’t think Dorothy is a monster, just incredibly tactless. If in the next strip she tries to make people go around the room and talk about their feelings about Mike she will earn the title of Worst Girl
Honestly I think the biggest reason there is such a strong divide in this comments on whether this is acceptable or not is because people are not understanding there are different ways to grieve that are not wrong or right, just different from your preferences.
Some of you would rather use a party to be cheerful and have fun and any mention of the Not Fun would destroy your mood. This is fair if you find the memories painful and what you need is space away from them.
But this puts you in stark contrast with the people where the memories are the source of comfort so talking about the person, acknowledging them, and having a moment of silence for them is helpful and kind for people where the memories bring comfort.
Dorothy is a memory brings comfort type of person and that does not make her tactless, socially awkward or mean this is inappropriate. It means not everyone handles loss the same way and for some people this would be very helpful, while for others, it would be reopening the wounds.
Yeah, but this type of action is usually something you talk to people about before mentioning the recently deceased to a room full of people. As it stands, this is now a room full of people that were having an alright time and have just been blindsided by a very heavy topic. Out of respect for the people haven’t given you consent to publicly discuss the Major Trauma Discussion, you should err on the side of not making the topic of the entire room’s conversation. Dorothy was especially out of line by suggesting that Sarah should say a few words and then immediately taking the Group Therapy Leader ball and running with it.
Also people can understand that there are multiple different ways to grieve and still think this was an inappropriate thing to do.
Not in my experience it’s not. At best, they might ask the host they’re making the speech on behalf of if it’s cool but just mentioning it happened at all? Not really. Sometimes people bring up heavy stuff that just happened – that’s just part of life. Especially when almost everyone in the room was involved in some way.
And Sarah TOLD her to say a few words if she wanted to.
Allow me to amend my statement: this type of action is usually something you SHOULD talk to people about before mentioning the recently deceased to a room full of people. Even if you’re dealing with your own trauma, you should still attempt to be considerate of other people dealing with the same trauma, especially if one of the people present was one of the deceased’s best friends. Something being part of life does not mean it’s something that is appropriate or considerate.
Sarah didn’t tell her to say a few words, Sarah said “YOU do that” and then “can we skip to the part where you decide to do it anyways” while looking exasperated. Sarah didn’t really give earnest consent; Dorothy was going to make a speech one way or another, and Sarah decided to fight it.
Except now Dorothy has just pretty much forced everyone at this party to go down memory lane, regardless of whether they’re in the “memories bring comfort” or “memories bring pain” camp.
My guess after waking up and ruminating on this strip for a while is that Mike is 100% dead (funeral has been discussed, and we saw the flashback strip and ‘he was supposed to have more time’,) and WALKY’S about to put his foot in his mouth something fierce by saying something to the effect of ‘Mike faked his death and will come out and explain his elaborate prank any minute now,’ prompting the Walky-Amber breakup.
Which in fairness? I can GENUINELY SEE WALKY BELIEVING as not just a form of denial, because Mike was the kind of person who made elaborate spoof websites to claim Walky’s favorite show was ending specifically to make Walky upset. It’s absurd, and comes off horribly, but is a logical extrapolation when your roommate’s spent all semester traumatizing you in absurdly involved ways.
I will note that I have Patreon but only at the bonus strips level, not the day early one. I have no idea what two hours from now will bring.
Which makes it all the more messed up what happens in the next strip (trying to not spoil specifically here)…another example of everyone seemingly forgetting/forgiving how awful Mike was. He messed up Walky pretty badly.
Loading ...
Walky got a working Martian resurrection chamber we don’t know about?
Turns out Blaine was in cahoots with Aliens all along
Galasso has one. It’s disguised concealed under a cocktail-style Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga machine. Now you know why every pizza restaurant has one of those.
The secret code for ordering a resurrection is “anchovies”. It’s brilliant, no one ever questions that pizza restaurants have that on the menu even though nobody ever orders it.
My father actually orders anchovies frequently.
Dodgy heart, he needs them pretty often.
Anchovies are delicious.
And it’s just not pizza without pizza fish on it.
I thought the resurrection machine was how they kept those machines running after all these years.
Galasso overheard pandering to nostalgia for two weeks ago is really in right now
Oh come on, really ?
People are coping and trying to have fun and you’re all “yeah ok but remember; THAT GUY IS DEAD”
Think we are seeing Dorothy coping with her own trauma using her old ‘work harder’ mindset. Problem is, this was a situation where working hard wasn’t needed, everyone just needed to relax and acting presidential is really out of place here.
Mike: “I’m not dead yet.”
Mortician: “Oh you think so do you?”
Why…why would you talk about that at any party?
I dunno. Depends on your background. Lots of people celebrate their version of Dia de Muertos around the time of Halloween and spend that holiday week remembering and celebrating their beloved dead.
Don’t know if that was what Dorothy had in mind, but it’s pretty common.
Dorothy does have Catholic family, and the All Hallows Eve / All Souls’ Day / All Saints Day holidays are Catholic traditions. Is what I mean. Just a hypothesis.
Good guess, but nah, she’s a well established atheist and probably doesn’t celebrate any Christian holidays except for the popular secularized versions of Easter and Christmas.
As we saw in the previous panel, she’s just standing on an unofficial soapbox like a grown-up Lisa Simpson
…and the popular secularized version of Halloween, probably.
You can be an atheist and still live certain religious traditions you grew up with, and even find them useful
Feels a little weird to me, especially since she volunteered to say something when that wasn’t asked for or intended. I guess everyone there probably does know Mike but this feels random to bring up unprompted.
Agree, whether Mike has passed away or is on life support at this time everyone seems to be trying to temporarily forget what happened. Dorothy has seriously misread the room here.
this is post-rooftop, they found out he’s dead right after the hope spot.
True, but some people are “culturally Catholic,” and still have their own special holidays to celebrate in a secular way, even though they don’t believe in the theology behind it. The Halloween / Hallow’s Eve / Dia de Muertos / Souls Day traditions strike me as those kinds of secular holidays that some folks might see as both somber and celebratory at the same time.
Dorothy’s family is atheist. But their culture of origin is the Jewish one..
