Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social ⋅ 9d
♥️ 
Tea Berry-Blue @teaberryblue.net ⋅ 2d
Truthout @truthout.org ⋅ 2d
Jay Edidin @edidin.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
Krispy @feathernotes.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Kendra, regular version @kendrawcandraw.bsky.social ⋅ 4d
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“bread crumbs”???
yeah no don’t kid yaself Joyce, Mary ain’t “”lost””, she knows EXACTLY where she is, what it’s about — she went LOOKING for that fascist filth to nod along to because she already fuckin agrees with it (-_-)
also — obligatory reminder that absolutely NOTHING about what’s been happening over in there is okay
Bread Crumbs= Panko.
Bread Crumbs = Panko = Pankow = The Trombonist for the group CHICAGO!
Everything leads back to trombone. We rule the world.
Pretty much everyone’s story starts with a bone.
They can be useful.
Back in elementary school, I tried to play one. I was incredibly bad at it, so bad that I got kicked out of the elementary school band. But before that happened, I had a kid try to hit me with his lunchbox on the playground. I had my trombone in its case, which it turns out is much bigger and heavier than a lunchbox.
It’s funny, I remember that, but I don’t remember what the little shit was bothering me about. Probably religion, I’m a lifelong atheist and grew up in the bible belt, I got told I was going to hell a lot. Public school, so the teachers didn’t dare, but most of the other kids were thoroughly indoctrinated.
Pankow, District of the City of Berlin, Germany.
Appears in the lyrics of „Sonderzug nach Pankow“ the singer Udo Lindenberg performed in the 1980s to protest the fact he wasn’t allowed to do concerts in the GDR – and basically asking for the Berlin Wall to be taken down.
(Just read around in yesterday’s comments and still busy with lyrics).
What do bread crumbs have to do with that game from The Price is Right?
Nobody will ever admit it, but they put crumbs on some of the pegs, to influence the bounce.
On a tangential note: Has anyone ever scored the full $50K on Plinko? Hell, I can’t recall seeing anyone hit the $10K slot more than twice.
Panko, Japanese bread crumbs.
Thank you! I was lost.
I’m still lost. How did the subject of breadcrumbs come up? Was there something about Mary’s sign that I’m missing?
Reread. Got it now. Mary said pinkos. Good thing I caught it before I posted and looked like an idiot. Now no-one will ever have to know.
Joyce thought Mary was saying she’s not a “dirty Panko” (panko meaning Japanese bread crumbs). Presumably she had never heard the word “pinko” (I hadn’t either and had to look it up). So Joyce was like, “why does Mary hate Panko (crumbs)”
for a very long time
Yeah… This is the point where if I were in this imaginary world, Mary would be met with “unjustifiable violence” and I would be completely okay with going to jail. You cannot be pro-“Bombing Babies” around me.
10 minutes off goes crazy
Why is she so hot and evil
I don’t find her particularly attractive, but to each their own.
She ain’t the most attractive in this scene but there have been moments where I’m like “Damn she’s pretty”
TBF it would be kind of fucked up if Willis drew the character with bad political beliefs as “uglier” than the other characters
Caw. Ca-caw caw. Tookie tookie.
(He does though. Since he lets us see how ugly they are inside.)
“George understand. George speak bird!”
“Well, what did he say, George?”
“Bird say, ‘Aw aw! Eee eee! Tookie tookie!'”
Right, yeah, but I’m talking about physical appearance here
Yeah, tbh, the indoctrination that “only evil people are ugly” is, in hindsight, one of the most messed up things I learned from pop culture growing up. O.o
I agree. Mary’s never seemed better looking than ‘pretty plain’ to me.
I’d argue she’s “conventionally attractive”. Like, a bottle of hair bleach away from an anchor position on Faux News.
Dina can fix that problem >:D
I like the thing you’ve said here.
at the risk of repeating myself: me, Penny.
she’s not hot, she’s just a terrible person. ~<3
Hotness is mainly because she’s a young woman with no obvious physical defects. Evil is because she’s a White Christian Nationalist and that’s their brand.
Yikes to that definition of “hot”.
They weren’t providing a universal definition of “Hot”, merely qualifying what may be Mary’s attributes that one finds hot. For being a place where we generally encourage tolerance, I find a knee-jerk judgemental yikes to an honest assessment far more puritanical and concerning than whatever people share about themselves.
So much for the tolerant left, unwilling to tolerate
…
Open and active ableism and misogyny.
You do understand that a *single* person’s comment is not representative of an entire swath of the population… right?
As you know, one comment equals a billion people.
??????? what part of what I said are you even referring to?????
Yikes. Don’t drool over fascists.
I wish Mary had died, and Mike had lived. Anybody else agree?
I’m okay with the Mike dying stuff, but I do wish things went the route where at one point, they’re reflecting on the awful stuff that happened, and go, “At least Mary fell into that sewer and was never seen again.” “Yeah, at least there’s that.”
+1
That did happen – “And yet, somehow, Mary returned.”
I like the thought that Mary is going to wander into the wrong situation because of her overblown sense of self importance, and then from the darkness behind her someone will start talking to her, like a very special episode of Family Ties. And out of the shadows Mike will step, in full color, and as he leads Mary away, they will both fade to washed out before disappearing into the darkness
Mary has better tits than Mike did, so I’m fine with how it shook out
Mary does not have better tits, because they’re attached to Mary. You never see them unless Mary is in the room.
Okay, but duct tape was invented ages ago.
Why would you want to duct tape Mary’s tits?
I like the color.
No visible bra straps and also she could have a backless outfit and still have adequate breast support. I have helped women with revealing cosplay get “street legal”. I’m not sure of the character she was playing, but basically speaking there was nothing in back, nothing above her breasts and not very much under her breasts until her micro miniskirt and briefs.
If there’s one thing the internet has taught me, it’s that everything is someone’s fetish. Although rigger’s tape might be a better choice, since it comes off easier.
Electrical tape.
Can get it in fun colours too.
Technically speaking there’s a point whenever she’s entering a room, however briefly, where her tits are in there but she isn’t!
Unless she’s carrying something and had to push the door open with her back.
Malaya’s are much better than Mary’s, just sayin
I’d much rather spend an hour in Malaya’s presence. And zero seconds in Mary’s presence.
Absolutely
I agree completely. I can’t stand mary, and i wish mike had lived, just to see how things would have played out. Not to mention mike was funnier than mary.
Honestly, yeah.
At this point I’d even take nearly* any villain over Mary. As a threatening serious villain representing fundamentalist Christianity, Mary’s just a Temu version of Joyce’s mom. As a silly over the top fun-to-hate villain, she’s never done anything as fun as Amber’s dad setting up a costumed Legion of Doom comprised of evil dads. She used to be a foil to Joyce but really isn’t any more because Joyce has been an atheist for years. Even her niche as “the villain who actually goes to the school” has been taken by Asher. Mary had one (1) non-evil character trait, which did technically make her the most “nuanced” villain by default early on, but Asher is a million billion times more interesting.
I feel like the only reason Mary’s in this comic still is because she was in Roomies. But she’s never getting, like, character development, she’s not a particularly effective antagonist villain, she’s not a funny team rocket villain where she loses in a funny way, and she’s not a foil to Joyce any more. What DOES she do in this comic?
*Incelerator is worse IMO, but that’s another rant
Have you thought that maybe shd is not a villain? Maybe she is just an asshole?
My problem isn’t that she’s just an asshole, it’s that she’s not actually any good at being an asshole. She doesn’t affect the plot and isn’t funny or interesting, but also she’s not a good base for any of the more likeable characters to bounce off. It’s not like she shows up to be homophobic and then Becky or Carla dunk on her in some epic way so we enjoy seeing Mary get her comeuppance. She just kind of shows up, has bad opinions, refuses to elaborate, and leaves.
Like, really all DoA villains (except Asher, if you count him) are one-dimensional assholes, but every time Toedad showed up he caused the stakes of the comic to escalate wildly into kidnappings and car chases and grappling hooks so even though he’s a one-note asshole his appearance heralded the story getting completely batshit and fun. If Ruth’s granddad shows up you can get excited if you’re a Ruth fan because it means she’s showing up soon too. What does Mary’s appearance herald? Nothing, it’s just us having to look at an asshole together for twenty seconds. I could do that on chat roulette.
There is very obviously utility to having a heel who doesn’t massively escalate the stakes just by showing up or demand huge amounts of narrative focus.
Personally, I’m rather looking forward to Zombie ToeDad.
+1
She is, though. She actively tried to kill students to off themselves.
