Spin off stories and other adventures from the world of Atomic Robo!
[un]Divine
Ayme
A highschool senior thought giving up his soul for a demon was a good idea. It wasn't.
Never Satisfied
Taylor Robin
Lucy Marlowe, a magician's apprentice, competes against other apprentices for an important, magical, Goverment Job.
Caramel Corn
Potchimew
Sarah is the only human left in a world full of mythical creatures and monsters. All she wants to do is live a quiet life, but everything changes when she meets her guardian angel, Jacob.
Alice and the Nightmare
Misha Krivanek
Alice finally attends University to learn to collect the dreams of humans, meet new friends, and deal with a pesky reflection along the way.
Jailbird
Charlie Davis
An all-ages comic about a recently escaped prisoner's struggle to understand the outside world, and vice-versa. Also, a magic cape!
Wilde Life
Pascalle Lepas
Oscar decided to rent an old haunted house, and that's when things got weird...
Atomic Robo
Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener
The robot punches monsters and bad robots and one time he was a cowboy.
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Monster Pulse
Magnolia Porter Siddell
Four kids run afoul of a creepy secret organization's experiments, which turn their body parts into fighting monsters. Part sentimental coming-of-age story, part monster-training shonen manga, with just a bit of sci-fi body horror.
Astral Aves
Moon Cabal
A fantasy coming-of-age following the adventures of Astra The Black and friends, as they navigate the mysterious world around them. It's politics, adventure, and the supernatural; oh, and crazy hair.
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
Paranatural
Zack Morrison
Superpowered middle schoolers fight evil spirits in their rural hometown. Come for the jokes, stay for the cast, the creatures, and the mystery that ties them all together!
The Sanity Circus
Windy
Magic, monsters and mysteries await in the odd city of Sanity. It's up to Attley and a colorful group of characters to find out just what is going on.
Fireweeds Moors
Gato Iberico
A cat-headed man and a girl with a sandwich hankering accidentally end up in a myth-infused country where magic chalices are a really big thing.
Tigress Queen
Allison Shaw
A barbarian warlord and a pampered prince try to avoid a marriage alliance that could end decades of violence.
Sufficiently Remarkable
Maki Naro
Two young women living in Brooklyn discover that you're always coming of age.
Between Failures
Jackie Wohlenhaus
The low stakes adventures of an assorted group of 20 somethings trapped in the declining years of American retail. They are naughty and say lots of swears.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Wychwood
Varethane
When Tiara's pyrokinesis is finally noticed, she is captured by a magical research organization for study. If she cooperates, she could be helping to save humanity from a dire threat - but can she trust them?
The Lonely Vincent Bellingham
Diana Huh
Vincent is an unkind man looking to disappear, and finds himself in the care of a vampire and her two wicked children.
Demon's Mirror
Harry Bogosian
Based loosely off of "The Snow Queen", a story by Hans Christian Andersen, we see things take a different turn as the demons become central characters, and the side characters stick around. Yup, that's the only differences. Enjoy!
Devil's Candy
Rem, Bikkuri
A lush fantasy about boy genius Kazu Decker, the girl he constructed for his 9th grade science project, and the world of devils and monsters they live in.
The Witch Door
Anni K.
Katariina Lehto discovers her neighbor is a witch called Jousia Muotka. Jousia introduces Katariina to the strange people and places beyond the witch door...
Sam & Fuzzy
Sam Logan
Troubled by gangster rodents, lovesick vampire stalkers, or confused ninja assassins? Don't panic! Sam and Fuzzy are here to help. (For a reasonable fee.)
Starhammer
J.N. Monk, Harry Bogosian
A teen girl inherits a powerful alien artifact and proceeds to make a series of increasingly poor decisions
Star Trip
Gisele Weaver
Jas is a human taken from her home planet on a trip across the galaxy she will never forget.
Hazy London
Scotty
A story about messy relationships. From friendly foes to crazy families. Nothing is black and white, just full of color. But, all colors can get a little hazy...
Love Not Found
Gina Biggs
Abeille is on a quest to find someone who wants to do it the old-fashioned way in a time when touching has become outdated.
Star Impact
Jack McGee
A young, energetic woman fights her way up in the world of super-powered boxing after discovering the mighty gloves of her missing idol!
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Girl Genius
Phil Foglio, Kaja Foglio
In a time when the Industrial Revolution has become an all-out war, Mad Science rules the World...with mixed success.
Lighter Than Heir
Melissa Albino
A young Volant woman joins the military in an effort to upstage her war-hero father.
Goodbye to Halos
Valerie Halla
Cuddles, gay flirting, weird feelings, and magic-fueled knife fights - it's an adventure across the queer multiverse!
Cassiopeia Quinn
Gunwild, Psudonym
A cute, pantsless thief is pursued across the stars by a buttoned-up military officer in the spacey, laser-filled future.
Kiwi Blitz
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
Steffi thinks she can use her kiwi mech to become a superhero. This idea turns out to be very stupid.
Godslave
Meaghan Carter
Edith has been thrown into the dangerous world of modern-day Egyptian mythology. Fighting monsters and dealing with family drama of godly proportions.
Cut Time
Juby
Rel and her trusty avian friend Fugue are on a quest to save a world that's lost track of time. Follow them and their new recruits, in a story written with help from the stars.
El Goonish Shive
Dan Shive
WARNING: This comic often ignores the Laws of Physics
Monsterkind
Taylor C
Wallace Foster, a young, bright-eyed human social worker, has his entire world view rocked when he's suddenly relocated into a city primarily inhabited by monsters.
Knights Errant
J.R. Doyle
Wilfrid's humble quest for revenge becomes bigger and bloodier by the day.
The Automan's Daughter
Mike Stamm
Aisha Osman and her uncle Siddig outwit bikers, spies and kidnappers while gearing up for a showdown with the formidable Widowmaker mecha.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Ghost Junk Sickness
Studio CARTRIDGE, Laura Lee
Two hunters try to survive and end up being pushed to pursue a deadly bounty dubbed "The Ghost".
Anarchy Dreamers
Emily Ree
Sparkly undead kids fight society's worst Nightmares in this pastel-punk urban fantasy coming-of-age!
Lilith's Word
inkPangur
If you had the power to make any wish come true using just one word, what would you say?
Whomp!
Ronnie
A depressed, portly, hirsute anime fan stumbles through life in the ever-pursuit of chicken nuggets and other life-shortening indulgences.
BOOKMARK Click "Tag Page" to bookmark a page. When you return to the site, click "Goto Tag" to continue where you left off.
BUFFER WATCH
Comics are currently drawn and uploaded through:
It’s not a particularly biting satire of fascism, though. I don’t get why people in this comic still treat Mary as kind of cringe/annoying now that she’s *literally a nazi*. We are well past “You look weird lmao owned” and it kind of undercuts everyone’s commitment to fighting fascism that they don’t do anything about the fascist next door.
You don’t need to, like, kill Mary, but I do think you’re morally obligated to rough her up a little at this point.
Like, you can either treat the encroaching specter of fascism and genocide as a serious issue deserving serious emotional speeches as characters make dramatic choices to sacrifice for the right thing as the police stand literally shoulder-to-shoulder with nazis, or you can do the Blazing Saddles route and have Carla set up a fake TSA booth and trick Mary into missing the counter-protests entirely through wacky cartoonish gags where she ends up an extra in a Tony-winning production of Rent or whatever, but I don’t know if you can really be doing both of those things in the same panel.
It’s like the opposite of the drama tag from the Walkyverse.
That’s the awful irony of the situation, though, isn’t it.
Fighting fascism inherently means that you need to defend your neighbor’s right to be a fascist. At least in theory.
they think politics is all about “”opinions”” regardless of what the devastating consequences of those “”opinions”” put into practice, as though the democratic process just somehow automatically evens it all out eventually even with overly influential, powerful people constantly pouring in bad ideas
as a result, they’re gonna be nothing more than right-wing cannon fodder 9-9
As a retired journalist, I still accept the right of people to say pretty much what they believe. It’s what they try to do. I can draw a line on that, up to and including flat-out war.
Y’know, I get that the government shouldn’t be locking people up for speech even if I don’t like that speech etc etc etc. but you don’t actually need to defend Mary Elizabeth Hitler’s right to call for genocide.
To defend tolerance you have to be intolerant of facism, because the goals of facism include removing tolerance. The idea that you have to defend someone’s right to be intolerant is inherently flawed.