Well, sort of. IIRC, 75% of her grandparents are Catholic, so that’s probably what most of her parents upbringing was.
Dunno why I said sort of. Yes, their family is partially ethnically Jewish, but religious-culturally, I’m pretty sure they’re mostly Catholic.
No, they’d be Jewish is they weren’t atheists.
A lot of Jews are atheists, actually.
I LOVE Dia de Muertos celebrations! especially ones with candy skulls!
yeah other than at his wake/a gathering in memory of it, seems like ethan and amber would have their own private thing about it. dunno if ruth/billie will walk in together later as well with even more awkward timing
Is this wrong or something? Sounds perfectly fine to me. It is the school where Mike is from. It’s not just Mike who’s gone, he’s a student from that school who is gone, that almost everyone knew of him existing
she’s trying really hard to ease the tension by addressing it by name instead of letting it be the elephant in the room — I honestly understand Dorothy way too well, I’m exactly that kind of ‘let’s fix it by leaning in’ problem solver who would not let the sleeping dog lie in an awkward situation.
if someone just died very recently you will be thinking about them, and almost everyone at this party is. the whole situation was very traumatic, and everyone responds to it differently. i dont have a problem with dorothy politely and gently acknowledging that ((and it helping her work through her trauma))
Some people see any occasion where people gather and… stop, basically (stop working or whatever) as a chance to “bring some things up”. Some of these people are well-intentioned. Others are social pursuit-hunters, and will do that at EVERY occasion until stopped.
Either things are about to get really interesting or this is a god level troll by Willis.
Honestly I’m fine either way.
I mean, remember we’re still in a flashback. I coulda sworn Mike was confirmed stone dead a while ago
Yeah, if Mike turns out to just be in witness protection this whole time, I would laugh really hard. It also would be a very Mike thing to only tell Walky he was alive – knowing he is the one goof-ball no one would believe.
I feel like it has been pretty well established in the comments section that Mike’s death is to be taken provisionally, and if it is a fakeout, it might on a loooong. time.
Ixnay on the Itnessway rotectionpay. You don’t know whose listening in…
witness protection for what, though? the only people he witnessed committing a crime are dead. like, it would not surprise me if he was still alive having faked his own death but witness protection would very unlikely be one of his ways unless he saw that shitgrill get murdered in the hospital.
“Witness protection for what? Nobody was convicted of anything!!”
I do have to wonder how useful Mike’s knowledge would have been against the mob overall. From what we’re told, Blaine was basically the equivalent of a door greeter for them, was he not?
Blaine had a front business that existed for the mob to launder money through it, and Mike got a good look at the receipts back in a flashback strip.
If he remembered all that stuff (which was years ago, but Mike is VERY good at remembering inconvenient facts forever), and Blaine for whatever reason didn’t preempt it by moving things around (which might cause the mob to ask questions and learn that Blaine was clumsy enough to spill their secrets)?
…then Mike could point police to a huge money trail. And also a huge amount of money. Both of which the police would be happy to get their hands on.
Thing is, witness protection from whom? Blaine and the Thumb are both dead.
It’s not a troll. Mike is dead. Walky just doesn’t know because he’s not close enough to Mike’s family to know. Families don’t normally inform a person’s roommate on their condition. That’s a very low priority call.
At least somewhat of a troll if that’s the case, since Walky and a funeral was mentioned.
According to this strip, Walky was at the funeral. (Ok, a little reading between the lines, but Sal wouldn’t offer condolences over Blaine, and starting to quote Walky saying something about the funeral certainly indicates he was there.)
The funeral probably hasn’t happened yet. I’m not super sure on how the timeline shakes out but Amber was informed and this is maybe a day or two after that. Funerals can take weeks to get setup. Even preparing the body for viewing if they chose to do that can take a few days. Walky can still attend the funeral and not know Mike is dead in this moment.
This is supposed to be Halloween, which was a least a week or two after the garbage roof get together.
Also, since Amber seemingly got the news at that get together, it’s really doubtful she wouldn’t tell Walky during this time.
Actually now that you mention it I think that would be incredibly in character for Amber to not tell Walky Mike died. She is not good at sharing important information or being emotionally vulnerable.
Also Billie said at the beginning of this storyline that Mike was dead. If Billie knows, Walky would know.
Unless there’s another Mike? I think it’s more likely that Walky has just dissociated the fact that Mike is gone.
The strip Otl1973 was attempting to link to is earlier in this same flashback. It happened already.
Appropriately, that seems to be a dead link.
…You do know that link’s alive, right?
OMG nice one
Thank you lol
Which strip? Your link did the thing where it just goes to today’s URL with a double quote at the end.
maybe this will work?
Ah! Well than maybe it is a troll.
Well, it’s possible from that reading that maybe they were talking about Blaine’s funeral, not Mike’s. But now I will either need to re-read the last like, year’s worth of comics to see when and where it explicitly says MIke is dead. Or just wait a day or two and see if the next strip makes more sense.
I don’t think Amber would be broken up at Blaine’s funeral.
That only makes his comment even more confusing, but given that everyone else in the room is awkwardly looking at him as he says that, I doubt they’re under the impression Mike is still alive at this time.
Doa should end in Halloween 2040 with the last panel being mike’s zombie hand coming out of his tombstone lol
Oh man, I hope we did get trolled. That would be on-brand for Mike. But most of all, I hope Walky isn’t making a horribly-poor-taste joke right now.
I’m not entirely convinced that Booster isn’t just Mike playing some long con/witness protection thing
The height matches. I think.
¿Por qué no los dos?
WHAT
Damn you Willis!
…I’m about to regret voting for Walky in the “best costume” poll, aren’t I.
wait I just realized his helmet’s visor shifted slightly to indicate a facial expression, it’s the best costume again
What facial expression? I can’t see a thing.
The right side (our right) shifted up to do a kind of -.^ expression, raised eyebrow type beat
I see it now. Thanks!
No way. Walky is fly tonight – that kind of style is immortal.
Ah, this is why Amber broke up with him.
Yup I imagine
NOT FOR LONG
I am pretty sure Mike is dead and Walky is either very missinformed or he overheard Amber talking to ghost Mike, thinking she was just on the phone and this about to get real akward.