Mary didn’t try to get Ruth to attempt suicide, or even seem to know that was a possibility. Most of her blackmail was for minor silly shit within the bounds of sitcom assholery that Walky could’ve done. But when Ruth attempted to kill herself, instead of feeling bad about it, Mary doubled down and tried to convince everyone that actually she was right all along and was the hero and everyone should praise her for it. Jennifer was actually willing to let everything slide if Mary behaved going forward (https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/off-limits/), it was the refusal to admit fault that was the final line that got her punched (specifically, the suggestion to blame it all on Carla). THAT was her Rubicon, not the blackmail itself or even the suicide attempt, it was that she refused to change in response to it. She had one final chance to choose between acceptance from the group (or at least tolerance) and her own ego, and she chose her ego.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/rat/
Mary’s character in early DoA was that she really wanted everyone to like her but couldn’t help but be an asshole. So her trying to get everyone to like her by saying assholishly Ruth was bad and that being the thing that gets her exiled is a *fantastic* ending to her character. Seeing everyone side against with two girls they all mostly hated because they hated Mary more. I legitimately love that storyline and it’s a very satisfying final defeat for Mary that felt like everything she’d done in the comic had led up to it.
The problem is that is *was* an ending, an ultimate defeat for Mary that can never be topped and she just kind of….is still in the comic for some reason? She’s the Emperor Palpatine of Dumbing of Age, just somehow returning over and over because she’s part of the brand without really having any point or reason to exist otherwise. Her story is done. It’s BEEN done for nearly a decade. So why are we still seeing her? I don’t care that she was in Roomies, just let her die.
Everyone hating mary still being here, while ignoring that it’s the most realistic thing about her character.
People who are terrible and shitty like this don’t just vanish and don’t stay down after a single climactic victory. They just get shittier, and are left alone by people not wanting to stir up drama, allowing them to continue metastasizing. Joyce and Dorothy are here, being insulted and vaguely threatened by her, and just letting it happen, and on the day of a real life nationwide protest against this exact kind of person actively dismantling the government, I’m glad to see it being called out.
The question is what’s the other option. It’s not just “not wanting to stir up drama”, there’s not really anything you can do in response to this kind of “being insulted and vaguely threatened” that’ll make them vanish or stay down.
Mary’s already socially isolated. What else can you do, even if wanted to stir up drama?
I am so glad the comments are being completely normal about this sensitive hot button issue.
Very well laid out. The problem of course, is that per the title, this is a tale of people coming of age. Losing people we care about is a part of that, as is confronting assholes.
Unfortunately, just because an asshole is dealt with once, doesn’t mean they go away. It’s certainly convenient when they do, but just as we’re seeing in the real world with fascism, Mary is still here. As it turns out, we don’t get to defeat slavery/confederacy/nazis/jimcrow/fascism/maga/mary once and be done with it.
Teaching kindness is a perpetual effort, and will always be a necessity, because our default state is naïveté.
imagine thinking you can blame anything on Carla who has never been wrong ever. ~<3
Honestly the way you just stroll into this comment section every time Mary shows up to talk about Willis like you think they can’t hear you and whine about how badly written you think Mary is for not conforming to the arc you invented for her where she was once really invested in making people like her.
Couldn’t be me, I’d be too embarrassed by the rudeness. These takes would stay in a DM with likeminded friends, or at least on my own tumblr/bluesky/whatever where I’d have the plausible deniability of imagining I wasn’t ranting on the comic artist’s own front lawn.
She may not necessarily be a villain, per se, but she’s definitely an X-Pac.
when Mike told me I’d go to hell, it always at least felt like I had actually done something wrong. and he only ever pointed out my actual character flaws as reasons to treat me like shit
Mary feels like some dumbass groomer made a pull-string toy that called adjacent labels to me groomers as a way to distract from the actual ones
With that kind of mealymouthed bothsidesism maybe Dorothy does have a future in politics after all!
Dorothy wasn’t giving a bothsidesism retort though?
Correct.
Cool, so which side do you think should be allowed to bomb civvies?
If this is sarcasm you’re going to need a tag, because too many people hate Dorothy enough to say basically anything
Civilians should only be bombed by their duely elected representatives.
To put it in Redditor terms: Both Sides Suck.
And by sides, I mean “the ruling authorities.” Pretty sure 90% of the population of both sides just want the fighting to stop.
I’m sure more than 90% want the fighting to stop. It’s not clear what percentage only want the fighting to stop because they’ve won.
I suspect a larger percentage of Palestinians want some measure of revenge and at least some of their land back. And then there’s the settler movement in Israel that would be happy for the fighting to stop as long as they can keep expanding West Bank settlements.
THANK YOU
….. huh?
Dorothy “Don’t Explode Civilians” Keener
This makes zero sense. The only ‘both sides’ here is that both sides shouldn’t be bombing civilians.
The ‘both sides thing would only make sense if Dorothy was arguing that the terrorists and government are bombing each other for good reasons.
the problem comes from the word ‘opposing’, and what that really means.
When you have two sides in a conflict, and both sides are committing war crimes to the best of their abilities, you end up with three possibilities:
1: The Kissinger: Pick a side that you think will ultimately be better in the long run, accepting that this will make you complicit in that side’s war crimes.
2: The Northern Ireland: Wash your hands of the whole affair, then sit back and watch as war crimes are continued and even exacerbated.
3: The Desert Storm: Invade and take over the area, imposing a solution from outside on both belligerents–and somehow achieve this without committing any war crimes, yourself.
All of these have happened in this region and none have been successful. Perhaps the most successful has been negotiated agreements, but that wasn’t on your list.
In some sense, the problem was caused by #3.
Goodness, you know much more about the history of Bulemia than I do. Was this covered at a higher Paetron level than I’m on?
Honestly, I’m a bit annoyed by that part of it. It’s a way for Willis to make the protestors ‘right’ to a degree that’s almost never possible in the real world. So there won’t be anyone shouting antisemitic slurs at Jewish students, nor will there be any protestors begging the university to please, please, permit uber eats to make deliveries to them, even before anything like that happened. (I’ve seen videos of both of these from the real-world protests. Do they make the protestors wrong about Nuttyahoo a war criminal the US should deliver to the Hague at the first opportunity? Not in the least. But those sorts of things can be used to muddy the waters.)
But by fictionalizing the conflict, Willis evades all that, and at the same time doesn’t have to worry about getting basic facts wrong.
For a reason–right now, neither side is interested in negotiating. There may be civilians on both sides that would just like the fighting to be done with, but they are neither numerous nor determined enough to make that happen.
‘Scuse me, the Palestinians have been trying to negotiate since Oct 8, 2024. Netanyahu has rejected every proposal, since they would all stop the bombing.
Far too many people have taken the idea of bothsidesism far too literally, and think that instead of the proper meaning, where you say Party B can’t be blamed for their actions when Party A does X, and now think that any sort of acknowledging of problems with both parties is making excuses.
Or they’ve taken in thinking that anyone called a terrorist is the victim of slander, and the person saying it is trying to hid either own crimes, even though I think we can all agree that say, Timothy McVeigh was definitely not in the right even though I think we can all agree the USA government was & is messed up.
God, I wish opposing war crimes regardless of who commits them got you a future in politics.
God, I wish I could upvote your comment.
I feel like “bombing civilians bad” is something that we all should agree on.
You’d think, and yet!
yeah that kind of “bothsidesism” stuff is futile to appeal to fuckers like Mary who INSIST that it’s ALWAYS and ever about picking one “side” and absolutely opposing the other
Dominator Society Values, Militarism, much of modern US conservatism rests on this fatalist narrative where opposing sides never “actually” agree with each other (as in, even what seems like agreement is only ever a deception feigned to benefit one “side” over the other).
because if agreement is innately impossible, it means you never have to feel guilty about never making any effort to meet in the middle, or concede any of your views no matter how factually or morally wrong, something we saw in action in the skirmish between the Walkertons and the Browns
the idea of cooperating to agree on and be guided by objective truth in policy/decision which can lead mutual benefit and more equitable society goes right out the window, and “”democracy”” becomes this competitive, zero-sum game where winning is about being able to outnumber and obstruct your opposition faster and more thoroughly than they can do the same to you in this never-ending beam struggle
the keyword is bad faith
Being on the side of everyone who just want to live their lives and are ok with everyone else living their lives unfortunately is not a position of power or one that influences the outcome of wars.
Because the narrative „if we allow them to be here / to do this, they‘ll overwhelm us“ is on the rise.
And saying „I want the best possible living conditions for everyone, let’s concentrate on slowing global warming, time is of essence“ is not winning you elections.
Building up someone else to be „the threat“ and you know how to eliminate them does.
Nah. That kind of general humanitarian principle is completely useless for mobilizing large numbers of the electorate into voting against their interests and freedoms. You need to divide the world into rabid us-vs-them in order to get votes!
To be fair to her, this strip has a long enough buffer that it was feasible that by the time it came out Israel/Palestine had been at peace for months and somehow Joseph Kony returned and her statement intended to support a metaphor for Gaza ended up reading as support for child slavery or something.