That’s the paradox of tolerance, and it can only be resolved by being intolerant of intolerance. I don’t remember who, but someone had a good perspective on the paradox of tolerance. Let me paraphrase: Tolerance is a social contract, those that do not abide by the terms of the contract are not protected by it.
Mary’s not even expressing a political opinion here. She’s endorsing genocide out of pure shitposting spite. Which I suppose does make this the first time she’s actually acted like the college Republican she’s supposed to be, but…say what you want about the tenets of national socialism, but at least it’s an ethos. Mary’s just a cancerous void on society.
Quite a few people voted for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024 out of pure shitposting spite, not because they actually liked Trump or thought he would be a good President. In fact, a lot of them knew he was a terrible pissbaby and that he was almost assuredly going to fuck up everything, which is precisely why they voted for him. To watch the world burn. For teh lulz.
I don’t see Mary as a regular 4chan denizen, though, so I don’t know what her excuse is.
That’s philosopher Karl Popper, who codified it in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies in 1945. In there, he wrote:
“The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.
Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”
No, in fact we can see it works the other way around. In my country you’d go to prison for hate speech if you said like half of things Donald Trump has said in public, until 2001. It wasn’t any laws that changed, the cops just stopped arresting fascists. Then in 21 years the fascist party went from nobody who anyone wanted to touch, to getting anti-Muslim propaganda published in respected newspapers, to gaining parliament seats, to running the government.
I know it’s already been mentioned a few times in other replies, but since it was also my first thought on seeing your comment, here, have a Wikipedia link. Or, if you prefer, a RationalWiki link.
I reckon next to bread-tube, RationalWiki is about one of the closest things we can get in the English-speaking internet landscape to an alt-left pipeline :3
Not at all. The social contract says you support free speech because you support the society. Fascists want to destroy the society. They declaim they are enemies of it, and want no part of it.
I basically agree, but it’s hard to construct a good argument. Communists also often declaim they want to destroy society, often more openly than fascists who lie about wanting to return it to former glory.
The Tolerance Paradox is calling,
and wants to know your location.
But seriously, giving people the right
to say that certain people (skin color, religion, sexuality, etc.)
don’t deserve rights or deserve to live then
infringes on those people’s rights to live safely.
We absolutely do limit people’s freedom and speech
when it interferes with the safety of others
(can’t yell fire in a theatre, your right to swing
your fists stops at my nose).
The only reason we allow Nazis free speech
is because it ultimately supports the system
in power that is based on white supremacy/capitalism.
You ever notice when the Occupy Wallstreet and BLM
and of course the current Palestine protests started,
suddenly we don’t have free speech and every protester
is a rioter or looter or a paid actor?
But the Nazis/KKK events are protected by police?
I am curious if the comic is going to address Carla’s situation in all this. IIRC her family business has defence contracts for the very weapons people are protesting. I feel like there would be people making noise about that. But I don’t know exactly how “evil” the company is considered in-universe.
It’s kind of an odd situation where we absolutely need to condemn the Military Industrial Complex for sending bombs to Gaza/Bulmeria because they’re used for genocide.
And we absolutely need to be sending more to Ukraine to protect people from genocide and invasion.
It makes me wonder if Carla’s parents have an opinion there.
The comic has already begun to address this. We saw a strip like a week or two ago where Mary pointed this exact thing out. Hopefully we’ll see some fruit from that planted seed.
I think there was a bit early on where Carla said that she refused to make her revenge on Mary anything other than childish pranks, because she wanted Mary to know that she was not being taken seriously.
Fascists can handle being told “You’re evil and need to be stopped” much better than being told “You’re ridiculous and everyone’s laughing at you”. (Although if you have the power to actually stop them you should do that.) Consider that time the left started calling the Trump coterie “weird”, a tactic that proved so unexpectedly effective that the Democrats decided it wasn’t fair and they should stop doing it in case they actually won the election or something.
Could someone help me out? Which strip(a) showed us that Mary is literally a Nazi? I do miss some strips now and then (life gets hectic), so I’d just like to get caught up.
Yup, touch averse autistic here as well who dreaded being hugged and often still do, because my whole family is a bunch of emotional huggers who can really sustain those things. What I figured out was I am less uncomfortable if I initiate the hug, it makes them feel better, and if I make it more like a bro hug with a lot of back thumping it’s funnier and lasts less time.
I don’t mind hugs, for the most part. I’ll even initiate them if the time seems right*. If the time is wrong though, I still remember how to lose all my bones at will.
*Any time my girlfriend is near is the right time.
I recently found out that my best friend is like a 95% yes-hugs person, and I’m like a 5%, which is an extremely funny disparity to have not known about considering we’ve been friends since we were 4 lol.
These days he’s one of the like 5 people in the world I will happily solicit hugs from, so it’s kinda worked out, but I can’t imagine how frustrating that must have been when we were kids (read: 17) and I would punch people who hugged me lol
I can handle hugging from close friends and family. Sometimes I want it more than other times and sometimes I don’t want it at all, even from close family.
Hugging is completely different from kissing to me though. Being kissed on the cheek when I was young was absolutely horrible and I still loathe kissing. Seriously don’t understand why some people can’t let kids have bodily autonomy on stuff like that. I mean, I get you sometimes have to carry your tantruming kid out of the store or hold their hand while walking in a dangerous area. Having to give Grandma Jo or Uncle Frank a hug or kiss should be up to the child though.
On a side note, things like back rubs/pats or something similar can sometimes be better for me than hugs. Maybe because it is less up close and personal? It could also just be less confining. I don’t know for sure.
Some people mix together like toddlers and cats, where one person wants all the physical touch and the other only wants it on their terms if at all (speaking as someone who has had cats that like hugs).
God no. Touching people in general is extremely unpleasant, buthugging is probably the worst version of that to not include actual violence.
… usually.
I’m personally more comfortable with using a certain slur to refer to myself among friends, so the original version of the Black Eyed Peas song “Let’s Get It Started” appeals to me more than the more radio-friendly version. If you don’t want to hear a vocalist shout the R-slur as a call to action on the dance floor, don’t look it up.
Another one rides the bus. Another one rides the bus. And another comes on and another comes on. Another one rides the bus. Hey, he’s gonna sit by you. Another one rides the bus.
*psst*
I think she might be deciding to kiss Joyce and/or confess her feelings to Joyce with the resulting chaos that will ensue.
She’s tired of waiting for Maybe Future Joyce. She wants real Actual Joyce right now.
I’m a fan of this idea, I’m just too scarred by past continuity to think we’ll actually get a kiss out of this. Ideally she just steals an anti-protest militia member’s semi-legal assault weapon and sprays down a few gunghos and marys, for justice.
that look on Dorothy’s face in the last panel, she’s contemplating how she’s basically spent her whole life banking on future happiness, only to come to deeply regret it
that she’s been trapped in a cycle of “playing it safe”, adding to her list of acceptable losses, and trudging forward under the ever-repeated, ever-unfulfilled, ultimately unsubstantiated promise that “her day will come” — a story she could have gotten from any five-dollar psychic
“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and the Homo sapien is at last compelled to face with sober senses, the reality of their conditions of life, and their relations with others of their species.”
(from years old memory, please correct errors)
She was a high school acquaintance of Walky who had an unrequited crush and decided to make a move on him years later after he was happily married/attached. He turned her down, and she betrayed the universe to a reality warping alien in her rage.
Close. She was Walky’s high school girlfriend, but she broke up with him before college for similar reasons as she broke up with Dumbiverse Danny. Years later she’s suffering from gifted kid burnout syndrome, her family is all dead or dying, her political career went nowhere, and her bookstore went out of business so she has nothing. Walky’s in the news because of the events of It’s Walky so she’s been thinking of him again.
The main antagonist of the series finds her and, in that vulnerable state, is able to convince her that Joyce is essentially a violent abuser, he uses examples from across the multiverse of her killing him as proof, and that Dorothy needs to break them up and be with Walky herself for his own good and, oh look, that just so happens to give your life purpose during a time when you desperately need it.
basically her life goes sideways enough that she teams up with an extraterrestrial tyrant who appeals to her selfish side by convincing her that her high school boyfriend should be with her instead of his fiancée because she’s better and also said boyfriend will die if he gets married. so her main plotline in that comic is sabotaging his marriage. this universe obviously is missing the aliens that can give her superpowers and also possess her, but the main takeaway is that if dorothy feels she has nothing left to lose (and if she can find a way to rationalize it), she will do anything to get what she wants.