Probably this, yeah.
This is gonna get heavy
Walky has never, ever shown any acknowledgement that Amber’s DID is real, so of course he would treat Amber talking to Mike as if it’s a fun little gag.
Have a link!
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/themask/
Yeah, Walky is the only person I can think of who picked it up on his own and one of the few who actually gets it.
To be fair, he got a bigger clue than anyone else did and wasn’t confused like Danny was by a lot of interaction with her when the personas were much closer.
What? Walky was the first and for a long time, only person to acknowledge ambers DID was real. What are you even talking about?
You know what else is awkward? Misspelling awkward and missing several commas. I swear the more I proof-read my posts the more grammatically incorrect they become.
Fortunately we all read so fast and are so used to internet typos nobody notices, unless they are really bad.
No, some of us spot every single one.
It’s only a gift if one is a proofreader.
It’s not a gift even then. It’s just a curse I can make some money from.
Or typos that we can willfully misinterpret as Freudian slits.
And you know what ELSE is awkward?
This segue to our sponsor, Ridge Wallet!
When you’ve been editting so long that your edits are create more errors than they catch…
… obviously you need to edit more to catch them.
Witness protection? Or walky just doesn’t know?
Either way. Wtf Dorothy.
if he is in witness protection i don’t think anyone would be told he lived (other than his parents?) even if he did change his identity
I assume he doesn’t know. Like Amber didn’t want to talk about it when she got the text, and others learned independently, but Walky got skipped, and their break-up maybe has to do with her using him as a refuge from her friend’s death without acknowledging that he should maybe know his roommate is dead.
I forget, is this before Amber got the call or after?
After, the call was almost immediately after the last shot pre-timeskip
After. This isn’t that long into the timeskip, but Amber got the message like literally the moment after the last panel of that chapter.
Not just after the call, but after the funeral – which Sal suggests Walky went to.
Oh life is bigger/It’s bigger than you and you are not me…
Is Walky in denial?
Has nobody told him yet?
Does he know something we don’t?
Has he actually not died yet and the “flashback-in-a-flashback” thing Amber getting a message that he won’t pull through but they haven’t pulled the plug yet for some reason?
It’s not only post-death, it’s post funeral. And Sal implied Walky went.
I see links get messed up too often to risk them myself, so full URL DEPLOY!
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/segregated/
iirc even at the beginning of the new semester, he still feels like Mike’s going to pop out of a closet to mock him.
…And… THAT was what killed Walky’s and Amber’s relationship.
Walky’s idea of a joke.
That sounds like the dry delivery of someone who was dead serious to me.
I wasn’t wrong. Just turns out it was at the Halloween party shortly after the funeral.
Yeah this would explain the breakup really nicely.
If only i had read Amber’s facial expression better in the last panel.
gotta love autism
My read of Amber’s expression (could be wrong) is “WTF…”
Or… hyperglycemic delusion?
See, e.g.: https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/diabetes-hallucinations
Meant that for Walky, anyway. Amber’s got other reasons for her mental state, in addition to sugar overload.
nah if anything, he may have forgotten or misunderstood something on behalf of his neuro-divergence
It was Walkys Denial that ended it wasn’t it.
amber was kinda in denial too but she def wouldn’t told anyone “hey i’m hallucinating my dead friend as a form of coping
Either he’s in protective custody, or walky is moron.
If he were in protective custody, Walky would be a moron to just blurt it out like this. As it is, could be that despite the earlier red panel flashback (and mention of a funeral), the plug hasn’t been pulled on Mike just yet.
If he was in protective custody Walky would have to be a moron to tell everybody at the party.
So . . .
So, he’s not dead… yet?
In fact, he’s feeling better!
He thinks he’ll go for a walk
He was born too late to be a Rolling Stone…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLo_0LKXi5U
He’s dead and buried at this point: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/segregated/ from earlier this dsame day.
or maybe cremated. They didn’t specify what was done with his body, but the funeral has passed.
Well… it only mentions a funeral. It could mean Blaine’s, not Mike’s, we’re just making an assumption. Good assumption to make, but still.
It doesn’t make any sense for them to mean Blaine’s.
Let’s all remember that we’ve seen present day Walky tell Booster that he feels, in his gut, like at any moment Mike might jump out of his closet or something and make fun of him for falling for the god-tier troll of faking his death for four months.
And let’s take this information with us on our way to any conclusions we might arrive at.
Thanks for that reminder!
That’s my assumption too. This is Walky about to unveil his theory that Mike’s death was a hoax, but in reality, Mike did die.
This is going to be like on BoJack Horseman where that guy beat a terminal illness and then shortly afterwards died in a bizarre comedic accident.
#letshopeitsnotfullofpeanuts #ohnoitwasfullofpeanuts
Maybe he is only mostly dead?
But, unless Ethan is Mike’s true love (and he gets a pill from a miracle maker), he won’t pull through.
Everyone knows Mike lives to blave.
I was really surprised Mike died. I recalled, perhaps mistakenly, Willis saying nobody was going to die. But now that I think about it has anybody definitively said Mike is dead?
1) Yes, Walky has said Mike is dead.
2) Willis did say that in word of god stuff but he also reserves there right to change his mind on word of god stuff.
THE right even, damn these idiot fingers of mine.
And also Willis because why not?
Also, Willis’ twitter handle is “DamnYouWillis”, so they reserve the right to troll the hell out of is as they desire, they are constantly warning us :D.
I mean, people have said pretty definitively Blaine and Ross died.
I think originally it was that no main characters that people cared about would die, but then Willis said at some point that he “broke a rule” but it wasn’t specified which one. People assumed it was the one about not killing off main characters (or protagonists, rather). I am still open-minded about whether it is all a con or not.
At the very least, Chunky Salsa rules apply to Ross.
Willis said he wouldn’t let someone die bc the mourning would take up to much screen time at the pace the comic develops, so doing this at the beginning of a time skip to avoid just that totally makes sense.
As this comic has more realism and only a miracle or alien tech could have turned Mike back into a functioning human after he fell of a roof landing on his head, …
Officially Walky’s worst Halloween ever.
But crap, who else doesn’t know?!
