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also, shit
The Ana returneth! Good to see you!
Praise be The Ana!
Yes!! Missed you!
Also, this is amazing. It’s a complete 180 reversal of behaviour, but that’s exactly the break she’s been building toward for a while now. Whether good or bad will depend on how she processes this later…
also, piss
There’s three of George Carlin’s seven words.
Muthafu—-
Pretty good deal tbh
Probably not. Small one-person basic tent from WalkyMart runs about $20 locally.
a very very basic tent, I guess
A small tent like for cycling can be the size of a particularly comfy sleeping bag, without any of the comfort but probably more weatherproof.
You wouldn’t want to bring your good tent to a situation like this.
Nope. Not at all. Too likely to lose it.
Side note, but the UK police will totally confiscate a good tent used by a homeless family. Basically, it isn’t bad enough not having a permanent residence you’ll also be out of pocket for a new tent. I honestly don’t know if they got to keep their personal belongings.
My wife and I went camping once with a group of neighbors. We drove a couple of hours from married student campus housing to the other side of the mountain valley, then pulled the duffel from the trunk of our car.
I unzipped the bag and saw green plastic fronds. It took a full ten seconds for my brain to process the fact that I’d packed our Christmas tree instead of our tent.
Check the clearance aisle. I picked up a 3 person tent for $25 once. It’d probably disintegrate if left out more than a night or two, but it counts.
But now you don’t have to pay for shipping or have to carry it yourself!
Apt for snow?
For a couple days, sure!
Yes! Do it! Crashout! Destroy things!
I dont want the inexperienced white woman who spontaneously hopped in a demonstration she was asked to leave, to escalate and cause problems for the actual protestors, actually.
I doubt Dorothy is actually capable of doing anything that could escalate this past the arrests the protesters have already been assured if they stick around. I need her to keep this energy when things are little less high stakes though.
Crashing out and destoying things would certainly escalate things.
Actually, I’m pretty sure they’ve all been asked to leave.
They obviously mean asked to leave by someone worth respecting lmao not the cops
Erm, actually, it’s dangerous for Batgirl to punch so many armed stooges. In real life, fighting someone with a gun can get you shot, so….
I mean, in this particular case, the sniper indicates Dorothy could get shot
But Dorothy isn’t Batgirl, so she can’t get shot.
Nor was Mike Batman, but he went out like a hero and still died, so being a hero has a track record for death in this comic
Mike went out like a dipshit moron, and didn’t even manage to take Blaine with him. Barely slowed the guy down.
Man, Amber would want to kick your ass for that
She’d have to leave her room for that.
You have a fair point
Mike was killed because he didn’t fit the tone of the comic and Willis was struggling to find reasons to include him in scenes or evolve his character in any direction that another character didn’t already do well.
He wasn’t just popped at random because the narrative demands blood sacrifice.
I mean it felt like he was. Because right before he killed him, Willis started to develop him so that he would fit the comic better.
Ike is 100% on the money with that – and even if that wasn’t the case, Mike was the Heel With a Heart of the story, and when Willis tried to replace him with Booster it flopped cuz Booster’s doesn’t even mean well.
We can certainly just disagree on every point. I went looking for the actual explanation from Willis which I am paraphrasing above, but I can’t find the quote so I’ll agree to disagree. Especially re: Booster, who I love.
I have very mixed feelings about Mike. Sometimes I think he was just an obnoxious git whose jerkassery occasionally happened to have positive outcomes, and who had occasional flashes of Actually Doing The Right Thing, one of which got him killed.
And then I read comments like Purple Floof’s and I start feeling he was so much worse than that. He was the obnoxious git whose jerkassery is intended to have positive outcomes, and always does, and therefore he is totally justified in everything he does. He’s punching Joe in the face to make him a better person, and that makes it okay. He’s Smallville Jor-El.
It felt pretty random to me. It seemed to me like Mike was just on the verge of becoming a better person and no longer being an asshole, and then he died.
I could be misreading Willis’s intent, but I don’t think Mike was ever supposed to have been justified. Even if he thought he was.
His final revelation that led directly to his sacrificial attack on Blaine, was that Blaine’s justifications for his abuse of Amber echoed what Mike had been telling himself.
In theory, but in the real life protest this is based on, no one got shot.
And, to tie to the point above, I doubt Dorothy’s going to do anything that would make the sniper shoot, if he wasn’t going to already.
Yeah but everyone’s argument for why this protest is legitimately dangerous has been “there’s a police sniper” and “there’s riot police”, so I was speaking in the context of their arguments, since it’s just going to cause unnecessary arguments to contradict them on that
what problem is going to be caused when they’re arresting people in 30 minutes lol. she wasn’t “asked to leave” by any sort of protest authority, she was told to leave by her teacher and her friend’s older sister because they don’t want her getting in trouble. do you seriously think most of the college students protesting this stuff irl had “experience”? what experience are you looking for? what makes her not an “actual protestor”? this doesn’t seem to be some highly organized thing with very specific actions being taken and specific people chosen for being arrested, especially if it’s based on the irl college protests. this is the kind of virtue signaling that encourages people not to participate in actions.
“Inexperienced” insofar as: someone who has never attended a protest, someone who barely even knows where she stands on the issue- just that she wants to be involved and make a grand gesture in at least some part because she has also attached it to representing something in her romantic life. It wasn’t just Joss or her teacher who told her to leave- several protestors expressed discomfort with her presence the moment she entered! All of which btw are grown women and absolutely have more authority than a random teenager who jumped in up on a whim.