Also she got a happy ending, where she was set up with “the genetic combination of Walky and Joyce, who is super into Dorothy for some reason”, as Willis put it.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”
Or maybe a bit more pointedly in multiple directions,
I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
“All right, then, I’ll go to hell”- and tore it up.
The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their “vital interests” are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the “sanctity” of human life, or the “conscience” of the civilized world.”
Dorothy raises an interesting thought. If trying to change things slowly and passively is ineffective, perhaps something drastic will be better.
Of course, there’s always the possibility of rushing it, and still failing anyways. Unless screwing things up is exactly what you want…in which case, go right ahead, I guess?
It seems If you want to implement something drastic, you need to ensure the Overton Window is open to that idea but often, it takes a slow, methodical process to open the window in the first place
That’s basic survival instinct, and it’s openly exploited by the subhumans in power. Too much propaganda telling us we can’t win no matter what we do (and honestly most of it comes from people who are allegedly on our side), so people are afraid to act because they’re repeatedly assured You Will Die™.
See this comments section’s catastrophic exaggeration of even the lightest form of protest being some apocalyptic event where cops are invariably going to impale your head on a pile the moment you’re within eyesight of a protest.
yeup. I think it’s one of the main reasons why the radical left has been failing to build up much steam in the US, despite the ideas being more popular than they have been since the Great Depression (I think Luigi Mangione’s massive popularity is a pretty good indicator).
It’s an unstable situation for the fascists, though. All it takes is one successful action and things can snowball pretty quickly.
Mary is not in the fenced area, Mary appears to be literally side by side with the riot police. I guess it’s explicitly school policy that anti-genocide protests are against the rules and pro-genocide protests aren’t.
Per Asma, protest “encampments” are against school rules now, which matches the events this is referencing except this clearly isn’t an encampment and also Dorothy keeps saying that the “law” changed when what actually changed was a school policy. So either what’s happening is that all pretense of rules are being ignored by the cops, Mary is not technically in Dunn Meadow, or Mary is going to be really surprised when the cops arrest her too. Presumably it’s the first one?
I’m not sure why you say it isn’t an encampment?
We’ve seen tents all over the place and when Jocelyne talked about it to Dorothy, she talked about staying until IU stopped funding military companies.
Dorothy is voicing a lot of my frustration with the state of the country, and honestly it feels very validating. So thanks for this, Willis. Genuinely.
I don’t think that is hate. That is a strong moral intuition and a concern for injustice. Dorothy is a Jedi, not a Sith.
Though she still does not believe in your sorcerer’s. Mary’s devotion to that ancient religion has helped her conjure up a real friend or given her clairvoyance enough to find her roommate’s hidden snack stash.
PS. What ever happened to Mary’s boyfriend? That whole relationship was both deeply entertaining and utterly disturbing.
It’s okay Dorothy, that’s exactly how I felt when I learned Texas seals records at 18 and I absolutely should’ve been decking people /j.
On topic, this strip today is precisely why I love Dorothy. I’ll criticize her, I’ll talk smack about her, but that’s because she reminds me so much of a lot of people I love and care about. I just feel so bad for her in those last two panels. I really hope she ends up switching her focus in politics to something closer to the metal. On a grande scale, politics is hell. On a small scale, you’d be surprised how much change you can actually accomplish (my city in Texas has free ambulance rides, free healthcare for anyone making under $60k at its main hospital, and refused to cooperate with ICE. This was all by local politicians, because our governor and senator are evil.)
I mean, I still would rather have her as president than half the people presented up for option during my life, fuck Raidah, but if Dorothy wants to enact a lot of good change while keeping blood off her hands, she can do that as a local politician or even a lawyer.
Also, I just wanna hug her. Girly needs some Chappell Roan and a weekend home. I still don’t want her to end up in jail, but at least I know she does genuinely care about the protest now.
Dorothy insisted on being on top to fix things immediately, but after seeing your comment, I agree. It’s better to start that way. And yes, I hope Karma has no mercy on Raidah.
However, I also wish it weren’t just limited to politics.
I still remember how the girl sang passionately at karaoke, and I can’t stop thinking that maybe singing is what she needs so much.
I’m surprised she isn’t leaving. She knows they are going to arrest her too if she’s still their when they start breaking the camp up… Wait, she does know that, right?
I mean they might still think they have to for it to survive the constitutional challenge. If this were being written now instead of last year, maybe not, but,
i guess if she’s at the front, ppl aren’t really looking next to her or so
all tho given the ‘incompetence’ (or ‘accidental’ situations) i’m surprised some ppl wouldn’t just fire at anyone with a sign even as a counter protest or so unless i guess ppl had a specific location/gave off “narc” body language/vibes like asma said lol
The counter-protestors aren’t encircled here, though. Mary’s literally part of the police line, with the cops standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the fascists.
Unfortunately, I think that would be the better option than them both staying there. No one knows where they are, and who knows how Joyce’s dad will react if she gets rounded up by police. I would be especially concerned by his reaction if it takes a while for people to find out where they went, as it could bring back thoughts about the first kidnapping. I just don’t trust his reaction if things go south.
I could see Dorothy’s parents being a bit more understanding about her frustration breaking out in this situation after everything she has been through and what she has been striving towards (being president). If I was one of the girls’ parents, I myself would be wondering why the security only showed up now during a mild student protest vs all those other times of violence on school grounds. I might even encourage switching schools so that we wouldn’t be giving money to a school that acts like this, depending on the scholarships and financial funding.
when I see words censored in that way, I can’t help but automatically pronounce them out loud. “fux-ing” might still convey the same meaning, but wow, “sexy-bait” really flips it upside-down and sideways
“I heard that famous photographed kiss between those girls at IU the moment the riot police started swarming in was problematic because they both had boyfriends at the time.”
“Ah, little Jimmy, true as that may be, our snapshots of revolutionary imagery show us much more than two people. It shows us a moment in time crystallized with context snowing behind it… And, let’s just admit it, the framing is just so good, pure art…”
“my face is a butt” lol funny as a standalone strip but feels like it’d be a more ‘effective’ prank to make mary’s sign Pro-the side she’s against so everyone else hounds her (but i’m sure ppl would have spare signs)
I’m surprised other ppl are packing up
Tho it’s not everyone’s responsibility tho it’d be kinda sad if too many ppl were like “Well, someone else will take care of it, so it’s not my problem” Maybe in some cases, choose ur battles but somet things you can’t ignore forever
Plan a protest every couple months, if they point snipers at you, try to kettle you, and order you to disperse; then plan a protest every couple weeks.
They keep trying to stop your peaceful protest? Guess who just got daily free publicity?
If they criminalize peaceful protest as they recently did in the UK (this law only applies if you’re supporting the right of muslims to not be exterminated in Gaza), then each peaceful protest will radicalize protestors. A small independent group that is willing to use violence can be effective when combined with large peaceful protests. If you find you can’t be peaceful at the site of the peaceful protest, then strain police capacity by attacking elsewhere. (I’d prefer it if you target property instead of people, both morally speaking but also for tactical reasons, any hierarchy of oppression has lots of replacement monsters; but they can run out of money, materiel, and time.) Cops can’t show up in big enough numbers to arrest peaceful protestors if enough of the cop car tires get slashed. Or just find a big chunk of something heavy and block a street.
This is happening on many fronts in the US currently. The protests throughout the US on the same day as the tank parade weren’t the first or the last. There are many reasons to protest what is happening in the world and at home, so it’s reasonable to make sure you survive to the next march, not that we’re ever guaranteed safety in the land of killer cops.
The US citizen that got sent to the foreign concentration camp along with legal immigrants was beaten, tortured, and prevented from using a toilet. There are so many things to protest here. It’s good to get good at marching for the fast arriving revolution or coups.
Seeing the students get arrested reminds me of students that got into trouble during the 2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot. The ones that were going to be “the upcoming sports star” for their university (and probably richer) were getting news articles from some saying that their life shouldn’t be ruined by this one event because they were young, and people should be lenient on them. I always thought that was a load of bs due to how dangerous and destructive that riot was, especially over something as mild as the end of a sports game. It is very bitter to me now that people call out for so much harm against students protesting an injustice. Especially so if I think those same people would have been asking for leniency for one of those rioting young men back then.