Did, uh.
Did nobody tell Walky?
I coulda sworn he was at Mike’s funeral.
I remember reading that too, but it might have been a post-skip January comic.
It was in the flashback, not too far back. Someone linked it above. Sal mentions the funeral to Amber, and at least suggests Walky was there.
“Witness Protection Program? I prefer Willis Protection Program. H— “
Oh geez, that’s right, Walky’s in a river in Egypt. Fuckshit. Welp, that explains THAT breakup.
I like how Sarah’s only expression appears to be perpetual boredom throughout this strip.
Moving to a dog farm upstate?
Classic Mike.
Wherever this is going, it’s good to see DW hasn’t lost his old talent for sudden plot twists!
Jesus Christ Dorothy that was a (insert President you hate here) level blunder.
On the bright side, might make Sarah even happier to see everyone miserable unless she considers this Dorothy sabotaging her halloween party
Wait, does Walky not know? Or does he know something that everybody else doesn’t know? Or has eating a whole helmet full of junk food impaired his memory recall?
It’s possible that Mike is brain dead at this point, and he’s still on life support because his parents aren’t willing to accept the fact. Walky might not get that.
That is possible. And certainly would be the logical thing in reality.
I don’t know if Willis would do a cliffhanger beat for that kinda thing, though. Outside of trolling, at least. I’ve been wrong plenty, but right now I’m leaning towards taking the cliffhanger panel as a more serious revelation.
It’s heavily implied (though not confirmed) that Mike succumbed to his injuries on October 21st.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/longer/
Unless… it was about Blaine and Amber got the text directly from Asher! Dun-dun-dun-dun…
Oh no I forgot about that! Okay I have no idea what Walky’s on about.
In addition, Amber (and probably Walky) have been to his funeral.
*Slap* MY ROOMMATES NOT DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD
*Slaps Garbage Roof* This baby can fit so many alive and well roommates in it!
Walky just Crammed his foot so far in his mouth he can kick his own ass.
“A Cronenbergian ouroboros, indeed.”
Walky, SOMEONE’S gonna be dead if you don’t withdraw that comment IMMEDIATELY, and it ain’t not you.
Of course Mike’s not dead. He just went to live on a nice farm upstate.
Even the lizard got in on the side-eye.
what if walky is just doing this to avert all the negative attention from Dorothy
because Dorothy what are you doing
Yeah, I could see him doing that. Taking one for the woman he loved…
I am now wondering how Danny is going to out Danny Walky and Dorothy here.
I mean his Mike being dead isn’t a bad thing is still a really Danny moment but I am thinking in the here and now and by that I mean the present past.
Walky is all of us
Welp, I knew Billie/Ruth wasn’t the only shoe that was gonna drop at this party…
That’s some denial there, Walky.
He was there in the last pre-skip scene on Garbage Roof, where Amber found out Mike died. You’d think everyone there would’ve found out in that moment.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/04-is-a-song-forever/transformative/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/longer/
Or that text wasn’t about Mike at all? Somehow?
It was her father. He died again
Oh she wouldn’t be broken up about that.
Unless she’s mourning that there won’t be more time for revenge…
That’s an astute observation, actually. I can’t tell if this is just Walky in denial or if he’s mistaken somehow.
Ooh… Now this is interesting. Looking at it, yeah, it very clearly implies he died and Amber regrets believing she had a longer period of time during which she could visit him before he passed.
But… If we’re going by literal definitions of what’s there… It’s not an outright confirmation. She never says “Mike” or “dead” or any of those things.
So, there remains a possibility that it’s referring to someone else or something else and has been a bait-and-switch.
As posited above, perhaps it was longer before he was put into witness protection and moved. But then again, whole point of witness protection is to make the person unfindable. If the people who would hurt Mike truly believe he’s dead, then that would make them less likely to look for him. So why would they tell anyone perhaps other than his closest family, like his parents, that he wasn’t dead?
I mean, Amber might qualify for that “close enough to tell” category, but Walky? Definitely not.
Honestly, the more likely scenario to explain Walky’s behaviour is that he truly believes Mike isn’t dead and that everything was faked to put him into witness protection.
(Also, prediction: At least part of Walky’s rationale for this belief is that he was not automatically given straight-As, therefore, according to the logic of the old urban legend his roommate cannot possibly be dead)
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/reaper/
Mike is definitely already dead in this strip. It’s more likely that Walky has constructed some elaborate fantasy for himself to stop from confronting that fact.
As an aside, I’m not sure why everyone is bagging on Dorothy for wanting to say something here.
When I was in high school, one of my classmates had most of his family slaughtered in what sure seemed like it could have been a mob hit (though he was elsewhere at the time and therefore okay). If one of our mutuals had taken it upon themselves at a Halloween party shortly thereafter to ask for a moment of silence, I can’t imagine anyone at all objecting to the idea, despite the fact that we were an incredible bunch of irreverent teenage assholes.
People process things in different ways, and this seems pretty obviously part of Dorothy’s process. And even if it isn’t, it’s only a moment of freakin’ silence.
Because they hate people who do their best to be helpful and nice. I honestly have no other explanation for that anymore.
Interrupting people having fun to remind them someone they knew died is neither helpful nor nice.
fully agreed with JBento: interrupting a party to bum everyone out is like throwing cold water on them. It’s also not like Dorothy particularly liked Mike or was close to him or anything, so this her hashing everyone’s mellow just because she likes saying “official” things
That’s a bit dramatic. It’s a moment of silence, which is, generally, just a nice or respectful gesture. Since she also knows that there are people who were close to him and might appreciate people remembering their friend.
Plus, she DID say Halloween is a day to have fun in spite of death, so… no reason not to have fun.
Reminding people their friend is dead is GOING to bring people down, regardless of intent
Maybe. It’s unlikely they’ve actually forgotten. Sometimes it can just be acknowledging the elephant in the room and wind up letting people be more relaxed about it.
I think we’re very different people, because if I was trying to relax at a fun party and someone brought up the fact that someone close to us died, and died in an event that traumatized nearly everyone in the room, that would definitely kill all my fun and I would be thinking about that for the rest of the party and be unable to enjoy myself.