Oh, it’s pretty clear she knows where she stands on the issue of the University’s involvement. Dorothy is an adult, not a random teenager. She may or may not be making a good decision, but it’s her decision to make.
Yeah, hiss-boo to the infantilizing Dorothy. She’s an adult and everyone’s first protest is their first protest. What a silly line to draw.
why would you think dorothy, someone who has been actively pursuing a political career up until this point, would not be intimately aware with whats going on politically with a genocide? i went back to read everything said about this subject and while she has not been outspoken about it not once has dorothy ever expressed anything but opposition for the university’s actions.
i can guarantee you, in real life, a huge portion of the college students who protested the way depicted in the comic were doing so as their first protest.
treating this as if its purely a part of dorothy’s romantic arc, as if she has not been continually set up to have this reaction to political action since raidah accused her of being a war criminal is ridiculous. willis is tying multiple of her arcs together into one because it makes for more compelling writing. but that does not mean that dorothy’s decision on political action here, while impulsive, is not out of nowhere. she has been leading to this.
“several protestors” did not “express discomfort” with her when she entered. what are you even talking about. one protestor, asma, said she had cop energy. that is not telling her to leave. that is asma saying she is not going to trust these people she barely knows with potentially sensitive information.
again, neither joss nor leslie told her to leave because she isn’t supposed to be at the protest, they said it because they don’t want dorothy to get arrested. but dorothy is also a grown woman. she can make that decision for herself.
i feel like you are seriously flattening dorothy’s character and infantilizing her to make some point about protestors that just makes you seem inexperienced. these kinds of protests want people in them. they want students to be joining in.
And anyway I was responding to encourage for Dot to “crash out! destroy things!”
The “experience” I would hope for is just, attending a protest where the intention was not to get arrested, and also having a plan like telling people beforehand as well as making sure bail can be arranged. I want people to participate in things, I don’t want people to be afraid, but I want people to make a plan beforehand for something escalating this far.
At least Dorothy is a fictional character so that changes things but yeah.
Joyce knows what’s happening. She knows Dorothy’s parents. Dorothy’s parents are almost certainly good for the bail. It’s not advanced planning, but it’s not jumping with no safety net.
Dorothy didn’t ask Joyce to do that though and Joyce might jump in with Dorothy without thinking to do that. If Joyce does realize she should set that up then that may work but this doesn’t seem to be “calm thinking under fire” hours.
yeah they should have told ppl where they were going beforehand lol. i still think expecting people to have the experience of a protest before actually going to a protest is silly, but dorothy is expecting joyce not to go with her so at least she is intending for someone to be aware of where she is. we’ll see if joyce makes the smart choice of not joining her lol
We’re gatekeeping protests now? I’m pretty sure getting as much people to join is one of the goals.
“Crash out! Destroy things!” is absolutely not a harmless thing for a white woman who barely knows where she stands on the issue and just wants to make a grand gesture to do. Which is what I was responding to. White people with hero complexes escalating is something that happens frequently and causes harm to the people around them.
It’s fine for Dorothy Keener, the character from Dumbing of Age (readable now at dumbingofage.com), to perform these actions in this story for these reasons and under these conditions.
Also I thought it was obvious that I was pretty solidly joking. I don’t actually want Dorothy the fictional character to escalate a protest. I just like her change in attitude. Pretty sure people were commenting her to punch cops like that wouldn’t also escalate things, but I guess sometimes you can’t really have fun.
Dorothy should not crashout or destroy things. She should keep believing in the same things and acting the same say she did before she was disillusioned. That’s my official stance on things now until the next update at least.
It WAS obvious. Sometimes people just take things far too seriously for one reason or another. It might be a generational divide, a bad day, frustration and burnout from the current state of the world, etc. You did fine.
Also I hope she crashes out and starts setting stuff on fire.
She sets things on fire like Elmo! OW HOT
Burn baby burn
A lot of things some people think are obvious jokes are not that obvious to some people. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what is and is not a joke on the internet, especially when it’s just text comments. It doesn’t help that the outrageous things some people may say in jest, others will say completely seriously.
Last protest I went to, one of the folks we counted in the tally was more accurately a counter protester.
For big rallies and stuff you want as many people as possible. For cases where you’re expecting confrontation with cops, you want some gatekeeping.
At the most basic level to screen out cops and provocateurs, but there are reasons the old Civil Rights groups actually did training.
Hm, a fair point. She’s gotten it right fitting in so far, but she doesn’t know how to handle things when they get really bad. She has mimickry rather than real knowledge – and no handy device to look up legal precedents on.
I don’t think she WILL massively escalate, but I am concerned she’s running in here off the back of disposing of her typical overplanned survival/success seeking behaviour and thus might put herself or others at risk veering too hard in the other way.
*play “Dare” by Stan Bush on hacked muzak*
“act with integrity, no regrets” but this time it’s Dorothy cold clocking a riot cop
hold up apparently it is “cold cocking” and not “cold clocking.” i just assumed i was hearing people wrong
I legit didn’t notice you didn’t say “cocking” until you mentioned it.
I too thought it was cold clocking lol, I thought it was an extension of ringing someone’s bell. Like an alarm bell, or an alarm clock.
Idk, the logic is not there like I thought it was lolol.
Wait, it’s what?
Why have I never heard crude jokes about this?
You weren’t listening at the right time?
Cold cock, (also cold-cock or coldcock) is early 20th century American slang for “knock unconscious”, with a connotation of a sudden, powerful, unexpected blow (see also “sucker punch”). “Cock” was associated with “fist” in boxing, as in “he cocked his fist”, which may derive from cocking the hammer of a firearm. “Cold” may derive from either “knocked him out cold” or “caught him cold”, or attacked unexpectedly. I’ve also seen a claim that coldcock refers to a heavy water faucet (a “cock”), but who would hit anyone with a faucet?