That example sounds a little silly, but also just in the last few weeks Israel started a war with Iran (and it’s still a little ambiguous how cool America was with them doing that) and Ukraine bombed a bunch of military bases deep in Russia. The world is chaotic and there are two wars the protests could be a metaphor for and who knows what will happen in another six months.
Hey, when it comes to the Ukrainian operation, I’m looking forward to the movie.
When terrorists use bombs on civilians for no good reason, they’re terrorists.
When governments use bombs on civilians for no good reason, they’re terrorists.
I suppose the real question is this: Is there ever a good reason to use bombs on civilians? (I believe I would apply Betteridge’s law to that one, even if it’s not a headline. I could easily see it becoming a headline in this dark age of Trump, though.)
The short answer is yes. The long answer is a lot more nuanced and contains a whole ton of limitations.
The simple presence of civilians is not a bar to legitimate military operations. In some cases, like attacks on arms factories, a legitimate target can be wholly civilian, but still part of the war effort.
In conflicts against insurgencies, things get even messier, since the lines between civilian and military are not nearly so clear.
None of which is to say that either Hamas’s October attack or Israel’s overall response are such legitimate cases.
She seems squarely proposing against the state? She essentially just said hold the government to the same standards you hold terrorists to, they shouldn’t be murdering innocents either.
#JusticeforBulmeria
Augh I hate mary
It would be worrisome if you didn’t
Mary is now voiced by that one YouTuber who does the shorts about all the stuff in the 90’s (MelissaKristinTV?) specifically the Midwestern voice she does for the mom character.
Because that’s the only way I can figure out how to pronounce “pinko” like “panko.”
What Midwestern accent makes an I sound like an A?
I have no clue, but imitating one is the only way I get somewhere close lol. It’s like a “peeyainko” lol. I guess maybe southern could get close-ish too, but I live in the sticks of Texas and you’d have to find somewhere even sticksier to get THAT much twang on the “i.”
You didn’t grow up in backwoods Texas halfway between Dallas and Texarkana. If you ever get your hands on The Legend of Boggy Creek movie, I grew up with people who sounded like that. Heck I sounded like that. I know because my mother recorded Christmas on a reel to reel the year my sister got a bike and I got a BB gun. (No, it wasn’t a Red Rider – I think they made that brand up.) I never put my eye out with it and never managed to injure a wild bird. Though not for a lack of trying.
There is the pin-pen merger, where those words (and others like them) are pronounced with the same vowel sound– but that tends to move to the side of “pin.” But it’s possible Mary’s usual speech makes it unclear what exactly the word would be heard as.
Either way, Joyce is substituting a word she’s familiar with for what Mary said, but if there’s some vowel merger or shift in Mary’s accent, then it could make this more likely–like if to Joyce, it was basically “p#nko”, with the # being “some vowel sound.”
I think it is just that Joyce don’t know what that is and thought Mary mispronounced it.
We interrupt your regularly schedule pining to bring you another episode of: “Fuck This bongo In Particular!!!”
That’s not an interruption. It’s just a slight variation of what a lot of us were already shouting at Dorothy and Joyce, regarding each other.
Mary’s back just in time to remind us all that Rachel could be worse
Mary is hotter than Rachel, she says more things than Rachel, she’s got more subscribers than Rachel, her hair is cleaner than Rachel’s, she drinks more water than Rachel, and she’s got a better ass than Rachel.
I also gotta give her a +1 for the wristbands, to be perfectly fair
I feel like maybe a week of coaching from a hot buff woman (which I know is a tautology) could turn her into a very powerful weed-smoking goth
Your hatred for Rachel feels personal at this point..
Unless your name is Rachel and you’re a comic character whose only purpose is petulant whining about people never changing, I would advise you not to take it personally.
If I changed my name to Rachel and practiced my whinning a lot, would it still count?
If nothing else, I’d respect your commitment to the bit.
Y’all are seriously out here stanning Generic Girl Stick Figure over somebody who looks like you could fix her entire personality by handing her a black vinyl corset and a Sisters of Mercy album lol
Actually, you’re right. That’s both of them.
Fuck it, now I’m shipping Rachel/Mary. Everyone here likes toxic yuri, right?
This is exactly what the comic needs. Mary and Rachel in black vinyl corsets, holding hands and smoking pot.
+1 to the hot goths in waistcloths tokin pot froth with yuri wroth
Rachel: I hate people who don’t change.
Mary: I’ve changed for the worse.
Rachel: Still counts, but aren’t you homophobic? Seems like a deal-breaker for yuri.
Mary: If the Halloween arc is anything to go by, I’m maybe okay with lesbian sex if done for the purposes of demonstrating sin to Christians.
Rachel: Baller. Let’s rock and roll.
I love the mental image of Rachel saying “baller” with a stone cold look on her face.
I dispute Mary being hotter than Rachel. They’re both assholes, but Mary isn’t all that hot.
You’re not breaking any laws.
Eh, neither of them are hot.
“no ass” is a better ass than Rachel’s undeniable booty?
I deny this alleged booty. I deny it thrice.
And yet.
“Dorothy, what’s wrong with games about pegs?”
ah, but we do have three different pinkos in this strip, yes yes
We will need a horse
The pegging will come later.
Something tells me Joe would be down.
And then up and then down again.
Ah Mary, what a treat.
If by “treat” you mean “pile of toxic waste.”
Mmm, yummy uranium jelly
She’s a treat like when I used to go trick or treating and I’d be given little story pamphlets about going to Hell and shit.
Also one time somebody handed out graham crackers. In sandwich baggies. It was weird.
Why bother volunteering any personal information to Mary?
Also, one of them needs to bone up for their apostate exam.
Well, they’re women, so none of them have a postate to examine
Please redeem this for one (1) Internet!
ESM – Maybe that’s why they need to bone up.
Or I guess one of them does.
that’s probate you’re thinking of. Why, my Uncle Thumper had a problem with HIS probate, and he had to take these big pills, and drink lots of water.
Because Joyce still has faith in basic humanity, and sometimes humanizing a faceless opposition does in fact cause people to reevaluate things. But unfortunately, Mary.
Wait….. Oh no…. Wait man I don’t even remember. Was Joyce actually aware of Mary harassing Carla? Now Mary is going to look for Joyce like objects and uh…. Man that’s going to fucking suck.
She’s aware of Mary’s opinions about Carla. That’s how she found out about Carla.
There is a big difference between knowing about Mary’s opinions of Carla and really fully understanding the harassment campaign aspect of it. That’s the main thing I’m not sure of. I’d really appreciate a link to a strip or something. Thanks for responding to confirm I at least remember that much correctly.
Being areligious, my only real exposure to the words Apostate is Dragon Age.
Wait why did this comment come out here, I made it at the bottom of the page.
In the real world, being an apostate has less to do with being a mage and more to do with leaving a religion.
In some jurisdictions it’s punishable by death
Why do I feel like Mary would jump at the chance at being Stephen Miller’s 2nd wife given that’s the only other human on the planet who seems to match her level of hate and self-righteousness.
She does loves hate and self-righteousness, but is Miller “Christian” enough?
I think he’s Jewish but I’m pretty sure he’d convert to whatever sect that ironically encourages him to hate and oppress none white immigrants.
The real question is if she wont end up leaving him for Elon Musk like the last one did.
We could pair her up with Andrew Tate, and then hopefully they’d both leave us alone
Willis has a year’s worth of buffer right? How horrific that this manages to be relevant a year after he wrote it
I think the point is that it’s sadly always relevant.
The meta references feels like opening a time capsule only to realize “Different year same shit with things only got a little worse.”
Yeah…
It’s additionally horrific to realise that while things were *terrible* last year, they’re significantly worse now.
The general reaction to the Gaza genocide, while not actually terribly out of step with reactions to other genocides at the time, continues to drive me bonkers.
It’s been relevant for a very long time, unfortunately.
I notice Mary is wearing dark socks, for some reason. She needs to fix that.
yah mean by standing in a lake of boiling chlorine?
Don’t waste all my chlorine, I need that for my evil plot.
ahahhahaha yeah, we gotta combine a bit of it with an equivalent molar mass of sodium for the salt we’ll need for the popcorn!
Didn’t you know that there’s a tarrif on salt now because the sea unfairly never buys anything from us.
Mary serves an important function in the comic, no matter how bad we think the actions and opinions of various characters might be, we can be certain that Mary is worse
Mary is so close to being a Dumbing of Age adult it’s scary. ~<3
She is a Dumbing of Age adult. All of these characters are adults. She act however like a Dumbing of Age parent.
Mary is by definition The EVIL Character (now that Toedad’s mostly out of the picture), so whatever she says is something Willis disagrees with.
I don’t think you can get more out of the picture than dead. At the most the Toe That Walks is backstory and inspiration for future villains.