I rarely advocate for violence or destruction for any cause, mainly because it tends to drag up innocent people into it. The average worker (like a clerk in a store or worker building a pipeline) is just trying to do a job to make their ends meet and has absolutely no say on what their employer’s morals are. There are some cases where it feels like there is little option but to make some form of illegal “mischief”, but there are ways to do that without causing too much harm, such as stealing the site boundaries lines from a legacy forest lot so the government has to re-survey the area before the sale. It can be a hard boundary to find, and it seems to be getting grayer all the time with how legitimate forms of protest are becoming criminalized. If the police are going to be violent and arrest you whether the crowd is protesting peacefully or not, is it any wonder that it does sometimes generate retaliation from the crowd?
I am very afraid for Dorothy’s safety, especially given the snipers are literal Chekhov’s Guns at this point.
She feels like she’s ready to do something impulsive that forces an escalation, like get herself shot. (Probably not fatally, but hey Willis DID already break his own rule once.)
Even if she doesn’t die I could see this resulting in her being written out of the strip, in a “the only way for her to grow the way she needs to is move on” manner.
Then she can pop up a few years later having fully been radicalized, leading a group of disaffected immigrants while wearing a militaristic outfit and identity concealing helmet as the “Head Alien”.
(I’m being silly here but just to be safe I’m also relinquishing in writing all rights to this idea because I don’t want to see it ruled out.)
Fuck, this make sense and I’m scared for real now.
(Are the snipers a real Chekhov’s Gun? Like, can’t they be used only for help to create the currently scenario?)
If Dorothy is going to end up in jail anyway, I hope she gives them an actual reason to arrest her by first punching Mary right in the anus. I mean, mouth.
I just hope more of them get radicalized soon, preferably much earlier in their lives than I did. Because with climate change getting worse and worse, we really don’t have much time.
Challenge with centrists is often a lot of them need to witness massive failures to make those leaps, something that shows the slow and steady to not work. A lot of people will justify so much nothing bc “that’s the system”
yeah if there’s any one lesson best not learned the hard way, it’s that we’re better off shifting towards organizational efforts as opposed to trying to win over so-called “centrists” in the Free Marketplace of Ideas™ — cuz let’s face it, the very structure of that marketplace is actively stacked against us :/
And it all could be made so morally simple by just transferring all those weapons to Bokraine who is fighting off an unprovoked invasion by its imperialist neighbour.
I don’t like the foreboading here, especially as Dorothy seems to be conflating her bisexual romantic dilemma with the demonstration around them. The two are not related.
If Dorothy does what I think she’s about to do I feel like that should be it, right? That should foreclose any possibility of her actually getting together with Joyce.
Raidah’s probably indoors, jacking off over how mature she thinks she is, likely after belittling a freshman for saying something that didn’t affect her and wasn’t her business.
look, i don’t want my reputation to be boiled down to “Raidah apologist“ and I don’t think it would even be out of character if she wasn’t a part of the encampments, but it would be nice if we had one of DOA’s very few prominent muslim characters like, have a non-antagonizing moment in this wider protest plot.
“And with that, I became Front Desk Girl yet again,” said Front Desk Girl, whose only reason for wearing a headscarf is apparently only for fashion and/or cancer, probably.
And in all seriousness – while I’m sure that Raidah cares about this, to some degree, I can’t see that ladder-climbing, contact-forming Raidah, who sees people’s worth solely in who their connections are and how they might be able to further better herself, would put herself out there on this. Especially when it’s calling out the institution that she’s depending on to advance.
My intuition has always been that she probably begrudges her Muslim heritage just a tad. It means she always has to work harder and make more connections and fight harder to get ahead, and getting ahead is what Raidah is all about.
I should have probably should have reworked my comment a little bit more before sending it off, because yes, Asma got her spotlight moment two weeks ago and i do genuinely truly love that for her, but unless the plan is to give her character some more focus in the future, IMO i don’t think having a character that is literally called “desk girl” by the main cast most of the time get a few snarky jabs in is good or compelling arab/muslim representation! and it sucks, because outside of three characters (one minor, two background) there really isn’t ANY arab or muslim representation in this comic.
at least 50% of the reason why i like Raidah is that for as antagonistic as it is, she actually HAS multiple dynamic relationships with our main cast, and in in light of what she said to Dorothy and the way it I do think it would be a missed opportunity to not follow up on that. I don’t need her to be protesting or be a part of the encampments, nor am i asking for her to suddenly become a good guy, but it sucks to see a mean, messy black muslim character continue to be continuously flanderized and dismissed in the comments section, especially when that kind of shit is at least called out or commented on when it comes to other controversial DOA characters (Rachel, Malayla, etc.)
like the stuff you said about Raidah begrudging her arab heritage, that’s good !! that the exact kind of thing that i’m talking about when i say she has a lot of character potential !!
fellow raidah enjoyer you articulated how I feel about her (& how she’s talked about) really well. Last time I tried getting at some of that in the comments (re: I’d like if her portrayal was a bit more nuanced than high school mean girl but in college, which it really felt like at the time) I sort of got shut down because sometimes people do just suck and are bad people and nothing else so there doesn’t need to be more. Which is whatever for a toedad but does feel like a waste in Raidahs case! Also not interesting to me!
How much do you want to bet that in the time that it’s taken for them to reach their emotional and moral conclusions, the gate’s already closed, and they’re now trapped in there?
I’d hate that. If they choose to stay, that’s one thing, but if they choose not to and get caught up anyway at this point, that doesn’t work well for me.
“MY FACE IS A BUTT”
LMAO I’M DEAD XD
Carla's Revenge -- Mission Status: COMPLETED!
*plays “Cologne” by Trans Am on hacked muzak*
Startling a laugh put of me in the middle of all this
I didn’t notice that until I read your comment. Brilliantly played Carla/Willis; you’ve done justice for the world.
I’ll admit I was getting tired of looking at a miserable Dotty, but ‘my face is a butt’ saves the whole storyline. It is high-grade humor.
once again, Carla saves the day! and the storyline. ~<3
I’m assuming Charlie’s the one who managed the swap without Mary noticing, letting her steal the position of Best Girlfriend Ever
A quality team. May their reign of mischief last long!
YEAH
FUCK YEAH CHARLIE AND/OR CARLA
_truly_ quality work.
Glad she got the last laugh. I wonder how she pulled it off. Did she recruit Dina?
It’s not a particularly biting satire of fascism, though. I don’t get why people in this comic still treat Mary as kind of cringe/annoying now that she’s *literally a nazi*. We are well past “You look weird lmao owned” and it kind of undercuts everyone’s commitment to fighting fascism that they don’t do anything about the fascist next door.
You don’t need to, like, kill Mary, but I do think you’re morally obligated to rough her up a little at this point.
if it’s any consolation, at the very least Dina later on is gonna RIP HER TO SHREDS
Remember the flowchart for punching NAZIs.
but yeah, you’re right
Like, you can either treat the encroaching specter of fascism and genocide as a serious issue deserving serious emotional speeches as characters make dramatic choices to sacrifice for the right thing as the police stand literally shoulder-to-shoulder with nazis, or you can do the Blazing Saddles route and have Carla set up a fake TSA booth and trick Mary into missing the counter-protests entirely through wacky cartoonish gags where she ends up an extra in a Tony-winning production of Rent or whatever, but I don’t know if you can really be doing both of those things in the same panel.
It’s like the opposite of the drama tag from the Walkyverse.
we haven’t even seen the next strip yet,
mark my words, at the very least Mary is gonna get fucking TRAMPLED D:<
I’m happy Mary is getting arrested.
Mary, to the cops: “But but… I’m on your side here!”
Cops, to Mary: “Tell it to the judge, buttface.”
That’s the awful irony of the situation, though, isn’t it.
Fighting fascism inherently means that you need to defend your neighbor’s right to be a fascist. At least in theory.
Nah, you really don’t need to defend anyone’s “right” to be a fascist. At all.
yeah that whole notion is white moderate bullcrap
they think politics is all about “”opinions”” regardless of what the devastating consequences of those “”opinions”” put into practice, as though the democratic process just somehow automatically evens it all out eventually even with overly influential, powerful people constantly pouring in bad ideas
as a result, they’re gonna be nothing more than right-wing cannon fodder 9-9
As a retired journalist, I still accept the right of people to say pretty much what they believe. It’s what they try to do. I can draw a line on that, up to and including flat-out war.
