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James Gunn @jamesgunn.bsky.social ⋅ 10h
Chris Ingraham @cingraham.bsky.social ⋅ 14d
Duncan MacMaster The Sweetheart of the Internet @duncanwriter.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
David M Willis! SPX table F2 @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
⚧️ Perfidious Josephine Riesman @josie.zone ⋅ 2d
Ron Chan | RCCC C25 @rondanchan.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
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Don Cardenas
Ruth: What do YOU got the stink-eye over?
Mary: *pushes kitchen magnet ‘8’ upwards* “Everything.”
Either Ruth just assumes that stink-eye is Mary’s default expression, or Mary’s got an extra pair of eyes on the back of her head that are doing it too.
Guessing she might be able to tell from her posture, or her just kinda standing in the hallway being pissy.
Willis always draws the characters facing the reader, no matter which way they’re actually facing in the DoA world.
*looks at first panel*
How do you tell if Mary is angry at someone?
Check her pulse. If she’s got one, she’s angry.
Folded arms. Hunched shoulders. We can’t see her lower body but there is a LOT that can be expressed in posture and body language that would indicate the stink eye without actually seeing someone’s face.
I adore that fourth panel.
Whoop!
Clearly, Joyce’s workouts with her sister are paying off…
You’re right! She’s actually got lots of practice moving people around.
Oh, that was a clever move of Joyce that shows she understands Mary very well. Direct her attention onto a lesser secret that you pretend to care about more!
That was pretty impressive, and I’m hoping it worked. Seems like it’d be hard to forget that one of your hall-mates is using an iguana as a hat.
Yeah, but the genius of it is that Mary doesn’t know where the iguana came from, and since she didn’t get the story, she doesn’t know it’s something worth tattling about. To her it’s just Joyce being weird.
She does know pets aren’t allowed.
So is Mary fooled here or is she holding onto the bigger secret for later use?
Mary’s not really a tattler. She’s a hoarder. She uses secrets for power, not just to get people in trouble up front.
But at this point, the ‘secret’ is that Joyce brought an iguana into the dorm…or maybe, just maybe, she could stretch that into “Joyce possibly has a pet iguana”, which could be easily disproven by searching her room. Joyce has no real ties with Malaya, so it’d be a leap to jump there. She may possibly go with “someone possibly has a pet iguana somewhere in the dorm,” but proving that would require searching EVERYONE’S room, which is problematic on the face of it (especially given that Mary is unpopular overall and with Ruth even more so) and would also give Malaya ample time/warning to cover her tracks.
Joyce played this well, overall.
Or Mary will do her thing, now that she knows to look for something and lurk and spy and wait for more evidence.
Huh, I’m actually impressed that Joyce was able to come up with that so quickly and that Mary bought that. Maybe Fuckface’s powers aren’t as bogus as I previously thought…
yeah. I really thought they were fucked, there.
You thought that, but Joyce faced Mary down with courage.
I suspect it was a true statement, although it’s possible Dorothy had permission, so when Ruth takes the accusation seriously and follows up on it (probably the correct course of action unless Mary cries wolf too much), Sierra will honestly be able to say Mary was bearing false witness. Borrowing + suspicious demeanor ≠ stealing.
Am I the only one noticing Mary shifting ‘borrowing’ to ‘stealing’ in her game of telephone tattling?
… literally the comment right above mine said the same thing twelve hours ago, I’m an idiot.
Mary sounds like the un fun aunt in the first panel and the annoying cousin in the last two panels.
I actually went back to see if Dorothy’s feet are ever visible to see if she has shoes. Because Sierra doesn’t wear them, and she’s borrowing her clothes…
It looks like she just threw that floral print shirt on on top of what she was already wearing.
Frictionless shoes, apparently.
It seems that Joyce’s command of psychology is as good as Dorothy’s.
Look at that expression on Fuckface. He’s so done with this shit.
I don’t know, that seems like Fuckface’s default expression.
Exactly.
Fuckface is permanently done with all the shit
Subterfuge? To avoid detection from an authorothy figure?
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: NEVER mess with Joyce.
She can break your heart (right, Joe?)
She can break your pedal magna distal phalangeal bone (right, Toe?)
Or, if she feels like it, she can be a very sharp suberfuge operator indeed. It start to show that although she did not always agree with her methods, this is the girl who grew up with Becky has her best friend.
“But she’s always a woman to me!”
lol
beat me to it!
Wha… what are you two talking about?
Song lyric.
Aaaaah, that makes much more sense. Thanks
Found it! Not half bad, either.
Mary better watch out, I hear there’s a killer going around called the Tattletale Strangler.
Well, they’re right. You’re the DEFINITION of a tattler, Mary.
Cerberus was spot on when she described her as a curtain twitcher ready to catch her neighbor in any little sin they might be up to
Somewhere out there, there’s a seat on a homeowner’s association board with her name on it.