Wasn’t aware that Mary knew about Joyce being Not Christian Anymore, though I guess two people yelling at each other right outside the door to a dorm building would probably be overheard.
I mean does she?
I feel like Mary’s standards are so ridiculous that she’d consider Joyce an apostate simply by associating with Dorothy and Becky regardless of Joyce’s actual beliefs
Yeah, Joyce did pretty clearly state to Mary that some of her views have changed: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-15/01-love-dares-you-to-change/sodifferent/
She didn’t say her faith had changed that I remember, but considering it’s Mary, I’m sure statements like that are enough to consider her no longer Christian.
She could have said “atheists” so it does seem like she just thinks Joyce just abandoned the parts of the religion about being judgmental and hating everyone different, like Jesus wanted if you read him in a very particular way.
Not too far from Lukewarm, neither hot nor cold. First to be spit out into the lake of fire.
I feel that “Atheist” is Dorothy and “Apostate” is Joyce. Mary probably just thinks she’s following the wrong version of Christianity.
My go to response will always be “I’m on my own side and that’s the side of being against whoever is for carelessly murdering civilians.”
That’s Dorothy’s take here. With both Hamas and Israel carelessly murdering civilians. Israel’s doing so on a far larger scale, mostly because they have the capacity and Hamas doesn’t.
what’s her sign say?
“I’m just here because hating other people drowns out how much I hate myself.”
So my best guess for what’s on Mary’s placard is “Bulmeria has a death wish.” Any other suggestions?
best guess is “Bulmeria has a right to defend itself”
That’s interesting nuance if true because Bulmeria is where Alex supposedly fled to
Settler-colonialism is terrorism
Asymmetrical resistance against empire is not terrorism
when whitebreds like Mary say “terrorist”, is really just a dog-whistle for “Muslim”,
or to speak with a sharper, more accurate edge, they use it to refer to any non-white person they afraid is gonna blow up a plane
I mean, it is. Just as much as war against an aggressor is war. If you’re blowing up noncombatants to get the general populace to fall in line, that’s terrorism, no matter who does it. (As contrasted with assassinating specific responsible individuals, or at least uniformed regular troops.)
Yall woulda been right there with the white liberal pearlclutchers calling Malcolm and Mandela and Huey and Ture all terrorists. Shame on the lot of you.
This isn’t useful.
It’s in a chain of unuseful statements, including yours though yours is usefully self-referential.
Gaza attacked Israel for breaking agreements and because they don’t believe Israel has a right to exist despite signing documents saying they did. It isn’t useful to say that was Hamas because Hamas controlled the democratically elected government of Gaza. Hamas achieved a limited peace with Israel including the right of Gaza to self-determination.
Israel similarly elected hawkish anti-Gaza leaders and supported illegal settlement of Palestinian “land”, which in some cases were the same Burbank style suburban lands that Israel had bulldozed into non-existence for “breathing room”, including for example flattening the houses of doctors who worked at Jerusalem hospitals. When Gaza attacked using guerilla tactics and kidnapping, Israel’s outsized response reportedly killed many more people who hated Hamas than actual members of Hamas, several of the hostages, and other noncombatants. This has been avoided in the past because even when Hamas has attacked with missile fire over the border, there was no place to fire back to, no Hamas military bases, etc. The rockets often came from school roofs, where there was no real proof the school was in any way complicit and bombing schools is pretty dickish.
There are some parallels to the London Blitz and the responsive bombing of Germany and France, including the indication that neither side thought the other had the right to exist. It is treated like a war between ideologies but in the end it’s just a war, mostly over land and ongoing crime. A war between nations, both aggressors in a war that repeats over and over despite the fact that in peacetime they commute to work in each other.
Arguments are available to say which side is more in the wrong, but given they are both in the wrong, deciding which is worse is debatable. Much like the USA, people hope more level heads will eventually be elected, though unfortunately electing the “other party” often still leads to war hawks in power (like Obama and Trump).
Yeah, it’s a big problem with a lot of nuance. I get that.
At the end of the day though a lot of the problem comes from other countries, like the US and the UK, and yeah also like Iran, who deliberately enable shit for our own strategic purposes. And a lot of the effective, organized action has been attempts to get groups, companies, governments, universities notably, to stop fucking actively bankrolling the war effort.
So, honestly, being neutral as to who’s the greater evil or whatever doesn’t mean you have reason to be doing nothing. I know we in the US get super confused over the idea of resistance movements being capable of pragmatism after the three-letter boys destroyed most of our history and infrastructure but it does happen (not sarcasm, this is a real issue).
This is like ‘it’s not genocide when [blank] does it.’ Words mean things.
Shooting up a concert is not a justifiable military operation – and it’s gone really fucking badly, as some of us expected.
Terrorism is a strategy that HAMAS and Israel have used. Whether you approve of their aims doesn’t change whether it is terrorism… EXCEPT when using ‘terrorist’ as a synonym for Bad Guy.
You can support the fight against Israel without endorsing the people fighting them as Good Guys.
Terrorism is normally a term used when non-state actors do it. The state equivalent is war crimes. It’s a little more nuanced than that, but it’s not far off.
o_ô
After having worked a bit with kids like this during volunteering Mary kind of disturbs me. Most kids like her don’t really understand the real life victims and consequences of repeating the rhetoric they hear online and just want to feel like they’re a part of something. I don’t know what’s missing in Mary’s life but I hope she finds it before it’s too late. Of course at this rate she’ll likely never change and only be rewarded more for her actions. She’ll probably end up a congresswoman or news talking head.
Mary fully understands. She tried to get people killed. Multiple times.
THIS.
Sooner or later, our allies are gonna have to really reckon with the fact that a lot of whitebred folk genuinely ENJOY nodding along to racist, classist, sexist, ableist, xenophobic assholes telling them what they wanna hear
like, the problem really ain’t the dickhead demagogues on the digital soapboxes as much as it is their AUDIENCE
white liberals wanna believe so badly that most of the people listening to bigoted shitheads like Trump, Musk, RFK, Rogan, etc, are “””actually””” potential allies that have just been “tricked” or “captured” somehow
THEY. ARE. NOT. your friends and family members, your employers, teachers and co-workers who listen to that bigoted bullshit WENT LOOKING FOR IT, because they already agree with it
obligatory reminder that your value as an ally does NOT hinge upon how well you can change the mind of a bigot
I think that’s fine when addressing adults but a bit cruel when applied to youth which Mary technically still is unfortunately. Like Joyce is right there and six months ago she might’ve agreed with Mary so what’s the difference? And I really don’t like the idea that Joyce is just different from Mary because she’s special and open minded and Mary is just an evil person for no reason.
But I’m not trying to defend Mary. I get her purpose in the comic. It just kinda bums me out. Probably shouldn’t have commented on this strip.
It’s not that Joyce is just special though, she went through a lot of stuff and her personality is in itself different from Mary, she was from the beginning a lot more friendly even while still being rigid about ger beliefs, Mary haven’t go through any of that stuff and she is generally a lot more prickly and openly antagonistic.
like, there’s a *difference* between adults like Mary who know full well what they’re doing and actively weaponize Hate against people,
and kids who just repeat shit they hear off YouTube and wat cuz they don’t know any better,
I very much get where you’re coming from, is good to reach out to kids before they go down reactionary rabbit holes and get recruited — formal means to disrupt the process already exist and have been used against groups like ISIS
all I’m saying is keep it in perspective — it certainly ain’t helpful for our causes when allies tend to spend more time trying to win back bigots vs their minority targets
I think unfortunately, in relation to your last sentence, the reason why this happens is not that your allies are thoughtless or cruel or love bigots (though sometimes those things are true), it’s that democracy is inherently majoritarian. This is not always a good thing, and one of the ways in which it is a bad thing is that when the majority of the country does not support being kind to certain people (or at least doesn’t support it enough to vote on it) you cannot win elections cutting all of those people out. You need to figure out what the best line you can take while still maintaining majority support is, and then hope that once you’re in power you can pass policy that helps marginalized people anyway or even moves the overton window by normalizing something.
The other problem is that calibrating where that line is is really hard and liberals are doing a terrible job marketing other potential political cleavages. We could probably get a lot more wiggle room on social issues if we figured out how to make the primary political cleavage in this country something the fuck else and then do the social issues stuff more quietly.
Anyway. None of this to say anyone should be courting unabashed superbigots. The people who raised Joyce and Mary are not in fact the heart of America, we should not be behaving like they are.
“you cannot win elections cutting all of those people out”,
except it’s only that way because of how their bigoted movements have been able cut minorities out of democracy for decades and white liberals let em get away with it
if even a FRACTION of the energy spent talking to fuckers like Mary was instead spent on restoring the rights of disenfranchised minorities, prisoner’s rights, redistricting, protections for immigrants, statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, etc, views like Mary’s wouldn’t even matter in the big picture in the first place
While it may not seem like it, far right conservatism / fundamentalism are actually real unpopular in the United States — they’re over-represented in our country’s politics, media and internet landscapes only really because the most ardent supporters of these movements have learned how to game the system
Also because the system is gamed inherently by the urban/rural divide and its affect on politics.
