I wonder if this is part of why he seemed -especially- annoyed about her acting different. He just did something to emulate a part of her he respects, and she’s gone ‘no you’re right I should be different.’
We did have an arc with Joyce where we established that when others need to be negative for a bit, they siphon it off of her and she gets suspiciously cheery
Is it just me or did Jacob seem to have… designs for this interaction?
it’s obvious he cares about Ethan as much the rest of his close friends, but it seems like he setting up some kind of narrative in which he gonna be seen as a dick no matter what he does, quite possibly to justify something toxic he’s done or about to do which may not necessarily related to Ethan
or at least that’s what I catch from the face he makin in the last panel
Probably not the /near/ future, but this certainly is him understanding Sarah’s choices and how much of what Raidah told him about her was poisoned by incomplete information. It’s certainly something that he should be talking to HER about.
well besides being recently openly objectified by Sarah, Jacob probably also reluctant to talk to her immediately on account of her smiling constantly like she about to pull a “knock knock” LOL
I honestly think he’s just relating it back to Sarah with that last bit? She definitely leaned into her role as the grumpy one in the friend group until extremely recently.
Inversion seems to be the theme all around here. We’ve got Joyce doing drunken parties and hoping for drunken sex while Joe’s been infected with her former evangelical purity culture. We’ve got Dorothy turning into an irresponsible, purposeless mess, Carla’s found a person that she likes just as much as herself, and Dan hasn’t danned anything up for weeks now.
Okay, except “Joe’s been infected with her former evangelical purity culture” is entirely Roz’s interpretation, and Roz has some weird inverse-slut-shaming thing going on.
This is definitely true. Joe didn’t exactly reveal the true nature of his sexual trauma with Roz, because Of Course He Didn’t. They’re not that close. In Roz’s defense, she got a deeply incomplete sense of what Joe was worried about.
Roz is so dogmatically sex-positive, that she is only used to engaging with the issue from the perspective of a sexually confident and empowered person. In her worldview, basically no sex can be wrong, if consent was obtained and retained. She has no sense that maybe she might seriously wound herself with regret over sex she initially chose to have, because there’s nothing within her internally, which could put her in that position. So, it all gets lumped into “immature fundie stuff that sensible people should never waste their mental energy with,” because to her, that’s all it can be.
Joe presented her with the question “yo, what if I like, ruin myself with this,” because it was the only language he had to describe what he was feeling. Roz naturally missed the subtext, that Joe wasn’t asking “what if I hurt or damage myself through having sex;” the question that Joe wanted to ask, but didn’t know how to, was “how do I know for certain, that I won’t hurt my partner, because I care deeply about them, and they have sexual baggage?” Which, to be fair…from her position, I don’t think Roz would have been prepared to answer that question tactfully, anyway.
I really like these strips. This is some great nuance right here, as well as great continued understanding for the position Sarah had previously been in. Sometimes life doesn’t offer up good alternatives or good choices. Sometimes solutions aren’t clean. Sometimes choices come with consequences. And if Jacob’s consequence is that his roommate is a bit rankled with him, he’s willing to live with it compared to the alternative of a dead roommate on his conscience.
It is also a bit easier to deal with something like that mentality/emotionally if you start acting the part. A ‘everyone treats me that way, so I might as well act that way’ type of thing. It could either be that you don’t see the point of wasting energy being nice to others if they are just going to misconstrue it, or as almost an emotional soothing technique where you do stuff that you feel actually deserves the abuse. It is less stressful if you agree with everyone that you have done wrong things vs always trying your best and being nice while still being called bad. You don’t have to constantly reaffirm your definition of whether your actions actually are good that way, if that makes sense.
That’s a good point about Ethan not going to class that wasn’t brought up. It might not have even taken to the end of the semester (when he’d get failing grades) depending on the attendance policies and if he’s ever gone to various classes. He could get removed from classes for not attending/responding, and even if it wasn’t al of them, if he doesn’t qualify as a full-time student, he could get booted from the dorms. That…wouldn’t help things.
Amber’s been doctoring his grades, etc, to cover for what he’s been doing, but that’s only going to go so far. He really needs to proactively do better than this.
Yeah, and there’s a decent chance his classes are big enough that she could change an attendance record unnoticed. For some of mine, if the professor saw someone never came or came the first class but then didn’t return for x number of classes, they might drop them from the roster (after trying to contact the student). But again, that depends on the professor noticing.
Does Jacob have any reason to know that Amber is helping Ethan by hacking the system?
If Amber has a paranoid mindset (the fewer people know, the better), she wouldn’t tell Jacob. So all Jacob has to go on is what he sees Ethan doing. Or not doing. As in, not leaving his room.
Ah. Just checked the relevant comic. Put the string “speakingof” after the site URL for the comic for August 5, 2023. Ethan says “Yeah, somehow I still have perfect attendance.” and Amber says “It’s a mystery!”. So Ethan figured it out, but he’s probably not going to tell Jacob that Amber has been hacking his attendance record and such.
Ironically, none of Ethan’s prof.s ever look at attendance records. College students are supposed to be adults, blabla — if they do the work they’ll do well enough; if they don’t do the work then they’ll wash out somehow; not my concern….
I have experience teaching at two very different universities, one being IU itself. While smaller schools may definitely care about attendance, for the most part IU does not. They will let you fail and keep your tuition money.
I doubt Jacob knows anything about Amber’s interference, no. He is I think one of the few main cast at this point who is pretty oblivious of Amazi-Girl in general, I think, like I am sure he’s heard of her, but doesn’t know it’s Amber, etc.
I think Willis didn’t enroll in classes for the second semester, which is a little different (more likely to get you booted faster, I imagine).
When I was in my third year of college, I had to get a medical withdrawal from my courses during spring semester (because brain bad), and then since I was living in the dorms, I had to move. There was a window of time before I officially needed to be gone, but it wasn’t that long. At the time, it kind of sucked because it meant I had to move away from whatever I had in terms of a support system in the area (I did semi-desperately see if there was someone I knew off-campus I could move in with), but ultimately it was better for me to be back home.
sorry to hear what happened to ya, was for the best to make your well-being a priority ^^
after two years of physics courses at University i had to drop out cuz of depression, disability, and of course the 2020 pandemic that turned just about everyone’s lives upside down
considering that a degree for me was by no means guaranteed, let alone a job actually in my field, would probably not be worth it to return any time soon, so oh well.
coding games ain’t no NASA rocket, but at least my brain and the rest of my insides are still (mostly) in-tact, and ya know wat? good enough
Brain bad is horrible in all times, but even worse during schooling. I ran into that while I was in grad school (combined with the therapists connected to campus constantly changing personnel and being so overbooked that they could only see you once a semester). I ended up not completing grad school because of that and covid. Still regret it and the cost it has had on my life.
DOA book 15: Like Sometimes You Have to Have the Strength to be the Bad Guy*. I’d Rather You Hate Me than Some of the Alternatives. Sometimes Caring Means Being a Dick. And then Living with Being the One Who’s a Dick, Forever. And then Leaning into It a Bit too Hard.
*Obviously you can’t put “shitty” on the cover so a little editorializing is in order.
I’m beginning to wonder if Jacob may have something to do with the impending return of another long-unseen person Ethan knows. He has to have gotten Naomi’s contact info from somewhere, so I suspect he’s gotten ahold of Ethan’s contact list somehow.
To be fair to Cthulu, they only drive all who see them to utter madness, by the standards of our dimension. Maybe, when we witness the Great Old One, the madness that consumes us, is actually a perfect form of clarity, by the standards of their home dimension? Cthulu could be doing us a favor, and it’s just that our dimension is cosmically wrong.