Good LORD do I not want her as a neighbour.
Seriously. Mary would be the one complaining about noise and parking when you have three friends over for dinner at six pm on a Saturday. (Not even a party with music or anything, just dinner.)
They may be right about Mary (like 100% right with a 2% margin of error), but…..do they know why children love the great taste of cinnamon toast crunch?! I don’t think so. Stay humble ladies.
Is it sugar? I’m gonna go ahead and guess sugar.
Well, I’m not prepared to say it’s sugar, but, yeah, it’s sugar.
CINNAMON sugar even?
The irony here is that at this point, Ruth would be more likely to throw Mary out than Fuckface. She already knows what Mary is.
Yeah, I give it VERY good odds that Ruth already knows about Fuckface and tries very hard to maintain plausible deniability
Fuckface, a.k.a. “Becky 2”? I could see it.
Well, Ruth didn’t already know about Becky and Fuckface has been less obvious, so I kind of doubt it. The only real clue Ruth’s had is the escaped Lettuce.
Yeah, fair. I mostly meant that there’s reasonable odds that Ruth would turn a blind eye to Fuckface -after- learning about him. She wouldn’t have the same reasons as she did for turning a blind eye to Becky, but still.
If that’s true then it’s just another point towards Ruth being a really bad RA because there are a lot of good reasons pets generally aren’t allowed in college dorms. In no particular order: 1) Animals are often messy and don’t exactly respect damage deposits 2) It’s unfair to expect people to cohabit with someone else’s pet not to mention allergies exist 3) Shoebox dorm rooms don’t have the space for the proper enclosures for most animals (they’re not even enough space for the people living there in the first place) 4) Animals can be unpredictable and the college doesn’t want to be liable when someone’s roommate gets bitten by their nervous dog
Thank you, Mary.
That was unfair and over the top. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I always find your comments so irritating., but I’m going to see if I can keep myself from responding to them for a few day.
No need to apologize, I honestly couldn’t give less of a fuck what you think of me.
But also go fuck yourself. Just on like general principle for conflating me with a transphobe and homophobe.
“No need to apologize, but also go fuck yourself” is the title of the next book.
Because they are consistently negative, judgemental and dripping with scorn? It’s not that they’re *wrong*, it’s just… consistently unpleasant to read.
I am wondering if Fuckface actually even has a proper iguana enclosure or whether he’s just wandering around freezing half the time, crapping everywhere and being miserable. Reptiles are not easy to care for, and real adult iguanas who are cared for properly get much larger than Fuckface and require enclosures too large to reasonably fit in a dorm regardless of any other issues.
He might just be a magical comic iguana like he was in Shortpacked, but if reality applies to him at all, sadly, we’ve seen no indication Malaya is taking care of him on a basic level.
I think all of this is true, barring the bit about it being unfair to expect people to live with other’s pets. Unless there are allergies, you take that risk if you agree to a random roommate. That’s not to say pets should be allowed in the dorms – you’ve given ample good reasons why its a bad idea. I just don’t think it’s unfair to expect others to cohabit with others pets in a random roommate scenario.
I’m on the fence there. pets that stay in a cage/tank should be easy to ignore, but some pets can get really destructive (I lost a lot of things to mum’s dogs as a child) and some pets are incredibly smelly (ferrets, omfg).
then again, I just skipped the whole dorm thing myself (which it turned out was a good idea because of the people running the dorms anyways – they had somehow gotten an exemption from the Residential Tenancy Act, so they could be as awful as they liked and students literally had no right to complain)
I’m not referring to the dorms – like I said, there’s a bunch of good reasons to avoid pets in the dorms. But if you agree to a random roommate, you need to accept the risk they have a pet. The pet owner is obligated to keep the pet as unobtrusive as possible, but that doesn’t mean that you (general you) have the right to demand they give up their pet or find somewhere else to live when you agreed to live with a random roommate (which, barring situations like dorms where there are good reasons to bar pets, includes anything they come with).
…
why *would* someone agree to a random roommate outside of dorms? that sounds like a blind date that lasts months instead of one evening.
I have no idea, but my point is if you agree to room with someone you don’t know, you kinda have to take whatever possessions they come with (barring if they are illegal to have in the house) if you want to live there (and you don’t have to! Saying ‘no thanks’ is an option). There are good reasons not to allow pets in the dorm, but lots of apartments don’t ban pets (and, where I live, they are not ALLOWED to ban pets except for allergies – they can say a specific animal is disruptive or dangerous but they can’t ban pets in general) so if you agree to room with someone you’ve not met and discussed this with previously, I kinda feel like that’s your own fault (though, again, the owner is obligated to make sure it behaves).