If I ain’t got a weapon, imma pick up a cock
There’s a joke I can make here about paid protestors but I’m not all the way committed
this protestor got paid for their tent
That’s a paid pro-tenter.
nice!
Now is the winter of our discount tent.
For (a) score (of dollars).
Is that why it’s snowing inside?
This is beautiful. A lovely pun. You should be very proud. Brava.
Where can I send your internet?
That’ll do it!
And at a steal too. $20 bucks is actually very cheap I think, even for a shitty tent.
Finally Left have money to pay for protesters. Kappa
The Kappa really brought it home
damn it, I should have said “I’m not entirely sold”
I don’t know, I’m buying it. I mean it’s only $20.
Technically he was paid to leave, but for her, this is pay-per-view.
I feel like this is more dramatic than it should be? But it is Joyce, I guess…
Welp. That’s another “fuck” from Joyce, but not for a good meaning.
Joyce right now the best thing you can do for Dorothy is leave and let your friend group know what’s going on
Agreed, she should leave and tell people, but I’m not sure she’ll be able to handle leaving Dorothy alone.
What? No. Protests fail if you wimp out. The best you can do is join the protest and call your friends to join it.
She has to go get her phone anyway for her to be able to call friends to join. Also, as someone who’s organised protests myself: we don’t mind if you “wimp out”. Put your safety first. There’s other people that can take it on.
Psh, don’t try to pull that card on me. I’m Chilean, I know a thing or two about protest and police brutality. We absolutely care about numbers. And safety is not on the line quite yet.
Also, she surely knows Dorothy’s phone number, she just needs to borrow a phone.
Betty’s*
Becky*
How the hell did I make that mistake TWICE.
Veronica’s*
Jughead’s.*
Archie’s*
Dpes she know it though?
I mean I remember phone numbers from when I was a child, but any number after I was 15 or so are known only tto my phone.
Except for my SO’s because I wrote it in a lot of “emergency contact” fields.
HAH! More of us?
Chiming in to support these sage words. I’ve seen people on the internet who legit believe you gotta enroll into protesting. As in, filling out a form. I wish I were kidding.
if someone is trying to get you to sign your name for a protest they’re undoubtedly a cop
Protests in the US routinely fail.
The last time a protest really accomplished anything was before I was born, the 1963 March on Washington actually did some good. But even then the protesters had allies with the president and a congressional majority, the 64 civil rights act was probably coming anyway.
Oh, and Stonewall did quite a bit of good. But that was spontaneous, and wasn’t nonviolent, the pigs got their sorry asses kicked, and people who got arrested were actively unarrested by the crowd. And again, before I was born.
The BLM protests had potential, but fizzled too soon. The pigs are as violent as ever, there’s still no oversight, and defunding them didn’t happen.
They don’t have their phones. Their friends don’t know they’re there. They have no way of informing their friends unless one of them leaves.
Wimping out is when you leave and come back more prepared, I guess? You’d be the first person in the rock climbing trip to fall off the rocks, thinking like that.
Have you ever been rock climbing? Falling off is a very common experience and an expected part of it.
Well yeah, but especially if you’re not prepared. Having a rope to catch yourself with seems like the bare minimum, like going to let someone know you’re going into an escalating situation to make sure your friend is alright.
Honestly, “letting someone know where you’re going” is a pretty good idea for rock climbing too.
It’s extra helpful if “where you’re going” is off the side of the cliff.
The police are about to arrest everyone who stays inside the fence. I don’t think Joyce “wimping out” or not will change that.
If there’s enough of you they can’t arrest you all.
Depending on the morals of the police, that can either be a good thing for the protestors or a very bad thing for the protestors.
Isn’t that literally the point of Kettling, so they can arrest everyone because they can’t escape?
Kettling is a tactic. It’s not the end and it’s not infallible. There’s strength in numbers, counter-tactics like the HK’s “be water”, knowing your terrain, straight up running faster than the cops, and many, many more.
There’s a degree of risk involved in a protest, alright, but it’s not lining up for slaughter.
Dorothy’s previously mentioned she was on her school’s track team, and she keeps in decent shape. A cop, meanwhile, is most likely a lazy piece of shit that doesn’t exercise, and these ones in particular are kitted out like they’re gonna on foreign soil getting ready to shoot brown people, so I figure they’ve got on like 50lbs of bullshit gear they don’t even need. She’ll outrun them easily.
Thus the fences.
It’s like people have never hopped a fence before.
The flimsy $5 Walmart fences with no visible supports, that may as well have been rolled in by a toddler with a wheelbarrow, they’re so frail.
Joyce has literally no good option here. Either she stays which could get her sister in extreme trouble, or she leaves and Dorothy is all alone. “Fuck” is right.
Dorothy could go be with big sis, and then she wouldn’t be alone.
Given that Big Sis will probably try to kick her out, she won’t. Dorothy’s being too smart for that.
…
… yes, i know. But you need a certain degree of intelligence in order to screw up in really big ways. Dumb screw-ups tend not to have as much reach.
Can’t kick her out once the gates are locked, and I doubt she’d physically put hands on Dorothy to force her out since that could trigger the cops to act early.
Jocelyne is the sneaky sort of clever. She’ll find a way.
Remains to be seen.
Be gay! Do civil disobedience!
somebody closes this gate, jeez
Um, Dorothy, what… exactly are you trying to accomplish here?