Y’know, I get that the government shouldn’t be locking people up for speech even if I don’t like that speech etc etc etc. but you don’t actually need to defend Mary Elizabeth Hitler’s right to call for genocide.
To defend tolerance you have to be intolerant of facism, because the goals of facism include removing tolerance. The idea that you have to defend someone’s right to be intolerant is inherently flawed.
That’s the paradox of tolerance, and it can only be resolved by being intolerant of intolerance. I don’t remember who, but someone had a good perspective on the paradox of tolerance. Let me paraphrase: Tolerance is a social contract, those that do not abide by the terms of the contract are not protected by it.
Mary’s not even expressing a political opinion here. She’s endorsing genocide out of pure shitposting spite. Which I suppose does make this the first time she’s actually acted like the college Republican she’s supposed to be, but…say what you want about the tenets of national socialism, but at least it’s an ethos. Mary’s just a cancerous void on society.
Quite a few people voted for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024 out of pure shitposting spite, not because they actually liked Trump or thought he would be a good President. In fact, a lot of them knew he was a terrible pissbaby and that he was almost assuredly going to fuck up everything, which is precisely why they voted for him. To watch the world burn. For teh lulz.
I don’t see Mary as a regular 4chan denizen, though, so I don’t know what her excuse is.
“Sure, everyone’s life is going to get worse. But this one specific person I hate’s life will get more worse and faster, so I can live with it.”
That’s philosopher Karl Popper, who codified it in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies in 1945. In there, he wrote:
Karl Popper (now in comic version!) https://skepchick.org/2017/08/popper-and-the-paradox-of-tolerance/
No.
That is a load of bullshit that the America education system tells you.
The only right a fascist has is to die. Everything else is stolen privilege taken by force.
It turns out that if you outlaw hate speech, as other countries show, it doesn’t magically make you hateful.
No, in fact we can see it works the other way around. In my country you’d go to prison for hate speech if you said like half of things Donald Trump has said in public, until 2001. It wasn’t any laws that changed, the cops just stopped arresting fascists. Then in 21 years the fascist party went from nobody who anyone wanted to touch, to getting anti-Muslim propaganda published in respected newspapers, to gaining parliament seats, to running the government.
I read this comment thinking “That’s exactly what happened in Sweden”, before noticing the very Swedish-looking name of the poster.
Of course the cops aren’t arresting fascists. Cops hate arresting other cops.
I’ll join the choir of “no, paradox of tolerance applies”
I know it’s already been mentioned a few times in other replies, but since it was also my first thought on seeing your comment, here, have a Wikipedia link. Or, if you prefer, a RationalWiki link.
So many jokes about tolerance and RationalWiki.
I reckon next to bread-tube, RationalWiki is about one of the closest things we can get in the English-speaking internet landscape to an alt-left pipeline :3
Not at all. The social contract says you support free speech because you support the society. Fascists want to destroy the society. They declaim they are enemies of it, and want no part of it.
I basically agree, but it’s hard to construct a good argument. Communists also often declaim they want to destroy society, often more openly than fascists who lie about wanting to return it to former glory.
The Tolerance Paradox is calling,
and wants to know your location.
But seriously, giving people the right
to say that certain people (skin color, religion, sexuality, etc.)
don’t deserve rights or deserve to live then
infringes on those people’s rights to live safely.
We absolutely do limit people’s freedom and speech
when it interferes with the safety of others
(can’t yell fire in a theatre, your right to swing
your fists stops at my nose).
The only reason we allow Nazis free speech
is because it ultimately supports the system
in power that is based on white supremacy/capitalism.
You ever notice when the Occupy Wallstreet and BLM
and of course the current Palestine protests started,
suddenly we don’t have free speech and every protester
is a rioter or looter or a paid actor?
But the Nazis/KKK events are protected by police?
Says nobody who reads the last article of the Universal Declaration.
I am curious if the comic is going to address Carla’s situation in all this. IIRC her family business has defence contracts for the very weapons people are protesting. I feel like there would be people making noise about that. But I don’t know exactly how “evil” the company is considered in-universe.
It’s kind of an odd situation where we absolutely need to condemn the Military Industrial Complex for sending bombs to Gaza/Bulmeria because they’re used for genocide.
And we absolutely need to be sending more to Ukraine to protect people from genocide and invasion.
It makes me wonder if Carla’s parents have an opinion there.
The comic has already begun to address this. We saw a strip like a week or two ago where Mary pointed this exact thing out. Hopefully we’ll see some fruit from that planted seed.
I think there was a bit early on where Carla said that she refused to make her revenge on Mary anything other than childish pranks, because she wanted Mary to know that she was not being taken seriously.
Fascists can handle being told “You’re evil and need to be stopped” much better than being told “You’re ridiculous and everyone’s laughing at you”. (Although if you have the power to actually stop them you should do that.) Consider that time the left started calling the Trump coterie “weird”, a tactic that proved so unexpectedly effective that the Democrats decided it wasn’t fair and they should stop doing it in case they actually won the election or something.
Could someone help me out? Which strip(a) showed us that Mary is literally a Nazi? I do miss some strips now and then (life gets hectic), so I’d just like to get caught up.
As littlekuriboh would say
JUST FUCK ALREADY
When reading it I even heard it in Tristan’s voice.
a butt that hovers above you, constantly pooping at all times
Everything You’ve Ever Wanted Poops Above
The Asshole of Damocles
“My face is a butt”
Lmao Prank’d
The best.
Those hands are superglued together btw.
Another classic from Carla.
Hello Mary.
I do not trust your appearance.
I mean she has a face like a butt, that’s only natural
Her being frame with the cops is surely not a coincidence.
So close to becoming a true menace.
embrace the menace inside you
what if there are two menaces inside you?
One of them is real but the other one is a phantom
brilliant. someone get Filoni and/or Favreau on the phone.
Embrace the first one now, and let the other one lead you in the summer.
I mean, at this point she’s a full-on Nazi.
I’m pretty sure Sirksome was talking about Dorothy, not Mary.
Dorothy needs a hug; although with how things are going lately, most of them need a hug.
Question: Are you a hugging type of person, or not?
Touch-averse autistic here who was like ten years old by the time I realized that someone hugging me when I was upset was meant to comfort *me.*
I am only comfortable with hugging people i am close with are basically just my immediate family.
Yup, touch averse autistic here as well who dreaded being hugged and often still do, because my whole family is a bunch of emotional huggers who can really sustain those things. What I figured out was I am less uncomfortable if I initiate the hug, it makes them feel better, and if I make it more like a bro hug with a lot of back thumping it’s funnier and lasts less time.
sometimes? but of course consent comes first, always
Of course; just because you are the hugging type doesn’t necessarily mean you hug anyone.
I don’t mind hugs, for the most part. I’ll even initiate them if the time seems right*. If the time is wrong though, I still remember how to lose all my bones at will.
*Any time my girlfriend is near is the right time.
Can you teach me the bone removal power?
I recently found out that my best friend is like a 95% yes-hugs person, and I’m like a 5%, which is an extremely funny disparity to have not known about considering we’ve been friends since we were 4 lol.
These days he’s one of the like 5 people in the world I will happily solicit hugs from, so it’s kinda worked out, but I can’t imagine how frustrating that must have been when we were kids (read: 17) and I would punch people who hugged me lol
I can handle hugging from close friends and family. Sometimes I want it more than other times and sometimes I don’t want it at all, even from close family.
Hugging is completely different from kissing to me though. Being kissed on the cheek when I was young was absolutely horrible and I still loathe kissing. Seriously don’t understand why some people can’t let kids have bodily autonomy on stuff like that. I mean, I get you sometimes have to carry your tantruming kid out of the store or hold their hand while walking in a dangerous area. Having to give Grandma Jo or Uncle Frank a hug or kiss should be up to the child though.
On a side note, things like back rubs/pats or something similar can sometimes be better for me than hugs. Maybe because it is less up close and personal? It could also just be less confining. I don’t know for sure.
Some people mix together like toddlers and cats, where one person wants all the physical touch and the other only wants it on their terms if at all (speaking as someone who has had cats that like hugs).
I’m not comfortable with a lot of physical contact. I’ll accept hugs from family and friends who I’m close to. But not much beyond that.