Call it dramatic if you will, but I don’t find it nice or respectful to bring up someone else’s tragedy to bring everyone’s mood down.
Dorothy was also kidnapped and lost Mike too. This is also her tragedy, not ‘someone else’s’.
Is this speech for everyone, or for Dorothy? Because she seemed game for Sarah to give a speech, which wouldn’t necessarily include a moment of silence. It feels like Dorothy just wants a speech for the sake of it because people have gathered. She’s not doing anything bad IMO, just socially awkward.
I think she means well, but I’m not sure if she’s read the room correctly. Regardless, things are headed sideways now that Walky has chimed in.
Mhm. Yep. that’s what it is.
Commenters interpret Dorothy’s actions in the worst way possible for no real reason: part 100000000.
The worst way possible of course being “This feels wildly inappropriate, maybe she shouldn’t be doing it.” Truer horror never has there been written.
Maybe you should read the comment section to get a general look at what people have been writing.
My impression is different from yours, so of course I must be simply reading incorrectly.
Probably just selectively.
Yeah, I can’t believe Dorothy told everyone to shut up and start crying right then and there, and also told them they aren’t allowed to experience any sort of joy at this party. What’s wrong with her? She’ll never be president but also she’s exactly like a politician.
Much as the Oracle gets on my nerves, they never said anything about Dorothy doing anything of the sort, and neither did anybody else. I don’t think tearing down people we disagree with like that (for something as low-stakes as a frankly mundane opinion on a webcomic character’s behavior) is very useful.
Unless of course, you’ve pivoted to a jokey tone meant to paint Dorothy as some sort of war criminal for comedic effect, in which case it’s hilarious and please carry on. I’m not your mom.
I did read this as comedic hyperbole, but I do know what they’re getting at lol
Dang, I knew I should’ve exaggerated more.
Take two: I can’t believe Dorothy brought out Mike’s dead body, dropped it in front of everyone and told them “You’re not allowed to be happy ever again.”
To be fair, that sounds like something Mike would give top marks to.
Well, I am glad I’m not the only one who feels like that.
I’m generally neutral-to-intrigued by Dorothy, but if I could posit on a perspective that isn’t “bluh the people who dislike a character I like are joyless misanthropes”…
Dumbing of Age is a very slow burn comic. Two months pass by in a year. Characters change, but not all at once, meaning if a character is relatively static or changes slowly than others, and they have a trait that you find frustrating, it’s easy for that frustration to build over time, especially in a daioy webcomic. If you spend every day watching a character continue to do things that sandpaper on you, that feeling of “Uuuuuuuugh just knock it off” starts to grow. (I got this feeling a low during the last arc, where Becky did jack all besides tell people how she and Dina had sex — I get the characterization, but Becky’s sex hangups have never interested me as much as Joyce’s and seeing the same joke repeated for three months straight every time Becky showed up got grating fast.) It may not be necessarily fair, but a frustrating character trait snowballing into Bongo Eating Crackers isn’t the most unsurprising thing.
In addition, the narrative has done more to actively highlight the weak spots in Dorothy’s character than it did at the start. Part of this is, as this arc is starting to show, due to the slowly-emerging fact that Dorothy is basically pasting over the cracks of her trauma with Idealized Personality Spackle because she’s nineteen and coming to terms with your trauma sucks at any age, but part of it might be that Willis is setting up a huge shift in the status quo once “Dorothy got into Yale” gets revealed, one that can’t really be supported if Dorothy continues to fill the Generally Unoppositionally Nice role she sat on for a near decade.
Characters in-comic are starting to highlight and call out Dorothy’s inability to read a room and pathogical need to take charge of a situation (“maternal vulture” as Jennifer put it). Hell, Sarah was riffing on it yesterday. Hard to blame readers too much for picking up what the comic is actively putting down.
Sorry if this is incomprehensible, I literally just woke uo and back pain is fogging the brain.
re:back pain, I know how that feels.
take care bruh
I don’t say this because I *like* Dorothy, I say this because I don’t think she deserves the specific kind of sht she’s getting.
Shocker, I know, but there is a middle ground between like and she’s the worst. ;P
I just continuously get the feeling that Dorothy making mistakes and having flaws is somehow worse to some people than other characters making mistakes. Gives me the impression some people just hate when characters geniuenly want to be good people, and they jump at every fuckup, making it out to be this sacrilege when it’s really just … a fuckup.
Like getting angry at her ‘trying to bum everyone out’ by ‘reminding them that someone died just recently’ is a really exaggerated read of the situation.
Not really different than other characters.
We overreact constantly here. Tearing characters apart for minor flaws. (Or whitewashing problems completely – which is just the other side of the coin.)
On the other hand, I don’t think that “What? Why’s she want a speech?” or “This doesn’t feel socially appropriate” are especially harsh criticisms.
Something I’ve noticed is that people usually seem more willing to forgive an antagonistic or evil character if they do one thing right, or are starting to get better, vs when a character who is the protagonist or has at that point been perfect/nice/good/etc makes a mistake. I think it’s because when someone is evil, an antagonist, or an underdog of some kind, we wanna root for them to improve and get better. Whereas if someone already ‘seems’ better, we want them to remain perfect and flawless and if they show a flaw, they have let the audience down. It’s a very interesting phenomenon that I’ve noticed in many different fandoms.
Hm. Morning!Chesh was admittedly a bit excessively passive aggressive. My apologies; I’ll do better to tamp that down in the future.
Perhaps I should clarify that I just feel like “people are just haters on people Doing Their Best” was a bit of a reductive and perhaps mean-spirited take on other human persons with years of shaped opinions on a story and character that they’re not necessarily going to completely dump in a single comment on a single in-universe moment at like 3 in the morning.
Like, I’ll dump out an essay about my character feelings 6 AM, but I assume most people in this comment section are not quite as impulsive and long-winded.
Same. Everyone’s experience of grief is different, obviously, but I’ve found taking a moment to remember and be candid about missing the person and hearing stories from everyone about them to be massively helpful. Humans developed grieving rituals (including wakes and shivas and receptions with little deli plates) for a reason.
I called it!
… so, you know, it’s probably not true.
Man, even Fuckface is staring at Walky.