You’ve had a realization about the sucky state of the world, but… yeah, what is the goal here? Cause, as far as I can tell, your main reason for doing this is so that you don’t kiss Joyce full on the lips right now.
Which I mean, might be all this is.
Good thing your answered your own question by the end
And speaking of “Does not deal with strong emotions very well”, Hi Claire!
([And sorry about hitting “report” when I meant to hit “reply)
As you might have noticed, Dorothy does not deal with intense emotions very well. If her reaction isn’t “Go bang Walky”, it’s probably going to be something that makes you go “Dorothy, NUUUUUU!”
Depending on how you feel about Dorky, there can be some overlap.
“Nu” means “now” in the Scandinavian languages. So it sounds awfully emcouraging
Encouraging* butter fingers
But at least it’ll make her feel like she did something
Isn’t that the point of protesting. So you know you did something?
Having a realization about the sucky state of the world and joining a protest about it makes sense.
This might be the commie in me but, the fact she’s doing this amidst also trying to not kiss Joyce, doesn’t take away from how joining the protest makes sense.
Yeah, I am not entirely sure why there need to be more of a reason to join a protest other than you support the protest.
Didn’t care about the issue five minutes ago? Doesn’t matter. If you heard the reason for the protest, the stakes, and decided to join in to support the protest — Then you’re in
There’s no roll-call (thank goodness). It can be a spontaneous thing, even.
I’m not trying to gatekeeper her (as some in a certain other thread above are). I am just wondering what her reasoning is.
And, to be fair, she isn’t just joining the protest. She is specifically attempting to get herself arrested by making certain she has a sign and tent so she can be in violation of police orders.
Really seems like she might want to spend the night in prison where she can’t be kissing Joyce.
*jail
*you don’t spend the night in prison, that’s long-term
Ugh I don’t like how much this looks like pointless pedantry even to me. I swear I was trying to be educational. In America at least they’re sort of synonymous but not really: https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/what-are-the-differences-between-jail-and-prison.html
I’m glad Dorothy’s reaction to that realization is to take action and join the protesters. That’s a very good first step for her. Obviously dangerous, but I assume she’s decided the risks are worth it.
If she bought a tent from another protestor that protestor doesn’t have the tent any more and presumably is leaving now, so Dorothy joining the protest had *literally* zero effect except for her personal growth.
That doesn’t make any sense
It would make sense if she’d bought it from a protester who wasn’t already leaving (with their tent), so likely ESM just misread the comic.
I think she’s basically self destructing. She’s self destructing that career path of hers (I know a President could be elected despite having once been arrested for a protest but considering the protest itself as well as Dorothy refusing a diagnosis because she didn’t wanna muck up her chances as President…), she’s self destructing the current life she has that she’s not happy with. She’s crashing out.
And hey, since it’s only her second semester of college, it’s not like she’s committed very much of her time to the political shtuff. With the right emails and conversations, she could probably change at least a few of her classes, pick up a bit of music theory, invest in a knockoff Les Paul 6-string, start playing Paramore covers at Hooch Place’s weekly open mic night with her new classmates, dye a streak of magenta into her hair, all the classics.
The character arc Dorothy needs and we deserve!
There could be an argument here for her actually getting some first-hand perspective by actually putting some skin in the game, rather than just treating politics as an abstract thought experiment.
… also, I’m pretty sure this isn’t so much her running from her gayness as it is expressing her admiration for Joyce through some ill-thought-out emulation.
it dependso n what she plans on doing/saying when she gets there versus just planning to be arrested
She’s gonna pull out the rocket launcher she had and she’s gonna fire the rocket launcher at the nearest police officer. But before that, she’s gonna toss down the grenade she brought and then jump just before it goes off so she can use the concussive force to get extra height on her jump. That way while she’s up there, she can get the best angle on the cop with the rocket launcher.
Becky will be jealous of her commitment to the bit.
The difference is, Dorothy plans things. Becky would probably have brought a molotov (because she prefers a more incendiary approach, as at least one bridge can attest), then realise too late that they’re not so good for grenade jumping.
Came back to add: that bridge had it coming.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/unlimited/
(I’m not sure that link supports my point, but it’s so glorious I don’t care.)
YouTube: “If I had a rocket launcher”. (I can’t search for it right now.)
We’re talking about a student protest, here. “what… exactly are you trying to accomplish here?” followed by a realization of “oh, your presence here is actually about your personal issues” is going to be extremely, *extremely* common, based on my several years of involvement in student protests.
(and a lot of those people end up getting very involved, and some of them even go on to do very good, very useful things, so I’m not even gonna knock it, just saying that its normal)
Dorothy’s got her checklist:
“Be gay; do crimes.”
Check. And check.
I was thinking “Be gay; do crow” . . . but that’s another comic. ;p
Hell yeah Dorothy. Go to jail. Learn what you actually want to do with your life. Open up to your therapist.
..One step at a time, I suppose. We’ll see how far she makes it down that checklist.
…an encampement ? that sounds like a lot of toilet and drinking/food problem soonish
Depends on how fast the riot cops arrest everyone.
I mean, the toilet/food situation in jail probably isn’t great, yeah. (Generally, multi-day protests do plan their logistics.)
i mean i don’t know how long it’s been going on for but i imagine ppl would prep for that if not start wearing diapers
You know things will escalate tomorrow when you read the “you can read tomorrow’s strip now on patreon, if you want” warning
No, little american girl, don’t go in the protest zone!
It’s about to be full of tearen gassen.