Aaah to finally understand a person. Feels good doesn’t…well maybe not I can see a bit of guilt in his eyes.
Sarah is cold but caring, mean but honest, but above all else even though she goes overboard with her tendencies of finding new ways to close herself off to most people she still won’t push away anyone who’s a real friend and she herself isn’t only a real friend but one that people need in there life…Sarah is a necessity.. .
As far as I’m concerned, wishing harm on genocidal maniacs is always morally correct. You have my blessing. You really shouldn’t need it! But you got it!
To be fair, Jacob, Sarah had to deal with a whole bunch of Dana’s pissy friends who either didn’t see or refused to see that she was in trouble and therefore decided to hate Sarah afterwards. All of Ethan’s friends are actually worried about him, not that he cares, and so would probably welcome some sort of intervention, since he won’t let them do one.
(I know some people have argued that Dana’s home must not have been safe, which I concede is entirely possible, especially given what parents are like in this comic, though I don’t think there’s any actual evidence one way or another. But even if that’s true, Raidah & co don’t seem to be aware of it — Raidah’s main argument against Sarah was “Yeah, well, we liked her.” Later, when Sarah argued Dana was in a better place, Raidah said “Not according to Dana,” but there’s not enough context to judge. For all we know, all it means is that Dana’s dad won’t let her smoke pot all the time in the house. Compare to Jennifer’s “Her home is not safe, Carla!” outburst, and you can see the difference between actually knowing/caring and, well, being Raidah’s group.)
Clearly what needs to happen now is Amber must grow to hate Jacob and commit to sabotaging his social life.
I also don’t like extrapolating the trend of bad parents to an overall belief that every student would be in danger if they returned home. With the extreme exceptions of the dead dad and possibly Ruth’s grandpa, even the worst parents we know don’t pose direct threats to their children. They’re just dicks. If Ethan went home right now things would arguably be better than he expected.
I would love for a strip where Amber decides that she has to sabotage Jacob’s social life out of solidarity with Ethan, and then realizes that she has absolutely no idea where to even start with doing that, before starting to regurgitate tropes from Transformers and DCAU episodes. 😀
Oh with her computer skills she absolutely could mess up his social life. Create fake dating profiles or hacking phones to send fake messages to make it seem like he’s cheating, etc.
“I also don’t like extrapolating the trend of bad parents to an overall belief that every student would be in danger if they returned home.”
Must be nice to have a freaky unicorn family of unrealistically supportive people. I promise you, hating your home life and fearing your parents, is the norm for most people and most families, in most places on Earth. Popping out a unit doesn’t magically transform a person’s ethics, and make them good. It just gives them a screaming nuisance to take care of…so, if anything, becoming a parent usually makes you an even worse version, of whatever genre of hot garbage a person already was.
Oh God, I didn’t even finish the comment, because I was so aghast at the first thing said.
If Ethan went home to be influenced by that woman, he would kill himself faster. If anybody can’t see that…then they’ve never dealt with an authority figure like Naomi. If you’re around a person like Naomi, you will choose to kill yourself, purely out of spite for their proximity.
I feel like this is choosing to ignore the character development we just saw with Naomi where she decided excepting her son’s sexuality was better than him killing himself. It’s a small step but better than what Ethan had before and proves that she doesn’t want to harm her son. You don’t have to like Naomi, but she at least cares about her son.
“fearing your parents is the norm for most people and most families in most places on Earth.”
No. No it isn’t.
I’m not saying that shitty parents aren’t unfortunately common, but you are suggesting that the majority of parents are horrible people to the point of causing active fear in their children, and no, that just isn’t true.
And no, having children doesn’t make you a better person. However, the world has plenty of good people in it who just want to mind their own business and not harm anyone. And when they become parents, they typically continue that trend. They are not unicorns and they are not unrealistic.
And if it is your experience that they are, then I’m sorry. That must be awful for you. I hope you get out of whatever terrible situation you are in and find somewhere safe where you can be happy.
It’s very clear that at least a distressingly large percentage of parents’ love is conditional, that their offspring happen to meet those conditions doesn’t really change that fact.
I think you might be a bit too fatalistic, yes a lot of parents are awful, but there are also plenty of decent ones, one kind doesn’t stop existing because there a lot of the other.
I mean granted the way Dana’s former click decided to handle the matter was to throw her a literal pity party every other week and then let her suffer alone in silence for the rest of it.
Kind of below the standard of being safe itself if you ask me.
Considering the way we see Raidah treats her current friends it kind of recontextualizes everything we’ve been shown and told about the Dana incident. Raidah sees her friends as connections first. Did happen in part because of Dana or was Dana a social asset too?
A•)She knew that Dana’s father was an important figure so she did everything in her power to get close with her and keep her by her side all throughout college.
B•)Dana was the only friend to really get her to not be so stuck up so she was more attached to her than tge rest.
C) She contacted Dana to rant about how evil Sarah is, Dana said “yeah no, Sarah did the right thing, I was in a bad place”. Raidah concluded that friendship is a LIE and vowed to spend the rest of her college career networking, like her parents wanted her to.
Cons of this theory: requires someone to make a far-fetched leap and stick to it for a year or so.
Pros: we can hate Raidah’s parents, before we even met them.
Agreed. In her first appearance, Raidah calls Sarah a “narc” and a “killjoy”.
Unless there’s been a soft-retcon…
that doesn’t say “you got my friend sent back to her abusive home”.
That says, “you got my FUN friend who knew how to get FUN drugs kicked out of school”.
I think Raidah valued her “friend’s” family connections, far more than she values any person she happens to be using at the time.
She wasn’t mad to lose the person. She was mad to lose the social connection to a properly rich and connected family. The loser stoner girl she had to string along to make that connection, never held any value to her at all. Because Raidah is a pure, unfeeling snake.
And then taking a fundie under your wing, watching them grow beyond what you thought possible, and deciding to come out of your shell again through effort you’re not sure you can manage to keep up
I know what being in the thick of it is like and how that can make you have irrational responses to things, but.
Come the fuck on, Ethan. I know your parents are kinda shitty but your roommate is worried you are going to *die* and did one of the only things a college aged kid can do in that scenario. Yeah it sucks having to have that convo with your parents when you’re not ready but I promise you in ten years you will be so grateful that someone cared enough to do something.
So yeah Jacob is not a jerk for this nor should anyone be treating him like one. Which isn’t as dramatic for a storyline but it’s true and someone should say it!
Having been Ethan in this scenario I think it’s really important to point out that it’s best to talk to the person directly and get consent before contacting anyone on their behalf. It’s also best to contact services rather than family.
Adults have a right to privacy and parents may cause more stress than provide support.
I’m not mad at Jacob a lot of people make this mistake with the best of intentions. However talking to the person you’re worried about frankly in the first instance is important.
It seems some people are linking Jacob’s actions to interfere with Ethan’s life with Sarah’s interference in her former roommate. But did we ever see an in-universe reveal where Jacob was told about Sarah’s experiences? Or are we just assuming he must have been told at some point.
If a main character can die off screen then I think some characters can hear about some stuff through word of mouth off screen. Raidah probably gave him his version of the events since she can’t shut up about it.
Yes, I know Raidah would have given her spin. But Jacob seems to be accepting Sarah’s version.
Its not that surprising he might have learned the real situation. I just am not sure where/when he might have been informed. (I can’t think of a situation it might have come up…)
Jacob was dating Raidah the entire year Sarah’s roommate situation went down. Raidah made it her full-time mission, to ensure that everybody in her entire social group would know, that Sarah was an immoral, selfish monster. There’s no reason not to assume that Jacob knew about the situation, likely before he ever even met Sarah.