Minorities had been cut out of democracy for centuries not decades and the attempt (largely with the support of white liberals) to let them in led to a massive backlash and the current generation Republican dominance.
Talking to fuckers like Mary is of course useless, but talking to people like Joyce and Hank isn’t and it’s really hard to tell the difference at first contact. Or to people like young Willis.
I mean in the end the problem isn’t that bigots are gaming an obviously broken system but that their goals they’re trying to accomplish is morally wrong.
heck over half the reason we’re in this mess is because complacent white liberals in the mainstream Democratic Party felt that it was less ethical to work towards fixing a system which frankly didn’t even meet our needs so well even before it became so obviously broken,
and didn’t have it in them to really question why they felt more affinity towards reaching out to bigots who oppose them than the minorities they claim to represent, why the former’s support is the one that has to be earned while ours is just automatically EXPECTED
I mean I can look at polling. Pew research isn’t bullshitting me when it says the American public has really distressing opinions about trans rights and immigration. There are some issues on which the Democrats have moved significantly left of the country, despite what the internet seems to think. Democrats are trying to play a profoundly unpleasant game where you figure out how far left you can move on social issues you care about before you start losing elections about it. They are GOING to at least aesthetically tack back into safer looking territory when they start losing ground. That’s what people do in politics. Unfortunately that makes many things my community cares about collateral damage, but we would all way rather that than they stand on their ground and get overtaken by people who want to destroy us and our friends.
What would be nice would be if the Democrats could find an affirmative vision of the future to stand for, something that would make quality of life better for the majority of Americans, and something they can implement fast enough to get credit for it. I suspect the average voter doesn’t care that much about trans issues if they feel like their life is getting materially better, which would be great, because there’s a lot more space to move on minority rights when the majority isn’t in a scarcity mindset.
Yes, it is all PROFOUNDLY unfair. That’s the horror of majoritarian politics. Democracy is a terrible political system, it’s just better than any other political system so far.
The difference between old Joyce and Mary is how they responded when they found out Dorothy was an atheist. Mary called her evil and walked away, Joyce asked her to dinner. That’s the difference.
i think both EZ and Sirk are right. like as in both kinds of people described exist, idk about mary’s writing. maybe we’ll get a little more insight on why she’s like that…
Mary is just a comic character that never has to change but it is a little disturbing how she’s portrayed and written off as evil. Especially after having worked even for the briefest time with young adults like her. They just want to be on the winning side and our government and media and education system is just kind of pipe lining them to become more like Mary.
Mary is just a caricature of though, even if ironically a less extreme depiction over time. It just kind of bums me out now. I’m glad she doesn’t show up as often.
Same! I actually really dislike Mary’s writing bc I WANT her to be a complex character with reasons for the way she is; we could use some more layered antagonists in this comic. But alas, caricature it is. Sigh.
It’s not a caricature. There are ppl in the world exactly like this.
yeah, the United States is full of these kinds of people, we are known all over the world for setting such a low bar for tolerable bigotry levels that bigots from other countries use us to feel better about themselves
they literally get off by saying “oh so what if I’m prejudiced, at least I’m not as up and in your face about it as Americans are”
it will do ya well to really reckon with the fact that the US is the Florida of the world in just about every sense you can think of
With all sincerity I think you are really being too charitable to bigots in the rest of the world here. If they care about the us at all I’m sure it’s more about American moral hypocrisy than “oh lol they are worse than us”
It depends on the country, I think. I also don’t hear it as “so what if I’m prejudiced” as much as “obviously we’re not racist, not like in America where they *example of American racism*.”
Of course, people in America will do the same thing. It’s just whataboutism.
like, half our country literally used to be it’s own nation founded for the SOLE PURPOSE of maintaining white supremacist social order
our government paid for the genocide of indigenous people during westward expansion, something to this day they still REFUSE to achknowledge
I know what you’re thinking, but where do you think the Nazis got it from? Hitler himself literally said he was inspired by the United States.
There’s no escaping it, a great chunk of the world wound up as fucked up as it is precisely because they kept taking after our bad example
There’s got to be a way to acknowledge that the USA has set the bar for many modern systems of bigotry without it becoming just another example of American exceptionalism (derogatory). We are not intrinsically that different from many other nations, we are just the ones on the top of the structural power heap.
Finding out why Mary is an extremist is not going to somehow make her redeemable.
Sure, but who’s asking for that part? There’s more to characters than whether they’re “redeemable” or not.
It would be worse if it did. Trying to make the audience sympathetic to a really evil villain is one of the main ways that people fail to write complex villains. Blaine and Toedad had reasons for doing what they did, they had character arcs, it didn’t make them less evil or more sympathetic.
The only “complexity” Mary ever had was that she wanted to be an evil pious jerk but also wanted everyone to like her and those to goals were in tension. Once she doubled down on how she was right to blackmail Ruth and got punched in the face for it and effectively exiled, that was the end of that, and she never really found a good gimmick to replace it. She’s just kind of a generic asshole, and this comic has no shortage of generic assholes and every single one of them is better at it than her. Blaine was so over-the-top with it he had a camp charm. Toedad’s stories basically changed the entire genre of the comic. Even Incelerator can banter a bit. Mary doesn’t do anything.
Willis did experiment with making her LESS nuanced, and becoming a right-wing Galasso in the Halloween arc whose homophobia was so inept Becky and Dina seemed to actually enjoy her haunted house. That actually seemed fun, I would’ve liked seeing Becky and Mary hanging out more because it was such a bonkers pairing and yet there was chemistry to it, but I guess you can’t really do that too long.
I did enjoy her showmanship on Halloween. Honestly, if she put that effort into something with actual value, she might end up making something genuinely good. And if she fell short of good, I think others would recognize her passion and creativity, and they’d encourage her to keep at it.
Exactly! She’s not even a good heel!!
Idk, I liked her original incarnation in the Walkyverse, because back then she had some subtlety and like 1-2 layers of personality. She was capable of deception and manipulation, and it made her more interesting to watch. But now she’s just a stupid robot that spouts a tinny version of whatever opinion Willis wants to mock, and that’s not satisfying. It’s shallow.
I don’t remember Mary ever wanting people to like her, she just wanted to make them do what she wanted.
I reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaly hope that Mary somehow gets hurt at this protest. Doesn’t matter to me by who. Just… fuck Mary, honestly. Somehow keeps getting worse.
May she smash her pinky toe on every corner.
Fuck Mary. KILL!!!!!
Mary says the most batshit stuff in complete earnesty. You can’t help but feel pity for her when Willis draws her with those eyes.
God I hope this arc hurts her soul.
I am quietly going “teehee, Mary unknowingly gendered Jocelyne correctly.”
Who would have thought that an anti-trans bigot would also turn out to be in favor of an ongoing genocide? >_>
Mary is bigoted against pretty much everything that isn’t cis-het-white-christian-fundamentalist-protestant-from-conservative-US-state.
The terrorists are the ones with bombs, but no plane.
Terrorists are people who use terror as a weapon. Doesn’t matter if they’re governments or civilians or Muslim or whites or little old ladies with dynamite strapped to their chest. Doesn’t matter if you feel justified in using it or not. Use terror as a weapon and you are a terrorist.
Pro tip – Using terror as a weapon usually doesn’t work out well in the long run.
Caveat – You have to get through the short run in order to reach the long run.
I’m not getting into THIS argument in a comic comments section but yikes to this and several of your other comments. If you’re open to suggestions:
1) learn some nuance between “people fighting someone trying to murder them” and “people actively wiping a population from the face of the earth”
2) learn what the Land Back movement actually is, because you plainly do not understand it (judging by an earlier comment)
I’m not at all familiar with a Land Back movement. Is it something I should google?
Pinko bread crumbs are great for egg-battered commie fish filets!
Dammit, now I’m hungry.
Specifically, egg-battered pinko-crumb-covered commie catfish filet. For breakfast with waffle, butter, syrup, and coffee (lots of that).
As a frequent watcher of the Food Network, the joke is panko bread crumbs.
Thank you.
Do you mean to tell me that someone hasn’t trademarked the name Panko Bread Crumbs?
I can see Robin, a Beltway Inbred pundit in the making, interviewing Mary. This will be indiscernable from every mainstream media outlet on TV.
…oh and it will be a near love-fest.
I have legitimately never heard anyone say the word “pinko” unless they’re specifically referencing the Red Scare (generally the second one) or mocking the type of person who would have said it 50 years ago.
Then again, I also never listen to right-wing radio or podcasts, so who knows, maybe joe rogan brought it back or something.