Why should a full grown American woman not go into a protest?
“It WAS obvious[ly a joke]. Sometimes people just take things far too seriously”
Yes. I said this to comfort someone about why their joke might have been taken too seriously. I also gave reasons. You reframing what I said to make it sound as shitty as possible is really a YOU problem, cupcake.
If you’d like to explain the joke feel free, otherwise Not Funny, Didn’t Laugh

Ohhh I see why lmao. You were the one who took that joke too serious so you’ve decided to make it a personal issue. Cute, have a day!
Yes babe guess we’re just two lesbian peas in a pod who can’t clock ~obvious jokes~
Sorry, the only joke I’m seeing is you getting this prissy about a perfectly mild comment I made lmao.
Are you unfamiliar with the little German boy meme? https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/oh-mein-gott-zees-is-ein-cave-full-of-bluntsmoken
Basically the original was:
“No little German boy don’t go to the weed cave”
“Oh Mein Gott Zees Is Ein Cave Full Of Blüntsmoken!”
I assume it’s a reference because “No, little american girl, don’t go in the protest zone!” has the same sentence structure. Hence my reply about how it’s about to be full of tearen gassen.
Ah, yes, I was unfamiliar, ty for explaining!
Why are the words “act with integrity, no regrets” ringing in my head right now?
While she is theoretically acting with integrity to some degree, I feel like she already has several regrets.
if they’re not arrested, then I’m sure she could get some assigned reading. Her comfort zone.
I’m kinda impressed with how quickly Dorothy has committed herself to this decision.
I was very sure they were going to close the gates on Joyce’s face right after Dorothy went back in, ngl.
But hey! Activist Dorothy! — We love to see it. Delighted to see she’s kept her core of “I want to make the world a better place” through the disillusionment of realizing being a president of the world’s imperial core wasn’t it. Absolutely fucking grinning at her realizing she can’t stay a moderate, that anger is REALLY a powerful tool for positive change! It’s legit the best direction her character could’ve taken.
That and the queerness. Of course. But yeah, the queerness comes bundled in with the shaking up of the statu quo in her brain.
When Dorothy wanted to be president, the weirdest thing about it was that she didn’t seem to be politically active about anything. Like the presidency is something you get if you score enough A’s on your term papers.
I think we’re literally finding out she wasn’t political and aware of the gladhanding necessary.
She definitely seemed to think all she had to do to become president was get good grades and go to Yale. Or at least, I don’t remember her saying any other plans for how she was gonna become president beyond that.
Maybe this is because I’m not from the USA. But also. She was like, so so so mild in her politics. “Minorities deserve rights water is wet” kinda deal. You’d think you’d need, if not ambition, at least convictions.
I’m happy to see that, whatever she does about the ambitions later on, she’s decided to learn about convictions – and walk her talk.
US politics are skewed way to the right compared to a lot of other countries. A lot of people in this country seem to think even mild reforms to capitalism are too extreme. And due to Cold War era propaganda, most people in the US are afraid of socialism and communism without even knowing what they actually mean.
A fair bit of socialism to take the rough edges off capitalism is a very good thing. The sooner that communism is buried in the dustbin of history, the better.
The good thing about capitalism is that it can take a bunch of greedy self-centered bastards and provide them with incentives to work for the benefit of other people, in hopes of becoming filthy rich. Capitalism isn’t magic and to work at all well it needs to be well regulated. Communism, by contrast, is a cornucopia of perverse incentives and the only way for it to work at all, beyond small groups with a strong shared ideology, is to be held in place by force and fear. There have been ideas that have caused more human suffering in their existance, but there aren’t many.
There is so much fucking blood on your hands.
Congrats on proving my point that most of y’all are afraid of communism without having a clue what it means.
Neoliberal propaganda has cooked so many of us, it’s a tragedy.
But you see, that’s not actually communism. That’s just the way all states claiming to be communist had to operate in this fallen capitalist world.
True communism can only be achieved through worldwide revolution, after which the state will wither away and we’ll all live in a worker’s paradise.
I’m absolutely on board with a lot of “socialism” to soften the rough edges of capitalism. I’m even more on board with democracy – despite the very real problems, it’s the best approach to governance we’ve come up with yet. The real problem, in my mind, isn’t the economic system, but how well your approach deals with the assholes who just want more power. Communism doesn’t have either great theory or a great track record there.
Communism in particular seems to have suffered from the problem of “most paths to Communism lead through ‘take over the state so it can be dismantled’, and it turns out that a lot of the type of people who end up as leaders just won’t do that ‘dismantled’ part.”
Capitalism doesn’t really do any better, mind you, it just tends historically to be associated with democratic governments that cede a fair portion of real-world economic power to millionaires/billionaires.
Also “dismantle the state” crashes hard against the real-world problem that you actually need a state to organize things and make a functioning society. At least until the Revolution spreads world-wide and probably even after that.
I don’t think you know what socialism or communism are (Marx used them synonymously, but even if you use other definitions where there is a difference between the two, “capitalism with a bit of socialism” does not make sense. at all.)
Sure it does. A state can have a mixed capitalist and socialist economy. China and Vietnam are classic examples. Even using the simplistic definition many Marxists use, about who is in control of the means of production, there is a lot of room for hybridization.
In the right district, a moderate of either party can get elected without any significant personal commitment or belief in anything in particular. The majority of US politicians, at the federal level, are elected due to which party ticket they are running under and nothing else.
I’m interested which country you live in that isn’t at least a little bit like this.