*hacked Muzak switches to The Bee Gees’ “Jive Talkin'”*
Just own it Mary. That way you take the power from them!
ahaahah it worked
you’re a rebel, Joyce
Question of the night: does the hovertext refer to Joyce’s line in panel 4, or Mary’s line in panel 6, or Mary’s line in panel 7?
yes.
Also, yes. Though I initially read it as a hypothetical Joyce response to Marys line in panel 6.
honestly Mary seemjs more confused through out this strip than angry, i’d say the stink eye was more a (safe) assumption on Ruth’s part
This is why nobody likes you, Mary.
The way Joyce has become incredibly good at ducking authority and obfuscating sounds about right for someone who grew up in a spiritual police state. I learned to lie just to have a life of my own.
Joyce didn’t lie, she just omitted certain truths. She’d be great at authoring “executive summaries”.
not the word I would use.
Mary’s a real Snitchy McLooselips.
Mary already went from ‘borrowing’ to ‘stealing’ in less than a minute.
….How did that work?
Joyce and Dorothy, count yourselves very, very lucky.
Overemphasised a smaller thing so she became distracted from the bigger thing. It is a tactic and it does work on people and Mary knows not the true significance of the iguana now as Joyce treated it as unimportant.
“I’m not a tattler, I just don’t let people get away with minor infractions!”
I’m glad to see that Ruth literally has no time for Mary’s issues.
Go take a short leap off a tall cliff Mary.
Note the self-righteous looming Mary pulls over Dorothy and Joyce, despite all of them being around the same height. That’s exactly the kind of thing a power tripping know-it-all tattletale does.
Honestly I feel like “borrowing” your room mates clothing without permission is a bit over the top. I mean, its okay if Dorothy got permission ahead of time, but please don’t steal your roommates clothing. I’d be pissed if I caught my roommate walking around in one of my shirts.
Well… desperate times desperate measures. And Sierra seems pretty chill. My roommate in college had no sense of boundaries. I got a new shirt. She immediately snatched it to wear it. And mind you this girl does not bathe very often and is stinky. The shirt doesn’t fit her. I thank the heavens so much.
“Sisters share clothes, right?”
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/share-2/
I doubt Sierra would be upset if you borrowed every item of clothing she owned. Probably wouldn’t stop her from going to class either.
It suddenly occurs to me that Joyce’s plan worked! Instead of telling Ruth about Fuck-face, Mary can only focus on the faux-confession about Dorothy borrowing Sierra’s clothes. She’s actually managed to forget about the iguana on Joyce’s head!
I dunno… maybe Joyce does have psychic powers!
It’s an EXCELLENT plan given that it came from little miss goody-two-shoe-never-lie-and-always-respect-authority-figures. And more than that – it’s a pretty good answer to – and A BETTER variation of – Dorothy’s “distraction-with-psychology”-ploy.
This is the Joyce who broke into a house with Becky and Jocelyne. The Joyce who – if ineptly, still in earnest – hid Becky from the entire world when she needed it, the Joyce who as far as I can tell surpasses Dorothy in Subterfuge.
I’m impressed and just a little scared.
I think the takeaway from this strip is that Ruth’s door goes ‘ding’ when she opens it.
Smart move from the residents, installing a warning bell.
Is it perhaps Ruth exiting the elevator?
Only if Ruth is now living in the elevator???
I thought that too… then noticed the lift buttons…
It makes so much sense! But I still like my story better.
And how adorbs do Joyce and Dorothy look in the third panel!!
Mary (in this strip and yesterday’s) seems really downcast.
She had a boyfriend recently right? Trouble in paradise?
What happened to her in Roomies…
EGADS IS SHE PREGNANT??!?
Wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to pressure her into pre-marital hanky-panky and she dropped him like a hot potato.
Dude is apparently genuinely just as sanctimonious as Mary (Joe told Rachel their wing could keep him towards the end of the List leak, which says to me it wasn’t an act to get in Mary’s pants,) so I’m betting no, or at least not PIV until they’re morally unimpeachable doing so under The Rules. (Thinking on it I would actually not be at all surprised if Mary’s one of those people who says she’s still a virgin because she’s never had PIV and so whatever else she’s done doesn’t ‘count’. Very much a letter of the law rather than the spirit type, Mary.)
Maybe he expressed sympathy for Not-Ryan and there are some places even Mary’s self-righteousness won’t go.
Well if he was from a congregation she did not approve of… but that would probably have more to do with “HERETIC!” than “Rapist!”.
Looking back at strips she’s been in, she might just be upset about Malaya being rude to her at art while also being better at it.
Little less fun but still somewhat interesting.
She’s not pregnant. Willis said that wouldn’t happen, because it felt to him too much like he’d shaming/punishing for having sex.
he’d BE shaming/punihsing CHARACTERS for having sex.
CURSE THE LACK OF AN EDIT FUNCTION!