Jacob probably never brought up any conflict with Raidah over it, because he’s a people pleaser, and you gotta know that Raidah doesn’t let her accessory boyfriends question her logic or missives. But Jacob likely always saw some sympathy to Sarah’s position in that situation, given that he went and did nearly the same thing, himself.
It’s not inverse to people’s misery. It’s generated from peoples’ misery. Repeated evidence that llife is as sucky as she knows it to be brings the sort of calm centeredness that can only come from understanding the world and one’s place in it.
This isn’t joy she’s feeling right now. It’s a projection of joy that she is not feeling.
I guess in a sense, we’re starting to realize, that Jacob was kind of already doing what Sarah has been doing recently, in his early tenure as a student, here? And now, he’s finally having it sink in, because seeing how unnatural it looked for Sarah to be positive, when he knows she isn’t like that, is bringing into clarity for him that he has an underlying sense of cynical justice, which he’s been ignoring in his quest to Be The Perfect Golden Child, like his older brother has always been.
I think it’s plausible. He was working really hard to be the up-standing church boy, a cheerful good student who always does the right thing. But starting from his fake date with Joyce and that kiss he’s just been a horndog who can’t resist a confident, attractive woman.
I don’t think that’s really true, I doesn’t look like he is “trying really hard” or anything most of the time, he is just naturally a pretty decent person.and I also don’t think he has “just been a horndog”, that seems a bit reductive.
Dude’s as repressed as Joyce tryin’ to be Mr. Checklist. Now look at him, he has no self-awareness about how very uninterested he actually is in a committed relationship. But now he’s with Lucy who actually is how he pretends to be. Uh oh.
What does that have to do with anything? Besides the fact that that there is no evidence of that, it isn’t real Ted with anything that is happening right now.
This is actually a plausible reading. He’s ready to kiss any cute girl who makes a confident pass (remember Joyce?) but Lucy probably thinks he fell in love with her at first sight. Alternatively both he and Lucy have reached the “whatever, this person is cute” stage of college life. And have run out of fucks to give.
Nah, Jacob & Sarah both did the wrong thing. Maybe they didn’t know the home situation, but they knew the SCHOOL situations were going in dangerous directions
Abdomino appears to be suggesting that because Jacob and Sarah knew their roommates were suicidally depressed at School, then it should have been assumed their home situations were even worse.
The fact said self-destructive, depressive episodes were each kicked off by the death of a loved-one not withstanding.
Still talking about yourself in the last panel, Jacob?
I once was part of the decision to contact a spiralling flatmate’s parents. Us flatmates and his other friends sat together and decided that it was the best call. The situation was a bit different through, it was a tough choice to make.
It landed him in a closed psych ward for a few weeks and an open one after for some time. He was not happy about it at first, but after he got out he said it was the right thing. But every situation is different, he had a good relationship with his parents for one.
Okay, but his core social group are glorified teenagers, most of whom are exceedingly privileged. Their concept of what “being a dick” is, is substantially different from ours.
This is a hella good run down though. Ethan’s loss wasn’t just a typical trauma, it was one of the most nightmarish confluences of personal tragedy and confusion a person could possibly have.
point 5 breaks my heart almost more than the death because holy fuck how cruel do you have to be to think just because someone was a dick to you it’s good that they’re dead. there are people I hate with my whole heart that I don’t wish fucking DEATH upon jfc. Ethan please get help I can only imagine how much this sucks, and having almost nobody around to sympathize.
If you don’t want people to be glad they’ll never have to interact with you again, don’t be a worthless troll who feeds on their misery. It’s really super easy not to antagonize everyone around you, and any blowback you get is 100% avoidable and your own fault. Mike earned it.
Walky is still checking his closets because he’s afraid this has all been a ploy to hurt him in some fashion.
Mike spent years “poking Amber’s bear” to turn her into a rage monster to use against her father.
He was an abusive asshole who traumatized everyone around him.
And I still don’t think any of the characters have even hinted they’re glad he’s dead.
As a reader I’m not sure how I feel about Mike. In universe, a second hand acquaintance I’d only seen be unpleasant at best and a bully at worst? I wouldn’t celebrate his death, but I wouldn’t exactly be heartbroken. I’d certainly have a lot of empathy for my friends who were hurt by it though!
So, to be clear. Not caring much someone died =/= wishing death upon them. Also, not everyone views death as the worst possible thing. I would never wish torture or horrendous suffering upon anyone, not even the most truly awful people to exist. I do think some people would be best dealt with by death, even as I support systemic change to reduce the factors that increase the likelihood of producing those people, and would never support the death penalty because on no planet can it be enacted appropriately by any government. /king of overexplaining
I’m still not sure what people think Jacob’s other option was here.
Watch Ethan get more and more suicidal? Wait for Ethan to be thin enough for Jacob to physically drag him to a medical professional once a week for therapy?
I’d be pissed in Ethan’s place, sure, but also it seems like a pretty reasonable choice if I was in Jacob’s place.
I agree. It’s unfortunate to see a growing mindset that if something makes you feel bad, it is Evil, and if someone makes you do something you don’t want to, they are Evil. Morality is based on what you like or don’t like, and that sort of mindset can turn this interaction into “Ethan didn’t want to talk to his mom! What the hell, Jacob, why did you make him experience that uncomfortable interaction!” instead of “Yeah, Jacob’s right, the alternative is a dead roommate”. Jacob even points out that if Ethan continues like this, he’s going to get kicked out and live with his parents, and Ethan has the nothing-response of “You don’t know that”.
If everyone had the approach of “Ethan’s going into a dark place but I don’t want to make him (or me!) uncomfortable so I just won’t talk about it or do anything about it”, Ethan will certainly just get worse and worse. Jacob points out that this is a shitty thing to do, but it really is way better than just letting Ethan voluntarily rot away.
I’ve seen this perspective with some people in similar situations; someone is in a dark, terrible place and getting dangerously worse and worse, but they refuse any help. A lot of people nowadays are very prone to not talking back or arguing, so they just accept that (even if it’s obvious they need help) and let the person become more and more worse because it is easier and more comfortable.
Everyone needs their autonomy, but the idea that no one’s bad decisions should ever be overridden or fought against is absurd; people need to be more self-aware and realize that your personal likes/dislikes/comfort/discomfort is not the most important factor in morality.
People are fixated on being mad because Jacob made the assumption that the parents were safe to contact, which is a reasonable thing to be mad about. But, Jacob literally comes from a perfect, golden family. He has no concept that this could be a bad thing to do. It would literally never occur to him, that calling someone’s Mom, could cause them substantially more pain and suffering, then just letting them rot. He’s been able to trust the authority figures in his life, and he’s internalized that that’s the norm.
He is extremely wrong about that, of course. But you can’t fault him for his life experiences making him miss the complexities of an action or social situation. Joyce is literally the protagonist of this comic, and we make giving her a pass on every little thing she fucks up, into an Olympic goddamned sport.
As we should! She literally doesn’t know any better! Hell, you could easily argue, that she was prevented from being able to know any better, to the absolute maximum. Being sheltered can mean a lot of things; Jacob is genuinely very sheltered, when you’re specifically talking about his understanding of dealing with difficult family issues, or with mental illness. His naivete is not a character flaw; it’s a natural outcome of being a person, who has net zero experience in a specific area.