Mary’s a parody of conservatives, but she’s also a character that got developed into her current form during the Bush administration and it really shows sometimes. You can’t really make her MAGA since then you’d have to drop the “I’m more pious” religious stuff since MAGA is more about embracing the id that justifying it (plus you’d have to update her *again* for whatever follows Trump) and she wouldn’t be recognizable. It might be better to just have her go away and have a TPUSA dude in a diaper show up to be the parody of the alt-right and Mary can show up if and when she’s needed.
MAGA absolutely have a “I am more pious” section my man, the disconnection between that belief and their actions is actively ignored, just like Mary does. Like i seen countless times Mary is very much not a parody, she is actually a pretty t9ned and harmless version of modern conservatives right now.
“Pinko” is an old Cold War era term for someone suspected of being a communist. I’ve never heard anyone use it these days, but then I don’t hang around the types of people who might still use it. Though there definitely seem to be a lot of Americans who are still afraid of communism (without actually knowing what it means) and accuse anyone with political views they don’t like of being communists even now, decades after the Cold War ended.
Don’t you just love being reminded that a hated character exists?
I’ve become convinced that someone hates every character in here. So hated character is all of them.
Does this mean that Joyce’s favorite chicken strips or nuggets are made with panko?
She has at least categorized all the different types of breadings and maybe ranked them.
Why is everyone in today’s strip wearing pink???
Because of bread crumbs!
To show that all of them are women. How else could we tell?
That’s what I’m sayin!
lol i wonder what her sign says
Down with Bread Crumbs
You have 5 minutes to hiss the villainess Mary!
Joyce sounds like me asking what’s wrong with seed oils. “I thought canola oil was good?!”
Zionism is terrorism
People whose goals and beliefs are different than mine do not thereby become terrorists.
It just makes them wrong.
The Zionists invented modern day terrorism. “Jewish paramilitary organizations, such as the Irgun and Lehi, used violence and terrorism in Mandatory Palestine to achieve their goal of establishing a Jewish state. These groups operated during the British Mandate period, primarily from the 1930s until the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.”
Zionists attacked the British and carried out the Nakba. So yeah, Zionism IS terrorism.
Terrorism has been a thing for as long as warfare has been a thing. What distinguishes “modern” terrorism?
terrorism as term does apparently have a very specific origin, and it’s the french revolution – so not “as long as warfare has been a thing”. which i just got from the wikipedia page. there’s also a bit on modern terrorism, maybe you can find what you’re looking for there if buck doesn’t elaborate.
i for one think the term itself is fraught – who is called a terrorist, and by whom? for what purpose (imo it’s extremely fair to say it’s usage in politics or media is to elicit an emotional reaction MUCH more than it is used as a real descriptor.)? there’s cases of groups having been called terrorists by the west at the start of a conflict and not by the end, even though their actions didn’t change. probably most common during liberation struggles.
While the term in English has a specific origin, I think the strategy of enacting violence against a noncombatant population with the goal of making them afraid, aka terrororism, is literally as old as warfare.
You are correct that “terrorist” and “terrorism” are almost always used as a synonym for Bad Guy. I don’t like it though.
Where one chooses to begin history is really just a marker of one’s own privileges and presumed norms. Jews in Palestine – as in every other corner of MENA – had been brutally oppressed, persecuted, and massacred for centuries before any of those militias you mentioned were formed. If you can recognize that there were no “good old days” in 1950s America, you can recognize that there sure as hell weren’t in the 1890s Ottoman Empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_killings_and_massacres_in_Mandatory_Palestine&oldid=1177750310
Every other corner of MENA – or Christian Europe, for that matter. Mandatory Palestine was of course under European Christian rule and these conflicts have to be seen in the context of European colonialism and the struggle for independence and national identity – which doesn’t excuse anything, but complicates things. This was also a time when the European Zionist movement was already encouraging migration to the Levant and the establishment of a Jewish state there.
As for the Ottoman Empire – it had long been a destination for Jews fleeing persecution in Europe. Seen as a safer and more tolerant place to live, despite formal legal restrictions. Antisemitism was growing there during the 19th century though, so things weren’t great by the 1890s, that’s certainly true.
Occupation is terrorism. Checkpoints are terrorism. Starvation is terrorism.
Occupation is not terrorism although terrorism might be used to achieve occupation. Checkpoints are not terrorism as such, although they might aid in terrorism. The threat of starvation is pretty definitely terrorism, but starving people is just murder. Words have actual meanings.
It’s giving me flashbacks to “abortion is genocide,” especially when spoken in response to shooting the doctors.
People who imagine themselves to be anti-Nazi or anti-fascist should not be so eager to find circumstances where it’s actually okay to murder Jews, even if those Jews are (*gasp*) living on the wrong side of an invisible line on a made-up map.
And, y’know, murdering, staving, imprisoning and torturing OTHER people living on “their” side of the map.
Ah, Mary, it’s been a while since we’ve seen everyone’s favourite hatesink.
Ah, Mary. Never change.
Hating you feels too good to give you character development.
Oh good the B-Word Queen of Campus is back.
Yanno Dorothy president might mean warcrimes but. No reason. Maybe you could look into local politics. Governor. You can do a lot.
Just when I’d mostly forgot about her, Mary shows up to remind me why I hate her.
Is her t-shirt from Magical Love Gentlemen?
Now, THAT is a twitter argument.
Between the alt-text and Dorothy’s correction, I’m torn between making an Emily Litella joke and a Kero Kero Bonito joke.
Lol, Mary. Calling Joyce an apostate just makes her sound like some epic rogue dark mage XD
On a day when my liberal-lefty-tuned bluesky feed has people talking about how Iranians are genetically predisposed to be terrorists and need to be bombed until they learn to stop trying to make bombs, Mary comes with this weak sauce? It might be time to retire, Mary.
That’s a very strange thing to be saying about people who happened to be born in a specific region.
Of course it is, but “blood and soil” is pretty much the foundation of any argument justifying Israel’s crimes.
This may be a hot take, but I think those guys should stop with the crimes and behave themselves.
The thing is, there are a lot of different those guys. Sometimes, it’s even us.
I must have forgot in what moment we became the nation of Israel. Weird.
When I say us, I am usually referring to the United States of America because that’s who I feel some shared responsibility for. It’s where I have spent my life and it’s the country I have served in the military of (It wasn’t my idea – I was drafted.) I do not feel any responsibility for the actions of other countries.
Woah woah woah! Let’s cool it with the anti-semitism.
I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.
I had a without the space but I guess the formatting thingy ate it
omfg
/s between angle brackets
During the height of the Gaza protests last year, there was a lot of leftish “blood and soil” rhetoric online too, which was creepy as hell. Some was certainly bots or right-wing provocateurs, but it did get picked up and spread around.
Talk about modern Israelis not really being related to the Jews of Biblical times, but just being Europeans. Talk about how “indigenous people of the land” would never bomb and destroy Gaza like that because they’d have some real connection to the land and wouldn’t hurt it. That kind of thing.
Not nearly as much or as politically important as Israel’s basic blood and soil claim, but still disturbing to see how easily that kind of thinking can seep in when it’s rhetorically useful.
Anyway who’s going to the “no kings/tyrant” protests today? There’s one here, in north Sweden, which would suggest they’re practically everywhere in the world. Just to give Trump a special treat for his birthday.
I approve this message.
According the the newspaper, Houston had 15,000 people.
I will be heading out to a NO KINGS protest shortly.
One of Mary’s signs says GOD IS MY KING.
Well, I did not meet Mary. But I did see one of her signs:
Jesus is the King we need
Going to one in Texas. Thankfully, it’s in an urban area, so pretty blue. So I PROBABLY won’t get a head injury from the police.
Headed out soon in Wisconsin. The blue part.
I had to skip it due to exhaustion but I admire all of you who went.
All five million+ of you, hell yeah.
For posterity, note that while this record breaking march for democracy happened around the world, Trump paraded 6,700 soldiers in front of an estimated crowd of 20,000.
The Communism adds flavour!
Of tree bark, only thing you can find to eat.
In Russia, even tree bark tastes better.
I wonder if they ever tried to distil it into vodka…
This might surprise you, but they actually did have plenty of food in communist countries.
Yes, we know. Or any way, I know.
I recommend watching old Rocky and Bullwinkle Cartoons with Boris and Natasha.
Yeah that’s why my parents needed food cards and needed to stand in queues. To be fair though Russians did have plenty of food… after they basically forced it out of their vassal states.
In bed.
You know, it really freaked me out when I found out that there is a sizeable portion of US politics that supports Israel for religious reasons. Like straight up “We need to support them to fulfil the conditions for the Judgment Day from the Bible”. To find out that part of the most powerful country in the world has a mentality not dissimilar from extremists in the Middle East is… unnerving.