Wasn’t til I did Theatre Studies, now it’s all hugs, dahling. Then covid….
Wasn’t until I got rid of my testosterone poisoning. Now I’m touch starved.
God no. Touching people in general is extremely unpleasant, buthugging is probably the worst version of that to not include actual violence.
… usually.
Definitely a hugger in a family of mostly non-huggers. Hoping to find a SO who likes hugs some day.
No touchy! Noooooo touchy! No touch.
Dotty and Joyce could have what they want right now, if they take Weird Al’s timeless advice.
Look, it’s either him or the Black Eyed Peas. Both songs are jams.
Hmm? (2)
I’m personally more comfortable with using a certain slur to refer to myself among friends, so the original version of the Black Eyed Peas song “Let’s Get It Started” appeals to me more than the more radio-friendly version. If you don’t want to hear a vocalist shout the R-slur as a call to action on the dance floor, don’t look it up.
Ah. Got it. Ta!
Hmm?
Dare To Be Stupid, you see.
Fascinating! I hadn’t seen or heard that one. Thank you!
In a Transformers movie = 100% on brand
Eat it?
I love Rocky Road, so won’t you go and buy half a gallon, baby?
Another one rides the bus. Another one rides the bus. And another comes on and another comes on. Another one rides the bus. Hey, he’s gonna sit by you. Another one rides the bus.
Can’t talk right now, I’m on my way to visit Mr Frump.
“OK, I can hear you now.”
Are they spending most their lives living in an Amish Paradise?
Well, they do live in Indiana.
I thought the Amish were in Pennsylvania?
Dorothy, I’m really proud of you, but maybe… don’t decide to get arrested at a protest on a whim?
*psst*
I think she might be deciding to kiss Joyce and/or confess her feelings to Joyce with the resulting chaos that will ensue.
She’s tired of waiting for Maybe Future Joyce. She wants real Actual Joyce right now.
ORR, she might sublimate her feelings into a desire to do something dramatic and self-sacrificing…
…There’s a reason the watchword of the day was always,
“No heroes, no machos, no martyrs”.
Dorothy??? Sublimating her feelings??? Nooooo… [heavy sarcasm]
I’m a fan of this idea, I’m just too scarred by past continuity to think we’ll actually get a kiss out of this. Ideally she just steals an anti-protest militia member’s semi-legal assault weapon and sprays down a few gunghos and marys, for justice.
Much as I support what the protesters are there for, if Dorothy and Joyce can avoid getting arrested, I’m fine with that.
that look on Dorothy’s face in the last panel, she’s contemplating how she’s basically spent her whole life banking on future happiness, only to come to deeply regret it
that she’s been trapped in a cycle of “playing it safe”, adding to her list of acceptable losses, and trudging forward under the ever-repeated, ever-unfulfilled, ultimately unsubstantiated promise that “her day will come” — a story she could have gotten from any five-dollar psychic
“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and the Homo sapien is at last compelled to face with sober senses, the reality of their conditions of life, and their relations with others of their species.”
Looking forward to the rise of Dorothy “Caligula” Keener.
—Karl Marx. ^
(NGPZ’s quote, I mean.)
The last time Dorothy got that look in her eye she almost broke up Walky and Lucy. Girl’s got some darkness in her.
Given her Walkyverse origins, that isn’t exactly surprising.
As a newer fan, what are her Walkyverse origins?
(from years old memory, please correct errors)
She was a high school acquaintance of Walky who had an unrequited crush and decided to make a move on him years later after he was happily married/attached. He turned her down, and she betrayed the universe to a reality warping alien in her rage.
Or something to that effect.
Oh my god, I remember that – no wonder Willis has her being the impetus of wrongdoing so much
Close. She was Walky’s high school girlfriend, but she broke up with him before college for similar reasons as she broke up with Dumbiverse Danny. Years later she’s suffering from gifted kid burnout syndrome, her family is all dead or dying, her political career went nowhere, and her bookstore went out of business so she has nothing. Walky’s in the news because of the events of It’s Walky so she’s been thinking of him again.
The main antagonist of the series finds her and, in that vulnerable state, is able to convince her that Joyce is essentially a violent abuser, he uses examples from across the multiverse of her killing him as proof, and that Dorothy needs to break them up and be with Walky herself for his own good and, oh look, that just so happens to give your life purpose during a time when you desperately need it.
Let the final boss posses her so she could have super powers enough to win Walky, by murdering Joyce at their wedding and all the wedding guests too.
basically her life goes sideways enough that she teams up with an extraterrestrial tyrant who appeals to her selfish side by convincing her that her high school boyfriend should be with her instead of his fiancée because she’s better and also said boyfriend will die if he gets married. so her main plotline in that comic is sabotaging his marriage. this universe obviously is missing the aliens that can give her superpowers and also possess her, but the main takeaway is that if dorothy feels she has nothing left to lose (and if she can find a way to rationalize it), she will do anything to get what she wants.
She was a tool of the Head Alien to Destroy Walky and Joyce (mostly Joyce) and SEMME, the secret super-hero organization run by Walky’s mom.
Also she got a happy ending, where she was set up with “the genetic combination of Walky and Joyce, who is super into Dorothy for some reason”, as Willis put it.
Thank you all for answering my question. You guys are awesome.
At least Mary has the courage to admit it.
She’s beaver than da troops.
….. what?
She has the courage to admit her face is a butt. Not everyone would be so brave.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”
Or maybe a bit more pointedly in multiple directions,
I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
“All right, then, I’ll go to hell”- and tore it up.
You should cite that quote.
Just sayin.
/English Teacher IRL
That MLK Jr quote is still accurate after several decades.
Is this a solo or can anyone drop some knowledge?
The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their “vital interests” are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the “sanctity” of human life, or the “conscience” of the civilized world.”
– James Baldwin
Dorothy raises an interesting thought. If trying to change things slowly and passively is ineffective, perhaps something drastic will be better.
Of course, there’s always the possibility of rushing it, and still failing anyways. Unless screwing things up is exactly what you want…in which case, go right ahead, I guess?
It seems If you want to implement something drastic, you need to ensure the Overton Window is open to that idea but often, it takes a slow, methodical process to open the window in the first place
Which can really suck when everything is f”@^#ed
Even then, most people will only join a fight they think they can win.
That’s basic survival instinct, and it’s openly exploited by the subhumans in power. Too much propaganda telling us we can’t win no matter what we do (and honestly most of it comes from people who are allegedly on our side), so people are afraid to act because they’re repeatedly assured You Will Die™.
See this comments section’s catastrophic exaggeration of even the lightest form of protest being some apocalyptic event where cops are invariably going to impale your head on a pile the moment you’re within eyesight of a protest.
yeup. I think it’s one of the main reasons why the radical left has been failing to build up much steam in the US, despite the ideas being more popular than they have been since the Great Depression (I think Luigi Mangione’s massive popularity is a pretty good indicator).
It’s an unstable situation for the fascists, though. All it takes is one successful action and things can snowball pretty quickly.
Question — did Carla pull the prank off before Mary got to the counter-protest? Or are they in the fenced area, too?
Mary is not in the fenced area, Mary appears to be literally side by side with the riot police. I guess it’s explicitly school policy that anti-genocide protests are against the rules and pro-genocide protests aren’t.
Considering what the protest is about, I’m not surprised that the anti-genocide protests appear to be against the school rules.
Per Asma, protest “encampments” are against school rules now, which matches the events this is referencing except this clearly isn’t an encampment and also Dorothy keeps saying that the “law” changed when what actually changed was a school policy. So either what’s happening is that all pretense of rules are being ignored by the cops, Mary is not technically in Dunn Meadow, or Mary is going to be really surprised when the cops arrest her too. Presumably it’s the first one?
I’m not sure why you say it isn’t an encampment?
We’ve seen tents all over the place and when Jocelyne talked about it to Dorothy, she talked about staying until IU stopped funding military companies.
Dorothy is voicing a lot of my frustration with the state of the country, and honestly it feels very validating. So thanks for this, Willis. Genuinely.
Oh my god, look at Mary’s unbelievably smug little 4-pixel eyebrow. She’s so confident about her butt face.
The real question is, is her butt also a face?
She talks out of it most of the time, so I figure it qualifies.
YES, DOROTHY.
LET THE HATE FLOW THROUGH YOU.
LET YOUR ARC COMPLETE.