Isn’t that the real hidden truth here, who is the comic about? who do you protagonize? Is it a story of will they wont they about who? If I had to hazards guess, it is still about Walky and Joyce. Because at the end of its Walky had the main characters theorizing about alternate universes and do Walky and Joyce get together? But in many ways I’d also be wrong because its really about Willis them self. Joyce might be their self insert. Them in cartoon form. Each character is a personification of the author and they are question/exploring the world. Joyce is the clearest author insert especially due to the resemblance and the similar trajectory’s of growth. But so is walkie being Wellies own personification of their silly side. So who is the main character? Well what part of Willis’s lived life are we addressing today? Their growth through religion and figuring out his thoughts on it or his growth recognizing how much representation matters? That’s really the driver what Willis is dealing with or guiding their audience to deal with.
It could be he just becomes a genuine friend or it is foreshadowing for endgame. Despite him saying he’s tired of being a lust status, we’ve never see him with friends/ male friends besides exercising with Joe due to his social habits vs school. Despite being an aggressive ball of floof and lower social economic status making her dependent on school funding, Sarah has always made time for friends.
‘Oh you reached out to my mom? Were you able to touch base right away, or did you feel her out before digging a little deeper? I’m sure you wanted to maximize impact but you have to work with hand you’ve got, sometimes quick and dirty is the best way. Anyway did you schedule a follow up?”
I am sure some of the others might get it, but yeah, I don’t know that any of them have quite gone in the same spot mentally on it. Dorothy can be a bit of an enabler, Jennifer hid Ruth’s problems for her for a time, etc. Like, rationally, I am sure some of them get it, but I don’t know how many of them could pull the trigger like she did.
kicked o regardlesss? Is missing classes rly something that’d get you expelled? at the very least i’d think it’d just be a waste of money/ppl would charge you regardless of going to classes (must suck for ppl who g et easily sick b/c other than makeup tests/explaining to the prof and being able to get notes from classmates, missing one day of class in college versus high school is more of a waste if you don’t have flexible classes/schedule)
Depending on the class, it could result in getting dropped from the roster, and if you’re not enrolled in enough credits to be considered full-time, you generally can’t live in the dorms. If that doesn’t happen, failing enough classes will get you kicked out. (Usually I suspect you’d have to be on academic probation first, and with Amber hacking his grades, he’s not there yet– but Amber’s hacking isn’t something Jacob knows about.)
If he’s not going to classes, he’s not getting the assignments and he’s not taking & passing tests. He’s not going to be ready for finals, if he even bothers going to them. So he’s going to flunk out.
Major universities like Indiana generally DO NOT care about freshmen or sophomores failing out, especially if they aren’t bothering to go to ANY classes. I lived in a dorm where you shared the bathroom with the room next door. One of those guys ended up failing out in his freshman year because he just wanted to play video games and sleep with his girlfriend all the time.
Well I hope he doesn’t make the same mistake twice, and ideate her in front of his brother while never thinking about the girl he is with, and not notice.
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Defs not anyone specific.
Plot twist: it’s Galasso.
Dude’s got a whole subplot we never get to see.
So that’s what the “(and subs)” stands for!
Feels like Sarah should be tagged.
Naw, it’s just her ears that are burning.
Jacob describing Mike’s origin story
Please…please don’t compare this to whatever Mike became. Dude took it too far.
Mike leaned into it a bit too far.
for a nickel ~<3
Mike leaned into it a LOT too hard
Like your mother. For a nickel.
Ah he figured it out.
Has Jacob become Sarah!? We’ve come full circle folks!
I wonder if this is part of why he seemed -especially- annoyed about her acting different. He just did something to emulate a part of her he respects, and she’s gone ‘no you’re right I should be different.’
I love that last expression, it’s practically Sarah.
It had to migrate somewhere…
We did have an arc with Joyce where we established that when others need to be negative for a bit, they siphon it off of her and she gets suspiciously cheery
When will humanity ever escape, or are we forever cursed to perpetuate this cycle of jerkitude?
Is it just me or did Jacob seem to have… designs for this interaction?
it’s obvious he cares about Ethan as much the rest of his close friends, but it seems like he setting up some kind of narrative in which he gonna be seen as a dick no matter what he does, quite possibly to justify something toxic he’s done or about to do which may not necessarily related to Ethan
or at least that’s what I catch from the face he makin in the last panel
that’s what it felt like to me :0
Sounds more to me like he’s describing how he imagines this went for Sarah.
And feeling bad that he did Sarah wrong, sending her over the edge.
Are we seeing Jacob dumping Lucy for Sarah in the near future?
Probably not the /near/ future, but this certainly is him understanding Sarah’s choices and how much of what Raidah told him about her was poisoned by incomplete information. It’s certainly something that he should be talking to HER about.
well besides being recently openly objectified by Sarah, Jacob probably also reluctant to talk to her immediately on account of her smiling constantly like she about to pull a “knock knock” LOL
*Sal walks through the comments with a boxing placard that says “Four and a half weeks” on it.*
Probably not, but if he and Lucy do break up, Sarah will be the first possibility for a rebound..
…. and that will be the second instance in a pattern that Lucy will NOT be happy noticing.
The second instance in what pattern?
Breakup with a boyfriend followed very swiftly by him hooking up with a previous love interest.
Ahhhh okok ty
The pattern of lucy getting what she deserves and remaining forever alone.
I honestly think he’s just relating it back to Sarah with that last bit? She definitely leaned into her role as the grumpy one in the friend group until extremely recently.
This is absolutely what’s happening. Maybe even a bit of realization that THIS is what’s going on with Sarah.
He’s just thinking about how much of a dick Sarah can be despite or because of her attempts to do good.
…. he’s trying to be substitute Mike isn’t he? 👀
No.
yeah you right, Jacob don’t got nothin to gain from pushin that button, or at least i sure hope not
Agreed. He didn’t even know Mike well enough to aspire to Mike levels of Mikeness.
Quite possibly. That is a good insight.
However, I should point out he lured Naomi to their room with concerns over her son’s wellbeing and not the promise of loose change.
His only “designs” are to prevent Ethan from killing himself.
Maybe also to prevent him from flunking out.
This seems like a thing Jacob would do
No, p sure he just had a realization/thoughts about Sarah at the end there. He didn’t start this interaction, Ethan did
OMG the Sarah and Jacob ~vibes~ inversion this chapter has been absolutely wild. Really nice complementing arcs!
I agree.
Oh…True
Inversion seems to be the theme all around here. We’ve got Joyce doing drunken parties and hoping for drunken sex while Joe’s been infected with her former evangelical purity culture. We’ve got Dorothy turning into an irresponsible, purposeless mess, Carla’s found a person that she likes just as much as herself, and Dan hasn’t danned anything up for weeks now.
Okay, except “Joe’s been infected with her former evangelical purity culture” is entirely Roz’s interpretation, and Roz has some weird inverse-slut-shaming thing going on.
This is definitely true. Joe didn’t exactly reveal the true nature of his sexual trauma with Roz, because Of Course He Didn’t. They’re not that close. In Roz’s defense, she got a deeply incomplete sense of what Joe was worried about.
Roz is so dogmatically sex-positive, that she is only used to engaging with the issue from the perspective of a sexually confident and empowered person. In her worldview, basically no sex can be wrong, if consent was obtained and retained. She has no sense that maybe she might seriously wound herself with regret over sex she initially chose to have, because there’s nothing within her internally, which could put her in that position. So, it all gets lumped into “immature fundie stuff that sensible people should never waste their mental energy with,” because to her, that’s all it can be.
Joe presented her with the question “yo, what if I like, ruin myself with this,” because it was the only language he had to describe what he was feeling. Roz naturally missed the subtext, that Joe wasn’t asking “what if I hurt or damage myself through having sex;” the question that Joe wanted to ask, but didn’t know how to, was “how do I know for certain, that I won’t hurt my partner, because I care deeply about them, and they have sexual baggage?” Which, to be fair…from her position, I don’t think Roz would have been prepared to answer that question tactfully, anyway.