Though in many of those districts the real race is the primary and there you need to distinguish yourself from the other candidates.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/03-sometimes-the-sky-was-so-far-away/entrylevel/
I think that strip might be the closest thing we have of her plans for a political career? It basically boiled down to “get enough As I can get a political job after college”.
She was aware she couldn’t give away any flaw or weakness(*) so she wouldn’t be devoured by her enemies, but yeah. Dorothy was aware of politics in a “I sat down for Prof. So-and-So’s lectures for extra credit” kinda way: Theoretical and detached. But there’s stuff you need passion for. Bringing about change is one of them.
—–
(*terms and conditions apply)
She was doing volunteer work and angling to get a job as campaign staff, so she wasn’t quite that naive
This isn’t Activist Dorothy. This is Self-Destructive Dorothy. Activist Dorothy would be looking for a more efficient route to reform than simply being one more piece of grist for the mill.
… not saying that’s a WRONG way to be an activist, but it’s not how DOROTHY would do activism.
You gotta start somewhere and homegirl is literally 18.
It feels like there was a lot, like, TRULY A LOT she didn’t dare to do because she’d boxed herself so thoroughly in her own rules she couldn’t even pick a political stance beyond “vaguely liberal.” Dorothy’s barely scratched the surface of who she is beyond that box.
… Also, who says reform is the way?
Dorothy being moderately impulsive once won’t kill her.
Which is why she’s being impulsive three times in a single comic.
Personally intrigued by the comment section being angry and frustrated with Dorothy and Joyce for not being more interested in the protest and not staying, then turning a ful 180 as Dorothy started taking an interest in the protest, and now today staying is actually the selfish thing and how dare she.
The character who can do no right.
It does seem that way sometimes, sigh.
“The real problem would be if she threw a Molotov cocktail at a cop- OH GOD DAMN IT”
“Okay, okay, we can still salvage this if– aaaaand she’s putting barbecue sauce on the burning cop.”
She just had it on her, the whole time. Since the strip started. It’s her EDC molotov.
Never seemed appropriate until now.
Mmm. Barbecue sauce.
“Anytime I had a problem and I threw a Molotov cocktail…Boom! Right away, I had a different problem.”
Any problem can be solved through the proper application of high explosives.
”If high explosives aren’t the solution, you’re probably not using enough of them”
-Me, recently in a game
Either that, or you’re mistaking “solving the problem and simultaneously introducing a new, different, possibly worse problem” for “not solving the problem.”
(Molotovs are low explosives.)
Very problematic of her to only throw the one. One isn’t enough for a propper pig roast.
Probably the single most earned “fuck” Joyce has given thus far in the comic
Yeah, she got cold feet with Joe last night.
I’m glad Dorothy is realizing she needs an actual cause.
I can’t help but feel that this is entirely performative for Dorothy. 3 hours ago she did not have enough strong feelings about Bulmeria to have ever mentioned it before, but now she’s willing to get arrested to make a point.
Maybe this is strict, but I think people should join political causes because they understand and believe in the goals, not because it seemed cool at the time.
Dorothy’s never been very thorough in her political stances and actions. No reason she’d start now.
This is what I’ve been saying! Like, I’m glad Dorothy is actually taking risks and standing up for things and all, but that might be the worst possible breakthrough to have in a situation where acting recklessly could get someone shot.
On the other hand, there are like 5 named side characters at this protest, and I don’t believe for a second that any of them are gonna get shot. So, whoever does get shot, seems most likely to be a background nobody, which means we don’t need to care about them.
I do agree this is very impulsive, but she has talked about Bulmeria before, mostly when Joyce or another person had no idea that anything was going on at all. I get the sense she follows these things but just had so much misplaced faith in the system to set itself right that she didn’t act on any of it.
For protests, where numbers are important, it’s sort of stupid to expect everyone to be ideologically pure to attend in the first place. It’s good when onlookers are swayed. I’m not gonna say it can’t become a problem, like how newcomers could try to act with authority they don’t have or talk over people, but I do feel like largely someone seeing a protest & going hey that makes sense to me is a positive.
I also think you’re reading Dorothy’s character arc fully wrong if you think this is her “doing it because it seemed cool at the time”, instead of like, finding meaning in direct political action in a direct contrast to her previous goal of “becoming president”.
It’s Dorothy. People were up her ass for not having ideologically pure reasons to apply for the RA job.
never too late to start but presidency isn’t the goal anymore
Derek, I don’t know that Dorothy has any strong feelings about Bulmeria, but she seems pretty definite about the University she’s attending not being involved in killing people.
Speaking as someone who has taken money, back in the day, for helping develop more cost effective ways of killing people en masse and who further believes that, from time to time, there are people who need killing, I might well disagree with Dorothy about the specifics. (Or maybe not.) But I have no reason to doubt either the sincerity or strength of her convictions and every reason to admire the courage to act on those convictions. I recognize that her evolving relationship with Joyce might have acted as a catalyst, but a catalyst can’t speed up a reaction that isn’t already happening.
She has a strong stance about the fascist crackdown at least. That is enough.
Yeah, she’s protesting for personal growth reasons and the Bulmeria protests just happen to be the ones happening at the moment. She was doing a bit of “both sides are bad” on it like an hour ago in-strip and her musings about fascism are all about something the *school board* did because that’s the thing that affects her personally.
Protests Done Quick.
Have you ever noticed there’s a lot of pig enemies at protests?
This storyline back to back with what Questionable Content has going on right now is a heck of a one-two punch.
(banging on pots and pans)
Get in the tent! Get in the tent! Get in the tent and kiss!
(losing the rhythm)
…also abolish ice maybe.