It is judging him hard…
Well Like people say in my country: this is not a reason not to drink
Hahaha I like that ^^
Wait, do we know Mike is dead at this point? Could he still be comatose?
Jennifer stated he died which is why Ruth’s outfit was inappropriate.
So, that’s the bad joke that made Amber and Walky breakup?
Oblivious Walky is Oblivious?
Excuse me??? Is Walky trolling or is he in denial? Or… It can’t be…
I’m withholding judgment.
*removes helmet*
“I’ve been Mike all along!!!”
(and I would have gotten away with it, too, if ti weren’t for you meddling kids and your iguana)
Watch Ruth arrive in her death-costume.
Wait, maybe it’s a joke Mike asked Walky to pull at some point, in case he died, and Walky was like “pchea sure whatever, now gimme back my nuggies”, and only just remembered a while ago. I could see that.
So today’s Walky is all “Honour before social acceptance” and falling on his sword.
What if Dorothy is in on it, too! And the next person waltzing through the door is actually gonna be Mike???
*Theresa may walk*
“bongo, I lived.”
The awkward, “he doesn’t know” moment, and of course, it would be Walky.
You know, just like, ”’in case”’, can we compile all the definitive and implied information saying Mike is Dead into one place?…
At this point Willis should really be in the tags as a character, just the nigh-immortal god-creature that we all shout ‘GOD-DAMNIT’ to
Read the room, idiot
This is directed at both Dorothy and Walky
Can we aim some of that toward Danny, too? He hasn’t said anything about it yet, but he did blunder twice just walking into the room, and we know he was rude about Mike before. I’m not confident he can hold his tongue here.
Man, in retrospect Joe really made the right move getting out of this place
For once, his instincts were right on the money
I’ve been saying it. I wouldn’t believe that Mike was dead unless its said or shown outright.
Is this gonna be some kind of Kingdom Hearts-style “He’s alive in all of us as long as we remember him” nonsense?
So did no one tell Walky, or is this his way of honoring Mike’s memory? Because honestly, valid if so.
Walky, keep your fucking mouth shut. You’re gonna give away “””Billie’s””” cover, and then it’s all for nothing. You dope. You clown. You imbecile. Ruining the operation over here.
I also wanna add (without specifically directed language) that I feel the overall vibes of the comments have been particularly rancid lately. People at each other’s throats, in-fighting between folks who ultimately agree, certain individuals refusing to just drop something out of misplaced stubbornness, and the like. I don’t wanna come off as a scold or tone police here, but I do feel like we could all stand to take a step back, detach from the vitriol a little, and ask ourselves if the people we’re talking to are really against us. Maybe people are frustrated that the actual people who cause and intend harm aren’t receptive so it’s all getting redirected toward whoever’s closest, intentionally or not.
Either way, stepping away for a little while has caused a noticeable improvement to my mental health. Make of that what you will.
Wait, what? Does Walky not know, or has Willis been screwing with us this whole time?
I really like Dorothy’s speech.
yeah! so do i <3
I remember when Maritza Campos was doing this, in her own college roommates comic, when a character named Mike died. Readers noticed that the death wasn’t completely confirmed, and even the funeral scene afterward avoided mentioning whose funeral it was and could plausibly have been for a different supporting character. So she spent a while trolling the readers with dialogue like “Remember, MIKE ISN’T REALLY DEAD. He lives on in our hearts.”
high-fives to thejeff and Ray Radlein and RedCat for being so composed and commonsensical and empathetic <3 love y'all.
i think Dorothy is doing a net Good Thing here any way you slice it.
• talking about death and grief and trauma is not easy, especially with the massive death-taboo we have in western cultures, exhibit A: today's comment section. so at least she's helping to make it a thing, that people can express and react to.
• "not bumming people out" and "not ruining the mood" and "reading the room" are all garbage values in my book and not worth taking seriously, ever. the world is not always funny-ha-ha, deal with it. If your mellow is harshed by people talking about a dead friend, then maybe your mellow is self-involved escapism and i'm not interested in preserving it.
• if it did turn out that "the room" was "bummed out" by Dorothy's unsollicited eulogy, so what? people will stop thinking about Mike in a matter of seconds after the interruption as they return to their individual chats. She gave whoever needs it permission to express themselves (what Walky is doing rn though, i have no idea, we'll see about that tomorrow), and whoever doesn't feel like being on that wavelength will just tune out. It's fine, y'all.
• Finally: is Dorothy doing this because she enjoys being the centre of attention? Well duh, that's how extroverts work. They do extrovert stuff, because they enjoy it. But also, sometimes it benefits everyone. We shy nerdgoblins need extroverts to use their powers for good sometimes. Sometimes they take a chance, and maybe it turns out they misjudged. in this situation, i'd be mortified for days. an extrovert just brushes it off like "oh yeah, happens to me all the time haha!" and just goes on prancing about, nbd. extroverts are magical poneys, y'all. appreciate!
thank you for your attention *bows out*
I’m not touching most of this with a 10-foot pole, but “reading the room” is not a “garbage value”. Nobody is calling for everything to be “funny-ha-ha” (nice reduction btw), and it’s especially rude to call it “self-involved escapism” if people would rather just enjoy a party for being a party.
It’s just needlessly dismissive, is all. One person’s need to bring up a morbid topic should not inherently override the wants and overall mood of everyone around them.
yeah. fair. i’m sure i got carried away.
i have my frustrations to deal with when it comes to this topic, that much is clear and i’m doing some unfair projecting here. like i said below, i felt that i was actually being self-centered myself. sadness leads to anger, angers leads to hate? the vibe i get from a lot of comments rubs me the wrong way but i didn’t need to go ahead and snipe at people for having a different read than mine. i’m sure there were better ways i could have expressed myself.
okkkk thanks for the reality check Taffy and sorry for my tone.
cue touch-grass time
No worries, it was just a weird vibe to start with, and it’s an overall touchy subject for a lot of people, so I get it.