Amen!
Sure, and I echoed her with my tongue in cheek, but underlying it is definitely a sort of inversion for Joe.
I really like these strips. This is some great nuance right here, as well as great continued understanding for the position Sarah had previously been in. Sometimes life doesn’t offer up good alternatives or good choices. Sometimes solutions aren’t clean. Sometimes choices come with consequences. And if Jacob’s consequence is that his roommate is a bit rankled with him, he’s willing to live with it compared to the alternative of a dead roommate on his conscience.
Act with integrity. No regrets.
It is also a bit easier to deal with something like that mentality/emotionally if you start acting the part. A ‘everyone treats me that way, so I might as well act that way’ type of thing. It could either be that you don’t see the point of wasting energy being nice to others if they are just going to misconstrue it, or as almost an emotional soothing technique where you do stuff that you feel actually deserves the abuse. It is less stressful if you agree with everyone that you have done wrong things vs always trying your best and being nice while still being called bad. You don’t have to constantly reaffirm your definition of whether your actions actually are good that way, if that makes sense.
That’s a good point about Ethan not going to class that wasn’t brought up. It might not have even taken to the end of the semester (when he’d get failing grades) depending on the attendance policies and if he’s ever gone to various classes. He could get removed from classes for not attending/responding, and even if it wasn’t al of them, if he doesn’t qualify as a full-time student, he could get booted from the dorms. That…wouldn’t help things.
Amber’s been doctoring his grades, etc, to cover for what he’s been doing, but that’s only going to go so far. He really needs to proactively do better than this.
Yeah, and there’s a decent chance his classes are big enough that she could change an attendance record unnoticed. For some of mine, if the professor saw someone never came or came the first class but then didn’t return for x number of classes, they might drop them from the roster (after trying to contact the student). But again, that depends on the professor noticing.
Does Jacob have any reason to know that Amber is helping Ethan by hacking the system?
If Amber has a paranoid mindset (the fewer people know, the better), she wouldn’t tell Jacob. So all Jacob has to go on is what he sees Ethan doing. Or not doing. As in, not leaving his room.
Ah. Just checked the relevant comic. Put the string “speakingof” after the site URL for the comic for August 5, 2023. Ethan says “Yeah, somehow I still have perfect attendance.” and Amber says “It’s a mystery!”. So Ethan figured it out, but he’s probably not going to tell Jacob that Amber has been hacking his attendance record and such.
Ironically, none of Ethan’s prof.s ever look at attendance records. College students are supposed to be adults, blabla — if they do the work they’ll do well enough; if they don’t do the work then they’ll wash out somehow; not my concern….
I have experience teaching at two very different universities, one being IU itself. While smaller schools may definitely care about attendance, for the most part IU does not. They will let you fail and keep your tuition money.
I doubt Jacob knows anything about Amber’s interference, no. He is I think one of the few main cast at this point who is pretty oblivious of Amazi-Girl in general, I think, like I am sure he’s heard of her, but doesn’t know it’s Amber, etc.
I’m trying to remember the details of how this all went for Willis. I think it’s in the commentary for the reruns of Roomies somewhere…
I think Willis didn’t enroll in classes for the second semester, which is a little different (more likely to get you booted faster, I imagine).
When I was in my third year of college, I had to get a medical withdrawal from my courses during spring semester (because brain bad), and then since I was living in the dorms, I had to move. There was a window of time before I officially needed to be gone, but it wasn’t that long. At the time, it kind of sucked because it meant I had to move away from whatever I had in terms of a support system in the area (I did semi-desperately see if there was someone I knew off-campus I could move in with), but ultimately it was better for me to be back home.
sorry to hear what happened to ya, was for the best to make your well-being a priority ^^
after two years of physics courses at University i had to drop out cuz of depression, disability, and of course the 2020 pandemic that turned just about everyone’s lives upside down
considering that a degree for me was by no means guaranteed, let alone a job actually in my field, would probably not be worth it to return any time soon, so oh well.
coding games ain’t no NASA rocket, but at least my brain and the rest of my insides are still (mostly) in-tact, and ya know wat? good enough
Brain bad is horrible in all times, but even worse during schooling. I ran into that while I was in grad school (combined with the therapists connected to campus constantly changing personnel and being so overbooked that they could only see you once a semester). I ended up not completing grad school because of that and covid. Still regret it and the cost it has had on my life.
Oh, so this is autobiographical as well?
I do wonder if Dana had been having that issue. Not attending classes or failing them might have ended up in the same result as Sarah calling her dad.
Yeah, and she didn’t have Amber hacking for her.
New Book Title just dropped: “Sometimes Caring Means Being A Dick”
“And Then Living With Being The One Who’s A Dick, Forever. And Then Leaning Into It A Bit Too Hard.”
there we go, the original suggestion wasn’t long enough
i vote we also tack that sentence onto the end.
DOA book 15: Like Sometimes You Have to Have the Strength to be the Bad Guy*. I’d Rather You Hate Me than Some of the Alternatives. Sometimes Caring Means Being a Dick. And then Living with Being the One Who’s a Dick, Forever. And then Leaning into It a Bit too Hard.
*Obviously you can’t put “shitty” on the cover so a little editorializing is in order.
Willis is publishing it. If he wants to put “Shitty” in the title, who’s going to tell him no?
His wife, I guess.
On the other hand, if Jacob keeps up this trajectory, he can end up as a smiley one like Sarah is now! In about a year or so.
Who is Lucy gonna make out with to jump start that character development?!
Sarah
That … might do it.
Jacob’s trajectory right now is definitely an interesting one.
I’m beginning to wonder if Jacob may have something to do with the impending return of another long-unseen person Ethan knows. He has to have gotten Naomi’s contact info from somewhere, so I suspect he’s gotten ahold of Ethan’s contact list somehow.
Praying at the altar for normalcy and rationality in the comment section tonight.
… do you really think that we would install an altar that was dedicated to a god dealing in normalcy and rationality?
I read it more like: praying (for normalcy and rationality) at the altar (nondescript, potentially available for prayer to multiple gods).
Look, I don’t care how many gods you’re trying to broadcast to, if you pray at a Cthulhu altar then you’re going to get Cthulhu stuff.
ia ia
I accept my fate
If it gets me a semblance of sanity in these comment I welcome Cthulhu with open arms.
To be fair to Cthulu, they only drive all who see them to utter madness, by the standards of our dimension. Maybe, when we witness the Great Old One, the madness that consumes us, is actually a perfect form of clarity, by the standards of their home dimension? Cthulu could be doing us a favor, and it’s just that our dimension is cosmically wrong.
That certainly how it’s been felling this decade so far.
Aaah to finally understand a person. Feels good doesn’t…well maybe not I can see a bit of guilt in his eyes.
Sarah is cold but caring, mean but honest, but above all else even though she goes overboard with her tendencies of finding new ways to close herself off to most people she still won’t push away anyone who’s a real friend and she herself isn’t only a real friend but one that people need in there life…Sarah is a necessity.. .
Hey, someone is coming to an important understanding about his friend!
And unrelated to this comic, but GOD I hope Steve Anderson’s kids are safe, both now and whenever the bastard gets out.
Yikes, my gosh what hell that preacher has created on earth. I join you in praying for them all to be safe and to escape or stay free as appropriate.
Not sure how I feel about wishing for the safety of the neonazi kid, but otherwise yes.
… look, I’m not wishing the kid HARM, I’m just conflicted on the question.
As far as I’m concerned, wishing harm on genocidal maniacs is always morally correct. You have my blessing. You really shouldn’t need it! But you got it!
Who is Steve Anderson?
Christian hate preacher.