Protesting apartheid is also cool.
(getting back on beat)
…and kiss!
RIZZ
It has got to be a relief to strike the match that you know will burn down the future you thought you would have and now no longer want. Pretty sure presidents don’t get arrested for whatever euphemism is in fashion for “exercising your constitutionally protected right to peaceful protest”.
I don’t think there are any Presidential examples, but some Congressmen did come up through the Civil Rights Movement, back in the day. Rep. John Lewis being probably the most prominent, who was arrested multiple times for protesting
Yep. Fuck, alright.
Ironically this is going to get her more political clout.
Nothing in this strip in particular brings this on, but I want to say that I appreciate how realistic the whole protest situation is. I was a little bit worried the cops would either all be wearing domino masks and being silly cartoon villains or flamethrowering the protesters in a way that’s a bit too dystopian even for our hellscape reality, but everything is happening in a way that makes sense and tracks with actual instances of protests that get busted up by riot cops.
I know this is apparently based on a real event at the school so maybe it’s not surprising that the cops are acting like real cops but it is noticeable and I appreciate the effort.
Damn, now I want the cops to be flamethrowering protesters in the comic, to justify how dramatic everyone’s been about the danger level.
In my experience in California at least most cops don’t even want to be there. They’re not your friends and will gas you or cuff you or club you but they also have to wear full riot gear in 90+ degree weather and you can tell their hearts are not in it.
If their hearts aren’t in it and they don’t wanna be there, maybe they should find real jobs. Something more respectable, like an office gofer or the guy who puts out lukewarm cucumbers at the craft service table on a movie set.
Well, the cops have no doubt about the name of that one, now, anyway.
Inflation definitely not keeping pace with comic book time.
that’s a good price for a tent
I would be a little worried it’s one of those shitty old coleman ones that are super heavy and impossible to pack up with less than four hands.
I mean, she doesn’t have to sleep in it, they’re arresting people pretty soon.
lmao true
It seriously looks like suicide by cops attempt
The only suicide attempt cops belong at is their own.
This, I don’t see.
Is she trying to get arrested to prove SOMETHING, mostly to herself? Yes, most likely.
Is she trying to DIE? I don’t see any evidence for it — it’s not like she’s shown acquiring anything likely to specifically attract more than “less-lethal” cop shit — no weapons, etc, her sign doesn’t even have a stick attached to it.
I’m not American, so I’m not sure, how things work there, but considering snipers and armed police it’s not impossible that there will be casualities. Or at least it’s possible thing to think. And Dorothy looks desperate and like she just realised that she’s in love with her best friend, that’s in good relationship and she’s also in an okay one (Walky may not be great but he’s definitely caring about her). And it looks to me like she has very little consideration for her life and lots of self-loathing.
BUT
I may be wrong and she just wants to prove something.
But for me, for a moment looked really bad. She is in a low place
In general, at these sort of protests, the US police have historically generally limited themselves to “less-lethal” tactics — beatings, rubber bullets, and pepper/CS gas and the like — still painful and able to cause severe injury/death (and often deliberately aimed to do so), mind you, but not in the same lethality class as “actual bullets”.
I don’t want to minimize the amount of bad things that happen in a US protest, but for example in recent big protests in Los Angeles that involved several thousand police/military and several tens of thousands of protesters, minimum, there have been (so far as I’ve been aware) zero deaths and several dozen injuries among the protestors.
I think that’s a new expression for Joyce. But I completely agree with her sentiment.
Dammit, Dorothy.
At least she isn’t doing smash cuts to her doing everything I say she i- DOROTHY SINCE WHEN DO YOU DO COMICS
Don’t know why I feel Raidah will at some point dismantle the new logic Dorothy has for taking this action.
Raidah can mind her own business.
She should, but are we sure she actually can?
“You’re just trying to make yourself a hero while people in Bulmeria are *dying*. Ever think about that?”
Because Raidah, much like Rachel (in different ways), is seemingly incapable of seeing some aspects the world in a non-cynical way and, equally, seemingly incapable of keeping that to herself.
But the comment section already has been, why waste a panel on Raidah?
The books don’t include the comment section.
You can tell because I’m not all over them making the stupidest jokes imaginable to force Willis to print them.
In a very roundabout way, i blame those students for having the audacity to do their laundry on a Saturday.
It seems a fair point
You’ve convinced me and I’ll never do laundry on a Saturday again.
In months beginning with R.
See Joyce, now is the time to start panicking.
Also, $20 for a tent? That’s either a really crappy tent, or an easily persuaded person.
It saves him having to haul it out of there while also making sure he doesn’t catch a charge for littering, plus $20.
Also, most people don’t bring their good camping gear to a protest so it doesn’t get wrecked/taken.
Yep, a crappy tent. My local wallymart has a little one-person pup tent for $20.
I do wonder what she thinks she means to accomplish here. The only person I can think of offhand that would matter, were she in the protest, would be Carla. I suppose maybe Tony. Everyone else is irrelevant and will just be processed as normal.
There’s a part of me that questions if she’s only doing this to be locked away from Joyce. Like she doesn’t trust herself around her.
The same thing everyone else at the protest is doing? Each of them individually is irrelevant.
Meh, protests as a whole are basically irrelevant anyway. I can’t think of a protest movement that actually succeeded in changing policy in the US since the Civil Rights movement except possibly at a very local level.
People gotta start somewhere. If we don’t view changing things at the local level as being valuable then we don’t view ourselves as being able to do anything that matters since the local level is all we usually can affect.