It’s genuinely scary that our government is funded and significantly staffed by a literal doomsday cult who want to see the end of the world and are actively trying to make it happen.
It’s even scarier that they’re allowed to keep living.
Silver lining, at least there is a perverse honesty to that. I’m more upset about the ones that know better but still go along with the death cult because it is politically convenient for their careers and/or they are being blackmailed over sexpest stuff.
But don’t worry, they’ll send the cultists a sternly worded letter!
You know there is a difference between wanting the Jewish people around to magically help bring about the end of the world and noticing that people have been killing, imprisoning, killing, stealing from, killing, ghettoizing, killing, and randomly expelling jews for centuries and centuries now, and thinking maybe we should stop doing that for awhile. Let them have a homeland and practice their religion in peace.
I also tend to think that democracy should be encouraged and as the strongest democracy-ajacent country around we should help out when other near democracies such as Ukrane, South Korea, Israel, France, England, or Taiwan have neighbors that want to destroy them, even if the French and the English talk funny, particularly the British.
Now my argument is undercut by the fact that we have somehow managed to elect a criminal madman who wants to absorb a peaceful neighboring country we have been friends with for time beyond the memory of anyone now living and ape the ways of the villains of the last several centuries. I personally don’t know if the election two years in will blunt the worst of the excesses and a few years later regulate them to unpleasant footnotes in the dustbin of history. Or whether the insurrection act will be used to postpone elections indefinitely, in which case he will have a real insurrection on his hands and many people here will die. We might also get an object lesson on the downside of keeping military grade weapons out of the hands of civilians.
I mean, I do sympathise with Jewish people wanting a homeland of their own, I really do, but when getting that homeland means stealing land from other people I really don’t think it’s worth all the suffering and deaths that would cause.
The modern Republican Party exists pretty much because of the reaction to Roe vs Wade. The KKK exists because of emancipation. How far do we go in deciding what really wasn’t worth the violent aftereffects?
I mean, both of those examples of roe v wade and emancipation were not inherently harmful to somebody. Some people just reacted by being arseholes about it. In the case of the foundation of israel it involved the forceful removal of countless people from their homes, I think that’s a bit different. If Jewish people want to immigrate to israel that’s fine, but they shouldn’t do so by stealing someone’s land.
Do you not think abortion opponents believe it harms someone? Or that the Confederacy feared it would be harmed – and was? The Civil War killed 800,000 people.
Mythologized alt-hists are not politically worthwhile and should be avoided. Israel is an 80-year-old country with 10 million people, and the time to oppose creating it was before creating it.
I’m not arguing that all Israelis should be forcibly removed or anything like that. Obviously now that generations of people have been living there they have a right to that land just as much as the Palestinians. However they don’t have a right to the Palestinians current land, which is something a lot of more recent settlers think they do have. That’s what I’m against, sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Please stop engaging with this person they are clearly arguing in bad faith and everything they say is disingenuous nonsense. Just report and ignore.
Hannah, I appreciate the clarification.
I mean… like… most of the countries around Israel had progressive democracies until we went in and fucked them up. Iran is Like That literally because we assassinated their leader and put in a theofascist. Among like a dozen other countries. This was widely know at the time.
So the “we should support democracies” is… not the foreign policy that is happening or going to happen.
Let’s be real “supporting democracies” is an excuse US uses to invade countries they don’t like. So long as a dictatorship is supporting US they love it. Like look at Saudi Arabia, most of the 9/11 terrorists were from there and Saudis are funding a lot of terrorism but they are buddies with US so they can do whatever they want.
They also get the world’s first Dragon Ball theme park, which is a little weird to me. Outside of Japan itself, I’d have expected Brazil or one of its neighbors to get there first.
I guess if they can love Jeff Dunham (according to Fluffy) they can love Dragon Ball too… and they have the money to throw at the copyright owner.
Oil is a political lubricant.
If politicians like oil so much, maybe we should pump it directly into their bodies until they can’t hold any more.
That is a vast exaggeration of the level of democracy in the Middle East. Also, the US didn’t put a theofascist in charge of Iran, the theofascists took over after overthrowing our guy.
Who was more of a straight up secularish dictator we’d put in to replace the democratic government.
I think we’ve gotten better about doing that kind of thing – at least nearly that openly.
I don’t support Israel for religious reasons.
I don’t like murder.
Ah, good, one of the few students actually worse than Rachel. Great. Go, Mary, and get trampled by a crowd, please.
(I feel like I have to specify “students” here, because too many of the parents are far worse than Rachel. Maybe not far worse than Mary, but worse than Rachel, for sure.)
Dorothy comin’ in tepid with the flaccid islamophobic willfully-obtuse neoliberal take. Makes sense for someone that (up until recently) planned on running for President.
Poor gal still has some programming left to undo.
Could you be kind and elaborate on which parts of what she said apply to which adjective? On the surface, she’s saying it’s fine to be against blowing up civilians no matter who does it. Why is that contentious?
It is maybe the mildest possible pushback against Mary’s ideology, really more of a request for the tiniest shade of nuance. But as we see by Mary’s response even that is unthinkable, I’m not sure what would be the point for Dot to put any bigger effort into her argument.
Giving people like Mary attention is exactly what they want. They want to feel hate, anger, and superiority through argument. Dorothy’s response was the only response that defuses her while still pushing back. Anything else would have led to escalation because Mary is arguing in bad faith as usual.
So which civilians do you support bombing?
Enjoy your middle of the road high horse where you get to pretend all sides are coming from equal positions in conflict, honeybunch.
Her political beliefs are abhorrent, but you gotta admire her confidence!
It’s terrible forgetting Mary exists and getting reminded of her existence and how terrible she still is
It really is.
Sort of like remembering I loved Hercules and Lois & Clark, then being reminded what complete trash-piles Sorbo and Cain have become.
Tragically topical strip. This just goes on and on.
It does. I took signs with 8 messages to NO KINGS. All but one were from Trump’s first term.
Stay strong. More protests are needed. Resist.
Man past Willis sure does pay attention…
the buffer is only a year long. This active, publicized genocide has unfortunately been going on far longer than that
Though honestly if he was really being topical, the protest would probably be an anti-Trump/anti-ICE protest rather than a Bulmeria/Gaza one. Gaza was the hot protest topic when this was written, not now.
hmmm, idk if you just worded this poorly, which can happen, but neither gaza nor the malice of ice should be reduced to ‘hot protest topics’. what’s happening in gaza is a genocide affecting 2 million people, and that’s not even including what israel’s doing in the west bank, lebanon, or iran, nor the palestinian diaspora terrified for their friends & family. ice are also ruining lives and terrifying people and entire communities, and sending people to detention centres with horrific conditions, & if we include the one in el salvador, what honestly seems like a death camp.
Fair. It does come across as dismissive.
Not sure what better phrasing would be though.
I see that Mary somehow became even less pleasant since we last witnessed her.
I would almost say it was too on the nose that she just says whatever horrible thing people care about storyline to storyline if she wasn’t also the exact kind of young republican college girl who’d show up in one of those Surrounded videos.
Shocking to see Israel’s attempt to wipe a population of people off the face of the planet defended in a comic comments section, but I guess that’s what I get for expecting anything of anyone. I lied about not getting into this in the comments, but I’ll put it mostly in one place:
Free Palestine
Land Back
Donate if you can
March if you can
Scream if you can
Fuck White Christian Nationals
Fuck Trump
I’m not coming back today, argue amongst yourselves. If your argument is “Israel has a right to–blahblahblah” then I hope you step on a rake. No one has the right to totally annihilate another group of people. As an indigenous person, it’s disgusting to watch people whine about how invaders and colonizers aren’t just allowed to squat on stolen land without anyone saying anything about it.
More disgusting to watch people defend genocide.
Everything you said, +1. These gd monsters.
I have a lot of sympathy for people who were worried about the hostages and the fact that it was an attempt to lure Israel into an overreaction to support Hamas (a typical terrorist tactic by people who are not synomous with the Palestinian people).
But Israel had no interest in rescuing hostages or a proportional response. The Netanyahu government wants the destruction of Palestine, mass deportation, and killing as many people as possible.
Sympathy has long since vanished from my perspective to disgust.
Hamas and Likud are symbiotic. Two sides of the same coin and they rely on each other to cling to power. Yes, the attack was absolutely an attempt to lure Israel into overreaction (and it worked too well, even by the planner’s intent I expect), but Likud’s long term strategy has been to provoke conflict as well.
Both parties rely on conflict to hold onto power. Peace is the biggest threat to both.
It’s worse than that, idealogues close to Netanyahu have been eager to find an excuse to wipe Gaza off the map for years. They wanted a terrorist party to come to power to delegitimize two-state support, and wanted to provoke a big enough attack to gain international permission to doze everything. So, pretty sus when whistleblowers in Israel’s own military reported that they’d noticed Hamas had plans and were making progress on them, but command from above was to just ignore it. The gov probably underestimated how many people would get killed.