Jacob should commit at least one murder.
hunt down Blaine in witness protection and murder him
i mean considerin how dangerous that asshole was, chances are it’d count legally as voluntary manslaughter, just sayin
Isn’t Blaine dead
Sure, and Billie isn’t secretly Mike in disguise.
That’s what They want you to think.
As a treat.
I know he’s emulating Sarah’s path now, but I think that would count as leaning into “leaning into it a bit too hard” a bit too hard.
No it doesn’t.
To be fair, Jacob, Sarah had to deal with a whole bunch of Dana’s pissy friends who either didn’t see or refused to see that she was in trouble and therefore decided to hate Sarah afterwards. All of Ethan’s friends are actually worried about him, not that he cares, and so would probably welcome some sort of intervention, since he won’t let them do one.
(I know some people have argued that Dana’s home must not have been safe, which I concede is entirely possible, especially given what parents are like in this comic, though I don’t think there’s any actual evidence one way or another. But even if that’s true, Raidah & co don’t seem to be aware of it — Raidah’s main argument against Sarah was “Yeah, well, we liked her.” Later, when Sarah argued Dana was in a better place, Raidah said “Not according to Dana,” but there’s not enough context to judge. For all we know, all it means is that Dana’s dad won’t let her smoke pot all the time in the house. Compare to Jennifer’s “Her home is not safe, Carla!” outburst, and you can see the difference between actually knowing/caring and, well, being Raidah’s group.)
Clearly what needs to happen now is Amber must grow to hate Jacob and commit to sabotaging his social life.
I also don’t like extrapolating the trend of bad parents to an overall belief that every student would be in danger if they returned home. With the extreme exceptions of the dead dad and possibly Ruth’s grandpa, even the worst parents we know don’t pose direct threats to their children. They’re just dicks. If Ethan went home right now things would arguably be better than he expected.
I would love for a strip where Amber decides that she has to sabotage Jacob’s social life out of solidarity with Ethan, and then realizes that she has absolutely no idea where to even start with doing that, before starting to regurgitate tropes from Transformers and DCAU episodes. 😀
Well she might not be able to destroy his social life… but she can mess with his Academic life.
Oh with her computer skills she absolutely could mess up his social life. Create fake dating profiles or hacking phones to send fake messages to make it seem like he’s cheating, etc.
Jacob is studying to be a lawyer. I’d be shocked if he doesn’t keep all of his old papers in order to contest any errant grades.
“I also don’t like extrapolating the trend of bad parents to an overall belief that every student would be in danger if they returned home.”
Must be nice to have a freaky unicorn family of unrealistically supportive people. I promise you, hating your home life and fearing your parents, is the norm for most people and most families, in most places on Earth. Popping out a unit doesn’t magically transform a person’s ethics, and make them good. It just gives them a screaming nuisance to take care of…so, if anything, becoming a parent usually makes you an even worse version, of whatever genre of hot garbage a person already was.
Oh God, I didn’t even finish the comment, because I was so aghast at the first thing said.
If Ethan went home to be influenced by that woman, he would kill himself faster. If anybody can’t see that…then they’ve never dealt with an authority figure like Naomi. If you’re around a person like Naomi, you will choose to kill yourself, purely out of spite for their proximity.
I feel like this is choosing to ignore the character development we just saw with Naomi where she decided excepting her son’s sexuality was better than him killing himself. It’s a small step but better than what Ethan had before and proves that she doesn’t want to harm her son. You don’t have to like Naomi, but she at least cares about her son.
“fearing your parents is the norm for most people and most families in most places on Earth.”
No. No it isn’t.
I’m not saying that shitty parents aren’t unfortunately common, but you are suggesting that the majority of parents are horrible people to the point of causing active fear in their children, and no, that just isn’t true.
And no, having children doesn’t make you a better person. However, the world has plenty of good people in it who just want to mind their own business and not harm anyone. And when they become parents, they typically continue that trend. They are not unicorns and they are not unrealistic.
And if it is your experience that they are, then I’m sorry. That must be awful for you. I hope you get out of whatever terrible situation you are in and find somewhere safe where you can be happy.
That ”hating and fearing your parents” is not the norm for humans. What a crazy statement.
Extra ”that” at the start. What I tried to say is that most people have decent parents who try to support them. That is the human norm.
Humans are still around. So I have to agree.
It’s very clear that at least a distressingly large percentage of parents’ love is conditional, that their offspring happen to meet those conditions doesn’t really change that fact.
I think you might be a bit too fatalistic, yes a lot of parents are awful, but there are also plenty of decent ones, one kind doesn’t stop existing because there a lot of the other.
I mean granted the way Dana’s former click decided to handle the matter was to throw her a literal pity party every other week and then let her suffer alone in silence for the rest of it.
Kind of below the standard of being safe itself if you ask me.
Considering the way we see Raidah treats her current friends it kind of recontextualizes everything we’ve been shown and told about the Dana incident. Raidah sees her friends as connections first. Did happen in part because of Dana or was Dana a social asset too?
One of two:
A•)She knew that Dana’s father was an important figure so she did everything in her power to get close with her and keep her by her side all throughout college.
B•)Dana was the only friend to really get her to not be so stuck up so she was more attached to her than tge rest.
C) She contacted Dana to rant about how evil Sarah is, Dana said “yeah no, Sarah did the right thing, I was in a bad place”. Raidah concluded that friendship is a LIE and vowed to spend the rest of her college career networking, like her parents wanted her to.
Cons of this theory: requires someone to make a far-fetched leap and stick to it for a year or so.
Pros: we can hate Raidah’s parents, before we even met them.
Agreed. In her first appearance, Raidah calls Sarah a “narc” and a “killjoy”.
Unless there’s been a soft-retcon…
that doesn’t say “you got my friend sent back to her abusive home”.
That says, “you got my FUN friend who knew how to get FUN drugs kicked out of school”.
I don’t even think it’s that.
I think Raidah valued her “friend’s” family connections, far more than she values any person she happens to be using at the time.
She wasn’t mad to lose the person. She was mad to lose the social connection to a properly rich and connected family. The loser stoner girl she had to string along to make that connection, never held any value to her at all. Because Raidah is a pure, unfeeling snake.
A detailed description of me as a teenager, of which I am unsure of how to feel about.
And then taking a fundie under your wing, watching them grow beyond what you thought possible, and deciding to come out of your shell again through effort you’re not sure you can manage to keep up
I vote Lucy.
Such a good story, I really feel for these kids.
I know what being in the thick of it is like and how that can make you have irrational responses to things, but.
Come the fuck on, Ethan. I know your parents are kinda shitty but your roommate is worried you are going to *die* and did one of the only things a college aged kid can do in that scenario. Yeah it sucks having to have that convo with your parents when you’re not ready but I promise you in ten years you will be so grateful that someone cared enough to do something.
So yeah Jacob is not a jerk for this nor should anyone be treating him like one. Which isn’t as dramatic for a storyline but it’s true and someone should say it!
Jacob is also emotionally intelligent enough to understand that “I did nothing wrong,” is not what Ethan wants to hear right now.
Having been Ethan in this scenario I think it’s really important to point out that it’s best to talk to the person directly and get consent before contacting anyone on their behalf. It’s also best to contact services rather than family.
Adults have a right to privacy and parents may cause more stress than provide support.
I’m not mad at Jacob a lot of people make this mistake with the best of intentions. However talking to the person you’re worried about frankly in the first instance is important.
That is a very Sarah expression in that last panel.
Here is a question…
It seems some people are linking Jacob’s actions to interfere with Ethan’s life with Sarah’s interference in her former roommate. But did we ever see an in-universe reveal where Jacob was told about Sarah’s experiences? Or are we just assuming he must have been told at some point.