I know in Puerto Rico we outed the governor in 2019 after a lot of protests. It’s started with a few people. Then it grew and grew until even celebrities got involved. It worked after a giant march/protest basically paralyzed the country because a good chunk of it protested as a country. But it started small. Real small. My point is, it might seem like a silly little irrelevant protest, but it always has a possibility to grow and topple those in power.
Oh, and include everyone who is for the cause. Doesn’t matter if they’re disabled, or if their only talent is banging a pot and being annoying. Make room for them too. Protest works when everyone in included.
To a point. Different protest tactics need different protesters. Big permitted street march things? You want numbers and sympathetic people like many disabled folks do well. Less of the black bloc types.
Night time protests after the cops have already started riots previous nights, where you’re going to expect tear gas and street fighting at best? You want a different crowd.
Reading about old Civil Rights movement days, they trained people in non-violence, because they needed people who’d resist provocation. They wanted people dressed in the best to look respectable for the cameras as they got beaten up. Or selected activists for legal challenges like Rosa Parks.
Very true and I agree with you.
Didn’t the protests following the murder of George Floyd directly cause a massive amount of police reform in the US? Certainly, it became something that is on the menu in progressive-leaning areas, where it would not have been before.
Also, strikes are a form of protest, and they are very effective at getting specific policy changes.
The type of victory available to a protest is usually more symbolic than material. They’re also important for raising awareness. Even if someone is aware that people on the internet care about something, it is very different to see lots of people in person who care about something.
Not really. A lot of talk. Not a lot of action.
It’s a right wing talking point that police were defunded by Democrats and that crime spiked since police couldn’t do anything, but actual changes were rare and local.
Considering even small, sparse local changes of this sort would have been considered impossible before, I think it’s still really significant.
Definitely significant – though these were far from the first such protests.
The protests over Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson and Eric Garner in Staten Island in 2014 were huge, bringing the Black Lives Matter movement to prominence.
It’s a visceral, emotional reaction so I don’t think she has any plan in place.
She’s doing this for Joyce. Also she’s pissed at the trustees for changing the rules on the fly.
What the hell is this weirdly clinical way of looking at protests that seems so prevalent in the comment section? She matters as much as anyone else matters, it’s a numbers game more often than not. Yes a few stand-out voices help churn the cause along, but the way you’re talking would keep most people home if they were planning on going to a protest without being a particularly big player.
Idiot college students have been getting the job done for as long as there have been colleges, and they haven’t all been ideologically pure, or well-informed, or particularly good at public speaking with rich parents to back them up. Yet, still, change grinds along anyway.
Like I agree that Dorothy and Joyce should have hoofed it home when neither of them actually wanted to be at the protest but were, in fact, at risk of being snatched up and arrested alongside protestors. But if Dorothy wants to be there because some part of this has set her sense of justice on fire, or because she needed to do something that actually mattered/helped people like she said, then I fully support her locking arms with the rest of the protestors and coming back for more when she makes bail.
Agreed. The comments I’ve been reading suddenly feel like the “moderate white allies” that people quoted MLK Jr about in the last few days.
Him again: “We do not need allies more devoted to order than to justice.”
Still MLK Jr: “There will be those who tell you to slow up … to cool off …. you cannot slow up your determination.”
Did you forget her conversation with Jocelyne?
Reminder of this great site a great soul has made and keeps it updated:
http://www.ci-n.com/~jcampbel/doafbombcount.php
Joyce has just tied with Sarah at sixth place. <.<
Goddammit, Dorothy, this is not getting you closer to kissing Joyce.
By far the most legit complaint today or yesterday about Dorothy staying!
Regrettably I think this is part of her motivation.
If Dorothy still ends up in politics, maybe she’ll end up having a career like Bernie Sanders? (Google “Bernie Sanders Protest Arrest”, if you’re not familiar with what I’m referring too)
I was about to say the same… this would probably help her in that arena.
She will also spontaneously evolve a thick, hoarse brooklyn accent.
I’d rather she have a political career more like Lenin, if she decides to stay in politics.
Does your country need more detainment centers turn into gulags? Because I’m not ready for IIIWW between Soviet Union and second Soviet Union
I had a dream last night that Dina used her powers of being undetectable to get past the fence into Dunn Meadow and get Dorothy out, but got shot in the process and freaking died. And everyone was like “Willis, you said no main characters would die!” and he was like “Dina’s a side character”
Brain!Willis is an asshole lmao
#BrainWillisIsOverParty
This whole section of the comic, with Dorothy and Joyce holding hands in a fenced in space surrounded by cops, is reminding me of the band t.A.T.u, and all I hear is
“all the things she said
all the things she said
running through my head
running through my head
running through my head.”
Dang Dorothy pulled a reverse Uno
Hell yeah, joining a protest at the worst possible moment for the worst possible reason!
The worst possible reason? Nah, she left her phone behind, so she can’t be livestreaming this to her OnlyFans.
How can it be the worst possible reason when it’s best-possible-reason shaped?
So who is going to be traumatizingly carted off in a van? Joyce or Dorothy?
Jason, somehow.
Honestly, kinda wish this was her first F-bomb.
Proud of her. She’s white. Middle class. Incredibly supportive parents. The kind of person who can do a lot in a protest while having…………………. less risk then other protesters. Not none.
Is it dumb? Oh sure. Absolutely do not do this in real life. but im pointing at the title. You also probably shouldnt jump onto or off of moving cars in real life.
I wonder what she’s gonna use that tent for, since the cops are getting ready to charge them.
Twenty bucks? depends on what kinda tent it is
“No Money For Blood, but Money for a Tent”