Probably also because he already did that to Mary in Roomies! and punishing the same character twice in the same way would be.. bad, to say the least, ignoring the problems with ‘punishing’ a character with pregnancy in the first place.
Perfect. This ended the way I foresaw.
Amazing how self righteous Mary gets torn down/ torn over “tattler.”
There’s call ins and call outs, Mary. But YOU are to your version of JESUS as RANDAL is to MISS FINSTER. And your version of Jesus can suck my ass.
That absolute snongo!
This is carlas room, isn’t it? I’m curious how she reacts to the wohle kidnapping-Malayas-pet-thing
1) Dorothy is dressed like some kind of female Joe;
2) Joyce has turned out to be a lot more daring and edgy than she ever thought.
Ergo: “My sisters that I never knew I had!”
Joyce and Sarah’s room, from the stars and letters visible on the door.
Which is another good move – going in through Joyce’s room, rather than directly to Malaya’s. If anyone does note the iguana, it’ll just be associated with Joyce, but won’t be found in Joyce’s room.
Sarah’s likely reaction upon seeing the odd duo: “I don’t know what is going on and I don’t care. Please don’t tell me anything or try to explain anything.”
Hm. I thought Carla had those red stars in her ultracar decorations.
Having a look at the adjacent room might be something they’ll do though. I would. And iguana tanks aren’t exactly small, so one look should be enough.
I’m thinking that Fuck-face will be disappointed to be back with his regular endotherm. The one with the triangular maw seemed to make things so much more interesting!
Great Batman Gambit on Joyce’s part!
I love that Mary’s so into herself she forgot about the huge lizard on Joyce’s head. Also, is it weird that I want Fuckface to show up in every scene from now on?
Tattling can be used for good too. Whistleblowers are an important part of bringing to light unsavory activities. Somehow, I doubt that Mary will use her powers for good though.
On “Tattler”, I’m thinking back and trying to remember anything Mary actually tattled on and I can’t come up with anything.
I mean, I certainly wouldn’t trust her with my secrets, but it would be more the feeling of impending doom from Mary knowing than the assumption she’d go straight to Ruth.
Mary once threatened to spread Carla’s trans status about the floor to create trouble for Carla. However, I can’t see Joyce knowing that. She also spread slander about Ruth and Billie’s relationship in the most unpleasant terms and that I do believe Joyce would know about.
However, I’m wondering if ‘tattler’ is something Joyce has decided for herself Mary is likely to be given the opportunity.
I’m not certain, but then thinking about it Joyce wasn’t present for the ‘shit Ruth’s suicidal, what do we do?’ Hall meeting where Mary suggested they could find an ‘opportunity’ with this information that made everyone conclude ‘Mary’s suggesting we blackmail a suicidal woman, what the actual fucking fuck.’ (She and Becky were on their way back from the disastrous church day.) Joyce may be aware of some of the details after the fact, but I’m not sure how public the knowledge that Mary actually DID blackmail Ruth actually became.
Whereas I’m pretty sure Joyce recognizes the threat of Mary tattling from keeping Becky secret in the dorm, but no one knew yet that what Mary would actually do is use things as leverage.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/blackmailed/
In this one, Billie says she told everyone on the floor about what Mary did. And that was after Joyce returned to school. Though if there was someone Billie would neglect to tell, it would be Joyce.
I forgot that, but: Interesting, Malaya’s the only one who WOULDN’T have gotten that warning as a given, which means she’s the only one Billie’s threat to Mary doesn’t cover.
I’d lay really good money Carla has either told her already after ‘let’s form an alliance against Mary’ or would the moment Malaya brings up a new blackmail attempt.
In practise, she’s been much more of a blackmailer than a tattler.
Even if Joyce wasn’t present, I’m pretty sure she heard about this
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/opportunity/
Exactly. She’s all about the threats.
Must tattle to stop tattling!
On the plus side I feel like Mary actually put in an effort to not tattle for all of one or two seconds. Which is an improvement.
On the down side, it’s still Mary.
“TEACHER! She said I’m a TATTLER!”
I remember those days… I mean you literally, right now, are tattling on them! Come on!
I keep thinking about how Joyce said Dorothy was borrowing clothes and 18 seconds later Mary said she was “stealing” them like that’s not even tattling that’s flat out lying
Well it’s pretty clearly implied that she’s borrowing without asking (aka stealing) by her preceding it with “keep this quiet.”
…. How did Ruth know she was giving the stink eye with Mary facing the other way?
Maybe it’s her default expression.
wow it’s pretty much pathological…also nice trick putting a new thing to tattle about in her head pushing out the iguana thing.
Whatever follows “Please keep this quiet…” will arouse all her tattling instincts.
…and thereby neatly steer them away from any OTHER subject… such as iguanas. Nicely done, Joyce