Given who he was dating, he absolutely heard about that.
If a main character can die off screen then I think some characters can hear about some stuff through word of mouth off screen. Raidah probably gave him his version of the events since she can’t shut up about it.
you probably right, especially considering he don’t seem to know about the drug part of it
Yes, I know Raidah would have given her spin. But Jacob seems to be accepting Sarah’s version.
Its not that surprising he might have learned the real situation. I just am not sure where/when he might have been informed. (I can’t think of a situation it might have come up…)
If by “people” you mean “Ethan and Jacob, implicitly on this page and explicitly on yesterday’s.”
Re-read yesterday’s page.
Oh, I know yesterday’s comic referenced Sarah’s situation.
I was just wondering if there was anything from months/years ago that showed Jacob being informed.
Jacob was dating Raidah the entire year Sarah’s roommate situation went down. Raidah made it her full-time mission, to ensure that everybody in her entire social group would know, that Sarah was an immoral, selfish monster. There’s no reason not to assume that Jacob knew about the situation, likely before he ever even met Sarah.
Jacob probably never brought up any conflict with Raidah over it, because he’s a people pleaser, and you gotta know that Raidah doesn’t let her accessory boyfriends question her logic or missives. But Jacob likely always saw some sympathy to Sarah’s position in that situation, given that he went and did nearly the same thing, himself.
Jacob’s a freshman. He met Raidah this year. Started dating her after he’d already met Sarah.
Oh thank goodness. I just couldn’t imagine a nice, kind boy like he seems to be dating that social climber for a whole year. Shudder.
I mean. Having your homophobic and judgemental mother visit as a severely depressed gay man could be the cause of someone finally killing themselves.
Not to say Jacob is necessarily wrong. And that went. As well as one could hope, I guess. But it’s not like he’s really got any more support either.
So wait, if Sarah’s joy is inverse to someone else’s misery… Did she steal Jacobs joy? Is that what’s going on with her? lol
It’s not inverse to people’s misery. It’s generated from peoples’ misery. Repeated evidence that llife is as sucky as she knows it to be brings the sort of calm centeredness that can only come from understanding the world and one’s place in it.
This isn’t joy she’s feeling right now. It’s a projection of joy that she is not feeling.
I guess in a sense, we’re starting to realize, that Jacob was kind of already doing what Sarah has been doing recently, in his early tenure as a student, here? And now, he’s finally having it sink in, because seeing how unnatural it looked for Sarah to be positive, when he knows she isn’t like that, is bringing into clarity for him that he has an underlying sense of cynical justice, which he’s been ignoring in his quest to Be The Perfect Golden Child, like his older brother has always been.
oh geez i didn’t close a bracket
I mean, I don’t really think Jacob whole personality has been some kind of act this whole time. Sometime people can just be nice.
I think it’s plausible. He was working really hard to be the up-standing church boy, a cheerful good student who always does the right thing. But starting from his fake date with Joyce and that kiss he’s just been a horndog who can’t resist a confident, attractive woman.
I don’t think that’s really true, I doesn’t look like he is “trying really hard” or anything most of the time, he is just naturally a pretty decent person.and I also don’t think he has “just been a horndog”, that seems a bit reductive.
Dude’s as repressed as Joyce tryin’ to be Mr. Checklist. Now look at him, he has no self-awareness about how very uninterested he actually is in a committed relationship. But now he’s with Lucy who actually is how he pretends to be. Uh oh.
What does that have to do with anything? Besides the fact that that there is no evidence of that, it isn’t real Ted with anything that is happening right now.
*isn’t related
Nah, he likes Sarah here. He wants to fuck her, and he’d be better off with her ambivalence towards commitment whether he realises it or not.
Like what I’m saying is there’s remarkable depth to his relationship with Sarah.
I genuinely don’t know how to respond to that, it was a real curveball.
That seems like projection. I don’t think anything like that has been communicated in the comic Bruno.
Are you saying Bruno has a remarkable depth to his relationship with Sarah?
Who the fuck is Bruno? I mean Jacob.
I- huh?
I appreciate the original comment because it is what helped me decide it was time to go to bed last night.
😀
This is actually a plausible reading. He’s ready to kiss any cute girl who makes a confident pass (remember Joyce?) but Lucy probably thinks he fell in love with her at first sight. Alternatively both he and Lucy have reached the “whatever, this person is cute” stage of college life. And have run out of fucks to give.
Nah, Jacob & Sarah both did the wrong thing. Maybe they didn’t know the home situation, but they knew the SCHOOL situations were going in dangerous directions
I genuinely don’t get what you mean by that.
So they did… the “wrong” thing… by trying to help the dangerous situation they could see?
You good buddy?
Abdomino appears to be suggesting that because Jacob and Sarah knew their roommates were suicidally depressed at School, then it should have been assumed their home situations were even worse.
The fact said self-destructive, depressive episodes were each kicked off by the death of a loved-one not withstanding.
who could he be talking about? ~<3
Still talking about yourself in the last panel, Jacob?
I once was part of the decision to contact a spiralling flatmate’s parents. Us flatmates and his other friends sat together and decided that it was the best call. The situation was a bit different through, it was a tough choice to make.
It landed him in a closed psych ward for a few weeks and an open one after for some time. He was not happy about it at first, but after he got out he said it was the right thing. But every situation is different, he had a good relationship with his parents for one.
Jacob, I hope you realize that last part is optional.
I know we are running on “Dumbing-barely-adult” rules,
but Jacob did nothing wrong, nor shitty, and he is def not being a d!ck.
Just putting that truth out there.
Okay, but his core social group are glorified teenagers, most of whom are exceedingly privileged. Their concept of what “being a dick” is, is substantially different from ours.
Jacob, you’re wrong. That is NOT what happened with Sarah.
Sarah WANTED to lean into a dick real hard, but you hooked up with Lucy instead.
#sorrynotsorry
It’s true and you should say it.
So he may be having some empathy for one of the characters here.
I’m guessing Asher.
Is Asher still there, just… listening to all this?
Jacob is learning some brand new perspective.
“Waaait a minute…”
C’mon Jacob, you’re making this up, you know nobody it’s like that.
And so begins Jacob’s “Unlikable” arc.
Joe, Jacob, and Sarah: The Unlovable Monsters (of Love)
Finally, understanding dawns.
Realization in 3…2…1…
Nah the realization happened between the last two panels.
I think it happened a while ago, he is just saying out loud now.
Ethan can’t move past Mike’s death because:
1. Mike was Ethan’s best friend
2. Ethan was coming to terms with the fact he was in love with Mike
3. The eternal “what if” that will never actually come to pass.
4. Possibly the fact that Mike committed suicide by heroic sacrifice
5. Everyone but Amber and possibly Walky is glad he’s dead
This is a hella good run down though. Ethan’s loss wasn’t just a typical trauma, it was one of the most nightmarish confluences of personal tragedy and confusion a person could possibly have.
point 5 breaks my heart almost more than the death because holy fuck how cruel do you have to be to think just because someone was a dick to you it’s good that they’re dead. there are people I hate with my whole heart that I don’t wish fucking DEATH upon jfc. Ethan please get help I can only imagine how much this sucks, and having almost nobody around to sympathize.
If you don’t want people to be glad they’ll never have to interact with you again, don’t be a worthless troll who feeds on their misery. It’s really super easy not to antagonize everyone around you, and any blowback you get is 100% avoidable and your own fault. Mike earned it.
Walky is still checking his closets because he’s afraid this has all been a ploy to hurt him in some fashion.
Mike spent years “poking Amber’s bear” to turn her into a rage monster to use against her father.