EMERGE.
my only hope for her is that if she decides to act on this new self *right now* and gets arrested, that she knows to shut the fuck up around cops
I don’t think that is hate. That is a strong moral intuition and a concern for injustice. Dorothy is a Jedi, not a Sith.
Though she still does not believe in your sorcerer’s. Mary’s devotion to that ancient religion has helped her conjure up a real friend or given her clairvoyance enough to find her roommate’s hidden snack stash.
PS. What ever happened to Mary’s boyfriend? That whole relationship was both deeply entertaining and utterly disturbing.
well, hope she does it alone, and push Joyce outside
It’s okay Dorothy, that’s exactly how I felt when I learned Texas seals records at 18 and I absolutely should’ve been decking people /j.
On topic, this strip today is precisely why I love Dorothy. I’ll criticize her, I’ll talk smack about her, but that’s because she reminds me so much of a lot of people I love and care about. I just feel so bad for her in those last two panels. I really hope she ends up switching her focus in politics to something closer to the metal. On a grande scale, politics is hell. On a small scale, you’d be surprised how much change you can actually accomplish (my city in Texas has free ambulance rides, free healthcare for anyone making under $60k at its main hospital, and refused to cooperate with ICE. This was all by local politicians, because our governor and senator are evil.)
I mean, I still would rather have her as president than half the people presented up for option during my life, fuck Raidah, but if Dorothy wants to enact a lot of good change while keeping blood off her hands, she can do that as a local politician or even a lawyer.
Also, I just wanna hug her. Girly needs some Chappell Roan and a weekend home. I still don’t want her to end up in jail, but at least I know she does genuinely care about the protest now.
Dorothy insisted on being on top to fix things immediately, but after seeing your comment, I agree. It’s better to start that way. And yes, I hope Karma has no mercy on Raidah.
However, I also wish it weren’t just limited to politics.
I still remember how the girl sang passionately at karaoke, and I can’t stop thinking that maybe singing is what she needs so much.
And to think Willis wrote this 9 months ago.
In the middle of the height of the Gaza protests? Shortly after the one this sequence is based on?
I suspect if he was writing it now, it would be very different. And even darker.
You know, I forgot about that, lol. I was thinking more about current events.
I’m surprised Mary didn’t notice that her sign was changed.
What do you mean? Mary’s face has always been a butt.
I’m surprised she isn’t leaving. She knows they are going to arrest her too if she’s still their when they start breaking the camp up… Wait, she does know that, right?
They’re not threatening to arrest the counterprotestors
I mean they might still think they have to for it to survive the constitutional challenge. If this were being written now instead of last year, maybe not, but,
Nope. The counterprotestors aren’t camping, so they’re not in violation.
But they can no longer tell that Mary is a counter protester. She’s just a butt face now, after all.
That would be a fun outcome.
Mary’s outside the fenced-in area, standing behind the cops. I doubt they’re gonna arrest her.
…… darnit.
Cops almost never arrest the fascists. They get treated with kid gloves and “boys will be boys” and “I know his daddy, let him be”.
I didn’t recognize it was Mary at first and thought it was just a random protestor and got very confused.
i guess if she’s at the front, ppl aren’t really looking next to her or so
all tho given the ‘incompetence’ (or ‘accidental’ situations) i’m surprised some ppl wouldn’t just fire at anyone with a sign even as a counter protest or so unless i guess ppl had a specific location/gave off “narc” body language/vibes like asma said lol
Cops always encircle protestors and anti-protestors seperately.
The counter-protestors aren’t encircled here, though. Mary’s literally part of the police line, with the cops standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the fascists.
I have this weird feeling she’s gonna kiss Joyce, shove her through the fence and join the protesters.
Unfortunately, I think that would be the better option than them both staying there. No one knows where they are, and who knows how Joyce’s dad will react if she gets rounded up by police. I would be especially concerned by his reaction if it takes a while for people to find out where they went, as it could bring back thoughts about the first kidnapping. I just don’t trust his reaction if things go south.
I could see Dorothy’s parents being a bit more understanding about her frustration breaking out in this situation after everything she has been through and what she has been striving towards (being president). If I was one of the girls’ parents, I myself would be wondering why the security only showed up now during a mild student protest vs all those other times of violence on school grounds. I might even encourage switching schools so that we wouldn’t be giving money to a school that acts like this, depending on the scholarships and financial funding.
If Dorothy is arrested, and Joyce is outside the fence and expected to go inform others of the situation…
This suddenly reminds me of the situation when Becky got into Toedad’s car and left. Not a good time for Joyce at all.
I wonder if she has leveled up in maturity, and will have a more strategic reaction than “go sic Sal and Amazi-Girl on the problem.”
This has been my feeling for days, yeah. I want it to happen so muuuuccchhhh.
“and to think I wanted to be the fxxking president”
Dorothy could be the celibate president if she wanted to.
Or excuse me, the cxxibate president.
when I see words censored in that way, I can’t help but automatically pronounce them out loud. “fux-ing” might still convey the same meaning, but wow, “sexy-bait” really flips it upside-down and sideways
I’m Glad Carla’s pranked work silver linings in a shit storm.
Way to go Charla.
I feel like we Relationship Sickos are being trolled…
Always.
The last strip WAS called ‘almost out’.
God, Willis must’ve foreseen You Know Who winning the goddam election because this is precisely the Attitude of Now
It was also what was going on last year, though it seems a lot of people weren’t paying attention back then.
Indeed it was. But somehow given the tendencies of the current regime, it seems more horrible, more likely to end in bloodshed now
Heck, the you know what stain “won” the election before the one before this recent one.
I’m excited for us to cut to Joe and Walky sharing McNuggets and they accidentally bite into the same one
Italian music starts playing as they chew their way toward one another and do a lil bonk kiss.
I’m a Relationship Sicko, and I approve this message.
They’re gonna do it!
“I heard that famous photographed kiss between those girls at IU the moment the riot police started swarming in was problematic because they both had boyfriends at the time.”
“Ah, little Jimmy, true as that may be, our snapshots of revolutionary imagery show us much more than two people. It shows us a moment in time crystallized with context snowing behind it… And, let’s just admit it, the framing is just so good, pure art…”
Mmm.
“Forget the whole boyfriends thing, look at that masterful rule of thirds!”
A reference to this photograph?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-J_Day_in_Times_Square
Or this one?
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/969118413537284994/
“my face is a butt” lol funny as a standalone strip but feels like it’d be a more ‘effective’ prank to make mary’s sign Pro-the side she’s against so everyone else hounds her (but i’m sure ppl would have spare signs)
I’m surprised other ppl are packing up
Tho it’s not everyone’s responsibility tho it’d be kinda sad if too many ppl were like “Well, someone else will take care of it, so it’s not my problem” Maybe in some cases, choose ur battles but somet things you can’t ignore forever
Plan a protest every couple months, if they point snipers at you, try to kettle you, and order you to disperse; then plan a protest every couple weeks.
They keep trying to stop your peaceful protest? Guess who just got daily free publicity?
If they criminalize peaceful protest as they recently did in the UK (this law only applies if you’re supporting the right of muslims to not be exterminated in Gaza), then each peaceful protest will radicalize protestors. A small independent group that is willing to use violence can be effective when combined with large peaceful protests. If you find you can’t be peaceful at the site of the peaceful protest, then strain police capacity by attacking elsewhere. (I’d prefer it if you target property instead of people, both morally speaking but also for tactical reasons, any hierarchy of oppression has lots of replacement monsters; but they can run out of money, materiel, and time.) Cops can’t show up in big enough numbers to arrest peaceful protestors if enough of the cop car tires get slashed. Or just find a big chunk of something heavy and block a street.
This is happening on many fronts in the US currently. The protests throughout the US on the same day as the tank parade weren’t the first or the last. There are many reasons to protest what is happening in the world and at home, so it’s reasonable to make sure you survive to the next march, not that we’re ever guaranteed safety in the land of killer cops.
The US citizen that got sent to the foreign concentration camp along with legal immigrants was beaten, tortured, and prevented from using a toilet. There are so many things to protest here. It’s good to get good at marching for the fast arriving revolution or coups.
Seeing the students get arrested reminds me of students that got into trouble during the 2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot. The ones that were going to be “the upcoming sports star” for their university (and probably richer) were getting news articles from some saying that their life shouldn’t be ruined by this one event because they were young, and people should be lenient on them. I always thought that was a load of bs due to how dangerous and destructive that riot was, especially over something as mild as the end of a sports game. It is very bitter to me now that people call out for so much harm against students protesting an injustice. Especially so if I think those same people would have been asking for leniency for one of those rioting young men back then.