That said, I agree that people shouldn’t hide from any mourning or even just mentions of death, and it doesn’t necessarily get the proper space in people’s “allowed” emotional expression. I do think, though, that there’s a time and a place for bringing it up, and people should be able to “opt in”, so to speak, rather than being stuck having to “opt out” because somebody sidelined them with the topic. For example, one could say that anyone who doesn’t wanna talk about Dead Mike for the 300th time this week could just leave the room, but I wonder if they should have to when they were here for snacks and costumes and a good time.
Of course, there are some mitigating factors, like Dorothy doing this pretty close to the start so there’s more time for the vibes to sorta self-correct, and it’s also a Halloween party, which is basically the sort of event you could maybe expect it to come up during.
Things could play out in any direction from here, though. Scene’s not over, so maybe everyone will turn out to be fine with Dorothy addressing the room. I just figure we’re all reacting to events in the moment and have more time to think about them than the characters, for whom this is all taking maybe several seconds.
And, in Dorothy’s defence, this is ten days or so after Amber got the ‘Mike died’ text. The funeral was recent. While I can’t fault anyone for not wanting to discuss it, especially Amber, I also can’t fault Dorothy for wanting to talk about it. Everyone seemed okay, if quiet, until Walky piped up so I don’t think she’s doing anything horrifically wrong here.
Hey Taffy! It’s been quite a while since we’ve talked on discord, wassup?
Back from my literal grass-touching expedition (i sat in the park listened to rebetiko and watched the full moon rise, what up)
thanks for your understanding Taffy. and thank you for trying to de escalate stuff around here. i assume most of us are in the northern hemisphere and overheating something silly— i know i am. i don’t often complain about the heat, because my threshold is way up, but yep, it’s starting to get to me now. not making excuses, but also maybe that plays a small role in the, as you say, increasingly aggro tone of the comments of late?
Anyway, i still don’t agree with you et al., but you’re right it’s a small thing, it’s not worth getting all, murder murder murder kill kill kill.
signing off on this topic at least, y’all take care and again, sorry for being an asshat, (but also some of y’all are also being asshats, but also also, that might be a reason but it’s not a good reason. right, byeee)
Ok, quick addendum. Maybe i’m giving my own experience too much weight, so i welcome counterpoints.
my experience with grief has everything to do with how frustratingly hush-hush our culture tend to be about death and its emotional aftermath, and nothing to do with being annoyed that people brought up my (or their) loss while i was chilling and not thinking about death.
however in my case, thank god for the queer community. We/they (i’m sort of at the periphery, but somehow all of my friend circle is firmly within) know about grief, and in my experience tend to be good at supporting each other through it. Queer folk know those feelings needs an outlet, they know it takes time, that rituals tend to help, and that grief might be monotonous from the outside (the stages of grief etc), but that actually it’s always irreduceable and unique, because it’s about love and intimacy and all the big and tiny things that make a person irreplaceable.
I like this take.
thanks for saying so!
“talking about death and grief and trauma is not easy, especially with the massive death-taboo we have in western cultures, exhibit A: today’s comment section. so at least she’s helping to make it a thing, that people can express and react to.”
this is like saying exposure therapy is a positive thing for helping people get over their phobias and then shoving a tarantula at an arachnophobe’s face without warning. There’s such a thing as a time and a place, and most importantly CONTEXT for processing these feelings. Dorothy is not “helping” even if she thinks she is.
It would be if you threw things in their faces at random, but this is a holiday with a lot of talk about death around it, AND it’s most likely the first gathering of the whole group since Mike’s funeral, which was probably a couple days ago. A quick tribute and a moment of silence doesn’t seem that weird and nobody seems really upset by it, at least until Walky pipes up. If Dorothy thought someone would be really upset by it, I don’t think she’d say it, but she knows this group.
“not bumming people out” and “not ruining the mood” and “reading the room” are all garbage values in my book and not worth taking seriously, ever. the world is not always funny-ha-ha, deal with it. If your mellow is harshed by people talking about a dead friend, then maybe your mellow is self-involved escapism and i’m not interested in preserving it.”
Wow we would absolutely never get along if we met in real life. Here’s a sensitive topic that requires time, patience and often delicacy to tackle and your response to it is “well deal it with it, the world is harsh”. In-comic, you could expect that sort of response from a tactless, uncaring person; but in this strip the person talking is Dorothy, who is friends with everyone in this room. What sort of friend says “I’m going to bring up death and trauma right now, and if it makes you sad that’s your own problem.”?
yeah, listen i’m sorry i was so confrontational and dismissive.
i especially think that line which you and Taffy rightly picked on, was ill-chosen. i definitely wanted to convey a more subtle point than “the world sucks deal with it” (especially out of context), but obviously that choice of words made it spectacularly likely to piss people off, and i suppose when i was writing it, well, that was the intent.
it was a bad idea to be commenting at all really, and i should’ve taken notice of my state of mind, and given it an hour or two until i was able to make my point calmly.
but anyway, as i said above i’m dropping this topic for now. again, sorry i was so mean-spirited.
Is… is Walky saying this loudly to the whole crowd or just kind of whispering it to Amber right now?
I think he’s saying it alive, which is gonna be super awkward when the others break the news to him…
Pretty sure Mike would much rather have a moment of “Fuck you!”
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
So, Mike’s clearly dead in the “now”, since he’s not getting retconned back to life.
Did Walky somehow not know about his roommate dying, or did Mike *fake faking his own death* in advance with like a dead man’s switch?
Oh, wait, no, I know what’s going on, Mike’s in a coma on life support and they haven’t pulled the plug yet but everyone except Walky has accepted they’re going to.
Mike is dead. His funeral has already happened. Walky attended said funeral. However, he is deep in denial, evidentially.
Wait I thought all of that happened AFTER the time skip?
No wait, I meant we learned that all that stuff happened after the time skip. Meaning it hasn’t happened yet at this flashback point. Man this is confusing!
Billie recently said “Mike in the other wing died” as a reason against Ruth being the Grim Reaper, and Sal briefly mentioned a funeral, though it also could have been Blaine’s and Walky just went with Amber as emotional support. If the funeral was in fact Mike’s, I’m left wondering what Walky’s playing at here. It feels like a balloon being slowly filled with water, and it’s getting pretty dang thing, and any minute it’s gonna pop, leaving everyone in the room wet.
Amber wouldn’t have been broken up about Blaine’s funeral, I don’t think.