He was an abusive asshole who traumatized everyone around him.
And I still don’t think any of the characters have even hinted they’re glad he’s dead.
Aside from Dan that is.
Well, he wasn’t dead at that point, so he escapes on a technicality.
As a reader I’m not sure how I feel about Mike. In universe, a second hand acquaintance I’d only seen be unpleasant at best and a bully at worst? I wouldn’t celebrate his death, but I wouldn’t exactly be heartbroken. I’d certainly have a lot of empathy for my friends who were hurt by it though!
So, to be clear. Not caring much someone died =/= wishing death upon them. Also, not everyone views death as the worst possible thing. I would never wish torture or horrendous suffering upon anyone, not even the most truly awful people to exist. I do think some people would be best dealt with by death, even as I support systemic change to reduce the factors that increase the likelihood of producing those people, and would never support the death penalty because on no planet can it be enacted appropriately by any government. /king of overexplaining
Someone’s seeing the light
I’m still not sure what people think Jacob’s other option was here.
Watch Ethan get more and more suicidal? Wait for Ethan to be thin enough for Jacob to physically drag him to a medical professional once a week for therapy?
I’d be pissed in Ethan’s place, sure, but also it seems like a pretty reasonable choice if I was in Jacob’s place.
I agree. It’s unfortunate to see a growing mindset that if something makes you feel bad, it is Evil, and if someone makes you do something you don’t want to, they are Evil. Morality is based on what you like or don’t like, and that sort of mindset can turn this interaction into “Ethan didn’t want to talk to his mom! What the hell, Jacob, why did you make him experience that uncomfortable interaction!” instead of “Yeah, Jacob’s right, the alternative is a dead roommate”. Jacob even points out that if Ethan continues like this, he’s going to get kicked out and live with his parents, and Ethan has the nothing-response of “You don’t know that”.
If everyone had the approach of “Ethan’s going into a dark place but I don’t want to make him (or me!) uncomfortable so I just won’t talk about it or do anything about it”, Ethan will certainly just get worse and worse. Jacob points out that this is a shitty thing to do, but it really is way better than just letting Ethan voluntarily rot away.
I’ve seen this perspective with some people in similar situations; someone is in a dark, terrible place and getting dangerously worse and worse, but they refuse any help. A lot of people nowadays are very prone to not talking back or arguing, so they just accept that (even if it’s obvious they need help) and let the person become more and more worse because it is easier and more comfortable.
Everyone needs their autonomy, but the idea that no one’s bad decisions should ever be overridden or fought against is absurd; people need to be more self-aware and realize that your personal likes/dislikes/comfort/discomfort is not the most important factor in morality.
People are fixated on being mad because Jacob made the assumption that the parents were safe to contact, which is a reasonable thing to be mad about. But, Jacob literally comes from a perfect, golden family. He has no concept that this could be a bad thing to do. It would literally never occur to him, that calling someone’s Mom, could cause them substantially more pain and suffering, then just letting them rot. He’s been able to trust the authority figures in his life, and he’s internalized that that’s the norm.
He is extremely wrong about that, of course. But you can’t fault him for his life experiences making him miss the complexities of an action or social situation. Joyce is literally the protagonist of this comic, and we make giving her a pass on every little thing she fucks up, into an Olympic goddamned sport.
As we should! She literally doesn’t know any better! Hell, you could easily argue, that she was prevented from being able to know any better, to the absolute maximum. Being sheltered can mean a lot of things; Jacob is genuinely very sheltered, when you’re specifically talking about his understanding of dealing with difficult family issues, or with mental illness. His naivete is not a character flaw; it’s a natural outcome of being a person, who has net zero experience in a specific area.
Man he really cares about her
I know, my gosh.
Epiphany: Sarah Edition.
Huh. It’s weird that the Saran and Jacob is over and yet Willis continues to write it. How peculiar!
Dang, meant to say “The Sarah and Jacob arc.”
Isn’t that the real hidden truth here, who is the comic about? who do you protagonize? Is it a story of will they wont they about who? If I had to hazards guess, it is still about Walky and Joyce. Because at the end of its Walky had the main characters theorizing about alternate universes and do Walky and Joyce get together? But in many ways I’d also be wrong because its really about Willis them self. Joyce might be their self insert. Them in cartoon form. Each character is a personification of the author and they are question/exploring the world. Joyce is the clearest author insert especially due to the resemblance and the similar trajectory’s of growth. But so is walkie being Wellies own personification of their silly side. So who is the main character? Well what part of Willis’s lived life are we addressing today? Their growth through religion and figuring out his thoughts on it or his growth recognizing how much representation matters? That’s really the driver what Willis is dealing with or guiding their audience to deal with.
All of the main characters, I think capture some aspect of Willis, either as he is or as he was.
Or even how he wishes he will be.
This feels pointed, but I don’t know who it’s pointed at.
It could be he just becomes a genuine friend or it is foreshadowing for endgame. Despite him saying he’s tired of being a lust status, we’ve never see him with friends/ male friends besides exercising with Joe due to his social habits vs school. Despite being an aggressive ball of floof and lower social economic status making her dependent on school funding, Sarah has always made time for friends.
Total aside, business jargon is so vulgar.
‘Oh you reached out to my mom? Were you able to touch base right away, or did you feel her out before digging a little deeper? I’m sure you wanted to maximize impact but you have to work with hand you’ve got, sometimes quick and dirty is the best way. Anyway did you schedule a follow up?”
I genuinely admire the fact that Jacob did this fully expecting to be hated for it.
If your dick is leaning a bit too hard, you may have Peyronie’s disease.
What’s the medical term for a penis that spirals like a corkscrew?
You are a duck or pig.
You win one internet. Use it wisely.
I love Sarah woman after my heart
i appreciate jacob recognizing sarah did the right thing. i dont think anyones really done that yet.
I am sure some of the others might get it, but yeah, I don’t know that any of them have quite gone in the same spot mentally on it. Dorothy can be a bit of an enabler, Jennifer hid Ruth’s problems for her for a time, etc. Like, rationally, I am sure some of them get it, but I don’t know how many of them could pull the trigger like she did.
kicked o regardlesss? Is missing classes rly something that’d get you expelled? at the very least i’d think it’d just be a waste of money/ppl would charge you regardless of going to classes (must suck for ppl who g et easily sick b/c other than makeup tests/explaining to the prof and being able to get notes from classmates, missing one day of class in college versus high school is more of a waste if you don’t have flexible classes/schedule)
Depending on the class, it could result in getting dropped from the roster, and if you’re not enrolled in enough credits to be considered full-time, you generally can’t live in the dorms. If that doesn’t happen, failing enough classes will get you kicked out. (Usually I suspect you’d have to be on academic probation first, and with Amber hacking his grades, he’s not there yet– but Amber’s hacking isn’t something Jacob knows about.)
If he’s not going to classes, he’s not getting the assignments and he’s not taking & passing tests. He’s not going to be ready for finals, if he even bothers going to them. So he’s going to flunk out.
Major universities like Indiana generally DO NOT care about freshmen or sophomores failing out, especially if they aren’t bothering to go to ANY classes. I lived in a dorm where you shared the bathroom with the room next door. One of those guys ended up failing out in his freshman year because he just wanted to play video games and sleep with his girlfriend all the time.
Well I hope he doesn’t make the same mistake twice, and ideate her in front of his brother while never thinking about the girl he is with, and not notice.
It’s funny cause Ethan is the one trying to turn into Sarah, at least someone whose every line of dialogue is telling people their decisions are wrong
Oh no he suddenly understands Sarah
what do you mean “oh no”?
if that’s the case it will hopefully mean she’s that much less likely to become the Joker LOL