I rarely advocate for violence or destruction for any cause, mainly because it tends to drag up innocent people into it. The average worker (like a clerk in a store or worker building a pipeline) is just trying to do a job to make their ends meet and has absolutely no say on what their employer’s morals are. There are some cases where it feels like there is little option but to make some form of illegal “mischief”, but there are ways to do that without causing too much harm, such as stealing the site boundaries lines from a legacy forest lot so the government has to re-survey the area before the sale. It can be a hard boundary to find, and it seems to be getting grayer all the time with how legitimate forms of protest are becoming criminalized. If the police are going to be violent and arrest you whether the crowd is protesting peacefully or not, is it any wonder that it does sometimes generate retaliation from the crowd?
I am very afraid for Dorothy’s safety, especially given the snipers are literal Chekhov’s Guns at this point.
She feels like she’s ready to do something impulsive that forces an escalation, like get herself shot. (Probably not fatally, but hey Willis DID already break his own rule once.)
Even if she doesn’t die I could see this resulting in her being written out of the strip, in a “the only way for her to grow the way she needs to is move on” manner.
Then she can pop up a few years later having fully been radicalized, leading a group of disaffected immigrants while wearing a militaristic outfit and identity concealing helmet as the “Head Alien”.
(I’m being silly here but just to be safe I’m also relinquishing in writing all rights to this idea because I don’t want to see it ruled out.)
Fuck, this make sense and I’m scared for real now.
(Are the snipers a real Chekhov’s Gun? Like, can’t they be used only for help to create the currently scenario?)
There were snipers at the real protest this is based on, but they didn’t open fire. No one was shot.
So they can just be here for realism rather than as a Chekhov’s gun that must be used.
There’s plenty of Dorothy in the upcoming preview panels, including talking to Dina in her room, and having coffee with Jocelyne.
ohhhhhhhhhh it’s a metaphor!
Your mom is a metaphor.
She is, but one that’s like a simile
That’s a simile I haven’t metaphor.
I never metaphor I didn’t like.
Everything Sucks but it sure ain’t Boring
“Carla got what she wanted in the future, so…”
If Dorothy is going to end up in jail anyway, I hope she gives them an actual reason to arrest her by first punching Mary right in the anus. I mean, mouth.
I mean, it’s an easy mistake to make. She talks out of both.
I love watching centrists get radicalised as they realise “wait a minute, this is bullshit”
Though you will always be suspicious of your instincts, take it from me, someone who’s instincts were probably centrist at 18
I just hope more of them get radicalized soon, preferably much earlier in their lives than I did. Because with climate change getting worse and worse, we really don’t have much time.
It would be nice
Challenge with centrists is often a lot of them need to witness massive failures to make those leaps, something that shows the slow and steady to not work. A lot of people will justify so much nothing bc “that’s the system”
yeah if there’s any one lesson best not learned the hard way, it’s that we’re better off shifting towards organizational efforts as opposed to trying to win over so-called “centrists” in the Free Marketplace of Ideas™ — cuz let’s face it, the very structure of that marketplace is actively stacked against us :/
Oh no, there it is. The “fuck it” face.
*offers a hug to Dorothy* Her worldview has been rocked as much as Joyce’s has since the year began for them.
Yeah. I’m glad it has, but it’s rough in the moment.
Dorothy, you can do this!
But not by staying at a dangerous protest totally unprepared. Please leave, you two.
Which of these two is a budding reporter again? Free press is supposed to be one of the lines of defence against this kind of bullshit, right?
And it all could be made so morally simple by just transferring all those weapons to Bokraine who is fighting off an unprovoked invasion by its imperialist neighbour.
“Let’s be lesbians who crime.”
“Protesting?”
“No…cop punching.”
(puts on superhero costumes)
I don’t like the foreboading here, especially as Dorothy seems to be conflating her bisexual romantic dilemma with the demonstration around them. The two are not related.
Finally ! Dorothy is embracing it ! She’s finally seeing the world for what it is ! She’s finally challenging power instead of hoping to embrace it !
If Dorothy does what I think she’s about to do I feel like that should be it, right? That should foreclose any possibility of her actually getting together with Joyce.
Depends what you think she’s about to do. Impossible question to answer with vaguely outlined criteria.
Well I think she’s going to be very impulsive and kiss Joyce
Ahhhh, I agree with that but I don’t think it’ll stop them from getting together.
Is Robin still here? Is Raidah anywhere?
Raidah’s probably indoors, jacking off over how mature she thinks she is, likely after belittling a freshman for saying something that didn’t affect her and wasn’t her business.
look, i don’t want my reputation to be boiled down to “Raidah apologist“ and I don’t think it would even be out of character if she wasn’t a part of the encampments, but it would be nice if we had one of DOA’s very few prominent muslim characters like, have a non-antagonizing moment in this wider protest plot.
“And with that, I became Front Desk Girl yet again,” said Front Desk Girl, whose only reason for wearing a headscarf is apparently only for fashion and/or cancer, probably.
And in all seriousness – while I’m sure that Raidah cares about this, to some degree, I can’t see that ladder-climbing, contact-forming Raidah, who sees people’s worth solely in who their connections are and how they might be able to further better herself, would put herself out there on this. Especially when it’s calling out the institution that she’s depending on to advance.
My intuition has always been that she probably begrudges her Muslim heritage just a tad. It means she always has to work harder and make more connections and fight harder to get ahead, and getting ahead is what Raidah is all about.
I should have probably should have reworked my comment a little bit more before sending it off, because yes, Asma got her spotlight moment two weeks ago and i do genuinely truly love that for her, but unless the plan is to give her character some more focus in the future, IMO i don’t think having a character that is literally called “desk girl” by the main cast most of the time get a few snarky jabs in is good or compelling arab/muslim representation! and it sucks, because outside of three characters (one minor, two background) there really isn’t ANY arab or muslim representation in this comic.
at least 50% of the reason why i like Raidah is that for as antagonistic as it is, she actually HAS multiple dynamic relationships with our main cast, and in in light of what she said to Dorothy and the way it I do think it would be a missed opportunity to not follow up on that. I don’t need her to be protesting or be a part of the encampments, nor am i asking for her to suddenly become a good guy, but it sucks to see a mean, messy black muslim character continue to be continuously flanderized and dismissed in the comments section, especially when that kind of shit is at least called out or commented on when it comes to other controversial DOA characters (Rachel, Malayla, etc.)
like the stuff you said about Raidah begrudging her arab heritage, that’s good !! that the exact kind of thing that i’m talking about when i say she has a lot of character potential !!
fellow raidah enjoyer
you articulated how I feel about her (& how she’s talked about) really well. Last time I tried getting at some of that in the comments (re: I’d like if her portrayal was a bit more nuanced than high school mean girl but in college, which it really felt like at the time) I sort of got shut down because sometimes people do just suck and are bad people and nothing else so there doesn’t need to be more. Which is whatever for a toedad but does feel like a waste in Raidahs case! Also not interesting to me!
Aw, Carla didn’t draw the stink lines on Mary’s replacement sign.
How much do you want to bet that in the time that it’s taken for them to reach their emotional and moral conclusions, the gate’s already closed, and they’re now trapped in there?
I’d hate that. If they choose to stay, that’s one thing, but if they choose not to and get caught up anyway at this point, that doesn’t work well for me.
It wouldn’t surprise me if that happens.
BE GAY DO CRIMES
BE CRIME DO GAYS
Legit. But also, become the person you want to be.
Toxic yuri status: GARNET
Seriously, this is so sweet. Well, bittersweet given the situation, but still.
science has proven that things can exist in two states at once. ~<3
[insert rant about how quantum superstates actually work from physics background]
Garnet is not toxic she is made out of love didn’t you heard the song!
Mary got PRANK’D! ~<3
took me a second to realize what the brick joke was.
Can you enlighten me?
Wait wait nope I finally saw it.
In the background.
The sign.
…Calling it now: I think we’re about to get a kiss scene.
Well done, Carla. Apparently, even the cops don’t like Mary.
Wally-Joe-Dorothy-Joyce foursome. Only way it’s resolved.
she wants that Joyce-Walky Threesome so bad