Alex, you are correct that WE first heard about it after the time skip but it occurred shortly around this point. Book Ten’s ending with everyone on garbage roof was when Amber got the text about Mike dying. The funeral was, presumably, a couple days later, and this about ten days after that garbage roof gathering.
I’m not sure who fucked up more in this moment, Dorothy reminding everyone about Mike’s death at a party where people are trying to enjoy themselves, or Walky making this dumb joke. Most likely Walky.
Joke? Isn’t Mike still on life support at this point? I think ESM’s explanation is more likely.
No, Mike is dead at this point. We saw Amber flashbacking-within-a-flashback about getting the text.
Jennifer flat out stated he died.
I don’t think it’s a joke, I think he either genuinely doesn’t know or there’s some technicality (ie he’s brain dead but still on life support to leep his body warm for aome reason) and Walky doesn’t get it
Our best evidence is that Walky was at Mike’s funeral.
Do we know when the funeral happened? You’re probably right but they’re not always immediate
(Extremely Brian Blessed voice) WHAAAAT?? MIKE’S ALIIIIIVE????
There is nothing wrong with calling a moment of silence at a social gathering in honor of a member of the social circle who has died.
That’s it.
assuming the person is dead already.
It’s rather poor party etiquette to jump the gun on that sort of thing.
Which he is to our knowledge as Jennifer flat out stated Mike died. And she might be flawed in many ways. But I think discerning the living from the dead is one of her abilities.
Man, a strip where TWO of my least favourite characters completely mess up a social event? I gotta wonder if either of them are still feeling the embarrassment from this months down the line.
Maybe this is really obvious, but “Most of us wouldn’t be here today if not for Mike” is making my brain misfire. I know he (possibly unnecessarily) died fighting Blaine and Ross, but did he save the gang? He saved Amber I guess? Though he drew her out into a confrontation with the evil dads to begin with instead of just calling the cops…
Sorry if I’m forgetting obvious plot beats, it’s been a couple of years since the big Amber & Mike vs. Evil Dads fight.
If Mike hadn’t been there, it’s very possible Blaine would’ve taken out AG, who played a crucial role in saving everyone.
It’s not a certainty they’d be dead without Mike but it’s a tribute. Not the time for technicalities.
I mean, if Amazi-Girl had been killed and unmasked that night, Blaine would have had what he wanted and cut bait with Ross instead of kidnapping everyone, probably…
But that makes a ton of sense, thank you! That’s gotta be what Dorothy is thinking.
“Hello, everyone. EVERYONE! Now that I have your attention, I’d like to ruin the party.”
For record I don’t think Dorothy is a monster, just incredibly tactless. If in the next strip she tries to make people go around the room and talk about their feelings about Mike she will earn the title of Worst Girl
Wow I like Dorothy a lot more right now
Honestly I think the biggest reason there is such a strong divide in this comments on whether this is acceptable or not is because people are not understanding there are different ways to grieve that are not wrong or right, just different from your preferences.
Some of you would rather use a party to be cheerful and have fun and any mention of the Not Fun would destroy your mood. This is fair if you find the memories painful and what you need is space away from them.
But this puts you in stark contrast with the people where the memories are the source of comfort so talking about the person, acknowledging them, and having a moment of silence for them is helpful and kind for people where the memories bring comfort.
Dorothy is a memory brings comfort type of person and that does not make her tactless, socially awkward or mean this is inappropriate. It means not everyone handles loss the same way and for some people this would be very helpful, while for others, it would be reopening the wounds.
Yeah, but this type of action is usually something you talk to people about before mentioning the recently deceased to a room full of people. As it stands, this is now a room full of people that were having an alright time and have just been blindsided by a very heavy topic. Out of respect for the people haven’t given you consent to publicly discuss the Major Trauma Discussion, you should err on the side of not making the topic of the entire room’s conversation. Dorothy was especially out of line by suggesting that Sarah should say a few words and then immediately taking the Group Therapy Leader ball and running with it.
Also people can understand that there are multiple different ways to grieve and still think this was an inappropriate thing to do.
Not in my experience it’s not. At best, they might ask the host they’re making the speech on behalf of if it’s cool but just mentioning it happened at all? Not really. Sometimes people bring up heavy stuff that just happened – that’s just part of life. Especially when almost everyone in the room was involved in some way.
And Sarah TOLD her to say a few words if she wanted to.
Allow me to amend my statement: this type of action is usually something you SHOULD talk to people about before mentioning the recently deceased to a room full of people. Even if you’re dealing with your own trauma, you should still attempt to be considerate of other people dealing with the same trauma, especially if one of the people present was one of the deceased’s best friends. Something being part of life does not mean it’s something that is appropriate or considerate.
Sarah didn’t tell her to say a few words, Sarah said “YOU do that” and then “can we skip to the part where you decide to do it anyways” while looking exasperated. Sarah didn’t really give earnest consent; Dorothy was going to make a speech one way or another, and Sarah decided to fight it.
Except now Dorothy has just pretty much forced everyone at this party to go down memory lane, regardless of whether they’re in the “memories bring comfort” or “memories bring pain” camp.
My guess after waking up and ruminating on this strip for a while is that Mike is 100% dead (funeral has been discussed, and we saw the flashback strip and ‘he was supposed to have more time’,) and WALKY’S about to put his foot in his mouth something fierce by saying something to the effect of ‘Mike faked his death and will come out and explain his elaborate prank any minute now,’ prompting the Walky-Amber breakup.
Which in fairness? I can GENUINELY SEE WALKY BELIEVING as not just a form of denial, because Mike was the kind of person who made elaborate spoof websites to claim Walky’s favorite show was ending specifically to make Walky upset. It’s absurd, and comes off horribly, but is a logical extrapolation when your roommate’s spent all semester traumatizing you in absurdly involved ways.
I will note that I have Patreon but only at the bonus strips level, not the day early one. I have no idea what two hours from now will bring.
Which makes it all the more messed up what happens in the next strip (trying to not spoil specifically here)…another example of everyone seemingly forgetting/forgiving how awful Mike was. He messed up Walky pretty badly.
Mike lives on in the hearts and moms of us all.