The civilians are nothing but sacrificial pawns to the rulers on either side.
Seems to be mostly this Clif guy. Never saw him before, may be just a troll that popped in for this conversation.
Not sure if you’re serious, but clif is like… a long-term major commenter. I imagine you’d have to go back a while (or check every strip for a possible missed day) to find a strip he hasn’t commented on.
It’s kinda funny. Like if someone just started noticing Ana Chronistic, Bicycle Bill, Opus the Poet, Wack’d, Needfuldoer, thejeff, ValdVin, NGPZ, Sirksome, Yumi, Reltzik, Josh Spicer, StClair, Azhrei Vep, Wizard, Cholma, Kyrik, Rose, Fart Captor, Steamweed, moon, Charles Phipps, Crow, ESM, Kamino Neko, Bryy, or any of the other people who constantly post here, and said “Huh. Never seen this one before. Must be a troll who just showed up today, no other explanation for it.”
And here I thought I was a newbie compared to those old-timers. Thanks! This was a nice bright spot in an otherwise very-mixed day.
Yeah, that Charles Phipps guy doesn’t really like Dumbing of Age!
ALL THIS ONE HUNDRED PERCENT
tho if I may add, a lot of white people don’t seem to realize that Israel, despite parts of it’s government being “”democratic””, is very much still a religious MILITARY DICTATORSHIP, no less than the countries surrounding it
and even when whitebreds know, they are mortally afraid of calling it out for what it is because they don’t wanna give up this free-parking which makes it easy for them to LOOK like they support us when really they have NOTHING in terms of an actual pro-Jewish praxis (9-9)
obligatory reminder that you be pro-Jewish AND recognize that Israel is an ethno-state built by white US Imperialists and Militarists so they can control the Middle East
Bullshit.
Same. I just wish more of the people speaking out about it now under Trump had been doing the same when this was happening under Biden. Reminder that these strips were written at least a year ago, when these anti-genocide protests were happening on college campuses across the US while Biden was president, and it was his administration giving money and weapons to Israel. This stuff is evil regardless of which president is doing it.
yeah it’s because too many (let’s be real here, mostly white) self-proclaimed progressives in our country think that the democratic party having victory is automatically a victory for minorities they claim to represent
if you are a leftist, you have an antagonistic relationship with our government and established power no matter who is in office, period.
people of color voted for Democratic party as often as they did in the 21st century because they just happened to be run by the kinds of racist white people who we could extract more from and who would result in less numbers of us prematurely DYING
to this day, mainstream Democrat politicians in the United States remain pretty right-leaning on the global overton window; they merely APPEAR left-leaning because they want civil liberties — but they believe in The System and they will never be anti-establishment
not to mention, they want civil liberties both for us AND for actual Nazis who Jews, Muslims and pretty much all non-whites and queers DEAD
some allies they turned out to be 9-9
*who WANT us dead
Seems to me more were speaking out about it last year. Like you said, all the protests then. Now the protests are focused on Trump and domestic issues. Much less energy left for Gaza.
And cynically, I think some were protesting then because it was Biden and thus an opportunity to take down Democrats.
There is nothing quite like a fanatic so sure of their position that people don’t matter, and there is nothing quite like a person of faith bound and determined to demonstrate that they’ve never read the book they hold holy.
Both groups are all kinds of fun to abuse.
For the record, Israel is not our friend and is, as a nation, far too willing to kill civilians. For anyone doubting Israel’s untrustworthyness, I refer you to the USS Liberty.
Hamas are murderous thugs who hide behind civilians.
It’s really too bad about the civilians between those two groups of assholes, but short of killing all the members of Hamas and of Israel’s government and military there is nothing anyone can do, and even doing that would likely generate a new generation of murderous thugs.
Israel kidnapped Greta Thunberg when she was delivering food and medicine.
You don’t get more obviously evil than that.
They told her to turn back, and when she didn’t they sent her back, harmlessly, then themselves distributed the meager and symbolic rations she brought.
You say that’s the ultimate evil ever – where do I sign? I’ll sign that contract right now. Nothing else in the world ever gets to be worse than THAT? Gimme, I’d sign in my own blood.
Yes, and that was illegal. Not that Israel has ever cared about international law, but I still think it’s important to point out when obviously ignored by so many. Humanitarian aid has to be let through a blockade. I think at worst, it can be searched for weapons or threats.
That aside, of course only Greta was mentioned, but it bears reminding that 8 volunteers from the Madleen, including a member of the European Parliament, are still under illegal arrest in Israel.
dude shut the eff up, go be a neonazi somewhere fucking else. nobody here fucking wants or likes you. this is a queer webcomic taking a stance against the exact kind of horseshit you’re spewing, kindly go away
“Kidnapped” is a bit much there. They intercepted the ship that was trying to cross the blockade, detained her briefly and deported her from Israel the next day. That’s pretty standard.
Israel’s done far worse than that. The blockade itself is bad enough. “Kidnapping” here is just a rhetorical addition.
Fair enough, No need for hyperbole when the reality is bleak enough to scar souls.
My apologies.
Well, there’s nothing anyone can do short of stopping the killing and taking the killers to trial for war crimes. But here we run into the problems where a) the government of Israel, with all the money and all the bombs in the world at their disposal as well as the best intelligence agency and the most advanced missile defense system ever made, believes the responsibility to stop the killing lies with the people whose primary supply of weapons comes from pieces of the bombs Israel drops on them. And b), while Hamas’ officials have long ago announced their willingness to go to the ICC for justice, Israel’s officials prefer to denounce the ICC’s legitimacy and run and hide in Greece when it’s their friends, and shoot people without trial when it’s their enemies.
Mary looks like she’s goose-stepping in the last panel
“Pinko” and “Communist” are the kind of hate thrown by the Right that are extra ridiculous since the Soviet Union has long since collapsed and they’re fully behind Russia in the invasion of Uk…err, Bulmeria.
Why is Dorothy both-sidesing the Gaza Holocaust
Because that’s more fair to Palestinians than people who don’t consider them human beings can tolerate, viz., Mary.
*Bulmeria
What civilians do you support bombing?
Does dirty panko involve Cajun seasoning? I might try that.
Make sure to have the right amount* of cayenne and garlic.
(* enough to make the spice store to think of you with fondness)
wearing a gay hentai t-shirt while being herself with all the views that entails is… about what I’d expect of mary actually
“Christian Otaku” It’s been established before.
Though I don’t think the shirt is specifically hentai? Or am I missing a reference?
it’s a magical love gentlemen shirt unless I very much miss my mark
I defer to the experts who would surely have nailed the reference by now. (Of course i know nothing of gay hentai. You need to search for “yaoi hentai t-shirt” )
Lots of people with strong opinions about Bulmeria (and Mary) in today’s comment section. Guess I should have expected it.
It’s certainly an unfortunate side effect of having a stand-in political protest subplot. Inevitably, someone’s gonna say “It’s definitely specifically in reference to this exact event, and you’re on Their Side if you consider any nuance.”
Mary is the part I really give a shit about, myself. Global politics and religious wars are above my pay grade, but a sexy hater is right up my alley.
Boy, the timing on this comic when I just came back from a protest where I waved a sign to prosecute ICE.
High five!
Pinko shrimp? Double the sacriliciousness.
I am glad tge comments are completely normal about this delicate hot button issue!
Last year, I went in a trip to Bulmeria. It was a nice place, nice people, weird food. I recomend to travel there in summer, when you can visit etoria at North.
*Petoria
I honestly find it difficult to believe with her background that Joyce has never heard “Pinko” before.
Yeah, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t misheard it every singke time and just never been comfortable asking why people hate those bread crumbs so much.
Well at least Mary has figured out how to be dressed before noon. Character development at its finest.
I initially assumed the protests were a stand in for Ukraine instead of Palestine.
So my interpretation of the metaphor was SO VERY WRONG.
yeah this arc is a direct homage to the pro-Palestine protests at Dunn Meadow and their aftermath which happened just last year at IU
I’m just thankful that… despite the teargassing of children, there wasn’t a full on massacre today.
It’s probably good I mostly skipped today’s comment section cause I would have been really rude
I am ignoring my autistic need to confront anyone I think is wrong but operating like hamas and israel are equal is baby brained and if you think that you are a part of why israel has been able to get away with all this
We are nearly two years into a genocide, no excuses
I was sooo confused.
By everyones comments I thought Joyce was asking about her basket, and Mary was passing out Panko.
Why is mary passing out Panko ?
( although oddly on the nose for a real christian. )
its just as odd for girl dressed like the pink panther to be laying out color coded slurs
Happy Father’s Day
… to Willis, cause Hank is in an iffy spot rn.
can’t help but read joyce and dorothy in the last panel in pinky and the brain voices